Warby Parker Inc. (NYSE:WRBY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dana Telsey: Got it. Just lastly, any update on contacts on Progressive and pricing, how you’re thinking about it for 2023?

David Gilboa: Yes. So we continue to see lots of strength in the contacts and progressive category. We noted that we saw north of 80% year-over-year growth in our contacts business and are really excited by the trends and the feedback that we’re seeing there; both in converting existing Warby Parker customers who were contacts to enable them to buy those contacts from us and also in attracting new customers to Warby, where their first purchase is contacts. That is a product category that has a very different purchase dynamics than our glasses-only customers, and we’re really encouraged to see not only strong repeat purchasing behavior from those contact customers but also to see a substantial portion of those customers then go on to purchase classes and also get exams from us.

And we’re finding that those holistic customers who buy glasses, get an exam and buy contacts from us, are not only more valuable with that first transaction. But over time, they become even more valuable. So one of the slides in our materials shows that after 12 months, they spend more than 2.2x as much as our glasses-only customers. And so we continue to be excited by that product category progresses. Similarly, we continue to increase the percentage of our overall prescription mix that was Progressives customers. This past year and expect that to continue as we roll out more stores, we tend to see a higher percentage of Progressives transactions in our retail stores versus online and are excited to be able to serve more of that demographic.

Dana Telsey: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Mark Altschwager from Baird.

Mark Altschwager: So you’re guiding to about a 15% sequential lift in sales for the first quarter. That’s, I think, a bit below the seasonality from pre-COVID. It does look more like last year, but that’s when you had the Omicron disruption through that key FSA period. So wondering if you could talk a bit more about what you saw in terms of customer engagement around that key FSA period this year, how that affected your approach. I think you called out some strong productivity numbers in February, if I heard that correctly. And then more broadly, has the expansion of the holistic offering and other initiatives affected the seasonality of the business versus what you’ve seen historically?

Neil Blumenthal: Mark, thanks for your question. It’s a little early to see sort of impacts on seasonality, especially given sort of the disruptions over the last few years. We believe that we’re entering a period where there should be sort of more consistency and more predictability, more similar to sort of years pre-pandemic, and that’s exciting to us. That being said, when we look at projections by the Vision Council, they’re projecting that the industry overall will be down approximately 0.6% in 2023. So we’re approaching sort of our guidance with some cautiousness as we want to continue to grow under our philosophy of sustainable growth while expanding margin as well. But one of the nice things about building out our eye care business is that it does support increased predictability as we see eye exams scheduled in advance.

David Gilboa: And we did see some strength in more predictable behavior around the FSA expiration to close the year, which was encouraging. But if we learned anything last year that we shouldn’t read too much into short-term trends. And so we’re proceeding with caution in the short term.

Steve Miller: And Mark, the other factor to keep in mind — the other factor to keep in mind as it relates to the sequential change year-over-year is just our rebalancing of marketing spend as a percent of revenue. So in the quarter, our marketing spend in Q4 is down approximately 40% year-over-year. When we report on Q1, we’ll see a similar level of trend downward in marketing spend year-over-year, and that is having a direct impact on our e-com channel. And so that’s what we’re baking into our results as well.