Assured Guaranty Ltd.

Good morning, everyone. Just want to touch on the highlights of the second quarter. Our net sales were 17.4 million versus 22.3 million in the prior year for the quarter. We're approximately $4.9 million down. We have a couple of things going on here. Our CPK microphone, our Carpool Karaoke microphone, which did very well. in the prior year. This first generation of microphone, we've bled down the inventory, so we did about $2.3 million less this quarter than we did in the prior year, same quarter. The other thing that happened, the $2.6 million difference between, that was $2.3 million worth of the difference in the 4.9 decrease. The second difference was primarily about $2.6 million, and that was primarily due to the delays from the Port of LA. So looking at the same instance year to date, 23.4 million versus 25.3 million. The Carpool Karaoke microphone was down 1.5 million from the same quarter last year. And about $400,000 was due to delays from the Port of LA and the ability to ship some of the Walmart Black Friday goods earlier this year to offset. So the Carpool Karaoke microphone, I mean, we bled down version one, but we recently introduced for this holiday season the second generation of the product, which I'm sure sales will discuss later on in this presentation. Gross profit, we were 3.3 million versus 5.8 last year. About $2.5 million difference, about $1.2 million was due to the sales volume shortfall, and the other $1.3 million was primarily due to the amount of margin yield, gross profit margin yield. We'll talk about that in a second. Year-to-date, $4.9 million of gross profit margin versus 6.8. of which half a million dollars was due to volume and 1.0 million was due to margin yield. So let's talk about gross profit margin. Had 19.2% gross profit margin versus 26.1% gross profit margin last year. It's approximately a 6.9 point margin drop. The Kapu Karaoke microphone, which carries a very, very strong gross profit margin, the decrease in that volume contributed to about four points of margin decrease. The other 2.9 was primarily due to increases in raw material and extremely more expensive freight costs, container costs. And another 1.1 points of margin was due to the mix of products that we shipped. Year-to-date, 22.2% gross profit margin versus 26.8% or a 4.6 point margin drop. 2.3 or half of those points drop were due to the Carpool Karaoke, which carries the decrease, decreased the profit margin as the Carpool Karaoke carries a much larger margin than most of our other products. And the rest, again, was due to increases in prices from freight, raw materials, as well as the mix of goods that was sold during the period. From an operating expenses standpoint, we had $2.6 million in operating expenses for the second quarter versus 3.4 last year. That was a drop of approximately $800,000, mostly variable expenses. commissions, royalty, and freight, which were pretty much commensurate with the decrease in sales. The general and administrative expenses were relatively flat for the quarter. Year-to-date, 4.6 million in operating expenses versus 5.1. Again, about a half a million dollars down, and G&A remained flat for the year-to-date period, so we're dealing mostly with less in selling expenses like commissions, royalty, and freight. and that was commensurate with the drop in sales year to date. As a result, we had income from operations of approximately $750,000 compared to $2.4 million last year, so a $1.7 million drop in year to date was $600,000 versus $1.7 million or a $1.1 million drop. We can talk about other income a little bit and expenses. We were at $116,000 in other income versus $790,000 of other income last year. For those of you who might recall, last year we had a recovery of a previous year insurance settlement on damaged goods that happened in the previous fiscal year of approximately $937,000. This quarter we had $236,000 in accounts payable forgiveness. Again, still part of settling out everything that had to do with the damaged goods incident of the prior year. Year-to-date, $207,000 of income versus 742 last year, and pretty much the same story. We did have $448,000 of loan forgiveness for the payroll protection program, and we also had... the $236,000 vendor accounts payable forgiveness related to the damaged goods. That did help offset some of the things, but we were still off in that area by about a half a million dollars because the biggest settlement of the insurance of the damaged goods, settling of the damaged goods project happened last year. Net income was $900,000 versus 2.4 for the quarter, about a million and a half down. $800,000 year-to-date versus $2.2 million in the same year-to-date period last year, approximately $1.4 million down as a result. The only other thing I'll mention here before I sign off is that inventory. You'll note that the inventory was approximately $9.2 million versus $8.2 million in the prior year. And again, this has mostly to do with all of the inventory that's delayed at the port. It was of the $19.2 million in inventory, about $9 million of it was in transit as of the end of 9.30. And we can discuss that at a later time. But that's my report. Thank you all.

Thank you, Lionel. At this point, let's turn the call over to Bernardo Mello, VP of Global Sales and Marketing.

Hey guys. Um, thank you for joining us and taking an interest in, uh, in our earnings call. Um, I wanted to go through some of the, I wanted to summarize some of the challenges that we face, um, especially from a, from a sales and logistic, um, situation that you're going to hear here. Um, and you're seeing a global lot global, but, um, You know, this year has been an incredibly tough year with nothing to do with how we had executed programs prior to the year. One of the things that we did this year, and you had heard me in previous calls, were that, you know, we had secured a lot of the programs for the back end much earlier than we did in previous years. Um, and, and we were lucky to, um, write our purchase orders in advance. Um, you know, Gary recognized our, our global logistic teams, but, um, I want to do the same with the Hong Kong team working extremely hard, securing containers, um, at a time where, uh, where everybody was bidding higher prices. Um, just to give an example, you know, we were usually paying about $3,300 a container. In some instances, we had paid this year about upwards of $20,000 a container just to get the items shipped and meet our commitments. So Q2, you know, we're impacted by those challenges. Some of the programs were set a little bit late, later than we had hoped, but it could have been a lot worse. And that's an attribute to to the Hong Kong team and the work that they have been doing. And also the team in California that really stepped up to the plate and were able to turn things as soon as they got it back out. But it did affect not only our domestic business, but it affected our direct import business. As you guys may know, Walmart has the flexibility that once they get products in their international distribution centers, The stores could pull in additional products and set up their own end caps, which in the past we've seen a lot of those initiatives done by the store. This year, with product being a little bit scarcer in the international distribution centers, we didn't see a lot of those roll out to the stores, and it affected some of the sales. So, you know, we were comping sales from last year all through March, probably September. September and October, we saw a little bit of a slowdown. That was obviously, like Lionel mentioned, due to Carpool Karaoke leveling down from the buzz that we got from TikTok. Also, just stores not being completely stacked with inventory. Our gross margins also took a hit because component costs were just were just raised across the board. You know, we do ship a lot of items with seven-inch panels, which saw somewhere around $4 to $6 in price increase just on the panels. We saw some of the ICs also increase in pricing. And then the container prices really impacted the gross profit as well. Luckily, we had some really, we were fortunate with our retailers that in some instances where they stepped up to the plate and accepted some of the price increases. As you know, we finished our year for rounding out the back half, mostly in December and January. And some of those price increases didn't come up to us until after Chinese New Year. And every time we placed new orders, we were seeing components continue to increase. So that had a heavy impact in our gross margin. And like I said, thankfully, some of the retailers stepped up and partnered with us, but it wasn't across the board. Focusing on individual retailers, Walmart, their sell-through has been pretty steady all throughout. Like I said, there was a slowdown sometime in September and October. As soon as December kicked off, we've seen the numbers continue to grow and get back to leveling out where they should be in this time of year. We had a Black Friday annual event at Walmart that launched early in November 4th. We've already seen strong sell-through to that, and we should be at 100% sell-through here by the end of November. So we were pretty satisfied with how that program turned out. We were able to increase one of our items from 2,000 stores to all stores in all 3,700 stores. You know, that shows the continued support from Walmart in believing in the category. Target also, you'll see that they rolled out their two-day ad and were featured on it. We have a $20 off on one of our items. We were able to get enough inventory to the pipeline in Target to be able to support that two-day ad, so they kept it for us. One big change for them was obviously removing Carpool Karaoke, but they're still selling on .com, not at the same rate that they were doing in .com and stores, but still steady flow of sales there in Target. So look out. There should be right after Thanksgiving, you should see our two-day ad across all stores in Target, and we're expecting some extremely good sales. Costco supported us with our initiative this year on a Wi-Fi pedestal. So this was year two of that item. They went a little bit heavier on that. We're in the midst of a two-week period where they're promoting that to all their members. We've seen already four different email blasts. on that item, and sales have been stronger than expected on .com. Clubs are still selling well, but we've seen the increase come from .com, so we're excited about that. The ad is running all the way through November 29th. So, you know, it was slow getting a lot of those products in because Costco is 100% relying on domestic deliveries, and some of those containers were caught in And what we've seen in the port, I mean, we we've seen some containers even delay up to 60 days in the port and, and, and, you know, those being our higher revenue items, they were caught in the port, but we were able to get enough out to at least support, um, the ad that's running through right now. Champs club is another one of our, of our really good stories. We have four items in there. We have kids item. We have a family item. That's retailing for $49.99. We have an item that we launched this year with Sam's Club that's been trickling in little by little, also a domestic item. And then they're also supporting our Wi-Fi pedestal. So we've had incredible success with Sam's Club, even though some of the challenges that we have with them being 100% domestic. but we we've had good success. Um, if you visited to one of the stores, one of the clubs of Sam's club, you will see a nice representation of, um, singing machine product there. And, you know, they, they're, they're very happy with the results so far. And hopefully we can continue to, to have Sam's club be a four item assortment instead of one or two, um, that has been in the past. um, Amazon, um, We were featured in Prime Day with Carpool Karaoke. They're still buying some direct import products that are coming in and also some domestic products. Even the big retailers like Amazon, Walmart, they've also had some container challenges themselves. So instead of hitting in late October, some of the containers are hitting now into their DCs. But we're seeing the ramp up. We're seeing the domestic orders coming in steadily just to have that backup of some of those direct imports that hit late. But Amazon continues to be really strong with us. We're still continuing to see weekly replenishment orders on the carpool karaoke, on our traditional karaoke, and we should launch some of the new items that we have coming in here shortly as well. And then I'll summarize international. International has been a really tough challenge for us. Um, just because they've also had container calls go up to $22,000, um, in the UK and we deal with, we deal with some distributors there. So that has put some challenges to those distributors, but we're still in Costco in Australia. We're still in Costco, UK. We're still represented in, in, in Amazon. Um, and, and we still have distribution into France, Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe. So we've maintained as much as we can there. And, um, we've already started to visit some of the international shows. We just had one in Amsterdam, um, with some good responses as to what we're going to accomplish in 2022. Um, and with that being said, I'll leave the rest into question. Um, I didn't want to take too much of the time, so I'll hand it back off to Gary.

Thank you, Bernardo. Appreciate the update. I just want to leave. I want to make sure we have plenty of time to address questions, but just wanted to sort of summarize with some parting thoughts on the quarter and particularly as we move into our holiday quarter. In terms of supply chain, I mean, obviously, it's posed a challenge to us. We see supply chain as a short-term disruption to our business that we think will continue to be a challenge over the coming one to two quarters. But that's not to say that our business model has changed in any way. The core strength of the business is still the same. We're still the captain of the category at every single major retailer. We are still the market-leading brand that consumers look for and recognize in the home karaoke space. And with the recent replacement and reconstitution of our shareholder, I believe the company is in the best position it's ever been in. to execute our business strategy moving forward, which is to transform from a purely hardware distribution model to more of a hardware recurring revenue subscription-based revenue model where we look to grow out our recurring revenue and subscriptions for content. So that I believe we are in the best position to execute on that. And that is still the long-term vision for the company over the coming few years. And with the support of the Stingray Group as a strategic investor in the company, I believe we're going to be well-positioned to take advantage of that. So at this point, I know we have a couple of minutes, so I'll turn it over to questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. Once again, that's star one to ask a question. We will pause a moment to allow questions to queue. We will take our first question from Romel Dionisio from AGS Capital. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Gary, about a year ago, after the holidays, I think in your commentary you talked about how the pricing environment was good, the promotion environment was low, you didn't need a lot of advertising into the holiday season. And just given the inflationary environment we're seeing overall, a little tightness on the supply chain, which obviously you guys are not alone with, are you seeing similar environments as we enter Black Friday now with Low promotions, low unnecessary advertising, and solid pricing. Is that kind of a similar consumer demand makeup that you're seeing going into the holidays? Thanks.

Sure. I can definitely touch on that, and if I miss anything, Bernardo can certainly comment. But in terms of what we're seeing, I mean, a lot of these promotional ads and circulars have been sort of pre-negotiated at the beginning of the season. Okay. Rewind back to sort of March, April, when we were building out these programs with all of our major customers. A lot of these supply chain challenges had not really sort of surfaced out there. And so we had worked programs, created forecasts based on a certain amount of promotional activity to be happening for the holiday quarter. And a lot of that is still going on. I mean, we still have major promotions running with Costco, planned promotions running with Amazon. Certainly Walmart just is in the midst of their big Black Friday promotion. So a lot of those things have still happened. But I will say that Bernardo and the team have been very successful in terms of passing on price increases due to supply chain back onto the retailers. And to the extent there's not enough inventory in the pipeline to warrant running a promotion, I know we've been pretty aggressive about just cutting back on as much of that as possible. So, Bernardo, if you have any other thoughts you want to add to that, feel free to chime in.

Yeah, you know, I would like to say that, you know, we've been pretty consistent from years past in the promotions that we've decided to participate in. You know, I think one of the things that we've stayed away was, you know, having those closeout items that we were promoting in the past. The last couple of years, we sort of stayed away from that because our product mix has been good A-plus, you know, inventory that is go-forward items. But for the most part, Walmart, Target, you know, and Amazon followed similar promotion schedules. We did have a promotional schedule with Sam's Club and Costco this year that was predetermined versus in the past, we've sort of ran it based on where they were sitting on inventory and we approved those. But this year we had predetermined programs with promos, but the club and the retailers bought into those programs and promos. So they were, like Gary had said, they were already secured right around January, February, and March.

Okay, thanks very much.

And once again, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star one on your touchtone phone. We will pause another moment for questions to queue. And it appears we have no further questions at this time.

Okay. Well, I appreciate everybody's time this morning to hop on and learn more about our second quarter earnings update. Look forward to touching base with everybody for our third quarter, big holiday quarter update. So thank you all. And obviously, if any questions in the meantime, feel free to reach out to Brendan Hopkins and we can schedule update calls. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Take care.