Ashland Inc.

Hello, and welcome to Ashland's second quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask the question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. I would now like to turn the conference over to William Whitaker. Sir, you may begin.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's second quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. My name is William Whitaker, Ashland Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Guillermo Novo, Ashland Chair and CEO, Kevin Willis, Ashland CFO, and our business unit leaders, Alessandro Piscine, Jim Minacucci, and Dago Caceres. During today's call, we'll reference slides being webcast on our website, Ashland.com, under the Investor Relations section. We encourage you to follow along. Please turn to slide two. We'll be discussing forward-looking statements on several matters, including our fiscal 2025 outlook, which involve risks and uncertainties as detailed on slide two, and in our Form 10-K. These forward-looking statements involve 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. They cannot assure that such expectations will be achieved. We'll also discuss certain adjusted financial metrics, both actual and projected, which are non-GAAP measures. We refer to these measures as adjusted and present them to supplement your understanding and assessment of our ongoing business. GAAP reconciliations are available on our website and in the appendix of these slides. I'll now hand the call over to Guillermo for his opening remarks. Guillermo?

Thank you, William, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'll be providing an update that covers four key areas, giving you a clear picture of our recent performance and strategic direction. First, I'll review the highlights of our second quarter performance. Later, I'll provide more details on our strategic priorities. We will also discuss our proactive approach to the evolving tariff landscape, and finally, I'll take a detailed look at our updated fiscal year 25 of guidance. Please turn to slide five. Let's begin with a recap of our second quarter performance. We saw a mixed demand environment that trended slower than expected. Q2 sales were $479 million, a 17% year-on-year decrease, including a peak $67 million impact from portfolio optimization. Excluding this, the 5% revenue decline was mainly driven by lower carryover volumes and pricing. Pricing generally aligned with our planned assumptions, excluding an intermediates. Adjusted EBITDA was $108 million, down 14% year over year, or 4% organically. This organic decline was partially offset by the cost savings initiatives and a well-managed production recovery after our Q1 maintenance pull forward. Early cost benefits are already improving margins, as segment details show, and are laying the groundwork for future profitable growth. Regarding capital allocation, we continue our balanced approach, repurchasing 1.5 million shares, as we believe our current share price undervalues our long-term growth potential. Please turn to slide six. Now I'll summarize the performance of the individual segments. Lifesigns showed strong volume momentum and demand recovery due to the effective execution and stabilization of customer inventories, reinforcing our renewed pharma growth outlook. Personal care core additives were resilient while navigating softer European demand and specific customer challenges. Specialty additives experienced anticipated volume declines in China, and competitive intensity remained high in export markets such as the Middle East, Africa, and India. However, strong execution in other markets partially compensated for these headwinds. Intermediates margins were below expectation due to the persistent pricing pressures and reduced production amid the challenging demand environment. Importantly, our portfolio optimization is now complete, marked by the sale of our Avoca business and the full identification of our $30 million cost reduction plan in the second quarter. We're successfully delivering on cost savings exceeding our full-year target with early benefits evident on Strong's life science and personal care EBITDA margins despite headwinds. This is the first time we've had both business units above 30% margins at the same time. Our key focus now is on accelerating the $60 million manufacturing optimization given the market uncertainties with increased financial impact through the second half of fiscal year 25 and into fiscal year 26. In summary, while we're effectively managing the second-hand quarter headwinds, increasing economic uncertainty and anticipated softer consumer demand are prompting an adjustment to our fiscal year 25 outlook, which we'll discuss later. In response to these evolving conditions, The completion of our portfolio optimization and our cost savings and productivity initiatives are more critical than ever. Our strategic priorities, as outlined at our strategy day, continue to guide us. We believe our ability to adapt and execute with discipline and prudence will be key to navigating the near term and creating long-term value. Now I'd like to turn over the call to Kevin to provide more detailed review of our second quarter financial performance. Kevin? Thank you, Guillermo, and good morning, everyone.