Knowles Corporation

Thank you for standing by. My name is Pruella and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NOLS Corporation Q1 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 the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sarah Cook. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Sarah Cook, Vice President of Investor Relations, and presenting with me today are Jeffrey New, our President and CEO, and John Anderson, our Senior Vice President and CFO. Our call today will include remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects for NOLS, which constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under applicable federal security laws. Forward-looking statements in this call will include comments about demand for company products, anticipated trends in company sales, expenses, and profits, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The company urges investors to review the risks and uncertainties in the company's SEC filings, including, but not limited to, the annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2025, periodic reports filed from time to time with the SEC, and the risks and uncertainties identified in today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and Knowles disclaims any duty to update such statements except as required by law. In addition, pursuant to Reg G, any non-GAAP financial measures referenced during today's conference call can be found in our press release posted on our website at NOLS.com and in our current report on Form 8-K filed today with the SEC. This will include a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. All financial references on this call will be on a non-GAAP continuing operations basis with the exception of cash from operations or unless otherwise indicated. We've made select financial information available in webcast slides, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff, who will provide details on our results. Jeff?

Thanks, Sarah. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. We started 2026 with solid financial results in Q1 and great momentum entering the rest of the year. Our strategy of leveraging our unique technologies to design custom engineered solutions and then delivering them at scale for blue chip customers in high growth markets that value our solutions is proving to be a powerful combination. We had strong organic growth in the first quarter as we delivered revenue of $153 million, up 16% year-over-year, and at the high end of our guided range. EPS of 27 cents, up 50% year-over-year, exceeded the high end of our guided range, and cash utilized in operations of $1 million was within our guided range. Now on to our segment results. In Q1, MedTech and specialty audio revenue was $68 million, up 14% year-over-year. Our customers' new product introductions, coupled with our position on these platforms, have led to stronger-than-expected growth in the first quarter. Knowles continues to demonstrate our ability to deliver unique solutions with superior technology and reliability our customers have come to depend on. MSA's first quarter revenue grew well above our annual organic growth target of 2% to 4%. However, the hearing health end market is expected to continue to grow at normal historical rates in 2026. Therefore, we are projecting MedTech and specialty audio will grow within the 2% to 4% range for the full year 2026. Beyond 2026, we are positioned well to win next-generation designs for MEMS microphones and balanced armature speakers. As I said during our year-end call, we also see the prospect to increase our content for device in next-generation hearing health products and expand our reach with our microsolutions group, which provides the opportunity in the future to increase growth rates above the historical rates. In the precision device segment, Q1 revenues was $85 million, up 17% year-over-year. With all our end markets we serve, MedTech defends industrial and electrification, growing on a year-over-year basis. Let me share a couple highlights driving growth in our end markets this quarter. We saw strength in the defense market across our product families. Our capacitors were in demand supporting ongoing OEM investments in defense programs, new products starting production, and share gains. We also saw broad-based orders for our RF microwave products as we continue to be a sole supplier on a number of key defense programs. Additionally, we do expect increasing demand in 2027 and beyond, driven by the replenishment of stocks in connection with the Iran conflict. In the industrial market, demand continued to grow with strong order activity across a wide range of our capacitor products, supporting a multitude of applications and industries at both our distribution partners and OEMs. As an example, our ceramic capacitors were in high demand in the semiconductor equipment market and also for use in downhole applications. Additionally, with inventory challenges we saw last year behind us, We believe our distributor partners' orders are aligned with end market demand. In addition to the strong shipments we saw in the first quarter, our book-to-bill and precision devices was very strong at 1.19. This ordering pattern was broad-based, and this marked the sixth consecutive quarter where the book-to-bill was greater than one. We see ordering strength across all our end markets, both at OEMs and with our distribution partners. A robust pipeline of new design wins coupled with favorable secular trends gives me confidence in our ability to continue to grow revenue above the high end of the organic growth target of 6% to 8% for precision devices in 2026. I continue to be excited by the strength of our business and the momentum we exited the first quarter with. We are well positioned for continued strong organic revenue growth and margin expansion through 2026. We believe this momentum is sustainable for two key reasons. First, our portfolio of businesses are well positioned in markets with strong secular growth trends. Whether it be defense, medical, industrial, or electrification, the secular drivers of growth in these markets is forecasted to be positive for the foreseeable future. Second, we design high-performance customized solutions for our customers that have demanding applications, and we have the manufacturing capabilities that allows us to ramp up these solutions quickly and efficiently. This combination differentiates us, allowing us to garner premium margins for the products we produce. This is proving to be a winning combination. Before I turn the call over to John to cover our financial results and provide our Q2 guidance, I would like to reiterate what I've said on previous calls. I believe Knowles has entered a period of accelerated organic growth. With a very healthy backlog of existing orders, We now expect our revenue growth in 2026 to be above the high end of our target organic revenue target of 4% to 6% that we provided at our investor day in May of last year. Our strategy of leveraging our unique technologies to design custom engineered solutions and then deliver them at scale for blue chip customers in high growth markets that value our solutions is proving to be a powerful combination driving revenue growth, expanding margins, and strong cash flow to drive shareholder value. Now, let me turn the call over to John for our financial results and our Q2 guidance.