Greetings everyone and welcome to the La-Z-Boy Fiscal 2024 Third Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for questions after the presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Mark Becks, CFA of La-Z-Boy Incorporated. You may begin Mark.

Thank you, Jenney. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us to discuss our fiscal 2024 third quarter. With us today are Melinda Whittington, La-Z-Boy Incorporated's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Lucian, La-Z-Boy's SVP and CFO. Melinda will open and close the call and Bob will speak to segment performance and the financials midway through. We will 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 a telephone replay of the call will be available for one week beginning this afternoon. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to remind you that some statements made in today's call include forward-looking statements about La-Z-Boy's future performance and other matters. 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 Melinda Whittington, La-Z-Boy Incorporated's President and Chief Executive Officer. Melinda?

Thank you, Mark and good morning everyone. Yesterday, following the close of market, we reported results for our January ended third quarter. Highlights for the quarter included consolidated delivered sales of $500 million, up 5% versus our most recent pre-pandemic third quarter and down 13% versus prior year, which benefited from delivering the above-normal pandemic backlog. Total consolidated non-GAAP gross margin, up 140 basis points year-over-year, with gross margin expansion across all segments. Non-GAAP operating margin of 6.6%, non-GAAP EPS of $0.67. Strong operating cash flow of $48 million for the quarter, bringing us up to $105 million year-to-date and continued progress against our Century Vision growth strategy, including completing the acquisition of six-store independent La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network in the Midwest, and signing an agreement to acquire another two-store independent network in Florida in the fourth quarter. The overall furniture and home furnishings industry is in a continued slowdown as housing turnover remains at historic lows, driven by challenging interest rates and housing affordability. January, the third month of our quarter was further affected by winter weather events across much of the U.S., which had a negative impact on traffic and related written sales at our retail stores across the Central U.S. These winter weather events in the second and third weeks of January also caused multiple days of manufacturing shutdowns in our U.S. assembly plants where the majority of our product is manufactured and disruption to our distribution, temporarily impacting our ability to produce and deliver products and causing our delivered sales and profits to fall short of the low-end of our guidance range for the quarter. After January's weather disruptions, production and deliveries are now back to normal in the fourth quarter as we focus on servicing our customers and consumers with the high-quality comfortable products they…

Thank you, Melinda and good morning everyone. As a reminder, we presented results on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. We believe the non-GAAP presentation better reflects underlying operating trends and performance of the business. Non-GAAP results exclude items, which are detailed in our press release and in the table in the appendix section of our conference call slides. On a consolidated basis, fiscal 2024 third quarter sales decreased 13% to $500 million versus the prior year as trends return to more seasonal levels, following a historically high comparative period in the prior year, which benefited from delivering the above-normal pandemic backlog. As a reminder, last year fiscal -- last fiscal year benefited by an approximately $300 million increase in delivered sales due to the delivery of backlog of COVID-related furniture orders. Consolidated GAAP operating income decreased to $33 million and non-GAAP operating income was $33 million, a decrease of 38% versus last year's third quarter. Consolidated GAAP operating margin was 6.5% and non-GAAP operating margin was 6.6%, reflecting a 270 basis point decline versus last year, primarily resulting from fixed cost deleverage on lower delivered sales. GAAP diluted EPS was $0.66 for the third quarter versus $0.74 in the prior year quarter. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.67 in the current year quarter versus $0.91 last year. As I move to the segment discussion, my comments from here will focus on our non-GAAP reporting, unless specifically stated otherwise. Starting with the Retail segment for the quarter, delivered sales were $205 million, an 18% decrease over the prior year's third quarter, which benefited from higher deliveries of backlog, while weather events in January during this year's third quarter negatively impacted our ability to deliver product. Importantly, sales were 22% higher than our fiscal 2020 third quarter, a 5% compound annual growth…

Thanks Bob. We continue to execute on our strategic initiatives and are appropriately investing in strengthening our brands and our capabilities to deliver our Century Vision goals and disproportionately leverage more normalized consumer trends when they emerge. We are engaging with an even broader consumer base than we have in the past. And although the macroeconomic environment remains challenging, we will continue to focus on driving our business, delighting the consumer, and continuously improving our execution. We have every intention of growing, gaining share, and believe the best is yet to come as we deliver long-term profitable growth and returns for all stakeholders. Finally, today, I want to highlight the recent publication of our fiscal 2023 sustainability report, delivering sustainable comfort. This is the second sustainability report published in our company's history and highlights our continued progress. Aligned with our core values, we empower courage for a sustainable culture, embrace curiosity for sustainable design, and operate with compassion for a sustainable planet. As always, I want to thank the entire La-Z-Boy Incorporated team for their hard work and solid progress toward our goals even in this challenging environment. And we thank you for your time this morning. I'll turn the call back to Mike -- Mark.

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

No problem, Mark. Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Your first question is coming from Bobby Griffin of Raymond James. Bobby, your line is live.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Morning Bobby.

So, I guess the first question I had was on the retail margins. And Bob, you gave some good detail on the year-over-year, but I was just curious if we kind of look at this from a sequential performance or just the prior two quarters this year. Revenue pretty stable, plus or minus $6 million to $10 million, it looks like, but the margins did step down if you kind of compare it to fiscal 1Q and 2Q. So, just curious if there's some one-time investments in there from a marketing standpoint or any kind of weather-related costs that might have caused that to move down from maybe the mid-teens to the low double-digits?

Thanks Anthony -- thanks, Bob, sorry. The -- there's really two things. One is the third quarter is generally speaking, one of our -- I guess, our first quarter is always the lowest margin because it's the beginning of the fiscal, and there's not a whole lot of furniture being sold in the first quarter. The third quarter is also a slightly lower margin type of a business for us for two reasons. One is we're spending a lot of money on marketing during that heavy period. And the second piece is we have a lot of plant shutdowns over the holidays. And as a result, we have a difficult time making and delivering all the product that gets written during that quarter. So, that's typically something that always pressures a little bit that third quarter margin.

While at the same time, you're paying the commissions on the sales that you're--

Exactly. The second piece, this particular quarter had we not had that weather event, those sales would have been higher than what you saw there. And you know the fixed cost leverage and deleverage associated with sales going up and down. The gross margins on most furniture retail businesses are in the 55% range. So, a lost sale. When I say lost sale, it's just a sale that wasn't delivered and was postponed into the next quarter, has a big impact on margin. So, our margins would have been not as high as the first -- the previous quarter, but it would have been definitely higher than what we delivered because of the lost sales that we saw in retail associated with the weather.

Okay. And just from -- just to kind of build off that, I mean, still feeling comfortable about the kind of low double-digit margin profile for Retail on this revenue base, not seeing anything -- or are you seeing anything from a cost perspective that's changed in the industry?

No, we're still very comfortable with that.

Okay.

And -- as we've talked before, we continue to move as we go forward to get that up consistently up into the mid-double-digits and we'll continue working on that.

Thank you. Okay, that's very helpful. I guess, it looks like there's, I think, six stores during the quarter, you acquired two afterwards. So, some good activity on the independent side of the business and acquisitions. Is that just timing all working out? Or is that market in those independent galleries becoming a little bit more active given some of the pressures we've seen in the industry last longer than I think you and I and a lot of people in the industry would have probably guessed?

Yes, I'd say it's a combination. Over recent years, we have been working really closely with our independently owned Furniture Gallery dealers, one, to make sure we're partnering so that there's a seamless experience to the consumer regardless of if the store is owned by us or owned by an independent and making sure that kind of a rising tide strengthens all boats. That said, we're strategically working with those dealers as well to help them understand what an exit could look like if they're interested. We know that those are immediately accretive to us where when we're able to buy those dealers back because we have that integrated margin, and we can control the entire brand experience. At the same time, a lot of our dealers have owned these businesses -- sometimes often for decades and sometimes multi-generationally. And so there's just sort of a natural flow of when people might start to explore what makes sense for them. So, net a little bit of both, I would say.

Okay. Thank you. And I guess, lastly for me, just maybe on some of the trends during the quarter. It looked like you guys indicated business did improve in February, maybe with some of the changes in weather. Is it right to think President's Day and that kind of flip positive on a written basis? Or is it just less bad than maybe what January implied? It does imply January written trends were fairly negative?

Yes. I mean we feel pretty good about trends overall. I'd say, eight months of the year, we were, I think, Bob mentioned in his comments, right, in an industry that was down 7% for our first nine months of the year, we were across our entire network, down 1%, right? And so January -- you pulled January out of that, and our numbers actually for the eight months flip positive across the network. So, what we saw -- what we're seeing so far in early February with President's Day looks a lot more like the rest of the year and not so much like sort of a challenged January, which, again, I think January was a couple of things. Across the industry, January a year ago was a stronger month. Our business was particularly strong last January, and then the weather just made everything a little bit crazy for the one month.

Very good. I appreciate the details. I'll turn it over to others. But best of luck, you're wrapping up February and moving forward.

Thanks Bobby.

Thanks Bobby.

Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Anthony Lebiedzinski of Sidoti & Company. Anthony, your line is live.

Good morning and thank you for taking the questions. So, I just wanted to talk a little bit about pricing. So, you mentioned in your 10-Q that part of your sales decline was due to selective pricing and promotional actions. So, I wanted to see if you guys could perhaps quantify that? And how should we think about pricing for the balance of the fiscal year and maybe even early fiscal 2025?

Thanks Anthony. The pricing that we've talked about, and we've been talking about it now for a number of quarters, is really to make sure that we maintain competitiveness. And particularly, where we've been focusing that, it hasn't been across the board. It's been very specific as to where we're pricing. A lot of opening price point or some of the manual products and things like that to make sure that we protect our margins and protect our floor space. We'll continue to do that as we move forward. There are no plans right now for price declines to be occurring in the future, not driven by us. I think we're priced where we are -- we're priced now where we are based on what's happening from a competitive standpoint. We'll always, as we always say, continue to look at that and adjust as that occurs. Looking forward for me to tell you what we're going to do on pricing, I'd have to guess what the competition is going to do on pricing and I have--

And input costs, which remain high.

And input cost et cetera. But I don't -- those are things I don't have a crystal ball into. So, we'll continue to operate the way we've been operating.

Understood. Thanks for that. And then so I realize that certainly the vast majority of your products are made in North America, but you do use a lot of imported components. Can you guys talk about the ocean freight costs and what's going on with the issues in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal?

Yes. I mean broadly always a factor, right, and making sure that we don't end up with a lot of disruptions and there definitely are, I would say, dramatic cost impacts. But for us, because of our final assembly here and because many and majority of our components are more locally-sourced, it's less of an impact for us than some players in the industry.

Okay, that's encouraging to hear. And then longer term, so as you look to grow to 400 stores in a few years, which geographic markets will you be mostly targeting? And also as you go through this process, how should we think about the improvement to your operating margins because of this?

Yes. As far as targeting where those stores are, it's pretty widespread, Anthony. And in many cases, it's a matter of markets that we're already in, where we see the opportunity for them to be serviced by more stores. In a couple of occasions, it's maybe fleshing out as we've gotten in some higher rent districts, I'll say, where historically, five, 10 years ago, when we were operating in a way that our margins were lower on retail, we maybe couldn't consider getting into. But now with the efficiency of our operations, we can expand into some of those areas where we know the consumer wants our product, but it's a little bit higher rent district to get into. So, it's pretty broad-based overall. To your point then on just margins overall, as we've talked about the -- getting to a sustainable double-digit margin for our company. Remember, that's getting wholesale margins back to around that 10% that we had pre-pandemic, which we're slowly making our way there. and then really having the retail margins in this double-digit and ultimately, sort of a sustained mid-teens kind of range. And each of those are around proof points of what we've done or are doing and continuing to make progress. And then we'll take leveraging a little bit of a tailwind from a more normalized furniture demand as well to help flesh out the final pieces of that.

And the other piece I'd add to that, Anthony, is just as we add stores, particularly when we're adding stores into DMAs where we currently have stores, we do get some fixed cost leverage as it relates to the regional managers, the regional merchandisers, the marketing that we're doing in that area, et cetera, we see some leverage from a cost perspective there. So, that coupled with same-store growth, will also be a key factor as we move up into the mid-teens.

Well, sounds good. Thank you very much, and best of luck.

Thanks Anthony.

Thanks Anthony.

Thank you very much. And your next question is coming from Zachary Donnelly of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Zachary, your line is live.

Hey good morning everyone. I'm on for Brad this morning. So, thank you for taking our questions.

Hi Zachary.

On written order trends, just kind of focusing in on January, is there any way you can quantify maybe what written order trends may have looked like for areas or geographies that weren't really impacted by the winter weather event?

No, I don't have that at my fingertips here. I mean what I would tell you overall is, again, against an industry that for our nine months of the -- of our year has been down 7%. Our same-store written for our entire network is down 1%. If I exclude January, it was actually plus 1%. So, that just tells you January was a pretty weird month. And given that we are spread all over North America, you get a significant impact in some of those -- particularly some of those Central and Southern areas that just got hit with some pretty dramatic ice events and cold events that are in areas that they just -- they don't get those type of weather events.

Got you. I appreciate that. And I apologize, there's an alarm going on in the background right now.

We can't hear it, but I'm sure it's distracting for you.

Yes. I guess moving on beyond that, just kind of touching base on the Century Vision strategy. I know two quarters ago in fiscal 1Q, you had mentioned your new partnership with Rooms To Go. I was just wondering if you could share any learnings from that that you've kind of had over the course of the past couple of months or any kind of update you have on that or how that's going?

Sure. We feel really good about what we're doing there. And the reality is the furniture industry, particularly through the sustained challenging time, you're seeing a lot of -- unfortunately, right, a lot of the smaller furniture stores, the ones and twos around really kind of struggling. And so it's important that we're looking at the right partnerships that are really able to play to a consumer that's otherwise not going to be attracted into our Furniture Galleries or to the La-Z-Boy brand, but have -- find some of these important partnerships. Rooms To Go is a -- has been a good one for us. They are active advertisers and good partners on our brand and there's some exciting things coming up on what they're planning to do with the brand. So, we're feeling really good about where we are from a starting point with them, and it's really about a strategic alliance that is good for our brand and good for them. So, we're off to a great start.

Got you. I appreciate that. I think that's it for us. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thanks Zach.

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Budd Bugatch of Water Tower Research. Budd, your line is live.

Good morning and thank you for taking my question. I guess, Melinda, I was wondering if you could give us maybe an update on what the acquisition funnel looks like for some of the La-Z-Boy existing network? I know you've got two stores, you're planning to acquire this quarter. And I wondered if you could maybe give us a read on what you see as the motivation for the dealers now? And how much -- what that funnel looks like going for the next year or two?

Sure. Good to hear from you, Budd. Yes, a couple of things. As I've said, it is -- I guess there are two strategic priorities when it comes to the independent furniture galleries for us. The first one is to make sure that we are actively partnering with those independently-owned galleries so that we have a seamless consumer experience. I think I mentioned a few quarters back in the summer, we had a big conference, the first one of its kind in over a decade where we brought in -- we had 100% of our independent galleries represented and went through our plans on Century Vision, our branding, our product plans and so forth and really just had a great event to get everybody excited about what La-Z-Boy brand can do for all of us. At the same time, those dealers were -- that we still have almost 50 dealers out there that are -- most of them in multiple decades of ownership, oftentimes multiple generations. And I think particularly given the last couple of years of a challenging furniture market, people are in different places. They've either weathered it and they've doubled down and they're ready to go for an extended period and they may be starting to think about exit events. And so we are trying to be very proactive to be out there for people to understand what that exit strategy would look like and take advantage of our strong financial position to bring in any of those that make sense and as many of those make sense. And we've been fortunate that we've been on a pretty regular cadence here of having those kind of conversations and I think we'll continue to see that.

Do you think you'll see more than two for the fourth quarter? Will you be able to close more? I'm sure you're in conversation with many of those, 50 who have either generational or financial concerns for their retirements to consider to sell their long-term networks. So, what should investors expect over the next year or so?

Yes, I won't speculate into the future. But in general, given where the conversations are, as we said, we've got one in the hopper that we expect to close here in the fourth quarter, and that's a two-store network and that's the one that's contracted. So, we're looking forward to bringing that group into the fold.

I see. And in the quarter that you just closed, you said you bought, I think, five of the six physical locations in terms of those six dealers average, what, I think, $3 million per if I did the math right, how much of that was real estate and how much of it was for operations? How does that value separate?

We don't typically provide the breakdown on that. So, yes, it's -- the real estate is going to be -- and generally speaking, the real estate will be worth more than the specific business on a per store basis. But we don't generally speaking, and we won't go provide information real estate and the business. And also, this is one of the first ones we've done in a while where we purchased the real estate. We don't go off and ask for that, but sometimes the dealers say that they're interested in completely exiting the business as opposed to being a landlord for us once they sell is to their business. So, again, these -- we don't go off and actively pursue buying the properties. We'll take a look at this property and we'll keep an eye on it. And if there's opportunities for beneficial sale and leaseback, we'll clearly think about that as well.

It's a benefit to be able a strong balance sheet to help those transactions through.

Yes, I understand that because as a former retailer, I know that real estate was typically the retirement idea for the owner when they sold the network or he sold -- she sold that network. And last for me is can you maybe give us a feel of where the undelivered backlog with the disruptions in January, how do you look undelivered for both Wholesale and Retail going into the next quarter?

We don't provide that level of detail. The way I'd have you think about that is just look at the range that we provided for Q4 on what we expect to deliver, and that encompasses all of that.

Okay.

In general, we're back to -- we've been running mostly -- we're pretty much back to our four to six-week delivery. We had that short-term disruption here fell behind by a week or two, but we feel good about being caught up again.

And well, then last from me then, the quarter was the average ticket up or down for your Retail network, the one you own?

As we mentioned in the call, our conversion rates were higher than a year ago, and our average ticket was higher than a year ago.

Yes, that's why we're really pleased with the execution, though even though traffic continues to be challenged.

Thanks Budd.

Okay. Thank you very much. I think we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. So, I'll now turn it back over to the management for any closing remarks.

Thanks, Jenny. Melinda, Bob and I will be in our offices today to take any follow-up calls. Have a wonderful day.

Thank you very much, everyone. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.