Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Innospec's third quarter 2023 earnings release and conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, David Jones, General Counsel and Compliance Officer. Please go ahead. Thank you. Welcome to Innospec's earnings call. This is David Jones. I'm Innospec's General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. The earnings release for the quarter and this presentation are posted on the company's website. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, and other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties are detailed in Innospec's 10-K, 10-Qs, and other filings with the SEC. Please see the SEC site and Innospec's site for these and related documents. We've also included non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is contained in the earnings release. The non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to those prepared in accordance with GAAP. They are included as additional items to aid investor understanding of the company's performance, in addition to the impact that these items and events had on financial results. With me today from Innospec are Patrick Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ian Cleminson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. With that, I turn it over to you, Patrick. Thank you, David, and welcome everyone to Innospec's third quarter 2023 conference call. Innospec delivered another set of good results. We are well positioned for continued organic growth through innovation and customer partnerships across all our businesses. Performance Chemicals delivered strong sequential operating income growth along with margins expansion as new personal care contracts commenced and volumes from our existing business improved. While destocking remains a headwind, we believe that it has peaked. We are cautiously optimistic that we will achieve further sequential operating income growth and margin improvement in the coming quarters. In addition, we believe that our continued investments in technologies like our industry-leading 1,4-dioxane-free and sulfate-free chemistries are well aligned with ongoing consumer and regulatory trends. In Fuel Specialties, operating income was broadly similar to last year as improved margins offset lower sales volumes. These results were below our internal targets, but we expect sequential margin improvement and operating income growth with our chemistries into the winter quarters. Margin improvement remains a key medium-term focus and opportunity for our Fuel Specialties business. Oilfield Services had another strong quarter with double-digit operating income growth and margin expansion over the prior year. As expected, activity levels moderated on a sequential basis, but remained on track for significant full-year improvement in 2023. In the fourth quarter, we anticipate similar results to this quarter as we continue to have a strong pipeline of opportunities across all our oilfield segments and geographies. Now I will turn the call over to Ian Cleminson, who will review our financial results in more detail. Then I will return with some concluding comments. After that, Ian and I will take your questions. Ian? Thanks, Patrick. Turning to slide 7 in the presentation, the company's total revenues for the third quarter were $464.1 million, a 10% decrease from $513 million a year ago. Overall, gross margin decreased slightly by 0.8 percentage points last year to 29.6%. EBITDA for the quarter was $56.5 million, compared to $59.2 million last year, and net income for the quarter was $39.2 million, compared to $38.7 million a year ago. Our GAAP earnings per share were $1.57, including special items, the net effect of which decreased our third quarter earnings by $0.02 per share. A year ago, we reported GAAP earnings per share of $1.55, which included a negative impact from special items of $0.19 per share. Excluding special items in both years, our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $1.59, compared to $1.74 a year ago. Turning to slide 8, revenues in Performance Chemicals for the third quarter were $145.2 million, down 9% from last year's $159.7 million, driven by a negative price mix of 19%, being partially offset by higher volumes of 7% and a positive currency impact of 3%. Gross margins of 20.9% decreased by 3.6 percentage points compared to 24.5% in the same quarter in 2022, due to a weaker sales mix and higher cost of inventory. Operating income decreased 33% from last year to $16.9 million. Moving on to slide 9. Revenues in Fuel Specialties for the third quarter were $169.3 million, down 5% from the $178.7 million reported a year ago. Volume reductions of 4% and a negative price mix of 4% were partially offset by a positive currency impact of 3%. Fuel Specialties gross margins are 31.3%, or 1.4 percentage points above the same quarter last year due to a richer sales mix. Operating income of $27.6 million was down slightly from $27.9 million a year ago. Moving on to slide 10, revenues in Oilfield Services for the quarter were $149.6 million, down 14% from $174.6 million in the third quarter last year. Gross margins of 36% were down 0.4 percentage points from last year's 36.4%. Operating income of $16.4 million was up 15% over the prior year. Turning to slide 11, corporate costs for the quarter were $19 million and within our expected range, compared with $17.4 million a year ago. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 17.5% compared to 20.9% a year ago, due mainly to the favorable geographical split of our profits. Moving on to slide 12, cash generation for the quarter was very strong, with an operating cash inflow of $58.1 million before capital expenditures of $16.7 million. As of September 30th, 2023, Innospec had $207.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt. Now I'll turn it back over to Patrick for some final comments. Thanks, Ian. We are entering the fourth quarter with good momentum in all businesses, and we expect our balanced portfolio to deliver sequential improvement. We continue to execute on a diverse pipeline of organic growth opportunities. Cash generation was again excellent this quarter, and our net cash position strengthened to over $207 million. This quarter, we increased our semiannual dividend to $0.72 per share, bringing our full year dividend to $1.41, representing a 10% annual increase. With our extremely strong balance sheet and a history of disciplined cash management, we are positioned to continue consistent shareholder returns, invest in organic growth, and pursue complementary M&A. With our foundation of world-class innovation and customer service, we remain well placed for long-term growth. Now I will turn the call over to the operator, and Ian and I will take your questions. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. It comes from the line of Jon Tanwanteng from CJS Securities. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning, Jon. My first one is on the Performance Chemicals segment, and congratulations on a nice quarter there. I was wondering how much of the sequential improvement was from new products, and how much of the improvement was from legacy products recovering as destocking, you know, peaks and you start selling more to end demand? John, it was a pretty good balance of both. You know, we did the expansion in a couple of our sites, and we're starting to see that volume flow through in some of the heritage products and some of the new products. So it's really been a combination of both, and we expect that to continue into Q4 and into 2024 as well. Where are you in the ramp of the new products? Did you only get, you know, maybe half of it in the quarter compared to the run rates you're expecting? How much is left as you go through the next couple quarters getting to the contracted run rates? Yeah, we still have a way to go. It's fairly early in the process, and you know, the consumer is still a little hesitant. I mean, there's a lot of conversations around destocking. We're not seeing it as drastic. I think that word's quite overused, quite frankly, except for probably markets like ag, et cetera. So it's still early in the process. The consumer's a little hesitant, so you do have some volume demand down. But I think that it's early in the process, and I think we'll see Q4 will tell us a lot going into 2024, but we're fairly cautious that this is gonna be, I'd say, fairly optimistic that 2024 is gonna be a good year. Got it. Okay. And then second, just on the Oilfield business, it seems like you've found a steady state now after, you know, a year of really, really strong performance. Is this kind of the run rate you're expecting going forward and into next year, or are there opportunities for growth from these levels? How should we think about this business as you go forward? Have we kind of lapped that period of the year? Yeah, I think what you saw in Q3, you'll see in Q4, and that's probably the run rate going into 2024. Okay, great. Last question, just any updates on the priorities for your cash? Yeah, you know, we're very cautious with our balance sheet. And I, you know, I know that people talk about being burning cash in your pocket, but in markets like today, I think it's great because we have a lot of opportunities. You know, our focus is organic growth. Our focus is to continue to increase our dividend, be flexible on the buyback, and just as important is looking at key acquisitions or mergers in our key markets. And we're starting to see a lot more activity in that area due to some chemical companies having stressed balance sheets and some private equity funds having stressed balance sheets. So, you know, I think it really bodes in our favor, managing this business the way we are today, and I think we'll be opportunistic. ... Okay, great. I will jump back in queue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes to the line of Mike Harrison from Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi, good morning. Good morning, Mike. So I just wanted to follow up on the Performance Chemicals business. You seem to be fairly confident that you've seen destocking peak. I think some other personal care suppliers are out there saying that destocking is probably gonna continue through year-end. Can you maybe just give a little bit more color on what you're hearing from customers, and maybe why your business might be behaving a little bit differently than others in the personal care space? Yeah, I think in the markets that we're primarily playing in natural and, and natural beauty, et cetera, we've seen that peak. Depending on where other chemical companies play, there could be still some destocking, but I do think that that's a probably overused word because we're seeing, if, if anything, we've probably seen volume destruction more than we have destocking. But from what we're seeing from the customers that we supply to, and, and the indications that we're getting for Q4 and also moving into Q1, that we're starting to get back to some normalized order patterns. You know, if you remember, the supply chain is more of, you know, you cut the time in half where you supply products now to the customer, and so there won't be this big ramp-up once destocking is over. You know, it's not gonna be, let's restock everything. It's going to be more in-time inventory and on-time inventory, but I think for us, we're starting to see normalized inventories in this business. All right. That's very helpful. And then, switching over to Fuel Specialties, you noted that there was some additional inflation that, that maybe impacted your gross margins relative to your expectations. Do you expect that price cost pressure to remain an issue into Q4, or, or is, there's some improvement coming? And, and then I guess, just given the, the positive, seasonal, pickup in, in volume and mix as we get into the winter months, where do you think we should expect to see gross margins in Q4 and Q1? I think Q4 and Q1, you're still gonna see probably margins in the lower end of our range. You know, there's a big focus on fuels to obviously increase those margins, get those back into the mid to upper range. You know, typically in winter months, you have higher margin products, but with some of these inflationary pressures, they might normalize each other. So, so I think you'll see probably on kind of the same type of margin profile in Q4 and Q1, and hopefully start to improve with the things that we're doing internally, into Q2 and Q3 of next year. All right. And, the last question for me is, just maybe more of a housekeeping question for Ian. Where should we be expecting the tax rates, to come in for Q4? And, any early thoughts on tax rate guidance for 2024? Yeah, Mike, it's, it's an interesting question. What we've seen in Q3 is sort of a geographical split of our profits towards our lower tax jurisdictions, and also a consequence of having some of our operations outside the U.S., where they're exposed to foreign currency fluctuations. So that's been a tailwind for us. We think the effective tax rate for Q4 will be about 22%, so similar to where we were in Q3. And for next year, we think all of those issues will sort of resolve themselves, and we'll be back to that 25%-26% range for the effective tax rate. Excuse me, Mike, any further questions? No, I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes to the line of David Silver from CL King and Associates. Your line is open. Please ask a question. Yeah. Hi, good morning. Thank you. The first question, I would like to just kind of go back to Performance Chemicals and the idea that you're starting to ship under your new volume contracts. You know, I guess I was just trying to clarify, but you do have an internal expansion capital expansion program underway that I believe was scheduled to be completed, maybe middle of next year, so not nine months or so from now. Is it your view that you can continue to fill these newer customer contracts, you know, based on the assets, the logistics and production and whatnot, assets you have in place now, or might there be a pause until the full internal discretionary CapEx program is in place? Yeah, David. The good thing about that $70 million CapEx, it's done in phases. So you're not just throwing $70 million out to get one expansion. It's multiple reactors. We have slowed the program down, so we have slowed that CapEx down, but we have added reactors where we see volumes picking up. And we'll add a lot of that expansion going into next year as well, as long as we see, you know, the activity that we're seeing today. So we have slowed it down. We do watch it extremely close, and we will add those reactors and bring those on as we see those volumes coming on. Okay, and then maybe just a somewhat broader question about resourcing or supporting your growth. But when I read through the press release, Patrick, I think, you know, you made kind of constructive comments, near term, medium term, about each of your three segments. I'd just like to hone in on two of them, Performance Chemicals and Oilfield. But, you know, those are areas I think where you know, to meet the new higher level of demand that you're set up for, you know, you would need additional resourcing in terms of, you know, maybe not just personnel, but logistics, maybe some technical support, et cetera. You know, how do you think Innospec is positioned here, you know, right now for the higher growth or higher level of business you anticipate over, let's say, the next six months-12 months? And, you know, maybe just to comment on talent acquisition and being able to get the people that you think you need to, you know, to meet customer requirements. Sure, David. Yeah, it's a good question. I think we're well positioned right now for the current growth that we're starting to see, in all the businesses. I think as, as you just alluded to, when you start moving up to the full $70 million expansion of what that means in revenue and what that means in technical service, supply chain, customer support, et cetera, you will have to bring some people on. We're constantly looking at talent, depending on where we're going to place that talent and what our needs are. You know, I think we've been a fairly attractive company to work for, because we have a strong balance sheet, because we really work with incoming talent to train them into not only this business, but what the needs are for the future of the company and, and where they fit in for the future of the company. So we do a lot of things in regards to attracting talent. The good thing right now is we're very well set. It would be very minimal, the amount of people that we would need for the current growth rates that we're looking at. So it's not like we're having to go out there and, and blanket the field to look at multiple people. It's a pretty limited amount of people that we're looking at to add on. Okay. No, thank you for that. And then, you know, maybe just a couple of smaller bore or more focused questions, and I'll get back in queue. But, you know, one or two of my companies have had kind of a bit of a margin squeeze here. Not so much from a, you know, management business perspective, but from an accounting perspective, and I guess it's maybe a FIFO versus LIFO issue. But those that have used FIFO have found that, you know, running maybe the costs from 60-90 days ago through the income statement and pairing it up with maybe the lower price points today, you know, maybe on a cost plus or a fixed margin arrangement, have led to, you know, a little bit of a squeeze from an accounting perspective here. I just wanted to, you know, ask you about that, if that's an issue with your company or whether you think, you know, the current level of pricing is pretty well paired up with, you know, the accounting for, you know, per unit cost, cost items. Maybe just, I'll stop there. Yeah, David, we're pretty well paired up. We have seen some pressure in our Fuel Specialties and our Performance Chemicals business, where we probably carry a little bit more inventory than we would like. We're working hard on lowering those levels of inventory. We're still seeing inflationary pressure, though, you know, prices are not coming down across the board. And, you know, inflation is still there, and that's still putting cost pressure across the business. But what's pleasing for us is that the way the business are managing the way through that. You've seen improved gross margins in Fuel Specialties this quarter, and you've seen improved gross margins in Performance Chemicals. In fact, Performance Chemicals tipped over 20% for the first time this year. We're managing our inventory volumes and our pricing well. Fuel Specialties is well understood in terms of the sort of delay and the lag in pricing that we have. We're not overly concerned. We just want to make sure that we're not carrying too much inventory for various reasons. But you know, it's not been a huge burden for us, but it's something that we do watch very carefully, David. Okay, very good. And then maybe one last one, again, on Fuel Specialties here. But, I may have missed this, but I believe in your prepared remarks, there was not really a mention of the role of, you know, aviation fuel additives as part of your overall mix and maybe as a source of gross margins being a little bit below your target range. But, maybe just an update on how that portion of your fuel specialties mix is progressing, and then also maybe just a comment on some of the newer initiatives, stationary power, et cetera. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, AvTel is a very small portion of Fuel Specialties, and it gets, you know, smaller as we move forward. There is a lot of heat going on in regards to getting TEL out of low-lead gasoline, you know, small piston aircraft, but we've been seeing that for years, so it's really nothing new. Now, do I think it could come before 2030 or 2032? It could. We're well prepared for it, but thankfully, it's a very, very small portion of Fuel Specialties. But, you know, we'll do what the industry needs. We'll supply the product as they need, and obviously, we'll take it out of the market when it's time. But I think we're well positioned, you know, to deal with AvTel. It's not as big of a product line in Fuel Specialties as we move forward. Fuel Specialties, as you just said, is moving into greener paths, and that's where our focus is in this business. Okay, very good. I'm going to get back in queue. Thanks for all the color. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes to the line of Jonathan Tanwanteng from CJS Securities. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi, thanks for the follow-up. I was just trying to get a little more color on your fuels out of this volume down 4% this quarter, down substantially more in the first half. I'm just wondering, are you selling to end demand at this point? Have you lost share, and or is it just where the market is and kind of what you expect going forward just from a volume perspective? No, it's just where the market is. We really haven't lost any market share. I mean, it's just, you know, this business just ebb and flows. And, you know, as we always say, it's not recessionary proof, but it's almost recessionary proof. You know, we'll have the ups and downs in quarters, but it's not necessarily that we've lost any big customers. Okay, great. Is there any update on the potential recoveries from the Brazilian issue you had earlier this year? Not really. We're going through the legalities of, you know, trying through the insurance and some civil and criminal legalities over in Brazil. We've replaced the individuals that were in charge of that business, and we've got new individuals running it, and we're off to the races and getting things fixed and improved. Okay, great. And then last question, just assuming this is the run rate for Oilfield going forward, at a revenue level, is there a chance to further improve the margin that you're seeing there, or are you still facing the same inflation concerns that maybe you're seeing in maybe Fuel Specialties or other portions of the business? I think there's a little room for improvement on the margins. You know, you've still got high-cost raw materials, so you still do have some inflationary issues there. But I do think with some new technologies out there, we can improve the margins just a hair. That's a big focus of ours right now. Okay. Is there any room to improve price if there's inflation? Could be. There could be a little bit of room. That's somewhat stagnated, though. You know, that's kind of run its course. Okay, understood. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Patrick Williams for any closing remarks. Thank you all for joining us today, and thanks to all our shareholders, customers, and Innospec employees for your interest and support. If you have any further questions about Innospec or matters discussed today, please give us a call. We look forward to meeting up with you again to discuss our fourth quarter 2023 results in February. Have a great day. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.