Caleres, Inc. (NYSE:CAL) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Diane Sullivan: Maybe I’ll just start Mitch and give you a little perspective. Recently obviously because of the seasonality of everything and with the weather being is a little more challenging late October into early November. As that’s changed those categories that are more seasonally influenced not only at Famous, but everywhere has shown really good rebound. So as you would expect, that that’s very much kind of what our performance looks like. I think the other thing is that there is tremendous amount of shifting going on and in the macro environment that we wanted to make sure that we really had and the right kind of room in the fourth quarter to make sure sort of delivered that the earnings per share that we laid out there and gave Famous plenty of room and the company to make sure that we could do that and go into ’23 in a way that we felt was really teeing up and continuing to support the momentum. So Jay and Jack, I’m happy to have you add any other comments.

J. Schmidt: I’ll just said, we did see boots off to a strong start in September and Famous and then as it got warmer, it cooled off a little bit the trend and then going into November, it started to pick up again. So we’re feeling good about that piece of it with the fashion part of the booth business being the strongest right now.

Jack Calandra: I would just add that I think the results we’ve seen quarter to date on Famous are pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in the industry and just a reminder, which is probably different from a lot of others is that Q4 is our smallest quarter. So less material on the full year than I think some of our other players in the industry.

Mitch Kummetz: And then just to follow up on boots, can you just remind me if I recall correctly last year, December was particularly warm. I don’t know if that was a negative on your boot business last year, plus I think there are a lot of latent boot deliveries. So just as you as you look at that comparison, as you kind of kind of see the quarter playing out, how much of an opportunity is there on boots over the balance of the quarter? And even on the brand — on the BP side just in terms of maybe replenishment, can you kind of walk me through that.

J. Schmidt: Yes. Well, on a BP side, I’ll start at that piece. Our boots are really significant portion of our business up to 30% across the portfolio and we do see more opportunity. Our inventories really were very at a line last year and so we really didn’t have the boot inventory. We’re in good place there now. So we do see nice sell through is coming through as we go in the fourth quarter in that piece of it and even with Famous boots in Q3 were actually up a little bit through the quarter and we do feel like we have more opportunity there as we go in, particularly on the fashion part of the boot business, which seems to me the best part right now.

Mitch Kummetz: And then Jack, just on — again on Q4, just maybe I haven’t kind of had the chance to sort of back into the margins for the quarter, but can you just kind of maybe kind of high level talk about some of the puts and takes that you’re thinking about Q4, maybe especially on kind of the merch margin side and kind of how you’re anticipating promotions.