Xcel Brands, Inc

Welcome to Axel Brand's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Please be advised that reproduction of this call in whole or in part is not permitted without prior written authorization of Axel Brands. And as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Seth Burrows from the company. Seth, you may now begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Axel Brand's second quarter of 2025 earnings call. We greatly appreciate your participation and interest. With us on the call today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Robert DeLoren, and Chief Financial Officer, Jim Herron. By now, everyone should have had access to the earnings release for the quarter ended June 30, 2025, which went out earlier this morning. In addition, the company will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission with its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2025, later today. The release and the quarterly report will be available on the company's website at www.excelbrands.com. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on the company's investor relations website. Before we begin, please keep in mind that this call will contain forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from certain expectations discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company's most recent annual report filed with the SEC. Excel does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The dynamic nature of the current macroeconomic environment means that what is said on this call could change materially at any time. Finally, please note that on today's call, Management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP diluted EPS, and adjusted EBITDA. Our management uses these non-GAAP metrics as measures of operating performance to assist in comparing performance from period to period on a consistent basis and to identify business trends related to the company's results of operations. Our management believes these financial performance measurements are also useful because these measures adjust for certain costs and other events that management believes are not representative of our core business operating results, and thus they provide supplemental information to assist investors in evaluating the company's financial results. These non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as alternatives to net income, earnings per share, or any other measure of financial performance calculated or presented in accordance with GAAP. You may refer to the attachment to the company's earnings releases or the 10-Q for a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures. And now, I'm pleased to introduce Robert DeLorean, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Bob, please go ahead.

Thank you, Seth. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start today's call with a brief update on recent developments from the most recent quarter and our outlook for the back half of 2025 and next year. After that, our CFO, Jim Herron, will discuss our financial results in more detail. But first, I'm happy to report that we have recently closed on a combined public equity offering and management led private placement equity transaction for combined gross proceeds of approximately 2.6 million. This equity offering combined with the strategic alliance and financing transaction with United Trademark Group in April has strengthened our balance sheet and provides us with the working capital needed to develop and launch a number of exciting new influencer brands this holiday season and in 2026. We continue to work with UTG to present the strength of our combined platforms to retailers across multiple channels of distribution and conducting due diligence for potential acquisitions and influencer brand development projects. Also, as previously mentioned, we believe that this partnership will accelerate our formation of additional creator influencer brands on our platform as we pursue our goal of building the brand portfolio to 100 million social media followers. Also, we are continuing to work hard with all of our production partners to drive our business. We announced our new creator influencer brands with Cesar Millan Gemma Stafford, Jenny Martinez, and Coco Rocha in Q2 of 2025. These new brands diversify our brand portfolio into new categories and retail distribution channels and reduce our risk to tariff volatility. We have also amassed key category license agreements for these new creator influencer brands, our social media reach, Across our brand portfolio has grown from 5 million followers at the start of the year to 43 million today. We are seeing early results from these new brands given their strong social media currency. Sea Wonder and Christie Brinkley remain the two fastest growing brands at HSN. That said, we did see some disruption in these businesses in Q2 due to a change in a wholesale licensee. We are working with our new licensee to minimize the impact from this transition. We have a strong pipeline of additional new creator influencer brands. Finally, I should note that we continue to approach Q3 and Q4 of this year with caution given the impacts of the tariffs on QVC and HSN and our licensees including G3 for our Halston brand. Judith Ripp continues to operate on-planet GTV. And it was up over 65% from the first quarter. As previously reported, the Longaberger brand launches on QVC this fall. In closing, we are excited to be launching all of our new influencer brands and look forward to additional announcements as we move forward. And with that, I'd like to turn things over to Jim, who will cover our detailed financial results for the second quarter. Jim?