Target Corporation (TGT)’s Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Wayne Hood

Okay, then my last question, I guess relates to cost out opportunities.  We’ve had some time now to see where there might be some opportunity over and above what they talked about prior to your arrival, so where are you coming out as other cost out above let’s say the $900 million annualized that was talked about before you arrived.

 

Brian Cornell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Wayne, I’m going to ask for your patience on that front.  It is something that we will address in great detail when we get together in March.  We have been very focuses on looking at cost saving opportunities, how to make sure we build the agility in the organization that allows us to move at a faster pace and bring the right innovation to the business.  We’ll come back and John and I will take you through a very detailed review of our plans to make sure that we are managing costs efficiently in the years to come.

Wayne Hood.

All right great.  Thanks you.

Brian Cornell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Melitz.

Greg Melich

Hi, thanks.  A couple questions, John, you mentioned an additional $275 million of costs that could be likely in 2015 on top of the charges, are those cash costs and what would those be?  Help us understand that a little bit more.

John J. Mulligan, Chief Financial Officer

Yes, it’ll probably be a little bit of a mix next year.  Some of it is things that are more expenses incurred, things like fees for advisors etc. that will come and that won’t be insignificant I would tell you.

But other things are, as we go through the process, some of the expenses aren’t knowable at this point in the process.  There’s potentially, and we’ve included it here to be on the side of conservatism, some potential additional impairments.  We’ll also update as we go through the process, the liabilities we’ve recorded today.  So, we wanted to give you very much an all in view of everything that is potential out there.  We feel pretty good that we’ve done that. Relative to the cash, I think the $500-600 million, that’s why there’s a range there.  We feel good that is also absolutely an all in view of what we think the corporation’s cash exposure is as we move throughout the process. We’ll obviously update this as we go along.

Greg Melich

Of course.  Just so I understand a little bit better on the balance sheet side and the buyback and how the rating agencies are looking at it, your current debt to EBITDA is what like 2.7 or something like that.  When this is all done, will you be under two and what did they want from you guys?

John J. Mulligan, Chief Financial Officer

Yes.  On the current rating, where we currently were was right around 2.7 as of last quarter.  What we’ve talked to them about is being under 2 and this likely gets us into a place of 1.9 or so.  Again, we need to let the dust settle here a little bit and I think that’s important too.  We want to be sure that we can provide a little more clarity that as we are thinking about the plan going forward here and the cash that the corporation will need to use to wind down Target Canada that we have a good line of sight to that and a plan that’s going to unfold exactly as we expected.

Greg Melich

Great.  And then one for Brian, given how well the digital business seemed to do, the 40%, if I remember correctly last year that also did okay and was less impacted by the breach.  So, any updates on what percentage of your business, how much of it was converted in the stores and how that trended into the New Year would be helpful.

Brian Cornell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Greg, I think you pointed out, we’ve put good numbers on top of good numbers last year.  We certainly feel very good about the digital acceleration and we also felt good about the fact that not only were we able to leverage our free shipping to accelerate growth, we leveraged our stores very effectively and I’ve talked earlier about the fact that we expanded our ship from store program during the holidays. 

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