Great. So welcome everyone. My name is Julian Mitchell. It's my pleasure to have, for our fireside chat Great. So welcome everyone. My name is Julian Mitchell. It's my pleasure to have, for our fireside chat Great. So welcome everyone. My name is Julian Mitchell. It's my pleasure to have, for our fireside chat Great. So welcome everyone. My name is Julian Mitchell. It's my pleasure to have, for our fireside chat now, Gates Corporation and Ivo Jurek, CEO. Please, if anyone has questions, email me those, and I'll make sure to try and get around to asking them. In the meantime, I'll hand over to Ivo to prepare the remarks, before we go into Q&A. Thank you, Julian. Thank you for hosting us today and giving us the opportunity to talk about what we believe are exciting times for Gates. Over the past several years, we have driven fundamental improvements in the business and ultimately repositioned it to achieve above-market growth and margin expansion. We have invested significantly, putting more efficient and flexible capacity in the ground and revitalizing a large portion of our portfolio of mission-critical components and products. We are also starting to see the benefits of our targeted organic growth initiatives, which are focused on attractive end markets, many of which have positive secular growth dynamics. Our products play an important role in helping our customers to deliver on their efficiency targets and support the overall drive towards sustainability across the industrial ecosystem, resulting in greater demand for our products. In addition to capitalizing on our growth, we are committed to expanding our margins, as we have discussed. Our restructuring programs remain on track and are expected to deliver full run-rate savings later on this year, 2021. Over and above these savings, we expect our new products and productivity initiatives under the Gates production system to continue to contribute incremental margin expansion also. We have emerged from the 2019-2020 downturn in a stronger position and demonstrated the resiliency of our business model. With our ability to generate strong cash flows, we now have a line of sight to three times net leverage, which we expect to achieve later on this year. As a result, this will provide our business with additional capital allocation optionality and opportunities to drive shareholder value well into the future. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Julian. Thanks, Ivo. And perhaps, you know, it'd be helpful to level set us on where we stand in terms of, you know, demand expectations near-term. Gates, with its short-cycle business, very good sort of barometer of, of industrial spending trends, OE, as well as aftermarket, of course. Maybe just give us an update there. What you're seeing in Q1 would be a good start. Look, we have exited 2020 with demonstrating a, you know, pretty broad-based growth across our franchise. We have grown across all of our geographies. We have delivered growth across both of our product lines. I'll say maybe with the exception of oil and gas, most of the demand trends across our portfolio are very positive. We anticipate that as we progress through 2021, the markets will continue to heal, and, you know, we will continue to see positive trends to impact our business. Frankly, you know, we also now starting to see nice shifts on sustainability, efficiency improvements, and equipment uptime, and those offer very attractive growth opportunities for us across just about the entire segment of our portfolio. You know, I've talked about, you know, some specifics around industrial automation, e-commerce, logistics and warehousing, and personal mobility, to name a few. You know, we feel actually quite positively about 2021, and we believe that, you know, the markets are just in very early stages of healing. Perfect. That's a good intro. I suppose looking geographically, China strength you're seeing, I think, is in common with other companies, but, you know, you do have a large presence there. What's your perspective on the sort of how 2021 will play out in your China business? I think you had mid-teens growth exiting 2020. How are you thinking about the slope of that growth this year in China? Look, I think I spoke on my earnings call about our performance in China in 2020, exiting very strong organic growth. 2020, the growth was led by industrial end markets, you know, particularly on the first fit side of the business or the OEM side of the business. Look, many occasions I have spoken about our focus on developing our automotive replacement side of our business, and we see some very strong underlying market fundamentals there as well. Given the very high level of auto productions over the past decade, our AR business nearly doubled just over the last three years, and we are very confident that we're gonna continue to see that level of growth, certainly over the midterm, future for us. Look, the overall market demand continues to be a very bright spot for our performance overall, and we clearly believe that we are clear leader in Asia, in China, in the AR side of the market, and, you know, I think that we are really well positioned. Overall, we are very constructive on China, and we expect that 2021 will be another year of solid growth for us, especially taking into account where we exited the year in Q4 of 2020. Thank you. If I switch to maybe North America, you know, it's a part of the world that's seen quite sluggish industrial spending trends versus other regions, even in the last few months. Gates, an exception to that, very good growth, exiting last year in North America, much better trends than most of the motion control peers, for example, you know, leaving the side automotive. What do you think's driving that uplift at Gates in North America? What's driving those share gains? Yeah, so look, I mean, I think, again, in North America in particular, we have seen reasonably broad-based strength across all of our markets with the exception of energy or oil and gas. You know, despite the fact that it is a reasonably small amount of business for us, you know, we are predominantly focused on land extraction. All of the other markets were very, very solid for us. And I think that, you know, that demonstrates our ability to take market share away. We have spoken quite substantially over the innovation cycle, launching new products, and I think that you are finally starting to see the design wins turn into revenue that is driving above-market growth rate, and frankly, that is driving above-market level of profitability as well. You know, I think I can, in general, speak about similar trends, right? The ESG drivers are pulling our products as people become, this is becoming much more important, topic for all manufacturers. It does not really matter where you reside in the universe of industrial manufacturing, you know, whether or not it is a noise pollution reduction or it is energy efficiency or energy conservation, reduction of potential incidents from HSC perspective. Our components facilitate general improvement in all of those metrics in your industrial equipment. I would say that, you know, I would point to that as probably the biggest driver for us in Q4 and I believe in 2021. When you look more broadly on a global basis, and Ivo, you have seen at different companies many different industrial cycles and ups and downs. When you're looking at this upturn beyond just this year, how do you think it will play out? You know, what does it remind you of? How does it differ from some of those industrial recoveries we saw four years ago or ten years ago? Any context, understanding that it's very early? Look, I think that's a really good question, Julian. And, you know, when I take a look at 2019 and 2020 in particular, maybe folks will cringe when I say this, but, you know, to me, it looks very much analogous to 2008 and 2009. You know, if I take a look at the integral under the curve, we see almost duplicate copy of that 2008 and 2009 behavior in 2019 and 2020. If I say, hey, look, 2019, 2020 look like 2008, 2009, and then I take a look at what happened in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, despite popular belief that these cycles go very quickly down and very quickly up and that they teeter out, 2010- 2014 was a very good time for Gates. 2010 was a very solid year. I believe that our guidance indicates that 2021 is going to be a very solid year for Gates. You know, although it is very early, as you've indicated, I do look towards maybe some more sustainable level loaded growth rather than necessarily seeing these large recoveries and then the large impacts that we see from these external shocks. I'm very hopeful. We are early in the recovery. We are very optimistic about 2021. I believe that the work we have done from 2018 through 2020 in terms of the transformation of the company, not just in operating cadence and restructuring, but frankly, more on the side of innovation, revitalization of our product portfolio, I believe that we can be real beneficiary of some of these positive trends that open opportunities that are more secular in nature, not just cyclical in nature. If we look at the very short, you know, there's a healthy discussion around how much restocking might be needed in the industrial world, whether it's selling to OEMs or distributor and channel partners. Inventories seem low, but perhaps that's a secular phenomenon, and each upcycle now you see less and less sort of restock. What's your assessment of that? You know, inventories are low. Do you think we get a big whip upwards in the next six months or perhaps not? Look, I certainly hope we don't, to be completely honest with you, because, you know, the inventory stocking and restocking and destocking is creating havoc in, I think, industrial companies such as ours. You know, I think that all of our customers are becoming much more efficient operators as well. I think that they rely more on companies like Gates to be able to manage their demand without necessarily having a huge amount of stock. That being said, my sense is that you will see some restocking because I believe that the inventories, as you said, are very, very low. In order for these distributors and channel partners to be able to effectively service their customers, I think it's gonna be tough for them to do that from the level of inventory position that they all have today. Now, the complication is going to be that, you know, there have been a pretty significant supply chain disruption that we all have lived through from 2020, you know, from second quarter of 2020 onwards. It's gonna be interesting to see how supply chains start healing. My sense is that we'll probably see some rebalancing of inventories as we see continuation of the market healing. Maybe looking at, you know, a magic point in the automotive world, you know, every day it feels like we're getting headlines around this or that OEM accelerating EV investments, you know, scaling back the ICE investments, and COVID perhaps accelerated that. Remind us, you know, how does Gates view that transition affecting the company itself? What's the content per vehicle like? But also, I suppose, with those OEMs in that transition, you know, is Gates confident it can get its fair share within the various OEMs on the EV-based platforms? Yeah, I think this is a great question. Look, I will be the first one that I will admit that, you know, we have been doing quite a bit of work under the skin to prepare our company for this transition. We haven't been very vocal about the technology that we have developed, and I think that you will hear us hear a lot more speaking about that, as we transition through 2021. I think on my last call, I stated that, look, we, you know, we will start talking about more design wins. We have spoken a little bit about a design win that we have secured in Q4, a heavy-duty truck, that we believe is, you know, is a really good design win for us, and it will start our more broad participation in the electrification. You're right. Almost every day you hear somebody talking about their desire to accelerate the transition into full electric vehicles. Look, we, you know, we participate today in the auto and heavy-duty truck markets with more traditional components. Our components, you know, go beyond just the power transmission side. Our components that we participate in are also thermal management products like engine cooling, you know, hoses that provide engine cooling and water pumps. Now, on these platforms, these products, as they transition into fully electric, they also cause a transition in technology. If on a passenger vehicle, on an ICE passenger vehicle, you may have a couple of mechanical water pumps that are kind of in the, you know, 50-75 watts of output that are, you know, single directional, really purely mechanical, you know, reasonably low cost, kind of call it $7-$10 of content, times maybe two or three. You know, those water pumps go up in output. They go to kind of 200, 400 watts to 1.2 kW. You are getting an increase in complexity from the output of power. You are getting complexity through these pumps now become bi-directional, on-off type pumps, and they are electric. The content goes maybe from, you know, $7-$10 to anywhere from $25-$100 in content. You know, this is the type of the content where we talk about the opportunity for us. That's the type of the content that we are very excited about. On the thermal management side, on the kind of what traditionally was engine cooling, you know, we no longer are gonna have an engine cooling. What we have is we have much more complex cooling of the inverter and of the batteries. The content for us versus the traditional ICE on the inverter and battery cooling goes up exponentially as well. We believe that is why we believe we have a tremendous opportunity with electric vehicles. Again, I think that you will start hearing us talk more about participation on OEM side of the electrification more intensely in 2021 and beyond. At the same time, I want to remind everybody that we are primarily focused on replacement business. The replacement side of the business is going to take quite a time until the, you know, the propulsion technologies transition, until they age to seven to kind of 14-year-old, old car park that is a sweet spot for our company. That being said, you know, we are not really waiting until we build out that fuel count for that, you know, for that existing car park that we see today. I spoke, I think, on my last quarterly update that we have launched over 30 SKUs for existing EVs that we, you know, we will continue to build up and we will get ready so that by the time that this becomes a more significant part of the car park, we will be, you know, we'll be in a situation that just like we are on an ICE, we have the reliable partner for people to go to, to get their automobiles repaired and go to the comp for the components that they need to do so. Thanks, Ivo, for that thorough answer. Is there, on the Gates side, much reinvestment need, you know, R&D or CapEx alongside that transition that the, you know, suppliers and OEMs are doing in automotive, or that's sort of in your run rate already, and you balance it with some scaling down of the ICE-related investment? Yeah, I think it's a great question, Julian. I will, you know, the answer that I will provide you is that it is in our run rate. I mean, I think that you've noted in your note that you have published after our call that, you know, our CapEx is stepping back up to the normalized run rate of 3%. We are doing that because we have a ton of growth opportunities, and some of those growth opportunities are in the EV space. We will be supporting the CapEx required to be able to get these technologies that I've just described launched. You know, on the, on the thermal management side of the EVs, we have a predominantly built-out capital structure, but there are some incremental, additional technologies that we need to be able to, you know, to be able to develop the latest of technologies that are evolving as these platforms are evolving. If you take a look at just simply from the Model S Tesla to Model Y Tesla, you really see a clear-cut delineation and evolution of that thermal management system and, frankly, a rising complexity for our products. You know, that also requires you to stay current and contemporary with the technology and make sure that you have the assets in place to be able to support that. On the sort of broad industrial side, away from automotive, yeah, I think a lot of companies are forever trying to make their businesses in the industrial world more recurring, less cyclical, less commodity-centric, more consumable, you know, all of that type of movement. Where is Gates, you know, sitting on that front today? What are the main things Gates is doing to try and push up the sort of stickiness of the customer base in the industrial world now? Yeah, so I think it's a really good question. I would, I would point out, Julian, that, you know, over 65% of our revenue comes, in replacement markets that, frankly, in our view, are highly reoccurring revenue. It isn't a reoccurring, revenue kind of like you would think in a software-based business. If your equipment breaks, you're going to go to Gates and get, get that product so that you can, operate your, your apparatus, whether or not it is a, a combine harvester or it is a, you know, it is a piece of gear, a lathe or a machining center in, in a machining operation. You know, we, we believe that, that our, that, that vast majority of our products are mission-critical. They deliver incredible amount of value, and certainly they have a wear and tear aspect associated with them, and they have a natural reoccurring replacement cycles. You know, we feel quite well. We feel good about our portfolio. We feel good about the components that we manufacture. I think that, you know, that is why you do not really hear us so aggressively going and continuing to build the OEM presence. We really want to ensure that our coverage of the apparatus that is installed in the industrial complex is covered. That is where we are spending our focus and commitment to continue well into the future. Maybe switching to the profitability side, you know, how soon should we expect that 24%+ EBITDA margin target to be hit, you know, beyond some of the vagaries this year of temporary costs returning, maybe some input cost headwinds for a quarter or two? You know, what kind of operating leverage should Gates deliver medium term? Yes, let's look, you know, let me start with, my view and my commitment to the shareholders and the street has been that during the present period, we will be returning, you know, as we are returning to growth, we are focused on, frankly, delivering, you know, elevated incrementals. We are committed to 50%. I'm on the record. You know, we are, we are very focused to be able to do that. You know, thereafter, if you think about it, you know, kind of in the year two post-recovery, you know, we would certainly expect to see more typical incremental margins to be in the range of 35-40% for both of the segments of our product portfolio, driven, frankly, by the transformation that we have undertaken of our business and by the innovation that we are putting into the marketplace. We feel good about right-sizing our variable cost base. We feel good about the efficiency improvements that we have driven, the footprint restructuring that we have brought forward. Frankly, that remains to be fully on track. Despite the trade war and despite the global pandemic, we are really not decommitting our 24% midterm target that I had shared with the investment community in 2019. Maybe looking at free cash flow, you know, I think the conversion rate is obviously depressed this year a little bit by CapEx and maybe some working capital movements. You know, I think Gates historically has talked about sort of, you know, 80-90% or so type conversion. But the last two years, the company's, I think, 105% if you take 2019 and 2020 sort of combined. As we look out, you know, could we perhaps see better cash conversion, better cash margin than what you've talked about typically since the IPO? Right. Look, there is nothing structural that prevents us or prevents this business from achieving free cash flow conversion greater than 100%. As you know, that is my stated goal. Our guiding 2021 contemplates a very significant growth, which does require to fund some working capital needs. That being said, you know, it is our initial minimum targets to deliver 80% plus cash conversion. We believe that the large investments are behind us. We do not believe that we need to make, you know, incrementally large investments over, over the foreseeable future. Look, our CapEx is gonna normalize kind of at a 3% of sales, which includes continued funding for the initiatives that, you know, we have spoken about earlier, right, whether it is electrification opportunity or, or some of the other secular trends that we see we can capitalize on. We are very committed to reduce our growth stock. As we do that, in addition to converting cash of the Adjusted EBITDA, we also believe that our free cash flow margin can improve as we continue to pay down our growth stock. I'm, as you know, I'm hellbent to be able to do that certainly in this year and for the foreseeable future. On that point, Ivo, that three times net leverage at the end of this year, looking more likely now, what's the sort of through cycle leverage range you think Gates should run with? How soon can you start to deploy cash for non-debt reduction uses? Yeah, Julian, you know, we put ourselves certainly in the same category as premium industrial peers. If we want to be truly put in that excellent environment of peers, we need to also get our leverage to a level that they operate within. My sense is that we have taken a pretty significant investment in 2017, 2018, and 2019. That being complete, we believe that over the midterm, we can get to that two to three times leverage through the cycle. We believe that that's a really good environment for us to operate within. Again, you've highlighted that we've demonstrated we can generate terrific cash flows. We've done that in depressed timeframe. We believe that, you know, this business is very capable to generate and turn earnings into cash. I don't believe that it's gonna be, you know, five years before we need to, before we operate in that two to three times. I think it's, it's probably a, you know, kind of two to three year timeframe where we will be, operating in that kind of two times net leverage environment. Now, that being said, we don't need to get to two times net leverage to deploy capital to other uses. We are operating in a very fragmented market. We spoke about, very large, market that we, you know, that we participate in. There is a significant amount of, opportunities for consolidation. We have, you know, good, pipeline of opportunities of potential acquisition targets that give us an opportunity to, to broaden our portfolio within, close adjacencies. We have a very formulated set of opinions about where we wanna grow, through some of the secular trends that we see. We think that those opportunities are out there. Honestly speaking, first and foremost, I want to get to three times or below leverage. I think we can have a very proactive conversation and productive conversation about, you know, where we think that we can grow inorganically. Those targets are there and they're great. Would the idea at that point, sort of steady acquisition process, you know, year in, year out, and that's where most of the cash would go as opposed to sort of buybacks or dividends or kind of the odd large transaction, you know, intermittently? You know, my focus, Julian, is to actually do something that maybe industrial companies do not do so well. That is to demonstrate we can grow really well organically. Layer on top of that, kind of a 2-3% of incremental, M&A driven growth. If we can accomplish that, we believe that we can kind of grow in that, you know, 6-10% range every year through the cycle. That would, you know, that would leave room for other uses of cash. It does not necessarily mean that all of that cash will be deployed on M&A. We believe that the lowest cost growth is an organic growth. I think that we are really well positioned to do that. I think that, particularly over the next few years, we are gonna demonstrate that we are really good organic grower. Perfect. Unfortunately, Eva, I think we're out of time. I know you have a very busy investor meeting schedule, so really appreciate you participating in this fireside chat. Thanks everyone for joining us today, and we'll look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you, Julian. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.