Q4 2023 Citi Trends Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Nitza McKee; Senior Associate, IR; ICR
David Makuen; Chief Executive Officer, Director; Citi Trends Inc
Heather Plutino; Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer; Citi Trends Inc
Mike Baker; Analyst; DA Davidson
Chuck Grom; Analyst; Gordon Haskett
Jeremy Hamblin; Analyst; Craig-Hallum Capital Group
John Lawrence; Analyst; Benchmark
Presentation
Operator
Greetings, and welcome to the Citi Trends fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
I would now like to turn the conference over to the Senior Associate, Ms. Nitza McKee. Please go ahead.
Nitza McKee
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on Citi Trends fourth-quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings call. On our call today is Chief Executive Officer, David Makuen; and Chief Financial Officer, Heather Plutino.
Our earnings release was sent out this morning at 6:45 AM Eastern Time. If you have not received a copy of the release, it's available on the company's website under the Investor Relations section at www.cititrends.com. You should be aware that prepared remarks today made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These statements do not guarantee future performance. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on these statements. We refer you to the company's most recent report on Form 10-K and other subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, David Makuen. David?
David Makuen
Thank you, Nitza. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today on our fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2023 earnings call.
I will begin our call with highlights of our financial and operational performance for both the quarter and year to update you on our progress across our strategic initiatives and establish our 2024 outlook. Peter from Gino, our Chief Financial Officer, will then elaborate on financial details for both 2023 and our outlook for fiscal 2024. Then we'll open up the call for your questions.
I am pleased to report that our fourth quarter and annual results were in line with our guidance. We delivered a solid holiday season as our Ready set gift campaign resonated with existing and new customers. Our strong execution of the business across our strategic priorities fueled our performance throughout the quarter. In particular, our focus on rebuilding inventories in targeted product categories drove improved comps. The team's hard work resulted in fourth quarter total sales growth of nearly 3%, EBITDA of $10 million and a strong gross margin of 39.1% throughout the fourth quarter, our team operated with great flexibility and agility. I'm incredibly grateful to our entire organization for their continued execution of our priorities while keeping our customers and neighborhoods at the core of everything we do.
While our customer base consisting mostly of families earning $45,000 per year and less continues to tightly manage discretionary spending in the face of lingering inflationary pressures. Despite this customers, young and all responded well to our edited and trend-right mix of head-to-toe outfits. Specialty design pieces only found at Citi Trends and the full complement of gifts and stocking stuffers. Then we had a strong black Wednesday, followed by peak days, leading up to Christmas. And lastly, a nice finish for New Year's.
Our 10-week holiday selling period comp was nearly flat to last year. Q4 closed with a softer January due to snow ice and cold weather in Southern markets, which is where a high portion of our fleet is located. This explains most of the slowdown in our fourth quarter trend, resulting in a softer and negative 1.5 comp for the quarter, which was still a significant sequential improvement compared to our third quarter results during the quarter, particularly strong categories were home for his big men's apparel, outerwear, kids, apparel and accessories, ladies' footwear and Beauty and Accessories giftables.
Before I move to our 2024 outlook, I wanted to acknowledge the progress we made in 2023 regarding the completion of many initiatives in support of in support of our previously stated strategic areas of focus completing these or making significant progress will help fuel momentum in 2024 and beyond.
First, as I've shared with you before, in support of driving comp store productivity, we have made considerable progress conducting tests and all rollouts of initiatives that unlock both traffic and customer basket building opportunities and drove top line sales in the fourth quarter.
Second, in support of managing inventory and maximizing margin. We've doubled down on fresh training of our BI team to maximize our markups, made selective and wise inventory investments and successfully launched our new ERP system.
Third, in support of controlling SG&A expenses and leveraging our balance sheet. We maniacally kept expenses in check and ensure we invested in the right areas during a challenging year I want to remind you that our model is highly fixed and we run it lean and mean, which means as the top line improves, which it did in the fourth quarter we realized terrific flow through to the bottom line.
Lastly, number four, in our list of 23 areas of strategic focus, executing technology enhancements, the aforementioned ERP launch, coupled with improved analytics emanating from our new data platform brought early benefits to the table that helped us deliver a strong fourth quarter.
Turning our focus to 2024. Today, we establish our full year outlook. For the coming year, we expect mid single digit comp growth coupled with an EBITDA range of $4 million to $10 million, both representing a significant improvement compared to last year to achieve our outlook, it should come as no surprise that we believe that the strategic areas of focus that I've just reviewed remain key themes in 2024 however, we have done some refinements to better reflect our starting point in the new fiscal year. Rest assured, we began working on these well before the end of 2023 naming team members to cast in the details and see them through to execution as the year unfolds.
Let me take a few minutes to provide a summary of our four strategic areas of focus in 2024, number one and by far, the most important area of focus driving comp sales and margin. This encompasses capturing greater share of wallet from African-American and Latino families through assortment optimization, second, optimizing inventory levels and in-stocks to expand margins, further, leveraging freight expenses on higher sales for ramping up marketing reach, and fifth, upgrading the store experience via remodels.
So you can tell, as I mentioned, driving comp sales and margin being the most important area of focus, you can tell that that bucket is full of some really great things to drive our top line. Number two in our 2024 areas of strategic focus, activating tech and analytics. This encompasses over time through the year, maximizing the capabilities of our new systems and to rolling out data tools to drive company-wide fact-based decision making.
Our third area of focus in 2024 is maximizing supply chain. This encompasses improving distribution center productivity and implementing initial steps to improve speed of deliveries to stores.
And lastly, number four for the year enhancing support capabilities. This encompasses investing in training and development programs for our great teams and providing improved tools to field leaders to increase operational productivity in our stores.
With that said, let me provide a quick glimpse of how the first quarter of 2024 is shaping up. Why only halfway through the first quarter, we are encouraged by our quarter to date positive comp that is consistent with our full year outlook and represents sequential improvement versus prior quarters, driven by both traffic growth and strong conversion growth.
Additionally, during the first quarter of 2024, we have several initiatives in place that are delivering strong sales lifts, including store remodels, store-specific category, comebacks and digital and radio marketing. All in all, we will have impacted nearly 30% of our stores in the quarter with incremental efforts to drive top line sales. Most of these initiatives have the potential to roll out to many more stores in Q2 and beyond. A few recent examples of our efforts include we continued to transform comp stores to our CTX. remodeled format. We completed 27 remodels in November.
We continue to see mid to high single digit lifts and now complete these remodels for half the cost versus prior. We completed 20 of the 27 in early fiscal 2024, and we'll pump out at least 20 more during the year. Since August of 2023, we have completed multiple marketing tests and we like what we are seeing. We plan on, including additional marketing spend across digital and radio during key seasonal moments for the remainder of 2024. I can't say enough about our store-specific category comebacks, which are a total team effort to make these works our buy, move and sell teams have worked synergistically to get dozens of select stores in better shape to win back and win new African American and Phoenix customers bolstered by analytics Our teams are improving assortment planning and product allocation, combined with significant staffing upgrades, allowing us to present the right product in the right store at the right time with the right staff.
Lastly, since Q4, we have been aggressively testing evolve in-store presentations of some really important categories. We are in the middle of testing expansions of our juniors and plus assortments for her and an expanded version of our successful two line all in select stores. Both tests are yielding better than expected sales lifts.
I want to quickly comment on this year's tax refund season, although it has unfolded differently from a timing perspective, the refund amount per family is slightly higher than last year and the aggregate amount of refunds, it's catching up nicely to last year's level. What's exciting is that the initiatives I just mentioned have set us up well to capture demand during our elongated tax refund season.
Lastly, our buyer team has done an excellent job getting the style rolling in 2024 by creating an assortment with compelling brands need for Citi Trends, styles and a steady stream of quick ship market goods at record margin levels. And of course, at prices that don't break the bank strength through the quarter to date is broad-based. Our ability to secure appealing trends, fashion and basics across apparel, accessories, footwear and home is deep and broad. Our buying team is traveling coast-to-coast, finding the most compelling content for our customer base that likes to consume our fashion and trend offerings so they can show up and show out in life. As you can hear, we are definitely not standing still. And as always, we're controlling and impacting the areas that are within our control, taking actions that we firmly believe will accelerate top line growth and expand margin, which in turn will produce incremental EBITDA.
Before I turn the call over to Heather, it's important to call out the families we serve, continue to face lingering economic pressures that we are monitoring closely by being the dozens of stores since the beginning of the year. And if I and I have experienced firsthand the pressures, our customers and associates often one and the same are dealing with food prices remain elevated rents and evictions remain high real wage growth is minimal. It's still tough out there.
We understand our customers' financial dynamics better than most. And we are acutely aware that our role in the neighborhood is to provide easy and pleasant access access to an assortment that helps you show up for whatever comes your way, empowering new the customer to bring opportunities to life matter, your age, financial situation, your skin color, our store teams, welcome you like a friend and find ways to give you a specialty store like attention and respect so that you can leave with as many items as you want in your bag that make you happy.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Kevin to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results in detail.
As well as our outlook other.
Heather Plutino
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. As David mentioned, we are pleased to have delivered fourth quarter and full year 2023 results in line with the guidance we provided. The hard work of our dedicated and scrappy teams is paying off with a stabilizing business driven by our strategic inventory, rebuild remodels, in-store experience, upgrades and the marketing test David described earlier, our disciplined management of the middle of the P&L, plus the positive comp sales trends we are seeing first quarter to date, we have a confidence in the 2024 outlook, which I will detail shortly.
I am also pleased to report that our balance sheet remained healthy ending fiscal 2023 with no debt no drawings on our $75 million revolver and $80 million in cash. This strong financial position gives us the flexibility to fund our growth initiatives all in support of our 2024 out.
Now let's turn to the specifics of our fourth quarter financial results. As a reminder, Q4 2023 included an additional week compared to last year's fourth quarter. Total sales for the quarter were $215.2 million, including $11.2 million from the extra week. Total sales increased 2.7% versus Q4 2020 to in line with our guidance. Comparable store sales calculated on a 13-week to 13-week basis decreased 1.5% compared to last year, a significant improvement to Q3's negative 6.2% comp.
Q4 gross margin was 39.1% versus 39.5% in Q4 2022. The 40 basis point decline from last year was due to slightly higher markdowns as we successfully cleared through year end seasonal products. It were somewhat impacted by winter weather. In addition, as we discussed during the Q3 call, we saw slightly higher shrink versus last year. We continue our cross-functional focus on this headwind, and I am confident that we are moving in the right direction.
Freight as a rate of sales moderated in Q4. Just as we outlined during our third quarter call, it was slightly lower than last year. For the quarter, we are making strides to further leverage the freight line in 2024 through new vendor partnerships and data insights. Adjusted Q4 SG&A expense dollars increased 5.3%. It represented 34.5% of sales compared to 33.6% in Q4 2020 due to lower sales and the extra week of operations drove the rate deleverage in the quarter. Adjusted operating income for the fourth quarter was $5.1 million with adjusted EBITDA of $10 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.53.
Turning to the full year fiscal 2023 was challenging, both for Citi Trends and for the customers we serve. We are not satisfied with our financial results for the year, and we do not believe that they represent the full earnings potential of our brands. That said, throughout the year, we never stopped playing offense, controlling what we can control and continuing to improve the foundation of the business. The details of our full year results are as follows.
Total fiscal 2023 sales were $748 million, a decrease of 5.9% versus 2022. Comparable store sales calculated on a 52-week to 52-week basis decreased 6.8%. Adjusted gross margin was 38.2% for the year and adjusted EBITDA was $1.5 million. Adjusted loss per share was $1.28 for the year. During the year, we opened five new stores and closed 14 as part of our ongoing fleet optimization efforts, ending the year with 602 locations, we also remodeled 15 stores, which continued to register mid to high single digit sales lift.
Now turning to the year-end balance sheet. As I mentioned earlier, we ended the year with $80 million in cash and no debt. We exited Q4 with total inventory dollars up 23% versus last year, which puts us in a strong position to fuel the two important moments for our customers in the first half of the year, tax refund season and Easter. While planning for this increase, we considered a number of factors. As we shared in previous conversations, we entered February of last year, too late in reaction, we have been strategically executing our targeted inventory rebuilds in advance of these important Q1 moments.
Secondly, as we've mentioned before, we have been launching our Seasons too late to capture the full demand potential and therefore, we set our fresh spring assortment earlier than ever. Third Easter falls earlier this year, driving earlier product flow. All of these factors are in support of delivering a strong top line increase in Q1. We're excited about the quality, breadth and depth of the value offering our BI team has curated for the first quarter. Importantly, exiting Q1 2024, we expect our inventory balance to be up low single digits versus prior year.
Now turning to our 2024 outlook. As David mentioned in his remarks, we entered fiscal 2024 with several tailwinds, including rebuild inventory levels, improved planning and allocation capabilities and upgraded in-store experience and new supply chain vendor partnerships. We continue to refresh refresh our fleet through our remodel program and began marketing tests, which are informing our 2024 advertising plans and supporting each of these initiatives, our teams are relying on upgraded tools to use more easily accessible facts to make informed business driving decisions.
The foundation of our business has been strengthened through these efforts and the top line momentum we experienced in Q4 and Q1 to date tells us that our efforts are beginning to pay off. As we focus on the four strategic areas David laid out earlier, we are excited about the sales and profit growth we expect to drive in fiscal 2024. The details of our 2024 outlook are as follows. Full year comp store sales are expected to grow by mid single digits compared to fiscal 2023.
We expect full year gross margin to expand by approximately 75 to 100 basis points, driven by ERP system benefits and freight expense leverage. As I mentioned earlier, from new vendor partnerships and data insights, we are planning an SG&A dollar increase for the year of approximately 2.5% to 3% primary driver of the increase is incentive compensation with merit increases for the first time in two years, promotions that had been delayed and a reset bonus pool.
In addition, we are planning a modest increase in marketing and technology resulting full year EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $4 million to $10 million. We plan to open up to five new stores, remodel approximately 40 locations and closed 10 to 15 underperforming stores ending fiscal 2024 with approximately 595 stores. Finally, we expect full year capital expenditures to be approximately $20 million.
Before I turn the call back to David, let me reiterate how pleased we are to have driven a significant top line trend improvement in the fourth quarter and to have delivered results in line with guidance. I am optimistic about fiscal 2024 and remain confident that our amazing team will deliver on our strategic initiatives with conviction, driving further top line momentum and profitability improvements, all while remaining keenly focused on the customers and neighborhoods we serve.
With that, I'll turn the call back to David for closing comments even.
David Makuen
Thanks, Heather. Well, today you heard how over the course of the fall months, we have devoted considerable effort towards improving foundational aspects of our business. We also shared some scalable steps we can take such as store remodels and targeted category inventory rebuilds to improve top-line sales.
You also heard some positives coming from our testing of new initiatives, but we are very optimistic about driving top line sales throughout the rest of the year.
Looking forward, we remain extremely proud of our connection to the neighborhoods we serve, offering compelling trend-right merchandise to the entire family at incredible values, our differentiated position in markets where others Arch, continue to drive our customers' loyalty and continued engagement even when their economic reality is difficult we are entering the new fiscal year with optimism excited to drive long-term profitable growth and shareholder value while unlocking the full potential of this important brand.
For I turn the call over to the operator, I want to say one more time. Thank you to the entire Citi Trends team for your hard work, resiliency and unwavering focus on serving families across so many great neighborhoods in 33 states. It is because of this team that we ended the year stronger than we started and it is because of you and I'm confident that fiscal 2024 will be even better.
With that, we're out of time ready to take your questions. Over to you, Craig.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Mike Baker, DA Davidson.
Mike Baker
Okay, thank you. So the improvement in sales trends are impressive and sort of goes without saying that that's a good step what I'm wondering about though, is the other part about the leverage and the flow through you don't really see it in your guidance because of the SG&A increase. So I guess could you just give us a little more color? I mean, I guess you said it's mostly on incentive comp, but what would the SG&A would have been more flat without the incentive comp increases and is that, you know what we should expect as we think as we go into the future, that kind of leverage. And as part of that, just a subtlety, the 2.5% to 3% increase, is that on a 52 versus 52 week basis or 52 versus 53, meaning 52 versus 53 it's sort of even more incremental growth.
David Makuen
Hey, Mike, good morning. It's another let's unpack there. So let me tackle the expense piece first, just on a 52 versus versus 53.
Okay, because we are going off of reported SG&A. And as far as the increase goes, the majority of it is incentive comp that we had to bake back in right we had been, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we had not done merit increases for years. We have held off on promotions all in that maniacal focus on the center of the P&L, right and controlling our expenses. And then, of course, the the bonus pool being reset on an annual basis that that happens every year and impacts our SG&A live but we be we believe it's the right thing to do for our people and making sure that we keep them retained and interested and focused on all of the amazing initiatives that we have going on.
Mike Baker
So is it fair as a follow-up, is it fair to say there's sort of a a little bit of a onetime step-up in terms of the catch-up on on merit increases and promotions and promotions. And so should we shouldn't see that same kind of year-over-year increase in SG&A dollars as we look beyond 2024 yet one you year over year, it becomes the new base like freight.
David Makuen
And then next year next year, our hope is that we pay merit increase again, freight and that we keep refilling the bonus pool and earning and paying out the bonus pool. So this is and this is I would consider this the new base.
Operator
Chuck Grom, Gordon Haskett.
Chuck Grom
Hi, this is Eric on for Chuck. I was just curious, as you can talk about the comp outlook for mid-single digit. You said that you're kind of carrying that for Q1. But Q1 also has by far the easiest compare compares, get tougher over the course of the year. And you also have an election in the shorter holiday period in the back half. Just curious sort of how the building blocks to get to the comp work and the sort of how you see it cutting sequentially throughout the year?
David Makuen
Hey, Eric, it's David. Thanks for joining and good question. I think the way I look at it is we as we highlighted, we have a number of initiatives that we're just getting going on and they're contributing some really positive lifts in this quarter and yet they're pretty young, if you will, in terms of their of their age as an initiative and are in limited stores. As you heard me state, we're going to touch roughly about 30% of our chain by the end of the first quarter, but we have a lot more to go.
So what I talked about, we are scaling and rolling out some of these tests and initiatives that's going to fuel the rest of the year. So we're not as sort of worried about the lap. We're frankly more focused on building up the base. And we believe that we can continue the momentum through Q2 three and four. We have these key moments that our customers rely on us on for I know, for example, part of the Mother's Day, July fourth and the first half, and then obviously back-to-school and holiday, and we've got really great plans supporting all those where we believe we can do quite a bit better than LY. with our initiatives fueling the growth.
Nitza McKee
Derek, you are asking about the election impact, if I could. And we went back and studied prior presidential election years. And then I can tell you that traditionally the impact is minimal to nonexistent so we don't see that as being a headwind or tailwind.
Chuck Grom
That's great. I'm just wondering if you'd talk about the marketing and just curious what kind of lift you're seeing there what you're doing different and how that sort of that test chips. So what you're doing this year and what does the customer going to see and the messaging from you? That's different and they're right.
David Makuen
Great question again, Eric, I'll keep that relatively high-level. There's a bunch in there, but I think most importantly, we are sending a message that really hits on our brand assortments. We're really coming out strong with, hey, we're your destination in the neighborhood for amazing trends, and we're being very targeted about it. You may recall in the audience may recall, we draw a lot of our customers within a five mile radius of our stores, pretty tight-knit in the neighborhood we go out as far as 10 mile.
And so depending on the store location, we're going in a pretty targeted fashion at the ZIP code level through digital social media advertising in that case. And then we're also blanketing entire markets in that case will bring in radio and as well as traditional and streaming radio. So we're kind of doing a somewhat a different mix, depending on the task at hand. But what's exciting is we're rebuilding market share thus far in our test from that local community.
So we're waking up some lapsed customers and they're coming back and we're enticing new customers to come back in and out through our testing so far, remember, we started in August of 23 and have done many of them through literally yesterday, and we've started a new run today in five more markets we're seeing really healthy lifts. You know, I would tell you akin to sort of our remodel efforts that we've quoted and that kind of mid to high single digits. So we're excited about the potential of it. We will be very choosy and very targeted. I want to be clear, we will we want to advertise the entire chain. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking much more about targeted efforts in markets where we believe we can capture more wallet share and so far, so good.
Operator
Jeremy Hamblin, Craig-Hallum Capital Group.
Jeremy Hamblin
Thanks for taking the question. So I wanted to come back to the quarter-to-date trends. There's quite a bit of noise. I'm here in queue one or in the reasons you mentioned, we've got leap year. We've got the lapping of the reductions in SNAP benefits in March, and I was hoping to get maybe a little bit more granular on just understanding the impact of the euro. Again, you, as you noted, tax refund season started a week later this year, which probably puts you behind a little bit at the beginning of February. But just in terms of what you're you're seeing from here as we've gotten into March, have you seen that normalization, as you noted, tax refunds up a little bit or have you started to see a bit more improvement? In other words, are we building a little bit of momentum here on comp trends?
David Makuen
So Jeremy, thanks for the question. I'll say it really simple. You're spot on. And the six day delay and the delay in amount of refunds dispersed has been a little wonky, but it has caught up. There's still some catching up to do, as you know. But our trend from a kind of a cadence perspective through the quarter to date has definitely improved in March versus Feb. And I want to re-highlight that being ready for that, even though we didn't predict it is really paying off and setting up our inventory levels in a healthy manner at the end of January, early Feb really has positioned us well as it turns out to capture sort of a more elongated tax refund selling season. So you're spot on earlier Easter, we believe, will only help March. And then as we roll into April, really well positioned thanks to the early setup to deliver the quarter so our we're liking what we're seeing based on your observations for sure.
Jeremy Hamblin
Great. And then I wanted to come you come around to gross margin guide here, which I think implied is about 38.9% to 39.1 for the year. Just in terms of what was the overall drag in 2023 from shrink, which I think you said is still a bit elevated?
And then, Heather, what is implied on the guidance for the year regarding shrink is are we expecting that to be flat or are we expecting some improvement on maybe a little bit more color around the gross margin guide would be helpful.
David Makuen
Yes. Hey, Jeremy, thanks for the questions. So a couple of things to remind you about with Frank First, this is not a new story for Sydney trends. Strength is something that we have been dealing with for decades, and it just happened to have reared its ugly head in Q three.
And remember that conversation it was a handful of stores based on their physical inventory counts, causing our accrual, which we test on a regular basis throughout the year, we are not a one-time per year account and scenario those those results came back and worse than we had expected, right? So we'll continue to see some of that. We can't I can't I can't tell you, Jeremy, that all of our stores are just fine. Thank you.
Heather Plutino
And we continue to see to see some of it. But we're focused on it was formed on it and pulling every lever as we always do to make sure that we're controlling the impact on a full year basis and one more thing sorry, before I get into full year that the shrink as part of our gross margin calculation is a small component is the frustrating component. Don't get me wrong, but it is a small component, okay.
So it's not we're not talking meaningful amounts here. And we saw an increase in the 23 versus 22 to the tune of call it 25 to 30 basis points as we turn the corner into 2024. The guide implies that some of that headwind, it continued, but it's really minor because remember the back half of the year, it was impacted by those unfavorable results. So we'll see some headwind in the first half of the year and then kind of flat in the second half of the year. So in total, it's really pretty pretty immaterial for the full year.
Operator
John Lawrence, Benchmark.
John Lawrence
Very good morning. Thanks, guys. I'm hesitating heavy. Have you been able to quantify obviously the last half of January and I were sitting in the weather zone where I'm sure you were close to better better part of a week and obviously that flows through as it was a slow period of time, assume stores were closed for multiple days. Any chance you can quantify what do you think that might have cost?
David Makuen
I know it's good to hear from you. I appreciate the question. So yes, you are right in the heart of it right with the ice and cold weather in parts of the country that are just not prepared for that. We definitely saw a hold back in traffic and we've studied it. We've stared at it. We think that it is on our calculations, which is never an exact science that does that the sales were impacted to the degree that we would have trended similarly. So the level of exiting New Year, whether that whether the holdback not occurred so recalls, our holiday sales release the 10 week as of holiday included in that release, our comps were negative 0.3 darn near flat.
John Lawrence
Great. Great. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes, yes, I mean, excuse me, yes, David, when you when you look at all the things that that occurred during the fourth quarter all the progress. What would you say was as far as the systems concerned? I know you were getting at the third quarter. We talked about some of that and I see or what would you say as you continue through that period up to now? What does the system telling you market and what are you going and learning from from at this point in time, John, and if I clarify, what do you mean by system? I want to make sure I understand. I'm sorry, the ERP, the ERP and allocate all of them gotten?
David Makuen
Yes, let me give you a quick update on where we are similar to probably what I mentioned in the call. The launch went successfully end of August which we reported in the November call. And like with any new system, we've gotten to know it more and more users have become more accustomed to how to apply it to our business as the weeks and months have progressed and we've kind of sitting right at the six month mark in a really good place. We use it to our benefit as I mentioned in the main call today to fuel some really good insights and actions that impacted Q4.
And most importantly, some actions that impacted our Q1 2024 setup. So we're more or less exactly on track with what we knew would be the case in terms of learning curve and and getting to know and use the system. I think the most exciting thing coming out of it is quite simply insights. I mentioned in the call this idea of a new data platform that's included typically in it and a good ERP system. And we're leveraging that data platform literally down to the store skew weak level if necessary, to drive different decisions around allocations, replenishment. And and that idea of sort of is it in the right store, is it in the right place at the right time, et cetera?
So we are, as you can tell by my energy, we're really pumped about it and we think it's over time like we have stated many times over time, but will be a really nice benefit to the up to the top line and bottom line of our business and where we're cooking with GAAP.
Operator
Mr. Makuen, there are no further questions at this time.
David Makuen
Thanks, Frank, and thanks, everybody, for joining us today. Happy upcoming Easter and Passover we'll see you next time.
Operator
That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines and have a great day, everyone.
