Academy Sports and Outdoors, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Academy Sports and Outdoors first quarter of fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, this call is being recorded and all participants are in a listening mode. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a brief question and answer session. Questions will be limited to analysts and investors. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. To ask your question during the call, please press star 1. If you require any operator assistance during the call, please press star 0. I'll now turn the call over to Matt Hodges, Vice President of Investor Relations for Academy Sports and Outdoors. Matt, please go ahead.

Thanks operator. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining the Academy Sports and Outdoors first quarter 2021 results call today. Participating on the call are Ken Hicks, Chairman, President and CEO, Michael Mullikens, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Steve Lawrence, Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer. For reference, The earnings release issued this morning is available at investors.academy.com. And as a reminder, statements in today's earnings release and the comments made by management during this call may be considered forward-looking statements and are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions under the federal securities law. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to the factors identified in the earnings release and in our filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. Today's remarks refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings release, which is provided on our investor relations website. I will now turn the call over to Ken Hicks, CEO.

Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to start by thanking our Academy sports and outdoor team members for their hard work and commitment as we continue to navigate these challenging times. I remain extremely proud of our team as we pass the one year mark of being fully open and back to work in our stores, distribution centers, and corporate offices. It is remarkable what we have been able to achieve in the last year. Our top priority remains customer and team member safety as we strive to be the best sports and outdoors retailer by providing fun for all through assortments, value, and experience. Following the terrific fiscal 2020, fiscal 2021 is off to a strong start as we achieved another record quarter. Sales were $1.58 billion, a 39.1% increase over the prior year quarter. Comparable sales were 38.9% and diluted earnings per share were $1.84. This is the seventh consecutive quarter of positive comparable sales and operating profit growth. We continue to see strong demand across all product categories and geographic regions. As we emerge from the pandemic, our customers are coming back more often and shopping more areas of the store as sports and outdoors remain a meaningful part of their lives. While sales did see a benefit from government issued stimulus checks, we believe there are other important long-term drivers of our business, such as the strategic actions taken over the last few years to increase operational efficiencies and improve margin rates. A change in lifestyle that is driving a shift in consumer spending for sports and outdoors categories, including bikes, camping, fishing, grilling, and backyard entertainment. Existing customers shopping more often and discovering more products in new categories. Introducing millions of new customers to our brand over the past year. Our customer base is strengthening as many of these new customers are more female, younger, and more diverse than our historical base. These drivers have not only increased sales, but have also led to significant profit growth as the retail best practices we put in place continue to drive margin dollar flow through. In addition, we continue to enhance overall store experience. Importantly, this includes strengthening relationship with partners like Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, North Face, Columbia, and Yeti. Together, we are making mutual investments to improve in-store presentation, attracting new customers to their brands through refined assortments and better storytelling in our stores and on our website, and securing new product lines and investing in and training sales enthusiasts who love their products. We're doing all these things to offer our customers the best shopping experience for the latest and greatest products from some of the world's best brands, including our own private label brands. Steve will provide more color on our efforts to expand that business. Additionally, in the quarter, we added more features to academy.com, executed more targeted marketing campaigns, which have had a powerful impact on our marketing success and cost efficiency. kicked off our supply chain initiative, and continued our power merchandising work. We will continue to invest in all of these areas, focusing on the customer to drive growth in existing stores online and in the future, new stores and new markets as we plan eight to 10 new stores in 2022. Our financial results are evidence of the positive impact the ongoing activities are having on the business. Based on the strong performance, we are increasing our full-year 2021 comparable sales and EPS expectations, being mindful of ever-changing macroeconomic factors. Michael will share more details about our updated 2021 outlook. I also want to highlight two actions that demonstrate our commitment to being good stewards of your capital. After the first quarter ended, we participated in a secondary offering as a buyer of $100 million of our common stock. We felt it was a good opportunity to reduce the outstanding shares at a discounted market price. We also reduced the interest rate on our term loan by 125 basis points and paid down the outstanding balance by 25% or $99 million. Our momentum for 2020 has carried through the first quarter. We're focused on maintaining it by cultivating and strengthening our customer relationships in-store and online to increase sales and profits and bring funds for all. I will now turn the call over to Michael for a review of the financials. Michael?