Ingevity Corporation Common Stock

Good morning, my name is Brika and I'll be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ingevity second quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. And after the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, you can simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star. And then two. Thank you. I would now like to hand over to John Napava, Treasurer and Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, Brika. Good morning, and welcome to Ingevity's second quarter 2022 earnings call. Early this morning, we posted a presentation on our investor site that you can use to follow today's discussion. It can be found on ir.ingevity.com under Events and Presentations. Also, throughout this call, we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement, not substitute, for comparable GAAP measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release and are also in our Form 10-K. We may also make forward-looking statements regarding future events and future financial performance of the company during this call, and we caution you that these statements are just projections and actual results or events may differ materially from those projections as further described in our earnings release. Our agenda is on slide three. Our speakers today are John Fortson, our President and CEO, Mary Hall, our CFO, Ed Woodcock, President of Performance Materials, and Rich White, President of Industrial Specialties and Pavement Technologies. In addition, Steve Hume, President, Engineered Polymers, and Eric Ripple, Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, will be available for questions and comments. John will start us off with some highlights for the quarter, including our recent announcements. Mary will follow with a review of our consolidated financial performance for the second quarter. Rich, on behalf of his performance chemical segment co-lead, Steve Hume, will discuss the entire performance chemical segment. Ed will review the results of performance materials, and then Ed and Rich will discuss our two growth investments. Finally, John will conclude with our outlook for 2022. With that, over to you, John.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. As you saw last night, in addition to our earnings release, we announced two exciting investments that we'll discuss on today's call. First, we'll spend some time on our quarterly results, and then Rich and Ed will provide more color on our two growth investments. We also want to leave plenty of time for Q&A, so let's get started. Turning to slide four, you may remember hearing on our last call that first quarter revenue was an all-time record for the company. That record did not last long as our second quarter revenue topped it. This reflects the continuing demand from our customers across all of our businesses for products that purify, protect, and enhance the world around us. I am proud of the team for their work in growing our businesses while managing higher input and logistics costs. Our commercial teams continue to stay close to our customers and ensure we are the provider of choice in our markets. Our supply chain team works tirelessly to ensure we have the materials we need to keep producing and can then deliver our finished goods to our customers. This focus on the customer is a competitive differentiator for us and is paying dividends in this environment. The first six months of the year also represent the best safety record we have delivered in our history as a public company. Safety is at the forefront of everything we do, and I want to congratulate our operations team on this phenomenal achievement. You can read more about our ESG progress in our sustainability report released in May, which is available on our website. Last night, we announced two important transactions. The first is our agreement to acquire Ozark Materials, a leading producer of pavement marking materials, including thermoplastic pavement markings, waterborne traffic paints, and preformed thermoplastics headquartered in Greenville, Alabama. The transaction also includes a logistics division with a dedicated fleet of vehicles located in five states across the US to serve customers with best-in-class shipping times. The acquisition is consistent with our strategy to pursue value-creating growth, and Ozark is a great match for Ingevity. Like our current businesses, Ozark Materials develops technology-focused customer relationships, partnering with the customer to drive innovation. And consistent with our commitment to safety, The Ozark Materials Greenville facility has received ISO certification and its other facilities are ISO compliant. These are important indicators of the quality of the Ozark business and its leadership. Ozark is a strategic transaction for us as it builds on two of our core strengths at Ingevity, our leading position in pavement technologies and our expertise in rosin-based adhesive applications. Ozark extends our product portfolio in the stable and growing pavement construction industry, and we believe it will serve as a platform for strong growth in the future. We're also excited to announce an investment in Nexion Limited. Based in the UK, Nexion is a leading technology company that produces silicone-based anode materials designed to improve the performance of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles. Our investment in Nexion includes a commitment to jointly develop technology for electric vehicles that will use our activated carbon to enhance battery performance. As we have long stated, the performance characteristics of our carbon can be used in a variety of high value add applications. And this one is particularly exciting as an entry point for our activated carbon into the growing electric vehicle battery market. As Nexion grows, this market could be a very significant source of volume demand for our carbon. These transactions demonstrate our ability to identify and execute on growth investments. We are committed to maximizing shareholder value and utilizing our resources and strong balance sheet to support growth. Before I turn it over to Mary, as you saw announced a few days ago, we made some changes to our board of directors. We added two new board members, William Slocum and Sean Wright, both of whom bring great experience to our board and will be key contributors in advancing our long-term strategy. Mike Fitzpatrick, who's been on the board since our spin, is retiring. We want to thank Michael for his years of service to the board. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mary to discuss our consolidated results.