WESCO International, Inc.

Hello and welcome to Wesco's first quarter 2023 earnings call. I would like to remind you that all lines are on listen only mode throughout the presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one followed on your telephone keypad. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Scott Gaffner, SVP Investor Relations to begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and by their nature are subject to inherent uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please see our webcast slides as this company's SEC's filings for additional risk factors and disclosures. Any forward-looking information relayed on this call speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect the changed circumstances. Additionally, today, we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. Required information about these non-GAAP measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website at westco.com. On the call this morning, we have John Engle, Wesco's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Schultz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And now I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you today. We're off to a strong start this year and set new first quarter company records for sales, backlog, margin, and profitability. The power of our increased scale our industry-leading positions, and our expanded portfolio of products, services, and complete solutions is evident in our continued strong performance. We deliver double-digit organic sales growth driven by secular demand trends, share gains, and ongoing improvements in the supply chain. All three of our business units set new records for first-quarter sales as well as gross margins. and we delivered another impressive quarter of cross-sell results, which continue to exceed our expectations. We're confident that 2023 will be another transformational year for Wesco. We're making excellent progress on our digital transformation and expect our strong sales growth and margin expansion to continue. As you saw in our release earlier this morning, we reaffirmed our full-year outlook, and we expect to generate significant free cash flow in 2023. As Dave will discuss in more detail later in the call, we are focusing our cash generation on debt reduction in the near term. As a result, we expect to reduce our leverage below 2.75 times, which is the midpoint of our target range by year end. And that creates increased capital allocation optionality for us in the second half and entering next year. Now turning to page four. The strength of our business model and the success of our integration efforts since closing the Annexter acquisition in mid-2020 have established a track record of superior results for our company. This page highlights our first quarter record results compared to the pro forma pre-pandemic results of legacy Wesco plus legacy Annexter in the first quarter of 2019. As you can see, we've clearly outperformed the market, delivering impressive sales growth and margin expansion. and we've achieved record profitability, all while rapidly deleveraging our balance sheet. Most importantly, our dedicated team of Wesco associates continues to provide resilient and critical supply chain solutions for our customers around the world, capturing the benefits of our deep exposure to sustainable secular growth trends that drive our future sales and profitability. So with that, I'll now turn the call over to Dave.