WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 5, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

John Engel – President and Chief Executive Officer

David Schulz – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

William Ruthrauff – Director-Investor Relations & Communications

Conference Call Participants

Deane Dray – RBC Capital

Sam Darkatsh – Raymond James

David Manthey – Baird

Nigel Coe – Wolfe Research

Tommy Moll – Stephens

Kenneth Newman – KeyBanc

Operator

Hello and welcome to today's WESCO's First Quarter earnings call. [Operator Instructions] I would now hand the conference call I about to Will [Indiscernible] Director of Investor Relations to begin, Will over to you

William Ruthrauff

Thank you and good morning everyone. 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 - non-GAAP measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website @ wesco.com. On the call this morning, we have John Engel, that's the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer and David Schulz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Now, I'll turn the call over to John.

John Engel

Well, thank you, Will. And good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Our first quarter results speak volumes about WESCO's foundation for accelerating growth and profitability. After delivering exceptional performance in 2021, we're off to an either more impressive start in 2022. Once again, we have outperformed the market and we achieved new company records for sales, profitability, and Backlog. Each of our three global business units delivered double-digit sales and profit growth, with results that are now well above 2019 pre -pandemic levels.

We also continued to our rapid de-levering, which now stands at 3.6 times adjusted EBITDA compared to 5.7 times when we closed the Anixter acquisition just seven quarters ago.

This is by far the strongest quarter since the new WESCO was formed by the transformational combination of WESCO and Anixter in June of 2020. With each quarter the power of WESCO has increased scale, expanded portfolio, and industry-leading positions becomes more evident as we build momentum and deliver superior value to all of our customers. As a result of our expanding start to the year and the accelerating momentum across our business, we're substantially raising our outlook for 2022 as well as increasing our cumulative sales synergy target through the end of 2023.