Carriage Services, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Carriage Services fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call and shareholder letter. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then 1 on your touchtone telephone. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then 0 to reach an operator. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Metzger, Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, and General Counsel. You may begin.

Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. Today we'll be discussing our fourth quarter and full year results for 2021. Our related earnings release was made public yesterday after the market closed, and we've posted the release, including supplemental financial information, on the investors' page of our website. This audio conference is being recorded, and an archive will be made available on our website later today. In addition to myself, on the call this morning for management are Mel Payne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Carlos Quesada, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Brink, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will begin with formal remarks from Mel, Carlos, Ben, and myself, and will be followed by a question and answer period. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during this call we'll make some forward-looking statements. Any comments made by our management team that state our plans, beliefs, expectations, or projections for the future are forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in such statements. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to both factors identified in our earnings release and in our filings with the SEC, both of which are available on our website. During this call, we'll also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the appropriate GAAP measures can also be found in our earnings release, as well as on our website. Thank you all for joining us this morning, and now I'd like to turn the call over to Mel.

Thank you, Steve. Thank everyone who is on this call today on a day that Russia has invaded Ukraine and markets worldwide are crashing. This unusual day stands in stark contrast to all the great news about our company, which is in our 2021 shareholder letter. It went out yesterday afternoon masquerading as our fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings release. The shareholder letter was co-written proudly by the other three members of our strategic vision and principles group who will present on this call all the great news about our past, present, and future performance. And I'd like to congratulate Carlos Quesada who was promoted to president effective yesterday. And as Chief Operating Officer, I talk about Carlos in this release and what he's done, and he's going to have a lot to say about what he's done since he's been here, but especially what he's doing now that will have legs and performance into the future. And Ben Brink, who's been here since 2009, does a great write-up about our investment portfolio. I think investors would be very intrigued by Ben's personalization of this section. And then Steve came as our general counsel and has learned so much about the business and about our people, about our incentives, about performance, and how it all aligns. And so his sections are written in a way that describes the DNA of our company probably better than I could. And so with that introduction, of what I call this dream team. I'd like to turn it over to Carlos.