Good morning and welcome to the Emerald Holding, Incorporated Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call may contain certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include remarks about future expectations, beliefs, estimates, plans and prospects. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. Such risks and other factors are set forth in the company’s most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and subsequent filings. The company does not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, in today’s call, management will discuss non-GAAP measures, which it believes can be useful in evaluating the company’s performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the company’s earnings release. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and a replay of this call will be available on the Investors section of the company’s website through 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on November 8, 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Herve Sedky, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. This is a very busy time here at Emerald and I’m excited to be here today to provide an update on our recently staged shows through the third quarter as well as our expectations for the continued recovery of our business as we look to the year ahead. David Doft, our CFO, will review our third quarter results in detail and we will then open the call for your questions. I would like to start by thanking our employees for their hard work and tireless efforts as we executed one of the busiest calendars in Emerald's history through the third quarter. Our teams staged 33 live events, serving more than 92,000 attendees and 5,200 exhibiting companies. Key brands that staged include, ASD, Outdoor Retailer, NY NOW, SURF Expo, COUTURE and Hospitality Design. Our best performing events during the quarter had attendance levels approaching pre COVID levels, while other events serving more adversely impacted industries remain challenged in the current environments. Overall, the execution was superb. Our exhibitor satisfaction was very high with strong attendee turnouts. The ratio of attendees to exhibitors increased by more than 22% as compared to the 2019 levels on average across all of our events during the quarter. This has led to a significant increase in average exhibitor Net Promoter Scores compared to the same events when they staged in 2019 and as accelerated our forward sales bookings looking to the year ahead. While our third quarter was successful and that we were finally able to stage a meaningful number of events again, we were of course not operating at our full potential. Nonetheless, many of the headwinds that impacted attendance for our third quarter shows such as the international travel bans and the rising infection rates caused by…

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Hi, we're back. Sorry about that. Operator, can you let me know where we cut off?

I think it was, why don't you just start off David at the beginning for your portion.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you.

For the third quarter, we reported revenues of $76.5 million, which compares to $8.5 million in the year-ago quarter. After reporting six consecutive quarters of significant revenue declined due to the pandemic, I am thrilled to be able to talk about revenue increases again. Organic revenues for the third quarter were $12.1 million, a decrease of $1.6 million as compared to organic revenues of $13.7 million in the third quarter of 2020. The decrease was due primarily to lower revenues generated by several events that staged in the first quarter of 2020, but were postponed out of the first quarter to the third quarter in 2021 as a result of COVID-19. Note, our definition of organic revenue only includes events that stage both this year and in 2020, and thus excludes events that did not stage last year due to pandemic related cancellations. When looking at all events as compared to their previously staged addition, irrespective of year, average event revenue declined approximately 60%. Despite this decline, we were able to run our events profitably and generate free cash flow in the quarter, even excluding insurance recoveries. Our adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $9.4 million as compared to negative $3.2 million in the same period last year. The increase in adjusted EBITDA of $12.6 million was mainly due to profits generated by the live events that stage during the quarter, partially offset by a lower amount of confirmed or received event cancellation insurance claim proceeds compared to the prior year. We recorded $1.1 million of other income during the third quarter of 2021. As a result of event cancellation insurance claims proceeds related to events cancelled in the second half of 2020, which compares to $16.1 million of other income recorded during the year-ago third quarter as a…

Thank you, David. To conclude, we successfully staged 32 live events in the third quarter while our customer satisfaction with our shows increased markedly versus 2019. This clearly demonstrates not only the importance of our industry leading shows to our customers, but also the path of recovery that we're tracking. We are working diligently to bring our shows back to their pre-pandemic levels, while also aggressively working to drive change across our organization designed to deliver improved growth and profitability. I'm very encouraged with where we stand today and filled with optimism for the future. Thanks again for your time today. And Rob, please open the meeting up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Annick Maas with Exane. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. So my first question is just I think you seem to suggest that exhibitor pacing for Q4 is better than Q3. Can you tell us what that is driven by? Is that you think driven by the fact that now you have international attendance as well? The second one is just going back on Q3 and the events that actually were cancelled throughout Q3, what was the commonality around these events? Were they in the same month, were they in the same industry, were the events that are typically having more international attendance? And then my last question is just with regard to forward bookings. Can you tell us whether you have changed the share of the first installment you are charging these days versus pre-pandemic? Thank you.

Thanks, Annick. I'll take the -- I think I will priority take all of them. Herve, chime in if I miss something. Q4 pacings, we view the improvement really coming from a couple of areas. One is the fact that many events have staged successfully in 3Q is giving exhibitors and attendees more confidence that will -- it will be a successful event. Second is the increased vaccination rates throughout the United States. The declining infection rates has also been a catalyst. And kind of going to your second question, I'll blend the two. And some of the cancellations in Q3 really came at the height of the concerns around the Delta variant, which led us to conclude that the events would not be successful. And so, we -- because of the impact of the pandemic in that way, determined that the events needed to be cancelled. The -- ultimately the international impact, absolutely events that had larger weighting of international exhibitors were much more impacted in the third quarter, and amongst those cancelled events are some of those as well. But it's too early, really didn't see the impact of bookings of international exhibitors on Q4 because the changes just happened. And only in the last few days have they've been clarified with an exact date. And so we're hopeful from here we could see further improvement.

The final question was …

In terms of …

Pricing.

In terms of our bookings, we have not changed our pricing or deposit strategy related to future events. And so it's very important to us that we protect and maintain the integrity of our contracts, which allow us to effectively plan these events to have the best experience for our customers. And so we have stuck with our historical practices around that.

Super. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, we reached the end of the question-and-answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

Great. Well, thank you, Annick, for your question and thank you all for your time today and attention today. Much appreciated. Goodbye.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.