Howmet Aerospace Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the HowMet Aerospace First Quarter 2020 results. My name is Shelby, and I'll be your operator for today. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Paul Luther, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, Shelby. Good morning, and welcome to the HowMet Aerospace First Quarter 2020 results conference call. I'm joined by John Plante, Executive Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer, and Ken Giacobi, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After comments by John, we will have a question and answer session. I would like to remind you that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements relating to future events and expectations. You can find factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these projections listed in today's presentation and earnings press release and in our most recent SEC filings. In addition, we've included some non-GAAP financial measures in our discussion. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in today's press release and in the appendix in today's presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to John.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the call. Given the pre-release of earnings, we'll move swiftly through the slides and then get to your questions. Revenue and profit for the first quarter were in line with the pre-release on April 14th. Moreover, earnings per share was at the favorable end of the expected range. If we move to slide four, please. Then, as we discussed on the last call, on the 1st of April, we separated Arconic Inc., the reported entity today, into two companies. Hammett Aerospace, which is RemainCo., which is primarily focused on the aerospace sector and contains the four business units within the engineering products and forging segment. Arconic Corporation, SpinCo, which is primarily focused on rolled and extruded aluminum products, contains the three business units within the global rolled product segment. The targeted guidance for one-time operational and capex costs related to the separation includes were $175 million. The final costs for the separation will actually be approximately $130 million, excluding tax leakage and debt breakage. One-time separation costs were funded by divestiture proceeds of approximately $190 million. The highlight slide for the combined company of Arconic Inc., which includes the EP&F segment, the GRP segment, and corporate, Performance in the quarter was strong, despite the impact of COVID-19, which surfaced during the last three weeks of March. Additionally, we were impacted by lower year-over-year 7.3 max production rate reduction. Q1 revenues were $3.2 billion, down 9% versus 2019, and down 6% organically, adjusting for the pass-through of lower aluminum prices, currency changes, and the divestiture of businesses. Operating income, excluding special items, was up 19% with a 350 basis points improvement. Moreover, EP&F improved 300 basis points and GRP improved 310 basis points. We have now had five consecutive quarters of year-over-year margin expansion. Earnings per share, excluding special items, was a 62 cents, a record, and up 44% year over year. Adjusted free cash flow excluding separation costs improved 19 million year over year, and the cash balance at the end of the quarter was 2.64 billion. We've taken several actions to deliver and improve our debt maturity profile, which I will discuss later in the presentation. Lastly, Return on net assets was at 410 basis points to a record 14.8% return after tax. Now let me turn it over to Ken for a more detailed view of the financials.