Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc.

good day and welcome to the hvt first quarter 2021 financial results conference call today's conference is being recorded at this time i would like to turn the conference over to richard hare chief financial officer please go ahead thank you operator during this conference call we'll make forward-looking statements which are subject to risk and uncertainties actual results may differ materially from those made or implied in such statements

which speak only as the date they are made and which we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include economic and competitive conditions and other uncertainties detailed in the company's reports filed with the Securities Exchange Commission. Our Chairman and CEO, Clarence Smith, will now give you an update on our results, and then our President, Steve Rudette, will provide additional commentary about our business.

Good morning. Thank you for joining our 2021 first quarter conference call. We're very pleased with the results of the first quarter and encouraged with the continuing momentum that we're seeing with increased written sales, higher traffic, and higher closing rates and average tickets. Even though our undelivered backlog is up almost four times last year, our current incoming orders are continuing at the elevated pace we have seen since January. We have not seen a slowing of orders or significantly higher cancellation rates, even with the longer wait times for furniture. While we do not know how long we will see these dramatic increases in incoming orders, we believe that the importance and the value of the home has risen dramatically in the past year. We believe this trend will continue for 2021 because of the large backlog of orders, the very strong housing market, the government cash subsidies, and increased demand for furniture and other home-related products. We also believe that the elevated importance of home is a longer-term, sustainable trend in America. Our supply, merchandising, and distribution teams have been tirelessly working with our suppliers and shippers to bring in the product to fill orders and reduce our record backlog. The delays and shipping challenges are well known now. but they're well beyond anything that our industry has experienced. We're planning to increase our inventories as the production and product flow improves and are investing in additional warehouse capacities in our distribution network. We opened a new store in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this past quarter and are excited to open a design-oriented store in the villages in central Florida this summer. We expect to open a third store in Northeast Austin, Texas later this year. We believe there are a number of good additional markets that we can serve within our distribution footprint and are actively investigating and pursuing new store opportunities. We're very excited about the rollout of a major new multimedia marketing campaign in May, which we believe will more clearly separate Haverty's from our competitors and raise the bar on service, quality furniture, and design. We'll be sharing more on the campaign early next month. I'd now like to turn the call over to our President, Steve Burdette. Thank you, Clarence, and good morning.