Kurt Darrow
Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday afternoon, we reported our fiscal 2017 first quarter results. Given the current retail environment, we were pleased to improve our earnings reflecting the great strides we have made with our supply chain initiatives, which include not only procurement but efficiencies throughout our manufacturing operations as well. Highlights for the quarter, include an increase in consolidated operating income, an increase in operating margin for both the upholstery and casegoods segments and significant increase in cash flow from operations to 34.1 million from 1.5 million in last year’s first quarter. We also provided returns to our shareholders with a purchase of more than 500,000 shares or approximately 1% of shares outstanding on the open market. We are continuing to execute against many strategic growth initiatives and opened five new stores in the first quarter across the network as part of our 4-4-5 store build out strategy. Subsequent to quarter end, the company moved into Canada with the acquisition of four stores representing another step as the company grows its percentage of ownership of the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network. As we move into what is typically a stronger fall selling season, we are in an excellent service position for both our dealers and the consumer. I will now turn into a brief discussion of each of our operating segments. First, our two wholesale segments, upholstery and casegoods. On a 1.9% sales decrease in the first quarter versus the prior year, we achieved 11.1% operating margin. This performance highlights the efficiencies of our plants and the effectiveness of our other supply chain initiatives, particularly with respect to procurement, productivity, and overall client efficiencies. We have talked a lot about supply chain over the past couple of years, and it is a primary focus for us, so I will take a few moments to describe two of the key drivers that are contributing to our success. First, in terms of manufacturing efficiencies, our ERP system upgrade provides for more efficient plant scheduling and has also enabled us to improve the planning process for materials. As a result of our ability to forecast better, we are improving our service to customers with speed in deliveries. Further, the continuation of various lean initiatives has improved plant productivity greatly. Secondly, with respect to procurement, our global trading company in Hong Kong is now fully operational and contributing to our overall supply chain savings. The team is broadening our vendor base while lending their expertise to existing suppliers to help them become more competitive. On the sales side, to be clear, we have some work to do on the frontend of the various businesses. That said, I would like to add some industry perspective. For the quarter, which for us is the May through July period, we experienced softer consumer demand which we believe is an industry trend and not specifically related to us. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the industry grew 6.6% in the February through April period, which would have been our fourth quarter compared to growth of only 2.4% for the May through July period. And circling back to our margin, in addition to the supply chain elements discussed a moment ago, we also benefited from a slight shift in product mix selling more stationary sofas and recliners which generate lower sales dollars but higher gross margins. Expanding our share in the upholstery category is one of our key growth strategies and gives us strength of our brand and an ongoing expansion of our on-trend stationary line, we see great opportunity in this category. In September, we’ll begin shipping the new iClean fabric introduced at the April Highpoint Market for the La-Z-Boy product line. This is a fabric with innovative technology that surrounds each fabric fiber to repel spills, and we believe it will be very popular with consumers. With respect to written same-store sales for the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network, we went up against a healthy comp of 5.3% in last year's quarter. Against that, sales were off 1.9% for fiscal 2017 first quarter. As we continue to add stores in a number of existing markets, we are experiencing some cannibalization which affects same-store sales. There are a number of markets where we need more stores based on the demographics of that particular market. When we have a store to satisfy that demand, the existing store or stores in the market may lose some sales, but net-net, the market overall is performing better and contributing to sales and profitability at both the wholesale and the retail level. So let me use a recent example to illustrate my point. In the Richmond, Virginia market, we have had a high-performing store in the Short Pump neighborhood. Research and demographics told us that we needed another store in the market, so we opened a new store in Midlothian. Last year, the original Short Pump store was doing about 5.9 million in written sales. The new Midlothian store is on pace to do 4.7 million in written sales this year with the Short Pump store likely to lose about 10% or 15% as a result of the Midlothian store opening. However, in total, the two stores in the market are projected to have approximately 9 million to 9.5 million in written sales or some $3 million more than the original store. While this is better for the company's overall performance, it does impact written same-store sales and we and our dealers have experienced this phenomenon across a number of markets. For the quarter, we believe half of the decline in written same-store sales system wide was a result of cannibalization. As we build out the store system, our goal is to have a higher market share and drive same-store sales, but sometimes in the short term, we are facing this cannibalization issue. We along with our independent dealers are hard at work building out the store network through our 4-4-5 strategy, as we believe the store system represents an excellent means to showcase our entire line of frames and cover, including fabrics and leather and to provide consumers with a great sales experience including the opportunity to take advantage of our in-home design services. We have a healthy plan for approximately 30 projects for fiscal 2017, including 12 net new stores. We also have plans for remodels and relocations which include changing out old format stores into the new concept design which is performing at the highest level of our three store formats. In the first quarter, the La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery network opened five new stores, remodeled four, relocated one, and closed one. We ended the period with 342 stores with 98 of them in the new design concept. In the second quarter of fiscal '17, we are planning for three new stores and two remodels across the network. In the casegoods business, we were pleased with both our 7% increase in sales as well as the increase in our operating margin to 8.6% versus 7.2% in last year's comparable quarter. Over the last two years, we have been on a course to change out a good percentage of our collections to reflect today's more casual lifestyle. It has been a significant undertaking but we are gaining traction with a number of our new transitional collections, particularly at Kincaid, which was reflected in our sales increase for the quarter. In terms of our operating margin performance, we are gaining efficiencies in this segment as we are leveraging our SG&A with the higher sales volumes. And at the April Highpoint Market, we were excited by the dealer response to American Drew's new AD Modern collection which is expected to begin shipping in late September. Now let me turn into a discussion of our retail segment. In the retail segment, delivered sales increased 10% in the quarter versus last year's first quarter with the core base of 108 stores included in last year's comparable period decreasing 4.4%. As discussed earlier, our 4-4-5 build-out strategy is a key growth driver for the company as we endeavored to fully penetrate the North American market with the La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery stores. When we started 4-4-5 some three years ago, we projected the company would increase its ownership to approximately 40% of the store system. Since that time, with 26 stores acquired to-date, 50 stores over the last five years and projected future acquisition activity, we believe we will now own about half of the store network when 4-4-5 is complete. With the ability to earn a combined wholesale retail operating margin of close to 20% on each piece of furniture sold through a company-owned store, our integrated retail strategy is a core component to drive the earnings power of this company. During the quarter, the company opened two stores and purchased a store in Reno, Nevada. Additionally, subsequent to quarter end, we bought four stores from an independent licensee in Canada, three in Calgary, and one in Winnipeg. These stores represent our first foray into the Canadian market which historically has performed very well with sales from these stores specifically being among the highest performing throughout the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network, and are expected to contribute some $25 million in sales on an annual basis to the company's retail segment. We are excited to enter what is a new market for the company and as with recent acquisitions, we are integrating these stores very quickly into our portfolio. I would like to thank Cam Davidson and his team in Canada for their 22 years of hard work and dedication. Moving forward, as fiscal 2017 unfolds we would expect to close on several more acquisitions. For the quarter, our operating margin declined to 2.3% from 5.5% in last year's first quarter. In addition to the lower volume in our core base of stores, we increased our overall advertising spend to drive volume across the company-owned markets and in particular, spent more in advertising on a number of targeted test markets. While we did experience an uptick in those test markets, we expected to write more sales across the remainder of the business that were not successful. We will continue to make strategic marketing investments and reevaluate the return on those investments and adjust our strategy, if necessary. At this point given the lift in the test markets, we do believe the up spend will drive increased sales and earnings over the longer term. Additionally, during the period, although we experienced a decline in traffic, the average ticket increased which was driven by a higher percentage of custom orders as well as in-home design sales. I will now turn the call over to Mike to speak about our financial performance.