Mettler-Toledo International, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first quarter 2019 Mettler Toledo International Earnings Conference call. My name is Jesse, and I'll be your audio coordinator for today. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star, the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. I would now like to turn our presentation over to your hostess for today's call, Ms. Mary Finnegan. Please proceed, ma'am.

Thanks, Jesse, and good evening, everyone. I'm Mary Finnegan. I'm the treasurer, and I'm responsible for investor relations at Butler Toledo, and happy that you're joining us this evening. I'm here with Olivier Filio, our CEO, and Sean Videla, our chief financial officer. I need to cover just a couple administrative matters. This call is being webcast and is available for replay on our website. Copy of the press release and the presentation that we refer to is also available on our website. Let me summarize the safe harbor language that we have on page two of the presentation. Statements in this presentation which are not historical facts constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. For discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see our recent Form 10-K. All of the forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors discussed under captions, factors affecting our future operating results, and in the business and MD&A in our Form 10-K. Just one last item. On today's call, we may use non-GAAP financial measures More detailed information with respect to the use of and differences between non-GAAP financial measures and the most directly comparable GAAP measures is provided in our form 8K. I will now turn the call over to Olivier.

Thank you, Mary, and welcome to everyone on the call tonight. I will start with a summary of the quarter, and then Sean will provide details on our financial results and guidance. I will then have some additional comments, and we will open the lines for Q&A. The highlights for the quarter are on page 3 of the presentation. We had a very good start to the year with the first quarter results. Local currency sales growth was strong and better than expected, as demand in our markets remained favorable and we continued to execute well. Total local currency sales grew 7% in the quarter. Food retailing declined in the quarter. Excluding this business, our total sales grew 8%. We had excellent growth in our laboratory and industrial product lines, which more than offset the decline in food retailing. Growth in Europe and Asia was strong, and America, excluding food retail, also grew quite well. Our productivity and margin initiatives continued to drive good results, and despite a 7% gross headwind due to the adverse currency and tariff costs, we achieved a 10% increase in adjusted EPS in the quarter. Our outlook for 2019 remains positive. This week has brought some noise surrounding the trade tariffs dispute situation with China. For now, we have assumed that the second wave of tariffs will increase to 25%, as indicated by the administration earlier this week. Sean will go over this in more detail, including the potential upside to our 2019 guidance if the tariff situation improves. We continue to be cautious on the global economy as economic data points have moderated in certain regions. However, we see no evidence of a downturn in our markets to date. We remain focused on execution of our growth initiatives and believe we are well positioned to continue to gain share regardless of market conditions. Assuming market conditions remain favorable, we believe we can generate good earnings growth in 2019. Let me now turn it to Sean to cover the financials and guidance, and I will come back later with additional comments on our business.