Koppers Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to CUPRS Final Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If you need assistance, please alert a conference specialist by pressing star followed by zero. Following the presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Quinn McGuire. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and good morning. I'm Quinn McGuire, Vice President of Investor Relations. Welcome to our conference call, where we'll provide highlights of our fourth quarter and four-year 2020 performance, as well as our 2021 outlook. We issued our press release earlier today. You may access this announcement via our website at www.coppers.com. As indicated in our announcements, We've also posted materials to the investor relations page of our website that will be referenced in today's call. Consistent with our practice in prior quarterly conference calls, this is being broadcast live on our website, and a recording of this call will be available on our website for replay through May 24, 2021. Before we get started, I'd like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement seen on slide two. Certain comments made on this conference call may be characterized as forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve a number of assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, including risks described in the cautionary statement included in our press release and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward-looking statements included in the company's comments, you should not regard the inclusion of such information as a representation that its objective, plans, and projected results will be achieved. The company's actual results, performance, or achievements may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. References may also be made today to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided with its press release, which is available on our website, Reconciliations of these Non-GAAP Financial Measures, to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Joining me for our call today are Leroy Ball, President and CEO of Coppers, and Mike Zuge, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn this discussion over to Leroy.

Thank you, Quinn. Good morning, everyone. So this morning, we're going to start, as we always do, with a discussion of our zero-harm culture. As I mentioned when we reported our preliminary results, we finished the year with our best underlying safety performance ever. Now, reaching this milestone amid the uncertainties of the pandemic proves once again that zero harm is the foundation of our culture, the way of thinking and behaving that has been adopted by Copper's employees around the globe. It is the basis of everything we do, and my sincere appreciation goes out to our worldwide team who are doing an admirable job of focusing relentlessly on our path to zero. As we've talked about often, Copper's has been fortunate to be classified as an essential business in every region that we operate, which has enabled us to continue to operate at full capacity throughout the pandemic. We provide essential products and services to keep our modern society functioning. Copper's helps to move products safely by rail. We help keep electricity and Wi-Fi accessible. We keep manufacturing supply with needed chemicals, and we provide treated wood for home and commercial construction and improvements. Essential to our ability to perform these essential functions is the health and well-being of our employee population. The responsibility that we place is our top priority at all times. Now, if we move to slide six, we have approximately 1% of our employees currently in self-quarantine with about 12% of the employee population to date that have tested positive for COVID-19. Now, we continue to require face coverings as personal protective equipment at all North American facilities, and we've distributed company-provided masks to all employees. Additionally, N95 masks or respirators are being used for close contact work. We continue to seek out new mask styles and other respiratory equipment that may provide more comfort and health benefits. And we continue to have protocols in place which require maintaining social distancing, screening practices, and virus-related hygiene standards. We're also using self-administered saliva test kits at all North American locations, as well as pool testing methods to periodically screen our U.S. plant employees to limit the spread. In the fourth quarter of 2020, we instituted a new life-saving rule regarding COVID-19 to heighten the awareness and operational discipline while protecting employees working higher-risk jobs with the necessary equipment. Communications remain a core element of our COVID-19 strategy with our quarterly all-employee meetings in three time zones around the world, virtual chats with our plant and remote work employees, and regular video updates from me that also can be accessed on our Facebook page. So as the vaccine continues to get rolled out, I am strongly urging our employees to trust the vaccine as a means of returning to normal. In fact, we're doing everything we can to simplify receiving the vaccine in areas where we have a larger presence through vaccination clinics that are being coordinated at various facilities across the U.S. So far, five locations have had vaccination plans approved through the use of federal and state point-of-dispensary programs, county health departments, and local clinics. And we're also actively working to set up vaccination for U.S. employees as phase 1B, which includes essential infrastructure workers as that gets closer to implementation. Vaccination programs for our employees outside the United States are being handled by the corresponding governmental programs. To repeat, as shown on slide seven, I am strongly encouraging all COPRES employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine, even though we are not making it a requirement. To help move those that might need a little extra nudge, we're offering an incentive of $250, which each employee will receive after he or she has received the full vaccination dose. I'm thankful to have several vulnerable family members that have received their first shot, and I'm looking forward to receiving the vaccine also as soon as it is available to my eligibility category. Guidelines in Illinois began offering vaccines to category 1B, which includes the essential infrastructure workers. And so employees at our Galesburg, Illinois facility, 41 in all so far, have received the first dose of the vaccines. We salute our Galesburg team for being the first copper facility to get vaccinated, which protects not only those individuals, but their coworkers and families as well. On slide nine, we provide an overview of our operations and planning activities throughout the pandemic, as well as what we have been experiencing over the past couple of weeks with the wave of record cold temperatures and severe winter weather that have plagued sections of the country that typically don't face those challenges. A number of copper facilities in the southern states, the southern Midwest, and particularly Texas, have had to temporarily cease operations because of frozen pipes, loss of power, unsafe working conditions, and inability to travel to work. The impact has hit us across all of our business segments, but dealing with severe weather is something we are used to, but this latest blast was worse than normal and had an impact across more facilities than is typical. Overall, we had at least five facilities that have dealt with some level of disruption, with some of those having to shut down some or all operations for a brief period of time. Now, we've begun working to dig ourselves out and are still assessing the overall damage while repairing broken water lines, fixing pumps, and trying to restore power to equipment. While this is an unfortunate setback and will cost us some money in repairs and lost production, we're thankful that our employees have weathered the storm and are all safe and accounted for. We've made donations to local agencies to help the communities that have been affected the most, and we've paid our employees throughout to provide them a level of security in their time of need. And as I mentioned, while we're still assessing the total impact from the storms, at this point, we do not expect it to have a material impact on our results, as we should be able to catch up on production and customer shipments. In terms of operating during the ongoing pandemic, we're still keeping business travel to essential only, and plant visits remain limited. Those employees working from home have been encouraged to continue doing so. Possible return to the office has been moved to July 1st at the earliest. Those who must come into the office must follow our company's PPE guidelines. Given the stresses that our workforce may be feeling, we're evaluating potential ways to enhance the work-life balance through our iShare Challenge, which encourages employees to come up with creative solutions. Now, recently we shared some good news as we completed the sale of our coal tar distillation facility in Fallon V, West Virginia, as you can see on slide 11. This is the latest in our strategy to right-size the operating footprint of our CM&C segment. We discontinued our coal tar distillation processing at Fallen Vee in 2016, and we ceased naphthalene refining activities there in late 2018, once the new unit, our Stickney plant, came online. This transaction represents the latest action to increase our focus on those businesses that play a greater role in building our global infrastructure. And while enabling us to direct resources to other value-added projects, this also frees up over half a million dollars in cash a month that we have been spending to wind down the plant. Special thanks go to Phil Hill and the entire Follensbee team in preparing the plant for sale. They did an outstanding job under a tough set of circumstances. And I know the last day was an emotional one for our remaining employees, but I've heard good news overall in that many have already landed other jobs with a few actually remaining in coppers in new roles. Slide 12 describes a new wood treatment solution for utility poles that was developed to enhance our current product line and serve as an attractive replacement for penta-treated poles, which will begin getting phased out over the next couple of years. Our UIP and PC businesses teamed up to develop and introduce DoraClimb poles, offering superior climability with utility line and value when servicing poles during storm-related events. That was our PC R&D team that developed the climbing additive preservative system used in the DoraClimb treatment process, Capital Microelectronics, the only producer of Penta, previously announced their plans to cease production of the preservative at their lone facility in Mexico by the end of this year. We move to slide 13. Our zero harm mindset led the team at our graft in Australia facility to reduce heat-related dangers in the outdoor fabrication area by installing mobile mist cooling fans and a permanent mist cooling system in one of the fabrication sheds. Temperature has overall been reduced by up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, and this innovative idea is working so well We're looking at doing the same at other plants as applicable. Coppers has been making news lately both here at home and overseas. The port of Nyberg in Denmark, as you can see on slide 15, is the central hub of our coppers European CM&C operations. And through a joint project, the pier length will be extended and water depth increased to enable us to receive and operate two vessels at the same time, reducing the time needed for loading and unloading products. This is a critical improvement since the capacity of our NIBOR plant has doubled over the past several years. With the updated port functionality, coppers can expand its global coal tar business with the necessary shipping capacity and speed. As highlighted on slide 16, Manufacturing Today magazine recently featured Chief Operating Officer Jim Sullivan, who did a great job discussing the vital importance of coppers to the global infrastructure, current expansion projects, and the ongoing success of our zero-harm efforts. He sums it up well by saying, what matters to us is our people, the environment, and the communities that surround us. If we protect those, we will have a strong future. If we move to slide 18, our Link Women employee group sponsored a second Women's Empowerment Series session featuring four dynamic women leaders from COPRS discussing their path to success, leadership styles, support networks, and work-life balance. The panel consisted of Ashley Everman, our Manager of Talent Development, Melissa Hadley, our Manager of Business Planning, Stacey McKinney, our Vice President of Technical Services, and Kim Nelson, our Logistics Manager. Now, this Link Women event was well attended. It demonstrates how our people actively engage with each other to foster personal and professional growth. And my deepest thanks go out to this impressive cohort for leading by example and giving of themselves. As seen on slide 20, I'm proud to have accepted the Chuck Cooper Foundation Leadership Award on behalf of Copper's employees worldwide. The late Chuck Cooper, a native of Pittsburgh and a barrier breaker in many ways, was the Jackie Robinson of the NBA, being the first African-American player drafted into the league and receiving their highest honor of being inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 2019. Chuck's son, Chuck Cooper III, honors his father's legacy through a foundation that awards graduate-level scholarships and provides leadership development to underserved students. We view this honor as an endorsement that, although we've taken a number of specific and tangible steps, Our work must and will continue to bring a truly inclusive and equitable society closer to reality. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike to discuss our financial results and then provide an overview of our debt and liquidity. Mike?