AdvanSix Inc.

Good day and welcome to the ADVAN6 fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Adam Crissel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Brittany. Good morning, and welcome to Advance6's fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. With me here today are President and CEO Aaron Kane and Senior Vice President and CFO Michael Preston. This call and webcast, including any non-GAAP reconciliations, are available on our website at investors.advance6.com. Note that elements of this presentation contain forward-looking statements that are based on our best view of the world and of our business as we see it today. Those elements can change, and the actual results could differ materially from those projected, and we ask that you consider them in that light. We refer you to the forward-looking statements included in our press release and earnings presentation. In addition, we identify the principal risks and uncertainties that affect our performance in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K. This morning, we will review our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2019 and share with you our outlook for our key product lines and end markets. Finally, we'll leave time for your questions at the end. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Advancix's President and CEO, Erin Kane.

Thank you, Adam, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us and for your continued interest in Advancix. As you saw in our press release, Advancix continued to navigate a difficult end market environment exiting the year. Despite the global slowdown in demand, we continue to benefit from our low-cost position and remain focused on executing against our strategic priorities. Mike will detail the results of the quarter in a moment, but I'd like to take the opportunity to highlight some of the great work that has been accomplished across the organization over the past year. As we've highlighted, 2019 saw several strategic investments that positioned the company for long-term success. First most, we continued to drive safe, stable, and sustainable operations. We achieved robust near-record output in 2019 across our Caprolactam and ammonia production units. which are key operations within our integrated asset base. Hopewell utilization was roughly 95%, a testament to the multi-year focus to drive stability, mature mechanical integrity programs, and mitigate risk. This utilization rate is up from a pre-spin 2013 to 2016 three-year average of approximately 89%. Higher, less variable utilization rates drive efficiency and build a foundation for higher returns. As you likely saw this past quarter, we announced the appointment of Wim Blindenbach as Vice President, Integrated Supply Chain. Wim comes to us following more than two decades at ExxonMobil and has a responsibility for safe, stable, and sustainable operations across our integrated manufacturing footprint, while advancing our strategic priorities with operational excellence and improving and robust safety performance. We were also recently awarded a 2020 Gold Rating for Corporate Social Responsibility from EcoVadis. an independent CSR assessment agency. The gold rating is an acknowledgment of our commitment to corporate social responsibility and the great foundation we have built as an organization to continuously improve our sustainability performance. We have also allocated capital for long-term value creation. CapEx was approximately $150 million in 2019, which was elevated to fund key investments, including our natural gas boilers, Caprolact MD bottlenecking, and our R&D lab relocation projects. These projects, as part of our longer-term, high-return project pipeline, further bolster our underlying earning potential. We expect to open our new R&D lab at our Chesterfield facility in the coming weeks, which will enable an improved configuration to drive productivity, increase connectivity with our resin manufacturing, and allow more effective collaboration with customers. In addition, we continued our return to shareholders by repurchasing approximately $62 million of shares during the year. We are continuing to stay the course through what has been a persistently challenging end market environment. We led successful anti-dumping petitions against acetone imports into the United States, which I'll further discuss later in the call, and we continue to build out long-term growth capabilities through our differentiated product portfolio. While we need to drive best possible outcomes as we perform through end market dynamics and address transient near-term factors, we are well positioned on the cost curve and remain focused on driving levers within our control for long-term value creation. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike to discuss the details of the quarter.