Trinseo PLC

corporate finance, and 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 after the close of market on Wednesday, August 6th. These documents are posted on the company's investor relations website and furnished on a Form K-8 filed document. with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If anyone should require operator assistance during this call, please press star, then the number zero on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to V. Van Kessel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Amy, and hello, 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 to differ include but are not limited to risk factors set forth in item 1A of our annual reports 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. The 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 August 7th, 2026. Now I would like to turn the call over to Frank Bosich.

Thanks, Bea, and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings call. Our core business results in the second quarter were slightly below the expectations we had due to weaker than expected demand across most applications and unfavorable net timing associated with falling feedstock prices. The seasonally higher volumes that we normally see in the second quarter were dampened by trade uncertainty after the April tariff announcements in the U.S. We experienced high order cancellations early in the quarter, which we believe was linked to increased geopolitical and trade uncertainty, but saw the magnitude of cancellations dropping significantly during the quarter. In this environment, it's critical that we remain intensely focused on two things, controlling the things we can control, which are fixed costs and working capital, and cultivating our key growth and sustainability platforms. In 2025, we expect to realize $105 million of EBITDA benefits from self-help actions. Specifically, we expect to see $35 million in fixed cost savings from previously announced restructuring initiatives, $30 million in mixed improvement and commercial initiatives, and $40 million associated with our change in the polycarbonate business model. We expect these actions to offset most of the incremental demand weakness and margin degradation we've seen so far in 2025, resulting in roughly flat year-over-year adjusted EBITDA. On working capital, I'm very proud of the work our team has done over the past three years to drive structural improvement through systems and processes. Over this period, we've reduced working capital by $560 million, with about half of that coming from a 17-day reduction in our cash conversion cycle. We've also made outstanding progress in our transformation strategy by driving growth in higher value applications. Recycled plastic containing products grew 7% in the first half of 2025 and command previous premium margins. For binders, case and battery binders were two bright spots this quarter, with year-over-year volume growth of 3% and 19% respectively. I'll elaborate more on a relatively new battery binder technology later in the call. I'm also pleased to report that we released our 15th Annual Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility Report. We continue to make progress on our 2030 sustainability goals as we remain committed to our investments in advancing recycling technology and sustainable product offerings. Before I turn the call over to Dave, I'd like to elaborate more on our new and unique battery binder platform. Trinzio opened its global battery application lab in Shanghai in 2017 and started selling our first generation high performance binders for lithium ion EV battery and energy storage solution applications in 2020. Our latex binders function in the lithium ion battery is to bind the anode active materials, which are predominantly graphite and silicon, into the current collector, which is a copper foil. The polymer needs to provide strength, ionic conductivity, and formulation compatibility, while at the same time having the ability to withstand a harsh battery cell operational environment to ensure long battery life. To do this, it must resist mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrochemical stress. Consequently, despite the binder typically accounting for less than 2% of the total battery cost, it holds a highly critical role in enabling both strong battery performance and efficient battery manufacturing. This year, we're launching our fourth generation Voltabon Anode Binder. which enables long lasting, fast charging, and high energy density batteries. This advancement, as well as our global footprint with plants in each region, are key advantages we have to serve these applications. Additionally, we have our first generation water soluble binder prototypes available for testing at key players after demonstrating strong performance in our own labs. Our volume compounded annual growth rate over the past five years has been 63%. And we expect this highly profitable platform to continue double digit growth over the next five years. For these reasons, Battery Binders represents one of our top strategic growth platforms. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Dave.