Avient Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Avent Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's third quarter 2024 results. My name is Michelle and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. We will have a question and answer session following the company's prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joe DeSavo, Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Before beginning, we'd like to remind you that statements made during this webcast may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements will give current expectations or forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They're based on management's expectations and involve a number of business risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statement. We encourage you to review our most recent reports, including our 10Q or any applicable amendments, for a complete discussion of these factors and other risks that may affect our future results. During the discussion today, the company will use both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the presentation posted on the Investor Relations section of the Avian website where the company describes the non-GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation for the historical non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. A replay of this call will be available on our website. Information to access the replay is listed in today's press release. which is available at aviant.com in the investor relations section. Joining me today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ashish Kanpur, and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Beggs. I will now turn the call over to Ashish to begin.

Thank you, Joe, and welcome, everyone. I am very pleased with our third quarter financial performance which proved to be our second consecutive quarter of organic sales growth. We delivered sales of $815 million for the quarter, representing 8% growth over the third quarter of 2023 on an as-reported basis, and 8.5% organic sales growth, excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Both segments, color, additive, and inks, and specialty engineered materials grew sales. The growth was broad-based across all geographies and most end markets. The drivers behind the above market growth were consistent with what we discussed last quarter. We won share. We were spec'd in in new product launches from our customers, and there continued to be some restocking in certain end markets. On the bottom line, the team delivered adjusted EBITDA of $130 million which reflected 6% growth over the prior year third quarter. Both segments expanded EBITDA margins by 40 basis points each, driven by favorable mix as well as operating leverage from increased volumes. Our commercial and operational efforts more than offset the year-over-year headwind we faced in the quarter related to the variable compensation accruals that we have previously communicated. Adjusted earnings per share grew double digits, up 14% over the prior year to $0.65, which exceeded our prior guidance for the quarter by $0.03. This was due to better than expected demand and new product specifications for our color business in Latin America, as well as timing of defense orders. Our teams are executing well across the globe, and we are winning business by focusing on customized tactics tailored to each of the regions. In the US and Canada, we have been focused on going deeper with our key global accounts and building new businesses related to some of the macro trends. In EMEA, we have been winning share by enhancing our customer focus and simplifying our go to market strategy. In Asia and Latin America, we are expanding our customer base through more local account penetration. In short, we have adjusted and deployed our commercial teams in ways to capitalize on the specific opportunities presented in each region, and we have had success. As we evolve as a company and start executing our new strategy, we have made some key organizational and structural changes in the recent months. First, we have streamlined our color, additives, and ink segment under a single global leader and eliminated organizational complexity particularly in Europe. We want to make it easier for our customers to do business with Aviant and start seeing things from their lens. We want to provide them solutions and options to help solve their problems. It's an important step as we become more customer-centric and agile, all differentiators and enablers to our expectations of organic growth. We have reorganized select parts of R&D and consolidated certain talent from across the organization to enhance our capacity and capability in specific areas prioritized for growth. This consolidation also enables our technical expertise to be broadly leveraged across the entire company versus just serving individual businesses. Additionally, we continue to strengthen and build our leadership team that will help execute our strategy and take Avian into the future. Since my joining the company, we have hired a new chief legal officer, chief information officer, chief technology officer, and created and hired for a new role of senior vice president for new business development and marketing excellence. These important changes are directly aligned to our strategy to grow profitably and build new businesses of scale while also leveraging digital tools to drive productivity and growth for the company. Furthermore, we are prioritizing the company's portfolios with differentiated expectations and resourcing them based on where the businesses are on their lifecycle curves. Lastly, starting next year, we are changing our compensation structure to more directly align to driving the company strategy and desired behaviors to win in the market. We will share more at our investor day in December, but I wanted to share a few items and some perspectives today on how we have been working to drive both top line growth and margin expansion for our future. Before I turn the call over to Jamie to cover the details of our third quarter results, I also wanted to highlight that earlier this month, we did increase our dividend by 5% to an analyzed payout of $1.08 per share. This marks the 14th consecutive year the company has increased the dividend since its inception in 2011. I view this as a reflection of our confidence in the company's underlying earnings growth and commitment to returning cash to shareholders. Now, I will turn the call over to Jamie.