Ark Restaurants Corp.

Greetings and welcome to Arc Restaurant's second quarter 2023 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Christopher Love, Secretary. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us on our conference call for the second quarter ended April 1st, 2023. My name is Christopher Love and I am the Secretary of Arc Restaurants. With me on the call today is Michael Weinstein, our Chairman and CEO, and Anthony Sirica, our President and Chief Financial Officer. For those of you who have not yet obtained a copy of our press release, it was issued over the news wires yesterday and is available on our website. To review the full text of that press release, along with the associated financial tables, please go to our homepage at www.restaurants.com. Before we begin, however, I'd like to read the Safe Harbor Statement. I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion this morning will include forward-looking statements and that these statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed on them. We refer everyone to our filings with Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the risks that may have a direct bearing on our operating results, performance, and financial condition. I'll now turn the call over to Michael. Thank you. Hi, everybody.

Before I get into this, Anthony, I would like to discuss our situation with cash and debt and where we stand, especially in relation to the fact that we increased the dividend from $0.50 annualized to $0.75 annualized.