Ashland Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ashland Global Holdings, Inc. Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, and to ask a question during this session, you need to press the star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any further assistance, please press the star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Seth Marzett, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's third quarter fiscal 2020 earnings conference call and webcast. My name is Seth Morozek, Director, Ashland Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Guillermo Novo, Ashland's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Willis, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We released preliminary results for the quarter ended June 30, 2020, at approximately 5 p.m. Eastern Time yesterday, July 28. The news release issued last night was furnished to the SEC in a Form 8-K. During this morning's call, we will reference slides that are currently being webcast on our website, Ashland.com, under the Investor Relations section. The slides can also be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. We encourage you to follow along with the webcast during the call. Please turn to slide two. As a reminder, during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements on several matters, including our outlook for fiscal year 2020. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause future results or events to differ materially from today's projections. We believe any such statements are based on reasonable assumptions but cannot assure that such expectations will be achieved. Please refer to slide two of the presentation for a more complete explanation of those risks and uncertainties and the limits applicable to forward-looking statements. Please also note that we will be referring to certain actual and projected financial metrics of Ashland on an adjusted basis, which are non-GAAP financial measures. We will refer to these measures as adjusted and present them in order to supplement your understanding and assessment of the financial performance of our ongoing business. Non-GAAP measures should not be considered a substitute or superior to financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. The most directly comparable GAAP measure, as well as reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures to those GAAP measures, are available on our website and in the appendix of today's slide presentation. Please turn to slide three. Guillermo will begin the call this morning with an overview of Ashland's results in the fiscal third quarter. Next, Kevin will provide a more detailed review of financial results for the quarter. And finally, Guillermo will close with key priorities and planning in the current economic environment, in addition to providing his thoughts on important next steps. We will then open the line for questions. Now, please turn to slide five, and I will turn the call over to Guillermo for his opening comments. Guillermo?

Thank you, Seth, and good morning to everyone. Before I begin, I'd like to thank you for your participation this morning. I hope that everyone's safe and healthy in these unprecedented times. Since the emergence of the coronavirus in China in January, the Ashland team has worked tirelessly to address the impact of the pandemic. First and foremost, this has meant protecting the health and safety of our employees. Second, we've continued to supply our customers and the critical industries we serve. And third, we've worked to ensure that Ashland is well positioned even in the event of a prolonged impact from the pandemic. Despite all the challenges presented over the last few months, we have maintained a strong focus on advancing our strategic initiatives to restructure Ashland. We have heightened our sense of urgency in executing our transformation as it is doing more than just positioning us for future growth and performance. It's also helping us navigate better through this COVID-19 environment. We've operationalized our new business unit model and the teams are working to improve performance across the portfolio. The teams have also refreshed their respective strategies in order to best serve our customers and profitably grow our businesses. And we're continuing to drive our self-help actions to improve Ashland's cost structure performance, and cash generation. Please turn to slide six. In summary, Q3 results demonstrate the value of our leadership position in high-quality end markets and the importance of the actions we are taking internally. Our consumer businesses performed particularly well. Life science demand continues to hold up across pharma, nutraceuticals, and nutrition. Nutraceutical sales continued to improve with a strong June performance as new businesses started to close or share loss impact from prior year. Overall, personal care and households also performed well but experienced some variation across segments. The industrial businesses continued to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, given the diverse industries we serve, we have seen significant variation across markets. As economies have started to reopen and industries restart operations, we are seeing strengthening demand. On the self-help side, we continue to make significant progress on driving our business focus, restructuring costs, and improving margins. We continue to take actions to reduce costs, working capital, and capital spending in order to conserve cash and maintain flexibility in this environment. I would like to recognize the entire Ashland team for their focus and commitment to our success during these challenging times. It's a real privilege to be part of this team. Let me now pass the call over to Kevin to review our Q3 results in more detail. Kevin?