Lftd Partners Inc

Welcome to Lifted Partners Third 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 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 hand the conference over to Jerry Jacobs, the Chairman and CEO of Lifted Partners, Inc. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Lifted Partners earnings conference call to discuss the third quarter of 2024. Our earnings press release and financial statements for the third quarter of 2024 have been filed with the SEC, and links to both can be found on our website, www.lftdpartners.com. On today's call, we shall 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 investor 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. The 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. During Q3, we welcome Sheryl Howard to our board of directors. Sheryl is an accomplished real estate professional who has worked closely for years with our board member, Kevin Rosio. We look forward to working with Sheryl to grow our company. We will be holding a shareholders meeting on December 6th in Orlando to vote on the election of our board of directors and to vote on the engagement of our outside auditing firm, First Seen Associates. By now, all of our shareholders should have received by mail our proxy materials. Any shareholders who have not received our proxy materials because their address is on file with our transfer agent or out of date should promptly contact our transfer agent which is Colonial Stock Transfer in Salt Lake City. I encourage all shareholders to participate in the votes. Now I'd like to address a few topics that have impacted our business over the past few months. First of all, consumers nationally have been reducing their spending on discretionary items, including hemp-derived cannabinoid products. Nick is going to comment on some important initiatives that he and his team at Lifted Made have been working on during this challenging sales environment. To grow herbs direct to consumer sales and direct to retailer sales, to expand sales of our rebel energy gummies and meal-less wellness gummies, and to reduce our operating expenses. Secondly, opponents led by the big marijuana companies are continuing to lobby at both the federal and state levels for prohibitions and or severe restrictions against hemp-derived cannabinoid products. Our company and other members of the hemp industry have been spending a great deal of time, energy, and money attempting to persuade legislators to support regulatory guardrails that would prohibit sales of intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoid products to miners, that would prohibit packaging intended to appeal to miners, and that would require rigorous lab testing of all products. Third, we are in serious discussions with certain potential acquisition candidates that sell both hemp-derived and non-hemp-derived products. One of these potential acquisition candidates is also involved in the US marijuana industry and is expanding into the European Union. We are actively exploring potential capital raises to fund such potential acquisitions, including using debt or equity or a combination of the two. We are subject to non-disclosure agreements, so I'm not in a position to provide much more detail at this point in time. While these potential acquisitions are extremely high priority for us, I must caution that no assurance can be given that these discussions will be successfully concluded. At this point in time, I'll turn the presentation over to Nick Warner, our vice vice chairman and chief operations officer and the founder and CEO of our holy on subsidiary lifted.

Thank you, Jerry. And good morning, everyone. I'd like to provide information regarding some exciting developments and updates regarding lifted. During Q3, we launched the newest iteration of our best-selling flagship brand herb featuring a fly high theme. We're using two major initiatives to intensively push these relaunched products in a way that is intended to significantly increase our direct-to-retailer and direct-to-consumer online sales. To increase our direct-to-retailer sales, we've built a 15-person team of boots on the ground. We have been meeting face-to-face with hundreds of vape shops in an intensive city-by-city push. So far, our team has spent time in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, and will be continuing on to other metro areas. To increase our direct consumer online sales, we've engaged some of the country's best online marketing firms to accelerate ERB's SEO and other online marketing efforts. We're hopeful that these two major marketing initiatives will significantly expand our sales volumes and profit margins and make us less reliant on current distributors. We're also spending time, energy, and money on marketing two of our new hemp-free brands, Milos and Rebel Energy Gummy. These two non-hemp brands are very important for Lifted because many large grocery and convenience store chains are not equipped or interested in handling products used that are illegal in some of the states. They want products that can be brought into their distribution centers and shipped all over the country without worrying about violating state and local laws. We expect our marketing efforts on Milos and Rubble Energy gummies We'll gain traction during the holiday season from Thanksgiving through the new year, which is historically a very busy season for our products. We've also been focused on reducing expenses. We've reduced our payroll expenses 8% from Q1 24 to Q2 24, and then reduced our payroll expense another 8% from Q2 to Q3 2024. Professional fee expenses also came down 40% from Q1 to Q2 24, and then another 33%. from Q2 to Q3. And we have then proactively reduced our CapEx spending from $747,000 in the prior year to $310,000 year-to-date, and are containing our CapEx spending going forward. As a result of these initiatives, our cash from operating activities only fell by $68,000 year-to-date, and nearly all of our declining cash was due to investing and financing activities. At this point, I will turn the presentation over to Jake Jacobs, our President and Chief Financial Officer.