Petco Health and Wellness Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:WOOF) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ron Coughlin: Hey Chris, it’s Ron. Let me take the promotional environment, and Brian can walk you through any view on gross margin. So, from a promotional environment standpoint, the market remains rational. And part of that is the fact that for a long time now, aggregate supply has lagged aggregate demand. It’s gotten better, but the market continues to be rational in terms of pricing. If you look at what happened over Black Friday weekend, the promotions were similar to pre-pandemic levels and actually, if you look at our promotional depth, our promotional depth was 300 points below a year ago. So, the promotional environment seems rational. We anticipated continuing through the holidays. Obviously, you have episodic type things. But over the period, we anticipate rationality from a promotional standpoint, and that’s what we have seen all along. I will pass it on to Brian.

Brian LaRose: Yes. And I would just say on the discretionary categories, Chris, that we are not passengers on the bus here. We saw a great success when we launched our perks program. We saw very successful, but that led into launching the good perks program, which is why we launched the supplies perks program. So, we are encouraged by the early sign-ups there. We are excited about our holiday lineup, but in reference to the guide, until we see a tangible improvement in the trajectory of those discretionary categories, we think the guidance that we gave which gross margins implied in there and the commentary around it is appropriate.

Chris Bottiglieri: Got it. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Ron Coughlin: Thanks Chris.

Operator: The next question comes from Steven Zaccone from Citi. Please go ahead.

Steven Zaccone: Great. Good morning guys. Thanks for taking my question. Our condolences also for the loss of Yummy, sorry, Ron. Could you talk about the implied fourth quarter outlook in a bit more detail. It’s a wide range of same-store sales. I think you cited Black Friday and Cyber Monday comp positive. Maybe how has the business trended overall thus far in November? What are the swing factors to get you to the high end versus the low end of the range?

Ron Coughlin: Maybe we will tag team again. So, one of the remarkable things about this business is there is very low variability. If you look on week-to-week, we have not had the significant swings that you see in some of the other retailers or I look at the NPD data, and I will see weeks when it’s up 2% and then weeks when it’s down 11%. We don’t see that. We have been very consistent through Q3, consistent through the Black Friday period. We had a great Cyber Monday, and we are tracking in November relatively consistently. So, we have not seen big swings on our business, which is why that’s feeding into the guide that Brian is providing. As Brian said, we have initiatives we have put in place like the supplies perks program.

I would add to that, we are seeing early traction on Klarna, particularly for our companion animal, if you are setting up a companion animal, you are getting a tag, you are getting an animal, you are getting a bunch of accessories as well. So, we are seeing early traction with that as well on our companion animal business. But our business has been relatively consistent and which is feeding into the guide, but I will let Brian add anything to that.

Brian LaRose: I would just add that to build on Ron’s point, we continue to see solid growth. We saw growth in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but given the consumer dynamic, Steve, and the fact that it is still there, while we got €“ we are past Black Friday, we are past Cyber Monday, but we still have the vast majority of the holiday season remaining. We feel like the range that we gave in the guidance is appropriate.