Ingevity Corporation Common Stock

Hello, and welcome to the Ingevity Q2 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Bill Hamilton, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Ingevity's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. This morning we posted a presentation on our investor site that you can use to follow today's call. It can be found on ir.ingevity.com under events and presentations. Any projections or goals we may include in our presentation today are likely to involve risks we've detailed in our earnings release our SEC filings in the forward-looking statement you see on slide two. I'll also refer you to our earnings release and presentation for disclosures and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures we use when discussing our results. Our agenda is on slide three. With me today are John Fortson, President and CEO, Mary Hall, CFO, Ed Woodcock, President of Performance Materials, and Mike Smith, President of Performance Chemicals. First, John will comment on the highlights of the quarter. Ed and Mike will review the performance of our two segments. John will briefly take a look back at our performance this quarter compared to 2019. Mary will comment on our current financial status, and John will discuss our revised guidance for the year. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, John Fortson.

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and we appreciate your continued interest and longevity. If you turn to slide four, you'll note some highlights for the quarter. We had a strong second quarter and finished the first half of the year in a terrific position. Demand improved across the board in all of our businesses. Sales in the second quarter rose 32% to $358 million compared to the previous year's second quarter. Our results were driven by volume and supported by price increases across both segments. In performance materials, automotive-based activated carbon sales were up sharply compared to the second quarter of 2020 that was affected by industry shutdowns in North America and Europe, even though this quarter's results were tempered by the ongoing negative impact of the global microchip shortage. Engineer polymers saw increased volumes in Q2 for all product lines, and this business has demonstrated significant growth over the first two quarters of the year. Our industrial specialties business also delivered a very good performance on increased demand, and the North American paving season is off to an excellent start. With respect to earnings, our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin both rebounded sharply from second quarter last year, driven by volume gains and price mix improvement which more than offset an increase in SG&A due primarily to labor-related expenses, including investment in growth and innovation resources. I want to thank the entire Ingevity team for all their continued hard work this quarter. Our supply chain team has done a terrific job and has stayed out in front of transportation and raw material cost pressures. Our commercial teams have done a great job making sure we realize the value of our products and recouping increased logistical and production costs. Our plants across the globe are running hard to meet demand, and they are operating safely every day in what continues to be challenging circumstances. I was at our CrossFit and the Ritter facilities earlier this week, and they're masking up again in Louisiana. The incredible efforts of these employees are the reason we are performing so well. I'll now turn the call over to Ed to discuss second quarter performance materials results. Thanks, John.