Armstrong World Industries Inc

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Armstrong World Industries fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Theresa Womble, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications.

Please go ahead. Thank you, Regina, and welcome everyone to our call this morning. Today, we have Vic Grizzle, our CEO, Chris Calzaretta, our CFO, along with Mark Hershey, our Chief Operating Officer, who will discuss Armstrong World Industries' fourth quarter 2020 results and our outlook for 2026. We have provided a presentation to accompany these comments that is available on the investor relations section of the Armstrong World Industries website. Our discussion of operating and financial performance will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. A reconciliation of these measures with the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in the earnings press release and in the appendix of the presentation issued this morning, both available on our investor relations website. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements that represent the view we have of our financial and operational performance as of today's date, February 24th, 2026. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may differ materially from those expected or implied. We provided detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties in our SEC filings, including our 10-K filed earlier this morning. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement beyond what is required by applicable securities law. With that, I will now turn the call to Vic.

Thank you, Theresa, and good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. As many of you know, this will be my last Armstrong earnings call as CEO. as I'll be moving into the executive chairman position on April 1st. And as previously announced, Mark Hershey, currently our chief operating officer, will be taking the helm as president and CEO effective at that time. It has been both a privilege and an honor to have led this great company for the past 10 years. Throughout my 15 years here at Armstrong, Mark has served alongside me in various key leadership roles. His extensive experience and track record of delivering results combined with his strong dedication to our values and our culture of operational excellence, make him both well-equipped and ready to lead this organization. We will hear from Mark later in the call today to discuss our recent acquisition of Eventscape and some advancements in our new product innovations. So, let me begin with our record-setting 2025 results. 2025 represented another year of strong execution and a full demonstration of our resilient business model that delivered profitable growth despite persistently challenging market conditions. It was our team's continued execution at the highest level across the enterprise that enabled us to deliver another record-setting, double-digit growth year across all key metrics, again, even as market conditions remained unfavorable. At the total company level for the full year, our net sales increased 12% from the prior year, and our adjusted EBITDA grew 14%, with our adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 70 basis points. As noted in our press release that we issued earlier, 2025 was our second consecutive year of double-digit growth, where the core values of Armstrong were on full display, such as strong mineral fiber average unit value growth, robust productivity across our operations, and double-digit top-line growth in our architectural specialty segments. Our 2025 results also mark the fifth consecutive year of net sales and earnings growth. And also notable, this is the third consecutive year we have reported year-over-year adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. These strong and consistent results reflect our team's ability to steadily execute across the enterprise in all parts of the cycle. So before getting to our quarterly results, I want to take a moment and recognize and express my gratitude to our team of nearly 4000 employees. Their commitment and their passion for what we do and dedication to serving our customers are not only impressive, but they're unique and a key driver of our continued success. So thank you to the entire Armstrong team. Now turning to our fourth quarter results. In the quarter, we finished with softer results than expected, even though we had solid AUV growth in mineral fiber with favorable like for like pricing. strong productivity, more than offsetting inflation, and continued double-digit top-line growth and architectural specialties. Softer results on the top line in mineral fiber mainly came from the impact of the extended government shutdown that disrupted maintenance and repair activity for government buildings across the U.S. In addition, we did not see the normal bounce back after reopening, which impacted mineral fiber volumes in notable areas like our Washington, D.C. territory. and with our MRO customers serving the repair and maintenance activity in government buildings. Softer than expected results in the quarter also occurred in the architectural specialty segment, primarily driven by key project delays. This created a cost imbalance in the quarter, temporarily compressing margins in the AS segment. Together, these drivers formed an air pocket of sorts for the total company results that we expect to work through in the coming quarters. As I mentioned in the quarter, average unit value, or AUV, in our mineral fiber segment increased 6% on strong like-for-like price performance and positive product mix driven by our innovative products. Despite short-term pressures created by these temporary market events, mineral fiber EBITDA increased 15% to a record fourth quarter result and a record fourth quarter EBITDA margin of 42.1%. Architectural Specialties delivered 11% top-line growth with solid inorganic and organic contributions despite the project delays. And importantly, order intake growth continued to be strong at double-digit levels year-over-year in the fourth quarter, sustaining a momentum heading into 2026. We continue to see strength in the transportation vertical for a broad portfolio of AES products, and we continue to win large airport projects with recent winds at LAX and Salt Lake City International Airport, we continue to expect a transportation vertical to provide a tailwind for several years to come. Both the mineral fiber and architectural specialty segments contributed to our record results in 2025, with our strong focus on operational execution being a key contributor to our sustained leadership position and our growth initiatives providing above-market growth rates. Operational excellence enabled now by technology is critical, both in terms of profitability as well as from the eyes of our customer in terms of quality and service. And this was an outstanding year in both areas, with our teams delivering a record high result for our perfect order measure. This measure I've described before tracks our performance across multiple metrics that are critical for maintaining our best-in-class customer service levels. things like on-time delivery, product defects, billing accuracy. Executing at high levels across these areas not only drives customer satisfaction, but it also supports our pricing performance in competitive markets and reinforces the strength of our market position. After a few years of foundational investment in our growth initiatives, they've continued to scale. and are contributing to our business model and are creating value as a competitive differentiator for the company. On the digital front, the use of Project Works, our automated design platform, continues to grow and generate higher win rates on projects when the service was used, reinforcing its value again as a competitive differentiator. Canopy also continued to perform well and contribute nicely to our growth in 2025. providing an easy way for otherwise underserved customers to access a broad range of products through a simple online selling platform. We are pleased to see record revenue and EPIDA results for Canopy in 2025, with each quarter providing a positive EPIDA contribution. Now, in addition to these successful digital growth initiatives, with growing opportunities in data centers and energy-saving ceilings, Total contributions from our growth initiatives are positioned to further accelerate in 2026 and beyond. And Mark's going to cover these two key growth opportunities here in a moment. All in all, these results, together with our growth initiatives, were another demonstration of how our business model and our strategy can deliver growth above the market and do so profitably through our pricing discipline, operational excellence, and strong operating leverage. Now I'll turn the call over to Chris for more details on our financial results.