Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the History Yale Q1 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would like to now hand the conference over to your speaker today. Kristi Kometko, please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2020 first quarter earnings call. I'm Kristina Kometko, and I'm responsible for investor relations at Hyster Yale. Thank you for joining us this morning. I hope you and your families are all healthy and safe. Joining me on today's call are Al Rankin, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Hyster Yale Materials Handling, Rajiv Prasad, President and Chief Executive Officer of High Street Yale Group, and Ken Schilling, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday evening, we published our first quarter 2020 results. The earnings release is available on our website. For anyone who is not able to listen to today's entire call, an archived version of this webcast will be on the website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months. Our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements made here today. These risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings release issued last night and other filings we make with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly conference call, if at all. Also, certain amounts discussed during this call may be considered non-GAAP. The non-GAAP reconciliations of these amounts are included in our earnings release and available on our website. In a moment, I'll discuss our first quarter results, but first let me turn the call over to our chairman and CEO, Al Rankin, for some opening remarks. Al.

Thanks, Christy, and good morning to everybody. This is an uncertain and stressful time or more than that for everyone. We appreciate your participation today. I also want to thank Hyster Yale's global workforce. We have one brand that is celebrating a centennial anniversary this year and another that celebrated 90 years in 2019. For a century, we've faced and overcome many challenges. As in the past, our employees are rising to the occasion. Eyes to Yale leadership couldn't be more pleased with how well they are managing through the crisis. We appreciate our employees' commitment to supporting our dealers and customers while also working diligently to keep themselves and others safe. Our first priority has been to keep our workforce safe and help reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Our safety-focused approach is coupled with our responsibility to our customers to supply them with products and services that operate in many critical industries to the extent possible. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, many governments have classified our operations as essential. Working with our dealers, we are delivering products and services that enable our customers to provide critical infrastructure that is essential to support the economy around the world during this pandemic. While we are serving these important needs, employees who can work from home are doing so. In our facilities that are open, we have implemented safeguards in accordance with regulatory requirements and guidance from health authorities to protect our workforce and limit their exposure to COVID-19, including adjusting shift schedules to promote social distancing enhancing cleaning and sanitation of equipment, work areas, and common areas, promoting recommended hygiene practices, and limiting workplace access. We came out of 2019 with momentum in our strategic programs, optimistic at that time about the progress we expected to see in 2020, both in these programs and in our results. And of course, we did not expect the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we are now experiencing. Christy will discuss our first quarter performance next, which was quite strong and which reflects limited impact of COVID-19 on Hyster Yale's results, particularly in the first two months of the quarter. Then Rajiv and I will provide our perspectives on the COVID-19 environment and the actions the company is taking to address this changed environment, including near-term demand and supply challenges. We've been through many challenges in past years, including the 2008-9 downturn. While COVID-19 is different, we believe our employees and our businesses are well-positioned to manage through this pandemic. Now let me turn the call over to Christy to cover the results for the quarter.