BRC Group Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to B. Riley Financial's second quarter 2022 earnings call. B. Riley today issued a press release and presentation detailing its financial results for the second quarter of 2022. Copies are available in the Investors section of the company's website at ir.brileyfin.com. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. An audio replay will be available on the company's investor relations website later today. Joining us today from B. Riley are Bryant Riley, Chairman, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Tom Kelleher, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, and Philip Ahn, CFO and COO. After management's remarks, we will open the line for questions. And before we conclude today's call, I will provide the necessary cautions regarding forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call to Mr. Bryant Riley.

Mr. Riley, please proceed.

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining our call. Our results demonstrated relative strength in our platform, once again highlighting the ability of our non-cyclical businesses to steadily perform despite a challenging market. In lending perspective to how we view the markdowns on our investments, it's important to understand that we've also experienced meaningful gains in our investments over the course of the past three years. On a cumulative three-year basis from January 2019 to June 2022, securities in our portfolio generated returns of more than 90% to be rightly. Despite current valuations, our securities portfolio has consistently outperformed the Russell 2000 index in both bull and bear markets. And while we've given back some of those gains during 2022, the losses are mostly unrealized and correlate to market contraction. Over the last year, we augmented our investments by increasing credit with our Badcock receivable book, from which we are already realizing benefits as that book converts into cash. The remaining portion of our portfolio consists of public and private small companies, including several long-duration positions that we hold with high conviction and have no intention to sell. As we explained on prior calls, strategic investing has become a larger and more integral part of our business to create value for our partners and shareholders, and a strategy that we believe truly differentiates the B. Reilly platform from our peers. Oftentimes, the companies we invest in are companies that we provide services to, be it investment banking, financial consulting, or real estate advisory services. At the same time, we have made concerted efforts over the last five years to expand sources of steady, and recurring income to balance the more cyclical, episodic business, which are currently slow. To put this in perspective, over the last 10 quarters, we have earned approximately $17 per share for our shareholders, including the first two quarters of 2022. We believe that we are delivering on our objective of increasing our recurring EBITDA. The relative contribution from our less cyclical and less episodic businesses have meaningfully grown with the entire Riley platform generating $366 million of operating EBITDA over the trailing 12 months, compared to $114 million of operating EBITDA in 2019. With increasing contributions from less cyclical and less episodic businesses exceeding the capital needed to support our dividend, we continue to have flexibility to invest across our businesses. To that end, we are pleased to deliver our shareholders a $1 dividend for the quarter. Looking ahead, we are encouraged by the opportunity to increase that dividend as capital markets return and become more normalized, and they will normalize. We have seen cycles like this many times over the course of B. Reilly's 25-year history, and each time we have come out on the other side stronger than before. Recognizing we are in a highly variable and volatile business, we will maintain focus on diligent expense control while utilizing our cash flows to continue to invest and enhance our businesses. Disruptive markets have historically presented some of our most attractive opportunities to differentiate ourselves with clients, attract top talent, and to generate sustainable share gains across key business lines. And we believe the current environment is no exception. In short, we are extremely encouraged by where we are today. Being able to generate the operating results that we did during another quarter without capital markets is extremely gratifying for us. And since quarter end, we have recovered some of the investment losses that we reported as the market has come back a bit. With over $200 million of cash and equivalents on the balance sheet, a significant receivables book converting into cash, and debt maturities years away, we believe we have the flexibility to be able to capitalize on the many opportunities we see ahead. Now I'll turn the call over to Phil Onn, our CFO and COO, to discuss financial metrics for the quarter, and then Tom Kelleher, our co-CEO, will discuss our individual operating units before opening the line for questions. Over to you, Phil.