Brady Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q2 2023 Brady Corporation Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during that session, you'll need to press star 1 1 on your phone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. And I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Anne Thornton, Chief Accounting Officer. Ms. Thornton, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Brady Corporation Fiscal 2023 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. The slides for this morning's call are located on our website at www.bradycorp.com slash investors. We will begin our prepared remarks on slide number three. Please note that during this call we may make comments about forward looking information. Words such as expect, will, may, believe, forecast, and anticipate are just a few examples of words identifying a forward looking statement. It's important to note that forward looking information is subject to various risk factors and uncertainties, which could significantly impact expected results. Risk factors were noted in our news release this morning and in Brady's fiscal 2022 form 10 K, which was filed with the SEC in September of 2022. Also, please note that this teleconference is copyrighted by Brady Corporation and may not be rebroadcast without the consent of Brady. We will be recording this call and broadcasting it on the internet. As such, your participation in the Q&A session will constitute your consent to being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Brady's President and Chief Executive Officer, Russell Schaller.

Russell? Thank you, Anne, and thank you for all for joining us today. This morning, we released our fiscal 2023 second quarter financial results. which represented another solid quarter of results across our businesses. This quarter marks our eighth consecutive quarter with at least 6% organic sales growth. This streak is a testament to the hard work of the entire Brady team, who are focused on providing the best possible customer experience while delivering highly innovative proprietary products that our competition just cannot provide. And so, Foreign currency continues to be a headwind. We still grew earnings per share by 16.9% this quarter. We want to get improved profitability while investing in R and D, expanding our Salesforce and improving our digital capabilities, which should keep us on this upward trajectory. I'm proud of how the entire Brady team worked through this challenging macro environment, all while delivering for both our customers and our shareholders. Brady's global footprint and sales into many end industrial markets give us a unique view of the macro environment. For instance, hiring is improving in most geographies but still remains somewhat challenging in areas such as research and development and IT where these skill sets seem to always be in demand. In general, we're seeing more qualified candidates and we're filling open positions quicker than we had in the past, but we remain in a tight labor market. International shipping rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels, and our supply chain is improving. However, there are still certain products that are a challenge to source in a cost-effective manner, specifically for our printers and scanners. We're getting the critical parts that we need to meet customer demands, but some chip and circuit board prices are still quite elevated. As it relates to inflation, The rate of cost increases seems to have slowed in certain geographies, including the U.S., but we are still experiencing inflation, and we expect it to continue for a period of time. As it relates to Europe, thankfully, the energy crisis doesn't seem to be as bad as many predicted, but we're still experiencing increased costs and increased wage rates in most of Europe. which is forcing companies such as Brady to increase prices to offset these inflationary forces. While there are a number of economic uncertainties and a lot of talk of a pending recession, we continue to experience solid demand environment for Brady's products as demonstrated by another quarter of strong growth. At this point, our cash generation, balance sheet, and access to capital give us flexibility to keep investing in our organic businesses throughout any foreseeable economic environment. Brady's priorities remain to first and foremost, continue our evolution into a faster growing company. As I mentioned, we've now logged eight consecutive quarters of organic sales growth north of 6%, and we're well on our way. Second is to improve our capabilities to enable our customers automation initiatives. This is an area where we expect tailwinds for years to come. Third is to take the necessary actions to offset the impacts of this inflationary environment, all while meeting customer demands and providing the best possible service. This includes pricing actions as well as evaluating our supply chain suppliers. Fourth is to reinforce Brady's culture of operating sustainably and with a long-term view which encompasses our approach to ESG and ensuring that we are supporting all of our stakeholders. from our customers to our employees to our communities and, of course, our shareholders. And finally, we're focused on deploying our capital in order to drive long-term shareholder value, be it organic investments, acquisitions, or returning funds to our shareholders. We are in a position of strength. Our industrial printer line is world-class, and I'm especially proud of our M211 portable printer launch, which has been greeted with an overwhelmingly positive customer response. We are leaders in many of our niches and we have a pipeline of highly innovative products on the way. We'll continue to make investments in our future. We have a rock solid balance sheet and we have a fantastic team at Brady that is delivering for all our customers every single day. I'll now turn the call over to Erin to provide more details on our financial results. Then I'll return to provide specific commentary on our identification solutions and workplace safety businesses as well as our geographic performance. Aaron?