EDUC

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Educational Development Corporation's financial and operating results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year results. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. On the call today are Craig White, President and Chief Executive Officer; Heather Cobb, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer; and Dan O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the fiscal 2026 fourth quarter and year-end results. The release will be available after today on the company's website at www.edcpub.com. Before turning to the prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors. We refer you to Educational Development Corporation's recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial condition. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Craig, please go ahead.

Thank you, Alan, and welcome everyone to the call. We appreciate your continued interest. I will start today's call with some general comments regarding the quarter, then I will pass the call over to Dan to run through the financials. After which, Heather will provide an update on sales and marketing and IT projects, and then I will provide an update on our plans for fiscal 2027. Much of our fourth quarter was focused on our turnaround plan of selecting and ordering critical inventory. During the quarter, we began a conservative purchasing plan to replenish some of our best-selling out-of-stock items, as well as purchase new titles. To remind everyone, it takes anywhere from four to six months from the time we issue a purchase order until the product is received and available for sale.

I am pleased to report that we have received some of these replenishment and new titles, and I've seen the excitement this has created in both our sales divisions. We are still expecting most of these new titles over the next few weeks and plan to showcase them at our annual convention in June. Heather will talk more about this in her marketing update. As I've said before, our turnaround plan was not an overnight change, but a carefully developed plan for growth over the next few quarters and years. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials.

Thank you, Craig. To start, our fourth quarter summary compared to the prior year fourth quarter, net revenues for the quarter were $4.2 million compared to $6.6 million. Average active PaperPie brand partners totaled 4,500 compared to 9,400. Loss before income taxes were $2.1 million, a $600,000 decline over the prior fiscal fourth quarter. Income tax expense for the quarter was $1 million due to a one-time valuation allowance of $1.5 million. Net loss for the quarter totaled $3.1 million, a decline of $1.8 million over the prior year fiscal fourth quarter. Loss per share totaled $0.37 compared to a loss per share of $0.16 on a fully diluted basis. Next to the fiscal year summary compared to the prior year.

Net revenues of $22.9 million compared to $34.2 million. Average active PaperPie brand partners totaled 5,800 compared to 12,300. Earnings before income taxes totaled $5.3 million, excluding the gain on the building sale of $12.2 million. The loss before income taxes were $6.9 million. Income tax expense was $3 million, with an effective tax rate of 56.5% due to a one-time valuation allowance of $1.5 million. Net earnings totaled $2.3 million. Earnings per share totaled $0.27 compared to a loss of $0.63 last year on a fully diluted basis. Now for an update on our working capital.

Inventory levels decreased from $44.7 million at the beginning of the fiscal year to $37.7 million at the end of the fiscal year, generating $7 million of cash flow from inventory reductions. At the end of the fiscal year, the company had approximately $1.3 million of cash on our balance sheet. I would also like to mention some unusual accounting adjustments made during the fourth quarter. First, due to our accounting policy surrounding classification of long-term inventory, coupled with our decline in sales, we made a $3.6 million reclass of inventory during the fourth quarter from current inventory to long-term inventory. The reclass had no P&L impact, as it only means that we have a longer-term supply of titles we continue to sell each month based on current sales volumes.

As sales increase, we expect more and more inventory to be reclassed from long-term inventory to current inventory. Due to our historical losses prior to the fiscal 2026, our operational expectations during our turnaround period, we evaluated the need for a valuation allowance offsetting our net deferred tax assets. Based on this evaluation, we recognized a one-time valuation adjustment of $1.5 million to offset our net deferred tax assets. This adjustment had no cash flow impact, had a direct impact on our fourth quarter tax expense, net earnings, and earnings per share. When the company returns to profitability, this valuation adjustment will be reversed.

The reversal will have no cash flow impact, but will have a direct impact to our tax expense, net earnings, and earnings per share. This concludes the financial update. I'll now turn the call over to Heather Cobb for a sales, marketing, and IT update. Heather?

Thanks, Dan. While our current results reflect the challenges of the past two years, we remain confident in both the direction of our strategy and the opportunity ahead of us. One of the clearest drivers of future growth for our business is growth on our PaperPie side through the brand partner community. As our active brand partner count increases, we count on that momentum to positively impact sales, customer engagement, and overall business performance. For that reason, much of our sales and marketing focus in fiscal 2027 is centered on attracting, onboarding, and retaining new brand partners while also continuing to engage existing leaders and teams.

We were encouraged by the response to our March join special, which produced meaningful engagement, adding almost 1,400 new brand partners, showing that there is still strong interest in our opportunity when paired with the right timing, messaging, and product excitement. We have additional strategically timed initiatives planned throughout the year that are designed to support both recruiting and sales activities. At the same time, we are being intentional about protecting the long-term value of our products and our brand. We believe there is an important balance between offering thoughtful promotions or sales that meet consumer expectations while avoiding excessive discounting that can weaken our overall brand perception over time. Our strategy moving forward is focused on creating excitement and urgency in purposeful ways while continuing to reinforce the quality, educational value, and uniqueness of our product offering.

We also believe we are well-positioned within a growing cultural shift toward more intentional and analog experiences. Parents and families are increasingly looking for opportunities to disconnect from constant screen time and reconnect through hands-on learning, reading, creativity, and meaningful interaction. That trend aligns directly with who we have always been as a company. Our mission of creating the story of tomorrow through people, purpose, and products continues to resonate, and we believe our educational books, games, and learning resources meet an important need in today's marketplace. As Craig mentioned earlier, the arrival of new titles and replenishment inventory has already generated renewed excitement across both of our sales channels. Combined with our continued investment in technology and enterprise-level initiatives, we believe we are building a stronger foundation for long-term growth.

Our IT and marketing teams are actively developing tools and platform enhancements designed to simplify how brand partners share our products while also creating a more seamless and enjoyable customer experience. Upcoming initiatives include a variety of platform enhancements focused on improving product discovery, streamlining and personalizing the customer journey, expanding functionality for both brand partners and customers, and supporting long-term engagement and retention. While we continue to adapt to changes in consumer behavior and the direct selling landscape as a whole, our overall strategy remains consistent. Increase our retail presence, strengthen the brand partner experience, provide exceptional products that support literacy and learning, and create sustainable growth through community, connection, and product sharing. One of the best ways that we do that, and Craig referenced it earlier, is through our national convention that happens each year.

Next month, we will have several hundred brand partners come into Tulsa to hear from speakers like Rory Vaden, 2 of our Kane Miller author and creators, and we'll spend an entire weekend focusing on solving the problem of disconnection with a way to connect with both their customers, new hosts, and next team member. We understand that turnarounds take time, and we are encouraged by the progress that we are making and confident in the path ahead. Our team remains deeply committed to the mission of this company, and we believe that that commitment, combined with strategic execution and renewed sales force growth, positions us to build momentum throughout fiscal 2027 and beyond. Now, I will turn the call back over to Craig.

Thank you, Heather and Dan. As Dan mentioned, we had some unusual adjustments during the quarter, expect these to improve our results in the future with the execution of our turnaround plan. During the last couple of years, we have been challenged to operate our business under restrictions from our bank. I am excited about the position we are in today and the plan for growth in fiscal 2027. We need to execute on our plan that increases sales and therefore cash, we're putting the most focus on increasing our brand partner counts and retaining existing brand partners. Over the last two years, our sales force has been anxious and waiting to see what will happen. A major factor for the reduced activity has been the lack of new products for them to get excited about for the last two years.

As I mentioned initially, we have already received a few of these new titles and are seeing the sales excitement from both of our sales channels. We have continued to work with our book vendors and are very excited about what has recently been presented to us for release in the new year. As always, and as you heard extensively from Heather, increasing our brand partner count is a big part of our overall strategy, and that means putting consistent effort toward attracting Gen Z. This new generation is challenging, not just for our company, but all companies in the direct selling industry to revise their recruiting and engagement methods. Many of our recent IT initiatives are focused on getting Gen Z to join as new brand partners by making it easier to do business with us.

They work and shop differently, and we are well-positioned to meet them where they are. These are revisions to our existing model, but certainly not an overhaul. We are evaluating programs and systems that haven't brought enough of a return and trying new tactics in new markets. We are embracing AI not as a strategy to eliminate or replace employees, but to become more effective so that as we grow, we do not have to hire as many new employees. We are already seeing returns in system development or coding and basic inquiries through support tickets. I also want to make sure everyone understands that we expect to generate cash flow from inventory reductions to fund operations. Having said this, we executed a new agreement for a $2 million line of credit with our new bank to ensure we have the cash needed for growth.

Although we are currently not using the line and have a higher cash balance than we had at year-end, this line ensures we can capitalize on new opportunities. Also, at the end of the fiscal year, as the next step in our turnaround plan, we executed a strategic restructuring of our office and warehouse staff, including executive pay reductions, a small reduction in force, along with other expense reductions. Lastly, I want to thank all of our shareholders for their patience, our employees, customers, and brand partners for their commitment to our mission, and our vendors for their willingness to stick with us. I am confident in our collective ability to emerge stronger and more resilient than ever before because I really believe we are tackling our growth plan from a position of strength.

While we are doing what we had to do to satisfy the bank, we are also thinking and planning for when we are out from under their control and continue to build. Now that we have provided a summary of some recent activity, I will now turn the call back over to Alan for question and answer. Alan?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Igor Novgorodtsev of Larus Capital. Your line is already open.

Hello, thank you for taking my question and pronouncing my last name correctly. I have a few questions. I unfortunately cannot see for some reason your balance sheet on your press release. Could you talk a little bit how much inventory was reduced in this quarter? As related to this, how much was the cash flow from the inventory reduction or from operations?

Hi, Igor. This is Dan O'Keefe. I'm sorry, I don't have that information for you right now. We will be filing the 10-K later today, and you can obviously glean that from the 10-K coming out.

Okay, fair enough. Would it be fair to say that the cash flow still stayed positive in Q4?

Well, Q4 is typically our softest quarter. That and the summer months, which is Q2, are our two softest quarters of the year. I would say that cash flow, you know, when you look at inventory reductions and our earnings before losses for the quarter would have been close to netting even.

Okay. fair enough. I'll just wait for your 10-K. my next question is, I appreciate that you take a revolving loan just in case, and that's actually nice to know. Hopefully that points towards the improvement of your business. Are there any covenants on your revolving loan that if your business improves enough doesn't allow you to buy stock back or pay a dividend to the shareholders, or there is no such covenants?

There are no covenants with the new $2 million line of credit.

Okay. Excellent. Again, it's a little bit too early. I understand you just removed your biggest problem as the overhang from the loan. Did you have already made any improvements to your inventory or your operations in this quarter or that you basically just didn't have a time or given that this is the weakest quarter traditionally, we will not see the results until the next quarter?

Okay. We touched on it briefly, but once we sold the building and knew we were gonna be able to resolve all of our debt with our previous bank, we executed a phase I of our purchasing plan, which is a very conservative half a million in purchases, which was executed in the 4th quarter. We're kinda just now seeing new titles come in. As we see the results of selling these new titles, we've already kind of started our phase II, which is another half a million. Does that answer your question?

Oh, yes, somewhat. Okay. Sorry, someone there was adding something, I believe.

Yeah.

Yep.

No, that was it.

No, can I just continue? Is it okay?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just run a quick numbers on your revenue per partner. I know that's an interesting trend. In the last 2 quarters, your revenue per partner actually increased. Like, if you do the comparable revenue per partner, it's actually increasing, and despite that the account of the non-partners is falling, the revenue is increasing. Is that because there is something operationally changed about the partners or simply the partners that remained are the most active ones?

That's a great question. One of the trends that we're seeing that tends to mean slightly higher sales per brand partner is the growth in our in-person events that are happening, whether that's book fairs inside schools or in-person booths and things like that, which even goes back to what I mentioned in my report of moving from digital to analog. Some people are having even more in-person, in-home parties, which we haven't done in several years. We believe that that trend, that you are referencing points back to the growth of these in-person events.

Okay. That's great to know. My last question, and hopefully it's not a long question, given that you have such a large inventory, do you consider any of your inventory unsellable, or you try to basically go for some inventory put through liquidation channels? You think that it's just slow-moving and it will just take time, but everything is potentially sellable still?

Yeah. We consider everything sellable still, and that's why I wanted to reiterate the move to long-term inventory. It's not that we're gonna have to write off anything at all. It's still all good sellable inventory. It's just gonna take a little longer. That being said, you know, we make mistakes in purchasing every now and again. It happens very, very rarely. We're kind of exploring the remainder market, but the returns are just not worth it. While we're looking into it's very unlikely that we'll participate in the remainder market. Yeah. We're looking at other creative marketing ways to move this inventory, and it's more of a kinda one-off here and there of the things that are, you know, more highly inventory.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll get back in the queue and maybe I'll ask questions if nobody else is asking.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Igor.

Your next question comes from Paul Carter of Capstone Asset Management. Your line is already open.

Great. Thanks very much. Hi, everybody.

Hello.

Craig, your comment about exploring the remainder market, that was the first time I've heard you say that. Can you provide some numbers around that? Like, what percentage of your long-term inventory are you thinking about creative marketing ways such as that?

Yeah, no. The creative marketing ways were as opposed to the remainder market. We looked into it. It's just not worth our time. We're just gonna find other ways. As an example, just some quotes that we got back, we get, like, 2% of the retail price. It's just not even remotely worth it, so we're not gonna participate in that.

Paul, I'll jump in too and say that in our meetings, one of the points of conversation that was important to us that may be important to you is, using our time and energy and resources on this as a potential short-term or one-off strategy didn't seem like our best use of resources. Since this wasn't going to be an ongoing strategy for us, once we discovered that it wasn't going to be worth it, we just aren't really pursuing it.

Okay. Fair enough. Maybe, more to the point is of my question is sort of how much of your $37.7 million of inventory you would characterize as inventory that you don't necessarily, you know, that you would want to maybe get rid of if you could, obviously not through the remainder market. Obviously, you looked at the remainder market because you felt there was a sufficient amount of inventory that maybe you weren't going to move within the next few years. Can you just give some numbers around what that is?

No. It's roughly in the neighborhood of $500,000. I mean, it's not even a big part of our inventory.

Okay. Okay. No, that's great. Then, Craig, you mentioned in the press release that throughout fiscal 2026, you continued to run promotions with discounted pricing, prioritizing cash flow, et cetera. I know that was obviously driven by the bank. Was that the case in Q4? Or maybe sorry, I missed a little bit of the earlier comment, so maybe you already touched on this. What was your gross margin change year-over-year in the fourth quarter compared to last year?

Yeah, we haven't disclosed gross margin yet, Paul. I don't have that information right in front of me. I'm thinking back to the fourth quarter, Heather. Did we run some promotional sales in December, January, and February?

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's always some sort of, you know, saving shelf type promotions. It's not one of the quarters that we typically do large sales. I will say that oftentimes our Black Friday sale trickles over into the fourth quarter just because of when the date falls on the calendar. That, that can have some impact there.

But would you say that the-

Yeah.

whatever promotional activity you have been experiencing obviously is not, you're not feeling the pressure of the bank anymore, that level of promotional activity is kind of back to quote normal, would you say?

Yeah. That's kind of what I was alluding to when I talked about, you know, trying to meet consumer expectations, which even on the other side of it, as a consumer, I like to shop a good sale. You know, putting out there the fact that our books are so reasonably priced, with an average price point hovering right around, if not below $10, not discounting ourselves in the value that we can offer even at regular price. We're trying to temper that by not throwing as many large scale promotional sales out at them, but more falling in line with the traditional timing of a Black Friday sale or, you know, a summer blowout or something like that. That's kind of expected, but not negatively impacting our business side of things.

Okay. Then just lastly, regarding your brand partner count, admittedly 4,500 is lower than I would have thought at the beginning of the year if you'd asked me a couple of years ago. That's obviously a pretty low number when looking at your history. It sounded like the March joint special that you mentioned, you were receiving positively. Is it kind of fair to expect that the current quarter, average active brand partner count might be higher than 4,500?

The fourth quarter that we just reported on or the current quarter that we're working in?

the quarter we're in right now, the March, April quarter.

Yeah. I mean, as always, and you're familiar with how this works, we constantly have ins and outs of people coming. We have been energized and hopeful about what we saw with what happened in March, and are focusing even more than normal on, you know, not only bringing those people in, but also retaining them. I do think that we will see more of a balance shift to more coming and staying than we have leaving.

Okay, great. That's it for me. Thanks very much, everybody.

Thanks, Paul.

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one. There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Craig White for closing comments. Please go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, it looks like maybe Igor jumped in late. Do we want to? I'm happy to take his question.

Sure, no problem. I'll go ahead and select Igor Novgorodtsev of Larus Capital for the next question. Your line is already open.

Oh, thank you so much. Sorry, I jumped in a little bit late. Yeah, just have a couple of follow-up questions. Now that you're gonna start getting finally new titles, what kind of gross margin you're thinking about if you just set the old titles aside? Just purely for the new titles, what would you consider like for your new business as acceptable gross margin?

Well, you know, hopefully getting back to more business as usual, if we're not discounting. When we've talked about discounting to satisfy the bank, we're talking about 40%, 50%, 60% discounting, and that's absolutely not normal. If we do, you know, kind of some normal discounting to meet customers' expectations, it's gonna be in the 10%-15% range. Our gross margins are gonna be getting closer back to business as usual.

What was your traditional margin like over the years?

Igor, we have kind of a pretty simple model. As Heather said, our average book is $10. The average cost, landed cost of that book is $2.50. When we sell it through the retail division, like Barnes & Noble or Ingram or one of our retail customers, we sell that $10 book to them for $5, and they sell it for 10 to their customers, and they make $5, and we get $5 on that $2.50 book. When we sell it through PaperPie, we typically sell it for the retail price of $10, but we pay out commissions to the salespeople and overrides to the leadership team of about $5.

In both sales channels, we get $5 for a $10 book that costs $2.50, and we have $2.50 to run our business on.

Great. This is very, very helpful. My other question is.

Did we lose you, Igor?

Oh, it-

I think he dropped off.

I think we lost him.

Well, all right. Somebody let Igor know he can email me.

Sure. There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Craig White for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Yeah. I have nothing else to add. I appreciate everyone's questions and interest in the call, thank you for joining us. Have a good day. We'll talk to you in July. Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Educational Development Corporation's financial and operating results for its fiscal 2026 third quarter and year-to-date results. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. On the call today are Craig White, President and Chief Executive Officer; Heather Cobb, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer; and Dan O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the fiscal 2026 third quarter and year-to-date results. The release will be available later today on the company's website at www.edcpub.com. Before turning to the prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors. We refer you to Educational Development Corporation's recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial condition. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Craig?

Thank you, Alan, and welcome, everyone, to the call. We appreciate your continued interest. I will start today's call with some general comments regarding the quarter, then I will pass the call over to Dan to run through the financials, after which Heather will provide an update on our sales and marketing, and then I will provide an update on our plans for fiscal 2027. During the third quarter, we completed the sale of our Hilti Complex, which was a big achievement for the company and our shareholders. Selling the complex saves -- paves the way for us to move forward into fiscal year 2027 with no bank restrictions, which allows us to execute our strategy to return to growth and profitability. Our plan is not an overnight change with expected immediate results, but a carefully developed strategy for long-term growth. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials.

Thank you, Craig. Third quarter financial summary compared to the prior year third quarter, net revenues were $7 million compared to $11.1 million. Average active brand partners for the quarter totaled 5,100 compared to 12,400. Earnings before income taxes were $10.6 million compared to a loss of $1.1 million in the third quarter last year. Excluding the building gain from the sale of $12.2 million, our loss before income taxes would have been $1.6 million. Net earnings totaled $7.8 million for the quarter compared to an $800,000 loss in the third quarter last year. Earnings per share totaled $0.91 compared to a loss of $0.10 on a fully diluted basis. Year-to-date summaries compared to the prior year, net revenues of $18.7 million compared to $27.6 million. Average active brand partners totaled 6,200 compared to 13,300. Our earnings before income taxes totaled $7.4 million compared to a loss of $5.3 million last year. Excluding the building sale gain of $12.2 million, our loss before income taxes were $4.8 million. Net earnings totaled $5.4 million compared to $3.9 million loss last year. Earnings per share totaled $0.63 compared to a loss last year of $0.47 on a fully diluted basis. Now for an update on our working capital. Inventory levels decreased from $44.7 million at the beginning of fiscal year 2026 to $39.1 million at the end of November, generating $5.6 million of cash flows from inventory reductions. This cash flow has been used to pay down vendors, reduce our bank debts and fund our operational losses. In October, following the building sale, we paid off our line of credit, our term loans with our bank, Bank of Oklahoma. At the end of the quarter, we had $3.4 million of cash, $800,000 of receivables, $39.1 million of inventory and $2.0 million of accounts payable and $0 owed to our bank. That concludes the financial update. Now I'll turn the call over to Heather Cobb for a sales and marketing update. Heather?

Thank you, Dan. One of the most significant milestones this quarter was the launch of Gathered Goods, our reimagined fundraising program. This program represents a meaningful shift in both strategy and execution. Unlike our previous Cards for a Cause fundraiser, Gathered Goods features custom products designed and created in-house, allowing us to better control quality, storytelling and brand alignment. From a financial perspective, this also delivers stronger margins, which is increasingly important in today's cost-sensitive environment. Equally important to this project was the online opportunity embedded within the program. Gathered Goods allows individuals and organizations to fundraise digitally, expanding reach beyond a single event or community and making participation easier for the supporters. While still early, this program positions us well for scalable, modern fundraising and opens the door for broader participation in future quarters. This quarter also included our Black Friday, which we call Book Friday promotion, a large site-wide sale that continues to be a cornerstone of our Q3 marketing strategy. Book Friday drove strong engagement across customers and brand partners, reinforcing the value of our catalog and our ability to generate excitement through well-timed broad-based promotions. While discount-driven events are not our priority or preferred strategy, this sale remains an important visibility and volume driver in the midst of the holiday season. Turning to the results themselves. While the decline in brand partner count is significant and clearly reflected in the top line, it's important to look at what the data tells us beneath the surface. First, the drop in revenue is not proportional to the decline in brand partner count. This tells us that the brand partners who remain active are, in fact, more productive and more engaged than in recent years. We are seeing fewer casual or inactive participants and a higher concentration of truly active sellers. Second, when we look specifically at our leader levels, the decline is not occurring at anywhere near the same rate as the overall field. Historically, leaders are our most loyal group. They are the ones who persevere through challenging cycles, adapt their approach and continue building even when conditions are not ideal. Just as important, leaders are also the primary drivers of new brand partner recruitment. Their relative stability gives us confidence that while the field may be smaller today, the foundation for future growth remains intact. In summary, this quarter reflects a business in transition, smaller in size, but more focused and more resilient. We are investing in programs like Gathered Goods that improve margin quality and scalability, maintaining strong seasonal promotional moments and seeing encouraging signs that our sales force is highly engaged and leader-driven. As we look to the future, the combination of a committed leader base, more productive brand partners and strategic program innovation gives us reason to be optimistic about the path ahead. Craig, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thanks, Heather and Dan. As Dan mentioned, with the closing of the building sale, we paid off all of our bank debts, which will have a positive impact on our cash flows of approximately $1 million per year. While the last couple of years have been challenging to operate our business under the restrictions from our bank, I'm excited about the position we are in today and the plan for growth in fiscal 2027 and beyond. Since fiscal 2024, we have had to prioritize cash. While we need to execute on a plan that increases sales and therefore, cash, we are putting more focus on increasing our brand partner counts. Our actions necessitated by the bank's restrictions have given red flags to our sales force, and they have been anxious and waiting to see what would happen. A major factor for the reduced activity has been the lack of new products for them to get excited about and therefore, share with their customer base. As we got closer to closing on the sale, we put together a reorder and new title purchase plan in conservative phases. We were ready to act on Phase 1 within a few days of closing and placed reprint orders on some key out-of-stock items as well as several new titles that we expect will energize our customers and sales force, giving our brand partners another item to help build momentum. We are excited about the arrival of those titles beginning in late spring and early summer. Another key component to attracting new brand partners is a refreshed marketing strategy. We know we need to adapt to what the next generation entering the workforce, Gen Z, is seeking in a business opportunity. These would be tweaks to our existing model, including language used for marketing, onboarding once they have activated their account, et cetera, but would certainly not require an overhaul. We are still working on putting the pieces in place for this to be implemented and can move quickly once that is finalized. We have continued to focus on being prepared to execute a growth plan once restrictions were lifted. You heard from Heather about one of the major enterprise initiatives being our online fundraising program, Gathered Goods. We are very excited about that program's successful launch and have a few other exciting upgrades and initiatives being implemented very soon. Also, I have recently pulled together an AI task force. Some of our employees had already begun exploring, so I formalized an opportunity for collaboration, allowing a safe space to see how we can best utilize it as part of our overall strategy. So far, we have implemented in ways that automate rote tasks, which can save money. We are excited about this starting point and continue to work together on transformational ideas that will propel us forward and allow us to compete in both retail and direct-to-consumer spaces. Lastly, I want to thank all of our shareholders for their patience, our employees for their hard work and commitment to our mission and our retail customers and brand partners for their loyalty during this challenging period. Having seen the resilience of all involved, I am confident in our collective ability to emerge stronger than ever before. I truly believe we are tackling our growth plan from a position of strength with our team of employees as well as the strategies being built and implemented with our sales and marketing and IT initiatives. Now that we have provided a summary of some recent activity, I will turn the call back over to the operator for questions and answers.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Paul Carter of Capstone Asset Management.

Well, good afternoon, everybody, and Happy New Year. So I know you've described in the past how your sales force has kind of been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the company to, I guess, to get out of hock with your bank. And I know it's only been 2.5 months or so since you sold your building, but do you have any evidence yet that this transaction has reinvigorated your sales force for a more productive 2026?

Well, I think one of the main factors in that reinvigoration, as you mentioned, was bringing in new titles and reorders of out-of-stock bestsellers. But also what we see is the uptick or the increased activity in leader promotions. That's been very exciting. I started in the last month or two calling all brand partners that promoted to upper level leadership. And there's a lot of excitement out there. So that's my couple of points. Heather, would you like to expand?

No. I mean I would echo what he said, Paul. Specifically, I think it's hard to say specifically that just the sale of the building was going to be enough for them to just immediately roll back into action. We announced just immediately after we made the purchases from that Phase 1 of new titles and reprints that they would be coming as we shared with you, late spring, early summer. We concluded our incentive trip promotion in December with just on target the anticipated number of earners that we had predicted. We launched a new incentive in January. And so while it's hard to say in the midst of the holidays, especially with Christmas and New Year, that we see specific things that are happening, we can definitely say that the energy feels slightly different in a much more positive way than it has in a while.

Well, that's good to hear. And then just changing gears. So obviously, it's nice to hear about the $0 debt balance. But do you have a new credit line in place? I know you've been talking about putting something small in place once this transaction was completed.

Yes. We're talking to a few banks and also talking to some other options. We're right now in a cash position where we're, I think that we're looking for just a relationship for banking to go forward with. And so we're talking to some local banks that have some interest and hope to have something in place here in the next few months.

Okay. Great. Just talking about your balance sheet. So I know the value of your inventory is like I think it's more than 3x the market cap of your company. So obviously, that's pretty important to investors. And I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about that. I guess, first of all, is your inventory like fully insured against all risks like water damage or pests or anything? Because I know some of them have been sort of sitting in boxes for a while up on the shelf. But -- and is your inventory like insured at replacement cost or something else?

It is insured at replacement cost. So what we have on the books is what it's insured for. So if we've got $39.1 million on the books at the end of November, that's what it's insured for, full replacement cost. Now we don't want to talk about any worst-case scenarios with disaster...

Yes. No, fair enough. Yes, I was just sort of wondering about that because I know -- and actually sort of related to that, we're not really damaged, but I'm just thinking about kind of the nature of your inventory. So I know most of your titles are things like zoo animals or whatever that don't go out of date. But like do you have a sense for what percentage of your inventory could be out of date and therefore, worthless in like 3 or 5 years if there's not a lot of sell-through in certain titles?

So I would -- the only thing I would say in response to that is our track record has been we've carried inventory sometimes for in excess of 10 years on certain titles before we sell through them. And we've never historically written down inventory, and we've never basically offloaded the title or gone into the remainder market to sell the title. So that's kind of reflected in our reserve. Our reserve is very small on our short-term inventory and also on our long-term inventory because our history says we typically don't participate in the remainder market and don't have topics, as you mentioned earlier, that go stale or out of favor.

Yes. Paul, unless you know something we don't, and they're going to change the alphabet on us, I think we're fairly safe.

Okay. No, that's good to hear. And I figured that was the case, but I just know that's one of the hesitations, I guess, that some investors have is that if you're sitting on so much inventory relative to current sales that maybe that inventory isn't worth a hundred cents on the dollar. But obviously, that's -- you're a little bit of a different company than a grocery store or something like that. Okay. And then just -- I know this will come out in your 10-Q, but how much of your $39.1 million of inventory is Usborne-related?

About 50%.

Okay. And then can you provide an update on the status of your relationship with Usborne Publishing? I don't know that you've talked about them in a little while.

Yes. There's really been no change. Dan actually has monthly or at a minimum quarterly calls with their -- the equivalent of their, Chief Financial Officer. They're anxious for us to get back and start ordering titles again. So because of the new distribution agreement, we're not required to purchase every title they offer, which is good for us. But yes, there's been no negative change in the relationship.

Okay. Okay. That's great. And then just the last one here, totally random question. But just regarding that 17-acre attractive excess land beside the Hilti Complex there. What is your plan for that? Are you just going to hold on to it for the time being? Or do you have sort of longer-term plans for it?

Well, it's kind of been an ace in the hole. I kind of kept that in my back pocket for now. It's -- there's been some flurry of activity on it recently, actually, which is interesting. Some people have kind of come across it and inquired about it. We've been given a proposal to develop it, which is intriguing. But in that particular proposal, the return for us just wasn't what I thought it could be or should be. So for now, we're just kind of holding on to it. It could be something that we develop for ourselves. It could be something that we sell if need be or develop it and retain ownership of it. So there's lots of options. It hasn't been necessary to do anything with it at all, and it continues to appreciate. So I'm happy to continue to do that.

[Operator Instructions]

I guess we did better than ever. Answering everyone's questions before they asked it.

There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Craig White for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on our call today. We appreciate your continued support and expect to provide an additional update on the -- well, not the Hilti sale progress, but our banking relationship and just moving forward our growth plan. So again, thank you for joining us, and we'll talk again in May.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.