Earnings Labs

Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. (BBW)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 23, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Build-A-Bear Workshop Third Quarter 2014 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now pleasure to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Allison Malkin of ICR. Thank you. You may begin.

Allison Malkin

Management

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. With me today are Build-A-Bear’s CEO, Sharon Price John; Tina Klocke, Chief Operating Officer; and Voin Todorovic, who joined Build-A-Bear on September 15 as Chief Financial Officer. For today’s call, Sharon will begin with a discussion of the third quarter results and fourth quarter outlook. Tina will follow with a more detailed review of our financials. Then, Voin will provide some introductory remarks, and then we will take your questions. We ask that you limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. This way, we can get to everyone's questions during this one hour call. Feel free to re-queue if you have further questions. Members of the media who maybe on our call today should contact us after this conference call with your questions. Please note that this call is being recorded and broadcast live via the Internet. The earnings release is available on the Investor Relations portion of our website, and a replay of both our call and webcast will be available later today on the IR site. Before I turn the call over to management, I will remind everyone that forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section in the Annual Report on Form 10-K, and we undertake no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. And now, I will turn the call over to Sharon John.

Sharon John

Management

Thanks, Allison. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I’m pleased to report that the continued disciplined execution of our stated strategies resulted in our seventh consecutive quarter of improved operating performance with a $2.1 million in pre-tax income, an improvement of over $3 million versus last year. Additionally, on a year-to-date basis for the first three quarters, we have delivered pre-tax income of $3.4 million, an improvement of over $10.5 million versus last year, marking the first time since 2007 that we’ve been profitable at this point in the year. These results demonstrate our progress toward our stated goal of sustained profitability as we evolve our business model to leverage the strength of the Build-A-Bear brand to drive future growth. During the quarter, our company achieved net retail sales of $85.6 million with seven fewer stores in operation at quarter end, a $2 million increase over the prior year; increased consolidated comparable store sales by 0.8%, which followed last year’s 6.4% increase; improved key operational levers, including dollars per transaction, units per transaction, and average unit selling price; drove comparable e-commerce sales by 14.5% over the prior year at a significantly improved profitability; and expanded retail gross margins by 360 basis points. Importantly, these positive results give us momentum for our key holiday selling period as we remain focused on driving the business by executing our stated strategies, including the delivery of sustained profitability and improving sales through the evolution of our consumer value equation. Looking at the third quarter in more detail, we continued to demonstrate that high-impact product launches, supported by well-executed elevated marketing programs, can drive broad consumer awareness and demand. The most impactful introduction for the period was the full line-up of Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in anticipation of the release of…

Tina Klocke

Management

Thanks, Sharon, and good morning, everyone. We’re pleased to report our third quarter pre-tax income of $2.1 million, which represents an improvement of $3.2 million over last year. Through the first nine months of 2014, we have generated pre-tax income of $3.4 million, marking the first time since 2007 that we have been profitable at this point in the year. For the third quarter, net retail sales were $85.6 million with seven fewer stores in operation compared to $83.6 million in the prior year. Consolidated comparable store sales increased 0.8%, driven by an 8% increase in average transaction value, partially offset by a decrease in transaction. By geography, comparable store sales increased 1% in North America, and were flat in Europe. E-commerce comparables sales increased by 14.5% with a continued improvement in profitability. Retail gross margin increased by 360 basis points to 43.7%. This was a result of approximately 300 basis point improvement from expansion in merchandise margin with the remainder coming primarily from improvements in packaging costs and leverage on fixed occupancy expenses. SG&A was $36.2 million, up slightly from last year. As a percent of total revenues, SG&A improved by 40 basis points to 41.8%. Management transition and store closing expenses were $800,000 in the quarter, compared to $600,000 last year. Excluding these costs to both periods, SG&A, as a percent of total revenue, improved 70 basis points to 40.9%. Pre-tax income was $2.1 million, compared to a pre-tax loss of $1.1 million in the 2013 third quarter. Net income improved to $1.8 million or $0.10 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $1.4 million or $0.08 per share in the third quarter last year. Adjusted net income was $0.15 per diluted share, a $0.20 improvement from an adjusted net loss of $0.05 per share last…

Voin Todorovic

Management

Good morning, everyone. I’m pleased to speak with you on my first earnings call at Build-A-Bear Workshop. For those of you not familiar with my background, throughout the last 15 years I had many financial and operational positions with increasing responsibility across a number of multi-billion dollar global companies that well prepared me to be a great addition to the Build-A-Bear Workshop senior leadership team. My experience in working with global consumer brands operating across both retail and wholesale channels and with owned, licensed, distributor and international franchise operations will assist Build-A-Bear Workshop in achieving our strategic objectives and profit expectations. In addition, I also had critical leadership roles in corporate finance, real estate, asset management and accounting at both divisional and corporate levels within Payless Shoe Source, Collective Brands, Stride Rite Children’s Group, and most recently, Wolverine Worldwide. I have spent my first six weeks at Build-A-Bear Workshop getting to know many aspects of the company and working with the finance and operations teams with Tina’s support during the transition. I’m excited to apply my finance, operational and capital allocation knowledge at Build-A-Bear Workshop to assist the company to achieve its long-term goal of sustained profitability and growth. I’m also looking forward to getting to know you, our investors and analysts, in upcoming meetings and investor conferences. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the operator to take any questions if you have. Operator?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Stephanie Wissink with Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Maria Vizuete - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

Great, thanks so much for taking our question. This is actually Maria Vizuete on for Stephanie. We just had a couple of quick questions. We’re wondering if you can talk a little bit more about mall traffic trends maybe by region in Q3 and maybe what you're seeing today? Thank you.

Sharon Price John

Analyst

Our mall traffic trends, well, I mentioned a lot of operational levers that we have improved, but I did not mention traffic. If you recall, we have improved in dollars per transaction, units per transaction and average unit selling price, but our traffic has been a little bit off, and it's not really been significantly by region in this particular quarter, but if there was a region that had some challenges is probably the Northeast.

Maria Vizuete - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

And then, any color on Q4 today?

Sharon Price John

Analyst

Other than what we mentioned, we’re positive, we have a positive comp to-date in third quarter - I mean fourth quarter rather.

Maria Vizuete - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

And then, if I can just add one quick one and just from a longer-term perspective, we’re just wondering what Macy’s partnership could imply for the future distribution model? Are there any plans or considerations to launch some more in multi-format stores beyond that? Thank you.

Sharon Price John

Analyst

One of the things that we’ve talked about in the past from a strategic perspective is looking at our fleet in a portfolio manner, and if you think about the different types of retail environments in which we currently exist, we have malls, we have, what we call, tourist locations, we have shop-in-shops, we have pop-up stores and we’re looking at that a lot more strategically. And as a part of that solution, shop-in-shops in more non-traditional approaches like a Macy’s relationship, we do think, bode well for us in the future, particularly if you want to have a diversified portfolio if indeed mall traffic continues to be somewhat challenged. We found particularly with these tourist locations, which I had mentioned in the past, they tend to over perform on all key metrics. We do look at this Macy’s shop-in-shop opportunity, particularly the Herald Square and State Street location, as clearly being opportunistic from a tourist opportunity. These are places that new consumers go that would also be inclusive of our Time Square pop-up store which will open next week.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Fuhrman with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Fuhrman - Craig-Hallum

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Congratulations on a really good third quarter. We’d love to talk about specifically the gross margin, I mean that just keeps beating quarter after quarter and it seems like there's a lot of things benefiting that, a lot of things in the supply chain that I feel like we're kind of starting to lap now and yet the growth in gross margin is really not abating at all. Can you maybe talk about where that's coming from and then maybe what the most important drivers are, whether it's initial pricing or markdown control or maybe just some extra legs of what you've been doing in the supply chain and really where could that keep going, if you just flow through obviously the traffic has been down and you put up those margins regardless, when are we going to start to run into the natural ceilings of the initiatives that are driving gross margin higher today?

Sharon Price John

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Mostly what you're seeing that's contributing to the gross margin expansion to-date is a combination of strategic pricing, and when I say strategic pricing, I'm not talking about that we're just randomly increasing pricing or creating price banding advantageous for us. And I had mentioned this, I think, last time on the call as an example of price banding. We actually did increase our entry-level price point, for example, on our core product line from $10 to $12. We did that late in the second quarter - or in second quarter last year. So we haven't actually lapped that yet, this year rather. And the other piece is what we've talked about, to some extent, which is value engineering, the reduction of the cost of the goods that are coming in. This is really the first quarter that we have enjoyed true value engineering from the bottom up versus value reengineering, if you will, of products that had already been somewhat designed. It takes about six, eight months to get through - to loop through the whole product development cycle. So the third and fourth quarter are representatives of product lines that were completely engineered from the bottom up with the value construct in mind. And is there any -- yes and on your question about upside, just and you can look back in our information. The highest retail gross margin we've ever had is 49% in 2005. So we're not at our height yet. I'm not saying that we can get to that. We had clearly a lot more volume and those were different days, but we still feel like we have some plays.

Alex Fuhrman - Craig-Hallum

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Great, that’s really helpful. And then, if I could just take you back on Maria’s second question here for a second. I mean it seems like this license stuff is really taking off giving you opportunities in different channels, I mean the Macy’s partnership could be great for the holiday season. Do the terms of your license agreements, do you have the freedom to put that product wherever you want in any channel and any market and did you have to get special approval from your licensors to be able to do that that Macy’s partnership or do you really have that latitude to put the product where you feel it’s appropriate?

Sharon Price John

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

For the most part, we have latitude. Our deals are based on being a vertical retailer. But we partner with our licensed -- we have great license relationships, so there is quite an open conversation. We’re running those stores.

Alex Fuhrman - Craig-Hallum

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

You're owning all the economics of that?

Sharon Price John

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. Just for clarity, are you asking if we have - you are referring to our Disney products and Marvel products. You’re not referring to that we have a Macy’s --?

Alex Fuhrman - Craig-Hallum

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Not referring to your own.

Sharon Price John

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. All right, so then that's the right answer. Yes, thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of James Fronda with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with our question. James Fronda - Sidoti & Company: Just on the Halloween items, do you think that could have as a significant impact as the Nickelodeon items had?

Sharon Price John

Analyst

We launched our proprietary Halloween products, as I mentioned, in late September. They really did quite well. We had a nice response to them. We had two specific Halloween products; a Werewolf and a Kitty. The Werewolf sold out very quickly. Once again, you can go on - he is actually upon eBay right now for more than we’ve sold in for. And our Kitty is just -- we’re pretty scattered on her. So we sold totally clean on our Halloween products, but they are nowhere near the volume of Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mostly because they have a really tight window of opportunity and they don’t have a national film. But our Halloween offering isn’t just about those products, kids dress up like all sorts of characters during Halloween and what we do is push the approach of everything from our superheroes to our princess suits products, those are the number one costumes for kids, and we have those in our products. So although we lead with things like a werewolf or a purple kitty, the Halloween story that will be really pick up next week isn’t reliant on these specific products. James Fronda - Sidoti & Company: Are you forecasting or expecting any shipment issues for the fourth quarter similar to what you had in the third quarter?

Sharon Price John

Analyst

Shipment issues, you mean from a quantities perspective or a flow perspective? I'll try to answer. James Fronda - Sidoti & Company: I thought you said that the Ninja Turtle product could have been even better but there were some short-term shipment issues.

Sharon Price John

Analyst

Well, they weren’t shipment issues. We didn’t order enough of initial quantities to meet the demand. So there is always going to be possibly a little chase. We are being a lot more, as I mentioned in the call, aggressive on a strategic basis with key stories based on our last few quarters of experience of being able to drive velocities at a higher rate than was expected. I think we're better prepared for this quarter for some of the opportunities, particularly given that the key licenses like Frozen, we certainly have some idea about the potential success of Frozen given that it's been out for quite some time in other channels. Shipment, yeah, so we feel that we're fairly well prepared for the fourth quarter.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We’ll pause for just a moment to allow for any other questions. Ms. John, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor back to you for any closing and final remarks.

Sharon Price John

Analyst

Yes. So thank you for joining us today. And in closing, I just want to acknowledge that this is the last earnings call for Tina as CFO and thank her for 17 years of service in that role at Build-A-Bear Workshop. Voin and I look forward to updating you when we report the fourth quarter results in February.