Kurt L. Darrow
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday afternoon, we reported our fourth quarter and year-end results for fiscal 2013. All in all, it was a good year for La-Z-Boy. We increased sales by $101 million, turned the retail segment profitable, experienced a 12.7% increase in same-store sales for the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network and increased our operating income by 36%. We also generated $68 million in cash from operations after making $23 million in contributions to fund our pension plan. We reinstated our quarterly dividend and continued our share buyback program. Additionally, we opened 10 new concept design stores across the network, entered new markets in our company-owned retail segment and increased sales of our stationary upholstery business. These successes have resonated in our financial performance and valuation. In addition to earning $0.85 per share for fiscal 2013, we closed the year with $174 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments, and our market capitalization surpassed the $1 billion level this year, rebounding from the low point of approximately $30 million back in early 2009. Today, our positioning in the marketplace is as solid as it ever has been. La-Z-Boy is the most recognized brand in the industry. After years of repositioning our company to succeed in this environment, we are poised to maximize the value of our operating model and integrated retail strategy. Key to our plan for growth is a focus on branded distribution, particularly the buildout of the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries store network, the channel through which we are experienced the strongest momentum. As housing and the overall macro environment continue to improve, we are well poised to capitalize on those trends and leverage our lean operating structure. Now let me turn to a discussion of our quarter and our 3 operating segments. First, upholstery. Sales in our upholstery segment increased 8.4% to $289.4 million. The operating margin for the quarter increased to 10.7% compared with 10.1% in last year's fourth quarter, demonstrating the efficiencies with which we are running our manufacturing facilities and the opportunities to leverage our lean structure with additional volume. In terms of sales, we continue to enjoy strong same-store sales increases across the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries store network, which posted an 11.2% increase this quarter after a 10% comparative in last year's fourth quarter. We believe this is not only indicative of the ongoing success of our marketing campaign but also reveals that we are gaining market share. Importantly, sales of our stationary product line continue to grow at a faster pace than our core recliner business, and that is one of the key objectives of the Live Life Comfortably campaign, as we educate the consumer of our vast and stylish upholstered product offering. Although our recliner business continues to increase, our opportunity to build share in the stationary area is significant given the size of that market where we have a much smaller share than we do of the recliner market. We continue to enjoy strong sales with our product -- our power product as well and at the same time, have had good success with upgrading customers to our memory foam offerings. We are continuing to invest in the advertising campaign to drive ongoing volume growth although are mindful to keep our advertising spend at a consistent percent of sales. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, at the core of our growth strategy is the plan to expand our branded distribution channels from today's level of 878 outlets to approximately 1,000, including the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores and our Comfort Studios, which is our store-within-a-store format. When completed, we expect these branded locations will represent about 80% of the volume for the La-Z-Boy branded business. With a significant change in the distribution landscape occurring over the last several years, most notably marked by traditional furniture retailers vacating the space, branded distribution has become increasingly important for us. We also believe it provides the best opportunity for the consumer to see our full line of furniture and experience an enjoyable shopping experience with the salesperson who is professional and knowledgeable about our product line and all of the customization opportunities. We have identified approximately 80 potential locations throughout the United States and Canada for the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries store expansion, which would bring our total store count to about 400 locations. Split between our independent dealers and the company, our plans call for us to complete this buildout over the next 5 years. We have termed this our 4-4-5 strategy: 400 stores averaging $4 million in sales per store over the next 5 years. And we are continuing to grow our Comfort Studio count to 600 locations in North America. Historically, the La-Z-Boy branded business has provided the greatest return of all of our companies, and we believe it will continue to do so as we take advantage of the improving economy and solid momentum of our business to open more stores. We are thrilled that our dealers are sharing in the success of the business, and they, too, are willing to invest in their own store systems to increase their penetration sales in their own respective markets. During fiscal 2013, 6 new La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores were opened across the network, 5 stores were remodeled, 3 stores were relocated and 5 stores were closed. For fiscal 2014, the network, including company owned and dealer owned, is planning for approximately 20 store projects including new openings, remodels and relocations. Going forward, all stores will be in the new design format, which today numbers 14 of our 313 stores. As we build on our base of branded distribution outlets over the next 5 years, volume should increase, and we will enjoy the benefit of leveraging the fixed-cost structure associated with our manufacturing operations. As we have mentioned before, we have the ability to manufacture in our La-Z-Boy branded plants approximately $250 million to $300 million of additional wholesale volume without any brick or mortar, allowing for a meaningful conversion on the incremental sales. Now turning to casegoods. Sales for the quarter decreased 8.7%, and the operating margin declined to 0.8%. This segment of the furniture industry faces ongoing challenges within the current macroeconomic environment, although we expect it to benefit from a further strengthening of the housing market. Given our variable cost structure in this segment, we were slightly profitable on the decline in volume for the quarter. In May, we announced a voluntary recall of beds sold by Lea Industries, our youth furniture company. During the fourth quarter, we placed most Lea beds on hold for several weeks when we discovered an issue with the side rails. Although the beds did pass testing and met industry standards, after we were notified of the failures in the field, we reported the issue to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada and worked with them to develop stronger rails. Lea's inability to supply product for several weeks negatively impacted our results for the quarter. Our occasional furniture continues to exhibit the greatest strength in this category given its lower price point and the ability to purchase one piece at a time versus an entire room group, which is typically associated with the bedroom and dining room furniture. Moving forward, our casegood team is working to expand our occasional offerings while at the same time, working to improve our speed to market for new introductions of bedroom and dining room collections. Now let's talk a few minutes about our retail segment. For the quarter, sales increased 32.5% over last year's fourth quarter. Excluding the recently acquired Southern Ohio market and new stores, our delivered stores on the core to lift [ph] 79 stores reported in last year's fourth quarter was up 12.5%. The business earned an operating profit of $4 million or a 5.4% operating margin for the quarter versus an operating loss in last year's fourth quarter of $1.1 million, which equated to an operating margin of negative 2%. Additionally, the segment was profitable for the full 2013 fiscal year with an operating income of $4.1 million, equating to an operating margin of 1.5%. During the quarter, our results reflected an overall improvement in retail sales metrics, including an increase in traffic, average ticket, units per ticket and In-Home Design sales. Our results were also driven by a favorable merchandising mix. We have a great retail team who has worked long and hard to our help turn around this operation. With a profitable retail business, the strength of our integrated retail model, where we benefit from a blended wholesale-retail margin, will become more evident. With a mid-single-digit operating margin target for retail and a low double-digit operating margin target for our wholesale upholstery business, the combined margin should be a strong number for our industry. With respect to the company's ownership of La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores, at the end of the quarter, we owned 94 of the 313 stores in the network. As we execute our 4-4-5 strategy, we believe we will own a greater percentage of the stores than we do now, likely in the 40% range versus today's 30%. I will now turn over the call to Mike to review the financials for the fourth quarter.