AZZ Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the AZUZ, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sandy Martin, three-part advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to review AZZ's financial results for the fiscal 2023 fourth quarter and full year ended February 28, 2023. Joining the call today are Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Philip Schlaum, Chief Financial Officer, and David Nark, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations. After the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note there is a webcast and slide presentation for today's call, which can be found on AZZ's Investor Relations page under the latest earnings presentation at azz.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Except for actual results, our comments containing forward-looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties. some of which are detailed from time to time in documents filed by AZZ with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Actual results could differ materially from these expectations. In addition, today's call will include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the reconciliation of non-GAAP to the nearest GAAP measure included in today's earnings press release and investor presentation for further detail. The earnings press release and Q4 presentation are posted on our website and have been included in the Form 8 case submitted to the SEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Ferguson, CEO. Tom?

Thank you, Sandy. Welcome to AZZ's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 full year earnings call. Thank you for joining us this morning. Starting on slide three, I am pleased with our performance for fiscal 2023. We made tremendous progress towards our strategy to become a pure metal coatings company. I'm appreciative of the hard work of the entire AZZ team. I commend our AZZ metal coatings team for generating record results and our AZZ pre-code metals team for coming into AZZ and performing well. We are fully committed to building a stronger and more sustainable and focused company. On a continuing operations basis, we achieved record annual sales of $1.32 billion, up 46% versus reported fiscal 2022 sales of $903 million, while generating EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share within our previously stated guidance. We paid down debt, resulting in net leverage of 3.5 times adjusted EBITDA at year-end, and received 2.6 million equity income from our remaining interest in AIS. As you can see here on slide four, we achieved good flow-through on higher sales, generating over 267 million of adjusted EBITDA, or 20 percent of sales. These numbers reflect metal coatings for a full 12 months and pre-co metals for about 42 weeks in fiscal year 2023. Net income on an adjusted basis was $86.9 million, up 55 percent, resulting in an adjusted EPS of $3.48. Philip will talk more about our fourth quarter and full-year financial results shortly. Moving to slide five, AZZ Metal Coatings had another strong year with sales up 21 percent to $637 million, with over 16 percent coming from organic growth. The growth was a result of organic sales growth of $87 million and the earlier acquisitions of Dom and Steel Creek, which added another $25 million. Operating income was up 21 percent versus prior year with an operating margin of 24.5 percent despite inflationary pressures, particularly as zinc costs peaked in most of our kettles. We continue to maintain our pricing discipline and focus on delivering value to our customers. Our investments in digitization continue to pay off in both productivity and customer service. Our investments in technology and innovation are focused on improving efficiencies, asset maintainability, and supporting our energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives. Turning to slide six, Precoat, during its 42 weeks as part of AZZ, had solid sales growth to nearly $687 million and generated $120 million of EBITDA. Precote sales grew by 20% on a comparable basis versus the prior year, mostly through unit volume growth and paint cost increases that were passed through. Precote's business performance was solid and within our expectations through its seasonally slower quarters where construction slows due to weather. As mentioned during our third quarter call, the management team at Precote took action in the fourth quarter, reduced the customer-owned inventory that had caused bottlenecks at many locations. Additionally, the team recently finished a plant expansion project at their MMC facility that had started prior to our acquisition. This was an important expansion as this facility focuses on heavier gauge material that supports our construction and infrastructure initiatives. Pre-code team is now reporting normalized inventory levels at most of their plants. Finally, I believe pre-code has taken steps to bring its pricing curve in line with the cost curve that has experienced significant inflation. While the team still has more work to do on production efficiencies, we have realized over half the expected synergies and still expect to identify sales synergies between pre-code and metal coatings. I am encouraged by the progress and expect their efforts to show up in our run rates in fiscal year 2024. And with that, I will turn it over to Philip to run through the financials.