Belden Inc

Just a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, you are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you are in the question queue and would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 2. I would now like to turn the conference over to Aaron Reddington, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jess. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's Belvin's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With me today are Belvin's president and CEO, Rural Vestians, and senior vice president and CFO, Jeremy Parks. Rural will provide a strategic overview of our business, and then Jeremy will provide a detailed review of our financial and operating results, followed by Q&A. We issued our earnings release earlier this morning, and we've prepared a slide presentation that we will reference on this call. The press release, presentation, and transcript of these prepared remarks are currently available online at investor.belden.com. Turning to slide two in the presentation. During this call, management will make certain forward-looking statements. For more information, please review today's press release and our most recent annual report on Form 10-K. Additionally, during today's call, management will reference adjusted or non-GAAP financial information. In accordance with Regulation G, the appendix to our presentation and the investor relations section of our website contain a reconciliation of the most closely associated GAAP financial information to the non-GAAP financial information we communicate. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Ruel Vestjens.

Thank you, Aaron, and welcome to the Belden team. As a reminder, I'll be referring to adjusted results today. Now please turn to slide three for a summary of the major accomplishments we achieved in 2022. First, we delivered another outstanding quarter with total revenues and EPS that exceeded expectations for the 11th straight quarter. For the full year 2022, we delivered record revenues of over $2.6 billion and record EPS of $6.41. I would like to thank our global teams for their strong execution in navigating a complex and challenging environment while supporting the needs of our customers with innovative solutions. Revenues for the year increased by 16% organically, with double-digit organic growth in both segments. On top of record revenues and EPS, we also expanded our EBITDA margins to 17%, up 90 basis points for the year driven by strong leverage on our organic growth. Our strength in 2022 was broad-based across our businesses as we continue to transition from a supplier of trusted products to a value-added partner in the design and implementation of network infrastructure solutions. We are very excited about our progress, which is reflected in our strong financial performance. Second, Our capital allocation strategy continues to be balanced and disciplined to drive long-term shareholder value. As we grew EBITDA and generated $220 million of free cash flow in 2022, net leverage declined to one times at the end of the fourth quarter, down from 2.1 times at the end of the prior year. This level of net leverage provides us with significant flexibility to execute our strategic plans while pursuing organic growth opportunities, M&A, and returning capital to shareholders, all while staying below our target of 1.5 times net leverage. Third, we remain focused on deploying capital towards high return opportunities. Our top priorities include investments in new product innovation and our solution selling capabilities, strategic bolt-on M&A opportunities, of which we completed three in 2022, And finally, returning capital to shareholders through our share repurchase program, under which we repurchased 2.6 million shares for $150 million in 2022. Fourth, and finally, at our 2022 Investor Day last June, we set forth a target of $8 EPS by 2025. And I'm happy to report that with our strong performance in 2022, we are ahead of our internal plan in reaching that goal. In summary, this was another excellent quarter for Belden, which concluded another record year. Now please turn to slide four, and I will provide an example of our strategy in action with details around how product innovation in fiber is leading to exciting customer wins. Over the years in our broadband and 5G business, we have strategically invested in fiber optic technology and solution building. Our solutions focus on reducing our customers' operating expenditures and deployment time. Over the last three years, we've grown our fiber business within broadband and 5G meaningfully. Fiber-specific revenues increased 59% organically in 2022, with a three-year organic revenue CAGR of 29%. Further, in 2019, fiber represented 16% of the total broadband and 5G business. And as of 2022, fiber now accounts for 37% of the total. Such growth highlights the success of the investments we have made to ensure Belden is in the right markets with industry-leading solutions. On that note, I'm happy to report that we received a meaningful win in the fourth quarter for our fiber cabinet solutions from a large telecommunications company based in the Netherlands. The commitment of approximately 8,000 fiber cabinets will provide the business with a total of approximately $50 million over the next four years. Our fiber cabinets offer an easy to configure solution, reducing cost and deployment time, both critical decisions for our customers. This is the largest single fiber commitment for our business and highlights the growth we have made in the marketplace as well as the future opportunity ahead. Looking forward, we see multiple favorable trends benefiting our broadband and 5G business. I outlined many of these in our recent Investor Day, but let me spend a minute reviewing the key themes. First, rural broadband has become a major focus with meaningful federal investments in recently passed legislation. We see combined broadband investment totaling $85 billion in the United States, which will provide meaningful growth opportunities for Belden. Second, to meet the increasing bandwidth demand, MSOs are reinvesting in the networks to preserve the current customer base amongst increased competition. Our portfolio of solutions positions us to support these multi-year upgrade cycles. And third, major 5G rollouts will dominate wireless carrier spend over the next five plus years. This will include macro cell upgrades and new small cell construction. As 5G cell sites need both fiber as well as power, this will allow Belden to participate in multiple ways. So to summarize, we continue to see strong demand from network operators for our fiber connectivity products. We offer easy-to-use fiber solutions, which allow customers to install fiber connections quickly and reliably. We see favorable long-term trends driven by the ever-increasing demand for high-speed broadband and the resulting investments required to upgrade networks. I will now ask Jeremy to provide additional insight into our fourth quarter and full-year financial performance.