Good day. And welcome to The Manitowoc Company, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ion Warner, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our earnings call to review the company's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial performance and business update as outlined in last evening's press release. Joining me this morning with prepared remarks are Aaron Ravenscroft, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Regan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we posted our slide presentation on the investor relations section on our website, manitowoc.com. You can use it to follow along with our prepared remarks. Please turn to slide two. Before we start, please note our safe harbor statement in the material provided for this call. During today's call, forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 are made based on the company's current assessment of its markets and other factors that affect its business. However, actual results could differ materially from any implied or actual projections due to one or more of the factors, among others, described in the company's latest SEC filings. The Manitowoc Company, Inc. does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether the result of new information, future events, or other circumstances. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Aaron.

Thank you, Ion, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide three. In the wise words of Winston Churchill, a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. You can draw from our financial results, we faced plenty of difficulties during 2024. I'm proud to say that The Manitowoc Company, Inc. team pursued every potential opportunity with great enthusiasm and optimism. It's inspiring to see the level of motivation and passion throughout the company. For example, during the year, we set a new record with $629 million in non-new machine sales. We grew our field service technician count by 7% to over 467 team members. We launched thirteen new cranes, including the next generation EV self-erecting tower crane and the MCT 2205, which is the largest tower crane that we've designed and built out of our China operations. And we renegotiated our debt to improve our liquidity and extend our tenure. I'd like to express my sincerest gratitude to The Manitowoc Company, Inc. team for a hard-fought 2024. For the full year, we reported $2.2 billion in sales and $128 million in adjusted EBITDA. We generated $100 million of free cash flow during the fourth quarter and ended the year with $321 million in liquidity. Please turn to slide four. Turning our focus to the Manitowoc Way, I'm extremely proud of the team's achievements. First and foremost, in terms of safety, we ended the year with an RIR or recordable incident rate of 1.19. This is the second-best result in the company's history following a phenomenal year in 2023. In addition, we reduced our first aid incidents by 25% year over year and saw a significant reduction in the severity of our lost time injuries. 2024 was arguably the safest year in our…

Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Please move to slide six. Despite entering the fourth quarter with a lot of uncertainty around the US election, our results were generally in line with our expectations and the guidance previously provided. To summarize, total revenue for the quarter was $596 million, and we achieved trailing twelve-month non-new machine sales of $629 million, a record high. Furthermore, we made significant improvements in reducing our inventory, generating $100 million of free cash flows to bring our leverage back below our target of three times. We had customer payments that slid into 2025, impacting our ability to achieve the cash flow guidance. Specific to fourth quarter results, orders were $516 million, an increase of 8% from a year ago. Notably, European tower crane orders were up year over year for the second quarter in a row. It is encouraging to see some early signs of a potential recovery. December 31st backlog was $650 million, a year-over-year decrease of 29%. Net sales in the fourth quarter were $596 million, flat versus a year ago. A year-over-year decrease in the Americas was offset by stronger non-new machine sales. SG&A expenses were $77 million, which included a $1 million charge related to a legal matter with the US Environmental Protection Agency. Excluding the impact of this charge, SG&A expenses as a percentage of sales were 13%, flat year over year. Our adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $35 million, a decrease of 4% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 5.9%, a decrease of 20 basis points. Our GAAP diluted income per share in the quarter was $1.59. On an adjusted basis, diluted income per share was $0.10, an increase of a penny from the prior year. Please turn to slide seven. Looking at the full year,…

Thank you, Brian. Please turn to slide ten. 2024 was definitely a challenging year. The European tower crane market reached what we believe is the bottom of its cycle. Chinese competition intensified globally, compressing prices in emerging markets. And the Americas experienced a significant slowdown leading up to the election. Nevertheless, the team continued to push our strategy forward, finding pockets of opportunity for growth. Even in the weak European tower crane market, we were able to grow our non-new machine sales year over year. To stay ahead of the Chinese competition, we continue to introduce new tower cranes specifically designed for Middle East projects. For mobile cranes, we continue to aggressively service our customers with field service support, remanufacturing, and used cranes to support our Cranes Plus 50 strategy. And in the Americas, we continue to expand our service locations. In addition to upgrading our locations in Phoenix and Baton Rouge, we recently announced the acquisition of certain crane assets and territories in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. We continue to transform The Manitowoc Company, Inc. through the execution of our Cranes Plus 50 strategy. Just consider the progress that we made since 2020. First, non-new machine sales in 2024 were $629 million, a 67% increase compared to 2020. Second, we increased our field service tech population to 467 techs in 2024, an increase of over 100% since 2020. Third, in the US, we added sixteen service locations, compared to just one location in 2020. In addition, we added service shops in Lima, Peru, Barnsley, UK, and Maru, France. And fourth, gross profits from non-new machine sales in 2024 were $208 million, a 64% increase since 2020. Although we can't control the ebbs and flows of the crane cycle, The Manitowoc Company, Inc. has a strong reputation for managing it utilizing the Manitowoc Way. I'm convinced more than ever that our Cranes Plus 50 strategy is the key to breaking this cycle's grip on our business. As a reminder, non-new machine sales are significantly less volatile than the new crane market and have average gross profits of roughly 35%. Our goal is to consistently generate stable and substantial returns on our capital regardless of the crane cycle. Cranes Plus 50 provides us a blueprint to achieve this. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Morning, Jerry.

Hi, Jerry.

Hey. You've got Clay on here for Jerry. To start off here, your guidance implies sales, you know, up a little bit here at the midpoint. Can you just talk about where that embeds things, you know, staying the same or getting better, just regionally? You know, you talked a little bit about it earlier. I was just curious what got embedded, you know, on a regional basis.

Yeah. I think, you know, it's marginally better. I say year over year from a revenue standpoint, you know, we've got a wide range because there's a handful of possibilities that'll happen during the year. But, you know, I mentioned that we expect Europe to be slightly better, in particular on the tower crane side. You know, the US, slightly better, but Asia continues to be, you know, uncertain, in particular, South Korea. So, you know, I'd say it's a mixed bag, hence why we've got the large range in the guidance.

Thanks. And, separately, on the non-new machine, can you talk about how used values for cranes have trended, you know, throughout the quarter and now as we head into 2025? Thanks.

Yeah. I mean, in terms of values on used cranes, it always depends on the age and the model of the crane. So, I mean, from my perspective, there's not been much change. Of course, sometimes whenever you go through some of these surveys, you know, the Ritchie Bros. numbers, usually those are cranes that are last resort. I mean, we're typically doing the deals directly, and those are cranes, I think, that have more interesting value or more interesting models to the marketplace. So from my perspective, prices haven't gone down or up.

Thanks. I'll pass it on.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ion Warner for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Please note that a replay of our fourth quarter 2024 earnings call will be available later this morning by accessing the Investor Relations section of our website at manitowoc.com. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your continuing interest in The Manitowoc Company, Inc. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.