Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to The TJX Companies First Quarter Fiscal 2016 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference call over to Ms. Carol Meyrowitz, Chief Executive Officer of The TJX Companies, Inc. Please go ahead, ma'am. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Cheryl, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to congratulate Deb McDonald (sic) [Deb McConnell], our Senior Vice President of Global Communications on her recent birth of her son. As Deb is on maternity leave, Doreen Thompson will start us off with some opening comments.

Thank you, Carol, and good morning. The forward-looking statements we make today about the company's results and plans are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and the implementation of the company's plans to vary materially. These risks are discussed in the company's SEC filings including, without limitation, the Form 10-K filed March 31, 2015. Further, these comments and the Q&A that follows are copyrighted today by The TJX Companies. Any recording, retransmission, reproduction, or other use of the same for profit or otherwise without prior consent of TJX is prohibited and a violation of the United States copyright and other laws. Additionally, while we have approved the publishing of a transcript of this call by a third party, we take no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear in that transcript. Please note that the financial results and expectations we discuss today are on a continuing operations basis. Also, we have detailed the impact of foreign exchange on our consolidated results and our international divisions in today's press release and the Investor Information section of our website, tjx.com. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures we discuss today to GAAP measures are included in today's press release or otherwise posted on our website, tjx.com, in the Investor Information section. Thank you. And now, I'll turn it back over to Carol. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Doreen. Joining me and Doreen on the call are Ernie Herrman and Scott Goldenberg. So let me begin by saying that I'm extremely pleased with our continued momentum and first quarter performance. Our terrific merchandise mix and great values are resonating with our consumers across all of our geographies. Earnings per share increased 8% above last year and well exceeded our plan. Consolidated comp store sales grew 5%,…

Thank you. Our first question comes from Mr. Oliver Chen. Sir, your line is open. Courtney Willson - Cowen & Co. LLC: Hi. This is Courtney in for Oliver today. We're just wondering as you look forward to back-to-school and fall, are you planning anything differently versus last year in terms of inventory planning or merchandising? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, Courtney, we always have a lot of initiatives in place, but we intend to continue to offer incredible value and we had some great marketing initiatives going forward. So, we are pretty excited about going forward with the business. Courtney Willson - Cowen & Co. LLC: Thanks very much. And just one more, if you could comment on how the West Coast port situation has impacted the business? Thanks. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Well, our packaways are up. There's plenty of goods out there. Scott Goldenberg - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. We've had, Courtney, plenty of availability of exciting brands and buys. It's hard to pinpoint necessarily whether it was due to the port or not. We have to believe that some of it was. So overall, we would say that the market has had a lot of exciting deals for us to take advantage of. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And I would comment that as always, we are trying to keep everybody home and back a little bit because there is a ton of goods out there. Courtney Willson - Cowen & Co. LLC: Thanks, guys, and congratulations. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mr. Omar Saad. Sir, your line is open.

Thank you. Great quarter. Congratulations. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

We noticed you guys are doing some more marketing commercials around the dotcom – the e-commerce business. Can you talk about some of the early signs of the efficacy there? How you think about that as part of your marketing plan going forward? Is it really targeted towards the e-commerce piece or do you think there's a halo there for the whole tjmaxx.com platform? And then I have a follow-up. Thanks. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Omar, we look at everything in total brand. So the combination of tjmaxx.com and T.J. Maxx together is the way we look at it. Obviously, we're trying to leverage as much as we can. We're advertising a little bit more heavily like you'll see in-store, but we're very, very pleased with what we're seeing. And again, I have to reiterate that our online business is a continuation of different SKUs and excitement to the consumer. So I don't believe – and from what we see initially, we'll have cannibalization. So we're pretty excited about the business in totality. But more importantly, it's about building our brand and we're bringing in younger customers. So, we're pretty excited about it.

Okay, great. Thanks. And then, as you think about this accelerated comp you've enjoyed the last couple of quarters, other purveyors of soft goods in the U.S. especially are experiencing a lot of weakness recently. I'm trying to understand is there a linkage inverse correlation in terms of product availability, some of the department stores are having some struggles. Are you guys benefiting from that or is it really just uncorrelated, do you think, with the performance of the industry and it's just secular outperformance by your formats? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I...

...formats? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: What I would say, first of all, our apparel business and our home business is strong really across the board. So I think some of the things that – it always comes back to execution for us. So, for example, our junior business, we had said was a bit tough and I think Ernie and his team did a lot to fix the business. So it's very, very strong. We have a lot of initiatives. So I believe it's execution. Ernie, you want to...

Yeah. I would say, Omar, the – well, first of all, back on the other question where there's been quite a few – the availability of goods in the market has been significant. Some of that could be a ramification of business around the environment not being as strong. I would say secondly, we've just kind of gone with the playbook, like Carol said, like we normally do. We've had good liquidity, good open to buy, and you have a lot of availability. So, we have to believe that type of execution has just allowed us to drive the sales and as we always say, to drive our sales – we try to beat our sales plan. So, to drive our sales above the plan is always our goal. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I honestly think we have outrageous value and that's what I'm the most excited about.

Thanks, Ernie. Thanks, Carol.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mr. Matthew Boss. Sir, your line is open.

Thanks. Great quarter. Great, greater quarter, guys. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

On the competitive front, a lot was made about the incoming domestic entrant. Can you guys talk about how your store is overlapping with Primark and some of the fast fashion players globally actually perform today? And any thoughts on department store peers looking to accelerate into the off-price space? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, I've said it many times, we love being next to Primark and fast fashion because it really just drives the traffic along with the other off-pricers. So it just creates a Mecca for us. I don't usually comment on the competition, but I will comment that I think we built the machine over 38 years and we're pretty proud of it. And I think we have tremendous growth ahead of us. So I don't look at it as – I don't worry about who were near. I'm happy that anybody brings traffic, we're very happy.

Great. That's a good game plan. So you raised your comps forecast to 2% to 3% from 1% to 2%. Can you just elaborate a little where you're seeing increased confidence by division? And any color on performance as the quarter progress, I think, would be really helpful if possible. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So it's across the board. So we raised the comps and it includes all divisions. And as far as the February, March, April, obviously, March being the strongest, which was typical. But again, we were strong across all areas in the country, all geographies and all three months were pretty strong.

Wow! Congrats on a nice quarter. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Our next question comes from Ms. Kimberly Greenberger. Ma'am, your line is open. Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great. Thank you. Really terrific start to the year, Carol. And I'm wondering – I'm looking at the inventory numbers, it looks like total inventory was up 9% here at the end of the first quarter. Burt if you exclude in-transit and e-com on a reported basis, I think you said, up 2%. Is that seven-point spread largely in in-transit and is there – obviously, that would suggest a lot of fresh goods flowing in, if that's the right conclusion there. And I'm wondering if you're seeing any particular incremental favorability year-over-year from any of the sources? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, first of all, as I said before, there's a ton of goods out there. We have new stores. We had packaway. Our average ticket is down because we want to offer outrageous value and we're buying to the trends of the business. So it's all of those elements. And I think, Ernie and the guys are just, again, trying to hold back because there are great – across the board, there's a lot of goods out there and a lot of great brands.

And as usual, Kimberly, we are trying to just make sure all the buyers are not buying too much too soon because of the availability. So we are very comfortable meanwhile with the number you just threw out there because it's right in line with our sales trend, packaways, like Carol said. And we look at where we were last year, where we are on the stores and the DCs and in-transit like you said. And everything is pretty much flush with the sales plan and the sales trend. Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Ernie, it's amazing that you've been able to offer... Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: You just have to understand... Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Sorry. Go ahead, Carol. I apologize. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I was going to say, you have to understand that our supply chain gets quicker so we can deliver. Our goal is deliver – to deliver more times during the week. So we are always building that number. So, that's really, really important. And that's part of our investment, it's – and part of our secret sauce. It's part of the way we run our business and we're going to keep making that faster and faster, which makes our goods fresher. So if you have a trend, you can buy to the trend that week and get it into the stores. And that's what you're trying to do. Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Is it the faster supply chain that's driving your merchandise margin higher? Is it the greater value? Just help us bridge the gap between offering customers greater value and actually building your merchandise margin up? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. That's mostly in the buy. Obviously, it's in the buy and driving sales. Those are the two elements. Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mr. Daniel Hofkin. Sir, your line is open. Daniel H. Hofkin - William Blair & Co. LLC: Good morning. I'll add my congrats on a strong start to the year. Just a quick clarification question on the margins and then a brief follow-up on e-commerce. You mentioned and obviously, the adjusted profit margin numbers you give don't include the transactional impacts in Canada or Europe, I believe. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Daniel H. Hofkin - William Blair & Co. LLC: Is there a way that you could help quantify what maybe the margin trend or year-over-year change would have been if you could adjust for that as well? And then on e-commerce side, one very brief follow-up. Scott Goldenberg - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hi, Daniel. We did a great job of mitigating in Canada a lot of the mark on pressure that we were seeing from headwinds. So it would have been better in Canada than the already strong numbers that we posted there. And we had some impact of currency in Europe as we do deal in multicurrency there, so there was some, I'll call it, revaluing of our assets and liabilities denominated in currencies other than the division's local currency a bit of a technical answer in terms of some of the cost that you have for the timing of multicurrency settlements. So that cost is between that and that, but it was not a big piece of an adjustment. The bigger piece was still in the mark-to-market and the translational impact for the quarter. And those were pretty much the translational. It's a little bit more than we had actually thought because the currency average for the quarter was actually a bit…

The next question comes from Mr. Stephen Grambling. Sir, your line is open. Stephen W. Grambling - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi. Good morning. I was hoping to just focus a little bit on the global growth here. And as you've entered Austria and prepare for the Netherlands, what are the biggest challenges that you've found in entering some of these new markets? And what are the things that you've adjusted to mitigate those risks? And then, I've got a follow-up on margins after that. Thanks. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. So first of all, it goes back to learning and we learned a lot when we entered Germany and we entered Poland. So we do a lot of investigation, research, understanding the mix, the supply chain, the customer, looking at the right real estate so that we're testing real estate in a low – a smaller market and a bigger market so that we get a feel. So there is a lot of work. It's sometimes a year to two years in advance. And we have teams that actually go and spend a lot of time. So we have a very good playbook in terms of entering new countries and we use that playbook so that we go in, we analyze and then we can grow from there. We have increased our number of European stores this year and again at year-end, we'll talk to the next year. But it gives us room to look at more real estate. We added two countries. The Netherlands has 17 million people. So, again, coming back to we have a very good playbook and we can leverage the foundation that we already have in the infrastructure. Stephen W. Grambling - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And so on…

The next question comes from Ms. Lorraine Hutchinson. Ma'am, your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on the cadence of the wage increases. It sounds like the $9 rate will go into effect in June and it looks like you've guided SG&A, the ratio to be up in 2Q, but how should we think about that for the back half? And also as you both anniversary this and move to $10 next year, how are you thinking about pressure there? Scott Goldenberg - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, you have it pretty much right in terms of the second quarter will be close – certainly a bigger increase. We had the state and local mandated increases in the first quarter. Investment growth, one of the reasons why the investment growth will be a bigger piece of the overall 9% that we put out there and a lot of that will be in the wage component of it. It will be relatively close in the back half of the year to what we're going to be seeing in the second quarter, so not enough to really call out as a big differentiator. Going forward, because of the timing of when we'll go to $10 and then annualizing some of the increase in $9, next year's impact will be higher than this year but then moderating and going down the year after.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Mr. Howard Tubin. Sir, your line is open.

Thanks, guys. Carol, I was hoping you could talk maybe just generally about your marketing plans for the fall season whether in terms of dollars spend versus last year or TV impressions or radio impressions, things like that? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: So the dollar spend is fairly flat to last year. However, each division has a slightly different strategy. So there's a lot more social media, a little less TV in Canada. We're revamping some things in Europe. So we have some new initiatives in Europe that we're pretty excited about. And we are leveraging all of our businesses for the back half. We have some really exciting things for gift giving in the fourth quarter across the board. So we are spending equal dollars but we think we're getting a bigger bang for the buck this year. And obviously, we did a lot of testing last year, we did a lot of analytics and we react to the analytics.

That's great. Thanks very much.

The next question comes from Mr. Jeff Stein. Sir, your line is open.

Good morning. Carol, a question on HomeGoods and just the home category in general. Did the home side of Marmaxx perform as well as HomeGoods? And maybe you could talk about some of the categories specifically, if there are any, that you could call out that are really driving HomeGoods at the present time? Thank you. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: We really don't talk to categories and our initiatives unless I will tell you something really needs to be fixed and we'll fix it. But our home categories across the board has really been very, very strong. But again, I will come back to apparel, we're pretty excited about. So we have a lot going on that's very positive.

Okay. Can you talk about the loyalty program and the expansion of your, I guess, tender neutral loyalty program? And has that been an important driver here in the first quarter, your comps? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Our loyalty programs are doing very well, both our rewards cards and our soft loyalty program. We've gotten some great results in Europe and that's expanding. In Canada, it's extremely strong. So I would tell you that we're gaining more customers shopping all of our brands because when they join the loyalty programs, they really tend to shop all our brands. And as I said before, when you shop one versus two versus three brands, it's an enormous increase in the spend per year. So, we're seeing a lot of different things happening. And again, we are gaining a lot of younger customers.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Mr. Bob Drbul. Sir, your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Congratulations. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Two questions I have, the first one is do you think that tourism is impacting your business at all and can you comment a little bit about are you considering more combo units and how those type of units are performing within the store block? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. We do combos wherever we can and where it makes sense, where we can get the square footage and it's absolutely terrific for us. No, we're not seeing any impact in tourism. In terms of across the board, our sales, our comps are pretty consistent. So we don't believe we're being hit by that at all.

Great. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Mr. Mike Baker. Sir, your line is open.

Thanks. A couple of quick follow-ups. One, the West Coast port issue, are any of those goods that you think you may have gotten from there in the stores, were they in the stores in the first quarter, so any impact to the comps this quarter, is this stuff that's all on the come? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Mike, the port, we can't tell you what it's really yielded. I mean, we pick the right goods, the best goods that we can find. In some cases, it may have been a delay from the port. But I could say this a thousand times. There is so much goods around the world that we take advantage of every situation. We have probably a piece of our business we got from the port delay. But it doesn't have an enormous impact to our business. And we will take advantage of everything in terms of packaway and great value and that's what we strive to do is just offer outrageous value.

Okay. Another follow-up, I understand March was the strongest. Was that due to Easter? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.

And I guess, it's more of a larger question. I know it was a great quarter and you don't want to use weather as an excuse, but I'm up here in New England, it was cold this spring, I mean weather had to have had an impact on your business. And even though Easter was early, it was so cold around Easter, my guess is Easter wasn't a great selling season. So, I guess, bigger picture question, how much did weather impact the quarter? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So we had a very strong Easter month, the month of March. And I say at some quarters you get affected by weather and it's dramatic and in the aggregate, you usually make up for it. So in the Northeast and in the North, we still had pretty strong comps. Were they softer in the month of February with the snow? Yes. And did it come back as soon as the weather cleared? Yes. So we always look at everything in the aggregate.

Okay. That makes sense. And then this is just for Scott, sometimes someone asks about quarterly expectations or margin expectations by the segments going forward, is that something you want to give us now? Scott Goldenberg - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. Again, we don't do it by the quarter, but I can certainly update you on the full year adjustments based on the first quarter. So I'll just, Michael, take it starting with Marmaxx, so as we said on the call, we have a 2% comp at the low and the high planned. The segment margin in the 14.2% to 14.4%, and that's down 40 basis points to down 20 basis points on volume of $19.5 billion to $19.6 billion, again, largely unchanged from the last time we gave guidance. HomeGoods, a 3% to 4% comp versus last year's 7% comp, 13.3% to 13.5%, down 30 basis points to down 10 basis points on $3.7 billion to $3.8 billion, and that reflects an increase both to the sales and to the margin based on the first quarter results. TJX Canada, 3% to 4% comp, again this is excluding FX 11.6% to 11.8%, down 190 basis points to down 170 basis points, again, these comps and the guidance reflect the strong performance of Canada in the first quarter. Europe is planned 3% to 4%, again, excluding FX 7.5% to 7.7%, down 50 basis points to down 30 basis points, slightly worse again than we had guided to, again, due to the performance in the first quarter. And that's $4.2 billion to $4.2 billion on the sales line.

Very helpful. Thank you. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I would not be happy if we didn't beat the 1% to 2% for the back half. Ernie and I would be disappointed and we always try to surpass our goals.

Very good. We'd be disappointed too. We hope you get there.

The next question comes from Mr. Ike Boruchow, Sir, your line is open. Ike B. Boruchow - Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc.: Hi, everyone, congrats on a great quarter. Thanks for taking my question. Just a quick follow-up on the higher DC costs that you called out for Q1. Just a little confused because I think you talked about lowering AUR and driving more units through the supply chain. I would have thought that would have been a margin benefit. Can you just help us elaborate on that callout at The Marmaxx Group? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, our merchandise margins were up, yeah. Scott Goldenberg - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. We're still planning merchandise margins slightly up. There's two components that hit in the gross profit margin line. One is you're producing with the average retails down a bit more than we had planned. We did plan them down, but not to the level they are – we are now forecasting that requires additional freight cost and additional cost in our DC to process that unit. So that's why the – again, despite that, we're still planning the merchandise margins slightly up. So it's just incremental cost to the gross profit margin. Ike B. Boruchow - Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc.: Got it. Thank you. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And that will (54:48) the cycle and mitigate a bit towards the end of the back half. We're still driving – the retails will be down again at Q2 because we think it's the right thing to do. But then we do start to cycle a bit towards the back half. Scott Goldenberg - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. And just as a note, embedded in the – again, this is unchanged from our plan, but as we originally planned, there are some investments both for DCs and in the home office that primarily in Canada that impact and get our – impact the occupancy cost. Ike B. Boruchow - Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc.: Got it. Thank you very much.

The last question comes from Ms. Marni Shapiro. Ma'am, your line is open.

Hey, guys. Congratulations. I'm broke from shopping your stores, they look fantastic. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Did you go to the one in Bridgehampton, right, Scott?

No, I have not gone out there yet. I go in with the intention of just looking around and taking notes, it just doesn't work. So if we focus on the millennials for half a second because you called them out as a nice area of growth for you, and I was curious if you're seeing that growth across categories, so is it in apparel, accessories, home and online? And are you doing anything to specifically market and target this customer or is it just that she's discovering you guys? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes and yes. We are learning a lot about social media to get directly to the younger customer. We're doing a lot of in-store initiatives and the home guys are targeting a piece of their business to the younger customer. And new apartments and when kids get out of college and school and they start working, so we have a lot of things going towards appealing to the younger customer from merchandising and from the marketing perspective.

Excellent. And across all the categories, so she is shopping across apparel and accessories and home? Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Excellent. Fantastic. Best of luck with the summer season, guys. Carol M. Meyrowitz - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you. I want to thank everyone and we look forward to giving you the second quarter results. Thank you again. Thank you, Cheryl.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call for today. You may all disconnect. Thank you for participating.