Greetings. Welcome to the Matthews International second quarter fiscal 2023 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Bill Wilson, Senior Director of Corporate Development. You may begin. Thank you, Shimon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Matthews International second quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. This is Bill Wilson, Senior Director of Corporate Development. With me today are Joe Bartolacci, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Nicola, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I want to remind you that our earnings release was posted on our website, www.matw.com, in the investor section last night. The presentation for our call can also be accessed in the investor section of the website. Any forward-looking statements in connection with this discussion are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Factors that could cause the company's results to differ from those discussed today are set forth in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and other periodic filings with the SEC. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial metrics and encourage you to read our disclosures and reconciliation tables carefully as you consider these metrics. In connection with any forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial information, please read the disclaimer included in today's presentation materials located on our website. Now I will turn the call over to Joe. Thank you, Bill. Good morning. Let me first thank all of our employees globally for their contributions to our continuing success last quarter. We are very pleased with our results for the fiscal 2023 second quarter as we continue to see momentum and interest in our energy solutions business, growth in our warehouse automation business, and strong results in our memorialization segment, despite the significant decline in COVID-related deaths. We're on target to meet our financial guidance for the current year. We remain focused on continuing to evolve our businesses to meet the opportunities before us. Consolidated sales increased by almost 8% and adjusted EBITDA improved by 6% in the second quarter of fiscal 2023 on a year-over-year basis. Importantly, on a constant currency basis compared to prior year, our sales increased 10% and our EBITDA increased almost 9%. A strong performance in a challenging environment. Looking at our businesses, industrial technologies grew by over 60% year-over-year, primarily through higher sales from our energy storage solutions business, as well as the acquisitions of OLBRICH and R+S Automotive. The interest in our energy storage offerings remains strong as we engage with many industry leaders in the battery space, including most of the Asia Pacific-based battery manufacturers. As well as OEMs around the world, we stand positioned to continue to grow this business. Progress on the over $200 million of energy orders we announced last quarter is on track and going well. We look forward to sharing additional information in detail on new orders over the next few quarters as several of our discussions are approaching the final phase of negotiations. Although OLBRICH has yet to be a contributor to our bottom line, the acquisition was a clear message to the EV market that we now have the skills and the capacity to significantly grow our energy business. For the OLBRICH acquisition, I am doubtful our current and prospective customers would have entrusted us with the orders we have received, let alone the orders and relationships that we are discussing. We are beginning to raise our prices and reduce our costs at OLBRICH as we look to position the business as a significant contributor to our overall results going forward. Our memorialization business grew despite the return to more normalized death rates following COVID. As stated on our earlier calls, we've evolved this business since COVID to a higher level of overall performance. Through market share gains, tuck-in acquisitions, our growing cremation products business, and significant capital investments designed to improve productivity, this business is poised for continuing success. For example, memorialization sales grew by 44% when compared to fiscal 2020 first quarter, the immediately preceding quarter before COVID deaths began to emerge. These improvements assure us of a continued steady cash flow necessary to evolve our overall business and focus on reducing our debt. We are innovators at our core. This attribute can clearly be seen in our product identification business, where we continue to make good progress in the development of our new products. For one of those products, which I have mentioned before, a silicon-based printhead, we have received external third-party revalidation of its value proposition, giving us increased confidence of the opportunity ahead as we move to production. Our external research confirms that the total cost of ownership of this new product can be up to 30% lower over the lifetime of competitive products. When coupled with the ability to meet changing marketing and coding demands like 2D codes or QR codes and ease of use, our business proposition gets stronger each day. Our warehouse automation business, we are in the early stages of a new phase of evolution at this business as well. As you are aware, we are a leading provider of warehouse execution software and pick-to-light technologies that help companies meet the demands of an ever-expanding e-commerce market. Our latest solution in this business will enable Matthews' proprietary autonomous vehicle management solutions to further penetrate the automated warehouse. This solution is still in its early stages, we have great confidence in our ability to innovate in this space for further success. Moving on to SGK. The business continues to be impacted by a variety of elements, including unfavorable currency rate changes and difficult market conditions in Europe. However, the cost reduction actions we initiated in Europe last quarter are beginning to take effect and have mitigated some of the negative impact. Further actions to improve our cost structure in this business, particularly in Europe, are planned in the coming quarters, and we expect margin improvement throughout the remainder of fiscal 2023 and into 2024. As we look forward to the remainder of the year, we are expecting continued consolidated growth. We are only in the early stages of the energy solutions orders we announced in January of this year. As a result, we expect these orders to provide some benefit throughout the remainder of fiscal 2023 and into and through the second quarter of fiscal 2024. Given the nature of these significant orders, the timing of revenue recognition is subject to change. Backlog for our warehouse automation business remains strong, assuring us of another strong year in this business. We remain confident that our memorialization business will continue to perform despite a return to normalized death rates post-COVID. As for SGK, we do see an improvement of the pricing environment, and as discussed earlier, we're also starting to realize the benefits from recently implemented cost reduction actions. With these factors in mind, in addition to the continuation of uncertain near-term economic environment, we remain cautious in our outlook. Consequently, we are maintaining our previous guidance for fiscal 2023 of adjusted EBITDA of between $215 million to $235 million. Although we have the orders to deliver a strong year, we have chosen to remain cautious on the timing of revenue recognition on the existing energy orders and the timing of future orders in this business. Let me now hand over the call to Steve, who will discuss the financial results for the quarter in greater detail. Thank you, Joe, and good morning. I'll begin with slide 7. Consolidated sales for the fiscal 2023 second quarter were $479.6 million, compared to $445 million a year ago, representing an increase of $34.6 million or 7.8%. On a constant currency basis, sales were 10% higher than the same quarter last year. The increase primarily reflected higher sales for the industrial technology segment. The industrial technology segment reported a sales increase of $47.4 million or 60.6% compared to a year ago, primarily reflecting higher engineering, energy storage solution sales, and the impact of the acquisitions of OLBRICH GmbH and R+S Automotive GmbH in August of last year. Memorialization segment sales also increased modestly for the current quarter. Sales for the SGK Brand Solutions segment were lower than a year ago. On a consolidated basis, changes in currency rates had an unfavorable impact of $9.9 million on current quarter sales compared to a year ago. On a GAAP basis, the company's net income was $9.1 million or $0.29 per share for the current quarter, compared to a loss of $1.9 million or $0.06 per share for the same quarter last year. The second quarter last year included asset write-downs of approximately $10.3 million or $0.33 per share related to the Russia-Ukraine war. On a non-GAAP basis, consolidated adjusted EBITDA, which represents net income before interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization and other adjustments for the fiscal 2023 second quarter was $58.4 million compared to $55.2 million a year ago, representing an increase of $3.2 million or 5.9%. The year-over-year change primarily reflected increases for the memorialization and industrial technology segments, offset partially by lower adjusted EBITDA for the SGK Brand Solutions segment. Changes in currency rates had an unfavorable impact of $1.5 million on current quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA compared to a year ago. Adjusted earnings per share for the current quarter was $0.65 compared to $0.74 for the same quarter a year ago. The increase in consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the current quarter was offset by higher interest expense. The increase in interest expense primarily reflected higher interest rates and higher average debt levels compared to a year ago. Please refer to the reconciliations of adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share, and constant currency sales and adjusted EBITDA provided in our earnings release. Please turn to slide eight to begin a review of our segment results. Sales for the industrial technology segment for the fiscal 2023 second quarter were $125.5 million, compared to $78.2 million a year ago, representing an increase of $47.4 million or 60.6%. The acquisitions of OLBRICH and R+S Automotive contributed $33.2 million to the current quarter. The engineering business reported higher sales for the current quarter compared to a year ago, primarily reflecting continued growth on our energy storage solutions business. Our warehouse automation and product identification businesses also reported higher sales for the current quarter compared to last year. Changes in currency rates had an unfavorable impact of $3.3 million on the segment's current quarter sales compared to a year ago. adjusted EBITDA for the industrial technology segment for the current quarter was $15.6 million, compared to $14.4 million a year ago. The increase primarily reflected the segment's sales growth for the current quarter. The segment's adjusted EBITDA margin percentage was unfavorably impacted by the OLBRICH R+S Automotive acquisitions. As we previously discussed, these acquisitions were not anticipated to contribute to adjusted EBITDA immediately. Changes in currency exchange rates had an unfavorable impact of $1.2 million on the segment's current quarter adjusted EBITDA compared to a year ago. Please turn to Slide nine. Sales for the Memorialization segment for the fiscal 2023 second quarter were $222.9 million, compared to $220 million for the same quarter a year ago. The modest increase primarily reflected the benefits of improved pricing, higher sales of cemetery memorial products, mausoleums, and US cremation equipment, and the acquisition of Eagle Granite Company. These increases were partially offset by lower unit sales of caskets, reflecting lower COVID-related deaths. Changes in currency rates had an unfavorable impact of $672,000 on the segment's current quarter sales compared to a year ago. Memorialization segment adjusted EBITDA for the current quarter was $48 million, compared to $42.9 million for the second fiscal quarter last year. The increase primarily resulted from higher sales, improved pricing, and benefits from operational cost savings initiatives. These increases were partially offset by the impact of lower casket sales volumes and increased materials, labor, and other inflation-related costs. Please turn to Slide 10. The SGK Brand Solutions segment reported sales of $131.2 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2023, compared to $146.8 million a year ago. The segment's European businesses continued to be challenged by unfavorable market conditions resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war. In addition, changes in currency rates had an unfavorable impact of $5.9 million on current quarter sales compared to a year ago. Sales for the segment's retail-based businesses were also lower. Adjusted EBITDA for the SGK Brand Solutions segment was $11 million for the current quarter, compared to $13.5 million a year ago. The decrease primarily reflected lower sales and inflation-related cost increases. These impacts were partially offset by benefits from the segment's recent cost reduction actions. Changes in currency rates had an unfavorable impact of $308,000 on adjusted EBITDA compared to a year ago. Please turn to Slide 11. Cash flow from operating activities for the fiscal 2023 second quarter was $80.9 million, compared to $99.9 million a year ago. For the 6 months ended March 31, 2023, operating cash flow was $44.6 million, compared to $72.7 million a year ago. Operating cash flow for both year-to-date periods reflected final payouts for the settlement of the company's U.S. retirement plan obligations. The final payouts for the settlement of the supplemental retirement plans totaled $24.2 million in the fiscal 2023 first quarter. Final payouts for settlement of the company's principal US pension plan totaled $35.7 million in the first fiscal quarter last year. In addition, operating cash flow for the current year reflected an increase in working capital, primarily resulting from higher inventories and reduced current liabilities. Outstanding debt was $778 million at March 31, 2023, representing a decrease of $59.1 million during the current quarter. Outstanding debt was $837 million as of December 31, 2022, and $799 million on September 30, 2022. At March 31, 2023, the company's leverage ratio based on net debt, which represents outstanding debt less cash, and the trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA, was 3.5, compared to 3.85 at the end of December 2022, and 3.5 at September 30, 2022. Based on our projections for the remainder of the fiscal year, we expect these levels to decline further. Approximately 30.5 million shares were outstanding at March 31, 2023. During the fiscal 2023 second quarter, the company purchased 7,600 shares at a cost of $287,000. The purchases related to withholding tax obligations on equity compensation. At March 31, 2023, the company had remaining authorization of approximately 1.2 million shares under its repurchase program. Earlier this week, the board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.23 per share on the company's common stock. The dividend is payable May 22, 2023 to stockholders of record, May 8, 2023. This concludes the financial review, and we will now open the call to questions. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Please proceed with your question. Thank you. Good morning, Joe, Bill, Steve. Thanks for taking the questions. Good morning, Dan. Thank you. Start with the industrial piece and specifically energy storage. How much if assuming revenue does approach $500 million, how much of that is represented by energy storage? Maybe just talk about what you're seeing in terms of the pipeline of new opportunities beyond that, you know, $200 million of new orders that we took in. I think I heard two questions there, so I'll try to get it to you. If we are approaching $500 million worth of revenue, the timing of our recognition of revenue is gonna be determinant of how much of that is made out of, above energy. We're expecting that $200 million worth of orders to be recognized about half in this particular fiscal year. We have other revenues that we're gonna be recognized. If we were to achieve half, I would expect it to be about $140 million-$150 million total of energy orders this year. Now recognized- Dan, that about half, includes the impact of the acquisitions of OLBRICH and R+S Automotive. No, no. None of the $100 million. No, the half of the $500. Oh, half of the $500. Yeah. Okay. No, I was saying Okay, half of the orders were recognized, Dan. Okay. Out of the $200 million, about half of it, if we hit that 50% of those orders this fiscal year, we should have somewhere around $140 million-$150 million of energy orders for the fiscal year. Timing of that is dependent on revenue recognition, which is not necessarily in our control. In terms of what else is happening, you heard in my commentary, the ramp up of inquiries is significant. We are in final stages of negotiations for fairly significant orders from several of the OEMs we've mentioned before, like ACC and Ola. We are also in more relationship negotiations with a lot of the APAC-related battery manufacturers that could result in significant orders as well. We're pretty bullish, as we have always been in this innovative technology that we have and where it's going. Very helpful. Obviously, you've discussed this before, margins on OLBRICH and R&S, you know, are lower than average, and that's why margins are a little lower this quarter. Just talk about the path to getting kinda overall segment margins back to maybe double digits or and maybe even mid-teens ultimately. We expect for the full year to be in double digits from an EBITDA margin standpoint. We are starting to take actions at the latter part of this fiscal quarter, the third fiscal quarter, as it relates to OLBRICH and R&S. Those actions are both costs as well as pricing actions that should continue to improve that business for the quarters to come. We're confident that they're gonna be a contributor to the organization in their traditional business. Mind you, we would probably not be able to do some of the orders that we're talking about today on the energy side without them. It was a good move on our behalf, I believe, in where we think this business will go. Certainly. Then we'll stick with industrial. Just you mentioned warehouse automation, and it sounds like you got some incremental progress on the new print head solution. That's one. Two, just overall kind of, you know, order activity in warehouse solutions, and then I'll jump back to the queue. Thanks. Yeah. Warehouse is full for the year. We're not expecting any significant... Now, you've been with us for a while, Dan. You understand that when economic crises, sometimes it, people pause projects. We don't lose those projects, they get paused. In our guidance, we're not anticipating a pause of any of those projects. The order activity is a little bit slower than we would like at this time of the year, but we've watched this business change pretty rapidly when it comes to order intakes. It's given the size of some of these contracts, it can change very rapidly in terms of where we see going into next year. On the new product development, we're calling that out specifically because one of the things that we have done is an external third party validation of our business propositions. That external party validation reconfirms and adds to our confidence, frankly. We are moving our production. We are moving to a new fab lab for production purposes, and that is ramping up as we speak. We expect to be in market in 2024, and the opportunities get bigger every day. We're pretty confident right now with all three of those businesses in our industrial technologies. We've been building these little businesses into something fairly significant. We think next year could be another stellar year for us, but clearly the balance of this year should remain strong. Very helpful, Joe. I'll jump back in queue with any follow-ups. Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of Liam Burke with B. Riley. Please proceed with your question. Thank you. Good morning, Joe, Steve, and Bill. Good morning, Liam. Steve, in your prepared comments, you highlighted lower year-over-year operating cash operations and, specifically talked about higher inventories. Could you give us some color? Is it just timing or, what's in that number? Business driven, Liam. Our operating cash flow in the second quarter was still very good. It was $80.9 million. It was a little bit lower than last year's number, and that had to do partly with inventory build. The two areas that I'd point to are energy-related businesses. Those inventories were higher and as you would expect, driven by increased revenues, increased demand, increased work. Similarly, our granite inventories on the memorialization side of the business, because that business has been growing and we've seen volume increases there as well. Inventory growth to support growth in those two businesses. Great. Thanks, Steve. Just sticking with the granite, it seems like a consistent or the cemetery products seems to be a consistent contributor to revenue growth. Is there something in the business that's changed? It used to be rather variable on a quarter to quarter. This seems to be a consistent contributor now. Yeah, Liam, we've been calling it out for a while. We've had both market share gains in every one of those businesses, as well as strong pricing realization that has allowed us to maintain that. As I said in my comments, this business has been reset from where we were pre-COVID. Volumes will be back to normal, but the revenues and we anticipate our bottom line to be going forward are materially different than they were before. The steps we're taking to continue to improve it, if I were to show you images of the automation that we put into businesses, gives us great confidence in our continued ability to generate strong cash flows and improve our margins going forward. Great. Thank you. Real quick on the cemetery, you highlighted U.S. sales on cremation, excuse me, were higher. How has the margin contribution been there? I mean, let's put it this way, Liam. On the cremation sales, we sell a little over $125 million of cremation-related products and services, and it's growing. I would tell you that the margins over there are consistent in the mid-teens. We hope that over time that gets better. We are moving into some new incineration projects and new incineration goals in the U.K. business that we think will improve our overall margins in our cremation segment as well. Great. thanks, Steve. Thanks, Joe. Our next question comes from the line of Justin Bergner with Gabelli Funds. Please proceed with your questions. Good morning. Good morning, Justin. Good morning. How are you, Joe? How are you, Steve? We're well. Good. Early morning. First question relates to the warehouse automation. You mentioned that you're seeing some pausing going on in activity, you don't expect that to, I guess, affect the current fiscal year. Can you sort of speak to, you know, what that might mean for the first half of the next fiscal year or sort of just looking beyond the next quarter? Yeah. It's difficult to tell, you know, from. We're not anticipating any impact to the current fiscal year unless there is some significant economic disruption that causes a pause. Right now, the orders are in-house and our projects are on time to deliver a strong year. You might expect, projects of this scale end up being bid and won months in advance. We're seeing a slowing, probably consistent with what I would say the overall market might be feeling, and I would call it more a cautiousness rather than a pause from our customer base as they try to figure out what's happening with the economic environment we're in. That changes very, very, very quickly, Justin. Some of these projects can be $5 million-$10 million that you can land relatively quickly that you weren't anticipating necessarily at this time. We still have 4 or 5 months before we begin next year. Some of the orders we have now will roll in the 1st quarter, at least, of next year. Right now, we're not anticipating any major challenges into next year, but we'll keep you up to date over the course of the next quarter or 2. Okay. Secondly, you alluded to some of the new, I guess, product and technology initiatives on the warehouse automation side. Could you just elaborate a little bit further in terms of the additional areas you're looking to get into? One of the projects that we are working on that I think has some significant opportunities is the management of what's called AGVs, automated guided vehicles. Autonomous guided vehicles are basically robotic moving carts that will move around a warehouse autonomously and allow the movement of product without the conveyors. And the magic in this whole system is managing multiple AGVs in a warehouse that could be upwards of 1.5 million sq ft. We're developing that technology. We got a test model going out here, hopefully in the next 6 months or so with a large U.S. customer that I'm not at liberty to speak about. Obviously, if that is successful, we'll be rolling it out over the years to come. The commentary about that is more around we're not static. In each one of these three businesses, what we call industrial technology, and for that matter, in all of our businesses, we continue to evolve them. You know, I think that part of it is lost on a lot of the market. The opportunities that are presented to us, Justin, are things that will allow us to continue to grow these businesses and meet market demands and be innovators in that space. Got it. In terms of the printhead innovation, any sort of thoughts on timing there? Yeah. In fact, we're off to a European fabrication lab here in the coming month or two. Our expectation is we're gonna start the production levels of that. It takes, as you might expect, this is not an overnight production. We have a product. We have found a partner for the development of that product and for the production of that product, excuse me, I would tell you it is a 24 event. Okay. Lastly, I believe you mentioned the relative cash outflows to settle your pension this year and last. Could you repeat those? I just didn't quite capture that. This year we settled our supplemental plans in the first quarter, $24 million. Last year, we settled in the first quarter, our U.S. pension plan, and that was a little over $35 million. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Justin. Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session. I'll now turn the call back over to Bill Wilson for closing remarks. Very good. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today in Matthews International. For additional information about the company and our financial results, please contact me or visit our website. Enjoy the rest of your day. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you for your participation.