Westlake Corporation

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Corporation third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, November 3, 2020. I would now like to turn the call over to today's host, Jeff Holley, Westlake's Vice President and Treasurer. Surrey may begin.

Thank you, Justin. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Corporation third quarter 2020 conference call. I'm joined today by Albert Chow, our President and CEO, Steve Bender, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management team. The conference call agenda will begin with Albert, who will open with a few comments regarding Westlake's performance, followed by a current perspective on the industry. Steve will then provide a more detailed look at our financial and operating results. Finally, Albert will add a few concluding comments, and he will then open the call up to questions. During this call, we refer to ourselves as Westlake Chemical. Any reference to Westlake Partners is to our master limited partnership, Westlake Chemical Partners LP, and similar references to Opco refer to our subsidiary, Westlake Chemical Opco LP, which owns certain Olyphant facilities. Today, management is going to discuss certain topics that will contain forward-looking information that is based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements suggest predictions or expectations and thus are subject to risks or uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially based upon many factors, including the cyclical nature of the industries in which we compete, availability, cost, and volatility of raw materials, energy, and utilities, governmental regulatory actions, changes in trade policy and political unrest, global economic conditions, including the impact of the coronavirus, industry operating rates, the supply-demand balance for Westlake's products, competitive products and pricing pressures, access to capital markets, technological development, and other risk factors as discussed in our SEC filings. This morning, Westlake issued a press release with details of our third quarter results. This document is available in the press release section of our webpage at westlake.com. We have also posted a presentation on our website to assist in the discussion of our results. A replay of today's call will be available beginning today, two hours following the conclusion of this call. This replay may be accessed by dialing the following numbers. Domestic callers should dial 855-859-2056. International callers may access the replay at 404-537-3406. The access code for both numbers is 189-6958. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, November 3rd, 2020, and therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay. I would finally advise you that this conference call is being broadcast live through an internet webcast system that can be accessed on our webpage at westlake.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Albert Chow. Albert?

Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter 2020 results. In this morning's press release, we reported net income of $57 million, for the third quarter of 2020, or 45 cents per diluted share. Before Steve goes through the third quarter results, let me provide some insights into our results for the quarter. Throughout the third quarter, we saw solid demand for our products, with global economic conditions improving as many countries relaxed their stay-at-home mandates and business restrictions that had been put in place early in the second quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Westlake captured its demand growth in the first two months of the quarter, with sales volumes in both the olefins and vinyl segments, which were either comparable with or higher than the prior period. As a result of this robust demand that accompanied the recovery in global economic activity, starting in June, we saw an increase in price environment for many of our products. especially for polyethylene and PVC. However, in late August, Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwest Louisiana as one of the most powerful storms to reach the U.S. Gulf Coast in the last 40 years. While our plans weathered the storm well, there was extensive damage to the electrical and utility infrastructure in the Lake Charles area. Once power and utilities were restored, we were able to begin the process of restarting operations. The extensive repairs to the power and utility infrastructure caused many of our facilities in Lake Charles, which is approximately one-third of our global chemical production capacity, to remain idle throughout September, resulting in lost productions and sales volumes in the third quarter. This catastrophic storm also severely impacted many of our employees, I would like to say a special thank you to our dedicated employees who worked tirelessly to restart our facilities while also dealing with the hurricane impact to their own homes. In early October, as we were completing the startup process following Hurricane Laura, Hurricane Delta made landfall in the same area, further delaying us from restarting our plans. I'm happy to report that our facilities have resumed operations. I would now like to turn our call over to Steve to provide more detail on our financial and operating results for the third quarter.