BJ's Restaurants, Inc.

star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad, and to withdraw from the queue, you may press star then two. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Ronna Shermer, Director of SEC Reporting. Ronna, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our fiscal 2024 third quarter investor conference call and webcast. After the market closed today, we released our financial results for our fiscal 2024 third quarter. You can view the full text of our earnings release on our website at www.bjsrestaurants.com. I will begin by reminding you that our comments on the conference call today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the private securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guaranteed a future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. These statements are based on management's current business and market expectations, and our actual results could differ materially from those projections in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or to make any other forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required to do so by the securities laws. Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and guarantees associated with forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We will start today's call with prepared remarks from Brad Richman, our Interim Chief Executive Officer, followed by Lyle Tick, our President and Chief Concept Officer, and Tom Hodek, our Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we will take your questions. And with that, I will turn the call over to Brad Richman. Brad?

Thank you, Ronna, and hello to those listening in. We appreciate you dialing in to hear us talk about our third quarter results. I see several familiar names and some new ones I look forward to meeting soon. I'm excited to be here at BJ's and what lies ahead for our brand and for our shareholders. Lal and I see a number of strengths to leverage, and modest challenges that are readily addressable. Our highest priority is a thorough discovery of the brand, its challenges and opportunities, and a serious evaluation of our activities, spending, and investments. This is well underway, and we are moving with urgency to shape our plans for 2025. We start from a position of relative strength as the brand serves over a million guests a week, has 220,000 dedicated team members who generate annual sales of more than $1.3 billion and free cash flow from operations in excess of $100 million. While there is a good bit of work to be done, our experience and current observation suggest we have permission to be optimistic of what the brand can deliver to our guests, team members, and investors. We will speak in greater details on our learnings and plans when we report fourth quarter earnings and full year 2024 results, but we'll share some of our initial thinking today. Lyle will comment more on our near-term learnings and thoughts in a moment, and Tom will take us through the third quarter performance details and our outlook for fourth quarter. And then we look forward to taking your questions and sharing our thoughts. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question, then return to the queue. The three of us will remain here on the line to take all your questions. Let me begin with some brief third quarter highlights and early thoughts regarding our emerging financial discipline. The third quarter was significant in that we generated positive traffic and meaningfully outpaced Black Box competitive set by employing a limited time everyday price point approachable promotion featuring a limited number of offerings that are appealing to guests, support our gross margin criteria, and feature our iconic bouzoukis offered during the weekdays. We are in a highly competitive environment where there are a significant number of major players, national brands competing on value with substantially more marketing spend than what we have, but we're demonstrating we can win in this space. However, we did not flow through as much of the third quarter incremental sales gains to earnings as we would expect. We have identified and addressed those challenges, and as the offer continues through the fourth quarter, we expect to generate higher flow through and stronger margin levels. Tom will walk us through that detail later. We are instilling a more structured and disciplined approach around our financial policies. All capital employment must be a value creating investment. Our remodel program has demonstrated good results in this regard. We need to increase our individual site success rate to raise overall value creation delivered, but we believe we have identified the opportunities and have the elements to make the necessary adjustments. Our current remodel program pace remains on track with the potential to increase the pace in the new fiscal year. New restaurant investment has not consistently achieved a hurdle rate return at all locations. We are evaluating our market penetration strategy and site selection criteria to improve results while maintaining a reduced opening pace as we fine-tune these elements. But ultimately, new units are integral to our growth and value creating proposition. As we look forward, we are assessing the optimal capital structure for our business, which has a durable cash flow generating capabilities. We look forward to sharing our learnings with our fiscal year results on this matter. In the interim, our cash flows exceed our high probability value-creating investment opportunities. During this period, these excess funds will be returned to shareholders in the form of a well-structured and disciplined share repurchase program, similar to what was adopted post the leadership changes. So, more to come on these topics, but we need to complete a thorough discovery and develop our going forward plans to inform our financial projections for 2025 before we get into greater detail. However, these comments highlight a rigor around financial decisions and the directions we take going forward. With that, let me turn it over to Law for some of his initial observations and thoughts.