Brady Corporation (NYSE:BRC) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 17, 2022 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Ann Thornton - Chief Accounting Officer

Russell Shaller - Present and Chief Executive Officer

Aaron Pearce - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Cashen Keeler - Bank of America Securities

Steve Ferazani - Sidoti

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2023 Brady Corporation Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ann Thornton, Chief Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Ann Thornton

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Brady Corporation fiscal 2023 first quarter earnings conference call. The slides for this morning’s call are located on our website at www.bradycorp.com/investors. We will begin our prepared remarks on Slide #3. Please note that during this call, we may make comments about forward-looking information. Words such as expect, will, may, believe, forecast and anticipate are just a few examples of words identifying a forward-looking statement. It’s important to note that forward-looking information is subject to various risk factors and uncertainties, which could significantly impact expected results. Risk factors were noted in our news release this morning and in Brady’s fiscal 2022 Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC in September.

Also, please note that this teleconference is copyrighted by Brady Corporation and may not be rebroadcast without the consent of Brady. We will be recording this call and broadcasting it on the Internet. As such, your participation in the Q&A session will constitute your consent to being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to Brady’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Russell Shaller. Russell?

Russell Shaller

Thank you, Ann and thank you all for joining us today. This morning, we released our fiscal 2023 first quarter financial results, which was another quarter marked by solid execution across all of our businesses. Overall, we had a good quarter with organic sales growth of 6.9%. Much of this organic growth was ultimately offset by foreign currency translation, resulting in total sales growth of 0.3%.

Although we can’t control currency translation, we can control organic sales and we can control our cost structure in an effort to offset currency headwinds. And that is precisely what we did, which led to our strong GAAP earnings per share growth of 17.9%. We once again improved profitability, while investing in R&D, expanding our sales force and improving our digital capabilities. I am proud of how the entire Brady team worked together through this challenging macro environment, all the while delivering for both our customers and our shareholders.