Glatfelter Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Glatzelter's fourth quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After this speaker 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. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Ramesh Shadigar from Glatfelter. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Abigail. Good morning, and welcome to Glatfelter's 2021 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This is Ramesh Shadigar, Vice President of ESG, Investor Relations, and Corporate Treasurer. On the call today to present our fourth 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's earnings call marks the conclusion of a very pivotal year in Gladfelter's transformation as we successfully delivered on our commitment to scale up the company through two sizable acquisitions of leading engineered materials businesses. At the same time, 2021 was also a very challenging year as we continued to navigate a pandemic that included severe macroeconomic headwinds. In the first half of the year, Our air-laid segment was negatively impacted by customers' destocking, while the second half ended with unprecedented energy inflation in Europe and significant raw material price increases that adversely impacted all three segments. As we closed out the fourth quarter, continued escalation in energy prices in Europe, raw material inflation, supply chain disruptions, and pockets of pandemic-driven labor constraints negatively affected our financial results. The intensity with which these inflation factors unfolded was not fully anticipated, nor reflected in our previous guidance, and the timing of these events has handicapped the Jakob Holm acquisition from having the quick and positive start we had expected. Despite the significant impact of these external factors, we remain confident in the strategic rationale of our two acquisitions. Mount Holly is in line with our near-term expectations and has the capability to overachieve our original goals. And our new spun lace segment provides scale and further expands our product and technology portfolio, which positions us favorably for the longer term. Ultimately, our leading positions in the broader nonwoven sector will facilitate our ability to deliver meaningful value to our shareholders and customers. While it is too soon to project when these extraordinary external pressures will dissipate, we are taking swift and aggressive steps to manage through this period of volatility. I will speak more about this later. If you go to slide three in the investor deck, it provides the key highlights for the fourth quarter. We reported adjusted earnings per share of 4 cents and adjusted EBITDA of $26 million. Airline materials performance was generally in line with expectations as contractual costs passed through arrangements protected margins from raw material inflation. although energy cost escalation in Europe was a drag on earnings. This segment had a very good year-over-year profit growth, driven by the addition of Mount Holly and a strong recovery in the tabletop category. Composite fibers results were much lower than expectations, driven by the unprecedented rise in energy costs in Europe and higher raw material inflation. Energy prices further spiked to record levels in the fourth quarter, negatively impacting earnings by approximately $4 million versus our prior guidance, which had already reflected about $1.5 million of energy inflation. To combat this spike in costs, we introduced an energy surcharge in November for customers in all three segments to specifically target the recovery of mounting energy costs. Volumes were also lower as some price-sensitive customers, predominantly in the wallpaper category, altered their buying patterns in response to the additional pricing actions we implemented. In our spun lace segment, results were lower than expectations driven by higher raw material and energy costs and a production delay at one of our manufacturing sites caused by a key raw material shortage that impacted shipments. This is our first reporting quarter for the spun lace segment since the October 29th acquisition date. The integration work is well underway as we continue to focus on aligning processes, technologies, and commercial strategies while addressing the external factors impacting near-term results. I will elaborate more on Spunlace integration in my closing remarks. I'll turn the call over to Sam now to provide more details on the quarter.