Luxfer Holdings PLC

Good morning. My name is Madison, and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to Luxfer's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute. After the speaker's prepared remarks, we will hold a question and answer session. Now, I will turn the call over to Kevin Grant, Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development at Luxfer. Kevin, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madison, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Luxford's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. This morning, we'll be reviewing Luxford's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2025. I'm pleased to be joined today by Andy Butcher, our Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Webster, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's webcast is accompanied by a presentation that can be accessed at luxford.com. Please note any references to non-GAAP financials are reconciling the appendix of the presentation. Before we begin, a friendly reminder that any forward-looking statements made about the company's expected financial results are subject to future risks and uncertainties. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please refer to the safe harbor statement on slide two of today's presentation for further details. During today's call, we'll be providing adjusted first quarter 2025 financial results, excluding the graphic arts business. and 2024 legal recoveries. Now, let me introduce Luxford CEO, Andy Butcher. Please turn to slide three. Andy, please go ahead.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our first quarter performance. Our team delivered adjusted earnings per share of 23 cents, up from 20 cents a year ago, and maintained net debt at approximately $42 million, or 0.7 times leverage. Sales revenues grew significantly, led by Electron, and driven especially by off-cycle demand in flameless Russian heaters, as well as our group Russian UGREs, reflecting higher 2025 demand from our defense applications, as well as commercial customers replenishing inventories. We also saw a continuation of the rebound in defense flares and aerospace, and our overall order books as we left the quarter were elevated by 12%. We'll dive deeper into the encouraging UGRE outlook later as a flagship example of our Luxor business system in action. The planned divestiture of our graphic arts business is nearing completion and remains on track to close by the middle of the year, which will enable us to sharpen our focus on higher margin growth opportunities. I'm also pleased to announce the order has been secured for our first bulk gas transportation system in Europe, a milestone that underscores LUXA's expertise in large-scale compressed gas handling as we expand our international gas solutions portfolio. Turning to tariffs, through a variety of proactive and reactive steps, we have effectively avoided or neutralized incremental direct duty costs as of now. This insulation from recent tariff actions reflects deliberate, forward-looking activities across the business. Based on work of the past several years, there are fully approved reciprocal tariff exemptions covering our electron alloys and most of our zirconium inputs. Nearly all cylinder trade within North America benefits from USMCA protections, and we have additionally used duty drawback programs and local sourcing to limit cross-border exposure. combined with some minor price changes where necessary. I'm pleased to say that these strategies have positioned us to minimize direct reciprocal tariff impacts today. That said, we remain attentive to evolving macro risks. We are very closely monitoring ongoing developments around rare earth supply channels from China and broader trade policy dynamics. Furthermore, should new duties emerge, we are prepared to adjust our sourcing, pricing and operational strategies as needed, and our heavy weighting in defence, first response and aerospace continues to position us well against any broader economic slowdown. Overall, Q1 demonstrates that Luxfer can execute effectively in a dynamic environment, with a strengthened backlog we remain encouraged by our internal performance and the near-term outlook. With that, I'll hand the call over to Steve, who will provide details of our financials and share our 2025 guidance.