Paul B. Toms
Analyst · Sidoti & Company
Thanks, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. On the revenue side, we're pleased with the sustained positive momentum of 5 consecutive quarters of increased sales compared to the prior year quarter. As we reported in this morning's press release, this was our -- one of our strongest shipping quarters in the last 5 years. More specifically, it was our second-largest shipping quarter in 5 years, exceeded only slightly by last year's fourth quarter, which had an extra week. Incoming orders and backlogs are also solid as we enter a historically strong retail selling season for furniture. Demand is up for both casegoods and upholstery compared to a strong quarter a year ago. The recent October High Point furniture market, which was one of our best written business in 3 years, bolstered our positive momentum. A particularly well-received new upscale casegoods collection is scheduled to ship from Asia before the end of our fiscal year. Like several of our other best-selling collections, this is positioned in the upper end of our product line in both price and quality. While our business continues to perform well at the upper end, we are proactively addressing the good and better price niche as well. During the quarter, we hired a seasoned merchandising executive at Hooker casegoods with expertise in developing good and better-priced wood furniture. In calendar year 2014, we expect to bring a strong assortment of good and better casegoods to market. Our goal is to have the strongest possible offerings at all 3 levels of good, better and best merchandise. We believe this will increase our competitiveness and give us further opportunities to grow sales and increase market share. On the income side, earnings were lower in the just-completed third quarter than in the 2 prior years. But we also had startup costs for both H Contract and Homeware brands that we didn't have in either of the prior third quarters. For the Homeware brand, we had some additional expenses during the quarter related to preparing the homeware.com website for direct-to-consumer sales. During the first week of November, we went live with a shopping cart on our Homeware website. These direct-to-consumer sales are in addition to our homeware sales through a number of top-tier Internet retailers such as Wayfair and Hayneedle, which began in August. Another factor in reduced income for the quarter was the significant discounting required to hit our targets for sales of pre-discontinued casegoods collections and product lines. Much of the discounting revolved around groups or product lines that we are exiting, including the category of youth furniture. Youth furniture has never represented more than 3% of our sales volume, although it is a SKU-intensive category, requiring a specialized approach. We made the decision late last year to exit the category as we believe our efforts are better focused in other more viable categories for us, such as collections and accent furniture. We've been methodically exiting youth bedroom throughout the year and have reduced our inventories by over 1/2 from 7.5 million when we begun the process early in the year to about 3 million today. We expect our exit from the category to be mostly complete by the end of our fiscal year, February 2, 2014. Although the discounting has had some short-term negative impact on profitability, we have been able to grow casegoods sales nearly 6% year-to-date in spite of exiting the category and believe that the long-term impact on profitability is positive as we redirect our focus where we can be most successful and competitive. Overall, our inventories are still about 10% above targeted levels. We've adjusted our ordering but expect that it will be the first quarter of the next year before we experience the impact of those adjustments. Inventory composition is improving with a higher percentage of active and in-line best-selling items and less pre-discontinued and discontinued products. We expect the current level of discounting will continue through the fourth quarter and expect discounting will return to more normal levels no later than the end of the 2015 fiscal first quarter. In addition to the negative impact of discounting and start-up costs for our new ventures, higher labor costs at Sam Moore to meet demand that's increased 15% to 20% per year during the last 2.5 years has also impacted profitability. Mike Delgatti will give further details on our upholstery performance momentarily, but before Mike begins, I want to share an announcement we made this morning following our Board of Directors meeting. Alan Cole, President of Hooker Furniture Corporation, has announced he will retire at the end of this fiscal year on February 2, 2014. He will be succeeded by Mike Delgatti, presently the President of Hooker Upholstery and Executive Vice President of Sales for our company. Since Alan joined Hooker in mid-2007 as Executive Vice President of Upholstery Operations, it has been a privilege to work with him. We greatly appreciate his profound contributions to Hooker Furniture, Bradington-Young and Sam Moore, as well as the 2 new business ventures he conceived and launched, Homeware and H Contract. The strategic vision and team-building he has brought to our organization will make this a stronger company for many years to come. We're fortunate that we will continue to benefit from his experience and vision after his retirement as he will serve as a consultant to our company several times a year. At the same time, we're very confident in Mike, as he prepares to assume the presidency of Hooker Furniture Corporation. Mike is extremely capable, has had an extraordinarily positive impact on our upholstery companies and has also made significant contributions during the last year as he added responsibility for sales in all divisions. Once he becomes President, he'll add responsibility for marketing and casegoods product development to his expanded role. I look forward to sharing leadership with Mike as I have with Alan for the last 6 years. Mike will focus on domestic and international sales, merchandising, marketing and oversee all upholstery operations. I will continue to focus on casegoods operations, supply chain, logistics, corporate services, investor and board relations, as well as the new Homeware and H Contract ventures. At this time, Alan has a few comments about his retirement.