Burlington Stores, Inc. Stock

Good morning, and welcome to Burlington Stores, Inc. 2Q 2026 Earnings Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Glick, Group Senior Vice President. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone's participation in today's conference call to discuss Burlington's fiscal 2026 second quarter operating results. Our presenters today are Michael O'Sullivan, our Chief Executive Officer; and Kristin Wolfe, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer.

Before I turn the call over to Michael, I would like to inform listeners that this call may not be transcribed, recorded or broadcast without our expressed permission. A replay of the call will be available until September 3, 2026. We take no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear in transcripts of this call by third parties. Our remarks and the Q&A that follows are copyrighted today by Burlington Stores. Remarks made on this call concerning future expectations, events, strategies, objectives, trends or projected financial results are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those that are projected in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include those that are described in the company's 10-K and in our other filings with the SEC, all of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference.

Please note that the financial results and expectations we discuss today are on a continuing operations basis. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures we discuss today to GAAP measures are included in today's press release. As a reminder, as indicated in this morning's press release, all historical and forward-looking profitability metrics discussed on this call exclude costs associated with bankruptcy acquired leases. These pretax costs amounted to $4 million and $11 million during the fiscal second quarter of 2026 and 2025, respectively, and $16 million and $35 million for the full fiscal year 2026 and 2025, respectively.

Now here's Michael.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I would like to cover 3 topics this morning. Firstly, we'll talk about tariff refunds. Secondly, I will review our second quarter results. And finally, I will discuss our updated guidance. After that, Kristin will walk through the financial details.

Okay. Let's start with tariff refunds. In the second quarter, we received approximately $55 million in tariff refunds. These refunds are included in our reported earnings and provided a $0.64 benefit to our second quarter earnings per share. We intend to fully reinvest these refunds into the business in the back half to deliver even sharper values to our customers. So we expect the direct impact of the tariff refunds to be neutral to full year earnings.

I want to be explicit about the decision that we have made here. Rather than taking a onetime boost to earnings, we are planning to use the refunds to deliver sharper values for our customers. Over the last few years, the rising cost of living has made life difficult for many moderate and low-income families. At Burlington, we already offer great deals. Our plan is to use these tariff refunds to further sharpen values across our assortment.

Okay. Let's move on to our second quarter results. As I mentioned a moment ago, these results include $55 million of tariff refunds. But for the purposes of this morning's discussion, we are going to strip out this impact. The headline is that even after you strip out the favorable impact of tariff refunds, the underlying earnings momentum in our business is extremely robust. In Q2, we delivered yet another quarter of very strong earnings growth. EPS increased 38% in the quarter, and this was on top of 39% growth last year. These very strong results further demonstrate our ability to convert sales growth into margin expansion and strong earnings flow-through.

Let's talk about sales. Total sales grew 11% on top of 10% growth last year. New stores are a major driver of this growth. In Q2, we opened 51 gross new stores. After store relocations and closures, this represents a net increase of 45 new stores. As we mentioned at the start of the year, the strength of our new store pipeline has enabled us to front-load new store openings this year with 2/3 opening in the spring and 1/3 scheduled for the fall. This means that on a trailing 12-month basis, we have opened an extraordinary 178 gross new stores translating to 149 net new stores after relocations and closures.

We are very pleased with the pace quality, productivity and profitability of these new store openings. Let's move on to comp stores. Comp sales increased 2% in Q2 on top of 5% comp growth last year. Our merchant and operating teams executed well in the second quarter and I am pleased with our solid 7% 2-year comp stack. I should add that the relatively higher number of new store openings in the last 12 months means the comp headwind from cannibalization by new stores is slightly elevated. As a reminder, whenever we approve a new store location, we analyze and ed make the potential cannibalization impact on nearby stores, and we build this into our economic modeling.

For the last couple of years, this impact has been running at about 1 percentage point of comp. Given the large number of new store openings in the past 12 months, it was worth about 1.5 percentage points of comp in Q2. We expect this to continue through the rest of this year. Again, to clear, the net sales lift and the overall economics of our new store program are extremely attractive and easily exceed this impact on comp growth.

Okay. Moving on to earnings. As I mentioned a moment ago, we were very pleased with our earnings growth in Q2. To reiterate, the numbers that I am going to quote exclude the favorable impact of tariff refunds. Operating margin expanded 100 basis points well above the high end of our guidance for 60 basis points of expansion. As previously mentioned, adjusted EPS increased 38% on top of 39% for the same period last year. This was a high-quality earnings speed driven by stronger merchandise margin as well as supply chain and SG&A leverage. Once again, these results demonstrate our ability to drive strong margin expansion and earnings growth even on relatively modest comp store sales increases.

Before we move on to the outlook for the rest of the year, I think it is worth taking a moment to put our second quarter results into context. Sometimes it can be misleading to read too much into a single quarter. So let me talk about the last 4 quarters. Over that period, and again, excluding tariff refunds, we have driven EPS growth of 24% on total sales growth of 11% and comp store sales growth of 3%. Going back even further, over the last 8 quarters, we have driven EPS growth of 51% on 19% total sales growth and 6% comp sales growth on a 2-year stack basis. Against any relevant benchmarks, these results are hugely impressive. I could keep going back further, but you get the idea. At Burlington, we have a tremendous track record of driving consistent margin expansion and earnings flow-through on our total and comp store sales growth.

Okay. Now let's talk about the outlook for the rest of the year. I will start with our full year guidance and then work backwards. We are taking up our earnings guidance to pass along the entire earnings beat from Q2. As described earlier, we received $55 million in tariff refunds in Q2, and we plan to use these to sharpen values in the back half. So for the full year, the direct impact of these refunds is expected to be neutral.

Let's talk specifically about the back half. Excluding the impact of tariff refund investments, our earnings guidance for the back half is unchanged. Our sales guidance for the back half is also unchanged but let me offer some editorial commentary. We continue to feel good about our sales upside potential. We will be lacking weather-related issues in Q3 and tariff-related supply constraints in Q3 and Q4.

Added to that, as discussed, we will be using the favorability from tariff refunds to further sharpen merchandise values. We feel like we are set up for success in the back half. That said, there are external risks. So for now, we have chosen to maintain sales guidance. Our playbook, which has served us well and has contributed to our strong track record of earnings growth is to maintain discipline and to manage our business in a tightly controlled way. As we have done in the past, we will chase the sales trend if it is stronger.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Kristin to provide additional financial details. Kristin?

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I will start with some additional color on the second quarter. Then I will share details on our guidance for Q3 and Q4 and for the full year. The second quarter profitability metrics I will share exclude the benefit of the $55 million in tariff refunds received in the second quarter. These were recognized as a reduction to cost of goods sold and added $0.64 to Q2 earnings per share. .

As Michael just discussed, our guidance for Q3 and Q4 assumes we reinvest all of the $55 million in tariff refunds across both the third and fourth quarters in order to deliver even sharper value.

Now turning back to the second quarter results. Total sales grew 11%, while comp store sales increased 2% which was at the midpoint of our guidance range of 1% to 3% comp growth. The gross margin rate for the second quarter was 44.3% and an increase of 60 basis points versus last year. This was driven by a 70 basis point increase in merchandise margin, which was partially offset by a 10 basis point increase in freight expenses. Product sourcing costs were $226 million versus $209 million in the second quarter of 2025. Product sourcing costs decreased 20 basis points as a percentage of sales versus last year.

Supply chain was the driver of the leverage as we continue to execute on our productivity and cost savings initiatives. We achieved leverage in supply chain despite the start-up of our new state-of-the-art Savannah distribution center.

Adjusted SG&A costs in Q2 decreased 50 basis points versus last year. This was primarily driven by lower store-related costs and leverage on total sales growth. Q2 adjusted EBIT margin was 7%, 100 basis points higher than last year, which was well above our guidance range of an increase of 30 to 60 basis points. Our Q2 adjusted earnings per share was $2.37, which also came in above our guidance range of $2.05 and to $2.20. This represents a 38% increase in earnings per share on top of a 39% increase in Q2 of last year. And demonstrates our continued ability to convert top line growth into even stronger earnings growth.

At the end of the quarter, comparable store inventories increased 11% versus the end of the second quarter of 2025. Our reserve inventory was 43% of our total inventory versus 50% of our inventory last year. We are very happy with the quality of the merchandise and the values we have in reserve. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.6 billion in total liquidity, which consisted of $704 million in cash and $942 million in availability on our ABL. We had no outstanding borrowings at the end of the quarter on the ABL.

During the quarter, we repurchased $87 million in common stock. We have repurchased $167 million of common stock fiscal year-to-date. And at the end of Q2, we had $218 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization, which expires in May of 2027. In the second quarter, we opened 51 new stores and relocated 6 stores. This resulted in the addition of 45 net new stores in Q2 bringing our store count at the end of the quarter to 1,287 stores.

Now moving to our updated fiscal 2026 full year guidance. This guidance excludes approximately $16 million of costs associated with bankruptcy acquired leases versus $35 million in 2025. For the full year, our guidance includes the benefit of the $55 million in tariff refunds received in Q2 and the corresponding reinvestment of those dollars across Q3 and Q4. Therefore, the net impact tariff refunds on our full year guidance is neutral. For the full year 2026, we are increasing our earnings outlook, passing through the entire second quarter underlying earnings beat to the full year.

For the full year, Total sales are now expected to increase 10% to 11%. We expect comp store sales to increase in the range of 3% to 4%. And and our adjusted EBIT margin to expand by 20 basis points to 40 basis points versus last year. Passing through the entire Q2 EPS upside results in adjusted earnings per share guidance in the range of $11.77 to $11.97, up 16% to 18% versus fiscal 2025 and well above our initial FY '26 guidance.

Moving now to our third quarter guidance, which excludes approximately $2 million of expenses associated with bankruptcy acquired leases versus $11 million in Q3 of 2025. Consistent with our prior fall guidance, we are guiding Q3 comp sales to be up 1% to 3% and total sales to increase 9% to 11%. Our quarter-to-date trend is within this comp store sales guidance range. Of course, we are only 3 weeks into the quarter, and the important transitional fall selling season is still ahead of us. As noted, we plan to reinvest approximately 40% of the tariff refunds into better values in Q3 and 60% in Q4.

Excluding these reinvestments, our followed guidance assumptions for EBIT margin improvement and earnings growth are unchanged versus our prior guidance, which called for EBIT margin improvement of 10 to 30 basis points and EPS growth of 7% to 10%. As we noted earlier, we believe it's important to drive an even stronger value offering in fall. Factoring in the reinvestment, we are guiding Q3 operating margin to decrease 80 to 60 basis points versus the third quarter of 2025. This translates to an adjusted earnings per share outlook in the range of $1.60 to $1.70 compared to last year's third quarter EPS of $1.80.

Excluding planned tariff refund reinvestments, we estimate Q3 operating margin would increase modestly versus last year. For the fourth quarter, we expect comp store sales to be up 1% to 3%, and total sales to increase 7% to 9%. We are guiding Q4 operating margin to decrease in the range of down 60 to down 40 basis points driven by the planned reinvestment of tariff refund. This translates to an adjusted EPS outlook in the range of $5.05 and to $5.15 compared to last year's fourth quarter EPS of $4.99.

Operating margin in Q4, excluding those tariff refund reinvestment would be up versus last year. As we noted, the net impact of tariff refunds on our full year guidance is neutral. We plan to reinvest the $0.64 benefit we saw in Q2 into Q3 and Q4. Excluding these reinvestments, our underlying fall guidance of $7.30 to $7.50 and EBIT margin up 10 to 30 basis points is unchanged from the guidance we issued on our Q1 earnings call in May.

I will now turn the call back over to Michael.

Thank you, Kristin. Before I hand it back to the operator for your questions, let me summarize 2 key messages from this morning's call. Firstly, we are very pleased with our second quarter results. Total sales increased 11% in the quarter on top of 10% last year. Comp store sales increased 2% on top of 5% last year, resulting in a solid 2-year comps down of 7%. And most importantly, even after stripping out the favorable impact of tariff refunds, our operating margin expanded 100 basis points and our adjusted EPS increased 38% on top of 39% last year. Our results in Q2 add to an already impressive and consistent track record of strong operating margin expansion and earnings flow-through. .

Secondly, we believe that we are set up for success in the back half of the year. We think that there may be potential sales upside as we lap specific issues in Q3 and Q4 of last year. And as we deploy tariff refunds to deliver even sharper values to our customers. That said, we recognize that there are risks. So we are going to stay disciplined and execute the off-price playbook. We are maintaining our sales guidance for Q3 and Q4, and we will be ready to chase if the sales trend turns out to be stronger.

Now I would like to turn the call over for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Matthew, please go ahead.

So Michael, on tariff refunds, could you elaborate on your decision to use the refunds to sharpen your prices and values, particularly relative to some retailers that are using them for favorability to earnings and others that are using them to offset expense pressures.

Matt, thank you for the question. It's a good question. For us, this was actually an easy decision. And there were, I would say, 2 main drivers that led us there. Number one, it feels like the right thing to do for our customers. Over the last few years, many households, especially moderate to lower-income families have struggled with the higher cost of living, higher prices on essentials like groceries, rent, gas prices, et cetera. So our goal is to use the tariff refunds to give our customers a break. We already offer great value at Burlington.

But by reinvesting the tariff refunds into lower prices, we should be able to sharpen those values further and to offer the customer an even better deal. The second thing that I would say and this one is a bit more technical. So let me try and explain we think it makes sense that different retailers have made different choices on this. Our tariff refunds are worth $55 million. Now in dollar terms and as a percentage of sales, that is much lower than many of our retail peers and competitors. And one of the reasons for that is because in the back half of last year, we pivoted away from categories where the impact of tariffs was very high. Now as you'll remember, that hurt our sales trend in the back half of last year, but it meant that we were still able to drive very strong earnings growth because we suffered less impact from tariffs.

Now there were other retailers who made a different decision. They stayed in those tariff-impacted categories, that meant they saw stronger sales than us, but weaker earnings. Anyway, scroll forward to the back half of this year. Now relative to our peers, we're sitting on a higher base of earnings from last year. And our current earnings momentum is also very strong. So we're confident that we can hit our earnings targets even without the assistance of tariff refunds. Now for some other retailers, that calculus may be different for them. The refunds may be an opportunity to catch back up on earnings that they missed out on in the second half of last year.

Anyway, I guess I would sum up my answer by reiterating that for us, this was an easy decision, reinvesting the refunds into sharper values feels like the right thing to do for our customers. And at the same time, we're confident that we can hit our targets without flowing these refunds to earnings.

That's great color. And Kristin, to Michael's point, 100 basis points of second quarter margin expansion and 38% earnings growth that's impressive flow-through on only a 2% comp. Could you elaborate on the drivers of the margin upside?

Matt, yes, we feel very good about our ability to continue to drive operating margins higher, drive strong EPS growth even on the 2% comp, as you said in your question, that 38% EPS growth we saw in Q2 was on top of 39% EPS growth in Q2 of last year. So we think this consistent earnings growth is worth calling attention to.

On the Q2 margin expansion, specifically, I'd call it a few key drivers. First, our merch margin was up 70 basis points. This was better than we planned. It was primarily driven by better markup with less tariff pressure compared to last year. The timing of markdowns from Q1 as well as a lower shortage rate also drove some additional leverage in merch margin in the quarter. The second area is our inland supply chain. We saw 20 basis points of leverage driven by productivity and cost savings initiatives in DCs. And this was despite the headwind of the Savannah startup in the quarter.

And finally, we drove 50 basis points of SG&A leverage, primarily due to lower store-related costs, including lower occupancy and leverage on that 11% total sales growth. These drivers more than offset some pressure we had in freight from higher fuel as well as some higher depreciation in the second quarter.

Our next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo.

Michael, first question is on the sales guidance for the back half. Given that you're making this investment via the tariff refund the sharper the values this fall, just curious, why not be a little bit more aggressive on the sales guidance, doesn't look you're assuming much benefit from those sharper prices. Could you elaborate there?

Sure. Thank you for the question. Let me start by saying that when we set guidance, it is not an exact science. We try to balance numerous competing factors and considerations. As we said in the prepared remarks, we feel very good about our sales guidance for the back half. In fact, we think there may be upside. We're going to be lapping weather-related issues in Q3 and tariff-related supply constraints in Q3 and Q4. And as you mentioned in your question, the fact that we are reinvesting tariff refunds into sharper values should provide an additional tailwind to the sales trend. So all of those factors are causing us to be optimistic about the back half but there are also some reasons to be a little cautious.

From a macroeconomic perspective, gas prices rose in the first quarter, and that increase has not gone away. And as we look at the full range of retailer results that have been reported over the last couple of weeks, there are some exceptions, but overall, the comp results have been weak. At all the commentary that we see and hear right now suggest that shoppers are under a lot of pressure. So that gives us some concern about the back half.

One other point to make. We believe that reinvesting the tariff refunds into shopping values will help drive our sales momentum. But we also recognize that we are not the only retailer in America. There are other retailers who will be doing the same thing, and some of them much larger than us. So that further reinforces our decision to reinvest the tariff-free plans in sharper values, but it may mean that any impact on our sales trend is somewhat muted.

I guess let me wrap up my answer by saying that we are -- we're an off-price retailer. We believe in the discipline of the off-price model. That discipline has served us well and it has certainly helped drive our earnings outperformance over the last few years. And the way that the model works is that we manage our sales and inventories conservatively and then we chase. So if our sales guidance turns out to be conservative, then you can be sure we'll be ready to chase the upside.

Got it. Makes sense. And then a follow-up for Kristin, maybe just more color on the Q3 and Q4 margin guide. Just would be helpful to understand how exactly you're going to reinvest those dollars.

Thanks for the question. We've said a couple of times today, we're reinvesting the tariff refunds Q2 into fall to offer even stronger value to our customers. So we expect these incremental investments to result in lower gross margins versus last year in both Q3 and in Q4. Again, that reinvestment approximately 40% into Q3 and 50% into Q4. These tariff refund reinvestments are the sole reason we're adjusting our Q3 and Q4 guidance, and this whole reason we're guiding lower EBIT margins in both of those quarters.

Excluding these reinvestments, our underlying fall guidance assumptions for EBIT margin expansion are unchanged versus our prior guidance where we called for EBIT margin improvement of 10 to 30 basis points. So underneath that, drivers of that underlying EBIT margin expansion in fall includes continued savings in supply chain as well as some additional leverage in SG&A partially offset by the higher -- by some higher freight cost due to fuel. And these are all embedded in our guidance for Q3 and Q4.

Our next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America. Lorraine, please go ahead.

Results across retail in the second quarter have been pretty mixed. Does this make you a little cautious today about the consumer than you were on last quarter's call? And where do you think the consumer is and what impact that may have on demand for the rest of the year.

Lorraine, thank you for the question. My direct answer to your question is yes. We are a little more cautious on the consumer I would say there are a few reasons for that. Number one, as I mentioned earlier, there was a big spike in gas prices back in March because of the situation in the Middle East. First, I think many observers thought that would be temporary, but it hasn't turned out to be temporary. And I think that sort of adds to the general concern consumers, especially moderate to low-income households are feeling stretched right now.

Number two, and again, I mentioned this earlier, as we look at the full range of retailer results that have been reported in the last 2 weeks. There are a couple of notable exceptions, but in general, I would describe the Q2 comp results across the sector as having been underwhelming, even at large value-oriented retailers.

And then number three, let me talk about our own comp trend. In Q2, I think that our merchant and operating teams executed well. There are always opportunities for improvement, but I thought that our values and assortments were good. But we still only ran 2% comp growth. Of course, on a 2-year basis, that's fine. It's a solid 7% 2-year stack, even more if you adjust for new store cannibalization. Bbut candidly, I was hoping for more than a 2% comp in the second quarter.

Anyway, again, the direct answer to your question is, yes, we are a little more cost on the customer. But let me pivot and talk about what the action implications of that are for us. I would say that despite that caution, we still feel good about our sales guidance for the back half, and we still feel good about potential upside. But as an off-price retailer, it makes sense to be cautious. We know that we can do well even in a difficult retail environment, if we stay disciplined. So we plan to appropriately manage our open to buy our receipts and our inventory levels and then be ready to chase if the trend turns out to be stronger.

And then, Kristen, comp store inventory levels were higher than we expected exiting the quarter. Can you walk through what drove that increase and why you're comfortable with that higher inventory level?

It's a great question. At the end of Q2, our comp store inventory was up 11%. And this increase was a bit higher than what we typically see, and there were a few drivers. Let me walk through. First, we exited the quarter with higher home inventory versus last year's purposeful pullback in home due to the higher tariffs. And in addition, we felt we had opportunity last year in the leader back-to-school market. So we pulled forward some back school receipts into late July to ensure we were well positioned there. There were also some tax-free shopping shifts that modestly influence our back-to-school inventory levels at the end of the quarter.

And the last thing was we mentioned this on last quarter's call, we have very selectively steps up our investments in strong performing fast-turning categories like those in beauty and accessories. So overall, for those 3 drivers that's stepping back, we're comfortable with our inventory levels and how we exited the quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Brooke, please go ahead.

Kristen, you finished the quarter at the midpoint of your comp guidance. Can you talk about how sales trended within the quarter and whether there were any meaningful changes in the business as the quarter progressed? What are you seeing in terms of the comp trend on an August month-to-date basis?

Brooke, thanks for the question. You may recall in our last earnings call in May, we shared that we were at the high end of our 1% to 3% comp guidance range. And as we progress through the quarter, the trend in June was similar to that of May and then it moderated in July. July represented our toughest comparison. And it's important to call out on a 2-year stack basis, July was our strongest month in the quarter. .

And for August, our quarter-to-date trend is within our 1% to 3% Q3 comp guidance range. August does represent our toughest monthly compare in the third quarter, and those comparisons ease in September and October. The last point I'd make here is that it's difficult to reliably extrapolate Q3 sales trends based on the first few weeks of August. August is typically driven by back-to-school demand, while September and October are much more seasonal shopping periods. We see the largest sales opportunity in the latter months of the third quarter, particularly as we anniversary those tariff-related assortment gaps from last year.

That's great. And then maybe a follow-up for Michael, given those opportunities that you have this quarter, can you provide an update on the home business? What progress are you seeing? And how confident are you in the opportunity for home as the category becomes more important into the back half of the year?

Yes. This is an important question. The headline is that we feel very good about the progress of our home business. As a reminder, going back a year ago, our home business was significantly impacted by tariffs, especially in Q3 and Q4. But when tariffs were first introduced in April of 2025, we moved very fast to remix our assortment and to take down sales [indiscernible] plans in categories that were the most heavily impacted by tariffs. Now that turned out to be the right thing to do from a margin and earnings perspective, but it had a very significant impact on sales, especially in our home business in the back half of the year.

Now in late Q2 of this year, in other words, over the last couple of months, we've started to lap that impact, and we are very happy with what we are seeing. In July, our home business outcomped the chain and that trend has continued into August. And as I said, that's very important because as you mentioned in your question, home becomes a larger proportion of our business later in the year, especially as we get into the fourth quarter.

Now just to add a little more color on space. Right now, we are seeing a lot of strength in categories like home furnishings, kitchen essentials and toys. And as we look forward, we are very happy with our on-order position in -- and our reserve positions in gifting, toys and holiday categories. So overall, I feel like we are set up for success in home in the back half of the year.

Your next question comes from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Group. Dana, please go ahead.

Kristin, it sounds like you opened a record number of new stores over the last 12 months. Can you provide some more color on these openings? And then I have a follow-up.

Thanks for the question. Yes, over the last 12 months, we've opened 178 growth new stores. This is the highest level of new store growth in Berlin's history for that time period. With the strength of our pipeline, we were able to front-load 2026 new stores more into the spring season. And this in contrast, in 2025, when new stores were more back weighted, more openings in fall. So these gross new store openings after closures and relocations resulted in 149 net new stores opened in the last 12 months, a 13% growth in store count over the period.

And I'll provide just a little bit more detail on these stores. We've really been pleased with the quality of these stores, the pace and the consistency of our execution. They average -- these stores average about 27,000 gross square feet. They're located in highly productive strip centers. We estimate these stores will be over $7 million in annual sales while delivering really great economic returns. We estimate a payback period of less than 2 years.

And from an operational standpoint, we're opening these stores on time and staffing them with experienced Burlington leadership teams. So it's great. We're pleased with this execution. For full year 2026, we continue to expect 135 gross store openings or about 115 net new stores this year.

And last point I'll make here is on the pipeline. We feel very, very good about our '27 pipeline, '28 pipeline is continuing to build really nicely, and we remain confident in our ability to open at least 110 net new stores annually and believe we're well positioned to reach and likely exceed the 1,500-store target by the end of 2028.

Great. And then the follow-up, can you talk a little bit about the cannibalization impact of new stores on comp growth?

Sure. As Michael discussed some of this in the prepared remarks, but let me provide a little bit more color. We, of course, expect some level of cannibalization of nearby stores when we open a new store. That impact is incorporated into our site selection and our underwriting processes before we ever approve a new location. So this level of cannibalization is not a surprise to us. And typically, over the years, we've seen cannibalization generally be about a 1% headwind to comp sales but given that extraordinary pace we talked about just in the prior question, that headwind is now higher, running about 1.5 points in the second quarter. .

This, of course, is an impact we're happy to accept and absorb a new store may create a small cannibalization headwind in nearby locations, but the overall incremental sales generated by the new store, obviously significantly greater and the overall economics to Burlington are very attractive. So last point I'll make on the cannibalization is we can -- we're seeing today due to that unusual concentration I talked about in your first question, so we expect this will continue through the rest of this year. And as that timing normalizes, we'll expect the cannibalization impact to moderate accordingly.

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Straton with Morgan Stanley. Alex, please go ahead.

Great. I've got 1 for Michael and then 1 for Kristin. So maybe starting with Michael, can you just give us some updated color on any trends you're seeing by demographic segment?

Sure. Well, Alex, welcome back. So demographics, yes, I guess I would say that the only important headline to share is that our stores that are in lower income trade areas continued to outperform the rest of the chain. Now as you'd expect, given my comments earlier about the macroeconomic environment, that metric is something we're watching very closely. And what the data says is that in the second quarter, our stores in trade areas with lower median household income continue to have comp growth above pecan average.

So in other words, I'm very happy to say it, we continue to see strong resilience among lower-income shoppers. As for other demographic factors, there isn't much to call out. Maybe the only other thing to share is on Hispanic shoppers. In Q2, our stores that are in high Hispanic areas performed in line with the chain. So again, we continue to feel good about that important demographic.

Great. And maybe for Kristin, do you expect to receive additional tariff refunds in the back half of the year beyond what you already received in the second quarter?

Alex, yes, thanks for the question. And to answer it directly, we do not expect to receive any material additional tariff refunds beyond what we've already recognized. There may be some additional amounts received as various claims are finalized, but we expect those amounts to be relatively small and not meaningful to our financial results. And it's worth reiterating what Michael said earlier, both the dollar amount of our refund and the benefit as a percentage of sales were lower than what many retailers experience. And that's really a reflection of the actions we took last year as tariffs increased in the back half of 2025, we deliberately pivoted away from some of the more heavily tariff exposed categories, particularly in home. And that decision created pressure on sales, but it reduced our exposure to higher tariff costs and ultimately contributed to the strong earnings performance we delivered last year.

Your next question comes from the line of Adrienne Yih with Barclays.

Michael, I'll start with you. So the investments that you're making for the tariffs they sound like they're almost exclusively going back into pricing. I'm wondering if there's any opportunity or anything thought about from the marketing standpoint, just to highlight the values. And what metrics are you watching to prove that these investments in price aren't onetime in nature and will result in loyalty and long-term customer value. .

And then a follow-up for Kristin. I'll just do it now. Can you talk about the ability to leverage your supply chain expenses, pretty nice ability to do that? And then an update on your Savannah DC and when we can see productivity and efficiencies, how much of that is in the guidance in the back half?

Well, Adrienne, first question on marketing. Yes, we -- at Burlington, we've known for some time that we have a particular challenge or rather an opportunity in marketing. We don't have the same awareness levels. as other retailers. And when shoppers have heard of us, more often than not, they think of the coat factory. So we need to raise our awareness levels and change perception at the same time. And I would say that's a particular and unique challenge to us. So we have been looking over the past, I would say, 6 to 12 months, we've been looking at ways to really sort of step up our marketing and go after those opportunities. And I would say we're still experimenting. We're still trying some different things. But I would expect over the next few quarters, we'll roll out some of those programs.

Now in terms of your -- the second part of your question around how will we know if the tariff investments are paying off. Once we get it if see a benefit to sales, that will obviously be the main driver in terms of -- or the main indicator in terms of whether or not the customer is responding to the sharper values.

And then -- this is Kris, and I'll take the supply chains, Savannah question. So as we've noted, supply chain levered 20 basis points in the quarter. This was really driven by DC productivity and cost savings initiatives. But I've said that a couple of times. So let me give -- a little more color on that. In DCs, we're highly focused on improving processes, increasing throughput and maximizing our most efficient facilities. We're using better predictive tools and routing capabilities, better integrating more seamlessly with allocation to make smarter, more efficient decisions across the network. This reduces handling loss, reduces touches, and ultimately drives efficiency and improve the merchandise flow.

And what's particularly encouraging, I mentioned earlier, is that in supply chain, we were able to leverage in Q2 despite the cost of starting up Savannah, which I think leads to the kind of second part of your question, Savannah is just coming online. This is our largest, most automated distribution center. We're very pleased with the progress. The facility began receiving inbound product in April and has started supporting outbound flow as well. And the start-up has gone really largely as planned, even though our largest and most automated relatedly, and it sort of gets to the productivity point, we're encouraged by what we're seeing at our Logan distribution center. This distribution center starting at third year or it's junior year, as we've been calling it, and it's really becoming a meaningful contributor to strong productivity gains we're seeing.

And this gives us confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead for Savannah While, of course, new DCs carry start-up costs and the ramp, we believe Savannah's scale and automation position it to be a critical driver of capacity, productivity and supply chain leverage over time.

And your next question comes from the line of Mark Altschwager with Baird. Mark, please go ahead.

Michael, the forecast calling for a super El Nino imply warmer than normal fall weather and winter weather across much of the country. How is that changing the way you're planning cold weather receipts for the back half? And is any of that risk built into the guidance?.

Wow, I can't believe we made it this far in the call, we are talking about the weather. So Mark, thank you. Thank you for the question. Seriously, though, it's an important question. And let me take a bit of time in answering this. I think it's widely understood that at Burlington, formerly known as the Co factory, we are more sensitive than most retailers to seasonal weather variations, especially in the third quarter. .

Now as you mentioned in your question, there are predictions that this could be a super El Nino year, which would mean [ Warmuth ] and average conditions in the back half. Now that would not be helpful for cells in our outerwear businesses, especially from late September through November. Now of course, those kinds of longer-term forecasts are not necessarily reliable, but it does represent a risk. And it's another reason to be cautious and not raise sales guidance for the back half of the year. Now with that said, I would like to talk about several actions that we've taken this year that I think should help to reduce the sales risk even if the weather turns out to be unfavorable.

Let me start with -- in the back half of last year, in addition to softness in our outerwear business, driven by warmer temperatures, we also faced significant tariff-related assortment gaps in our home business, and we've referred to that a few times on this call and scroll forward to this year, we've really strengthened our home assortment. So even if the weather is not favorable, those improvements should still help drive our overall sales trend as we anniversary those tariff-related assortment gaps.

Secondly, over the last couple of years, we've been investing in our localization capabilities. Now those capabilities should enable us to do a better job of customizing the mix of inventory across merchandise categories based on regional weather patterns. Now for example, that might mean increasing the mix of fleet and lightweight jackets and reducing the flow of medium and heavy weight coats in regions where it's warmer. Again, those capabilities should help support our trend, no matter the weather.

The other -- the last thing I'll call out is that this year, when we developed our overall sales plan for the back half, we deliberately planned down our outerwear businesses and plan up our weather neutral businesses. Now historically, we would not have been comfortable planning down such important category. But with our merchandising 2.0 systems and tools, we're confident that we can start with a more conservative plan for these businesses and then react more rapidly if the weather does turn out to be cooler. So that means that our overall sales plan for the fall is less exposed to our outerwear businesses. That does not completely eliminate the risk in our overall sales plan, but it does reduce it.

So anyway, let me sum up, this is a long answer. Let me sum up. The weather pattern from late September onwards is a very important driver of our comp, especially in Q3 for good or for bad. But this year, we've taken numerous actions that should help reduce the risk and support our sales trend even if the weather is not favorable. And we also believe that we have the ability to chase the trend if it's stronger and if the weather actually does turn out to be cooler than last year.

A quick follow-up for Kristin. Can you speak to what stood out by region and by category in the quarter? And then on the composition of the comp, I'm not sure if you heard it, but can you speak to how much came from transactions versus basket?

Great. Thanks, Mark. In terms of regional performance, it was pretty broad-based. The Northeast and the Midwest were the top-performing regions. They outperformed the chain. The Southwest region trailed the chain. Our category trends were strongest in beauty and accessories, and our home business has started to outperform the chain as we build that business back. And finally, to your last question, in terms of comp metrics or components of comp, our second quarter comp was driven primarily by a higher basket size. Transactions were relatively flat compared to last year. Thanks. .

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Michael O'Sullivan for closing remarks. Michael?

Let me close by thanking everyone for your interest in Burlington Stores. We look forward to talking to you again in November to discuss our third quarter 2026 results. We appreciate your questions and your time today. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Burlington Stores Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Operating Results. [Operator Instructions].

I would now like to turn the conference over to David Glick, Group Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer for Burlington Stores. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone's participation in today's conference call to discuss Burlington's fiscal 2026 first quarter operating results. Our presenters today are Michael O'Sullivan, our Chief Executive Officer; and Kristen Wolfe, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer.

Before I turn the call over to Michael, I would like to inform listeners that this call may not be transcribed, recorded or broadcast without our expressed permission. A replay of the call will be available until June 4, 2026. We take no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear in transcripts of this call by third parties. Our remarks and the Q&A that follows are copyrighted today by Burlington Stores.

Remarks made on this call concerning future expectations, events, strategies, objectives, trends or projected financial results are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those that are projected in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include those that are described in the company's 10-K and in our filings with the SEC, all of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference.

Please note that the financial results and expectations we discuss today are on a continuing operations basis. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures we discuss today to GAAP measures are included in today's press release.

As a reminder, as indicated in this morning's press release, all profitability metrics discussed on this call exclude costs associated with bankruptcy acquired leases. These pretax costs amounted to $7 million and $6 million during the fiscal first quarter of 2026 and 2025, respectively, and $10 million and $35 million for the full fiscal year 2026 and and 2025, respectively.

Now here's Michael.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I would like to cover 3 topics this morning. Firstly, I will discuss our first quarter results. Secondly, I will talk about our outlook for the rest of the year. And finally, I will comment on our new store opening program. After that, Kristin will walk through the financial details.

Okay. Let's talk about the first quarter. I will start with the headline. We delivered yet another quarter of very strong earnings growth with EPS increasing 26%. This marks our 14th consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth. This track record demonstrates our ability to consistently convert higher sales into margin expansion, thereby driving very strong earnings flow-through.

Moving on to sales. I will start with total sales growth. Of course, total sales is the most obvious and reliable proxy for retail market share. In Q1, we notched up 14% total sales growth. This was on top of 6% total sales growth in 2025 and 11% growth the year before that. This means that cumulatively, our business is now 34% bigger than it was 3 years ago.

We are taking retail market share through new store openings and comp store sales growth. And as I described a moment ago, we are achieving strong and consistent earnings flow-through on these incremental sales.

Let's talk about comp stores. Comp store sales increased 6% in Q1, well above our guidance of 2% to 4%. I was very pleased with our flexibility in chasing the sales trend while also managing our liquidity and inventory levels to drive strong merchant margin leverage on this comp growth. Our comp trends were broad-based across businesses and geographies with particular strength in ladies apparel, beauty and accessories.

One particular call out was the strength of our warm weather categories. Historically, we have not been happy with our seasonal transitions. Our legacy as an outerwear retailer means that our processes and systems have often been too slow in responding to weather variations, especially in early spring or in the fall. But this year, our upgraded allocation and localization capabilities enabled us to make faster smarter and more precise allocation decisions. This helped drive sales and merchant margin through more efficient use of merchandise receipts and inventory.

Okay. Let me turn to profitability. Our operating margin in Q1 expanded by 20 basis points. This was significantly ahead of our guidance. As a reminder, we had expected a decline of 60 to 100 basis points driven by headwinds specific to Q1. As it turned out, we rolled right over these headwinds and delivered operating margin expansion that was 100 basis points above the midpoint of our guidance.

The drivers of this margin outperformance were higher merchant margin and stronger supply chain productivity. This operating margin expansion, together with the head of plan sales drove an EPS gain of 26%. As I have just described, we faced specific margin headwinds as we lapped Q1 of 2025. We had expected EPS in the quarter to be flat. So 26% growth is an impressive peak. Again, this strong earnings flow-through is a consistent pattern stretching back many quarters.

Now let's move on to forward guidance. I will start with the full year. We are updating our full year guidance to pass along the entire sales and earnings favorability from the first quarter. We are now expecting full year comp sales growth of 2% to 4% and EPS growth of 13% to 16%.

For the second quarter, we are guiding comp growth of 1% to 3% and with discount growth we expect to drive an EPS increase of 19% to 28%. This second quarter guidance signals our confidence in driving strong margin leverage and EPS growth even in a quarter where we are guiding to modest i.e., 1% to 3% comp store sales growth. As a reminder, in Q2, we will be lapping our strongest quarterly comparison versus last year.

In terms of the back half, we continue to feel good about the comp outlook that we discussed in our March call. As a reminder, at that point, we called out potential comp upside in Q3 and maybe even in Q4.

Before I hand over to Kristin, I would like to briefly comment on our new store, our store relocation and our store downsize programs. In Q1, we opened 40 gross new stores. We relocated 6 stores and closed 4 for a net increase of 30 stores. We are very pleased with the pace and quality of these new store openings.

For the full year, we now anticipate 135 gross new stores. Stripping out relocations and closures, we expect this to yield 115 net new stores. This is slightly ahead of our prior guidance of 110 net new stores for 2026. Aside from our new store program, we are also very pleased with the progress we are making in transforming our legacy store base through relocations and downsizes.

Store relocations continue to perform well, typically delivering a sales lift of 5% to 10% as we upgrade the physical store and move into higher traffic centers with stronger cotenancy. Our downsized program is also driving very strong results. This program is targeted at older stores where we like the location, but the store is oversized. As a reminder, we downsized 20 stores in 2025 and and we are ramping this program to about 30 stores this year. In a typical downsize project, we cut the square footage in half, giving the excess space back to the landlord or subleasing to a cotenant.

On average, we are seeing a reduction in occupancy costs of about 200 basis points. The financial returns are very attractive and we plan to ramp this program in the years ahead. Taken together, new stores, relocations and downsizes have driven a huge step-up in sales productivity. In 2019, our sales per selling square foot was languishing around $220. Fast forward to today, and it is now around $350 per square foot. That's a 55% increase in sales productivity in a 6-year period.

We talk a lot about sales growth, but it is important to call out that our sales growth is happening in smaller, more productive stores. This is important because we expect that this higher sales productivity will drive leverage in occupancy expenses as new stores join the comp base and their sales ramp up over time and as we relocate or downsize many more of our existing stores to our smaller store format.

Looking ahead, we are on track to exceed 1,500 stores by the end of 2028. Of these, over 80% would have been opened or relocated or downsize since 2019. Our legacy of old oversized and low productivity stores is diminishing.

One last point to make. For the last couple of years, we have been retrofitting existing stores to Store Experience 2.0. This program is designed to make our stores feel more exciting, easier to shop and more off-price. Our retrofitted stores have received very positive customer feedback and have seen a nice sales lift. We anticipate completion of the Store Experience 2.0 program across the chain by the end of this year.

I would now like to turn the call over to Kristin to walk through the financial details of our first quarter results and our updated guidance. Kristin?

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I will start with some additional color on our first quarter performance. Then I will share details on our guidance for Q2 and for the full year.

Starting with the first quarter. Total sales grew 14%, while comp store sales increased 6%, well above our guidance range of 2% to 4% comp growth. The gross margin rate for the first quarter was 44.1%, an increase of 30 basis points versus last year. This was driven by a 20 basis point increase in merchandise margin and a 10 basis point decrease in freight expenses.

Product sourcing costs were $216 million versus $197 million in the first quarter of 2025. Product sourcing costs decreased 30 basis points as a percentage of sales versus last year as we continue to execute on our supply chain productivity and cost savings initiatives.

Adjusted SG&A costs in the first quarter increased 20 basis points versus last year. Q1 adjusted EBIT margin was 6.3% and basis points higher than last year. This was well above our guidance range of down 100 to down 60 basis points.

In March, we spoke to a few discrete factors that we expected would pressure Q1 margin. But we were able to more than offset those with stronger-than-anticipated sales disciplined markdown execution and continued supply chain productivity. Our Q1 adjusted earnings per share was $2.10, which also came in well above our guidance range of $1.60 to $1.75. This represents a 26% EPS increase versus Q1 last year and our continued ability to turn strong top line growth into even stronger earnings growth. At the end of the quarter, comparable store inventories increased 11% versus the end of the first quarter of 2025.

Our reserve inventory was 41% of our total inventory versus 48% of our inventory last year. We are very pleased with the quality of the merchandise and the values that we have in reserve. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.7 billion in total liquidity. This consisted of $747 million in cash and $942 million in availability on our ABL. We had no outstanding borrowings at the end of the quarter on the ABL.

During the quarter, we repurchased $81 million in common stock. At the end of Q1, we had $304 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization. This expired in May of 2027.

Staying on capital structure. In March, we completed a repurchase of $111 million of our 2027 convertible notes. This transaction reduced the outstanding balance of the 2027 converts to $186 million. In Q1, as Michael mentioned, we opened 40 gross new stores, relocated 6 stores and closed 4 stores. This resulted in the addition of 30 net new stores in Q1, bringing our store count at the end of the quarter to 1,242 stores.

Now moving to our updated fiscal 2026 full year guidance. This guidance excludes approximately $10 million of costs associated with bankruptcy acquired leases versus $35 million in 2025. We are increasing our outlook for the full year 2026, passing through the entire Q1 upside to the full year. Total sales are now expected to increase 9% to 11% versus our original guidance of 8% to 10%. We are now expecting 115 net new store openings this year. This is up from our original outlook of 110 net new stores.

We anticipate that the majority of our 2026 new store openings will occur in the first half of the year. For the full year 2026, we're now forecasting comp store sales to increase in the range of 2% to 4%. And our adjusted EBIT margin to expand by 10 to 30 basis points versus last year.

Passing grew the entire Q1 EPS upside, results in adjusted earnings per share guidance in the range of $11.45 to $11.80, up 13% to 16% versus FY '25 and well above our initial 2026 full year guidance.

Moving now to our second quarter guidance, which excludes approximately $3 million of expenses associated with bankruptcy acquired leases versus $11 million in Q2 of 2025. For Q2, we expect comp store sales to be up 1% to 3% and total sales to increase 10% to 12%. We are guiding Q2 operating margin expansion to increase 30 to 60 basis points versus the second quarter of 2025. This translates to an adjusted EPS outlook in the range of $2.05 to $2.20 compared to last year's second quarter EPS and of $1.72.

Our sales trend for May month to date is tracking at the high end of our comp sales guidance range. That said, our month-by-month comparisons get more difficult as we move through the quarter. For the back half of fiscal 2026, our outlook remains unchanged. We expect comp store sales to increase 1% to 3%. Total sales to increase 8% to 10%. Adjusted EBIT margins to increase 10 to 30 basis points and earnings per share in the range of $7.30 to $7.50. Capital expenditures, net of landlord allowances, are still expected to be approximately $875 million in fiscal 2026.

I will now turn the call back over to Michael.

Thank you, Kristin. Before I hand it back to the operator for your questions, I would like to summarize the main points from this morning's call. Firstly, we are pleased with our Q1 results, 14% sales growth comp growth and an EPS increase of 26%. These results add to an already very impressive track record of consistently converting sales growth into strong margin expansion and earnings flow through.

Secondly, we have raised our full year outlook passing through the entire upside from Q1. Our expectations for the balance of the year remain unchanged from our commentary in our March call, including the potential for upside in Q3 and maybe even in Q4.

And lastly, we continue to be very excited about our new store, store relocation and store downsize programs. These programs have contributed to a remarkable growth in our sales productivity.

I would now like to turn the call over for your questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan.

Congrats on the nice quarter. So Michael, in March, you said you were bullish about the outlook for 2026. That was pretty much before the outbreak of war in the Middle East and the subsequent run-up in gas prices. So have these factors caused you to feel less bullish on the outlook at all today?

Matt, thank you for the question. You're right, a lot has happened since early March. But the direct answer to your question is we still feel bullish, especially about the back half of the year.

As I recall back on that call in March, we described external and internal drivers of optimism. On the external side, we cited the resilience of our customer. Well, we just reported 6% comp growth in Q1, well ahead of guidance. And when we look at our underlying customer data, the key indicators continue to look positive across demographics and income bands. By the way, we estimate that higher tax refunds in Q1 were worth about 1.5 to 2 points of comp. So even if you strip those out, our comp growth in Q1 was still mid-single digit.

The other external factor that we cited back on the March 5 call was that we expected tariffs to be less disruptive to pricing and supply this year. Well, check, that is what we are seeing. The supply of off-price merchandise is excellent right now.

Now on that call, we also talked about internal drivers of optimism. And again, I would say those have not changed. We see potential upside in Q3 and perhaps in Q4 as we lap easier comparisons in Q3 and as we lap tariff-related assortment gaps in both quarters. So we continue to be excited about those opportunities. So with all that said, I would acknowledge that we're perhaps a little more wary now than we were in March, based on higher gas prices and the potential impact on inflation.

We're watching the trend very closely and looking for any change in consumer behavior, we haven't seen it yet. But as an off-price retailer, that is what we do. We watch to see how the trend changes. And the benefit of the off-price model, when it's well executed, is that we can tap the brakes or we can hit the accelerator if we need to.

The last point I would make is if the external environment does get more difficult and if the consumer becomes more focused on value, then we don't regard that as a bad thing. In fact, as a value retailer, it could turn into an opportunity.

Great color. And then, Kristin, as a follow-up, on your second quarter guidance, even with a relatively modest comp growth, you're projecting earnings growth of over 20% at the midpoint of the forecast. Could you walk through the bottom line drivers and just additional details?

Matt, yes, thanks for that question. So for Q2, we're guiding 30 to 60 basis points of operating margin expansion on comps of 1% to 3%. And that translates, as you said in your question, to EPS growth of 19% on the low end and 28% on the high end. A couple of drivers of the margin expansion in Q2. One is higher gross margin we're planning for we're planning for higher merch margin in the quarter. This is driven by anticipated markdown favorability, modestly faster turns and a favorable shortage accrual rate relative to Q2 of last year.

Partially offsetting this, the merch margin is some pressure, some modest pressure in freight expenses due to higher fuel rates projected for the quarter. So one driver is in gross margin from higher merch margin.

The second is leverage in product sourcing costs driven by supply chain. We're continuing to execute productivity initiatives across all our DCs. These savings are, of course, pressured slightly by the continued start-up cost of our new distribution center in Savannah, Georgia, which became operational late in the first quarter.

There are also some puts and takes in SG&A that we believe will give us some slight leverage in Q2, certainly on the 3 comps. And then I just close by reiterating, we've consistently demonstrated the ability to drive strong earnings growth even on modest comp sales growth and our plan -- our internal plans and our guidance reflect just that.

Our next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo.

Michael, I wanted to ask you a bigger picture question. I think -- I guess as you look across retail, off-price and not off price, what do you see happening in terms of major competitive trends, I guess, just bigger picture? And how do any of those trends? Or do you see anything -- what are the ramifications of that on Burlington specifically.

Well, thank you for the question. It's actually good to talk about the big picture. Sometimes on these calls, it can get very easy to get caught up in the details of quarterly performance. So again, I appreciate the question.

When I look across retail, and this has been true for a long time now, I see a major restructuring going on. And the key driver of that restructuring is the consumers' desire for value. The retailers that can consistently offer great value are winning, and those that cannot offer great value are losing. I think perhaps the strongest evidence to that is the growth of off-price.

For Q1, we just reported 14% total sales growth. And this 14% was on top of 6% last year and 11% the year before. And when you look at our off-price peers, they are also driving terrific growth -- the customer is voting for value and off-price is delivering that value. The growth that we and our off-price peers are achieving, of course, is not coming out of 10 air is coming from traditional retail from full-priced retailers, if you like. I don't see any signs of that slowing down.

In fact, if the economic environment were to deteriorate in the next few months, I think that could further accelerate the growth of off-price.

So on the second part of your question, what are the ramifications for Burlington. Well, of course, it means we have a big opportunity. But I would say that for us to take advantage of that opportunity, we have to continue to improve how we execute the off-price model. we're very aware. We have 2 very successful off-price peers.

We've made a huge amount of progress, but we know that we're behind those companies in some key capabilities, capabilities like localization of the assortment or automation of our supply chain, but I regard that as good news. It means that we have a huge opportunity ahead of us.

I think it's also worth calling out that to go after that upside. At Burlington, we do not have to try new and radical things. For our off-price peers, I think it's different. At that stage in development, it makes sense for them to invest in new ideas. That might mean, I don't know, expanding internationally or making big changes to their model.

But for us, we're at an earlier stage in development. We need to stay focused on the basics of off-price, controlling liquidity, managing inventory, chasing the trend and delivering great value. And I guess I would wrap up my answer by saying that the proof of this strategy for me is in our numbers. For full year 2026, our guidance, our updated guidance is for mid-teens EPS growth, and that's on top of 22% EPS growth last year and 34% the year before that.

So I know the phrase focused on the basics does not sound very sexy, especially with the British accent. But it is working for us. Over the last few years, it's driven very strong and consistent earnings growth.

And I applaud the [indiscernible]. But I'll go to Kristin with the follow-up. Maybe, Kristin, just look back at Q1. Just remind us like what were the factors that were supposed to create the headwinds in 1Q for the margin contraction?

And then what basically happened outside of just the comp being better that was able to offset that and drive the margin expansion you ultimately put up.

Good question. First, let me step back and say, we're very pleased with the flow-through we saw in the first quarter. Operating margin expanded 20 basis points, but that was 100 basis points above the midpoint of our guidance. And when we guided Q1 in March, we embedded a few known headwinds that we expected would pressure operating margin and really disciplined execution coupled with stronger-than-expected sales drove better flow-through than we originally anticipated.

Let me call out a few drivers. First, we saw strong merchandise margin performance, up 20 basis points, this was versus our expectation of lower merch margin in the quarter, really driven by disciplined markdown better, markdown execution, which was better than we expected. And also driven by the quality of our buys. This was a meaningful contributor to the upside. Freight also leveraged 10 basis points as we more than offset any fuel pressures in transportation.

And then the second major area is we continue to make great progress, really better-than-expected progress on our supply chain productivity initiatives. That drove 30 basis points of leverage in the quarter. And this is all despite start-up costs from our new Savannah DC, and this is what drove the leverage on the product sourcing line.

So overall for Q1, merch margin improvement on gross margin and on product sourcing more than offset some slight deleverage we saw in SG&A, and that was really driven by higher incentive comp compared to Q1 last year and higher marketing spend in the quarter.

And let me just final point, I like to make is that the flow-through we saw here really reflects the strength of the operating model, meaning when we deliver sales above expectations, we expect to see meaningful earnings leverage relative to our guide, and that's what we saw in Q1.

Our next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson with the Bank of Bank of America.

Michael, over the last 3 years, your EPS growth has typically exceeded 20%. Do you think that by driving earnings, you may have missed some comp growth?

Good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. It's a great question. And it's actually something that we wrestle with internally all the time.

In our business, the most direct way to drive sales is to turn on receipts and flow more merchandise to stores and then to run with higher inventory levels and more markdowns. Conversely, the way to consistently drive earnings is to carefully control the flow of receipts and to very tightly manage inventory levels.

Now I would say that at Burlington, historically, we were not good when it came to controlling receipts and inventory. But in more recent years, we've worked hard at this, and I think we've become very good at it. And the evidence for that is the huge increase in our merchant margin over the last several years.

Our inventory turns are much faster now, and our markdowns are much lower. We like those results. But going back to your challenge, I do think that we may have an opportunity to loosen our belts a notch and get slightly more aggressive on sales -- there are some high potential merchandise categories where it might make sense for us to take up purchase commitments and maybe run with a little more inventory, but let me be clear, let me reassure investors, I'm not signaling a major shift here. We are very focused on long-term earnings growth.

We strongly believe in discipline of the off-price model, control liquidity, manage inventory and chase the trend. That's the proven model. It works. In fact, it drives terrific earnings leverage 22% EPS growth last year, 34% the year before that.

And then, Kristin, sticking with that theme, your comp guidance for the full year of 2% to 4% is below some of your off-price peers, but your EPS growth guidance of 13% to 16% is in line. Can you talk about what's driving this leverage?

Thanks for the question. I'll walk down the P&L for the full year and really kind of give you the puts and takes on the earnings guidance. First, we're expecting overall leverage in gross margin. Higher merch margin is more than offsetting some slight deleverage in freight costs driven by higher fuel rates that are embedded in our guidance.

The anticipated higher merch margin is driven by disciplined control of inventory translating to efficient markdown execution, faster turns and better buying. And then as I move down the P&L, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really pleased with the leverage we're seeing in product sourcing costs driven by supply chain.

We anticipate supply chain cost levering in 2026 and this is all despite the opening of a brand-new distribution center in the year. In SG&A, there are also a couple of puts and takes, but one line item I want to call out is on occupancy. We expect occupancy costs to lever this year as we continue to drive up sales productivity, and we're starting to see some of the benefits of downsizing stores and reducing occupancy expenses.

And then the last point I'll make on the full year is that we expect 10 to 15 basis points of incremental leverage for every additional point of comp.

Our next question comes from the line of Brook Roach with Goldman Sachs.

Michael, in your opening statement, you talked about the increase in sales per square foot as you've opened new stores and relocated or downsized older stores. How much more opportunity do you see to drive the sales productivity ahead?

Well, Brook, thank you for the question. The direct answer is that we still have huge opportunity on sales productivity. And my goal over the next few years is to further significantly drive up sales productivity in terms of sales per square feet. As you said, in the prepared remarks, I talked about that, and I quoted the data. In 2019, we had sales productivity that was down in the $200 to $220 per square foot range. And we're now up around $350 per square foot. And I should add that with a lot of new stores in the base.

Now as with many key performance indicators, I think we've made huge progress, but when you look at our competitive benchmarks, it's still -- it's clear that we still have plenty of opportunity ahead of us. Now of course, part of that opportunity will come naturally from comp growth across all stores in the chain.

But at Burlington, we have a lot of new stores that have opened in the last few years that are going to ramp up over the next several years. So those stores are smaller format, 25,000 square foot boxes. And as those new stores ramp up, they'll have an outsized impact on our sales productivity.

Now add to that, the other programs, our downside and our relocation programs, they have a direct impact on sales productivity of older existing stores. These are large stores with existing sales volumes and essentially what we're doing is moving them into a smaller format location. So there are several reasons to think that our sales productivity is going to continue to move up.

Now of course, the reason that, that is important is occupancy expenses are a big part of our cost base. And by continuing to drive up sales productivity over the next few years, we should be able to leverage that expense and that should provide a nice tailwind to our operating margin over the next few years.

Great. And then as a follow-up, you mentioned the strength of the warm weather businesses in 1Q. Can you talk a little bit more about those businesses? I'd also be interested in hearing more about how your new allocation systems helped to drive the comp trend in those businesses this quarter.

Good. Yes. Thank you for that question. Warm weather categories account for about 25% of our sales in the first quarter, so very significant. And those businesses include all the categories you might expect, short sleeve tops, swimwear, sandals, sunglasses, and so on. In Q1, those categories achieved double-digit comp growth, so well ahead of the chain.

Now weather was a piece of that early in the quarter. But overall, the impact of weather in Q1 was somewhat mixed. It was helpful in February and March, but then it was unsettled and less favorable through April. Anyway, I'm very happy with how we were able to navigate those trends and drive our warm weather businesses in the first quarter.

Over the last couple of years, we've begun to roll out more sophisticated localization tools and processes. And that meant that in Q1, we were able to plan and allocate receipts between different regions in a much more granular and intentional way. and we were able to respond much more effectively in more detail to performance variations across regions. Now that helped drive sales, but it also helped drive merchant margin.

Now stepping back, I know that many investors have heard me say this before. We have terrific consistency when it comes to driving quarterly earnings growth, but we have -- we're much less consistent when it comes to quarterly comp growth. And that's especially true or it has been especially true in the first and the third quarters when weather variations tend to be the most impactful.

Our coat factory heritage means that our seasonal transitions historically just haven't been nimble enough. We know that we're never going to be able to control the weather, but we can get better at responding to it. And our localization initiative is going to be an important piece of that.

Our next question comes from the line of Adrienne Yih with Barclays.

Congrats on quarter, it full through. Michael, I was wondering if you can talk about some of the demographic trends that you're seeing by segment. Historically, you've made a little bit of comments on sort of the sub 40,000 category versus above category. So wondering if you can help us out with any changes that you're seeing there? Typically, we see sort of that inflationary pressure of gas, in particular sort of.

It's a good question. you say it's something that we look at all the time and often comment on. I would say the good news is that there's not a lot to call out in the data. I would say the only real headline is that our stores that are in lower income trade areas continue to outperform the rest of the chain. And I don't want to overstate it, but it is real.

In the first quarter, stores in trade areas with lower median household income had comp growth that was clearly above the chain. And now that said, stores in higher income areas still achieved mid-single-digit comp growth, but the key takeaway from that data for me is that we continue to see resilience among lower-income shoppers despite higher gas prices despite inflation creeping up.

Now as for other demographic factors, again, not much to call out. We pay very close attention, as you know, to trends among Hispanic shoppers. And in Q1, stores in high Hispanic areas had mid-single-digit comp growth. So more or less in line with the chain. So again, we continue to feel good about that important demographic.

Fantastic. And then my follow-up for Kristin. The topic of the year, I suppose, is tariffs and now tariff refunds. Can you talk about kind of how you are treating those throughout the rest of the year's guidance? I assume that you filed for them. So just any color or commentary on where they are and what you're assuming for the rest of the year?

Great. Adrian, yes, very topical. As you've heard from many other retailers, we have also filed for tariff refund it's really -- it's highly uncertain how much we will receive and when we could receive the refunds. So we have not factored any of that into our guidance.

Okay. And the assumption for current is the incremental 10%, I assume?

Correct.

Our next question comes from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Group.

Congratulations on the progress. Kristin, can you expand a little bit on the new store pipeline, how you're thinking about what is the smaller size of the box you're looking at regional growth and what the pipeline could look like and also along with that, the new store performance? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Great. Thanks, Dana. So for 26 for the full year, we now expect 135 gross new stores. And then once you strip out relocations and closures, we expect to yield 115 net new stores in 26. This is slightly ahead of the prior guidance we gave of 110 net new stores for we were able to pull forward the openings of several stores that were borderline 2026 openings, and we feel good about opening these additional 5 new stores by the end of the third quarter this year.

Given the timing of these additional new store openings did not really move the needle on the overall total sales growth guidance. Now turning to your question on the pipeline, we continue to feel very good about 2027 new store pipeline. And the 2028 pipeline is also robust. -- we are comfortable opening at least 110 net new stores in '27 and in '28, and we are well on our way to hitting or likely exceeding that 1,500 store mark by the end -- and I think you had -- in the last part of your question on new store performance, we continue to be pleased with the performance of new stores.

We continue to see stores open at about $7 million of sales in our first year -- full year and achieve a payback in just under 2 years. And lastly, after these new stores enter the comp base, we see them meaningfully outcome the chain for several years.

Got it. And then just higher freight and fuel costs, what are you seeing and how are you planning?

Yes, great question. We are, of course, seeing higher fuel costs and surcharges, driven by the higher diesel costs. In the first quarter, we were able to lever overall freight cost as transportation cost savings initiatives offset those higher fuel rates. The higher fuel and those incremental surcharges are baked into our full year guidance.

As I mentioned, I think in an earlier question on full year 2016 guidance, we are expecting modest deleverage in freight for the year, driven by higher fuel costs. We strive to -- or strive to manage the P&L proactively, and we found offsets to these surcharges, and that's all incorporated into our guidance.

Let me also call out kind of in the same vein. We recently locked in our ocean and domestic contracts for the next year at favorable rates. We've got great partnerships here, and this should help us control freight costs in 2026. And I guess, of course, if diesel fuel prices go up further from here and where they're projected, that could be an additional risk to our guidance.

Our next question comes from the log of Mark Altschwager with Baird.

Michael, first, I was hoping you could give us an update on the elevation strategy, just where you are in the rollout and what's working?

Sure. Well, Mark, thank you for the question. Yes. The elevation strategy has been a major strategy for us for the last couple of years, elevating the assortment to offer better more recognizable brands, higher quality and more fashion, all at great values within a good, better, best assortment.

Now our internal data shows that by elevating our assortments we've been able to drive higher customer perception scores, stronger comp growth in higher-priced buckets and ultimately, a higher average basket and unit retail I've said this before, but I'm especially pleased with how we've been able to successfully pursue this elevation strategy without hurting margins.

When you increase the mix of better brands, that can really pressure your merchant margin through lower markup or higher markdowns or higher shortage. So it's remarkable that over the last 2 years, we've increased the mix of better and recognizable brands in our assortment. But at the same time, we've actually increased our merchant margin. It takes a lot of skill to pull that off. The fact that we've been able to elevate the assortment at the same time, actually expand margins, demonstrates the strength and talent of our merchant teams.

That's great. And just a follow-up, Michael, on the consumer, you spoke to some of the demographic trends earlier. But I guess, have you seen any correlation between gas prices and the comp trends on a week-to-week, month-to-month basis? Just any insight there?

Thanks, Mark. Yes, it's a very good question. It's something that we've we've sliced and diced many different ways. In the past, actually, we've analyzed this, looking at, for example, we've looked at what's happened to comp growth historically when gas prices have gone up or down.

We've also looked at what's happened to comp growth by region or market. Where gas prices have hit different levels in different parts of the country or gone up at different rates in different parts of the country. The bottom line is that none of those analyses show any correlation. And similarly, in the first quarter, we saw no clear pattern. And we looked very, very closely. That said, we all understand that if gas prices remain high for a sustained period of time. And if that feeds into a higher general cost of living, then that's not good.

We saw what happened a few years ago when inflation went up, it squeezed the discretionary spending of shoppers, and that had a particularly negative impact on lower-income shoppers. So as I said earlier, we're watching the trends very closely for any change in consumer behavior, but we just haven't seen it.

Our last question for today comes from the late Michael Binetti with Evercore.

Krisitin, let me start with one. Could you just expand on the callouts you gave in the prepared remarks on some of the category performance metrics and any regional callouts? And then I'm also curious, any color you can provide on first quarter comp metrics like transactions versus basket AUR, UPT, -- anything on the build that would be helpful.

Yes. Great. Michael, Okay. Let me start regional performance. In terms of regional performance, the Northeast and Midwest were the top-performing regions. The Southeast and West were in line with the chain comps and the Southwest trailed the chain -- on category trends, Michael spoke to this -- some of this in the prepared remarks. It was really broad-based across businesses. We had particular strength in ladies apparel, beauty and accessories. We also did particularly well in warm weather categories in Q1.

We're really pleased with that transition. Those categories include sort sweep tops, swimwear, sandals, sunglasses, et cetera. So those are the call-out in the category. And then the last part of your question, components of the comp. So our first quarter comp was driven by both an increase in the number of transactions and by a higher basket size due to higher AUR.

Those 2 drivers, transaction volume and higher basket were about equal in terms of their contribution to our comp in the quarter.

Okay. And then, Michael, if I could just ask one. Really nice to see the SoHo store open earlier in the quarter, a nice store. Could you mind giving us an update on -- you touched on the store experience 2.0 in the prepared remarks, but just a little bit of an update on that initiative, what we'll see as we go on to the checks the rest of the year here.

Yes. Well, thank you for the question. Yes. You've heard me say this before. Historically, at Burlington, our store environment was quite undifferentiated. When you walked into our stores, it was just a sea of racks. It really hasn't changed since the company was founded in the 1970s. So a few years ago, we launched our store experience 2.0 initiative. And the goal was to reimagine the store environment to make it more exciting, more off-price, easier to shop, and more Burlington 2.0, if you like.

Now in 2024, we rolled that program out to new stores and we retrofitted approximately 120 existing stores. And we saw very good feedback from shoppers and from associates, and we also saw a nice sales lift in retrofitted stores. So last year, we rolled the program out to -- I think it was about 350 or so additional stores, and we'll complete the full chain rollout this year. Now again, we continue to see a nice sales lift on retrofitted stores. That said, we also believe that the benefits of Store Experience 2.0 will grow over time.

By the end of 2026, all stores will have been fitted with store experience 2.0, and that's important. We know from research that many shoppers have an outdated perception of Burton. Maybe they came into the store with their mother to buy a coat 20 years ago. Well, when they walk into our stores now, they tell us it feels completely different, fresh, more exciting and more off-price.

Thank you. And at this time, that concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Michael for closing remarks..

Before we close, I am very pleased to announce that Marissa Shake has recently joined Burlington as Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury. Marissa has tremendous experience and a strong track record of success in banking, consulting and retail, including off-price. We are very excited to have Marissa as part of our Investor Relations team. With that, let me close by thanking everyone on this call for your interest in Burlington Stores. We look forward to talking to you again in August to discuss our second quarter 2026 results. Thank you for your time today.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Burlington Stores, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I'd now like to turn the call over to David Glick, Group's Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone's participation in today's conference call to discuss Burlington's fiscal 2025 fourth quarter operating results.

Our presenters today are Michael O'Sullivan, our Chief Executive Officer; and Kristin Wolfe, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Michael, I would like to inform listeners that this call may not be transcribed, recorded or broadcast without our expressed permission. A replay of the call will be available until March 12, 2026. We take no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear in transcripts of this call by third parties. Our remarks for the Q&A that follows are copyrighted today by Burlington Stores.

Remarks made on this call concerning future expectations, events, strategies, objectives, trends or projected financial results are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those that are projected in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include those that are described in the company's 10-K and in our other filings with the SEC, all of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference. Please note that the financial results and expectations we discuss today are on a continuing operations basis. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures we discuss today to GAAP measures are included in today's press release.

As a reminder, as indicated in this morning's press release, all profitability metrics discussed in this call exclude costs associated with bankruptcy acquired leases. These pretax costs amounted to $8 million and $5 million during the fiscal fourth quarter of 2025 and 2024, respectively, and $35 million and $16 million for the full fiscal years 2025 and 2024, respectively.

Now here's Michael.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I would like to cover 3 topics this morning. Firstly, I will discuss our fourth quarter results. Secondly, I will review our full year 2025 results. And thirdly, I will talk about our outlook for 2026. Then Kristin will provide additional financial details.

Okay. Let's start with our fourth quarter results. Total sales increased 11%. This was on top of 10% total sales growth last year. The fourth quarter is by far our largest quarter of the year. So to grow total sales by double digits on top of double digits is especially impressive. It shows that we are continuing to take retail market share.

Comparable store sales increased 4%. We knew coming into the quarter that we were up against 6% comp growth from last year and that we had some tariff-related gaps in our assortment.

We expected our sales to be within our guidance range of 0% to 2%. So we were very pleased to handily beat this guidance and to deliver a strong 2-year comp stack of up 10% for the fourth quarter. Our buying, planning, supply chain, marketing and store teams executed very well to chase this trend. I am not going to spend a lot of time dissecting the details of our Q4 comp performance, but I would like to call out 2 important items. Firstly, our elevation strategy. This has been a focus over the last couple of years, elevating the assortment to offer better, more recognizable brands, higher quality and more fashion, all at terrific values.

There is clear evidence of the success of this strategy in our internal sales data. For example, when we analyze our sales by price point, we see that the highest comp growth rates are in the higher-priced buckets. In other words, despite the economic pressure she may be feeling, our customer is responding to the great values we are offering at these higher price points. These trends drove a mid-single-digit increase in our average unit retail in the fourth quarter.

The second point I would like to make is that although we are pleased with our ahead of plan comp growth, as we hindsight the quarter, we can see that there were important categories where we could have done more business. I will explain what I mean, and we'll talk more about this in a few moments when I discuss the full year. But before I move on to our full year 2025 results, let me just touch on Q4 earnings.

In the quarter, we achieved 100 basis points of operating margin expansion and 21% earnings per share growth. Again, this is the largest quarter of the year, so we are especially happy with this performance.

Now let's discuss our results for the full year 2025. For this discussion, I am going to read the headlines. But then I would like to spend most of the time talking about how in response to tariffs, our operating strategies shifted in 2025 and how this impacted these sales and earnings results.

The headlines are that in 2025, we delivered 9% total sales growth on top of 11% total sales growth last year. 2% comp sales growth on top of 4% comp sales growth last year, 80, that's 8-0 basis points of operating margin expansion on top of 100 basis points last year. And 22% earnings per share on top of 34% earnings per share growth last year. What really jumps out from these headline results is that we drove extraordinarily strong earnings growth on a relatively modest comp sales increase.

Let's talk about that. When we started the year 2025, as usual, we planned our business for low single-digit comp growth. So we believe or hoped that we might be able to chase to mid-single-digit comp growth for the year.

Our initial 2025 focus and operating strategies were consistent with this comp sales outlook. But then in April, things changed. The introduction of tariffs forced us to recalibrate. It was clear that if we ignored the margin impact of tariffs, then this would significantly reduce our earnings growth. Over the last few years, we have worked hard to build our operating margin. And in 2025, we decided that we were not going to allow tariffs to set us back.

So we took numerous actions to offset the impact of tariffs. We talked about these actions in our quarterly calls in May, August and November. They included pivoting away from and planning down receipts in categories which faced the greatest negative margin pressure from tariffs. These categories were mostly in our home businesses, reducing inventory levels across the store to drive a faster turn and thereby generate lower markdowns, raising retails in select fast-turning categories where there was limited resistance or pushback from the customer and aggressively going after expense savings across the P&L.

These actions were very successful. In May, despite the initial shock of tariffs, we were confident enough to reiterate our earnings guidance for the year. In August, we took this guidance up. In November, we took our guidance up again. And today, we are reporting actual full year results featuring 80, 8-0 basis points of operating margin expansion and 22% earnings per share growth. These numbers are well ahead of the original earnings guidance that we issued on this call in March last year. So let's talk about sales.

As I said a moment ago, at the start of 2025, we planned our business for low single-digit comp growth, but hoped we would be able to chase to mid-single digit. We didn't. We didn't because the actions we took in response to tariffs were a drag on sales. Of course, we knew this. We knew that cutting receipt plans for businesses most impacted by tariffs was the right thing to do for earnings growth, but that it would likely dampen our sales upside. This impact showed up in Q3 and Q4.

In Q3, unseasonably warm weather hurt our outerwear business. That can happen. We don't control the weather. But in the past, when this has happened, we have been able to lean on nonseasonal businesses, particularly home categories to pick up some of the slack. That did not happen because our home assortment was the most impacted by the shift away from businesses with the greatest margin pressure from tariffs. Without these assortment gaps in Q3, we would likely have driven more sales. That said, given tariffs, our earnings growth would have been lower.

My commentary is similar for Q4. I know it seems like an odd thing to say, given that we are reporting strong 4% comp growth on top of 6% comp growth last year. But I am convinced that we could have done even more sales in the fourth quarter. There are categories that are very important in Q4, for example, toys, gifting and housewares, where we could have done more business and driven higher comp growth across the chain. At the start of 2025, we had much higher full year sales plans for these businesses. But once tariffs were introduced, it made sense to pull back. We could have made a different decision. This would likely have delivered a stronger comp increase, but with lower earnings growth.

Wrapping up on the full year, let me reiterate that we are very pleased with our results. 80 basis points of operating margin expansion on top of 100 basis points last year, 22% EPS growth on top of 34% last year. One of the reasons why I have taken a few minutes to go through all this and to provide a full analysis of the drivers of our 2025 results is that it helps inform how we are thinking about the sales outlook for 2026.

In fact, this is a good segue to talk about that sales outlook. I tend not to use the word bullish very often, but I am going to use it now. We feel very bullish about our sales outlook in 2026. Barring some black swan event, we think that we have an opportunity to really drive sales this year, comp store sales and total sales. There are several external and internal factors that are driving this optimism. On the external side, based on our trends in the fourth quarter, our view is that our customer looks quite resilient right now.

Add to that, we expect that the current tax refund season is going to be more favorable than recent years. As we have said in the past, our core customer is very sensitive to tax refund payments. And the early signs and expert predictions are very positive. So we think there may be sales upside, especially in the first quarter.

Staying on external issues, we don't know what will happen with tariffs this year. It is very uncertain, but we believe that the industry and our supply base have now adjusted to them. And that tariffs are unlikely to represent the same margin challenge that they did last year.

Let's move on to the internal drivers of our optimism. There are 2 things to highlight. Firstly, in 2026, we will be up against our easiest comp sales comparisons for some years. In Q1, in Q3 and even in Q4, we look at the comp numbers that we posted last year, and we feel like we have tremendous opportunity.

As I explained a moment ago, in the back half of 2025, we had significant tariff-related gaps in our assortment, especially in our home businesses. These gaps held back our sales trend. Now that the industry and our supply base have adjusted to tariffs, we plan to go after these assortment opportunities in the back half of 2026.

Secondly, we expect continued progress on our Burlington 2.0 initiatives including the completion of our Store Experience 2.0 remodel for the balance of the chain. And we are also excited about the rollout of additional Merchandising 2.0 capabilities, especially regional and store level localization. Since our last quarterly call in November, these favorable external and internal factors have caused us to reconsider and take up our sales plans for 2026. That is why we are raising our comp guidance to 1% to 3% for the full year. This is modestly higher than our typical model.

That said, you can divine from my comments that we think there may be potential upside to this guidance, and we are positioned to chase the sales trend. There is one other important point to make. Although we are very excited by the sales outlook, we do not plan to go after this sales opportunity at the expense of margins. We have made huge progress expanding our operating margin over the last couple of years. We are confident that there is more to come, and we anticipate that any ahead of plan sales in 2026 will drive further operating margin leverage.

At this point, I would like to turn the call over to Kristin. Kristin?

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide more details on the financials. First, starting with the fourth quarter. Total sales grew 11% and comp store sales grew 4%, well above the high end of our guidance. As Michael noted earlier, this Q4 growth is on top of last year's 10% total sales growth and 6% comp store sales growth.

Our Q4 adjusted EBIT margin expanded 100 basis points versus last year. This was 50 basis points above the high end of our guidance. The gross margin rate for the fourth quarter was 43.7%, an increase of 80 basis points versus last year. This was driven by a 60 basis point increase in merchandise margin and a 20 basis point decrease in freight expenses.

Product sourcing costs were $232 million versus $217 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Product sourcing costs levered 30 basis points as a percentage of sales, driven by supply chain productivity and cost savings initiatives. Adjusted SG&A costs in Q4 were 40 basis points lower than last year. The leverage in SG&A was primarily driven by leverage from store payroll and occupancy costs on higher sales in the quarter. Q4 adjusted EBIT margin was 12.1%, and our adjusted earnings per share in Q4 was $4.99. Both of these were well above the high end of our guidance.

Our Q4 adjusted EPS represents a 21% increase versus the prior year. At the end of the quarter, comparable store inventories were up 12% versus the end of the fourth quarter in 2024. Our reserve inventory was 40% of our total inventory versus 46% of our inventory last year. We are very happy with the quality of the merchandise, the brands and the values that we have in reserve. We ended the quarter in a very strong liquidity position with approximately $2.2 billion in total liquidity, which consisted of $1.2 billion in cash and $926 million in availability on our ABL. We had no borrowings outstanding at the end of the quarter on our ABL.

During the quarter, we repurchased $59 million in common stock, bringing our annual share repurchases to $251 million. At the end of Q4, we had $385 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization, which expires in May of 2027. In Q4, we opened one net new store, bringing our store count at the end of the year to 1,212 stores. In Q4, we had 2 new store openings and one closing.

I'll now move on to discuss our full year 2025 results. Total sales increased 9% on top of 11% in 2024. Comp store sales increased 2% on top of 4% in 2024. Our operating margin for the full year expanded by 80 basis points.

Merchandise margin increased by 40 basis points despite the negative impact from tariffs. Freight expenses improved by 20 basis points, and product sourcing costs levered by 20 basis points. We also achieved 30 basis points of leverage on adjusted SG&A. This leverage was offset by 20 basis points of deleverage and higher depreciation and amortization costs. In terms of store openings for the full year, we opened 131 new stores while relocating 18 stores and closing 9 stores, adding 104 net new stores to our fleet.

I'll now move on to our 2026 guidance. This guidance excludes expenses associated with bankruptcy acquired leases of approximately $8 million in 2026 versus $35 million in 2025. For 2026, we expect total sales growth in the range of 8% to 10%. This assumes 110 net new store openings. We anticipate that approximately 60% of these new stores will open in the first half of the year, with the balance opening in the fall. We are forecasting comp store sales for the full year to increase 1% to 3% and our adjusted EBIT margin to be in the range of flat to an increase of 20 basis points versus last year.

This results in adjusted earnings per share guidance in the range of $10.95 to $11.45, an expected increase of 8% to 13%. Capital expenditures, net of landlord allowances, are expected to be approximately $875 million in fiscal 2026.

I would now like to move on to guidance for the first quarter of 2026. This Q1 guidance excludes expenses associated with bankruptcy acquired leases of approximately $6 million each in 2026 and 2025. We expect total sales to increase 9% to 11%. Comp store sales are assumed to increase 2% to 4% for Q1. We are expecting adjusted EBIT margin to be in the range of down 60 to down 100 basis points over the first quarter of 2025, which results in an adjusted EPS outlook in the range of $1.60 to $1.75 versus last year's first quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.67.

I would now like to turn the call back over to Michael.

Thank you, Kristin. Before I turn the call over to questions, I would like to reinforce a few of the key points that we have discussed this morning. Firstly, we are very happy with our Q4 performance, 11% total sales growth, 4% comp sales growth, 10% 2-year comp stack, 100 basis points of operating margin expansion and 21% increase in earnings per share.

Secondly, we are also pleased with our full year results. We achieved 80 basis points of operating margin expansion on top of 100 basis points last year and 22% earnings per share growth on top of 34% last year. In 2025, in response to tariffs, we had to adjust and make choices. We took actions to address the margin impact of tariffs and to drive earnings growth. The results are clear. This strategy was spectacularly successful.

And thirdly, we are feeling bullish about 2026. There are external and internal factors that are driving this optimism. We think there may be upside to our sales guidance, and we anticipate that any ahead of planned sales should help drive additional operating margin expansion.

I would now like to turn the call over for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss of JPMorgan.

And congrats on another nice quarter. So Michael, to break down the fourth quarter further, could you elaborate on what drove your ahead of planned sales? And in particular, what makes you think that you could have done even more sales in the fourth quarter than your reported results?

Well, thank you for the question. As I said in the script, overall, we were very pleased with our trend in Q4, a strong 4% comp growth on top of 6% comp growth last year, so a 10% 2-year stack. That said, the breakdown of this comp growth by business was very, very different to how we had originally planned it. Let me explain that.

Over the last few years, we have had enormous success growing our home businesses, especially in the back half of the year. Home has been a real engine of growth for us with categories such as gifting, home decor, housewares, bedding, toys and seasonal decor.

Now our original plan for 2025 was to significantly expand those areas starting in Q3 and then into Q4. We believed that we had a significant sales opportunity. Now with the introduction of tariffs in the spring, we faced a different set of economic choices. If we've maintained our original plans in those areas, we could have driven higher sales. But because of tariffs, we had to adjust.

The way I think about this is our mission is not just to chase sales, is to chase profitable sales. And looking back, I'm very pleased with how smartly and flexibly our teams responded in that situation. When tariffs were announced, we set about remixing our plans to focus on businesses that were less impacted by tariffs, certain categories in apparel, footwear, beauty and accessories. So not surprisingly then, coming back to your question, our comp growth in Q3 and Q4 was strongest in these specific businesses.

I would say that our merchandising teams in those categories did a great job delivering terrific assortments that drove our comp sales in the back half. The flip side, of course, was that our comp growth in our most important home and holiday categories was lower. Of course, it was. As I said, we deliberately lowered the mix of these businesses in response to tariffs. And it was that remixing that really enabled us to drive such extraordinary earnings growth in 2025.

Now the last part of your question, which businesses could have delivered more sales then? It's all the categories that I mentioned, gifting, home decor, housewares, bedding, toys, seasonal decor. Now despite the gaps in the assortments in those businesses, we still turned very fast. So that tells me that if we had more receipts, then for sure, we could have done more business. But those additional sales would have come with unacceptably low margins.

Let me wrap up my answer by looking forward though. We're excited for 2026. The math is different now. The industry has had the chance to adjust to tariffs. Tariffs are still here, but they're lower now than they were last summer. As I've described, last year, we started out with ambitious sales plans in our home businesses. But we had to shelve those plans in response to tariffs. That opportunity -- that sales opportunity has not gone away. And in 2026 unlike 2025, we see the chance to go after that opportunity aggressively and profitably.

Our next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow of Wells Fargo.

First question for Michael. I think I have a question on the comp guidance just for '26, 1% to 3%. It is higher than you normally give us? I know it's relatively small. But it is a deviation from your typical guide. Can you give us a little bit more color on how we should interpret this along with your -- I can't help but hear the word bullish, and I think that's a change from you as well. So just how should we interpret this?

Yes. Ike, yes, growing up in the U.K. bullish isn't really part of the vocabulary. But yes, I'm using bullish this time around. So let me answer your question. As you know, we typically plan our business and guide to flat to 2% comp growth with the goal being to change any sales upside. In the fall, when we started to put together our 2026 budget, flat to 2% was our starting point. And that was the -- obviously, that was the initial guide that we discussed in November. So over the last few months, we've had a chance to sort of really look at the outlook for 2026. And obviously, we've torn apart and analyzed our 2025 performance.

Now based on all that, we see a lot of potential upside. Again, as I said in the prepared remarks, there are sort of external and internal factors that are driving our optimism. On the external side, based on our fourth quarter sales trends, our customer looks pretty resilient to us. We also -- we think that tax refunds are likely to create some momentum, certainly in the first quarter. And while we don't know what will happen with tariffs, we think they're unlikely to present the same margin challenge that they did last year.

Now on the internal side, specific to Burlington, if you like, as we look at Q1, Q3 and even Q4, we see an opportunity to drive sales as we lap issues in those quarters, especially tariff-related assortment issues in the back half. Now with all that said, let me reassure everyone that we're an off-price retailer. Our overall playbook has not changed. We're still going to plan sales conservatively, manage the business flexibly and then chase any upside. I should also make the point that although raising guidance to 1% to 3% is not a very significant change, it does matter. It gives our merchants a little more open to buy, so they can be more aggressive, especially as we start the year, as we start the quarter.

It gives them more of a head start, if you like, as they chase the sales trend. The other data point that I should call out is our inventory level. At the end of Q4, our comp store inventories were up 12%. Now that kind of increase is very unusual for us, but it was deliberate, and it's another indicator that we see potential sales upside in 2026, especially in Q1.

Got it. And then a quick follow-up for Kristin. On the margins, just the 1Q down 60% to 100%, can you just elaborate what exactly are the moving pieces there because the full year seems pretty solid, but what's going on in the first quarter that we shouldn't take note of?

Thanks for the question. It's a great question. Glad you asked. Let me start with the full year, and then I'll touch on the Q1 dynamics specifically. So for full year 2026, 1% to 3% comp store sales growth and operating margin flat to 20 basis points. Going down the P&L, we are assuming relatively flat merchandise margin as we invest and reinvest any favorability from cycling tariffs to better support, better brands, higher inventory levels in stores, all of this to drive sales.

Similarly, for the full year, we're expecting relatively flat freight and product sourcing costs, as our continued productivity and cost saving initiatives are still there, but mostly offset by new DC start-up costs this year. And then in SG&A for the full year, we expect to see about 20 basis points of leverage at a 3% comp. That's what's driving the full year guidance. And it's worth reiterating, we continue to expect 10 to 15 basis points of incremental leverage for every point of comp above the 3%.

So now to your specific question about the first quarter, it is an outlier for the year. We're guiding lower margin in Q1, but we absolutely expect margins to increase Q2, Q3 and Q4. We have some unique factors going on in the first quarter. First, we have some pressure on gross margin. We will not have anniversary tariffs, so that puts some modest pressure on markups. And we also have a markdown timing shift into Q1 from Q2.

Secondly, as it relates to our supply chain costs, we're anticipating some deleverage specifically in Q1 that's related to the start-up costs from our new Savannah distribution center, which we plan to open in the second quarter.

And then the last thing going on in Q1 is we're lapping a few onetime favorable items from Q1 last year. Michael talked about how aggressively we went after expense savings across the P&L in response to tariffs. And there were some levers that we pulled specifically in April of last year to drive savings that we're now lapping in Q1. These are the primary deleverage items that drive the down 60 to 100 basis points for Q1.

And again, just to reiterate, we do expect EBIT margins to increase to varying degrees for each of Q2, Q3 and Q4 to offset the lower operating margin in Q1 and net out to that flat to plus 20 basis points for the full year.

Your next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson of Bank of America.

Michael, we're expecting tax refunds to be much higher than last year. In 2021, you saw a significant sales lift from these stimulus checks. Should we think of higher refund checks in the same way?

Lorraine, thank you for the question. At a very high level, I would say that the answer is yes, whether it's a tax refund check or a stimulus check, it puts extra money in our customers' pockets, and that's always a good thing and helps to drive comp sales. That said, there are a couple of very important differences, I think, firstly, the stimulus checks back in 2021 were much more significant and more expansive. They went to everybody. For the One Big Beautiful Bill, it looks like there are many different pieces to it, and it doesn't affect everybody equally.

So it's difficult to tell how much it will impact our customers. Our expectation is that the impact will be much less significant than the 2021 stimulus checks. The second point to make is that the 2021 stimulus checks, they were a onetime thing. So in 2022, you'll remember, we were up against them. The One Big Beautiful Bill is a change in the tax code. And in that sense, it's permanent. So any sales lift that comes from it should be sustained rather onetime event. Anyway, I guess boiling it all down, it's difficult to know how big an impact it might have. We've built in some upside to our plans, and we're ready to chase.

And then I wanted to follow up on inventory. You spoke earlier about the comp store inventory up 12%, but your reserve penetration was lower than last year at the end of the fourth quarter. Are you happy with your inventory levels? And maybe more broadly, how are you feeling about merchandise supply and off-price availability?

Lorraine, this is Kristin. I'll take the first part of your question on inventory. Michael kind of spoke to it on the higher inventory levels in an earlier question, talking about our approach for 2026 sales guidance. But at the end of Q4, our comp store inventories, as you noted, were up 12%. This was deliberate, and we feel very good about the amount of inventory and the freshness of that inventory. The primary driver of the higher inventory is we wanted to be prepped and stock for higher traffic and sales anticipated in Q1 due to the higher tax refunds as well as the underlying trend of our business.

In addition, the other dynamic is we did a great job delivering transitional receipts in Q4 such that our assortment was fresh. There's newness in the store as we move from holiday and into spring. And we're continuing to improve our capabilities to better localize assortments by geography and climate, and these strategies contributed slightly to slightly higher comp store inventory levels at the end of Q4 versus last year. So that's on in-store inventory.

On reserve inventory, our reserve penetration was lower than last year. But at 40% of total inventory, it's really more in line with historical levels at the end of Q4. In 2023, for example, it was slightly higher than the -- we saw 39% at that time, at the end of 2023. And as we look at that inventory that we have in reserve, we really feel good about the quality and the values in the brand that will help support sales and support our ability to chase in 2026.

And then let me jump in on the last part of the question on off-price merchandise availability. I would describe the buying environment for off-price right now as excellent. I think you've probably heard the same thing from other off-price retailers. There is plenty of supply in the market across most categories. I mentioned in the prepared remarks that we think there may be sales upside in 2026.

Well, it's important to add that we see plenty of off-price merchandise availability to help fuel that sales trend.

Your next question comes from the line of Brooke Roach of Goldman Sachs.

Firstly, I have a quick question about the monthly cadence of comp sales in 4Q. In particular, I'm wondering how your business performed in January and your comp trend exited the quarter.

Brooke, it's Kristin. I'll take the question. It's a good question. As we look at it, it makes the most sense given the timing of holiday to look at and speak to November and December combined. And for that 2-month period in Q4, our comp sales increased mid-single digits. And as we got closer to Christmas, that trend accelerated. So we were really pleased with the holiday performance and the sales trend we saw, particularly given the strength of our holiday season last year.

Then as we moved into January, that strong trend and momentum continued. January also ran a mid-single-digit comp. And I'll point out that our comp in January would have been even stronger if not for the significant winter storm that impacted many of our major markets late in the month.

It was widespread and led to several hundred store closures. This disruption cost us about 1 point of comp on the full quarter and several points for the month of January. Now to the last part of your question, once we dug out from the winter storm, we resumed that strong comp store sales trend. Momentum has continued into February, such that Q1 is off to a very strong start. We have a lot of the quarter ahead of us, of course, but so far, so good.

That's great to hear. As a follow-up, I was hoping you could speak to sales trends by customer demographic. What are you seeing in terms of sales trends by different income groups? And are there any call-outs on trends for other demographic groups that we should be aware of?

Yes, Brooke, it's Michael. I'll take that. It's a good question. It's something we look at all the time. We slice and dice our internal sales data just to see if there's any -- if there are any pockets of weakness or pockets of strength. So let me tell you what we're seeing. On sales trends by different income segments, as we analyze the performance of stores based on median household income of the surrounding area, our comp sales trends in the fourth quarter were very broad-based. It's true that our stores in lower-income trade areas had a slightly higher comp than the rest of the chain, but it was very close.

In other words, all income cohorts performed well in the fourth quarter. So when you segment our customers based on household income, every segment is looking fairly resilient right now.

On the second part of your question, other demographic groups, again, there's not much to call out. When we look at the performance of our stores based on ethnicity of the surrounding area, again, the trends look fairly broad-based. For example, stores in high Hispanic trade areas, if I exclude the Southern border, those stores are pretty much right in there with the rest of the chain in terms of comp performance. So overall, as we look across demographic segments, income and ethnicity, et cetera, we're not seeing any major pockets of weakness at this point.

Your next question comes from the line of Adrienne Yih of Barclays.

It is really nice to see Burlington 2.0 kind of really coming into its own. Michael, a little bit more color on the elevation strategy. How should we be thematically thinking about the pyramid of sort of good, better, best, where it was, where it's going to? You have other off-price competitors that are doing a similar strategy, and they're also opening stores in your market. So just how do we think about how you're differentiated the product?

And then, Kristin, a little bit more on the supply chain, but maybe more from a qualitative benefit over a multiyear horizon, how do you think about productivity, capacity utilization? And are you running anything in tandem? Like are you running legacy DCs or something that we can roll off in the next 12 to 18 months.

Adrienne, thank you for the questions. Obviously, I'll take the first one on the elevation strategy. Yes, we're very pleased with what we're seeing in our elevation strategy. It's been a major focus for us for the last couple of years elevating the assortment to offer better, more recognizable brands, higher quality and more fashion, all at great values. We're very encouraged by the results.

And our internal data shows us that by elevating our assortments, we've been able to drive higher customer perception scores, stronger comp growth in higher-priced buckets and ultimately, higher average unit retail and higher transaction size, which is what you should be seeing if you have a successful elevation strategy.

Now one aspect of this that I'm especially pleased about is that we've successfully pursued this elevation strategy without taking a hit to margin. That's always been the major challenge in off-price. When you increase the mix of better brands or you raise the quality or you take more fashion risks, then that can really pressure your merchand margin.

When you elevate the assortment like that and the AUR goes up, the typical pattern is that markup is pressured and markdowns increase. It takes skill to elevate the assortment without hurting merchand margin. So the fact that we've been able to elevate the assortment and at the same time, we have actually expanded our margins is, I think, a clear testament to the strength and the talent of our merchand teams.

By offering a terrific assortment with great value at higher price points, we've been able to convince the customer to trade up and to spend more. And yes, as I say, over the past couple of years, we've elevated the assortment, but it's really important to point out that we, at the same time, have expanded our margins.

And Kristin, do you want to take the second question?

Yes, Adrienne, on supply chain, I appreciate the question. I'll speak to both qualitatively and quantitatively. We do continue to make significant progress, reducing supply chain expenses as a percentage of sales. That's certainly been a focus. We're doing this through numerous productivity initiatives in our DCs and cost savings projects across supply chain. So for 2025, supply chain costs levered 20 basis points and this was on top of 50 basis points of leverage in supply chain in FY '24. So we are seeing that leverage.

This spring, 2026, we're going to go live in our newest DC in Savannah, Georgia. We're really excited about this new asset. It's more than twice the size of our current largest DC. It's highly automated. It's built for off-price processing. Now kind of near term, as you would expect, there's significant start-up expenses associated with opening a new facility of the size, and that will drive some deleverage in 2026. And for 2026 overall, we expect supply chain costs as a percentage of sales to be relatively flat for the year as these new DC start-up costs are then offset by our continued efforts around productivity and cost savings initiatives elsewhere in the supply chain.

You see this dynamic more in Q1 where we're expecting about 10 to 20 basis points of deleverage on this line. And then as the year goes on, we expect that deleverage to moderate as we offset with these cost savings initiatives.

Now sort of on the qualitative point in your question, it does typically take 2 or so years for DC to be fully ramped up. Over time, we absolutely expect this state-of-the-art design for off-price DC to drive cost efficiencies for us, notably significantly faster processing times.

And additionally, based on the physical locations of our vendors and our store bases, we believe over time, we can see some modest leverage in freight related to this new DC. So we're continuing to invest in new distribution centers. And over time, we'll modify our DC footprint to be -- to have the majority of our supply and processing go through our more efficient DCs. That will take time, but that's the plan that we're continuing to execute.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Altschwager of Baird.

Michael, can you talk about the pipeline for new stores and relocations?

Yes. Mark, yes, I'm glad you asked this question. I am really very excited about our new store program and our new store pipeline over the next couple of years. When we -- going back a little bit, when we laid out our long-range plan back in November 2023, we said at the time that we thought we could open roughly 500 net new stores over the next 5 years or approximately 100 net new stores per year on average. Now we're running slightly ahead of this.

And not only are we ahead in terms of number of stores, number of new stores, we're also very -- it's important to say we're also very happy with how those stores are performing. We expect new stores to achieve about $7 million in sales in their first full year. Our new stores are running in line with that. We then expect them to comp above the chain for their first few years in the comp base.

And again, recent cohorts are actually performing -- outperforming these expectations for comp growth. That means that our overall investment returns for new stores are very strong, well above our hurdle rates. The other aspect of our new store program that I'm excited about and I want to call out is our store relocation and downsizing programs. As you know, we have a lot of older oversized stores in the chain. In 2025, we relocated 18 of those stores to smaller format locations, mostly in busier nearby strip centers.

Now with those relocations, we're seeing a good sales lift and a reduction in occupancy costs, so driving much improved earnings. In 2025, we also physically downsized about 20 existing stores. Now this is a new and growing program for us. When we downsize the store, we reduce the footprint of the store, and we either return the excess space to the landlord or we sublease it to a co-tenant. Now as we reduce the footprint, we refurbish, modernize and improve the reduced space.

Now with our downsized projects, we're seeing very strong returns, driven by significantly lower occupancy costs. And in many cases, we're also seeing a sales lift. We have many stores in the chain that are candidates for our downsizing program. So we expect that program to grow over time and become more important.

Now wrapping up my answer, we have -- obviously, we have a much, much smaller store base than our off-price peers. And we, therefore, have much, much more room for growth. So we're very excited about our new store program and our new store pipeline, including the 110 net new stores that we plan to open in 2026. And we're also excited by our relocation and downsize programs, as I described. These programs are not only going to help us expand our store base, but they're going to help us transform it.

That's very good color. And just a follow-up, in the prepared remarks, you talked about some of the localization initiatives and how that seems to be ramping up. Can you give us a little bit more detail there?

Yes, sure. It's actually another really great question. Localization, it's hard to overstate this, but I think localization is a major opportunity for us. It's a capability that our off-price peers have had and have invested in for many, many years. And it's an area where we, frankly, are a long, long way behind. There have been times over the last several years, there's even times now when I walk into one of our stores, say, in a beach community or in the South in the summer, I look around, and it looks like Burlington Coat Factory has come to town. So we need to -- we have a huge opportunity to improve and get better at customizing and localizing our assortment, not just based on the region and the climate, but also based on income levels and demographics of the trade area.

Now this is a business problem where people, process and technology, including, by the way, artificial intelligence can make a huge difference. And we've known for some time now that it's a major opportunity for us. Indeed, we've talked about it with investors, but we also recognized that it would be difficult for us to make significant progress on localization until we had really strengthened and upgraded sort of our foundational merchandise planning and allocation systems.

Over the last couple of years, through Merchandising 2.0, that's what we've done. And we're now in a position to really start going after localization. Now I know from experience that this is not a capability that we can build overnight. But I'm very excited about some of the initiatives that we've begun to roll out. Better store and class level planning and forecasting, much stronger localization analytics, new store assortment planning and trending, seasonal flow and event planning, assortment distortions based on income and demographics and an expansion and redesign of our merchandise planning regions.

If you go back and look at the history and the growth of our off-price peers over time, you'll see that localization was a major unlock in their evolution and growth. And as I say, we're a long way behind. We have a lot of work to do, and it's going to take some time. But I think that over the next several years, localization is going to be a key driver for us.

Our last question comes from the line of Dana Telsey of Telsey Group.

Nice to hear the progress. Your operating margins were very strong in the fourth quarter as well as for the fiscal year? Can you just walk us through the puts and takes of the margin drivers?

Dana, thanks for the question. I'll start with Q4, and then I'll go into full year. As Michael has discussed, and we've talked about on this call today, we took deliberate actions in 2025 to drive our operating margin and earnings growth. In Q4, the biggest contribution was an increase in gross margin. It was 80 basis points versus last year. 60 of that 80 basis points came from merchandise margin. Merchandise margin was driven by lower shortage as well as the actions we took to mitigate tariffs, as Michael has talked about today. The other 20 basis points came from lower freight expenses.

Similarly on product sourcing costs, supply chain cost savings helped us lever 30 basis points in the quarter. And then we achieved 40 basis points of leverage in SG&A. This was mostly driven by sales leverage in store payroll and occupancy expenses. And all of these items more than offset deleverage we saw from higher depreciation expenses in the quarter. For the full year, many of the same levers drove the 80 basis points of improvement in EBIT margin. And as a reminder, this 80 basis points of improvement was on top of 100 basis points of improvement in '24.

Gross margin for the year increased 60 basis points that was made up of merch margin, 40 basis points, freight expenses, 20 basis points. Supply chain savings drove a 20 basis point of leverage for the year with cost savings initiatives and SG&A drove 30 basis points due to many of the cost savings initiatives we put in place earlier this year that we described. These improvements more than offset 20 basis points of deleverage we saw in depreciation for the year.

And just one last point on margin. I want to reiterate that we believe the margin gains we achieved in 2025 are absolutely sustainable, and we believe we have further margin expansion opportunities ahead of us. We'll be laser-focused on driving sales in 2026, but we have opportunities over time to drive faster turn, generate more supply chain savings, leverage SG&A expenses, particularly as we deliver a stronger comp store sales increase.

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back to Mr. Michael O'Sullivan for final remarks.

Let me close by thanking everyone on this call for your interest in Burlington Stores. We look forward to talking to you again in May to discuss our first quarter 2026 results. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Burlington Stores Inc. Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to Mr. David Glick, Group Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone's participation in today's conference call to discuss Burlington's fiscal 2025 third quarter operating results. Our presenters today are Michael O'Sullivan, our Chief Executive Officer; and Kristin Wolfe, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer.

Before I turn the call over to Michael, I would like to inform listeners that this call may not be transcribed, recorded or broadcast without our expressed permission. A replay of the call will be available until December 2, 2025. We take no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear in transcripts of this call by third parties. Our remarks and the Q&A that follows are copyrighted today by Burlington Stores.

Remarks made on this call concerning future expectations, events, strategies, objectives, trends or projected financial results are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those that are projected in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include those that are described in the company's 10-K and in our other filings with the SEC, all of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference.

Please note that the financial results and expectations we discuss today are on a continuing operations basis. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures we discuss today to GAAP measures are included in today's press release.

As a reminder, as indicated in this morning's press release, all profitability metrics discussed on this call exclude costs associated with bankruptcy acquired leases. These pretax costs amounted to $11 million and 0 million, respectively, during the fiscal third quarter of 2025 in 2024, and $28 million and $9 million, respectively, for the first 9 months of 2025 and 2024.

Now here's Michael.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I would like to cover 4 topics this morning. Firstly, I will discuss our third quarter results. Secondly, I will review our updated fourth quarter and full year guidance. Thirdly, I will provide some early thinking on the outlook for 2026. And lastly, I will comment on the progress we are making towards our longer-range financial goals. Then I will turn the call over to Kristin to provide additional details.

Okay. Let's start with our Q3 results. Total sales increased 7% in the third quarter, at the high end of our guidance. This was on top of 11% sales growth last year. This means that year-to-date, total sales have increased 8% on top of 11% year-to-date growth last year.

Comp store sales for the third quarter increased 1%. We started the quarter well with a strong back-to-school trend, but in September, we saw a significant drop-off in traffic to our stores, driven by warmer-than-usual weather.

As we have discussed previously, we have very strong brand equity in outerwear. Many shoppers still think of us as Burlington Coat Factory. Outerwear is a great business and a source of competitive strength, but this means that in Q3, our comp trend is very sensitive to weather, much more so than competitors. In some years, the impact is positive; in some years, it is negative. This year, it was negative. That said, in mid-October, once the weather turned cooler, our comp trend picked up to the mid-single digits. And that momentum of mid-single-digit comp growth continued through the first 3 weeks of November.

Finishing up on Q3, I would like to comment on earnings. Despite the weather-driven slowdown in our sales trend in Q3, we still delivered margin expansion that was well ahead of last year and earnings growth that significantly beat our guidance. It's worth calling out that this was despite the considerable headwind that we faced from tariffs.

Moving on to the fourth quarter. We are maintaining our previously issued comp store sales guidance of 0% to 2%. We feel good about our recent trend, but it is still early in the quarter and, in the coming weeks, we'll be up against very strong comparisons from last year. So it makes sense to remain cautious. That said, given the strong margin and expense trends that we are seeing, we are increasing our Q4 margin and EPS guidance. To be clear, we are adjusting our full year 2025 earnings guidance passing along all of our beats to earnings in Q3 and factoring in our higher Q4 earnings outlook.

I would like to call out that we started this fiscal year with EBIT margin guidance of flat to up 30 basis points. Our updated full year 2025 guidance now calls for expansion of 60 to 70 basis points. This is despite pressure from tariffs and it is on top of 100 basis points of margin improvement in 2024. We are excited about the progress we are making on margin expansion. I will return to this topic in a few moments when I talk about our longer-range financial goals. But first, I would like to share our initial thoughts on the outlook for 2026.

We are early in the budget process, but as a starting point, we're planning for total sales growth in the high single digits. We now expect to open 110 net new stores in 2026. This is higher than previously discussed and it reflects the strength of our new store pipeline and the performance we are seeing from new stores. We are excited for these new store openings.

For comp sales, we are assuming growth of flat to 2% in 2026. This should sound familiar. It is our typical off-price playbook. There is significant economic uncertainty and we do not know how this might affect our business in 2026. So we will plan our business conservatively at 0% to 2% comp sales growth and then be ready to chase if the trend is stronger.

In terms of operating margin expansion, for budgeting purposes, we are assuming that at 2% comp growth, our operating margin would be flat versus this year. Then 10 to 15 basis points higher for each point of comp above 2%.

Before I turn the call over to Kristin, there is one more topic that I would like to talk about. I would like to provide an update on our longer-range financial goals. As a reminder, 2 years ago, we shared our objective of getting to approximately $1.6 billion in operating income in 2028. The headline is that we feel good about the progress that we are making towards this goal. We are tracking in line with where we thought we would be at this point.

We are especially pleased with the progress we have made in driving operating margin. This means that at the high end of our updated 2025 margin guidance, we will have achieved 170 basis points of the 400 basis points of opportunity that we identified 2 years ago. And of course, we will have achieved this despite negative headwind from tariffs.

Apart from margin expansion, the other drivers of our long-range financial model are new store sales and comp store sales growth. On new store sales, we are even more bullish now about our new store opening program than we were 2 years ago. Originally, we had assumed that we would open 100 net new stores a year in the period 2024 to 2028. In fact, this year, we will open 104; and in 2026, we are now planning to open 110 net new stores. Based on our new store pipeline, there is a possibility that we could sustain or even exceed this stronger pace of new store openings.

The other major driver of our long-range model is comp sales growth. As I discussed in the context of our Q3 results, leaving weather aside, we feel good about the underlying comp trends that we are seeing. We believe that we can achieve average annual comp sales growth in the range of 4% to 5% over the remaining years of the long-range plan, in other words, between now and 2028. Of course, we recognize there are a lot of external variables that can affect comp growth, so in the nearer term, as we always do, we will plan our business conservatively, and then chase.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Kristin to review our Q3 results, updated 2025 guidance and high-level outlook for 2026 in more detail. Kristin?

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I will start with some additional color on Q3. Then I will talk about our updated guidance. Lastly, I will comment on our initial outlook for 2026.

Starting with the third quarter. Total sales grew 7%, while comp store sales increased 1%, both within our guidance range. As Michael described, our comp trend in the third quarter fell off significantly after the back-to-school period driven by warmer weather, but then picked up to mid-single digits in mid-October.

The gross margin rate for the third quarter was 44.2%, an increase of 30 basis points versus last year. This was driven by a 10 basis point increase in merchandise margin and a 20 basis point decrease in freight expenses.

Moving down the P&L. Our Q3 product sourcing costs were $214 million, versus $209 million in the third quarter of last year. Product sourcing costs decreased 40 basis points compared to last year. This was primarily driven by leverage in supply chain through continued cost savings and efficiency initiatives.

Adjusted SG&A costs in Q3 levered 20 basis points versus last year. This leverage was primarily achieved in store-related costs. Our store teams drove significant leverage in store payroll through numerous efficiency and productivity initiatives.

Q3 adjusted EBIT margin was 6.2%, 60 basis points higher than last year. This was well above our guidance range of down 20 basis points to flat. Our Q3 adjusted earnings per share was $1.80, which came in well above our guidance range. This represents a 16% increase versus the prior year.

At the end of the quarter, comparable store inventories were down 2% versus the end of the third quarter of 2024. Let me provide a little more context here. In Q3, we saw a significant slowdown in our comp trends, a weather-driven slowdown. But using our Merchandising 2.0 tools, our planners and merchants were able to react very quickly to adjust receipts, especially in cold weather categories. So despite the slowdown, our store inventories are well balanced, current and very clean going into the fourth quarter.

Moving on to our reserve inventory. Reserve inventory was 35% of our total inventory, versus 32% of our inventory last year. In dollar terms, reserve inventory was up 26% compared to last year. We are pleased with the quality of the merchandise and the values and brands that we have in reserve. And as a reminder, we use reserve inventory as ammunition to chase the sales trend. For example, our reserve includes great outerwear buys that we made earlier this year that we've been pulling out over the last few weeks to fuel the trend since the weather turned cold in mid-October.

We ended the third quarter with approximately $1.5 billion in liquidity. This consisted of $584 million in cash and $948 million in availability on our ABL. We had no outstanding borrowings on the ABL at the end of the quarter.

During the third quarter, we repurchased $61 million in stock. And at the end of the quarter, we had $444 million remaining on our repurchase authorization.

In Q3, we opened 73 net new stores, bringing our store count at the end of the quarter to 1,211 stores. This included 85 new store openings, 10 relocations and 2 closings. We now expect to open 104 net new stores in fiscal 2025, up from our original estimate of 100 net new stores.

Now I will turn to our outlook for the fourth quarter and full year for fiscal 2025. We are maintaining our fourth quarter fiscal 2025 guidance for comp sales and total sales. We are guiding comparable store sales to be flat to up 2%, with total sales to increase 7% to 9% for the fourth quarter.

We are raising our adjusted EBIT margin and adjusted earnings per share guidance for the fourth quarter. We now expect our adjusted EBIT margin to increase by 30 to 50 basis points. This margin outlook now translates to an adjusted earnings per share range of $4.50 to $4.70, an increase of 9% to 14% versus the fourth quarter of last year.

For full year fiscal 2025, after factoring in our actual Q3 results and our improved outlook for Q4, we expect comp store sales growth of 1% to 2%; total sales to increase approximately 8%; and EBIT margins to range from an increase of 60 to 70 basis points. As Michael noted earlier, this fiscal 2025 EBIT margin guidance is 40 basis points higher than our original full year guidance at the high end. And this is despite the significant pressure from tariffs.

Finally, factoring in Q3 actuals and updated Q4 guidance, adjusted earnings per share are now expected to be in the range of $9.69 to $9.89, an increase of 16% to 18% for the full year 2025.

Finally, I would like to touch on our preliminary FY '26 outlook. We are in the early stages of the budgeting process, so this could change. But at this point, we are planning on total sales growth in the high single digits. We are assuming at least 110 net new stores. And we're planning comp store sales in the range of flat to up 2%.

For operating margin, as Michael said, we are assuming that, at a 2% comp growth, our operating margin will be flat to this year. And we expect leverage of 10 to 15 basis points for each additional point of comp.

And now I will turn the call back over to Michael.

Thank you, Kristin. Before I turn the call over to the operator for your questions, I would like to summarize a few of the key points from today's call.

Firstly, Q3 was impacted by warmer weather in September through early October. Once the weather normalized, our trend improved to mid-single-digit comp growth. And we are off to a strong start for Q4 with comps up mid-single digits for the first 3 weeks of November.

Secondly, we are pleased with our margin trends. We are updating our full year 2025 guidance to reflect the earnings beat in Q3 as well as our improved earnings outlook for Q4. At this point, we are maintaining our previously issued Q4 comp guidance of 0% to 2%.

Thirdly, we are pleased with how we are tracking towards our long-range financial goals, especially the pace of margin expansion. And within this long-range financial plan, we think there may be additional upside in terms of our new store opening program.

Now I would like to turn the call over for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss of JPMorgan.

So on relative performance, your comp this quarter came in below both of your off-price peers. This is a clear reversal from results in the second quarter and over the last year. Clearly, you cited weather was a factor. But how concerned are you by this change in your relative comp versus peers?

Matt, thank you for the question. You're right. Just to lay out the facts, we ran a 1% comp in Q3; our peers were 6% and 7%, very impressive. That's a very significant difference. I can't give you a complete bridge, but at a high level, let me try and dissect that gap.

I'll start with the obvious. We know that weather was the biggest driver of our slowdown in Q3. That's not an excuse, but it is a partial explanation. We changed our name some years ago, but shoppers still call us Burlington Coat Factory. So mild weather in September and October has a huge impact on our business. This is a real thing, and it is unique to us, I think, versus our peers.

Now in September and October, cold weather merchandise ballooned to more than 20% of our assortment. In the third quarter, our comp sales for ladies' and men's coats, jackets, boots and cold weather accessories, all these important categories were down double digits. Now they bounced back in mid-October once it turned cold, but by then, it was too late to really drive the quarter.

Let me go a little further and try to quantify the weather impact on our comp in Q3. If you strip out the drag on our overall comp from cold weather categories, the categories I just listed, and if I make an adjustment for the impact that lower weather-related traffic had on the rest of the store, then I can get to the low end of a mid-single-digit comp. In other words, I do not get to 6% or 7% comp. So in my view, weather only explains half of the gap versus peers.

Now usually, in off-price, when your comp is lower than your peers, it's just the customer telling you that they prefer the value and the assortment that they found elsewhere. In the second quarter when we ran a 5% comp growth ahead of our peers, the customer was voting for us. But in Q3, that changed. Now we have some hypotheses on why, but we have more work to do to really tear that apart and then aggressively go after that performance difference.

But before I leave the question, let me just call out a silver lining. The comp numbers that our peers have just reported reaffirm that the off-price shopper at all income levels is alive and well. Leaving aside the weather, the major implication for us is that we need to take better advantage of that than we did in the third quarter.

Great. And then, Kristin, as a follow-up, could you provide more color on the 60 basis points of operating margin expansion in the quarter, particularly just given as we think about the pressures that you faced from tariffs and the 1% comp?

Yes. First, it's worth reiterating that we really are pleased with the 6.2% operating margin in the quarter, up 60 basis points versus last year on a 1% comp, as you noted in your question. Let me provide the major puts and takes, starting with gross margin.

First, our merchandise margin increased 10 basis points. And within merchandise margin, there was a lot going on. Tariffs had a negative impact on markup, but we were able to offset this impact through numerous actions, such as negotiating with our vendors, adjusting the mix and driving a faster turn. The net impact of all this was much more favorable than we originally guided back in August. This was really driven by our tariff mitigation strategies.

Now staying in gross margin, freight levered by 20 basis points. This was due to greater efficiencies and cost savings initiatives, particularly in transportation. So our overall gross margin increased 30 basis points versus the third quarter of last year, all this despite the impact from tariffs.

On product sourcing costs, moving down the P&L, we drove 40 basis points of leverage here. This was driven by supply chain and efficiency initiatives in our DCs. We're excited about the consistent progress we've made in streamlining our supply chain costs.

And moving on to SG&A. We showed about 20 basis points of leverage here on a 1% comp. And this was driven by efficiency initiatives in stores, such as speeding up checkout times at point of sale. Offsetting this leverage was higher depreciation, which delevered about 20 basis points driven by increased CapEx in supply chain and new stores. So taken all together, this drove the 60 basis points of EBIT expansion in the quarter.

Next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow of Wells Fargo.

I guess my question, kind of piggybacking off of Matt's, is, so the comp growth in Q3 was lower than peers, but the margin and earnings were actually pretty much better. How should we reconcile that? And then really more importantly, are there choices that you made during the quarter that may have driven the higher margin in Q3 at the expense of sales?

Well, I'll take that, Ike. Thank you for the question; it's a good question. I think the direct answer is yes, there were decisions or choices that we made that helped drive our margin in Q3 but may have had a negative impact on our sales. And I'll give you a couple of examples, but maybe I should just preface what I'm going to say with a couple of points.

Firstly, our margin and earnings performance in Q3 was very strong. Margins were up 60 basis points and adjusted EPS grew 16%. We've also taken up full year earnings guidance. In other words, we've rolled right over tariffs.

Secondly, on comp sales, to reiterate, the biggest driver of the slowdown that we saw was weather. If I adjust our comp for weather, we probably would have been pretty happy with the outcome. But as I explained a moment ago, that only explains half of the gap between our 1% comp growth and our peers' 6% and 7% comp.

So if I come back to your question, yes, there were choices that we made that might explain our relatively strong margin and earnings performance and our weaker comp growth in Q3. Now these were choices that we made as part of our tariff mitigation strategies. And let me describe 2 specific examples.

Firstly, when tariffs were introduced -- first introduced, we reduced our sales and receipt plans for categories where the margin impact was too significant. We did not feel like we could raise retails in those categories and we did not want to accept the margin compression. That meant that in some businesses, especially some categories in home, our inventory levels and assortments were -- they were very light in Q3. And we saw that in terms of the sales in those categories, the sales were lower.

Now that wasn't an error. It was a deliberate decision. I would say it was an economically rational decision. And it worked. It may have hurt sales, but it drove our earnings in Q3.

Now I should add that as tariff rates have come down, we've gone back and we've taken up sales and receipt plans in most of the categories that were affected. So I would expect this impact to be less significant in Q4.

But a second example. As Kristin described a moment ago, another step that we took to help offset tariffs was to trim inventory levels in many businesses across the store and force a faster turn. Again, this helped to offset the margin pressure from tariffs. Now we only really took that step in Q3, not in Q4. We already turned very fast in Q4 so we didn't want to try and force a faster turn going into holiday. But again, in Q3, that approach drove earnings, but it may have hurt sales.

So for both of the examples I've just given, at a high level, those decisions worked. We fully absorbed tariff pressure on our margin, and we drove very strong margin and earnings growth in Q3. And all this happened actually despite a slowdown in comp sales due to weather. Normally, a slowdown like that would drive deleverage.

Anyway, with that said, we really need to do a full after-action assessment on Q3. Now that we have our competitors' comp results, we need to go back and hindsight our performance and identify anything we could have done or should have done differently.

Got it. And then maybe, Kristin, just to elaborate maybe a little more on the 2026 initial outlook, key risk opportunities in the outlook, anything else you could share?

Yes. Great. Ike, we're still somewhat early in the process. We're actively working through the budget for 2026. So let me give some headlines on how we're thinking about it.

The outlook for next year is pretty hard to predict with significant economic and political uncertainty that could absolutely affect consumers' discretionary spending. There are potential tailwinds like the possibility of higher tax refunds in the early part of next year. And then there are potential headwinds like tariff-driven price increases, which could put additional inflationary pressure on our core customer. Michael spoke to this earlier, but given this uncertainty, we're planning to stick with our off-price playbook. That really means planning comps at flat to 2% and positioning us to chase the trend if it's stronger.

In terms of new stores, we mentioned this in the prepared remarks, but it's worth reiterating, we feel very good about the new store pipeline. We are planning to open at least 110 net new stores in 2026. So combined with our comp guidance, this should drive a high single-digit increase in total sales.

On the operating margin side, as we've said, we're modeling operating margin flat to last year at the 2% comp. We do expect 10 to 15 basis points of leverage for every point above a 2 comp. And then there's a couple of things in the margin, a couple of puts and takes. We are planning for slightly higher merch margin as we look to offset any impact of tariffs, particularly as we lap the fall season next year. We're planning for continued supply chain productivity gains next year, but there will be offsets here due to the startup costs and the initial ramp-up of our new Southeastern distribution center which we plan to open in the first half of 2026.

And finally, we do expect fixed cost leverage on the high single-digit total sales growth, but we also are expecting higher depreciation, which creates deleverage. The higher depreciation is really due to the higher CapEx spend in supply chain and our increased number of new stores. Those are really the main call-outs for 2026 at this point.

Your next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson of Bank of America.

Michael, one of your off-price peers is accelerating comps with more focus on marketing, more in-store inventory and a store refresh. Do you see any risk that Burlington will lose market share?

Lorraine, thank you for the question. It's a good question. I'm going to avoid talking about any specific competitor, but I think I can still try to answer your question maybe in more general terms. I'll start by saying that actually we like innovation and fresh ideas. We believe in off-price retail, and anything that drives off-price awareness and excitement is a good thing. In fact, I'd go further and say that a strong off-price sector is important for us. So it's good that our off-price peers are achieving very strong results.

But your question was more about potential risks to Burlington. So let me come at it from that angle. I think there are 2 important points that I would make here. Firstly, when we talk among each -- to each other and when we talk to analysts and when we talk to investors, I think we sometimes talk about off-price as if it were a separate, isolated, ring-fenced segment of retail. But the customer does not think of it that way. The customer does not respect the boundaries of off-price. If she needs a pair of pants or a dress, she might shop Burlington or one of our off-price peers. But we know from our own research that she also cross-shops department stores, specialty retailers. In fact, any retailer where shale likes the assortment. She doesn't care about our off-price business definition. She just cares about finding a great deal and great value in the categories, brands and styles that she's looking for.

Now if you're an off-price -- if you're an investor in off-price, I think it's very important that you understand this. This is not like the retail market for office supplies. We aren't 3 companies just scrapping it out for market share in a limited space called off-price. It's bigger than that. We compete in a very large and competitively fragmented market for apparel, accessories, shoes, home, beauty and so on. Off-price is really just a small part of that overall market. Our opportunity is to take share from non-off-price retailers. That's what has been happening over a long period of time.

So I mean just to bring it up to -- just to throw in some numbers. Today we announced 7% total sales growth in Q3 on top of 11% growth last year. At those growth rates, it's self-evident that we are taking market share, but so are our off-price peers. These share gains are not coming at the expense of each other. Mathematically, that wouldn't be possible. These share gains are coming from non-off price. And I think that the shift from traditional full-price retail to off-price is unlikely to end anytime soon. So that's the first point.

The second point I would make is that despite everything I've just said, I think it's very important and useful for us to pay close attention to our off-price peers. They matter. They operate a similar business model to us. They've been very successful over the years and we can learn a lot from them. So if our off-price peers come up with new ways of doing things, new processes in stores, new innovative marketing programs, then we need to pay close attention. Now not all of those ideas will work, of course. And certainly, not all of them will make sense for us. But we need to be open to new ideas that could help drive our business and actually drive off-price retail in general.

Let me finish up. Again, your question was about risk to Burlington. Right now, I see off-price as a whole as being very healthy. For 2025, we now expect to grow total sales by 8% on top of 11% last year. And at the high end of our guidance, we now expect to achieve EPS growth of 18% on top of 38 -- sorry, 34% last year. Those are, by any metric, those are very healthy numbers.

I anticipate that our off-price peers are going to be successful too. But I don't see that as a risk. In fact, it's better for us if the off-price segment as a whole continues to perform well.

And I wanted to follow up on pricing. Did you take price in 3Q? And what impact did that have on your comp? And then what's your strategy on pricing for the fourth quarter?

Yes. It's a good question. I would sum up our pricing strategy in 3 words: be very careful. We recognize that because of tariffs, prices are going up across the retail industry. But we will not raise prices unless we've seen them go up elsewhere. And even then, we will test and monitor the impact of those price increases.

We've said this many times before, we have a very price-sensitive customer. We know that the reason that they shop at Burlington is that they're looking for a great deal. Our core strategy is to offer great value. And of course, that means keeping prices low.

Now our approach to tariffs this year has been to avoid retail price increases and to focus instead on finding other margin and expense offsets. Kristin described those actions earlier. We're very pleased with how that approach has worked. It's allowed us to avoid price increases but still to grow margin and earnings this year.

Now of course, we have tested some things. We've tried some higher prices. And in Q3, when we saw other retailers take prices up, we tested higher retails in some categories. But I would say that those pricing tests were in a very limited number of areas. And mostly the higher retails worked. We saw very little resistance from customers. So going forward, I would say that we will probably get more aggressive, but we kind of have to see what happens in Q4. And also, of course, we need to see what happens with tariff rates going forward.

Your next question comes from the line of John Kernan of TD Cowen.

Happy almost Thanksgiving. Michael, it sounds like you see -- thanks. It sounds like you're seeing an opportunity to take up the number of new store openings and the cadence of growth. Can you expand a bit upon this? What are you seeing in terms of the new store pipeline both from a real estate perspective and also potential new store productivity?

John, it's Kristin. I'll take this one. We're really pleased with the performance of our new stores across the board. They've been delivering results that are in line or better than expectations, as well as our financial hurdles. It really reinforces the strength of our site selection process and the appeal of Burlington really across markets.

And it's worth pointing out just some data. Our Q3 comp, of course, is at the midpoint of our guidance, but our total sales growth in Q3 was at the high end of our guidance, up 7%. And this was driven by new stores. And based on our Q4 guidance, our total sales increase is planned at 9% at the high end as we benefit from the slew of new stores we just opened in the third quarter, 73 net new.

Now as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we now expect to open 104 net new stores this year. This is a modest step-up from our original plan of 100 net new. And this increase reflects really 2 things. First, the ability to pull forward some openings that were originally slated for 2026. And secondly, the strength of our real estate pipeline.

Looking ahead to 2026, we're raising that new store target to at least 110 net new stores. This is supported by this robust pipeline but also by 45 leases we secured from the Joann Fabrics bankruptcy. These incremental sites really give us confidence in sustaining the high level of growth next year.

And as for the pipeline for 2027 and beyond, it's still early to provide specific numbers, but I will say we feel very good about the long-term opportunity. Our real estate team continues to identify attractive locations, and we already have a very healthy pipeline for new stores beyond 2026.

Got it. Maybe as a follow-up. Obviously, all 3 off-price retailers are resonating strongly with consumers. I'd like to have Michael frame the industry's opportunity. You're clearly feeling more bullish on the number of stores, maybe a little bit more cautious on comp sales, but more bullish on the potential margin expansion potential for the business. Is that the right way to think about?

Great. Yes, John, thanks for that question. It's a good question. So 2 years ago, we shared our objective of getting to approximately $1.6 billion in operating income by 2028. The headline is that we feel very good about the progress we're making towards this goal. We're tracking in line with where we thought we would be at this point.

And we're especially pleased with the progress we made in driving operating margin. At the high end, Michael said this earlier but it's worth repeating, at the high end of our updated 2025 margin guidance, we will have achieved 170 basis points of the 400 basis points of opportunity that we identified 2 years ago. And we will have achieved this despite the negative headwind from tariffs.

So really to sum up, we're pleased with the progress. But the way you characterize the long-range model in your question is about right. It's true we're more bullish on new stores, and we are more bullish on margin expansion. On the comp, we still believe we can drive an average annual comp growth of 4% to 5% over the remaining 3 years of the long-range plan. But we recognize that there is external uncertainty, so we are slightly more cautious here.

Question comes from the line of Brooke Roach of Goldman Sachs.

Michael, I'd like to ask you about the trends that you're seeing with the lower-income customer. How did these customers perform in the third quarter? And are there any other call-outs in terms of customer demographics that are worth sharing?

Brooke, thank you for the question. The headline is that we feel very good about the lower-income customer, we've been -- and the trends that we're seeing with that demographic. We've been watching this particular demographic segment very closely all year. This is a critical customer for us. Given the economic uncertainty and the cost of living issues, we've been concerned about lower-income customers.

But the good news is that this customer has been very resilient. When we look at our stores in lower-income trade areas, they continue to outperform the chain. This has been true for several quarters now. I should say, as we listen to other retailers, it seems like this is a consistent pattern. Many retailers are reporting strength in -- with lower-income consumers.

There is -- in terms of other demographic call-outs, there's one other call out, specifically relating to Hispanic customers. Again, we've been watching this demographic very closely all year. It's an important customer for us. We have many stores across the country that are in trade areas with a high proportion of Hispanic households. You may recall that in previous quarters, we've said that our stores that are in trade areas with a high proportion of Hispanic households have been slightly outperforming the chain in terms of comp growth. Well, in Q3, the trend in those stores flipped. They've gone from slightly outperforming the chain to trailing the chain. Now the change in trend for those stores varies a lot depending on the specific market and even the specific or particular location of the store. In other words, it's very localized to what's happening in those particular cities. And of course, it's difficult for us to say how long those localized slowdowns might last.

Great. And then my follow-up would be for Kristin. Kristin, can you give us more color about your guidance for the fourth quarter both in terms of comp sales and for earnings?

Sure. Let me repeat a little bit. I think it's worth reiterating some of what we described earlier. On comp store sales and total store sales, we're maintaining our Q4 previously issued guidance. So comp of flat to 2%, and total sales growth 7% to 9%. We do, as we said, feel really good about our recent trend in Q4. But it's still early in the quarter. The critical weeks are ahead of us. And in those coming weeks, we'll be up against very strong comparisons from last year. So we'll continue to take a cautious approach on sales.

On the margin side, we are increasing our margin and EPS guidance for Q4. We now expect our Q4 adjusted EBIT margin to increase by 30 to 50 basis points. We do anticipate some tariff-driven pressure on merch margin in Q4, but we expect to more than fully offset that pressure and drive overall operating margin expansion in Q4 versus last year.

And the drivers of the margin leverage should largely be similar to what we saw in Q3. We expect continued cost savings in freight and supply chain and in store-related initiatives. And finally, we should also see additional leverage in SG&A given the higher incentive comp accrual in the fourth quarter of last year.

Next question comes from the line of Alex Straton of Morgan Stanley.

Great. Michael, can you talk about the availability of off-price merchandise as you're heading into the fourth quarter? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Yes. Alex, thank you for the question. I would characterize the buying environment for off-price as very strong. Earlier in the year when tariffs were first introduced, there were some concerns, a lot of concerns about whether vendors would be reluctant to bring potentially excess merchandise into the country. But frankly, those concerns have just not materialized. Even some of the categories where supply was tighter in the summer, categories like housewares and home, also housewares and toys, have come back. I think that's probably pretty consistent with what you've heard from our off-price peers. There's a lot of great merchandise at great values, and we're taking advantage of it, both to flow to stores and to build up reserve.

Perfect. And then just on the cold weather merchandise in the quarter, is there any just additional detail you can provide on that dynamic, the impact on the overall comp for the chain? I know you've given a lot of details, but anything else worth highlighting there?

Sure. Yes. So after back-to-school, the cold weather merchandise becomes very important to our mix. As I said earlier, it expands to more than 20% of our total assortment during the quarter. Now cold weather merchandise, just to define it, includes categories like coats, jackets, boots, and accessories like gloves and scarves. So it's only stuff you need if it's cold outside. And our customer is very need-driven. For September through mid-October, our comp sales in those businesses were down in the negative mid-teens. Then in the last 2 weeks of October, once the weather turned cold, they grew up double-digit comp.

Maybe if I step back for a moment, there are 2 ways in which milder weather in September and October affects our business. There is the direct drag on our overall comp growth from lower sales in the cold weather categories that I just mentioned. That's one impact. But there is also an impact on our non-cold weather businesses. Because if you think about it, if the customer comes in to buy a coat, she's probably going to put some other things in the basket too. So if because the weather is mild she doesn't come into the store to buy that coat, then this doesn't just hurt our coat sales, it impacts other businesses as well.

Now mathematically, the drag on our overall comp from cold weather categories alone was worth about 200 basis points in Q3. If you then add the impact that lower traffic had on other non-cold weather categories, you can easily get up to a few points of comp. And I think that's somewhat consistent with the fact that we saw a bounce back to mid-single-digit comp growth in the second half of October once the weather had turned cold.

Your last question comes from the line of Mark Altschwager of Baird.

Kristin, could you give us some more detail on regional trends, category trends as well as any of the detailed comp metrics for Q3?

Mark, yes, absolutely. In terms of regional performance, the Southeast was our strongest region in the quarter. The West, Northeast and Midwest were in line with the chain, while the Southwest trailed the chain.

On category performance, we saw the strongest performance in beauty, accessories and shoes. Apparel comp slightly above the chain, while home was softer, comping below the chain in Q3.

In terms of the comp metrics, our traffic was down in the third quarter. That was largely driven by September and early October when weather was unseasonably warm. And this lower traffic was offset by a higher average basket size. For the quarter, we were pleased to see that both conversion and basket size or average transaction size were higher than last year. So this tells us that once she's in the store, she likes what she saw.

Excellent. And then, Michael, as we look at the Q4 comp guidance, do you view that as conservative just given typically less weather sensitivity in the fourth quarter?

Mark, sometimes when we give comp guidance, we'll also sort of signal, if you like, if we think there may be upside. I don't think -- I don't see a lot of upside in our Q4 comp guidance. The reason I say that is that we're up against 6% comp growth from Q4 last year. So 6%. If you take our 0 to 2% guidance, that gets you to a 2-year stack of 6% to 8%. Now we exceeded that in Q2 of this year, but we were well below it in Q3.

I should also add that when I look at our off-price peers, the way I'm interpreting their guidance, it looks like they are slightly below us on a 2-year stack basis. So even though we're happy with our recent trends and with how we started the quarter, and we're excited for our holiday assortments, we're not anticipating significant upside to our Q4 comp sales guidance at this point.

I'd now like to hand the call back to Mr. Michael O'Sullivan for final remarks.

Let me close by thanking everyone on this call for your interest in Burlington Stores. We would like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. We look forward to talking to you again in March to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.