SpartanNash Company

Good morning. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Kelly Campbell, Head of Investor Relations.

Good morning and welcome to the Spartan Nash Company fourth quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings conference call. On the call today from the company, our President and Chief Executive Officer Tony Sarsom, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jason Monaco. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings release, which was issued this morning at approximately 7 a.m. Eastern Time. For a copy of the earnings release, as well as the company's supplemental earnings presentation, please visit Spartan Ash's website at www.spartanash.com forward slash investors. This call is being recorded and a replay will be available on the company's website. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that today's discussion will include a number of forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. If you will refer to Spartan NASH's earnings release from this morning, as well as the company's most recent SEC filings, you will see a discussion of factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Please remember that all forward-looking statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and Spartan Ash undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. The company will also make a number of references to non-GAAP financial measures. The company believes these measures provide investors with useful perspective on the underlying growth trends of the business, and it has included in the earnings relief a full reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, which can be found on Spartan Ash's website at www.spartanash.com forward slash investors. And now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Tony.

Thank you, Kaylee, and good morning, everyone. 2022 was a transformational year at Spartan Ash. Our corporate identity, which we call our winning recipe, served to align our associates as they executed on our strategic plan. Our success in 2022 was made possible by our talented and hardworking associates who played a win. Speaking of our terrific associates, before we dive into our 2022 results, I want to take a moment to recognize a group of associates who are special Olympics athletes. This month, we've had a company-wide fundraiser in our stores to support Special Olympics. We've enjoyed a 39-year relationship with Special Olympics, and we are proud to support our 16 associates who are actively training to compete in the upcoming summer games. We encourage anyone listening today to join us in supporting this great organization. All right, turning to our performance. In a dynamic operating environment, our team drove solid fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 results. Our full year top line results were squarely in line with our most recent guidance after having raised our expectations throughout the year. And adjusted EBITDA came in around the top end of our guidance. This is an increase of nearly 14% compared to last year. I want to call out three of the many highlights from a pivotal year. First, we secured cost savings in connection with our supply chain transformation. Part of this transformation involved optimizing our fleet mileage through the addition of a West Coast distribution solution. Of course, taking miles out of the system also advanced our sustainability progress. Additionally, our fill rates continued to improve while throughput increased by 7% for the full year. And by the end of the year, we secured more than $25 million in run rate cost savings. Our success in supply chain helped enable us to gain share in our wholesale segment. We expect our supply chain transformation to make even greater strides in 2023, which includes custom operational plans for each distribution center. There are more savings and efficiencies to come as we strive to reduce footsteps and fingerprints in our process. I want to extend my sincere thanks to all supply chain associates for their progress in improving operational metrics in 2022. Thank you, team. A second highlight from the year is that we created additional consumer offerings through digital partnerships with DoorDash, Uber Technologies, and Shift. We also leveraged insights from our marketing innovation work to further our progress and own brands to unlock opportunities within our retail segment. Our comparable store sales remained strong, increasing 9.1% for the quarter. This was an increase of 110 basis points sequentially from Q3. We also continue to deliver unit share growth year over year, fueled in part by our strong own-brand performance. We're building on this momentum with investments in store renovations. We plan to renovate about a quarter of our stores by the end of 2025. As a third highlight, we launched and made meaningful progress on our merchandising transformation. We are focused on creating enhanced offerings and value for our customers and store guests in several ways. To start, we're making significant strides linking sales, profitability, and customer loyalty drivers across our wholesale and retail segments. Secondly, we're leveraging insights to enhance our category management capabilities. And we're improving our customer offerings. We also remain focused on our cost policy capabilities, which protect customers from unjustified vendor cost increases based on underlying commodity markets. And We are revamping our end-to-end fresh food offerings with an initial focus in produce. Finally, we are investing in wholesale deals and new retail promotions to offer more value for our customers and store guests. Customer-focused innovation is an important ingredient in our winning recipe. We expect our merchandising transformation will have a meaningful impact to our business for years to come. I want to pivot now to discuss our inorganic growth. The M&A framework we shared on our investor day is now deployed. We finished the year strong by adding Great Lakes Foods to our distribution network. We're proud to welcome our newest associates in Menominee, Michigan, whom I had the pleasure of visiting recently. This acquisition brings 100 new customers to our portfolio and allows us to further optimize our supply chain network throughout the Midwest. We're excited about the opportunities this expansion provides. As we look ahead, our team is energized by the progress we've made, and we are united in our commitment to our winning recipe. It goes without saying that all businesses are evolving in this dynamic operating environment, and we must stay focused on delivering value to our customers and store guests alike to remain competitive. This morning, we provided our 2020 free guidance and raised our 2025 long-term sales target to $10.5 billion. We remain committed to achieving adjusted EBITDA of more than $300 million, which is an increase of at least 40% since 2021. We are confident in our ability to achieve this aggressive target as we continue firing on all cylinders to advance our mission of delivering the ingredients for a better life. All right. I'll now turn the call over to Jason to walk you through the financials in greater detail.