BJ's Restaurants, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the BJ's Restaurant's fourth quarter 2024 earnings release conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the 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. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ronna Shermer, Director of SEC Reporting. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Fiscal 2024 Fourth Quarter Investor Conference Call and Webcast. After the market closed today, we released our financial results for our fiscal 2024 fourth 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 guarantees of 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 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 uncertainties 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 Richmond, our interim chief executive officer, followed by Lyle Tick, our president and chief concept officer, and Tom Hodick, our chief financial officer. After our prepared remarks, we will take your questions. And with that, I will turn the call over to Brad Richmond. Brad?

Thank you, Rana, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today as we discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 performance, as well as our outlook for 2025. Before we dive into our results, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the devastating impact of the wildfire here in the Los Angeles area. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by these fires. I want to express our deep gratitude to the first responders who worked tirelessly in these challenging conditions. I'd also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our local restaurant leaders, team members who have gone above and beyond providing support to the first responders and local residents, offering meals, refreshments, and even safe spaces for those affected by the fires. We couldn't be prouder of their community engagement and spirit of generosity. We also know that some of our team members have been directly impacted and a few have tragically lost their homes. BJ's team member support fund, which we call Give a Slice, came to the aid of these members in their time of need. The fund is supported by voluntary donations from team members who contribute from each of their paychecks. We are grateful for their generosity and support of the BJ's family. Now turning to the fourth quarter, I'm pleased to report that the breadth of our momentum of our progress is clearly reflected in our financial performance. comparable same restaurant sales were very strong, margins continued to improve, and our cash flow is both resilient and increasing. What's even more exciting is that there's still ample opportunity to build upon these achievements and further strengthen each of these key financial metrics as we move forward. We made significant progress on our first phase of initiatives, and I'm impressed by what we've accomplished in such a short time. This progress also fuels my optimism as I see more untapped potential for the BJ's brand in the near term. Our early goals have been met, the foundation is strengthening, and we now have more clarity and actual plans in place to drive future success. To provide deeper insights into our recent progress and near-term initiatives, Lyle will discuss our brand positioning efforts and growth plans later in the call. And Tom will review our fourth quarter and annual results and share our expectations for 2025. But before he does, let me quickly recap our fourth quarter financial results. Comp sales for the quarter were 5.5%, driven primarily by guest traffic, with strength across all day parts and all channels. Each month of the quarter, we delivered sales meaningfully above the Black Box benchmark levels. Also important to note, the QLE comps did benefit by approximately 100 basis points from favorable holiday shifts. Our margin enhancement initiatives began to deliver meaningful results late in November and leveraged our top-line growth to achieve restaurant-level margins of 15.4%, up 100 basis points to last year. Restaurant-level operating profit reached $52.9 million, a 14% increase to last year, which set a record for Q4 restaurant profitability. Adjusted EBITDA was $33.1 million in the fourth quarter, a 21% increase from the prior year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.6%, 120 basis points improvement from last year, and we were able to deliver this significant profit growth while making meaningful investments in brand positioning initiatives. In the fourth quarter, we engaged in significant work around strengthening our brand and business model, leveraging external resources to increase the certainty and accelerate the pace of our efforts. Lal will go into more detail on this shortly, but we are energized by the preliminary insights and are excited to bring these fresh perspectives to life. Additionally, We made some key leadership changes. The charges for these two items increased G&As approximately 100 basis points in the quarter, but are largely transitory and already behind us with only a small amount remaining for the first half of 2025. We also conducted a thorough review of our restaurant portfolio and determined that no restaurants needed to be closed. We also reassessed our new restaurant pipeline applying a more refined set of criteria, which we believe will lead to more consistency in our new restaurant opening performance. This led to the removal of some sites from our new restaurant pipeline as they no longer meet our revised criteria. These two reviews were the primary drivers of the charge for asset disposals and impairments in the quarter, which I remind you is a non-cash item and does not impact our restaurant's operations. In summary, Q4 was a strong quarter with meaningful progress across multiple areas. I want to extend my thanks to Lyle, our leadership team, and our 21,000-plus team members for their hard work and agility in delivering these results in quick order. Their efforts have laid a solid foundation as we move into 2025. With that, let me turn it over to Lyle to talk more broadly about our brand refresh and growth initiatives.