Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2015 Lifetime Brands Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tony and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Harriet Fried of LHA. Please proceed.

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining Lifetime Brands conference call. With us today from management are Jeff Siegel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Larry Winoker, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin I’ll read the Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statements that are about to be made in this conference call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and involve risks and uncertainties, including the company’s ability to comply with the requirements of its credit agreements, the availability of funding under those credit agreements, the company’s ability to maintain adequate liquidity and financing sources and an appropriate level of debt, changes in general economic conditions, which could affect customer payment practices or consumer spending, changes in demand for the company’s products, shortages of and price volatility for certain commodities, the effect of competition on the company’s markets and other risks detailed in Lifetime’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. The company’s earnings release contains non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Regulation G promulgated by the SEC. Included in this morning’s release is a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. With that introduction, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Siegel. Please go ahead, Jeff.

Thanks, Harriet, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our second quarter 2015 results. Despite continued headwinds from foreign exchange we delivered results that were substantially in line with our internal plans and well above last year’s period. Before talking in detail about the quarter let me touch on two areas that are likely to be of increasing importance to us, as well as for many companies in the years ahead; foreign exchange and e-commerce. Over the past several years we have made a concerted effort to expand our footprint outside of the United States. Through our global distribution system, consisting of Lifetime and its wholly owned subsidiaries in the UK, our partner companies in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and India, our joint ventures in China and our network of international distributors our products are now available in over 100 countries worldwide. This breadth of distribution exposes us to foreign exchange fluctuations that in this year have and will continue to dampen our results when sales in certain foreign currencies are converted into the U.S. dollars. To provide a clearer picture of how our non-U.S. operations are performing, consistent with how we evaluate our performance we have presented our net sales both in an as-reported and in a constant currency basis. The constant currency presentation excludes the impact of fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. We calculate constant currency percentages by converting our prior period local currency financial results, using the current period exchange rates and comparing these adjusted amounts to our current period reported results. The strong U.S. dollar has also had an impact on the cost of purchases in China by our non-U.S. partners. A [indiscernible] purchase is generally denominated in U.S. dollars. This has had a negative impact on the gross margin percentages…

Thanks, Jeff. As we reported earlier this morning, the net loss for the second quarter of 2015 was $1.7 million or $0.12 per diluted share compared to a loss of $3.2 million, or $0.24 per share in the 2014 period. Adjusted net loss for the quarter was $600,000 or a loss of $0.04 per share as compared to a loss, as adjusted last year of $3.1 million or $0.23 per share. A table which reconciles this non-GAAP measure to reported results was included in this morning’s release. Loss from operations was $1 million for the ‘15 quarter compared to a loss of $3.2 million last year. Consolidated EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure that is reconciled to our GAAP results in the release, was $4.4 million for the current quarter, $1.5 million for the period in 2014 and consolidated EBITDA for the trailing 12 months ended June of this year was $44.3 million versus $41.2 million in the same period last year. For our U.S. wholesale segment, net sales in the 2015 quarter increased 11% to $94.6 million. Higher volumes of Kitchenware and tableware was partially offset in the home solutions group. Kitchenware’s increase was primarily due to the strength of cutlery volume while the increase in tableware came from all product categories. Home solutions decline was due to lower pantry ware sales which was attributable to timing of its warehouse club program. U.S. wholesale segment gross margin was 35.5% in the 2015 quarter compared to 35.2% in 2014. The increase reflects better margin for certain product categories and higher sales from our more profitable product categories. U.S. wholesale distribution expenses as a percentage of sales shipped from our U.S. warehouses were 10.2% in both periods. The benefit of higher shipments in the current period was primarily offset by increased cost associated…

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Mr. Frank Camma of Sidoti. Please proceed.

Good morning guys.

Good morning Frank.

Hey can you talk about the timing of the dividend increase a little bit, is that typical for you kind of midway through the year. Most my companies are kind beginning of the year after results for the year, just kind of curious?

Well, we think -- it’s something we talk about at, obviously at all our Board meetings. I mean we just assess where we think the business will do, how healthy it is and obviously we have pretty good quarter. And we want to demonstrate that we are pretty confident about our success and continued success, so we did it this time. But we don’t necessarily set a date or particular period in which we will adjust the business.

Let me add that we had quite a long discussion with our Board on this and the feeling is because our business looks like it’s really going in the direction we want it to go in, both in the last quarter and going forward that we felt it was the right thing to do.

Okay, the other thing is you kind of stated some of this, but I just -- a little surprised on the -- when you adjust for FX, the lack of growth internationally, was it because you had to increase prices or there was a slack in demand, I was just wondering if you could get a little more into that?

Yeah, it is we talked specifically about the UK, as Larry, mentioned the Kitchen Craft business did have increases, it did increase. The decreases were in Creative Tops which -- and Creative Tops is more of a ceramic end of the business. The Kitchen Craft business because of the lower price of oil that were able to negotiate some lower cost in products and also the fact that they -- Kitchen Craft sells to the smaller retailers where it’s easier to raise products quickly, independent retailers, where Creative Tops sells to the majors which takes much longer time to get a price increase. It’s not that the demand is really down but the prices are up quite a bit and they are also both having difficulty selling into Continental Europe because of the exchange rate differential between the pound and the euro makes their products more expensive in Continental Europe and also it’s a margin challenge but we are raising prices in Continental Europe to the independents. We just -- it was actually done in July and we expect to see definitely improvement in the UK business in the second half of the year.

Okay, and we talked a little bit last time about the -- your input cost, I mean both oil based resins and steel down year-over-year, when do we start to see that kind of flow through the P&L?

As Larry has mentioned that we expect to have improvements in our margins and we expect that to continue. We are definitely we are seeing that and it’s something that I think it is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Okay and final question just on cash flow. Can you -- traditionally you’ve actually produced pretty good free cash flow, with the exception of last year. So wonder if you could maybe touch on cash from operations and if you can kind of help us out there modeling out this year?

No, our cash flow should pretty much follow our growth in our business and EBITDA plus less calculated tax of the interest. The other factor that will be significant in operating cash flows, working capital and we don’t foresee that increasing in any significant way. Our business is growing 3% to 6% perhaps that increases also. So last year was anomaly, we did have some payments after we acquired Kitchen Craft, there were some final payments that came out of that business having to do with pension and some other things that caused last year to be lower than it has been historically. But we should see much more predictability, our CapEx spending should be in the $6 million, range, our dividend we can see it if we can raise it [ph] better, no it’s not going up significantly, so from that $2.1 million to about $2.3 million or $2.4 million and we will continue to use the excess cash flow to pay down debt. We have really significant amortization of term loan which we can handle and the rate on the term loan is higher than on the revolver so we can get interest rate benefit here as well.

Okay, thank you.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions in the queue at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Jeff Siegel for any and all closing remarks. Please proceed.

Thanks again for joining us today. You can see from our new revenue guidance and increased dividend that we are moving into the second half of 2015 with a high degree of confidence in our strategy and our products. We look forward to talking to you again after the third quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen that concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your patience. You may now disconnect and everyone have a great day.