Torrid Holdings Inc (CURV) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings. Welcome to Torrid Holdings Inc. Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2021 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Jean Fontana with ICR. Thank you. You may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Torrid's call today to discuss fourth quarter and full year financial results for 2021, which we released this afternoon and can be found on our website at investors.torrid.com. With me today on the call are Liz Munoz, Chief Executive Officer of Torrid; and George Wehlitz, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, I would like to remind you of the company's safe harbor language, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Management may make forward-looking statements, including guidance and underlying assumptions. Forward-looking statements are based on expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a further discussion of risks related to our business, see our filings with the SEC. This call will contain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. Reconciliations to these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in the earnings release furnished to the SEC and available on our website.

With that, I will turn the call over to Liz Munoz.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the discussion of our fourth quarter and full year results. Firstly, I want to thank our employees for their incredible performance and commitment to our brands, our customers and our mission. I would like to especially acknowledge our employees in the distribution center and in our stores, who physically came in to work throughout the pandemic. This dedication to our customer is at the core of everything we do, and we are so grateful for their service.

There are 3 things I want you to take away from today's call. First, we delivered record performance in 2021, achieving top line sales growth and strong profitability far exceeding our long-term targets. Second, we made significant progress across all our growth strategies. And third, despite macro headwinds in 2022, we remain as confident as ever in our ability to achieve our long-term targets.

Starting with our 2021 performance, net sales grew 31% versus 2020 and 23% versus 2019. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 144% over last year and 86% versus 2019, and adjusted EBITDA margin reached 19%. Importantly, we achieved these results in the face of pervasive supply chain challenges and cost pressures, demonstrating the strength of our brand and strong execution against our growth strategies.

In Q4, we delivered 5% comparable sales growth despite the impact of Omicron on our business, especially during the Torrid Cash event in January. The fourth quarter marked our 38th positive comp in the past 40 quarters, and demand for our brand remained strong. And despite the gross margin pressures related to these macro issues, we delivered $28 million in adjusted EBITDA, which was a 58% increase in pre-COVID 2019 levels. Importantly, we ended the quarter in a strong inventory position heading into the spring selling season.

Second, we made significant progress on our growth strategies in 2021, and we are well positioned to advance these further in 2022. Specifically, we grew our Curve business by 42% to nearly $310 million in sales, far exceeding plan. We grew active customer count by an impressive 20% to 3.8 million, a record high. We delivered product innovation that contributed to a 9% increase in spend per customer. And we continued to advance our unified commerce model, delivering e-commerce growth of 18%, while stores remained our #1 way of acquiring new customers to the brand. We are extremely proud of this performance as we continue to expand our customer reach within this underserved $85 billion market. And now I would like to further highlight our progress on advancing our growth strategies.

First, Curve. Curve is our largest growth opportunity, and we continue to be very excited about the pace and the consistency of its growth. Curve revenue grew 42% in 2021, and we see this becoming a $1 billion business. During the fourth quarter, we rolled out an expanded assortment of Curve to 74 stores. Sales in these stores achieved a mid-teens lift in performance to date, resulting in comp growth ahead of our fleet average. We also continue to see strong reception to our wire-free bra offering that delivers both comfort and sexiness, and we remain focused on assuring customers into our bras to drive both retention and average spend.

Looking ahead, by the end of the second quarter, we plan to launch a Curve-dedicated online tab experience, which will enhance the way our customer experiences Curve on our website. We will also roll out our expanded Curve assortment to as much as 1/3 of the fleet over the course of the year. And we are very excited about a pilot of up to 10 Curve stand-alone stores in the second half of 2022, focusing on markets where we see strong demand for intimate.

In 2022, we will continue to build our product offering and drive growth with innovation and launches that we know she wants. In Q1, we launched our Happy Camper collection within Curve, which brought much needed outdoor wear to our girl. The collection has driven a 30-point increase in activewear sales comp in the 4 weeks post launch and is a testament to our unique understanding of our customers' needs. This early success further demonstrates our ability to incubate and bring new ideas to market where we believe our customer is underserved.

Our second strategy is focused on building brand awareness to acquire new customers as we continue to grow market share. We are funding top of the funnel marketing investments to drive customer acquisition with spend focused on channel she engages in. This past quarter, we tested billboards in select markets and have seen a meaningful lift in acquisition in these test locations.

Recently, we segmented our total addressable market of 90 million women into a subset of 20 million, who had been identified as lookalikes to our core customer. In the first half of 2022, we are focusing our marketing efforts around this 20 million subset by increasing our media investment to the top 17 markets where she lives. We are also testing on TV where she still has a strong presence, and our TV spot called Say Yes is launching next month.

Our third strategy is focused on increasing wallet share with existing customers by continually expanding our product offering through launches, introductions and innovation as well as enhancing the customer experience online, in stores and with the new app. We once again delivered growth in every single category, illustrating our ability to identify and deliver product with unparalleled fit that addresses every occasion of her life.

The consistency and superiority of our fit is exemplified by our industry-leading 9% return rate, which includes difficult-to-fit categories like swim and bras, the quality of our fit and our offering is further demonstrated by the fact that 1/3 of our revenue comes from sizes 10 to 16. These customers can shop just about anywhere and they choose to shop at Torrid. We have a large and growing loyalty program with 3.5 million members, representing 95% of our customers. We segment this program into 3 tiers. Our highest 2 tiers, the loyalists and VIP, spend over 3x more than the average Torrid customer, and we grew their average spend by 28% last year.

Additionally, we are actively expanding our base of Torrid credit cardholders, who make up over 1/3 of brand sales and spend more than 2x compared to non-cardholders. Our strong loyalty is further driven by our ability to consistently deliver product innovation and create excitement for the customer. In fall 2022, we will relaunch Studio, which is modern workwear focused on a refined, comfort-based offering across our core categories. This collection is the biggest launch in our brand's history because it reaches across a number of categories and highlights new wash and wear fabrication. We are especially excited about this launch as she prepares for her return to work.

Our fourth strategy is to advance our unified commerce model, offering our customer an inspiring experience wherever and however she wants to shop our brand. We will continue to invest in marketing. Stores remain the #1 way in which new customers discover Torrid. This is part of the reason we are able to maintain attractive customer acquisition costs.

We continue to expand our store base with the addition of 22 stores this year, which have collectively performed better than expectation. Our stores provide an unparalleled shopping and fitting room experience, combined with passionate and knowledgeable associates, enabling us to interact with customers in a deeply personal and powerful way. This experience fuels our e-commerce channel, which accounted for 63% of net sales in 2021 and has grown at a 31% CAGR over the past 5 years. We know that our unified commerce model drives higher revenue per customer and increased retention, evidenced by the omnichannel customer who shopped 3.4x more than the single-channel customer.

We enhanced our digital shopping experience with the recent launch of our next-generation mobile app. The new app offers expanded search functionality, personalized notifications and additional payment options. While it remains early, we are already seeing an increase in product views and higher order values on the app. We will continue to invest in our mobile app experience by expanding omnichannel capabilities, such as BOPIS and Shop by Store, better integrating loyalty features and creating a Curve tab directly within the app. We will also be launching SMS texting in May. We believe that both the app and text messaging are strong tools for us to drive sales and engagement in a more personalized way.

And finally, we continue to leverage our organization and infrastructure investments, including the launch of a new technology in our distribution center that will improve throughput and efficiency to help offset labor challenges. We expect it to go live in Q2 and will enable us to more than double our throughput. We are also addressing supply chain challenges, which we expect to persist into 2022 by managing areas that are within our control. As part of these efforts, we have formed a speed committee, where we are analyzing our full production cycle in order to reduce lead times and increase efficiency.

Sustainability and social impact is front of mind for us, and we have engaged an outside agency to help us refine our efforts and establish goals. We are still in the early stages, but we've started to look at how we are producing our apparel and make changes where we see opportunity. For example, now we manufacture about 1/3 of our denim, utilizing laser technology instead of water. Additionally, we are proud of our accomplishments in the past year with diversity and inclusion, which is important to me personally and important to our team.

Our workforce has completed over 3,000 hours of training across the business to build deeper trust and equality within our teams, and we will continue to make D&I a focus at Torrid. And lastly, the Torrid Foundation raised and distributed over $2.5 million across the YWCA, GLAAD and National Breast Cancer Foundation, and we remain committed to supporting these incredible organizations in the future.

Looking ahead, while we recognize that we are in an uncertain environment, given the rapid rise of inflation in gas prices, we remain confident in our ability to drive high single-digit annual net sales growth and low double-digit operating income growth over the long term. We have an incredible brand, and we are uniquely positioned to serve this customer with the product we know she wants and unparalleled fit.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge that this is George's last call as our CFO. George has been an incredible partner to me and to the entire team at Torrid, and we will certainly, certainly miss him, and we thank him for his outstanding leadership and contributions, and we wish him the very best in his retirement. As I mentioned before, George will remain in the CFO role through April, and we have an ongoing search for a replacement, considering both internal and external candidates. I have the utmost confidence in the strength of our finance team, and I am pleased that George has agreed to act as a strategic adviser to the company after his departure. I know that if I ever need him, he's only a phone call away.

And with that, I will now hand the call over to George to provide more detailed financials on the quarter and the year.

Thank you, Liz, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, I would like to share how extraordinarily proud I am of what our team has accomplished during the past year. Our results demonstrate the strength of our brand as we continue to grow market share through both new and existing customers, and maintained our focus on our strategic growth priorities, all while managing supply chain and macro headwinds.

I will begin my discussion with a review of our financial results followed by our outlook. In my remarks, I will make select comparisons to the fourth quarter and full year of 2019 to normalize for the anomalies created by COVID-19 in the prior year to provide a better understanding of our growth.

Net sales grew 5% to $314 million compared to $298 million in the fourth quarter last year and increased 16% compared to 2019. Comparable sales grew 4.5% in the fourth quarter, which was driven primarily by an increase in transactions. We continue to attract new customers to the brand, leveraging our unified commerce model and delivering product that meets her needs. Our results came in better than the updated guidance we provided in January.

Following a strong start to the fourth quarter, the increased prevalence of Omicron in late December and January impacted both stores and our distribution center. We saw temporary store closures and reduced hours in over 10% of our stores during a portion of December and January. In addition, labor shortages in our DC related to Omicron resulted in shipping delays to customers that impacted our sales by approximately $14 million. This impact was $7 million better than expected as the recovery in productivity levels in our distribution center enabled us to meet a portion of customer demand sooner than anticipated.

Gross profit in the fourth quarter was $99 million or 31.6% of net sales. This compares to $114 million or 38.2% of net sales in the fourth quarter of last year, representing a 660 basis point decline in our gross margin rate versus last year. The gross margin decline compared to last year was largely due to a 340 basis point increase in transportation costs in addition to higher product costs. They were partially offset by price increases and lower promotions compared to last year. The gross margin decline was also due to a realized benefit from rent abatements in the prior year that resulted in a 200 basis point increase in occupancy expense in the fourth quarter of 2021.

In addition, the return to normalized reserves following benefits from reserves reported in the prior fourth quarter comprised 120 basis points of the decline. As compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, gross margin declined 270 basis points from 34.3%, due primarily to an increase in transportation costs, higher discounts and product costs, which were partially offset by higher retail prices.

Selling, general and administrative expenses in the quarter were $66 million compared to $98 million for the fourth quarter in the prior year and $69 million in 2019. As a percentage of sales, SG&A decreased 1,200 basis points to 20.9% compared to 32.9% in the fourth quarter of last year, primarily due to leverage on lower share-based compensation and performance bonus expense. As compared to 2019, SG&A as a percentage of sales declined 470 basis points, primarily due to leverage on payroll expense related to the higher penetration in e-commerce sales and lower share-based compensation.

Marketing expenses in the quarter were $17 million compared to $13 million for the fourth quarter in the prior year. As a percentage of sales, marketing increased approximately 100 basis points to 5.5% compared to 4.5% in the fourth quarter last year. The higher marketing costs as a percentage of sales was driven by an increased investment in brand marketing test to drive new customer acquisitions that Liz has already discussed.

Turning to profitability. In addition to GAAP measures, we believe that adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income are important measures that we use to evaluate and manage our business. The adjustments are particularly relevant this year due to a onetime noncash impact on GAAP earnings from the charge associated with revaluing our legacy incentive units as part of our IPO in the second quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA was $28 million or 9.1% of net sales compared to $44 million or 14.8% of net sales in the fourth quarter of 2020. This compares to $18 million or 6.7% of net sales in the fourth quarter of 2019, which is a 58% increase. For the quarter, our tax rate was 328% compared to a negative 297% in 2020. The tax increase was related to nonrecurring noncash charges associated with revaluing our legacy incentive units. Net loss for the quarter was $23 million or $0.21 per share compared to a net loss of $9 million or $0.08 per share for the same period last year. Adjusted net income was $10 million or $0.09 per diluted share as compared to adjusted net income of $24 million or $0.22 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Now turning to our fiscal '21 results. For the full year, net sales grew 31% to $1.3 billion compared to $974 million last year and increased 23% from 2019. Comparable sales grew 30%, driven by an increase in the number of transactions as well as higher AOV. As Liz mentioned, we saw a 20% growth in our customer base and a 9% growth in our spend per customer.

Gross profit in fiscal '21 was $519 million or 40.6% of net sales. This compares to $330 million or 33.9% of net sales last year and $396 million or 38.2% of net sales in 2019. This 670 basis point expansion in gross margin was primarily driven by higher merchandise margin rate and leverage of store occupancy costs, distribution costs, merchandise payroll costs and store depreciation expense as a result of higher net sales volume. Adjusted EBITDA was $246 million or 19.2% of net sales compared to $101 million or 10.4% of net sales in 2020. This compares to $132 million or 12.7% of net sales in 2019.

For the year, our tax rate was 289% compared to 30.9% in 2020 due to an increase in the amount of nondeductible items associated with our share-based compensation. This increase was largely driven by the nonrecurring, nondeductible $111 million noncash charge associated with revaluing our legacy incentive units as part of our IPO.

Net loss for the year was $30 million or $0.27 per share compared to net income of $25 million or 22% -- $0.22 per share for the same period last year. Adjusted net income was $121 million or $1.10 per diluted share, an increase of 275% from adjusted net income of $32 million or $0.29 per diluted share in 2020.

Now turning to the balance sheet. Our cash and cash equivalents at the end of fiscal '21 totaled $29 million. Our cash flow from operations totaled $121 million in fiscal 2021 as we continue to drive profitable growth and efficiently manage our working capital needs. During the quarter, we repurchased $23.4 million of common shares outstanding and had 76.6 million remaining on our stock repurchase program at the end of fiscal '21. We will continue to opportunistically repurchase shares, reflecting our confidence in our long-term growth outlook.

Total debt at the end of the quarter was $341 million, reflecting the new term loan recorded in the second quarter, compared to $205 million in 2020. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 1.3x at the end of the quarter. Inventory at the end of the quarter was $171 million compared to $106 million last year and $120 million at the end of Q4 2019. Excluding in-transit, inventory was 12% higher at the end of fiscal '21 versus fiscal 2019. We are comfortable with both the level and the newness of our inventory and are sufficient to support our first quarter sales outlook.

We opened 11 stores in the fourth quarter, bringing us to a total of 22 stores opened for the year. Again, we are very pleased with the strong performance we delivered in 2021, and we continue to build on the progress we've made in executing our growth strategies into 2022 while continuing to manage the macro environmental headwinds.

Turning to the outlook for the year. We expect net sales to be between $1.3 billion and $1.365 billion. This outlook contemplates low single digit to positive low single digit growth in the first half compared to a 62% increase in sales in the first half of last year. We expect to deliver high single to low teens net sales growth in the second half compared to last year as we lap inventory constraints and the impact of the Omicron variant.

We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $195 million to $220 million. Our EBITDA outlook factors in margin pressure resulting from higher product and transportation costs consistent with our industry peers. As a result, we expect gross margin to be between 37% and 38% in 2022, close to pre-pandemic levels. We expect these factors to have a larger impact on the first half of 2022 and recover in the fourth quarter as we lap the higher cost in 2021.

In the first quarter of 2022, we expect net sales to be between $295 million and $305 million. Our guidance incorporates the tough comparison to last year. We saw a meaningful benefit from both stimulus and pent-up demand from consumers initially emerging from the pandemic. In addition, our Torrid Cash event is planned to start later in Q1, and this is expected to shift approximately $30 million of sales into Q2. That said, we continue to see strong consumer demand for our brand, and we are in a solid inventory position for spring should this demand prove to be better than we anticipate in our guidance.

We expect adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter to be $44 million to $48 million. This assumes a gross margin rate of between 38.5% and 39%. Roughly half of the decline versus the prior year is attributed to the continuation of elevated transportation costs, with the remainder being a combination of increased product costs and higher promotions relative to last year when stimulus was driving significant demand. We expect these pressures to be partially offset by select price increases.

In addition, we made a strategic decision to increase our marketing expense by an incremental $5 million in Q1 associated with the TV campaign that Liz has discussed. We believe we can achieve the highest return from acquiring customers earlier in the year when the advertising costs are seasonally lower.

We feel comfortable with both our current inventory position and the flow of shipments as we continue to take proactive measures to mitigate the impact of shipping delays and higher transportation costs. We are placing orders earlier, consolidating fabric orders to get low pricing and selectively taking price increases. We are confident in our ability to continue to navigate the supply chain challenges facing us in our industry.

Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $30 million to $35 million in fiscal '22, reflecting infrastructure investments and roughly 35 new store openings in '22, including up to 10 Curve-only test stores. We also plan to close approximately 5 stores next year.

As we look into 2022, we're excited about the long-term opportunity for Torrid and remain focused on advancing our strategic growth initiatives. As a reminder, I will continue to serve as CFO through the end of the first quarter '22 and will remain as an adviser to the company thereafter to ensure a smooth transition.

We have incredible bench strength in our finance team, and I'm confident in their abilities to support Torrid's growth. It has truly been an honor to serve as the CFO of this extraordinary company during this pivotal time, including the completion of our IPO. I'm truly excited about the future for this company.

With that, I will now turn it over to the operator for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Mark Altschwager with Baird.

Great. I guess just, first off, regarding the sales guidance for the year, George, I know you were giving some of the details on some of the revenue shifts, but the plan seems to embed a pretty big ramp after Q1. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more detail there? Because I know there were some sales that shifted out of Q4 into Q1. Now you're sort of speaking to an additional shift. So just any more color there on the confidence in that inflection through the year would be great.

Sure. So the shift primarily in Q1 was a $30 million event related to our cash shifting timing and that shifted into Q2. So that was a big shift between Q1 and Q2. For the year, we believe that we saw most of the pressure coming in the first half of the year, which was embedded related to the stimulus and the pent-up demand that we saw in the first half of 2021 that we're up against in the first half of 2022, that easing out into Q3 and to Q4. So that, in conjunction with the inventory constraints that we also started getting in Q3 as well and having a better inventory position this year, gives us the confidence of where we are and especially given the inventory position that we currently have going into Q1 and going into Q3 after that.

Great. Great. And then maybe for Liz. Great to see the momentum behind Curve. It sounds like a lot of opportunity still ahead there as well. I'm curious in the near term here. Are you seeing ongoing pent-up demand for more occasion-oriented styles? And how are you thinking about balancing that opportunity in the near term as she returns to the events and to the office with a significant longer-term opportunity with Curve?

So we're incredibly excited about Curve. We're still in the very early stages of it. As you may know, 1/3 of our customers come to the brand through Curve. Curve customers spend 3x more. We believe that we are benefiting from this mixing of comfort and sexiness that we've built. Our wire-free bra has been incredibly successful. We think there's still tremendous opportunity for growth in Curve. One of really the big things we're very excited about is, only 50% of our customers -- Torrid customers have bought into Curve. So we see that as a really, really important opportunity. So we tested a $20 reward for customers who did not buy a bra, and we doubled the percent of bra purchasers in that test group, and that test was margin accretive. So we are pushing that whole program out. We're also going to test it on new customers who haven't purchased a bra.

We have great store events that the customer is loving. And we do think that there are a lot of -- people have put on weight in captivity. And so we see customers needing to buy new bras. We've also seen growth in all of our categories. That said, we're incredibly enthusiastic about some of the other products that we have going on. And the other thing I'll tell you is, it's really important to note, we are going to test 10 Curve stand-alone stores in 2022, which we are very, very excited about. We are going to launch the Curve tab experience in Q2, which we also think will give a really amazing enhanced experience to the customer. So a lot going on with Curve. I will also just reiterate that bras are the #2 leading product that brings new customers to the brand. So I think the momentum that we have in Curve will continue and not be impacted by all the other things that are going on.

Our next question is from Oliver Chen with Cowen and Company.

George, it's been great working with you. Best regards. Regarding the guidance, you've had really nice momentum and spend per customer and also the customer base. What's assumed in terms of those trends continuing? Any metrics or thoughts there? And also, I would love some color on that better-than-expected DC flow. That was an upside surprise. That was great to hear about. And then finally, Liz, you spoke about supply chain opportunities in speed and throughput. Would just love some highlights about where you see the most opportunities there.

Sure, Oliver. So regarding your first question related to customers and spend, we still see both of those growing into 2022 just at more modest rates to reflect the sales guidance that we have out there for '22. But we still feel that there's ample room in both of those related to this per spend. As Liz has said, we have everything in her closet. So we think there's opportunity there and moving them up between -- in tiers from -- in our loyalty program as well.

Regarding the DC, we did see significant improvement in the last 2 weeks related to our distribution center on absenteeism related to Omicron. We were seeing significant absenteeism in -- starting in late December and into early January. And that shifted in the latter part of January back to more normal levels, and that's how we were able to pick up the increased productivity throughput and shipping more orders and push that into Q4 rather than Q1.

And as far as supply chain, we will continue to do the things that have worked for us that are in our control. We are writing orders earlier. We are consolidating and positioning fabrics. We're leveraging long-term relationships with factory owners. We are mostly direct. All that said, we also had a moment where we said, we cannot accept what is happening as our future. So we cannot allow these long lead times to become the default. And so we need to get speed back. And we formed a committee that is really thinking out of the box and coming up with different solutions around speed, and we just did that. So we'll give you a better update once we get rolling on that.

And in addition to that, Oliver, we did do some repositioning of our ports and so not exclusively using the West Coast and moving towards some product through the East Coast as well to spread that out.

And Liz, I know you've been hard at work on pricing and looking across each item pretty surgically. How has that gone? And what is your framework for the next decisions you'll make? And related to that, just if you could give us a sense of the promotional environment that you're seeing, that would be helpful, too.

Okay. Great. Thanks, Oliver. So we -- as you know, we have taken prices up to mitigate inflation, and we continually review pricing and make changes where appropriate. That's been a long-term strategy at Torrid because we've been building and improving the product over the years. Quality and fit and value are important to her, and she will pay for it. So for example, the average price of a blue jean at Torrid is $60.

And I'll just give you an example of some of the pricing things that we have done and what sort of the results we got. We recently repriced our denim, increasing AIR across the board, and sales units per day actually increased post re-ticketing. So items that she sees tremendous value on she will pay for.

As far as the promotional activity, we see promotional activity to be similar to '21. And we are focused on the promotional events that we know are part of our DNA, and they form a bond with our customer. They drive engagement. And I will tell you that a lot of these promotional events are also really good new customer acquisition tools. So things like Torrid Cash and the Love Your Bra event will continue. And then we use incentives to get customers in the categories we really want them to be in because they are very sticky like bras and blue jeans, and we've seen success in that. So I think it's going to continue as it's been, and we will adjust and address as it comes at us.

And then as a follow-up to what Liz said, yes, looking at '22 to be more of a normalized year related to that. But if you're looking compared to 2021, remember that the first half of the year, we were much more impacted by the stimulus and the pent-up demand. And there was less promotional activity going on because of what she was spending and she had available to spend. So it will be more of a normalized [year related to] that as we look more towards pre-COVID levels. But if you're comparing to '21, more pressure in the first half of the year and that kind of moderating itself in the back half of the year.

Our next question is from Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs.

Liz, I'd love to hear a little bit overall about how you think about the health of your customer right now. You mentioned inflation earlier and everyone's watching the rising food prices. Have you seen any change among your customers and how they're purchasing with the brand in the past few months maybe among income cohorts? Are there any signs of trading down within your good, better, best product architecture?

We have not seen any evidence of her trading down. I mean that said, listen, we know inflationary pressures are real. They're real for all of us. And we -- honestly, the reality is that predicting her demand is going to be difficult in these times. That said, we've been conservative in our forecast. And I think she's going to focus on things that are centered around value for her. So she's going to shift. She will look for products that have multiple end uses and multiple wear occasions, things she can wear to work and wear out somewhere else. She will focus on products that have solutions, things that enhance her body, that make her feel -- that are more comfortable or things focused around that. And then I think she's going to buy into highly emotional things.

And finally, we're going back to work. So she will need to replenish her wear-to-work clothing, and I think that's going to be a really big opportunity for us because comfort is going to be really important. It is what we do really well in our wear-to-work. And as I mentioned, we are relaunching our Studio sub-brand in the back half of the year. And we think that the Studio is really comfort-based wear-to-work products across a lot of categories. And we think it's the right product at the right time. So we're very excited about that as well.

Great. And then maybe one for George. Can you dive in a little bit more on your gross margin expectations for the year and help us shape how you're thinking about the puts and takes between promotions, pricing in terms of -- what you're doing in terms of customer-facing pricing, higher unit costs and transportation expense?

Sure. From a transportation cost, we believe that those will continue into 2022, the increases that we saw in Q4 as they will go all the way and through '22. We think we'll start anniversarying some of that in the latter part of Q4 comparing '21 to '22. From a product cost standpoint, those also will continue. We are also, as Liz said, continuing to look at price increases. So we will, throughout the year, be looking at that on an ongoing basis and increasing prices where we see, again, the value for the customer from that standpoint.

And again, related to what we're looking at as far as cadence, again, Q1 and Q2 the most impacted, a slight improvement going into Q3 and then really lapping the cost in Q4, so turning positive from that standpoint, from a gross margin standpoint.

Our next question is from Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America.

This is [Alex Shell] on for Lorraine Hutchinson. Can you talk about the performance of the e-commerce channel versus stores during 4Q and also, if possible, quarter to date? And then what are your sales assumptions by channel for the year, please?

So from a Q4 perspective, e-commerce performed very well. And we're very happy with the results of our e-com business. As Liz also said, we really look at it together with the stores and the e-com business for our unified model, since they support each other. But just individually, the channel did perform well. It will be -- and we're looking at it to continue to perform into 2022. And we basically, again, combine the 2. When we're looking at our sales, we don't separate it out by channel, but it is something that we're going to be increasing. Our penetration rate was around 63% for '21, and we think it will be somewhere around the 63% to 65% as we go into 2022. So growth in that channel.

Our next question is from Kimberly Greenberger with Morgan Stanley.

Okay. Great. Liz, I wanted to start with the active customer data that you put out today. It looks like there was about a 14% increase in active customers from year-end of 2019 to year-end of 2021. And obviously, customer spend is up as you noted. I'm wondering if you can -- if you look at that, the additional acquired customers just under 500,000, is there any way to help us understand what portion of those customers are coming to Torrid through the stores? And what portion found you online? And then if you could just talk about some of your customer acquisition strategies for 2022 online or in-store, understanding that some of the stepped-up marketing like in television is sort of meant to be channel-agnostic.

Okay. So first on -- I think question number one was how many customers came in through stores? What -- percentage is about 50%. And I think the next question was what are we doing from a customer acquisition standpoint? I'll tell you the things we did in '21 that worked really well. We scaled investment in digital channels where she spends the most time, which is Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. That said, we also -- we believe that our stores are a significant competitive advantage.

So we leveraged our 600-plus store fleet for new customer acquisition by launching geo-targeted digital marketing campaigns that generate local store awareness. They drive store traffic, and they highlight some of the benefits of going into a store, like a bra fitting. We tested billboards as consumer behavior shifted out of captivity and more into real life and found success in that. And then we continually heavily invest in marketing that features bras and blue jeans because those are the stickiest.

I think what we're also super excited go forward is this 20 million women subset that we've identified that align from a demographic and psychographic point of view. And we're reaching these women where they are. The reason we're running TV ads is because this customer, these 20 million, a very large percentage of them are outsized TV watchers, watching 4-plus hours of TV a day. So our mission is always to find her where she is and reach her in that way. And then finally, we're going to continue to scale our investments in digital channels that have worked for us. And we are running billboards in 17 markets that are in the areas where this 20 million subset exists. So excited about what we've accomplished in '21 and what's coming in '22.

And Kimberly, just as a follow-up to that, if you remember, as Liz said, over 50% of new customers came through the stores. If you remember in 2020, when a lot of the stores were impacted by closures, we were at 30%. So we definitely saw, as the stores reopened, she did come back to stores. She's loving the store experience. So that piece of it is really, really helpful. As well as new stores that we opened, we saw a really good lift as far as what they were doing as far as acquiring new customers and even from a sales performance that they were performing at or better pre-COVID new store opening. So from a whole store customer experience standpoint, we're very happy with where she's kind of now coming back to the store, interacting with the store and continuing her journey with us at the store, and we can convert her from a store customer into an omnichannel customer, and that customer will spend much, much more. So...

Okay. That is a great rundown. George, I wanted to follow up on your comments on the higher transportation costs. You'll lap those in the fourth quarter here in 2022. Are there any pieces of the higher transportation costs that you experienced in the third and fourth quarter last year that strike you as transitory or temporary as compared to those that will be more permanent in the P&L? And then I just had one question on inventory after that.

Yes. I think most of the transportation costs I wish was transitory, but every time we think there might be something transitory about it, it just continues to -- something else happens. So we're not really thinking and haven't planned that way that it's going to be transitory. The one is the amount of air freight that we spent in 2021, but we're anticipating that we may not have to spend quite that much, but there could be a point that we might need to do that as well. So that would be the one that could be somewhat transitory.

Okay. Great. And then the question on inventory is for Liz. It sounds like you're going to work on some speed to sort of get back to perhaps more of a read-and-react model at some point in 2022 or 2023. Perhaps just to help us understand the current level of inventory that you've got, could you maybe contrast it. It looks like inventory is up about 40% compared to 2 years ago with sales up about 20% compared to 2 years ago in 2021. Clearly, you're looking for some additional sales growth here in the upcoming year. So maybe just using 2019 as a benchmark, how much should we think about the inventory investment rising in 2022 as compared to the inventory you would have been buying in 2019.

Yes. So from a comparison with -- at the end of the year 2021 compared to 2019, our inventory in total was up. But if you look at it from -- and excluding in-transit, because, again, with this delay related to the supply chain and the transit times, it has increased what we have in-transit in the water, not in our buildings. You exclude that, we were up 12% compared to '19. So very in line with what we're looking at from a sales perspective.

We feel very good about what we have in inventory. We feel good about the composition of what we have in the inventory. And we feel good about what's coming in as well as what we factored in, again, as Liz said, timing-wise, trying to place orders earlier to get the product in. So I think from an inventory perspective, we have the inventory to be able to support higher sales than we have put into the guidance. And I think from an inventory perspective, as we look throughout the year, I think we're going to -- we would definitely be higher than we were in '19. But again, it will be moderated to what we think we can have from an investment standpoint of what's keeping ourselves current and in line with our expectations of where we're going to be to be able to support from a sales perspective.

Our next question is from Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisors.

George, best of luck on the retirement.

Thank you, Dana.

As we think about -- it sounds, Liz, like you're talking in terms of whether it's Curve, whether it's the new work clothing, whether it's also the new Happy Camper, I think, items you described, it feels like the assortment is adjusting and capturing more of the interest of the consumer. What else should we expect to change? Is the new merchandise coming in at a higher margin than the old? And what do you see as the opportunity on the accessories side, footwear and other things? How should we continue to see the merchandise assortment develop? And what does it mean on the margin profile go forward?

So we will see more expansion, but more focus on products. I think there's a big rebound from the pandemic, right? She spent the last few years buying things to be in the house. We see a very clear shift where she is starting to rebuild her wardrobe and prepare to go back to work. We think that's going to be a big focus for the rest of the year for her. Incredibly excited about Studio because what we do with workwear is very different, incredibly attractive, fits great, but also very comfort related.

So I think the shift is going to be more into those kinds of products. I don't know that it's going to have any outsized impact on margin one way or the other on what she's buying there. The other thing that we're going to do is -- what we do really well is identify areas in which she is wildly underserved. So Happy Camper was a result of us knowing that there is very little camping and hiking clothing for her. I do think -- and we will focus on dressy, building our dress business back up from sort of the downside that it had during the pandemic is a really big focus.

And then I would say, from an accessories perspective, shoes are something I'm very excited about and I think are a big opportunity. If you search wide-width shoes for women, you'll see what's out there. It is a very big white space. And we've spent the last 3 years really perfecting our fit, our construction and what we're doing with shoes, and we're very excited about them.

Got it. And then just a follow-up on your stores. It sounds like the store productivity in 2022 of the new stores was better than you expected. What does this mean for how you're planning the class of 2022? And is there a cadence to the store openings this year?

Sure. Our cadence that we're looking at is 25 Torrid stores and up to about 10 Curve stand-alone stores. We could flex that number a bit if need be, if we have more opportunities. So we're open to that piece, but we're not married to the exact number. It's more what we're seeing in the environment, and what we can make our criteria when we're looking it from an investment standpoint.

So there could be some more opportunities that we can take advantage of for that piece of it. I don't think we're going to make any significant shifts at this point related to that. But we're, again, very happy with the results that we saw in '21 from our stores, and we're evaluating those on an ongoing basis for 2022 as well.

Our next question is from Oliver Chen with Cowen and Company.

On ESG, it was a great topic that you brought up, Liz. Just would love your initial thoughts on the opportunity and/or as the industry thinks about this a lot. Water seems like a big topic in terms of an opportunity to advance there.

Yes. So like I said, we're in the early stages. We started down this road and then the pandemic occurred, and we really had to redeploy our forces to navigate that. But we're back on track. We've brought an outside organization to help us think about what the next 5 years look like and what we want to accomplish. That said, I know that water is a big deal, and denim, in particular, is a big offender of wasting a lot of water. So this shift to laser technology, which I have to tell you, you can't tell the difference between a jean that's been laser-treated and one that's been stone washed.

So what we're doing now is we're just opportunistic. In areas where we see we can do better, we are doing it. I think there's a lot less packaging that can go into garments. We're going to take -- anywhere that we can take a hang tag or something that's on the garment that's just going into the trash, we are eliminating. We're looking at packaging that goes into stores and where the waste is. So it's not just sustainability, it's also the amount of stuff that we put on our garments and that goes into the trash. So we're going to update you more on this as we roll forward and have a more concrete plan. But this is something that's important to this whole organization, and we're excited about what we can do here.

Okay. And finally, you have a very loyal customer. Would just love your thoughts on the Torrid loyalty program and how that will integrate with your mobile app and the vision for some key opportunities there.

Yes. I -- so the mobile app has features that -- the new features that we didn't have before that really integrate the loyalty program that give her, her information. She can pay her credit card bill there. She can check on what's going on. And I think, over the long haul, what we want the app to be is something that she checks every day because it's sort of -- I don't want to say gamified because that's not the term, but something that she checks on, is excited to see that there's new updates, push notifications come through there. So I think our long-term intent for the app is that we form a very close and intimate relationship with her on that, but the loyalty has been integrated, and it looks really good and it functions really well.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Liz for closing comments.

Okay. Well, first of all, I would like to reiterate a big thank you to George for the years of just amazing business, amazing friendship and guidance and also to thank him for the extraordinary organization that he's built. We have just such an incredible finance team. He's done a remarkable job, and I am going to personally miss him very much. And just want to thank you all for joining us for your interest and our remarkable brand, and we look forward to telling you more about what's going on at our next call. So again, thank you and have a great day.

That concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.