John Bean Technologies Corporation

Good morning and welcome to JBT Corporation's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Maddie and I'll be a conference operator today. At this time, 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. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I will now turn the call over to JBT's Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Kedrick Meredith, to begin today's conference.

Thank you, Maddie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter 2021 conference call. With me on the call is our Chief Executive Officer, Brian Deck, and Chief Financial Officer, Matt Meister. In today's call, we will use forward-looking statements that are subject to the Safe Harbor language in yesterday's press release and AK filings. JBT's periodic SEC filings also contain information regarding risk factors that may have an impact on our results. These documents are available in the investor relations section of our website. Also, our discussion today includes references to certain non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the investor relations section of our website. Finally, I encourage you to review the earnings call presentation, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. In it, we provide analysis of our current performance, including a bridge between projected and actual third quarter results. Now, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Thanks, Kedrick, and good morning, everyone. While JBT continue to enjoy robust demand across our food tech business and are firmly on the path to recovery at Aerotech, unprecedented challenges associated with the confluence of supply chain disruptions, inflation pressure, and labor shortages hurt our top and bottom line performance in the third quarter, particularly at Aerotech. Specifically, shortages of critical materials, components, and labor impeded our ability to build and deliver equipment. While Foodtech was more successful at absorbing the impact of the current environment, we experienced extended delivery and installation lead times, which tempered top-line growth. and the unavailability of parts impacted our aftermarket business and production efficiency. Across the board, rising labor costs and labor shortages were more pronounced, and metal and logistics costs have skyrocketed. We have been taking all actions to offset these operational pressures. Specifically, we are working with suppliers to increase supply lead time visibility, secure delivery, order earlier, and identify alternative sources for parts. We have implemented price increases across Foodtech and Aerotech where possible and will continue to pursue increases to offset higher costs. Additionally, we are constantly communicating with our customers to keep them abreast of how these challenges might affect their orders. Our customers are facing similar supply chain disruptions as well as their own labor challenges which can also delay our delivery and installation. We're responding by remaining as flexible as possible in supporting our customers' day-to-day operations by optimizing uptime and productivity of their existing equipment. This is an important part of building long-term customer partnerships and delivering on JBT's brand promise. I'll talk more about the great demand environment in a few minutes. First, Matt will provide more detailed analysis of the third quarter results and walk you through updated guidance for the year.