AZZ Inc.

Good day and welcome to the AZZ incorporated first quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal 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 touch tone phone. And 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 Ms. Sandy Martin of Three Part Advisors. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to review AZZ's financial results for the fiscal 2025 first quarter, which ended May 31, 2024. Joining the call are Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jason Crawford, Chief Financial Officer, and David Nark, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations Officer. After today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note the live webcast for today's call can be found at www.azz.com slash investor dash events. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. By their nature, forward-looking statements are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Except for actual results, our comments containing forward-looking statements may involve risk and uncertainties, some of which are detailed from time to time in documents filed by 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. Therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Actual results could differ materially from these expectations. In addition, today's call will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered supplemental to, not a substitute for, GAAP financial measures. We refer to the reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP in today's earnings press release. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Ferguson.

Thank you, Sandy. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I will discuss the first quarter results and cover our outlook for the rest of the year. Jason Crawford, our newly appointed CFO, will walk through our detailed financial results, and David Nark will provide an industry update on our end markets. Then we'll open it up for some questions. Our first quarter results met the higher end of our expectations, and we are very pleased with the performance and emphasis on execution in both segments. We reported record quarterly revenue of $413 million, improved segment profitability, and expanded EBITDA in both dollars and in terms of margins. Our results generated significant cash flow from operations for the first three months of . top-line revenue growth by .7% versus the prior year, and pre-code metal sales increased over the prior year in both segments. In the first quarter, we benefited from strength in a number of our end markets, including construction, bridge and highway, transmission and distribution, and renewables. Not only was there potential project spending for both public and private projects is now tracking higher than pre-pandemic levels. This year, we have in public sector construction, which demonstrates aside energy and manufacturing that David will cover private spending and commercial construction continuing to be interest rates, the shift residential construction projects. Continuing with our first quarter results, metal coatings EBITDA margin grew to 30.9% exceeding the prior year and slightly ahead of our target margin range of 25 to 30% due to both and zinc productivity improvement. Pre-coated metals EBITDA margin of 20.2% was also meaningful as we have noted before that any reasonable uptick in volume helps drive margins above the 20% mark and towards the upper end of our communicated range of 17 to 22%. In addition to the solid execution of our operational initiatives in the first quarter, we also completed a public offering of common stock to fully fund the redemption of ACZ Series A convertible preferred stock. Jason will discuss this more in a few moments, but the strategic rationale and timing were critical as the redemption premium was set to escalate on May 12th. The timing was right, and we were pleased with the efficient execution of this transaction with the support of our capital markets partners. In less than 24 months, we have fully redeemed and retired the mezzanine financing associated with the acquisition of pre-code metals. The pre-code acquisition further supported our long-term strategy to improve the return profile and de-risk our business by transforming into a pure play metal coatings company with significant scale, expertise, technology, and a very strong balance sheet. This year, we remain focused on our operational and financial objectives. I'm gratified that our efforts in developing a strong servant-minded leadership team with a solid bench of talent over the last several years have resulted in positive momentum with strong organic growth and profitability improvements in both segments. We attribute this success to our team's well-executed strategic action centered on revenue growth, operational excellence, margin enhancements, and working capital improvements, all of which contribute to the generation of free cash flow. I am proud of the work and dedication of our teams in both segments and in our corporate headquarters. We also continue to prudently deploy capital this year to high return investments for growth, further debt repay down, and cash dividends to common shareholders while we continue to strengthen the balance sheet. We're evaluating a growing list of acquisition candidates, but plan to be judicious as we evaluate leverage, strategic fit, ability to drive synergies, and timing. We reduced that by $25 million this quarter and again repriced our term loan in March to lower interest costs. A significant company initiative this year is the completion of our new aluminum coil coating facility in Washington, Missouri. We expect to begin equipment testing in the third quarter with plans to be operational by early in calendar year 2025. Our decision to build this facility was evaluated based on a long-term contractual customer commitment that accounts for 75% of the plant's total capacity. This facility should be well positioned to respond to the secular shift from plastic to aluminum in the beverage industry, and we are pleased to report that this important project remains on schedule. AZZ is recognized for its number one market position in both of our metal coating segments with strong and growing economic moats, providing us with a significant competitive edge. This business edge is built on our differentiated, highly sustainable, and environmentally friendly metal coating solutions. We bring over 65 years of technical expertise, customer-centric technologies, and strategically located facilities across North America. Our relationships with Blue Chip customers are scale and culture of operational excellence and are crucial elements that we believe will continue to drive our future success this year and for years to come. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jason.