Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's First Quarter of Fiscal 2013 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded. A rebroadcast of the conference call will be available beginning on Wednesday, June 26, 2013, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time through 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Friday, June 28, 2013. To access the rebroadcast, you may dial (888) 843-7419 with the passcode ID of 35107337. At this time, it's my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Gene Castagna, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Bed Bath & Beyond. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and good afternoon. Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's First Quarter of Fiscal 2013 Conference Call. A short time ago, we issued a press release announcing Bed Bath & Beyond's results for the 3-month period ended June 1, 2013. During this call, we will comment on some of the first quarter highlights and update our second quarter and full fiscal year 2013 planning assumptions. Before proceeding, I will read the following statement and I quote, "Bed Bath & Beyond's fiscal first quarter press release and comments made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities & Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. Many of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as may, will, expect, anticipate, approximate, estimate, assume, continue, model, project, plan and similar words and phrases. The company's actual results and future financial condition may differ materially from those expressed in any such forward-looking statements as a result of many factors. Please refer to Bed Bath & Beyond's SEC filings, including its Form 10-K for the year ended March 2, 2013. The company does not undertake any obligation to update its forward-looking statements." Joining me on today's call are Leonard Feinstein, Co-Chairman of Bed Bath & Beyond; and Steven Temares, Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. I'm now very pleased to introduce Leonard Feinstein. Len?

Thanks, Gene, and good afternoon. We are pleased to report our company's fiscal first quarter net earnings per diluted share of $0.93 compared to $0.89 per diluted share in last year's fiscal first quarter. As we said on our prior quarter's call, last year's fiscal first quarter included approximately $0.06 per diluted share of distinct net tax benefits. This year's first quarter distinct net tax benefits were approximately $0.01 per share. These results continue our consistent performance in terms of earnings per share growth and overall financial strength. During the quarter, we continued the integration of World Market and Linen Holdings and made good progress on our major initiatives that we mentioned last quarter. Steve will discuss these items in a few minutes. Our other first quarter activities included the opening of 4 Bed Bath & Beyond stores, 2 World Market stores, 1 buybuy BABY stores, 1 Harmon Face Values store as well as closing of 1 Christmas Tree Shops store. Additionally, we continue to relocate and renovate stores across our concepts. At June 1, 2013, consolidated store space including the 266 World Market stores was approximately 42.2 million square feet, an increase of approximately 16% over the end of last year's first quarter. Since the beginning of the fiscal second quarter of 2013, we have opened an additional buybuy BABY store. Including this store, we currently operate 1,479 stores, consisting of 1,008 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada; 266 World Market stores, 84 buybuy BABY stores, 73 stores under the names Christmas Tree Shops or andThat! and 48 stores under the names Harmon or Harmon Face Values. Including the 9 additional stores we have opened so far, we now anticipate the number of store openings across all our…

Thank you, Len. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in this conference call. As Len said, we are pleased that we've been able to continue our consistent performance in terms of earnings per share growth and overall financial strength as well as the key integrations of both World Market and Linen Holdings. We are grateful for the dedication and talents of all our associates and their constant focus on improving the overall customer experience while at the same time creating a more productive and efficient company, which are the keys to producing the strong results that we have experienced. On an ongoing basis, we continue to increase and differentiate our merchandise assortment to better serve our customers needs and shopping preferences. We also continue to invest in all aspects of our company and work to enhance our customers' overall experience in the store, online and through mobile devices and social media. And we remain committed to being our customer's first choice for the merchandise categories we offer domestically, interactively and over the longer term, internationally. By offering a broad, deep and differentiated assortment of merchandise with superior customer service, we are confident that our company's well positioned to grow profitably and increase our market share and shareholder value over time. During this fiscal year, we are advancing several major initiatives, which will require incremental capital investments and SG&A expense, including enhancing our omnichannel experience for our customers by replacing both back-end and customer-facing systems for our websites. We have successfully launched a new buybuy BABY website in early June, and as we said in our last call, remain on track to launch the new Bed Bath & Beyond website by the end of our fiscal second quarter. By upgrading our mobile sites and apps, by enhancing network communications…

Thanks, Steve. As you heard from Len and Steve, we earned $0.93 per diluted share in our fiscal first quarter. While we are encouraged by our positive fiscal first quarter results, we continue to be cautiously optimistic about the remainder of the coming year. I would like to begin by highlighting 2 items which affect the comparability of our financial statements for the remainder of fiscal 2013. First, the inclusion of World Market and Linen Holdings sales and earnings will not be comparable until after we anniversary the acquisitions during our fiscal second quarter. And second, since fiscal 2012 was a 53-week year, the net sales generated of approximately $184 million during the extra week in the fourth quarter last year and the related approximate $0.05 earnings per share will not be repeated in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2013. That said, I would like to now provide our assumptions for the remainder of fiscal 2013. One, we are modeling a 2% to 4% increase in comparable store sales for the second quarter and full fiscal year. Please note the shift in our fiscal calendar caused by the 53rd week last year and the timing of Thanksgiving relative to Christmas in 2013 will affect our reported comp store sales in the fiscal third and fourth quarters of 2013 as follows. For the third quarter, the comp store sales calendar will compare the 13 weeks ending the week of Thanksgiving in 2013 to the 13 weeks ending the first week after Thanksgiving in 2012. This will result in an unfavorable comparison in the third quarter comp store sales calculation. For the fourth quarter, our comp store sales calendar will include 24 pre-Christmas shopping days in 2013 versus 23 pre-Christmas shopping days in 2012. That, in conjunction with a compressed holiday shopping…

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for listening. You may now disconnect.