Thank you for standing by. My name is Jail and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the J. Jill, Inc. First Quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your questions, simply press star 1 again. Before we begin, I need to remind you that certain comments made during these remarks may constitute forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the private securities litigation reform act of 1995 as amended such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results that differ materially from such statements those risks and uncertainties are described in the press release and gauges sec filings the forward-looking statements made on this recording are as of June 10th, 2026 and JGL does not undertake any obligation to update these four looking statements. Finally, JGL may refer to certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures during these remarks. A reconciliation schedule showing the GAAP versus non-GAAP financial measures is available in the press release issued June 10th, 2026. If you do not have a copy of today's press release, you may obtain one by visiting the Investor Relations page of the website at jjill.com. Now let's turn the comments over to Mary Ellen Coyne, CEO and President. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. As I have said on previous calls, J. Jill is in the early stage of evolving both the brand and the business amidst the dynamics of a complicated external environment. We began 2026 with a sharp focus on expanding the customer file, making progress through disciplined execution in three key areas, evolving our product assortment, enhancing the customer journey, and advancing the way we work. This strategic framework is essential to build a solid foundation for sustainable, long-term growth. Evolution takes time and requires patience as our product and marketing strategies are introduced to both new and existing customers. Insight seen in the first quarter, particularly in stores where customers can touch, feel, and experience our new assortment, supported by our exceptional sales associates, give us confidence in our ability to achieve success. We delivered first quarter results in line with our expectations for both sales and profitability. And while it was a challenging period for a number of reasons, we are actively applying learning that should continue to drive momentum throughout the rest of this fiscal year and beyond. We know through both customer research and feedback from our sales associates that customers want JGL to evolve as their approach to building a wardrobe has evolved. But we also know that we must take care with the pace and scale of that change. We are being thoughtful about infusing newness while retaining the essential elements our most loyal customers value. From a product perspective, our assortment in Q1 reflected the start of a transition, still dominated by legacy products, but with some new styles and silhouettes representing where we are headed. Notable successes in the quarter were jackets and accessories. Accessories are only a small part of the business today, but they showed strong growth and we see more opportunity. As we know, accessories are often an entry point into a brand for new customers or an impulse purchase that reactivates last customers. In terms of key learning, Topps assortments skewed too far into shorter lengths and did not offer enough breadth in print. Another highlight in the quarter was our new-to-brand customer acquisition, which has slight year-over-year growth, driven primarily through the retail channel. Our store teams continue to perform at a high level, engaging existing, returning, and new customers, and doing a great job speaking to the brand's evolution. We saw a meaningful improvement in the profile of these new customers, who are younger than our existing customer's average age. While the new-to-brand segment of our customer file remains relatively small, we believe its growth is key to our long-term success. This progress is encouraging. We are also leveraging learning to make enhancements to our e-commerce sites, such as fabric guides, lookbooks, and stronger product storytelling, all of which help to educate online customers on our product evolution the way our sales associates are already doing in-store. While the e-commerce channel continues to be more price-sensitive, we expect these new tools and enhancements to more fully animate our product assortment and move someone from discovery to purchase, turning to our three key areas of focus. First, evolving our product assortment. We are excited by customers' initial reactions to our summer assortment so far in the second quarter. These assortments reflect better alignment between our merchandising and design teams, represent a real step forward in terms of product evolution, and are a good indication of where the brand is headed. These positive early reads are encouraging and position us for gradual sequential improvement in the second quarter and further throughout the remainder of the year as indicated in our guidance second enhancing the customer journey as part of our plan to reinvigorate the brand and expand the customer file we have already begun to enhance how people engage with JJL across channels during the quarter we saw growth in the SMS file and in March we launched a new non-tender loyalty program called J-Jill Collective to a small subset of our customer base. We have plans to roll this out and will share more in the coming months. Leading this program and all customer and marketing strategies is our new Chief Marketing Officer, Kimberly Wallengren, who joined us at the end of April. Previously with Coach and American Eagle, she brings a proven track record of leveraging marketing to drive brand evolution, boost relevance, and broaden the customer base. Kimberly's expertise is perfectly matched to our objective, and we are delighted to welcome her to JGL in advancing the way we work. In addition to developing the right strategy, we have also been building the right capabilities. Our executive leadership team has the right balance of institutional knowledge, new insight, and transformation experience to deliver on this strategy. Our strategies and capabilities will also be reinforced with new tools, starting with a merchandise planning and allocation system later this year. The new system will move us from a manual and time-intensive approach to one with more predictive and data-driven forecasting that will allow us to better assess demand planning and allocate more effectively, which we expect will support higher full-price sell-through and greater markdown yields, beginning in earnest in 2027. In summary, we are still in the early days of our transformation, but I am encouraged by our progress and the discipline with which our team is executing against our strategic priorities. With that, I will turn it over to Mark to speak to the details of the financials and our outlook.

Thank you, Mary Ellen, and good morning, everyone. For a review of first quarter performance, regarding first quarter, total company sales for the quarter were about one hundred and forty four million dollars twenty five inclusive a floor is now open for questions if you have dialed in and would

like to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue if you would like to withdraw your question simply press star one again if you're called upon asking a question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on you when asking your question we do request for today's session that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. Your first question comes from the line of Jonah Kim of TD Cowan. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking my question. How would you assess sort of the macro impact to your consumer in the first quarter and second quarter versus sort of, you know, assortment still that needs to improve?

And could you give us a little bit more color on how Mother's Day trend is for you? and it's a big event for you so what are some learnings from this year versus last year and and how you sort of evolve that event going forward thank you good morning Jonah and thanks for the question so in our most admittedly is more choiceful but what we also see is she truly believes in the hallmarks of this brand in quality and customer service and she is has had a very positive response to our latest collections. So, the way that we think about this, you know, in an environment that is challenging and promotional, we know that we need to focus internally on getting her to, on putting products in front of her that she will respond to. And that's what we've seen really as we're heading into Q2. too. We're very encouraged by the latest floor sets. What I would say is that includes Mother's Day, right? So, as we entered Q2, we saw positive reads on the floor set, certainly the one that dropped right before Mother's Day. We saw a more coordinated marketing effort this year and know that as we move forward, there is opportunity for us to continue to build on that as it is such an important holiday for us stores performed stronger than direct which you would expect again with some activations in stores that were very positive got it and then just one follow-up you know as you look at second half I mean you talked about gradual sort of improvement but what really gives you confidence in that inflection is there specific sort of product changes and marketing that you feel especially more more optimistic on

Thank you.

Sure. So, yes. What I would say is, as you know, Q1 was a period of testing and learning for us. It was the start of our evolution. The product was predominantly legacy products, but we did fast-track new categories, new silhouettes, and really are taking the learnings from that and using them appropriately as we're moving forward. A lot of learning around product specifics, around communications to our consumer. We talked a little bit about the direct business and really the things that we are adding in terms of lookbook and fabric guide to move her from consideration to conversion. So moving forward, we're taking those learnings. We're very encouraged by current results as Q2 has kicked off, assortments, assets, and we're adjusting appropriately. So we are rebalancing where we feel that we need to. We know that we did not have enough color in the first quarter. We know that she wanted more tunics in the first quarter. These are things that we have corrected as we move into the back half of the year, and we're very excited about it. So, again, you know, we continue to underscore that this is an evolution and that evolution takes time. All of that is implied in our guidance in a gradual, sequential improvement. But the way that I would say that we are very much thinking about the product and the way that we're building our product framework and strategy is around a Venn diagram that is very much 60% of what we do will be applicable to our existing as well as new customers, and then we'll have 20% on either side where we are protecting legacy and moving forward. And what we've learned is that balance in categories where we are having an assortment of silhouettes that address the middle and both ends is where we're seeing much success.

Thank you so much.

Your next question comes from mine of Janine Stichter of BTIG. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning, and congrats on the progress. I wanted to ask about the direct channel. How do you think about restoring the more full price nature of that channel, or do you think of it as remaining more of a clearance channel? And then on the stores, you lowered the outlook for new stores. I'm just curious how new stores are performing. Is this more a function of adding less new stores just based on the environment or anything you're seeing on the stores you're closing? Is there any changes to how you're thinking about the hurdles for closing units?

Good morning, Janine. So I'll kick off, and then Mark will join in for sure. On the direct channel, again, what we're seeing is stores are driving stronger results than direct at the moment. And, again, we know that we are up against a promotional environment. But as I said earlier, we're very encouraged as we head into Q2 to see some improvement in full price selling. And we're actively taking steps to make sure that we can morphally engage that consumer in the lifestyle of the brand with the things that we talked about, with a lookbook, with a fabric guide. The team has added video to the site. There are things that we're doing to really engage that customer because we know we're sitting in a promotional environment. but we know that we can stand out if we have the right product and the right messaging. So that's what I'll say about direct.

And I was just...

It's still early, but anything you can share on the initial pilot of the Non-Tender Loyalty Yeah.

So it is early days. We've had a very strong response so far. As you know, this JGO Collective is a vehicle that we will use to continue to engage and retain our existing customers and the response so far in terms of engagement has been very high so we're looking forward to rolling that out to a broader group as we progress through the balance of the year okay thanks so much your next question comes from line of Dana Telsey of the Telsey group your line is open hi good morning Mary Ellen as you enhance the product one of the categories that wasn't mentioned was bottoms how did they do whether in

skirts or in bottoms and as you see the continued enhancing of the product like the takeaways you had on shirts that were a little bit shorter what do you how much should remain the core how much should remain new do you think of it as a percentage and then on new customer additions any new demographic profile of those customers and lastly mark in terms of I think there was some marketing that goes to the second quarter, how do you think of gross margin in SG&A and eclipses and takes for Q2 and beyond? Thank you.

Good morning, Dana, and thanks for the questions. I'll start with your first, which is around bottoms, and we saw a tougher first quarter in terms of bottoms. Growth in the other category, bottoms was tougher for us, and I think from what we've read, you know, that seems to be an industry trend. We did see at the quarter progress our dress business picking up, which usually offsets bottoms, right? If they're buying one, they generally don't need the other. So, but we are, you know, we'll continue to watch as we move forward. That was one of the tougher categories. We saw great business in our jackets and outerwears we keep talking about, and again, got dresses better. To the point about core versus new, we are very measured about it. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we are making sure that the vast majority of what is in our assortment appeals to both customers. What we've seen is that when we then, in any given category, offer a balanced assortment of silhouettes, 20% leaning toward new, 20% being very legacy. but the vast majority in the middle appealing to both, that's how we're building it. In terms of shirt lengths, you know, it's interesting. A year ago, our business in tunics was terrible. We had a terrible season. And yet this year when we reduced them, the consumer came back and said she wanted more choice in tunics. So, you know, that's one that's fortunately easy to rebalance. And we have done that in the back half of the year. And so I would say, you know, and color was also a very, very obvious call out that February leading into March was too neutral and our customer response to color. And, again, we've seen that improve the Q2 business, and we'll have watched that as a percent of the business going forward. When we look at new-to-brand customers, we are very encouraged for a few reasons. One, this new-to-brand customer coming in is younger than our customer's average age. And two, she's spending higher. And so both of those things encourage us. And so as we think about marketing efforts moving forward, right, we have things like the J-Jell Collective to retain our gifting. We are focused on bringing new-to-brand in, but we are also focused on converting them to existing customers and keeping them within the brand. We're very excited about that set, which is growing and younger.

And Dana, addressing your question on spend, we did, so SG&A in Q1, we mentioned was down about $1 million, and in part by, it really was, we have our question comes from the line of Mantera Marino-Cheek of Jefferies.

Your line is open.

Thank you for taking your question. I think you just touched on it a bit just now about second half gross margins, But can we just walk through the implied second-half improvement for gross margin, especially after the improving tariff environment? Thank you.

This question comes from the line of Marnie Shapiro of the Retail Tracker. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Sorry I had to tap on one or two minutes late. I just wanted to ask, I know you had a little bit of trouble with the colors, but where you had color, from my vantage point, it sold out immediately. You had a beautiful pop and pop of pink that came in, some blues. So was it across the board, or when those colors came in, they sold and sold very quickly and at full price?

Yeah, so we struggled with color in 7 March when it was much more neutral and the colors were muted. The minute that we were selling was very, very strong, both pink solid and prints that had pink in it, followed up by a delivery that was all around a beautiful aqua color sold very strong then you know we go into Memorial Day red white and blue very red always very strong for us the color color is working and again just something that we will be very cognizant of in terms of the percent of the assortment as we move forward also I felt like in and out of your stores instantaneously could we also just talk about the customer that's looking for the deals a little bit more I guess are these newer customers that are coming in online and looking for deals or are they across the file they are across the file and it's what we you know what we've seen the last you know several quarters just continuing with the promotional cadence online being so elevated and remaining elevated. Again, what we know we need to do is we need to cut through, and we're seeing some encouraging results as we start in Q2 with some full-price selling and the direct channel. And we'll continue to really elevate that experience online. And as we bring new people in, be sure that they're having a full, you know, the true JGL experience and that they are converting at full price thank you I'll take the rest offline thanks guys thanks morning with no further questions that concludes our Q&A session and today's conference call thank you for joining you may now disconnect