Greetings and welcome to the Bloomin’ Brands Fiscal Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Chris Meyer, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Mr. Meyer, you may begin.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. With me on today’s call are Liz Smith, our CEO and Dave Deno, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Administrative Officer. By now, you should have access to our fiscal second quarter 2016 earnings release. It can also be found on our website at www.bloominbrands.com in the Investors section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting our results on an adjusted basis. These non-GAAP financial measures are not calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP and maybe calculated differently than similar non-GAAP information used by other companies. Quantitative reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our earnings release on our website as previously described. Before we begin our formal remarks, I would like to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including our discussion of growth strategies and financial guidance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ in a material way from our forward-looking statements. Some of these risks are mentioned in our earnings release, others are discussed in our SEC filings, which are available at www.sec.gov. During today’s call, we will provide a recap of our financial performance for the fiscal second quarter 2016, an overview of company highlights, a discussion regarding progress on key strategic objectives and an updated 2016 financial outlook. Once we have completed these remarks, we will open up the call for questions. In addition, as several points in this presentation, we will be referencing consumer data from NPD Group’s CREST market research for the annual periods ending May 2006, 2010 and 2016. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Liz Smith.

Thanks, Chris and welcome to everyone listening today. As noted in this morning’s earnings release, our adjusted second quarter diluted earnings per share was $0.30, up 7% from last year and U.S. comp sales were down 2.3%. We continue to expect our comp sales performance to strengthen meaningfully in the second half versus the first half. However, Q2 sales were somewhat softer than we anticipated. This quarter’s performance reflects the combination of lower than expected traffic from our marketing programs, increased competitive activity and industry traffic that has continued to soften. Before we drill down into the quarter, I wanted to provide our perspective on the casual dining operating environment. For the last 11 years, casual dining traffic has declined. Price promotion, which ramped up in earnest during the recession, continues to increase, but has not restored traffic growth. At the same time, additional capacity continues to come to market. According to NPD CREST, in 2006, 16% of all casual dining occasions were deal-driven. By 2010, when we exited the recession, that percentage had increased to 21%. Today, despite improving macroeconomic conditions, CDR discounting has increased further to now represent 22% of all occasions. This trend is unlikely to change given the sluggish start to 2016. Our segmentation study show that approximately 25% of CDR customers are truly motivated more by price than brand preference. In our view, the industry, including our brands, has overspent chasing this group through discounting and price promotions. As a result, CDR brands trade share back and forth among this subset of customers who are both less brand loyal and are less profitable. The unintended consequence of this is that we are unnecessarily subsidizing the majority of consumers who would have visited anyway and view value as unique and differentiated experiences at affordable prices. As…

Well, thank you, Liz and good morning, everyone. I will kick off with discussion around our sales and profit performance for the quarter. As a reminder, when I speak to results, I will be referring to adjusted numbers that excludes certain costs and benefits. Please see the earnings release reconciliations between non-GAAP metrics and their most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures. We also provide a discussion of the nature of each adjustment. With that in mind, our second quarter financial results versus the prior year are as follows. GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter was negative $0.08 versus $0.26 in 2015. Adjusted diluted earnings per share, was $0.30 versus $0.28 last year. The primary difference between our GAAP and adjusted numbers in the second quarter was the sale of South Korea. This includes $40 million of impairment charges and related cost as well as $3.5 million of tax expense associated with the repatriation of proceeds from the sale. Total Bloomin’ Brands revenues decreased 1.9% to $1.1 billion. This decrease was driven primarily by a 2.3% decrease in U.S. comp sales and the unfavorable impact of foreign currency translation. This was partially offset by the net benefit of restaurant openings and closures. Adjusted restaurant level operating margin was 15.5% this year versus 16.2% a year ago. The year-over-year decline in operating margin was driven primarily by higher labor expense, changes in product mix and higher commodity cost driven by both product enhancements at Outback and inflation in Brazil. These items are partially offset by the benefit of productivity savings and menu pricing. It is also important to note that embedded in our Q2 restaurant margin is approximately $4 million of investments to enhance the guest experience, including the training and rollout of new center cut sirloin and adjusting the…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Michael Gallo with C.L. King. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Buckley with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of John Glass with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew DiFrisco with Guggenheim. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of John Ivankoe with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Howard Penney with Hedgeye Risk Management. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Farmer with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Jason West with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Karen Holthouse with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Strelzik with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Our final question comes from the line of Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Ms. Liz Smith for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. We appreciate everybody for joining us today and we look forward to updating you on the portfolio of progress on our Q3 call, which is on October 28. Thanks a lot.

This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.