Educational Development CorporationEDUCNASDAQ
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Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Educational Development Corporation's financial and operating results for its fiscal 2026 third quarter and year-to-date results. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. On the call today are Craig White, President and Chief Executive Officer; Heather Cobb, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer; and Dan O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the fiscal 2026 third quarter and year-to-date results. The release will be available later today on the company's website at www.edcpub.com. Before turning to the prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors. We refer you to Educational Development Corporation's recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial condition. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Craig?
Craig White: Thank you, Alan, and welcome, everyone, to the call. We appreciate your continued interest. I will start today's call with some general comments regarding the quarter, then I will pass the call over to Dan to run through the financials, after which Heather will provide an update on our sales and marketing, and then I will provide an update on our plans for fiscal 2027. During the third quarter, we completed the sale of our Hilti Complex, which was a big achievement for the company and our shareholders. Selling the complex saves -- paves the way for us to move forward into fiscal year 2027 with no bank restrictions, which allows us to execute our strategy to return to growth and profitability. Our plan is not an overnight change with expected immediate results, but a carefully developed strategy for long-term growth. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials.
Dan O'Keefe: Thank you, Craig. Third quarter financial summary compared to the prior year third quarter, net revenues were $7 million compared to $11.1 million. Average active brand partners for the quarter totaled 5,100 compared to 12,400. Earnings before income taxes were $10.6 million compared to a loss of $1.1 million in the third quarter last year. Excluding the building gain from the sale of $12.2 million, our loss before income taxes would have been $1.6 million. Net earnings totaled $7.8 million for the quarter compared to an $800,000 loss in the third quarter last year. Earnings per share totaled $0.91 compared to a loss of $0.10 on a fully diluted basis. Year-to-date summaries compared to the prior year, net revenues of $18.7 million compared to $27.6 million. Average active brand partners totaled 6,200 compared to 13,300. Our earnings before income taxes totaled $7.4 million compared to a loss of $5.3 million last year. Excluding the building sale gain of $12.2 million, our loss before income taxes were $4.8 million. Net earnings totaled $5.4 million compared to $3.9 million loss last year. Earnings per share totaled $0.63 compared to a loss last year of $0.47 on a fully diluted basis. Now for an update on our working capital. Inventory levels decreased from $44.7 million at the beginning of fiscal year 2026 to $39.1 million at the end of November, generating $5.6 million of cash flows from inventory reductions. This cash flow has been used to pay down vendors, reduce our bank debts and fund our operational losses. In October, following the building sale, we paid off our line of credit, our term loans with our bank, Bank of Oklahoma. At the end of the quarter, we had $3.4 million of cash, $800,000 of receivables, $39.1 million of inventory and $2.0 million of accounts payable and $0 owed to our bank. That concludes the financial update. Now I'll turn the call over to Heather Cobb for a sales and marketing update. Heather?
Heather Cobb: Thank you, Dan. One of the most significant milestones this quarter was the launch of Gathered Goods, our reimagined fundraising program. This program represents a meaningful shift in both strategy and execution. Unlike our previous Cards for a Cause fundraiser, Gathered Goods features custom products designed and created in-house, allowing us to better control quality, storytelling and brand alignment. From a financial perspective, this also delivers stronger margins, which is increasingly important in today's cost-sensitive environment. Equally important to this project was the online opportunity embedded within the program. Gathered Goods allows individuals and organizations to fundraise digitally, expanding reach beyond a single event or community and making participation easier for the supporters. While still early, this program positions us well for scalable, modern fundraising and opens the door for broader participation in future quarters. This quarter also included our Black Friday, which we call Book Friday promotion, a large site-wide sale that continues to be a cornerstone of our Q3 marketing strategy. Book Friday drove strong engagement across customers and brand partners, reinforcing the value of our catalog and our ability to generate excitement through well-timed broad-based promotions. While discount-driven events are not our priority or preferred strategy, this sale remains an important visibility and volume driver in the midst of the holiday season. Turning to the results themselves. While the decline in brand partner count is significant and clearly reflected in the top line, it's important to look at what the data tells us beneath the surface. First, the drop in revenue is not proportional to the decline in brand partner count. This tells us that the brand partners who remain active are, in fact, more productive and more engaged than in recent years. We are seeing fewer casual or inactive participants and a higher concentration of truly active sellers. Second, when we look specifically at our leader levels, the decline is not occurring at anywhere near the same rate as the overall field. Historically, leaders are our most loyal group. They are the ones who persevere through challenging cycles, adapt their approach and continue building even when conditions are not ideal. Just as important, leaders are also the primary drivers of new brand partner recruitment. Their relative stability gives us confidence that while the field may be smaller today, the foundation for future growth remains intact. In summary, this quarter reflects a business in transition, smaller in size, but more focused and more resilient. We are investing in programs like Gathered Goods that improve margin quality and scalability, maintaining strong seasonal promotional moments and seeing encouraging signs that our sales force is highly engaged and leader-driven. As we look to the future, the combination of a committed leader base, more productive brand partners and strategic program innovation gives us reason to be optimistic about the path ahead. Craig, I'll turn it back over to you.
Craig White: Thanks, Heather and Dan. As Dan mentioned, with the closing of the building sale, we paid off all of our bank debts, which will have a positive impact on our cash flows of approximately $1 million per year. While the last couple of years have been challenging to operate our business under the restrictions from our bank, I'm excited about the position we are in today and the plan for growth in fiscal 2027 and beyond. Since fiscal 2024, we have had to prioritize cash. While we need to execute on a plan that increases sales and therefore, cash, we are putting more focus on increasing our brand partner counts. Our actions necessitated by the bank's restrictions have given red flags to our sales force, and they have been anxious and waiting to see what would happen. A major factor for the reduced activity has been the lack of new products for them to get excited about and therefore, share with their customer base. As we got closer to closing on the sale, we put together a reorder and new title purchase plan in conservative phases. We were ready to act on Phase 1 within a few days of closing and placed reprint orders on some key out-of-stock items as well as several new titles that we expect will energize our customers and sales force, giving our brand partners another item to help build momentum. We are excited about the arrival of those titles beginning in late spring and early summer. Another key component to attracting new brand partners is a refreshed marketing strategy. We know we need to adapt to what the next generation entering the workforce, Gen Z, is seeking in a business opportunity. These would be tweaks to our existing model, including language used for marketing, onboarding once they have activated their account, et cetera, but would certainly not require an overhaul. We are still working on putting the pieces in place for this to be implemented and can move quickly once that is finalized. We have continued to focus on being prepared to execute a growth plan once restrictions were lifted. You heard from Heather about one of the major enterprise initiatives being our online fundraising program, Gathered Goods. We are very excited about that program's successful launch and have a few other exciting upgrades and initiatives being implemented very soon. Also, I have recently pulled together an AI task force. Some of our employees had already begun exploring, so I formalized an opportunity for collaboration, allowing a safe space to see how we can best utilize it as part of our overall strategy. So far, we have implemented in ways that automate rote tasks, which can save money. We are excited about this starting point and continue to work together on transformational ideas that will propel us forward and allow us to compete in both retail and direct-to-consumer spaces. Lastly, I want to thank all of our shareholders for their patience, our employees for their hard work and commitment to our mission and our retail customers and brand partners for their loyalty during this challenging period. Having seen the resilience of all involved, I am confident in our collective ability to emerge stronger than ever before. I truly believe we are tackling our growth plan from a position of strength with our team of employees as well as the strategies being built and implemented with our sales and marketing and IT initiatives. Now that we have provided a summary of some recent activity, I will turn the call back over to the operator for questions and answers.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Paul Carter of Capstone Asset Management.
Paul Carter: Well, good afternoon, everybody, and Happy New Year. So I know you've described in the past how your sales force has kind of been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the company to, I guess, to get out of hock with your bank. And I know it's only been 2.5 months or so since you sold your building, but do you have any evidence yet that this transaction has reinvigorated your sales force for a more productive 2026?
Craig White: Well, I think one of the main factors in that reinvigoration, as you mentioned, was bringing in new titles and reorders of out-of-stock bestsellers. But also what we see is the uptick or the increased activity in leader promotions. That's been very exciting. I started in the last month or two calling all brand partners that promoted to upper level leadership. And there's a lot of excitement out there. So that's my couple of points. Heather, would you like to expand?
Heather Cobb: No. I mean I would echo what he said, Paul. Specifically, I think it's hard to say specifically that just the sale of the building was going to be enough for them to just immediately roll back into action. We announced just immediately after we made the purchases from that Phase 1 of new titles and reprints that they would be coming as we shared with you, late spring, early summer. We concluded our incentive trip promotion in December with just on target the anticipated number of earners that we had predicted. We launched a new incentive in January. And so while it's hard to say in the midst of the holidays, especially with Christmas and New Year, that we see specific things that are happening, we can definitely say that the energy feels slightly different in a much more positive way than it has in a while.
Paul Carter: Well, that's good to hear. And then just changing gears. So obviously, it's nice to hear about the $0 debt balance. But do you have a new credit line in place? I know you've been talking about putting something small in place once this transaction was completed.
Dan O'Keefe: Yes. We're talking to a few banks and also talking to some other options. We're right now in a cash position where we're, I think that we're looking for just a relationship for banking to go forward with. And so we're talking to some local banks that have some interest and hope to have something in place here in the next few months.
Paul Carter: Okay. Great. Just talking about your balance sheet. So I know the value of your inventory is like I think it's more than 3x the market cap of your company. So obviously, that's pretty important to investors. And I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about that. I guess, first of all, is your inventory like fully insured against all risks like water damage or pests or anything? Because I know some of them have been sort of sitting in boxes for a while up on the shelf. But -- and is your inventory like insured at replacement cost or something else?
Dan O'Keefe: It is insured at replacement cost. So what we have on the books is what it's insured for. So if we've got $39.1 million on the books at the end of November, that's what it's insured for, full replacement cost. Now we don't want to talk about any worst-case scenarios with disaster...
Paul Carter: Yes. No, fair enough. Yes, I was just sort of wondering about that because I know -- and actually sort of related to that, we're not really damaged, but I'm just thinking about kind of the nature of your inventory. So I know most of your titles are things like zoo animals or whatever that don't go out of date. But like do you have a sense for what percentage of your inventory could be out of date and therefore, worthless in like 3 or 5 years if there's not a lot of sell-through in certain titles?
Dan O'Keefe: So I would -- the only thing I would say in response to that is our track record has been we've carried inventory sometimes for in excess of 10 years on certain titles before we sell through them. And we've never historically written down inventory, and we've never basically offloaded the title or gone into the remainder market to sell the title. So that's kind of reflected in our reserve. Our reserve is very small on our short-term inventory and also on our long-term inventory because our history says we typically don't participate in the remainder market and don't have topics, as you mentioned earlier, that go stale or out of favor.
Heather Cobb: Yes. Paul, unless you know something we don't, and they're going to change the alphabet on us, I think we're fairly safe.
Paul Carter: Okay. No, that's good to hear. And I figured that was the case, but I just know that's one of the hesitations, I guess, that some investors have is that if you're sitting on so much inventory relative to current sales that maybe that inventory isn't worth a hundred cents on the dollar. But obviously, that's -- you're a little bit of a different company than a grocery store or something like that. Okay. And then just -- I know this will come out in your 10-Q, but how much of your $39.1 million of inventory is Usborne-related?
Dan O'Keefe: About 50%.
Paul Carter: Okay. And then can you provide an update on the status of your relationship with Usborne Publishing? I don't know that you've talked about them in a little while.
Craig White: Yes. There's really been no change. Dan actually has monthly or at a minimum quarterly calls with their -- the equivalent of their, Chief Financial Officer. They're anxious for us to get back and start ordering titles again. So because of the new distribution agreement, we're not required to purchase every title they offer, which is good for us. But yes, there's been no negative change in the relationship.
Paul Carter: Okay. Okay. That's great. And then just the last one here, totally random question. But just regarding that 17-acre attractive excess land beside the Hilti Complex there. What is your plan for that? Are you just going to hold on to it for the time being? Or do you have sort of longer-term plans for it?
Craig White: Well, it's kind of been an ace in the hole. I kind of kept that in my back pocket for now. It's -- there's been some flurry of activity on it recently, actually, which is interesting. Some people have kind of come across it and inquired about it. We've been given a proposal to develop it, which is intriguing. But in that particular proposal, the return for us just wasn't what I thought it could be or should be. So for now, we're just kind of holding on to it. It could be something that we develop for ourselves. It could be something that we sell if need be or develop it and retain ownership of it. So there's lots of options. It hasn't been necessary to do anything with it at all, and it continues to appreciate. So I'm happy to continue to do that.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]
Craig White: I guess we did better than ever. Answering everyone's questions before they asked it.
Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Craig White for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Craig White: Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on our call today. We appreciate your continued support and expect to provide an additional update on the -- well, not the Hilti sale progress, but our banking relationship and just moving forward our growth plan. So again, thank you for joining us, and we'll talk again in May.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.