Whirlpool Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Whirlpool Corporation Q1 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After this speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. If you require further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Roxanne Warner, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter 2020 conference call. Joining me today are Marc Bitzer, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Peters, our Chief Financial Officer. Our remarks today track with a presentation available on the investor section of our website at willpoolcorp.com. Before we begin, I'll remind you that as we conduct this call, we will be making forward-looking statements to assist you in understanding Wopo Corporation's future expectations. Our actual results could differ materially from these statements due to many factors discussed in our latest 10Q and other periodic reports. We also want to remind you that today's presentation includes non-GAAP measures. We believe these measures are important indicators of our operations as they exclude items that may not be indicative of results from our ongoing business operations. We also think the adjusted measures will provide you a better baseline for analyzing trends in our ongoing business operations. Listeners are directed to the supplemental information package posted on the investor relations section of our website for the reconciliation of non-GAAP items to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Also, as we highlight on slide two, there is significant uncertainty about the duration and potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, our discussion of the potential impact of COVID-19 on the company's business results reflects our best estimate based on what we know today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following our prepared remarks, the call will be open for analyst questions. As a reminder, we ask that participants ask no more than two questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Marc.

Thanks, Roxanne, and good morning, everyone. Before we discuss our first quarter business results, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the unprecedented circumstances we're all currently experiencing and the efforts we have undertaken as an organization to support our people, consumers and communities. The health and safety of our employees continues to be our top priority as we navigate through this crisis. I'd like to take a moment to thank them for the hard work and ongoing efforts during this challenging time. These efforts began in early January with the creation of a cross-functional and cross-regional task force to aid in developing and driving globally aligned communications and action plans. In February, we took decisive action to ensure the safety of our 77,000 employees around the world, including banning all domestic and international employee travel, while also ensuring our corporate and manufacturing locations abide by all local, state, and federal guidelines and safety measures. Additionally, we implemented our work from home policy, resulting in 95% of office loads now being performed remotely. Also, we continue to safely operate our plants and manage through periodic slowdowns and shutdowns as they arise. As it relates to business continuity, we took decisive actions in late January to ensure we were able to continue supplying our consumers with our essential products and services. These actions focused on ensuring ample supply of critical components and detailed review of inventory across key product categories. We also have remote-enabled call centers that allow us to maintain reliable post-purchase service to our consumers. Now, more than ever, families across the globe are relying on our products and services to take care of their families. They are depending on our products to clean, cook, and to provide proper food and medicine storage in their homes, while also providing a place in the kitchen for them to come together as a family. Finally, we took a number of actions to give back to local communities in which we operate, including providing funding to support COVID-19 research in local hospitals, donations of PPE and appliances to hospitals and organizations, as well as providing additional donations to local food banks, shelters, and small businesses. Overall, thanks to the strong actions and efforts of our teams, we've been able to significantly limit the number of cases in our companies around the globe. Turning to slide five, I'm highly confident in our ability to manage through these uncertain times, and I strongly believe that we have the right actions in place to protect our operating margins and the financial strength to protect our liquidity position throughout 2020. Thanks to the hard work of our employees and our relentless focus on delivering on our commitments to consumers, we delivered strong Q1 results, demonstrating our resilience as an organization. As the depth and the duration of this crisis remains unknown, we are taking strong actions to mitigate the anticipated impact of volume deleveraging and sustain our operating margins. Further, we have positioned ourselves well with ample liquidity and the financial flexibility required to weather this current crisis. Lastly, we remain committed to investing in our future while also taking actions now to win during the eventual economic rebound. Now I'd like to turn it over to Jim to review our first quarter results.