Trinseo PLC

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Transail First Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. We'll welcome the Transail's management team, Frank Bosich, President and CEO, David Stacey, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Andy Myers, Director of Investor Relations. Today's conference call will include brief remarks by the management team, followed by a question and answer session. The company distributed its press release along with its presentation slides at close of market Wednesday, May 4th. These documents are posted on the company's investor relations website and furnished on a Form 8K file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If anyone should require operator assistance during the call, please press star then zero on your telephone. I will now hand the call over to Andy Myers.

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After our brief remarks, instructions will follow to participate in the question and answer session. Our disclosure rules and cautionary notes on forward-looking statements are noted on slide two. During this presentation, we may make certain forward-looking statements, including issuing guidance and describing our future expectations. We must caution you that actual results could differ materially from what is discussed, described, or implied in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, risk factors set forth in item 1A of our annual report on Form 10-K or in our other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements. Today's presentation includes certain non-GAAP measurements. A reconciliation of these measurements to corresponding GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of our investor presentation. A replay of the conference call and transcript will be archived on the company's investor relations website shortly following the conference call. The replay will be available until May 5, 2023. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Frank Bozich.

Thanks, Andy, and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. We had a very good start to the year with continued solid earnings in the first quarter. Q1 results reflect the continued progress we have made in reshaping our portfolio as it was one of the highest quarterly adjusted earning results in the company's history. I'm particularly pleased with this as we're operating in a challenging macro environment which now includes uncertainty and volatility from the conflict in Eastern Europe. Our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine, and I want to thank our employees who have shown great generosity through their donations to benefit those who've had their safety and well-being compromised. The conflict has had no direct impact on our operations, as all of our plants in the region are in Western Europe, with no regular direct suppliers in Ukraine, Russia, or Belarus. However, we have observed indirect impacts in the region, including automotive production issues as well as higher and more volatile prices of natural gas and other inputs. We've taken proactive steps to mitigate some of these effects, including creating new mechanisms for customer pricing to more accurately pass through input costs. These actions have helped, but given the volatile environment, we're still subject to significant day-to-day swings in prices. I'm confident that our teams will continue to find ways to securely source raw materials and keep our operations running to provide customers with their quality products in a timely manner. While we contend with external challenges, our strategic focus continues to be on the transformation of Trinzio. to a specialty material and sustainable solution provider. As you know, we've already taken several meaningful steps in this process, including the acquisitions of our PMMA business, Aris Tech Services, and the recycled materials business, Heathland. These new businesses have greatly expanded the opportunity landscape for organic growth. By providing us with access to new markets, new products, and new top line synergies, due to our unique product portfolio. To realize these growth opportunities, we are focusing on three distinct dimensions of growth, which will impact our core business by strengthening the core, extending the core, and expanding the core. Internally, we've begun to refer to these distinct efforts as our C-Strategy, or S-E-E for short. I would like to elaborate on these three growth dimensions to provide some color on them and to highlight some of the progress we've made. First, our Strength in the Core efforts focus on improving our position in the markets in which we currently operate by reducing our cost position in our core chemistries, driving business excellence programs, and delivering on cost synergies from our recent acquisitions. More importantly, our efforts to strengthen the core include our efforts to leverage our new capabilities to grow our total addressable market, or TAM. A good example of growing our total addressable market is through material replacement, such as replacing painted metal exterior trim parts with color-matched PMMA products. This application creates value for our customers by reducing emissions, weight, and cost. Material replacement is a significant opportunity for us because we can offer customers a quality product that not only costs less to use, but is more environmentally friendly by virtue of eliminating process steps or alternative materials that have higher CO2 footprints. For example, because we have both PMMA and ABS in our portfolio, we're able to offer multiple end markets a PMMA laminate sheet in any color, that's reinforced by ABS rather than the more conventionally used fiberglass. This co-laminate product, which has Q1 sales volume growth of more than 20% versus prior year, provides customers with a solution that's both lower cost and more sustainable. In total, we believe we can expand our total addressable market in auto, building and construction, and consumer goods by over $3 billion. The second area of growth focuses on those opportunities to extend the core by moving the core business into new, higher-value added applications via M&A. We will also extend the core through the implementation of our sustainability roadmap, which has three building blocks. These efforts focus on decarbonizing our operations, developing an advantage product offering based on recycled materials, And lastly, developing a sustainable feedstock business. This involves positioning Trinzio as a leader in waste polymer collection and recycling and upgrading it to our innovative technologies, which will allow us to offer more sustainable solutions. That was the main rationale behind the recent acquisition of the plastics waste collector and recycler, Heathland, earlier this year. We view security of supply of sustainable feedstocks as vital to our long-term success and sustainability. While Heathland has been our first major step into recycling feedstocks, we will look to expand the sustainable business unit organically and inorganically. In addition to strengthening and extending our position in our core markets, We look to create additional opportunities to grow further by expanding the core through the addition of complementary technologies. This will be accomplished through targeted M&A of specialty businesses with attractive adjacent chemistries that broaden our offering into applications in mobility, building and construction, medical, and consumer goods. The potential divestiture of the StagRenix business, which continues to progress, would provide us with capital that will aid in this effort. But setting aside the potential proceeds from the sale, we are well positioned to grow thanks to our strong balance sheet and a portfolio that is very cash generative with relatively low capital intensity. To effectively guide these SEE efforts, we have recently added three new executive leadership positions. Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, and Chief Technology Officer. These positions will report to me and be part of our executive leadership team. Francesca Riverberry was appointed as Chief Sustainability Officer last October. Her primary responsibility is to keep us on track to achieve our 2030 sustainability goals, as well as expand our product portfolio of sustainable materials such as the recently launched Magnum Bio ABS Resin for automotive applications, which contains up to 80% bio-attributed content. She will also take the lead in defining the investments and partnerships required to decarbonize our assets. In fact, her team's efforts have already defined an opportunity to decrease their already market-leading scope 1 and 2 emissions by over 70%. by 2035, which is significantly ahead of our previously stated goal of 35% reduction. I am also thrilled to point out that our Q1 sales volume and variable margin of recycled containing solutions grew 39% and 31%, respectively, over the prior year. To give you a sense of scale for our sales of these solutions, they represent about $30 million in annual variable margin. The role of Chief Commercial Officer was recently filled by Andre Lonning, who was previously responsible for our strategy and corporate development efforts. In his new role, Andre will ensure that we have the right commercial processes and tools in place to better serve our customers. He will also have oversight over all of our organic growth opportunities and will provide the dedicated focus to resource and drive these market-expanding efforts, which focus on material replacement. To give you some sense of scale for our existing material replacement activities, these represent about $100 million in annual variable margin. The role of Chief Technology Officer, which we expect to fill soon, will be responsible for creating a framework for our technology and innovation capabilities that allow us to provide solutions and products that differentiate Trinzio and expand our total addressable market. Before I turn the call over to Dave, I'd like to comment on a recent press release concerning the request for information related to styrene monomer purchasing activity that we received from the European Commission in 2018. As a result of further developments on this matter, we have recorded a reserve of $36 million in the first quarter. We continue to cooperate fully and look forward to the resolution of this matter. Lastly, we do not expect this to impact the sales process of our StagRenix business. Now I'd like to hand the call over to Dave, who will comment on our first quarter earnings.