Good morning, and welcome to the Macy's, Inc. 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I'm Tony Spring, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. On behalf of your board of directors, I wanna thank you for being with us today and for your investment. We'll begin with the formal business of the meeting, followed by a brief overview of the company's 2025 performance, and conclude with Q&A. Please submit your questions using the tool on the web portal. It's now shortly after 10:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time on May 15th, 2026, and I hereby call this meeting to order. I'd like to recognize our director nominees who are with us here today and standing for re-election: Emilie Arel, Torrence Boone, Marie Chandoha, Bob Chavez, Naveen Chopra, Deirdre Connelly, Jill Granoff, Rick Markee, and Paul Varga.
We appreciate the time, the insight, and the leadership that you bring to the board and its committees. We're grateful for your willingness to continue to serve our company. I'd also like to acknowledge Rick Clark, Doug Sesler, and Tracey Zhen, who are not standing for re-election. Their terms will expire at the close of today's annual meeting. On behalf of the entire board and everyone at Macy's, Inc., I want to extend our sincere gratitude for your service and commitment to our company. I'll now turn things over to Tracy Preston, our Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, to conduct the formal business of the meeting. Tracy?
Thank you, Tony. As a reminder to everyone, the polls opened at the start of the meeting and will remain available until we finish presenting the proposals for shareholder vote. We are also joined today by KPMG LLP, our independent auditors. The board of directors set March 19, 2026, as the record date for determining the shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting. Broadridge Financial Solutions has provided me with an affidavit regarding the mailing of the proxy statement and the annual report on Form 10-K. Computershare, our transfer agent for common stock, has supplied a certified list of the company's common stockholders as of the close of business on March 19, 2026. Tracy Oats, a representative of Broadridge Financial Solutions, has been designated by the board of directors as the judge of election.
Our judge of election has advised that a quorum of the outstanding shares entitled to vote is present. We will follow the agenda and meeting rules posted on the meeting web portal. There are 4 proposals before shareholders at this meeting. Item 1: election of the 10 directors named in the proxy statement to serve on the company's board of directors for a one-year term expiring at the 2027 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Item 2: ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as Macy's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending January 30th, 2027. Item 3: advisory approval of the compensation of our named executive officers. Item 4: approval of the amended and restated Macy's, Inc. 2024 Equity and Incentive Compensation Plan.
If you have not yet voted or if you would like to change a vote you already submitted, you may do so by selecting the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions. If you have previously voted, including by proxy, and do not wish to make changes, no further action is required. We will pause for a moment as voting concludes. I now declare the polls closed and will announce the voting results. We have been informed by the Inspector of Elections that the preliminary vote report indicates the nominees for election to the board have been duly elected. The appointment of KPMG LLP as Macy's, Inc.'s independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending January 30, 2027, has been ratified.
The advisory vote on the named executive officer compensation has been approved, and the amended and related, excuse me, amended and restated Macy's, Inc. 2024 Equity and Incentive Compensation Plan has been approved. We will report the final voting results in a Form 8-K to be filed within four business days. I will now turn it back to our Chairman and CEO, Tony Spring, to continue our remarks.
Thank you, Tracy. With no further business before the meeting, the 2026 Annual Macy's Shareholder Meeting is adjourned. Before we conclude, I'd like to reflect on our 2025 performance and the continued advancements we've made executing our Bold New Chapter strategy. Fiscal 2025 was a year of transformation and solid execution for Macy's, Inc. During the year, we built on the strength of an improved omnichannel shopping experience as customers responded favorably for our merchandise, marketing, and promotional events. Our strategy gained traction as we navigated uncertainty, including unexpected tariff headwinds. Despite these challenges, we strengthened our go-forward business and made meaningful progress toward our long-term goal of sustainable, profitable growth, supported by our strong balance sheet. In 2025, we returned Macy's, Inc. and the Macy's nameplate to growth with positive comparable sales, an important inflection point for our business.
We achieved better than expected top line and bottom line results in every quarter, demonstrating strong and consistent execution. Macy's delivered $21.8 billion in net sales and returned to positive annual comparable sales growth of 1.5%. We achieved comparable sales growth across Macy's reimagined 125 locations, Bloomingdale's, Bluemercury, and each of our digital channels. Our disciplined execution contributed to GAAP and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.32. We maintained a strong balance sheet, ending the year with $1.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and generated $1.4 billion in operating cash flow versus $1.3 billion last year. At the same time, we maintained our track record of returning capital to shareholders, including $251 million in share repurchases and $197 million in dividends.
Since reinstating our dividend in 2021, we've increased the annual payout by approximately 27%. Looking ahead, we intend to continue delivering value through consistent dividends and share repurchases whenever appropriate. I'm enthusiastic about the momentum we have built. Our focus on the fundamentals, delivering relevant product, improving and personalizing the customer experience, and optimizing our omnichannel model is strengthening customer engagement across Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Bluemercury, and giving customers more reasons to shop our brands. Let me share more detail on the advances we've made across our three strategic pillars. First, we took steps to strengthen and reimagine the Macy's nameplate. During fiscal 2025, our go-forward business delivered comparable sales growth in three of the four quarters. For the full year, go-forward comparable sales increased 0.6%, driven by the success of our reimagined one twenty-five locations and the strength of our digital business.
Earlier this year, we expanded our strategic initiatives to 75 additional stores, creating reimagined two hundred, which now represents nearly 60% of our go-forward Macy's fleet and roughly 75% of our go-forward Macy's store sales. Additionally, in 2025, our net promoter scores reached record levels for the second consecutive year, underscoring our deep customer engagement. These results reflect our continued work to enhance the customer experience, refine our assortments, and bring more newness and fashion into our business while also reducing redundancy, improving clarity, and increasing relevance. We expanded our brand portfolio with 60 new partners and enhanced distribution with existing leading national brands. In addition, we invested in colleague education, empowering our colleagues to deliver more seamless shopping experiences for our customers. Together, these efforts are building a more relevant modern Macy's that is delivering sustained performance.
We're bringing this to life in 2026 with Celebrations Start at Macy's, a year-long marketing events campaign. We'll feature engaging in-store experiences, including local prom events, and we've just completed our 51st annual Macy's Flower Show. Our campaign also celebrates national moments like the 50th anniversary of our 4th of July Fireworks and the 100th anniversary of our Thanksgiving Day Parade, supported by storytelling that deepens emotional connections with our brand. From everyday celebrations to our most iconic traditions, Macy's remains at the center of meaningful moments for our customers. Turning to our second pillar, we further accelerated and differentiated our luxury brands. Bloomingdale's achieved annual comparable sales growth of 7.4% and its best holiday performance in history. With record net promoter scores for the second consecutive year, we are gaining market share and reinforcing Bloomingdale's place as the leading premium contemporary to luxury destination.
We have a highly loyal and engaged customer base, excellent vendor relationships, and a clear omnichannel roadmap for growth at Bloomingdale's. Bluemercury continued to grow through its strength in dermatological skin care and fragrances, with annual comparable sales increasing 1.6%. We're encouraged by the outperformance of our new and remodeled stores as we continue to iterate on our assortments and build our client base. Across both of our luxury brands, we expanded distribution and strategic partnerships, leveraging deeper digital penetration, exclusive collaborations, targeted activations that capture market share across categories and regions. For the final pillar of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we continued to simplify and modernize end-to-end operations for all of Macy's, Inc. We improved delivery speed and increased the percentage of orders delivered within five days, driven by streamlined processes and greater use of advanced technologies.
Throughout the year, we maintained disciplined inventory management, optimizing our composition and delivering a better balance of newness and evergreen product. We ended the year with inventories down 1.3% to the prior year. A key milestone in our multi-year modernization efforts was the opening of our China Grove distribution center in 2025. This state-of-the-art facility leverages automation to enhance speed, accuracy, and efficiency for our customers while helping us reduce our cost to serve. As we continue to build on our efficiencies of the end-to-end operations, we believe there are significant opportunities to leverage AI throughout our Macy's ecosystem. We currently have more than 35 AI use cases in development designed to enhance how customers shop, how our colleagues serve them, including our Ask Macy's virtual shopping assistant, which was introduced in the first quarter of this year.
We plan to continue scaling these capabilities as time goes on and we iterate and learn. Overall, today's Macy's, Inc. looks and feels meaningfully different than we began our Bold New Chapter journey two years ago. Our operational and financial initiatives are driving a healthier, more resilient business and positioning us to create value for our shareholders. In 2025, we made significant progress toward achieving our long-term goal of sustainable profitable growth. However, we understand there is still more work to do, and we're focused on what comes next. We remain committed to the Bold New Chapter strategy and delivering an enhanced experience for our customers through steady deliberate improvements. We've entered 2026 clear-eyed about the macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape, as well as other external factors that may influence discretionary consumer spending.
We have taken a prudent approach to our outlook, balancing the confidence in our Bold New Chapter strategy momentum with the flexibility to respond to changes in the external environment. I am grateful to our teams and our partners whose hard work, dedication, and resilience remain core to our success. I'm confident we have the right leadership team and strategy in place to deliver for our customers and for our shareholders. We are moving through 2026 with clarity and purpose, and we look forward to sharing updates along the way. On behalf of all of us at Macy's, Inc., thank you for your ongoing support and investment. With that, let's open it up for Q&A. Let me turn it over to Bobby Amirshahi, our Head of Communications, to address any questions.
Thank you, Tony. We have one submitted comment that I will read for you to respond to. This is not a question, but rather a statement to reflect the immense gratitude by hundreds of thousands of Chicago shoppers and tourists who are ecstatic over your initiatives, unlocking the great value of the Marshall Field's brand and experience at State Street. Please keep going with maximizing the valuable asset that is the Marshall Field's brand at State Street. I, for one, am glad to help.
Thank you for the comment. I think it underscores our commitment to not only being a national retailer, but improving the level of localization. You know, I'm proud of the fact that we have empowered our local teams to do more to connect with our customers and to be community relevant. It was exciting this year to launch our partnership with the Houston Rodeo and enhance our work with the Kentucky Derby. We've launched, as I mentioned in my remarks, prom events across the country, and we are excited by the fact that we're gonna have 65 different events that are a part of our Father's Day and World Cup celebration. We absolutely love our State Street store, the tradition and the history that it brings.
The Tiffany dome, the Burnham Fountain, the iconic clock, and Frango Mints , just to name a few of the things that are so appealing about Marshall Field's. During the 2025 holiday season, we renamed our landmark 7th floor restaurant, the Marshall Field's Walnut Room. Visitors there are now greeted by the Marshall Field's name on a beautiful plaque as they enter the dining room, in addition to the nameplate on the outside of the building. We're gonna continue to honor State Street's many traditions, including the fact that we returned the flower show to State Street for the first time since 2020 with our partnership with Coach and Fossil. We continue to hang a 5,000-sq ft American flag in the north atrium on Memorial Day. Of course, the great tree is presented as you enter the Walnut Room during the holiday season. We love our Chicago business.
We love the Marshall Field's brand, and we're committed to maintaining our impact in our local communities.
Thank you, Tony. This concludes our question and answer portion.
Thank you again for joining us at the Macy's, Inc. Annual Meeting of Shareholders. This concludes our call.
This does conclude today's meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.