WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 3, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Scott Gaffner - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

John Engel - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

David Schulz - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets

Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James

Nigel Coe - Wolfe Research

Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer

Stephen Volkmann - Jefferies

David Manthey - Baird

Operator

Hello and welcome to WESCO's Second Quarter Earnings Call. I would like to remind you that all lines are in listen-only mode throughout the presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I would now hand the call over to Scott Gaffner, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations to begin.

Scott Gaffner

Thank you and good morning. Before we get started, I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and, by their nature, are subject to inherent uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please see our webcast slides as well as the company's SEC filings for additional risk factors and disclosures.

Any forward-looking information relayed on this call speaks only as of this date and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect the changed circumstances. Additionally, today, we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. Required information about these non-GAAP measures is available on our webcast and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website at wesco.com.

On the call this morning, we have John Engel, WESCO's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Dave Schulz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Now I'll turn the call over to John.

John Engel

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. The power of our portfolio and mix-shift into higher growth markets is clear in our record second quarter sales, although sales were below our expectations in the quarter due to our EES business.

Continued strong growth and record sales in our CSS and UBS businesses more than offset a quarterly drop in our EES business. The decline in EES was largely the result of unprecedented supply chain rebalancing in the electrical industry, leading to customer destocking, along with weakness in certain sectors, including commercial construction and manufactured structures.

Our long-term secular growth drivers remain intact and they are reflected in our continued sales growth in the utility, data center, security and industrial sectors. On the strength of our industry-leading customer value proposition, strong cross-sell execution continued in the quarter and we're now raising our sales synergy target again we've had a series of these, a string of these since we put the two companies together, we're raising it from $1.8 billion to $2 billion.