Earnings Call Transcript - CTRN Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Citi Trends First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Nitza McKee, Senior Associate at ICR. Thank you. You may begin.

Nitza McKee, Senior Associate at ICR

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on Citi Trends First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. On our call today is Chief Executive Officer, Ken Seipel; and Chief Financial Officer, Heather Plutino. Our earnings release was sent out this morning at 6:45 a.m. Eastern Time. If you have not received a copy of the release, it's available on the company's website under the Investor Relations section at www.cititrends.com. You should be aware that prepared remarks today made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These statements do not guarantee future performance. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on these statements. We refer you to the company's most recent report on Form 10-K and other subsequent filings within the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ken Seipel. Ken?

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for our first quarter earnings call. I'm happy to report that at Citi Trends, we're gaining traction on our strategic transformation. I'm pleased to report that our first quarter progress, in which total sales grew $15.4 million or 8.3% over the prior year, and our adjusted EBITDA increased $6.2 million, representing a sales to profit flow-through of 40%. Our strong profit flow-through was driven by gross margin expansion of 90 basis points and meaningful operating expense leverage of 220 basis points, demonstrating our ability to leverage the cost structure as we grow the top line. A highlight of our first quarter performance was our comparable store sales growth of 9.9% over the prior year, which is a 2-year stack of 13%. These metrics demonstrate that we're clearly gaining market share. Before I provide a comprehensive review of our first quarter wins, as well as areas in which we see opportunity to improve, I'd also like to take a moment to recap the 3 strategic phases of our business journey. This is the framework on which we are building a high-performance company positioned for long-term sustainable and profit growth. So Phase 1 is the repair phase. In this phase, we focused on reestablishing fundamental practices and foundational improvements. This includes implementing the 3-tiered product plan with opening price points, core value products, and familiar brands, while also developing our extreme value product capabilities, which enable us to offer well-known brands at amazing prices. The repair phase also includes building and improving foundational retail processes across the organization from merchandise allocation planning, along with standardization of our reporting and our metrics. So in Phase 2, the execute phase, we're focused on developing consistent execution capabilities and best practices. During this phase, we're improving our core product selection and value creation as well as our supply chain speed, which will measurably reduce our working capital requirements and improve our inventory turns. And we're leveraging SG&A expenses across all areas of the business to ensure sufficient sales to profit flow-through. And finally, Phase 3, the optimization phase. This phase will prepare us for business acceleration. This means leveraging new systems and processes, fueling efficient sales to EBITDA flow-through while simultaneously developing our new store expansion capabilities. The combination of these 3 phases, repair, execute, and optimize creates the foundation for accelerated growth and positions Citi Trends to capitalize on the significant market opportunity ahead of us as we expand into both existing and new markets. So with that backdrop, let me walk you through what worked in the first quarter, what the opportunities are, and what's next in our journey. During the first quarter, we made significant progress on our strategic product initiatives. We took another meaningful step toward offering off-price deals and extreme value branded product; our enhanced focus on delivering exceptional value merchandise continued to resonate strongly with our customers across all of our categories. We achieved strong first quarter performance across all apparel and home categories, and many of our focused categories experienced double-digit growth. The plus-size business, which we flagged as a growth opportunity, showed meaningful improvement in the first quarter. As you might recall from prior calls, we've been focused on rebuilding our footwear business, and the shift to off-prices enabled us to generate consistent top-line improvements in this category as well. In all categories, our merchants continue to improve the product value equation, adding several new brands to the assortment at exceptional prices while enhancing the style and quality of the overall assortment. On the opportunity side, the accessory business is currently in transition and was slightly below plan for the quarter. We're actively refining this assortment to better meet our customer needs. Our merchants are in the midst of adjusting our offering of handbags, jewelry, and beauty to be more consumer relevant, and I look forward to updating you on the progress here in the future. Looking ahead, we have several initiatives underway to further strengthen our product offering. We're specifically focused on product intensification areas that offer significant growth potential. This includes a broader, more consistent assortment of plus sizes for women and extended sizes for Big Men. We're improving trend relevancy for our juniors and young men's offering alongside continual development of our women's accessories and family footwear. As we're nearing the important back-to-school season, our children's team is laser-focused on building on the strength that they've developed in the market by executing an enhanced assortment of branded and core products. Our comprehensive product strategy, combining our 3-tiered approach of opening prices, value products, and familiar brands with our expanding extreme value capabilities positions us well to serve customers across all income levels while driving both traffic and basket growth. As we also mentioned in the Q4 call, we have leveraged extensive consumer research to sharpen our focus on understanding both the demographics and ethnography of our African-American customer base. This research revealed that we have a significant group of average and higher-income customers, which creates a tremendous opportunity for us expanding our product assortment to continue to meet their fashion needs. Our customers have responded very positively to recognizable brands at amazing prices as many of our brands have quickly become some of our best-selling products. As we advance our assortment relevancy, we expect to add a large number of new brands to our product offering this year with a longer-term goal of ensuring that most desired brands are available to our customers at strong value. As we've moved deeper into the execute phase of the transformation, a notable highlight has been our substantially improved preseason product planning and in-season execution capabilities. Our detailed focus on planning, combined with enhanced product allocation practices has allowed us to maximize sales opportunities while operating on a leaner inventory base. As I mentioned, we registered the first quarter comparable store sales increase of 9.9%, and that was with average in-store inventories down roughly 5%. This achievement reflects our disciplined approach to inventory management, our continued focus on maximizing productivity across all areas of the business, and positions us well for continued working capital optimization. Regarding our stores, we've made meaningful strides in consistently executing neat, clean, and organized shopping experiences for our customers. We've implemented new wayfinding signage systems to improve in-store navigation, making it easier for customers to find what they're looking for and enhancing their overall shopping experience. These improvements support our strategy of creating a welcoming environment that encourages both traffic and basket growth. And while we're pleased with our store-level operational improvements, distribution center performance was below expectations for this quarter. Although our DCs still remain very stable and functional, we recognize that there's significant room for improvement in this critical area. We're actively making personnel and process changes to drive improved second half performance as efficient distribution capabilities are essential to our long-term success. And we're also in the final stages right now of testing our new AI-based allocation system, and I am excited to report that test performance has exceeded our expectations. We're currently planning for a full chain rollout following the back-to-school season and prior to the holiday period. This technology will be a game-changer for our inventory efficiency and represents a significant step forward in our operational capabilities. As part of our execute phase, we've implemented comprehensive KPIs and performance dashboards across all key functions. This enhanced visibility into performance metrics, combined with standard operating procedures gives us confidence in our ability to drive continual operational improvement through the balance of the year. These systems create the accountability and transparency necessary to achieve our operational excellence goals and support our path to sustainable profitability. Our growth initiatives continue to gain momentum as we build the foundation for expansion. During the quarter, we maintained our disciplined approach to fleet optimization and enhancement, continuing our remodel program with 36 store refreshes completed year-to-date. These investments are showing solid returns, and we're seeing strong customer response to our refreshed store environments, which aligns with our strategy of maximizing market share in existing locations. We're taking a data-driven approach to our expansion strategy that positions us for intelligent, profitable growth. We've engaged a third-party expert to help develop company-specific site selection tools tailored to our unique customer base and market positioning. This partnership represents a significant investment in growth capabilities and will provide us with sophisticated analytics to guide our real estate expansion decisions. We've leveraged actual transaction data from the past 3 years across every single store location and recently completed a comprehensive fleet-wide geolocation study to complement the swift data set. This combination of transactional and geographical intelligence gives us unprecedented insight into our customer behavior patterns and market dynamics. In the near future, we'll have detailed store-specific profiles of our shoppers and their shopping habits, which will enable us to more accurately identify and duplicate our most successful locations. This analytical approach is critical to our strategy of both backfilling existing markets with new locations and entering new select markets. By understanding the specific characteristics that drive success in our current locations, we can minimize risk and maximize the probability of success as we expand our footprint. And finally, we're working closely with our Board of Directors to develop a comprehensive plan that will guide our growth strategy for the next 3 years. As I previously stated, we have a clear path to achieving a target of $40 million to $50 million of EBITDA, and this plan will provide the detailed initiatives roadmap to achieve that goal. The strategic planning process ensures that our growth initiatives are aligned with our financial objectives and that we have the operational capabilities to support sustainable expansion while maintaining our focus on profitability and shareholder returns. And now a few comments, if I may, regarding the current tariff environment. As we discussed on our last call, we're maintaining an aggressive approach to business growth while ensuring that we have adequate flexibility to react and adjust to the evolving macro environment. The new administration's introduction of potential changes in tariffs continues to create uncertainty for business, but our teams have demonstrated remarkable agility in navigating these challenges. I'd like to specifically recognize our entire merchant team for their outstanding work over the last couple of months in this unpredictable tariff environment. They have successfully navigated the ever-changing landscape and have been able to hold overall product costs flat, identify alternative sourcing opportunities when needed, and position us to take advantage of off-price opportunities presented by this disrupted environment. Their expertise and quick adaptation have been instrumental in protecting our margin profile while maintaining our competitive price advantage. So while the tariff situation has introduced many challenges, it's also created a good deal of opportunity. As an off-price extreme value retailer, we're well-positioned to capitalize on tariff-related disruptions in the market. In fact, we're currently reviewing a large amount of extreme value deal flow and expect that deal flow to increase as the fall progresses. In the end, my direction to the team is, in addition to being aggressive and flexible, also stay focused on our strategy, let's play our game, and let's win at our game. So with that, I can turn it over to Heather for a review of the first quarter results. Heather?

Heather Plutino, CFO

Thank you, Ken, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to have the opportunity to walk you through our first quarter results and how we're thinking about the balance of the year. Before I dive in, let me set the stage by stating that we remain encouraged by the broad positive trends we are seeing across the business as we gain market share, thanks to the strategic and foundational improvements implemented over the last few quarters by our Citi Trends teams. Now the details of the first quarter. Starting with the top line, Q1 sales were $201.7 million, up $15.4 million or 8.3% compared to Q1 2024. Comparable store sales grew 9.9%, our third quarter of sequential comp improvement, and we delivered a 2-year stack of 13%. Comp store sales were positive each month of the quarter, starting with low single-digit comps in February, impacted by weather and delayed tax refunds, then significantly improving to low double-digit comps in March and April as tax refunds caught up and the Easter selling season kicked in. Importantly, improvement to last year was fairly consistent across climate zones and store volumes, with broad-based strength across most product categories. We delivered strong results across our retail metrics in the quarter with increased traffic, mid single-digit transaction count growth, and strong and improved conversion rates. We also saw an increase in basket as customers showed a willingness to add units while trading into higher ticket extreme value product procured as part of our strategy shift. Gross margin was 39.6% in the quarter, a 90 basis point expansion compared to last year. The primary drivers of the year-over-year increase were higher initial markups and lower freight, partially offset by higher markdowns as we followed our updated approach to take more in-season markdowns, keeping our inventory fresh. Gross margin was also helped by a 70 basis point improvement in shrink as we continue to make notable progress again this quarter, evidenced by improved results from the 179 physical inventory counts taken in the quarter. Adjusted SG&A expense totaled $74.4 million or 36.9% of revenue compared to $72.8 million or 39.1% in the prior period. The 220 basis point improvement in SG&A rate was driven largely by disciplined cost control and the impact of improved top line results, demonstrating our ability to leverage the cost structure as we grow the top line. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $5.4 million, an increase of $6.2 million versus Q1 2024 results. Sales to EBITDA flow-through, as Ken mentioned, was 40%, well above our goal of 20% to 25%. Diluted earnings per share was $0.11 or $0.17 as adjusted compared to a loss per share of $0.42 or $0.32 as adjusted in the first quarter of 2024. During Q1, we remodeled 19 stores, ending the quarter with 25% of the fleet in an updated format. Second quarter to date, we've completed an additional 17 remodels, getting us to the year-to-date remodel count of 36 stores Ken spoke of in his remarks. Now turning to the balance sheet. Total inventory dollars at quarter-end decreased 7.6% compared to last year, with average in-store inventory down 4.9%. Importantly, Q1 inventory was significantly fresher than last year, with a 45% reduction in product aged 7 months or more, reflecting the impact of our 2024 markdown of aged goods plus our dedication to taking timely in-season markdowns. We are pleased with our current inventory level, composition, and freshness. At the end of the quarter, we remained in a healthy financial position with a strong balance sheet, including no debt, no drawings on our $75 million revolver, and $42 million in cash. With liquidity of approximately $117 million, we remain able to more than sufficiently fund our business initiatives, building on our foundational strength for future profitable growth. In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 251,000 shares for a total spend of $6.3 million, ending the quarter with $40 million remaining on our repurchase authorization. Now turning to our fiscal 2025 outlook. Based on our first quarter results and our confidence in the continued effectiveness of our turnaround plan, along with recognition that there is a significant degree of uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, we are pleased to update our outlook for 2025 as follows. With the strength of our first quarter sales, we now expect full-year comp store sales growth of mid single-digits on the high end of our previous outlook of low to mid single-digit growth. We now expect full-year gross margin expansion of approximately 200 basis points versus 2024, slightly below previous outlook due to an extended timeline for the repair phase of our supply chain transformation. SG&A is now expected to leverage in the range of 60 basis points to 80 basis points versus 2024, above our previous outlook of 30 basis points to 50 basis points. The improvement is driven by leverage from higher sales and includes the build of our incentive compensation accrual. I want to share a few comments on the incentive comp accrual to keep in mind for modeling purposes. Bonus expense accrual was reinstated in the first quarter of 2025 after no accrual in the last 3 quarters of 2024. As a result, sales to EBITDA flow-through, particularly in the second half of 2025, will be lower than what we delivered this quarter. We anticipate returning to an EBITDA flow-through rate that meets or exceeds our goal of 20% to 25% once this period of bonus to no bonus comparison is behind us. Turning back to outlook. With these updates, we now expect full-year EBITDA to be in the range of $6 million to $10 million, a $20 million to $24 million improvement versus fiscal 2024. There is no change to our expected effective tax rate of approximately 0% for the year. We continue to plan to open up to 5 new stores, to close up to 5 stores, and to remodel approximately 50 locations in the year. And finally, expected full-year capital expenditures remain in the range of $18 million to $22 million. Before I turn the call back to Ken, I want to emphasize how pleased we are with our first quarter results and the improving trends we've seen over the past 3 quarters. There is a new level of energy at Citi Trends, and we're getting used to the idea of winning. We're committed and we're focused. The foundational enhancements we've already made and the improvements we are continuing to make are setting this company up for sustainable profitable growth. I'm confident that our strategic initiatives plus our disciplined execution will continue to deliver meaningful value to our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call back to Ken.

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

Thanks, Heather. Before we open the call for questions, I do want to take a minute and express my sincere gratitude to our entire Citi Trends team for their exceptional hard work during this quarter. I'm particularly impressed by the willingness to embrace our strategic initiatives and execute them in a clear, focused and consistent manner. The progress we're seeing today is a direct result of their dedication and commitment to our transformation journey. And also speaking on behalf of our entire team, we are very pleased with the meaningful progress we've made. But collectively, we remain humbly aware of the need for continual business improvement. We understand that we're still in the early stages of the turnaround with significant opportunity ahead of us as we continue to strengthen our foundation and build toward our long-term objectives. Our strategic plan remains crystal clear: maintain an unwavering focus on our core African-American customer, deliver compelling products and value propositions that feature trendy fashions, great brands, and extreme value treasures that our customers can't find anywhere else, execute our business model with consistency and precision, drive attractive profit flow-through as we leverage our cost structure, and position ourselves for long-term square footage expansion as we capitalize on the substantial opportunities ahead of us. The combination of our highly differentiated market position, our strengthened operational capabilities, and our healthy balance sheet positions Citi Trends to generate meaningful free cash flow and drive significant shareholder returns. We have a clear line of sight to our targeted EBITDA range of $40 million to $50 million, and we are excited about the upside potential as we continue to execute our strategy. So I'd like to thank everyone for your continued interest and support of Citi Trends. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to the operator to open up the lines for questions.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from Michael Baker with D.A. Davidson.

Michael Baker, Analyst

Okay. Can you hear me okay?

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

Yes, we got you, Mike.

Michael Baker, Analyst

Great. Awesome. I wanted to focus on the merchandising and the closeout aspect, if I could. Can you just remind us where you are in that process? I think in the past, you did some level of closeouts, more end of season. And as I understand that this is more in-season sort of treasure hunt type stuff. So can you just articulate the change in your closeout strategy? And then to the extent that you can, quantify what closeouts were in the past, what they are now in season versus end of season, what it could be over time? Just a little bit more context and color on that whole closeout opportunity would be great.

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

Certainly, Mike. That's a good question. To clarify what we mean by off-price, it's important to note that it can mean different things to various retailers. Specifically for Citi Trends, off-price includes a couple of categories. One is end-of-season closeouts, which we've participated in periodically over the years. I don’t have an exact figure on our historical closeouts, but we have included some in many of our categories. This is the typical end-of-season buying opportunity where products are offered at a good discount. The other aspect we are focusing on is what I refer to as extreme value products. This differs because these items are often current or just past season, but they need to have strong brand recognition and we must acquire them at significantly discounted prices—ideally 50% off or even up to 70% off the suggested retail price. The purchasing process for these deals can be complex, requiring extensive negotiation and can be more challenging overall. However, the value and appeal to consumers are substantial. We aim to place renewed emphasis on this extreme value segment at Citi Trends, with a long-term goal of achieving approximately 10% incremental growth from this off-price area. We are not there yet, as we are still in the testing phase, but I do anticipate this growth over time. We will continue to engage in end-of-season closeouts as they remain a significant part of our merchants' activities. I hope this provides a clearer picture of our historical approach and our future direction.

Michael Baker, Analyst

Yes, sure. It absolutely does. If I could ask, I suppose, a related follow-up. All seems like it's going well. I suppose it's maybe an obvious question and the answer is probably just being conservative. But just comped up 9.9%. Current quarter, at least a month through is mid to upper single-digits. Your full year guidance is below that. Is that tougher comparisons just being conservative? Or is there something else that we should know about as to why comp trends would decelerate so much in the back half of the year implicit in that outlook?

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

Yes, there are a few points to consider here. We experienced a 5.3% growth in Q3 and over 6% in Q4, which means we are facing tougher comparisons in the latter half of the year. We are evaluating our business on a two-year comparative basis, coming off a strong 13% growth over two years. We have a double-digit growth planned for Q2, but we anticipate this two-year growth rate to decrease to upper single digits in the back half of the year. There is some uncertainty in the macro environment regarding product supply and other factors, so we want to avoid being overly aggressive in our forecasting to prevent excessive spending or investment. While there may be a hint of conservatism in our outlook, we believe it is more accurate to assess our growth based on a two-year comparative perspective.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

This is Will on for Jeremy. Congrats on the strong results. I just wanted to follow-up here on sales trends. Maybe specifically, if you could share any more color on specific category performance and maybe what you're seeing quarter-to-date. It sounds like plus size and footwear were strong. I guess, are you seeing these trends continuing in Q2? And then maybe which categories you'd like to see the most improvement?

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

I'm happy to address that, and Heather can provide additional details if needed. As I mentioned earlier, every category performed exceptionally well in Q1. Many of them experienced growth in the mid-single to upper-single digits, with around five or six categories achieving low double-digit growth. It’s challenging to pinpoint a single category as the main driver, as all categories contributed positively to the overall performance. Our consumers increased the number of units per transaction, indicating they found a better selection to shop from, which is a testament to the hard work of our merchant team. While our accessory business was slightly below plan, it remained relatively flat year-over-year. Overall, there isn’t a standout category; growth is happening across the board, which is encouraging because it shows that all our teams are dedicated to improving product value and that customers are enjoying a well-rounded shopping experience without over-reliance on a specific category. Regarding future emphasis, we believe there are categories we have underrepresented, such as plus sizes and Big Men's apparel, which need broader assortments and a more consistent offering. This presents a clear opportunity as a significant portion of our consumer base requires plus size and Big Men apparel. Additionally, we see potential in the young men's and juniors' categories, where we need to fine-tune our approach and become more trend-relevant to stand out in the marketplace. Beyond these categories, we’re looking to grow our consumables business, and our home segment continues to perform well, presenting traffic-building and basket-enhancing opportunities. I also want to mention our kids’ line, which has a strong history with the company and continues to do well. In summary, I’m pleased with our performance across the board. Heather, do you want to add any clarification to my overview?

Heather Plutino, CFO

No. Honestly, I would double down on it, Ken, and say, well, one of my favorite things of the many great stats of this quarter is the broad-based improvement, right? So apparel was up significantly to last year. Non-apparel was up significantly to last year. Our stores were up across the board by region, by volume, by the market in which they sit. I mean, it was like all boats rise. And that, I think, is the strongest statement we can make about the quarter. It was broad-based. So are there areas where we're leaning in? Yes, Ken has walked you through that, right, plus Big Men's, young men's, juniors, making sure our trend is right and that we're showing up in the sizes that our customer is looking for. But it's working across the board. And that, to me, is the most exciting part.

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

If I may just add one additional thought to that, too, because we're talking about categories, but it's also important to understand that across our store fleet, Heather made this comment in her remarks, literally every single region, every single zone is actually improving at about the same rate regardless of demography. So we are happy to see that this thing is really resonating across all lines and all customers in all markets right now.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

Great. That is super helpful. And then I guess just a follow-up there, shifting over to the remodels. So 36 year-to-date. I guess I'm wondering if you're able to quantify what you've seen in terms of performance uplift from the recently remodeled units?

Heather Plutino, CFO

It's early yet, Will. I mean, we did our first round of remodels in February. So we've only had a couple of months under our belt. But I will tell you that we're happy with the performance, and it's not inconsistent with prior classes of remodeled stores.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Seipel for any final comments.

Kenneth Seipel, CEO

All right. Well, again, thank you, everybody. We do appreciate your continued interest in our business, and we look forward to updating you on more results on our next call. Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

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