Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's Second Quarter of Fiscal 2015 Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode for the duration of the call. This conference is being recorded. A rebroadcast of the conference call will be available on Thursday September 24, 2015 at 6:30 PM Eastern Time through 6:30 PM Eastern Time on Monday September 28, 2015. To access the rebroadcast, you may dial 888-843-7419 with a passcode ID of 40642689. At this time, it's my pleasure to turn the conference over to Janet Barth, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Darrel, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on today’s call are; Steven Temares, Bed Bath & Beyond's Chief Executive Officer; and Sue Lattmann, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements including statements about or references to our internal models and our long-term objectives. All such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we say during the call today. Please refer to our most recent periodic SEC filings for more detail on these risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as events or circumstances may change after this call Our earnings press release dated September 24, 2015 can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.bedbathandbeyond.com. Here are some highlights from the press release. Second quarter net earnings per diluted share increased to $1.21 in line with our model. Net sales for the quarter increased approximately 1.7% over the same period last year or 2.2% higher on a constant currency basis and comparable sales increased by approximately 0.7% or 1.1% on a constant currency basis. The company continues to model fiscal 2015 net earnings per diluted share to be between relatively flat and a mid-single digit percentage increase. Today, the Board of Directors authorized a new $2.5 billion share repurchase program to commence after the completion of the existing program, which is estimated to be in early fiscal 2016. During our call, Steven will review some highlights from the quarter and then provide an update on the strategic investments and ongoing initiatives that we believe will continue to position our company for long-term profitable growth and further enhance shareholder value. Sue will then discuss our quarterly financial results in more detail as well as review some of our key modeling assumptions for the remainder of fiscal 2015. Let me now turn the call over to Steven.

Thank you, Janet, and good afternoon everyone. We reported positive growth in both sales and net earnings per share this quarter while we continue to make strategic investments in our future and return value to our shareholders through share repurchases. As Janet said, our fiscal 2015 second quarter net earnings per diluted share increased to $1.21 on net sales of approximately $3 billion. Net sales increased about 1.7%, or 2.2% on a constant currency basis. Despite slightly lower than modeled top line sales growth, we are pleased to have generated net earnings per share within the midpoint of our range. Comparable sales increased approximately 0.7% or 1.1% on a constant currency basis. Comparable sales consummated through customer-facing websites and mobile applications grew in excess of 25% while comparable sales consummated in stores declined approximately 1%. Directionally this follows the trend of strong comps in our customer-facing digital channels and relatively flat comps in stores. As we have previously pointed out, these numbers in and of themselves are directional in assessing the productivity of our various channels for reasons such as; when an item purchased online is returned to a store results in a reduction in stores sales; or when an item is being shopped for in the store and concurrently purchased on a mobile device, it is treated as a mobile sale; or when an item is reserved online and picked up in a store, it’s recorded as a store sale. As our digital and physical channels continue to converge, the physical stores remain central to serving our customers and provide us a tremendous opportunity to be close to them. The ability to consult with our knowledgeable and solutions-oriented sales associates coupled with our in-store services, encourage customers to visit and spend time in our stores. Options such as reserve online, pickup in-store, buy online and return to store and online appointment scheduling highlight various points of interactions we have with our customers across our channels. During the second quarter we opened a total of six new stores including two Bed Bath & Beyond stores, three buybuy BABY stores and one Cost Plus World Market store. We continue to actively manage our real estate portfolio in a manner that permits store sizes, layouts, locations and offerings to evolve over time to optimize market profitability. Since the start of our third quarter, we have opened two additional Bed Bath & Beyond stores, one buybuy BABY store and one Cost Plus World Market store. Including the 12 stores that we've reopened, and one store that we've closed to-date, we continue to model 30 new store openings and approximately 10 store closings companywide during fiscal 2015. Again, the combination of store openings and closings are part of our ongoing strategy to optimize both our market profitability and market coverage. Our recent store openings included new Cost Plus World Market store that opened in Manhattan last month on 6th Avenue between 18th and 19th Street, steps away from our Bed Bath & Beyond store in the same building. This 5,000 square foot store provides a unique venue for customers to gain insight and appreciation for our product development initiatives in urban, small-space living as well as to see what's trending in home décor. The store contains a well edited mix of World Market’s home décor offerings and provides an inviting atmosphere to customers to explore, shop and make purchases in both virtual and physical environments. Similarly, we continue to be excited about our 2016 project in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is being developed to place four of our concepts under one roof. This location provides us with an opportunity to create another unique shopping venue to showcase our ever-increasing and evolving merchandise assortment as well as the services and solutions we offer. In Mexico, our joint venture currently operates six Bed Bath & Beyond stores, including five in the Mexico City market. During the second quarter, we opened in Cuernavaca, our first store outside of the Mexico City market. And we continue to be excited about our growth opportunities in Mexico and with our partners plan to open one additional store before the end of this year. As an organization, we remain vigilant in our mission to do more for and with our customers, wherever, whenever and however they express their life’s interest and travel through their various life stages. We believe we have the culture and organizational structure in place to leverage our broad knowledge and expertise in the categories for which we are best known. We strive to provide the right products, services and solutions for our customers, while at the same time continue to make the necessary investments in our omnichannel capabilities to thrive in an ever evolving retail environment. Our customer-centric culture and commitment to customer service have been the bedrock of our company from our beginning. When Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein founded Bed Bath & Beyond, they established a few simple tenets around our customers and our people. We will do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer and therefore the only unbreakable policy is that no customer should leave unhappy. We focus our investments on what will improve our customers’ experience. We are never satisfied. For us, it’s not about being the first or being the biggest, we want to be the best in providing the right products, services and solutions for our customers. And our success is first and foremost because of our people. We believe in a meritocracy, and we significantly promote from within. We believe our customer-centric culture with its never say no attitude is a key differentiator for Bed Bath & Beyond. We strive to exceed our customer’s expectation, we invest in our people and in delivering high quality products, services and solutions and we also invest in the technology necessary to enable a more seamless interaction between our associates and our customers wherever, whenever and however they wish to interact with us. We have earned the reputation for providing high quality service during important life-stage events, such as getting married, having a baby and going to college. We remain a market leader in the gift registry space and we continue to expand and improve our registry services to provide an even more convenient and noticeably better customer experience. Every day our associates must lead by example and earn the trust and loyalty of our customers. To support their efforts, our associates receive product knowledge training on an ongoing basis, to better assist and engage with our customers on the selling floor, on the phone or online to answer questions, make recommendations and provide the services and solutions they are looking for. To further support the growth in our business, we have developed a new customer service contact center in Layton, Utah, which is expected to officially open next month. Our customer service contact centers are an essential component of the high quality service and support, we strive to provide to all of our customers regardless of whether they are in a store, on the phone, on email or in a live chat and we are committed to ever improving our customer experiences across all these channels. Our mission to do more for and with our customers is also supported by our merchandising initiatives, which include introducing new categories, developing innovative products, offering exclusive products, developing private label brand and extending the quality, value and assortment of product in existing categories. We currently have hundreds of thousands of SKUs available online and/or in store for the customer to take home or to purchase through the Beyond store, which is our proprietary in-store, web-based channel that extends the isles of our Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY stores. Our associates can access the Beyond store to offer customers a broader selection and deeper assortment of products that can be shipped directly to their home. We have steadily expanded our merchandise offerings online and will continue to do so over time. Our goal is to both increase our assortment while we curate the right assortment of products for our customers. In order to do this, we constantly review, edit and refine our offering based on our buyers’ expertise, customer feedback and purchasing trend. Our newer merchandise category such as furniture, mattresses, jewelry, watches and luggage are continuing to gain recognition with all our customers and we are steadily adding new brand to the assortment. For example, we have started to add collections of Baby furniture. These items can be found on both the buybuy BABY and Bed Bath & Beyond websites. We believe these expanded product offerings are part of a natural progression of the merchandise we already sell online or in our stores and extend our ability to satisfy our customers’ interest as they travel through their life stages. Complementing our merchandise of the various service and solutions we offer, both in-store and online to assist our customers to find what they are looking for and to make purchasing decisions more quickly and efficiently. We leverage our broad knowledge and expertise to provide solutions for our customers relating to various life-stage events such as going away to college, having a new baby and getting married. Supporting our merchandising and service efforts are our initiatives in marketing and analytics. We’ve made significant investments in these areas and continue to do so. We are investing in the systems, the analytic capabilities and people to capture and leverage our data to develop a more in-depth 360 degree view of our customers. Our goal is to drive better customer engagement through continuously optimized marketing programs across all channels. While we are making progress, we still believe there is a tremendous opportunity just to improve how we personalize and target our marketing. Our marketing efforts continue to be a blend of both physical and digital program with a continuing shift towards digital marketing such as email, page search, SCO, social media, display, and affiliates in order to communicate more efficiently and effectively with our customers. Consistent with the ever increasing role of digital connections in our life, customer’s adoption of our digital channels is also improving, with solid year-over-year growth in both visits and orders in the second quarter. In particular, our mobile channel remains very strong with steady growth in traffic, ticket, and conversation rates, and we continue to optimize our mobile touch points to create an even better customer experience. The growth in our digital channels is also driving addition needs in our distribution network while we have the capability and do shift to most of our stores; we also utilize distribution facilities to ship merchandize to both stores and customers. We currently have plan in retail distribution centers including our newest facility which opened last quarter in Las Vegas. We are planning to open an additional distribution facility in the Southwest sometime during the fiscal 2016. We will also continue to assess additional sites throughout the country for the potential to gain even greatest distribution efficiencies. In addition to our retail operations, we continue to grow our complementary institutional business which includes Harbor Linen and T-Y Group by leveraging our combined expertise, product knowledge and relationships to provide products and services to hospitality, travel and other institutional customers. Before turning the call over to Sue, I wanted to mention the recent Of a Kind acquisition. Last month we welcomed Of a Kind, and their customers and emerging designers to the Bed Bath & Beyond family. Of a Kind founded by two college friends, Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur is an e-commerce website that introduces promising up and coming fashion and home designers by selling their specially commissioned limited edition items and sharing their stories. Erica and Claire are talented and passionate entrepreneurs who have created a business model with a clear point of view and sophisticated taste level. We are pleased to have their unique abilities as part of our team, the combination of a highly talented organization along with additional support now available to the Of a Kind team will enable us to do even more forth and with our collective customers. For now, the focus is on continuing to build the Of a Kind brand including the e-commerce platform, their popular Ten Things weekly newsletter and its accompanying podcast. As I said before, this is an exciting time for our Company and we’re excited about our future. We are confident that we’re making the appropriate investments to position our Company for long-term profitable growth and to further enhance shareholder value. To that end, our Board of Directors has authorized today a nearly $2.5 billion share repurchase program that will commence after the completion of our current $2 billion. Our Board took this action based upon its continued confidence in our Company’s long-term growth potential, financial outlook and cash flow generation. For paying purposes, we anticipate completing the new program in fiscal 2019. It is currently anticipated that this new $2.5 billion share repurchase program will be funded from current cash and future cash flows. That said, our Company’s Board of Directors continues to review our capital structure on an ongoing basis. I’ll now turn the call over to Sue to review our quarterly financial results and provide an update on some of our planning assumptions for the second half of fiscal 2015. Sue?

Thank you Steven. I’ll start with the review of our second quarter results and then provide an update on some of our modeling assumptions for the remainder of fiscal 2015. Net sales for the second quarter were approximately $3 billion, about 1.7% higher than net sales in the prior year period or approximately 2.2% higher on a constant currency basis. Of this increase, approximately 41% was attributable to the increase in comp sales and the remainder was primarily from new stores and Linen Holdings. Comparable sales in the second quarter increased by approximately 0.7% attributable to an increase in the average transaction amount partially offset by a slight decrease in the number of transactions. Canadian currency fluctuations unfavorably impacted our comparable sales in the second quarter by approximately 40 basis points. We had originally modeled an impact of 20 to 30 basis points. Gross profit for the second quarter was approximately 38.1% of net sales compared to approximately 38.5% of net sales in the corresponding period a year ago. Gross profit as a percentage of net sales decreased primarily due to an order of magnitude, an increase in coupon expense resulting from an increase in the number of redemptions and a slight increase in the average coupon amount and an increase in inventory acquisition costs. Also contributing was an increase in net direct to customer shipping expense. Selling, general, and administrative expenses for the second quarter were approximately 26.4% of net sales as compared to 26% of net sales in the prior-year period. This increase in SG&A as a percentage of net sales was primarily attributable to an increase in technology expenses and related depreciation. Reflecting these movements in gross profit margin and SG&A expenses, the second quarter operating profit margin of 11.7% was approximately 80 basis points lower when compared with the same period last year. Net interest expense for the second quarter of approximately $25 million related primarily to interest associated with our $1.5 billion of senior unsecured notes and from our sale/leaseback obligations related to certain distribution facilities. Also included in net interest expense this quarter was approximately $2 million of a realized loss related to the tender of certain auction rate securities as well as approximately $3 million of expense related to the reduction in the value of the non-qualified deferred compensation plan investments. This reduction was offset by corresponding benefit in SG&A and therefore did not impact net earnings. Our tax rate for the second quarter was approximately 38% compared to approximately 37.7% in the second quarter of fiscal 2014. The second quarter provisions included net after-tax cost of approximately $800,000 this year as compared to net after-tax benefit of approximately $800,000 last year due to distinct tax events occurring during these quarters. Considering all of this activity, net earnings per diluted share increased to $1.21 for the second quarter of fiscal 2015, in line with our modeled range. This includes an unfavorable impact of approximately $0.01 from Canadian currency fluctuation. Turning to the balance sheet. As of August 29, 2015, our cash and cash equivalents and investment securities were approximately $767 million. Retail inventories, which include inventory in our distribution facilities for direct-to-customer shipments were approximately $2.8 billion at cost. Retail inventories continue to be tailored to meet the anticipated demands of our customers and are in good condition. Capital expenditures for the six months of fiscal 2015 were approximately $161 million and included expenditures for technology enhancements, new stores, existing store improvements and other projects. Consolidated shareholders’ equity at the end of the second quarter was approximately $2.6 billion, which is net of approximately $194 million, representing about 2.9 million shares repurchased during the period. The Company's current $2 billion share repurchase authorization had a remaining balance of approximately $305 million at the end of the second quarter and is expected to be completed in early fiscal 2016. As a reminder, our quarterly share repurchase activity may be influenced by several factors, including business and market conditions. And as Steve mentioned earlier, our newly authorized $2.5 billion share repurchase program will commence after the completion of the existing program. Since our first share repurchase authorization back in December 2004 and through August 29, 2015, the Company has returned more than $9.1 billion of cash to shareholders through repurchases, representing over 170 million shares. We are pleased to have been able to return such value to our shareholders while at the same time making significant investments in our people and technology to position our Company for continued successful growth in the ever involving retail environment. Now, I’d like to provide an update on some of our modeling assumptions for the remaining two quarters and the full year. These include the following. For both the third and fourth quarters, we are now modeling comparable sales to increase in the range of 1% to 3%, including an impact of about 40 to 50 basis points in the third quarter and 20 and 30 basis points in the fourth quarter due to modeled year-over-year fluctuations in the foreign currency exchange rate related to our Canadian operations. We are modeling comparable sales consummated through our customer-facing websites and mobile apps to grow approximately 25% and store comps to be relatively flat for the rest of fiscal 2015. As Steve mentioned earlier, this directionally follows the trend of strong comps in our customer-facing digital channels and relatively flat comps in stores. Consolidated net sales are modeled to increase by approximately 1.8% to 4% for both the third and fourth quarters. Assuming these sales levels, we continue to model deleveraging gross profit for the remainder of fiscal 2015. Contributing to this deleverage are increases in coupon expense and net direct-to-customer shipping expense. As a percentage of net sales, we continue to model the full-year deleverage to be less than it was in fiscal 2014. We are also modeling SG&A deleverage for the remainder of the year, which includes increases in technology-related expenses and investments in compensation and benefits. As a remainder, SG&A in the third quarter of last year included a non-recurring benefit relating to a credit card litigation settlement, which is equivalent to about $0.05 per diluted share based on our modeled share count for this year’s third quarter. Depreciation expense for fiscal 2015 continues to be modeled in the range of approximately $255 million to $265 million. Annual interest expense is now anticipated to be approximately $85 million, primarily resulting from the interest related to the $1.5 billion of senior unsecured notes and from our sale leaseback obligations related to certain distribution facilities. The third and fourth quarter tax provisions are estimated to be in the mid to high 30s percent range. Net after-tax benefit due to distinct tax events are modeled to be approximately $3.7 million for the third quarter as compared to $16.7 million last year, an unfavorable difference of approximately $0.08 per diluted share based on our modeled share count for this year’s third quarter. We expect to continue generating positive operating cash flow. Consistent with our model, capital expenditures in 2015 are modeled to be approximately $375 million to $400 million, subject to the timing and composition of projects. Our technology related projects continue to represent a significant portion of our planned capital expenditures for the year and include the deployment of new systems and equipment in our stores, enhancement to our omni-channel capabilities, ongoing investment in data analytics, the continued build out and utilization of a data center in North Carolina and the continued development of a new point of sale system. In addition to our technology related projects, capital expenditures also include the opening of approximately 30 new stores companywide, including the 12 we have opened to-date and our new customer service contact center that Steven previously mentioned. We believe that fiscal 2015’s mix of store openings by concept will be relatively comparable to that of fiscal 2014. We will also continue our program of renovating or repositioning stores within markets where appropriate and we will continue making enhancements to our distribution facilities to improve capacity and productivity. Regarding our current $2 billion share repurchase program, we plan to continue to repurchase shares during the second half of this year and estimate this program to be completed by early fiscal 2016. This repurchase program however may be influenced by several factors, including business and market conditions. We are modeling diluted weighted average shares outstanding to be approximately 165 million for the third quarter and 166 million for the full year. We are now modeling an unfavorable foreign currency exchange rate impact of approximately $0.06 per diluted share for fiscal 2015 compared to our previous estimate of about $0.05 based on a revised model, 2015 Canadian currency exchange rate of approximately CAD1.32 to each US dollar. This $0.06 represents approximately $0.01 in each of the first two quarter and about $0.02 in each of the remaining two quarters of the year. Based on these and other planning assumptions, we continue to model fiscal 2015 net earnings per diluted share to be between relatively flat and a mid-single digit percentage increase. For the third quarter, we are modeling net earnings per diluted share to be approximately $1.14 to $1.21. This range results in year-over-year net earnings per share growth of approximately 5% to 11%, after adjusting for some non-comparable items. These non-comparable items total about $0.15 based on this year’s modeled share count and include approximately $0.05 due to the non-recurring favorable credit card fee litigation settlement that occurred in the third quarter of 2014, approximately $0.08 due to the significantly lower net after-tax benefit dollars planned in the third quarter of this year as compared to last year due to distinct tax events and approximately $0.02 due to the modeled unfavorable foreign currency rate impact in the third quarter of 2015. We continue to execute our mission to do more for and with our customers, while making strategic investments to position our company for long term growth and profitability. Our performance year to date reflects not only the health of our business and the underlying strength of our balance sheet, but also the progress we’ve made in further enhancing our omni-channel capabilities. As we said before, this is an exciting time for our company and we continue to manage our business for long-term performance. Please join us again on Thursday, January 7, 2016 when we plan to report our fiscal 2015 third quarter results. I would now like to turn the call back to Steven.

Thank you, Sue. As I said earlier, we have a customer centric culture and in our mission to do more for and with customers, we strive to excel in the categories for which we are best known to excite customers with additional offerings and solutions and to provide the highest level of service to create the best shopping experience. We are committed to making the necessary investments to position our company for long-term success. We are and must remain flexible and nimble to be able to respond to the ever-evolving industry landscape and we’re confident in our business model and our long term outlook. In closing, I would like to thank our more than 60,000 dedicated associates for all their efforts, which drive our company’s success. It is their passion to succeed and satisfy our customers that enables us to continue to do more for and with our customers wherever, whenever and however they wish to interact with us. Thank you for listening today and for your continued interest in Bed Bath & Beyond. Sue, Janet and Ken Frankel will be here tonight to answer any of your questions. Thank you. End of Q&A: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.