MSA Safety Incorporated

Good day and welcome to the MSA SACE-D fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a 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 touchtone 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 fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. This is Chris Hepler, Executive Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. With me today are Nish Vartanian, Chairman and CEO, Steve Blanco, President and COO, and Lee McChesney, Senior Vice President and CFO. Before we begin, I would 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 and Steve will discuss key highlights of the fourth quarter and full year 2023. Lee will then review our financial performance and outlook. To conclude, Nish will provide closing comments, at which time we will open up the call for your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Nish.

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your interest in the work we do. I'll start on slide four. Our team delivered excellent results in the fourth quarter with strong growth and operational performance, wrapping up an outstanding 2023 for MSA. Our results are a testament to our passion for our mission and dedication to addressing our customers' toughest safety challenges. Despite the lingering pandemic effects on global supply chains, rising interest rates, and dynamic macroeconomic conditions, our team outperformed throughout the year. I'm very proud of our execution and achievements in 2023, and we're carrying that momentum into 2024. Moving on to slide five, MSA's sole purpose and mission over its 110 year history has been to protect workers' lives and critical infrastructure in high hazard environments. And our customers recognize that we at MSA know what's at stake when they put their lives on the line each and every day. This provides us with a unique bond with our customers and being alongside them on the safety journey allows us to be a true partner in the development of products and solutions like few other companies. Across our many leading firefighter safety detection and industrial PPE technologies, we protect more than 40 million workers around the world. We do not take this responsibility lightly. It drives our passion for continuous innovation. Now on slide six. Over the past several years, we've been diligently working to build MSA into a higher growth, more profitable company with greater resiliency and durability. With customer centricity at its core, our strategy has focused on accelerating our innovation engine, enhancing our go-to-market strategies and customer facing activities, and increasing productivity and driving efficiency. To complement our organic efforts, We've effectively deployed capital across several acquisitions to better serve our customers, expand and diversify our end markets, and win in regions where we've been under-penetrated. Our deliberate actions result in a high-performing, more agile company with an even greater ability to drive stakeholder value over the long term. Slide seven summarizes the financial impact of these actions. We have executed on our financial commitments to deliver solid mid single digit growth and 490 basis points of margin expansion while compounding earnings at an attractive rate. We've also added to our high performance talent while continuing to reinforce our culture, putting us in a tremendous position to build on this performance. I'm incredibly proud of our team's accomplishments, which have MSA well positioned as we move forward. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Steve, who will take you through the key highlights from the quarter and year.