Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining, attending our Oppenheimer Annual Internet & Communications Conference. With me today is Crane NXT. I have an outperform rating on the stock. Presenting from the company today would be Aaron Saak, who is the CEO, and then also Christina Cristiano, who is the company's CFO. Aaron is going to have a bit of a slideshow to begin with, and after that, we will go into Q&A. If anyone has a question on the line, you can put it into the chat, and I will ask that question, or you can email me at ian.zaffino@opco.com. With that, Aaron, you want to take it away? Excellent. Well, thank you, Ian, and appreciate the invitation to be here at the Oppenheimer Conference. Good afternoon to everyone joining us today, to learn more about Crane NXT. If we could go to the next slide, I will just remind everyone about our normal forward-looking statements and disclosures, and I will let you read those at your own choosing. Let me move to the next slide to talk about our company, which I am very excited to be here today to speak about, and the transformation that we have been undertaking at Crane NXT to build what I think is a fantastic global technology leader in the industrial space. We are going to end this year close to $1.9 billion in revenue, with approximately 24% EBITDA margins and 100% free cash flow conversion, financial statistics that we are very proud of. What we have really done over the last several years is build a portfolio that has become the leader in authentication and traceability technologies. With over 100 years of history, 6,000 employees around the world, over 16,000 customers, and a portfolio that is more diverse and more resilient than ever, focused in a variety of end markets, as you can see on this slide, and playing in a number of geographies. About 50% here in North America, but 25% coming from emerging markets as we have grown and expanded the company through M&A, and about 15% in Europe. This is a quick snapshot of who we are and the markets we serve as Crane NXT, but I would like to dive into our businesses and how we report our numbers and what we have constructed in terms of being this leader in authentication and traceability technologies. The way we talk about the company are in these two segments. The first is Security and Authentication Technologies, a leader in providing advanced materials and technology that goes onto products to prevent counterfeiting and help our customers ensure that their products and the identities of their citizens are secure. We have two leading businesses under this segment, Crane Currency, which is the world's leader in advanced technology to governments providing currency, and Crane Authentication, which provides similar leading technology, but to brands and governments around the world for identities and tax stamp-type solutions. So that first segment, which is approaching $1 billion in sales in 2026, provides the core technology for authenticating products and securing them. Our second segment now, called Detection and Traceability Technologies, is made up of companies that are providing the equipment and the services to help authenticate those products. It starts with Antares Vision, our newest acquisition, which we closed just about 150 days ago, that is taking us into the pharmaceutical and food and beverage markets, again, providing for the quality and authenticity of products and tracking and tracing those through the supply chain. Then CPI, a business that is providing detection and inspection equipment for currency and payment transactions that includes both a hardware business, aftermarket services, and vending. In total, this is the portfolio today of Crane NXT with these two segments and four market-leading businesses. If we go to the next slide, what you will see here is very deliberately, over the last several years as we have expanded the company, we have purposely honed in on key capabilities and the interplay between those across the portfolio. You can see those five key capabilities here in the verticals with the businesses and where they play in the horizontal rows. First is our focus on providing the world's best security technology to stop counterfeiting, and that is really the hallmark of our Crane Currency and Crane Authentication businesses. Then we move into the software, and this is a really important part of our value proposition and what helps create wide moats around our business in that the software works with the security features to be able to track and trace products from the point of manufacture all the way to the point of consumption, oftentimes by a consumer. That is really the focus of Crane Authentication and Antares Vision in their respective end markets. Then we move into the equipment that helps to ensure the quality and read and detect our authentication labels. That is, again, the focus of Antares Vision and CPI, along with field service capabilities to go out and commission and service those pieces of equipment at the customer sites. Then last, but really not least, and maybe what is less understood and not just about our portfolio, but the importance we have across each of our companies in dealing with governments. Between Crane Currency, Crane Authentication, and Antares Vision, we are selling, in many cases, direct to governments and agencies within those governments. Different sets of technologies to ensure the quality or the authenticity of products and identities all the way from currency to pharmaceuticals transacting in different countries around the world. This capability of being able to sell to governments is a growing part of what makes our portfolio stronger together. That is Crane NXT today, and we have set out a vision for the company to really drive and increase the value creation to our shareholders in three major areas. One is in accelerating organic growth, built on our differentiated technologies, positioning our portfolio where we can capture market tailwinds. The second is continuing to expand on these leadership positions. We have done three large acquisitions since going public, most recently Antares Vision, and we have created anchor positions that we can continue to build on and become this leader in authentication and traceability technologies. Finally, what has been a longstanding hallmark of the company is driving operational excellence through what we call the Crane Business System. This is something that is not new to the company, but that has been part of our fabric and our DNA for a long period of time, and you can see it most importantly in our financial results, including what we presented just last week on our Q2, where we expanded margins through the deliberate and intentional use of CBS. Those are our value creation priorities as we look at the next three years, and here are the metrics by which we are going to judge success that we announced at our investor day earlier this year. First is accelerating organic growth, and our target is to consistently be at around mid-single digits with the portfolio. Second is to continue to build the portfolio up to about $2.5 billion in revenue by 2028. The important thing here is to keep our net leverage below 3, so we are utilizing our balance sheet, but we are keeping leverage in check. Right now, you can see over the last several months, we have consistently paid down our net leverage. We now stand at about 2.7 times and are well on our way to the low 2s by the end of 2026. Then finally, as I mentioned before, driving operational excellence, it comes through in our adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-20% range, which we will maintain even though we have acquisitions that are typically a little dilutive. We bring those margins up through the application of our business system. Again, you saw that on display with our Q2 results, where we had several hundred basis points expansion in our authentication acquisition. Then finally, a hallmark of the company has been our strong free cash flow. It allows us to go out and expand the portfolio, keep our leverage in place, and pay a competitive dividend. Our adjusted free cash flow is around 100% and has historically been there for the last three years since we went public. Ian, those are our priorities as well as the metrics that we are focused on to drive success over the next three years. I sincerely appreciate the time for Christina and I to join you here today, and happy to dive in a little deeper with questions. Very good. Maybe I will kind of kick it off, and maybe you could give us an update on the U.S. currency refresh and general thoughts on the upcoming Fed order of the new $10 note and then the higher value denominations. Yeah. Thanks for that, Ian. The currency business for us inside our SAT segment has been a standout for the last three years. In Q2, we announced an all-time high backlog for that business, where we are booking orders now into 2028, which is a position we have never been in, to have this strong of a visibility into the backlog, and the orders that we believe are going to come really in 2028 and beyond. That is why we are investing in this business, building out new production lines for our proprietary micro-optic technology here in the U.S. and expanding into Europe. Again, based on the demand we see, not only in our backlog, but what we see coming. A key part of that, to answer your question, or part of your question, is the U.S. currency. We see the new $10 bill really launching at scale in 2027, meaning going out en masse to all of us as consumers. That is what we anticipated this year. So it is really a 2027 benefit to the business, and we are busy at work on the design of the next $50 bill, which we expect to come out about a year or so later from the 10, and then there will be the 20 and ultimately the $100 bill here in the U.S. So we see this U.S. currency business as a tailwind for us for the next really better part of a decade, and we see the international currency business performing better than probably any of us would have even expected three years ago, and we are investing more to capture that growth. To answer your last question about volumes you mentioned for the U.S. currency, we expect to get that update sometime in the late September, early October timeframe. That will be a public announcement from the Federal Reserve. The key thing to watch there for us is the mix. We want to see more 100s and 50s and 20s year-over-year than last year. We think volume overall will probably be pretty consistent with what we saw in 2026. Good. That actually kind of dovetails nicely into one of the questions we have online, so I will read you the question. It says, "You have spoken about strong international currency demand and a record backlog. As you think about future investments in the currency business, can you help us understand what level of demand visibility gives you confidence to deploy incremental capital? More broadly, how should investors think about the relationship between capacity investments today and the revenue growth opportunity they could support over the next several years? Sure. Thanks for the question from the gentleman online. I would tell you a few things to break that down. First of all, just a reminder that in general, Crane NXT is a pretty CapEx-light business. About 5% of sales go into CapEx. For our currency business, it's going to be closer to 7%, due to this visibility we have on the growth of our international and U.S. business over the next decade. What gives us a lot of confidence is not only what you see in the backlog that we reported last week at near $500 million for the segment, but also this visibility into new tenders or new contracts being proposed by governments around the world to redesign their currency. As we talked about at our Investor Day, if you look at what's coming, that we have high confidence is going to be types of currencies that we can design and win with our technology. We see an incremental potential $100 million of growth in this business between 2026 and 2030. So it gives us high confidence that the investments we're making are going to have a very good return to the shareholder. Once we win those contracts, I think as you know, Ian, they're like an annuity stream. So once you win it, you have a five to 10-year window to continue to service that customer, governments around the world, as the case may be. You're typically in a very good position then to win the next iteration of that contract. It's a fabulous annuity stream of business that comes at a high margin, and we feel very good about the future. Okay, good. If we were to turn to authentication, maybe talk about your expectations for growth for the year, maybe across brand authentication, government solutions, IDs, just any color you could give us. Yeah, I think overall, we would look at that business in totality at about mid-single digits, and we are on track to get to that number this year. That is what we have always said and what was in our underwriting case for the acquisitions. I think the really key point of our authentication business is we are capturing that higher or that mid-single digit growth, but we are able to improve our margins substantially through 80/20 work, rationalization of rooftops, rationalization of the SG&A structure in the business. In this quarter, we saw a few hundred basis point margin expansion. We will see that again next quarter on a year-over-year basis. We are going to move the margins of that business into the low 20s over the next two to three years. Very high confidence we are on trajectory to do that. Okay, good. Any potential wins or targets of brand authentication that you would like to call out? Yeah. Christina, do you want to take a few of those? Sure, I would be happy to. First I will just say we continue to have great relationships with our marquee customers, including all the major sporting leagues like NFL and MLB, where we have recently resigned longer term, multi-year agreements. We are also now driving the cross synergies, part of the thesis for the acquisitions, where we are taking our legacy micro-optics technology and selling it into authentication customers. A great example of that this quarter was us selling into a major electronics retailer, that is now going to upgrade their security technology to micro-optics technology in a multi-year agreement. That is a great example of a win, and we hope to see more of those cross-selling opportunities reading through in the years to come. Okay, good. Any operational improvements you'd like to highlight over at OpSec or De La Rue Authentication or any kind of margin uplift you expect there, and maybe talk about that a little bit more. Well, I'll take it, Ian. Those are the first two acquisitions we made, and we've merged them together to now form what is Crane Authentication. That's how we run them today. As a unified business, there's really no longer an OpSec or a De La Rue. There's one Crane Authentication, one leadership team. What that's given us is the opportunity to rationalize manufacturing footprints and product lines where there could've been some overlap. That was always part of the deal thesis. Case in point, we've taken one of the legacy De La Rue product lines and sunset it and moved over the last year those customers to our micro-optics. We've been able to optimize our manufacturing footprint and move the customer to a higher gross margin product, which is exactly the kind of synergy work when we talk about operational improvements, that we had in the deal thesis, and that's played out pretty much on plan. We're busy doing those same kind of activities through the rest of this year and continue to look at ways to optimize the footprint of the authentication business. It's why we have the high confidence you're going to see the margin lift, and it's a margin lift of a few hundreds of basis points over this year and next year based on the actions we're already taking. Okay. Let me just see here. On CPI, maybe we can talk about that a little bit more, and maybe tell us kind of the hardware trends that you're seeing there, and then any other kind of color you'd like to tell us. Yeah, sure. CPI now sits in our DTT segment, biggest part of it, along with Antares Vision, and we run that business as three really separate business units. I will speak to each one to give you a little color on what we see in the business and the end markets. The first is our vending business, where, as a reminder, we make the entire vending machine. We are number one by far here in North America in that business, and that is playing out this year pretty much as we expected. It is kind of a low single digit grower with incremental margin expansion inside that P&L. Next, we have our services business. That is really where we are investing inside the CPI portfolio in differentiated systems and processes to upgrade the client experience and our dispatch of technicians. It is a business that is servicing our own equipment as well as third-party equipment at retailers, financial institutions, casinos, et cetera. That business is growing mid-single digits and again, seeing some nice margin expansion as well. Then lastly, you have the hardware part of CPI. This is where we make components that go inside slot machines to accept and validate bills and transactions into self-checkouts, and into financial institutions. So think about a cash in transit type customer who has processing a lot of cash that perhaps they picked up for their client through the course of a day or a week. That business, we always expected to be a flat to down for this full year. It was down low single digits in Q2. We expect it to be down slightly in Q3 and then move to positive growth in Q4. That is based on what we see coming through in orders. We had sequential backlog growth in the business quarter-over-quarter in a book-to-bill that was above or right around 1.1 times. So we are seeing the business go from this negative growth into positive growth as we exit the year. We have updated our guidance to reflect that last week. Okay. How do you feel about each component of the business as far as this remaining part of the long-term portfolio? Well, it's a good question. I think we're at an interesting point now where we built out these positions in our two segments. We feel very good about the properties that are inside from the acquisitions that we've done, and there's more we can add to those. The M&A pipeline remains very healthy. It gives us the time now that we're approaching $2 billion in sales, I think, Ian, to look at the portfolio. Always determine if what we have today is purpose-built for the future and evaluate if there's ways to generate more value for the shareholders. I would hope our shareholders are asking us to do that. That's what we're doing. We're constantly evaluating it. I think you can assume safely that those are the kind of discussions that we're having inside the company. Okay. That's helpful. I guess when you think about this additional M&A, is it dependent on what you do on CPI or anything in CPI? Is it really mutually exclusive? How do we kind of think about it? Yeah. I may take that a little to talk about capital allocation broadly. Okay. Then, Ian, to say, our priority right now, at least from an M&A perspective, is to execute the integration of Antares, which you saw from our results last week's going very well. It's right on plan, and we feel good about the full year. That is the focus, at least here for the next several months. Secondly, it's to pay down the debt. We want to get our debt well below 2.5 times, before we consider doing anything else. We think that's just the prudent thing to do. We'll be there by the end of Q3, just based on our strong free cash flow. We'll end the year at probably 2.3 times if you just model out our free cash flow. So we'll be in a position to say the debt's in a very good place, well below 2.5. We'll have firepower to probably do M&A perhaps in 2027. There certainly won't be any here in the rest of 2026. Then you start to get to the place below 2.5 times in net leverage where you could start to look opportunistically at share buyback depending where the equity is trading at. We'll always be, again, kind of putting it through the lens of shareholder value, if the balance sheet's in a good place and we have the success free cash. Okay, thanks. Then, we talked about the U.S. currency refresh, for one part of the business, but can you maybe talk about how it might impact CPI and what we should expect there? Because I know you touch a lot of the old notes I mentioned. Yeah, I think it's a second-order benefit from the new U.S. currency upgrade that may not be obvious, that we highlighted at our investor day. But once the new U.S. currency comes into circulation with some advanced security features, it will require an upgrade of the infrastructure to read that currency. We stand to benefit from that as CPI is the number one provider of cash and coin currency readers across the world. So we would expect probably on a lag more of like a 2028 type timeframe, 2029, that you'll start to get into an equipment upgrade cycle that will also require ongoing software support to read the new U.S. currency. So, that'll ultimately be a tailwind for our CPI business. Sorry, Ian, I can't hear you if you're asking a question. Sorry. I turned on mute. Thank you. Maybe we also then switch back to Antares Vision a little bit. Maybe give us an update on the integration there, and then basically what you're seeing for growth in life sciences, food and beverage, et cetera. Yeah, I'll take some and then maybe hand it to you, Christina. You can chat as well. Maybe I'll just start with those two end markets. We're expecting mid-single-digit growth from the company overall this year. In total for us, once we've acquired it'll be about $200 million- $210 million in top line. Food and beverage probably performing a little better than we actually originally thought, just due to some strength, not only in the market, but in people adopting some of our equipment solutions. So that feels pretty good. That's why we have a high confidence we're going to land at the range we guided to. But Christina, I'll let you talk more about the integration. Sure. Happy to talk about it. If anything, certainly on track, if anything, maybe a little bit ahead of where we expected to be. I think what's really the most exciting is to see the Antares team fully embracing CBS, right? The culture, the hallmark of Crane NXT and our continuous improvement environment. So they're already having Kaizen events and driving initiatives for productivity. This will be a big part of how we expect to achieve the synergies that we've identified through improved productivity over the next few years. So, off to a great start. We've owned the business for a little over 150 days and feeling really confident in the guidance that we gave for this year. Okay, thanks. Then just digging into the trends a little bit more on Antares and maybe F&B in particular, what are you seeing as far as the end markets? Our coverage includes some of the makers of the machines that go into a lot of these facilities. You hear different things from them, but what are you guys seeing as far as that? Or is this just much more of a solution that's providing a better mousetrap and therefore, no matter how they're doing, they're still amenable to taking on your products and innovative products? Yeah, it depends a little on that end customer, right? There's several larger customers, but this business, it has some project work, but it's more flow. So these are, a typical order is hundreds of thousands, maybe to a few million. These aren't enormous orders by any stretch. So you get kind of a combination of replacement installs, you get some new installs, and then remember, 30% of the business they're in is software and services. So you have some nice resiliency in the business of a very sticky revenue base that's reoccurring based on equipment sales that occurred in the past. So that's why we're not going to have big inflections one way or the other. It's a very steady visibility out into the next few quarters. Okay, yeah. Just because from one of the other companies we cover, they do talk a lot about, especially international push to just more consumers eating factory-produced food. Yeah Food safety increasing, and it just kind of seems like you're playing all into those. Yeah Those tailwinds. The other thing goes back to the portfolio synergies that I discussed around selling to governments. More and more of the governments are regulating protocols on the manufacturers in their jurisdiction. That plays to our strengths as well, because they have to pick a certified software that links to the equipment in those facilities that can track and trace and verify the quality of the product down to the day and time of manufacture. Exactly to your point, we feel like we've really positioned the portfolio with some resilient tailwinds in strong technology positions. You're starting to see the benefit of that. You can see it as organic growth will start to accelerate in the total for Crane NXT over the coming years. How do you feel about Antares' competitive position in food and beverage and how does sales work? Is it kind of full-line solutions? Is it single à la carte and any opportunities there? Yeah, it's more of a solution sale that includes the equipment with the software for a particular function in a line. We are typically selling in, let's say, a piece of equipment for an inspection or quality check or to serialize a product. That could be anything from a soft drink to a canned food product or what have you. So it's a solution for whatever the product is being made by that manufacturer. Now the beauty is typically it replicates itself across other factories or other lines that that manufacturer might have. So it's rarely just a one-time sale opportunity. The technology itself with Antares is best in class. We believe that. There's still fragmentation in this market. That's why we like it. There's other opportunities in our M&A funnel to keep adding to it and helping to consolidate the market that I think that gives us more scale. It also leads to better SG&A structure and margin improvements. I know we talked about some trends, but any other emerging trends that we should be on the lookout for that might help this business, whether it's like GLP-1s or peptides or anything like that in life sciences? Well, I think GLP-1s is a really good example. When you start to look at these higher-end drugs that are both expensive and come at volume, those are the most susceptible to counterfeiting. You see a desire, not just by governments to mandate some type of traceability, but of the brands themselves because they don't want the risk of counterfeiting that hurts both the equity of the brand or more importantly, the consumer who's using it should it be a bad compound. So those are the kind of applications that not only help Antares Vision, they also help Crane Authentication with the label technology that goes on the outside of those containers. So we're positioned in both of those businesses to benefit from those kind of trends that you just mentioned, Ian. Okay. I know we kind of jumped the gun a little bit on capital allocation, but if we were to circle back to that a little bit more, walk us through the M&A strategy. How do you evaluate what you want to buy? Christina, how do you know what you want to pay for it? How do you assess that, and then maybe also just the pipeline you're seeing out there? Yeah. Would you want to start, Christina? Do you want to- Sure. You bet. Our M&A framework has been unchanged since we started the acquisition. I think we've been very consistent in executing that, right? So first, we've been looking for niche technologies in markets that are growing at mid-single digits or higher, right? So to expand our organic growth once they get fully integrated into our portfolio. Then in terms of size, we've been focused on acquisitions that are about $100 million- $500 million of revenue. So not anything transformational, things that we can absorb into the portfolio and integrate successfully within a year. Then just from a financial perspective, we're looking for a double-digit return on invested capital within five years, and that's really our financial criteria, to answer your specific question, to ensure that we're driving that right amount of shareholder value. Aaron, anything else you wanted to add to that? Well, I would just end with the pipeline. To your question, Ian, it remains as strong and robust as it has been. If anything, it gets better over time because we have expanded our TAM, about doubled it from $7 billion to $13 billion since we started the company. That just naturally brings more opportunities into the funnel. Most of these are private companies, although every now and then, like Antares, there is kind of a public company, albeit in the case of Antares, it was a European public company. But I think the secret to us executing the deals and getting these kind of properties has been it is cultivated over a long period of time. All three of our transactions, the large ones, have been direct relationships with the seller, that we would be the right home for the property, and they shared the vision for what we wanted to build in this portfolio. We have a very robust list of other companies out there that we think could add in to Crane NXT, and we can start in the way we have done it with OpSec, De La Rue, and now Antares, is cadence them in at a pace a little bit of our choosing so that we can absorb them and keep our balance sheet in check. That is what you will see coming in 2027. Okay. Then just maybe staying on capital allocation. I know you guys just generate a ton of free cash flow, right? That 100% conversion ratio. Obviously you will delever pretty quickly. Then what do we do from there? How do you decide really what to do with it, right? Because there is organic stuff you want to do, buybacks potentially, M&A. Yeah, how do you figure that one out? Well, to be fair, there is probably two options for us after we delever to down to the low twos, mid to low twos. You could argue there is a dividend. We have increased that every year by a few pennies. We want to maintain that, but we are not going to significantly increase that. So I do not see that as a real viable option. The next is share buyback or M&A. M&A will be a little bit dependent on the timing, both for us and for the seller. If we are at a place where we think the equity still is trading at a low level, I would say in the low 50s, getting into that level, I think it is incredible value for where we are headed, Ian, and we would definitely look at use of capital for strategic share repurchase if the equity was trading, let us say, at or below anywhere in the vicinity of where we are at today. I think that would be a good use of cash and would generate a lot of shareholder return. Okay. Understood. This was very helpful. Those are my questions. I do not know if you have anything that you wanted to mention or something in closing. No that you wanted to say, but you have been more than generous with your time and answered my questions. Hey. And the audience's. Well, thanks, Ian. Maybe I will just end it here and end with, once again, a thank you for you and for everyone joining to hear about Crane NXT. It is hard for me to believe, Ian, we are onto our third year, and you have been with us here from the beginning and have seen the changes in the portfolio. We are in a better position, if not the best position we have ever been in as you look at where the portfolio is at, how the companies are performing, how the acquisitions are being executed. You saw it in our Q2 results, where we felt confident that we are at a position to raise guidance for the rest of this year, and we are producing EPS growth into the teens year over year and in a very good place to do that in 2027, as you have suggested in your coverage as well. We feel like we have turned here, and we are heading quite literally with the wind at our back and are looking to a strong finish in 2026 and continued evolution of the portfolio in 2027, if you will at, and think the stock is an exceptional deal at this value, Ian. Perfect. We are in agreement. I appreciate your confidence. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much, and I'll let you go back to more important things. Excellent. Thanks, Ian. Have a great day. Thank you. All right. Take care now.