MSA Safety Incorporated

Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to MSA's third quarter 2022 conference call. This is Chris Hepler, Executive Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. I'm here with Nish Vartanian, Chairman, President, and CEO, Lee McChesney, Senior Vice President and CFO, and John Buck, Chief Accounting Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the matters discussed during this call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include but are not limited to all projections and anticipated levels of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors are detailed in our SEC filings. MSA undertakes no duty to publicly update any forward-looking statements made on this call, except as required by law. We have included certain non-GAAP financial measures as part of our discussion this morning. And the non-GAAP reconciliations, as well as our third quarter press release, are available on our investor relations website at investors.msasafety.com. Moving on to today's agenda. First, Nisha will discuss key highlights of the quarter. We will then provide a few remarks on our results before turning the call to John to discuss the details of the quarter. Finally, Nish will provide closing comments. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Nish.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'll start my comments by thanking the MSA team for delivering excellent results in the third quarter. At MSA, it all starts with safety. I'm pleased to report we're closing in on our 12th consecutive month of not having a lost time incident. While we've enjoyed a very strong safety record over time, this is truly exceptional performance. Shifting gears and looking more closely at the quarter, we saw strong financial performance with organic double digit year over year growth in both orders and sales. Healthy incremental margins drove adjusted operating margin of 19.7%, another step toward our aspirational goal of above 20%. Order activity continued at a robust pace, and our backlog remains at historically high levels, up more than $150 million year over year. The pace of orders increased each month during the quarter, and order activity remains healthy in October. Demand has been broad-based across products and markets. Book to bill remained above one for the quarter. We saw slight easing in the supply chain during the quarter. That combined with various engineering and supply chain initiatives we've implemented throughout the year has resulted in improved deliveries in lead times for our customers. It's great to see that progress and we're happy to get product into the hands of our customers. Inflationary pressures continue to be present across our business. In response, we continue to be proactive on the pricing front to keep pace with rising costs. Our balance sheet remains strong and we continue investing in our business As I mentioned last quarter, we continue to add inventory in key areas to mitigate supply chain risk as we work to improve delivery times for our customers. I'm also pleased that we continue to see customers recognize our market-leading innovation in differentiated products. Even in this challenging environment, we continue to be rewarded with a strong order pace and solid margins as a credit to the value we deliver with our safety technologies and solutions. Lastly, Before we start the review of our quarterly financial highlights, I want to take a moment to welcome Lee McChesney to our team. Lee joined MSA last week as our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'm delighted to have Lee on board to help drive continued growth and leadership in our industry. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Lee. Lee?