Thomas Chubb
Analyst · Citi Research. You may proceed with your question
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Before I start, I would like to wish you and your families my personal best for your health and safety during these difficult times. I'd also like to pause just for a moment to thank our incredible people for all they are doing to delight our customers under such difficult circumstances. Our strategy at Oxford is a simple one. To own brands that make people happy, to delight our customers with memorable experiences and products they love. During 2020, we have faced a myriad of new challenges. Nonetheless, every day we are finding ways to successfully execute this strategy. In order to do this in the current environment, we’ve leaned heavily into our advanced digital capabilities. The investments we've made in our e-commerce channel over the past several years allowed us to capitalize from the accelerated shift to online spending. Each of our brands, Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer and Southern Tide positively contributed to the 52% year-over-year increase in e-commerce sales in the second quarter. Lilly Pulitzer was the standout, up an extraordinary 142%. The Lilly product collection this summer was very strong and in many ways offered exactly what the customer was looking for, sun, happy, easy-to-wear apparel. The collection was highlighted by very effective digital marketing to which we shifted more resources in the quarter. A non-comp flash sale in June, also added to the success of Lilly's second quarter results. Historically, the Lilly website offers sale items only 5 days a year. To ensure excellent inventory control, an additional 2 day flash sale was held in the second quarter, which generated $15 million from sales at a solid 40% margin. Even absent flash sale, Lilly Pulitzer's e-commerce business grew 74% over last year. We continue to invest in our digital platforms and evolve our digital capabilities, including upgrades and redesigns of websites, enhanced search engine optimization and enterprise order management systems. We believe the accelerated shift to online shopping brought on by the coronavirus health crisis is likely to continue. While bricks and mortar will continue to be a key part of our distribution strategy, we believe our e-commerce channel will be stronger, bigger and a more critical component to our overall strategy coming out of this crisis. In contrast, through our e-commerce business, consumer traffic, bricks and mortar locations was understandably very challenged in the quarter, driving meaningful revenue decreases in our stores and restaurants. In addition to operating under restricted hours in limited capacity, important markets, which rely heavily on fly in tourists, such as Hawaii, Las Vegas and New York City were pressured even further. Despite the temporary headwinds we are currently experiencing, we believe our modest physical footprint holds true competitive advantages for us. Across all of our brands, we have only 187 full price stores and restaurants with most located in premium, off mall locations, such as lifestyle centers, iconic resorts and resort towns and prestigious street fronts. Our beautiful stores and restaurants engage our customers and immerse them in our brands and function as an important guest acquisition tool for us. While we look forward to the time when the store traffic improves, we are taking advantage of this opportunity to judiciously prune underperforming and non-brand enhancing locations. By the end of 2020, we will have closed approximately 10 locations, including 5, which closed in the first half. At the same time, we are also making some exciting additions to the lineup this year. We have already opened a Marlin bar at Dania Point near Fort Lauderdale and converted two existing Tommy Bahama locations on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale and St. John's town center in Jacksonville into Marlin bars. In the back half of the year, we plan to open Marlin bars at Fashion Valley in San Diego and Lahaina on Maui. During the pandemic, our Marlin bars with their casual bar and dining concept and outdoor seating have been a bright spot. Every day we are serving existing customers and attracting new customers to the brand. We strongly believe in the Marlin bar strategy, and are optimistic about the role the concept will play in our future growth strategy. Southern Tide, which just begun its foray into owned retail, now has two stores, both in Florida with another opening in the Destin area this fall. While it is difficult to fully assess performance under current conditions, the result that we have seen so far are encouraging. Lilly Pulitzer has done an outstanding job, leveraging their bricks and mortar locations by adding a concierge level of service for their customers with private appointments and curbside pickup. Their talented store associates are also assisting with customer service calls, further blurring the line between our online and store channels. Our wholesale channel, which we have been strategically pruning prior to the pandemic and represented approximately 30% of our revenue in 2019 has been significantly impacted by current conditions in the consumer marketplace and the weakness of many retailers going into the COVID crisis. Our wholesale sales in the second quarter were less than half of what they were a year-ago. As part of our plan to focus on only the strongest partners in this channel of distribution, we meaningfully reduced our exposure to department stores, which made up only 11% of our total revenue last year. We are expecting sales reductions in this channel to continue through the back half of the year and are addressing this trend by very carefully managing our inventory levels. Across all channels, our sourcing, planning and merchandising teams have done an extraordinary job and our inventory levels are in very good shape as is the rest of our balance sheet. Cash flow was quite strong in the second quarter, as we made significant expense reductions related to employment across the enterprise and reductions in occupancy costs. We ended the quarter with a strong liquidity position with over $30 million in net cash and over $250 million of availability under our credit facility. In March, I outlined our priorities for this year as, one, the safety of our people and our customers; two, protecting the integrity of our brands; and three, preserving liquidity. These have been the right things to focus on during this crisis, but it is also important to remember that while dealing with the issues at hand, we haven't lost sight of our future and what a future we have at Oxford. With the strength of our brands, the resilience of our people, an enviable balance sheet, and the competitive advantages mentioned earlier we look forward to returning the company to growth and resuming our long-term track record of generating increased value for our shareholders in 2021 and beyond. I'll now turn the call over to Scott with more details on the second quarter and our plans for the back half of 2020. Scott. Thank you, Tom. As Tom discussed our sales in the second quarter was significantly lower year-over-year. The 36% decrease was driven by lower sales in our retail restaurant and wholesale channels, partially offset by an increase in e-commerce. Our gross margin was 55% in the quarter, down from 60% in the second quarter last year. We were modestly more promotional across our brands, including the addition of successful Lilly Pulitzer flash sale. And we took inventory markdowns across all operating groups. We're pleased with the cost reduction efforts taking across Oxford as SG&A decreased 19% or $28 million. It's important to note that in the second quarter, we incurred $10 million on an adjusted basis related to credit losses, including the tailored brands bankruptcy, inventory markdowns and fixed asset and operating lease impairments, or just a loss for the quarter, which included these charges was $0.38 per share. Managing inventory is a critical component of ensuring the health of our brands. And we have inventory levels that are appropriate for our plans for the second half of the year. We ended the quarter with inventory 3% lower than last year, despite the significant sales decline. As Tom mentioned, preserving a high level of liquidity is essential during these uncertain times. We have ample liquidity to meet our ongoing cash requirements, reflecting the strength of our balance sheet, entering the pandemic, as well as the recent actions we've taken to mitigate the COVID-19 impact. During March, 2020, as a proactive measure to bolster cash, our cash position, we drew down on our 325 million asset based revolving credit facility. With strong cash flow, we ended the second quarter with $65 million of borrowings, $97 million of cash and unused availability of $257 million. As we move into the back half of the year, we'll continue to face the challenges and uncertainties created by the pandemic. In our third quarter, which is typically our smallest quarter of the year, we're expecting the year-over-year decline in bricks and mortar traffic to be slightly less pronounced than it was in the second quarter. In addition, our Lilly Pulitzer flash sale, which has been a bright spot in the third quarter is expected to be significantly smaller as some of the inventory that would have been available for the September event was pulled forward into the non-competent June. As a result of the reduced traffic, a smaller flash sale and continued softness at wholesale, we expect year-over-year revenue to decline in the third quarter at a rate similar to that of the second quarter. For the month of August, e-commerce continued with strong, positive comps. We continued to see year-over-year decreases in brick and mortar and wholesale with modest sequential improvement. For the fourth quarter, we don't anticipate a significant rebound in bricks and mortar, traffic and wholesale. We believe we will move closer to break even, and expect to return to profitability in fiscal 2021. Our dividend is an important component of our commitment to our shareholders. Our orders declared a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share. Thanks for your time today, and we'll now turn it over for questions, Laura?