Flexsteel Industries, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Flagsteel Industries second quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Ressler, Chief Financial Officer for Flex Steel Industries. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to today's call to discuss Flex Steel Industries second quarter fiscal year 2024 financial results. Our earnings release which we issued after market closed yesterday, February 5th, is available on the investor relations section of our website at www.flexsteelindustries.com under news and events. I'm here today with Jerry Dittmer, Chief Executive Officer and Derek Schmidt, President. On today's call, we will provide prepared remarks and then we will open the call to your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the comments on today's call will include forward-looking statements, which can be identified using words such as estimate, anticipate, expect, and similar phrases. Forward-looking statements by their nature involve estimates, projections, goals, forecasts, and assumptions, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results or outcomes to differ material from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those that are described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, as updated by our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings as applicable. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this conference call and should not be relied upon as predictions of future events. Additionally, we may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Press release available on the website contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Jerry Dittmer. Jerry?

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start by welcoming Mike Ressler, our new Chief Financial Officer. Mike has been with Flex Steel over 17 years in various accounting, finance, and other cross-functional roles, most recently as the Vice President of Manufacturing. His appointment as CFO reflects his leadership and contribution to the company's transformation over the past several years. And I'm excited for Mike to further expand his positive impact on the company at CFO. I would also like to congratulate Derek Schmidt on his appointment to president and to the board of directors. Derek's promotion reflects his leadership of the company's operations and growth strategy and aligns with his expanded responsibility since joining the company nearly four years ago. With that, I am very pleased to share with you our second quarter fiscal year 2024 results. While headwinds from macroeconomic challenges and shifts in consumer spending towards experiences and away from things persist in our industry, we continue to execute on our strategic initiative and deliver sales growth of 7.5% when compared to the prior year quarter. In addition, our relentless focus on operational efficiency and cost savings propel gross margin expansion and help fund additional investment in growth initiatives while delivering significantly improved operating income when compared to both the same quarter of the prior year and our first quarter fiscal 2024. While we expect the business environment in the near term to remain challenged, our team isn't deterred and remains intensely focused on continuing to profitably grow our business throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2024 and long term. We will continue our positive momentum going into the third quarter and are confident in our ability to grow sales both compared to last year and the second quarter. I'll now turn the call over to Jerry to discuss our results and an update on our growth initiative. I'll be back at the end of the call with some closing comments on what we see ahead.