Good morning, my name is Anastasia and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Harte Hanks Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. And Robert Munden, General Counsel, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, operator. Our call will include forward-looking statements, such as statements about our strategies, adjustments to our cost structure, financial outlook and capital resources, competitive factors, business and industry expectations, anticipated effects of acquisitions, litigation and regulatory changes, economic forecasts for the markets we serve and other statements that are not historical facts. Actual results may materially differ from those projected or implied in these statements because of various risks and uncertainties, including those described in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC and in the cautionary statement in today's earnings release. Our call may also reference non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to today's earnings release for the required reconciliations and other related disclosures. Our earnings release is available on the Investors tab of our web site at hartehanks.com. I'll now turn the call back over to the operator.

Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Doug Shepard, CEO of Harte-Hanks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Robert, and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for our earnings conference call. By now you've had a chance to review our second quarter results and the full earnings release we issued earlier today. Before I get into the results, I'd like to take a moment to discuss the leadership change we announced earlier this month and elaborate on our strategy and game plan going forward. I'll then walk through the second quarter in more detail and will discuss our expectations for the remainder of the year. I'll end by opening the call up for questions. As you know on July 9, we announced that Robert Philpott left the company as President and CEO. We are very appreciative of Robert's efforts in the strategic direction he helped to define and implement. Little over one year ago, we outlined our plan to be a leader in providing smarter customer interactions. Robert let us do that process in the management team and our Board of Directors continue to support that long-term vision. The Board just formed an operating committee shared by Karen Puckett, former Chief Operating Officer of CenturyLink and a six-year member of our Board. This operating committee is actively supporting management and me in running the business during this transition period. The Board has also formed a search committee to identify a successor CEO. We will communicate further details or updates on the search when it's timely to do so. We remain acutely focused on achieving our vision of returning to profitable revenue growth and becoming a leader in smarter customer interactions. Our business strategy of being a trusted business partner, delivering impactful customer interactions, differentiated through our expertise and execution remains unchanged. We will continue to leverage our existing strengths, coupled with an acquisition strategy…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Dan Salmon with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hi, Doug. Good morning. Two questions. First, just in light of the change in leadership, should we still consider the M&A targets that were laid out at the Investor Day a little over a year ago to be intact? And then second, I just want to clarify a comment you made about client work that's a little bit more channel specific. One of the themes at that Investor Day and since then under Robert had been focusing more on growing more recurring revenue streams. I'd interpreted that more as sort of ongoing relationships and I just want to make sure I understood properly, did you suggest that, of course, I'm sure you want to continue to grow that type of business, but that you may also be open to more single-channel type of work. I don't know if project-oriented work is the right way to describe that. But I just wanted to understand that comment a little better.

Okay. I’ll be happy to, Dan, address your last question first and then we'll get to the M&A stuff. We are more than happy and yes we are still focused on providing solutions to our customer problems. If that is a bundled set of the channels that we provide and then we sell to our customers, we are more than happy to sell and provide that to a customer along with a single or individual point solution that may solve the customers' problem. The bottom line is working with the customer, satisfying the customers need, solving whatever problem that they have. We would still prefer, we are still focused on recurring projects, those build the best relationships between us and our clients where we can provide the most value. So there is no shift or change in that direction or emphasis, it's more towards solving customers problems, be it through either a bundled solution or a single point channel solution. And yes, we would still prefer recurring projects, recurring type of work. Those type of things again lead to stronger relationships between us and our customers and allow us to provide more value over the long term. On the M&A side, our strategy is still intact. We have a healthy pipeline right now of transactions and things that we're working through and working on. We as a company, as I've said, the Board and management still believes very strongly in the strategy that we laid out little over a year ago. There will always be a need for the company to continue to evolve its products to stay current in the marketplace. That's why this is a 90 year company. Harte Hanks has gone through many transformations, it has changed over time, we will continue to change over time, we have to, to stay relevant and current for our client needs. And on the M&A activity, M&A that’s a part of our strategy will have to happen in order for us to satisfy our client needs and continue to transform throughout the marketplace. Now the rate and the specific numbers that we put out there in that plan, I would say the longer term vision is still very viable, hitting that short-term number that we put out there and spending a couple of $100 million in the first couple of years versus two years, we're already a year into it. It's possible, I guess, I will say we may get close, we still got another 12 months for that first acquisition spend goals that we put out there. We'll see where we end up, but the pipeline and the activity in the things that we're working on have not stopped and it's a part of continuing to evolve our services and staying relevant in the marketplace.

Okay, great. Thanks, Doug.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Daniel Baldini with Oberon. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. If I go back over the last, I don't know, nine years or so, at the beginning Mr. Hochhauser was the CEO and he retired and or announced he was going to retire and the Board got together and decided to appoint Mr. Blythe the new CEO. Now he lasted about, I don't know, a year and a half and departed abruptly. And Mr. Franklin came, stepped back in and took over for a while. And then the Board got together and appointed Mr. Philpott, and he lasted, I don't know, a year and half, two years and then disappeared quickly. So my question is, here we are and why should we believe that the Board will be any more successful identifying a capable CEO this time around than they were the last few times?

Pretty easy. I mean we have an experienced Board. We have several folks who are active CEOs, Chief Operating Officers within their organization. They understand our market and our company like any company that has gone through some transformations, we've had folks with very long tenure. So, if you want to go back 9 years, you can go back 15 years or so and Mr. Hochhauser may have retired but that was age-related. He served as a CEO for I believe, six or seven years, and he reached his mid 60s and he retired. Same thing with Mr. Franklin. They had a succession plan in place. They had a strategy they knew what they were doing. And then, age wise, Larry got into his late '60s, early '70s and he decided to retire. But he served I believe it was four years in his second go around as the CEO. So, like any company we've had some long tenured over a time period, some long tenured CEOs. We've had others with shorter tenures. And now, the Board will use its resources both internally and externally with the search committee that it has formed and we have faith that they will identify, select the right candidate. They definitely have the expertise and the resources to do that.

Okay. Well, good luck.

Thank you.

Thanks.

There are no further questions in queue at this time. I'll turn the call back call back over to the presenter.

Alright. We appreciate everybody’s time this morning. Again I want to reiterate that we have a focus on four primary areas of returning to profitable growth, increasing our profitable revenue growth, increasing our customer satisfaction, operational excellence and improving employee engagement. The company has a wonderful customer base out there, it has a strong balance sheet, and we appreciate your continued support. We are focused on creating and returning shareholder value to our shareholders, and at this time, we'd like to thank you all for joining the call. Thank you. Operator?

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.