Vince Holding Corp.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VINC fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute during the presentation portion of this call. I would now like to hand the conference call over to our host, Caitlin Churchill, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to VINC Holding Corp's fourth quarter fiscal 2023 results conference call. Hosting the call today are Dave Stesco, Interim Chief Executive Officer, and John Sapansky, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me remind you that certain statements made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those that the company expects. Those risks and uncertainties are described in today's press release and in the company's SEC filings, which are available on the company's website. Investors should not assume that statements made during the call will remain operative at a later time and the company undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed on the call. In addition, in today's discussion, the company is presenting its financial results in conformity with GAAP and on an adjusted basis. The adjusted results the company presents today are non-GAAP measures. Discussions of these non-GAAP measures and information on reconciliations of them to their most comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and related schedules, which are available in the investor section of the company's website at investors.vins.com. Following today's remarks, there will be no question and answer session. Now I'll turn the call over to Dave. Dave?

Thank you, Caitlin, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning. I am pleased to be speaking with you once again. Since retiring as CFO earlier in 2023, as a member of the Board of Directors, I have remained focused and engaged on the progress the teams have been making in positioning Vince for long-term success. While the Board is actively looking for our permanent CEO, I am committed to leading the company through this transition while we continue to execute our transformation plan and drive improved performance, including building on the progress we have made this year and the re-energized focus in enhancing our growth initiatives, including driving customer acquisition. Now let me turn to review our full year and fourth quarter highlights in progress against our initiatives. As previously discussed, fiscal 2023 was a transformative year for Vince. We completed the wind down of the Rebecca Taylor business, entered into a strategic partnership with Authentic Brands, successfully refinanced our credit facilities, and launched our transformation plan aimed at delivering over $30 million and cost savings over the next three years to help mitigate royalty fees now incurred in our go forward operating model. In addition, we maintained a very disciplined approach to inventory management and prioritize driving a healthier full price business. While some of the actions we had taken in mid to late 2023 hindered our top line growth, particularly as we decreased our promotional activity, and pulled back on our off-price wholesale business. As reflected in our fourth quarter results, we are pleased to have delivered on our profitability objectives for the fourth quarter and fiscal 2023 as evidenced by the strong operating margin expansion in both periods, despite incurring royalty fees that we did not incur in the prior year periods. As we enter fiscal 2024, we believe we are now better positioned to execute our initiatives and focus on capitalizing on the growth opportunities we see ahead. As discussed on our last call, we were very pleased with the enhancements we made to our e-commerce site for the holiday season. While stores continue to outperform e-commerce, we saw nice strength in our holiday gifting pages and are incorporating learnings from the changes we made in 2023 to our plans for 2024. In addition, we continue to leverage the capabilities from our customer data platform and are now able to provide our store associates with more consistent information to support their customer engagement efforts to help drive traffic and conversion. Looking ahead, we are continuing to explore ways to leverage the data we now have to increase our customer lifetime value, to drive further loyalty with our top customers, and to enhance our customer acquisition efforts. We look forward to sharing more on our marketing and customer engagement plans as the year progresses. Part of our customer acquisition strategy is through our own doors. We continue to value our store channel for the opportunities it creates in welcoming new customers to the brand. As discussed in prior calls, we are taking a measured approach to store growth as we stay focused on more near-term opportunities in driving profitability while maintaining disciplined expense management. In fiscal 2023, we closed two full-price locations and two outlet stores. But over time, we strive to be in a position to expand our fleet domestically. With respect to international, similar to our store plans, we are taking a measured approach to further expansion and are evaluating next steps with certain markets, which we plan to provide an update on when appropriate. we continue to see a long runway of opportunity to expand the Vince brand in both Europe and Asia. Turning next to our focus in growing our men's business, during the fourth quarter, we continue to see nice reception to our assortment and saw an elongated season in our core sweater business while identifying opportunities within our bottoms program. We are particularly pleased that Nordstrom is planning to expand our men's presence and Vince will be a dual gender brand in all Nordstrom doors for the coming fall season. Finally, with respect to our transformation plan, we remain on track with our plans to improve our gross margin profile and drive cost efficiencies to offset the ABG royalty expenses we now incur. As John will discuss, while we expect Q1 top line results to reflect trends similar to what we saw in Q4, As we remain focused on driving profitability through lower promotions and a pullback in the off-price channel, we believe for the year we will continue to achieve strong year-over-year margin improvement. I want to thank all of our teams for their continued hard work and dedication over the past year. Through their work and with the actions we have taken, we have strengthened our foundation and we believe are better positioned to drive long-term profitable growth. I'll now turn it over to John.