Greetings. Welcome to the Where Food Comes From Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that the conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host Jay Pfeiffer with Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning and welcome to the Where Food Comes From second quarter earnings call. Joining me on the call today are John Saunders, CEO; and Leann Saunders, President. During this call, we'll make forward-looking statements based on current expectations estimates and projections that are subject to risk. Statements about current and future financial performance, growth strategy, customers, business opportunities, market acceptance of our products and services, and potential acquisitions are forward-looking statements. Listeners should not place undue reliance on these statements, as there are many factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our publicly filed documents, as well as our news releases and website for more information. Today, we'll also discuss adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure provided as a complement to GAAP results. Please refer to today's earnings release for important disclosures regarding the non-GAAP measures. I'll now turn the call over to John Saunders, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, and thanks for joining the call today. This morning we released our second quarter financial results before the market opened. These results reflected what we hope is the beginning of the return to normalcy as a lot of the restrictions put in place due to the COVID pandemic began to lift. That said, the recent surge in COVID Delta variant and the government's evolving response to that surge reminds us that the timetable for business as usual is still up in the air. You'll recall that in 2020 as the pandemic gained momentum many of our customers for pork, poultry, egg and dairy audits and to a lesser extent organic audits were forced to limit third-party visits to their operations due to government-mandated social distancing restrictions. With the approval of standard-setting bodies under unprecedented conditions, we responded to that challenge by transitioning to remote audits using various video technologies that allowed us to complete a limited amount of work for these customers, and generate a modest amount of revenue against what is typically a more meaningful component of our revenue mix. Fast forward to the second quarter this year as restrictions began to ease, we began to resume on-site audits. This resulted in a sharp increase in revenue at our Validus and Where Food Comes From organic units that coupled with other solid performance by our IMI Global beef unit drove a 16% year-over-year increase in revenue to $5.1 million from $4.4 million. For the six months revenue was up 15% to $9.6 million from $8.3 million. While we are certainly happy to see a resumption of these delayed audits, it is important to note that the revenue derived from these verification categories is lower margin than our core beef business, and that impacted our consolidated margins for…

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Terry Thompson, a private investor.

John, congratulations on the quarter, and I want to thank you personally for the special dividend that we spoke about that very generally and briefly the last time we spoke face-to-face at our last in-person meeting. And I'd mentioned that to a few people and they kind of pooh-poohed it. And now, I can call them back and tell them I told you so. So, I just want to thank you very much, you all are doing a fantastic job there. And I think you weathered the disruptions in this last year 1.5 years and the economy extremely well. And I just feel privileged to be a long time stockholder with you all, and look forward to bigger and brighter things in the future. Thank you so much to you and everybody there, and thanks a lot.

Well, thank you very much Terry. Not exactly sure about the conversation, but I really, really appreciate the sentiment. And as I mentioned, we've been very, very fortunate to have the group of shareholders that we've had and the commitment over the long-term. And so, thank you very much.

Thank you. Take care, and I hope we're able to get back to in-person shareholder meetings. I really enjoy those. Take care, and God bless everyone there. Thank you, sir.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, there are no more questions. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I will now turn the call over to John Saunders for closing remarks.

Well, once again thanks everybody for joining the call and we'll talk to you in three months.

This concludes today's meeting. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.