Five Below, Inc (FIVE) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, and welcome to the Five Below First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christiane Pelz, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for Five Below's first quarter 2022 financial results conference call. On today's call are Joel Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ken Bull, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. After management has made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. I need to remind you that certain comments made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Those risks and uncertainties are described in the press release and our SEC filings. The forward-looking statements made today are as of the date of this call and we do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements. If you do not have a copy of today's release, you may obtain one by visiting the Investor Relations page of our website at fivebelow.com. I will now turn the call over to Joel.

Thank you, Christiane, and thanks everyone for joining us for our first quarter 2022 earnings call. When we last spoke at our Investor Day in March, we unveiled our vision for future growth, the Triple-Double, and characterized 2022 as a unique year within that framework, given the lapping of stimulus and ongoing macro issues including record inflation, the war in Ukraine, and continued lockdowns in China. While 2022 is indeed proving to be a unique year, the customer response to our new prototype has been overwhelmingly positive. We remain excited about our future and are focused on execution to convert our store fleet to the new prototype. Key initiatives related to this rollout include opening all new stores in the Beyond format, executing store conversions, and adding new products and services to celebrate rituals and milestones to further enhance the store experience. Now onto the first quarter. The first quarter was challenging from a sales perspective as we had to anniversary the impact of stimulus amid the uncertain macro environment. While sales in April came in softer than expected, we effectively managed costs and delivered solid bottom line results in line with expectations. Total sales in the first quarter grew 7% over last year to $640 million, while comparable sales decreased 3.6%, driven by a decline in both basket and transactions. We delivered diluted earnings per share of $0.59 driven by strong cost discipline. Our key growth driver, new store growth continued with 35 new stores opened across 23 states. The new store in Albuquerque, New Mexico ranked in the top 25 Spring Grand openings of all time. Other highlights of the first quarter include opening our 1,200 store in Union Square, Manhattan and two other stores in the New York Boroughs, as well as a new store in Downtown Chicago. During the first quarter, we also continued to make progress across our strategic initiatives of product, experience, and supply chain. On product, one of the key distinguishing features of our model is our team's ability to recognize trends and capitalize on them quickly. The flexibility of our model with our Eight Worlds and ability to quickly shift is what makes the Five Below concept so unique. During the quarter, our merchants stayed on top of the squishmallow trends. We spoke about previously sourcing new edition squishmallows for our popular Squish Sunday events, which our store and marketing teams featured on social media and in-store marketing campaigns. The strong performance of the squish trend drove outperformance in the sports world, while Candy World benefited from novelty candy, snacks, and drinks. Pet also continued to be a strong category in the Room World. Turning to our second initiative experience, as I outlined in my opening comments, we are excited about the latest prototype unveiled at our Investor Day. This newest model features a Five Beyond destination. Our store within a store concept, which showcases reimagined tech and Room Worlds, while also doubling the SKUs dedicated to Five Beyond. As we mentioned at the Investor Day, we are planning on converting over 750 of our current stores into this latest format over the next four years. Our mission is to bring Five Beyond everywhere. In 2022, we are on track to convert over 200 stores to the new Beyond prototype. Regarding the digital experience, we focused on developing deeper connections with our customers and communities, while better engaging our crew. Through more effective digital marketing, we are growing brand awareness and are gathering data on our customers to better understand and market to them. We are also focused on enhancing the customer experience even further by letting them experience Five Below in the way they want. And to that end, we are working on a BOPUS rollout this summer. Moving on to our third strategic priority, supply chain. Recall that we spoke in detail about the theme of controlling our destiny on Investor Day. While this area continues to be challenging, given the impacts of lockdowns in China, our teams remain nimble, putting us in a great position to flow the majority of our expected product into the ports, distribution centers, and our stores. This is a great example of how focused we have been on execution and I am extremely proud of the progress we made. We are proactive in our approach from securing additional container capacity to adding to our truck fleet at the ship centers. We have improved our inventory in-stock position significantly since the beginning of the year and have the freshest inventory since I joined Five Below. This sets us up nicely for the second half and allows us to take advantage of closeouts and one-time special buys that have already begun to emerge. As it relates to our distribution infrastructure, we are very excited to officially open the Indiana ship center this summer to further gain efficiencies, speed to our stores, and ultimately our customers. As a reminder, after we open this distribution center, which will enable us to service approximately 90% of our stores within one day, we will have completed our Five Node network. We will then take a pause from opening distribution centers for a couple of years. The entire supply chain team has made great progress to set us up to serve incredible value to our customers this upcoming holiday season. In summary, we remain focused on our growth strategies with disciplined investments in people, systems, and infrastructure to support the execution of our future growth. Growth is at the center of our long-term strategy and, throughout the organization, our attention is solely focused on execution to deliver our Triple-Double strategy. We now have full line of sight on delivering our goal of approximately 160 stores in 2022 and have made significant traction on our 2023 goal of opening over 200 stores for the first time ever. Our scale continues to benefit us and our customers as we continually reinvest in WOW products and provide the fun experience they expect from us. We are also poised to take advantage of dislocations in the marketplace, including merchandise and real estate, and we will aggressively pursue the opportunities we are seeing, which we expect to grow, given the current environment. While the pressures facing some of our customers due to the reduction in stimulus and the current inflationary environment weigh on our near-term results, history has taught us that consumers will seek out value even more when times are tough, and nobody is better positioned to deliver fun at outstanding values than Five Below. With that, I will turn it over to Ken to provide some more details on the financials.

Thanks, Joel, and good afternoon, everyone. I will begin my remarks with a review of our first quarter results and then provide guidance for the second quarter and the full year. As Joel said, the first quarter was more challenging in April than we expected. As we cycle the impact of large stimulus payments amid an uncertain macro environment while consumers experienced record high inflation. Our sales for the first quarter of 2022 increased 7% to $639.6 million from $597.8 million reported in the first quarter of 2021. As we have said on previous earnings calls, we believe that a meaningful measure of our performance in the near term is to compare our results to pre-pandemic results from fiscal 2019, given the outsized stimulus impact in 2021 and the impact of COVID in 2020. Sales for the comparable set of stores opened in both the first quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2022 increased 17%, or 5.4% on a three-year compound annual growth rate. Comparable sales decreased by 3.6% versus the first quarter of 2021 with a decrease in comp ticket of 1.9% and a comp transaction decrease of 1.7%. As we have seen since reopening our stores in 2020, our average ticket continues to be strong, increasing over 20% when compared to 2019. We opened 35 new stores across 23 states in the first quarter compared to 68 new stores opened in the first quarter last year. We ended the quarter with 1,225 stores, an increase of 138 stores or 13% versus 1,087 stores at the end of the first quarter of 2021. In line with our guidance, operating margin was 6.6%, which declined approximately 400 basis points versus the first quarter of 2021 with approximately one-third of the decline in gross margin and the remainder in SG&A expenses. As a comparison to a pre-pandemic period, these operating margin results were in line with the first quarter of 2019. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2022 was $206.8 million versus $200.9 million in the first quarter of 2021. As expected, gross margin decreased by approximately 130 basis points to 32.3%, driven primarily by fixed cost deleverage on the negative comp. As a percentage of sales, SG&A expenses for the first quarter of 2022 increased approximately 280 basis points to 25.7%. As expected, SG&A expenses as a percent of sales were higher than last year, driven primarily by fixed cost deleverage, higher store wages, and increased marketing. Our effective tax rate for the first quarter of 2022 was 22.3% compared to 20.9% in the first quarter of 2021. Net income for the first quarter of 2022 was $32.7 million versus net income of $49.6 million last year. Earnings per diluted share for the first quarter was $0.59 compared to last year's earnings per diluted share of $0.88. We had a share-based accounting benefit of approximately $0.03 in the first quarter this year compared to a benefit of approximately $0.04 in the first quarter last year. Now looking to our balance sheet. We ended the first quarter with $320 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments and no debt, including nothing outstanding on our $225 million line of credit. We repurchased approximately 247,000 shares in the first quarter of fiscal 2022 at a cost of approximately $40 million. Inventory at the end of the first quarter was $504 million as compared to $327 million at the end of the first quarter last year. Average inventory on a per store basis increased approximately 37% versus the first quarter last year. Average total units of inventory on a per store basis increased approximately 20% year-over-year. Accelerated merchandise receipts and higher inbound freight costs drove the year-over-year increase. As Joel previously mentioned, we are pleased with the makeup and level of our inventory and are well positioned for our summer selling season. We remain disciplined and flexible in our inventory purchasing so that we can adjust to customer demand and preferences, chase trends, and be opportunistic in a dynamic supply chain environment. Now on to guidance. As we stated at our Investor Day in March, we expect 2022 to be a unique year for several reasons. First, lapping significant government stimulus. Second, the uncertain environment with residual pandemic impacts primarily on supply chains and store openings; third, ongoing inflationary pressures, especially fuel costs; and fourth, cycling a very strong year of multiple merchandise trends. Given our Q1 performance and Q2 sales trends to date, we believe it is prudent to adjust our outlook. Our guidance for the second quarter includes opening approximately 30 new stores, sales of $675 million to $695 million, comps of between negative 2% to negative 5%. A 25% effective tax rate. Net income between $41 million and $48 million with diluted EPS of $0.74 to $0.86. At the midpoint of this guidance, we expect operating margin to be down approximately 450 basis points over last year, driven by deleverage in both gross profit and SG&A expenses. We had originally planned for a second quarter operating margin decline that moderated from first quarter levels, due primarily to unanniversaried freight costs, higher store wages, and increased marketing expenses. However, due to fixed cost deleverage on the lower sales outlook, we now expect a larger operating margin decline than in the first quarter. Our current outlook assumes lower sales than originally planned for Q3 and an operating margin decline year-over-year of approximately 350 basis points, driven primarily by fixed cost deleverage, higher store expenses, and increased marketing spend. As we look further to the fourth quarter, our current outlook assumes that more consumers overall and our customers specifically will be looking for better value, as we have seen in the past during difficult economic periods. For Q4, we currently expect an improvement in year-over-year sales trends from Q2 and Q3 levels and we still expect significant operating leverage. We believe several factors will drive the sales improvement in Q4, including improved year-over-year inventory position and merchandise in stocks, expanded Five Beyond assortment and penetration of store count, and increased and more effective marketing. For the full year of fiscal 2022, we now expect sales of $3.04 billion to $3.12 billion, which is a reduction of approximately 5% versus our previous full year guidance. This sales range is an increase of approximately 66% versus fiscal 2019 total sales or an approximate 19% compound annual growth rate. For fiscal 2022, we also expect comps in the range of flat to negative 2%, which assumes an approximate 17% increase for the same subset of stores opened in 2019 and 2022, which is in line with a similar comparison, I mentioned for our first quarter 2022 results. We also expect an effective tax rate of 25%. Net income in the range of $271 million to $293 million, and diluted EPS of $4.85 to $5.24. We expect operating margin of about 12.2% at the midpoint of guidance with a decline versus last year driven primarily by deleverage on fixed costs and higher SG&A expenses from a more normalized marketing spend. For fiscal 2022, we plan to spend approximately $225 million in gross CapEx, excluding tenant allowances primarily for opening approximately 160 new stores, executing over 200 conversions to the new Five Beyond prototype, opening a new distribution center in Indiana, and investing in systems and infrastructure. We still plan to open approximately 60% of new stores in the second half of the year, including approximately 20 openings in January. And over the next two years, we still plan to open between 375 and 400 new stores. In closing, we remain committed to delivering an amazing experience and exceptional value for our customers, something that is even more important now than ever before. And we will continue to manage our cost structure and spend with great discipline while staying focused on our long-term vision and sales and profitability targets. For other details related to our results, please refer to our earnings press release. That concludes our remarks. And with that, I'll turn it over to the operator to begin Q&A.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question is from Matthew Boss with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. So, Joel, maybe could you elaborate on the softer than expected April across your world? Have you seen any change in consumer behavior so far in May or June? And then for Ken, are you embedding any improvement in the macro backdrop into this revised outlook or maybe could you help walk through the underlying comp build for the back half of the year relative to trends in the business that you're seeing today?

Certainly, Matt. For the first quarter, we projected a range of 0 to 2, so coming in at a negative comp of around 3.5 was disappointing. The results for April were softer than anticipated. Like many retailers, it's challenging to predict what will happen, especially given the peak stimulus period of 2021. While we know when the funds were distributed, it’s hard to determine when they were actually spent. We probably focused too much on the distribution timing and didn’t consider the lingering effects of those funds in April and May. Additionally, there were more tax returns processed in May last year compared to this year, which we also didn’t account for. The most significant challenges seem to be behind us with the $1.9 trillion stimulus, but consumers are still facing obstacles, like the formula shortage, which is likely top of mind for families. Our guidance suggests that we expect Q2 to be fairly consistent with Q1. As consumers move out of their cautious phase, they will start looking for value, which is where we will begin to improve.

Regarding your question about our assumptions and outlook in light of the current macro environment, as Joel mentioned, we're closely examining the present situation. One key factor we're considering is that customers are returning to a focus on value, especially during these challenging times. We anticipate this trend will become more evident, although we haven't fully realized its benefits yet. In terms of comps, our guidance reflects a negative comp for the first half of the year, with an expectation of a flat to a negative 2 comp for the full year. This suggests we should see positive comps in the latter half of the year. We are particularly optimistic about the fourth quarter, influenced by several factors, including our inventory positioning and stock levels, as well as the Five Beyond initiative. Our current outlook anticipates that the trends observed in Q1 and Q2 will begin to stabilize in Q3, with more significant improvements expected in Q4.

We believe that the first half of the year and our guidance for the full year, which indicates flat to a decline of 2 percent, suggests we will see positive comparisons in the latter half of the year. We have a lot of confidence in the fourth quarter due to several factors I mentioned, particularly regarding inventory positioning, in-stocks, and Five Beyond. Our current outlook assumes that the trends observed in the first and second quarters will stabilize around the third quarter, leading to more significant improvements in the fourth quarter.

Thanks, Matt.

The next question is from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

I feel positive about the fourth quarter considering several factors I mentioned, particularly regarding inventory positioning and availability, as well as Five Beyond. Our current outlook is based on the expectation that the trends we are observing in Q1 and Q2 will begin to stabilize in Q3, leading to more significant improvements in Q4.

Simeon, I was having a hard time. You're asking how do we drive traffic as a discretionary retailer?

Do you think there are any factors that will change given that the situation has evolved?

Well, I mean, look, I think, first of all, we certainly look back to the last time there was a recession in ‘08 and that was a pretty successful time for Five. I wasn't here during that time. I was at Walmart at that time. We saw the same thing at Walmart. And I think for us, that's why so many of our remarks and comments were on value and the opportunities we're starting to see around one-time buys and special buys and that type of thing. And I think as we especially get closer to holiday the back half of the year, we're going to see a lot of customers start their trip at Five rather than finish their trip because they know the value that they're going to find there. And so, we start to move as we get into the back half of the year from a discretionary retailer into a needs retailer. As history would tell us and certainly from our day ToysRUs as well as the last place, the consumer will cut is for their kids. And so we see no reason that doesn't change this year and that is why we are so focused on the value message as we look ahead to the second half of the year. Thanks, Simeon.

And the next question is from John Heinbockel with Guggenheim. Please go ahead.

Hey Joel. Two related questions, right. How aggressive do you want to be on closeouts and in what categories and price points? And then secondly, maybe just remind us your philosophy on markdowns versus packaway.

That's a great question. Let me address your second question first. A few years back, we were overly invested in packaways, which was effective when we were a smaller regional player. As we evolved into a national player, managing packaways has gotten more complicated. I don’t anticipate packaways significantly altering our strategy moving forward. Regarding one-time buys, if opportunities arise in any category that align with our core customer, we will actively pursue those. We're beginning to see such opportunities after a dry spell over the last two years. Michael has empowered us and the merchants to pursue these products across all Eight Worlds. We aim to have very clean inventory by the end of the year, especially since this product performs exceptionally well during the holiday season. We have a solid history of managing that well, and we plan to be aggressive in all Eight Worlds.

Thank you.

Thanks, John.

The next question is from Paul Lejuez with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hey Joel. Can you just frame the close out from special buys like what percent of your sales does it typically represent versus where you think you might be going this year, next year? And then, you mentioned capitalizing on some opportunities in real estate. I was curious if you could just dig into that a little bit in terms of what you're seeing there? Thanks.

Yeah. Look, regardless of how you look at closeouts on special buys, it is a very small piece of our business. It was much, much bigger when we were a small chain, but we can't rely on closeouts to drive our business. They're not going to be sitting on 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 units of an item that we can constantly use as a flow of goods. Having said that, Paul, they really serve as traffic drivers. While it will still be less than double digits of our total, we can use those in our emails and social media and really try to use that to lure customers into our store with incredible value. So it's more opportunistic and it's more about being able to drive traffic. We can use them for online exclusives, but it's really a nice piece of our strategy, but it doesn't make up the overwhelming piece of our business. And then as far as real estate goes, as you've listened to some of the announcements from several retailers, we're just coming back from ICSC a couple of weeks ago, which is in Vegas, probably the biggest retail real estate show of the year, which really hasn't occurred in the last couple of years because of COVID. Our team came back energized; the landlords are talking to us. The landlords are getting excited and ready to get back to growth. They are starting to see some of their bottlenecks start to loosen up and so I think that it's really been a sea change from where we were at the beginning of the year where everything was of backing up into the back half of this year and into next year. So we are pretty much done with all the deals for this year and that's why, as my prepared remarks said, we've got great line of sight of the 160 for this year and next year is really starting to shape up with the added commentary of the kind of the tenor of the meeting out in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago.

Joel, those rates come in better than you anticipated at the beginning of the year.

I mean, it's less than rate change, clearly, if we went into the C&D centers, we could easily take rates down, but we're still staying committed to the A & B centers and it's just more about the opportunities presenting themselves as opposed to at least at this point a change in rate. All right. Thanks, Paul.

The next question is from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon. My question concerns the sales performance during the quarter, especially in April. You are slightly below your guidance. Is this primarily due to a tough comparison with last year, or are you noticing some signs within your business indicating that consumers are pulling back? Could you help us understand that?

Yeah, Brian. It's kind of a combination of both and I think because they both hit at the exact same time, it's really tough to tease out which one weighs more than the other, but clearly the consumer, and we can measure that, because our lower household income markets are not performing as well as our higher income household markets. So that clearly those dollars have dried up from last year's stimulus; those customers have less discretionary income and therefore that's where we've seen a tightening in sales. But kind of separating those two out because they happened at the same time, it's hard to weigh one over the other. But we are definitely seeing both.

Got it. Thank you.

Thanks, Brian. You bet.

The next question is from Karen Short with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks very much. I just wanted to go back to guidance for the second half more specifically, I mean obviously, I appreciate that things are very volatile right now, but when you look at your second half guidance with respect to and I'm looking at this on a three-year basis, but three-year sales growth, three-year comps, three-year EBIT growth, and margin expansion implied. It just seems that there is a, you really need to see meaningful strength in the second half that doesn't necessarily seem realistic. And so I want to tie that into the fact that I know you feel good about your inventory, but obviously, inventories are up quite a bit year-over-year. And the question is like, what's the risk that you really have to have much greater markdowns in light of ongoing weakness in the consumer?

Yeah. Thanks, Karen. There is obviously different ways to look at the numbers now given the challenge in comparing things year-over-year, right with the pandemic and other challenges there. So one way to look at it and I'll put out there is to go back again as we did for our Q1 results and go back and look at 2019. One way you could do it is to go back and look at the average sales per store in 2019, which again was a more normalized year pre-pandemic. And when you look at that, you'll notice that the increase on a quarterly basis is relatively consistent when you look at the first quarter and the third and fourth quarter. There is a little bit of a shortfall in the second quarter, again based on the current environment, what we're seeing. So it really kind of gets back to first quarter levels that we saw. So when you look at it that way and I think when you look at it from a geometric stack basis also, you see that same trend where the back half of the year is getting back in line with the first quarter. So you don't see it as much of the, I guess a hockey stick that you're mentioning there.

Yeah. In fact, all you have to do is believe we will perform at the exact same levels as Q1. So I'm not sure what numbers you are looking at, but that's kind of how we thought about it in terms of the back half versus the first quarter.

And just the inventory risks?

I mean maybe far bad we should probably talk about it at the Investor Day, but I mean it was part of our plan to be up significantly year-over-year. Some of it was about just pulling forward, I mean we did not have the inventory levels we wanted in Q4 last year and we wanted to ensure we were ready for summer here; a piece of it is inflation costs. I mean our inventory levels include all the added shipping costs, etc. that's all in it that wasn't there a year ago. So, is it up a little bit more because of the sales miss, but sales miss is not much more than that far materially off what we guided, so a few percent, but overall, there's really no concern from our end. In fact, I'll tell you what, it’s the cleanest inventory we've had since I've been here, in terms of newness and that should really bode well for the customer.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Karen.

Thanks, Karen.

The next question is from Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, guys. Good afternoon. So just additional sort of color on what you think is driving the most recent slowdown and what I mean by that is, like, how have the trend right product Squishmallows like how has that been performing, has that slowed at all. I know you're taking some price I guess for the inflation has the elasticity on that pricing changed much. And then just one more on Q4, I know you've had trade down in the past, like ‘08 and ‘09, but that was also a big stimulus environment, which we probably won't see. Just curious, is there are other things that have you optimistic about Q4 like product pipeline in the holiday, maybe you could speak to that. Thanks.

I mean, referring back to my prepared remarks, Squishmallows have continued to perform very well for us. We're facing comparisons from last year, but that trend is pretty much behind us, so for those concerned about markdowns, we are in a solid position. Squishmallows are a great example of how we are identifying strong trends that our customers are still purchasing. Licenses haven't been a significant trend for a couple of years, but we see potential for that area to pick up now that movies are being released. We will pursue trends as much as we pursue value. Looking ahead to Q4, we have over 200 new stores in the pipeline, a decrease in stimulus effects, and the shift in our positioning from being a want store to a need store in Q4. All these factors contribute to a positive outlook for the latter half of the year as we navigate through the challenges we've faced in previous years. Ken, is there anything I missed?

I would like to add a bit more regarding Q4. We highlighted in our prepared remarks that our inventory position is better than it was last year. We all recognize the supply chain challenges we faced last year, and our supply chain and buying teams have done an excellent job managing the right amount of inventory. Additionally, our marketing efforts are improving, especially with our increased focus on digital marketing. All of these factors contribute to the positive comments we are making about the potential for Q4 and the holiday season.

All right. Hey, thanks much, Ed. Take care.

Thanks, Ed. Yeah.

The next question is from Michael Lasser with UBS. Please go ahead.

Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. If you do a minus 3 to minus 4 comp for the full year rather than the flat to 2 for the full year. Would you have more or less than $0.50 of EPS risk to your full-year guidance in light of the deleverage on negative comps you would experience in the back half? Thanks a lot.

So, Michael. You're asking, okay. If we do a minus…

Minus 3 to minus 4, instead of flat to 2.

Yeah, I mean I don't have the exact figures here from an EPS impact, but it's not going to be, if you mentioned a $0.50 impact.

Is that, we're saying would it be more or less than a $0.50 impact?

Yeah. The overall takeaway from the earnings release for folks is that the outlook for the back half of the year is optimistic. So if you could frame downside case scenario for earnings for the year in light of that viewpoint, it would be helpful.

I think one way to consider this is that while we are affected by factors such as fuel surcharges and rising fuel costs like other retailers, we haven't really discussed the total impact for the year. Embedded within our operations and results are cost mitigation strategies that we are actively implementing. As you know, Joel has mentioned that we are a nimble organization and we adapt to these challenges. If you look at the anticipated reduction in sales from our previous guidance for the second half of the year, you might expect a greater negative impact on earnings. However, the significant cost mitigation strategies and efficiencies we are employing internally are helping to offset that, which likely explains why the outlook for the second half appears more favorable than one might expect given the sales changes.

Take the example of first quarter.

Yeah.

It's roughly 2 percentage points of comp below the guide and yet earnings came in right at the midpoint. So, I think we've got flexibility on our side to really manage the business and I certainly wouldn't forecast that big of a decline in earnings.

Yeah.

Thanks.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joel Anderson for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks everyone for joining us. While the first quarter, as you can tell, was certainly challenging, we are focused on being nimble as we navigate this dynamic operating environment. We continue to believe Five Below as an innovative and resilient retailer with a long runway for growth. We have an industry-leading new store payback model and a strong balance sheet, none of that changes. We remain focused on delivering incredible value and quality merchandise with a commitment to strong expense management and cost discipline. These attributes are distinguishing characteristics, which will serve us well as we continue to grow. In closing, I wish you all a great summer and an end to the school year, our summer fun list is out there with an amazing list of products. And as always, I encourage you to shop at Five Below for all your outdoor pool and beach needs. We look forward to speaking with you again at the end of the summer. Have a great evening. Thanks everybody.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.