Tuesday Morning Corp.

Thank you for joining the Tuesday morning fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following today's remarks, there will be no question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today on the company's website. I will now turn the call over to Jennifer Robinson.

Good morning. I would like to welcome you to the Tuesday morning fourth quarter and full-year fiscal 2021 earnings call. Joining me on the call today is Fred Hands, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Katz, our Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin today's prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the information presented may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these statements. Information regarding the company's risk factors was included in our press release and in our SEC filings. Any forward-looking statements made during this call speak only as of the date of this call. Today's presentation will also include certain non-GAAP financial measures, including EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures may be found in the Investor Relations section of the Tuesday Morning website at TuesdayMorning.com. I will now turn the call over to Fred.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2021 conference call. As this is my first conference call since joining the company in mid-May, I thought I would begin with a few comments highlighting the reasons that I joined Tuesday morning. First and foremost, I'm a true believer in the off-price model, delivering highly recognizable brands at great values, while simultaneously creating a treasure hunt shopping experience that continues to resonate with consumers. Second, I also believe the home category has consistent growth ahead of it, with more people working from home than in the past. Third, I've known Tuesday Morning throughout my career and understood that it has cultivated a very loyal customer base over its 45-year history. I also looked at a company that had just come through bankruptcy and had reduced its store fleet to its most profitable 490 stores. negotiated favorable lease terms for approximately 400 stores, and made reductions in corporate overhead. Finally, I knew that Paul Metcalf, whom I worked with in the past, was the acting chief merchant and had a year and a half head start leading the merchandising team and instilling off-price buying principles. Before I begin with some initial impressions, I would like to acknowledge the Tuesday morning team and their unwavering commitment during what was a very challenging time for the business and the industry. Many on the team worked incredibly long hours during the past year and a half as the company entered and then emerged from bankruptcy. It is a testament to their hard work that Tuesday Morning is now able to focus on its next chapter and improving its execution as an off-price retailer. In my first month here, my focus has been on building out the leadership team at Tuesday morning, as we had several open positions. These positions included the CFO, CIO, and a VP role in supply chain. I am delighted to announce that we have filled all those positions, and the new executives are in place. I believe these hires are a great compliment to this strong and dedicated team that was on board when I began. This morning, we announced our current interim CFO, Mark Katz, who spent 11 years at Burlington Stores, most recently as CFO and principal, is transitioning to the full-time COO of Tuesday morning. We're also excited to announce the addition of Jennifer Robinson as our new CFO, who joined us from Michael's stores. One area that needed little focus for me was merchandising. Paul Metcalf, our chief merchant, has done a great job over the past year and a half building out the team and implementing off-price buying disciplines within our buying organization. During this time, the company transitioned away from its prior promotional calendar and moved to focusing on treasure hunt and delivering value every day to our customers. I believe the strides made across our merchandising organization have positioned us well as we move forward. We will continue to operate the off-price model of driving scarcity and bringing in opportunistic buys into the assortment with the focus on delivering fresh receipts from nationally recognized brands. Supporting these efforts has been the great relationships we have with our vendors. which is why it was so important for us to fulfill all our obligations to them as we emerged from bankruptcy, which we did. With this behind us, we look forward to continuing to build on our existing and new vendor relationships. As I look out over the next couple of years, I believe there are some of the more foundational areas of the company that can be improved upon to help drive greater efficiencies. within the organization. Over time, we will discuss in more detail our plans related to supply chain, information technology, and the stores. At a high level, our Dallas DC network is made up of five non-contiguous buildings and a recently added building for pack and hold and flow and hold storage. We believe efficiencies in speed to market can be gained by moving to a DC network specifically designed for off-price. This is a top priority for us, and we will share more as we learn over time. In terms of information technology, we have the opportunity to implement and enhance existing systems. This will not be a race to change all systems within a short amount of time, but rather a methodical process to address key systems first. and develop an IT roadmap over several years to address the rest. We believe efficiencies will be gained across all areas by simplifying the business, reducing manual work, and improving the decision-making process. As far as the stores organization, we have a strong store base with ample opportunity for growth over time. In the near term, however, we will be looking at everything from merchandise flows and adjacencies the tasks being performed in our stores to the customer shopping experience i came up through the stores organization and i'm looking forward to spending more time in our stores and working with the stores team i would now like to turn it over to mark to discuss our financial results and provide high level comments regarding fiscal 2022 mark

Thank you, Fred, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I would just like to comment that my reasons for joining Tuesday morning align with what Fred previously stated, with the additional point that Fred was here as CEO. Fred and I met in the 1990s and worked very closely together over the years, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, both professionally and personally. I will now provide a few highlights from our fourth quarter performance before reviewing our full year results and providing high-level comments on fiscal 2022. Given the impact from temporary store and DC closures due to COVID-19, as well as actions taken with our bankruptcy filing in Q4 of fiscal 2020, prior year Q4 results are not comparable. Moreover, in Q4 of 2019, the company operated 714 stores with a fair amount of promotional activity, which clouds comparability versus 2019 as well. With that said, the company reviewed sales and inventory metrics based on the comparable 490 stores that were open in 2021 and 2019. Compared to Q4 of 2019, we delivered comp store growth of 1.2%, in Q4 fiscal 2021, while store inventories were down 34% compared to 2019 levels. Comp increase was entirely driven by an increase in AUR. It's important to note that Q4 of 2021 contained one promotional event, while Q4 of 2019 contained 13. Our ending inventory levels were slightly below our plan, indicating our desire to maintain the treasure hunt experience and turn faster. We believe our ability to deliver positive comp growth despite significantly reduced inventories indicates progress our merchandising team is making with its transition to a true off-price retailer. As Fred discussed, the off-price model is focused on scarcity and consistently delivering fresh receipts. This requires operating with leaner inventory levels and remaining liquid to enable us to take advantage of the robust supply of merchandise available in the marketplace. Turning now to our full year results. We delivered net sales of 691 million compared to 875 million in fiscal 2020. During fiscal 2021, 197 stores were closed and two were opened. for an ending store count of 490 as of June 30th, 2021. Gross profit was $206 million compared to $285 million for fiscal 2020. Gross margin for fiscal 2021 declined to 29.8% compared to 32.6% last year. The decrease in gross margin was primarily driven by the industry-wide supply chain dislocation. which was partially offset by improved merchandise margin due to a reduction in promotional activity compared to the prior year. As part of our transition to a true off-price retail strategy, we eliminated all promotional activity beginning calendar year 2021. To provide more context on the supply chain costs, it's important to understand the three areas in which we are experiencing elevated expenses. First, as you have heard from other retailers, the dislocation in the global supply chain is resulting in several cost increases and delays. The imbalance between supply and demand results in capacity issues, which leads to an increased inbound and outbound freight costs. As it relates to inbound freight, even though we direct import a small percent of our receipts, our vendors often import goods, and those costs are being passed on to us. From an outbound freight point of view, capacity issues are impacting both road and rail methods of transportation. This congestion is not just affecting costs, but also speed to market, given the delays. Second, we recently increased our wages in the distribution centers so that we can hire and retain the workers we need to get through the peak receipt period of the year. And finally, as our merchandising team continues to move more toward off-price buying disciplines, we are receiving goods that require more value-added services. Set another way, approximately 70% of the goods we now receive need to be touched by human hands. For example, full cases broken down to be delivered to multiple stores to maintain scarcity, in addition to the extra touches required for pack and hold and flow and hold. Looking ahead, we expect the freight and DC cost headwinds to increase before they get better toward the end of our fiscal 2022. Moving to SG&A, as a percentage of net sales, SG&A was 35.3%, compared to 37.8% in the same period last year. SG&A was $244 million in fiscal 2021, compared to $331 million in the same period last year. The decrease in SG&A was primarily due to lower store expenses on a smaller store base, including a significant decrease in store rents for closed stores and renegotiated rents for the ongoing store base. Labor costs and depreciation were also lower on a smaller base. Operating loss was $49 million compared to an operating loss of $159 million in fiscal 2020. In connection with the company's restructuring and reorganization with respect to the Chapter 11 filing, we had a $49 million net credit, which drove net income to $3 million, or $0.05 per share, for fiscal 2021. This compared to a net loss of $166 million or $3.68 per share for fiscal 2020. Fiscal 2020 had restructuring and reorganization costs of $117 million. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was negative $20.3 million for fiscal 2021 compared to a negative $15.4 million for the prior year period. Turning now to the balance sheet, we ended the year with a very clean inventory position at $145 million, which was slightly below our plan, as I mentioned earlier. We had ample open to buy as we entered 2022 and are ready to take advantage of the great supply available in the marketplace. Total liquidity was $45 million, including approximately $39 million available in our revolver. As of fiscal year end, We had $12 million in borrowings outstanding under our line of credit compared to $100,000 last year. It was very important for the company to come out of bankruptcy having paid our vendor claims in full. We expect to be net cash flow neutral during 2022 with total monthly liquidity from now through the end of the year averaging over $50 million. We believe this is more than enough capacity. to cover our obligations and meet our plans for 2022. Now a few comments as it relates to fiscal year 2022. When we discuss sales and inventory metrics during the year, our comparison for fall will be calendar 2019 and spring will be calendar 2021. So far this quarter, comp store sales are up low single digits versus 2019 which had 11 promotional events. Due to the continued uncertainty in the current environment, the company is not providing financial guidance at this time. With that said, given the continued headwinds from the industry-wide supply chain dislocation previously discussed, we are expecting an adjusted EBITDA loss for the year, slightly improved from fiscal year 2021. I will now turn the call back over to Fred for some concluding remarks. Fred?

Thank you, Mark. Despite near-term headwinds, we see tremendous opportunity over the long term for Tuesday morning. With our team now in place, we're focused on improving our execution of the off-price model across all areas of the organization. We have a strong brand, loyal customers, and an opportunity to grow store count in a meaningful way. In my opening remarks, I commented on the attributes of Tuesday morning that attracted me to the company. Now that I've been here for a few months, as I look at the opportunities before us, these are opportunities that we have seen before and give us confidence in our ability to transform Tuesday morning into a world-class, off-price home goods retailer. It will take time and a great deal of effort. Given the level of effort required and our very lean corporate team, we will be focusing our time on improving our execution of the off-price model. We believe this is in the best interest of our shareholders. We truly appreciate the investor interest and support that we have received. And at some point in the future, we will become more involved in investor relations activities. I would like to close our prepared remarks with once again thanking the entire Tuesday morning team for their hard work and dedication in 2021 and look very forward to working with you on writing the next chapter for Tuesday morning.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.