Operator
Operator
Welcome to the Advance Auto Parts First Quarter 2015 Conference Call. Before we begin, Zaheed Mawani, VP of Investor Relations, will make a brief statement concerning forward-looking statements that will be made on this call.
Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (AAP)
Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, May 21, 2015
$56.50
—
Same-Day
+1.71%
1 Week
-2.72%
1 Month
+4.06%
vs S&P
+4.74%
Operator
Operator
Welcome to the Advance Auto Parts First Quarter 2015 Conference Call. Before we begin, Zaheed Mawani, VP of Investor Relations, will make a brief statement concerning forward-looking statements that will be made on this call.
Zaheed Mawani - Vice President, Finance Planning, Analysis and Investor Relations
Management
Good morning and thank you for joining us on today's call. I would like to remind you that our comments today contain forward-looking statements we intend to be covered by and we claim the protection under the Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements address future events, developments or results, in typically used words, such as believe, anticipate, expect, intend, will, plan, forecast, outlook or estimate and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may cause our results to differ materially. Our comments today will also include certain non-GAAP measures including certain financial measures reported on a comparable basis to exclude the impacts of costs in connection with the integration of General Parts International and B.W.P. Distributors. Please refer to our earnings press release and accompanying financial statements issued today for important information and additional detail regarding these forward-looking statements and the reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures referenced in today's call. The company intends these forward-looking statements to speak only as of the time of this conference call and does not undertake to update or revise them as more information becomes available. Now, let me turn the call over to Darren Jackson, our Chief Executive Officer. Darren? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Zaheed. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter conference call. Joining me on the call today is our President, Sherman, who will update you on our business operations including our integration activities; and Mike Norona, our Chief Financial Officer, and Mike will update you on our financial performance. Entering 2015, and year two of our integration, we remain very confident in the growth, earnings and service potential of this combination. We are well positioned in the commercial business, DIY, import,…
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Thanks, Darren. Good morning, everyone. First, I too would like to thank all of our team members for their contribution to customer service in the quarter and putting their focus and energy into meeting our customer commitments while stretching to complete many of our integration tasks. With my prepared remarks this morning, I'll provide commentary on our first quarter base business performance together with a progress update on our integration priorities. As we mentioned in the past, Advance is on a path of continuous improvement and consistent execution and we've made tangible progress. However, when you layer on the integration that touches many parts of the organization, and namely customer facing parts such as our field and sales teams, it's clearly not business as usual. The multiyear integration plan will have a few peaks and Q1 was at a high point with many simultaneous work streams being executed. We expected our business would see some impact. However, it was more than we anticipated and led to sales outcomes that were below what we expect and aspire to deliver with a comp of 0.7%. I'll discuss the integration impact and status in more detail (10:42). Turning to our commercial business. As Darren mentioned, our core commercial business faced the most change and experienced the greatest amount of variability. The overall industry is benefiting from the macro benefits, improving consumer confidence, and those are all net positives. Offsetting the industry tailwinds beyond the integration was weather impact we experienced in our core markets as we continued with high degrees of sales variability and lost sales days due to weather-related store closures. With respect to our key customer segment, our TECH-NET commercial partnership programs are designed to help our customers improve their service and grow their business. We grew our TECH-NET program in…
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
Thanks, George, and good morning everyone. I'd like to start by thanking all of our talented team members for their commitment to serving our customers during the quarter while also navigating the change driven by our integration efforts. In my remarks today, I plan to review the financial highlights from our first quarter of 2015 and provide some insights on the remainder of the year. As a reminder, and unless otherwise specified, Advance will present its financials and supporting commentary on a consolidated enterprise basis, and would also discuss results on a comparable basis which excludes the impacts of one-time integration expenses and amortization of intangible assets both related to the acquisition of General Parts. Our financial results were below our expectation in our first quarter of 2015, primarily driven by our integration activities. We expected the heavier integration efforts to impact our financial performance in 2015. However, the combination of both the volume of change and the areas of the business that were impacted had a greater financial impact than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. The changes had the most impact on our commercial sales. Despite the softness, we were able to grow our profit rate and deliver on our synergy expectations. We are confident that we will work through the required operational phases of our integration and deliver the compelling financial value of our combination with GPI. Turning to sales. Our first quarter net sales increased 2.3% to $3.04 billion compared to our first quarter of 2014. This sales growth was principally driven by the addition of new stores, our comparable store sales increase of 0.7%, which was led by the growth of our commercial business, a 40 basis point sequential improvement in our DIY business from Q4 2014 offset by a net 21 basis…
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our first question comes from Greg Melich with Evercore ISI. Thank you. Your line is open.
Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI
Analyst
Hi. Thanks. I had a couple questions. Mike, I think you've mentioned synergies, $24 million of net acquisition synergies. Is that a cumulative figure including last year's first quarter or how should we think about that number? And then I had a follow-up.
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
That's an incremental number, Greg. If you remember last year, we did a little bit over $8 million. And this year, we're a little bit over $32 million. And that is a net number.
Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI
Analyst
So we should think of the $24 million as being halfway through to the $45 million you expect for this year?
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
Yeah. The way to think about that, Greg, if you think about last year, our synergies built. So in the first half of the year, last year, we had about 30% of our synergies and they've built throughout the year. This year, it's going to be the opposite – it's going to be the flip, roughly 75% of our synergies will happen in the first half of the year, and then the last 25%, just because they'll be annualizing the bigger numbers from last year.
Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI
Analyst
Got it. And then second question is, could you remind us how many distribution centers you now have for each business, or now it's one business but how we started with GPI and Advance? And how the plan of integrating these and how many you expect to have as you move forward on that integration? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Greg. Good morning. So in total, we're at 44 centers today. We've completed a logistics network study that's going to inform us on where we're going to end up from an integration perspective. Where we are on the journey right now is, we are going to do a significant amount of upgrade work on a large number of the Carquest DCs to prepare the capacity for the expansion of our conversions. And in the second quarter we'll be in a position to start announcing where we're going to be with (35:21). We obviously have a lot of work to do in different markets and that's when we'll come back and give you greater insights in terms of total count.
Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI
Analyst
So this year is about fixing up the ones we have to make them as optimal and then we decide which ones to close next year? Is that a fair way to think about it? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's exactly right.
Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI
Analyst
Great. Thanks. I'll let someone else have a shot.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Lasser with UBS.
Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Securities LLC
Analyst · UBS.
Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. As you get into some of these more complex marketing integration, are you finding anything that's changing your longer-term view or causing you to change direction? So perhaps you're realizing that some of the systems from either legacy organization just may not be up to speed and you're going to go through a big change in management process anyways, so why not take this as an opportunity to bring everything up to the state-of-the-art?
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Michael, good morning. It's George. I'll start with that one and turn it over to Bill Carter, who is running our integration. We are very committed to powering through the conversions and the consolidations. And I think if you look at conversions as a starting point, that's relatively straightforward work. We've done it in the past. We have a core competency around it. We like the DIY outcome that has come with much of that work. The consolidations are inherently more complicated. But, again, I think with the BWP acquisition, we learned how to do a consolidation quite well. A little bit more taxing, a little bit more time-consuming, but we have to keep on working through this. We've not seen anything that would cause us to dramatically change any of the schedules.
Bill Carter - Senior Vice President, Business Development and Integration
Analyst · UBS.
That's correct both from a store standpoint and a product standpoint. You heard George mention the progress we're making and we continue to be on track. I think the second part of your question is, are you learning stuff through the integration that's causing you to change. I'd say we learn every week, we learn every month, and we make tweaks. We're not radically changing the long-term integration plan by any stretch of the imagination, but we continue to improve it over time. One example that George mentioned on the call is, we recognize the value of giving to our common catalogs sooner rather than later. So that our availability across the network can be similar across platforms. So we're prioritizing that as something that's a value-creating engine for the team member and the customer. And that was a learning that we probably had three or four months ago, as we were doing our due diligence and have adjusted accordingly. To prioritize that is something we're bringing to the front from a value creation and common foundation standpoint. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'd also say, Michael, that we're not changing the process but we're certainly iterating the process. So every consolidation, we get a bit better. So, for instance, if a Carquest store is moving into an Advance store and that base of business that they're bringing along with them require some parts that were not in the assortment of the Advance store, we're being more expeditious in moving that over.
Bill Carter - Senior Vice President, Business Development and Integration
Analyst · UBS.
Correct. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Maybe last case. Michael, your last question is why not get everything to state-of-the-art. That would be hard. But there will be a handful of things that will be state-of-the-art by 2017. Our catalog will be state-of-the-art by 2017 and we'll start to experience some of those benefits as early as the beginning of next year. Our supply chain, in terms of daily replenishment, by the end of 2017, will – the 5x delivery across the nation will be state-of-the-art. So there's more examples. So we're trying to balance this, as George said, in terms of the team's ability to kind of work through the change, things that we have to power through versus piecemeal, and we're keeping an eye on the things that are critical to the customer relationship that should be state-of-the-art by the time we get through this in 2017.
Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Securities LLC
Analyst · UBS.
Okay. That's super helpful. And, I guess, what we're all trying to figure out is just – with all the pieces you have in place and what you're learning, there's nothing that suggest that you won't be able to close the – or at least narrow the margin gap that AAP currently have with some of its peers over time. So there's nothing that's really changing in the longer term? And then, as part of that, when should we expect that – some of the recent integration hiccups are going to be less impactful and the business will perform more in line with the market? Thank you so much.
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Hey, Michael. It's George again. I don't think we see anything that would cause us to change any margin expectations. As far as the work and what's behind us and what's ahead, I tried to give some detail on this and I'll give a bit more. I think if you look at the actual work that's been done, we've tried to move to a common foundation between the two companies and we see that – we mean product brand alignment, pricing, process, getting the store support centers consolidated, getting our store leadership teams consolidated in the field, and then beginning some of the early consolidation, conversion and relocation work. If you look at that, I think the product label part of this is largely behind us. So again, that was very physically intensive. It's touching 20 million pieces of merchandise and it's essentially close to done. So we're emerging there. If you look at the product replacement, that work is still ahead of us category by category. As far as pricing, we're nearly complete. Most of the pricing unification has happened, and it certainly has in the major product lines. I call the work ahead of us some of the clean-up work odds and ends, but the major lines have now been changed. That's a big change for us. If you're in the field and you're working with customers and the pricing is different between an Advance store and a Carquest store and you're beginning to bring your customer base together, that leads to questions, obviously, on why someone is getting a lower price than someone else. And then, I think, when the work is done, as you can imagine, one of two things has to happen. If we raise price, it's holding line on unit velocity. And then if we lower prices, it is getting the unit lift that we need to pay back for the pricing investment that we make. So we're making progress there. And I think we're emerging from that portion of it as well. The support centers are – the work is done. Now, bringing the teams up to speed, ramping them up in terms of just their handle on their new positions remain something that takes a bit of time. But I think those major elements are behind us. The product lift is still ahead, no question about that. There'll be some more work around that. A little bit of pricing work needs to be done yet. And then, obviously, the conversions, consolidations will go on for well over a year and a half, two years.
Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Securities LLC
Analyst · UBS.
This was helpful. Thank you so much. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities.
Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.
Analyst · Wedbush Securities.
Good morning and thank you for taking my question. My first question is around the cadence of the impact from some of the integration changes that you're making. I understand that they're temporary and primarily in Q1. But as you've gone through the first month of the second quarter, have you seen the impact lessen? And does that give you confidence that you'll be able to hit your new targets for 2015?
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Yes, Seth. It does. And I think there are markets where either the change has been limited or the change has abated. If you look at our Canadian business, again, they did this work last year. Their product replacement is well behind them, they've activated on it, and they're running nice solid double-digit results in local currency. If you look at Autopart International business, they've been protected from most of this change and are continuing to run very nice growth. Worldpac is just growing and is completely isolated from this change and is running nice single-digit growth. Where we went into Dallas/Fort Worth on the go-forward systems, we have seen very good results in a very competitive market where we've begun to – where we did the work early, and, Seth, we did the BWP work well ahead of this. That was the biggest concentration of Carquest business in the Northeast. So much of that work is behind us and we like the way that we've emerged into Q2 with our Northeastern business, and the intensity of the change of management is far less of a factor there.
Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.
Analyst · Wedbush Securities.
That's helpful. So the earnings revision for the year is primarily related to the miss in the first quarter as well as some pressure in the second quarter with very little change to the second half vision? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, that's a way to think about it. It's always – I think George really articulated well. All those things didn't happen at the same time in the first quarter. So some of the change happened throughout the quarter, so we're still navigating through the change. So I think that's a way to think about it, Seth. It's always difficult to predict the exact level of change and the learning curve that the teams are going through, but a way to think about the outlook is we've built in the miss in the first quarter. We have lowered our sales for the balance of the year. We went to the low end of our previous range. If you think of a low-single digits in kind that 1% to 3% range, we think we're going to be in the low end of the range and I think that reflects what you just shared. So that's kind of how we thought about (44:54)
George E. Sherman - President
Management
But I would look at the change as, is it the product brand work? Is it the pricing work? Is it the process work? Is it the corporate work? And I think it's an amalgamation. It's all those things. And as I said, some of that is behind us now. So we see this abating during the course of the year.
Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.
Analyst · Wedbush Securities.
Very helpful. Last question for me. The DIY business, it seems like you made some progress there. Can you comment as to whether or not the comps in DIY were stronger in the first quarter than the fourth quarter?
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
Yeah. We said they sequentially improved 40 basis points, Seth.
Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.
Analyst · Wedbush Securities.
Great. I missed that. Thank you very much. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Fassler with Goldman Sachs. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks a lot and good morning. Two quick questions. I'll ask them both up at once. First of all, as you think about the impact of the loyalty program, you spoke about its impact on sales. Can you talk about how that tends to impact margin and how you expect the margin impact to progress as that program ramps? And then, secondly, if you could just update us if you haven't already done so, on the sales impact, on the sales recapture rate that you're seeing as you close, as you continue to consolidate some stores. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Matthew, sorry go ahead.
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Yeah, Matt, let me start off with the Speed Perks program and then Charles Tyson will add some comments as well. I think we've been satisfied with every aspect of Speed Perks. They have a membership of well over 4 million here early in Q2 and 4 million at the end of Q1. We think that we're on with something pretty good here. We think that the program is distinctive and is the best in the industry. It has been a win for us in terms of all the financial fundamentals. The sales lift has been good, the transaction growth has been good, we're seeing a bounce-back effect. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And as you think about – understand that sales work – is there, just to make sure that we model it correctly. Is there some give back on gross margin? Obviously, the gross profit dollars have to be doing well for you to like what you see. But does the margin rate come down and does that build, or is there a cadence to that? Charles E. Tyson - EVP-Merchandising, Marketing & Supply Chain: Yeah. Matthew, its Charles. Yeah, there is an impact from a gross margin rate. Obviously, the impact on sales and the growth we're seeing from that customer segment that have joined the Speed Perks program has a very positive gross margin dollar impact. So from a pro forma perspective, when we piloted this, we are exceeding our expectations from the pro forma that we set for ourselves for this year. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Great.
Bill Carter - Senior Vice President, Business Development and Integration
Analyst
And, Matt, just this is Bill. Just to answer the question on the consolidation results. As George mentioned in his comments, we completed the early consolidation program as of the end of last year. That was focused on the 100 lowest-performing low-profit stores of Carquest. We are pleased with those profit and sales results from those. And we recaptured about 60% to 80% of the revenue that was associated in those Carquest stores, obviously some variability based on markets and how well we executed. As we move into the broader consolidations associated with the market conversion plan that George outlined, we expect consolidation performance to improve and be at the higher end of that range versus the lower end of that range as we work with programs that are bigger and stronger in nature to start with and we do more meticulous planning of the customer transitions as part of the larger consolidations. So that's where we're performing at this point. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you so much.
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
And just as a reminder, sorry, Bill, 60% to 80% is in the commercial part of the business. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And holistically, if you include DIY, I understand that DIY is kind of tiny for those for certainly the Carquest stores you're closing. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. It's not a meaningful figure. It generally disperses. And especially for those, it absolutely disperses. So it wouldn't change that number appreciably. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Robert Higginbotham with SunTrust.
Robert Higginbotham - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust.
Thanks. Good morning. I was hoping to get a little more color on what really surprised you in your integration process. Was it really that things were taking longer or were just tougher to execute, or was there a piece of there being a sharper reaction, if you will, from your customer base? And one thing I'm trying to get at is to the extent that you lost some share through these changes, do you expect to get that back, call it, immediately once you're done with those changes or you think you'll have to work harder, if you will, to win that business back?
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Yeah, it's George. I'll start off with that and ask Bill Carter to make some comments as well. I think if you look at the work, again, I think if there's something that made an impression, it would be the cumulative effect. I don't think there's any one aspect of it that was more complicated than what we thought, and I think we're well in control of every aspect of the integration. It's hard work. I would call the combination, the one that has made things a bit more complicated. A lot of things falling into place at the same time, pricing changes, product changes. Any time we do a product replacement, you're relying on execution at multiple levels including the suppliers. We've had a couple of instances where it hasn't been the best first impression of a new part coming onboard because of the in-stock condition at the time. I think when you look at the pricing work, again it's a multi-phase challenge. It's not just getting the pricing unified; it's getting the activation around that new price once it's done. And that takes time, getting the sales team out there into the shop to communicate that. So it's no one single thing; it's the combination of all of them landing at the same time.
Bill Carter - Senior Vice President, Business Development and Integration
Analyst · SunTrust.
It's the combination of the, to answer your question specifically, Robert, nothing took longer than we expected. I think it was just tougher when it all added up in Q1, change for our team, and as George mentioned change due to some of the product and pricing changes that the team and the customer worked through. So it was more of an amalgamation of them than any particular things sticking out as a surprise.
Robert Higginbotham - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust.
And on the customer reaction. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Parts of it were terrific. So if I can go back to the cultural overlay and the field alignment, we asked our teams to go to 33 regions across the country and we combined (51:17) of our regional vice presidents come from Carquest, some of them come from Advance. They initially spoke a bit of a different language in terms of how they focus around the business, and that, one quarter later, has meshed together very, very well.
Robert Higginbotham - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust.
Okay. That's helpful. And in terms of winning back some of the business, I mean granted you're still growing commercial, but winning back some of the share that you presumably lost, do you expect that to happen kind of automatically, or will you have to do something incremental to get that back? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think while some of the change has been tough, and let's talk about the product brand alignment. Uniformly, we like where we're going. So when the work is done and when the work is behind us and we have this new house of brands that we think is terrific, our team is behind it, our customer is behind it, and we're very confident that we'll win back.
Bill Carter - Senior Vice President, Business Development and Integration
Analyst · SunTrust.
And we've experienced this in previous integrations when we did BWP and we had things disruptive. This year, it came back over time. Within a year, usually, but not instantaneously. It's not going to come back next week. So we feel good about the recovery. It definitely wasn't nearly as bad as what occurred in some of the previous ones. But that share comes back. We regain that share with customers and we do it over a reasonable period of time.
Robert Higginbotham - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust.
Got it. That's very helpful. And my second question is really on your general pricing strategy. Historically, it seems like you've been pretty aggressive in the marketplace in commercial. As you harmonize pricing, is that a fair way of thinking about how you're currently going to market? Does price become less of a point of competition as you increase daily delivery and now have bigger muscle as a bigger enterprise? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I think that's absolutely the case. When we looked at the pricing continuum, as you'd expect, Advance was on the more competitive side and Carquest was on the higher side. We struck a point where we felt it was the right pricing strategy for the kind of commercial business that we are going to emerge as and that we've become. And that includes 5x delivery benefits. That includes a lot of the commercial know-how coming from Carquest that includes the Carquest Training Institute, that includes our TECH-NET programs, banner programs that have come out of this partnership.
Robert Higginbotham - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust.
Got it. Great. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Wewer with Raymond James. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Hi. Thanks. Can you talk about the perspective of your commercial customer, what they saw differently from Advance and Carquest in the last quarter that resulted in the market share in your commercial channel I guess weakening a bit? Was it a disruption in your in-stock capabilities, your ability to hotshot a part within 30 minutes? Was it a change in the salesmen covering their account? If you can give us some clarity on that.
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Sure. I'd be glad to, and I'll kind of give it to you from the perspective of if you were a district manager for, say, Carquest and some of the change that's happening right now. Those customers working with that team will have seen some product changes. Clearly, there have been changes in filters and in belts and in chassis and in gaskets and in batteries. So brands that you've been used to selling for many years, you're now in some cases selling a new one, and in all cases going forward you will be. So it's bringing the customer along on that journey and just showing and demonstrating the quality of the part, and I'd start it off right there. I think the pricing part of it has been an impact as well where there is some interim period of time where again in a market Carquest and Advance have two different prices. And then we have a new one going forward. So for those Carquest customers, they're very often seeing lower pricing. And again, we have to activate and sell more when that happens, but that's a change. Some of the systems tend to change for our team along the way. We try to make that as transparent as possible and protect our customers from change. So from a B2B standpoint, they're using the same systems that they always have. So I think those are the major changes. And we have changed some of our sales territories and that's another part of it where we did not want to have a customer have an Advance commercial account manager come knocking on the door and then the Carquest commercial account manager came knocking on the door 10 minutes later. That appears to be disorganized and is confusing for the customer, and we've changed that. So we have built new sales territories with a single representative representing both brands in some cases. But every customer has one commercial account manager only, not multiple. So in some cases, it's a new phase; in others, it's the same. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Just following up on the previous question, I don't understand if a commercial is now, let's say, doing more business with O'Reilly or more business with NAPA, and perhaps Advance or Carquest drop down the first call list. If they're getting a good experience with your competitor, why are they going to toggle back to Advance two or three quarters down the road?
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Well, I think we'll have converted all of our brand work. We'll have all of our availability in all of our brands lined up, our pricing lined up. I'll remind you, some of those of relationships go back for years and years. So there might be a period of time where part of our integration is showing up in a commercial shop, but we've been with these folks for a long, long time and that matters. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Dan. This is Darren. So part of the indicators I look at – because I think that's a fantastic question is that when we look at our strategic and national accounts, our growth slowed a little bit in the quarter, but you know what? The ones that had been leading the way continue to lead the way, so whether that's CarMax or whether that's DriveTime or others, we feel really good about that. When I peer into the Carquest network, their banner programs, we grew that business in the quarter 7%, so those tend to be some of the large bay installers, and then we grew the TECH-NET customers specifically. Now there's only 6,500 of them, but we grew those double-digits in the quarter as well. And those tend to be a leading indicator of the best relationships and we built up – or I should say, the Carquest team has built up a lot of great equity in terms of those relationships. Now, we did see a little bit of a pullback on the Advance side to some of that, weather always events out. But I think when we move the sales people, you know what? What happened is we are not able to give as much attention as we're going through the process and what we have to focus on and what we're monitoring is that quarter in and quarter out, Mike talked about a 300 basis point volatility in terms of touching customers. So each period, we've seen that volatility come down a little bit. And what is it? Is that we're touching customers again on a consistent basis. And so, that's how you win people back and then you augment it, as we've said, with getting the pricing right, the product brands and the consistency. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: And just a real quick question for Mike, on your 12% operating margin goal for 2017, you talked about 100 basis points of cost reductions. I guess that equates to about $100 million. Is that going to be back-loaded primarily to 2017 or would you expect to achieve some of that $100 million savings either late this year or in 2016?
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
Yeah. The way to think about it, Dan, is we really started that once we put this acquisition together. Our operating margins were at 9.1%. Last year, we did some work on our costs. This year, we're doing some work on the costs. And I think you're right. It will start to accelerate into next year and then we'll probably see the biggest change hit us in 2017. I think we've talked about our cost before as we move to a lower cost, lower commercial model. We see opportunities at our support centers to take costs and make ourselves more efficient in those areas. IT is an area as we get rid of duplicate systems. It's a big opportunity. And then, as we improve the profitability and productivity and the variability across our store base. So we think those are big opportunities and its work that – it will be very planful. It will be very thoughtful. And then part of also getting to 12% is keeping our sales going and growing the comps. So that's another important dimension. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Right. Great. Thank you. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our final question today comes from Chris Horvers of JPMorgan.
Christopher M. Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC
Analyst
Thanks and good morning. So question asked – maybe asked prior, but a little differently this time. So, I'm trying to dial in the impact of the integration impact on the Carquest commercial business versus the heritage AAP commercial. On Carquest, there was a lot of concern that the business had decelerated all year in 2014 and worries that something was breaking there on the integration. And then, heritage AAP commercial did very well last year. So maybe can you share some insights on Carquest and the heritage AAP and maybe highlight regions that didn't have as much change impact and how those businesses performed and what the lift you're seeing from daily delivery in heritage AAP?
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Yeah. I think if you look at, Chris, the change for the Carquest commercial business, I highlight one thing, the beneficiary of a pricing benefit. So, certainly, we're seeing that happen and, again, that activation piece of getting the unit velocity back is not immediate. So if you look at where that's happening more often than not, lower pricing is happening in the Carquest network. They're having to go catch up, get the velocity to drive the dollars above where it was before. There really aren't many markets in the country where there is change to Carquest. The best indicator of that would be the BWP business. And again, as Bill said, there is a trough initially, but we certainly see ourselves come out of it and build upon the business. In the 5x markets, we've been very pleased with the lift and the most recent work that we've done was Lakeland, Florida to get the North Florida on the daily delivery. Very happy with our outcomes in Florida. And then, of course, we have a new Hartford, Connecticut facility that is at about 160 stores now and beginning to ramp up more and more, bringing daily delivery to the Northeast. And we're happy with those results too. And especially the way that just recently with a lot of the change behind us in the Northeast, that market we're pleased with.
Christopher M. Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC
Analyst
So the daily delivery lift is basically, as you've rolled more DCs and more stores, it's been consistent with your prior experiences? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. That's correct. Obviously, as George said, we've been very happy with the impact in our Lakeland facility. And our team did a wonderful job in executing that without any interruption of service to our customers. And we're beginning to see that flow through into our new Hartford facility. And we will complete more of that work as we move through the year this year.
George E. Sherman - President
Management
Yeah. Probably the most, the clearest example we have is what's going on in Canada, right team? They went through a first, littlest changed, double-digit comps. And all the competitive set's different, but there are some pretty good competitors up there as well and the team is doing a great job. Worldpac continues just, it's a very nice business, growing above our early expectations, so they're doing a nice job. And the BWP market, certainly, less change there and they're a leading indicator to, yeah. We just have to power through it. And so we got to finish through the things we got to power through, and we got to manage to the integration plan that we set out there. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And I'll also say that our Dallas/Fort Worth market opening has been a great example, so we're very happy with the results in Dallas/Fort Worth and how we entered a new market. And we used something close to what the go-forward model will look like. We used the Carquest distribution center. It is on daily delivery. We opened up super hubs geographically spaced across the DFW Metroplex. We've got a combined team. There will be some change still in those markets. It's not entirely on the go-forward plan, but it opened up well and certainly we like the outcome there.
Christopher M. Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC
Analyst
And so two quick follow-ups. So A, what did your – what was the first quarter earnings below your internal expectations? And B, what do you attribute the improvement in the DIY business to because the compares are actually tougher. So was this actually the loyalty card helping? Thanks.
Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Management
Yeah. I'll hit the first one, and I'll let Darren get the second one. I mean it's real simple. It was on the top line. We said it. The change that George put through – discussed, we believe those are shorter-term impacts. They had an impact on our field teams. And it impacted – and it primarily came through on our commercial sales. So that was really our shortfall. I think we were pleased with some of the things. Really pleased with our synergy work and what we did there. And so we're building momentum there, but really it showed up on the commercial sales side. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: On the DIY side, I think the single biggest change was the Speed Perks program; again, very happy with the membership base that's being built. I'll also add that we changed our marketing strategy and you'll see a shift in our marketing mix more toward TV. And on TV, you'll see them in places where car guys tend to watch TV, so a car-related show on Velocity TV, a NASCAR broadcast, and we're getting very, very good feedback on that and I think it certainly highlights what's different about our loyalty program.
Operator
Operator
At this time, I will turn the call back over to Zaheed Mawani for any final comments.
Zaheed Mawani - Vice President, Finance Planning, Analysis and Investor Relations
Management
Thanks, Lisa, and thanks to everyone for participating on our first quarter earnings conference call. That concludes our call. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
That concludes our call today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining us.