Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE:WSM) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call November 20, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jeremy Brooks - Chief Accounting Officer and Head of IR
Laura Alber - President and CEO
Jeff Howie - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Cristina Fernandez - Telsey Advisory Group
Peter Benedict - Baird
Kate McShane - Goldman Sachs
Jonathan Matuszewski - Jefferies
Simeon Gutman - Morgan Stanley
Max Rakhlenko - TD Cowen
Chuck Grom - Gordon Haskett
Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer
Oliver Wintermantel - Evercore

Operator

Welcome to the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the conclusion of the prepared remarks.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jeremy Brooks, Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jeremy Brooks

Good morning and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. I'm here this morning with Laura Alber, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Jeff Howie, our Chief Financial Officer; and Sameer Hassan, our Chief Digital and Technology Officer.

Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that during this call, we will make forward-looking statements with respect to future events and financial performance, including our raised guidance for fiscal '24 and our long-term outlook. We believe these statements reflect our best estimates. However, we cannot make any assurances these statements will materialize and actual results may differ significantly from our expectations. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of these statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after today's call.

Additionally, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures should not be considered replacements for and should be read together with our GAAP results. A detailed reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure appears in Exhibit 1 to the press release we issued earlier this morning. This call should also be considered in conjunction with our filings with the SEC. Finally, a replay of this call will be available on our Investor Relations website.

Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Laura.

Laura Alber

Thank you, Jeremy. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining the call. At Williams-Sonoma Inc., we continue to have strong performance exceeding both top and bottom-line expectations. The third quarter was driven by continued improvement in our sales trends, market share gains and strong profit. Our comp came in at down 2.9% with an operating margin of 17.8%, delivering a 7% increase in earnings per share to $1.96. Also, we bought back $533 million of our stock this quarter and have purchased 4% of our shares outstanding so far this year.