Nordson Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Abby and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Nordson Corporation first quarter fiscal 2023 conference call. Today's conference is being recorded and all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, you must press star one once again. Thank you. And I will now turn the conference over to Lara Mahoney. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning. This is Lara Mahoney, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. I'm here with Sundaram Nagarajan, our President and CEO, and Joseph Kelly, Executive Vice President and CFO. We welcome you to our conference call today, Tuesday, February 21st, to report Nordson's fiscal 2023 first quarter results. You can find both our press release as well as our webcast slide presentation that we will refer to during today's call on our website at www.nordson.com forward slash investors. This conference call is being broadcast live on our investor website and will be available there for 14 days. There will be a telephone replay of the conference call available until Tuesday, February 28, 2023. During this conference call, references to non-GAAP financial metrics will be made. A reconciliation of these metrics to the most comparable GAAP metric was provided in the press release issued yesterday. Before we begin, please refer to slide two of our presentation where we note that certain statements regarding our future performance that are made during this call may be forward-looking 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. Moving to today's agenda on slide three, Naga will discuss the first quarter highlights. He will then turn the call over to Joe to review sales and earnings performance for the total company and the three business segments. Joe will also discuss the balance sheets and cash flow. Naga will then share a high-level commentary about our earnings performance. He will conclude with an update on the fiscal 2023 full year and second quarter guidance. We will then be happy to take your questions. With that, I'll turn to slide four and hand the call over to Naga.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Norton's fiscal 2023 first quarter conference call. I want to thank our team for delivering another strong first quarter performance. There were a lot of bright spots in this quarter to begin It was the first quarter of contribution from our cyber optics acquisition. The integration of the business is going well, and we are pleased with the energy and engagement of our cyber optics team. Test and inspection is a long-term growth focus for Norton, and we are very excited about the differentiated optical precision technology that cyber optics adds to our portfolio. Next, we had a solid regional performance in the Americas and Europe, which collectively delivered 9% organic growth. This was partially offset by declines in the Asia-Pacific, which saw weakness in China relating not only to the Lunar New Year shutdown, but also labor shortages due to the unfortunate spread of COVID-19 in the region. Once again, the diversification of our business and our steadfast dedication to the needs of our customers ensures we deliver results. Finally, I remain pleased by the ongoing deployment of the NBS Next growth framework. Each division is gaining momentum towards achieving top-tier growth, quality, and on-time delivery performance. In this dynamic environment, NBS Next ensures we are focused on our greatest opportunities for profitable growth, and it also clarifies where we can simplify so we can better focus resources on those opportunities. In a few moments, I will speak more about the business and what we are seeing in our end markets, But first, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide a detailed perspective on our financial results for the quarter.