Koppers Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to COPPRS Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a 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 will now 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 second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. We issued our press release earlier today. You may access it via our website at www.coppers.com. As indicated in our announcement, 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 November 4th, 2022. At this time, I would 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 on 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 objectives, plans, and projected results will be achieved. The company's actual results, performance, or achievements include 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 Non-GAAP Financial Measures to the Most Directly Comparable GAAP Financial Measures. Today, you will hear from the following. Leroy Ball, President and CEO of Coppers. and Jimmy Sue Smith, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn it over to Leroy.

Thank you, Quinn. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased that you're joining us today to review our second quarter results. And while we're still dealing with many of the headwinds that we talked about last quarter, such as inflation, as well as pandemic and supply chain issues, copper has delivered record sales in the second quarter, and we continue to make great progress in optimizing and expanding our business on our road to $300 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2025. We have much to share with you regarding each of these topics and more. But first, as we always do, we'd like to update you on our zero harm efforts, which begin on slide four. In July, a number of senior leaders joined me in traveling to our monthly cross-tie treatment facility in central Pennsylvania to present plant manager Al Rutz and his team with the 2022 Zero Harm President's Award. Our team at the facility provides treated cross-ties to Class I and commercial railroads, producing more than 900,000 cross-ties in 2021 alone. The workforce in Muncie achieved best-in-company performance in safety, environmental responsibility, and innovation metrics. They ranked number one among all copper facilities worldwide in the effective use of leading indicators, those activities that demonstrate their commitment to identifying and eliminating hazards and are proven to help prevent safety incidents on a daily basis. In addition to the recognition they received, the plant received funds to direct to the charity of their choice in their community. They selected the Ronald McDonald House of Danville, Pennsylvania, who sent their executive director, Michael Turles, to happily accept. Congratulations to plant manager Al Rutz and his team at Muncie for truly embodying our zero-harm culture. On slide five, we see that in the second quarter of 2022, a total of 23 of our 43 operating facilities worked accident-free. Year-to-date, as of June 30th, the total recordable rate of safety incidents was 8% lower than at the same time last year. The second quarter also saw the continued development of zero-harm 2.0 a comprehensive effort to drive the zero harm culture deeper within the organization with the goal to accelerate our progress to zero injuries and zero environmental harm. We're continuing to use the strategies and tactics that have been proven successful to date while also gaining more input from frontline employees as the basis for developing highly practical training tools. We're concentrating on peer-to-peer interactions as a key to greater and faster awareness, acceptance, and incorporation of zero harm procedures. Currently, we're featuring 12 work streams being managed in a formal project environment to recatalyze Zero Harm and take it to the next level. In addition, we recently held a Zero Harm Idea Summit, which consisted of 10 frontline employees from 10 different wood treatment plants. The participants took part in a two-day Idea Summit in Pittsburgh, discussing their daily experiences and brainstorming ways to advance Zero Harm. They came up with more than 130 ideas, with the top 10 ideas presented to the Zero Harm team for evaluation and potential implementation. As always, I'm proud of the unwavering enthusiasm of our people around the world to continue making progress on our journey to zero. Every team member has my ongoing admiration and appreciation in this never-ending effort. Now, staying in our news release this morning and highlighted on slide six, we achieved record sales in the second quarter, our first quarter in history where we exceeded half a billion in sales. That was fueled by $95 million in price increases spread across all three business segments. Those increases more than offset a 15 million negative impact from our foreign sales being translated into a stronger U.S. dollar, and a 19 million negative impact from lower sales volumes primarily in our performance chemicals and utility and industrial products businesses. I'll provide more details later, but performance chemicals volumes were expected to fall short of prior year volumes as Q2 2021 was still riding the wave of outsized pandemic demand. In spite of that, there were several bright spots on the sales front for PC, and they were still able to overcome the lower volumes and some foreign currency impact with higher price and post-to-record sales quarter. For utility and industrial products, their sales decrease was not demand-related. First of all, we exited our arrangement with Texas Electric Cooperative in the second quarter of last year, which accounted for half of the revenue decline, and the other half is related to other challenges, mostly on the supply chain side, that affected our ability to keep up timely with orders and shipments. That appears to be a widespread problem that the industry is facing, so we don't feel that we're losing business as a result because all business is being pushed out. From a positive standpoint, the underlying fundamentals of our business remain strong in the second quarter. The issue that we and everyone else has dealt with is the persistent inflationary cost increases in all areas that still manage to outpace a 22% sales increase from price in the second quarter in a strengthening U.S. dollar that had an unfavorable impact of several million dollars on our foreign results. We said coming into this year that the first half would not be as strong as the first half of 2021, but by the time we got to mid-year, we expected a much stronger second half and we would be exiting 2022 on a reasonable pace to reach our goal of 300 million EBITDA by 2025. It is, in fact, exactly where we find ourselves one month into the third quarter. All the pieces are in place for each business unit to improve their second half profitability compared to the first half. Cross-type procurement in our railroad products and services business is now tracking at a pace well above last year. Demand and pricing in our utility and industrial products business have never been stronger. Add in a favorable near-term backdrop for pricing and demand in our carbon materials and chemicals segment, and a solid backlog of projects that underpins performance chemicals demand in the back half of the year should represent record financial performance. More about that when I return later in the call. Now I'd like to turn it over to our CFO, Jimmy Sue Smith, for a more detailed review of second quarter financial results. Jimmy Sue?