Glatfelter Corporation

We're about to begin. Good day and welcome to the Glatfelter's Q1 2023 Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ramesh Shadigar. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning and welcome to Glatfelter's 2023 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This is Ramesh Shadigar, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. On the call to present our first quarter results is Thomas Fahneman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blackfelter, and myself. 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 2022 Form 10-K filed with the SEC and today's release 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 Thomas.

Thank you, Ramesh. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Gladfelder's first quarter conference call for 2023. It's a real pleasure to be with you today. I begin today's call by highlighting that we have completed several meaningful actions throughout the quarter to progress our turnaround strategy with the sole focus of improving the long-term financial performance of the company. In the first quarter, we achieved operating income of $6.1 million and improved our adjusted EBITDA by $2.5 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, largely driven by the strong performance of our alate and composite fiber segments. While we are encouraged by our first quarter results, we continue to operate in a very challenging macroeconomic environment and inflationary conditions that we anticipate will create volatility in our markets for the remainder of the year. Despite these continued headwinds, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our annual guidance of $110 to $120 million in adjusted EBITDA for 2023. Before Ramesh addresses financial highlights, I want to cover a few of the quarter's key accomplishments that contributed to progressing our turnaround strategy. First, we successfully completed the necessary steps for securing the needed refinancing that strongly positions the company to be very well capitalized while providing the financial flexibility to execute our short and long-term strategy. As a result, No material debt will come due prior to the maturity of the company's revolving credit facility in September of 2026. The completion of this refinancing was quite timely given the recent liquidity pressures in the global banking system and was viewed favorably by Moody's, resulting in an upgrade of our credit rating. Second, the performance of the composite fibers and allied material segments remains strong as demonstrated by the quarter-over-quarter growth in profitability despite a continued difficult economic environment. In this bundler segment, volumes increased, but we did not see a sequential increase in profitability compared to the fourth quarter due to a less favorable product mix. As a result, we are carefully evaluating ways to address the ongoing demand and profitability dynamic within this segment. The last action I highlight is one that is a direct result of me having evaluated the needs of the business since leaving the company now for nearly eight months. As communicated in early April, I took several key actions to reorganize the senior leadership team to have a single point of accountability for the performance of the company's global supply chain, commercial, and innovation functions. These functions will report into Boris Ilyichko, who will be joining Gladfelder around early October as Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer. As part of this change, we are also forming a product management function, reporting into Boris, which will be responsible for product profitability and pricing, along with a fulsome and integrated marketing, distribution, and portfolio strategy for each of our product categories. I'm confident this new structure under Boris' leadership will strengthen the integration across the core functions of the business and accelerate effective decision-making as we continue to address the company's near and long-term financial performance. Ramesh will now provide additional details on our first quarter financial performance. Ramesh?