Good day, and welcome to the DICK’S Sporting Goods first quarter earnings call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nate Gilch, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter of 2021 results. On today's call will be Ed Stack, our Executive Chairman and Chief Merchandising Officer, Lauren Hobart, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Lee Belitsky, our Chief Financial Officer. A playback of today's call will be archived on our investor relations website, located at investors.dicks.com for approximately 12 months. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our last annual report on Form 10-K and cautionary statements made during this call. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. Please refer to our investor relations website to find a reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call. Finally, a few admin items. First, a note on our same-store sales reporting practices. Our consolidated same-store sales calculation includes stores that we chose to temporarily close last year as a result of COVID-19. The method of calculating comp sales varies across the retail industry, including the treatment of temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19. Our method of calculation may not be the same as other retailers. As a reminder, due to the uneven nature of 2020, we plan 2021 off a 2019 baseline. We will compare 2021 sales and earnings results against both 2019 and 2020. Lastly, for your future scheduling purposes, we are tentatively planning to publish our second quarter 2021 earnings results before the market opens on August 25th, 2021, with our subsequent earnings call at 10:00 A.M. Eastern Time. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Ed. Thanks, Nate. Good morning, everyone. We are extremely pleased to announce yet another quarter of record results as we continue to execute at a very high level and capitalize on incredibly strong consumer demand. We're in a great lane right now. 2021 will be our boldest and most transformational year in the company's history. We believe the future of retail is experiential, powered by technology and a world-class omnichannel operating model. Importantly, we are reimagining the athlete experience both across our core business and through new concepts that we have been working on for the past several years, which will collectively propel our growth in the future. We recently debuted DICK'S House of Sport in Rochester, New York. It's off to a great start and is on track to become among our highest volume stores in the chain. We reimagined virtually everything in this store and believe it sets the standard for sport retailing and athlete engagement. Our partners who have visited the store all agree there's nothing like it, and we hope everyone has the opportunity to see it in person. We are completely re-engineering our Golf Galaxy business. The game of golf is in great shape, and our golf business has been tremendous. With Golf Galaxy comps significantly outperforming the company average in recent quarters, we're leaning into this strength by investing in our Golf Galaxy business and adding TrackMan technology to enhance the fitting and lesson experience. We are also investing in talent to elevate the in-store service model and are remodeling 18 stores this year. The new stores we've remodeled are showing promising results. Looking ahead, we expect golf to have a long runway, and we are committed to leveraging this momentum for future growth within our business. Additionally, we are launching Public Lands, a complete outdoor omnichannel retail concept that will focus on making the outdoors a place where everyone feels welcome and inspired. We've been working on Public Lands for several years and look forward to opening our first two stores later this year. Based on our research, we think there is an opportunity in the marketplace and believe this new concept will be a great growth vehicle for us. Importantly, conservation will play a prominent role in our new Public Lands concept. We will champion environmental issues as we speak up to protect the planet and our public lands. As a member of the outdoor industry, we've also joined forces with other retailers to advocate for conserving 30% of the U.S. lands and waters by 2030. We expect to have the same voice and as much impact on these issues as we've had inside the DICK'S business, highlighting the youth sports crisis and sensible gun legislation. We'll be sharing more details about our plans for Public Lands in the weeks and months ahead. In closing, you can see DICK'S is a growth company, and we will continue to invest in our business to grow our lead as the nation's largest sport retailer. We see significant growth opportunities within DICK'S and Golf Galaxy, as well as with House of Sport and Public Lands. We will continue to invest in our vertical brands and with our key partners, including Nike, The North Face, Callaway, TaylorMade, and others, to elevate the athlete experience across the stores and online. This morning, as Lauren and Lee discuss the results of our strategic growth drivers in greater detail, I couldn't be more excited about our business and more proud of our team and their unwavering dedication to our business. I'll now turn the call over to Lauren. Thank you, Ed, and good morning, everyone. As announced earlier this morning, we delivered another exceptionally strong quarter, achieving record first quarter sales and our highest-ever quarterly earnings, both significantly exceeding our expectations. Our Q1 consolidated same-store sales increased 115% as we anniversaried the majority of our temporary store closures from last year. The strength of our diverse category portfolio, supply chain, technology capabilities, and omnichannel execution helped us continue to capitalize on strong consumer demand across golf, outdoor activities, home fitness, and active lifestyle. We also saw a resurgence in our team sports business as kids began to get back out on the field after a year in which many youth sports activities were delayed or canceled. Our strong comps were supported by sales growth of over 100% within each of our three primary categories of hardlines, apparel, and footwear, as well as increases in both average ticket and transactions. Like others, we also benefited from the recent stimulus checks. These results combined translate to a 52% sales increase when compared to the first quarter of 2019. From a channel standpoint, our brick-and-mortar stores generated significant triple-digit comps and importantly delivered an approximate 40% sales increase when compared to 2019 with roughly the same square footage. Our e-commerce sales increased 14%, which was on top of our 110% online sales increase in the same period last year when the vast majority of our stores were closed for over six weeks. This represented nearly a 140% increase when compared to 2019. Within e-commerce, in-store pickup and curbside continue to be a meaningful piece of our omnichannel offering, increasing approximately 500% when compared to BOPIS sales during the first quarter of 2019. As a percent of online sales, we saw sequential growth compared to the second half of last year. These same-day services, along with ship from store, are fully enabled by our stores, which are the hub of our industry-leading omnichannel experience, both serving our in-store athletes and providing over 800 forward points of distribution for digital fulfillment. During Q1, our stores enabled approximately 90% of our total sales and fulfilled approximately 70% of our online sales through either ship from store, in-store pickup, or curbside. Throughout the quarter, we remained disciplined in our promotional strategy and cadence, and certain categories in the marketplace continued to be supply constrained. As a result, we expanded our merchandise margin rate by 787 basis points versus 2020 and 312 basis points versus 2019. This merchandise margin expansion, along with substantial leverage on fixed costs, drove a significant improvement in gross margin. In total, our first quarter non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $3.79 not only represented a 511% increase over Q1 2019 but eclipsed our full year 2019 non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $3.59. During the first quarter last year, we recorded a net loss per share of $1.71 as we temporarily closed our stores to promote the safety of our teammates, athletes, and communities. Looking ahead, we remain very enthusiastic about our business and we're raising our full-year sales and earnings guidance. Our financial outlook balances this enthusiasm with the uncertainties that still exist, particularly as it relates to the second half of the year. Lee will address our outlook in greater detail within his remarks. Now let me provide a few updates on our strategic growth drivers. First, within merchandising, our well-defined brand strategy drives differentiation and exclusivity within our assortment as we leverage both our key national brand partnerships and our highly profitable and growing vertical brand portfolio. During the quarter, our vertical brands continued to be a significant source of strength, posting triple-digit comps with merchandise margin rate expansion that outperformed the company average. We saw sustained success in DSG, our largest vertical brand, as well as in CALIA, our second-largest women's athletic apparel brand. This year, we are investing to make our vertical brands even stronger through improved space in store and increased marketing. In March, we augmented our men's athletic apparel collection by launching VRST, our new premium apparel brand that serves the modern athletic male. The team has done a great job with VRST, and it's off to a really strong start. Next, to increase engagement with our athletes, we're taking steps to dial up service in our stores and to make our stores more experiential. As I mentioned, we've been very pleased with the early results from our first DICK'S House of Sport and are excited for the grand opening of our second location in Knoxville next week. Virtually everything in House of Sport is new, from our engagement and service models to our merchandising standards, brands, and concept shops, as well as an adjacent outdoor field to host sports events and promote product trial. These highly experiential stores are exploring the future of retail, and they provide us a great opportunity to test and learn. We'll continue to refine and grow the House of Sport concept while also rolling the most successful elements into our core DICK'S stores. Beyond House of Sport, we continue to evolve the DICK'S athlete experience. During the quarter, we added more than 30 soccer shops that provide a high level of service from in-store soccer experts who are specially trained to help athletes find the equipment and cleats they need to excel at the game. The soccer shops also feature a variety of updated in-store elements, including an elevated cleat shop, an expanded selection of licensed jerseys and soccer trial cages in select locations. We've been pleased with the initial results and plan to add additional shops throughout the year. As discussed on prior calls, footwear is a key pillar of our merchandising strategy. During this quarter, we converted more than 40 additional stores to premium full-service footwear. Over 50 more stores will be converted by the end of the year, taking this experience to approximately 60% of the DICK'S chain. Lastly, as the number one premium golf retailer in the world, we are benefiting from renewed interest in the game. Participation rates are healthy, and energy for the game of golf continues to increase, with women, juniors, and young adults contributing to the game's growth. As a result of this robust demand, our golf business has been great at both DICK'S and Golf Galaxy, with Golf Galaxy comps significantly outperforming the company average in recent quarters. In 2021, we're investing over $20 million to transform our Golf Galaxy stores via a combination of elevated experience, industry-leading technology, and unmatched expertise through our certified PGA and LPGA professionals. As part of this, we rolled out TrackMan technology to over 80% of the chain to enhance the fitting and lesson experience. We've also completely redesigned nearly 20 stores. We enabled online booking of lessons and club fittings and invested in talent and training to elevate our in-store service model. We supported these efforts through our first Golf Galaxy-specific brand campaign, Better Your Best, across TV, social, and in-store. Moving to our omnichannel capabilities. We continue to drive significant improvement in the profitability of our e-commerce channel through fewer promotions, leverage of fixed costs, and strong athlete adoption of in-store pickup and curbside. We're continuing to enhance the curbside experience with new features like proxy pickup, as well as through improved inventory availability and reduced pickup wait time for athletes. During Q1, over 90% of curbside orders were ready within 15 minutes, and upon check-in at the store, 50% were delivered to the athlete's car in under two and a half minutes. Looking ahead, we continue to expect curbside pickup will remain a meaningful piece of our omnichannel offering as our athletes turn to this service for speed and convenience. Along with curbside, our ScoreCard program continues to be a key to our omnichannel offering, with more than 20 million active members who drive over 70% of our sales. We're using data science to drive more personalized marketing and engagement with our athletes, which is resulting in strong retention of the 8.5 million new athletes we acquired last year. Speaking of new athletes, we acquired nearly 2 million new athletes this past quarter, and relative to our existing athletes, they continue to skew younger and more female, representing a great opportunity for future growth. In closing, we are a growth company steeped in technology and omnichannel experience with a bold path forward. As we continue to execute against our strategic priorities, we are enthusiastic about our business and confident that our investments will strengthen our leadership position within the marketplace. I had the pleasure of visiting many of our stores during this first quarter, and I would like to thank our teammates across the company for their continued hard work, collaborative spirit, and passion for serving our athletes and supporting our business. I will now turn the call over to Lee to review our financial results and outlook in more detail. Thank you, Lauren, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with a brief review of our first quarter results. Consolidated sales increased 119% to approximately $2.92 billion. Including the impact of last year's temporary store closures, consolidated same-store sales increased 115%. This increase was broad-based with each of our three primary categories of hardlines, apparel, and footwear comping up over 100%. Transactions increased 90%, and average ticket increased 25%. Compared to 2019, consolidated sales increased 52%. Our brick-and-mortar stores comped up nearly 190% as we anniversary-ed last year's temporary store closures, and compared to 2019, increased approximately 40% with roughly the same square footage. Our e-commerce sales increased 14% over last year and increased 139% versus 2019. As a percent of total net sales, our online business was 20%. As expected, this decreased from the 39% of net sales in 2020, given last year's temporary store closures, but increased compared to the 13% we had in 2019. Lastly, in terms of stimulus, while this can be difficult to quantify, we recognize that our athletes had more cash to spend during the quarter and believe we benefited from this during the first quarter. Gross profit in the first quarter was $1.09 billion, or 37.3% of net sales, and improved approximately 2,100 basis points compared to last year. This improvement was driven by leverage on fixed occupancy costs of approximately 1,000 basis points from the significant sales increase and merchandise margin rate expansion of 787 basis points, primarily driven by fewer promotions and a favorable sales mix. Additionally, last year included $28 million of inventory write-downs resulting from our temporary store closures, which were subsequently recovered in the second quarter of 2020 due to better-than-anticipated sales and margin on merchandise nearing the end of life upon the reopening of our stores. The balance of the improvement was driven by lower shipping expense as a percent of net sales due to higher brick-and-mortar store sales penetration following last year's temporary store closures. Compared to 2019, gross profit as a percent of sales improved by 795 basis points, driven by leverage on fixed occupancy costs of 475 basis points. Due to the significant sales increase and merchandise margin rate expansion of 312 basis points, primarily driven by fewer promotions. SG&A expenses were $608.3 million, or 20.84% of net sales, and leveraged 940 basis points compared to last year due to the significant sales increase. SG&A dollars increased $205.1 million, of which $21 million is attributable to the expense recognition associated with changes in our deferred compensation plan investment values. This expense is fully offset in other income and has no impact on net earnings. The remaining $183 million is primarily due to normalization of expenses following our temporary store closures last year to support the increase in sales, as well as higher incentive compensation expenses due to our strong first quarter results. SG&A expenses include $13 million of COVID-related safety costs, which in light of the latest CDC guidance, we expect these costs to decline significantly beginning in the second quarter. Compared to 2019's non-GAAP results, SG&A expenses as a percent of net sales leveraged 446 basis points due to the significant sales increase. SG&A increased $122.3 million due to increases in store payroll and operating expenses to support the increase in sales and hourly wage rate investments and COVID-related safety costs, as well as higher incentive compensation expenses. Driven by our strong sales and gross margin rate expansion, we delivered record quarterly non-GAAP EBT and EBT margin results. Non-GAAP EBT was $477.1 million, or 16.35% of net sales, and it increased $684.8 million, or approximately 3,200 basis points from the same period last year. More relevantly, compared to 2019, non-GAAP EBT increased $396 million, or approximately 1,200 basis points as a percent of net sales. In total, we delivered non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $3.79. This is compared to a net loss per share of $1.71 last year and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $0.62 in 2019, a 511% increase. On a GAAP basis, our earnings per diluted share were $3.41. This includes $7.3 million in non-cash interest expense as well as 9.2 million additional shares that will be offset by our bond hedge at settlement, but are required in the GAAP diluted share calculation. Both are related to the convertible notes we issued in the first quarter of 2020. For additional details on this, you can refer to the non-GAAP reconciliation tables in our press release that we issued this morning. Looking to our balance sheet, we're in a strong financial position ending Q1 with approximately $1.86 billion of cash and cash equivalents and no borrowings on our $1.85 billion revolving credit facility. While our quarter-end inventory levels decreased 4% compared to the same period last year, our strong flow of product supported Q1 sales growth in excess of our expectations. Looking ahead, our inventory is very clean, and we continue to expect a robust product flow. In terms of supply chain expense, we are seeing elevated costs, which we expect to continue, but thus far have mitigated this pressure through higher ticket as a result of being less promotional and increasing prices in select categories. Turning to our first quarter capital allocation, net capital expenditures were $57.2 million, and we paid $33 million in quarterly dividends. During the quarter, we also repurchased just over 1 million shares of our stock for $76.8 million at an average price of $74.59. We have approximately $954 million remaining under our share purchase program, and our plan for 2021 continues to include a minimum of $200 million of share repurchases. Let me move on to our fiscal 2021 outlook for sales and earnings. As a result of our significant Q1 results, we are raising our consolidated same-store sales guidance and now expect full-year comp sales to increase by 8%-11%, compared to our prior expectation of down 2% to up 2%. At the midpoint, our updated comp sales guidance represents a 22% sales increase versus 2019 compared to our prior expectation of up 11%. While we have been very pleased with the start of our second quarter and are highly encouraged about the rest of the year, beginning in June, we will start to anniversary significant comp sales gains from last year. There is also continued uncertainty around when consumer behavior will normalize and what the new normal will be, and we are limited in our ability to forecast demand, particularly as it relates to the second half. Given this, within our updated outlook, we have maintained our Q3 and Q4 performance expectations in line with our original guidance, which assumes comps will decline in the range of high single to low double digits. Non-GAAP EBT is now expected to be in the range of $1 billion-$1.1 billion, compared to our prior outlook of $550 million-$650 million, which at the midpoint and on a non-GAAP basis, is up 142% versus 2019 and up 45% versus 2020. At the midpoint, non-GAAP EBT margin is expected to be approximately 10%. Within this, gross margin is expected to increase versus 2019, driven by leverage on fixed expenses and higher merchandise margins. When compared to 2020, gross margin is also expected to increase, driven by leverage on fixed expenses, while merchandise margins are expected to be approximately flat. This assumes a gradual normalization of promotions beginning in the second quarter and modest deleverage on fixed expenses in the second half. SG&A expense is expected to leverage versus both 2019 and 2020 due to the significant projected increase in full-year sales. As a reminder, at the beginning of 2021, we transitioned last year's premium pay program to a more lasting compensation program, including increasing and accelerating annual merit increases and higher wage minimums. The impact of these programs has been included within our guidance. In total, we are raising our full-year non-GAAP earnings per diluted share outlook to a range of $8- $8.70, compared to our prior outlook of $4.40 - $5.20. At the midpoint and on a non-GAAP basis, our updated EPS guidance is up 126% versus 2019 and up 36% versus 2020. Our updated earnings guidance is based on 97 million average diluted shares outstanding and an effective tax rate of approximately 24%. In closing, we are extremely pleased with our Q1 results and remain very enthusiastic about the future of DICK'S Sporting Goods. This concludes our prepared comments. Thank you for your interest in DICK'S Sporting Goods. Operator, you may now open the line for questions. Thank you. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Robbie Ohmes with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Good morning, Ed, Lee, Lauren. Sorry, I'm still too speechless to say congratulations. Thanks, Robbie. I think, I guess, Lauren, I'm going to ask you. On the curbside customers, can you remind us what the spend is on them? Is there a calculation where as you're building more curbside customers, do they spend 2x or 3x normal customers, and do they spend that within the stores and not in the stores? Maybe also with, I guess it's 10.5 million new customers, you said they're younger and they're more female. Could you talk about how they're spending with you, and can you give us any kind of numbers? Do they spend more than historical customers? Are you losing some customers as you bring on all these new customers? Sort of more help on who's actually coming into the store and how they're spending. Thanks, Robbie. In terms of curbside customers, our best customer is our omnichannel customer, someone who shops in all channels. The curbside is so new, we don't have specific data on those specific customers versus the general e-commerce customers. Overall, when somebody comes into our system, and if they shop in the store and they shop online, they are a more valuable customer. In terms of new customers, you're right, we had $8.5 million last year and $2 million new customers this year. Our database continues to grow. We have over 30 million emails that we can reach out to people with and communicate to and personalize our offers to them and our communication to them. Those athletes are spending more than last year, and doing well versus existing customers. We're not going to share specifically how they're doing, but we are very pleased with their retention rate. They're shopping again. They're shopping again within a short window, a few week window, and we're very pleased with that. Got you. Just a quick follow-up. Lee, on the guidance, I just want to clarify, what kind of promotional environment are you guys expecting? A return to full normal in the back half of this year, or how should we think about the promotional environment? We're not anticipating a return to full normal that we might have seen in 2018 and 2019, but we are anticipating a gradual return of promotions beginning here later in Q2 and then building throughout the back half of the year. Got it. Thanks so much, guys. Congratulations. Thank you. Our next question comes from Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Please go ahead. Good morning. Just when we thought it couldn't get better, it does. Congrats. Thank you. Lauren, my first question for you. We've talked about this. For those who have strengthened during the pandemic, you're in a very unique position of being able to accelerate investment, test some new formats, take a little bit more risk than maybe some others. We're seeing you do that with House of Sport. You're also doing a variety of other things, exclusive high touch in store soccer shop, and then also going lower with OVERTIME Warehouse and off-price concepts. I know they're very small and still in test format, what are you learning about each, particularly at the lower end, OVERTIME Warehouse and the Going, Gone!? Are you just testing those to see which format will win out? Any ideas on the thoughts there, the strategy? Thank you. Okay, thanks, Adrienne. You are right. We are investing in our business in many different ways. The one thing I think is important to realize is that many of these initiatives were in place before the pandemic and are just continuing on now. That would be including our Golf Galaxy investments, our House of Sport, our soccer shops, a lot of things were in the works and just basically paused during the pandemic. We come out of the pandemic now with a lot of consumer demand and tailwinds and these strategies that we knew made sense before the pandemic. We are even more eager and more excited to get going on them. We are definitely investing in the business. We are investing in our omnichannel experience. We're investing in experiential aspects of the store, as you see with House of Sport and things like rock climbing walls and the soccer shops and Footwear Decks and HitTrax. Everywhere where we can add experience, we're doing that. Specific to Warehouse Sale and Going, Gone!, that is truly just a test. We're using it as a clearance vehicle in the DICK'S channel. We will have more to come on that, but it's a handful of stores right now, and it is a test, just in order to keep our clearance moving. Okay. Does that help? And then the. Yes. Yes, you did. Lee, a quick one for you. What percent, if you're willing to share that with us, what percent of team sports and associated accessories, sort of on an annualized basis, and I'm sure that bumps it up in the back-to-school season, so if you can give us penetration in the third quarter. Lastly, close to $2 billion of cash. What are your thoughts on what to do with all that money? Thanks so much. Well, a couple of things. Team sports has its highest penetration of business typically in the first quarter, and then that's followed by the third quarter as the second highest penetration, and then the second and the fourth quarter is the lowest penetration. We did really well with team sports in the first quarter, and that's in its highest penetration quarter. We were well-inventoried coming into the quarter, expecting a resurgence, and we were able to meet that demand. With respect to the cash that we have on the balance sheet right now, overall, we intend to continue to be conservative on maintaining cash balances. However, we're able to support the investments in new concepts that we have going forward. We're able to invest in working capital. We haven't rebuilt our inventories yet, but we are continuing to be fairly aggressive on our inventory buys for the back half of the year. Even though in our guidance, we have anticipated sales down approximately 10% to last year, up 10% to 2019, we are going to be buying to support continued comp sales gains because we don't want to lead the consumer there, and we want to let our customer tell us when they're ready to slow down. We're going to have the inventory and we have the working capital, and we have the cash to go do that and make those bets. Ed had talked earlier, as had Lauren, that we're going to continue to invest in our stores and new concepts. We are maintaining our guidance on buying back at least $200 million of stock this year. We expect to continue to make our dividend payments as we've increased those over the last several years. We have a lot of uses for it, but having said that, we anticipate continuing to be conservatively capitalized and maintaining sizable cash balance. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. Our next question comes from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hey, everyone. Nice results. My first question is on gross margins. I wanted to focus on two elements of it. First, if you can look at product margins and look at it within category, are there any changes that are improving that you could sort of attribute structurally getting better, whether the hard line margin is getting better within itself because of mix or apparel and footwear? The other part of it is, if you look at the e-commerce business, I realize you look at it all combined multi-channel, but any way to quantify how much better EBIT margins can be structurally from higher BOPUS or from ship from stores than pre-COVID? I'll start with the last question. With e-commerce, it's certainly advantageous for us to have a higher penetration of BOPUS and curbside. We're up 500% versus 2019 on those areas. The channel is benefiting from that, but also benefiting by the fact that we invested in technology many years ago, and we've created a platform now where we do get leverage as the sales come in. Our gross margins, getting to your second question, which has been extremely strong for the last few quarters and including this past quarter. Within categories for gross margin, we are finding across the board, we are not in a promotional environment, nor are we certainly leading in any promotional way. Across the board, the categories have been improving in gross margins. It's true of hardlines, it's true of footwear, it's true of apparel. Overall, it's a really good story, and we're very pleased with e-commerce profitability. The more BOPUS and curbside, the better, but even the ship from home business, everything is more profitable now as we scale. Yeah, I would just add to that, due to the strength of demand across our product assortment, we're not really creating much in the way of clearance merchandise. We don't have a little bit of an anchor on our merchandise margin rates coming from dealing with clearance that we would typically have. The clearance stores that we've opened have also helped us to more efficiently deal with our clearance inventory. Structurally, that's helped us with our merchandise margin rates, but strong demand has helped us as well. Okay. My follow-up maybe for Ed and for Lauren. I know you're trying to be prudent about what we extrapolate for the future, given how strong things are right now. Maybe can we talk about certain things that you think may continue, whether it's the category stay stronger, and then things that you've changed, whether it's product assortment or your platform. I don't know if you throw around at this stage sort of comping the comp again, right? This business is, I think, did double-digit last year. Now it looks like it's on track to do double-digit again. Is that even a scenario that you've been joking around with? I know it's early. Curious how you think about what's sustainable here. Yes. Look, we're learning every day, as is everybody, in terms of what the new consumer is going to be and what the new consumer behavior is going to be. There's a lot of factors going on right now, including, as Lee said, stimulus and a whole bunch of other things. What we've seen for sure is that team sports came back with a vengeance, rightly so, because it had been a year or so since people had played or more. At the same time, some of the surging categories that were pandemic related, such as golf and fitness, outdoor, are still really, really, really strong. Can we predict the future? We can't. We were sort of joking that you guys were going to ask about if we can comp the comp. We feel really, really positive about the business and what we're seeing about consumer demand as we head into the future. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. Thank you. I think a couple of things that have changed that we've done has been our team has done a great job with differentiating product that we have in the store versus our direct competitors, or even some tangential competitors by differentiating product not only from the key brands that we have. If you take a look at our footwear assortment and what we've done with the premium full-service footwear areas, or what we've done with our concept shops from Nike and a few other brands, and along with what we've done with our vertical brands. The team has so differentiated the product out there that we're really a different retailer than our competitors. I think the consumer is realizing that, shopping us more, and gives us the opportunity from a margin rate standpoint to not be in that promotional environment. I think we'll be less promotional when and if a promotional environment comes back. I think we'll be in less of a promotional aspect from our company because of the differentiated product. I can't say enough about how this merchandising team, the store team, the marketing team has developed this and one of the real reasons for our success right now. Yep, that's helpful. Thank you both. Our next question comes from Paul Lejuez with Citi Research. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks, guys. Curious if you could give some of the comp metrics, traffic ticket versus 2019, particularly at the store level. Would also be curious to hear about categories versus 1Q19, just which ones have really taken a large amount of share within the box and online versus those that are down. Obviously, hunt would be, I think, the obvious one there, but curious if any others are lower. Then just second, on the team sports strength that you saw in the spring, how much of that was driven by spring team sports versus fall sports that just got pushed out to the spring? Thanks. Yeah. Our traffic and ticket versus 2019 are both positive, and we're feeling really good about that. Obviously, when you look versus 2020, the traffic numbers are a little distorted due to the fact that, I mean, we're up significantly. Our stores were closed. Even versus 2019, we have strong double-digit growth in both of those. With regard to team sports, it's an interesting thing what's happened with team sports. There's certainly a lot of pent-up demand, and then there's also strange phenomenons like there was a mini football season this January, February, that you wouldn't have thought would have happened. There's been excessive amounts of team sport demand in Q1. I'm guessing, but I don't think it's a pull forward of fall sports. I think there's still a tremendous number of athletes who are going to take the field who are not equipped yet, football come back en masse, and kids are still growing. We feel good about the future of team sports. Got it. Thanks. Just on the supply chain side, any categories that you're still finding it hard to chase? I think this is an important point. Our supply chain group has done an absolutely outstanding job managing through 15 months of real challenges from a supply chain standpoint. That's been, originally it was in the hard goods and fitness, and we've talked about that, but it's hit almost every aspect of the business. We're chasing all the time. We're chasing everything. We've gotten really good at it, and we have attack teams on it day in and day out. We're working with our vendors. We're picking up product wherever it is and helping get it into our supply chain sooner. I think this has actually become a core capability of ours that we can drive growth with a challenged and challenging supply chain. Got it. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Lasser with UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. You're pointing to a 10% operating margin this year. Your prior peak has been a 9% operating margin. Is a 10% margin the right way that we should be modeling the business moving forward? Michael, we're going to have to see how the back half of the year settles out this year. I think there's still quite a few unknowns about what the new level of demand is that's out there, in our product categories. We know it's going to be, or we're very confident it's going to be significantly higher than 2019, and we become meaningfully more optimistic about that as we get longer and longer into this run we're making right now. We certainly feel better about higher levels of operating margin than we did three months ago, six months ago. I don't think we're ready to guide on what the long-term margin outlook is yet until we see a normalization of spending on travel, on restaurants, and how that affects our categories. Certainly, the consumer is saying they want to continue to be outside, continue to try to get fit, buying athletic apparel, athletic footwear, playing golf. I think a lot of those trends are going to stay with us for some time. We've got to let this play out a little bit before we can give the long-term view. As part of that, can you frame when you had a 9% operating margin back in 2012, you had a 31.5% gross margin. E-commerce penetration was much lower then. How does your merch margin today compare to where it was back then? As an unrelated point to that, you had mentioned that you were very pleased with the start of the quarter. What does that put the bias to the upside too for your full year guidance, if the strength you are seeing now continues? Thank you. The merchandise margin rates are running higher now than they were at peak simply because we just don't have any promotions right now, and we have very little clearance merchandise to work with, and we've never really been in a position where we haven't had to run promotions. As we go forward, it's going to be a matter of when do promotions return and what level. We're encouraged by some of the activities of some of our brands that have been narrowing distribution of product and have been narrowing it basically away from some of the players that have typically led promotions in the past. We're excited about that and what the outlook could be around promotions there. We're encouraged by the restraint there's been on putting product into the various channels as well. Product levels continue to be pretty thin, which suggests a continuing favorable margins. Merch margin, as we look out, should continue to be favorable. Right now, we're running meaningfully higher than we were at peak. The start of the quarter, how does it impact fiscal year guidance? We baked some of the beat from Q2 into the guidance. The guidance rolls in our first quarter beat versus what our expectations were and a little bit from Q2. At the low end, it's got a small beat from Q2. At the higher end, it's got a little bit of a bigger beat from Q2. We are flowing through some increases from the second quarter as well. That is very helpful. Good luck with the rest of the spring. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Our next question comes from Mike Baker with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead. Okay, thanks. A couple follow-ups here. We know the first quarter. You said the third and fourth quarter down about 10%. You can get a pretty big range for the second quarter, anywhere from, losing my math, down high single digits to up low single digits. Why not just tell us what you think the second quarter will be? Well, the guidance is for the second quarter, since you already gave us the back half, just to make sure everyone's on the same page. We're not going to give the specific numbers around the second quarter. We're very pleased with the start, and really in June, we start to come up against these significant double-digit comp sales gains and coming to Father's Day and the beginning of back to school. We're going to have to let it play out here as we start to come up against the big gains that we saw in the back half here of the second quarter. Okay. Fair enough. I also wanted to follow up on Mike Lasser's question just about where you are now versus your prior peak. It seems to be that your vendor relationships have improved quite a bit. Just on my math, Nike's actually a smaller percent of your business than it was, but you're a bigger percent of Nike's North American business, if you will. I think Under Armour is cutting back on some of the vendors. Can you just, bigger picture, maybe this is the question for Ed, just describe how and why your vendor relationships have changed over the past eight years or nine years since the past peak. I think our vendor relationships are better than they were back then, but they weren't bad back then either. I think that some of the key people that we partner with have seen the commitment we've gotten to from a service standpoint, a commitment we've gotten to the environment and the experience when an athlete comes into our store, and they've liked that. We've worked with them with that. They've given us additional allocation of product. Our teams have done a great job of merchandising, marketing, selling. We really look at the key partners that I mentioned truly as partners, and I think partnership can be an overused word, but we really do partner with them. They partner with us. We understand what their objectives are. They understand what our objectives are. We sit down, we have a conversation. We come to marketplace that's good for both of us, and I think that will continue to move forward and our relationships with the brands, I think, will only continue to get better. I think that's good for us, and I think it's good for our brands, too. Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. I'll just end by saying I'm not looking forward to buying my second pair of football cleats for my son in five months, but I guess that could be a good thing for you. It's either growing. Well, I hope not everybody feels the same way you do. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from John Kernan with Cowen. Please go ahead. Yeah. Let me extend my congratulations on just phenomenal performance and just such a differentiated offering versus all your competitors out there. Thank you. Lee, could you give us any detail on how you're thinking about transactions and tickets for the remainder of the year? I feel like there's still tailwinds behind tickets. Obviously, transactions was going to be huge in Q1, but I'm curious in terms of how we should think about transactions ticket in the overall comp guidance for the remainder of the year. I think generally that there are more tailwinds behind the ticket side, and the transactions are what will remain to be played out here. As we continue to be not very promotional, and not getting back to normal levels of promotion really this year, that bodes well for ticket. We've seen trading up in some areas as well, particularly like in golf, where there's a better inventory supply of new products than there is in cascaded prior year products. The consumers show willingness to trade up, and we expect that trend to continue. I think that there's pretty good tailwinds around ticket, around promotions, lack of clearance, trading up, get to some better products. Feel good about that. Transactions, we're going to have to let that play out and see as folks get back to normalized activities and travel and so on, will we continue to get the high level of trips that we're getting now into our stores. Our comparable store sales in stores have been fantastic. Will we continue to get the traffic online as well. I'd say the outlook for ticket is good. The outlook for traffic may be good, we're not that certain for traffic. Understood. Maybe just a quick follow-up on private label, the performance in Q1, I think it was annualizing around $1.3 billion last year, just the margin profile of that business, the top-line performance in Q1, and then any initial reads on VRST? Yeah. The vertical brands performed fantastically in Q1, in line with the entire chain. Margin did expand somewhat. Really great trends on vertical brands. Did you say about VRST? Was that your last question? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. We're very pleased with VRST and how it's launched, and the fact that it is a true white space in our stores. It's an opportunity to get the athletic male in a lifestyle capacity in a way that we weren't serving before. I would say everybody on the call should go try it. It's amazing. It's a really high-quality, fashion-forward product, and we're excited about it. Excellent. Thank you. Yep. Our next question comes from Warren Cheng with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Great quarter. Thanks. Just wanted to follow up on Adrienne's question about some of the new banners that you're piloting. Do you see the square footage component of your algorithm start to tick up in the near term? Can you just talk a little bit about how the OVERTIME and Going, Gone! concepts are tying into the inventory clearance? What products go through these channels? Are they moving the needle on gross margin? Thank you. First question on square footage. We do have some net growth in stores coming in the next few years. In the long term, our strategy is not to significantly expand our square footage, but possibly that we will show up differently within the square footage we have. We are building new concepts. There will be some net square footage growth. Lee, I'll turn it to you for the Going, Gone! and clearance question. On Going, Gone! and clearance, we have a couple of different concepts in here. At this point, they're handling the clearance product coming from DICK'S stores. The DICK'S stores have been generating less clearance, but we certainly have enough to give us a good test in these stores. It is moving the gross margin needle. The merchandise margins that we're getting out of these stores are considerably higher than when we handle clearance merchandise within the DICK'S stores. We're really pleased with that. It's still a test for us. We're going to read it for a while and make a determination, but so far the signs are good. At a minimum, it's helping us with clearance in the DICK'S stores, and maybe there's an opportunity to make some money at it over the long term. We're going to test it and see how it works for us. Got it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Christopher Horvers with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Following on the use of cash opportunity that you have had, as you continue to focus on experiences and getting better at e-commerce, are there certain capabilities that you think would be useful in terms of using some of that cash deployment and acquiring that and bringing those capabilities in-house? We always are looking to improve our core capabilities, and a lot of our investments in capital this year is exactly that, improving our capabilities. We look opportunistically at M&A as well, if that's what you're getting at. Right now, we're very focused on building capabilities internally. I'll just say that we've got a really, really good relationship at this point with Federal Express, and meet with them regularly as they talk about different ways to get product to our athletes more quickly. While we do look at opportunities to bring capabilities in-house, we're really pleased with the partnership we've got with the team at FedEx. They've been extremely helpful in coming up with new ideas as well. Got it. That's very helpful. Looking at the merchandise margin improvement in Q1 relative to Q4, it did tick down a little bit, obviously, relative to 2019 that is. Obviously very strong numbers on a two-year basis. Was that just, we had more winter clearance, more clearance activity in the Q4 around winter and that's the delta on a two-year basis versus Q1 is not as big of a clearance quarter? Well, you want to say that? Yeah. It does come down to mix and there was more clearance in the fourth quarter of 2019. First quarter is not a big clearance quarter for us. Yeah, you're on it, Chris. Got it. Thanks very much. Have a great spring. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe Feldman with Telsey Advisory Group. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, guys, and again, congratulations on the quarter. One of my questions, with regard to back to school and that period, are you guys changing your approach this year? Presumably it's coming at a time when the Child Tax Credit's coming through, and that should help families, and I would think you guys should be able to capitalize on that. I was wondering if you're thinking about it differently than you have in years past. Back to school, we think, is going to be big. There's a lot of opportunity to meet needs both on the field and in the classroom for athletic apparel and footwear. We're leaning into it. We have a great marketing campaign planned. We've got great product coming in. We're expecting it to be a strong season. Recall that last year, back to school, I'd say, was smaller than typical because a lot of kids didn't go back to school, and it came later. Many schools were delayed for several weeks before they got going. There's a big opportunity between the Child Tax Credit that's coming, and the smaller and delayed back to school to get the third quarter off to a good start. That's great. Thanks. If I could follow up one more on with regard to labor. We keep hearing so much about it's been difficult to find labor out there, and also we know of wage pressure, and I know you guys talked about that. Can you maybe share some thoughts on if you're able to get labor as easily as you have in the past, and what kind of wage pressure you are thinking about for this year? Yeah. It's a good question, and it's something obviously we and everybody else is focused on. We've gotten ahead of it in a number of different ways, in that we were out trying to build to peak volumes, and hire people in advance. I do think one thing that's really important to note is that between our policies, and how we've shared some of the upside in our earnings over the last year, and also how we treated people during the pandemic and tried to bring them back as quickly as possible and kept people's health insurance paid. We really put our team first. Personally, I could say the company felt like a family in every single way during that time. It was really a joy to see, and I actually do think that that's helping us, from a retention standpoint. I think in general, we are an employer of choice right now. We certainly are struggling. A few markets we're struggling, but it's not a top-of-mind challenge. That's helpful. Thanks. Good luck with this quarter. Thank you. Our next question comes from Scot Ciccarelli with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Thanks for fitting me in here. You guys are obviously making a lot of changes to the business. You talked about the golf, the soccer shops, the new store formats. You've also talked about how you're happy with the early results. Honestly, it seems like everything's really strong right now. Do you think you're in a position where you can really evaluate these initiatives properly and whether they're going to generate the kind of returns you guys are looking for in a more normal environment? It's a great question. Obviously, you're right. Every category is trending right now, or most of them are. Obviously things are doing much better than we might have expected. When we built these initiatives out, we didn't expect comps quite like this or sales quite like this. We have a productive business model, and we're learning from these concepts every day in terms of what can be translated back into the DICK'S store, both in golf and with the House of Sport and all the experiential concepts. I think we can tell, and we look versus balance of chain, how things are doing. We can tell what's working and what's not. These are not concepts or programs that we've put in place recently or thought about recently. As I said, these have been a couple of years in the gestation period, and we're pretty confident that these are going to work, whether it's the soccer shop. We had done a couple soccer shops last year right in the middle of the pandemic and knew that soccer was an area that we weren't great at. If you take a look at how we are in baseball and football, soccer was an area that we trailed in. We're just making some of these investments in these areas to bring us up to parity with some other categories that we are more top of mind with. These have all been very thoughtful, and I suspect there might be a surprise or two here, but we're pretty confident with these. The House of Sport that we opened up in Rochester is off to a great start. The other House of Sport that we've done in Knoxville is a very differentiated experience, and I think they are going to continue to be very viable as we go forward. That's all really helpful. kind of related to that, I'm assuming a lot of these changes does increase your cost of doing business or the comp break-even level. Is that something we should think about if we assume that we'll go back to a more historical comp pattern at some point? We think that these areas have a big growth opportunity even when we go back to something that would be normal, whatever the new normal might be. These are categories that we felt that we were deficient in or had a great opportunity in prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic put them on hold, and we've had the opportunity to continue refining and test them during this period. Whether it's access to product, and when you take a look at the soccer shops that we've done, we have access to shoes at price points that we didn't have access to before or decided not to put in. When we've tested these, that athlete who's the more enthusiast athlete has really responded. No differently than what we did with baseball prior to the pandemic when we re-engineered our baseball department and really tried to cater to that enthusiast baseball player, which did great. We've got the same thing that is happening in soccer, and we've got a couple of other opportunities that we'll be looking at later this year and into next year that we think we can do the same thing with. Got it. Thank you very much, guys. Our next question comes from Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning. Just one quick one from me. When you look at sales performance in the quarter and maybe into the month of May by region, particularly in states that are farther along in the reopening process, I'm curious what you're seeing from a trip frequency and overall buying perspective? We're seeing strength across the country right now, probably seeing a little bit more strength in the states that were closed for longer, like in the Northeast and California. Nationwide, we're seeing strength. Okay, great. Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Forbes with Guggenheim. Please go ahead. Good morning, and extending my congrats as well. Just a follow-up on loyalty and customer trends. If I look through the presentation here, I think a note that 70% of the 8.5 million new athletes were acquired through the digital channel in 2020. Curious if you can sort of discuss how that cohort is engaging with the brand in 2021 thus far in terms of channel and whether the repeat or retention behavior has historically differed between those acquired through digital versus brick-and-mortar? Yeah. That's a great question. What we're finding is that generally speaking, people's first transaction once acquired is in the same channel that they came in through. We have so many new users in the digital channel that I don't think looking backwards to say how that's going to change is going to be very helpful. Retention's good. It's good across whichever way they're coming in, and they're repeating more often than not in the channel where they came in. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. I'm not sure if the number was disclosed before, you call out in the presentation, I think it's the 4 million ScoreCard Gold, right? I'm sorry, 5 million ScoreCard Gold loyalty members, $500 or more. Two questions on that. One, what was that up versus 2019 or any sort of commentary on growth in the Gold member base? Any comment on just the breadth of category participation among that group. How broad is their purchasing behavior in terms of the categories in which you serve? Yeah. The ScoreCard Gold program, actually one of the reasons why I think you're noticing it for the first time, it's only a year or two old. We don't have a comp versus 2019. I want to say it was 18 months ago or so that we started the program. It's obviously our best customer. You have to spend $500 to get into the program or be a credit card member, they definitionally buy a broad range of products. They are the best of the best. Thank you. Best of luck. Thank you. Our next question comes from Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot, and I'll add my congratulations. My question is around fiscal stimulus. I know it's tough to quantify, but do you have a sense how much fiscal stimulus might have driven your sales growth versus 2019 in this first quarter? Yeah. We certainly believe that it helped the business, but I wouldn't want to put a number on it. The business was in good shape going into the stimulus. We did get a nice lift when those checks started hitting, but the business has continued to be strong throughout the first quarter and going into the second quarter as well. If we look at the slowdown implied in your guidance for the second quarter from the first quarter in terms of growth versus 2019, would you say that the biggest driver of that slowdown is fading fiscal stimulus benefits? I wouldn't say that. What would it be then, if you could give us some recap? I would say that versus 2019, I think our biggest concern is when people start traveling over the summer and they're booking vacations and spending in restaurants and going to concerts and things like that, where's the share of wallet going to be? I think that's more of our concern than stimulus, because there is actually some new stimulus coming beginning in July with the Child Tax Credit that is going to start to be distributed on a monthly basis. Seth, did you have another question or do we want to go on to the next question? Next question, sir. Our next question comes from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. I actually want to add my congratulations on a great start to the year. Thanks. We'll get towards the insights. I'm going to ask just one question. It's a bit of a follow-up, but clearly we've talked about, you mentioned the forthcoming more difficult comparisons and the telegraph in your guidance. You're smartly, conservatively assuming moderation sales trends through the back half of this year. The question I have is, as you think about this, are you prepared to sort of just let the business run against these comparisons as it will? Or are there levers at your disposal that you could potentially pull to help cushion the impact of these comparisons? Go ahead. Yeah, sorry, I've got it. Yeah, there are multiple levers we could pull if we wanted to, and we'll have to assess it. As we've mentioned, we're not promotional right now. Could we pull that lever? Yes. Do we want to? No. We're going to watch it. We're really monitoring the business versus 2019 trends and trying not to get caught up in the ups and downs of each of these quarters or do anything irrational as a result of what might be uncomfortable for short term. Yes, we have levers, but we are planning to continue with the business as it is. Great. Maybe just one quick follow-up from a bigger picture standpoint. Clearly, the business performed extraordinarily well here as the economy's reopening. Are you seeing indications that through the COVID crisis, there was some competitive fallout within the sporting goods category, potentially making it an easier competitive backdrop for DICK'S now? Yeah, there's been obviously some other channels, non-sporting goods, some competitors have gone out of business and some of the department stores have stopped selling some product. Generally speaking, no, we are the leader in the sporting goods category and remain that way. I appreciate it. Congrats again. Thank you. This concludes our question- and- answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Lauren Hobart, President and CEO, for any closing remarks. Okay. Thanks everybody for joining our Q1 call, and we will see you next quarter. Have a great spring. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.