Ashland Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Ashland's second quarter 2026 earnings 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 during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that 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 first speaker today, Sandy Klugman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. My name is Sandy Klugman, and I am Ashland's Director of Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Guillermo Novo, Chair and CEO of William Whitaker, CFO, as well as our business unit leaders, Alessandro Sassin, Life Sciences and Intermediates, Jim Menicucci, Personal Care, and Dago Caceres, Specialty Additives. Please note that we will be referencing slides during today's call. We encourage you to follow along with webcast materials available at Ashland.com under Investor Relations. Please turn to slide two. As a reminder, today's presentation contains forward-looking statements regarding our fiscal 2026 outlook and other matters, as detailed on slide 2 and in our Form 10-Q. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ materially from today's projections. We believe any such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, but there is no assurance these expectations will be achieved. We will also reference certain adjusted financial metrics, both actual and projected, which are non-GAAP measures. We present these adjusted figures to provide additional insight into our ongoing business performance. 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. Thanks, Sandy, and welcome to everyone joining us.

I'll start with a brief overview of our second quarter performance, then William will review the financials and outlook, followed by a deeper business unit detail with the team. Please turn to slide five. Overall, second quarter results reflect resilient underlying commercial performance amidst stable demand conditions, with pricing and portfolio mix action remaining a central focus across the organization. Life Sciences delivered steady results supported by resilient pharma demand. Injectables, tablet coatings, and high-purity excipients continue to drive growth, marking a fourth consecutive quarter of volume gains. Progress across our innovate and globalized pillars remains strong, with continued adoption of differentiated new product introductions. Personal care generated broad-based portfolio growth driven by strong volume gains and execution across biofunctional actives, care ingredients, and microbial protection. Biofunctional actives delivered robust double-digit year-over-year growth, while microbial protection continued to gain share following our globalized investments. Specialty additives operated in a mixed market environment. Coatings volumes grew year-over-year, reflecting share gains and new product traction, while construction sales remained lower, reflecting deliberate portfolio mixed actions and slightly softer demand. Overall results returned to flat year-over-year, which is an important step forward, given that we have not yet fully lapped our prior year China impact. Intermediates operated in a stable but trough-level environment with results impacted by both commercial and operating effects of the Calvert City outage. The team will cover more later, but operational performance was impacted by specific issues during the quarter, all of which are internal and not reflective of underlying demand trends. Despite these headwinds, commercial execution across much of the portfolio was solid, and we continue to see encouraging demand trends in Q3. Please turn to slide six. I'll now walk through our second quarter results, which reflect discipline execution across the portfolio in a mixed market environment. Teams remain focused on cost control, operating discipline, and customer service, while managing through operational headwinds during the quarter. Structural actions taken over the past several years continue to support the underlying economics of the business, even as near-term performance was pressured by temporary execution challenges. Working capital was a key strength in the quarter, driving strong operating cash flow and reinforcing our focus on cash discipline. Looking across the portfolio, the quarter demonstrated resilient underlying performance and continued progress in strengthening the business foundation. With demand conditions generally stable across the portfolio and margin pressures primarily driven by specific operational issues rather than end market weakness. Please turn to slide seven. First, our consumer-focused businesses principally life science and personal care, continue to provide stability supported by resilient and market demand. Second, innovation and globalization initiatives are gaining traction with accelerating momentum in higher value applications across the portfolio. Innovation has already exceeded our full year target after two quarters, reflecting the strong pipeline execution and commercialization.