Dick's Sporting Goods Inc

Hello and welcome to the Dick's Sporting Goods fourth quarter earnings call. My name is Charlie and I will be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may register to do so by pressing start followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Nate Gilch, Senior Director of Investor Relations to begin. Nate, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. On today's call will be Ed Stack, our Executive Chairman, Lauren Hobart, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Navdeep Gupta, 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. Beginning in Q1 2022, we will update our method for determining consolidated same-store sales. Prior to fiscal 2022, relocated store locations have been excluded from our consolidated same-store sales calculation until the relocated store commenced its 14th full month of operations. Beginning in fiscal 2022, relocated store locations will remain in our calculations consistent with our holistic view of each market. In an 8 file today, we have provided a table that presents quarterly and full year consolidated same store sales results for fiscal 2021 calculated in the same manner the same store sales will be calculated beginning in fiscal 2022. The table will also be available on our investor relations website. Second, also beginning in Q1, we will adopt new rules that will impact the accounting of our convertible senior notes due 2025, resulting in lower interest expense and higher diluted shares on a GAAP basis. We do not expect the net effect of these changes to maturely impact our GAAP earnings per diluted share. Given our intent to settle the principal in cash, and the shares that will be delivered by our bond hedged settlement, we do not expect the notes to have a dilutive effect at settlement. Accordingly, we believe that reflecting the notes as debt more closely reflects the underlying economics of the transaction, which is included in our non-GAAP outlook. For additional details on this, you can refer to our press release that we issued this morning. Next, I want to highlight a new investor presentation that was posted to our investor relations website earlier today. The intent of this presentation is to serve as a resource to provide current and prospective investors an overview of our company, strategy, and competitive differentiation. And lastly, for your future scheduling purposes, we are tentatively planning to publish our first quarter 2022 earnings results before the market opens on May 25th, 2022. with our subsequent earnings call at 10 a.m. Eastern time. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Ed.

Thanks, Nate. Good morning, everyone. We had an exceptionally strong 2021 and delivered record sales and earnings. Our consolidated same-store sales increased 26.5 percent, which was on top of a 9.9 percent increase from the prior year and 3.7 percent increase in 2019. Our non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $15.70 represented a 157% increase over last year and a 325% increase over 2019. Our current success is the result of a deliberate multi-year transformational journey that is driving sustainable sales and profitability growth. With an athlete-first approach, we have built significant competitive advantages across our merchandise assortment brand relationships, service model, in-store, and digital commerce experiences. We have also invested in our technology capabilities, including data science, personalization to advance our omnichannel growth strategy. Virtually nothing about our business is the same as it was five years ago. As expected, 2021 has been the most transformational year in our company's history. Among our accomplishments, We drove strong growth in our core Dick's business, launched Dick's House of Sport, a completely new experiential destination that's redefining sports retail. We re-engineered Golf Galaxy and launched the Golf Galaxy Performance Center, a new immersive experience for golf enthusiasts of all levels. And finally, we unveiled Public Lands, a new omni-channel specialty concept to better serve the outdoor athlete. We are the clear market leader in a fragmented $120 billion industry with strong secular growth trends. Our strategies are working and we've set our business on a new trajectory for growth. We'll continue to take market share and extend our lead. We have the best overall management team we've ever had and are entering 2022 stronger than ever. Looking ahead, I couldn't be more excited about the future of our business. Before concluding, I'd like to thank all of our teammates for their hard work and unwavering dedication to our business. I'll now turn the call over to Lauren.