SPX FLOW, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SPX Flow Q1 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today, Mr. Scott Gaffner. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Francis. Good morning, and thanks to everyone for joining us for a discussion of our first quarter 2021 financial results. This morning we issued a news release detailing our financial performance for the three months ending April 3, 2021. The news release along with a presentation to be used during today's webcast can be accessed on our website at spxflow.com. And a replay will also be available on our website later today. Joining me today are Mark Michael, President and CEO, and Jamie Easley, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. Before we begin, a brief reminder that elements of this presentation contain forward-looking statements that are based on our current view of our business and markets. Those elements are subject to change. We ask that you view them in that light. Principal risk factors that may affect our performance are identified in our most recent SEC filings. In the appendix of today's presentation, we provide a reconciliation for all non-GAAP and adjusted measures presented. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

Great. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate the introduction. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call. It's an exciting time at SBX Flow. Our mission and strategic objectives have never been clearer. We're a process solutions provider focused on improving the world through innovative and sustainable solutions in the nutrition, health, and industrial markets. Our three-year strategic objectives, which we laid out at our investor day in March, are are supported by our four foundational pillars you see here. This focus is guiding us towards both our long-term financial goals and near-term operational performance. We have intentionally changed our historical paradigms to create an inflection point in operating results which is evident in our quarterly results. First quarter performance improved as markets continued to recover and our internal initiatives gained momentum. Orders improved as short cycle demand remained solid and systems orders were significantly better while keeping project selectivity a priority. Industrial CapEx continues to recover with a building pipeline of projects. The economic recovery combined with our improved operating performance drove a 19% increase in organic revenue in the quarter that was nearly evenly split between the segments. Operating income margins significantly improved by 550 basis points and supported by a higher quality of revenue from the work we've undertaken to segment our product lines through an 80-20 lens, a positive impact from our cost programs, lower corporate expense, and effective management of price cost. We also met our commitments in the first quarter to disproportionately invest in capabilities in our high-growth and high-margin product categories that are aligned with our priority markets. We doubled our capital spending by investing in plant modernization and also increased R&D investment by more than 20% to support new product development. Our programmatic M&A process is building momentum with an attractive pipeline of opportunities. We've identified M&A targets using a disciplined approach with an objective of both high returns and alignment to our strategic priorities. This resulted in the acquisition of UTG Mixing in the quarter, and last week we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Philadelphia Mixing Solutions. Lastly, I'm pleased that we've been able to return excess cash to shareholders in the form of a dividend, which we initiated during the first quarter, along with the continuation of our share repurchase program. The economic and in-market recovery that we experienced in the first quarter was broad-based geographically, supporting our 19% organic revenue growth rate. As anticipated, the year-over-year revenue growth was most significant in China, where first quarter 2020 results were heavily impacted by the initial outbreak of the coronavirus. However, we also experienced a significant acceleration in North America and EMEA, with total revenues growing at mid-teens in North America and at low to mid-teens rates in EMEA. Jamie will provide an assessment of year-over-year orders during his prepared remarks. As we highlighted on our Investor Day, the deployment of 8020 provides a framework to create focus on an outstanding customer experience and provides clarity on how and where we want to grow profitably. Throughout last year, we built cross-functional growth teams that are empowered to own and execute our strategy of driving profitable growth, and the first quarter results highlight the success of these efforts. During the quarter, we achieved a 26% growth in revenues in our growth product lines and also built a base for future growth with a 35% increase in the CRE category, which consists of our nutrition and health systems business. We will continue to oversee our, excuse me, we'll continue to over-serve our highest priority and best customers in 2021 to drive a higher quality and improved mix of revenue. Taking a look at orders, we continue to see momentum following the low points of 2020 demand. Overall, industrial orders were sequentially stable with modest increases in demand for our short cycle product categories. Our OE project pipelines continue to improve during the first quarter, and we experienced solid growth in demand in both China and EMEA. Demand in our nutrition and health business remains robust. The commercial team did an excellent job partnering with our customers during the quarter to deliver a strong start to the year. Sequential systems orders were down as we experienced a more normalized level of order intake following an outstanding fourth quarter, most notably in China. Our short cycle orders, while down slightly on a sequential basis, remain at relatively high levels versus historical rates and have shown resiliency throughout the pandemic. The strong start to the year builds a base from which we believe we can continue to grow through the course of 2021. Our year is off to an excellent start. The improved economic outlook combined with our strategy to drive a higher quality of revenue mix and improve our cost structure gives us confidence in achieving profitable growth in 2021. Based on the solid revenue performance during the quarter, we are raising our full-year revenue growth assumptions to the high end of our prior range and now believe organic revenue will grow at a mid-single-digit rate during 2021. At the same time, our productivity initiatives are progressing to plan, which supports continued earnings improvement as we look forward. So a great start to the year and a validation of the strategic objectives we laid out in March. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jamie to cover the financial review.