Aritzia Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to Aritzia's fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2021 results and earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I will now turn the conference over to Helen Kelly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Cherise, and thank you for joining us for Aritzia's fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2021 earnings conference call. On the call today, I'm joined by Brian Hill, our founder, chief executive officer, and chairman. Jennifer Wong, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Todd Engledew, our Chief Financial Officer. Following management's discussion, we'll host a question and answer period open to analysts and investors. Please note that the remarks on this call may include our expectations, future plans, and intentions that may constitute forward-looking statements. The uncertain and dynamic nature of COVID-19 and its ongoing impact could continue to materially alter our performance. We will refer you to our most recently filed management discussion and analysis and our annual information form, which include a summary of the material assumptions as well as risks and factors that could affect our future performance and our ability to deliver on these forward-looking statements. Our earnings release, the related financial statements and MD&A, as well as the most recently filed AIF, are available on CDAR as well as the investor relations section of our website at aritzia.com. I'll now turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you, Helen. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us. Together with Jennifer and Todd, I'm pleased to report our Q4 and year-end results while providing insight into the exciting year ahead. Q4 ended what was unquestionably the most challenging year in our history. I'm incredibly proud of how our team navigated the uncertainty with discipline, resilience, and agility, and in light of this, the exceptional results we delivered. It was a year we remember for not only what we accomplished, but how we accomplished it. And as we begin fiscal 2022, we are extremely well positioned to capitalize on the many growth opportunities ahead with a focus on both our surging e-commerce and U.S. businesses. While Todd will provide the financial details of both Q4 and fiscal 2021 shortly, I'll start by sharing the highlights of our sustained strong performance. In the fourth quarter, our net revenue decreased by just 2.9% from the prior year, with ironically the U.S. actually being up 9.2%. This is in spite of ongoing occupancy restrictions, reduced operating hours, and the reclosure of 57% or 39 of our boutiques in Canada for the majority of the quarter. Furthermore, our e-commerce business continued to surge, growing by an impressive 81% from the fourth quarter last year. Turning to the full year, our net revenue decreased by just 12.6% from the prior year, despite the sustained impact of the pandemic. Importantly, we capitalized on the consumer shift to drive e-commerce growth 88%, ending up comprising approximately 50% of our net revenues for the year. more than double the penetration of 23% in fiscal 2020. Our results enabled us to generate free cash flow and improve our strong liquidity position, which allowed us to continue to invest during this turbulent year. Given the 81% growth in e-commerce over Q4, sustaining what was already a consistently accelerating part of our business over the course of the year, We continued to invest in new digital features and functions. This included the expanding rollout of our client app, Fit Analytics, Afterpay, and digital concierge, amongst others. Together, they significantly enhanced our online capabilities, mirroring the same everyday lecture experience our clients enjoy in our boutiques with further opportunities underway. For Q4, in our boutiques, we saw the United States to begin to recover However, it was disappointing that in Canada we began the quarter with 18 boutique reclosures, growing to 39 boutiques reclosed by Boxing Day, right at the start of our holiday sale period. Despite these ongoing pressures throughout the year, we continued our strategy to expand our boutique network thoughtfully with fastidious location selectivity, exceptional financial terms, and a downside safeguards in place. By early Q4, we successfully opened seven new boutiques and expanded three existing boutiques. In support of both our e-commerce and retail businesses, we advanced the kickoff of our Omni Capabilities Initiative, designed to grow our multi-channel client relationship. We expect the launch of the various initiatives throughout the year. Turning to product, we are extremely pleased with the performance of our fall-winter collection. However, we had the high class problem of chasing inventory throughout the period. On the backdrop of what was going on at the time, we thought having lower inventory was a wise position to take, although in hindsight we were too conservative. Therefore, given our continued growth in e-commerce and accelerating business in the United States, We intentionally ended the quarter in a meaningfully higher inventory position in order to fuel the potential of these channels. We are very pleased with this decision as we are already seeing positive results in our first quarter revenue. At the end of Q4, we launched our spring-summer product assortment with expanded choices in almost every category. Our clients immediately responded with excitement for both the welcome change of seasons and the prospect of a gradual return to more normal activities with the rollout of the vaccination programs led by the United States. We cancelled our traditional spring sale and have pushed back the launch of our summer sale event in the United States by four weeks to align with the Canadian event. We are confident we will finish the season with a clean inventory position as usual. Throughout Q4, our marketing efforts continued to propel our everyday luxury offering, with captivating communications seamlessly spanning our e-commerce site, social media platforms, and in our boutiques. From a holiday campaign to our spring-summer brand launches, we also continued our paid media pilot, evaluating our results and developing a go-forward strategy. I can say with confidence that in our history, our brand has never been stronger and our creative never more engaging, resonating with our existing clients online, through our social channels and in our boutiques, while attracting new clients to Aritzia, particularly throughout the United States. COVID-19's impact made it more important than ever that we uphold our commitments to our people and our planet. As Jennifer will speak to in greater detail, we've made encouraging progress this past year and in the most recent quarter to advance our strategic initiatives in support of Aritzia's communities, cultivate diversity, and enhance sustainability. In summary, our fourth quarter and full-year performance reflect the remarkable resilience of our team, our clients' affinity to our brand of everyday luxury, and the strength of our multi-channel business. even under the most difficult circumstances. As we begin to, here in North America, hopefully put the pandemic behind us, the insightful and bold decisions we made, together with our continued strategic investments, have already served us well as evidenced by an incredibly successful start to fiscal 2022. I will now turn the call over to Jennifer to provide some perspective on our operations.