AptarGroup, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to APTAR's 2021 second quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Introducing today's conference call is Mr. Matt Della Maria, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thanks for being with us today. Joining me on today's call are Stefan Tanda, President and CEO, and Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO. Our press release and accompanying slide deck have been posted on our website. If you are following along on the website, you can advance the slides by hovering over the presentation screen and clicking on the arrows on the right and the left. As always, we will post a replay of this call on the website. Today's call includes some forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings to review factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we are discussing today. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Stephane.

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I hope that you are doing well. As you saw in our press release from yesterday, we announced strong top-line growth in the quarter with reported sales up 16% and core sales up 10%, with EBITDA improvement over the prior year. I would like to discuss a few highlights as mentioned on slide three. In summary, sales increased in each of our reporting segments with currency-related tailwinds adding to the core growth. The wide breadth of our portfolio of solutions and services continues to be a key strength of APTA as you generated growth in each segment and double-digit growth overall for the company. Bob will speak in more detail on sales by market when he gives his update. Similar to the first quarter, growth of our pharma segment was driven by strong demand for elastomeric components for injectable drugs and active material solutions. which offset declines in sales to the prescription and consumer health care markets, which continue to be impacted by customers drawing down inventory levels in key categories. Our beauty and home segment reported solid growth in the beauty and home care markets, the former being mostly on easier comparisons to the depressed second quarter of 2020, although with some initial signs of recovery. Sales to the personal care market were slightly below the prior year's strong performance as hand sanitizer demand is normalizing. Approximately 75% of the growth came from increased volumes. In our food and beverage segment, top-line growth was strong across each market segment with about 60% of the growth coming from price adjustments related to the passing through of higher resin costs. It continues to be a very challenging input cost environment, and we are in the process of passing through higher input costs to our customers. I would like to remind you that the passing through of increased input costs has the effect of compressing margin percentages. Our overall margin was also affected by the mix of sales within our pharma segment, favoring some of our lower margin businesses in pharma. We also remain active on the M&A front, making several strategic investments. During the quarter, we announced that we were in the process to acquire the outstanding shares of Volantis, a pioneer in digital therapeutics. This is a significant step in building our foundation in the fast-growing digital healthcare space. If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it is that advancements in healthcare are rapidly accelerating, and things like remote patient engagement and patient monitoring, whether for clinical trials or real-world treatments, will be a big part of each of our futures. Just this week, we announced another pharma transaction. We have entered into an agreement to acquire 80% of Weihai Hanyu Medical Products, a leading manufacturer of elastomer components for injection devices in China. This investment gives us immediate local and regional supply capabilities in the critical and growing injectable space. Also, subsequent to the quarter, we announced a collaboration with a Chinese skincare company called YAT to bring new skincare solutions to the market. We look forward to leveraging YAT's expansive market insight database, focus on specific consumer skincare needs and skincare profiles, and we will use YAT's in-depth experience in customized turnkey solutions as well as online product distribution and promotion. On the sustainability front, we have been active in forming strategic partnerships to further our progress towards a more circular economy where plastic can be recycled and reused. To that end, we have formed a partnership and are serving as a strategic advisor to a company called Rebo, to offer reusable water bottles that uses technology to help people stay hydrated while helping to collect tossed away plastic bottles. Now on slide four, I would like to speak to a few environment, social, and governance, or ESG updates. As previously announced, 3BL Media evaluated the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies on ESG performance, and APTAR is honored to be named among the top 50 companies who are leading in corporate citizenship we also announced the launch of our 2020 sustainability report which highlights again our extensive sustainability initiatives that have been implemented across our global operations and we invite you to read the report on our website our first comprehensive sustainability report was for the year 2014 So our experience and engagement is built on deep expertise and a long track record. Finally, we are delighted to welcome Candice Matthews to our Board of Directors. Candice is a highly accomplished business leader with over 30 years of experience developing and marketing products for the healthcare, cosmetics, food and beverage industries. And she has held leadership positions with Amway, L'Oreal, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble, amongst others. Our directors provide valuable guidance and keen oversight based on their first-hand operating experience in the end markets and geographic regions in which we operate, as well as functional expertise and multicultural insights. Candace is a valuable addition to our board with deep contemporary knowledge of our markets, including having spent a significant time in China. Turning now to slide five, and new product and technology launches, I would like to briefly comment on several product introductions that will highlight the breadth of our offerings. In pharma, our elastomer stoppers used with injection systems continue to play an important role in the COVID-19 vaccine distributions worldwide, including a vaccine approved in Latin America. We're also supplying stoppers for several animal vaccines in Mexico. In the prescription drug market, the central nervous system pipeline is active and we have several customers making progress with nasal delivery of a variety of medicines in the area of opioid overdose, antidotes, epinephrine, and medicines to treat suicidal tendencies. In consumer healthcare, our preservative-free ophthalmic sweet is the delivery device for a new over-the-counter eye lubricant by Bausch & Lomb by a true brand in the U.S. In beauty and home, we recently announced a strategic sustainable dispensing system, our first fully recyclable monomaterial dispenser pump for the beauty and personal care products called Future. Because the Future pump is made only from polyethylene, it also aligns with the most common materials used to make the bottles, polyethylene and polyester, or PET. Therefore, the complete packaging, including pump and bottle, more easily recycled. We also supplied our Prestige fragrance pump for a new Tom Ford fragrance and our dispensing closure for Dollar Shave Club's new shampoo and conditioner line, both recently launched in the U.S. Also in the U.S., our airless pump is the dispensing solution for Cody's CoverGirl and Olay brand color cosmetics product called Eye Rehab. Finally, in the home care market, our closure with SimpliSqueeze valve is featured on the Nuke Ditch Care product in Europe. In food and beverage, we received critical guidance recognition from the Association of Plastic Recyclers for our SimpliCycle recyclable valve technology. This recognition acknowledges technologies or packaging components that solve long-standing problems in sustainable packaging design. Our Simply Cycle Valve is made from a low-density material that allows the valves to float, so it is easily separated from the polyester stream and then ultimately recycled with the polypropylene or polyethylene olefin stream. In the food market, our custom closures are featured on a limited edition line of mash-up sauces, including hot sauce coupled with ranch and tartar sauce combined with ketchup by Kraft Heinz in Canada. Nestlé has also launched a new range of condiments with flavors from the Middle East called Mideast, which feature our food closures. Turning to the beverage market, our closure with simple squeeze valves is the dispensing solution for a new concentrate product in Germany called Creme de la Creme, concentrates by Aldi. With that, I will now turn it over to Bob, who will provide additional comments on our second quarter results. Bob.