Steelcase Inc. (NYSE:SCS) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call December 20, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Mike O'Meara - Investor Relations

Sara Armbruster - President and Chief Executive Officer

Dave Sylvester - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Reuben Garner - The Benchmark Company

Greg Burns - Sidoti

Steven Ramsey - Thompson Research Group

Budd Bugatch - Water Tower Research

Operator

Good morning. My name is Krista, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Steelcase Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 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] Thank you.

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

Mike O'Meara

Thank you, Krista. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the recap of our third quarter fiscal 2024 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 third quarter earnings, which crossed the line -- 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 hello, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today.

Our third quarter results reflect the continued progress we're making on our profit improvement initiatives, which is evidenced by our year-over-year gross margin improvement of 360 basis points. I'm proud of all of our employees who are continuing to drive fitness and reallocate resources to support our growth and transformation initiative. I'd like to thank our sales team for capturing price increases and our operations teams for the improvements they're driving.

Additionally, our operations teams continue to make changes aimed at improving our manufacturing and distribution efficiency. We recently announced the relocation of our regional distribution center in Rancho Cucamonga, California to Phoenix, which we expect will provide additional savings beyond that from our previously announced Atlanta distribution center closure. We've also begun implementing the consolidation of certain seating production into our Mexico and Malaysia operations, which will open up additional footprint that will enable us to pursue further efficiency actions.