Westlake Chemical Partners LP

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, you will be invited to participate in a question and answer session. As a reminder, 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 Chemical Partners vice president and Treasurer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Michelle. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners third quarter 2020 conference call. I'm joined today by Albert Chao, our president and CEO, Steve Bender, our senior vice president and CFO, and other members of our management team. During this call, we refer to ourselves as Westlake Partners or the partnership. References to Westlake or Westlake Chemical refer to our parent company, Westlake Chemical Corporation, and references to OPCO refer to Westlake Chemical OPCO LP, a subsidiary of Westlake Chemical and the partnership, which owns certain Olafin's assets. Additionally, when we refer to distributable cash flow, we are referring to Westlake Chemical Partners MLP distributable cash flow. Definitions of these terms are available on the partnership's 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. Actual results could differ materially based upon many factors including operating difficulties, the volume of ethylene that we are able to sell, the price at which we are able to sell ethylene, changes in the prevailing economic conditions, actual and proposed governmental regulatory actions, competitive products and pricing pressures, the COVID-19 pandemic, our ability to borrow funds and access capital markets at a reasonable cost, and other risk factors discussed in our SEC filings. This morning, Westlake Partners issued a press release with details of our third quarter 2020 financial and operating results. This document is available in the press release section of our webpage at wlkpartners.com. A replay of today's call will be available beginning two hours after the conclusion of this call. The 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 778-7568. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, November 3, 2020, And therefore, you're advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of 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 wlkpartners.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Albert Chow. Albert?

Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter 2020 results. The third quarter had a strong start with solid production across our plants and operating rates similar to those of the same period in 2019. This production was anchored by strong demand pull from Westlake Downstream's vinyls and olive-in products. Stemming from sales and pricing recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, that weighed on the first and second quarter of this year. On August 27th, southwest Louisiana was severely impacted by Hurricane Laura, one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast in over 40 years, which resulted in significant damage to the power and utility infrastructure in the region. In anticipation of this storm, we idled our facilities in the area prior to the hurricane's landfall, While we sustained minimum damage to our facilities in Lake Charles, the lack of access to electrical power and other utilities caused OPCO to remain idle and declared force majeure. Once power was restored, we began the process of restarting operations and had just begun to produce ethylene when the threat of Hurricane Delta caused us to idle our facilities once again in early October. In mid-October, Petrol 1 began to restart as power utilities became available, and Petrol 2 has also recently restarted operations. I would like to say a special thank you to our dedicated employees who helped restart these plants while many were dealing with the impacts of the storms to their own homes. Due to provisions in our Ethylene Sales Agreement, Westlake is committed to purchase and pay for a minimum amount of ethylene from OPCO each calendar year. Those were insulated from impacts of these outages during the force majeure. Through this commitment, OPCO continues to receive a 10 cents margin per pound for ethylene volumes that would have been produced, plus production costs that occur, allowing OPCO and in turn Westlake Partners to maintain consistent cash flows during these unplanned events. This is another example of how our long-term fundamentals and thesis remain strong. Turning to our financials, in this morning's press release, we reported consolidated net income, including up-cost earnings of $92 million for the third quarter of 2020. Westlake Partners' third quarter net income was $19 million. These solid financial results are a testament to the stability generated from our fixed margin ethylene sales agreement for 95% of annual plant production each year, which insulates us from commodity price volatility. This certainty, combined with our investment-grade rated sponsor, Wesley Chemical, produces predictable earnings and cash flows. I would now like to turn our call over to Steve to provide more detail on the financial and operating results for the third quarter. Steve?