Aarons Holdings Company, Inc.

Welcome to the Aaron's Company Shared Call to 2023 Results Call. Thank you for your patience while you're underway. My name is Ellen and I'll be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to pass the conference over to our host, Mark Levy, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations to begin. Mark, please go ahead whenever you're ready.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Aaron's Chief Executive Officer Douglas Lindsay, President Steve Olson, and Chief Financial Officer Kelly Wall. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Yesterday after the market closed, we posted our earnings release on the investor relations section of our website at investor.aarons.com. We also posted a slide presentation that provides additional information about our third quarter results and full year 2023 outlook. During today's call, certain statements we make may be forward-looking, including those related to our outlook for this year. For more information, including important cautionary notes about these forward-looking statements, please refer to the Safe Harbor provision that can be found at the end of the earnings release. The Safe Harbor provision identifies risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from the content of our forward-looking statements. Also, please see our form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and other filings with the SEC for a description of the risks related to our business that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. On today's call, in the earnings release, and in the supplemental investor presentation, we referred to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net earnings, non-GAAP EPS, adjusted free cash flow, and net debt, which have been adjusted for certain items which may affect the comparability of our performance with other companies. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in the reconciliation tables included in our earnings release and the supplemental investor presentation posted on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Douglas Lindsay.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today and for your interest in the Aarons Company. Before we discuss the results of the third quarter, I would like to mention some exciting leadership announcements. On September 13th, we announced the appointment of Wally Bagdian and Chris Malkowski to our Board of Directors, effective October 1st. Wally and Chris have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and I know they will be great additions to our Board. Also on September 13th, we announced the appointment of Russ Falkenstein to Chief Operating Officer of Lease to Own. Russ joined the company in 2016 and has served in a number of senior leadership roles. In his new role, he will oversee all lease to own operations at Aaron's and BrandSmart Leasing. I'm also very excited to announce that we held a grand opening celebration for our new BrandSmart store in Augusta, Georgia on October 21st. This is the first new store we've opened since we acquired the company in April of last year. We are delighted to bring the BrandSmart experience to the Augusta community, and we look forward to delivering exceptional value and service to our customers in this new market. Now turning to the results of the third quarter. I'm pleased to report that we delivered consolidated earnings that exceeded our internal expectations. We benefited from the least decisioning enhancements in the errands business and continued progress in our cost optimization initiatives at both Aarons and BrandSmart. We achieved these results despite ongoing challenges in customer demand for the big ticket and discretionary products we carry. In the Aarons business, we ended the quarter with revenues and earnings above internal expectations, primarily due to a larger than expected lease portfolio size combined with lower write-offs. We also made great progress in our market optimization initiatives including adding more GenNext stores and expanding our Hub and Showroom program while continuing to grow our e-commerce channel. As we look to the fourth quarter of this year and into 2024, we expect the challenging demand trends to persist. In this environment, we remain focused on growing our market share through delivering a best-in-class customer experience, including flexible payment options, low prices, and a broad product selection. We are also excited about the next evolution of our lease decisioning model, which we believe will enhance the customer experience and lead to higher approval rates. Steve will share more details about this initiative in a minute. I'm pleased with the progress we're making on our ARIN's multi-year strategic plan, and I remain encouraged about our ongoing transformation and the investments we're making to drive future growth. Now turning to BrandSmart. We remain confident in BrandSmart's compelling value proposition and our long-term strategic growth opportunities, including expanding into new markets and growing our e-commerce channel. Although demand is challenging, we remain focused on optimizing profitability through enhanced cost controls and strategic procurement and pricing actions. While doing this, we are also continuing to enhance our capabilities in merchandising, marketing, and technology to position the business for long-term growth. Now I'll turn the call over to Steve to provide more details about both Aarons and BrandSmart.