Five Below, Inc.

Good day and welcome to Five Below Second Quarter 2024 Earnings 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 touch-tone phone. 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 Christiana Pelz, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Drew. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for Five Below Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. On today's call are Tom Bellios, Executive Chairman and Founder, and Ken Bull, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer. and Christy Chipman, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. After management has made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. I need to remind you that certain comments made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Those risks and uncertainties are described in the press release in our SEC filing. The forward-looking statements made today are as of the date of this call, and we do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements. In this presentation, we will refer to our SG&A expenses. For us, SG&A means selling general and administrative expenses, including payroll and other compensation, marketing and advertising expense, depreciation and amortization expense, and other selling and administrative expenses. Additionally, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of these items to U.S. GAAP are included in today's press release. If you do not have a copy of today's press release, you may obtain one by visiting the investor relations page of our website at fivebelow.com. I will now turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you, Christiana, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our fiscal second quarter results and our path forward. Over the past six weeks, I have been heavily engaged with the company, working closely with Ken and the team as we thoroughly assessed our business challenges, navigated the CEO transition, and launched the search for a permanent CEO. When David and I founded Five Below, our vision was clear, to be the go-to destination for preteens and teens, a cool store for kids and a yes store for parents. Our mission has always been to deliver an exciting assortment of extreme value, trend right, high quality products in a fun shopping environment. We have always been intensely focused on the customer and this commitment has made Five Below a successful standout growth retailer. Over the past few years, we lost some of that sharp focus on our core customers. Since 2022, we launched a new store format, opened over 450 new stores, remodeled over 750 locations, and overexpanded our product assortment. We did this all while managing a challenging macro environment and consumer shifts, which stretched our teams. We know the resulting issues are fixable. In fact, work is already underway and we are committed to an operational and strategic refocus of our business. Going forward, we are refocusing on our core customers. We are prioritizing initiatives that enhance value, improve the shopping experience, streamline our operations, and ensure that we meet the evolving needs of our customers. Specifically, We need to regain our speed and intensity in identifying and bringing in key trend items into our stores that delight our customers. We need to deliver more wow and value, which for Five Below is the intersection of trend, quality, and price. We are fortunate to have an engaged, energized, and motivated team who understand the task at hand and the steps necessary to execute. We are confident in our leadership with Ken at the helm. His operational experience, knowledge of the business, and keen understanding of our culture position us well to execute this reset of our business. As we move forward, we are fully committed to making the necessary changes to deliver the wow factor our customers, associates, and shareholders deserve. Together, we will emerge stronger and more vibrant than ever. And with that, I will hand it over to Ken to give you more information on our strategy and initiatives. Ken?