Westlake Chemical Partners LP

Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners first quarter 2024 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 the question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, May 1st, 2024. I would now like to turn the call over to today's host, John Zeller, Westlake Chemical Partners Vice President and Treasurer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners first quarter 2024 conference call. I am joined today by Albert Chow, our President and CEO, Steve Bender, our Executive 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 refer to our parent company, Westlake Corporation, and references to Opco refer to Westlake Chemical Opco LP, a subsidiary of Westlake and the partnership, which owns certain Oliphant'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. We encourage you to learn more about the factors that could lead our actual results to differ by reviewing the cautionary statements in our regulatory filings, which are also available on our investor relations website. This morning, Westlake Partners issued a press release with details of our first quarter 2024 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 can be accessed via the partnership website. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, May 1st, 2024, and therefore you are 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'd like to turn the call over to Albert Chow. Albert?

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter 2024 results. In this morning's press release, we reported Westlake Partners' first quarter 2024 net income of $15 million, or 42 cents per unit. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, our first quarter sales and earnings benefited from a higher sales price for ethylene sold to Westlake per the terms of the ethylene sales agreement, as well as a slight improvement in third-party ethylene sales margins. The stability of Westlake Partners' business model is consistently demonstrated through our fixed margin ethylene sales agreement, which minimizes market volatility and other production risks. The high degree of stability in cash flow, when paired with the predictability of our business, has enabled us to deliver the long history of reliable distributions and coverage. This quarter's distribution is the 39th consecutive quarterly distribution since our IPO in July of 2014, without any reductions. I would now like to turn our call over to Steve to provide more detail on the financial and operating results for the quarter.