Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Sally Beauty Holdings Fiscal 2015 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. And as a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Karen Fugate, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Karen Fugate - Vice President Investor Relations & Strategic Planning: Thank you. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain comments including matters such as forecasted financial information, contracts or business, and trend information made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21-E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Many of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as may, will, should, expect, anticipate, estimate, assume, continue, project, plan, believe and similar words or phrases. These matters are subject to a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Those factors are described in Sally Beauty Holdings' SEC, including the most recent annual report on Form 10-K for September 30, 2014 and its most recently reported on Form 10-Q being filed today. The company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements. The company has provided a detailed explanation and reconciliations of its adjusting items and non-GAAP financial measures in its earnings press release and on its website. With me on the call today are Chris Brickman, President and CEO, and Mark Flaherty, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Chris? Christian A. Brickman - President & CEO: Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. I'll briefly provide an update on our business performance and Mark will discuss our 2015 third quarter results in more detail. Our third quarter results were mixed. Our BSG business had another exceptional quarter, while our Sally U.S. business failed to perform up to our expectations. We are disappointed in the results for our Sally business, but not discouraged. It is taking longer than we expected for traffic from the non-Beauty Club Card customer to recover. But we still have great confidence that we are moving in the right direction. Over the past year, we've made tremendous progress on a focused set of initiatives designed to transform the consumer experience at Sally. And these initiatives are now reaching critical mass in terms of what the impact we expect for them to have on our customer experience. We started this journey by hiring a talented team of retail professionals. With the team in place, we gathered consumer insights through focus groups and surveys to find out how our customers felt about shopping at Sally. From the non-Beauty Club Card customer, we heard that our stores were often dark, cluttered and hard to shop. But it was also clear that Sally offered a beauty solution that was unique from our competition and that our core value proposition of salon quality products and solutions available at a better value was still relevant. Our research led to several key initiatives. First, transforming the physical retail space by upgrading the look, feel and shoppability of our stores. By the end of the third quarter, we had refreshed almost 520 stores, resulting in improved sales trends when compared to the benchmark of non-refreshed stores. We expect to complete another 480 stores by November 1. We have also upgraded key merchandising sections across all stores, including the Nail Studio, the cash-wrap, the lash and brow studio and the cosmetics section. We also expect new promotional merchandising systems to be installed in the front of the store by October, and the hair color and hair care solution studios will be completed by the first half of the coming fiscal year. The benefit for our customer is a cleaner, brighter and more engaging store that is easier to navigate and reinforces our motto of Beautiful Finds at Beautiful Prices. We also upgraded and enhanced our e-commerce platform by transforming it from a purely transactional site to a content-rich experience that offers customers the ability to research styles, trends and products before they purchase. As a result, we've realized a significant lift in our online traffic of approximately 60%, with sales growth of 15% and building. Our connection with the customer has profoundly changed as well through our integrated marketing approach. We launched the consistent marketing campaign designed to touch the customer through every medium she engages in. For example, direct mail, social and digital media, e-mail, text and the building of our recently launched CRM capabilities. We now touch the consumer in a myriad of ways, well beyond the direct mail focus of the past, and we consistently reinforce our motto of Beautiful Finds at Beautiful Prices and our brand promise of salon quality brands at a better value backed by our Love It or Return It guarantee. As we begin Q4, we will take this to another level through our sponsorship of Project Runway, which airs tonight on Lifetime TV. This is the first time the Sally brand has been promoted on national television, and we are very excited about the influence this campaign may have on our customers and the potential to attract new customers to our Sally stores. Beyond this, we are upgrading the look and feel of our own brands to ensure they also deliver on the promise of salon quality. We have redesigned key assortments like multicultural, introduced new brands and new on-trend hair colors, as well as an extended wear nail polish line. All of these changes are key elements to our aspiration of delivering salon quality products that inspire our customers. Attracting new customers to our stores is a great aspiration. But if we fail to convert them to the new products we present, if those products lack the attractiveness and are uninspiring, we will not make them permanent consumers and permanent customers of Sally. So, we are committed to delivering on the promise that she will find salon quality solutions with the latest styles and trends and at affordable prices all backed by our Love It or Return It guarantee. And finally, we have to fund this investment through cost reductions, better managements of discounts and pricing, and working with our vendors in a manner that protects our margins and delivers exceptional returns to our shareholders. All of these initiatives have recently come together at scale and have begun to attract the attention of our customers. We hear their enthusiasm in our stores and through social media as they begin to see the difference. The full impact of our work will take time to change perceptions and behavior, because the non-Beauty Club customer is an infrequent shopper for us. However, we expect our steady improvement to continue and we believe we can be back to historical same-store growth rates by the second half of next fiscal year. Our Beauty Systems Group had another terrific quarter. The introduction of new brands and product innovation continues to drive sales growth above historical run rates, resulting in strong bottom-line performance. This morning, we announced a leadership transition at BSG. Mark Spinks, former BSG Chief Operating Officer, was appointed to President; and John Golliher, former President of BSG, assumed the role of BSG's Chairman. John will stay with us full time until the end of fiscal 2015, and then assume a consulting role for an additional two years. Under John's tenure, he took BSG from a small, unprofitable business to an industry-leading organization with over $1 billion in sales. Mark will have some very big shoes to fill, but is well qualified for the challenge. He is a seasoned veteran of the professional beauty business and has held various leadership positions in BSG for over 10 years. Almost a year ago, we appointed Mark to the COO role, and he has demonstrated strong leadership of BSG since assuming that position. As a result, I have complete confidence in Mark and have no doubt this will be a smooth transition. And I can assure you that John will be close at hand as a trusted adviser. Before I turn it over to Mark, I want to provide a couple of observations regarding our expectations for fiscal year 2016. As we look towards the new fiscal year, we now expect the Sally Beauty segment same-store sales will continue to improve sequentially and reach historical growth levels of 3% to 4% in the back half of next year. On the expense side, we anticipate significant labor and rental cost inflation to affect our business as we compete for talent and real estate with other retailers. We plan to offset the bulk of these increases through cost reductions and tactical pricing measures. However, we believe that this cost inflation will now be a moderate drag on operating earnings growth for next year. Finally, the disruption caused by the recent data security incident is now behind us from a consumer perspective, and we plan to further enhance our systems and culture to ensure the security of our networks and consumer data. To accomplish this, we plan to invest in talent and additional hardware and software, which may elevate our capital spending in fiscal year 2016 over the current year. As we are still completing our budgeting process, we will provide more color on our 2016 expectations on our November earnings call. Now, I'll turn it over to Mark. Mark J. Flaherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thanks, Chris. Consolidated net sales for the third quarter were $967.9 million, an increase of 2%. This increase was primarily driven by same-store sales growth of 3.1% and 162 new store openings. Offsetting this growth was the unfavorable impact of foreign currency exchange rates of $26.2 million or 280 basis points of sales growth. Consolidated gross profit was up 1.2% over the prior year. Gross profit as a percentage of sales was 49.7%, down 40 basis points. Gross profit margin declined primarily due to the strong promotional activity in the Sally U.S. segment, which was not supported by vendor allowances, as occurred during the prior year quarter. On a year-to-date basis, gross margin is flat when compared to the prior year and as such, we now expect our consolidated gross margin for the fiscal year 2015 to be flat versus our previous expectations of 20 basis points to 30 basis points of margin expansion. Third quarter SG&A expenses including charges associated with the data security incidences and the restructuring of our Sally Germany business were 33.9% on a percent of sales basis, a 10-basis point increase from the fiscal 2014 third quarter. Consolidated SG&A expenses excluding the data security and the restructuring charges were 33.4% of sales. We continue to believe that SG&A as a percentage of sales for the fiscal year 2015 will be flat to the prior year of 33.9%. Unallocated corporate expenses, including share-based compensation, were $37.5 million or 3.9% of sales, up $484,000 compared to the prior year quarter. Share-based compensation was down $3.6 million versus the prior year due to a non-recurring charge of $3.5 million in connection with the executive management transition plan that occurred during the fiscal 2014 third quarter. Third quarter 2015 unallocated results include approximately $3.2 million of pre-tax charges related to the data security incidences compared to $864,000 in the prior year quarter. GAAP consolidated operating earnings in the third quarter decreased 3.1% to $130.8 million with an operating margin of 13.5%, down 70 basis points. This decline was primarily driven by lower gross margin and higher SG&A expenses in our Sally segment versus the prior year quarter. Interest expense including the amortization of debt refinancing cost totaled $29.2 million, flat to the prior year. For the fiscal 2015 third quarter, our effective tax rate was 38.5% when compared to the fiscal 2014 third quarter of 35.9%. The lower effective tax rate in the fiscal 2014 third quarter was primarily due to the reduction of valuation allowances related to a previously uncertain tax position. GAAP net earnings was down 7.8% to $62.5 million and adjusted net earnings were down 7.4% to $65.2 million. Earnings per share on a GAAP and adjusted basis were $0.39 and $0.41, respectively, compared to the prior year GAAP and adjusted EPS of $0.42 and $0.43, respectively. Also during the quarter, we repurchased approximately 219,000 shares of our common stock for $6.8 million. Due to the timing of our security breach, we did not make any open market purchases during the quarter. We do, however, anticipate to have the flexibility to act upon board authorizations under our stock repurchase program during the fiscal 2015 fourth quarter. And turning to the business segments, same-store sales growth for Sally Beauty was 2% versus 1.8% in the year-ago quarter. Net sales for Sally reached $588.6 million, an increase of 70 basis points over the prior year quarter. Sales growth was attributed to new store openings and same-store sales growth. The unfavorable impact of foreign currency exchange rates offset the sales growth by $22 million or 380 basis points. Beauty Club Card sales increased 7% with transaction growth of approximately 8% over the prior year quarter. Club membership grew 8.5% to reach 8.6 million members, with a membership renewal rate of 60.3%. Gross profit margin in the third quarter was 54.9%, down 50 basis points. Gross profit margin declined primarily due to the strong promotional activity in the Sally U.S. segment, which was not supported by vendor allowances as occurred during the prior year quarter. Operating earnings for our Sally business were $107.3 million, down approximately 6.5% when compared to the prior year. This decline was driven by lower gross margin than the prior year and higher SG&A expenses, which includes approximately $1.1 million of restructuring charges in our German operations. As part of our initiative to increase profitability in Europe, we are restructuring Sally's operations in Germany, which includes the closing of 16 underperforming retail stores and two administrative offices. We will continue to operate 17 retail stores after the restructuring, which is expected to be completed by fiscal year-end. We incurred a $1.1 million pre-tax charge in the fiscal 2015 third quarter and expect to incur an additional pre-tax charge of approximately $5.9 million by the end of the fiscal year. And turning to the BSG segment, BSG had same-store sales growth of 5.6%. Net sales grew 4% to reach $379.3 million. Overall sales growth was attributed to same-store sales improvement as well as improvement in the sales consultants business and new store openings. This growth was primarily offset by the impact of unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates of $4.2 million or 110 basis points. Looking at the sales growth by distribution channel, sales from our store business grew 5.4%, while the direct sales consultant business was up 1.4%. BSG's gross profit margin was up 10 basis points to reach 41.8%, while operating earnings at BSG increased $3.9 million or 6.7% in the 2015 third quarter. Operating margins reached a record high of 16.1%, up 40 basis points, primarily due to the gross margin expansion and SG&A leverage. And looking at the balance sheet, inventories were $875 million, an increase of 4.1% compared to the ending inventory on June 30, 2014. This year-over-year increase is primarily due to sales growth from existing stores, additional inventory for new store openings, and the addition of new brands and territory expansion at BSG. Capital expenditures for the nine months of the fiscal year 2015 totaled $72.1 million, and reflect expenditures for opening new stores, expenditures related to our store refresh initiative, and IT-specific projects. Capital expenditures are expected to end the year at the higher end of our previously-stated guidance of $95 million to $100 million. And looking ahead into the fiscal year 2016, we expect to continue our investments in our store refresh initiative and various IT systems enhancements throughout the business. Chris? Christian A. Brickman - President & CEO: Thank you, Mark. As I said in my earlier remarks, our results were mixed for the quarter. Our Sally U.S. business is taking longer to recover than we originally anticipated. Having said that, I'm proud of what the team has accomplished in just a year, from transforming the physical retail experience, upgrading our e-commerce platform, launching an integrated marketing approach to upgrading our brand offerings. I fully recognize that our shareholders are looking for the return on these initiatives, and I believe we are very close to delivering on that objective. Now, I'll turn it over to the operator to take your questions.