Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Hyster Yale fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings 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 the session, you'll need to press the star one in your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Christina Kmetko. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2020 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. I am Christina Kmetko, and I am responsible for investor relations at Hysteria. Thank you for joining us this morning. Joining me on today's call are Al Rankin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rajiv Prasad, President, and Ken Schilling, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday evening, we issued our fourth quarter and full year 2020 results and filed our 10-K. Copies of our earnings release and 10-K are 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 For anyone who is not able to listen to today's entire call, an archived version of this webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months.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 the forward-looking statements made here today. These risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings release issued last night and in our 10-K 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 earnings 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 fourth quarter results. But first, let me turn the call over to our chairman and CEO, Al Rankin, for some opening remarks. Al.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. There's no doubt that 2020 was one of the most unusual years in recent history. The global pandemic created very significant disruptions to our business and to the daily lives of us all. While many uncertainties regarding the pandemic remain, the availability of a number of vaccines provides us hope that we can get past this sometime in 2021. Until then, we will continue to focus on keeping our employees safe and limiting the spread of the virus while still serving our customers as effectively as possible. Throughout this uncertain time, our workforce around the world has remained focused and agile. My view is that our team has done a great job of navigating effectively a challenging and evolving environment to meet the needs of our customers, while delivering at the same time solid results in the fourth quarter and full-year results that were substantially stronger than we initially anticipated at the start of this pandemic. Christine will provide the financial details in a moment. but I have a few high-level comments first. Overall, in the fourth quarter, our business still felt the impact of the pandemic and the low bookings we experienced during the peak period of the pandemic-related shutdowns. We have been seeing improved market demand and increasing bookings, but at the same time, these improvements in the continuing effects of COVID-19 are creating challenges in other areas, especially including increasing costs and supply chain constraints. Despite these challenges, and primarily as a result of the cost containment actions we implemented in the first half of the year, our 2020 fourth quarter results were significantly higher than the prior year quarter, despite lower unit volumes. Benefits from these cost containment actions resulted in a decrease in operating expenses of $25 million in the fourth quarter and $72 million for the full year and that is at the high end of the savings range outlined last quarter. We also had lower provisions for estimated self-insurance claims during the quarter compared with last year. However, these lower expenses were offset by approximately $4.5 million of restructuring charges related to actions taken to make our global commercial operations more cost-effective. Ken will talk about this program further in his section. In this pandemic-altered work environment, the resiliency of our workforce has been impressive. Our workforce overcame significant headwinds this past year, including uncertain customer demand, supplier delivery interruptions, and workforce availability, among others. We greatly appreciate their efforts to remain positive, safe, and productive in the face of adversity while also minimizing costs. As a result, we believe our High Street Yale management team, global workforce, and our businesses are well positioned to manage through the remainder of this pandemic and come out of it in a very strong position. After Christy reviews the results for the quarter, Rajiv will discuss our business operations and our strategic projects. Ken will then talk about our outlook in this uncertain and evolving environment. Now let me turn the call over to Christy to cover the results for the quarter.