Good morning, and thank you for joining the Regis Second Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. I'm your host Biz McShane, Vice President, Corporate Controller. All participants are in listen-only mode. The prepared remarks by our President and Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Doctor and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Kersten Zupfer are accompanied by slides to help participants follow along. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to remind everyone that the language on forward-looking statements included in our earnings release, and 8-K filing also apply to our comments made on the call today. These documents along with their presentation today can be found on our website, www.regiscorp.com/investorrelations, along with reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today's call with their corresponding GAAP measures. Today's slides are located in the investor presentations and supplemental financial statements section of the investor site. With that, I will now turn the call over to Matt.

Thank you, Biz. And good morning, everyone. On today's call, I will discuss our Q2 fiscal 2024 results and share my observations about the progress we have made to stabilize Regis over the past 2 years as well as our ongoing work to reaccelerate growth and drive value for all of our stakeholders. Jumping right into our results for the quarter and first half of the year. Same-store sales rose 1.9% in the quarter and 1.8% year-to-date. Now while we ended the quarter 1.9% above last year, we saw a progression in comparable sales throughout the quarter with October being a bit more challenging coming in roughly flat year-over-year. Well, in the month of December, we were up 4.5% versus December of 2022. And from a sales perspective, we're seeing notable disparity between our top and bottom quartile salons, and this is really driving the overall sales comp. We are really seeing some bright spots in those top quartile salons across all of our brands as they have collectively demonstrated approximately 6% same-store sales for the quarter with positive traffic comps. Adjusted Q2 EBITDA on a consolidated basis was $6 million compared to $7.8 million in the prior year's quarter. Part of that gap between this quarter and Q2 fiscal 2023 is due to the onetime $1.1 million received from the state of North Carolina, with the remaining due to our lower salon count driving lower revenues and timing of expenses. For the first half of fiscal 2024, our adjusted EBITDA of $13.5 million is a $1.8 million improvement versus the first half fiscal 2023 adjusted EBITDA of $11.7 million. We reported operating income of $4.8 million in the quarter versus $700,000 in Q2 fiscal '23. This is a $4.1 million improvement. Operating income for the first half has improved…

Thanks, Matt, and good morning. For this morning’s call, I will review our second quarter results. The second quarter saw positive system-wide same store sales, increased operating income, positive net income, positive earnings per share and strong adjusted EBITDA. Overall, we are continuing to see stability in our business. Reviewing the second quarter in more detail and beginning with the income statement, the second quarter revenues were $51.1 million and declined $8.9 million from the prior year. This revenue decline was expected and relates primarily to a reduction in franchise rental income, which is a gross up of revenue and expense and has no impact on profitability. Additionally, transitioning out of company-owned salons and product sales reduced revenue with minimal impact on profitability. Royalty and fee revenue of $18.3 million, which represents our core business revenue was down $1.1 million versus the prior year second quarter due to the number of salons closures over the course of the last 12 months. Another reflection of our revenue performance is our system-wide same-store sales, which grew to 1.9% in the quarter. We posted GAAP operating income of $4.8 million in the quarter compared to $700,000 in the prior year quarter. The increase in GAAP operating income of $4.1 million was driven by lower depreciation and an inventory reserve charge in the prior year period. We continue to produce operating profit each quarter and we expect that trend to continue. We reported positive net income of $1 million and earnings per share of $0.43 in the second quarter compared to a loss of $2.4 million a year ago and a loss per share of $1.04 a year ago. The improvement relates to the improvement in operating income previously mentioned and a $2 million gain in discontinued operations related to the sale of Opensalon…