Hubbell Inc

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2021 results conference call. At this time, all participants' lines are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. And to ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Speaker Dan Inamorato. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for the first quarter of 2021. The press release and slides are posted to the investor section of our website at hubble.com. I'm joined today by our President and CEO, Gerben Bakker, and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Bill Sperry. Please note that our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company. and are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Therefore, please note the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release and consider it incorporated by reference into this call. Additionally, comments may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP measures that are included in the press release and slides. Now let me turn the call over to Gerben.

Great. Thanks, Dan. And good morning, everyone. and thank you for joining us to discuss Hubble's first quarter results. I will start my comments on page three with some key takeaways for the quarter. At a high level, we are seeing strong improvement in demand across each of our end markets, and we'll give you some data points around that in the next page and throughout this presentation. Our operating profit and margins expanded in the quarter as we continue to actively manage our cost structure and realized savings from the investment and restructuring initiatives. Our results in the quarter are consistent with the guidance we laid out at the beginning of the year and put us well on a path to achieving our full-year EPS guidance, which we are raising today. We'll walk you through our guidance in more detail later, but overall, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our commitments. Let's turn to page four with more details. You see here that our sales were down 1% year-over-year and down 4% on an organic basis. In our utility solution segment, secular growth trends around grid modernization and renewable energy continue to drive strong demand for Hubble products, and that is reflected in broad-based double-digit order growth in the first quarter across each of our major business segments, power systems, gas connectors, as well as Eclaire. While revenues in the first quarter continue to be impacted by installation delays for certain projects, we anticipate this dynamic will normalize beginning in the second quarter and drive growth as we ramp up our capacities to meet the growing customer demand. Backlog in our shorter cycle T&D components business was up almost 40% year-over-year exiting the quarter, while the Aclara backlog is back up to approximately a billion dollars following a strong first quarter with over $200 million of orders. In our electrical solutions segment, markets continue to improve as orders turn positive year over year, and we realize solid sequential growth in revenues in the first quarter. Light industrial markets are strengthening as the broader industrial economy recovers, a positive sign for Hubble that demand for electrical products and solutions will drive growth over the balance of this year. Our backlog across the electrical solutions was up more than 30 percent year-over-year exiting the first quarter. And our focus over the near term is to continue managing through a tight supply chain environment to serve the critical infrastructure needs of our customers. In terms of our operations, we achieved 30 basis points expansion in our operating margins in the first quarter. as we overcame lower volumes and the impact of price cost turning to a headwind as we absorbed significant commodity inflation on our cost base. We recognized and anticipated this towards the end of last year and took early actions to address it through price and productivity. However, inflationary pressures have continued to accelerate through the first quarter, which necessitated and drove additional pricing actions and will continue to take further actions while this inflation persists. Over the last six months, we have implemented price increases which have led most of our markets in frequency, pace, and magnitude, and will continue to utilize the strength of our product portfolio to drive profitable growth. While commodity inflation remains a moving target, we've contemplated a range of scenarios within our guidance and have levers at our disposal to effectively manage our operations and deliver on our near-term and long-term commitments. You also see here that we delivered $1.72 of adjusted earnings per share in the quarter and $39 million of free cash flow. And I will turn it over to Bill in a minute to give you some more context around those results. But before I do that, I wanted to highlight a few key accomplishments for us in the quarter. First of all, Hubble is very honored to have been named one of 2021's world's most ethical companies by Ethisphere. And I'd like to thank our over 19,000 employees who have demonstrated the highest standard for integrity each and every day. And note that this achievement is a recognition of their commitment to compliance and ethics as a foundation of our strategy and culture. I'd also like to highlight that Hubble recently received two major awards from one of our top distributor partners, out of only three given annually. Our gas connectors business received the top award for sales and marketing, while power systems received the award for above and beyond service excellence. Both of these awards are recognitions of the strength of our brand and the quality and reliability of our products in the marketplace. They demonstrate our commitment to service, which is a key differentiator for Hubbell, particularly in recent years as our utility franchise had been so effective in serving our customers' needs to increase storm activity. And finally, we closed the acquisition of Beckwith in the fourth quarter, and I wanted to congratulate the leader of that business for being recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to digital protection and control devices for the grid. This is a recognition of the strength of Beckwith's technology solutions and a testament to the talented people that joined Hubble as part of acquisitions. which we are confident will drive further innovation and differentiation. With that, let me turn it over to Bill to walk you through the financial results in a little more detail.