Educational Development Corporation

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Educational Development Corporation's financial and operating results for its fiscal second quarter and fiscal 2023 year-to-date results. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Stephen Hoosier, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Educational Development Corporation's second quarter and fiscal 2023 year-to-date earnings call. On the call with me today are Craig White, President and Chief Executive Officer, Heather Cobb, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, and Dan O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. We will also be joined by Randall White, Executive Chairman of the Board during the question and answer session. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the second quarter and fiscal 2023 year to date. The release is available on the company's website at www.edcpub.com. Before turning to the prepared remarks, I 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 the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial conditions. With that, I will now like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's president and chief executive officer. Craig?

Thank you, Stephen, and welcome everyone to the call. We have quite a few people here today. Looks good. I will start today's call with some general comments in regard to the quarter. I'll then pass the call off to Dan and Heather to run through the financials and provide an update on our sales and marketing. I'll then wrap up the call with some comments on product strategy and outlook. During the second quarter, we continued to feel the negative impacts of high inflation in the U.S. market. Soaring costs have reduced disposable income of families with young children, which is our target customer base. While we hope to see these pressures subside, we are making strategic adjustments to address our own increased costs, including an increase to the amount we charge for freight on outbound shipments. We are using extreme caution with these price increases, working to balance our increased costs while being sensitive to the increased dollars to our customers. Additionally, during the first quarter earnings call, I discussed that we had entered a new distribution agreement with As One Publishing Limited are UK-based supplier of Usborne products. The new agreement continues to allow uninterrupted sales through the UVM division. However, there was some initial uncertainty from our consultant sales force about the ongoing relationship and how it might impact them. This resulted in a reduction in new recruits by 38% from the second quarter of last year. While we continue to manage through the impacts and changes created, not just from the pandemic, but also all of the additional global related headwinds and other items within our business, I am proud to see the resiliency of our team. Profitability is the cornerstone of our business and although we have had some recent shortcomings while managing through the rapidly changing environment, we are working hard and remain laser focused on returning the company to its long-standing profitable state. Once we return to profitability, we will look to reinstate our historical practice of paying quarterly dividends. With that, I will now turn the call over to Daniel O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials for our second quarter of fiscal 2023 highlights. DANIEL O' Thank you, Craig.