Stran & Company, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the STRAN and Company third 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 Schultz, Vice President of Crescendo Communications, the firm's investor relations. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Strawn & Company's 2023 Third 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, November 6, 2023, containing its 2023 third 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 September 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 Strong'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 strong control. With that, we will now turn the call over to Andy Shape, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Andy.

Thank you, Ally, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I'm extremely proud to report that we generated a 42% increase in the revenue to a record 19.3 million for the third quarter of 2023, reflecting the success of our business growth initiatives. Even more notable, our gross profit increased by 50% to $6.4 million, with the gross profit margin increasing to 33% compared to 31% for the same period last year. And most importantly, we achieved net income of approximately $684,000, This is a major achievement for the company. As many of you are aware, Strong has historically been a profitable company, but with our cost as a public company coupled with our investments in the business, as well as one-time costs associated with M&A activity, we reported the losses in recent quarters. We believe our strong growth and return to profitability is a testament to the investments we have made while carefully managing our expenses, which demonstrates both the scalability and earnings potential of our business. Moreover, we are proud to have grown organic revenue 30% to $15.4 million for the third quarter and achieved these results despite a challenging macroeconomic environment with many of our peers witnessing declining sales. We believe this demonstrates our strong competitive position and increased market share. We expect the growth trajectory to continue throughout the remainder of the year as historically the fourth quarter has always been our strongest in terms of sales as customers utilize the remainder of their annual marketing budgets and with the holiday season upon us. We believe our revenue growth is a direct result of executing on our business growth strategy, which has included aggressive M&A, landing and expanding our customer contracts, as well as effectively streamlining operations. Regarding M&A, we have completed a meaningful acquisition including Gap Promotions, Trend Brand Solutions, Premier NYC, and T.R. Miller, all within less than two years. Each has brought important strategic advantages to STRON and our operations, including expanding our geographic footprint, increasing our warehousing and manufacturing capabilities, and bringing elite clientele to our already impressive roster of clients. I'm pleased to report that all four acquisitions are now fully integrated into our operations, and we've seen a seamless transition into STRON. While these acquisitions did come with the integration costs and other one-time expenses, we are witnessing the benefits of our strategy. We expect the profitability of each of these businesses will continue to increase over time. As I've mentioned, M&A has been an integral part of our growth strategy as a promotional products industry is ideal for consolidation. And while we will not move away from exploring M&A opportunities as they arise, we are focusing on organic growth and maximizing the potential of our completed acquisitions while expanding into new verticals and geographies to support our growth. Moreover, our expanded sales and marketing programs are positively impacting our pipeline. In fact, we have secured multiple contracts with both new and existing customers, including our recently announced six-figure contract with the leading medical group that specialize in the treatment of gastrointestinal disorders. This new customer has over 200 locations throughout the United States and over 3,000 employees. We're in the process of launching a new marketing program for this customer and will also be providing holiday and recruitment gifts as well as new hire kits to its employees. We believe this contract is further validation of our ability to address the needs of our customers regardless of industry. In addition, we expanded our relationship with an existing customer and have launched a loyalty redemption program for them. We support this online sports entertainment client through a combination of physical and experiential rewards designed to drive behavior. This program is an example of one of several such programs based on our e-commerce loyalty program platform, which supports all aspects of client and consumer engagement from product ideation to production, technology, logistics, inventory management, fulfillment, and reporting in order to ensure a seamless experience for both the client and their consumers. We received more than 22,000 orders in the first week alone from this program, generating over $2 million in sales. The maximum number of orders from this program is approximately 45,000 units for a total sales of approximately $4 million. We look forward to further executing this program for our client and exploring implementation of similar programs with other clients as well. We also continue to launch new online stores for our customer and are now actively managing over 280 online customer stores. These provide long-term value for our customers as well as an easy and simple access to these products. In addition, we are continually being recognized in the industry, and I'm honored to jump 21 places to 24th in Advertising Specialties Institute's 2023 annual listing of the most powerful people in the promotional products industry, which follows our top 40 rankings as well. 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 our progress, including accelerated revenue growth and our ongoing business efforts to become a leader within the industry. Furthermore, we are continuing to enhance our technology capabilities, and as previously discussed, we are actively working to fully implement NetSuite into our operations, along with additional e-commerce incentives using Adobe's e-commerce platform, Magento Open Source. We believe that our overall technology strategy and investments will continue to improve the overall efficiency of our business. Reflecting our confidence in our financial positions and the outlook of the business, we have resumed our stock repurchase programs. As of September 30, 2023, we have repurchased approximately $3.4 million worth of stock over the course of the program. While there are limitations as to how many shares we are allowed to repurchase at any given time, we believe the stock repurchase program can be an effective tool to drive long-term shareholder value given the volatility in the capital markets. We've also reported that members of the management team have purchased strong stock in the open market as filed with the SEC. Overall, we have and continue to execute a well-designed growth strategy, which has resulted in profitability for the third quarter of 2023, along with new contracts, enhanced business operations, and new technology offerings. We remain committed to our growth strategy, which we believe will secure our position as a leader within the $25 billion promotional products industry. At the same time, we have preserved a strong balance sheet with $19.7 million in cash and investments as of September 30th, 2023. This provides us with the flexibility to explore strategic opportunities as they arise. So to wrap up, we plan to continue to apply our growth strategy by innovating and investing in technology, initiating marketing efforts to help deepen and develop client relationships, and selectively pursuing acquisitions to sustain our growing operations. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, David Browner, to go over the financials in detail. Please go ahead, David.