Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Regis Corporation Fiscal 2018 Fourth Quarter and Year End Earnings Call. My name is Cecilia, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management's presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded for playback and will be available by approximately 12:00 PM Eastern Time today. I'll now turn the conference over to Mr. Paul Dunn, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Cecilia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us. On the call with me today are Hugh Sawyer, our Chief Executive Officer; Andrew Lacko, our Chief Financial Officer; Eric Bakken, President of our Franchise Segment; and Amanda Rusin, our General Counsel. Before turning the call over to Hugh, there are few housekeeping items to address. First, today's earnings release and conference call includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance, and by their nature, are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's current earnings release and previous SEC filings including our most recent 10-K for more information on these risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call. Second, this morning's conference call must be considered in conjunction with the earnings release we issued this morning and our previous SEC filings. In today's call, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial results that excludes the impact of certain business events. These non-GAAP financial measures are provided to facilitate meaningful year-over-year comparisons but should not be considered superior to, as a substitute for, and should be ready in conjunction with GAAP financial measures for the period. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in this morning's release which is available on our website at www.regiscorp.com/investor. With that, I will now turn the call over to Hugh.

Thank you, Paul, and thanks for joining us today and for your interest in Regis. Although we are still in the early days of our multi-year strategy and recognize that we have much more work to do, we are pleased to report signs of progress in our 2018 financial performance and ongoing transformation efforts. The results we reported this morning mark the company's fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year adjusted EBITDA improvement and the fourth out of five quarters of same-store sales growth. Additionally, we have continued to expand our franchise portfolio where we believe it will support our evolving strategy for the business and maximize shareholder value. Franchise salon locations now make up 51% of our salon portfolio versus 29%, 16 months ago. Andrew Lacko, our CFO, will now take you through our results. Andrew?

Thanks, Hugh, and good morning, everyone. On this morning's call, I'd like to provide you with some additional color on both the quarter and full year financial results, along with the balance sheet and liquidity update. Additionally, I will give you an overview of some accounting changes that will impact fiscal 2019 and the comparability of prior years. Turning to the results; on a consolidated basis, fourth quarter revenue totaled $295 million, a $26 million, or 8% year-over-year decrease. The revenue decline was driven primarily by the closure of a net 701 salons and the conversion of 448 company-owned salons to franchise locations over the past 12 months. These reductions were partially offset by revenue growth in our franchise segment and a 70 basis point improvement in company-owned same-store sales comps. I'd like to point out that our reported sales comps were negatively impacted by the shift of Easter traffic into the third quarter this year versus the fourth quarter last year. We estimate this shift reduced -- the company-owned comps in the fourth quarter by approximately 90 basis points. So on an Easter adjusted basis, same-store sales improved approximately 160 basis points year-over-year. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of $31.2 million increased $2 million, or 6% year-over-year driven primarily by our operational initiatives which delivered approximately $6 million of benefit during the quarter. We also saw favorability from the closure of unprofitable salons, the sale of salons to franchisees, profitable growth in our franchise segment, and positive company-owned same-store sales performance. These benefits were partly offset by a year-over-year increase in the company short-term incentive compensation expense based on improved year-over-year financial performance, sytlists’ minimum wage increases, strategic investments made in digital advertising during the quarter in support of our SmartStyle brands, and various advertising costs in support of our…

Thank you, operator and thanks to everyone who joined us today. It's certainly been a team effort here at Regis, thanks to all our colleagues around the company here at salon support, and then our field organization for your great effort. We look forward to talking to you again, soon. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. We appreciate everyone's participation today. You may now disconnect.