Bed Bath & Beyond Inc (BBBY) 2015 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond's fourth 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 beginning on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, at 6:30 PM Eastern time through 6:30 PM Eastern time on Friday, April 8, 2016.

To access the rebroadcast, you may dial 888-843-7419 with a passcode ID of 41999782.

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the conference over to Janet Barth, Vice President Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Adrienne, 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'd 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 April 6, 2016 can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.BedBathandBeyond.com.

Here are some highlights from our financial results: Fourth-quarter net earnings per diluted share were $1.91, an increase of approximately 6.1% over the prior-year period, including approximately $0.06 per diluted share of a net benefit from certain nonrecurring items.

Net sales for the quarter were approximately $3.4 billion, an increase of approximately 2.4%, or 2.8% on a constant currency basis.

Quarterly comparable sales increased approximately 1.7%, or 2.1% on a constant currency basis.

Fiscal 2015 net earnings per diluted share were $5.10, including approximately $0.06 per diluted share of a net benefit from certain nonrecurring items.

Net sales for the full year were approximately $12.1 billion, an increase of approximately 1.9% or 2.3% on a constant currency basis, and full-year comparable sales increased approximately 1% or 1.4% on a constant currency basis.

In addition, our Board of Directors today authorized a dividend program and declared an initial quarterly dividend of $0.125 per share to be paid on July 19, 2016 to shareholders of record as of June 17, 2016.

As we know, retailing is experiencing dynamic change as technology impacts the way consumers are able to make shopping decisions and purchase services and products.

Today's call will include a detailed discussion by Steve regarding the steps we have taken to transform our business to succeed in this evolving retail environment.

Then Sue will review our quarterly financial results and provide some modeling assumptions for fiscal 2016 as well as some high-level comments regarding fiscal 2017.

I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Janet, and good afternoon everyone.

We are pleased to have completed another successful year.

Our fiscal 2015 financial performance reflects the benefit of the significant investments in our business, steady progress on our strategic initiatives, and the return of more than $1.1 billion to our shareholders through share repurchase.

As Janet highlighted, we reported fiscal 2015 net earnings per diluted share of $5.10, including a $0.06 net benefit from certain nonrecurring items.

Excluding this benefit, we were at $5.04, which marks the fourth year in a row that we've been in this $4.50 to just over $5.00 range since we entered a heavy investment phase several years ago, and we believe we can again achieve earnings per share at the high end of this range this year, and in the event our comp is higher than the 1% to 2% range we are modeling, exceed it.

Over the past few years, we have driven change throughout our organization to capitalize on advancing technologies.

We have made tremendous progress in the transformation of our Company to better serve our customers in an ever-evolving digital world.

At the same time, our strategy remains rooted in our customer-centric culture and commitment to customer service: to do more for and with our customers wherever, whenever and however they wish to interact with us; to provide our customers a seamless experience whether they interact with us in a store, through one of our contact centers, on a desktop, tablet, smartphone or through social media; and to be viewed as the expert for the home, including the accompanying life stages that make a house a home such as getting married, having a baby, transitioning to college and moving to a new residence, to become the destination for our customers' needs and wants as they express their life interests and travel through their life stages, all through the expanding and differentiated products, services and solutions we offer.

Looking forward, we believe the dynamic and ever-changing retail environment presents a great opportunity for even greater success in the years ahead.

The pace of change requires and rewards continuous innovation and the ability to adapt as technology advances and consumer preferences evolve.

As a highly profitable market leader, we are committed to strengthening our business and making the strategic investments that will enable us to continue to do more for and with our customers.

We are committed to becoming even more relevant to our existing customers and attracting new customers as they choose where, when and how to shop.

With that in mind, I'd like to provide more details surrounding the technological developments impacting omni-channel retailing today and about the steps we have taken to transform our business, including a number of examples that demonstrate this in terms of where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.

I'll start with the evolution of our information technology group and our expanding capabilities.

Where were we?

Several years ago, our dedicated IT resources were much smaller and operated under a budget about a quarter of the size it is now.

Since then, these IT resources have increased by nearly 500 people, including the addition of key members to our IT leadership team.

Many of the additions have taken place within our digital technology group as we make further enhancements to and grow our digital footprint.

Over the past several years, the IT group has upgraded or replaced the majority of our customer-facing and back-end systems, and introduced new systems to enable us to utilize new technology while also enhancing the security and redundancy of our systems.

Today, members of our IT group are immersed in all aspects of the business - as technology has become the backbone of so many of our initiatives to do more for and with our customers.

Going forward, we will focus on better integration of our systems in order to achieve a more comprehensive view of our customers as they interact with us across multiple channels and provide a more personalized customer experience.

The IT group will continue to partner across the organization to deliver new technology and innovation to take advantage of the opportunity that our enhanced tools can provide.

Over the course of this call, I will cover a number of these initiatives.

Next, our digital Web and mobile capabilities.

Where were we?

The opportunities presented by new technologies surpassed our older systems capabilities, making additional improvements to search, navigation and functionality more difficult.

We also did not have mobile websites or applications for any of our concepts.

For the past several years, we have re-launched our customer-facing websites for both Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY, and created a new selling website for Christmas Tree Shops andThat!

We now have mobile websites for all of the concepts and have created apps for Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY.

We have continued to make improvements to the functionality, general search and navigation features across our customer-facing digital channels so that our customers can find what they're looking for more quickly and efficiently.

In addition, we've greatly expanded the functionality to allow for the sale of personalized product, Vendor Direct-to-Consumer items, which I'll refer to as VDC, and product that utilizes less-than-truckload shipping, which I will refer to as LTL, such as furniture.

We have also created new services and experiences for our customers such as online appointment scheduling for registry, and a new virtual coupon wallet called My Offers, which organizes and stores print and digital coupons so customers can access and redeem them conveniently online or in-store.

Going forward in fiscal 2016, we are planning multiple software releases to provide additional enhancements to all of our digital experiences.

As consumer shopping preferences evolve, we remain focused on providing a consistently better and more personalized customer experience across all of our retail channels.

In addition, we will be launching a new series of curated and inspirational merchandise collections where customers will be able to conveniently shop the look.

We also plan to add more places on the Web for customers to upload their own personal content such as images of how they have used our products so that other customers may use them as inspiration.

Also this year, we plan to re-launch our mobile apps for Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY, and streamline our mobile websites to create a better user experience by making them faster and easier to use.

Now let's turn to analytics.

Where were we?

We did not have a centralized analytics group and our data was housed in disparate systems across the Company as well as with third-party providers.

Since the data was disconnected, we were limited in our ability to tie various interactions together, or comprehensively slice and dice information in order to efficiently reach the desired insights.

Today, we have a structured analytics department with robust quantitative capabilities.

We have made significant investments to hire talented people, re-engineer key business processes, build new systems and migrate, connect and consolidate all of our data into one central platform that we manage internally.

We also augment our behavioral data with third-party demographic data to create an enhanced view of our customers.

The analytics group is actively supporting many areas of our business, including merchandising, pricing, marketing, logistics, store operations and finance, with meaningful advanced analytics, business intelligence and reporting to help drive enhanced performance and gain deep insights into how our customers interact with us across all our concepts, channels and countries in which we operate.

However, we are just scratching the surface in terms of how analytics can move our business forward.

In the future, we will grow and extend the team's reach within the organization to provide valuable insights based on analysis and information from both external and internal systems.

For example, further utilization of predictive modeling tools will enable us to achieve improved optimization of markdowns, pricing and direct mail campaigns.

With our data initiatives, we will continue mapping customer interactions, both in-store and through our various digital channels.

This in turn allows us to get smarter about discerning and anticipating our customers' needs and providing inspiration and solutions, and thus reinforcing that we know our customers and are the experts in the home.

By leveraging our ever-expanding 360 degree view of the customer, we will further optimize targeting and tailoring techniques in marketing and enhance personalization, both digitally and through traditional marketing media.

In merchandising, where were we?

As you know, our merchandising strategy was historically rooted in bed and bath.

However, as we identified opportunities, we adapted our strategy and our name to meet the additional needs of our customers.

In recognition of our expanding merchandise assortment within domestics and home furnishings, we added "Beyond" to our store name.

Our acquisitions of Harmon, Christmas Tree Shops and buybuy BABY in 2002, 2003 and 2007 gave us an opportunity to further differentiate our merchandise assortment and our ability to do more for and with our customers.

Over the past several years, in addition to all of this merchandise being available online and in stand-alone stores, we have also created specialty departments such as health and beauty care, baby, food and beverage within our stores to increasingly showcase this differentiated merchandise.

We have continued to expand, differentiate and improve our merchandise and related services and solutions internally through our teams, including product development, and externally via acquisition.

The acquisition of Cost Plus World Market in 2012 gave us another avenue into the growing food, beverage and furniture categories and the more recent Of a Kind acquisition in 2015 gives us an eCommerce platform geared towards Millennials that offers specially commissioned limited-edition items from up-and-coming artists and designers.

Within Bed Bath & Beyond, we have exclusive or proprietary brands such Wamsutta, Real Simple, and Kenneth Cole Reaction Home, which enable us to provide differentiated merchandise across multiple product categories such as bedding, bath, storage, cleaning and dining.

During fiscal 2015, we introduced additional proprietary brands within Bed Bath & Beyond, including SALT, .ORG, and Studio 3B by Kyle Schuneman.

More recently, we launched Artisanal Kitchen Supply, a collection of curated kitchen products.

The increased functionality of our websites has also produced and provided an opportunity for us to do more for and with our customers as we can now sell hundreds of thousands of items - with the potential to sell millions of items - that we did not sell previously and that we do not carry in our stores.

With our capabilities to sell DTC and ship LTL, we have introduced new product categories such as mattresses, jewelry and furniture.

Our assortment of outdoor and indoor furniture, which includes furniture for a baby's nursery, has increased significantly over the past year.

We do see tremendous opportunity in the furniture and home decor categories and have plans to grow our assortment dramatically in the years to come.

Consistent with this, we have also added resources, including associates and enhanced systems, that will enable us to substantially increase the number of SKUs we can make available for sale in the categories where greater choice is valued by the customer.

We have also been working to evolve the merchandise we carry and to improve the look and feel of our stores.

An example is what we have done for our Christmas Tree Shops andThat!

concept.

We are excited to introduce our newest andThat!

store to the Kennesaw, Atlanta market later this month.

We've designed this store to have local appeal and to become the destination for customers to find an ever-changing mix of differentiated and close-out merchandise spanning categories such as home decor, seasonal, food, entertaining essentials and gifts.

All at a great value.

Going forward, growing our product offerings, including in furniture and home decor categories, and differentiated products remains a focus for us.

As our assortment grows, we will continue to review, refine, and edit our offerings to present the right assortment in the right manner to our customers.

Another area of focus is solutions-based product.

An increasing number of innovative products have come to market that provides "the connected home experience," which enables remote access to smart home devices such as thermostats, lighting and home security systems.

Generally, we have introduced technology-related products within numerous departments, including bedding, kitchen, health and wellness, and baby and kids.

We believe Bed Bath & Beyond is uniquely suited to benefit from solutions-based and technology-driven product because: we have extremely talented merchants who work daily with our vendors and product development teams in connection with developing new and differentiated merchandise; our customers have come to expect new and innovative products from us; we provide good value at the right price; and we provide a high level of customer service.

We are always looking to develop and present products that make the lives of our customers easier and more enjoyable.

Moving onto marketing, where were we?

Historically, our marketing program consisted primarily of postcards, newspaper inserts and circulars that often included coupon offers.

Our strategy targeted customers based on proximity to one of our stores and past coupon usage.

Plus our ability to understand our customers' shopping preferences, lifestyles and life stages was limited because our customer data was fragmented, housed in different places and difficult to navigate.

Several years ago, recognizing the growing influence of the Web on consumer purchasing behavior and engagement with our brands, we expanded our in-house marketing team, including experts in digital marketing.

Today, we use a full range of online and off-line vehicles in our marketing efforts, including email, text, paid search, SEO, social media display and affiliate programs, as well as traditional print media such as postcards and circulars.

Through our enhanced analytics capabilities, we are just beginning to utilize sophisticated, predictive modeling based on hundreds of data points, including both observed and inferred shopping behaviors, to drive a more customer-centric marketing strategy.

Recently, we have begun to implement a new marketing campaign management system to better target our customers and drive personalization.

For example, in buybuy BABY, we've been evolving our direct mail and email contact strategies to include a more personalized approach based on a customer's prenatal or postnatal life stage.

While we have significantly increased our digital marketing efforts, we have also modified our print campaigns.

Last year, we piloted our first-ever print catalog for Bed Bath & Beyond to introduce our online Outdoor Living Collection.

The book was distributed to a targeted group of customers that were identified using our predictive modeling tools as having a propensity to shop this product category.

A digital version of the catalog was also available online.

We were pleased with the results of this pilot, and as a result plan to produce three category-specific catalogs in fiscal 2016.

Going forward, our team will continue to leverage analytics in order to optimize our marketing strategies as we learn more about our customers and how they prefer to interact with us.

This will enable us to tailor our marketing communications and provide our customers with more personalized, timely, and relevant information, thereby furthering our efforts to establish our brand as the expert for the home and the destination for our customers' needs and wants.

Next, store operations and customer service.

Where were we?

Well, both have always been strengths of our organization.

It starts with our people and the culture they create.

We are extremely proud of our associates who work hard to provide a noticeably better shopping experience for our customers.

However, we had the opportunity to improve the tools and technologies available to service our customers and be more productive.

For example, our proprietary internal Web-based platform called The Beyond Store, while initially ahead of its time, proved to have limitations as technology evolved.

Our labor scheduling system and point-of-sale systems are also in need of updating.

Our technology investments over the past several years included the deployment of systems, equipment and increased bandwidth in our stores.

During 2014 and 2015, we rolled out our new workforce management system to Bed Bath & Beyond stores and going forward plan to roll it out to all other concepts.

In 2015, we significantly upgraded the Beyond Store platform and integrated it with our Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY selling websites and mobile channels, which give our associates more functionality such as the ability to create LTL orders, compare products, and read product reviews.

This new platform has been fully rolled out to our stores in Canada, and will be rolled out to the rest of the United States Bed Bath & Beyond and BABY stores in 2016.

During fiscal 2015, we also rolled out the new Beyond Store platform to our customer contact teams, and opened a new customer contact center in Layton, Utah to supplement our East Coast operations and enhance our 24/7 customer support.

Our customer 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 interacting with us in the store, on the phone, on email, or in a live chat.

During fiscal 2016, we will be making further enhancements to the systems in our customer contact centers to enable a more personalized experience.

As other retailers close stores and consolidate their customer contact centers, we are investing and strengthening our position as a leader in customer service.

Our best-in-class registry services for wedding, baby, college and other life events also provide a unique opportunity to deepen our customer relationships by demonstrating a high level of customer service during important life stages.

As consumer preferences continue to evolve, it is imperative that we further enhance our reputation for providing best-in-class customer service.

Going forward, we have initiatives to enhance the in-store customer experience by bringing our products, services and solutions as well as our brand to life.

For example, at our new Liberty View project in Brooklyn, which will house four of our concepts, we are creating a unique shopping venue to showcase our ever-increasing an evolving merchandise assortment and we are further integrating our omni-channel capabilities to provide a more experiential shopping environment.

When the store opens towards the end of this summer, customers will be able to experience product demonstrations and how-to sessions, food sampling and cooking classes.

In addition, customers will be able to use our "Scan For More" digital tool to view product images, get product pricing information as well as customer reviews.

Our interactive catalogs will enable customers to view a curated assortment of products such as seasonal furniture and bed and bath items.

And our digital Product Advisor tool will help customers find what they're looking for based on responses to questions that will filter the assortment of products that best fit their needs.

We believe that this venue, including the revised layout of our stores, along with the enhanced services we offer, will become a shopping destination where our customers can have a fun and productive shopping experience.

Also going forward, our associate mobility initiative for our stores utilizes various technology enabled tools, including mobile devices, to enable our associates to provide greater floor coverage and a more personalized customer experience.

With a mobile device, associates can gain instant access to product information and content as well as place in-store orders via the Beyond Store.

In addition, our multi-year investment in a new Point-of-Sale system is also coming to fruition and we plan to begin piloting it in fiscal 2016.

Some benefits of the new system will include providing a more efficient customer checkout process by automating many manual processes, as well as greatly enhancing our promotional capabilities such as opportunities for personalized coupon offers and potential loyalty programs.

As importantly, the new Point-of-Sale system will provide the foundation for future enhancements and will allow for integration with the Beyond Store as well as our Web and mobile platforms.

As shopping patterns continue to change, our physical channels will evolve, including the number of stores we have, their size and layouts as well as their look and feel.

These changes will reflect how customers utilize our stores, including for growing services such as reserve-online pickup in-store, returning items purchased online, scheduling appointments, and interacting with our associates for registry and design services.

Next we have pricing.

Where were we?

We did not have a formal pricing team.

Pricing decisions were made on a decentralized basis and competitive prices were monitored manually through store visits and scanning retailer websites.

Over the past several years, with the expansion of pricing transparency throughout retail, we put a pricing team and new systems in place to track competitive pricing to maintain our competitive position within the market.

The team has already begun to affect change based on more timely and relevant competitor pricing information.

Going forward, the team will further develop dynamic pricing capabilities to enable us to better manage and optimize market pricing decisions in real time.

New systems will enhance our ability to set pricing, adjust pricing, react to competitive pricing and optimizing pricing for markdowns.

We remain committed to offering our customers high-quality and differentiated products, services and solutions at the right value.

Let's turn to supply chain.

Let's talk specifically about fulfillment to our customers.

Since Bed Bath & Beyond essentially operated under a vendor direct to store model, we did not have any distribution facilities, so we really had no way to ship product to customers from a warehouse.

Since then, we have opened or gained through acquisition 10 retail distribution facilities.

We have also built out a store network to ship to customers, including about 175 stores operating as Regional Fulfillment locations.

In addition, we have made significant investments in developing more flexible fulfillment options for customer delivery, and expanding our distribution facility network to support anticipated growth across all our channels, our enhanced capabilities, including being able to ship LTL and parcel direct from vendors, or from some of our distribution facilities.

Further, we have enhanced our current warehouse management systems with new labor-management modules to create efficiencies and reduce delivery times.

Going forward, we will continue to assess our supply chain network to better optimize it so as to improve our delivery times and achieve important cost savings.

In keeping with this, in the fall, we will be opening a new 800,000 square-foot distribution facility in Lewisville, Texas.

This new facility will primarily fulfill online orders for all concepts and significantly improve our delivery capabilities.

In addition, we are also working with various partners to pilot same-day delivery service in a limited number of markets.

Moving to real estate, where were we?

We have always conducted our real estate in-house and believe it to be another strong core competency.

We have high standards for how we evaluate each real estate transaction, and manage our portfolio in such a manner that permits store layouts, sizes, locations and offerings to evolve over time to optimize market profitability.

Many years ago, we recognized that the retail landscape was changing and we raised the bar in how we evaluate real estate opportunities.

As such, we began taking a much more conservative view with the store performance potential from a four-wall sales perspective, essentially assuming reductions in store traffic and additional migration to digital channels.

Today our stores remain very profitable and as the physical and digital retail channels become more integrated, we believe that having a physical presence in the market is and will continue to be a competitive advantage for us.

As many retailers have announced store closures, we have been asked why we are not being more aggressive in closing stores?

Our answer is we do close stores.

However, in almost all cases, we have made the right judgment and done the right transactions in the first place so that our stores are profitable and provide enormous benefit to our customers and our Company.

Our stores still give us incredible opportunities to satisfy our customers and provide a noticeably better shopping experience.

Our stores provide access to merchandise for immediate purchase or in-store pickup as well as access to knowledgeable store associates to answer product-specific questions, to provide product recommendations, to assist with a return or to create or update a registry, or to execute a Beyond Store order.

The success of our nationwide network of more than 1,500 stores benefits our digital channels as well.

Since having a strong physical presence in local markets creates a broad level of consumer awareness of our brand, our physical presence in local markets keeps us top of mind as customers decide when and where they want to shop online.

Going forward, we will continue to evaluate our real estate portfolio and both open and close stores when it makes sense.

We are opening stores in new markets, we are testing smaller store formats, and we are making our stores more experiential to further leverage the differentiated products, services and solutions we provide.

Our stores will evolve in such a way that reflects how our customers are utilizing the products, services, and solutions.

Before wrapping up, let me say a few words about our institutional business, which includes Harbor Linen and T-Y Group.

We acquired this non-retail business back in 2012 in order to better leverage our combined expertise, product knowledge, distribution synergies, and relationships, to provide products and services to hospitality, travel and other institutional customers.

Since then, we've been laying the groundwork for growth, including strengthening the leadership team and integrating systems.

We are pleased with our progress to date and will continue to invest in order to prepare for future growth.

As we begin a new fiscal year, we remain committed to and focused on positioning Bed Bath & Beyond for long-term success.

The opportunities are abundant to do more for and with our customers, wherever, whenever and however they wish to interact with us, to provide our customers a seamless experience whether they interact with us in a store, through one of our contact centers, on a desktop, tablet, smartphone or through social media, and to be viewed as the expert for the home, including the accompanying life stages that make a house a home such as getting married, having a baby, transitioning to college and moving to a new residence, and to become the destination for our customers' needs and wants as they express their life interests and travel through their life stages, all through the expanding and differentiated products, services and solutions we offer.

As our business transforms, we will navigate the competitive landscape and adapt as customer preferences evolve.

We will utilize internal and external resources to attract the right people and have the right technologies and products to advance our strategy all the while remaining disciplined in our efforts to achieve positive returns and improve long-term profitability.

Our healthy cash flows and strong balance sheet enable us to fund these investments and build upon our operational achievements while also returning value to our shareholders.

In recognition of our strong cash flow generation and confidence in our business, as well as to provide a more balanced approach to returning value to shareholders, our Board of Directors has today authorized a dividend program and declared its first quarterly dividend of $0.125 to be paid on July 19 to shareholders of record as of June 17.

In addition to the dividend, we will continue to return value to shareholders through share repurchase.

Sue will provide more detail in a few minutes.

For those of you who have followed our Company for some time, you know that we manage our business for the long term.

Our focus has never been about being the biggest; it has always been about being the best.

Our focus has never been about optimizing short-term profitability, but always about creating long-term prosperity.

This has never been more true that it is today.

We remain steadfast in making the correct investments for our long-term success.

I will now turn the call over to Sue to review our quarterly financial results and provide some annual modeling assumptions for fiscal 2016 as well as some high-level comments regarding fiscal 2017.

Sue?

Thanks Steve.

I'll start with our fourth-quarter results.

Net sales for the quarter were approximately $3.4 billion, up about 2.4% over last year, or approximately 2.8% on a constant currency basis.

Comp sales for the quarter increased approximately 1.7% or 2.1% on a constant currency basis, reflecting an increase in the average transaction amounts and a slight increase in the number of transactions.

These results were at the upper end of the model range we provided back in January, which was between relatively flat and an increase of 2%.

Comp sales from our customer-facing digital channels grew in excess of 25% while comp sales from our stores were relatively flat.

Gross margin for the fourth quarter was approximately 38.6%, down about 110 basis points from last year.

The decrease was primarily due to a decrease in merchandise margins.

Also contributing were increases in net direct to customer shipping expense and markdowns.

For the year, the gross margin deleverage was less than it was in 2014, which is consistent with our model.

SG&A for the fourth quarter was approximately 24% of net sales as compared to 23.8% last year.

This increase, as a percentage of net sales, was due to, in order of magnitude, technology-related expenses, including depreciation, and advertising expense due in part to the growth in digital advertising, partially offset by a favorable net benefit of approximately 50 basis points from certain nonrecurring items, including a favorable state audit settlement.

Net interest expense for the quarter was approximately $24.5 million and related primarily to interest from our debt.

Our income tax rate for the quarter was approximately 36%, which was in line with our model assumptions back in January, versus 37.4% last year.

The tax rate decreased about 140 basis points as the current quarter includes about $7 million in discrete tax events versus $700,000 last year.

As we had modeled, our unfavorable foreign currency exchange rate impact in the quarter was approximately $0.02 per diluted share.

Considering all of this activity, net earnings per diluted share for the quarter increased 6.1% to $1.91, or $1.85 excluding the favorable net benefit from nonrecurring items of approximately $0.06.

Moving onto the balance sheet, we ended the year with approximately $673 million in cash and cash equivalents and investment securities.

Retail inventories were approximately $2.8 billion, up about 3.6%.

This increase was due in part to an increase in inventory in our distribution facilities for direct to customer shipments, including the inventory associated with our recently opened Las Vegas distribution facility.

Retail inventories continue to be tailored to meet the anticipated demands of our customers and are in good condition.

CAPEX for the year was approximately $328 million, relatively flat to last year and below our model of $350 million due to some of the anticipated spend for 2015 moving into 2016.

A significant portion of the 2015 spend related to technology projects as well as new stores, existing store improvements, our new customer contact center in Utah, and the new distribution facility in Las Vegas.

We repurchased approximately 7 million shares of our stock during the fourth quarter.

And as expected, we completed our $2 billion share repurchase program and began repurchasing shares under our new $2.5 billion share repurchase authorization during the quarter.

This new authorization was approved by the Board in 2015 and had a remaining balance of approximately $2.3 billion at the end of the year.

Since 2004 through year-end 2015, the Company has returned approximately $9.7 billion to its shareholders through share repurchases.

So now let's turn to where we are going in 2016.

As we have indicated throughout this call, we are managing our business for the long term and making progress on our strategic initiatives.

In keeping with this approach, I'd like to provide you with some full-year modeling assumptions: comp sales increase of 1% to 2% with total sales being about 90 basis points higher than the comp; gross margin deleverage, including increases in coupon expense and net direct to customer shipping expense.

We do anticipate the 2016 deleverage to be less than that of 2015.

SG&A deleverage as a percentage of net sales, primarily as a result of the following items: first, additional payroll startup costs associated with the opening of our Louisville, Texas distribution facility; second, in response to wage increases impacting the retail sector, we are modeling an increase in our investments in compensation and benefits to preserve our ability to attract and retain the best associates.

Third, we are modeling store coverage to be consistent with the prior year to reflect the evolving nature of the services our stores provide.

We are modeling the full-year impact of these three payroll-related investments to be approximately $0.23 per diluted share.

Fourth, we expect to make further investments in technology and in our digital Web and mobile capabilities, which will result in an increase in our technology-related expenses, including depreciation.

We are modeling the full-year impact of these tech investments to be approximately $0.17 per diluted share.

Additional assumptions for fiscal 2016 include: a depreciation expense estimate of $290 million, net interest expense estimate of $80 million, full-year tax rate estimate in the mid to high 30s% range with continued quarterly tax rate variability as distinct tax events occur.

We anticipate less favorable distinct tax dollars in 2016 as compared to 2015.

Opening approximately 30 new stores across all concepts, most of which are planned to open in new markets for our various concepts.

We also plan to close about 15 stores.

CAPEX estimate of approximately $400 million to $425 million, which is subject to the timing and composition of projects and includes some carryover of projects from 2015, as I mentioned earlier.

Our technology related projects represent a significant portion of our planned CAPEX and include the continued deployment of new systems and equipment in our stores, enhancements to our digital, Web and mobile capabilities, ongoing investment in data analytics, and the ongoing development and deployment of our new POS system.

In addition to technology-related projects, the CAPEX estimate also includes an estimate for the opening of our new distribution facility in Lewisville, Texas and new stores, as well as our program for renovating or repositioning stores within markets where appropriate.

Also, we anticipate our current period of heavy CAPEX investment to reach a peak in fiscal 2016.

We believe that the level of capital investment required over the next few years should start to come down off of this spending level.

In addition to our newly authorized dividend program, we will continue to repurchase shares under our current $2.5 billion authorization.

As a reminder, share repurchases may be influenced by several factors, including business and market conditions.

As Steve said earlier, our earnings per diluted share have been in the $4.50 to just over $5.00 range since we entered a heavy investment phase several years ago, and we believe we can again achieve earnings per diluted share at the high end of this range this year and, in the event our comp is higher than the 1% to 2% range we are modeling, exceed it.

We believe our fiscal 2016 quarterly net earnings per diluted share, excluding one-time items, will have a similar pro rata percent to the total year as they have in previous years with the exception that the percent for the first quarter is anticipated to be somewhat lighter and for the fourth quarter is anticipated to be somewhat stronger, due in part to holiday shifts and advertising changes.

Looking to 2017, a 53-week year, as I said, we plan CAPEX to be less than our 2016 peak estimate range as the spend for a few of our larger capital projects such as most of the equipment required for our new POS system will have been completed while still allowing for appropriate investments in areas critical to our future.

We also plan to open new stores, mostly in new markets, and close stores as market dynamics dictate.

Regarding capital allocation, with today's announcement of the quarterly dividend program, we now anticipate that the completion of our $2.5 billion share repurchase program will occur in the latter half of fiscal 2019 or in fiscal 2020.

Of course, the completion date will continue to be influenced by several factors, including business and market conditions.

Before turning the call back over to Steve for some final remarks, please note that our next quarterly conference call will take place on Wednesday, June 22, 2016.

At that time, we will review our first-quarter results and provide an update on fiscal 2016 as well as answer some questions from the investment community.

I'll now turn the call back to Steve.

Thank you Sue.

First off, thank you for taking the time to listen to our call.

To summarize, we believe we are making the right investments to position our Company for long-term success.

Over the past several years, we have been transforming our Company, and have created an incredible foundation for future growth.

We are excited about the opportunities to do more for and with our customers and to strengthen our business as a world-class omni-channel retailer.

I want to thank our more than 60,000 dedicated associates for what they accomplished during fiscal 2015.

Our foundation has never been stronger.

This includes the quality of our people, our merchandise assortments, and our technologies, each of which drives our Company's success.

Through the commitment of our associates and the culture they have created, and the greatly valued contributions of our merchandise and service providers, we are looking forward to continuing to satisfy our customers and, in doing so, improving our competitive position in the categories in which we do business.

Again, thank you for listening in today.

After the call, Sue, Janet and Ken Frankel will be available to answer your questions.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

This concludes today's conference.

Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.