Floor & Decor Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Floor and Decor Holdings Inc. Fourth Quarter 2022 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you host Wayne Hood, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, Wayne. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Floor & Decor's fourth quarter and fiscal 22 earnings conference call. Joining me on our call today are Tom Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, Trevor Lang, President, and Brian Langley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I want to remind everyone of the company's Safe Harbor language. Comments made during this conference call and webcast contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risk and uncertainties. Any statement that refers to expectations, projections, or other characterizations of future events, including financial projections or future market conditions, is a forward-looking statement. The company's actual future results could differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements for any reason, including those listed in its SEC filings. Warren, of course, assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Please also note that past performance or market information is not a guarantee of future results. During this conference call, the company will discuss non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. We believe non-GAAP disclosures enable investors to better understand our core operating performance on a comparable basis between periods. A reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP measures to most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings press release, which is available on our investor relations website at ir.florentecor.com. A recorded replay of this call and related materials will be available on our investor relations website. Let me now turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you, Wayne, and everyone for joining us on our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter earnings conference call. During today's call, Trevor and I will discuss some of the highlights of our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter earnings. Then Brian will provide a more in-depth review of our fourth quarter performance and share our thoughts about fiscal 2023. We are pleased to announce that our 2022 fourth quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 45.5% to 64 cents from 44 cents last year. exceeding the $0.53 to $0.63 per share guidance range that we provided on our 2022 third quarter earnings conference call. Our full year 2022 adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 13.1% to $2.76 from $2.44 in 2021. Notably, our full year 2022 adjusted diluted earnings per share are slightly above the low end of our guidance range of $2.75 to $3 per share that we provided at the beginning of fiscal 2022, which did not contemplate the economic and geopolitical headwinds we faced during the year that were unknown at the time. We are particularly pleased to achieve these financial results considering the challenging macroeconomic environment including steep mortgage rate increases and moderating growth in home prices. These factors contributed to significant year-over-year declines in existing home sales in 2022, particularly in October, November, and December when they declined 28.4%, 35.5%, and 34% respectively. Despite these significant headwinds, we continued to grow our market share by remaining agile, executing our key growth strategies, and investing in initiatives that further widened our competitive moat. We continued to deliver on our gross margin rate recapture plans by executing our pricing strategies and from favorable supply chain costs, which contributed to our better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings results. Ocean freight rates have declined significantly due to lower global market demand and the easing of port congestion. In addition, we have seen material reductions in demurrage, tension, and drayage costs and softening in domestic logistic rates. Collectively, we believe these will provide a tailwind to our gross margin rate in fiscal 2023 and 2024. These improving supply chain costs should enable us to strategically pass certain cost savings to our homeowner and pro customers and continue to grow our market share as we move through fiscal 2023 and beyond. As we enter 2023, we intend to manage our stores in a way that reflects the current economic environment. That is to say, we will further lean into capitalizing on our low prices brought in stock assortments and industry leading customer service provided by our store associates. To further enhance our customer service, we introduced fit teams or field installation teams to handle daily tasks, allowing sales associates more time to engage with customers. We completed the rollout of these teams to six key markets in the fourth quarter of 2022 and plan to have 12 markets with fit teams at the end of 2023. We are proud of our best in class customer service and that we finished 2022 with our highest customer service scores. Our homeowners and pros rely on us to provide them with a wealth of information and style inspirations at the lowest possible price. Before I turn the call over to Trevor, I want to touch on a couple of management and board related items. First, I'd like to remind everyone that in February of 2020, our board of directors authorized retention grants for our executives that were tied to three main goals. doubling our adjusted EBIT over a three-year period, maintaining a prescribed return on invested capital, and stock performance that exceeded our peer group. We are pleased to announce that we have successfully achieved these financial targets. We believe that aligning management's interest with long-term shareholder value creation should be the cornerstone of our executive compensation strategy. For that reason, our board of directors again approved equity retention grants for our executive team linked to achieving specific long-term financial goals and total shareholder return. We will provide more information on these grants in our upcoming proxy statement. Second, I'd like to turn everyone's attention to our press release today on the nomination of Melissa Kersey to join our board. She's currently the Chief Human Resource Officer at Tractor Supply and previously held senior roles at McDonald's and Walmart. We believe Melissa's background will be valuable to our continued growth and that her nomination is consistent with our approach of adding diverse individuals with skills and experiences that will support our strategic growth objectives. Let me now turn the call over to Trevor to discuss our sales and some of our growth pillars.

Thanks, Tom. Before I get started, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all of our associates and vendor partners for their invaluable contributions to our financial success in 2022. In my role as president, I'm spending more time in stores and gaining even more appreciation of the associates for their dedication and hard work that goes into achieving these results. Thank you for all your unwavering commitment to our company. Let me now discuss our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year sales. Fourth quarter sales increased 14.6% to $1,048,100,000 from $914,300,000 last year. approximately in line with the midpoint of our guidance provided during our fiscal 2022 third quarter earnings conference call. Our fiscal 2022 four-year sales increased 24.2% to a record 4.3 billion, which represents a more than doubling of our sales over a three-year period. Our fourth quarter comparable store sales growth was at the low end of our expectations, increasing 2.5% from the same period last year, including 5.6% in October, 1.3% in November, and 0.6% in December. We estimate Hurricane Ian positively impacted our fourth quarter comparable store sales growth by approximately 100 basis points. The closed-door effect from winter storm Elliott did not have a material impact on our comparable store sales growth for the quarter. During the fourth quarter, laminate and vinyl, tile, insulation materials, and adjacent categories for the strongest performing product categories surpassing the company's overall average sales growth. Our fiscal 2022 full-year comparable store sales increased by 9.2% from last year at the low end of our guidance of 9% to 10% growth provided on our fiscal 2022 third quarter earnings conference call. Our fiscal 2023 first quarter to date comparable store sales are down 2.3% from the same period last year, which is in line with our expectations. I will now discuss the growth in our average ticket Our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter comparable store sales were driven by 14.4% growth in average ticket compared with 19.5% in the third quarter of fiscal 2022. Our average ticket growth continues to benefit from an increase in retail prices to mitigate cost pressures, an increase in sales penetration of laminate and vinyl, and an increase in sales penetration from our higher ticket pro, e-commerce, and design-led initiatives. On the other hand, weakness in our higher average ticket natural products acted as a drag on our overall average ticket. Year over year, we continue to see ongoing customer preferences toward our better and best price points where we offer industry-leading innovation, trends, and styles at the lowest price points. Turning to our transactions, the rapid increase in mortgage interest rates, significant declines in existing home sales, And moderating growth in home prices caused us to experience a steady sequential decrease in our transactions in fiscal 2022, culminating in the fourth quarter comparable store sales transactions decline of 10.4% from last year. That said, the fourth quarter transaction decline was approximately in line with our expectations, and our business model continues to be resilient. I will now discuss our new store pillar of growth. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we successfully opened 13 warehouse stores, including three in October and five in both November and December. This accomplishment allows us to achieve our goal of opening 32 warehouse stores in fiscal 2022, despite the challenges posed by industry-wide construction delays. At the end of fiscal 2022, we operated 191 warehouse stores and six design studios across 36 states, and now have a presence in the top 25 MSAs in the United States. As previously discussed during our fiscal 2022 third quarter earnings conference call, we believe it is prudent to plan a range of 32 to 35 warehouse store openings in fiscal 2023 and for them to be primarily in existing markets and weighted toward the second half of the year. Awaiting the openings to the second half of 2023, we consider potential construction delays. In the first quarter of fiscal 2023, we intend to open four warehouse locations and are pleased that two have already opened in January and February. As we look beyond 2023 and into 2024, we expect construction delays to ease and anticipate a more balanced quarterly store opening cadence that will lead to more warehouse stores, more warehouse store operating weeks. Let me turn my comments to our design studios. At this juncture, we now believe that we have sufficiently large and diverse group of design studios open that we can monitor and refine before accelerating growth further in this area. Turning to our pro business, our strategy to expand our market share among pros continues to be successful. In the fourth quarter of 2022, our pro comparable store sales increased by 18.8% and transactions by 3.9% from the fourth quarter of 2021. Pros accounted for 42.2% of our 2022 fourth quarter sales and 40.6% of our 2022 four-year sales. By comparison, pros accounted for 35% of our fiscal 2021 four-year sales. Our efforts to drive engagement continues to be successful. We added approximately 30,000 new pro contacts during the fourth quarter of 2022, and our enrollment in our industry-leading Pro Premier Rewards, or PPR, program where our most active pros or members increased by 24% compared with the previous year. Pros also continue to demonstrate a strong appreciation for the value of our PPR program with a 90% increase in the number of points redeemed compared with the same period last year. We also build sticky relationships and lifetime value with pros through education and trading about flooring products, insulation, and design solutions. We look to partner with pros and hosted 71 workshops and trained 1600 pros through our education and training strategies in 2022. Pros have told us, and I quote, I'm impressed with the way Floor & Decor looks beyond just selling the products. Their hosting and supporting of training events demonstrates their commitment to high quality lasting installations. I learned major keys to help my business grow. Importantly, pros tell us they feel more educated after training and express a very high likelihood to recommend to other tradespeople. We intend to build on these important education and training strategies in fiscal 2023 and beyond. Additionally, we remain focused on further strengthening our teams and reporting tools and dashboards at our pro desk to build on the execution of key priorities and objectives. Starting to our e-commerce business, our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter e-commerce sales increased 18.3% from last year and accounted for 17.1% of our sales compared with 16.4% in the previous year. For fiscal 2022, four-year e-commerce sales increased 31.7% and accounted for 17.4% of sales compared with 16.1% in 2021. As we enter 2023, our e-commerce team continues to execute strategies to further optimize our customers' digital experience, including focusing on product, inspirational content, and conversion. Additionally, we have improved our price filtering experience on our website to reflect the current economic challenges where consumers are likely to look for more value. Moving on to our design services, we remain excited about the opportunity to strengthen our competitive moat and grow our market share through a well-executed in-store design services offerings. To that end, we have successfully executed a comprehensive design services strategy that includes adding four divisional design leaders, growing the number of designers in our warehouse stores, and providing them with clear career path and training to ensure success. We ended fiscal 2022 with more than 920 designers and manage over 550,000 appointments during the year. Our efforts led to total and comparable store sales, comparable store design sales growth for the fourth quarter and the full year, which were significantly above the company's growth rate. We will continue to build on these strategies in 2023 by further optimizing our staffing requirements to ensure we have the right designers in the right place at the right time. We have implemented a great customer relationship management strategy, technology and processes to allow for thoughtful and efficient follow-up that we believe elevates the sales experience to maximize conversion. As we have discussed in prior calls, when designers are involved in projects, we see higher customer service scores, higher average tickets, insulation material sales are higher, as well as adjacent category sales and gross margins. Turning to our commercial form business, which includes Spartan Services and our regional account managers, or RAMs, which work with our stores, we continue to be very pleased with the sales and earnings growth at Spartan Services. For fiscal 2022, fourth quarter sales and earnings results once again exceeded our expectations. Spartan's fourth quarter sales increased by greater than 60% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, and EBIT increased 370% from the same period last year. Our RAM's fourth quarter sales increased 72.4% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. As discussed in prior earnings calls, we remain excited about the commercial market opportunities and our strategies. Finally, we are operating from a position of strength and are excited about the opportunity to continue to grow our market share in fiscal 2023 and beyond. We have demonstrated that we have the right teams, strategies, and an agile business model to continue successfully navigating the challenging macroeconomic environment. I will now turn the call over to Brian to discuss our 2022 fourth quarter financial results in more detail and our outlook for 2023.

Thank you, Tom and Trevor. I'm excited to represent such a resilient company with so many great associates. Over the years, we have proven that we can navigate unexpected economic events outside of our control, including significant tariffs, anti-dumping, and countervailing duties on our products, which caused us to continue our successful sourcing diversification efforts while expanding gross margin. The COVID-19 pandemic caused us to close our stores for some time, forcing us to develop alternative solutions to serve our customers. Most recently, we successfully navigated significant declines in existing home sales, global supply chain constraints, and considerable cost inflation, all while recording record sales and profit. We managed these headwinds in 2022, and that allowed us to report fiscal 2022 adjusted diluted earnings per share that were still within the range of $2.75 to $3 per share we provided at the beginning of 2022, validating the strength of our teams and the agility and durability of our business model. Let me now discuss some of the changes among the significant line items in our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows, and then discuss how we were thinking about 2023. Starting to our fourth quarter gross margin, we are pleased that our merchandising, supply chain, and store teams continue to deliver on our gross margin recapture plans. Our fourth quarter gross margin rate increased 280 basis points to 41.6%, from 38.8% in the same period last year, exceeding our expectations of 41%. The better than expected improvement is primarily due to higher product margins from lower freight costs, favorable inventory shrink and damage, and lower distribution center costs. Moving on to our fourth quarter expenses. Our fourth quarter selling and store operating expenses increased by 18.8% to 280.0 million from 235.7 million in the same period last year. As a percentage of sales, these expenses deleveraged approximately 90 basis points, driven by new stores and deleveraged from our mature stores, primarily in payroll, credit card transaction fees, and depreciation. Fourth quarter general administrative expenses increased by 2.7% to 51.4 million from 50.1 million in the same period last year. As a percentage of sales, general and administrative expenses levered 60 basis points to 4.9% primarily due to lower incentive compensation. Reopening expenses increased by 26.4% to 9.8 million from 7.7 million in the same period last year. The increase is primarily due to opening 13 new stores in 2022 compared to seven new stores in the same period last year. Fourth quarter net interest expense increased by 4.2 million to 5.3 million from 1.1 million in the same period last year. The growth in interest expense is in line with our expectations and is primarily due to an increase in borrowings under our ABL facility and interest rate increases. Let me now turn my comments to our profitability. Our gross margin recapture efforts successfully drove a 270 basis point increase in our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margin to 13.7% from 11% in the same period last year. As a result, adjusted EBITDA grew by 42% from the same period last year. Our fourth quarter gap net income increased by 38.8% to 69.2 million, and diluted earnings per share increased by 39.1% to 64 cents per share. Fourth quarter adjusted net income increased by 46.2% to 68.9 million, and adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 45.5% to 64 cents from 44 cents in the same period last year. Our fourth quarter weighted average diluted shares were $107.4 million. Reconciliation of our gap to non-gap earnings can be found in today's press release. Moving on to our balance sheet and cash flow. As of December 29, 2022, inventory increased 28.2% to $1.3 billion from last year, in line with expectations and modestly above our sales growth of 24.2%. As discussed in the third quarter earnings conference call, we expected inventory to grow above our full year fiscal 2022 sales growth, primarily due to inflation. Our fiscal 2022 cash flow from operations of 112.5 million declined 188.9 million from 2021, primarily due to growth in our inventory and drop in payables due to timing of receipts. Fiscal 2022 capital expenditures, including capital expenditures accrued at the end of the period, totaled 486.0 million compared with $475.3 million last year, above our guidance of $445 million to $465 million driven by timing of spend on the class of 2023 stores. These capital expenditures were funded by cash flow from operations, existing cash on hand, and borrowings under our ABL facility. We ended fiscal 2022 with $566.3 million of liquidity and $210.2 million outstanding on our ABL compared with no borrowings at the end of fiscal 2021. Let me now turn my comments to how we were thinking about the macroeconomic environment and our fiscal 2023 sales and earnings guidance. As you will see in today's earnings press release, we're providing a wider guidance range than in prior years to reflect the prevailing macroeconomic uncertainty. Our fiscal 2023 annual comparable store sales are expected to be flat to down 3% from last year, reflecting continued declines in existing wholesale throughout most of 2023 from higher interest rates, moderating growth in home prices, and strategic price reductions we expect to take from the benefit of lower freight costs. Fiscal 2023 sales are expected to increase by 8% to 11% from last year, which assumes 65% of our planned 32 to 35 warehouse store openings occur in the second half of the year. We look forward to the full year sales and profit opportunity of fiscal 2024 from the 2023 stores opening late in the year. Our strategic balanced approach to price reductions is expected to moderate our growth in average ticket, but improve our transaction trends as we move throughout the year. As a reminder, we start the cycle past high single digit declines in transactions in the second and third quarters of fiscal 2023 before comparing against a 10.4% decline in the fourth quarter of 2022. Taken together, we look for comparable store sales to decline through the third quarter before returning to growth in the fourth quarter. As we think about growth in inventory to support our new stores and sales growth in 2023, we expect inventory to grow at a slower rate than sales. The complexion of our P&L and profit growth drivers will change throughout the year as we strategically reinvest cost savings and select price reductions. Because we are using a balanced approach to reducing our retails from cost savings, we expect to continue demonstrating strong year-over-year improvement in gross margin rate in 2023 with the most significant improvement in the first half of the year. We expect sequential improvement in our gross margin rate throughout the year, approaching 42% as we exit 2023. Our selling and store operating expenses are expected to be approximately 27% of sales at the midpoint of our sales guidance. The year-over-year deleverage from 2022 is primarily due to new stores, as well as continued investments in wages and merchandising initiatives and higher credit card transaction fees. Reopening expenses are planned to be around 1% of sales flat to 2022. We are planning general administrative expenses to be approximately 5% of sales at the midpoint of our sales guidance, slightly above 2022. The slight increase reflects continued investments to support our growth initiatives and incentive compensation recapture. Interest expense is expected to be approximately $17 million to $18 million. The increase over 2022 is primarily due to an increase in borrowings under our ABL facility and interest rate increases. We expect our adjusted EBITDA to grow 5% to 12% to approximately $605 million to $650 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin rate is expected to be approximately 13% to 13.5%. Importantly, we continue to see a path towards our expected medium-term margin rate of mid-teens and longer-term margin rate in the high teens. 2023 diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $2.55 to $2.85. Diluted weighted average shares outstanding is estimated to be 108 million shares. Moving on to how we were thinking about capital expenditures. Fiscal 2023 capital expenditures are planned to be in the range of $620 million to $675 million and be funded primarily by cash flow from operations and borrowings under our ABL facility. More specifically, we intend to make the following capital expenditures in fiscal 2023. We intend to open 32 to 35 warehouse format stores, relocate stores, and begin construction on stores opening in fiscal 2024. Collectively, these investments are expected to require $495 million to $525 million. The year-over-year increase reflects three main drivers. First, we plan to improve the store opening cadence in 2024, resulting in more stores opening earlier As a result, we will incur more CapEx in 2023 associated with the 2024 open age. Second, we are transitioning to more ground-up projects versus second-use facilities that require more upfront capital in exchange for lower rent. Third, higher construction costs from inflation. Additionally, we plan to invest in existing store remodeling projects and distribution centers using approximately $95 million to $110 million And finally, we plan to continue to invest in information technology, infrastructure, e-commerce, and other store support center initiatives using approximately 30 million to 40 million. In closing, I am grateful for my new role as CFO and eagerly anticipate taking on the challenges that may arise in this uncertain macroeconomic environment. In my eight years at Florida Corps, I have never been more confident in our business model and the talented associates that make up our team. We have demonstrated our ability to grow our market share in the face of uncertainty. On behalf of the executive team, I want to express our gratitude and extend a personal thank you to our associates. We recognize and appreciate the hard work and dedication you bring to serving our customers every day. Operating with that, we would now like to take questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we call for questions. We request participants to please restrict to one question and one follow-up. We have a first question from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. I wanted to ask about the forward curve on housing. You know, we have existing home sales down a lot. You mentioned the numbers, you know, comes from positive. They just turned negative, I guess. So does your view that we have a stronger, I guess, back half? Does that mean existing home sales don't get worse? Does it factor in anything around pricing or that maybe it is just this time is different and that will allow the comp to reaccelerate in the second half?

Yeah, Simeon, this is Trevor. Our view is, first off, I'd say we're not economists, but our sales range of flat to down 3% assumes existing home sales trough at about 4 million units in 2023, which is where they are today. placing them back against the most recent trough of 4 million in May 2020. As we think about pricing, we would expect that the pricing, you know, continues to probably decelerate with, you know, interest rates being high and lastly to go higher as we think about the rest of the year. I think if we're wrong and existing home sales continue to sequentially decline from 4 million units and move towards a historic low, you know, 3.5 million existing home sales, then there could be risk to our plan. And one other thing, because I know you guys follow a lot of companies that I think is worth contemplating as we've given this guidance, this model assumes or this forecast assumes our mature stores will be down more than the negative three to flat that we've given guidance for. But we get the benefit of all those new stores because we've opened 20% stores. It takes our stores years to mature, that that's what brings it back up to that flat to 3%.

As you think about it, too, you've heard us state this before, but as a reminder, every comp point is worth about $41 million in sales at about $0.10 in EPS. That equates to about 20 basis points of operating margin, just as you guys may flex up or down differently than we do.

Got it. Okay. Non-macro, the way you measure sales and your market share, I'm guessing your denominator is a data set we don't see. Are you seeing your core business market share, so non-commercial, stable, accelerating? Can you give us some color there?

This is Tom. I'll give that a shot. You know, we believe our market share continues to increase. Things that we read from Catalina indicate that. And then we just look at kind of our total sales. Total sales in 2022 grew 24.2%. We were able to post a pretty decent comp for the year. And when you look around the competitive landscape reports on our category, they don't seem to be too close to how our performance is. So, yes, from everything that we see, we're taking share in a pretty meaningful way.

Thanks, guys. Good luck.

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Karen Short with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks very much. Good to talk to you again. So a couple of questions. Just with respect to your margin assumptions on EBIT, there are a lot of companies that are looking to have kind of flat-ish margins relative to pre-pandemic and you're obviously guiding to significantly higher margins, kind of 8.8% relative to 2019. So I wanted to parse that out a little bit and then I just wanted to ask about new store productivity in terms of how we should think about that. I obviously realize there's timing and back-end loaded with respect to this current year but looking at new store productivity, how we should think about that.

Karen, are you talking about gross margin or operating margin? Just be specific about your margin.

Operating margin.

I'll go first. This is Trevor. I mean, our volumes are just higher than they were at that time. And we've, you know, hopefully been efficient and thoughtful about where we've made investments. You know, our stores over five years old are getting close to $29 million in sales and close to $7 million in four-wall EBITDA. And so as those volumes have come up in the last three years, we've leveraged components of our P&L.

Yeah, I mean, as you think about it, Karen, as well, we've talked about the complexity of the P&L changing a little bit. So we have had significant gross margin recapture, and we plan on gross margins sequentially increasing every quarter throughout 2023. So you will see a slight increase due to new stores kind of in our SG&A. But as you think about it, it's offset by our gross margin recapture throughout 2023.

Okay, got it. And then just how to think about new store productivity just going forward in general in 23 and 24?

Yeah, today, you know, just like we said at the analyst day in our 10K, you probably haven't read yet all 100 pages, but... We still believe that new stores will do $14 to $16 million in first-year sales. We think we can get those stores to do around $3 million of four-wall EBITDA. And as I just mentioned, they run up that maturation curve and hopefully they get to $28, $29 million and get close to $7 million in four-wall EBITDA. As I studied the class of 23 and what we know so far about 24, they look like a good class of stores. And we think there's going to be those metrics that I just mentioned, We're optimistic that we're going to hit those, even though the environment's not nearly as good as it was in the second half of 20, all of 21, and the first part of 22. That's right.

They started about 60% productivity, so we should see pretty meaningful gains from that 2024 with the laser openings this year.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from the lineup. Zach Fadum with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Could you walk us through your expectations for category growth relative to your flat to down three comp guide? And as you think about the macro and housing indicators out there today, what factors do you need to see to give you confidence that 2023 will be the trophy year for you in the category as opposed to seeing the pressures linger into 24?

That's the last part first.

Yeah, I think for us, when we look at our own specific numbers, they get easier, obviously, as we move through the year. Our transactions were down around 7% for Q2 and Q3, and then they were down just over 10%. If we make it to the summer with continued negative existing home sales, which seems like for sure that's going to happen, that's going to be two full years of negative existing home sales. And from what I read, I know inflation has been a little bit pesky. But it does feel like that the Fed is going to sort of be done with what they need to do on interest rates, either in the summer or the springtime. And hopefully mortgage rates even start to come down in the back part of the year. And then we're going up against easier compares as well. And then you start to see a rebound. And then, as we all know, you know, there's just a very aged housing stock that is going to be in need of investment. So and I think on the on the category perspective, you know, our You can see some of this in our filings, but our tile business is strong right now. Our insulation categories are strong right now. People are resonating with what we're doing in those categories. Our rigid core vinyl was strong in the fourth quarter as well. And so those big categories that you've historically seen us do well in, I would expect that those are what's going to drive the business as we continue into 2023. And just as a reminder that

we'll flex our stores to whatever is selling. So if it's our, get our growth out of, you know, vinyl, and then we'll expand more in the vinyl section. If tile continues to do well, we'll continue to expand in that. We have the flexibility because we're in all categories.

Got it. And on that note, you were able to hold your store expense line flat sequentially in Q4, despite opening 13 new stores, which I think is a first for you, excluding the pandemic. So what, When you say you're operating your stores to reflect the current economic environment, can you talk a little bit more about what exactly that means? And how should we think about just the cadence of the leverage on that line as we move through 23?

Yeah, I mean, at the end of when you compare Q4 to Q3, we have from a labor perspective is generally our biggest opportunity or can flex up or flex down. We've tried to sort of simplify that and just give the hours a similar amount of hours throughout the year. And so we don't see massive increases or decreases in labor and operating costs sort of quarter over quarter. As we think about where we are going in 2023, we have assumed a continued increase in labor, right? We've seen that happen. We and every other retailer have invested in the labor. We think that's been a good payoff. We've recently seen both our full-time and our part-time turnover come down pretty meaningful. So we feel like we've made the right balance of investment in labor to lower that turnover. We are going to see a pretty big increase in tender costs, credit card fees this year. We're switching to a provider mid-year. And just with LIBOR up, those costs will go up. Or I should say SOFR up. Those costs are going up. But we think we can offset that with marketing and some other components of the operating expenses as we look to 2023. Hey, Zach, just finalizing.

Just to call it out, we actually saw 110 basis points increase from Q3 to Q4 in our store expenses. So when you look at that, as you exit Q4, which has a much higher, because we opened 13 new stores, you'll start to see that as actually kind of the complexion that we'll see similar into 2023, because we'll average about 27% at the midpoint. So what you see in Q4 is kind of similar as new stores start to come into the class as well in 2023. Got it. Thanks for the time, guys.

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Michael Lazor with UBS. Please go ahead.

Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. So two of the debates are, number one, how bad is this year going to be? How rough is it going to be? And two, what does next year look like? So on the first question, if you roll out these negative transactions like you had indicated through this year, where is that going to put your volumes, your store volumes, just on a unit basis this year versus where it was in 2019, especially in some of your mature stores. And then I have one follow-up.

Yeah, I mean, we'll still be higher than 2019, pretty materially. So again, this year that we just finished those stores over five years old, doing close to $29 million. I don't have what we did in 2019. I have to go back and look at that. But it was probably in, it was below $25 million I'm pretty confident back then. And so, you know, if we're going to have a flat comp, I don't know that the complexion of that's going to change all that much.

And then my follow-up question is, how negative would your comp need to be this year in order for you to pull back on your store growth in 2024? Is there any condition under which you would moderate your store opening plan?

I'll answer that. At this point, no, Michael. Our plans are to continue to run the business effectively. I think we've demonstrated our ability to be agile and execute on what we say that we're going to deliver. We'll be smart in the way that we run our business. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and we're playing for the long game. Things would have to be turn significantly worse for us to consider lowering our store count. We said 32 to 35 this year. We haven't given a number for next year, but feel pretty confident that that'll be around that number.

I think the other thing we've said historically, Michael, is there's only two things that would inhibit us, which is one, if things got tied from a liquidity perspective for whatever reason, we might be a little cautious there. We don't see that happening. And then if we saw a material decline in the return on invested capital, our cost of capital is probably somewhere between high single digits, low double digits, depending on what factors you put in there. And even with a slightly higher cost, because there is inflation to open new stores, even with a higher cost, we still think we're getting a return in the high 20s from a return on invested capital. So I don't envision either having a liquidity issue or the return on that invested capital changing much. And so, yeah, we're going to, just like we've done for the last decade, we're going to invest through cycles. That's right. And I just would

close that comment with what Trevor said earlier, too, that Class of 22 looks to be a very good class, and what we're looking at for opening in 23 and 24 looks to be really good.

Thanks a lot, and good luck. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We take a next question from lineup Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, and congrats on a really good year. It's really helpful you guys provide the monthly comp cadence. I was wondering if you could provide transactions by month in the fourth quarter and also what transactions are doing so far year to date in January and February.

Yeah, sure. Look, I can give you the monthly cadence and transactions. So for us in Q4, transactions were down 9.3 in October, 11.4 in November, and 10.5 for December. Pretty consistent throughout the quarter.

Okay, and any color in January and February so far?

Yeah, consistent. Very consistent with what we have in Q4.

Yeah, how we exited, that kind of tennis range has been fairly consistent.

Okay, and any color on transactions in markets where housing turnover has slowed more than the rest of the country? Is there any delineation that you could provide?

I would just say the West is performing a little bit softer than the rest of the country, and that seems to tie into existing home sales under a little bit more pressure. So that's what we see.

Okay, great. And then one last one for me, just to follow up on Karen's question on new store productivity. Over the past couple of years, you've had great NSP that's averaged close to 90%. This quarter was in the low 60s, at least on our math and model. Just curious if there was anything timing that led to that or anything else you guys could point to.

Yeah, I would say the timing of when we opened those stores in the fourth quarter was late. And then also we don't have a real seasonal business, but in Q4, you know, the week of Thanksgiving, the weeks around Christmas are pretty low volume. And so that may have the appearance of low NSD, but it's just really more from the timing of those stores. Exactly.

We opened 13 of our 32 stores in the fourth quarter. Okay. And remember, we're going to have 55% of our openings in the back half of this year, too. Yeah, and I think that's why you're expecting NSP to get a little bit weaker as well. Okay.

That's right.

That's why sales growth on a flat to negative three comp, we would have an 8% to 11% sales growth, so it tells you right there. Normally, that's in the 15% to 16%. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please restrict questions to one question per participant. We take next question from the line of Steven Forbes with Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Good evening, guys. I wanted to focus, Tom. I think you briefly talked about the fit team rollout. It was curious if you could maybe expand on that initiative in terms of, you know, sort of the size of the program today, supporting members, and what do you expect it to scale to, how we should think about the net cost of the initiative, And then, you know, what are you hearing from the stores in terms of the excitement about what they can do to alleviate some of the tasking responsibilities?

Yeah, so the 15 we put in, it's really in an effort to continue to improve customer service within our stores. So anything we can do to take the tax away from associates during the day so that they can focus on just taking care of the professional customers and do-it-yourself customers that come in the store, that's our whole goal. So we started playing around with the pilot a while ago in one market. We really liked what we saw. The feedback from the stores was terrific. So we're in six markets as we exit this year, and then we're going to open up 12 as we get into next year. And again, all of the effort is that we think the presentation within the store gets a little bit better, and we think that the customer service in the stores will get a little bit better.

And just in terms of, like, investment into the program on, you know, whether it's gross or net terms?

It funds it. You know, it funds it. It's got a little bit of cost, but the majority of the hours come from within the stores and are just pooled into a centralized team that's managed a little bit differently. Exciting. Thank you.

Thank you. We take a next question from the line of Stephen Zacon with Citi. Please go ahead.

Great, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the decision to implement the strategic price reductions for this year. Is that purely due to costs coming down or is there something you're seeing in the competitive landscape with your price gaps? And then can tickets still be positive this year despite these strategic price reductions?

So I'll, this is Tom, I'll start on the price. First, as we stated in our and our scripts. We plan to continue to recapture margin all as the year goes. We do think our supply chain costs are going to continue to give us the ability to take our prices down where we need to be. It is not a reaction to anything going on in the competitive marketplace. It is to widen the moat of our castle. It's to give us the ability to take share at a quicker basis. And the last thing I would say is just we have a heavy market pro-influence in our business. They saw prices go up pretty significantly last year for the first time in my 10 years here. And as supply chain costs come down, they're our partners. We're going to give some of that back.

Yep. And then on the second part of the question, yeah, I mean, look, if the strategic price reductions could have us be at a negative comp, but it would be a very, very low negative comp in the back half if that was the case. But keep in mind, too, we're also lapping the highest increases that we had in average ticket in Q3 and Q4 of 2022. So it's a much harder comparison.

Okay, great. Thank you for that. The follow-up I had was just on gross margin. So thanks for the detail on 23. But if you look over the medium term, do you see potential for gross margin rate to go back above that prior peak that the business had of 42.5? What are the drivers to see gross margin rate go back above that prior peak besides just recouping some of the supply chain costs?

I do think it can go above the prior peak. This is Tom. And I think it's – for a few reasons. One, within the store, we've made tremendous progress. As you heard when Trevor was speaking, we've had over 900 designers in our store. So our design initiative has taken an improved service within our store. And we know when the designer is related, we tend to sell a bit of a higher margin basket. Two, the supply house strategy, what we've done with the installation accessories department, the categories we've added, They're helping us from a margin perspective. They're getting more frequency within the professional business, and I think that can help. And then lastly, selling better and best. The better and best products we make more margin on, they continue to do better in our stores. Even in light of the macro environment, the customers are still buying those better and best products. As I look at all of that and understand what's happening within the dynamic of our supply chain costs, I do believe now that we will be able to exceed. It's a question of time, but I believe we'll be able to exceed that high end margin rate that we had.

Yeah, just to just to piggyback on top of that, you know, we're going to be methodical about our approach to gross margin as the complexion of the P&L changes. you know, we may need to strive for a little bit higher, as Tom mentioned on that, just to achieve our long-term higher teams, even a margin rate. So we're being kind of methodical and strategic about that as well.

Thank you. We take next question from lineup Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. Without kind of beating a dead horse, we just wondered if you could maybe talk talk through the circumstances in which you would expect to do, you know, better than your guide or maybe at the high end of your guide versus the low end of your guide. And then we were just wondering if there were any updates with regards to sourcing, if there were any changes in the sourcing environment that may be different in 23 than 2022.

Yeah, I'll take a stab at this and then Tom and Brian may weigh in. I mean, I think if The Fed was to lower rates for any reason and that drove existing home sales being higher. I think if the consumer is less focused on services, you can read any report you want that the consumer is spending a lot more on services than they are on hard goods because they spent so much on hard goods for the three years of COVID. Those two things can be net positives for us. I think we're certainly super pleased with our competitive standpoint when we look around at who we're competing with. We feel great about where we are from that perspective. So those may be the upsides I would call out. I'd agree. What was the second part of the question?

I just was wondering about any kind of change in the sourcing environment. in 23 versus what was experienced in 22?

No, I mean, we're always trying to find the lowest cost provider no matter what country it's in. As you know, you know, we have over 225 suppliers in over 20 countries. Those countries are constantly changing. Our penetrations per country are constantly changing to wherever we can get the best product. I don't anticipate 2023 to be significantly different than any of the last couple of years.

Thank you. We take a next question from the line of Liz Suzuki with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. This is Sarah Park on for Liz Suzuki. I was wondering if you can speak to how you're thinking about private label mix in the current environment when the consumer is getting more price sensitive.

So I'll take a stab at that. The majority of what we do is private label. All of our level one SKUs across hard surface flooring categories are generally our own brands. The only place where brand is relevant is in installation accessories where we carry name brands that the professionals want to use. I don't anticipate any change in our strategy in private label. I think what we're doing works well.

Thank you. We'll take a next question from the line of Greg Mellish with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. I wanted to ask about pro-outfacing DIY. It seems like pro-traffic is still up and all the decline is on the DIY side. Any sign of that starting to shift, or would you expect DIY to improve by the end of 23 in your guidance?

Greg, this is Trevor. I think... You're exactly right. Our pro business is performing well. We did a pretty deep dive with our pros towards the end of the year, early this year. And what we hear from them is their business is strong across the country. They probably are not at their historic backlogs, but their backlogs are still strong. They feel like they've got plenty of business and don't feel concerned about their business and it's strong. I think on the homeowner side, man, it certainly feels like that's going to have to change. And whether that's going to be something with mortgage rates or existing home sales changing, But it does feel like at some point that's going to change because we're now rounding out a year and a half, maybe close to two, where pro has been much stronger than homeowner.

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Justin Clever with Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. On the gross margin guide, is the starting point for 1Q effectively the 41.6 she exited the year at? And have you contemplated any trade down from better best into your planning assumptions or do you not see that as much of a risk?

Yeah, I'll take the first part of it and then kind of hand it off. So yes, I mean, you're spot on. So the starting point is really exiting Q4 and then we expect sequential improvement kind of from there. So that's the right thought.

Yeah, we don't, you know, we don't expect to have too much trade. And we haven't seen that, you know, even as of today in January, as we look into the month of January and as we looked into the fourth quarter, customers that are electing to still do hard surface flooring jobs are still electing to use better and best products. And so I think that if they make the decision and they can afford to do the flooring project, that they are willing to spend what they want to get the floor they need. So we're not seeing the trade down as of today. And I, you know, this is, We're in the middle of this, and we haven't seen it yet, so I don't foresee that change.

That's right. Yeah, we've got a sophisticated merchandising team that they're sharp on their line structure, so we haven't seen a trade down.

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line-up, Jonathan Matuszewski with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just one question on pricing. Sounds like you're not going to be taking down prices as much as your supply chain costs are coming down. Because my question is, is that how you think the industry, your competitors are going to react as well? And I guess if not, I suppose you'd be planning for your price gap to narrow a bit in 2023. Just how should we think about, I guess, your overall price gap that's contemplated in 2023 versus your competitors? Thanks.

I'll start with we feel good about our competitive price gap that we're managing with today. And you're correct that we're not anticipating on dollar for dollar flowing back into price all of the savings and supply chain. As Brian mentioned earlier, some of the complexities within the P&L change, and we've got long-term EBIT margins that we want to hit. So that will change a little bit, but Our spread in the market's good. We anticipate it to continue to be good. You know, so I am not, I don't have a, we will watch it and react accordingly if we see it, but we're seeing within the marketplace today, we're very confident in what we're doing.

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the lineup set. Sigmund with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to follow up on the competition question to some extent. It sounds like pricing is still rational, but I'm curious, what are you seeing in terms of inventory across the channel right now? And maybe if you could just frame your own inventory position, how much of the growth that we're seeing year over year is inflation versus units? And then I have one pricing follow-up. Thank you.

I'll start. This is Tom. I'll start with the pricing part. And Trevor or Ursan, if you want to hit kind of what you're seeing from an inventory level standpoint. I think from a pricing standpoint, we're seeing seems like, you know, the big box competition is always, you know, aggressive in price, moving in price. We certainly have to pay attention to them, which we'll continue to do from an independent channel. We haven't seen much in pricing. We have, I think they've learned from previous recessions and they're being cautious and, you know, eroding their margins to a significant extent. So that's why I feel like our spread's probably better than it's been against the independent channel than it's historically been. So we hope that that stays rational from an inventory level standpoint.

Okay. And this is Arisan. Inventory levels close to competition seem to be high and seem to be in good shape at this point for them.

I don't know that they're high. I mean, they're in stock. We went for a lot of last year where they didn't have inventory as everyone was chasing everything. But in general, that's what we see. It's hard to tell for sure.

And on the inflation piece, I mean, inflation was a big reason why our inventory grew at a faster pace than sales, just to tie that in as well.

Thank you. We take a next question from the line of David Bellinger with Roth MKM. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for the question. So you mentioned earlier the benefit of newer stores maturing and that the sales will have flown through to comps. That helps to get you to the full year guide. So first, can you size the comp lift you're planning from that subset of maturing stores? And two, it seems like at this point you're not contemplating some type of slower ramp in those units because of the macro environment. So is that a correct assumption? Thank you.

Sorry. Yeah. So your question. Yeah. So we, we believe that it adds about three to four comp points is what our new stores kind of add to that. So said another way, our mature stores would really be down three to six is kind of the way to think about it.

And we haven't given the number just be completely transparent on that though. But that, that number is somewhat offset by cannibalization, right? Roughly 65% of our stores are in existing markets. And so that isn't all flowing through because the math wouldn't work either. So there is some cannibalization. Over 50% of our stores are going into an existing market.

And I think the second part of your question, it would be tampered just a little bit by the macroeconomic environment, but not that much.

Thank you. We'll take the final question from the line of Dean Rosenblum with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. You know, we've talked a lot about the potential impact of existing home sales on the outlook for the business. And I was wondering if you could talk explicitly about the mix of your business as you see it that is actually project business driven by I just bought a home or I am selling my home and getting it ready versus, you know, I'm in my house and I need to do a floor or a kitchen or other hard surface. And then I have one follow-up on the mix of projects pro versus DIY?

I'll start and Trevor can weigh. I don't think we exactly know how much of the business is driven by housing. Someone saying, hey, I'm going to sell my house. Let me change my floors before I sell it. Or I just bought a house. Let me change my floors because I just bought it and I don't like the carpet in the bedrooms. But I do know this. While I don't know what percentage of the business it is, I know that it doesn't hurt when housing turns over. There's a percentage of those customers that are absolutely redoing their flooring. So I can't say for Florida Core exactly what that number is, how many of our transactions go to that. But, you know, when existing home sales are positive, we have wind to our backs. And when existing home sales are negative, it's wind in our face. So, you know, that's what we have to deal with. I don't know, Trevor, if there's anything to the backside of that question.

That's right. I mean, I've been here 12 years. We've had three downturns in existing home sales. And every time we've seen our comps slow. Yeah.

Got it. And then the follow-up is on the, in terms of the growth of pro versus the growth of DIY, is it possible that as you increase your penetration of pro customers, that you're seeing pro customers purchasing for DIYers because they're essentially purchasing the materials for jobs that the pros already had. And essentially the pros are, are bringing in DIY customers that are showing up through the pro, through the pro desk on sales.

I mean, listen, it's possible. I don't know that we have any intel that says that. And I think when you look broadly across retail, you know, some of our larger competitors have called out that their pro businesses are strong as well. So, you know, we're certainly doing an incredible job. It's up from, you know, a year and a half ago, it was in the low 30s. Now we're in the low 40s. But I'm not sure that I can point to that they're spending more on behalf of the consumer.

Thank you. I think that could just be every end of. Yes, sir, please go ahead.

But I think that concludes the questions. There's no more questions, right?

All right. I was just handing over for your closing comments. Over to you, sir.

Good. So my closing comments, thank you very much. So look, I would just like to say that I feel really good about the way we executed it in a very difficult 2022. As I said in my script, if you think about it, for us to be at the low end of our 22 guidance, given that we gave guidance the day the Ukraine war started and we weren't anticipating the feds to be as aggressive as they were going to be in raising interest rates. And I don't think we anticipated the Ukraine war and its effect on natural gas pricing and what that would do. And Professor Cummings' low end was something to be very proud of. Our service scores have never been better. Our turnover across our part-time and full-time associates continue to come down. We were able to open 32 stores in one of the most difficult opening store environments that I've faced in my 10 years here. So, you know, I'm really proud of our teams and the way they executed. And we just say that, you know, we're, we are, we're running a marathon, not a sprint. Uh, this is a Valley. This is a cycle. Um, it will, it will improve in Florida core will be on, you know, in a better place on the other side of it. We're going to continue to invest to widen the boat, uh, around our competition. And we're excited about, uh, about what this year can bring for us. So I appreciate everyone's interest and I appreciate everyone joining the call. Thank you.

Goodbye. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.