Educational Development Corporation

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Educational Development Corporation's third quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, January 11th of 2024. 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 the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial condition. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Hooser, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alan, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Educational Development Corporation's third quarter earnings call. On the call with me today are Craig Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer of Heather Cobb, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, and Dan O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the fiscal third quarter. The release is available on the company's website at www.edcpub.com. Additionally, as the operator noted, today's conference call and prepared remarks are being recorded, and there are forward-looking statements. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's president and chief executive officer. Craig?

Thank you, Stephen. Welcome, everyone, to the call. I will start today's call with some general comments regarding the quarter, then I will pass the call over to Dan and Heather to run through the financials and provide an update on sales and marketing. Finally, I will wrap up the call with some comments on strategy and fiscal 2024 outlook. We are encouraged, as we have seen our active brand partner count stabilize this summer and remain at consistent levels through our fiscal third quarter, which is traditionally our largest sales quarter of the year. During the third quarter, our sales within our paper pie division decreased approximately 30% from third quarter last year, primarily due to the lower active brand partner levels. The sales in our publishing division were also lower this quarter due to the stoppage of selling Usborne products. As a reminder, this was in part due to our new distribution agreement with Usborne Publishing that we entered into May of last year. However, the decrease in Usborne sales were partially offset by strong orders for our new product line, Smart Lab Toys, along with increased sales of Kane Miller Books and Learning Wrap-Ups products. We continue to be excited about the demand for all of our products and especially when we look at the growth opportunities within Smart Lab Toys where we have only introduced 25 initial products through the third quarter. During the quarter we offered sales promotions and strategically reduced freight charges to increase demand and make it easier for our brand partners to engage new customers. These changes impacted our third quarter operating profits but we're aligned with our goals to intentionally reduce our excess inventory levels and improve long-term brand partner success. Brand partner success generates future brand partner success, and that continues to be our number one focus. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of our financials. Dan?