WESCO International, Inc.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 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, 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 uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please see our webcast slides and the company SEC filings for additional risk factors and disclosures. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of this date and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additionally, today we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures Required information about these measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website, 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. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Our second quarter results were somewhat below our expectations for a low single-digit decline in reported sales, and this was against a continued mixed and multi-speed economic environment. Results improved, however, as we moved through the quarter with a return to organic sales growth in June, and that was accompanied by improvement in gross and operating margins on a sequential basis. With our record $500 million of free cash flow generation in the first half, we're on track to deliver our full-year free cash flow outlook of $800 million to $1 billion. As planned, we executed our capital allocation strategies and repurchased $300 million of our Wesco stock in the second quarter. We also closed on two small but important software-based acquisitions, EntraSim being the first one, a data center and building intelligence software company, and StoreroomLogix, the second acquisition, an asset and inventory management software company. I think it's important to note that M&A remains a critical component of our enterprise growth strategy as we continue to benefit from our global capabilities, our leading scale, and our expanded portfolio and continue our move towards our long-term EBITDA margin expansion goal. The digital transformation... that we're currently executing will enable us to increase shareholder value through a combination of cost efficiencies, additional cross-sell opportunities, and rapid integration of future acquisitions. We look forward to sharing more details on these critical aspects of our growth strategy at our investor day next month. Dave will walk you through the details of our three businesses momentarily, but I first wanted to touch on a few noteworthy aspects of the quarter. Growth in our data center business was strong, and it was up high teams versus the prior year. We continue to capture share and benefit from the secular growth of global data centers, and the increase is driven by AI and Gen AI applications. This growth was more than offset by a significant slowdown in purchases by our utility customers as a result of destocking and project delays in the second quarter. While we remain confident in the long-term growth of our utility and broadband solutions business, we do expect the mixed economic environment and customer purchasing delays in our UBS business to continue through the second half of 2024. As you saw from our materials, we've reduced our full-year outlook to reflect this change. With that said, overall quoting, the inactivity levels, and our overall backlog remains healthy And it supports our view for sales growth in the second half against an easier year-over-year comparable, but at a more modest rate than our previous outlook. So with that, I'll now hand it over to Dave to take you through our second quarter results in more detail, as well as our updated outlook for the rest of the year. Dave. Thank you, John.