Westlake Chemical Partners LP

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Chemical Partners Second 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 a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, August 6, 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 second quarter 2024 conference call. I am joined today by Albert Chow, 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 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 HoloFence 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 second 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, August 6, 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, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our second quarter 2024 results. In this morning's press release, we reported Westlake Partners' second quarter 2024 net income of $40 million, or 41 cents per unit. Compared to the second quarter of 2023, our second quarter of 2024 sales and earnings benefited from a higher production and sales volume as a result of last year's Calvert City turnaround, and higher third-party ethylene sales prices and 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 40th consecutive quarterly distribution since the IPO in July of 2014 without any reductions. We're happy to welcome Jean-Marc Gilson to the partnership with his appointment as our new president and CEO. He's a seasoned industry leader with a proven track record of delivering sustained financial performance most recently as President and CEO of Mitsubishi Chemical Group. Jean-Marc's appointment is a combination of a thoughtful succession plan that ensures the continuation of our strategy to provide stable, predictable cash flows, supporting our distributions to unit holders. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Jean-Marc to provide some initial thoughts. Jean-Marc?