Franklin Electric Co., Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Franklin Electric Reports second quarter 2026 sales and earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star

Thank you, Andrew, and welcome, everyone, to Franklin Electric's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Jennifer Wolfenbarger, our Chief Financial Officer, and Joe Ruzynski, our Chief Executive Officer. On today's call, Joe will review our second quarter business highlights, Jennifer will provide additional details on our financial performance, and then Joe will make some additional comments highlighting our water system segment. We will then take your questions. A replay link of the webcast will be archived for seven days, and a transcript and audio version of this call will be available on our website tomorrow. Before we begin, let me remind you that as we conduct this call, we will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. A discussion of these factors may be found in the company's annual report on Form 10-K in today's earnings release. During this call, we will present both GAAP and certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the appendix of our earnings presentation. All forward-looking statements made during this call are based on information currently available and, except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Earlier today, we published a slide deck to accompany our prepared remarks. The slides can be found in the investor relations section of our corporate website at www.franklin-electric.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Dean, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. I'm pleased to share Franklin's results today and show you a company that is on a journey of growth and transformation. Let's move to slide three. Our second quarter was solid for all segments. We continued our work to expand margins and increase our investment in our strategic plan. Our revenue from new products recently launched is at a record pace, and we expect this to continue throughout the year. As we exited the quarter, we saw strong order growth and a healthy backlog, along with a balanced inventory position in our channel. Our balance sheet remains strong. We closed two deals in our water business in the first half, strengthening our position in water treatment in North America and our water systems business in Europe. We also closed a deal in our distribution business, which extended our ability to bring our leading customer service and portfolio to some new end markets. All three deals are tracking ahead of plan. Finally, as we are a company on the move and have a great story and momentum to share, we'd like to announce our first investor day on March 23rd, 2027 in New York. So please stay tuned for more details. If we could move to slide four. Looking at our results for the second quarter, we like to talk first about our growth. It's critical for us. While we play in global markets that have dealt with some significant uncertainty, Our story is one of a focused strategy, clear metrics, and controlling our destiny. We finished the quarter with over 6% growth, 3.5% organic, and each segment grew nicely. We saw positive pricing, some good volume growth overall, and strong contribution from new channels, new customers, and M&A. Our adjusted operating income was up 12%. Gap EPS was up 11% with adjusted EPS up 18%. Our adjusted EPS growth in Q2 more than tripled our sales growth year over year. This was helped by strong improvements in our income and SG&A productivity. We received a portion of our EPA tariff recovery. As we knew we would receive some benefit in Q2, we modeled some balance in pricing and the offset to these same tariffs included in our inventory. The benefit to us was a few million dollars, mostly benefiting the energy P&L. We saw an acceleration of inflation throughout the quarter and some softer regions in Europe and South America and continued to watch for pricing and productivity measures to offset as we moved to the back half. We are ramping up a new factory in Turkey and working through some facility consolidations in North America to build an efficient operating structure to better serve customers long term. Some of these costs are included in our numbers, both in restructuring and operating expense, and we expect a nice productivity boost from these efforts as we move into 2027. If we can move to slide five, I'd like to share our progress on some of our strategic priorities. Our value creation model starts with a clear growth focus on moving to faster-growing markets, adding new channels and customers, and accretive revenue through new product launches. I'd like to give some proof points for Q2. By focusing on wider customer needs and the market trends, we have invested in our R&D. Our goal is to increase velocity and scale. In Q2, we've seen some growth from new products deliver over $10 million in new sales. We expect this number to grow over the next few years. We are also focused on partnering with the best channel and looking to add customers. One great example is our water treatment business, adding new dealers that contributed over $2 million in new revenue in Q2. These two examples highlight a focused plan to expand our reach, customers we can serve, and to accelerate our growth. Our margin expansion efforts continue to accelerate. We have recently announced V.T. Rajeshnath as our new Chief Supply Chain and Transformation Officer. He brings a stellar resume of building teams, supply chain networks, and transformation execution. He will also lead our VAO, or Value Acceleration Office, which is off to a great first year and has a funnel that we expect to help accelerate our productivity efforts as we move into the second half of 2026. I mentioned on our last call we launched a new factory in Q1. We've also made some smart consolidations of assets to more efficiently serve our customers and expand capacity in North America. Our capital budget is a record this year. More importantly, we are getting a great balance of growth, productivity, and sustaining projects to ensure we achieve our long-term strategy. Our commitment to our shareholders remains a key tenet with continued growth and dividend in 2026. Finally, and most importantly, we are focused not only on building the strongest team in our industry, but growing a company that attracts, develops, and retains this great talent. Thank you to our Franklin team for your support of our journey and your important contribution to our results. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jennifer to discuss the financial results in more detail.