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QVC Group Inc. (QVCGA)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, May 4, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the HSN, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. This call is being recorded. Following the conclusion of today's discussion, the HSNi team will be taking your questions. With that, I'd now like to turn the conference over to Felise Glantz Kissell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Kissell, please go ahead.

Felise Glantz Kissell - Vice President, Investor Relations

Management

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On this morning's call, we have Mindy Grossman, Chief Executive Officer of HSNi, and Judy Schmeling, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Judy will initially review our financial performance. Mindy will then strategically discuss the business. As always, some of the statements made on this call may be forward-looking and as such are subject to many factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements. Additional information regarding these factors, as well as various risks and uncertainties, can be found in HSNi's earnings release filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the company's website. HSNi does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. In addition, on today's call, there will be references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These are described in more detail on the company's earnings release and SEC filings available on the HSNi website. You are encouraged to refer to the press release and SEC filings and to review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP results. I would now like to turn the call over to Judy Schmeling, HSNi's COO and CFO. Judy? Judy Schmeling - Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer: Thanks, Felise, and good morning, everyone. On the earnings call, we articulated that the first quarter would be impacted by a challenging retail environment and a repositioning of certain merchandising categories and brands. As we focused on our merchandising initiatives to drive top line growth, we continued to aggressively manage our cost. At HSNi, sales were down 3% with digital sales increasing 3%, comping 8% sales growth and 12% digital sales growth in the prior year. Our gross profit rate was down 30 basis…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Also, to allow everyone the opportunity to ask questions, we ask that you have one question and one follow-up if needed. The first question is from Neely Tamminga of Piper Jaffray. Your line is now open. Neely J. N. Tamminga - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Many thanks for the strategic overview, as usual. I'm wondering if we can dig a little bit more into the idea of new channels of distribution, thinking maybe even the traditional brick-and-mortar. You've mentioned some success here on Ballard Designs. You've also talked about Ingenious Designs wholesaling into folks like Target. We're also noticing a brand that you guys are known for, Diane Gilman, over at Christopher & Banks. Just wondering kind of where you're seeing some success stories of maybe new customer acquisition lift from these dynamics. Does this make sense? Are you seeing assimilation? Things like that would be helpful in how this could play out. And a housekeeping question for Judy. If we excluded the whole Keith Urban dynamic on the customer acquisition or the customer active file, which you said, I think, on a 12-month is down slightly, if you exclude the Keith Urban dynamic, are you guys actually up? And if you could quantify, that'd be great, Thanks. Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Great question on the channels of distribution. Specifically, in Ballard and a number of our brands, we do feel that giving the customer a 360-degree experience will have a positive implication from the business. As I mentioned, what we're seeing in the markets where we do have the physical design studios, not only are we seeing performance in that environment, we're seeing a lift in performance in the marketplace as well as elevated awareness and engagement. So, we do feel…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Eric Sheridan of UBS. Your line is now open.

Eric J. Sheridan - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions. One, on the customer analytics that you mentioned during your commentary, wanted to understand sort of how that will roll out through the year, what you think that might do to the business as you sort of continue to push that forward, not only in 2016 but beyond. And then based on the commentary, there are a lot of puts and takes on places where you're looking to invest in the business in 2016 but also places where there could be cost savings and leverage in the business. Can you help us understand a little bit how those puts and takes will move as we go through the year just so we don't get too far ahead of ourselves in terms of thinking about projections? Thank you. Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. As far as – I can let Judy talk on some of the puts and takes and all of that. Judy Schmeling - Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. I'll take your second question first. On the operating expenses, you're correct in the fact that we have a lot of expense savings that we really have been pushing forward in terms of talent realignment and operating expense reductions, whether it be in circulation or our supply chain management optimization program. We are going to be reinvesting some of that back into areas of growth, particularly in some of the things regarding our customer analytics and digital marketing. So there will be some puts and takes as we continue to see the business have opportunities to grow the top line. Having said that, we are very focused on that operating expense leverage as we continue to move forward and should continue to see savings for the balance of the year. However, if we do see pockets of opportunities to reinvest, we will do so. But again, we're very focused on driving operating expense reduction to the extent that we can. Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, in terms of our investments and what we look to see from those investments in tools, systems, talent around data, it really is around data to provide us a greater level of customization and personalization. And we continue to do a significant amount of testing and rollout, testing and rollout. And we're very pleased with what we're seeing in those areas as we begin to ramp up. And we continue to invest and whether that's in our seamless capabilities across all of our sites, the individualization on the customer level, and we have plans across all of our businesses to be able to leverage that. But very specifically at HSN, you will continue to see that ramping up across the year.

Eric J. Sheridan - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Alex Fuhrman of Craig-Hallum Capital. Your line is open.

Alex Joseph Fuhrman - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just want to try to get a sense of the kind of base case revenue scenario here in the second quarter and beyond. I mean, it looks like for most of the last four years or five years typically there's a meaningful drop-off sequentially from the first quarter to the second quarter. 2014 was obviously a notable exception to that and last year was pretty strong in the first quarter. So just trying to understand, I mean how you kind of think about the base case here of what it would be reasonable to think of the second quarter and the third quarter looking relative to the numbers you just reported here in Q1. Judy Schmeling - Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer: Sure. To your point, in the second quarter, the drop-off does occur on the HSN businesses. It is the lowest quarter of sales volume absolute dollar-wise that we have. And then it continues to build up for the balance of the year. So the third quarter normally is higher than the second quarter and then obviously the fourth quarter is the largest. So for HSN historically, the fourth quarter is the strongest followed by the first quarter, third quarter and then the second quarter is our lowest quarter. So, there is some changes in the dynamic which I think you can see in every quarterly filing that we've had since we've been public. As well as on the Cornerstone side, though, it's the inverse in that the second quarter is typically a very large quarter as it relates to outdoor specifically for Frontgate and Ballard Designs. So we do have a larger sales volume there than the first quarter. In terms of how we're looking at the business, I think as we articulated on the HSN side of the business, we're continuing to repositioning a lot of these merchandising categories that we have and we do expect that's going to continue to take some time to progress throughout the year and we'll continue to see improvement, as Mindy articulated. And, Mindy, is there anything else that you'd like to add to that? Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. As Judy said, I mean, we're definitely seeing progress in certain areas of the business that we feel good about. And there are still some areas that we are working to accelerate and develop. But, certainly, there's no lack of work being done and we feel good about the teams and how they're progressing.

Alex Joseph Fuhrman - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Analyst

Great. That's really helpful. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Barton Crockett of FBR Capital Markets. Your line is open. Bart E. Crockett - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to drill down a little bit more on how to think about the revenue trends. And I understand revenue is not the full story. We've got to think more about kind of gross profit per hour. And the gross margin trends here were encouraging relative to what we were fearing. But on the top line, your comps did get easier in the first quarter relative to the fourth quarter on a one-year basis. They got about 400 basis points easier. But in TV shopping – and this is in core HSN TV shopping – in TV shopping, your trend worsened on the top line by about 200 basis points. As we look ahead to the second quarter, it seems like the comp might get, on a one-year basis, about 700 basis points easier. So when we look about these comps, is that a reasonable way to think about the revenue trajectory from here? Does that really matter? Or is there something different happening and shift in the environment where we should just kind of ignore the comps and look at the business differently? Judy Schmeling - Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer: Sure. Yes, our comps were slightly easier in the first quarter than they were in the fourth quarter. As I articulated on the call, excluding that Keith Urban, sales were down 2%, so it wasn't quite as dramatic shifting as the decline. I would say, though, to the point that I made earlier, as we continue to reposition these categories, it has taken us more time to be able to comp…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Matthew Harrigan of Wunderlich Securities. Your line is open.

Matthew J. Harrigan - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. Firstly, Comcast X1 is about I think 35% of their video base now and certainly has some characteristics akin to OTT platforms, Roku being cloud-based and just behaviorally what it offers the consumer. Can you give us any sense of how you (44:07) HSN is faring in that category in terms of viewer activity and how that translates to purchases? And then, secondly, as much activity as I've seen with you on the merchandising side right now, but I'm curious whether you're still going to replace your – I think still open Chief Merchandising Officer position? Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Do you want to take the first one? Judy Schmeling - Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer: Sure, Matthew. And we saw you also on CNBC earlier this week. You looked very good and sounded very smart relative to Hulu and over-the-top. So regarding the Comcast X1 platform, we have not seen any differences between the performance on X1 versus other cable providers platforms, with the exception of the fact that with that moved to the X1 platform, we no longer have our Shop by Remote technology on that. We are working with Comcast to get that back on the platform because we know that that's a huge driver of customer engagement. So I would say that is the one difference that we're seeing on the X1 platform. Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: And then on the merchandising side, to your point, we have done a lot of work in each of the categories of the business with very strong Senior Vice Presidents. We have made some organizational consolidations, so there are five key platforms of business. As you know, we brought in new Senior Vice President of Beauty not too long ago, who's very strong; Alicia Valencia, who had run Bobby Brown North America. We just brought in Catherine Coquillard for jewelry. We consolidated culinary, electronics, and fitness under Sandy Conrad, who's been certainly successful long-term in the company. Chris Nicola in Home. And then Vanessa Dusold in Fashion, very strong. And they have really been driving a lot of the efforts in the business, certainly along with Bill Brand and myself. Having said that, we continue to look for an appropriate head merchant but again, we are going to be very specific and stringent into the qualities we are looking for and we're leveraging our strong team in the process.

Matthew J. Harrigan - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks, Mindy.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Victor Anthony of Axiom Capital. Your line is open.

Victor Anthony - Axiom Capital Management, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Thanks for taking the call. Mindy, the retail environment has certainly been challenging across the board except for the pure play Internet retailers, with the exception of eBay, which I think has its own set of unique challenges. To what extent do you think your business, the TV shopping business, the Cornerstone brand, has been impacted by threats on the Internet? Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think the entire retail environment, as you say, is going through a tremendous amount of change and volatility as everyone really looks to find a very specific point of differentiation. And that's competition from everywhere, not just pure play. And the way we think about it is, in order to really compete effectively, we need that maniacal focus on very differentiated and exclusive product. We need to create experiences beyond just a commerce relationship with our customers. We need to use our data to create significant personalization and meeting with the customer and in the right selected instances create that 360-degree experience like what we are doing with Ballard and where we're looking. And that's what we have to be very, very focused on, not just us but in general that's going to be very key to differentiation going forward.

Victor Anthony - Axiom Capital Management, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. And for Judy, you mentioned again the supply chain automation that you expect to save $10 million to $20 million annually. Just help me understand better how you get to that $10 million to $20 million annual savings number? Judy Schmeling - Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer: Sure. It's a much more efficient operation. We are able to consolidate two warehouses into one warehouse. It utilizes less labor and it's more efficient from a supply chain getting the packages out faster to the customer.

Victor Anthony - Axiom Capital Management, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There appears to be no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to Ms. Grossman. Mindy Grossman - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Very well. Thank you, everyone, and I look forward to keep you updated on our progress. Have a great day.