Thank you for standing by. My name is Dee and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Lou Nabhan, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you Dee and good morning everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. Yesterday after the stock market closed, we filed with the SEC our form 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31, 2024. And we issued our first quarter 2024 earnings release. Copies of those documents are available on our corporate website. Our speakers today are Greg Trepp, Chief Executive Officer, Scott Tidey, President and Sally Cunningham, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Our presentation today includes forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in either the prepared remarks or during the Q&A. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties is available in our 10-Q. Our earnings release and our Annual Report on form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023. The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly conference call, if at all. And now I will turn the call over to Greg.

Thank you Lou Anne. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Our agenda today is that I will make some opening comments, Scott will report on our strategic initiatives, Sally will discuss our first quarter financial results. After that we will take your questions. We were pleased with our first quarter results, which were in line with our expectations. You're off to a solid start in 2024 after we delivered a strong performance in the second half of 2023 and built momentum that carried into this year. We are affirming our outlook for the full year 2024 and we believe there could be upside if consumer spending and retail sales continue to be as strong as they have been. While Sally will discuss our first quarter financial results in detail, I would like to make a few high level comments. As we have reported on February 2 this year, our Hamilton Beach Health subsidiary acquired a company called HealthBeacon which is a medical technology company and a strategic partner of ours since 2021. Our first quarter includes 2 months of HealthBeacon results. We are very excited about this acquisition. Let me provide some brief contexts regarding our enthusiasm. 3 years ago, we determined that the large and fast growing home health and wellness market was an attractive opportunity for our company. We took particular note of our emerging growth categories for home, health care management, forming a partnership with HealthBeacon was our first venture into that space. HealthBeacon needed a partner to help it gain visibility and distribution in the U.S. market for its pioneering product. We work together to launch a healthcare solution that enables patients to effectively manage at home chronic conditions that require the use of injectable medications. In the U.S. the system is sold principally…

Thank you, Greg, I appreciate your comments. Good morning, everyone. It is a great honor to be appointed President of our company. I am delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with our outstanding global team to build on the successes we have achieved. The promotions in our sales and marketing groups that Greg mentioned were important steps. It was very gratifying to see senior leaders with whom I have worked with for years, assume greater responsibility. Erin Israel, who has been with the company since 2000 and who has been serving as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Marketing, now also, has oversight of our Global Commercial business. Wayne Albrecht, who joined the company in 2003 and has been serving as Vice President, North [Technical Difficulty] is now Senior Vice President, Global Consumer Sales. Erin and Wayne are both very strong leaders. I have the utmost confidence in their ability to quickly settle into their new roles and do a fantastic job for us. I, too, was pleased with our first quarter performance in getting 2024 off to a good start. Our results reflected progress of our 6 strategic initiatives. Our initiatives are designed to enable us to increase revenue, margins and cash flow over time and build value for all of our stakeholders. Let me briefly discuss each of our strategic initiatives, what they are, the plans for growth and how each initiative is performing. I will first continue the discussion Greg began with respect to strategic initiatives to accelerate the growth of our new Hamilton Beach Health business. We are very excited to have become a participant in the home health care management business. Rapid growth is being driven by technology, innovation and a growing shortage of medical staff that formally treated certain conditions in office settings.…

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. I will start with our first quarter 2024 results compared to the first quarter of 2023. As you have heard this morning, we were pleased with our results, and they are in line with our expectations. The total revenue was $128.3 million, flat to last year's first quarter. Revenue overall benefited from an 8% increase in unit volume and a favorable product mix. These benefits were offset by decreased selling prices versus a year ago. In our consumer markets, revenue increased in our Mexican and Latin American markets, where our teams have added incremental placements and new business. Revenue decreased in our U.S. and Canadian markets. For the U.S. market, volume increased 5.7%, and we expect improvement in our U.S. market this year as the year unfolds and as we benefit from incremental placements. The market in Canada is experiencing some overall weakness that may continue for a while. Our Global Commercial market revenue increased slightly in the first quarter, and we look for this business to enjoy a strong year. Also included in the first quarter was new revenue from our acquisition of HealthBeacon, which was immaterial. Our gross profit margin expanded by 710 basis points, reflecting lower product costs and a favorable mix, partially offset by the impact of a $700,000 non-cash lease impairment related to the consolidation of warehouses. Gross profit totaled $30.1 million or 23.4% of total revenue compared to $20.9 million or 16.3% in the prior year. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased to $30.9 million compared to $25.9 million in the first quarter of 2023. Approximately one half of the increase was driven by the increase in of HealthBeacon's SG&A expenses, along with associated M&A expenses. The other half of the increase was primarily due to higher employee-related…

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Gregory Trepp for closing remarks.

Thank you. Today, we welcome Scott's participation on our call as our new company President. We are excited about the many opportunities we believe we have to increase revenue, expand margins and deliver strong cash flow over the long term. We have 2024 off to a good start. We will continue to build on that momentum as we carry into this year and see upside potential to our current outlook. That concludes our report for today. Thank you again for joining our call.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.