Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc.

Hello, thank you for standing by and welcome to Sprout's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Susanna Livington, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased you have taken the time to join Sprouts on our first quarter 2022 earnings call. Jack Sinclair, Chief Executive Officer, and Chip Malloy, Chief Financial Officer, are with me today. The earnings release announcing our first quarter 2022 results, the webcast of this call, and quarterly slides can be accessed through the investor relations section of our website at investors.sprouts.com. During this call, management may make certain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our expectations for 2022 and beyond. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our SEC filings, along with the commentary on forward-looking statements at the end of our earnings release issued today. Our remarks today include references to non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP figures, please see the tables in our earnings release. With that, let me hand it over to Jack.

Thank you, Susanna, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased with solid first quarter results and believe it is a sign that many of the strategic changes we've made over the past couple of years are beginning to materialize. The turn to positive comp sales supported by positive comp transactions, while at the same time maintaining stable gross margins, was extremely encouraging. During the quarter, we successfully attracted new health enthusiasts and innovation-seeking customers. by continuing to focus on providing both the freshest produce at great prices, along with a wide variety of differentiated attribute-based products. This was especially important during the all-important New Year's resolution season. Our earnings for the quarter benefited as our pricing caught up with inflationary trends, leading to better than expected gross margins. We also made good strides in our unit growth objective with the addition of six new stores that spanned across Colorado, Texas and Florida. One of the stores that opened during the quarter and the majority of the remaining stores opening this year will be in our new format. All of this was possible due to the resilient Sprouts team. Many thanks to them as they remain diligent in keeping our fresh supply chain running and our shelves stocked while at the same time caring for our customers by providing friendly service and product knowledge. While we are pleased with our strategic changes and the positive impact they have had on the business, the near-term landscape has changed a bit since our last conversation with you, which is slightly impacting our outlook for the remainder of the year. Chip will provide details relating to our financial performance and our current outlook, and then I will follow up with more details relating to our focus for the remainder of 2022 and how we're navigating the current environment. With that, I would like to turn it over to Chip.