H&R Block, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the H&R Block second quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Kobe Brown, Vice President, Finance, and Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Lateef. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our fiscal 2020 second quarter results. On the call today are Jeff Jones, our President and CEO, and Tony Bowen, our CFO. We've posted today's press release on the Investor Relations website at hrblock.com. Also on the website, you will find a link for the webcast containing today's presentation, which will be posted after this call. Some of the figures that we'll discuss today are presented on a non-GAAP basis. We've reconciled the comparable GAAP and non-GAAP figures in the schedules attached to our press release. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'll remind everyone that this call will include forward-looking statements as defined under the security laws. Such statements are based on current information and management's expectations as of this date and are not guarantees of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. As such, our actual outcomes and results could differ materially. You can learn more about these risks in our Form 10-K for fiscal 2019 and our other SEC filings. H&R Block undertakes no obligation to publicly update these risk factors or forward-looking statements. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we'll have a Q&A session. During Q&A, we ask that participants limit themselves to one question with a follow-up, after which they may choose to jump back into the queue. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Colby. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We have a lot of exciting updates to cover on today's call. I'll start by recapping our progress against the strategic framework we introduced to you last year. Then I'll talk about our plans for fiscal 20 in both tax and small business. This will include details about the significant progress we've made to digitally enable all facets of H&R Block. This work is essential to our success in both fiscal 20 and the long term as we launch innovative new products, modernize how we deliver expertise and care, and ensure the best trained tax professionals in the industry can help clients in better and easier ways. Finally, Tony will discuss a non-GAAP financial reporting change, second quarter results including share repurchases and dividends, and our Fiscal 20 outlook. Fiscal 19 represented the first steps to modernize H&R Block and to position ourselves to deliver sustainable growth. We made improvements to our business and excellent progress against our enterprise growth strategy. We brought transparency to pricing in all our channels and we lowered prices for millions of consumers. We leveraged AI and machine learning to make the DIY experience faster, easier, and more personalized. We introduced more new digital products than ever before, which attracted consumers to our brand. and we made tremendous progress on our technology roadmap. These combined efforts enabled us to deliver at the top end of our financial outlook, make record increases in our client satisfaction scores, and grow overall clients and share. This positive momentum has carried into the first half of the fiscal year. In addition to closing the wave acquisition, which will help us accelerate our efforts in serving small business owners, we're seeing positive results in our tax business. We achieved return growth and share gains during the extension season, which just ended in October. And having recently spent time at our national retail meeting, I'm certain that our associates and franchisees are ready to extend this momentum into the upcoming tax season. So as we look ahead, I'd like to talk about our plans for the year and how we're combining technology and our human advantage to deliver expertise and care in new and compelling ways. In our offices, teams remain focused on operational excellence to improve the quality and consistency of the experience. A key element of this improved experience is upfront, transparent pricing, which will remain a top priority. We're also building on last year by enhancing our standard operating procedures, and we'll continue to leverage our competitive refund advance product to drive consumers to our brand. We're also strengthening the tools that enable our tax pros to provide best-in-class service for our clients. This includes digitizing how our tax pros work and communicate with clients through a tool called WorkCenter. This technology provides our tax pros a 360-degree view of the client, consolidating and simplifying routine tasks, and offering a portal to all the services we provide. This year, we'll introduce a variety of enhancements, such as an improved dashboard to streamline how tax pros manage both in-office and virtual returns, and document management that makes the process of gathering and sharing tax documents easier. By equipping our tax pros with the right technology, we're increasing their efficiency, giving them more time to provide help and inspire confidence in their clients, which will be a key to retention. Next, TaxProGo represents an important product as we offer mobile-first solutions that appeal to busy young consumers who know H&R Block but haven't yet tried our brand. This season marks the second year we've offered this fully assisted digital service nationwide. Based on client feedback, we've improved the product flow and simplified pricing. We're also making it easier to connect with our tax pros, a key differentiator for H&R Block. No one can match their level of training, quality, and tenure, with nearly half of our pros being members of the Block team for more than 10 years. In DIY, we've improved all aspects of our offerings with a focus on ease, speed, and personalization. We will maintain our challenger mindset by pricing competitively, making sure consumers know about our award-winning product, and ensuring clients are never surprised by their price. We're capturing client data earlier in the process and further leveraging AI and machine learning to remove questions and steps from the workflow. This year, you'll hear us talk about how consumers can now switch in two clicks, making it even easier to move from a competitor. We've also improved our online assist product, formerly known as Ask a Tax Pro. This offering gives our DIY clients on-demand access to a Tax Pro for help with any questions they may have. This year, we're increasing the prominence of this product by highlighting our price advantage and offering it as a separate SKU on our website. Let me switch gears to talk about a digital tool for clients called MyBlock. Regardless of how a client engages with us, whether it's in office, online, or through TaxProGo, MyBlock is the digital hub of our client's experience with H&R Blocks. Through this platform, clients can upload and store their tax documents, access prior year returns, set appointments, manage their Emerald Card, and use our tax estimator for help with planning. This year, myBlock enables secure document upload, private messaging with the tax pro, and greater visibility into the status of the return. and we've redesigned the workflow and streamlined our digital signature experience for clients who choose to finish their return online. I am pleased with where my block is today and the valuable role it will play in the future. Let me turn now to small business. We currently serve over 2 million small business clients in tax and are working to ensure that more small business owners understand the expertise we can provide through new tools and a redesigned tax prep experience. Through WAVE, we continue to simplify the financial lives of small business owners. We're excited to announce that we've opened our API to third-party developers to extend the functionality and reach of our tools. We're also releasing new integrations to make it easier for small businesses to track all of their transactions from various sources in a single system. These integrations dramatically simplify the accounting process, allowing small business owners to focus on what matters most. And I'm pleased to announce that we've partnered with Shopify for our first integration launch. This is a significant accomplishment as it represents the first direct accounting integration in the Shopify App Store. What I've just covered outlines our plans for the upcoming season and some of the ways in which we're using technology to drive value for consumers and small business owners. By focusing on digitally enabling every aspect of our business, we're setting the company up for success for both this fiscal year and the long term. With that, I'll now hand the call over to Tony.