Lftd Partners Inc

Welcome to Lifted Partners' first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If you have joined via the 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 your telephone keypad to ask a question. I will now hand the call over to Jerry Jacobs, the Chairman and CEO of Lifted Partners, Inc. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Lifted Partners' first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Our earnings press release and financial statements for the first quarter 2024 have been filed with the SEC, and links to both can be found in our website, www.lftdpartners.com. On today's call, we'll share some comments on our quarterly performance, and we'll 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's the safe harbor notice. Some of the statements that we will make today regarding our business operations and financial performance, including words such as may, might, would, should, could, potentially, hope, believe, expect, project, and similar verbiage are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, so listeners should not place undue reliance upon such statements. 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. I'd like to highlight some of the factors that have been impacting our business, some for the better and some for the worse, over the past few months. First, regarding product collaborations. During the second half of 2023, our lifted subsidiary launched a hemp-derived products collaboration with privately held marijuana company Jeter, which absorbed a significant portion of our management time and efforts. However, for various reasons, neither party was satisfied with the collaboration. Consequently, Lifted and Jeter signed a mutually acceptable termination agreement that unwound the collaboration's positions, including in regard to cash, accounts receivable, raw materials, and finished inventory associated with Jeter-branded hemp-derived products. While this unwinding actually had a positive impact on Lifted's cash on hand, Bob White- Which is currently in excess of $5 million under gap accounting rules, the transfer from lifted to Jeter of raw materials and finished inventory resulted in lifted recognizing a loss from the termination of the Jeter collaboration of $1.3 million. Bob White- One of the reasons why lifted agreed to terminate its collaboration with Jeter is that nearly back to back with the termination of the Jeter collaboration. lifted entered into a new collaboration with a much larger publicly traded multi-state marijuana company on terms and conditions that we consider to be more attractive than the jeter deal and meanwhile lifted is continuing to manufacture and sell hemp drive products under its collaboration with diamond supply company second regarding stock buybacks As previously reported, Lifted Partners received approvals from our lender, Surety Bank, and our board of directors to use up to $300,000 of our working capital to conduct a private off-the-market stock buyback of up to 178,571 shares of our common stock at $1.68 per share or less from certain of Lifted Mate's earliest employees who are obligated to pay income taxes on the deferred contingent stock that they acquired pursuant to an employee retention agreement that was negotiated by Nick Warrender that reduced his merger consideration by the same number of shares. Pursuant to these approvals, Lifted Partners to date has purchased a total of 143,000 shares of our common stock at $1.68 per share for an aggregate of $240,240. Paul Cecala, Third, regarding regulatory risks hemp derived cannabinoid infused products continue to be under regulatory attack at both the federal and state levels. Paul Cecala, A reauthorization of the so called farm bill is currently being discussed in Washington DC and it is uncertain what language will be included in the final legislation. In addition, Bill Meyer- prohibition of or tighter regulation of hemp derived cannabinoid infused products has been adopted or proposed in several states that are significant markets for lifted, including Florida. Bill Meyer- These federal and state regulatory challenges are material risks to lifted business and are continuing to require us to expend substantial management time effort money in regard to lobbying efforts. At this point, I'll turn over the presentation to Nick Warnder, our vice chairman and chief operations officer and the founder and CEO of our wholly owned subsidiary, Lifted Made.

Thank you, Jerry, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to provide some information regarding some exciting developments and updates regarding for Lifted and operations, the first being Milos. We plan to launch our new brand of non-hemp health and wellness products called Milos this May. The Milos brand will focus around fitness, focus, sleep, and relaxation. Milos will be the first nutraceutical gummy brand leveraging the power of botanical terpenes with well-known natural ingredients. The second is a brand called Rebel. We plan to launch a new brand of non-hemp energy gummies called Rebel in June. These gummies are formulated to compete with similar Red Bull caffeine-infused beverages. Third, we're working on our rebrand of Herb. Our team, along with one of the top creative firms in the world, have spent the last seven months working on the newest iteration of our best-selling brand, Herb. This relaunch will showcase a brand-new suite of products, formulation, technologies and branding that we believe will set a new benchmark in the cannabis industry. Come by and see the new phase of ERB this July at Champs Vegas. Fourth, our expansions of our Kenosha operations. At the end of March, Lifted came to an agreement with its landlord in Kenosha to cancel, without penalty, two of its existing leases in the Kenosha Business Park and to expand the area of another existing lease in the Kenosha Business Park by an additional 23,000 square feet. This started April 1st. We expect this arrangement to improve Lifted's operational efficiency meaningfully. Fifth, the relocation of our hemp flower division to Colorado. Lifted has terminated its lease in Aztec, New Mexico, and has moved its hemp flower division to a facility in Durango, Colorado. One of the reasons we made this move was to allow Lifted to be able to manufacture its own THCA products, which are currently illegal in New Mexico, but legal in Colorado and have big consumer demand. At the Durango facility, we're using a large machine that we acquired in the Oculus acquisition to manufacture hemp drive products. Finally, a major new online sales initiative. Our company's greatest strength continues to be our well-known, high-quality, and extremely popular brand, Herb. However, for technical reasons, it's been challenging for Lifted to use its current website to simultaneously and efficiently sell Herb products to individual consumers, to our retail stores, and to our distributors. We have spent months analyzing the situation, and we've developed a solution that is currently being implemented, which we expect will be capable of efficiently handling larger product and sales volumes to all three of our channels. At this point, I will turn the presentation over to Jake Jacobs, our President and Chief Financial Officer.