Ryerson Holding Corporation

Good day, and welcome to Ryerson Holding Corporation's second quarter 2022 conference call. This conference is being recorded. There will be a question and answer session later. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at any time. Again, that is star 1 to ask a question. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Jorge Berestain, Vice President, Finance. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. Thank you for joining Ryerson Holding Corporation's second quarter 2022 earnings call. On our call, we have Eddie Lehner, Ryerson's president and chief executive officer, Mike Burbach, our chief operating officer, Jim Claussen, our chief financial officer, and Molly Cannon, our chief accounting officer and corporate controller. John Orth, our executive vice president of operations, will be joining us for Q&A. Certain comments on this call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statements and are not limited to those set forth under risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2021. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made and are not guarantees of future performance. In addition, our remarks today refer to several non-GAAP financial measures and are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings release filed on form 8K yesterday, also available on the investor relations section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Eddie.

Thank you, Jorge. And thank you all for joining us this morning to discuss our second quarter 2022 results. As the second quarter of 2022 gave us yet another strange brew of challenges to surmount, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to our 4,000 plus strong Ryerson team for their hard work and dedicated effort in delivering a safe and profitable quarter characterized by many important actions and accomplishments toward and always improving Ryerson. Although we always prefer the up cycle to the counter cycle, we found the signs and signals of a counter cycle by the middle of the second quarter that continued into July. The market environment we experienced in the second quarter was characterized by declines in metals, commodity prices, and decelerating demand. During this time, we noted some customers continuing to experience supply side and labor constraints, we noted another subset of customers tempering spot materials purchases amidst falling metals prices and another set of customers that saw order rates decline during the quarter due to broader inflationary pressures and shifting consumer spending priorities for a triple whammy of countercyclical activity. These occurrences presented some resistance to our demand estimates for the quarter. Despite these challenges, Ryerson managed well through these volatile economic and industry inflections by delivering diluted earnings of $5.10 per share and adjusted diluted earnings of $5.31 per share, both all-time records for the company. This second quarter represents an important milestone in our company's history and our capital structures composition and strength. During the second quarter, and as noted in our subsequent events disclosure, we retired the remainder of our high yield notes, reduced net debt, lowered cash interest costs, completed our share buyback, amended and extended our asset-based credit facility, increased liquidity, increased the dividend, announced a new and larger share repurchase authorization, increased netbook value, and made important growth investments across our service center network in new plants, equipment, and systems to further our company's potential and enhance the customer experience. Now that's a list of accomplishments of which we can all be proud that are worth repeating. Over the past decade, we have used these counter cycles to good effect as higher cash flow generation through such counter cyclical periods has enabled Ryerson to meaningfully improve its operating model, only now we have much preferred uses for that free cash flow as seen through increased investments and modernization and growth, as well as increased returns to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Ryerson's continued execution of its strategy to drive long-term profitable growth amidst positive secular drivers supporting such growth opportunities can be seen through increases in planned infrastructure and decarbonization investments underpinned by supply chain onshoring and increased demand for recyclable and sustainable industrial metals. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mike to further discuss the pricing and demand environment.