FlexShopper, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Flex Shopper fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings 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. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Jeremy Hellman of the Equity Group. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. I would like to remind everyone that we have posted an updated investor presentation within the IR section of the company website, www.flexshopper.com, and encourage everyone to review the forward-looking statement on page two of the presentation. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Flex Shopper CEO, Rich House. Please go ahead, Rich.

Thank you, Jeremy, and welcome everyone to our earnings call. Joining me today is our CFO, Russ Heiser. If you've joined us before, as always, Russ will be expanding on the key financial aspects of our quarterly results, and I'll cover some operational highlights. Our fourth quarter was solid with growth in net revenue and a nice increase in bottom line profitability. Importantly, we are happy to note that we increase the year-over-year EBITDA by over 30%. And as we have a better view of how the COVID pandemic is affecting customers, we believe we can grow at a similar or higher rate in 2022. Throughout the pandemic, our direct-to-consumer FlexShopper.com website has proven to be a key asset and a driver of our lease originations. In the first half of the year, stimulus programs put subprime consumers in a stronger liquidity position and apparently dampen demand across the rent-to-own industry based on the earning reports of our peers. We believe that dynamic has lessened considerably in the fourth quarter as COVID-driven stimulus programs wound down. Our data suggests recent payment activity, especially early payoffs, continue to revert to historical patterns. Our retail partner ecosystem accounted for about 34% of our leases this year. And as COVID-19 surge occurred throughout the winter, we receded. We've seen a noticeable pickup in leasing activity in this channel. Additionally, as noted in our earnings release yesterday, we expect to see a retail footprint expand during the first half of this year through a mix of new pilot programs and full rollouts. These rollouts have a substantial amount of investment in sales support. However, we believe that these are great investments. I'm going to turn it over to Russ now to address specific items regarding our financial performance. performance. And I'll come back later to wrap up.