WESCO International, Inc.

And welcome to Westco's third quarter earnings call. I would like to remind you that all lines are in listen-only mode throughout the presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Scott Gaffner, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, to begin.

Thank you and good morning. Before we start, 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 well as the company's SEC 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 Wesco.com. On the call this morning, we have John Engel, Wesco's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Schultz. Executive Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer. Now I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our call on the third quarter earnings release. As you've seen from our earnings press release and webcast materials, we delivered a strong set of operating results in the third quarter. Highlights for the quarter included great cash generation, stable gross margins, SG&A cost actions now taking effect, They're the actions we took over the last two quarters. Sequential EBITDA growth and sequential EBITDA margin expansion, better inventory management, strong cross-sell execution, and continued market share gains. The power of our portfolio and industry-leading value proposition is clear, and we're in a great position to create value across all phases of the economic cycle. That is, without regard to the exact economic environment that will prevail over the near term. So starting with cash, we generated very strong free cash flow of $357 million or more than 140% of adjusted net income. And this highlights the strength of our B2B distribution business model. Over the past two years, global supply chain constraints due to the pandemic required us to invest in our inventories to service our customers. With supply chains healing, we were focused on reducing our inventory and returning to our historical levels of strong, and consistent free cash flow generation. We saw this in the third quarter, in fact, and deployed capital in a balanced manner to reduce our debt and return cash to shareholders through a share buyback. Importantly, our financial leverage now stands at 2.7 times below the midpoint of our target range and is at the lowest level since the annexure acquisition in June 2020. We expect our strong free cash flow generation to continue, and we expect to use that cash to invest in above-market growth, continue to pay down our debt, and increase the return of capital to shareholders. Now, turning to our third quarter financial results. Overall results were in line with our expectations with improved performance in our EES business, and that was coupled with continued share capture and higher operating margins in both our CSS and UBS businesses. The multi-speed economy has increased the importance of our array of internal initiatives and our continued operational excellence as we drive out performance versus our end markets. We again exceeded our expectations for cross-sell, I'm happy to say, and are raising our sales synergy target from $2 billion to $2.2 billion. Our long-term secular growth drivers remain intact, and our portfolio mix shift in the higher growth end markets has driven growth and is expected to continue to drive more consistent financial performance. We remain focused on what we can control as we continue to invest in our digital transformation plan and deliver game-changing digital capabilities that will benefit our customers and supplier partners. We've revised our full-year outlook to reflect a moderating economic environment and are confident in delivering record sales, record-adjusted EBITDA, and record-free cash flow in 2023. Finally, as we look to 2024 and beyond, we remain confident in and committed to delivering the financial value creation objectives presented at our investor day last year. And as you know, these include our long-term margin expansion, profit growth, and cash generation targets. So now let's move to page four. The strength of our business model and the success of our integration efforts since closing the annex or acquisition in mid-2020 have established a track record of success and exceptional results for our company. Over the past three years, we have outperformed the market and delivered impressive sales growth and margin expansion, and we did this all while rapidly deleveraging our balance sheet. With our three-year integration program coming to a close at the end of this year, we are exceptionally well-positioned to capture the benefits of the enduring secular growth trends, as well as the anticipated increased infrastructure investments in North America. And we will do this by using our global scale, industry-leading positions, and now expanded portfolio of product services and solutions. So with that, I will now turn the call over to Dave.