Harley-Davidson, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the 2021 First Quarter Investor Analyst Conference Call. At this time, all attendees are in listen-only mode. If you want to ask a question during the Q&A session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. Thank you. And now, I would like to welcome Mr. Shannon Burns, Manager of Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Good morning, everyone. You can access the slides supporting this call at investor.harleydavidson.com. Click the earnings materials box in the center of the page. Our comments today will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters we have noted in our latest earnings release and filings with the SEC. Harley-Davidson disclaims any obligation to update information in this call. Joining me this morning are CEO Jochen Zeitz, CFO Gina Getter, and Chief Commercial Officer Adele O'Sullivan will also be joining us for Q&A. Jochen, let's get started.

Thank you, Shannon. I would like to welcome our shareholders, the financial community, dealers, employees, and all our valued stakeholders who are joining us today. As we look to 2021, it remains important to remember the unprecedented year that was 2020. I am, however, very pleased with the pace of recovery we've seen across our business and strong numbers reflecting the implementation of our new strategy as demonstrated by the positive financial results this quarter. We continue to manage through the impacts of COVID-19 with the extraordinary efforts of our global team, keeping employee safety and community well-being at the forefront. We've overcome global shipping and supply chain challenges, adeptly managing the effects of disruption, ensuring that we were able to continue building and delivering the world's most iconic motorcycles. As you can see today, the actions we've taken to reshape the business through the rewire leading into the early months of our hardwire execution are already having a positive impact on our results, in particular in the most important North American region. We can see the initial signs of consumer excitement and optimism returning, even if parts of the world are still lagging due to continued COVID-related lockdowns and delayed vaccination efforts. As we start to execute our five-year strategic plan, the Hardwire, I'm confident Harley-Davidson in 2021 is a significantly leaner, faster, and more efficient organization, and will continue improving and delivering in line with our HD number one culture. I will talk more about stage one of the Hardwire later, But before I hand over to Gina, I'd like to address the announcement we made yesterday regarding the amended tariff ruling by the EU. The decision taken by the EU is unprecedented, unfair, and is a deliberate attempt to create a competitive disadvantage against our European competitors. We are committed to fighting it and have lodged an immediate legal challenge in Europe, as we firmly believe that the original ruling on our BUIs remains correct and should therefore be overturned. Every big bike we sell in America comes straight from the hands of our hardworking men and women of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It bears repeating, if not for the tariffs, which are now threatening our recovering export potential, we could be investing in jobs at our American facilities, leading the world in electric innovation, research, engineering, design, and advanced manufacturing. Instead, we are facing huge tariffs in a trade war not of our making. So as you saw from the numbers, we delivered a very strong quarter, and I'll hand it over to Gina for more details. Gina?