Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (SWK) Presents at Morgan Stanley's 14th Annual Laguna Conference Transcript

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day 3 of the Morgan Stanley 14th Annual Laguna Conference. It's my pleasure to have with me up here this morning, Chris Nelson, CEO of Stanley Black & Decker.

Before we kick things off, I just need to read some quick disclosures. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. And if you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative.

So Chris, maybe if you have any prepared remarks, anything you want to level set for us before we dive into it, take it away.

Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I just -- it's about coming up on a year into being in this role and just a little bit of an update when you -- at the beginning, as I was stepping in, laid out 3 key priorities for our organization. First was to make sure that we really activated our brands with purpose. And we, last quarter, reported growth in our 3 core brands of focus. So we feel like we're making nice progress there with the investments and the focus that we've made in the brands. The second one was to drive improved operational excellence. And we continue to march on in what is not the most robust volume environment, march towards our margin objectives. And this year, we're feeling good about where we're -- where we've guided to on our margins and progressing towards the 35% gross margin area that we have laid out. And then the third