Okay. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to introduce Ulta Beauty and to moderate this fireside chat. Today, we have with us Keisha Steelman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ulta. She's been in the role since January 2025 and previously served in a number of leadership roles since joining the company in July 2014. And we also have with us Chris Liolas, interim chief financial officer of Ulta as of June 25, previously serving as senior vice president and controller since 2018. Thank you for joining us today. Yeah. Thank you, Kate, for having us. It's both of you guys are first timers to the conference, so we're we're very excited to to have you. Keisha, if we can maybe start with you, you've been in the CEO seat for about eight months now. You've done a lot of work. What have been some of the bigger challenges you've faced in that time? And what have been some of the bigger accomplishments so far? Yes. Thank you so much for the question. I will say it's been a fun eight months, that's for sure, and it's been fast and furious. I'd say my biggest focus has been really reaccelerating our performance overall and really leaning into our competitive opportunities for us to continue to drive our business. A couple of things I would just highlight that I've really been focused on initially out of the gate. First and foremost, you have to have the right C suite around you and the right leaders to take the business not only for today but also for the future. So I made the top priority is to make sure that I have the right leadership team in place. And then I also took this opportunity with me being here for over a decade. I saw that there were some opportunities where I could really streamline decision making, make the company a little bit more agile, ways of working, especially in this highly competitive environment at retail. So I made some organizational alignment changes initially. So that's really where I focused on my efforts with the foundation. The second piece was really around our core business model. And execution is everything. And executing not only flawlessly in our stores but also on our online channels has been a top priority for me. And then I really emphasize on our go to market strategy. So it's not just the go to market strategy itself, but the way that we're actually bringing our brands to life and how our teams are working internally. And then the last piece is we've done a lot in eight months. When you're looking at margin accretive businesses and ways that we think that we can add profitability to our model, there's really been four areas that I've been leaning into: UV Media, which has been started over the last few years, how do we continue to accelerate that marketplace, which is going to be going live here in the third quarter wellness, which we're just well underway with expanding that in about three seventy stores with additional square footage and then another 50 stores with an elevated fixture and even a little bit more space. We're learning and leaning into that. And then the last but not least is our international expansion. We've been growing internationally. So it's been a fun eight months, a busy eight months, but we've accomplished a lot, and I'm really excited about the future. That's great to hear. Great place to kind of launch the rest of our questions on it. The category itself, beauty, has remained very healthy. And we've heard and seen that beauty enthusiasts are often willing to make trade offs for their beauty versus their other discretionary areas, but the consumer does remain cautious. And so could we have an update on what you're seeing from your consumer and what you expect in the next few months? Yes. We haven't really seen much change with the consumer and how they're responding. I feel like beauty isn't recession proof, but I would say it's recession resistant. It's the consumer is still prioritizing beauty and their wellness and their self care, and we're seeing that in our portfolio. One of the advantages that we have at Ulta Beauty is that we do have everything from mass to luxury and everything in between. So if we do see behavioral shifts of trade down, etcetera, we'll be able to still keep that consumer in our ecosystem. But thus far, we really haven't seen much changing thus far. Okay. You recently raised your guidance to same store sales of 2.5% to 3.5 for the full year. Could you maybe talk about what macro trends are assumed at the high end and the low end of this updated guidance? Yes. We're off to a strong start in the 2025. But there is a lot of we're probably being very cautionary because we don't know what's going to happen in the back half of this year. And in our most recent guidance that we announced last week, we are saying that we'll be flat to up low single digit comps in the back half of the year. We're cycling against stronger comps last year. There's a lot of unknowns. But we're leaning into controlling what we can control and listening to our guests and staying very close to them. So while some people have said that we're being cautious, I think that's being prudent in this current environment that we're in today. But we're confident in that we're going to finish out the year strong. And I feel like we've put numbers out there that we feel we can achieve. I think the question that we've been getting is, is there something you're seeing in the quarter to date trends? Or is it really just you being conservative and cautious? Well, what I will share is that August, we were pleased with how August was performing. But I think in this environment, I don't know that there's any benefit from shooting for the moon at this point in time, and it's really smart for us to be really reasonable and proactive and prudent in our guidance this back half. Market share has been, I think, big thing that you've been trying to tackle. You've been able to gain market share in mass, I think, pretty consistently, but prestige has been a tougher category until very recently. What are the key drivers behind some of the recent market share gains? And how much do you think is due to just those physical points of distribution that kind of came on fast and furious the last couple of years, the fact that that's slowing down? Yes. Well, I would start with that. We're very, very proud of the fact that we have gained market share in both mass and prestige this last quarter. And I don't think that there's necessarily one attribute. I think it's many things that are at play, And we're hitting on a lot of different cylinders. I'd start with our Ulta Beauty unleashed plan first that the team is really getting behind it. The guest is responding well. We see green shoots of goodness that are coming because of the investments that we've made. And I think that, that's paying off. So that's first and foremost, I think, what's driving our ability to take share. The second piece of that is really newness. Newness really plays a big factor in creating this halo effect of the new consumer potentially coming into the store. And when you come in the store, it's harder to just walk away with one thing. So I think that newness has been important. And the balance of newness across the portfolio, it's not just in one category that we're seeing newness. It's spread pretty evenly throughout the entire business. And then the third is, we've had over the last three years, so many points of new distribution, especially in Prestige. So over 1,000 points of new distributions with some of these partnerships. And the fact that we held in there over a few years and now we're cycling through that is definitely playing a little bit into what we're seeing with the comp, but it's not 100% what's driving the comp. And the reason I can say that is we had about 90% of our stores were impacted by at least one new point of presence with prestige opening. But you take that remaining 10% of stores that didn't have any competitors that were opening, we're seeing them comping like the other stores too. So that's not what the Holy Grail is that's really driving the overall comp. I think it's really everything pulled together and that we're hitting on all of our cylinders, and that we're really giving a better shopping experience in our stores and online because of the investments that we're making. So it's really all of the things pulled together. When it does come to innovation, because I know that is across most retail categories really what spurs a lot of demand, how much are you in control of that versus what's being dictated by the vendors? Oh, I think it's a partnership. I mean, one of the things in the industry, we talk a lot about getting in the kitchen with our brands. So our buyers, this is what they love to do. It's not just about new brands coming into the Ulta Beauty ecosystem. It's also working with our existing brands. And we've identified numerous times white space to some of our existing brands like a MAC or a Clinique or a NYX or an Hourglass or even a Redken, an established brand where we say, our guests are asking for something that's a little bit unique, where our buyers will get in the kitchen and work with these brands. They have pretty good R and D, and they want to lean into this too because the likelihood of success definitely grows. So innovation is really critical and key to how we're continuing to drive our business forward, and we're doing more and more of that. It's not just, like I said, about bringing new brands into Ulta Beauty. It's about looking for opportunities within our existing brands to create an increased exclusivity that's at Ulta Beauty only. And the two of those combined together is what's really helping us kind of create some unique opportunities for our guests and also for our brand partners. I think historically, newness has been about 20% to 30% of your sales. Is that still something is that still kind of the range in which we should think about newness at Ulta in terms of percentage? Yes. I'll take a quick step back and just share that newness is very important. And this year alone, so in the first half, we've had 43 new brands or new exclusives that have come into Ulta Beauty, and that's against 29 from last year. So newness is definitely accelerating. And we see that happening also in the back half, where there's a nice steady flow of some new brands that are coming in. We just launched a new one just this last week with Moroccan Oil, which is one of the top hair care brands in the industry. So newness is important. I mentioned earlier having newness balanced across the portfolio, so it's not just in one sector of our business, is really healthy, too, because it's like it's bringing all ships or rising with the business when the guest is coming to the store. So it's something that our new Chief Merchandising and Digital Officer is very focused on with her buying team, looking at new products that make a lot of sense. Korean beauty happens to be one don't know if you've been watching on social media, but there's this huge craze of people wanting to get this perfect glass skin. And we're bringing in some brands from Korea that are exclusive really to Ulta Beauty. And it's fascinating and it's fun and it's great to just see the energy and the excitement and the carryforward that, that's happening. So those percentages are about where we've been and what we're focused on going forward. If we can move down the P and L. One question I think we got post your Q2 call from last week was your increased SG and A growth guidance to plus 13% to 14%, which was up from 10% prior. Could you maybe walk us through the drivers of that acceleration and how you see SG and A expense in the back half? And then just what it could look like as we go into 2026? Yes. I'll let Chris answer that. Sure. For SG and A growth in the back half of the year, the primary drivers are coming from three areas. It's the fully loaded SG and A expense for Space NK. As you guys recall, we only had three weeks' worth of the results in Q2. The second driver is of SG and A is the incentive comp. That's we're lapping a lower number last year, actually a benefit from last year with the better performance this year. That's a headwind. And the last thing is our timing of our investments. If you recall on the call last week, there is a shift from timing between investments in the first half that are now shifting in the second half, primarily around advertising and some of the go to market strategic initiatives that we've been talking about. Could you maybe drill down on the timing a little bit more? Is it the fact that, you're pushing more of those dollars into the back half? Do you see more, dollars being put towards occasions? What is the thinking behind the timing of the advertising? So it's kind of like what we talk about a lot at Ulta. Our appetite is bigger than our stomach. So in the beginning, in the first half, we thought we could get off the gates much faster. So getting the right resources and making sure we were fully staffed to kick off these initiatives took a little bit longer, which is causing some of the shift into the second half. And then it's just we really are being thoughtful on making sure that these investments in the second half are truly ready to go light. So we have marketplace coming up. We're expanding wellness. We did some expansion of wellness here in the second quarter, but we do still have some more that's going to be happening in the second half. And then lastly, our international expansion. We've got Mexico and The Middle East coming on board in the second half. So we're all very excited. And lastly, what I'll say, if you take Space NK out of the equation, our SG and A growth is about 11%, which is pretty close to what we originally had in our outlook. Yes. And we're going against the back half of last year, our sales were starting to moderate too. And so we only had SG and A growth of 1% last year in the back half. So we're going against not a lot of investment from last year and we're in an investment cycle this year. So I think those things combined, we're very thoughtful of where we're investing our OpEx and our CapEx. And we believe it's the right thing to do not only just to drive short term business but also for our long term algorithm at the same time. Just because it's come up in the explanation around international, I thought we would maybe ask a little bit about Space NK, which you just acquired in July. Could you maybe walk us through the thought process behind that acquisition and what you hope to achieve by acquiring it? Well, The U. K. Is one of the largest and growing markets for beauty in the world. And it's not a market that I would view that we would want to organically grow a presence in and of ourselves on our own. The only way that we'd be able to go into that market is either to have a joint venture or to acquire or have some kind of a licensed partnership. And the opportunity became available for us to acquire Space NK. Space NK is a leading prestige beauty retailer in The U. K. It's a beloved brand. It's got a great leadership team. There's a lot of synergies that I see with their business. And it's one of these situations where I believe it's a one plus one can equal three for us in the big picture. There's things that we can learn from Space NK to bring into The U. S. Business. They do a great job with high street locations. They're a smaller box. They've got a lot of prestige brands. They've got some brands that we would be interested in. They also really understand that clienteling, that personal touch and that interaction and engagement. And then on the flip side, we're really great at our supply chain efficiencies and IT investments, and we can really potentially help them become even more efficient in their business. And I just think that if we were going to ever want to be in this market, this was the perfect company to purchase and for us to really grow at scale in a relatively short period of time. With that acquisition, we were able to get 83 locations and stores in Scotland and Ireland. And I think the future is going to be really bright. I'm going to give us some space, let the dust settle. We're going to run them as a stand alone business. And more to come on what we're going to end up how that asset is going to continue to grow and what does it look like in the future. But we're really excited about the partnership. Andy Lightfoot is a fantastic CEO. They've got a great leadership team, and there's a lot of synergies. And we're looking forward to continuing to grow the businesses together. You mentioned real estate there, the fact that Space and K has some of that High Street exposure. We were wondering if you could maybe discuss how you view your remaining unit growth opportunity. You are changing your relationship with Target, which I think changes a little bit just how much distribution is out there for the Ulta Beauty brand. Does that come into play at all when you think about your real estate strategy? And just how are you thinking about opening in existing markets versus new markets? Yes. A lot of questions for that. Let me make sure I hit them all. So let me just take a step back, and let's talk about our basic real estate strategy. We view that the beauty industry, there's still opportunity for us to continue to grow in The United States. There's multiple ways that we can grow with prototypes. So we've got our small store format, which is about 5,000 square feet. I've shared that we've got about 20% of our stores, our new stores this year will be in that type of a prototype. There is outlet centers, which is kind of a newer foray for us that we're liking what we see in these outlet centers and how our stores are performing there. We're putting traditional stores in the outlet center. It's not like we're doing a reduction in price in these locations, but the guest is really responding well. And then there's our everyday prototype of the 10,000 square foot store. On our most recent earnings call, I did share that we think the number going forward is closer to that 50 to 60 store per year range. So we're coming down a little bit from the 200. So what the driver is of that is purely that we're being very thoughtful of our CapEx and our OpEx expense and our investment. And in a lot of the prime real estate locations, the vacancy rates have come down from the landlords. So hence, your ten year lock in could be potentially higher. So we want to be really thoughtful when we're putting in a new store and when we're signing on these longer lease type terms. Also, the fixtures and your CapEx cost of building these locations has also run up. So we're just being really thoughtful for our shareholders of where we're investing the money. We want to make sure that we continue to maintain a strong financial portfolio of new stores. So that was a decision on coming down to slightly. In regards to the partnership with Target, what I've shared is that the decision to not move forward with our partnership, to me, doesn't people are like, why wouldn't you add more stores? Well, that doesn't make much sense because two things. Number one, it's not like we had a full store in the Target locations. It was 1,000 square feet, highly curated assortment. It was more of that infill shopping experience. And when you look at the halo impact of like where we have stores that are located within Target, I've got plenty of stores where I can pick up that volume in existing store formats. So there's not that need to like all of a sudden be more aggressive and open stores because I've we're moving away from the partnership with Target. I think did I hit all your Yes. And then just new markets versus existing markets, just how you balance that Yes. With the 50 to 60 a So new markets, the one of the strongest assets that we have is our loyalty program. The 45,800,000 loyalty members, we can see where they're shopping across The United States, where we have green space or white space or green where we can make more money, where there's the opportunity for us to build locations. And it's not just even about getting the in store experience and getting that in store volume. We also do have we have a lot of research around the halo impact that you get of your e com business. So we have such robust insights and information that we're still confident that we can open up new stores at a rate where it's going to be accretive and it's going to be new market or new share of getting guests into our portfolio versus overly cannibalizing existing stores. There's huge opportunity still for us in The United States. We're just being really thoughtful of it and pacing it right now just because it's a lot more expensive to open up stores. So we want to make sure that we're pacing and sequencing things right for our growth going forward. I wanted to ask about the long term algorithm that you put out last fall. Just as a level set, it was 4% to 6% net sales growth based on a 3% to 4% comp. And you also guided mid single digit operating profit growth with operating margins around 12%, noting that the 12% could maybe expand over time. Could you remind us how to think about the long term algo and what assumptions are included in achieving these targets? Yes. Well, when we had our Analyst Day in October, we shared all the numbers that you just covered. And we do believe and we're building the plans around that 12% operating margin percent, a mid single digit operating profit margin dollar growth. So it's mid single digit growth on the dollars. And we've said diluted EPS would be in the low double digit growth. So it's important to kind of keep that framework as we're going forward. I'm getting a lot of questions because we've come out of the gates pretty strong in 2025. But six months doesn't necessarily mean that, that's how things are going to continue to flow. And I believe, as the CEO and Chris as the partner as the CFO, we need to make sure that we're positioning ourselves to continue to be a growth driver for business and to be able to take market share and also have great returns for our shareholders in the end. And we have to have some of that flexibility in a highly competitive market because beauty is a very competitive market. And we believe that by having that 12 operating margin gives me the flexibility to invest in our business to be able to still maintain that competitive nature and be relevant. When you're hearing about brands that are struggling even in the beauty space, it's because they're tired. You can't let yourself become irrelevant and get tired and get your stores outdated. So I've got to be able to continue to invest, and we believe we can do that with the 12%. Now could that potentially change in the long term? Absolutely. I'm totally focused on how we can make sure that we're providing great returns for our shareholders. But I want to do it in the right way while I'm still protecting the growth algorithms that I can still grow this business in the right way moving forward. And I know you haven't given guidance for 'twenty six, but again, a question that we get is with 2025 being the investment year, what gives you confidence that 2026 won't be a transitional investment year as well? I think that's one of my jobs as a CEO is to make sure that I'm looking at the pacing and that we're not starting too many projects late in the year that has too much carryover into next year. I don't have the crystal ball, so I don't know exactly what's going to happen in 2026, but I'm a big believer in controlling what I can control and that we're really doubling down and looking at the bigger picture. We have been in some very heavy investment cycles over the last four years. The first phase of that investment cycle was really around our foundational systems. We were becoming end of life with many of our systems. And when you start touching one, you have to impact them all. I would have liked to have not had to have touched everything that we did at once, but I'm now glad that we did because we've got good, clean foundational systems, which is really going to help us as we're able to leverage AI, etcetera, in the future. We then positioned and shifted from foundation to go to market, and we were a little bit behind in our go to market investments because we had so much heavy investment in our foundational system. So now we had to do some catch up, and that's what I'd ask for. Give me some relief this year so we can really heavily invest in a go to market. We need to, in 2026, in my opinion, let some things simmer and take place and just continue to focus on letting my new leadership team settle in and really execute with excellence and let our investments that we've made kind of come to fruition and really prioritize, hyper prioritize where it is that we want to continue to invest, but not have it be at the investment levels that we've been in the past. I think that's how we're going to be able to manage 2026 and not have it be like this another like, oh, this is going to be a huge investment year for us. Okay. That's very helpful. Just in our last couple of minutes, we ask five questions to every company that sits with us on stage. Okay. That's kind of meant to be like like lightning round. Okay. So I'll be quick. So the health of the consumer, we already kind of talked about a little bit, but your expectations for the consumer in the second half of the year versus what you saw in the first half, same, better or worse? Boy, if I had a crystal ball, I'd be able to answer that question for you. I think it's difficult to say. I think what we we've given guidance that's been viewed as cautious. I think it's too early to say and if there's a lot of unknowns. So I'm going to defer to say I'm not going to answer the question because I don't know. That's been an answer by a lot of people. Pricing, we didn't really talk too much about pricing. You're not being impacted by tariffs quite as much as maybe some others in retail. But have you taken any price? And have you seen any kind of elasticity impact as a result? No. You know what? We've seen pricing activity very similar to 2024. So we haven't seen it impacting, but that still could happen in the back half. But what we're hearing from our brands is that those that are experiencing some tariff type pricing, they're working really hard internally to not try to pass that on to the consumer because they don't want to try to price themselves out of the consumer selecting their brand. So we'll see, but we haven't really seen anything that's changed from 2024. Okay. The third question is around inventory. Just what are your expectations for inventory growth in the second half? We see inventory in Q3 will start to pick up a little bit. We just shared that our inventory growth was a little higher at 20%, but it's been driven by Space NK coming into our ecosystem, new brands and new stores. Q3, we always see an uptick because we're bringing in inventory goods for holiday. But by the end of Q4, we will be more normalized and we see ourselves in low double digit growth, inventory growth, and that includes Space NK. Okay. With regards to margins that are not tariff related drivers like freight, wages, materials, into 2016, do you think that will be the better, same or worse? What I would share is that we are committed to our 12% operating margin. So we've calculated that in. And then the last question is about just the competitive landscape and consolidation. Do you think market share consolidation will speed up, slow down or be the same in '26? I think beauty is a very competitive environment, and I'm playing to win. And I'm focused on controlling what we can control, and I'm always going to be focused on taking market share. Great. Well, thank you. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you.