A.O. Smith Corporation

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second quarter 2019 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Patricia Ackerman, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, and Treasurer. Ma'am, you may begin.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us on our second quarter 2019 results conference call. With me participating in the call are Kevin Wheeler, Chief Executive Officer, and Chuck Lauber, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin with Kevin's remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the comments that will be made during this conference call, including answers to your questions, will constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters that we have described in this morning's press release. As a courtesy to others in the question queue, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up return. If you have multiple questions, please rejoin the queue. I will now turn the call over to Kevin, who will begin our prepared remarks on slide three.

Thank you, Pat, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Chuck will elaborate on our financial performance in a moment. And while China continues to be particularly challenging, I am pleased to highlight several items in action which help position us for future success. Number one, our solid operating margin performance in North America remains steady despite expected lower water heater volumes compared with last year. We announced a price increase of up to 4% on our North America wholesale water heater portfolio effective August 1st. Excuse me, just August, early August. We joined our Hay and Water Right water quality dealer sales organization together so as to represent one customer facing our customers in that channel. The transition has gone well. Continuing our strategy to leverage our distribution channel, we launched our A.O. Smith branded water treatment portfolio in the U.S. wholesale channel. We revised our China sales expectations as we moved into the back half of the year. with a path towards more normalized channel inventory levels, which, as previously discussed, has been elevated for over the past 15 months. Chuck will now describe our results in more detail, beginning on slide four. Thank you, Kevin.