Educational Development Corporation

Thank you for joining the Educational Development Corporation's third quarter earnings call. Before beginning the call, we would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors. We refer you to Educational Development Corporation's recent filings with SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial condition. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Sir, you may now begin.

Thank you and welcome everyone to the call. With me today are Heather Cobb, our Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, and Dan O'Keefe, our Chief Financial Officer. As we have signaled in all of our previous calls, we continue to look at our business as compared to pre-pandemic levels given that COVID created record demand and results for our company. I am pleased that we exceeded pre-pandemic levels in our fiscal fourth quarter with increases in net revenues and average number of consultants resulting in continued profitability. Now to address the elephant in the room, we have decided to temporarily suspend our dividend The dividend has always been a priority for the company as part of our long-term capital allocation strategy to create shareholder return. This strategy remains unchanged, but given the strong positive COVID tailwind, our inventory levels are at record highs and this decision is solely to protect our balance sheet. As our inventory levels normalize later this year, our plan is to reinstate our historical dividends and this remains a priority. With that, I will now turn the call over to Daniel O'Keefe, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide a brief overview of the financials for our fiscal year 2022.

Thanks, Craig. So for some fiscal year 2022 highlights, our net revenues for fiscal year 2022 totaled $142.2 million, a decrease of $62.4 million, or 30.5%. compared to 204.6 million reported for fiscal 2021. Earnings before income taxes for the fiscal year totaled 11.2 million, a decrease of 6 million, or 34.9%, compared to 17.2 million reported in fiscal 2021. Net earnings totaled 8.3 million, compared to 12.6 million, a decrease of 4.3 million or 34.1% from last year. And finally, earnings per share on a fully diluted basis totaled 98 cents compared to $1.50 down 34.7% on a fully diluted basis. And as Craig mentioned, to discuss some of the recent events that have happened with EDC. As you might have read in the 10K that was filed earlier today, in our subsequent event footnote, we increased our working capital line from 20 million to 25 million to strengthen our balance sheet during this quarter. We ended the fiscal year 2022 with approximately $73 million of inventory. We expect this to be our peak inventory level and see a significant amount of inventory turning into revenue and cash over the next three quarters. In addition to our working capital line, pausing the dividend, as Craig announced earlier, will increase our cash position by about a million dollars a quarter on a temporary basis. This concludes the financial report, and now I'll turn the call back over to Craig.