Ryerson Holding Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Ryerson Holding Corporation's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Justine Carlson. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Good morning. Thank you for joining Ryerson Holding Corporation's first quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm here this morning with Eddie Lehner, Ryerson's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Burbach, our Chief Operating Officer, Jim Claussen, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Molly Kannan, our Controller and Chief Accounting Officer. John Orth, our Executive Vice President of Operations, will be joining us for Q&A. Before we get started, let me remind you that certain comments we make on this call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties. including the impacts of COVID-19 and related economic conditions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statement. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those set forth under risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the day they are made and are not guarantees of future performance. In addition, our remarks today refer to several non-GAAP financial measures that are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is provided in our first quarter 2021 earnings release filed on Form 8K yesterday, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Eddie.

Thank you, Justine. and thank you all for joining us this morning to discuss our first quarter 2021 results. I hope this call finds you all safe and well. I want to begin by thanking my writers and colleagues for making the most of our opportunities and overcoming the many challenges engendered by the pandemic now in its second year as we together achieved truly outstanding results safely and productively I also want to thank our customers for every opportunity to earn your business and to our suppliers as we work through the supply side challenges posed by this very unique time in our shared history. At this point, the pandemic is still very much with us. However, vaccination efficacy data looks to be promising, indicating that better days are ahead. Whether we debate commodity and demand regular cycles or super cycles, supply chain squeezes and their duration, fiscal and monetary policy support effects, decarbonization, supply chain reorientations and rotations, and ongoing secular growth stories, what is clear is that the current environment of higher prices and recovering demand looks to be stronger for longer. This is evidenced clearly in channel inventories that are still well below restocking parity before even mentioning inventory levels necessary to support growth. The PMI report from this week illuminated what we're experiencing in that demand is recovering and getting stronger but for acknowledged shortages of various manufacturing inputs, whether it is labor transportation, lumber, metal, semiconductors, phones, sealants, and you name it. Even end markets which have been trailing the recovery such as heavy truck and trailer and machinery and equipment have strengthening backlogs amidst the aforementioned supply-side constraints. We see continuing strength in commodity price drivers supporting stainless steel and Aluminum and Carbon Steel average selling prices and margins through the second quarter given a trifecta of pandemic, trade policy and decarbonization impacts. This spells a favorable setup for the second quarter and argues well for tailwinds supporting improving program pricing and gradual improvement in supply chain bottlenecks for the balance of the year. 2021's Basecase is shaping up as an opportunity for Ryerson to accelerate the deleveraging of the balance sheet to further de-risk legacy liabilities and to advance our operating model as we continue executing on our customer-centric operating model driven by our overarching mission of consistently delivering great customer experiences at speed, scale, and value-add throughout our intelligently connected network of service centers. I'll now turn the call over to Mike to discuss the first quarter pricing and demand environment.