Acuity Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to the KD Brand Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, the company will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Charlotte McLaughlin, Vice President of Investillations. Charlotte, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Earnings Call. On the call with me this morning are Neil Ash, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Karen Holcomb, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will include updates on our strategic progress and on our Fiscal 2025 First Quarter performance. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of this call. As a reminder, some of our comments today may be forward-looking statements. We intend these forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbour provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as detailed on slide 2 of the accompanying presentation. Reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial metrics with their corresponding GAAP measures are available in our 2025 First Quarter Earnings Release and Supplemental presentation, both of which are available on our Investor Relations website at www.investors.acuitybrands.com. Thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands. I will now turn the call over to Neil Ash.

Thank you, Charlotte, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Our fiscal 2025 first quarter performance was solid. We delivered sales growth, expanded our adjusted operating profit and adjusted operating profit margin, and increased our adjusted diluted earnings per share. We're also pleased to welcome QSC to Acuity, having successfully closed the acquisition last week. Now, turning to Acuity Brands Lighting. We continue to perform well, delivering sales growth in the first quarter. Our performance is more predictable, repeatable, and scalable as a result of the continued actioning of our strategy to increase product vitality, elevate service levels, use technology to improve and differentiate both our products and how we operate the business, and to drive productivity. Our strategy has informed the development of our differentiated product portfolios, Contractor Select, Design Select, and Made to Order, enabling us to drive growth and productivity for ourselves and for our partners. With Contractor Select, we are driving growth and productivity for our electrical distributors by lowering their cost of doing business and empowering them to carry less inventory. With Design Select, we're focused on delivering productivity to architects, lighting specifiers, design-build contractors, and electrical contractors by enabling them to choose the right configurable products for their projects. Our portfolios are constructed with high levels of product vitality. In Contractor Select, this quarter, we launched two new products, TruWrap and the Rebel Round High Bay. Both products feature switchable technology and offer multiple functionality with the end result being that distributors can carry fewer SKUs while providing more options for customers. TrueWrap from Lithonia Lighting enhances the traditional wrap, offering even lighting for spaces with limited natural lighting options, like locker rooms, storage utility areas, garages, and offices. It features three adjustable lumen settings and three switchable color temperature settings. The Rebel Round High Bay delivers uniform illumination for large open spaces like industrial facilities and indoor sports arenas. In addition to offering an expanded lumen range with switchable color temperature options, it is manufactured to withstand harsh conditions and can be easily integrated with our sensor switch controls for improved energy savings. These innovations are important to our customers, and our team has once again been recognized for the value they deliver. In the first quarter, many of our lighting solutions were selected for the Grand Prix de Design Awards, an international competition that celebrates the excellence and talent of creative professionals and firms. Our winners included Mochi by Cyclone, Hydrel Flame, and several Eureka products, including the Tangram family and the Frank, Jolie, Elke, and Merrill luminaires. Our luminous Sirius Pro was recognized by the Architect's Newspaper's Best of Product Awards, which elevates well-designed products serving the architecture and design community. The Sirius Pro family includes interior and exterior luminaires for a seamless aesthetic transition. The luminaires are compatible with our in-light controls, allowing seamless control of indoor and outdoor spaces while reducing energy costs, aiding in building compliance, and improving occupant comfort. Now, moving on to Intelligent Spaces, which delivered another strong quarter of sales growth and margin performance. Our mission in Intelligent Spaces is to make spaces smarter, safer, and greener through a strategy of connecting the edge with the cloud using disruptive technologies that leverage data interoperability. In Distech, we are focused on where we compete and what we can control to expand our addressable market. As part of our geographic expansion, this quarter we continue to add systems integrator capacity in the UK, Asia, and Australia. Distech partners with the best SIs in specific geographies to sell our full suite of controls, sensors, and applications. In October, we brought together our North American SI partners in Nashville for our Connect Conference. This is a highly engaged community of the best systems integrators in the world that come together to learn more about Distech and Atrius products. During the conference, we launched new products and applications and delivered updates on the latest technology trends while also offering technical training. This year was the highest attendance since the event began and highlighted the continued strength and importance of our relationships across the building management systems industry. We are thinking about spaces differently. We're using data to maximize occupant experience and transform spaces. Last week, we closed our acquisition of QSC. Through DISTEC, Atrius, and QSC, we can now control both how a space is managed and what happens in that space with our disruptive technologies that promote end-user satisfaction through data interoperability. Imagine a future where you walk into a room and the space intelligently adjusts, where data is used to predict how many people will be using that room, cooling or heating the room in advance for optimum occupant comfort, aligning the in-person and virtual experience by seamlessly transitioning between microphones and cameras based on who is speaking and where they are located. using data points to optimize lighting levels, lowering shades if there is an increased glare, and if a meeting is canceled, reverting a room back to its unoccupied settings to save energy and lower costs. We're excited about the addition of QSC to Intelligent Spaces as we continue to execute on our mission. Now, looking forward, we are an industrial technology company with the best lighting company in North America and a larger scale intelligence-based business. Our path to growth and profitability is clear in both segments. In Acuity Brands Lighting, our growth algorithm is grow with the market, take share, and enter verticals where we have either not historically competed or where we are under-penetrated. We will continue on our path to improve margins. In intelligent spaces, through DISTEC, Atrius, and QSC, we can now control both how a space is managed and what happens in that space with our disruptive technologies that promote end-user satisfaction through data interoperability. Our focus will be on growth, and we have the opportunity to expand margins. We are creating value by growing net sales, turning profits into cash, and not growing the balance sheet as fast. And we are demonstrating that we are effective capital allocators. Now, I'll turn the call over to Karen, who will update you on our first quarter performance and provide more details of the expected financial impact of the QSC acquisition.