Genesco Inc. (NYSE:GCO) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Genesco Inc. (NYSE:GCO) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript March 8, 2024
Genesco Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $2.59 EPS, expectations were $2.66. Genesco Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Genesco Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2024 Conference Call. Just a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Darryl MacQuarrie, Senior Director of FP&A. Please go ahead, sir.
Darryl MacQuarrie: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter fiscal '24 results. Participants on the call expect to make forward-looking statements reflecting our expectations as of today, but actual results could be different. Genesco refers you to this morning's earnings release and the company's SEC filings, including its most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for some of the factors that could cause differences from the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements made today. Participants also expect to refer to certain adjusted financial measures during the call. All non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to their GAAP counterparts in the attachments to this morning's press release and in schedules available on the company's website in the Quarterly Results section.
We have also posted a presentation summarizing our results here as well. With me on the call today is Mimi Vaughn, Board Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tom George, Chief Financial Officer. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mimi.
Mimi Vaughn: Thanks, Darryl. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Fiscal '24 highlighted how substantially our consumer shopping behavior has changed since the pandemic. Back in fiscal '22, consumers were flush with cash, thanks to fiscal stimulus, and spent heavily in the footwear category, which led to a record year for Journeys. As we entered fiscal '24, we saw a pronounced drop in purchases at the beginning of the year and have been working to close the gap ever since. The forward buying dynamic, along with a period of higher inflation that followed, competitive discounting to clear elevated athletic footwear inventories and a general lack of innovation in footwear made for a difficult operating environment that remained challenging as we progressed through fiscal '24.
Throughout the year, these evolving purchase patterns led to greater volatility and made it hard to forecast demand, particularly for Journeys. In the fourth quarter, after a strong Black Friday and solid kick-off to the holiday season, sales were negatively impacted by a more selective customer that shopped almost exclusively for key footwear items, coupled with a market shift away from boots. As we got into the month of January, the combination of softer-than-anticipated sales due to disruptive winter storms and higher-than-anticipated expenses at Journeys is what drove EPS below our most recent guidance. Throughout the quarter, our core product assortment was much more pressured than we originally expected at the beginning of Q4. We expect this dynamic to carry into this current year, and given our limited ability to now impact product for spring, we believe it will remain a significant headwind in the first half despite facing easier compares.
We are clearly disappointed with these results. However, I want to stress that we faced challenging times before and consistently demonstrated a strong track record of turning around our businesses to emerge even stronger when confronted with economic and consumer disruption. Our response to the pandemic and recent turnarounds at Schuh and J&M, evidenced by another year of record sales for both, are clear examples of this, and I'm confident we will achieve the same success with Journeys. It's also important to note, despite a very difficult operating climate, in fiscal '24, our overall sales declined only low single-digits and our gross margin compressed by just 30 basis points. The sensitivity of our model is such that smaller movements in sales are magnified with quite a bit of deleverage against our largely fixed cost base.
Coupled with our low share count, this had a substantial effect on our bottom-line. However, the inverse is true as well. In a sales growth environment, as we've demonstrated before, our model provides significant leverage and earnings upside potential. Our cost savings initiatives are aimed at improving this further. As we turn the page to fiscal '25, the operating environment remains difficult. Given the steeper challenges in our core business, we now have more work to do in our assortment. As such, we're counting on more time for a Journeys' rebound. All that said, we have a very clear understanding of what we need to achieve; Journeys continued turnaround is our number one priority. With the right new leadership already in place and a strong team overall, we're better positioned than ever to accomplish this task.
I've said before, well positioned strategically with a spotlight focus on the team, no other retailer serves this customer quite the same as Journeys. Journeys is the one-stop shop for a broad range of both casual and athletic brands. This unique proposition as the destination for teen fashion footwear, particularly for the teen girl, remains solidly intact. As fashion broadens and teens are embracing multiple wearing occasions, we will achieve success with a more diversified assortment that addresses these needs and fills out our customers' closets. Importantly, we already have the backing of our consumer who consistently scores Journeys' higher-than-key competitors in market research and our brand partners who are demonstrating exceptional support.
Under Andy Gray's leadership, the Journeys team is working to dramatically accelerate the pace of improvement in response to how the consumer has changed. With his strong merchant background, excellent vendor relationships and expertise in brand building and product innovation, Andy's insight has already proven tremendously valuable. We are working with great urgency. However, these efforts will take some time given footwear industry's lead times. Already in the works though, they will set the stage for more significant progress for back-to-school and especially for holiday. I will discuss some of these initiatives in more detail shortly. But first, I'd like to point out some important highlights from the quarter and year beyond the record sales years Schuh and J&M delivered.
We grew our comparable digital business by 5% in Q4, 8% for the year, and expanded digital penetration in fiscal '24 to 23% versus 20% a year ago. We launched Journeys All Access loyalty program and Buy Online, Pick Up in Store in North America to encouraging initial results. BOPUS was a bright spot in Journeys and its first holiday in operation, accounting for almost 30% of e-commerce sales in the week leading up to Christmas. Importantly, we made further progress rightsizing our inventory. Journeys ended Q4 with inventory down over 20% to last year, enabling us to generate strong cash flow and enter the new fiscal year in a very clean position. This also helped us deliver solid gross margins ahead of expectations and positions us well to buy into the product we need to drive Journeys sales.
Furthermore, we continued to advance our strategies to position the business for better productivity and profitability. We closed nearly 100 underperforming Journeys stores and are evaluating up to 50 more closures this fiscal year as we reshape the footprint to align with the shopping patterns of today's consumer. And we made substantial progress in realigning our cost base and are now targeting an increased run rate of $45 million to $50 million in annual savings by the end of this year. And now for color on our individual businesses. Starting with Journeys. While we were pleased that sales once again improved sequentially in Q4 as they have in every quarter this year, results nonetheless fell short of our initial expectations. Following a strong Thanksgiving weekend, business decelerated in December as customer shopping trends remained choppy.
That said, store traffic was positive, and consumers responded well to the newness in our assortment, which tells us that Journeys remains a key destination for our team. However, a decline in conversion outweighed this given our consumer selective appetite for key items. Once we ran out of high-demand product, we were not able, as we usually are, to motivate an alternate purchase, and discounting did not drive enough sales to be effective. This was evident in boots. While we planned our boot business down in anticipation of a challenging season, it was weaker [Technical Difficulty] impacted by both warm weather and style preferences, boot sales, which typically represent 50% of Journeys' holiday business, were down 20% during the holiday period.
And as I mentioned, we experienced more pressure than we expected in our core assortment, including vulcanized product. The overall sales decline in Q4 was confined to stores as Journeys digital business performed quite well, up mid-single digits versus last year. We tested numerous engagement and traffic driving programs with All Access members, increased SMS usage and increased influencer and paid social campaigns to generate awareness and drive conversion. In fact, as we exited the year, we saw some acceleration in total comps in January led by Journeys e-comm, which increased 35% during the month. Moving to the UK. Despite experiencing a slowdown in Q4 comps against a difficult compare, Schuh delivered an exceptional year with strong comp growth throughout the first nine months.
Our efforts to strengthen Schuh's value proposition has differentiated the business from competitors, grabbing the attention of new customers and enhancing our brand relationships and access to top-tier product. That said, sales in Q4 were challenged by a tough boot business, coupled with a more cautious UK consumer that against recessionary economic challenges was also more discriminating in their purchases. The pressure was primarily in stores as Schuh's e-comm business remained positive in the quarter, accounting for over 40% of total sales. Kids also remained a bright spot with sales up 8%, while non-footwear categories saw strong growth of 35%. Even amidst a difficult operating environment, Schuh held strong market share. As of mid-January, Schuh maintained its Number 10 rank in total UK footwear market share, according to Kantar, a position it's held since May 2023 after moving up three spots during the year.
Loyalty has played a key role in strengthening Schuh's market position. Currently accounting for roughly 30% of total sales, Schuh Club members now stand at 2.3 million and are more engaged than non-loyalty customers purchasing more frequently. Turning to Johnston & Murphy. The business was a standout over holiday with a record fourth quarter as we continued to invest to drive growth. Compelling product and strong sales of non-footwear led to nicely positive comps, demonstrated a solid recovery from the ERP implementation challenges in Q3. However, relative to the run rate over holiday, sales were pressured by the disruptive January winter storms. Our efforts to reimagine J&M as a more comfortable lifestyle brand with products suited for today's more casual preferences is resonating really well with our consumers.
In Q4, J&M's direct-to-consumer business was strong across all channels, e-com, retail and factory. Although the casual and casual athletic categories were key drivers in J&M's footwear business, apparel and accessories were an even bigger call out in Q4. Apparel and accessories increased 18%, driven by strong growth in blazers and outerwear and accounted for almost half of J&M's DTC sales. J&M is a great example of how we've taken our strong DTC capabilities built in retail and applied them to a branded concept. With the work of repositioning to an updated multicategory lifestyle brand paying dividends, J&M is positioned to drive meaningful growth, with opportunities across categories, age demographics, geographies and gender. As the cornerstone of our branded platform, the future for this business is incredibly bright.
Now switching back to Journeys. Andy and team have taken a deep dive on the business and put sharper focus on a turnaround program and growth strategy that will impact the customer through product, marketing and experience. And today, I'll highlight some key initiatives for this fiscal year, which are a mix of both strategic acceleration and disciplined expense management. Number 1, drive product leadership and create marketplace differentiation. To continue improving Journeys footwear leadership and assortment, we're implementing new strategies led by our recently appointed Chief Merchant to meaningfully increase product access and boost investment in key fashion, athletic and casual brands. This includes diversifying and adding new key styles with our existing brand partners, increasing our leadership position with all our key brands, enhancing in store social and digital exposure to build awareness with our customer to shop Journeys for these brands and working to add brands beyond those were traditionally known for.
Number two, build the Journeys brand and enhance the omni experience. We're intensifying efforts to build and promote Journeys as an industry-leading retail brand. We're currently onboarding a new creative agency to develop a new brand communication strategy. We plan to roll this out in the back part of the year along with an updated brand mission, vision and purpose. In parallel, we're improving Journeys brand presence and upgrading the customer experience with quick actions in both stores and online, including refreshed messaging and visuals that tell a cohesive brand story across channels and social. We're excited about the investment we're making to personalize and improve the timeliness and relevance of our marketing communications as well.
We're also evolving the All Access loyalty program, where we signed up over 2 million members in six months, continuing to provide an exciting feature rich program that differentiates Journeys, generates valuable consumer insights and encourages consumers to consolidate purchases across brands with us. And finally, we'll ultimately pursue an updated store concept and next generation design to further enrich the customer experience. And number three, leverage the power of our people. This initiative leverages the expertise of our store employees to set us apart by providing excellent service as a differentiator. Over the past year, we've introduced new capabilities, including mobile point of sale and BOPUS to improve efficiency and customer engagement.
And this year, we'll further improve training execution and roll out additional features like data-informed suggested selling. Number four, optimize to drive operational and cost efficiencies. We're implementing several initiatives here, including continued efforts to optimize the store footprint, closing unproductive stores and redirecting traffic and sales, while strategically opening mall and off-mall locations and prioritized optimization projects focused on selling salaries, rent expense, inventory management and digital marketing spend efficiency. In summary, overall, I want to emphasize my belief in our team's ability to reshape our business and unlock Journeys considerable earnings potential. In addition, we're executing new initiatives to accelerate growth for Schuh and J&M in fiscal '25, all building off our footwear-focused strategy.
I'll discuss a few select examples. With a data capture rate of 75% plus for customers in North America and growing loyalty and affinity programs across our concepts, we're augmenting our understanding of our customers' needs and driving up repeat purchase rates using our CRM platforms and more advanced analytics. For J&M, we're excited for the launch of the brand's refreshed marketing campaigns this spring. Powered by a new agency, this campaign aims to increase overall brand awareness and heat, and attract a broader and younger consumer, while also changing the perception that J&M is still primarily a dress shoe resource. Revamped social media content and organic social campaigns are key drivers of these efforts, along with new digital and in-store rollouts.
Finally, building out the Schuh Club loyalty offering will accelerate member sign ups and customer engagement. Turning now to our outlook for fiscal '25, we continue to navigate volatile consumer behavior and are not assuming any significant change in the near term. As I mentioned, we anticipate a difficult first half with significant pressure in Q1 given the product challenges at Journeys and are planning the back half to be much stronger than the front as we make an aggressive push to reposition our assortment. Our guidance for the year reflects this view with the expected front-half results impacting our ability to further grow EPS in fiscal '25, but with the product build we're putting in place, setting us up well for fiscal '26 and beyond.
Before closing, I'd like to say that while this past year has truly tested us, I'm extremely proud of our resilience and drive to overcome the challenges we faced. None of this would be possible without our incredible, talented people. I'd like to thank you all for your tremendous efforts and for all the great work you will be doing in the coming year. And with that, I'll turn it over to Tom.
Tom George: Thanks, Mimi. The headwinds in Journeys along with the inclement weather we faced in January had a greater impact on our fourth quarter financial performance than we initially anticipated. Relative to our revised guidance, the net earnings per share result was below our expectations, primarily due to expense pressures at Journeys coupled with the lost store traffic and earnings resulting from January's unusually impactful snow and ice storms. Looking ahead, the efforts we've made and continue to make to contain expenses and drive productivity will better position us to withstand this pressure and emerge even stronger as sales growth returns. Turning to results for the quarter. Consolidated revenue was $739 million, up approximately 2% compared to last year, driven by sales increases in all divisions other than Journeys.
Excluding the 53rd week, total sales declined 2%. Relative to our expectations, sales were largely in line with our revised guidance, with the exception of J&M, which was especially impacted by January's weather disruptions. Total comps were down 4%. For Journeys, although comps were negative 5%, the business continued to improve sequentially. Schuh comps were down 5%, driven by stores. Even with the January shortfall, J&M comps increased a healthy 8%. By channel, total store comps were down 7%, while direct comps were up 5%, with digital sales accounting for 27% of total retail sales, up from 25% last year. We ended the quarter with 69 fewer stores versus a year ago, largely the result of closing underperforming Journeys stores as we optimize our store footprint and drive productivity in our remaining store fleet.
Overall, gross margin was down 10 basis points compared to last year, which was ahead of our expectations due to lower planned promotions at Journeys. With our consumer focused on purchasing key items, discounting was not as effective in driving sales, so we moderated our promotional stance. Relative to last year, Journeys gross margin was down 30 basis points due primarily to product mix shift. Schuh's gross margin was down 10 basis points to last year, while J&M's gross margin was up 70 basis points, driven largely by lower freight expense and a favorable mix shift to retail versus wholesale, partially offset by higher retail markdowns. Lastly, Genesco Brands gross margin was up 420 basis points as we lapped last year's freight and logistics cost pressures and benefited from price increases this year.
Moving down the P&L. Adjusted SG&A expense was 41.1% of sales, 170 basis points above last year, with roughly 60 basis points of the increase attributable to the 53rd week. While the 53rd week added to our top-line, it was a low sales volume week that was particularly dilutive to our bottom-line. Adjusting for the 53rd week, SG&A expenses were relatively flat in absolute dollars compared to last year, despite additional variable expenses associated with our direct sales growth, reflecting the impact and benefit of our cost savings initiatives. The increase in operating expenses relative to our guidance was primarily driven by Journeys in addition to the incremental cost to support higher-than-expected direct sales, product returns to our vendors resulted in greater-than-anticipated wage and freight pressure.
Finally, we experienced additional store expenses, including occupancy cost. Lowering overall occupancy cost and reducing the amount of fixed expense in the store channel remains a key priority. In Q4, we achieved a 15% reduction in straight line rent expense on 47 lease renewals across the company with an average term of approximately three years. This brings our full year fiscal '24 renewals to 202, resulting in an 15% reduction in straight line rent expense. With over 50% of our fleet coming up for renewal in the next couple of years, we continue to have a lot of runway to capture additional savings. Although we've made nice headway on rent savings and savings on selling salaries productivity and hours -- higher hourly wages has been an offset and remains a pressure point due to minimum wage and competitive increases, and we continue to work to mitigate that.
In summary, for the fourth quarter, we realized adjusted operating income of $38.5 million compared to adjusted operating income of $51 million for Q4 last year. This all resulted in adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.59 for the quarter versus earnings per share of $3.06 last year. For the 53rd week, operating income was an estimated loss of $2.6 million or approximately $0.18 per share. Turning now to capital allocation and the balance sheet. We ended the quarter in a slightly positive net cash position and generated approximately $108 million of free cash flow. We ended the year with clean inventories, down 17% from last year. With respect to Journeys, we worked with our brand partners to adjust inventory levels, enabling us to end the quarter with inventories 22% lower than last year and well positioned to bring newness and freshness to the assortment.
In addition, our strong cash flow, balance sheet and liquidity under our revolving line of credit provides the financial capacity to support all our strategic efforts. Capital expenditures in Q4 were $10 million, with investments primarily directed to retail stores and our digital and omnichannel initiatives. We opened five stores, which were primarily off-mall and closed 24, ending the quarter with 1,341 total stores. Lastly, we didn't repurchase any shares during the quarter, but bought back 10% over the year and our current authorization remains at $52 million. Over the past five years, we have repurchased almost 50% of our outstanding shares. Regarding cost savings, when you combine our efforts to increase the variability of our cost structure with savings under our cost savings plan, we made meaningful progress on expense reductions in fiscal '24.
Our updated plan now targets a reduction in annualized run rate before reinvesting of $45 million to $50 million by the end of fiscal '25, which is above our original target of $40 million. We expect savings from reduced store rents, selling salary productivity gains, reduced warehouse and logistics cost and reduced freight cost from inventory optimization initiatives. With respect to store closures, we closed 94 Journeys stores in fiscal '24 or roughly 8% of the total fleet. These were primarily mall-based locations. For fiscal '25, we are aiming to close up to 50 more Journeys stores. Savings from these closures will eliminate approximately $14 million of annualized costs from SG&A expense, which adds to the roughly $25 million of annualized savings from the stores closed this past year and is in addition to the $45 million to $50 million of run rate savings we expect to achieve by the end of this year.
The goal of these cost savings in store closure programs is to gain better expense leverage and operating margin expansion even with modest increases in sales. Now turning to guidance. Recognizing that we're starting this year in a difficult position given the product challenges we are facing, I'd like to start providing some specifics around Q1. Starting with the top-line, we don't expect to see the demand curve improve within Journeys core product assortment, which makes up a sizable portion of our spring business. That pressure will make it difficult to drive sales growth. As such, we expect a mid- to high-single digit sales decline versus last year, driven primarily by Journeys and to a lesser extent Genesco Brands Group. Regarding Q1 gross margins, we expect an overall gross margin decrease of 40 basis points to 50 basis points, mostly due to product mix shift at Journeys and Schuh.
As Q1 is also one of our lower volume quarters with expenses at minimum levels and largely fixed, the sales decline will result in roughly 320 basis points to 350 basis points of SG&A deleverage, resulting in an earnings per share loss of approximately $1.10 more than we lost in Q1 last year. Moving to the full year, while we are confident that our turnaround strategy at Journeys can begin to drive improvements in the back half, especially for holiday, since this is a transition year for Journeys, we believe it's prudent to adopt a cautious view throughout fiscal '25 with opportunity for a more significant rebound in fiscal '26. We are also taking a more conservative view for Schuh and J&M as they both cycle robust multi-year compares. Taking this all into account, we expect fiscal '25 total sales to decrease 2% to 3% or down 1% to 2% when excluding the 53rd week last year.
The variance between the high and the low end of the range is primarily due to uncertainty in the consumer and macro environments, particularly in the UK. Regarding EPS, we expect adjusted earnings per share in the range of $0.60 to $1. We expect a challenging first half to give way to positive earnings in the back half as back-to-school and holiday give us the opportunity to generate profitability on higher sales. Net-net, we expect improvement over last year to be weighted to Q4 as further pivoting the Journeys assortment will take time. We expect gross margin rates to be flat to up 10 basis points for the year, with improvement at Schuh mitigating some product and channel mix pressure at Journeys. As a percentage of sales, we expect adjusted SG&A to range from deleverage of 30 basis points to flat with the cost reduction efforts I described earlier and other actions working to partially offset deleverage on fixed expenses.
All of these inputs result in an operating margin that is in the range of fiscal '24's operating margin. Our guidance assumes no additional share repurchases, which results in fiscal '25 average shares outstanding of approximately 11.3 million, and we expect the tax rate to be approximately 26%. In closing, we are taking aggressive actions to accelerate our Journeys' turnaround, and while those efforts will take a little time to create impact in the P&L, we believe they will best position us to unlock Journeys' considerable earnings potential, return to growth and create meaningful shareholder value. Operator, we are now ready to open the call for questions.
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