Signet Jewelers Limited (NYSE:SIG) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

So when you look into the back half of the year and particularly in the fourth quarter on stronger seasonal selling in the fourth quarter, the deleverage impact abates. We are also seeing the pressure coming from Blue Nile acquisition begin to abate in the back half. Gina mentioned in her prepared remarks that we’ve completed the re-platforming for Blue Nile, James Allen, and that was a critical element of us driving the synergies from that acquisition. And that went very well. The team worked very hard to bring that to be with we could start the back half off on the new platform and be able to really harvest those synergies. And then there is some deleverage from — or some impact related to the strategic investments as well. So overall, that’s the dynamic between front half, back half and the improvement that we’re seeing in our bank.

Mauricio Serna: Got it. Very helpful. And then just very quickly, just one clarification on the Q3 guide, I think you mentioned that this quarter, to Q3, Blue Nile is like already [uncomfortable] (ph). But I think — I thought like the — you started like consolidating Blue Nile in September, so I thought we would still get like one-month contribution. Just want to clarify that point. Thanks.

Gina Drosos: Yeah. We acquired the Blue Nile on August 18. So there’s a couple of weeks of non-comp.

Mauricio Serna: Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Gina Drosos: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jim Sanderson from Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

Jim Sanderson: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. Just wanted to follow up on the credit concerns we’ve heard in the marketplace. I think you had mentioned that your percentage of sales on credit had maintained at 44% in the quarter. Is that correct?

Joan Hilson: That is correct.

Jim Sanderson: Is that — I think that’s a little bit weaker than prior quarters. How should we look at that slight shift in sales mix.

Joan Hilson: It’s roughly the same, Jim, from quarter-to-quarter. So we’ve been very pleased with the penetration. And as I mentioned earlier, the amount finance has increased, we’ve been able to offer credit online to our customers. And while the approval rate online is not as high in store, we’re very pleased with the response to that advancement.

Jim Sanderson: All right. And I just had a question about the EBIT margin. I think at the IR Day, you had guided to a midterm goal of about 11%. If we take out the incremental investments made this year in some technology, is that a good run rate for the type of EBIT margin we could achieve — Signet could achieve next year?

Joan Hilson: So just thinking about the Investor Day, that was a midterm goal, which is really three to five years is the dynamics that we wrapped around our goal. What we are doing to drive those increases really related to something Gina just mentioned was strategic revenue management is a key lever for us and really through analytics, understanding the elasticity of pricing and promotion and then also strategic sourcing initiatives that we talked about at the Investor Day where we engage in things with our vendors really driving joint business planning, so that we’re driving inventories into our business or receive into our business just in time and with cost transparency. So we’re able to optimize our margins. That’s a critical lever for us in that growth — in that margin expansion as well as continuing with the analytics around our very healthy inventories and continuing to drive further productivity there.

And then with respect to cost savings and expansion. We will continue to optimize our fleet and assess the right balance of e-commerce and store and really bringing even more to life to connect the commerce experience for our customer. So we’re excited about the opportunity to drive into these initiatives over the next several years.