Greetings, and welcome to the Oxford Industries Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings 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, Brian Smith. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that certain statements made on today's call and the Q&A session may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results of operations or financial condition to differ are discussed in our press release issued earlier today and in documents filed by us with the SEC, including the risk factors contained in our Form 10-K. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures in our press release issued earlier today, which is posted under the Investor Relations tab of our website at oxfordinc.com. I now like to introduce today's call participants. With me today are Tom Chubb, Chairman and CEO; and Scott Grassmyer, CFO and COO. Thank you for your attention. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Chubb.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased to be reporting fourth quarter net sales and adjusted EPS that are both near the top of our guidance ranges. In December we said that we were expecting a strong holiday selling season. That expectation turned into reality as the consumer did in fact show up to buy their loved ones and friends the gifts that they really wanted from the brands that they love. We were particularly pleased in the weeks leading up to Christmas by the performance of some of our newer special product such as Tommy Bahama's Indigo Palms Denim and Denim Friendly Product, the Tommy Bahama Marlin Luxe Quarter Zip Pullover and the Lilly Pulitzer Reserve Collection. The performance of these higher price point products is strong evidence that when there is reason to shop, our customers are choosing to spend with our brands and this helped drive comps for the month of December up 2%. As we moved into January, we experienced a moderation in demand which we attribute to the recent pattern of consumers retreating when there isn't a reason to spend combined with a deterioration in consumer sentiment. As a result, January was not as strong as December with comps down 3%. This negative trend accelerated in the beginning of fiscal 2025 with comps of negative 9% in February. Given this backdrop, we are pleased with our fourth quarter performance and commend and thank our people for delivering these results. We believe the choppiness and demand we experience towards the end of fiscal 2024 is likely to continue in the near term, just as the consumer showed up and was willing to spend for Christmas. We expect the same will be true for the first half of fiscal 2025 with strong selling…

Thank you, Tom. As Tom mentioned, we finished the fourth quarter in full fiscal year 2024 with top and bottom line results at the top end of our guidance range. Our operating groups had strong holiday seasons and performed well during the fourth quarter despite pullback in consumer spending in January. Consolidated net sales in the 52-week fiscal 2024 decreased 3% to $1.52 billion. As a reminder, 2023 net sales included an approximate $16 million from the 53rd week resulting in $10 million of additional gross profit. Sales in our full price brick and mortar locations were down 2%, driven by a mid-single digit negative comp, partially offset by the addition of new store locations. E-commerce sales decreased 4%. Our food and beverage and outlet locations performed better with a 1% and 3% sales increase respectively, driven by new locations, partially offset by low single digit negative comps. Our wholesale channel, which had a particularly challenging year, decreased $31 million or 10% as the specialty store business across our brands continues to struggle, partially offset by increased sales to major department stores. Adjusted gross margin contracted 80 basis points to 63.2, driven primarily by a higher proportion of net sales occurring during promotional and clearance events in Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer and Johnny Was. Across our three major brands and throughout fiscal 2024, consumer response was strongest to our new and innovative fashion products and during our promotional and end of season clearance events. We believe the higher proportion of spending around key promotional periods represents a return to pre-COVID spending habits. The decrease in gross margin resulting from an increase in promotional and clearance sales was partially offset by change in sales mix with a greater proportion of our sales coming through our direct to consumer channels. Our Merchant…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Ashley Owens with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. So to start, I wanted to touch on the first quarter guide. I know you spoke to some of the comps and what you've seen thus far. Maybe if you could help us unpack some of the different headwinds you mentioned in the magnitude of each. Did it vary by brand at all. And then additionally, as we think about the balance of the year, some of the puts and takes in your assumptions for both the low and high end of the revenue guidance ranges. Thank you.

Well, on the relative strength of the brands, what I would tell you is that Lilly is the strongest performer right now and is actually doing pretty well right now. The rest of the brand, the bigger brands are off a bit. I will point out that you, we do have the Easter shift this year, so not entirely surprising to see March comping down a bit given that Easter shifted really completely out of March and into April. And then in terms of the guidance for the balance of the year puts and takes on the top and bottom end of the revenue range. Yes, yes, we do have the new stores which are helping offset the negative comp assumption. But again, we expect Lilly to comp positive, maybe some of our smaller brands to comp positive. And Tommy and Johnny Was our plans have them comping a little bit negative.

Okay, great. And then quickly as well, I'm hearing from some of the other brands we've spoken to, we're hearing from wholesale partners that they're tightening some of the order books for the remainder of the year and becoming cautious again. Would be curious if this is something you've observed and if there's any variances by brand then additionally, just maybe a little bit on the details for the Johnny Was plan. It was down 9% in the quarter or so where you're observing some of the soft spots, if it's regional or broad based? Anything outside of the assortment that you want to or see opportunity to change this year? And then anything you can say on wholesale door increases as we move through the year. I believe you mentioned before that the brand was reentering some accounts in 2025.

Yes, I think in terms of the overall wholesale market, there is, I think concern out there that some of the big retailers will pull back their forward orders a bit. And we would look at that as being a potential headwind for sure. And we've thought about that as we build our forecast. On the other hand, the performance of our brands on the retail floor of our key wholesale accounts has been quite good, quite strong and usually that helps protect you against some of the downdraft. So a bit of sort of contraindications, if you will, the headwind of what they may be feeling in the overall market, but the sort of the tailwind that we might be getting from our very strong performance. In fact, in a lot of cases we're performing better in those stores than we are in our own stores. In terms of Johnny Was, we do hope to be able to rebuild the wholesale business there, which has slipped a bit in recent years, especially in the majors. And I think are optimistic about that, although again, you have the kind of the potential headwind of the market just more broadly pulling back there. And I think that was. Did she have another question? I think that covered.

The only other thing would have been with Johnny Was just anything outside of the assortment for opportunity to change this year.

Yes, well, I think, improving the performance of the retail stores is a big focus. I mean, overall right now the market is very challenging, but we're doing everything we can from the way that we're visualizing merchandising the stores to the way that we're staffing them to the way that we're assorting them, including overall, shifting the assortment a little bit more towards our classic collection type product, but then at a more micro level trying to sort the individual stores better. So we've got a lot of plans there to try to improve the retail performance. We also obviously hope to be able to improve our wholesale book of business. The wholesale has a great contribution margin, so every incremental dollar of wholesale does a lot for us on the bottom line. Those are kind of the key things that Johnny Was. And then the last one I'd call out, which I think we talked about maybe in previous quarters, but is really trying to improve the efficiency of the marketing spend. And that's not just for Johnny Was, but I would say especially for Johnny Was trying to improve the efficiency of the marketing spend.

Okay, great. Thanks for passing along. Thank you.

Thank you, Ashley.

The next question. Janine Stichter with BTIG. Please proceed.

Hey, you've got Ethan Sagi on for Janine. First question, just with all the macro uncertainty going on so far this year, are customers still responding positively to newness in the assortment or have they pulled back across the board? And would you say your assortment is more balanced with newness now or is there still some room to improve?

Yes, no, we have. We've got significantly more newness in especially our biggest brands. Tommy and Lily have taken big steps up in the amount of newness they have this spring versus last spring. And it is the newness that's driving the business. When overall you're a little bit soft sometimes it's hard to see strength. But we do have strength in newness. We're glad we have the level of newness that we have because the customer is responding to it really nicely. And Tommy Bahama, we've got the new Barbados Pro short, which, Ethan, if you like to be outside during the summer months, it's just a great product. It builds upon a lot of past successes that we've had in shorts and really takes it to a new level. And then Lily Pulitzer, some of the stars have been, I believe it's called the Tazia [ph] Dress, which has been a star. Our Disney capsule collection that we just released, I believe last week and has done really well. And that's a new thing for us. We've had Disney product before in our Disney stores, Disney Spring store, but this is available everywhere and it's done really, really well. And then the last example, the ultimate in newness really is Lilly Pulitzer Menswear, which we last did in a meaningful kind of way about 15 years ago. And that's been, it's small, it's not going to be a huge part of the business, but it certainly performed very well and has created a lot of excitement and buzz around the brand. So yes, newness is good and we got some newness and we're glad we have it.

That's great to hear. And then just one more from me. So, besides needing more bullish consumer, just could you provide us some more detail on internal initiatives you're taking to improve conversion?

It's, all kinds of things, better product knowledge in the stores, trying to focus the customers or, excuse me, the associates, help them with the knowledge they need to better sell the products, tweaking the assortments. As we talked about, it's all kind of blocking and tackling kind of stuff that we're trying to do, making improvements to the websites that make it easier to get from wherever you start to check out and then easier to check in the prepared comments that we've done major upgrades to the Tommy Bahama, Lilly, Southern Tide and Beaufort Bonnet websites. And all of those have a lot of features that are in there that are designed to help move people through to check out and then get them checked out.

Got it. That's really helpful. I'll pass it on and best of luck.

Okay, thanks, Ethan.

Next question. Mauricio Serna with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. First, maybe could you talk about what is like the comm sale on March that you've seen? It sounds like things got a little bit better relative to February. So just so just wanted to get a better understanding on that and maybe help us understand…

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Yes. Okay, great. I was just going to say on the sales cadence for the year, I think like the implied guide is like for the average growth in the next couple of quarters, the next three quarters to be like roughly up 1%. Is that mainly a function of the store openings or is there you're embedding some sort of home sales improvement in upcoming quarters? Thank you.

Okay, I'll let Scott answer the second one. But as to the first one, I would say March feels better than February did. You do have the big sort of non-comp event of Easter shifting out of March and into April and as you know it moved sort of as far as it can move and is about I think as late as it can be and usually that, we 10 days before Easter or a big selling period. So moving that out of March and into April, you would almost expect March to have some challenges with the comp. So I think we feel better about March than February. It's still negative but I do think we'll pick up a lot of that in April and wouldn't be surprised to see April comp positive.

Yes. And the first half we have the negative comps are a bit bigger the second half, third quarter, we had a lot of noise last year in the third quarter with the two hurricanes, a tropical storm. So we think hopefully third quarter will be a little easier comp. But we still are more flattish there and kind of that trend into the fourth quarter. So we have not, we hope we've been very conservative in our comps. Obviously time will tell but we don't have, huge positive comps in the back half. We still have comps closer to flat in the back half and negative in the first half. The new stores will, are helping offset some of that. We have been two new Marlin bars last week, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and Charlotte, North Carolina and both are off to very nice start. So we feel really good about those and do have some maybe a little more front end loaded openings this year than some of the past years. So hopefully we'll get a little more benefit late in the year from new stores that are open during the year than we have in the past.

Got it. Very helpful. And then on SG&A, I recall like in the last few earnings calls you had talked about trying to get some operating leverage, trying to control SG&A, but this year is still going to be growing higher than sales. So I understand like drivers of growth. But what are some initiatives that you're doing to kind of like, try to like control the SG&A.

We're looking at everything, marketing efficiency. I really monitor marketing spend. And there have been some people reductions throughout the company. So we're really looking, at everything we can. We're trying to negotiate hard with vendors on all kinds of contracts, heavy initiative there. So we're looking at all things and a very good part of any SG&A increases, really these new stores within having negative or in having negative comps in a resisting basin. So we're not getting, you have to overcome that to get any leverage. But it is a real focus.

Understood. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mauricio.

Next question. Paul Lejuez with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. It's Tracy Kogan filling in for Paul. I had a follow up first on an earlier question about what you're seeing from your wholesale partners. I know you said others are hearing that they're expressing caution, but I'm wondering what you're actually seeing in your order books. I think you had said your order books were positive as of your last earnings call. And I'm wondering if you're seeing changes there or if you haven't really seen it yet, but you maybe anticipate that. And then I have another question when you're finished with that one. Thank you.

We've now our latest projection has our wholesale business more flat, up a little bit in spring and down just a little bit, but we're still booking. So I think, we put a little caution into our projections of what our future bookings will be for the rest of the year. And as Tom mentioned, we are performing well on the floor. But most retail, most retail accounts probably are getting more cautious themselves. We are being more cautious on our inventory buys for the back half of this year and then we'll probably do the same for going into next year. We'd rather be in a situation instead of having too much inventory. Things bounce back. We're chasing a little bit. So we're approaching it with caution. Not panic, but just caution.

Got you. That makes sense. And then I had a question on tariffs. I think you said that the dollar number, the $9 million to $10 million, was unmitigated. And I wondered, so is the entire $9 million to $10 billion in your guidance for this year, you assume no mitigation and maybe you might be able to mitigate some of that. I know you said you thought you'd mitigate it by 2026, but just kind of wondering if there some potential there that that comes in better if you can mitigate or maybe you've already built something in. Thanks.

We built some mitigation in, but those are more actions that, groups have identified. They're still negotiating with factories. We're still going through our pricing where we could change some retail prices for especially the later part of fall and into holiday. So there's still, I would think it maybe gets a little bit better, but a lot of the mitigation will really impact spring of 2026 where we think we can be fully mitigated. The challenge is we don't know what the true playing field is yet because we don't know what's going to happen in early April when different countries might have tariffs. So we might be running to a country that might not have been the right country to run to. So it is. The unknown is difficult. But the $9 million to $10 million, we don't think it could get worse than that for this year and hopefully it gets a little bit better.

Got you. Thanks very much. Good luck, guys.

Thanks a lot.

There are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to Tom for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Stacy. Thanks to all of you for your interest and we look forward to talking to you again in June. Hope you are well until then.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.