Earnings Labs

Wayfair Inc. (W)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Stephanie and I will be your host operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Wayfair Q2 2016 Earnings Release and Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to introduce Julia Donnelly, Head of Investor Relations at Wayfair.

Julia Donnelly

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for joining us. Today, we will review our second quarter 2016 results. With me are Niraj Shah, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chairman; Steve Conine, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman; and Michael Fleisher, Chief Financial Officer. We will all be available for Q&A following today’s prepared remarks. I would like to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call regarding future events and financial performance, including guidance for the third quarter of 2016. We cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will be accurate, although we believe that we have been reasonable in our expectations and assumptions. Our 10-K for 2015 and our subsequent SEC filings identify certain factors that could cause the Company’s actual results to differ materially from those projected and any forward-looking statements made today. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise these statements whether as a result of any new information, future events or otherwise. Also please note that during this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures as we review the Company’s performance. These non-GAA financial measures should not be considered replacements for and should be read together with GAAP results. Please refer to the Investor Relations section of our website to obtain a copy of our earnings release which contains descriptions of our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures. This call is being recorded and a webcast is available for replay on our IR website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Niraj.

Niraj Shah

Analyst

Thanks, Julia, and thank you all for joining this morning. We are pleased to report our second quarter results and share with you some exciting initiatives we have underway. We generated net revenue of $787 million in Q2, up 60% year-over-year and $756 million in our Direct Retail business, up 72% year-over-year. This represents Direct Retail dollar growth of $315 million versus Q2 2015, making this the third quarter in a row with the Direct Retail business has added over $300 million in revenue year-over-year. As we have noted in the past, we believe that we are taking a third to 40% of the U.S. online dollar growth in our categories. There is a secular shift underway as consumers shift home purchases away from brick and mortar stores and toward online purchases. We believe that the strength of our offering including vast product selection, beautiful visual merchandising, helpful customer service and quick shipping and delivery have positioned us as beneficiaries of that trend and allowed us to take such a significant share of the dollars as they move online. The key part of our value proposition is our ability to deliver home products to the customer quickly and conveniently. I’d like to update you on some of the strategic initiatives that we began to pursue over 18 months ago to improve and expand our domestic transportation and logistics infrastructure. Our business model has always been somewhat of a hybrid model, giving the customary seamless branded first party experience while leveraging a drop-ship model where we have leading selection yet take little to no inventory. We believe this model allows us to focus on the things we are good at, merchandising, marketing, sales and service, all underpinned by great technology, while allowing our suppliers to focus on what they are good…

Steve Conine

Analyst

Thanks, Niraj, and good morning, everyone. Managing the complexities of our logistics infrastructure would not be possible without our custom developed technology. Like all parts of our business, our logistics network was developed with technology and data at its core, and with a focus on optimizing for the home category where products come in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and can be bulkier, heavier and some times more fragile. We think there is a lot of opportunity to take our technology and data and transform the large item delivery experience for the customer. One recent new feature we added to our site is the ability for customers to schedule delivery of certain large items, such as the bedroom set or a large patio set at the time of purchase upon checkout. Rather than placing an order, receiving an estimated ship day and then subsequently receiving an email schedule of delivery date, a week or so later when the order is in transit, we allow customers to select their delivery date and time window right on the site as they complete their purchase. While the customer sees it a stress free convenient way to preplan their delivery, behind the scenes there is a lot more going on to enable this experience. Our technology takes a delivery location and product location to determine the eligibility and early as possible delivery date and then interfaces with the software of our last mile delivery facilities to provide the available delivery window to the customer. To improve the accuracy of the timeline, we leverage our ever-growing volume of big data around product ship times and supplier lead times. Customers then have the ability to adjust the delivery window to accommodate and change in their schedules from the site or from the mobile app.…

Niraj Shah

Analyst

Thanks Steve. I’d now like to update you on the performance of our international business. As a reminder, we’ve operated sites in the UK since 2008, and Germany since 2009. But in 2014 and 2015, we began laying additional ground work in Europe to deepen the product catalog and build out the supply chain. We have served Canada through our U.S. site since 2008 but in early 2016, we launched the wayfair.ca site that’s targeted specifically at the local Canadian market. With a solid offering in place in the UK and Canada, we began to ramp advertising spend in these two countries in 2016 to fuel customer acquisition and brand awareness. I am pleased to report that our international business continued to show strong growth in Q2, reaching $54 million or 7% of total net revenue. Of total international growth, international Direct Retail growth was 170% year-over-year, excluding the impact of the Australian business that we divested last year. While we continue to monitor the recent political events in the UK, our long-term vision for that business has not changed. Our German business is in earlier stage as we deployed resources there later than in the UK. Our Canadian business benefits from the logistics infrastructure we have in the United States. And we are now able to serve approximately 40% of the Canadian population with a two-day delivery as we ship an average of five trucks each day from our Kentucky warehouses. With a nearly $250 billion addressable market in Western Europe and a relatively underserved Canadian market, we continue to be excited about the market opportunity we have in the UK, Germany and Canada, and our ability to leverage the technology, ad spend and logistics playbook we have developed in the U.S. over many years. You will hear more…

Michael Fleisher

Analyst

Thanks Niraj, and good morning everyone. As always, I will highlight some of the key financial information for this quarter now, with more detailed information available in our earnings release and an updated set of charts in our investor presentation, which can be found on our IR website. In Q2, our total net revenue increased 60% year-over-year to $786.9 million. As in recent quarters, this growth was driven by our Direct Retail business, which increased 71.6% over Q2 2015 to $755.7 million. Our other business, which primarily includes revenue from our retail partners, but also includes revenue from our small media business and CastleGate logistics program, decreased as expected 39.2% over Q2 2015 to $31.3 million as we continue to ramp down our retail partner business. As Niraj mentioned, this quarter, the Direct Retail business, increased $315 million versus Q3 last year. We’re pleased to have maintained this momentum, even as we reach a larger scale and increasingly comp of a larger base of revenue. This growth has been fueled by the U.S., where we believe we’re taking between a third and 40% of the U.S. online dollar growth in our categories, and benefiting from higher brand awareness and repeat purchases. As I’ve discussed in past quarters, providing guidance can be difficult in a high growth business, where you also need the consumer to show up every day and make purchases. This quarter, we beat the top end of our revenue guidance but not by as much as we have in previous quarters. One of our challenges in striking revenue guidance is forecasting next quarter’s performance in the context of the dramatic sequential acceleration of growth from last year, on top of which we are now comping. As a reminder, the Direct Retail quarterly revenue comps in 2015 increased from…

Niraj Shah

Analyst

Thanks Michael. Before we wrap up, I’d just want to reiterate one concept that Michael mentioned. We’re running the business today with very consisting gross margins and contribution margin. With an approximate contribution margin on incremental revenue of 20%, we’ve used these incremental contribution dollars, which are large because of our large dollar growth, to make the important investments that we’ve been discussing today, in the international market markets, in our distribution and logistics network, and in new product and service offerings. The assets primarily in the form of people and real estate to drive those initiatives are largely in place now. And our continued strong growth at massive scale will continue to deliver large contribution dollar flow-through and create leverage, particularly in the OpEx line as we move into Q4 and 2017. I could not be more excited about how our business is resonating with customers. As we’ve always done, we will continue to make the right investments to deliver an exceptional experience across the board to our growing audience of new and repeating Wayfair customers. Now, having our teams fully staffed against these initiatives, we are excited to execute on our plans and deliver for our customers and drive solid financial performance. We’d now be happy to take your questions. So, I’ll turn the call over to the operator.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Neely Tamminga with Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.

Kayla Wesser

Analyst

Good morning. This is Kayla Wesser on for Neely. As we think about new customer acquisition, just wondering if you could talk more about some of your new strategies like registry and loyalty, and more specifically in terms of timing of rollout and maybe key attributes of the programs? And any sense on if these programs are being requested by your current customers? Thanks.

Niraj Shah

Analyst

Thanks, Kayla. This is Niraj. So, in terms of the new things you mentioned; so, a few different things in there. Our loyalty program, we revamped that with the launch of the private label credit card last fall in August, September timeframe of 2015, and that’s gotten off to a really nice start. So, we’ll give you an update on that in the near future, but that continues to ramp and we’ve been working on version 2 of that -- and not a revamp but additional set of things are going roll out pretty soon. In terms of the registry, we -- the soft launch for that is actually coming up shortly and that will fully launch in the early fall, which I think we’ve mentioned. And there are lot of the things we’re doing for customers to allow them to basically grow their share of wallet us are things that we’ve mentioned in the past around seasonal décor decorative, the home improvement categories, and those are initiatives we’ve been working on for a while that kind of continue to roll out as we speak. So, all these things are sort of in play now. And one of the things we tried to mention on the call was that all of these efforts were started in 2015 or before. And so, we’ve been at these for a while and we’re exciting about the time period now as that they are actually all starting to reach market. So, we sort of expect to see exciting things come from them as we move forward.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Seth Basham

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Thanks a lot, and good morning. My question is around orders per active customer. And we saw that network increase on an LTM basis but year-over-year in a quarter it was down. As you invest in all these initiatives to improve share of wallet as you just mentioned, how are you thinking about orders per active customer going forward?

Niraj Shah

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

We would expect orders per active customer over time to go up. The main metric we really look at is the dollars per active customer but the two are pretty closely related because our strategy is not to prioritize AVO over orders, it’s really to prioritize total customer share of wallet which really means you need to drive orders. So, expectation is that you should see that number rise. As you know that’s a slow number to move either up or down, because of the way it lags the current events. And so, our expectation is basically that it’ll continue to go up, albeit slowly.

Seth Basham

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Okay, that’s helpful. As it relates to AOV specifically, we saw really strong growth once again this quarter. Can you give us a sense of the drivers behind that improvement and how we should think about AOV going forward?

Niraj Shah

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Yes. So AOV, the thing about AOV is it’s really an outcome. And so, AOV gets driven by a few different things, but the primary thing AOV gets driven by is basically category mix shift. And so, I mentioned seasonal décor and decorative accents, as those scale and take some share from the total, they’ll pull down AOV, while the home improvement categories which are some of the earlier categories of the emerging ones that started to grow will pull up AOV. And then, you have some things like our international business, which in general today would pull down AOV. So, you have this mix shift of different businesses and the mix shift of categories within business that makes that number move around. This is a little bit of wide -- we were talking about the average orders per customer a minute, AOV times that at the dollars per customer per year, and that’s kind of why you keep going back to the dollars per customer per year metric.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Fassler with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Matt Fassler

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Couple of questions, first of all, when you talk about your two-year stack for Direct, it has been stacking quite consistent, 156 I believe in Q1, 152 in Q2. The high-end of your range [technical difficult] of the either range Direct would imply a little bit of deceleration in this two year stack. So, how should we think about that in terms of the management of the underlying business and what might be transpiring the op [ph] compares?

Michael Fleisher

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Yes. I think Matt that’s just us being sort of thoughtful and prudent. Obviously, it’s really tough when you’re trying to forecast against what was a massive acceleration in growth rate last year, on an already big base. And so obviously, we have the data where we’re at quarter-to-date, and as I said that’s sort of in the mid to high 50s. But at the same time I got a sort of straight guidance and knowing that I’ve still got chunk of a quarter left in front of me, and I’m working against an increasingly tough comp as the revenue accelerated throughout the quarter. So, it’s really just trying to be thoughtful about guidance setting within that context.

Matt Fassler

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Got it. And then, second question, you spoke about the investments you made in people, you talked about the initiatives that you’re engaging in although thoughtful, do you think of these as essentially revenue driving over time, or in essence revenue preserving or franchise enhancing in that way. So, do you see a return on, I guess, those operating expense dollars, the same way you very closely measured and delivered on returns on your ad expense dollars?

Niraj Shah

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks Matt. This is Niraj. I would tell you to think about them as revenue driving. So, the way to think about them is you have things like new categories or offerings like registry and home improvement, which are easier to see how those are revenue driving or internationally you see revenue driving. But, when you think about the logistics investments, they basically -- the primary thing they do is they improve lifetime value and they drive up conversion rate. And both of those are very revenue driving activities. And so, I think you have to think of everything we’re doing is revenue driving. And the thing I would say is the difference between like preserving enterprise value or defensive moves and offensive moves are largely a function of time in the sense that if you think about what the customer wants and you are very aggressive about it early, you effectively not only get the benefit of the customer reaction to that which is revenue driving but you build the most then forces others to fall behind, they then do it to try to preserve their revenue, they try copy you but it’s very hard to catch up. So, the nuance between the two I think is maybe slightly smaller than you might think of first flush.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Oli Wintermantel with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Oli Wintermantel

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Yes, good morning guys. I had a question regarding the EBITDA guidance for the next quarter. It looks like it’s a bigger step down in the third quarter year-over-year versus we saw it just in the second quarter. Can you maybe give us some insight into what drives that; is that more on the international side; more on the U.S. side, or what is driving it?

Michael Fleisher

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Yes. Hey, Oli; it’s Michael. I would say it’s really driven by both, but primarily the starting point is the continued international investment. As we noted on the call, we have 670 people in Europe now; obviously that’s a substantial investment against what is still a small albeit very fast and increasingly growing revenue base. So, I think piece number one in terms of sort of thinking about where our losses are coming from is certainly the international business. The second is as Niraj spoke about on the call, we are making some substantial investments in our distribution and logistics infrastructure here in the U.S. and that has a cost as well, as well as all these new areas that we’re investing in, the home improvement categories, registry et cetera. So, I think the place you’re going to see it is you’re going to see it increase in the OpEx line and particularly you’re going to continue to see growth on a dollar basis from Q2 to Q3 in the OpEx line. And then you’ll really start to see the leverage in that line in Q4 as we start to slow the pace of hiring in the back half of the year when we are really sort of catching up and more aggressively hiring focusing all of those categories in the first half of the year. Then, you’ll see it effectively deleverage in Q3 and then leverage in Q4.

Niraj Shah

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

If I can just chime in for a minute on that question, Oli. So, just a couple of points. If you look at the OT G&A and MMS lines added together, which are basically the OpEx line really driven by headcount in particular and you see this quarter is at 11.4% of revenue. If you look at a year ago, it was 9.4% of revenue. So, it went up 200 basis points. Now, if you look at what happened last year, you’ve seen in Q3, it actually went down from 9.4 to 8.6, so it went down 80 basis points. And at the time we mentioned that hiring was slower than we were hoping to have it, and we talked a lot about it. Well, do you think to be able to hire people you want? We said, we will. We have a pretty infrastructure in place. And then couple of quarters later, quarter later we mentioned that we now have infrastructure in place. Well, the point is what you see now is you see that we’ve hired all these folks. In this quarter we hired a net new 794 people. And so, we’ve hired all these folks, you see that line and deleverage and what is basically reflecting is that we’ve hired OpEx folks at a rate faster than revenues hired but it’s not against the revenue, it’s against the initiatives which were basically having [ph] future revenue. So, what would happen is that that line which in the third quarter of last year was 8.6% went down from the second quarter, this year, now we’ve hired all these folks but they are now on payroll, it won’t -- now they are going to be paid for full quarter. So, it’s not going to go down right away, it…

Oli Wintermantel

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

That’s helpful, thanks. And just quickly on the gross margin line, it was 23.8 in the third and fourth quarter, that’s right in line with your near-term guidance. Is that a prudent assumption for the second half at all?

Michael Fleisher

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Yes. I think we continue to target mid-23s, and we sort of said mid-23s to mid 24, we came in a little high this quarter. But also remember, Q4 is the holiday period, typically a place where sort of everyone gets sharper on price and therefore margin tightens up.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Blackledge with Cowen and Company. Your line is open.

John Blackledge

Analyst · Cowen and Company. Your line is open.

Just a couple of questions. So, for the CastleGate initiative, could you discuss the conversion rates or items that are available for delivery in one or two days versus comparable items that are available at later delivery dates? And then what percent of small parcel inventory is available in one to two-day delivery at this point? And then, I have a follow-up.

Niraj Shah

Analyst · Cowen and Company. Your line is open.

Sure. So, on the conversion rate lift, that’s not something we publically disclose but there is a meaningful conversation rate lift, when we promise that fast delivery on these larger bulkier items. In terms of the percent of our business that is going through the fast delivery network, I would basically describe it today’s high single digit percentage of our revenue is flowing for that network and we believe we’re now in a position to ramp it quite quickly.

John Blackledge

Analyst · Cowen and Company. Your line is open.

And just a quick follow-up, Michael, could you give us a sense of the second quarter EBITDA in the U.S. and international and also ad expense in the U.S. and international, and when will you break out U.S. and international results? Thank you.

Michael Fleisher

Analyst · Cowen and Company. Your line is open.

We did see greater ad leverage in the U.S. We’re not giving the specific details, because we’re not going to sort of keep doing that. But we did see greater ad leverage in the U.S., obviously offset by the investment in the international business. I think using the back of the envelop math we’ve given everybody in previous quarters; you can look at almost all of the losses this quarter as being tied to the international business. And it’s not hard to get there when you sort of add in the operating cost of that business plus the lower gross margin, lower contribution margin and less than lower -- higher ad spend. And in terms of sort of breaking out, I think we recognize that everybody has a great interest in sort of better understanding the international U.S. split, at the same time it still represents 7% of the business albeit one that’s growing very quickly. And so we’re carefully considering sort of what’s the right time and the right format to give additional detail.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Graham with Canaccord. Your line is open.

Michael Graham

Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you. Your old framework that we had been discussing around margin progression in the out years was sort of a couple of hundred basis points of expansion per year. You’ve got a lot of investing going on. I’m wonder if you have any comment on that just philosophically; you took a step backwards in profitability in Q3; would you be willing to do that in the future? And then related to that, the two things that could extend this framework of investing beyond what you’re talking about are more products and geographies beyond, and I am just wondering if you can comment on how you’re thinking about those possibilities.

Niraj Shah

Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open.

Sure. Let me start with the expansion categories and geographies. On categories, we’re very focused on just being a home player. So, when we talk about our categories, we talk about furniture, décor, and we talk about the finished parts of home improvement which are like plumbing and lighting, flooring, these are the categories that our consumer, that she is picking herself, not things for the builder, we talk about house-wares and kitchen. So, we’re not terribly interested in expanding that list. So, if you think about the ones that we have talked that we’re pushing into, they are effectively just flushing out that list, but we’re not really looking to change that list, if that makes sense. So, don’t look forward to us entering media or parallel or these adjacent categories. We’re very focused on home and within the construct of what I just described. In terms of geographies, we’re very much focused on the four countries we operate in today. So the United States and Canada, North America and in Europe it’s the UK and Germany. And those are very large markets that have a lot of opportunity. And as they continue to scale up, it will open up for other geographic opportunities, which are adjacent. But to be honest, right now, we’re focused entirely on those forward geographies. So, I would think about kind of the near-mid-term oriented around that construct where we believe there is a huge amount of opportunity in those geographies with the home offering and that’s absolutely what we’re focused on. In terms of the margin expansion question that you started with, the way I would describe it, the way I believe that we’ve always said is that we’re very focused on getting to free cash flow positive, which is the way operated…

Michael Graham

Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open.

That was the exactly what I was looking for. Thank you, Niraj.

Michael Fleisher

Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open.

Thanks. Operator, I think we have time for maybe one more question.

Operator

Operator

Certainly. Your last question comes from the line of Chris Horvers with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Chris Horvers

Analyst

I just want to understand, as you put back the two-year stack in the different business, can you talk about what the experience then in the U.S. and then is there a U.S. only? And then, is there a point in time, that you can look out to say, international business is X percent of revenues today, but once it gets to a certain scale that backs actually then the two-year stack to a higher level? Thanks.

Michael Fleisher

Analyst

Yes, Chris, I think we -- obviously, we’re not -- we’ve given you the international growth; it’s obviously on a small base. This was a 170% that we try to do the math to exclude the partner business as well as the Australian business that we divested to see how to sort of clean math, which you’ll need because that detail isn’t in the Q. And so -- but it’s obviously still a small pieces of the whole. The U.S. business continues to chug along at a sort of a substantial growth rate, because it’s vast, vast majority of the business. I do think that if some point in time that business has very long legs, we’re tiny compared to the market opportunity. You’ll remember roundly, the Western European market is $250 billion like the U.S. business. So, there is a ton of room to go versus the $50 million business we have there today. So, I think the opportunities exist to scale and then be a meaningful sort of accelerating growth contributor exists but it’s got a long way to go to sort of get to the scale we can outstrip what continues to be extraordinary growth on a massive base of the U.S. business.

Niraj Shah

Analyst

I think that’s a good summary. We mentioned that the direct international business grew 170% in the quarter, and despite that it ticked up to 7% sales. So, can see the relative size of it, it’s going to be a drag. I think the way to think about it is, if you think about these things independently, and I know you guys ask hey, at some point, can you give us the full segment financials and what have you, so would be helpful. And we’re aware of that. You have these different exciting growth things going on, you’ve got these international businesses where you can’t treat it as one thing, you are really need to think about Canada separate from the UK, separate from Germany. In the U.S., you have wayfair.com which is our dominant brand in the U.S. but you have other brands Joss & Main and AllModern, and they are all on different growth trajectories. And so, there is a lot of things going on that all add together to give you this aggregate growth number. And that’s why you can see these different trends in terms of how it’s going to play out over time being perhaps a little more volatile than if you’re kind of steadily growing at a few percent a year off the expansion of new units being added that are fairly predictable. But the opportunity is I think much lower because of the disruptive nature of the internet and the fact that at the speed at which the share is changing hand. So, we’re certainly very focused on that. We obviously run the business in a very granular way to make sure that each individual effort and the funding we’re giving it is paying off. And then, when you add it up, these patterns that to be fair kind of hard from the -- you have I would say to model out precisely, but there are certainly very exciting growth things underway that we expect to see flow into results over time.

Michael Fleisher

Analyst

Great, thanks everybody for joining the call today. And we look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Niraj Shah

Analyst

Bye, guys.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.