Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Signet Jewelers’ Third Quarter Fiscal 2020 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today Randi Abada, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our third quarter earnings conference call. On the call today are Signet's CEO, Gina Drosos; and CFO, Joan Hilson. During today's presentation, we will make certain forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical facts are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. We urge you to read the risk factors cautionary language and other disclosures in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly update forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. During the call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, for further discussion of the non-GAAP financial measures as well as reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Investors should review the news release, we posted on our website at www.signetjewelers.com/investors. I'll now turn the call over to Gina.

Thank you, Randi. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining today's call. I want to begin by thanking all of our team members for delivering a solid third quarter and for providing an inspiring holiday experience for our customers. I'll open my remarks with an overview of our third quarter results and then provide thoughts on the holiday season and progress on our Path to Brilliance priorities. I'll wrap up with some brief comments on our guidance before turning the call over to Joan for additional details on our quarterly results and commentary on our financial outlook. We believe that our third quarter performance demonstrates that the cumulative - progress on our Path to Brilliance transformation is positively impacting our results. The operational improvements we are seeing each quarter are contributing to higher net promoter scores improving traffic trends and better than expected financial results. While we remain mindful that we still have more work to do. We are pleased with the progress of our Path to Brilliance transformation efforts. Here are some highlights of our third quarter results. We delivered total same-store sales growth of 2.1% with brick and mortar same-store sales up in all US mall-based banners and double-digit growth in eCommerce sales. North America same-store sales grew 2.9% reflecting growth at sales Kay and Piercing Pagoda with Kay's performance driven by a strategic decision to accelerate inventory reduction and make room for holiday newness. James Allen returned to double-digit growth through new merchandise assortment and site enhancements along with beginning to lap the implementation of sales tax. Once again Signet's U.S. traffic performance was ahead of shopper track total retail traffic. I want to give a special mention to Piercing Pagoda which had its sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit same-store sales growth. Pagoda has made strong…

Thanks Gina, and good morning everyone. In my remarks, I'll first cover the highlights of our third quarter financial results. Briefly discuss the results of our recent refinancing and then conclude with guidance. In the third quarter, total same store sales grew 2.1% with brick and mortar same-store sales up 0.9% and eCommerce sales up 11.4%. In North America, same-store sales grew 2.9% with brick and mortar same-store sales up 1.6% and eCommerce sales up 13%. Kay and Jared same-store sales performance benefited from additional clearance to accelerate inventory reduction ahead of new merchandise for holiday. North America eCommerce reflected improvements at James Allen, as well as strong performance from our core banners. North America eCommerce sales excluding James Allen were up 10.6% in the - quarter inclusive of a planned technology platform change at Kay and Jared. International same-store sales declined 5.2% and continued to reflect the challenging operating environment in the UK. Revenue declined 0.3% reflecting same-store sales growth the impact of net store closures and the impact of foreign exchange. Non-GAAP gross margin is flat to prior year with procurement related transformation cost savings and higher credit revenue share payments offsetting a lower merchandise margin. The lower merchandise margin in the third quarter included the impact of Kay and Jared inventory reduction efforts. Additionally, the positive brick and mortar same-store sales performance resulted in leverage of our store occupancy costs. SG&A was down $12 million or 0.9% of sales on a year-over-year basis. This performance was driven by lower corporate and indirect spend as well as lower store staff costs, primarily due to store closures, partially offset by $12 million increase in advertising. Non-GAAP operating loss improved year-over-year, reflecting the benefit of cost savings and a lower net impact of credit somewhat offset by higher levels of…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Paul Lejuez with Citigroup. Paul, your line is open.

Just wanted to circle back on your Black Friday comments, you said it was in line with expectations, so that means specifically that it was within that down 2% to 4% that you were looking for the fourth quarter. And then second, you mentioned that the Kay and Jared were driven by clearance. Can you quantify how much that did impact your third quarter comps and I wasn't quite sure I understood the comments about how the clearance activity did not impact merchandise margin or wasn't included in your comments that merchandise margins were flat, maybe if you could just expand on that a little bit? Thanks.

So thanks, Paul the comps for the quarter - the mentioned was about clearance for Kay and Jared and Kay and Jared did have higher clearance sales, clearance level of selling and it really drove their comp however underneath that. We are pleased with the performance of new product. I would say also that the Zales and Pagoda businesses were largely driven by irregular price promotional type comps and had normal penetration of clearance activity. Growth merchandise margins on a non-GAAP basis were relatively flat and - as we look at the merchandise margin. It was lower because of the clearance selling itself. With respect to Black Friday, that is incorporated into our view of guidance, but we're not giving guidance specifically are giving actual results relative to the Black Friday performance.

Maybe just one follow-up, can you talk about sales recapture from stores that are closing, maybe how much that - it could help comps this quarter even this year and what are your typical recapture rates as you look historically?

The transference rate is 30% is what we target for our store closures.

And - is that we are seeing currently?

We see that broadly in some of the older stores, the regional stores and it differs by banner calls. But we're finding our closing strategy to be effective, but that is our target for our closure. As we've also engaged in additional activity if that help us drive our clienteling and our customers two other locations which are we've incorporated that into this year, selling our sales transference and store closings.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time I will turn the call back over to the presenters for closing remarks. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. On behalf of Signet Jewelers, we thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.