IDEX Corporation

Hello and welcome to the Q126 IDEX Corporation earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, just press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, just press star one again. Thank you. Now I would like to turn the call over to Jim Giannacuros, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Jim.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to IDEX's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We released our first quarter financial results earlier this morning, and you can find both our press release and earnings call slide presentation in the investor section of our website, IDEXcorp.com. On the call with me today are Eric Ashleman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IDEX, and Sean Gillen, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will begin with Eric providing highlights of our first quarter results and an update on our business outlook and strategies. Then Sean will discuss additional financial details and our updated outlook for 2026. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. But before we begin, please refer to slide two of our presentation where we note that comments today will include forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results could differ materially from these statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties which are discussed in our press release and SEC filings. As IDEXX provides non-GAAP financial information, we provided reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in our press release and in the appendix of our presentation materials, which are available on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Eric.

Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Please turn to slide three. IDEX delivered a strong first quarter and continue to see our growth strategies gain traction as we expand and integrate capabilities in targeted advantage markets powered by 80-20. I'd like to thank our teams around the world for their disciplined execution, agility, and focus as they help drive long-term value creation. In the first quarter, IDEX delivered organic sales growth of 5% and adjusted EBITDA margin of 26%, which reflects a margin expansion of 50 basis points year over year. These results were above our expectations and reflect strong performance across each of our segments. Additionally, orders were better than expected, growing 10% organically year over year. Strength was most pronounced in our health and science technologies, or HST segment, where secular drivers continue to fuel growth across high-value applications in data center, semiconductor, and space and defense markets. The strong backlog build in HST improves our visibility to deliver continued solid growth for the balance of the year and into 2027. Finally, orders in our fluid and metering technologies, or FMT segment, grew 9% organic year over year. This was driven by strong order activity in our water platform and our pumps businesses. In our general industrial business units, we are off to a good start to the year, and it's encouraging to see signs of improvement in these end markets. Taking our Q1 performance and backlog build into account, we are raising our full year 2026 financial outlook. Sean will get into greater detail later in the call. Before turning it over to Sean, I'd like to walk through a live example of IDEX's capabilities to drive long-term value as 80-20 drives growth, margins, and earnings. Please turn to slide four. At the highest level, this starts with a very high-quality portfolio of market-leading applied technologies used in environments where performance is critical and failure is not an option. Space and defense is a prime example of faster-growing, durable end markets where we are increasingly deploying resources in the HST segment to expand our opportunity set. In simple terms, we provide critical components that move, manage, filter, focus, and protect data, energy, and fluids in space and defense systems. These markets benefit from growing demand for space-based connectivity and breakthrough defense technologies, with long program lives and rising system complexity creating a multi-year growth runway. Importantly, our participation spans multiple touchpoints across the portfolio, from optics enabling secure data transmission to MOTS filtration solutions supporting propulsion and thermal management, alongside other engineered components for mission-critical systems. These solutions are co-engineered early with customers, allowing us to move quickly, adapt as requirements evolve, and reinforce our role as a trusted partner. Please turn to slide five. For more than a decade, 80-20 has helped us improve focus, margins, and execution. Within our growth platforms, we are increasingly using it as a growth tool, segmenting markets more deliberately, clarifying where we win, and actively reallocating capital and talent toward the highest value opportunities. What's different today is the quality and scale of growth emerging from our platform 80s customers and markets. As demand concentrates in more complex, higher value applications, our pivot toward durable growth areas is reinforcing a stronger overall outlook for IDEX. This momentum also creates a flywheel effect. Strength in our advantage platforms allows us to further simplify, rationalize, and refine the portfolio. driving higher growth, stronger margins, and enhanced shareholder value over time. It might seem counterintuitive to some, but we grow fastest by focusing and doubling down on fewer customers over time as we help winning customers quickly grow share within advantage spaces. Our component orientation allows us full flexibility to move right or left into the other application arenas to apply 80-20 again, moving out the peaks and valleys of dynamic growth as we compound value. We complement this work with balanced and disciplined capital deployment, maintaining a strong balance sheet for flexibility, investing organically, actively pursuing tuck-in acquisitions, and returning capital to shareholders. We repurchased $76 million of IDEXX shares in the first quarter and expect to maintain that pace throughout 2026. With that, I'll turn it over to Sean to walk through the quarter in more detail, including segment performance and our updated outlook.