Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to AMCO Pittsburgh's first quarter 2022 earnings results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Melanie Sprousen, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning to everyone joining us on today's first quarter 2022 conference call. Joining me today are Brett McBrayer, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike McCauley, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Also joining us on the call today are Sam Lyon, President of Union Electric Steel Corporation, and Dave Anderson, President of Air and Liquid Systems Corporation. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that participants on this call may make statements or comments that are forward-looking and may include financial projections or other statements of the corporation's plans, objectives, expectations, or intentions. These matters involve certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of the corporation's control. The corporation's actual results may differ significantly from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statement due to various factors, including those discussed in the corporation's most recently filed Form 10-K and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any obligation to update or otherwise release publicly any revision to our forward-looking statements. A replay of this call will be posted on our website later today. To access the earnings release or the webcast replay, please consult the Investors section of our website at amcopgh.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett McBrayer, AMCO Pittsburgh CEO. Brett.

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. As shared in today's press release, AMCO Pittsburgh recorded a net income of $1.6 million in our first quarter of 2022. The execution of price increases and expanded surcharges in our Forged and Cast Engineer product segment was instrumental in helping AMCO Pittsburgh return to profitability. From a top-line perspective, our sales increased by 9% from the prior year. Demand remains strong for our products. Our backlog increased 36% versus the prior year period and 12% versus the prior quarter. Despite the challenges we continue to face from an inflationary and supply chain standpoint, we will continue to focus on areas of the business we can control to further improve our performance. The transformation of our North American fixed assets in our Forge and Cassinger product segment is on track. The installation of the first pieces of our new capital equipment begins late in the second half of this year. With an expected continued ramp-up in working capital and related ongoing inflationary pressure, we recently announced we are exploring options to obtain incremental capital to better enable us to capture top-line growth opportunities and position ourselves for higher profitability while we manage through the heavier CapEx spending phase of the equipment modernization. From a safety and health perspective, we saw positive progress in our injury rates during the quarter. We will continue to drive further improvements as we remain focused on zero injuries in our workplace. I will now turn the call over to David Anderson, President of Air and Liquid Systems, for comments on this segment's performance. Dave?