Kennametal Inc.

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to Kenna Meadows' first quarter and fiscal 2026 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 then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then the number two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Pesey. Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review CannaMetal's first quarter fiscal 2026 results. This morning, we issued our earnings press release and posted our presentation slides on our website. We will be referring to that slide deck throughout today's call. I'm Michael Pisi, Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Sanjay Chaubey, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Pat Watson, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After Sanjay and Pat's prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. At this time, I would like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement. Today's discussion contains comments that constitute forward-looking statements, and as such, involve a number of assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. These risk factors and uncertainties are detailed in KennaMetal's SEC filings. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures on the call today. Reconciliations to GAAP financial measures that we believe are most directly comparable can be found at the back of the slide deck and on our Form 8K on our website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Sanjay.

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin the call today with a brief overview of the quarter including some in-market commentary, followed by a spotlight on one of our growth focus areas, power generation. From there, Pat will cover the quarterly financial results, as well as the fiscal year 26 outlook. Finally, I'll make some summary comments, and then we will open the line for questions. Turning to slide three, let me begin by addressing some of the highlights from our strong first quarter. Our global commercial teams continue to advance our strategic growth initiatives. In the quarter, infrastructure secured two large project wins within our earthworks and market. Both wins were a direct result of our team's efforts with those customers to deliver high-quality technical support and superior product performance. That combination has and will continue to be a winning formula for us. In metal cutting, we won projects in energy, aerospace and defense, and transportation. For example, we increased our share of wallet with an aerospace customer to provide high-precision tooling solutions for machining military components. As you know, we continue to prioritize above-market growth, and these wins position us well in markets that are benefiting from long-term secular growth trends. We also continue to respond to the evolving tariff landscape, and we remain committed to fully offsetting the impact of tariffs through various actions, including product moves, supply chain optimization, and surcharges as appropriate. Separately, we have implemented pricing actions in response to the continuing rise in tungsten costs, which have increased since August and are at historically high levels. We remain confident in our ability to price to offset the rising tungsten costs. On the cost improvement front, we realized $8 million in restructuring savings this quarter, and we continue to execute our plans to lower structural costs by reducing employment costs and consolidating manufacturing operations. Now let's move to our quarterly results, which exceeded the sales and EPS outlook we provided last quarter. Compared to the outlook, sales were primarily driven by better-than-expected volume across all end markets. EPS benefited from the additional volume and a lower-than-anticipated tax rate. Year-over-year, sales increased 3 percent organically. That's our first quarter of organic growth in two years and reflects modest relief from the broad market weakness that has impacted our end markets for the past eight quarters. As you may recall, historically, down cycles tend to last four to eight quarters. Adjusted EPS increased to 34 cents compared to 29 cents in the prior year quarter. In terms of profitability, adjusted EBITDA margin was 15.3 percent compared to 14.3 percent in the prior year quarter. Cash from operating activities year-to-date was $17 million compared to $46 million in the prior year period. Free operating cash flow year-to-date was negative $5 million compared to $21 million in the prior year. And finally, we returned $25 million to shareholders through share repurchases of $10 million and dividends of $15 million. Today, we are raising our sales and EPS outlook for fiscal 26. This update reflects the modestly improved market conditions, additional price and tariff surcharges, and our favorable performance in the first quarter. Pat will provide more details on our updated outlook shortly. In summary, we are pleased with this quarter's results and we continue to focus on delivering our commitments throughout fiscal 26. Turning to slide four and our in-market update. As a reminder, our full year outlook reflects forecasts of specific market drivers and general market conditions. I will focus on the bottom half of the slide and address the two markets that have changed since our last call. First, IHS estimates for transportation slightly improved from the previous estimate, while still being in the negative low single-digit range. Volumes in the Americas have improved from the prior estimate, partially offset by pressure that continues to impact EMEA. And secondly, for aerospace and defense, expectations are improving as the aerospace industry has recovered from supply chain challenges and will benefit from the recent approval that will increase OEM production. Market factors remain mostly unchanged within the other end markets. Turning to slide five, we are seeing emerging opportunities in power generation, driven by rising demand for both renewable and traditional energy sources to support the expansion of AI data centers. This is an expanding opportunity for Kenomero across both of our segments and we are capitalizing on this trend. As we shared last quarter, we secured a key win in metal cutting connected to the backup generators that are providing energy security to those data centers. And it's our deep expertise in application engineering and machining complex engine components that is positioning us particularly well to support customers as they manufacture backup power generation systems and utility-scale gas turbines. With respect to the gas turbines, these applications require the same capabilities that we have long applied in aerospace and defense. So, this is also an area that we know very well. While this slide focused on metal cutting, the opportunity extends across both segments. In infrastructure, our wear-resistant solutions and strong position in oil and gas extraction aligns with the growing need for natural gas as a reliable fuel source for uninterrupted power. So while our recent wins are in backup power systems, the opportunity is much broader, and we're well positioned to capitalize on that as the trend continues. Now, let me turn the call over to Pat, who will review the first quarter financial performance and the outlook.