Good day everyone and welcome to the Altria Group 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is scheduled to last about one hour, including remarks by Altria's management and question-and-answer session. Representatives of the investment community and media on the call will be able to ask questions following the conclusion of the prepared remarks. I would now like to turn the call over to Mac Livingston, Vice President of Investor Relations for Altria Client Services. Please, please go ahead sir.

Mac Livingston

Thanks, Ashley. Good morning and thank you for joining us this morning. Billy Gifford, Altria's CEO, and Sal Mancuso, our CFO, will discuss Altria's third quarter and first nine months business results. Earlier today we issued a press release providing our results. The release presentation, quarterly metrics and our latest corporate responsibility reports are all available at altria.com. During our call today unless otherwise stated, we're comparing results to the same period in 2023.

Our remarks contain forward-looking and cautionary statements and projections of future results. Please review the forward-looking and cautionary statements section at the end of today's earnings release for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from projections. Future dividend payments and share repurchases remain subject to the discretion of our Board of Directors.

We report our financial