Shoe Carnival Inc (SCVL) 2016 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon and welcome to Shoe Carnival's first quarter FY16 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. It is also being broadcast via webcast. Any reproduction or rebroadcast of any portion of this call is expressly prohibited.

Management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risk factors. These risk factors could cause the Company's actual results to be materially different from those projected in such statements. Forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the discussion of risk factors included in the Company's SEC filings and today's earnings press release. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today's date.

The Company disclaims any obligation to update any of the risk factors or to publicly announce any revisions to the forward-looking statements discussed on today's conference call or contained in today's press release to reflect future events or developments.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Cliff Sifford, President and Chief Executive Officer of Shoe Carnival, for opening comments. Mr. Sifford, you may begin.

Thank you and welcome to Shoe Carnival's first quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today is Kerry Jackson, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Operating and Financial Officer. On today's call, I'll provide a brief overview of our first quarter performance and give you an update on our 2016 guidance. Kerry will review the financial results, and then we'll open up the call to take your questions.

We had a strong start to FY16, fueled by the combination of unseasonably warmer weather and a continued benefit from our multi-channel sales initiative. At the end of the first quarter, we had approximately 9.8 million Shoe Perks members, which helped us achieve record net sales for the quarter and, when combined with our team's efficient management of our expenses, led to record first quarter earnings per diluted share of $0.56, or an increase of 7.7% as compared to the same quarter last year.

Athletic footwear remained a key merchandising category of strength. This contributed to the first quarter comparable store sales of 2.7%, our seventh consecutive quarter of comparable store sales growth. Our ability to drive consistent growth demonstrates our entire team's commitment to execute at the store level and across our entire business model, from identifying footwear trends and merchandise categories to thoughtfully managing the controllable aspects of our business.

I would now like to provide additional color on our sales performance in the first quarter of FY16. On our last earnings call, we discussed that we experienced warmer than normal temperatures in the month of February, or early in the first quarter. From an inventory perspective, we were well positioned with athletic product to take advantage of the later tax refund season, which was delayed several weeks into mid February. This resulted in a very strong start to the first quarter.

Cooler, wetter weather patterns became a norm as we approached the Easter selling season, which had a negative impact on our non-athletic product categories. The timing of the Easter holiday can shift from year to year, and we have historically reported Easter on a combined basis for both the months of March and April. Even though we experienced a cooler and wetter Easter time period, comparable store sales for March and April were up 1.2%, on top of the 6.7% increase for the same time period last year.

Athletic shoes were up mid-single digits, while non-athletic was down low single digits. Even though Easter sales were impacted by winter weather, we were pleased that once more seasonal conditions returned late in the quarter, we generated positive momentum across our business. Now as we begin the second quarter, we expect to further benefit from our assortment of casual sandals, in addition to the continued strength in athletic footwear.

In the first quarter, we benefited from a combination of higher conversion rates, average sales per transaction, and units per transaction. These positive results were partially offset by a mid-single digit decline in traffic. We ended the quarter with inventory up approximately 1.9% on a per door basis, which was in line with our expectation. We remain focused on appropriately supporting our growth in athletic.

Merchandise margins were down 90 basis points, due primarily to our increased promotional activities in reaction to a slower than expected Easter selling season. VD&O as a percentage of sales decreased 40 basis points, due primarily to lower distribution expenses. Kerry will give more detail on the financial results in his prepared remarks.

Our team remains focused on our multi-channel strategic initiatives and we want to provide you with an update on our progress as we start the fiscal year. We added approximately 950,000 members to Shoe Perks, our loyalty program, in the first quarter. This represents the single best quarter we have ever had for member enrollment. As I referenced earlier in my remarks today, this record enrollment brings our total membership to about 9.8 million members who, on average, spent 24% more than non members and accounted for 65% of our sales in the first quarter.

Shoe Perks has become a very important and effective tool for communicating special promotions and sales events to our customers. We recently made a new addition to our team with the appointment of a Director of Customer Relationship Management, who will help us progress from member acquisition to personalized member management. We are excited about taking our customer engagement activities to the next level.

On a go forward basis, we plan to better mine our customer data into certain segments and categories and then be able to market special offers and communications to them, based on their Shoe Carnival shopping habits. We believe this will help us increase shopping frequency and average order value across our most loyal customers.

Over the past several years, we have made tremendous progress in creating a seamless, endless aisle experience for our customers. In the near future, we will also plan to launch additional enhancements to our online store by providing Shoe Carnival customers the option to buy online, pick up in store and buy online, ship to store. This complements the redesign of our launch of our Shoe Carnival app at the end of FY15. We believe our multi-channel efforts have helped better position Shoe Carnival for growth over the long term, as consumer shopping habits evolve and have led to our consistent ability to achieve seven quarters of positive comparable store sales growth.

We ended the first quarter with 404 stores in 34 states and Puerto Rico. During the quarter, we opened up 3 stores and closed 4 stores. For FY16, we currently expect to open 20 stores and close approximately 10 stores.

Our store growth plan continues to focus on the strong trade areas within our current footprint and to take advantage -- to take our underperforming stores that have minimal opportunity to improve and either renegotiate lease terms, relocate, or close the store. As a reminder, we will not enter into any new large markets during FY16, as we continue to fill in larger markets we have entered over the past several years.

We opened an additional small market store in Litchfield, Illinois, bringing our total to three at the end of first quarter. We are pleased to report that all three of our small market stores are trending well above our expectations. We currently have approximately 5 additional small market stores out of our total 20 new store openings planned for the remainder of the fiscal year. If strategic opportunity for additional small market stores presents itself, this number could change. We continue to expect consistent small market unit growth over the next several years, as we expand into new and fill in existing markets.

Moving on to merchandise. I'd like to take a moment to review our first quarter sales by department. Women's non-athletic ended the quarter down low single digits to last year on a comparable basis. While traditional dress shoes and women's boots were down, we were pleased with the mid-single digit increase in sandals, vulcanized canvas casuals, and Junior dress shoes, whose performance was driven by some of the Junior brands we added to the assortment over the past several years.

Men's non-athletic ended the quarter down low single digits. While men's casuals, in particular boat shoes, were disappointing, we did experience a nice mid-single digit increase in men's sandals.

Children's shoes were up mid-singles, driven primarily by canvas, basketball, and skate, along with kid's sandals and boy's and girl's running. Adult athletic was up mid-single digits on a comparable basis, driven by men's and women's canvas, men's and women's running, and men's and women's retro styles.

As I mentioned earlier, inventory was up 1.9% on a per door basis at the end of the quarter. We are pleased with the content of our inventory and we believe our inventory is well positioned in the right categories for the second quarter. We expect to further benefit from our assortment of casual sandals as warmer weather arrives, in addition to the continued strength in athletic footwear.

Now I'd like to give a little color on our expectations for FY16. The second quarter got off to a cool and rainy start, which has suppressed the sales of sandals and other key spring categories. We do believe with warmer seasonal weather, this sales trend will turn around on our sandal performance in the first quarter.

We continue to be pleased with the positive athletic trajectory across footwear industry and we believe this will continue to be fueled, with the Olympics beginning in the third quarter of FY16. As many of you may know, this is the first time since 1996 that the Olympics are actually taking place in our time zone, which means more customers watching live and being inspired to become more active.

Looking a little further out to fall of 2016, we have completed our boot buys and are pleased with the content and balance between shaft height and fashion versus utility. We believe we once again can plan fashion boots up slightly for the fiscal year.

Based on our performance to date and these expectations, we are reiterating our previous guidance of full-year net sales in the range of $1.007 billion to $1.027 billion, with a comparable store sales increase in the range of 1% to 3%. Earnings per diluted share are expected to be in the range of $1.58 to $1.65. Included in the earnings per diluted share estimates for the fiscal year are that at the high end of our guidance gross profit margin will be flat, with buying, distribution, and occupancy costs slightly leveraging, offset by the growth of our multi-channel initiatives. We expect SG& A will decrease slightly as a percentage of sales.

With that overview, I would now like to turn the call over to Kerry.

Thank you, Cliff.

First quarter net sales increased $7.7 million, $260.5 million compared to the first quarter last year. The net sales increase was driven by a $5.6 million increase in sales from the 23 new stores opened since the beginning of the first quarter of FY15 and a $6.5 million increase in comp store sales. These increases were partially offset by a $4.4 million loss in sales from the 19 stores closed since the beginning of FY15.

Our gross profit margin for the quarter was 29.0%, compared to 29.5% in the first quarter last year. This decrease was driven by a 90 basis point decrease in our merchandise margin partially offset by a 40 basis point decrease in buying distribution occupancy expenses as a percentage of sales. The decrease in buying distribution occupancy expenses as a percentage of sales resulted primarily from the leveraging effect of higher sales and a decrease in freight costs. As you may recall, the Company incurred additional freight costs in Q1 last year, due to the West Coast port congestion.

SG&A expenses increased $612,000 in the first quarter of FY15, to $58.3 million. As a percentage of sales, these expenses decreased to 22.4%, compared to 22.8% in the first quarter last year. For the quarter, the increase in expenses for new stores was more than offset by expense reductions for stores that have closed, resulting in a $272,000 decrease in non-comp store selling expenses.

Other significant changes in SG&A for the quarter were increases in wages, advertising and depreciation, partially offset by reductions in incentive and equity compensation and utilities. Pre opening costs included in both cost of sales and SG&A decreased $436,000 in the first quarter of FY16 to $281,000. Store closing and impairment charges included in both cost of sales and SG&A decreased $50,000 in Q1 this year, to $119,000.

The effective income tax rate for the first quarter of FY16 was 38.2%, compared to 38.8% in the same period of FY15. For the full year of FY16, we expect our tax rate to be approximately 38.5%.

Net earnings for the first quarter of FY16 were $10.7 million, or $0.56 per diluted share. For the first quarter of FY15, we reported net earnings of $10.4 million, or $0.52 per diluted share.

Now turning to our cash position and information affecting cash flow. In the first quarter of this year, we repurchased 70,330 shares of common stock at a total cost of $1.6 million. The amount that remained available under our $50 million share repurchase authorization at the end of Q1 was $44.1 million.

Depreciation expense was $5.9 million in Q1. Depreciation expense is projected to be approximately $24 million for the full fiscal year. Capital expenditures for FY16, including actual expenditures during the first quarter, are expected to be between $19 million and $20 million. Approximately $9 million of the total capital expenditures are expected to be used for new stores and $7 million to $8 million will be used for store relocations and remodels. Lease incentives are anticipated to be $4 million to $5 million for the year.

My final comment today will focus on adding more color on our earnings expectation for the second quarter this year. We expect Q2 comp store sales to increase low single digits. Additionally, we expect our gross profit margin and our SG&A as a percentage of sales to be relatively flat to Q2 last year.

This concludes our financial review. Now I'd like to open up the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Jill Nelson, Johnson Rice.

Maybe you could just talk about the real estate environment right now, what you're seeing, particularly given your entrance in the small town market, smaller store size.

You know, we're still early in our new cycle where we brought in some new players into our real estate. But we're very pleased on the initial read. We brought in, like I said, new talent. We changed our brokerage network significantly.

This coming week is the big real estate show, ICSC. We should learn a lot more about where we stand at that point. But we're pleased with where we -- on the stores we expect to see for next year.

This year, we've pretty much gotten buttoned up. We have 19 signed leases. So we're not done with the year. We still expect to add on at least one more, like we said in our guidance, then there's an opportunity for possibly a few more than that. But we'll know more coming out of the ICSC and have a good understanding of what's available out there.

And then if you could address, definitely merchandise margins in the first quarter were hit more than what we were modeling for. If you could talk about that pressure and then expectations heading into the second quarter, where you're looking for flat gross margin. And it looks as though year-over-year you're facing a tougher comparison on the merchandise margin line versus, first versus second quarter.

Jill, the reason for the reduction of margin, as we entered into the Easter time period and winter finally arrived, because you remember that December, January, and the early part, or most of February, were much warmer than normal. So winter finally arrived as we were entering into Easter.

And as you know, our number one, one thing we're really good at and you have to give us credit for, is that when product categories don't sell as we expect them to sell, we force the sale. We get aggressive. And that's exactly what we did. So for the two weeks of Easter, our margins ran a little lower and we got more aggressive, both online and in our stores.

As far as margin as we go forward, the more we grow our multi-channel initiatives, the more pressure it's going to put on margin, the shipping costs and just the cost of doing business online. And with the multi-channel, forget about just the e-commerce store, but the whole multi-channel initiative is at a lower margin.

Okay. Thanks so much.

Chris Svezia, Susquehanna Financial Group

Thank you for taking my question, and nice job on the quarter.

I'm curious just on categories. Sandals? Could you just talk about your inventory exposure in sandals right now and what your thought process is as you go into the second quarter, where that is relative to your inventory position?

Actually, we feel pretty good about where we are today. Let me explain, because it might be counterintuitive for us to say that our margins were due to the fact that Easter didn't come the way we expected, yet our sandal business was up mid-single digits. We had an incredible February in sandals and we had a really good last couple of weeks of April in sandals. The issue we had was during the March time period, when the weather turned cool and the dressier sandals didn't sell. And that's where we got aggressive when we got through that product, both through our multi-channel initiatives and in our stores.

So what we've seen with the customer is that whenever the weather cooperates, and so far in the second quarter, we've struggled a little bit with that, the sandal business picks up and it picks up nicely, not just a couple of percentage points, it picks up really nicely. So we're very pleased with where we are.

You've got to remember that the number one month for selling sandals is June, and that begins next week or the week after next, and we have plenty of time through back-to-school to sell sandals. So we're very happy with where we are.

Okay. So I guess what I'm getting at, the guidance doesn't really assume that you would continue to be promotional to drive the sandal business as we go into the second quarter. You cleaned up what you had --

We actually believe that we'll see better margins of sandals for the second quarter than we did in the first quarter. Again, as I've said to Jill, most of our margin pressure is coming from our multi-channel initiatives.

Okay. Understood. Got it. And canvas, I'm just curious, I guess your canvas business continues to hold up. It's pretty broad-based. No real change there, judging from what you're saying.

Exactly. We hear everything you hear, but we haven't experienced it yet.

Okay. And your comp outlook for the second quarter, any color you want to give, what you're seeing right now. Are you assuming just the trends? Seems like you accelerate as you came out of the first quarter. Is it fair to say your comping in excess of where you were in the first quarter and then you're assuming some moderation as you go through the quarter?

No, that would not be correct. We saw acceleration as we went through the latter part of the first quarter. Unfortunately, as we entered into the second quarter, weather did play a part. It has been incredibly wet and very cool in the Midwest. And with that, our business is trending for the month to be basically flat.

We believe that's going to accelerate as the weather warms up. And as we go through the remainder of the quarter, we're going against a mid-single digit in June. And if you'll remember correctly, we're going -- mid-single digit increase in June -- and we're going against a mid-single digit loss in July.

So we think we have opportunity, especially with the way our athletic business is trending and when the sandals reignite, to pick up sales. So we're guiding to low single digits in the second quarter.

And the mid-single digit decline in July is because the athletic business slipped into the third quarter last year.

It slipped into August. That is correct. And we don't see a lot of change this year. There might be a tweak here and there in some states. But we don't see a lot of change in that

Okay. All right. That's all I have. Thank you very much and all the best.

Sam Poser, CRT Capital.

Cliff, can you walk through, you mentioned that the merch margin, or the margins, were hurt by the multi-channel processes. Can you give us some break down, like a little more detail within that 90-basis point decrease in the merchandise margin of how much of that was promotionally related versus, can you break it down a little more for us there?

No. I don't know how to be any more direct than that. Here's what I'll tell you is that when you looked at the merchandise margin, it was both multi-channel and it was us getting more aggressive on the product that we expected would sell at the Easter time period but didn't because of the cooler weather.

Okay. So is it by nature that you're finding that you're selling goods, you're running more promotional activity online than you are in-store? Is that a fair way to look at it?

When categories don't work, Sam, or we feel that there could be a inventory situation because something didn't sell as well as we thought it would, we are promotional both online and in stores.

No, no, I understand that. But I'm saying, you're bringing up the issue that running the e-commerce business doesn't work in the same margins as the brick-and-mortar works at. So how much --

Sam, I'm not the only one that brings that up. Every retailer in America talks about that.

I want to get color on how much of that is selling goods at lower prices versus how much of that is your shipping and all that, is that falling into gross margin or is that --

That's in gross margin.

Right. That's in the merchandise margin. So then how would you split that 90 basis point decrease in merchandise margin between promotional activity and those incremental shipping costs?

Sam, what we've said before on calls is that we see the multi-channel initiatives as an extension of our stores and we're not going to break down the individual pieces and try to bifurcate between what is multi-channel and what's stores. We see it as all one.

Through those various channels, though, we can tell you that we typically are more promotional on the internet, but it also comes with a charge for the shipping, at times. We sometimes will do free shipping as a promotion, sometimes we won't. But we're not going to break down the individual components of the 90 basis points. We're just going to tell you what the factors are that led to it.

Okay. You answered the question by -- I guess the question is, what can you -- what results in your being more promotional online then you are in store? What is the causal of that, would you view it?

I don't believe -- I'm not sure I follow the question. Why don't you --

Kerry said that you were more promotional online than you are in-store. My question is why. Why is that the case?

-- more promotional, because occasionally you offer free shipping or discounted shipping. I don't have to ship when I'm in the store.

No, but that's not what he said. That wasn't what you said, Kerry. You said that sometime you're more promotional online and sometimes you offer free shipping and sometimes you don't. I think of the shipping as separate from promotions. So the question is, is do you have some goods that are online exclusives, correct? Are you doing -- are you finding that you're doing a disproportionate of more promotional online?

There are times we run promotions online that we don't run in stores. We'll run flash sales. Every retailer does that. So that's not unusual to Shoe Carnival.

All right. Thanks very much.

Jeff Stein, Northcoast Research.

A couple of questions for you. First of all, Cliff, I'm wondering as you grow your Shoe Perks membership and sales as a percent to total, does that in any way become a drag on your merchandise margin?

No, I believe that actually that actually will help not only our sales in the long term, but will help our margin because what this is going to allow us to do, especially with our new CRM individual that we just hired, we're going to be able to talk individually to our customers. So this week, for instance, this week we sent out a sandal, a women's sandal email to all our Shoe Perks members.

I got that sandal email. If you're a Shoe Perks member, you got that women's sandal email. And in the future, with this new CRM individual, we will be able to tailor that email to where if you buy athletic shoes from us, you will get an athletic email instead of a women's sandal email. So this is going to help us as we move forward to grow our business and grow our business even more profitably.

I understand. That makes sense. But with Shoe Perks, you're giving awards away. So as your Shoe Perks membership grows and you give more awards away, doesn't that impact margin? That is my question.

We would manage that margin, we would manage that with our promotional cadence. I understand what you're saying now. And we would manage that with our promotional cadence and the number of coupons that we would put out to our customer base.

Jeff, we said all along in our longer term forecasts and even when we gave guidance for the full year is that we expect to have headwinds because of the multi-channel initiative, much of it being related to the shipping charges around that multi-channel initiative, but that we expect to have positive opportunities within our product that we're selling.

What hurt us in the first quarter is we had to get more promotional with that product margin, and therefore it didn't cover the headwinds on the multi-channel. And we may see a little bit more of that as we go through the year. But overall, we've said for the next few years, we expect to have rather flattish merchandise margins because of those headwinds.

Okay. I have a question also on your Shoes2U program. Can you talk a little about what kind of impact it's having on your sales and conversions? So in other words, had you not had Shoes2U, any thoughts in terms of what that might have meant in terms of missed sales opportunities?

We don't want to get into how much it's meant from a sales standpoint, but we will tell you that we believe it is responsible, entirely responsible, actually, for our increase in conversion. So it's added at least, it's added in excess of 100 basis points to our conversion rate.

Okay. Perfect.

As far as your buy online pick up in store, buy online ship to store, what is the timing of the rollout of that?

We think that will happen early in the third quarter.

Okay. And are you getting any meaningful volumes off of your app, and can you talk about the number of downloads you've had so far?

You know, I don't know that off the top of my head, and I probably should. I can tell you that we could do a very high percentage of our online business that they enter the site through a mobile device. We know that. I don't have the number off the top of my head on the number of people that have downloaded the app. I will certainly get that.

Sure. Okay. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Eddie Plank, Jefferies.

Thanks for taking the question.

So with respect to the longer term margin impact from multi-channel, how are you thinking about that? I would think that presumably expenses would go up as you introduce buy online pick up in store, buy online ship to store, et cetera. Is this something we should expect to normalize over time, something you can improve? How are you looking at it in the big picture?

I believe, as we get it up and running -- we're really late to the game, Eddie. And we have actually been racing to catch up with all our competition. So I think as we get to the volume expectation that we believe that it can bring to us, then I think it will all balance out. But I do believe it's going to be in the near term, we're going to see a little pressure on margin. And I think that's the way we guided at the beginning of the year.

Okay. Got it. That's helpful. Bigger picture now that we've been reading about these new overtime rules, any thoughts on how that might impact your payroll, if there's any impact at all?

They came out yesterday. We're in the middle -- I don't know if you've seen it, but it's a 450-page document that we are pouring over. Our human resource people are going through it with everything they have, and I just don't know how to answer that today. It just hit us yesterday. So give us a little time and we'll certainly be able to tell you.

Fair enough. I only read page 1. (Laughter)

Last question. Kerry, you did a little bit of a buyback in the first quarter. Any guidance on how we should think about buybacks for the remainder of the year?

You know, we're committed to buying back shares when we think they're of value. We're generating a significant amount of cash flow in our projections this year, and the models are showing that, the analysts' models. So we're going to be out there.

The first quarter is tough for us from the standpoint that we release a little bit later fourth quarter numbers. They don't come out until mid March. And then we shut down before the quarter is over, being a quiet period, so we have a limited window of opportunity. And we put in a 10b5 program to potentially buy some shares during that blackout period that we had. However, the stock price was reacting very strong and was accelerating, in many cases, through the quarter. So we didn't get an opportunity to buy anything through that 10b5 program. But next week, our windows open up through the quarter. We'll have some time, if the stock's under pressure, I'd see us being a buyer of it.

Great. That's very helpful. All the best going forward. Talk to you soon.

And with no further questions at this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Sifford for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us and we look forward to speaking to you about our third quarter results in August.

And that does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.