Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Lincoln Electric 2022 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode, and this call is being recorded. It is my pleasure to introduce your host, Amanda Butler, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Dylan, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Lincoln Electric's Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call. We released our financial results earlier today, and you can find our release as an attachment to this call slide presentation, as well as on the Lincoln Electric website at lincolnelectric.com in the investor relations section. Joining me on the call today is Chris Mapes, Lincoln's chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Gabe Bruno, our chief financial officer, and Steve Hedlund, our chief operating officer. Chris and Steve will begin with a discussion, an overview of our results and business trends. Gabe will cover our quarterly financial performance in more detail. And finally, Chris will conclude with a review of updated assumptions for the year. And following our prepared remarks, we're happy to take your questions. Before we start our discussion, please note that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking and actual results may differ materially from our expectations due to a number of risk factors. A discussion of some of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our results are provided in our press release and in our SEC filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, we discussed financial measures that do not conform to U.S. GAAP, and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is found in the financial tables in our earnings release, which again is available in the investor relations section of our website at lincolnelectric.com. And with that, I'll pass the call over to Chris Mapes.

Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, everyone. Turning to slide three, I am pleased to report another quarter of record sales, profitability, earnings, and returns. The organization did an excellent job capitalizing on growth and effectively managed the challenging operating environment, demonstrating the success of our customer-first approach and the strong execution of our commercial and operational higher standard 2025 strategy initiatives. We achieved record sales of $970 million, led by 21% organic growth on 17% higher price and a 3% increase in volumes, including a solid 10% increase in volumes in our America's welding segment. We benefited 3% from acquisitions, which partially offset a 6% unfavorable impact from foreign exchange. We achieved record second quarter profitability with a 17.3% adjusted operating margin and a 30% incremental margin. We are maintaining strong operating leverage from the team's effective management of inflation, supply chain constraints, and the improved operational execution in automation and Europe. These factors help to offset higher employee costs and unfavorable foreign exchange. Adjusted earnings per share increased 31% to $2.18, a record performance. Additionally, we achieved a record 26.3% return on our invested capital and generated solid cash flows in the quarter. We returned approximately $58 million to shareholders in the quarter through dividends and share repurchases, bringing our year-to-date returns to $196 million which includes $130 million of share repurchases. And now I'm going to pass the call to Steve Hedlund, our Chief Operating Officer, to cover organic sales trends.