Floor & Decor Holdings, Inc. Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

Hello, and welcome to the Floor & Decor Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2021 Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It’s now my pleasure to turn the call over to Wayne Hood, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on our earnings conference call today are Tom Taylor, Chief Executive Officer; Lisa Laube, President; and Trevor Lang, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone of the company’s safe harbor language. Comments made during this conference call and webcast contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Any statement that refers to expectations, projections, or other characterizations of future events, including financial projections or future market conditions is a forward-looking statement. The company’s actual future results could differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements for any reason, including those listed in its SEC filings. Floor & Decor assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Please also note that past performance or market information is not a guarantee of future results. During this conference call, the company will discuss non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. We believe non-GAAP disclosures enable investors to better understand our core operating performance on a comparable basis between periods. A reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the earnings press release which is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.flooranddecor.com. A recorded replay of this call, together with related materials, will be available on our Investor Relations website. Let me now turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you, Wayne, and thanks to everyone for joining us on our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter earnings conference call. Today’s call will discuss some of the highlights of the strong fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and 2021 full year earnings results. Trevor will review our financial performance in more detail and discuss how we are thinking about fiscal 2022. We will then open the call for your questions. Let me start by saying that we are proud to have achieved several milestones in fiscal 2021 and most importantly, continue to grow our market share in a challenging environment. Despite the continued challenges presented by COVID-19, widespread disruption in the global supply chain and related cost headwinds, we delivered record fiscal 2021 sales and earnings results. On a 13-week to 13-week basis, our fiscal 2021 adjusted fourth quarter earnings increased 7.3% to $0.44 from $0.41 last year. On a 2-year compound annual growth rate basis, our adjusted earnings per share increased 30.1% from 2019. We are happy that our strong results enabled record incentive payouts through our bonus and achieve programs in 2021. Additionally, we raised our minimum starting wage to $15 per hour effective January 1, 2022, placing us in the first quintile of retailers. Over the past 6 months, we have increased our average store wage by 5% to over $17 per hour from approximately $16 per hour in July 2021. We believe this will help improve retention and associate turnover. Our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter total sales increased 26.4% to $914.3 million from last year, exceeding expectations. Adjusting to remove the extra week last year, our fourth quarter 13-week to 13-week total sales increased 34.1%. Our full year fiscal 2021 total sales increased 41.5% to a record $3.4 billion, which is more than double our fiscal 2018 sales, despite having to moderate our new store openings in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On a 52-week to 52-week basis, our full year 2021 total sales increased 44%. Our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter comparable store sales increased 14% on top of a strong 21.6% growth last year. Comparable store sales increased 17.2% on a 2-year compound annual growth rate basis from 2019, the highest 2-year quarterly growth rate in fiscal 2021. Our full year 2021 comparable store sales increased 27.6% and 15.4% on a 2-year compound annual basis, culminating in 13 years of growth in our comparable store sales. Let me turn my comments to our new store openings. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, we opened 7 new warehouse format stores compared with 5 new stores during the same period last year. We opened 4 stores in October and 3 stores in November. For the 2021 fiscal year, we opened 27 new warehouse format stores, representing 20.3% growth from fiscal 2020. We ended 2021 operating 160 warehouse format stores and 2 design studios in 33 states, further extending our store footprint and brand awareness. We plan to open 32 new warehouse format stores in fiscal 2022 and expect about 56% of the store openings to be in existing markets and 44% in new markets. Among the 32 new warehouse store openings, we expect 7 will be owned. We are taking advantage of our strong balance sheet and cash flow by intentionally shifting some of our new store development to owned locations from leased projects. We have seen a good return on this additional investment. The shift increases our control of new store projects, significantly increases our store level EBITDA by lowering rent and occupancy expense, and improves our store opening cadence. We intend to open 6 new warehouse stores in the first quarter of fiscal 2022, including a new warehouse store in Garden City, New York expected in March. We are excited about continuing to build our store footprint in the Northeast. And this opening will bring us to 4 warehouse stores that we operate on Long Island, New York. We expect a balanced opening cadence of about 50% of our new warehouse stores opening in the first half and second half of fiscal 2022. We intend to open 4 design studios, including 3 in the first quarter of fiscal 2022; 1 in Miami, Florida; 1 in Vienna, Virginia at Tysons Corner; and 1 in Houston, Texas. The design studios are small-format stores strategically located in densely populated, higher-income metropolitan markets that we would not be able to operate a large warehouse store economically. As we look beyond 2022, we are excited to announce that we have expanded our new store opportunity in the United States. We now believe we have a path to operating at least 500 warehouse format stores over the next 8 to 10 years compared with our prior market expectations of operating at least 400 warehouse format stores. The performance of our new stores opened over the past 3 years, coupled with the strong performance from our more seasoned stores and our market refresh information reinforce our conviction in our new store opportunity. We intend to get into more details at our upcoming Analyst Day on March 16, the webcast details of which will be available on our Investor Relations page. Let me now discuss in more detail our comparable store sales. Monthly, our comparable store sales increased 16.2% in October, 10.9% in November and 14.8% in December, culminating in a 14% growth in the fourth quarter of 2021. Thanksgiving week, a lower volume week for us, moved into November from December last year, which is the main difference in November and December comparable store sales. We are pleased with our fourth quarter sales exit rate and the start to the first quarter of fiscal 2022, where our January comparable store sales increased 11.5% and are up to 23.9% month-to-date in February. Our fourth quarter comparable store sales growth was driven by a 14.8% increase in average ticket, which is primarily being driven by higher average retail per square foot. We also saw a slight increase in square foot comp per ticket. The increase in average ticket is mainly due to continued strong sales in laminate and vinyl, ongoing customer preferences towards our better and best price points across all departments and, to a lesser extent, retail price increases to mitigate cost increases. Additionally, our average ticket benefited from an increase in the sales contribution from our designer-led initiatives, a higher sales penetration in e-commerce, and a higher Pro sales penetration rate, all of which have an average ticket above the company average. While fourth quarter transactions declined 0.7% from the same period last year, they increased 10% on a compounded annual basis from 2019, which is slightly above the 9.8% growth in the third quarter of 2021. The 2-year compound annual growth rate in transactions of 10% and modest year-over-year growth in our square footage sold per comp store transaction reinforces our belief that we continue to gain market share. At this juncture, we are pleased that the modest price increases that we have taken to cover the rising costs are having an inelastic impact on demand. Let me now turn my comments to how we are navigating the constraints in the global supply chain. Our supply chain teams continue to work aggressively to secure international ocean carrier capacity to meet our strong demand. To do so, we have added significantly more capacity to our ocean and North American logistics, particularly from Asia, Europe, and Brazil. Consequently, our in-stocks continue to trend in the right direction, supporting our strong sales growth. We believe this strategy, combined with our broad assortments, enables us to offer our homeowners and Pros alternative products where some out of stocks have occurred elsewhere. However, we face intermediate-term cost headwinds in pursuing this strategy, particularly from elevated ocean container costs as well as demurrage and detention costs, particularly in the Los Angeles port. In the fourth quarter of 2021, our ocean freight costs, which represent our highest supply chain cost, more than doubled from 2020. Given the ocean capacity constraints that are driving higher container rates and demurrage and detention costs, we are planning on higher ocean freight costs throughout 2022. As a reminder, we didn’t see material increases in supply chain costs until the final 4 months of fiscal 2021. As we study the market and our competition, we believe our holistic value proposition is the best it has ever been. Simply said, we don’t believe anyone offers the breadth of in-stock product, visual inspiration, compelling assortment or services we offer and certainly not at our prices. Because of this, we will continue to judiciously raise retail prices throughout 2022 in this heightened inflationary environment. And we plan to grow our gross margin rate throughout 2022 relative to the 38.8% we achieved in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 with the goal of exiting the fourth quarter of 2022, with the gross margin rate approaching approximately 41%. While none of us knows the future, it seems reasonable that the global and U.S. supply chain issues will abate at some point in the future. And if this occurs in late 2022 or early 2023, we see a path for gross margin rate to continue to grow as we move into 2023 and 2024. Our third strategic pillar of growth is expanding our connected customer experience. On the 13-week to 13-week basis, our fourth quarter e-commerce sales increased 45.1% from last year and 61.7% when measured on a 2-year compound annual growth rate basis from fiscal 2019. As a result, our fourth quarter e-commerce sales penetration rate increased 190 basis points to 16.4% from 14.5% last year. For the year, our e-commerce sales increased 30.2% year-over-year and on a 52-week to 52-week basis accounted for 16.1% of our sales compared with 17.4% in 2020 and 9.4% in 2019. These results exceeded our expectations and validated that we are making the correct investments in our connected customer capabilities. We continue to enhance our web experience focusing on content and conversions. That said, our stores remain integral to our connected customer strategy. For example, about 79% of web sales and 88% of web orders were picked up in the stores in the fourth quarter. Our fourth pillar of growth rests on the investments we are making in our Pro and commercial customers to grow our market share. We are pleased that our strategies to grow our Pro wallet share, particularly among our top Pros are working. For the full year, our Pro sales increased 44.1% from last year, exceeding $1 billion, a milestone in the company’s history. Our Pro sales continue to grow at a faster pace than our homeowner sales. We are pleased that our top Pros are shopping more often and spending more with us to build lifetime value. The average spend of our top 10% of Pros was 24% higher compared to the top 10% Pros in 2020, validating the strength of our growing brand equity. Indeed, our brand tracker data shows that our brand equity with Pros improved in 2021 from 2020. We see that Pros increasingly shop with us as their spend increases due to our large in-stock selection of high-quality, low-cost, trend-right flooring products, website and Pro Premier app, which increasingly resonates with Pros. Importantly, we believe our in-stock job lock quantities are a clear competitive advantage during the current disruptions in the global supply chain. We are pleased that enrollment in our Pro Premier Rewards program, or PPR, increased 56% in 2021 from 2020. PPR sign-ups are positively correlated with store performance. In 2021, PPR Pros spent 3x as much as non-PPR Pros and shop with us 2.6x as frequently. Points redeemed, a measure of the program’s value, increased 63% in 2021. Turning to sales growth from our commercial regional account managers or RAMs and Spartan Surfaces. We are happy that the 2021 sales from RAMs increased 61% from 2020. Let me turn my comments to Spartan Surfaces. We are focused on successfully integrating critical functional areas and understanding Spartan’s needs to prepare the company for accelerating growth in 2022 and beyond. We are pleased to say that the integration has been going exceptionally well, contributing to management’s meeting 100% of their earn-out performance metrics and related payouts associated with 2021. As we look to 2022, Spartan is expected to begin to leverage opportunities with our supply chain management, Floor & Decor products and organic and inorganic sales reps and additions. Over time, we expect commercial sales to become a material part of our growth as we leverage our core strengths in merchandising, direct sourcing, and Spartan’s commercial sales reps. Let me now discuss our progress with our design services, the fifth pillar of our growth. As we have discussed in the past, we are focused on building a consistent, high-touch, best-in-class, and seamless designer service experience for our homeowners and Pro customers in our stores. To that end, we are enhancing key productivity metrics, adding new technology to improve the customer experience, and refining our design organizational reporting structure. We believe the new organizational structure enhances our ability to grow this business and attract and retain high-caliber designers by providing them with clear career path opportunities. Collectively, we are pleased that our focus on design services led to a 78% increase in design appointments in 2021. Notably, our 2021 annual design sales penetration rate increased 440 basis points. As a reminder, the gross margin and average ticket is higher than the company average when a designer is involved. We are excited to build on these investments in 2022 and grow the awareness and familiarity with our design services. We are also pleased with our Dallas Design Studio, where the pro forma metrics are slightly ahead of expectations. We look forward to walking through our Miami Design Studio and Doral Warehouse store with analysts attending our March 16 Analyst Meeting in Miami, Florida. Before turning the call over to Trevor, I want to thank all of our Floor & Decor associates for their collective hard work every day in our stores, distribution centers and store support center to serve our customers. I want to particularly thank our merchandising and supply chain teams that continue to work tirelessly to ensure we have inventory sourcing flexibilities to meet the strong demand despite ongoing disruptions in the global supply chain. Collectively, we have yet again proved to be a company that is agile, resilient, and resourceful. I’ll now turn the call over to Trevor to discuss our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings results in more detail.

Thank you. As Tom mentioned, we are proud to have achieved several milestones in fiscal 2021, despite the continuing challenges presented by COVID-19, widespread disruptions in the global supply chain and related cost headwinds. Additionally, like many companies, we have been managing our business through ongoing tight labor market. Still, we have proven to be a company that manages through these disruptions by being agile and resourceful at meeting our customers’ high demand in this environment as evidenced by our strong sales momentum that has continued into fiscal 2022. To meet the increased demand and continue to grow our market share, we are intensely focused on improving our stores in-stock merchandise assortments. While our sales continue to reflect strong demand, some challenges remain in the supply chain costs, particularly in demurrage and detention costs that arise primarily from port congestion. These costs remain somewhat unpredictable, particularly at the Los Angeles port and reduced our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter earnings by about $0.05 per share compared with the expectations we shared with you on our last call. Said another way, excluding these unexpected costs that were over and above our forecast, our fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share would have been an estimated $0.49 versus the reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.44. For these reasons, we have provided a wider range of fiscal 2022 earnings guidance to account for this near-term unpredictability and higher overall supply chain costs. We expect our earnings guidance range to narrow as we move throughout fiscal 2022. Let me now turn my comments to some of the changes among the significant line items in our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows, and then I will further discuss our thinking about fiscal 2022. As a reminder, our fiscal 2020 year, which ended December 31, 2020, was a 53-week period. The extra week added an estimated $0.06 to our diluted earnings per share in fiscal 2020. More details pertaining to the impact of this extra week in fiscal 2020 can be found in today’s press release. Turning to gross margin. Our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter gross margin rate contracted to 38.8% from 42.5% in fiscal 2020, which was below our expected range of 39% to 40%. The larger-than-expected decline was due to higher-than-expected demurrage and detention costs that accelerated at the end of the fourth quarter reducing our gross margin rate by about 70 basis points compared to the internal expectations of our gross margin. The timing of these expenses prevented us from raising retails fast enough to offset these charges. Demurrage fees are assessed on containers that sit inside the ports and transit to our facilities and detention fees are assessed when containers are not returned to the port timely, which in many cases are outside of our control due to extreme port congestion, primarily in Los Angeles. We are managing these costs and planning fiscal 2022 price increases based on the current environment. Turning to our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter expenses. Our fourth quarter selling, and store operating expenses increased 23.4% to $235.7 million from $191.1 million last year. As a percentage of sales, we leveraged these expenses by approximately 60 basis points, primarily from our strong sales growth. Additionally, as a reminder, we paid $2.5 million in spot bonuses to our store associates and reimbursed store support center associates for salary reductions they took during COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that led to some modest year-over-year incentive compensation leverage in 2021. On a 13-week to 13-week basis, our selling and store operating expenses increased 28.4% and leveraged approximately 110 basis points when removing the additional week of sales in 2020. Our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter GAAP net income decreased 12.7% to $49.9 million and $57.1 million in the same period last year. Our GAAP diluted earnings per share decreased 14.8% to $0.46 from $0.54 in the same period last year. Our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter non-GAAP adjusted net income decreased 6.1% to $47.1 million from $50.2 million in the same period last year. Our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter non-GAAP adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.44, down 6.4% from the $0.47 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. Excluding the additional week of sales and estimated profit due to the 53rd week in the fourth quarter of 2020, our adjusted EPS grew 7.3% and on a 2-year CAGR basis, our fourth quarter 2021 adjusted EPS grew 30.1%. A complete reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP earnings can be found in today’s earnings press release. Moving on to our balance sheet and cash flow. At the end of December 30, 2021, our net inventory increased 54% from the same period last year to approximately $1 billion. The increase in inventory was in line with our expectations of $900 million to $1 billion that we provided in our third quarter fiscal 2021 earnings call. As a reminder, these expected increases in inventory was driven primarily by 2 strategic investments: first, investments made to improve our in-stock inventory in key SKUs; and second, bringing in a portion of the Chinese New Year inventory a couple of months early to try to mitigate the international container capacity issues. We made the strategic decision to build up our inventory levels heading into 2022, and we are glad we made these investments given the strong demand environment. Our fiscal 2021 cash flow from operations was $301.3 million, down $104.8 million from the same period last year, primarily due to our inventory investments. Turning to our capital expenditures. For fiscal 2021, our capital expenditures totaled $475.3 million, including capital expenditures accrued at the end of the period. Our fiscal 2021 capital spending was funded by cash flow generated from operations and existing cash on hand. Let me turn my comments to how we’re thinking about the macroeconomic environment and fiscal 2022. From a macroeconomic perspective, we are planning on 2022 to be a good year. The secular demand in housing continues to exceed available supply, which has led to an acceleration in home price appreciation. We believe these factors, combined with record levels of homeowner equity and aging housing stock should further support home remodeling spending. In addition, we serve a higher-income consumer, and they have substantially higher wealth and home equity relative to pre-pandemic levels, and there continues to be innovation in our category. With that said, we are monitoring factors such as today’s Russian invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical events, rising interest in mortgage rates, modest decline in existing home sales, inflationary pressures impacting the consumer and uncertainties related to the pandemic. Let me discuss the details of our ‘22 outlook. Our assumptions are based on opening 32 new warehouse stores, 4 new design studios and a continued favorable macroeconomic backdrop that I just outlined. However, we cannot currently estimate any impacts Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may have on our business. We are planning for higher supply chain and vendor product costs throughout 2022. Additionally, in order to lock in international container capacity to support our growth for the second half of 2022, we are planning on international container costs to continue to grow throughout 2022. As Tom mentioned, it is our intention to pass along these cost increases and grow our gross margin rate throughout 2022 relative to the fourth quarter of 2021 when our gross margin rate was 38.8%. We expect our net sales for fiscal 2022 to be in the range of $4.285 billion to $4.375 billion, an increase of 25% to 27%. We are planning on our comparable store sales growth of 10.5% to 13% driven by our business model, a good macroeconomic backdrop, and raising retail prices throughout 2022 to offset the anticipated higher supply chain and vendor product costs, which is remarkable considering the average comp growth we had in fiscal 2021 as well as the second half of 2020. Moving on to how we’re thinking about gross margins, expenses, and adjusted EBITDA. Gross margin in the first quarter of 2022 is expected to be in the mid-39% range. Our full year fiscal 2022 gross margin is expected to be around 39.5% to slightly above 40%. We are planning on our fourth quarter 2022 gross margin approaching 41% with expected sequential improvement in each quarter from mid-39% in the first quarter. While the complexion of our P&L will change in 2022, we believe these are not structural changes. We are actively taking measures to combat and counter rising costs by implementing price adjustments, prudently contracting our fixed and spot market capacity with ocean carriers and continually shifting our sourcing to regions where we can reduce costs. On the expense side, we, like many other retailers, are facing wage pressure. Our average hourly wage rate is now over $17 an hour, and we are proud to be a retailer with a $15 an hour minimum starting wage. We will continue to invest in our people and retain and attract our best talent, and we are glad to see our fourth quarter 2021 turnover decrease as we make these important investments. As a result, selling and store operating expenses are expected to be slightly above 24% for 2022, but below the 24.7% in fiscal 2021. We believe these are good long-term investments in our people that will continue to yield a return. Preopening expenses are planned to be around 0.8% of sales, leveraging slightly from the 1% in fiscal 2021. We are planning on general and administrative expenses slightly above 5%, leveraging from fiscal 2021. We expect our adjusted EBITDA to grow 19% to 26% in fiscal 2022 to approximately $575 million to $610 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin rate is expected to be 13.4% to 14%. Importantly, we continue to see a path towards our expected medium-term margin rate of mid-teens and longer-term adjusted EBITDA margin in the high teens. Fiscal 2022 diluted earnings per share expected to be in the range of $2.75 to $3 with a midpoint of $2.88. The diluted weighted-average shares outstanding is estimated to be approximately 108,400,000. Moving on to how we’re thinking about capital expenditures. As we look at fiscal 2022, our total capital expenditures are planned to be between approximately $550 million to $590 million and are expected to be funded primarily by cash flow generated from operations and cash on hand. More specifically, we intend to make the following capital expenditures in 2022. We intend to open 32 warehouse format stores, 4 small-format design studios, and start construction on store openings in stores that are going to open in fiscal 2023. Collectively, these investments are expected to require $405 million to $430 million of cash in fiscal 2022. Most of the year-over-year increase reflects an acceleration in store openings to 32 new warehouse stores compared with 27 warehouse stores opened in the last year and the strategic decision to shift more towards owned locations from leased projects for the reasons Tom mentioned earlier. We plan to invest in these existing store remodeling and expansion projects and distribution centers using approximately $100 million to $110 million in cash. Finally, we plan to continue to invest in information technology infrastructure, e-commerce, and other store support center initiatives using approximately $45 million to $50 million of cash. In closing, I would like to say that our entire leadership team is very proud of how we performed in 2021, and we remain encouraged by the momentum that has continued into fiscal 2022. The strength of our business model is more evident now than ever given the complex supply chain and inflationary environment we are operating in, and we believe we are in a unique position to continue to gain market share. Our entire executive team would like to personally thank all of our associates and our vendor partners for the great work they do every day to serve our customers. On March 16, we will be hosting the company’s first analyst conference in Miami, Florida where we look forward to providing an update on the long-term strategy and financial outlook. The event will be webcast for those who can’t join us. You can reach out to our Investor Relations team if you have any questions.

Our first question is coming from Michael Lasser from UBS.

My first question is on price increases. How much price did you take in the fourth quarter? What did you see from others within the industry? And how much price do you expect to take over the next few quarters to recoup the gross margin pressure that you experienced in the fourth quarter?

I’ll start by saying that was more than one question. Yes, it’s a lengthy one with many comments. We implemented modest price increases in the fourth quarter to address supply chain costs, as we previously indicated. Throughout the marketplace, we’ve noticed that many are increasing prices, and I've observed more price movement than ever since I've been here. A recent report from Catalina indicated that hard surface flooring square footage pricing rose over 8% in the fourth quarter, while our price increases were significantly lower. When we raised prices, we did not observe notable changes in our business during the fourth quarter or into the first quarter. We'll be cautious when it comes to future price increases; however, we prefer to keep specifics about these increases confidential, although we will be considerate in our approach. Our commitment to providing value as a low-price leader remains unchanged. Price is just one factor in our decision-making process, and we recognize that our spread has been strong and will continue to be. We offer a wide variety of services and products, including Pro services, design services, and a broad in-stock assortment, which sets us apart from competitors. Feedback from our customers regarding our pricing is generally positive, and they often inform us of competitive prices rather than complaining about our pricing. Therefore, we are confident in our pricing strategy.

Michael, I’m not going to add much to that. Only to say just to put some real numbers to it. If you look at our 2-year transaction comp, it was 10% in Q3 and it was also 10% in Q4. So when you look at it on that basis, to Tom’s comment, to date, we haven’t seen any elasticity so far or inelasticity. And I think when you look at what we’re seeing, as Tom said, in the competitive front, others are taking up prices more than us.

If the industry is increasing prices by an average of 8% and Floor & Decor is not keeping pace, that suggests that price gaps have grown. With the various compelling reasons to shop at Floor & Decor that you just mentioned, how do you plan to address the significant gross margin pressure you are facing due to these widening price gaps? Additionally, is it possible to return to the gross margin levels experienced previously, specifically the high 42% range seen in 2020?

We believe in the long term, we will start that journey this year. Part of it will come from price this year, but it involves more than just pricing. Our business is also experiencing a shift towards better and top-tier products, which carry higher margins and positively impact profitability. When we involve designers in sales, we tend to achieve higher margins from those sales. The progress we've made in the supply house sector regarding installation accessories has been remarkable, allowing us to sell a full range of products, which provides a better blended margin. All these factors will contribute to our performance. As I mentioned earlier, if we consider that supply chain costs may improve towards the end of this year or in 2023, this improvement will also enhance our gross margin over time. We expect to gradually return to the levels we saw this year and eventually regain the margins we experienced in previous years.

Yes. And I think the reason we specifically called out demurrage and detention, most people didn’t even know what those things were until the third or fourth quarter. Those are millions of dollars of cost that we and many others are taking on because things are getting stuck in the port where we don’t have control to get them out or return the containers, that’s going to fix itself at some point. I can’t say when, but I think those are kind of costs that are happening now and in early 2022 that I think most people think as you get to the end of the year and hopefully into next year that those costs go away. As those costs go away, our margin rate goes up nicely.

Our next question is coming from Chuck Grom from Gordon Haskett.

This is John Parke on for Chuck. I guess can you guys isolate the benefit in FY '21 from Spartan? And I guess kind of how is that impacting your sales growth outlook for FY '22?

Still it’s pretty small. I mean we disclosed a little bit of this in our 10-K. I think it’s less than 2% or 3% of our sales today. The acquisition was all about the long term. They are a great company, and they are executing well. They really own that A and B part of the commercial business that might have been a little bit harder for us to get. And the first year was really about, let’s get them integrated, let’s build the relationship, let’s start exposing them to our inventory so they can eventually start selling our inventory, let’s help them grow their sales reps. And so that’s exactly what we’re doing. So it won’t be a material part of our growth in '22. But I think as we look into '23 and '24, we think both that business as well as our RAM business is going to get a lot bigger. And we’ll talk a little bit about this in our March meeting, where we’re going to do a little bit more deeper dive on what we think the next 3 years look like. I mean that’s a big industry. It’s 60% the size of the residential remodel industry. We’re having a lot of success in commercial, both on the RAM side and the Spartan side. And could we someday have 300, 400, 500 reps doing $3 million, $4 million more piece? I mean that’s what the goal is long term.

All of the advantages that we carry in the box that serves the repair remodel customer and the flooring experts. It exists in the commercial space. Our supply chain advantages, the broad in-stocks, the deep inventory levels that we carry, all of those advantages exist in the commercial space. So we think it’s a big opportunity, and it will be meaningful over time.

Next question is coming from Simeon Gutman from Morgan Stanley.

Going back to the topic of pricing and gross margin, you initially guided on managing gross profit dollars this year, similar to last year. Is there a reason you aren't considering a quicker adjustment to pricing? You've mentioned price gaps, and if you're not experiencing elasticity, why can't this adjustment process happen more swiftly than anticipated?

Yes. I mean we are accelerating from what we talked about in the fourth quarter, right? So we are going to be a little bit more aggressive in it. But we want to be thoughtful. As I said in the fourth quarter call, a lot of the independents that we compete with are still having a hard time accessing inventory, and we want to make sure that our prices are sharp so that we continue to take market share at an accelerated pace, and we think we are. So we’re going to be thoughtful across every line in the category and take price as we see fit. So it is taking a step up from what we thought in the fourth quarter.

And then maybe a follow-up. Can you share what product costs maybe rise like the percentage of product costs are rising by and any quantification on how much your distribution costs or freight costs have risen by?

I don’t think we’re sharing the exact number on that, but I would say that the supply chain costs are the vast majority. The vendor product cost increases that we’ve seen so far have been pretty small.

Our next question is coming from Karen Short from Barclays.

Just on the unit growth, wondering what you could point to in terms of how and what you changed within your I guess, analytics on expanding or increasing the number of unit potential? And then I have 1 follow-up.

Karen, this is Trevor. Good question. We’re obviously very excited to take the store count up. A lot has changed since we went public 5 years ago. We’ve got a fantastic real estate team. We’ve got some really good advisers to help them. I’d call out just a handful of things. First of all, the market continues to grow, right? Hard surface flooring continues to grow. It’s growing at a very good clip. Also hard surface flooring is taking a bigger share than soft surface flooring, which is giving us a bigger opportunity. We’re selling more things. We have adjacent categories. We’re selling broader categories within adjacent flooring. We’ve got a bunch of markets now where we’ve got 8, 9, 10. I think in 1 market, we’ve got 11 stores. And some of those stores are close to each other and not only the new stores doing fantastic and our comps in those new stores are doing fantastic, our old stores are doing fantastic. And then finally, I think just because the profitability of the model has gotten so much better over the last 5 years, we can just substantiate stores in smaller markets. And so we’ve got, I don’t know, 10 or 20 stores that are in some of these smaller markets that are performing really well for us. So we do a very detailed look across all 330 million Americans, all the top 130 or 140 MSAs, and we look at all the demographic and psychographic profiles that produce a successful customer in a store and we run that through our algorithms and our advisers, and it actually gives us the list of where those 500 stores are going to be. So just a lot has changed since we have that original 400-store target 5 years ago.

And I’d add too, Trevor. We’re going to talk more about it at the analyst meeting in Florida. Hopefully, folks will attend so we’ll be able to provide even more details on it. One thing I would emphasize is that, as Trevor mentioned, we have markets with 11 stores. I’ve indicated for the last couple of years that we needed to expand in more densely populated markets to better understand how close the stores can be and how many stores we can have within a tight area. We’re starting to gather more insights now as our total exceeds 160 stores.

Our next question is coming from Greg Melich from Evercore ISI.

If you look at your comp guide for the year, could you help us a little bit in terms of how you see that average ticket growth of 14% flowing in, if you will, that anniversaries, you’re chasing price a bit. So it just seems to me that if your average ticket was up 14% or more in the fourth quarter, what would be the split of average ticket and, I guess, transaction growth through the year?

What’s interesting is that our transactions were down 0.7% in the fourth quarter, but our square foot per transaction actually increased by over 2%. There are a couple of factors contributing to this. First, our Pro business is performing significantly better than our homeowners business. While the homeowner segment is doing well, the Pro business is generating much larger sales, with the Pro ticket being nearly 2.5 times bigger than the homeowner ticket. This increases the square footage for each sale. Additionally, consumers are opting for higher quality items, which contributes to raising our average ticket size. Our laminate category also accounts for substantial square footage. To sum it up, even though our transactions might be slightly down, I believe that the strength in the Pro segment, our design initiatives, and consumer preferences will keep our average ticket elevated. In simple terms, I anticipate that the comp increases we will experience for the remainder of the year will primarily be driven by ticket size.

Your next question is coming from Steven Forbes from Guggenheim.

Tom, I want to focus on the Pros, my question, 2 part one. In prior periods, you mentioned percentage of Pro sales from Pro Premier members. So can you comment on that on how that ratio finished for 2021? And then as we think about Pro growth for 2022, any color directionally on the anticipated rate of growth within that customer group?

Yes. I believe that 80% of our active Pros, defined as those who have shopped with us in the past year, are involved in some format of our PPR programs. The majority of our Pros are engaged in it. As mentioned, for those participating in the program, the average transaction value is three times higher, and we receive better ratings from them as well. Looking at the strength of our Pro business and considering future prospects, we've certainly taken note of our competitors’ calls. The current environment is very favorable for Pros, who have plenty of work available. I recently came across data from a major bank indicating that homeowners have about $6.5 trillion more value in their homes than they did in 2019. Therefore, there is ample financial capacity for home improvements. Our customers, particularly those in higher-end homes, possess record amounts of cash and equity, making them likely to want to invest in their properties. They are generally inclined to hire Pros for these projects. Furthermore, from an inventory and assortment standpoint, we are in a strong position to meet their needs with unique products that are in stock, unlike many of our competitors. All these factors lead us to believe that our Pro business will remain robust in the foreseeable future.

Our next question is coming from Jonathan Matuszewski from Jefferies.

Mine was on design services. It sounds like you’re making a lot of progress there. Penetration is up. Can you remind us the percentage of transactions that utilize design services? Is that more than half, less than half? And relatedly, what percentage of your customers just simply don’t have awareness that these services are available? It feels like that latter group could be better low-hanging fruit.

This is Lisa. So that’s not a number that we’ve given out. It is I will tell you well less than half. So there is a lot of opportunity. I don’t think we know the number or the awareness for our design services. But anecdotally, I would tell you, it’s pretty darn low. We often get customers that are in the store, and that’s the first they knew that we have free design services. So our goal over time is for design services to become a real competitive differentiator, and that’s the reason or one of the reasons they come to shop is not a service that they find about once, they get to the store for all the other reasons that they choose to shop with. So we believe there is a very, very long runway on design services for us. The other thing to just point out, as Trevor I think mentioned earlier, it’s a much higher average ticket, much higher conversion, much higher margin and the average customer service scores are very high as well. So there’s a lot of reasons that this is a big initiative for us.

Yes, I’ve mentioned before that the merchandising aspect of the design center has been performing well for quite some time, and the operational side is continually improving. We are applying the same strategy we used with Pro years ago, where we appointed dedicated teams to build a comprehensive program around it. This has led to consistent service across stores, the creation of career paths for our designers, and the provision of the necessary tools, resulting in significant progress. Our best customer service ratings come from those who utilize the service, highlighting a substantial opportunity for us.

Our next question is coming from Zach Fadem from Wells Fargo.

This is Eric on Zach. Your EBITDA being strong fiscal ‘21 comp, the outlook for ‘22 is still goes above your long-term algo the mid-to-high single digits. Just curious if you can talk about the building blocks to getting to the 10%, 13% comp outlook, sort of how much is your market growth versus share gains, new store, waterfall, etc.? Sort of how long do you think you can stay above the long-term algo going forward?

Yes, I’ll start by saying that I don’t have a better prediction than anyone else, but we are currently facing cost increases, mainly in the supply chain, along with anticipated vendor product cost increases. We plan to pass on these costs, and as Tom mentioned, we aim to grow our gross margin on top of that. I believe most of our comparisons will be driven by ticket prices because we still have additional retail increases to implement due to the expected cost hikes. As long as we remain in this inflationary environment, ticket prices will likely stay elevated, which supports our confidence in exceeding our long-term growth targets. While I can't predict the future, I hope some of these supply chain challenges ease by the end of '22 and into '23, allowing us to reduce retail prices since we wouldn't need to maintain them at their current levels. We aim to remain competitive, and during that time, same-store sales may slow down, but the gross margin rate would improve, sustaining our profit growth. I want to be cautious about the upcoming developments in March, but we still believe that over the long term, we can achieve a 25% profit growth on a three-year CAGR basis. This year's financial structure will reflect higher inflation, leading to increased top-line growth. If inflation decreases, we may see lower top-line figures but higher gross margin rates, which will still result in solid profit growth.

Next question is coming from Christopher Horvers from JP Morgan.

It’s Christian filling in for Chris. Considering that mix and ticket, or mix and volumes, are influencing ticket sales, can you provide some insight on your expectations for comparable sales trends throughout the year and the role inflation plays in that? With product costs expected to rise due to supply chain issues, do you anticipate implementing another price increase in the second half of the year?

Our current expectation is that we have a weighted-average cost system, and our inventory turns are just over twice a year. As we anticipate rising costs throughout the year, we also expect our retail prices to increase. We're facing significant comparisons from nearly three years ago, specifically with over 20% growth in the latter half of 2020, followed by a 27.6% increase this year. Looking at the latter half of this year, we are up against larger numbers. Thus, we expect our performance to remain relatively stable by quarter, likely in the mid- to low teens, based on the guidance we provided. We do not operate a promotional business and typically avoid discounting, so we expect a consistent performance through both halves of the year.

Your next question is coming from Kate McShane from Goldman Sachs.

This is Patrick Hollander on for Kate. We just wanted to ask about what kind of product innovation is coming to the flooring category in 2022? And how the strategy will evolve around getting customers to trade up to better invest into 2022?

I think as we have for the last many years, is we continue to focus on innovation and durability, and we continue to focus on trend. And so as you look at that we’ve talked about the OptiMax program that’s pretty new for us still. It’s an echo resilient product that’s doing extremely well. It is in the best price point, in fact it’s the highest price point we have between laminate and vinyl and is doing extremely well. So we’ll continue to expand that. As far as trend goes, you’ve heard us talk before about large format and whether that be in tile or in wood, and that continues to expand. We’ve got some tests that you’ll see in a couple of weeks. And in Florida on large slabs, which is a brand-new category for us to get in that is very logistically challenged but customers are responding well to that already. So our merchants have done a great job even though they haven’t been able to travel internationally for the last couple of years to continue to work with our vendor partners to innovate. So I think you’ll continue to see more and more from us, like I said, mostly around the durability, technology side and then on the trend and fashion side.

The second part of the question was about how we encourage customers to make a purchase and our sales strategy. This really connects to our design initiatives that we consistently discuss. We understand that involving designers makes it easier for customers to move up to higher quality options. When considering the overall cost of a flooring project, the difference between upgrading to better and best options is relatively minor. The more designers we have involved, the more they can assist customers in making those upgrades. Additionally, we can get customers to choose higher quality products even when we don't serve them perfectly; just the way we showcase inspiration in our stores makes it simple for customers to notice our superior products compared to many of our competitors.

Our next question is coming from Steven Zaccone from Citi.

I had a question on the overall demand environment. So when you look at the business on a CAGR basis, you referenced the fourth quarter was actually the highest level of growth, and it sounds like that’s continuing in the first quarter to date. I guess as you look at your business, do you attribute the acceleration to an overall pick up in spending in the market? Or are you actually seeing some accelerating share gains when it comes to Pros and new store performance? And then just briefly, within the 2022 outlook, how do you expect the Pro side of the business to perform versus DIY?

I’ll take the first one, and then Trevor, you can take the second one. I think from my perspective, I do think that we’re taking share at a bit of an accelerated pace. I think that inventory levels within the independence is strained because of all the global supply chain issues that we’ve talked about. It’s just been challenging. We’ve made conscious decisions to spend significantly more on supply chain to make sure what our priority one is to be in stock. So we put a priority on that. We brought in Chinese New Year early. I mean, we’ve just done a lot to have the inventory in the stores. So I do feel like it’s coming more from a share gain perspective than anything else. And Trevor, do you want to hit the Pro question?

Yes. I mentioned this briefly earlier about the fact that we serve a higher-income customer. There’s record wealth that exists in household values as well as cash and stock market portfolios. And those people won’t help put their products in. And everything we’ve talked to our Pros I know some of our larger competitors said the same thing earlier this week that the Pros have got as much work as they want. And we’re doing a great job of taking care of our Pros. So our view is the Pro business will continue to be strong as we look into 2022.

Our final question today is coming from Justin Kleber from Baird.

Just a longer-term one on the leverage point in the model and whether you think it’s changed at all given some of the cost pressures like wages. I’m just trying to understand what level of comp going forward beyond 2022 when we’re not in this double-digit same-store sales environment. What’s the right leverage point we should think about from an OpEx perspective?

This is Trevor. As long as we’re doing 20% unit growth, and we are adding stores in more expensive markets, it’s going to be above your typical 3% to 4% because the advertising costs a lot more in those markets, the labor costs more, usually, the rent costs more. And so our historical long-term algorithm to all the complexities over the last few years was kind of may do an upper single-digit comp, gave a little leverage out of SG&A and grow gross margin, but get you a 25% net income growth. I think that’s basically, if we ever get back to a sense of normalcy, I think that still plays into account. And we should have an elevated comp as long as we’re doing 20% unit growth because you have so many new stores, almost 50% of the chain is less than 5 years old. And so you have a lot of those new stores running up that maturation curve. So we will need, call it, mid- to slightly above mid-single-digit comp as long as we’re executing 20% unit growth to get leverage in the P&L. And again, that’s when things are a little bit more constant, which we’re obviously not in that environment today.

I will now make some closing comments. Thank you all for your interest in our company and for participating in our call. We truly appreciate it. I’d like to acknowledge that this is Lisa’s last call as a participant. She may listen in on the next few calls, but this is her final one as an active contributor. I cannot stress enough how much she has done for our company; we wouldn't be where we are today without her efforts. Her contributions are far too significant to enumerate. Many of you have known her and seen the great work she has accomplished for our company, and we wish her the best in her retirement. Ultimately, it's about enabling people to pursue their dreams. We are very happy for her and grateful that she has built a strong team behind her, ensuring that Floor & Decor continues to thrive. Thank you once again for your interest in the call, and thank you, Lisa, for everything you’ve done.

Thank you. It does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.