Thanks, Sheila, and welcome, everybody, to the Winnebago Industries Second Quarter Fiscal 2012 Conference Call.
The second quarter held many challenges for us. Sarah will get into the details of the financials in a minute. But first, I want to make a few overall comments.
It's not uncommon for the winter season to present challenges in the RV industry. Seasonal slowdown that often accompanies the winter season, in conjunction with excess motorized industry capacity, created a competitive environment, which negatively impacted our business. Specifically, certain discount programs were offered to secure additional volume in the quarter and minimize production shutdowns, which would've resulted in additional unabsorbed overhead and higher inventory levels. Unfortunately, these programs, along with some raw material cost pressures that were not passed on, impacted results to the point illustrated in our financial release.
Within the quarter, I had the opportunity to visit with several dealers on both coasts, with trips to California and Florida. Dealership visits give me the opportunity to be face to face with our wholesale partners in their business environment. It gives me a good perspective on what they're seeing in their expectations.
In Florida, we were also able to combine a dealer visit with a rally at one of our largest dealers, Lazydays, in Seffner, Florida, allowing us to interact with our Motor Home retail customers as well. Based on dealer sentiment and what I see going forward, there are reasons to be optimistic about the remainder of our fiscal year. We're better positioned this year in relation to model year changeover being essentially sold out of current model year product ahead of the changeover, which is a third quarter event.
Inventories at the factory and dealerships are lean by most measures. And for the first time in 4 years, we're scheduled to resume our annual dealer meeting, we call Dealer Days. That'll take place in May and it affords us the opportunity to meet with our dealer partners and showcase our exciting lineup of new or redesigned motor homes, fifth wheels and travel trailers.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Sarah for the financial review.