Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:OLLI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Simeon Gutman: Good morning, everyone. First, a two part question. It’s a follow-up to gross margins. So you mentioned there were higher promotions in the fourth quarter. Is the bridge to 2023, I think it sounds like it’s mostly supply chain and you’re embedding a similar level of promotions. And then the connected part of this question is, is there a comp lift that you could estimate that help the business so that we know how to think about modeling the back half of next year when maybe there’s fewer promotions?

Rob Helm: I can do that question, it’s Rob. You’re correct. Essentially, all of our gross margin expansion is relative to supply chain costs and the easing that we saw in the first half of 2022. From the second part perspective, when we think about comps, we used to leverage our expense base right in the midpoint of the 1% to 2%, with the increased investment in wages that we made that — Eric referenced a couple of moments ago, it’s probably closer to 2% to continue to gain leverage on our expenses.

Simeon Gutman: Okay. And then — unrelated follow-up, talking about the robust closeout environment. The responding that you’re seeing now and that you’re excited for next year, are there different product categories that are coming in? Are there deeper discounts that they’re responding to? It felt like some of the closeouts were some of the over consumed categories. Is that changing? Is the (ph) changing?

John Swygert: I would say, Simeon, it’s changing a little bit, but there’s still — I’m not going to get through real big details for competitive purposes, but we’re still seeing a pretty wide variation of closeout opportunities in the marketplace from HBA, housewares, clothing, flooring, lawn and garden, auto, there’s a lot out there. So we’re not seeing one penetrated area. But I think one of the things we’ve seen, obviously, when we called out food, candy, HBA as one of the bigger drivers in the quarter, we’re seeing the consumables definitely take hold. And when people get in the stores, they see the consumables. They’re also buying other add-on pieces to that, which are non-consumable in nature. So the deals resonate once they get into the boxes and see how much value we’re giving to them. So that’s getting stronger, and our merchants are really being selective in finding what’s out there in the marketplace today.

Simeon Gutman: Thanks, John.

John Swygert: Thanks, Simeon.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Boss from JPMorgan. Your question please.

Matthew Boss: Great, thanks. So John, maybe could you elaborate on some of the shopping patterns that you’re seeing from your core customer? Is there a correlation maybe to look back financial crisis? I know you’ve talked about stock market and some of the different pressure points then trying to think of applying it to today. And then, Eric, on this year’s guide, so it implies a geometric stack of about 1% for the year. How do we triangulate that multiyear stack trend to the pre-pandemic comp algorithm?

John Swygert: Yeah, Matt, with regards to the overall shopping patterns, we’re not going to get too deep into that data right now, but we’re seeing the — our offerings are resonating with the consumers as you can see with the comp we delivered in Q4. And then I think with the confidence we’re coming out in Q1, in terms of what they’re buying and how they’re — we’re seeing a good impact from a consumable perspective. But other than that, I won’t give too many details on it.

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