Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Lifetime Brands Fourth Quarter 2015 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Harriet Fried of LHA.

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, the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations 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. Go ahead please, Jeff.

Thanks, Harriet, and good morning everyone and thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and year-end results. For the year as a whole, we had good sales growth in our U.S. wholesale segment with sales of kitchenware, tableware and home solutions products all rising. Unfortunately, this growth was offset by various currency challenges in the UK, which both increased our cost of goods and hurt our export sales. Nonetheless, through improved operating margin, we achieved the 5.5% increase in our consolidated EBITDA, which rose to $44.9 million and we undertook a wide variety of product and business initiatives that are important to positioning our company for further growth and increased profitability in 2016 and beyond. To give you a good perspective on our outlook for the business, let’s take a closer look at the important trends that took place during the fourth quarter focusing on our wholesale segment, which accounts for the vast majority of our sales and profits. Starting with our U.S. operations, here the most exciting development was the significant improvement in our home solutions business providing proof that this division whose performance was impacted in recent years by significant cutbacks in retail, floor space devoted to the category has truly turned the corner. Our home décor portion of this business is now focused on branded giftables and functional décor, two areas at home décor that are growing. This new focus enabled us to launch a large program with a major pharmacy chain, our first significant foray into this retail class and it’s been going very well. In kitchenware, the largest component of our U.S. wholesale segment, sales were down slightly for the fourth quarter, although up through the year as a whole. Part of the decline was timing though a significant portion was the…

Thanks, Jeff. As we reported this morning, net income from fourth quarter 2015 was $11 million or $0.77 per diluted share compared to $9.3 million or $0.66 per diluted share in the 2014 period. Adjusted net income for the quarter was 10.8 million or $0.75 per share compared to 9.4 million or $0.66 per share in 2014. The table, which reconciles this non-GAAP measure to report results, was included in the release. Income from operations was 17.6 million in the 2015 quarter versus 18.3 million in 2014. However, excluding adjustments for acquisition contingent consideration and restructuring expenses, income from operations increased to 17.3 million in the 2015 quarter from 14.1 million last year. Consolidated EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure reconciled through our GAAP results in the release, was 23.9 million for the current quarter and 20.9 million for the period in 2014. Consolidated EBITDA was 44.9 million for the full year of 2015 and 42.5 million for last year. For our U.S. wholesale segment, net sales in the 2015 quarter increased 1.7 million to 146.9 million as growth for our tableware and home solutions business categories more than offset a small decline in the kitchenware category. Tableware’s increase came from all product lines while home solutions had a very strong quarter on home décor’s Bombay products and pantryware volume in the warehouse club channel. Kitchenware’s strength for cutlery and boards did not quite offset lower volume in categories of other product lines. U.S. wholesale segment gross margin was 36.2% in the 2015 quarter compared to 35.4% in 2014. The increase reflects the benefit of margin increases at certain retailers and product mix. U.S. wholesale distribution expense as a percent of sales shipped from our warehouses improved to 7.7% from 8% last year’s quarter, as lower fuel cost reduced freight expense. U.S.…

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Frank Camma from Sidoti.

Good morning, guys. How are you doing?

Hi, Frank.

Hi, Frank.

I apologize, I missed the very beginning so you may have commented on this, Jeff, but I just want to ask about one of the things that you had pointed out last call was sort of the product placements going into holiday season. Just wonder if you could review for us kind of – obviously, you had good product placements and how they met your expectations on the sell-through?

Sell-throughs were not great in the fourth quarter. We found retail in general to be a bit challenging although it’s starting to pick up again, but it definitely was challenging at the end of last year. As you’ve all read, there has been a monumental shift in business heavily shifting towards the Internet both to the brick and mortar retailers and to the Internet-only retailers and this will continue. And we’ve positioned Lifetime to really capitalize on this as much as possible. We’ve set our systems up so that we can profitably shift direct to consumers for our retail partners, again whether they be brick and mortar retail partners or Internet-only retail partners. And we have build a very large team that’s focused on building sales of our products on the Internet through our customers.

Okay. You spoke pretty prominently about the Color Works. I was just – can you just remind us when, and I know you have new products coming in 2016 but when did Color Works – when did you launch that initially? I can’t remember.

The first shipments were in July. It’s a line that we picked up from the UK and we’re now marketing in this country and we’re gaining much more placement this year.

And do those products mostly, like the knives, do those mostly use ceramics too or are those – I know they’re colorful?

Most of its colorful there. The blades are what the call a resin-coated blade that you can slip on the blade itself. But they’re just very popular with young people, it’s a very colorful line. It’s – by the way it’s branded Farberware Color Works, which helps us to enhance the Farberware brand.

I see, okay. You mentioned retailers, it’s obviously not surprising based on all the other companies I follow. Can you comment on sort of the inventory levels at the retailers, how do you feel they are? I know you’re coming off of your season here, so if you could just kind of give us an idea like how well stocked up they are?

They’re fairly light. We had our houseware show in Chicago that ended on Tuesday – this Tuesday and at that show we met with every one of our major customers over a four-day period. And there’s quite a bit of enthusiasm. I have to tell you we were extremely busy every day of the show and the attitudes were good, and inventories I think are a little on the low side within our categories though they’re not from what the retailers are telling me, there are some other categories that are rather high.

Okay. And you obviously had a pickup in the margins and Larry, you mentioned some of that was from sort of the retailers and also the product mix. What about input costs? Were those input costs kind of offset by the currency issues because you also mentioned those as kind of a takeaway especially for the – you said you source in dollars but you sell in the pound, so I just wondering if you can comment about that?

For our U.S. business, the input costs have come down but we still have to cycle through the inventories. We carry about a six-month inventory, but input cost – the inputs have come down for a number of reasons. Raw materials have come down and the exchange rate between the dollar and the Chinese RMB has become a bit favorable towards us. Now, of course, the retailers want part of that and we have to give them part of that. But we will retain some certainly. In the case of the UK, the offset of their exchanges is far greater than the lower input costs, so their costs have gone up. It has certainly slowed their business. We have good teams there and they know how to fix it. So they are raising their prices, which – it’s a competitive world but the competitors are also raising their prices. We’ll start getting the benefit of the higher prices in 2016, higher selling prices, but it’s certainly a step back in 2015.

Okay. And some of those commodity costs – favorable commodity costs in the Chinese currency is clearly what I assume both into your comment about the 50 basis point improvement in gross margin. Am I correct about that?

That’s correct.

Okay, great. Thanks, guys.

[Operator Instructions]. All right. I’d like to turn the call back over to Jeff for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. As you heard, we had many areas of success in 2015. We also have many efforts underway to enhance Lifetime’s performance in 2016 and beyond. We see exciting growth potential as a result of the changes we are making and look forward to giving you an update on our first quarter call. Thank you.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your participation in today’s conference. This concludes the presentation and you may now disconnect. Have a great day.