Hibbett, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIBB) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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A – Mike Longo: That’s correct. I mean, last year as inventory levels, you know where we began a year from the first quarter standpoint was not acceptable to deliver the experience that we looked to deliver to our consumers. That inventory really did not build and started getting to the latter part of the quarter, so that’s certainly a part of this year’s comparison, and the comparison and inventory will be you know significantly heavier to the prior year. As we get throughout the balance of the year that will level off as we get back to normal expectation of declines and inventory in the back half of the year.

Alex Perry : Perfect! That’s really helpful. Best of luck going forward!

A – Mike Longo: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Justin Kleber with Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Justin Kleber : Yeah, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a follow-up on the gross margin. Bob, you’re expecting more promotions, higher digital mix, same store occupancy cost inflation, but you’re only forecasting gross margin down 20 to 30 basis points. So two questions there, what’s embedded from a product margin perspective in that guide, and then what are some of the offsetting levers you see in gross margin this year that will only allow the margin to dip 20 to 30 basis points.

Bob Volke: Yeah, so obviously Jared touched that. I think you know the promotional environment is clearly the biggest headwind against us this year so we’ve worked through some of the product categories. The flip side is, you know we are still looking at pretty significant sales growth year-over-year, and so we’re probably going to get €“ we expect, we anticipated that we’ll get some leverage out of store occupancy, and also we peaked in freight rates you know the middle of last year and we can €“ if I need to see you know some additional lowering of those costs, more efficiency within our own operations, so we think there’s some, you know some good news in the freight component as well. And so I think what you see is you know, despite the fact just a little bit of your product margin or register margin pressure, I think we can do some offsetting with continued efficiency in our logistics operation, store occupancy and some freight costs.

Justin Kleber : Got it! That’s very helpful color. And then just a bigger picture question on EBIT margins. Mike you talked about this focus on delivering operating leverage. I guess I’m just curious, you know if I go back a couple of years ago you had an investor meeting and you talked about 15 to 25 basis points of annual EBIT expansion. So, I mean do you think the business has reached an EBIT margin level that is sustainable and perhaps you can grow off this base after this fiscal year, or do you think operating margins are going to continue to drift lower here?

Mike Longo: Thank you. Yes, we did address that in the Investor Day. We do expect to continue to grow EBIT. But as you know, it’s not linear and so we believe that we have reached a new rebase in that 9% range and we grow from here, and we’ll continue to grow it towards 10%. So Bob, any additional color on that?

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