Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to La-Z-Boy Fiscal 2020 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be opened for your questions and comments following the presentation. [Operator Instructions] At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host for today Ms. Kathy Liebmann. Ma’am, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Jess. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss our fiscal 2020 second quarter results. With us today are Kurt Darrow, La-Z-Boy’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Melinda Whittington, CFO. Kurt will open and close the call, and Melinda will speak to the financials midway through. We’ll then open the call to questions. Slides will accompany this presentation, and you may view them through our webcast link, which will be available for one year. And the telephone replay of the call will be available for one week, beginning this afternoon. Before we begin the presentation, I’d like to remind you that some statements made in today’s call include forward-looking statements about La-Z-Boy’s future performance. Although we believe these statements to be reasonable, our actual results could differ materially. The most significant risk factors that could affect our future results are described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K. We encourage you to review those risk factors, as well as other key information detailed in our SEC filings. Also our earnings release is available under the News & Events tab on the Investor Relations page of our website, and it includes reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures, which are also included as an appendix at the end of our conference call slide deck. With that, I will now turn the call over to Kurt Darrow, La-Z-Boy’s Chairman, President and CEO. Kurt?

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning. Following yesterday’s close of market, we released our second quarter results. We delivered $447 million in sales on a consolidated basis, with our largest two segments, Upholstery and Retail, turning in solid top and bottom line results. Written same-store sales across the entire La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network increased 3.5% for the quarter on top of second quarter increases in each of the prior three years. And delivered sales for our company-owned Retail segment increased 5%, reflecting the strength and relevance of the La-Z-Boy brand in today’s challenging home furnishings environment. Fiscal year-to-date, consolidated sales are up 4.5%, written same-store sales for the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries system increased 4.1% and delivered sales for our company-owned Retail segment are up 4.3%. Consolidated operating margin for the second quarter increased on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis, led by double-digit profitability in the Upholstery segment. Also, during the quarter, we generated $34 million in cash from operating activities and returned $17 million to shareholders in dividends and share purchases. And yesterday, our Board of Directors voted again to increase the quarterly dividend to shareholders, demonstrating its confidence and our various growth strategy and long-term prospects, as we further solidify our position in the marketplace and continue to deliver strong returns to our shareholders. Before getting into a discussion of each operating segment, I want to take a moment to talk about what our brand means in this environment. Macroeconomic indicators are generally positive for the consumer, with interest rates low and consumer confidence remaining near all-time highs, both of which bode well for the home furnishings business. At the same time, however, tariffs and associated rhetoric in the marketplace continue to impact the home furnishing’s industry. But for the La-Z-Boy branded business, the 25% tariff on Chinese…

Thank you, Kurt, and good morning, everyone. As always, let me remind you that we are presenting our results on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis. Non-GAAP results continue to exclude purchase accounting adjustments for our acquisitions, one-time charges related to our supply chain optimization initiative announced in August, and the impacts of our recent termination of the company’s defined benefit pension plan. We believe this non-GAAP presentation better reflects underlying operating trends and performance of the business. For fiscal 2020 – for the fiscal 2020 second quarter, we recorded $1.6 million pre-tax, or $0.03 per diluted share in purchase accounting charges, the majority of which related to the acquisition of Joybird, which is reflected in Corporate and Other. We also recorded a $2.8 million pre-tax, or $0.04 per diluted share charge related to our supply chain optimization initiative, which is reflected in our Upholstery segment. And in addition, this quarter, our non-GAAP results excluded a $1.9 million pre-tax income, or $0.03 per share benefit related to the company’s retirement termination of our defined benefit pension plan. In last year, second quarter, we recognized $3.9 million pre-tax, or $0.06 per share in purchase accounting charges. And as always, a full reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP is included in our press release and in the appendix section at the end of our conference call slides. Moving to our consolidated second quarter results, sales increased 1.8% to $447 million, led by our Retail segment. GAAP consolidated operating income was $29.6 million versus $28.5 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding purchase accounting charges and the charge for our supply chain optimization initiative, our non-GAAP consolidated operating income increase to $33.7 million from $32.2 million in last year’s quarter. Consolidated operating margin on a GAAP basis was 6.6% versus 6.5% in last…

Thank you, Melinda. We are encouraged about the results La-Z-Boy Incorporated continues to deliver. Our brand differentiates us in the competitive marketplace, supported by ongoing product innovation and excellent service to both dealers and the end consumer. As we head into the busiest selling season, I’m confident we are making the right strategic investments across the business to drive profitable growth and continue to provide returns to all stakeholders. We thank you for your interest in La-Z-Boy Incorporated. And I will turn the call over to Kathy to provide instructions for getting into the queue. Kathy?

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

Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] We’ll move first to John Baugh at Stifel.

Good morning, La-Z-Boy team. Thanks for taking my questions. Jumping right in, could you comment – I see in the Q, we’ve got a pretty good increase year-to-date in the stationary upholstery business and the meaningful decline – we have 3%, 3.5% decline in motion and there’s commentary around power and leather being soft. And if I recall correctly, your margins are pretty good on power and leather. So could you maybe discuss that assumption correct? And sort of what’s going on there do you think? And it is, I believe even more pronounced in the Retail segment, where stationary is strong, which is good, but we’d love to see motion flat or up? I’m wondering what you see in the marketplace is driving that? Thank you.

That was all one question, John.

One question. I got more.

Oh, yes. Okay. I just wanted to be sure. So, our mix over time changes back and forth to have all categories have equal strength all the time is difficult to do. Our sectional business in the Upholstery segment is being – is very strong right now. People are seeming to want the big groups with a deep seating in their rooms, where particularly they have TVs. And I think that’s more in favor right now than motion sofas. And we also – there’s a little more competition on motion sofas from some international players. But there’s nothing – we don’t see it right now as a long-term trend. What was lost this quarter in the motion business was gained in the Upholstery business dollar-wise. So we’re not alarmed at it. It’s just one of these things that ebb and flow when we’re going to be doing some enhancements and some new ideas to our motion business in April to address this but don’t see that it is anything significant. And the leather business in general in the industry has been affected by the tariffs more than the upholstery business, because a lot of leather motion sofas and stationary sofas are coming in from China to most every customer in America with at least half, if not the full tariff.

Great, thank you. And then maybe a question for Melinda. I know some of the costs from the supply chain changes are not being captured in the one-time restructuring-type thing. Is there – does that mean that – and I realize not all the $4 million to $6 million next year will flow to the bottom line, because you’ll invest it. But might the swing if you didn’t reinvest any of that be even greater, in other words, those transition costs that are being incurred in regular operating earnings are a drag in this number. Any sense of how much that is?

Yes. No, you’re absolutely right. Now certainly, the drag in the quarter of some inefficiency of transition is nothing in New York City order of magnitude of the kind of savings we expect over the longer-term. But that certainly is a bit of a short-term headwind as we just work through the – as we work through the whole transition. We’ve called out throughout the year, even broadly, more broadly than the the Redlands transition, that while we’ve got a nice tailwind coming from raw material costs, a lot of our other input costs have continued to be a bit more challenging. And so I think we’re doing a pretty good job of continuing to offset those. And those are people costs, benefits costs, transportation costs, that across our business, are kind of daily focuses for us to be managing, and the Redlands transition just added incrementally to that in the quarter.

Okay, thanks. And my last question is, yes, go ahead.

John, just a second. I’d just like to make a callout that the work our team did to idle a plant in California, move all the orders, hire new people to build the furniture and get the majority of it to our consumers at their promised time was a yeoman’s effort. And we didn’t have much disruption. We didn’t have long delays for our customers. And it was a real good work by everybody who got that done. We’re prepared now to sell the facility and move on.

Great. No, I realize there’s a lot of work behind the scenes there. Congrats on that. Just finally, maybe on Joybird. You mentioned the customer acquisition costs, I think, caused higher year-over-year loss. And while revenues grew, they were a 12% rate. I’m curious in your path to profit pre-accounting or acquisition accounting, what are the levers there? And I guess, the concern would be do you have to cut the customer acquisition spend? And if you do, does that slow that growth rate at all? Thank you.

Great question. We have taken the last six to nine months to put together our integration plan of joining the two companies and utilizing each other’s strength. So we are now making the majority of their best sellers in our Dayton, Tennessee plant to provide quicker delivery and less transportation costs to the East Coast. We have those Joybird styles in all of our regional distribution centers that we use for retail. So for the first time Joybird customers can get product pretty quick, that is not custom. Number three, getting all of our supply contracts that La-Z-Boy has on similar items integrated into Joybird, so they can enjoy the savings, getting them some equipment to cut poly and do all that that has taken more time to get it integrated and to get the value of it by the time the product gets to the consumer. We think there’s still a combination of some tightening up of SG&A and realizing the savings that we haven’t enjoyed yet. And the combination of those two things can get us profitable without cutting back on customer acquisition.

Great. Thanks for the detail and good luck.

Thank you, John.

Thank you.

We’ll move next to Bobby Griffin at Raymond James.

Good morning, buddy. Thank you for taking my questions.

Good morning, Bobby.

I first want to touch on the Upholstery segment, and particularly the non-La-Z-Boy branded area of that wholesale business. It looks like the quarter was at once again, where the La-Z-Boy branded stuff outperformed it. Maybe can you talk about what’s going on at the other 50% of that segment? Was that performance relatively in line with how it was in the first quarter? And is there any expanded thoughts that you can share with us of what’s going on there with the England subsidy in that area?

Okay. So I’m a little confused that there’s two paths there. Are are you talking about our sales to – our sales in one piece here.

Yes. Let me…

….the dealers non-store and then what are other companies within the Upholstery segment are doing?

Yes. I mean, basically, I’m trying to connect the dots between the strong written business that we’re seeing across the whole La-Z-Boy Gallery network, your company-owned stores, as well as your independent licensees, to the 1% just total Upholstery growth that we’re seeing out of the Wholesale segment itself. And I guess, that’s implying that the network in the La-Z-Boy branded galleries are performing better than some of your non-branded part of that business?

Yes. Okay, I’ll start with that. So we are pleased with the performance of our retail, both the whole network and our company-owned, the consistency for the last couple of years of their performance has been great to see. And I think, they embody everything that the brand has to offer and sets them apart. It’s hard to give you anything meaningful on the rest of our distribution. We have some 2,000 doors, where our product is sold from small dealers to large dealers. And some of them have a full array of the La-Z-Boy brand in their stores, other have just a portion. So we don’t see any pattern. But we do see the midsize and smaller dealers struggling a little bit for growth these days with their inability to market like larger customers, their inability to buy containers, things of that nature. But I can’t really, Bobby, point to a one item that would say, this is what we need to fix. I would also tell you that in most of our businesses in the second quarter, their written sales were above their delivered sales. And part of that was in the branded business with making the changeover with – from Redlands to Neosho. But I think that’s just the state of the industry. If you look at some of the other public companies that have been long-term players in the industry, a lot of their sales are not in the positive zone, which is, I think, just reflective of some of the sluggishness at various points in the home furnishing space.

Bobby, I would just add one clarification, you were referring to branded and non-branded. Within our Upholstery business, the vast majority of that business is La-Z-Boy branded. About half of that is going through furniture galleries, of which, we own about a quarter of them. So we have La-Z-Boy branded business per se, but going through third parties, as Kurt was referring to. And then we also have – we have some other smaller that are non-branded business and they kind of are playing in that order, our strongest desire Retail than our furniture galleries, and then we’re seeing a little more struggle as we go to our La-Z-Boy brand, but uncompetitive floors and then out to the kind of non-branded business.

Okay, that’s helpful.

It’s performing more like the rest of the industry.

Okay, that’s helpful. And I guess, what I was also trying to connect this is the two areas that you’re seeing a little bit of the weaker or struggles in verses your galleries, your own galleries. Has that materially changed? Is that or about the same as it was in the first quarter and the fourth quarter of last fiscal year?

I don’t think there has been a material change. This isn’t the first quarter – the third quarter phenomena. This has been truly ever since kind of the tariff thing came on the horizon. There has been a little dampening down of growth for certain portions of our distribution.

Okay, that’s helpful. And then lastly, for me on Joybird itself. Can you maybe talk about expectations for the year on full-year sales? I think last time we spoke at the end of the first quarter, we’re looking at $95 million to $100 million or so was the number you talked about on the call, I believe, and year-to-date, we’re tracking about $38 million or so sort of implies a pretty big ramp. Can you talk about how sales came in for the quarter? Were they a little weaker or better than you expected for Joybird? And just the pathway for that business to continue to accelerate?

So let’s – I’ll try to give as many data points as I can. When we purchase Joybird a year ago, August, they were trending slightly above $50 million for a year. In our first six months, they did, I think, $38 million for the similar timeframe. And that is like a retail business that we also own, that is in the weaker half of the 12-month period, given our fiscal year. So we would expect a sales acceleration in the back-half of the year, and still are targeting that $90 million to 100 million dollar range for this year, if everything goes to our expectations. A lot could change and it would be – it wouldn’t necessarily be Joybird specific, it could be economy specific or something like that. But we still think the back-half is going to be better. We’ve got a lot of our integration issues behind us. We’ve got product available in more places than the first-half of the year. So we think that’s still a good target of the $90 million to $100 million.

Okay. And then did the integration aspect of that limit some of the sales in the first-half, or is it more just the seasonality of that business that you’re referring to?

Oh, I’m sure the integration of everything has caused some disruption. You don’t put two companies together that will run totally different for a long time and try to get the best out and make changes and we layout the plan and all those things, that doesn’t happen. But I don’t think we can lay a major portion of the sales mix. They didn’t have a very good written month in August and never were quite able to catch up. But since September now, all the way here through November, they’ve been on a stronger pace of written sales.

And I think seasonally, you have to expect that Q1 is always going to be pretty light and they’ll pace as you move through the year.

Okay. That’s been very helpful. I appreciate all the detail. Best of luck to the remaining part of your fiscal year.

Thank you, Bobby.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We will go to Brad Thomas at KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Wanted to follow-up on the Upholstery segment and the strong margin performance you’ve had in that segments in the first-half of the year. I was hoping you all could just talk about as we think about the next couple of quarters, any differences in the puts and takes as we think about profitability in the Upholstery segment?

My comment on that, Brad, would be that almost a 11%, that’s one of the highest margins in the industry on manufacturing Upholstery. So we don’t take that for granted. But an excellent job from our supply chain team to achieve that. And I think we have – we said this before, our ability to improve above 11% is directly related to volume. If we can generate more volume and the capacity utilization is increased, so would be our profits. So right now, we have some tailwind with the raw material situation. And once our plan in Missouri gets all their staff trained and running at a rate where they don’t have to run as much over time, that could improve the situation. But if they make the same amount of units that they did the previous year, there’s probably not a lot of extra juice in the margin. If we get 10% more units or anything above probably 5%, without any other extraordinary things happening, you could possibly see a little bit increase in the margin.

And one other headwind, I spoke to some of the other cost trends we’re looking at. But as we are investing in these plants, it’s not a huge number, but we will pick up a little more depreciation as we go forward with our investment in our two largest plants, where on the tail end of all of our work in Dayton, Tennessee, on our largest plant and just kicking off the work in Neosho, which between those two are 70% of the volume even a little bit more than that now of our total company. But we are making, as you know, significant capital investments there. So that will be a little bit of a non-cash headwind going forward.

That’s helpful. And if I could ask a similar question on the Retail segment and thinking about its profitability over the next couple of quarters. Obviously, the trends have been good, this is the last two, but you’ve had the Arizona stores as a tailwind for you. If you can keep up this momentum in same-store sales, which hopefully, you can against some easier comparisons. Do you feel like you’re in a position, where we should continue to see profits in retail going higher in the next couple of quarters?

So, again, as we said earlier, it’s all seasonal, Brad. They will do much better historically in the second-half of our fiscal years than they do in the first and that would be reflected in the comparables. But we – even this month so far in November, we haven’t seen any differential in the pace of our retail business. And while Arizona is a tremendous business for us, at the level of volume they’re at, to keep pace with the same-store sales growth as the rest of the organization is kind of difficult, because we’ve got more opportunities in some other markets, but we’ll be probably adding another store to Arizona here in the near-term and doing some other things. But Arizona has helped the profitability of the business and the size of the overall business, but they are not the main driver of same-store sales growth.

Gotcha. That’s very helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

We’ll go next to Anthony Lebiedzinski at Sidoti & Company.

Good morning, and thank you for taking the questions. So, just first, I just wanted to clarify with respect to Casegoods that you noted the supplier issue that you had. So just wanted to make sure, has that issue been totally resolved at this point?

We believe it has Anthony. We’ve changed suppliers. And if you look historically at our Casegoods business over the last two or three years, this is the first real hiccup they’ve had. They’ve normally been steady and slow growth and doing a little better and double-digit margins. And I think this is an unusual situation and not a trend line that we think will continue.

Okay. That’s good to hear. So as far as retail, you noted that traffic was up, which is unlike a lot of other retailers. So I just wanted to get a sense as to the average ticket trend, plus also penetration for your in-home design program?

I’ll go in reverse order. The – excuse me, the penetration in our in-home and in-custom business is hovering in that low-30% and hasn’t had a meaningful change from that. We think over time, we can build it. But right now, it’s been a fairly static at a really high number. And our performance on all the metrics, traffic, conversion, average ticket, percentage of in-home, are all slightly trending up. It’s a combination of all those that have made the consistency of the 3% to 5% growth.

Okay.

One is not out-shadowing the other. We’re not getting so much more traffic that the other metrics have gone down. It’s a combination of those four things and the team is executing at a very high level.

That’s good to hear. And also, as far as the back-half of the year, just wondering what’s your outlook is from – for promotions, whether it’s for Black Friday or later, it’s going to be Presidents’ Day weekend. Just overall, do you expect to do kind of more of the same types of promotions, or anything that you’re looking to do differently? Certainly, helpful to get some color on that? Thank you.

So the furniture industry is a highly promotional business. And different retailers take different tactics on how they connect with the customer. We think where we’re positioned our continued investment in our marketing campaign with Kristen. We think our local media that all of our dealers and our own stores do. We think putting some strong values out in our marketing proposition that draws customers into the stores is good. But I mean, when you start running – and we don’t do this, but the comparison, when you start running 50% off in free TVs and we pay the tax and all that, I don’t know how much farther the industry in general can go to try to attract more customers to come in. It’s highly competitive. It’s highly promotional. Everybody’s got to find the lane they want to swim in. We think we found our niche, continuing to work. But we won’t – you won’t see anything dramatically different on how we go to market.

Got it. Okay. Well, thank you so much and best of luck.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With no other questions holding, I’ll turn the conference back to management for any additional or closing comments.

Thank you, everyone, for your interest in La-Z-Boy Incorporated. We certainly appreciate your time this morning. Should you have further questions, please give me a call. And in the meantime, enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today’s call. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time, and have a great day.