Release Date: April 24, 2024
For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.
Q & A Highlights
Q: It's Taylor Zick on for Brad Thomas. I just wanted to ask about cadence of the business for the quarter. You had mentioned that January was kind of weak because of weather, but some of the trends have seem to get better as the quarter has moved along. So curious to what you have seen during the quarter. And then if you have any thoughts on how April is trending.
A: Yes. I think that in this quarter, we did have the impact of weather in the middle of the month. It really had an impact, and that created issues. And on top of it, as I said, with our focus, with the consumers' interest in other areas, that also impacted. But as we went into -- towards March, we did start seeing some improvements. And in April, as we said in our press release, we have seen more interest in the consumers getting back into the home from travel and all other areas.
Q: Great. And then maybe just on the refresh of your design stores. You mentioned you're complete on most of those refreshes. I'm curious on what you're hearing from your customers or maybe your designers there. And any feedback on some of those updated products as well?
A: Yes. This is really -- it's almost like a revolution. Five years back, folks in New Jersey thought they needed something very different than in Connecticut, and forget California or Texas. But the fact is good design is good design. And we decided that we will, along with -- we have to make sure that all our key designers, that our folks are managing were on board because they have to -- they have one right in the feet. They all love what we did.
Q: I wanted to follow up on the first question and your comment about seeing improved interest in the home. If I understand your comment correctly, it seems like you're seeing some sequential improvement in March and April. Can you talk about what you're seeing year-over-year? Are the declines lessening? And I guess, what is giving you the confidence to -- kind of what green shoots, what are you seeing with the traffic to feel confident that the consumer is, in fact, kind of back purchasing for the home?
A: Yes. Cristina, the issue is really what I was referring to is the fact the improvements are from the last 6 months or 9 months because that's when we saw consumers' interest go to other areas. And before that, we are back, there was a lot of interest in the home. So you've got to compare this more to the last couple of quarters or 3 quarters at most. Then a lot of interest, COVID sort of debated. There's a lot of interest into other areas. We are now seeing that people have traveled, able to spend money in other areas, and they are now looking back into the home. But keep in mind, during the COVID period, a lot of folks did spend a lot of money on home. There's a lot of attention. So this is going to be relative to see how much better we are going to do. But certainly, we're going to do better than what we did in the last couple of quarters.
Q: Okay. And then I want to ask about the order intake, the spread between retail and wholesale was wider than what we've seen in the past couple of quarters. So is it the timing of the state department contract. Or I guess, what other factors are at play in that wholesale order intake?
A: Yes. That's all that is important. There are two important factors. One is our government business. This conflict is taking place, a lot of interest -- I mean, a lot of attention from the government into spending money on security in other areas, that's what we understand. The good news is recently now, in the last couple of weeks, they've started to pay more attention to their furniture needs. So we've seen increased business back.
Q: And then the last question I have is in relation to the SG&A dollars. You've been able to reduce those. You were down 10% year-over-year this quarter. Where are you flexing the SG&A? Is it mostly the head count reductions in the last year? Or are you also pulling back on marketing or other sort of expense buckets?
A: Yes. Actually, it is mostly head count, and that is both in manufacturing and retail. The combination of technology has really had a tremendous impact in the business we are doing. We have actually somewhat increased our marketing relative to what we did in the previous quarters. Matt, how much -- in this quarter, how much did we then got, 3%, 4%?
For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.
