Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cooper Standard fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Following company-prepared comments, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press the star followed by the one key. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded, and the webcast will be available for replay later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Roger Hendrickson, Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your continued interest in Cooper Standard, and we thank you for taking the time to participate in our call this morning. The members of our leadership team who will be speaking with you on the call this morning are Jeff Edwards, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Banas, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. While they are made based on current factual information and certain assumptions and plans that management currently believes to be reasonable, these statements do involve risks and uncertainties. For more information on forward-looking statements, we ask that you refer to slide three of this presentation and the company statements included in periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix to the presentation. So with those formal comments out of the way, I'll turn the call now over to Jeff Edwards.

Thanks Roger and good morning everyone. We appreciate the opportunity to review our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. and provide an update on our outlook for 2022 and beyond. To begin on slide five, I'd like to discuss some key data points that we believe are reflective of our continued strong commitment to driving sustained value for all of our stakeholders. For our customers, we continue to deliver world-class results in terms of product quality, launches, and customer service. At year end, 98% of our customer scorecards for product quality were green. Our scorecards for program launches were 97% green for the year, even as we executed on 12% higher launch volume versus 2020. Even more importantly, we had another outstanding year for employee safety, which is always our top priority every day. For the full year 2021, our safety incident rate was 0.40 per 200,000 hours worked, well below the world-class benchmark of 0.57. We're especially proud of our 23 plants that completed the year with a perfect safety record of zero reported incidents. When the automotive market gets tough, suppliers often have to deliver the same or more with less resources. This was certainly the case for us in 2021. In view of industry headwinds, we focused on further right-sizing every aspect of our business. As a result, we ended the year with nearly 10% reduction in headcount when compared to the end of 2020. While this reduction will drive necessary cost improvements for our current business environment, we also want to acknowledge and recognize the contributions of all of our hardworking, dedicated employees. We know that our employees are the heart and soul of the company. and are definitely a competitive advantage for Cooper Standard. And that's true now more than ever during this unpredictable business environment as a result of the pandemic. Our continuous improvement and lean manufacturing initiatives are the definition of doing more with less. During 2021, our manufacturing teams delivered $33 million in cost savings through these programs. which is an outstanding result when you consider all of the unusual challenges presented by volatile production schedules and lower production volumes. We also successfully reduced our SGA and E expense by $32 million compared to 2020 and realized $16 million in savings from our aggressive restructuring actions. So in total, we delivered over $80 million in sustainable cost reductions for the year. By many measures, we had a very successful year, but unfortunately, strong industry headwinds of lower production volumes, volatile schedules, and unprecedented inflation combined to offset our operational cost savings. Turning to page six, complementing our focus on manufacturing excellence, is our commitment to sustainability. We are consistently advancing our efforts and resource allocation on environmental, social, and governance initiatives, and we are seeing positive momentum throughout the company. From the plant floor to our product development labs and the boardroom, the progress we are seeing is encouraging and rewarding. Our progress in 2021 resulted in improving scores by multiple ESG rating institutions. In addition, our focus on transparency and reporting sustainability topics placed us ahead of our aspirational comparative peer group in 10 out of 11 high priority categories. Led by our recently established Global Sustainability Council, We're quickly driving our ESG efforts beyond basic compliance requirements to true strategic alignment within our business and with our stakeholders. We expect this improving alignment to be the key to enhancing long-term value and sustainability of our company. Now I'll turn the call over to John to walk you through the financial details of the quarter and the year.