Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Rainier Advanced Materials second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn this call over to your host, Mr. Mickey Walsh, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations for Rainier Advanced Materials. Thank you, Mr. Walsh. You may begin your presentation.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome again to Rainier Advanced Materials second quarter 2021 earnings conference call and webcast. Joining me on today's call are Paul Boynton, our president and chief executive officer, and Marcus Moultner, our chief financial officer and senior vice president of finance. Our earnings release and presentation materials were issued last evening and are available on our website at rainieram.com. I'd like to remind you that in today's presentation, we will include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities laws. Our earnings release, as well as our filings with the SEC, list some of the factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we may make. They are also referenced on slides two and three of our presentation materials. Today's presentation will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, as noted on slide four of our presentation. We believe non-GAAP measures provide useful information for management and investors, but non-GAAP measures should not be considered an alternative to GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to their most directly GAAP-comparable financial measures are included on slides 17 through 25 of our presentation. I'll now turn the call over to Paul.

Thank you, Mickey, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report second quarter results were significantly favorable to both the prior year and sequential quarter. We also made substantial progress on our strategic initiatives. Let's start by looking at slide five. The total company EBITDA improved by $130 million from prior year to $149 million, driven by continued momentum and high purity cellulose commodity products prices essentially viscose and fluff bulbs, and solid demand for cellulose specialty products, as well as, of course, our ability to capture the record lumber prices in our forest product segment prior to their divestiture. Additionally, we saw higher prices and volumes in the paperboard and high-yield pulp segments. With the strong EBITDA results, we have generated $141 million of free cash flow year-to-date, including $120 million in the second quarter. In addition to the exceptional financial results, we progressed towards a successful closing on the sale of our lumber and newsprint assets to Green First Forest Products, which is expected to occur on August 28th. This sale will complete the Strategic Portfolio Optimization Plan that commenced with our 2017 acquisition of Tembeck. and has included the divestiture of the resins business, the Matan high-yield pulp mill, the Huntsville hardwood sawmill, and now in this sale, the six Quebec and Ontario softwood sawmills and the newsprint mill in Kapuskasing. Each sale was well-timed to optimize the value to our shareholders. Now with the lumber and newsprint asset sale, the company is well-positioned for the future as we will use the cash flow and the proceeds to reduce leverage and support disciplined investments in our core high-purity cellulose business, including investments in green energy and our biofuture. We also expect the sale to reduce the volatility and the cyclicality of our future earnings as we focus on our core high-purity cellulose business, along with the integrated paper board and high-yield pulp business segments. Now I'd like to ask Marcus to take us through the numbers for the quarter and discuss our capital allocation priorities in more detail. I'll come back and provide additional perspective on our markets. Marcus?