Educational Development Corporation (NASDAQ:EDUC) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan O’Keefe: Well, we don’t — and this is Dan. Frank, we don’t give guidance as far as revenue. Just to put that out there before I turn the call back over to Craig. As a small reporting company, we just — it’s — as it’s been our past practice to just be conservative and not put our guidance. Craig, I’ll let you take over from there.

Craig White: Yes, that’s good. Thank you. Well, things are looking up. We’re doing all kinds of things to help increase sales, retain brand partners. And it takes a little time for those things to come to fruition. The sentiment right now is more positive than it has been. We’re going to be releasing some of our software projects in the next couple of months, which will be a positive impact. Our products get better and better. When we keep our brand partners, and salespeople, and customers focused on our mission of children’s literacy and learning, things always go better. So we’re doing all the right things. It’s just taking a little longer than we’d hoped, but we will survive this tough period and increase sales.

Frank Goodell: Second question I had, what are the insiders within EDUC doing as far as stock retention?

Dan O’Keefe: You — Craig, you want me to take this?

Craig White: All three of us were buying.

Heather Cobb: Yes. Go ahead, Dan.

Dan O’Keefe: I was going to say — so the insiders being the — obviously the White family, the Board and nobody has really been selling any shares. And then of course, as Craig mentioned, Heather, Craig and I continue to buy shares every quarter. And we’ve recently filed some Form 4s that reflect our activity for the first quarter.

Frank Goodell: Okay. To that point. One way you obviously improve cash flow is to pay in shares rather than salaries. Obviously, people have to make a certain amount of money to maintain a standard of living. Companies I worked for in the past often did that, called them golden handcuffs, whatever, but they paid with shares when times were hard to reduce losses, I guess, you could say by having high salaries.

Dan O’Keefe: Well, and I don’t know how long ago you’re mentioning, but Frank, the key thing that — I mean, it’s a great idea. It’s something that Craig and I’ve talked about in the past. But I just want to — before Craig — turn the call over to Craig, I just want to make sure you’re aware that it’s not legal underneath the SEC rules for us to issue shares to management unless we’ve gotten shareholder approvals to do so. So we will — to do that, we will have to file — we would have to file a registration statement registering the shares and have a shareholder vote. So just on — just giving you current SEC guidance. Craig, I’ll let you discuss the thoughts on that.

Craig White: Yeah, the only thing I also was going to add is that we do have short-term and long-term incentives. The long-term incentives are shares. Now, those were earned and the first tranche was awarded this past March after a five-year vesting period. But we have other chunks of stock that our top 15 to 20 management have earned over the past several years. They’re still being vested in things like that. So we do have long-term incentive plans in place. We have small cash bonuses with short-term. They’ve been bigger in the past. We’re doing very nominal short-term cash incentives. But yeah, I like the thinking, but we’re doing some of that.

Frank Goodell: Part of where I’m going is you’re highly incentivized to turn this company around rather than bailing when it gets tough and you are in a tough situation right now. So, as a stockholder, I have a lot of patience if I have hope. But if you lose hope, then your patience goes away. So…

Craig White: Sure.