Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:LECO) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call October 27, 2023 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Amanda Butler - Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications
Chris Mapes - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Gabe Bruno - Chief Financial Officer
Steve Hedlund - Chief Operating Officer
Conference Call Participants
Bryan Blair - Oppenheimer
Saree Boroditsky - Jefferies
Nathan Jones - Stifel
Mig Dobre - Robert W. Baird
Walter Liptak - Seaport Research
Robert Jameson - UBS
Operator
Greetings and welcome to the Lincoln Electric’s 2023 Third Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And this call is being recorded. It is my pleasure to introduce your host, Amanda Butler, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Thank you. You may begin.
Amanda Butler
Thank you, Liz and good morning everyone. Welcome to Lincoln Electric’s third quarter 2023 conference call. We released our financial results earlier today and you can find our release as an attachment to this call’s slide presentation as well as on the Lincoln Electric website at lincolnelectric.com in the Investor Relations section.
Joining me on the call today is Chris Mapes, Lincoln’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Gabe Bruno, our Chief Financial Officer; and Steve Hedlund, Chief Operating Officer. Chris will begin with quarterly highlights, Steve will provide a discussion of end market trends and Gabe will cover quarterly financial performance in more detail as well as comments on our full year 2023 assumptions. Following our prepared remarks, we are happy to take your questions.
Before we start our discussion, please note that certain statements made during this call maybe forward-looking and actual results may differ materially from our expectations due to a number of risk factors. A discussion of some of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our results are provided in our press release and in our SEC filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.
In addition, we discussed financial measures that do not conform to U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures found in the financial tables in our earnings release, which again is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at lincolnelectric.com.
And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Chris Mapes. Chris?
Chris Mapes
Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 3, we maintained strong performance in the third quarter and continued to generate record sales, profitability, earnings and cash flow performance. We also maintained top decile returns and are positioned to continue to fund long-term growth and drive higher shareholder returns with our solid balance sheet profile. We remain well positioned in the market. What is unique in the quarter is the mix and drivers of our 10.5% sales growth. Our automation acquisitions led by Fori Automation accelerated in the quarter and generated approximately 9% sales growth or $83 million. This increased our global automation portfolio sales to $238 million in the quarter as we work to exceed our $1 billion Automation 2025 sales target.