Apogee Enterprises, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q4 2021 Apple G Enterprise, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today. Mr. Jeff Hibson, you may begin.

Thank you, Tawanda. Good morning and welcome to Apogee Enterprises' fiscal 2021 fourth quarter earnings call. With me today are Ty Silverhorn, Apogee's chief executive officer, and Nishit Gupta, chief financial officer. I'd like to remind everyone that there are slides to accompany today's remarks, which are available in the investor relations section of Apogee's website. During this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP measures and a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measures is provided in the earnings release we issued this morning, which is available on our website. I'd also like to remind everyone that our call will contain forward-looking statements reflecting management's expectations, which are based on currently available information. Actual results may differ materially. More information about factors that could affect Apogee's business and financial results can be found in our SEC filings. And with that, I'll turn the call over to you, Ty.

Thank you, Jeff, and thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. It's great to be with you on my first earnings call as Apogee's CEO, and I'd like to thank the Apogee board for putting their trust in me to lead this company. I'd also like to thank my predecessor, Joe Pushus, for his leadership of Apogee over the past decade. as we wish them all the best. Well, it's been a busy first three months for me, as you might expect. I spent time getting to know the business and building relationships with our team, gaining a deeper understanding of our markets and customers, and assessing the opportunities and challenges in front of us. I've learned a lot about the company these past 90 days, not the least of which is the knowledge and passion our team has for this business. We have work to do, but Apigee has tremendous long-term potential and an opportunity to build on its 70-plus year history. Now, prior to joining Apigee, I led several businesses through strategic realignments and reshaping, while also finding ways to deliver performance improvements in the near term. This has given me invaluable experience, and I've also developed a passion for shaping long-term, sustainable growth strategies. while also driving stronger operational execution. This is what led me to Apigee. I saw a company with a decades-long successful track record of transforming its business as markets shift. And I saw the opportunity to help reset the overall growth strategy to build the next chapter in the company's history. I see significant potential for Apigee to grow in the future while also delivering improved returns as we move ahead. So I'm very excited to collaborate with Apogee's leadership team and our employees to build that future together, one that delivers for our customers, shareholders, and employees as we position for stronger, more profitable, and sustainable growth. Let's now turn to our results for fiscal year 2021, which are summarized on page four of our presentation. There's no question this was a challenging year for our business and for the broader non-residential construction industry. However, Apogee's team rose to the challenge. Protecting the health and safety of our employees was a focus from the outset of the pandemic and remains our number one priority. We adapted our business operations so we could continue to serve customers while keeping our employees safe. We paid down debt and strengthened our financial position, giving us more flexibility going forward. And we took short-term cost actions, starting the long-term work to improve our overall cost structure, which allowed us to deliver solid earnings and cash flow despite significant revenue declines. I want to acknowledge the efforts of all our employees in helping the company manage through the past year. We intend to build on that foundation of work as we start our new fiscal year. Now, looking ahead to fiscal 22, the data suggests that non-residential construction has entered a down cycle. It's unclear at this point how long this will last and what the rebound will look like, although it's likely to be different than past cycles, especially in a post-COVID environment. What I can tell you is that we will not be content to just weather through this downturn in period of uncertainty. We are using it, as we have the pandemic, as a catalyst to make bigger and accelerated changes to transform the company, positioning us for a brighter future. Against that backdrop, let me discuss our priorities for the new fiscal year, which are outlined on page five of our presentation. Building on the work we began in fiscal 21, we will continue to drive near-term cost and operational improvements that protect our bottom line while also taking actions to strengthen the company's long-term position for growth. This begins with a focus on our people. We will continue to prioritize workplace health and safety, and we'll emphasize talent management and development, critical enablers to everything else we hope to accomplish. Next, we're working to drive stronger operational execution with a higher level of rigor and urgency on a vital few set of priorities. This will have some near-term impact but larger long-term benefits, enabling us to drive higher returns on invested capital even if revenues do not bounce back quickly and strengthening our leverage when they do come back. Third, we will accelerate our efforts to transform the enterprise. This means continuing to build out a more competitive cost structure challenging ourselves to rethink how we can better manage SG&A and drive to lower costs of goods sold through efficiencies, cost out, and stronger portfolio management. We'll also begin to make foundational investments to strengthen core processes, systems, and develop new digital and back office capabilities. This is critical work to enable our future transformation, sustain the gains we make in margin improvements, and make us a more effective acquirer in the future. Finally, we will embark on a new enterprise strategy to position the company for long-term sustainable growth. We'll utilize market insights to inform how we shift resources and capital across our businesses, focusing on products, services, and end markets where we can bring more differentiation, more value, better margins, and grow faster than the market. Our goal will be to generate improved return on investment, which means we must deliver stronger profit dollars and be more efficient in how we use our capital. To drive this home internally, we are shifting the focus and measurement for our leadership team to delivering stronger returns on invested capital long-term and EBIT dollar growth in the near term. Now, I know you want to hear the specific details of what this new strategy will look like, and so does the rest of the Apogee team. At this point, we are still very early in the process. This is an important effort, and we will be thorough and thoughtful to make sure we get it right. It's likely going to take much of this calendar year to fully build out, but we will provide updates in the coming quarters. I'm excited about the coming year and the long-term opportunities we have ahead of us, and Apigee's entire leadership team is focused on building a more successful future for our company, our customers, employees, and shareholders. Now let me turn it over to Nishit to provide comments on the quarter and our fiscal year 22 outlook.