Vera Bradley (NASDAQ:VRA) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call March 8, 2023 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Jacqueline Ardrey - President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

John Enwright - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Mark Dely - Chief Administrative Officer

Conference Call Participants

Eric Beder - SCC Research

Joe Gomes - Noble Capital

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vera Bradley Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year-end Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. As a reminder, today’s conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mark Dely, Vera Bradley’s Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead.

Mark Dely

Good morning and welcome everyone. We'd like to thank you for joining us for today’s call. Some of the statements made during our prepared remarks and in response to your questions may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to and within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that we expect. Please refer to today’s press release and the company’s most recent Form 10-K with the SEC for a discussion of known risks and uncertainties. Investors should not assume that the statements made during the call will remain operative at a later time. We undertake no obligation to update any information discussed on today’s call.

I will now turn the call over to Vera Bradley’s CEO, Jacquie Ardrey. Jacquie?

Jacqueline Ardrey

Thank you, Mark. Good morning and thank you for joining us on today’s call. We focused on driving revenues in the fourth quarter through targeted strategic promotions on seasonal giftable and key items. As a result, total company fourth quarter revenues outperformed our guidance, although gross margins remained under pressure.

Diligent expense control enabled us to deliver fourth quarter non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.16, which was nearly flat with last year. In the fourth quarter, sales trends at both Vera Bradley and Pura Vida improved over prior quarters, with Vera Bradley total sales down just 1% and Pura Vida sales down less than 5% on a year-over-year basis.