Vera Bradley Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call December 7, 2022 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Robert Wallstrom - President, Chief Executive Officer

Jacquie Ardrey - Chief Executive Officer

John Enwright - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Mark Dely - Chief Administrative Officer

Conference Call Participants

Oliver Chen - Cowen & Company

Joe Gomes - Noble Capital

Eric Beder - SCC Research

Steve Marotta - CL King & Associates

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vera Bradley third quarter 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.

Mark Dely

Good morning and welcome everyone. I’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 outgoing CEO, Rob Wallstrom. Rob?

Robert Wallstrom

Thank you Mark. Good morning and thank you for joining us on today’s call. Our new CEO, Jacquie Ardrey, and John Enwright, our CFO both join me today. Jacquie joined the company in November after most recently serving as President of Grandin Road with previous experience at Harry and David and Hanna Andersson. She has jumped right in and we are excited to have her leading the company into the future.

First, let me make a few comments on the quarter. We delivered a year-over-year improvement in non-GAAP EPS largely driven by implementation of our targeted expense reductions. Total revenues of $124 million were modestly above overall expectations and we began to experience some stabilization in our gross margin rate as supply chain challenges moderated and strategic price increases help offset increased raw material and freight costs.