Good day, and welcome to the Cracker Barrel Fiscal 2014 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Jessica Hazel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Eric. Good morning, and welcome to Cracker Barrel's fourth quarter fiscal 2014 conference call and webcast. This morning, we issued a press release announcing our fourth quarter and fiscal year results and our outlook for the 2015 fiscal year. In this press release and on this call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures for the current fiscal year, adjusted to exclude charges and tax effects related to proxy contests. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures for the prior year, adjusted to exclude charges and tax effects related to the prior year proxy contest and severance expense as well as retroactive reinstatement of the work opportunity tax credit. The Company believes that excluding these charges and tax effects from its financial results provides information that may be more indicative of the Company's ongoing operating performance while improving comparability to prior periods. This information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. The last page of the press release includes a reconciliation from the non-GAAP information to the GAAP financials. The press release can be found in the Investors section of our Web site, crackerbarrel.com. In the press release and during this call, statements may be made by management of their beliefs and expectations of the Company's future operating results or expected future events. These are what are known as forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties, and in many cases are beyond management's control and may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. We urge caution to our listeners and readers in considering forward-looking statements and information. Many of the factors that could affect results are summarized in the cautionary description of risks and uncertainties found at the end of this morning's press release and are described in detail in our reports that we filed with or furnished to the SEC. We urge you to read this information carefully. We also remind you that we do not comment on earnings estimates made by other parties. In addition, any guidance or outlook we provide or statements we make regarding trends speak only as of the date they are given and we do not update or express continuing comfort with our guidance, outlook or trends, except in broadly disseminated disclosures such as this morning's press release, filings with the SEC or as otherwise required by law. On this call with me this morning are Cracker Barrel's President and CEO, Sandy Cochran; Senior Vice President and CFO, Larry Hyatt; and Senior Vice President of Marketing, Chris Ciavarra. Sandy will begin with a review of the business and Larry will review the financials and outlook. We will then open the call up for questions for Sandy, Larry and Chris. We ask that you please limit your questions to matters relating to the Company's performance, outlook and plans. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Cracker Barrel's President and CEO, Sandy Cochran. Sandy?

Good morning. Thank you for joining us on the call today. This Friday marks Cracker Barrel's 45th anniversary and we are very pleased to celebrate this milestone by reporting positive news. As you can see from today's press release, our fourth quarter and fiscal year were successes on many fronts. During the fourth quarter, we grew total revenue by 2.8% with comparable store growth in both restaurant and retail sales, outperformed our peers in sales and traffic as measured by the Knapp-Track casual dining index for the 11th consecutive quarter, increased operating income by approximately 10% versus the prior year fourth quarter, grew diluted earnings per share by 14% from $1.43 in the prior year fourth quarter to $1.63 in fiscal 2014 fourth quarter, opened four new Cracker Barrel stores and improved guest survey scores for both overall satisfaction and overall value. Over the course of the last year, we've remained focused and executed against the business plan that we laid out at the beginning of the fiscal year, and despite the many challenges faced by the restaurant and retail industry, we had many accomplishments during fiscal 2014. As we close out the fiscal year, I'd like to share a few of the highlights from the year. We improved our operating profit margins despite continued food commodity pricing pressure; in every quarter of the year we outperformed the Knapp-Track casual dining index; we rolled out several new systems to support operations, reduce costs and enhance the employee experience; we introduced a new menu category, Wholesome Fixin’s, to meet our guest desire for additional better-for-you menu items; we increased diluted earnings per share by approximately 13% for fiscal 2014 compared to fiscal 2013; we received the highest percentage of excellent ratings among 32 large restaurant chains that Technomic Inc. analyses; we…

Good morning everyone, and thank you Sandy. I would like to begin by discussing our financial performance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 and the full fiscal year and then our outlook for the 2015 fiscal year. As I discuss our full year financial results, I will refer to adjusted financial information for both the 2014 and the 2013 fiscal years. For the 2014 fiscal year, we made adjustments to GAAP operating and net income to exclude the impact of proxy contest expenses and their related tax effects. For the 2013 fiscal year, we made adjustments to GAAP operating and net income to exclude the impact of proxy contest and severance expenses and their related tax effects. Additionally, we adjusted for the retroactive reinstatement of the work opportunity tax credit in the second quarter of fiscal 2013. The last page of this morning's press release contains a reconciliation from our GAAP financial results to this non-GAAP adjusted information. In this morning's release, we reported fourth quarter net income of $39.2 million or $1.63 per diluted share, representing a 14% increase over prior year earnings per diluted share of $1.43. For the full fiscal year, we reported adjusted net income of $135.1 million or $5.63 per diluted share, representing a 13.3% increase over the prior year's adjusted EPS of $4.97. Our revenue in the quarter was $692.7 million, an increase of 2.8%, compared to revenue of $674.1 million in the prior year quarter. Our restaurant revenues increased 2.5% to $563.5 million and our retail revenues increased 3.9% to $129.2 million. Our comparable store restaurant sales in the quarter increased 1.2% as average check increased 3.1% and traffic declined 1.9%. The increase in average check reflected menu price increases of approximately 2.2% and a favorable mix impact of 0.9%, which was…

(Operator Instructions). And we'll take our first question from Imran Ali of Wells Fargo.

Hi good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. It just looks like casual dining industry trends have improved over the last five or six weeks. I was wondering, are there any broader consumer factors that you’d point to as potential drivers.

Well Imran we're not going to comment on the factors since the end of the fourth quarter, so I don't want to speak to that, but I can say that during the fourth quarter that we think we're pleased with the way our concept performed in what we believe was actually a challenging environment in terms of the impact that the winter weather had on travel and the disruption with school schedules and things on that but -- and the challenged consumer just economically, but we do believe that the Cracker Barrel concept being so highly differentiated, did a good job of performing in that and will continue to be able to provide value and an extraordinarily good guest experience going forward.

Okay. Fair enough, and separately, you talked about this earlier, but regarding the $50 million in annual cost savings over the next three years, how should we think about the pace in which you'd expect to deliver these efficiencies? Will it be fairly evenly spread across three years or frontloaded, back loaded? Any color would be great.

Yes, the way that we explained that at our annual analyst and investor day meeting is that we said that we anticipated that by our 2017 fiscal year, that we will achieve the full $50 million in cost savings, but that in the 2015 and 2016 fiscal year that cost savings may not necessarily be ratable. We actually have built in to our 2015 cost numbers about $20 million of the anticipated cost savings, but those cost savings are unfortunately being partially offset largely by commodity costs which we now expect to be higher than our expectations even back in May.

And our next question is from David Carlson of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Larry, quick question for you. When you exclude the changes in working capital during fiscal '14 and it seems that the dollar dividend, the quarterly dividend was paid for the full year. It appears the payout ratio as a percentage of free cash flow is around 80%. I was hoping you could discuss maybe the sensitivity of cash flows to changes in same store sales and if the economy were to weaken, where your CapEx priorities are, what discretionary items do you think you could pull back on?

Lots to that question, David. And first of all, I'll make the observation that Cracker Barrel has very stable cash flows, has a very strong balance sheet, has a lot of financial flexibility under our existing credit arrangement. So we don’t anticipate that we would necessarily have a need. If the economy were to go into say a normal recession of necessarily having to pull back on our maintenance CapEx, our new store development or on the funding of our various initiatives, nor do we think that our dividend would be at any meaningful risk.

And our next question is from Joe Buckley with Bank of America.

A couple of questions. Can you talk about the sequence of the retail same store sales numbers in the quarter? Seems [throughout] [ph] the quarter pretty strongly. You mentioned doing some clearing sales I guess type thing in July. So just talk about it. The overall comp number was pretty good but just talk about sequencing?

Well I think Joe, we had a variety of things going on. One thing that it's the way the travel sort of evolves through the quarter, we did see some shift from the travel side of our business in this quarter. I think that the delay of schools getting out, and then people had pressures on their own personal balance sheet made them in some cases, either abbreviate their travels or avoid them and that did have an impact. I think our retail sales would have even been better than they were. But I think our buyers did a good job on the assortment and as it came in through the quarter, that's really more about what was happening. The clearance activity at the end of the quarter is not unexpected. It was planned and we typically do that. At the end of the summers we're trying to take advantage of the travel and the additional traffic we are getting. Overall I'm really pleased with the progress that our retail team has made on improving both the quality and the breadth of the assortment. They are trying very hard to keep the floor fresh, changing it often to improve the way we're marketing and promoting our retail offering and I'm looking forward to even more progress as we move through the next fiscal year.

A question on the pricing assumptions in this year’s same store sales guidance for fiscal '15, guidance. Given that you just started the regional pricing, what do you think you'll realize in terms of pricing this year and will that be a little bit more backend loaded, dependent on the rollout of the regional pricing?

Yes, Joe, the test of the regional pricing started last week so we don’t have much of a preliminary read yet. We have baked into our guidance the expectation that the test is successful, that we implement it gradually over the course of 2015 fiscal year. So the impact is likely to be felt in the back half of the year more than in the front half. As we said, our same store sales guidance is in the 2% to 3% range most of that is expected to come from average check.

We will go next to Steve Anderson with Miller Tabak.

Sandy, I just remember a few months ago at the Analyst Day, you mentioned bringing out a few -- a range of mid-tier menu items I think for lunch and dinner. Are these items being tested and if so, have you noticed any shift away from the higher end or the lower end of the menu range and I have a follow up.

Steve, it’s Chris. So yes, we did certainly talk about that item being part of the three year strategic outlook and are calling for that in next year's operating plan, specifically. When we look right now at how the guest is behaving, we're not necessarily seeing a lot of trading behavior up or down. The mix is relatively stable. We did enjoy within the Q higher check driven out of our promotional offerings. We have seen that in the past couple of Qs. So we're pleased with that performance. So we'll look for midline to kind of be part of the conversation in upcoming calls.

Okay. What percentage of the average ticket has been these promotional items? I know they have been running around 9%-10%. Are you still seeing about that?

Yes, actually I believe we're even a little bit north of that right now in terms of mix for the promotions.

Okay. And the follow-up question regards the potential West Coast port closures. If I remember correctly, you are starting to ship some items out to the East Coast port, more specifically Savannah. And I just want to see what percentage of your items are still coming from the West Coast?

Yes, the percentage of the items coming from the West Coast is very small. But the reason why that was a factor Steve, and -- is because although it's two separate longshoreman unions, the longshoreman's union in Savannah had indicated that in the event of a West Coast longshoreman strike, that they would go out in sympathy. And so that although the dispute is on the West Coast, our concern was its potential impact on Savannah and other East Coast ports.

It appears there are no further questions at this time. Ms. Cochran, I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Great. Thank you. Well, thank you again for joining us today and as we move through the first quarter of the fiscal year, I'm pleased with the progress we made on our strategic priorities in 2014 and I'm excited about what we have in the pipeline to support our 2015 priorities. I remain confident that we have the right strategy and the right leadership in place to move the brand forward and to drive shareholder value. We appreciate your interest and support. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation.