Rockwell Automation, Inc.

Thank you for holding, and welcome to Rockwell Automation's quarterly conference call. I need to remind everyone that today's conference call is being recorded. Later in the call, we will open up the lines for questions. If you have a question at that time, please press star 1. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Jessica Karakis, Head of Investor Relations. Ms. Karakis, please go ahead.

Thanks, Emma. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Rockwell Automation's first quarter fiscal 2022 earnings release conference call. With me today is Blake Moret, our chairman and CEO, and Nick Gangstad, our CFO. Our results were released earlier this morning, and the press release and charts have been posted to our website. Both the press release and charts include, and our call today will reference, non-GAAP measures. Both the press release and charts include reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures. A webcast of this call will be available on our website for a reply for the next 30 days. For your convenience, a transcript of our prepared remarks will also be available on our website at the conclusion of today's call. Additional information and news about our company can also be found on Rockwell's Investor Relations Twitter feed using the handle at investors are okay. That's at investors are okay. Before we get started, I need to remind you that our comments will include statements related to the expected future results of our company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described in our earnings release and details in our SEC filings. So with that, I'll hand the call over to Blake.

Thanks, Jessica, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Let's turn to our first quarter results on slide three. Total orders grew by more than 40% to over $2.5 billion, once again reflecting very strong demand across our portfolio of core automation and digital transformation solutions. Total revenue of $1.9 billion grew 19%. Organic sales grew 17% versus prior year, better than our expectations, despite significant supply chain challenges in the quarter. The manufacturing supply chain remains constrained due to extremely high levels of demand and persistent electronic component shortages. It's a very dynamic situation, and our global supply chain organization continues to navigate these challenges. We're taking a variety of actions, including qualifying additional semiconductor technology and investing in capacity to increase our supply chain resiliency and support our growth. Turning now to our top-line performance. Core automation sales and orders momentum was broad-based across our product lines, including control, visualization, network, motion, power, sensors, and safety. In the intelligent devices business segment, organic sales increased 26% versus prior year, even with significant headwinds from supply chain. software and control was also impacted by supply chain constraints but organic sales growth of eight percent was above our expectations we also had very strong orders growth in this segment of note industrial pc orders at awesome our recent acquisition were particularly strong and almost doubled from a year ago in lifecycle services Organic sales increased 10% versus the prior year, led by double-digit growth at Sensia and our solutions business. Demand is strongly increasing in this segment, as demonstrated by double-digit sequential orders growth and a 1.38 book-to-bill for the segment. Information solutions and connected services grew double-digits in both orders and revenue. Q1 sales were particularly strong across the entire information solutions portfolio, as well as Calypso's digital consulting services. Industrial cybersecurity demand was strong in the quarter and included a strategic win with one of the world's leading natural gas pipeline companies in North America. We also had a key win with one of the largest beverage manufacturers in EMEA, demonstrating how our industrial cyber business continues to create new ways for us to win. Our investments in the cloud are also showing very good traction. Another notable win in the quarter was with the Shift Group, formerly known as Spartan Motors. The Shift Group is a global leader in the commercial vehicle industry and a big beneficiary of EV and last-mile delivery trends. Here, Plex's smart manufacturing platform was chosen to enable best practices across their operations, reduce material costs, automate quality processes, all while supporting high-speed line deployments. At FIX, we had another great quarter, with their ARR growing over 40% and over 600 new FIX customers added in just the last 12 months. In the quarter, Rockwell expanded its presence within Lucid Motors, one of the top up-and-coming luxury EV companies in the world. Lucid had already selected Rockwell's FactoryTalk software to manage production and is growing their fixed subscription base to ensure readiness and facilitate skilled resource effectiveness. This is a great example of the synergies we are already seeing across our cloud and on-prem software portfolios and the positive contributions they're making to our overall business. I'd also like to highlight the continued traction we see with our PTC partnership. The capabilities and versatility of the combined solution has contributed to our significant software portfolio differentiation and has become a great way to win with customers. In summary, I'm very happy with how these digital offerings are contributing to our recurring revenue base, including contributions from our organically developed software, PPC, and our recent acquisitions. In the quarter, total ARR grew by over 50 percent, and organic ARR grew double digits. Let's now turn to slide four, where I'll provide a few highlights of our Q1 end market performance. Each of our industry segments showed strong, double-digit, year-over-year organic growth. And as we've said, our strong orders are reflective of underlying demand. Advanced orders for longer lead time products that are not immediately needed made up about 10% of the total. In our discrete industry segment, sales grew approximately 20% versus the prior year. Within this industry segment, automotive sales grew mid-teens, led by a 50% increase in EV capital project activity around the world and strong growth in EV battery led by our independent CART technology. Semiconductor sales grew over 25% in the quarter, with strong double-digit growth in all regions. Significant greenfield project activity is leading to our strong growth at semiconductor-focused engineering firms and machine builders. E-commerce was our fastest-growing vertical, with sales growing approximately 50% over the prior year. e-commerce orders included a series of multimillion-dollar wins to automate new fulfillment centers throughout North America for a well-known e-commerce provider. We believe our strong differentiation in motion, including advanced material handling technology and support services, are driving market share gains in this fast-growing vertical. Turning now to our hybrid industry segment, The verticals in this segment also had a terrific quarter. Food and beverage grew over 20% in Q1, with broad growth across the regions. Once again, SKU expansion, end-of-line automation, and the need for greater manufacturing flexibility are important trends requiring greater levels of automation. We believe the steady pipeline of greenfield and brownfield project opportunities, our deep relationships with machine builders, and our strong technology differentiation are driving record demand in this key vertical. Like sciences, sales grew over 10% in Q1 off of an extremely strong quarter last year and remains one of our fastest growing verticals in fiscal 22. We have significantly invested in this area of our business over the last few years and believe we are well-positioned to gain more share through broader and deeper offerings and expertise. Our fastest-growing vertical in the hybrid segment this quarter was tire, which grew about 35% in the quarter. This is another great vertical that is investing heavily in innovation. Turning to process, this industry segment grew approximately 15%, led by improving trends in upstream and midstream oil and gas. Ascensia Joint Venture had strong sales and orders in the quarter, led by strength in process automation and lift control solutions. Sensia's digitalization solutions are well suited to the energy industry's desire to improve productivity and extend the useful life of existing infrastructure, as well as the desire to use modern technology to improve safety and reduce environmental impact. As operating and capital budgets increasingly open up, we believe Centsia is well positioned for double-digit growth in fiscal 22. Turning now to slide five in our Q1 organic regional sales performance. North America organic sales grew by 16% versus the prior year, with strong double-digit growth across all three industry segments. EMEA sales increased 15% driven by strength in food and beverage and tire and metals. Asia Pacific was our fastest growing region in Q1, growing 25% with broad-based growth led by semiconductor and food and beverage. In China, we saw double-digit growth driven by strength in tire, food and beverage, chemical, and mass transit. Let's now turn to slide six to review highlights for the full-year outlook. We now expect orders for the year to exceed $9 billion, which is above what we expected just a few months ago and really taking our business to a whole new level. We continue to expect total reported sales growth of 17.5%, including 15.5% organic growth versus the prior year. Our projections reflect a detailed review of supply chain constraints by supplier and product line over the course of the year, but as we've said before, these constraints remain very dynamic. We continue to expect double-digit growth in both core automation as well as information solutions and connected services. Acquisitions are off to a good start and expected to contribute two points of profitable top-line growth. We are maintaining our margin expectation and adjusted EPS target of $10.80 for the year, which represents about 15% growth at the midpoint of the range compared to the prior year. I should add that we continue to expect another year of double-digit annual recurring revenue growth including our recent Plex acquisition, which adds approximately $170 million to our ARR totals in fiscal 22. A more detailed view into our outlook by end market is found on slide seven. I won't go into the details on this slide, but as you can see, there is no change to the outlook for our three industry segments. With that, let me now turn it over to Nick, who will elaborate on our Q1 results and financial outlook for fiscal 22. Nick?