Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator. Today's conference call is scheduled to begin momentarily. Until that time, your lines will again be placed on music hold. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Hyster Yale Q1 2021 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 will need to press star 1 on 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 Kometko. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2021 First Quarter Earnings Talk. I am Christina Kometko, and I'm responsible for investor relations at High School Yale. Thank you for joining us this morning. Joining me on today's call are Al Rankin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rajiv Prasad, President of High School Yale's Handling, and Ken Schilling, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday evening, we published our first quarter 2021 results and filed our thank you. This information is available on our website. If anyone is not able to listen to today's entire talk, an archived version of this webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months.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 statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in 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 10Q and other filings 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. In a moment, I'll discuss our current quarterly 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, everyone. Results for our first quarter of 2021 are very mixed. On the one hand, bookings were extraordinarily strong, with the forklift truck backlog at record levels. And as a result, prospects for the future are bright. On the other hand, supply chain disruptions had a major impact on production and material costs, which significantly reduced our first quarter earnings. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Hyster Yale was seeing improving market demand and increasing bookings and was optimistic about 2021 prospects. Then the market demand and the bookings improvements we saw in the fourth quarter actually increased during the 2021 first quarter, generating demand for forklift truck products that was significantly higher than we had forecasted. While this demand has provided us with a record backlog, Hyster Yale's global supply chain, which has also had to ramp up production, has struggled to ramp up its suppliers and their capacity. This slow and erratic ramp up, exacerbated by continuing pandemic-related supplier labor shortages and cost increases, and logistics constraints has led to significant component shortages and material and freight cost inflation. This has had a significant effect on high street deal in the first quarter. As a result of these factors, our first quarter shipments were substantially lower than we had expected, particularly in our America's division where receiving components needed to build certain trucks on schedule was very challenging. This resulted in earnings that were significantly lower than both the 2020 fourth quarter and the first quarter. While these results were not what we had planned or expected, our team is working diligently to obtain the components we need. Given our very high backlog, the opportunity for increased production is high as supply chain bottlenecks are resolved. After Christie reviews the financial results, for the quarter in more detail. Rajeev will provide more detail on these supply chain challenges, as well as provide an update on our business operations and strategic projects. Ken will then discuss our outlook in this evolving environment. Kristi?