Wabash National Corporation

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jeannie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Wabash third quarter 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ryan Reed. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on this call. With me today are Brent Yagey, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pat Keflin, Chief Financial Officer, and Mike Pettit, Chief Growth Officer. Before we get started, please note that this call is being recorded. I'd also like to point out that our earnings release, slide presentation supplementing today's call, and any non-GAAP reconciliations are all available at ir.onewabash.com. Please refer to slide two in our earnings deck for the company's safe harbor disclosure addressing forward-looking statements. I'll hand it off now to Brent.

Thanks, Ryan. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Let's start out by level setting that our adjusted third quarter financial results largely align with our prior expectations. Before we get into the details on the quarter, I'd like to provide some strategic updates and address how we see the path of our growth continuing to unfold. To set the stage, I want to step back and reflect on the last few years of our journey to change the growth and performance trajectory of Wabash, highlighting how we've reached our current position and where we see the company heading. When I assumed the role of CEO, our strategy of becoming a more diversified industrial was no longer serving us well. While the fundamental rationale behind it to address drive-in cyclicality was sound, especially after the challenges of the 2009 financial crisis, it had become clear that some of the most promising megatrends were happening within our core markets of transportation, logistics, and distribution. We needed to refocus closer to home. Expanding our equipment portfolio to complement our core drive-in product line created greater value and an opportunity for deeper relationships with our customers. But we hadn't fully capitalized on that potential. The pandemic provided an opportunity to quickly restructure both our organization and the go-to-market strategy, with the latter shifting from a product-centric model to a more customer-centric one, where we could expand the definition of how value could be created. By streamlining access to multiple equipment types through a single commercial point of contact, we created significant value for our customers. This shift has brought us closer to our customers, enabling us to jointly plan for the future and foster innovation. It also gave us further insight into what their deeper problems and business needs were beyond the products we make and the solutions we provide at the time. We are now able to position our total portfolio of transportation solutions as a more resilient set of revenue streams. The value of a deeper customer relationship gives us reasons to engage more strategically with our supply chain to enhance the manner in which business can be conducted, allowing for more resilient responsiveness and willingness to collectively serve the customer. Suppliers recognize Wabash's efforts to improve the industry status quo and are aligning with us, combining strengths to provide even greater benefits to our customers, particularly within the next industry upcycle. Our reimagined manufacturing capacity will also be a key asset in this regard. Our increased resiliency and improved responsiveness will allow us to outperform as compared to previous cyclic upturns. One major area of strategic focus has been our parts and service initiative. For years, this opportunity was overlooked in our previous drive for diversification. We now recognize that growing this higher margin recurring revenue business is a core element to balancing the cyclic nature of demand for transportation equipment. We're excited about the potential in parts and services, not just as a revenue driver, but as a critical support mechanism to maximize the lifecycle of our equipment. We continue to drive the core aspects of this growth journey and are increasingly excited about unmet needs we are uncovering through our enhanced customer relationships. Our partnerships with HDI and Fernway Group are instrumental in this growth. The Wabash Parts Joint Venture with HDI rapidly established extensive distribution capabilities, providing our dealer network and fleet customers with efficient access to a broad portfolio of aftermarket parts. Meanwhile, our link JV with the Fernway Group is enhancing our digital capabilities, providing us the capability of engaging our customers differently and engaging in solutions to problems in different ways. The ability to revolutionize how our dealers and our suppliers and customers experience the Wabash brand through the solutions we provide and the manner in which we provide it within the vast transportation and logistics landscape. We have positioned the company well for this next chapter, where the continued investment and development of capabilities were increased to scale profitable growth for the company. To further refine our focus, we made some key organizational changes. Mike Pettit, formerly CFO, has been both a thought leader and internal catalyst for our parts and service growth. Recognizing that we needed to free him from his day-to-day CFO responsibilities to allow him to fully focus on the mission to accelerate the scale of our achievements, Mike will now serve as Chief Growth Officer overseeing Parks and Services, Digital Enablement, and Engineering. Collectively, these areas of the business will be leveraged in a manner to bring our purpose of changing how the world reaches you to life at scale. Let me turn the call over to Mike for his first update as Chief Growth Officer. It's all yours, Mike.