Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. At that time, you will hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker. Susanna Livingston, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased you are joining Sprouts on our first quarter 2024 earnings call. Jack Sinclair, Chief Executive Officer, and Curtis Valentine, Chief Financial Officer, are with me today. The earnings release announcing our first quarter 2024 results, the webcast of this call, and financial 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 2024 and beyond. These statements involve several risks and uncertainties that could cause 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 and the commentary on forward-looking statements at the end of our earnings release. Our remarks today include references to non-GAAP measures. Please see the tables in our earnings release to reconcile our non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP figures. With that, let me hand it over to Jack.

Thanks, Susannah, and good afternoon, everyone. I want to start by thanking our 32,000 hardworking team members who worked together to create a great experience for our customers, which in turn delivered impressive financial results. Our sales have grown by 9%, with comparable store sales growing by 4%, and diluted earnings per share growing by 14%, compared to adjusted diluted earnings per share in the same period last year. These positive results reflect the effectiveness of our strategy and the exceptional execution by our team. It has been a strong start to the year and we're encouraged by the continued momentum in our business. Our entire approach across the business remains centered around our target customer. We've aligned our merchandising, marketing, operations, new store design, and supply chain strategies to provide the freshest, most innovative attribute-driven products in the marketplace. We've also created a unique and easy-to-shop format with great service. During the first quarter, we organized Sprouts brand and organic events, which were highly successful. These events and others led to positive customer traffic growth in the first quarter. We are pleased to bring Sprouts to more communities across the country. The new store program continues to gather pace. We opened seven for the quarter and are on track for the year. And we're committed to helping our customer live and eat better with every new store opening across the country. I'll follow up with more on our journey in just a bit. But for now, I'll hand it over to Curtis to review our financial performance in the first quarter and our 2024 outlook. Curtis.