ASO - Academy Sports and Outdoors Inc. (ASO) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-06-11 15:33:02 ET

Academy Sports and Outdoors, Inc. (ASO)

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

June 11, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Matt Hodges - VP, IR

Steve Lawrence - CEO

Carl Ford - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Seth Basham - Wedbush Securities

Justin Cleaver - Baird

Michael Lasser - UBS

Simeon Gutman - Morgan Stanley

Chris Horvers - JPMorgan

Kate McShane - Goldman Sachs

Robbie Ohmes - Bank of America

Greg Melich - Evercore ISI

Anthony Chukumba - Loop Capital Markets

John Kernan - TD Cowen

John Heinbockel - Guggenheim Securities

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Academy Sports and Outdoors First Quarter Fiscal 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, this call is being recorded and all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a brief question-and-answer session. Questions will be limited to analysts and investors. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now turn the call over to Matt Hodges, Vice President of Investor Relations for Academy Sports and Outdoors. Matt, please go ahead.

Matt Hodges

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the Academy Sports and Outdoors First Quarter 2024 Financial Results Call. Participating on the call are Steve Lawrence, Chief Executive Officer, and Carl Ford, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, statements in today's earnings release and the comments made by management during this call may be considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to the factors identified in the earnings release and in our SEC filings.

The company undertakes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. Today's remarks also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in today's earnings release, which is available at investors.academy.com. I will now turn the call over to Steve Lawrence for his remarks. Steve?

Steve Lawrence

Thanks, Matt. Good morning to everyone and thanks for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings call. As always, we appreciate your interest and support of Academy Sports and Outdoors. As you saw from our press release this morning, sales for Q1 came in at a [$1.36 billion] (ph) which was a 1.4% decline versus the first quarter of last year. As a reminder, we had a 53rd week in 2023, so we're using a shifted comp sales calculation which compares weeks one through 13 this year versus weeks two through 14 last year. Using this methodology, our comparable sales for the first quarter came in at down 5.7%.

As we expected, our customer remains challenged by the current macroeconomic environment. Inflation is keeping prices at elevated levels while personal savings have been depleted, causing our customers to be tight with their discretionary spending. The trends we've cited in previous calls in terms of customer shopping patterns held true in the first quarter with customer shopping episodically, while gravitating towards the value offerings in our assortment along with new and innovative items. What was encouraging was that we saw sequential improvement throughout the quarter, with April being the best month of Q1.

The second quarter represents a good opportunity for us to show continued improvement with several natural shopping events still ahead of us, such as Father's Day, Fourth of July, and the beginning of Back to School. Beneath the surface, our .com business posted an 8% sales increase over last year and comprised 9% of total merchandise sales versus 8.2% last year. BOPIS and ship-from-store represented more than 80% of total .com sales for Q1, which highlights the true omni-channel approach that we've taken to growing this business. As you know, one of our long-range plan goals is to build a more powerful omni-channel business. We are focused on engaging as many customers as possible across all of our channels because we know that an omni-channel shopper is our most valuable customer. They shop more frequently, they spend more per transaction, and are worth three to four times more in sales per year than a non-omnichannel customer....

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