Westlake Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Westlake Corporation first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remark, you'll be invited to participate in a question and answer session. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, May 5, 2026. I would like to turn over the call to today's host, Jeff Holey, Westlake's Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Crystal. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Corporation conference call to discuss our first quarter 2026 results. I'm joined today by Albert Chao, our Executive Chairman. John Mark Gilson, our President and CEO, Steve Bender, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management team. During the call, we will refer to our two reporting segments, Performance and Essential Materials, which we refer to as PEM or Materials, and Housing and Infrastructure Products, which we refer to as HIP or Products. Today's conference call will begin with John Mark, who will open with a few comments regarding Westlake's first quarter performance. Steve will then discuss our financial and operating results, after which John Mark will add a few concluding comments, and we'll open the call up to questions. During the first quarter of 2026, we agreed to pay $67 million to settle certain legal claims in our pipe and fittings business. We also incurred expenses of $18 million related to the shutdown of facilities undertaken last year. We refer to these expense items, which in aggregate were $85 million, as the identified items in our earnings release and on this conference call. References to income from operations, EBITDA, net income, and earnings per share on this call all exclude the financial impact of the identified items. As such, comments made on this call will be in regard to our underlying business results using non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings release, which is available in the investor relations section of our website. 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. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in Westlake's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 and other SEC filings. We encourage you to learn more about these factors that could lead our actual results to differ by reviewing these SEC filings, which are also available on our investor relations website. This morning, Westlake issued a press release with details of our first quarter results. This document is available in the press release section of our website at westlake.com. We have also included an earnings presentation, which can be found in the investor relations section on our website. A replay of today's call will be available beginning today, approximately two hours following the conclusion of this call. This replay may be accessed via Westlake's website. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, May 5th, 2026, And therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay. Finally, I would 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 Jean-Marc Gilson. Jean-Marc?

Thank you, Jeff. And good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to discuss our first quarter, 2026 results. During the first quarter, we delivered 2.7 billion in net sales and EBITDA of 235 million by supporting our customer supply needs, managing our costs, executing our three pillar profitability improvement plan, and driving long-term value creation. While the first two months of the quarter saw PEM sales reflect lower sales prices and continued soft global industrial and manufacturing activity, sales improved significantly in March as the conflict in the Middle East brought about a significant disruption to global supplies of oil, chemical feedstocks, and polymers from the Persian Gulf. Commercial conditions for Westlake and our industry changed dramatically with the outbreak of the Middle East conflict. Industry consultants estimate that this conflict has disrupted approximately 10 to 15% of global polyethylene supply and approximately 5% of global PVC resin supply. Furthermore, up to 20% of global oil supply is disrupted, which has reduced the availability of chemical feedstocks such as NAFTA for much of the global chemical industry, creating further declines in the global supply of polyethylene and PVC. The associated sharp increase in global oil and chemical feedstock prices has significantly steepened the global cost curve for many of the materials that PEM sells. which is supporting higher selling prices and margins for cost advantage producers in North America, such as Westlake. In response to the reduction in global chemical and polymer production created by the Middle East conflict and significantly higher feedstock cost in much of Asia and Europe, customers around the world thought supply from producers unaffected by the production disruptions caused by the conflict, which drove increased demand for our polyethylene, PVC, and epoxy resin, and increased prices for our products. Our advantage asset footprint in North America using gas-based feedstocks positions Westlake to benefit from the pricing momentum and expected associated margin expansion since the conflict began. The evolving situation in the Middle East drove a significant improvement in PEMS sales volume and earnings towards the end of the first quarter. PEMS delivered net sales of $1.7 billion and EBITDA of $36 million on 3% sequential volume growth, excluding the impact to volumes from our 2025 planned shutdowns. While the conflict in the Middle East remains fluid and we hope for a peaceful resolution, we expect the supply disruptions could persist throughout 2026. Turning to our HIP segment, CES volume and EBITDA were impacted by the unusually cold weather conditions in the first two months of the quarter. However, Performance improved in March as the home building season began, along with the onset of milder weather. Excluding the impact of the ACI acquisition, HIP delivered 10% sequential sales volume growth, which drove net sales of $1 billion and EBITDA of $186 million. HIP sales and EBITDA in the first quarter were driven by continued solid infrastructure-related growth, and seasonally stronger residential housing demand, as compared to the fourth quarter of 2025. In addition to the intra-quarter earnings improvement from supply disruption in the Middle East and weather normalization, our first quarter results benefited from our three-pillar profitability improvement plan, including delivering approximately $150 million of EBITDA uplift from footprint optimization and cost savings actions. While we still have some work to do to get our plant reliability all the way to where I would like it, I'm pleased with the progress that we have made to date and the trajectory of our reliability initiatives. Overall, we remain confident that our three pillar profitability improvement plant will deliver the targeted 600 million EBITDA uplift in 2026. Before I turn the call over to Steve, I want to provide some thoughts on our CFO transition. As you may have read on April 20th, we announced that on June 15, John Bakcht will join Westlake Corporation and Westlake Partners LP as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. John brings experience from the oil and gas packaging, and building products industries, as well as investment banking, to Westlake, and we look forward to him joining the company. On June 15, Steve Bender will transition to the role of special advisor and will continue to report to me as he supports the transition. We anticipate that Steve will participate in the second quarter earnings call in August. And with that, I would now like to turn our call over to Steve to provide more detail on our financial results for the first quarter of 2026. Steve?