Good morning. My name is Kelly and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SunCoke Energy Q4 2017 Earnings and 2018 Guidance Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Jonathan Law, Vice President, Strategy Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us to discuss SunCoke Energy's fourth quarter and full year 2017 earnings. With me are Mike Rippey, our new President and Chief Executive Officer and Fay West, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. This conference call is being webcast live on the Investor Relations section of our Web site, and a replay will be available there later today. If we don't get to your questions on the call today, please feel free to reach out to our Investor Relations team. Before I turn things over to Mike, let me remind you that the various remarks that we make on today’s call regarding future expectations constitute forward-looking statements. The cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in our SEC filings apply to the remarks we make today. These documents are available on our Web site, as are reconciliations to any non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call. With that, I'll now turn things over to Mike.

Thanks Jonathan. And thank you for joining us this morning. Let me start by saying I'm excited to be leading SunCoke. The management team and the Board have grown SunCoke over the past several years, and have also endured their share of challenges. Through it all have positioned SunCoke for the success that it enjoys today. I look forward to continuing to enhance our existing operations, while formulating a strategy that will position the company for further success in 2018 and beyond. In terms of my background, I spent my entire career in the steel industry, it’s a challenging industry to be sure, but an industry in which I believe companies can enjoy great success. The overall economic climate for the domestic steel market and our customers has shown improvement over the past year, and I'm optimistic that the fundamentals will continue to do so. High regard for this company and its people are major reasons that I chose to join SunCoke. The company has very strong business fundamentals. Our coke business is integral and blast furnace steel making and this team has a proven track record of successfully growing the logistics business. My first 60 days as CEO, I've had the opportunity to meet our leaders and have spent significant time at all of our domestic operations. I'm impressed by the passion that our teams have for our business, their knowledge of our customers and their dedication to our company. It's because of these teams and their commitment that we can produce coke and move material day-in and day-out to valued partner in the steel and global logistics supply chain. That being said, I did not take this job to simply stand still. As we move forward, we will adapt and change to improve performance, optimize our assets and…

Thanks Mike. Good morning everyone. Turning to slide four. As you can see, fourth quarter and full year EPS were $2.05 per share and $1.88 per share respectively and reflect the impact of recent tax reform. I’ll have more to say about this and other EPS impacts in a few slides, but the revaluation of our deferred tax items resulted in an income tax benefit attributable to SXC of approximately $125 million in the fourth quarter. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $69.5 million. In 2017, CMT achieved record volumes, which resulted in the recognition of higher revenues throughout the year. Therefore, our deferred revenue recognition on take or pay volume shortfalls in the fourth quarter of 2017 was lower than the fourth quarter of 2016. Excluding these deferred revenue timing impacts, fourth quarter results were $7.3 million higher versus fourth quarter of 2016. On a full year basis, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $234.7 million, which was at the very top end of our 2017 guidance range, and up significantly compared to 2016. Turning to slide five and looking at key tax reform items and the anticipated impact to SunCoke. On the left hand side of this chart, you can see that we've listed a few key provisions from the new tax code and the expected impact to SunCoke. Given that this legislation was enacted during 2017, we were required to revalue all U.S. deferred income tax assets and liabilities on our balance sheet from the previous corporate tax rate of 35% to the new tax rate of 21%. Based on the new 21% corporate tax rate, the revaluation of SXC’s deferred tax items resulted in a fourth quarter income tax benefit attributable to SXC of approximately $125 million. On the right side of the slide, you…

Thanks Fay. Before we get into our 2018 guidance, I wanted to provide a few brief thoughts on the overall market where we see things heading as we go into the New Year. On steel, I believe we entered the year with some positive momentum the modest industry improvements in 2017. That being said, there's still room for improvement in addressing import challenges that our customers face. Hot rolled coil benchmark price continues to rise as industrial and manufacturing activities pick up here domestically with autos holding fairly steady and construction continuing to rise. HRC prices are currently in the low 700s compared to an average of 620 in 2017. Capacity utilization remains below 80%, driven by the continued flow of imports, but the trend is positive and we believe both the pace and efficacy of trade measures will increase over time. We've seen a sharp rebound in energy prices with Brent crude recently crossing north of $70 per barrel. It may result in additional drilling activity and pipeline development here in the U.S. to benefit the OCTG market. Some longer term tailwinds, which we believe could be catalysts for the steel and manufacturing sectors, include an increase in infrastructure spending and a favorable outcome for section 232. On coal, I believe resilient is the best word for the coal markets as we enter '18. Coal volumes have been robust on the back of strong API 2 and Newcastle prices, which are approaching $100 per ton on strong demand from both Europe and Asia. We anticipate volumes and pricing to remain at these levels throughout 2018, and for the U.S. to be a significant participant in seaborne coal trade. Domestically, natural gas continues to put pressure on domestic thermal coal, and we see met coal holding relatively flat in 2017. In total, we think 2018 macro environment will be modestly better than 2017 with some potential upside as we move into 2019 and beyond. With that, I'll hand the call back to Fay to review our detailed 2018 financial guidance.

Thanks Mike. On slide 15, you can see that we are expecting another strong year of earnings growth with 2018 consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance of between $240 million to $255 million, which is up $13 million at the midpoint versus 2017. We expect Indiana Harbor will report an adjusted EBITDA improvement of $16 million to $20 million, driven primarily by increased production from our rebuilt ovens, as well as the benefit from the reset of our O&M cost sharing mechanisms ending this year. We expect our other domestic coke assets will be down between $5 million to $9 million in 2018, driven by three items; first, higher outage costs due to increased scope; second, increased coal costs at our Jewell Coke facility, driven by higher met coal prices; and finally, the normalization of coke making yields after posting strong yields in 2017. We also expect our Brazil coke operations will be down slightly as it returns to a normalized run rate after a record production year in 2017. Turning to our logistics business. We expect improved performance in 2018 based on the continued stability of CMT volumes, which includes additional new business volumes, as well as the higher annual per ton rate on our base take or pay volumes. We also expect higher KRT volumes as customer demand patterns normalize. Finally, we expect our coke and other segment will be slightly improved in 2018. Turning to our domestic coke outlook on slide 16. In 2018, we expect our domestic coke adjusted EBITDA, excluding Indiana Harbor, will be between $198 million to $202 million. In any given year, we may experience certain items, either positive or negative, that impact adjusted EBITDA. While these annual benefits or impacts may cause adjusted EBITDA differences year-to-year, you can see that on the full whole…

Thank you, Fay. Wrapping up on slide 21. For 2018, we are going to be keenly focused on improving operational performance across both our coke and logistics businesses, including continued execution of our Indiana Harbor rebuild initiative. From a commercial perspective, we will continue to focus on leveraging CMT's unique capabilities to secure further new business towards our goal of achieving $5 million to $10 million of additional EBITDA in the next few years. And finally, we'll again be focused on executing on our commitments to shareholders by achieving full year financial targets, which we laid out today. With that, let's go ahead and open up the call for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Lee MacMillan from Clarksons Platou Securities. Please go ahead your line is open.

I was wondering if you guys could run it through the assumptions regarding Indiana Harbor and the breakeven guidance in a little more detail. On the one hand, I see there's $18 million year over year improvement but at the same time, production expectations look like they're up somewhat marginally from 2017. So I'm wondering if that's the relative efficiency of the rebuilt ovens falling through, because you also talked about degradation at non-rebuilt ovens and then you have the O&M reset. So maybe if you could quantify the O&M and then talk about the balance between new ovens -- rebuilt ovens running better and non-rebuilt ones degrading.

Lee, there's a number of questions in there, and so I'll try to get to them. So our Indiana Harbor production for 2018 is anticipated to be between 870,000 and 900,000 tons. And when you look at our near breakeven guidance and the increase year over year, there're two components that are driving that. One is the O&M reset and the other is the increased production from our rebuilt ovens, right. And the way to think about that increase year over year is roughly 50% is associated with the O&M reset and 50% is associated with the increase in production.

So you got the 9 million and then another 9 million of that incremental tonnage, and that's outweighing the degradation at the non-rebuilt. Then the other question, I guess moving on to non-Indiana Harbor guidance, ex-Indi. With the steel market is tight as it is in the U.S. and you commented some of this in the 2018 outlook, expectations I think for utilization is pretty strong in the domestic steel market. Is there any upside to the ex-Indi Harbor guidance from just increased volume requirements from your customers running at higher utilization or is that already baked into your expectations?

So I would just remind you that we actually -- our facilities typically run full out. And we are typically producing above nameplate capacity. The incremental impacts to SXC would be very minimal to our EBITDA just based on the nature of our take or pay contracts and the way that we run our facility. It would be marginally if we could produce above our nameplate capacity, let's say at our Granite City facility. Across the fleet, that number is not terribly large. So the impact to our results isn't that material. And I would also -- so I think if that helps -- give you any context.

Your next question comes from Lucas Pipes from B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Ted Beachley for Lucas Pipes today. So just one question, going forward into 2018, how do you think of shortfalls related to the take or pay volumes at CMT? Do you expect that deferred volumes will continue to drop in 2018, or how are you guys thinking of that?

So we've guided in 2018 that we're going to have 6.5 million tons of throughput through the facility for our take or pay contracts with FELP and Murray, that's down versus 2017. So we will see an increase in the fourth quarter of 2018 on deferred revenue recognition. But I would just comment that on the whole given the take or pay nature of those contracts, the impact to adjusted EBITDA is relatively immaterial. It really is just based on incremental revenue from ancillary services. So even though you’re going to have lower volumes for those two contracts through the facility, the impact should not be terribly material.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Richard Diamond from Castlewood Capital. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Can you address AK Steel, as yesterday's news has put both the stock of SXC and SXCP under pressure?

So AK yesterday announced that they took out impairment on Ashland, .but they also indicated that the Ashland works remains on temporary idle. And so it's not a permanent closure of that facility as we look at what our customers said publicly.

Can you indicate how that would impact your contract as well as early notification periods?

So our contract with AK have for an early termination, it requires a two year notice and it requires the permanent shutdown of the Ashland blast furnace. As I indicated, our customer hasn’t indicated that there is a permanent shutdown. They said it was a temporary idle, which is no different today than where I was last year or two years ago.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Mike Rippey for closing remarks.

Thank you all you for joining us this morning and for your interest in SunCoke. I plan to be out on the road with Fay and the IR team in early March and look forward to meeting with many of you then. Again thanks, and have a good day.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.