Unifi, Inc. New

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q1 2021 Unified, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in 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 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, A.J. Eckert, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. On the call today is Al Carey, Executive Chairman, Eddie Engel, Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Creatore, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer. During this call, management will be referencing a webcast presentation that can be found at unifi.com and by clicking the first quarter fiscal 2021 conference call link. Management advises you that certain statements, including today's call, will be forward-looking statements within the meeting of the federal securities law. Management cautions that these statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and or projections about the markets in which Unifi operates. These statements are not guaranteed of future performance and involve certain risks that are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed, forecast, or implied by these statements. You are directed to the disclosures filed with the FCC on unified forms 10-Q and 10-K regarding various factors that may impact these results. Also, please be advised that certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted working capital, and net debt, may be discussed on this call. I will now turn it over to Al Carey.

Thanks, AJ. And good morning, everyone, and thanks for listening to our call today. I'll turn this presentation over to Eddie Engel, our CEO, in just a minute or two, but I thought I'd provide you with a few broad highlights for our first quarter of fiscal 2021. First, we've gotten off to a good start. Each month, our volume and our revenue has improved sequentially since the pandemic began in March, and the trend continues in October, and October is part of our new quarter. And our profitability performance was also solid, and it was ahead of our expectations. Second, We see a trend with our customers. They're prioritizing sustainability goals, and that has actually helped our reprieve business. Last quarter, reprieve, back in quarter four, reprieve was 28% of our mix, and then in this first quarter was 35% of our mix, and we see that continuing. Third, we've been quite busy during the pandemic period to set ourselves up for a better long-term business when we come out of the COVID. We've paid down our net debt to a record level. Our cash position is strong. We've reduced inventories, but I'd say we've right-sized our inventories. We began placing our innovative Evo cooler equipment, and we brought in a new CEO, Eddie Engel. Although I'd say Eddie is not new, he had a 30-year career with Unify before he came back. And fourth, you may recall For the last 18 months or so, we've had quite a bit of management turnover. With the addition of Eddie, we've now completed an entire reset of our leadership team at Unify. And I feel that each member on the team is not only the right person for the job, but they're also highly motivated and working well together. So I'm optimistic about our progress in quarter one and as I look out over quarter two. But we still have a great deal of work to do. and there's still a fair amount of uncertainty in the environment they're operating in, so it makes it difficult to forecast with any level of precision. So all considered, I believe our industry is recovering nicely, and we're slightly ahead of the pace of our industry. So I leave quarter one with a positive feeling right now. So for more detail on our performance for Q1, let me turn it over to our CEO, Eddie Engel, to provide you with more highlights.