Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Chemical Corporation's Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded, today, November 3, 2015. I would now like to turn the call over to today's host, Dave Hansen, Westlake's Senior Vice President of Administration. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Chemical Corporation's third quarter 2015 conference call. I am joined today by Albert Chao, our President and CEO; Steve Bender, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and other members of our management team. The conference call agenda will begin with Albert, who will open with a few comments regarding Westlake's performance in the third quarter of 2015, followed by a current perspective on the industry. Steve will then provide a more detailed look at our financial and operating results. Finally, Albert will add a few concluding comments, and we will then open the call up to questions. During this call, we refer to ourselves as Westlake Chemical. Any reference to Westlake Partners is to the master limited partnership, Westlake Chemical Partners LP. References to OpCo refer to our subsidiary Westlake Chemical OpCo LP who owns certain Olefin facilities. Today, management is going to discuss certain topics that will contain forward-looking information that is based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements suggest predictions or expectations, and thus are subject to risks or uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially based upon many factors including the cyclical nature of the chemical industry; availability, cost, and volatility of raw materials, energy, and utilities; governmental regulatory actions and political unrest; global economic conditions; industry operating rates; the supply/demand balance for Westlake's products; competitive products, and pricing pressures; access to capital markets; technological developments, and other risk factors discussed in our SEC filings. This morning, Westlake issued a press release with details of our third quarter 2015 financial and operating results. This document is available in the Press Release Section of our webpage at westlake.com. A replay of today's call…

Thank you, Albert, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with discussing our consolidated financial results followed by a detailed review of our Olefins and Vinyls segment results. Let me begin with our consolidated results. In this morning's press release, Westlake reported net income for the third quarter of 2015 of $184 million or $1.39 per diluted share on net sales of $1.2 billion. This represents an increase to net income of $16 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, compared to the third quarter of 2014 net income of $168 million, or $1.25 per diluted share, on net sales of $1.3 billion. Third quarter 2015 net income benefited from approximately $23 million, or $0.17 per share, primarily due to tax planning initiatives, resulting in increased tax benefits in certain prior years and the current year. We estimate that, as a result of the taxing planning initiatives, our ongoing effective tax rate on ordinary income will be approximately 33.5%. Additionally, our third quarter income from operations is lower by approximately $34 million due to both unplanned outages and planned maintenance turnarounds at various North American and European facilities. For the third quarter of 2015, net sales decreased by $65 million over the same period in 2014 due to lower sales prices for all of our major products, partially offset by higher sales volumes for most of our major products and from sales contributed by Huasu, our Chinese PVC operation, in which we acquired a controlling interest on June 1, 2015 and from Vinnolit, which we acquired on July 31, 2014. Third quarter 2015 income from operations was $254 million, a decrease of $53 million from the third quarter of 2014, driven by lower integrated product margins that were the result of lower sales prices and the planned and unplanned outages. These results…

Thank you, Albert. Before we begin taking questions, I'd like to remind you that a replay of this teleconference will be available starting two hours after we conclude the call. We will provide that number again to you at the end of the call. Operator, we're now prepared to take questions.

Thank you. And the first question comes from the line of Aleksey Yefremov from Nomura Securities. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thank you. I apologize if I missed it, but what was the impact of Vinnolit outages and U.S. outages in the third quarter?

The total outages impact in the third quarter was $34 million impact. That includes both European and North American impacts.

And did you have any negative impact from shortage of ethylene in Europe in the third quarter?

The impact that we saw was in the second quarter, not in the third quarter.

Okay. Thank you. And could you provide your thoughts on U.S. polyethylene pricing, outlook, and also the level of polyethylene inventory in the U.S.? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, certainly. There is a price increase announced by members of (20:15) industry for $0.05 a pound, and it's effective on November 1. And I think the inventory level that was in for polyethylene in the U.S. about average for producers, and on low side for customers.

Thank you very much. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

And our next question is from the line of James Sheehan from SunTrust. Your line is now open. James, check your mute button please.

Operator, can we move to the next one, we can re-queue Jim?

Thank you. And our next question is from the line of David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. This is actually Jermaine Brown filling in for David. (21:15) questions. Can you talk about the caustic demand that you are seeing in the Asia-Pacific region and how it's tracking versus historical levels? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well. We don't sell caustic in Asia, and we don't export caustic much internationally, but I understand that the chlor-alkali demand has slowed down a bit. So the caustic production probably have slow down a bit in Asia in the upcoming winter months. So, with the – if industry demand is weak for caustic, it may impact on the caustic production as well.

Understood. Thank you. And can you comment on the pace of the buybacks out through 2016?

Our program of buybacks was active in third quarter as well as second quarter of this year. And what we've said is, the program is an opportunistic program, but you see that we've been active throughout the second and third quarter. And as I mentioned, we've returned about $200 million back to shareholders in the form – and unitholders – in the form of share buybacks, dividends and distributions to our partners, unitholders. But as I say, the program itself is discretionary, but you can see that we've been active in the last two quarters.

Okay. Okay. So I'd assume it's fair to – it's fair to assume that the pace would continue at a similar amount going forward?

That's reasonable to assume.

All right. Thank you. That's all that I have. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

And our next question is from the line of Hassan Ahmed from Alembic Global. Your line is now open.

Good morning, Albert and Steve.

Good morning. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Hassan.

Question around near-term effective utilization rates for ethylene. I mean, you guys yourself are talking about some turnaround in sort of Q2 of 2016. And it seems a fair number of people are doing that. So, are we setting ourselves up for a year in 2016 similar to 2015 where, all of a sudden, you see tight effective utilization rates on the back of a number of planned, and certainly some unplanned outages, and maybe potentially a spike in spot ethylene prices? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: From what we understand, there is over 10% of capacity that will be offline, in turnaround, about March, April, May period. So potentially, the industry could be tighter at that time.

Very set. (23:58) And now, just a longer-term question. You talked about sort of LDPE demand and the strength associated with that and I guess one of the virtues of the polyethylene side of things has been that polyethylene supply demand has been tighter than ethylene supply demand, right. So, hence, sort of a pricing premium. Now going forward, as and when all of this announced North American ethylene capacity comes online, it just seems that a number of people haven't really announced their derivative intension, right. So, what are you hearing in terms of ethylene integration into polyethylene in general? Is the bulk of the ethylene sort of capacity increment going into polyethylene? So, that's kind of on the general side, and beyond that, LDPE in particular? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Certainly. I think you're right that with the increased capacity in ethylene, the ethylene prices has dropped as a result because of lack of derivative demand to catch up with the ethylene supply. I presume, people do expand without broadcasting to the market that people are looking at expansions down – derivatives. As far as new ethylene plants that being announced, they're usually tied with the downstream derivative plans and most of that is polyethylene, about 60% of ethylene today goes into polyethylene. But most of those capacities are not in LDPE, that's where West Lake's major product in polyethylene is. So we'll be seeing more of the commodity grades, of low in high density and less of LDPE in the market on a global basis.

Super. Thanks so much, Albert. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're very welcome.

And our next question is from Arun Viswanathan from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thanks. So, I guess just curious on the caustic side. What are your observations in the market right now? Are your customers accepting the current $30, that we've seen go through the industries, and what's your, I guess, expectations for the rest of the $65, that's been announced? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. I think in October, that the industry accepted a $30, $35 price increase for caustics, and the export demand is good as well. So we look forward to the rest of the $65 price announcement that's being put in place for the fourth quarter.

And then, Albert, do you believe that the market is tight enough that these prices will stick well in the Q1 even when maintenance comes back online? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, it depends also on the demand for PVC. We're heading into winter months now. If the weather is severe, and PVC demand slows down a lot, then there is less production of flooring, hence less production of caustic.

Okay. Thanks. And if I may, another one on your overall cash used priorities, you've discussed in the past, your preference for essentially buying assets in somewhat depressed regions, are you still seeing those opportunities? You definitely have quite a nice cash balance on your balance sheet. How do you expect to deploy that and maybe you can just discuss a little bit on the M&A pipeline right now? Thanks.

Yes. Arun, as we've said and as Albert noted in his closing comments or in prepared comments that we continue to look for opportunities to deploy this capital; and you see that in 2013 and 2014 that we acquired some I think attractive assets contributed to the results this quarter, and I'm speaking to the North American Specialty Pipe business that we acquired in 2013 and Vinnolit last year. We're continuing to look for good opportunities such as those and that's constantly something that we look at as well as the organic initiatives of course that we always pursue.

Thank you. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

And our next question is from the line of Frank Mitsch from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Yes. Good morning. Steve, I'll take that last response as a yes, in terms of the M&A. Hey, there's a lot of capacity coming online in VCM and PVC or not a lot, but a material amount and this has not been the best of years 2015 in terms of utilization rates and demand. As we start to think about 2016 and a little bit more capacity out there, what are you guys thinking about in terms of the demand side? How should we start thinking about 2016 in terms of the – in terms of that part of your business? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Certainly, the U.S. construction market has improved albeit still gradually. I think September, we have the housing construction at 1.2 million rate, annual rate, which is better than last year, the average about 1 million unit. Hopefully, with the recovering economy, the next year, that construction and multi-family, single-family homes continue to grow, but also because of the advantage of the cost position we have in the U.S., U.S. is ready to export more PVC to international markets and international market demand is still good. And so, there will be more exports from the U.S.

All right. So we – I mean, we have been pretty – we've been exporting quite a significant amount so far, so you anticipate that that will continue to grow if we do not see the sort of housing recovery or new – at least enough of a robust housing recovery, you would think that that's where we're going to put all the those pallets in? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

And on the – as we think about the further upstream, I guess on the chlor-alkali side, a couple of competitors are at least talking about rationalizing some capacity there. What would your expectation would be for operating rates in chlor-alkali which is, I guess, it's been around the mid-80s in 2015. How should we be thinking about that in 2016? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think probably will be the same ballpark. It's about 300,000 tons of chlor-alkali capacity coming on-stream next year as well. So probably we'll still be in the mid-80s.

All right. All right. Thanks so much. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, welcome.

And our next question is from Brian Maguire from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Ryan L. Berney - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Good morning. This is Ryan Berney on for Brian. Just had a quick question. Could you maybe give us an update on the planned turnaround you have early next year. You still kind of thinking it'll be around 90 days and then maybe comment on how that'll impact maybe the first quarter versus second quarter?

Yes. As we noted, it'll be a planned 80-day outage. It'll be completed in the second quarter. So, it starts earlier in that second quarter and will be completed in that second quarter. As I noted in our remarks, we expect the impact for those 80-day outages will be about $45 million to $50 million between that and some other planned turnaround activity occurring in that second quarter. Ryan L. Berney - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Great. Thank you. And then, maybe could you also give a sense from a bridge perspective for the maintenance CapEx for 2015 versus 2016?

Well, I think the maintenance capital certainly is other than the turnaround related activity is going to be as we normally would expect it to be year-on-year. As I say, when I think of the total capital spending that we have for our business, maintenance capital tends to run in the neighborhood of about $150 million. But of course, it'll be higher in 2016, because we'll pull some of that into the work related to the expansion and debottleneck of Petro 1. Ryan L. Berney - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Great. Thank you.

We haven't given guidance yet to the 2016 total capital spending budget. We'll do that once we finish our budgeting process.

Thank you. And our next question is from the line of Don Carson from Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now open.

Yes, question on polyethylene inventories. Albert, you mentioned you thought that producer PE inventories were at about average levels. When would you start anticipating that to rise because, for example, specifically in your own situation, as you take down Lake Charles, at what point do you start building inventory to see you through that turnaround? I know some of your competitors have even earlier turnarounds coming. So, do you expect that need to build inventory will offset any softness we're seeing in spot polyethylene prices? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, we expect that people will start building more inventory heading to winter months and early part of next year, ready for the turn on spring, which will start most likely between March and May period.

Okay. And then finally, any update on the IRS MLP proposals? What further discussions have you had with them?

Don, we've certainly participated in the formal 90-day comment period that ended in early August. And then, there was a hearing that the IRS held in October, where they took formal comments from all the commenting companies, and we participated in that hearing process. No update from the IRS in terms of their timing, other than what they told us earlier this year back in May, which would be a targeted day of late spring or early summer of 2016 for final regulations, but no update since May on that timeframe. So, we're still working with that timeframe.

Thank you. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

And our next question is from Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Jeff.

Hi. Are you surprised that the price of ethane isn't lower, with natural gas being pretty close to $2? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, the demand for ethane is still very strong. Ethane is still among the lowest destock (34:58) across the U.S., and there will be also ethane be exported in coming months. So, I think the ethane price is reasonable.

So, some people think there is 500,000 barrels per day of ethane being rejected. Why would there be a $0.05 premium to the ethane price over its filled out (35:21) value, given there is so much rejection? Do you have an opinion on that? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. Your guess is as good as mine, Jeff.

Okay. I noticed that you bought back about $50 million of stock in the quarter, and I think your share price averaged maybe $58 or so?

Jeff, it was $53, and we were – and you're right, we were in the mid-$50 in terms of millions of dollars, but it's about a $53 price.

$53 price. Well, I think in the previous quarter, you bought back $60 million worth of stock, maybe at around $72? So...

Yes. That's right.

That's right. Yes. So why is that you spent less, even though your stock price went down quite a bit?

Opportunities, Jeff. We continue to be opportunistic, and certainly we continue to be opportunistic and, as I mentioned to one of the earlier questioners, we'll continue to look at the program and buy shares.

So does that mean that the probability that you might need cash for acquisitions went up?

No, Jeff. I think the level of granularity between the numbers of shares and the dollar amount (36:44) is relatively insignificant to the balance that you see that we had at the end of the quarter.

How much do you still have to spend for your ethylene expansion next year?

Well, we're largely through the long lead items, and what we've said is that – and so, we're about half way through that spending. But the great majority of that spending will occur when we get to that second quarter of 2016.

About halfway through. And forgive me; did you talk about what the total cost of the expansion project was?

We have – we've given no direct guidance on the amount of that, other than to say, and I'm talking about the expansion, not the turnaround-related items.

Yes, exactly, right. So, how much did you say you're spending for the expansion, or when you've done it similarly in the past? How much did you spend?

It was about – it was – the guidance range we gave was $350 million to – $350 million would be the midpoint of that range.

Okay. Good. Thank you so much. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

And our next question is from David Wang from Morningstar. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the polyethylene margin. We see more of the ancillary (38:11) margin come from that part of this quarter. I was wondering if you can talk about, if you think that this certainly could sort of tighten the future or if you think that these prices are sort of sustainable? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, Dave, the $0.05 upon price increase announced for November 1, and the demand has been quite strong, both domestically and internationally for polyethylene in general.

Great. Thank you. And can you talk about what your thinking is around propane versus ethane for feedstock given the recent decline in propane prices? Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, propane price has fluctuated a lot. And in the summer time, it was very – advantaged over ethane, (38:58) and today, it's probably on par with ethane.

Okay. Thank you so much. Albert Chao - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

And our next question is from the line of John Roberts from UBS. Your line is now open.

Good morning, guys.

Good morning, John.

Once you finish the ethylene expansion, I think your capital spending covered is kind of fair. Do you have any engineering studies underway for anything else significant beyond that?

Yes. John, as you can imagine, we're always looking at opportunities to take further debottleneck opportunities in this business. And so, while we made no formal announcements at all, as you can imagine that's a constant study and analysis process that we're going to take.

Okay. And is there any update on the Eastman litigation?

No, John, I think you remember that there were two issues there, one was the directional flow and one was the tariff itself, in terms of the value of the tariff. The tariff itself has been agreed I think in terms of being market oriented and we've taken into the court system the other matter. And that's going to take some time to get resolved.

Is there a date for an initial hearing or is that finding meeting?

It'll be later this quarter.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And at this time, the Q&A session has now ended. Are there any closing remarks?

We'd like to thank you for participating in today's call. We hope that you will join us again for our next conference call to discuss our fourth quarter and full-year 2015 results. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.