Grocery Outlet Holding Corp.

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

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss grocery outlets first quarter financial results. Participants on this call will make forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results from these statements. Any such items, including our outlook for fiscal 2020 and future performance, should be considered forward-looking statements within the meeting 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 periodic reports we file with the SEC, all of which may be found on our website at investors.greysteryoutlet.com or on 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, in our SEC filings, and on the Investors tab of our website. 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. Thanks, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you and your families remain healthy and safe. We are continuing our social distancing effort, so Joe, Charles, RJ, and I will once again be conducting our earnings call remotely. Our discussion today will be primarily focused on providing you with an update on how we've been operating our business through the coronavirus pandemic, as well as how we expect to operate our business moving forward. Starting with our top priorities, our efforts remain centered around ensuring our safety of our team and communities, supporting our IOs, Working with suppliers to purchase product and continuing to deliver strong operational execution. First, to safeguard our IOs, their store teams and customers, comprehensive safety measures in line with the CDC and public health guidelines have been enacted across the organization. Examples of safety measures the IOs have instituted include cleaning stations at the entrance, space markers to ensure social distancing, plexiglass barriers at the checkouts, as well as precautionary signage throughout the entire store. We have temporarily provided incremental financial support to offset some of these incremental costs in the spirit of our partnership with the IOs. We recognize that they and their teams have been on the front lines of this pandemic and provide a vital service to their communities, and we're incredibly grateful for their outstanding efforts. Second, our purchasing teams have done just an amazing job of leveraging their vendor relationships to keep up with demand for opportunistic and everyday products. We have been working closely with our supplier partners to buy product to meet customer demand throughout the pandemic, while at the same time finding new sources of supply. We cannot overstate the value of our long-standing partnerships, and we continuously strive to be a great solution provider for our suppliers we work with. Third, our supply chain. With the significant increase in demand that began in mid-March, we increased the frequency of deliveries and many more. Our flexible business model, value orientation, localized approach, and product offering have enabled us to effectively navigate through the initial stages of the pandemic and deliver a 17% comp growth in the first quarter. We are all extremely proud of the team's success in managing through this difficult period. Turning to an update on our real estate expansion strategy, we have opened 10 stores in the first quarter and have been working closely with our developers to get the remainder of our planned stores open by year-end. Despite the delays related to COVID-19, we still expect to open 28 to 30 stores this year. We feel good about the opportunities in front of us and continue to build our pipeline to a 10% annual unit growth. While we continue to focus on our response to COVID-19, we have not lost sight of our growth strategies and remain committed to making investments that will enable us to capture the long-term potential of our business. We know that people are one of the best long-term investments we can make. To that end, we recently hired Andrea Bortner to the newly created role of Chief Human Resources Officer. Andrea brings 30 years of experience in talent acquisition and development, as well as organizational development, which will be instrumental as we grow and scale our business over the coming years. We are excited to have Andrea on board to help contribute to the next chapter of our growth. With that, I'll turn it over to RJ.