Pitney Bowes Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Pitney Bowes fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Your lines have been placed in a listen-only mode during the conference call until the question and answer segment. Today's call is also being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect your lines at this time. I would now like to introduce participants on today's conference call. Mr. Jason Dyes, Interim Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Ana Maria Chadwick, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Philip Landler, Vice President, Investor Relations and Global Strategy. Mr. Landler will now begin the call with a safe harbor overview.

Good morning. I'm Philip Landler. Thank you for joining us. I manage the Pitney Bowes Investor Relations Program, and part of my duties include covering the safe harbor information for these calls. So let me briefly cover that. Included in today's presentation are forward-looking statements about our future business and financial performance. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from our projections. More information about these risks and uncertainties can be found in our earnings press release our 2022 Form 10-K Annual Report, and other reports filed with the SEC that are located on our website at www.pb.com and by clicking on Investor Relations. Please keep in mind, we do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information or developments. Also, for non-GAAP measures that are used in the press release or discussed in our presentation materials, you can find reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measures in the tables attached to our press release. Finally, we have provided a slide presentation and spreadsheet with historical segment information on our website. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Interim CEO, Jason Dyes.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the call and your ongoing investment and interest in Pitney Bowes. Over the past 120 days, I've spent a lot of time getting valuable feedback and viewpoints from our shareholders and core stakeholders. This input has helped reinforce my assessment of our key opportunities and the challenges we're working to address. Most importantly, these conversations have increased my optimism about the future here at Pitney Bowes. Later in the call, I'll discuss my work with the senior management team and the board to develop a set of strategic and operational priorities for 2024. Let me start today by giving a high-level overview of Q4 performance at the enterprise level, as well as across each of our segments. We made good progress this quarter, growing adjusted EBIT 14 million year-over-year, but still have work to do. At the enterprise level, we are on track with our cost reduction and restructuring efforts, after increasing our original targets late last year. We are seeing the benefit from these efforts show up in segment and overall profitability, and Ana will provide more details. Centec and Presort executed well in the quarter. Centec grew EBIT as a result of gross margin expansion, simplification, and cost reduction actions. These gains are enabling us to shift resources towards investments in our shipping capabilities, where we see meaningful long-term profitable growth potential. Presort grew revenue and recorded its highest ever EBIT in a quarter, which is a testament to the great work of the team. We will continue to capitalize on our excellent operational and client support capabilities to create value in this segment. Global e-commerce delivered improved fourth quarter profitability year over year and sequentially. demonstrating the value of our network in peak and on a go-forward basis. Domestic parcel volumes grew 13% to 61 million parcels. We are continuing to take actions and review options to realize the value of this segment. I'd like to thank all of the PB teams for their dedication to serving our clients in the holiday season and throughout the year. I want to spend a minute outlining the strategic and operational priorities that will help us build on current momentum and continue to transform in 2024 and beyond. First, we will continue to streamline the organization and reduce cost. The cost reduction program we previously announced started to yield savings in 2023, and we expect to increasingly realize these benefits throughout 2024. Although we are on target on the restructuring side, we will continue to look for additional ways to increase efficiency. Second, we're driving more accountability into our businesses. In addition to changes in how we operate and measure performance, we have also made some initial and important changes to our overall organizational structure. We have integrated a majority of our marketing functions under segment leadership to improve focus. We are also combining Centec globally under Shemin Nurmohamed who will have full responsibility for strategy and execution in our 10 geographies worldwide. Third, we are realigning assets and resources to better leverage our technology and innovation capabilities to create client value, with specific focus on accelerating Centec's shipping growth. To that end, effective January 1st of this year, we moved GEC's digital shipping business into Centec. That includes our global carrier library, and API technology to create and manage multi-carrier shipping options. This will drive product development and engineering efficiencies as we upgrade existing solutions and develop new ones. Also, since Centec recently launched a go-to-market model that prioritizes growth and shipping, having our digital offers combined in one channel will drive additional synergies and an improved client experience. Fourth, We're focused on more disciplined capital allocation and strengthening our balance sheet. As we continue to execute on corporate cost reductions and realize business unit efficiencies, we plan to allocate capital in a manner that balances near-term and long-term interests of our investors. In closing, one quarter in, I am optimistic about what lies ahead for Pitney Bowes. As we look ahead in 2024, we will continue to operate with intensity and prioritize actions that support increased operational discipline, and accelerate our shift into targeted shipping growth paths. We understand the challenges and also the opportunities we have. 2023 was a year of significant change for Pitney Bowes, and 2024 will bring additional transformation, which I expect to be very positive. And now, I'd like to turn it over to Ana to discuss our Q4 results in more detail.