American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. (NYSE:AEO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michael Rempell: Sure. This is Michael. I’ll take that. The way we look at it, our digital margins are pretty comparable to our store margins. What I would tell you is we’ve been able to start to see that nudge even higher as we’ve been focused on some of the delivery initiatives recently. So as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we’ve been able to drive down and reduce the cost of delivery both in absolute dollars, in cost per shipment, in number of shipments per order while delivering to the customers faster. And that is starting to drive incremental leverage in the direct channel. So we’re certainly excited to see that, and we think there’s more work and more opportunity in front of us. One of the big levers that I talked about in the remarks was the fact that in many parts of retail, in grocery and hard goods, people have been able to leverage their stores as pickup points in a pretty robust way to make a difference in their business.

It’s historically been a very small part of our business, but with some changes that the team made focusing on inventory availability and some of the system changes, we were able to double that in the quarter. And we see a good runway to continue to grow that. That provides a ton of leverage for us because it actually eliminates delivery as a cost and allows us to upsell customers as they come in the store. We’re currently seeing about a 10% attachment rate to those digital sales, and we think we can get that number even higher. So yes, so historically, margins for e-commerce and stores are pretty comparable. We’ve been able to drive the e-commerce margins up in recent quarters, and we see opportunity as we go forward to raise those even higher.

Jonna Kim: Got it. Thank you.

Michael Rempell: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Corey Tarlowe: Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the new store design that you have. And it sounds like it’s early days, but it does also seem like you’re witnessing some pretty promising results from that. So could you maybe talk a little bit about what you’re doing differently in this new store design?

Jen Foyle: Sure. First and foremost, we’ve – Michael mentioned that we’re in three malls, as he stated, Polaris, Palisades and Oakbrook in Illinois. So they’re all semi-different formats, but it’s very focused on more of a modern design, approachable design. The opening — just the entrance alone is very inviting. I was really pleased to see when I went to Palisades to see all three brands in the mall. I mean just our store designs really — we definitely needed a new concept for American Eagle. It was time. We’re calling it lived in. And I really like what I’m seeing. The results are definitely well above average. And we really we feel excited about it. So we’re in the middle of some of these new strategies, AE77, AE 24/7, which is our men’s active concept.

Early reads there are very encouraging to the point where we’re launching some of the product that was tested in fewer stores to all stores. We’re up to a lot over here. Also, just to add on SoHo, our store there now has all brands consolidated into it, including AE77. And we just did our first pass at a remodel there. It will be in full swing headed into November. But just I love what I’m seeing early on. The teams — we only set forth on this initiative about two months ago. This shows you how swiftly our teams work, and they’ve already put together an entire concept around the store. It looks beautiful. I’m going to go revisit it after this call, and I invite everyone to go see it. It’s — we’re calling it The Gateway. It has all of our house of brands, and it’s the entrance into SoHo. So I think it’s just really an exciting concept, and there’s more to come here.

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