Hubbell Inc

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hubble Incorporated's third quarter 2021 results 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 this session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dan Inamorato, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Paul. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for the third quarter 2021. The press release and slides are posted to the investor section of our website at hubble.com. I'm joined today by our Chairman, 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 our 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 and are included in the press release and slides. Now let me turn the call over to Gerben.

Great. Thank you, Dan. And good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss Hubbell's third quarter results. You've likely seen our press release announcing the definitive agreement we reached to sell our commercial and industrial lighting business, and we'll give you some further commentary on that in a couple of minutes. But let me start my comments with some key takeaways for the quarter. First, as you're here throughout this morning's presentation, demand remains strong. we continue to see broad-based order growth across markets and businesses within both segments. Year-to-date, our orders are up approximately 30 percent, and our third-quarter ending backlog was up over 60 percent versus prior year. In our electrical segment, strong demand is being driven by recovery in industrial markets, as well as pockets of strength in verticals like telecommunications solar, and industrial manufacturing. In our utility segment, orders continue to accelerate sequentially, driven by ongoing grid hardening and modernization investments. As we noted in this morning's release, supply chain disruption affected our production and shipment levels in the third quarter, leading to further backlog build as strong order rates continue to outpace sales. While we expect these headwinds to persist in the fourth quarter, we are confident that we are serving our customers effectively throughout this dynamic environment. We have been aggressive in qualifying alternate sources of supply for key components, paying premium rates to expedite materials, and reallocating internal resources to drive higher production and shipment output. We have also continued to take aggressive actions to drive value for our shareholders. Most significantly, we have executed unprecedented levels of price realization across the enterprise, which have accelerated in pace and magnitude as the year has progressed. We achieved seven points of price realization in the third quarter, up significantly from 3.5 percent in the second quarter and 1 percent in the first quarter. and we expect further acceleration in the fourth quarter and continue to project that we will be price material positive in the quarter. Finally, we are updating our guidance to reflect third quarter results and our latest outlook for the fourth quarter. We will walk you through the moving parts in more detail, but we are modestly lowering our range versus our prior expectation. based primarily on incremental supply chain disruptions to unit volume and productivity levels. This morning, we announced that we reached a definitive agreement to sell our commercial and industrial lighting business to GE Current for a cash purchase price of 350 million. This strategic decision positions the portfolio for higher growth and margin characteristics and enables us to expand our focus and strength in core markets where we provide reliable and efficient critical infrastructure solutions. This portfolio move will create value for our shareholders and the company. As we've talked about in the past, lighting is an important product category to our customers and within the broader low-voltage electrical market. And we are confident that GE Current is the right strategic partner for the business going forward. Looking ahead, This portfolio reshaping will allow Hubble to more effectively focus our strategic investment decisions on core areas of our portfolio where we have the ability to strengthen our position in markets with higher growth and margin characteristics. We see significant opportunity accomplish this across both our electrical and utility segments. With our portfolio strategically aligned around clean energy megatrends in grid modernization and electrification, we are well positioned to solve critical infrastructure problems for our customers while driving differentiated financial results for our shareholders over the long term. We expect to deploy the net proceeds from the sale to accrete a bolt-on acquisition as well as share repurchase. As we noted in our press release, this transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. Let me now turn it over to Bill to give you some more context around our financial results for the quarter.