Stepan Company (NYSE:SCL) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 20, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Scott Behrens - President and Chief Executive Officer
Luis Rojo - Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Mike Harrison - Seaport Research Partners
Vincent Anderson - Stifel
David Silver - CL King and Associates
Dave Storms - Stonegate
Operator
Greetings, and welcome to the Stepan Company Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterward, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded on Tuesday, February 20, 2024.
It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Luis Rojo, Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer of Stepan Company. Mr. Rojo, please go ahead.
Luis Rojo
Good morning and thank you for joining Stepan Company’s fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial review. Before we begin, please note that information this conference call contain forward-looking statements, which are not historical facts. These statements involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including but not limited prospects for our foreign operations, global and regional economic conditions, and factor detailing our Security and Exchange Commission filing.
In addition, this conference call will include discussions of adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, which are noon-GAAP measures. We provide reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures in the earnings presentation and press release, which we have made available at www.stepan.com under the investor section of our website.
Whether you are joining us online or over the phone, we encourage you to review the investor slide presentation. We make these slides available at approximately the same time as when the earnings release is issued, and we hope that you find information and perspective helpful.
With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Scott Behrens, our President and Chief Executive Officer.
Scott Behrens
Good morning and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full-year results. To begin, I will share our fourth quarter and full-year highlights. Luis will then provide additional details on our financial results, and I will finish up with comments on our strategic investments, and will also provide brief comments on 2024.
For the full-year, adjusted net income was $50.7 million versus a record prior year of $153.5 million. Earnings for the full-year were significantly impacted by an 11% decline in volume due to a slowdown in demand across most end-use markets, including significant customer and channel inventory de-stocking.