RH (NYSE:RH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Anthony Chukumba: Hey, it’s sort of a related question. But I mean, obviously, as you were talking about the fact that sales could be down 20% this year, but you could hang up to that 20% operating margin. And now you’re actually not expecting sales to be down quite as much, but the operating margin is going to come in significantly below 20%. So it was just €“ I mean is it the macro? Like I guess I’m just trying to understand, obviously, look, we see all the same headlines you do, but I’m just trying to understand that sort of disconnect between what you said last quarter and what you’re saying now? Thank you.

Gary Friedman: What I said last quarter was our core business, right, in isolation can maintain 20% not with all the investments. So that’s what I said last quarter.

Jack Preston: In Q3 2021 is when we made €“ initially made that comment. And so if you think about just relative to the sales we generated in that year, I mean, you could think about it at a $3 billion roughly level. So I think we’ve been trying €“ I’ve been trying to clarify them as well. So not just 20% in isolation, it is relative to certain business size. And as Gary, for all the reasons talked €“ Gary just talked about could we generate 20% margins at a $3 billion revenue? Yes. Is that the right thing, the thing that we’re choosing to do, no. I’ll just reiterate what Gary said.

Anthony Chukumba: Got it. Thanks for the clarification.

Gary Friedman: Okay, Anthony, thank you.

Operator: Michael Lasser with UBS, your line is open.

Michael Lasser: Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. So you mentioned that the Contemporary business is on pace to exceed the modern business at a similar time frame and you’re guiding to €“ at the midpoint of mid-20s sales decline in the first quarter. So how incremental is the contemporary business? And how does that inform how you think about the incrementality of the launches that you’re going to be doing later this summer. Thanks a lot.

Gary Friedman: And it’s all baked into our guidance right now, right? It’s not a normal time. So, when you think about incrementality in a time like this obviously, it’s different, but it’s all baked into our guidance.

Jack Preston: And the down 20% in Q1, again, is relative, again, on a comparable basis €“ on a compare basis versus up 11% in Q1 last year. The year unfolded with a flat revenue growth in Q2, down 14% €“ down 14% in Q3 and Q4. So I think you just have to take that into account as well, but the down 20% is relative to just higher level the business was before the trend started to deteriorate early last year.

Michael Lasser: And you are pushing ahead with a lot of the investment you are going to be trying to manage the cash flow of the business carefully. How are you going to be approaching share repurchases? You stock as you pointed out earlier, well below where it was a few years ago, would this be an opportunity to be even more aggressive with buying back the stock? Thanks a lot.

Gary Friedman: Sure. I mean nothing different than what we said last time. I mean we would like to get some visibility and certainty is about where things are heady how much capital we deploy in share repurchases. And also, I think everybody should know, like I read sometimes analysts notes that say, yes, we expect that they bought more shares this quarter. And I don’t know if everybody knows the blackout rules of buying shares, but we can only repurchase shares for a certain number of weeks in a quarter. And so we are not buying shares some of the people putting in notes, oh, RH, let’s be in the market buying shares right now. And like you really not know you can’t buy shares the whole quarter. And we can only buy shares at certain times, how many weeks do we have opened.

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