Ingevity Corporation Common Stock

call and webcast will begin in approximately one minute's time. Thank you for your patience. Good morning or good afternoon all and welcome to the Ingevity first quarter 2025 earnings call and webcast. My name is Adam and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand the floor to John Nyparva to begin. So John, please go ahead when you're ready.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning and welcome to Ingevity's first quarter 2025 earnings call. Earlier 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.engevity.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 most recent form, 10-K. Thank you. 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 David Lee, our CEO, and Mary Dean Hall, our CFO. Representing our businesses today and available for questions and comments, are Rich White, President of Performance Chemicals, Michael Shoukoff, President of Advanced Polymer Technologies, and Jonathan MacGyver, VP of Global Commercial for Performance Materials. Dave will provide introductory comments. Mary will follow with a review of our consolidated financial performance and the business segment results for the first quarter. Dave will then provide closing comments and discuss 2025 guidance. With that, over to you, Dave.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. The company delivered a strong first quarter, reflecting the priorities we've outlined in previous earnings calls, including driving increased profitability, generating strong free cash flow, and improving leverage. Our results demonstrate meaningful progress on those commitments, including our fourth consecutive quarter of year over year margin expansion. This quarter was an example of the best in class profitability Ingevity is capable of, and I believe we're just getting started. I'd also like to take a moment to share how excited I am to be here today. As some of you know, I've spent my career in the specialty chemicals and materials industry, and was most recently the CEO of a specialty materials company that was primarily focused on semiconductors as an end market. What drew me to Ingevity was the incredible potential that I see in the company, our people, and our products and technology. I'd also like to thank and acknowledge the board, particularly Luis Fernandez Moreno, who acted as interim CEO and Ingevity employees for planning a seamless and thoughtful transition. I felt welcome from day one, and I look forward to what we can accomplish together. Also, as announced at our recent annual meeting, Bruce Hoechner, who has served on our board since 2022, has been elected as chair, succeeding Jean Blackwell. Jean will remain on the board, and I want to express my deep appreciation for her leadership and ongoing support. I'm also excited to work with Bruce in his expanded role. Lastly, I want to briefly address the broader operating environment. We are actively monitoring developments related to tariffs and macro demand conditions. We'll cover this in more detail later, but briefly, from a tariff standpoint, we believe the direct impact to our business will be minimal, and we have mitigation plans underway to manage any near-term effects. On macro demand, particularly related to consumer sentiment and auto sales, we've widened our guidance range to be in line with the latest auto industry forecasts, which reflect an approximately 10% year-over-year decline in North American auto production versus prior expectations when we delivered guidance in February. Despite these headwinds, I believe Ingevity is well-positioned to deliver strong profitability in 2025 and beyond. Our focus will remain on the disciplined execution of our strategy to optimize the portfolio and drive business performance, which should create significant value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Mary.