Greetings, welcome to the iMedia Brands second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Monty Wageman, Chief Financial Officer for iMedia Brands. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. This is Monty Wageman, iMedia Brands' Chief Financial Officer. We issued our Q2 earnings release earlier this morning. If you do not have a copy, you may access it through the news section of our IR website at imediabrands.com. This release is also an exhibit to the Form 8-K filed this morning. I would also like to remind everyone this call will be available for replay through September 7th, 2021, starting today at 11:30 A.M. Eastern Time. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release, as well as on the IR section of our website. Some of the statements made during this call are considered forward-looking and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our expectations about future operating and financial performance and speak only as of today's date. We undertake no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. We believe the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable but give no assurance such expectations or any of the forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. For additional information, please refer to the Safe Harbor statement in today's earnings release in our SEC filings. Finally, we will make references to non-GAAP measures on this call, such as adjusted EBITDA. Please refer to our earnings release for further information about these measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of iMedia Brands, Tim Peterman. Tim? Thank you, Monty, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining. Q2 was another strong quarter for us. We navigated through a logistics challenge related to COVID-19. We ignited three catalysts to accelerate shareholder growth, one in each of our three business strategies, TV networks, consumer brands, and digital services. We grew our customer file again. In fact, July was the 10th month in a row. We improved our gross margin to 42.3%, a 510 basis point improvement over the same prior year period. We significantly strengthened our balance sheet, and despite the logistics bumps and bruises we endured in Q2 that challenged our revenue, we exceeded our profitability expectations that we communicated to investors during our Q1 earnings call. Strategically, our individual successes within our TV networks, consumer brands, and digital services are collectively accelerating our company's timeline to becoming the leading single-source partner to consumer brands and advertisers seeking to entertain and transact with customers using interactive video. Now, let's walk through these Q2 highlights in a bit more detail. Q2 net sales were $113.4 million, a decrease of 9% compared to the same prior year period, and about $5 million lower than we'd expected for the quarter. As many retailers are enduring, for the first time, we experienced material shipping delays for several of our most productive products. From our fashion favorites like Kate & Mallory and Indigo Thread, to health favorites like our air purifiers and laser pain massagers, to our seasonal home favorites like Quantum vacuums and Colston air fryers. Inventory receipts were consistently delayed. Fortunately, our entrepreneurial culture pivoted quickly, reprogramming our calendar with on-hand inventory that was often higher margin but lower productivity, thus the results you see for the quarter, our gross margin dollar and rate growth despite reduction in net sales. For example, several of our 34 new product launches during the quarter received more airtime than originally estimated, like Dr. Sparano Skincare, which is based on Dr. Sparano's 40 years of experience performing plastic surgery and is a proprietary collection of quick and easy beauty treatments for women and men to use in the comfort of their own home. Jewels by Jorge Perez, which is a collection that showcases Jorge's artistic talent for creating colorful and unique designs infused with his vibrant Cuban heritage. Last but certainly not least, our very own Christopher & Banks, which debuted in Q2. These shows focus on putting her first, providing our customers with style, value, and service that help her look fabulous and feel amazing for every day and for life's special moments. Good news, although we expect continued congestion at the domestic ports on a smaller scale going forward, we have already adjusted our programming calendars accordingly. Good news, our year-to-date KPIs are strong. Year-to-date net sales were $226.6 million, which was a 3% growth compared to the same prior year period and the strongest year-over-year net sales growth in the company's first two fiscal quarters in seven years. Year-to-date adjusted EBITDA was $16.4 million, a $7.3 million increase or 80% improvement over the same prior year period and the highest Q2 year-to-date adjusted EBITDA in the company's history. Let's talk about our Q2 strategic catalysts. First, our acquisition of Synacor's portal and advertising business segment, which is the catalyst for our digital services strategy and is truly the foundation of iMedia's overall digital strategy. Which is best explained in my mind with a simple formula. Synacor's video advertising platform, plus iMedia's first-party purchasing data from ShopHQ, plus Float Left's best-in-class OTT app equals a truly differentiated video advertising platform. A good example of a competitor to our strategy would be Walmart's advertising platform, Walmart Connect, that utilizes its first-party purchasing data to help it better serve its advertisers seeking to reach better targeted audiences. We have renamed our advertising business iMedia Digital Services or IMDS, and I'm proud to announce it is already a leading video advertising platform that monetizes over 200 million monthly users for its online publishers by utilizing its proprietary technologies and its interactive video services to drive engagement, traffic, and conversion. We expect IMDS will generate at least $45 million in profitable revenues over these next 12 months. Very soon, our plan is that IMDS will also offer our advertisers tailored first-party customer shopping data from retail, catalog, and e-commerce that will enable us to efficiently deliver publishers targeted demographics and conversion at real scale. Today, major advertisers use IMDS's comprehensive suite of video header bidding display technology and Search in mobile and desktop to eliminate cost, maximize yield, and create exposure to new demand sources. Our advertising products names are S2S Bidder, Reflex, and Search. We also offer our advertisers and publishers an optional best-in-class value-added engagement platform, which is a managed online and OTT digital start page that enables our advertisers and publishers to provide their end users a compelling video-centric website/portal/app, depending on the platform, for original content, news and entertainment, email, identity management, identity protection, and TV everywhere. IMDS creates and hosts these fully managed interactive video experiences across all technology platforms, specializing in desktop, mobile, OTT, and CTV apps. Our next catalyst, Christopher & Banks, or CBK, is the central driver in our consumer brand strategy and is the first real example of how iMedia is being positioned in the marketplace already as being the best single-source partner to drive growth using interactive video. In this case, Hilco is our partner, and I'd like to give more context on this opportunity that Hilco and iMedia are so excited about capturing. CBK was a publicly held specialty retailer featuring exclusively designed, privately branded apparel targeting plus-size women who were 55+ years old. CBK operated 450 retail stores in 44 states as well as its website. CBK filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 14th, 2021, and its primary lender, Hilco, purchased it. To really size the opportunity, let's look at its history. For 2019, CBK posted about $350 million in revenue, of which about $80 million was e-commerce sales. For 2020, CBK posted about $200 million in revenue, and about $100 million of that was e-commerce sales. That was the opportunity that Hilco was thinking about. Hilco carefully evaluated its best path from doing it itself to partnering with other folks, and it concluded that iMedia, with its national television promotional platforms, expertise in fashion merchandising, proprietary e-commerce capabilities, including web and mobile, customer service, 3PL capabilities, and financing products, was the best choice for them for a single-source partner to relaunch its CBK brand. iMedia's growth strategy for CBK centers on its ability to create live CBK-branded television experiences on ShopHQ to engage CBK customers who may miss the live demonstration that they used to enjoy within the bricks-and-mortar experience. Our short-term goal is clear, and that is to recapture, quickly, the $100 million in digital sales from prior year, and I am pleased to report that our progress to date has been meaningful. Our second catalyst, RN's new 20 million HD homes that launched on June 28th, is a central driver in our TV network strategy. As you may recall, these were 20 million+ high-definition homes across New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Boston, which will help us level the playing field against our competition in these markets that matter most. To date, our revenue lift in these markets is consistent with our already communicated expectations, and we are very pleased. Back to walking through our Q2 KPIs. Our operating expenses in Q2 were $50 million, an increase of 15% or $6.5 million, driven primarily by new merchandising and marketing related costs, and additional transaction and integration costs for CBK, and an increase in amortization related to our broadcast distribution rights. Regarding our balance sheet, total unrestricted cash was $20.9 million, compared to $15.5 million at prior year-end. On June 14th, we closed on a common stock equity raise, generating proceeds of $40.3 million, net of discounts, commissions, and other offering costs. On July 30th, we closed on an expanded $108.5 million debt refinancing facility to replace our previous facility with PNC. Regarding capital expenditures, during the quarter, we spent approximately $3.1 million on capital projects, primarily reflecting investments and upgrades to our websites, infrastructure, and facilities. Regarding our outlook for Q3, we anticipate reporting at least $9 million of adjusted EBITDA and approximately $127 million in net sales, which is roughly a 17% growth in net sales compared to the same prior year period. For the full year 2021, we anticipate reporting full-year adjusted EBITDA between $37 million and $40 million, which is an increase from our previous guidance of between $35 million and $37 million. In addition, we anticipate reporting full-year net sales of at least $502 million, which is an approximate 11% full-year net sales growth compared to 2020. As a reminder, from a tax perspective, the company has approximately $397 million in federal NOLs that are available to us to offset future taxable income. In closing, I would like to say that these are important times here at iMedia as we accelerate our growth in building shareholder value. Thank you for your time this morning. I will turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A. Operator? Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Tom Forte with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question. Great, Tim, Monty. Can I have one short-term question and one long-term question? I'll start with the short-term one. Tim, you and I have been following the industry for a long time. How can we put in historical context the supply chain challenges? Is it the toughest to spend in the last 24 months? Ever? How do you think about it, and what gives you confidence you can navigate the challenges over the next 12 months? After that, I have a longer-term question. Thanks, Tom. It's a great question. If I had a crystal ball, I could say that for sure. It's probably the most challenging I've seen in ever. The wave is just cresting now. It's been building. People talked about the logistics challenges, and so did we last year as the pandemic slowed virtually all areas. That was just a little ripple as the wave was headed to shore, and it was really focused or contained within the consumer electronics and some of the more ordinary products that you would think would be affected by these types of logistics issues. However, now, as we move into Q1 and Q2, it's a combination of container shortages for these direct imports, as well as big backups at the local ports, whether that's East or West Coast. The container shortages have lightened up a bit, and the ports are getting a little bit better on the congestion, but it's still there. I would say that if you ask my view today, and I'll give you that view every quarter, I would say that I think Q2 was the crest, and we're going to start to see this dissipate in Q3 and Q4. There will be some challenges, but it won't be as acute, at least as broadly speaking and from a product category. We looked at, it was in fashion, it was in beauty, it was virtually in every category. That's what I think will dissipate and move behind us. It's here for at least a year, in my view. It took a year to build, it'll take a year to get back to normal. From an organizational perspective, from a programming perspective, we've implemented several different countermeasures from making sure that the product was in-house at least three weeks in dock before. Even getting to port, which used to be a point of reference for product being available to calendar, is no longer reliable because of the congestion. Just different programming policies that we've put in place has helped alleviate the short-term pressure, and that's how we're planning Q3 and Q4. All right. Thank you for that. All right, the longer-term question, then I'll get back in the queue for maybe a couple more follow-ups, is that you did a wonderful job explaining your advertising efforts. How should we think about how that could potentially positively impact your long-term gross margin, and then therefore your long-term EBITDA margin? Great question. I think there's two catalysts to our gross margin. As you know, we worked hard throughout 2020 to improve our gross margins by 500 basis points. As I talked about, getting to the 37%-38% was where we could scale revenue. That's for TV retailing, and we've demonstrated that. As you point out, certainly in the consumer brands with CBK and certainly with our new video advertising platform, our acquisition of Synacor's portal and advertising business, those margins are higher. As those businesses scale, you will see our gross margin move, and you've seen some evidence of it in Q1 and Q2. I think it's going to move into more of the, from a modeling perspective, if you want to think about our enterprise margin, it would be in the 39%-40% by next year, is our view. Excellent. I'm going to get back in the queue for a couple more follow-ups. Thanks. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Wold with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question. Thanks. Good morning. Couple of questions. I guess one, first, I was kind of following on the last questions around the port issues. It sounds like obviously you're making some programming changes, making sure the inventory's in hand et cetera. With gross margins in the ShopHQ segment well above target levels for now, the second consecutive quarter, does it make sense at all to try to expedite air freight, do some things around that to get the desired products in hand to drive further customer growth? Is that just not an option at this point? Thanks for the question, Eric. Yeah, that's the age-old question, right? If I could look back 2020, I'd say that I could have taken less margin and perfectly brought those in. It's a constant question we wrestle with. Particularly for jewelry, we can do that, and we do that. For some of the bigger items like fashion, they were stuck in containers, and they were stuck en route where we didn't really have that option. Where it wasn't caught up en route, we took advantage of it. Then the other side of that is that, when we put the existing products we had on hand, as we talked about, or as I talked about in my prepared remarks, some of it was already higher margin, and we knew it would be less productive. That balance is something that we're used to doing, as we did all last year. When we looked at the overall impact, it was a balance of, what do we know we have in-house? What do we know that will resonate with the customers, have a strong margin? What can we air in and from a category perspective in the quarter? Then again, what do we have to then brace for impact on in terms of what we won't get in fashion, what we won't get in home, what we won't get in, even in some cases, watches. It was a blended rate that at the end of the day, allowed us to make sure from a EPS and a net income and margin perspective, we delivered on what we promised. We feel good about it. I mean, we feel it wasn't like it happened all at once. It was like one of those things that kept, "Really? This happened again? Really, on that?" As we moved through it, we reacted pretty quickly. Got it. The second question, you mentioned obviously Christopher & Banks going along well. Maybe give us some kind of details around what you've done so far. How have you exploited or targeted their customer list that came along? What's next on the calendar, and what would you be disappointed at if that didn't generate X amount of revenue this year, and how much could that grow next year? Great question, Eric. When we think about CBK, the first and foremost is the customers. Called over 1.5 million 12-month customers when we began the journey. What we've been doing to re-engage those customers, and it's a multipronged effort. First and foremost, we're reaching out from an email perspective and re-engaging them to bring them back with new products, discounts, because, as you might recall, in the last six months of last year, they weren't really introducing new products. Making sure that we have the new products to engage them when they come is first and foremost. The first step in the spring was making sure we kept all the vendors, that some of them were hurt in the bankruptcy, and engaged with them, and they've, together with our team, created an amazing fall season and brought in some goods for the spring to help us with this re-engagement process we're talking about. First and foremost, it was on email. We've also, as you think about a retailer, have many of our customers that don't have email addresses, we old-fashioned, re-engaged them with postcards, and that has been tremendously successful. We mail them a postcard, we say that we miss them, and we do it by strata within the customer file, and we do it monthly, and those have been very productive. On the television side, you think about email, you think about the postcards, you think about our television. Our television began. The monthly rotation is what we're doing for this brand. In fashion, you can have static programming that happens every week. When you have a distinct brand, like One World, for example, or Christopher & Banks, we rotate them in monthly. When a brand starts, it starts at, call it three to four hours. The first rotation for CBK was in April, and it was good. There were some learnings. Sizing was different. There were all these different things that we wanted to try to make sure we were doing right by the customer, and some of the art of TV retailing, we didn't pay enough attention to. In May and June, the on-air presentation was much improved. The new products that we brought were much improved, and it's really taken off on the television side and something that we're very excited about in the fall to rebuild that customer file. You have those three pieces, and then we have stood up two of the bigger, more productive retail stores, because we do believe in omni-channel. It's just we don't believe in brick-and-mortar retail driving the bus. We believe television and digital drives the bus, but it's a complement on the physical retail side. In Branson, Missouri, and here in Minnesota, both of those stores were up and engaged, and the customers on the social platform are very happy to have that store back. That's really the fourth side. Then as we think about engaging customers in digital, we've talked about Salesfloor, which is a way for us to virtually style out different customers as they think about what they want to buy from us. That's something that is planned for the fall. It's a multipronged approach to get back those 1.5 million into the 12-month file. I would be disappointed if we didn't reach that $100 million next year, and I would be disappointed in digital sales. I would be disappointed if you think about it, we should have, in the first full year, reached half of that. We started in March, you can do the math. It is a meaningful growth catalyst for us and something that we're already seeing great success with. That's perfect. Thanks, Tim. Yeah. Thanks, Eric. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Argento with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good morning, guys. Yeah, just a couple quick ones. Just wanted to look at Synacor a little bit and better understand the integration process and you walked through the whole iMedia Digital Services, but maybe just talk about how close you're going to stitch the Synacor assets together with some of the other digital assets that you currently have and kind of your high-level thinking there. Thanks, Mark. Great question. Yeah, it is. When you think about the team and the culture that we acquired with this business, which I know well since I used to be there, call it five, six, no, more like eight, nine, 10 years ago. Let me first start by saying the team that is our new business called iMedia Digital Services, that is the construct of Synacor's portal and advertising business, is very strong. You have, I'll mention them by name, Ron, Matt, Bill, and Gabor is the leadership team there, and they've been there for quite some time. When you think about what they've done so far and what the ambition is, there's not really a stitching together of this iMedia Digital Services with our other digital. I would say that this video asset platform that we have today is the foundation of our iMedia Digital strategy. They are driving forward with a platform that will utilize what we call our first-party customer data. As you think about the ecosystem of digital advertising and the third-party cookies going away and the tracking going away, the idea of this video asset platform having real first-party data for them is a differentiation for them in the marketplace. We're going to take their skills and their culture of gritty entrepreneurial development, and we're going to provide them with a couple of our assets, and those assets being Float Left, which is our OTT app business that we bought back in 2019. If you think about some value-added services that IMDS provides today, they're an advertising platform, primarily an interactive video. They provide their clients, particularly the MVPDs and the ISPs, what we call video engagement portals or website in the online world. That's really what Float Left does on the OTT side. Complementing the video asset platform today with our first-party customer data and the Float Left OTT app is a way of better equipping them to grow faster in this marketplace. Integration isn't really the right way to think about it. We're enabling them with a few key pieces of technology and data to make them grow faster as a standalone. It's an exciting time. I think that we're just getting started here, and you'll hear more about our efforts each and every quarter. It's foundational for us. Great. Just in terms of the guidance, the old guide, $490 million on the top line going to $502 million. I think you said $45 million in revenues kind of next 12 months. If you just straight line it and take 40% of that this year, maybe 45%, whatever the math works out to be. It's probably another $16 million-$17 million in contribution this year, I'm guessing. The delta being the overall iMedia business you expect to be down a little bit just given the logistics relative to where it was before. Is that kind of the put and take there or just peeling the onion a little bit on the guide? Yeah, absolutely, Mark. Great question. It's like the duck on the pond as well swimming under there. Think about it this way. We guided to a full year 490 at the end of Q1, now we're guiding to a full year of 502. As we talked about, we were short on the revenue side of guidance, call it $4 million. If you think about our increase of $12 million in the back half of the year, Q3 and Q4, primarily driven by IMDS, you can think about that as $16 million being added because we're making up the gap in the logistics. We're starting to get all that product in now in Q3, so we do think that productivity from the receipts that didn't come in in Q2, coming in in Q3 will drive obviously productivity, and then the acquisition of the portal and ad team will drive revenue as well. That combined $16 million is how you should think about what we're adding to the forecast for Q3 and Q4. Great. That's helpful. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Fuhrman with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question. Hey, thanks, guys. Tim, do you mind just building on what you were just talking about your outlook for the third and the fourth quarter? Can you give us a sense of what's kind of baked into the forecast in terms of availability of inventory as you get closer to the holiday season? It sounds like from what you were just describing, you're not anticipating any sort of hiccups or anything in the third or the fourth quarter. Can you just give us a sense of how much visibility you have at this point into your ability to be well-stocked for the holidays? Hi, Eric. Great question. Again, I'm sorry, Alex. I had to take out my crystal ball here. What do we know and what do we think, right? We know what we can control and what do we think about the logistics situation. I'd call that the unknown or the headwind is really this logistics. We know we've taken care of it from a programming perspective and an inventory on-hand perspective. We think that from that perspective, it's baked in as not a material distraction from the revenue performance that you see in the guidance. There is some hesitancy that we've baked into the guidance because of the congestion, but it's not meaningful. We are with the view that the Q2 logistics was the crest, and it would be moving down along with our remediations that we've done internally. We're not going to face the kind of tumult on the revenue side that we did in Q2. That's the first issue. When you think about the tailwinds as you move into Q3 and Q4, there's several. There's really 3 that are new that really weren't there last year. The first, obviously, is the RNN HD carriage that we have in Q3 and Q4 that we recently launched. As that matures, that incremental growth will get higher. As we move into Q3 and Q4, that's a tailwind, and we've baked some of that in, obviously very conservatively, in our revenue numbers. The second catalyst is Christopher & Banks, obviously not here last fall, and even in the spring from a performance perspective, we didn't have new inventory. We didn't really have inventory per se. We've developed a great fall season. We've also introduced accessories to the balance of the product, which will be, we think, even more engaging for the customers. That's a tailwind moving into Q3 and Q4. Our new acquisition, which is the iMedia Digital Services there, that is a tailwind for sure. Obviously not here last fall. When you think about on balance, our guidance for the back half, we have baked in some optimism from the tailwinds I've just described and some concern considering the logistics issue. It's a balance. We feel good about it. As we've always talked about, my goal with all IR communication is to beat expectations. We think about that too when we provide guidance. Great. That's really helpful. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you'd like to join the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is a follow-up from Tom Forte with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question. Great. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Monty. Let's go short-term, long-term again. On the short-term basis, Tim, historically, the Olympics are often challenging for TV retail. How, if any, do you think it impacted you this year? Great question, Tom. I don't know if it really is going to be impactful to us. It certainly is a distraction. I think world events and things like that are bigger distractions. I think the NFL football kickoff is a bigger distraction where we have to deploy counter-programming. Our strategy is the same and probably the same in most cases, is how good can you counter-program against those. For example, on the NFL Sunday kickoff, we have great Invicta NFL watches, a big deal for us, right? You would think naturally, "Wait, let's put that on a Sunday NFL," right? We put it on Monday because all our fans are going to be watching the football. Then on that Sunday, we would have great beauty brands like Isomers or Consult. We'd have jewelry. Any of the really female-dominated categories is where we would go. With the Olympics, it isn't that cut and dry, right? Because it's very mixed in terms of demographics and who watches it. That's our strategy. That's how we would approach it. Looking historically, it hasn't, unless there's some acute event on the Olympics, it hasn't been as painful as some of the examples I just said. Excellent. All right. Last one, long term. With the adjustments you've made to your asset portfolio, do you think you have everything in place to execute your full vision, or are there more potentially complementary or other assets you'd like to add? Great question, again, Tom, as always. I like to think about it this way. We have three primary strategies. We have television networks or TV networks, we have consumer brands, and we have digital services. That has been our offensive plan since I came back in the middle of 2019. That is all we need to execute our strategy to become the leading single source partner to advertisers and consumer brands who are seeking to use interactive video to drive growth. That's really what I want to make sure I'm clear on. The river that runs through it is the interactive video. As you think about examples of single source providers out there today, similar to where we're moving, you can think of a Shopify, you can think of a Squarespace. They're an e-com based, self-serve, single source provider to consumers. We are still B2B in providing advertisers and consumer brands. Again, the differentiating quality here with us is that interactive video, something that we really think we do well, and that as the central driver, supported by a thriving TV network, a thriving consumer brand, and a thriving digital services, just accelerates our path. You won't see anything outside of those three strategies from us going forward. We have our offense on the field, and that's what we're executing against. Wonderful. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Monty. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Peterman for any final comments. Thank you. Just again, thank everybody for their time and their trust. We appreciate it. As I like to end, these are exciting times at iMedia Brands, and we look forward to talking again soon. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.