NASDAQ:EDUC Educational Development Q3 2025 Earnings Report $1.25 +0.05 (+4.03%) As of 04/25/2025 04:00 PM Eastern This is a fair market value price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. Earnings History Educational Development EPS ResultsActual EPS-$0.10Consensus EPS N/ABeat/MissN/AOne Year Ago EPSN/AEducational Development Revenue ResultsActual RevenueN/AExpected RevenueN/ABeat/MissN/AYoY Revenue GrowthN/AEducational Development Announcement DetailsQuarterQ3 2025Date1/13/2025TimeAfter Market ClosesConference Call DateMonday, January 13, 2025Conference Call Time4:30PM ETUpcoming EarningsEducational Development's Q4 2025 earnings is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20, 2025, with a conference call scheduled on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 4:30 PM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Conference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfilePowered by Educational Development Q3 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrJanuary 13, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 8 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00This call is being recorded on Monday, January 13, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Operator00:00:06Steven Huser, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:11Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Educational Development Corporation's fiscal Q3 of 2025 earnings call. On the call with me 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 Q3 and year to date results. The release will be available later today on the company's website at www dotedcpub.com. Speaker 100:00:48Before 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 more details on the company's financial conditions and full forward looking statements. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Craig? Speaker 200:01:21Thank you, Stephen, 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 and Heather to run through the financials and provide an update on our sales and marketing. Finally, I will wrap up call with an update on our progress of the sale leaseback of our headquarters, the Hilti complex, and provide some comments on strategy for fiscal 2025. Speaker 200:01:49During the Q3 last year, we recognized a $4,000,000 gain on the sale of our old warehouse. Without this one time event, our Q3 pre tax losses would have been $1,300,000 compared to the pre tax loss of $1,100,000 in the Q3 of this year. Our Q3 results on lower than historical revenue levels reflect the continued operational improvements we have made over the past year and our continued focus on driving continued operational and cost efficiencies. During the quarter, we continued intentionally to offer additional discounts to our customers, which negatively impacted our gross margin and bottom line. Our increased discounting has solely been to bolster sales and turn excess inventory into cash to be used to pay down our bank debt. Speaker 200:02:39This is a short term strategy that we will continue to strategically pursue until we sell our building and pay back all of our borrowings. At that time, we will be able to return to more historical promotions and pricing, which should have a positive impact to our cash flow and margins. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials. Dan? Speaker 300:03:02Thank you, Craig. To our Q3 results compared to the prior year Q3, net revenues were 11 $16,900,000 Average active brand partners totaled 12,400 compared to 16,400. Loss before income taxes totaled 1.1 compared to income of 2,700,000 dollars Net loss totaled $800,000 for the quarter compared to a net income of $2,000,000 in the Q3 last year. Loss per share for the quarter totaled $0.10 compared to earnings per share last year of $0.24 on a fully diluted basis. Now for a year to date summary compared to the prior year. Speaker 300:03:46Year to date net revenues totaled $27,600,000 compared to $42,100,000 Our average active brand Paper Pie brand was $13,300 compared to $19,200 last year. Loss before income taxes totaled $5,300,000 compared to income before taxes of $2,900,000 Net loss after taxes totaled $3,900,000 compared to income of $2,200,000 Loss per share totaled $0.47 compared to earnings per share of $0.26 on a fully diluted basis. Now for a quick update on our working capital positions. Net inventories decreased $8,800,000 from $55,600,000 at February 28, 2024 to $46,800,000 at November 30, 2024. Borrowings on our working capital line of credit totaled $4,300,000 at the end of November 2024 with $1,200,000 of availability at the end of the quarter. Speaker 300:04:52That concludes the financial update. I will now turn the call over to Heather Cobb to talk about sales and marketing opportunities in further detail. Heather? Speaker 400:05:00Thank you, Dan. At BakerPie, we remain committed to strategic initiatives that drive growth and success for our brand partners. This quarter, we introduced key efforts designed to deliver both immediate results and long term value. The first was the shipping subscription launch. In November, we introduced a membership program offering customers the opportunity to qualify for reduced or free shipping, along with value added perks such as monthly emails, birthday postcards for the children in their lives and more. Speaker 400:05:29The program has been met with overwhelming positive feedback from both brand partners and customers affirming its value as a relationship building and revenue driving tool. Our Black Friday promotion known as Book Friday was expanded this year launching earlier in alignment with broader retail trends. The excitement generated by social media activity and direct messaging translated directly into sales performance throughout the event. And our Storymaker Summit. In 2025, Paper Pie will host 5 Storymaker Summit in major cities across the U. Speaker 400:06:01S. Running from January through June. This shift from a single national convention allows us to engage with more brand partners in smaller, more intimate regional settings, facilitating deeper connections between attendees and home office staff. Registration opened in Q3 and the enthusiastic response suggests this format may become a part of a new every other year rhythm for the business, alternating with our national convention. Looking ahead a bit in 2025, we're preparing innovative projects and initiatives across both the paper pie and retail divisions with a continued focus on expanding our impact and enhancing brand partner success. Speaker 400:06:40We remain confident in our products and mission. Print books continue to be the overwhelming preferred choice for reading, particularly in the children's market. As education and learning needs will persist, EDC is well positioned to meet those demands with our diverse collection of quality books and educational toys and resources. This concludes our sales and marketing update. I will turn the call back over to Craig for our closing remarks. Speaker 400:07:06Craig? Speaker 200:07:08Thank you, both Heather and Dan. And now for an update on the Hilti complex building sale process. In September of 2024, we announced that we had executed a new letter of intent and in late October we announced the asset sale agreement which started the due diligence timeline with the buyer group. The initial due diligence period is scheduled to expire on January 19 and the buyer has an option to extend the due diligence period for another 30 days. As such, we hope to have the transaction completed by the beginning of March. Speaker 200:07:43While this time frame is longer than we are hoping, a transaction of this size is not something that moves quickly. One positive side in the delayed closing of this transaction is that we will continue to make monthly pay downs on our debts with our bank and thus our available cash at closing will be higher. The proceeds from this sale will not only bring savings from reduced interest expenses, but will allow us to build a positive cash position as we continue to work down our excess inventory levels, which was approximately $30,000,000 at the end of November. As previously stated, the agreement excludes the 17 acres of excess land, which will remain under EDC's ownership and provide further strength to our balance sheet post building sale. The proceeds from the sale are expected to fully pay back the bank, leaving us with no debt, and we expect to have limited borrowing needs moving forward. Speaker 200:08:41While the building sale is a large project, we continue to focus on growing our brand partner levels and sales. We continue to pursue additional enterprise projects between our IT and marketing teams that we feel will generate positive momentum in the upcoming fiscal year. Lastly, I want to thank all of our shareholders for their patience, our employees for their commitment to our mission, and our customers and brand partners for their loyalty during this difficult period. I'm confident in our collective ability to emerge stronger and more resilient than ever before. Now that we have provided a summary of some recent activity, I will now turn the call back over to the operator for questions and answers. Speaker 200:09:24Operator? Operator00:09:26Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Olivier Dorte from please go ahead. Speaker 500:10:32Yes. Hello. It's Olivier Dorte from Geneva. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you for your update. Speaker 500:10:41I have 2 questions. Do you hear me well? Speaker 300:10:47I do. Speaker 500:10:48Okay, good. The first question is about the new markets. Maybe you are taking in account right now. Have you any ideas about new markets? And where are you? Speaker 500:11:01Where is EDC now about that? And the second one is about the new IT implementation. First, on the partner side, what are your returns? And on the customer side, do you think about digital extension of your products? Or what is where are you again on this side of customers with your new implementation? Speaker 200:11:36Okay. I think I've got those. As far as new markets, we're always looking for new markets. I would say, while it's not necessarily a new market, our Smart Lab toys in the retail division has done very, very well for us. So kind of almost consider that a new market. Speaker 200:11:54But I don't have anything necessarily new to report at this time about new markets. What I will say and I can expand on it during the IT questions is that we've been very successfully implementing a couple of major projects in IT. First of all, being the e commerce, as you know, roughly a year ago, that's gone very well. We continue to make tweaks and add new features consistently. We've had the shipping subscription, which is a big project that launched in that Q3, which has been successful. Speaker 200:12:31Kind of moving forward, we have our online fundraiser program that will kind of add new abilities with it being online, but that's going to be in the next couple of months. We're also talking about making this a slight tweak to our model, not abandoning our model, but adding brand ambassador, which is kind of more of an affiliate type program. There's been more than a couple multilevel marketing companies that have attempted that and not done well, but I'm very excited with what we've come up with. It's probably not quite as aggressive as other multilevel marketing companies, but it does expand us into a different, I wouldn't say market per se, but it does give us the ability to increase brand partner counts without signing up through our traditional model. So that's kind of what we have on the horizon for IT. Speaker 200:13:35I hope that answers your question. Speaker 300:13:39Yes. Speaker 500:13:42Maybe a little update. Have you any news from us, Dom? Speaker 200:13:51Dan has quarterly or many monthly calls with their CFO. Everyone is just kind of patiently waiting for us to get through this difficult period. We don't have any news to report, but as restrictions for purchasing are lifted, we anticipate that we will return to normal purchases with Osborn. Thank you. Operator00:14:27Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Paul Carter from Capstone Asset Management. Please go ahead. Speaker 600:14:36Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions and Happy New Year. Just to start off, minor question. So you previously announced that on September 19, you executed a commercial real estate sales contract and that the due diligence period started that day on September 19. But now you're saying that was only a letter of intent and the due diligence period only started on October 28. Speaker 600:15:03So can you just maybe explain what happened there? Well, Speaker 300:15:13it's the LOI is in it, it's just that, it's just a letter of intent and so we had to wait until we could get NASA purchase agreement documented for the due diligence piece to be defined and start. So while what the real issue Paul from a macro perspective was we were kind of under the impression with the buyer group that they wanted to close this by year end. And so when we went to the bank and we asked them for the last amendment and we kind of put everything out in a timeline, we were really geared towards a year end close. And so our amendment with our bank on our disclosures were all geared towards that. What's end up happening is the buyer group is kind of had another transaction that they said that kind of took all their focus away from year end and so they didn't start a lot of their work until towards the November December timeframe which slowed them down. Speaker 300:16:18And so now we're left with the asset purchase agreement definitions which outline that they've got 75 days from the delivery of certain key documents to them which started in basically early November. And so that puts our timeline for the initial due diligence period to be January 19th. We also have they have in the asset purchase agreement a 30 day option to extend that, which would put them into mid February. And then they're still closing after that. So that's why we've gone to the bank. Speaker 300:17:00We've recently executed a new amendment to extend our line out until April 4th to give us sufficient time to close the transaction. And it's just kind of a so that's the current timeline. Speaker 600:17:20Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Thanks for that detail. And is the sales price still $38,300,000 or was that changed? Speaker 300:17:31No, it's that the terms of the asset purchase agreement were consistent with the LOI. So nothing changed. Okay, Speaker 600:17:42great. And then just another unrelated question. For the quarter, your average active brand partners was 12,400. Are you able to say what you ended the quarter at? Speaker 300:17:59Well, that's the average for the quarter. We don't report monthly numbers for our active average brand partners. Speaker 600:18:11Okay. Fair enough. All right. So this is apologies for the rather blunt question, but I'll ask it anyway. So 4 years ago, you were doing about $200,000,000 in net revenues and are growing your capacity to get up to $4,000,000 to $450,000,000 And now you're done with a net revenue run rate of about, call it, dollars 30,000,000 give or take. Speaker 600:18:35And there I guess, there isn't a lot of evidence yet that things have totally bottomed. And I totally understand, and you know I've been following you for a long time, I understand you've been facing multiple challenges all at the same time like inflation, the Osborne relationship, the overhang of your debt agreement, etcetera. But rather than just selling your building, has the Board considered hiring a banker and pursuing all strategic alternatives, including selling the company to maybe a different another party with greater resources? And if the Board hasn't done that, I'd just be interested in why not? Speaker 200:19:22Well, I mean, the closing of the current building sale transaction is imminent. It doesn't seem appropriate to look at options until that either closes or doesn't. That being said, we've got several options on the table as well that we've kind of been thinking about not moving forward as the current contract is exclusive, but we have several options. If in fact we do get the transaction closed and we're out of bank debt, then we're kind of back going again. We feel like our sales force is kind of sitting on the sideline to see what happens. Speaker 200:20:10Honestly, we've kind of thrown up several red flags with the heavy discounting and selling off assets. It does look like we're going out of business, but we're not. If we complete this transaction, we're in a much stronger financial position and we can do run our business how we need to. It's been 2 years that we've been under the okay stump, if you will. So we haven't been able to operate our business as we would normally. Speaker 600:20:44Yes. No, that's fair enough. Yes, I'd probably just throw that out there just to kind of get your reaction. But yes, it does sound like closing of this transaction will hopefully be a bit of a catalyst for an inflection point. But that's it. Speaker 600:21:00That's it for me, everybody. Thanks very much. Operator00:21:03Thank you, Paul. Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Joseph Bebe. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:21:13Hello. Quick question about the brand partner numbers, if you can just comment a little more on those. Speaker 200:21:25Just kind of the numbers and what's generally happening? Speaker 700:21:29Yes. Just kind of the decrease in them and just how you feel the trend is and the motivations of the brand partners for leaving, if you have an idea of that? Speaker 400:21:42Sure. I mean, I think that Paul alluded to some things even in his question talking about economy and the headwinds that everyone has been facing there. I think that there are the overarching things that we are up against just as an MLM. We've talked about those several times on the calls. The reputation that MLM tends to carry with it, and then Craig alluded to some others that we do sense that they are sort of waiting kind of in a waiting game. Speaker 400:22:20They're in a wait and see attitude. But the overwhelming response that we get from any sort of a release of new title or a conversation about what's next and all of those things that we are privy to that unfortunately the public can't see is always overwhelmingly positive. The heart of the mission and the foundation of why we do what we do continues. The impact we believe is just continues to be able to grow. And so while the numbers have decreased, unfortunately, we don't think that that is a trend that will continue into future years, but it's something that we believe will get turned around as the sale of the building is done and we are purchasing again and things look more normal for us from a business standpoint. Operator00:23:24Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Craig White for any closing remarks. Speaker 200:23:32Thank you. Before I get into my closing, I do want to just reiterate what Dan mentioned. It was in the press release at 3 o'clock that we signed an amendment that now extends through April 4th, which I feel is a very good sign. What it tells me is that the bank believes we're doing everything we can to pay them back. We're doing everything we can to get back to a stronger financial position. Speaker 200:24:01So until further notice, that's what we're doing. We're trying to get back to business as usual. If we can purchase some new titles, make it look like a normal new title release, our sales force will get excited and we're kind of back going again. But anyway, that remains to be seen. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on our call today. Speaker 200:24:24We appreciate your continued support and look forward to providing an additional update Speaker 300:24:31in May. Next one will be in May. Speaker 200:24:34The next one will be in May 2025. Speaker 300:24:36Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks, everybody. Operator00:24:40Thank you. And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallEducational Development Q3 202500:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2x Earnings DocumentsPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) Educational Development Earnings HeadlinesDemystifying College Accreditors, Trump’s Latest Higher Education TargetApril 25 at 1:45 PM | forbes.comEducation Dept investigates UC Berkeley's foreign funding disclosuresApril 25 at 1:45 PM | msn.comHere’s How to Claim Your Stake in Elon’s Private Company, xAIElon Musk has done it again. He’s developed a powerful new AI model that’s already turning heads — and turning the industry upside down. Some say it could threaten Google’s search engine dominance. Others believe it could mark the beginning of the end for ChatGPT.April 26, 2025 | Brownstone Research (Ad)‘He would not commit’: Hesperia educators confront Obernolte over education cutsApril 25 at 8:29 AM | usatoday.comThis one Utah university president signed onto national letter criticizing Trump’s attacks on higher educationApril 25 at 8:29 AM | msn.comThree judges, including two Trump appointees, rule against the Department of Education’s anti-DEI policyApril 25 at 2:18 AM | msn.comSee More Educational Development Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Educational Development? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Educational Development and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About Educational DevelopmentEducational Development (NASDAQ:EDUC), a publishing company, operates as a publisher of educational children's books in the United States. It operates through two segments, PaperPie and Publishing. The company offers various books, including touchy-feely board books, activity books and flashcards, adventure and search books, art books, sticker books, and foreign language books, as well as internet-linked books comprising science and math titles, and chapter books and novels. It markets its products to retail accounts, which include book, school supply, toy and gift stores and museums, through commissioned sales representatives, trade and specialty wholesalers, and its internal tele-sales group; and through a network of independent sales consultants through internet sales, direct sales, home shows, and book fairs. Educational Development Corporation was incorporated in 1965 and is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma.View Educational Development ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Earnings By Country U.S. Earnings Reports Canadian Earnings Reports U.K. Earnings Reports Latest Articles Market Anticipation Builds: Joby Stock Climbs Ahead of EarningsIs Intuitive Surgical a Buy After Volatile Reaction to Earnings?Seismic Shift at Intel: Massive Layoffs Precede Crucial EarningsRocket Lab Lands New Contract, Builds Momentum Ahead of EarningsAmazon's Earnings Could Fuel a Rapid Breakout Tesla Earnings Miss, But Musk Refocuses and Bulls ReactQualcomm’s Range Narrows Ahead of Earnings as Bulls Step In Upcoming Earnings Cadence Design Systems (4/28/2025)Welltower (4/28/2025)Waste Management (4/28/2025)AstraZeneca (4/29/2025)Booking (4/29/2025)DoorDash (4/29/2025)Honeywell International (4/29/2025)Mondelez International (4/29/2025)PayPal (4/29/2025)Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (4/29/2025) Get 30 Days of MarketBeat All Access for Free Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools. Start Your 30-Day Trial MarketBeat All Access Features Best-in-Class Portfolio Monitoring Get personalized stock ideas. Compare portfolio to indices. Check stock news, ratings, SEC filings, and more. Stock Ideas and Recommendations See daily stock ideas from top analysts. Receive short-term trading ideas from MarketBeat. Identify trending stocks on social media. Advanced Stock Screeners and Research Tools Use our seven stock screeners to find suitable stocks. Stay informed with MarketBeat's real-time news. Export data to Excel for personal analysis. Sign in to your free account to enjoy these benefits In-depth profiles and analysis for 20,000 public companies. Real-time analyst ratings, insider transactions, earnings data, and more. Our daily ratings and market update email newsletter. Sign in to your free account to enjoy all that MarketBeat has to offer. Sign In Create Account Your Email Address: Email Address Required Your Password: Password Required Log In or Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google Forgot your password? Your Email Address: Please enter your email address. Please enter a valid email address Choose a Password: Please enter your password. Your password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least 1 number, 1 letter, and 1 special character. Create My Account (Free) or Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google By creating a free account, you agree to our terms of service. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
There are 8 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00This call is being recorded on Monday, January 13, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Operator00:00:06Steven Huser, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:11Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Educational Development Corporation's fiscal Q3 of 2025 earnings call. On the call with me 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 Q3 and year to date results. The release will be available later today on the company's website at www dotedcpub.com. Speaker 100:00:48Before 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 more details on the company's financial conditions and full forward looking statements. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Craig? Speaker 200:01:21Thank you, Stephen, 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 and Heather to run through the financials and provide an update on our sales and marketing. Finally, I will wrap up call with an update on our progress of the sale leaseback of our headquarters, the Hilti complex, and provide some comments on strategy for fiscal 2025. Speaker 200:01:49During the Q3 last year, we recognized a $4,000,000 gain on the sale of our old warehouse. Without this one time event, our Q3 pre tax losses would have been $1,300,000 compared to the pre tax loss of $1,100,000 in the Q3 of this year. Our Q3 results on lower than historical revenue levels reflect the continued operational improvements we have made over the past year and our continued focus on driving continued operational and cost efficiencies. During the quarter, we continued intentionally to offer additional discounts to our customers, which negatively impacted our gross margin and bottom line. Our increased discounting has solely been to bolster sales and turn excess inventory into cash to be used to pay down our bank debt. Speaker 200:02:39This is a short term strategy that we will continue to strategically pursue until we sell our building and pay back all of our borrowings. At that time, we will be able to return to more historical promotions and pricing, which should have a positive impact to our cash flow and margins. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials. Dan? Speaker 300:03:02Thank you, Craig. To our Q3 results compared to the prior year Q3, net revenues were 11 $16,900,000 Average active brand partners totaled 12,400 compared to 16,400. Loss before income taxes totaled 1.1 compared to income of 2,700,000 dollars Net loss totaled $800,000 for the quarter compared to a net income of $2,000,000 in the Q3 last year. Loss per share for the quarter totaled $0.10 compared to earnings per share last year of $0.24 on a fully diluted basis. Now for a year to date summary compared to the prior year. Speaker 300:03:46Year to date net revenues totaled $27,600,000 compared to $42,100,000 Our average active brand Paper Pie brand was $13,300 compared to $19,200 last year. Loss before income taxes totaled $5,300,000 compared to income before taxes of $2,900,000 Net loss after taxes totaled $3,900,000 compared to income of $2,200,000 Loss per share totaled $0.47 compared to earnings per share of $0.26 on a fully diluted basis. Now for a quick update on our working capital positions. Net inventories decreased $8,800,000 from $55,600,000 at February 28, 2024 to $46,800,000 at November 30, 2024. Borrowings on our working capital line of credit totaled $4,300,000 at the end of November 2024 with $1,200,000 of availability at the end of the quarter. Speaker 300:04:52That concludes the financial update. I will now turn the call over to Heather Cobb to talk about sales and marketing opportunities in further detail. Heather? Speaker 400:05:00Thank you, Dan. At BakerPie, we remain committed to strategic initiatives that drive growth and success for our brand partners. This quarter, we introduced key efforts designed to deliver both immediate results and long term value. The first was the shipping subscription launch. In November, we introduced a membership program offering customers the opportunity to qualify for reduced or free shipping, along with value added perks such as monthly emails, birthday postcards for the children in their lives and more. Speaker 400:05:29The program has been met with overwhelming positive feedback from both brand partners and customers affirming its value as a relationship building and revenue driving tool. Our Black Friday promotion known as Book Friday was expanded this year launching earlier in alignment with broader retail trends. The excitement generated by social media activity and direct messaging translated directly into sales performance throughout the event. And our Storymaker Summit. In 2025, Paper Pie will host 5 Storymaker Summit in major cities across the U. Speaker 400:06:01S. Running from January through June. This shift from a single national convention allows us to engage with more brand partners in smaller, more intimate regional settings, facilitating deeper connections between attendees and home office staff. Registration opened in Q3 and the enthusiastic response suggests this format may become a part of a new every other year rhythm for the business, alternating with our national convention. Looking ahead a bit in 2025, we're preparing innovative projects and initiatives across both the paper pie and retail divisions with a continued focus on expanding our impact and enhancing brand partner success. Speaker 400:06:40We remain confident in our products and mission. Print books continue to be the overwhelming preferred choice for reading, particularly in the children's market. As education and learning needs will persist, EDC is well positioned to meet those demands with our diverse collection of quality books and educational toys and resources. This concludes our sales and marketing update. I will turn the call back over to Craig for our closing remarks. Speaker 400:07:06Craig? Speaker 200:07:08Thank you, both Heather and Dan. And now for an update on the Hilti complex building sale process. In September of 2024, we announced that we had executed a new letter of intent and in late October we announced the asset sale agreement which started the due diligence timeline with the buyer group. The initial due diligence period is scheduled to expire on January 19 and the buyer has an option to extend the due diligence period for another 30 days. As such, we hope to have the transaction completed by the beginning of March. Speaker 200:07:43While this time frame is longer than we are hoping, a transaction of this size is not something that moves quickly. One positive side in the delayed closing of this transaction is that we will continue to make monthly pay downs on our debts with our bank and thus our available cash at closing will be higher. The proceeds from this sale will not only bring savings from reduced interest expenses, but will allow us to build a positive cash position as we continue to work down our excess inventory levels, which was approximately $30,000,000 at the end of November. As previously stated, the agreement excludes the 17 acres of excess land, which will remain under EDC's ownership and provide further strength to our balance sheet post building sale. The proceeds from the sale are expected to fully pay back the bank, leaving us with no debt, and we expect to have limited borrowing needs moving forward. Speaker 200:08:41While the building sale is a large project, we continue to focus on growing our brand partner levels and sales. We continue to pursue additional enterprise projects between our IT and marketing teams that we feel will generate positive momentum in the upcoming fiscal year. Lastly, I want to thank all of our shareholders for their patience, our employees for their commitment to our mission, and our customers and brand partners for their loyalty during this difficult period. I'm confident in our collective ability to emerge stronger and more resilient than ever before. Now that we have provided a summary of some recent activity, I will now turn the call back over to the operator for questions and answers. Speaker 200:09:24Operator? Operator00:09:26Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Olivier Dorte from please go ahead. Speaker 500:10:32Yes. Hello. It's Olivier Dorte from Geneva. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you for your update. Speaker 500:10:41I have 2 questions. Do you hear me well? Speaker 300:10:47I do. Speaker 500:10:48Okay, good. The first question is about the new markets. Maybe you are taking in account right now. Have you any ideas about new markets? And where are you? Speaker 500:11:01Where is EDC now about that? And the second one is about the new IT implementation. First, on the partner side, what are your returns? And on the customer side, do you think about digital extension of your products? Or what is where are you again on this side of customers with your new implementation? Speaker 200:11:36Okay. I think I've got those. As far as new markets, we're always looking for new markets. I would say, while it's not necessarily a new market, our Smart Lab toys in the retail division has done very, very well for us. So kind of almost consider that a new market. Speaker 200:11:54But I don't have anything necessarily new to report at this time about new markets. What I will say and I can expand on it during the IT questions is that we've been very successfully implementing a couple of major projects in IT. First of all, being the e commerce, as you know, roughly a year ago, that's gone very well. We continue to make tweaks and add new features consistently. We've had the shipping subscription, which is a big project that launched in that Q3, which has been successful. Speaker 200:12:31Kind of moving forward, we have our online fundraiser program that will kind of add new abilities with it being online, but that's going to be in the next couple of months. We're also talking about making this a slight tweak to our model, not abandoning our model, but adding brand ambassador, which is kind of more of an affiliate type program. There's been more than a couple multilevel marketing companies that have attempted that and not done well, but I'm very excited with what we've come up with. It's probably not quite as aggressive as other multilevel marketing companies, but it does expand us into a different, I wouldn't say market per se, but it does give us the ability to increase brand partner counts without signing up through our traditional model. So that's kind of what we have on the horizon for IT. Speaker 200:13:35I hope that answers your question. Speaker 300:13:39Yes. Speaker 500:13:42Maybe a little update. Have you any news from us, Dom? Speaker 200:13:51Dan has quarterly or many monthly calls with their CFO. Everyone is just kind of patiently waiting for us to get through this difficult period. We don't have any news to report, but as restrictions for purchasing are lifted, we anticipate that we will return to normal purchases with Osborn. Thank you. Operator00:14:27Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Paul Carter from Capstone Asset Management. Please go ahead. Speaker 600:14:36Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions and Happy New Year. Just to start off, minor question. So you previously announced that on September 19, you executed a commercial real estate sales contract and that the due diligence period started that day on September 19. But now you're saying that was only a letter of intent and the due diligence period only started on October 28. Speaker 600:15:03So can you just maybe explain what happened there? Well, Speaker 300:15:13it's the LOI is in it, it's just that, it's just a letter of intent and so we had to wait until we could get NASA purchase agreement documented for the due diligence piece to be defined and start. So while what the real issue Paul from a macro perspective was we were kind of under the impression with the buyer group that they wanted to close this by year end. And so when we went to the bank and we asked them for the last amendment and we kind of put everything out in a timeline, we were really geared towards a year end close. And so our amendment with our bank on our disclosures were all geared towards that. What's end up happening is the buyer group is kind of had another transaction that they said that kind of took all their focus away from year end and so they didn't start a lot of their work until towards the November December timeframe which slowed them down. Speaker 300:16:18And so now we're left with the asset purchase agreement definitions which outline that they've got 75 days from the delivery of certain key documents to them which started in basically early November. And so that puts our timeline for the initial due diligence period to be January 19th. We also have they have in the asset purchase agreement a 30 day option to extend that, which would put them into mid February. And then they're still closing after that. So that's why we've gone to the bank. Speaker 300:17:00We've recently executed a new amendment to extend our line out until April 4th to give us sufficient time to close the transaction. And it's just kind of a so that's the current timeline. Speaker 600:17:20Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Thanks for that detail. And is the sales price still $38,300,000 or was that changed? Speaker 300:17:31No, it's that the terms of the asset purchase agreement were consistent with the LOI. So nothing changed. Okay, Speaker 600:17:42great. And then just another unrelated question. For the quarter, your average active brand partners was 12,400. Are you able to say what you ended the quarter at? Speaker 300:17:59Well, that's the average for the quarter. We don't report monthly numbers for our active average brand partners. Speaker 600:18:11Okay. Fair enough. All right. So this is apologies for the rather blunt question, but I'll ask it anyway. So 4 years ago, you were doing about $200,000,000 in net revenues and are growing your capacity to get up to $4,000,000 to $450,000,000 And now you're done with a net revenue run rate of about, call it, dollars 30,000,000 give or take. Speaker 600:18:35And there I guess, there isn't a lot of evidence yet that things have totally bottomed. And I totally understand, and you know I've been following you for a long time, I understand you've been facing multiple challenges all at the same time like inflation, the Osborne relationship, the overhang of your debt agreement, etcetera. But rather than just selling your building, has the Board considered hiring a banker and pursuing all strategic alternatives, including selling the company to maybe a different another party with greater resources? And if the Board hasn't done that, I'd just be interested in why not? Speaker 200:19:22Well, I mean, the closing of the current building sale transaction is imminent. It doesn't seem appropriate to look at options until that either closes or doesn't. That being said, we've got several options on the table as well that we've kind of been thinking about not moving forward as the current contract is exclusive, but we have several options. If in fact we do get the transaction closed and we're out of bank debt, then we're kind of back going again. We feel like our sales force is kind of sitting on the sideline to see what happens. Speaker 200:20:10Honestly, we've kind of thrown up several red flags with the heavy discounting and selling off assets. It does look like we're going out of business, but we're not. If we complete this transaction, we're in a much stronger financial position and we can do run our business how we need to. It's been 2 years that we've been under the okay stump, if you will. So we haven't been able to operate our business as we would normally. Speaker 600:20:44Yes. No, that's fair enough. Yes, I'd probably just throw that out there just to kind of get your reaction. But yes, it does sound like closing of this transaction will hopefully be a bit of a catalyst for an inflection point. But that's it. Speaker 600:21:00That's it for me, everybody. Thanks very much. Operator00:21:03Thank you, Paul. Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Joseph Bebe. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:21:13Hello. Quick question about the brand partner numbers, if you can just comment a little more on those. Speaker 200:21:25Just kind of the numbers and what's generally happening? Speaker 700:21:29Yes. Just kind of the decrease in them and just how you feel the trend is and the motivations of the brand partners for leaving, if you have an idea of that? Speaker 400:21:42Sure. I mean, I think that Paul alluded to some things even in his question talking about economy and the headwinds that everyone has been facing there. I think that there are the overarching things that we are up against just as an MLM. We've talked about those several times on the calls. The reputation that MLM tends to carry with it, and then Craig alluded to some others that we do sense that they are sort of waiting kind of in a waiting game. Speaker 400:22:20They're in a wait and see attitude. But the overwhelming response that we get from any sort of a release of new title or a conversation about what's next and all of those things that we are privy to that unfortunately the public can't see is always overwhelmingly positive. The heart of the mission and the foundation of why we do what we do continues. The impact we believe is just continues to be able to grow. And so while the numbers have decreased, unfortunately, we don't think that that is a trend that will continue into future years, but it's something that we believe will get turned around as the sale of the building is done and we are purchasing again and things look more normal for us from a business standpoint. Operator00:23:24Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Craig White for any closing remarks. Speaker 200:23:32Thank you. Before I get into my closing, I do want to just reiterate what Dan mentioned. It was in the press release at 3 o'clock that we signed an amendment that now extends through April 4th, which I feel is a very good sign. What it tells me is that the bank believes we're doing everything we can to pay them back. We're doing everything we can to get back to a stronger financial position. Speaker 200:24:01So until further notice, that's what we're doing. We're trying to get back to business as usual. If we can purchase some new titles, make it look like a normal new title release, our sales force will get excited and we're kind of back going again. But anyway, that remains to be seen. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on our call today. Speaker 200:24:24We appreciate your continued support and look forward to providing an additional update Speaker 300:24:31in May. Next one will be in May. Speaker 200:24:34The next one will be in May 2025. Speaker 300:24:36Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks, everybody. Operator00:24:40Thank you. And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.Read morePowered by