Good morning, and thank you, for holding. Welcome to Rent-A-Center's Third Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following today's presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, Tuesday, October 27, 2015. Your speakers today are Mr. Robert Davis, Chief Executive Officer of Rent-A-Center; Guy Constant, Executive Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer; and Ms. Maureen Short, Senior Vice President of Finance, Investor Relations and Treasury. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Short. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, Amy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, for joining us. Our earnings release was distributed after market close yesterday which outlines our operational and financial results for the third quarter. All related materials are available on our website at investor.rentacenter.com. As a reminder, some of these statements made on this call are forward-looking statements which are subject to many factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. These factors are described in our earnings release issued yesterday, as well as, in the company's SEC filings. Forward-looking statements that may be discussed today include forecasted revenue, earnings, cash flow, and business trends. Rent-A-Center undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I'd now like to turn the conference call over to Robert. Robert? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Maureen. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. For many of you this is probably the first time that you've participated in a Rent-A-Center call without the presence of Mitch Fadel, our former Chief Operating Office. As many of you know, Mitch recently left the company to pursue another opportunity. And I wanted to take just a brief moment to acknowledge all of the great contributions that Mitch has made to the Rent-A-Center business, thank him for his many years of service and to wish him the very best in his new opportunity. Now I'll turn our attention to the great opportunities that are present in our own Rent-A-Center business. As promised, last quarter, Acceptance Now has expanded into the direct or virtual channel and we have done so with a flourish. I am pleased to say that we grew our overall location count by 15% this quarter which is the strongest growth we have seen…

. Your first question comes from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Brad, your line is open.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, Robert, Guy and Maureen, a couple things I wanted to ask about. I know there will be a lot of other people wanting to ask questions, so maybe I could just first ask about guidance and then, secondly, ask about the phones. With respect to guidance and specifically the outlook for same store sales in the Core business, could you share a little bit more about what you've been seeing over the last few months as you have anniversaried the rollout of smartphones? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: So, as you saw with the third quarter cost, Brad, we held close to that flattish expectation that we were expecting as we started the first quarter of the lap over smartphones, so we felt good about how the first quarter has gone. The other categories other than smartphones have all continued to improve sequentially as we expected as we went through the lap of the smartphones. And as you see by our guidance today, our expectation is to stay pretty close to that flattish expectation that we expected a year ago. The portfolio remains strong, similar to where it was last year, maybe slightly down, which is the best indication we've got going into the quarter of what we think the result of comps will be. But clearly the fourth quarter is a high volume quarter for us and so we need to be able to continue to add to the portfolio as we go through this busier volume season that we're about to embark on here in a couple weeks. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And just one additional comment, Brad. I think in Guy's prepared comments and maybe the press release even talked about the oil-affected markets, just a little bit more color there. Texas, the state of Texas, our comps were down about 4% in Texas and higher than that in some of the Odessa markets and Houston markets as an example. So, if Texas had been just flattish like the majority of the rest of the business, our comps actually would have been a positive 0.2%, given that 10% of our stores and revenue really comes from this state. So, that macro impact really had an effect as well.

Got you. And Guy, I think you mentioned the on rent merchandise down 15%. And just so I understand you right, that's what you normally would see seasonally from the end of 3Q into the start of 4Q, so that number still makes you feel comfortable as you guide to comps for the fourth quarter? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Yeah, so actually it was down $15 million, Brad, not 15%. But yes, we still have that comfort level that our customers in the summer season tends to be a little more challenging for them, so it tends to be our lowest volume season. And also the season where it's a more challenging to collect from our customers. And if you look back before last year, you will see typically that this is the low point of our inventory on rent number. So, last year was a bit of an anomaly because we were rolling out smartphones during that season, so not typical what we usually see.

Right, right. And then, just on phones and I'm sure others will ask about this but two questions. For one, how much was this an acute issue due to the new models that have just come out in the last few months versus something that has been sort of ongoing and how you've been planning your inventory over the course of the last year that you've been in smartphones in all of your stores? And then, just how much might this affect the profitability on a go-forward basis for phones?

So, Brad, it's more a product that's standing up in the category, a new category. For those who have followed the company for some time, we don't have write-downs like this and we haven't in our historic categories that we have a lot more experience managing and do very well. Smartphones were a new category and while we were able to test in some markets, it's difficult to test everything associated with smartphones like what national media will do to you. It's hard to test that in a regional market. And so, we entered into the category with a broad assortment of phones, sort of a good, better, best approach that is what we typically do with our other categories. And what we've seen over the year as we've learned a lot of being driven by our own business but some of what you see out in the marketplace where newer phones are starting to become much more common as the carriers and the manufacturers make it much simpler through their agreements for you to always have a newer phone. While our customers can't necessarily tap into that, it does create an expectation in the marketplace that phones tend to be newer and what we've seen is newer phones performing very well and older generation phones be a little more challenged. And so, I think as we move forward with the category, we likely will see probably more of a skew towards new generation phones in the category moving forward. We'll have to look at our pricing and want to look at inventory levels to make sure that we have those right and we probably want to look at our depreciation policy to make sure it's consistent with how quickly those newer models turn over. But we do expect that a momentum we've seen recently with locking and some of the progress we've made on service cost will continue in the future and we think it will be a profitable category and we plan to stay in it.

Got you. So, just to be clear knowing what you know today about you do think that this can continue to be a profitable category for you? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Absolutely. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: We do and knowing what we do today, we would have not had as many older generation phones in our inventory to begin with and that's really what we're trying to address here is ensuring we're focusing on the more popular items that customers resonate with them.

Got you. All right, I'll turn it over to others. Thank you so much. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Thank you, Brad. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Brad.

Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Chukumba from BB&T Capital Markets. Anthony, your line is open. Anthony Chinonye Chukumba - BB&T Capital Markets: Thanks for taking my question. Just one follow-up. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Hi, Anthony. Anthony Chinonye Chukumba - BB&T Capital Markets: Hi, just one follow-up question on the smartphone write-down at $35 million, can you give us a sense for what that was as a percentage of your total smartphone inventory? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Anthony it's about 35% of our total smartphone inventory. Anthony Chinonye Chukumba - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay that's helpful. And then just one unrelated question, in terms of comps particular in the Core can you give us any color just in terms of how that worked out over the course of the quarter like on a monthly basis? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Well, that can be difficult Anthony because of the mismatch months and how many weekend days fall in a month as opposed to the year previously but I think it's fair to say that you know earlier on in the quarter we felt very good about our portfolio and I think as we got more towards the end of the quarter that declined a little bit which is why now our expectation of flattish for the fourth quarter is now more flat to down 1 because the portfolio is slightly weaker ending the quarter than it was starting the quarter. Anthony Chinonye Chukumba - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay that's helpful as well. Thank you. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: All right, thank you Anthony.

Your next question comes from the line of J.R. Bizzell with Stephens, Inc. J.R. your line is now open.

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, J.R. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Good morning J.R.

Hi, So Robert kind of building on your commentary I know we're going to beat this phone inventory thing to death but kind of building on your comment about how you – if you had to go back and do it again and kind of thinking about how you wouldn't have as many old phone options thinking about that moving forward I am guessing you all are addressing this inventory moving forward and just if you could I guess my question is kind of walk us through maybe how you are addressing the inventory moving forward and how you are going to handle that moving forward? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well I think, as was mentioned in the press release, and as Guy eluded to we are ensuring that all of the learnings that we had were flat going forward. So whether it's from an assortment perspective, a pricing perspective, our depreciation policy perspective, all of that is for things that will be addressed moving forward. So, it's hard from a competitive perspective to give you too much color on that knowing that our competitor is entertaining the notion of getting into this category. So, I hesitate to share too much. But the fact is we do believe that the category has been the popular item, one that really gave us the shot in the arm last year from a top-line perspective and from a profitability perspective has been profitable but improving along the way with some of the locking features and the service cost initiatives that we've undertaken. So, we would expect the category to actually improve going forward as well.

Great color. And then, kind of building on that maybe for you Guy, it would be fair to assume that we're not going to expect a big write-down on a go-forward basis now that we've kind of got more color around the inventory levels? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: No, we don't expect that, J. R., as I said earlier, we've been managing our other product categories for quite some time and have never experienced a write-down and as I mentioned in my earlier comments, this write-down is more associated with standing up a new category that we hadn't done before and getting a read and learning over the year since we've rolled it out about what our customers value most. So, no I wouldn't expect that moving forward.

Understood. And then last one from me kind of building on the – switching gears to the 90 day buyout and that continues to be successful and driving nice volume, just wondering Robert, I know you alluded to some changes with your partners kind of in 2016, is that, is it just simply going to be something of a – kind of a discount on the purchase, is there, if you could add some color there, I don't know how much you can but if you could just maybe some more details around may be some margin improvement opportunities moving forward with that? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I think there a variety of ways that we're addressing that J.R., and again I hesitate to share too much with you but I think it's fair to say that we don't want to have top-line growth that's not productive from a bottom-line perspective. And so as we're seeing that feature if you will or that proposition to the customer gaining popularity, we believe it was necessary to address the overall profitability of that option. So, we have been in conversation with some of our top partners from a retailer perspective and those have been very productive. So, we would expect that to enhance as we move into 2016 and beyond.

And what percentage of transactions were that 90-day buyout this quarter? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, about 33%, a third of our overall transactions customers took that option and we expected that to actually go down from Q2 I think it was in the mid 30s in Q2 and while it came down just a couple of points not as much as we would have otherwise expected coming out of tax season. So it does appear that customers will continue to choose that offer going forward. And so we felt it necessary to go back to our partners and have some productive discussions.

Thanks for taking my questions. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Thank you. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Laura Champine with Cantor Fitzgerald. Laura, your line is open.

Good morning. Guy, my question is about the guidance for Q4, the implied range when we spoke in July was $0.10 higher than it is today. Are the differences solely the increased loses versus your prior expectations in Acceptance Now and the accelerated sell through at lower margins of older generation smartphones or is there something else happening impacting the guidance? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: No, it's really those three factors I mentioned in my remarks Laura, it's the Core comp expectations being just a little bit lower than we might have thought related to the portfolio question I got earlier. A little clarification on where we're going to be with Acceptance Now comps as we get more color into the lap of the 90 day option and then the losses related to Acceptance Now.

Got it. And, on the losses on Acceptance Now, that's an issue that obviously you've been facing for a while, what are the specific steps that you're taking to try to improve that? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Well, today, Laura the collections process occurs largely in the stores and so, as we look at opportunities to improve our collections approach, we think there are some other resources we can use to supply that or to at least support that and provide additional ways for us to manage that number down. So, we'll talk more about that as we get into 2016, but I think in Acceptance Now, we have historically managed the losses similarly to how we've done it in the Core business. And I think, what we recognize now is that there is perhaps some opportunities for us to manage it a little differently than we do in the Core business and do it a little more effectively, related to the unique characteristics of that business.

Because collections is such a key part of the Core, it is tough for me to understand why those same processes wouldn't be even better when applied to the higher FICOs in Acceptance Now. So, I am just wondering, if I can get more specifics on how it might change and also, whether this will impact growth in Acceptance Now as perhaps you limit approvals? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Yeah, so, Laura, may be the biggest difference I can draw for you is in the Core because of the weekly payment model and where the customer sits on the demographic spectrum versus Acceptance Now we tend to see those customers much more regularly as they come into the stores to make payments. And so managing the collections process largely from the store where the relationship is much deeper and more established works very well in the Core. As you can see we've made great progress on managing losses in the Core. We don't have that same sort of relationship in Acceptance Now where it's a monthly model and more people are perhaps paying electronically than you might see in the Core or we don't see them as frequently. And so the ability to leverage the in store co-worker in Acceptance Now is not as effective as it is in the Core. And so we see some other opportunities to perhaps manage that or support it more centrally than we do today and become more effective in managing the losses that way.

Got it, thanks. And then just one more follow-up and then I will yield. On the Core same-store sales you're now looking to be lower than your prior expectations, I wasn't clear on what that impact is, is it just Texas or are there other things impacting the Core comp? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: As I think I mentioned earlier Laura, I think the portfolio is not quite as good as it was at the start of the quarter I don't want that to sound alarming it's not in bad shape but it's not as quite good as it was at the start of the quarter. And so that's why we've made what I call more of an adjustment down from expecting flat comps to remain flat to down 1. It's not a dramatic reduction in our expectation but it is more in line with what we expect now.

Thank you. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Thank you Laura.

Your next question comes from the line of John Baugh with Stifel. John, your line is open. John Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thank you for taking my questions this morning. I was wondering on the Acceptance Now losses. So, you mentioned looking at collections but frequently if you have sub-prime go bad, it's not so much collections but an underwriting decision problem, is this something you're going to be looking at there to maybe tighten approvals or change the way you approve? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, John that's a good question. Certainly, one thing that we believe is an opportunity for us particularly given the technology that we've deployed into Acceptance Now is our ability to mind data and understand the different profiles of consumers given their employment record, the reference checks and so forth. We believe that the underwriting process can be enhanced going forward as it relates to using that technology. So, they're part and parcel of one another as you know, having followed this for so long so not only the back-end process that Guy alluded to but also the front end approval process are both areas that we have opportunities. John Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Robert, do you think that would resolve and maybe a slightly lower of approval rate to improve the profitability or you're not sure yet? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: We're not sure yet. John Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: We're in the early innings, if you will, in terms of mining that data but certainly our ability to have those insights are going to just enrich our process and opportunity going forward. John…

Your next question comes from the line of Budd Bugatch with Raymond James. Budd, your line is open. David Joseph Vargas - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Good morning, everyone. This is David on for Budd. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, David. David Joseph Vargas - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: So I was hoping you can just shed a little bit more light on the smartphone issue. I hate to beat it to death but when did you – I guess when did you see this becoming an issue? I mean you've had – the category has been stood up for a while, when you bought in, you bought across a spectrum, so when did you I guess realize that the lower or the older generation models weren't renting as well and the inventory may have had to been written down? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: I'd say, David, probably over the last couple of quarters the issue has been building a little bit. And so what happened particularly in this quarter, though, was a couple of events that really brought us to where we are today. The first was, we completed a sale of phones in the secondary market at a value that was less than what we had on the books for those phones. And so that as the first trigger that caused us to realize that we have been looking to take a step like this. The second one was that our belief was we would be able to use some clearance events and some bundling approaches, a couple of which occurred in this third quarter. And while we had a little bit of success on that, we didn't see as much as we would have…

Your next question comes from the line of Carla Casella from J.P. Morgan. Carla, your line is open.

Hi, sorry about that, I was on mute. On the 90 day option, can you just talk about how does the economics of that differ, I mean, you did mention that it's not a lower margin product but can you just explain in a little more detail? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Yeah. So, the 90 day option Acceptance Now, Carla, what it, it looks like a normal agreement when the customer signs up for it so, but the difference is that they have the ability to elect, to pay a cash option prior to the end of the 90 days from the start of the agreement. And so, what we – previously we had not offered that in our Acceptance Now business more than a year ago, we've always offered it in our core business but clearly with that stronger customer that we see in the Acceptance Now business they perhaps have a little more ability to take advantage of that than our Core customer would. And so what you're seeing is with us buying the product at retail that the margin we earn on the product comes in the form of a discount for the product that we can tap into or with the ability to mark up the cash price in the store. Either way though that is a lower margin transaction than what we would see in our normal rentals and fees business. So I think I said in my prepared comments something more like a 10% to 15% margin when we typically earn a margin that's more like in the 60s for our rentals and fees business. Now we don't think it's a highly cannibalistic business. I mean, clearly, it wouldn't take a lot of transactions to cannibalize our normal business for it to not be a good idea for us to be in 90-day cash option, but what we think is happening is that we're bringing people in that perhaps wouldn't have considered a longer term rental agreement, but are those that are predisposed to take advantage of the 90-day cash option that only other option would have been to save the money for longer and try and purchase it a few months from now.

Okay. And then when you talked about moving from direct to staffed are you the one initiating that typically or is it the retailer and how is the labor market, are you having any problems finding staff or you pull from your existing staff? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: It depends on the volume that we generate in the particular location Carla. So it does cost us to put staffing in a location. And so we want to make sure that certain amount of volume that could be driven in order to justify the cost of the staffing. And generally when we start off with the retailer we're staffed in all of their locations but as we gain some experience in terms of what volumes are driven often will historically we would have closed the location that wasn't doing enough volume. Now, we have the ability to convert that location to a direct location where the transaction would simply be an electronic one and not supported by an actual staff member in the store. So usually retailers would like us to be staffed because the staffed model is so much better than the online model in terms of driving volume but there are just some locations that can't support the staffed model. So the direct option is a good one for those locations.

Okay. It sounds like that you are moving the other direction in some, moving from direct back to staffed? Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Yeah in some, I think what – in Robert's comments what he said was in some locations, we've started with direct that are smaller locations, we have been really pleased by the volumes that we've been generating. These locations may actually reach the point where it does make sense for us to be staffed but those are typically smaller locations starting out not larger retailers but yes if we can generate the volume necessary to do the staffed model, we prefer to do that because it is better for the retailer and it is certainly better for our business too.

Okay. And then just one comment on the labor market, are you still having any trouble staffing either those or your stores given all your changes in the labor model? Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: We haven't seen that. In fact, we've been very pleased with the rate at which our flexible labor model has ramped up and our ability to source, recruit and hire, as I mentioned, 5,500 plus part time co-workers in a short span of time. So at this point in time, the labor market seems to be sufficient to allow us to make this transition haven't seen any challenges. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Yeah we'll say Carla on – the thing about the labor market as wage rates push up, that's a good thing for our business because our customers are those minimum wage earners for close to minimum wage earners that are all going to be seeing salary increase as which will allow them to shop in our stores. Our hourly wages are typically up above $10 an hour anyway, so we are not at minimum wage levels today. Certainly in some micro markets where the wages are higher than that we will have to pay a little bit more but on balance rising minimum wages is a good thing for our business not a bad thing.

Okay, great. Thank you. Guy J. Constant - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & EVP-Finance: Thank you. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks Carla.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Robert Davis for closing remark. Robert Dale Davis - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Amy and thank you everyone for joining us. We appreciate your time and interest in Rent-A-Center, in our company. We certainly look forward to reporting back to your next quarter as we come out of our seasonally strongest period, our fourth quarter selling season. And look forward to the opportunity for all of our initiatives to continue to add value and create opportunities for all of us going forward. Thank you for the time and attention.