Grocery Outlet Holding Corp.

Greetings and welcome to Grocery Outlet's fourth quarter 2019 earnings results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Joseph Pellin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may now begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss grocery outlets' fourth quarter and fiscal 2019 results. Participants on this call will make forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such items, including our outlook for fiscal 2020 and future performance, should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. A description of these factors can be found in this afternoon's press release, as well as in our latest prospectus and pre-audit reports we file with the SEC, all of which may be found on our website at investors.grosseryoutlet.com or sec.gov. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information. During our call, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial information, including adjusted items. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures as well as the description, limitations, and rationale for using each measure may be found in the supplemental financial tables included in this afternoon's press release and in our SEC filings. We reference non-GAAP measures in some of our financial discussions as we believe they more accurately represent the true operational performance and underlying results of our business. Presenting on today's call will be Grocery Outlet's Chief Executive Officer, Eric Lindberg, President, RJ Sheedy, and Chief Financial Officer Charles Brocker. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. With that, I'll turn it over to Eric.

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope that you are well and safe. I want to let you know that as part of our social distancing efforts, Joe, Charles, RJ and I are all in separate locations handling this call and the Q&A remotely. Bear with us as sound quality and coordination may be a little less than optimal. In light of the coronavirus pandemic and current environment, the focus of our call today will be on how we are and our independent operators are supporting customers through this challenging and uncertain time. First, safety remains our number one priority. We continue to make numerous precautions with health and safety in mind. We are deemed essential businesses in communities and states that have issued shelter-in-place mandates and stores remain open to serve our customers. Our IOs and their staff are on the front lines and I want them to know how much we value their incredible efforts in helping the communities they serve. The ongoing safety and health of our corporate employees, the IOs, their staff, our vendor partners, and our customers remains our top priority and we are taking precautions to ensure their well-being. In that effort, we've enacted various safety measures including the cancellation of our annual supplier meeting, the elimination of non-essential business travel, Moving all employees who are able to to work from home and maintaining a work environment according to the CDC guidelines for all those employees still needed in our offices. We will continue to stay vigilant on these activities according to the guidance from the World Health Organization, the CDC, and local health organizations for as long as absolutely necessary. Due to our significantly higher customer demand, our buying organizations, supply chain teams, and IOs are working around the clock to keep shelves stocked for our customers. Our purchasing team is intently focused on working with our vendor partners to replenish the high-demand products for our stores. We have been working very closely with suppliers to purchase these basic needs such as water, paper supplies, rice and beans, and canned goods. We are, among many others, experiencing some delay for those items. But broadly speaking, we continue to have good access to product and are purchasing aggressively to keep our warehouses full. We are incredibly grateful for the support we've been seeing from our vendors as well as the diligence of our buying team in this effort. It's a real testament to the value of the long-standing relationships we have with our partners. As for the supply chain, we're working hard to get products into stores as quickly as possible. We've made several adjustments in the past week based on sudden spikes in demand that we've seen. I wanted to recognize everyone in our logistics network for the dedication to supporting stores and customers. That includes our distribution center employees, our transportation fleet drivers, our third-party vendors, our DSC suppliers and their drivers, all of whom are working nonstop to keep goods on the shelves. Our IOs and their employees are working extremely hard as well to support their local communities with essential products and are continuously looking for resourceful ways to handle the high volume of customers and business. Their efforts truly exemplify the entrepreneurship and the community-first traits this company was founded upon. We are so proud to see their commitment to customers and know that their communities are extremely grateful to have them there. We realize that these are very challenging times and I just want to say thank you to them for their tireless efforts. During times like these, we are reminded of the critical role Grocery Outlet plays in so many local communities. Our business model is particularly well suited to serve them due to our value orientation, flexibility of our purchasing model, and the many benefits of a local independent operator operating the store. Our dedicated and nimble corporate team is working together with our community of IOs to find solutions. As unpredictable as the future environment may be, we think that we're well-positioned to continue to serve these communities and deliver on our mission of touching lives for the better. And while we are very much focused today on the here and now, we are also not taking our eye off the long-term objectives. In that regard, I wanted to share that during the fourth quarter, we expanded our board of directors with the addition of two highly experienced independent members. Jeb Bachman brings a wealth of experience in audit and risk management as a tenured executive at PWC and will also serve as chairman of our audit and risk management committee. Mary Kay Haven comes to us with 33 years of experience in global brand management in the food industry where she successfully led several multi-billion dollar divisions at Wrigley following a 27 year career at Kraft Foods. We are already benefiting from their experience and look forward to their contributions as we continue to execute our growth strategies. I'll now turn the call over to RJ to provide more details on our efforts.