Earnings Labs

Shoe Carnival, Inc. (SCVL)

Q2 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 23, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Shoe Carnival's Fiscal Year 2012 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded and is also being broadcast via live webcast. Any reproduction or rebroadcast of any portion of this call is expressly prohibited. This conference may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risk factors. These risk factors could cause the company's actual results to be materially different from those projected in such statements. These forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the discussion of risk factors included in the company's SEC filings and today's press release. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today's date. The company disclaims any obligation to update any of the risk factors or to publicly announce any revisions to the forward-looking statements talked about during this conference call or contained in today's press statement to reflect future events or developments. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Mark Lemond, President and Chief Executive Officer of Shoe Carnival for opening remarks. Mr. Lemond, please begin.

Mark Lemond

Management

Thank you, and welcome to Shoe Carnival's second quarter fiscal 2012 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Kerry Jackson, our Chief Financial Officer; Cliff Sifford, Executive Vice President and General Merchandise manager; and Tim Baker, Executive VP of Store Operations. Following my opening remarks, Cliff will review our merchandise performance and Kerry will review the financial results for the quarter in more detail than I'll give. I will then provide some closing remarks and we'll open up the call to take your questions. I'd like to begin this call by saying there are a lot of good things happening at Shoe Carnival today. We are very pleased to report our second quarter earnings results exceeded the expectations we conveyed to you this past April. Additionally, we are excited about our accelerated store expansion strategy, continued free cash flow generation and the recent initiation of a quarterly cash dividend program. Before I review our financial results, I would like to remind everyone that this past April, we completed a 3-for-2 stock split affected as a 50% stock dividend. Consequently, the company's shares outstanding increased from approximately 13.6 million to approximately 20.4 million shares. Shoe Carnival's historic earnings per share and additional share information were restated so that all periods presented reflect the stock split. Despite a significant increase in store opening costs in the second quarter compared to last year, we recorded a 5% increase in net earnings to $2.9 million from net earnings of $2.7 million in the second quarter of 2011. Due to a slight increase in shares outstanding in 2012, aside from the effect of the stock split, earnings per diluted share were $0.14 in each quarter. This exceeds our original guidance of $0.08 to $0.11 per share. Second quarter net sales increased approximately 9.3% or $15.5…

Clifton Sifford

Management

Thank you, Mark. As Mark stated, our total comparable store sales for the second quarter of 2012 were up 3%. Although units per transaction were down low single digit, conversion was down slightly, we were very pleased that traffic was up low-single digit, with transaction size up by mid-single digits. Merchandise margins increased by 70 basis points primarily due to tight inventory management of our seasonal sandal categories, and improved margin in our adult athletic department. In our women's nonathletic department, comparable store sales were down low-single digits. Increases in athletic sandals, molded footwear, boat shoes and casual flaps were not enough to overcome the double-digit loss we experienced in dress shoes. As I mentioned in previous calls, for the first half of 2012, our merchants shifted inventory dollars away from the dress categories into a more seasonally relevant casual categories. Therefore, dress shoe inventory is in line with our plan. We are encouraged by the recent improvement of sales of several of our dress shoe categories with pumps, both single sole and platforms, along with new micro suede wedges, selling well. In our men's nonathletic department, we ended the quarter with a mid single-digit sales increase on a comparable store basis. Soccer sandals, campus casuals, along with boat shoes, were all up double-digit. Our children's business ended the quarter with a low single-digit comparable store sales increase. This increase was driven primarily with flats, canvas, molded footwear and colorful athletic shoes in boys running, skate and infants athletic. In adult athletic, comparable store sales were up mid-single digits. The classification of product driving the gains of adult athletics for the second quarter were; men's and women's basketball, men's and women's skate, and men's and women's performance running. As we mentioned last conference call, colors is still the lead story…

W. Jackson

Management

Thank you, Cliff. Our net sales increased $15.5 million, or 9.3%, to $182.2 million during the second quarter of fiscal 2012, compared to the prior year's net sales of $166.7 million. This increase was primarily due to a $12.4 million increase in sales generated by our new stores opened since the beginning of the second quarter last year, as well as our e-commerce site which we launched in September 2011. Our comparable store sales increase of 3% contributed $5.0 million. These increases were partially offset by a $2.0 million loss in sales from the 9 stores closed since the second quarter of fiscal 2011. The gross profit margin for the quarter increased 0.9% to 28.7%. The merchandise margin increased 0.7%, while buying, distribution and occupancy costs decreased 0.2% during Q2 as our sales gain enabled us to leverage these costs. We realized an increase in preopening expenses included in distribution and occupancy, which was offset by an equivalent decrease in store closing costs included in occupancy expense. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased $5.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2012, to $47.6 million from $42.3 million in the second quarter of last year. As a percentage of sales, SG&A increased to 26.1% from 25.3% in the same period last year. The increase in SG&A was primarily due to the $3.6 million increase in expenses for new stores, net of expense reductions for stores that have closed. In addition, due to our improved financial performance, incentive compensation, which includes both cash and stock-based compensation, increased $2.3 million in the second quarter 2012 as compared to the second quarter last year. $789,000 of this expense is a cumulative catch up expense adjustment for a tier of restricted stock that was previously determined to be unlikely to vest, but is now…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Scott Krasik with BB&T Capital Markets.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

I guess, question, Kerry, can you help me understand, so I think you said the last -- on the last call that the high end of your guidance was predicated on merch margins being flat and then the comps came in, in line with the high-end and then the merch margin was up 70, is that the difference between the $0.03 difference between the high end of your guidance and what you reported? Or are there other moving parts in there?

W. Jackson

Management

It's almost exclusively the better margin we got during the quarter, that it allowed us to exceed our earnings estimates for Q2.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

Okay. And in terms of the drivers of the better merchandise margin, what were they?

Clifton Sifford

Management

Scott, we -- this is Cliff. We saw higher margins out of our women's department, nonathletic, mainly because we didn't -- we made a decision not to buy back into the sandal category later in the second quarter. We had a pretty good first quarter in sandals and the -- first thought would be to buy back in but we were concerned that we'd be just buying markdown. So we decided not to do that and that helped our margin in the women's department. And then our -- in our athletic margins overall, women -- adult athletic margins were up.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

Okay. Good. And then sort of the drivers of the flat margin so far, quarter-to-date, is that just a function of a tough compare year-over-year and how do you view that if it's playing out in Q3 in the merch margin?

Clifton Sifford

Management

It's the -- last year, for August, we ran one of the highest margins we've ever run. And August is a promotional time period for back-to-school, and we are running flat mainly because of the -- just the time period of the year. We looked to improve that as we move through the quarter, as we sell more seasonally higher margin product.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

Okay. Good. And then I'll ask Kerry the same question about the margin, how do you view to get to the high-end of the guidance what does that imply for merch margin?

W. Jackson

Management

Flat to slightly up is what we have built into the high end of our guidance.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then, Mark, in terms of you've got the new markets coming online, are there other more important markets at this point? Or is it more backfilling next year? How do you view it and can you get more umph out of it because you're really starting to build some scale now?

Mark Lemond

Management

Well, the intent in 2012, Scott, as we've said is, we will have to go into Dallas with a good number of stores, and we will have achieved that by the end of this year with 7 new stores in that market. And I think we've got even one additional coming on in the very early part of next year in the Dallas market. So we should have 8 by the end of the first quarter or second half. So we're really happy with that infiltration of Dallas. Puerto Rico is the other larger market that we entered this year, and with 2 stores opening in the third, fourth -- actually the fourth quarter, we'll have 4 in that -- on the island by the end of the year. So we're really happy with that as well and we're looking for, obviously, for more stores next year -- or maybe not so obviously for more stores next year. Those 2 stores we opened up in July really opened up very, very, very strongly, as I mentioned both of them were company records. And one of them was 8,000 square feet, so we're really happy with that. Next year, we intend to really focus our efforts back again on filling in existing marketplaces. Besides Puerto Rico and Dallas, we're continuing to look at Houston, we're continuing to look at Cleveland, we're continuing to look at a lot of the markets that we've gone into, Phoenix, for example. We're going to enter into Tucson and we'll look for backup stores in that market. So we're really looking at infilling strategy next year. And in 2014, probably towards the end of '14 and '15, we'll start looking at some major new markets again.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

That's a good -- good understanding. And then just lastly, Kerry, sorry I think I missed it, how much did you say that employment comp plan was in the quarter, and the impact of reversing it later this year?

W. Jackson

Management

Well it -- obviously, there's potential, but it's $789,000 in expense we took in Q2. Now, if we hit the performance targets, that will not be reversed, obviously, but if we hit the lower end of our targets, then it'd be reversed out in Q2 or Q3 or Q4.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

How wide? Just because if you're having such an amazing Q3, you know you'll have that regardless and that's why -- why wouldn't it -- why would it get reversed in Q3, I guess, because there's always the chance...

W. Jackson

Management

The restricted stock tier has a very specific EPS target. And if we hit that target on the fiscal year, then it vests. If we're $0.01 shy of it then it won't vest then it'll expire, and any expense associated with it, at that point, would be reversed out and taken back into the income.

Scott Krasik

Analyst

Okay. I just don't know why then -- I mean, you always have a chance to earn it in Q4, right? So...

W. Jackson

Management

Right. I mean, we're not -- well -- yes. Well you take the tier of the expense and you allocate the expense over the time frame that the tier of a restricted stock will be valid. Well, we only have till the end of this year and this catch-up adjustment of $789,000 was from the date of grant. As the categories [ph] say, from the date of grant what ever the expense would have been, you have to pick up at the point in time that you now deem it more likely than not that it will vest.

Operator

Operator

So we'll go next to Chris Svezia with Susquehanna Financial Group.

Christopher Svezia

Analyst

So I just want to go back to gross margins for one sec here just so I got this correct. You sort of have stepped into Q3, and sort of the talk is kind of flattish product margins but an opportunity to show acceleration as you sell more seasonal product. If you think of about a 4 to 6 comp, wouldn't you get leverage on occupancy? As well if you got 20 bps in the quarter. So, I mean, could gross margins in the third quarter be up slightly or just trying to nail down how you -- how we should think about that?

Mark Lemond

Management

Yes, we are -- yes, at the high end of our guidance, we are planning for a slight increase in gross margins. So you're exactly right. We should gain leverage on our buying, distribution and occupancy costs, and hopefully, with the switch to athletic products, the way our merchants have switched the mix, we'll see higher margins throughout the remainder of the third quarter just the way we've seen in the athletic product categories so far in the third quarter. So yes, we do anticipate slightly higher margins going forward. The one nice thing about not having as much clearance product in women's sandalized footwear, as the further we get into the third quarter, the less liquidation sales we will have to rely upon to get rid of the remaining piece of our women's sandalized product. So on a relative basis to last year, since we don't have as much inventory to liquidate, we anticipate those women's margins to start to climb throughout the remainder of the third quarter.

Christopher Svezia

Analyst

Okay. And then, Cliff, for you, just on the women's dress category, I think you referenced as you went into the -- into August, all your categories are comping positively, what do you -- I mean, is women's dress comping, what are you doing differently, what's changing in the assortments?

Clifton Sifford

Management

As what I've said in the prepared remarks was that our women's -- that every department was comping positive. So in women's, I have dress, I have casual, I have sport, casual and boots. So even though dress is still comping negative, I'm picking up the increase in women's, and not only in my boot category but in the casual and sandal category as well.

Christopher Svezia

Analyst

Okay. I got you. And obviously, you just mentioned -- you referenced boots, so that was my, sort of, next general conversation -- I mean, so far in terms of what you've seen, you've been pretty pleased with the vestiture that you're making, is that a fair statement?

Clifton Sifford

Management

For such a -- for us, it's such a small month from a volume standpoint in boots, but we are seeing nice increases in boot category, western boots were selling well, and we think that's going to continue.

Christopher Svezia

Analyst

Okay. And then lastly, just on -- I'm curious, Puerto Rico, you like what you see, you referenced how strong those stores in terms of how they opened, you got a couple more to go here, what's the market opportunity for Puerto Rico? How many stores can you actually put in that market as you look out to the next couple of years?

Mark Lemond

Management

Well, certainly, our expectations may change depending where we open these initial half a dozen stores. And we -- after we open a store, we always take to look at what's the primary trade area that we are driving customers from into that particular location. We will do the same analysis in Puerto Rico. So right now, we're anticipating somewhere between a dozen and 15 stores. However, I'll caution you is that we'll continue to take a look at that as we open stores, we don't want to cannibalize, we don't want to take a chance on cannibalizing stores in Puerto Rico, except that if they -- if we see sales per square foot continue the way that we've seen sales per square foot of these 2 stores that we just opened, cannibalizing a certain amount of those sales is not going to hurt us. So the bottom line answer to that is we'll do a quantified polygon where we're driving customers from and base our anticipation of stores on that. Right now, we see 12 to 15 stores.

Christopher Svezia

Analyst

And can I just go back to Texas one sec? I know you don't want to comment just because of the timing on back-to-school and the ship later. But when those stores had initially opened and you seeded it with marketing, I mean can you add any color about how you felt when those stores opened in that point in time, relative to the base, relative to plan at that point?

Mark Lemond

Management

Oh, when the stores opened?

Christopher Svezia

Analyst

Yes.

Mark Lemond

Management

Texas stores opened very nicely. Yes, we were happy with the way those stores opened. Again, we went into the Dallas market with -- if that's what you're talking about, is Dallas. We went into the Dallas market with 6 stores at one time in the spring and we've never been able to do that in any opening any new large market. We spent an inordinate amount of advertising in that market to generate those grand opening sales. But in the long run, we felt that was the best thing to do for opening that large new market. Now, we're coming -- and then, we got off with the advertising subsequent to the opening because they fell into our normal advertising pattern. Now with back-to-school, we're increasing the amount of advertising that those existing Dallas stores we're seeing, as well as the new store that we opened in the Wheatland [ph] area of Dallas, I think it grand opened August 4 ph]. So we'll see advertising pick up now through their back-to-school day, which is about 5 days later than it was last year. And that's why we're saying that, if you strictly look at the performance of the Dallas market in early August without any advertising except for that new store, it's not as robust as it will be as we go back to the back-to-school period. We're expecting good things, we're going to hit -- the bottom line is we're continuing to expect good things out of Dallas, but until we get through a very heavy advertising period, we're not willing to make that call.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next questions from Jim (sic) [Jill] Caruthers with Johnson Rice.

Jill Caruthers

Analyst

That's Jill Caruthers. Just a follow on the last question, given the excitement on the successive entry into 2 new markets, could you remind us or have you thrown out a long-term store potential number out there?

Mark Lemond

Management

Jill, I'm having a hard time hearing you. Can you speak up a little bit?

Jill Caruthers

Analyst

Sure. I was wondering have you thrown out a potential long-term target of store count?

Mark Lemond

Management

Within the United States?

Jill Caruthers

Analyst

Yes.

Mark Lemond

Management

We've repeatedly talked about a 700 store chain with the current Shoe Carnival format and approximately the same size stores that we're operating today.

Jill Caruthers

Analyst

Okay. And then just to touch on the comments you made about the loyalty program, granted 10% of the sales -- it's pretty small compared to some of your competitors, could you talk about maybe the focus on driving that initiative and kind of the outlook going forward on that program?

Clifton Sifford

Management

Well, we've started as we launched in our e-commerce site, with a renewed focus on building the loyalty program, as we felt that this was going to be a great way to drive our business on e-commerce, and obviously, once you build that loyalty membership, you start communicating through -- let them through e-mail campaigns and whatnot. So we've seen -- again, we're seeing tremendous growth in the database of loyalty members. And with that and the communication that we've made to them with through our e-mail campaigns, we've seen an increase in sales. This is something that we're truly focused on. We obviously think that it can be a big driver of our business on a go forward basis.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Jeff Stein with Northcoast Research.

Jeffrey Stein

Analyst · Northcoast Research.

Mark, can you talk a little bit about marketing. And I'm just kind of curious with the elections coming up, it's probably going to be a little bit more expensive to advertise. Some retailers I've talked to are doing a little bit more cable, and I'm wondering are you mixing your media any differently this fall than you have in a non-election year? And maybe you could talk a little bit about how you see your marketing spend in the back half as a percent to sales if you hit your sales plan?

Mark Lemond

Management

Let me answer the second question first. I don't have those specific percentages, and I probably won't give those out for competitive reasons anyway. The answer to your first part of the question is we don't do a lot of television advertising prior to the election period. So for us to be preempted, we would have to mistake -- make a mistake in placing that advertising in the first place. So we're not too worried about that. When our advertising -- our big advertising push, comes -- our next big advertising push, except for a certain holidays, comes at the day after Thanksgiving period. So as we get into holiday, obviously, we're by the elections, maybe not the aftermath of the election but certainly by the periods where we would consider to be prime for preemption. And no, we don't have to -- we really don't have to change our mix of advertising to accommodate any kind of election period phenomenon.

Jeffrey Stein

Analyst · Northcoast Research.

Okay. Can you give us some metrics in terms of how these new stores opened in Puerto Rico? In other words, what did you do kind of in the first week compared to what you would do in an average store opening here in the U.S.?

Mark Lemond

Management

No, I really don't want to get into the specifics, Jeff. But like I said, we opened those stores. They were record in terms of sales. Not too far above the absolute record but the record before that was pretty significant. It was opening a 25,000 square foot store in Jacksonville, Florida back in the early '90s. So -- and we had a lot of advertising help and a lot of promotional help with Jacksonville Jaguars at that point in time. So it was a pretty significant record then. And the 2 stores in Puerto Rico, slightly beat it but they did beat it. And again, we're excited because one of those stores was an 8,000 square foot outlet mall location. So...

Jeffrey Stein

Analyst · Northcoast Research.

So you're saying an 8,000 square foot store in absolute dollars, beat a 25,000 square foot store? I just want to make sure I understand that.

Mark Lemond

Management

It not only beat a 25,000 square foot store, it beat the best 25,000 square foot grand opening we ever had.

Jeffrey Stein

Analyst · Northcoast Research.

Okay. Congratulations on that. Can you talk a little bit about product costs for the back half of the year and your initial mark on going in, are you at -- are you passing it all along to the customer or are you just trying to go in with a more modest IMU and hope to come out with a lower markdown?

Clifton Sifford

Management

Product costs are up anywhere from low singles to mid-single digit, and thus far, for the year, in our plan going forward, we'll pass that cost increase onto the consumer.

Jeffrey Stein

Analyst · Northcoast Research.

Okay. And no resistance so far?

Clifton Sifford

Management

No. We think that the way to not get resistance is to improve the product. So in the athletic part of the cost increase is the fact that we're buying better product, and that when you buy better product that demands higher price, and there's been absolutely no resistance there.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Sam Poser with Sterne Agee.

Ben Shamsian

Analyst · Sterne Agee.

It's Ben Shamsian for Sam. Just on the store openings, you mentioned 30 store openings in 2013, is that 30 net openings?

Mark Lemond

Management

No. That's an estimated approximate number of new store openings.

Ben Shamsian

Analyst · Sterne Agee.

Okay. But you'll have some closings, I'm assuming, there?

Mark Lemond

Management

We will have some closings. At this point in time, I'm in a position to say because we're still in negotiations with a good number of landlords regarding stores that we might anticipate closing.

Ben Shamsian

Analyst · Sterne Agee.

Got it. And was there a shift in openings in -- form third quarter into fourth quarter?

Mark Lemond

Management

This year?

Ben Shamsian

Analyst · Sterne Agee.

Yes.

Mark Lemond

Management

Yes. A number of stores are going to grand open or open right at the beginning of the fourth quarter, right in the first week of November. So we've had -- and we had a few stores, they may or may not get opened the last few days of October, which is the end of the third quarter, but we're anticipating those stores, big push in sales at grand opening in the first week or 2 of November.

Ben Shamsian

Analyst · Sterne Agee.

Got it. Got it. Okay. And were there anything shifting in terms of back-to-school from Q2, Q3 given the late back-to-schools?

Mark Lemond

Management

Not from Q2 to Q3, as much, maybe a couple things -- maybe a couple of days out of second quarter into the third quarter, but on an overalls -- in the overall scheme of things, it didn't dramatically impact, and certainly, not going to dramatically impact the third quarter.

Ben Shamsian

Analyst · Sterne Agee.

Got it. Okay. And anything else -- anything in terms of trends by brands you can -- you're excited about as we go into the back half?

Clifton Sifford

Management

As far as brands are concerned, all the key brands have been driving our athletic business, continue to get stronger. In fact, as we are now previewing and actually a bulk first quarter in athletic and previewing second quarter, the key brands that have always been our key brands continued to improve. So we're pretty excited about the athletic brands and where we're going there. From a nonathletic perspective there are no real key brands that I'm prepared to talk about on this call.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Mark Montagna with Avondale partners.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

A question about your comps for the second quarter, is it fair to say that the comps were hindered by a lack of clearance?

Mark Lemond

Management

From a total top line sales, maybe slightly, Mark. But it's not going to add -- it's not going to double it from 3 to 6. But yes, I mean we looked at our women's, and again, we made a conscious decision not to buy into sandalized footwear that sold very well in the first quarter. So potentially, yes. We look at it as if -- okay, we didn't have a lot of sandals to clear, consequently, we sold some athletic product at better prices, that was the whole intent. So it's hard to quantify what the opportunity cost was of some of the liquidation sales.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Okay. It sounds like a pretty high-class problem to have. So...

Mark Lemond

Management

Well, the strategy worked.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Yes. So could you guys give a number in terms of what percentage the second quarter ending clearance was down? I think you might have talked about total inventories but I was curious if you could tell us anything about clearance dollars?

Mark Lemond

Management

No, what we talked about -- what Cliff had mentioned and I think that I mentioned it, is that our women's sandal inventory was lower in terms of units in the inventory on hand at the end of the second quarter. And consequently, we're expecting slightly higher margins out of that category in the third quarter. We did not give any quantification of that.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Okay. And then when you were discussing shifting inventory into, say, hotter categories, how much lead time is needed for you to make that kind of shift?

Clifton Sifford

Management

To do it properly, you need approximately 6 months. Anywhere from -- depending upon the vendor, anywhere from 5 to 6 months. But you need to -- that needs to be identified upfront in order to shift the dollar so that the buyers can execute. And basically, what we have seen over the past, actually, over the past year is this increased demand for athletic products, specially in the running category, and we made a conscious decision to shift dollars to that category and out of some of the other categories that we saw as struggling.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Okay. And then just looking at boots, I'm wondering if the average unit price -- the initial average unit price on boots, I would imagine you're expecting it to be a bit higher for the second half of this year versus last year.

Clifton Sifford

Management

Absolutely. Expected to be higher. If you remember, last year in the second half, the weather gods didn't actually smile upon us. And in the fourth quarter, we sold -- we ended up selling a lot of boots especially in the month of December and January because we had to take dramatic markdowns on those. So we do expect to see higher unit costs and -- unit retail, excuse me, and higher margins.

Mark Lemond

Management

And I think, Mark, your -- let me clarify your question, was it initial price points or initial markup or was this realized price? Because we measure everything in realized price.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Yes, I mean, of course, the realized price should be higher. But I was wondering just in terms of the initial pricing, I would anticipate that's also going to be higher than last year?

Clifton Sifford

Management

It would be higher based on increased costs.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Okay. And that's the sole reason why it would be higher, it's just the costs?

Clifton Sifford

Management

Well, not necessarily, cause there's a bit -- actually been a shift in the product categories so some of the product categories that we -- that were supposed to be strong last year or the year before, we've downshifted that product and increased the buy in other categories, which were better product and higher retail. So it's a combination of higher unit costs and better product.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Okay. And then you mentioned sounds like surf skate is doing pretty well, is that being driven by some sort of apparel trend or is it just merely driven by denim sales or can you actually talk about what is driving...

Clifton Sifford

Management

I'm sorry, I didn't hear -- skate?

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Yes. The surf skate shoes.

Clifton Sifford

Management

It's -- we don't do a lot of surf skate. But with the skate product, I did mention the fact that, that was increasing for us, and I really believe that has a lot to do with color. When you look at our skate inventory, it's no longer just black and white, which is traditionally been the strong colors, there's a lot of exciting color in skate.

Mark Montagna

Analyst · Avondale partners.

Okay. And then just lastly, back to Puerto Rico, Mark, you were saying that Puerto Rico could be 12 to 15 stores, but is that based on allowing no cannibalization, therefore, you'll open more stores, or allowing for some cannibalization?

Mark Lemond

Management

That would probably be some cannibalization. And as I -- maybe I didn't make myself clear. As I tried to discuss, as we get more into, or as we learn more about where we're driving sales from, in other words, how far out each store is drawing customers from, we'll have a better handle, a better quantification on what potential cannibalization we do have. We've identified areas in the -- on the island that we think are distinct, separate retail trade areas, and that's what we're targeting right now. Now having said that, it's very possible that, when we've got a 15 or 15,000 maybe even 20,000 square foot store in certain locations, they will draw from a wider population base, a larger population base than what we've originally intended. So especially when we're talking about outlet malls. So that's why we're a little bit hesitant to say exactly how many stores we think we can get on the island. We've identified all of the really important retail hubs on the island, and we're working towards putting stores in those. And right now, we think that we could have 12 to 15 really viable stores on Puerto Rico.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Steven Martin with Slater Capital Management.

Steven Martin

Analyst

Most of my questions have been answered. just on preopening, you have expenses of management, and things like that, traveling to Puerto Rico that are not included in preopening expenses, am I right?

Mark Lemond

Management

No. We did. We included, some of that, and we didn't.

Steven Martin

Analyst

Would the non-included expense be something meaningful to talk about or is there some way...

W. Jackson

Management

Steve, what we do is we include like store management, who are actually working in the stores that will travel from another store to work to get that store up and running, that's included in the preopening costs. But when Mark, Cliff and I go to a store, we don't include that in preopening costs because we're there to monitor and learn, not working the store itself.

Jeffrey Stein

Analyst

And so if you -- and that would include the trips you guys might have been making down there pre the opening of the store, to find a store?

W. Jackson

Management

Correct, but we just include that in just regular operating cost in our general and administrative expenses.

Steven Martin

Analyst

Okay. Next year, assuming, Mark made comments about roughly 30 openings and no new markets, would it be fair to go to you -- oh, let me ask the question differently.

Mark Lemond

Management

Steve, let me clarify -- before you ask the question, let me clarify, what I'm talking about is no new major markets.

Steven Martin

Analyst

Right. Right. So if we were going to go out, if we were modeling for next year, and -- what number do you guys use as preopening on a rough basis, per store?

W. Jackson

Management

Steve, it goes all the way from these Puerto Rico stores were more expensive because advertising is more expensive. You can go in -- and if you go into an existing market, preopening costs may be in the 40 range, at the high end, it might be in the high 6 or in the low 6 figures. So it really just depends on what is the circumstances of the market, what market is it. It has literally been all over the board. A new market -- a large new market is generally at the high end of that range.

Steven Martin

Analyst

Right. But if you didn't open a large new market next year, and every -- as Mark just said, no major new markets and the rest of the stores were all infill, what kind of number would be fair for us to use?

W. Jackson

Management

Probably, the midpoint of that range would be something more reasonable than the high end of that range.

Steven Martin

Analyst

So $60,000 a store?

W. Jackson

Management

Approximately.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have nobody else left in our queue. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mark Lemond for any additional or closing remarks.

Mark Lemond

Management

Well, in closing, I just like to iterate that we're pleased with the back-to-school season thus far, and we're optimistic for the remainder of the third quarter. Our accelerated new store opening plan is right on track, and our financial results continued to validate the Shoe Carnival operating model. Thanks for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you in November.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at this time.