Illinois Tool Works Inc.

Good morning. My name is Connor Meek, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to ITW's third quarter earnings conference 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, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by number one key again. For those participating in the Q&A, you will have the opportunity to ask one question and if needed, one follow-up question. Thank you. Erin Linnihan, Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

President and CFO, Michael Larsen. During today's call, we will discuss ITW's third quarter 2026 financial results and provide guidance for full year 2026. Slide 2 is a reminder that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's 2025 Form 10-K and subsequent reports filed with the SEC for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. This presentation uses certain non-GAAP measures, and a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is contained in the press release. Please turn to slide three, and it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Chris O'Herlihy. Chris?

Thank you, Erin, and good morning, everyone. As you saw in our press release this morning, the ITW team delivered another quarter of strong operational and financial performance. Our third quarter highlights include organic growth of 4% or 5% excluding the impact of a tornado event at one of our welding locations. Our top line was fueled by another meaningful increase in customer back innovation and we are raising our full year CBA projection to 3% plus. Operating margin expanded 40 basis points to 27.8% and operating income increased 6% marking a new quarterly record for ITW. Gap EPS exceeded our estimate and increased 7% to $3. Demand momentum this quarter continued to accelerate in our two CapEx related segments that were organic growth of 16% in test and measurement electronics and 7% in welding or 15% excluding the tornado event. In addition, polymers and fluids grew 8% due to robust contributions from both market share gains and new products. Beyond capitalizing on favorable market conditions, we continue to make meaningful progress on our long-term organic growth agenda across all segments. On that note, I am very encouraged by our customer-backed innovation progress, which so far this year has contributed more than 3% to revenue growth compared to 2.4% in 2025. As I mentioned, we are now projecting that CBI will exceed 3% for the full year, which is the single biggest catalyst for achieving our enterprise goal of sustained, High quality organic growth of 4% or higher. Our performance year to date offers another proof point that disciplined execution on our next phase enterprise strategy priorities is yielding strong results, positioning us very well for 2027 and putting us firmly on track to achieve our 2030 performance goals. Before I transition to the bottom line, let me spend just a minute on the unfortunate tornado event that we mentioned on our call in July. which damaged two of our welding facilities and reduced our revenues by about $40 million, our one percentage point in the third quarter. I am pleased to say that our colleagues were all safe and the team did an outstanding job quickly and safely restoring operations and taking care of customers. Our swift recovery serves as a great demonstration of our ability to read and react, a key proof point of the value of ITW's decentralized entrepreneurial culture. With welding order growth running well ahead of revenue, we expect welding to return to strong growth again in the fourth quarter and carry good momentum into next year. On the bottom line, the ITW team continued to execute at a high level, with enterprise initiatives contributing 130 basis points to our operating margin. And in a very dynamic inflationary environment, our teams continued to respond decisively and effectively. Overall, price cost was favorable in the third quarter. but as you can see, in a few segments such as automotive OEM and construction products, we have some catching up to do. Turning to capital allocation, in the quarter we raised our dividends 7%, marking our 63rd consecutive year of dividend increases. In the first three quarters of the year, we have returned $2.7 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. In terms of our outlook, We are raising our full year gap EPS guidance by 5 cents to a new midpoint of $11.50, reflecting 10% year-over-year growth. This marks our third guidance increase of the year. Looking ahead to 2027, and with the caveat that we haven't developed our annual plans yet, demand momentum continues to build across several of our end markets, notably in welding and test and measurement electronics. In addition, we are exiting this year with CBI already at 3% plus, We would expect another meaningful contribution from our enterprise initiatives and incremental margins in the 40% plus range. Our long-term performance framework, 4% plus organic growth and 30% operating margins by 2030 is very much intact and remains well within our reach. In conclusion, I want to thank our dedicated IHW colleagues around the world and this quarter in particular, the welding folks in Appleton, Wisconsin for their dedication to serving our customers and executing our strategy with excellence. With that, I'd hand the call over to Michael to walk you through the segment details and updated full year outlook. Michael.