All right, welcome to the MSA presentation. Joining us today we have Lee McChesney, MSA long-term participant in our conference, so happy to have him here today. Lee's gonna give us a summary of the company and go through some slides, and then we'll open it up for Q&A after. Now I'll take it over to Lee. Thanks, Lee. Yeah, Patrick, thank you. Thanks for the introduction, and thank you all for joining. We appreciate your interest in MSA Safety, and I'd certainly like to thank the Oppenheimer for hosting the conference, and our team's happy to be here. During today's discussion, a few key takeaways I'd like you to consider. First and foremost, MSA Safety is a global, purpose-driven growth company with a singular mission of safety. You know, this mission drives our strategy, inspires our workforce, and has not wavered since our founding in 1914. It's why... It's our why. When we wake up each day, you know, we know that we're keeping people safe, and it's really led to a real rally call for the organization for now 110 years. We are the leader in the sophisticated safety space with global reach and scale. Our market-leading new product development and innovation positions as well to capitalize on the positive secular trends in the markets we serve. And third, you know, our business has proven to be very resilient. It's supported by defensible positions across 3 product categories: firefighter safety, detection, and industrial PPE, and diversified geographic regions and end markets. So we are not your average industrial company. We don't just swing up and down. We're a very resilient business model because there's such a sticky nature of, you know, really over 60% of our businesses. And then finally, you know, it's all supported by the MSA business system. We remain committed to delivering mid-single-digit growth, 30%-40% incremental margins, and approximately 100% of free cash flow conversion over a cycle, while really leveraging our strong financial position to invest in strategic growth initiatives. Now, before I get to the presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that if you're interested in learning more about MSA Safety following today's discussion, we're holding an Investor Day on May 22nd. The event will be webcast live from New York City, and registration can be found on our IR website. So next page, just, you know, a reminder, I'll do the short version of this. Please be mindful of the safe harbor statements regarding our forward-looking outlooks today in the Q&A. All right, so let's go to the next slide here. So MSA has been a purpose-driven safety company, as I mentioned, since 1914. Our mission is that men and women may work in safety, and that they, their families, and their communities may live in health throughout the world. It's, it's what we started with in 1914, and it's still who we are today. So we haven't had to figure out what our purpose was. We're, we were born with that purpose. That mission motivates our employee, our more than 5,000 employees, in and out every day. We have an attractive financial profile, $1.8 billion in sales, 48% gross margin, nearly 23% operating margin, if you look at the last twelve months. Within our financial profile, we have strong cash flow generation, enabling really a nice balanced capital allocation framework, which leans towards organic growth, and then complemented by strategic bolt-on acquisitions. Our framework also returns cash to our shareholders, and we have a long history of paying an increasing dividend. Last week, we announced an 8.5% increase to our dividend, so up to $0.51 a share, and that marks our 54th consecutive year of an increase. And then we certainly utilize share repurchases as well, with an intent to minimize the dilution from our equity compensation programs. Now, our mission of protecting workers is driven, brought to life through innovation, and that's represented on the slide by 4.5% of sales reinvestment in R&D. So, you know, $81 million spent in the last 12 months to bring these, you know, these leading solutions to life to serve that mission. Now, we have two business segments. Nearly 70% of our sales is in the Americas segment. A little bit more detail, obviously, underneath that is, yes, the US, but Canada, Mexico, Latin America, South America, and our international business represents the remaining 29%. So if you step back, really, about 40% of our business is outside the US. Now, we have three product categories. As I touched on a little bit earlier, firefighter safety represents the largest sales volume of the mix, about 39% over the last 12 months. These are sales of breathing apparatuses, oftentimes called SCBAs, helmets, turnout gear, and then some of the equipment a firefighter uses. Now, detection represents 35% of our sales. Certainly been, you know, our fastest-growing segment. Sales in this category are comprised of portable and fixed gas and flame detection products. And then finally, 26% of our sales is the industrial PPE market. This is made up of industrial head and fall protection products primarily. And our leading sophisticated safety portfolio goes through diversified geographic regions and markets, and again, innovation is the mindset that really brings this to life. It has a meaningful impact on the world. So 40 million workers are protected every year through MSA Safety's products. This is something we just released to the market early this year, really put a nice, you know, perspective of just how impactful what we do is across the world. All that said, you know, this balanced portfolio really brings limited downside financial risk during what you would, you know, normally see from your average industrial during the different cycles that go up and down. All right, we can go to the next page. So as I said before, you know, we are a purpose-led growth company with a singular mission of safety. You know, we have a vast impact on the world, driven by our unique mission. You know, we have three impact pillars: our products, our people, and our planet. Now, on the product side, you know, recent innovations such as the Bacharach MGS-401 or the C1 Hard Hat allow our customers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and minimize heat stress for the worker. Now, in line with that mission, product quality, durability, are extremely important aspects of our products and solutions, and we've built a reputation in the market around these attributes. And with our proven R&D capabilities, we continue to innovate across our product categories to help address our customers' toughest safety challenges. Now, we have a highly devoted team committed to our mission. Again, 5,000 associates that wake up each day. You know, that mission is how we recruit, retain, and motivate our employees. And when looking at, you know, our key executives, we have a high diversity in our leadership team and our board, which really helps bring the best ideas forward, on the innovation front. Our overall workforce runs about 53% diverse, and in this competitive environment, MSA is a place where talent can come to work, be included, and really contribute to the impact we're making across the world. Now, moving on to the planet. Last year, we did set a 1.5-degree Celsius carbon reduction target in line with the Paris Agreement, and along with that, our goal is to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 42% by 2030. We'll continue to make progress against our commitments, already a ton of results in the last couple of years. Finally, these efforts are brought to life in MSA, and they're recognized often. You see, you know, just on the chart here, you know, there's Newsweek, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, a lot of recognition for what we're doing, you know, locally and internationally as well. Again, if you're interested in learning more, certainly look at our most recent impact report, which is located on our IR website. So let's go a little bit more into the products. So, again, we talked about having three product categories, each really supported by their own, strong secular trends. So whether it's, you know, increased safety regulations, you know, ESG and sustainability, or, you know, the adoption of solutions for the connected worker, all of which are expected to drive demand for sophisticated solutions of safety, products. Our products serve a wide range of end markets, including government, municipal fire departments, energy, utilities, food and beverage, construction, manufacturing. Again, a very diverse set of markets that we serve. Let's take a little bit deeper look into each of these three categories. So we'll start in firefighter safety. You know, we protect the firefighter from head to toe, by, you know, by manufacturing firefighter helmets, their breathing apparatus, turnout gear, and, you know, unique products like thermal imaging cameras. This category represents 39% of our sales. We have a number one position in each of these categories, with a strong position in the Americas, and we continue to see good growth internationally. You know, more recently, for example, the London Fire Brigade, you know, a competitive win for us. You know, an area where they really wanted to see a total solution. Really, they were interested not only in our products, but also the connected firefighter journey that we're on. You know, nice competitive win, and, you know, frankly, has helped influence departments around London to also be open to MSA as well. And again, this is a category that, you know, 5 years ago we didn't really have much of a share at all, so some really good recognition there. So in the SCBA, again, the self-contained breathing apparatus, we offer the market-leading G1, which was recently awarded a nice contract from the U.S. Air Force. Last year, we completed the shipment of that initial order recently, you know, about $35 million. We're expecting a second tranche of that later this year. And then outside of the, you know, the national markets, you know, the US-oriented markets, we offer the M1, which really speaks to modularity in the SCBA. We introduced that a few years ago, and that's... I'm sorry, the, the evolution from the G1 is the M1 for, for the international markets. A lot of modularity built into that. In the helmet space, we have two brands: Gallet, which is number one in the international market, and our Cairns, which is the iconic brand in the US. You know what a firefighter helmet look, looks like in the US, that's a Cairns helm- a Cairns hat. In celebration, we just released our newest. You know, Cairns was created, started in 1836. We just released the Cairns 1836 fire helmet at the most recent fire trade show in Indianapolis. It's our lightest weight traditional fire helmet on the market, and this is the latest example of continued innovation, bringing better protection to the firefighter. And then in turnout gear, we completed our head-to-toe firefighter kit with 2017 and 2021 acquisitions of Globe and Bristol. This is obviously what a firefighter wears. This is turnout gear, protective apparel, and the Bristol is a leading position in the UK market. These brands help really strengthen our distribution network and really provide us an opportunity to have a more frequent interaction with our users than you did simply in the SCBA world. So our go-to-market strategy really includes unique fire distribution. These are distributors that, in many cases, are multi-generation, selling MSA products and developing key relationships with departments. You know, just here in Pennsylvania, where we're based, you know, there's over 2,000 fire departments that need to be serviced. So, we certainly lean on our distributors to help service that, but obviously, there's also a heavy inclusion from our own sales people as well. So hey, 70% of the 1.1 million firefighters are volunteers. So again, just another example of just maintaining those relationships so we can really make sure MSA is understood across the US and across the globe. You know, another example of just the success here is, you know, we estimate over 97% of fire departments in the US use at least one MSA product today from our offering, again, from head-to-toe firefighter solutions. Now, you may be wondering about fire. The funding environment there is pretty, pretty strong. You would benefit from federal funding on an annual basis, and the fire business is quite resilient for MSA during times of economic stress, because funding in this area is consistently a top priority. You know, if the, you know, things are good, obviously funding is strong, it goes well. But even when things are challenged, the firefighter market is a place where really funding seen as a good place to put dollars to help the communities get safer, but also, it's a good- a really good return for your dollar. And then certainly, technology and the connected worker are growing trends in the firefighter space as well, and certainly we're on the leading edge of that. And it's certainly helped us win some of the business you've seen recently, whether it, you know, it's in London or L.A. The fact that the SCBA is connected and has the ability to, to develop a solution set while they own it over the next 10+ years is a key feature that we really are leading the industry with. Let's pivot now to detection. So the, you know, this business dates back to when, the origins of the company, when the canary, came out of the coal mine, and we started with our carbon monoxide detectors. So, you know, this has expanded as a portfolio for us. It's 35% of our business today. It's made up of really two, two areas: fixed gas, you know, flame detection, and then portable gas detection. So let's start off with, with fixed gas. It's really about installing products within the process control of a facility. So think about protecting critical infrastructure and the environment. So it's really a sticky business as a result of, you know, maintaining relationships. Once you attach this to the building, in many cases, you're starting a ten-year relationship, because whether the building's gonna evolve, whether you have to replace sensors, you know, all that's gonna be this, the sticky business as you go forward here. So our technology is unique in that we leverage our proprietary sensor capability. We design and make those sensors ourselves. We're not using someone else's. And it's resulted really in, you know, really the less of a need for maintenance for our user, lower costs for our customers, and, you know, our go-to-market strategy is through dedicated reps. You know, imagine a system for green energy generation. There's multiple parties involved in laying out that site, you know, the solutions to ultimately use. Those reps make sure we're represented across the globe, inspect into those solutions. One of the more recent examples of innovation is the release of our FL5000 multi-spectrum flame detector. It leverages advanced infrared sensors and AI to enhance performance and responsiveness, 'cause in this business, speed is everything. The speed of detection and also not having false alarms is critical to make sure your people are left protected. Now, this business also includes Bacharach, which is one of our acquisitions from a couple years ago. It's a leader in the HVAC and refrigeration space, and it's really focused on detection and leak solutions, and really is focused on a broad range of applications. You know, you can imagine anywhere there's, there's HVAC, there's a need for detection and protection and, and frankly, just maintenance. Now, again, I mentioned it, there's a split here, so that's the fixed gas business. The portable gas detection business is really focused on protecting individuals. You know, we again leverage our proprietary sensor capability across a full range of portable instruments focused on worker health, safety, and wellbeing. And more recently, we've launched our fully cloud-connected solution, called the ALTAIR io4. Now, this is part of our connected worker ecosystem, and the product continues to see accelerating momentum is the io4. And again, it's been out for about 18 months. It's now available in 60 countries. It's fully connected. You know, it goes through many cases, you know, local network, but also connected through mobile systems across the globe. And the io4's connected product that really works seamlessly with MSA Grid software and our ALTAIR io4 Dock to provide higher visibility into worker safety. And again, you know, really, we go to market here through industrial distribution. And then finally, our industrial PPE business represents about 26% of our sales, and that's comprised primarily of industrial head protection and fall protection solutions, including PPE and systems. Now, this is sold through local regional distribution, distribution that you're all familiar with, your national distribution, like Grainger and Fastenal. And our leading position is in hard hats with our iconic V-Gard. Again, go look at really any type of construction site other than a residential, and there's probably a good chance you're gonna see the V-Gard or our Skullgard on that site. Complementing that is really our growing position in fall protection, with our leading innovation focused on comfort and usability. Fall protection remains a large growth opportunity for us. Again, a reminder, falls on the job site are still the number one killer of workers in the U.S., so there's still a focus here on continuing to bring innovation to the marketplace to eliminate any of that risk. Now, as a reminder for you, these product lines have been supported by consistent investment. Again, 4.5% of our sales goes into innovation. Innovation, again, is how we service the mission of keeping people safe so they return home each and every day. Let's pivot now to the next slide and talk a little bit about how we execute and deliver, nice, nice returns for our shareholders. So, again, maybe not be surprised, we're a pretty pretty disciplined as a company, so a disciplined execution of our strategic priorities aims to really continuing creating value for all of our shareholders. Now, first, our consistent mid-single-digit growth across our business segments is fueled by a steady demand for safety products and solutions across the globe. Again, it's a secular trend that you're only seeing increasing as we look forward here. Our customer-centric innovation, again, is what helps us be successful here, have the market-leading positions we have. You know, we measure that through vitality. You know, our five-year vitality is 37%. So again, for a space where, you know, a great solution can last for decades, certainly bringing innovation to market's very important as well. Now, we complement organic growth through strategic bolt-on acquisitions. Over the past several years, we've invested over $400 million in strategic M&A. These acquisitions have enhanced our market position, expanded our addressable market, and improved margins, and enable us to really continue driving growth. Again, examples include, I mentioned earlier, Bacharach and Sierra Monitor, which was in our gas detection segment, and Bristol in our firefighter segment. These are businesses that were close to who we were, they were natural enhancements, and they hit the financial thresholds of what we do here. You know, when we, when we do an acquisition, we're looking for them to, you know, make sure they're either on day one, accretive to who we are, or we see that visibility over the first couple of years of ownership. All that has enabled us to maintain a very strong balance sheet, and we leverage that as a strategic asset. You know, we have investment-grade metrics. Today, our debt to EBITDA is down to one after we had, you know, done a strategic liability, or a divestiture of our liabilities back in January last year, where we went up into the twos. We're already back down to one because of the strength of the cash flow that, and the resulting balance sheet. So we certainly support our balance sheet strength, and allows us to have balanced capital allocation. As I mentioned earlier, over 50 years of increasing dividend, and we continue to deleverage when we do leverage up for strategic acquisitions. Our strong financial position provides us ample opportunity to invest in strategic growth initiatives. It's certainly where we focus first. And really, across all of our operations, we're constantly looking for ways to improve our results for our customers, shareholders, and associates, and communities. And at MSA, you know, we call this the MSA Business System, and it's really our toolkit of processes, tools, and behaviors that drive continuous improvement across the organization. You know, from the business system, we see an opportunity, really, to drive margin improvement from where we are today, of 30-50 basis points annually, and the same time, increase our customers' experience. Again, it's a holistic approach to how we run the business at MSA. So let's pivot to the next slide and give you a little bit of update on the year. So, you know, for the remainder of 2024, we're in a good place. So in the first quarter, which we just reported last week, we delivered solid results that built on our record 2023 performance of really mid-teens growth. Now, you know, for this quarter, we delivered a mid-single-digit growth, robust margin expansion, which, again, supported by MBS, and solid cash flow generation. We saw double-digit growth in our firefighter safety business, and that was partially offset by our detection and industrial PPE business. Again, our business is very sticky, very resilient. It can also be a bit lumpy, so we always like to look at things kind of on a six-month clip, just because of some of the project work that can then play through the business as well. But, you know, we're, we again, good, good solid quarter. Sales were about $413 million. We had a 21% operating margin, up a couple hundred basis points over the prior year. Certainly, volume helped, you know, our focus on productivity, and then price-cost management, and it all, all came through in that margin level. So as we look forward, we're energized by the opportunities in front of us. We really seek to continue driving further efficiencies and continuous improvement. You know, MBS has become, you know, our way to... We navigated through COVID, now you've seen it be our way to really drive higher fill rates, higher margin levels, and, you know, we just think there's still more opportunities beyond that... and again, for 2024, I reaffirmed our outlook with growth of mid-single digits. You know, again, our overall investment thesis is 30%-40% incremental margins, and then 100% free cash flow conversion. So we can pivot to the last slide, and, you know, I'll just conclude with a couple key takeaways. Again, first, MSA Safety is a global, purpose-driven growth company with a singular mission on safety. This mission, it drives our strategy, it inspires our 5,000 associates around the world each day, and it's been our unchanged mission since our founding in 1914. Our business is very resilient. It's supported by really defensible positions across our three product categories, whether it's firefighter safety, detection, industrial PPE. And again, we serve really a nice diversified set of geographic regions and end markets. You know, the business, as I mentioned earlier, is very sticky. Over 60% of what we do is really, you know, a resilient business with the firefighters and with the fixed detection business. And then lastly, we, you know, we purposely are focused to be a leader in sophisticated safety. You know, we've chosen these three business segments. Over the last 10 years, we've been, you know, very disciplined. We wanna focus on building these spaces out, and as a result, we have really a nice global reach and scale, and, you know, we service that market through really our, again, our focus on innovation. And then, again, as I mentioned just before, the business system is really something we've brought to life over the past decade. It started out in the operations world, and really has spanned across the entire business today, and that's what enables us to have confidence in our ability to grow mid-single digits, deliver these consistent incremental margins, and continue to drive strong cash flow, and give us a lot of optionality with our balance sheet. So my last comment is, you know, a little bit of advertising. We are gonna have an Investor Day on May the 22nd, and you know, again, you know, you'll see us really speak about you know, these areas on a much deeper level. If you're interested in participating, certainly go to our IR website. You get all those details, so you can live stream that. So Patrick, that's the introduction for today. Great. Yeah, thanks, Lee. Yeah, I just wanna take a quick minute and say that any of our audience members that now have a question for Lee, feel free to use our message system below, and I can see those on my end, and will reiterate them to Lee here. But, Lee, maybe if I could just kick one off here. Obviously, you mentioned you reaffirmed your mid-single digit outlook. I was wondering if you could kinda walk us through your categories and end markets, and talk about, you know, whether there's, you know, been any, you know, changes kind of underlying within that, year to date, and where you see that, going through the rest of the year. Yeah, no, thanks, Patrick. So, yeah, so a little bit of the color underneath that recommitment. So again, we're looking for mid-single-digit growth here for 2024, and we think it will play out very, very similar to how we describe each of those businesses. So the fire business, the detection business are, you know, typically mid-single digits. Sometimes they trend even a little bit higher than that, but that's what we think will be the 2024 version of that. And we're gonna be pretty cautious on industrial PPE. You know, again, the good thing is we serve a lot of markets, and it's a mix of pluses and minuses, but right now it's netting to a small positive. And that's still our mindset. You know, last year we were cautious on industrial PPE. We had a little bit of a surge of activity in the early part of the year, but it's... You know, again, we all know the markets are a little bit mixed on a macro level. You bring all that together, though, it's a nice mid-single digit growth. As I mentioned earlier, you know, you can have some lumpiness based on some big projects and things like that. So, you know, one quarter could be, you know, maybe not quite those growth numbers I just spoke about. They could be a little bit higher, sometimes they could be a little bit lower, but when you step back and look at it usually over six months or nine months, they very much come back to the investment thesis of mid-single digits, with, again, detection probably leading growth, fire being right in line in there, and then industrial PPE can swing depending on what's going on with the macro world. But, you know, if you step back and think about MSA, as I mentioned earlier, it's. You know, people ask me sometimes about decrementals. We don't have a lot of negative growth years in our history because of really the stickiness and the resiliency of just how we go to market. And so maybe on, you know, a step below that point is just, you know, talking about margins. You mentioned the- Mm-hmm ... steady margin progress and your, your, you know, 30%-40% incremental margin target. Maybe you could talk about some of the tools you're deploying with your MSA Business System to, Yeah ... enable that steady progress. No, I appreciate the question. So, yeah, I mentioned MBS a bit here. It's been building in momentum here again, so that, you know, like a lot of other companies, you have this orientation that probably starts out in ops and lean focus, and certainly we built that capability out. But for the last number of years, we're really trying to bring this across the entire organization, and I think the first proof point actually came out during COVID. So, you know, a lot of businesses were challenged with margins during that period of time. We were able to maintain them despite a challenging supply chain, you know, despite effects-... You know, going crazy all over the world, we're still able to keep our margins right in that, initially, at that phase, you know, the mid-40% perspective for gross margin. And then over the last couple years, all the efforts have helped us, you know, come through in the gross margin expansion you've seen as well. So, you know, what is that? It's really, it's everything. So, it's building out a pricing team capability that we've been doing for a number of years, so that, you know, we really understand, you know, the cost dynamics, we understand the market dynamics, and we can make smart pricing decisions. It's a focus on productivity and at all levels from all functions. You know, maybe as opposed to just trying to mitigate inflation, you know, how do we drive even more than that? Certainly that's helped. Then certainly you get into our kind of our cost base and SG&A, things like that. You know, it's making smart decisions, it's prioritizing, it's following the 80/20 rule, and applying those to the business. So it's that, and then lastly, which is, you know, I might even argue is the most important, it's just this constant focus on innovation. If you have a great solution in the marketplace, and the safety sector, you provide that enhanced level of safety, you know, NPD is a great mix driver as well for the organization. So it's a little bit matching of all those elements. So as we look, as we look forward, you know, we're delighted with what we've achieved, but we're focused on certainly targeting, you know, an element of all those every year, and then we'll just have to see what comes at us. But, you know, goal number one is to protect, you know, all the work we've done to get where we are here, and then we think there's an opportunity to enhance it 30-50 basis points each year. You know, it'd just be... That will just be subject to what's going on in the macro world, but certainly it starts with that mindset to really leverage all those areas each and every year. Makes sense. Okay, thanks, Lee. You know, maybe you, you talked about the strength of your balance sheet and the, the low net leverage, the 1x. Maybe you could talk about some of your capital allocation priorities, maybe specifically to, to M&A, and what's in the pipeline? Yeah, well, we know on the live stream we won't be talking about M&A too much, but I appreciate the question, but I'll certainly talk about how we think about M&A. Sure. So let's back up and think about capital allocation, first of all. You know, we're absolutely investing in the business. That's where, that's the first place we go, so whether that's innovation, whether that's how we go to market, whether it's the operations footprint we have, that's certainly, you know, our first and foremost area to invest the business, to keep growing and living in action here. Certainly, we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, paying the dividends and buying back shares to minimize dilution. You know, the combination of those things could, you know, be probably each about a third, on a targeted basis, and then the rest is for M&A. You know, those numbers obviously flex depending on the opportunities. But M&A is important to us. It's, it's definitely enhanced our journey, you know, historically, but certainly over the last 10 years. You know, M&A's helped us accelerate our journey within the business as we are today. You know, whether it's, you know, advancing on a technology side, or maybe it's helping us find a, even a, a new solution that's number one or number two in what they do, you know, that's, that's how we think M&A plays out. As we look forward, you know, that type of mix is, you know, I think, still the same mindset. You know, we're gonna continue to invest organically, that's the first place we go. We're gonna continue to reward shareholders at the same levels we've been doing. And then again, the balance sheet strength gives us, you know, a nice opportunity, you know, to drive cash flow to just buy, and then we have obviously ample debt capacity to do things. But we're primarily focused on, in the acquisition space, bolt-on acquisitions that enhance the portfolio we have today. You know, the probably the best example of that most recently was Bacharach. Again, that's in our fixed detection business space. This was... We were already in the HVAC space, but this was finding someone that was, again, number one or number two in what they did, and it's really accelerated our journey into, you know, further diversification of who MSA is in the detection space, and then just overall. You think about just who we are, you know, protecting the workers, protecting the environment, you know, it's just a natural evolution of where MSA is. You know, we're looking for things like that today. You know, we're certainly active in the marketplace, but we're gonna be very disciplined. You know, we're looking for things, again, that, you know, meet our financial thresholds, and we think they have the growth characteristics, you know, over the long term, you know, that will continue to enhance MSA. All right. Well, thanks, Lee. I think we're out of time, so, you know, thanks again for participating, and we look forward to learning more at your upcoming Investor Day. Thanks, Patrick, for the extra ads.