Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Titan International, Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and we will open up the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Alan Snyder, Vice President, Financial Planning, and Investor Relations for Titan. Mr. Snyder, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Megan. Good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to Titan's third quarter 2023 earnings call. On the call with me today are Paul Reitz, Titan's President and CEO; and David Martin, Titan's Senior Vice President and CFO. I will begin with a reminder that the results we are about to review were presented in the earnings release issued yesterday, along with our Form 10-Q, which was also filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. As a reminder, during this call we will be discussing certain forward-looking information, including the company's plans and projections for the future that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information. Additional information concerning factors that either individually or in aggregate could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements can be found within the Safe Harbor statement included in the earnings release attached to the company's Form 8-K filed earlier, as well as our latest Form 10-K and Forms 10-Q, all of which have been filed with the SEC. In addition, today's remarks may refer to non-GAAP financial measures which are intended to supplement -- In addition, today's remarks may refer to non-GAAP financial measures which are intended to supplement, but not be a substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The earnings release, which accompanies today's call, contains financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. The Q3 earnings release is available on the company's website. A replay of this presentation, a copy of today's transcript, and the company's latest quarterly investor presentation will all be available soon after the call on Titan's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Alan. Good morning, everyone. Our One Titan team delivered another solid quarter on multiple fronts, positioning us well to finish the year with good momentum and financial results that will rank as one of the best years in Titan's history. Overall, I have to say I'm pleased with our Q3 results, especially when you look at our financial performance and cash flow and most importantly, our service to our customers to help them de-risk their supply chains. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $41 million, enabling us to continue fortifying our balance sheet with free cash flow of $37 million. That allowed us to push our cash balance up to approximately $212 million with an EBITDA leverage at just 1 turn. The significantly improved strength of our balance sheet along with the team delivering solid performance illustrates that Titan is in good position for future strength and growth. Overall, 2023 is generally playing out as we expected, with certain puts and takes across business units that really does illustrate the ability and strength of our geographic and product diversification to deliver solid results in these type of conditions. Recall that 2022 was an exceptionally good year at Titan as we enjoy our highest revenues and free cash flow in history, that enabled us to accelerate the pay down of our debt, leaving our balance sheet in excellent shape. While we certainly enjoyed the success 2022 brought, it has also impacted the optics around our 2023 results as industry dynamics simply did not support a continuation of last year's activity levels, really driven by the OEM inventory destocking that has been taking place throughout this year. However, viewed relative to longer term financial performance trends for Titan, 2023 is shaping up to be a very good year for the company.…

Thank you, Paul. And good morning, everybody that's joined us today. Paul noted this, but it worth repeating. Our Q3 results were solid. And it leaves us in a really good position to finish the year well with results, again, that are going to rank amongst the best that we've ever had. Given the relatively unusual business conditions in our industry, that success is especially noteworthy and reflective of both of the hard work by everyone at Titan and also the multi-year transformation for the business. We've outlined many of those actions in our investor presentation, and we're going to continue to talk about all those things that are really going to drive the business going forward. This transformation has positioned us well, and we're in the best position we've ever been, with an excellent balance sheet and a business that we fully expect to be more resilient through all market cycles, which we've experienced this year to a certain extent. I'd like to remind everyone that our press release issue yesterday afternoon and our form 10-Q filed with the SEC, both contain a good amount of detail on our operating results, including segment performance discussion. With that in mind, I'll focus my remarks today on select highlights and the key items in the quarter. Starting with net sales, which were $402 million, it was generally in line with what we expected for the quarter. Our sales continue to be impacted by all the things that Paul talked about this morning, including the OEM destocking and the impacts on the Brazilian operations with more significant local economic headwinds. We overcame those challenges and our business is performing well. Our gross margin of 16.4% in the third quarter is reflective of our ability to hold margins, even during the period of…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Steve Ferazani with Sidoti & Company.

Good morning, Paul. Good morning, David. Appreciate the commentary on the presentation this morning. I mean, the big question, right, is really for a couple of quarters you're saying destocking should be completed by year-end and production picks up in early 2024. The question is, the last time we did this three months ago versus now, right, the key is, what -- has anything changed in your customer communications in terms of where they are in destocking and their plans to ramp up? Again, in terms of orders of tires and wheels, what are you hearing?

Yes. I mean, I've spent a lot of time out at customers lately, Steve, and trying to get to the answer to the question you're asking. And I've been pleased with what I've seen. Just recently I was up at a customer driving around their yard where they store their wheels and tires and they've had very significant movement on where it used to be to what I was looking at that day and where they thought they would be at year end. And so, again, I kind of get two customer visits in the last week, large customers of ours that I've been pleased with what I've seen with my own eyes and the conversations that I've had with their upper management. So this hill we've been climbing up all year long and peddling really hard, I mean, our team's done a great job dealing with the volatility of this, meaning the forecasts have been fluid and you can't always look at what's going on in the marketplace and to know exactly where our production levels need to be. And primarily I'm talking about Brazil and small ag when I say this too. I think we need to zero in on those areas and not create the perception that every situation is exactly the same. So if you look at Brazil, like David and I talked about, the de-stocking -- first off, OEM bought way too much, too many wheels and tires, especially tires in Brazil. They do that for reasons that are specific to their business. But we have extremely strong market share in Brazil, so this de-stocking has an impact on us from that perspective when you combine with the turmoil that was caused by the election. So it's really those two factors where we saw our…

Great, thanks. It's helpful. Question on the gross margins. One, the obvious question which is, very surprising given the significant revenue decline that your gross margins were as resilient as they were and I'm sure there's a lot of internal hard work. But a little bit more color because you would have expected some yield leveraging from reduced production and we're not seeing that in your numbers. And the add-on to that is, significant variability in the three segments, consumer and ag, actually better year-over-year, whereas EMC was much lower even though similar revenue declines.

Yes, Steve, with EMC, I think we said it a little bit earlier, Brazil had a bigger impact on that with the lower demand there. And it's a high margin area for us, so you saw more impact there. Again, a lot of factors go into the delivery of the margin that we had. A good discipline in the business and our ability to manage through it. So that's really it. And of course, on the consumer side, we have some of our efforts to grow parts of the business that are higher margin as well. So that's impactful to the overall performance of that segment as well. So again, the heart of our business being agriculture, we talked a little bit about that. There's a good mixed level in terms of the product innovations we brought to market as well. So you have that impact holding margins at least.

So were there different pricing actions taken depending on the segment?

Pricing is very dynamic right, in terms of that the impacts of raw materials and other inflationary factors and so forth. And there's, again, very good discipline in that and how we approach it. And it does vary by -- it's even more than that when you get into this skew levels and things like that.

Okay. If I get one more in, you didn't change your guidance. To us, your revenue was a little bit lower than we might have expected in 3Q. The guidance implies 4Q is a little bit higher. Was 3Q in line with your expectations and do you indeed think 4Q has a little bit of uptick sequentially?

Look, We see our order decks being stabilizing as we go from three into four, and then as we round the corner into next year, we see the boost coming from some of the de-stocking being done. And again, our end markets being in good condition as well. So, now we see things being fairly stable like you and I talked about earlier on the previous question, we see the inventory's levels coming down at the OEMs. They just bought way too many tires, especially and that happens. It's not anything new that we haven't seen in prior years, but just getting the visibility into that does take some time and getting them to work down through it. So we're watching our production levels, making sure we stay in line with where we see the forecasts and the market demand. But again, we see a world with the de-stocking being relatively behind us, if not behind us by the end of the year, like we already talked about, creating a nice world of stability for us. And so it's good to be on flat ground instead of feeling like we're going uphill. So yeah, I think the position we're in has stabilized nicely as we get near the end of the year.

Great. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, David.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kirk Ludtke with Imperial Capital.

Hello, Paul, David.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for the call. And congratulations on another good quarter. Just a couple of follow-ups. With respect to the gross margin, can you expand maybe on what has changed? And have you reduced capacity, utilization up? Are you pricing things differently? Is there any kind of color as to what you're doing differently?

We've done a lot differently, man. We've done a lot of things really well. It's been a journey to get to that question and the point we're at with our Q3 results. And really, throughout all of 2023, I mean, we've done a really good job this year. And so David has mentioned in his comments earlier, it's not one simple thing, it's a lot of things. You combine what I keep mentioning in some of my comments as well. I mean, our innovation is tremendous. And with innovation, it's a win-win for everybody. It increases the profits of the end users, our dealers and our OEMs love being able to sell a product that makes their customers happy. And in return, we can earn better margin on that as well. So the innovation leads to better margins. It leads to more stable demand, both with the OEMs and also with the aftermarket. Again, a lot of products that we produce, this innovation can go directly to the aftermarket as well. It doesn't have to go through an OEM. So the changes we made at the company with innovation, David mentioned the pricing dynamics. We've gotten really good at understanding pricing, understanding our costs and combining the two of them. And we have, I've said it a hundred times and I'll probably say it a hundred more. I mean, the technical connection we have in the marketplace, it's not just engineers boots on the ground, it's people that are involved with pricing and financial analysis. They don't just look at it as a number on a piece of paper. They understand the equipment it goes on. They understand the impact that has to the end user. They understand how that flows through our operations and the costs in our plants. And so, we've created a tremendous environment around pricing and that's helped stabilize and improve our margins through these cycles. And along with that, we manage our plants effectively. Taking everything I said, that strong connection to the marketplace, we have forecasts that we know where things are going, and we know what to do within our plants, and we take the appropriate actions. I mean, we've got an awesome team of plant operators around the world. And I've said it again a hundred times [indiscernible] make it one-on-one right now. I mean, our One Titan team has done an exceptional job over the last four years. We've had very little turnover, if any at all, amongst our key management team. So our knowledge, our experience, our connection to the customer, it's second to none in our industry, and it's good to see us be able to handle these cycles and like you've seen through 2023, we've had a really good year.

That's great. That's very encouraging. Just shifting topics here. It's very encouraging. Just shifting topics here to the competitive landscape. Are any of your competitors making moves that are noteworthy? Do you sense any trends in market share?

You're always looking out over the landscape of what your competitors are doing. I think the big dynamics, what we've been talking about is just the OEM de-stocking. If we keep doing what we're doing, if we manage our plants effectively, keep introducing innovation, understand the market better than the competition, have that connection to the end users. If we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be in a good position with the competition. So, I haven't seen anything that has been a significant change to really answer your question directly. I feel good about what our moves have been this year, especially in Europe. I feel like our position in Europe has continued to strengthen. But again, the innovation we have in North America has been tremendous and our Brazilians have extremely high market share because they do an exceptional job there. So in our undercarriage business, strong brand, keep innovating, keep pushing into the marketplace and more distribution, better geographical footprint. Our ITM Brazilian business, we talked about the impact this quarter from some de-stocking, but again, their market share -- undercarriage in Brazil is exceptional. That business is phenomenal. So, now, I think we -- I look at it -- I look at it two ways. One, we got to always be looking at the competition like I started the answer to the question, but two, I got to look at our strengths and we've got to make sure we keep getting better on our strengths and I think we've been doing that this year.

Great. Thank you. And so market shares are stable?

Yeah, market shares have been stable. Again, you've got the de-stocking dynamic. But yes, there hasn't been much -- anything significant and much more to talk about other than really just watching our customers manage through that.

Got it. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you.

You bet.

Thanks, Kirk.

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Reitz for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you. I appreciate everybody's time and interest in our Q3 results today and look forward to talking to you in the New Year's as we highlight the results from the fourth quarter. Thank you. Have a good day.

Thank you for attending today's presentation. The conference call has now concluded.