Hubbell Inc

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hubble Incorporated First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on 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'll need to press star-1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star-1-1 again. Please be advised, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dan Imarato. You may begin.

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 2025. The press release and slides are posted to the investor section of our website at hubble.com. I'm joined today by our Chairman and President and CEO, Gerben Bakker, and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Bill Sperry. Please note our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company. These are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please note the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release and consider it incorporated by reference to this call. Additionally, comments may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP measures which are included in the press release and slides. Now let me turn the call over to Gervin.

Great. Thanks, Dan. Good morning. Thank you for joining us to discuss Hubbell's first quarter 2025 results. Our results in the quarter were driven by continued strong operating performance in our electrical solution segment and a return to organic growth and grid infrastructure. offset by anticipated softness in grid automation and the impact of increased cost inflation from higher raw materials prices and tariffs. In electrical solutions, we delivered mid-single-digit organic growth with continued adjusted operating margin expansion and strong core adjusted operating profit growth. Our segment unification efforts and our strategy to compete collectively are driving outgrowth in key vertical markets, most notably evidenced by strong data center growth in the first quarter. From an operational standpoint, we continue to simplify our business to drive productivity and operating efficiencies, which we are confident will drive long-term margin expansion. In utility solutions, while grid automation sales were down on challenging prior year comparisons as anticipated, our grid infrastructure business returned to organic growth in the quarter. Transmission and substation markets remain strong as utility customers invest to interconnect new sources of load and generation on the grid. We delivered another quarter of double-digit growth across these markets in the quarter, as our leading positions and premium brands position us well to capitalize on a growing funnel of project opportunities. In distribution markets, We are encouraged by recent order trends and are confident that we are emerging from the recent period of customer inventory normalization. Before I turn it over to Bill to discuss the results and our outlook in more detail, I'd like to provide some opening comments on how we are positioning Hubbell to mitigate recent cost inflation and near-term macroeconomic uncertainty. Hubbell is a US-centric manufacturing company. with more than 90% of our sales in the U.S. and a largely U.S.-based manufacturing footprint. Our international sales are served primarily on a local-for-local basis. While recent raw materials inflation and tariffs implemented in February and March drove a headwind in the first quarter, we have already implemented action to offset those impacts within 2025. and we are taking the actions necessary to offset the more recent impact of reciprocal tariffs. Cost inflation cycles are not new to Hubble. We have successfully dealt with them before, and we have a playbook in place with several levers at our disposal to drive continued profitable growth under a range of scenarios. From a market standpoint, while the macroeconomic environment has become more dynamic over the last several months, we see no net change to our prior near-term and long-term views. We believe the current environment warrants caution and continued proactive cost management, but strong recent order trends and favorable end markets support our forward growth expectations. Additionally, our markets are not only bolstered by near- and long-term growth megatrends, but have also proven to be more resilient during periods of economic uncertainty. We are maintaining our full year 2025 outlook this morning and remain confident in our ability to achieve our financial and strategic commitments. With that, let me turn it over to Bill.