BURL - NYSE

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Burlington Stores Inc. first quarter 2024 earnings and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press the star-one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Glick, Senior Vice President. Please go ahead.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Great, and then maybe a follow-up for Kristin, just on your first quarter margin and the expense shift. Could you just provide any additional color on the expenses that shifted out of the first quarter and why, and then excluding the shift, could you just walk through the drivers of operating margin upside that you saw in the first quarter?

Matt, good morning. Yes, thanks for the questions. Overall, we did have a strong first quarter in terms of margin expansion, about 170 basis points versus last year, and this expansion does include a benefit from the timing of expenses worth about $9 million, or around 40 basis points out of Q1 and primarily into Q2. After accounting for the expense timing, our Q1 adjusted EBIT margin increased 130 basis points versus the first quarter of last year, which was well above our guidance of 20 to 60 basis points. Let me give a little more detail on the expense shift. There were really three drivers. The first was in supply chain, which represented approximately $3 million. This was driven by two factors. The biggest piece was the timing of receipts, so some receipts expected--that we expected to be processed in Q1 shifted to Q2; and then secondly, there were some start-up expenses associated with the opening of our new New Jersey distribution center, which opens in the second quarter, as we planned. The second factor in the expense timing was on freight - there was about $2 million in freight expenses that shifted from Q1 to Q2, and that was associated with the receipt timing, and then finally there was approximately $3 million of SG&A items - this includes the timing of marketing spend and select benefit expenses. These shifted out of the first quarter and into the second quarter, and then another $1 million of miscellaneous SG&A items that shifted out of Q1 and into fall. In total, the expense timing shift included $8 million of out Q1 and into Q2, and $1 million shifting out of Q1 and into fall. Looking at the quarter net of these expenses, as was part of your question, EBIT margin as I mentioned expanded by 130 basis points, and this was really driven by three primary factors: first, a 90 basis point increase in merchandise margin due to faster inventory turns and lower markdowns; secondly, 70 basis points of leverage--and excluding the timing of expenses there, 70 basis points of leverage in supply chain, and then 20 basis points of leverage on freight. Partly offsetting the leverage of those items was deleverage in SG&A, namely in store payroll, and then also in depreciation given the higher capex spend.

That’s great color. Best of luck.

The next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Got it, very helpful. Then Kristin, if I can sneak one more in, you referenced the supply chain efficiencies in the quarter benefiting you. Can you just unpack that a little bit more? What exactly are those drivers that led to some of that upside in the first quarter, and then I guess a follow-up to that is, is there more to come there, is this just a one-time thing in the first quarter, is there possibly more efficiencies to come? Thanks.

Great, good morning Ike. It’s a good question. We were encouraged by the progress we’re making in terms of driving down supply chain costs as a percentage of sales. Excluding that expense shift I just talked about in Q2, supply chain leveraged 70 basis points, which is more than we had planned. I’ve shared before, we’ve talked about a number of productivity initiatives we have in place in supply chain, where we’re targeting meaningful cost savings. These are process improvements, industrial engineering-oriented improvements that streamline operations, reduce touches, reduce time to process merchandise, and ultimately save labor dollars in our DCs. In the first quarter, we found we are harvesting these savings a bit faster than we’d originally expected. To your follow-up question on is there to come, yes, as you know, we’ve said we believe that we have about 400 basis points of EBIT margin opportunity over the next five years - that’s using 2023 EBIT of around 6% as the baseline, and we believe about half of this, 200 basis points of the margin opportunity is independent of sales, and a meaningful part of this 200 basis points will come from--we expect to come from continued supply chain leverage, with the balance coming from lower freight and higher merchandise margin. We feel like we’ve demonstrated good progress in the first quarter on all three of those line items, particularly supply chain.

Awesome, thanks again.

The next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thank you, and then Kristin, the margin performance in the first quarter was much better than we expected. Obviously the balance of fiscal ’24, including 2Q, is not calling for that kind of increase in EBIT margins. What was unique about the first quarter that enabled such strong flow-through, and why aren’t we seeing the same outlook for the balance of the year? Also, what should we expect in 3Q and 4Q?

Great, good morning Lorraine. Thanks for the question. Certainly we had strong margin performance in Q1. Lower clearance levels and faster turns really helped drive strong merchandise margins, and our supply chain leverage was better than we had expected, as I spoke about just a few moments ago. But to your question and turning to the second quarter, there are a couple call-outs I want to make. First, we have about $9 million of expenses that shifted out of Q1, of which $8 million shifted into Q2, so that’s having around a 30 basis point negative EBIT margin impact on the second quarter. In addition, our newest distribution center in New Jersey will be coming online in the second quarter, in this quarter, which will add some modest deleverage in supply chain, given the start-up and training costs. Now, we expect that this will be more than offset by the productivity initiative I just talked about in supply chain, but that will likely temper the leverage in supply chain in Q2. Then to your last question on the back half of the year, there is a 53rd week impact. Fall total sales growth is planned for 7% to 9%, slightly lower than our full-year guidance of 8% to 10%. The 53rd week has the most acute impact on Q4 sales growth, where we are essentially trading a week in November for a week in January as compared to Q4 last year from a total sales growth standpoint. Now, we’ll share more detail on Q3 and Q4 margin guidance on our call in August, but for now as you think about modeling Q3 and Q4, keep in mind that the total sales growth for Q3 will be higher than Q4 due to the 53rd week calendar impact, which will impact--which will thereby impact the relative margin improvement for Q3 versus Q4.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of John Kernan with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Thanks, good morning Michael, Kristin, David. Nice job on the top line and the margin flow-through. Kristin, let’s just keep it on the margin theme here. It looks like freight was a margin driver in Q1. Will freight continue to be a margin tailwind for the rest of the year? Is there any chance it becomes a headwind as you get further into the year, and then just a quick follow-up for David after that.

Great, good morning John. Appreciate the questions. We were pleased with the 30 basis points of leverage we saw in freight in the first quarter. About 10 basis points, as I described, was due to the timing of receipts, but the majority of the leverage was due to favorable freight rates and specific transportation-related cost savings initiatives we have. We do expect to continue to see freight leverage this year. We’re unlikely to get all of the way back to FY19 freight expense, as we’ve previously discussed, but we recently finalized our latest round of domestic freight contracts, and we’re pleased with where we landed. Freight should continue to drive expense leverage through all of 2024, and in addition diesel fuel rates have begun to become a modest tailwind here.

Got it, thanks. David, just on the balance sheet in today’s release, the convertible notes, it looks like they become a current liability in Q1. What’s the plan on retiring these? Just wondering also if there’s any impact to the stock repurchase program or share count - sometimes the accounting for converts can be pretty tricky to model.

Thanks John, appreciate--glad you asked about the converts, good question. Before I answer your question directly, I just want to talk about our liquidity. We feel very good about our current liquidity. We ended the quarter with $742 million in cash, we had no borrowings on our ABL, and about $1.5 billion in total liquidity. Secondly, we’re really comfortable with our total debt levels and we would expect, as hopefully our EBITDA continues to grow, that our leverage ratios would stay on the healthy trend of improvement we’ve seen over the last few years. Getting to your question on the 2025 convertible notes, yes, they became a current liability as of the end of this quarter. There’s $156 million outstanding that mature in April 2025. If you recall, John, we did an amend and extend convert transaction in 2023, and at that time it was our intention to ultimately reduce the total amount of converts outstanding on our balance sheet, and we extended $297 million in new convertible notes out to December 2027, while purposely allowing the converts you referenced, the $156 million, the 2025s, to go to maturity. Given the strong liquidity that I just referenced, we’re very comfortable retiring that $156 million of principal with cash on hand next April, and as you might expect, this is a strategy that we socialized up front with the rating agencies before we completed the transaction. Getting to the heart of your question about buybacks, since we completed the convert transaction last year, we’ve bought back about $164 million in stock between Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year. We indicated on our last earnings call that we viewed last year’s level of buybacks, which was $232 million, as a reasonable proxy or target for buybacks this year, and as you probably noted in the press release, we have $442 million remaining on our current share price authorization. Look, we know our shareholders value a consistent approach to share repurchases, and our intention would be, given our strong liquidity as well as what we expect to generate in cash flow, that we would continue to buy back shares consistently, not only in 2024 but 2025 as well, assuming our financial performance continues as we have it planned.

Got it, thanks.

Thanks John.

The next question comes from the line of Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

That’s really helpful. For Kristin, can you elaborate on that point on the expectations for merchandise margin as you move throughout the year, given some of the puts and takes on mark-on versus the year-on-year trend on regular priced selling relative to clearance from last year? Thank you.

Sure. No, it’s a good question. We certainly saw higher merchandise margin in the first quarter with the lower clearance, faster turns, lower markdowns. Go forward, I’d say we think looking at--we do feel like there’s an opportunity to continue seeing a faster turn, faster inventory turn and thereby lower markdowns, maybe not as much opportunity on mark-up, but do feel like we have opportunity going forward on faster turn. We still turn a little bit slower than some of our peers and feel like there’s an opportunity there to drive improved merch margin, and that’s part of that 200 basis points of margin opportunity that’s independent of sales, that I talked about earlier. Higher merch margin is part of that, really based on a faster turn.

Great, thanks so much. I’ll pass it on.

The next question comes from the line of Alex Straton with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Maybe just a second one for me, but on the flipside - store closures. It looks like you relocated or closed a lot of stores in the quarter. Can you just provide more color on what was going on there, and then how many additional stores do you think you ultimately need to close or relocate? Thanks a lot.

Great, good morning, Alex. I’ll take that one - it’s Kristin. It’s a good question. We did close or relocate a number of stores in the first quarter. On a net basis, we opened 14 new stores, but we opened 36 gross new stores in the first quarter, which means we closed or relocated 22 stores on our base of a little over 1,000 stores. For the year, we plan to close or relocate approximately 40 stores, and we plan to open about 140 gross new stores. This means we’re moving out of approximately 40 older, oversized stores that tend to be in secondary or tertiary centers. We’re moving into higher traffic centers that tend to trade more broadly across income demographics, and this year is really representative of what we plan to do over the next several years as leases expire and new locations in these higher traffic centers become available. We expect to close or relocate about 150 to 200 stores over the next five years.

The next question comes from the line of Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Your line is open.

Great, thank you very much, and let me add my congratulations. Great start to the year. Michael, can you comment on the drivers of comp growth in Q1 traffic AUR, UPT, and then how those transition through the quarter and into the May quarter to date? Then Kristin, my follow-up is on the deleverage that you mentioned on Q1 on store payroll. We’re hearing from some other retailers that there’s some stability in turnover and maybe average ROE rate gains are slowing. What drove this, and are you expecting that same deleverage through the rest of the year? Thank you very much.

Good morning Adrienne. I’ll actually take both of your questions. The first was on the components of comp. The primary drivers of first quarter comp were both traffic and conversion. Together, the increase in total transactions, that’s what really drove the comp in the quarter. Higher conversion is great because it tells us when she comes in our store, she sees the content and value that she likes, and we see that in conversion. AUR was down slightly in the quarter due to mix of business and our continued focus on opening price point, and units per transaction were up slightly. Traffic and conversion improved as we moved through the quarter, as you would expect. I think both metrics were stronger in the March-April period than in February. Then your second question was on store payroll. It’s a good question. We mentioned it in the prepared remarks - excluding Bed, Bath & Beyond dark rent expenses, SG&A deleverage was 40 basis points, and that was driven primarily by increased investments in store payroll. As a reminder, in early 2023, we thought we had opportunity to improve our customer shopping experience and improve store condition to ensure stores were neat, clean, easy to shop. To address this opportunity, we made a purposeful investment in store payroll beginning in the back half of last year, and we’ll lap this payroll investment in the fall of this year. Typically, you can expect that we see SG&A leverage at around a 3% comp. I think the last part of your question was around store wages, and we tend to take a market by market approach. We plan for, obviously, the legislative increases, but we also plan for competitive and market related wage increases, and we’re seeing stability there, and our approach of market by market seems to be working.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, and best of luck.

Our last question comes from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning everyone, and congratulations on the results. In regards to real estate, two questions. Any update on the Bed, Bath & Beyond stores that you took - are they all open now, how are they doing, and are all the one-time Bed, Bath & Beyond expenses behind you? Then just secondly, I saw that you picked up some of the 99 Cents Only leases in the bankruptcy auction. Any update or detail on those stores, and are they likely to open this year? Thank you.

Good morning Dana. Yes, thanks for these questions. It’s still early, but we feel very good about the Bed, Bath & Beyond stores. As a reminder, we expect that on average, new store sales volumes will be about $7 million in the first full year, and we expect that these Bed, Bath & Beyond stores as a group will achieve or beat that expectation. Of the 64 Bed, Bath locations, we opened 32 last year in fiscal 2023. The majority of those were in the fourth quarter. In the first quarter this year, we opened 20 Bed, Bath & Beyond stores, and we expect to open the remaining 12 in the second quarter, although it’s possible we could have a few stragglers that fall into Q3. As far as the dark rent cost, in Q4 of 2023 associated with Bed, Bath were about $6 million, and in all of 2023, fiscal 2023, that cost was about $18 million. In the first quarter of this year, in ’24, those Bed, Bath & Beyond dark rent costs were $6 million, and for Q2 we have modeled in the guidance we expect about $3 million of Bed, Bath & Beyond dark rent expense. After that, it should be largely behind us. I think your second question was on 99 Cents Only - yes, it’s a good question. We evaluated over 370 store locations that became available in the 99 Cents Only bankruptcy. We really scrutinized these, but really very few of these sites had the characteristics we’re looking for - we’re looking for busy strip malls, national co-tenants, strong traffic, sales potential, nor did many clear our new store financial hurdles, so based on our analysis, we’ll likely secure just a handful of these locations. If we secure these stores, they’ll join our pipeline in ’25 or even ’26. In August, we’ll plan to offer a more detailed update as some of the negotiations are still ongoing there. Thanks for the question.

Thank you.