Hammond Power Solutions Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Hammond Power Solutions 2023 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Certain statements that will be discussed in the conference call will constitute forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information and statements included in this discussion are not guarantees of future performance and should not unduly rely upon. Forward-looking statements will be based on current expectations, estimates, and projections that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated and described in the forward-looking statements. Such information and statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information and statements. These factors include, but not limited to, such things as impact of general industry conditions, fluctuations of commodity prices, industry competitions, availability of qualified personnel and management, stock market volatility, and mostly in cost-effective access to sufficient capital from internal and external resources. The risk just outlined should not be construed as exhaustive. Although management of the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give an assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Accordingly, listeners should not place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements information discussed in the call. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill Hammond, Chairman and CEO of Hammond Power Solutions. Please go ahead, Mr. Hammond.

Thank you, operator, and good morning to everyone.

Welcome to Hammond Power Solutions' first quarter financial results conference call for 2023. Joining me today is Richard Vollering, our Chief Financial Officer. For today's call, I'll start out with some high-level commentary on the quarter and our business. From there, I will hand it over to Richard for a review of our first quarter results and financial highlights. After which, I'll outline what we expect for the balance of 2023 before turning it over to the analysts for any questions. A month and a half ago, we reported we had finished the year with very strong results. I am pleased today to report that the tailwinds we benefited from in 2022 have been strong to start 2023, and we see them persisting for the balance of the year. Sales and profits are both higher as our business continues to experience growth in our key markets here in North America and in India. We are experiencing the combination of a favorable product mix and high factory utilization, which both drive gross margins to industry-leading levels within the transformer market. Our biggest growth engine in the quarter has been our U.S. distributor channel. Quotation activity is up significantly over both Q4 and the same quarter a year ago. Our booking rates remain high as diverse markets like renewable power generation EV recharging, energy storage, data center construction, silica chip manufacturing, industrial expansions, power quality, and institutional projects like hospitals and industrial buildings drive our year-over-year growth. The expansion of our U.S. and Mexican distributor networks continues with the addition of new distributors and more branches, which we expect will contribute to our growing distributor platform and provide further growth opportunities in the months and years ahead. Turning to our Indian operations, we continue to see increased volumes and delivered a record first quarter. We continue to see expansion in our domestic business in industrial sectors like cement manufacturing, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, steel production, marine power, hospitals, and solar power generation. As we announced late last year, we are in the process of planning and executing a significant expansion of our production capacities throughout North America. This additional $40 million will be deployed over the next two years and will add capacity to accommodate sales growth of $250 million over the next five years. These investments are being made in both existing plants as well as construction of a new manufacturing facility to build small products in Mexico. Our expansion program started late last year and we are already benefiting from those early investments. In addition to giving us the capacity to be more aggressive in growing our business, and market share, it will also allow us to reduce our lead times and improve service to our OEMs and distributors. I will now hand the call over to Richard to provide details on our financial progress. Richard.