Minerals Technologies Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Minerals Technologies second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lydia Kopilova, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Dave. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's call will be led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Doug Dietrich and Chief Financial Officer Erik Aldag. Following Doug and Erik's prepared remarks, we'll open it up to questions. As a reminder, some of the statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal security laws. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our earnings release and on this slide. Our FCC filings disclose certain risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please also note that some of our comments today refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Our reconciliation to GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release in an appendix of this presentation, which I posted on our website. Now I'll turn it over to Doug. Doug?

Thanks, Lydia. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining today. I'm going to kick us off with a review of our second quarter financials. Erik will then take you through the numbers in more detail and provide our outlook. And at the end of our presentation, I'll briefly share some of the highlights from our sustainability report, which we just published, and provide a preview of our upcoming investor day on September 22nd. After that, we'll open the call to questions. First, a quick overview of the quarter results. Sales were $548 million, up 4% over last year, with operating income of $75 million. Earnings per share were $1.60, up 3% from last year. We continue to be a strong cash generator, with cash flow improving over last year, and our balance sheet is in great shape, with our net leverage reducing to 1.6 times EBITDA. Our top line momentum has continued. with sales growing 7% for the first half of the year. I'll highlight that this has been quality revenue growth driven by higher volumes from our new growth projects and from stronger end market conditions. Another highlight is that our engineered solution segment delivered a particularly impressive performance this quarter, generating a record margin of 17.8% and a record quarterly income of $49 million. Both segments continue to be positioned for solid growth this year, with our strategic projects in each segment remaining on track. As a result, we have a clear line of sight to hitting our mid single-digit growth guidance for the company for the full year. In our consumer and specialty segment, our cat litter sales have grown 9% through the first half of the year, driven by the introduction of new products, and this business remains on track for a mid to high single-digit growth year. We're also excited about our raffinol bleaching earth expansion, which is now ramping up, and we can begin working through a very strong order book from sustainable aviation fuel customers. Our new Fabricare product production is also ramping up. We expect sales to strengthen early in the fourth quarter. Paper and packaging sales were also strong, up 7% so far this year and our three new satellite facility launches are all progressing. In our engineered solution segment, High Temperature Technologies is having a strong sales year driven by our refractories business, where sales are up 14% driven by MINSCAN installations and the corresponding contractual refractory volumes, as well as from higher foundry sales in Asia, which are up 11%. We also saw strong sales in environmental and infrastructure, where sales are up 19% this year, driven by higher volumes of environmental lining products, building materials, and drilling products, as well as from strong demand for our offshore energy services business. Our main challenge this year has been dealing with the higher level and persistent inflation. As we mentioned would happen this quarter, we absorbed quite a bit of higher energy, transportation and raw material costs, the majority of which hit our consumer and specialty segment. We've adjusted pricing across all product lines, but due to contractual price increased timing to many customers in the consumer and specialty segment, The majority of the positive pricing impact is only now beginning to take effect. Margins in the quarter for the consumer and specialty segment were impacted as a result. Erik will outline all of the price-cost dynamics for you in detail, but we continue to make contractual price adjustments and expect to recover segment margins as we move through the second half of the year. A few other items I'd like to touch on before handing the call over to Erik. First, I wanted to mention that we've made organizational changes that I believe will result in even closer collaboration and greater efficiency across our four product lines. We've elevated four experienced leaders to oversee each product line, leveraging their deep knowledge of our markets, operations, and technologies. This change will more closely align the people, products, facilities, and core technologies that serve similar markets and strengthen execution across the organization. We believe these changes, we expect these changes to drive efficiencies, further accelerate innovation, and speed to market for new products, and accelerate best practice sharing and adoption across our business. Second, as we previously announced, this past quarter, we also filed a plan of reorganization in the Chapter 11 cases of our subsidiaries, BMI OldCo, formerly known as Barrett's Minerals, and its affiliated debtors to comply with the court deadline. Concurrently with the filing of the plan, we recorded a charge of $290 million to increase our reserve for funding the proposed potential trusts and for estimated costs related to this matter. More recently, the judge has abated the bankruptcy court cases in order to await the outcome of a district court proceeding on the underlying talc causation issue. We continue to maintain that all talc sold by BMI Old Co. has always been safe and remain committed to a fair and final resolution for the company and all stakeholders. Lastly, I'm pleased to announce that we published our 18th Annual Sustainability Report earlier this week. It's packed with information about the company and our journey over the past several years. I'm going to take a moment at the end of our presentation to run you through some of the highlights. Now, let me hand the call over to Erik, who will take you through our second quarter financials in more detail. Erik.