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

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Tom Greco: Yeah, that is. That’s the right way to think about it. We think we’ve gotten through the majority of the inflationary costs on a LIFO basis. There’s still going to be some. And that’s why we want to be real clear about the cadence in terms of what we’re expecting. Q1 for sure, being the most challenging for the reasons that we pointed out. But yes, we definitely think we’re going to see improvement in gross margin. It will be largely led by LIFO. We have our other initiatives that are also going to help us contribute whether it’s the own brand expansion, the availability. We think we have opportunities there as well, but you are thinking about it correctly.

Seth Basham: All right, great. Thank you. And then another question on the guidance in terms of your store growth. Ex the 20 additional California stores you still have to open, you’re looking at doing only 40 to 60 net new stores, which is pretty low relative to your store base. I know that a year or two ago, you guys had a stated goal of starting to accelerate store growth. Can you just tell us how you’re thinking about growth in the future from a store base standpoint?

Tom Greco: Sure. Well, this year, we want to make sure that we really dial the completion of the California openings. We talked a lot about the delays we experienced last year. And now that we’re open, we’re gaining market share out there. We’ve got some really strong team members that came to us from Pep Boys that have a lot of content knowledge and geographic knowledge, product knowledge for that market. So we want to really drive growth and market share gains out in California and obviously continue to grow the new stores that we have planned for the year. What I would tell you is that we’re doing our strategic plan, and I alluded to this earlier, Seth. We’re taking a very close look at our – the entirety of our asset base to drive our Pro business and leveraging everything that we have.

We’ve got over 300 buildings at Worldpac and Autopart International, over 300 hubs in super hubs. So we believe there’s a way to further optimize our asset base in Pro, and that has an impact on how we think about new store openings in the future. So as we construct our plan, for 2024 through 2026, we’ll obviously be considering how that unfolds in the future. But for this year, we guided the way we guided.

Seth Basham: Understood. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. That was the last question for today. So I’ll hand back to CEO, Tom Greco for any further remarks.

Tom Greco: Well, thanks for joining us today. Our 2023 guidance reflects growth in comp and net sales, as well as GAAP margin expansion. We’re pleased to have the bulk of the integration behind us so we can focus on execution and update our strategy. Our goal is to win in the future and continue to drive strong earnings per share growth and shareholder value. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you for joining today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines.

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