Benchmark Electronics, Inc.

Good day everyone and welcome to today's benchmark third quarter 2024 earnings call and webcast. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Please note this call may be recorded and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Paul Manske, Benchmark Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jess, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today for Benchmark's third quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. Joining me this afternoon are Jeff Banks, CEO and President, Brian Shoemaker, our CFO, and Arvid Kamal, VP of Finance. After the market closed today, we issued an earnings release pertaining to our financial performance for the third quarter of 2024. and we've prepared a presentation that we will reference on this call. Both are available online under the investor relations section of our website at bench.com. This call is being webcast live and a replay will be available online following the call. The company has provided a reconciliation of our gap to non-gap measures in the earnings release as well as in the appendix to the presentation. Please take a moment to review the forward-looking statements disclosure on slide two in the presentation. During our call, we will discuss forward-looking information. As a reminder, any of today's remarks, which are not statements of historical fact or forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties as described in our press releases and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from these statements. Benchmark undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For today's call, Jeff will start with an overview of the quarter, followed by an introduction to Brian, our new CFO. Arvin will then detail our third quarter results, and Brian will provide fourth quarter guidance. As usual, we will conclude with Jeff sharing more insight into demand trends by sector, new business wins, and some final remarks. If you'll please turn to slide three, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Jeff Bank.

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, and thanks to everyone for joining today's call. The third quarter was another successful milestone for the company, where we exceeded the midpoint of our guidance for revenue, margin, and non-GAAP EPS. Let me step through a few highlights. Total revenue of $658 million was above the midpoint of our guidance range provided in July. We were pleased with the year-over-year growth in aerospace and defense and SEMICAP, the latter being well into the double digits. As anticipated, this was offset by declines in industrial, medical, and advanced computing and communications. While demand over the last few quarters has certainly stabilized, we continue to see end market softness in several sectors, weighing on our opportunity to grow revenue year over year. Third quarter, non-GAAP gross margin of 10.2 percent marked the fourth quarter in a row of 10 percent or better margin performance. I'm particularly thrilled to share Non-GAAP operating margin of 5.3% represents the 16th consecutive quarter of year-over-year operating margin expansion. This performance, coupled with our revenue achievement, enabled us to deliver $0.57 in non-GAAP earnings per share in the quarter, which was at the higher end of our guidance. We continue to execute on our working capital initiatives led by inventory management, which enabled us to deliver $29 million in free cash flow in the quarter, bringing our trailing 12-month total to $245 million. I would now like to pass the call over to Brian, who has only been on the job a few weeks, but I'm already confident he will make a significant impact as we continue to drive our strategy forward. With that, Brian, over to you.