Tronox Holdings plc

Good morning. Welcome to the Tronox Holdings PLC Q1 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen only mode until the question and answer session begins. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Gunther, Chief Sustainability Officer, Head of Investor Relations and External Affairs. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter 2025 conference call and webcast. Turning to slide two, on our call today are John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, and John Cervasol, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. We will be using slides as we move through today's call. You can access the presentation on our website at investor.tronox.com. Moving to slide three, a friendly reminder that comments made on this call and the information provided in our presentation and on our website include certain statements that are forward-looking and subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to the specific factors summarized in our SEC filings. This information represents our best judgment based on what we know today. However, actual results may vary based on these risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. During the conference call, we will refer to certain non-US GAAP financial terms that we use in the management of our business and believe are useful to investors in evaluating the company's performance. Reconciliations to their nearest US GAAP terms are provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of the accompanying presentation. Additionally, please note that all financial comparisons made during the call are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to John Romano. John?

Thanks, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. We'll begin this morning on slide four with some key messages from the quarter. We realized a stronger-than-normal seasonal demand uplift in TO2 volumes in Q1, with an increase of 12% from the Q1. Q4 of 2024. Europe led to sequential growth, bolstered by anti-dumping duties. We are beginning to see the expected benefits from the duties that were finalized in the EU in January, resulting in sales volumes recovering to levels not seen since the second quarter of 2021 in Europe. North America also realized stronger seasonable trends, while competitive activity in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia continued to exert pressure on sales. Zircon sales were lower both compared to the prior year and sequentially due to a slower start in China as expected. Additionally, despite increased competitive dynamics across all products, average pricing for the quarter came in as anticipated with TIO2 and Zircon both down 2% sequentially. Our production costs in the first quarter were higher than expected primarily due to lower operating rates at Botlik and increases in direct material prices. In response to ongoing macroeconomic volatility, we have taken decisive strategic actions to manage the levers within our control to deliver our cost improvements. Our focus on cost reduction initiatives drove lower SG&A in the quarter. In addition, in March, we announced the difficult decision to idle our Botlik pigment plant in the Netherlands. The decision was a result of an extensive review of our asset footprint driven by the ongoing global supply imbalance caused by Chinese competition, as well as an increasingly challenged operating environment over the last two and a half years. We deeply value our commitments to our employees, the employee unions, local works council, and key stakeholders. We appreciate the constructive dialogue and smooth process to date, which is a testament to the professionalism of our employees at the Botwick facility. These measures and actions underscore our commitment to operational efficiency and enhanced earnings. I will review these and other actions in more detail a little bit later in the call, but for now, I'll turn the call over to John to review our financials from the quarter in more detail.