Vera Bradley, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vera Bradley fourth quarter and fiscal year end conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for a question. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mark Dillai, 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 Burr Bradley's CEO, Jackie Ardrey. Jackie?

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. We focused on driving revenues in the fourth quarter through targeted strategic promotions on seasonal, giftable, and key items. As a result, total company fourth quarter revenues outperformed our guidance, although gross margins remained under pressure. Diligent expense control enabled us to deliver fourth quarter non-gapped diluted earnings per share of 16 cents, which was nearly flat with last year. In the fourth quarter, sales trends at both Vera Bradley and Pura Vida improved over prior quarters, with Vera Bradley total sales down just 1% and Pura Vida sales down less than 5% on a year-over-year basis. For the fourth consecutive quarter, the Vera Bradley indirect channel experienced year-over-year revenue growth. Targeted customer retention efforts led to increased Vera Bradley e-commerce revenues while full line and factory store revenues continued to be negatively affected by traffic levels, although trends improved throughout the quarter. At Pura Vida, e-commerce trends improved over previous quarters due to strategic promotions. However, overall challenges continued to persist in our social and digital media effectiveness, coupled with rising digital media costs. And we experienced a year-over-year sales decline in our wholesale channel. On the plus side, Pura Vida full-line retail stores continued to perform ahead of our expectations, and they drove improved e-commerce traffic and revenues in their markets. We also took the opportunity in the fourth quarter to reset and appropriately position the Pura Vida business for the future by recording goodwill and trade name impairments and necessary inventory write-offs. We ended the fiscal year with consolidated revenues of $500 million, which exceeded our guidance. During the year, we began to see stabilization in our supply chain, diligently controlled our expenses, and carefully managed our cash. During the fourth quarter, we meaningfully reduced our year-end inventory levels from the third quarter. Although fiscal 2023 had its challenges, we took actions and laid the groundwork to position the company for the future. In mid-2022, we collaboratively identified $25 million in annualized cost reduction initiatives and efficiency processes. The expense savings were derived across various areas of the company, including payroll reductions, retail store efficiencies, marketing expense, information technology contracts and projects, professional services, and logistics and operational costs. Many of these savings were realized in fiscal 2023. In January 2023, we further streamlined our corporate structure by eliminating the positions of Vera Bradley brand president, chief creative officer, and chief revenue officer, and by adding the position of chief marketing officer, all designed to drive an annual cost savings of approximately $2 million. add more focus on marketing and merchandising, and position the company to deliver steady top and bottom line growth. These decisions were made in order to right-size our leadership team and cross-structure for the size of our business, to address the continuing challenging macro environment, and to best position us to achieve our long-term strategic plans. Subsequent to the end of fiscal 2023, In January 2023, we acquired the remaining 25% interest in Pura Vida from founders Gryffindor and Paul Goodman for $10 million. We continued to make investments in customer data science, business analytics, and pricing optimization, allowing us to collect and analyze data and make fact-based decisions to more efficiently run our business. As the Vera Bradley brand, We expanded our robust product innovation pipeline, including launching our featherweight collection, and continued another year of product collaborations with iconic brands like Disney, Harry Potter, and Crocs, and also expanded our cozy, sleep, and outerwear collections. We continue to strengthen and rationalize our store base. We opened five new factory stores and closed 19 underperforming full-line stores and one factory store ending the fiscal year with 51 full line and 79 factory locations. We also continued to expand options for customers to shop, like enhancing our presence in third-party marketplaces, including Amazon, and adding boutiques in select high-traffic airports. At the Pura Vida brand, we entered into several high-profile product collaborations with brands such as Hello Kitty, Disney, and Harry Potter, and expanded our product offerings by launching our Demi Fine collection and expanding our assortment of engravable jewelry, all designed to bring new customers to our brand. We focused on building a more diverse, innovative, effective, and performance-based marketing program to drive Pura Vida e-commerce sales. We began the process of implementing a comprehensive customer data platform to build a single, coherent, complete view of each Pura Vida customer, so that we can better target and personalize marketing and become less reliant on third party marketing. This project is scheduled for completion this spring. We continue to engage our micro-influencers, significantly expanded our TikTok presence, launched impactful ads on connected TV, optimized SMS, and aggressively explored other methods to effectively reach our customers. We also opened three new Pura Vida full-line stores during the year, bringing our full-line store count to four, which collectively exceeded our expectations. These four stores are playing a role in driving new customer acquisition as we continue to diversify our marketing platforms, and they demonstrate the power a retail presence can have in driving digital sales, omnichannel loyalty, and spending. Now, let me turn the call over to John to review the financial results. John?