Good day, everyone, and welcome to the LittleFuse Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the call over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, David Kelley. Please proceed.

Good morning, and welcome to the LittleFuse Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Greg Henderson, President and CEO, and Abhi Khandelwal, Executive Vice President and CFO. This morning we reported results for our third quarter and a copy of our earnings release and slide presentation is available in the investor relations section of our website. A webcast of today's conference call will also be available on our website. Please advance to slide two for our disclaimers. Our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements may involve significant risks and uncertainties. Please review today's press release and our forms 10-K and 10-Q for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We assume no obligation to update any of this forward-looking information. Also, our remarks today revert to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is provided on our earnings release available in the investor relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Greg.

Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. This morning, I'll provide details on our third quarter results, including performance highlights across our end markets. I'll then share progress against our strategic priorities before turning the call over to Abhi to review our segment financials and fourth quarter outlook. Turning to the quarter, we delivered record net sales of $767 million. Our Q3 results were impacted by a one-time Dortmund contract amendment fee that reduced semiconductor sales by 28.5 million, which we will discuss in more detail shortly. Organic revenue growth accelerated to 22% year-over-year, driven by execution on our strategic priorities and demand strength across our markets. We also delivered significant margin expansion and 96% year-on-year earnings growth in the third quarter. This culminated in an adjusted earnings of $5.79, a record for the company. Finally, I wanted to highlight our free cash flow performance, which is up 66% year-to-date, reinforcing our strong execution. Turning to performance across our end-market exposures, Computing, Communications, and Diversified Industrials, or CCDI, delivered another quarter of strong growth. Data Center was again a leading contributor as we continue to capitalize on our unique grid-to-chip capability and customer-focused go-to-market model. Our Data Center backlog is expanding, and we see traction in our opportunity pipeline and design wins. Across diversified industrials, we delivered broad-based growth, led by demand for medical and aerospace and defense applications. We also continued to execute on strong orders from our broad market channel partners, and the end customer POS remains very healthy across geographies and applications. Turning to energy and industrial infrastructure, or EII, we saw broad-based demand momentum, and Bassler Electric continues to perform well. Within industrial infrastructure, growth was led by industrial automation, heavy construction, and HVAC Demand Recovery. Within energy infrastructure, grid modernization and utility investment drove increased demand for our market-leading protection solutions. Battery energy storage served as another key growth engine where we are developing market-leading protection architectures to support rapid power scaling. In transportation and logistics, or T&L, commercial vehicle demand strengthened in the quarter. This was driven by our proactive go-to-market engagement and a market recovery across heavy truck, agriculture and material handling equipment. In passenger vehicles, revenue increased given by strong execution as our teams are delivering content and market share gains despite lower global vehicle production. Overall, our third quarter performance reinforces the strength of our end market diversity and technology positioning. Our growth also reflects our sharpened focus on high growth opportunities and our go-to-market shift as we continue to outperform our end markets. Heading into the fourth quarter, we are well positioned to maintain our operational momentum. Bookings were again a record in Q3, driven by growth across our businesses, and our book-to-bill remained well north of 1.0. Now let me update you on the progress we're making across our strategic priorities. Starting with go-to-market, we continue to see strong customer engagement translate into a larger, higher-value new business funnel. By engaging customers earlier in the design cycle with more of our multi-technology solutions, we are increasing both the breadth and value of our opportunity pipeline. As evidence of our traction year to date, the average dollar value per new business opportunity has increased by more than 20%, while third quarter design wins again grew double digits year over year. Together, these results reinforce our confidence in our long-term organic growth targets. Now let's turn to our high growth opportunities, or HGOs. While early, we also believe our sharpened focus on our three HGOs, data center, grid and utility infrastructure, and aerospace and defense, is beginning to deliver tangible returns. Today, I wanted to specifically highlight our expanding aerospace and defense, or A&D, opportunity. While this high-growth market represents a small portion of revenue today, sales growth outpaced company average in Q3. A&D is an ideal market for our technology, given its mission-critical requirements and rapid transition towards high-voltage DC architectures. During the quarter, we secured several key A&D design wins, including high-reliability power semiconductor modules for a defense flight control system, and specialized switching solutions for a commercial space customer. Long-term, we believe a focused A&D growth strategy will diversify our market exposure while providing strong and resilient profit contribution. Finally, turning to operational excellence. At our May Investor Day, we highlighted semiconductor products and transportation where we see opportunities to enhance our long-term growth while optimizing our portfolio and driving long-term profitability enhancements. While early, we're seeing evidence of our progress towards our 2030 goals. Starting with semiconductors, we delivered significant revenue growth and improved profitability in the quarter. This was led by our protection franchise, which delivered record revenue and profitability while we see continued strong bookings momentum into year end. Long-term protection remains well positioned as a market leader and key enabler of the long-term electrification megatrend across our markets. In power semiconductors, organic growth accelerated alongside improved margins. While early, we are executing our more focused power semiconductor strategy around higher power and higher value opportunities. We are delivering for our customers as our orders have accelerated. We remain disciplined in balancing power semi-growth opportunities with active portfolio rationalization and footprint optimization. During the third quarter, we executed an amendment to a commercial supply agreement for our Dortmund facility. In exchange for a one-time payment, This amendment accelerates the delivery of contracted volumes while eliminating restrictive covenants. This step materially improves the underlying economics of the Dortmund asset and grants us significant strategic flexibility and optionality as we evaluate our broader power semiconductor footprint. Over time, we remain committed to better positioning our power semiconductor franchise for sustainable growth, structural margin expansion, and enhanced long-term returns. Turning to transportation, Our sharpened focus on our market-leading customers, efficiencies, and scale is driving solid growth while we're seeing continued margin expansion as we scale our operations and simplify our cost structure. We believe our enhancements position us well to drive structural margin expansion in a muted underlying market environment. Taking a step back, we are encouraged by our third quarter results. Our teams are executing against attractive market demand, converting and expanding customer opportunity pipeline and driving profitability enhancements across the portfolio. I want to thank our teams for their dedication to serving our customers and delivering value. With that, I'll turn the call over to Abhishek.

Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will walk you through our third quarter financial performance before reviewing our fourth quarter outlook. Please turn to slide six for details on our third quarter performance. All comparisons are versus the prior year, unless noted otherwise. Reported net sales in the third quarter were a reckoned $767 million, reflecting the $28.5 million one-time Dortmund customer amendment fee, which was not contemplated in our previous guidance. Organic growth contributed 22%, the bachelor acquisition contributed approximately 6%, and foreign exchange was neutral. Adjusted EBITDA was $226 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin finished at 28.4%, up 690 basis points. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $5.79, up 96% versus the prior year, and a record for the company. The improvement reflects strong volume leverage, favorable mix, pricing, and operational execution. As a result of our operational excellence initiative, we expect to realize approximately 5 million in 2026 run rate savings. We continue to deliver progress towards our 2030 optimization goal of $50 million and see further opportunities into 2027. Operating cash flow was $230 million and free cash flow was $216 million, up 64%. Year-to-date, free cash flow was $409 million, up 66%, as we continue to drive strong conversion. We ended the quarter with $825 million of cash on hand and a consolidated net leverage ratio of 0.7 times. We also returned $20 million to shareholders through our third quarter dividend. Please turn to slide eight for our segment highlights, starting with the electronics product segment. Reported electronic sales were $426 million, reflecting the $28.5 million one-time Dortmund customer amendment fee. Organic sales increased 27%, with passive products up 30% and semiconductor products up 24%. Growth was broad-based across data center, diversified industrial, and transportation applications. Within semiconductor products, we observed continued strong production demand and improved power demand. Excluding the one-time amendment fee, adjusted EBITDA margin for the electronics segment was 33.1%, up 910 basis points versus the prior year, reflecting volume leverage, favorable price, product mix, and operational execution. While early, we are seeing the benefits of our more focused power semiconductor strategy. Looking ahead, we will continue to pair healthy end market demand with disciplined portfolio and footprint actions in a power semiconductor franchise with the goal of driving improved long-term profitability and returns. Moving to our transportation product segment on slide nine, sales were 183 million, up 7%, both on a reported basis and organically. Commercial vehicle organic sales expanded 20% fueled by strong demand in heavy truck, data center, and agricultural equipment. Passenger vehicle organic sales declined 5%, reflecting lower global auto production and planned exits of legacy lower margin sensor lines. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 19.6%, up 280 basis points. Strong commercial vehicle volume leverage and operational execution more than offset the impact of softer passenger vehicle demand. Turning to slide 10, industrial segment sales were 158 million, up 65%. Organic growth was 27%, supported by strong data center and grid infrastructure, HVAC, and industrial automation demand. The bachelor acquisition contributed approximately 38% to growth. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 25.2%, up 450 basis points, reflecting favorable walling leverage, operational efficiencies, price, and MEX. Turning to our outlook for the fourth quarter on slide 11, we expect continued healthy demand across several of our key markets supported by strong backlog and customer engagement. Based on current market conditions, we expect fourth quarter net sales in the range of $750 million to $770 million. At the midpoint, this represents approximately 28% growth versus the prior year, and better than typical seasonal sales. We expect fourth quarter adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of $5.05 to $5.25 per share. Our guidance assumes an adjusted effective tax rate of approximately 24%. We remain focused on executing the value equation playbook we outlined at investor day, driving 7% to 9% organic growth over time, expanding adjusted EBITDA margin toward 24% to 26%, generating strong free cash flow and deploying capital with discipline. Our third quarter performance reinforces our confidence in the strategic path toward our 2030 targets of $4.5 billion in revenue, $1.1 billion in adjusted EBITDA, and more than $600 million of annual free cash flow. Thank you to the Lilfuze teams for their continued execution and commitment to our customers. With that, operator, please open the call for Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of David Williams with Needham. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning and congratulations on the really stellar results here.

Thank you, David.

So maybe first, just kind of think about the mechanics of the semi-growth and you kind of walk through some of that, but can you help us understand how much of this is maybe cyclical versus demand and perhaps maybe The repositioning of what you've done within those power semis. I'm just trying to understand how much of this is really demand versus the operational changes that you've made within that business.

Yeah, thank you, David. Yeah, so look, semiconductors, as part of our electronics segment, had strong performance in the quarter. You know, you start with our protection semiconductor franchise. We had a record revenue and profitability from this segment, and this is a very model profitability segment for us in general. And I would say two things. One, we do have good market momentum. We actually have broad-based growth in our protection semiconductor business across our markets. And second, I would say we also are taking share. So we have some opportunities to take share. For example, in transportation, we outperformed market in the passenger car, and a lot of that was driven by Some of that significant part of it was driven by our protection semiconductor business that other franchises like our passives as well that were doing well in that business. So I would say that's the thing about protection semiconductor. And then in power semiconductors, we had also good performance. We do have volume growth. So we do see volume growth and momentum. And that is driving obviously volume in this business with a high fixed cost is driving good profitability improvement. But we're also starting to see benefits from our manufacturing optimization and our portfolio optimization. So it's early, but we have more focus. Like we've said, we're focused much more now on high voltage, high power, high value applications. And we're deemphasizing parts of the portfolio where we have less value and differentiation. And it's early in the progress, but we are seeing some of that momentum. So power semiconductor revenue and profitability growth did deliver also Materially to the electronic segment profitability growth in the quarter.

Yeah, and David, just to add to a couple of things. So if you think about it at the highest level, kind of think about the year and the way the year played out. For Q1, we saw an organic growth of 9, and Q2 was 14, and then Q3, we just posted 22% organic, okay? So that's point one. Point two, I'd say, is if I just think about our semiconductor business or semiconductor products, right? If I think about the organic progression throughout the year, in Q1, we posted 8%. Q2 was 15% and then Q3 is 24%. So you're seeing sequential improvement based on, you know, kind of what Greg was saying, which is the demand has improved and has improved sequentially throughout the year.

And one other thing, because you asked a little bit about the cycle, just to add that, you know, we see broad-based demand across our markets. We talked about diversified industrials, industrials. We're seeing broad-based demand across our markets. And also we're very focused on making sure that, you know, channel inventory is normal. We have strong POS growth in our channel as well. So we feel that there is still just broad-based strength across the markets.

Okay, fantastic. Thanks for all the color there. And then maybe just secondly on that, the kind of the pricing and the lead times, any color there on what you're seeing in terms of being able to raise pricing? And how are your lead times as we kind of seem to be getting into a more constrained environment here? Thanks again for the help.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. So look, we continue to be in an inflationary environment. I think we all know that word commodities, freight, fuel costs, etc. So we continue to be in an inflationary environment. And we, you know, we're working to manage that as best as we can. It is an environment where we are passing price increases along to our customers as we need to based on that so that we can maintain our business conditions. We also have a lot of productivity activities to improve our cost structure as well. So I would say that That's the environment that we continue to be in from that perspective.

And David, I'll just say this. We said this in 25. We made a commitment. We delivered on our commitment. Same thing in 26, which is our intent is to be price-cost neutral. At the end of the day, to Greg's point, we're in an inflationary environment. Whether you think about pricing, whether you do it through surcharges, driving productivity in the factory, but our intent for 2026 is to be price-cost neutral in an effort to manage inflation. And then to the second part of your question on lead times,

You know, I would say our lead times are pretty normal across our business, but one thing we are seeing is customers booking farther out. So they're now booking outside of lead time, and so we have more bookings into next year, for example, at this time than we would normally. So we see customers booking farther out, but as of now, lead times are materially normal, I would say, in our business.

Thanks again, and good luck into the fourth quarter, gentlemen. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Appreciate all the callers today and good times there. Congrats on the success that's ongoing. Wanted to ask, build off the comment on sort of kind of customer dictated lead times there, booking a little further out, just in terms of Are them being more proactive about securing supply? Is there any view they need to, on their part, you think they need to get in line before others?

Yeah, thank you, Chris. Look, I think, you know, from our perspective, our lead times are broadly normal. So we don't have a challenge, right, that they're needing to get in line and we have this backlog. But I will say we're just seeing a customer behavior where they're tending to book farther out. I think the whole ecosystem is planning a little more now because there's been a lot of growth and they continue to see a lot of growth. I think we do all hear about in the supply chain some constraints here and there. We're not largely having constraints in our supply chain, but I think there are some constraints in the supply chain that's making people book out. So from our perspective, it's not for our business. We don't have people needing to get in line but they are tending to book farther out. And I think that's just maybe a little bit of a different customer behavior. The other thing I'll say is, is that where bookings are good across our markets. So we are seeing broad strength across our markets and all of our markets have kind of a strong kind of bookings. That's the other thing I would add.

Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, I realize you have You know, very crisp book to bill visibility at the distributor level. You know, maybe it's a little more opaque as you kind of think about the end customers inventories and what they're pulling through distribution. You know, I think that's a little more of an art than as you try to evaluate that dynamic. Just curious how you think about that. Just given the fact that we're just stacking quarter after quarter, really, you know, robust and expanding book to bills.

So one thing I'll just, Chris, on the question, I think To be clear, in our new go-to-market model, one of the value propositions we have of our new go-to-market model is that we call on two-thirds of our revenue customers direct. We talked about this. About 1,000 customers is about two-thirds of our revenue, and we call on those customers direct. Now, some of those customers choose to buy through distribution, but we call on them direct, which means we're talking to the end customer about their end demand directly. and so we understand their platforms and what's going on so this puts us in a better position that actually two-thirds of our revenue we talk directly to the customer about the platforms we're in and then there's the one-third that's kind of the broad market through the channel where yeah it's more you know you have less visibility to the individual customers so talking to that first top two-thirds I would say we don't see broadly a customer customers hoarding inventory or building inventory either there is a planning further out We don't see kind of an inventory building phase broadly in the ecosystem. In the bottom third, we talk to our channel partners, and they also see breadth to the market. I mean, one important thing we look in the bottom third is number of new customers, breadth of customers, number of design wins, and that also seems to be very healthy. So that's what I would say. So we don't see that as much, and one of the changes in our go-to-market model is we're closer to more of our customers directly to understand what's going on. We think that's going to help us. as we all navigate through this, you know, through this upcycle.

Great. Thanks for that, Keller. I'm just going a little Deepak and Artman move too. How should we think about the fixed cost savings with that? Was there any impact to adjusted EPS from this action in the and should, you know, kind of an adjustment to the range of this structural move have Is it one and done?

No, Chris is not. So if you're going to think about the investor day and what we laid out, we had said, hey, we're going to walk away from one to two points of revenue as we look over the next five years in terms of product rationalization. And then that should generate about $50 million of incremental EBITDA over the next five years. So, so far, what we've identified in 2026 is a $5 million savings. In connection to that $50 million, we expect more to come through in 2027, and as we get more clarity in 2027, we'll be transparent and lay it out for you. Okay, thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Luke Junkwith-Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking questions. I apologize if any of these are repaid to juggling a lot of calls today. Greg, maybe to start with, we'd be great if you could help us understand some of the factors animating your data center growth right now in terms of maybe seeing some initial high voltage uptake or maybe more interestingly, if you could talk through some of the impacts that you're seeing relative to all the work that you've done to align with customers from a co-engineering standpoint. Are you seeing some Are there any benefits in the low-voltage portfolio today of all the work that you're doing to position into those high-voltage sockets into the future?

Yeah, thanks, Luke, and thank you for the question. Yeah, so first starting, I think just starting with data center, we are continuing to see large significant growth in data center. Data center was the leading growth driver for our performance in the quarter. and so that continues to be good. The vast majority of the revenue we ship today is still in the low voltage shipments. We're starting to see, I would call it small volume of the higher voltage platforms, but that's really yet to ramp meaningfully from our perspective. So I would say the growth we've had so far is all in the low voltage systems. Now, if you go and look at our bookings and our backlog, we have strong backlog going into the next quarter. And like I talked about previously, we have backlog into next year. And bookings and backlog and design wins have more contribution from the higher voltage systems. So we continue to have momentum actually in both. I would say we have an increasing number of design wins around high voltage systems. We talked about the content expansion we have. So we expect that to continue to accelerate. but we continue to have design wins in both and we continue to have revenue in both and so for us it's really I know there's a lot of questions in the market about how fast that's going to really go and what percent will actually evolve for us we consider that we're going to continue to have strong growth either way and for example you know design wins again in in the in the third quarter were 2x last year and so we continue to see good moment momentum across that I'll also just emphasize as well that our growth you know data center is a strong growth driver but Our growth in this electrification megatrend is broad, so we are seeing breadth across the other markets, which also gives us a strong view into next year.

Thank you. And then for my fellow, maybe Greg or V, you could both comment on this. Just thinking out loud here, comparing and contrasting now with electronic adjusted operating margins reaching the high 20s in the third quarter, Today, just thinking through some of the underlying dynamics versus what prior peak margin dynamics were like in this business, just maybe some of the key drivers behind incremental margins in electronics, and importantly, how sustainable you think those drivers are going forward. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks, Luke, to answer the question. So first of all, if you kind of think about the performance in the quarter tied to our electronic segment, right, we saw 27% organic. Thank you for joining us. played out in the year so far between transportation and power semis. As we start to streamline that, drive more operational execution there, start to look at more product line rationalization, footprint optimization, you're going to see margin expansion in electronics over the longer haul. Okay, so that's how I would think about it. But at the highest level, if you think about Q3, it's volume leverage, it's operational execution, and when protection and passives grow, the operating leverage in that business is really, really strong.

Yeah, maybe, Greg, I'd be curious to get you to chime in here as well, because I think maybe there's a little bit of concern relative to where margins have been in this business in the past. High 20s to 30 margins electronics were kind of a little bit of a cyclical high previously. It feels like this has more undergirding towards it. Can you maybe just talk about qualitatively your margin expectations in this business, especially as you bring on incremental high voltage content, and think through some of these mixed factors, especially. Thank you.

Yeah, look, I think what's important, I think, is that we're increasingly focused on strategically capturing more value at our customers and more share at our customers. And also, our new go-to-market model is also very focused about making sure that we're optimizing across all the markets that we're in. Obviously, there's a lot of momentum right now in data center, but there's a lot of other good markets too. And we mentioned, for example, in the earlier that the content, the dollar content per opportunity in our design wins is up 20% versus the year before. And our design wins are also broadly across all of our markets up double digits. So I do think that we're making progress on our relative market and share position. which is going to improve our relative performance as we go through the cycle. So there's always going to be cycles in the business, right? But our view is that our goal is to be much more market focused and to outperform the markets and also make sure we're investing in the markets that are growing. So that's why I haven't focused on the high growth markets. That's why we focus on markets that also have a lot of resilience, like aerospace and defense, for example, that have a little bit of different resilience than normal cycles. So I think we feel strong about our 2030 model we put out there. We feel like we're making a lot of progress on the 2030 model, both from a top line and the bottom line performance. And to me, the most significant thing is we will be able to get more share at a top line and also have higher value solutions and higher voltage. So there's a lot of We call them tailwinds in those directions. But in addition, like Abhi mentioned, we have a lot of focus on the bottom line as well. So I think our goal is to have improved performance as we go through whatever cycles the business is in.

Understood. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of David Williams with Needham. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for letting me jump back in. Just wanted to ask quickly on Basler, and that seems to be performing very well, but just curious if you're seeing the benefits of the synergies that you thought you might have in that business, or is this mainly just the recovery and demand dynamics within that business? And maybe what are the opportunities for growth there, maybe to outpace what your original expectations were when you made the acquisition?

Yeah, thank you. So I'll kind of start with kind of the strategic point of view and where we are, and then Avi can fill in some of the kind of details. But I would say we're seeing significant benefit from Bassler in our market position, especially in the grid infrastructure and data center. And those are two of our strong growth markets. Those two are our strong growth organic markets. but also Batchelor significantly contributed to growth. So our new go-to-market model is actually benefiting us and there's actually in two ways, right? So one, I would say that we are seeing more opportunity for Batchelor products in data center due to the relationships that LittleFuse has at the hyperscalers, leveraging some of Batchelor's technology like their protective relay technology for next generation architecture. So we're talking to data center customers now about call it N plus two architectures leveraging the Bassler technology. Our go-to-market is benefiting us there. On the flip side, kind of the other way around, Bassler had a good go-to-market in utility and grid space where LittleFuse did not have any direct sales coverage. And we are actually seeing good traction now for some Legacy LittleFuse product opportunities like arc fault protection solutions through to utility customers or some of our grid scale and so on. So it's early, but we're seeing traction already from, I would call it a customer opportunity pipeline perspective that hasn't followed through directly yet, but will. And I'll be committed to get a little bit more on the details of the synergy.

Yeah, and David, as you kind of then think about what that all means in terms of what Greg just described. So when we came out with the bachelor guide the first time around, we said, hey, look, our top line is going to be in the $130 to $135 million range. clearly ahead of our synergy realization. And so our latest view for the year is $135 to $140 million in top line. Then if you kind of think about the bottom line, when we announced the asset, we said, hey, we expect $0.10 to $0.15 of accretion. And our current view for the year is about $0.25 to $0.30. So just kind of building off of what Greg's saying, our synergy realization is ahead of schedule. And we feel really good about the asset and the acquisition that we did, both in the top line and the bottom line.

Great. I certainly appreciate the call.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to CEO Greg Henderson for closing remarks.

Okay, thank you. And thank you all for joining us today. I'd just like to, in closing, thank our global teams for a strong third quarter. We have good market momentum but also strong execution across the business. And we feel confident on the progress we're making to our 2030 targets. So thank you very much.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.