Tarang Amin
Analyst · SunTrust
Thanks, Allison, and good afternoon, everyone. Our third quarter results reaffirm our confidence in our 2018 guidance. Results for the quarter were ahead of expectations and were driven by strong growth in the specialty channel, the earlier timing of the holiday shipments at Target and disciplined expense and balance sheet management. As we talked during our last call, we are aggressively pursuing 3 strategic initiatives to improve business trends and track channels: to obviously increasing investment in the e.l.f. brand; focusing on key items; and optimizing 2019 shelf sets. I'll now share the progress made on these initiatives that we believe will positively impact fiscal 2019. Our first focus is investing more behind the brand. We have built a brand that beauty enthusiasts love, and we've done this at a marketing investment level of approximately 3% of net sales. We continue to believe it's the right time to invest more in the brand to break through in a noisy marketplace. You'll see us be disciplined with an ROI-based test-and-learn approach and are also pursuing savings across the enterprise to help offset this investment. In the third quarter, we started testing digital awareness-building campaigns in select regional markets that focuses on our high-quality extraordinary value proposition and the fact that we're the largest mass brand that is 100% cruelty-free, which resonates strongly with our consumers. We plan to provide preliminary results of this test on our next quarterly call and additional detail on the marketing programs that we expect to phase in during 2019 to bring more consumers into the e.l.f. franchise. Our second area of emphasis in putting greater focus on key items. We have real differentiation and innovation, output and speed. We launch over 100 items per year in as fast as 13 weeks. While we're proud of this innovation capability, we also have an opportunity to bring greater focus to some of our best items. In the third quarter, we put an integrated effort behind our Beauty Shield Magnetic Mask. This $24 product is a great example of our high-quality extraordinary value proposition. The only other thing like in the market is a $75 Prestige product. In the quarter, we introduced product-specific social media messaging, influencer collaborations and PR, including a feature on the TODAY Show and quickly saw our Magnetic Mask become one of our top items. The integrated investment behind this product was quite modest, and we're encouraged to leverage similar tactics in other key items. We've already mapped out product integrations through the front half of 2019, including activations with leading national retailers. Our third key initiative is getting optimal assortment at retail. A major 2019 initiative that we expect to help improve productivity at retail is Project Unicorn. This is a major product, package and shelf initiative that elevates brand presentation and improves navigation. We've been planning this initiative since 2017, when retailers began putting e.l.f. into significantly larger footprints, and we noticed that our predominantly black packaging became a sea of black in these larger sets. Project Unicorn eliminates and changes the outer packaging on select SKUs, highlighting our premium componentry and colors. Another major benefit of this project is it allows us to fit more product with an existing space. We will also have improved signage, showcasing our leadership in categories like brushes and primers. In Q3, we also finalized 2019 planogram designs for Target, Walmart and Ulta Beauty. Based on our planning with these and other key customers, we expect to maintain or grow our space in 2019 at every one of our major retail accounts. Let me tell you why. First, at both Target and Walmart, e.l.f. is the most productive brand in cosmetics. Second, we believe we're still under-spaced relative to productivity at our major retailers. Last, our attractive consumer profile, strong innovation pipeline and powerful insights generated from our number one 1 mass cosmetics e-commerce site continue to make e.l.f. a valuable strategic partner to these national retailers. In summary, we're aggressively focused on initiatives to drive growth in our business and are confident in our outlook for the remainder of the year. I'll now turn it over to John to discuss our financial results.