Pitney Bowes Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Pitney Bowes first quarter 2024 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. Mr. John Wittek, Interim 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 Phil Landler, Vice President, Investor Relations and Global Strategy. Thank you for joining us this morning. 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 2023 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. For non-GAAP measures that are included 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. We have also provided a slide presentation and a spreadsheet with historical segment information on our website. In our prepared remarks, revenue comparisons will be on a constant currency basis. Other items such as EBIT, EBITDA, EPS, and free cash flow on an adjusted basis. 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. I'd like to start the call today by first addressing the recent changes to our Board of Directors. before providing a high level overview of our Q1 results. As many of you know, last year, the board endorsed our strategic priorities focused on achieving efficiencies, simplifying the corporate structure, increasing efforts to maximize the value of GEC, and renewing our focus on our cash generating and high margin segments. Given the clarity on the path ahead and the confidence in our team to carry out that mission, several directors felt this year's annual meeting is an appropriate time to retire from the board. This will result in a more streamlined board for this next phase of Pitney Bowes' transformation. I and the rest of the management team look forward to working with them to accelerate progress on the key priorities and opportunities ahead of us. I'd also like to thank our retiring board members for their leadership, guidance, and insights during this period of transformation. Their skills, experiences, and counsel have been invaluable as we reposition the company for an exciting future. Now, moving on to first quarter. Our results from the past quarter reflect the enterprise-wide changes in focus, priorities, and accountability that we've been implementing over the past few months. The impact of these changes is evident in our strength and performance across multiple parts of the business, with EBIT growing by more than $23 million on relatively flat revenue. This represents a 71% improvement when compared to prior year. We also continued to make progress on our cost reduction and restructuring efforts. As a result, we now expect cost savings from the program we announced last year to exceed the $75 to $85 million target. We see additional opportunities to build on this momentum by maintaining strong execution and a disciplined focus on cost to increase cash flow and create capacity for investment in high margin growth areas. At the segment level, Centec and Presort Services recorded strong results in the quarter. PreSort achieved record revenue in EBIT with expanded EBIT margins. We will continue to capitalize on our excellent operational and client support capabilities to create value in this segment. Centec had another solid quarter with increased EBIT, expanding margins, and accelerating growth in shipping. Centec will continue to shift resources towards investments in our shipping capabilities where we see meaningful long-term profitable growth potential. Global e-commerce grew domestic parcel volumes 20% in a challenging market and reduced operating expense while delivering the best network performance since the pre-COVID timeframe. The team continues to take the necessary steps to accelerate progress and improve results as we continue our efforts to maximize value for this segment. Looking ahead into our 2024 strategic and operational priorities, we continue to look at ways to increase accountability streamline the organization, and further improve execution. We will continue to simplify the business to both reduce cost and build on the productivity improvements that you've seen over the last couple quarters. To complement these efforts, we have recently engaged an outside firm to help us identify and implement additional ways to remove complexity and increase efficiency. These savings will create capacity for us to further capitalize on attractive growth opportunities. Our shipping play in CENTEC represents one of these significant opportunities, where we can leverage our assets and footprint to drive meaningful growth in targeted verticals, particularly for enterprise clients. We are leveraging our existing relationships in the office segment and will continue to invest and develop specialized vertical shipping solutions with differentiated value. Similarly, in presort services, we can leverage our national footprint, extensive transportation network, and operational excellence to drive growth in targeted areas. In closing, we're making significant progress against our strategic and financial objectives. As a reminder, we grew EBIT 28% in Q4 and have built on that with another 71% growth in the first quarter. We also see significant opportunities to build on that momentum as we look forward, especially in the second half of the year. The progress we've made over the past seven months and the opportunities ahead give me great confidence in our future. I'd like to thank all of our teams for their hard work in delivering a strong first quarter and their continued dedication as we move through the next phase of our transformation. And now I'd like to turn it over to John to discuss our Q1 results in more detail.