Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Hubbell's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star one one again. I would now like to hand the call over to VP of Investor Relations, Dan Innamorato. Please go ahead. Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for the third quarter of 2023. The press release and slides are posted to the investor section of our website at hubbell.com. I'm joined today by our Chairman, President, and CEO, Gerben Bakker, and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Bill Sperry. Please note our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company and are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Therefore, please note the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release and consider it incorporated by reference into this call. Additionally, comments may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP measures and are included in the press release and slides. Now, let me turn the call over to Gerben. Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss Hubbell's third quarter results. Third quarter results demonstrate continued execution off of strong first half and multi-year performance. Price realization remains strong as prior actions to offset inflation continue to stick in the marketplace, supported by our leading position and service levels in attractive markets. Additionally, improved productivity and lower year-over-year raw material costs also contributed to another quarter of significant operating margin expansion. As anticipated, we accelerated our investments in capacity, productivity, and innovation initiatives in the third quarter to drive long-term returns for shareholders. We expect that grid modernization and electrification will continue to drive GDP+ growth in our markets over the next several years, and Hubbell is uniquely positioned to solve these critical infrastructure needs for our customers in front and behind the meters. These investments we are making in the second half of this year will effectively position the company to capitalize on these visible growth opportunities through best-in-class quality and service, as well as through the introduction of new products and solutions. More near term, we detailed last quarter how normalizing supply chain dynamics have enabled improved manufacturing lead times and allowed our channel partners to normalize their order patterns in response to more predictable product availability. This process continued in the third quarter. Bill will walk you through more of the details in a few minutes, but overall, we continue to view this as a natural outcome of supply chain normalization. Broadly, our sell-through to end markets remains healthy, and our positions with our customers remain strong. We anticipate that we will be mostly through this normalization process as we exit 2023. Our visibility to continued strong operating performance gives us the confidence that we can navigate effectively through the fourth quarter to deliver at the upper half of our prior guidance range. As we look ahead to 2024, we believe we are well positioned to drive profitable growth off of a strong multi-year performance base, and I will share some more color around our early planning considerations for next year at the end of the prepared remarks. Before I turn the call over to Bill, Hubbell announced in a press release yesterday the acquisition of Systems Control for $1.1 billion. You'll note in today's presentation materials that we've also closed on a bolt-on acquisition of Balestro. Both of these acquisitions are high-quality businesses with strong strategic fits that enhance our industry-leading platform of utility components, communications, and controls. Systems Control is a leading manufacturer of mission-critical substation protection and control solutions. The business is complementary to our portfolio and enhances our leading value proposition to our core utility customer base. Substation automation is an attractive space within the utility market, as control and relay solutions are critical to upgrading and protecting aged infrastructure, while also enabling the integration of renewables and the electrification of the grid. Systems Control has a proven business model and a demonstrated track record of delivering value for customers and financial performance that will enhance Hubbell's long-term growth and margin profile. Balestro is a leading manufacturer of high-quality utility arresters and insulators that bolts on well to our existing portfolio. Importantly, this acquisition also provides us with additional manufacturing capacity that will enable incremental output in a constrained T&D market. Bill will provide more color on both of these acquisitions in a few minutes, but we are very pleased to deploy capital to acquire attractive businesses like these that will drive strong return and strong long-term value for our customers and shareholders. With that, let me turn it over to Bill to walk you through the details of the quarter. Thanks very much, Gerben. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate you taking time to join us this morning. I'm going to start my comments on page 4 of the materials that I hope you found on the website. You'll see here highlighted, strong results, for the third quarter, with our performance, broadly consistent with the themes and trends we've been discussing throughout the year. If I were to try to summarize that neatly, in a sentence, I would say we've been enjoying, broad-based market strength, in our key end markets, which has helped support, strong margin expansion, primarily driven by execution on the price- cost front, and doing that while absorbing, the channel, managing inventories down in response to, the supply chain improving from, pandemic depths. You'll hear us talk about, I think, a lot of those themes, throughout the day as we discuss our performance with you. So you see, sales of about $1.4 billion, a 5% increase, 4% organic, 1% from acquisition. And again, that's basically in line with how we've been guiding you. The OP margins at 21.4%, plus 440 basis points to last year, marking the third quarter in 2023, where we've had margins above 20%. Again, very strong execution, particularly on the price lever there. And I'd say that it gave us the extra margin to help invest that we think will really help us both grow in future years as well as be more efficient. So I think as we think about earnings and profit, essentially in line with our expectations, a little bit stronger on margin and maybe a little bit lighter on sales growth. So maybe getting there a little bit differently, but certainly in line with our expectations. You see $3.95 of earnings, 28% year-over-year increase. Obviously, the strong operating performance driving those results. And free cash flow of $159 million, higher income in the quarter, but also higher CapEx, higher investment in trade working capital. And we are confident in the year getting to $700 million, as the fourth quarter is a very seasonally strong, as it typically is. So I think the way we're thinking about cash flow, and in Gerben's comments, he talked about multi-year trends. So we're talking about cash flow from 2021 to 2022 to 2023, going from $425 million to $500 million to $700 million. And we're excited about the high-quality earnings giving us that cash flow 'cause it allows us to lean into investing and making our great company even better, even better in the future. Let's go to page 5, and we'll see performance graphically arrayed against prior year here, and I'm gonna start in the upper left on sales. You see 5% increase to just under $1.04 billion. We had talked about organic being 4%, acquisitions being 1%. The acquisitions, PCX, our data center acquisition, as now we've kind of lapped out of that, so the incremental is coming from both EIG and Ripley, which were component manufacturers in the utility space. So helping drive utility growth there, mostly. On the organic, 4%, price was 6%, and units were down 2%. As we think about the units, there was 2 soft end markets that we're managing through. One is the resi side, where we've had double-digit declines. I think interest rates having a big effect there. And second is on the telecom side, and we can talk a little bit more about that, where we still have very strong medium-term outlook expectations for telecom. But the balance, where we see units being driven down, we believe is coming from channel actions to manage their inventories in a very natural response to this kinda multi-year cycle of having our lead times gap out during pandemic problems, where we had both material and labor shortages. Like, we forced our customers, therefore, to overorder, and now they're managing that inventory back down to target the normal levels, meaning they're selling through to our end market at a higher rate than they're buying from us. As Gerben said, we're starting to see that come to an end on the electrical side around now, and we're expecting the power side to be done by year-end. So I think 2024 should start to look like a much more normal order pattern that year for us with healthy markets. On the upper right, you see operating profit, $295 million for the quarter, 21.4% OP margin. 31% increase in dollars and a very healthy increase in basis points of margin expansion. Interestingly, as we look at trajectory and we see sequentially, those margins are down versus the second quarter, that's primarily due to investments that we're making, essentially on the growth side, where we're pushing hard on new product development, innovation, and also making some capacity expansions, as well as on the efficiency side, where we're focusing on sourcing. I think we've shared with you in the past, pie charts of our cost structure and a lot of our costs, in the material side. So our sourcing activity has to be very efficient and, as well as supply chain efficiency. So we're happy to have the margin, to make these investments because we think they're going to make us, more profitable, in the future as we go forward. And, earnings per share on the lower left, you see a 28% increase to $3.95. Basically in line with the OP growth, we had some tax headwinds that were largely offset by interest income. So one of the interesting impacts of higher interest rates, where we have significant cash balances, we've been earning about 5% on that cash, and even better, more towards 5.5% in the US. So helped offset that tax headwind to keep earnings growth in line. And then you see the free cash flow down 18% to prior year. We obviously had more income, but we have higher CapEx, higher working capital investment in inventory. But one big driver was the timing of receipts, which flooded in early October. And so October has proved to be a very cash-rich month. We think going to drive a very cash-rich fourth quarter, which will get us over $700 million of cash flow for the year. So again, that 3-year working cash really is supporting us, being able to be in a net investment position. So now I want to unpack the results between our two segments, and on page six, I wanted to start with the utility segment. So, another strong quarter for our utility franchise. You see 8% growth in sales and nearly 40% growth in OP dollars, with 5 points of operating profit margin expansion. So, strong, strong performance by the franchise here. We'll focus on sales first, up 8%, $838 million. 7 points of that is organic, 1 being via acquisition. The organic is essentially all price, so units effectively flat. And interesting, we're starting to really see—we report to you in these two different business units between the components for transmission and distribution versus the comms and controls business unit. We're starting to see the portfolio effect here, where, for the past couple of years, the T&D components business has been outgrowing communications and controls. Last quarter, the growth was quite balanced, and this quarter, you see comms and controls outgrowing components. I think both, both effects being driven effectively by supply chain disruption becoming more normalized, and let's talk through that for a minute. On the T&D side, we'll talk about three components: first, transmission, second, distribution, and third, telecom. The transmission part of the business continues to be very strong. Demand strong, shipment growth strong, backlog strong, pricing strong. On the distribution side, there are elements that continue to be quite strong on backlog and growth. In particular, there's places where there's some part shortages and, in particular, some of these MOV blocks, which we'll talk about a little bit later, that are causing some of the insulator arrester units to just be growth-constrained, essentially. But where the book and bill parts of distribution have come back and lead times have come way back, we're seeing again our channel manage the inventory down in some of those parts, and the distribution portion bigger than transmission. Telecom is clearly weakening temporarily here. We make primarily enclosures, a little bit of connectors and hardware as well, but we make plastic, fiberglass, and polymer concrete enclosures. If you're crossing the street and you look down as you're pushing the crosswalk button, you know, you'll often see on those corners a lid, and our brand would say, Quazite. You might see the brand name of the telco. And those are boxes that contain the electronics, keep them safe and dry and accessible for maintenance. And, telecom had become an important customer of that, of the enclosures business, and we see very clear weakening there by the telcos. I think there's a mix of high interest rates, but we're seeing the timing of their projects being affected by stimulus dollars, where if they wait to start a project into next year, they'll receive some stimulus and have someone else pay for it. So we're seeing that have pretty significant demand on the timing of projects. The medium-term outlook for that spending is still very robust, so we still consider it a growth vertical, but having this stimulus impacted, I think weakness. So that's up in T&D. On the comms side, similarly affected differently by the supply chain disruption, basically have been prevented from finalizing chips and AMI going into meters. And so business has been constrained. We've seen the chip supply loosen up here in the third quarter, and a nice nearly 30% growth at attractive margins. And so we see some momentum now coming on the comms side. So basically, the portfolio, the pieces and cylinders of our portfolio are firing at different times here, but the net result is a very strong performance, especially as you look over on the operating profit side, on the right side of the page. Nearly 40% growth to $200 million of profit at 24% margins. Price costs still quite a positive dynamic. We feel good about that, that the price continues to stick. You know, the cost has all of 2022 was inflationary from a materials perspective, and 2023 actually turned to become a tailwind. So providing an awful lot of lift to that margin story and some momentum into our fourth quarter that gives us confidence, as Gerben mentioned, to raise our guidance for the fourth quarter. So again, utility franchise performing really nicely, great, great financial performance. We'll go to page 7 to talk about the electrical segment. For them, quite strong execution on the operating profit line by Electrical Solutions segment. You see the 17% growth and the attractive margin expansion there. All accomplished with a 1% decline in sales to $538 million. That 1% decline is comprised of price being up low single digits, and the volume being down mid-single digits. So worth sort of talking about the different end market pieces there. Before breaking it down, I think important to note that the volume is up sequentially, and we think that's a very good sign. You've heard me talk about the channel managing the inventory is down. That's most notable in our non-res exposure area. And with that volume up sequentially, and as we see the order patterns emerging, we believe the fourth quarter will see the segment be able to grow. We'll be able to discuss the end of the channel inventory management phase, which would be quite welcome. On the resi side, it's been soft, down double digits. The industrial is the brighter part. We see growth and healthy shipments. The reshoring tailwind we think is real, and in particular, our verticals are doing very nicely between data centers and renewables. And so when we look to the right side of the page, we see the margin expansion, we see the growth of OP dollars while absorbing some of the volume impacts of the channel inventory management phase and soft resi. It's actually, we think, quite a successful, quite a successful story. So Gerben, in his opening comments, mentioned a couple of portfolio moves, and on page 8, I want to walk you through a little bit more detail than he gave you in his remarks. This is really the outcome of our business development process, which is very intentional and focused on finding us high-growth, high-margin profile businesses that we can acquire and make more valuable on our platform, you know, than they are as standalone companies. And we believe we have two really good instances of that that I'll talk you through. And really good for to see the cash flow performance of the enterprise. Really enable it enable us to comfortably do not only two acquisitions, but one being in the billion-dollar kind of size range. So that's good. I'm gonna start at the bottom of the page with Balestro. You see Balestro, an $85 million deal with $40 million of sales. That, I think, looks very typical to you all. I would call it a very typical Hubbell tuck-in. It's we've been in contact with them on and on for many years. It's exciting to get this to fruition. Balestro has a very attractive local business in Latin America making insulator arrester products. But the real attraction for us is what you see on the left of the picture. Those little hockey pucks are MOV blocks. They help take insulator arrester products, which you see kind of in the spine there, and prevents the conduction of electricity, which then allows our products to really protect other expensive equipment from high voltage surges and other damaging effects. So, effectively, our insulator arrester business in the U.S. has been constrained by lack of availability of these MOV blocks. And so, it's an exciting deal for us, besides local business, to really help us now get that supply chain vertically integrated, make more capacity available so we can actually grow and grab share in those businesses, which are high-margin businesses. So very strategic, strategic acquisition for us, even though of typical tuck-in sort of size. You know, Systems Control being a larger size than typical for us. On this page, I may talk about the footprint of Systems Control, and next page, I'll maybe switch to a little bit more what it does. But you see, $1.1 billion acquisition size with $400 million of sales, that's all in backlog, essentially, so it's kind of pre-wired for that for next year. We are anticipating closing... We've just signed it. We're anticipating closing by year-end, as normal closing conditions get satisfied. We will be anticipating source of funds for the acquisition coming from cash and debt. As a result of the acquisition, we're anticipating our debt to EBITDA being around 1.7 times on a gross basis, a net basis, about 1.5. So interesting to see how the balance sheet has grown and the cash flow has grown to allow a billion-dollar deal to be very affordable by leverage means. We're anticipating attractive accretion from the acquisition. It may be worth noting, I think a couple of you put out some notes that we're emphasizing synergies. And I would not describe Systems Control as a synergy-oriented deal, at least on the cost side. There certainly will be cost synergies, but there's always in the first year, integration costs as well. So the net of that doesn't tend to be a big impact, but the real synergy for us is with our sales force and our client base, really being able to grow the business, very, very effectively. And as well, I think the second item on interest expense, we mentioned our cash. We've been earning about 5 points, and borrowing, you know, will probably be in the 6s, but that's all subject to market conditions at time of close. So we'll kinda reserve the time to get that organized for when we give you guidance; we'll give you more specifics on all of that. And maybe on page nine, I can do a better job of explaining exactly what Systems Control is and what it does. So you see on the bottom of the page, when you have generation, you got to step up the voltage, to transmit it on one of those 90-foot steel towers, and when it gets to the last mile, it gets stepped down in voltage and then distributed, to the user. And each of these substations around. And it's fun when you drive on the highway, you'll now start to look, I hope, and see these white buildings inside of the substation, which contain these control and relay panels, which monitor and control the flow of electricity, and prevent damage to any of the really expensive equipment around it. And so, this business kind of fits very nicely with Hubbell in many ways. It's all the same customers. In fact, you're getting relationship-oriented customers who like this product done on a turnkey basis, which is good for us. If you look around that substation on the upper left, we're already selling insulators, arresters, switches, bushings, hardware, connectors, and the like, sprinkled around. So this is now kind of a chunky investment here in the control building. It has the same traits as typical Hubbell Power Systems, where the cost of our product is quite low relative to the investment in the performance and the other equipment around it. So the protection of that becomes very valuable. It's gonna involve very close work with our customers in designing and executing these buildings. So, we're very pleased and think it fits well. Its financial history has been very attractive. It's grown at double digits over the last 8 years or so. The investment thesis on growth is really simple here. The outlook for substation spending is very robust, as the 53,000 substations out there start to age. And secondly, the way these buildings are constructed, we think there's gonna be a pivot from in-field construction to in-factory construction. And this turnkey solution that Systems Control provides fits that trend. We think both of those trends are gonna allow for continued double-digit growth at high margins. So, I think the last part of fit worth mentioning is the management team. Brad and his team, we really enjoyed getting to know them. We think a lot of times with private equity-owned businesses, we run into a mercenary who's been hired, you know, to dress something up and sell it. And Brad is a 22-year vet of this company. He has a deep passion to grow it, and I would say we're really excited to partner and provide Hubbell's resources to enable Brad to engage in his growth strategy, and we welcome Brad and his team to the Hubbell family. So let's talk about how the year is expected to finish, and then I'll let Gerben tell you about how that sets up 2024. But on page 10, you'll see that we had sales growth when we talked to you last in July, of 8%-10%. We're narrowing that to the 8% range. In July, we had earnings at $14.75-$15.25, so we're cutting that range in half, and we feel good that the fourth quarter momentum will get us to the upper half of the range that we had initially shared with you back then. And the cash flow remaining robust at over $700 million. So the fourth quarter is all that's left, obviously, and we think what we should expect in our fourth quarter is typical seasonality, and there's mid-single digit fewer days, so we usually get that impact on sales sequentially. The price-cost dynamic, we've got momentum there, which is gonna help drive margin expansion in the fourth quarter. And we're gonna continue to invest in both our business's growth prospects as well as its efficiency, to set up a stronger 2024 and beyond. So again, I think the three-year walk, you know, shows a pretty interesting picture of the pandemic contraction in 2020, the expansion with supply chain disruption in 2021 and 2022 and 2023 being normalizing supply chains and price cost really driving this 25% growth over that three-year period. So we really feel we're coming out of the pandemic as a bigger, stronger, more profitable enterprise. I think we're pleased with the investing we've been able to do in 2023 to really help support 2024 and beyond. I'll let Gerben sort of give you some of his preliminary thoughts on that. Great. Thanks, Bill, and as we look ahead, we feel well positioned for 2024 and beyond. Grid modernization and electrification megatrends remain intact, and we continue to believe our utility markets can deliver mid-single-digit organic growth over the next several years. Our industry-leading utility franchise is uniquely positioned to enable us to serve our utility customers as they invest to make the grid infrastructure more reliable, resilient and renewable. While we anticipate telecom markets to remain weak through the first half of next year, strong demand in T&D markets, particularly transmission and substation, support visible growth. We also anticipate that the deployment of infrastructure stimulus funding will drive further demand for Hubbell utility solutions in the second half of next year. In Electrical Solutions, we continue to see significant opportunity to drive further value across the portfolio by competing collectively and operating more efficiently as we bring these businesses closer together. We've made good progress in reshaping this portfolio over the last several years, with 25% of re-segment revenues now tied to growth verticals aligned to megatrends like data centers, renewables and utility T&D, and we expect continued growth in these areas next year. Industrial markets have been solid, with support from U.S. industrial nearshoring and manufacturing project activity, and non-residential markets have remained stable. We've yet to see the signs of macroeconomic uncertainty or higher interest rate impacting these markets, but this is something we are closely monitoring as we build out contingency scenarios for planning into next year. From an operational perspective, the price-cost productivity equation will be more dynamic to navigate as we enter a more normalized environment, but we have levers at our disposal to manage this effectively.... We expect that execution and productivity initiative will become more important focus area for us moving forward, to enable us to offset persisting inflation while maintaining the strong pricing levels we have achieved over the last several years. We'll provide additional color along with our 2024 outlook early next year, but overall, we remain confident in our ability to deliver continued profitable growth off of a strong multi-year base of performance. With that, let me turn it over to Q&A. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Sprague of Vertical Research. Thank you. Good morning. First, just thinking about Q4 implied, you know, kind of a nice acceleration in organic growth. Obviously, the comp is easier, but I just wonder if you could give us a sense of how you see volume progressing in Q4. Sounds like you would expect it to inflect positive in EP and backing into probably a decent volume quarter in utility also, but would love your perspective on just some granularity on the organic as part one here. Yeah, Jeff, I think, I think you almost answered your own question, but it is significant to us, that the electrical side has been facing some of this, overstock situation, for a few quarters now. So we think that's nice to see that inflecting into a growth position and sort of getting that period back to, you know, back to a normal book and bill, sort of fourth quarter and really 2024. And I think that's kind of the, that's kind of the story. Then just thinking about margins into next year, Bill or Gerben, you know, obviously, we're coming off a high level. So it sounds like you expect price to be positive. You still have inflation, in aggregate, maybe not so much in materials, but, but maybe just kinda talk about, you know, roughly how you would bridge us on an incremental or however you want to frame it, because we're also trying to dial in these investment headwinds. I would assume you're going to continue to invest for growth going forward, but it sounds like maybe it's a headwind in 2023, but is more kind of maybe just in the base and part of sales growth in 2024. But maybe you could just give us a little bit more color on, you know, how to think about bridging the margins. Yeah, I think... Look, I think we're frankly, will be much more, give you much more granularity when we're together in January, and we give you our guidance. But I think you're putting your finger on some important things. You know, basically, you've got the expectation that volumes, you know, will be positive, and in those cases, you know, it's the, fixed cost absorption and the incrementals, you know, helping push margins up. I think the, investment point, you know, we're still calibrating exactly how much we're going to do. I think from Gerben's and my perspective, the great news is to see how creative and aggressive our teams have been in coming up with investment ideas. So it's more a function of Gerben and I regulating that, and as opposed to, "Gee, we don't have any ideas as to how to improve, you know, the franchise." I think on, you know, the price comment that you made, there is a little bit of wraparound embedded from the timing of price increases in 2023, but that's pretty small, certainly compared to the last two years. You know, we'll be whether there's any new price beyond that, you know, will remain to be seen, and we'll share that with you as we get to year-end. I think we do expect productivity because you mentioned the inflation side, and we've been pretty simplistically trying to maintain, you know, a balance between price and material cost on the one hand, and productivity and non-material inflation on the other. When the non-material inflation gets, you know, 5-ish%, right, it's a little bit harder to rely on just productivity to do that. That being said, we have a lot of this investment that we've been talking about is aligned towards being more productive. So we're going to continue, you know, to target that price, cost, productivity, you know, to be balanced. But again, I think we'll be a lot more clear with you and granular with you, Jeff, when we're together next time. Maybe just a quick one for Gerben. You know, nice deal here, obviously, on the utility side. I just wonder if you could give us a little bit more color on, you know, how you can leverage it internally, you know, either for growth or margin expansion and, you know, what kind. You know, Bill kind of tried to dial us back a little bit on cost synergies. I'm sure there are some, though, like, how do you integrate this into your footprint, leverage purchasing, that sort of thing, to fully maximize the value here? Yeah, sure. And, we're obviously very excited to both deals, but obviously, the Systems Control, the size and the scale that it adds to the franchise. We're really excited about. The good news with this business coming in, that it's historically been, you know, high growth, and it's very profitable, as you can see. So that's certainly a nice position coming into the portfolio. As we looked and we diligenced this business, there, there's some really nice trends that I think will serve this business right. One is that they've been for 60 years, you know, a relay and control panel manufacturer, but over the last 10 or 20 years, they've moved into more turnkey systems. In essence, what that does is take labor of putting these systems together, you know, traditionally in the field, to a more controlled environment in the factory, where they can not only have a better control environment, but they test them, and it takes, you know, a lot of time out of the field. So this is a trend that we're actually seeing in the business. You know, we saw this when we acquired PCX, so that's similar dynamics. Some of the new products that we're developing have those features in place. So it's an area that we believe will, you know, see outsized growth coming in. What we where we can add to it, as we looked at who their customers are, it aligns extremely well with, with who some of our customers are, with the exception that they still have a much smaller share of those customers. I think this is where we really see that with our sales force, with our people, we can, we can add to, to, you know, complementing that. So I, I do believe it's more about the sales growth than, than probably, you know, typical cost synergies that we would see in smaller tuck-ins coming in. But, but, real excited about having this in the portfolio and what we can do with it. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line... Please stand by. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Tusa of JP Morgan. Hi, guys. Good morning. Morning, Steve. So just on the—can you update us, update us on the price-cost productivity numbers? And then, you know, Bill, you're - you always have, like, a pretty good balanced view of the macro here. I remember back in the day, you know, you would talk about how things were either, you know, kind of trending as you would expect with a rhythm to it, or whether things were, you know, kind of choppy in a low-growth world. How would you kind of characterize the demand you're seeing today into 2024, like, just from a consistency and visibility perspective across your portfolio? Yeah, I would say, you know, the hard part about your question is, I think you're asking about out-the-door demand from our channel, you know, to the end user. And I think that has been a nice, you know, stable demand. I'd point out two weak areas between telco and resi, and together, you know, they're each on one side of our segment, and they're each about 10%, you know. So there's 80% of the company, I would say, Steve, that's seeing nice, healthy markets from, you know, the out-the-door sales side. I think the part that's, you know, makes it a little more challenging is, you know, how much of that's coming out of inventory in the channel versus how much is coming out of our factory shipping new stuff. That's where we're sort of in this inflection phase that I think our electrical side was probably a quarter earlier, and so I think they're out of it, and our power side has another quarter or so to go. So it's that disconnect that just makes it a little less smooth. Because I think you're using a good word of predictability, visibility. You know, I think we're looking forward to 2024 being a little more straightforward of, you know, a demand begets an order, begets a shipment, you know? That is price, cost, and productivity for the year? Like, what that new number is, if there's an update to it. I'm sorry, Steve. [crosstalk] price, price cost. Yeah, price- Yes ... plus productivity. Yeah. So we, you know, when you look at it on a year-over-year basis, this is kind of we got this 8-quarter, 2022 and 2023, very positive picture. You know, 2022, I would characterize as really strong price pull with material inflation. 2023 has been a little bit less price pull, but with material tailwind, so it created an even bigger net. And as you look at it quarterly, you know, it's stepping down in the second half. So third and fourth quarter, a little bit less, but still, I mean, on an absolute basis, a really big contributor to our, our margin expansion story. Can you get an absolute number? Driving the majority of the margin expansion, Steve. Okay, great. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you. At this time, we'd like to remind analysts to limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. Again, that's one question and one follow-up, then return to the queue. Please stand by for our next question, which comes from the line of Nigel Coe of Wolfe Research. Thanks. Good morning, guys. So I only get one question and one follow-on? Okay. Okay, fair enough. Can you maybe just give us, you know, kind of your thinking on what gives you confidence that this utility stock is sort of gonna be finished by year-end? Because I think that's the key for a lot of folks here. So any metrics on kind of, you know, selling the sell outs, you know, backlog burn or, you know, days on hand? Any intel there would be helpful. Yeah. So we've been using backlog, you know, Nigel, let's say that to simplify your question, electrical is already in the position of being kinda book and bill, okay? So, we've used backlog in the second and third quarters of this year. And we still have, you know, more backlog than we traditionally do. I would say pre-pandemic, we would think about backlog being in the 6-week range as being very normal and typical of our book and bill kinda enterprise. I'd say we're sort of in the quarter and a half of backlog now, so it's maybe 2.5 times typical size. So we still have the backlog on the power side. And I think that, you know, the models that we've built, and the way that we're looking at, you know, those specific businesses who have gone to a, a much more normal, lead time, and we see those are the, those are the areas where, we think, they're shipping more than, than they're receiving from us. And, as we talk to our customers, and, and the models that we've created, it feels to us like that burns off, that, that whole phase burns off by the end of the year. And we're kinda using what we saw in electrical, 'cause it's, that's a good precursor, we think. And so the, those two, all that stuff combines. But I do appreciate, I think there's maybe some, some art and, and, some science mixed together in that answer. Yeah, and maybe I'll provide an additional comment here, Nigel, is that while I think Bill correctly points out there's a lot of moving parts, so the good part is we have very strong tie-ins with not just our electrical channel partners, but with our utility end customers. So through those discussions, we can have discussion where the inventory sits in that channel, because it sits in both places. And we see, you know, clearly in certain product lines, supported by the order rates and the shipment rates, that inventory has come down, and they're telling us, you know, when they're getting towards that end of where they wanna be. But I'd also remind you that the demand in the utility sector is still very, very strong. You know, in those same conversation, customers are very optimistic about the you know, increased higher levels of spend. If you look at their CapEx plans going forward, elevated. So while it's certainly a little bit uncomfortable managing through this time, you know, as we look out a little bit, we feel really good about the end demand and that we can continue to grow our business through the cycle. Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. Thanks, guys. And then just on the Electrical Solutions margins, you know, I think with all this noise in utility, I think we're forgetting that these are continuing to, like, inflate to record levels, especially when we consider, you know, the residential business would be obviously well below that the average. So, you know, when volumes inflect, you-- I think you're calling for volumes to inflect in the fourth quarter, and then obviously into 2024. Do you think you can actually build on these margins, or is there gonna be some offsets? So, you know, I can't think of any, but would the... Are you confident you can push margins into maybe the other teens levels? Yeah, I think, I think you're looking at it the same way we are, which is that, this is a new base, and that, new volumes should drop at incrementals. And I think the, the one overlay to all that, that gives me maybe even more confidence than you is, you know, Mark Mikes spent, seems like a lifetime making our Power Systems multi-brand platform compete collectively and, and act really efficiently. And he really is at the early days of him adding what I would just call overall segment efficiencies to, to how those different silos are running. And so there's both the math of growth and incrementals, but also Mikes' experience with us and track record of finding, just structural ways to, to make it cheaper to operate it, more efficiently set, I should say. Okay. Thanks, Bill. Cheers. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brett Linzey of Mizuho. Hey, good morning, all. Hi, Brett. Morning, Brett. Yeah, I wanted to come back to comm and controls up 28%, another strong quarter as you catch up on supply chain. I know at one point you had a $1 billion backlog, $6 billion of pipeline of projects in the funnel. Just curious what the conversion of that funnel has been looking like. And then, do you think you can build off some of this catch-up growth this year as we flip the calendar to 2024? Let me start with the first one and or sorry, the second one, and let Gerben comment maybe on the overall picture. But yes, we think the momentum of having the chip supplies thawing is really helping us get some backlog from the meter side out and as well for on the M&I, on the AMI side. So, it's been—it's a welcome, you know, surge of momentum that certainly will carry us through fourth quarter, Brett, and maybe, maybe let Gerben talk more macroly about the positioning of Aclara. Yeah, and now, regarding the backlog, it still sits around that $1 billion-ish mark. You know, as we look forward, especially with some of the technologies that we are developing to, you know, so serve some of those new applications of distribution automation, we feel well-positioned in this market over the next, you know, several years out. And we see it on our quotation activity, that's picking up. You know, these are big projects that the timing of which tends to be a little more unpredictable than the regular stock and flow part of our business. But we're, you know, quite optimistic and bullish about what this business can contribute over the next few years. You know, that, that's helpful. Thanks. And then just to follow up, I think you noted the additional manufacturing capacity, the two recent deals, you know, could be favorable. I guess, how does this change your current capacity plans or, you know, what you're thinking in terms of 2024 budgeting? Can you absorb some of the acquired capacity? Any context there? Yeah, I think on the Balestro side, it's really adding to the capacity of our North American insulator arrester business. I think on the Systems Control side, you know, as I was mentioning, you know, Brad has some ambitious growth plans that we really embrace. So I think we'll be looking to add capacity. As we mentioned, they've grown, been growing double digits for eight years in a row, and so we're looking to help buttress that. Yeah. Yeah, it's and I'd say on the specific to Balestro, helps with the investment needs even into next year, because that was one of the areas we were contemplating having to make investments in to grow that block or this capacity. But it's not the only one. We're constrained in other areas. If you look at our transmission business and other parts of the businesses, we clearly still need to invest into next year to be able to capture that growth over the next few years. It helps, but it's not unique. Yep, understood. Thanks for the questions. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Snyder of UBS. Please go ahead, Chris. Thank you. I wanna just ask about, you know, confidence in the ability to hold utility margins at around these levels into next year. You know, obviously up a lot year-on-year, and it felt like a big piece of that expansion, you know, was obviously on price cost. So, you know, can you just talk about, you know, expectations there into next year? Yeah, maybe I'll start and Bill will fill in. And if you look at the margins, you know, particularly utility, but I think it's across our business, that in 2023, we, you know, we're looking to expand our margins there by 700 basis points. That's, you know, quite attractive. And our view is going into 2024, is that we can grow profitably on that base. And, you know, one of the drivers is gonna be volume next year. We do expect the business to grow in volume. We expect to manage through this price cost productivity equation that we talked about earlier, and we'll continue to invest in the business. So I think, you know, as a set up to think of profitable growth on top of this base is the right way at this point. Certainly, we'll come back in January to provide more color on the different moving pieces and where that may fall with, you know, margins more specifically. I appreciate that. And then maybe just on the price side of utility. I mean, it seems like, you know, obviously there's been a lot of price the past couple of years. It seemed like the drivers of that were, was obviously metal, or raw materials inflating higher, and then also just supply, you know, couldn't keep up with the strong demand. But, you know, now with, you know, deflation, and it seems like, supply is in a better place, you know, allowing the channel to destock. Any change around price pushback, in the channel? Thank you. Yeah, I would say on the utility, we're not seeing it, and you know, you mentioned a couple of things that cause the price, but I would say beyond metals, just general inflation. We've seen over the last year, just incredible non-material inflation. And I think, you know, we talked in the past of what the pure commodities is, and it's actually a relatively small part of it. The bigger part is the purchase components, the labor, and all that, that has inflated pretty well. The other thing that we continue to have discussions with our customer around is the investments that we're making back in our business. And you don't always see that reflected in our operating performance or EPS, but, you know, the level of CapEx and the elevation that we've done in CapEx and other areas, you know, is an area that clearly benefits our customers, short term and long term. So I think much more of the discussion continues to be around, you know, the value that we can add by the product and the services that we don't deliver than price first as a lever. Not unimportant, but, it's not the leading a part of discussion. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe O'Dea of Wells Fargo. Hi, good morning. Morning. First question, just wanted to ask if you're seeing higher funding costs factor into conversations with utilities and their spend plans at all in your sort of comments around ongoing mid-single-digit growth? Doesn't really seem like it. And then just related to that, I think your kind of outlook for the transmission and substation growth to outpace distribution growth, maybe a little bit more context on sort of what's behind and driving that. Yeah, I mean, I think on. Let me take the second question first. Transmission and substation growth, I think is being impacted quite a bit by renewables, as well as electrification trends. So, you know, you need a new substation if you're doing a, you know, utility-size solar farm, you know, that needs to be generated and then transmitted and then stepped down again. To the extent you had some kind of massive data center or battery factory, you know, so electrification impacts like that, you know, that kind of increases the demand on substations. And in addition, you just have, in those 53,000 substations, you just have some aging equipment that, you know, needs to be updated. So it's not that it's not that distribution has bad growth outlook, it's just that the projects on the T and substation side, we just think are gonna outgrow a little bit. We did a little deep dive, you know, last quarter on that because we think it's an interesting little subset of the space. You know, as far as interest rate impact on project management, you know, I think it obviously is weighing on people's consideration of cost of capital, and I just think the returns on their projects, you know, are just higher than the cost of capital. So we just... We haven't seen the dialogue, you know, step down because of interest rates, but that may, I don't know. That we, we're not—we just haven't seen that yet. The other thing that will help is the infrastructure bills that you know are starting to come out. We're seeing some of those being released right now. We just recently saw money being released in those areas. A good bit of those are going into transmission projects that we've been following, so that gives us confidence that certainly over the more near term, that area is a little stronger. But that affects positively, even to your interest rate question, I think, you know, bodes well for us, you know, going into next year, particularly the second half. That, that's helpful. And then, just on the, the sequential margin trends in utility, you know, I think clearly a, a mix impact with the comps and control strength. Within the power side and anything from a, a mix side there, to be mindful of in terms of the sequential move, or, or was it, you know, really just the comms and controls mix? Yeah, I would say nothing inside of Power Systems would create sequential issues. Got it. Thanks very much. Thanks, Joe. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Dan Innamorato for closing remarks. Sir? Great. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, and we'll be around all day for calls. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.