Ryerson Holding Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Ryerson Holding Corporation's first quarter 2025 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 Mr. Pratham Deer, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. Thank you for joining Ryerson Holding Corporation's first quarter 2025 earnings call. On our call, we have Eddie Lehner, Ryerson's President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Claussen, our Chief Financial Officer, and Molly Cannon, our Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller. John Orr, our Executive Vice President of Operations, Trent McFarland, our Senior Vice President of Supply Chain, and Jorge Berrizain, 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 and our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, and in our 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. Good morning. And thank you all for joining us to discuss our first quarter 2025 performance. During the first quarter of 2025, we continued our operating model renovations by progressing further significant CapEx investments across our service center network that when fully operationalized are expected to provide an improved quality of earnings through the cycle. We are continuing to see promising indicators that our historical efforts to modernize our service center network and go-to-market capabilities are paying off even amidst very uniquely challenging market dynamics, especially given the scale and still newness of these CapEx investments throughout our network. I want to commend our entire Ryerson team as we saw significant improvements across the business sequentially But more importantly, we could see the vision we have for Ryerson taking better shape and effect as our investments plug in and begin playing within a strong culture of providing great customer experiences over the medium and longer term. During the quarter, excellent working capital management and encouraging spot transactional market share gains offset slow OEM contract business and lagging contract price adjustments. This was a quarter of three moons. January showed up as the 13th month of 2024 as depressed business conditions extended into the first month of the quarter and average selling prices bottomed. By February, we saw much improved quote and order activity, restocking mixed with forward buying, which lasted through mid-March, after which came some deceleration in quoting and order levels as customer activity tailed off at quarter end due to elevated levels of uncertainty across price, demand, capital markets, and trade variables. On a relative basis, our carbon transactional sheet franchise saw some welcome improvement, while our non-ferrous franchise, where our market share is strong, but the macro environment is still depressed, particularly stainless steel, remained a headwind. At present, buyers and customers are very cautious given significant volatility in LME aluminum and nickel markets and notable backwardation in bellwether hot-rolled coil indexes as current spot prices are well above futures prices, given expectations of potential declines in inventory replacement costs. Looking ahead to the second quarter, industry inventories appear balanced, mill lead times have shortened, and domestic metal availability is generally good as Ryerson sources the overwhelming majority of its industrial metals from domestic suppliers. Price indicators have stabilized somewhat over the past several weeks, although non-ferrous surcharge resets are creating spot price oscillations month to month, and steel purchases remain affected by falling scrap prices and spot-to-futures curve backwardation. On the demand side, Although quote and order activity has come in from mid-Q1 levels and demand visibility is opaque at best, average selling price and transactional margin trends have improved early into the second quarter, leading to our guide of sequentially improving operating income in Q2 2025. At this point, I'll turn it over to Jim Claussen to discuss market conditions and our financial results.