Emerson Electric Company

Good morning, and welcome to the Emerson Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings and Climate Technologies Announcement Conference Call. All participants will be in 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 telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. And now I'd like to turn the conference over to Colleen Mettler. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our Q4 and full year 2022 earnings and an exciting milestone in our portfolio transformation. Today I am joined by President and Chief Executive Officer Lal Karzambai and Chief Financial Officer Frank Dellaquilla for the presentation. Also here with us is our Chief Operating Officer Ram Krishnan. I encourage everyone to follow along with the slide presentation, which is available on the investor page of our website. This presentation and responses to questions may include forward-looking statements, including the company's outlook for the remainder of the year. Information on factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from those disclosed today is available on Emerson's most recent annual report on Form 10-K as filed with the SEC and subsequent SEC filings. After our remarks, we will hold a Q&A and appreciate you limiting your questions to one. With that, I will now turn the call over to Emerson's President and Chief Executive Officer, Lal Karzambai.

Thank you, Colleen. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Please turn to slide four. Allow me to begin by saying that I'm very proud of Emerson's global team for the results delivered in 2022. Thank you. we had a strong finish to the results in 2022, with underlying sales growth of 9%, operational leverage of 36%, and adjusted EPS of $5.25, representing a 16% increase over prior year. As we'll discuss during today's call, most importantly, we have a strong outlook for 2023, supported by end market growth and excellent operational execution. Shortly after becoming CEO in February of 2021, we embarked on an ambitious journey to accelerate value creation for Emerson shareholders. This required a bold, transformational agenda inclusive of culture, portfolio, and execution. Alongside our board of directors, we underwent a comprehensive assessment of Emerson's portfolio and identified potential new market segments for investment. We designed the path forward based on a vision to create a pure play automation company. Today, we achieved a significant milestone in this portfolio transformation by announcing the sale of a majority interest of the climate technologies business to Blackstone. Emerson, going forward, will be a unique automation company with a cohesive, higher-growth portfolio exposed to diverse end markets and aligned to the world's secular trends, including digital transformation, sustainability, energy security, and nearshoring. We have ample room to invest both organically and through disciplined capital deployment in M&A to build automation capabilities along our technology stack, which is industry-leading and is composed of intelligent devices, control, and software, serving leading customers in process, hybrid, and discrete industries. We will do this while maintaining our commitment to return cash to our shareholders. through share repurchase and the dividend. In 2023, we enter our 67th consecutive year of increased dividends per share. I'm excited and cannot think of a better time during my 27 years at Emerson to be optimistic about our future. To provide more details on our results, I'll now turn the call over to Frank.