Q3 2024 Citi Trends Inc Earnings Call

Speaker Change: Nitza McKee, Heather Plutino, Kenneth Seipel, Nitza McKee, Heather Plutino, Kenneth Seipel, Heather Plutino, Kenneth Seipel, Nitza McKee, Heather Plutino, Kenneth Seipel, Nitza McKee, Heather Plutino, Kenneth Seipel,

Speaker Change: Gunking Molette The selection of these recordings gives us insight into the history of the Mont lemonade company, and howKitty had abandoned his solitary life to make money. We are based in New York, Massachusetts around the world, and have provided information and advice for most of the New York-based grape cutters who have participated in the competition. Patreon.com

Speaker Change: Greetings and welcome to the CityTrends third quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad.

Speaker Change: As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Cody McAllister with ICR. Thank you. You may begin.

Cody Mcallister: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on CityTrend's third quarter 2024 earnings call. On our call today is Chief Executive Officer Ken Seipel and Chief Financial Officer Heather Plutino.

Cody Mcallister: Our earnings release was sent out this morning at 6.45 a.m. Eastern Time.

Cody Mcallister: You should be aware that prepared remarks today, made during this call, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These statements do not guarantee future performance. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on these statements.

Cody Mcallister: We refer you to the company's most recent report on Form 10-K and other subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

Speaker Change: I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ken Seipel. Ken?

Ken Seipel: Thank you, Cody. Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q3 earnings call today.

Ken Seipel: Since we last spoke, as most of you have seen, I've been honored to accept the permanent role of CEO here at CityTrends.

Ken Seipel: And I'm really pleased to continue leading the company in this capacity, which will allow us to continue to implement the strategies that we outlined back in last summer that have been aimed at driving business improvement and ultimately increased shareholder value. I also want to acknowledge the Board of Directors for providing a unique equity compensation structure that ensures my alignment with shareholder interest.

Ken Seipel: And CityTrains is really unique and exciting growth opportunity. We have nearly 600 stores serving our African-American customers directly within their neighborhoods. Our brand familiarity, customer loyalty, neighborhood store locations are really difficult to duplicate, which gives us a defensible mode against their competition.

Ken Seipel: With this solid foundation of differentiation, our future is well within our control and not dependent on external factors.

Ken Seipel: Implementation and consistent execution of a redefined business strategy which includes an acute focus on our core African-American customer

Ken Seipel: a strong product value proposition with a boundless offering of good, better, and best products more extreme value treasure for our treasure hunt experience for our customers

Ken Seipel: Disciplined expense management and compelling growth plans will effectively be the driving force for creating significant shareholder value.

Ken Seipel: Our business results in Q3 are really an early indicator that our customers are responsive to our renewed focus and the resulting corrective measures in the business. And notably, we've seen that momentum continue into the fourth quarter with high single-digit comp sales performance to date.

Ken Seipel: The strong customer response and the growing transaction count momentum give me optimism that we're really on the right path and the success that will continue to compound as we more fully execute our strategies.

Ken Seipel: Let me take you through a few highlights of our third quarter results.

Ken Seipel: Starting with our top-line performance. As previously announced, we delivered strong third quarter sales of $179.1 million, achieving positive comparable sales growth of 5.7 percent.

Ken Seipel: We saw growing strength throughout the period, with comparable cells improving each month, culminating in high single-digit growth in October.

Ken Seipel: This performance was broad based, driven by increased customer traffic, single digit transaction growth, and a larger basket size.

Ken Seipel: Fifteen-two category performance. We saw positive trends across both our apparel and non-apparel categories.

Ken Seipel: Pilgrim's Apparel was particularly strong this quarter, benefiting from a combination of our enhanced product assortment and improved allocation tactics, which allow us to capitalize not only in the peak back-to-school selling period, but also post-peak period when we strategically allocated inventory into stores with sales demand to fuel the growth throughout the entire selling season.

Ken Seipel: Our non-apparel categories also perform very well, led by continued strength in our home and lifestyle categories, driven by strategic inventory investments and strength in our family basics and sleepwear, fueled by our commitment for better in-stocks of family basics, like socks and underwear.

Ken Seipel: These are all areas that also benefited from execution of our allocation tactics anchored on placing inventory in stores based on local demand.

Ken Seipel: During our poll in June, I mentioned we were planning to focus on improving product allocation.

Ken Seipel: And after spending some time reviewing the product allocation methods and systems, it became clear that there were just simply too many variables for an average allocator to manage. It included an overwhelming complexity of allocation methods, coupled with a large amount of store choices.

Ken Seipel: In short, we made it very difficult for our allocation team to be successful.

Ken Seipel: We've since reduced the complexity by limiting our store clusters to three groups, simply high, average, and low-volume stores. Our allocation accuracy steadily improved during the quarter, and I'd like to acknowledge our allocation team and leadership for their hard work and commitment to improvement.

Ken Seipel: Now that we have established the basics of allocation, we're turning our attention to more advanced techniques, which will include future system enhancements down the road.

Ken Seipel: I expect our work in allocation to have a meaningful impact on our operating results well into 2025 and beyond.

Ken Seipel: As I mentioned last quarter, we're intently focused on foundational and fundamental internal process of provence.

Ken Seipel: Our success this quarter is a testament to these efforts as our data-driven approach has improved inventory efficiency.

Ken Seipel: And I'd like to acknowledge the work of our finance team for developing methods to track the retail industry standard metric, gross margin return on investment, commonly known as GMRI.

Ken Seipel: down to the category level for our own internal use. I was pleased with our merchants team's willingness to embrace the metric and make better product decisions to improve not only our gross margin dollars, but also include the cost of handling and the cost of the overall inventory investment in their overall evaluation process.

Ken Seipel: Again, we're just in the early stages here. We have more work to do, but this benefit will keep on going in the future.

Ken Seipel: And speaking of foundational improvements, our supply chain team has found ways to improve both the transportation and distribution center efficiency, which has resulted in nearly a two-week reduction of time from vendor to store.

Ken Seipel: This is a really big first step in helping us build capacity to quickly chase sales, demand trends, and improve our inventory turnover.

Ken Seipel: tied to the strategic markdowns we took in 2.2, our full price selling trend sequentially improved as the quarter progressed, which has continued into Q4, and it reflects a growing resonance of our product offering and our customers' willingness to pay full price for the increasingly compelling merchandise that we're able to offer.

Ken Seipel: Another key highlight in the third quarter was gross margin expansion of 160 basis points, along with solid gross profit dollar growth that outpaced our top-line expansion.

Ken Seipel: The primary drivers are twofold. First, we expanded initial markups to improve product cost negotiations, a muscle that we're further developing, combined with growing sales penetration of our higher margin categories.

Ken Seipel: Second, we registered improved shrinkage rates on stores inventoried in the quarter. With a consulting partner in the quarter, we identified several favorable shrink opportunities that have implemented specific administrative and process actions that enable us to better monitor and manage both internal and external theft.

Ken Seipel: We expect these detectives to have a meaningful improvement in their strength measures going forward.

Ken Seipel: According to the drivers of SG&A in the period, we also mentioned in our November 18th pre-announcement, we encourage strategic cost related to a number of efforts aimed at driving future top-line expansion and enhanced profitability.

Ken Seipel: So first, we initiated a comprehensive customer insight study to gain quantitative and ethnographic insights into the drivers of purchase decisions.

Ken Seipel: This study has delivered a host of new insights that's going to fuel decision making processes and product and positioning our story experience in 2025 and beyond.

Ken Seipel: Second, we incurred costs to improve operational processes, including new shrink improvement measures that are driving notable improvement, along with the enhancements related to the effectiveness of our island-pacific operations system and development of KPIs to drive the business and exception reporting to increase focus on facts that are critical to our business.

Ken Seipel: And third, we engage consultants to help evaluate customer shopping patterns in our store with a goal of developing improvements in the shopping experience for our customers and to drive new decision making that will inform both our merchandising and store remodel strategy in the future.

Ken Seipel: In total, we estimate there were approximately about $1.6 million in ancillary expenses incurred in Q3. I consider these costs as one-time in nature and important to stabilizing our foundational operational practices in preparation for long-range growth.

Ken Seipel: Before passing the call over to Heather to review our financial results in more detail, as well as our upwardly revised outlook, I'd like to take a moment to reiterate the pillars of the foundation that we've laid out for the future and also express how we are executing with clear vision and passion around the organization.

Ken Seipel: So first, we have redefined our company's focus to our core African-American customer who represents the majority of our trade area in around 90% of our stores.

Ken Seipel: This renewed focus will enable our merchandising teams to secure a more refined product assortment that resonates most adeptly with our core demographic. We're beginning to see the results of these efforts.

and I'm really encouraged by our early outcomes.

Ken Seipel: Second, we're reinforcing our product value proposition with a balanced assortment of good, better, and best product categories across all of our categories.

Ken Seipel: For our lower-income customers that are on a tight budget, we're shifting a strategy to offer increased selection of goods priced under $5 with visible signage to emphasize our value proposition.

Ken Seipel: This is driving both traffic and basket size, which were key drivers of our third quarter results.

Third, we are offering more treasure.

Ken Seipel: by securing branded deals from various sources that represent extreme values.

Ken Seipel: We've recently strengthened our buying team with an experienced off-price specialist who's actively identifying compelling opportunities in the market.

Ken Seipel: Plus, our entire buying team is now actively sourcing opportunity deals in the marketplace. Our buyers have secured numerous compelling deals, including an excited branded footwear buy that is just now hitting the shelves.

Ken Seipel: It is resonating well with our customers today. It's driving viral word-of-mouth marketing and positioning us well for the remainder of this important holiday season.

Ken Seipel: We've already seen strong and growing trends in November, adding to our confidence in our actions. Longer term, we expect this off-price tradesman segment to become a significant growth area for the company, and eventually contributing 10% or more of our sales mix at above average margins.

Ken Seipel: And fourth, we are focused on consistent execution across all areas of the business from product procurement to logistics to store execution. While consistency is defined over time, I am pleased with the internal enhancements we've made to date that will allow for more consistent execution of our model in the quarters and years ahead.

Ken Seipel: And lastly, we'll continue to diligently manage expenses, which will provide for a good flow-through of sales to profit as we execute our core strategies.

Ken Seipel: Now I'll turn the call over to Heather to review financial points from Q3 as well as a few comments related to fourth quarter. Heather?

Thank you, Ken, and good morning, everyone.

Heather Plutino: First, let me add my congratulations to the many teams across the organization for the hard work that drove our third quarter results. I am encouraged by the positive trends that are beginning to develop across the business, particularly the mid-single-digit comp store sales growth in the quarter and the 160 basis points of gross margin expansion.

Heather Plutino: We continue to implement the strategies Ken laid out, creating new opportunities for top-line expansion by quickly executing a refreshed inventory assortment with high-demand brands and a more balanced, good, better, best approach.

Heather Plutino: While there is still much work ahead, our initiatives, along with our strong balance sheet, are positioning city trends to return to profitable growth.

Turning now to the specifics of our third quarter results.

Heather Plutino: Total sales in the quarter were $179.1 million, with cost sales increasing 5.7% compared to the prior year period.

Heather Plutino: The comp increase was driven largely by improved customer traffic and mid-single-digit transaction growth as we introduced our new, more strategic product selection and employed better allocation methods.

Heather Plutino: Importantly, comparable store sales gained momentum as the quarter progressed, delivering sequential improvement month over month, and that momentum has continued through fourth quarter to date, positioning us well for the holiday season.

Heather Plutino: The markdowns taken in the second quarter certainly helped our Q3 sales results, particularly in September and August.

contributing about two points of comp sales growth in Q3.

Heather Plutino: That said, it's important to note that full-price sales were up versus last year in each month of the quarter, and we delivered our best comp performance in October as we exited our clearance event and delivered freshness to the stores.

Heather Plutino: By the end of the third quarter, the Markdown product was significantly sold through. As discussed in earlier calls, we've updated our processes to support more in-season Markdowns, ensuring that our inventory aging is well managed.

Heather Plutino: In fact, inventory age 7 months or older made up only 3% of Q3 end-of-period inventory, a significant decline from prior quarters.

Heather Plutino: During Q3, we closed four stores as part of our ongoing fleet optimization effort, bringing our quarter-end store count to 593, with CTX stores representing approximately 23% of our fleet.

Heather Plutino: Growth margin dollars were $71.2 million, representing an increase of 3.9% compared to the prior year period.

Heather Plutino: Growth margin rate was 39.8%, a 160 basis point expansion compared to third quarter last year.

Heather Plutino: The primary drivers of this year-over-year margin expansion were higher initial markup and lower shrink levels.

Heather Plutino: As a reminder, we implemented several shrink mitigating tactics in Q1 and Q2, including upgraded store talent, updated equipment, revised policies, increased leverage of accession reporting to quickly identify issues.

and a third-party restitution program.

Speaker Change: And, as Ken noted, we are addressing other opportunities called out by a consulting partner.

Speaker Change: While we're happy to see some improvement in Q3, we remain focused on improving strength and driving toward a baseline rate that is more in line with our historic performance. As we've said before, this journey will take time.

Speaker Change: Moving to SG&A. Adjusted SG&A expenses totaled $74.6 million in the quarter, an increase of $3.7 million versus last year.

Speaker Change: About $2 million of that is from the store and corporate merit increases we put in place in Q1.

Speaker Change: The balance of the increase to last year, as well as the increase to prior quarters, was driven by a number of strategic costs aimed at driving future growth, which Ken detailed in his remarks.

Speaker Change: To be clear, although considered one-time in nature, those expenses are included in reported SG&A and were not adjusted out.

Speaker Change: We expect these workstreams and their related expenses to be completed in the fourth quarter.

Now turning to the balance sheet.

Speaker Change: We continue to maintain a healthy financial position with a strong balance sheet including no debt at the end of the quarter, no drawings on our $75 million revolver, and $39 million in cash.

Speaker Change: With liquidity of approximately $114 million, we can more than sufficiently fund our business initiatives.

Speaker Change: Our Board of Directors has recently approved the resumption of our share repurchase program, leveraging our existing $50 million authorization.

Thank you for your attention.

Speaker Change: We expect to begin repurchasing shares in the fourth quarter, utilizing a modest amount of our cash on hand to do so.

Speaker Change: Aerie Purchases will be part of our overall capital allocation strategy along with funding operations and continuing to make investments to drive future growth.

Speaker Change: Total inventory dollars at quarter end decreased 1.7% made up of a refreshed assortment with new and exciting offerings.

Speaker Change: The market for quality product remains strong, and our teams are able to source off-price and regular products that excite our core customers and drive traffic.

Speaker Change: Many of our newest treasures are arriving in stores now, just in time for the peak holiday selling weeks ahead, and they're already creating quite a buzz with our associates and with our customers.

Now turning to our Outlook.

Speaker Change: We are increasing our expectations for the second half of the year as follows.

Speaker Change: We now expect second half comparable store sales to be up low to mid single digits year over year compared to our previous guidance of flat to up low single digits.

Speaker Change: Total sales for the second half are expected to be flat to down slightly due to the 53rd week last year and foreclosures.

Speaker Change: Second half growth margin is expected to be approximately 39% consistent with our prior outlook.

Speaker Change: Second half EBITDA is expected to be in the range of 1.5 million to 4 million dollars above our prior outlook of 0.5 million to 2.5 million dollars.

Speaker Change: We expect to end fiscal 2024 with approximately 590 stores, consistent with our prior outlook.

Speaker Change: Finally, we expect to end the year with $60 million to $65 million of cash within our prior outlook.

Speaker Change: Our updated year-end cash includes capital expenditures in the range of $14 to $18 million, slightly higher than prior outlook on the pull-forward of certain investments to drive 2025 improvement.

http://www.kenhub.com

Speaker Change: While we don't provide quarterly guidance, given the significant changes in our business model, the dynamic nature of our growth pattern, plus where we are in the fiscal year, we want to offer some thoughts on our expectations for the fourth quarter.

Speaker Change: Q4 comps are expected to be up low to mid-single digits with total sales down mid-single digits due to the 53rd week last year and closed stores.

Speaker Change: SG&A in the quarter is expected to be approximately $76 million, including the final leg of the strategic expenses described earlier, plus store payroll to support higher sales and longer operating hours during the holiday season.

Speaker Change: Q4 EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $5 million to $7 million.

Speaker Change: Before I turn the call back to Ken, I want to reiterate how encouraged I am by the positive results we delivered in the third quarter.

Speaker Change: There is a renewed sense of focus and energy at CityTrends as we follow Ken's leadership to make foundational improvements across the organization, addressing processes and creating disciplines as needed to pivot the business and position CityTrends for improved financial performance.

Speaker Change: As I said earlier, we still have a lot of work to do. We will continue to push forward with our refined strategy, and we look forward to updating you on our progress and upcoming calls. With that, I'll turn the call back to Ken. Ken?

Ken Seipel: Thank You Heather. Well in closing I remain energized and optimistic about the future of CityTrans. Our third quarter results are an indicator of the work that we've done to create solid foundation and set the company up for long-term success.

Ken Seipel: In my time here, I've really enjoyed working with our talented and highly engaged employees and I look forward to further progress together as we pave a path and improve business performance and significantly increased shareholder value

Ken Seipel: With our acute focus on the core African-American customer, intense leverage of competitive advantages, disciplined focus on operational improvements, and strategic investment and growth initiatives, I am confident that we can build on our positive momentum and deliver a strong finish to Fiscal 2024 and well beyond.

Ken Seipel: Our holiday season is off to a great start, and I want to extend my thanks to the CityTrends team for planning and executing such a great start to the holiday period. I want to wish all of our team members and our shareholders a very happy holiday season, and I look forward to updating you on our fourth quarter results in the new year.

Ken Seipel: With that, I'll turn the call over to our operator, Melissa, to facilitate questions.

Melissa: Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.

Speaker Change: We ask that you each keep to two questions and one follow-up. Thank you.

Speaker Change: Our first question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker Change: Congratulations, Ken, on the appointment, and congratulations to the team on the improved results.

high single digits on comps.

Speaker Change: You know, so I wanted to understand just in terms of the guidance for the quarter, you know, if there's an element of conservatism in the low single to mid single digit guide for the quarter, or if there are,

Speaker Change: if there are some aspects to what you're going to lap in December and in January that that kind of lead to a bit more conservatism.

Speaker Change: Thank you, Jeremy. I'll answer a little bit from a high level and certainly not Heather for lenient details. Yeah, first off, November was really exceptional compared to what we were expecting. As we put a new product and fresh product out, I mean certainly the business took off and we were just really pleased with customer response in November.

Speaker Change: to your point around the conservatism or the potential of that, there's a lot of holiday season ahead yet. And certainly through December, you might remember the company had a reasonably good December last year in terms of comp performance. And so we also are against a little bit tougher comp.

Speaker Change: As well as, we also appreciate the calendar shifts that are ahead, so we're being a little bit more conscious about what December might bring, but still very optimistic around the overall Q4 numbers.

Heather, did you add anything to that?

Heather Plutino: I think you nailed it, Ken. Jeremy, we will not be mad if that winds up being a conservative guide. I don't think you would be either, right? But to Ken's point, November was exceptional. Nothing really to comment on for the compare throughout the quarter, December, again.

Speaker Change: The only thing I would say is that there's probably more opportunity for us than usual in January on a comparison standpoint.

Speaker Change: The comp last year was particularly soft as we came into a softer-than-expected tax refund season. So we're set up and will be set up to take advantage of all sales opportunities. But we're pleased with the way we started. A lot of days ahead.

Speaker Change: Great color. And just to clarify a little bit more color, on December, what portion of your Q4 sales comes in December? Is that roughly 40% of the quarter or maybe even slightly more?

It's slightly more, Jeremy. I'd give it about 50.

Young.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Speaker Change: And then just want to come back to the investments that you're making, you know, and maybe hone in a little bit more on the shrink portion of those investments as well.

Speaker Change: So it sounds like you've, you know, you've got a plan in place, you're getting a little bit of help from a third party, you know, on some strategy to improve that.

Speaker Change: Where is shrink, you know, in terms of kind of the impact or the drag on your margin today versus, let's say, where it might have been five years ago? What's that gap that we're looking to close? You know, is it 50 basis points? Is it something more like 100 basis points?

Speaker Change: any color you might be able to share on that. And then the second part is just kind of the timeline that you think is reasonable to get it back to what you'd consider a normalized level.

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for the question. I'll start and then Ken you can fill in where.

Ken Seipel: I may miss here. On your question about what's the headwind, on a full-year basis,

Ken Seipel: I'd probably assign it somewhere between 50 and 70 basis points of drag compared to historical levels. On a quarterly basis, it's a little less than Q4, more like a, you know, compared to last year it was a 40%.

Thank you. Thank you.

I don't think I'm saying that right, Jeremy. Hold on.

Ken Seipel: It was actually an improvement to last year, sorry, so it depends on quarter to quarter. But on the full year, again...

Ken Seipel: less than a point. I think, you know, the fact that we are mentioning as many initiatives as we are on these calls and have for quarters tells you how...

Ken Seipel: maniacal we are on attacking this issue right we are we are leaving no stone unturned we have teams within the company who have been looking for every opportunity to improve strength

Ken Seipel: And then the addition of this consulting firm is really just to make sure that we aren't

Ken Seipel: We aren't missing something. So we are attacking all levels, whether it's...

Ken Seipel: It's, like I mentioned, Teams is using the systems that we have, like our Agilent system, which is the exception reporting that we use to be able to identify trends very quickly and address them very quickly. In-store signage, right?

to backdoor...

Ken Seipel: access protocols. So we're really into the weeds and it's appropriate because this this particular issue, shrink, is going to take being in the weeds to be able to tackle it.

Ken Seipel: When we expect to see improvement, we're modeling improvement into 2025, early days yet, not ready to reveal 2025, but it will be gradual throughout the year, because this, again, this is a journey.

Speaker Change: I can tell you if I think about, I'm going to keep going, Ken, if you don't mind, if I think about Q3, part of our improvement in Q3 was because of the 211 physical inventory.

Speaker Change: counts that we did in the quarter. And included in that were a number of stores that we were recounting because of higher than acceptable shrink rates earlier in the year.

Speaker Change: of those stores, a portion of them continued to have higher than acceptable shrink rates. So we're pleased with the progress, but there's still opportunity. That's why I call that out. There's still opportunity to make sure that we are addressing shrink.

at every level within the organization. It's a challenge.

That's great color.

Speaker Change: Let me shift gears here and talk about your store fleet.

Speaker Change: And, you know, Kenneth, you've had a chance to really dive into the details a bit more. You had some, you know, some closures here in Q4. You've still got some conversions to CTX format that are going to happen over coming years.

Speaker Change: How should we be thinking about, you know, kind of the store fleet on a go forward basis? Is this, you know, kind of a

Speaker Change: Do we expect the store fleet to continue to shrink until we feel confident that we've kind of scuttled all the, you know, maybe underperforming locations?

Speaker Change: Or, you know, is there a time where you've got some momentum in the business and we think about kind of reopening the growth?

Speaker Change: for this story and potentially add locations going forward. How are you thinking about the fleet?

Speaker Change: Yeah, for sure. Good question. As we go forward, Jeremy, I'm really thinking about really the fleet in two ways. One, that is in the refresh and the remodel.

We've got about...

Speaker Change: I think about a third of our store is roughly not quite, you know, remodeled into the new format.

Speaker Change: but we still have a significant number of our higher volume stories that need to be remodeled. And so, as we go into 2025, you can expect us to come out with a fairly aggressive remodeling refresh program, bringing our fleet up to standard across. And where we've done so, we've achieved higher than average comparable sales. So, we're confident in the results in our customers' response to a fleet refresh. So, that'll be a big part of our repertoire going forward initially.

Speaker Change: simultaneous to that. We are actually behind the scenes right now doing some studies in various markets and we will be returning to new store growth. Part and parcel is we had to fix our business model and get it to be a little bit more reliable which is beginning to take shape.

Speaker Change: And now we're taking a look at really going into various key markets and making sure that we can actually command market share where we deserve it. And some of those are existing markets, and some of those will be net new markets for us. But you can expect, particularly in 2026 and beyond, but even a little bit in 2025, you can expect a significant return to growth pattern.

Speaker Change: Closing and relocating stores is kind of a normal part of keeping a fleet healthy. There'll be a little bit of that, but it's certainly not a target. We'll do, you know, lease maintenance where it's required, and we'll move out of bad locations and move into better locations and so forth. That'll certainly happen, but I just want to make sure that you appreciate that we do have a very aggressive growth thought in mind right now, and as we are stabilizing our business model, you can expect us to get good at being a growth company.

. . . . .

Speaker Change: That's great color. Thank you. Just one clarifying question on the remodels.

Speaker Change: What's kind of the range of cost in remodeling into the CTX format of store and what's the average?

Speaker Change: Yeah, the range of costs, you'll recall, Jeremy, that we recently reduced...

Speaker Change: Our CTX remodel cost by about half. So when we first started the program, the remodel was about $250,000 on average. And in 2023, for the latter part, we developed a new remodel package, which the range is about $85,000 to $130,000. So I'd say the average, you can call it maybe $110,000.

For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov

Great. Congratulations and best wishes here during the holiday season.

Thank you very much.

Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Baker with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, thanks guys.

Speaker Change: A lot of initiatives. I can ask specifically about where you think SG&A is going to go, etc. But maybe I'll encompass it all in one question. What is the right long-term EBITDA margin for this business prior to COVID? It was, you know, 2017, 18, 19, between 5% and 6%. We won't think about the COVID years and post-COVID years. Probably not relevant, but obviously much lower than that now.

Speaker Change: Ken, where do you see long-term EBITDA margins for this business?

Ken Seipel: Good question, Mike. I think as I join the business to start to kind of think about, you know, setting forth a long-range plan which we're beginning to work through with with our board here shortly.

Ken Seipel: One of the primary goals that we have is to return our EBITDA back to those historical levels that you mentioned, and frankly, we see a little bit of a path even beyond that. But certainly, you could be thinking those historical levels, 5 to 6 range, for sure, are in our sites and will be a part of our active near-term plans.

Speaker Change: Okay, to follow up on that, and as part of that, looking at the SG&A,

Speaker Change: specifically, if you pull out the one-time, the 1.6 million that they talked about, one-timers, I think you were at about $73 million this quarter, and next quarter you think you'll be about $76 million. You know, in the past, the quarterly SG&A was usually around $70 million or so. I get why it might be permanently higher because of inflation, etc., but, you know, is that $73 million? It sounds like it's probably somewhere between that $73 and $76 million. What do you think the long-term, you know, quarterly SG&A should be for this company?

Yeah, Mike, I'll take that one.

Speaker Change: So 70 was our run rate in 2023. Recall that in our Q4 call, we talked about the fact that we were increasing that rate to enact merit increases in stores and corporate. That brought it up to the 72-73 range.

Speaker Change: So, if I think about the go forward, I would say 73 per quarter is feeling like a good earmark and then flexing up accordingly to account for sales flows quarter to quarter.

© The Ultimate Parody Site! All rights reserved.

Yeah, okay.

Speaker Change: Mike, I might add to that. I think you know this about the business already, but one thing about the SG&A base is it's highly, highly fixed, which means that as we start to accelerate ourselves and start to grow, we should see some significant leverage. So, just appreciate that it's the number that Heather mentioned is directly correct, but just appreciate there's a good leverage on that as we continue to grow our top line.

Speaker Change: Yeah, I know that that's that's the whole idea I just had to figure out what that fixed cost number is and then we can figure out the leverage And so I guess you know to that and just one I guess a lot says one

Speaker Change: Let's ask this. Ken, you've had a lot of turnaround experience, a lot of different places, I guess just bigger picture.

Can you compare this to some of the other...

Speaker Change: Turnarounds you've led. What's what's different? What's easier? What's harder? What have you learned from past turnarounds that you're applying here? I know that's you know a big question that you could probably take an hour to answer But you know a couple bullet points on how you see this turnaround versus others

Speaker Change: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'll give you the quick notes of that. So what's common here is that getting the company refocused on the core customer and really truly understanding the customer coming through the door and doing a better job of adjusting the assortment, including some of the good, better, best things that I've talked about and then treasuring the treasurer and all those things, are really about redefining and getting our assortment to match the core consumer. And then it started with us first understanding who that customer is. That's very much a common theme. When you get into companies and turn around, oftentimes they lose track of that. And so we're getting refocused on that.

Speaker Change: What's unique here from places, two things I'd say are unique.

Speaker Change: One, we did have a number of operational, fundamental, and foundational practices.

that were broken or disconnected, more so than I've seen.

Speaker Change: We've spent a lot of time, in Q3 we kind of understated really how much work has gone into this, getting things fixed and repaired, including shrinkage and some of those other things we mentioned. But the team has just done marvelous work in terms of really getting their arms around the things that we need to do to run a solid and

Speaker Change: and consistently executable business model. So that's unique here as much as work has been required to get that done. And the other thing that's been a positive surprise

is the quick response from customers.

and the changes we've made, oftentimes customer traffic.

Speaker Change: is one of the more difficult things to change in a business. It takes time and reputation. But because of our neighborhood locations and the love affair that our customer has with this brand, as we're starting to get things right, we're seeing pretty quick reactions. So that's why I'm a little bit euphoric about November. We really delivered a good step forward into our strategies there, and the customers responded quickly. So that's it. I could go on, like you said, for an hour, but those are probably the three big differences that I see here. One common thing with the customer.

Speaker Change: Very unique in customer response positively and then the opportunity for us to be operational solid we have work to be done there

Awesome. Great. Appreciate the call there.

Thank you.

Thanks Mike.

Speaker Change: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Seipel for any final comments.

Ken Seipel: All right. Well, thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest in Cities Trans today, and certainly wish everyone a very happy holiday season. Thank you, and goodbye.

Ken Seipel: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Thank you.