Good day and thank you for standing by. And welcome to Scholastic Reports Q2 Fiscal Year 2022 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Gil Dickoff, Senior Vice President and Treasurer and Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Hello. And welcome everyone to Scholastic’s fiscal 2022 second quarter earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Peter Warwick, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ken Cleary, our Chief Financial Officer. As usual, we have posted the accompanying investor presentation on our IR website at investor.scholastic.com, which you may download now if you have not already done so. I would like to point out that certain statements made today will be forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those arising from the continuing impact of COVID and its variants on the company’s business operations. These forward-looking statements, by their nature, are uncertain and actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. In addition, we will be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. The reconciliations of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures may be found in the company’s earnings release and accompanying financial tables filed this afternoon on a Form 8-K. This earnings release has also been posted to our Investor Relations website. We encourage you to review the disclaimers in our press release and investor presentation, and to review the risk factors contained in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Should you have any questions after today’s call, please send them directly to our IR e-mail address investor_relations@scholastic.com. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Peter Warwick to begin this afternoon’s presentation.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I hope you are each enjoying this holiday season, which in many ways feels closer to normal, even as we remain watchful of COVID developments. The ongoing balance of moving forward in our new normal, while continuing to remain cautious made our second quarter especially meaningful this year. We have stayed in close touch with families and educators, as they navigated a new school year. Thankfully, for the most part, finally back in the classroom. We have shared these insights throughout the company while increasing our reach. In fact, this fiscal year-to-date, we have increased our parent reach through email by almost six-fold. And as we have seen throughout our 101 year history, it’s this deep relationship that yet again contributed to positive results, because of our ability to meet real-time needs and to evolve. All of these efforts led to a 29% increase in revenues and an approximately $30 million improvement in operating income. While Ken will provide you with specific details of our second quarter results, I’d like to address what I expect is the upper most question in most people’s minds given our experience with COVID during the past 18 months or so. And that’s the question, are our Books Fairs backed. Well, I am pleased to say, that, yes, our Book Fairs business is coming back. As with all COVID impacted businesses, our optimism comes with caution due to the unpredictable nature of the virus. But, overall, we believe we have made significant steps in moving beyond the pandemic and with a confidence that while repeated wide scale school closures are unlikely, we have systems in place to manage through it all, we have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels of Book Fair bookings, which was…

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon. Today, I will refer to our adjusted results for the second quarter excluding one-time items unless otherwise indicated. Please refer to our press release tables and SEC filings for complete discussion of one-time costs and legal settlements. We started the school year with strong demand across all of our channels, but most notably in our Book Fairs channel, where the pandemic essentially shut us down at the start of the prior school year. Our Trade channel continued to dominate bestseller lists and our Education Solutions business had strong results as well. We are experiencing higher costs for labor and product in our Book Clubs channel as the scarcity of labor led to delays in the shipment of product to our customers. The pandemic continued to impact some of our foreign operations, notably in Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Overall, we are very pleased with our results, which exceeded our expectations. Revenues for the second quarter grew to $524.2 million versus $406.2 million in the prior year period. Operating income in the second quarter was $84.3 million versus $54.3 million last year. Net income was $69 million, compared to $39.4 million last year and adjusted EBITDA was $113.7 million, compared to $77.7 million in the second quarter last year. Earnings per diluted share was $1.93, compared to $1.15 in last year. Net cash provided by operating activities was $78 million, compared to $46.1 million in the second quarter of last year. Free cash flow for this quarter was $75.4 million, compared to $30.9 million last year. For the six month period, net cash provided by operating activities was $141.6 million, compared to $20.1 million in the prior year and free cash flow was $124.5 million in the current year, compared to free cash use of…

Thank you, Ken. As a reminder, we invite questions to be directed to our IR mailbox, investor_relations@scholastic.com. We appreciate your time and continuing support and wish you a very enjoyable and safe holiday season ahead.

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Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.