Crane Company

I would now like to turn the call over to Alison Poliniak, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Madison, and good day, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2025 Earnings Release Conference call. I'm Alison Poliniak, Vice President of Investor Relations. 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 accompany slide presentation. both of which are available on our website at www.craneco.com in the investor relations section. Now, let me turn the call over to Max.

Thank you, Allison. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. While we've got many exciting things to discuss today as we exit the fourth quarter, we're already off to a fantastic start for 2026. Our performance last year and our initial guidance for 2026 are show that we are consistently and reliably delivering on our commitments and our long-term value creation thesis. 4% to 6% core sales growth, and we were just at the high end of that last year. 35% to 40% core operating leverage and upside from capital deployment. And that's just the baseline. We're always working to over-deliver. All aspects of this thesis have continued to play out as expected, and will continue. For the quarter, once again, we exceeded even our high expectations, underscoring the strength of our teams, strategy, excellence in execution, and a relentless commitment to delivering shareholder value. Adjusted EPS of $1.53 was up 21% over the prior year, driven by an impressive 5.4% core sales growth, reflecting broad base strength at aerospace and advanced technologies, and continued strong execution of process flow technologies. For the full year, adjusted EPS increased by 24%, driven by our outstanding teams delivering on customer expectations enabled by our sustained investments in advanced technologies and innovative solutions. In 2025, we also continued building on our strong track record of enhancing and shaping our portfolio by adding technologies and capabilities inorganically that will drive growth and support both existing and new customers. Having previously announced the signing with Baker Hughes on June 9th last year, we are excited to formally welcome the Druck, Panametrics, and Reuter Stokes brands to the Crane portfolio. having closed on the acquisition of these brands on January 1st. As a reminder, Reuter Stokes doubles the size of our nuclear business, adding industry-leading radiation sensing and detecting technologies for nuclear plant operations, as well as for homeland security applications. Nuclear is an exciting market space today, and we see additional applications for the core Reuter Stokes technology in a number of other high-growth adjacent markets. This business is being integrated into our Crane nuclear business, which Chris Mitchell has successfully run for us over the last six years. Panametrix will operate as a standalone business unit in our process flow technology segment, reporting directly to SVP Senghasa Dassault. This business has advanced ultrasonic flow meters and precision moisture analyzers, a really incredible portfolio of solutions, that enables accurate measurement of liquids and gases across applications such as cryogenic gas storage, LNG transportation, wastewater treatment, chemical and petrochemical production. And lastly, DRUC will be maintained as a standalone business unit reporting to SVP Jay Higgs under the newly renamed Aerospace and Advanced Technologies segment. This new name better captures who we are today and our future strategic direction for this segment than the prior aerospace and electronics name. Still the same focus on proprietary, highly differentiated technologies with primarily sole source positions, but continuing to expand our range of technologies and offerings and looking at adjacent end markets where our capabilities are similarly valued. We expect to selectively and carefully widen our aperture in this segment without losing focus on what differentiates us. Specifically, the addition of DRUC's complementary product line meaningfully strengthens our pressure sensing capabilities across critical applications, including aircraft engine monitoring and hydraulics with strong positions in both single-aisle and wide-body aircraft platforms, as well as environmental control solutions. Druck also expands our presence into ground-based test and calibration equipment for aerospace and certain other end markets, leveraging the same best-in-class pressure sensing technology. And other exciting news, in addition to Druck, Panametric's and Werder Stokes' business is closing January 1st. At the start of the year, we also closed on the acquisition of Optech Danielette, headquartered in Essen, Germany. Optech is the leader in in-line process control optical sensing measurement solutions for biopharma, pharma, and other demanding markets, with annual sales of approximately $40 million. Optech is a perfect complement to our growing instrumentation business. My personal thanks to Juergen Danielet for his trust in Crane as stewards of his legacy moving forward and to the outstanding team at Optech. Just really a fantastic addition. The teams have hit the ground running across all businesses. The integration process is well underway, and the machine is fully in motion. Further M&A activity is robust, and we continue to execute and cultivate accelerated opportunities. We see many opportunities progressing through 2026, but at this time, nothing additional is imminent in Q1. Alex will provide more details on our core businesses as well as the recent acquisitions shortly. But let me touch on the planned succession timeline that we announced last night. I want to congratulate Alex for being appointed as Crane's next CEO, effective April 27, 2026, at our next annual shareholder meeting. And at that time, At the request of the Board, I will move to serve as Executive Chairman for a transitionary period expected to be no more than two years. Having partnered with Alex for more than a decade, I can confidently say he is the right leader to accelerate Crane's strong momentum. His deep operational expertise, proven ability to develop and execute complex strategic initiatives, and unwavering commitment to our high-performance culture have been critical in shaping Crane into the market leader it is today and our proven performance across PFT and AAT. In my new role as executive chairman, I look forward to supporting Alex and the leadership team as we continue driving strategic growth and long-term value creation. Coming off the incredibly strong performance in 2005 and turning to 2026, I remain highly confident in the strength and resilience of Crane's team and portfolio. Moving to 2026 guidance, I'd like to highlight that our guidance for 26 includes a change to our non-GAAP presentation of adjusted EPS, which now excludes non-cash, tax-affected, acquisition-related intangible amortization. Rich will provide more on this during his remarks, but using this new convention for both 25 and 26, I am pleased to announce our initial 2026 adjusted EPS guidance of $6.55 to $6.75, a solid 10% adjusted EPS growth at the midpoint, when excluding the $0.16 benefit of one-time hurricane-related insurance recoveries that we received in 2025, as well as after-tax acquisition-related intangible amortization in both years. Importantly, I'm excited to share that we estimate that the acquisitions will be slightly accretive to 2026 earnings results. As I started with, many exciting developments across the company and our investment thesis is stronger than ever. Now, let me pass it over to our Chief Operating Officer and incoming Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Alex Alcala, to provide some color on the current environment, segment performance, and recent acquisitions. Alex?