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spk08: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Boothman Holdings Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this call has been recorded. Now, I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Mark Dadovich, Vice President, Financial Planning. Please go ahead, sir.
spk15: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Boot Barn's fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 earnings results. With me on today's call are Jim Conroy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Greg Hackman, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Jim Watkins, Chief Financial Officer. A copy of today's press release, along with a supplemental financial presentation, is available on the investor relations section of Boot Barn's website at bootbarn.com. Shortly after we end this call, a recording of the call will be available as a replay for 30 days on the investor relations section of the company's website. I would like to remind you that certain statements we will make in this presentation are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect Boot Barn's judgment and analysis only as of today, and actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on the number of factors affecting Boot Barn's business. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements to be made during this conference call and webcast, we refer you to the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that is included in our fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 earnings release, as well as our filings with the SEC referenced in that disclaimer. We do not undertake any obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Jim Conroy, Group Run's President and Chief Executive Officer. Jim?
spk18: Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's call. On this call, I'll review our fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 results, discuss the continued progress we have made across each of our strategic initiatives, and provide an update on current business. In addition, I will be sharing the results of a recent study we have completed that has led us to update our estimate of the size of our total addressable market and to establish a new long-term store account potential. Following my remarks, Jim Watkins will review our financial performance in more detail, and then we will open the call up for questions. On this call, we will return to our typical cadence of discussing our financial results on a one-year rather than two-year basis. Fiscal 22 is a record-setting year for Boot Barn, with results exceeding our expectations across the board. Consolidated same-store sales increased a staggering 54%, cycling a positive 3% comp in the prior year. This consolidated same-store sales growth was comprised of an increase in retail store same-store sales of 57% and e-commerce sales of 39%. Our sales growth throughout the year was consistently strong, driving our business far beyond the $1 billion mark for the first time to $1.5 billion. Remarkably, all 52 weeks of fiscal 22 grew in excess of 55% on a two-year basis, demonstrating the consistency of our performance. Merchandise margin increased 270 basis points compared to the prior year, fueled primarily by greater full price selling and growth in our exclusive brand penetration. The combination of top line strength, merchandise margin growth, and expense leverage led to a more than tripling of our earnings per share to $6.33 and an EBIT margin rate of 17.4%. I would like to take a brief moment to congratulate the entire Groupon team for achieving one of the best if not the best years I've seen in my entire retail career. Thank you all for your dedication, resilience, and hard work. Looking at our fourth quarter performance, consolidated same-store sales grew 33% on top of 27% same-store sales growth in the prior year period, which benefited from two rounds of stimulus payments. Our consolidated same-store sales growth was comprised of an increase in e-commerce sales of 50%, and retail store same-store sales growth of 31%. Consistent with our third quarter, the growth in same-store sales was driven primarily by an increase in transactions. Additionally, a substantial portion of the increase in transaction growth came from new customers, which underscores the success of our strategy to expand our addressable market, which I will address later in my remarks. In addition to strong top-line performance, EBIT margin expanded 360 basis points to 16.3% during the fourth quarter, driving earnings per diluted share of $1.47. On a tax-adjusted basis, excluding the benefit from stock compensation in the prior year period, earnings per share grew 96% compared to 75 cents in the prior year period. We believe the underlying strength in the business is a result of relentless execution across each of our four strategic initiatives. I will now spend some time highlighting the progress we continue to make across each initiative. Let's begin with driving same-store sales growth. We saw broad-based growth across the business in the fourth quarter with every major merchandise category showing double-digit growth over the prior year period. From a geographic perspective, every region also increased strong double digits. As we anticipated, the South modestly outperformed the other regions, primarily as a result of a full rodeo season this year in Texas going up against a COVID-impacted season last year. From a merchandise perspective, ladies apparel and boots, cowboy hats, ball caps, and belts were our strongest performing categories. Additionally, we saw healthy growth in men's Western apparel and boots, kids' apparel, and accessories. Work boots and work apparel were also double-digit positive, with both flame-resistant and non-flame-resistant apparel showing nice growth over the prior year period. The merchants, in combination with our planning, supply chain, and logistics teams, overcame industry-wide supply chain challenges and did a fantastic job of broadening our merchandise assortment as well as securing enough inventory to fuel the outside demand. We believe that the team's aggressive buying decisions helped drive a strong impact position, gave us a competitive advantage, and drove solid growth across the entire business. From a marketing perspective, we continue to balance our investment in both traditional marketing programs and digital advertising. Our marketing strategy has enabled us to elevate the aesthetic of the brand and extend our customer base beyond our traditional Western customer. We are pleased with our ability to continue to build our customer base and we are encouraged to see that their retention rates and spending patterns are very similar to our legacy customers. We believe that our efforts to transform and extend the Boot Barn brand has greatly expanded the market in which we operate. We are further pleased to report that our push to attract a new customer segment has not negatively impacted our legacy customers who continue to shop even more frequently than they have in the past. From an operational perspective, the entire field team was able to handle the elevated sales volume while providing excellent service to our customers. The stores organization managed a heavy flow of merchandise and led a much larger base of employees while also supporting the opening of 28 new stores across the country. As we emerged from the holiday season, we believed that the strength in the sales trend would continue. Accordingly, we worked to convert a substantial portion of our seasonal employees to full-time associates, which positioned us well for the balance of the fourth quarter. This enabled us to circumvent many of the ongoing staffing challenges other retailers are facing and provided additional competitive advantage. Moving to our second initiative, strengthening our omnichannel leadership. Our e-commerce channel had a fantastic fourth quarter, with sales growing 50% and EBIT increasing 70% over the prior year period. Our ongoing focus on driving exclusive brand penetration, coupled with a more efficient use of our digital marketing spend, continues to result in improved profitability of our e-commerce business, despite industry-wide freight cost headwinds. From an omnichannel perspective, we continue to build a more seamless experience for our in-store customer. Over the last several years, we have upgraded the digital experience in the store with the addition of multiple omnichannel services that have been very well received. For example, the implementation of our endless aisle or WIP capability has enabled us to enhance the in-store shopping experience and to convert potentially lost store sales by making all of our inventory chain-wide. available to every customer in every store. During the fourth quarter, our stores team and IT team partnered well to roll out multifunctional handheld devices across the chain that enable omnichannel selling services while also streamlining the operational aspects of the store. On our last earnings call, we highlighted our ability to sell in-store inventory to our online customers. Now e-commerce orders can be fulfilled by either our distribution center or any one of our stores. This has had a positive impact on the business from a few different perspectives. First, as we carry more exclusive brand product in stores versus online, we've been able to drive incremental exclusive brand penetration online by broadening the inventory selection available to that customer. Second, we are able to mitigate markdown risk at the individual store level by by enabling all in-store inventory to be viewed by our online customers as well. Lastly, by making all our store inventory accessible, we believe we can service online customers more quickly and more efficiently as the product ordered often resides in a store that is geographically closer to the consumer. Amazingly, when factoring in all of our omnichannel capabilities, Approximately two-thirds of total e-commerce orders involve a store associate, whether that be via in-store fulfillment, ship-to-store, WIP, BOPIS, or same-day delivery. We believe our focus on an integrated omni-channel experience that leverages a nearly national footprint of stores has set us apart and gives us another competitive advantage. Now to our third strategic initiative, exclusive brands. During the fourth quarter, we grew exclusive brand penetration to 29.6%, an approximately 540 basis point increase over the prior year period. We continue to be very pleased with the growth and reception of our exclusive brands. Notably, three of our exclusive brands were among the top five selling brands in the fourth quarter. For the full fiscal year, we grew exclusive brand penetration to 28.3%, an approximately 470 basis point increase over fiscal 21. Our current portfolio now consists of 10 brands, including the addition of our four new brands in the fourth quarter. We are quite pleased with the customer receptivity of our exclusive brands and the ability to provide our customers with unique merchandise. Further, as many of our branded vendor partners have faced significant supply chain challenges, we were able to rely on our own brands to ensure a strong in-stock position and outperform our competition. Finally, our fourth initiative, expanding our store base. During the fourth quarter, we opened 11 stores, bringing our total store count to 300 stores at the end of the fiscal year. We also opened our first store in Delaware during the fourth quarter, bringing our national footprint to a 38th state. We continue to be very pleased with the performance of our new stores. New stores opened in both existing and new markets are consistently outperforming their pro forma sales and their expected payback period. Not only are we seeing these stores far outpace their original sales pro forma, but we are also seeing a synergistic growth in our e-commerce business in those markets as well. We are excited about our new store openings in fiscal 23 with expansion into the states of New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, and Maryland. Remarkably, every store in the chain is profitable from a four-wall contribution perspective, which gives us further confidence to continue our aggressive growth. At this point, I would like to share some exciting new information related to the market opportunity for the Boot Barn brand and store concept across the country. As we have been communicating over the past few years, we have been looking at expanding our customer reach to a more casual customer in addition to the core Western customer. We have now had time to substantiate our intuitive feeling with a robust data-driven third-party analysis. This work, which is summarized on pages 9 and 10 of our supplemental financial presentation, has further validated our recent strategy of extending our customer reach as a mechanism to drive outsized sales growth and has confirmed that the market is substantially larger than we had estimated when we last did this work almost 10 years ago. Not only has the original Western and work market expanded by 25% in these 10 years, but we have now added $15 billion of new market opportunity as a result of incorporating this more casual outdoor segment that we have defined as a country lifestyle customer. As a result of this external evaluation, we now believe that our total addressable market has doubled from $20 billion to $40 billion. When you couple this analysis With the success of our new stores, both in building out new markets and adding to existing markets, we now feel confident that our U.S. store count can successfully reach 900 stores over time. This is quite exciting news for us and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future. Turning to current business. We are now approximately halfway through our first fiscal quarter and are very pleased with the continued growth of the business. While there was some concern that it would be difficult to wrap the strength of last year's business, our consolidated same-store sales growth through the first six weeks of fiscal 23 is approximately 12%, with both the stores and e-commerce channels posting strong comps. Once again, sales are being driven by strength in transactions with minimal help from inflation and no change in our promotional posture. We are now six weeks into the quarter and feel great about the strength of the current trend, further bolstered by the sequential improvement we have seen in May relative to an already very strong April business. I'd like to now turn the call over to Jim Watkins. Thank you, Jim.
spk17: As a reminder, I will be discussing our financial results with comparisons to our prior year period. In the fourth quarter, net sales increased 48% to $383 million. Sales growth was driven by a 33% increase in consolidated same-store sales and sales from new stores added during the past 12 months. Gross profit increased 61% to $149 million, or 38.8% of sales, compared to gross profit of $92 million or 35.7% of sales in the prior year period. The 310 basis point increase in gross profit rate resulted from 190 basis points of leverage in buying and occupancy costs and a 120 basis point increase in merchandise margin rate. The merchandise margin rate increase was primarily a result of better full-price selling and growth in exclusive brand penetration, partially offset by a 60 basis point headwind from higher freight expense. Operating expense for the quarter was $86 million, or 22.6% of sales, compared to $60 million, or 23% of sales in the prior year period. Operating expense increased primarily as a result of higher store payroll, store overhead costs, and marketing expense. Operating expenses as a percentage of sales decreased by 40 basis points, primarily as a result of expense leverage on higher sales. We are pleased with the expense leverage we saw in the quarter as we cycled our fourth quarter business last year when we saw a sharp acceleration in sales volume toward the end of the quarter, which drove outsized operating expense leverage. It is encouraging that we could anniversary that nuance and offset other inflationary expense pressures to drive leverage. Income from operations was $62 million, or 16.3% of sales in the quarter, expanding 360 basis points compared to $33 million, or 12.7% of sales in the prior year period. Net income was $45 million, or $1.47 per diluted share, compared to $25 million, or 82 cents per diluted share, in the prior year period. Net income for diluted share in the prior year period includes an approximately $0.07 per share benefit primarily due to income tax accounting for share-based compensation. Excluding the tax benefit in the prior year period, net income for diluted share in the current year period was $1.47 compared to $0.75 in the prior year period. Turning to the balance sheet. On a consolidated basis, inventory increased 72% over the prior year period to to $474 million. This increase was primarily driven by a 36% increase in same-store inventory, growth in inventory held at our Fontana distribution center, and inventory for new stores added in the last 12 months. We finished the quarter with $29 million drawn on our $180 million revolving line of credit. We also had $21 million in cash on hand at the end of the quarter. Turning to our outlook for fiscal 23. For the year, we expect same-store sales to grow 4.8% and earnings per diluted share of $6.41. As a reminder, fiscal 23 is a 53-week year. We expect to generate approximately $34 million of sales and earn approximately 19 cents per diluted share in the 53rd week, which is included in our provided guidance. We expect total sales to be $1.74 billion. We expect a gross profit to be $652 million or 37.5% of sales. We expect operating expenses to be $386 million or 22.2% of sales. Our income from operations is expected to be $266 million or 15.3% of sales. We expect net income for fiscal 23 to be $197 million. We also expect our interest expense to be $3 million and capital expenditures to be $87 million. The increased investment in capital expenditures in fiscal 23 when compared to fiscal 22 is the result of opening new stores, remodeling and relocating existing stores, and opening a third distribution center. This new Midwest distribution center will primarily support our exclusive brand initiatives and a portion of our e-commerce business. For the full year, we expect our effective tax rate to be 25.2%. Additionally, for fiscal 23, we expect to accelerate our new unit growth and open 40 new stores with targeted openings spread consistently throughout the year. Included in our guidance is an assumption that these stores will generate sales of $3.5 million per store in their first 12 months of operations. Please refer to pages 6 through 8 of the supplemental financial presentation released we released today for further information on our fiscal 23 guide. As we look to the first quarter, we expect total sales to be $367 million, driven by a same-store sales increase of 10%. Our income from operations is expected to be $47 million, or 12.8% of sales, which is expected to result in net income per diluted share of $1.14. Now I would like to turn the call back to Jim for some closing remarks.
spk18: Thank you, Jim. Fiscal 22 was an incredible year for Boot Barn. We continued to build on each of our strategic initiatives, further strengthening the brand and expanding our customer reach. I would like to take one more opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to the entire Boot Barn team in the field, distribution centers, and the store support center. Each and every one of you has stepped up to every challenge, and as a team, you just delivered one truly spectacular year. I look forward to what fiscal 23 brings and what we will be able to accomplish together. Now I would like to open the call to take your questions. Jacob?
spk08: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roaster. Ladies and gentlemen, I request you to limit your question to one per participant and one for follow-up. The first question comes from Matthew Boss with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead, sir.
spk04: Thanks, and congrats on a great quarter.
spk18: Thanks, Matt.
spk04: So, Jim, we've talked about consistency, I think, for the past four quarters, but to me, your 12% one-Q-to-date comp now points to sequential acceleration if we look at it on a three-year CAGR relative to the fourth quarter. Could you speak to the drivers of this acceleration that you're seeing as we think about maybe the doubling of the TAM you cited, oil and gas market trends, or event reopening opportunities that you're seeing today?
spk18: Sure. You're right. If you were to pull apart the business on a three-year basis, Q3 into Q4 got better. Q4 into Q1 is also better once again. And amazingly, May is better than April. In terms of what's driving that, first I'd like to start with many people thought, including some of us occasionally around the table internally, that we weren't going to be able to cycle the business that really took a step function change up essentially a year ago, right, mid-March of last year. So we're thrilled to be able to report that we've been able to grow on top of that. I would attribute it to sort of the proverbial flywheel, right? We've extended our reach to more customers. We've broadened our assortment. We've contemporized the brand to make it more accessible to people that are outside our core Western customer. And as we've done each part of that, coupled with sort of a lot of operational execution pieces, right? So we've been aggressive at securing inventory. We've managed our supply chain extremely well. We've been able to hire in the stores and retain people extremely well. And when you put all that together, it's a combination of maybe a little bit of a tailwind from some macro pieces, but Honestly, and we say this with great humility, and my hat's off to the team that's executing, but a good portion of it is just sort of very strong execution across sort of basic tenants of retail.
spk04: And then maybe a follow-up on the bottom line. So, Jim, at the IPO, I think you cited low to mid-single digit, same-store sales, 10% unit growth. was a 20% plus EPS growth story. So on an underlying basis, now moving forward, I guess has anything changed with top-line flow-through in the model, or has the algorithm lost any drivers as you've scaled the business?
spk18: Sure. So you're right, and that has been our long-term algorithm. You know, we are, and you have led us to this in the past while we've, tried to guide investors to a 20% EPS growth. Since we've been public, we've been growing even more than that, right? We've grown almost double that or more than double that, 40-something percent EPS growth since the time of our IPO. So this upcoming year, given that we've had such a step function performance in fiscal 22, we're certainly not promising either 20 or 40% EPS growth for this next fiscal year, fiscal 23. From that point forward, though, I think the long-term algorithm should be viewed as our ongoing view into EPS growth. I would imagine it's going to once again prove conservative. If you think about what we've been able to do over the last few years and how we're positioned today, We're likely to grow faster than 10% new units, so I'd probably say 13% new units. We often anchor back to 250 or 300 basis points of exclusive brand penetration, but we've overperformed that. The historical algorithm is low to mid single digit comps, and we've been plus 11 for 11 years. So if you look at the three factors that when taken together drive a 20% EPS growth, I think there's a decent likelihood that going forward we'll be able to achieve that or overachieve it again. So right now we're going to focus on delivering a strong fiscal 23, and then I guess on the call a year from today, we'll give you a better answer for the go-forward algorithm.
spk04: Look forward to it. Great work, and best of luck.
spk09: Thanks, Matt.
spk08: Thank you. The next question comes from Max Roklenko with Cohen & Company. Please go ahead.
spk07: Great. Thanks a lot and congrats on a really strong quarter. So with another quarter under your belt, how would you assess your ability to lock in the new shoppers that you've gained over the past 12 to 18 months? How confident are you that these shoppers will remain food shoppers? And then if there was a reason why you would potentially lose them, what do you think that that could be?
spk18: Sure. So we've had enough time now to see more than 12 months of behavior. from some of the new shoppers that have been attracted to the Boot Barn brand. And while, of course, we can't completely predict the future, what we can say looking back over the last 12 or 16 months is that those customers are shopping with us with the same frequency as our legacy customers. So they're shopping roughly twice a year on average. Their basket is roughly in line with our legacy customer. at a little over $110 per trip. And in terms of how we could potentially lose them going forward, look, I think there's a host of ways that they could leave the Groupon brand. They could be bid away by a competitor. There could be an online threat with a company that is competing on price with maybe less of a focus on profitability. But there's also a more bullish viewpoint, which is we're just getting started in this new customer segment. There'll be word-of-mouth expansion within this new customer segment. We'll start to gain not only more customers but a bigger share of their wallet going forward and so on and so forth. So we announced this initiative to broaden the sort of definition of RootBarn. kind of concurrent, unfortunately, with the outset of COVID in the beginning of calendar 2020. And we've had a couple of years of learning and we're encouraged by those results, but we're still in the early innings of expanding that customer base, learning more and more what makes them tick and what types of product to bring in the store and how to reach them from a marketing perspective, et cetera. So I actually view it from the perspective of This is a great new market opportunity that we're just beginning to tap into. Like our core customer, there's not a whole host of really strong competition, typically being serviced by mom and pop operators. And, you know, we're going to do what we normally do, which is just methodically continue to expand within that part of this new customer base.
spk07: Got it. It's very helpful. And then with doubling of the TAM, how does that impact your outlook for what your own brands can do and contribute? Is there an opportunity to potentially lean more heavily, especially given all the success that they've had over the past year plus? Just any of the new verticals that you're looking to get into, are they all covered by exclusive brands now or are there additional opportunities down the road? Thanks and best regards.
spk18: So I would separate the expanded TAM a little bit from the potential opportunity for exclusive brands. And not to nitpick the words at all is a fair question. We're very excited about the opportunity to announce a larger market size that we can go after. We know we can open successful new stores. We've been doing that for years and really have been able to achieve that in the most recent year. So a big part of our future growth is to continue to open 40 or 45 or 50 stores a year going forward. And if you do that for a few years, four years or so, that could be another billion dollars in sales. On the exclusive brand piece, we feel reasonably well covered. If we look at our 10 different brands, we could easily position them on sort of a brand map in terms of, customer segment, Western versus work versus country, male versus female, boots versus apparel, et cetera. And I think we feel reasonably well covered. There might be opportunities for some additional brands going forward. And I guess I would just end with when we look at the new brands that have been added, along with the brands that we've had up and running for a few years now, we're really pleased with their performance. We are calling out 300 basis points of additional exclusive brand expansion in this fiscal year. That's essentially what we called out last year. But last year, we overperformed it quite a bit. And I think there's probably opportunity for us to overachieve that exclusive brand penetration this year as well. All of that said... will still be roughly one-third of our business will be exclusive brands, and the other two-thirds of our business will be to our third-party branded partners who are extraordinarily important as we continue to grow our business. And many of them have really stepped up to help us fuel the outside sales trend that we've been experiencing over the last year plus. So, You know, a great deal of gratitude goes out to those, many of those vendor partners as well.
spk09: Jacob? Thank you.
spk08: The next question comes from Steven Zacon with Citi. Please go ahead.
spk05: Great. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on another strong quarter. I wanted to ask on the margin side of the business. So maybe, Jim, could you talk a little bit more about the outlook for gross versus SG&A within the first quarter EBIT margin guidance? And then for the full year, could you just elaborate a little bit more on the gross margin outlook? I saw on the slides it looks like 130 basis points of free deleverage. So maybe just talk about that in a bit more detail. That'd be helpful. Thank you.
spk17: Sure. So, Steve, for the first quarter, just talking about the EBIT rate, and I'll just walk through the P&L top to bottom. But as a reminder, last year we got a significant amount of leverage or EBIT at 17.5% during the quarter as our sales accelerated. This year we've developed our expense budget contemplating a more modest sales increase in the first quarter. And so we expect the EBIT rate to normalize a bit, as you see in the guide that we've got there at 12.8% EBIT. So the first of those on the freight, what we've seen with freight is it's been elevated during the last couple of quarters. And from an accounting standpoint, we capitalized those freight charges and amortized them over a six-month period. And so based on what we've been seeing, we're expecting 200 basis points of headwind in freight during the first quarter. which is above our 130 basis point guide for the full year as far as freight headwind goes. So that'll create a little bit of pressure. And as we said on our last call, we've significantly increased wages in the fall for our employees and our distribution center. And these wages, in addition to some occupancy deleverage from the timing of new stores, will result in some buying and occupancy deleverage in the first quarter. From the SG&A standpoint, as we've talked about, we expect to see deleverage in store labor and marketing as we normalize and plan our labor and marketing in line with our sales plan for the quarter there. And then finally, from a stores and a corporate overhead standpoint, there's a little bit of pressure there as things such as health insurance and supplies and consumables and some maintenance charges pressure us in Q1. As far as the fiscal year goes, I would refer you to slide eight where we've got the components listed out there, and I'll point you to the right side. As you look at the gross profit, our merchandise margin is comprised of our product margin as well as freight, and that all rolls into our merchandise margin. So we've broken that out and expect to see 50 basis points of product margin expansion which will be led by better full-price selling and exclusive brand penetration of 300 basis points. Improvement there. And then 130 basis points of freight headwinds will get us to an 80 basis points of deterioration in our merchandise margin for the year. And then also included in the gross profit is the 40 basis points of occupancy deleverage, and that's really related to the timing of the new stores, Last year, again, we're back half-weighted in opening the stores last year, and then we'll have a more evenly split, maybe 10-1⁄4 new store openings for the current year. And then as we go down into SG&A, similar to what I've talked about previously for Q1, is we normalize the store labor and the marketing this year and have that planned more in line with our sales plan We expect to see 90 basis points of deleverage there.
spk05: Great. That's very helpful. Thanks for that detail. I had a follow-up on Matt's question earlier, just thinking about the longer-term operating margin path for the company, because I think the slides referenced fiscal 23, this 15% level as the new baseline for the business. It's a step down from where you were last year, but explainable. I guess as you think about going forward beyond 23, is there opportunity – for the margin to continue to expand. Do you think there's potential to get back to the 17% level you saw?
spk17: Absolutely. Absolutely. We expect that to continue to build off of this year. And what that looks like as we move into fiscal 24, it's hard to say at this point, but we can say that at some point the freight headwinds of 130 basis points will start to dissipate and return in our favor. as well as getting continued expense leverage from the SG&A line. And then as we continue to open these new stores and we get the additional benefit of occupancy leverage going forward and just general expense leverage, we continue to expect to see some EBIT growth and getting back to where we were this last year and beyond, hopefully.
spk05: Very helpful. Thanks, guys.
spk09: Thank you. Thank you.
spk08: Thank you. The next question comes from Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hey, thanks, everyone. Great results. Just looking forward and maybe looking back first, you guys have long cited that you're a functional use retailer with about 70% of your sales on functional use products. That's really limited gross margin volatility and markdown risk and pretty steady results. As you've moved now with the TAM to this increase in this country lifestyle segment, maybe there's a little bit of a Western trend going on right now. Do you think the business steps down from a functional use percentage? And if so, would that perhaps increase some of the markdown volatility?
spk18: It's a great question, Peter. I guess the candid answer is yes, but slightly less. Right, and I would bring everybody back to when we launched Idlewind by Miranda Lambert a few years ago, and she and that brand continue to perform well, and they're just fabulous partners for us. But when we launched that in the fall of 2018, we moved straight into a pretty strong fashion sensibility with that particular brand. And despite launching that and then growing it and then hitting the pandemic, we still have really never had any significant markdown call-out, despite being more penetrated in fashion on the ladies' side with Idlewind and having to work through COVID-19. I think the worst we had was we, as COVID was emerging, In our first quarter of fiscal 21, you know, we had 20 or 30 basis points of merchandise margin erosion. And that's kind of like, you know, the worst of all worlds, the perfect storm, if you will. As we come back to your question more specifically, yes, we're going after customers that don't all need the product for purely functional use. However, much of the product is still basics-oriented, right? It's denim, woven shirts, T-shirts, still cowboy boots or footwear of some sort. And maybe they're not wearing them to work on a farm or a ranch or to work in a construction site or an oil and gas industry. But it's still basic. fairly basic and functional in nature, and we're not betting on the next fashion cycle or fashion season or whatever. So, again, in the spirit of full transparency, it's slightly less functional than it was when we were first introduced to you back when we were going public, but I don't think we're sticking our neck out and taking undue risk with the expansion into these other customer segments.
spk03: Okay, great. And then certainly the 900 store target is impressive to sit here and still trip your store base from where you stand today. The new markets being half of that upside opportunity, could you talk a little bit more about where you see big new market opportunity? You've talked about the Northeast for a long time. Is that one that you think is really starting to open up for you or are there other geographies that are becoming a bigger opportunity?
spk16: Peter, it's Greg. This current year, as we think about the 40 stores, we'll open about a fourth of those in the west region, primarily California. We'll open about a fourth of them in the south region, which is primarily Texas. And then we'll open about a fourth in the northeast, so New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. And roughly a fourth in what I would describe as the mid-Atlantic states, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia. and we've been opening stores in that area for the last couple of years. We've got six stores in Pennsylvania, four in Virginia, and three in Ohio. So I'd say about half will be existing markets where we continue to fill out California and Texas, and the fourth will be, again, on the eastern seaboard.
spk03: Okay. Very helpful. Thanks so much, guys.
spk16: Thank you.
spk08: Thank you. The next question comes from Jonathan Combs with BED. Please go ahead.
spk12: Yeah, thank you. Hi, good afternoon. I want to follow up on the sales outlook. I know you've guided with quite a bit of precision, so I might as well ask when you look at sort of the first quarter here beyond the first six weeks, it looks like you're embedding high single-digit same-store sales, even though May is running above that. and then more like 3% to 4% for the balance of the year. So could you maybe just comment more on what's feeding into that guidance, and how do you think about the economic sensitivity of your business mix today since it's shifted pretty meaningfully the last few years?
spk17: Yeah, John, so for the sales outlook, we pinpointed a guidance that was more of a precise number than what We used to do what we wanted to do this year, given some of the nuance of the level setting of the business and to give you all the pieces and components and really what it was with our best estimate and how we're looking at the business, how we're planning the inventory and the labor and the sales for the year and the earnings. And we'll provide you updates on that as we carry on through the year. As far as the way we're thinking about the business, Q1 and Q2, we have more visibility into, and so we've planned sales to be more front half weighted as far as sales. And so, yes, you're right. We're tracking at a plus 12. We've guided plus 10, which would put the back half of the quarter at 8% or so. and then the rest of the year would come in below that. I think in Q2, we're planning it to be strong. Q3 and 4, also positive, but maybe not as strong. I think as far as modeling the quarters, what I would do is really look at how we modeled or how we came in last year, sales as a percent of the year by quarter, and that's how we're thinking about the business, and then factoring in Q4 with which is normally elevated above Q1 and Q2 because of Texas rodeos, and then add the 53rd week in there, you're going to get a higher sales dollar volume in Q4. So that's how we're thinking about the sales cadence for the year.
spk11: And any thoughts on sort of the economic sensitivity of your business today?
spk18: John, what do you mean by that? Meaning as macro pressures in the U.S. or inflation, that sensitivity to those types of things?
spk12: Yeah, certainly. And I'd be curious if you'd see more risk of tailwinds or headwinds. I know certainly market participants are worried about headwinds forming in the future. So just curious how you think about some of those factors for your business.
spk18: Sure. Fair question. I think a lot of people are worried about the impact of inflation on customer spending, will we see, will we be slipping into recession, et cetera, et cetera. Frankly, we're probably facing into some of that right now. I mean, there's some portion of our customer base, coming back to a prior question, that really relies on Boot Barn for functional product. Most of our work food and work apparel business, of course, much of our men's Western product is functional in nature as well. A good portion of our ladies Western is functional. So that customer tends to be pretty solid. But with that said, our median household income for our customer group is about $75,000. And if there's inflationary pressure that other retailers are facing, we're probably facing it now as well. The challenge that we always try to accept is how do we grow despite those pressures? And as they unfold in front of us throughout this year, we'll have to continue to innovate and find ways to get additional growth. But right now, we're feeling very strong momentum early on in this fiscal year coming off of just a kind of once-in-a-lifetime year. And, you know, we're going to continue to try to reach out, get more customers, extend the brand's reach, expand the share of wallet with each of those customers. And I think the outlook for us continuing to have sales growth going forward is still pretty strong.
spk12: Yeah, that's really helpful. Done a great job of that so far. Maybe one other question just on the operating margin. I'm asking maybe differently than what's brought up on some of the earlier questions, but I know in the past you've talked about directionally more of a 12% to 14% operating margin aspiration, and now you're above that and talking about that new guidepost that is expected to stay above that. So could you maybe just review, especially on the merchandise margin, some of the structural changes and what you see as sustainable based on what you've driven so far and any other factors that are giving you confidence to be above that sort of 14% mark on the operating margin?
spk17: So as far as the merchandise margin rate goes, we tried to break out something a little differently this year than we've done in the past, which is putting the product margin out there. And that was really to illustrate that we've seen really nice expansion on the product margin side of things, and that's really been driven by our exclusive brand penetration growth. And that's something that we're not expecting to give back, as well as the full-price selling, reducing promotions, has been something that we've chipped away at over the past several years. And then more recently, the in-store fulfillment that we've talked about a little bit more last quarter, where the online shopper is able to have full visibility of what's available in our stores. And so what we saw online is with more exclusive brand product available to our online shoppers, that penetration has gone from rough numbers 10 to 20%, which has really helped our online margin. And looking forward, we see that also as an opportunity with the in-store fulfillment to use the eyeballs of the online customer, if you will, to move some of the clearance items where we may have a broken size in one store. Rather than put that... Rather than have a deeper markdown in the store, we can sell that hopefully a little bit earlier, and early reads on this have shown that we are able to sell that with a lower markdown. And so I think from a merchandise margin standpoint, we're excited about the opportunities we have as we look forward and continue to grow our exclusive brand business and find ways to increase the product margin there.
spk11: That's great. I appreciate all the color. Thanks again.
spk09: Thanks, John. Thank you.
spk08: The next question comes from Corey Darlouis with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. As it relates to the new 900 long-term store target and 13% new unit growth, What key segments of the business have you invested in to be able to sustainably support this opportunity and level of store growth ahead?
spk18: Sure. If you're speaking to the organization from a functional standpoint, we've certainly invested in our real estate and construction department. We've added another dealmaker on the East Coast. We've bolstered a construction group a bit. We have more construction project managers. We've also done some things within the store ops or field organization to really professionalize our new store opening, new associate training programs and processes, if you will. Historically, we would borrow people from one part of the country and send them to a different part of the country and open up stores. We'll always have a little bit of that in our DNA, but now we're trying to isolate some folks that are more heavily focused on new store openings and training. I can tell you we've been really happy with our ability to bring people from one part of the country to another, to add people from outside the organization, and get them up to speed on the Groupon culture and our way of operating the business. The last thing we did structurally, which I think will also help sort of simplify the problem, so to speak, is we used to run with three different regions. And for years now, we have spoken to you all about the North region, the South region, and the West region. And you might ask the obvious question of where is the east region? Well, we just recently promoted a woman named Kim Latourneau to our east region director. She's been one of our most solid district managers. She lives in the east already. She understands that market already, and she'll be taking over that, quote, unquote, fourth of the business. It'll be slightly less than fourth of the revenue for a while. So with the additional region comes some additional HR support, additional loss prevention support, etc. So there's a mini team that goes along with that. That said, we feel great about our ability to bring on new stores. We feel great about the pipeline for new stores. We've opened 10 or 11 stores every quarter now for the last few quarters. If you include this one, we're on track for that. One of the quote-unquote easiest parts of our strategy for growth is to just continue to roll out a store concept that seems to be working extremely well and has proven now to be well-received in many parts of the country, including those that aren't geographically Western. So it's exciting. So that, I think, is perhaps the best way to answer your question. That's great.
spk06: And then if I recall correctly, you've recently introduced four new exclusive brands. Are there any early reads that you can share with us today with regard to how those are ramping?
spk18: Sure, sure. We're very pleased with each of them. So Brothers and Sons, Clio and Wolf, Blue Ranchwear, and Rank 45 are the four new brands. Two of them are targeting sort of the country lifestyle customer. That's Clio and Wolf and Brothers and Sons on the ladies' side and the men's side, respectively. And then the other two are different facets of the Western customer. One that we're really excited about is Rank 45. Rank 45 is a core Western customer, but a bit more younger, more modern-feeling, modern-fitting than some of our historical product going after that same customer. So all four of those brands are in the process of ramping. If you walk into our stores now, you'd see – merchandise assortments and tables presenting those goods sort of first and foremost in the store. Some categories are still trickling in, so we're still waiting for some denim in some of those brands and for some of the boot assortment to be expanded, but the early reads are pretty positive.
spk09: That's great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Corey.
spk08: Thank you. The next question comes from Sam Poser with Williams Trading. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple. Good afternoon, gentlemen. One, did this year change your sourcing? You had 50% of your goods being made in China, and I think it was 35% of the goods being made in the Western Hemisphere and the the rest of the other places. What does that look like? What did it look like last year? And what's it going to look like this year?
spk18: Roughly in line for all three years. So China tends to be half of our business. You're right about the 35% that split between Mexico and the U.S. and a few other smaller countries. But right now, that's our plan is to continue to use many of the vendors that we've been sourcing from, both third-party and exclusive brands, and the split will remain roughly in line.
spk02: And does that mirror your exclusive brand business, especially in Western footwear? I know in the work footwear, the pure work, you get a lot out of China, but
spk18: Yeah, so our exclusive brands and our branded vendor partners are pretty similar in terms of where we source from.
spk17: And then the Western footwear, the leather sold Western boots are made primarily in Mexico.
spk02: Gotcha. Thank you. And then? Within everything you're doing, do you have any M&A or are you considering any M&A beyond rolling up a few other smaller Western players? Do you have any other M&A on the horizon or are you potentially looking at anything?
spk18: Right now, we have so much opportunity to continue the growth in our store base organically. That's our primary focus. We've made acquisitions in the past. Of course, if something were to present itself, we would take a look at it, but it would have to be relatively compelling for us given how much success we've been having just opening up new stores.
spk09: Gotcha. Thanks very much. Continued success. Thank you.
spk08: The next question comes from Jeremy Hamlin with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Please go ahead, sir.
spk13: Thanks, and congrats on the outstanding performance, and thank you for the increased transparency and additional details. I wanted to focus on the unit development and just clarify first, in terms of the 13%, unit growth. Is that something where you're thinking this is several years forward at 13%? And then part two of that question is, we've seen a number of companies running into permitting and construction issues. Given this is not a level of unit development you guys have been at in quite some time, can you provide some additional thoughts on confidence of getting to those figures, not just in 23, but on a go-forward basis? Thanks.
spk18: Sure. So I think for the time being, we should assume 13% is our go-forward number. We'll calibrate it again a year from now, but it would be unlikely, unless we saw something that was negatively impacting us pretty dramatically, that we would then step backwards to 10%. In terms of our ability to literally get the stores open and constructed and permitted, I think we face many of the obstacles of the other companies that you're calling out are facing, but have been at a 11-store run rate now for a couple of quarters. I think in our third quarter, we opened 11 stores. In our fourth quarter, we opened 11 stores. In this quarter, we're on pace to open 10 stores, and that's a Q1 number. And then as we look forward into Q2, right, so not so far forward, our Q2 pipeline is quite strong and probably, if everything goes reasonably well, will be more than 11 stores. We have had some challenges here and there, but nothing that has slowed our pace in any significant way. And candidly, at least from our experience, some of those issues are still kind of holdovers from things relative to COVID. So I think a year from now, I'd like to think anyway that some of the challenges that people have been facing might dissipate a bit because we're getting further and further to the tail end. I hope and fortunately this will remain true to the tail end of COVID and at least that piece of the challenge that you're calling out will go away.
spk13: Great. I'll leave it at that. Congrats. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. Thank you.
spk08: The next question comes from Jay Soul with UBS. Please go ahead.
spk01: Great. Thank you so much. My question is about the share count guidance for this year. It looks like the share count at the end of the quarter was 30.4. You're guided to 30.7. It seems like you might generate $125, $150 million in free cash. Have you considered buybacks? It looks like you could buy back 5% of the shares at the current stock price. What are your thoughts about that? Thank you.
spk17: Yeah, Jay, it is something that we've looked at, and it's something that is an option. What we've really focused on is building our inventory, building new stores. We've got a great payback on our new store rollout, and so it's a pretty much guaranteed payback on our new stores. We've seen others who have... you know, opportunistically bought back shares and, you know, only to see the stock price, you know, be volatile after doing that. I think for us, you know, our use of cash is better spent right now in growing the business and building new stores and tackling some of that white space that we have available. I would say that, again, looking at the share count, that is something that, you know, maybe a year from now that we look at a little more seriously, but for the near term, it's not something that's we've got the appetite for right now.
spk01: Okay. And then maybe I know there's been a lot of questions about this 900-store target, but, Jim, if you can just talk about, you know, what were some of the parameters that you put around, you know, this independent study? Because, you know, Tractor Supply has about 2,000 stores. You know, why only 900? Why not more than that? Because if you get that handy map that you guys have on the slide deck, I think it's slide 16, you know, there's a lot of states that don't have a whole lot of density like you do in East Texas and California. what would be the reason to not say, hey, 1,500, 1,700 stores could be the ultimate upset opportunity?
spk18: Well, there's a couple of things. I'm kind of smiling because a few years ago, nobody thought we could ever open 300 stores or 500 stores. Now we're raising it to 900, and it seems conservative, which is, to some degree, a nice compliment. I think the way we looked at the study was, and whenever you do an estimate like that, there's ranges of different assumptions, right? And you can relax assumption one or assumption two or assumption three or multiple moral assumptions simultaneously. So the universe of potential outcomes is actually quite broad. So when we got the results of that study, we had to apply some judgment and say, where do we think, what do we think is a reasonable target for the midterm? And that's where we got the 900. We certainly have the possibility, once we get closer to that, and clearly we're several years away from getting, bumping our head against the 900 store ceiling, But based on what we see in the development around the country, based on what we see with new stores opening in some of these newer states, seeing if there's any cannibalization, there's some likelihood that we'll take that 900 up again, but just, again, in the spirit of complete transparency. That's four years away or something, right? You know, we've got... 400 more stores to open before we start thinking about what our next new store target is. All of that said, I appreciate your sort of bullishness and the comparison to Tractor Supply. We have a world respect for those guys. Incredible company, extremely well run. they've led the path for us from a consumer standpoint sometimes and certainly from a Wall Street perspective. And if we can approach anything close to their store count, there's plenty of opportunity for us to continue to expand our brand across the country.
spk09: Okay, got it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jay.
spk08: Thank you. The next question comes from Mitch Komet with Seaport Research. Please go ahead.
spk00: Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. I just have two. I wanted to drill down on a couple things that have already been discussed. One was on the product margin. I know you guys have historically been a predominantly full-price retailer, but do you have a sense as to what your full-price percent is today versus maybe what it was pre-COVID? And then when I look at the you know, the margin bridge for 23, you've got the product margin going up. I'm kind of curious what's embedded there in terms of full price percent. I don't know if you've got that maybe ticking down a little bit. I would think that if anything, you know, the main driver again would be the exclusive brands. But can you talk a little bit about the full price selling percent? And then I got to follow up.
spk17: Sure, Mitch. Great question. We haven't disclosed the full price selling mix, but we have said it's the vast majority. And Compared to pre-COVID, the amount of full-price selling has gone up a couple percentage points from back then. And so that's kind of what I can give you there. As far as the product margin expansion during the quarter or during the year, it's really going to be driven by more of that full-price selling as well as inclusive brand penetration growth at 300 basis points. It may sound like a conflicted answer. So the part of your question where you asked if there's going to be some give back from a clearance standpoint, there are some products or categories where we are expecting to have the product margin not grow like it did, or maybe there's a little more clearance baked into what we've estimated. But we think that's going to be more than offset by better full-price selling and other categories. So the mix of where we may have some clearance versus this last year may change a little bit, but that product margin extension does contemplate some more full-price selling along with exclusive brand penetration.
spk00: Okay. Appreciate that color. And then also, Jim Watkins, on the margin bridge, I noticed that you're expecting occupancy deleverage in 2013 on a 4.8. same-store sales increase. I'm just curious, you know, what's the leverage point now on occupancy, and maybe that's gone up, but I guess it's above a 5 comp or above a 4.8 comp. Can you talk a little bit about that?
spk17: You're thinking about it the right way. It is above a 4.8 for this year. I would say it is more of a level-set year. We've tried to provide as much color as we could down the P&L. We didn't give leverage points, but it is, you know, well above that 4.8 guide. As we get into next year, we see this as a level setting of the business where we'll grow from here. We'll expect to provide you next year with some leverage points that will probably look more similar to what we have historically had. But for this year, it's something we're not providing yet.
spk16: Mitch, it's Greg. I would just add that if you looked at the phasing of new stores last year, we opened 22 new stores in the back half of last year. So that puts pressure on occupancy rate this year, of course. And then we're opening 13% new units, which is a little bit elevated from the 10% unit algo. So that, again, puts some pressure on occupancy. That makes sense. Okay.
spk17: The opening through this year, what we're planning on, should help with that flow next year as we give you some leverage points.
spk09: Okay. All right. Thanks again.
spk08: Thank you. The last question comes from John Lawrence with Benchmark. Please go ahead.
spk14: Great. Thanks. Congratulations, guys. Great quarter.
spk18: Thanks, John. Appreciate you calling that out.
spk14: Jim, would you just to – I know the call has run long, but let me just – one quick question. If you look at your customer and walk him through, like you say, several years in the business, do you think that if that customer came to you years ago to buy work boots or one of the segments, do you think most of the growth has come from that customer's buying that one specific thing like boots or fashion or whatever, and then as time has moved on and through the years, you've attracted more customers, but then that historical customer has shopped more of the store and expanded his basket?
spk18: So the quick answer is it's both, right? In very rough numbers, we've grown nearly 70% in sales over the last two years. Almost exactly half of that 70% can be attributed to a 35% growth in attracting new customers into the brand. So therefore, balance, if there's no real help for us in terms of inflation and basket size, it's been pretty de minimis. So the balance is our legacy customer shopping more frequently and undoubtedly expanding their wallet and shopping different parts of the store. One of the things that we said when we first went on the road and when we were going public is more than half of our customers shop at that point. We only had kind of two pieces of the business, Western and work. But we saw a lot of crossover between the two businesses. And so I think your intuition is right, that a portion of our growth is just getting more share of wallet from somebody that has been a tried and true customer for us. So they might buy cowboy boots but a Carhartt jacket, and now they're both a Western and a work customer combined. So if I were to take my answer maybe up one level in terms of altitude, we're thrilled with the growth we've been able to achieve because we're not promoting the business, we're not running more sales. It's extraordinarily healthy, full-price selling growth. It's driven both by the attraction of new customers and the increased frequency of current customers. So, again, we're extremely pleased with the most recent year and taking a page out of your book in terms of your question. It's been a pretty good decade of growth, and we've added a billion dollars in sales since we went public.
spk14: And not to take it too far, but there's no reason that that similar sort of trend could happen over the next three or four years as those new customers find more parts of the store.
spk18: Correct. We always have to challenge ourselves to find more opportunities for growth. As I had mentioned in answer to a question earlier, we're thrilled with the share and the sales we're generating from this country lifestyle customer. But we're also just getting started, right? There's plenty of opportunity for us to attract more of those customers into the brand. We started to do some small sponsorships, just as an example, with NASCAR. So that world of fan base is open to us. In addition to our tried and true legacy sponsorships with PRCA and PBR and sort of the rodeo circuits. So there's plenty of opportunity for us to continue to get growth, continue to add customers, and then to be a bigger part of their apparel and footwear spend. I don't know how big that could be. I mean, we've raised our TAM from $20 billion to $40 billion. There's another publicly traded footwear company that thinks the TAM is $1.8 trillion. So we've got some room between our $40 billion and... and that $1.8 trillion number.
spk14: Got it. Thanks again for your time. I'll be in touch. Thanks.
spk09: Thanks so much. Thank you.
spk08: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Jim Conroy for any closing remarks.
spk18: Thanks, Jacob. And thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. We look forward to speaking with you all on our first quarter earnings call. Take care.
spk08: Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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