Five Below, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIVE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Five Below, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIVE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript March 20, 2024

Five Below, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $3.65 EPS, expectations were $3.78. FIVE isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Five Below Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today’s event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christiane Pelz, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Please go ahead.

Christiane Pelz: Thank you, Rafale. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for Five Below’s fourth quarter 2023 financial results conference call. On today’s call are Joel Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Kristy Chipman, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. After management has made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. I need to remind you that certain comments made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements.

Those risks and uncertainties are described in the press release and our SEC filings. The forward-looking statements made today are as of the date of this call. We do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements. In this presentation, we will refer to our SG&A expenses. For us, SG&A means selling, general and administrative expenses, including payroll and other compensation, marketing and advertising expense, depreciation and amortization expense and other selling and administrative expenses. If you do not have a copy of today’s press release, you may obtain one by visiting the Investor Relations page of our website at fivebelow.com. I will now turn the call over to Joel.

Joel Anderson: Thank you, Christiane, and thanks everyone, for joining us for our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. As discussed in early January at the ICR conference, we were pleased with our holiday sales led by an amazing assortment of Wow products sourced by our passionate merchants. For the full fourth quarter, despite the impact of unfavorable January weather, sales ended at the midpoint of our guidance and comparable sales were slightly above the high end of guidance. Consistent with the rest of the year, results for both the holiday period and the quarter overall were achieved through comp transaction growth led by the Five Beyond format stores, which continued to outperform the non-Five Beyond format stores. These results illustrate the effectiveness of our conversion strategy, the relevancy of the extreme value trend right products and the fun treasure hunt shopping experience we offer to our customers.

Total fourth quarter sales were $1.34 billion, or growth of over 19% and comparable sales increased 3.1%, driven by outperformance in the candy, style, sports and seasonal worlds. Despite these strong sales results earnings per share of $3.65 was at the low end of our internal expectations and can be fully attributed to higher-than-planned shrink. Our prior expectations assumed that our mitigation efforts would result in a reduction of the shrink rate we observed earlier in the year versus consistent rate we noted in our January physical inventories. Kristy will discuss the impact of the higher shrink on our financial results in more detail shortly. Underpinning these results is the progress our team continues to make against our key strategic pillars, which drive our long-term growth.

Let me review each one. First, store expansion. As a leading high-growth retailer with a stated goal of achieving 3,500 plus Five Below locations nationwide by 2030, new store openings remain vital to our growth plan. In 2023, we opened a record 205 new stores, including 64 in the fourth quarter with a total ending count of 1,544 stores across 43 states. Following the pandemic-driven disruption and delays to our store opening plans, we are firmly back on track as evidenced by the stepped-up store growth in 2023 versus 150 new stores openings in 2022. We achieved this growth by playing offense and refocusing resources while also demonstrating flexibility to pursue leases outside of our traditional approach. We create efficiencies and opportunities across our deal making, legal, new stores, and hiring teams to achieve the growing number of store openings.

For example, our streamlined real estate review process reduced the time needed to execute leases. We also proactively secured 23 leases from bankrupt retailers and tested alternative venues per store, such as grocery-anchored centers. With this flexibility, we were able to capitalize on various opportunities in very desirable existing centers. We are pleased with the outcome thus far for the class of 2023. Second, store potential. This pillar is all about increasing average unit volume or AUVs, including growing our Five Beyond format stores and product offering. We’ve been focused on converting existing stores to this new format, which highlights the store within a store Five Beyond section. We successfully converted over 450 in fiscal 2023 or more than one a day with nearly 400 completed in the first half alone.

Combined with the 250 converted stores in 2022, we now have approximately 700 stores or over 50% of our comp base in the Five Beyond format. Our strong sales and transactions in these converted stores demonstrate the appeal of Five Beyond. Feedback from customers on our ability to provide extreme value in new and existing product categories has been very positive. Our third pillar is product and brand strategy. We are a merchandise-driven company, and our buyers scour the globe to bring our customers the value, trends, wow and newness that keep them coming back to Five Below. In 2023, strong performers included licenses such as Hello Kitty, Disney and Harry Potter as well as trends like hydration and collectibles and the continuation of squish malls.

In addition, our version of need-based categories like candy, food, beverage and beauty continue to outperform. The flexibility of our model with our eight worlds is unique and enables our teams to quickly introduce trend-right relevant products to our customers. As we’ve seen in the past, our growing scale opens up even more incredible opportunities to source amazing products across categories, our customers will love. This year, we reached a key milestone of opening our first global sourcing office in India, shipping and selling products sourced from there for the first time in the fourth quarter. We are excited to work more closely with factories across the region, which increases collaboration, quality and innovation and will help get products to the U.S. faster.

Brand awareness is the product of our growing scale and improved target marketing. As we continue to open locations in new and existing DMAs and convert more stores to Five Beyond, we are bringing our brand to millions more people each year. Our aided brand awareness is holding steady in the mid-60s in the majority of our markets with the exception of the newer markets out West, which are lower. We believe this continues to be an opportunity for us to increase brand awareness in each of our markets. The customer data and analytics team is working closely with our marketing team, to ensure we are reaching the right customers through digital marketing to both retain existing customers and attract new audiences. We have improved our ability to meet our customers where they are, whether it be Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat among other social media platforms.

We are still in the early stages of this journey and see great future potential to both increase brand awareness as well as customer loyalty. The fourth pillar is focused on inventory optimization. Inventory is a key asset we leverage to drive sales and maximize profits, while scaling the business as a high-growth retailer. We have already made many improvements to our systems and infrastructure over the last several years, implementing new retail merchandising, inventory ordering and distribution management platforms, while also increasing ship center capacity and capabilities. We still have a huge opportunity to make further strides, particularly in the movement and levels of inventory. We are now integrating our new capabilities to improve inventory forecasting ordering replenishment and flow, which will improve turns, in stocks and end-to-end visibility.

These improvements are key to supporting our future high growth. Crew innovation is the fifth pillar. In 2023, we once again conducted the annual associate engagement survey, inviting all Five Below crew members to participate, including full-time and part-time crews across our stores, ship centers and Wild town. Our engagement and overall scores continued to grow. Our engagement scores landed us in the top quartile of Gallup’s overall company database, which includes thousands of companies across multiple industries. We are very proud with the level of engagement of our crew and we will continue to focus on hiring outstanding crew members. In the fourth quarter alone, we hired a new hiring milestone of 20,000-plus seasonal associates. Now, let me turn to 2024.

We still expect to open between 225 and 235 new stores, and convert approximately 200 stores to end the year with about 70% of our comp stores in the Five Beyond format. We are excited to see the traffic and customers this format is generating. We will leverage our growing scale and sourcing capabilities to deliver even more Wow product to our customers. Our data analytics and marketing teams will continue to refine our marketing and targeting strategies to improve upon an already strong start to utilizing customer data to help inform decision-making. We expect inventory to benefit from AI-powered tools and our crew to embrace simpler processes and systems utilizing technology. In summary, we are pleased with the progress we made on our strategic initiatives throughout 2023.

While 2024 has started off more slowly than we expected, which we believe is due to the slower start of tax refunds, we are encouraged by the early sales of our Easter seasonal category. We are excited for 2024 and to deliver against our key operational priorities as we advance toward our triple-double goals. With that, I’ll turn it over to Kristy to review the financials in more detail.

Kristy Chipman: Thanks, Joel, and good afternoon, everyone. I will begin my remarks with a review of our fourth quarter and Fiscal 2023 results and then discuss guidance for the first quarter and full year of fiscal 2024. As a reminder, the fourth quarter of 2023 and the fiscal year included an extra week versus 2022, and the upcoming fiscal year 2024. Total sales in the fourth quarter of 2023 were up $1.34 billion, up 19.1% versus the fourth quarter of 2022 or up 14.9% on a 13-week basis. The 53rd week added sales of approximately $48 million. We opened a record 63 net new stores during the quarter and ended the year opening 204 net new stores to end the year with 1,544 stores. Comparable sales increased 3.1% for the fourth quarter of 2023 versus a 1.9% comp increase in the fourth quarter of 2022.

The comp increase for the fourth quarter was driven by a 3.9% increase in comp transactions, partially offset by a 0.8% decrease in comp average ticket. The ticket trends we have seen in recent quarters continued in the fourth quarter as lower units per transaction were partially offset by higher AUR. Gross profit increased 21.9% to $551.6 million from $452.4 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2022. Gross margin in Q4 was 41.2%, increasing approximately 90 basis points from 40.3% last year. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by lower inbound freight, leverage on fixed costs due to the extra week, offset in part by higher shrink, which came in above our expectations. SG&A as a percentage of sales for the fourth quarter of 2023 increased approximately 100 basis points year-on-year to 21.2% and primarily related to lapping last year’s cost management strategies as well as higher incentive comp versus the prior year.

Operating income increased 18.9% to $268.4 million inclusive of $11.4 million from the extra week. Operating margin of 20.1% was consistent with the fourth quarter of 2022. And the effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2023 was 25.8% compared to 24.8% in the fourth quarter of 2022. Net income for the fourth quarter increased 18% to $202.2 million or $3.65 per diluted share from – excuse me, $171.3 million or $3.07 per diluted share last year. The EPS benefit from the 53rd week was approximately $0.15. For fiscal 2023, total net sales were $3.56 billion, an increase of 15.7% over fiscal 2022. On a 52-week basis, sales increased 14.1% to $3.51 billion. Comparable sales increased 2.8% due to a 3.9% increase in comp transactions, partially offset by an approximate 1% decrease in comp average ticket.

Gross profit for the full year increased approximately 16% to $1.27 billion. Gross margin increased by approximately 20 basis points to 35.8%, driven primarily by lower inbound freight, partially offset by higher shrink. SG&A as a percentage of sales for the year increased 60 basis points to 25% from 24.4% in 2022, primarily due to lapping last year’s cost management strategies and higher incentive compensation this year. Operating income of $385.6 million increased 11.7% in fiscal 2023 compared to last year. Operating margin of 10.8% decreased approximately 40 basis points from last year’s operating margin of 11.2% as lower inbound freight was more than offset by higher shrink and SG&A. As we discussed last quarter, our guidance assumed a shrink headwind of 50 to 70 basis points in fiscal year 2023 and we expected our margins to delever by approximately 10 basis points at the midpoint versus the prior year due to higher shrink, partially offset by both direct shrink mitigation and other expense reductions.

Actual shrink levels for the full year came in at approximately 100 basis points higher than the prior year before accounting for approximately 30 basis points of true-up. Net income was $301.1 million versus $261.5 million in 2022, an increase of 15.1% and our effective tax rate for the year was 24.9% compared to 24.7% in 2022. Diluted earnings per share was $5.41 for fiscal 2023, an increase of 15.4% versus $4.69 for fiscal 2022. Diluted earnings per share included a $0.07 benefit from share-based accounting in 2023 and a $0.04 benefit in 2022. We ended the year with approximately $468 million in cash, cash equivalents, short and long-term investment securities and no debt. This was an increase of approximately $69 million versus 2022. Our inventory balance at the end of the year was approximately $584.6 million, an increase of approximately 11%, while average inventory per store decreased approximately 4%.

With respect to CapEx, we spent $335 million in gross CapEx in fiscal 2023, excluding tenant allowances. This reflected opening 205 new stores completing over 450 conversions to the new Five Beyond format and investments in systems and infrastructure, including the beginning of the expansion of two distribution centers. We also made share repurchases of about $80 million or approximately 500,000 shares in 2023. Now I’d like to turn to our guidance for the full year and first quarter of fiscal 2024. For 2024, sales are expected to be in the range of $3.97 billion to $4.07 billion, an increase of 13.1% to 15.9% on a 52-week basis. The comparable sales increase is expected to be flat to 3%. As Joel previously mentioned, we plan to open between 225 and 235 new stores, reflecting unit growth of approximately 15%.

For the full year, the midpoint of our guidance assumes a flat operating margin on a 52-week basis, while gross margin is expected to expand in part due to lapping the onetime shrink true-ups from 2023 and that expansion is expected to be offset by G&A due to higher depreciation and payroll expenses. Again, we have not assumed any benefit from an improvement in shrink levels in 2024 in this guidance. We are forecasting a slight increase in interest income this year due to higher average invested balances versus 2023 offset partially by the expectation that interest rates will decrease in the back half of the year. We expect a full year effective tax rate for 2024 of approximately 25.5%, which does not include any potential impact from share-based accounting.

Net income is expected to be in the range of $318 million to $346 million, representing a growth rate of approximately 8.6% to 18.2% on a 52-week basis versus 2023. Diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $5.71 to $6.22, implying year-on-year growth of 8.6% to 18.3% on a 52-week basis. This guidance does not include any potential impact from share repurchases. We expect approximately $365 million in gross CapEx, excluding the impact of tenant allowances. This reflects the opening of between 225 and 235 new stores, approximately 200 conversions as well as the completion of the Georgia and Arizona distribution center expansion and the start of the expansion at our Indiana distribution center as well as investments in systems and infrastructure.

For the first quarter of 2024, net sales are expected to be in the range of $826 million to $846 million, an increase of 13.7% to 16.5%. We plan to open approximately 55 to 60 new stores in the first quarter this year as compared to 27 stores opened in the first quarter last year and we are assuming a first quarter comparable sales increase in the range of flat to 2%. Diluted earnings per share for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 is expected to be in the range of $0.58 to $0.69 versus $0.67 in diluted earnings per share in the first quarter of 2023. The first quarter of 2023 had a $0.06 benefit to EPS from share-based accounting and the potential impact from share-based accounting for 2024 is not included in our guidance. The midpoint of this EPS guidance assumes operating margin deleverage of approximately 80 basis points entirely driven by higher SG&A, due to higher planned marketing, payroll expenses and deleverage on fixed costs.

While shrink will be a headwind in Q1, it will be offset by lower freight and distribution costs. As is our practice, we are not providing quarterly guidance beyond Q1. However, I do want to note that we expect margin improvement in our margin profile as we move into Q2 and Q3. This is because we cycle a marketing shift in Q2 and shrink true-ups in Q3, creating easier comparisons in quarters two and three before we face the comparison of the extra week last year and the shorter holiday season. With that, I’d like to turn the call back to, Joel.

Joel Anderson: Before turning to questions, I want to reiterate what a great year it was from a sales perspective and my gratitude to the awesome Five Below crew who helped drive this performance, along with achievement of key strategic initiatives that we just talked about that are critical to the success of our continued long-term growth. While we know shrink, is industry-wide and a societal problem that accelerated over the last year, I want to be specific, but what we are doing at Five Below regarding the 2023, shrink results that we observed. We tested many shrink mitigation initiatives late in Q3, into Q4, including product-related tests, front-end initiatives and guard programs. The most significant change we made across most of the chain was to limit the number of self-checkout registers that were open while positioning an associate upfront to further assist customers.

In response to the continued elevated shrink, we saw during our January physicals – we immediately implemented additional mitigation efforts based on our test learnings from 2023. Specifically, we have now evolved to associate, assisted checkout in all of our stores. In addition, in our high shrink stores, the primary option for checkout is more of the traditional, over-the-counter associate checkout. We expect to have 75% of our transactions chain-wide assisted by an associate with a goal of 100% in our highest shrink, highest-risk stores to be fully transacted by an associate. Additionally, in those stores, we’re implementing further mitigation efforts, including receipt checking, additional store payroll and guards. We intend to measure progress as soon as Q2 when we perform a limited number of store counts.

While we are confident these measures will help us over time, as Kristy mentioned, we have not included any financial impact for shrink reduction in our 2024 guidance. Lastly, at Five Below, we always play offense and intend to aggressively pursue returning to pre-pandemic levels of shrink or offsetting the impact over the next few years. With that, we will take your questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Today’s first question comes from Matthew Boss at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Matthew Boss: Great. Thanks. So Joel, could you elaborate on the progression of comps that you’ve seen post-holiday, maybe particularly early spring trends or the underlying comp trend as tax refunds have normalized in the past couple of weeks? And then Kristy, I think it would be helpful if you could just walk through the cadence or maybe the bridge between flat to 2% comps in the first quarter relative to your flat to 3% comp guide for the year?

Joel Anderson: Yes. Thanks, Matt. Like many have seen February was soft, and we’ve seen it improve here in March. What’s hard to tease out for the March improvement? Is it due to the tax refunds starting to normalize, although they are still about 10% behind – or is it due to the early Easter versus last year? And therefore, that’s what we won’t know fully until we get through the balance of last year’s Easter cycling. But we have definitely seen a nice improvement from what we saw in February. And then the first quarter cadence.

Kristy Chipman: Yes. So flat to 2% for the quarter versus the flat to 3% for the full year is what I believe you’re asking. So basically, we are focused on the midpoint for the full year being between that flat to 3% with the slower start to the first quarter being really the only change that we have really focused on with Q2 and Q3 still being similar to the trends we indicated and the closer to 3% comp for those two quarters. And then as you get into the holiday with the five fewer shopping days, that will slow down from the 3% down to about 1%.

Joel Anderson: Thanks, Matt.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Seth Sigman with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Seth Sigman: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to follow-up on shrink and just make sure we have the message right. So it sounds like it didn’t get better as you were expecting. Is the message that it’s not getting worse? Do you have a good feel for that and whether it’s kind of stabilized at this level? And then if you just elaborate on what is actually reflected in the guidance for shrink? Is it still a year-over-year headwind? Or is it just neutral? Not assuming an improvement? Just help us understand that. Thanks so much.

Joel Anderson: Yes. Thanks, Seth. It’s a really good question. And let me try and answer that as simply as possible. You’re right, our prior guidance assumes shrink mitigation efforts would reduce our overall shrink expense. However, what we did see is that – we were successful in stopping the absolute rate from growing. And what we saw in January was roughly the same rate we saw back last August, September. So that seems to point towards – we roughly are at the high watermark. As far as our guidance goes, it reflects the same exit rates as what we saw here in January. So it does not reflect there being any improvement in shrink. But it also doesn’t require us to get any better in order to fulfill our guidance overall. Thanks, Seth.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Mike Lasser with UBS. Please go ahead.

Mike Lasser: Good evening. Thank you so much for taking my question. Joel, if we assume higher shrink, higher labor expense, are simply now a cost of doing business. How does this inform the margin potential for Five Below, especially over the next couple of years, especially if we consider that this shrink experience this year might be more temporary in nature. And if that – my second part of that question is, if your shrink mitigation efforts do bear fruit, should we think about the potential for 30 to 50 basis points of upside to your margins for this year, just given that, that would put you back into the range of what you had expected like 50 to 70 basis points of a drag? Thank you.

Joel Anderson: Yes. Michael, I think it’s a fair question to ask. And I think – as far as the long-term goes, while we’re not giving guidance on the long-term today, we’re also not changing our outlook on the long-term. And as I said in my prepared remarks, towards the end – it is still our expectation to either mitigate the shrink headwinds or take care of that with other initiatives like on margin price. We – and certainly, given what we saw in Q3 and Q4, I don’t think it would be prudent on our part to give you any of you a guidance that requires an improvement in shrink. But I think it’s fair to say, Michael, as we begin to see improvement, that will certainly turn into a tailwind. What’s unique about shrink is when it’s going the wrong way, you always have that true-up, and that’s why the fourth quarter felt extra challenging.

But when it goes the right way, you get the true-up to your benefit. But that wouldn’t come until later in the year. We are going to do physical inventories earlier than we ever have, beginning in Q2, and we’ll do that in Q3 as well as we traditionally do in Q4.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Scot Ciccarelli with Truist. Please go ahead.

Scot Ciccarelli: Good morning guys. Unfortunately, another shrink-related question. So, was there an additional true-up in the fourth quarter? I guess I was a little confused on that. And then a little bit of a follow-up on Michael’s question. With some of your shrink mitigation efforts, are they adding to SG&A pressures like to the point that you have more associates, you have more, let’s call it, security at the front end, inherently that’s going to cost extra dollars. So, are we really just seeing a movement within the P&L as you wind up trying to tackle the shrink issue? Thanks.