Stran & Company, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Stranan Company second quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Ali Schilt, VP of Investor Relations.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Stratton Company's 2022 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. On the call with us today are Andy Shape, Chief Executive Officer, and David Browner, Interim Chief Financial Officer. The company issued a press release today, August 15, 2022, containing its second quarter financial results, which is also posted on the company's website. If you have any additional questions after the call or would like any additional information about the company, please contact Crescendo Communications at 212-671-1020. The company's management will now provide prepared remarks reviewing the financial and operational results for the three months ended June 30th, 2022. Before we get started, we would like to remind everyone that during this conference call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding timing and financial impact of Sharon's ability to implement its business plan, expected revenues, and future success. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties and are based on assumptions involving judgment with respect to future economic, competitive, and market conditions and future business decisions, all of which are difficult or impossible to predict accurately, and many of which are beyond Sharon's control. With that, we will now turn the call over to Andy Schaaf, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Andy.

Thank you, Allie, and thanks to everyone for joining us today as we discuss our progress and financial results for the second quarter of 2022. I'm pleased to report that we maintained our growth trajectory during the second quarter, illustrated by a record revenue of $14.8 million, a 72.5% increase compared to the same period last year. Importantly, our year-over-year organic revenue increased 49.4%, reinforcing our traction in the market. and we continue to maintain a solid balance sheet with over $28 million of cash and cash equivalents as of June 30th, 2022, and no long-term debt. We are proud to once again achieve record revenue numbers and believe this is a direct result of our business growth strategy through expansion of our geographic footprint, entering new verticals and opportunistic acquisitions that complement our existing platform. We believe these activities are key drivers for ongoing success and set Strand apart from others within this industry. As part of our growth strategy, we remain committed to identifying accretive acquisition targets. Toward this end, I'm pleased to report that we have fully integrated GAP promotions into our business operation, an acquisition completed in January. GAP brought an impressive roster of top-tier beverage and consumer good customers, as well as expertise in point of sale, display, racks, and more. We are already witnessing the operational synergies of this transaction and look forward to benefiting from additional growth opportunities based on our combined knowledge and capabilities. In addition, we recently announced entering a definitive agreement to acquire TrendBand Solutions, a leading global brand solutions company that is strategically located in Texas. In fact, the Houston area is home to two dozen Fortune 500 companies and ranks third among metro areas in terms of Fortune 500 headquarter location. Given the high-profile companies headquartered in this area, we believe expanding our presence within this key geography will provide significant opportunities to grow our operations and customer base. By executing on our M&A goals, we have increased our customer base, grown our capabilities within the beverage space, and with trend, we look forward to expanding our geographic presence within the United States, especially within the Houston, Texas area and southern United States. Given the fragmented nature of this industry, we believe that our strategy of acquiring undervalued and accretive businesses will remain a key aspect of our continued growth. bringing together innovation, relationships, and top-tier talent. We continue to explore opportunities in the market that are in active acquisition discussions with companies we believe would add value to Stroud, including expanding our geographic presence and enhancing our capabilities. We'll provide additional updates as those discussions progress. Since our inception, we have invested heavily in our infrastructure in order to provide comprehensive offering with unique value proposition, which has resonated very well with customers and supported our revenue growth. Toward this end, we intend to build upon our success by expanding our sales and marketing initiatives. Specifically, we are establishing a new dedicated lead generation team to support our sales force, which will be further enhanced through an integrated and aggressive digital marketing strategy. This expanded strategy is expected to open new doors and designed to complement our existing sales and marketing initiatives. We believe this approach will create a steady and consistent pipeline of customer leads for our sales team, which could be a potential game changer for Strong. In fact, as a result of recently launched campaigns on Google Ads and LinkedIn, we're already averaging over 50 qualified leads per week and believe that more than 35% of these opportunities have the ability to close, while also having the potential of becoming repeat and annuity type program customers. Through these and other initiatives, we believe we're ideally positioned to rapidly grow our market position as a leader in the promotional products industry, serving many of the top Fortune 500 companies in the country. In addition to our sales and marketing efforts combined with acquisition opportunities, we're making progress on implementing Oracle's NetSuite as our new ERP in order to gain operational efficiencies, provide greater financial analysis, and prepare for additional scalability. We're on track to launch this in the third quarter and our target to be fully integrated into the platform by the end of the year. Looking ahead, we are seeing very strong bookings headed into the second half of the year with over $30 million in orders secured year to date. It's important to reiterate that these numbers aren't reflected as build revenue until the products are delivered over the next few months. However, it does reinforce our traction in the market as well as set the pace for the remainder of the year. Overall, we believe we have built a highly scalable business model and are witnessing continued revenue growth. Although we are now carrying public company expenses that we did not incur last year and added other fixed expenses to support our planned growth, we expect to resume and build upon our track record of profitability given the scalability of our operations. Additionally, we have maintained a solid balance sheet, as I mentioned earlier. We entered the quarter with over $28 million in cash reserved and no long-term debt. As a result, we are well capitalized to internally fund and execute on both organic growth and acquisition strategies, ultimately establishing Strawn as a preeminent force in the promotional products industry, a market valued at over $23 billion. One final note, we're putting our money where our mouth is to show our conviction to the outlook for the business. Since our last earning call, earnings call, the senior management team has purchased approximately $75,000 worth of common stock personally, and we plan to continue taking advantage of opportunities in the market. I'm also pleased to report that under our share repurchase program, we have repurchased approximately 1 million of our common shares at an average price of $1.96 per share. In summary, we are very proud of the progress made to date and plan to continue to execute on our growth strategy by growing our customer base, entering into new customer verticals, expanding geographically, and identifying accretive acquisition targets. At the same time, we are focused on increasing awareness of STRON through investor and industry-related activities. Together, we believe these initiatives, along with continued execution, will drive long-term value for our shareholders. At this point, I'd like to turn over a call to our Interim Chief Financial Officer, David Browner, to go over the financials in detail. Please go ahead, David.