So, welcome, everyone. Behind me, we have Chris Zimmer, CEO of USAP. Thank you all for coming, and I'll turn it over to Chris. Okay. Thanks, Kimberly. Good morning, everyone. So I should let everybody know, remind you about an announcement that we put out, a couple months ago. We are in the process right now of engaging with a new auditor. They began with us on December 18th. So as we work through closing the fourth quarter and 2023, we are in a blackout period. I'll be a bit guarded with some of the comments that I have, and we look forward to updating everybody on our fourth quarter and full 2023 financial numbers at the end of March. So an overview on Universal Stainless: we are a specialty steel producer, domestically based. Our company is built upon specialty steel production with a focus of targeted interactions with OEMs for very critical applications. We're going to get into a little bit of the scope of the company, but primarily that's aerospace and defense applications. The company's producing advanced alloys. This means that the equipment that we have, the know-how that we have, and more importantly, the relationships and the approvals that we have from customers allow us to be a unique player, in the specialty steel world. We've got four fully integrated facilities located just in the greater Pittsburgh area, out into Ohio and in New York State. So an overview on the company: I'm going to talk a little bit about a growth strategy that is starting to kick into high gear. You can see that evident in some of the high-level financial numbers that I can share with you here. Sales have begun to accelerate after a high point in 2018. The COVID adjustment hit everybody, hit us, and now we've come back strong. This is not only the rebound of demand of our critical customers, but it's the addition of these new premium alloys that are a part of the execution of the strategy that we put in place nearly a decade ago with the purchase of our North Jackson facility. So last year we had record revenue. You can see the trend, being supported that this will continue with a strong backlog as we leave 2023. We've had 16 price increases since coming out of COVID, the most recent one last week. Given lead times, we haven't fully realized all of these price increases, but they continue to take hold every quarter as they go through. In fact, as we look forward to 2024, my expectation is that average selling price is going to be nearly double what we experienced in 2022. So a lot of goodness continuing to come through on the pricing front as we also build upon that premium alloy portfolio. And talking a little bit more about that, this is an advancement in the offering that we have to the marketplace. Universal Stainless, traditionally, with some of the alloys that we produced, would be on more structural components throughout the plane. But the facility that we acquired in 2011 in Ohio has a vacuum induction furnace. This allows us to make higher-end advanced alloys for more critical applications. It's a game changer for our company. The length of time that it takes to develop the products, more importantly, the approvals, is one of the reasons why we're just now starting to see this benefit flow through. These approvals have been coming in at a very quick pace over the recent years. The backlog is starting to build as customers are layering in these new orders with us. So it's an exciting time for us as we're finally executing upon this strategy. The tightness in the COVID market has helped, but these are now finally coming through and being a reality for our business. So as I mentioned before, aerospace and defense is the predominant driver of our business, representing 76% of our overall sales. Commercial and defense, defense of that 76% is about 15%-20%. And I say that with a range because the majority of our product does go to market through service centers. A lot of them are targeted relationships. We build and produce products to specifications, but when customers multi-spec them, we have a general idea where they go to. But when we look at that 76%, I think about 60% or so being commercial in nature and the balance going towards defense applications. A little more on our participation in the commercial side of the business. So as I mentioned, structural participation, things like landing gear, structural components, hinges, actuators have been the space that Universal had lived with and and inside of. The VIM alloys do get us into the engine side. So these are more critical applications. I'm talking about things like bearings, gears, shafts, blades on the cold side, the casings. This is a whole new area that Universal has been participating in, growing our business in with the advent of this new facility. You can see that the aerospace business has grown. When we go back in time, this has been a focused area of opportunity for us. A lot of that has to do with the relationships we have, and you can see a handful of them on the screen there. It's been the key to our growth, working in a partnership with the primes so that they understand who we are and is the critical way to enter into these markets with those relationships, with those approvals. And like I said, they're finally starting to take hold in a more meaningful way. The future's bright for commercial aerospace. A quick glimpse at the backlogs today shows us that there's about a 9-year supply of production at Boeing and Airbus. Those backlogs continue to build. The focus of our initiative, in addition to the commercial side of the business, is also on defense. Defense spending continues to be robust. Global conflicts continue to happen, and our participation in this area continues to grow. When we think about fixed wing, we've talked about our friends that are presenting next door at Bell. We're a very active part of a number of these different platforms and continuing to grow as these approvals flow through. Quickly touching on some of our other markets, we do support the automotive industry primarily with some tooling products that we sell. So we love model changeovers, and this is a great environment for that. As EVs evolve, as new designs come out, the manufacturing lines need to rebuild. So for us, it's more about the changeover designs, and this is a very good environment for us there. Generally, we're seeing a bit of a softness in this marketplace as are other people, but there's a lot of upside. When we look at the general industrial market, the semiconductor industry is coming off of about an 18-month low of activity, but there's a lot of upside expectation in 2024, not only in true demand, but as the semiconductor industry is trying to onshore a lot of their production that has gone overseas. This is a big area of opportunity as well, the production of the components that make semiconductors. And finally, in the energy markets, oil and gas applications like aggressive environments for exploration and drilling, these are areas that we also participate in, and there's a lot of hopefulness that that capital spending is going to increase as we move forward. So again, another area of opportunity, in addition to aerospace and defense, that we plan on capitalizing on. I do want to give everybody a quick update on some of our capital initiatives. In particular, the VAR expansion at our North Jackson plant. We previously talked about the addition of 2 new VARs. We've been very excited about this to help us support our growth initiatives. There's some pictures up there of the early-on construction, getting the material in place. The technical validation has finally completed, and they just went into operation a couple of weeks ago. So we're really excited about this, another stepping stone to help us support that growth initiative. Some statistics on our 2023 capital spending you can see coming into $13 million, and the depreciation and amortization just over $19 million. As I mentioned, I'm going to be a bit muted in some of the historical performance, so a little bit more of a rearview look. You can see that EBITDA has has started to recover after the impact of the business in COVID. The expectation, as shown here and as reflected in the backlog, is that we're going to continue to see expansion, not only through the price increases of all of our core products, but these premium alloy grades that we're producing and selling more of sell at higher prices for better margins. The competitive space is a lot less crowded. So the expectation as we move forward is this trend will absolutely continue. The expectation in 2024 is that we're going to continue to generate free cash flow. Our expectations are to continue to pay down debt, and that's going to be our focus as we move through the year. So in conclusion, Universal Stainless is a uniquely positioned specialty steel producer. There's a lot of discussion these days about the ability for the supply chain to support the growth initiatives, both commercially and from a defense standpoint. Universal is uniquely positioned as we bring on these new products and gain these new approvals to be a solution to a lot of the challenges that the marketplace is seeing. It's exciting that we're experiencing that firsthand right now. The approvals are coming in. The orders are coming in. LTAs are being won. That's showing up as we service the marketplace. That's another strength of ours. We may not be the biggest one out there, but we see that as an asset. Our ability to work with our customers, be flexible with them, and support their needs, we found that to be a tremendous asset, and it's helped us to grow in the space that we're targeting. And finally, I can't say it again. It's a great environment that we're in right now. There may be some turbulence over the next 10 years, but fundamentally, we're in a really good spot. So I appreciate your attention. Kimberly? Chris? Yeah. So we can get into some of the Q&A. So I have a couple of questions. I'm going to turn it over to the audience in case there are any. So since 2011, I think we've heard a lot about the transformational story about what premium products can mean to your business out of North Jackson. I think it's really starting to play out now. Can you talk about sort of the journey from then to now, what has gone on at North Jackson to position you to be, you know, where you are today, able to capitalize on these premium alloys, and what that is going to mean for USAP's growth in products? Yeah. So, just a little bit of a background. Universal's got four facilities. I would consider them to be some legacy facilities, still making some good higher-end product for structural components. The North Jackson plant was new construction, one that we assumed finished construction on in 2011 with a vacuum induction furnace and a radial forge that allows us to make larger diameters. So there's a plant that did not have an existing product line. It did not have an existing customer base. So there was a lot of work done on our side to develop the products, develop the customers, and more importantly for these grades, getting that source approval to sell these grades into the supply chain. Coming out of COVID and the tightness in the marketplace was the catalyst that we needed with a lot of the primes. So going to the air show this year and in the past couple of years has been fantastic because rather than making the business case for why people need us, they're now seeking us out. They're focusing their engineering talent on our organization to get us approved. They want us in the supply chain. That's really been the big change here in the past two to three years, the acceleration of those approvals, being able to penetrate into the supply chain, and then just doing our thing to go in there and execute and service our customers. We're seeing it in the results. It's in the backlog. And as the saying goes, we just need to execute as we move into 2024 and continue this momentum beyond that into 2025 and 2026. So my expectation is the good things that we saw this year, that path will continue next year. And it's supported by a very strong backlog. That's great. Thank you. I also wanted to hit on labor. Is USAP experiencing the kind of broad, sort of talent drain that the overall industry is feeling? And if so, how are you guys addressing it? Do you feel like this is something that's temporary or, more structural? Yeah, the challenges that we had immediately coming out of COVID have seemed to moderate. The ability to be able to recruit and bring in talent has improved. Our focus these days is on retention. What are the things that we can do to create an environment, to help retain the workforce that we do bring in? That looks like more extensive training, but more specifically on the shop floor, it's adding technology to how we produce the products, putting controls into our equipment, trying to automate wherever we can and take advantage of some of the newer talents that are coming into today's workforce that are replacing some of the, what I'd call more craftsman type of skill sets that we saw in the past. So it does put the onus on us to up our game from a technology standpoint to digitize wherever we can, and do it in an intelligent way, so that we can create an environment where I'm not sure that the days of new employees coming in and working for 30 years still exist. I'm sure there's a few of them still out there. But our plans are that people will transition from jobs, so we need to bring them in, get them up to speed, make sure that they're working safely and proficiently. So we're investing in our manufacturing system to make sure that we have an environment where we can ramp people up so that they can work safely, productively, and we can continue this growth trajectory. Thank you. Another question. So I think overall, there's discussion around there being sort of an inventory build in some of the aerospace and defense supply chains that, you know, you might be selling into. Are you seeing that? And what are your what are your expectations there going forward? So all of our channel checks right now to continue to confirm, as our customers say it, this is still a very strong pull environment. 75% of our products flow through service centers, and in the aerospace and defense side of their business, they are unable to build inventories. They talk about record backlogs of material that they're waiting to come in from the mills to go straight back out the door. So we always remain vigilant with some of the inefficiencies in the supply chain for inventories to build. But frankly, we're not seeing it right now. We've lived off the strength of the single-aisle plane builds, ramping back up to some of the production levels that we're at pre-COVID levels. Now, over the past year, there's been some strong order entry on the double-aisle planes. So that stream of production is starting to come online, balancing out activity on the single-aisle. Defense continues to be robust. So the environment that we're in right now still continues to be in a very much pull mode. And again, not only riding the current and the tide that we're in right now, the addition of these new products, the new approvals that we have continue to pile on to the backlog of work that we have. So we remain vigilant, but right now, everything that we see going into 2024 and beyond is not suggesting an inventory build. But we do know that Boeing is going through a phase right now where they're stabilizing their production. We continue to be in close contact with our customers, but the feedback that we get is they need metal, and they need it as quickly as we can get it to them. So that's job number one. Perfect. So I'll ask one more question, and then I can turn it over in case anyone has any others. So what can we expect from you guys in 2024? I think that the trajectory of increasing our premium alloys will continue. It's evident in our backlog. We've seen an expansion in our premium alloys going from the low teens to the 20% range. 36% of our backlog today are these premium alloys that sell at the higher prices with the better margins. So I have a full expectation that trend will continue into next year. We continue to ramp our production every quarter. We're having higher output. So shipment levels will continue to increase. And we've got pricing power that is flowing through with these 16 price increases to hit. So I'm I'm excited about what 2024 has to bring. And and again, we need to execute, but we've got a customer base that's also excited about what's ahead. It's a tremendous environment. We just need to keep our head down and execute. Sounds great. Do we have any any questions from the audience? Chris, the. It's generally underrated the impact. Yeah. [Garbled audience question]A lot of chatter about seeing the. That's a That's a new product that you're selling that's closely involved. It does fall under premium products. So where we participate are the structures that are actually making the semiconductors. So these are the flow control components for the gases and the fluids that go into making it. As the semiconductors become more sophisticated, the need for higher-end, what the semiconductor world calls ultra-high-pure material, becomes critically important. So the manufacturing path actually mimics that of aerospace. So for us to be able to service that side of the market right now, the challenge is following the supply chain. We've seen a lot of construction happening back here in the US where they're building up the final assembly plants to make these semiconductor chips. Our point of sale are at the people that are making the flow control components. So historically, that was in the US. It moved off to Asia in a pretty sizable way. So for us, it's watching that side of the business come back on. And we are seeing investments in the US where people are tooling up to be ready to meet that demand. There's a lot of positive speculation that in the second half of 2024, we're going to start to see that strong upswing in material. These semiconductor products compete with aerospace because the manufacturing route is different. But the capacities and the capabilities that Universal bring, they're providing a solution not only for aerospace and defense, but we see semiconductor as also a very exciting market where there's upside potential there. So, we're well positioned. We're waiting for that demand to hit. And, we're looking forward to it. Just figuring out exactly when that's coming, but I think it's soon. Yes. Yes. Yeah. 36%. My expectation as we move through 2024 is that as we go from the low 20s that we experienced. I've got a slide. I'll bring it back up for reference. Okay. So 19% of our sales in 2022 were of these premium alloys. In 2023, 24%. My expectation is that we will be in the upper 20s here in 2024. We continue to add capacities as we were talking about the VAR additions, addition into a new 18-ton furnace for our VIM, which gives us a 50% increase over the 12-ton furnaces that we've been running in, and we've got downstream capacities to continue to grow. So the 36% in our backlog, the reality of that is that I expect this as we move through into the 2025-2026 time period, that we'll be in those upper 20s to mid- to lower 30% range for premium alloys. No, just participation, overall portion of our revenues. So these do sell at a higher level. And both the advent of the price increases and this richer mix, we absolutely do expect to see an expansion there and an improvement there. So pricing of the premium alloys more stable than the traditional product? In this environment, they've actually been accelerating at a faster rate. Some of the traditional alloys, there tends to be more competitors out there. So the marketplace is finding ways to be able to get the products that they need. But on the premium side, it really is not a crowded space. There’s a few producers that are out there. So they tend to accelerate at a faster rate. That stuff in the portfolio is useful. Yeah. So there have been a couple of markets that we’ve intentionally stepped back away from temporarily, primarily because of finishing capacities. Oil and gas would be a good one. So while that is a good market, there are some good margins there. When we look at the opportunities in the aerospace side, we have made a near-term strategic decision to shift some of that capacity over to aerospace and defense. That still leaves us an awful lot of opportunity to fully utilize our assets. So as markets fluctuate, we have the ability to move back into different markets and serve them as those capacities free up. Any more? Okay. Not seeing any more questions. I appreciate everybody joining us today. Thank you very much.