Unifi, Inc. New

Ladies and gentlemen, today's conference is scheduled to begin shortly. Please continue to stand by. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the UNIFI third quarter fiscal year 2021 conference call. 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 this 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 further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, A.J. Ecker, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Christelle, and good morning, everyone. On the call today is Al Carey, Executive Chairman, Eddie Engel, Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Creatore, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be referencing a webcast presentation that can be found at UNIFI.com and by clicking the conference call link. Management advises you that certain statements included in today's call will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. 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 guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks that are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed, forecasted, or implied by these statements. You are directed to the disclosures filed with the SEC on Unified's 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 EPS, adjusted working capital, and net debt, may be discussed on this call. I will now turn the call over to Al Carey.

Thank you, AJ, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today on our call. And I want to get the call started with a few comments about our overall performance for Unify's third quarter. And then I'll turn the presentation over to Eddie Engel and also Craig Kreator, who will provide you with the details. So all in all, we had a solid quarter three, stronger than we anticipated, and we continue to see a steady recovery from the pandemic. Our Brazil and Asia business had very strong sales and gross profit performance. That's whether you look at it versus Q3 of last year or versus the previous quarter. North American sales saw a year-over-year growth in March, so we now have all three regions showing solid growth trajectory. Our EBITDA performance was very positive in Q3. Our balance sheet continues to be strong, as does net debt, and our overall financial performance really puts us in a position so that we can invest in growth as we move into the future. If you look at Q4, while there's still some uncertainty in the Brazil market and even the US market with regards to COVID, even with that, we see a path to sequentially improving our sales for Q4 and finishing the fiscal year in a way that sets us up for a strong 2022. I'd like to tell you about one positive trend that's growing in the market that's worth noting. There's a very definite momentum for sustainable products from consumers and also from our customers. This bodes well for Reprieve's future, and we can hear this in the discussions that we have with our customers and in their future plans for not only apparel, but also home furnishings, footwear, and also automotive. Many customers are increasing their commitments to making products using recycled material, and they're actually taking action on those commitments. This quarter three, we've seen the reprieve hang tags with our co-branding partners increase by 80%. Now, that number year-to-date is 50% so that we can see the trends continuing to strengthen. For the fiscal year, we expect to end the year at 90 million hang tags on products across the marketplace, so the awareness of our brand is climbing in a very positive way. As I turn the call over to Eddie, let me just say one other thing. The management team at Unify is now seeing the benefit of being in place and working together for multiple quarters after what I consider to be a fairly unstable management situation over previous years. This is now starting to pay dividends and has become a clear driver of our improved performance. I've got to say that I'm very proud of the team and I'm grateful for their resiliency over these last 12 months. So with that, Let me turn it over to Eddie Engel, our CEO of Unify.