Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's Fiscal 2013 Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode for the duration of the call. This conference is being recorded. A rebroadcast of the conference call will be available beginning on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time through 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, April 11, 2014. To access the rebroadcast, you may dial (888) 843-7419, with the passcode ID of 36886594. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the conference over to Ms. Sue Lattmann, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Bed Bath & Beyond. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's fourth quarter of fiscal 2013 conference call. A short time ago, we issued a press release announcing Bed Bath & Beyond's results for the 3 and 12-month periods ended March 1, 2014. During this call, we will comment on some of the fourth quarter and full year highlights and provide our fiscal 2014 planning assumptions. Before proceeding, I will read the following statement, and I quote, "Bed Bath & Beyond's fiscal fourth 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 Warren Eisenberg, 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 Warren Eisenberg. Warren?

Thanks, Sue, and good afternoon. Before I get started, I'd like to take this opportunity to again welcome Gerry Elliott to our company's Board of Directors. The company announced their election on February 20 and we are delighted to add her experience and abilities to our Board. In addition, on behalf of the Board, I'd like to congratulate Gene Castagna on his promotion to Chief Operating Officer and Sue Lattmann on her promotion to Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. As Steven said when he announced their promotions Gene and Sue will continue to help lead and organize our company for future growth and success in their new roles. Returning to today's call, our press release issued within the past hour showed that our company earned $1.60 per diluted share in the fiscal fourth quarter and $4.79 per diluted share for the 2013 fiscal year ended March 1, 2014 compared with earnings per diluted share of $1.68 and $4.56 in the prior year's fiscal fourth quarter and full year, respectively. As we previously discussed, the fiscal 2013 results take into account a reduction of approximately S0.06 to $0.07 per diluted share as a result of the disruptive weather in the fourth quarter, the fiscal 2012 results were negatively impacted by hurricane Sandy in the third quarter and included a benefit of approximately $0.05 per diluted share as a result of the 53rd week in the fourth quarter. During the fourth quarter, we opened three new Bed Bath & Beyond stores, four buybuy Baby stores, one Harmon Face Values store and one Christmas Tree Shops andThat! store. Also, we continued 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 four Cost Plus…

Thank you, Warren. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in this conference call. As Warren mentioned, despite the period of disruptive weather we experienced this past December, January and February, we are pleased that we've been able to continue our consistent performance in terms of annual earnings per share growth and overall financial strength. Looking back on 2013 we have made considerable progress in many areas. To mention a few, we enhanced our omnichannel experience for our customers by re-platforming and adding improved functionality to our buybuy Baby and Bed Bath & Beyond websites, initiating a selling component to our Christmas Tree Shops website, re-platforming our mobile sites and apps and growing and developing our IT, analytics, marketing and ecommerce groups to lead our omnichannel initiatives. Further, we have completed the construction of our new IT data center in North Carolina and now engaged in the ongoing process of equipping the facility which will enhance our disaster recovery capabilities and support our overall IT systems. In addition, we installed energy-efficient lighting and heating and cooling systems in our stores and we continued our ongoing deployment of new and enhanced systems and equipment to allow our stores to take advantage of new technologies and processes. With respect to 2014, which began on March 2, although we are pleased with our progress on our initiatives to-date, we also know we have more progress to make. As we have noted, this is a period of significant investment for our company and although there are required capital investments and incremental expenses related to these initiatives, which will increase certain expenses as a percentage of net sales in the short term, we are confident we are making the appropriate investments for our company's long-term success. For this year we plan to continue to…

Thank you, Steve. As you heard from Warren and Steve, we earned $1.60 per diluted share in our fiscal fourth quarter and $4.79 for the full year. We are pleased with our positive fiscal fourth quarter results and we continue to be cautiously optimistic about the coming year. Turning to fiscal 2014, our planning assumptions for the fiscal first quarter and full year include the following. One, for the fiscal first quarter we are modeling comparable stores sales to increase in the range of 1% to 2.5%. For the full year, we are modeling comparable store sales to increase by approximately 3%. Two, consolidated net sales are modeled to increase by approximately 2% to 3.5% for the first quarter and approximately 4% for the full year. Three, depreciation for fiscal 2014 is expected to be approximately $240 million. Four, assuming these sales levels, we are modeling deleverage for both gross profit and SG&A for the fiscal first quarter and full year. Contributing to the modeled gross profit deleverage on an assumed continuation and the shift of the mix of merchandise sold to lower margin categories and an increase in coupon expense. The modeled SG&A deleverage includes increases in technology expense and depreciation related to our ongoing investments. Five, our annual interest line will include approximately $9.2 million in interest expense, substantially resulting from the inclusion of sale lease backed obligations related to certain distribution centers. Six, the first quarter and full year tax provisions are estimated to be in the mid to high 30s percentage range with expected variability as distinct tax events occur. Seven, we expect to generate positive operating cash flow and to continue to fund operations entirely from internally generated sources. Eight, we plan to continue to repurchase shares under our $2.5 billion repurchase program, which we…

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