Dick's Sporting Goods Inc

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Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter of 2021 results. On today's call will be Ed Stack, our Executive Chairman and Chief Merchandising Officer, Lauren Hobart, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Lee Bulitsky, our Chief Financial Officer. A playback of today's call will be archived on our Investor Relations website, located at investors.dix.com for approximately 12 months. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our last annual report on Form 10-K and cautionary statements made during this call. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. please refer to our investor relations website to find the reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call. And finally, a few admin items. First, a note on our same-store sales reporting practices. Our consolidated same-store sales calculation includes stores that we chose to temporarily close last year as a result of COVID-19. The method of calculating comp sales varies across the retail industry, including the treatment of temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19. Accordingly, our method of calculation may not be the same as other retailers. Next, as a reminder, due to the uneven nature of 2020, we plan 2021 off the 2019 baseline. Accordingly, we will compare 2021 sales and earnings results against both 2019 and 2020. And lastly, for your future scheduling purposes, we are tentatively planning to publish our second quarter 2021 earnings results before the market opens on August 25th, 2021, with our subsequent earnings call at 10 a.m. Eastern time. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Ed.

Thanks, Nate. Good morning, everyone. We are extremely pleased to announce yet another quarter of record results as we continue to execute at a very high level and capitalize on incredibly strong consumer demand. We're in a great lane right now. And 2021 will be our boldest and most transformational year in the company's history. We believe the future of retail is experiential, powered by technology and a world-class omni-channel operating model. Importantly, we are re-imagining the athlete experience both across our core business and through new concepts that we have been working on for the past several years, which will collectively propel our growth in the future. We recently debuted Dick's House of Sport in Rochester, New York. It's off to a great start and is on track to become among our highest volume stores in the chain. We've reimagined virtually everything in this store and believe it sets the standard for sport retailing and athlete engagement. Our partners who have visited the store all agree there's nothing like it, and we hope everyone has the opportunity to see it in person. Next, we are completely re-engineering our Golf Galaxy business. The game of golf is in great shape, and our golf business has been tremendous. With Golf Galaxy comps significantly outperforming the company average in recent quarters, we're leaning into this strength by investing in our Golf Galaxy business and adding TrackMan technology to enhance the fitting and lesson experience. We are also investing in talent to elevate the in-store service model and are remodeling 18 stores this year. The new stores we've remodeled are showing promising results. Looking ahead, we expect golf to have a long runway, and we are committed to leveraging this momentum for future growth within our business. Additionally, we are launching Public Lands, a complete outdoor omni-channel retail concept that will focus on making the outdoors a place where everyone feels welcome and inspired. We've been working on Public Lands for several years and look forward to opening our first two stores later this year. Based on our research, we think there is an opportunity in the marketplace and believe this new concept will be a great growth vehicle for us. Importantly, conservation will play a prominent role in our new public lands concept, and we will champion environmental issues as we speak up to protect the planet and our public lands. As a member of the outdoor industry, we've also joined forces with other retailers to advocate for conserving 30% of the US lands and waters by 2030. We expect to have the same voice and as much impact on these issues as we've had inside the Dix business, highlighting the youth sports crisis and sensible gun legislation. We'll be sharing more details about our plans for public lands in the weeks and months ahead. In closing, you can see Dix is a growth company and we will continue to invest in our business to grow our lead as the nation's largest sport retailer. We see significant growth opportunities within Dix and Golf Galaxy, as well as with House of Sport and Public Lands. We will continue to invest in our vertical brands and with our key partners, including Nike, North Face, Callaway, TaylorMade, and others to elevate the athlete experience across the stores and online. This morning as Lauren and Lee discussed the results of our strategic growth drivers in greater detail, I couldn't be more excited about our business and more proud of our team and their unwavering dedication to our business. I'll now turn the call over to Lauren.