1 800 Flowers Com Inc Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good morning and welcome to the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM Incorporated Fourth Quarter 2021 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 Joe Pititto, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jason. Good morning and thank you for joining us today to discuss 1-800-FLOWERS.COM Inc.'s financial results for our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and full year. For those of you who have not yet received a copy of our press release issued earlier this morning, the release can be accessed at the Investor Relations section of our corporate website at 1800flowersinc.com. Our call today will begin with brief formal remarks and then we will open the call to your questions. Presenting today will be Chris McCann, CEO; and Bill Shea, CFO. Before we begin, I need to remind everyone that some of the statements we will make today may be forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the applicable statements. For a detailed description of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our press release issued this morning, as well as our SEC filings, including the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. In addition, this morning, we will discuss certain supplemental financial measures that were not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the tables accompanying the company's press release issued this morning. The company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements made in today's call, any recordings of today's call, the press release issued earlier today or in any of its SEC filings, except as may be otherwise stated by the company. I'll now turn the call over to Chris McCann.

Thanks, Joe, and thank you all for joining us this morning. We are very pleased to report a strong finish to what was truly an incredible year for our company. Most important, we are very proud of the achievements of all of our associates. They worked diligently throughout the year to overcome the unprecedented challenges of the global pandemic to help millions of our customers stay connected with and express themselves to the important people in their lives. For our fourth quarter, we achieved continued strong double-digit revenue growth. And keep in mind, this is on top of the more than 60% revenue growth that we achieved in last year's fourth quarter, when the pandemic first took hold in our country and consumers began to work from home, to shelter in place and shifted much of their shopping online. As we noted back in our April call, our fourth quarter, along with the current fiscal first quarter, represents our most challenging year-over-year comparisons. Despite the challenging comps, both our top and bottom line results for the fourth quarter exceeded the high end of the guidance that we provided back in April. This reflects our focus on providing our customers with an expanded range of solutions, combined with our ability to leverage our unique e-commerce platform, which includes our all-star family of brands, our advanced technology stack, our manufacturing distribution and logistics capabilities, our digital marketing expertise and our growing customer file. These factors helped us drive revenue growth of 42.5% for the full fiscal year and achieved a significant milestone for our company, by surpassing $2 billion in total revenue. We have basically doubled the size of our business in the past three years. In fact, over the past several years we have significantly transformed our company, growing from a collection of specialty brands into a unique e-commerce platform that inspires and enables our customers to express, connect and celebrate. As such, we are well positioned to continue to deliver strong growth going forward. We see significantly increased recognition and relevancy for our brands and products for everyday occasions, including birthday, sympathy, get well, new baby, anniversary and just because. We further expanded our already broad product offerings to provide more solutions to our customers through the acquisitions of two strategic and highly accretive businesses Shari's Berries and Personalization Mall. We grew our customer file significantly in fiscal 2021 and we saw a continuation of the positive customer trends and customer behavior metrics in terms of frequency and retention that we've discussed in our past calls. Our customer file is one of the most important assets and a driver of the strong growth that we see going forward. So to help illustrate the strength of this list, I'd like to share some key metrics with you. In fiscal 2021, we added more than 6.5 million new customers. One of the strongest areas of new customer growth for us was with millennials, which increased at a double-digit pace and now represents 24% of our total customer file. Existing customers also grew at a strong steady pace, resulting in more than 13 million total active customers for the year. Importantly, even with the strong new customer growth, existing customers represented approximately 64% of total revenue. As we've noted in the past, our best performing customer cohorts are customers who purchase from more than one product category or brand and customers who belong to our Celebrations Passport loyalty program. In both cases we saw solid growth in fiscal 2021. Customers who bought more than one product category or brand, excluding PMall, made up more than 13% of our total active customers and represented approximately 29% of total revenue for the year, up significantly from the prior year period. Further illustrating the importance of this cohort, the average spend of these customers in fiscal 2021 was $330, more than double the spend of an average customer, excluding PMall. In terms of our Celebrations Passport loyalty program, as we noted in April, membership had surpassed the one million mark back in early spring. For the year, membership grew 112% to 1.3 million members. Passport member revenue per customer was also up for the year at $284, nearly double that of the average customer. These metrics really illustrate the tremendous value of our customer file, a key asset and growth driver for our overall business and one that we will continue to develop going forward. In terms of product development, we significantly expanded our product offerings with the acquisition of Personalization Mall getting thousands of personalized gift items from wine glasses to picture frames, a dozen personalization technology options from laser engraving to custom embroidering and a highly automated operating model that provides industry-leading order-to-ship delivery times. This acquisition significantly expanded our capabilities of our operating platform and clearly positions us as a leader in personalized gift. Now we've only begun to scratch the surface in terms of what we can do with Personalization Mall's unique capabilities and their product offerings. So for example, this fall you will see us roll out personalized products across our brand sites, showcasing our new capabilities to millions of our customers. And we're equally excited by the tremendous opportunities we see in corporate gifting where personalized products can help our corporate customers stay connected with both their clients and their employees. Throughout fiscal 2021, we also focused our product development efforts on creating more cross-brand and cross-category bundled gifts, leveraging our platform to create truly original and compelling gift combinations. To give you an example of this, for Mother's Day we bundled Shari's Berries, roses from 1-800-FLOWERS and award-winning wines from Harry & David, creating a hit product that we have now expanded into a growing collection that we call our Deliciously Decadent series. We've also created shop-in-shop experiences to take advantage of brand affinities such as the 1-800-FLOWERS shop on the Harry & David site and the Moose Munch shop on the Popcorn Factory site, introducing customers to our expanded product offerings with authentic and organic experiences. And for everyday gifting occasions, we expanded our birthday and sympathy collections that now feature more multiple brand combinations. And before I turn the call to Bill for his review of our financial results, I'd like to cover our expanded initiatives to engage with our customers and build a community that goes beyond transactions. Deepening the relationships we have with our customers through a combination of highly relevant content, interactive experiences and platforms that promote a two-way dialogue will further enhance our position as our customers' go-to resource for all of their expressive and connective needs. One way that we measure the success of our initiatives in this area is through specific touch points that we have with consumers across a broad range of communication and social channels. In fiscal 2021 we created nearly 80 million consumer engagements, 80 million consumer engagements. Many of these engagements happened around key holiday periods such as Mother's Day and Father's Day where we built programs called MVP Moms and MVP Dads featuring popular chefs like Antonia Lofaso and well-known athletes like Ali Krieger and Ray Allen. We created video profiles showing their roles as the heart of their families and these videos reached more than 10 million consumers. Throughout the year, we also worked to create a growing range of online events through social channels like Facebook and Instagram. For example, our Breakfast at Wolferman's Series was a great success, watched by nearly 2 million consumers and effectively introducing a new younger demographic to our Wolferman's Bakery brand with a mix of lifestyle tips, personal experiences and live recipe demonstrations. We've also continued to innovate our digital experiences, evolving our design and creative to better mix content with commerce as we evolve both desktop and mobile channels. There's many more interactive engagements and these have all helped us to introduce millions of people to our broad range of solutions for their connective and expressive needs. We plan to continue to broaden these efforts and extend our engagement reach going forward. Now I'd like to turn the call to Bill to review the financial metrics. Bill?

Thank you, Chris. We are very pleased to have finished a very challenging and very successful fiscal 2021 with solid performance in our fourth quarter. As Chris noted, last year's fourth quarter results posed a particularly challenging comparison due to the initial impact of the pandemic in the prior year period. Nonetheless, we were able to deliver results above the top end of our guidance for revenues, adjusted EBITDA and EPS. We achieved overall revenue growth of 16.5% and organic revenue growth of 3.8% compared with the prior year period. To put our revenue growth for the quarter in perspective compared with our fiscal 2019 fourth quarter, our overall revenue growth was 88% and our organic growth was 58%. Our results for the quarter and the full year reflect the decisions we've made over the past several years to manage the various headwinds we have faced and to lean into the growth opportunities that we saw. We made the decision to invest in expanded digital marketing programs that have helped us accelerate new customer growth, significantly grow membership in our Celebrations Passport loyalty program and increase awareness in our all-star family of brands for both holiday and everyday occasions. We made a decision to acquire Shari's Berries in August of 2019 and to acquire Personalization Mall in August of 2020. Both acquisitions have proven to be highly accretive top and bottom line, illustrating the strength of the unique business platform that we have built. We continue to see significant opportunities to drive growth in these businesses and across our family of brands by leveraging our platform. Now breaking down some of the key metrics for the fourth quarter and year. For the fourth quarter, total revenues increased 16.5% to $487 million compared with $418 million in the prior year period. For the year, total revenues increased 42.5% to $2.12 billion reflecting strong growth across our three business segments, as well as contributions from Personalization Mall. Excluding Personalization Mall, total net revenues grew 26.6% compared with the prior year. Gross margin for the quarter increased 20 basis points to 40.7% and for the year increased 40 basis points to 42.2%. For the quarter operating expenses as a percent of total revenues improved 10 basis points to 37.5%. Excluding the impact of the company's nonqualified deferred 401(k) compensation plan and in fiscal 2020, the costs associated with the closing of the Harry & David retail stores and the acquisition costs of Personalization Mall, operating expenses as a percent of total revenues increased 180 basis points to 37.2% for the quarter compared with 35.4% in the prior year. This increase reflects the higher digital marketing and advertising costs compared with the prior year period. For the year, operating expense improved 120 basis points to 35.2% compared with 36.4%. Excluding the aforementioned one-time costs, operating expenses improved 110 basis points to 34.7% compared with 35.8% in the prior year. This despite the numerous cost headwinds we incurred shows the leverage in the model as we grow. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $30.2 million, compared with $32.5 million in the prior year period. The strong adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, while down slightly compared with the prior year period, primarily reflects higher revenue and gross margin achieved somewhat offset by the increased marketing costs compared to the record low marketing rates in the prior year period. For the year, strong revenue growth combined with enhanced gross profit margins and lower operating expense ratio resulted in adjusted EBITDA growth of 64.5% to $213 million. Net income and adjusted net income for the quarter was $13.3 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, compared with net income of $9.8 million, or $0.15 per diluted share and adjusted net income of $15.1 million, or $0.23 per diluted in the prior year period. Net income for the year was $118.7 million, or $1.78 per diluted share, compared with $59 million, or $0.89 per diluted share in the prior year. And adjusted net income for the year was $122.6 million, or $1.84 per diluted share compared with $65 million, or $0.98 per diluted share in the prior year period. Providing our segment results. In our Gourmet Food and Gift Baskets, revenue for the quarter was $152.2 million, down 1.1% compared with the prior year period. For perspective, revenue for the quarter was up 110% compared with our fiscal 2019 fourth quarter. For the year, revenue in this segment increased 21.6% to $955.6 million, compared with $785 million in the prior year period. Segment contribution margin for the quarter was $4.2 million, compared with $10.1 million in the prior year period and adjusted contribution margin of $15.3 million in the prior year period. The decline in the quarter reflected the higher year-over-year marketing rates, as well as higher labor and shipping costs. Adjusted segment contribution margin for the year was $148.9 million, compared with $115.8 million in the prior year, reflecting the strong revenue growth along with enhanced leveraging of operating expenses. In our Consumer Floral and Gifts segment, revenue for the quarter increased 27.2% to $297.7 million, compared with $234.1 million in the prior year period. This primarily reflects the contributions of Personalization Mall combined with solid growth for the Mother's Day holiday. Excluding the contributions from Personalization Mall, revenue growth in this segment was 4.4% for the quarter. For perspective, revenue growth for the quarter excluding Personalization Mall was up 53% compared with our fiscal 2019 fourth quarter. And for the year, revenues increased 72.8% to $1.03 billion, compared with $593.2 million in the prior year. Excluding contributions from Personalization Mall, revenue in this segment was up 33% for the year. Segment contribution margin for the quarter was $41.2 million, compared to $39 million in the prior year period. And for the year, segment contribution margin was $128.6 million, compared with $73.8 million in the prior year. This reflects contributions from Personalization Mall combined with the continued robust performance in the segment's flagship 1-800-FLOWERS Consumer Floral brand. In our BloomNet segment, revenues for the quarter increased 23.5% to $37.3 million, compared with $30.2 million in the prior year period. For the year, revenue increased 27.9% to $142.9 million, compared with $111.8 million in the prior year. Segment contribution margin for the quarter was $11.3 million, compared with $7.6 million in the prior year period in part due to the decision in the year-ago period to waive certain fees to help support our florist members. Segment contribution margin for the year was $45.9 million, compared with $35.1 million in the prior year, driven by strong top line growth. In terms of corporate expense, for the fiscal fourth quarter, corporate expense, including stock-based compensation, but excluding the impact of the company's non-qualified deferred 401(k) compensation plan was $29.1 million compared with $31.3 million in the prior year period. For the year, corporate expense, including stock-based compensation, but excluding the impact of the company's deferred 401(k) plan and one-time costs associated with the acquisition of PMall, was $121.2 million compared with $103.5 million in the prior year. The increase in corporate expense for the year was primarily related to increased support services, Personalization Mall, overall company growth and COVID-related expenses. Regarding free cash flow, we generated free cash flow for the year of $118.1 million compared with $104.7 million in the prior year. Turning to our balance sheet. At the end of the year, our cash and investment position was $173.6 million. Inventory was $153.9 million, primarily reflecting the acquisition of Personalization Mall and our conscious decision to build inventory ahead of the new fiscal year. Our term debt balance, net of deferred financing cost was $181.5 million and we had zero borrowings outstanding under the working capital line within our revolving credit facility. As a result, total net debt at the end of the year was $7.9 million. Providing guidance for fiscal 2022. Last year, due to the significant uncertainty in the overall economy related to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not provide guidance for the full fiscal year, instead providing guidance on a quarter-by-quarter basis. This year, while there remains considerable uncertainty in the economy due to the ongoing pandemic, we are moving back to the practice of our prior practice of providing full-year guidance. This is based on the improvements, albeit uneven, in the overall economy that we've been seeing for some months now, as well as the macroeconomic trends and the factors we see in our business that support our growth outlook, including the significant shift for consumers to e-commerce shopping, which we believe will continue along with our expansion of our product offering both organically and through strategic acquisitions like Shari's Berries and Personalization Mall; the strong growth and positive behaviors in our customer file, including strong new-to-file customer growth as well as increased demand from existing customers and continued strong growth in our Celebrations Passport Loyalty program, which is helping drive increased frequency, retention and cross-category cross-brand purchases. For fiscal 2022 full year, we anticipate total revenue growth of 10% to 12% compared with the prior year, adjusted EBITDA growth of 5% to 8%, EPS in line with fiscal 2021 as improved EBITDA is offset by higher depreciation and a higher effective tax rate and free cash flow to again exceed $100 million. We are well aware of several headwinds affecting our business as we enter the new fiscal year, including a challenging labor market with both limited availability and rising wage rates and significant increases in both inbound and outbound shipping rates as well as certain commodity costs. We are confident in our ability to manage these headwinds and continue to leverage the strength of our business platform to drive strong revenue growth and solid bottom line performance in fiscal 2022 and over the longer term and continue to enhance shareholder value. Regarding our current fiscal first quarter, our smallest in terms of revenue, we anticipate modest revenue growth reflecting the comparison to last year's COVID-driven summer months where most of the country was in near complete lockdown and consumers were moving their purchases online as well as reduced operating leverage reflecting the increased labor and transportation costs and higher digital marketing rates compared with the prior year period when the impact of the pandemic reduced marketing costs to historic lows. We anticipate significantly improved performance in our fiscal second quarter and in the second half of our fiscal year, which drives our strong growth guidance for the year.

Thanks, Bill. Fiscal 2021 was a record year of top and bottom line results, which illustrate the strength of the unique business platform that we've been building over the past several years. I'm so proud of our team's efforts to transform and once again reinvent our company from a collection of specialty brands to become a leading e-commerce platform that inspires our customers to express, connect and celebrate. Looking ahead, we are extremely well positioned to deepen the relationships we have with our customers by engaging with them across a broad range of communication channels as we work to build a true community and offer our customers the most robust online gifting assortment. Our success can be seen by our strong growth rates in our customer file and a sharp rise in our new customer base. As a result of our strategic initiatives, we've seen tremendous growth driven both organically and through strategic acquisitions. We have an exciting runway ahead of us, which will enable our company to drive solid, sustainable, double-digit revenue growth and strong cash flows in fiscal 2022 and the years beyond. We are confident that we will drive long-term shareholder value as we continue to leverage the strength of the unique business platform that we've built. Now, I'd like to turn the call back to the operator, so we can take your questions. Operator, please repeat the Q&A instructions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski from Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Hi. Yes. Good morning and thank you for taking the question. So, a certainly impressive year as you said. Kind of looking forward to fiscal 2022, the revenue growth implies certainly continued solid trends. Now, Chris you touched on a little bit on the expanded product offerings that you expect as well as continued growth from your active customer base. Can you just further give us some details as to the expanded product offerings that you're looking to do? And how will that drive engagement and growth?

Sure, Anthony, and thank you for the comments. There's a couple of things here as we look at expanding the product catalog. We see that as we expand our product offerings and our product catalog, our customers are seeing more and more options and more solutions for their gifting and connective needs that helps increase their frequency and their retention rates with us, especially when they join our Passport program, or even if they don't, and they're more of a cross-category purchaser. So while simultaneously we're expanding the product catalog, we're also working on more cross-merchandising capabilities like the shop-in-shop example that I gave, or the bundled gifts that I gave in the formal remarks, where we combine wine from Harry & David with Shari's Berries with flowers. So those two efforts simultaneously are what will really drive the growth going forward. And as we look at expanding our products catalog, we really look to do it three ways: Organic development from our existing brands and our existing capabilities; I think Harry & David Gourmet line was a good example of that. The bundled gifts that we're now doing, the combined gifts that we're now doing are good examples of that. We'll look to also do it through acquisition as we mentioned. We've expanded our catalog significantly by bringing on all the Shari's Berries products, as well as the thousands of products that we've brought on in the personalized gifting category with our acquisition of Personalization Mall. And then through more of a marketplace strategy, where we have hundreds and growing makers and sellers on our platform bringing their product into our catalog, so we could put those products in front of our customers. Again, our philosophy is to help our customers express themselves and connect and to celebrate. And that's – to do that, we have to have more and more product solutions and not only products that we own but more third-party products as well.

Got it. Okay. That's very helpful, Chris. Thank you very much for that. And then in terms of the Q1 guidance, certainly it's – comparison, but then last year, if I recall, I think the wholesale piece of the business was still hurt, because of the initial uncertainty, because of – are you seeing the wholesale piece of your business coming back? Just wanted to get some more color on that?

Yeah. Sure. I think really as we looked at again, and we're very pleased with the guidance that we're providing next year for double-digit growth next year on top of what was a phenomenal year this year, as you pointed out. So looking at that growth of 10% to 12%. As we get into Q1, it's clearly our most difficult comparison quarter, but Bill, why don’t you speak specifically to what we’re seeing in the wholesale side of things. Some of that impacts Q1, but also moves into Q2.

Most of that is in Q2. The wholesale baskets we deliver to the big-box retailers primarily occur in Q2, and there is sometimes some crossover between September and October that may affect timing. This year, we expect to see a much stronger wholesale business as a recovery from last year. We have encountered some challenges with margins due to ocean freight issues, which you may have read about regarding product importation from Asia. However, we anticipate having a very robust wholesale year.

Got it. That's great to hear. And then just Bill as far as the guidance that you put out for fiscal 2022 so what is your expectation for the tax rate and depreciation expenses?

We experienced a benefit in fiscal 2020 that resulted in an effective tax rate of just over 20% this year. This was due to some discrete items related to the Jobs Act and Tax Cuts, along with other unique items that won't recur in fiscal 2022. Therefore, we anticipate our effective tax rate will rise to around 23% to 24% in fiscal 2022. Additionally, depreciation is expected to increase as our capital expenditures are on the rise. To support the significant growth we have been witnessing, we continue to invest in our infrastructure. This includes the addition of PMall to our operations and maintaining strong growth expectations for the coming years. Consequently, our capital expenditures were $55 million for fiscal 2021, and we expect that to increase in fiscal 2022. Depreciation is projected to rise by about $10 million in fiscal 2022.

Got it. Okay. That’s very helpful. Well, thanks a lot and best of luck.

Thanks, Anthony.

The next question comes from Michael Kupinski from NOBLE Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yes. First of all, congratulations on a solid quarter and a great year. It was indeed a very good quarter. Regarding Consumer Floral, there was a significant increase in operating expenses. I was curious about the marketing expenses you mentioned. When looking at the expenses, they accounted for around 27% of segment revenues, which is still below the percentage seen in the fourth quarter of 2019. Could you provide some insight into the reasons for the increase in expenses? Specifically, how much of it was due to labor and how much was related to increased marketing? Any additional details you can share would be appreciated.

Yes, Michael. The significant rise in Consumer Floral was mainly attributed to marketing efforts. As Chris pointed out earlier, during Q4 last year and into Q1 this year, we experienced marketing rates fall to unprecedented lows due to many companies shutting down and exiting the advertising markets. This worked to our advantage. We recorded a $35 million increase in EBITDA in the fourth quarter from a year ago, which contributed to the challenging comparison we faced this year. A large part of this was driven not only by the robust top-line growth we achieved last year but also because marketing rates were about 50% of their historical levels.

And that is because we saw the opportunity and leaned into it. So we took advantage of those rates, but those rates changed pretty quickly Bill.

They did. So Q2 of this year, of fiscal 2021 we saw them bounce back. So we had about a six-month window where marketing rates were significantly low Q4 of fiscal 2020 and Q1 of fiscal 2022. And then by Q2 as we get into our big quarter those advertising rates bounce right back up.

And are you seeing any intense competition? Has the competition increased, or is that just purely just related to rates? I'm just trying to get a sense of the competitive landscape.

It's really just related to rates. We haven't seen anything in the competitive nature whether in the floral category, gourmet food category or the personalization. Nothing different. Nothing special. So it still gives us opportunity to continue what we're doing focusing on our brands, leaning in where we see opportunities expanding market share in all the categories and continuing to grow our platform.

And the increase in marketing expenses you mentioned that as the company grows and scales, one of the benefits would be that marketing expenses would not materially increase and that you would see an expansion of margins from that. I was just wondering if you still believe that this scale would actually provide that type of leverage on the marketing spend.

Yes, Michael. I think every time we spoke about that that was over the long-term horizon that eventually more and more of the revenues and our growth will come from existing customers as frequency continues to increase. And as a result there will be leverage in the marketing side. Right now we're facing tough comps in again the quarter we just reported and in Q1. So, that's more of a longer-term vision that we'll get leverage on the marketing expense side.

And then as you look at the metrics that we reviewed supporting that long-term vision there and you look at the customer file that we've built the growth in the Passport program the growth in customers buying from more than one category, those all come with significantly increased retention rates. So, the value of that customer file is continuing to grow which will help our marketing spend going forward.

And just a clarification on the guidance. I think you mentioned that the guidance in fiscal 2022 is also based in part from strategic acquisitions like Shari's Berries. Can you give me some color on the prospect of acquisitions and what areas seem interesting at this point?

No, the guidance that we gave is purely organic. It does not contemplate any additional acquisitions. So, we usually don't do that. So, the 10% to 12% is purely organic. We do point out the great acquisitions that we've done over the past 18-plus months of Shari's Berries and Personalization Mall. We stay active in the M&A market looking to see what's appropriate out there that can either add to our platform like Personalization Mall did or significantly leverage our platform like Shari's Berries did. So, as you as we continue to look for opportunities with products or capabilities, we're just looking for things that add to the platform, add value to the consumer, add value to our Passport program, bring more products into our catalog expand it. As I mentioned to Anthony, the more we grow that product catalog the more opportunity our customers have to buy with us. So, I think that's what you'll see us continue to look from an M&A perspective.

Got you. Congratulations again.

Great. Thanks Mike.

The next question comes from Dan Kurnos from The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Good morning. It's encouraging to see that you're keeping the guidance consistent. I don't anticipate any surprises on either front. Chris or Bill, as we move forward, I know you just provided the September quarter results, but we're interested in how the holiday quarter is looking, specifically regarding inventory and product availability. How are you planning ahead to address shipping costs? We've noted that driver costs are decreasing, and you're utilizing services like Uber and DoorDash to help manage shipping expenses. Additionally, there is an increase in postage costs on the horizon. Could you discuss your strategies for the holiday season, including your inventory availability in relation to consumer demand?

Sure. To start off, thank you, Dan. Looking ahead, we are quite proud of the double-digit guidance we've provided for next year, especially considering the outstanding year we've just had. Bill mentioned some of the challenges we face, and while we will discuss the headwinds in detail, I want to express my pride in our team. They have consistently demonstrated their ability to navigate the cost challenges we encounter from time to time, whether it's related to labor, shipping, or product costs. Bill, would you like to share more details on what we are observing and how we are addressing these issues?

Yes. First off, Dan, we are optimistic about the holiday quarter. However, from a cost perspective, as mentioned in our formal remarks and as Chris pointed out, we are facing challenges. Labor availability and rates continue to be an issue. We have also discussed that the increase in capital expenditures is focused on automation in manufacturing, distribution, and our customer service platform to reduce the need for seasonal helpers. Advertising will pose a challenge in Q4 and Q1, but this will correct itself in Q2, since last year heavy investments in political campaigns led to higher advertising rates, which normalized in October. Therefore, we won't face the same negative comparison as we enter Q4. Regarding shipping, we’ve seen many reports about ocean freight, and trucking rates are increasing, giving third-party carriers more leverage to raise costs. We are working with our partners to navigate these cost challenges. We will implement some strategic price increases to transfer some of these costs to consumers. Overall, I believe we have successfully managed these headwinds in the past and expect to do so again in fiscal 2022.

Yes, the guidance clearly indicates expectations for a strong holiday quarter, particularly in light of modest growth in fiscal Q1. That provides useful insight. Just to clarify, considering your expectations for PMall, which is grouped with Harry & David, both of which are showing solid growth despite some challenging comparisons in the near term; do you anticipate potentially reaching a low point next year in adjusted EBITDA due to cost headwinds, even without a precise prediction based on the mix shift you foresee moving forward?

Well, I mean our EBITDA guidance does give growth of 5% to 8%. So we're expecting growth in both top line double-digit growth...

I meant from a margin perspective Bill, sorry, not from a total dollars.

Yes. Due to the headwinds, gross margins will face more challenges than before, as most of these headwinds impact gross margin.

Okay. I'll follow up with you after. Chris, I appreciate all the help with the KPIs. Can you discuss what you're observing regarding the pre-COVID cohorts compared to the cohorts acquired during the pandemic and those obtained after the pandemic in terms of repeat behavior or any insights you can share?

Great, Dan. Yes, we're really pleased with the customer metrics I've reported. The growth in Passport to 1.3 million members is evident, as is the average revenue per member. New memberships, new customer accounts, and customers purchasing from multiple brands or categories are all continuing to grow significantly. We had impressive growth in all these areas last year, reaching 1.3 million members. Growth rates remain strong, and the customer behavior metrics from post-pandemic to pre-pandemic are holding steady, showing at least equal if not slightly better performance than pre-COVID days. This reflects a new type of consumer. I mentioned that a significant number of new customers are millennials, who now represent 24% of our 12-month active users. These newer customers tend to be more engaged and are more likely to join Passport and utilize the platform extensively. All of this gives us great confidence moving forward.

Got it. Thanks for all the color, Chris. We'll wait for the new vegan eco-friendly options coming out to address that customer base.

The next question comes from Doug Lane from Lane Research. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. Good morning, everybody. It seems to me that last year, during the holiday season, the big concern was really not on demand but on capacity. So, can you sort of run us through what you've done to try to alleviate the capacity constraints in your peak season there?

Doug, there's been a number of things. Bill has been a little bit closer to it from the operations side. So Bill, why don’t you hit on those?

First off, our balance sheet shows that our year-end inventory is $55 million higher than it was last year. We have a solid balance sheet, which we're leveraging to improve our position. Part of that inventory increase was due to the acquisition of Personalization Mall, but we intentionally decided to build more inventory as we entered the fiscal year. It's true that we faced challenges with inventory availability during the holiday season last year, and we are actively addressing that, along with the overall supply chain issues that have been in the news. We aimed to get ahead of those challenges, and we've utilized our balance sheet to do so. We are still collaborating with our third-party carriers, but delivery capacity remains an ongoing challenge. They are restricting certain customers' volumes due to the persistently high e-commerce demand. We are working with all our carriers to manage this situation, and we are confident in our ability to navigate through it.

Great. That's helpful. And then can we just step back and take a look at where we are with Personalization Mall a year into it? Where would you rank the level of integration with your business? And what do you see going forward that you can add to the continued growth? Because it obviously tremendously exceeded your original expectations, so the question I guess is where do we go from here?

I think we're really pleased with the acquisition of PMall and how it has performed since joining our platform. Our integration approach has been more cautious than usual due to the pandemic and other priorities we had to manage. In my formal remarks, I mentioned that we're just beginning to explore the potential. Currently, we're focused on launching personalized products across all our sites this fall, which aligns with our marketplace initiatives to create more multi-branded collections. We aim to incorporate a wider range of our product catalogs, including Personalization Mall, into various collections like birthday and sympathy, along with enhanced search capabilities on our site. This will boost cross-brand merchandising, supporting a customer segment that shops across multiple categories, representing 13% of our active customer base and 29% of our revenue. These customers also demonstrate significantly higher retention rates. We're just starting to tap into the potential of PMall, and we see great opportunities as we continue integrating. Additionally, for corporate gifting, which was a smaller area for PMall, we've noticed good growth this year, and as we integrate that capability with our corporate sales teams across our brands, we expect significant opportunities.

Thank you. That's helpful. And just lastly, your balance sheet now is back to being underleveraged. And the acquisition market is difficult to predict, but I imagine prices remain high there. Can we look for an accelerated stock buyback here in the meantime until the right acquisition comes along?

I believe one of the key highlights from the last quarter is that we announced a new authorization and an increase in authorization from our Board to $40 million for stock buybacks, which we have been actively using. At these rates, we consider this a strong investment and a great way to return value to our shareholders. However, our primary focus for utilizing our cash is to grow our business. We have shown a solid ability to achieve this through strategic acquisitions and our internal investments.

Hey Doug, as mentioned in the press release regarding the cash flows, we allocated $22 million for stock buybacks, marking an increase in our buyback strategy. Over the past year, we repurchased around 820,000 shares. In addition, during April, we received authorization to raise the buyback limit to $40 million.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks Doug.

The next question comes from Linda Bolton-Weiser from D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi, thank you. So congratulations on the great performance. So can you just talk about – you mentioned some metrics on the cross-brand bundles that you're doing for your products. How are the margins on a cross-brand bundle? I would think it's a little more expensive to put the bundle together, et cetera. But how are the margins on those products?

Right. So we didn't really give any metrics on those Linda but we talked about the early success that we're seeing and really the leverage of the platform by putting those bundles together. If we do so, we actually can increase the gross margin on those. So again, those are taking – especially, if you look at taking Shari's Berries roses from 1-800-FLOWERS combining that with Harry & David wine, when you combine that, you can get more pricing power. So we're able to increase the gross margin. So we're very happy with what we're doing there. And as we continue to develop our distribution capabilities you'll see more and more of those bundled products which customers are just loving. And that's why we're really getting behind those and we think that will really help drive more of that cross-category purchasing.

That's great. Thank you. And then can you talk about – you kind of said modest revenue growth in the first quarter. I would assume that means below the 10% to 12% for the year. Is that correct?

Yes.

And then do you expect EBITDA to be positive or negative in the first quarter?

Yes. So we're not giving specific guidance on a quarter-by-quarter basis. What we wanted to do is go back to our prior practice of giving annual guidance, but give you some kind of pace for Q1. Because it is a tough comp year-over-year because of the reasons Chris outlined, not only do we have the cost inputs – the tough marketing cost inputs you year-over-year, again, the cost headwinds that we're seeing. And again, remember the environment of a year ago. Everybody was in kind of lockdown mode in their homes during the summer months and not seeing anybody and so they were gifting. This year people are out and about which is great for the overall economy but obviously, it makes it a tough comp for us.

Right. But again, keep in mind, this is in context of the full year guidance that we gave of 10% to 12%. So we're very confident that we're looking at this as really being a fantastic year on top of what was a tremendous year this past year.

Great. And then you referred again to the waiving of the BloomNet fees to florists in the prior year. Can you remind us how long – how many quarters did you waive those fees?

That was just in the fourth quarter of a year ago.

Yes one time.

Okay. And then finally I guess you said 13% of all customers are multi-brand customers. What would that percentage be for Passport members? I would think it would be quite a bit higher.

No. Passport customers – I forget the percentage of active customers, but if I compare the 29% of revenue from multi-category purchases last year, Passport customers would have accounted for about 19% to 20% of revenue. Let's keep in mind that Passport customer could also be a single-brand customer. And as you could see they have – the Passport customers still have a lower average order value than those multi-category customers.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Linda.

The next question comes from Alex Fuhrman from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good to talk to you. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the holiday season coming up. It strikes me that over the past year as everything had been in flux, you guys have done a really good job of responding to demand as it started to increase. Are you still going to be in the position to do that, if demand is a lot higher than your forecast for any given week of the holidays just given all of the pressure points here with labor and freight? What is your strategy, if there are days and weeks during the holiday season where demand really accelerates? What can you do to really lean into that?

Thank you, Alex. So there's a number of things. That's really how we go into planning in the holidays. Okay. Here's what we could expect and how do we react when the demand opportunity there is greater than we originally planned. So there's a lot of flexibility built into our systems. With that said, as Bill has pointed out, we do run into different challenges with our third-party carriers, et cetera. But that's all about working with them on a day-in, day-out basis, forecasting on a daily basis, adjusting that on a twice-a-week basis as we go through the holiday. And we see where the demand opportunities are. Keep in mind, last year we were really tight on inventory, because sales were a little bit ahead of what we expected. We expect that to be in a better position this holiday. So, there are several areas that we are always identifying. Okay, as we look at the plan, what are the risks, but what are the opportunities. And when can we react to that?

Sure. My only other point is to consider our history. We have been operating for 18 months during the pandemic, which has presented numerous challenges. However, we have performed exceptionally well, remaining agile. We have created a safe work environment for our employees and have been able to execute effectively. The pandemic is still present, and we will continue to face challenges ahead, but we are managing that quite well.

That's really helpful. Thank you.

The next question comes from Tim Vierengel from Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I was hoping you could provide more insight into your various automation initiatives. It's been 2.5 years since you started discussing these efforts, focusing on two main goals: reducing labor hours and enhancing fulfillment capabilities. Could you update us on your current progress in this process compared to your goals? Additionally, which aspect are you prioritizing more? Is your biggest opportunity in automation focused on reducing labor hours, or is it more about improving fulfillment capabilities? Thank you.

Yeah. I'll ask Bill to comment more on some of the kind of operational automation that you're referring to Tim. But keep in mind, when we talk about automation, we're also looking at how do we automate customer interactions as well, so utilizing conversational commerce and capabilities to really help in our customer contact our customer care platform. That not only helps reduce labor, but what we find is it increases the customer experience, as they get a good consistent response from whether it be an AI-driven, in IVR types of products whether it be AI-driven chat capabilities that we have, bots that we utilize in certain platforms like Apple Business Chat et cetera. So we're always looking to automate on that side as well. But Bill, why don't you give a little bit more update on the operational automation?

We have been discussing this for several years, and it is an ongoing effort that spans multiple years. Our largest distribution center in Southern Ohio is fully automated as we approach the holiday season, and we are also opening a new distribution center in Atlanta this year, which still needs to be automated. This will continue to be a multi-year project, which is reflected in the increase in our capital expenditures. The advantage of acquiring Personalization Mall is that they were already fully automated, and we are working to replicate some of their processes in our distribution centers. We are also exploring manufacturing improvements, like the automated icing machine at Cheryl's that we introduced a few years ago, which significantly increased production with fewer employees. We are focusing on identifying bottlenecks in manufacturing and distribution, particularly because we need to manage high volumes during peak holiday periods. This remains a continuous project for us.

All right guys. Thank you so much. That's all I had.

Thanks Tim.

There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Chris McCann, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Well thank you for joining us and thank you for your compliments. We're very proud of the company and the team what they've done throughout this challenging environment to really make it a record year for our company and really transforming our company as we've said. We're proud that we've doubled the business over the last three years, transformed the company into really this e-commerce platform. We thank you for joining us this morning. If you have any additional questions or any follow-ups, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you.

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