Ashland Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Ashland Global Holdings Inc. Fourth 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. To ask the question during this session, you will need to press star then 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today. Seth Morozek, you may begin.

Thank you, Tawanda. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's fourth quarter fiscal year 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 September 30, 2020, at approximately 5 p.m. Eastern Time yesterday, November 10. 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 2021. 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 for or superior to financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. The most directly comparable GAAP measures, 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 fourth fiscal quarter. Next, Kevin will provide a more detailed review of financial results for the quarter and the fiscal year. 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, if you'd please turn to slide five, 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. As we have stated throughout the year, our first priority has been protecting the health and safety of our employees. Second, we have continued to supply our customers in the critical industries that we serve. Despite all the challenges that are presented this year, we have also remained committed to executing our strategy. Importantly, this means expanding our margins, enhancing our free cash flow conversion, demonstrating the resilience of our business, and working to accelerate organic growth in each of our business units. I will discuss these aspects of the strategy in more detail at the end of this call. Please turn to slide six. In summary, Q4 results demonstrated the value of our leadership positions in high-quality end markets and the importance of the actions we are taking internally. Our consumer business continues to demonstrate strong resilience, boasting 4% sales growth during the quarter. And we realized substantial sequential improvement in the industrial business as global demand continues to recover during the quarter. On the self-help side, we continue to make significant progress on driving our business focus, restructuring costs, improving margin, and reducing inventory levels. This resulted in improved free cash flow generation in both the quarter and the full year. Kevin will review our inventory actions and the impact to free cash flow in more detail in a few minutes. I'd 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 a part of this team. Let me pass the call over to Kevin to review our Q4 results and full year in more detail. Kevin?