Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (NYSE:AAP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Shepherd: I mean not a whole lot. I mean it really is the three drivers that we called out. It’s the inflation, it’s the availability. We do have some transformation related costs that we anticipate we’ll be in Q1. We’ll be able to talk about that a little bit more the next time we meet in whatever is April or May. And those are really the three drivers. I mean obviously, the product costs when they come in, we’re going to incur them under LIFO. And the availability, as we talked about, just it takes some time to get that into our network and get it forward deployed. It’s one thing to get into your distribution center, but we need to get it throughout the network, to make sure we’re available all the time for our customers.

Scot Ciccarelli: Got it. Okay. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Zaccone from Citigroup. Steven, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Steven Zaccone: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Tom, best wishes in the next step. Just to clarify on the first quarter, just to follow-up on that last question. Would you expect first quarter comps to be at the low end of the full year range? Or will they actually be slightly below that full year guidance range?

Jeff Shepherd: Yeah. We’re not going to break out the comps. We feel really good about the 1 to 3 over the course of the year. It’s really difficult at this point. I mean January, December, these timeframes are incredibly volatile. And to try to put some sort of analysis around the first four, six weeks and say that’s going to make our quarter, which, by the way, is our longest quarter, is our 16-week quarter spring selling season. Sometimes it’s Q1, sometimes, it’s Q2. We’re – the least here in Raleigh we’re off to an early spring. But it just is premature to really say whether or not we think comps will be on the low or high end of that range.

Steven Zaccone: Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Then, second question I had was could you talk a bit more about the outlook for SG&A leverage in 2023? What’s the puts and takes? Wages are a pressure point across retail, so curious for your input there? And then, as we shift to GAAP, how should we think about the ability to drive leverage on SG&A? What level of comp growth do you really need on a go-forward basis?

Jeff Shepherd: Yeah. I mean, when it comes to SG&A, you have those transformation and amortization costs that are going to test themselves there. They’re going to be relatively flat. So we don’t expect any significant volatility with those in particular. In terms of some of the puts and takes, you certainly called out the biggest factor, which is the wage inflation. We’re cognizant of that. We’ve modeled wage inflation yet again for 2023. We do think we have some opportunities in terms of overall cost takeout, leveraging some of our – sorry, I’m blanking on the term or – I got My Delivery and

Tom Greco: My Day .

Jeff Shepherd: Yeah. Thank you. So the online – I’m sorry, the automated payroll and getting the hours into – really getting the hours associated with the revenue. And so we’ve been working through that for a number of years. We’ve got some significant opportunities there. So we do feel good that we can get some improvement in our, what we call sales and profit per store. Another big one that we called out, were the start-up costs that we had with our California expansion. And those were sizable in 2022. Good news is we’re beginning to get those stores open. We’ve got nearly 90 stores open. We’ve got a little less than 20 to go. So there’s still going to be some start-up costs there, but it won’t be nearly as sizable as what we saw in 2022. So the combination of all those, gives us a reasonable level of confidence that we’re going to leverage SG&A in 2023.