Greif, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Bill D'Onofrio, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Greif's fiscal second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today, our CEO, Oli Rosgaard, will provide a strategy and market update, followed by our CFO, Larry Hilshimer, with a review of our financial results and guidance. Please turn to slide two. In accordance with regulation fair disclosure, please ask questions regarding topics you consider important because we are prohibited from discussing material non-public information with you on an individual basis. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements involving plans, expectations, and beliefs related to future events. Actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Additionally, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation to the most directly comparable gap metrics that can be found in the appendix of today's presentation. I'll now turn the call over to Ole on slide three.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We continue to execute against our strategy during the second quarter with a particular focus on productivity and cost optimization, which remains a core driver of our margin improvements. I'm pleased to report that we have achieved 75 million of savings, putting us on track to our full year target range of 80 to 90 million. We remain confident in that range for the full year as we went into the year anticipating the first half performance we delivered. As a reminder, the broader program is a total commitment of 120 million by fiscal year end 2027. That figure represents only defined actions. We have full confidence will be actions by the end of 2027. We continue to explore opportunities that haven't yet met that threshold, which could result in upside to the 120 million in the future. Additionally, we ended the quarter with a leverage ratio of 1.1 times, even after completion of our 150 million share repurchase program. Simply put, this is the strongest balance sheet in our nearly 150 year history. We understand that value which gives us the financial flexibility to achieve our three highest capital deployment priorities. Organically growing our business while continuing to grow our dividends and repurchase shares all while maintaining a leverage ratio below two times. Our confidence on driving value through those three priorities is possible because of our improving margin profile and durable free cash flow generation. In the quarter, EBITDA dollars improved 7.5% year over year, margins improved 110 basis points, and free cash flow improved by 93 million compared to a Q2 2025, which by the way also included cash flow from the divested container board business. Those results demonstrate our ability to drive returns through volatility and disruptive impacts to our business from the conflict in the Middle East. We have one of the most engaged and agile workforces in our industry, as evidenced by our latest Gallup engagement score in the 91st percentile, so we know how to deal with situations like these. Our team has proven time and again the ability to navigate challenging, disruptive macroeconomic events. We've been doing it for almost 150 years and have weathered even greater disruption during that time. Our focus, first and foremost, goes to the affected region, ensuring the safety of our colleagues, customers and suppliers. We're also monitoring price cost, making sure to stay ahead of cost inflation driven by the supply chain constraints this conflict has caused. The situation is dynamic, and we expect it's going to continue to evolve, but we'll manage through it effectively. While we sincerely hope for a resolution soon, we also recognize the risks the conflict presents on broader demands and industrial sentiments. As such, we are adjusting our full year EBITDA guidance to reflect the disruptive impact experienced in Q2 and continue softness related to the conflict through year ends. Larry will discuss the EBITDA guidance change in a moment. For now, let's talk about what we experienced in Q2 on slide four, please. Underlying industrial end market demand remained consistent with what we've seen over the past 12 months. That broad demand picture was overlaid by direct impacts to our business in Q2 related to the Middle East conflicts. We experienced intermittent periods of shutdowns in at least one of our facilities in the region. While the total EBITDA loss was less than 5 million in Q2, potential for continued disruption is factored into our guidance. We have also seen real-time the impacts of raising or rising input costs due to the conflict, but we are exhibiting our usual action bias and our teams are doing a fantastic job keeping ahead of inflation with our own pricing actions. This action bias extends to our supplier relationships, too, where we are in constant communication and ensuring continuity of supply for our customers. We also saw a few notable volume bright spots in parts of our business. First, as expected, small containers were resilient in the quarter due to a solid start in the ag season. Cuban Core, while still soft, has been improving in our two largest end markets, the North American paper and film industries. We also announced a $60 to $70 URB price increase to offset the inflation we are experiencing, which was recognized at $60 a ton in April by RISI, which will result in an increase to our contract customers through negotiated pass-through provisions. Lastly, closure volumes were also resilient, with total volumes flat year over year. While volumes continue to be mixed on an absolute basis, they have consistently been most resilient in the areas of our portfolio in which we are growing. This validates our strategy and progress towards a less cyclical end market mix. It is clear our growth strategy is sound. And when a meaningful inflection or demand does occur, Greif will unlock significant operating leverage and earnings growth. In the meantime, our focus will continue to be on managing volatility through pricing, cost management, and productivity, which has helped offset the current volume environment and support continued profitability. With that, I'll turn the call over to Larry to walk through the financials on slide five.