Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the High State Yale Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Alex. I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, you may press star 2. I'll now hand over to our host, Christina Comecto of Investor Relations. Christina, over to you.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Welcome to our 2022 second quarter earnings call. I am Christina Comecto, and I am responsible for investor relations at High Street Yale. Joining me on today's call are Al Rankin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rajiv Prasad, President, and Ken Schilling, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Yesterday evening, we published our 2022 second quarter results and followed our 10Q, both of which are available on our website. Today's call is being recorded and webcast. The 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 several 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 10-Q and other filings with the FCC. 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 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, everyone. Overall, our second quarter results are directionally where we expected them to be. as we continue to face near-term supply chain constraints and inflation challenges, as many other companies do. Despite these headwinds, and while still reporting a substantial consolidated operating and net loss, our results for the quarters were substantially better than we anticipated in our first quarter earnings release, with all three segments, particularly the lift truck business, reporting better than expected results. These more favorable results were due to higher than anticipated gross margins and lower operating expenses. Nevertheless, supply chain availability prevented our forklift truck business from achieving production levels we would have preferred in the second quarter. Lift truck gross margins decreased modestly from gross margins in the first quarter of 2022 due to additional commodity inflation resulting from the Russia Ukraine conflict and adverse product mix. In-market booking demand appears to be moderating, but the market is still strong, and we continue to have healthy order rates and a robust backlog. Nevertheless, shortages of certain critical components are continuing to disrupt our production level. and the lift truck business has reduced future production levels planned for the back half of 2022 and 2023 to help ensure parts availability. We remain laser focused on mitigating the impacts of the supply chain constraints, and our teams continue to work closely with Subtires to obtain the components we need for production. Given the high backlog levels, the lift truck business will further increase production as supply chain bottlenecks are resolved. We have also continued to raise prices in the current inflationary environment to increase margins, both in our backlog and particularly for new orders. While these challenges have affected our outlook for the back half of the year, we remain confident that they will subside over time. Rajiv and Ken will provide more specifics on these topics. Now I'll turn the call back over to Christy to review the financial results for the quarter. Christy?