We'd love to have you give us an overview of the HF Foods story, as some of the listeners here today may be new to the name. so HF, we've been in business for almost three decades. We are the market leader specifically in the Asian specialty foodservice space, which is projected to be the fastest growing segment of the broader space itself. Again, about roughly a $15 billion top line business. Today, HF has roughly a 16% market share within the space. It's a space that is extremely tough to get into. Over three decades of great business performance, we're kind of able to get to this point. We feel good about where we're at today, and there's a lot of growth opportunity ahead of us that we're excited about as well. Okay, fantastic. Thank you for that, Felix. I'd love to start off maybe talking about where you just left off in terms of the broader Asian specialty cuisine category. You mentioned how you're a leader within that. Maybe talk about, tell us more about the size and growth of the category. How fragmented is it today? How has it evolved over the years just to help give us a better sense of the broader category? Yeah, great question. I mean, I think if you look at the broader food industry, it's roughly about 780,000 restaurants. Asian specifically, it's about 12%-13% of the entire segment, so 94,000 restaurants or so. Over the years, if you look at from a macro standpoint, especially with the introduction of social media, people are more open to trying new cuisines. Everyone has a consensus that, again, Asian specialty itself is probably the fastest growing within the space. Certainly, we've seen it with our customer retention. It's in the high, you know, in the 90% versus industry, probably 65% or so. Again, it's a $50 billion adjustable market. Today, HF is at roughly about $1.2 billion. We're still at the tip of the iceberg. We're the one that's in the best position to further capitalize on the space itself, just given our scale within Asian specialty. Okay, no, I appreciate that. Let's talk a bit about how your model might be a bit differentiated from mainstream distribution companies such as Sysco or US Foods. Why do you see yourself as having a competitive advantage when it comes to sourcing and customer relationships there? Yeah, there's a couple of things, right? One, again, going back to the industry, the space itself for a second. You know, 94,000 restaurants, 98%-99% of our customers are all independently run businesses. They're not these large chain restaurants that perhaps Sysco or US Foods are, you know, used to doing business with. Brands like Panda Express or P.F. Chang, which a lot of the general consumers are, you know, pretty aware of, make up a very, very small portion of the Asian restaurant industry itself. Our ability to historically service what I consider underserved customers in the specialty space is what helps us win. Certainly, there's a language side of it as well, a cultural connection we have with our customers. From a pure product SKU offering standpoint as well, we offer over 20,000 SKUs and 50%, over 10,000, is specifically in Asian specialty. Our ability to source these highly specialized products globally for our customers is one of the advantages that we have. The reason why, again, companies like Sysco or US Foods, while they find the space very, very attractive, historically have a very tough time competing with us in our space. Okay, no, that's helpful there. When you talk about some of the more independent versus chains, does that make it more difficult to get the economies of scale? Is that why some of them shy away from that? Can you maybe just talk about some of those dynamics, maybe increase a manpower that you need to kind of service all the independent chains that might not be needed for some of the larger distributors that are servicing the larger chains? Yeah, look, I mean, there's always pros and cons with every model, right? I think broader industry-wise, people, businesses generally see that there's a higher opportunity from a margin standpoint if you deal with independent restaurants. That's why, again, going back to some of the larger companies like Sysco or US Foods, especially in the last few years, they tried to pivot themselves and start servicing more independent restaurants versus these national or regional accounts that they have. If you're the customer, you have a larger scale, especially if you're willing to give commitment as well, then they're pushing margin down for food service companies like, you know, like ours, right, trying to get a better deal. Our advantage is that, again, 99% of our customers are independently run businesses. We're able to, you know, have a very strong relationship with them. Our ability to buy and sell at a spot market as well without commitment gives us the advantage to react to the market, especially when things are going through high levels of uncertainty or very rapid macro changes that we're seeing today in 2025. Okay, that's helpful. Felix, you became permanent CEO in January of this year, but you've been with the company for a number of years, first as a Board of Directors since 2019 and then as COO. HF Foods, recently you went through a transformation. Can you speak to the evolution of the company since you've been there and maybe what you see as the next steps now as CEO? Yeah, look, I mean, from day one in terms of joining the company, you know, being a Board Member, I've seen a tremendous amount of opportunity here with HF, not just in terms of, you know, how much the business has grown over the last, you know, two to three decades, but where the business could go, right? As I mentioned earlier, you know, even though we're at a $1.2 billion business today, we're decent sized, but the growth trajectory is tremendous ahead of us because, again, it's a $50 billion adjustable market, and yet we're the largest, you know, within the space. It's great to kind of see the transition in terms of being privately family-owned to public and now doing things very differently. In the last few years, we focused on, again, system upgrades, facility upgrades, fleet, and even from a purchasing standpoint. I'll say we're still in the very early beginning phase of that, probably the first, second inning. There's still a lot of runway for us to go. Despite all of this, we're still able to deliver quarter- over- quarter, year- over- year growth here, you know, recently. I think, again, the story is still to be written about HF. Now, longer term here, even looking at 2026 and beyond, it's all about deploying the capital in the right place, addressing our capacity constraint, upgrading our capability so that we can go out there and execute and tackle this highly attractive market that we got here. Again, we're in the best position to do it because no one can do it better than we can within our space. All right, yeah, let's dive a little bit into that in terms of potential deployment of capital, specifically referencing M&A. Can you speak to the role that M&A has played historically and how it could be utilized going forward for HF? Look, it's no secret that in the food service space, you grow through M&A, right? Everyone has been through that. That's why there's always a lot of consolidation in the broader space. Within Asian specialty, it's no different. Given our size, given our reputation, the people that we deal with, we know most of the players within our space in every single market. I think over time, this is where HF, I want to send a message loud and clear, right? We're open for business in terms of looking at M&A targets. We're actively evaluating, especially a lot of these first-generation operators that, as they look to monetize and exit, we are the strategic acquirer for them versus anyone else because we understand the business and we see the opportunity in terms of how do we fold them in and get synergy out here fairly quickly. I think, stay tuned in terms of the M&A front here for the foreseeable future in terms of news for HF. What are some of the core things that you look for in terms of acquisition targets, whether it be synergistic, top line, bottom line, expanding into new geographies, product categories? Can you maybe touch on just some things that make an acquisition target attractive for you? Yeah, it's a short answer. It's all of it, right? You have to prioritize things, you know. Again, I think for us in the short- term, it's looking at businesses that operate within our existing market where we know their business very well. There's probably some synergy from a customer standpoint and margin where we can buy better and sell better, just given our scale, and expand our share of the wallet within existing territories. Over time, as we do more and more of this and get better and better at, you know, integration and acquisition, there's a lot of geographic expansion opportunities as well. Today, we don't have a meaningful presence in the Mid-Atlantic and in the New England area. Those are geographic expansions down the line. You know, we want it all, but you just got to take multiple bites of the apple here for sure. Being efficient in the use of capital, maybe touch a bit in terms of how you're looking to make these acquisitions, what multiples there generally are out there. I know it can vary. Then how you look to utilize cash versus paper within these acquisitions. Yeah, look, if it is smaller acquisitions, our intention is that, you know, our balance sheet cash flow is still fairly strong, so utilize our internal capability to do it. I think over time, as we look at a higher volume of acquisition or larger acquisition targets, this is where I think we're going to have to get a little bit active and look at alternative sourcing if speed is a factor in order to kind of consolidate and have more tuck-in M&As fairly quickly. We fundamentally believe, again, we have a great business here, high barrier of entrance. There's a unique moat about the way we do business with our suppliers and our customers. Over time, in the last few years, we believe that we're somewhat undervalued here. There's an opportunity from a capital market standpoint. Again, all the conditions have to be met for us to really kind of think about that alternative. You mentioned this before, M&A is not a new strategy for the company. Maybe talk about some of your past M&A success, learnings that you've had that you believe make you better positioned for the strategy going forward. Yeah, you know, our most recent acquisition was actually back in 2022 where we bought a couple of frozen seafood businesses, one out of Richmond, Virginia, Chicago, Illinois, and Dallas, Texas. I'll say by introducing, it served multiple purposes. One, we weren't in those territories previously, so it was a geographic expansion opportunity for us. Second, it really opened the door in terms of, from a volume expansion standpoint, being able to sell a lot more frozen seafood because of the scale. We grew that business at a time of acquisition from a $300 million product category to now over a $400 million product category within just a couple of years. That's a great example of being able to achieve multiple objectives through an acquisition and how volume and scale can help benefit both the top line and the bottom line in terms of expansion. We're looking to do more of that here in the future. Okay, thanks for that, Felix. A quick reminder to everybody, if you guys have any questions for Felix or Cindy, go ahead and type them into the questions chat below and we'll go ahead and get to that Q&A towards the end of the session. Felix, Cindy, turning now toward organic growth opportunities, outside acquisitions, you've talked about other growth avenues such as cross-selling. Maybe speak about some of those organic growth opportunities you guys have available. Yeah, organic growth is going to be important for us as well. We effectively have a parallel dual growth path, right? One side is, you know, actively evaluating tuck-in M&A opportunities. The other side of it is focused on investing into our capacity and our capability. That's why, regardless of what the short-term noises might be from a macro environment standpoint, we're staying the course in terms of our investment. We have a brand new Atlanta facility that's coming up here, hopefully by the end of 2025. We're retrofitting an older facility in Charlotte as well. In those markets, we're trying to sell more frozen seafood because we're not doing much of that today in the Southeast. Beyond that, we're going to pivot to other markets where, again, today we're selling mostly frozen seafood, but I'm driving more Indian-based capacity to sell everything else. Over a three to five-year period, we think there's probably at least a $200 million- $300 million organic growth opportunity just within my existing customer accounts. We're not talking about getting outside of that, increasing my share of the wallet. That's where our priority is going to be here in the next 12- 18 months, is execute on those investments and expansion plan. What are the core KPIs that we should be looking for and thinking about as you look to execute on this initiative? I think over time it's going to be, you know, gross profit dollar. Are we generating incremental dollars, you know, to come into the business, right? For HF Foods, one of the things I think that's very, very different than the broader foodservice is that because we don't do commitments with our suppliers or with our customers, you can't look at us through the lenses of kind of every single quarter, you know, gross profit margin should be X and Y, because again, if the market fluctuates quite a bit, right? I think gross profit by dollar is probably the best metric for us over time as we expand, whether it's organically or inorganically. Are we truly winning from a top line standpoint, converting that to dollars, which ultimately kind of translates to trying to deliver this 5% EBITDA margin target that we have over this three to five-year period. One of your initiatives you guys have is the expanded cold storage. Maybe talk a little bit more and drill down in terms of the opportunity there, how it further strengthens your business model. Yeah, I mean, I touched on a little bit about Atlanta here previously. Expanding cold storage capacity is specific to Atlanta and Charlotte, where today, we only do about 1%- 2% frozen seafood business in those markets, in the entire Southeast market, where normally it should be probably 10%-1 5% of your mix, right? When the construction is done, new facilities up and running, I will literally double my cold storage capacity in the market. That's going to give me the tools and everything I need to go after, again, existing customer accounts. I don't have to go acquire new accounts just by selling them what they typically buy from others. Again, today I'm selling them everything but frozen seafood. Okay, no, I appreciate that. That's helpful color there. Maybe talk about the broader consumer environment. You know, looking at the state of the consumer today, you know, how has the constrained wallet had an impact on the business via foot traffic, spending, or otherwise? Yeah, look, I mean, even if you go all the way back to the pandemic, you know, 2020 to now, it's been a very, I call it volatile three, four years, right? You know, hybrid inflation environment and a deflation environment. Coming out of the pandemic, things, you know, kind of recovered quite a bit. In 2025, obviously, you know, new administration came in, policies from a tariff standpoint, you know, immigration enforcement, all of that have an impact in terms of consumer sentiment, right? Foot traffic. Across the board, I think it's not unusual to see that, you know, foot traffic has been down, you know, especially probably going to be in the second half of the year. All of the businesses, restaurants, food service, everyone's kind of responding to it as well. There's still quite a bit of uncertainty here, I think, for the rest of the year. Again, for HF, we're not letting any sort of short-term noises kind of deter us or change our direction because fundamentally, we think we just kind of, again, scratched the tip of the iceberg here. You know, being able to position ourselves to continue to get bigger, you know, over time, this is where, again, we're kind of staying the course from an investment standpoint and still very actively having conversations on the M&A front. Not much of that has changed for us since we're kind of playing the long game here. Can you just maybe help contextualize the impact for your guys' business as distributors, even though you're in consumer and maybe a slowdown in the consumer for your end customer? How does it change for you guys? Is it that they're not working through their inventory or are they making smaller purchases, changing the frequency? Maybe talk about how that flows through to have an impact on your business. Yeah, so again, there's been a lot of conversations about, you know, tariff impact on businesses in 2025, right? For us, we're actually not very concerned about the tariff impact because, again, we've done some very strategic inventory management, leveraged our long-term strategic relationship with partners, with our customers, providing a lot of, you know, proactive education in terms of pricing and inventory, purchase, and storage. The bigger concern, it's always about the foot traffic. You know, when people are not going out and dining out, then people are going to be spending less and there's going to be a drag on the volume itself. When the volume overall is going to be down, this is where you're going to see an even higher level of competition, right? People are going to be, again, trying to protect their share of the wallet, really compete on price, compete on every single front. There's going to be a lot of short-term pressure that's kind of a good bit of unhealthy practice, I'll say, within the space because of the lower foot traffic. I still believe that perhaps this is just going to be temporary. Over time, Asian specifically, from a restaurant standpoint, is still going to grow very quickly. Most of our customers are going to fare much better, even if we're ever going to be in a recessionary kind of environment as well. What is the best way to think about the margin profile for the business, and how do you plan to drive that margin expansion over time? Yeah, again, I think if you look at EBITDA margin, right, I think our goal is next three to five years to get to north of 5% EBITDA margin. You know, again, gross profit, I think it's going to fluctuate quite a bit here and there, given some of the macro uncertainties, commodity uncertainties, as well as new businesses and territories that we want to get into in terms of our kind of strategy to go conquer beyond kind of our share of the wallet. I wouldn't look at gross profit margin. That's probably the number one metric, but EBITDA margin over time is probably one that we're focused very, very heavily on, which of course we're trying to limit our cost structure through this period of time as well. Right, so it's not as concerned on the gross margin, but yes, on EBITDA. Do you have additional levers either within the SG&A then to maybe offset some volatility on the gross margin to still meet that EBITDA margin target? Yeah, I think so. Again, if you just look at the last several quarters of the result that we published so far, right, every single quarter we've had made some incremental improvement versus the prior quarter versus the prior year. Even in the second quarter, we just came off, you know, it was a 31.1% year-over-year improvement on our adjusted EBITDA. Going back to Q1, Q4, even of last year, we've made kind of improvements as well. In fact, we've had, on the top line specifically, we've had six consecutive quarters where we've had year-over-year growth here within the business. Again, to get to a level where we have sustainable, predictable growth, you know, we have to put in the investment now to drive capacity so that we can bring in incremental volume here to the business. Our objective is going to be, again, north of this 5% EBITDA margin for us over time. Okay, great. On that topic, you recently implemented a new ERP system. How has that helped you to identify efficiencies in running the business? Yeah, so again, the ERP just got implemented here in May of this year. It was a massive sprint that we've done here internally. We have 15 sites across the country. Over a nine-month period, we got everyone on the same platform. I think it's still going to take a little bit of time. We're kind of in this hyper-care period of making sure that there's no disruption. So far, it's been running pretty smoothly. I think it's going to take us at least a couple of quarters to collect and rationalize and look at the data from this new platform and see where there's some opportunity. One thing I'll say is it certainly gives us better tools to have proper controls in place, right? You touch on a little bit about the SG&A costs here. Historically, we're probably a little bit heavier on the SG&A side because we had an outdated system and there's some inefficiencies. I do expect there's going to be some savings here down the line, perhaps in 2026. Right now, we're not necessarily kind of quantifying exactly what that amount is going to be. Okay, that's helpful. You touched on tariffs earlier. I just want to make sure that we understand that correctly. It sounds like, you know, you're not overly concerned about the tariff. Maybe just talk about what exposure you do or don't have, your ability to potentially pass through any tariff impact, and how we should think about that, you know, having the impact on the margins of overall business. Yeah, I think the good thing, what we're seeing just in the last couple of weeks, is that it seems like things have kind of settled down here a little bit. The goalpost is not continuously moving. The toughest thing, I think, for all business leaders is not knowing what the actual goalpost is, right? We've been very, very proactive in terms of managing the tariffs out of it even before the new administration rolled out the policy. Again, keep in mind, President Trump campaigned on tariffs here. It shouldn't be a hill loss. I think the biggest surprise for business leaders globally is the level and the extent that probably they went with the tariff policy, right? We had these conversations back in Q4 and even in Q1 with a lot of our global suppliers. The vast majority of them were willing to probably absorb anywhere from 70%- 80% of the tariff. Also, proactively having these conversations and education sessions with our customers, every single one of them. Hey, things are going to be short. You need to change your menu offerings. You need to change your ingredients. Or, selectively, you need to start thinking about increasing your menu prices as well. On both ends of it, we're able to get our partners, customers, and suppliers to kind of absorb the vast majority, if not 100%, of the tariff that came through here in the first half of the year. Now, in the second half, I think the biggest concern industry-wise is probably with respect to seafood, right? Specifically shrimp and frozen products that come from India, because again, currently at 25%, it might get to 50% here on the 27th. It just depends on whether or not India and the U.S. can make a deal happen here. There's a little bit of a question mark and uncertainty out there. Given the volume and the size of our frozen seafood business, that's one thing we've got to monitor here fairly closely. Short- term, I think we're okay from an inventory standpoint. Again, we'll make some very, very strategic buys here. I appreciate that. Can we touch quickly maybe on product mix today and then also sourcing partners? Product mix and maybe how that ties into how diversified you are in terms of your domestic partners. I know you're touching on that a bit now in tariffs, so maybe if we could kind of tie that all together, that'd be helpful. Yeah, so, pretty significant, the vast majority of our buy is actually all domestic, right? You think about food services, what do you sell to a typical restaurant customer? All the protein, your chicken, pork, and beef, all that is domestic. Your produce, mostly domestic. What we source internationally, again, it's a majority of our frozen seafood, and then you have canned goods or packaging type material that's coming from Asia, Southeast Asia, China, for example. Again, most of these things, we've done some very, very strategic inventory management. We weathered the storm quite nicely here in the first half of the year. I don't expect a significant impact here into the second half of the year. More so on if the economy is not good, you kind of have this stagnation that's kind of happening and the foot traffic continues to be lower for different reasons, right? It's going to be challenging in terms of just overall volume. Other than that, we don't see any sort of significant risk here from a tariff standpoint. Okay, fantastic. Before we dive into Q&A, just one last one here. You guys have your e-commerce platform, that's another new initiative in Red from New Stream. Could you talk to us a bit about that and some of the benefits, you know, that could come from there? Yeah, you know, e-commerce, I see a tremendous amount of opportunity in e-commerce. I think, again, especially with new technology platform, all of that, it's still very much in a pilot phase today. I'll say the two sites that we have implemented e-commerce so far, now we're just limiting the platform to our existing restaurant customers where they can order selective specialty goods from us for their own consumption, right? Again, it's going well. We have a pretty large adoption, high margin business. You're looking at anywhere between 25%- 30% margin on some of these specialty goods. Can we build on that over time and maybe roll it out across my entire network and then eventually maybe even service the general public? Our specialty, one of the core competencies is being able to source these types of specialty products as well. If you look at 20,000 SKUs, over 50%, so 10,000+ are in this Asian specialty specifically. Having these types of new products, hard to find products available, it's a pretty significant part of it. It's going to take time in terms of the platform from an adoption standpoint. This is where we're going to put some investment in as well, continue to put investment in. Okay, great. Thank you for that, Felix. Let's dive into some Q&A. A couple of questions have been coming in. This is another question that I had as well. Just thinking about CapEx moving forward, can you touch on that a bit, how you plan to fund things and maybe also then just touching on the balance sheet as well? CapEx and balance sheet, how to think about that in the near term? Yeah, so again, short- term, I think 2025, our CapEx, I don't have the exact numbers, probably in that $15 million- $20 million range, right? Specifically, it's tied to facility upgrades, facility expansion. I think for the foreseeable future, as I mentioned, the next couple of years, we're going to have additional CapEx needs associated with capacity expansion. The range could vary. It depends on if you're leasing versus buying warehouses. If it's going to be buying, then it's probably going to be higher, in the higher end of that. For the most part, I think we can support our organic CapEx requirements with our cash flow. If you're trying to do organic expansion and you want to do M&A, this is where we're going to have a different conversation and think about a different capital strategy from a fundraising standpoint. We're having active conversations, kind of evaluating our options here. More to come on that front. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Talking about some of the relationships that you have with your restaurants or clients, from the rest of them, do they have multiple suppliers and distributors, or do they have one that they prefer versus the other? Can you talk about how that relationship works and evolves and how you potentially look to kind of increase share of wallet with the respective customer? Yeah. Yeah, so again, when you deal with independent restaurants, right, you know, most of the customers are price- sensitive, you know, for sure. It's a general practice that they source from multiple food service providers. You will never get 100% share of the wallet. Now, because of our scale, you know, we differentiate ourselves both in terms of price, quality, service, and so forth. We generally have a larger share of the wallet with our customers, probably anywhere from 25%, in some cases maybe 50%, 60%, depending on the market and the competition, right? Going back to what we talked about cross-selling earlier, in selected markets, where today I know what the customers should be buying, what they would buy, and the price that they perhaps are paying for things, but I don't have the capacity from a warehousing setup standpoint to service them, right? Just by introducing freezer space capacity or ambient space, but in market-to-market we can easily increase our share of the wallet in those markets. I feel very good about those opportunities. Okay, great. That's helpful. Before we leave things off here now, as we look ahead and come to the end of 2025 into 2026, what are you most excited about and seeing as the greatest opportunities? We've talked about a couple of them today. If you can close things out and talk about what you're most excited about, that'd be helpful. Yeah, look, I mean, the most exciting part is it's about keeping up the momentum. It's about execution. I've been involved with the company for a little bit over five years now for various reasons, right? We've been kind of sitting on the sideline here a little bit, both in terms of telling the HF story, getting people to recognize, understand our industry, understand our business, how unique it is, how tough it is to get into the space, and the advantages that we have as an organization. Where we can take this company, whether it's doubling, tripling the business over time by organic growth, by M&A, as we make progress, that's what I'm excited about. Even if you look at our most recent results, despite the lack of investment that we put into the business over the last four or five years, we're able to achieve some level of growth, whether it's at industry or above industry pace. Think about what we can do now that we're fully aligned as an organization and we're putting the resource where it's required, right? The future is bright. I'm very, very fortunate that I'm sitting in this position, being able to lead and drive this organization here. Fantastic. I think that's a great way to close things out. Felix, Cindy, thanks so much for joining us. I'll leave it open to you if you do have any additional closing remarks. That was great before I end things. Felix, Cindy, I'll pass it back over to you one last time if you have any closing remarks. No. For all the interested parties, I just ask that you guys continue to follow us. I think it's an evolving story, but again, we're in a very, very good position in an industry that's hard to get into. We're definitely, again, playing the long game here in terms of investment. Looking forward to speaking with you guys again here. Thank you very much. Again, Felix Lin, President and CEO, Cindy Yao, CFO, HF Foods, traded on the Nasdaq, ticker HFFG. Felix, Cindy, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you, everyone who tuned in. Hopefully, you found it value-added and helpful. Have a great day. Thanks, Aaron. Thanks, Aaron. Appreciate it.