Good day, and welcome to the American Greetings Corporation First Quarter Fiscal 2014 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Gregory Steinberg. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Devona. Joining me today on the call is Steve Smith, our CFO; Chris Haffke, our General Counsel; Bob Tyler, our Chief Accounting Officer; and Gui de Mello, our Assistant Treasurer. We filed our Form 10-Q for our fiscal 2014 first quarter this morning. If you do not have yet our 10-Q filing you can find a copy within the investor section of our American Greetings website at investors.americangreetings.com. As you may expect, some of our comments today may include statements about projections for the future. Those projections involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of any forecasts or estimates, and we do not plan to update any forward-looking statements. If you would like more information on the risks involved in our forward-looking statements, please see our SEC filings, previous earnings releases, as well as our 10-Qs, 10-Ks and the reports, and the proxy statement relating to the Weiss family's proposed acquisition of the company are all available on the Investors section of the American Greetings website. In light of the proposed Going Private transaction that was announced at the end of December 2012, today's conference call will have a similar format to the last 3 quarters conference calls. Our CFO, Steve Smith, will offer some preferred remarks which will be followed by a question-and-answer session. We will be limiting our prepared remarks to historical results, we are not addressing fiscal 2014 guidance, and will not be discussing the proposed Going Private transaction. We'll not be entertaining any questions or commentary regarding future performance or the Going Private transaction during the question-and-answer session. For information on the proposed transaction, please see our SEC filings particularly the proxy statement on file with the SEC. We'll now proceed with comments from Steve, followed by the question-and-answer session. Steve?

Thanks, Greg. I have 3 components to my prepared remarks today. I will start with the comments on the larger items that impacted our consolidated results this quarter, and move to review of our reported segments. And finally, a quick walk through to the few key components of our financials. I will be focusing on the main items of variance between our first quarter of this year and last year's first quarter and would encourage listeners to refer to the 10-Q for further details. We will then open the line for questions. Our consolidated revenue of $497 million increased approximately $104 million from last year's first quarter revenue of $393 million. Last year was negatively affected by a noncash impairment of deferred cost of about $4 million related to our supply agreement with the Birthdays subsidiary of Clinton Cards, which was reflected in total revenue. Last year was also negatively impacted by about $1 million as a result of scan-based trading conversions. This year was negatively affected by scan-based trading conversions of about $3 million. In addition, this year was negatively affected by about $3 million of foreign exchange, compared to the prior year's first quarter. While the impact of scan-based trading and foreign exchange occur regularly, we are calling out these items to assist listeners with their year-over-year comparison. So holding aside the Clinton's supply agreement impairment, the SBT conversions and FX, revenue was up about $105 million or 26% quarter-on-quarter. Most of the year-over-year revenue increase related to unusual or noncomparable items. About 60% of the $105 million increase was driven by the acquisition of Clinton, which happened during our second fiscal quarter of last year. As a result, in the first fiscal quarter this year, we recognized a net increase in revenue of about $64 million, comprised…

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Owen Douglas with Robert W. Baird.

Just have a quick question regarding the Clinton Cards business. Just wondering, are you able to share with us any sort of plans with regards to how you think this business will evolve in terms of the revenue opportunity, the timing for it to become a meaningful contributor to your bottom line, as well as just generally, any other thoughts to how this integration is proceeding?

Sure, Owen. So first of all, as we commented last quarter, this is a business that's in a turnaround mode. We had a healthy fourth quarter, and during the call, we cautioned people that 1 quarter does not a trend line make. As we've seen this quarter, the business did not perform on an operating basis at a profitable level, and so we were disappointed by that. The business is in turnaround and as it's stabilizing, we hope that the business will be able to generate earnings profit through the next few years. And the timing of that is yet to be determined as the turnaround continues. Recently, we have been able to narrow the number of doors we have opened from over 700 to now just under 400, 395, 396. And with that, some new systems they have in place and remarketing, we see a path toward a better future for that business, but it will take us some time.

Okay. Now -- again, I remember in the past you mentioned that they didn't have very good systems to be able to measure progress, but are you able to give a sense as to, this quarter at least, which either the rough proportion of stores that were profitable on a four-walls basis versus others?

Well, the challenge there is they did not have the systems in place they do now. So comps versus prior are very difficult. And we will, by later this year, be able to lap the systems that were installed last fall, early last winter. So we'll have a better visibility to that in about 6 months.

And what proportion of stores would you say today, or in most recent period, were profitable?

We haven't comment on that, so I'm not so sure we would like to do that on the open [mic] [ph].

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Marjorie Kellner with Harvest Management.

I was wondering if I could ask if -- actually, the quarter looked very nice, we were actually happy to see that, and we had tried to compare it to the projections that has been in the old proxy and it looked materially better to us than the old proxy. And of course, the updated proxy on Friday had new projections, and I wondered if I could ask you a question about the -- I was having trouble with the cash flow statement. I can see where the EBITDA comes through, but I was wondering where that cash flow is going because it seems that the cash flow wasn't increasing, so -- and it wasn't CapEx. So I'm just wondering why we weren't seeing it in the cash flow statement?

You're referring, Marjorie, to the proxy or to the actual reported financials of the Q?

To the proxy.

So we aren't, at this time, commenting on the proxy or any of the other statements that have been recently filed with regard to the transaction. So I'm sorry, we'll not be able to help you with that particular question.

Okay. Then in terms of the Q, when we go through the sales -- could you just repeat what you said in the beginning, $120 million was you thought the extra selling days of the increasing sales?

For the corporation at large? Yes, I would be glad to repeat that. So we had, in the first quarter, we reported a total revenue that was $104.7 million greater than the prior period. If you remove the effect of FX, SBT period-on-period and the Clintons contract impairment in the prior period, you end up with the same figure about $104 million, $105 million on a [quote] [ph] adjusted basis. Against that $105 million, the components are: $64 million, or about 60% of the increase, due to the Clintons acquisition; about $11 million due to the increased revenue and the fixtures business, which is in our non-reportable segment; about $17 million, 16%, due to day count, which leaves you in the neighborhood of about $15 million of increased revenue excluding the FX, the SBT and Clintons and day count. And then we gave you the reasons which were due to cards in North America and the U.K., giftwrap in North America and licensing globally.

Okay. And so in the next -- I mean, obviously, I know you can't really give projections, but in the second quarter, those 5 days come off? Those extra 5 selling days?

So the day count between the quarters is much more comparable within 1 day. Yes, the day count catch up occurs in the fourth quarter, but the second quarter of this year is roughly comparable to the second quarter of last year.

Okay. And will you be having meetings to go over the proxy and shareholder meetings before the vote? Will you have a roadshow or something?

That is not currently anticipated.

So how should we address questions about the [indiscernible]?

One second, please. So if you have questions about the proxy process, that would be to Georgeson, our proxy advisor. If it's questions about the numbers within the proxy, that would go to the advisors to the Special Committee, PJ Solomon and Sullivan & Cromwell.

So could you give us a contact person there?

It would be in the proxy itself. I don't have that with me in the conference room we're sitting in.

[Operator Instructions] It appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Steinberg, I'd like to turn the conference back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, Devona. We do thank everyone for joining us here this morning. And that does conclude today's conference call.

And that does conclude today's conference. We appreciate your participation.