DICK’S Sporting Goods, Inc. (NYSE:DKS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

We’re up against a 6% comp, and we want to reflect that the comps will moderate. I’ll turn it — I will turn it over to Navdeep to break down some of your further questions. But I do want to start by saying your question about transaction size, I think you have to start with the fact that transactions were up 7.6%. So, while there was a slight decline in average ticket and we don’t break out whether that’s AUR, UPT, we did find that there were more athletes, so we have more athletes in our database. They shopped more frequently — and in total, they spent more. So, delivering a 5.3% comp with that level of transaction size, we’re really, really pleased with that.

Navdeep Gupta: Good morning, Robby. I think Lauren covered that answer really well. Maybe another way to think about this is if you look at our — the same transaction and ticket versus 2019, we saw much balanced performance. So, that maybe is another way to think about that. And then, as you look to the guidance overall, we are remaining very optimistic and confident about the guidance that we have provided here for 2023.

Operator: Our next question comes from Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs.

Kate McShane: We wondered if we could go back to the merchandise margins and the gross margin side in terms of what is driving the improvement that you expect for gross margins in ’23. Is it because we’re lapping such severe inventory issues and promotions in ’22 that you expect things to be a little bit better? Is there something changing with the vendor relationships or the merch margin to be a little bit better? Any drill down there would be really helpful.

Navdeep Gupta: Good morning, Kate. This is Navdeep. So, we gave two color commentary around the gross margin expectation. First, that we expect that the merch margin and gross margins will improve into 2023, two drivers, merch margin as well as the lower freight expenses that we will start to see the benefit into 2023 as well. In terms of a little bit of more cadence around gross — merch margin itself, as you can imagine, the inventory positions in Q1, both for us as well as the — in the industry was pretty lean and was pretty constrained. So, as we are annualizing that, we expect some level of normalization of the pricing in the first half and that’s what we gave in our kind of a cadence for the merch margin expansion. And as you think about the back half, we also expect the freight expenses to start to have the benefit as the inventory starts to turn because we capitalize those expenses. So, that’s the other factor that we have contemplated in our guidance.

Lauren Hobart: Kate, I just want to pick up one other part of your question. You asked whether we’re lapping severe inventory issues or promotions. I want to be very clear that while we managed through a lot of inventory disruptions last year, there was no return to an overall promotional environment. We cleared through inventory through our value chain stores or Going, Going Gone! chain, and we were able to keep the DICK’S store really looking great for holiday with an assortment of full-price merchandise. And that really was true throughout the entire year. So promotions, I just want to pick up on story that comes up all the time, promotions were not a key factor in our year last year. There was price item discounts, especially on lumps, but it wasn’t a highly promotional environment for us.

Operator: Our next question comes from Chris Horvers with JPMorgan.