Earnings Labs

La-Z-Boy Incorporated (LZB)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Jun 17, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the La-Z-Boy Incorporated Fiscal 2015 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Kathy Liebmann, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Thank you. You may begin.

Kathy Liebmann

Analyst

Thank you, Jessica. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss our fiscal 2015 fourth quarter and year-end results. With us today are Kurt Darrow, La-Z-Boy's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Riccio, our Chief Financial Officer. Kurt will begin today's call and then Mike will speak about the financials before turning the call back to Kurt for his concluding remarks. We will then open the call to questions. A telephone replay of the call will be available for one week beginning this afternoon. Slides will accompany this presentation and are available for viewing through our webcast link. These regular quarterly investor conference calls are one of La-Z-Boy's primary vehicles to communicate with investors about the company's current operations and future prospects. We will make forward-looking statements during this call, so I will repeat our usual Safe Harbor remark. While these statements reflect the best judgment of management at the present time, they are subject to numerous future risks and uncertainties as detailed in our regular SEC filings, and they may differ materially from actual results due to a wide range of factors. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. And with that, let me turn over the call to Kurt Darrow, La-Z-Boy's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Kurt?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. As Kathy mentioned, a few slides will accompany our remarks this morning if you would like to follow along. Yesterday afternoon, we reported our fiscal 2015 full year and fourth quarter results. All-in-all, it was a good year marked with steady progress as we continue to transform our company through the execution of key strategic growth initiatives. For the year, sales increased 5% with increases in all three business segments. Operating income grew 15.5% and we generated $87 million in cash from operating activities. We also returned 66.4 million in value to shareholders through an increased dividend and share purchases, an increase of 56% over last year. And we finished the year with a strong balance sheet, which will continue to provide us with the necessary financial flexibility to invest in our business to drive long-term profitable growth while continuing to return value to our shareholders. Throughout the year, we made excellent progress with our 4-4-5 store build-out strategy, successfully implemented our new ERP system in four of our five domestic La-Z-Boy branded facilities and strengthened our casegoods segment through a major restructuring with a move to a pure-import model, the key component. Before I discuss the particulars for the fourth quarter, I would like to take a moment to provide some perspective on the progress La-Z-Boy Incorporated has made over the five-year period following the economic downturns in the fall of 2008 and 2009. Since fiscal 2010, we have increased sales by 29%, increased our operating income by 168%, increased income from continuing operations by 134% and increased our earnings per share by 121%. We have also returned 129 million in value to shareholders in the form of dividends and share purchases and have generated $357 million in cash from operating activities.…

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

Thank you, Kurt. Consolidated sales for the fiscal 2015 fourth quarter were $375 million, up 6.2% compared with last year's fourth quarter of $353 million. As a reminder, the operating results of Bauhaus and Lea Industries are reported as discontinued operations. For the quarter, consolidated operating income increased 31% to $29.6 million compared with $22.5 million in the fiscal 2014 fourth quarter with the consolidated operating margin increasing to 7.9% from 6.4%. The company reported net income from continuing operations attributable to La-Z-Boy Incorporated of $19.8 million or $0.38 per diluted share, which included a $0.01 per share restructuring charge and $0.01 in antidumping income related to the company's casegoods segment. This compares with last year's fourth quarter net income of $14.6 million or $0.27 per diluted share, which included a $0.06 per share restructuring charge related to the casegoods segment. As noted in our press release, adjusted income from continuing operations attributable to La-Z-Boy Incorporated per share was $0.38 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 versus $0.33 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014. For the year, our consolidated operating margin was 7.2% versus 6.6% in fiscal 2014. Our consolidated gross margin improved 1.2 percentage points in fiscal 2015 as a result of increased volume at selling prices, the higher weighting of the retail segment and improved performance from our casegoods business due to the restructuring Kurt referenced earlier and a reduction to the life of reserves related to that segment. These factors were partially offset by raw material costs increases and disruptions experienced in our upholstery segment from the ERP implementation. I’d like to emphasize on a comment about the higher weighting of our retail business as this is important for modeling purposes. As you are aware, the retail business carries a higher gross margin than our…

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Mike. Before we close, I’m happy to report we have moved into our new world headquarters and the atmosphere in the office is energetic and very positive. We are invigorated by working in a more collaborative and creative environment that we believe will drive innovation, productivity, enhanced teamwork and the ability to attract and retain talent to the organization, and the investment in the building is behind us. The building is completely debt free and offsetting a portion of the costs will be benefits received from local and state governments for the next nine years. Moving forward, we believe our future is bright with many opportunities to grow our business. While we have a clear pathway to execute our 4-4-5 strategy, we are also hard at work setting the stage for the next wave of growth for the number of initiatives in the pipeline being studied and evaluated. At the same time, our team is working to further expand our product line, which will allow us to continue to increase our market share. Our brand remains the most recognized in the industry and our distribution network is vast. As we grow our business, we’ll be able to leverage the efficiencies of our operating platform while driving increased profitability through our integrated retail model. We will continue to make strategic investments in the company to drive profitable long-term growth and enhance shareholder return. I thank you for being on the call this morning and hope you found the new format with the slides helpful. I will now return the call to Kathy for the Q&A.

Kathy Liebmann

Analyst

Thank you, Kurt. We will begin the question-and-answer period now. Jessica, please review the instructions for getting into the queue to ask questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is coming from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Jason Gere

Analyst

Hi, guys. This is actually Jason sitting in for Brad this morning. My first question is on some of your real estate. You’ve made a lot of good progress on your 4-4-5. I know you’ve talked about – you’ve kind of got some of the low-hanging fruit behind you and there’s a couple more difficult markets that you’re going to look to enter. I was wondering about your 2016 – fiscal '16. Are there anymore of those kind of lower-hanging fruit markets or are you going to have to kind of make a push into some of the New York, Boston type markets?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Good question, Jason. So we really don’t have many vacant markets that the company is looking at right now. We are building two more stores this year and we want a third store to go with our first one in Edina in Minneapolis. So that’s kind of greenfield build-out. But after that it’s the markets we’re already in, it’s markets that we need additional stores. We’ll be putting between ourselves and our dealers two to three more stores in New Jersey and some other places. Yes, the greenfield markets are for the company diminished quite a bit. There are some smaller markets that our independent dealers are pursuing, so there will be some new communities experiencing presence of our stores but the majority is in the much larger markets with deeper penetration.

Jason Gere

Analyst

Okay. And then whenever you look at – you mentioned strategically acquiring dealers. Do you have a sense of what that pipeline looks at? And is it you proactively going to a dealer and saying, you have three chains that are not really performing well, why don’t you sell those to me, or is it more a guy who’s looking to retire may just want to cash out of this investment. How those deals kind of arise?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Well, we have had a store program for nearly 30-plus years and we’ve had great support over that time from our independent dealers. And it wasn’t really until about 10 years ago that the company got involved in owning stores. But for the most part, I would say, Jason, that it’s dealers talking with us about their exit strategy, about retiring, about not having a succession plan, about their kids not that interested in the building. So most of these have been very amicable, very business-like and very smooth. And just the nature of our business, of somebody that’s done this for 30 years trying to plan their retirement, becomes the natural process.

Jason Gere

Analyst

Okay. And then I guess this one is more for Mike. There seems to be on very transition to a headquarters, there’s – you have a period of some duplicative costs. You have moving expenses, utilities in both places. Was there any impact on fourth quarter from that? And then what you’re really looking for in the first half of the year in terms of drag from the headquarters’ move?

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

There was a little bit of that disruption in the fourth quarter, because we moved in March. We pointed out some of that disruption, but it wasn’t significant for us to call out a percentage. We will have duplicative costs in the summer as we’ll run – we’ve tried to reduce that impact as much as possible. But the new building will cost more than the other building to run. We don’t have enough experience to how much the air conditioning is going to cost in the summer versus the other building. I don’t think it will be measurable that I’ll be pointing out that we lost X% of our earnings because of the new building, but other than the depreciation that I’ve already referred to in my comments.

Jason Gere

Analyst

Okay. And then last, is there any kind of puts or takes that you’d call out within any of the segments that we should be looking at when we model out FY '16?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

So I would just make a couple of comments. One is I think the overwriting number that you should be cautious of is we talked a little bit about the softness of the retail business during the quarter. But the pace of the overall business for the first five months of the year same-store sales wise is 4.6% and that’s a pretty solid performance. The other thing, we got one more quarter of the casegoods business anniversarying the hospitality sales and a lot of that was in the first quarter. So there will be a little bit of comparison to that. And I think there was some $2 million, $2.5 million in the first quarter last year in the casegoods business and hospitality that’s not there this year. But it should not have an effect on the business for the year, just the first quarter.

Jason Gere

Analyst

All right, I appreciate it and good luck next year.

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

Thank you.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Budd Bugatch with Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Good morning, Kurt. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, Kathy. Hope everybody is well. I guess on casegoods, Kurt, you just made that comment about the 2.5 million. So for the year, should we think casegoods will actually have positive revenues comparison?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

That is our plan today and we believe there’s an ability to overcome the hospitality volume that we’re replacing. And as we go through our product refresh, the new groups are selling a lot better. In fact, a couple of them were a little short of inventory right now and catching up. So, yes, it would be our intention to not have a down year in casegoods.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And on the written sales for retail, I’m a little bit confused and make sure I understand it. That 4.5% for the first five months of this year, but the fourth quarter was just 1%. Is that right?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

That’s right, Budd, and the reason we’re giving that number is we had very strong written business in both January and May and choppy business in the fourth quarter. And I don’t want to use excuses. It’s hard to remember the fourth quarter because that was February and March and we experienced some of the same challenges not using this as an excuse, but we experienced weather issues, we experienced the port strikes. We had some of the other issues. But I think the better number is the pace of business in the entire network and the pace of business over a five-month period has averaged out at 4.6%.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. And so for the year, we would expect that mid-single digit kind of increase is a good way to look at for the year?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

I can’t predict the rest of the year. Our same-store sales increase last year for the whole network was right around 3%. We would hope to do a little better than that, but I’m not really going to give you a number. I can’t see into the back half of the year and any confidence to give you a number, but obviously we think we can still continue to grow the base store business.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. Let me take this tack. Mike, you had gone over and given us some of the mix comparison as the company’s characteristics change for gross margin and SG&A. Are there any other changes this year if we were going to just project out, should we project out something different to get those two numbers other than the mix change or what other factors, because you said raw materials are relatively benign. I take it that means there’s not much in the way of pricing. How do we think about the SG&A overall and the gross margin or cost of goods sold overall?

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

So in my comments, I tried to list as many things as we thought were prevalent to give, Budd, but – and obviously I emphasized a little bit more on the gross margin and SG&A because of the weighting of the retail. I’m just trying to make sure people understand that we may get some efficiencies in our gross margin or in our SG&A based on our volume at retail. But then as a consolidated number, it does offset some of that. But I don’t have any other color that I can give you that we’re aware of right now that’s going to impact other than the things that I outlined in my prepared comments.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. Kurt, let me just take some other attack now. You have a very strong balance sheet as you said nearly $100 million of unrestricted cash and almost no debt. Last year you returned a whole bunch of cash to shareholders, dividends. What’s the dividend policy thought process now? How should we project out of that if we want to do a couple years forward, because it looks like cash is going to grow on the balance sheet? You don’t have the claims of the new headquarters anymore and it looks like you’ve got depreciation fair – not terribly but fairly in close with CapEx.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Well, Budd, I’d go back a little bit and say one of the things that we were a little cautious a couple of years ago with cash is because we knew we had all these investments we were making in technology and in stores and in the new headquarters. And with that behind us, we have a little more flexibility on what we want to do. But our priorities on our cash have not changed. It’s investing in the business, it’s share buyback and it’s dividends. And to tell you the weighting of those, I can’t comment because things could change. But we’re going to continue to try to increase our number of stores both through greenfield projects that we do and through buyback of our dealer organizations. And so we are watching that and trying to balance all three of those. But obviously, we’ve worked hard to get our balance sheet in this position and should we not have investments we can make in the business, you would see fairly strong returns of cash to the shareholders like you did last year. But we’re also looking to invest cash in the business long term to try to enhance our returns and grow our business.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Should I take it in the order I think you gave it – you had share repurchase above dividend. That’s a more pressing – a higher priority --

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

No, I would not. I would reverse – the order of magnitude is investing in the business is first and always first. And then how we return the cash to shareholders depends on a lot of factors and the share price in the market and things of that nature. So there are not hugely disproportionately weighted.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. And as the Board discusses dividend policy, is there a payout ratio that you target, is there yield that you target? What’s the thought on the Board that you can share with us in the public domain?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Well, most of the things that we talk about in the Board I can’t share in the public domain. But we have our targets and we talk about the dividend appropriately and we introduce it three years ago and have increased it each of the last two years. So I think that’s a signal that we’re sensitive to what our shareholders are looking for and need. But I don’t want to make a blanket statement and commit to any kind of ratio, because we want to remain flexible.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. And lastly, Mike, for you just tax rate for modeling purposes 35.5 rate, is that a good rate or what would you think is the right rate?

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

That will be a good rate, Budd. I mean 35% to 36% is where we’ve been targeting. It just really depends on what our overall taxable income ends up being what some of these deductions get to be. But that’s a good range.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

But I’m not sure that’s a good rate but that is our rate.

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

I’d rather be 25% but I can’t seem to get it there.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

I hear you. Thank you very much.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Budd.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Matt McCall with BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Good morning.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

So just to clarify I guess first on the raw material side, you said there’s going to be no change, just making sure I understand what you’re saying there, so you had some pressure if I remember in '15. Are you going to get relief in '16 as that pressure goes away as we see some deflationary benefits or we’re going to see another year of mid teens type pressure?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Our comment on that, Matt, was we don’t see much change in our raw material pricing in aggregate for the year. Some things are going down, some things are going up. Last year we did have raw material price pressures and we took some price increases to cover that. This year as we look out sitting here today, we don’t see much of that on our horizon and we haven’t done anything pricing wise to mitigate that.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. I mean you talked about the quarter – I’m talking about same-store sales here. We talk about the quarter being up slightly, the year being 4.6, the year-to-date being 4.6, in May it’s better. When you looked at the good marks and your broke out the different drivers traffic, ticket, units per ticket, conversion, is anything that changed during those months at all that drove out traffic that much better or was – the ticket was conversion or was it more of those items like weather and ports and some of the --?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Matt, I would say that there’s three components to this and I really can’t tell you because frankly we’re not 100% clear. But there are three factors. Number one, the same-store sales number is the entire network not just our stores. So we know a little bit about some things we’ve changed within our stores on some incentive and compensation issues on some management changes, et cetera. But I don’t know intimately what our independent dealers did to drive their same-store sales through that five-month period, so I can’t comment on that. And the other factor here is the consumer. The consumer at times seems to retreat temporarily and then come back. And I think from everything we’ve seen in the market that the industry had a good Memorial Day weekend, which was not like the last couple of years. And I’m not positive to anything the industry did but I think the consumer was out more and all of us benefitted from that. So, I can’t point to one or two things that has made the difference and we’re as equally puzzled by the change month to month from being very positive to tepidly weak one month to the next with us not changing anything. So that’s a lot of conversation without a whole lot of detail because I think that’s the environment we’re in.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

But I guess the point there is your results are consistent with what you’re seeing in the broader industry.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Well, our own stores are paralleling the results of our independent dealers, so that’s kind of an ebb and flow. And when the company stores have a flat same-store sales month, it’s not like our independents are up 10% or anything like that. There is a pattern to that all over North America. And then remembering that we do at least 50% of our business with the non-store customers, the pattern I just outlined seems to be consistent with what their experiencing business as well.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

Okay. And then you mentioned the supply chain operational excellence initiative, any more color you can add there in near term, long term, what you expect to accomplish from a savings perspective?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Well, we’re just in the beginning phases and we have had a couple of people that have been working here at the Michigan office moving to Hong Kong and establishing our trading company. So to date we have been basically doing quality and logistics in our group in Asia, and it’s going to become a little more aggressive with procurement and direct sourcing and some other things that we won’t see a lot of benefit of that for another 12 to 18 months. But as we look at things organizationally to do it more corporately and has retail plays a larger and larger percentage of our growth in our business going forward, the global sourcing entity is a natural outgrowth of that.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

Okay and more to come, okay. And then maybe Mike, you gave a nice list of kind of some puts and takes for '16 over '15. As we think about that in terms of your stated conversion targets, can you maybe consolidate all those items and is the bottom line other than the SG&A or gross margin shift, and I get that, but is the bottom line that will see some continued pressure on your targeted conversion in '16?

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

What we said I believe on the incremental basis for what we’re adding on for if we do same-store sales increases that type of thing, we’ve converted our stated amount. Now that we’re finished with Dayton, our largest plant, we went live a week and a half ago and everything is showing that it’s going very well. Still disruptive but based on having this being our largest plant with two shifts and all the different facets of this building, it’s going really well. But I don’t have anything that I can add to that to make the conversion any different. We are still working through can we give you all some better information on what an overall conversion would be without incremental. There’s just so many moving parts with our technology changes with the building, with the plan going live, so we just need to see some consistency to give you better information on that, so we can take out the incremental part.

Matthew McCall

Analyst

Okay, all right, got it. Thank you guys.

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Kristine Koerber with Barrington Research Associates. Please proceed with your questions.

Kristine Koerber

Analyst

Good morning. First, let me just follow up on CapEx. So the 30 million to 35 million, is that something we should use – is that ongoing, is that something which you use beyond fiscal 2016?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

I think the depreciation and amortization getting around 30 million I think it’s little under that, but I think 30 million is a good number to use going forward for right now. We found that the one thing that we cannot go back on is making sure that we’re updating our technology. It’s changing so dramatically every year. So we’ll have a cadence of spending that money every year, maybe not any more than what we’re spending but we’ll have some cadence for spending that. And with our plants, we have dedicated resources ensuring that our plants stay modern. So we’ll continue to do that as well. So I think the $30 million number going forward is a good barometer to start with.

Kristine Koerber

Analyst

Okay. And then another question on the technology, so after the sales order management software and then the customer service module you talked about, what’s next besides just kind of regular updates? Are there any other major investments that will be needed over the next couple of years?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

It’s hard for us to answer that question, Kristine, because we don’t know what’s coming next from the technology companies. But I know whatever we’re doing today in technology five years from now, it won’t be absolute but it won’t be best practices at the time. So our view is we’re trying to, as we look at our future investment and spending, is to protect that bucket of technology investment for knowing that something else is going to come downstream that helps us in the retail stores, helps our people on the front lines, some other things. So we can’t tell you specifically what that would be, but odds are technology spending is going to be continuing at a high level for most all companies.

Kristine Koerber

Analyst

Okay. And then as we look at advertising, what is the advertising budget projected to be this year over last year? As we think about the television campaign, how are you measuring ROI? And how do you know that the campaign is working and that it’s driving traffic into the stores and to the brand?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Those are very good questions and I’ll answer the second part first. Since we launched the ‘Live Life Comfortably’ campaign and it’s certainly not the only factor but our average store is doing over $1 million more than it did four years ago. And so the marketing effort has had to have some impact on that. I think our sales people are more knowledgeable. I think our product is more fashionable and competitive. But the only thing that we do consistently over the whole network of 325 stores is the marketing because it’s all done with the same creative and the same message. And over that period of time we’ve had traffic, so I think that it’s a clear indicator that our marketing campaign has been effective. And to answer the first part of the question, we have for the last few years been spending around 4% of our sales in advertising and that’s all kinds. That’s not just the ‘Live Life Comfortably’ campaign. And we increase it every year as our sales go up. So we put more dollars to it but we haven’t materially changed the percentage. So we were spending 4% when we were doing 1.2 billion and we’re spending 4% when we’re doing 1.5 billion and the dollars are important, but as a percentage of sales there hasn’t been much movement.

Kristine Koerber

Analyst

Okay. And then Mike you had mentioned expect to see some pressure in Q1 from the Web site launch. I mean what should we – how much pressure, what should we expect to remodel out Q1?

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

Like I said, we’ve spent the money last year more evenly and we’re just talking about that since the Web launch is going in August, most of the money will be spent in the first quarter. I wouldn’t say it’s going to be more than 3 million but it will be a couple of million dollars in the first quarter on that spend for the technology.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

And I think we had to be sure because some of these things in a normal quarter, we probably wouldn’t even call out, but historically the first quarter we do $50 million, $60 million less than we do in the fourth quarter. And so any expenditure is amplified because of the lower volume but on a year basis, it’s not going to have larger an impact.

Louis M. Riccio

Analyst

Right. That is the main purpose why I put that in my comments is the first quarter does have the pressure on it, because of the low volume.

Kristine Koerber

Analyst

Okay, great. And then just lastly, can we just get an update on Urban Attitudes? I know it’s doing quite well for you guys. What are you thinking about the collection longer term and I’m assuming we’ll continue to see expanded SKU assortments?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

I think that’s safe to assume although we may not have – we may not put it all under the Urban Attitudes monitor. So what it has shown us is that we have a customer that’s looking for that type of product and a customer that we’re trying to attract more of to our stores, which is a little younger, which is a little more fashion-forward and I think we were under serving that customer prior to Urban Attitudes. So it’s still pushing almost a third of our upholstery business and it also I think reflects what’s happening with urban living and people downsizing and living more in apartments and condos that just the smaller scale of furniture is something that everybody is attacking, and we’re glad we got out ahead of it.

Kristine Koerber

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Todd Schwartzman with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your questions.

Todd Schwartzman

Analyst

Hi, Kurt, Kathy and Mike. In discussing the Q4 comps written and hand delivered and in fact the January to May entire first five months of the year, you talked about a number of factors but one thing I don’t think I heard mention was the promotional landscape. Can you talk about any changes you may have seen from month to month within that five-month period?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Todd, we don’t really see that much of a change. I mean the furniture business, the furniture industry is very promotional and everybody’s trying new things and ways to attract a customer but nothing that we can point out significantly different. It’s just been – this is an unusual period of time when we have certain months that are high single digits and certain months that are flat, and they’re back to back and we see no discernible change in what’s going on in the external environment. So we’re scratching our heads a little bit to figure out both why it was so good and why it was flat come the next month, but nothing that we can point to yet.

Todd Schwartzman

Analyst

I can’t recall offhand what the weather was like in January 2014, but if weather was a factor, was it better in January because that would help that month as Memorial Day essentially stronger year-over-year help that particular month?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

I’m not going to use the weather as an excuse or anything. We had bad weather in '13 too – in '14 and '15. So I just said that was part of the factors. I can’t say that was the only reason or the biggest reason. I would say that January is one of the largest sales volume months we have because of the post holiday sales, clearance sales. And so sometimes the percentage increase on a month is not as meaningful because the month itself like the month of April is not nearly as strong as the month of January. And then a peculiar thing that doesn’t happen all the time in May was that there were five Saturdays and five Sundays in the month, so there was a full complement of five weekends, which is a retailer’s dream. And so we probably benefitted from that a little bit. But there’s no discernible difference in any of those things that you’ve asked.

Todd Schwartzman

Analyst

So if we were just to parse the Memorial Day and isolate the Memorial Day weekend, you saw some, it sounds like good growth year-over-year. Can you quantify the demand pickup in terms of traffic, ticket any weight at all?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

So the reason we gave you the five-month number of 4.6, I think that takes out all the noise and gives you a more steady run rate than one weekend was good, one week was bad and two weeks, we have another inflection point with the 4th of July weekend. We’ll see how that turns out. So we like to look at it over a longer term basis and not focus solely on one month. So I think for your planning purposes and thinking about what’s the real pace of our business, that 4.6% number is the best one you can use.

Todd Schwartzman

Analyst

Got it, okay. Thanks. I wanted to just ask on the casegoods, Kurt. You had made a statement that you’re gaining traction with some of the new collections. Just curious about what you were referring to whether it’s new customers or maybe just better placement with existing ones?

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Well, my comment there, Todd, was 18 months, two years ago we said that our – in general that our casegoods assortment was SKU’ed too far on the traditional side and we had to get more transitional and get more up-to-date looks. And so we’ve changed out a lot of the product and we’re more balanced today with less formal because the American people aren’t building as many formal dining rooms and formal bedrooms and their more casual and our furniture didn’t quite reflect that. And we’re starting to see the benefits of that. In fact, we’ve had a couple of groups, particularly at Kincaid that sold so well, we’ve temporarily ran out of stock and will be caught up in the next 60 days. But it’s just the product that’s more on trend as it’s resonating. And as we have that better product, our ability to sell more through existing customers and pick up new customers is going to increase.

Todd Schwartzman

Analyst

Excellent. Thanks a lot.

Kurt L. Darrow

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. It appears there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any additional concluding comments.

Kathy Liebmann

Analyst

Thank you everyone for joining us on this morning’s call. If you have any follow-up questions, please give me a call. I’ll make myself available for you. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation and you may disconnect your lines at this time.