Oxford Industries Inc Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call

Greetings, and welcome to the Oxford Industries Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brian Smith. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that certain statements made on today's call and the Q&A session may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results of operations or financial condition to differ are discussed in our press release issued earlier today and in documents filed by us with the SEC, including the risk factors contained in our Form 10-K. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures in our press release issued earlier today, which is posted under the Investor Relations tab of our website at oxfordinc.com. I would now like to introduce today's call participants. With me today are Tom Chubb, Chairman and CEO; and Scott Grassmyer, CFO and COO. Thank you for your attention. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Chubb.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased to be reporting fourth quarter net sales and adjusted EPS that are both near the top of our guidance ranges. In December we said that we were expecting a strong holiday selling season. That expectation turned into reality as the consumer did in fact show up to buy their loved ones and friends the gifts that they really wanted from the brands that they love. We were particularly pleased in the weeks leading up to Christmas by the performance of some of our newer specialty products such as Tommy Bahama's Indigo Palms denim and denim-friendly product, the Tommy Bahama Marlin Luxe Quarter Zip Pullover and the Lilly Pulitzer Reserve Collection. The performance of these higher price point products is strong evidence that when there is reason to shop, our customers are choosing to spend with our brands and this helped drive comps for the month of December up 2%. As we moved into January, we experienced a moderation in demand which we attribute to the recent pattern of consumers retreating when there isn't a reason to spend combined with a deterioration in consumer sentiment. As a result, January was not as strong as December with comps down 3%. This negative trend accelerated in the beginning of fiscal 2025 with comps of negative 9% in February. Given this backdrop, we are pleased with our fourth quarter performance and commend and thank our people for delivering these results. We believe the choppiness and demand we experienced towards the end of fiscal 2024 is likely to continue in the near term, just as the consumer showed up and was willing to spend for Christmas. We expect the same will be true for the first half of fiscal 2025 with strong selling for big events such as Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. In the in-between times, we anticipate the consumer will be more hesitant to spend given the uncertainty in the current marketplace. With our powerful portfolio of happiness-evoking brands, our world-class omnichannel platform, our strong cash and balance sheet and our resilient team, we continue to believe that the long-term opportunity for us is extremely bright. However, we are realistic enough to recognize that we are not immune from the current headwinds. As with any time of uncertainty, the key for us in the short term is to control the controllables and to stay focused. At the top of our focus list is our customer. Our top priority is staying hyper-focused on the four-point North Star that serves as the blueprint for how we run the company. As a reminder, our four-point North Star starts with our overarching strategy to maximize long-term shareholder value. The key here is to remember that we're building a sustainable business and shareholder value for the long-term, notwithstanding the short-term turbulence. The second point of our strategy is to own a portfolio of lifestyle brands. We have 83 years behind us and have remained successful through many challenges. We know how to do this. During this uncertain time, we will make sure that we are protecting the integrity of our brands for the long-term. Protecting the integrity of our brands means avoiding short-term fixes to offer slightly improved near-term results that would damage our brands and our prospects for the long-term. Third is our purpose as a company which is to evoke happiness in our consumers. All of our brands are happy brands that metaphorically take our customers to their happy place. It is important for us to stay focused on delivering that happiness to our customers and not get distracted by external challenges beyond our control. Our fourth and final area of focus is to generate cash that we can then reinvest to grow our existing businesses, pursue acquisitions when the opportunity exists and return capital to our shareholders, all while maintaining a healthy balance sheet. Each of our brands has detailed plans for fiscal 2025 tailored to their unique circumstances, challenges and opportunities. However, all of them have one thing in common and that is that they focus on the core of what makes the brand great. For Tommy Bahama, focusing on the core is about ensuring that we are engaged and fully activated in our top 25 markets. We have a tremendous following in each of these markets that serves as a great foundation for the business. At the same time, there is a significant opportunity to attract a much larger audience to the brand as we ignite and activate these core markets in 2025. Our plan is to not only delight our current customers, but connect with prospective customers to drive more traffic and higher conversion across all channels. At Lilly Pulitzer, focusing on the core is all about the top 20% of our customer base. The top 20% of our customer base accounts for 67%—or two thirds—of our sales and even more of our profitability as they tend to buy at full price. Making sure that we have the products, experiences and marketing messages that delight these customers will help ensure they are fully engaged in spending money with us during fiscal 2025. We also believe that doubling down on serving our best customers will help us to attract many, many more who are demographically and psychographically similar to our existing top customer base. In Johnny Was focusing on the core is about getting back to the brand's roots through the type of products that made Johnny Was famous and a favorite with hundreds of thousands of customers. As we stretched the boundaries of what the brand can be in the last several years, we probably took a little bit of focus off the embroidered and embellished products that consumers came to love. During 2025, we will focus on delighting our engaged customers with an enhanced assortment of what we call our collection product merchandise that better reflects Johnny Was origins. We believe this focus on what makes Johnny Was unique and differentiated in the marketplace will also help us attract new loyalists to the brand. Scott will provide more detail on our guidance in a minute, but it is fair to say that the ongoing uncertainty in the marketplace has made us a bit more cautious in our view for the full year. That said, we still expect cash flow to remain strong with cash flow from operations projected to be approximately $170 million for the year, and we intend to continue to invest that cash flow in the areas that we believe help drive long-term shareholder value. At the top of our investment priorities is continuing to grow and strengthen our omnichannel platform. In recent months, we have completed significant upgrades to our Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer, Southern Tide and the Beaufort Bonnet Company e-commerce websites. In addition, late this year we expect to complete the new distribution center that will allow us to increase our inventory velocity and sell-throughs as it services our very large omnichannel business in the eastern and southern parts of the country. During the year we also plan to open approximately 20 new stores, including four new Marlin bars, and we remain focused as always on returning capital to shareholders, and we have already purchased $50 million worth of stock during the first part of this fiscal year at prices that we believe over the long-term will prove to be very attractive. In addition, on Monday our Board of Directors approved a 3% increase in our quarterly dividend from $0.67 to $0.69. As a reminder, we have paid a dividend every quarter since we went public in 1960. As we navigate the uncertainty our confidence is buoyed by the fact that as a company, as a team, we know who we are and we know what we are doing. I'll now turn the call over to Scott for more detail on the fourth quarter, the full year and our outlook for fiscal 2025. Scott?

Thank you, Tom. As Tom mentioned, we finished the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 with top- and bottom-line results at the top end of our guidance range. Our operating groups had strong holiday seasons and performed well during the fourth quarter despite the pullback in consumer spending in January. Consolidated net sales in the 52-week fiscal 2024 decreased 3% to $1.52 billion. As a reminder, 2023 net sales included an approximate $16 million from the 53rd week resulting in $10 million of additional gross profit. Sales in our full-price brick-and-mortar locations were down 2%, driven by a mid-single-digit negative comp, partially offset by the addition of new store locations. E-commerce sales decreased 4%. Our food and beverage and outlet locations performed better with a 1% and 3% sales increase respectively, driven by new locations, partially offset by low single-digit negative comps. Our wholesale channel, which had a particularly challenging year, decreased $31 million or 10% as the specialty store business across our brands continues to struggle, partially offset by increased sales to major department stores. Adjusted gross margin contracted 80 basis points to 63.2% driven primarily by a higher proportion of net sales occurring during promotional and clearance events in Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer and Johnny Was. Across our three major brands and throughout fiscal 2024, consumer response was strongest to our new and innovative fashion products and during our promotional and end-of-season clearance events. We believe the higher proportion of spending around key promotional periods represents a return to pre-COVID spending habits. The decrease in gross margin resulting from an increase in promotional and clearance sales was partially offset by a change in sales mix with a greater proportion of our sales coming through our direct-to-consumer channels. Our Merchant Brands group was able to significantly increase gross margin through improved inventory positions and fewer promotional sales. Adjusted SG&A expenses increased 4% to $841 million compared to $807 million in fiscal 2023, which also included approximately $11 million of incremental SG&A from the 53rd week. During fiscal 2024, we incurred higher expenses related to the annualization of incremental SG&A related to the 23 net new stores added during fiscal 2023. Recent and ongoing investments in our business were primarily from the addition of 30 net new brick-and-mortar locations opened during fiscal 2024, including three new Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar locations, costs related to some of the approximately five new brick-and-mortar locations that we expect to open early in the year, the Tommy Bahama King of Prussia and Charlotte, North Carolina Marlin Bar locations that opened last week, and the addition of Jack Rogers from the Jack Rogers brand acquired in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. The result of this yielded $136 million of adjusted operating income or a 9% operating margin compared to adjusted operating income of $216 million, or 13.8% of net sales in the prior year. The decrease in adjusted operating income reflects the impact of our SG&A investments and the constrained consumer environment that resulted in decreased sales and lower gross margins. Moving beyond operating income, we benefited from $4 million of lower interest expense resulting from lower average debt levels and a lower adjusted effective income tax rate. Our tax rate was impacted by certain discrete items, including interest income associated with a refund received related to our fiscal 2020 net operating loss. With all this, we ended with $6.68 of adjusted EPS, which was at the top end of our guidance. I'll now move on to the balance sheet beginning with inventory. At the end of fiscal 2024, inventory was up 5% on both a LIFO and FIFO basis. The increase was primarily driven by the early receipts of shipments from Asia ahead of the effective date of some of the new tariffs. We ended the year with outstanding long-term debt of $31 million, up slightly compared to the prior year as our $194 million of cash flow from operations in fiscal 2024 were outpaced by our elevated level of capital expenditures of $134 million primarily related to the Alliance (Lyons, Georgia) distribution center project and the addition of new brick-and-mortar locations, $43 million of dividends, acquisitions and changes in working capital needs. I'll now spend some time on our outlook for 2025. For the full year, we expect net sales to be between $1.49 billion and $1.53 billion, or down 2% to up 1% compared to sales of $1.52 billion in 2024. The sales plan in 2025 includes a total comp decline of between 2% and 4%, growth in our Lilly Pulitzer and Emerging Brand segments, partially offset by decreases in our Tommy Bahama and Johnny Was segments. By distribution channel, the sales plan consists of relatively flat sales in both the brick-and-mortar and wholesale channels and a mid-single-digit increase in food and beverage. We also expect e-commerce sales to decrease in the low-single-digit range. We anticipate gross margin will decrease in 2025 between 50 basis points and 100 basis points, primarily driven by the impact of tariffs and the expectation of a lower proportion of full-price direct-to-consumer sales. Similar to what we experienced in fiscal 2024, we expect the trend of our consumers responding strongly to our promotional events and off-price offerings to continue in fiscal 2025. Related to tariffs, our gross margin forecast includes an unmitigated tariff impact of approximately $9 million to $10 million, or about $0.45 to $0.50 per share on goods made in China based on the recently enacted incremental tariffs currently in effect. As the entire tariff landscape becomes clearer, we will continue to put further mitigation steps in place. Our mitigation steps have and will continue to include receipt of inventory ahead of the effective date of new tariffs, sourcing shifts to countries with lower duty and tariff rates, sharing of tariffs with our vendors, merchandising shifts to more favorable duty products and select price increases. Our strong brand management teams have a track record of successfully mitigating past tariff increases and are proactively implementing mitigation strategies related to the known tariff shifts. We expect to be able to materially mitigate the impact of the known and implemented tariffs by the spring of 2026 through these mitigation actions. Moving beyond tariffs and gross margin, we expect SG&A to grow in the low- to mid-single-digit range primarily due to the annualization of incremental SG&A from the 30 net new stores added during fiscal 2024, investments in additional brick-and-mortar location openings in 2025 including four new Marlin bars, our net new brick-and-mortar count is expected to increase by approximately 20 locations and incremental costs related to the opening of our new distribution center in Lyons, Georgia in the fourth quarter of 2025. While we expect our store count to increase in fiscal 2025 primarily due to signed lease agreements in our store pipeline, we anticipate that our store opening pace will slow during fiscal 2025 and into 2026 as we signed fewer new agreements and opened fewer Johnny Was and Southern Tide locations. At the same time, Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer will continue to be highly selective with any new locations. Also, within operating income, we expect royalties and other income to be relatively flat in fiscal 2025. Additionally, our fiscal 2025 guidance includes the unfavorable impact of non-operating items including anticipated higher interest expense at $7 million for the year compared to $2 million in 2024 or an approximate $0.20 to $0.25 EPS impact. The increased debt levels in fiscal 2025 are due to our continued capital expenditures on the Lyons, Georgia distribution center and return of capital to shareholders exceeding cash flow from operations. We also expect a higher adjusted effective tax rate of approximately 24.5% compared to 20.9% in 2024 which benefited from certain discrete items primarily related to interest income from tax receivables that are not expected to reoccur in 2025. The higher tax rate will result in a profit impact of approximately $0.20 to $0.25 per share. Considering all these items including the $0.85 to $1 impact from tariffs, higher interest expense and a higher tax rate, we expect 2025 adjusted EPS to be between $4.60 and $5.00 versus adjusted EPS of $6.68 last year. In the first quarter of 2025, we expect sales of $375 million to $395 million compared to sales of $398 million in the first quarter of 2024. The sales plan in the first quarter includes decreases in our direct-to-consumer channels partially offset by an increase in our wholesale channel. We also expect decreased gross margin resulting from a lower proportion of full-price sales and the impact of tariffs and SG&A deleveraging largely from the impact of new stores. As previously mentioned, higher interest expense of approximately $1 million and an effective tax rate of approximately 100 basis points lower than the first quarter 2024 rate of 25.6% are expected. We expect this to result in first quarter adjusted EPS between $1.76 and $1.90 compared to $2.66 in the first quarter of 2024. As to spending on the investments we intend to make in our business, I'd like to briefly discuss our CapEx in fiscal 2024 and our outlook for 2025. In fiscal 2024, total capital expenditures of $134 million included approximately $70 million spent on the multiyear Alliance (Lyons, Georgia) distribution center project that we anticipate will require a total investment of $130 million. Similar to fiscal 2024, the most significant portion of our anticipated $125 million of capital expenditures in fiscal 2025 will relate to the completion of the Lyons, Georgia distribution facility expected in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. The remaining capital expenditures in fiscal 2025 will relate to the execution of our pipeline of new stores and Marlin bars, including four expected to open in 2025 and increases in store count primarily across Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer, Southern Tide, TBBC and store remodels and other maintenance capital. We expect the elevated level of capital expenditures in fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 to meaningfully moderate for fiscal 2026 and beyond after the completion of the Lyons Georgia project. Wrapping up our guidance, cash flow from operations is expected to be strong along with borrowings on our revolver which will provide us with ample room to fund the previously mentioned investments, pay our quarterly dividend and fund share repurchases. In the first quarter of fiscal 2025, we initiated and completed a $50 million 10b5-1 program where we repurchased 842,000 shares, or approximately 5% of outstanding shares at what we believe will prove to be an attractive average price of $59.38. Following our recent buying activity, the board authorized a new $100 million share repurchase program on March 24th that replaces our previous authorization. Thank you for your time today and we will now turn the call over for questions. Stacy?

Thank you. Your first question comes from Ashley Owens with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. So to start, I wanted to touch on the first quarter guide. I know you spoke to some of the comps and what you've seen thus far. Maybe if you could help us unpack some of the different headwinds you mentioned and the magnitude of each. Did it vary by brand at all? And then additionally, as we think about the balance of the year, some of the puts and takes in your assumptions for both the low and high end of the revenue guidance ranges. Thank you.

Well, on the relative strength of the brands, what I would tell you is that Lilly is the strongest performer right now and is actually doing pretty well. The rest of the bigger brands are off a bit. I will point out that we do have the Easter shift this year, so it is not entirely surprising to see March comping down a bit given that Easter shifted completely out of March and into April. In terms of the guidance for the balance of the year, puts and takes on the top and bottom end of the revenue range: yes, we do have the new stores which are helping offset the negative comp assumption. But again, we expect Lilly to comp positive, maybe some of our smaller brands to comp positive, and Tommy Bahama and Johnny Was our plans have them comping a little bit negative.

Okay, great. And then quickly as well, I'm hearing from some of the other brands we've spoken to that wholesale partners are tightening some of the order books for the remainder of the year and becoming cautious again. Would be curious if this is something you've observed and if there's any variances by brand. Then additionally, just maybe a little bit on the details for the Johnny Was plan. It was down 9% in the quarter—where you're observing some of the soft spots, if it's regional or broad-based? Anything outside of the assortment that you want to or see opportunity to change this year? And then anything you can say on wholesale door increases as we move through the year? I believe you mentioned before that the brand was reentering some accounts in 2025.

Yes, I think in terms of the overall wholesale market, there is concern that some of the big retailers will pull back their forward orders a bit. And we would look at that as being a potential headwind for sure, and we've thought about that as we build our forecast. On the other hand, the performance of our brands on the retail floor of our key wholesale accounts has been quite strong and usually that helps protect you against some of the downdraft. So there are somewhat offsetting factors: the headwind of what they may be feeling in the overall market, but a tailwind we might be getting from our very strong performance. In fact, in a lot of cases we're performing better in those stores than we are in our own stores. In terms of Johnny Was, we do hope to be able to rebuild the wholesale business there, which has slipped a bit in recent years, especially in the majors. I think we are optimistic about that, although again you have the potential headwind of the broader market pulling back. In terms of Johnny Was things outside of assortment, improving the performance of the retail stores is a big focus. Overall the market is very challenging, but we're doing everything we can from the way that we're visualizing and merchandising the stores to the way that we're staffing them to the way that we're assorting them. That includes shifting the assortment a little bit more towards our classic collection-type product, and at a more micro level trying to sort individual stores better. We have a lot of plans to try to improve retail performance and we also hope to improve our wholesale book of business. Wholesale has a great contribution margin, so every incremental dollar of wholesale does a lot for us on the bottom line. The last thing I'd call out, which we've discussed in previous quarters, is really trying to improve the efficiency of marketing spend—especially for Johnny Was—trying to improve the efficiency of marketing spend across the company.

Okay, great. Thanks for passing along. Thank you.

The next question comes from Janine Stichter with BTIG. Please proceed.

Hey, you've got Ethan Saghi on for Janine. First question, with all the macro uncertainty going on so far this year, are customers still responding positively to newness in the assortment or have they pulled back across the board? And would you say your assortment is more balanced with newness now or is there still some room to improve?

Yes, we have significantly more newness, especially in our biggest brands. Tommy and Lilly have taken big steps up in the amount of newness they have this spring versus last spring. Newness is driving the business. When overall you're a little bit soft sometimes it's hard to see strength, but we do have strength in newness. We're glad we have the level of newness that we have because the customer is responding to it nicely. For example, Tommy Bahama's new Barbados Pro short builds upon past successes we've had in shorts and takes it to a new level. Lilly Pulitzer's Tazia Dress has been a star. Our Disney capsule collection that we released last week has done really well; that's a new thing for us in terms of broad availability. And the ultimate in newness is Lilly Pulitzer menswear, which we last did in a meaningful way about 15 years ago; it's small but performed very well and has created a lot of excitement and buzz around the brand. So yes, newness is good and we're glad we have it.

That's great to hear. And then just one more from me. Besides needing a more bullish consumer, could you provide us some more detail on internal initiatives you're taking to improve conversion?

It's all kinds of things: better product knowledge in the stores, helping associates with the knowledge they need to better sell the products, tweaking assortments, better store-level merchandising and staffing, and improvements to the websites that make it easier to get from wherever you start to checkout. We've done major upgrades to the Tommy Bahama, Lilly, Southern Tide and Beaufort Bonnet websites and those have features designed to help move people through to checkout.

Got it. That's really helpful. I'll pass it on and best of luck.

Next question comes from Mauricio Serna with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. First, could you talk about the comp performance in March that you've seen? It sounds like things got a little bit better relative to February, so I just wanted to get a better understanding on that. Also, on the sales cadence for the year—the implied guide is for average growth in the next couple of quarters to be roughly up 1%. Is that mainly a function of the store openings or are you embedding some sort of same-store sales improvement in upcoming quarters? Thank you.

March feels better than February did. You do have the non-comp event of Easter shifting out of March into April, and that can make March look softer. We feel better about March than February; it's still negative but I do think we'll pick up a lot of that in April and wouldn't be surprised to see April comp positive.

Yes, and for the first half we have the negative comps being a bit larger. The second half, particularly the third quarter, had a lot of noise last year with two hurricanes and a tropical storm, so we think third quarter will be a little easier comp. We are hoping for a little more normalization, but we have been conservative in our comp assumptions. We don't have huge positive comps in the back half; we expect comps closer to flat in the back half and negative in the first half. The new stores help offset some of that—we opened two new Marlin bars last week in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and Charlotte, North Carolina, and both are off to a nice start. We do have somewhat more front-end-loaded openings this year than in past years, so hopefully we'll get more benefit later in the year from new stores that open during the year than we have in the past.

Got it. Very helpful. And then on SG&A, I recall in the last few earnings calls you had talked about trying to get some operating leverage and control SG&A, but this year SG&A is still going to grow higher than sales. I understand the drivers of that growth, but what are some initiatives that you're doing to control SG&A?

We're looking at everything: marketing efficiency is a major focus—I personally monitor marketing spend. There have been some people reductions throughout the company. We're negotiating hard with vendors on contracts and looking at all levers. A meaningful portion of SG&A increases are from the new stores; with negative comps it's harder to get leverage. Controlling SG&A is a real focus.

Understood. Thank you so much.

Next question comes from Paul Lejuez with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. It's Tracy Kogan filling in for Paul. I had a follow-up first on an earlier question about what you're seeing from your wholesale partners. I know you said your order books were positive as of your last earnings call. I'm wondering if you're seeing changes there or if you haven't really seen it yet but you maybe anticipate that. And then I have another question when you're finished with that one. Thank you.

Our latest projection has our wholesale business more flat—up a little in spring and down just a little—but we're still booking. We have put a bit of caution into our projections for future bookings. As Tom mentioned, we're performing well on the floor, but most retail accounts are probably getting more cautious themselves. We are being more cautious on our inventory buys for the back half of this year and will probably do the same going into next year. We'd rather be in a situation of having less inventory than too much; if things bounce back we're chasing a little bit. So we're approaching it with caution—not panic, just caution.

Got you. That makes sense. And then I had a question on tariffs. I think you said that the dollar number, the $9 million to $10 million, was unmitigated. Is the entire $9 million to $10 million in your guidance for this year assumed unmitigated and maybe you might be able to mitigate some of that? I know you said you thought you'd mitigate it by 2026, but just wondering if there's potential that it comes in better if you can mitigate or if you've already built something in. Thanks.

We have built some mitigation in, but many mitigation actions are still in process—negotiations with factories, sourcing shifts, and pricing decisions for later in the year. I would expect some incremental mitigation that could make it a little better, but timing and the overall tariff landscape remains uncertain, especially given potential changes in early April when different countries might have tariff changes. The $9 million to $10 million is what we expect given the current enacted incremental tariffs and we don't think it could get worse than that for this year; hopefully it gets a little better.

Got you. Thanks very much. Good luck, guys.

There are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to Tom for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Stacy. Thanks to all of you for your interest and we look forward to talking to you again in June. Hope you are well until then.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.