Tpco Hldg Corp

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the parent company's first quarter 2023 conference call for the three-month period ended March 31, 2023. Listeners are reminded that certain matters discussed in today's conference call or answers that may be given to questions asked could constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to the parent company's future financial or business performance. Any such forward-looking information is based on certain assumptions and is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or results anticipated by the forward-looking information. Including the risk factors detailed in the parent company's continuous disclosure filings that can be accessed via the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, website at www.sec.gov or CDAR at www.cdar.com. Forward-looking information provided in this call speaks only as of the date of this call and is based on the plans, beliefs, estimates, projections, expectations, opinions, and assumptions of management as of today's date. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate and should not be placed on due reliance on forward-looking information. The parent company undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise except as expressly required by applicable law. In addition, during the course of this call, there may also be references to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including references to adjusted EBITDA, which do not have any standard meaning under GAAP, and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. For more information about forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, please refer to the company's quarterly report on Form 10Q, including management discussion and analysis, available on the SEC's website and CDAR. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded today, Monday, May 15, 2023. I'll now hand the call over to Mr. Troy Datcher, Chief Executive Officer of the parent company. Please go ahead, Mr. Datcher.

Thank you, Operator. And thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. During today's call, I'll provide a high-level overview of some of our successes during the first quarter. And then I'll turn the call over to our newly appointed Chief Operating Officer, Roz Lipsy. Let me say that again. Our newly appointed Chief Operating Officer, Roz Lipsy, to provide... a review of the progress we made over the course of the quarter, our strategic goals, and the initiatives generated in partnership with Go Flora. Then Mike Batesel, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our first quarter 2023 results in further detail. Following this, I'll provide a brief overview of plans for 2023, and then I'll turn the call over for questions. To best compete in our market and our position ourselves as a long-term leader in California, we chose to undertake a significant evolution in our business model. This included a move away from high-volume but low-margin wholesale businesses and low-value segments, which focused our energy and our efforts on establishing ourselves as a premium brand builder and consumer-focused company. I am pleased to share today that we have done great work with our teams to accomplish some really great results. These results are starting to have a meaningful impact on our financial results. We actually saw initial signs of the success in our full year 2022 results. And now, in the first quarter of 2023, we've achieved record gross margin. This would not be possible without the significant strategic shifts that we made. And I want to thank the team sincerely for their great work. Now, the work started when I arrived here. And I can tell you that I've been incredibly impressed with their efforts. I'm incredibly proud of what we've accomplished together. Now, I want to be very clear here. The work is not completed. It is not finished. But we have built a really strong foundation. And now it is time to accelerate our pathway to profitability. We can achieve this through our continued focus on building authentic brands, our premier retail experiences for consumers, as well as optimization of our operations through our transformational merger of equals with Goldflora. With this said, I'll now turn the call over to Rod Elipsi, who will take us through those plans. Thank you, Rod.

Thanks, Troy. It's great to be here with all of you today. As mentioned, we're currently working on several exciting initiatives, and I'd like to walk you through some of our most recent developments. Our expert brand building and omni-channel retail network remain a top priority for us. And to that end, we're pleased to announce the extension of our partnership and licensing agreement with Murillo by Santana. Murillo is a top-selling celebrity-influenced brand in California, inspired by Carlos Santana's Latin heritage, and dedication to spiritual wellbeing. This brand collaboration perfectly aligns with our values as it is developed by authentic industry leader who is committed to providing premium products that connect with consumers. Recently, our teams gathered to celebrate the launch of Mariah's new line of solventless 10 milligram hash rosin gummies made with all natural ingredients and available in flavors such as guava, prickly pear, and raspberry. The new gummies are now available at our retail stores across the state. We also recently launched a new brand called Cruisers, which combines our top-performing Fun Uncle and Deli brands into a single line that offers premium cannabis products at consumer-friendly price points. Cruisers will be the best price offering in every category it participates in, and following its launch, it performed exceptionally well. In fact, in the three-week period following its launch, Cruisers became our top performing brand by revenue across our entire retail network and continues to remain our top performing brand by revenue and units. This new consolidated brand has also allowed us to reduce our overall SKU count by 30%, increase our gross margins, and reduce our cost of goods sold. We are very pleased with the Cruisers launch, which remains ahead of our original forecast. Brand building will remain a key area of focus for our team, and we look forward to sharing additional developments throughout the year. During 2022, we significantly optimized our operations to reduce costs and improve profitability. This enabled us to create a platform that was focused on our areas of expertise and our best valued assets. With our announced combination with Goldflora, we have an opportunity to bring together two operators with significantly complementary strengths to further accelerate our growth. As shared in our announcement on February 22nd, 23, it is expected that our combined company can achieve between $20 and $25 million of annualized cost savings, thanks to its comprehensive vertical integration. Our initial integration work has begun, and we are leveraging the enhanced scale and supply chain optimization to further drive efficiencies. We've already begun to capitalize on benefits of Gold Flora's vertical integration, including initiatives such as sourcing specific strains for more genetic directional brands to deliver enhanced consistency and predictability to consumers. We've also moved vape pen and certain pre-roll production to Gold Flora's production lines for cost containment and margin improvement. Furthermore, we've shifted product R&D and innovation to Goldflora's platform to accelerate our capabilities and improve timeframes for the development of brands. Through the implementation of recent measures, we've yielded approximately $21 million in annualized payroll cost savings from the beginning of 22 to date. We're off to a strong start, and I look forward to providing further updates on the next call. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mike, who will discuss the financial results of the quarter.