Optical Cable Corporation

Good morning, my name is Gretchen and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to the Optical Cable Corporation second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. You may register to ask a question by pressing star and one on your touchtone phone. Please note this call may be recording. It is now my pleasure to turn today's program over to Mr. Palos. Please, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Gretchen. Good morning, and thank you all for participating on Obstacle Cable Corporation's second quarter fiscal year 2022 conference call. By this time, everyone should have a copy of the earnings press release issued earlier today. You can also visit www.occfiber.com for a copy. On the call with us today are Neil Wilkin, President and Chief Executive Officer of OTC, and Tracy Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of Optical Cable Corporation may differ materially due to a number of factors and risks, including but not limited to those factors referenced in the forward-looking statement section of this morning's press release. These cautionary statements apply to the contents of the internet webcast and www.occfiber.com as well as today's call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Neil Wilkin. Neil, please begin.

Thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. I will begin today's call with a few opening remarks. Casey will then review the second quarter results for the three-month and six-month periods ended April 30th, 2022 in some additional detail. After Tracy's remarks, we will answer as many of your questions as we can. As is our normal practice, we will only take questions from analysts and institutional investors during the Q&A session. However, we also offer other shareholders the opportunity to submit questions in advance of our earnings call. Instructions regarding such submissions are included in our press release announcing the date and time of our call today. Our second quarter results reflect the OCC team's continued execution in a dynamic market that is experiencing pressures from inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain constraints, which tempered production volumes and impacted net sales. Yet as a result of the OCC team's execution, we were able to deliver a solid top line performance this quarter, with net sales in the second quarter increasing over 19% sequentially from the first quarter of this year and over 9% year over year compared to the second fiscal quarter of 2021. We were also able to deliver strong gross profit performance. I would also add that we are pleased that our sales order backlog and forward load continue to be at high levels, higher than typical. This reflects strong demand as we execute our growth strategies and build on our strong competitive position. We also continue to focus on controlling expenses as supply chain and labor market constraints that affected our results are starting to show signs of easing. OCC remains well positioned to capture the growing opportunities in the cabling and connectivity industry. At OCC, we have a differentiated core Differentiated core strengths and capabilities that not only enable us to offer top tier solutions, products, application, and technical expertise, but also to successfully compete against much larger competitors. Moreover, our enviable market position, brand recognition, and loyalty to our customers and end users helps us service a broad, diverse geographic footprint with ACC selling into approximately 50 countries each year. We appreciate the opportunity to meet the evolving and unique needs of our customers, installers, specifiers, and end users. As we look ahead to the second half of fiscal 2022, our team is focused on continuing to drive growth in our targeted markets, providing customers with our full suite of mission-critical cabling and connectivity products and solutions. We are also continuing our efforts to operate efficiently and effectively increase production volumes, and meet strong product demand. Moving forward, we remain committed to leveraging our core strengths and capabilities and executing our strategies and initiatives to create long-term value for shareholders. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tracy, who will review in additional detail our second quarter fiscal year 2022 financial results.