Ashland Inc.

It's one of our newest inventions in line of our platforms and I'm very excited about what that product brings to us as a company and what it brings to our customers from a perspective of innovation and the focus on sustainability. So it's a super wetter, so basically for substrates where you want to put a coating's level on, you need to basically first make sure that the level or the substrate you want to put it in get the adhesion of the product. It really is creating the advantage of making that connection easy for us to use. The back advantage where we see it, it's a product which is natural. So it's silicone free with a lot of the products which are out there on base of silicones. So we really go on the health issues, the environment where we have a differentiating product and make sure that we listen to our customers of solving their issues, not only from a application behavior, but also from a sustainability perspective. We are known as a company in rheology and all these kind of things. We now have something extra to add to our portfolio, a broader portfolio for customers. We can innovate further on what we have. We have started with a new backbone. We can scale it. We can modify it to make it work for basically any application. and we have seen what it can bring on LabScale. We have posted feedback from customers, and now we basically want to bring that broad out and make it available for everybody.

Okay, and welcome to the Ashland Inc. First Quarter 2024 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 a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Seth Morozak, Director of Portfolio Strategy. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Abigail. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's first quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. My name is Seth Morozek, Director of Portfolio Strategy for Ashland. Joining me on the call today are Guillermo Novo, Ashland Chair and Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Willis, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In addition, I want to welcome William Whitaker, Vice President of Finance and Director of Investor Relations, Following this month's organization changes to Ashland's finance, strategy, M&A, and portfolio teams. William and I will complete the investor relations transition following this earnings cycle. Ashland release results for the quarter ended December 31st, 2023 at approximately 5 p.m. Eastern time yesterday, January 30th. The news release issued last night was furnished to the SEC in a Form 8K. During today's call, we will reference slides that are currently being webcast on our website, Ashland.com, under the investor relations section. We encourage you to follow along with the webcast during the call. As a reminder, during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements on several matters, including our financial outlook for our second quarter and full year fiscal 2024 results. 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 an explanation of those risks and uncertainties and the limits applicable to forward-looking statements. You can also review our most recent form 10-K under item 1-A for a comprehensive discussion of the risk factors impacting our business. Please also note that we will be referring to certain actual and projected financial metrics on Ashland on an adjusted basis, which are non-GAAP financial measures. We will refer to these measures as adjusted and present them 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 reconciliation 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 performance and results in the first quarter. Next, Kevin will provide a more detailed review of financial results for the quarter, followed by commentary related to Ashland's outlook for the second quarter and fiscal year 2024. Guillermo will then provide an update related to Ashland's strategic priorities, and we will then open your line for questions. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Guillermo for his opening remarks. Guillermo?