Citi Trends, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the CTRN Third Quarter 2019 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 zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, November 26, 2019. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nitza 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 Peter Soxie, a member of our board and currently serving as Special Advisor to the CEO, and our Chief Financial Officer, Stuart Clifford. We were very pleased with our return to positive comparable store sales during the third quarter. Our strategic reallocation of merchandise mix more towards the growing non-apparel lines continued to produce strong sales increases in the accessory and home categories. It is also important to note that within apparel, Our ladies and men's categories both contributed to the sales growth, despite a significantly leaner inventory investment in this year's third quarter. In fact, total inventory investment was down 3% at the end of the third quarter, including a 7% decrease in inventory in comparable stores. This decrease in inventory, together with a 2.6% increase in comparable store sales in the quarter, resulted in a much improved inventory turnover rate. As we enter the fourth quarter, we are very pleased with the quality of our merchandise and the inventory liquidity that we have to chase trends and capitalize on opportunistic merchandise deals. We were pleased to see our strongest sales increases in the last month of the third quarter, and we believe our shift more towards non-apparel merchandise will benefit the holiday season Due to the heavier gift-giving nature of the assortment during that period. Now I will turn the call over to Stuart to provide additional details on the results before I discuss future plans and expectations.