Jon Barker
Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Rachel. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin by reviewing the highlights of our third quarter, and then discuss the progress on our strategic initiatives. Kevan will then go over our financial results in more detail and review our outlook. After which, we will open up the call to your questions. We are pleased with our third quarter performance as our top and bottom line results were in line with expectations. For the quarter, total sales grew 2.3% to $223.1 million versus the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 and comparable sales decreased 0.5%, which was towards the high-end of our outlook, drilling down further on the composition of comparable sales for the third quarter. Firearm units across the company were again better than the adjusted mixed data, reflecting our continued investments across the business that we believe have positioned us well to capture additional market share within the firearm category. For the third quarter, our firearm unit sales increased 8.8% versus an 8.3% decline in adjusted mix data within the states we serve. Ammunition sales decreased [ph] 3.4% in the third quarter. The primary drivers of the decrease were in: reloading components, magazine and the rimfire segments within our ammunition category. Looking to our non-hunting categories, footwear was positive 2,9% with solid performance from hiking and workboots along with waders. Fishing was positive 1.4%, driven by the core products of rods, reels and fly fishing. In the camping department, we saw a negative impact from generator sales, which were down 34% as we comped prior year natural disasters and a change in promotion from a key vendor. We achieved adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.26 for the third quarter of fiscal year 2018, which was in-line with our expectation. Our gross margins for the quarter came in towards a high-end of expectations, despite increased supply chain costs. Our operating expenses were in line with our expectations. Kevan will discuss the Q3 financial performance in greater detail in a moment. Now, I’d like to spend a few moments highlighting the progress we made in the third quarter against our key strategic priorities for 2018 beginning with our omni-channel strategy. In terms of brick-and-mortar, as previously mentioned, we opened our 11th California location in Milpitas during August, which completed our five-store growth plan or 4.4% square footage growth since the end of third quarter fiscal 2017. Looking ahead, our store site collection for fiscal year 2019 is well underway. We plan to open between four and five stores next year or between 3% and 4% square footage growth. The first of these stores is scheduled to open during summer of 2019 in Lansing, Michigan. We will continue to maintain our strategy of moderate store growth, which will allow us to further invest in our e-commerce capabilities and allocate free cash flow towards debt reduction. On the e-commerce side, we are pleased with the continued strong growth we saw within our e-commerce segment across all categories during the third quarter. I’m excited to announce today that our new front-end platform sportsmans.com is up and running in beta and in parallel with our legacy platform operating as sportsmanswarehouse.com. Launching a platform of this scale and complexity, ahead of schedule is a testament to the passion and commitment of our team and partners on this strategic initiative. Over the next several weeks, we will continue to load test and improve a new platform before transitioning all of our website visitors to the new site and URL, sportsmans.com. While still very early, we have received positive customer response to the improved usability and content on the new site. Earlier than schedule, the new platform in beta is already providing our customers the ability to shop our immense selection of firearms across our stores in real-time, and place a buy online pick up in store order with the firearm being ready for regulatory processing and pickup within hours. The buy online pickup and store orders increased approximately 75%, versus the prior year during the key Cyber weekend period that just ended. Over the coming months, we will continue to roll-out this functionality across other categories allowing us to leverage our existing store inventory and foot print along with our expensive assortment to satisfy our customers. Looking at customer acquisition and engagement, we are excited about a recently launched in-store program around our firearms category aimed to increase customer confidence in the purchase cycle, while increasing life time value of the customer relationship. We now offer a firearm service plan across a majority of our store base, which includes a concurrent warranty, as well as cleaning and accessory installation services. As a market leader in firearms, the launch of the service enhances the in-store support and further strengthens the relationship of our customers. We also continue to be pleased with our customer engagement efforts through our royalty program. Our loyalty members grew more than 23% to 1.8 million members versus Q3 of 2017 and represent approximately 46% of our revenue. We continue to utilize personalized marketing strategies for our royalty members based on information we know about their shopping preferences and look forward to increasing these efforts through innovative technologies in conjunction with our new e-commerce platform. Turning to merchandizing, our branded and exclusive products complemented by our private label offering differentiates us within the outdoor sporting goods space. On the branded side, our store-within-a-store concept shops are proving successful. This initiative drilled a significant comp store increase for Q3 with these concept shops highlighting the opportunity in how we present key brands across categories. Regarding private label, we are staying relative with our customers by providing a strong value proposition with our private label products across categories and price points. During Q3, given the opportunity we saw to fill a void within the workwear category, we launched our first workwear private label, Wasatch Outdoor gear, in key markets and are encouraged by the strong initial performance. The positive customer response to the private label extensions are a testament to our customers desire for a quality product at good value across good better and best price points. So, in summary, we are pleased with our third quarter performance and a solid progress made on our key strategic priorities. As you saw in our press release, we are narrowing our previously provided full-year guidance. Before turning the call over to Kevan, I wanted to mention a few recent key hires as we continue to strengthen our talented team. First, Steve Stoner has been brought on board as our new Senior Vice President of Human Resources. Additionally, Eric [indiscernible] has been hired as Director of Inventory Planning. Both divisions are newly created and will add tremendous value to the organization. Also, as announced earlier this month, we added Rich McBee to our Board of Directors. We are looking forward to benefiting from the expertise of his addition as we continue to capitalize on the growth opportunities that I had for Sportsman's Warehouse. Finally, I want to thank all of our hardworking team members who contributed to a productive and successful third quarter. We believe we have an attractive runway ahead as we continue to strengthen our competitive positioning and build on our market share. With that, I’ll turn the call over the Kevan to discuss our financials.