Albany International Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Albany International First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Director of Investor Relations, Mr. John Hobbs. Please go ahead.

Thank you Greg and good morning everyone. Welcome to Albany International's first quarter 2021 conference call. As a reminder for those of you listening on the call today, please refer to our press release issued last night detailing our quarterly financial results. Contained in the text of the release is certain information regarding our forward-looking statements, and the use of non-GAAP financial measures in their associated reconciliation to GAAP. For the purposes of this conference call, those same statements apply to our verbal comments we make this morning. Today, we will make statements that are forward-looking, that contain a number of risks and uncertainties, among which are the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations, the markets we serve, and our financial results. For a full discussion, including a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures we may use on this call to their most comparable GAAP measures, please refer to both our earnings release of April 26, 2021, as well as our SEC filings, including our 10-K. Now I'll turn the call over to Bill Higgins, our President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide opening remarks. Bill?

Thank you, John. Good morning and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm pleased to report that we started the year strong, delivering another solid quarter. Both segments got off to a good start. As a company, we achieved $222 million in revenues, an excellent bottom line performance of GAAP EPS of $0.85 or $0.87 per share on an adjusted basis. Our cash flow generation was particularly good for our first quarter. And we continue to pay down debt and have a healthy balance sheet, which enables investment in future growth. I'm particularly proud of how our employees continue to perform through the pandemic. Even while following our COVID-19 protocols and safety procedures, our operating teams are driving process improvements with Lean Kaizen. Our R&D teams are working on the next generation of materials and products. And we continue to do a great job for our customers in delivery quality and service. Our machine clothing segment had its strongest quarterly top line performance since 2015, with revenues up nearly $12 million year over year and good order activity in Q1, which bodes well for this year. In fact, other than the secular decline in publication grades, machine clothing and market demand in packaging, tissue, pulp, and engineered fabrics were all positive in Q1. In addition to a solid backlog, our engineering teams are hard at work developing new technology belts for our customers, which is critical to our success and value proposition. We have seen some instances of isolated supply constraints impacting raw material pricing and delivery timing in this segment, and we continue to actively manage our supply chain, securing the materials we need to support our customers' demand. In summary, our machine clothing segment continues to perform well. serving customers around the world as the recognized global leader supplying these critical consumable components to the paper industry. This success is the result of a disciplined execution of our long-term strategy. In aerospace, as we reported last quarter, our engineered composite segment will be grinding through a year of destocking of excess inventory in the channels for LEAP, Boeing 787, and F-35 products. That said, Engineer Composites is on track with their plan and ready for the upturn as commercial air transport improves, inventory in the channels is consumed, and our production is back in sync with aircraft OEM production. We're on good platforms that we expect will recover, and we continue to do this as a time to further improve our operations. We're ready and looking forward to the upturn. We're working closely with Saffron to coordinate our operations as the LEAP engine production ramps up supporting the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX. With domestic air travel recovering first and fueling demand for narrow-body aircraft, the A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX are in the sweet spot of the air transport recovery. In engineered composites, looking beyond our current portfolio of programs, our opportunity pipeline is as full as it's ever been. We're developing a breadth of capability to be the next generation supplier of advanced composite materials, This ranges from our proprietary 3D woven composites currently used on LEAP engine fan blades and fan cases to automated fiber placement composite wing skins for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to complex components on the Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter. We continue to develop applications for the Wing of Tomorrow program with Airbus Industries, and we're investing more this year in R&D projects with new customers and new platforms using advanced materials such as our 3D woven composites on a range of exciting applications, including unmanned, hypersonic, and electric aircraft. The sum of these efforts furthers our goal to diversify and grow our customer base and broaden our material science capabilities. As I mentioned, we have a strong balance sheet and good, free cash flow generation. These allow us to sustain our investment in the technologies and customer programs that expand and broaden our competitive positioning in both segments. Our first priority for capital allocation is to invest in organic growth programs across both business segments and then to seek acquisitions that fit our long-term strategies. Our reputation for reliability, service, and technical excellence is well established in the machine clothing segment, and our brand is growing in aerospace as a reliable supplier and engineer materials partner. And we're optimistic about the long-term opportunities in both segments. But with that, I'll turn it over to Stephen for more detail on the financials. Stephen?