Steelcase Inc. (NYSE:SCS) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call March 23, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Mike O'Meara - Director, Investor Relations and Financial Planning and Analysis

Sara Armbruster - President and Chief Executive Officer

David Sylvester - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Reuben Garner - The Benchmark Company

Greg Burns - Sidoti & Company

Steven Ramsey - Thompson Research Group

Rex Henderson - Water Tower Research

Operator

Good morning. My name is Regina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Steelcase Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2023 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Mr. O'Meara, you may begin the conference.

Mike O'Meara

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the recap of our fourth quarter fiscal 2023 financial results. Here with me today are Sara Armbruster, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Sylvester, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Our fourth quarter earnings release, which crossed the wires yesterday, is accessible on our website. This conference call is being webcast and this webcast is a copyrighted production of Steelcase Inc. A replay of this webcast will be posted to ir.steelcase.com later today.

Our discussion today may include references to non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking statements. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures and details regarding the risks associated with the use of forward-looking statements are included in our earnings release, and we are incorporating by reference into this conference call the text of our Safe Harbor statement included in the release.

Following our prepared remarks, we will respond to questions from investors and analysts.

I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Sara Armbruster.

Sara Armbruster

Thanks, Mike, and hi, everyone, and thanks for joining our call today. Our fourth quarter results were better than we expected as both revenue and EPS finished above the guidance range we provided in December.

Stronger orders, higher pricing benefits and improved fulfilment rates combined to generate the increased sales. We continue to drive improvement in our gross margin, which is up 370 basis points on a year-over-year basis, as our pricing actions continue to recover the inflation we've been absorbing.

We also continue to optimize our spending by shifting investment to our most critical initiatives and driving efficiencies in our processes. On the supply chain side, we saw significant improvement in our operational metrics as our network of suppliers stabilize their performance and we benefited from adjustments in our own operations.