Carriage Services, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Carriage Services second quarter 2022 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Steve Metzger. Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Administrative Officer. Mr. Metzger, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jack, and good morning, everyone. Today we'll be discussing our second quarter results. Our related earnings release was made public yesterday after the market closed, and we 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 from management are Mel Payne, Chairman of the Board 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. Yesterday we had our best board meeting ever prior to our second quarter earnings release yesterday afternoon. This morning we're having the largest decline in our share price which was about $8 a share, last time I looked, or 18%, in the history of our company as a public company since August of 96, 26 years ago. Why this disconnect? Not sure, you never can be with Mr. Market, but I would like to provide my personal perspective as a co-founder, chairman, and only CEO Carriage has ever had. My family and I also now own 12% of the company and we own nothing else. It has been an incredible journey of ups and downs since founding Carriage in 1991 with the mission vision of being the best operating and consolidation company in our industry. I started at 48 with no history, no knowledge, but only some money and an idea.