Stepan Company

Greetings and welcome to the Q4 and full year 2020 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach the operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Thursday, February 18th, 2021. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Luis Rojo, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Stepan Company's fourth quarter 2020 financial review. Before we begin, please note that information in this conference call contains forward-looking statements, which are not historical facts. These statements involve risk and uncertainties. that could cause actual results to differ materially, including but not limited to prospects for foreign operations, global and regional economic conditions, and factors detailing our security and exchange commission filings. Whether you are joining us online or over the phone, we encourage you to review the investor slide presentation, which we have made available at www.stepan.com under the investor relations section of our website. We make these slides available at approximately the same time as when the earnings release is issued, and we hope that you find the information and perspective helpful. Now with that, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Quinn Stepan, our chairman and chief executive officer.

Thank you, Luis. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. We hope you and your families are safe and healthy. As the world continues to be challenged by the global pandemic, we at Steppen remain committed to doing our part by supporting customers that supply essential cleaning, disinfection, and personal wash products to the market. We are extremely grateful to our employees for their passion and commitment to get the job done for our customers throughout what was a challenging year. Overall, COVID opportunities in the consumer product segment of our business outweighed the negative impacts elsewhere, and the company delivered record fourth quarter and full-year earnings. Fourth quarter adjusted net income was $33.1 million, or $1.42 per diluted share, up 29% from $25.7 million, or $1.01. and 10 cents per diluted share last year. Adjusted net income for the full year was a record $132 million, up 11% from last year. For the quarter, surfactant operating income was up significantly on volume growth, which was mostly attributable to continued strong demand for cleaning, disinfection, and personal wash products. Mexican operations delivered strong volume growth versus the prior year quarter. Our polymer business was up significantly during the quarter due to the Millsdale insurance recovery. Our rigid polyol volumes are gradually improving. We had a good fourth quarter and finished strong with double-digit growth driven by increased demand and customer inventory Brexit build in Europe. Our specialty product business results were up slightly in the fourth quarter. Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend on Steppen's common stock of 30.5 cents per share, payable on March 15, 2021. Steppen has paid higher dividends for 53 consecutive years. As recently announced, Steppen acquired Invista's aromatic polyester polyol business and associated assets. The acquired business has global sales of approximately $100 million per year. We are excited to add Invista's polyester polyol business and believe that Invista's available spare capacity, combined with de-bottlenecking opportunities in both plants, will allow Stepan to support future market growth in a capital-efficient way. At this point, I'd like Luis to walk through a few more details about our fourth quarter results.