Nordson Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Nordson Corporation First Quarter Fiscal 2020 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to one of your speakers today. Laura Mahoney, please go ahead.

Thank you, Marcella. Good morning. This is Laura Mahoney, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. I'm here with Sundaram Nagarajan, Norton's President and CEO, and Greg Saxton, Executive Vice President and CFO. We welcome you to our conference call today, Thursday, February 20th, 2020, to report Norton's fiscal year 2020 first quarter. Our conference call is being broadcast live on our Investor Relations webpage at investors.nordston.com, and it will be available there for 14 days. There will be a telephone replay of the conference call available until March 5, 2020, which can be accessed by dialing 416-621-4642. you will need to reference ID number 2468115. During this conference call, forward-looking statements may be made regarding our future performance based upon Nordson's current expectations. These statements may involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors as discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that could cause actual results to differ. After our remarks on the quarter, we will be happy to take your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Naga.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Norton's 2020 fiscal first quarter conference call. 2020's first quarter performance was in line with our expectations for the quarter, where sales were consistent with the typical seasonal pattern. As a reminder, Our spending is generally consistent throughout the year due to our direct sales model and strong customer focus. The total company operating margin in the first quarter was also in line with our expectations. We expect sales to improve as we move through the year, allowing us to achieve our previously announced fiscal 2020 sales growth, margin, and EPS guidance. I'll speak more about our fiscal 2020 annual guidance in a few moments. But first, I'll turn the call over to Greg to provide more detailed perspective on the quarter.