lululemon athletica inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Lululemon Athletica Inc. 4th Quarter and End Year 2019 Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Analysts who wish to join the question queue may press star then one on their telephone keypad. Should you need any assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Howard Toobin, Vice President, Investor Relations for Lululem Athletica Inc. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. Welcome to Lululemon's fourth quarter earnings conference call. Joining me today to talk about our results are Calvin McDonald, CEO, and PJ Guido, CFO. Before we get started, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements reflecting management's current forecast of certain aspects of Lululemon's future. These statements are based on current information which we have assessed, which by its nature is dynamic and subject to rapid and even abrupt changes. Actual results may differ materially from those contained or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business, including those we have disclosed in our most recent filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any of these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our annual report on Form 10-K and in today's earnings press release. Press release and accompanying annual report on Form 10-K are available under the investor section of our website at www.lululemon.com. Before we begin the call, I'd like to remind our investors to visit our investor site, where you'll find a summary of our key financial operating statistics for the fourth quarter, as well as our quarterly infographic. We're planning to end today's call in under an hour, so please limit yourself to one question at a time to give others the opportunity to have their questions addressed. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Calvin.

Thank you, Howard, and it's good to speak with all of you for our fourth quarter earnings call. We are very pleased with the strong performance of Lululemon both in the fourth quarter and throughout 2019 as we delivered nearly $4 billion in revenue. We continue to grow our core businesses while we strategically expand around the world and acquire new guests. The underlining health of our business is strong, and we entered 2020 with strong momentum. As you know, circumstances have changed dramatically in quarter one, given the spread of COVID-19. We're proud of the actions we've taken across our business to help protect our people and our guests as we navigate this situation. I'll begin my comments by discussing COVID-19 as it relates to our business and provide a brief overview of Quarter 4 and 2019. PJ Guido, our Chief Financial Officer, will then take you through our financials and provide more details on our more recent performance. We'll then take your questions. We plan to keep the call shorter than normal and wrap up in under an hour. Our hearts go out to all of those impacted by COVID-19. The safety and well-being of our people and our guests in the affected regions remains our highest priority. The current situation is clearly dynamic. Broadly speaking, and similar to many of our peers, we are seeing virus-related impact on performance across our markets, In North America and Europe, our stores have been closed since March 16th. Stores in New Zealand are closed at this time, while Australia is operating on reduced hours. In China, all of our stores except our location in Wuhan are open, with most operating on regular schedules. Our stores also remain open in other Asian markets except for Malaysia, where our two locations are currently closed. In addition, we are closely monitoring our supply chain and staying in constant contact with our vendors as they too navigate the situation. Given the rapidly changing nature of current events, we have decided not to provide financial guidance at this time. That said, the underlying health of our business is strong, which provides us with many levers to successfully manage through this period. These include, first, our strong balance sheet. We ended the year with $1.1 billion in cash, no long-term debt, and a $400 million untapped revolver. Second, our investments in key technologies, including RFID and strong partnerships with our vendors, will enable us to maximize inventory across our network while managing our overall levels. Third, the power of our products. Our assortment is less seasonal in nature, as many of our core styles are relevant year-round and can be held for future use. Fourth, the flexibility of our multi-channel business. Our e-commerce sites, mobile apps, and Omni capabilities allows our guests to shop in multiple ways, which is complemented by our agile store formats. And fifth, the strength of the category in which we compete. At our core, we solve sweaty problems for athletes, and we do not believe the current situation will change the trend toward people wanting to live an active and healthy lifestyle. These are some of the reasons we're confident in our abilities to navigate the near term while working to realize the opportunities over the longer term. In addition, we have early learnings from China which show us that our business will bounce back. We are not yet back to pre-closing volumes, but the business is getting stronger week by week. There is considerable work underway across the business to respond to the current situation, and I'd like to specifically update you on two of these work streams. The first is the support phase, and the second is how we will enable the recovery phase. I'll start with our support phase initiatives and how we are currently assisting our teams, our ambassadors, and our guests. We will do our best to open our stores as soon as possible when the recovery begins, and we'll approach this market by market based upon the latest information. I'm consistently inspired by the resilience of our people as they navigate the unknown and connect even more regularly than ever before. In terms of our guests, our e-commerce sites continue to operate around the world so we can continue to fulfill their needs with our product. Similar to what we've done for our own people, we have been offering online sweat sessions for our guests with yoga, meditation, Pilates, dance, and train classes. Our teams in North America and Europe have followed the lead of our people in China, where we've gained thousands of new followers on WeChat. On Instagram, during our first week of store closures, and thanks to our increased content offerings, we saw nearly 170,000 guests join us for our live classes. It's inspiring to see the strength of our guests come together this way, and we'll continue to stay closely connected as we navigate what's ahead. And finally, our ambassadors remain top of mind as well. We are in constant contact, and they are continuing to help us engage with our local communities through these virtual sweat sessions. As many of our ambassadors are small business owners who have been forced to close their doors, we just launched a global ambassador relief fund