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Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (AAP)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 13, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Advance Auto Parts' Second Quarter 2015 Conference Call. Your lines have been placed on listen-only until the question-and-answer session of today's call. This conference is being recorded. Before we begin, Zaheed Mawani, Vice President 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'd 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, 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. 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 second quarter conference call. Joining me on the call today is our President, George Sherman, who will update you on our business operations including our integration activities; and Mike Norona, our Chief Financial Officer, who will update you on our financial performance. We are 18 months into our integration, and our confidence in the growth, earnings and service potential of this combination remains very strong. The 2015 enterprise priorities continue to be improving our base business execution and successfully delivering the year-two integration objectives. Through the first half of this year, we have been…

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Thanks, Darren, and good morning, everyone. First I'd like to echo Darren's comments and thank all our team members for their contribution to customer service in the quarter and putting their focus and energy in meeting our customer commitments. With my prepared remarks this morning, I'll provide commentary on our second quarter base business performance together with a progress update on our integration priorities. Entering Q2, despite the heavier integration work, we experienced sequential improvement in the business as our team has started selling into normal business rhythms. While our comp of 1.3% in constant currency is not what we normally aspire to, it is progression we expected from Q1. We are nearly one period into our third quarter and I'm encouraged by the continued progress in our business. Turning to our commercial business, as Darren mentioned, our core commercial business continues to face a larger proportion of integration-related change, namely in people and products, but showed steady improvement versus Q1. There continue to be many encouraging signs including our Canadian comps growing double-digits in constant currency, our strategic account growth and a continuing strong performance of our Texas market where we're utilizing key elements of our combined resources. With respect to our key customer segments, our TECHNET customer marketing program membership has grown to a record level of 7,000 members with overall sales growth continuing in the double digits year-to-date. As the program has grown, it's become clear that TECHNET could assist our customers not just with diagnostic support but with training, marketing as well as a variety of programs to help them save money and grow their businesses. TECHNET is also experiencing record program retention rates. These results were a great example of the commercial sales team recruiting solid new members that find value in the program's marketing,…

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, George. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to also start by thanking all of our talented team members for their commitment to serving our customers in our second quarter. In my remarks today, I plan to review the financial highlights from our second quarter, share some details on our progress toward our 12% comparable operating profit target and provide insights on the remainder of the year. Moving into our second quarter operating results, we delivered comparable cash EPS of $2.27 which included $0.03 of unfavorable impact from foreign currency. This was a 9.1% increase from our second quarter of 2014 and in line with our overall expectations. Included in our comparable cash EPS was $14.1 million in incremental synergy realization. On a GAAP basis, our second quarter EPS was $2.03 which included $9.8 million of intangible asset amortization associated with the acquisition of General Parts and $18.6 million of one-time integration expenses primarily related to the integration of General Parts. Turning to sales. Our second quarter net sales increased 1% to $2.37 billion compared to our second quarter of 2014. The sales growth was principally driven by the addition of new stores and a comparable same store sales increase of 1% partially offset by changes in our independent store count. Our comparable store sales was led by our commercial business together with a sequential improvement in our DIY business in Q1 offset by a net 34-basis-point impact from foreign currency. Our gross profit rate of 45.9% was up 64 basis points compared to second quarter of 2014. The gross profit rate improvement was primarily the result of lower product acquisition costs inclusive of the company's ongoing merchandise cost synergy savings. Our comparable SG&A rate was 33.8% in the quarter which improved 22 basis points compared to the second quarter of…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Mr. Seth Basham of Wedbush Securities. Sir, your line is open.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you and good morning.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Seth. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Seth.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

My first question is just a clarification of 2015 guidance. I want to make sure that some of the extra savings that you guys are now talking about were included in the 2015 outlook previously.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Seth. It's Mike. Yes, we were – if you look at our guidance for the year, it's $8.20 kind of take the middle of that range we gave of $8.10 to $8.30, so use $8.20. And then that included about $20 million of Hartford annualization from last year and acceleration of Worldpac. So if you adjust for that, you get an increase in EPS of somewhere between 10% and 11%. And then if you take the midpoint of the synergies that we planned this year, that explains about half of it. If you do use the midpoint of 45 basis points to 55 basis points which means the base business was increasing. So we actually assumed that we would improve our base business and those things that we talked about in our script in terms of improving our SG&A and some of the other aspects of improvements are part of that improvement in the base business this year. So the answer is yes.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And as a follow-up, just thinking a bit about the DIY business, you mentioned sequential improvement. Can you point to whether or not we saw positive comps from that business yet and what the drivers of improvement are and how you expect it to trend going forward? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, Seth. This is Darren. So in my prepared remarks I said the DIY business approached flat. So it's been the best DIY performance that we've probably had in nearly a year and a half. And the drivers are what George outlined. We're real pleased with the Speed Perks program and the loyalty program and we continue to build that membership. It's over 6 million. The other things that we have put a fair amount of time and energy into, we talked about our omni-channel capabilities. We like that business in terms of the synergy we're seeing in terms of moving traffic into the store. And then some of the marketing efforts are paying off in some of the key markets and we're starting to see some of the benefits that we haven't seen in years as we open new stores in new greenfield markets. That tends to be a little bit of a flywheel as that builds. I mean it's not going to be a big deal right now. But over the next several years as we start to push stores out west, that will be part of it.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much and good luck.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mr. Scot Ciccarelli of RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is open.

Scot Ciccarelli - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, guys. You've previously mentioned that you needed some improved comp growth to get to your 12% EBIT target in 2017. So I guess the question is what are you guys assuming your comps need to be in 2016 to reach that 12% target? And just to be clear, this is 12% for the full year in 2016 and not a run rate by the end of 2016, correct?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Hey, Scot. It's George. You're correct. It is the full year for 2016 that we're targeting toward. We've previously guided our comps to be in the low-single digits. We're sticking with that. I mentioned in my remarks that we're pleased with the start that we've had to Q3 and that also remains the fact. If you look at the 12% work, I think it's a culmination of a couple activities that we've talked about in the past. First of all, 18 months into the integration, we're always going look at head-count synergy; 18 months into the integration, we're looking market-by-market. So as we look at our consolidation, conversion and relocation work, it became natural over time to begin to look at the Advance stores as part of that as well. And the same business rationale that we would have for consolidating a Carquest store or closing a Carquest store applies to an Advance Auto Parts store as well. So call that kind of an evolution of that activity. And then we stated that we were going to look for some costs out our business, and that was going to help guide us to 12%. We've found ways to accelerate that. So while looking at the synergy head-count, we looked deeper. We looked at ways to simplify the business for our teams. We looked at taking layers out of our corporate structure that would allow us to stop sending so much change to our stores and put more control around that. Culmination of all those things just led us to believe that we could get there considerably faster.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes, and as for the sales, Scot, I'd say it's pretty straightforward. We do need to see the sales continue to make their upward progression. We're not going to jerk the wheel here. As George and his team have been essentially clearing the deck for the activities for our store, this progression – DIY got better last quarter, it got better this quarter, we expect it to get better next quarter. Our commercial business and our AAP stores got better this quarter. We have some work to do in our Carquest legacy stores. They will get better. They have probably the brunt of the intensity of the integration change, so we're not planning on a quantum leap in the comp store sales to get there, but we are planning on this progression into this methodical focus to get there over the next six quarters.

Scot Ciccarelli - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Excellent. Thanks a lot, guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Simeon Gutman of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Simeon A. Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thanks. Good morning. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Simeon.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Simeon. Simeon A. Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: My first question is, just last quarter the outlook was lowered and we mentioned 12% for 2017. My question is why raise the bar now? It wouldn't have – better progression may be to beat along the way next year and that begs a follow-up of 12% wouldn't seem like a stopping point to your point, Darren. I'm curious about your thoughts, just why now?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Well, I'll start off with the why say 12%. Because we think we have a clear pathway there. So again, as we began the work and as we – the sales have to continue to grow. We've said they would. But as the integration begins to abate more and more quarter by quarter, we know that the primary effect of the integration has been on the Commercial business. We'll see the Commercial business strengthen along the way. We also find some significant cost-out opportunity across the board that we now feel very strongly that we can achieve this number and we'll do so in the six-quarter period to get there. 12% is simply the next step along the way. So we're saying it because we have a clear pathway. We're not in any way, shape implying that that is what we're capable of doing. We actually believe we're capable of doing more than that. Simeon A. Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. And my follow up, thinking about share gains and top line growth versus margin. The industry is clearly strong right now and there's a lot of top line opportunity for your business, Worldpac, cross-selling and some of the better availability. So how do you balance the opportunity for market share gains with this margin target that you laid out there? Could that margin focus cause you to miss some opportunities on the top line or prevent you from going after some?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes. Simeon, I'd frame it this way is, you're right. The market out there is very strong. If you think about our growth drivers, and you mentioned it on the call, Worldpac. Worldpac is a business that, to be honest, we're just not touching them. We will open another distribution center for Worldpac in the fourth quarter. They've opened six branches so far this year. They will finish with 12. Bob and his team continue to be missioned with grow that business profitably and as quickly as you can without affecting the base business, because you can take a business and grow it too fast and disrupt the base business is one. Continue to focus on new markets in terms of other growth opportunities, but do it in the right way. And we've targeted Texas in terms of growing our new store base out there and other parts out west. Keep taking advantage of those new markets in the core, I think as George has alluded to, each quarter – I think, George, you call it quieting the integration – how do we quiet the integration in a way that we continue to make steady progress on DIY, steady progress on the core Commercial, and really help the teams that are suffering the brunt of the integration in terms of product and people, continue to make their path forward in terms of normal selling routines.

George E. Sherman - President

Management

And, Simeon, the moves that we've made so far and the ones that we referred to in our script are G&A heavy, S light. So we are not going to try to get our way there by affecting sales capability. That absolutely has to remain strong for us. In fact, we need to try to find ways to do more and more for the sales force, and I actually think the G&A cuts encourage sales.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

And, Simeon, the other piece of that is the stores that we've closed help us both – the chronic underperformers are delivering negative comps. And when you close those stores that actually helps us on the top line. And actually they delivering negative profit, it actually helps us on the bottom line. So as George says, and I think it's an important point, this 12% is linked; top line growth and bottom line improvement.

George E. Sherman - President

Management

And let me add, when you close stores that are underperforming, you're also helping out BS (38:09) once again. So how does that play out for a district manager? An underperforming store is much like any performance management issue. You spend a disproportionate amount of time and effort trying to fix that store, resuscitate that store, and maybe that's not even possible. So this frees up the time and the bandwidth for our district managers to go encourage the best-performing stores and move along the middle performing stores. Simeon A. Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mr. Greg Melich of Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is open.

Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Hi, thanks. I wanted to get in a little more about the real incremental store closures. Could you give us more – it sounds like they were just poorly performing stores. Were they geographically in a certain area, or were they burning cash, or what were the metrics used to actually pick those 50 stores? Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: We looked at the four-wall profitability of the stores, Greg, and I think that really drove the answer. They're geographically spread. I think when you have a chain the size of ours, 5,300 stores, over time demographic shifts, business shifts, and I think that's simply the case with these stores. So they've been around for a while. They've begun to decline. Their comps were going down, their operating income was going down, and this was just the right decision for us to make. And I wouldn't suggest that we're finished. It's an ongoing process. We should always be looking at the performance of our stores and we should always be paring away those that are weaker.

Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Got it. And then on the capital allocation, I think, Mike, you mentioned that once you get the debt paid down and get down to under 2.5 times debt to EBITDAR that you go back to the traditional capital allocation strategy. Could you remind us of what that is? And also if I remember correctly it tended to bounce around between maybe 1.8 times and 2.4 times debt to EBITDAR. Could you just remind us what that was and how you look at it now?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, so the answer is, yes. We'll go back to our previous capital allocation. And that was always investing in the business first and then our share buyback program. We always had an open to buy. Currently we have an open to buy. We've made a commitment to the rating agencies that we'll be below our 2.5 times, and that's what we're committed to. And then the other thing I'd remind you of, we recently got an upgrade from Moody's. So, I think those are all positive. That doesn't change the commitments we've made. We're going to keep under our 2.5 times. And then we'll use our share buyback as we've used it historically.

Gregory S. Melich - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Great. Thanks.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yep.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mr. Dan Wewer of Raymond James. Sir, your line is open. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. George, I wanted to follow up on your comments about the Carquest stores generating commercial comps a little less than expected. Is that primarily reflecting their lower pricing or the price of realignment that you referred to? And not yet generating higher revenues or do you think it was perhaps the loss of some of their brands such as Wix and Gates that's impacting their performance?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Dan, I think you hit the primary one. When you look at the pricing strategy work that was done and we got to what we consider to be competitive pricing in the commercial business across the country, the majority of the price decrease work went toward the Carquest stores, which were historically higher in price. As we've said that price change is immediate but velocity growth is not. So, it takes a bit of time to get the word out to go from customer-to-customer and begin to get the realization that there is a more competitive price in the market before we begin the see the sales lift. So I think we attribute the majority of it to that. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: I also wanted to follow up on your comments about do-it-yourself comps getting close to flat. And it sounds like you're off to a good start with the loyalty program. But it looks like there's one other initiative the company hasn't yet implemented to drive do-it-yourself revenues and that's an expanded private label program. Is your private label penetration still in the low-20% rate? And if so, do you see a need to bump it up to the level that AutoZone and O'Reilly are currently running to achieve similar type of do-it-yourself productivity? Charles E. Tyson - EVP-Merchandising, Marketing & Supply Chain: Hey, Dan. This is Charles. Good morning. Dan R. Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Hi, Charles. Charles E. Tyson - EVP-Merchandising, Marketing & Supply Chain: We've been working on our private label development program now for four years and when you look at the expansion of the Carquest program across our whole network, today we said it was a combined company of 47%. So we made significant progress…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Lasser of UBS. Sir, your line is open.

Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. The closure of the 50 incremental stores begs the topic of what the potential opportunity from this strategy might be along with how you're thinking about the potential for sales recapture from those 50 closed stores. So how many of the stores across your entire base right now are unprofitable?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Well, we're addressing those within this closure.

Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst

Okay.

George E. Sherman - President

Management

We're addressing the unprofitable stores within the closure. As for what the total number is we're still – that's ongoing analysis, we'll continue to work on it. We'll always work on it. But I would add that in some cases there will be consolidation opportunity as well as part of this. So, we don't look at it necessarily as a complete sales loss. We look at it in many cases as profit optimization.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Michael, the other thing I would add as well is there were three dimensions to improving the profitability that we talked about. One is performance management. And whenever you have stores, sometimes there's points and periods of time where stores run a little lower comp or are unprofitable in a certain period of time and those can be solved with performance management or as George said, simplifying our operation. And then the third dimension is, and that's the last resort of closing stores. So it's those three things that we look at across and all three of them will drive improvement.

Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst

Mike, do we think about the distribution of your stores by profitability as maybe more uneven than the average retailer? So you have a good amount of very profitable stores and then more at the tail of those that are unprofitable?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

No. I wouldn't say – we have 5,300 company owned stores, and I would say we're no different than a lot of other retailers, because you're going to have variability. We just completed an acquisition; we've got some newer stores to our portfolio. But I would say we're no different than any other retailers. You get variability and you address those variability. And that's what we're doing as part of our efforts.

Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst

Okay. And then if we look at the gross margin performance in the second quarter it was up nicely. How much of that was due to the synergies that accrued during the period?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, that was the biggest driver of the improvement in our gross margin.

Michael Louis Lasser - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst

Okay. Thank you so much.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yep.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Matt Fassler of Goldman Sachs. Sir, your line is open. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks a lot. First just a quick quantitative housekeeping item. Because you didn't have 2016 guidance out there previously, just to clarify, it seems like the acceleration on the margin side is about 50 basis points from the original plan. Is that, Mike, the right way to think about it?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

You know what? We haven't put it out there yet. I think George said it earlier, in Q3 we'll give you a clue like we typically do with how we're thinking about next year, and then we'll give you the actual outlook in Q4. I don't want to get into that for next year, but the fact of the matter is for the full year next year we're expecting to grow on this year and we're expecting the margins to come in at 12%. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. I was just using the 45 basis point to 55 basis point quantification that you gave for some of the expense line items that you itemized...

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, we actually gave two. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

We gave 45 basis points to 55 basis points for G&A and we also gave 45 basis points to 55 basis points in terms of the closure of our stores. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. So those were two different ones. And both of those, just to be clear, are incremental to your prior thinking?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes. Yep. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. Thank you. And then second question...

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sorry, Matt, those are incremental to what we would expect for this year. Some of that was already built into our synergies, but they're incremental to this year. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. Okay. So the acceleration by year, we probably can't pinpoint exactly how much you've pushed forward from your prior plan to your new one? Not at this point?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, you know what happens, Matt, is originally when we did our synergy work you do it based on targets. Now we're getting to more street addresses and that's how we think about it. So, they start to blur together. Here's how I'd have you think about it. This year we've given you an outlook for this year for $8.10 to $8.30, that's how we think about this year. And then next year we're going to build on that and hit 12% operating profit. That's how I'd have you think about it. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And just one more piece of clarity. On this quantitative side, it sounds like the acceleration, the 12% is not just pushing up the timing of recognizing synergies that you'd previously disclosed, but in addition to that some other cost cuts that you discussed on the call. Is that correct?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

That is correct, Matt. It reflects a deeper work than the synergy. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. And then just briefly on the qualitative side, you made reference earlier in the call, guys, to moving to more of a field-driven organization. Can you talk about how you implement that, how you deploy that strategy, I guess, on the cultural front, which seems to your point to be an opportunity for the stores?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Yeah, Matt. I think it begins with, again, simply beginning to put some significant governance and gatekeeping in place and the communication is coming out of the SSC. It also involves becoming a better listening organization. So, we've already begun to do things like General Manager Councils that actually have some real consequence to them where a group of just great performers from around the country begin to come in and give us advice on what needs to be done to change the business. We now run all field changes past the field leadership team or a sampling of the field before we actually go ahead and we make those changes. We give more decision-making autonomy to the field senior leadership and ask them to take a bigger role in driving the outcome of our business. We've made a significant effort at trying to just dismantle the bureaucracy of our company. And we have it like any other that when you get big over time, you get some unintended consequences. So beginning to pull that out and just begin to simplify our message to the team and mean it much more on what we say. This business ownership and accountability for our field team, we've simplified our field structure. We have said certainly that we feel that we need to go to a single selling team in our stores. We've had the historical DIY and commercial split. We know that we need to begin to unify that and operate as one single selling team. So, I think there are a number of initiatives ongoing and certainly planned that we've begun to put in place that will begin to drive that kind of behavior. And it really begins to shift the decision-making weighting more toward the field team and away from the corporate team. We know there are things that we think can affect our business that will put an entrepreneurial spirit in the stores. Among those things are how we incent our team, so we're going to pilot and try those things as well. And most of the change in this organization going forward will be led by our field teams, piloted by our field teams and rolled off by our field teams, not tops down. Matthew Jeremy Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mr. Chris Horvers of JPMorgan. Sir, your line is open.

Mark A. Becks - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. It's actually Mark Becks on for Chris. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Mark.

Mark A. Becks - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

My first question is on the loyalty program and Speed Perks. Can you give us a sort of idea on the lift that you're seeing? And then also if there's any affiliated gross margin impact or maybe that's just a shift of advertising dollars? And then I have a follow up as well. Darren R. Jackson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Mark, historically we don't hand out the lift numbers and I'd say the other – but I would say this is that if you asked us point blank, what's underlying your shift in terms of positive momentum in DIY, it is Speed Perks. You know what? We're seeing excitement with our team members. When your team members can actually provide something to your customers that they're excited about, provide a benefit to your customers, that's what's driving part of the 6 million memberships that we're seeing today. Is there a margin cost for this? Of course it is. It's not material in the scheme of things given DIY margins overall, but there is a small cost to it in the margins that we're seeing.

Mark A. Becks - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And this is my second question on the daily delivery and fulfillment. I think you guys are at 777 stores now you said and going to 1,000 stores by yearend. Can you guys give us an update on how many of your DCs are actually have the capabilities for daily fulfillment or replenishment and then how you view that increase going forward? That would be helpful. Thanks. Charles E. Tyson - EVP-Merchandising, Marketing & Supply Chain: Hey, Mark. This is Charles. So today, we've got three of our AAP legacy DCs that are doing daily delivery across all of the Carquest DCs are daily delivery today, which we will continue to make investments in the AAP buildings to build out and complete our 5X delivery across our whole network. We will add capability in the fourth quarter of this year to enhance moving beyond that 1,000-store number. And we will continue to drive additional capability into converting three more of the legacy DCs next year to expand on our 5X capability.

Mark A. Becks - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

So, if I got my numbers right that would only leave another two or three legacy Advance DCs for daily delivery. Is that correct? Charles E. Tyson - EVP-Merchandising, Marketing & Supply Chain: That's correct. That would leave two more that we would be working on in 2018 in our current plan.

Mark A. Becks - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Perfect. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Our final question today comes from Mike Baker of Deutsche Bank. Sir, your line is open.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. So question for George, you said that this second quarter was the second quarter of heavy lifting and then that should dissipate from here. So is there any way to quantify where that disruption occurred in the first quarter and then quantify in the second quarter and what it will look like in the third quarter and fourth quarter? Does it show up in sales, SG&A, margins, et cetera, any way to sort of help us quantify what that looks like?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

Yeah, I mean, I think we would see the intensity of the integration abate sequentially through all four quarters of this year. So, if you go back to the first quarter of the year, we had changed the field organization. We had changed some selling team responsibilities, some customers had been realigned among our sales team. We were at the peak of price changes across getting to one set of prices across both Advance and Carquest. We were at the peak of the product lift strategy, relabeling which is essentially completed now. It was in full swing during the first quarter. So that was kind of the high watermark in terms of all the activities starting in the same place. If you move into Q2, as we finished Q2, again, the relabeling work is done. But Carquest still goes on, but it's become more manageable. Our teams are six months more experienced enrolled (56:04) than they were when we started this, so the relationships are getting stronger, and that impact on the commercial business begins to lessen. That plays forward into Q3 and Q4. So, we see Q2 as having been better than Q1, and Q3 is going to be better than Q2 was.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Right. And so understanding that, any way to quantify how that might show up in the P&L?

George E. Sherman - President

Management

No. I think, again, we've said that we saw some sequential progress from Q1 to Q2 in sales, mentioned that we were pleased with the start to Q3. We'd expect that to continue.

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

And it's built into our annual outlook.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. If I could ask two more quick follow-ups, because I know we're getting close to 11 a.m. here. One, the 200 stores in consolidations, conversions, et cetera, does that include the 50 stores you're talking about today? And then can you sort of break out how many of those will be consolidations versus closures versus conversions, et cetera? Just so we can sort of calculate in our model, your yearend store count?

Bill Carter - Senior Vice President, Business Development and Integration

Analyst

So, this is Bill Carter. The 50 incremental closures that Mike and George mentioned are on top of the 200 stores that we'll do TCRs (57:17) and we'll do in the back half of this year. What I'd say in terms of breaking out those 200 in terms of conversions, consolidations and what we'll call relocations is if we go back to the bigger picture, we're about a one-third, a one-third, a one-third between conversions, consolidations and relocations across the Carquest chain and we're largely sticking with that allocation. We'll do more conversions and consolidations earlier because the relos take a little bit longer to work through the system. So, as I look at the 200 stores, it's probably 40/40/20 stores in terms of breaking out how many of those are conversions versus consolidations versus relocations.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, helpful. One more quick one. You reiterated your low single digit guidance during the Q&A session here. But I think the guidance as of last quarter was the low end of the low single digit comp guidance. So, are we still thinking low end of the low single digit?

Michael A. Norona - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes, we are.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions. I will turn the call back to Zaheed Mawani for any final comments.

Zaheed Mawani - Vice President, Finance Planning, Analysis and Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Cheryl, and thanks to our audience for participating on our second quarter conference call. That concludes our call. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That concludes your call today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining us.