BJ's Restaurants, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the BJ's Restaurant's first quarter 2025 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 2025 first quarter investor conference call and webcast. After the market closed today, we released our financial results for our fiscal 2025 first 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 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 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 to discuss our performance for the fiscal first quarter of 2025 and updated annual outlook for 2025. Our first quarter comp sales performance was strong, driven by significant traffic growth, which meaningfully outpaced the industry. While sales were a bit behind our internal expectation, the shortfall was isolated to February, where monthly comps were negative due to adverse weather and the delay in federal income tax refund processing. But January and March comp growth was strong at approximately plus 3%. in line with our expectations. Importantly, our operating initiatives delivered improved guest satisfaction scores, which bodes well for future sales growth. And we expanded margins beyond the normal sales growth leveraging expectations. As a result of the stronger margin performance, we've raised our earnings expectations and increased our planned share buyback range. Tom will take you through those details in a minute. Even amidst the potential macroeconomic headwinds in 2025, we believe we are well positioned to continue to be a share taker and expand margins as we look across the remainder of the year. Underlying this are well-developed near-term sales growth drivers, initiatives around operational excellence, and executing at our best, while also supporting investments in our longer-term strategic initiatives to create shareholder value beyond 2025. Before I turn it over to Lau to walk you through a few of those key highlights, I want to thank our restaurant operators who make this happen every day at every restaurant for every guest, our support team centers who have raised their level of support to enable our operators to perform better, and the rest of our leadership team, who have been very agile and adaptive in developing and implementing near-term actions, and have put in the extra effort to develop our broader strategic initiatives as we move this business ahead with more clarity and certainty. And a big thanks to Lyle for his guidance through the early phases of this journey. His insight and leadership have been instrumental in our progress. And we believe BJ's is well positioned for the long term. With that, let me turn it over to Lyle to talk more broadly about our brand refresh and growth initiatives.