Warby Parker Inc. (NYSE:WRBY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Neil Blumenthal: One other thought on gross margin is that we tend to see it highest in Q1, thanks to some of the revenue deferral from Q4 into Q1 coming out of the FSA season at the very end of the year. That being said, we continue to have great leverage of the fixed cost of COGS, thanks to our retail growth and our e-commerce channels are returning to growth. We’ve always maintained that we have significant opportunities to gain leverage over those fixed costs. One of those fixed costs is our investment in our eye exam business, particularly, our doctor salaries. As you mentioned, we are continuing to invest in telehealth and we view this as a way to supplement our in-person doctors and provide more availability and convenience to our customers and patients.

As we have an in-person doctor, we may be able to have broader hours, thanks to telehealth. You will see us continue to expand the pilots on video assisted eye exams that we currently have. But the biggest impact will likely be next year as that gets scaled and we continue to invest in that area of our eye exam business.

Operator: Next question today comes from the line of Dylan Carden from William Blair. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Dylan Carden: Thanks a lot. Just curious, how you think about the comp lift from new doctor availability? If there’s sort of incremental marketing that you’re putting towards that to grow awareness. I appreciate there’s a lag time just sort of given the purchase cycle. And then, if I missed it, apologies. But any color between sort of growth by channel as you think about the second and full year guide — revenue?

Steve Miller: Overall, we continue to see that, our stores with doctors drives higher level of sales. We’ve been excited to expand our doctor network and onboard new doctors into all of our new stores, in addition to adding doctors to some of our existing stores. There is a ramp up period as you noted and there is a big opportunity for us to drive more awareness, that we offer exams and that we have doctors, conveniently located across the country. We find that, even with some of our long standing customers who have bought multiple glasses from us online, that they’re not aware that we have stores that are now conveniently located in their cities and there’s even less awareness that we have eye exams. Our team has been focusing on leveraging our increased media investment to drive home some of those messages, whether that’s through TV commercials or direct mail campaigns within a certain radius where we’re opening new stores or have brought on new doctors.

And we are excited to continue to build momentum there. We also believe that as more customers are able to use their in network benefits, that will also help to increase doctor utilization over time. In terms of our channel growth, we continue to see the majority of our growth driven from retail. We have seen e-comm inflect positively over the last few months here, but still projecting still guiding to low-single-digit growth for e-comm for the remainder of the year.

Operator: Our next question today comes from the line of Brooke Roach from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Evan Dorschner : Hey, everyone. This is Evan Dorschner on for Brooke. Thanks for taking our question. I guess, first, just a follow-up on Mark’s question earlier regarding insurance. Are you seeing any differences in trend between in network customers and out-of-network customers and just how they shop? And then separately, could you just talk a little bit more about e-commerce trends? I know you just mentioned still guiding the low-single-digit growth for the year. What’s it going to take to drive an even further acceleration? I know things reflected this quarter, especially as you start to lap lower marketing spends last year?

Dave Gilboa: On the insurance front, we tend to find that customers who use their in network benefits at Warby tend to be some of our best customers. They tend to spend a bit more in both for their initial purchase and over time. We’re excited to expand that population. The majority of our customers do have vision insurance. 60% of people who shop with us have vision insurance. Some of those people are leveraging their benefits and others just know that they’re getting great value with us, but we are excited to make it even easier for people to get value out of those benefits both in network and out of network. And then as it relates to e-comm, we’re seeing modest growth at this point but it is a significant improvement, when you compare to where we were a year ago and e-comm was a drag on our overall business and was negatively impacting both revenue and gross margin.

Our team has driven better trends, particularly in glasses and we know that we still have a headwind from Home Try-On as a diminishing portion of our overall sales and our e-commerce sales, but direct classes purchases are growing nicely. Those direct classes purchases enable us to serve customers faster. They’re also higher margin. We’re encouraged by that trend. We also find that a higher percentage of repeat purchases take place online. And so, as our overall installed base of customer grows, that will be a tailwind, in addition to contact sales, largely taking place online as well. We continue to believe that e-commerce is on the right track and will continue to positively impact growth going forward and are excited to continue to evolve our digital experience and introduce some improved digital features that will make shopping more fun and convenient across channels later this year.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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