Vertiv Holdings

Good morning, my name is Nick, and I'll be your conference operator today. This time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Alberta's first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that this event is being recorded. And I'd like to turn the program over to your host for today's conference call, Lynne Maxeiner, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Nick. Good morning and welcome to VRDA's first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Joining me today are VRDA's Executive Chairman, David Cote, Chief Executive Officer, Rob Johnson, Chief Financial Officer, David Fallon, and Chief Strategy and Development Officer, Gary Miederkrum. Before we begin, I would like to point out that during the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events, including the future financial and operating performance of VRDA. These forward-looking statements are subject to material risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. We refer you to the cautionary language included in today's earnings release, and you can learn more about these risks in our registration statement, our proxy statement, and other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will also present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Our GAAP results and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in our earnings press release and in the investor slide deck found on our website at investors.vertib.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Executive Chairman David Cote.

Thanks and good morning everyone. I want to welcome you to the Vertiv Investor Call to announce our Q1 2020 results. Before I turn it over to Rob Johnson, I want to begin with a few opening remarks. As we spoke last time, and as many of you know, I was fortunate to be able to work for Honeywell for about 16 years. Those who invested with us made a great return. That performance was marked by consistent annual improvements in the people, processes, and portfolio of the businesses that made up Honeywell. We did all the seed planting for new products, services, process improvement, and other growth initiatives needed to perform well for a long time. The world is in a very different place than when we spoke a couple of months ago. But those opening remarks stay true, whether we are in a period of economic expansion or economic contraction. If you look at our success at Honeywell, it really took off after the Great Recession. and I attribute that success largely to the fact that we continued to implement an operating system, we drove technology investments and we planted seeds even during that difficult time. Why do I bring it up? Because we're doing that same kind of seed planting averted. Now, some of you may conflate our withdrawal of guidance even in the face of good orders growth with the liquidity scenarios we've included. and conclude we see a serious problem looming. That would be an error. They are two entirely separate points. We've withdrawn guidance because we can't be sure we can ship given government shutdown of facilities for us and suppliers at various times. Additionally, our service people sometimes aren't allowed access to facilities. Our credibility matters greatly to us. and we don't want to guide to numbers we may not be able to deliver even in the face of strong orders. Totally separately, we've included a couple of liquidity scenarios to demonstrate that even if sales fell to $4 billion or even in a 25% sales decline, we will be just fine. It's not a forecast. It's an attempt to make you feel comfortable that we're just fine. Combining these two separate points into the erroneous conclusion that we are forecasting disaster is, well, erroneous. This time has been difficult for everyone, but it also has demonstrated how important data centers and the edge are to our society. It is clearly critical infrastructure and reaffirmation this is a good industry. We have a great position in that good industry. and even at this difficult time, we are investing in the future. Based on how we're running the business during extraordinarily difficult times, including our own customer focus, while still seed planting, I am just as excited today as I was three months ago about our future. Now, I'll turn over the call to Rob, who can take you through the business in a little more detail. Rob?