Timken Company (The)

Good morning. My name is Kara and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Timken's first quarter earnings release conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star, then number one on your telephone keypad again. Thank you. Mr. Fronepel, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. This is Neil Fronepel, Vice President of Investor Relations for the Timken Company. We appreciate you joining us today. Before we begin our remarks this morning, I want to point out that we have posted presentation materials on the company's website that we will reference as part of today's review of the quarterly results. You can also access this material through the download feature on the Earnings Call webcast link. With me today are the Timken Company's President and CEO, Lucian Baldea, and Mike DeCenza, our Chief Financial Officer. We will have opening comments this morning from both Lucian and Mike before we open up the call for your questions. During the Q&A, I would ask that you please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up at a time to allow everyone a chance to participate. During today's call, you may hear forward-looking statements related to our future financial results, plans, and business operations. Our actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied due to a variety of factors which we describe in greater detail in today's press release and in our reports filed with the SEC, which are available on the Timken.com website. We have included reconciliations between non-GAAP financial information and its GAAP equivalent in the press release and presentation materials. Today's call is copyrighted by the Timken Company, and without express written consent, we prohibit any use, recording, or transmission of any portion of the call. Finally, just a reminder that we are hosting an Investor Day on Wednesday, May 20th in New York City, so we hope that you will join us either virtually or in person. With that, I would like to thank you for your interest in the Timken Company, and I will now turn the call over to Lucien.

Thanks, Neil, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Timken and for joining us today. I would like to start by thanking our Timken team for their hard work to deliver an excellent start to 2026. We're gaining momentum and making great progress executing our strategic priorities, including two recent actions to advance our 80-20 portfolio work. Our financial performance is strong, and we are pleased to have achieved double-digit earnings growth and margin expansion in the first quarter. Turning to our results for the quarter, total sales were up 8% from last year, and organic revenue grew more than 4%, driven by higher pricing and volume growth in the industrial motion segment. We expanded EBITDA margins to 18.8% in the quarter and adjusted earnings per share increase nearly 20% year-over-year to $1.67. With respect to capital allocation, we repurchased approximately 280,000 shares and acquired Bijou Delamont, which I'll talk about more in a moment. We ended the quarter with a strong balance sheet and net leverage of only 2.1 times, giving us continued flexibility to pursue our balanced approach to capital allocation. While Mike will take you through the details of our 2026 outlook, we are raising our guidance for organic revenue, margins, and earnings. Our outlook now implies 13% adjusted EPS growth at the midpoint of our range compared to the 8% we previously guided and includes a more positive price-cost impact related to tariffs. We saw improved customer demand across most end markets, which was reflected in our recent order activity. Our backlog at the end of the quarter was up both sequentially and year-on-year, continuing the positive momentum we experienced in the back half of last year. These trends support the increase in organic sales outlook for the year to 3% growth. Despite continued volatility around trade and geopolitics, our team is operating with urgency to execute our strategic priorities and deliver stronger performance in 2026. As I mentioned earlier, we are deeply engaged in advancing our 80-20 strategic initiatives, including optimizing our portfolio as we are prioritizing actions that will have the greatest impact to company margins and growth. Last quarter, we announced that we are extending the 80-20 discipline across our entire enterprise to reduce complexity and streamline operations. While still early in the process, we are moving quickly. We have established a transformation office with dedicated 80-20 teams responsible for leading the execution of major work streams. We have completed comprehensive training across many areas of the business, and as of today, nearly 300 Timken leaders are fully trained and putting 80-20 principles into action. Our focus on these initiatives have driven two recent actions. On May 1st, we announced the sale of our belts business to Gates. This divestiture is expected to simplify our portfolio, free up resources to redeploy to our growth initiatives, and structurally improve margins for the industrial motion segment. We expect to complete that transaction in the third quarter. Secondly, we acquired Bijoux Delamond, which strengthens Timken's industrial motion portfolio and key markets, and is expected to be accretive to industrial motion segment margins after synergies. Timken is the natural owner of this business, and it scales our automated lubrication systems platform to nearly $400 million in total revenue. These two portfolio moves are aligned with 80-20, and the net result is a higher margin, faster-growing industrial motion segment. Our teams around the world are energized by the benefits of 80-20, and we are confident it will be a major driver of value creation over time. I remain confident about the opportunity to raise Timken's organic growth trajectory by focusing on the fastest-growing verticals and regions. This includes driving synergies through the global expansion of our acquired businesses, and we are gaining traction. For example, we saw double-digit organic growth during the first quarter in our linear motion platform in the Americas, driven by new business wins within factory automation. We're excited about the many opportunities like this ahead to leverage Timken's strength and create new ways to drive higher performance. Before I turn over the call to Mike, I want to touch on the leadership transition we initiated for our engineer bearing segment and thank Andreas Rögen for his many years of service to Timken. An external search is underway for a permanent successor. During this time, Tim Graham, our president of industrial motion, will serve as interim president of engineer bearings. Tim spent decades leading teams within Engineer Bearings, including most recently as Vice President of Operations. His deep knowledge of our operations and customers across Engineer Bearings will ensure a seamless transition. Our Bearings business set the foundation for Timken more than 125 years ago and remains critical to our future. Together with Industrial Motion, we have a very compelling customer value proposition. I am focused on building the right leadership structure to best position our teams around the world for even greater success. With that, let me turn the call over to Mike for a more detailed review of the results and outlook. Mike?