Watts Water Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:WTS) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 4, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Diane McClintock - Investor Relations

Bob Pagano - President and Chief Executive Officer

Shashank Patel - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Mike Halloran - Baird

Jeff Hammond - KeyBanc

Nathan Jones - Stifel

Michael Anastasiou - TD Cowen

Walt Liptak - Seaport Global

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Brent and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Watts Water Technologies, Inc. First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Now my pleasure to turn today’s call over to Ms. Diane McClintock, Senior Vice President, FP&A and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Diane McClintock

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter earnings conference call. Joining me today are Bob Pagano, President and CEO; and Shashank Patel, our CFO. During today’s call, Bob will provide an overview of the first quarter and discuss the current state of the markets and our operations. Shashank will discuss the details of our first quarter performance and provide our outlook for the second quarter and for the full year. Following our remarks, we will address questions related to the information covered during the call.

Today’s webcast is accompanied by a presentation, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. We will reference this presentation throughout our prepared remarks. Any reference to non-GAAP financial information is reconciled in the appendix to the presentation.

Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that during this call, we maybe making certain comments that constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For information concerning these risks, see Watts’ publicly available filings with the SEC. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

With that, I will turn the call over to Bob.

Bob Pagano

Thank you, Diane and good morning everyone. Please turn to Slide 3 and I will provide an overview of the quarter. I’d like to start by recognizing our team for their continued efforts to serve our customers. Together, we delivered another better-than-expected quarter with record first quarter sales, operating margin and earnings per share. The Americas and Europe teams expanded top line growth at a low single-digit pace, primarily due to price. Both regions continued to drive organic growth despite the tough comparison to double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2022. We also saw high single-digit growth in APMEA despite challenges in China after COVID restrictions were lifted and the impact of unprecedented flooding in New Zealand.