Founded in 1932, Ethan Allen Interiors Inc., through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Ethan Allen Global, Inc., and Ethan Allen Global, Inc.’s subsidiaries (collectively, “we,” “us,” “our,” “Ethan Allen” or the “Company”), is a leading interior design company, manufacturer and retailer in the home furnishings marketplace. Today we are a global luxury international home fashion brand that is vertically integrated from design through delivery, which affords our customers a value proposition of style, quality and price. We provide complimentary interior design service to our customers and sell a full range of furniture products and decorative accents through a retail network of approximately 300 design centers in the United States and abroad as well as online at ethanallen.com. The design centers represent a mix of independent licensees and Company-owned and operated locations. As of September 30, 2020, our Company operates 144 retail design centers, with 138 located in the United States and the remaining six in Canada. The majority of the independently operated design centers are in Asia, with the remaining independently operated design centers located throughout the United States, the Middle East and Europe. We also own and operate nine manufacturing facilities including six manufacturing plants in the United States, two manufacturing plants in Mexico and one manufacturing plant in Honduras.

COVID-19 Update

The COVID-19 crisis has challenged our operations, but our associates continue to persevere through these challenges. Our primary focus has been to operate in a safe manner, for our associates and clients. As our design centers began to reopen, we implemented various mitigating and safety protocols recommended by the CDC guidelines for operating businesses safely. We established logistics for the supply of hand sanitizer and related dispensers, disinfectant cleaning supplies, masks and nitrile gloves, and have increased the cleaning frequency of our design centers and other facilities. For the safety of our associates in our design centers we require all associates and clients to wear masks.

In our initial response to the COVID-19 health crisis, we undertook immediate action and made adjustments to our business operations, including temporary design center and manufacturing plant closings, a reduction in headcount, curtailing certain operating expenses, suspension of our dividend and share repurchases and delaying investments and capital expenditures. Our approach to the crisis continues to evolve as business trends substantially improved during the first quarter of fiscal 2021. Given the positive trends in cash flows, during the first quarter of fiscal 2021, we repaid the remaining $50.0 million in outstanding debt, previously borrowed under our credit facility in March 2020. We also resumed production in our North American manufacturing plants to work through existing order backlog and have ramped up to near full production by the end of September 2020. The temporary salary reductions were lifted, effective June 30, 2020, as planned and we have brought back many of our associates previously furloughed in April 2020. Further, on August 4, 2020, our Board of Directors reinstated the regular quarterly cash dividend and declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.21 per share, payable on October 22, 2020.

While we continue to serve our customers and operate our business while managing the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, and have now reopened substantially all of our retail locations in the U.S. and Canada, there can be no assurance that future COVID-19 related developments will not have an impact on our business, results of operations or financial condition since the extent and duration of the health crisis remains highly uncertain. We will continue to make decisions regarding the sources and uses of capital in our business to reflect and adapt to changes in market conditions, including any lasting effects of COVID-19. Future adverse developments in connection with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, including additional waves of COVID-19 outbreaks, evolving international, federal, state and local restrictions and safety regulations in response to COVID-19, changes in consumer behavior, health concerns, the pace of economic activity in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, or other similar issues could adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition in the future, or including our financial results and business performance for fiscal 2021.