Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Emerald Holding Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, the conference will be opened for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turns this call over to Mr. David Doft, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate your participation today in our third quarter 2020 earnings call. I'm very pleased to have Brian Field, Emerald's Interim President and Chief Executive Officer with me here today. As a reminder, a replay of this call will be available on the Investors Section of the Company's website through 11:59 P.M. Eastern time on November 9, 2020. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call may contain certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include remarks about future expectations, beliefs, estimates, plans and prospects. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. Such risks and other factors are set forth in the Company's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and subsequent filings. We do not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release. Now, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you, David. This afternoon, I will provide an update on the exhibition industry, and then discuss progress transforming our operations to position Emerald for return to organic growth. David will review our third quarter results, and we will then open the call to your questions. On today's call, there are five main points that I hope you take away. First, our survey work continues to affirm our customers desire to return to live face-to-face events, given the value and importance of our marketplaces to their businesses. Second, third-party studies and recently staged shows across the world both demonstrate the clear desire or return to live in-person events. Third, we are also seeing this desire in our own portfolio as our IGES show, which is set to stage this week has experienced 36% registered attendance growth as compared to last year. Fourth, we continue to implement our strategic initiatives designed to improve our execution and accountability across the company. Our goal is to deliver improved organic growth and profitability once the environment normalizes and we are aggressively implementing our initiatives during this current time period. And lastly, we are well capitalized given our insurance coverage and the completion of our preferred stock offering. This place is Emerald in an enviable position. We now have the flexibility to invest in our business for the future and also take advantage of dislocations in the market as a result of the pandemic. Of note, we are seeing opportunities today and believe there will be many attractive assets coming for sale at compelling values. Turning to our trade shows, we have cancelled all of our large events through year end, with the exception of the International Gift Exposition in the Smokies or IGES, which is scheduled to take place this week. Additionally this past…

Thank you, Brian and good afternoon. For the third quarter we reported revenues of $8.5 million, which compared to $75.6 million in the year ago quarter. The decrease was primarily due to the cancellation of 29 events due to COVID-19 most notably ASD August, New York NOW August, CEDIA Expo and Modern Day Marine. Our adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was a loss of $3.2 million as compared to $28.7 million in the same period last year. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA of $31.9 million was mainly due to COVID-19 related event cancellation, representing prior year third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $46 million. This was partially offset by the recognition of $10 million and other income related to event cancellation insurance claim proceeds confirmed in the third quarter of 2020 as compared to the year ago quarter. Third quarter 2020 adjusted EBITDA also reflected combined effect of lower organic revenues, offset by the continued cost savings measures that we are implementing and which I will discuss further in a moment. Free cash flow for the third quarter was a use of $20.9 million, which includes $37.5 million in customer refunds paid for cancelled events and the decline in cash receipts due to the calculation of the upcoming events. It just partially offset by the receipt of $39.8 million in cancellation insurance policy, and our close management of cash and expenses. The underlying business trends reflected approximately $33 million of cash outflows for expenses, including payroll, severance and prepayments for future events, offset by $14 million of cash collected for future events and media, as well as the insurance proceeds I just mentioned. At December 30, we have a refund liability of $25 million for cancel shows, which compares to $47 million at June 30, 2020. Additionally, we have an…

Thank you, David. As we exit the third quarter and begin to plan for the year ahead, I'm optimistic with the green shoots that we are beginning to see in the global tradeshow industry combined with a demonstrated desire amongst our customers to return to our portfolio of industry leading marketplaces. It's encouraging to see significant shows successfully staged once again. And we're very excited to host our customers at IGES this week. Taken together these are early signals for industries’ recovery and healthy return. As we've discussed this afternoon, we've been aggressively using this time to transform our operations to ensure we exit this difficult period of stronger and better performing company. We're exploring new digital business models and making progress with our technology initiatives which will allow us to better understand our customer’s preferences, opening the door to what we believe is significant cross-selling opportunity. Further, our liquidity position is unique in the U.S. event sector, which positions our team to take advantage of dislocations to come in the market. We will be prudent as we look to thoughtfully expand our portfolio of industry leading shows. To conclude, I would like to thank all of our employees for their tireless work, dedication during such a challenging time. We remain committed to the health and safety of our staff and customers. Thank you again for your time today. Operator, please open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Seth Weber with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

I wanted to ask about the comment you mentioned for the IGES show. I think I heard you say the exhibitor count is down about 50% while registrations are up 36%. I'm wondering, do you have any sense for, if there's a portion of your exhibitors or attending companies that have kind of just been permanently, affected or gone out of business over the last six or eight months? Do you have any way to quantify that or there's been kind of some sort of structural just impact on your on that base or exhibitor base customer? Thanks.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. Thanks Seth. A couple of things about IGES which I think are really interesting. So first of all, this show typically takes place, it spread over two cities. So Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, Sevierville happen to have restrictions, limitations on mass gatherings, such that it was impossible for us to actually stage it there. So we had to consolidate into one venue in one city so as part of that, that certainly part of the – having of exhibitor numbers there.

Yes.

There is certainly also, as you can expect, some trepidation from exhibitors who are from distant parts of the country, some states still have some fairly stringent kinds of regulations around needing to either pre COVID test or go into a quarantine when they get back. And for a lot of people, being in quarantine for two weeks is kind of a nonstarter.

Yes.

So, you can imagine. So a lot of the exhibitors are kind of local, local exhibitors and for those that have come from farther away, they're really excited about being able to participate. I actually just got some message today from the moves in, because today we're moving in exhibitors. And obviously, not a full survey of everyone's there right now. But the exhibitors that we talked to were really pleased that we were able to put this show on and supporting them. So it was part of the number of customers that may be impacted and other business, surely a lot of our smaller customers, long tail customers have an ongoing. There's a cycle of small businesses that wink outs, and the barriers to entry are pretty low, and they're new customers that pop up. So we're not seeing, a significant evaporation of big swaps of our customers quite, quite the reverse. I mean, we're seeing a lot of loyalty to return to the events, coupled with the kind of safety protocols we're putting in place. Giving them some assurance around, not just having a great show in fact you know plus 36% up in preregistration is quite remarkable. But also, a safe show coupled with a show that they're going to be able to do a lot of business during and for that they're really excited.

Okay yes, I know I mean 36% is quite, is really pretty, impressive and pretty surprising. So that's great to hear. And then just, you obviously alluded a couple times to some dislocating or potential dislocations in the market and with strong financial position and your capital situation. Can you just help us understand a little bit more where how you're thinking about, potential for incremental M&A? Are there certain categories, markets that are most appealing to you is it all domestic or would you look internationally? Is there anything that you would expand on that line?

Sure, this is David. So, ultimately I think we're not going to front run ourselves on getting into too much detail on categories, but we do have some strong presence across a number of different categories with Emerald that we think that we can leverage with incremental, not just events, but other services that can help bring together and educate buyers and sellers in those markets. At the same time, we're currently working to evolve Emerald’s exposures to areas that are higher growth than it has had historically. And so, we're also considering potential new categories that are natural extensions of where we are now, that could help tilt us towards a better longer term growth position.

Thank you. There are no further questions. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing comments.

Thank you. Thank you to everyone for your time today. As I mentioned earlier, we're really encouraged by the green shoots we're seeing in the industry globally and in particularly enthusiastic about our IGES show this week. As early signals of our industry's recovery and healthy returns we look forward to providing you all additional updates over the coming months. And thank you once again, Have a good afternoon or evening.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.