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Amid a challenging overall retail landscape, the pace at which our jewelry industry is changing has reinforced the need to transform as a company. Fiscal 2019 was the first year of a multi-year plan to accomplish this transformation.

The Path to Brilliance transformation plan was designed by our management team under the leadership of our Chief Executive Officer, Virginia C. Drosos. The Board of Directors reviewed the development of the plan at critical stages and regularly monitors its execution. While we made meaningful progress against the plan’s goals in Fiscal 2019, we had a disappointing fourth quarter, which affected our annual results as a whole. Ms. Drosos’ accompanying letter and our Form 10-K describes our results in more detail.

The Board continues to believe that Path to Brilliance is the right plan for Signet. In Fiscal 2020, Signet has an accelerated focus on cost efficiencies to free up resources to make growth investments in the business, particularly in technology and digital platforms, to deliver a seamless and memorable shopping experience for our customers in our stores and online. By executing the plan, we are confident we can position Signet for both sustainable growth and stronger shareholder returns. Our priorities for capital strategy are to invest to drive growth, protect the business by ensuring adequate liquidity and return excess cash to shareholders.
Signet is fortunate to have a strong management team that continues to add talent and experience, seen most recently with the addition of Joan M. Hilson as Chief Financial Officer in April 2019. In line with Signet’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, I am very pleased that we have gender parity on both Signet’s Leadership Team and the Board. We also have strong, diverse leadership across our company, with women making up more than 70% of store management.