Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Hyster-Yale Materials Handling Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Christina Kmetko, Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Hyster-Yale's 2023 third quarter earnings call. I'm Christina Kmetko, and I'm responsible for Investor Relations. Yesterday evening, we published our third quarter 2023 results and filed our 10-Q, both of which are available on our website. We are recording this webcast. The webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12-months. I'd like to remind you that our comments today, including answers to any questions, will include statements related to expected future results of the company and are, therefore, forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described in our earnings release, 10-Q and other SEC filings. We may not update these forward-looking statements until our next quarterly earnings conference call. With me today are Al Rankin, Executive Chairman; Rajiv Prasad, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Minder, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. With the formalities out of the way, I'll turn the call over to Rajiv to give his perspective on our strong third quarter results in the global Lift Truck markets.

Thanks, Christie, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report that Hyster-Yale had another strong quarter with significant year-over-year revenue and earnings growth. We're continuing to gain momentum as supply chains improve, and we are benefiting from actions we have taken over the past several years to drive growth and sustainable profitability. In the third quarter, consolidated revenues grew by 19% or $161 million to just over $1 billion. Our operating profit improved by almost $84 million from a prior year loss. These results exceeded our expectations for several reasons. First, product margins expanded faster due largely to lower-than-anticipated material costs. Second, we sold more higher-margin aftermarket parts, and we had lower operating expenses than forecasted. On a global basis, our third quarter shipment increased by 5% over prior year. This was driven by a 23% increase in the Americas, where regional supply chains have significantly improved. Shipments declined in EMEA as production rates were hampered by new product launch issues and a handful of critical component shortages, particularly at our Nijmegen big truck facility. Shipments were lower in JAPIC as a portion of their product coming from EMEA were negatively impacted by production challenges. We continue to experience skilled labor shortages in many of our factories. This contributed to planned production and shipment rate constraints in the quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2023, we are planning to increase production rates and expect Americas shipment to increase moderately. These high shipments will likely be more than offset by fewer EMEA shipments while we continue to resolve new product launch issues during the quarter. As a result, we expect a modest decrease in consolidated fourth quarter shipments compared with prior year. In 2024, production and shipment rates are expected to improve in all regions compared with 2023 as component constraints…

Thanks, Rajiv. As you just heard, our positive year-over-year revenue and earnings growth trends continued in the third quarter. The business generated significantly improved financial results that were ahead of our expectations. Once again, quarterly revenues topped $1 billion, increasing 19% or [Technical Difficulty]. Revenue growth was led by a 19% increase in our Lift Truck business, which significantly outpaced the 5% shipment growth rate over the same period. This difference was largely due to a parts volume increase and the benefit from prior price increases in all regions. Favorable sales mix toward higher-priced, higher-capacity trucks and foreign currency benefits added to the top line growth. Shipments in the EMEA and JAPIC regions were lower. Our manufacturing and supply chain teams continued their work on increasing production rates and unit shipments. We shipped 25,700 units in the third quarter, increasing by 5% compared to prior year but declining sequentially. This quarter-over-quarter decrease was in line with expectations due to seasonal plant shutdowns in Q3. Third quarter unit bookings were 18,200, decreasing 12% year-over-year and 15% sequentially. These declines resulted from slowing, but healthy markets in our major geographies. As a result of the higher production rates and lower bookings, our backlog declined to 85,300 units. This favorable decrease improves lead times on some of our product lines. As Rajiv noted earlier, lead times are still long with some extending beyond 12 months. Moving to earnings. We reported consolidated operating profit of nearly $59 million, representing a 5.9% margin in the third quarter. This was an improvement of almost $84 million, compared to a 2022 loss. Our substantial year-over-year operating profit improvement outpaced revenue growth for the quarter, resulting in a 52% incremental margin. Q3 net income was $36 million or $2.06 per share. This compares to a prior year net…

Thanks. Both Scott and I mentioned that we've generated significant cash flow before financing activities to-date. We expect to generate additional cash in the fourth quarter and make further progress in this area in 2024. As our cash flow improves, we'll deploy these resources accretively to reduce debt levels and make additional investments in our strategic growth and efficiency programs. Investing in and executing our core strategies remains a top priority for driving our long-term profitable growth. Hyster-Yale's strategies remain generally consistent with past descriptions, but I will provide a few key updates for each business. The Lift Truck business primary strategic focus remains on launching its modular and scalable products globally. We're also working on several other key projects to increase and enhance Lift Truck electrification, increase the adoption rate for our advanced Lift Truck technologies, transform our sales process using an industry-focused approach to better meet our customer needs and to augment further our independent dealer capabilities. We're making solid progress on each of these programs. Over the past two years, we have launched our modular, scalable 2 to 3.5 ton internal combustion engine lift trucks in EMEA and Americas markets. This production ramp is occurring gradually, given our current extended backlogs. Customer feedback to date has been strong, and bookings and shipments accelerated in 2023. We expect to launch these products in the JAPIC market during the fourth quarter. We're making similar enhancements to the 2 to 3.5 ton electric truck platforms and expect these products to launch beginning later in 2024. The modular, scalable product platform is expected to enhance the business in several ways. First, by reducing cost and working capital levels as our supply chain moved closer to our flagship factories. Second, by helping to optimize our manufacturing footprint in each region and increasing…

Thanks, Rajiv. In closing, I'd like to note that demand for our products is robust, and we're investing in new products that we expect to drive profitable growth. Our strong 2023 results are due to the ongoing implementation of key strategies; the cost structure enhancements made since the pandemic began; and the significant manufacturing, marketing, IT and other process improvements made in the past few years. All of these actions, which we've covered in more detail earlier, better position our company for substantial profitable growth over the longer term. Our more mature Lift Truck and Bolzoni businesses are the foundation for this improvement, while the Nuvera fuel cell business' substantial growth prospects are yet to be realized in the future. I want to emphasize a point that Scott made earlier. We've now had profitable results for the last four quarters. The team has done an outstanding job. The foundation for sustainable and significant profitability over the long-term has been put in place. We have the right team and the right structure to execute our key strategic programs, to sustain strong performance over time and to achieve our long-term goals. I also want to note that we will be hosting an in-person Investor Day in New York City on Thursday, November 16. Rajiv, Scott and I will be there as will our Hyster Group Chief Operating Officer, our Hyster-Yale Group emerging technology business leader and the heads of our Bolzoni and Nuvera businesses. We'll provide more detail on our strategic plans and programs at that time and how they will position us for further success. If you're interested in attending, please be in touch with Christie. We'll now turn to any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] And there are no questions today. I will turn the call back over to Christina Kmetko for some final remarks.

Thank you. We'll close with a few final reminders. As Al mentioned, our Investor Day is on November 16, just a couple of weeks away. If you're interested in attending, please reach out to me today so we can get your name on our final participant list. We'll be webcasting only the audio and slides for this event. A replay of our call will be available online later this morning. We'll also post a transcript on the Investor Relations website when it becomes available. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. You can reach me at the phone number on the release. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And I'll now turn the call back to Rob to conclude the call.

This call will be available for replay beginning today in approximately two hours after the completion and will run through until Wednesday, November 8, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. The number to access the replay is (800) 770-2030 or (647) 362-9199. The conference ID number to access the replay is 82174. That will conclude today's conference call today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.