Good morning. Hope everybody is well-caffeinated and ready to go. Bryan Kitchen, President and CEO of Ascent Industries. Before we get started, I wanted to talk a little bit about our team. Ryan Kavalauskas, our CFO, and I have been together for about 10 years at a couple of different stops along the way, along with a number of folks on our current management team, and that's important for a couple of different reasons. Before joining Ascent two and a half years ago, the last company that we worked for was a company called Clearon. It was a small specialty chemical manufacturer located in Charleston, West Virginia. At the time we leaned into Clearon and moved into that company, it was losing about $8 million a year of adjusted EBITDA. We were on the verge of bankruptcy on a couple of occasions and breaking covenants left and right. Fast-forward four and a half years later, we had turned the company around. We sold it to a strategic, and at the time that we sold it, we were doing about $36 million of adjusted EBITDA on a trailing 12 basis. A pretty good turnaround in a relatively short period of time. We just have an incredible team, and we were blessed to have been able to pull many of those folks that we worked with previously along with us over to Ascent. That's really been core to our accelerated transformation over the past two and a half years. Just a little bit on Ascent. We're a 75-year-old company. We started off 75 years ago as a specialty chemical manufacturer. About 20 years into that journey, I'm pretty sure somebody got drunk along the way and decided to implement a diversification strategy, and we bolted on stainless steel assets, and we were confused for decades. We operated two different segments, a specialty chemical segment, a stainless steel segment, up until last year. Along the way, a lot of changes throughout the company. We were breaching pretty close to $1 billion at one point in time over that 75-year journey. We came into the company back tail end of 2023, early 2024. When I joined, I joined with the mandate to build up and build out the specialty chemical segment of the company. That changed about three or four months in when the chairman said, "Just kidding. Can you please take over the whole company?" I started reaching back out in the network and putting the band back together. For the past two and a half years, the way to think about our journey, year number one, 2024, was all about stabilizing and fixing the foundation. A lot of activity around getting the right people in the right roles, stripping out costs. We pulled out 20% on labor and overhead. We pulled out 20% on raw materials. We reevaluated our go-to-market strategy, made a lot of changes in a short period of time. Rolling into 2025 last year, sounds crazy to say that out loud. Last year, we implemented our portfolio optimization strategy. We sold off all of our stainless steel assets. Rolling into 2026, that we're already in the middle of at this point, we're now a pure play specialty chemical company, really going back to our roots. Look, I talked to you a little bit earlier about people and just the incredible difference that having the right people on the team has made and the accelerated improvements that we've driven along the way. You can see just some of the highlights since the new management team has been in place since 2024. Huge improvements in GP, huge improvements in EBITDA. We generated a lot of cash from our sale of stainless steel assets. We got out of some stainless steel related leases, we've been very active in buying back our own shares. In fact, from January 1, 2025 through Q1 of 2026, we had repurchased about 11% of our outstanding shares. For us, the biggest shot in the arm from a growth perspective for specialty chemicals really came in the Q4 of last year, right? There's been a ton of activity. The sales and marketing team have done a fantastic job of going out and winning new pieces of business, they've been singles and doubles and a triple here and there. When the Q4 rolled around, we locked down a very large $10 million programmatic piece of net new business. For some companies, it's a million-dollar piece of net new business. That's small. That's a rounding error. For us, a $75 million company, that's a pretty big shot in the arm. We'll talk a little bit more about that here in a few minutes. Just a lot of great work in a very short period of time, we're really just getting warmed up at this stage. A little bit more about who we are, what we do, how we operate. We participate, we manufacture specialty chemicals that go into a wide array of different market applications. Hygiene related applications, personal care related applications, ag, pulp and paper, coatings, and oil and gas, to name a few. There's also a really long tail. Take a stroll down memory lane. When we rolled in back in late 2023, early 2024, we took a look at the existing business. Our business model at the time, roughly 90% of our sales, 90% of our top line was underpinned by contract manufacturing. Right? Contract manufacturing. 10% was underpinned by product sales, where we had our own IP, we were selling products to customers. We took a look at that business, it was problematic for a variety of different reasons. We had some pieces of business where we were actually selling below our variable cost, that makes your head explode and say, "That's kind of crazy." We agree. We've changed that with urgency. We also have been purposely beginning to shift our business model more towards focusing on proprietary products that we manufacture and sell to customers. Principally designed to solve our customers' most difficult problems. Whether they're having an issue with a defoamer in a can of paint, or whether they're having an issue with their corrosion inhibitor package in oil field applications, what we want to do is come alongside of our customers and understand their technical problems, innovate a technical solution to meet their needs. By doing so, generally speaking, that business is more ratable, it's more predictable, and generally more margin accretive than the traditional kind of contract manufacturing model. Our strategy and operating model can best be described as Chemicals as a Service. We come alongside of our customers in the moments that matter most for them, and we come alongside of them and help them how they want us to help them. In some instances, it's addressing their most difficult technical challenges. In other instances, it's providing a differentiated service level to meet their requirements. In all instances, we're really rallying around our customers to meet their specific needs. Look, we're small enough, we're incredibly agile, and we're winning as a result of that. Just a couple of examples on some wins that we've had. Very large piece of business, one of our first sponsoring pieces of business in the oil and gas segment. For context, back in 2023, our participation in oil and gas was about 0%. That was about 0% of our overall top line. We received a call, literally on a Good Friday, from one of our prospective customers, because again, we weren't really selling anything to anyone at that point in time, and they said, "Hey, we have a problem. Can you help us solve it?" The team dug in, developed some samples in the lab, shot those samples out with urgency. Within a week the customer had the samples in the lab. They qualified in the lab. They said, "We really like this one." We said, "Great." We did a field trial, then within a month, because we had solved their most difficult needs, we were awarded with a $7 million piece of net new business with really solid EBITDA margins. Again, getting back to solve our customers' most difficult problems, generally that volume is going to be more ratable, more predictable, and more margin accretive. This is a real-life example of that. From a contract manufacturing standpoint, look, not all contract manufacturing business is a bad business, right? It's just not. We've proven that out with that large $10 million programmatic win that I referenced a few slides ago. Within a six-month period of time, we came alongside of a very large multinational who had a couple of very clear problems that they were trying to address. We managed to marshal all the resources, allocate those resources, crack the code, within a six-month period of time, we won not only a $10 million piece of business, it's not one product, one customer. It was about 15 products for one customer that was spread across two of our three manufacturing facilities domestically here in the U.S. It was a really exciting win. A great example of the cross-functional collaboration that we have inside of Ascent. Folks from R&D were engaged, folks from plants engineering were engaged, folks from process safety were engaged, supply chain, procurement, you name it. We rallied and we won. Today, we don't just have 15 products in the portfolio. We've actually won some additional business with that customer because of how we operate and how we come alongside of them in those moments that matter most for them. Just a little bit more on our business model. How we win. We connect with customers the way that they want, when, where, and how that they choose. Again, for some customers, that means that they need a technical partner, somebody to come alongside of them and solve their most difficult technical challenges. We got that. In other instances, they need us to do scale-up work, they need us to do reacting, drying, formulating, packaging. Some of them want us to do warehousing for them, along with logistics. We offer all of those services, and we charge appropriately for that value that we're bringing. From a business model standpoint, again, we manufacture and sell products to our customers, but we also do toll manufacturing. We also do custom manufacturing. Believe it or not, we've actually, over time, have designed, built, and operated purpose-built manufacturing facilities for customers on our property. Very diverse business model. Our asset base, we'll talk a little bit about our asset base. We have three manufacturing assets in the U.S., one in Tennessee, close to Chattanooga, one in Greenville, Spartanburg area in South Carolina, and then one in Danville, Virginia. Our utilization, this kind of gets back to the good news, bad news, right? Bad news is, oh my gosh, your utilization is pretty low. The good news is, oh my gosh, your utilization is pretty low. As we got into the company, we understand a little bit more about the utilization and the operating rates. That was one of the things that we got excited about, is the fact that there's so much room for additional growth inside of our existing asset base without a lot of CapEx required on the back end. If you look at the right-hand side of the chart over here, you'll see over the past four years or so, we've averaged what's called a million and a half dollars of CapEx per year. Just to be clear, it's not a million and a half dollars of CapEx per year because we're running the plant with duct tape and popsicle sticks. That's what it's required to run our assets safely and reliably. Okay. We've been working really hard, we touched on this a little bit earlier, on shifting our mix from a business model standpoint. As I mentioned earlier, 2023 we rolled in, 90% of our business was underpinned by contract manufacturing, 10% was product sales. 2024, some pretty good steps forward in shifting that mix. 27% of our top line was product sales, 73%, contract manufacturing, last year we kind of rounded out at that 70/30 mix. We're continuing to deliberately drive a very purposeful shift towards value. That's what we're going to continue executing. You can see from a gross margin standpoint, the gross margin build from 2023 - 2025 has been strong and material margin growth has been accretive as well. We're doing a lot of the right things. We're not done yet. No ticker tape parade or victory lap, but we're heading in the right direction. From a sales standpoint, what are we doing? Last year we had roughly 100 projects that our team efforted and won in the year. All varying degrees of sizes and shapes, some singles, some doubles, some triples. A huge amount of volume that was pushed through our group last year. Average sales cycle time, three months. That feels almost a little misleading because generally speaking, the sales cycle time for product sales could be three months - six months. For contract manufacturing, it could go anywhere from 6 months - 18 months. Last year, our average sales cycle for the projects that we won was in fact right around three months. Our conversion rate last year, nothing to write home about, but we are proud of the progress that we're making. Our conversion rate was 18%. Industry standard's about 15%. What are we running and gunning towards? A conversion rate kind of in that 30% range would make us happy. Business model, you can see the mix there. Roughly a third of it was product sales, two-thirds was contract manufacturing. From a mix perspective, we're not just growing with new customers. In fact, we've been successful in growing with new customers, but we've been very successful in growing our share of wallet with existing customers as well. There's plenty more room for us to go out and do that again with our existing customer base. Our selling project pipeline, a couple of things to understand about that. What it's not, it's not an Excel spreadsheet where sales folks put really big numbers in so they can sleep better at night. That's not what we do. That's not how we operate. In order for something to make it into our selling project pipeline, there's a level of vetting that takes place. We know exactly what it is. Either we have made it in the past or we believe that we can make it, and we know that there's a need that's driving that request from the customer. It's not a line card type of a play. You can see, quarter-on-quarter, we've grown that selling project pipeline. For us, initially, yes, we wanted to see kind of that expansion of the selling project pipeline. We're now very hyper-focused in on the quality of that selling project pipeline. Let's talk a little bit about capital allocation. I mentioned a minute ago that from January 1st of 2025 through Q1 of 2026, we've been very active in buying back our shares, repurchasing about 11%. Today, we have zero debt. We have roughly $39 million of cash at the close of Q2, and that includes the cash for a recent acquisition. I'll talk about that acquisition here in a couple of minutes. We have borrowing capacity of about $30 million. We've got about $69, $70 million worth of firepower to play with. From a capital allocation standpoint, the kind of the drumbeat that we like to talk about internally with our team is any time that we can fund high ROIC projects that go inside of our existing asset base, we'll do that all day and all night. Generally, you're going to get a higher return on those type of projects and a lower risk profile. Additive to that, we've been very active over the past couple of years and looking for really good, compelling bolt-on M&A. What that means for us, what we are generally most interested in is going out and acquiring a product or a product line that we can then integrate back into our underutilized asset base. Because there is a value multiplier associated with that. We have been successful in finding one of those. We are actively looking for more of those. M&A has been and will continue to be a part of our growth story. Third, we are going to continue to be active in repurchasing our shares. As I mentioned a second ago, we actually literally, about a month ago, a month and a few days ago, completed our first acquisition. It has been incredible. The entire process, the team at Midwest Graphic Sales, phenomenal to work with throughout the process and has been even better to work with post-process. We will talk a little bit more about that company for a few minutes here. Midwest Graphic Sales and Sigma Coatings, they make barrier coatings. Barrier coatings that are largely used for packaging type of applications. It is an incredible complement to our business model. What you heard me talk about earlier was anytime that we can come alongside of customers and solve their most difficult problems, you make a friend for life. Generally, again, ratability of volume, predictability of volume, and generally more gross margin accretive. As we got into the process and learned more from Brad and Brian and the rest of the team, that is exactly that business model that they have put in place, that they have been operating for four years. In fact, when you take a look at the top five customers that they have, they have been working with those customers for over 35 years. Incredibly sticky and compelling. Transaction, purchase price of roughly $14 million. $1 million held back in escrow. $12.95 million cash at close. Again, that $39 million of cash on hand that I flagged earlier, that is net of that $12.95 million cash at close. Super excited about the transaction. One of the coolest things about this, it is not underwritten at all by crazy cost synergies or crazy growth synergies. It really stands on its own merits, and I will get here into the financials in a second. This just gives you a little bit more visibility on the different types of coatings that they manufacture and the different applications that they are used in. Things like food contact products, think paper plates, just as an example. The coatings that go on top of paper plates or even the bottom of paper plates, beverage packaging, printed materials, and playing cards. Fast fact, we are in Vegas right now, so I guess this is very relevant. It is actually the only coating that is approved for the World Series of Poker. Kind of cool. High-value niche applications. Financial overview. Last year, the company did about $10.8 million of revenue, 24% or 25% gross margin, adjusted EBITDA of around $2 million. Really healthy standalone business. Entry economics, you can see that, what we paid, just under a 7x multiple for it. Again, the transaction is really underwritten by the existing earnings quality of the business, the demonstrated gross margin profile, and the business model that they have. Great product line. We're going to be in the process of taking that product line and integrating it back into our existing asset base in the Q4 of this year and in the Q1 of next year. Path forward. Let's talk about what we can do inside of our existing asset base. Three manufacturing plants today. Last year, we were about $75 million top line. Given our utilization levels, we should be able to punch towards 120 - 130 on the top line, delivering a gross margin in the genre of 30%-35%. Our SGA that we need to grow into, right? Because we've resourced up, and appropriately so, for things like sales and marketing over the past couple of years. When we get to that 120, 130 mark, that should be around 15%, and the resultant EBITDA margin should be in that kind of 15%-20% range. How long is it going to take to get there? Last year when I was at this conference, we flashed, "Hey, we're going to get there 2030." Obviously, that's a little conservative. It's not consistent with our internal expectations. Just know that we're driving to deliver this sooner than later. Again, think about it through the context of last year's sales and what we bolted on with just that one big win, let alone everything else. $75 million last year, we're bolting on a net new piece of business this year of $10 million and some additional growth. We're well on our way. We're excited about the path forward. Why invest in Ascent? We've done a lot of work in a really short period of time. We've stabilized. We've fixed the foundation. We've taken care of the portfolio. We actually know who we are and what we do now, right? We are a pure-play specialty chemical company. We're ready to grow, and we are growing. It's not talk, right? We're actually growing, and it's starting to be reflected in our numbers. There is absolutely near-term upside. We've got really strong balance sheet for the size of our company. I believe, I'm a little biased, right? We're undercovered, and we're undervalued. Early innings of our story, just getting started. Beginning to have fun, again, kind of going full circle, we've got the right people. We have an incredible team. Without them, we wouldn't have made the progress that we've made to date. We've demonstrated that we've done this before, right? We're in the early innings. We're beginning to have some fun. Yeah, appreciate your time. If you have any questions, I think we might have one minute left, two minutes? Two. Yeah. I understand that you guys have squeaky clean facilities, and they're top-notch. Still new to the chemical industry. Yep. I imagine as you're bringing on new clients and their very disparate projects. Yep You would need new equipment to kind of facilitate those ends? Not necessarily. Again, getting back to that utilization I mentioned earlier, right? Today, our utilization is about 45%. We have an enormous amount of equipment that's there and available. In some cases. For all types of projects. What's that? For all types of projects. Yeah. Certainly, it's different, right? Think of it as kind of like a game of Tetris, right? Where you have to find the right opportunity to fit into the right process train. That's what we do, right? That's what we do. In some instances, would you have to have an additional storage tank? Sure. That's not an outsized investment. Good question. Yeah. Yeah, I understand you led a turnaround of another business several years ago. Yep. You brought in some of the same people from that organization here. That's right. What would you say, as you look back at the success of the first one, was the biggest reason for success of how you guys turned it around? I assume you're doing a similar playbook here. Yeah. All right, one minute left. A lot of lessons learned with the first one. Most principally was getting the right people in the right roles with incredible urgency. We didn't do that during the first turnaround. Quite frankly, we didn't have the luxury of doing that. We didn't have the balance sheet strength to do that, so it took us time to get there. Walking into Ascent, we had a little bit more flexibility and pulled the trigger and made changes literally within the first two weeks. That was number one. Number two, kind of the, again, big swath changes right out of the gate. Cost. Strategic sourcing played an incredible role at the prior turnaround, and it still does today. 95% of our raw materials are sourced domestically out of the U.S. 65% of our raw materials are petroleum-derived. Because of that and everything that's going on in the Middle East, raw material prices have gone up. Our teams are so well integrated between sourcing and commercial. All of that visibility is there, and we're passing that cost on to our customers. We've demonstrated we know how to do that. We've done it before. I could go on and on about the team, but a lot of good work. All right, great. I'm being called off. Thank you, everyone.