Mettler-Toledo International, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MET with Toledo Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Mary Finnegan. Please go ahead.

Mary Finnegan, Thank you, and good evening, everyone. I'm Mary Finnegan, and responsible for investor relations at Mettler Toledo, and happy that you're joining us this evening. I am joined on the call today with Patrick Kaltenbach, our CEO, and Shawn Videla, our chief financial officer. Let me cover just a couple of administrative matters. This call is being webcast and is available on our website. A copy of the press release and the presentation that we refer to on today's call is also on the website. Let me summarize the Safe Harbor language, which is outlined 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, level of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statement. For discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see the discussion in our recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the SEC from time to time. All of the forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety. by reference to the factors discussed under the captions, factors affecting our future operating results, and the business and management discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations sections of our filing. One other item, on today's call we may use non-GAAP financial measures. More detailed information with respect to the use of and differences between the non-GAAP financial measure and the most directly comparable GAAP measure is provided in the 8 . Let me now turn the call over to Patrick.

Thanks, Mary, and good evening, everyone. We had a great finish to 2021 with strong fourth quarter results. We capitalized on robust customer demand and executed very well particularly with respect to our supply chain to meet customer demands. The strength and agility of the teams around the world are reflected in these results. The highlights of the quarter are on page three of the presentation. Local currency sales growth was 11%, and we had particularly strong growth in the Americas and Asia and rest of the world. Both our laboratory and industrial product lines performed very well. As expected, food retail was a headwind to our overall sales growth as we again had a significant decline in the quarter. Despite facing higher material and transportation costs due to challenges in the supply chain, we had very solid growth in adjusted operating profit and strong growth in adjusted EPS in the quarter. The fourth quarter was the end to an excellent year of results. For the full year, We achieved an 18% increase in local currency sales, a 26% increase in adjusted operating profit, which resulted in a margin improvement of 130 basis points. We had outstanding 32% growth in adjusted EPS. And finally, cash flow generation in 2021 was excellent. We not only achieved great results, we also strengthened our competitive position in 2021 as innovation nourished our excellent product portfolio and comprehensive services offering combined with our Spinnaker sales and marketing strategies helped us capture growth opportunities. We also did a superb job navigating the hurdles in the global supply chain. Our agility and excellent execution further reinforced our already strong brand. Importantly, our impressive results last year allowed us to make important investments for future growth. We are confident in our ability to continue to gain share and believe we are ideally positioned to deliver strong results in 2022 and beyond. I will have some additional comments later, but let me turn it first to Sean to cover the financial results. Sean?