Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's Third Quarter Fiscal 2013 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded. A rebroadcast of the conference call will be available beginning on Wednesday, January 8, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time through 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, January 10, 2014. To access the rebroadcast, you may dial (888) 843-7419, with the passcode ID of 36264087. 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 third quarter fiscal 2013 conference call. A short time ago, we issued a press release announcing Bed Bath & Beyond's results for the 3- and 9-month periods ended November 30, 2013. During this call, we will comment on some of the third quarter highlights, update our fiscal fourth quarter and full year model and provide some preliminary fiscal 2014 planning assumptions. Before proceeding, I will read the following statement, and I quote, "Bed Bath & Beyond's fiscal third quarter press release and comments made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities and 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 that our company's net earnings per diluted share increased approximately 8.7% in the fiscal third quarter to $1.12. These results continue our consistent performance in terms of earnings per share growth and overall financial strength. During the third quarter, we opened 5 new Bed Bath & Beyond stores, 2 stores under a combination of the names Christmas Tree Shops or andThat! and 3 World Market stores. Also, we continue to optimize our operations in a number of trade areas through renovating stores across our concepts and repositioning our stores in various markets, which also included the closing of 3 Bed Bath & Beyond stores during the quarter. At November 30, 2013, consolidated store space, net of openings and closings for all our concepts, was approximately 42.5 million square feet, an increase of approximately 1.4% over the end of last year's third quarter. At the end of the third quarter of 2013 and currently, we operate 1,491 stores, consisting of: 1,011 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada; 269 stores under the names World Market, Cost Plus World Market or Cost Plus; 86 buybuy BABY stores; 76 stores under a combination of the names Christmas Tree Shops or andThat!; and 49 stores under the names Harmon or Harmon Face Values. Including the 24 new stores we have opened so far, we are planning the number of store openings for fiscal 2013 to be approximately 33 stores across all our concepts. Additionally, we will continue our program of renovating or repositioning stores within markets when appropriate. We believe that throughout the United States and Canada, there is an opportunity to operate in excess of 1,300 Bed Bath & Beyond stores, as well…

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. At the same time, as Gene will discuss shortly, our performance since the beginning of the fourth quarter has not met our initial projections. As we said in our prior call, our model would be subject to high volatility due to our calendar shift assumptions. Although we had a slight increase in comp store transactions during fiscal December, our assumptions included an even greater number of additional transactions than we experienced during this compressed holiday shopping period. Accordingly, we have revised our projections for the period. While we continue to model sound fourth quarter comp store sales, more importantly, we believe we continue to take the necessary steps to maintain our consistent long-term performance, including our focus on increasing and differentiating 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 store, online and through mobile devices and social media, and we remain committed to being our customers' 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 in an omnichannel environment, with superior customer service, we are confident that our company is well positioned to grow profitably and increase our market share and shareholder value over time. We continue to move forward with several major initiatives which will require incremental capital investments and SG&A expense on an ongoing basis, including enhancing our omnichannel experience for our customers by adding additional…

Thanks, Steve. As you heard from Len and Steve, we earned $1.12 per diluted share in our fiscal third quarter. We are pleased with our positive fiscal third quarter results, and we continue to be cautiously optimistic about the remainder of the year. As noted in our prior calls, I would like to remind everyone of the following 2 items. First, 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. Second, due to a shift caused by our 53rd week last year, there are differences in the date ranges between the fiscal and comparable store sales calendars on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Please refer to the chart included in our fiscal first and second quarters of 2013 10-Qs that highlights the differences in those date ranges. That said, I would like to now provide our remaining assumptions that support our revised model for the fourth quarter. One, based upon sales to date and our assumptions for the rest of the fourth quarter, comparable store sales are now modeled to increase by approximately 2% to 4% versus our previous model of 3.5% to 5.5%. For the fiscal second half, we are modeling comp store sales, which compares 26 weeks both this year and last year to increase by approximately 1.7% to 2.7% versus our previous model of 2% to 4%. Comparable store sales for the full year, consisting of 52 weeks, are modeled to increase by approximately 2.5% to 3.1%. Two, net sales are now modeled to decrease by approximately 3.9% to 5.7% when comparing the 13 weeks of this year's fiscal fourth quarter to the 14…

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