Monro, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Monroe, Inc.' 's earnings conference call for third quarter fiscal 2021. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require operator assistance during the call, please press star zero on your touchtone phone. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference call is being recorded. and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission from the company. I would now like to introduce Ms. Maureen Mulholland, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Monroe. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this morning's call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind participants that during the course of this conference call, Management may make statements about Monroe's future performance that contain forward-looking information. Actual results may differ materially from those suggested by our comments today. The most significant factors that could affect future results are outlined in Monroe's filings with the SEC and in our earnings release, and include the significant uncertainty relating to the duration and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our customers, executive officers, and employees. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Additionally, on today's call, management statements include a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement but not to be substitutes for comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations of such supplemental information to the comparable GAAP measures will be included in our earnings release. Rob Meller, Monroe's Board Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Brian D'Ambrosia, Chief Financial Officer, are joining us today. For the question and answer portion of the call, our Chief Operating Officer, Rob Rakowski, will also be available to take questions. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Rob Meller. Rob?

Thank you, Maureen, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This morning I will talk about our third quarter results and the positive outlook for our business. We had a tough third quarter, which you can see in our results. While there are a number of reasons for this, including general market conditions, the principal reason was our earlier success in downsizing our store staffing levels to align effectively our operations with the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on our revenues. Our prompt and decisive management actions allowed us to stay ahead of the curve. At the outset of the pandemic, we focused our efforts on right-sizing technician staffing levels at each store to meet lower demand. When demand picked up, we had to recruit hundreds of technicians, and in fact, we have recruited over 700 technicians since July. but ramping up this number of new teammates presented a challenge. Getting our new teammates on board, introducing them to our operating standards, and getting them to full run rate in each store could not be done in a day or even a week, for each new recruit takes time before they can become fully productive, and some just don't work out. This was reflected in our October and November labor productivity levels, and directly impacted our top line. Stores were not able to meet all the demand and sales opportunities were missed. During the third quarter, we accomplished the onboarding task and have reversed this trend. December was the best month of the quarter with earnings only a few cents below our pre-COVID-19 December results of last year. Our new technicians are making significant contributions to sales, margins, and earnings. January is looking even better, with positive comparable store sales ahead of last year's pre-COVID-19 levels. We are encouraged by these positive trends, and we are well positioned to drive higher same-store sales and profitability going forward. Importantly, we remain financially strong and well positioned to execute against all of our growth initiatives. We look forward to fiscal 2022 with confidence our organization is stronger battle-hardened and proud of coming through an unprecedented year our initiatives are working as brian will discuss further in a moment and we look forward with confidence in our business and with that i'll turn the call over to brian who will provide additional detail on all our financial performance and recent acquisition brian thank you rob and good morning everybody