Westlake Chemical Partners LP

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners First Quarter 2021 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, this conference call is being recorded today, May 4th, 2021. I would now like to call over to today's host, Jeff Holley, Westlake Chemical Partners Vice President and Treasurer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Valerie. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners first quarter 2021 conference call. I'm joined today by Albert Chow, 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, extreme weather events, our ability to borrow funds and access capital markets at a reasonable cost, and other risk factors as discussed in our SEC filings. This morning, Westlake Partners issued a press release with details of our first quarter 2021 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 332-7838. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, May 4th, 2021, 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 first quarter results. In this morning's press release, we reported consolidated net income, including off-cost earnings of $77 million for the first quarter of 2021. Westlake Partners' first quarter 2021 net income was $50 million, or 43 cents per unit. Ethylene production in the first quarter was impacted by the severe winter storm, and the ethylene sales agreement with Westlake Chemicals, again, This quarter provided significant benefits to our partnership as we dealt with the unplanned production outages from the storm, supporting our earnings. The severe winter storm caused widespread power outages, disrupted feedstocks and utilities, causing widespread industry ethylene outages, including Opco. I want to take this opportunity to thank our employees for their efforts quickly responding to the disruptions caused by the severe winter storm and fully resuming operation by the end of the quarter. The ethnic sales agreement with Westlake provides for recoveries of margins on committed production volumes and fixed costs associated with this unplanned outage. Steve will discuss this in greater detail in just a moment. Partners' financial results in the first quarter are a testament to the stability of generated from our fixed-margin ethylene sales agreement for 95% of annual planned production each year, which insulates us from market volatility and other production risks. This certainty, combined with our immersing great sponsor, Wesley Chemical, produces predictable earnings and stable 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 quarter.