MSA Safety Incorporated

Good day and welcome to the MSA first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Hepler. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to MSA Safety's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. This is Chris Hepler, Executive Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. With me today are Nish Vartanian, Chairman, President, and CEO, Lee McChesney, Senior Vice President and CFO, and Steve Blanco, Segment President for the Americas. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that 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 Safety 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. The non-GAAP reconciliations are available in the appendix of today's presentation. The presentation and press release are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.msasafety.com. Moving on to today's agenda. First, Nish will discuss key highlights of the quarter. He will then turn the call over to Lee to discuss our financial performance and outlook. Nish will then conclude with closing remarks. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Nish.

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. I'm on slide four. I want to start with a brief story that has a very important reminder. NSA's purpose runs deep in our company, and our employees are very often involved in community work that ties closely to our mission. One of our associates locally here in Pittsburgh, who also serves as a volunteer firefighter, responded to a house fire recently, where tragically, two children were killed by the smoke and flames. The investigation identified that there were no smoke detectors in the home, which could have helped save the lives of these children. As a result, he's become passionate about smoke detectors and launched a community event on smoke detector awareness. To amplify this important message, I want to remind everyone on this call to check your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors regularly, change the batteries, and ensure they're installed throughout your home. It can help save you or your loved one's life. Now moving on to slide five, MSA had an outstanding start to the year. With strong revenue, earnings, and cash flow growth, we're very encouraged as this marks the third straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth and healthy incremental margins in cash flow. Our profitable growth was a result of broad-based demand for MSA's leading safety solutions. Orders were up double digits over the last year. Our book-to-bill ratio was favorable at more than 1.1 times, and we grew backlog sequentially Revenue is up a strong 20% in a quarter. We saw balanced growth across our key product categories and regions. Growth in our shorter cycle products like portable gas detection, head protection, and fall protection was strong in a quarter. Our fixed gas detection business also saw solid growth and orders. And in firefighter safety, we saw healthy growth in breathing apparatus and protective apparel, specifically in our globe business. So to all of our MSA associates around the globe, thank you for delivering another great quarter. Results like these are driven by your unwavering dedication to our mission of safety. We also take great pride in our ability to design innovative solutions that address our customers' toughest safety challenges and improve their productivity. By putting the customer at the center of everything we do, our teams are able to design better solutions that address these challenges. This has helped us introduce better solutions to the safety industry and has resulted in leading product vitality, which was 37% for 2022. This demonstrates a strong product market fit for our solutions, and we're competing well in our markets. A great example of this is the continued expansion of our fall protection portfolio, an effort that was started pre-pandemic. We recently launched the V-Shock series of self-retracting lanyards that complement our V-Tech lineup. The V-Shock product line is designed for durability, ease of use, and improves our competitive position in the growing fall protection sector while extending our addressable market. And on the commercial side, we continue to see momentum in the fire services market with recent wins with Los Angeles City for the G1 breathing apparatus and Bedfordshire United Kingdom for for the M1. These contracts build on our wins that we had last year with Los Angeles County and London Fire Brigade. And we've also had recent notable wins in Chile, China, and in France. Moving on to slide six, as the safety company, our commitment to sustainability begins with our mission and is the basis for our key sustainability pillars, our products, our people, and our planet. In our recently published annual report, we announced a 1.5 degree Celsius carbon reduction target, reducing our scope one and two emissions by 42% by 2030. To achieve this target, we're incorporating sustainability principles into our daily operations across the globe. Our associates are inspired by our ambition, and we have numerous initiatives in process to help us reach our targets. Not only is sustainability incorporated in how we operate, it's also incorporated into the products we develop. As an example, we recently launched the Bacharach MGS 401 entrance monitor that provides improved safety to monitored areas, such as mechanical rooms and lock-in freezers, by providing accurate gas concentrations and audible and visual alarms when gas levels are too high. Importantly, the monitor also helps customers more easily comply with refrigeration safety standards. It's another way our team is bringing innovative solutions to solve our customers' evolving safety and sustainability challenges. With that, I'll pass the call to Lee to discuss our first quarter financial results and outlook. Lee?