Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

Stand by, we're about to begin. Good morning and welcome to Air Products and Chemicals Third Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference 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, sir.

Thank you, Rochelle. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Air Products' third quarter 2021 Earnings Results Teleconference. This is Simon Moore, Vice President of Investor Relations, Corporate Relations, and Sustainability. I am pleased to be joined today by Safi Ghasemi, our Chairman, President, and CEO, Scott Krakow, our Executive Vice President and current Chief Financial Officer, Melissa Schaefer, who we announced is succeeding Scott as our Senior 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. This discussion contains forward-looking statements. please refer to the forward-looking statement disclosure that can be found in our earnings release and on slide number two. In addition, throughout today's discussion, we will refer to various financial measures. Unless we specifically state otherwise, when we refer to earnings per share, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, the effective tax rate, and ROCE, both on a company-wide and segment basis, we are referring to our adjusted non-GAAP financial measures, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted effective tax rate, and adjusted return on capital employed. Reconciliations of these measures to our most directly comparable gap financial measures can be found on our website in the relevant earnings release section. Now, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Safey.

Thank you, Simon, and good day to everyone. Thank you for taking time from your very busy schedule to to be on our call today. Today, in addition to announcing our results, we do have a significant announcement, which is updating our future plans for growth and capital deployment. But before we get into the details, I would like to say a few words about our CFO transition which we announced last month. Please turn to slide number three. Following this call, Ms. Melissa Schaefer will succeed Mr. Scott Krakow as our chief financial officer and assume leadership responsibility for our worldwide finance organization. Scott is retired from Air Products on September 30th. as part of this smooth transition. Today, I want to recognize and thank Scott, who has had a distinguished 31-year career with Air Products. Scott started in our career development program and ultimately progressed to the highest role in finance, serving as our executive vice president and Chief Financial Officer. Clearly, that achievement is a testament to Scott, particularly his strong work ethic, his drive to deliver, and his focus on creating shareholder value. Scott, I would like to say publicly what I have told you privately, that it has been a privilege working with you for these past seven years, particularly as we have executed our growth strategy and won world-class projects in gasification, carbon capture, and hydrogen. These projects continue to differentiate the company and position their products for significant growth into the future, particularly I want to thank you for leading our effort to position us for the successful closing of the Jazang Gasification and Power Project, and for your efforts related to the project financing of this significant investment. I appreciate all you have done to help us move forward, and I wish you great health and happiness in the future. Thank you again for all you have done for Air Products. Scott, at this point, would you like to say a few words?