H.B. Fuller Company (NYSE:FUL) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call January 18, 2024 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Steven Brazones - Vice President, Investor Relations

Celeste Mastin - President and CEO

John Corkrean - Executive Vice President and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Ghansham Panjabi - Baird

Patrick Cunningham - Citi

Mike Harrison - Seaport Research Partners

Jeff Zekauskas - JPMorgan

David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank

Vincent Anderson - Stifel

Rosemarie Morbelli - Gabelli Funds

Operator

Thank you for standing by. And welcome to the H.B. Fuller Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to welcome Steven Brazones, Vice President of Investor Relations to begin the call. Steven, over to you.

Steven Brazones

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to H.B. Fuller’s fourth quarter 2023 investor conference call. Presenting today are Celeste Mastin, President and Chief Executive Officer; and John Corkrean, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we will have a question-and-answer session.

Before we begin, let me remind everyone that our comments today will include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are supplemental to the results determined in accordance with GAAP. We believe that these measures are useful to investors in understanding our operating performance and comparing our performance with other companies.

Reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure are included in our earnings release. Unless otherwise noted, comments about revenue refer to organic revenue and comments about EPS, EBITDA and profit margins refer to adjusted non-GAAP measures.

We will also be making forward-looking statements during this call. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from these expectations due to factors covered in our earnings release, comments made during this call and the risk factors detailed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, all of which are available on our website at investors.hbfuller.com.

I will now turn the call over to Celeste.

Celeste Mastin

Thank you, Steven, and welcome, everyone. In the fourth quarter and throughout fiscal 2023, our team members executed exceptionally well to achieve strong profit growth despite a low volume environment, record margins and outstanding cash flow.

I am very proud of the team’s response to the significant volume weakness precipitated by unprecedented customer destocking activity over the course of the year. We proactively managed rapidly changing price and raw material dynamics and supplemented those with meaningful restructuring initiatives to deliver these strong results.