Orbia Advance Corp Sab

Good morning, and welcome to ORBEA's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. As we turn to slide one, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. And should you need any assistance during the call, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please also note that this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Diego Echave, Orbia's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to Orbia's second quarter 2024 earnings call. We appreciate your time and participation. Joining me today are Samir Baradwash, CEO, and Jim Kelly, CFO. Before we continue, a friendly reminder that some of our comments today will contain forward-looking statements based on our current view of our business, and actual future results may differ materially. Today's call should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and in our most recent Bolsa Mexicana de Valores report. The company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Sameer.

Thank you, Diego, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin discussing this quarter's results, I would like to thank our global employees for their continued commitment to improving business performance and solving our customers' challenges in difficult market conditions. Turning to slide three, I will share a high-level overview of our second quarter 2024 performance. Revenues of $2 billion decreased 9 percent, and EBITDA of $334 million decreased 25 percent compared to the prior year period. EBITDA included $13 million of non-operating charges. Compared to the previous quarter, our results demonstrated sequential improvement across all businesses in line with anticipated trends discussed during our first quarter earnings call. While volumes have started to show a recovery in many of our businesses and geographies, compared to the prior year quarter, revenues continue to be impacted by lower prices and unfavorable product mix. However, despite these near-term headwinds, long-term fundamentals remain strong. As part of our previously stated strategy to be disciplined operators and good stewards of capital, we continue to take proactive steps to control costs and maximize efficiency across our businesses, which will enable RBI to capture benefits associated with market recovery and to continue to create value for our shareholders. During the quarter, progress continued on the engineering for the investment in U.S. PVDS capacity through a joint venture with ScienceCo. The board of directors also approved moving forward with engineering for the LIPS6 project. Our new building and infrastructure facility in Indonesia is nearing completion and is expected to begin commercial operations in the fall. The expansion of our specialty compounds joint venture plant in India for semiconductor compounds is also nearing completion. In addition, the building and infrastructure business is launching a slew of new innovative products in the fall. We also continued our focus on cost optimization, reducing year-to-date manufacturing and SG&A costs by a total of $35 million compared to last year. I will now turn the call over to James. to go over our financial performance in further detail.