TJX Companies, Inc. (The)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the TJX Company's fourth quarter Fiscal 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press star one. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded as of today, February 28th, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Ernie Herman, Chief Executive Officer and President of the TJX Companies, Incorporated. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Ivy. Before we begin, Deb has some opening comments.

Thank you, Ernie, and good morning. Today's call is being recorded and includes forward-looking statements about our results and plans. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to vary materially from these statements, including, among others, the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. Please review our press release for a cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements, as well as the full Safe Harbor statements included in the Investor section of our website, TJX.com. We have also detailed the impact of foreign exchange on our consolidated results and our international divisions in today's press release and in the Investor section of TJX.com, along with reconciliations to non-GAAP measures we discussed. Thank you, and now I'll turn it back over to Ernie.

Good morning. Joining me and Deb on the call is John. I want to start today by recognizing all of our global associates for their excellent work in 2023. I truly appreciate their continued commitment to TJX and their focus on our customers. I especially want to thank our store, distribution, and fulfillment center associates for their hard work and dedication to our company every day. Now, to an overview of our results, beginning with the fourth quarter. I am extremely pleased with our very strong finish to 2023. Our fourth quarter sales, profitability, and earnings per share all exceeded our expectations. Overall, comp sales were up a strong 5%, and were entirely driven by growth in customer transactions. This is great to see, as it underscores our ability to continue gaining market share in all of our geographies. I am particularly pleased that our US businesses, Marmax and HomeGoods, continued their very strong sales momentum. Also, it was great to see comp sales growth accelerate versus the third quarter at our Canadian and international divisions. We are confident that our exciting assortments and excellent values resonated with shoppers across all of our retail banners this holiday season. We believe our gift-giving selections offered customers something for everyone on their list, and we see being a gift-giving destination as a year-round opportunity for our business. For the full year, overall sales surpassed $50 billion, marking a milestone for our company. Even more exciting, we still see plenty of opportunities to continue our growth in our markets around the world. For the full year, consolidated comp sales increased 5%. Profitability increased significantly, and earnings per share grew double digits, all well above our initial guidance for the year. Importantly, we saw comp sales growth across each of our divisions, again, all driven by increases in customer transactions. We are confident that we gain market share in every geography that we operate in. Our outstanding performance in 2023 is a testament to the sharp execution of our talented associates around the world and their relentless focus on delivering excellent value to our customers every day. Looking ahead, the first quarter is off to a good start. In 2024, we have many initiatives planned that we believe will keep driving sales and attract more shoppers to our stores. Availability of quality branded merchandise in the marketplace continues to be outstanding. We are in a terrific position to continue flowing a fresh assortment of goods to our stores and online this spring and throughout the year. Longer term, we see many opportunities to capture additional market share across our geographies, and we are laser focused on increasing the profitability of TJX. We are convinced that our flexibility and commitment to value will continue to be a winning retail formula for many years to come. Before I continue, I'll turn the call over to John to cover our fourth quarter and full year financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Ernie. I also wanna add my gratitude to all of our global associates for their continued hard work. Now I'll share some additional details on the fourth quarter. As I recap the fourth quarter results, I'm gonna speak to everything on a 13 week basis, which excludes the extra week in the quarter. Reconciliation's detailing the impact of the extra week on our results and other adjustments can be found in today's press release and on the investors section of our website. Adjusted net sales grew to $15.5 billion, a 7% increase versus last year. As Ernie mentioned, consolidated comp store sales increased 5% above the high end of our plan and were entirely driven by an increase in customer transactions. A quick note that on prior calls, we have referred to customer transactions as customer traffic. But for the sake of clarity, we'll use the term customer transactions going forward. Back to the results. In the fourth quarter, our consolidated comp sales increased in both our apparel and home businesses. In terms of divisional sales performance for the fourth quarter, we were pleased to see strong comp sales increases at every division, all driven entirely by customer transactions. At MarMax, also note that we saw comp increases in both our apparel and home categories. Fourth quarter adjusted pre-tax profit margin of .9% was up 170 basis points versus last year. Our adjusted pre-tax profit margin came in well above our plan, primarily due to a higher merchandise margin. This includes a larger than expected benefit from shrink and freight, lower markdowns, and better mark on. We also saw some expense leverage on our above plan sales. Adjusted gross margin for the fourth quarter was up 340 basis points versus last year. This was driven by a higher merchandise margin, including a significant benefit from lower freight costs and shrink, strong mark on, and lower markdowns. Fourth quarter adjusted SG&A increased 190 basis points versus last year, primarily due to higher incentive accruals and incremental store wage and payroll costs. Adjusted net interest income benefited fourth quarter adjusted pre-tax profit margin by 10 basis points versus last year. Lastly, we were very pleased that adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.12 were well above our expectations and up 26% versus last year. Now to our fiscal 24 results. Once again, for our full year financial results, I'm gonna speak to everything on a 52 week basis, which excludes the extra week in the fiscal year. Adjusted net sales grew to $53.3 billion, a 7% increase versus last year. Full year consolidated comp store sales were up 5%, entirely driven by customer transactions. We were very pleased to see mid single digit comp sales increases in both our apparel and home businesses. Adjusted pre-tax profit margin of .9% was up 120 basis points versus last year's adjusted 9.7%. Adjusted gross margin for the full year was 29.9%, up 230 basis points versus last year's 27.6%, primarily driven by a significant benefit from lower freight costs, as well as strong mark on in 10 basis points of shrink favorability. Shrink was an area that we were laser focused on as an organization all year long. I wanna recognize and thank all the associates who worked extremely hard on our initiatives throughout the year. Importantly, we managed our in-store initiatives while delivering a very strong top line and providing a pleasant shopping experience for our customers. We remained focused on shrink and continue to look for ways to improve this area going forward. Full year adjusted SG&A was 19.3%, up 140 basis points versus last year's 17.9%. This is primarily due to incremental store wage and payroll costs and higher incentive accruals. Adjusted net interest income benefited full year adjusted pre-tax profit margin by 30 basis points versus last year. Lastly, full year adjusted earnings per share were $3.76, up 21% versus last year's adjusted $3.11. Moving to inventory, balance sheet inventory was up 3% versus fiscal 23. We are happy with our inventory levels and the plentiful availability we see in the marketplace. We are well positioned to flow fresh assortments to our stores and online this spring. I'll finish with our liquidity and shareholder distributions. For the full 53 week year, we generated $6.1 billion in operating cash flow and ended the year with $5.6 billion in cash. In fiscal 24, we returned $4 billion to shareholders through our buyback and dividend programs. Now I'll turn it back to Ernie.

Thanks, John. I'll pick it up with some full year divisional highlights. As we saw with our strong fourth quarter sales, every division delivered comp increases for the full year with customer transactions driving the increases across the businesses. Again, we believe this is a strong indicator of our ability to continue gaining market share and it underscores our wide customer demographic. Beginning with Marmax, overall sales well exceeded $30 billion. Comp store sales increased a very strong 6%. We also surpassed 2,500 total TJ Maxx and Marshall stores. Marmax's apparel and home categories both comped up for the year. Further, we saw consistently strong comp sales increases across regions and income demographics. As to Marmax's profitability, we were extremely pleased to see full year adjusted segment profit margin improve significantly to 13.7%. As we look ahead, we are very excited about the opportunities that we see to grow our customer base, drive sales, open new stores, and increase the profitability of our largest division. At Sierra, which is reported with Marmax, we were pleased with the continued sales growth. At our online businesses, we added new categories and brands throughout the year to deliver the same freshness and excitement online as we do in our stores. At HomeGoods, annual sales grew to nearly $9 billion and comps grew 3%. It was great to see the home business return to positive comp sales trends. We are particularly pleased with the acceleration we saw in the second half of the year with comp sales increasing high single digits. Similar to Marmax, we saw consistent performance across regions and income demographics. HomeGoods adjusted profitability also improved significantly to .4% and getting closer to our goal of returning this division to a double digit profit margin. During the year, we opened a combined 34 HomeGoods and HomeSense stores. Long term, we see exciting potential to bring our eclectic mix of home fashions to even more consumers across the United States. Moving to TJX Canada, full year sales were $5 billion and comp store sales increased 3%. Adjusted segment profit margin on a constant currency basis was 14%. With more than 550 stores across Canada, we are one of the largest apparel and home retailers in the country. We are a top destination for consumer seeking branded merchandise at amazing value. We continue to see opportunities to expand our footprint across Canada and attract new shoppers to all three of our banners. At TJX International, full year sales approached $7 billion and comp store sales were up 3%. Adjusted segment profit margin on a constant currency basis was 4.6%. As a reminder, in the second quarter, this division's profitability was significantly impacted by a reserve related to a German government COVID receivable. In Europe, we believe our sales growth outperformed many other major brick and mortar apparel retailers in a difficult economy. Australia delivered very strong sales growth and we continue to open stores in new markets. Going forward, we are confident that we can grow our retail banners in each country that we operate in and are highly focused on improving this division's profitability. Going forward, I am confident that we are well positioned to continue our growth around the world and in many kinds of economic and retail environments. Let me briefly remind you of the key characteristics of our business that we believe are tremendous advantage. First, is our relentless focus on offering our shoppers great value on every item every day. For us, value means delivering consumers the right combination of brand, fashion, price and quality as always. Second, is the flexibility of our business model that allows us to shift our buying, distribution and store mix to quickly react to the hottest trends in the marketplace and changing consumer preferences. Further, the globalness of our business allows us to create a differentiated treasure hunt shopping experience in every country that we operate in. Third, we successfully operate stores across the world with a wide customer demographic. Our ability to offer a differentiated mix of good, better and best merchandise at each of our stores allows us to appeal to value conscious shoppers across a broad range of income demographics. Further, each of our divisions continue to affect an outsized number of younger customers to its stores, attract an outsized number of younger customers to our stores, which we believe bodes well for the future. Next, we are extremely confident that there is more than enough inventory available in the marketplace to support our growth plans. In 2023, our more than 1,300 buyers source goods from a universe of more than 21,000 vendors, including thousands of new ones. As we continue to grow our top line, we believe we become even more appealing to vendors as we offer them an attractive way to grow their business. Fifth, we continue to see opportunities for store growth around the world. We believe we can grow our global store base by at least another 1,300 plus stores over the long term with just our existing banners in our current countries. Last, but certainly not least, is our exceptional talent and strong culture. I truly believe the depth of off-price knowledge and expertise and the longevity of our talent within TJX is unmatched. We continue to invest in teaching and training our associates to develop the next generation of leaders within our company. Finally, I am so proud of our culture, which I believe is a major differentiator and another key component of our success. Turning to corporate responsibility, our teams across the company did great work on our initiatives in each of our four pillars, workplace, communities, environment, and responsible business. Our 2023 Global Corporate Responsibility Report summarizes our efforts and progress within this work as I shared last quarter. Our value mission extends to our corporate responsibility efforts including supporting our associates, giving back in our communities, helping mitigate our impact on the environment, and operating our business ethically. I'm pleased to share that in fiscal 2024, we supported more than 2,000 nonprofit organizations globally through our TJX foundations, including nonprofit partners in all 50 states within the United States. Through our grant funding and in partnership with our generous customers, we provided more than 30 million meals to our nonprofit partners, the people experiencing food insecurity. And our associates across the globe continue to be engaged in this work, running Give a Dollar campaigns in our stores, participating in our associate nominated grants program, helping to build homes for those in need, serving as career coaches for students, and more. These are just some examples of work our teams are doing in our communities. And we invite you to visit TJX.com to learn more. Summing up, we are very proud of our team's performance in 2023, and are in a great position as we enter 2024. We are confident in our plans this year, and as always, we'll strive to beat them. We remain committed to investing in our business to support our future growth. Longer term, we believe that the combination of our key strengths and history of strong execution sets us up extremely well to continue our successful growth around the world. I am convinced that plenty of opportunities remain to drive sales, increase profitability, and capture additional market share going forward. Now, I'll turn the call back to John to cover our full year and first quarter guidance, and then we'll open it up for questions.

Thanks again, Ernie. Now to our fiscal 25 guidance, beginning with the full year. We are planning overall comp store sales growth to be up two to 3% in fiscal 25, over a 5% comp increase in fiscal 24. For the full year, we expect consolidated sales to be in the range of 55.6 to $56.1 billion. We're planning full year pre-tax profit margin to be in the range of 10.9 to 11%. This would be flat to up 10 basis points versus fiscal 24's adjusted pre-tax profit margin of 10.9%. Moving to full year gross margin, we expect it to be in the range of 30 to 30.1%, a 10 to 20 basis point increase versus fiscal 24's adjust the gross margin of 29.9%. We expect this increase to be driven by a higher merchandise margin, partially offset by our supply chain investments. We're planning for both freight and shrink to be flat versus fiscal 24. For full year SG&A, we're expecting it to be approximately 19.3%, flat to last year's adjusted SG&A. We're planning incremental store wage and payroll costs to be offset by lower incentive compensation costs and a benefit from items that negatively impacted us last year. We're planning full year net interest income of about $118 million, which would deliver fiscal 25 pre-tax profit by about 10 basis points. For modeling purposes, we're currently assuming a full year tax rate of .0% and a weighted average share count of approximately 1.14 billion shares. As a result of these assumptions, we expect full year earnings per share to be in the range of $3.94 to $4.02. This would represent an increase of five to 7% versus last year's adjusted earnings per share of $3.76. Moving to our first quarter guidance, we are planning overall comp store sales growth to be up two to 3%. We expect first quarter consolidated sales to be in the range of 12.4 to $12.5 billion. We're planning first quarter pre-tax profit margin to be in the range of 10.5 to 10.6%, an increase of 20 to 30 basis points versus last year. Next, we expect first quarter gross margin to be approximately 29.8%. This would be an increase of 90 basis points versus last year primarily due to a higher merchandise margin which includes the annualization of lower freight costs from last year and favorable mark on, partially offset by supply chain investments. We're expecting first quarter SG&A to be approximately .5% up 50 basis points versus last year. We expect this increase to be primarily driven by incremental store wage and payroll costs. For modeling purposes, we're currently assuming a first quarter tax rate of 25.8%, net interest income of about $37 million, and a weighted average share count of approximately 1.14 billion shares. As a result of these assumptions, we expect for first quarter earnings to be, earnings per share to be in the range of 84 to 86 cents, up 11 to 13% versus last year's 76 cents. Moving on to our fiscal 25 capital plans. We expect capital expenditures to be in the range of two to $2.1 billion. This includes opening new stores, remodels and relocations, as well as investments in our distribution network and infrastructure to support our growth. For new stores, we plan to add about 141 net new stores, which would bring our year-end total to almost 5,100 stores. This would represent a store growth of about 3%. In the US, our plans call for us to add about 45 net new stores at Marmax and 40 stores at HomeGoods, including 17 HomeSense stores. At Sierra, we plan to add 26 stores. In Canada, we plan to add 10 stores, and at TGX International, we plan to add 15 net stores in Europe and five net stores in Australia. Lastly, we also plan to remodel about 480 stores and relocate approximately 40 stores in fiscal 25. As to our fiscal 25 cash distribution plans, we remain committed to returning cash to our shareholders. As we outlined in today's press release, we expect our board of directors will increase our quarterly dividend by 13% to 37.5 cents per share. Additionally, in fiscal 25, we currently expect to buy back two to $2.5 billion of TGX stock. Looking beyond FY25, we continue to believe that on a three to four comp increase, our pre-tax profit margin can be flat to up 10 basis points. As I've said before, this assumes no outsize expense headwinds. Also, our plans do not contemplate assumptions for macro factors such as geopolitical events, foreign exchange volatility, or consumer behavior. In closing, I want to emphasize that we are laser focused on growing our top line, increasing profitability, and will strive to exceed our plans. We are in an excellent position, both operationally and financially, to take advantage of the opportunities we see to further grow our business while simultaneously returning significant cash to our shareholders. Now we are happy to take your questions. As we do every quarter, we're gonna ask that you please limit your questions to one per person so we can keep the call on schedule and answer as many questions as we can. Thanks, and now we'll open up for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. If you need to withdraw your question, you may do so at any time by pressing star two. Our first question comes from the line of Paul Legeuille from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks guys. You've got your margin guidance overall for the year, but I'm curious how you're thinking about profit margin at each of the segments this year. Where do you have the most opportunity and what is assumed in your guidance? Which segments are up, which are down? And then Ernie, just having quick comments on the Macy's News yesterday, how you're thinking about the store closure opportunity, what that might mean for you guys.

Yeah, Paul, to start off, in this call, we're not gonna get into the detail by division. Just to say that we're very confident in the plans we have to execute them, and we're pleased to be increasing 10 basis points on a two to three comp. Yeah.

Paul, on the interesting, the Macy's store closure, this is a little similar to some of the other closures we've talked about over the last few years. Obviously, with the Macy's store closures, you do have a lot of overlapping categories that marry up to the businesses that we run. So we would think that would be an additional, and it's probably what you're getting at, I'm guessing, an additional market share opportunity, depending on the categories and the locations they're in. So not that we would get all of that, but we would get some of it, is what we always figure. And again, we've looked at that with any of the other stores over the last 18, 24 months that have closed, and we look at it similarly. I also think where our teams, I like to give this, I like to give our planning and allocation organization a lot of credit, because they look for trends in our system, and sophisticated enough to look for the trends in nearby store closures, and how they affect our store, and a HomeGoods or a Marmac store, and then we're able to watch that trends and ship back and capitalize on the market share opportunity. One indirect byproduct, and I know you're not asking this, but I would like to mention to everyone on the call, one of the things that's happening with all the store closures is the importance to the vendor community keeps rising for our merchants amidst less brick and mortar competition, so to speak. So one of the, it hasn't been a question yet, because we're not there in the order, but merchandise margin opportunities, I think one of the benefits as we look forward is the importance that our buyers have to the vendor community, and that is one of the things that probably will continue to allow us to buy a little bit better on an ongoing basis. So it's indirectly related to this store closure question, I thought I'd point that out.

Thanks, Pat, good luck. Thank you, Paul.

Next, we'll go to the line up, Brooke Roach from Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.

Good

morning, and

thank you for taking my question. Ernie, you talked a little bit about this already, about the opportunity for better buying, which could help merch margin, but I was hoping you could contextualize the drivers of merch margin expansion that you're forecasting. This year, as well as the drivers of expansion that you see on a multi-year basis, is this year a function of mark on, mark down, or further price increases? Where do you see the most opportunity? Thank you.

Yeah, great question, Brooke, and John, were you gonna?

Yeah, we see a combination of both mark on and mark down favorability in FY25, so we're quite pleased to see that.

I would tell you, Brooke, getting even a little more specific for your question is, where the mark on, I think, comes, which is still your, I guess, most important component here, because we can kind of control that, is it's a combination. What I just started to touch on with Paul's question on the buying better, also linked with that, I didn't get to mention, is clearly availability, which I did mention in the script, is outstanding across the board, as always. It varies by category and vendor, but at the end of the day, there's more goods out there than we can handle, and we're still holding our merchants back. What I like that's happened, and it's been, this isn't a new thing, it's been happening over a number of years now, is the importance that our buyers are to the vendor community, and the way they handle the vendors in a very courteous manner, but straightforward, is allowing them to continue to buy better season after season, and I think, as we continue to gain market share, and the vendors see that their goods being placed in our store in an eclectic mix with even more and more better brands, has been an incentive for them to continue to wanna work with our buyers, even more so than in the past, and obviously, this has been evolving over a number of years now, so we feel good about the mark on from the buying better perspective, and then, I think you touched on this, on the retailing of the goods, we still feel there's opportunity, again, we've just started over the last few years, on, as we used to call it, selectively adjusting retails where it was appropriate, and we still think there's a lot of opportunity there. Our perception on value is at a very high level across all of our brands, and as you can see from our sales momentum, the customers are responding extremely well to the values that we have in the store, so I would tell you on the, John mentioned the markdowns, that's one thing, I think the mark on opportunity still exists because of both buying better and retailing goods, and I think, again, continues to be a midterm and longer term opportunity, hope that answers that.

Thank you so much. Next, we'll go to the line, next, we'll go to the line of Matthew Boss from JP Morgan, please go ahead.

Thanks, and congrats on another great quarter.

Thank you.

So, Ernie, with holiday comps driven by transaction, could you elaborate on new customer acquisition and market share opportunity that you see, and just how do you think your apparel and home assortments are positioned in the spring, given the good start that you cited, and then maybe, John, on the margin side, just a follow-up, I mean, with margins now exceeding pre-pandemic, is there any change to the historical margin flow-through on incremental above-planned sales? It sounds like Ernie walked through a number of drivers, but just thinking about incremental sales and flow-through in the model.

Yeah, Matt, great question. Well, first, let's deal with the first one, which is the new customer acquisition. We've been very happy. We are skewing, we continue to skew with new customers, we continue to skew a little younger, which is what we want, it bodes well for the future. I think I also mentioned that in the script. One other focus, though, and I think we had this recently at the meeting up where we talked about, is we also are trying to acquire new customers, but we're trying to, in our marketing, create additional visits out of our existing customers, because that is still a

huge

driver of market share, is if we could get one additional visit out of only 10% of our customers, that is a monster. So yes, we are obviously looking for new customers and happy that they're skewing younger, and we've been happy with the acquisition of new customers. But just so you know, we equally have, we have challenged the organization to try to increase visits, and our marketing team, we just had a bunch, and I'm thrilled with what our marketing team has done on their creative for this coming year. We have some great creative and great messaging plans across each brand. I recently had marketing meetings for a couple of weeks with every division, and we love the messaging where we're going out, and in some cases, appealing to what you just mentioned, new customers, some of our messages are really geared at educating a customer what our price is in the messaging so that we can try to get those new customers. One other thing I'd like to point out on this, that's really encouraging, we always talk about how we trade broadly, and in the call here, we've talked about different income demographics. A really neat thing, I think, for everyone to remember is, we are very balanced, actually, relative to the population of the United States,

we

are balanced on age and income demographics in a very appropriate manner. We're not, as some retailers can skew towards different categories, we actually are at the point where we over-index in the age 18 to 34. So we're slightly over the population average with those shopping our stores, which I think bodes really well for the future. And then on income demographics, we're very balanced by category, under 50,000, 50 to 99,000, over 100. We skew a little bit more to the, you know, over the 50,000 and above that. So, great question. Obviously, we spent a lot of time on this, so. Second part. Yeah, I

would just say on the income demographic, when you look at our sales performance in the fourth quarter, it was very consistent across our income demographic bands that we look at, particularly in the US divisions. But yeah, as far as the sales incremental flow through, I would say that it's very consistent with what we've been saying all along. You know, we see our lever point somewhere between the three to four comp, as we said in the script. And I don't think

anything's changed on that. And Matt, what was the last part of your question? Was that about our go-forward, was it about the home business?

Yeah, just opportunities. You mentioned spring off to a good start. Just any elaborating on your assortments in apparel and home into the spring.

Apparel and home, you had said, right. So yeah, I have to tell you though, we did not, we were not, at the beginning of February, we were getting hit with the weather that I think many of you know across the country. So that was holding back our comps a little in the first couple of weeks of February, even though we were within our guidance range. And then over the last, really the last couple of weeks, our business got stronger when the weather was more normalized. Yeah, from week three on. We were much happier with our comps. So that's why we're off to a good start. And by the way, I would say that we, when the weather's like that, it can affect your apparel a little, but we were still pretty pleased with where we were trending given the weather. And our home business, I would tell you, again, I don't wanna take up too much more time on this section, but our home business, as you could tell from Q4, and as we go into spring and this year, as I mentioned in the script, we just feel a, just a massive opportunity in markets here because our home business, we do it so differently than really anybody else. We don't have competition the same way, whether it's all the fashion aspects of what we do in our home, some of the categories that are more replenishment where we're increasing our steady traffic in home goods because we have items that customers replenish. And then you have utilitarian items that we sell. So home goods is such an eclectic treasure hunt that it's really a special place in terms of impulse buying and I think just huge market share opportunity there. And we're positioned, I love the way that team is positioned. And that isn't just, I'm not talking just about home goods. I'm talking about the home area in Marmax has been really strong. Home area over in TK Maxx and in Winners, Marshall's in Canada, all the full family stores have been running a strong home business. And it's also continuing that way as we enter spring.

Yeah, and Matt, let me just add on to what I was talking about as far as the incremental sales flow through. So as we said in the past, it's for every point in comp, 15 basis points. And again, unchanged from what we've been saying.

Great color, congrats again.

Thank you.

Next we'll go to the line of Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of America, please go ahead.

Thank you, good morning. Ernie, I was hoping to get your outlook for pricing for this year. Do you still see an opportunity for like for like price increases throughout the assortment? And then also how will mix factor into your outlook for total AUR and fiscal 25?

Sure, no, probably not. Both on point there Lorraine. No, we feel there's still opportunity on the like for like pricing. As we look, we comp shop so regularly, our buyers are so good at that. And we can see specific items here and there where we could be going up a price point. Again, you would never notice it because we're doing it so sparingly throughout the assortment. It isn't a widespread thing, but there's enough that there's opportunity to be doing it. Surgically in different places throughout the store. We can just see because other retailers have had to go up and they aren't coming down even though inflation has moderated. So much cost, John and I talk about all the time, cost is embedded in all of the businesses out there. So I think that Lorraine is gonna still continue for a while. This isn't just a season or this year thing. Yeah, and then the, I'm sorry, the second part was,

mix.

The mix. Oh, was it mix relate? Yeah, so the mix is always, we are always going after the hottest trending mix. I don't, in our plans right now on our AUR, we don't see the AUR changing that much. We've been kind of going after some of the hotter categories and taking down some of the ones that aren't. And as you know, you know us well, we move very fast to the trends. So we still see some of those categories that were looking good, that we were trying to maximize last year, continuing this year. And on our plans right now, we're looking at the AURs as not changing that much actually. You know, we can always go, we don't top, that's why as we talk about this all the time, we do not top down manage that. But from what we see, our visibility right now looks like they won't change much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll go to the line of Jason from UBS, please go ahead.

Great, thanks so much. I'd like to ask about maybe some of the smaller banners, just on HomeSense, there's a lot of talk in the market that some home categories broadly across the US aren't doing that well, but you know, you've said a couple of times, home is doing really well. You just talk about HomeSense, how that's doing, what your store opening plans for next year are. And also just, because you mentioned on the script, this Sierra Trading Post, do you plan to open more Sierra Trading Posts and can you give us a little bit more color on what you're seeing in that banner?

Definitely. So John is looking at the stores. One thing I'll go, I'm gonna tell you one thing on the HomeSense mix. We make adjustments, just like, it's interesting, just similar to what I was just saying to Lorraine, we will go with where the customer is voting. Again, our model allows us to do this and our teams are experienced. So we are in the process and actually they started in fourth quarter. The HomeSense team has started modifying the mix to go to what's more happening than some of the other categories that have not been, that are big in HomeSense, but that haven't been trending as strongly and we've started shifting and sure enough, our HomeSense trend now has picked up dramatically since we made those adjustments. So by the way, in our Sierra, sales trend all last year was strong and we've been thrilled with where we're heading there, which is why in both of these situations we're pretty aggressive on store count.

Yeah, I mean, we're really pleased with what we're seeing in our, we're calling their seed businesses, that we're adding 17 HomeSense stores, we're adding 26 stores in Sierra, and we're also very pleased with what we're seeing in Australia as well, where we're adding five stores down there. So we're really quite pleased with what we're seeing with the performance of these businesses.

Super, thank you so much.

That's okay because we don't get to talk about small businesses often, so that's good.

Thank you.

Thank

you.

Next we'll go to the line of John Kernan from TD Cowan, please go ahead.

Excellent, congrats on a great holiday. Thank you. John, you talked about unit growth within the guidance in fiscal 25, and just within the context of your long-term store targets, and also some of the trends within new store productivity as you open new more max and home goods stores, how should we think about real estate availability, also the long-term outlook for stores? Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, so right now the, what we see in total is unchanged, it's just under 6,300 stores we see as the potential. And as far as store availability, we wanna make sure that the stores that we're opening across all our banners are the right stores for us. So we're not necessarily gonna pick a number and then shoot for that number, we make sure that the stores we're looking at fit right within our store mix. And we're quite pleased with the performance when they do open, so when we see these store openings performance, we're quite pleased with that as well. The other thing that gives us, that really works well with us are the relocations that we do. So this year we're planning 40 relocations. And here we're actually finding better locations in the store trading areas that we're in for stores that are coming due as far as leases. So we're able to relocate those stores to the better shopping pitch in the area. So we see definite improvement in the performance as we do move those stores. In Europe, we see more opportunity in Germany to open up stores and in the UK for more of our relocations. And in the US and Canada, as we see more department stores close, we see the opportunity to, if we don't have stores in those areas, to put stores in some of those areas to be the department stores of that. So we're seeing opportunities there for new store growth. So that's kind of what we're seeing for the strategy.

Understood, I guess one quick follow-up would be just on other categories outside of apparel, home you spoke about quite a bit on the prior question, just what about beauty? It feels like it's much more elevated in store than it has been in the past. What's the opportunity within beauty and the elevation of that category?

Yeah, I'll jump in here, John. Yeah, the beauty business is obviously, you can see from the presentation in the store, that's been very healthy for us. And I would tell you, we see big upside there, obviously, and we're continuing to go after that. We have done something with the presentation, but you've seen the assortments expand as well. So as you can imagine, that's one of the businesses we feel has a lot more upside. If you look at things that go along with that health and wellness and beauty thing, some of those other categories in the store, obviously kind of go along with that, if you know what I mean. So beauty is the more noticeable one you're calling out, but that trend kind of spills over, I would say, to some other categories in the store that we're going after. And I think we've talked about this before.

We

don't just do it, we love that our stores are very flexible, so you're bringing up beauty. One thing you probably notice is the way we've done the beauty thing, we still can flex the departments around it. And so that is an advantage, again, as always, I like to point that out, when our buyers are able to, in our planning organization, we're able to go after the HUD business and flex it in the store very quickly, and it doesn't take as much labor or capital to redo the stores because there aren't any walls, et cetera. So great question,

though. All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to the line of Alex Stratton from Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.

Perfect, I wanted to focus on home goods real quick here. So ended the year at just under a 10% margin. I was wondering if you could speak to kind of what's constraining that business below your long-term goal of low double digits and when you think it gets there. And then secondly, just on the ability to take market share over time, just wondering if there's any color you could provide on particular categories or changes in the market landscape that are gonna enable that going forward. Thanks a lot.

You are. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll start off. Talk some margin. Yeah, so with home goods, I mean, it's a couple things. I mean, home goods was impacted by freight more than some of the other divisions, but for home goods, it's about continuing to drive that top line sales growth while looking at the cost structure of that freight and continuing to try to be as efficient as possible on that freight line. The home goods team executes very, very well, and it's just about continuing to focus on execution, drive that top line and be as efficient as we can.

Yeah. Yeah.

And Alex, if you look, when you're asking about, one of the things that's gonna also help with the margin is the market share and sales growth opportunity that we strongly believe that we have there. If you look at the year that we had there in home goods, dramatic first half to second half, and then even as you went to Q4, you could see how powerful the home goods sales trend is relative to competition. And so it's an unusual thing. When the home business years ago, we've had really strong home goods and home trends for years. Typically, yeah, we'd be outpacing competition, but not as dramatically as recently. And so that just shows you that the market share, which is, I think, like a third part of your question, the market share is really up for grabs. And fortunately, what's going on, I think, in the landscape is you have the e-comm players on home, as well as the brick and mortar, all creating additional opportunity for our home business because of their execution and their lack of excitement. We do believe, like our Marmach store, we believe home goods is one of the most exciting store shopping experiences on the planet, really. And you've seen, whether you look on TikTok or any of the, with third party endorsements that come out on different talk shows have had segments on home goods lately, it's become a bit of a cult because people know that you can't go in there and spend less than a couple hundred dollars, even though you're planning and going just for a bed pillow. So that's why we're so bullish. We also, corporately, it's one of our most collaborative arenas, our home merchants are so linked up across all the organizations, which is why we're bullish on total TJX home business, which, as you know, we've talked in the past, is over a third of our business will be home business in TJX this year. Heading to a higher percentage over the next few years, that's what we believe. So, you know, you're touching on it. What I think is a competitive advantage and a future continuing to be traffic driver for TJX.

Great, thanks so much.

Thank you, next we'll go to the line of Michael Benetti from Evercore ISI, please go ahead.

Hey guys, congrats on a great quarter. Let me, I just wanna ask a little bit on the margins. I know you've talked about it a little bit today, but it's remarkable to see the profitability you guys are putting up, particularly when competitors are looking at stores and saying, look, the economics are going the other way and we're gonna close a few stores. So, as we think about Marmax, that was a 14 to 15% margin business at its peak with labor and supply chain stabilizing a bit now and you have this pricing lever that you didn't really have or flex before COVID. Are there any reasons why Marmax isn't a structurally higher business in the long term, given it's now above 2019 levels? And then I guess as a follow up, John, you did mention earlier that in the long term, three to 4% seems for sales growth is a flat to 10% or sorry, flat to 10 basis point leverage algo. But this year is flat to 10 basis points on a two to three comp. So something's a little better this year and then it normalizes next year or if we get out to the middle of the year and you're running above the two to three again, any reason I wouldn't flow through at a better rate on the point of comp than the 15 basis points that you mentioned?

Yeah, I mean, so I'll pick up the last part of your question first. Yeah, we had some one time headwinds. So, whether it's the incentive accruals or homegoods.com that negatively impacted us last year, that helped us to offset what we see is continued wage pressure. So we were able to be at flat to up 10 on a two to three versus a three to four. Does that make sense?

It does, yeah.

Yeah, as far as, yeah, go ahead.

In this year, is the flow through still the same though on a point of upside or is it also different margin profile on a point of upside? Yeah,

that 15 basis points holds true in FY25 as well for every point of comp opportunity. And then as far as MARMAX goes, a .7% pre-tax profit. Yeah, I mean, obviously we had a huge improvement during the year, up 100 basis points. And a lot of that has to do with, again, the lower freight rates, even though freight is not back to where it was in FY20, we're still 100 basis points off where we were. So we've had to, through the merchandise margin has been able to offset some of that headwind. And again, we've talked about this in the past, we don't anticipate freight to come back all the way just because of the wage increases that we've seen in particularly domestic freight, whether it's rare people that work on the rail or in trucks. But we are looking for, we continue to look for ways to be more efficient on how we move our freight. And that's really where we see the opportunity moving forward. But again, similar to, when we talked about home goods with MARMAX, it's again, it's about that strong execution, driving that top line and continuing to improve the merchandise margin through better buying. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

And for our final question, we'll go to the line of Marni Shapiro from Retail Tracker. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, congrats on a fantastic year. And a lot of my questions have been asked and I do wanna dig into one smaller part of your business. Can we talk a little bit about your credit card business? Lately, as I've been in your stores, I've had some associates asking me if I want a credit card. I'm curious what percentage of your business is done on your own store credit cards. Is there an opportunity there? Is there a data capture that has been helpful to you? Is there an opportunity or loyalty or does that just not really matter because everyone's so addicted? They don't need to actually, you don't need to do loyalty because it's a physical addiction. Can you just dig into this part of the business a little bit? It's not something you guys usually talk about.

Yeah, as far as our credit card goes, we don't get into the amount that goes through on our credit card, but I will say this, that our penetration is not as high as some of the other retailers that offer incentives to use the card. Our everyday value is our everyday value and we don't wanna train the customers into waiting on a discount day to use the credit card. So we're highly focused on making sure that the messaging for the model itself is not affected. That being said, it is the one way that customers can get, when they use the credit card, they get coupons back

and that

drives volume back into our stores. So we definitely see it as a positive for our driving customers back to our stores. And let's face it, it pleases the customers when they get that coupon. Everybody's read the reports about whether it's delinquencies or the potential for having the late fees reduced. That will impact us, but not as much as some of the other retailers that rely much more heavily on the credit card.

Is there an opportunity to grow that penetration? Is that something you guys would look to do? I would think there's probably some level of loyalty and increased visitation with those customers.

Arnie, we have been growing that penetration over a number of years. As much as John pointed out, we're not at, what other retailers do when they're almost, they're credit card programs, but we are a fair amount higher than we were a handful of years ago. So yes, rightfully so. And those shoppers, right, John, tend to also cross shop our different brands more and more. And so there's a lot of benefits in our sales. And as John said, when they do, it is the only way to get any type of a rebate from us. And it does create that extra visit. So yes, you're right. And we're still, by the way, that's why you get asked in the store. We're trying to still grow that percentage.

That's fantastic. We'll talk to you guys later. Fantastic, thank you so much.

Thank you, Marnie. Thanks, Marnie. All right, well, I think that was our last question. Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to updating you again on our first quarter earnings call in May. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call for today. You may disconnect at this time, and thank you for participating.