Q1 2023 Signet Jewelers Ltd Earnings Call
[music].
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by welcome to the Signet Jewelers first quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings call. My name is Irene and I will be coordinating this event.
I would like to turn the conference over to our host.
Vinnie Sinisi senior Vice President of Investor Relations <unk>. Please go ahead.
Okay.
Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter earnings conference call on the call today are Cigna, CEO Jen address those and chief financial and strategy Officer, Joan Hilson. During today's presentation, we will make certain forward looking statements any statements that are not historical facts are subject to a number of.
Risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially we urge you to read the risk factors cautionary language and other disclosure in our annual report on Form 10-K quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on form 8-K, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly update forward looking statements in light of new informed.
Asian or future events during the call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for further discussion of the non-GAAP financial measures as well as reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures investors should review the news release, we posted on our website at Www Dot Signet jewelers.
Dot com slash investors with that I will turn the call over to Jenna.
Thank you Ronny and thanks to all of you on the call with us today.
Before I discuss our first quarter results I'd like to take a moment to thank our signet team.
Our team continues to strengthen their capabilities in every part of our business and to execute with brilliance quarter. After quarter. They are cygnets greatest competitive advantage and a never ending source of inspiration for me.
There are three key messages that we want to focus on today.
First using our scale, we have structurally improved our margin profile and are confident that we can deliver annual double digit operating margin year after year.
We are widening competitive advantages that drive share growth based on critical capabilities, we've been developing over the past few years.
These capabilities give us the agility to respond to the kinds of macroeconomic challenges that we saw during the first quarter.
And third we remain sharply focused on shareholder returns, while also continuing to invest in our business.
Our signet team delivered $1 $8 billion in revenue this quarter, an increase of nearly 9% compared to last year, including two 6% of organic growth, which excludes diamond direct.
And despite the macro environment, we expanded our non-GAAP operating margin 60 basis points above last year to 10, 6%. This quarter, we've improved our margin profile with a rigorous cost disciplined mindset, that's enabled us to significantly rationalize our store fleet.
And leverage the investments we've made in connected commerce and data analytics.
All underscored by the strength of our balance sheet.
Our growth is broad based we're continuing to grow across all four of our where to play strategies.
In our big businesses, we delivered more than $80 million more in total bridal sales than in Q1 last year.
Headings are revenue drivers for signet and an opportunity to establish lifetime relationships, not only with brides and grooms, but entire wedding parties.
They're a critical point of entry, which we are capitalizing on.
And accessible luxury and value Jared grew nearly 19% at price points above $3000 dime.
Diamond direct over delivered our acquisition expectations with $106 million in revenue this quarter.
In services, we delivered more than 15% growth in revenue compared to last year, resulting in operating margin expansion, we are expanding our service offerings to deepen customer relationships quarter over quarter.
And in digital 52% of online orders are now leveraging our flexible fulfillment capabilities.
For orders that we fulfilled through ship from store or buy online pickup in store. The average order value grew more than 24% this quarter.
Our ability to serve customers whenever wherever and however, they want to shop with us is an increasingly important and differentiating strength.
We can see the advantages of our diversified banner portfolio in these results.
For example, we are capturing consumer demand in bridal and accessible luxury which offset softness in the value tier where consumers are more impacted by inflation and economic pressures.
We leveraged our portfolio Similarly last year, where in the value segment banter captured stimulus spending by leaning into self purchase trends among value customers and outpaced the growth of our other banners as a result.
We believe no other company in the jewelry industry has this same ability to adjust dynamically to market conditions across its banner portfolio and continue to grow even in the face of challenges to a particular part of the business.
The point I want to focus on now for the balance of my comments is not only what we're delivering but how because how we're delivering these results, especially in a challenging macro environment is key to our confidence that we can sustain our performance.
So, let's take a closer look at our how to win capabilities starting with consumer inspired.
We use data analytics to capture consumer inspired insights that drive virtually every aspect of our business I'd like to share four quick examples of how we're doing this.
First we are navigating the impact of inflation and economic pressure on value shoppers.
February traffic was up compared to last year, but as we anticipated we saw a deceleration in traffic in late March as we began to lap the impacts of last year's stimulus alongside heightened inflation and the war in Ukraine. These.
These factors led to softer demand at lower price points across our banners and.
In response, we planned ahead, we've leveraged our scale vertical integration capabilities and strategic vendor relationships to value engineer pieces that made jewelry more affordable for all our customers. We are also selectively increased prices this quarter, but well below.
So the inflation, we've seen overall in the industry proving that our scale and competitive advantages enable us to provide customers with value that is hard to match while at the same time protecting our margins.
Second we've paired up are accessible luxury assortment to capture demand from customers, who want higher quality metals and larger carrots, and who continued to drive growth in our highest price points. We saw this opportunity coming into Valentine's day and beyond we tailored our.
Accordingly, and even with some softening in the value tier in traffic, we held cygnets conversion rate roughly flat to last year during the quarter Cygnets average transaction value in North America was up more than 19% to last year and up nearly 30% of fiscal 'twenty.
Before the pandemic.
Third we've curated a breath of external credit and payment options that go beyond traditional financing, we think about financial services as an opportunity to provide our customers with a range of consumer inspired options, which we know our customer base values, especially.
Molly and uncertain economic environments, our fully outsourced financial services model is designed for this kind of service and agility.
A fourth example of being consumer inspired is our commitment to lead the jewelry industry in corporate citizenship and sustainability, which we know is important to our customers and to our team members as well.
We just released our fiscal 'twenty, two citizenship and sustainability report, which details our progress.
Our entire team has embraced our commitment to citizenship and sustainability 90.
Percent of our team so as they take great pride in what they do every day.
It is this passion and pride that unlocks discretionary effort inside our company and our goals attract consumers who want to buy from a company like ours. One that is willing to take a stand and be the change we want to see in our world.
The key point here is that we are inspired by customers' needs and expectations.
When we respond in ways that deeply matter to them, we grow our business and we grow share.
Connected commerce is the second how the wind capability I want to emphasize.
When we talk about connected commerce, we are referring to jewelry shoppers crossing channels seamlessly we've been working to make this a desired shopping habit in jewelry and already two thirds of our customers cross channels in their shopping journey.
We continue to invest and innovate to make that journey delightful and seamless we've been focusing on our appointments capability. For example, the volume of appointments and related revenue has more than doubled year over year.
Further our jewelry consultants are assisting customers with scheduling their six month warranty appointments, leading to an increased flow of service engagements about 21% of our appointments are scheduled through client, telling which is important because <unk> has almost double when scheduled through client telling.
And conversion is 33% higher.
Loyalty is another aspect of our connected commerce presence, we can offer our loyalty incentives at scale and across channels in ways that no other jewelry retailer can.
This is what we're doing with our new vault rewards program. After piloting last fall is now available at every Jared location is in pilot at Kay and is visibly promoted both online and in store.
Walt members spend over 60% more on a transaction than our average customer return.
Return for repeat purchases sooner and spend nearly 15% more on their first repeat purchase.
Extended service agreements are also part of our connected commerce presence they drive repeat visits create opportunities for repeat purchases and drive lifetime value, which is also true of our repair services. We grew repair revenues, 20% this quarter compared to last year.
Our turnaround time is now steadily below a week compared to an industry average of about two to three weeks.
We just recently rolled out our virtual repair tracker, which allows customers to follow each step of the repair process online by text or E mail.
Our ability to provide customers with quick turnaround and process transparency is driving satisfaction scores as well as our revenues. Our Q1 NPS score for repair improved four points to last year with our strongest improvement in time to compete.
Fleet and strongest overall rating in quality.
The key point and all of this is that connected commerce is the future of jewelry retail and a significant driver of share growth.
With every investment we make in this space, we continue to widen the digital note around our business.
Our final how to win capability is our culture of agility and innovation anticipating and responding to change is a competitive advantage at signet and is continuing to grow stronger.
Our agility is underscored by our financial health, we have the data and the liquidity to make precise spending adjustments throughout the year in response to customer demand, while staying sharply focused on margin. This applies to spending pools, such as store labor and advertising.
Which we managed dynamically by leveraging our scale and speed, we can make projections and place orders far enough out that our strategic vendors can consistently meet our needs. So we can meet customer demand.
This in turn helps us manage our in stock and ensures that we have the right assortment at the right level of inventory at the right prices to provide superior customer value throughout the year.
Financial agility is also the driver of our share repurchase program supported by the confidence we have in our operating model.
We don't believe the market is reflecting the sustainability of our performance. So we are investing in signet shares.
We are confident these investments will drive strong returns for shareholders.
We repurchased more than 4 million shares in Q1, decreasing our outstanding shares by roughly 7% in ways large and small are team is moving with accelerating agility and passion for innovation in every part of our business.
What I hope you can see is that what's working at Signet has every reason to keep working.
We remain focused on what we can control such as our merchandize assortment tailored marketing and cost disciplines.
And we are committed to respond with agility to forces beyond our control such as prolonged periods of heightened inflation the war in Ukraine and changes in fundamental consumer spending patterns.
Or how to win capabilities are advancing the macro environment. We are delivering in right. Now is a pressure test that demonstrates the value and reliability of these strengths and advantages.
We are widening the moat around our business, a moat that differentiate and position signet as an emerging and sustainable growth leader and best in class jeweler.
I'll close with one final point earlier today, we announced that Signet has agreed to a $175 million financial settlement.
This concludes a nearly 15 year long legal matter alleging unfair pay and promotion practices against one of our divisions Sterling jewelers.
This is another example of how we've transformed our company over the past four and a half years.
We have been taking a systematic approach to eliminating all overhangs on our company.
We've substantially reduced our debt to achieve a healthy trailing 12 months leverage ratio of less than two times.
We fully outsourced our financial service offerings.
We've provided much clearer financial targets, including our path to $9 billion in sales and our commitment to an annual double digit operating margin.
We completed the buyout of substantially all of our UK pension plan obligations.
We implemented a $15 minimum wage to retain talent and limit uncertainty around wage inflation, while also improving employee benefits leadership development and training.
And now we've settled this nearly 15 year old legal matter. So we can continue our focus on an inclusive and highly engaged culture that will allow our company to truly shine.
We're able to do all of this in line with our purpose of inspiring love because of the balance sheet strength, we've created through our transformation.
I am proud of the changes we've made to signet culture over the past several years chain.
Changes that ensure pay equity diverse hiring and promotion practices and abundant personal growth opportunities.
Interventions like these have earned us recognition as a great place to work certified company for the second year in a row recognition by Bloomberg's gender equality index for four years in a row and most recently inclusion on the human rights campaign corporate equality index.
D Eni diversity equity and inclusion is reflected in our corporate sustainability goals as well and we believe it to be a key business driver as well as a differentiator.
Our team member satisfaction ratings are the strongest and signet history and are improving year over year.
I believe these changes among many others are important drivers of the growth that we're delivering.
I'm very proud of the company we are today.
On that note I'll turn the call over to John .
Thanks, Jen and good morning, everyone.
I'd like to reiterate today's key messages.
First we are operating with a sustainable cost structure that we believe can deliver annual double digit operating margin year after year.
We will continue investing and innovating to deepen our capabilities and widen our competitive advantages to drive share growth.
And third we continue to prioritize shareholder return alongside continued investment.
Now turning to the quarter's results our team performed once again delivering total sales of $1 8 billion growth of $150 million to last year.
This included growth in our comp base, which was driven by U K performance as we anniversary lockdown as well as more than $100 million in revenue from Diamond direct.
Today, we are a transformed company with a sustainable operating structure and we continue to meet our customers' growing demand for high quality and innovative product assortments at higher price points.
Nearly all banners delivered their strongest growth at price points above $3000 in both bridal and fashion.
Our data driven consumer insights helped us to anticipate and plan for this trend and we delivered for our customers this quarter.
In bridal growth included wedding and anniversary bands, reflecting this years 40 year high watermark for wedding.
Our scale and tailored bridal assortments enabled this growth and was effective alongside the expected year over year moderation.
An engagement ring sales engagements are expected to return to pre pandemic levels.
In fashion, we continue to see growth in gold with particular strength at higher price points.
In services, we also delivered growth with higher attachment rates of service plans, coupled with the growth at higher price points. We also saw growth in our care and repair services as more customers returned to public shopping spaces.
Altogether, our uniquely diversified portfolio remains a competitive advantage and a variety of macro environments.
Simply stated we range from a value offering and banter to achievable luxury and Jared Diamond's direct and James Allen.
non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was $728 million or 39, 6% of sales down 60 basis points to last year.
This reflects similar merchandise margin for last year for our organic banners and the strength of diamonds bridal business, which carries a lower relative margin.
It also reflects the absence of Covid related tax abatements within our UK operation.
non-GAAP SG&A for the quarter was $533 million or 29% of sales a 130 basis point improvement to last year, reflecting the impact of our enhanced credit agreements and continued cost discipline, which accommodated.
Initiatives.
Notably the investment in talent that we made in the second half of last year.
First quarter non-GAAP operating income of $194 6 million is up more than $25 million to last year.
Accordingly, we expanded our non-GAAP operating margin, while lapping a hyper growth year, delivering a 10, 6% margin up 60 basis points.
These results were above expectations and demonstrate our team's diligent cost discipline and agile execution. We note that GAAP operating income was impacted by charges that are not reflective of signet ongoing operations.
Let's turn now to the balance sheet.
Our strong balance sheet creates resiliency and enables us to anticipate.
Innovate and operate with high levels of agility.
We ended the quarter with $2 $2 billion in inventory up $200 million to last year driven substantially by the addition of diamond's direct to our base. This.
This is reflected in our cash used for operating activities this quarter of $136 million compared.
Compared to an inflow of $161 million in the prior year.
Our inventory efficiency remains healthy with turns above one five times on a rolling 12 month basis and clearance and sell down penetration is nine points lower to this time last year. This gives us room for new products and gives us the flexibility for further innovation in our product.
Matt.
We ended the quarter with $928 million in cash.
This cash level provides us the flexibility to defend against macro uncertainty and continue deploying capital consistent with our stated priorities.
First investing in our business, including further banner differentiation enhancements to digital capabilities and flexibility to act on opportunistic potential M&A.
Second to maintain our leverage ratio within our target of less than three times.
And third to return capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases to that end, we completed $318 million of share repurchases this quarter, including $50 million related to the completion of our ASR.
And we have expanded our share repurchase authorization by $500 million to a total remaining authorization of approximately $645 million.
In summary, our balance sheet strength is a direct result of our investment in capabilities and the execution of our high functioning team.
We have significant liquidity and we have greater financial agility.
Compared to pre pandemic fiscal 'twenty.
We delivered more than six times, the Q1 operating margin and have increased our operating profit eight fold.
This improvement to our performance is sustainable and built on the foundation of our investments to differentiate our banners implement connected commerce shopping capabilities and elevate our use of data analytics across our business to that end, we continue to expect capital investment.
<unk> of up to $250 million this year.
With that let me turn to our fiscal 'twenty three financial guidance.
We are reaffirming our expectation for full year total revenues in the range of eight three to 825 billion and non-GAAP operating income in the range of $921 million to $974 million.
Within that we've reflected our view of the continued pressure on consumer discretionary spend resulting from inflation as well as a more pronounced return of consumer spend around experiences and travel.
Additionally, we factored in the continued impact of diamonds direct into our merchandise mix as well as investments in banner differentiation and technology like cloud computing.
Offsets to these includes diamonds direct efficient operating structure as well as further cost savings relating to our enhanced credit agreements indirect procurement and labor planning.
All said the operating margin implied is 11, five to 11, 8% reflecting year over year expansion at the high end of our guidance and slight degradation at the low end.
We expect fiscal 'twenty three non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $12 74 to.
To $13 47 per share.
Turning to the second quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $1 79 to $1 eight 2 billion.
With non-GAAP operating income in the range of $188 million to $204 million.
Reflecting our ability to continue driving growth while defending against the shift in consumer spending that we expect to play out across the year.
To be very clear our fiscal 'twenty three outlook factors in a level of pressure on the consumer similar to what we're currently experiencing our outlook does not anticipate a material worsening of macro economic factors, which could impact consumer spending patterns and have.
The impact on our business performance.
That said, we are committed to controlling what we can such as our merchandise assortment tailored marketing and cost discipline.
Before we turn to your questions I'd like to reinforce our core message. Our continuing performance is demonstrating that our strategies are working and we have a proven and sustainable business model.
We're competing where we're best positioned to grow profitably and we're leveraging our headwind capabilities to create and widened competitive advantages that drive long term growth.
Market share gains and value for our shareholders again compared to just three years ago, we delivered more than six times. The Q1 operating margin and have increased our operating profit eight fold and at the heart of this organization are the extraordinary team members who remain.
Committed to our purpose and remained resilient in the face of macro challenges to every one of our team members I. Thank you for your partnership and tenacity and bringing our strategies to life.
On that note, we'll be happy to take your questions.
Okay.
Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question. Please do not hesitate to press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad now.
In case you changed your mind. Please press star followed by the number two when preparing to ask a question. Please make sure. Your phone is on mute locally also due to the high number of questions registered and the limited amount of time participants are kindly asked to resume to only one question per person.
Our first question comes from Ike <unk> from Wells Fargo. Your line is open you may ask your question.
Hey, Thank you congrats everyone.
I guess I wanted to start.
High level I mean, I think you gave some really interesting color to begin the call, but any more insight on how you guys are essentially delivering topline in this environment I think there is a lot of concern around.
The revenue base you guys have any overall jewelry category.
Covid beneficiary and how much give back or could.
Could you just talk about the confidence you have in that sustainability, both margin and just the overall revenue brings I think that'd be very helpful.
Sure Ike thanks, very much for that question.
I'm happy to dimension, our sales performance for the quarter and what I hope that you will take away is that signet is not a COVID-19 story.
We have successfully executed on our multi year turnaround for this company and we believe this quarter is evidence of three key competitive advantages that we continue to invest in and are widening.
The first and important one is our uniquely differentiated portfolio of banners.
We're able to meet the demand for a wide spectrum of customer shopping journeys.
Last year when stimulus was in the market, we leaned into sell purchase trends and gifting and we're able to achieve strong results with value customers in that environment. This year, we're leaning into wedding day merchandise and higher price point assortment and so we're able to.
<unk> dynamically change our focus within our portfolio.
Focusing on you know at this point in time, the customers who were in the market and I think that's something that can continue for us.
Secondly, I don't think there's any question now that connected commerce is the future of jewelry. This is a category that was slow to move to virtual sales, but we've been leading that effort and we are still in the early days of what I would call friction as frictionless shopping.
But we have the physical footprint, the digital capabilities and the supply chain efficiency to provide journeys that cross channels and we're seeing that play out now two thirds of signet customers are interacting with us both virtually and in a store before they purchase.
And then the third thing as Joan really emphasized in her remarks is that we have worked diligently to create a flexible and sustainable cost structure, we're leveraging our scale our digital capabilities the strategic vendor relationships that we have to invest in our business and to widen our competitive.
<unk> advantages.
And really meet customers at all points on their shopping journey in unique and differentiated and meaningful ways. So these are these are sustainable competitive advantages as a sustainable operating margin and I think that's why we are able to deliver the results.
That we did in a period like retail saw in the first quarter.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Paul <unk> from Citi. Paul Your line is open.
Hey, Thanks, guys.
You guys said a couple of times it.
Youre intending to keep the double digit EBIT margins over time.
Wanted to hear kind of again.
What gives you the confidence to be able to do that and I guess you know what I asked that question.
I'm also.
Looking at your your guidance and talking about how youre not expecting any sort of a deterioration in the consumer environment maybe.
He can answer that question just in the context of what if you did see some some weaker performance.
At a high level other consumer broad based a weakening or within the jewelry category.
It gives you the confidence that you can sustain that double digit EBIT margin over overtime.
Thanks for that question, Paul our confidence in an annual double digit operating margin is based on structural changes that we've made in our business as well as the agility that we've created within our business just to remind you the large.
The structural changes that we've made or the optimization of our physical footprint.
We've reduced our store fleet roughly 20% since the beginning of our transformation and this has reduced our fixed costs such as occupancy and again allows us to leverage those costs as we deliver top line growth.
Further.
Another structural change with the enhancement of our credit agreements and it's driving notable improvement within our SG&A.
As well as we've removed consumer credit risk from our balance sheet.
And we've also created agility through variable spend levers like marketing spend and the mix of marketing channels that are enabled by our <unk>, our data analytics program and as well our labor hours and our ability to condense store operating hours more so in off mall formats has really enabled.
<unk>.
Good change for us.
And the ability to leverage our cost base.
And then we've developed muscles important muscles in response to Covid, we use zero based budgeting across our business every expense is justified and supported Theres no a use it or lose it mindset, it's rather take only what you need.
And we've empowered our teams to hunt cost savings throughout our organization and it's given us the capability to react quickly to your question to customer demand deterioration and deliver on our own expectations.
Our cost structure takes advantage of our scale across channel shopping and data driven insights to deliver that double digit operating margin.
Nearly a flat to positive topline growth.
So when you think about the guidance that we're giving we're showing we're reflecting what we see and in.
Occurring in our business today in terms of topline performance and we're leveraging our differentiated banner portfolio, which.
It runs from a value offer up to achievable luxury as I mentioned, so with that flexibility within our consumer base. We feel that we can bring assortments target our marketing and continue this agility to deliver an operating margin rate.
Yeah.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, due to the high high number of questions registered and the limited time, we will.
Kindly asked to resume to only one question per person.
Our next question comes from Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of Bank of America Lorraine. Your line is open.
Good morning.
Wanted to focus on sales the guidance implies some acceleration in sales growth versus pre pandemic levels for the rest of the year and I wanted to hear your view on what areas of the business you might improve for you to hit that guidance.
Hi, Lorraine.
They are really a couple of key areas and these have been called out as part of our <unk>.
Where to play strategies.
One is we're leaning into services. The good news about that is it also comes with a higher margin.
And we saw some great results in the quarter repair was up substantially as customers returned to brick and mortar we've been driving.
Repair through.
Now using client telling an appointment booking.
And to reach out to customers to come in for their six month warranty checks, we're seeing good attachment rates of our extended service agreements both in store and online. So services has been I think a growing strength for us and I was particularly pleased to see the improvements in <unk>.
Our NPS.
We're now down to about a week for repair versus an industry average of typically around three weeks.
So it is a competitive advantage and <unk>.
Similar to what it's like when you check your bag and get on an airplane you can see where it is at every stage in the process. That's what we're now doing with repair so customers can feel a level of comfort and trust us were.
Repairing their cherished piece.
Needle piercing is another great expanded service for us alongside loyalty. So we've got some traditional services that were growing and some new non comp ones that we've brought in this year.
The second area I'd highlight is leaning into accessible luxury we've really substantially tiered up portions of our portfolio, particularly in Jared, but we see it also in Kay and zales and so we're able to serve a wider range of customers.
That's working really well for us across all of our banners price points above $3000 were growing.
Broadly and so that's something we'll continue to do at the same time, we're working with our vendors to leverage.
Existing diamond inventory that they have to value engineer products just to make sure that our products are very affordable for customers.
At a time when their discretionary spend is.
Is that a premium so I think we've got a number of strategies, but particularly services and higher price points have been working well for us.
Thanks.
Yeah.
The next question comes from Mauricio Serna from UBS Mauricio Your line is open.
Great Good morning, and thanks for taking my question.
Just wanted to ask about.
Trends in the North America business, maybe if you could provide some commentary on what you've seen throughout the quarter.
Talked about traffic, but maybe what happened in March and April and what have you seen so far in May and I guess also just to that point like what does that are there.
Q2 guidance sales guidance implies.
The North America business.
Just a quick one on on diamonds direct.
Should we expect a similar impact in gross margin.
No.
Second then.
Third quarter, and maybe a little bit in fourth quarter, and like what kind of impact should we see gross margin come about.
So I'll I'll take your first question Mauricio.
We're seeing some puts and calls are basically on what's going on in the environment as we talked about in our remarks, we saw very strong traffic.
Valentine's day performance, we leaned into higher price points, we are leveraging our marketing research our consumer data to understand in advance of key purchasing occasions, what customers will be looking for who will be in the market and.
Now multiple holidays in a row, we've really been able to predict with a high level of accuracy, what kind of assortment, we ought to have in store and available online.
And Thats been working we did see a falloff on traffic.
About the time, we started to lap stimulus so call that mid to late March and particularly at lower price points. So.
That was as expected with stimulus.
The other thing that is as expected is customers returning to <unk>.
Travel and entertainment.
As a discretionary spend item.
The things that are probably worse than we expected is the level of inflation and the continuing war in Ukraine, but we've been able to use the agility that John talked about of how we manage.
We've done structural cost savings that have fundamentally improved our operating model.
Margin and flexibility, but we also are using data to manage our variable costs better than we've been able to in the past the two notable ones being store labor hours and advertising.
So I think we've been able to be agile in that environment in terms of for the year. We continue to expect the jewelry category to be down versus last year.
The range of low to mid single digits.
So I think in that environment.
But what we're guiding to overall is some slight growth in our business and we feel like it's the strategic capabilities and widening competitive advantages that are allowing us to deliver that and just to.
Bond to your mother's day question Mauricio we saw a continuation of the themes that we just mentioned.
In the first quarter, but we continue to say as average transaction transaction values were above last year, while traffic levels were below so we're really driving conversion on the traffic that we do have.
And we're as we said higher price points are driving up the average transaction value. So our Q2 guidance implies the same deceleration of traffic, but again driving the higher price points leveraging the breadth of our assortment.
And our marketing capabilities to achieve the topline guidance that we've.
Included in our Q2 guidance.
Then when you think about gross margin.
We're very pleased with the diamond direct performance and Theyre, largely bridal and substantially bridal and that carries a lower relative margin gross margin. However, they are operating structure does apply.
<unk>.
Margin expansion as well so it's a very good formula for us and we're very pleased with how the diamonds direct business is performing and we do expect that to.
The margin impact to continue into the second quarter and then if you move to the year.
We're providing guidance that has bottomline expansion at the higher end, but it's also giving us the ability to have flexibility with promotion flexibility with.
Taking action and the ability that Gina mentioned.
To continue to drive leverage in our cost base as well so.
Really feel I'd, just remind you that the back half of the year the comps.
Are not as high as they were in the front half of the year and the prior year. So.
There are some.
<unk> that we're dealing with now as well.
Yeah.
Our next question comes from Dana Telsey from Telsey Advisory Group Dana Your line is open.
Thank you good morning, everyone.
Do you think about the lower price point categories, where there is softer demand how do you dimensionalize the percent of your assortment from lower price point versus higher price point is it different in North America versus overseas and then when you just look at North America and that the average price average transaction value.
<unk> up nearly 30% to 2020 are you taking price increases how much how much are they and how do you see the pricing environment go forward. Thank you.
Yes. Thanks for the question Dana So what we're doing is continuing to see and leverage our drive our tailored assortments in the higher price points. So we have the agility as I mentioned our inventories are.
The healthiest they've been in 10 years in our clearance and <unk>.
<unk> inventory is down nine points, what that gives us the flexibility to bring in newness and work with our vendor base with a very strong relationships that we have to bring in the innovation that we need to continue to fuel the higher price points in our assortment. So that's a critical lever.
For us as we said, we see it we see the lower price points across our banners, including.
The UK business, but what's important is that the view this year that there's weddings or at a 40 year high.
And we see benefit within our assortment across.
Serving the the bridal party as well as guests and we see anniversary.
Up as well.
Even in the higher price points in that category, so the leverage across our assortment and our ability to tailor and moves quickly is what will enable us to respond to the consumer demand.
Yeah.
The one other thing I might add on that is our financial services portfolio is a competitive advantage in an environment like this.
We are fully outsourced in that portfolio.
We have a private label credit card, but we now also over the last few years have added leasing we have split pay so we've really become kind of payment option agnostic. If you will but it's a way that we can offer customers.
Many different choices.
Choices in terms of how they finance their jewelry purchases.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question. Please do not hesitate to pass star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad now in case you changed your mind. Please press star followed by the number two when preparing to ask a question. Please make sure your phone is on mute locally.
So due to the high number of questions registered and the limited amount of time you are kindly asked to resume to only one question per person.
Our next question comes from Jim Sanderson from Northcoast Research Jim Your line is open.
Okay. Thank you and congratulations on a great start to the new fiscal year I'm. Just wondering if we could drill down on the uncertainty that I think most retailers are feeling given the global macroeconomic context, maybe you could walk through how each of your banners are most released at risk. If there is a deterioration in consumer demand.
In the United States or Europe , if these economies move closer to a recession reduced celebration and growth and I'm, especially I'm wondering how diamond direct how you would quantify that banner in this context.
So I think as we were saying this year is one of a number of different puts and calls I think the customer that is most challenged in this environment is the value seeking customer. So as we said we have a.
<unk> of strategies to leverage our scale.
And the breadth of our financial services offering in our assortment to make our product more affordable for that customer.
And then we're leaning into things that are enduring I mean, one of the one of the great things about the jewelry category is that it has tended to perform well in recessionary periods because number one there are still important and meaningful.
Events that customers want to celebrate and secondly, it's a product that has.
Strong material value the gemstones, the diamond the precious metal hold their value.
Customers see and recognize that so we're leaning into things like weddings with weddings at a 40 year high we've seen an increase in wedding bands anniversary bands Bridal party jewelry gift for the bride and groom those kinds of things and we've really.
Been leveraging the point of market entry strategy that we have with engagement rings to be able to contact and clientele with the people who are getting married this year, who purchased a ring from us.
And we're staying.
Staying agile on on serving value oriented customers as best we can in this environment I think the.
Other thing just to reinforce is the flexibility that we built into our cost structure.
So that we can move up and down.
On on how we allocate those costs in this kind of an environment what I'm, what I'm really pleased about frankly is our ability to continue to invest to widen our competitive advantages. This is the kind of environment that our market leading company like ours can really leverage to our competitive advantage is we have the wherewithal to.
<unk> to invest in.
And that's kind of an environment.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached our time limit allocated for the Q&A session. Therefore, I would like to hand back to the management team for any closing remarks.
I want to thank you all for joining US today I Hope you will see from our results that our strategies are creating sustainable competitive advantages that our people are inspired and driven to win and while there is much more work still to do we are committed.
Today, and we have confidence that we are building a best in class sure. Thank you very much.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for being with US today have a lovely day ahead you may disconnect your lines now.
Okay.
Yeah.