H&R Block, Inc.

for standing by and welcome to H&R Block's third quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings conference 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 1 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 1 1 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Jordan Eskigen, program manager, investor relations, and ESG. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lateef. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to H&R Block's fiscal 2025 third quarter financial results conference call. Joining me today are Jeff Jones, our president and chief executive officer, and Tiffany Mason, our chief financial officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release and presentation which can be downloaded or viewed live on our website at investors.hrblock.com. Our call is being broadcast and webcast live, and a replay of the webcast will be available for 90 days. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that comments made by management may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statement, due to numerous factors. For a description of these risks and uncertainties, please see H&R Block's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, as updated periodically with our other SEC filings. Please note, some metrics we'll discuss today are presented on a non-GAAP basis. We've reconciled the comparable GAAP and non-GAAP figures in the appendix of our presentation. Finally, the content of this call contains time-sensitive information accurate only as of today, May 7th, 2025. H&R Block undertakes no obligation to revise or otherwise update any statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. With that, I will now turn it over to Jeff.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today, I'm pleased to share the highlights of our performance this tax season and an update on our block horizons and paradigms. Tiffany will then share the details of our third quarter financial results, and we'll open it up for Q&A. For the third quarter, we delivered revenue growth of 4%, EBITDA growth of 5%, and EPS growth of 9%. We saw an increase in company-owned assisted volume, higher overall net average charge, or NAC, and effective labor management. Based on these results, we're reiterating our outlook for fiscal 25, which Tiffany will talk more about in detail later in the call. It was a strong quarter, and while we still have work to do, our transformation continues to gather momentum and deliver results. Let me start with some commentary on the industry. While industry volume grew approximately 1% as anticipated, Clients shifted from DIY to assisted this season. As a result, the assisted category delivered growth of 170 basis points compared to 90 basis points of growth in DIY. This shift underscores the importance of the assisted category and highlights clients' desire for human health and expertise, a domain where H&R Block is the category leader and has been delivering for seven decades. Over the last couple of years, we've also observed an industry shift in overall filing behavior during the season, with more clients waiting until closer to the deadline to complete their tax returns. This year, there was an acceleration of this trend, and as a result, we experienced record high volumes in our tax offices in the final two days of the season compared to recent history. In uncertain times, We know it's even more important to provide expertise and value to our clients, and we did just that this tax season. Now, taking a closer look at our own performance. Through April 30, I'm pleased that we improved our volume and market share trends year over year in the assisted channel. This tax season, we redesigned the assisted client experience with two important goals. to convert more clients who started TaxPrep with us, and to improve retention. To do this, we improved our TaxPro matching algorithm and introduced new steps in our process to ensure our TaxPros better understood clients' needs and manage their expectations. We drove an increase in assisted client conversion for the second consecutive year. demonstrating the benefits of the continued improvements we've made. We saw higher overall client satisfaction scores in the key experience pillars of empathy, ease, and expertise. Importantly, we also increased the number of appointments set for next tax season versus this time last year. Setting future appointments is important for retention and engagement. Additionally, this season, we enhanced and automated our Second Look service, where we review the last three years of a new client's tax returns to see if any refund dollars were left on the table. Through Second Look, we consistently deliver meaningful value to clients by uncovering missed deductions and credits on prior year returns. We had a tenfold increase in new clients who participated in the service this season. and we identified no worthy discrepancies in nearly a quarter of those reviews. This demonstrates the expertise and thoroughness of our tax professionals and maximizes client refund dollars. Second Look is unique among nationwide tax preparers and offered free of charge to our clients, reinforcing our commitment to providing exceptional value and expert assistance. Our trusted brand name is a competitive differentiator, and we remain the category leader in assisted tax. Our local value proposition is strong, underpinned by our extensive retail footprint of nearly 9,000 offices conveniently located within five miles of most Americans in all 50 states. Our brand is well known, and more consumers are benefiting from our ability to handle all types of returns and financial situations as we are serving more complex clients who have higher lifetime value to block. For the third consecutive year, we have seen client growth in all segments above $80,000 in income, with our fastest-growing segment again being clients with over $100,000 in income. All in all, this year was another important step in demonstrating our leadership in the assisted tax business And the consumer shift toward the assisted category further demonstrates that clients are increasingly seeking expert help and value. And we have a trusted brand and proven track record of serving those needs. Shifting gears to DIY. For the quarter, we delivered DIY revenue growth of 8% year over year and saw customer satisfaction scores increase across all dimensions. Through April 30, DIY paid NAC was strong at $81.55, up 9% versus the prior year, with more than half of that growth coming from a mix shift to more complex SKUs, demonstrating the strength of our product. While online paid volume was essentially flat this season, we believe this is a reasonable outcome as we remain disciplined in what was an unprecedented promotional environment. As you may recall, last year we began providing a breakout of free and paid DIY filing volume in the appendix of our earnings presentation. We believe this transparency is important because while free DIY clients help our market share, they don't generate revenue. And consequently, many have limited lifetime value to block. We recognize that most free filers will likely always file for free, and they are the least loyal one to one provider. Others, such as young college-educated consumers, have a greater potential to become paid filers in the future as their circumstances evolve. We continue to believe a strategic focus on paid filers and free filers who have potential to become paid filers over time is the best use of capital to deliver financial returns in the business. We were once again very pleased with the performance of our AI tax assist tool in our DIY paid SKUs. We launched this tool to give clients easy access to our extensive body of tax knowledge, along with expert help at no extra charge. Building on last year's success, we expanded the knowledge base to cover more topics with a greater degree of accuracy. we continue to see higher user engagement and satisfaction among clients who used AI TaxAssist. In fact, conversion was 13 points higher among clients who used the tool than those who didn't, reinforcing the confidence it provided in their tax outcome by offering expert help. AI TaxAssist provides clients with more personalized guidance through the filing process. This coupled with live expert help, is a powerful value proposition and competitive differentiator for Block, particularly as clients must pay more to receive the same level of expert help in competitors' products. Additionally, we continue to see DIY clients upgrading to TaxPro Review, which delivered another year of growth. Clients turning over their work for us to complete reaffirms the value and demand for our professional expertise. And finally, we were pleased with the performance of MyBlock, H&R Block's mobile app and digital front door. We remain well positioned to serve clients however they want to be served, fully virtual to fully in person and every way in between. This season, we increased the total number of clients served fully virtually by 24%, reflecting our clients' growing preference for convenience blended with expert help. MyBlock underscores our commitment to adapting to client needs and delivering unmatched service and expertise in person and online. Now let's move on to a quick update on our other Block Horizon strategic imperatives, starting with small business. Assisted small business tax performed well again this quarter, delivering high single-digit revenue growth. We saw positive trends in entity returns and other more complex filings, and our bold marketing messages, including our up to 30% price advantage over a typical CPA or accountant, resonated. In DIY, we continue to improve the appeal of our small business SKUs and we're pleased with the growth in top-of-funnel registration. Last season, we launched new custom experiences for clients tailored to their occupation, which gained traction. We increased the number of custom experiences from 5 to 20, covering over 70% of clients and driving another year of improved conversion. We also maintained momentum in our year-round bookkeeping and payroll services, which together delivered double-digit revenue growth year over year. At Wave, our key priorities of accelerating revenue growth and driving profitability remain unchanged, and we continue to see momentum in Wave's high-margin subscription product, ProTier. To that end, I'm pleased that we delivered revenue growth of 13% in the quarter. Overall, I'm pleased with our performance as an increasing number of small businesses are choosing Block, and I'm excited about the continued opportunity ahead. Turning to financial products, Spruce, our mobile banking platform, continued to deliver on its mission of helping people improve their financial well-being. Since launch through April 30, results showed over 700,000 sign-ups, a nearly 50% increase compared to the prior year. In addition, about half of all deposits over the last year continue to be non-tax related, highlighting the product's ability to engage users year-round. Notably, our cross-selling efforts have been highly effective, as approximately 90% of our new Spruce clients also completed a tax return with H&R Block, and half of those clients were new to our brand. And by electing to deposit their federal tax refund into their Spruce account, clients were able to access their refund up to five days early. For the third consecutive year, clients using Spruce's Smart Tax Refund feature saved an average of 26% of their tax refund, surpassing the recommended 15%. This demonstrates Bruce's ability to help clients better manage their finances and foster smart savings habits. I'm proud of how our team has continued to deliver value to clients regardless of the broader market conditions, which speaks to the strength and resilience of our business model. Amid an evolving economic backdrop, one thing remains constant. Consumers and small business owners want trusted support when it comes to their taxes and financial needs. I want to now turn it over to Tiffany to discuss our financial results.