Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Carriage Services Q2 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Steve Metzger, President. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our Q2 results. In addition to myself, on the call this morning for management are Mel Payne, Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, Carlos Quesada, Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Kian Granmayeh, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. On the Carriage Services website, you can find our earnings press release, which was issued yesterday after the market closed. Our press release is intended to supplement our remarks this morning and includes supplemental financial information, including the reconciliation of differences between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Today's call will begin with formal remarks from Mel, Carlos, Kian, and me, and will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, we'll make some forward-looking statements, including comments about our business and plans. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties and only reflect our views as of today. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, factors identified in our earnings release as well as in our SEC filings, all of which can be found on our website. Thank you all for joining us this morning, now I'd like to turn the call over to Mel. Good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be with you this morning as we kick off our first earnings call since the announcement of our succession plan on June 22nd. As most of you know, we've been working on this CEO succession plan for more than two years, and the thoughtful investment of time and preparation is paying off, which is evidenced by the seamless transition that has occurred since our announcement. I have also been hard at work on my continued rehabilitation following my stroke and continue to be encouraged by my progress. I recently graduated at the top of my class, which is all about being the best, from an intense 12-week program that has me more motivated, energized, and passionate about what we are doing and where we're going than ever before. While I meet with our Strategic Vision and Principles Group leadership team regularly, I look forward to spending even more time with them and focusing on the job I enjoy the most, which is serving as a mentor to Carlos, Steve, and Kian. As a co-founder and largest shareholder of Carriage, I'm pleased to report that Carlos and Steve continue to exceed my exceedingly high expectations as they focus on their new roles. Together with Kian, this executive leadership dream team has been working closely together to lead the continued evolution and maturation of Carriage, which the three of them will talk more about in detail this morning. The alignment of this team, together with their talent, has never been stronger, and the execution of our clearly defined strategic vision has never been more compelling. We appreciate your interest in Carriage and for taking the time to listen this morning. I will now turn this call over to Carlos for more color on a really good quarter of performance. Carlos? Thank you, Mel. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining. Before I start with our report, I'd like to thank Mel and the board of directors, our executive team, and everyone at Carriage for their support as I take on the new CEO role. It has been a thoughtful and well-planned process for over two years, where Mel, through countless hours of mentoring and coaching, has prepared me to lead Carriage and continue the legacy of what he created for years to come. I am grateful for this opportunity and committed to continuing our good to great journey and pursuing our mission and vision of being the best every day. Thank you. Now, moving to our Q2 high performance. For today's call, I will report on our financial performance with some operational color. Steve will provide an update on the composition of our new board of directors. He will share the integration process of our most recent acquisitions and other M&A activities. Kian will provide detailed financial information. Now on to the results. We're very excited to share that our financial performance in the Q2 has exceeded our expectations. As previously communicated, we have diligently focused on delivering high performance through execution excellence. Here are the consolidated financial results for the Q2. Total revenue reached $97.7 million, an impressive increase of $7 million or 7.8% compared to last year. These outstanding results were primarily driven by the exceptional work of our high-performance pre-need cemetery sales teams and the recent acquisition in Bakersfield, California. I will give more color on this point later on this call. Total field EBITDA was $40.8 million, showing an increase of $2.1 million, or 5.6%, and field EBITDA margin of 41.7%, experiencing a slight decrease of $879,000, or 90 basis points. This decrease is primarily attributed to higher costs in salary and benefits, and general and administration. The incremental expenses in these two areas totaled $2.3 million during the Q2. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our managing partners at each business, we managed to offset $1.4 million through other cost savings opportunities.... Overhead expenses amounted to $12.1 million, or 12.4% of total revenue, reflecting a significant reduction of $1.4 million compared to the same quarter last year, and under our previously communicated goal of reaching 13% in overhead costs by the end of 2024. GAAP income in the Q2 was $8.3 million, indicating a decrease of $2.6 million, or 24%, compared to last year. This decline can be attributed to a notable increase of $3.4 million, or 56.9%, in interest expense over what we paid the previous year, resulting in GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.53. The decrease in interest expense approximately equates to $0.22 of GAAP diluted earnings per share. As we continue executing every item of our High Performance and Credit Profile Restoration Plan, we will reduce our interest expense. For our adjusted numbers, Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA for the Q2 was $28.7 million, showing an impressive increase of $3.4 million, or 13.3%. Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA margin was 29.4%, an increase of 150 basis points, and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share of $0.53, outperforming consensus. We are immensely proud of these results, as they reflect our efforts and progress in executing our strategic plan to consistently and sustainably enhance our financial performance over time. These efforts have allowed us to make up for most of the decrease we experienced in the Q1 of this year, due to the record high Q1 of 2022 at the peak of COVID-19. Now, let's move to our funeral portfolio. Funeral home total revenue reached $60.8 million, an increase of $2.7 million, or 4.6%. Our newest acquisitions primarily drove this growth, with comparable revenues decreasing by only $308,000, or 0.6%. Total funeral field EBITDA remained steady at $21.9 million compared to the previous year, with a slight decrease of only $108,000, or 0.5%. Total funeral field EBITDA margin was 36%, showing a reduction of 190 basis points from last year. However, thanks to the dedicated efforts of our managing partners in the field and at the Houston Support Center, the inflationary cost margin decrease has been significantly curbed. Their work in revenue growth, pricing strategy, and efficient management of their controllable cost has contributed to this financial performance, and we extend our gratitude for the determination and commitment to our Being the Best mission and vision. Now, switching to our cemetery portfolio. We are thrilled to report that our total cemetery revenue hit an all-time high, reaching $29.1 million in the Q2, reflecting an increase of $4 million or 16.1%. Moreover, total cemetery field EBITDA saw significant growth, reaching $12.9 million, a $1.8 million growth, or 16.2%, compared to the same quarter last year. Total cemetery field EBITDA margin remained very strong at 44.4%, maintaining the exact performance level achieved in the previous year. These record high revenue and EBITDA margin results were mainly due to the outstanding performance of our pre-need cemetery teams. Establishing our pre-need sales organization over the last three years has been a true game changer. Coupled with the strategic acquisitions of Premier Cemeteries since 2019 and our existing cemetery portfolio, in addition to the impact that the execution of our pre-need cemetery strategy is making. SalesEdge, as our customer relationship system and lead generation marketing, provides us with multiple growth opportunities. That is why we're confident that we can continue maximizing these opportunities as we execute and create additional high performance in the years ahead. Regarding our pre-arranged funeral sales and strategic national partnership, we are delighted to announce that the integration strategy between Precoa, the National Guardian Life Insurance Company, and Carriage, has been officially launched after 2 months of planning. This strategic move will revolutionize how we add value to families by offering pre-arrangement options for their funerals, securing future market share for each of our businesses, and generating additional recurring revenue like we never had before. We will integrate our funeral home portfolio into the new program in a phased approach, and we anticipate that preneed funeral sales will experience substantial growth in the range of 40%-60% within a year of integration. This exciting venture holds incredible potential for Carriage, our partners, and the communities we serve, while generating added value for our shareholders. We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to our entire team for their unwavering dedication and hard work, without whom none of this would be possible. Witnessing the tangible results of our strategic plan during the Q2 filled us with much excitement, and we're thrilled about the prospects for the future, as we firmly believe that for Carriage, the best is yet to come. Thank you. I will now pass it over to Steve. Thank you, Carlos. As most of you are probably aware, the past couple of months have seen us welcome three new directors to our board, fulfilling the commitment we made earlier this year to add new talent and diversity to our board of directors. We began working with a national search firm in the Q1. Our board management team have spent the past several months meeting with a number of impressive candidates. From that group, we were able to identify three individuals who bring diverse experience and thought that will help drive our focus on continuous growth and improvement throughout Carriage. The newest member of our board, Julie Sanders, currently serves as Senior Vice President and a Chief Audit Executive for Dell Technologies, one of the world's leading technology companies, where she's held a variety of leadership positions over the past 20 years. Julie has served as a CFO for two other companies and has extensive experience with everything from M&A to financial planning and analysis. She also serves on Dell's ESG and Disclosure Committee, and will be a tremendous resource as we continue to identify opportunities to enhance our focus on corporate responsibility. We've also recently welcomed Somer Webb to the board. Somer currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer for a publicly traded, direct-to-consumer platform company focused on outdoor and lifestyle brands. Somer has worked for some of the top consumer-focused companies in the world, including Amazon and Southwest Airlines, and she brings valuable experience to Carriage, particularly as it relates to growing companies through acquisitions. Finally, Chad Farguson joined our board in late June. After receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics from Duke University, Chad spent 10 years with KKR, and has spent the last 10 years as a senior portfolio manager for an investment firm with approximately $15 BiIllion under management. Chad's experience identifying and analyzing capital allocation strategies for various companies, coupled with his deep valuation expertise and knowledge of the markets, will serve Carriage and our shareholders well as we execute on the 10-year growth-focused vision laid out in this year's shareholder letter. Since the beginning of this year, there's been an immense amount of time and thoughtful effort dedicated to identifying and recruiting new leadership to join our board of directors. We're proud of that focus and confident that the experience and talent that Julie, Somer, and Chad bring to our board will be of great value to our shareholders. We look forward to their contributions in helping drive Carriage forward in the years to come. As it relates to our focus on growth, we continue to be encouraged by the opportunities presented by our three most recent acquisitions. In particular, since we put a top sales team in place to support our Charlotte business, the production from the cemetery segment of that business continues to highlight why we were initially so excited to partner with Heritage and Forest Lawn East. Similarly, our most recent acquisition in Bakersfield, our largest acquisition by revenue in the history of Carriage, is only entering month 5 of our integration, and we're excited about the potential that will be realized in the months and years ahead as we continue to optimize the strong foundation of this great business. As we dedicate our time and resources to supporting these new additions to the Carriage portfolio, we also continue to build relationships with owners of other premier businesses throughout the country. In fact, this past quarter, we had several visits and conversations with owners of businesses that we believe will be great future partners for Carriage. These owners are aware that our current focus is integration of our newest acquisitions and paying down our debt, and many of them are willing to wait, given their belief that Carriage is the right choice for their business. We look forward to continuing these conversations and building these relationships as we learn more about their succession plans and timelines. Finally, as we announced on June 29th, our board has initiated a process to explore potential strategic alternatives, possibly including a merger, sale, or other potential strategic or financial transaction to maximize shareholder value. As we noted at the time, there can be no assurance that this process will result in a transaction. While the board continues this review process with the support of outside advisors, we don't have further updates at this time, and we'll have no further comment on the topic. We will, however, provide an update when we have more news to share. With that, I'll pass it over to Kian to provide more color on our Q2 performance. Thank you, Steve. In the Q2 of 2023, under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Carriage reported total revenue of $97.7 million and net income of $8.3 million, or $0.53 per diluted share. This compares to total revenue of $90.6 million and net income of $10.9 million, or $0.69 per diluted share in the same period in 2022. Looking at our adjusted financials, which are reconciled in the appendix tables of our press release, this quarter, we reported Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA of $28.7 million, Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA margin of 29.4%, and Adjusted Free Cash Flow of $3.8 million. This compares to Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA of $25.3 million, Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA margin of 27.9%, and Adjusted Free Cash Flow of $12 million in the Q2 of 2022. We are very pleased with our financial results and operational performance, with considerable growth in both Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA and margin this quarter as compared to the same quarter last year. Now that we are able to compare and examine operational performance to prior periods that are minimally affected by COVID-19, this further highlights all the improvement, efficiencies, and growth related to our operational decisions from the Houston Support Center down to the field level that translate into our financial results. This is a perfect example of the resiliency of our unique business model and strategy, and how we are able to successfully navigate the near-term choppy waters of a post-COVID-19 world. Turning to this quarter's income statement, I will highlight some of the expenses down to net income. First, I'll start off by circling back to Carlos's comment on total overhead, which excludes stock-based compensation and other minor overhead costs. On the income statement, the combination of total G&A and other, along with regional and unallocated funeral and cemetery costs, decreased by $800,000, primarily related to our continued effort and discipline to meet our 2024 overhead target. Second, as Carlos mentioned, interest expense increased nearly $3.4 million, mainly driven by the average interest rate for a credit facility, increasing from 2.9% in the Q2 of 2022 to 8.6% this quarter. Lastly, income tax expense decreased $800,000 in the Q2 as a result of a lower taxable income applied to a similar tax rate for the quarter. Turning to the cash flow statement, cash flow from operations this quarter decreased approximately $1 million to $13.3 million as compared to the same quarter last year, despite net income decreasing nearly $2.6 million during the same period. When expanding the comparison period to the first six months of the year, cash flow from operations and free cash flow have increased $9 million and $11 million, respectively. As you can see, cash flow continues to remain strong, and we continue to strictly adhere to our capital allocation plan as outlined in the High Performance and Credit Profile Restoration Plan back in December. Similarly, we continue to delever methodically from a peak leverage ratio in the Q1 of this year after closing on the Greenlawn acquisition. Using our bank covenant compliance ratio, as defined by our credit agreement, we ended the Q2 with 5.37 x leverage. We expect the leverage ratio to steadily decrease throughout the year. Lastly, turning to our annual guidance, we are pleased with how we are tracking operationally in the H1 of the year relative to our annual guidance. Nonetheless, we would like to take a prudent approach to our guidance and gain more visibility into the seasonality of our business in a post-COVID world before revising our guidance ranges. As a result, we are reaffirming 2023 guidance of $375 million-$385 million in total revenue, Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA of $110 million-$115 million, Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share of $2.25-$2.40, and Adjusted Free Cash Flow of $50 million-$60 million. Next quarter, we will look to tighten and or update our guidance ranges for the year. Again, with that, we'll open it to questions. Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Paris at Barrington Research. Your line is open. Thank you, congratulations on the better-than-expected Q2 results, everyone. I have a few follow-up questions. First off, I'd like to start with the impact of inflation, both on your P&L and on consumer behavior. Your Service Corp announced earnings earlier this week, and this was a big topic on their call, so I thought I'd ask you some of the same questions. In the Q2, your field EBITDA was better than expected, driven by cemetery. Your overhead expense was less than expectations, but within funeral, while revenues were up 4.6%, the field EBITDA was down 0.5%, suggesting some margin compression. My first question is, based on your decentralized structure, how do your funeral managing partners evaluate price increases in the context of the funeral standards incentive comp structure? Good morning, Alex. This is Carlos. Let me just break in a couple of components first. You know, if, if you compare the compression of margins between Q1 and Q2, it's a significant difference from where we are today, and that's because of the effort and focus on pricing and cost-saving strategies at the, at the business level. Managing partners have full freedom to go and decide what the pricing should be for their business based on the competition. We highly believe, as a decentralized organization, that the decision-making power on things that truly matter should be and remain in the field. They know their competition better than us. We're, you know, 2,000 miles away from, from many of them, and they know what's really going on between families that are asking questions, making calls, and shopping. We do leave that pricing power to them, we're working really hard in showing where the opportunity is, so it can, you know, lead to the right decision based on the financial performance expected for each business. We feel very confident with the efforts we have done, that we're catching up to inflationary costs, not fully, as you highlighted on our EBITDA, but it is a significant, you know, improvement compared to where we were last quarter. We believe that as we continue to move forward, that compression should be even less because we have not experiencing, you know, increase over increase over increase, quarter after quarter. It has been somewhat steady, a little increase here and there, but nothing too dramatic. We are very... With high expectations that we should be able to have this pretty much in control. Good. That, that's helpful. You know, while there's compression year-over-year, there's improvement sequentially from the Q1 during this period in which you're trying to pass along those costs. Yes, sir. Great. Second and related question is, Service Corp noted on their last conference call that their cemetery within their cemetery business, excuse me, they noted more price sensitivity with their lower-tier property sales, less so on their mid and premium-level property sales. Did you see similar behavior in your cemetery business? Contrary to that, Alex, you know, we had a, a phenomenal, phenomenal quarter for preneed cemetery sales. Shane Pudenz and the whole team of director of sales support and every sales manager in the business did a, an exceedingly well job. We did 116% over prior year on preneed property alone, and pretty much same thing, 116% on, on preneed merchant license services. This is, this is the result of two companies at different stages as it relates to preneed properties. You know, before, let's say three years ago, Carriage didn't really have the structure to sustain, you know, growth on the preneed side through a very structured approach on compensation, you know, lead generation, CRM, things of that nature. We are very young, really, on the early stages of, of cemetery growth over time. Early stages, almost, maybe not an infant, but certainly a toddler, one of executives, you know, pointed out to me today. I believe SCI, they have done an incredible job for many, many years. They're a more mature organization, and I believe because of that, because the past history of Carriage, of not having that type of organization, we just have way more opportunity. Because of that reason, we have not found any significant pushback as it relates to lower-income families and discretionary spending. That's good to hear. Just to be clear, though, you had a 116% increase in preneed property sales in the quarter? Correct. Now, remember that that includes unrecognized revenue, right? They're just pure preneed sales. Alex, this is Mel. Good to be back and talking to you again. Yeah, same here. I've been so impressed at what Carlos has built over the last three years. When he got promoted, he turned over the organization to Shane Pudenz, and I've been equally impressed at what Shane has done and his growth and development as a really senior leader. We had our first board meeting with all three new members yesterday, and I was blown away by Shane and his presentation of a game plan to keep the momentum going in preneed property sales. He didn't bring up one time the consumer being an obstacle in the third and fourth quarter of this year, so I'm, I'm assuming the momentum that he has going, which continued into July, will also continue in the Q3 and the fourth quarter and next year and years after that. I agree with Carlos. I never could get the preneed organization to be a high-performance cultural organization. Carlos knew how to do that. It took time and effort and a lot of sophistication. Now he's got it in place. We have strategic plans in all of our largest properties. We never had those before. We can allocate precious capital to a very high return on investment in these developments. Now we have the organization who can sell it at very high margins that will be sustainable into the future. I'm excited about it. We never had this engine to push. We were always too relied on death rates. Now we're not. Great. Super helpful. Just a point of clarification, and I, I think I know the answer to this, preneed property sales are up 116%, but in the press release, you talk about a 3.4% decrease in the number of preneed interment rights sold. Am I thinking about apples and oranges here? Could you explain the difference in, in terminology there? Absolutely. I apologize for that. When you think about this, there are a few components on the cemetery side, preneed specifically, right? One could be the number of interments, which is just the, the actual number of, of, burial that will take place over time. That doesn't really correlate directly to the revenue per one of those interments. The other piece is the unrecognized revenue. That's what you'll see a difference between the 116% on preneed property and the revenue we had recognized from those preneed properties. Even though we have a phenomenal, you know, preneed recognition rate, you still have a tiny little difference between the 16%, almost 17%, and the 16.2% that you can see on our total cemetery field, EBITDA. Is that because we don't get the down payment big enough, or what? No. That could be because. Well, yes, down payment is one, and maybe the, the development has not been delivered. Yeah. We need to wait for the delivery, to take place in order to be able to recognize that revenue. Gotcha. It's a recognition- I hope that answers your question. -difference. Yes, it does. Thank you very much. and then, I guess that's it for me. I'll, I'll go back into the queue. Thank you very much, and again, congrats on the quarter. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, guys. Thank you. One moment for our next question. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your phone. Our next question comes from John Franzreb of Sidoti & Company. John, your line's open. Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking the questions. I guess I would like to start with, with the guidance expectations. I guess you do have a cautionary note that you revise the next quarter, but I'm wondering where, what's the status of the December 2022 outlook for 2024? Any thoughts about that, midterm guidance outlook and maybe an update there? Hey, John, yeah, this is Kian speaking. Focusing on 2023, the revision that we kind of signaled is more just tightening things up for, you know, for 2024. You know, when we look at, I'm sorry, for 2023. When we look at 2024, you kind of want to see how things play out, but nothing has really changed in terms of our guidance and expectations that we've laid out as a result of, you know, the, you know, the December 2022 kind of forecast we had and the goals that we put out there. We feel comfortable with those, that guidance as of now. As we get more visibility, as we get closer into next year, we will make sure to, you know, update the market appropriately. Yeah, this is Mel. I know Carlos is going to come in too. You know, we did that, and it's always dangerous when you try to predict what will happen two years out. We did it at a very high level. What we're seeing so far is that we're, we're on track to do that, but we don't want to change anything right now. We'd rather see a little more progress. Post-COVID, with that, we're actually seeing pretty good volumes in our, in our funeral business, better than we actually thought we would, and even more success in our pre-need property and cemetery portfolio. If things keep tracking the way they are and we get more updates, we'll have a, we'll have a tighter range for you. That's what Kian is alluding to, but it'll be based on more data, more, and more precise success, I think, where we wind up at the end of 2024. Yeah. We don't need, we don't need... Our main thing here now is not to disappoint. We, we would rather under promise and, and overdeliver, rather than overpromise and underdeliver, which is something we did in the past. As far as I'm concerned... Fair enough, Mel. We take that whole concept of burial. I'll add a little bit more color, too. You know, when you think about seasonality, this has always been a seasonalized business. We talked about this in the past, Q1 being typically the number one quarter for a year, then Q4 being the Q2 for the year. Q2 would be the third, and I'm sorry, Q3 will be the third and Q3-- I'm sorry, Q3 will be the, the last one. I apologize for that. We're going into the Q3, and last Q3, we experienced something interesting, you know, coming off COVID-19. We had a great, you know, Q1, phenomenal, record-breaking, phenomenal Q2, and then we had a great July, great August, and suddenly dropped about 20% in September, mainly due to COVID-19 deaths not showing anymore, right? We believe there should be some seasonality into 2023. However, we're highly encouraged how the normalization is setting way above the, you know, the pre-COVID-19 levels. To give an example, you know, at 2019 into 2020, the cremation rate dropped by 3% in just one year, mainly due to restrictions and families not being able to gather. As it moved into 2021 and 2022, went somewhere around 1.2%-1.3%. What we have seen in a quarterly basis between 2022 and 2023 in the Q2 is a variation of only 0.9%. It seems like even the cremation mix is going back to what it was, which was about a rate of 1% every year, and that's highly encouraging as we continue to move forward. We just want to be thoughtful, prudent, and get more insight into the next two months, and then we should be able to give you more guidance, especially coming off a Q3 in a row, outperforming. Fair enough. Just when you're thinking, when you're looking at, at the properties, are you seeing any meaningful regional differences in, in pricing or the willingness to accept pricing? Please remain on the line. One moment for a technical difficulty. We shall be right back. Thank you for holding. One moment while we work on the technical difficulty. Thank you for standing by. We're working on resolving the technical difficulty, and we'll be back up soon. Thank you. Thank you for standing by, folks. One moment. We're working on a technical difficulty and we'll resume shortly. Are you there, Cole? Yes, ma'am, we can hear you now. Thank you very much. Sorry for the technical difficulties, folks. Sorry, John. I don't know how, how much of my answer you got. I really apologize for that. We suddenly just got cut off- Nope. while I was speaking and didn't realize. I think we got all of the 2024 outlook, but I didn't hear anything about the differences in the regional pricing, if you heard that question? I did not hear that question. If you mind repeating the question, that would be wonderful. Certainly, Carlos. I was curious if you see, in the current pricing environment, any meaningful differences in, in the regional pricing across your properties? Is, when you say meaningful, do you mean, like, lower prices or, or are we able to? Any increase prices? Ability to push back or, and, or accept. I'm just curious if there, if there's any changes in, in... Yeah. I'll give you some, some granularity here. For example, the difference between our funeral average per contract between first, Q2 of 2022 and this quarter of 2023 is just $1, at $5,490 for this quarter. The burial contract is $68 above what it was last year, and the cremation contract is $71 of what it was last year. From a, from a, you know, even preneed funeral sales average is $143 of what it was last year. We, we do feel pretty encouraged that our pricing strategy is working, and that we can increase, you know, revenue sustainably as we continue to, to work on that. Okay, fair enough. I was curious, but last quarter you talked about hiring additional sales personnel. Is that process complete? Do you have all the people you need? It is in terms of upgrading. We are looking to add teams, you know, advanced planning teams in specific properties that will just add more to our, you know, pre-need strategy. So as we continue to recruit and place those teams, and as those teams recruit counselors and get them to sell, it will be aggregate to our performance that we have today. It's not even calculated into our outlook just yet. Okay. One last question, and I'll let other people... 'Cause I'm sure people have been waiting. On the relationship with National Guardian, I think you said you expect 40%-60% growth in pre-need funeral revenue a year after it's fully implemented. What gives you confidence in that kind of a number? Just some color onto that, right? Right now, we do somewhere around, you know, $80 million in prearranged funeral production, in general terms. We have a lot of relationships right now, over 40, and that's why we have this new agreement to re-remove all those 40 over time. It's gonna be a phased approach over the next, you know, year, and then being able to, through this strategy, significantly grow those $80 million. The 40%-60% that I'm referring to, is referring to that $80 million. I believe we should be somewhere around $120 million to $145 million-$150 million, sometime within a full year of, of, you know, execution after the full rollout. Okay, thank you. I'll, I'll get back into queue, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from George Kelly of Roth MKM. Your line is open. Hey, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. So first, just to follow up on, on a point, Carlos, that you were just reviewing the 40%-60% growth in the pre-need funeral that you expect over the next, I think you said 12-18 months. The, the question for you is just, what is it about this relationship that's so superior to your existing relationships? I guess, what, what do they bring that's so new and, and incremental? Oh, yeah. What's different is, Well, first, we never really focused on trying to grow our pre-arranged funeral, you know, program. By managing so many relationships, so many different commission schedules, so many different strategies by business, different relationships between, whether it's a marketer, meaning somebody that is selling on your behalf or the insurance company backing that marketer behind it, you lose, number one, your leverage in terms of being able to have better commissions from a general agent perspective, because you have to negotiate with each one of those 40 different parties. We have more than 40, but, you know, it becomes very complicated. You lose your leverage. Most importantly, you don't have a national strategy. You don't have a marketing advantage that you can use. You don't have the CRM, so you have to rely upon the strategy that each one of those partners have in their training, their capacity, and, and, and there's really good ones out there. Precoa is really the number one national pre-need company in the United States. They have a robust marketing program. They have a robust, you know, CRM already there. By partnering with a, you know, NGL, the National Guardian Life Insurance Company, they're backing us in terms of a phenomenal, you know, advantageous to Carriage into them and to every, you know, partner within this agreement, commission schedule. Everybody wins, right? In our estimations, we should be doing somewhere around four times the general agent commission we were doing before this agreement was signed. When you add that in addition to the acceleration of preneed sales on the funeral side, it becomes very, very accretive to our financial performance. Okay, that's great. That's helpful. Thanks. Second question for me: Is there a... I don't know if maybe this is for Mel or Kian, I'm not sure. Is there a target leverage number that you're... I don't know if it's 4 x or, or maybe sub 4 x, but something that you just have in the back of your head that you're working towards, and, and you're gonna be really prioritizing debt paydown until you reach that, and then you'll kinda start to be, consider, you know, other, other uses of cash? Just curious what that number is. Yeah, this is Mel. You're right. We do have a number, and we've always had a number. We just haven't lived up to it. It's, it's 4 x or less. The reason, you know, having started this company and not knowing anything about it, but I was told early on that, "Mel, you don't need to know a whole lot, except there's a lot of cash that comes out of the funeral business, so you can leverage it." I did that, and they were right. Then we built a big, bigger company, and we, we have now too much leverage. It scares a lot of common equity holders. I understand that. I think when we put out our High Performance and Credit Profile Restoration Plan, we mentioned we wanna get back to 4 x or less. SCI has proven that they can operate really well at less than 4 times, and sometimes less than 3 times, still generate a lot of cash to allocate value creation. When we grow up, we wanna be like them. Best thing I can say. They've done a great job at it. You know, Bob Waltrip, who died in February, was a dear friend of mine. He was the founder of SCI, pioneered the consolidation of this industry, starting in 1962. Bob would tell me, "Mel, I should have been broke 4 x. This industry bails me out every time." Well, I don't wanna be broke, and I wanna create value for our shareholders, and I don't want anybody to lose any money on credit or on equity. I think getting down to a perceived safer leverage ratio will enhance our multiple of our performance metrics, and that's what we're shooting for. We'll do that by the end of 2024. Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks, Mel. Thank you very much. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back to Mel Payne for closing remarks. Thank all of you so much for tuning in today. This is a very special day for me. You know, I've been back in the office now a few days after working on my stroke recovery for months and months, and it's been a very emotional time for me because I've received... Here's the deal for all of those of you listening in who might know me. You know, it's not like I have this tame, wimpy personality, so anybody who gets to know me knows that, you know, they're around somebody who has an energy and passion for what they do, and I don't hide it. I show it 100% of the time, and that seems to be what people really like from me, plus I like it as myself. I have received... Many good wishes for recovery, so many prayers. I, I just didn't know what to do to, to say thank you to all those people. Lo and behold, Carlos came up with a brilliant idea, and I didn't have to do anything. He said, "Mel, why don't you make a video now that you're kinda back in the saddle and send it out to all of our people?" I did, AJ, his, and his team, they just put magical stuff together. Thank you, AJ. He's down the way here. What they do is amazing. They came to my library, and we recorded a video message from me to all of our people a week or so ago. It was sent out a few days ago. I told my wife, "You know, I've had so many people send me messages, and I haven't known how I'm gonna thank all of them. This is gonna do it, and I think maybe a lot of people will, will listen to it." What I wasn't prepared for is when I walked in this morning to this call, Carlos gave me pages of responses to the video, and I'm sitting here reading them while they're answering all your good questions, and I'm blown away all over again. So I just wanted to read one of them to give you a general sense of how they all sound in one way or another. This is from Jason Wheeler. Jason is the new managing partner of Wood Family Funeral Home, which is part of the Greenlawn acquisition in Bakersfield, California, from earlier this year. He said, "Below is a text message. We would like to share this message with Mel. Please, if there's any way to pass on this message about the message Mel sent this morning, please do. It takes a lot of courage to get in front of a camera and be open and honest about such a situation. His message was obviously filled with love and encouragement. It was inspiring, inspiring, to say the least. Mel, thank you. You have shown me that this company was built by a man who cares about his people and his company. This is not a company based on profit alone, but a company that was based on his people and the client families the people serve in every business. Your words are encouraging and motivating. God bless and praying for continued recovery." Here's the deal: It has always surprised me why people say our people are our best assets, but they don't really act like that to the people, you know? I've always acted like that to the people, and so they respond. They respond, and we say we're decentralized, we have these high-performance standards, and the way I define the company is we're a high-performance culture company that happens to be in the funeral and cemetery business. What we do in the funeral business is deliver high-value, emotional, personal services. When you do that, you build financial performance and market share and reputation in the local community and, and in the industry. Same thing in the cemetery. Our people do a wonderful job, and I'm just so grateful to be here, back in my saddle, around the people I love the most and care about the most in my life. Building this company has been the highlight of my life, and I could, I could hopefully keep doing this for a long time. I know a lot of people are looking at us right now. I'm fine with that. Look hard. Dig beneath the surface because it's all good. I just wanna thank all of you for calling in and listening today. I'm so grateful for the leadership team I have in place. You got to hear Carlos in action, Steve, Kian. This is the dream team that I always wanted. It just took me a while to get them in place, and now they are, and I'm so thrilled. Thank all of you for tuning in, and we, we look forward to reporting our progress for the rest of the year. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.