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AutoZone, Inc. (AZO)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, May 24, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the AutoZone Conference Call. Your lines have been placed on listen-only until the question-and-answer session of the conference. Please be advised today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. This conference call will discuss AutoZone's third quarter financial results. Bill Rhodes, the Company's Chairman, President and CEO, will be making a short presentation on the highlights of the quarter. The conference call will end promptly at 10 AM Central time, 11 AM Eastern time. Before Mr. Rhodes begins, the company has requested that you listen to the following statement regarding forward-looking statements.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements typically use words such as believe, anticipate, should, intend, plan, will, expect, estimate, project, position, strategy, and similar expressions. These are based on assumptions and assessments made by our management in light of experience and perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments, and other factors that we believe to be appropriate. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, credit market conditions; the impact of recessionary conditions; competition; product demand; ability to hire and retain qualified employees consumer debt levels; inflation; weather; raw material costs of our suppliers; energy prices; war and the prospect of war, including terrorist activity; construction delays; access to available and feasible financing; the compromising of the confidentiality, availability or integrity of information, including cyber security attacks; and changes in laws or regulations. Certain of these risks are discussed in more detail in the risk factors section contained in item 1A under part 1 of this annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended August 29, 2015, and these risk factors should be read carefully. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results, developments and business decisions may differ from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements, and events described above and in the risk factors could materially and adversely affect our business. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made. Except as required by applicable law we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Actual results may materially differ from anticipated results.

Operator

Operator

Now I'll turn the call over to your host, Mr. Bill Rhodes. Sir, you may begin.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Good morning. And thank you for joining us today for AutoZone's 2016 third quarter conference call. With me today are Bill Giles, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IT and ALLDATA, and Brian Campbell, Vice President, Treasurer, Investor Relations and Tax. Regarding the third quarter, I hope you've had an opportunity to read our press release and learn about the quarter's results. If not, the press release, along with slides complementing our comments today are available on our website www.autozoneinc.com. Please click on quarterly earnings conference calls to see them. To begin this morning, I want to thank all of our AutoZoners for another solid quarter. In the third quarter we continued to execute our strategies to organically grow our business. We expanded our US retail footprint with the opening of an additional 33 new stores. Our commercial business continued to grow, with sales increasing 6.5% and we opened 46 net new programs for the quarter. We now have the commercial program in 82% of our domestic stores. And we continue to expand our presence in Mexico, opening 7 stores this quarter. We did not open any new stores in Brazil this quarter and currently have 8 stores in operation. Lastly, we opened 1 new IMC branch, bringing our total branch count to 25. While we currently have approximately 90% of our total company sales coming from our domestic AutoZone stores, we continue to see great growth prospects in international and our other businesses. If I could sum up our quarter's major highlights, we continued on our game plan of executing our inventory availability and delivery frequency initiatives, while maintaining our efforts to constantly improve our customer’s experiences. We continued implementation of our multiple delivery frequency initiative, adding just over 300 locations this quarter. We now have approximately 1,600…

Bill Giles

Management

Thanks, Bill, and good morning, everyone. To start this morning, let me take a few moments to talk more specifically about our retail, commercial, and international results for the quarter. For the quarter, total auto parts sales, which includes our domestic retail and commercial businesses, our Mexico and Brazil stores, and our 25 IMC branches increased 4.1%. Our switching to macro trends, during the quarter nationally unleaded gas prices started out at $1.72 a gallon and ended the quarter at $2.22 a gallon, a $0.50 increase. Last year gas prices increased $0.42 per gallon during the third quarter, starting at $2.27 and ending at $2.69 a gallon. It is usual for gas prices to go up during this time of year as summer blend begins to take effect with refiners. We continue to believe gas prices have a real impact on our customers' ability to maintain their vehicles. And as cost reductions help all Americans, we hope to continue to benefit from this increase in disposable income. We also recognize that the impact of miles driven on cars over 11 years old, the current average, is much different than on newer cars in terms of wear and tear. Miles driven increased in both January and February. We don't have March or April data yet. The other statistic we highlight is the number of seven-year and older vehicles on the road, which continues to trend in our industry’s favor. For the trailing four quarters, total sales per average AutoZone store were $1,785,000. For the quarter, total commercial sales increased 6.5%. In the third quarter, commercial represented 19% of our total sales and grew $29 million over last year's Q3. As Bill said previously, we remain confident in our strategies to grow sales with this customer base for many years to come…

Bill Rhodes

Management

Thanks, Bill. We are very pleased to report our 39th consecutive quarter of double-digit EPS growth, growing this quarter at a rate of 12.6% over last year. To execute at a high level, we have to consistently adhere to Living the Pledge. We cannot and will not take our eye off of execution, success will be achieved with a strong attention to detail and exceptional execution. We are confident in our initiatives, and we are pleased with the progress we are making in rolling out our new supply chain model by delivering inventory to our stores on a more frequent basis. In addition, the performance of our mega hubs has been strong and ahead of our expectations and we look forward to opening more. We believe these initiatives will benefit both our retail and commercial businesses. Our long-term model is to grow new store square footage at a low single digit growth rate, and we expect to continue growing our commercial business at an accelerated rate. Therefore, we look to routinely grow EBIT dollars in the mid single-digit range or better in times of strength, and we leverage our very strong and predictable cash flow to repurchase shares, enhancing our earnings per share growth into double-digits. We feel the track we are on will allow us to continue winning for the long term. We believe our steady, consistent strategy is correct. It is the attention to details and consistent execution that will matter. Our belief is that solid, consistent strategy, combined with superior execution drives success. Our charge remains to optimize our performance, regardless of market conditions, and continue to ensure we are investing in the key initiatives that will drive our long-term performance. In the end, delivering strong earnings per share growth and ROIC each and every quarter is how we measure ourselves. We are proud of our results this past quarter. But we are capable of doing better. We have a lot of work in front of us, but the future looks bright. Now we'd like to open up the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from the line of Simeon Gutman of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Simeon Gutman

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. Could you guys - can you share with us the spread between the weather and non-weather affected markets?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes. It was roughly 500 basis points.

Simeon Gutman

Analyst

Okay. So if its –and I guess we could make some assumptions on the percentage of stores that are affected. But if you look then at the non-weather affected markets, then that would probably equal something between a 3 and a 4 comp, I don't know if you'd agree or disagree with it. But if you look at that trajectory, are there any changes in those markets, whether it's internal efforts from some of the supply chain investments, anything miles driven in those markets, I mean, what's the trajectory like in the non-weather, is there anything notable?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, I would start with any time you're in the springtime, regardless of the markets you're in, things are changing. They're pretty volatile week-to-week. That's just the nature of the spring business. But I would say that the unaffected markets that we were talking about generally performed consistently with how they've been performing the last couple of quarters.

Simeon Gutman

Analyst

Okay. That's fair. And then in the commentary you were talking about the distribution strategy, the DCs and the mega hub. Maybe it was the tone, but you sounded a little more bullish than you did in the last quarter. I don't know if that's the right read or not. But in general can you talk about the changes you are seeing or the adoption you are seeing with the distribution rollout?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Well, I would say a couple of things on that front. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily more bullish. I think we continue to be pleased with the performance of the multiple deliveries per week program. We've said all along that as we rolled out the mega hubs they were outperforming our expectations. I guess, there was one piece of negative news and that is we updated our guidance on what our new distribution centers are going to cost. They are going to cost substantially more amount of money as we got further into the due diligence. But we believe in this strategy we're rolling it out. We're pleased with the performance so far. We can see how it is benefiting our business and think it will only gain more traction over time.

Simeon Gutman

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of David Schick of Consumer Edge Research. Your line is now open.

David Schick

Analyst

Hi. Good morning and thanks for taking my question. I was hoping you could update us on the competitive environment. There's a lot going on out there, just your view on that. And then anything you could add on how you're thinking about SKU additions to the autoanything.com? Thank you.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Thanks, Dave. On the competitive environment, number one, we have fantastic competitors. We have a lot of very strong competitors and have for a number of years, and that's both on the retail side and the commercial side. There is more than normal going on in the competitive environment. Obviously we have one competitor that's going through an integration effort and they're converting and or closing some stores. We're obviously monitoring that very closely and seeing how we can optimize our performance. But the biggest thing that we're focused on is us and our initiatives. We've got to make sure we believe in the game plan that we have and we've got to execute that game plan. So, I don't want to get too overly focused on what's happening short term in the competitive market.

Bill Giles

Management

An AutoAnything, that's obviously primarily focused on performance and accessories business. But as you may have seen, we are beginning to expand in some replacement parts on AutoAnything. That's still relatively new but we're continuing to expand the SKU count on the site to be more encompassing and to really take advantage of the name AutoAnything.

David Schick

Analyst

Thanks so much.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Kate McShane of Citi Research. Your line is now open.

Kate McShane

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning and thanks for taking my question. My question is centered around commercial. I know you had said commercial was impacted by the weather, just as DIY was, and while accelerating in the quarter it didn't accelerate on the two year. How should we expect for the rest of the year to play out especially considering the two year stack?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, clearly, our commercial performance, if you go back to Q4 of last year, our commercial performance has decelerated. We talked about some of that deceleration, but not all of that deceleration has been due to the number of new stores that are going through the maturation process. But there's still a gap and we are very focused on why that gap exists and what are we going to do about it. We talked on the last call about really significantly increasing the engagement of our district managers and our store managers in the commercial business. We said at the time that will take time. That's proving to be you true, but I'm very excited about getting those great leaders more involved in the commercial business. We're also looking at what else can we do to drive sales in this business over the long term. We think inventory availability is having an impact and will continue to have an impact over the long term. But we've got to get more acceleration in our commercial sales growth.

Kate McShane

Analyst

And just a follow up to the question prior about the competitive environment, do you have a sense of how much share gains is contributing to your business at this point and are you seeing more in DIY versus DIFM?

Bill Rhodes

Management

I think we're seeing pretty fairly significant share gains on both sides. Clearly the market, we grew 6.5% on the commercial. I don't think anybody thinks the commercial market grew 6.5%. Now, that's not as wide a gap as we had before, and then all the indicators that we have on the retail side of the business show that we continue to gain share.

Kate McShane

Analyst

Thank you.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Dan Wewer of Raymond James. Your line is open.

Dan Wewer

Analyst

Thanks. I just wanted to drill into commercial a bit further. You did note that mega hubs are [exceeding plans] [ph], multiple delivery sounds like it's in line with expectation. And in the past you talked about stores with both initiatives, mega hub and increased fulfillment, to increase their weekly sales $1,000 to $1,500. But how do we reconcile those comments with the deceleration, that gap between 6.5% and 10% plus can't all be due to weather. So, is there any other company specific initiatives or challenges, let's say, with these initiatives that's not working out as you had intended?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Let's make sure I'm clear on one thing first, Dan, when we talked about $1,000 to $1,500 per store, that's both our retail and commercial business. And, frankly, more than half of that goes to the retail side of the business, okay. We do believe inventory availability and saying Yes, We've Got It more frequently will build to longer and stronger relationships with our customers over time. But I don't think it is a flip the switch, and obviously that's playing out to be true. You said, yes, weather was a material drag on commercial. Also this maturation cycle is a significant drag. But, frankly, there is some more sales that we haven't figured out why we're missing those and we're working on that. And I have a high degree of confidence we'll figure it out and hopefully reaccelerate our commercial growth rate. But it's not lost on us. We're marginally disappointed with our commercial sales performance and frankly, disappointed with our sales performance overall for the quarter. But we're not managing this business for one month or one quarter or frankly, even one year.

Dan Wewer

Analyst

Are you customers aware of the improved parts availability? Has that message been communicated recently?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, absolutely. We have territory sales managers on the ground in those markets. And nobody's more excited about turning on a mega hub or getting increased frequency of delivery than a territory sales manager or a store manager and they are preaching that from the rooftops.

Dan Wewer

Analyst

And the last question I had, subtracting out the extra supply chain costs, it implies your merchandise margins are improving over 70 basis points year-over-year. Are we going through a new cycle of this gross margin expansion cycle or just the magnitude of further cost concessions from your vendors, is that accelerating?

Bill Giles

Management

I think it's probably a combination of both cost concessions and also sourcing. And so we've put a lot more time, energy and effort around improving our capabilities around sourcing. We've mentioned earlier that we had established an office overseas to help support that effort. That's still relatively immature. And so from our vantage point we're very pleased with the hard work the merchandising organization has done to improve our overall margin rates and we really think there is continued opportunity for us to continue on that track some time into the future. Obviously I don't know exactly what that rate will be, but we're really pleased with the health of the margin and our opportunity to continue to grow it.

Dan Wewer

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Bill Giles

Management

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Matthew Fassler of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Matthew Fassler

Analyst

Thanks, excuse me, thanks a lot and good morning. You are executing the enhanced distribution and supply chain efforts with increasingly tight inventories. Can you just give us some insight as to how you are pulling this off, where the inventory is relative to where you'd optimally like to see it please?

Bill Giles

Management

Actually, I'd say our overall inventory level right now at $629,000 a store is pretty close to where we think it should be able to sustain itself, between 629 and say, 640. I think that the more frequent delivery has allowed us to optimize some of the inventory even though we're increasing the amount of inventory we have in the mega hubs. So I think the organization's done a pretty good job of balancing out. We've obviously increased it pretty significantly, if you go back a couple of years. But we think that probably that 630, 640 is a pretty good range for us at the moment.

Matthew Fassler

Analyst

Got it. A second question, Bill Rhodes, you talked about data capture and deployment of that data. Can you talk about what if anything is changing in your capacity to get that done and how you would envision deploying some of this in the future?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, I mean, if you think about it in the simplest form, we've acquired businesses over the years, and many of those businesses have some of the same customers that we have in the AutoZone business. So, think about ALLDATA and the customers that they overlap with our commercial customers, and think about IMC and some of the overlaps we have with those customers. So, we're really trying to build what we call one view of the customer, so that we have a holistic view of how we as an enterprise interact with that customer. And it's going to take us some time. We've been working on it’s for a while, but it's very hard to get all those data sets the same. I'm really pleased with the work our IT organization's doing but it's going to take us a while. When we come out the other side of it we think we'll be in a much better position in the market to those customers, be they retail or commercial.

Matthew Fassler

Analyst

That's great. And then, finally, very briefly, you spoke about weather. You also spoke about traffic and ticket. To the extent that weather was an impact on the quarter and the markets where it was impacting you, is that felt more on the traffic side, on the ticket side or evenly?

Bill Rhodes

Management

It's generally more on the traffic side, Matt. You do see some compression, for instance, if your battery business is off, because its - then that's going to hurt your ticket because that's a high-price ticket. But most of it is in the traffic count.

Matthew Fassler

Analyst

Got it. Thank you so much, guys.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Greg Melich of Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Greg Melich

Analyst

Thanks. I want to talk two things, one on sales and the other one is on payroll cost. First, on sales, I want to make sure I interpreted this right. Do we actually go negative in April, May? And if the two year stacks was stable through the quarter, why shouldn't we roll that into the fourth quarter because this is a harder comparison and assume comps are less than one. Then I had a follow-up on payroll costs.

Bill Rhodes

Management

To answer your first part of your question, they were flat to slightly negative in the latter part of the quarter. But really, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, Greg, sales were really volatile week-to-week, and it directly correlated with when those weather patterns were coming through. To your question about should you straight-line the two year comp, our premise at this point in time, as you know we don't give guidance. But we think the weather was a pretty significant headwind in this quarter. They are calling for a hot summer. We haven't seen it yet. It's starting to heat up around here a little bit, and hopefully it does in the Northeast. But we think if that comes to fruition we could have a pretty strong fourth quarter.

Greg Melich

Analyst

Got it. So, the point is the two-year would have been influenced by weather?

Bill Rhodes

Management

No question about it.

Greg Melich

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then the second question was, I think in your prepared comments, and maybe I read it in the release, the pressure on payroll cost. Could you describe where that's coming from, if any of that is due to the new Department of Labor salary to hourly switches or just help us understand what happened there and what we should expect?

Bill Giles

Management

Yes, I would think of it as more intentional. I think that we're very focused on improving customer service and so we've made some investments from a payroll perspective. Yes, we're getting some pressure from some of the regulatory environment in terms of wage rates, et cetera. But I would say that's much to a lesser extent currently. So today, I would say that it's more intentional from ensuring that we've got great customer service in the stores.

Greg Melich

Analyst

Okay. And, I guess, Bill, while I've got you, then, on the higher CapEx cost for the DCs, should we just take the current CapEx and for modeling out just sort of add $50 million to $60 million for three DCs over a couple years? Is there any other thing we should…

Bill Giles

Management

Yes, nothing much more dramatic than that, Greg. I mean, we've already added tractors and trailers to support more frequent deliveries. There will be a little bit more of that as we open up new distribution centers. But for the most part I would think of it as those three distribution centers over the next couple of years. Exactly right.

Greg Melich

Analyst

That's great. Hope it gets hot soon. Thanks, guys.

Bill Giles

Management

Me too.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Tony Cristello of BB&T. You may now ask your question.

Tony Cristello

Analyst

Hi. Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask a little bit about the IMC business. It sounds like there continues to be a lot of potential opportunity, but you don't discuss it much in terms of the plan for the rollout, just sort of integration into a potential to have those parts touch on some of your existing businesses. Can you elaborate a bit more on where you are in that rollout and how we should think about that alongside your initiatives to increase parts availability?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, I would say, first of all, the premise behind the acquisition of IMC was it's a good business and we think it can be a great business and can be substantially larger than it is today. After we bought them, we quickly started increasing the branch count. We were at 17 branches less than 2 years ago when we acquired them. We're now at 25, that's over 50% growth or right at 50% growth. And frankly, we've probably got a little bit out in front of our skis, we were moving too fast for an organization that had not opened a lot of branches over time, and we were also doing a lot of integration with AutoZone. And so, we've slowed down a little bit and intend to slow down our branch growth and really work on the fundamentals of the business in the 25 branches that we have and then restart the branch expansion later. We are using, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we have about 700 stores that are using and selling IMC parts. That is just to supplement our commercial offerings. It's not going to be a radical change in the sales trajectory of our commercial business. But it's a nice way to say Yes, We've Got It to a commercial customer who has a unique need.

Tony Cristello

Analyst

And are the same territory managers or regional managers working on expanding that IMC as relationships of that part, as well as the newer initiatives? What I'm asking is, do you need to, as you grow your parts availability and your frequencies of delivery, add more sales in order to sort of educate and get that message out there?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, as far as a separate sales organization, we have separate and distinct sales organizations for AutoZone, commercial, ALLDATA and IMC. Now, we are doing some work around them on lead generation between the three different businesses, but each one of those is really a standalone organization. As far as on the AutoZone side regarding mega hubs and increased frequency of delivery, at the current point we don't believe we need a significant expansion of our sales force. We've got a very talented sales force that we've built over the last seven or eight years and think they are performing well. We've just got to keep telling our story.

Tony Cristello

Analyst

Okay. And then just quick on a follow-up, I'm not sure if you categorized why you are increasing the cost in terms of those DC rollouts. Was there something that you found, whether it's automation or something, that you needed to provide, and I apologize if I missed it in the prepared remarks.

Bill Rhodes

Management

No, I don't think we addressed it. Frankly, we just missed our estimate. It's been a while since we built a distribution center. These are in different geographies which have different site preparation costs. It was just a function of we got deeper into the due diligence and found out they were going to be more expensive than we thought. It's the same general operating model that we've opened in the last couple of distribution centers we've opened.

Tony Cristello

Analyst

Great. Thank you for your time.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Chris Horvers of JPMorgan. Your lines is now open.

Chris Horvers

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Morning.

Chris Horvers

Analyst

Bill, I want to get your thoughts on how much of the slowdown could simply be the lapping of the benefit of lower gas prices. Could you refresh us on what you thought the benefit of lower gas prices was to your business in 2015 impacted it and when you thought it peaked during the year?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, I'm trying to remember back, I think we quantified it and said we thought it might be 1 point, 1.5 points, something like that. As we're thinking about gas prices currently and yes, they are elevated but they are still at historically low levels for the last decade or so. So, when we're thinking about it, yes, it may have muted that benefit, and maybe slightly a headwind, but we don't think it's a significant major driver. It will be interesting to watch what happens to miles driven as we get those data sets that show when gas prices started to increase. So far, all the miles driven data we've seen has been incredibly positive.

Chris Horvers

Analyst

Okay. So, I guess, said another way, it's not as if we have to - any of your business out perform by that point, 1.5, and it's not symmetrical where we maybe have to give that back versus what the underlying trend was?

Bill Rhodes

Management

No, what we've really seen is in gas prices the real shocks that we've seen have been when gas prices got to $4. And there seemed to be almost a magic switch there, that it changed customer behavior. People started changing where they lived or where they worked or using public transportation. There was a meaningful change in miles driven at those levels. Below those levels it's really hard to ferret out.

Chris Horvers

Analyst

Understood. Thanks very much, guys.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Michael Lasser of UBS. You may now ask your question.

Michael Lasser

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. It's on the commercial side. If we look at your sales per commercial program, on a two year stack it decelerated to 3.5% from 5% the last couple of quarters. Can we attribute all of the 150 basis point sequential slowdown to the weather?

Bill Rhodes

Management

No. I think you can contribute some of it to the maturation cycle change. You can contribute some of it to the weather, and I think there's still a gap there that we haven't identified yet.

Michael Lasser

Analyst

So you previously talked about adding new commercial programs in areas where you already have a store, so there's some cannibalization impact. So are you still seeing that and is it now being compounded by the maturation curve issue such that…

Bill Rhodes

Management

No, I think cannibalization by definition is less today than it was three or four years ago when we were opening 400 programs. We're just not opening as many on top of the other programs.

Michael Lasser

Analyst

I guess, the question was getting at is, are those mature programs still in decline or has the decline started to abate?

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes, I don't think they were ever in decline. I think that they were not growing as rapidly as we would have expected because that cannibalization was coming in. Now a specific store, if we open a store two miles down the road, yes, it might go in decline for six months. But as a general rule, most of them were continuing to grow.

Michael Lasser

Analyst

And Bill, my last question is, in your mind, did you have some time frame on how long it might take for these investments to pay off? And has that been slower than you expected and now you have updated thinking on the time frame for earning return there?

Bill Rhodes

Management

No, I think we're absolutely on par, if not ahead, with our initiatives, particularly the mega hubs. We see the performance every week. We know that they are outperforming where we thought we would be. We see the inventory, the frequency of deliveries, they continue to perform in line with our expectations, if not even a little bit ahead there. So, we're seeing that performance. There's just other things that are going on in the business too, that are giving us a little bit of headwind and that happens over time.

Michael Lasser

Analyst

Got it. Okay. Thank you so much and good luck.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Yes. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Bret Jordan of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Bret Jordan

Analyst

Good morning, guys.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Morning.

Bret Jordan

Analyst

A quick question on IMC and those 700 stores that have same-day distribution of the catalog, are you seeing any impact on those commercial volumes relative to the other stores?

Bill Rhodes

Management

We're clearly seeing that we're selling some products to them, but it's not going to be a meaningful change in the overall performance of the commercial program.

Bret Jordan

Analyst

Okay. And then on AutoAnything, as you're beginning to put some replacement parts through that channel, is the pricing strategy the same or as you're selling on an online platform like AutoAnything, do you have to price against the RockAutos as opposed to the other brick and mortar retailers?

Bill Giles

Management

I'd say that we're focusing it more on an online strategy and we're basing it based on the level of value proposition that the online retailer has. So obviously returns are a little bit more difficult, you don't have the trustworthy advice that you have at a brick-and-mortar store. So we're pricing it appropriately based on that and based on the level of service that we provide.

Bret Jordan

Analyst

Are you differentiating the products so people don't wind up going to AutoAnything to buy the same thing cheaper that they could have bought at AutoZone?

Bill Giles

Management

Yes, it will be a different product, different brand, et cetera.

Bret Jordan

Analyst

All right, great. Thank you.

Bill Rhodes

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Alan Rifkin of BTIG. Your line is now open.

Alan Rifkin

Analyst

Thank you very much. With respect to the 1,600 stores that are getting greater deliveries, can you maybe provide some color on the relative comp of those stores relative to the corporate average?

Bill Rhodes

Management

It's a great question, Alan, but we don't focus on it that way. What we're doing, we run simulations so we can understand what they wouldn't have sold. And those stores are all over the country. So some of these weather patterns that we're seeing would distort those views in certain areas versus other areas. I think we're just going to stick with what we've said all along, that we expect, when a store gets each of these two initiatives, then their sales will grow between $1,000, $1,500 per week, and we're seeing that's being confirmed in our test results, excuse me, our roll outs.

Alan Rifkin

Analyst

Okay. And on the commercial side, you said that it was slowing a little bit but could you maybe provide some color as to the increases? Is it coming from you new customers or are you just seeing greater traffic or greater ticket from already existing accounts?

Bill Rhodes

Management

I think we're seeing both. Clearly we're constantly out there trying to hunt for new accounts and build better relationships. We also are out there building deeper relationships with the customers that we have. So I would say it's on both sides.

Alan Rifkin

Analyst

Okay. Just a quick point of clarification, the two to three additional DCs does not include the one in Mexico you're adding later this year, correct?

Bill Giles

Management

That is correct. That's exactly right, Alan.

Alan Rifkin

Analyst

Thanks for that clarification. Thank you.

Bill Rhodes

Management

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our last question is coming in the line of Scot Ciccarelli of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Bill Rhodes

Management

It sounds like Scot - I think he already asked a question. So we'll just go into the closing. Before we conclude the call I want to wish everyone a nice Memorial Day weekend, and look forward to updating you on our initiatives in September. While we're excited about our growth prospects for the remainder of the year, we will not take anything for granted as we understand our customers have alternatives. We have a solid plan to succeed this quarter, but I want to stress that this is a marathon and not a sprint. As we continue to focus on the basics and focus on optimizing long-term shareholder value, we are confident AutoZone will continue to be very successful. Thank you for participating in today's call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.