JELD-WEN Holding, Inc.

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 would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. Chris Teachout, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We issued our earnings press release this morning and posted a slide presentation to the investor relations portion of our website, which we will be referencing during this call. I'm joined today by Gary Michel, Chair, President, and CEO, and John Linker, our CFO. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during this call, we will be making certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our earnings release and provided in our forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. GELDWIN does not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements, including the guidance we are providing with respect to certain expectations for future results. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable financial measure calculated under GAAP can be found in our earnings release and in the appendix to this presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Gary. Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Over the past few years, We have focused on deploying operational and commercial excellence initiatives as the strategic foundation to propel Gelwyn's long-term growth strategy, leveraging our premier performance culture as a competitive advantage. Those efforts paid off for us in 2021 as we delivered an excellent year of financial performance with record revenue and core revenue growth. End markets were strong. driving robust customer demand for our world-class brands. Our operations were healthy, allowing us to maintain market-leading lead time. And we successfully navigated a challenging year of sharply accelerating inflation. And as we will discuss in a few minutes, we made significant progress on growth initiatives that we expect will position us for a breakout year of financial performance in 2022. I want to thank our global associates and our channel and supply chain partners for their unwavering dedication to serving customers with the highest quality products and delivering this record-setting performance in a challenging environment. To summarize our 2021 performance, net revenues increased 12.7%, driven by a 10% increase in core revenue, with all segments contributing to core revenue growth. Our adjusted EBITDA grew 4.2%, driven by favorable price realization and positive volume mix, which was partially offset by headwinds from inflation. We successfully offset material and freight inflation with pricing actions. However, the net impact compressed our margin rate. We head into this fiscal year knowing that the foundation of our operations is strong, our commercial excellence initiatives are driving business, and the company is primed for sustainable growth and margin expansion, which I will touch on shortly. Please turn to page four as I share a few highlights from the fourth quarter. In Q4, demand remains strong in each of our end markets. reinforcing the strength in new housing starts and replace and remodel or R&R markets. Consolidated core revenue growth accelerated to 12% with a positive core growth in each operating segment led by North America. This marked our sixth consecutive quarter of consolidated core revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased 4% to $120.1 million, driven by positive volume and productivity actions. We also progressed our capital deployment initiatives, repurchasing $45.7 million of our stock in the fourth quarter, bringing the full year total to nearly $325 million, or approximately 11.5% of shares outstanding. In North America, core revenue grew 15% from sequentially improved volume throughput and pricing-related actions. Quarter-end backlog in North America increased sequentially and year-over-year, with strong order rates, book-to-bill, and market-leading lead time for the majority of our product categories. We made investments to attract and retain labor to meet strong customer demand while ensuring more long-term stability in a tight labor market. These investments, combined with our productivity initiative, drove an approximate 8% sequential increase in average shipments per day compared to the third quarter, while on a year-over-year basis, throughput accelerated as the quarter progressed. Our teams also delivered cost controls and pricing-related action to mitigate inflation. In Europe, core revenue grew 10%, a significant acceleration driven by sequential improvements in price realization. And in Australasia, core revenue grew 6% and adjusted EBITDA margin was the highest of all segments at 14.7%, improving 100 basis points. In Australia, we are capitalizing on record levels of new housing demand, although volume mix is being tempered slightly by supply chain and builder labor constraints that have extended build lead times by more than 50%, which we expect to moderate this year. Please turn to page five. We really like the setup for 2022 as all segments execute plans to accelerate top-line growth through new customer-centric innovation launches, capacity expansion, throughput improvement, and channel initiatives. Across global operations, including our 14 model value stream sites, Associates are focused on the rigorous deployment of our business operating system, the GELDWIN Excellence Model, or GEM, which is a competitive advantage, enabling us to increase throughput, maintain market leading lead times, and reduce per unit cost. The results are greater customer satisfaction, share gain, and margin expansion for GELDWIN. Through the work done at our 14 model transformation sites, we've reduced labor requirements by an average of 25% and unlocked approximately $45 million of incremental capacity. The benefits from these transformation efforts extend beyond throughput capacity and lower labor requirements. At these sites that have started their transformations, associate engagement is five times higher than at facilities that have yet to begin. This is incredibly powerful because it impacts every factor that influences our transformation, including reducing associate turnover. We expect to accelerate capacity for site transformations in the coming year, including deploying three times the number of rapid improvement events across our global operations. In Europe, We plan to drive growth through increased market penetration with existing products, expanding in underserved geographies, and launching new and innovative products across the region. This year, for example, we're planning to bring a new line of technical doors to the UK market that is already a part of our portfolio in other parts of Europe, which we expect will be a meaningful contributor to growth. In Australasia, we've developed what we believe is an industry-leading lineup of energy star rated product for the Australian market as the country prepares to roll out energy efficiency standards and energy star ratings this year. We expect our suite of energy efficient products will contribute growth and be accretive to margins. And in North America, we have several product lines that we expect to contribute meaningful growth with accretive margins. We're already seeing significant interest from developers up and down the East Coast from our recently opened DPI manufacturing facility in Statesville, North Carolina, which at full utilization doubles our capacity to serve multifamily and commercial customers. Our exterior fiberglass doors are poised for growth as we've further broadened our industry-leading style options, innovated to make our fiberglass doors even more wood-like in appearance. brought value to our builder partners by creating integrated door systems and added capacity needed to satisfy this increased demand. And this year, we will launch a full suite of our Auraline composite windows and patio doors that not only combine a wood-like appearance with the durability and thermal benefits of vinyl, but do so at an attractive price point and with more visible glass than competing options. The oral line products also support consumers desire for more sustainable material options and help deliver on our commitment to reduce our environmental footprint. Our global operations are positioned to deliver increased productivity, and we expect to deliver our unique growth drivers to accelerate performance in 2022 and beyond, giving us confidence in our 2025 revenue and margin targets. Finally, before I hand it over to John, I want to highlight the measurable progress we're making in building a values-based premier performing culture. In 2021, we continue to advance our ESG strategy, including market increases in employee engagement scores, diversity measures, and overall safety metrics. This past quarter, our team in the U.K. was honored for its safety innovation when it received the prestigious British Woodworking Federation Health and Safety Award. As we begin 2022, I want to emphasize that our focus on the safety and well-being of our 25,000 global associates remain at the forefront of our decision-making in all that we do. Now I'll hand it over to John to give you more detail on the financials.

Thanks Gary and good morning everyone. I'll start on page seven. Fourth quarter net revenue increased 11.8% to 1.3 billion driven by a sequential improvement in both pricing and volume mix. This is our sixth consecutive quarter of core revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA improved 4.0% to 120.1 million while adjusted EBITDA margin compressed due to the impact of inflation. EPS and adjusted EPS increased 7% to 45 cents and 48 cents, respectively. Relative to the outlook we provided on our last call, improved throughput and price realization drove revenue growth that exceeded our revenue outlook range, while sharply higher than anticipated inflation held EBITDA at the low end of our outlook range.