Glatfelter Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your operator. Your conference is about to begin. Please continue to stand by. Once again, this is your operator. Your conference is about to begin. Please continue to stand by. Thank you. Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to GLAAD Feltery's Earnings Conference 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 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. And now, I would like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ramesh Sharigar from Glatfelter. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, and welcome to Glatfelter's 2021 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This is Ramesh Shedegar, Vice President of ESG Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer. On the call today to present our third quarter results are Dante Perini, Glatfelter's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Sam Hillard, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin our presentation, I have a few standard reminders. During our call this morning, we will use the term adjusted earnings as well as other non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these financial measures to our GAAP-based results is included in today's earnings release and in the investor slides. We will also make forward-looking statements today that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our 2020 Form 10-K filed with the SEC and today's release both of which are available on our website, disclose factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These statements speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. I will now turn the call over to Dante. Thank you, Ramesh.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. The third quarter marks an important milestone in Gladfelter's ongoing transformation. with the successful acquisition of Jakob Holm. This business will significantly enhance the scale and diversification of our product and technology portfolio by introducing premium quality spun-lease nonwovens to our offerings. We also completed the first full quarter with Mount Holly under Glidefelter's ownership, which contributed to record operating profit for the air-laid segment. Slide three of the investor deck provides the key highlights for the third quarter. We reported adjusted earnings per share of 21 cents and adjusted EBITDA of $32 million. Airline materials performed well above expectations driven by the higher than anticipated demand for our tabletop and wipes products. This strong demand positively impacted segment profitability in the quarter. We also experienced sequential volume growth of 10% in our hygiene products category after being negatively affected in the first half of the year as consumers destocked. Consistent with our previous guidance, customer buying patterns in this category returned to more normalized levels during the quarter. Also, our contractual pass-through arrangements with customers allowed us to offset elevated raw material costs and maintain solid margins during this volatile inflationary period. Composite fibers was challenged in the third quarter by significantly higher energy prices that were well above our expectations, along with continued inflation for raw materials and logistics. For example, electricity prices more than doubled during the quarter in key European countries like Germany and the UK, where we have significant manufacturing operations. In order to mitigate this unprecedented escalation of input costs, we announced in mid-September an incremental 12% price increase across the composite fibers product portfolio. This action was in addition to the 8% price increase announced earlier in the year. We believe these price actions appropriately reflect the current market conditions as we continue to provide our customers security of supply of high quality products and responsive service during this very dynamic business environment. In addition, we successfully executed a $500 million bond offering that is primarily being used to finance the Jakob Holm acquisition. This transaction marks another significant step forward in our transformation by further broadening our engineered materials product and technology offerings, enhancing enterprise-wide innovation capabilities with a focus on sustainability, and adding meaningful scale to the company. I'm very pleased to welcome the Jakob Holm colleagues to Gladfelter. who now represent our spun lace segment. We will begin the process of enabling close collaboration and technology sharing among this expanded group of industry-leading nonwovens experts. Our near-term priorities for this acquisition will be focused on successfully integrating Jakob Holm into Gladfelter's operating model, achieving the targeted $20 million of annual synergies, and actively de-levering the balance sheet. Sam will now provide a more detailed review of our third quarter results, as well as additional comments on the Yacob Home acquisition. Sam?