Sharon Price John
Analyst · Stephanie Wissink with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead with your question
Thanks, Allison. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We were pleased to deliver solid results in 2014 and believe that our strong fourth quarter represented the convergence of the key strategies that we have been driving throughout the year. For the fourth quarter we achieved a 9.9% increase in consolidated comparable store sales, expended retail gross margin by 730 basis points and delivered net income of $13 million versus adjusted net income of $7 million in the fourth quarter of 2013 and an increase of $6 million. In total, for the 2014 fiscal year we achieved an increase of 1.6% in a consolidated comparable store sale on top of a 5.1% increase in fiscal 2013. Expended retail gross margin by 450 basis points following a 220 basis point expansion in fiscal 2013 and delivered adjusted net income of $16.5 million versus adjusted net income of $3 million in fiscal 2013, an increase of $13.5 million. The continued disciplined execution of our stated strategies is the primary contributor to our improved results for the quarter and for the year. As we stated, our plan for 2014 focused on four key strategies. Optimizing our real estate, refining our consumer value equation, rationalizing our expenses structure and establishing the groundwork to further leverage our core competencies and brand equity. Throughout the year we believe we have successfully and consistently delivered against these strategies. First, we have continued to execute the real estate optimization plan that was initiated in late 2012. At that time 22% of our North American retail stores were unprofitable. In contrast, we ended 2014 with 98% of all stores generating a positive four-wall contribution margin. Specifically, we generated margin of over 19% in our North American stores which is almost double the margin we achieved in 2012. The results show significant progress towards reaching our stated goal of a 20% to 22% four-wall profit margin. Simultaneously with the closing of underperforming stores, we have selectively opened stores in new format to take advantage of high-traffic tourist locations. An example of our ongoing opportunistic approach to non-traditional real estate is the fourth quarter opening of five temporary shop-in-shops within key Macy's locations, including the Herald Square in New York City flagship store. This initiative not only added sales in the quarter but also increased our brand exposure to the hundreds of thousands of tourists and local consumers to visit Macy's as a part of their holiday tradition. Second, we have continued to successfully refine our consumer value equation. We balanced the tactics of reducing discounts and taking selective price increases with an integrated brand building marketing effort designed to drive more profitable sales and elevate product stories. During the fourth quarter, our Merry Mission Christmas campaign was a great example of how this new brand building marketing approach can generate both sales and margin for our company. We positioned our proprietary Merry Mission Reindeer product as intellectual property and buoyed it with exclusive advertising and a mobile app. This approach elevated the perceived value of the line enabling parity retail pricing with our licensed offerings for the first time. By doing this we increased average transaction value and added margin. The app which extended our brand interaction by creating play beyond the plush had over 1.5 million game sessions. This along with the strength of our other proprietary and licensed properties, namely Disney's Frozen and Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fueled our 9.9% comparable store sales increase in the fourth quarter. The combination of real estate optimization and refinement of the consumer value equation was instrumental to our North American sales per square foot improvement of $409, up from $381 in 2013 moving us closer to our stated sales per square foot goal of $450 to $500. Third, we have continued to manage our expenses and successfully expand our margins. The fourth quarter marked the first period where we were able to comprehensively value engineer our product offering from the planning stage versus cost reducing the line midway through the development process. This effort combined with the strategic price increases help to drive a 730 basis point expansion in retail gross margin for the quarter and a 450 basis point expansion in retail gross margin for the year. And fourth, we started to lay the groundwork for the expansion and creation of new revenue streams. In 2014 we expanded into new international markets for the first time in over three years with the opening of two stores by our franchise partner in Turkey. We also elevated and expanded our franchise agreements in Germany adding two additional countries for future development, Switzerland and Austria. In addition, we started to make key investments to upgrade our IT infrastructure and supply-chain with the goal of continuing to improve productivity and efficiency. During the coming year, we will begin to evolve our 2014 strategies and stated goal of sustained profitability to sustained profitable growth. Through a combination of continuous improvement of current initiatives and strategic expansion into additive opportunities, we will focus on the following four key strategies for 2015. One, expand into more places. During the year we expect to open stores in high potential destinations such as tourist locations, outlet malls and shop-in-shops. Given that these types of locations tend to over index on key metrics versus our traditional mall stores. In the back half of the year, we will also start to update our aging store fleet and systematically rollout a new store design that has been developed to improve productivity while refreshing our brand look to be more relevant to the millennial consumer. We will update stores with our new design primarily in conjunction with natural lease events including new store openings, relocations and lease required remodels. We will also continue to leverage the current momentum of our owned and operated retail business to enter new global markets with both a restructured franchise model and organic corporate expansion. To this end, we are pleased to share that we recently restructured the Nordic franchise arrangement which included converting the store in Tivoli Gardens, one of Denmark's most popular tourist destinations, into an owned and operated enterprise. Two, target more people. We will continue to drive our core consumer business with an evolved segmentation, product development and marketing strategy. We will focus on initiatives that increase trial and repeat visits from the 3 to 12-year old core consumer who currently represents over 60% of our sales. We will also strategically expand our effort to the over 12-year-old consumer base with a focus on less price-sensitive categories including giftable, affinity and collectible products. This consumer currently represents approximately 20% of our sales and has a tendency to over index for online purchases. Therefore, we expect to leverage our e-commerce business to efficiently target this segment. Three, develop more products. We will continue to develop more high impact, proprietary product stories coupled with elevated marketing programs that tend to garner higher price points, drive add-on purchase and create play beyond the plush. We also intend to strategically expand our brand presence and generate new sales and profit streams by launching an outbound licensing program. Licensing will enable us to extend our brand reach with new offerings in relevant categories and will provide consumers with products beyond the plush.
.: To date, our first quarter 2015 comparable store sales are positive. Key contributors are the impact of the redemption of holiday gift cards and the implementation of our strategies including the launch of fresh new offerings of proprietary and seasonal products and the continuing performance of key license properties that we accurately anticipated would remain relevant after the holiday sales period, such as Frozen. Of note, this past Valentine's Day was the third largest single sales day in our history and represented the highest average daily store sales since 2006. Buoyed by the holiday falling on a Saturday, we further fueled this opportunity by leveraging our interactive, personalized store experience to create an integrated marketing effort designed to appeal to kids, parents, grandparents and teens who wanted to create a furry friend for someone special in their life. Our campaign called Share your Heart paid homage to our iconic and holiday appropriate heart ceremony an emphasized adding a personalized message to your furry friends with our record a sound accessory. We also partnered with the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the second year in a row to enable our guests to share their hearts and their support for children with life threatening illnesses. To drive our boys business during the Valentine period, we built on our historically successful superhero product lines with the launch of a new Hulk Bear in advance of the May 1st release of Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. This super cute buffed up Hulk was also a natural giftable for our over 12-year old guests who wanted to send a message of strong affection for someone special. To drive sales for the remainder of the first quarter, we will take advantage of the Easter shift back to the first quarter with the introduction of an innovative brand building TV advertising campaigns timed with the Easter season and the arrival of our proprietary spring collection. We will launch a new Build-A-Bear product line called Promise Pets, a more realistic breed based plush primarily targeted to the older girl and boy segments. Promise Pets is supported with an age appropriate free mobile app that allows the child to bring the product to life and virtually care for their new furry friend further building on our goal of extending brand interaction and creating play beyond the plush. We will introduce the first of a series of limited edition collectible Disney Princess bears created to appeal to both the younger girl and the over 12 collector segments. The initial offering will be the Cinderella Bear which we expect to benefit from heightened character awareness due to Disney's March 13th release of the live action Cinderella film. And we will continue to drive our boys business by systematically launching new Avengers characters building up to the film's release. Overall, our outlook for the quarter remains positive and we continue to expect to leverage the momentum from 2014. Now I would like to turn the call over to Voin to review our 2014 financials in more detail.