Monro, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Monroe, Inc's earnings conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 2025. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question and answer section, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the call, please press the star zero on your touch-tone phone. And as a reminder, 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 Felix Vessler, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Monroe. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this morning's call. Before we get started, please note that as part of this call, we will be referencing a presentation that is available on the Investors section of our website at corporate.monroe.com forward slash investors. If I could draw your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement on slide two, I'd like to remind participants that our presentation includes some forward-looking statements about Monroe's future performance. 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. 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 and not be substitutes for comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations of such supplemental information to the comparable GAAP measures will be included as part of today's presentation and in our earnings release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Monroe's President and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Broderick.

Thank you, Felix, and good morning, everyone. This morning, I'd like to share an update with you on our first quarter accomplishments. After that, I'll outline several objectives that we plan to achieve in the second quarter. Before I begin, I'd like to recognize and thank all of our teammates for their dedication to Monroe and our customers. Turning to slide three, starting with our accomplishments in the first quarter, while we are not satisfied with our top line results, we are confident that we have begun to see our recently implemented initiatives take hold. We drove a significant acceleration in our comp store sales trends as the first quarter progressed. Importantly, we turned the corner in our tire category with a return to growth in units in the month of June. We continue to leverage the strength of our manufacturer-funded promotions, which allowed us to meet the needs of a value-oriented consumer while also optimizing the profitability of our tire assortment. And although we have more work to do to improve the performance of our higher margin service categories, the combination of our Confidrive digital courtesy inspection process, service coupon, and oil change offer allowed us to drive growth in both battery units and sales dollars in the month of June as well as an improvement in our service categories as the quarter progressed. In parallel with our top line initiatives, we continue to drive gross margin expansion in the first quarter with labor optimization through actions to reduce non-productive labor costs, including overtime hours in our stores, labor efficiency through productivity improvements, including scheduling, training, and our attachment selling initiatives, and lower material costs. Our gross margin expansion in the quarter represents another major step toward restoring our gross margins back to pre-COVID levels. Now onto our objectives for the second quarter. We will leverage the traction from our initiatives in the first quarter to achieve our second quarter objectives, which include improving store traffic trends driven by a keen focus on oil chain services, as well as continued growth in tire units, accelerating the performance of our key service categories and optimizing labor and efficiencies through continued improvements in productivity and maintaining prudent cost control. In summary, our recently implemented initiatives are beginning to drive an improvement in our top line results. Our comp store sales trends accelerated as the first quarter progressed, led by our tire category, which returned to unit growth in June. While we have more work to do to improve the performance of our higher margin service categories, growth in batteries in June, as well as an improvement in our service categories as the quarter progressed serve as evidence that our initiatives are working. Our gross margin expansion in the quarter through labor optimization, labor efficiency through productivity improvements, and lower material costs gives us further confidence that we remain on a path to restore our gross margins back to pre-COVID levels with double-digit operating margins over the longer term. The initiatives we put in place will enable us to achieve our second quarter objectives. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Brian, who will provide an overview of Monroe's first quarter performance, strong financial position, and additional color regarding fiscal 2025. Brian?