Greetings and welcome to The Container Store Q3 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Caitlin Churchill, Investor Relations. Thank you, Caitlin. You may begin. Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining us today for The Container Store's Q3 fiscal year 2023 earnings results conference call. Speaking today are Satish Malhotra, Chief Executive Officer and Jeff Miller, Chief Financial Officer. After Satish and Jeff have made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain matters discussed in today's conference call are forward-looking statements relating to future events, management's plans and objectives for the business and the future financial performance of the Company that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. The risk factors that may affect results are referred to in The Container Store's press release issued today and in our annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the SEC on May 26th, 2023, as updated by our quarterly report on Form 10-Q and other public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements made today are as of the date of this call and The Container Store does not undertake any obligation to update the forward-looking statements. Finally, the speakers may refer to certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures on this call. A reconciliation schedule of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is also available in The Container Store's press release issued today. A copy of today's press release and investor deck may be obtained by visiting the Investor Relations page of the website at www.containerstore.com. I will now turn the call over to Satish. Satish? Thank you, Caitlin, and thank you all for joining our call today. I'll begin today's discussion by reviewing highlights from our Q3 performance, followed by a review of our key areas of growth. Jeff will then share the details of our Q3 financial results, followed by our outlook. We'll then open up the call to questions. As we discussed in our announcement last month, our Q3 sales results fell short of our original expectations. We delivered a year-over-year consolidated sales decline of 14.8%, largely driven by ongoing challenges in our core general merchandise categories. Despite these dynamics, we maintained a strong discipline with respect to our promotional strategy and expense management to deliver adjusted loss per share of $0.08 which was within our original range of expectations. Furthermore, we were encouraged by the sequential improvement in year-over-year comparable sales decline of Custom Spaces over the Q2. While the current macroeconomic environment still remains challenging, our teams are focused on executing against our strategic initiatives, leaning into the areas of the business that are delivering results and positioning ourselves to maximize the potential for longer-term growth, particularly with Custom Spaces. For the Q3, despite experiencing declines in our core general merchandise categories, we did see a positive reception to the introduction of new products to our assortment, with sales more than doubling against our expectations for these new products. In particular, our new premium products continue to do very well. Our analysis has shown that customers purchasing new premium products are returning more frequently and have a higher average ticket compared to customers who do not purchase these new products. Additionally, our Discovery categories are also performing strongly, with On-The-Go Travel Solutions and Home Fragrances achieving double-digit growth in comparable sales relative to the Q3 of last year. Likewise, our premium Custom Spaces have also maintained robust performance, with sales experiencing only a slight decline compared to last year, thus outpacing the overall performance of Custom Spaces. Instead that, we were pleased with the performance of our value-oriented Elfa line, which celebrated its 75th anniversary with a special event that ended in the Q3. The event's sale performance met our expectations, with notable sales being achieved towards the end of the event, as customers responded to the sense of urgency messaging that was conveyed in our marketing communications. Looking ahead to Q4, in addition to January's abnormal weather impact, we anticipate continued challenges to our core general merchandise categories, similar to what we experienced in the prior quarters. As a reminder, Custom Spaces is expected to have a tougher sequential comparison, as mentioned on our prior call, due to the additional promotional event this year to celebrate Elfa's 75th anniversary. We also expect softer, softer Elfa product-related sales during the planned non-promotional time period in the Q4. In response to our top-line performance, we remain committed to exercising strong discipline with both our promotional strategy and expense management. Furthermore, we look to action additional areas of optimization and improve efficiency. As we look forward to fiscal 2024, we believe the need for The Container Store has never been greater. Over half of Americans are overwhelmed by the amount of clutter they have and the vast majority have no idea what to do about it. Many resort to re-renting outside storage or find themselves unable to use their garages for parking due to the poor utilization of space in their homes.... They need our help to reclaim not only their space, their time, their money and their lives. That's the journey we've been on these past few years and the purpose we have been living out: to help our customers transform their lives through the power of organization. While we are uniquely positioned with our comprehensive solution and services, we recognize the need to increase awareness about what we offer. This includes leveraging accolades such as the recent recognition by Time, which named Elfa and Preston as top picks within several of their best closet system categories. Turning to the key growth areas of Custom Spaces and general merchandise will be focused on in fiscal 2024. While Custom Spaces has traditionally accounted for approximately 40% of our sales, given current sales trends and identified opportunities, we believe we can grow this penetration to approximately 60% of sales over time. We aim to fuel Custom Spaces growth in 3 distinct ways. First, through our expanded assortment. As we have discussed before, we are continuing to drive innovation and newness within our Custom Spaces line. We have recently expanded our garage offering with Garage Plus by Elfa, which soft launched in late November. We are seeing the new features and functionality like enclosed wall and rolling cabinet, lighting, full extension drawers and heavy-duty wall workbench already resonates incredibly well with our customers and look forward to officially launching it this spring. Later this calendar year, we also plan to launch a significant overhaul of our Elfa Decor line that will elevate its positioning in the marketplace. Our Preston line is also expected to grow in its offering, just as we have done earlier this fiscal year, with more premium options like leather drawer front, matte finishes and enhanced lighting. We're excited to be working on adding a fully concealed hardware option for customers, which we expect to be a material differentiator in the marketplace. Secondly, we plan to grow our Custom Space business through our specialists, whether they be in-store designers supporting Elfa or in-home designers supporting our more premium line. Today, we have almost 140 highly trained in-home designers focused on selling premium spaces and they continue to perfect their selling strategy, speed of design and their design capability. In the Q3, 92% of premium space sales were driven by our in-home designers. We plan to increase our number of in-home designers and are working diligently to significantly improve our Preston design-to-sold conversion rate, which is currently about two-thirds of what we experienced with our premium Avera line. When combined with the total addressable market opportunity, this provides us a long runway of growth and potential share gains within Custom Spaces. Finally, we anticipate Custom Spaces growth to come from increased awareness. Many customers today are either not aware that we offer Custom Spaces or have yet to engage in this category. We aim to change that by being far more intentional and leveraging data to drive our marketing strategy. For example, through a recent analysis, we reaffirmed that the majority of customers who have purchased Preston and Elfa spaces heavily shopped our kitchen and closet general merchandise categories first. Leveraging insights like these will help us make more impactful decisions as we attract new customers and launch them on their Custom Spaces journey. Furthermore, our marketing efforts will aim to take a more integrated approach, demonstrating our ability to facilitate life-changing transformations for our customers through space optimization, curated finishing products and vital organizational advice. This approach aims to not only allow customers to achieve their transformational aspirations also ensures that their new newfound achievements are maintained over time. As we intensify our focus on Custom Spaces, our merchandising team is hyper-focused on refining and rebuilding our general merchandise assortment to complement our Custom Spaces offering for a complete solution. With respect to general merchandise growth, we also plan for it to come from three distinct areas. First, through our expanded premium assortment. As we shared, we are pleased with the reception of our new premium general merchandise and see an opportunity to grow this offering with an improved margin profile. This includes high-quality artisan bins and baskets to complement a Preston closet and glass, crystal glass and barware to complete a Preston pantry. Offering premium general merchandise to complete our premium Custom Spaces is essential to serve the needs of our customers and offers them a full solution under one roof. Next, we plan to grow our exclusive private label business through our new sourcing capabilities that we brought in-house last year. Our growing Everything Organizer collection is a great example of an exclusive, value-oriented offering that can work in any space and complements our Elfa solution. The healthy margins private label products provide and the opportunity to develop products that seamlessly integrate with our Custom Spaces, make this area crucial to our general merchandise growth. Currently, 40% of our general merchandise assortment is private label and we see an opportunity to increase it further over time. Lastly, we believe we can achieve growth in general merchandise through our discovery categories that complement our core offering. Discovery categories like home fragrances and on-the-go travel solutions continue to trend positively, presenting us with significant opportunities in these areas... Before I close, I want to touch on our updated outlook for the remainder of the year and our disciplined focus on capital allocation. With respect to store openings, we are on track to end fiscal 2023 with 5 new locations and recently celebrated our 100th store opening in Pennsville, New Jersey. We continue to see high penetration in Custom Spaces and high customer satisfaction in our small format stores, with an average Net Promoter Score of 81 in Q2. In regards to fiscal 2024, we plan to open four new built-to-suit locations, which, as a reminder, require far less capital outlay. We also plan to relocate our San Francisco store in late June and have made the strategic decision to close our store in Los Angeles at The Marketplace. We closely monitored the profitability of our stores and decided it was not in the company's best interest to renew the lease when it ends in August of 2024, due to a significant rent increase. Furthermore, given the current environment, we are not committing to the timing of future store growth beyond 2024. While we continue to see significant opportunities to expand our national presence, it will be done in conjunction with our goal of sustained positive free cash flow. Despite the current macroeconomic difficulties and the obstacles encountered within our core general merchandise categories, we remain optimistic about the growth opportunities we have identified. Our belief in the transformative power of organization, coupled with the demand for it and our unique solution-oriented offerings, fuels our confidence. Marrying this focus with the passion and the strength of our team lays a solid foundation for enduring success. Now I'll turn the call over to Jeff. Jeff? Thank you, Satish and good afternoon, everyone. As Satish reviewed, while we continued to face similar challenges to our top line that we experienced in the Q2, particularly within our core general merchandise categories, we were able to deliver earnings results in line with our original guidance range through disciplined promotional activity and tight expense management. For the Q3, consolidated net sales decreased 14.8% year-over-year to $214.9 million. By segment, net sales for The Container Store retail business were $202.5 million, a 15.4% decrease compared to $239.3 million last year. The decrease is inclusive of a comp store sales decrease of 16.8%, driven primarily by the 20.4% decline in our general merchandise categories, which negatively impacted comp store sales by 1,380 basis points. Custom Spaces comp store sales declined 9.2% compared to last year and negatively impacted comp store sales by 300 basis points. Sales from new stores benefited total TCS net sales by 130 basis points. For the Q3 of fiscal 2023, our online channel decreased 26.3% year-over-year and our website-generated sales, which includes curbside pickup, decreased 15.6% compared to last year. Website-generated sales represented a total of 21.8% of TCS net sales in Q3, which is consistent with Q3 last year. Unearned revenue decreased to $17.5 million in Q3 this year versus $18.8 million last year, which is reflective of the decline in overall sales. Elfa third-party net sales of $12.4 million decreased 4.2% compared to the Q3 of fiscal 2022. Excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, Elfa third-party net sales decreased 4.9% year-over-year, primarily due to a decline in sales in Nordic markets. From a profitability standpoint, our consolidated gross margin for Q3 increased 140 basis points to 58.3%, compared to 56.9% last year. The 140 basis point increase in gross margin was primarily driven by a higher mix of Custom Spaces sales this year. By segment, TCS gross margin increased 40 basis points compared to last year, primarily due to freight tailwinds, which were partially offset by product and service mix headwinds, driven by general merchandise, as well as the expected impact from the incremental promotional activity in Q3 of this year. Elfa gross margin decreased 170 basis points compared to last year, primarily due to unfavorable mix, partially offset by price increases to customers. Consolidated SG&A dollars decreased $9.7 million, or 8% to $111.8 million, compared to $121.5 million in Q3 last year, which reflects the impact of cost management actions taken in the Q1. As a percentage of net sales, SG&A increased 380 basis points year-over-year to 52%. The increase is primarily due to deleverage and fixed costs associated with lower sales in the Q3 of fiscal 2023. Our net interest expense in the Q3 of fiscal 2023 increased to $5.2 million, compared to $4.4 million last year. The year-over-year increase is primarily due to higher year-over-year interest rates on our term loan and to a lesser extent, higher average borrowings on our revolver during Q3. The effective tax rate for the quarter was -34.5%, compared to +33.8% in the Q3 last year. The decrease in the effective tax rate was primarily related to the impact of discrete items related to share-based compensation on a pre-tax loss in the Q3 of fiscal 2023, as compared to pre-tax income in the Q3 of fiscal 2022. Net loss for the quarter on a GAAP basis was $6.4 million, or $0.13 per share, as compared to a GAAP net income of $4.2 million, or $0.08 per diluted share in the Q3 of last year. Adjusted net loss was $4.1 million, or $0.08 per share, as compared to last year's adjusted net income of $4.1 million, or $0.08 per diluted share. Our adjusted EBITDA decreased to $12.8 million in the Q3 of this year, compared to $22.2 million in Q3 last year. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $16 million in cash, $184.7 million in total debt and total liquidity, including availability on our revolving credit facilities of $99.6 million. Our current leverage ratio is 2.8 times. We ended the quarter with consolidated inventory down 14.3% compared to the Q3 last year. The decline reflects a concerted effort to tightly manage inventory in the current environment and is primarily the result of lower freight costs and fewer inventory units year-over-year. At TCS, on a unit basis, on-hand inventory was down approximately 15% year-over-year, driven by general merchandise. Capital expenditures were $33.4 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2023, versus $46.6 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2022, which reflects the planned pullback in capital spending in fiscal 2023. We are continuing to prioritize investment in our stores and technology. Free cash flow in the first nine months of this year was a use of $6.7 million, versus a use of $27.7 million in the first nine months of last year. Now for our outlook. As noted in our press release, we have updated our full year outlook to reflect our year-to-date results and updated outlook for the Q4. For the Q4 of fiscal 2023, we expect consolidated net sales to be approximately $200 million-$205 million, driven primarily by a comparable store sales decline in the mid-20s. The expected decline in comparable store sales is reflective of weather challenges we have experienced in January, as well as continued pullback in our core and value-oriented general merchandise categories. As it relates to Custom Spaces, in addition to the already anticipated pull-forward headwind related to the Q3 75th Elfa anniversary sale, we are expecting additional pressure from the Elfa product line, primarily during a planned non-promotional time period in the Q4. We expect the consolidated revenue declines are also inclusive of continued Elfa third-party headwinds, which we expect to be more than offset by new store sales. We expect adjusted net loss per share in the Q4 to be in the range of -$0.12 to -$0.09. The implied year-over-year operating margin decline for the Q4 is expected to be driven by SG&A, depreciation and other fixed costs deleveraged on lower sales. In addition, we expect gross margin to be relatively flat in comparison to the prior year, as well as a result of the net impact of continued freight tailwinds and an unfavorable product mix from general merchandise. Interest expense for the Q4 is expected to be approximately $5 million, driven primarily by higher interest rates. The effective income tax rate for the Q4 is expected to be approximately 21%. Capital expenditures for the full fiscal 2023 are now expected to be in the range of approximately $40 million-$45 million. Based on our performance to date and our Q4 outlook, we are expecting free cash flow to be slightly negative in fiscal 2023. This concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn it over to the operator to begin the Q&A session. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Steven Forbes with Guggenheim Securities. Please proceed with your question. Good afternoon, Satish, Jeff. Satish, given the focus on conversion, right and awareness improvements here, as we look out, can you maybe give us some preliminary thoughts on how you're thinking about the event calendar for next year? You know and have you guys identified why the conversion, the design-to-conversion rates differ between the product lines? Like, is there any targeted efforts, right, that you've identified that you can incorporate into the event calendar? T his is Satish. Thanks for the question, Steve. F irstly, when it comes to the event calendar, the thinking that we have for fiscal 2024 is to separate some of the lines that we have traditionally showcased for our customers. Rather than having a combined Custom Spaces event with all of our lines, we look to separate them so they can each have their moments. In particular, as we see really strong progression of in-store sales with Elfa and then utilizing our in-home specialists driving our Preston and Avera sales. With results and quite frankly, I would tell you the conversion rate for Elfa is extremely high as you can imagine because not only is it available for customers for a do-it-yourself option it also allows us to design for our customers and for them to really benefit from the modularity of the Elfa offering. When we think about the lines, in particular, our more premium lines, as you can imagine and this is the efforts that we've been on, in particular with Avera, is that it takes our specialists some time to get comfortable with the lines and with their selling approach and we've definitely seen great improvements with our Avera conversion lines and similarly, we expect that to happen with our Preston line. As I mentioned, we have about 140 in-home designers and they've gone through rigorous design trainings to enhance their design and selling skills. Our more tenured designers are already performing quite well in annualizing sales from anywhere between $700,000-$800,000 and are making great progress on their design to sales conversion rates and that's slightly pulled down with new individuals that we're training and bringing into our company. L ook, all I will tell you is that we've seen great success in conversion with Elfa. We've seen great success with Avera and we believe as our more tenured designers get comfortable with selling Preston, we should expect in fiscal 2024 to get the benefits of them now being accustomed with all the new features and functionalities that we bought with Preston, including their abilities to utilize the design tools that are in their hands to start to benefit quite well with that conversion rate. Thank you for the color. Maybe just a quick follow-up for Jeff. You commented on this year looking at slightly negative on free cash flow. Any preliminary thoughts as we think about the rebalancing of growth versus profit into next year and what levers that the business can pull to maybe keep the business in a free cash flow neutral to positive state? Sure, Steve. as we're in the early stages of planning our fiscal 2024, We can't necessarily comment too much in detail. A s we think about the business moving forward and maintaining and sustaining free cash flow, as we're in this growth mode, focused on the growth mode, there are a number of levers that we have and right now, we've actually. In the call earlier, Satish spoke to the fact that we have 4 stores open, planned to be open in 2024 and we have no plans for store expansion outside of 2024. We're pulling back from a capital expenditure perspective. This certainly will help on a free cash flow perspective in fiscal 2024. I would expect that. As it relates to expense management and working capital, we see a line of sight of working capital opportunities, specifically in inventory, one of our largest areas of working capital and we'll be working towards that as we get into 2024, plans of actions around that and of course we're always looking for efficiencies on the expense side and we'll continue to focus in on that. We as we work through our line of sight for fiscal 2024 with the aim in sight of positive to neutral free cash flow. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question. Hi, thanks for taking our question. We wanted to ask about marketing with Steve's question, you just walked through the messaging and the event calendar. I s there any change happening with the percentage spent as a percentage of sales on marketing? Or are you shifting dollars in any way to improve this messaging? I'll take the first part of that question and then I'll let Jeff talk about the percentage to sales. Look, the change that we're making in our marketing is really to be more mindful of understanding that customers are still not really aware that we offer, offer custom spaces and the approach that we're taking is a far more integrated approach. By that is our ability to, whether it's through, emails or our site or even embedded within our general merchandise, is really allowing customers to understand the importance of making sure they have the right space and how that space can be optimized for them and then how our general merchandise truly is acting as a finishing product for that more optimized space, finished off with really some vital, organizational tips to ensure that they're able to maintain their transformational achievements, once, they've been able to fully embrace what we have to offer. T hat's what you should expect to see now and into fiscal 2024 is- ...us taking more of this integrated approach rather than it being siloed out between a custom space messaging that then differs from a general merchandise messaging, that then differs from a services offering. Just to add to that, kate in terms of dollars spent in marketing, as a% of sales, we've remained relatively consistent throughout fiscal 2023 and you know as I said earlier, we're still early in the plans for 2024, the focus will be more around making those dollars work harder for us, as Satish was outlining and the approaches and how we're doing it and the team that we have here at The Container Store has been working very diligently in finding ways to be much more efficient with the marketing dollars that we have, to have the biggest impact and Satish outlined some of those ways that we feel like would have the biggest impact. W e've been focused on making sure we're operationally efficient from an SG&A perspective and implied in the Q4 guide is SG&A savings of $15 million, up to $15 million. Which we started the fiscal year taking actions and we had a range in... we saved $30 million through Q3, with an additional $15 million through Q4, for a total potential savings of $45 million on a year-over-year basis. With that in mind, we'll continue to focus marketing as a key aspect of engaging with our customer and maintaining those messages and making sure they're much more efficient. T hank you and then our second question was just on the guide for comp in the Q4. Is that primarily a function of the adverse weather trends that you mentioned in your prepared comments and the lapping of some of the tougher compares? Is there anything else within the mid-20s decline that's driving that? Embedded in our guidance for the, for q4 if I were to speak to the high and low end it's really based on the January trends we saw at the time we were putting together. the the high end of the guide assumes some normalization from what we were seeing in january and from a, from a weather perspective it did impact us quite a bit. We had six times more store impacts in January than we did in the previous year. When I look at the entire quarter, February last year did have more weather impacting, W e're still early in february and we don't know. W hen we developed the guidance, we assumed some normalization from the January trends at the high end of the guide. The low end of the guide assumes the January trends continued through the remainder of the quarter and as I said in my prepared remarks it's reflective of the continued pullback in the core and value-oriented general merchandise and we also are seeing more pressure in the non-promotional time periods for the Elfa product line, based on what we learned during Q3. T hank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Christopher Horvers with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question. Thanks, guys. M y first question is: Do you have a sense of how much the Elfa anniversary sale pulled forward demand from into the Q3 from the Q4? it's always been a big event here in the spring and I know you moved it forward and it drives a lot of the seasonality in that business. I was curious if you had put some thoughts and numbers around that. Chris, I don't have a number to speak to from a pull forward standpoint. Certainly, we are seeing that just on the normalization of the quarters from a revenue top-line perspective and that's what was anticipated in our Q4 guide. Got it and then as you think about what is left for the year. You mentioned, like outside of the promotional periods, there's not as much responsiveness on the Elfa side. W hat exists now in the Q4 to drive that business? And as we think about the upcoming year, should we assume that the Elfa sale goes back to its normal timing? J ust to clarify, Chris, this is Satish. We are in Q4, we do have an Elfa event and the event that we were talking about earlier was our 75th anniversary event and that was an added event from what we normally do and that is something for you to pay attention to and as we think about fiscal 2024, our expectation is to still have 4 Elfa events throughout the year. The event that we have currently doesn't end until mid-february and we still have a month and a half left to close out that quarter from that event. W e definitely will continue to go after customers that have experienced a purchase with Elfa and see what we can do to make sure that they're able to take full recognition of those installations, see what other potential Elfa opportunities exist, as well as completing those Elfa purchases with completion products. W e still have a lot of exciting things to engage our customers with as we finish out Q4. Got it and then my last question is as you think about, like, the current freight environment more general merchandise is more from asia and then there's some stuff going on in the, in the Middle East. H ow are you thinking about the duration of this freight tailwind that you've seen in, in the, in the gross margin line? and what are your thoughts on... Could that, could that turn into a headwind, or you contract it out, or how are you managing that? Chris, in terms of freight, certainly, we've experienced the benefit of tailwinds through fiscal 2023, based on the lower freight costs that we've been seeing throughout the fiscal year. We would expect that to continue a little bit, not as much, in fiscal 2024, in the first half of the year. W hen we look at this the Red Sea situation and some of the disruption that's going on there, we have limited routings through the Suez Canal. About less than 1% of our freight goes through there. The impact on global rates, on the spot rates, hasn't impacted us yet. We have about 85% of our shipments are under contract and certainly, we're watching it as we move forward. It could be a potential risk depending on how long, how prolonged the situation is from a volume standpoint, we don't have a whole lot of volume going through that part of the, part of the world. Got it. Thanks very much. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.