Earnings Call Transcript - DKS Q3 2023

Nate Gilch, Senior Director, Investor Relations

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter 2023 results. On today's call will be Lauren Hobart, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Navdeep Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer. Playback of today's call will be archived in our Investor Relations website located at investors.dicks.com for approximately 12 months. As a reminder, we'll be making forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC including our last annual report on Form 10-K and our most recent Form 10-Q filing as well as cautionary statements made during this call. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. Please refer to our Investor Relations website to find the reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call. And finally, for your future scheduling purposes, we are tentatively planning to publish our fourth quarter 2023 earnings results on March 11, 2024.

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Thank you, Nate, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased with our third quarter results, which demonstrate the ongoing strength of our business and the focused execution of our team. We had a very strong back-to-school season, driven by our best-in-class athlete experience and differentiated assortment. And we continue to gain market share as consumers prioritize DICK'S Sporting Goods to meet their needs. Our third quarter sales increased 2.8% to $3.04 billion and our comps increased 1.7%, driven by increases in both transactions and average ticket. This strong comp was on top of a 6.5% increase from the same period last year. And during the quarter, we saw more athletes purchase from us while spending more each trip. On a non-GAAP basis, our Q3 gross margin expanded by 88 basis points versus the prior year period. And looking to Q4, we expect to see continued year-over-year gross margin expansion. We achieved double-digit non-GAAP EBT margin of 10.6% and delivered non-GAAP EPS of $2.85, up 10% over Q3 last year. As a result of our strong Q3 performance, we are raising our full year outlook. Our updated guidance balances the confidence we have in our key strategies with an acknowledgment of the uncertain macroeconomic environment. For the year, we now expect non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $12 to $12.60 compared to our prior expectation of $11.50 to $12.30. In addition, we now expect comparable store sales in the range of positive 0.5% to positive 2% compared to our prior expectation of flat to positive 2%. At the midpoint, non-GAAP EBT margin is expected to be approximately 10.4%. We have a tremendous long-term growth opportunity ahead of us and are making strategic investments that position us well for growth and enable us to continue gaining share in a large, fragmented industry. These investments include accelerating innovation in our omnichannel athlete experience and expanding our new concepts like House of Sport and our new 50,000 square foot prototype, which are resonating exceptionally well with our athletes. As we outlined on our last call, we've done extensive work to optimize our business so we can capture the opportunity ahead of us. This includes better aligning our talent, organizational design and spending in support of our most significant growth opportunities while also streamlining our overall cost structure. First, as we discussed last quarter, we are resourcing DICK'S for growth and refocusing our team on our four key strategic pillars of differentiated products, athlete experience, teammate experience, and brand engagement. Second, we are optimizing our outdoor specialty business. This primarily includes integrating the operations of Moosejaw and Public Lands to enhance our ability to fulfill outdoor athlete demand more effectively. This new structure immediately improves operational efficiency and strategically positions this business for profitable growth within the $40 billion outdoor industry. Navdeep will share more details about our business optimization plans, including the expected SG&A benefits and the charges related to executing these plans. Innovating within the omnichannel athlete experience is at the heart of our growth strategies. Our newest DICK'S concepts have proven to be tremendously successful and are a key part of our future as we continue to reimagine our store portfolio and footprint. First, we continue to be pleased with the results from our DICK'S House of Sport locations. We opened two new Houses of Sport at the beginning of Q3 and now have a total of 12 locations open, nine of which we opened this year. We're excited to open approximately 10 additional locations throughout 2024, including at the Prudential Center in Boston as well as locations in Pittsburgh, Miami, and Tampa. We continue to expect that by 2027, we will have between 75 to 100 across the country. In addition to House of Sport, we're rolling out our next-generation DICK'S store, which revolutionizes our most typical 50,000 square foot format. During Q3, we're excited to have opened another five locations. And earlier this month, we opened three more. With a total of 11 next-generation locations now open, we are pleased with the performance and confident in the long-term opportunity of this new 50,000 square foot prototype. We're also growing our Golf Galaxy footprint through Golf Galaxy Performance Center, an immersive experience for golf enthusiasts of all levels. During Q3, we opened seven new Golf Galaxy Performance Centers, expanding our Golf Galaxy chain to 104 locations, including 13 Performance Centers. We believe there is a significant long-term growth opportunity in golf. Over the next four years, we expect to have as many as 40 to 50 Golf Galaxy Performance Centers across the United States, including approximately 10 new locations in 2024. In combination with our stores, our digital experience remains an integral part of our success, and the investments we are making in technology are strengthening our athletes' omnichannel experience and driving increased engagement. This quarter, we added 1.6 million new athletes and are further growing our base of omnichannel athletes. Omnichannel athletes make up the majority of our sales, and they spend more and shop with us more frequently than single-channel athletes. As we invest in data science and personalization, we're excited to continue building one-to-one relationships and better serving these athletes. We remain focused on ensuring DICK'S is a convenient one-stop shop and have enhanced our multiple delivery and pickup options by expanding same-day delivery. In fact, athletes can now filter online for same-day delivery. And this holiday season, we will offer same-day delivery service up until 12 noon on Christmas Eve for last-minute gifting. In closing, we're very pleased with our strong third quarter results and remain enthusiastic about the future of our business. We're excited for the upcoming holiday season and the product, service, and experience we're providing to our athletes. I'd like to thank all of our teammates for their hard work and commitment to DICK'S Sporting Goods and for their upcoming efforts during the fourth quarter. With that, I'll turn the call over to Navdeep to share our financial results in more detail.

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Lauren, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with a brief review of our third quarter results. We are very pleased to report consolidated sales increased 2.8% to $3.04 billion as we continued to gain market share. Comp store sales increased 1.7% on top of a 6.5% increase in the same period last year. Our strong comps were driven by a 1.1% increase in transactions and a 0.6% increase in average ticket. Collectively, our back-to-school categories did very well, and we're pleased with the results from our House of Sport locations. Our noncomp sales growth of roughly 110 basis points this quarter was primarily driven by sales at Moosejaw. On a non-GAAP basis, gross profit in the third quarter was $1.07 billion or 35.1% of net sales and improved 88 basis points compared to last year. This improvement was driven by lower supply chain costs, which leveraged 78 basis points. Merchandise margin increased 23 basis points and, as expected, this increase was primarily driven by the anniversary of our clearance activity from last year and partially offset by higher shrink of approximately 50 basis points. To be clear, absent the shrink headwind, our merchandise margin would have increased over 70 basis points. Combating theft remains a top priority, and we continue to invest in efforts to keep our stores, teammates, and athletes safe. On a non-GAAP basis, SG&A expense increased $50.1 million to $729.9 million and deleveraged 102 basis points compared to last year. This was favorable versus our expectations due to better-than-expected sales, targeted actions to control discretionary costs, and benefits from our business optimization actions. As we have highlighted on prior calls, the year-over-year deleverage this quarter was driven by our investments in our base rate, talent, and technology to create a better athlete experience as well as investments in marketing. These areas of investments were partially offset by $8.2 million of expense reduction or 26 basis points of leverage associated with changes in the investment value of our deferred compensation plan, which is fully offset in other income. Interest expense was $14.4 million, a decrease of $11.7 million compared to the same period last year. This decrease was primarily due to the inducement charges incurred in the prior year related to the exchange of our convertible senior notes and the interest savings this year from the retirement of those notes. Other income totaled $10.1 million compared to $4.8 million in the same period last year. This $5.3 million increase in income was driven by a $13.3 million increase in interest income as a result of higher average interest rates on our cash and cash equivalents. This increase to other income was partially offset by an $8.2 million expense increase from the change in the value of our deferred compensation plans, which fully offsets the SG&A expense reduction I mentioned earlier. Driven by our strong sales, higher gross margin, along with lower interest expense, non-GAAP EBT was $321.1 million or 10.6% of net sales. This compares to an EBT of $304.2 million or 10.3% of net sales in 2022. In total, we delivered non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $2.85. This compares to a non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $2.60 last year, an increase of 10%. As Lauren said, to continue fueling our long-term growth, we have optimized our organization to better align our talent, organizational design, and spending in support of our most critical strategies while also streamlining our overall cost structure. First, we are resourcing DICK'S for growth. As we discussed on our last call, during the third quarter, we took actions to change our resourcing and organizational structure, primarily at our customer support center. Second, we are taking steps to optimize our outdoor specialty business and are forming one team that will support the operations of Public Lands and Moosejaw. This will allow us to quickly leverage the best practices across our outdoor specialty business to drive growth while operating more efficiently. We started to see the SG&A benefits from these actions during the third quarter and expect to see continued benefits into Q4 and 2024. These actions, along with our overall focus on improving productivity and reducing discretionary costs, will help enable us to significantly moderate our SG&A expense growth in 2024 as compared to this year. As a result of these actions, we incurred pretax charges totaling $52.5 million during the third quarter. This included a $6.3 million inventory-related write-down associated with the rationalization of non-go-forward Moosejaw inventory. These charges were included in our GAAP earnings per diluted share of $2.39. For additional details on this, you can refer to our non-GAAP reconciliation table in our press release that we issued this morning. Now looking to our balance sheet, we ended Q3 with approximately $1.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents and no borrowings on our $1.6 billion unsecured credit facility. Our quarter-end inventory levels decreased 2% compared to Q3 of last year. Our inventory is well positioned, and we are excited about our assortment for the holiday season. Turning to our third quarter capital allocation, net capital expenditures were $151 million and we paid $81 million in quarterly dividends. We also repurchased 3.5 million shares of our stock for $388.1 million at an average price of $112.46. Year-to-date, we have returned over $900 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. Let me wrap up with our outlook for 2023. As Laura noted, as a result of our Q3 performance, we are raising our full year outlook. We are confident in our key strategies and are well positioned to execute against what is in our control. At the same time, we are being appropriately cautious, particularly at the low end of our expectations, considering the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties. For the year, we now expect non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $12 to $12.60 compared to our prior expectation of $11.50 to $12.30. This continues to include approximately $0.20 coming from the 53rd week. In addition, we now expect comparable store sales in the range of positive 0.5% to positive 2% compared to our prior expectation of flat to positive 2%. Including the 53rd week, we expect roughly 250 basis points of noncomp sales growth for the full year. Specifically, this includes approximately $150 million in sales from the 53rd week, which is a smaller than average sales week for us. At the midpoint, non-GAAP EBT margin is expected to be approximately 10.4% compared to our prior expectation of 10.2%. We expect modest improvement in gross margin for the full year, which continues to include an approximate 50 basis point unfavorable impact from higher shrink compared to 2022. Specific to Q4, we expect to deliver continued gross margin and merch margin expansion on a year-over-year basis with some improvement versus our Q3 expansion. We also continue to expect SG&A expenses to deleverage on a full year, primarily due to the proactive investments in our growth strategies. Specific to Q4, we expect SG&A to deleverage by a similar magnitude as the third quarter. Our earnings guidance is based on an effective tax rate of approximately 21% and an approximately 86 million average diluted shares outstanding compared to our prior expectation of approximately 87 million average diluted shares outstanding. In addition, we expect net capital expenditures between $550 million and $600 million for the year. As part of our business optimization, we incurred pretax charges totaling $52.5 million during the third quarter and currently expect to incur charges of approximately $10 million in the fourth quarter. These charges were excluded from today's non-GAAP outlook. We are still conducting our business optimization review, which we expect to be completed during fiscal 2023.

Simeon Gutman, Analyst

My first question is on the comps of the business, which have been much better than most retail categories and more resilient over the last couple of years. So you see the detail, you see the product categories, the trends. As you look at this composition and how the consumer is going, I'm trying to assess what the puts and takes are as you look forward. And if you want to share how you think about '24, fine, but more interested in what gives you confidence and what gives you pause.

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Thank you, Simeon. We are happy with how our consumers are performing in the sporting goods industry, especially as they increasingly choose DICK'S to meet their needs. People are focused on maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle, engaging in team sports, outdoor activities, running, and walking. Therefore, we were particularly pleased with the increase in transactions and average transaction value in the past quarter. Our customers are not downgrading their purchases, and their behavior has remained strong. Looking ahead to Q4, as mentioned in our guidance, we are very optimistic about what we can control. Our products are well-stocked, and we have great gift options available. On LinkedIn, you can see the Reindeer Runs happening across the country, and our teams are excited to provide an exceptional holiday experience. We are also being cautious about the macroeconomic climate and the challenges consumers face right now. While we've taken a thoughtful approach in our guidance, we are enthusiastic about how well our consumers are managing.

Simeon Gutman, Analyst

I will now shift to discussing gross margin. In the past two years, last year you collaborated with a vendor to manage some inventory. This year, you encountered some markdowns for outdoor products. When considering the rebasing of gross margins, do you see these occurrences as anomalies that can be addressed to regain that margin? Or do you believe this current level is the appropriate baseline that provides flexibility and potential for growth moving forward?

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Thanks, Simeon. It's important to note that our product mix has become more differentiated, which impacts our gross margin. One of our key operating principles is to be decisive and move inventory to create space for new products. This approach drove our performance last quarter and has been influencing our results for a while. Last year, we faced some unusual situations, including disruptions in outdoor equipment and apparel due to the pandemic. However, that's not the case this quarter. We're pleased with the inventory we're receiving and have acted quickly to clear out products in stores, sending them online and to clearance to prepare for a strong Q4 and holiday season. I believe this strategy has positively affected our performance. Additionally, excluding the impact of shrinkage, our merchandise margin is still 50% higher than it was before, and we're proud of our current gross margin and anticipate ongoing improvements.

Robert Ohmes, Analyst

It was a great quarter. I have two questions. The first is about House of Sport. Can you provide more details on the performance of the stores that are comping? Also, is the outlook for the store economic model improving? You mentioned the Prudential Center in Boston, so I assume you're getting favorable lease rates for that location. What are your thoughts on that? My second question is about Going, Going, Gone! and pop-up stores. Can you explain their impact on noncomp sales in the third quarter and your expectations for them in the fourth quarter?

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Thanks, Robby. I'll start, and I'll turn it over to Navdeep. House of Sport stores are performing very, very well. And I think it's important to note that as much as we got a positive impact from those stores, both the first three that we opened more than a year ago and the new stores that just opened in the past six months, we also had growth across the balance of our portfolio and our omnichannel business as well. So it was a very balanced portfolio, which we're very happy with from a comp standpoint. The economics of House of Sport are very good. I'll turn it over to Navdeep to talk about how our lease rates and such. We're probably not going to get into that. But we have a very high standard for how we look at our real estate investments, and we don't do anything unless we hurdle a certain amount of ROI. So Navdeep, anything you would add?

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Robby, for your comments. Regarding the House of Sport, we are pleased with the performance of the 12 stores we've opened. The advantages go beyond just the economic aspects; we are also successfully attracting new brands and partners to showcase their products at our House of Sport locations. We believe Prudential Center will be another prime location for brands to display their products. We will provide more details about the economics of these locations when we discuss our expectations for 2024, as we plan to open 10 additional stores next year. Regarding Going, Going, Gone!, the chain and our warehouse locations continue to play a crucial role in our clearance strategy. As Lauren mentioned, our unique product assortment is key to fostering strong relationships with our athletes, and we see our assortment resonating well with them. Having a fresh and vibrant product selection in our stores is essential to this strategy. Going, Going, Gone! enables us to efficiently move excess or clearance inventory, yielding a significantly better economic return than in the past. In terms of non-comp sales impact, there was not a significant effect since the number of stores in Q3 this year is very similar to last year. We had 58 stores this year compared to 56 last year in Q3, making the comparison quite similar. The non-comp benefit this quarter came primarily from the Moosejaw business.

Katharine McShane, Analyst

I wondered if you could talk to any category performance during the quarter, just maybe how apparel and footwear looked relative to the second quarter year-over-year? And are you seeing any stabilization in some of the bigger ticket categories that maybe were COVID beneficiary categories a couple of years ago?

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Thanks, Kate. Yes, the story in Q3 from a category level really was about the strength of our back-to-school business. We saw strength as back-to-school has different cycles throughout the country, early, mid, and late back-to-school, and we could literally see the comps follow those trends. The back-to-school categories were performing so well. So collectively, that is footwear and apparel and hydration, which is doing incredibly well and then other accessories like backpacks, socks and those sorts of things. So we're very pleased with overall how our key categories performed in Q3. Looking at the higher ticket, the COVID categories, I want to just remind you, they are a smaller percentage of our business. And across the board, they remain significantly higher than our pre-COVID levels. We do expect long-term growth in those categories. We're just managing through them. But they are a small percentage of our business relative to the rest.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

I just want to follow up on House of Sport stores. I hope you could parse out the performance of some of the newly converted House of Sport stores that are included in the comp base relative to how legacy gift stores performed in the third quarter? And I just have a follow-up.

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Yes, thank you for the question. To clarify, we have not removed the stores converted into House of Sport from our comp base, so they have been included even in the first half of this year. We mentioned previously that their conversion had a negative impact. However, we are very excited about the performance of these stores. There are only eight original stores, but they are performing really well. The newly converted stores are also doing extremely well and have positively influenced our comp. We are quite pleased with the overall performance of both our brick-and-mortar locations and the omni-channel comp we achieved. Overall, we are very satisfied with the performance of House of Sport locations along with our core business in Q3.

Joseph Feldman, Analyst

Congratulations on the quarter. I wanted to revisit your comments about the weather. How much of an impact does weather have for you in the fourth quarter? Will apparel be a concern if it doesn't get cold here, considering it seemed to be a softer month for everyone in October due to warmer-than-normal weather? I'm just curious about how to approach the fourth quarter in terms of apparel.

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Yes. Thanks, Joe. Certainly, Q4 is the most weather-dependent category. We've, over time, mitigated some of the volatility of that factor because we can't control the weather, but just making sure we have all sorts of lightweight. Fleece is a big driver for us and things that don't depend on super extreme cold. That said, we like cold. So I'm hoping for a snowy Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Yes. I would say that we haven't given the guidance for Q4 on inventory. But I would start to say by the fact that if you look at our sales were up 3% almost in Q3, and our inventory was down 2%. So that kind of indicates how well we are managing the overall inventory position, and I would say a similar sentiment as we look to Q4 as well. We are right now in the middle of our budget season for 2024, and we are planning through the top line, the bottom line expectations, and the inventory. So we'll share more about exact 2024 working capital investment as we share the guidance in next quarter.

Frederick Gaertner, Analyst

Could you guys just give us a breakdown of store openings for the balance of the year? And perhaps into next year, how you're thinking about store openings and how we should be modeling that?

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Yes. The store openings for Q4 are primarily done with the holiday season. So not too many stores are expected to open here in the fourth quarter. What we have guided in terms of the preliminary 2024 expectation is 10 House of Sport openings. You can see us continuing to open more Golf Galaxy locations into 2024. We continue to be really pleased with the overall performance of the Galaxy Performance Center. In addition, we will also be remodeling our stores to continue to keep our overall assortment within those stores fresh and have the right capability and experience investment in the core part of the DICK'S stores as well.

Justin Kleber, Analyst

I have a question regarding the implied revenue guidance for the fourth quarter. If I look at the midpoints of the comparable and non-comparable benchmarks you provided, it seems that the guidance suggests revenues will increase sequentially in the high teens if I disregard the extra week. Historically, prior to the pandemic, your fourth quarter revenues used to grow by more than 30% quarter-over-quarter. Can you clarify why that isn't happening anymore? Why doesn't that trend hold? Are you being more cautious with promotions around the holiday season, or has the business mix changed significantly? I'm just trying to understand this better.

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Justin, this is Navdeep. I’ll try to answer that. We view the fourth quarter similarly to how we think about the holiday season. The holiday season is quite unique compared to the back-to-school season. Therefore, we assess it mainly on a sequential year-over-year basis rather than just comparing Q3 to Q4. Regarding our fourth quarter expectations, we are up against a 5.3% comparison and face a broader competitive environment than during the back-to-school season. We remain confident in the higher end of our expectations based on factors we can control. However, we have adjusted the lower end of our Q4 forecast, considering the current macroeconomic conditions we will be navigating in the fourth quarter. We believe we have provided a balanced outlook, and if you have more detailed questions on this, we can discuss it further offline.

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Yes. Justin, I would add that while we don't have historical numbers for comparison on this specific topic, I believe the strength we've experienced in our business during Q3, particularly in back-to-school categories, team sports, footwear, and apparel, has likely helped to stabilize our performance.

Daniel Imbro, Analyst

Maybe a first one just on inventory and then the optimization actions. I guess the inventory write-down, Navdeep, is that all within the outdoor categories that were maybe left over from last quarter? And is there anything left to do on the inventory side? It does look like on the website, there's still some decent promotions in bikes and outdoors. So trying to think about are we through that inventory kind of write-down or optimization?

Navdeep Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Daniel, let me clarify. The two things are totally separate and distinct. The one-time action that is included in our GAAP outlook and the inventory write-down actually is associated with the Moosejaw brand. We have some tertiary SKUs in that business. That will not be part of the go-forward assortment as we look to bring the two brands together. And so that's what you're seeing is the action around the Moosejaw business, not necessarily anything to do with the actions that we talked about in Q2. Overall, our inventory is really clean, and we are really excited about the assortment that we have available for Q4. And if you look at the overall inventory, we were down 2% on top line growth of 3%. So we continue to manage the overall inventory really well and are excited for the holiday season.

Lauren Hobart, President and CEO

Well, thank you very much. I hope everybody has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks for your interest in DICK'S Sporting Goods, and we'll see you in the New Year. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you, Ms. Hobart. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, that does conclude the Q3 2023 DICK'S Sporting Goods Earnings Conference Call. Thank you very much for joining us, and we wish you all a great day. Goodbye.