Ashland Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ashland Third Quarter Conference Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in 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 1 1 on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Sandy Klugman, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Sandy.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's third quarter fiscal year 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, William Whitaker, CFO, as well as our business unit leaders, Alessandra Faccin, life sciences and intermediates, Jim Minicucci, 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 2. 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 projection. 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 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.

Please turn to slide five. Overall, we delivered a strong third quarter that reflected strong demand, disciplined commercial execution, and healthy free cash flow generation. Sales increased across all business units, and our performance was in line with the expectations we outlined at the beginning of the quarter. These results reflect the team's strong execution and reinforce the momentum we're building across the businesses. delivered double-digit sales growth, benefiting from broad contributions across pharma and markets and ongoing momentum within our globalized and innovative strategies. Pharma achieved its fifth consecutive quarter of volume growth supported by strength in high purity excipients, injectables, and innovation growth momentum. Personal care generated another quarter of solid performance, led by biopunctional actives, High single digits growth in skin care and favorable contributions from hair care and microbial protection. Performance reflected healthy growth across end markets and major regions, supported by strong customer engagement and innovation adoption. Specialty additives delivered encouraging sales growth in line with our expectations. Strength in coatings and performance specialties was primarily driven by market share gains reflecting strong commercial execution by the team. Regionally, most markets improved compared to prior year. Intermediates delivered higher sales supported by improving merchant sales driven by higher NMP demand in North America EV battery and energy storage applications. Operationally, our third quarter results reflected continued progress on manufacturing performance with further opportunities to improve. We remain focused on targeted investments and disciplined execution and expect continued progress in the fourth quarter as the benefits of these actions build. We also generated strong cash flow during the quarter to discipline working capital management and ended the quarter with a net leverage of 2.4X returning to our long-term and others. Our results demonstrated the strength of our execution and the benefit of the actions we have taken across the portfolio. Sales increased 7% year-over-year, reflecting broad-based growth across the portfolio. Profitability was impacted by production production challenges encountered earlier in the fiscal year. Results improved sequentially and were largely in line with our expectations. We continue to make steady progress across the manufacturing network and on our strategic priorities. Our teams remain focused on commercial execution, pricing realization, and cost discipline. Pricing actions continue to gain traction, offsetting higher raw material costs while maintaining strong customer relationships. Please turn to slide seven. Slide seven illustrates the breadth of our growth and the quality of our earnings profile. First, our consumer-focused businesses, life science and personal care continue to generate attractive margins supported by resilient demand, innovation, and favorable mix. Second, Innovate and Globalize strategies continue to deliver measurable results with accelerating momentum in higher value application across the portfolio. For the first nine months of the year, Innovate has exceeded its full-year target, while Globalize has already achieved its full-year target and continues to deliver strong results across the platforms. While margins continue to reflect earlier production rate challenges and cost pressures, the actions we have taken across pricing, manufacturing, and commercial executions continue to gain traction. As a result, we are well positioned for further profitability improvement in the fourth quarter. Before turning the call over to William, I also want to take a moment to share that yesterday, We announced a cooperation agreement with Ancora, an Ashland shareholder with whom we have had constructive dialogue. Under this agreement, we are welcoming Peter Thomas and Alan Spizzo to the Ashland board as independent directors. Both bring significant executive and financial experience in specialty chemicals, and we believe their perspectives will support our continued focus on creating value for our shareholders. The board is also forming a capital allocation advisory committee to bring additional rigor and objectivity to our capital allocation strategy and planning. We value ongoing engagement with our shareholders and look forward to working collaboratively with Peter, Alan, and the rest of the board as we continue to execute our strategy. Now let me leave you with three key takeaways before we get into the financials. Demand remained healthy across our core businesses. Our innovate and globalize initiatives continue to generate meaningful growth and we continue to make progress in addressing the operational challenges we have discussed throughout the year. These are encouraging signs for the business and reinforce our confidence in the opportunities ahead. Now I'd like to turn over the call to William to provide more detailed view of the third quarter financial performance.