Dick's Sporting Goods Inc

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Dick's Sporting Goods first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Nate Gilch, Senior Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter 2024 results. On today's call will be Lauren Hobart, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Gabby 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 that 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, as well as 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 our non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call. And finally, a few admin items. First, as we previewed on our last earnings call, beginning this quarter, we have revised our comparable sales calculations to include revenue from our Game Changer business. Second, beginning this quarter, we have included grand opening advertising costs within pre-opening expenses. These one-time costs incurred in connection with opening new stores were historically presented within SG&A, part of advertising costs. We have reclassified prior period amounts to conform to our current year of presentation. And finally, for your future scheduling purposes, we are tentatively planning to publish our second quarter 2024 earnings results on September 4th, 2024. With that, I will now turn the call over to Lauren.

Thank you, Nate, and good morning, everyone. We're incredibly proud of our strong Q1 results, which demonstrate how well our strategies are working. Powered by our compelling omni-channel athlete experience, differentiated product assortment, deep engagement with the Dix brand, and our focus on providing a best-in-class teammate experience, we continued our momentum from the fourth quarter. Our execution on these strategic pillars is driving continued market share gains. For the first quarter, our sales increased 6.2%, to just over $3 billion. Adjusting for the calendar shift, our comps increased 5.3%, which was on top of a 3.6% comp last year. This strong comp was driven by growth in transactions and an average ticket. During the quarter, we saw more athletes purchase from us, and they spent more each trip compared to the prior year. Our first quarter gross margin expanded 10 basis points, and we achieved double-digit EBT margin of over 11%. In total, we delivered Q1 EPS of $3.30. Today, we're raising our full-year outlook to reflect our strong Q1 results. We now expect comp sales growth for the year to be in the range of 2% to 3%, and EPS to be in the range of $13.35 to $13.75. Our emphasis on the omnichannel athlete experience is driving robust athlete engagement. We are continuing to enhance service levels across all our digital and store experiences to meet our athletes wherever they are, provide the support and service they need, and get product into their hands faster. During Q1, we continued to see growth in our omnichannel athletes our strongest athletes, who spend more with us and shop more frequently than single-channel athletes. As we've talked about previously, our significant investments to reposition our portfolio are key to delivering an elevated omnichannel athlete experience. We expect House of Sports and our next-generation 50,000-square-foot Dick's Store to drive robust omnichannel athlete engagement and generate strong sales and profitability. During Q1, we opened two House of Sport locations and are excited to open six additional locations this year. We also opened two Next Generation 50K locations during the first quarter and look forward to opening an additional 14 locations throughout 2024. We continue to be very pleased with the results of these exciting DICS concepts. This one-two punch of House of Sport and our Next Generation 50K format combined with the elevated omni-channel experience our teammates are bringing to life throughout our entire portfolio, is the future of Dick's. We're also growing our Golf Galaxy Performance Centers, an immersive experience for golf enthusiasts of all levels, and opened three new locations during the first quarter. We remain confident in the long-term growth opportunity in golf and are excited to bring this experience to more golfers. Investing in our digital capabilities is central to our omni-channel success. I want to briefly talk about Game Changer, the premier live streaming, scheduling, communications, and scorekeeping mobile app, where we're building the first and best place to experience youth sports. During Q1, Game Changer drove continued strong sales growth. Over 5 million unique users engaged with Game Changer. averaging approximately 30 minutes per day on the app. We saw a robust increase in usage of the app across all sports, including those that are newer to the Game Changer platform, such as basketball, football, soccer, and volleyball. We're excited to continue innovating within the fast-growing, multibillion-dollar youth sports technology market and strengthening our relationships with athletes and their families through Game Changer. Our access to differentiated on-trend product, which is our second strategic pillar, helps make DIX the go-to destination for sport in the US. We're excited about the product pipeline from our key brand partners. For example, Nike's recent Paris Innovation Summit highlighted several breakthrough products across apparel and footwear that we look forward to bringing to our athletes. Our relationships with our brand partners are stronger than ever, and the innovation of performance and style, in our opinion, has never been better. In addition, our flagship vertical brands, DSG, Calia, and Versed, are resonating very well with our athletes. They continue to outpace the total company comp growth and contribute greater margin expansion. We see a long runway for sales and profitability growth for our vertical brands. Our teammates are a critical driver of our success, and our third strategic priority is providing a best-in-class teammate experience. This past quarter, we were named a great place to work for the fourth year in a row. We remain focused on providing our teammates with the tools and technology to help them do their jobs better and driving a culture where they can develop and thrive. Lastly, we're creating deeper brand engagement. During the first quarter, we invested in several exciting marketing campaigns and also continued to invest in Dick's brand building during March Madness. We're excited to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of our foundation's Sports Matter program and recently announced that the program is giving $2 million in grants to mark its anniversary and empower even more young athletes to pursue their passion. In closing, we are very pleased with the strength of our first quarter performance and are highly confident in our strategies to drive sustained, profitable growth. Before concluding, I'd like to thank all of our teammates across the company for their tremendous efforts and continued commitment to Dick's Sporting Goods. It's their passion and hard work that make these results possible. They are truly an outstanding team. With that, I'll turn the call over to Navdeep to share our financial results in more detail.