You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Due to the material impact of COVID-19 on our business in fiscal 2020, we will also include comparisons to fiscal 2019 results.
We are extremely pleased to be reporting an incredibly strong start to fiscal 2021.
We took decisive actions at the start of the pandemic to protect our people, our brands and our liquidity.
This combined with our focus over the past year on delivering happiness to our customers and investing in enhanced digital, marketing and store capabilities, as well as in our bars and restaurants, have strengthened our foundation for profitable growth.
As consumers have become increasingly more comfortable returning to physical shopping, our overall engagement levels have greatly accelerated, leading to strong momentum across our entire portfolio of brands.
Given conditions last year, it is not surprising that we were able to post strong sales gains across all brands and all channels of distribution during the first quarter of fiscal 2021 as compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2020.
What's much more impressive about our first quarter 2021 performance is how it compares to the first quarter of 2019.
We believe that the comparison to 2019 is much more informative for most purposes than comparing to 2020.
Accordingly, during our discussion today, we will focus on the positive traction we have made toward returning to and even exceeding our 2019 levels of performance.
First quarter sales came in at $266 million compared to $282 million in fiscal 2019 and versus our guidance range of $220 million to $240 million.
It is worth noting that $14 million of the $16 million sales decrease from the first quarter of fiscal 2019 is due to lower sales in Lanier Apparel, which, as you know, we are in the process of exiting.
On an adjusted basis, earnings per share increased to a $1.89 compared to our earnings of a $1.30 in the first quarter of fiscal 2019.
Scott will provide more detail in a few minutes, but these results were driven by very strong performance in our e-commerce businesses and outstanding gross margins.
Our bar and restaurant business also performed very nicely during the quarter.
In our bricks and mortar stores, we generally saw a sequential improvement in traffic and sales in the quarter with regions in Florida, the Southeast and Texas showing the most strength while the Mid-Atlantic, the Northeast and the Midwest are recovering at a somewhat slower pace.
There is no question that we are benefiting from some pent-up demand so far this spring and summer and the alignment of our brands' focus on products related to travel, vacation and social occasions with the consumers' desire to travel and reengage socially.
We expect this to continue as more regions of the country begin to normalize.
That said, we believe that the results we have seen thus far this year and that we are projecting for the balance of the year also demonstrate the value of staying true to our brands during the challenges that we faced last year.
Our commitment to the happy, upbeat and optimistic messages of our brands and delivering those messages to our consumers through our products and services is paying off handsomely as the world reengages.
In addition, we are seeing positive returns on the investments we have made and continue to make in enhancing our brands' creative content in improving our omni-channel customer service and continuing to hone our digital marketing capabilities, and in our stores, bars and restaurants.
In our biggest brand, Tommy Bahama, we are anchored in the relaxed island lifestyle.
We deliver this lifestyle to our guests through our amazing products, our wonderful stores and e-commerce website, and very importantly through our bars and restaurants.
By staying true to our Live the Island Life brand message and making the types of investments outlined above, we were able to deliver outstanding first quarter results.
Sales overall came close to 2019 levels, driven by healthy gains in e-commerce and restaurants while stores in the wholesale continued to improve sequentially.
Very importantly, increased full-price selling and stronger initial IMUs, coupled with excellent expense control, helped contribute to a marked improvement in gross margin, operating margin and a 36% increase in operating income over first quarter of 2019.
We are delighted with the margins we achieved for the quarter.
Finally, we were pleased to see that while performance in our men's business was strong, our women's business at Tommy Bahama was even stronger.
We are honored to have the dedicated cadre of true Tommy Bahama fans that comprise our very loyal customer base.
That said, we believe there is room on the island to delight even more customers.
Through the investments we are making and the priorities we have established, we are intent on expanding our customer reach while continuing to serve our loyal guests.
Staying anchored to its resort chic lifestyle and as we say being the sunshine served Lilly Pulitzer very well during the first quarter.
Lilly's product priority for spring '21 was feel-good fashion with a focus on the happy color and print, easy chic comfortable pieces and a resort state of mind.
This focus together with the investments that we have made in enhancing our brand creative and enhancing our store and digital capabilities paid off in strong first quarter results.
We continue to see strong growth from e-commerce while our stores in the wholesale business continue to improve as consumers feel increasingly comfortable engaging in the physical world.
In total, first quarter '21 sales exceeded first quarter 2019 sales, and operating margin came in at an impressive 27% as compared to 21% in 2019.
Our Luxletic and lounge product continued to drive growth and we saw a healthy rebound in our dress business as for social calendar begins to fill up.
At the same time, our golf and tennis collections have also been bright spots and the consumer is showing strong renewed interest in swim as she thinks about travel and vacation this summer.
Our recent results demonstrate that we have the product she wants and our brand message is resonating with her.
We look forward to continuing to drive a strong business through the balance of the year.
Our smaller brands, Southern Tide, The Beaufort Bonnet Company and Duck Head, also had a great first quarter, all posting meaningful sales gains above first quarter 2019 levels.
All three are poised to contribute to our profitability this year.
We are very pleased with our first quarter results and are excited about the balance of the year.
Scott will provide more details in our guidance momentarily, but I will say that we do expect to have a strong year, particularly in terms of profitability.
Our enthusiasm is based on both external factors as well as the internal priorities that we have been focusing on for the last year.
I'll start with the external factors.
As the summer progresses, we expect some of the regions that have been slower to recover for us, namely the Mid-Atlantic, the Northeast and the Midwest, to pick up momentum.
We also believe that consumers will continue to have a high degree of interest in travel, vacation and social events through the year.
Finally, after a long pandemic, consumers appreciate the highly differentiated happy, colorful, upbeat nature of our brands and products more than ever.
All of these external factors portend a strong 2021.
We are also excited about the benefits we are seeing as the result of our internal priorities.
There are many, but I will highlight five here.
First, in our brand message, we are taking care to ensure that our messages are both true to our core brand values and relevant for today's consumer and marketplace.
Second, we have realigned our creative teams and are enhancing our creative content to make sure it is delivering the full impact of our powerful brand messages.
Third, as part of our effort to enhance our digital capabilities, we are improving our ability to capture and analyze customer data in a way that respects her privacy but also puts us in position to serve her in a better and more personalized way.
It also helps us identify and reach new audiences of potential customers.
Fourth, we are honing our skills in measuring the effectiveness of and optimizing the various channels, many of them digital media that we used to reach both existing and potential new customers.
Fifth, we continue to enhance our store order fulfillment capabilities.
This allows us to use inventory located anywhere in our footprint to satisfy demand from anywhere.
The implications for inventory efficiency sell-through rates and ultimately gross margin are huge.
We believe the combination of the positive external factors as well as the benefits from our work on our internal priorities gives us ample reason to be bullish on 2021.
In closing, please allow me to express my sincere appreciation for our wonderful and loyal customers and for our world-class employees, an incredible group of women and men who worked harder than ever over the last year and a half to deliver happiness to those customers.
As Tom just mentioned, fiscal 2021 is off to a great start with record earnings in the first quarter.
I'll walk you through how we got there.
Sales were stronger than expected, and excluding the impact of the exit of the Lanier Apparel business were comparable to 2019 levels.
Our full-price e-commerce channel was 55% higher than in 2019, with significant growth over 2019 in all of our branded businesses.
Our retail store performance reflects the significant regional differences in the pace of recovery.
We saw real strength in the Southeast and Southwest, particularly in Florida, where retail sales achieved 2019 levels.
However, we are experiencing a much slower recovery in other parts of the country where sales levels in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest while improving versus Q4, were still over 30% lower than in 2019.
Overall, our retail sales were 16% lower than in 2019.
We continue to see improvement so far in the second quarter and expect that improvement to continue as restrictions lift and as summer arrives in these areas.
Our restaurants benefited from the addition of five Marlin Bars and the strong recovery in certain regions with a sales increase of 7% compared to 2019.
All restaurants are now open except for New York, which we plan to reopen this fall.
We are particularly proud of the work we have done to improve our gross margin, which on an adjusted basis expanded 520 basis points over 2019 to 64%.
As demand remained high, more of our sales in the first quarter were at full price than in the first quarter of 2019.
Gross margin also benefited from our focus and investments in our direct-to-consumer businesses and lower sales in Lanier Apparel, which has resulted in a meaningful shift in our sales mix to these higher margin channels of distribution.
In the first quarter of 2021, our direct business was 72% of revenue compared to 64% in the first quarter of 2019.
We have also increased our IMUs by reducing product cost and selectively increasing prices.
SG&A modest -- decreased modestly from 2019 levels with lower employment costs, occupancy costs, variable expenses and travel costs, partially offset by increased performance-based incentive compensation.
Putting it altogether, in the first quarter, our consolidated adjusted operating margin expanded 410 basis points over 2019 to 15%, with operating margin expansion in all operating groups.
Our business is supported by our strong balance sheet and cash flow from operations.
Here are some highlights.
On a FIFO basis, inventory decreased 29% compared to the end of the first quarter of 2020.
Excluding Lanier Apparel, which we are exiting, FIFO inventory decreased 22% compared to the end of the first quarter of 2020.
Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer and Southern Tide each decreased inventory levels significantly year-over-year with conservative purchases of seasonal inventory and higher-than-expected first quarter sales.
Ongoing enhancements to enterprise order management systems are also contributing to a more efficient use of inventory.
On a LIFO basis, inventory decreased 36% compared to the end of the first quarter of 2020.
Supply chain challenges, including higher transit cost and production and transit delays, are ongoing.
However, our emphasis on direct-to-consumer channels gives us more flexibility on product release dates.
Our liquidity position is strong with $92 million of cash and no debt at the end of the first quarter.
In the first quarter of 2021, cash provided by operating activities was $41 million compared to cash used in operating activities of $46 million in the first quarter of 2020.
Turning to our outlook.
The positive momentum we experienced in the first quarter has continued, and we expect to deliver strong revenue and earnings in the second quarter.
Sales in the second quarter expected to be in a range of $300 million to $310 million compared to $302 million in the second quarter of 2019.
Impacting sales in the second quarter is the wind down of our Lanier Apparel business.
We estimate Lanier Apparel revenue to decline to approximately $5 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2021 compared to $20 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2019.
Strong full-price sales, a shift of our sales mix toward our brands and our direct-to-consumer channels, and higher IMUs in the second quarter are expected to contribute to a meaningful increase in consolidated gross margin over 2019.
On an adjusted basis, earnings per share for the second quarter of 2021 are expected to be in a range of $2.15 to $2.35 compared to $1.84 per share in the second quarter of 2019.
Our third quarter is historically our smallest sales and earnings quarter due to the seasonality of our brands.
We also cleared end-of-season inventory in both the third and fourth quarters with the highly profitable Lilly Pulitzer after party sales as the most notable of our events.
High sell-throughs in the first quarter and elevated sales plan -- levels planned in the second quarter are expected to reduce the availability of excess inventory for these clearance events.
As a result of lower planned revenue from clearance events in the third quarter and the impact of the Lanier Apparel exit, we are projecting an adjusted loss in the quarter in a range of $0.20 per share to $0.35 per share compared to adjusted earnings of $0.10 per share in the third quarter of 2019.
With our better-than-expected first quarter results, combined with our projection for a strong finish to the year driven by continued strength planned in our full-price e-commerce channel, retail and restaurant channels of distribution, we are raising our previously issued guidance for 2021.
We now expect sales in the range of $1.015 billion to $1.05 billion compared to net sales of $1.12 billion in 2019.
For the full year, Lanier Apparel sales are expected to be approximately $20 million or $75 million lower than 2019, with no Lanier comparable sales planned in the fourth quarter.
Adjusted earnings per share for 2021 are expected to exceed 2019 levels, benefiting from meaningful gross margin expansion.
SG&A for the full year is expected to be comparable with 2019, with lower employment cost, occupancy cost and travel cost partially offset by increased performance-based incentive compensation and investments in marketing, including top-of-the-funnel expenditures.
We now expect adjusted earnings in a range of $4.85 per share to $5.15 per share compared to $4.32 per share in 2019.
We plan to continue investing in our growth opportunities, primarily in information technology initiatives such as the redesign and relaunch of the Lilly Pulitzer mobile app and additional development of digital marketing and customer service enhancements.
We also plan to open new retail stores and a new Marlin Bar at Town Square in Las Vegas, which will replace our full service restaurant in the center.
In 2021, capital expenditures for the full year is expected to be approximately $35 million comparable to 2019 levels.

user
sees fy 2021 gaap earnings per share $4.55 to $4.85.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $1.89.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $4.85 to $5.15.
sees fy sales $1.015 billion to $1.05 billion.
q1 sales $266 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $233.1 million.

assistant