Stran & Company, Inc.

and welcome to the Strannan Company second quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode, and 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, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Alexandra Schilt, Vice President of Crescendo Communications. Mom, you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Strawn & Company's 2023 Second Quarter Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. On the call with us today are Andy Shape, Chief Executive Officer, and David Browner, Chief Financial Officer. The company issued a press release today, August 14th, 2023, containing its 2023 second quarter financial results, which is also posted on the company's website. If you have any 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, 2023. 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 Strand'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 judgments 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 STRON's control. With that, we will now turn the call over to Andy Shape, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Andy.

Thank you, Allie, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Over the last several months, we have developed and executed on our business growth strategy, which has resulted in 18% growth in revenue to $17.5 million for the second quarter of 2023 and 23% growth in revenue to $33.2 million for the first six months of 2023. Importantly, in the second quarter, organic revenue increased 11% while also achieving a 35% increase in gross profit to $5.1 million and improved our gross profit margin to 29.1% from 25.4% for the same period last year. Additionally, for the first six months of 2023, organic revenue increased by 14% while our gross profit increased by 40% to 9.8 million and gross profit margin improved to 29.4 from 25.8 for the same period last year. We're very proud of this organic growth and margin improvement given the current market environment and declining sales many competitors in this share are experiencing due to economic uncertainty and pressure on marketing budgets. Rather than contracting, though, we are growing and capturing additional market share within the $25 billion promotional products industry. We're witnessing a strong contract momentum as a result of our sales efforts and highly focused marketing initiatives. We expect this trend to continue as we further refine and expand our outreach, as well as leverage established relationships from our acquisitions. Regarding our acquisitions, we are proud to say we completed four meaningful acquisitions within the last 18 months. Gap promotions, Trend Brand Solutions, Premier NYC, and our most recent acquisition of T.R. Miller have all brought meaningful and important strategic advantages to STRON and our operations. Importantly, Gap Promotions, Trend Brand Solutions, Premier NYC are all fully integrated into our operations and we're working towards full integration of T.R. Miller. While it has taken some time to close and integrate T.R. Miller, we anticipate significant revenue from this transaction as our largest acquisition to date. And while our results for the quarter reflect the integration cost, Kier Miller has been historically profitable, and by integrating them into our organization, we anticipate additional cost savings, which should further enhance our profitability and cash flow. Importantly, we believe this transaction validates our strategy of exploring and identifying valuable and accretive companies that have potential not only to complement but propel strong forwards. These acquisitions play an important part of our growth strategy as they enabled us to expand our national footprint, enter into new verticals, and each brings established customer relationships that we can leverage to support our growth. As I mentioned before, the promotional product industry is ripe for consolidation. We're building a company that contains the right resources, talent, and reach to bring us to the forefront of the industry, building our strong and established reputation within the market. By combining our opportunistic M&A strategy with our expanded marketing programs and aggressive sales efforts, we're witnessing strong contract momentum among both existing customers and new customers. We expect this trajectory to continue as we expand our marketing and complete the integration of T.R. Miller where we can leverage their established relationships. We also continue to launch new online stores for our customers and are now actively managing over 180 online customer stores. These provide long-term value for our customers as well as easy and simple access to our products. In addition, we are continually being recognized in the industry and were recently ranked among the top 40 distributors by the Advertising Specialties Institute. I'm proud to say that I was also recognized and awarded the Person of the Year by ASI in the 2023 Counselor Awards. ASI serves a network of 25,000 suppliers, distributors, and decorators in the $25.8 billion promotional products industry. And being acknowledged within their awards validates the incremental exposure and visibility that STRON is receiving as a result of our accelerated growth and our ongoing business efforts to become a true leader within the industry. Importantly, we're executing and pursuing growth initiatives that we believe to long-term sustainable profitability. Beyond the initiatives I've already mentioned, we are also setting revenue and profitability goals, working to fully implement NetSuite, continuously training new employees to enable consistency, and setting and adhering to our annual budget. These are very important to the business and our core aspects of our strategy to propel our growth. While we did report a loss for the quarter, much like last quarter, these expenses are temporary and relate to the integration of our acquisitions, costs related to the implementation of NetSuite, and lead generation program costs. We believe these are valuable investments that will be essential for overall growth and profitability in the long term. We expect these costs to increase over time. We have also recently implemented cost savings initiatives by reducing non-essential staff, cutting back on advertising spend, and limiting travel and entertainment. At the same time, we've preserved a solid balance sheet with $25.5 million in cash and investments as of June 30, 2023. This provides us with the flexibility to explore strategic opportunities as they arise. So to wrap up, we developed executing on a business growth strategy resulting in increased awareness of STROM, a strong customer base, and a national footprint. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, David Browner, to go over the financial results in detail. David, please go ahead.