Vera Bradley, Inc.

We're holding for the Vera Bradley Conference. We are still many additional participants. The conference should begin shortly. We do thank you for your patience and please continue to stand by. Please stand by. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vera Bradley first quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we'll conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mark DeLye, Vera Bradley's Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome, everyone. We'd like to thank you for joining us for today's call. Some of the statements made during our prepared remarks and in response to your questions may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that we expect. Please refer to today's press release in the company's most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC for a discussion of known risks and uncertainties. Investors should not assume that the statements made during the call will remain operative at a later time. We undertake no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. I will now turn the call over to Vera Bradley's CEO, Rob Wallstrom. Rob?

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. John Enright, our CFO, also joins me today. While total company first quarter revenues of $98.5 million fell below our expectations and resulted in a net loss before certain charges of $0.19 per diluted share, we continued implementation of our price increases, which helped offset logistics and sourcing pressures, continued to drive product innovation, controlled expenses, and completed 10.5 million of share repurchases while maintaining a strong debt-free balance sheet. We are clearly seeing a bifurcation in the spending of our customer base. At Vera Bradley, direct channel full-line revenues were above last year as customers with higher household incomes remained engaged and spent more than last year. We also saw a healthy year-over-year rebound in indirect channel revenues. However, Inflationary pressures, including rising gas prices, particularly impacted the spending of Vera Bradley customers with household incomes below $55,000, as well as traffic and spending in our Vera Bradley direct channel factory stores for the quarter. In addition, Pura Vida's e-commerce revenues continue to be significantly affected by the shift in social and digital media effectiveness and rising digital media costs. For the balance of the year, we are taking decisive actions to strengthen the enterprise and remain highly focused on our two core brands. On a company-wide basis, we are in the midst of a comprehensive cost reduction and efficiency process. We expect we will complete the identification of cost reductions and continue implementation in the second quarter, and we anticipate we will realize annualized savings in the range of $15 to $25 million. We are also continuing to evaluate and execute strategic price increases for both brands to offset rising raw material and freight costs as appropriate. As you might recall, we began taking some price increases in the fourth quarter of last year. At the Vera Bradley brand, we remain confident in our core strategy. The brand is fundamentally strong, although we have been fighting through macro issues, including rapidly increasing supply chain costs, recessionary spending from lower household income customers, skyrocketing gas prices and exponential increases in digital marketing costs. We are continuing to innovate and build on our lifestyle merchandising strategy with a laser focus on protecting the core amplified by targeted marketing. We are maximizing the travel category, which is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels and optimizing our very important upcoming back to campus season with strategic product assortment enhancements. Of course, we are continuing with successful product collaborations like Disney. In just the second quarter, we have introduced partnerships with iconic names like Star Wars, Coleman and Target, and Tupperware. We are thrilled about expanding our home assortment and adding cloud slip-ons and mules to our Vera Bradley footwear franchise this fall and holiday season. At Pura Vida, we are evolving our business model from one largely dependent on e-commerce and digital marketing to one that is a true omnichannel business with a more diversified marketing base. This will take time, but we are taking the actions to make this transformation happen and return the brand to growth. Chief Growth Officer Lockie Andrews has joined Pura Vida. She will work with the team with a primary focus on building a more innovative, effective, and performance-based marketing program for by bolstering our internal marketing and data analytics talent and platform. Lockie is a great addition to Pura Vida and to our entire organization. Her perspective, expertise, and creative thinking will be instrumental in developing Pura Vida's full potential as a unique lifestyle brand. In this newly created role, she has responsibility for all digital performance marketing, direct consumer sales, and merchandising initiatives across Pura Vida's channels and distributions. Working with co-founders Griffenthal and Paul Goodman, she will not only strengthen the marketing initiatives, but she will explore, develop, and launch new sales channels and drive category growth and expansion over time. She has a deep background in retail, marketing, digital strategy, technology, and data analytics, and most recently held key e-commerce and digital posts at Party City in Nantucket, as well as running a boutique consulting firm for the past 15 years. We are very excited about opening three additional Pura Vida retail store locations this year, building on the success of our first store opening in San Diego last summer. The San Diego store continues to exceed our expectations, and we continue to experience a double-digit differential in our San Diego e-commerce business relative to the rest of the country since the store opened, demonstrating the power of a retail presence has in driving digital sales, omnichannel loyalty, and spending. So we are very excited about additional store growth. We will open Pura Vida stores in Irvine Spectrum in Orange County, California, and in the high tourist area of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July, and in the Phoenix market in September. We look forward to even more store growth in the future. Pura Vida's future growth will be a balance of online growth and growth in physical distribution channels. Stores will play a key role in driving new customer acquisition as we continue to diversify our marketing platforms. We will also continue to build Pura Vida customer excitement and engagement through collaborations like Disney, Hello Kitty, and the World Surfing League, partnering with key influencers and offering themed collections centered around key events like upcoming Shark Week. Now, let me turn the call over to John to review the financial results. John?