Ryerson Holding Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Ryerson Holding Corporation's third quarter 2023 conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. There will be a question and answer session later. If you would 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 Pratham Deer. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. Thank you for joining Ryerson Holding Corporation's third quarter 2023 earnings call. On our call, we have Eddie Lehner, Ryerson's president and chief executive officer, Mike Verbach, 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, Mike Hamilton, our vice president of corporate supply chain, and Jorge Berestain, our Vice President of Finance 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. These risks include, but are not limited to, those set forth under risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K, for the year December 31, 2022, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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 that are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures 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 Pratham, and thank you all for joining us this morning. I want to start by expressing my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to our 4,300 plus strong Ryerson team for their continued emphasis on creating and sustaining a safe and productive operating environment, which is paramount to our mission of delivering great customer experiences throughout our network of intelligently connected industrial metal service centers. I would also like to welcome Norlin Incorporated, located in central Wisconsin, to the Ryerson family of companies. Founded in 1964, Norlin is an excellent fit within Ryerson's strategy of acquiring high value added industrial metals processors. The third quarter of 2023 saw a continuation of counter cyclical headwinds from the second quarter, characterized by falling average selling prices and compressed margins, particularly within our stainless steel franchise. Slowing customer demand for industrial metals as reflected in decelerating transactional customer quoting activity and reduced OEM order sizes through the quarter were consistent with broader macro manufacturing indicators such as metals price indexes and the purchasing managers index PMI. I would note, however, that we are encouraged by recent inflections in HRC index pricing, manufacturing PMI, and stimulative policy announcements in China, indicating that price and demand conditions may be stabilizing as we move through the balance of the year. Inside Ryerson, while navigating through ongoing counter-cyclical conditions, we continue making important investments on new and enhanced service centers, machinery and equipment, acquisitions, homegrown software development, and ongoing ERP conversions to build out our next generation operating model. These investments woven together afford us the opportunity to create the best industry customer experiences within our value added scalable network of intelligent service centers as we work toward our next stage financial targets and desired shareholder returns. We're doing the hard stuff, but the smart stuff that creates and sustains next-level capabilities and returns. As we look ahead to the fourth quarter of 2023 and longer term, we will continue balancing the necessary management of counter-cyclical business conditions while bringing our growth and improvement initiatives to harvest. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Operating Officer, Mike Burbach, to further discuss the pricing and demand environment.