Jose Luis Laparte
Analyst · Scotiabank
Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today. I will begin my remarks focused on our second quarter results and will follow that with some comments about March sales which was included in our press release. Sales for the quarter were $759 million, an increase in total sales of 3.7% when compared to the second quarter of last fiscal year. We ended the quarter with 38 warehouse clubs compared to 36 a year ago. Net income for the second quarter of fiscal year 2016 was $25.9 million or $0.85 per share compared to $24.8 million or $0.82 a year ago for the same quarter. I will probably sound a little repetitive as I have been mentioning in the last few calls that the Colombia currency affects many of our comparisons with last year and quarter two was no exception. For example, comparable sales which now include 38 of our 38 clubs had a decrease of 0.9 for the 13 weeks ended February 28, 2016. Three Colombia warehouse clubs were in that calculation for the full 13 weeks and the other three in Colombia were in the calculation for a portion of that period. Extracting those clubs from the calculation, the 13-week comparable sales for the other 30 warehouse clubs was a positive of 2.7%. I will speak more about our Colombian business but let me first touch base on results in our other regions. Our non-Colombia markets performed well in the second quarter. Central America had a total sales growth of 11.5%, which included the positive impact of two additional warehouse clubs, one in Panama opened in June 2015 and one in Nicaragua opened in November 2015. The two new warehouse clubs continued to do well adding members and sales. We saw positive comp sales in our -- in all our Central America countries with the exception of Nicaragua which was impacted by the planned cannibalization of sales in the exiting warehouse club by the new one. Double-digit sales growth was recorded in Panama, Honduras and Nicaragua. In the Caribbean, warehouse sales grew 4.4% in the second quarter compared to the year earlier period with the equivalent number of warehouse clubs 11. Again, all countries in the region of the Caribbean recorded positive sales growth with Jamaica growing above the 10% year-on-year. On the other hand, we started to see some challenges in Trinidad during the quarter. In February, Trinidad increased the BAT on a large number of products which impacted prices and consumer spending. The country in total, a big exporter of oil and natural gas is slipping into a period of its lower economic growth due to low price of those commodities. This is expected to put some pressure on consumer demand, which could impact our business in the next few quarters in a market that has been very good for us over the past two to three years. In Colombia, net warehouse sales declined by 32% when translated to U.S. dollars, reflecting the impact of 37.8 devaluation of the peso compared to the U.S. dollars in the same quarter last year. The average exchange rate for translating Colombia and peso sales to U.S. dollars in the quarter was 3,283 compared to 2,382 a year ago. In local currency, net warehouse sales for the quarter declined 6.5%. The prices on imported merchandise which have a U.S. dollar cost basis is impacting demand which is driving the negative growth for those products. Sales of local products however recorded a 9% positive growth when measured in pesos. It is our goal going forward to comp positive in local currency in Colombia. We did not achieve that in the second quarter. The peso has stabilized somewhat at around 3,100 pesos, latest. A stable currency should help us achieve that goal. From a merchandise perspective for the total Company, we recorded comp sales growth in the period in liquor, health and beauty, pet, produce, fresh meats, automobile, home furniture, office furniture and fashion apparels. Moving on to membership, membership income was $11.3 million for the quarter. We finished the quarter with more than 1,000,460 accounts. While this is an increase of 6% compared to a year ago, it is a reduction of approximately 21,000 accounts from the end of fiscal year 2015, driven by renewal activity in Colombia on the neighbor [ph] service of the opening of the warehouse clubs in Bogotá, Medellin and Pereira. As discussed in our first quarter earnings call, the combination of generally lower renewal rate for first year members and other factors specific to the three newer clubs in Colombia such as the exceptionally large number of preopening sign ups in the Bogotá club and the instance of the Bogotá club to a number of those members resulted in a net reduction of member accounts. We finished the second quarter at an 81% 12-month renewal capture rate for all countries and that would be 88% excluding Colombia. While we have seen some improvement in the monthly renewal rate over the past few months in Colombia, we’re particularly encouraged by an ongoing stream of new member sign ups in our Colombian clubs. Our warehouse clubs in Bogotá, Medellin and Barranquilla have the highest number of new membership sign ups of any of our warehouse clubs in the second quarter. We believe this is a good indication of the acceptance of our concept with these new members that despite the current prices on imported merchandise, they are seeing good value in the overall item mix that we now have between imported and local merchandise. Before I leave the subject of Colombia, let me say a few things about our approach to pricing our imported merchandise during this evaluation that I know I shared a few times already in other earnings calls but is worth repeating. There is no question then that prices of imported merchandise across all retailers in Colombia are going up which negatively impacts consumers demand. We have taken margin reductions in that market in an effort to solidify our position for the future and in addition, we are pleased with the conversion of items to local production that we have been introducing in the last few months, while making sure that the quality of the locally produced products is at least as good as imported goods that we have been offering for sale. It has been a good experience working with local vendors that have demonstrated their ability to produce and supply high quality items for us. Other activities relevant to report as we finished second quarter include the progress of the construction of our new warehouse club in Chia, a municipality in the northern suburb of Bogotá. Our plans remain to open that club around September 2016. We believe this new club will serve not only the Chia community but also residents in the northern portion of Bogotá. Also in Colombia, we’re adding a parking deck at our Barranquilla location. This is part of an overall expansion program in certain live markets. The expansion in Barranquilla will add more parking spaces and extra sales force to our clubs. In other markets, we’re in the process of planning similar actions and in some cases have or expect to acquire some adjacent land to be used for expanded parking at those locations. Finally, as reported in our 10-Q, subsequent to the end of the quarter, we entered into a contract to acquire a build to suit distribution in Miami. Once completed, currently expected in the first half of 2017, we will relocate much of our current distribution operations to this new location. Not only will this new center provide improved operating efficiencies by virtue of its design but it will ensure we have long term control over a strategically critical element of our business. I know John will have a few comments about Q2, so let me now speak to our March sales. March sales decreased 4.2% to $227.8 million and four-week comp sales ending March 27 decreased 5.4%. Excluding Colombia, comp sales decreased 3.1%. This month in which Semana Santa and Easter fall compared to the year earlier period has a measureable effect on the year-to-year comparison, given the base warehouse clubs are closed and the shopping behavior of members in our markets over the Easter weekend. Easter Sunday this year fell in the last day of our comp period, March 27. Easter year last year was in April 5th. As such, we believe it is more instructive to do March and April, together as we have done in prior years. For example, last year, fiscal year 2015, March comps were 7.3 followed by April at 0.2%, all at 3.8% combined. Before I conclude, I would just like to add one more comment. As I travel and visit our operations in our different countries, I always come back optimistic from the things I see and the efforts and dedication of our teams. Even though we face very good competitors in our markets, I am reminded that PriceSmart offers a particularly unique and differentiated shopping experience -- shopping alternative for the small business members and household members. I also see farther opportunities for us to improve our execution of the club philosophy, finding efficiencies in our buying, distribution, operations and our other functional disciplines to best serve our members. Thanks again for joining us today. After John’s remarks, we will take your questions.