Earnings Labs

CarParts.com, Inc. (PRTS)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, May 11, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to U.S. Auto Parts First Quarter 2015 Conference Call. On the call today from the Company are Shane Evangelist, Chief Executive Officer and Neil Watanabe, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the first quarter 2015 earnings release, which went out today at approximately 04 PM Eastern Time. If you have not received your release, it is available on the Investor Relations portion of the U.S. Auto Parts' Web site, at usautoparts.net by clicking on the U.S. Auto Parts' Investor Relations tab. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on the Company's Web site through May 25, 2015. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that the prepared remarks contain certain forward-looking statements and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These statements do not guarantee future performance and speak only as of the date hereof. We refer all of you to the Risk Factors contained in U.S. Auto Parts' Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion on the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement. U.S. Auto Parts assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking projections that may be made in today's release or call. Please note that on today's call, in addition to discussing the GAAP financial results and the outlook for the Company, the following non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. An explanation of U.S. Auto Parts' use of these non-GAAP financial measures in this call and the reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures required by SEC Regulation G is included in U.S. Auto Parts' press release today, which, again can be found on the Investor Relations section of the Company's Web site. The non-GAAP information is not a substitute for any performance measure derived in accordance with GAAP and the use of such non-GAAP measures have limitations, which are detailed in the Company's press release. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Shane Evangelist.

Shane Evangelist

Management

Thank you, and thank you all for joining the call. I’d like to start by thanking our team members at U.S. Auto Parts for their hard work and dedication to the business. Your efforts have helped U.S. Auto Parts to deliver a fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Thank you. Before I get into specifics of the quarter, I think it’s important to note that we’re a growing e-commerce business, producing positive free cash flow from operations in an industry that is projected to double over the next five to seven years. We believe we’re in a great position to take advantage of that market growth ahead because of our industry leading consumer reach and supply chain advantages. This business like many others has its challenges however we believe the challenges ahead of us are manageable and can be addressed with the right strategy and execution. I will now provide some commentary on our revenue and our plans to support long-term growth and then we’ll turn the call over to our new CFO Neil Watanabe, who will go into the numbers in more detail. Revenue for the fourth quarter was up 12% which hit two important milestones; the first is the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth; second, important milestone is growth over previous quarter’s year-over-year growth, meaning in the first quarter of 2014, we had positive 4% growth and in the first quarter of 2015, this last quarter, we were up 12%. I believe it demonstrates our ability to return to continuous year-over-year growth and anticipate this setting us up for long-term growth. Our e-commerce channel grew 10% in the quarter. And I highlight here is this was our first quarter of positive attractive growth since the second quarter of 2012 and this is encouraging. On our last call,…

Neil Watanabe

Management

Thank you, Shane. I wanted to share how excited I am to join the U.S. Auto Parts team. I was attracted to this opportunity because of the inflection point of the Company’s leadership position in the industry and the expectation of significant growth in this sector. I was also very impressed with the management team’s vast experience in both the e-commerce and automotive sector which can take full advantage of the available growth opportunities. I’ve hit the ground running here and I am focused on improving the Company’s profitability and enhancing shareholder value. Good afternoon to everyone on the call. I am going to go through our financial results for you and then I’ll touch on some of the key business initiatives that the company is focusing on to drive improved profitability. Unless otherwise stated, reference to this quarter and comparisons to last year, refer to the consolidated 13 week period of Q1 2015 as compared to the consolidated 13 week period of Q1 2014. Also, percentage and basis points discussed are calculated using net sales with the exception of advertising which we will be discussing and comparing to net online sales. Additionally, unless otherwise stated, all financial data reported including and not limited to revenues, gross margin, operating expense, net income loss, excludes our AutoMD reporting segment. We have included a chart of summarized segment information in our press release detailing the base U.S. Auto Parts, AutoMD and consolidated financials. Net sales for the first quarter of 2015 were 76.3 million compared to 68 million last year, an increase of 8.3 million or 12.3%. The majority of this growth came from our online sales channels where sales grew by 13.4% while our wholesale sales grew by 2.8%. The quarter’s online sales increase of 8.2 million was a result of…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Jeff Martin of ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Could you go into more detail about the life time value initiatives, specifically how far into the process you are and what the process entails any results you are seeing to-date and when you think that will reach the completion stage?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Yes Jeff, this is Shane I will take it. So we’ve -- it has certainly been a plan of ours since the start of the year as we’ve addressed sort of the issues of us being less dependant on organic search and it really led us to the position that we’ve got to drive LTV to be able to; one, have consumers come directly back to our sites; and two, be able to spend more money in marketing that again can control that consumer flow and that traffic in. And while we’ve always been focused on LTV certainly you have heard us talk about more private label shifting and on the last call investments in that area, certainly you have heard us talk about increasing repeat purchase and the investments we’re making there as a management team we have solidified this as the operating goal for us to move forward with in 2015 you’re starting to see some of those results in the numbers themselves. Our conversion was up. Our AOV was up. Our order count was up. So I think you are starting to see some of that progress move forward and we have just a number of initiatives inside driving both gross profit per unit that number of units, repeat purchase and conversion. And hopefully by the end of the year you will start to see our marketing spend as a percent of revenue increase as a result as we’re driving more customer lifetime value to be able to put those dollars to work, driving more customers.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

And then could you touch on the online marketplace, if there has been any changes I mean that is a constantly evolving channel for you just an update there would be helpful?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Yes so it continues to be a channel that’s important to us both through Amazon, eBay and other emerging online marketplaces. We’re seeing that soften a little bit for us over sort of you can call two very aggressive growth years over the last two years. But we continue to think that’s going to be a great channel for us going forward and a strong channel and it may have some as your point ups and downs but certainly a very strong channel for us and one that we think we can compete in because we have frankly the best supply chain in the industry when it comes to private label products and when you are starting on marketplaces you certainly have got to be the low cost leader to move products with that channel and we’ve proven that we can do that.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

And then I just want to make sure I caught this right. The life time value initiatives, you spent about 1.2 million marketing should generate 2.5% and in terms traffic 10 million in revenue and 1 million of EBITDA, I think is that right?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Jeff let me give you that in more color, what we’re seeing there is if we could increase our LTV in year one by $1, that $1 would turn into some traffic, 2.5% increase in traffic that would probably turn into like $10 million in revenues and $1 million of EBITDA because we'll spend about another 1.5 million in marketing. So I am hoping what you see from our business over the next period of time two years is an increase in our marketing spend because of the increase in LTV and again a number of initiatives around that; firmly centered around our ability to drive private label product; second, our ability to actually increase the basket size and as you increase the basket size obviously more GP dollars and the entire basket drop through. So, that’s really about thinking about why are we pushing so hard on this initiative and the areas of that initiatives it really centers around our ability to drive $1, $2, $3 more dollars of LTV and then reinvest that back into business to drive more customers in.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Can you shed any insight into the tail off in the traffic that growth that you started to see at the beginning of the quarter and what headwinds if you could point to any that caused this pullback from the rate it was at the beginning of the quarter?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Sure, we started the quarter up sort of mid single-digits. We were very excited about the traffic growth. We have consistently seen conversion growth but as that traffic growth came through, we were kind of clicking on all cylinders and quite excited about that. The headwind frankly came in a macro shift that we saw on our top keywords where it’s shifted a little bit from e-commerce players to more media site or content players. And so that mix shift had an impact also in the quarter and so we went from up positives and from a traffic perspective to run in a little bit negative and that’s actually continued into the second quarter. But then that effectively had worked its way into the second quarter as I just mentioned.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

You’re still seeing the conversion rates higher though?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Yes, we continue to see improved conversion. We continue to think we’ll be up single-digits for the year as I mentioned it on the call though the second quarter will clearly be our toughest quarter of the year based on some of the weather that happened last year and so we think we’ll see acceleration in the back half of the year.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Mitch Bartlett of Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Mitch Bartlett

Analyst

You talked about sales metrics quarter-to-date and you were just talking about it just a second ago. But did you give kind of growth metrics for the quarter?

Shane Evangelist

Management

For the first quarter Mitch?

Mitch Bartlett

Analyst

For the second quarter, just like quarter-to-date how you’re seeing the…?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Yes, Mitch we’re slightly positive for the quarter we’ve seen a little bit of a ramp during the last week and we expect it to ramp more throughout the quarter. Again though I would mention the second quarter is obviously going to be our toughest quarter of the year.

Mitch Bartlett

Analyst

And then, the private label and branded the private label at 63% of total sales, is that the highest level you’ve ever hit and what was the growth of private label and branded in the quarter, respectively?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Yes so, branded was slightly positive in the quarter and private label was up similar to where it had been trending in the upper teens.

Mitch Bartlett

Analyst

Very good quarter let me ask the interesting news in the past few months was one of your shareholders large shareholders and former CEO of the company put out a release basically suggesting the Company could be sold, any commentary on that?

Shane Evangelist

Management

Well, we certainly appreciate all feedback from shareholders and welcome it. And we’re in agreement with Mitch you know is always the value of the business we do think we’re undervalued we’re certainly growing e-commerce business that’s put up a couple quarters of double-digit growth with positive free cash flow in an industry that’s doubling. And so we like where we’re going with the business and as it relates to commenting specifically on the points around the acquisition obviously we wouldn’t do that. But I can assure you that our Board is always looking at our shareholders’ best interest and looking at all alternatives if presented.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Neil Watanabe for closing remarks.

Neil Watanabe

Management

Thank you. I just wanted to thank everyone for joining the call today. As always, we’re available for any additional questions you may have so please don’t hesitate to call. Also, please note that we will be presenting at the B. Riley & Company Conference in Los Angeles on May 12th and the Craig-Hallum Conference in Minneapolis on May 27th and hope to see some of you there.