The TJX Companies, Inc. (TJX)
Q1 2011 Earnings Call Transcript
May 18, 2009 11:00 a.m. ET

Executives

Carol Meyrowitz – President and Chief Executive Officer
Sherry Lang – Senior Vice President, Investor and Public Relations
Jeffrey G. Naylor – Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Administrative Officer
Ernie Herrman – Senior Executive Vice President and Group President

Analysts

Jeffrey Black – Barclays Capital
Todd Slater – Lazard Capital Markets
Brian Tunick – J.P. Morgan
Paul Lejuez – Credit Suisse
Kimberly Greenberger – Citigroup
Evren Kopelman – Wells Fargo Securities
Michelle Clark – Morgan Stanley
Scott Kaufman-Ross – Goldman Sachs
Adrianne Shapira – Goldman Sachs
Jeffery Stein – Soleil-Stein Research
Laura Champine – Cowen and Company
Richard Jaffe – Stifel Nicolaus
David Mann – Johnson Rice & Company
David Weiner – Deutsche Bank
Daniel Hofkin – William Blair
Howard Tubin – RBC Capital Markets
Dana Telsey – Telsey Advisory Group
Marni Shapiro – The Retail Tracker
Stacy Pak – SP Research, Inc.
Patrick McKeever – MKM Partners

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to The TJX Companies'' first-quarter fiscal 2011 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode and later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press star one. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded Tuesday, May 18, 2010. I would like to turn the conference call over to Ms. Carol Meyrowitz, President and CEO for The TJX Companies, Inc. Please go ahead, ma''am.

Carol Meyrowitz

Thank you. Before we begin, Sherry has a few comments.

Sherry Lang

Good morning. Forward-looking statements we make today about the Company''s results and plans are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and the implementation of the Company''s plans to vary materially. These risks are discussed in the Company''s SEC filings including, without limitation, the Form 10-K filed March 30, 2010. Further, these comments and the Q&A that follows are copyrighted today by The TJX Companies. Any recording, retransmission, reproduction, or other use of the same for profit or otherwise without prior consent of TJX is prohibited and a violation of the United States copyright and other laws.

Additionally, while we have approved the publishing of a transcript of this call by a third party, we take no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear in that transcript. Please note that the financial results and expectations we discuss today are on a continuing operations basis. Also we have detailed the impact of foreign exchange on our consolidated results and our international divisions in today''s press release and the investor information section of our website, www.tjx.com.

As a reminder, the comparable store sales numbers that we talk about today are on a constant currency basis. With respect to the non-GAAP measures we discuss today, reconciliations to GAAP measures are included in today''s press release and posted on our website in the investor information section. Thank you and now I will turn it over to Carol.

Carol Meyrowitz

Thanks, Sherry and good morning again. Joining me on the call today with Sherry are Jeff Naylor and Ernie Herrman. Let me start by saying that it''s great to see our strong momentum continue. We delivered another quarter of above-plan results, with earnings per share up 63% over last year. We should note that we achieved these strong results on top of comparisons that were quite a bit more challenging than most other retailers faced.

Our customer traffic continued to increase significantly, which we believe indicates that consumers will remain focused on value regardless of the economic environment. Our strategies to retain new customers and continue growing our customer base are clearly working. I am going to keep my comments brief today and reiterate the reasons for our confidence in our sustainable, profitable growth; then update you on our strong first-quarter results. I will also discuss our outlook for the second quarter and opportunities in 2010.

We will continue to run the business conservatively, keeping inventories lean and reducing costs. At the same time, we are extremely focused on keeping our new customers that we have been gaining and have many initiatives underway across the company to drive results beyond our plan.

We continue to have tremendous opportunities for global growth. Before I continue, let me turn the call over to Jeff to recap the numbers for the first quarter.

Jeffrey G. Naylor