Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc.

Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's fiscal 2020 fourth quarter earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the Q&A portion of the call. Today's conference call is being recorded. A rebroadcast of the conference call will be available via webcast found on the company's investor relations website. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to Janet Barth, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fiscal 2020 fourth quarter earnings call. On the call with us today is President and CEO Mark Tritton, Chief Merchandising Officer and President of Harmon Face Values, Joe Hartzig, Chief Operating Officer and President of Bye Bye Baby, John Hartman, and Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gustavo Arnal. Before we begin, let me remind you that our fiscal 2020 fourth quarter earnings release and slide presentation can be found in the investor relations section of our website at www.bedbathandbeyond.com. And as exhibits to the form 8K, we just filed ahead of this call. This conference call and the slides we refer to may contain forward-looking statements, including statements about or references to our outlook regarding the company's performance, our internal models, and our long-term objectives. All such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we say during the call today. Please refer to our most recent periodic SEC filings for more detail on these risks and uncertainties, including the risk factors section in our annual report on Form 10-K. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Additionally, the information we will discuss today contains certain financial measures that exclude amounts or are subject to adjustments that have the effect of excluding amounts that are included in the most directly comparable measure prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. For reconciliation to the most comparable measures presented in accordance with GAAP, please refer to the table in our earnings release available on our website and included as an exhibit to our form 8K filed today. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Janet, and good morning, everyone. Fiscal 2020 was a year of fast-paced transformation in which we reformed the path overcame extraordinary circumstances of the present and established a firm foundation for the future. Despite the challenges created by COVID-19, we have relentlessly focused on taking purposeful and bold steps to transform our entire organization and remain true to our plans to rebuild our authority in home and restore this iconic company. Throughout 2020, we achieved a great deal. We established an entirely new leadership team with world-class retail and digital experience who helped design and shape the growth strategy that will define our future. We accelerated change in our operations to create a more competitive, omni-always shopping experience with the introduction of new services like BOPUS, curbside pickup, same-day delivery, and over 100 meaningful improvements to our digital experience. With this improved omnichannel offering in 2020, we registered more than 1 billion visits to our websites and more than 3 million downloads of our apps. Our online conversion rate increased by 30% and repeat purchases, 34% of customers placed two or more digital orders. We drove digital sales growth of over 80% on the year and surpassed $3 billion in digital sales. 2020 was a pivotal year for our company. We returned to comp sales and adjusted even to our margin growth as of Q2 after four years of decline and sustained this positive momentum consistently throughout the rest of the year. At the same time, we showed our agility by securing and substantially improving our financial position through diligent and agile cash management and expense control, as well as a laser focus on driving gross margin improvements. We also streamlined our portfolio, unlocking capital from non-core asset sales, which added even more cash to our war chest. We also significantly reduced our debt. We capped the year with strong fourth quarter results, which enhanced our strategic position for 2021 and further strengthened our three year growth plan. Importantly, the company ended the year net cash positive and a much stronger financial position than we started. We now have a refined and strategically aligned portfolio of retail banners and a very healthy cash position to invest where it fuels our growth and where it supports our customers and our people. We have exciting strategic and impactful initiatives for fiscal 2021 that will create a platform for sustainable long-term growth. These include moving beyond transactional private label offerings to launching strategic new own brands that can drive differentiation and preference for our enterprise. Introducing new and unique digital services designed to enhance our OmniAlways experience and further accelerate growth. Upgrading and remodeling stores under our store network optimization program to elevate our omni-channel shopping experience. Modernizing our technology and operations and reinventing our supply chain to support our digital-first OmniAlways growth strategies Investing to further strengthen our Bye Bye Baby and Harmon banners to broaden our customer base and build cross-banner engagement. And continuing to build a foundation for long-term growth and unlock shareholder value. As we turn the page on a year of unprecedented change, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our team of talented associates for their extraordinary effort throughout this past year in delighting our customers and restoring growth in the business. recovery is real and shows the strength of our own efforts and output rather than reliance on outside factors such as stimulus spend we know this because by and large the demographic of our core customer base is not eligible for stimulus benefits in addition data shows the stimulus spend is primarily occurring in categories such as food technology and apparel which are not core offerings for us our current momentum fortifies our customer inspired data-driven approach and as we reestablish authority in our core home, baby, and beauty and wellness markets. I will now turn the call over to Joe Hartzig, Chief Merchandising Officer and President, Harm and Face Values, who will speak about the quarter from a commercial perspective, and then John Hartman, Chief Operating Officer and President, Bye Bye Baby, who will do the same for our baby and our operations.