Greetings and welcome to the Build-A-Bear Workshop Investor Presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may submit a question via the web at any time by typing them in the Ask a Question field on the left side of your screen. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, press star zero on your telephone keypad. If you're on the webcast, click the question mark icon on the upper right-hand corner of your screen. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Glenn Axelrod of Bristol Capital. Thank you. You may begin. Thank you, Diego. Thank you everybody for joining our webcast today with Build-A-Bear. The purpose of today's presentation is to give our audience a better understanding of the business through a presentation and then questions with management. Just a reminder, this is not a quarterly earnings call, and our purposes today is just to give you a high-level overview of the business. The company did release their prior earnings results recently, they're available on the company website. Today's discussion is gonna be led by CEO, Sharon John, who is also joined on the call by Voin Todorovic, CFO. You should see their presentation in the webcast. If you'd like to get a copy, simply email me at Glenn, G-L-E-N, @bristolir.com. I'll be happy to send you one. We will break for questions at the end of the formal presentation. When we do break, we encourage those questions. As a reminder, we're just taking questions through the web portal. If you're listening over the telephone, please access the web link that I sent earlier today to ask that question. Remember, you can submit a question using the text box within the portal at any time. I'll ask the questions on the air for everyone to hear, Sharon or Voin will answer. I'm not going to reference any names, but I will read the questions asked. As we have a fairly large audience today, if I can't get to your question online in time, and it has not yet been addressed during the call and can be, I'll come back to you by email. I won't read the forward-looking statements, but I do state that they apply, and I reference them under page two of this PowerPoint. With that said, once again, thank you for joining us. Remember, this is fairly informal, and we do encourage questions to help you better understand the business and its growth path. Now I'll turn the call over to Sharon to start her part of the discussion and presentation. Thanks for everyone, being here this afternoon or morning, wherever you are. We'll just get started with some key investor considerations. I do wanna start out with four points about where we think a lot of our brand power and business power lies. One is that we do have a very strong brand. Build-A-Bear brand is a trusted brand. It's iconic at this level, at this moment. We believe that it is capturing the current consumer zeitgeist. People are really wanting to have more personalized one-on-one relationships with brands. We are a very shareable experience, and what I mean by that is our brand and that experience location process generates a lot of UGC from our consumers. We are now evolved into very topical categories of gifting, enthusiasts, and collectibles as well as a nostalgia brand. The second point is this really dynamic and strong relationship that we have with our consumers and our guests. They are in a lot of different categories. We're gonna give you some information about that. We're multigenerational, given our 25-year-old history, and we span ages, genders, and socioeconomic strata, and have a lot of great data on the, our loyalty members as well as first-party data that we believe we can drive engagements and value. The third is a dynamic business model where we've been working on in the last few years to diversify the company across multiple channels. We still maintain that vertical experience location portion of our business that allows us to drive our products directly to the consumer, we've expanded into different sorts of revenue models as well, and we'll go into that. That's beyond the digital and e-commerce, into additional categories. We've demonstrated consistent financial strength, business strength, consistent profitable growth. We have comparatively high margins, good free cash flow, a clean balance sheet, and a seasoned executive team that's been together through quite a few things at this point. That leads us to a hypothesis, a thesis of saying all of those points that we believe that we're positioned for continued growth across a number of these revenue streams that we've created to monetize this brand. We believe that we have comparative control over our future to some degree. What I mean by that is because it is our brand, because we have the direct relationship and access to communicate with consumers, and because we're in a vertical retail environment, we believe that we're poised for a lot of opportunity in the future. Very quickly, the journey, you can take a look at this. In a nutshell here is we started as a mall-based vertical kids retailer that became a brand through all of these experiences, these 225 million experiences that we've now been had in our stores, and pivoted to a brand-first company that can monetize through channels, categories, consumers, and content. We just celebrated our 25th year, that was a journey all this time to what we call more in that I know that it's often believed that, everything I'm gonna say that we're more than is what all we are, if that makes sense. We are now clearly more than malls, more than plush toys, more than just workshops, and more than kids. The next page, which is slide six, gives you just some snapshots about some data points that support that, those facts. Again, reiterates what we are now, which is a multi-channel, multigenerational, experience-based brand company that operates in diverse product categories of, and appeals to a broad consumer group. Picking out some of these data points, you'll see our e-commerce, is now a very meaningful piece of our business at 20%. At the end of 2021, 35% of our retail portfolio is now outside of what one would call a traditional mall. We have 500, about 500 global locations, multiple business models, multiple countries. I mentioned how many furry friends have been made in our Build-A-Bear over the course of the last 25 years. 40% of our sales are to teens and adults. Strong licensing portfolio, really robust brand equity beyond plush and gifting, pajamas, pet toys, content, NFTs, going to launch gaming, and a lot of passionate employees that help create that relationship. Some data about the brand. One of the ways that we're able to create that is we engage in life moments with families and consumers and individuals. This gives you a little bit of an idea of all the different ways that we engage and all the different moments that it makes sense for Build-A-Bear to be a part of consumers' lives and weave ourselves into their lives. The biggest one actually, beyond birthdays, is the just because. People like to just come to Build-A-Bear and experience it with no real reason, we're finding. The brand is beloved because of that emotional connection. We are extendable and well-known. You'll get a sense of that in the bar graph, where you can see us compared to other well-known family brands on these, on a couple of metrics, including awareness and distinctive, very important elements. These are, these are affinity types of data points, then we're very high on the affinity level. It's important to understand that we drive a lot of our traffic at our experience locations. It's estimated from exit surveys that over 60% of our store visits are planned as a special trip. To put that in really simple terms, we're creating the traffic to the mall. The mall's not creating the traffic for us in those areas where we are mall-located and otherwise. We are more balanced from a seasonality perspective than one might think if you only believed we were a toy company. That seasonality comes a lot from the fact that we do have these different moments in time. Valentine's is actually our second most common season, but birthdays spread, which is our largest reason for coming, spread across the entire year by default. Important data point, 14 million names in a first part, from a first-party data perspective. We have a, on page 10, you'll see some data about how diverse and coveted, frankly, our consumer base is. Lots of interest across generations. We have a, you would expect households with children is a big part of our consumer base. But we also are diverse, you know, again, with that teens and adults who are buying them for themselves, if you look at the pie charts on the bottom right, I believe it's often a surprise when I do this presentation of the balance between girls and boys. Finally, we have consumers who are most likely have attended college and are above average on, from a household ownership, marriage, and income. Because of all this affinity, the well-known aspect of our brand, we do generate quote-unquote, "Free media." A lot of people pick up stories about Build-A-Bear. It's not that unusual for us to get 1 billion impressions on a single drop, as we did with our After Dark program, our Baby Yoda program. We've been generating about 10 billion media impressions over the course of the year, over the last three years, and that has significantly increased since five years ago. As I said, we've evolved to be just integrated into pop culture. Lots of, from TikTok to things going viral, to stars visiting the stores, to being integrated in popular television shows. I like to say from South Park to the Pope, Build-A-Bear's media drives top-of-mind awareness for us. We are considered a co-brand with over 75 world-class collaborators and licensees. You can just take a look across this who's who of pop culture that we get to mash up our brand with. When I say mash up, I really mean it. We're not label slap. In our case, as I've said before, we don't just make a Darth Vader stuffed something that you stuff that looks like a Darth Vader. We're allowed to create a Darth Vader bear or a Elsa bear. Little bit different kind of relationship. All of these brands allow us to put our brand mark on the product, which is also something that isn't common. Even with the power of this license portfolio, again, I want to reiterate, Build-A-Bear is seen as a brand itself, strong brand itself, and that provides balanced sales. These licenses still are less than 50% of our business. That what we're then able to do when you think about this dynamic business model that we've created, is harness the power of the brand. Now all of these tools with technology that we have to communicate directly with these consumers to drive a circle of engagement. It is not an uncommon model, where you're interjecting different consumer touch points from a one-to-one experience to an email, to a targeted social post, to seeking out consumers who have affinity or lookalikes, to get them to engage with the brand, either in the experience location, to go into e-commerce, watch one of our movies on Netflix, buy some pet toys at PetSmart, and you see how the circle of value starts to get to elevate. By getting the consumer to experience the brand in our locations, that drives affinity and then getting them to want to engage in other ways, which then often gets them to come back to the store. It is a lifetime value model. I think it's also important to pause on the importance of the experience locations, the retail part of Build-A-Bear, and how that dynamic that is between the physical locations and the e-commerce side. We do have award-winning retail locations, about 25% average contribution. Basically 100% of our locations are EBITDA positive in North America. 50 million guests per year cross a lease line for us to have this experience. We have lots of different formats, which we'll share with you on the next page. We serve as many distribution centers for e-commerce. The buy online, ship from store, buy online, pick up in store, a big unlock for us. That is a very efficient model for us to leverage overhead and labor in these locations, and it has worked very well for us. On 17, you get a sense of all the different models we have, so that we are as flexible as possible to be where the consumer wants us to be, in the way they want us to be, working with partners, from Great Wolf Lodge to Carnival Cruise Line and in different countries around the world. We've recently opened, we're on track to get 20 new locations open for 2022 that we've mentioned most recently in Six Flags Magic Mountain and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We've added testing and adding new formats, evolving constantly. A new one that's been opened in East St. Louis is the Build-A-Bear Adventure, which includes an arcade and party rooms and has a bigger back room for that fulfillment that I was sharing with you. We've learned to operate efficiently and profitably, very short form, in terms of how long we're there to, of course, years. Each one of these models has a little bit of a different approach. One is the corporately managed stores are more a traditional retail model, third party is more of a wholesale model, and international is a franchise model. On 18, again, you see that we now have a significant portion of our sales coming from e-com. That is important to us. Our most valued consumers, as this is true in a lot of multi-channel companies, are the consumers that will shop in both areas. They have different reasons for being. It's an important piece of business for us. It is also a profitable piece of business for us. We think about this in terms of we want to grow our total business. We're agnostic to a great degree if the consumer shops online or shops in the store because our profitability is similar. One of the reasons why that is the case versus say a lot of other vertical retailers, which are often apparel retailers, is because we don't have a lot of returns because the clothes always fit. Always fits a teddy bear. Since the shift to driving e-commerce and building out all of the new technology and dynamics that we have there, since 2019, since we first did that, we've grown over 150%. I think, on the previous couple of pages, you saw another award from Newsweek, but also here, one of the fastest growing online shops according to Newsweek for 2022. e-commerce also provided us a fabulous platform, especially when going mobile first, to drive additional business to not think about this as a cannibalistic plan, but an additional business for our teens and tweens by driving that collector and gift-giving business through our buildabear.com. Our primary and secondary targets are different based on the physical experience and the online experience. It doesn't mean that we don't appeal to both in both places, it's a primary and secondary question of making sure that we're driving a broad consumer base and that we're not, again, cannibalizing. It's families and children in the retail locations and teens and tweens and adults on dot com. Part of that is we did not want to just singularly digitize our in-store experience, although we did do a version of that, which I'll share here. These are just some of the sub sites that sit inside of buildabear.com so that consumers can have special and procured experiences online. First, of course, that we have the landing page, which by the way supports the Build-A-Bear Workshop, because the number two and three pages that are visited are Plan a Visit and Plan a Party. The dynamic relationship between our digital and physical is at the very beginning of the experience. As well as, of course, we're encouraging consumers that shop up in the store to go online and do and have yet another experience. Build the Bear Builder goes, takes you through a process. Bear Builder 3D is an animated experience like for our younger consumer with a side-by-side. HeartBox is gifting. We have an entire gift shop where you can put in consumer-centric, or the, for the receiver, and we will make suggestions for you. The Bear Cave is age-gated. Recently launched Pajama Shop, of course, we're in other locations such as Amazon and Facebook as well. 21 provides you with some of the remarkable data that we've managed to drive since we've launched a lot of these new capabilities through, mostly through our relationship with Salesforce. Very strong digital feedback and data here. Again, that first-party data is of critical nature. The next few pages just give you a bit of a highlight of some of the things that we're doing on the types of categories that a brand, a company with this kind of brand power, has capabilities to extend. We use a lot of this content creation for marketing as well as it drives product development for us in some cases. From short form to NFTs, as I mentioned, from to gaming, new movies, radio and music, we're in the content business, and it helps us drive awareness for our brand, as well as on the next page, 2023, that brand power also gives us the leverage to diversify revenue streams into new categories with something that we call outbound licensing that does drive margin-rich revenue to us because it's royalty revenue. Really importantly, these products that you're seeing here from, you know, bedding to toys to bicycles to pet, to pet toys, puts us in literally tens of thousands of doors, where our brand has a presence. That's important as well. That's just one more reason for us to be top of mind. With that, I will turn it over to Voin to provide some financial results updates. Thank you, Sharon. I'll start on slide 25 and talk a little bit about 2021, the results. 2021 was the most profitable year in Build-A-Bear history. We delivered the highest revenue in over a decade and the highest profit in company's history. Even on the slide, you can see that our total revenue of $411 million was over 21% growth versus 2019. Pre-tax improvement, significant versus 2019. It was really important for us to know that like we came out of COVID stronger, and we continue to build on this momentum. This momentum in 2022, so far for the first nine months, we reported our results last week. Total revenues of about $323 million versus about $282 million last year, so significant growth. About $36 million in pre-tax income compared to $31 million. You know, confidence in the business and the momentum that we had so far in Q4 give us confidence to raise our guidance on a full year basis to be now $455 million-$465 million versus $440 million-$460 million that we had previously. We also raised our pre-tax income range to $56 million-$63 million compared to $52 million-$62 million. We continue to be very pleased with the results and the momentum that we are seeing in our business. Just few things I think it's important to note when we talk about a turnaround and some of the slides, some of the graphs on slide 27 are comparing full-year results. Again, these are gonna get updated and based on our guidance, we expect them to improve. I just wanna highlight a couple of the things, you know, like when we think about profitable stores. You know, nearly all of our stores in North America are profitable with the average contribution margin over 25%. When you think about when we got here in 2012, that was about less than 10%. Also, there was a lot of work done from the diversification perspective, and about 35% of our locations are now outside of the traditional malls. Last but not the least, when you think about the increase in sales, we are also seeing increase in our average dollar per transaction. It went up from $35 to over $53 during this time frame between 2012 and 2021. You know, it didn't come just through increase in price, it came through increases in units per transactions too, as well as the average retail has gone up. Us telling more comprehensive marketing stories and connecting with our consumers, it helped drive that overall revenue. This is where the experiential piece come to play, and this is why stores are a critical piece of our business, and we continue to drive that connection with our guests. As we think about sustainability of our business, and when you look on the top of this slide, we are seeing some consecutive improvement in our quarterly revenues. Again, quarter after quarter, we are delivering some record profitability results despite some of the challenges that we are seeing this year from the macro environment, especially inflation and freight related, as well as some economic impact from fluctuation in exchange rates. That 2021 that was previously the best year in a decade and most profitable year, we expect to beat this year if we achieve midpoint of the range, that will be just shy of about 12% revenue growth. Our pre-tax income during this same time frame would grow about 17.5%. The total pre-tax income would be just shy of 13% of sales. Like, all signs are of a really healthy business that we continue to manage. You know, these results also are helping us to stay and continue to be focused on shareholder returns. Since Q3 of last year, we repurchased nearly 10% of our outstanding shares. Last year in Q4, we declared $1.25 per share special dividend. We have now multiple board authorized programs. We completed the first one of $25 million, right after that, our board authorized a new $50 million buyback, we still have about $46 million left. All this stuff culminated so far in a multi-year high stock price of about $25.67. With that, I'll pass it back to Sharon. Okay. We believe that this, the accomplishments as well as the team have. We're quite proud of what the organization has been able to do from a financial side. We also believe that that's because of a long-term strategic plan that we've shared and have been quite clear about since for about the last. I've been here nine years. Voin's been here about eight years. We clarified the objective of the pivot this company from a mall-based retailer, as I mentioned in the beginning, to a branded intellectual property company that just, that uses vertical retail as a number of other revenue streams to monetize the value of the brand. We provided, at the beginning of this fiscal year, some objectives that we had, including the leveraging our ongoing digital transformation, actually to accelerate that digital transformation. We highlighted some of the objectives that, underneath, from a tactical perspective, including the expansion of the loyalty program, adding on new modules, expanding our addressable market, utilizing digital media and brand building tools. All of these things have been accomplished to leverage those, the capabilities that cross both of our, digital and physical assets, to evolve those retail experiences and go into new locations with new experiences and connect those consumers, driving that lifetime value. We did, as I mentioned, we do expect to have those additional 20 stores. We did indeed capitalize on our 25th anniversary celebration to drive sales and elevate the brand and the brand awareness. We reintroduced parties into our stores. We've been on a hiatus through COVID. That historically has been 5% of our sales. We're still climbing back to that level and believe we have some opportunity ahead of us. We developed new digital experiences I noted, not just the launch of the Bear Builder 3D, but also now we're on the verge of the launch of a new gaming gaming experience as well as NFTs. Finally, it was that goal of continuing to drive financial strength again, with a clean balance sheet, no debt, and return value to our shareholders. In fact, we had a goal of, as we mentioned in our guidance from the beginning of the year, was to beat the prior year. That is currently based on our updated guidance, what we expect to do. On 20, 32 rather, just to reiterate and reflect back on those opening points, when you think about the brand power after all the information that we've shared with you, that 80% brand awareness is certainly strong, but we do not believe that our, that our revenue, or our business yet reflects the power of the brand that we've been building out the infrastructure and the capabilities to do that. When you're benchmarking against other brands with that similar awareness and affinity metrics, it does show still significant untapped potential for us to monetize across channels, across categories, and to build more relationships with that broad addressable market. We believe that we can leverage that one-to-one relationship. There's a lot of companies today that started digital first that now want, and they're seeking out to assure they have that one-to-one relationship. We already have multiple stores, and we are excellent at running profitable retail. Elevating that relationship as well as that dynamic between the physical and the digital is key for us. It gives us a very robust model that leads to our third point, is we do not believe we are over-stored. We do not believe we are oversaturated. We believe we have an opportunity to expand physically beyond the 500 global vertical experience locations that we have. We believe that we can continue to grow e-commerce, and that we can build on these touch points through outbound licensing in the locations where they are, as well as entertainment, gaming, et cetera, and the tens of millions of digital interfaces that we can continue to grow to drive that business. We believe in the momentum that we're seeing. We believe that is, it's proven to be resilient at this point. The team is resilient. We are operating with double-digit operating margins and a good and again, that's generating good cash flow, free cash flow. We've maintained a no-debt position, and that we're well-positioned to execute against key initiatives to drive additional sustained profitable growth in the future. That is the summary of why we stand by the opener remark of we believe there's continued opportunity for our company to grow across a number of revenue streams, and that we believe that we have control over our future to a great degree. The last couple of slides highlight the management team that I was speaking of and the strong background of the board, and there are some non-GAAP reconciliations in the back. Perfect. Thank you very much, Sharon. I assume that concludes the formal remarks. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please use the question-and-answer text box within the webinar portal. We'll make sure to ask that question. We have a number of questions in the queue already, Sharon, I'll just get going. Can you talk about the lifetime value of the customer? How many customers come back as repeat buyers? How do you acquire new customers, and what would you say is driving that recent growth? Yeah. I'll start, and then, you know, like, Sharon can add some more things. You know, this is one thing when you think about our consumer base, you know, like, our kids come in as young kids, where somebody else is making transaction on their behalf. Like, now more and more of these kids, as they get older and have the kids of their own as adults and teens, you know, they are getting their own accounts. When you look at some of those things, it is a little bit more of a challenge for us to get a true lifetime value of our guests and what they spend. The way when we track that stuff is based on the transactions and the database that we have in our Bonus Club program. They are repeat guests that are coming and, you know, we keep getting them engaged early in the process through our Count Your Candles program, and we have some good data that tells us how often they are coming back. With all the tools that we are using, with Salesforce help and the journeys that are being created, we are trying to increase and maximize that lifetime value. What we have been able to do over the last several quarters and last several years is to start to increase that frequency that we are getting from the bonus club guests. At the same time, we are getting these new guests that are coming into a brand as collectors and teens, tweens and adults. At the end of the day, the goal for us is to really drive more transactions. Whichever way the guests tend to engage with the brand, we are finding ways to communicate with them so that we can increase that repeat purchase. Typically speaking, the way when we look at some of those things internally, it's over last 12-15 months what purchases people were making. Because at some point, some of the kids, especially at the lower end, they start to age out before they come back into the brand. Sharon, anything else that you would like to add? It's just that it's important to understand that we have a lot of different types of consumers, and we acquire those consumers in different ways. I think that some more homogeneous brands, it might be an easier discussion. We, you know, for them to say, "Well, we focus on men 18 to 34," and you can talk about them as a collective. When you're beloved by a lot of distinct consumer groups, that's more difficult. As from an acquisition perspective, one of the key acquisition tools for us for the young kids, as Voin mentioned, is the Count Your Candles program, where a child can come in on their birthday month, and pay the age that they're turning in that month. That's a big acquisition tool for us. Because you have to be in the loyalty program to participate in this particular opportunity. That is a big unlock for us, and we think can then re-engage with them. We learn a lot about that family and the child, their, you know, basically their age based on the year, based on the amount that was ultimately paid for the bear. All the way up to these, our super collectors, enthusiasts, who often engage with us with some of these licensed products and buy the entire collection of something like a Pokémon or a Harry Potter. We then know who they are, and we're able to go back to them because they're often signing up to get information about when the next Pokémon product is coming out. We originally acquire those consumers by seeking out and crawling all over the web for lookalike information or partnering with the licensed partner to send out information about the fact that their brand is available in a Build-A-Bear form. Great. Thank you for that. Next question. What are the biggest drivers of gross margin versus calendar year 2019, and is 52%-53% a new baseline? When we compare stuff versus 2019, definitely several things have changed and shifted. Just as a reminder, or maybe just explanation for people that are new to the story, what we have in our retail gross margin, we have our occupancy and warehouse costs. As we drive more sales, we do see leverage in those. At the same time, you know, as our sales grow, we are seeing some of that margin expansion. In addition to that, our merch margin has expanded despite having some of the headwinds that we are seeing from the freight increases over last 12 months or so. And we have been, you know, like, managing some of that through price increases to offset the inflationary pressure from freight and product costs. At the same time, we have significantly reduced our promotional activity, and we have been able to drive AUR and then with the leverage that we are getting from other areas, that's what's helping us expand these margins. When you think about, when you ask, what, 52, 53, is that a good baseline? Again, since Sharon and I have been here, you know, we have been and we are always very focused on expansion of margin. I think there is, besides this year, with all the unprecedented freight challenges, there was only one quarter in our eight, nine year history here that merch margin didn't expand, and that's when we launched the Count Your Candles program in that particular quarter. I think we have a long history of expanding our margin. Again, I don't like to set any fixed targets and things, but, you know, we are always aspiring to do better and find ways to expand, even when we reach these highs, looking for ways to get to the new level. Super. Thank you for that. Keeping on this theme, first, congrats. This is the next question. Congrats on strong margin improvements during your tenure. What initiatives are in your pipeline over the midterm to protect or grow operating margins? Also, you mentioned not being over-stored. What is your room to expand stores in the U.S.? How many U.S. stores do you think you might add before saturation kicks in? You can answer first. I'll answer the first piece as it relates to operating margins. Definitely we believe, you know, there is room, even with some of the stuff that we have shared this year. For the first nine months of the year, we've seen about $10 million more in incremental freight compared to 2019. If you make an assumption that portion of that's gonna come back next year and as these rates are coming down, everything else being equal, you know, we should see some improvement next year. Again, you know, we continue to stay focused across the income statement, driving higher sales, leveraging our costs, and, you know, we continue to be smart and disciplined in executing. During all these years, we've been able to expand our operating margins, but at the same time, without sacrificing the investments and initiatives that we are trying to do to really drive future growth and to enable us to deliver some of those results. We will continue to find ways to drive both top line and improve the bottom line. You know, and one of those things to drive the top line, you know, I'll pass it over to Sharon to talk about store count. Right. Let's just focus on North America on that question. Before I do that, I just also wanna point out that on the international franchise front, we believe that there is significant opportunity. We're only in, what did I say? Eight or nine countries at this point. Clearly, none of those are in continental Europe, but we paused on that during the COVID years. The Build-A-Bear brand has opportunity outside the United States. We'll just start with that. Secondly, in the U.S., we only have about 350-ish stores. That's a combination of third party. Those are our owned 350 owned and operated stores another 60 some odd in third party. Each one of those is, you know, an experience for the consumer. That's really not when you think about a retail company or an experience-based company. That's not that many locations for the population of the United States, and we believe that we do have runway there. As we've mentioned, just this year, we've opened 20 additional locations. We are assessing what is the right number for 2023 and beyond. We are working with some partners to make that correct assessment on what our runway is in North America and expect to be able to share that at some point in the future on in at least some rough way in the three to five year range type of approach. Between the third party business, which understates our retail number, just to be clear, because that's a wholesale relationship like with Great Wolf Lodge, where the retail, the retail revenue is not reported through our numbers, just the wholesale the wholesale revenue. As we've built these relationships out, we're finding more and more opportunities with these hospitality tourist types of areas where consumers really go for fun and entertainment that is beyond what would be the traditional mall. So far we're quite as an example, as a proof point of this, we've been quite impressed with the 20 some odd stores that we will have open before the end of this fiscal year. That gives us a lot of confidence in this thesis. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna build on this theme here as there's a few questions that sort of tie into it. In terms of growth through your expanding retail locations, I think you answered some of the part of the question, which is what is your strategy in terms of targeting certain geographical areas and expansion. Maybe you could comment a little bit more of outside of the United States and how you sort of see that rolling out. Sure, Glenn Axelrod. Again, you know, we believe there is a big opportunity, as Sharon mentioned. Some of the challenges caused by COVID really prevented us, even in some of these bigger markets that we signed a couple of franchises in a couple of the biggest countries in the world, China and India. You know, they had their fair share of COVID challenges and disruptions, and still some of those are present in those respective areas. You know, we believe this is a big opportunity. Definitely the brand is very strong in North America and you know, a lot of other companies, you know, have probably same number of stores in a franchise format as they have in North America. We believe that's a big opportunity. At the same time, it's more of a longer term horizon. If you think about it's finding the right partners, it's building the infrastructure, opening the stores. You know, this is one of those areas we definitely believe there is value to be had. You know, finding the right partners around the world is definitely something that we are open in discussing and talking and getting the brand in more locations around the world. Also what we think about even in the market like in U.K. where we own and operate stores, we don't have currently very many third party retail locations. We are looking even to that format to expand and increase the location count in places where we operate. Okay. Thank you for that. question regarding digital, I guess. Can you talk about the traffic on your website and how that's performed, over the recent period? Digital demand like this past quarter was a little bit softer. You know, some of that was expected as we were making changes to our website. We also said subsequent to the quarter, through Cyber Monday, you know, like the time of our call that we were seeing an improvement in positive trends and positive results on the web and, you know, strong traffic. We continue to stay focused and continue to make investments in digital, continue to test especially with the new site and the new investments that we are making in that particular business. Another piece that's very important to clarify, even though we are driving digital marketing and spend, a lot of that may not materialize through the online channel, but we are seeing significant traffic growth in our retail locations. That is the value of that digital marketing that we are seeing. We are channel agnostic if people are coming online or in stores. You know, what we are really looking at is the total transactions continue to go up and some of the things that we are doing as a team are working and resonating with our guests. That's definitely reflected in sales results that we have presented recently. That's right. That we actually shared that on the call that even though we did expect some, a little bit of softness, in the third quarter, in e-commerce as we shifted over to a new mobile first site and did a lot of A/B testing, reset up, started calculating new analytics data, so we could be more efficient and more effective. Some of that now that we've started to dig in is that people, our consumers shifted to in-store, to Voin's point. I think that that is reflective of some consumer sensibility right now of wanting to be in person, wanting to do things together. We were there for them to be able to do that. At the end of the quarter, the total sales were increased. That again is reflective of being a diversified company, that allows us to be where the consumer wants us to be, and be able to take advantage of the way they wanna shop when they wanna shop. Okay. Thank you for that. The next question is tied to, I guess, macro trends. There's obviously a fear of recession out there, and some of your peers have been underperforming. How would you characterize your strategy in 2023, as you sort of deal with this recessionary, potential climate? There is clearly a lot of different data on the dynamics of the recession, on whether we are in it or not in it, going to have it, not going to have it. It's far from a classic setup. If we're already in it, I would say that we have bucked the trend, in that our traffic and our results. Our traffic is outperforming traditional traffic, and our results have been strong. If we believe that we're going to be in a recession that is more negatively impactful, impacting to us right now, the couple of things to keep in mind is the more diversified you are as a company, usually the better off, you are in those kind of situations. We, when you think about the type of products that we offer, they are less, they're more recession resistant. We also have a higher income, more stable consumer base that is generally less impacted. I think that we have proven our ability as a leadership team, as a management team, and as a company, to be very resilient and to be very flexible, in situations where we need to shift tactics or strategies to assure the ongoing, the ongoing, pro, you know, continuation of the company, at the best levels possible. Okay. Thank you. Does your business have recurring revenues outside of the traditional franchise model? Well, yes, we do. I mean, third-party retail model, that's the wholesale model. Yes, we have that piece that's reflected in our commercial segment, as well as we have the outbound licensing stream that's also in the same commercial segment that we are getting royalty income from our partners for use of our IP. Okay. I'm not sure I understand this question, but I'm gonna ask it, and maybe it makes more sense to you. To the person asking the question, if it doesn't, please feel free to elaborate. Could you talk about any entry barriers, you may have? I think that depends on the category or the channel that we're discussing from a barrier of entry, unless you're talking about a competitor and that we have barriers of entry from a competitor. We have a lot of barriers of entry from a competitor, which I think makes increases our innate value, in that, you know, it's very difficult to build a brand of this, of this level of power. It's, you know, we have the retail infrastructure that we've been working on to make it as profitable and as possible, you know, over the last eight years. We've been in multiple years of relationships and discussions with our landlords to evolve that footprint to be in the best possible locations, reducing our total footprint, to increase our sales per square foot, diversifying the locations where we are to be where consumers go for fun and entertainment. All of those are barriers to entry for another company to replicate Build-A-Bear. On a side note, kind of an interesting thing, we're often asked that, you know, to whom should we compare Build-A-Bear? Often, you know, it seems to be a question where if we don't have a direct competitor, it's harder to model. The truth is, we don't have a direct competitor, but I think that that's a protector in value. Okay. Thank you. I think that my next question was answered earlier on, but I'm gonna ask it just in case and you can elaborate on it. What is the lifetime value of a customer and the cost to acquire a customer? Yeah. We don't share that information. Okay. Perfect. One thing, like. Go ahead. Glenn, maybe just on the second piece, cost to acquire, even though we don't specifically, when you think about Count Your Candles program, it's a big acquisition tool for us. When you think about people are coming and celebrating and choosing to buy something, whatever birthday they are celebrating, and that's the sweet spot for our guests, like probably four to seven years old. That kinda like gives you maybe an idea when people come in and like, you know, because that's, at the end of the day, people may come in and test the brand, like that's the lowest price point, entry price point that we have. You know, that's the piece where we are getting kids as early engaged as one or two years old. You know, that by definition, it's increasing that lifetime value. We don't specifically provide some of those numbers. Okay. Thank you. next question. retail sales increased approximately 8% in the third quarter. Can you provide for us how much of that increase was transactions versus ticket-based? We haven't, we definitely said transactions were up. We haven't talked specifically about the ticket prices. You know, there is a little bit of tougher comparabilities when you think about, like, what's going on in some of the channels and some of the mix that's caused by last year's challenges. For example, Count Your Candles program is a good example, as people get that entry price point. We've saw an increase in that one particular business. Last year, our inventory was a little bit spotty due to delays in supply chain that product coming in and out. When you are comparing some of the stuff people are... There is a little bit of a mix shift what people are buying year-over-year. Overall, we are seeing significant growth in transactions and more traffic and people coming to our stores. Yeah, we mentioned on the call that we believe that based on the data that it's a healthy business growth. Some of the increase is related to inflationary or strategic price increases, but a lot of it is associated with that with more transactions. Thank you. Next question. Regarding your $12 million-$14 million expected CapEx, can you comment on what portion of this CapEx is growth versus maintenance? When you think about on any given year, there is probably $5 million-$6 million of what you would call core maintenance CapEx. Now, there are some pieces when you think about, like, even reinvestment in the stores and touching these stores on periodic basis to maintain these revenues. Roughly half of our growths, half of our CapEx is related to stores, half of the CapEx is digital transformation. Hopefully that helps. You know, we continue to find ways and look at ways to maximize that area. You know, like, when you think about the store business, we gotta continue to make the investment, you know. Because we do have a big fleet, and periodically you have to touch some of those stores, especially when these lease events come up. Sometimes, you know, that's, like, a little bit more challenging to answer it like what is the maintenance CapEx for that, because we do need to make those investments. Again, when we guide that $12 million-$15 million or $14 million, about half and half, I think it's stores and digital at this point. Okay, thank you. I've got a couple more questions in the queue, and then we'll end the call, assuming nothing else comes in. How do you assess your 2022 in terms of, I guess, your performance and fulfilling pent-up demand since COVID has waned? How do we feel about 2022? I mean, we feel good about 2022. You know, we said at the beginning of the year that- Sorry. Just make sure I didn't get the question wrong. I think the spirit of the question is to try to understand whether this year is just pent-up demand, or if it sort of stays and is a sustainable trend. Just to give you. God, thanks, Glenn Axelrod. Just to give you maybe a few data points, and then I'm sure Sharon John may have some additional comment. When you think about, you know, even the definition of pent-up demand. When I tell you, two years later, and you know, like even last year when the things started reopening and, you know, we had strong 2021. Every year, and you know, this is what we have shared previously publicly, about one-third of our business is birthday related. Be the birthday of one or a birthday party or people coming to. I can probably argue there is not that much pent-up demand as it relates to birthdays. When you think about holiday season, like, you know, Valentine's Day or Christmas or holiday season or Halloween, some of those things I would argue, you know, how much, if you don't send somebody a gift for Christmas this year, are you gonna send them till next year? I don't know. Those are type of things when you think about, like, how much pent-up demand there is. We said in 2021, we believe there was some of that. It's hard for me to think there would be that much or any pent-up demand in 2022 versus 2020. Again, even if there is some, I don't think that would be necessarily material from my point of view. Okay, great. Last question, and then I'll ask you guys if you wanna leave any closing remarks for the group still on the call. Last question is, regarding the recession, looking at the stock performance when the recession was back in 2008, 2009 happened, the stock price went down to a third and took about 5 to 6 years to bring back to an upward trend. Are there any lessons learned from that? Any strategies to avoid the same thing happening again, if we are indeed in a recession? Yeah, I think that this is also related to the pent-up demand question. I think what is most critical to understand is the lessons that were learned in 2006 were the lessons, or not learned in 2006, were the things that we came in in 2013 to correct. Over the last 9 years, that is what we've been doing, is pulling apart and putting back together where does the value lie on this company and how can we create a platform and infrastructure to drive the business profitably and to leverage the equity of this brand in multiple revenue streams. We are now a dynamic multi-channel company with a robust e-commerce arm and a profitable and growing physical retail arm that has also brand leverage in outbound licensing, franchising opportunities, content creation, and entertainment. Those things did not exist in 2006, 2007, all the way to 2012 and 2013, well, until we came in and went through the entire fleet, upgraded the fleet, operating at a 25% floor wall from a 12% floor wall. 10, yeah. 10%-12% floor wall with 20% some odd of the stores being unprofitable, significantly shifted our marketing, our communications, our digital side, ripped out our entire IT, rebuilt the entire website twice now, mobile first, diversified consumer base, new categories. We're not even the same company, and we're not from 2006. We're actually not even much of the same company from 2018, 2019 to pre-COVID to now. Those are the lessons learned. I would also state or restate that this leadership team, as well as our balance sheet and cash flow, has shown significant resilience. Recall that we shut down 100% of our retail stores and managed through it to come out stronger on the other end from COVID to now. Although we are never saying that we would not be impacted by some sort of severe recession or that we are recession-proof, I do feel confident that we, as much as any, have the tools and the team to manage through it effectively. Perfect. Thank you for that, Sharon. If you have any closing remarks, happy to hear them now. Otherwise, we'll end the call. No, we really appreciate everybody tuning in. Appreciate your interest. Hope you go out and go to a Build-A-Bear. It's really fun. If you haven't done it means you probably don't understand the brand, but it is the best way to do it. Particularly during the holiday season, I think you would find it to be very insightful. Thank you very much, Sharon. Thank you, Voin. Thank you to our audience. This concludes this presentation. Thank you. All parties may disconnect. Have a great day.