Kurt L. Darrow
Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday afternoon, we reported our fiscal 2016 first quarter results. It was a good quarter with increases in sales, profitability, earnings per share and same-store sales at the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network. In particular, we are very pleased with the performance of our company-owned retail segment which earned $4.4 million more than it did in last year's first quarter and posted 5.5% operating margin. Additionally, [even there was a] [ph] $0.04 per share benefit from two items our earnings for the quarter were solid and Mike will address these in more detail in a few minutes. Before I get into a discussion of the three operating segments, I would like to take a moment to highlight our various growth initiatives and provide a framework for how we think about the business and its growth and profitability potential. We have four growth plans that are running concurrently. The first and largest initiative is our 4-4-5 store build-out strategy that we have talked a lot about. For those of you who may be new to our story, 4-4-5 is the moniker for having 400 La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores throughout North America, averaging $4 million in revenue per store with a build-out taking place over a five-year period. We have just started year-three of the plan and are well on our way to achieving many of the objectives associated with it. Our second growth strategy is focused on acquiring La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores from independent dealers upon their retirement which will bolster the size of the company-owned retail base of stores. As we have talked about in the past, sales through the company owned La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores provide the company with the greatest level of profitability as we realize the benefit of a stack margin where we can earn a profit on both the wholesale and retail side of the business. As our retail segment grows, this model will enhance the earnings power of the company. I will talk in more detail about this in a few moments when I discuss our retail segment. The third initiative is to grow our other distribution channels, meaning those beyond the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores. Although much of our focus has been on branded distribution, we have some $700 million in wholesale sales across the balance of the La-Z-Boy business and with our other brands outside of the store system. These other distribution outlets include some of the largest furniture dealers in the country as well as many small mom-and-pop stores. Today we sell all of our brands, La-Z-Boy, England, American Drew, Hammary and Kincaid to about 4,500 doors beyond the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network of stores and many of our customers are expanding their footprint. For example, Art Van Furniture has opened a number of new stores in Chicago over the past two years and as they open new locations our business with them increases. Many similar opportunities exist with our overall customer base. And our fourth growth opportunity is to expand our share in the stationary upholstery market. While we do have the largest market share in the recliner segment of the market it is the smallest part of the overall upholstery industry. The stationary sofa piece of the market however compromises the largest part and we had a relatively small share in that category leaving us with a great potential to leverage our brand strength, our great new product offerings and our vast distribution to penetrate this piece of the market in a more significant way. We believe all four of these strategies will drive growth and profitability for the company long-term. Now let me turn to a brief discussion of our three business segments. First, upholstery, for the quarter sales in the upholstery segment increased 3.7% to $272 million versus last year's first quarter and we achieved a 9% operating margin an increase from 8.4% in the comparable quarter last year. During the period increased volume leveraged the fixed cost structure of our brands. We also benefited from supply chain efficiencies which is a key focus for us and a favorable change in product mix including Power which has been a fast growing category. Written same-store sales for the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries system increased 5.3% for the quarter and we were pleased with our result. As same-store sales pace in the mid single digit range for the remainder of the year we should reach the $4 million target we have set for the average revenue per store in our 4-4-5 strategy. With respect to our store build-out program during the quarter the network opened two stores and remodeled one. We ended the period with 327 La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores with 64 in the new concept design. For the year we expect to complete 35 to 40 projects including new stores, remodels, and relocations and plan to end fiscal 2016 with 17 net new stores or 342. As I discussed a moment ago we are very focused on our opportunity in the stationary upholstery market and enjoyed success over the past couple of years growing our stationary business at about twice the rate of our overall business. In addition to our popular Urban Attitudes collection we will continue to introduce new entrée and stationary product to appeal to a wider demographic and increase our market share in this large category. We are also moving closer to the early fall launch of our new web and e-commerce technology platform and expect it to provide a best-in-class digital experience making it easier for consumers to be inspired and informed about our products and shop in the manner that best suits their needs. Traffic to our site continues to increase and there is much anecdotal evidence that consumers are spending a lot of time researching the frames and fabric selections before they come to either the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries store or to one of our other distribution outlets. And when they visit a store they have the opportunity to broaden their experience by seeing the frames and fabric in person and testing out the feel of our furniture before making their final selections. In June we completed the implementation of our ERP system at our La-Z-Boy branded facilities when we finished with our Dayton, Tennessee plant. Throughout the remainder of fiscal 2016 we will be working on the sales order management component of the ERP system. Now let me spend a few moments on casegoods. Our transition to a pure import model is delivering results in the casegoods business. For the quarter we improved our operating margin to 7.2% from 5.3% in last year's first quarter on lower sales. By ceasing production at our Hudson, North Carolina facility, narrowing our portfolio of brands and changing our product offering to include more transitional collections, we believe the business will perform more consistently in the future. With regards to sales to clients for the quarter our new transitional collections have sold better than anticipated which created a temporary shortfall in supply. Additionally, last year's first quarter included $2.1 million of sales in our hospitality line, a business that we exited last fall. Now moving on to retail. We are pleased with the way our company-owned retail business is growing and performing. For the quarter sales increased 18.9% versus last year's first quarter, we posted an operating margin of 5.5% as I mentioned in my opening remarks. This marks the $4.4 million increase in operating income compared to the prior year first quarter. On a core basis stores delivered sales for this segment increased 7.2%. I would like to take a moment and provide some perspective on our base of stores. When the company first became involved in store ownership back in the early 2000s for the most part we were acquiring stores with issues that needed to be addressed and fixed. Although markets we acquired were large and vibrant many of the stores themselves were in poor locations, were old and tired or there simply were enough stores in the various markets to capture a share of the voice and to leverage the fixed cost structure associated with those markets. As we discussed in the past we spent a lot of time working to improve the performance of these stores and have made significant headway till to-day. Today however, the composition of our store base is very different. Over the last several years the stores the company has opened in dark markets including Pittsburgh, Southeast Michigan and Minneapolis and the stores acquired from the independent La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries' dealers have changed the overall complexion of our portfolio as these stores are performing at a much higher rate than the stores we purchased a decade ago. Back then we acquired stores to protect our market and distribution. Today our acquisitions are more strategic and the stores added to the company-owned retail segment are accretive and are contributing to the overall performance of the segment. Early in the second quarter we acquired two stores in Wisconsin and have signed an agreement to acquire two stores in the Carolinas from an independent dealer in September. As we move forward we plan to acquire additional stores from independent La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries' dealers and believe that when we are done with our 4-4-5 build-out strategy, the company's ownership of the entire network will increase to between 40% and 50% based on new stores and acquisitions. And as we mentioned earlier, as the size of our company-owned retail business increases we will enjoy the benefit of the blended wholesale retain margin that's inherent in our model. I'll now turn things over to Mike to speak about our financial performance. Michael?