Citi Trends, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the CTRN 2Q19 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, August 22, 2019. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Nitsa McKee, Senior Associate. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Our earnings release was sent out this morning at 6.45 a.m. Eastern Time. If you have not received the copy of the release, it is available on the company's website under the Investor Relations section at www.citytrends.com. You should be aware that prepared remarks made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These statements do not guarantee future performance, therefore you should not place undue reliance on these statements. We refer you to the company's most recent report on Form 10-K, and other subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Smith. Bruce?

Thanks, Nitsa. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. Also on the call is our Chief Financial Officer, Stuart Clifford, and our Senior Vice President of Merchandising, Christina Short. As the second quarter progressed, our sales trends began to improve, and I'm pleased to report that the momentum has continued early in the third quarter. Despite a slow start to the second quarter, our comparable store sales decrease of 1.2% was at the more favorable end of our guidance. The non-apparel part of our business, consisting of accessories and home merchandise, continued to grow. And while apparel sales declined, the trend was better in the latter part of the second quarter and has also continued to show improved performance early in the third quarter. We continue to strategically reallocate more inventory dollars towards the growing non-apparel lines, which will gain in importance as we approach the holiday season when non-apparel gift items resonate with our customers. Although we are shifting inventory dollars from apparel to non-apparel, We still believe that we can improve recent apparel sales trends during the back half of the year, particularly considering that we will be comparing results to a period of time last year when we had some specific ladies' apparel fashion misses. It's important to note that we were very pleased with our efforts in the second quarter to improve inventory turns and maintain inventory liquidity. We entered the third quarter in a very clean and high-quality inventory position, as reflected in a 5% reduction in inventory levels, including a 14% decline in comparable stores' inventory. Now I will turn the call over to Stuart to provide additional details on the results before I discuss future plans and expectations.