Earnings Labs

La-Z-Boy Incorporated (LZB)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Jun 22, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the La-Z-Boy Incorporated Fiscal 2016 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Miss Kathy Liebmann, Director IR and Corporate Communications. Thank you Miss Liebmann, you may begin.

Kathy Liebmann

Analyst

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss our fiscal 2016 fourth quarter and full year results. With us today are Kurt Darrow, La-Z-Boy's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Riccio, our Chief Financial Officer. Kurt will begin today's call, and then Mike will speak about the financials before turning the call back to Kurt for his concluding remarks. We will then open the call to questions. A telephone replay of the call will be available for one week beginning this afternoon. Slides will accompany this presentation and are available for viewing through our website link. These regular quarterly investor conference calls are one of La-Z-Boy's primary vehicles to communicate with investors about the Company's current operations and future prospects. We will make forward-looking statements during this call, so I will repeat our usual Safe Harbor remarks. While these statements reflect the best judgment of management at the present time, they are subject to numerous future risks and uncertainties as detailed in our regular SEC filings, and they may differ materially from actual results due to a wide range of factors. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. And with that, let me turn over the call to Kurt Darrow, La-Z-Boy's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Kurt?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday afternoon we reported excellent results for fiscal 2016 and the fourth quarter. We continue to make strong progress in the execution of our strategic growth initiatives while improving the efficiencies of our operations and this translated into the fifth consecutive year of sales and operating income increases. We are also delivering on our corporate vision to enrich peoples lives by turning houses into homes. By providing great product, services, comfort and quality with the ability to satisfy both our shareholders and customers simultaneously giving us tremendous satisfaction. Before reviewing the quarter, I would like to run through the highlights of the full fiscal 2016 year. And to note, fiscal 2016 included 53 weeks with the additional week having an approximate two percentage point impact. For those of you new to our story our fiscal year ends on the last Saturday of April and every five or six years due to the way the calendar works we have an extra week in our fiscal year. For fiscal 2016, our sales increased 7% with improved efficiencies, our operating margin reached 8% for the year, the highest in 13 years and diluted earnings per share increased 21.1% to $1.55 despite the impact of the previously announced $0.07 per share charge related to a pending legal matter. This charge impacted our consolidated operating margin by 0.4 percentage points. Over the past five years our EPS has increased 278% and in addition to operating cash flow exceeding $100 million this year our balance sheet remains very strong with $112 million of cash on hand, access to additional lines of credit and virtually no debt giving us the financial flexibility to execute our growth initiatives, reinvest in the business and move into the future with a solid foundation.…

Mike Riccio

Analyst

Thank you, Kurt. As a brief conclusion of Kurt's discussion about the fourth quarter, consolidated sales for the fiscal 2016 fourth quarter were $417 million, up 11% compared with last year's fourth quarter. As Kurt mentioned earlier, the fiscal 2016 fourth quarter included one additional week with the extra week increasing sales by approximately 8 percentage points. Consolidated operating income increased 16% to $34 million, compared with $30 million in the fiscal 2015 fourth quarter with the consolidated operating margin increasing to 8.2% from 7.9%. The Company reported net income from continuing operations attributable to La-Z-Boy Incorporated of $22.7 million or $0.45 per share which has mentioned earlier included previously announced $0.07 per share charge for legal matter. This compares with last year's fourth quarter results of $19.8 million or $0.38 per diluted share, which included a $0.01 per share restructuring charge and $0.01 per share of anti-dumping income related to the Company's Casegoods segment. As a note, the approval for the legal matter had a 1.3 percentage point impact to our consolidated operating margin for the quarter. Consolidated sales for fiscal 2016 full year were $1.53 billion, up 7% or $100 million higher than last year. The fiscal 2016 year included 53 weeks with the extra week increasing sales by approximately 2 percentage points. For the year consolidated operating income increased 19% to a $122 million, compared with $103 million in fiscal 2015, with the consolidated operating margin increasing to 8% from 7.2%. The Company reported net income from continuing operations attributable to La-Z-Boy Incorporated of $79 million or $1.55 per share, which included the previously announced $0.07 per share charge for a pending legal matter and a charge of $0.01 per share for the restructuring related to the Company's Casegoods segment. This compares with fiscal 2015 results of…

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Mike. As we execute our multi-pronged gross strategy to-date, our team remains nimble and is at work developing the next set of initiatives to drive growth well into the future. Well, this is premature to expand further upon the potential of those initiatives, I am invigorated by the creativity, the thought-processes and the analytics, our team is applying to the ongoing development of our strategy growth initiatives. Importantly, we challenge ourselves everyday to ensure we include in our decision making as the competitive landscape continues to change. Though there had been many twist and turns through the decades today our Company is positioned as well as that has ever been. Our brand remains the most recognized in the industry. Our distribution network is vast and varied and we are providing consumers with many options to learn about our product and shop for it. I'm very proud of our team who operates the business with vigour and in innovative spirit and I'm confident the path ahead will be exciting as we continue to drive sales and earnings while investing in the business to provide long-term sustainable growth and earnings momentum. I want to thank all of you for your interesting in La-Z-Boy Incorporated. I will now turn the call over to Kathy to provide instructions for getting into the queue for questions. Kathy?

Kathy Liebmann

Analyst

Thank you, Kurt. We will begin the question-and-answer period now. Michelle, please review the instructions for getting into the queue to ask questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.

Brad Thomas

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, Kurt, Mike and Kathy and congratulations on another great year here.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Brad.

Brad Thomas

Analyst

Couple of questions if I could, the first was around the update of your web and mobile sites and Kurt I was wondering if you share any early learnings, if perhaps how the customer is using the site differently and how these upgrades sites might benefit your business going forward?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

So, I think two of the large measurements that you watch with your web traffic and access for the site is, are you actually having increased traffic. And number two, how much time are they spending and what are they looking at. So, we believe that the longer they spend on the site the more probable they are going to shop for our products. And so we're seeing increases in both of those and also finding that they are using all types of different devices to communicate with us. So, being able to have a broader view of the customer and how he wants to interact is been valuable and we watch those other two metrics pretty closely.

Brad Thomas

Analyst

Great. And then with respect to ERP, I guess the couple of questions about it. For one, maybe could you quantify some of the benefits that you might be starting to see here in fiscal 2017? And then, could you just give us an update on what the next steps are in terms of the rollout and if there any quarters that we might be more mindful of potential risk if you're changing things over within the retail store itself? Thanks.

Mike Riccio

Analyst

So, I think it's very obvious to us that the largest benefit right now in addition to some financial benefit from being more efficient, but our ability to service the customer has improved dramatically. Our on-time shipping percentage is at an all time high, our late orders are at all time low. We're shipping 95 plus percent and five – four weeks or less. So the availability to consistent data and the availability to see end-to-end has been a great benefit for not only the company, but actually for all of our customers and dealers who interact with us. So I think that's the biggest takeaway so far that we have, and again, as I said in addition to the efficiencies and productivity. We are in the final stages of the E1 implementation and we're putting in the front end of the system. And any time that you touch legacy systems and change them over and have this many users as we have, there could be some risk, but we are taking the same approach with this implementation as we did with the plants and supply centers. We're taking one bite at a time. We're not trying to go to the big bang theory. We're not going to put all of our systems to a changeover at once. So, we wouldn't anticipate any kind of huge risk or one quarter where there's a huge financial drain to us. And our experience over the last five years of going through this journey had made us very cautious and disciplined about how we do this. So, something could happen but that's not in our view right now, Brad.

Brad Thomas

Analyst

Great. And then just to connect the dots with the updates on ERP and the balance sheet. I believe in the 10-K it shows your backlog down about $20 million from $71 million last year to $51 million at the end of this past year. Can you just help us connect the dots and how much that efficiency versus perhaps what you're seeing out there in terms of customer demand?

Mike Riccio

Analyst

Well, our customer demand has remained steady based on our results and we did have growth, so the majority of that reduction in backlog is not having late orders and hitting our prime states and cleaning up things that had been out there longer than they should have been. So, most of that is an acceleration of service which took our backlog down.

Brad Thomas

Analyst

Perfect. I'll turn it over to others. Thanks so much and congratulations again.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Thank you, Brad.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Budd Bugatch with Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Good morning Kurt, good morning, Mike, good morning Kathy. Congratulations as well.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Thanks Budd.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

I think if I understood right, the increase in sales for the extra week was 8% and I think that was probably evenly spread across the segments, is that a right way to think about that?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes. On average the 8% is across all segments, yes.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay. And I hear the increase in sales, if I missed the increase in earnings because of the extra week, I apologize, but I didn't hear how that factored into earnings, were there any accounting issue that might not get repeated with the 52-week year?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

No. I mean, we had a normal sales and conversion on those sales based on our costs and nothing really was out there that we would want to call out on this call.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

So, nothing to be concern on that, and if you did quantify that the extra PPS impact of that, Mike, what that be or I can do the math, but I haven't don't yet, because I thought there might be some flavors in that?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

I think the math is there. It's pretty much our conversion based on the sales and using our tax rate, so I don't have that number, off top of my head.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay. You talked about the elevated CapEx for the year, how does that factor into the quarters? Have you already started to see that? Is it more evenly spend? How is that going to flow through the year quarter-by-quarter or period-by-period?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Well, it will be pretty evenly throughout the four quarters, but we anything we can for machinery and everything we try and do in the first quarter when we do our shutdown, there will be less disruptive in the plant. But a lot of these equipment changes that we're doing as well and the remodels we're doing in our plants. What will be done outside of the production environment so that they should not have any issues there, but we try and do these pretty much evenly throughout our four quarters.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Kurt, where you need upgrades in the equipment, is it La-Z-Boy, is it England [ph], is it both. And what's the competitive edge you're trying to achieve there?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Well, I think about it differently, Budd, you know we have older plants, because we had them a long time and we probably under invested in them to keep them fresh and you know simple things as bathroom remodelings and a roof and air-conditioning and some of the other things that just need to have happen. And so equipment wise our routers were out everywhere. We run our equipment hard. We run it a long time, but some of its time to replace, also in there is continuing to upgrade our transportation fleet particularly at England with new equipment as well. So it just -- we have a big infrastructure and we have to keep it moderate. We don't want to get behind. And so, we're going to over the next probably two years touch every one of our manufacturing facilities with some much needed refresh and some maintenance things that have been put off.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

And so as we look, this is a more of two-year elevation, is that the way to think about it?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Well, I mean, it could be depending on timing of things, depending on whether the good thing is most of our plants are in south, so they don't have to take the winter off for building and also we don't – we're looking to sequence this. We're looking without getting bids on certain things. It isn't tighten down to where I can give you that those specifics, but suffice to say, our CapEx will be a little bit higher and given that the enterprise is continuing to rise and there is CapEx in there for stores and other things. So, I think this CapEx percentage as a percentage of sales is not much different than five years ago, we were spending 25 million. We're $400 million larger and we got to continue to reinvest.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay. Mike, I've got like -- projecting like $28 million in depreciation and D&A for the year, is that a reasonable number or did you give a number, I don't think I heard that either?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

No. That's a reasonable number. That's about range we're going to be in.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay. And last question from me is advertising, you elevated it little bit this year, you have more retail, how does that factor in and what do you think for this year?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

So, Budd I think we had – we did elevate the dollars spend, but I'm not sure the overall percentage spend on all of our marketing for all of our brands and all of our companies, I don't think it was up percentage wise very significantly. The one change that we have on our horizon for next year is there are certain markets where we think we've got an opportunity to raise our share of voice where we're not as pleased with some of the traffic counts who are getting into certain DMAs. So we may do some testing and learning about how we can attack those things, but we're not doing at nation-wide or at a wholesale -- on a wholesale basis. We're picking target at things where we think we have some opportunity.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay. I'll let others to go from here. Thank you very much.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you, Budd.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Matt McCall with BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good morning everybody.

Mike Riccio

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Matt.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

So, maybe start with the Upholstery margin, I think we strip out the legal, it's over 13%. I wouldn't expect that, so good job. Can you talk about the outlook from here? Is there a way to look at that from a conversion standpoint? I don't really know, because one of things you brought up Kurt was the SCO, I think you said it was SCO, supply chain initiatives. Is that playing a part in this? I'm assuming that it is. But if it is can you quantify the savings today than what you expect?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Well, I think with all of our numbers that you have to look on an annual basis. So, there's going to be one quarter or year that retails make its best margin because that's the quarter it has the most volume. And the fourth quarter is in wholesale when we have the most volume. So to say that you can replicate that every quarter of the year and that's going to be our annual like a little bit of stretch. But one of things about our supply chain team that has done thing is if you always have the materials on hand than your workers don't have to take any interruptions. And they can work a full schedule without changeovers and everything. Your efficiencies do go up. And so that's been a big benefit for us. And we're continuing to find ways to be more and more efficient and take cost out. But we've also had favorable economics and favorable raw materials and that doesn't last forever either. So, it was a wonderful job that our operations and supply chain team did this year. There is no doubt about that. And we would expected to continue, but I'm not sure year-after-year we're going to be able to double down, now that we've caught up on things that are at a run rate.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. So, the 13.5% understand the full year view, but is the new baseline or do we still understand seasonality of the business, but we talk about run rate of these benefits are all of the benefits that you expect in that run rate that was in that 13.5% or there are more savings that's coming?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

So, one of the problems we're talking about places where you save money and everything. We don't ever seem to talk about places that cost us money, so unless you got the different plan than we do healthcare keeps going up, our wages are going up, all this kind of things, so we try to find efficiencies in savings to offset some of that so we can keep our values to the customer at a good level and return value to our shareholders, so, to give that we could save a couple of million dollar here but our healthcare to go up $5 million. So, I'm not sure I want to get into that debate, but we're comfortable that we should be in the low double-digit range of operating margin in our Upholstery business. And we're not prepared to raise that to 15% or anything like that. So, that 10% to 12% whatever range we've been in we believe that's possible on an annual basis and we'll work hard to beat it, but right now I can't give any indication of seismic change in our view.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. That's fair. But is the same true for other two segments, mid single-digit I think is what we've talked before that's kind of where they were mid-to-high this year is there anything that it sounds like…?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Well, I think with volume we have opportunities to raise both of those, but we just got to 6.5% in the retail business from a loss position five years ago, so we feel good about that, but we don't feel that's the top, but you need to let us perform at that for a little bit of longer period. And as we add more stores and we acquire more stores we would expect that to go up, but I'd like to see it go up before I tell you that we can maintain it.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Got it. That's fair. Last question, I think you said in the release the plan is to own 40% to 50% of the stores and as part of the 4-4-5 strategy, I think the goal previously was taken 30% up to 40%, now you're bringing 50% into it. If I miss it, was that a change in language and if so what has changed?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

No. I think our target for the last couple of years has been right around the 40% range, and so we still have a lot of places where the company can open stores. But we are surprised we're having more interest from some of our long standing dealers to talk to us about retiring and so that's maybe accelerated the point a little bit. But I only think that's probably two, two and a half year window and anybody that's interested is probably will have raise their hand by then and we will either do something with them or pass. But I don't think it's an ongoing thing that we'll be buying 11, 12, 15 stores a year, every year for the next five years. We have a lot of very strong individuals and families who own the majority of the independent La-Z-Boy stores that are in for the long-term and they have no interest in selling and we've got plenty to do with what we have.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. I'm sorry; I want to sneak one more and just because I thought. You mentioned the efficiencies in the factories you got the material where you can things out more quickly. I think that implied service levels are up. Is that – as I think about same-store sales looking forward and all the factors that go into it, your comp scale little bit tougher. Are the opportunity is associated with this, with the improved service levels, how much are they're going to help going forward or they kind of –how much of they're making a difference in the transitory at retail?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

So, I think the help – most of the help we got last year, I mean, being in stock, servicing better all that, but we don't have a backlog of late orders. We got that cleaned up, so that's a one-time gain if you would. And now we have you know to produce it we have to sell it and that’s a good position to be in, because we can service better but I -- there is not nearly the opportunity to improve our late orders with last year. We have probably less than 2% of our backlog that’s outside of four weeks, so that’s not a very big number. But the other thing that I think we need to think about when you talk about La-Z-Boys growth and their sales, the -- and I understand this is typical with pure retailers and all. But when you look at our same store sales and that is an indicator, that’s only half our business. So we have thousands of other important customers throughout North America that we have no visibility into their samestore sales or their growth pattern everything like that and we think have in half our business with the store program and half our business with the general trade is a competitive advantage and so we don’t derive all of our growth from just the store activity and I think I want to be sure investors understand that.

Matt McCall

Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

All right. Thank you Kurt.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of John Baugh with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks and congrats to the team on a great quarter and year. Most have been answered just a couple of quickies, one, I assumed the one last week this year will fall into Q4?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

It does.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And then I can’t believe we’ve gotten this far end of the call and nobody has asking for that current business trends, it is seven and plus weeks since your year end and we’ve heard fairly constructive things around memorial day but in general still pretty sluggish trends and anything you would add current to what you are seeing and I understand the seasonality in week Q1 compares?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. I think you clocked it pretty good John. You know I would call it inconsistent. There’s pockets that are pretty good in other places that are not. Memorial Day was strong for the industry and us as well but you know that’s four days. That’s not necessarily a trend, and so I think there’s some uncertainty with the customers and some nervousness and I -- we try to find our way through that and find different ways to do things and you know so other good data points about housing are encouraging and well as low as in home depot are doing that would tell you that people are investing in their house, so it’s certainly not doing good, and we’ve been challenged a little bit with our North America footprint because Canada, even though we have a reasonable increase in wholesale in the fourth quarter, our Canadian business was 3%, 3.5% behind last year on the wholesale side. So we overcame that and we’ve posted a 2.5% increase. So it is a -- it would seem to me with housing starts where they are at with interest rates lower, with energy lower that it would be easier to grind out 1%, 2%, 3% but you got to fight for it and that’s what we are doing.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Understood, yes. And then last one, I guess maybe directed to Mike, is there enough data on the cash amounts you’re comfortable carrying and it sounds like at least in the next year or two there might be still considerable acquisition opportunities for stores which of course you don’t -- or forecast but just curious as to how we are thinking about all the cash we are generating and what balance you will indicate [ph] on the balance sheet and how much might you get taking off through acquisitions or anything else we don’t know about?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Well I think Kurt and I haven’t changed our position on the $80 million to $100 million in cash is what our comfort level is and since we have been on the acquisition mode we do consider that and looking at what our free cash is and how we are going to invest it. So, we have said consistently that if we can’t find ways to invest in the business to grow it after our dividend will be out there and buying shares. In this last quarter we brought 600,000 shares which is a little above what we had spent the previous two quarters at about 400 and some thousand shares right around 400. So we considered that, but as we go through the summer and look at some other opportunities for some other dealers we’ll consider that into our cash flow needs and spend accordingly.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks and good luck.

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you, John.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hi good morning guys, thank you for taking the questions. So just a follow up about the Canada, the 3% to 3.5% decline was that in local currency or translated to U.S. dollars?

Mike Riccio

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

It is translated to U.S. dollars.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Got it, okay thank you for that. And also, would it be possible for you guys to quantify the benefits from the global trading company that you’ve set up in Hong Kong and what additional improvements do you expect to achieve from that?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

So that’s all part of our larger supply chain initiatives and it’s -- the benefits are about service, the benefits are about logistics, the benefits are about quality and savings. So it’s a multi faceted organization we have over there that virtually all the factories where we buy are Casegoods and our fabrics and leathers. And it’s just being more organized, having a coordinated, being on the ground more frequently and then sourcing things where appropriate and so we are receiving benefits again, we are probably not knowing to got to quantify from a dollar standpoint because as I said earlier when you start doing that we’d have to quantify all the other things that are going to be going up and we try to save as much throughout our operations through innovative ways and efficiencies we try to save as much as we can to increases that we get in other parts of our business so that’s just a mindset we’ve had for the last five or six years and one of the reasons we’ve been able to grow our gross margin as well.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Got you. And also Kurt you mentioned that before the introduction of iClean and -- well what’s the potential ASP impact with the addition of that?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Well it’s a little higher grade fabric than our average not a lot, it’s priced very competitive but you know it has instead of just putting a topical spray or chemical on furniture this is actually weaved into the yarns that have the fabric repel the spill and the other thing is it’s got great colors and decorative patterns where normally most of those things are flat suedes and not the same. So we think it’s going to be fantastic and we were able to negotiate with our partner [Indiscernible] a launch exclusive so La-Z-Boy has this exclusively for the first six or eight months and we think that’s very important to be the first mover in this and we expect it to do very well but I can’t quantify numerically what that’s going to mean.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Got it, okay. And lastly, last year you guys had a small store test in the Washington DC market there. Any updates on that?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

So we did open a store right before Thanksgiving in Logan Circle which is about three blocks from the capital. We are learning a lot about it. It’s growing in momentum. We believe there is some changes we need to make to it both in the interior and with some of the marketing, but you know our overwriting belief is this trend towards moving into urban areas both for younger people and even older retirees. We don’t think it’s a fad, we think it’s something that’s going to continue and so this is the first of many of these stores that we are going to open because we don’t believe those customers are going to drive out to the suburb where we have our other 350 stores and we are going to do our best to figure out how to serve that customer.

Anthony Lebiedzinski

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Got it. Okay, thank you very much.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is a follow up question from Budd Bugatch with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Yes I had a couple of just follow ups. One, you talked Mike a little bit about the cost increases atleast in steel that you are potentially seeing. Any price increases implemented or expected this year to the extent that you are willing to talk about Kurt?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Well I think our strategy, our philosophy Budd has been and I think it’s coming closer not just to ours but the industry cause wages and other things go up and we got to find a way to offset that and because the customers, that’s not -- that’s not their concern, but the industry doesn’t make enough money to absorb raw material increases. So it’s been our practise that if there is enough raw material increases that we think it’s going to materially affect our margins we will take a price increase. But right now, steel is so volatile it went up so fast and it’s coming back down from and we have a current track that we were locked in. I’m not sure where that’s going to be but philosophically if we got a number of raw material increases and it was going to materially change our operating margins we would take a price increase.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Have you done anything so far in fiscal…?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

No we don’t have any; because we’ve been protected by longer range contracts we haven’t had the increases yet.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. Well in the past 2007 dividend peaked at I think $0.48 per annual, per annum and looking back at a kind of a normalized payout rate was around 30% right now it’s around 23% or so when you got -- I don’t remember that up heard you enunciate a dividend policy that for investors to expect how you -- how the board might treat dividends on a continuing basis. Is there something that you can share with us?

Mike Riccio

Analyst

Well I’m not -- there is really no new update there, but I think the challenge for us is we could have a lot of opportunities in the market place for other investments and I think from our shareholders that we talk to, their first priority for us is invest the money in the business and make a better return and grow the business and we don’t want to box ourselves in, so we are -- we’ve raised the dividend in each of the last four years and the business continues to expand. We would -- I wouldn’t think we would get to anything of a flattening out, but then all other judgments, how much do you -- we have a certain amount of cash and how much you are going to put in the business, how much you are going to use to buy back stocks and how much you are going to pay a dividend and we like the fact that we have various options.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay and my last question is really in regards to 4-4-5. You as you correctly pointed out you have exceeded now the middle four, one of the fours, I think you have probably said that other fours are more challenging because of real estate markets although I think maybe that’s somewhat loosening. How do you think about that and what’s next after 4-4-5?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Well I think that if you did the math but if acquired in two years our same store, this is hypothetical if our same store was doing $4.3 million or $4.4 million and we only had 375 stores or 380 stores, that would still deliver the $1.6 billion and that is more probable than the 400 stores only doing $4 million. So that’s kind of how we are thinking about the economic value of that. And then again, and then we have half of our business with independent retailers and we are growing with them particularly on the England side. And so we are working on our next set of growth initiatives, we are not quite ready to give any color to that but we understand there’s a point in time where we will not have the opportunity to open 30 stores a year, but that’ a couple of years away and we’ll be ready to go with something else as that kind of winds down.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Any comment as to when the coloring book might be such that give us those in the public arena some of the -- when you put some color to those thoughts?

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Yes, really buddy as soon as we figure it out. I don’t have a timeframe probably because there’s lots of things we are doing behind the scenes, we are testing and experimentation and discussions with other people that it has been finalized but we understand there’s our appetite for growth is still big and you can think about another store format, you could think about international expansion, you could think about all kinds of things. We have not made a final determination of where we are going to plant the flag and go*, but we will do something beyond 4-4-5.

Budd Bugatch

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much, good luck for this year. Thank you very much.

Kurt Darrow

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Kathy Liebmann

Analyst

Thank you, everyone for participating this morning and your interest in La-Z-Boy Incorporated. I will be happy to schedule any follow up calls with anyone who has additional questions. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.