J. Jill, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Rex, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the JGL second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. On today's call are Claire Spofford, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Webb, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Operating Officer. 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 would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one once again. Before we begin, I need to remind you that certain comments made during these remarks may constitute forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Those risks and uncertainties are described in the press release and J. Jill's SEC filings. The forward-looking statements made on this recording are as of September 1, 2022, and J. Jill does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Finally, J. Jill may refer to certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures during these remarks. A reconciliation schedule showing the GAAP versus non-GAAP financial measures is available in the press release issued September 1st, 2022. If you do not have a copy of today's press release, you may obtain one by visiting the investor relations page of the website at jjill.com. I will now turn the call over to Claire.

Thank you, Operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for your interest in J. Jill.

For today's call, I'll review highlights of our second quarter performance and provide an update on our strategy before turning the call over to Mark to review our financial performance and outlook in more detail. Our second quarter results reflect the team's continued execution of our business strategy, focused on regularly flowing newness, driving full price sales, and expense management while operating in a volatile consumer environment. This strong execution helped to drive a record quarter of adjusted EBITDA of $35.6 million for Q2, led by growth margin expansion of 150 basis points, on top of last year's difficult comparison, and supported by year-over-year sales growth of approximately 1%. In line with Q1, woven tops and dresses continued to be standout categories, demonstrating our customers' appetite for newness and novelty. Our core franchises, like linen, across tops, bottoms, and dresses continued to perform well as well. Now I'm going to talk about what we're seeing and hearing from our customers. Last quarter, we mentioned that while our customer is not impervious to economic pressures, including inflation, she tends to be more resilient than the average consumer. In particular, we saw a strong start to the quarter over Mother's Day and heard from our store associates that she was generally stocking up early for her seasonal wardrobe and shopping for a summer packed with events and travel. We did see a slowing in purchasing in the latter part of the quarter as our customer had shopped earlier for the season and headed out on vacation. But we remain committed to full price selling, resulting in strong margin performance for the quarter. As the weather turns and we continue to flow newness, we're staying close to her and our field organization on her behaviors and shopping intent. And we feel confident, based on what we've heard, that she's coming back to refresh her fall wardrobe. Now I want to provide an update on the way we are using our stronger foundation as a platform for the long-term profitable growth of the company. As we move into Q3 and beyond, we are beginning to invest meaningfully in brand awareness and the growth and value of our customer base. This investment will support our growth agenda as we move into the latter part of this year and into 2023. Recently, you may have heard our announcement around the Welcome Everybody campaign and our Sides Inclusivity Initiative. Before I go deeper into the modernization of our brand and value proposition with welcome everybody, I want to outline the approach we've taken to launch this initiative. We remain committed to the execution of our operating model and our new inclusive sizing efforts are being managed with this same focused approach. We've offered extended sizes for a long time online and to some extent in our stores, but we haven't done a sufficient job of building awareness and supporting this offering. providing a real opportunity for us to reach new customers and to do a better job of serving the customers we have. As we prepared for this rollout, we focused on perfecting our fit, improving her experience when shopping for extended sizing, and clearly communicating our robust range of size options. Now I will go into more detail about the brand campaign. As I mentioned on the last earnings call, we conducted a thorough customer insight plan, including primary research with thousands of existing and prospective customers, as well as information gathered from our field associates. Our due diligence informed every aspect of the Welcome Everybody campaign and size inclusivity, revealing several real opportunities to excite our current customers and to introduce new customers to our brand. These include merging the Missy and Women's collections to provide a size-integrated shopping destination for customers in stores, bringing 2X into our stores where we know there's an appetite for it, while continuing to carry sizes extra small to 4X online, continuing to offer deep ranges of products in petite and tall to support growth and the consumer need within these categories, and to reintroduce our brand and compelling value proposition and products to her through the Welcome Everybody campaign. Reintroducing our brand also created an opportunity for us to respond to one of her most salient needs, the importance of seeing women she could relate to and women who look like her in our marketing, and to celebrating individuality in our presentations and messaging. We continue to build on the success we've seen in social channels like Facebook Live and Instagram by featuring a diverse cast of influencers across a range of sizes and body types who are helping us spread the word around our brand and the Welcome Everybody ethos. As I talked about earlier, fit was among one of the most important aspects of the size inclusivity initiative. The design team conducted extensive fit sessions to closely evaluate the fit on all different body types and perfect the fit within our extended size runs. This extensive fit testing allowed us to interpret each style and bring it to life for the full range of customers. We want every woman to be able to find her desired fit and products that are uniquely relevant to her with the confidence that J. Jill has what she's looking for in beautiful styles and fabrication. As we look to the remainder of the year, we continue to take a conservative outlook with respect to the consumer landscape, but expect to leverage the operating disciplines and our stronger foundation to continue to execute on our objectives and strategy. Now I'm going to turn it over to Mark, who will go into detail about our financial performance.