BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:BJ) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kate McShane: Thank you. And as a follow-up question, I know there’s been a lot discussed already on your thoughts around gross margin and SG&A. But if you could talk specifically to the EPS range given today, how do you think about the drivers of the lower end of the range versus the higher end of the range?

Bob Eddy: Look, I think there’s a couple of big things. One is obviously the sales trend, right? If we see — we could see more or less inflation or deflation, and that would certainly impact the bottom line. And the other part is the gas business. You know that that is — has a tendency to be pretty volatile. It’s certainly structurally more profitable today than it ever has been. Embedded in the guidance is some normalization in that from last year’s results, which were sort of high double-digit cents per gallon toward $0.15, $0.16 per gallon. That could be better or worse than that assumption there, too. Those are the two big ones that I would play around with. We’re pretty comfortable in the comp guidance that we’ve got out there.

We’re pretty comfortable with the margin rate guidance we’ve got out there. I mean I think we’ve got multiple levers to hit the EPS guidance. But every year is a little different at the end of the year from the beginning of the year. So we tend to, as we talked about, invest for the long term and manage the short term.

Kate McShane: Thank you.

Bob Eddy: Thanks, Kate.

Operator: That concludes the Q&A portion of today’s call. I will now turn the session back over to Bob Eddy for any final comments.

Bob Eddy: Great. Thank you. Look, we had a great fourth quarter, a great fiscal year, and that concludes a great five-year period for us as well. We’re very bullish in our future at BJ’s Wholesale Club, and we have a lot of irons in the fire to make those dreams come true. So we appreciate your time and effort in attending the call today, and we will talk to you at the end of the first quarter. Thanks so much.

Operator: That brings us to the end. You may now disconnect your lines.+