Carriage Services, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Carriage Services' third quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. Thank you. As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, the Carriage Services Leadership Team.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. This is Vicki Blinderman, the Chief Accounting Officer. Today we'll be discussing the company's third quarter results for 2020. A related earnings release was made public yesterday after the market closed. Carriage Services has posted the press release, including supplemental financial tables and information on the investor's page of our website. This audio conference is being recorded, and an archive will be made available on our website later today through November 2nd. Replay information for the call can be found in the press release distributed yesterday. On the call today for management are Mel Payne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ben Brink, Chief Financial Officer, Peggy Chapeau, Vice President of Operations and Acquisitions Analysis, and Steve Metzger, General Counsel. Today's call will begin with formal remarks for management followed by a question and answer period. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during this call, we will make forward-looking statements. Certain statements on this call, including financial estimates, assumptions, or statements about our plans, future results, expectations, or beliefs, may constitute forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. We make these statements on the basis of our reviews and assumptions regarding future events, business performance, and other factors at the time we make them, and do not undertake any obligation to provide updates or revise any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this call, whether to reflect the occurrence of events, circumstances, or changes in expectations, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied in light of a variety of factors, including factors contained in our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in our other filings with the SEC. Please note that a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures that may be referred to on this call to equivalent GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release that was issued yesterday and on the company's website. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Mel.

Thank you, Vicki. Today I won't say a whole lot. There's a lot of information in our earnings release for this quarter. And the earnings release is anything other than another quarter release. It's all about a company. And I wanted to simply state that we do a lot of communications beneath the covers of what is reported to the public. I would like to share. a little of that with everybody on this call. So this went out to every managing partner, every sales manager, every field support leader, directors of support, and every employee and leader in our Houston Support Center. This went out about 5.24 p.m. yesterday with our quarterly nine-month release. And I quote, I have never in my life been more honored and inspired by anyone or any group of people than I have been by the amazing leadership and performance of our managing partners and sales managers and our funeral and cemetery portfolio businesses over the last nine months and especially the last six months after the coronavirus pandemic shocked a country with both a continuing health and economic crisis. The same is true for all the support leadership and teams who enabled all of our frontline coronavirus battle warriors and their courageous teams of employees to remain in the battle of serving their client families and communities when it counted most. On behalf of Carriage's executive team and board of directors, thank you for your heroic service and for making Carriage a very special place for very special people to unite in a common cause on noble work for so many client families and communities. Attached is our third quarter and nine months earnings press release. It was truly humbling to write about what you have achieved this year, a year of record performance by a company full of high performance heroes. Let's finish the year strong, all the best, Mel. Now when this goes out, it generates a lot of attention. We do a lot of communication and recognition in the company. So we'll have so many people from Carriage across the country on this call. So I know I'm speaking to them as they hear this. And now they're hearing it, not just reading it. And I often get many responses. to these kinds of communications, but I'll just read you one. It's from Lauren Forresteri this morning at 5.23 a.m. Mel, thank you for your words of encouragement and enthusiasm. We have been working hard and keep pushing for revenue enhancement while serving the families with higher flexibility and awareness to each need related to the pandemic. It has been wonderful to have the support of all members within Carriage Services. We truly are united. I am looking forward to the call. Lauren is the daughter of Frank Forresteri. I'm sure they're on the call. The Forresteri family business is the business in Springfield, Massachusetts. They joined Carriage and became our partners in October of 98. Frank was one of the original Standards Council members And he had to rotate off a couple of years ago when he passed the leadership managing partner role to his daughter, Lauren. Every Thursday, Lauren, we hear about what you and your team is doing. Not always on a Thursday, but the main subject over the last weeks getting ready for this call is where are we gaining market share? How much of this is COVID only and how much of it is market share? And I will tell you, Lauren and Frank, we know who you're growing the business, how you're growing the business, and even when the outbreak slowed, you didn't. We know where the business is coming from. And I'm not going to mention their name. It's a big business, but it's getting smaller by the month. So thank you and your team for what you do, because this is the exact example of what's going on broadly across Carriage. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Ben. put a little meat on the bone of what transformative really looks like.