Brady Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Brady Corporation's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants on the list are in only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message rising your hand is raised. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anne Thornton, CFO and Treasurer of Brady Corporation. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Brady Corporation Fiscal 2024 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 boards 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 2023 Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC in September. 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? Thanks, Anne, and thank you all for joining us today.

We released our 2024 second quarter financial results this morning. and I'm pleased to report another quarter of organic sales growth and improved profit. This quarter, we increased our growth profit margin to 50.2%. We improved our pre-tax earnings by 15.1%, and we grew our non-GAAP earnings per share by 14.8%. These results wouldn't be possible without the hard work and dedication of our entire global team. I'm incredibly proud of the effort the team has put in to ensure the success of our regional reorganization. which became effective at this time last year. The progress we've made and the opportunities we've identified continue to excite and motivate me every single day. It has absolutely contributed to our improved earnings and cash flow, and just as important, it's creating an environment where we're encouraging our teams to think differently about what they do every day, which to me is the best part. Combining our businesses within our regions has brought our teams together. It's cultivating more innovative thoughts, and we're all working together better than ever. This quarter, we once again grew earnings per share while increasing our investment in both research and development and our sales force. We increased our R&D spend by nearly 10% in the second quarter, and we added a number of new salespeople throughout our global business. We have some exciting new products that's launched over the next several quarters and a strong future pipeline of innovative new products, which are essential to drive sales growth over the long term. I'll now turn the call over to Ann to provide more details on our financial results. Ann?