Emerson Electric Company

Good day and welcome to the Emerson second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Pete Lilly, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Emerson's second quarter earnings and conference call. Today, I'm joined by President and Chief Executive Officer, Lal Karsanbhai, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Frank Delacroix, and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Ram Krishnan. I encourage you to follow along the discussion with the accompanying slide presentation, which is available on our website. Please join me on slide two. As always, this presentation may include some forward-looking statements which contain a degree of business risk and uncertainty. During slide three, I'd like to briefly highlight that Emerson has been publishing a corporate social responsibility report for many years now. We have renamed the report the Emerson Environmental, Social, and Governance Report and are excited to highlight all of the goals, momentum, and global standards that our organization is working towards. In particular, our environmental sustainability framework, greening of Emerson, by Emerson, and with Emerson, captures our internal sustainability efforts, our enablement of our customer sustainability journeys through our products and solutions, and our collaboration efforts with various sustainability stakeholders. I encourage you to review the document next month when it is published. As always, I'm available for questions. Please turn to slide four. I'd like to briefly mention our recent Emerson Exchange virtual series, which took place from November through March. Emerson Exchange is a chance for our customer base to interact with other users, industry experts, and Emerson technology leaders. Despite the obvious in-person limitations of the pandemic, Emerson had a tremendously successful virtual engagement with customers, focusing on digital transformation, sustainability, technology, and many other topics. This virtual framework dramatically expanded the reach of this already very popular user event. Due to the success of the hybrid format, we will likely be adopting such a format going forward. More details to follow as the time and place for the next Emerson Exchange event is finalized. Please turn to slide five, and I will now turn the call over And Lal Karsanbhai for opening remarks. Over to you, Lal.

Thank you, Pete, and good morning, everyone. I would like to say a few things before passing it on to Frank. Firstly, to our global team, three things. Thank you for a tremendous quarter. This was one that was delivered based on strong execution, which required agility and creativity as we jumped over a number of hurdles over the last three months. The result was top-class profit leverage, over 40% across our operations. Well done by everyone. Momentum is building, and it's more broadly today and across a large number of our markets than it was three months ago. This expansion across both platforms, now as the cycle expands, will enable us to make critical technology investments, building on our strong differentiation and customer relevance. Lastly, to the teams, thank you for welcoming me during my first 90 days, and thank you for your energy and passion. You energize me every day in the journey and on the journey that we're taking together. Secondly, I'd like to recognize David Farr, whose board service concluded today after more than 20 years. Thank you, David, for your many contributions. And last but not least, I would like to extend a warm welcome to Jim Turley, elected by the Board of Directors yesterday to be Emerson's new non-executive chair. Jim is a highly qualified independent director who is extremely passionate about people, culture, and the future of Emerson. I look forward to working alongside Jim and our entire board. Frank, over to you.