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 one. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Ajana Zellner, Head of Investor Relations and Market Strategy. And Zellner, please go ahead.

Thank you, Julianne. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Rockwell Automation's first quarter fiscal 2026 earnings release conference call. With me today is Blake Moretz, our chairman and CEO, and Christian Rothies, our CFO. Our results were released earlier this morning, and the press recent charts are available on our website. These materials, as well as our remarks today, will reference non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures are included in both the press recent charts. A replay of today's webcast and a transcript of our prepared remarks will be available on our website at the conclusion of today's call. Before we begin, please note that our comments today include forward-looking statements regarding the expected future results of our company. Our actual results may differ materially due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties described in our earnings release and FAC filing. So with that, I'll hand it over to Blake.

Thanks, Ayjana, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into the specific results, I'll start with a few opening comments. We entered fiscal 2026 with a focus on delivering solid top line performance while continuing to increase productivity and expand margins. This quarter reflects additional progress on these fundamental objectives with sales, margin, and earnings all exceeding our expectations. Demand across our core offerings and verticals remained healthy in the first quarter, and our teams executed well. We had double-digit sales growth and sustained momentum in our key product and software businesses. At the same time, we continue to advance structural productivity actions. These efforts span projects in commercial spend, direct material, and supply chain efficiency, with broad adoption of AI providing additional opportunities. We are well positioned to expand margins as the year progresses. The macro environment remains fluid with heightened geopolitical uncertainty around trade, regional conflict, and supply chain risk. While these factors add complexity, they reinforce the importance of the disciplined, execution-focused mindset our teams bring every day. And the long-term trends driving automation and digital transformation remain strong. Rockwell is well-positioned to lead. as customers accelerate their factory of the future initiatives and move toward more autonomous operations. The strong growth of orders related specifically to projects adding new U.S. production capacity gives us confidence that the combination of our traditional sources of value with digital services, edge computing, and cloud-native software is differentiated. We are the most used technology in American manufacturing. Let's now turn to our first quarter results on slide three. Our Q1 sales came in slightly better than expected, with double-digit year-over-year growth in both reported and organic sales. While large CapEx investments are still on hold for many customers, demand for our products portfolio remains strong, particularly in logics and motion. Customers continue to modernize their operations even as they look for more stable market signals. Annual recurring revenue grew 7% in the quarter and was in line with our expectations with strong performance in our recurring software across automotive, life sciences, and energy verticals. Plex delivered its strongest quarter yet with several significant customer wins. One notable win was with RH Shepherd, a US-based tier one commercial vehicle supplier who will use our cloud native Plex platform to drive greater operational control, continuous process improvement, and scalable future expansion. Another standout win in our recurring services was with Hindalco Industries, a global leader in aluminum and copper production. Hindalco has chosen to partner with Rockwell to implement OT cybersecurity across six plants in India. Moving to our business segment performance for the quarter, Intelligent Devices delivered another solid quarter with organic sales up 16% year-over-year and in line with our expectations. Growth was broad-based with especially strong performance in drives and motion. Within motion, we secured several strategic wins across food and beverage, CPG, and entertainment. A stand-down Q1 win here was with PFM Group, a leading Italian packaging OEM, supporting a large food and beverage customer's CapEx expansion. The customer selected our independent car technology to deliver high-speed, flexible production at scale across multiple key facilities. Another example of our differentiated production logistics offering is our win with ATS. This customer is deploying our auto AMRs to deliver an autonomous material movement solution for an end user in the U.S. Margins also continue to improve year over year in the intelligent devices segment. In software and control, organic sales grew 17% versus prior year, ahead of our expectations. Logix continued its strong momentum with North American sales up over 25% year over year. Our new L9 controller is off to a great start, with early adopters seeing clear benefits from higher performance, simplified architecture, and faster data throughput. Beyond hardware, we are seeing growing adoption of our next generation software offerings. Customers continue to expand their use of Emulate 3D to create digital twins, and we are seeing building momentum with the co-pilot functionality of our factory torque design studio. This quarter, Thermo Fisher selected Rockwell to deliver an AI-enabled troubleshooting agent to accelerate issue resolution and reduce downtime, a great proof point of how our AI strategy is delivering real customer value. You heard directly at Investor Day in November about how Rockwell is broadly contributing to this important customer's success. Lifecycle services organic sales declined 6% versus prior year, largely in line with expectations. Book-to-bill in this segment was 1.16. As in prior quarters, customers continued to delay and narrow the scope of larger projects until there was more clarity on potential trade policy impacts. Our plans to end the Centsia joint venture are on track for an April 1st close. with the return of the profitable process automation business to full Rockwell control. We continue to work well with SLB through this transition, and we look forward to updating you once the transaction is complete. Total company segment margin was 20.7%, and adjusted EPS was $2.75. These both exceeded our expectations and were driven by higher volume, favorable mix, and strong productivity. Tariffs did not have a meaningful impact on our total company earnings in Q1. Christian will talk more about tariffs and the fiscal 26 impact in a few moments. Turning to slide four for key highlights of our Q1 industry performance. Our discrete sales were up low double digits year over year, led by continued strength in e-commerce and warehouse automation. Within discrete, Automotive sales grew mid-single digits, consistent with our outlook. Although the CapEx environment remains subdued, brand owners and tier ones are continuing to advance MES, digital twin, and AI-enabled modernization across their global manufacturing footprints. E-commerce and warehouse automation sales grew over 60% in the quarter, led by strong year-over-year growth in North America. Customer investment continues to be driven by labor shortages, network modernization needs, and increasing focus on sustainability and cybersecurity. Business-related to data centers again contributed strong double-digit growth in the quarter. AI-driven power constraints are accelerating hyperscaler and COLO adoption of gas-powered microgrids. driving increased demand for our industrial-grade controls in power and advanced cooling. This is deepening our engagement with leading power and process OEMs and driving continued momentum in this end market. Moving to hybrid, sales in this industry segment were up high single digits, led by double-digit growth in food and beverage and home and personal care. Consistent with what we saw last quarter, Customers in food and beverage and the broader CPG sector continue to focus on operational efficiency. While the majority of our business here is driven by brownfield modernizations and productivity, we did see some greenfield projects across the U.S., Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and India. One example of orders resulting from new capacity being built in the U.S. is our Q1 win with Comma. an Italian packaging OEM that selected Rockwell's advanced motion platform to run complex high-speed operations with emerging sustainable materials. This gives Comma a clear advantage in throughput, reliability, and flexible changeovers as the industry accelerated its shift towards sustainable and highly robotized packaging. Sales and life sciences declined low single digits year over year, driven by several project delays in North America. Despite these temporary pushouts, our pipeline continues to expand across strategic areas, including GLP-1, radiopharma, and med devices. We continue to expect growth in life sciences for the full year. Turning to process industries, sales in this segment were up 10% versus prior year, with strong growth, in chemicals, water, and energy. Our chemicals business is in the specialty chemical sector, which remains relatively resilient. We also continue to gain share at key customers with our PlantPAX control platform. This quarter, Corteva Agriscience completed the modernization of its IPARC infrastructure, using our process control and networking capabilities to improve operator visibility, and reduce downtime across critical chemical utilities. Within energy, we saw good activity in oil and gas, power, and renewables, supported by an important greenfield win with FS Bioenergia, a leading Brazilian corn ethanol producer with strategic emphasis on carbon capture and decarbonization. The customer will be deploying our full suite of automation offerings to build their next facility in Brazil and for their carbon capture and storage project. Let's move to slide five in our Q1 organic regional sales. As expected, North America remains our strongest region. At our automation fair in November, we announced plans for our new manufacturing facility in southeastern Wisconsin, and I'm pleased to share that this factory of the future will be located in New Berlin, additionally, as we have completed the purchase of our Mequon, Wisconsin facility, which we previously leased. These two projects are aligned with our announced investments in our plants, talent, and digital infrastructure and underscore our commitment to and confidence in the U.S. market. Let's move to slide six to review our fiscal 2026 outlook. We are maintaining our organic sales growth outlook of 2% to 6% with the midpoint assuming a gradual sequential improvement through the year. We will need to see some additional evidence of accelerating capital spend across additional verticals to move higher in our full year outlook. Additional recurring revenue remains on track for high single digit growth. We continue to expect full year segment margin expansion of over 100 basis points. Given some discrete tax benefits in Q1, we're increasing the midpoint of our adjusted EPS to $11.80. Christian will cover this in more detail in a few moments. Free cash flow conversion is still expected to be approximately 100%. I'll now turn it over to Christian for more detail on our Q1 results and our fiscal 26 outlook. Christian?