Good morning. My name is Katie, and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to the Ecovyst third quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. Please note today's call is being recorded and should run approximately one hour. Currently, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you want to remove yourself from the queue, please press star two. When posing your question, we ask that you please pick up your handset to allow for optimal sound quality. Lastly, if you should need operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the call over to Gene Shiels, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, Katie. Good morning and welcome to the Ecovyst third quarter 2022 earnings call. With me on the call this morning are Kurt Bitting, Ecovyst Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Feehan, Ecovyst Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll take your questions. Please note that some of the information shared today is forward-looking information, including information about the company's financial and operating performance, strategies, our anticipated end-use demand trends, and our 2022 financial outlook. This information is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and the implementation of the company's plans to vary materially. Any forward-looking information shared today speaks only as of this date. These risks are discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today's call with their corresponding GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and in presentation materials posted in the investor section of our website at ecovyst.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Kurt. Kurt? Thank you, Gene, and good morning. Ecovyst delivered strong financial results for the third quarter of 2022, reflecting continued growth in sales and building upon the favorable results we delivered in the first half of this year. As a key supplier of products and services to industries that provide energy and materials to essential segments of the economy, Ecovyst has continued to benefit this year from favorable demand trends across the breadth of our portfolio. In addition, we believe Ecovyst remains well positioned to leverage key sustainability trends and to benefit from projected growth in demand for low carbon technologies in the years to come. For our Ecoservices business, high utilization rates in the U.S. refining industry, more stringent fuel standards, and increasing demand for premium gasoline continue to drive volume growth for our regeneration services. Those regeneration services are vital to our refining customers' production of alkylate, the critical component in the formulation of higher octane and cleaner fuels. Ecovyst has a leading share position for regeneration services in the U.S., with long-standing relationships with blue chip customers who rely upon Ecovyst as their sole provider of regeneration services. Our assets are well situated to service both the Gulf Coast market, where 2/3 of U.S. refining capacity is located, and West Coast markets, where alkylate plays an important role in the production of CARBOB, the regulated blend for California gasoline. With four facilities in the Gulf Coast and two in California, our customers value our production redundancy as it ensures operational integrity for their highly profitable alkylation units. Strong regeneration volume growth was a significant contributor to the robust year-over-year results for our Ecoservices business in the third quarter. We also continue to see strong demand for virgin sulfuric acid across a variety of applications, including mining, production of engineered plastics, lead acid batteries, and semiconductors. In the third quarter, our Catalyst Technologies business benefited from higher sales of polyethylene catalysts driven by positive global polyethylene demand. We also saw increased sales of niche custom catalysts for petrochemical applications. With continued favorability in demand trends, Ecovyst's third quarter sales, including our 50% share in the ZI Joint Venture Joint Venture, were up 30%, and Adjusted EBITDA was up 9% compared to the third quarter of 2021. I'll note here that on a year-to-date basis, Ecovyst sales are up nearly 45% and Adjusted EBITDA is up 26% compared to the first nine months of 2021, with the increase primarily representing organic growth. While inflation is a reality in today's environment, we have continued to benefit from structural margin support in our Ecoservices business by contractual pass-through mechanisms for variable costs. For sulfur, the pass-through is dollar for dollar, while costs for other variable inputs such as natural gas, transportation, labor, and certain plant costs are passed through on an indexed basis. While we do not have these contractual pass-throughs in our Catalyst Technologies business, we have undertaken targeted price actions as a means to offset increases to variable costs. As a result, we were able to significantly mitigate the adverse impact of inflation in the quarter. In fact, during the third quarter, we continued to see unit margin expansion in our Ecoservices business. The third quarter of 2022 was also another quarter of strong cash generation for Ecovyst. With open market share repurchases and in conjunction with the secondary offering in early August, we repurchased an aggregate of $65 million worth of stock during the quarter, yet we were able to maintain our net debt leverage ratio of 2.8 x, underscoring our conviction that Ecovyst cash generation capability continues to provide for significant capital allocation flexibility. In our second quarter earnings call in late July, we shared with you our belief that we remain on track to deliver solid year-over-year growth in financial results. Given our conviction in the strength and stability of our business, at that time, we increased our full-year guidance range for Adjusted EBITDA to $265 million-$275 million. As we move into the fourth quarter, I am pleased to say that the positive momentum in our business has continued. Based upon our current outlook for the balance of the year, we expect that our full-year 2022 Adjusted EBITDA will land at the high end of our $265 million-$275 million guidance range. Now let's turn to slide five for more detail on our expectations for near-term demand trends. Within our Ecoservices business, we believe the outlook for our regeneration services and for virgin sulfuric acid demand remains favorable. While electric vehicle penetration will no doubt increase over the next few years, we believe conventional fuel demand will remain strong, supported by the sheer number of conventional cars and trucks in use today. High refinery utilization, growth in premium gasoline, which requires a higher proportion of alkylate, as well as increasing fuel economy standards, are expected to continue to drive alkylate demand. Additionally, export demand for refined products remains strong, and with access to crude supplies and the lowest cost of energy, U.S. refineries remain in a favored position to serve the growing export demand. We also believe future expectations for greener infrastructure and electrification, as well as continued growth in other industrial applications, will drive further demand for virgin sulfuric acid. Growth in low carbon technologies, including electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels, will require increased production of metals and minerals, with sulfuric acid utilized in the leaching process to extract materials such as copper and borates from the mined rock. If expectations for expansion of these low carbon technologies are to be met, demand for sulfuric acid will undoubtedly increase. Turning to the balance of our Ecoservices business, while collectively less than 10% of consolidated revenue, we believe our catalyst activation segment, the Chem32 business that we acquired last year, and our waste treatment businesses are positioned for attractive growth. Chem32 provides ex situ activation for catalysts, including catalysts used in renewable fuels applications. Ex situ activation provides for faster startup from turnarounds, averting lengthy on-site activation processes. The business is extremely scalable, and we expect to benefit from continued expansion in renewable fuel production. We also expect further growth in our waste treatment business. With our favorable Gulf Coast locations, our incineration of specific chemical waste streams provides our customers with a preferred alternative to long-distance trucking of liquid waste and disposal via deep well injection. With a more environmentally friendly process than other alternatives, the waste streams are incinerated in our furnaces, and Ecovyst benefits from the inherent energy in the waste streams, reducing external natural gas requirements. For our Catalyst Technologies business, sales of our silica catalysts have continued to grow along with global polyethylene production. While polyethylene demand is expected to slow modestly, as we have noted, our sales in the polyethylene production have been higher than the industry growth rate, as the sales of our customized catalyst solutions have benefited from a differential win rate on new capacity expansions. Likewise, the near-term demand outlook for sales of zeolite catalysts through our ZI Joint Venture also remains positive. We expect high refinery utilization and global fuel demand will continue to support sales of hydrocracking catalysts. While there is still a significant backlog of heavy-duty diesel vehicle orders due to production constraints and the global chip shortage, sales of zeolite catalysts for emission control applications are expected to benefit. Lastly, we expect growth in renewable fuel capacity, including the future adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, will continue to drive growth for our zeolite catalysts. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike Feehan for a review of third quarter financial results. Thanks, Kurt. During the third quarter, Ecovyst continued to benefit from favorable demand trends. Total sales, including our 50% interest in the Zeolyst joint venture, were $260 million, up $60 million or 30% compared to the third quarter of 2021. The increase was primarily driven by higher average selling prices, including the passthrough of higher sulfur costs, as well as the higher demand for regeneration services in our Ecoservices business and higher catalyst sales into polyethylene and niche custom applications within Catalyst Technologies. Higher pricing in the third quarter includes the passthrough of $28 million of higher sulfur costs, as well as the contractual index passthrough of other variable costs, including natural gas and freight, principally in our Ecoservices business. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2022 was $75 million, up 9% compared to the third quarter of 2021, with an associated margin of 29%. On the next slide, I'll highlight the components of our Adjusted EBITDA expansion compared to the third quarter of 2021. The increase in Adjusted EBITDA was driven by nearly $7 million of contribution from higher sales volume, as well as higher average selling prices, including the $28 million pass-through of higher sulfur costs, which more than offset the increase in variable costs. The $28 million average selling price increase associated with the sulfur pass-through does not impact Adjusted EBITDA, but does inflate the denominator in the Adjusted EBITDA margin calculation. If you exclude the impact associated with the pass-through of higher sulfur cost, the Adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 32.5% in the third quarter of 2022. Turning to the next slide, Ecoservices posted another favorable quarter, with third quarter sales of $196 million, up $58 million or 42% compared to the third quarter of 2021. Third quarter results were driven principally by higher contract pricing along with the increased demand for regeneration services supporting alkylation production. In addition, sales of virgin sulfuric acid were up modestly compared to the third quarter of 2021, reflecting ongoing demand in industrial applications, including mining. Third quarter Adjusted EBITDA for Ecoservices was $64 million, up $12 million or nearly 24% compared to the third quarter of 2021. On the higher sales volume and pricing covering increased operating costs, including sulfur, natural gas, and freight. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for Ecoservices was 32.8%, down 490 basis points compared to the third quarter of last year. However, Adjusting for the 690 basis point impact of the sulfur pass-through, Adjusted EBITDA margin for Ecoservices would have been 40% for the quarter. Turning to results for Catalyst Technologies on the next slide. Third quarter results for Catalyst Technologies reflects higher sales of polyethylene and niche custom catalyst, partially offset by lower sales of hydrocracking catalyst, largely a function of timing due to the deferral of planned turnarounds as refiners seek to maximize profitability. We expect to see higher sales of hydrocracking catalyst in the fourth quarter. Total sales for Catalyst Technologies was $64.6 million, up $2 million or 3% compared to the third quarter of 2021. Third quarter Adjusted EBITDA was $19 million, down $6 million compared to the third quarter of 2021, with higher overall sales volume offset by less favorable product sales mix and higher production costs within the quarter. Moving to the highlights on leverage and liquidity. As we have previously discussed, our strong cash generation provides significant financial flexibility, supporting net leverage reduction, the funding of growth initiatives, as well as share repurchases. Our net leverage ratio was 2.8 x at September 30th, which was unchanged from the end of the second quarter, even with deploying nearly $65 million in cash for share repurchases in the third quarter. Given our expectations for further cash generation in the fourth quarter and excluding any potential M&A or additional share repurchases, we continue to anticipate our leverage ratio to be in the mid-2x by the end of the year. At the end of the third quarter, we had total liquidity of nearly $200 million. While down compared to the $236 million at the end of the second quarter, this reflects the previously mentioned $65 million of cash used for share repurchases during the quarter. We continue to believe our free cash flow generation capability and our liquidity position provides us with a significant amount of financial flexibility, allowing us to maintain a very balanced approach to capital allocation. Given our strong balance sheet with only one tranche of debt maturing in 2028, we can continue to invest in operational improvements and organic growth initiatives while remaining positioned to evaluate accretive bolt-on acquisitions that have a clear strategic fit with our existing businesses. As we demonstrated in the third quarter, we can also participate in targeted share repurchases while continuing to prioritize net leverage reduction and growth initiatives. During the quarter, we repurchased 1.1 million shares through open market purchases at an average price of $9.77 per share. In addition, we repurchased an additional 6.5 million shares in early August, supporting the secondary sale of stock by our private equity sponsor. As of quarter end, we still had $376 million remaining under the original $450 million share repurchase authorization. Turning to our full year 2022 outlook. As mentioned, we expect demand trends to remain relatively stable for the balance of the year. We believe high refinery utilization will continue to drive demand for alkylate and therefore our regeneration services, and we expect demand for virgin sulfuric acid to also remain strong. In Catalyst Technologies, our outlook for long-term demand trends is positive, driven by polyethylene demand, future growth in renewable fuel and emission control applications. Overall, our outlook for the fourth quarter has not changed materially. We are lowering our full year sales guidance down modestly to a range of $810 million-$830 million, solely a reflection of the pass-through impact of lower anticipated sulfur costs. Based upon our favorable results for the first nine months and our expectations for the fourth quarter, we anticipate our full year 2022 Adjusted EBITDA may fall toward the high end of our $265 million-$275 million range, and we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow generation of $115 million-$125 million for the year. As a reminder, the fourth quarter tends to be seasonally lower for Ecoservices due to customer and internal turnaround activity following the summer driving season, and we expect fourth quarter Adjusted EBITDA for Ecoservices to be similar to the first quarter earlier this year. In contrast, as noted in our second quarter call, we expect strong fourth quarter results for Catalyst Technologies, with fourth quarter Adjusted EBITDA higher than in the third quarter. I'll now hand the call back to Kurt for some closing remarks. Thank you, Mike. In summary, we are energized by the financial results we have delivered thus far in 2022, and I want to extend my gratitude to all Ecovyst employees for their dedication and their contributions to the success we have had this year. We firmly believe our year-to-date results demonstrate the true resilience and organic growth potential of Ecovyst's business model. Furthermore, our favorable results thus far in 2022 validate the decision to divest the Performance Chemicals and Performance Materials businesses, which enabled Ecovyst to focus on growing the high-quality, uniquely positioned businesses that we have today. We have entered the fourth quarter with good business momentum in both our Ecoservices and our Catalyst Technologies businesses. As a result, for full year 2022, we expect to deliver on the high end of our guidance range for Adjusted EBITDA. Looking forward into 2023, while the uncertain economic environment could result in some softening of demand, we still expect demand fundamentals across our end use exposures to remain positive. We believe our leadership positions in growth markets, the nature of our long-standing customer relationships, and in some cases, order backlogs, will all continue to provide for good near-term visibility. With a net debt to leverage ratio of 2.8 x, and in light of the cash generation capability we have, our balance sheet is in very strong shape. We expect to generate additional cash over the course of the fourth quarter, which will continue to provide us with the flexibility as we balance our capital allocation alternatives and continue to position Ecovyst to deliver exceptional value for our shareholders. With that, we will ask the operator to open the line for questions. Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question will come from John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for taking my question. I guess the first one would just be on the Refining Catalyst business in terms of some of the business that kind of got delayed or pushed out as the refiners you know, postponed some of their turnarounds. Does that all get pushed into the fourth quarter, or do you see that drag into 2023 as well? Because I know 2023 was looking like we were gonna see a pretty good step up already, but I guess curious if that maybe even picks up higher. Thanks, John. Yeah, well, really nothing's fundamentally changed with the hydrocracking business. You know, we've seen delays, as you mentioned, and this is really due to the historically high distillate cracks in the marketplace right now, and as you've probably seen, the historically low inventories of distillate. This has obviously encouraged refineries to put off turnarounds and the catalyst changeouts to basically make more product for the marketplace. You know, the other side of this is that, you know, when with these high margins and the high demand for the product is when these refineries do take those outages, they're gonna look to install really high-yielding and high-performance catalysts like Zeolyst offers. We did mention fourth quarter will be stronger on hydrocracking. You know, we look at these types of things as they're really delays. They're not, you know, that won't go on a very long time, and it's really due to just the demand for the product in the market right now. Got it. Fair enough. Then when you think about the Ecoservices businesses, we start looking out to 2023, it seems like there's kind of a lot of puts and takes. It seems like, you know, you may see more demand from the regeneration side as you know, the economy's opening up and you see more and more driving. At the same time, like, there is, you know, obviously concerns about the economy slowing down, and so maybe there's a negative impact on mining and industrial. Maybe can you walk us through how you guys are thinking about the puts and takes, and maybe give us a little bit of an early peek at how you think about 2023? Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously we're not gonna provide, you know, guidance towards 2023, but if you look at just the underlying trends for, you know, specifically for the Ecoservices business, you know, high refinery utilization, you know, above historic average, refinery crack spreads, the continued strong demand for alkylate and the octane and the clean gasoline component that it provides to the U.S. motor pool, strong exports of motor gasoline leaving the United States, which our customers, particularly in the Gulf Coast, participate strongly in that. That is all going to continue to benefit the regeneration business. You know, as you look over to virgin sulfuric acid, I mean, the way I like to think of it is really, you know, virgin sulfuric acid is where the rubber meets the road on creating these, green technologies and low carbon technologies and the minerals and metals required for that. Clearly demands a lot of virgin sulfuric acid. The other sections of our virgin sulfuric acid business, you know, I would say more in the industrial and the material side, a lot of that is concentrated towards, in the Gulf Coast, where those customers, again, have an enormous energy advantage and, you know, should continue to prosper in this environment. Got it. Helpful, helpful call. Thanks very much. Thank you. Now, as a reminder, it is star one, if you had a question. We'll go next to David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Kurt, just sticking on the virgin sulfuric acid business. In a recession, how has it performed historically, in prior downturns? Yeah. In prior downturns, it's been stable. We have a, you know, fortunately, I've been with the business really since, you know, 2006, so I've gone through the 2008 downturn and obviously the 2020 downturn. The business is very diverse, so obviously, sulfuric acid is the most widely used chemical in the world. You know, our particular portfolio business is diverse in terms of its exposure to industrials. Again, mining as we, I think what may be different, as we enter, 2023, different from maybe past is really the mining segment continuing to remain strong. We don't really see anything that's gonna deter future mining activity and the need for the green technology and low carbon technologies that require those copious amounts of metals and minerals. Again, on the industrial side, very diverse in terms of, you know, materials to petrochemicals to water treatment chemicals. A lot of our business, again, is concentrated in the Gulf Coast, which has a enormous energy advantage versus their competition worldwide. Very good. Just in Catalyst Technologies, you mentioned higher production costs in Q3. Could you talk to those? Is that one of the reasons why Q4 is, looks like quite a bit stronger than Q3? Yeah. Well, really, on the catalyst side, when you look at, you know, what Q3 is, first of all, I guess, you know, on the Q2 call, we did say that, you know, Q3 was gonna look a lot like Q2. When you look at overall the catalyst performance, you had a few things going on there, right? You know, the hydrocracking sales, which we talked about earlier, that were delayed due to really the strength in the distillate production going on right now. There was, you know, from a comparative standpoint versus third quarter of 2021, the mix was slightly different. Really on the production cost side that we referred to is really intercompany shipment costs, where we had some kind of one-time logistical bottlenecks that required us to do some freight expediting of raw materials in between plants. Can you quantify that impact in Q3? Is that tailwind for Q4? Yeah. For Q4, as we said, we expect Q4 to be stronger than Q3 in the catalyst business. In terms of the production cost impact of those intercompany transfers, we see that moderating as the logistics supply chains are improving. Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just to stay on the catalyst side. I realize you will not be providing guidance for next year, but what's your sense, can catalyst business grow next year? Grow EBITDA? Yeah. Yes, sure. We expect, you know, there's again strong underlying, you know, growth trends in that catalyst business. You know, clearly diesel crack spreads and diesel inventories are expected to remain, you know, favorable going into next year, benefiting the hydrocracking segment. When you look over to some of the other sections of Catalyst Technologies on emission controls, clearly, as we've talked about before, there's a backlog of heavy duty diesel vehicles that has built up that will require emission controlled catalysts moving into 2023. We really see in our other segments of the catalyst business firmness. You know, when we talk about things like polyethylene in terms of its demand for things like film and sheeting continue to remain strong. You know, really, as we look going forward, we see really continued strength. Obviously, as we've highlighted before on previous calls, renewable fuels continues to be a tailwind for us as, you know, obviously higher distillate cracks encourages even more, renewable fuels production and the construction of new renewable fuels plants. Thanks, Kurt. On Ecoservices, you reported volume growth this quarter. Was this primarily regeneration or virgin or both markets? Yeah, I can answer that one. That was primarily in the regeneration services side. That was the predominance of the volume growth. However, I would comment that virgin sulfuric acid was up modestly. Again, it was up, you know, continuing with you know the strong growth in the various end markets. You know, both sides were up, but more on the regen side. Thanks. Last one, if I may, just on virgin markets. Do you see any signs of weaker demand trends? Obviously, there's some seasonality, but beyond that, is there any red flags in that market? Yeah, I think, you know, the virgin sulfuric business isn't so seasonal. The regeneration is, and I think, you know, as we said before, you know, as you enter the fourth and the first quarters on regeneration, refineries and ourselves, you know, Ecoservices will typically take our maintenance during those times, you know, off-peak season times. On virgin sulfuric, it's less so. It's more, you know, really kind of steady demand. So, you know, when you look at the end market drivers there, again, the petrochemical, the materials business remains strong. And, you know, I think that's, for us, being completely North American-based, our customers are enjoying a very large energy advantage versus their global competition, which allows them to, you know, keep very high utilization rates. On the mining segment, I mean, it's, you know, clearly all, you know, the tailwinds behind that sector are really gonna be hard to kind of disrupt, right? When you think about all the investment, the government subsidies that are, you know, even the recent Inflation Reduction Act, which put a, you know, a large amount of subsidies and tax credits into things like green infrastructure as well as electric vehicles, which all are gonna require really a lot of U.S. mining activity. That's very beneficial for the virgin acid segment. Very helpful. Thanks a lot. We'll go next to Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my question. First, I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on the methyl methacrylate or MMA catalyst business and what you're seeing there in terms of orders as well as just overall demand, both fourth quarter and for 2023. Yeah. Well, for methyl methacrylate or, you know, we tend to refer those as more in the niche or custom catalyst space, in general. I think we mentioned that third quarter, as compared to third quarter of 2021 was the mix of that was different, so that was lighter this year than last year, and that's primarily a timing. Those methyl methacrylate orders generally, you know, there's not sales in every quarter. They generally can be a timing issue as those customers refill those units. We believe the demand in that space remains strong. We have a really good and unique technology offering there, with long-term relationships with those customers and are really specified into those units. You know, we feel that's healthy, going forward. That's helpful. Thank you. Just in terms of capital allocation, you noted you did another $11 million of buybacks this quarter, and you talked about, you know, opportunities in terms of bolt-ons or further kind of investments. Can you just tell us there, I guess, as you think about both the near term and into next year, how you're kind of thinking about the, you know, both the buyback opportunity, given you have a lot of authorization still outstanding as well as, you know, bolt-on opportunities in the pipeline that you see there, both from a timeline perspective and in areas of potential interest or opportunities? Yeah. Sure. Good question. You know, we look at the business's cash generation as well as its strong balance sheet, really gives us, as I like to say, a very flexible and robust capital allocation strategy. You know, as we look at that strategy, clearly growth is very important. We have a rich pipeline of both organic and inorganic opportunities. You know, as we go forward, we're gonna use that cash generation and the balance sheet to fund that growth where we can. We've looked at the, you know, as we look at M&A opportunities, we're clearly, our existing business is clearly in the energy environment, things, linked to green infrastructure trends, renewable fuels, and really the production onshoring of a lot of materials that we see going on right now. As we evaluate opportunities going forward, we're gonna continue to look in those, in those spaces. You know, in terms of, the stock repurchases, listen, we view, the management team very strongly views that our share price is undervalued. We participated in both open market purchases as well as alongside the secondary offering that happened in Catalyst. We feel very strongly that, you know, the stock is undervalued. The company has participated in those repurchases as well as the management team. I'll highlight, you know, again, this quarter was another strong quarter for management personally buying shares as well. Very helpful. Thank you. We'll go next to P.J. Juvekar with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, this is Patrick Cunningham on for P.J. Good morning. You know, we've started to see some inventory destocking in polyethylene and producers are cutting utilization rates. What are your expectations, you know, for polyethylene film and packaging demand? And do you expect, you know, this, you know, sort of recent destocking to mute near-term volume growth? Sure. You know, our polyethylene sales were up in the third quarter. You know, you have seen, and we've read the same thing where you've seen some, I would say more inventory distortions, you know, on separate sides of the supply chain as there's been, ongoing shipment and logistics issues in the industry. You know, we view things like, you know, film and sheet as remaining stable. You know, as we mentioned, our really highly customized catalysts that we, you know, we're specified into really the world-class producers of polyethylene, you know, companies that are on the very low end of the cost curve due to their, you know, their scale and their location and their cost of energy. Our customer base is generally, you know, maintains a very high utilization. We feel pretty good about polyethylene going forward. Great. How are you thinking about, you know, the potential benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act? You know, are there any sort of growth investments that become, you know, more incrementally attractive, whether it be catalysts for renewable fuels or something in plastics recycling? You know, how are you positioning yourself, you know, given that, the bill? Yeah, I mean, reviewing the Inflation Reduction Act, it really supports several aspects of the business. You know, first, there's tax credits and loans for green infrastructure. So as I mentioned before, that's really where the virgin acid segment plays a vital role in the production of those metals and minerals that are gonna be required to produce things like wind turbines, solar panels, you know, et cetera. The act also extends the credits for renewable fuels and introduces a new credit for sustainable aviation fuel, which is kind of the next generation of renewable fuels. That we expect really sustainable aviation fuel to really start being adopted heavily around mid-decade. Finally, the clean vehicles element of the act, you know, again, encourages those vehicles to be made with metals and minerals that are produced here in the U.S., which will be a tailwind for the mining sector and virgin acid. In general, the Inflation Reduction Act is very, you know, very positive for, you know, numerous segments of our business. You did mention the plastics recycling. We again, as we've talked about that before, we're working with, you know, major plastics producers on, you know, Catalyst Technology that really enables the catalytic pyrolysis or catalytic recycling of plastics, and we expect that to really kind of be commercialized in mid-decade. Great. Thank you. Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning. Just two questions on cadence. One, to follow up on the last question. When new renewable diesel capacity ramps up, is there an initial fill order for your product, or is your sales to that facility gonna be tied more to just their actual production run rates? Yeah. Yes and yes. We have, when you look at our renewable fuels exposure, it is really on two sides of the business. Starting on the Ecoservices side, the Chem32 catalyst activation business that we acquired last year, they are sulfiding the hydroprocessing side of that process. Those hydroprocessing catalysts, when the unit's built, requires it to be sulfided, and then those catalysts end up being changed out every year to 18 months. There's kind of a natural repeat business that goes through that. On the Catalyst Technologies side, we're making, you know, zeolite catalysts that are used in what, you know, the dewaxing side of that process. Those are more for the initial fills, and then the changeout rate on those is a little bit longer, you know, multiyear changeout rate. We kind of play on both sides, where one, we on the initial fill, both businesses do benefit, but then there's, you know, the intermittent changeouts that occur, you know, anywhere from, you know, 10-18 months on the Ecoservices side and, you know, a couple years on the Catalyst Technologies side. Okay. No, that's very helpful. Then when you look at the scale of the investments that have been proposed already in the renewable diesel area, do you have enough capacity to serve that by flexing and shifting capacity over from other end markets? Or do you need to undertake a investment cycle? If you do, when do you need to do that to be ready for the customers? On the catalyst activation side for renewables, when we purchased the Chem32 business, one of the things that was attractive about that business was its scalability. We are actively scoping and looking at ways to scale that up to meet that growing demand, as you know, especially as new renewable units are built, will require, you know, not only new fills, but then the recharge of those fills and meeting that demand. On the renewable side for the Catalyst Technologies business for the zeolite catalysts, you know, clearly we have capacity in that sector that we can flex between our emission controls production. Some of those assets are fungible between both. As you know, as demand grows or we need to create capacity for one or the other, we can flex between the products. Okay, great. Then separately on the heavy-duty diesel side, what's your, you know, will you see a downturn in volumes at the same time as production of the vehicles, or do you know, once the backlogs are worked off, or will you see a slowdown before the backlogs are kind of finished? I mean, just what's your place in the inventory cycle? Yeah. I mean, we've seen, you know, that business is obviously has gone through, you know, supply chain disruptions, particularly on the chip side. We have seen customers that are starting to, you know, they're starting to stock up and order in anticipation of working that backlog down. I think, you know, the backlog is, you know, pretty much was created over a two-year period. We think that's got, you know, kind of a longer tail to it. Once we come to, you know, kind of the end of that and more of a normalization, there are new, you know, both Europe and the U.S. are considering new regulations, which will require even more stringent emission controls, which will eventually require more zeolite catalysts for those emission controls. We kind of view it as, you know, if we're looking, you know, more long-term ish, working off of that backlog, over the next, you know, couple of years, 'cause it'll take a while to do that. Then after that, additional demand really coming from new regulations. Okay. Got it. Okay, great. Thank you. Again, it was star one if you had a question. We'll go next to David Silver with C.L. King. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. I'll apologize in advance. I did have to step away at one or two points here. I have a couple of questions to start on the sulfur side. First, I just was hoping you could refresh my memory on the mechanism for sulfur cost pass-throughs. In other words, you know, we've seen a steep run-up earlier this year and now a pretty, you know, steep decline in the price of sulfur. Is the pass-through mechanism kind of seamless or are there leads and lags that may, you know, impact your reported quarterly results? I mean, how seamless would that pass-through mechanism be? Yeah. Thanks for the question, David. I think, you know, it's not perfectly seamless. There are small lags both, you know, from where we purchase from our suppliers, may lag with the current market prices. Then obviously our the contractual mechanism point of that, you know, may lag a little bit, but it's nothing very material. You know, we always have been pretty good with closely overlapping the sulfur costs with what our, you know, what our actual pricing is, you know, to our customers. It's really not a big, you know, what we call sour spot or sweet spot out there where you're on one side or the other. Okay, thanks. A question about your virgin sulfuric acid production capability. I mean, you've cited that as a source of stronger growth for a number of quarters now. Where are you on your own capacity utilization for the virgin product? In particular, can you just remind me, but is it possible or practical to debottleneck, you know, your sulfuric acid unit, or is it the case where you'd really have to go greenfield, which I recall at world scale can be pretty expensive. Thanks. Yeah. I would say the, you know, the utilization on, you know, on the acids both on, regeneration and virgin acid, not just with us, but really in the whole industry is high. You know, you've probably seen that if you've read, you know, about, you know, the demand for virgin acid has obviously been very strong, to support some of the fundamentals we spoke about earlier. We're constantly innovating in the Ecoservices business and working on, debottlenecking projects. You know, we had mentioned some in the past quarters where we've installed new logistics, capabilities, particularly at the Houston site where we installed, you know, pretty much doubled our rail shipment capability. We've gone back and are actually adding to that right now. We've added rail capacity to the Martinez plant this year. We've got several other projects that are really targeted towards virgin acid in the Southern California and Midwest plant where we can actually increase the amount of sulfur throughput that we can have in the furnaces. There's things out there that we're constantly working on to incrementally debottleneck the units. You know, a lot of it is, you know, we're replacing pieces of equipment with larger pieces of equipment or larger pumping capability that just allows us to produce more virgin sulfuric acid, which has allowed us to really, you know, keep pace with the growing market demand. Okay, great. One last one on the sulfuric acid, but I have read an article recently, linking, you know, very strong demand for sulfuric acid with lithium production in particular. You know, apart from the trajectory of, you know, global lithium production, is there anything especially unique about the processing, you know, or the extraction of lithium, going on that would lead to an unusually high, you know, intensity of sulfuric acid consumption in that end market? You know, so apart from the production growth level, but is the process itself especially, you know, intensive user of sulfuric acid? Thank you. Yeah. I think it really gets back to just the ore content, right? So you have projects that you're trying to drive smaller amounts of minerals out of a larger amount of rock, I think, for the lithium. So you're just requiring more sulfuric acid. You know, we've seen everything from upwards of 20 tons of sulfuric acid per ton of lithium carbonate produced. You know, on the copper side, that's lower, where it's 3-5 tons of sulfuric per ton of copper produced. One of the things that is now going on in, I would say, the metals industry is, you know, metal prices have become so favorable and metals demand high for these green infrastructure projects, where we're seeing mines go back and go after, I'd say, you know, they call leach piles, you know, things, you know, ores that have already been processed that have residual metals and minerals on them, and they'll go and re-leach them with even more amounts of sulfuric acid to try to drive out as much metal as they possibly can. So that's led to even higher demand of sulfuric acid. Okay. Last question would be about your share buyback activity, and this would be along the lines of, you know, how you decide, you know, where to direct kind of incremental buyback activity. You know, I did look at the final prospectus from August on the secondary offering by your major stockholder. You indicated above and beyond that, you know, you chose to purchase, I think, 1.1 million shares in the open market here. When I think about, you know, kind of the optimal way to conduct that, I'm just scratching my head, but, you know, you are able to get a discount, I guess, off of the market when you go in one direction and you're purchasing at full market, you know, give or take in the other direction. You know, I'm just wondering from the point of view of stability of the share price and return on your buyback dollars, you know, how do you think about, you know, negotiating directly with a major shareholder versus going out in the open market to conduct those buybacks? Thank you. Yeah. Hey, David, it's Mike. The open market purchases were done prior to the purchase with the secondary. Right? That was really an extension of what we had done at the end of the second quarter that bled into the beginning of the third quarter. Again, we look at that really for, you know, academically, you know, when your stock price is trading a lot lower than our expectations are, and as Kurt mentioned, you know, we believe that the stock is undervalued. It made sense to execute those open market purchases. Then when we executed on the stock buyback as part of the August secondary, you know, those were, you know, not necessarily negotiated, but they were just in conjunction with the price that was executed under the secondary. Again, it was, as you could see, at a lower price, but it was, you know, part of the structure. The ones that were done in the open market were under the, you know, the 10b5-1 that was in place at the time. Hopefully that helps clarify. We're always looking for a prudent execution to increase shareholder value for those share repurchases. That's very clear. Thank you very much. We have no further questions in the queue at this time. This does conclude the Ecovyst third quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. Thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.