Lftd Partners Inc

welcome to LFTD partners second quarter 2022 earnings conference call this call is being recorded at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode if you have joined via webcast and would like to ask a question during this presentation please click on the ask question box on the left side of your screen type in your question and hit submit teleconference participants please hit star 1 on on your telephone keypad to ask a question. I will now hand the conference over to Jerry Jacobs, the Chairman and CEO of LFTD Partners, Inc. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to LFTD Partners' second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Our earnings press release and financial statements for the second quarter have been filed with the SEC and links to both can be found on our website, www.lftdpartners.com. On today's call, we will share some comments on our quarterly performance, and we will answer some questions at the end of the call. A replay of this call will be available for an extended period of time, accessible through the Investors section of our website. Here is the safe harbor notice. Some of the statements that we will make today regarding our business operations and financial performance may be considered forward-looking, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. During the second quarter of 2022, the federal and state by state regulatory landscape in our industry has continued to evolve. Our company is spending a great deal of time and money trying to make sure that we stay legally compliant and that we and other hemp derived product manufacturers continue to educate elected officials and regulators about the important role that high quality hemp derived products play in consumers lives. In particular, Any language relating to hemp-derived cannabinoids contained in any bill federally legalizing marijuana and the precise language contained in the next farm bill will be very important to our business. During Q2 2022, LFTD Partners has engaged in discussions with multiple potential acquisition candidates. Currently, we are most interested in one particular acquisition candidate in the cannabis industry, with whom we have signed a confidentiality agreement. Based on the due diligence that we have conducted so far, this particular acquisition candidate appears to be of significant size, growing, profitable, and a good fit with our company, and we are actively exploring a potential merger with them. We cannot give any guarantee or assurance that we will enter into a definitive merger agreement with this particular acquisition candidate and if we do, when the deal would close as auditing and a capital raise would be required. Even though we have paid off all of our secured debt and have been experiencing excellent free cash flow, we continue to have discussions about raising additional debt and or equity capital. The purchase lifted MAID's headquarters building for $1,375,000 as we are contractually obligated to do no later than December 31st, 2023, to finance the cash portions of potential future acquisitions and also to provide additional working capital. Relating to potential debt, we are continuing to have discussions with potential lenders. One of the principal reasons why we recently prepaid all of our outstanding term debt and terminated the outstanding first lien security interest on all of our assets was to dramatically simplify our ongoing discussions with potential bank lenders. On the equity side, we have been reluctant for some time to sell newly issued equity securities because in our view, our share price hasn't yet fully reflected our company's outstanding growth and profitability as we are currently trading at less than 11 times our trailing 12 months basic earnings per share of 71 cents. However, depending upon how our discussions proceed with potential acquisition candidates, and especially with the particular acquisition candidate that I discussed earlier, we believe that there may be an attractiveness to raising equity capital in conjunction with a listing of our common stock on an exchange, preferably on the NASDAQ, but if that does not turn out to be possible, then most likely on the Canadian Securities Exchange. It is our hope that an exchange listing combined with an equity capital raise may help us to obtain some analyst coverage of our stock and an increase in the daily trading volume of our stock. We are sometimes presented voluntary unsolicited offers by some of our unrelated shareholders to sell back to the company blocks of shares of our common stock in private transactions at prices less than the then current trading price of our stock in the OTC markets. Our company occasionally accepts these offers. Between November 2020 and March 2022, LFTD partners bought back a total of 172,000 shares of our common stock. During Q2 2022, we were presented with some more of these voluntary unsolicited offers, but rather than accepting any of them, we chose to fully pay off our remaining secured debt and to continue building up our working capital. Depending upon the status of our acquisition discussions, the levels of free cash flow that we're generating, and other factors, we may engage in additional stock buybacks, either in more such privately negotiated transactions or pursuant to a broader stock buyback program in the public market that may from time to time be approved by our board of directors. At this point, I will turn the presentation over to Nick Warner, our vice president and chief operations officer and the founder and CEO of our wholly owned subsidiary, Lifted Maid.

Thank you, Jerry.