Xylem Inc.

Welcome to the Xylem first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you'd like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. We ask that you please pick up your handset to allow optimal sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Latino, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Hillary. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Xylem's first quarter earnings conference call. With me today are Chief Executive Officer Patrick Decker and Chief Financial Officer Sandy Rowland. They will provide their perspective on Xylem's first quarter results and our outlook. Following our prepared remarks, we will address questions related to the information covered on the call. I'll ask that you please keep to one question and a follow-up and then return to the queue. As a reminder, this call and our webcast are accompanied by a slide presentation available in the investor section of our website at www.xylem.com. A replay of today's call will be available until midnight on June 2nd. Please note that the replay number is 800-585-8367, and the confirmation code is 556-7508. Additionally, the call will be available for playback via the investor section of our website under the heading Investor Events. Please turn to slide two. We will make some forward-looking statements on today's call, including references to future events or developments that we anticipate will or may occur in the future. All references will be on an organic or adjusted basis, unless otherwise indicated. These statements are subject to future risks and uncertainties, such as those factors described in Xylem's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in subsequent reports filed with the SEC. including in our Form 10Q to report results for the period ending March 31st, 2021. Please note that the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements publicly to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, and actual events or results could differ materially from those anticipated. In the appendix, we have also provided you with a summary of our key performance metrics, including both GAAP and non-GAAP metrics. Now, please turn to slide three, and I will turn the call over to our CEO, Patrick Decker. Thanks, Matt.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We announced earlier this morning that our first quarter results reflect strong operational performance, exceeding our expectations on orders, revenue, margin, and earnings per share. The quarter's growth was broad-based, reflecting increasing demand across all of our segments, our end markets, and geographies. Our momentum coming into the year accelerated through the quarter, with the team taking full advantage of economic recovery and pent-up demand in our markets. Orders were up double digits in all three of our business segments, and backlog was up 23% organically. Both Western Europe and emerging markets delivered exceptional organic revenue growth, with Western Europe up 11%, and emerging markets up 33% year on year and with momentum up strong sequentially. U.S. demand also continued to recover with orders up 18%. Alongside top line growth, our results reflect considerable margin expansion. I credit the team's discipline, building on the benefit of volume effects and positive impact from the cost actions we took in 2020. Our financial position, which was robust coming into the quarter, strengthened even further on the combination of revenue growth and margin expansion. Looking forward, we are confident about the remainder of 2021 and beyond. Therefore, we are raising our full-year guidance on the top line, margin, and EPS. I'll talk a bit more shortly about trends and focus areas for the team, But first, let me hand it over to Sandy to provide more detail on performance and the quarter.