Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Scholastic's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. I'd now like to hand the call over to Jeffrey Mathews, EVP, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello and welcome, everyone, to Scholastic’s fiscal 2023 third quarter earnings call. Today on the call, I am joined by Peter Warwick, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ken Cleary, our Chief Financial Officer. As usual, we posted the investor presentation on our IR website at investor.scholastic.com, which you may download now if you have not already done so. We would like to point out that certain statements made today will be forward-looking. These forward-looking statements, by their nature, are subject to various risks and uncertainties 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 reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can 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 the release and investor presentation and to review the risk factors disclosed in the company’s 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, investor_relations@scholastic.com. And now, I’d like to turn the call over to Peter Warwick to begin this afternoon’s presentation.

Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. In the fiscal 2023 third quarter, Scholastic recorded modest sales declines and higher losses as we continue to navigate short term market headwinds, whilst also increasing investment for the long term in blended learning programs and digital tools in our education solutions business. As a reminder, Scholastic's third quarter is seasonally smaller and typically loss making. We have modestly lowered our financial guidance for FY '23 as a result of the ongoing softness we're seeing in the retail bookselling market and purchasing delays for educational materials on the part of schools and school districts, something that has impacted our quarter three results and we now expect to continue into quarter four. Our team has taken decisive steps to align short term spending across the company with our new top line outlook. They've dedicated themselves to initiatives to improve margins. The team is also being mindful to protect strategic growth initiatives that are essential to our near and long-term opportunities. We remain confident in the performance and long-term outlook for our business, in our market-leading children's book publishing and providing high quality blended learning solutions for schools and in our international business. Reflecting that optimism, in the third quarter, we returned over $50 million to shareholders, in addition to investing in key growth opportunities. We are more committed than ever to deploying our capital to drive long-term growth and sustained value for our shareholders and all stakeholders. This afternoon, I'd like to review our results and outlook in more detail. Ken will then walk through our financial results and revised expectations for fiscal 2023. I'd like to begin with an update on the current business environment where the headwinds we described on last quarter's call continue to affect our industry…

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon. Today I will refer to our adjuster results for the third quarter, excluding one-time items in the prior year period unless otherwise indicated. Now, we record no one-time items in this third quarter. Please refer to our press release table and SEC filings for complete discussion of one-time items. As Peter discussed, company performance was lower than expected, partly due to the near-term softness in the retail children's book market and ongoing purchasing delays by schools and district administrators. In children's books, our Book Fair's channel outperform the prior year, achieving higher fair count and revenue per fair, partially offsetting the selling challenges in the trade market and continuing trend in book clubs operations. We continue to experience higher costs due to inflationary and supply chain pressures. We're starting to see these higher costs slow. In education solutions, we took steps to adapt to a more challenging market environment. We also invest in our long-term literacy platform, including the upcoming launch of the new K3 phonic system, ready for reading, the integration of A2i and the buildout of staff and capabilities to compete in this education solutions market. Likewise, we're investing in modernized distribution assets and automation to reduce costs and improve customer service. We continue to see opportunities to optimize certain components of our business, while we see substantial growth opportunities in the education solution space and our book fairs operations. As such, we remain bullish on our long-term outlook for the future, but we acknowledge some short-term headwinds to our operations. As a result of the softness in the retail book market and the uncertainty of Q4 education solution sales, we have updated our guidance. We now expect adjusted EBITDA of $175 million to $185 million and revenue growth of approximately 4%.…

Thank you, Ken. Well, we're disappointed to see quarter three results come in lower than expected and to reduce our outlook for quarter four, Scholastic is strong and resilient. We've navigated much more significant challenges than today's short-term headwinds, emerging stronger, and holding our focus on our mission for long-term opportunity. I'm proud of the quick actions the team has taken to adjust spending and preserve margins in line with our adjusted top line outlook. Just as critically, we continue to focus on driving growth and creating shareholder value for the long term. We're sustaining our investments in key growth drivers like our literacy platform, while upholding our commitment to return substantial cash to our shareholders. We're optimistic about our future and look forward to sharing our plan for FY '24 and the longer term on our next call in July. So thank you all again for joining our call today. Jeff will conclude this afternoon's presentation for us.

Thank you, Peter. As a reminder, we invite questions to be directed to our IR mailbox investor_relations@scholastic.com. We appreciate your time and continuing support.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. End of Q&A: