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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hyster-Yale Materials Handling 2023 First Quarter's Earnings Call. My name is Glen, and I'll be the moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions]. I will now hand you over to your host, Christina Kmetko, to begin. Christi, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us today. Welcome to our 2023 first quarter earnings call. I'm Christina Kmetko, and I'm responsible for Investor Relations at Hyster-Yale. Joining me on today's call are Al Rankin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Rajiv Prasad, President; and Scott Minder, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Yesterday evening, we published our first quarter 2023 results and filed our 10-Q, both of which are available on our website. Today's call is being recorded and webcast. The webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months. Our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements made here today. These risks include, among others, matters that we've described in our earnings release issued last night and in our 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly earnings conference call, if at all. With the formalities out of the way, I'll turn the call over to Rajiv.

Thanks, Christi and good morning, everyone. I'll start by providing the operational perspective and some color commentary on our market. Scott would follow with detailed financial results and outlook, and I will close the call with a strategic perspective and take us into Q&A. We had a very strong first quarter. I mentioned on our last quarterly call that we expected to build on our fourth quarter 2022's momentum, and we did. In fact, we did better than we expected in the first quarter. While Scott will cover the financial details, I'll share some highlights from my perspective. Revenue and consolidated operating profit increased very significantly over 2022's first quarter results. Our first quarter profits were driven by improving product margins from more favorable material costs and a strong mix of products and parts. These positive changes more than offset the negative impact from unfavorable currency movements and ongoing supply chain constraints. Third-party component shortages and related production impacts remain a headwind, but have moderated compared to prior year. Our first quarter unit shipments increased more than 5% from first quarter 2022, primarily as a result of fewer component shortages. However, our factories experienced multiple production setbacks due to ongoing skilled labor availability issues, particularly in the Americas, coupled with shortages of specific components primarily in Europe. These challenges resulted in our plants falling short of the planned production rate increased targets. Looking ahead, we are planning for an improving production cadence in the Americas, but labor challenges could alter those plans. In Europe, specific component supply constraints and to a lesser extent labor challenges, are likely to negatively impact their production rates in the second quarter. As these issues abate, we expect production and shipment rates to increase rapidly. For the full year 2023, we anticipate very strong production and shipment volumes, which we expect to exceed 2022 levels despite the ongoing production challenges. In the first quarter, material and labor costs continued to increase compared to prior year levels, primarily in EMEA, but the rate of increase slowed substantially. Forward economic indicators suggest more moderate 2023 cost inflation trends. As previously shared, we've implemented multiple price increases over the past two years to offset persistent inflation. We've gained ground in the Americas, and we expect this moderating cost inflation to help drive increased margins, particularly in EMEA. We'll continue to monitor our material and labor costs closely, including the potential impacts from tariffs and we'll adjust pricing as needed to maintain momentum towards our long-term unit margin goals. Shifting to our global market expectations, demand for lift trucks remained strong. The latest available data shows that fourth quarter 2022 market volumes were down significantly from the peak levels reached in the first quarter of 2022. Our internal market estimates indicate that the decline seen in the last three 2022 quarters continued in the first quarter of 2023 across all geographic regions. These declines appear to be more moderate than initially anticipated, reflecting more resilient global demand across a variety of industries and markets. Looking ahead, we expect the broad Lift Truck market to decrease in each of the remaining 2023 quarters compared to the prior year quarter. Despite these declines, market should remain strong when compared to pre-pandemic standards in all regions, except EMEA. Lift truck bookings decreased significantly in the first quarter compared to robust prior-year levels. Several factors contributed to the decline. First, the global market declined compared to record high prior-year levels. Second, we remain focused on booking orders with solid margins. And lastly, because of our inventory lead time caused by our high backlog level. Substantially, booking increased modestly -- Sequentially, bookings increased modestly compared to the fourth quarter, largely led by the Americas. Looking forward, we expect the lower year-over-year booking trend to continue due to slowing global economic activity in 2023 and a return to more normalized market levels. We'll remain focused on booking higher-margin orders. As the year progresses, we'll work to balance our booking rates and production lead times on a line-by-line basis to maximize profitable growth. With the combination of increasing production and lower bookings, we reduced our backlog by an additional 3% from fourth quarter 2022, but it still remains well above historic levels. Our continued diligence over booking margins along with building our shipping -- building out and shipping older lower margin units has led to higher average unit margins in our remaining backlog. Our efforts are paying off. In the first quarter, the average sales price for our backlog unit increased by nearly 34% year-over-year and about 2% sequentially. We expect these positive margin trends to continue in 2023 and into 2024 as we produce the remaining aged backlog units over the next few quarters. While global economic signals and mix regarding the likelihood and depth of a recession, our current backlog of higher margin trucks extends through 2023 production schedules and into 2024. This provides a shock absorber if bookings declined more sharply than expected in 2023. I'll summarize my comments by saying we expect higher production and shipment rates over the next several quarters, largely due to improving component and labor availability. We remain focused on mitigating the impacts of our continuing supply chain and manufacturing challenges. Our teams are working closely with our suppliers to obtain what's needed for production when it's needed. As our planned production rates increase across 2023, we expect the higher unit price and margin built into our backlog to support the continued improvement in our financial results. Ongoing discipline over bookings, margins and cost structures will support this profitability improvement trend over the longer term. We expect our unit backlog and extended lead times to decrease across 2023, but remain above preferred levels. While we work towards our desired backlog levels and lead times, we remain focused on profitability and cash generation. Before I turn the call over to Scott, I'd like to highlight a significant recent announcement. In March, we launched a new brand identity for our Yale business. Our Yale brand has had a solid position in the warehouse segment, while our Hyster brand has had a strong position in industrial and port segments. This reflects a core marketplace differentiation between the two brands, and one now being enhanced by new technology. As a result, we have rebranded Yale as Yale Lift Truck Technologies. This new identity and new logo emphasize our focus on solving the toughest labor, safety, and productivity challenges in the fast-paced, fast-growing warehouse markets. Yale Lift Truck Technologies will couple technology integration with a customer-focused philosophy designed specifically to address the customer's application need. I'd like to thank the team that steered this project from concept through the launch and at the -- through launch at the recent ProMat trade show. It was a job well done. Now I'll turn the call over to Scott to update you on our financial results and provide our financial outlook. Scott?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. We have our first question comes from Steve Ferazani from Sidoti.

Great, appreciate the color. Obviously, it makes sense that backlog is coming down, you're picking up volume and the economic conditions are what they are. I guess the question -- the concern would be, and it looks like we can see it in the numbers. It looks like the backlog has remained very sticky, right, that would be the risk if people had to start canceling older orders. You're not seeing that yet, correct?

No, we're not seeing cancellations. In fact, there are very, very low rates of cancellation.

And how is pricing, it looks like overall backlog ASP is up sequentially, it was down a little bit, but it looks like you had at least one big order in the Americas?

Appreciate it, thanks.

Thank you Steve. We have our next question comes from Chip Moore from EF Hutton. Chip, your line is now open.

Sure Chip, I mean I think the second part of your question was how do you make it sticky? And that's where our strategic initiatives come into play. As Al said, we're a little bit -- we prioritized the critical ones through the pandemic period, but there are some key ones that will -- are critical to enabling us to make that 7% sticky. And those will be executed over the next three years or so. So I think a combination of the things that Al talked about and the implementation of these projects are key to sustaining that 7%.

That’s very helpful Al and Rajiv, appreciate it. And maybe if I could ask one on electrification, [Technical Difficulty] fuel cell adoption. More so, I guess, customer-centric, what you're seeing out there, how those conversations have evolved, it feels like commercialization is getting much closer for some of those legacy internal combustion products, but just curious what you're seeing from the customer side?

Great, that’s very helpful color. I will hop back in queue. Thanks.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from Brett Kearney from Gabelli and company. Brett, your line is now open.

Hi guys, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I want to follow up on the Nuvera momentum. It sounds like you guys have identified a new market opportunity in this potentially stationary backup power application. I guess, can you just discuss the genesis of that, how that's kind of come about? And I noticed you also called out opportunities to expand Nuvera's presence in EMEA and China, just kind of what applications that is, is that the China bus market opportunity or specific applications you're seeing there?

Yes, so it is very helpful. And then I just had one follow-up more broadly on China. I believe the domestic market there, small exposure for you guys. But can you just -- I guess, remind me or help me think about either between your JV in Japan as well as through the Maximal acquisition, I guess, exposure to the China Lift Truck market and your outlook that you're seeing for demand in that region of the world?

Excellent, that’s very helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you Brett. We have no more further questions on the line.

Okay. With that, we'll conclude our Q&A session, and we'll close with a few final reminders. A replay of our call will be available online later this morning. We'll also post a transcript on the Investor Relations website when it becomes available. And if you have any questions, please reach out to me. You can reach me at the phone number on the press release. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and I'll turn the call back to Glen to conclude the call.