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AutoZone, Inc. (AZO)

Q2 2011 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 1, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the AutoZone Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference call will discuss AutoZone's second quarter financial results. Bill Rhodes, the company's Chairman, President and CEO, will be making a short presentation on the highlights of the quarter. The conference call will end promptly at 10 a.m. Central Time, 11 a.m. Eastern Time. Before Mr. Rhodes begins, the company has requested that you listen to the following statement regarding forward-looking statements.

Ray Pohlman

Analyst

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements typically use words such as believe, anticipate, should, intend, plan, will, expect, estimate, project, positioned, strategy and similar expressions. These are based on assumptions and assessments made by our management in light of experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors that we believe to be appropriate. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including without limitation: credit market conditions, the impact of recessionary conditions, competition, product demand, the ability to hire and retain qualified employees, consumer debt levels, inflation, weather, raw material cost of our suppliers, energy prices, war and the prospect of war, including terrorist activity, availability of consumer transportation, construction delays, access to available and feasible financing and changes in laws or regulations. Certain of these risks are discussed in more detail in the Risk Factors section contained in Item 1A under Part 1 of our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended August 28, 2010, and these risk factors should be read carefully.

Operator

Operator

Mr. Rhodes, you may now begin.

William Rhodes

Analyst

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for AutoZone's Fiscal 2011 Second Quarter Conference Call. With me today are Bill Giles, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Store Development and IT; and Brian Campbell, Vice President, Treasurer, Investor Relations and Tax. Regarding the second quarter, I hope you had an opportunity to read our press release and learn about the quarter's results. If not, the press release, along with slides complementing our comments today, is available on our website, www.autozoneinc.com. Please click on quarterly earnings conference calls to see them. We are very pleased to announce another very strong quarter of performance, both financially and operationally. Our earnings per share for the second quarter increased by 35.8%, our best performance since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, and our domestic same-store sales increased 7.1%. This marks the ninth consecutive quarter of EPS growth in excess of 20% and the 18th consecutive quarter of double-digit EPS growth. I'd like to start our call this morning by thanking all our AutoZoners across North America for their exceptional efforts to deliver on our 1TEAM Going the Extra Mile operating theme in 2011. We have made consistent progress on each of our initiatives, which include hiring, retaining and training the best AutoZoners, enhancing our hub network, leveraging the Internet, profitably growing Commercial and improving our product assortment and inventory management efforts. I'll go into more detail later on these initiatives. However, I'd like to point out that none of these initiatives are radical departures from the initiatives we began over five years ago. I'm confident in saying we believe the strategies we have in place work for the long term. And as evidenced by the last several years, they work in varying economic cycles, year in and year out. We intentionally…

William Giles

Analyst

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone. To start this morning, let me take a few moments to talk more specifically about our Retail, Commercial and Mexico results for the quarter. For the quarter, Total Auto Parts sales increased 10.3% versus last year's second quarter's growth of 4.1%. This segmentation includes our Domestic Retail and Commercial businesses and our Mexico stores. This quarter, we completed category line reviews in 13 of our 40 major merchandise categories, improving our parts coverage remains a key priority. Now regarding macro trends during the second quarter, unleaded gas prices started out at $2.88 a gallon and rose steadily, finishing the quarter at $3.13 a gallon. Last year, gas prices were stable throughout the second quarter between $2.63 to $2.75 a gallon. While gas prices have increased, we believe they were not a meaningful driver, positive or negative, to our sales results over the last quarter. Although we are always mindful of the moves in oil prices and how they ultimately can correlate to prices at the pump, it's our belief the consumer has grown accustomed to prices within the current range. One of the data points showing the consumer is used to these prices is the spike over the last several months in light trucks, sport-utility sales in the U.S. They, in fact, outnumbered cars in units sold for the first time in a while. As trucks tend to have lower gas mileage, this tells us prices at the pump in this range have been accepted by consumers. Miles driven remains less of a story to our near-term sales results than in previous years. Recently, October, November showed positive upward trends, 2% and 1.1% respectively, in spite of any gas price impact. While recently we have seen minimal correlation in our sales performance with miles driven,…

William Rhodes

Analyst

Thanks, Bill. Before we conclude the call, I want to reiterate that our industry's performance has been strong for the last couple of years. But I believe our team's commitment to our culture and our customers, combined with our initiatives, has contributed significantly to our success, as evidenced by our continuing growth in market share in both Retail and Commercial. While our AutoZoners across the organization deserve credit for our past successes, we promise to remain committed to continuing to improve our business model and our operations, focusing on continual refinements but not radical change. We have an exceptional business model that still has tremendous opportunities for further improvement. On April 1, we will celebrate our 20-year anniversary as a public company. In preparation for this event, we have looked back at the last 20 years. During that period of time, we have grown our domestic store count from 553 stores to 4,425. We have added Commercial, Mexico and ALLDATA. Our sales have grown at a compound annual growth rate of 13%, while our earnings per share has grown at 17%, compounded annually. On a split adjusted basis, our stock has grown from $5.75 to $255, representing a total return of over 4,300%. I'm not personally familiar with many companies that have had that kind of sustained performance over a 20-year period. And while our past is impressive, we believe our future is very bright as well. We still have significant opportunities to expand our DIY business on a per store basis and by adding new stores. Our Commercial business is performing very well, but has tremendous opportunities for growth. Our Mexico business is only 12 years old and has substantial opportunities for growth as well, and ALLDATA continues to grow its base business, while also finding exciting expansion opportunities like collision and shop management. For the balance of fiscal 2011, we will continue to focus on our key priorities, great people providing great service, continual refinements and improvements in our hub strategy, leveraging the Internet, profitably growing commercial, ever improving inventory management and improving our product assortment. Finally, before we move to Q&A, I want to again thank and congratulate our entire organization for their dedication to our customers, fellow AutoZoners, stockholders and our communities. Our approach remains consistent. We're focused on again succeeding in 2011, and we are optimistic and excited about the second half of the year. Now we'd like to open up the call to questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is from John Lawrence of Morgan Keegan. John Lawrence - Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc.: Bill, would you comment just a little bit, digging into Commercial a little bit, the two pieces, if you took those converted hub stores and separated those from the base of those that have not been converted, what would be the delta there on sales improvements?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Well, John, we finished the conversions at the end of the calendar year back in August. And clearly, the hub stores that we converted earlier came out of the gate very strong, but they continue to grow at an accelerated rate even, what, three to four years after they were initially opened. But they grow both on the DIY side and the Commercial side of the business. We think they give us some great opportunity to better leverage our inventory assortment, put more product into the local marketplace. And frankly, we've been very impressed with how they've performed so far, which is what's leading us to this relocation or expansion strategy of our hub stores where frankly, in quite a few of our hub stores we don't have the amount of inventory in those stores because we simply don't have the space. So although we've been very impressed with our results today, we think we still have a long way to go. John Lawrence - Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc.: And secondly, on that, as you have that success with that, and the shop management starts to work and you're getting that call or tied into that customer, how does that change your real estate profile as far as the number of stores that you could see that you could have in a particular market?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Yes, it's a great question. If you look at what's happening in the Commercial side of the business and heard our competitors talk about it as well, more and more online ordering or electronic ordering is growing fairly rapidly. It's still a very small percentage of the day-to-day but has great opportunities for the future. And frankly, it just makes all the sense in the world to leverage the great technology that exists today to make the transaction more efficient for both the customer and for us. With ALLDATA, it provides us a distinct advantage to integrate our electronic ordering very seamlessly within the ALLDATA Manage 4.9 product, and we're very excited about that. That is just now beginning. But we think the future's going to be great. As far as opening new programs, I don't necessarily know that electronic ordering or shop management systems are going to change that over time. As you can tell from what's happened over the last 12 months, we've opened a couple of hundred new programs on Commercial, I think were up about 9%. So we're continuing to expand our footprint. We think we can go significantly farther than we are today. But we want to continue to do it in a prudent and profitable manner. And so I think we'll continue to open programs over the long term. And we think we'll be profitable in doing so.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Dan Wewer with Raymond James. Daniel Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Bill, I'm trying to get a better sense of the incremental impact from growing Commercial on your financial statements. We recognize this is incremental revenues, gross margin rate on Commercial is lower than the house average. But can you talk about the incremental SG&A investment that you need at a store? In other words, is it providing leverage on SG&A, or is it initially, is it an expense headwind? Then also if you could walk through the capital investment, again, the incremental capital investment to support the Commercial growth.

William Rhodes

Analyst

Yes. Sure, Dan. I'll start with the capital investment first. It's very insignificant from a capital point of view. There is some working capital that goes in for incremental inventory, but as you can see with our accounts payable to inventory ratio, we've been able to finance that through our vendors primarily. On the operating expenses, yes, it has a lower gross margin. It also has a higher SG&A burden. So as we've grown our Commercial business at an accelerated rate versus the rest of our business, it presents a fairly significant SG&A headwind. Not only is it presenting an SG&A headwind based upon its core components in the income statement, but we're continuing to invest fairly significantly. We've increased our sales force now to over 250 sales people. Turning back the clock three years ago, we didn't have any. Obviously, our incentive compensation in that business, based on our performance, has been significantly higher. So it's creating a fairly significant headwind in SG&A. But at the end of the day, the ROIC on it is frankly, remarkable. And so we're going to continue to pursue it. It generates incremental operating profit dollars that we are very satisfied with the rates of return on. Daniel Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: I recognize the lower gross margin rate is inherent part of Commercial, but is that also true for SG&A? Or is there a point where, let's say, if you're generating $12,000, $13,000 in revenues per week per commercial program, does that SG&A burden change and actually begin to see some leverage?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Clearly, it changes for that part of the business. There's no question about it. Whether or not, it is still slightly dilutive to the Retail business, I think is yet to be determined for us. We're just not that far along. But clearly, it would be less of a burden if we got to that point. And also less of a burden once we get our full infrastructure rolled out to support the Commercial business. Daniel Wewer - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: The other question I had, the gross margin improvement, it looks like this is the biggest increase since the fourth quarter of 2006. I recognize a big chunk of this is shrink, which you have not talked about in the past. Would your success in this quarter imply that you'll be able to reduce your shrink accrual during the balance of the year?

William Giles

Analyst

Well, we certainly have been very impressed with what the team has done on shrink. And shrink is always a tough one to manage, and the team has done a very good job. So we've had a very good result, and we would expect that to continue for the rest of the year. But we still have continued stores to count and more work to be done there, but we're pleased with the trend that we're seeing in shrink right now, and it's attributed to a lot of hard work in the field.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Aram Rubinson with Nomura.

Aram Rubinson

Analyst

Just a clarification on the shrink, and then one additional question. Was that shrink a change in the rate or reversal of prior years? I'm just trying to put it in context in terms of how much can possibly be ongoing.

William Giles

Analyst

It's improved rate performance.

Aram Rubinson

Analyst

And would you mind giving us a little bit of color around the failure, the maintenance and the discretionary categories, if possible. I know you mentioned failure was around 47%, but how that trended year ago, and whether there's been progress in discretionary and whether or not the change in the economy has any shifting in mix, whether it's exhaust or transmissions or other things to kind of help you understand whether the underlying improvement in the economy is manifesting itself in your business in any way?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Yes. I would say there weren't any significant changes. Clearly, as we've mentioned in our previous remarks, the failure-related categories were performing quite well, then January hit, and people didn't do those kind of jobs. And so that impacted both the failure-related categories and our transaction count. But outside of that period of time, there's nothing terribly significant. Our discretionary purchases have been challenged over time. I think our team is doing a very good job there, but frankly, the economy is not terribly conducive to discretionary purchases at this point in time.

Aram Rubinson

Analyst

And so are there things that an improved rate of a new vehicle selling rates would be influencing your business, or are you seeing anything around that? And then I'll leave you be.

William Rhodes

Analyst

First of all, the SAAR is projected to go up by $1 million, that hasn't necessarily happened yet. We see no indications in our business of any impact from new car sales at this point in time. And frankly, that just doesn't happen overnight. It will take some period of time, some sustained period of time, before we would see any impact of that. So we don't see anything at this point.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Alan Rifkin with Bank of America.

Alan Rifkin - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst

First question for Bill Giles. Bill, you mentioned that you completed category line reviews in 13 of the 40 lines. I was wondering specifically to those 13, what are you seeing with respect to incremental buying power and consolidation of vendors?

William Giles

Analyst

For the category line reviews we're really focused predominantly on making sure that we got the best coverage and specifically later model coverage. And one of the things that we changed this year, I was trying to accelerate some of the category line reviews, so that we would be in a better position as we entered the spring season. And what that ultimately equated to was us receiving inventory a little bit earlier in the season, so we think we're better prepared. Relative to consolidation of vendors, we haven't seen significant activity although there has been some consolidation of vendors. We expect that to be a normal course of business over time and continue to have good relations with the vendors.

Alan Rifkin - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst

And second question, if I may, is for Bill Rhodes. Bill, with respect to the hub investment, can you maybe shed a little bit more color on exactly what is happening within these 25 hubs where you relocated or expanded? Are you seeing the demand come incrementally greater? I mean, why the incremental investment there, relative to what you thought when you first build these 25 out?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Yes, let me clarify my previous comment. We're going to be expanding or relocating 25 of them, and we're going to do that. If you recall, when we first put our hub stores out, what we generally did was take advantage of second-generation lease spaces where we had a significant incremental square footage that we were not utilizing. That allowed us to go into the stores not have to pay anymore occupancy expense and put additional parts in place. Well, some of these stores are frankly just too small based upon the hub operating model and inventory assortment that we've defined that we want today. But we can sit there and look at the stores that have ample space, that have the right parts assortment, and then look at the stores that are too small. And we can see exactly with a pretty fine tooth comb what we think the sales will be if we expand and relocate those stores and are able to put the right inventory assortment in it. So we have a very high degree of confidence that frankly we're sub-optimizing the inventory assortment, and therefore, the sales in those stores that are too small, so we're going to relocate them or expand them.

Alan Rifkin - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst

So if you have not yet relocated or expanded those 25, then can you maybe shed a little bit more color on where the incremental expenses in the current quarter, in the second quarter came from as it relates to the hub investment?

William Giles

Analyst

I would say, the hub investment, if you retract time, we expanded our program of doing 3x a day deliveries and completed that rollout in the end of Q4 of last year. And so we're still anniversary-ing that incremental expense and that incremental impact to the organization. So when we talk about hubs impacting SG&A by 23 basis points, we're really talking about the anniversary of that 3x a day delivery that we went in the hub conversions. Relative to the expansion, there really isn't any significant expenses that have been incurred to date, and most of that will wind up being capital as we continue to expand those, both the capital as well as inventory investment.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from David Schick with Stifel.

David Schick

Analyst

Question first on these gas price spikes we've seen in the past, could you just take us through your perspective on how the consumer reacts, the DIY consumer in particular? Do they seek out efficiency products? Is there an impact we should be looking for on sales or mix?

William Giles

Analyst

Yes, at a high level, I mean, obviously, volatility isn't helpful, but we do believe, as you just mentioned, that there's plenty of tactics that we can take to communicate to the consumer during rising or volatile prices in order for them to save money whether it be air filters, fuel injector cleaners and maybe even a locking gas cap. So there's plenty of opportunities for us to communicate to the consumer on how they can increase their miles per gallon through some general maintenance items on their cars. The other one I would probably point out too is, if you kind of look back and think about it, we've had 18 consecutive quarters of double-digit increase in EPS, and certainly, those 18 quarters covered the $4 spike that we incurred a couple of years ago. So we've lived through this before. We don't know what the future will hold. We don't know exactly what gas prices will do in the future. But we certainly have lived through some gas price volatility in the past, and certainly, that's an experience, we're trying to take advantage of that, particularly in communicating with the consumer on how they can improve their gas mileage.

David Schick

Analyst

As a second question, could you talk about the long-term operating margin opportunity for Mexico, the market opportunity and the growth there? But as it mixes in over time, how should we think about what that does to your total margin?

William Giles

Analyst

I would say the operating margin is very good in Mexico. As the business continues to mature, we expect to see stability and possible improvements in the operating margin for Mexico. It's been a good business for us. We continue to grow stores at almost a 15% and 20% expansion rate, so there's plenty of opportunity for us to continue to grow. And quite frankly, the store base remains relatively immature and probably will so for the next few years.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Tony Cristello with BB&T Capital Markets. Anthony Cristello - BB&T Capital Markets: Bill, you've had such good success on the Commercial side of the business, and I understand that parts coverage is certainly helping that. But when you get down to the local level, in that sales effort into that Professional Installer, you mentioned training, and you mentioned technology. But can you give me, or help us understand a little bit better some of the ability or tools or learning that you're doing to help him understand what is it a very much of different business than the traditional DIY side of the business?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Sure. Great question. And frankly, last week I was with our sales force at our spring sales meeting, and I have got to tell you we've got a very impressive group of folks and very enthusiastic. We spent four days last week with various parts of that sales organization, training them on the tools that we have provided and on the products and assortments that we have. And I think they came away feeling very good about it, as did we. We've provided a lot of tools to them. First of all, as you mentioned, we made sure that we improved and enhanced our inventory assortment. We've also, and this probably goes unmentioned, our store team has done a fantastic job of just improving our daily service to our customers. Service has always been a very important part of our culture, and they're doing a great job of it today and much better than we have in the past. But now we have over 250 people that are out there telling the AutoZone story, and they're doing it the AutoZone way. We have great materials for them to communicate. They're well trained. They also are supported by some technology that helps them manage their sales activities and also communicate with the rest of the local market team, and I think it's working very well. But that being said, we're still very immature with our sales force, and they're continuing to grow, but they've got great opportunities for continued growth for the future. Anthony Cristello - BB&T Capital Markets: And has the receptivity of that Professional Installer been, hey AutoZone, you now have the part, what's the next thing that they ask for from you though? I mean, is it the service quality? Is it then managing the return process? I mean, what is sort of that, to get to that next level to be the number two or even the number one in terms of the call list. And where do you think you are in terms of tackling that side of the equation?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Yes, I don't think that there's one next thing. I think it continues to be improve all the foundational levels of our business and go out and tell our story. We're late to this party where other people have been out there building those relationships for a very long period of time, and our competitors are very good at this business. And it just takes time, and it takes persistence, and that's why our sales team is so critically important. They're in those shops every day, and when somebody else makes a misstep, we want to be there, so that we step up that call list. And I think that that's exactly what's happening. This is, as I mentioned, our sales trajectory in this business has been pretty aggressive and pretty impressive over the last several quarters. Anthony Cristello - BB&T Capital Markets: The last question, have you done anything in terms of staffing or labor management that's allowed you to have a better coverage of your professional customer as well?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Yes, we've continued to add labor and trucks as our Commercial business grows. And as it grows, it gives us more opportunities to leverage some of the infrastructure as far as people that's in place, which allows us to give better coverage. If you have two people on the store trying to service a customer, it's more challenging than if you had four people. And so I think we've got better coverage and better service as we continue to grow, and I expect that to continue.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.: The question I had, I wanted to focus, I know a couple of people asked some questions on gross margin too. But I just want to kind of look at this closer again. You did have a nice acceleration in gross margin in the fourth quarter from an already decent trend through the prior few quarters, and you called out shrink. Maybe you can help us understand what specifically allowed you to see the better shrink results in the quarter? And then how much opportunity still remains on that effort as we go into the next quarters?

William Giles

Analyst

Well, there's a host of things that are being done in the field in order to improve shrink, and there are numerous tactics and better reporting and better focus. So I can't go through a list of things on the phone per se, but there's a lot of blocking and tackling and things that are being done inside the four walls of the organization that have helped to reduce shrink, and obviously this is not something that happened yesterday. This is something that the team has been working on for a long sustained period of time. And we have been seeing an improvement throughout the year. This quarter was a little bit larger, and we called it out. But overall, we've experienced good shrink performance this quarter. And like I said before, we don't know what the future will holds, but we believe that the tactics that we have in place and the results that we have up to this point will continue into the future. Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.: Could you help us understand maybe the magnitude of the shrink benefit in the prior quarters, since you haven't called out to this point?

William Giles

Analyst

Well, something less than 40 points obviously. But it was positive in the last few quarters but not quite to that magnitude, if that helps. And I'm not trying to be slick about it, but the fact is, is that it was a positive improvement in the last few quarters. It just increased a little bit enough for us to call it out this quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Kate McShane with Citi Investment Research.

Kate McShane - Citigroup Inc

Analyst

Can you remind us where we are today, and what the longer-term strategy is for your private label penetration at your stores? And how do the commercial customers respond to private label? Do they tend to demand more brand name products?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Well, we've been in this private label strategy for a very long time. In fact, we don't call it private label, we call it our brands. We think Duralast is the largest brand in the automotive aftermarket and has quality, as good if not better, than any of the other brands that are out there. But this is not a new venture for us. I came to this company over 16 years ago, and we had substantial private labels at that point in time. We continue to find opportunities where we can further leverage our brand strategy in the Duralast brand in particular. Over the last year, we rolled out Duralast hub bearings, which are very high-quality hub bearing and have been incredibly well received in both the DIY and the commercial marketplace. There continues to be a lot of discussion about, do we have to have brands to be effective in the Commercial business? First of all, we have brands. An easy example is Felpro gaskets, we had them for 10 years. We have FRAM oil and air filters, we have Castrol motor oils. On down the line. So we have brands where we think they are important. Will we continue to look at other brand opportunities that would make sense for us, yes. But generally, our strategy has been and will continue to be that the Duralast brands are high-quality products, and they perform very well, and they perform well in the marketplace as evidenced by our sales performance recently.

Kate McShane - Citigroup Inc

Analyst

And just as a follow-up, if you were to carry more brands, as you mentioned, how would that work with your hub strategy? Would it be something that you'd offer within the store as well, or just kind of keeping back for the Commercial customer?

William Rhodes

Analyst

I don't want to sound like we're going off on a brand strategy. We have our brand strategy. Will we continue to test and refine it over time to see what works, absolutely. But until we test something, I don't know what we would do, so I think that will be premature.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Matt Fassler with Goldman Sachs.

Matthew Fassler - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst

I'd like to understand, first of all, within the incentive comp line item, how formulaic that is into what the metrics are, the performance metrics are that drives, that presumably has obviously a lot to do with the good underlying financial [ph] performance. If you could give us a sense as to how that moves with your underlying gross profit numbers.

William Giles

Analyst

Sure, Matt. But relative to incentive compensation, it's highly formulaic, and it is really an EVA model. So it's very much focused on EBIT and ROIC, and so it's a pretty set calculation. And there's no difference in the prior year by the way. I mean, this calculation and this formula has been in place for several years, so there's been no change to the compensation program, it's simply the performance to the organization.

Matthew Fassler - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst

So if there were a scenario where your sales growth were to be a bit slower, and all the other factors that you've discussed kind of go your way, is it feasible that the incentive comp would remain close to current levels? Or would it be the kind of thing that a year out might come off a little?

William Giles

Analyst

Yes, theoretically it would remain at the same levels because it's not a sales-driven compensation program, so much of it is and EVA one.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Michael Baker with Deutsche Bank.

Michael Baker - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst

I guess, it's sort of a follow-up to that question, but you've talked consistently about how if sales slow, there are areas where you can adjust your costs. With comparisons becoming more difficult, if sales were to slow to more the mid-single digit range, let's say, what areas of SG&A can you take out? It sounds like some of these hub investments are going to just naturally roll off anyway as you cycle that. So is it fewer commercial programs or less growth in commercial sales people? I was just curious what areas you do cut, or is it just simply incentive comp comes down?

William Rhodes

Analyst

Sure. Let me start by -- I don't want to give up on continuing with our robust sales performance. As I mentioned previously, we see the dynamics of the marketplace not substantially different than they've been over the last over two years, and so we certainly aren't saying that we think sales performance is going to necessarily slow. However, if it does, I have a high degree of confidence that our organization will be able to react to it just as we have. And if you turn back the clock in that 18 consecutive quarters of double-digit earnings per share growth, we had several quarters where the comps were basically flat, and we were able to deliver double-digit EPS growth. This organization knows how to tighten its belt when it's appropriate, and we can do that on a wide variety of things. Yes, incentive compensation would go down. Yes, the hubs will annualize generally at the end of August. But there are other activities where we have variable operating expenses where we are constantly fine-tuning those, whether that's maintenance programs, advertising expenses, incremental training initiatives, there's just a whole variety of them. And as we have had better performance, we have been more aggressive in investing in some of those type activities.

Michael Baker - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst

That makes sense. I guess as a follow-up, I wanted to ask Bill Giles about the comments on rising gas prices. And in the past, you've seen certain categories perform better. So just in the past couple of weeks or so, just to be clear, are you starting to see any of that yet, or those are things that you think might happen as gas prices rise?

William Giles

Analyst

More the latter. We haven't necessarily seen significant impact from the gas prices, obviously, they've gone up about $0.20 in just the last week. So they're sitting at about $2.38 on a national average. But too early to tell, but we do have a fair amount of experience and history with it.

Michael Baker - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst

Just trying to get a sense as how consumers reacting aren't really on here to these rising prices.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Rhodes for any closing comments.

William Rhodes

Analyst

Great. Well, before we conclude the call, I'd like to take a moment to reiterate that our business model remains solid. We remain excited about our growth prospects for the balance of the year. We cannot take anything for granted as we understand our customers have alternatives. Our culture remains our key point of differentiation from our competition, and we must not lose sight of the importance of basic store execution in order to remain very successful. We operate our business as a marathon and not a sprint, but we will continue to focus on the basics and never take our eye off of optimizing long-term shareholder value. We remain confident AutoZone will continue to be incredibly successful. Thank you very much for participating in today's call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.