Wolverine World Wide, Inc.

everyone and welcome to today's Wolverine Worldwide third quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Please note this call is being recorded and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Alec Weissman, Senior Vice President of Finance.

Good morning and welcome to our third quarter fiscal 2024 conference call. On the call today are Chris Hufnagel, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Taryn Miller, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings press release and announced our financial results for the third quarter of 2024. The press release is available on many news sites and can be viewed on our corporate website at wolverineworldwide.com. This morning's earnings press release and comments made during today's earnings call include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures were reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in attached tables within the body of the release or on our investor relations page on our website. References made regarding financial results and outlook for 2024 and comparable results from 2023 in each case for our ongoing business exclude the impact of Keds, Wolverine Leathers, and Sperry. I'd also like to remind you that statements describing the company's expectations, plans, predictions, and projections, such as those regarding the company's outlook for fiscal year 2024, growth opportunities, and trends expected to affect the company's future performance made during today's conference call are forward-looking statements under U.S. securities laws. As a result, we must caution you that there are a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These important risk factors are identified in the company's SEC filings and in our press releases. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Chris Hufnagel.

Thanks, Alex. Good morning, and thanks to everyone for joining us on this morning's call. Starting with the headlines. In the third quarter, we delivered better than expected revenue and earnings. Notably, Merrill returned to growth, and Saucony and Sweaty Betty were approximately flat when adjusted for business model changes and currency fluctuation, respectively. We drove record gross margin for the third quarter, the second quarterly record we've set this year. Finally, at the bottom line, we more than doubled our earnings from a year ago. It was a good quarter for the company, further confirming our strategic direction and the great work our teams are doing. Based on these results and our outlook for the fourth quarter, we're raising both our top and bottom line guidance for the year. Karen Miller, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide more color here in a few minutes. A year ago, we outlined an ambitious plan to turn around Wolverine Worldwide and, in the process, build a new company for the future. We started by taking fast and bold action to stabilize the company and strengthen the balance sheet by significantly paying down our debt and reducing inventory, both of which are now well under half of where they stood 24 months ago. At the same time, we moved quickly to transform Wolverine Worldwide for the future, rationalizing our brand portfolio, restructuring the global organization, and working to improve our profitability. Today we continue to execute with great pace against this agenda, focus squarely on delivering the progress needed quarter after quarter to build a better business and ultimately deliver better returns for our shareholders. While we have more work to do to fully realize the potential I believe our company, brands, and teams possess, we're getting better and building new muscle each and every day. We're placing our consumers and brands at the center of our approach and developing the talent, tools, capabilities, and processes needed to execute our enterprise and brand strategies with distinction moving forward. As we secure the turnaround and advance the transformation of our organization, we're thoughtfully navigating the reinvigoration of our brands and our inflection to growth as a company. We've worked hard to establish a healthier foundation for growth, cleaning up the marketplace, expanding margins, and working to better position and manage our brands at wholesale and in our own channels of distribution. As we guided at the start of the year, we've now driven sequential improvement in top line revenue for the past two quarters. We have a plan to inflect a growth as a company in the final quarter of the year, and more importantly, carry this momentum into 2025. While the macro environment remains choppy and the consumer outlook is still a bit murky, our teams continue to manage the variables they can control. Focusing on a global brand building model and prioritizing, designing awesome products that are innovative, trend right, placed right, and priced right, telling amazing stories that not only convey the functional benefits of our brand's products, but also resonate with consumers on an emotional level and driving the business each and every day. The third quarter was another positive chapter in our turnaround and transformation story. Before handing it over to Taryn to detail our financial results in the quarter and updated outlook for the remainder of the year, I'd like to provide some additional insight on our brand's performance, starting with Merrill. As a leader in the hike footwork category, the brand remains intently focused on modernizing the trail through faster, lighter, and more versatile product. Over the course of this year, the Moab Speed 2 has meaningfully advanced this effort and established itself as an important franchise for the brand. It continues to sell through well at key outdoor accounts and, encouragingly, is also performing well at certain lifestyle retailers. Next week, the brand anticipates launching its second collaboration with Jeep, this iteration on the Moab Speed 2 platform, an opportunity to increase the brand's awareness and continue to build on the product franchise's success. Merrell's premier trail runner, the Agility Peak 5, is also selling through well in both performance and lifestyle channels. The brand has plans to continue to leverage collaborations on both of these franchises for the trail moving forward, further broadening their reach. Merrill's modernized product offering has enabled the brand to partner with several of its key accounts to reset assortments, with the goal of evolving consumers' perceptions of the brand and driving sell-through. As a result of our proactive approach, the brand again accelerated share gains in the high category in the U.S. last quarter. Merrill's created traction on the lifestyle side as well, successfully testing new products with several influential retailers. Outside the U.S., the brand was up mid-teens in EMA and drove mid- single-digit growth in Asia-Pacific in the quarter, in part due to the execution of our key city strategy in Tokyo, with brand activations in our Shibuya Square Scramble and Harajuku stores. Looking ahead to 2025, Merrill plans to launch its most innovative franchise to date in January, the all-new SpeedArk Collection, led by the award-winning SpeedArk Surge BOA, last week named one of Time's Best New Inventions of the Year. It employs advanced materials and the brand's new SpeedArc platform, including its Float Pro Plus supercritical foam and a stabilizing flex plate. The result is a remarkably unique and comfortable ride with exceptional energy return that outperforms the industry in extensive lab testing, packaged in a visually disruptive modern silhouette. Merrill's pushing innovation boundaries of the trail as a category leader and generating momentum around the world. Moving on to stocking. As the original running brand, Saucony has been an innovator in the category for decades, earning the trust of serious runners around the world with elite products like the award-winning Endorphin Collection. A little over a year ago, we overhauled the brand's strategy to sharpen its focus on everyday runners and the broader run lifestyle opportunity by bringing better innovation into its core four franchises, the Ride, Guide, Triumph, and Hurricane, and by enhancing its designs to provide more versatile, wearable styling. Saucony has made this important pivot while simultaneously advancing innovation in its most elite offerings, and the consumers responding positively to the brand's evolution. Saucony has partnered closely this year with a host of key accounts to prove the power of the brand and its key product franchises, and has delivered strong results in several distribution channels, including run specialty, sporting goods, outdoor specialty, and beyond. And the critical US run specialty channel in particular the brand drove strong growth and took market share in the third quarter. Internationally, the brand grew in EMA and was up significantly in Asia Pacific after adjusting for last year's business model change in China. Stockany executed a similar approach on the lifestyle side as well. The brand's deep, authentic product archive with key styles like the ProGrid Omni and Ride Millennium, coupled with relevant and compelling collaborations with the likes of JTips, Minted New York, StarCow Paris 316, and Undefeated, and others right up through last week has helped fuel strong brand heat. As of today, the brand expects to thoughtfully increase its store count in relevant U.S. lifestyle and athletic specialty channels from nascent distribution this past spring to over 900 doors in spring 25. Stockton anticipates building on its strong momentum in 2025 by kicking off the year with a fresh offering of the rapidly growing ProGrid Omni and Lifestyle, along with the introduction of new guide and ride models on the performance side. the latest iterations of two of the brand's biggest franchises. To continue to advance tip-up sphere innovation, the brand also plans to launch the Endorphin Elite 2 this coming spring, featuring IncrediRun foam, the brand's most innovative and responsive foam ever, delivering unmatched energy return and cushioning. Saucony expects to build on its key city strategy to help activate the brand in a strong pipeline in an impactful way as well. With continued sponsorship of the London 10K, and the opening of our first Pioneer store in London's Covent Garden in spring 25. 2024 has been a pivotal, transitional, and transformational year for Saucony. I believe we've positioned the brand for the opportunity to deliver strong growth in 2025 and beyond. Sweaty Betty also delivered a solid quarter with year-over-year increases in both its e-commerce and wholesale businesses while our stores finished flat. The brand launched its new Femtech collection aimed at empowering its female consumer at every life stage which was met with an overwhelming consumer response. In addition, the brand drove strong growth in its biggest category, leggings, powered by its cornerstone franchise, Power. Importantly, the brand's lifestyle offerings, led by the Explorer Collection, also contributed to growth in the quarter, helping the brand diversify beyond its core performance silhouettes. Finally, the Wolverine brand saw encouraging proof points in its business trends as well. While we experienced some delayed product deliveries that impacted the brand's shipments for the quarter, Retail sell-through in the U.S. was up compared to the prior year, and the brand's market share trend sequentially improved. However, we have more work to do in our work group, and it starts with bolstering the innovation in our product pipeline. To that end, we recently appointed a new product chief for the group. As for 2025, I'm excited for several new launches for Wolverine, beginning with the Vantage and the Rancher Pro collections, both featuring the brand's new HyperRest technology for improved cushioning and energy return. And to help accelerate brand heat, The brand will launch a partnership next February with country music superstar Jordan Davis. While we know the path forward won't be perfectly straight or smooth, I believe our company is headed in the right direction with great pace, executing our strategies, driving the business, and beginning to deliver better results. With that, I'd now like to hand the call over to Taryn to take you through our third quarter results and update Outlook in more detail. Taryn?