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Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. (BBW)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 16, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Build-A-Bear Workshop’s fourth quarter and fiscal 2011 results conference call. (Operator instructions) A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Allison Malkin of ICR. Thank you, Ms. Malkin. You may begin.

Allison Malkin

Management

Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Maxine Clark, Chairman and Chief Executive Bear; and Tina Klocke, Chief Operations and Financial Bear. Before I turn the call over to management, I want to remind members of the media who may be on our call today to contact us after this conference call with their questions. We ask that you limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. This way we can get to everyone’s questions during this one-hour call. Feel free to re-queue if you have further questions. Please note that our call is being recorded and broadcast live via the Internet. The earnings release is available on the Investor Relations portion of our corporate website and a replay of both our call and webcast will be available later today on the IR site. Before we get started, I will remind everyone that forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors including those set forth in the Risk Factors section in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Maxine Clark. Maxine?

Maxine Clark

Chairman

Thank you, Allison, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our 2011 fourth quarter fiscal year results. On our call today I will discuss our full year results including our fourth quarter, then I’ll turn the call over to Tina Klocke, our Chief Operations and Financial Bear, to review the financial details. After that, I’ll conclude the call with an overview of our growth plans for 2012 and beyond. For the full year of 2011 we had essentially flat net retail sales and our comp store sales declined about 2% on a consolidated basis. I am extremely disappointed to report a sales decrease in the fourth quarter, particularly on the heels of two periods of positive comps in our second and third quarters. We do understand the reasons for the decline and we are already putting changes into effect in 2012 to improve our results. In fact, through Valentine’s Day, our comp store sales are essentially flat in North America, and the UK and e-commerce is up almost 9%. Coming off of a solid third quarter in which we grew our total retail sales, comparable store sales and e-commerce, we believe that we had a line up to the fourth quarter that would continue to improve our sales. Not only do we have a solid core assortment of Build-A-Bear Workshop proprietary products, but we also had tie-ins with highly anticipated feature film releases, particularly Happy Feet Two and Shipwrecked featuring Alvin and the Chipmunks. We were excited that the movie industry was placing such a high emphasis on family-oriented films, and given our strong sales history of products that tied into these movies, we felt that our holiday would benefit from these partnerships. Unfortunately for the movie industry and for Build-A-Bear Workshop, the holiday season at…

Tina Klocke

Management

Thanks, Maxine and good morning, everyone. Before I review our results this morning, I would like to discuss the non-comparable cost and benefit that impacted our fourth quarter and fiscal 2000 year results, which are also detailed in a reconciliation table in the press release we issued earlier this morning. For the fourth quarter, these costs include a $15.6 million, or $0.93 per diluted share non-cash cost related to the establishment of a tax valuation allowance; a $285,000 after-tax, or $0.02 per diluted share non-cash store asset impairment cost; and a $915,000 after-tax, or $0.05 per diluted share benefit to deferred revenue related to our loyalty program. Excluding these non-comparable cost and benefits, our adjusted net income for the fourth quarter of 2011 was $5.9 million, or $0.34 per diluted share. For the 2011 year, in addition to the cost and benefit included in the fourth quarter, we also incurred a $1.7 million after-tax, or $0.10 per share in non-comparable costs related to our consulting project. Excluding the cost and benefit just mentioned, adjusted net loss for fiscal 2011 was $435,000, or $0.03 per share. As many of you are aware, GAAP requires companies with a three-year cumulative book loss to record a valuation allowance to reduce net deferred tax assets. The recording of the valuation allowance is a non-cash book charge and does not have any impact on our consolidated operating income or cash flow. In addition, recording the tax valuation allowance does not impact our ability to utilize our deferred tax assets when we generate taxable income in future periods. As such, we will be able to recognize a benefit in future profitable periods. Now, on to our review about the fourth quarter. For the fourth quarter, total revenues were $119.1 million compared to $125.8 million in the…

Maxine Clark

Chairman

In conclusion, I want to restate my disappointment with our fourth quarter results, but I also want to be very clear that I’m excited about our future. 2012 is moving in the right direction. We think very strategically about our business and are on track to meet our long-term goals. We are executing, again, several key strategic growth platforms that I will review with you. First I’ll talk about our stores and then I’ll review our key marketing plans. As it relates to our stores, Build-A-Bear Workshop was built on our experience and going to one of our stores is a special occasion. We have a two-pronged strategy to reenergize and build the destination appeal of our stores and to maximize our productivity and profitability. As Tina mentioned, we’ll close between 15 and 20 stores in 2012 as an initial phase to right-size our store portfolio, primarily in multi-store markets where we’ve become over-stored. These are strategic closures that will benefit the comp sales of the remaining stores in the market. We will also relocate select stores in existing malls, reduce their square footage and increase productivity. At the same time, we’re investing in our company as we build our first newly designed stores that feature a bold new look and enhanced experience. I’m very excited with the design, the culmination of nearly two years of intense work. While many other retailers are trying to create an experience to draw shoppers to their brands, we have always offered that and we will continue to lead in the interactive experiential retail space. While our store base in North America will be leaner with fewer stores that have higher volumes and profitability, we will continue to grow internationally in our company-owned operations in the UK and through franchisees, those already existing and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. (Operator instructions) Our first question is from Sean McGowan of Needham & Co. Sean McGowan – Needham & Co.: Good morning. First, a clarification and then a question. On the clarification, Maxine, did you say that if either of those movie promotions had met their targets that consolidated sales would have been up?

Maxine Clark

Chairman

Yes. Sean McGowan – Needham & Co.: Okay, thank you, and Tina, could you review what some of the other influences are on gross margin? Maybe give us a little bit more color on what the markdowns on these movie promotions cost, just generally talk about puts and takes on gross margin?

Tina Klocke

Management

Sure. On a quarterly basis, Sean? Sean McGowan – Needham & Co.: Yes, please.

Tina Klocke

Management

Basically, our retail merchandise margin was down about 150 basis points, and then the other 100 basis points was due to deleverage of occupancy costs.

Maxine Clark

Chairman

So, Sean, we had to take some markdowns during the holiday season on Happy Feet -- or we promoted him pretty aggressively. Not the Chipmunks, not quite as aggressively. They did better and they’re still selling, and all of this is still selling in our stores, by the way, but we’ve had to, at least particularly on the Happy Feet movie, bring those down pretty aggressively and have since the middle of December. Sean McGowan – Needham & Co.: Can you give us some sense of what the impact would have been if you had sold those products at the expected margin? Were there other factors that impacted the merchandise margin?

Maxine Clark

Chairman

No, honestly, those were really -- the lack of business on those two products, which are key products for the holiday season, we put a lot behind them and we had had -- The Happy Feet movie was six or seven years ago, a long time between them. We’ve never had a bad penguin, and the Chipmunks movie had been very successful for us all the times we had run it before, so there was nothing to really indicate that that wouldn’t have been good, and actually, up until the beginning of November when we launched them, everything was in great shape for a wonderful quarter. So, as we said, we’ve looked at it a million ways until Sunday. I think if either one of them had gone and made their plan -- obviously Happy Feet missed its plan by the most. Our other products did well. Our core and proprietary products lived up to expectations as best they could because there was -- the traffic just wasn’t wanting the movie products. Sean McGowan – Needham & Co.: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions)

Maxine Clark

Chairman

Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you when we report our first quarter results in May.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.