Xcel Brands, Inc

Hello and welcome. My name is Ayesha and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Excel Brands Quarter 1, 2026 earnings conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, please press the star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Accel Brands first quarter of 2026 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 March 31st, 2026. In addition, we filed our quarterly report on Form 10Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Thursday. The release and quarterly report will be available on the company's website at www.excelbrams.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 and presented in accordance with GAAP. You may refer to the attachment to the company's earnings release or the Form 10-Q for reconciliation of non-GAAP measures. And now, I'm pleased to introduce Robert DeLoren, Chief Executive Officer. Bob, please go ahead.

Thank you, Seth. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start today's call with a brief update on recent developments since the recent filing of our Annual Form 10-K and our outlook moving forward. After that, our CFO, Jim Herron, will discuss our financial results for the quarter in more detail. We continue to work hard with all our licensee production partners, powerful influencers, and strategic retail partners to drive our business. We launched two of our influencer or creator-led brands toward the end of the first quarter, and we expect to launch two more in the fall and another in spring 27. As we previously mentioned, we announced our influencer-led brands with Cesar Millan, Gemma Statford, Jenny Martinez, Coco Rocha, and Shannon Dougherty. These influencer-led brands grew the social media following in our brand portfolio from 5 million to over 46 million. Based upon our pipeline of new influencer-led brands, We are on track to reach 100 million followers across our brand portfolio. We began wholesale shipments with our licensees for two of our influencer-led brands during the first quarter, and on-air programming commenced for them on QVC and HSN in the second quarter. As I mentioned, the other influencer-led brands will be shipping and launching throughout the rest of 2026, on interactive TV and at bricks and e-commerce retailers. We are very pleased and optimistic given early results and demand for these brands. I should add that our TV and streaming content reaches well over 100 million households and generates tens of millions of media impressions per month. Many of our investors and licensing partners have asked why we are so excited by the influencer-led brand opportunity. Please allow me to illuminate this a little. According to a recent report issued by Goldman Sachs, the influencer or creator economy generated $254 billion of sales in 2025 and is expected to grow to over $2 trillion by 2035. Why is this happening? Marketing dollars are shifting to influencers and influencer-led brands given the relatively high return on ad spend according to statistics from Shopify Influencer Marketing Hub. Industry surveys note that 67% of consumers trust influencer recommendations over legacy brand ads. We believe we have fully entered this fast-growing market and will continue to penetrate it over the coming years. We continue to explore opportunities to sell certain of our legacy brands and closed the sale of our Judith Ripka brand at approximately six times gross royalty income in Q2. This is consistent with the sale multiple of our formerly owned brand, Isaac Mizrahi, and is further confirmation of the value of our brand. I should note that recent analyst reports report that ascending influencer-led brands are trading at revenue multiples as high as 15 times revenue. We generated an adjusted EBITDA loss of approximately $700,000 in Q1, flat from the prior year quarter, which we expected. During the quarter, we had approximately $100,000 in non-recurring expenses and lower HSN sales in Q1 caused by a change in the apparel supplier for our Sea Wonder and Tower Hill by Christie Brinkley Brand. While this change disrupted inventory availability in Q1, we have significantly improved product quality which should drive sales going forward. Sea Wonder and Christie Brinkley remain two of the most popular brands on HSN, and the new licensee that supplied product on HSN began shipping during this quarter. With the supplier transition behind us, we expect significant growth in these brands compared to the past two quarters. The Longaberger brand is scheduled to launch in spring of 2027 with new products co-created by Shannon Dougherty. Shannon has 3 million followers and is perfect for Longaberger. We are pleased with the progress of our brand portfolio, and we believe revenue growth is now in front of us. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Herron, to cover our financial results for the quarter. Jim?