Patterson Companies, Inc.

ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by good morning my name is brent and i will be your conference operator today at this time i would like to welcome everyone to the patterson company's fiscal year 22 second quarter earnings call 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 at that time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad if you would like to withdraw your question again press star 1. thank you it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to mr john wright vice president of investor relations please go ahead thank you operator good morning everyone and thank you for participating in patterson company's fiscal 2022 second quarter conference call

Joining me today are Patterson President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Walter and Patterson Chief Financial Officer Don Zerbe. After a review of the fiscal 2022 second quarter results and outlook by management, we will open the call to your questions. Before we begin, let me remind you that certain comments made during this conference call are forward-looking in nature and subject to certain risks and uncertainties. These factors, which could cause actual results to materially differ from those indicated in such forward-looking statements, are discussed in detail in our Form 10-K and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We encourage you to review this material. In addition, comments about the markets we serve, including growth rates and market shares, are based upon the company's internal analysis and estimates. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, December 1st, 2021. Patterson undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. Also, a financial slide presentation can be found in the investor relations section of our website at pattersoncompany.com. Please note that in this morning's conference call, we will reference our adjusted results for the second quarter of fiscal 2022. The reconciliation table in our press release is provided to adjust reported gap measures, namely operating income, other income expense net, income before taxes, income tax expense, net income, net income attributable to Patterson Companies Inc., and diluted earnings per share attributable to Patterson Companies Inc. Four, the impact of gains on investments, inventory donation charges, deal amortization, legal reserves, and integration and business restructuring expenses, along with the related tax effects of these items. We will also discuss free cash flow as defined in our earnings release, which is a non-GAAP measure, and use the term internal sales to represent net sales adjusted to exclude the impact of foreign currency, changes in product selling relationships, contributions from recent acquisitions, and the extra week of selling results in the first quarter of fiscal 2022. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay starting today at 11 a.m. Central Time for a period of one week. Now, I'd like to hand the call over to Mark Walchuk.

Thank you, John, and welcome, everyone, to Patterson's fiscal 2022 second quarter conference call.