Ashland Inc. (NYSE:ASH) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 9, 2023 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Seth Mrozek - Director, Investor Relations

Guillermo Novo - Chair and Chief Executive Officer

Kevin Willis - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank

John McNulty - BMO Capital Markets

Lucas Spector - UBS Group AG

John Roberts - Mizuho Securities USA LLC

Jeff Zekauskas - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Mike Harrison - Seaport Research Partners

Lawrence Alexander - Jefferies Group LLC

Michael Sison - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Ashland Inc. Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Seth Mrozek, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Seth Mrozek

Thank you, Abigail. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ashland's fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. My name is Seth Morozek, Director, Ashland Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Guillermo Novo, Ashland Chair and Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Willis, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

We released results for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, at approximately 5 p.m. Eastern time yesterday, November 8. The news release issued last night was furnished to the SEC in a Form 8K. During today's call, we will reference slides that are currently being webcast on our website, ashland.com, under the Investor Relations section. We encourage you to follow along with the webcast during the call.

Please turn to slide 2. As a reminder, during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements on several matters, including our financial outlook for fiscal year 2024. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause future results or events to differ materially from today's projections. We believe any such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, but cannot assure that such expectations will be achieved. Please refer to slide 2 of the presentation for an explanation of those risks and uncertainties and the limits applicable to forward-looking statements. You can also review our most recent Form 10K, under Item 1A, for a comprehensive discussion of the risk factors impacting our business.

Please also note that we will be referring to certain actual and projected financial metrics on Ashland on an adjusted basis, which are non-GAAP financial measures. We will refer to these measures as adjusted and present them to supplement your understanding and assessment of the financial performance of our ongoing business. Non-GAAP measures should not be considered a substitute for or superior to financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. The most directly comparable GAAP measures, as well as reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures to those GAAP measures, are available on our website and in the appendix of today's slide presentation.