LyondellBasell Industries NV (LYB) CEO Kenneth Lane on Q1 2022 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 29, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

David Kinney - Head, IR

Kenneth Lane - Interim CEO & EVP, Global Olefins & Polyolefins

Michael McMurray - EVP & CFO

Conference Call Participants

Jeffrey Zekauskas - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Stephen Byrne - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Bhavesh Lodaya - BMO Capital Markets

Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley

Hassan Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors

Prashant Juvekar - Citigroup

Michael Sison - Wells Fargo Securities

Joshua Spector - UBS

Aleksey Yefremov - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Kevin McCarthy - Vertical Research Partners

David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank

Matthew Blair - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.

Arun Viswanathan - RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the LyondellBasell teleconference. At the request of LyondellBasell, this conference is being recorded for instant replay purposes. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Kinney, Head of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

David Kinney

Thank you, Alex. Before we begin the discussion, I would like to point out that a slide presentation accompanies today's call and is available on our website at www.lyondellbasell.com/investorrelations.

Today, we will be discussing our business results while making reference to some forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. We believe the forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions and the alternative measures are useful to investors. Nonetheless, the forward-looking statements are subject to significant risk and uncertainty. We encourage you to learn more about the factors that could lead our actual results to differ by reviewing the cautionary statements in the presentation slides and our regulatory filings, which are also available at our Investor Relations website.

Additional documents on our Investor website provide reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures, together with other disclosures, including the earnings release and our business results discussion.

A recording of this call will be available by telephone beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern Time today until May 29 by calling 877-660-6853 in the United States and 201-612-7415 outside the United States. The access code for both numbers is 13727006.

During today's call, we will focus on first quarter results, the current market and our near-term outlook.

Before turning the call over to Ken, I would like to call your attention to the noncash lower of cost or market inventory adjustments, or LCM, in the impairments that we have discussed on past calls. LCM adjustments are related to our use of last in, first out or LIFO accounting and the volatility in prices for our raw materials and finished goods inventories. Impairment charges were recognized to write down assets to their estimated fair value. Impairments include the noncash impairment of $624 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 that reflects our evaluation of strategic options for the Houston refinery.