Koppers Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to COPPR's first quarter 2024 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 first quarter 2024 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 have 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 August 3rd, 2024. 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 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 objectives, 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 press release, which is available on our website, also contains reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Joining me for our call today are Leroy Ball, Chief Executive Officer of COPPERS. and Jimmy Sue Smith, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn over this discussion to Leroy.

Thank you, Quinn. Good morning, everyone. I'll start by saying the obvious, which is that despite best efforts from the Global Coppers team, our first quarter financial results were a disappointment. While we expected adjusted EBITDA will be lower year over year and signaled that in February, we fell short of our forecast and the consensus estimate by about 5%. Now, as expected, our performance chemicals business and our railroad and utility products and services business both showed strong year-over-year growth in sales and profitability. Those impressive gains, however, were more than negated by slumping CM&C markets, in particular in North America. An unplanned outage at our facility in Stickney, Illinois, caused by weather-related factors that contributed to higher costs early in the quarter, was far from the only factor, but ultimately made the challenging market dynamics even more difficult to offset. Now, in these sorts of situations, we typically get help elsewhere to mitigate difficulties that we're encountering in specific parts of our portfolio. And while some help did come in the form of slightly better than expected Q1 performance from our PC business, that ended up getting washed away by a poorer than expected outcome from our railroad maintenance of way business. Now, as I'll talk about later in my commentary, I believe that 2024 will still be a strong step forward for coppers in our quest to reach our 2025 financial commitments, And we are taking additional measures to improve our chances of finishing towards the high end of our revised guidance for this year. We will take this opportunity, however, where we seem to be facing more uncertainty than since the pandemic to temper our expectations slightly for the balance of this year. Now let's take a quick look at the headline numbers for the first quarter seen on slide four. Consolidated sales totaled $497.6 million compared with $513.4 million in the prior year quarter. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $51.5 million compared with $61.5 million in the prior year quarter. Now, as I mentioned, most of that drop was expected and factored into our projections, but we did finish about 5% off our internal projections. Those numbers work out to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.3% compared with 12% in the prior year quarter. We had diluted earnings per share of 59 cents compared with $1.19 in the prior year quarter, and adjusted earnings per share were 62 cents compared with $1.12 in the prior year quarter. Moving to slide six, now that shows some key results related to our Zero Harm 2.0 program to re-energize employee engagement at the front lines and accelerate our progress towards zero incidents. First quarter saw a 16% increase in the number of leading activities over the prior year quarter. We've talked in the past about how injuries have a negative correlation to the leading activities and so that as leading activities go up, injuries and incidents typically go down. And for the most part, we continue to see that as our recordable injury rate continues to trend once again to an all-time best mark. Now of our 45 facilities around the world, 34 operated accident-free in the first quarter with the following operations having zero recordable incidents. Australasia CMC, Australasia PC, Europe CM&C, and Europe Performance Chemicals. These safety efforts helped to reduce our overall recordable injury rate by 7%, currently at its lowest ever rate through Q1. Now I'd like to turn it over to Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Sue Smith to talk with you about first quarter financials.