Good morning! Welcome to. I'm Gene Shiels, Director of Investor Relations, and I'm pleased that you're all here, either in person or visiting us through the webcast, as I believe we have a very compelling story to share with you today on how Ecovyst is positioned for continued growth and increase in shareholder value. Before we move to the formal presentations, I'll cover a few housekeeping items. Please note that some of the information that we'll share today is forward-looking information, including information about the company's financial and operating performance, strategies, anticipated end-use demand trends, and financial outlook. This information is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and implementation of the company's plans to vary materially. Any forward-looking information we share today speaks only as of this date. These risks are discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures mentioned today with their corresponding GAAP measures can be found in presentation materials that are filed this morning as a Form 8-K, and which will be posted on the investor section of our website at ecovyst.com. In terms of our agenda this morning, we have a break planned at around 10, and during the break, there'll be refreshments, coffee, and other things out in the lobby, and we encourage you to visit with the Ecovyst team members and the board members that are present with us today at the break and after the formal sessions. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Kurt Bitting, our CEO. Kurt's been in the chemical industry for 25 years. Lots of experience. He joined Ecoservices in 2006 as sulfur products manager when Ecovyst was a division of Rhodia. As the Ecoservices business was transitioned to Solvay, Kurt held several positions and important roles, and helped lead the sale of the Ecoservices business when it was divested by Solvay. Kurt was appointed President of Ecoservices in 2019, and Chief Executive of Ecovyst in April of last year. Given Kurt's background and tenure with the company, he has extensive experience and deep knowledge of the industries and the customers we serve. Kurt's overseen the strategies that have driven our growth and our strong margin profile, and this morning, he'll share with you the strategies that will drive Ecovyst's success in the future. Kurt? Thank you, Gene. It's great to see everybody today. Thank you for coming today to today's Investor Day, and thank you for your continued interest in Ecovyst. Before we get going today, I first would like to introduce the Ecovyst board members that are in attendance today. We have Kevin Fogarty, our Chairman, David Bradley, and Anna Catalano. Each of these three executives brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in both the chemical and energy industries to Ecovyst. Please feel free to chat with them during the break or after the presentation. I've been a part of many of the exciting moments in Ecovyst's history. This includes our rebranding in 2021, divestitures and acquisitions, as well as launching new products at key blue-chip customers. But it's now, at this day, that I'm most excited about Ecovyst's great future. Today's presentation, we have a couple key takeaways for you. First, we're gonna review Ecovyst's great business model, the moats around our segments, and how that sustains best-in-class profitability. We'll review our R&D and innovation focus, and how that drives product and application development. We'll then lay out how we plan to continue to win in our core segments while capitalizing on emerging opportunities in those sustainability-focused areas. Finally, we'll review the growing in EBITDA and cash generation, and talk about how we're gonna employ a balanced capital allocation strategy. Ecovyst is made up of 880 engaged and empowered employees, most of whom sit at one of our 10 production locations. We primarily service blue-chip customers located in North America that have substantial scale and are well-positioned on their cost curves. Our customers represent numerous industries, including refining, mining, plastics and polymers, and many others. In all cases, our products and services are absolutely critical to our customers' production process, meaning our products cannot be easily substituted. Our products also represent a low portion of our customers' overall production cost, and this high value add enables us to pass our costs through, which has enabled us to maintain high EBITDA margins, even in the face, in the face of steep inflation. We have long-term customer relationships, and many of our customer contracts feature things like capacity reservations and take-or- pays. Ecovyst also has a strong commitment and focus to to sustainability. This focus on sustainability extends to both how we operate our facilities and the products that we bring to market. This commitment to sustainability has been recognized with the EcoVadis Gold sustainability rating.... Ecovyst has a track record of delivering consistent financial performance. From 2018 to 2022, Ecovyst delivered a 6% EBITDA CAGR, while maintaining 30% EBITDA margins. We've been able to deliver leading cash conversion, typically in the 70% range, and this is due to the strong pass-through and long-term nature of our customer contracts. This strong cash generation has enabled us to repurchase $24 million, or roughly about 17% of our outstanding share base since April 2022. So Ecovyst is made up of two strong and stable businesses, both of which are leaders in their respective segments. First thing you're gonna notice is that we've changed the name of the Catalyst Technology segment to Advanced Materials & Catalysts. This name change doesn't just represent a shiny new rebranding, but it represents a true expansion in our playing field, where we believe that we have the material science expertise to enable solutions for emerging technologies such as advanced plastics recycling, renewable fuels, and others. Advanced Materials & Catalysts is also a leader in high-density polyethylene catalysts, as well as hydrocracking catalysts and emission controls catalysts through our Zeolyst joint venture. Ecoservices is the North American leader for sulfuric acid regeneration, critical for the production of alkylate, which is the cleanest-burning gasoline component. We're also the North American leader for merchant Virgin Sulfuric Acid and a critical supplier of Catalyst Activation and waste Treatment Services. The two business segments complement each other in that they both actually service a pretty similar list of blue-chip customer names, albeit we sell them the different processes of those customers, and both segments also overlap in some key areas, such as renewable fuels, where we produce renewable fuels catalyst materials and activate renewable fuels catalysts through the Chem32 segment. Ecovyst's ability to win and drive shareholder value is derived from our differentiated and competitive advantages. Our innovation and material science expertise has aligned with our customers' needs for sustainable products, where we think there are really huge opportunities for growth. Our innovative spirit and long track record of delivering great, reliable service through our network of plants has led to high switching barriers and long-standing customer relationships with industry leaders. Favorable contract structures and high margins have ensued from these competitive advantages, and this protects Ecovyst's bottom line and allows us to invest for the future. We're gonna talk a lot today about the great future and the products that Ecovyst has to offer, but I'd first like to take a moment to review how Ecovyst has been able to innovate and adapt over its history. The timeline you see up here on the slide is representative of the segments that are currently within Ecovyst. So the predecessor company to Ecoservices was Stauffer Chemical Company. Some of you may recognize that name. In the late 1880s, Stauffer Chemical founded its first sulfuric acid plant in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, we started servicing one of our largest Virgin Sulfuric Acid customers, who we've continuously supplied since then. In 1943, Stauffer Chemical pioneered the sulfuric acid regeneration process, which was critical for the production of alkylate, which was needed for aviation gasoline for the World War II effort. Then, in the 1980s, we launched our first catalyst products, and then 35 years ago, we formed the Zeolyst joint venture with Shell, where we supply high-quality zeolites for hydrocracking and dewaxing applications. 2017, the company IPO'd with its four segments as PQ Group. Then in 2020 and in 2021, the company underwent a strategic review, at which time we decided to divest the the Potters glass beads business and PQ's chemical segment. At the same time, we rebranded as Ecovyst and acquired the Chem32 activation business. This portfolio transformation left Ecovyst with the segments that have the highest cash generations, highest margin profile, and most potential for growth. So let's fast-forward now to November 28, 2023. Ecovyst is a unique and attractive mix of some great core businesses that have leading positions in both clean fuels and clean transport, critical industrials, and emerging areas where our technology enables sustainable and low-carbon solutions. We have grouped our products here into three classes of growth trajectories, their core, industrial, and emerging. Our strategy is centered on creating shareholder value by leveraging those competitive advantages and applying a tailored approach to each of these three areas to maximize their, their potential. Our core group of businesses is made up of the segments such as regeneration, hydrocracking, and Treatment Services. Here, we have leading and differentiated positions in these markets. We plan to invest to increase our production capability through operational efficiency gains and enhance reliability. We'll also continue our commercial excellence program, where we are able to leverage the high value add that we bring to our customers' processes to continue our history of stable cash generation. That cash generation. The material science expertise and those customer relationships gained in the core segments enable us to win in the emerging and industrial segments. Polyethylene and catalysts represent the middle. Our polyethylene virgin acid represent the middle, what we call industrial growth. Here, we plan capacity expansions and debottlenecking to keep up with the growing demand in these spaces. Our recent announcement of the expansion of the Kansas City plant is an example of the initiatives in this area. Renewables, functionalized silicas, plastic circularity, and activation make up the emerging segments. Here, we will drive innovation and invest to keep up with the growing demand for these products. Finally, we've operated our sites and serviced our customers for many decades, so we believe that by improving our already safe, sustainable, and responsible workplaces will enable us to execute on our strategic initiatives. Ecovyst products and services are a critical part of the value chains for many end uses. Many of these are growing very rapidly as they enable sustainable low-carbon solutions. When it comes to talking about the end uses that we touch, it's almost easier to pick out the ones that we don't, and that's why, and that's because Virgin Sulfuric Acid is one of the most widely used chemicals in the world, and polyethylene for packaging and film is in many of the products that we touch every day. In terms of transport, we play both in clean and green fuels, where regeneration enables alkylate production for clean, high-octane gasoline, and our hydrocracking catalysts enable the production of low sulfur diesel and marine fuel. We serve as green fuel applications with Advanced Materials & Catalysts, as well as activation services, which enable both renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. Our products also touch diverse segments such as mining, where sulfuric acid is essential for the domestic processing of the minerals that were required for electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and other associated green infrastructure. Advanced Materials & Catalysts are also crucial to nascent sustainable solutions, such as renewal or advanced plastic circularity, immobilized enzymes, and other technologies. Our products and services benefit from industry trends that should drive broad-based growth across all of our segments. We expect GDP plus type growth from the clean fuel segments, backed by tightening fuel regulations, as well as growing product exports. Our industrial areas are expected to benefit from onshoring and the growing demand for metals and minerals. In the emerging areas, we feel that our zeolites and silicas enable the production of low-carbon solutions such as renewables, advanced plastics recycling, and carbon capture. Our strategy focuses on increasing shareholder value by leveraging the stability and cash generation of our core segments to accelerate organic growth in those industrial and emerging segments. I refer to our growth as balanced because we do expect broad-based growth across all segments. In fact, we anticipate that each segment will roughly contribute 1/3 of the revenue growth over the next five years. We do believe that the fast-paced growth in the emerging areas will evolve into an Ecovyst with a faster-growing Ecovyst, with sustained high margins and an evolved business mix. Now I'm gonna take a few minutes to review the individual business segments. Ecovyst, or Ecoservices, has a proven track record of long-term growth. Since 2014, when the business was spun out of Solvay, the EBITDA has more than doubled. The major segments of Ecoservices are sulfuric acid regeneration, where we're the North American leader for recycling sulfuric acid for the refinery production of alkylate. Virgin Sulfuric Acid, where we're the North American leader, supplying high quality, high-strength sulfuric acid for industrial and mining applications. Catalyst Activation through our Chem32 segment, which was acquired in 2021, provides off-site or ex- situ Catalyst Activation services for both traditional refining hydroprocessing catalysts as well as renewable fuels units, and our treatment service segment, where we incinerate hazardous waste, which enables us to lower our natural gas usage. I want to take some time briefly to talk about our long-term beliefs around the growth drivers in regeneration and alkylation. Regeneration supports alkylate, which is one of the most profitable products that a refinery produces, and that's because alkylate is the cleanest burning gasoline component, it's high octane, and it typically makes up 40%-50% of a gallon of premium gasoline. This is important because government mandates are calling for cleaner, higher octane gasoline to power more efficient turbocharged engines. We get asked a lot, "What's the effect of EV penetration on the regeneration business?" And we feel very strongly that the regeneration business has a long tail, and this is supported by some key projections. First, the EIA projects that in 2028, refinery utilization will be 92%, which is higher than what it is today. Additionally, refining or gasoline exports from refineries will grow by 800,000 barrels a day, or roughly 9%. If we look beyond to 2040, the EIA projects that there will still be 212 million internal combustion engines on American roads, only a slight decrease from the current 231 million. Additionally, product exports or gasoline exports will have grown by 13%, largely offsetting any domestic decline in gasoline consumption. At the same time, we expect the virgin acid business to benefit handsomely from electric vehicle growth, and that's because it will require a major expansion in domestic mining operations, as well as higher production for nylon and other lightweighting materials that make up electric vehicles. We also believe the Catalyst Activation business will benefit from the continued trend of refineries looking to outsource their Catalyst Activation services, as well as the growing number of renewable fuels units. So Advanced Materials & Catalysts. This is centered on two major platforms. First, our advanced silica business. Here, we use our expert knowledge in silicas to innovate customized catalyst solutions for leading high-density polyethylene producers, as well as silica supports for low-density polyethylene and chemical catalysts. More recently, we've introduced more nascent solutions, including functionalized silicas for immobilized enzymes and advanced silicas for CO2 absorption. Zeolyst is our 35-year joint venture with Shell, is the second segment. Here, our knowledge of the zeolite structure enables us to produce hydrocracking catalyst, renewable fuels catalyst materials, emission controls catalyst, and now zeolites for advanced plastics recycling. Global sustainability initiatives are expected to boost growth in Advanced Materials & Catalysts. Polyethylene for light weighting and packaging and film is expected to grow above GDP as the global middle class continues to expand and e-commerce continues to gain traction. Other growth drivers in advanced silicas include biocatalysts, where enzyme reactions enable green chemistry and silicas enable carbon capture. In Zeolyst, we expect our renewable fuels catalyst materials will continue to grow as renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel represent the only viable way to decarbonize both heavy duty and aviation transport. And zeolites aid in plastic circularity, where they're able to lower the energy intensity of the reaction, as well as increase the product quality. The segments that Ecovyst has selected to play in are all supported by long-term sustainable growth trends. We expect innovation to drive growth in the emerging areas, where there's a strong pull towards sustainable and low-carbon technologies. Our industrial segments will continue to grow as we leverage our customer relationships and innovation to continue our asymmetric win rate at leading producers. And as I discussed before, our plans for operational efficiency gains and enhanced reliability will yield volumetric gains in Ecoservices. So given the strong cash generation of the business and being mindful of other capital allocation priorities, such as deleveraging, we will look to opportunistically add to these areas, especially in the emerging segments, where we see strong adjacencies as well as the ability to quickly integrate. Our Chem32 acquisition in 2021 is a prime example of the type of M&A that we'll pursue to push our growth rates even higher than the all-organic rates that I've referenced before. So everywhere you go in Ecovyst, you'll find that our core purpose is to deliver high-performance products, reliable service, and form deep customer relationships. This is the North Star that we all follow. This desire for high-performance products and deep customer relationships requires a flat organization that depends on high employee empowerment. This enables us to make fast decisions and quickly customize solutions. In Ecoservices, where many of our customer relationships reach back more than 70 years, Ecovyst employees actually manage the customer's supply chains, and in some cases, we have Ecovyst employees embedded on customer sites operating their logistics. In advanced silicas, in Advanced Materials & Catalysts, our customers rely on our silica and zeolite knowledge to quickly adapt solutions for their end market needs. We feel that this agile and empowering model will enable us to execute on our ambitious growth strategy. Great company with a forward-looking strategy is indicative of a highly qualified and aligned management team. Our team is a mix of both newcomers, with Colleen, Sean, George, and Paul all joining within the last 15 months, and Mike, Joe, and I, who have been involved with Ecovyst for 17 years now. So we have a nice mix of new ideas and history. But what's more important is that this team has nearly 200 years of combined experience working in and around the chemical industry. So Ecovyst is a unique and attractive mix of some core and emerging businesses, but more importantly, we are already capitalizing on global sustainability trends. We believe that our durable competitive advantages will continue to lead the strong margins and cash generation, which enables us to employ a balanced capital allocation strategy where we can fund our growth and prioritize our deleveraging. For the balance of this meeting today, you're gonna hear about Ecovyst's internal sustainability initiatives, the strengths and opportunities in Ecoservices, and the truly innovative developments in the Advanced Materials & Catalysts segment. Mike will then demonstrate how our growth expectations distill into an organization with healthy margins, steady cash flows, which we believe will create value for our shareholders. I wanna thank everybody for attending today, and thank you for your interest in Ecovyst. I'm now gonna turn the presentation over to Colleen, who is gonna talk about Ecovyst's focus and commitment to sustainability. Good morning, everybody. I'm the newest member of the management team at Ecovyst, and I've spent about three and a half decades advising clients on legal, environmental, health and safety, and product stewardship issues. And I started doing that when I was twelve years old. Just saying. I'm pleased to present Ecovyst's sustainability framework to you today. Our internal and external focus on our sustainability initiatives makes us unique and sets us apart. As you'll learn this morning, our sustainability efforts are driven by our operations and by our delivery of inorganic products to our customers. Internally, we drive sustainability through our automated optimization efforts and our enhanced reliability programs, and externally, we drive it through our cutting-edge R&D leadership with our customers. At Ecovyst, we're on a continuous sustainability journey with quantifiable goals. We're pleased with the progress we're making today, and we expect to make great progress in the future. George is gonna cover a lot of this, but I'm just gonna highlight Ecoservices from a sustainability standpoint. Our acid regeneration operations focus internally on sustainability by recycling 1.5 million tons of sulfuric acid, delivering regenerated acid back to our customers for use. This acid would otherwise be disposed of either by deep well injection or through incineration. We also use steam from our furnaces to power our equipment, and we make an awful lot of electricity through our turbine generators at our plants, enough to power approximately 11,000 homes each and every year. Our Treatment Services operations take high heat value waste, waste that typically aren't accepted by others other than for incineration. From there, again, we take the heat value, we produce steam, and we produce a lot of electricity. As Kurt had mentioned, in our virgin acid production process, that supports copper production through mining, and that is essential to electrification end uses and green energy. Our Ecoservices Chem32 plant activates catalysts that we give to our customers, and they use them in their renewable diesel fuels production operations. As George will discuss, increased use of these activated catalysts is expected to accelerate the transition to greener energy. We also focus on advancing our sustainability externally, and Paul will get into a lot of those examples through our advanced materials and catalyst collaboration with customers. That collaboration starts at a very early stage, where we meet with customers, we take innovations and ideas through the various R&D phases to production and to ultimately inorganic product sales. Here, our R&D investment linked to sustainability was at 60% in 2015, and it rose to 83% in 2022. As Paul will discuss, we plan to further expand our product lines to support our customers' sustainability initiatives. Here are some examples, and again, Paul will go into detail on a lot of these. Our Alpha product lines support contaminant absorption in produced water from oil and gas production. They also support carbon capture, storage, and use, enzymes immobilization for biocatalysis, and metals recovery. Our Opal, or Opal, product line support a decrease in the energy intensity of plastics recycling. They support sustainable aviation fuel production, which I'll talk about a little later, and also emissions abatement in heavy-duty diesel engine vehicles.... In 2022, actually, before I started with the company, Ecovyst kicked off its Sustainability Leadership Awards. This program recognizes that our best sustainability initiatives start with our employees and their ideas and innovations, and it drives home our culture of sustainability throughout Ecovyst. We believe that it's going to enable us to meet great sustainability standards for years to come. The program has three award levels. The first level is Best New Products or Processes. The second level deals with Impactful Social Contributions to the communities where we serve, and the third level is the Most Impactful Climate Change Reduction Project. That's the Environmental Award, and in 2022, that award went to our Baton Rouge, Louisiana, facility for internally improving sustainability through its operations. Specifically, this plant installed automated temperature and oxygen controls at one of its furnaces to improve efficiency, and in the first year alone, we realized reduction in natural gas consumption beyond our target. We exceeded it by greater than 20%. That equates to greenhouse gas emission reductions of greater than 21,500 metric tons. These optimization efforts were subsequently rolled out at the other Baton Rouge furnace and also at our Dominguez, but I see by our chart there, it's also Long Beach, California, facility. We expect to roll these optimization efforts out at our remaining Ecoservices furnaces by 2028. As Kurt mentioned, the most viable way to reduce carbon intensity in the heavy trucking and aviation transportation industry is through the production of renewable fuels. Some of our R&D focus is on creating products to enable cleaner, more sustainable fuels, particularly sustainable aviation fuels and renewable diesel fuels. Our zeolite products that Paul will be speaking about for sustainable aviation fuel production are an example of that external sustainability focus by producing inorganic products. There is a current and rapidly expanding need for sustainable aviation fuels, and that is driven by industry standards and also by mandates and goals set by governments. An industry standard to highlight is the ASTM temperature standard for preventing freezing and clogging. The U.S. challenge is to dramatically increase sustainable aviation fuel production to at least 3 billion gallons per year by 2030, and up to 35 billion gallons by 2050. The proposed E.U. mandate is to increase sustainable fuel availability at E.U. airports from 2% in 2025, all the way up to 63% in 2050. Our zeolite product is and will continue to be instrumental in meeting our customers' sustainability initiatives to meet this dramatic goal for sustainable aviation fuels. For inorganic products, for renewable fuels production, our products are currently in use in over 15 customer locations, with over 30 additional customer projects in the pipeline. We have an award-winning sustainability program, and we're proud of it. And as Kurt had mentioned, our EcoVadis Gold sustainability rating was received in 2022, and we're reapplying for that rating again in 2023. It placed us in the top 3% of companies in our peer group, and the Gold rating recognizes our achievements in sustainability in four key areas: environment, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement. We're also a proud American Chemistry Council member, and they've recognized us for excellence and achievement in the areas of employee and contractor safety. These awards are a testament to our commitment to safety and our safety culture. We're also proud of product stewardship and safety-related awards by various railroads that emphasize our commitment to safety, not only in our own plants and our own communities, but well beyond those facility boundaries. In fact, in 2022, greater than 99.9% of our shipments were incident-free shipments. Also, our sustainability program closely aligns with widely recognized standards: SASB, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, to name a few. You can look to our issued 2022 sustainability report for alignment information. So now let's get to Ecovyst sustainability goals. We have 10 specific goals, and they cover the environmental, social, and governance landscape. But I'm only gonna highlight four of those goals today, and you can see them on the screen. First, let's talk about fuel and power usage. The 2030 goals embody our plans to limit our energy consumption. For fuel usage, it translates to a 10% reduction in natural gas usage, and for power usage, it translates to us achieving 75%-80% of our on-site electrical use through our own homegrown generated electricity. In the aggregate, these two goals represent greenhouse gas emission reductions of 66,000 metric tons, and that's roughly the equivalent of approximately 16,000 cars. For health, safety, and environmental performance, or HSE performance, we strive at Ecovyst to make every day a perfect day throughout our entire company, and that metric is very unique to us. We don't only track the incidents that are recordable or reportable to a government agency, but we also sweat the small stuff by looking at smaller internal incidents, in a lot of cases in the environmental realm, where you have a release, and it's contained in secondary containment and does not get to the environment. Our added internal accountability metrics set us apart from most other companies, so we're tying ourselves to a very high standard, and that led to a perfect day goal per business unit of greater than or equal to 95%, and that's 347 perfect days every year within each of the two business segments. Finally, we strive to be a good partner with the communities where we are located. Ecovyst has a long history of helping the local communities through volunteer efforts, through goods and services, through scholarship opportunities, and also through financial support. Based on my long history of serving on the advisory board for the Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Center in Camden, New Jersey, I know firsthand the benefits that we get from helping our communities, lifting them up, and it also helps us and our well-being to be able to serve. When we band together to make a difference, amazing things can happen. So in this vein, we're excited to roll out our community engagement program with a goal of encouraging employees to take up to eight hours per year paid volunteer time, with a company goal of at least 1,800 hours of volunteer time per year by 2030. Again, our sustainability efforts are focused internally on our operations through optimization and energy consumption, and externally through our inorganic products to help our customers with their sustainability initiatives. We're excited for Ecovyst's future, and we're eager to attain each of our sustainability goals in the years to come. We're proud that our technologies, our inorganic products, our recycling efforts, and our power generation will have a direct and measurable positive impact on the environment and on the communities we serve, and we're pleased to provide our customers with valuable inorganic products to help them along their sustainability journey as well. I thank you for your time, and I'd now like to turn it over to George Vann of Ecoservices. Thank you, Colleen. Good morning. I'm George Vann, President of Ecoservices. I have over 30 years of experience in the chemical industry, working for Engelhard Corporation, BASF, W.R. Grace, and now Ecovyst. During that time, I've held a variety of leadership positions in manufacturing, sales, procurement, and business management. In August of last year, I joined Ecovyst, and I'm excited to be here today to share with you the details of the Ecoservices business, how we're positioned for growth, and the strategic levers we've put in place to achieve that growth. First, a brief overview of the Ecoservices business. Sulfuric acid is one of the most commonly used and widely used chemicals in the world and is a critical component in a variety of markets, including petroleum refining, mining, and many industrial applications. Ecoservices has a strong and established leadership position in the markets we serve.... We are the leading supplier of sulfur-related services to the refining and chemical industries, enjoying the number-one supplier position for most of the markets we serve. Ecoservices has a stable and steady customer demand, and we expect this demand to continue through the next 15+ years. As Kurt mentioned in his opening comments, we strongly believe that the regeneration portion of our business has a very long tail, and that demand for this product and our services will continue even with the growth of electric vehicles. Further, we serve six of the top 10 major oil refineries in the U.S., which we think best positions us to supply sulfuric acid for many years to these world-scale companies who are positioned for the long term. Some of our competitive advantages include high switching cost for customers and high barriers to entry for new entrants. The key takeaway for Ecoservices is we believe in the long-term durability of our U.S. refining customers and our strategic position to supply these customers. The Ecoservices portfolio is divided into four business units: Regeneration Services, Virgin Sulfuric Acid, Catalyst Activation, and Treatment Services. As I've already mentioned, we are the number one supplier of Regeneration Services for refinery alkylation units in the country. In our virgin acid business unit, we are the leading producer in North America of specialty high-quality grades of sulfuric acid that are used in a variety of industrial applications, including mining, nylon intermediates production, and industrial applications. Virgin Sulfuric Acid is in the industrial growth segment that Kurt mentioned earlier, and is expected to grow in the mid to high single digits over the next five years, with increases in both volume and pricing. Our third business unit is Catalyst Activation, which is the Chem32 business we acquired in 2021, and this is expected to be the highest growth area for Ecoservices and is part of the emerging growth segment, with revenue growth projected in the double digits by 2028. This growth is driven by increasing demand for cleaner and renewable fuels. Treatment Services rounds out our business portfolio and is a unique service that enables Ecoservices to realize high energy value from hazardous waste that our customers want to dispose of. Processing this waste eliminates other, more costly options and provides Ecoservices with a source of thermal energy that decreases our demand for natural gas in our furnaces. This service complements our regeneration business, as we use the same acids for regeneration acid, as well as for the processing of hazardous materials from Treatment Services. Regeneration and Treatment Services are core business segments for Ecoservices, and we expect this to grow in the mid-single digits over the next five years, with increases in both pricing and some volume. I'll cover each of these businesses in more detail shortly. As you can see on this slide, greater than 65% of alkylation capacity is located in the West Coast and the Gulf Coast regions. Our sites are strategically located in the same regions, near our customers and the markets we serve. This extensive network of site operations and logistics capabilities provides a competitive advantage for our customers and secures supply in the event of any supply chain disruption in any particular location. Further, our position in California gives us a well-established franchise for the West Coast supply. Ecoservices has one of the largest fleets of rail cars specifically designed to transport sulfuric acid, and we've established high safety standards, which have resulted in receiving numerous safety and sustainability awards from major rail carriers, including BNSF and Canadian National. We also own a fleet of 19 barges that allows us to supply our customers along the Gulf Coast. Our contracts with customers are multiyear agreements that generally represent the majority of supply for those customers' demands. What Ecoservices provides is not a commodity chemical, but rather a unique service and a reputation for reliability that ensures our customer needs are met with the high-quality product they need. It is this service and our reputation that enables Ecoservices to achieve higher margins than a typical chemical supplier. There are three key strategic initiatives that will help drive our growth for Ecoservices. First, operational excellence and enhanced reliability. We have already several groups in place that focus on sharing best practices and increasing the reliability of our assets. In the third quarter of this year, we initiated a new program aimed at achieving even greater results in these areas over the next five years. Specifically, in terms of reliability, we are increasing the staffing of our reliability organization, and this team will focus on strategic elements that leverage industry-leading technologies and best practices, like equipment, strategies, and reliability modeling, which will further enhance our existing efforts. The next area of focus is automation at our sites to improve our operating efficiencies, reduce waste, and increase throughput. We want to leverage our existing capabilities, like we did with our Baton Rouge furnace optimization project that Colleen mentioned, and expand on them to increase on-stream time and the volume we produce. Both of these initiatives are multiyear efforts, which we believe will significantly enhance the growth and the growth plans for Ecoservices. We plan for the reliability initiatives to increase operational efficiency by greater than 10% and automation to increase capacity by more than 70,000 tons, both of these by 2028. The final strategic initiative is our growth at our Chem32 site, which is designed to increase the processing capacity of that site. We are preparing to submit our air emissions permit application for the Chem32 site that is expected to increase the efficiency of our emission controls process with the installation of a new thermal oxidizer system. This system will be designed to allow for capacity expansion, which includes the planned addition of multiple reactors over the next four years. This expansion is expected to double the capacity of our existing Catalyst Activation units by 2027. Together, these initiatives are expected to contribute significant Adjusted EBITDA growth over the next five years, enabling us to grow in the mid-single digits. As Kurt has mentioned, increasing fuel regulations are a major driver for the demand for alkylate, which requires sulfuric acid in its process. As Kurt mentioned, alkylate is the most desirable blending component because it increases octane without negatively impacting other clean fuel specifications. It is often referred to as liquid gold in the refining industry. Alkylate economics are also higher than other fuel-blending fuel components and drive refineries to maximize alkylate production whenever possible. Alkylate makes up about 13% of the regular gasoline pool and as much as 45% of premium gasoline. As shown in the graph, the use of premium gas has steadily increased over the past 10 years. Additionally, the use of higher grades of gasoline is expected to increase, with the number of smaller turbocharged engines also increasing. Since 2020, turbocharged engines have increased by 7.5%, while premium gasoline usage has increased by 4 percentage points since 2010. With the push for cleaner-burning fuels and regulations on tail gas emissions, alkylate is the product which refineries turn to, to meet the emissions requirements for fuels. As I mentioned early on the outlook of refining, we see the need for alkylate to continue beyond 2040 as fuel regulations continue to tighten. The Regeneration Services business model is more similar to that of an industrial gas company. We provide a key service to refineries that is more than just a commodity chemical. This enables us to get higher pricing as well as higher margins because of the service we provide. Sulfuric acid is the catalyst that is used in the production of alkylate. So as demand for alkylate grows, so does the need for additional sulfuric acid. Ecoservices regenerates approximately 4.4 million barrels of spent acid annually. Refineries send their spent acid to Ecoservices, where it is combined in the furnace with fresh sulfur to increase the overall acid strength and eliminate the impurities. This regenerated acid is then sent back to the refineries for use in the alkylate process, where it is used until the acid strength reduces to a level that is no longer effective, and then is sent back to Ecoservices for reprocessing. Ecoservices is the number one supplier of regenerated acid in the market. We have relationships with customers that go back more than 70 years. This results in long-term agreements with customers to ensure their supply demands are met. As we look at the growth drivers in this segment over the next five years, there are three key elements. First, we see incremental growth based on pricing increases driven by general market inflation. Second, we expect opportunities for spot business in this space as other suppliers have constrained assets. And then finally, as the need for alkylate grows, customers are planning expansions to meet that need, and we believe we are positioned to be able to supply the additional volume necessary to support those expansions. We think our strategic initiatives of operational excellence and enhanced reliability and automation are key elements that will enable us to win in this market space. The increased reliability is expected to improve our on-stream time, delivering greater than 10% additional volume through our existing assets. We are also working on expanding our logistics capability for both rail and truck to ensure that we can capitalize on the additional volume that will occur. We also have a detailed five-year capital plan, with plans to upgrade major equipment that will increase our overall operational efficiency. Virgin Sulfuric Acid is used in a variety of applications that are expected to grow at rates equal to or higher than GDP. The three key segments for virgin acid use are industrial, which is a diverse collection of end uses, including batteries, water treatment, and semiconductors, mining, and nylon intermediates. The industrial segment of the virgin acid business is the largest portion of this business unit and has growth projected to be in line with GDP. We serve the different end users through a combination of direct sales and distributors. In mining, we project that demand will grow at about 5% for copper, borates, and lithium. These metals are especially in high demand for sustainable energy sources and electric vehicles. For example, there are approximately 5.5 million tons of copper per megawatt in solar power systems. It is projected that there will be 262 GW of new solar installations between 2018 and 2027, and this is just in North America, which would require almost 2 billion pounds of copper. Copper, borate, and lithium mining currently require approximately 4 million tons of sulfuric acid to process the ore mined. Mining companies have their own sulfuric acid, which generate the majority of the acid they need. However, these companies turn to sulfur burners to make on-purpose sulfuric acid to supplement their needs. This merchant demand represents about one-third of the total sulfuric acid needed for mining. So as the overall mining industry grows, so does the need for additional sulfuric acid. Finally, the nylon intermediates represents the final segment for Virgin Sulfuric Acid. In this segment, we are the largest supplier of supersaturated sulfuric acid, which is also known as oleum, to the producers of this material. Our Virgin Sulfuric Acid business, there are three expected growth drivers. First, the growth of mining, which I've already covered. Second, we expect growth consistent with GDP in the industrial—other industrial segments, nylon, chlor-alkali, and water treatment. Third, as the chemical and petrochemical industry grows in line with GDP, this is expected to provide new opportunities for additional sulfuric acid. We plan to win in this segment by supplying the extra volume required over the next several years. Key elements of our strategy are operational excellence and enhanced reliability, and a focus on automation. We plan for these initiatives to deliver additional volumes of Virgin Sulfuric Acid by more than 15% by 2027. To support this increased volume, we are also investing in the expansion of our logistics capability to ensure that we can supply our customers' increasing demand. The Catalyst Activation market represents the segment with the highest projected growth percentage for Ecoservices. When we purchased Chem32 in 2021, there were approximately 40 renewable hydroprocessing units in the world.... As you can see on the chart, that number increased by more than 60% over the past two years, and then this growth is expected to continue for the next several years. Operators for hydroprocessing and renewable units must activate their catalyst prior to using it in their units. This means the catalyst must be subjected to a process called sulfiding, which activates the catalyst. Sulfiding is similar to seasoning a cooking pan prior to use. Seasoning a pan helps prevent foods from sticking and enhances a pan's overall performance. Sulfiding prepares a catalyst to be effective when placed in the reactor. If a catalyst is not properly activated, it will not perform properly in the unit. There are two methods of activation: in-situ activation and ex-situ activation. In-situ activation is performed at the refinery site when the catalyst is already loaded in a reactor. Ex-situ activation, which is what we do at Chem32, occurs off-site, and once the catalyst is activated, it is transported to the refinery's location, where it is loaded into a reactor, ready for use. The last several years have seen refineries outsourcing their activation services to third-party providers, which provides a unique opportunity for us. We've been pleased with the demand for Chem32 since we acquired the business, and we see significant growth for the increasing demand of sustainable fuels and third-party activation services. Currently, the industry is fully utilized, and Chem32 enjoys a strong pipeline of orders. As a result, we are planning to expand the reactor capacity at our Orange, Texas, facility to enable it to meet the growing customer demand. The installation of the thermal oxidizer project is just the first step, and we expect the installation of that project to start in 2024. This activity also has geographic expansion potential, since it is easy to scale, and the requirements for Catalyst Activation are the same, regardless of location. Just like with our sulfuric acid plants, the strategic initiatives of operational excellence and enhanced reliability is expected to improve the onstream time of our existing assets and deliver greater than 10% volume. We are also expanding our customer base to end users who are looking to partner with a third-party activation service. All of these actions are expected to enable Catalyst Activation to double its revenues by 2028. The Treatment Services business for Ecoservices is one of the most interesting parts of our product portfolio. Customers who use our Treatment Services come to Ecoservices because we are able to handle hard-to-dispose-of hazardous and non-hazardous materials. This provides a value to our customers in terms of disposal of difficult material and provides Ecoservices with a source of high thermal energy material, which in turn reduces the amount of natural gas we need to burn in our furnaces. Treatment Services has seen revenue growth of greater than 50% over the past several years, and we're forecasting this growth to be greater than 10% over the next five years. Ecoservices has a history of delivering strong financial performance and long-term growth. As we look to the next five years, we plan to increase our Adjusted EBITDA by 5%-7% on a compounded annual growth rate. We expect this growth through our strategic initiatives will enable Ecoservices to, one, produce more volume with our existing assets. Two, expand assets in our higher growth segments. And three, deliver on our pricing initiatives due to our unique model of key services to the refining and chemicals industries. Ecoservices has been in business for over a hundred years, and we are the leader in the markets we serve. We provide a unique and valuable service to the refining industries, which is more similar to that of industrial gases than a typical chemical producer. Ecoservices has a consistent history of delivering strong financial performance across all its business segments, and we are positioned to deliver solid mid-single-digit growth over the next several years. We've embarked on a journey to enhance an already strong operational mindset with strategic initiatives that will increase our site's production throughput-... Improve operational efficiency, and deliver higher Adjusted EBITDA for our overall business. I feel confident about the future of Ecoservices business in the long term. Our regen and Treatment Services provides a critical function to refineries and the chemical industry, and we believe this will continue long into the future. Both our virgin acid and Catalyst Activation are poised to take advantage of the growth in their respective markets, and we expect Ecoservices to capitalize on that growth. These are exciting times for Ecoservices, and I'm proud to be a part of it. Thank you for your time today, and we're now going to take a brief break, and after the break, Paul will come up and cover the Advanced Materials & Catalysts business. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Could you take your seats? We would like to keep going, if possible. Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul Whittleston, and I have the privilege of leading the Advanced Materials & Catalysts team since January of 2023. By way of background, about 30 years in the chemical industry across the U.K., Singapore, the U.S.A. I can't get away with an American accent, so I'll try and keep it in a version that you can easily understand me, but apologies if I get into some bad habits. As we go into my presentation here, we're gonna cover three key topics that hopefully can resonate with people. One is around our new name and our new branding, and to give you some insights into the overall advanced materials and catalyst business. Second, around the core and industrial areas that Kurt mentioned, and some of the continued growth opportunities where we're already a winner in some of those markets, and we're fighting for our position there. Then thirdly, we'll talk a little bit about some of these emerging markets that Kurt referred to, and why we believe our technology is going to enable us to be a winner in those markets going forward. About 25 minutes, five or six minutes for the intro, about eight or nine minutes on each of the businesses. That's the goal. So to start with, we thought we'd talk a little bit about what is Advanced Materials & Catalysts today. And today, you can see we've got two parts of our businesses, two solid legs that we proudly stand upon. If we think about our Advanced Silicas business, 40 years plus heritage, initially making anti-block additives. They're the things when you take cling film and the plastic film and pull it apart. To get those sheets to come apart, that's an anti-blocking additive that's in there. Over years, we expanded that, adding in catalysts for polyethylene, and then we took that core competency of using a silica-based catalyst and said: "What else can we do?" And we found partnerships, and we developed new solutions. So for example, catalysts for methyl methacrylate production. Polymethyl methacrylate, that's that flexible plastic that's shatter-resistant. That's using our catalyst technology. Then we further expanded into things like butadiene. So growth markets where people are taking renewable food stocks and making new chemical solutions. Again, Advanced Silicas enables that. And then finally, we're looking at how do we leverage the functional properties of those silicas to enter some of these new markets, where perhaps the material's not as much of a catalyst, but you're an absorbent and you're creating different chemical effects. What about Zeolyst? Not quite 40 years old, 35 years partnership. Not many partnerships last 35 years unless you're doing something right. So what do we do here? Here, Ecovyst manufactures the key raw material there called a Y Powder. That Y Powder is then converted into finished catalysts and either Shell markets those catalysts, our joint venture partner... So they go into hydrocracking and specialty applications, or we market those catalysts or those feedstocks into things like emission control, renewables, custom catalysts, and advanced recycling applications. Thought we'd do just one chemistry slide for you, and that chemistry slide is to talk about what are these advanced materials? Why are they so exciting? So when you think about it, we have these deep science capabilities. That's great, but when you combine that deep science capability with complex, difficult manufacturing techniques, that's where you can really create value. And if I just give you a little analogy, if you think of a teaspoon, if you sat on the beach down on Jersey Shore, and you pick up a spoon of that sand, we start with that as a raw material. We put it through some complex chemical and physical processes, and at the end of that process, we take that sand into a value-added raw material that can be used as feedstock for many other processes. That's pretty good when you think about it. If you also think about our capability, that one teaspoon of sand that you've got there, if you open it up and took all that surface area, all the pore volumes and spread it out, you'd cover an American football field. That one teaspoon of sand becomes the surface volume of a football field. That's pretty impressive. If you think about our zeolite capabilities, there again, we start with a sand, and again, complex manufacturing processes, but here we do something different. Here we build pores of a certain size and shape, and the pictures try to show you just some of those examples of that size and shape. Why is that important? Well, if you're gonna catalyze a reaction, the material has to perfectly fit in so that it can actually react and do what it's supposed to do. Too big, too small, doesn't work. So our ability to control how you make that pore size, how you make that volume, is where our secret sauce is. Couple that with we can change the shape, we can change the size, we can take the strength, we can make them round, we can make them jagged, all these different technologies that we can do for different end markets. That's an advanced material. So why change our name? This extensive in-depth materials expertise allows us to develop customized solutions. If you combine that with our ability to scale from lab to pilot to full production, it's our core capability to modify materials using science to create products with significant different functionality and higher value. Our customers use that to be winners in their applications. Developing catalysts, though, is a deep legacy. Been doing it for 40 years. We're confident to leverage that catalyst expertise to continue to develop profitable growth. As Kurt highlighted, many of the emerging markets that offer the greatest growth opportunities take the functional benefits of a silica or the functional benefits of a zeolite, not just the catalytic benefit. As such, they really are advanced materials. Together, advancing materials and catalysts are what we provide our customers. If it looks like a fish, smells like a fish, and tastes like a fish, probably is a fish. The same goes for us. We research, develop, scale, and commercialize Advanced Materials & Catalysts using silica and zeolite as the base chemistries to enable our customers to be winners in their selected applications. It's also a pleasure today to announce some branding that we're launching to the market. You'll see another press release come out next week that talks about some more here. Under our Advanced Silicas, we've got the name Alpha. Alpha carries that concept of leadership, of being first. You can see also then that the sub-brands for the different applications that we participated in. For zeolites, you'll hear us talk about the name Opal. Opal carries the concept of specialty. Specialty products value. If you think about an opal, very valuable stone. I'm sure if you can give one of those to your wife or partners, they'd be very happy. Same for us. There's value in our zeolites. And again, you can see there's some product-specific branding. Why are we doing this? Yes, we're known in many industries. Yes, many of our customers know us very well. But in many of the emerging markets, customers don't know us so well. They don't know our name. They don't know our brands. We can give an example. Recently, we put out a press release about a French company partnership, Valoregen. You may have seen it for the advanced recycling using our Opal Infinity products. Following that, it was amazing. The number of customers that reached out and said, "Hey, we didn't know you did this. We didn't know you were in this area. Can we talk to you?" That's how we start our innovation process, with a conversation. And that conversation starts with our R&D scientists, our technical people, our commercial people saying: How can we help you? What's your challenges? What's your opportunities? How can our advanced materials help you get to your market and be winners in your market? We follow a very simple stage-gate process. We work in partnership. We do a lot of check-ins with the customer.... When you, when I talk to customers and listen to what they say, it's our clear commitment to developing a customized solution that they value, and we can do that with speed and go from lab to pilot to real production extremely quickly. Critically, though, our pilot and our commercial plants closely mirror each other. So if we go to our pilot plant in Conshohocken that some people have visited, if you then go to our plants in Kansas City and see, we have the similar type of technology. Why is that important? Well, when customers develop solutions, they take our products and test them, and they demonstrate value to their customers. When we can show them we can deliver the exact same quality, the same performance, when we scale this up from grams to kilos to tons, they have confidence. Some of our customers have so much confidence in us, they actually outsource the entire process, from R&D through application testing, before they go into their pilot plants. They trust us that much. That's the value that we can create. Under this process, we've got 40+ R&D collaborations ongoing at the moment. We're really confident those 40+ R&D collaborations will deliver positive organic growth for us in the future. So you heard from Kurt that we've segmented our applications into core and industrial and emerging. So when we look at the Advanced Silicas business, you can see here industrial includes polyethylene and chemical catalysts. These are solid applications, typically growing GDP, GDP plus a little bit. With this strategy, we're confident of comfortably beating GDP and GDP plus growth targets in for these markets. On our emerging applications, we're focused on typically solving a new problem. Sometimes it's our chemistry that can create a better solution to a problem, but typically, we're looking at new challenges, new opportunities, new problems, and how silicas and zeolites can support a solution. We'll talk in a few minutes about carbon capture and enzymes and enzymes immobilization. Just to highlight a couple more, the functionalized nature of silica means we're doing a lot of work with other companies on how do you absorb metals? Colleen talked a little bit about that. If you can help recover metals from waste streams, there's a lot of value in that today as metals become more scarce, more expensive. Second area is when you get into oil and gas extraction, you create a wastewater. When that wastewater goes back into the ground, you need to clean up that wastewater to a better condition, actually, than when it came out of the ground. Our Advanced Silicas there, our functionalized silicas, can absorb hydrocarbons, trace amounts of hydrocarbons. Really important. Got some good demonstration work going on at the moment with a couple of customers to prove out that technology, and we're hoping we've got launches planned for 2024 there. The next three slides will go into some of the great growth opportunities for Advanced Silicas. We'll start with polyethylene, where we are a winner today. We'll then go into enzymes, and then we'll close with carbon capture. So Advanced Silicas into polyethylene. If you look at the market growth from 2017 to 2023, the market's been growing at about 3.8% on a volume basis per year, on an average basis. What's our performance? 7.3%. Almost double what the market is growing at. Why and how are we winning? So there's two key drivers of why we're winning and why we'll continue to winning. One, it's our ability to develop those customized solutions that we talked about. We partner with customers who come and say, "We want to grow in this application. Can you help develop a catalyst that enables us to do that?" A good example of that is metallocene chemistry. You may have heard of those single-site catalysts, metallocene. Going to produce high-quality films. High-quality films used for food preservation and food transportation. Again, that's our chemistry when you get into our catalyst supports for enabling that. The second key driver for the growth is we're partnering with a lot of customers that are growing in feedstock advantageous regions, so typically North America and the Middle East. You can go to the press and read companies that have announced expansions. We've also announced our expansion in Kansas City. Those are customers that are likely to be winners in that end application in the future. They're our partners. We'll grow with them. We've got a robust pipeline of opportunities. We've got customers expanding their capacities. We've expanding, or we're expanding our capacity. We're convinced we're gonna be able to keep winning and keep growing at two to three times the market growth rate for the polyethylene market. What about enzymes and enzymes immobilization? It's a new topic to talk about. It's really about biocatalysis. Why are biocatalysis growing? Well, when you think about it, enzymes are cost effective. They don't have to go up to high temperatures, high pressures. They can be used ambient temperatures and pressures. That's great when energy is really expensive. You think of the health, safety, and environment profile of an enzyme. Typically generates low hazardous waste, typically ease of handling, typically ease of processing. And then finally, you look, enzymes can be modified. The technology's developed over the years, so enzymes can be... the DNA extracted and understanding what specific genome causes a reaction. That technology is advanced now to the point where you can be very specific, and if you can be specific, you avoid generating wastes, you avoid byproducts, you get more of the product that you want. So there's a lot of activity going on at the moment in this area of biocatalysis. For example, making synthetic sugars, synthetic sweeteners. For example, taking very hard-to-process difficult oils, maybe inedible oils, and getting to the point where they're easier to process and have specific properties. It's the enzymes that enable those reactions. Silica is well positioned to be part of that growth. Why? Well, with a silica, you can fix or immobilize that enzyme specifically. Why is that important? Well, if you're an enzyme, you've got to be available to react, so you've got to be fixed at a certain point and be available to do the reaction. But when you do that, you've also got to store and transport that advanced material around the world. If you fix it on a silica and dry it, you've got an ease of transportation. Following our innovation wheel, we've partnered with a number of the world's leading companies in this area to develop new solutions. As an executive leadership team, we're very proud that from a concept to the first sales in under 6 months, shows our deep advanced material capability, shows our ability to develop manufacturing processes, and shows our partnership approach really does deliver profitable growth. Our focus today is to partner with customers who are likely to be winners. Once we've got that going and we've got the applications working, we'll broaden that experience into new applications, new customers, and help scale that as they grow. It's a great time to be part of our biocatalysis team. So finally, under Advanced Silicas, let's talk for a minute about carbon capture. It's a hot topic, isn't it? You go to the news, you read, and showing the impact of climate change and the need to reduce CO2 and take CO2 out of the atmosphere. There's a lot of companies innovating in this area. We're one of those companies, and it's where our materials, our functionalized silicas, can positively contribute to this global challenge. Imagine if we go back to that teaspoon that we talked about, that teaspoon of silica. Think about all that internal pore structure we've created. Think about it, if all that pore structure could absorb CO2. It's a massive surface area to absorb that CO2. Now, think about it, if you can find ways to, to store and then, at an appropriate point in time, release that CO2. That's really positive value. We're focused today on emissions from power generation. We're not trying to do this for every application out there. We realize there's lots of applications we can grow with. Today, we're focused on power generation. Why? Well, there's a rich stream of CO2 gases that come off power generation. It's also typically a very continuous process. So we develop a unique silica, we functionalize it with an amine, and then we place it in a moving bed collection system. We've got a carbon dioxide capturing system. We've got two great trials ongoing at the moment at two power plants. Target is to launch in 2025 the solutions to the market. It's not just about the silica, though. Once you've got the silica and you've got the CO2, what are you gonna do with it? So we're working on: how do you recover the silica to be able to reuse it again and again and again, so you're developing a circular solution and improving the efficiency? Very exciting for me is, how do you use that CO2? How do you take a catalyst and convert that CO2 into a downstream chemical that creates more value, so you're not just sucking CO2 out of the air, you're using it appropriately? That's our goal. Our strategy involves learning, winning, and then broadening our application reach. We can also sell our silicas to others to functionalize, to use in this market. We don't have to do this all ourself. We can partner with others who can capture even more of the value chain by selling it to co-producers. I'd like to take the last few minutes to talk a little bit about Zeolyst. Again, as Kurt highlighted, we've segmented our markets, core, industrial, and growth. Here, under core, we do have a couple of applications around heavy-duty diesel engines. We've also got hydrocracking. In hydrocracking, we've got some great new technology called MACH, Molecular Access Catalysts for Hydrocracking, that's out there. These catalysts crack heavy feedstocks, delivering improved diesel yields. If we think back to an example, we talked about a teaspoon before. Well, if we think of 2.5 teaspoons now. 2.5 teaspoons of a zeolite, over its lifetime, that hydrocracking catalyst could produce 300 L of low sulfur diesel fuel. That's sufficient to drive a Class 8 truck around 600 mi. Just 2.5 teaspoons, 600 mi. That's the value, again, that we create for our customers. We also have, under this industrial applications, our custom catalyst. That's where we can take a swing. We take a chance, we take an opportunity at developing a new solution for a customer that solves a problem or creates an opportunity. It's a great area for our team to learn and for innovation. Got a couple more slides now. Let's talk about sustainable fuels and then finally, advanced recycling. So perhaps my more complex slide with a couple of processes on there, but, it's not that complex when we drill it down. At the end of the day, we're already a winner in renewable fuels. We entered the market in 2020. Why? Because decarbonization of heavy-duty diesel and aviation industries is most likely to be achieved using renewable fuels. What did we do? We took our core competency, which back then was lubricant dewaxing, and with lubricant dewaxing, we modified it to say: How do you dewax renewable diesel? Now thinking about this, dewaxing, it sounds complex and all that, but I'll give you a simpler example. If we don't dewax, all those trucks going up and down the highways, when the weather gets really, really cold, and we all stay inside, they won't move. The fuel gels. By dewaxing and using our technology, we keep those trucks moving down the highway when temperatures get so cold, we all stay inside. Our strategy was to partner with technology licensors who were entering the market and were likely to be winners as new plants were built around the world. As those new plants were built, we've been richly rewarded with profitable growth. The market is growing. We see growth rates of 20%+ for the next five years as very realistic as these plants are built around the world. We're not static, though. We have a great R&D team that's already innovating for how do you develop second- and third-generation catalyst solutions for our partners to continue to be winners? We need to keep our partners in front of the rest of the competition. Who's not heard of sustainable aviation fuel? Just today, if you go to the website and look on the BBC News, Virgin Airlines flight took off from London, flying to New York, entirely using sustainable aviation fuel. Today, we're partnering with people to develop the right catalytic solution for sustainable aviation fuel. There's two processes that can be followed. One, it's you modify your existing process to make renewable diesel by adding a hydrocracking and a dewaxing step. That's great for us because we make hydrocracking catalysts, we make dewaxing catalysts. Happy if customers want to go that way. The second way is perhaps one that's got even longer-term growth potential, and it's how do you move to use what's called an alcohol, alcohol-to-jet? So you take an alcohol, perhaps in the future, maybe it could be produced from CO2, what's being absorbed from the atmosphere. You then go through an oligomerization process. Dewaxing, you break things down. Oligomerization, you build things up. Our technology does both. So whether it's an alcohol-to-jet process or a traditional process, we have solutions that help our customers be winners in their chosen applications. Again, a lot of the work is ongoing. It's pleasing to be able to say we've actually sold pilot material to our customers as they go through their development activity and go from pilot to full scale. It's our catalysts that are included in that process. So finally, let's talk about plastic waste, another exciting growth area. If you think about it and you, you go, "Well, what about this plastic waste? Why don't we just get it, chop it up, and mechanically sort it and reuse it?" Eh, you could. Not really very efficient. People tend not, not to separate plastics. Separating plastics is labor-intensive, time-intensive, costs money. People want to develop what we call advanced recycling solutions. Advanced recycling solutions are typically thermally based. If you're using energy to pyrolyze something, it's a high-energy process. So what does a catalyst do? Well, it makes it lower energy, makes it more efficient, less energy-intensive. That's pretty good. Now, if you can combine that with a solution where you don't have to separate all those wastes, you can take them as combined plastics and put them through a pyrolysis process. You're saving the producers costs and processing steps. Now, if you can go one step further and have a zeolite-based catalyst that enables a pyrolysis oil of a specific quality to be produced, now maybe you're giving the customer the chance to command a higher price point for their end product. So you've made more efficiency, you've made ease of handling, and you've created a product of more value. That's what our zeolite chemistry is capable of doing. Today, we're partnering with multinational companies that are looking to commercialize their thermal pyrolysis processes. It could be themselves building plants, or in the future, it could be them licensing their technology to others. Zeolyst will benefit as these customers expand and grow. Pilot sales have already been made, and we anticipate full sales commercializing in early 2025. It's not, again, about staying static. What's important for our Advanced Materials & Catalysts is to keep moving, to keep innovating, to keep in front. So the Zeolyst team here is doing a lot of work with: How do you develop, again, second-generation catalysts that improve the efficiency even more? Or how do you look at recovery and recycling processes for catalysts so that, again, you can improve the efficiency of the process? All this is being done is important for our customers, and it's important that we partner with our customers so that we enable their success. Their success, at the end of the day, is our success. My conclusion slide. I started off by saying our goals today is to introduce our core capabilities, our name change, and our branding. Wanted to make sure everybody had some insights into our continued growth in our core and industrial applications. And then finally, how are we leveraging our innovation capabilities in these emerging markets that offer even more growth potential for Advanced Materials & Catalysts and Ecovyst? If you have any remaining doubts, please find me after this presentation. Let's have a chat and talk through what your questions are. I conclude with a message that we not only have the potential, we're already doing this. We're targeting about a third of our growth that will come from our core and industrial applications, mainly polyethylene, renewable diesel, and custom catalyst applications. Most of that growth is in the early years of our plan. About two-thirds of our growth come from these emerging applications. These emerging applications will grow faster at the later stages of our time period plan. We're applying our advanced materials know-how to diversify into these new applications. Overall, Advanced Materials & Catalysts is a team of 340 highly passionate, accountable, motivated employees that are committed to exceed. Our innovation capabilities, close partnerships with our customers, and unique production capabilities are, and will remain, key differentiators to enable our continued success. I thank you for your time for listening to me, and I now hand over to Mike Feehan, who's gonna talk through our financial aspects. Thank you, Paul. All right, let's get my picture up there. Hi, good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I've had the privilege of being the company's CFO for over two years now. While my tenure with the company started 17 years ago, I have over 25 years of experience in various finance-related roles, primarily in the chemicals and manufacturing industries. I'm excited to speak to you today about the strategic direction of the company, and how our strategy is expected to lead to exciting financial results over the coming years. Today, you heard from our leadership team on why Ecovyst has a great business model, and how our strategy will capitalize on the strong demand trends to create growth over the coming years. I'd like to spend a few minutes today reinforcing the messages that you heard, and how they translate into positive financial results that'll help create long-term shareholder value. Over the past several years, Ecovyst has demonstrated proven financial results, with strong earnings growth and cash generation, and top-tier leading industry margins. Well, how have we been able to do so well? Well, first, our value-added products address global demand trends, often through environmental and safety regulations, or through consumer preferences for more sustainable products. We have leading supply positions, holding the number one or number two supply share position in over 90% of our product sales. We have a global footprint and efficient network of strategically located facilities, offering a competitive advantage to help serve our customers. We are customer-focused with long-term contracts, and we have a long track record of innovation reflected in our expertise in advanced materials for silicas and zeolites. As a result of these competitive strengths, we have been able to demonstrate solid earnings growth, high margins, and continued cash generation while driving a strong return on invested capital. Our business fundamentals have fostered the strong financial results over the past five years. Our growing Adjusted EBITDA, with high industry-leading margins and a high and increasing cash conversion ratio. When comparing our historical results against the S&P 1500 Specialty Chemicals peer set, we have demonstrated a strong track record of solid earnings growth with high margins, allowing for this cash generation. Our two businesses are resilient, both operating with margins above 30%. The competitive advantages that I previously described have helped build a moat around these two businesses, allowing for these high margins. Ecovyst's historic growth has been centered around strong demand, competitive strengths, stability of customer and contract structure, and innovation driving new areas of growth. Our proven historical earnings growth, high margin profile, and strong cash generation help set the stage for our future growth story. Our history of earnings growth with a high margin profile is the basis for the strong cash generation, which has helped to drive our investment for growth and create shareholder value. Over the past several years, our cash conversion ratio has steadily increased as our earnings have grown while spending modestly on capital expenditures. During this time, we have significantly reduced our leverage. We plan to end the year at three times after deploying $215 million in share repurchases over the past two years, as we believe the shares were undervalued, represented an attractive return, and were used to help to facilitate the exit of our sponsors at the time... excluding the cash used for those share repurchases, our net leverage would have been more than three-quarters of a turn lower. We have a strong balance sheet. In 2021, the company entered into a prepaid term loan facility with a June 2028 maturity date. Through a thoughtful hedging strategy, we currently have approximately 75% of our interest rate exposure hedged through 2026, giving us an average cost of debt of approximately 5%. We are well-positioned to continue our cash generation with our strong balance sheet, targeting a leverage ratio of two to 2.5 times. The culmination of what you heard today takes us to this slide. As Kurt has laid out in his presentation, our fundamental strategy is, number one, to continue to maximize the value of our core clean fuels applications through operational excellence and cash generation. Number two, to capture, share, and achieve above-market growth rates in our established and sustainable industrial applications. And number three, to leverage our material science expertise and customer relationships to rapidly scale and deploy our products and services for our emerging applications. This strategy, along with our competitive strengths and business fundamentals, will help drive further growth over the next several years, leading to a 6%-8% organic adjusted EBITDA growth rate target for 2028. During this time, we expect to maintain an average cash conversion ratio of approximately 75%, which is up from 71% over the past few years. We expect an average return on invested capital of over 20%, which is up from 15% over the previous period. Executing on our five-year plan and hitting our financial targets will provide us with an attractive cash generation profile that supports a flexible and balanced capital allocation strategy to help drive shareholder value. We anticipate generating over $600 million in free cash flow over the next five years. As we look at our priorities, we will first use cash from operations for maintenance capital needs to ensure operational excellence at our manufacturing facilities, leading to increased production and reduced costs. Our growth plan will require capital for expansion and debottlenecking projects, along with operational improvement projects. After cash is used for capital spending, we consider the priority of allocating our free cash flow. As previously mentioned, our short-term priority is to drive towards a manageable net leverage target of two to 2.5 times. Given our anticipated cash generation, we expect to achieve this in the near term. Our expected earnings growth and cash generation allows for at least 0.5 turn a year in net leverage reduction. Our strong balance sheet, our low cost of debt, and our expected cash generation will allow us to look at other options, including bolt-on acquisitions and opportunistic share repurchases. Our goal is to maximize long-term shareholder value, and having a flexible and balanced capital allocation strategy will help drive us towards that goal. A key area of our growth plan is focusing our capital investments on enhancing high-growth areas through expansion and debottlenecking projects. As our business grows, we plan to allocate more cash to capital projects, both for maintenance projects to continue with our operational excellence, but with an added focus on high-growth capital projects. In mid-September, for example, we announced the expansion of our Kansas City facility, where we plan to increase our capacity by 50%. This project is supported by additional long-term customer commitments, allowing for greater certainty for expected favorable investment returns. We expect to use a similar commitment-backed model for other organic expansion projects in the future. We expect our growth capital to represent approximately 30% of our total capital spending over the next 5 years. Even with the higher growth capital, our capital intensity as a percentage of Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be lower, with an average of about 25% over the projected period. This will allow us to maximize our cash used for other capital allocation priorities. As we discussed earlier, our strategy is focused on growing our leadership position in our core clean fuel applications, achieving above-market growth in our established and sustainable industrial applications, and leveraging our innovation and customer relationships to rapidly scale up our emerging segments. In Ecoservices, we plan to expand our production capabilities to meet the growing demand for Catalyst Activation for hydroprocessing and renewable fuels. We also plan to focus on operational excellence in our sulfuric acid business through investment in debottlenecking and reliability projects. And we expect to continue to benefit in price from inflation based on our long-term customer contract structure.... For Advanced Materials & Catalysts, we expect to grow our industrial applications in polyethylene at above-market rates through our technical know-how and key customer partnerships, supported by expansion projects. We will also focus on our existing high growth catalyst use for renewable fuels, along with new, innovative, emerging technologies, including advanced recycling for plastic pyrolysis, enzyme development, and advanced functionalized silicas for carbon capture. This will lead to organic earnings growth of 6%-8% and increased cash generation over the forecasted period. Earlier, I discussed our capital allocation priorities. As mentioned, our first priority is for net leverage reduction. However, we are also focused on other priorities to drive long-term shareholder value. Bolt-on acquisitions that are strategic and financially accretive will help drive long-term shareholder value. As an example, we acquired Chem32, a leader in Catalyst Activation technologies, in 2021 for $45 million. That was both strategic and financially accretive. In addition, we recently strengthened our management team with executives that have extensive experience executing the types of bolt-on acquisitions, strategies that we envision for Ecovyst. So what makes a good bolt-on acquisition investment for Ecovyst? Well, within Advanced Materials & Catalysts, we would be looking to increase technical capabilities in growing and emerging platforms. For Ecoservices, we would look for similar adjacent technologies and services, and look to expand the reach and scale of Virgin Sulfuric Acid and Catalyst Activation, given the strong demand expectations for these products and services. We will be prudent and judicious in selecting any potential bolt-on M&A. We have set out certain strategic and financial criteria to ensure that we maximize the value of our investment. This includes gaining exposure to emerging trends and growth into sustainable markets, looking for adjacent or complementary technologies, including differentiated intellectual property and technical know-how expertise. We will also look for a good cultural fit with high customer intimacy, easily integrated into our platform. We want an investment that provides for a good financial return, exceeding our cost of debt or cost of capital, one that has a sustainable growth and margin profile similar to ours, and a company that will provide synergies and be accretive to our current portfolio. So where does this lead us to in five years? How do we measure our success? We anticipate organically growing our Adjusted EBITDA by 6%-8%, driven by the strategy that you heard today. Our margin expansion is expected to be driven by price and favorable product mix, and we will use the cash generated from this earnings growth to further increase shareholder value through reduce leverage, further share repurchases, and bolt-on M&A. Through a bolt-on acquisition strategy, we would expect to grow earnings at an even higher rate by more than 10% over the five-year period, with only a limited impact on the trajectory of our leverage ratio. Our company has all of the attributes to support a strong investment thesis. We have a core product portfolio that is stable and delivers strong margins and cash generation through operational excellence. We have a group of industrial products growing at above market rates, enhanced by capacity expansion and debottlenecking. We have emerging products that are anticipated to grow at very high rates, driven by innovation through material science expertise and customer collaboration, all leading us to great returns and increased shareholder value. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call back to Kurt for some closing remarks. Thank you, Mike. Well, today in our presentation, we had a few main takeaways for you. We demonstrated the strength and the durability of Ecovyst business model, and our sticky customer relationships, those high switching barriers, the long-term contracts, and how that leads to high margins and cash generation. We also talked about the favorable industry and sustainability trends that drive the demand for our products and services. We expect that broad-based growth across all of our segments will lead to a faster growing Ecovyst that has that more evolved business mix. That projected strong cash generation, that gives us the ability to employ a balanced capital allocation strategy, where we can prioritize our very manageable deleveraging targets while funding our growth. We believe that this strategy, the EBITDA growth, and the capital allocation, will lead to compelling value creation for our shareholders. So I wanna thank everybody for attending again today. We've had folks here from as far as Southern California, and there's over 90 folks that have joined us on the webcast. So we're, thank you for your interest in Ecovyst. I'll now invite my other management team members up on stage, and we're gonna transition to our Q&A session.... Go ahead, David. All right. Just a couple of questions. First, I think I'd like to go back to some of the comments that Colleen and George made about the sulfuric acid. Sorry. About the goals for your sulfuric acid business. And in particular, I'm focusing on the idea that upstream performance is going to increase by 10%. And I was just thinking, I mean, you're already the largest in the industry. One of your earlier charts said you've been producing the sulfuric acid since 1880. Mm-hmm. What have you missed? In other words, why is there an extra 10% upstream, even after you've been operating for, you know, 100 years or more? Yeah, if you're talking about the 10% natural gas consumption? And yeah. Fuel usage to specific- I'm not doing a good job, but then- No, no, it's okay. Yeah. I would defer to George on the enhanced automated optimization and our reliability program, which is where we're going to find a lot of good nuggets to reduce natural gas consumption. Yeah, David, I guess I would answer it this way: You know, we have processes and teams in place that continually look at continuous improvement, and so we've been improving over the last, you know, decade or so. What we're seeing now, though, is there's still incremental improvement that we can gain through process automation, through also enhanced reliability, and that will complement our sustainability goals. So it's really not that there was something we missed. It's just part of our ongoing continuous improvement process that says, "Okay, how do we squeeze out some more improvements?" So that's the incremental piece. And then we also look at, okay, are there certain other things that we can do that will be maybe some step changes? But for regeneration, we're really looking at that incremental process improvement that we focus on on an ongoing basis. Kurt, is there anything you want to add? No, I think, you answered it pretty well. I mean, we were talking earlier, somebody in the audience asked me, You know, we've, we've debottlenecked. I mean, Ecoservices, if you go back to 2016, we've debottlenecked almost a whole acid plant worth of capacity from 2016 to 2020. And a lot of our plants, I mean, sulfuric acid is not easy to make, right? Which is, you know, why one of the reasons the, the industry is such high switching barrier or, you know, high barriers to entry. And so we've become a lot better when we replace equipment that may be, 20 years old with a new piece of equipment that has new metallurgy. That gives you a step change in the amount of, of acid that you can make out of that plant. So that, combination of some of those equipment replacements and just general enhanced reliability will drive that step change and increase volume. Okay, and then maybe a different question, maybe for Paul, but this would have to do mainly with intellectual property and how you protect it. So my own opinion, but I always think of the catalyst business as potentially a winner-take-all type of business. And I noticed in various slides, you know, you're producing at Kansas City, but you also rely on contract manufacturers. And in particular, now, as you're rolling out, you know, high potential, high secular growth range of products over the next few years, I mean, how do you plan the growth, the production, the commercialization in such a way that, you know, your trade secrets or your proprietary processes or designs don't leak out? Thanks. So there's two different parts to that. One, yes, we work with contract manufacturers, tollers. They're typically, you know, it's the lower value products that are perhaps a little bit older in technology and maybe IP's reach towards the end. And by, you know, consuming that capacity, we work together in the right way. When you get into some of the new technologies, obviously, we look, if it's possible to patent, you know, if it makes sense to patent, then if we do use other manufacturing assets, not our own, we look for long contracts and protection that way. I think in general, we try and sort of say, "Hey, sometimes it's good not to always put a patent out there," because patents can be copied. Sometimes trade secrets actually add a lot of value to the manufacturing know-how that we have, and that's a lot of what we've built up. Sure. Go ahead, John. John McNulty, BMO. So, on the advanced catalysts or Advanced Materials & Catalysts business, do you have a vitality index kind of currently that we can think about and where you may be targeting, and just so we can kinda track that over, you know, over the next few years? We do have a vitality index. I think we'd have to discuss if we're prepared to make that public, Kurt. Mm-hmm. It is something that we've set up, and we do use a stage-gate process to manage those processes. Yeah, I think it's something, John, we'll probably look forward to putting out in the future. We've talked about it, as we've—as Paul, we've kind of refocused on rebranding the segment, Advanced Materials & Catalysts, so we're trying to understand how we want to package all that into the vitality index. I mean, in the past, I'd say years ago, when the company first went public, they did a general vitality index that included all the other segments, and I think we're gonna get—we need to distill that into specifically Advanced Materials & Catalysts. So that'll, that'll be coming, you know, forward, I would say, in the next year or so. Okay, fair enough. And then on the M&A side, I guess, can you help us? Look, it's been a crazy year or two. Admittedly, and you're in a unique position where you have a lot of cash, and you have interest rates kind of protected for you at this point, or your cost to borrow protected. So can you speak to whether you see it as a target-rich environment right now, or is everything kind of seized up a little bit? I guess, can you help us to think about, you know, over the next year or two, how we should be thinking about it? I know debt reduction is a big priority, but maybe a little bit of commentary on the M&A environment. Yeah, sure. I mean, as Mike said, we are prioritizing deleveraging to get to that two to 2.5 level. But there, you know, there is a pipeline of opportunities out there. It has been kind of slow, right, for this year. But, you know, when we look at Ecoservices, there's a lot of businesses in that, you know, call it, in that service sector, that have been outsourced by refineries over time, that are run by small shops, right? That could use being bolted on to a big industrial scale like Ecoservices. That's really where we're getting, like, as George talked about with the Chem32 business, as we've integrated that, we've been able to bring technologies such as, you know, thermal oxidizer technology or other things to that to help them quickly scale up their production. Additionally, the relationships Ecoservices has with some of these major, you know, refineries, you know, we're able to leverage those relationships and help, you know, kind of those businesses. You go over to Paul's business in Advanced Materials & Catalysts, a lot of technology out there, where there's some folks that have some really great ideas in a lot of the end uses that we talked about today, where CO2, you know, CO2 capture, advanced plastics, recycling, they've got great ideas. We have that unique capability, pilot scale, you know, ability to pilot and scale up technologies really fast. There's things floating in that area that will be of interest, right, where we can bring them in, help those companies quickly commercialize those products, and get them into the marketplace. Excellent. Aleksey Yefremov of KeyBanc. I just wanted to follow up on the 10% performance improvement in sulfuric acid. Are you talking about regeneration or merchant or for total? And are you really talking about volume increases? Aleksey, what we're talking about is really around 10% for regeneration, 15% for virgin, and we're talking about volume increases based on incremental improvements through both our automation initiative and our operational excellence and enhanced reliability initiative. Great. Thanks for clarifying. And then I think you also mentioned the spot sales opportunities over the next five years based on constraints with other suppliers. So are you expecting other suppliers to have production issues or not expand in line with the market? Could you talk more about that opportunity? So there are always opportunities if there's a, you know, like a, a turnaround or a shutdown where there's spot sales, and we expect that to continue. We also expect, as refineries and other, producers of alkylate look to expand capacity, that that will provide additional opportunities for spot sales. Yeah, I just, you know, the utilization, Aleksey, in the, in the industry is very high. So when any incremental demand that comes on the marketplace just, you know, further squeezes, I guess, the tightness, you know, of the supply, so it just creates incremental spot opportunities over time. So all the drivers that George talked to, you know, as those things, you know, drive more and more sulfuric acid demand, we'll see additional spot opportunities in the pipeline. Great. And the last one for Mike. For CapEx, could you frame it in terms of dollars over the next five years or gross and total CapEx spend? Yeah, I mean, we haven't framed it in dollars, but what I would say is that, you know, we are planning to spend more on capital, right? I mean, you can see that, we are expecting this to generate a lot of cash, over $600 million over the next, you know, five years. So we are putting more cash, both for maintenance projects to continue our operational excellence, but with an added focus on that growth capital. So there was a chart that kind of went from a, call it a, 20% or 25%, up to a 30% more focus on growth, but that actually still keeps our capital intensity, which we measure as a percentage of our Adjusted EBITDA, even lower. So we're gonna spend more money, but it's not gonna impact our leverage materially. We even talked about having, you know, a recent acquisition or announcement for our Kansas City facility, right? So we will be putting more money into growth projects, and that's a great example of one of them. Thanks a lot. Great. Hey. Hi, Hamed Khorsand, BWS. First off, you had a lot of slides on the branding that you're implementing or have implemented. Can you discuss the marketing aspect of it with the customers so they're not confused as far as the capabilities of each brand? Because, you know, there were slides that you were talking about, you're customizing as well. Yeah. So, you know, there's a marketing campaign behind this. You'll see there's some updates coming out to websites and then our typical marketing collateral that we go out to trade shows and events, where we can publicize that product range to educate customers. When you look, yes, we do do some customized solutions, and perhaps those customized solutions that are unique to a certain customer and not going anywhere else, perhaps we'll give that a slightly different name and not put that under a generic brand because we can't sell it to anyone else. So there will be times where we'll still use a generic brand for certain customers. ... And my other question was, on the M&A front, is there a timing of when you would plan to do these M&As? And the second part of it is, you know, what are those, you know, bolt-ons that you think you're lacking, that you can't, you know, self-develop yourself? Thank you. Yeah, I think in terms of the timing for the M&A, you know, we have, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, right? Deleveraging is a priority for us, but as you saw from Mike's chart, you know, we plan to generate over $600 million in cash during the time period. So as those opportunities become available, we're always looking and scanning for, you know, what makes sense, right? And so we're always out there, and as John's question asked, there are things floating out there. So as they become available, we're looking at them and evaluating them. Our strong cash generation gives us that ability. Plus, we're looking on the bolt-on, you know, in the bolt-on area too, right? Where it's not something so enormous that it's gonna, you know, drive our leverage ratio way out of way out of whack. So, yeah, I forget your second question, Hamed. Did you... What was the second part to that? Why can't you just self-develop what you're lacking? Yeah, we are self-developing. I mean, if, you know, so we are developing a lot of that. You know, as Mike said in his presentation, you know, our first dollars are going towards organic growth, right? The expansion at the Kansas City plant is an example that the example of George talked about with Chem32, right? That's a global product where we can, we ship a lot of that stuff, it goes to the Middle East, it goes to South America. So we're looking at it and saying, "Hey, can we develop our bases here in North America to kind of reach global customers?" As time goes along, we may say, "Hey, does it make sense to, you know, put footprints elsewhere organically and develop elsewhere?" So we will develop where we see. But then there's some technologies, right? Where some folks may have some IP or some great ideas, particularly in the advanced materials and catalyst segment, that we can bring in-house, again, that are unique to that, whatever that firm is, that we can bring and help them commercialize quickly. John Roberts, Mizuho. Crude to chemicals was a really hot topic. I don't know, five years ago, the Chinese were building special refineries. I think Motiva did a major revamp here in the U.S., and I thought they were gonna use a lot more catalysts. So, has that, like, not developed the way the industry thought it might? And then secondly, I think Chemtrade and Veolia have broad-based water businesses, but that doesn't seem to be part of your strategy. Is it just not a good adjacency for you? Sure. So, just from the crude to chemicals standpoint, I mean, we have seen an expansion in that, right? When you look at, you know, Paul mentioned the growth on our polyethylene catalysts. In particular, if you look at that, you know, the polyethylene demand has grown by 3% or so. We've had double that volume. So there is growth in that space where you mentioned Motiva. There's others that have expanded their, you know, petrochemical, crude to chemical capabilities, so there is still momentum there. And, you know, I think going forward, we're gonna really continue to see that. You know, your second question, if you could repeat that again for me. The water businesses. Yeah, the water business. So, you know, we do play a little bit in the water business. We have a little small aluminum sulfate segment that mainly operates on the West Coast for us. The water segment generally has been for the two companies you mentioned, for Chemtrade, which you mentioned, is generally through aluminum chemistry. That's primarily based for paper manufacture, which is, you know, in other regions of the country that we typically have not operated in, either, you know, heavily in the Northwest or in the Southeast part of the country. So we've typically not played too much in that. Veolia's business is more of water treatment, industrial water treatment, right, inside refineries and such. We touch a little bit on that when you look at our hazardous waste treatment business, right? Not so. Some of that is very aqueous material, where it's, you know, it's contaminated water that we're incinerating, and some of it's actually, you know, straight hazardous waste. So we overlap a little bit there, but no, we've never considered really moving in further into that chemistry, 'cause some of it's just really out of our, out of our region and out of our sweet spot. Kurt, we've got a couple of questions that have come in from the- Yep ... from the online. First one: In terms of your regeneration business, how do you see the balance between alkylate demand and supply impacting your business going forward? Specifically, do you see more projects like the Next Wave ethylene to alkylate facility outside of Houston, and does this present an opportunity for Ecovyst? Yeah. Maybe, George, you wanna handle that one? So I think, as I mentioned, and Kurt also mentioned, alkylate is a key component in blending fuel, for blending fuels, and we see a strong growth of alkylate. I think Next Wave just highlights that point, where this is a unit that's specifically built to produce additional alkylate outside of of a typical oil refinery. So what that does, though, is Next Wave's gonna require more sulfuric acid, and as both Kurt and I have mentioned, assets are currently fully utilized. Yes, you can increase incremental volumes, but you're starting to squeeze the utilization. So projects like Next Wave increase the overall demand for sulfuric acid, providing additional opportunities for us and for the overall market. Okay. Another question that's come in: Do you see feedstock availability as potentially limiting the growth in renewable fuels? So, you know, yes, there's always the food versus fuel conundrum out there, but what I expect to see in the future is more innovation around using non-food-based feedstocks. Those feedstocks typically will need a catalytic-type solution again, which is our technology. So yeah, I would expect to see a trend away from food, but I think it's positive for us ultimately, because we'll provide the solutions for the catalyzed-based processes. Okay. Then, another question that's come in: Is your hazmat incineration limited to spent acid? Given the shortage of U.S. hazmat incineration capability and the difficulty in permitting greenfield facilities, would it make sense to expand the range of materials you treat? So we occupy a unique niche in the treatment, our Treatment Services business and treating hazardous and nonhazardous waste. What we look for is things that we can process within our existing assets that provide thermal value, as well as dispose of the material coming in. We're not like a cement kiln that you just dump a lot of stuff in, and they process. So there are opportunities for us in the Treatment Services, and we're going to take advantage of those, but we're not looking to expand broader than what our current capabilities are because that just doesn't fit the niche of what we do. Our Baton Rouge and our Houston facilities do have RCRA hazardous waste permits that allow them to thermally process a lot of different waste streams. Okay. Thank you. Kevin? Nope. How are you? Kevin Chin with Cramer Rosenthal. Just a quick question for George and Paul. Just if you can give any color on the linearity of the growth over the five-year period to 2028. For George's business, do you expect that to be more linear based upon the volume growth you expect to get? Or similar to Paul, is there an investment period, a new product rollout period, which will impact margins initially, and then get an acceleration above that EBITDA growth in the back years? So maybe I'll go first. Overall, for Ecoservices, we expect a more linear growth. We do expect some step changes, like for instance, with the expansion of our Chem32 facility, where we're going to double the capacity of our calcination. So that would be more of a step change. But in general, it's. We're looking at that as a linear growth over the next five years. Yeah. And for our Advanced Materials & Catalysts, I think you summed it up well. There are step changes that will come as new technologies become more established. It does take a little bit more longer time. We have to build the plants and, you know, basically make sure we can supply those needs. So there is, can I say, a little bit more in the back-end part of the time period than in the front end. Yeah. One thing I would echo, though, that we said before, right, is we have a history of growth, right? And it's not a hockey stick, right? So we have the history of growth. We continue that growth. A lot of what we talked about with our core clean fuels applications, that's going to continue to do what it's been doing, and same thing for our industrial applications, where that growth in polyethylene and Virgin Sulfuric Acid, we've proven that we've done it, we continue to do that, but then we're going to be layering in a lot of these other things. And I think that's going to be the key driver to that next level growth, right? Is that not only the capacity expansions that we've already announced and planned, but some other areas of growth as we start developing new products and services. David? David. We can't hear you from here. Yeah, that's right. Dave Silver, C.L. King. I don't know. I'm going to ask the, the question that hasn't been asked yet to, to Mike. But, you know, given the current stock price and the market valuation, and given maybe just your base case operations, I mean, you're starting off as a 9% or 10% free cash flow yield, you know, security, and it's likely to go higher, in my opinion, you know, over the out years. So, you know, you've talked about some of the potential uses for, your free cash. But I was just wondering, you know, have you-- what are your latest thoughts maybe about initiating a dividend? And maybe more to the point, how do you kind of opportunistically going forward, you know, your, your shareholder base has changed dramatically, and I think for the better. But, for that, that incremental, you know, component of free cash flow, how do you, how do you trade off between buying, you know, a little bit more of your stock versus, paying down debt or, or some other uses? How, how are you, kind of, thinking about that right now? Yeah, sure. Thank you, David. So our goal is to increase shareholder value, right? I mean, that's why we're here, right? So there's things that we want to do in the short term, right? Leverage reduction is certainly a key component to it. Now, we do have a very strong balance sheet. We're hedged, you know, on our interest rates, so we feel very comfortable at three times, but we also recognize that there is some space to move down in that. But at the same time, as we start to get to that point, we start to, you know, the stock price starts going up, we will look at different opportunities. I mean, it's a flexible and balanced capital allocation strategy. So if there's opportunities for those, share repurchases, additional share repurchases, we will do that. If there's opportunities for some bolt-on acquisitions, we will look at that. A dividend is not something we talked about a lot here, but... ... that is something that we can always look at down the road. However, we're in a growth mode. We don't wanna go and put money back into somebody's pocket when we can grow our business through a lot of these great organic opportunities for capital expansion and also some potential bolt-on acquisitions. And again, if our stock is trading at an appropriate spot where we think we can buy more shares, that looks like an opportunity for us to do that. So, you know, it's really exciting to be able to come up here and show you a big chart that shows some high growth of our earnings and free cash flow. And it gives us, you know, a lot of options to do a lot of different things. Hopefully, that'll all generate shareholder value in the future, and we'll be able to, you know, pick what we need to do along the way. I'm just gonna follow up with maybe a question for George about Ecoservices and your mid-single-digit growth projection. But in particular, I was gonna pick up on your comment about elements of your business being similar or analogous to the industrial gas market. When I think of industrial gas, especially in the Gulf Coast, I think it's an industry where customers don't wanna diversify. They wanna hone in on the single supplier with the greatest reliability, the greatest redundancy, you know, the greatest reliability overall. But that's the value proposition. Mm-hmm. So a couple of years ago, you did pick up a large new account in the Gulf Coast refinery customer. In your, you know, five-to-six-year projection, is there any pickup? Is there any expectation of share gains? And if not, you know, what could you do maybe to pry loose another, you know, big customer or two over a multiyear period? Thanks. So, David, as you already mentioned, you know, we're similar to industrial gases in terms of our customers value the service we provide, and they are looking for continuity of service and reliability and guaranteed supply. As I allude to, as Kurt alluded to, we enjoy long-term relationships with the vast majority of our customers. Yes, we've picked up, you know, a customer not too long ago, but that doesn't happen on a regular basis. There's not a lot of trading of customers because there's high switching cost for customers. And customers, they don't want to jeopardize their production of, like, alkylate and other uses of sulfuric acid. So they want to stick with somebody they can count on for the long term. So is there an opportunity to pick up somebody or to, quote, "peel somebody off"? Maybe, but that's really not what's in our growth plan. Our growth plan is focused more on, you know, general pricing increases associated with the market inflation, the spot business that we've talked a little bit about, and also with their expansions growing with our customers that exist. Yeah, I think, you know, David, just to elaborate on that, I mean, the alkylate units, they're always looking to expand their units, right? And looking how they can make more alkylate with their current feedstocks they have. Sometimes one of the reasons the industry has grown so much is people are taking less than optimal feedstocks, right? You know, things like C3s and C5s and trying to alkylate them, which produce the same amount of alkylate on the back end, but consume a lot more sulfuric acid to do that, right? So we're seeing a lot of that, as well as people are trying to eke that incremental barrel of alkylate out of that unit. They're drawing on different feedstocks, which, you know, again, may keep the general output of the alkylate static, but the acid consumption can, you know, around that grows. Okay, well, if there are no other questions, again, the Ecovyst team really appreciates everybody joining us here from long distances and, and in some cases, just down, down the street. But we really appreciate your interest in Ecovyst, and we're really excited about the materials that we presented today, the opportunities that are before us, whether in George's business, which is, you know, obviously the, the leader in, in acid regeneration and Virgin Sulfuric Acid, and really all the innovative and exciting technologies that surround Paul's, Paul's area. So again, thank you for attending today, and we look forward to continuing the conversations on calls and meetings with you that we'll have in the future. Thank you.