Avient Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Avian Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's third quarter 2026 results. My name is Kevin, and I'll be your operator today. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. We will have a question and answer session following the company's prepared remarks. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to George Clark, Director of Investor Relations at Avian.

Thank you, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Before we begin, we would 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 of forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They're based on management's expectation 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 statements. We encourage you to review our most recent reports, including our 10-K, 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 in the investor relations section of the Aviant website where the company describes the non-GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation for historical non-GAAP financial measures to their 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 on the call today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Frank and Joe DiSalvo, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. I will now hand the call over to Mike to begin.

Thank you, George, and good morning, everyone. I want to start by saying thank you to the Global Aviant team for welcoming me to the company and to the board for their trust and support. I'm truly honored to join Aviant. As I've gotten to know the company, my excitement for the value we can create has only grown. It really comes down to four key themes, the people, the business, innovation, and the opportunity ahead for Aviant. I'll start with the people because they are truly the core of what determines a company's success. In my brief time with Aviant, I've been struck by the focus on and the passion for the customer and on innovation that permeates across the entire organization. In addition, it's clear to me that we have a strong leadership team that's focused on the strategy and our purpose. Over the past few weeks, I've met with several of our stakeholders, including employees at both our headquarters and operating sites, customers, suppliers and investors. I came away impressed and excited by the opportunity that lies ahead. We are delivering today with a strategy that is working, but I also believe we have the opportunity to do even more. Of course, I'm also excited about the business itself and the markets we serve. Avian's diverse portfolio of technologies sits at the intersection of several powerful secular trends, including healthcare, personal safety and protection, lightweighting, electronics, and others. These trends are creating significant opportunities for innovative material solutions and positions as well to compete and deliver sustainable organic growth over time. The world is demanding that materials do more. And innovation is the thread that connects all these opportunities. And it's one of Avian's core strengths. By combining deep technical and regulatory expertise with close customer collaboration, we are creating solutions that strengthen our market positions, expand our addressable opportunities and generate durable growth. It's only been three weeks, but it's clear to me that we have a strong organization, a differentiated portfolio of technologies, exposure to attractive growth markets, and a proven ability to innovate. The strategy is sound, the disciplined execution by our operating segments is strong, and the opportunity ahead of us is significant, as evidenced by our third quarter results and updated outlook. The third quarter reflected broad-based strength across the business with results exceeding expectations and demonstrating the continued effectiveness of the company's strategy. Adjusted EPS of 86 cents came in six cents ahead of expectation and total company organic sales increased 10.6% year over year. Our focus on profitable growth along with the benefit from productivity initiatives increased adjusted EBITDA margins by 80 basis points over the prior year to a third quarter record of 17.3%. Given the healthy performance through the first three quarters, we are raising our full year adjusted EPS, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow outlook at the midpoint, reflecting our confidence amidst ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. Joel will cover all the details in the later slides. From these business results, it's clear we have momentum. And before I comment on my initial impressions and opportunities, allow me to provide some context on the mandate I received from our board. This is not a turnaround story, and the board believes our strategy is well defined. However, they also believe we have opportunities to accelerate the growth trajectory of our business, which is core to my mandate. Again, it's early days, but let me provide three examples of where I see opportunities to start to unlock more value. Firstly, we need to accelerate the translation of innovation into profitable growth. We have strong innovation capabilities, and we need to find ways to scale our unique technologies across our customer base more quickly. For example, we've innovated some incredible material science solutions for a medical device company, but we're scaling it sequentially instead of simultaneously. Secondly, our customers are looking for us to bring them solutions. Solutions to the big challenges they are trying to solve. This is an opportunity to enhance how we approach market segments in a holistic manner. I have seen some instances when we approach opportunities through the lens of a single technology, business or individual customer. By strengthening our collaboration between our two segments, I believe we can better leverage the breadth of our portfolio. And lastly, we have real opportunity to optimize our end-to-end supply chain. I'm taking a fresh look at our operations, including our manufacturing footprint, our product portfolio, and how we go to market. This effort will help us optimize our cost of service and expand our opportunities for profitable growth and some of our more mature markets. Ultimately, this will not only help to boost growth, but also aid in improving margins as plant utilization increases and complexity decreases. All of that said, we will not sacrifice the progress we've made on margin expansion to drive growth, and we are committed to maintaining our focus on productivity and cost discipline. Strong free cash flow will be a meaningful measure of success. reflecting our ability to efficiently convert earnings into cash to provide greater financial flexibility and enhancing returns. That brings me to our capital allocation priorities. First and foremost, we will continue investing in the business to support organic growth and strengthen our competitive position. Second, we will remain committed to returning capital to shareholders, including through our dividend. Beyond those priorities, we will take a balanced and disciplined approach to deploying excess cash, evaluating opportunities to reduce debt, repurchase shares, or pursue other value enhancing investments. Our objective is to allocate capital in a manner that maximizes long-term shareholder value while maintaining the financial flexibility to support future growth opportunities. As such, in the near term, the key metrics I will be focusing on will be profitable sales growth, adjusted EBITDA margins, and free cash flow. Aviant is a company with a clear purpose, a strong foundation, and strategy that's delivering results. And I see opportunities to help accelerate that strategy. I see a company with attractive positions in our core markets and growth vectors. differentiated technologies, deep customer relationships with market leaders and a talented team that understands how to execute. My objective is to help unlock even more of that potential, increase the pace of execution and ensure that we're fully capitalizing on the opportunities in front of us to materialize a brighter future. With that, I will turn the call over to Joe to discuss our third quarter financial results in more detail. Go ahead, Joe.