Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Air Products and Chemicals Third Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded at the request of Air Products. Please note that this presentation and the comments made on behalf of Air Products are subject to copyright by Air Products and all rights are reserved. Beginning today's call is Mr. Simon Moore, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Eduardo. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Air Products Third Quarter 2019 Earnings Results Teleconference. This is Simon Moore, Vice President of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be joined today by Sefi Ghasemi, our Chairman, President, and CEO, Scott Krakow, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Sean Major, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary. After our comments, we'll be pleased to take your questions. Our earnings release and the slides for this call are available on our website at airproducts.com. Please refer to the forward-looking statement disclosure that can be found in our earnings release and on slide number two. Now, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Safie.

Thank you, Simon, and good morning to everyone. We certainly do appreciate your interest in air products, and we thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to join us on this call. At Air Products, we have a great team of talented, committed, and motivated people who will stay focused on serving our customers and creating value for our shareholders every single day. This team delivered yet another quarter of very strong results. I want to thank all of our 16,000 employees for their hard work and dedication. Our quarterly adjusted earning per share is a record $2.17 per share, 11% higher than the last year, and 14% higher at constant exchange rates. This is the 21st, I'd like to repeat, the 21st consecutive quarter that we have reported higher results compared to the previous year. We continue to maintain our position as the safest and most profitable industrial gas company in the world. Our EBITDA margin this quarter was a record 40%, which is 1,500 basis points higher than five years ago. We remain in an extremely strong financial and technology position with a business that generates significant cash flow. Each quarter, my confidence increases in our ability to deploy this capital into high-return industrial gas projects that will generate significant value for our shareholders, while also continuing to return cash to our shareholders through our dividends. Now please turn to slide number three. In terms of safety, our goal has always been zero accidents and zero incidents. We are pleased that we have improved our Rothstein injury rate by 72% and our recordable injury rate by 31% since 2014. But none of us can be satisfied until and unless we reach zero accidents. Even one accident is too many. Now please turn to slide number four that states our long-term goal. Five years ago, we set the goal to be the safest and most profitable industrial gas company in the world, providing excellent service to our customers. We are very proud of achieving this goal and are committed to maintaining our leadership position in the years to come. Our goal has also been extended to include being the most diverse. That means we are an inclusive company where we welcome the contribution of all people. Now turn to slide number five which is my management philosophy that has guided me throughout my business career. That is, focus on cash generation and responsible capital allocation. Now please turn to slide number six, which is our five-point plan for moving forward. We have shared this with you many times before. In summary, we are focused on cost and productivity to maintain our industry-leading margins. We are poised for growth by expanding on our core competencies and financial strength, and we are very focused on promoting a higher purpose for the company in addition to creating value for the shareholders. We are committed to create a company where all of the people feel they belong. A company where people's contributions are recognized and rewarded. A company that is committed to sustainability and the environment. A company that is supportive of the communities in which we operate. A company that people want to work for, where they are proud to be part of the innovative process to solve the world's energy and environmental challenges. That is our higher purpose, and we are committed to that. Now please turn to slide number seven, which shows the key milestones in our gasification strategy. Let's take the opportunity to provide an update on a few of these exciting projects. As expected, the Luan project continues to run very well and contribute to our results. The Jazan air separation units were built on budget and on time with excellent safety performance. We continue to work toward financial closing of the Jazan gasifier and power project by the end of this calendar year. We are continuing our discussion with the YK Group for the very large coal-to-sink gas project, and the Juitai project is going well with expected on-streaming Building on this momentum, we just announced the completion of an asset buyback arrangement with Jinmai, a leading coal chemical company in China. We purchased two ASUs previously owned by Jinmai and entered into a long-term contract to supply oxygen and nitrogen for the customer's coal-to-clean fuel project in Shanxi Province. This project is another great example of the customers' increased confidence in outsourcing their industrial gases. In addition to these announced projects, we continue to work on a number of existing gasification opportunities around the world. Now please go to slide number eight, where you can see the results of our key profitability metrics. We remain committed to our goal of continuing to be the most profitable industrial gas company in the world, as measured by each of these metrics. And now, please go to slide number nine, which is always my favorite slide, and even more so this quarter. You can see our record quarterly EBITDA margin of 40.1%. up 1,500 basis points from five years ago. This is a tremendous achievement by the people of our air products, and all of us are very proud of it. Now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Scott Krakow, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our results in detail. Scott?