Acuity Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2021 First Quarter Results Conference Call. After today's presentation, there will be a formal question and answer session. At that time, directions will be given on how to ask a question. Today's conference is being recorded at the request of the company. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Now I would like to introduce Mr. Pete Chenin, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development of Acuity Brands.

Good morning. With me today to discuss our fiscal 2021 first quarter results are Neil Ash, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Karen Holcomb, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Ricky Reese, our Executive Vice President and President of Acuity Brands Lighting. We are webcasting today's conference call at AcuityBrands.com. During this call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our first quarter press release. I would like to remind everyone that during this call, we may make projections or forward-looking statements regarding future events or future financial performance at a company. Such statements involve risk and uncertainties, such that actual results may differ materially. Further, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly any of these statements considering new information or future events. Please refer to our most recent 10-K and 10-Q SEC filings in today's press release which identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements. Now, let me turn this call over to Neil Ash.

Thanks, Pete. Good morning, and happy new year. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Acuity Brands. As we transform our company, I am pleased with our performance in the first quarter of fiscal 2021. We had strong financial results, and we made progress on our digital transformation. Our team was able to effectively serve our customers through our broad product portfolio and diverse paths to market. At the same time, our gross margins were in line with those in the fourth quarter, even on lower sequential sales, and we continued to generate a significant amount of free cash flow. I am pleased and grateful for the outstanding way our team has continued to manage through the pandemic. We remain diligent about protecting the health and well-being of our associates and ensuring the continuity of our operations. Turning to first quarter highlights, We are committed to making the communities in which we operate better. We published our second annual Earthlight Report, highlighting the company's priorities, actions, and metrics for environmental, social, and governance matters. We continue to wisely deploy capital by repurchasing 2.6 million shares of the company's common stock for $255 million. We successfully reintroduced ourselves to the debt capital markets through the issuance of a $500 million 10-year bond with a coupon of 2.15%. Proceeds were used largely to repay our existing term loan. We are making strong progress on the execution of our digital transformation. I'll provide more updates on that progress later in the call. Finally, we have added talent to the organization. As we build out our technology organization, we have added outstanding data science, product management, and engineering talent. As we further build out our managed team, Candice Steele-Flippen joined the QA in November as our Chief Communications Officer. Candice will work with me and our team to define and amplify our company's narrative among our stakeholders. I'm very pleased with the quality of people who are joining our team. With that, I'll turn it over to Karen for more detail on the financials. Karen?