Boot Barn Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:BOOT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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JimConroy: Sure. On the first part on the West, I would sort of say this for the entire business. Our business was so incredibly strong last year, the way we view it internally. The fact that we’re not down 15% in our third quarter is a victory. The West business, in particular, was a little bit less strong or down relative to last year, but that’s on top of multiple years of growth and just phenomenal execution. As I look forward for the Western region, one of the things that could help them grow from this new elevated base, yes, it gave part of it back in the third quarter, but the base is so much higher than it had been historically, is with the persistent lean that we’ve seen in California. Oftentimes, we call out the short-term benefit of that in our business, but there’s been so much rain that could have a positive impact on the ag markets that were part of the reasons that the Western region declined in the quarter was difficulty in agricultural markets in the Central Valley.

And that’s where we have a tremendous amount of sales volume. In terms of what we’re looking at for our fourth quarter rodeo season in Houston, we had a pretty solid fourth quarter last year. But if you look at all of the quarters from a comparison standpoint, there was nothing notably stronger about our Q4. The Houston concert lineup looks pretty good. And I think we’ll be well positioned to take on that business. So we’ll see. But I don’t think there’s anything particularly high or ominous from a year-over-year comparison standpoint other than what we’ve been cycling for the last several quarters.

Steven Zaccone: Great. That’s helpful. The follow-up question I had is just commentary about the pricing and promotional environment. I think the expectation was promotions will remain confined to the holiday quarter. Is that still the plan as we look forward through calendar ’23?

JimConroy: Sure. I can take it. The — we’re — we run the business with very few promotions 12 months out of the year. When we get into holiday, we have a couple of sales on different things. And our promotional posture this year was very similar to prior years, maybe slightly more than last year when everything was essentially full prices. We were short on goods and comping up 55%, but very similar to two years ago. As we get into the other 11 months, there’s even fewer sales promotions that happen throughout the year. January tends to be a month where everybody, including us, clear some of our inventory. We’re doing that as we — sort of normal course of business, that’s actually — has not put any undue pressure on our margin rate from a year-over-year perspective, which is why we’re calling out accretion for this fourth quarter.

So we don’t expect any change in our promotional posture, very little impact from competitors changing their price or promotion or clearance strategy. And while there has been some noise there, we just don’t react to it anyway. So I wouldn’t expect anything differently than full-price selling and occasional clearance all to move through the small amount of clearance products they have and sort of standard course of business for the balance of the quarter.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Max Rakhlenko with Cowen and Company. Please proceed with your question.

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