Trinseo PLC

The company distributed its press release along with its presentation slides at close of market Wednesday, February 12th. These documents are posted on the company's investor relations website and furnished on a form 8K filed with the Security and Exchange Commission. If anybody should require operator assistance during the call, please press star then zero on your telephone. I'll now hand the call over to B. Van Kessel.

Thank you, JL, and good morning, everyone. At this time, all participants are in 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 the 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 financial measurements. A reconciliation of these measurements to corresponding GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of our investor presentation. The replay of today's 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 February 13, 2026. Now I would like to turn the call over to Frank Bosich.

Thanks, Bea, and welcome to our year-end 2024 earnings call. Before we get into our financial results, I'd like to highlight some of our outstanding safety achievements as we've had one of the safest summers in the history of the company this past year. I'm proud to announce that 19 production and recycling facilities, All of our global R&D teams and two site service teams received a triple zero award, which represents zero recordable injuries, zero spills, and zero process safety events for the entire year. With an injury rate of just 0.3, we continue to operate in the top quartile of companies in the American Chemistry Council and outperform many of our peers. These results are a testament to the priority that we place on safety and everything that we do and our reflection on the dedication that our people have to creating a safe work environment. Moving on to our operational results, this past year saw a continuation and in some cases a worsening of many of the market challenges that the chemical industry faced in 2023. Geopolitical uncertainty, elevated inflation, and relatively high interest rates eroded consumer confidence across the globe, which adversely affected our largest end markets of auto, building, and construction, and most significantly in Europe and China. Despite these macroeconomic challenges, we were able to improve our full-year adjusted EBITDA by $50 million. because of the self-help actions that we've taken over the past couple years amid these challenging times our focus has been on executing actions within our control and aligned toward transformation strategy as we wait for the macroeconomic environment to inevitably recover these included exiting our unprofitable and energy intensive styrene inversion polycarbonate production operations consolidating several of our PMMA sheet operations, and right-sizing the company and its support functions based on the new operating footprint. We also implemented new supply chain systems and processes that enabled a greater than 20% reduction in days of inventory to a level that can be sustained through the cycle. Finally, we took actions to extend our near-term debt maturity to 2028 and greatly improved our liquidity. All of these actions have resulted in more efficient and focused company. Compared to the first half of 2022 when we began these actions, our energy intensity has decreased by approximately 45%. Our maintenance capex has decreased by more than 35%. And due to work process improvements and footprint reductions, we have reduced our total headcount by approximately 20%. These actions have allowed us to continue to make progress in our strategic initiatives and circular technologies. We continue to grow our recycled content containing product offerings with sales increasing 47% versus prior year and representing now 4% of the total company variable margin in 2024. Sales volumes were higher to higher margin case applications, continue to make up an increasing percentage of volumes in our latex binder segment, accounting for 11% of our total segment sales volumes and 18% of our total segment variable margin in 2024. And in our engineered material segment, PMMA resin sales and margins continue to show resilience as volumes increase 3% year over year, despite a very weak end market demand environment. We have also made significant advancements in our circular technologies. These include commissioning our polycarbonate dissolution pilot facility and opening our ABS dissolution pilot plant and our PMMA depolymerization demo facility in 2024. We anticipate scaling up the PC and PMMA technologies at a Rho Italy site and the PC dissolution technology at our Zhangjiang China site to support the growing demand from our auto clients. Next, I want to spend a few moments discussing a recently announced agreement with Deepak Nitrite Limited. In November, we agreed to supply a polycarbonate license as well as all proprietary virgin polycarbonate production equipment from our Stade Germany facility to Deepak for a combined total of $52 million. While the economics of producing virgin polycarbonate at our Strad facility have become unprofitable and led to our decision to exit that site, our polycarbonate technology remains highly valued, and the assets can still be utilized. We view this agreement as mutually beneficial to both companies and see this as the initial steps of a strategic and collaborative partnership with DPAC. We also see India as a significant growth market returns you currently has minimal exposure, we believe in a base case scenario of at least 7% compound annual demand growth through the end of the decade in our target and markets. Before I hand the call over to Dave i'd like to make a few comments regarding our fourth quarter results. or business results were in line with our expectations. As seasonally lower volumes and extended year-end shutdowns led to sequentially lower profitability. Falling raw material prices resulted in significant negative timing impacts in our polymer solution segment and at America's Styronex. While this led to lower adjusted EBITDA than originally anticipated, the lower raw material prices led to lower working capital balances, which contributed to the highest quarter of free cash flow generation in over two years. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Dave.