Good morning and welcome to the 25th Annual CJS New Ideas for the New Year Conference. I'm Bob Labick, President of CJS, and I'm pleased to have with us here today Crane NXT. Crane NXT is an industrial technology company focused on securing, detecting, and authenticating critical items for its customers. The company had an active 2024 in M&A, building out its brand authentication adjacency, which complements its core currency and payment innovation businesses. We're happy to have with us President and CEO Aaron Saak and Senior Vice President and CFO Christina Cristiano. We'll start with a 10- to 15-minute overview, and then we'll move on to a fireside chat. For clients interested in asking management questions, you can send those through the portal, and we'll try to weave those into the chat as well. With that, it's my pleasure to hand it off to Aaron to talk about Crane NXT. Good morning and thank you, Bob. It's a pleasure to be with you and everyone listening today, and we certainly appreciate the opportunity to talk about Crane NXT and as you said, I think a very exciting and transformative 2024 for us, and we look forward to what's in store for the company in 2025. Now, I know for many of you, you've been with the story of Crane NXT since our launch, which is coming up on almost two years, and that'll be in April of 2025, but for many of you, as the name of the conference implies, this may be a new idea, and so we're excited to tell you about Crane NXT and our vision for the company, and so before I begin, I just wanted to go through the normal forward-looking statements that are typical, and so let me do that. As you can see, please read those at your leisure, but understand, as always, we have that disclaimer at the beginning of any of our presentations. And so with that, let me talk a little bit about the company. Again, for those who are new to our story, we are a leading provider of trusted technology solutions that secure, detect, and authenticate our customers' most valuable assets. That's really the hallmark of the company and where we're positioning ourselves as a premier industrial technology company. As I mentioned, we launched in April of 2023, just less than two years ago from the separation of Crane Holdings Company. And really, I think a hallmark of the company is our best-in-class financial profile that includes significant margins and free cash flow, a very strong balance sheet, and you can see that on the left-hand side of this page. You know, we're ending 2024 based on our original guidance coming out of our Q3 call at about $1.5 billion in sales. Almost 45% of the company has recurring revenues, which we think, again, is a hallmark of the company and provides resiliency for the future. About 27% adjusted operating margins and a very strong balance sheet. As we exit the year, we were at about one, or exited Q3 at about 1.7 times net leverage. Really, a hallmark not only of our financials is how we run the business, and that includes utilizing the Crane Business System to drive continuous improvement and continuous margin expansion over time. As Bob mentioned, we had a very active 2024 with our first M&A transaction that was both announced and closed. A hallmark of the company, both in its current form and in its predecessor, has been a very disciplined capital allocation process. In this case of Crane NXT to diversify our portfolio, as Bob mentioned, and really provide differentiated positions with leading market technologies all aligned to secular growth trends. So again, we're very proud of what we've accomplished in almost the first two years of existence for Crane NXT and believe we have a very resilient portfolio as we move forward. With that, let me dive a little bit deeper into who we are by segment and geography and customer. We go to market and report as two segments, the largest of which we call CPI or Crane Payment Innovations, which is approximately 60% of the portfolio. And the second is Security and Authentication Technologies, about 40% of the portfolio and where we've done our M&A here over the last year. In terms of geography, we have very wide exposure around the world, which I think, again, builds to the resiliency of the company. About 60% of our sales are in North America, and it may be interesting to many of you, about 20% of our sales are in emerging markets where we're really aligned to growth demographics and overall secular tailwinds. And then finally, I think a hallmark of the company is the long tenure of many of our customers. In fact, you probably won't be speaking with many companies in this session today and conference over the next few days that have customers that have been with us for over a century, and we certainly do here in Crane NXT. In fact, one customer, the U.S. Government, has been with us for almost 150 years, but they're not the only one. We have many of our customers, in fact, approximately 80% who have been with us for decades, and so again, building to a very resilient, sticky business as we look at the portfolio, so as I go to the next slide, I wanted to lay out how you see us reporting in terms of our financials and how we'll talk about the company here today. Again, the theme here is we've taken a very deliberate approach as we've launched the company, focused on technology solutions in the thematic of secure, detect, and authenticate customer assets and to make sure we're aligning the company to secular growth trends. And this really leads us to our two segments, Security and Authentication Technologies, whereas we ended 2024, we'll be at about $620 million in sales and Crane Payment Innovations at about $870 million in sales. Now, under Security and Authentication Technologies, this is where the M&A activity has occurred. We think we're building a fantastic position as a real market leader in this space, all focused on trust and counterfeiting protection. And we closed our first major acquisition in the second quarter of 2024, and that was OpSec. And as we announced in the fourth quarter of last year, we have entered an agreement to acquire De La Rue Authentication, which we expect to close in the first half of 2025. Now, outside of aligning the company to the secular growth trends all around secure, detect, and authenticate technologies, what binds the company together, as I mentioned before, is this focus on continuous improvement as exemplified in the Crane Business System. And this is a longstanding hallmark of the company to drive continuous improvement year over year, both in our core businesses and in the businesses that we acquire. And so we're going to continue to build out this portfolio based on our strong free cash flow, continue to add to our market leadership positions, and continue to utilize the Crane Business System to drive value for our shareholders. And so with that, I'm presenting here the growth formula, which we've talked about for Crane NXT. And it really starts at the top of this diagram with a core business in differentiated niche segments that generates very strong free cash flow. You'll see that as a hallmark of the company. We take that strong free cash flow and we use a disciplined framework to return some of that to our shareholders in the terms of a competitive dividend. You'll see that our dividend is roughly about a 1% yield over the course of the last year. We want to always keep our net leverage in check, and our target long-term is to keep that below three and then utilize the remainder of that free cash flow primarily for M&A as we executed in 2024 with a very disciplined approach focused on secular growth markets where we can find niche technologies and then improve those through the application of CBS. I think our efforts in 2024 show we've made very good progress towards this vision for the company. And so with that, my last slide before I hand it back to you, Bob, is just a reminder on who we are as Crane NXT and that we're in the early stages of a journey. You know, again, less than two years out as a new company, but I think well underway in doing what we said we were going to do of building a premier industrial where we had very strong performance in Q3 with about a 14% revenue growth, and that's 5% core revenue growth. We continue to focus on driving the Crane Business System to improve operational performance both in the core and as we acquire new assets. We're executing our strategy, exactly what we laid out in our first investor day as we launched the company to position our portfolio into higher growth adjacent end markets, really aligned to niche and differentiated positions over the long term, while at the same time keeping our balance sheet and our leverage in check, using our strong free cash flow to do that. With that, we have, again, very good capacity and a strong funnel for continued M&A. I think we're in a really very, very positive position heading into 2025 over the long term and positioning the company for significant shareholder value creation. With that, Bob, I appreciate the time this morning and happy to hand it over to you for the fireside chat. All right, super. Thank you, Aaron. That was a fantastic introduction. We appreciate it. And I think maybe we'll start off with the M&A this year because it is a big change. You've obviously done a lot in the last, you know, 18 months or so, but talking about the M&A, the authentication assets, you've committed to spending, I think, $660 million to acquire two bedrock assets you mentioned, OpSec and De La Rue. Maybe you can, you know, dig into the technology acquired, why these are good, sticky businesses, and the overlap with your existing technology as well. Yeah, thanks for that, Bob, and I would say we're, you know, very excited and still bullish not only on what we acquired and will be acquiring with the close of De La Rue, but also on the demand and the trajectory of the end markets all around authentication, but to your point, if I take it back to our strategy, you know, we started the company with the Crane Currency asset of one of the core pillars of the company, and when you really look at what we do in Crane Currency, it's all around authentication. It just happens to be for currency and applying a physical authentication onto currency banknotes, whether that's the U.S. government, and many people know that blue strip that's down the $100 bill, that is our hallmark micro-optics technology that's never been counterfeited. And we apply that to now over 150 denominations around the world. It's really a bedrock of the company, of this differentiation in the technology. We've been moving to take that technology into other end markets that are growing and have the same need for anti-counterfeiting protection. We really saw M&A as a way to accelerate that strategy. OpSec being one of the leaders in this area where their portfolio was focused more on brands, think of sports and apparel, and using holographic technology to protect and secure assets, whether that's, you know, league paraphernalia, think of jerseys and other things we all may buy as we go to sporting events, or coats and jackets and things of that nature. We can extend that thought process out of brand and apparel to industrial goods and to pharmaceutical products as well. We really like that market. We think OpSec brought with us now a channel to that market and core technology in their holographic capabilities that augmented what we could do with our micro-optics technology. And then we see De La Rue as further acceleration of this strategy where they bring extra strength, if you will, into the government sector of using the similar type of technologies, but really having a very strong position with governments and their tax stamp business and also brings us into the ID verification market. And And think of passports where you're securing and protecting and authenticating passports. So I think this is just a continuation of expanding our markets, one adjacency at a time, all under the macro and secular trend of the need for any counterfeiting protection, both physical and digital. And both of these assets not only give us access to new channels, but access to new technologies, as I just described. So hopefully that's helpful, Bob. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for that. And you know, part of, I forget, was it Crane Holdings Company before, you know, you spun off the other Crane company and now you're Crane NXT, but part of that was the Crane Business System for years in terms of you had an acquisition history and you were able to integrate companies and raise the ROIC of the businesses you've acquired and of the, you know, investment itself. Can you talk about how CBS and that methodology can be additive to these assets and how the integration's going, I guess, with OpSec so far because you haven't even gotten De La Rue yet? Sure, Bob. Hey, and thanks for mentioning that because I think there's a secret sauce, if you will, to how we run the company and have, to your point, for many, many years. And I think we're all very proud of this heritage. It's the focus on continuous improvement. And that's driving process discipline to drive outcomes that ultimately lead to business results, whether that's revenue growth, margin expansion, accessing new markets through a series of tools that are all part of our Crane Business System playbook that includes Lean, 80/20, and policy or strategy deployment. This is a very well-developed toolkit that's core to the DNA of the company. And you can see it deployed in all of our M&A going back now well over a decade where we take an asset that we think may be aligned in the case of OpSec to fantastic end markets with strong technology leadership positions, but there's an opportunity to do better and to continuously improve. And we see that in OpSec as ways to improve the supply chain, ways to improve the manufacturing footprint and drive productivity inside of operations, way to improve pricing and the commercial discipline on contracts. These are all the tools that we deploy in CBS and are applying those to OpSec. And I would say in terms of the acquisition itself, we're right on track to where we thought we would be. Going as expected. In fact, we have a full range now of CBS practitioners inside the business and CBS champions inside of each of the manufacturing facilities driving that continuous improvement mindset. That's what we'll do with each acquisition and what we're planning to do and we're well in the middle of planning as we close and intend to close the De La Rue acquisition in the first half of 2025. Okay, great. And I think, you know, with a little bit of growth, and these are secularly growing, but little growth, these two assets could be at $300 million in revenues in the not too distant future. That's still 25%-30% of the target you laid out at the separation deck, $1 billion- $1.5 billion acquired revenue. Is that target still relevant? Are there more assets out there? How do you think about, you know, do you pause now? Can you keep going? What's the, what's next for M&A? And will it be in similar, you know, brand authentication assets? No, thanks for that, Bob. You know, the strategy here is unchanged. And I'll just go back to what we said at the time of separation because the key message that we wanted to make to all of our shareholders is very disciplined, I would say logical M&A. And I like that as a programmatic approach to do M&A where we can take on an asset that's one step adjacent to perhaps our core business, as I think we would say OpSec and De La Rue are. It's of a size we can incorporate in, and we see the opportunities to drive margin expansion through the application of CBS. OpSec and De La Rue were the first two. As you know, Bob, we also did a small technology bolt-on called TrueTag that shows, again, we're able to go find technologies that we think we can accelerate through our channel and also drive margin improvement over the long term. What I would envision and feel very confident that we'll execute are continued M&A activities similar to the OpSec and De La Rue, both in this authentication segment or the security and authentication technology segment, but also in other areas that are one step adjacencies from our CPI business and continue to drive the thematic around secure, detect, and authenticate. We have a very rich M&A funnel. As most companies do, we turn down more deals than we execute on because we have to have a high conviction. We're going to continue to follow the disciplined approach, which is ensuring that we're aligning to these markets, that the asset we're acquiring has a leading position in their market, and we can see a line of sight to continue growth above GDP run rates. That, and probably most importantly, we have a clear path to value creation, which is a double-digit ROIC by year five for the assets we're acquiring. Again, Bob, I would say, you know, we're continuing on pace, and I would expect that in 2025. The strategy is unchanged, and we feel very good about where the funnel sits. Okay, super. Thank you. And then moving on to CPI, we view this as a group of niche leading products and targeted end markets. And so I was hoping we could discuss, you know, the end markets that you focus on and the outlooks for each, and maybe, you know, start with gaming because there's been, you know, more changes there in short-term iterations. Talk about your visibility now and just kind of go through the end markets for CPI. Hey, Bob, it's Christina. I'll take that one, so you know, just thinking about the year overall, outside of gaming, the CPI end markets were growing at mid-single digits, and as you mentioned, when we discussed throughout the year, the gaming market has been working through a correction of inventory levels with our OEM customers, where inventory levels got higher than normal as a result of long lead times, right, so looking back to right around COVID and right after that, our lead times went up to over one year, and a normal lead time would be anywhere between eight and twelve weeks as a reference point, and that's really what we're back to now. And so what we've seen is, you know, a buildup of our backlog as a result of overordering that our customers have been working down now over the last, you know, year to year and a half. And, you know, directionally, we expected this to resolve toward the end of 2024, but as we mentioned on our last call, it's simply taking a little longer than we thought. And so this work down now of inventory levels and resuming to normal ordering as we would expect will happen now more toward the middle of 2025. And that's really part of it is our own doing, actually, because now we're able to ship our products much faster to our customers based on these lower lead times, and they simply don't need to hold as much inventory as they were holding, you know, one and two years ago. And so their inventory levels are a little lower than they had historically maintained. And now we've simply got to just work through this cycle, and we expect that to start to move again in the second half of 2025. So outside of gaming, as I said, the other end markets are growing at mid-single digits. And if you start with the largest part of the CPI portfolio, which is vending, and there, just as a reminder, we sell the entire vending machine, not just the components. And that includes the cashless reader as well as note and coin receptacles. Here, we're seeing very strong performance post-COVID, right? So during COVID, everything shut down. The places where people would normally go to use vending machines not open. And that really took a toll on the business. And we've seen a nice resurgence since COVID and growing now solidly at mid-single digits. And we're expanding our offerings here into coffee, which has been popular in Europe, and now we're starting to see that growing in the U.S. And we also see growth in our aftermarket parts business, which comes at a high margin. So feeling good about vending. And then moving on to financial services, again, mid-single digit grower here. And this is really driven by our services business. So we have a fleet of about 450 highly skilled technicians that service our equipment, and mostly in the U.S. and a little bit in Europe and Canada. And this group now is, that's a captive fleet that we have and continues to grow and identify new opportunities to expand our service offerings. So very strong performance there, again, mid-single digit performance in financial services on the services side. And we see equipment there continuing to grow at low single digits. Lastly, on the retail side, this for us in 2024 has been driven by growth in the custom self-checkout market, where we work directly with our retailers or the integrators that they hire to customize the self-checkout experience in their stores. And that includes our components. That's a smaller part of the business. The larger piece of the business would be where we sell directly to OEMs, but we saw the custom self-checkout growing this year in 2024. So solid growth there. Now, specific to the OEMs, as we noted last quarter on the earnings call, they've been reporting softness in their hardware market. And we've even seen other retailers reporting their results. And we've all seen, you know, some softness in retail. So this is an area we're going to be watching closely in 2025. There's known headwinds in the retail market. And we're going to continue to be working with our OEM partners to understand their demand levels and manage our inventory accordingly. So again, just wrapping up CPI in total, outside of gaming, growing at mid-single digits. And the area of focus for next year will be headwinds in the potential headwinds in the retail end market. Got it. Okay, great. And then kind of following up on the M&A discussion and some of your comments there on services, I think we've talked a little bit in the past. Is that a potential area for M&A, some more services? And would it be into CPI as a whole? Would it be in financial services? Or how are you thinking about potential M&A in the services area? How would that fit for the company? Yeah, thanks for that, Bob. I think that's unchanged from what we discussed in prior dialogues that services is an area we could continue and are continuing to look at for potential M&A, probably more of a bolt-on or a tuck-in to our existing business. But I just go back to my prior comments, you know, discipline is the key, making sure we're aligning to secular tailwinds, and, you know, our M&A funnel is as healthy and rich as it was, you know, as we launched the company, if not even more robust, so I think we're in a very strong position here to pick the areas and prosecute and cultivate the deals that we think are most on strategy, whether that's in services or in other parts of the portfolio. Okay, super. Then jumping over to currency, and maybe we'll start with the U.S. here. And there's two kind of short-term divergent themes. One being, you know, I think it was October, maybe it was November, but the YCO came out and a yearly currency order from the U.S. government. And it was weaker than expected, you know, partially COVID hangover, you know, Catalyst Series launch, you know, whatever the reasons. But maybe talk about that. How do we think about kind of fiscal 2026 and the overall, you know, U.S. currency outlook when you weave into it the Catalyst Series as well? Yeah, thanks for that, Bob. And for those not familiar with why you're referring to the YCO or YCO is the yearly currency order that's put out each year publicly by the U.S. government. And as a reminder, we are the sole supplier of substrate, think of the paper and many of the security features to the U.S. government's currency program. And that's, again, a position we've been in for 150 years. So we feel very good about that business. It's an important part of our portfolio. And as you mentioned, the volume for what will now be 2025 was below what most folks were expecting. Now, the silver lining in that, if you will, is it's largely due, and as you said, to the normalization coming out of COVID. So we think this is the last year for that type of normalization. The other driver is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing preparing for the launch of the new currency redesign. They explicitly mentioned that in why the order for 2025 is at the prescribed numbers. We think that this is a transitory year as we look at the U.S. currency business, that we, as you know, Bob, are actively working on system upgrades that are taking place now and actually have a good part of our production down in the first quarter, as we've talked about before. It's all in preparation of a generational opportunity, as the U.S. announced earlier, will be launching a new updated bank note starting with the 10 and progressing through the 100 every two years for the next decade. And we feel very confident about our position there, about the added technology that will likely be on those notes as the U.S. follows and continues its leadership in high technology for bank note anti-counterfeiting protection. And we would expect that as we exit 2025 or early 2026, we'll see an announcement on the design of the new $10 bill. I know everyone's going to be excited about that, both for business reasons and just for, you know, general interest of what the new U.S. currency is going to look like. And again, we feel very good about that. And that will be a tailwind driving our U.S. business as we exit 2025 and really going forward for the foreseeable future. So I think the U.S. business, again, I would define as transitory year, but the long-term tailwinds are very much in place. And we feel very good about our position. And of course, as you said, there's the other side of the currency business, which is our international currency business. This just had a terrific 2024 with a backlog that's consistently grown. It gives us a lot of visibility as we've entered 2025 for this year. And we continue to win in that market, fundamentally based on our micro-optics technology, our design capabilities, and the quality of the bank notes we provide to countries all over the world. And so, you know, again, very, very optimistic on our international currency business through 2025. Yeah, absolutely. International has been, I think it's a CFA term, but kicking butt of late, and there has been, you know, some movements, you know, obviously with De La Rue you guys bought the authentication business, but they also have a currency business, which you, you know, were not interested in. How are you gaining share? You know, give us a little bit more of, you know, kind of lay of the land and, you know, opportunities beyond 2025 for international currency. Yeah. Well, you know, I think if you back up, Bob, all central bankers, which, as you're probably not surprised to know, are not a risk-averse group. And everyone is worried around the world, if you're a central banker, and particularly those in charge of the currency program, around counterfeiting. And you look no further than to the U.S. $100 bill, which is the most secure bank note in the world that uses our micro-optics technology. And it's really our calling card to the international market of ensuring as a central banker, you have the most secure technology for anti-counterfeiting, and you have beautiful bank notes. And that's really where we distinguish ourselves, as I said before. We win on technology. It's a defensible position. We continue to innovate in this space. We have a very robust patent portfolio around our technology. And each year, you know, we add new denominations, as you've seen, on average 10-15 a year of currency bank notes using our micro-optics technology. And so over time, we continue to outperform by just providing a very simple formula of the best quality, most secure, highest technology leading bank notes in the world. And as time progresses, all central bankers move to more technology and more anti-counterfeiting protection. And it typically starts with their highest denomination, perhaps the most valuable note in their fleet, and normally moves down into lower denominations over time. And that's where you see us just continually winning share, again, based on the hallmark of our core technology. And so that keeps playing out, Bob. We don't see an end in sight to that thematic. If you think about currencies in the world or bank notes in the world, let's assume there's roughly 2,000 worldwide. Today, we have about 150. So we see a very, you know, long march for us to continue our expansion based on our technology leadership. Okay, great. And then before we wrap up here, there's a couple of questions we're asking all the companies that are with us today at the conference. And, you know, one is talk about, you know, some of the company-specific milestones or catalysts you see this year specifically for Crane NXT. And then the inverse of that is what are the biggest company-specific risks you guys are, you know, thinking about and working to mitigate? Yeah, thanks for that, Bob. I, you know, I would go back to what 2024 looked like for us, which was really our first step in transforming the portfolio and executing and announcing three different M&A deals. I think that's a continued catalyst for the company. Now, I know you and our investors will wait to see what those are, but as I've said, we have a very robust M&A pipeline. And I think we're going to continue to execute towards this mission of diversifying the portfolio and growing to a $3 billion company. So I think more and more folks understand the mission we're on and start to see us executing to that should be a natural catalyst for the stock. Also, as Christina mentioned, our CPI markets, you know, like all companies are looking to what's going to happen at the macro level. If we see some acceleration in those end markets, you know, that's very, very good margin for us in terms of what it drops to the bottom line. We'll have a very positive effect on EPS if we see that unfold and particularly the U.S. economy continues to be resilient. I would say, you know, if there's a headwind, it's the counter to that. If we would see some slowing in the macro environment where we're positioned, we have a, you know, particularly in CPI, we have a number one or number two position in all the markets we play in and care to focus on. We're really executing with the markets themselves and incrementally gaining share. Again, acceleration of those end markets will be a wonderful positive for us. What we have to watch out for is any deceleration. And that brings me back to CBS. And if we see that, and I think you could see that this year in 2024, where we did see some headwinds, as Christina mentioned in gaming, we were still able to execute productivity programs and drive cost productivity. And you see that in the operating margins. So no, we have our hand firmly on the wheel of protecting our margin rates as we look at in-market demand. Okay, super. And I think we're just about wrapping up here. So I want to thank you so much for joining us this morning. And I know you have a busy day ahead of you as well. So really appreciate you making time for CJS and clients. And I'd like just to hand it back to you for any closing remarks. Thank you, Bob. I appreciate not only the invitation, but everyone who's listening in this morning. Welcome the questions as well. Again, I'll go back to the slide that we have up for those watching the presentation. We think we're, you know, on a journey and building a premier industrial technology company with just world-class financials. We're executing to the strategy and doing what we said we were going to do as a hallmark of the company of driving continuous improvement with CBS, executing M&A, and returning to our shareholders a dividend that's competitive while keeping our balance sheet in a very strong fortified position. We're excited about 2025 and we're excited about the long-term future of Crane NXT. Again, appreciate the opportunity today to speak with you. Thank you, Bob. Thank you.