WESCO International, Inc.

Hello and welcome to West Coast 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Call. I would like to remind you that all lines are in a listen-only mode throughout the presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Please note, this event is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Scott Gaffner, FCP 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's 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. I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. We had a strong close to our third quarter with sales up slightly versus the second quarter, and this came in at the high end of our outlook range. Accelerating momentum and double-digit sales growth in our data center business was the primary driver. The continued weakness in utility and broadband offset what would have been a return to organic growth in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin was flat sequentially and better than the expectations reviewed during our investor day last month, and this was driven by an increase in growth margin. Dave will provide more details on this later in the call along with our outlook for the fourth quarter. Moving to cash flow, I'm pleased with our free cash flow generation of 280 million in the third quarter and 777 million year to date. And that equates to 154% of adjusted net income. We placed a particular focus on working capital management and we're beginning to see the benefits. And this is especially and most notably in our communications and security solutions business. Quoting bid activity levels and backlog remain healthy. In the fourth quarter, we expect to continue to benefit from double digit growth in the data center space while the continued weakness in utility and broadband are expected to continue. We are reaffirming our full year 2024 outlook for sales, profitability, and free cash flow. If our current run rates of sales and margin continue, we would expect to be within the lower half of our outlook range for sales and adjusted EBITDA margin. As we look ahead, I really like Wesco's leadership position and exposure to the long-term secular growth trends underway in our certain markets. While the macroeconomic environment will inevitably present challenges, I strongly believe Wesco will continue to outperform our competitors under all market conditions. Our commitment to and focused on value creation from the operational improvements, digital transformation, and our capital allocation strategy, including the focused M&A objectives we have, is clear and resolute as we outlined during our recent Investor Day held last month. Our WESCO team is focused on executing those plans to deliver outsized returns for our shareholders. So with that, I'll now hand it over to Dave to take you through our third quarter results in much more detail, as well as our outlook for the fourth quarter.