Vince Holding Corp.

Good morning or good afternoon all and welcome to the VINCE Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Adam and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the floor to Ikiko Okuma to begin, so please go ahead when you're ready.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to VINCE Holding Corps' first quarter fiscal 2025 results conference call. Hosting the call today is Brendan Hoffman, Chief Executive Officer and Yuji Okamura, 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 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 that 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 Investors section of the company's website at investors.fins.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Brendan.

Thank you, Akiko, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Given it has not been that long since we last spoke, my remarks today will be relatively brief. Before I review highlights from the first quarter, I want to spend a moment to discuss where we are with respect to our mitigation efforts related to the evolving tariff policies. I cannot overstate how proud I am of our organization and how quickly our team sprung into action over the past few weeks, negotiating with vendors, working closely with supportive partners, and exploring diversification and other opportunities within the supply chain to mitigate impact. In short order, we have already significantly reduced our exposure to China, beginning with our fall product, leveraged opportunities to mitigate near-term costs, and made select and strategic adjustments to our pricing architecture. While we are pleased to see some reprieve in the tariff policy for the moment, given the fluidity of the situation, we are maintaining a disciplined approach to all plans going forward and believe it is prudent to maintain a perspective to not provide full-year guidance at this time. Now let me discuss a few highlights from the quarter. We have continued to see relative outperformance in our wholesale segment compared to our direct-to-consumer. However, we were pleased to see the sequential improvement in trend within our direct business in the quarter. This was largely driven by our e-commerce channel. But our stores, excluding the impact from closures and remodels, also delivered a nice performance on a like-for-like basis, despite contending with headwinds associated with weather and the evolving macroeconomic backdrop that impacted consumer sentiment. In addition to the top-line performance, we delivered improved product margins, excluding freight and other distribution costs, a testament to the ongoing success we are seeing in managing a healthier margin business as we continue to balance our promotional activity as well as extend our full-price seasonal offering. Across both men's and women's, sweaters continued to perform well. We also saw a nice reception to our more traditional spring product, like Bits and Tees for women and Linen for men, towards the end of the quarter, in line with warmer weather. In our Knits business, we introduced new color palettes that drove solid growth in the category, and our Bottoms business also performed nicely with both men's and women's. Our men's business delivered another quarter of strong growth and continues to serve as a key driver as we extend our reach for this offering. As we look ahead, we are also excited for our expanded international presence with the recent opening of our Marlebone location. We have always believed in London as a key city for us as it attracts both local residents and international travelers from around the globe. We are thrilled to have a location in Marylebone, which is a vibrant location in central London, and we'll compliment our DRACOT Chelsea South Kensington store nicely, welcoming both new and existing customers to Vince. In the U.S., we are on track to open our Nashville and Sacramento stores later this year and are continuing to assess plans going forward. We believe in the importance of our store channel and have continued to invest in refreshing and remodeling our stores to ensure we are creating the customer experience that aligns with the look and feel of the Vince brand. We recently remodeled our Greenwich, Stanford, and Mercer stores and are thrilled with the refreshed look each has now. While too early to speak to any lift associated with these remodels, we believe introducing a new flow to the store, leveraging our mobile POS, and opening additional capacity will benefit these locations and provide a nice return to the investments we have made thus far. In closing, our first quarter reflects the dynamic environment in which we are operating, as well as the underlying strength of our operations, and Vince's brand positioning in the marketplace. As we look to the second quarter, while the tariff situation has delayed pre-fall product shipments, we have been able to extend the full price selling season for spring, creating a nice support to current trends in the business. This perhaps is a lesson that we can take away from the current situation, as we have talked in the past on how best to align our floor sets to the buy now, wear now behavior customers have shifted to over the last few years. We will be thinking through this in our plans going forward, but for the immediate term, our focus is ensuring we are well positioned as we move into the heart of our selling season later this year. We feel very good with the trends we are seeing to date as reflected in the sequential improvement our outlook implies, but we remain cautious given the level of uncertainty there continues to be with respect to the macroeconomic environment. As discussed in our last call, while we believe in the great opportunities ahead for Vince Holding Corp, And I look forward to sharing more with you on thoughts regarding strategic growth initiatives. Our priority at the moment remains navigating today's environment. Once there is more certainty with respect to tariffs, we look forward to updating you on our longer-term plans and growth opportunities that we see propel Vince Holding Corp into its next chapter. I'll now turn it over to Yuji to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail. Thank you, Brendan.