Manitowoc Company, Inc. (The)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Manitowoc Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Ion Warner, Vice President, Marketing and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Ion Warner Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Manitowoc Conference Call to review the company's Second Quarter 2020 financial performance as outlined in last evening's press release. Participating on the call today are Aaron Ravenscroft, our new President and Chief Executive Officer, and David Antonik, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's webcast includes a slide presentation, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website under events and presentations. We will reserve time for questions and answers after our prepared remarks. I would like to request that you limit your questions to one and a follow-up and return to the queue to ensure everyone has an opportunity to ask their questions. Please turn to slide two. Please note our safe harbor statement and the material provided for this call. During today's call, forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 are made based on the company's current assessment of its markets and other factors that affect its business. However, actual results could differ materially from any implied or actual projections due to one or more of the factors among others described in the company's latest SEC filings. The Manitowoc Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether the result of new information, future events, or other circumstances. And with that, I will now turn the call over to you, Aaron.

Thank you very much, Ion. And good morning, everyone. Before we discuss our second quarter results, I would like to make a few comments regarding last night's CEO announcement. It is a great honor to be named the President and Chief Executive Officer of Manitowoc Cranes, and I would like to thank Ken Krieger and the Board of Directors for the opportunity to lead the company into the future. With globally recognized brands and some of the best service in the lifting industry, it is no coincidence that Manitowoc has become a manufacturing leader of cranes and lifting solutions. While this business has certainly been faced with unprecedented global crisis, I am incredibly proud of what our team has achieved and has continued to deliver We have a strong foundation and a great team in place, and I see tremendous opportunities ahead for this company. As an introduction, I have served as Manitowoc's Executive Vice President of Cranes, overseeing mobile and power cranes globally for the past four years. In this role, my focus has been on improving our product quality, customer service, and enhancing operational efficiency and profitability. While I certainly found my home at Manitowoc, Earlier in my career, I worked in a variety of operational and sales and marketing roles in the global industrial and engineered equipment product space. I also want to recognize Barry Pennypacker for his years of service to Maniflox and acknowledge the foundation that he has built. Under his stewardship, the company has expanded the breadth of its product portfolio and significantly enhanced its profitability. Barry was the architect of the Maniflox way and he was a great advocate for the potential of the company. I look forward to continuing to benefit from Barry's guidance in his advisory role through the end of the year. While I certainly have big shoes to fill, I will be focused on continuing to build and grow the company. There are certainly some things that will not change under my leadership, namely a commitment to and a belief in the managed walkway, a relentless focus on delivering for our customers, and a commitment to providing superior returns for our shareholders over the long term. I look forward to continuing to work closely with our experienced leadership team, the and all of our team members to advance our strategic priorities and usher in a new phase of growth and development. With that, please turn to slide three. Moving to the second quarter, I'd like to start by thanking my team for their outstanding effort in managing through the significant headwinds created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The team did a great job of ensuring both the business continuity and the health and safety of our team while implementing the various local regulations across our global organization. With these efforts and the prior work to right-size the business, we delivered positive EBITDA during the quarter, which exceeded our expectations. While we executed well in the first half of 2020, we continued to plan cautiously for the second half of the year, given the uncertain macro environment. The dynamics through the quarter were largely a continuation of what we outlined in early May. April appeared to be the trough, with modest improvements as we moved through May and June. However, we are currently in the midst of one of the slowest seasonal periods in the crane business. In the Americas, although many existing projects are resuming work, there continues to be a fair amount of uncertainty among customers regarding new projects. Demand remains soft, particularly in the energy and commercial construction end markets, dealer stocking levels remain elevated, fleet utilization rates are down, and used crane values have weakened. As a reminder, we've historically experienced solar purchasing decisions during a U.S. presidential election cycle, and expect this one to be no different. Construction sites are working aggressively to recover lost time on projects with shortened construction season. We feel good about the short-term utilization rates, but there is less confidence as we look into next year's construction season. And we expect a slower-than-normal order intake for our European Tower winter campaign in the second half. Turning to MEF, there are lots of puts and takes. In the Middle East, we have seen a nice pickup in multi-train deals. However, the fundamentals of the construction business remains weak and we feel this is more of an anomaly than a trend. In Asia, it's a tale of two halves. China and South Korea are experiencing a V-shaped recovery while the rest of Asia hasn't begun to bounce back yet. What the timeline for global economic recovery remains unclear given the challenging operating environment, we are confident that the strengths that are the core to Manitowoc's business, that is our people, our products, our brands, our network and our operational excellence, position us for success and demand returns. Despite these difficult market conditions, our liquidity remains strong with $375 million at the end of the second quarter. As we have previously commented, the changes we made to our capital structure last year have better positioned us to manage the cyclical nature of the crane demand. Looking at the second half of 2020, while we are confident we can manage through these turbulent times, we just don't have a clear enough picture to reinstate 2020 guidance at this time. And with that, I will turn the call over to Dave to provide further details on our financial results. Dave?