WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 13, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Scott Gaffner - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

John Engel - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

David Schulz - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets

Nigel Coe - Wolfe Research

Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James

Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer

David Manthey - Baird

Patrick Baumann - JPMorgan

Operator

Hello and welcome to WESCO's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. I would like to remind you that all lines are in listen-only mode throughout the presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the call over to Scott Gaffner, SVP, Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead.

Scott Gaffner

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and by their nature, are subject to inherent uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please see our webcast slides as the company's SEC filings for additional risk factors and disclosures.

Any forward-looking information related on this call speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect the changed circumstances. Additionally, today, we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. Required information about these non-GAAP measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which you can find on our website at wesco.com.

On the call this morning, we have John Engel, WESCO's Chairman, President and CEO; and Dave Schulz, Executive Vice President and CFO.

Now I'll turn the call over to John.

John Engel

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. You saw from our earnings release earlier today, we had a very disappointing fourth quarter to close out 2023, which results well below our expectations. These results, they're unacceptable. They're unacceptable to me and they're unacceptable to the entire WESCO management team.

We understand the issues that drove our fourth quarter results, and we're already taking actions to address them. Dave will take you through this in detail shortly. But first, I'll summarize the three key issues we had in the fourth quarter.

First, reported sales declined 2% versus our expectation for flat to slightly positive sales. This was due to a market downshift and reduced purchases with some customers. Second, we experienced higher SG&A expenses.