Earnings Labs

Tractor Supply Company (TSCO)

Q4 2023 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 1, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Tractor Supply Company's Conference Call to discuss Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. We ask that all participants limit themselves to one question and return to the queue for additional questions. Please be advised that reproduction of this call in whole or in part is not permitted without written authorization of Tractor Supply Company. And as a reminder, this call is being recorded. The host for today's call is Mrs. Mary Winn Pilkington, Senior Vice President of Investor and Public Relations for Tractor Supply Company. Now, first up is a year-end video. [Video Presentation] I would now like to pass the call to our host, Mrs. Mary Winn Pilkington. Mary Winn, please go ahead.

Mary Winn Pilkington

Management

Thank you, Alissa. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to join us today, and I hope you enjoyed watching the video of Tractor Supply's year-end review. On the call today are Hal Lawton, our CEO; and Kurt Barton, our CFO. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call up for your questions. Seth Estep, our EVP and Chief Merchandising Officer, will join us for the question-and-answer session. Please note that we've made a supplemental slide presentation available on our website to accompany today's earnings release. Now let me reference the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This call may contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including the future operating and financial performance of the company. In many cases, these risks and uncertainties are beyond our control. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct, and actual results may differ materially from expectations. Important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements are included at the end of the press release issued today and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information contained in this call is accurate only as of the date discussed. Investors should not assume that statements will remain operative at a later time. Tractor Supply undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed in this call. We have extended the call to allow for more time for Q&A. Given the number of people who want to participate, we respectfully ask you to limit yourself to one question. If you have additional questions, please feel free to get back in the queue. I appreciate your cooperation. We will be available after the call for follow-up. Thank you for your time and attention this morning.

Hal Lawton

Management

Thank you, Mary Winn, and thank you to everyone for joining our call this morning. In 2023, Tractor Supply celebrated our milestone 85th anniversary. Over 85 years, Tractor Supply has been a growth company with a clear purpose to help our customers live Life Out Here. Since 1938, we've operated in all types of economic conditions, embraced innovation and adapted to changing times. We've elevated the farm and ranch channel, bringing the sophistication of other retail categories to improve the shopping journey and ensure we have scalable platforms. Tractor Supply's needs-based, demand-driven business model has stood the test of time. No doubt this past year has proved challenging, more top feature than we expected with the beginning of the year with unfavorable weather, rising interest rates and inflation impacting consumer spending habits, but we believe these headwinds are temporary. We continue to invest for growth in 2023, and gain market share along the way, especially in companion animal and livestock feed. I think the opening video was a great recap of the highlights of the team's significant accomplishments across Tractor Supply in the year and over the last few years. As I reflect on 2023, our Tractor Supply team has navigated so much together, working with commitment and resilience to serve our customers and our communities, and our team has proven their ability to be unrelenting and executing against the macro and other headwinds, while also building our future. I sincerely thank them for living our mission and values. In 2023, we faced the well-documented macro headwinds that weighed on consumer goods spending, particularly discretionary goods, as well as unfavorable weather impacts every quarter on our business. While we've made progress over the years to deseasonalize our business, we will always be the reliable supplier for our customers for their…

Kurt Barton

Management

Thank you, Hal, and hello to everyone on the call. I want to start by reiterating Hal's comments on 2023 and our confidence in the long-term opportunities for Tractor Supply. Over my 2.5 decades in this business, I've never seen a year where we've had many transitory headwinds as we did in 2023 that did not break positively at some point during the year. Before I get into my review of the quarter, I wanted to address two items. First, for comparability purposes, please keep in mind, 2022 had a 53rd fiscal week that provided a net sales benefit of $225 million to the prior year fourth quarter, representing about 5.6 percentage points of our net sales decline this quarter. On a full year basis, it negatively impacted net sales by 1.6 percentage points. In addition, diluted EPS in 2022 benefited by $0.16 for the quarter and the year from the 53rd week. Second, overall, the unseasonably warm winter weighed on our results in the fourth quarter. We estimate the impact to be approximately 400 basis points of pressure on our comp sales performance. We knew this was going to be the most challenging quarter of the year, given our strong comp performance of 8.6% in the prior year as we were cycling the late December 2022 winter storm that provided a 200 basis point comp benefit to the fourth quarter of last year. The majority of the pressure was in transactions, given the needs-based nature of our business and it impacted our seasonal categories across Q and other winter goods. Our Q business in the fourth quarter has a higher mix of cold weather seasonal products such as wood pellets, bulk propane, bird feed and pine savings for bedding. From the cadence of the quarter to our product categories,…

Hal Lawton

Management

Thank you, Kurt. Now I'd like to update you on our progress on our Life Out Here strategy and share more about the exciting plans we have in place for the spring season. Tractor Supply continues to build on our competitive advantages. And arguably, the company is as strong as it's ever been. This is backed up by several proof points. We continue to gain market share across our major product categories and our customer metrics remain incredibly healthy with strong spending and retention with our best customers. Our strategic priorities are clearly resonating with our customers. We continue to see strength in our brand equity metrics, continue to grow our brand consideration and our unaided awareness. These strong customer trends are attributed to the team. The team is executing at a high level and is extremely engaged. In 2023, our turnover improved at every level across the company as we're committed to being an employer of choice in rural America. With customer satisfaction scores at an all-time high, the team is passionate about their work, and we're energized to capitalize on our growth investments to provide our customers with legendary service. Our strong culture has always been a part of our secret sauce. The team has dialed in and determined to build on our long track record of success. Our Life Out Here strategy is on point. Our strategic initiatives in Project Fusion, Garden Centers, Neighbor's Club and Digital are working and they are driving results. In 2024, we anticipate that our Project Fusion layout will be in about 50% of our store base by year-end. This layout is clearly driving improved comp sales force as we're leveraging category insights to determine space allocation and drive productivity. For instance, in the companion animal categories, we're seeing that the Fusion…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Zach Fadem with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Zach Fadem

Analyst

Hey, good morning. Starting with Q4, it sounds like October, November trends were a touch better than that down 4% comp. But December stepped down and January step back up. So just considering all the variability over the past couple of months, can you help us understand just the underlying run rate for the business, where you think it is today and what you think the path is back to the long-term growth algo. And then specifically, how are you thinking about the contribution of the internal drivers like lawn and garden and Neighbor's Club in 2024?

Kurt Barton

Management

Hey, Zach, this is Kurt. Good morning. In regards to the comp sales performance, I'll point back to some of the things I mentioned on our prepared remarks. For the fourth quarter, the best way to look at it is start with the backdrop that when we look at the seasonal performance, the challenge is about an extremely mild fourth quarter going up against an Arctic storm of last year, there's 400 basis points of pressure. October and November were unseasonably warm as well. So you've got negative low single-digits generally consistent when you normalize for the December storm across all of the months. And all of that principally in the weather-related categories that I pointed out on the call. So as I mentioned, the fourth quarter ran consistently with the trend rates of the third quarter. Our consumable or needs-based business continues to be running solid, especially the year-round non-seasonal-related categories, the strength in all of our feed and food, the confidence that we have comes from examples such as livestock feed, equine feed, poultry feed, wildlife supplies, cat and dog running unit positive comps in the fourth quarter. Some of that up against the last year pantry filling that happens in the last week of the year against that storm. So you could see the traffic that we get from the consumables, the stability of the core of our business running really strong. So we still have that and care that confidence that our customers are shopping us just as consistent as they were before. We have growth in active customers, Neighbor's Club contributing more. All of those are the drivers of the consistency of the business.

Zach Fadem

Analyst

Thanks for the time.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chris Horvers with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Chris Horvers

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. So I guess a two-parter. So first, as you think about not putting weather into 2024 is a potential benefit, can you talk through that? Is that because you look at it, the headwind in 2023 as more of a lap? Or is it just -- you're just trying to be prudent in your outlook? And a second follow-up is we get a lot of questions about the competitive encroachment from the big box guys. So could you talk about what you're seeing in terms of where those competitors have rolled out and expanded farm and ranch assortment? Thank you.

Hal Lawton

Management

Hey, Chris, thanks for joining the call this morning. Yeah, on weather, I think as we reflect on last year, we had a lot of discussion on weather times felt like we're playing meteorologists. And I think we just decided to be prudent as we look at this year, not look at whether it's potential upside or downside as we called out, there's a number of other factors that could also influence our sales as the year progresses whether that be the agriculture market, oil, housing, et cetera. And instead, we just chose to focus on for the purposes of our guidance and range of outcomes this year, really the factors that we think are going to have the most influence on our sales as we can see it right now, which are our continued market share gains, offsetting the shift still in consumer spending from goods to services, as well as disinflation, which is dominantly a first half issue. And then as it relates to competitive encouragement, I'd say we really haven't seen anything different in competitive activity for the foreseeable past. So it's been really, for the last -- since COVID, the competitive activity has been pretty stable, pretty rational. Our share gains continue to -- we continue to take share in the market, and really haven't seen anything out of the ordinary from a competitive perspective, whether that be in our farm and ranch -- core farm and ranch competitors or the multitude of other national retailers that we compete against as well.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Kate McShane

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking our question. Our question centered around SG&A. We just wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about wage growth in 2024, and how does incentive comp come into play in 2024? What happened regarding incentive comp in 2023, given the flat comp for the year? And how should we think about that.

Kurt Barton

Management

Yeah. Hey, Kate, this is Kurt. I'll take those. On wage rate growth, we are anticipating wage rate growth, slightly above the historical average is pre-pandemic. It varies across different areas of the business. But I'd center around a 3% to 4% range wage rate growth. We continue to see strong, solid workforce, unemployment continues to be low. Our culture, our teams continue to have all the success with hiring, but it's appropriate to anticipate that you'd be at that level of wage rate growth. In regards to incentive compensation, we're incentivized at all levels of the organization. In 2023, our performance from top and bottom line did underperform our original expectations. And so there was some modest leverage in 2023. So if you look at 2024, what's factored into our guidance into our SG&A is some normalization of incentive comp gives a modest 10 or 15 basis point deleverage, but that's all considered in the guidance that I gave.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Haas with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Jason Haas

Analyst · Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I'm curious, if you could comment on your expectation for new store productivity in 2024. And based on the math that we could do it, it looks like it's maybe going to be like around 60% or so. I know sometimes the math can be fuzzy from our perspective. So can you just talk about what's expected there? And if there's any reason why the initial productivity would be lower in 2024? Thanks.

Kurt Barton

Management

Yeah, Jason, this is Kurt. I'll answer that question. On my prepared remarks, I was very specific on that on what is really driving our new store productivity. So I want to point everyone back to that. We continue to see the Tractor Supply consistent, strong new store productivity. 2023 ran at 67% new store productivity. The 80 stores that we plan for 2024 are expected to be coming out the gates very consistent in the same way and our new store maturation process of a four to five year 65% to 70% new store productivity is where we target and we expect 2024 with the strong pipeline that we've got, we believe an excited -- just as we have in 2023 about what these new stores will produce.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Peter Benedict with Baird. Your line is now open.

Peter Benedict

Analyst · Baird. Your line is now open.

Hi, guys. Good morning. I guess, Kurt, maybe a question for you. As we think about the EBIT margin and how it toggles within your guidance range, roughly speaking, about 15 basis points up or down per point of comp move. If you guys -- if you think we see a scenario where your comps are either below the low end of your guide range or they come in above the high end of the range, any sense for how the incrementals or decrementals would look. Anything we should think about there is 15 basis points a good benchmark? Or just curious kind of your thoughts on that. Thank you.

Kurt Barton

Management

Yes. I'll give you a couple of points, Peter, on that. First, we've considered the micro strategic drivers, the macro favorable or unfavorable pressures for this year. We've given a guidance range, albeit slightly larger on the top and bottom line than we historically have that recognizes we're in a time of uncertainty. And so we believe all of those scenarios, any plausible, reasonable scenarios have been factored into our guidance. So we don't see likelihood outside of the downside of the guidance that we've given. That said, inside the guidance range, even outside of the guidance range, I'd point that the EBIT margin movement within sales range is not linear. And there's a number of factors, certainly with the level of gross margin or what might be a factor that's driving the low end of the range. A deflationary environment, for example, gives us upside on margin rate. So I would not point to any linear and even outside of the range when you start considering incentive comp and other things, it's not linear as well.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scot Ciccarelli with Truist. Your line is now open.

Scot Ciccarelli

Analyst · Truist. Your line is now open.

Hi, guys. Scot Ciccarelli. Can you help quantify the comp lift that you're baking into your model from your Garden Centers this year? I think you mentioned you have about 40% penetration now, and we know that the spring selling season was largely wiped out in 2023 and probably even 2022. And maybe any other color on the performance of the Garden Centers as that program matures? Thanks.

Kurt Barton

Management

Yes, sure. Why don't I start with that, Scot, on the comp, and then I'll toss it to set a little bit on the performance of Garden Centers, some of the 2024 drivers, et cetera. Our expectation and how we've modeled in our long-term targets is still the same as our expectations for 2024. As we continue to add Garden Centers roughly 150 to 200 of those a year. And you get from Fusion and Garden Center mid-single-digit to high single-digit on combo lift as those mature in year one and then a lower benefit in like year two, but still a benefit over the chain, that roughly plays into our algorithm, and we would anticipate for this year to play similar to that the Fusion Garden Center initiative is driving -- give or take some roughly one point of comp in our guidance range. And Neighbor's Club is another initiative that's driving consumers to spend up the tiers, more transactions, getting more of their share of wallet is another driver. So just kind of pointing out the two biggest strategic initiative drivers, and then I'll toss it over to Seth, maybe to talk a little bit about what's driving the garden centers.

Seth Estep

Analyst · Truist. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thanks, Kurt. Thanks, Scot, for the question. Scot, first, I'll just start with as we think about our garden center initiative, just the size of the addressable market there is over $20 billion. And as we know, it's a place where our customers participated, where they didn't necessarily look at us as their first and primary destination for those categories, and we believe we have significant share opportunities as we look at the lawn and garden segment. Over the course of the last three years, as Kurt has mentioned, we have really been focused on driving scale to build out our grower base and then build to the 450-plus garden centers where we'll be entering spring, which we really believe this is the year that the team is really going to be able to drive some sales. As we go into spring with those 450, I mean, obviously, we're focused on winning those spring categories as well as building out both fall and our winter seasonal related areas to make sure that we can leverage and maximize that footprint. Not just in the spring season, but also in the 12 months of the year. So, very excited about the work that the team has been doing, very excited about the size of the prize there, and I think this is the year which really all going to come together. We built scale and how those programs are going to be hitting stores.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett Research Advisors. Your line is now open.

Chuck Grom

Analyst · Gordon Haskett Research Advisors. Your line is now open.

Hey thanks very much. Happy New Year guys. Now that you've completed the Orscheln conversions, I guess I'm curious your outlook on sales productivity and margins of these locations. And I guess now that they're in the set, how does that compare to the legacy Tractor Supply stores? And when we look at 2024 and '25, how do we think about the sales maturation curve and the benefit to comps from those stores? Thanks.

Kurt Barton

Management

Yes, Chuck, this is Kurt. The Orscheln conversion went very well. All stores converted, as we mentioned, to the Tractor Supply brand. The first six to nine months of -- since the acquisition was a transition, a lot of noise through that. We now have them all branded Tractor Supply. The team is engaged. We've got the Tractor Supply products and services, our Tractor Supply, feed and food brands. And when we begin to cycle that in second quarter where we converted all over we do anticipate to see much like a new store maturation, perhaps we'll learn it in a similar type maturation curve, but we anticipate and have baked into our guidance some new store maturation type comp benefit from those 81 stores as well. And how it compares? We anticipate these markets from our real estate study that there is upside to the historical performance in those stores to be able to run in line with Tractor Supply averages. Albeit we've said it's very much in line with like a Midwest tractor supply average, which is a bit below the overall tractor supply average store level. So there's room to have these grow over time. And we're excited about our ability to capture new customers, bring them into Tractor Supply in these stores. And so overall, for 2024, even into 2025, we believe much like a new store, there's a benefit from the maturation.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Michael Lasser with UBS. Your line is now open.

Michael Lasser

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. What if you assumed for input cost relief in 2024, especially key variables like transportation costs and commodity costs? And then how does that inform your view of the gross margin outlook for this year? Because it seems like the gross margin has been expanding significantly in part because of this relief? And is there a risk that at some point, Tractor Supply could invite more competition as its gross margin is about 150 basis points higher than it was in 2019? Thank you so much.

Hal Lawton

Management

Hey, Michael, good morning. Two things I'll hit on this. First is the long-term structural nature of our gross margin, and then I'll speak to the assumptions implied in 2024. On the long-term structural nature, there's two big shifts that I want to remind folks about that really have transferred rate out of gross margin and expense out of gross margin and into SG&A. The first one of those is our field activity support team. As we've mentioned, it's nearly a 1,800-person team that where the expense falls in our SG&A, but the offsetting support provided by our vendors falls in gross margin. As we've talked about that several times in the past, that's roughly in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 basis points of shift. Secondly, I would call out the continued transformation of our supply chain. From 2018 to 2023, our stem miles have reduced by 20%. And that basically means a truck going from a DC to a store. And so the impact of that is reduced freight cost on a like-for-like volume and rate basis versus, say, 2018, but there's obviously operating costs embedded in our G&A to run the two DCs we've opened since then and the 11 mixing centers that we've opened since then. That is a benefit of roughly 60 to 70 basis points of the delta there. So when you add the fast difference and you add the supply chain difference kind of, call it, 75% of the gross margin difference that you quoted that 150 basis points is structural in nature and really a shift from SG&A to gross margin rate. Now looking forward, I would say the balance that you see there in gross margin rate, I would attribute to our scale. As we talked about, we're almost double the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Seth Basham with Wedbush. Your line is now open.

Seth Basham

Analyst · Wedbush. Your line is now open.

Good morning. My question is on the companion animal category. And if you could comment on the performance of that category in the fourth quarter were comps up or down. And then specific to cat and dog food, you mentioned positive unit comps. What about sales comps? And how are you seeing the consumer respond to inflation broadly in that category?

Seth Estep

Analyst · Wedbush. Your line is now open.

Hi, Seth, this is Seth. Relative to our companion animal business, we remain very excited about the opportunity that we have in companion animal and we've continued over the years to manage through multiple cycles and have a track record of this. What I'd say like relative to comp, companion animal continues to be a comp driver for us in both units as well as top line. When you look at trends in the industry, approximately for our customers, approximately 75% of our customers own a pet, and about half of those that own more than one pet. And so just structural to our customer base in general, it's an area that we are highly committed to. We believe you think about like our convenient locations, our team members, our omnichannel capabilities, our robust and differentiated assortments. We see those as all competitive advantages in the pet space, and we continue to take market share there. And we believe we have substantial market share opportunities ahead, both in 2024 and beyond with our existing customer base, as well as the new customers that are out there. So companion animal in general for us, it remains a healthy business, and it's something that we were confident in taking share in the years to come.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Peter Keith

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just to touch base on deflation, Kurt, you said modest deflation. I'm wondering if you could actually just quantify that if we think if it's like down 1% as comp headwind, and then bigger picture, there are some concerns that deflation will take you guys back to the back half of like 2015 to 2017 where comps were sluggish for a longer period of time. Do you see any key differences from the economic backdrop today versus several years ago when we last saw deflation?

Kurt Barton

Management

Yeah. Peter, I'll start with your first part of your question in regards to what our assumption is on a neutral deflation. Roughly neutral deflation for the year overall is what we see, give or take, I mean, give or take in our ranges, plus or minus one impact on retail AURs. As Hal mentioned, I think, in one of the other questions earlier, as we've rolled back off the peaks of 2022 throughout 2023 on a lot of the commodity deflation. A vast majority of that occurred throughout 2023 during these cycles. And these are fast turning SKUs in feed and food. So these -- these prices are already in our retail prices. First half of the year may have some exposure as a year-over-year lap on that. As we had slight net deflation in Q4, there could be and assumed in our guidance, some slight in the first half of the year. The second half of the year could be neutral or actually slightly positive. So we've considered each of those scenarios, but we really don't see a wide range in there. And I demonstrated that in regards to like corn, where it's 35% below the highs of 2022, and that happened throughout 2023. There's 10 or 15 points of difference between the pre-pandemic levels. And so there's really not much movement left in a commodity, and that commodity is a small percent ingredient in a small or a portion of our products that we offer. In comparison to 2015, it's all about what's structural. In 2015, we were coming off of years where oil prices, steel prices, grains were coming off of highs, and they completely flipped. In this case, the commodities hit the early peaks in 2021 and 2022 and all the structural nature, which is a bigger portion, such as wage rates, operating cost, et cetera, are really begin to get embedded in 2022 and 2023. And this structural. So I think it's a very different scenario. And there's limited risk that we see, if anything, it's a small level, and we believe adequately considered in our guidance.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Joe Feldman with Telsey Advisor Group. Your line is now open.

Joe Feldman

Analyst · Telsey Advisor Group. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to follow-up on something you said about big ticket. And you talked about you think big ticket should be positive in 2024. I was just curious, is that lapping in just the easier comparisons? Or is it more to do with your view that discretionary spending will pick up, consumer behavior will kind of shift towards that discretion bigger ticket category. Like what's driving, I guess, that confidence in having said that. Thanks.

Kurt Barton

Management

Joe, this is Kurt. I'll quickly just affirm what our -- was assumed in our guidance and then let Seth give you the answer about why we're assuming that for 2024. But we do believe that big ticket should be in line with our overall guidance range for the year. That's as you see that, that's relatively flattish at the midpoint to slightly favorable. And we're going up against two consecutive years of negative big ticket comps. So it has a lot to do about the compares. And in 2022, we were coming off of all of the stimulus spending in 2023. There's a bit of a swing off of durable goods into services and some of the weather-related pressures. And in 2024, we're cycling that and we've got some great offers, some new innovations that I know Seth can speak to.

Seth Estep

Analyst · Telsey Advisor Group. Your line is now open.

Yeah. Thanks, Kurt. Yeah, so as Hal mentioned in his prepared remarks, we've got a lot of newness and innovation coming, particularly in our big ticket categories, also as we lap some of the easier compares that Kurt just mentioned, whether it be the Toro havoc that's going to be exclusive to us that Hal mentioned, a whole new grill lineup that we continue to expand basically an exclusive lineup of trailers to Tractor Supply, where we are definitely a destination, safe. As we look ahead, we believe can be a driver for us and then finally, I'd just say as the team and as we mentioned in prepared remarks, our private label credit card that we've been able to lean into to drive some volume as it comes to big ticket has also been strong.

Hal Lawton

Management

Broad-based, I'd just say, retail, in general, is rebounding some of the big ticket, and we could definitely see that as we approach kind of November and December.

Mary Winn Pilkington

Management

Allisa, we'll take one more question. Time limit.

Operator

Operator

Certainly. Our final question comes from the line of Michael Baker with D.A. Davidson. Your line is now open.

Michael Baker

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. Can you guys hear me?

Kurt Barton

Management

Yes.

Michael Baker

Analyst

Hello?

Kurt Barton

Management

Yes, Michael.

Michael Baker

Analyst

I hate to ask the last question on a real short-term thing. But I am curious about the first quarter. You said, you expect all quarters to be within your range or consistent with the range or something along those lines. So that would mean at the high-end. And you said positive for 1Q, but that would mean about 1%. Is that reflective of what you're seeing in January? Or how much does that consider? I think the comparison gets a little bit harder in February, although I don't think March was very good last year either. So with all the weather we're all seeing in the country, I think a lot of people are assuming that January is a pretty strong month. I guess I'm just trying to gauge how strong relative to the implied guidance of maybe up 1%? Thanks.

Hal Lawton

Management

Hey, Michael, it's Hal. Thanks for the question. I'd just say it's certainly, we saw some benefit from the weather in the first three weeks of January, really the second and third week, but January is our smallest month of the year, smallest month of the quarter. And the thing that the month that's really going to determine our comps for Q1 is going to be March. We are, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, very excited about our spring setup this year. We've got our most innovation in the last three or four years now that kind of the supply chain disruptions and all those things have been worked through. Our vendors have been able to really spend the last year getting their innovation pipeline restarted. Our in-stock rates and our spring sets are back to the expected 95% plus that we historically have set at, and we feel great about spring. We're optimistic about Q1, as Kurt said, we're certainly expecting a positive comp. We're off to a good start with the month of January behind us. But really, the most important thing that we're focused on is having a win in March.

Mary Winn Pilkington

Management

Great. Well, Alissa, thank you. That will conclude our Q&A session. And I'm the Randall Day [ph], for anybody, please reach out for follow-up, and we look forward to talking to you on our Q1 earnings call at the end of April. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.