Crane Co. (NYSE:CR) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 26, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jason Feldman - VP-IR

Max Mitchell - President and CEO

Rich Maue - SVP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Damian Karas - UBS

Matt Summerville - D.A. Davidson

Nathan Jones - Stifel

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to Crane Co. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Jason Feldman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Jason Feldman

Thank you, operator and good day everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2022 earnings release conference call. I'm Jason Feldman, Vice President of Investor Relations. On our call this morning, we have Max Mitchell, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Rich Maue, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will start off our call with a few prepared remarks, after which we will respond to questions.

Just a reminder that the comments we make on this call may include some forward-looking statements. We refer you to the cautionary language at the bottom of our earnings release and also in our annual report 10-K and subsequent filings pertaining to forward-looking statements. Also during the call, we'll be using some non-GAAP numbers, which are reconciled to the comparable GAAP numbers and tables at the end of our press release and in the accompanying slide presentation, both of which are available on our website at www.craneco.com in the Investor Relations section.

Now let me turn the call over to Max.

Max Mitchell

Thank you, Jason, and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining the call today.

Another strong quarter with solid results across the board. First quarter adjusted EPS from continuing operations was $1.81, up 15% from last year. We delivered core sales growth of 5% with a number of strong leading indicators reflected in core order growth of 12% and core backlog growth of 16% compared to last year. Further evidence of our ability to drive profitable growth, despite persistent inflationary pressures, ongoing supply and logistics issues and continued COVID disruptions globally.

Overall, the environment is similar to date to what we saw and described on our last earnings call, generally not improving and not significantly worsening. While issues tend to change and evolve from various disruptions that continue to occur on a regular basis, it's a stable environment of ongoing challenges that are almost predictably unpredictable, if you will.