Crane Company

Good day and welcome to the Crane Company second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2 so others can hear your questions clearly We ask that you pick up your handset for best sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Jason Feldman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Treasury, and Tax.

Thank you, operator, and good day, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2024 earnings release conference call. I'm Jason Feldman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Treasury, and Tax. Before we get started, I'm delighted to introduce Alison Poliniak as our new Vice President of Investor Relations. Many of you know her from her time as an analyst following the industrial technology and transportation sectors. She brings a wealth of experience into the role, and we're happy to bring her on board. I will continue to oversee the Investor Relations function, but over the next few months, as she assumes primary responsibility for investor communications, I'll be spending more of my time with tax, treasury, and M&A. Alison, let me pass it on to you.

Great. Thank you, Jason. So good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here and look forward to connecting with everybody in the next few weeks. As Jason mentioned, I spent the last 18 years as an analyst at Wells Fargo covering the industrial technology and transportation sectors. That gave me the opportunity to analyze and learn from a lot of great companies, their unique growth strategies, their approaches to drive productivity and sustainable profit improvement, as well as their approach to M&A. A lot were successful, but some were not. All that gave me great insight as I stepped into this role. I have been considering making this move to the corporate side for some time. However, there were three key qualities that the company needed to have for me to join. One, a strong strategic growth vision that I supported that would take the company to the next level. The second is a sound and achievable M&A strategy that would complement that vision. And third, the ability to have a voice as both the inorganic and organic strategies evolved. There were a few opportunities I did walk away from over the years because those companies did not have those qualities. Crane, however, did tick all those boxes for me. Add to that the respect I had for the management team and it was an easy decision for me to join. And with a little over a month into the role, I can tell you that I'm certainly not disappointed. What I have found is a strong culture focused on executing the team's strategic vision with significant opportunity both organic and inorganic to grow Crane and continue to move the earnings profile higher. So in that, let's get started. On our call this morning, we have Max Mitchell, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Rich Malley, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will start off our call with a few prepared remarks, after which we will respond to questions. And just a reminder, the comments we make on this call will include some forward-looking statements. We refer you to the cautionary language at the bottom of our earnings release and also in our annual report, 10-K and subsequent filings pertaining to forward-looking statements. Also during the call, we will be using some non-GAAP numbers, which are reconciled to the comparable GAAP numbers in tables at the end of our press release and accompanying slide presentation, both of which are available on our website at www.craneco.com in the investor relations section. So now let me turn the call over to Max.