Brady Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 2024 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 the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ann Thornton, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Brady Corporation fiscal 2024 fourth 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 2024 Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC this morning. 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 all for joining us today. We released our fiscal 2024 fourth quarter financial results this morning, and I'm thrilled to announce another company record high EPS for both quarter and the year. We grew organic sales this quarter, and we also generated record high cash flow from operating activities. This quarter was an excellent finish to another great year. Our 2024 non-GAAP EPS of 422 was another all-time record high following three consecutive years of all-time record highs. Our GAAP EPS of 4.07 was also an all-time record high. This year we grew organic sales by 2.6% with growth driven by both of our regional segments. We improved our gross profit margin to 51.3% an increase from 49.4% last year. We closed the acquisition of GraviTech on August 1st, and we returned $117 million to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. I'm incredibly proud of the entire Brady team for creating our results this year. It's a testament to their efforts that our profitability improved while we increased our investment in R&D. We are using these investments to increase our portfolio of engineered products to help make our customers' lives easier. Meanwhile, we're expanding our sales force and investing in our digital capabilities to put ourselves in the best position to generate consistent organic sales growth. Our priorities for the next year remain the same. Generate top line growth in excess of GDP and continue our evolution into a faster growing company. Target niche opportunities by developing unique product offerings to support our customers, particularly in the area of workplace automation, which we believe is a growth opportunity for years to come. Deliver operational improvements to increase profitability as we grow. To integrate GraviTech acquisition and identify combined sales growth opportunities. And effectively deploy our capital to drive long-term shareholder value which includes organic investments, acquisitions, returning funds to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. We demonstrated our commitment to returning funds to our shareholders this year as we repurchased nearly 3% of our diluted share count. And we announced an additional 100 million share back authorization. And yesterday, we announced an increase in our dividend, which represents the 39th consecutive year of annual dividend increases. We are committed to return cash to our shareholders while delivering a strong shareholder return. I'll now turn it over to Ann to provide more details on our financial results. Ann?