Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Heister Gale Materials Handling First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christina Kimetko, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Hyster Yale's 2024 First Quarter Earnings Call. I'm Christina Kometko, and I'm responsible for investor relations. Yesterday evening, we published our first quarter 2024 results and filed our 10-Q. These documents are available on the High Street Yale website. We are recording this webcast, and a replay will be on our website later this afternoon. The replay will remain available for approximately 12 months. I'd like to remind you that our remarks today, including answers to any questions, will include comments related to expected future results of the company, and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described in our earnings release 10-Q and other SEC filings. We may not update these forward-looking statements until our next quarterly earnings conference call. Our presenters today are Al Rankin, Executive Chairman, Rajiv Prasad, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Minder, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. With the formalities out of the way, let me turn the call over to Rajiv to begin.

Thanks, Christy, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start by providing the operational perspective and some commentary on our markets. Scott will follow with the detailed financial results and the outlook. Then I'll share a few strategic project highlights, Al will close the call with his perspective, and then we'll open it up to your questions. First, I'll provide some highlights from our excellent quarter one 2024 financial results. 2023 was an outstanding year, and we're continuing to build on those successes. For the fourth consecutive quarter, we have reported revenues of more than $1 billion. And this past quarter, we had the highest reported operating profit and profit margins in the company's history, achieving an operating profit margin above 7% for the first time. Our quarterly highlights are all positive. Consolidated operating profit and net incomes are up significantly versus the prior year. We've improved operating profit margins and consolidated revenues as well. The global economy remains strong overall in the first quarter. However, political unrest around the world is causing lingering uncertainty. The latest publicly available lift truck market data indicates that Q4 2023 global bookings increase year over year with stronger than expected year-end volumes in EMEA and JPEG markets. Those higher bookings more than offset the America's decline. However, we estimate that Q1 2024 global lift-track bookings moderated compared to relatively strong prior year levels. In Q1, we continued to work through our extended backlog and continued to focus on booking orders with strong overall margins. This, coupled with the year-over-year market decline, led to a moderate bookings decrease compared to prior year. bookings increased 10% sequentially, led by a large order for Class II and Class III warehouse trucks in EMEA. In Q1 2024, average booking prices decreased compared to Q4 2023 and prior year. This was largely due to a shift to lower-priced warehouse products, predominantly in EMEA. In line with our objectives, backlog levels decreased compared to year-end 2023 levels. Now let's talk about the outlook for our business. Looking ahead, we expect competitive dynamics to become more prevalent again in our market, particularly on products with shorter lead times. As we reduce backlog levels and improve lead times, we're committed to maintaining our targeted booking margins through new models introductions, and cost decreases. We predict an upward swing in quarter-over-quarter bookings throughout 2024. This is largely due to anticipated market share gains in the Americas and PMEA and improving North American market conditions later in the year. Our shipments are expected to increase in 2024 compared to 2023 due to higher production rates, continued supply chain improvements, and the dissipation of lingering product launch issues. As production and shipment rates increase, we foresee backlog levels and lead times on many product lines reaching target levels by year-end. As expected, our $3.1 billion backlog, which is equal to approximately nine months of production, combined with new unit bookings is supporting the business through any near-term market weaknesses. Now I'll turn it over to Scott to provide some detailed financial results and outlook.