The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript February 28, 2024

The TJX Companies, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to The TJX Companies Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded as of today, February 28, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Ernie Herrman, Chief Executive Officer and President of The TJX Companies, Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Ernie Herrman: Thanks, Ivy. Before we begin, Deb has some opening comments.

Deb McConnell: Thank you, Ernie, and good morning. Today's call is being recorded and includes forward-looking statements about our results and plans. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to vary materially from these statements including, among others, the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. Please review our press release for a cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements as well as the full safe harbor statements included in the Investors section of our website, tjx.com. We have also detailed the impact of foreign exchange on our consolidated results and our international divisions in today's press release and in the Investors section of tjx.com, along with reconciliations to non-GAAP measures we discuss. Thank you, and now I'll turn it back over to Ernie.

Ernie Herrman: Good morning. Joining me and Deb on the call is John. I want to start today by recognizing all of our global associates for their excellent work in 2023. I truly appreciate their continued commitment to TJX and their focus on our customers. I especially want to thank our store, distribution and fulfillment center associates for their hard work and dedication to our company every day. Now to an overview of our results beginning with the fourth quarter. I am extremely pleased with our very strong finish to 2023. Our fourth quarter sales profitability and earnings per share all exceeded our expectations. Overall comp sales were up a strong 5% and were entirely driven by growth in customer transactions. This is great to see as it underscores our ability to continue gaining market share in all of our geographies.

I am particularly pleased that our U.S. businesses, Marmaxx and HomeGoods, continued their very strong sales momentum. Also, it was great to see comp sales growth accelerate versus the third quarter at our Canadian and international divisions. We are confident that our exciting assortments and excellent values resonated with shoppers across all of our retail banners this holiday season. We believe our gift-giving selections offer customers something for everyone on their list, and we see being a gift-giving destination as a year-round opportunity for our business. For the full year, overall sales surpassed $50 billion, marking a milestone for our company. Even more exciting, we still see plenty of opportunities to continue our growth in our markets around the world.

For the full year, consolidated comp sales increased 5%. Profitability increased significantly and earnings per share grew double digits, all well above our initial guidance for the year. Importantly, we saw comp sales growth across each of our divisions, again, all driven by increases in customer transactions. We are confident that we gain market share in every geography that we operate in. Our outstanding performance in 2023 is a testament to the sharp execution of our talented associates around the world and their relentless focus on delivering excellent value to our customers every day. Looking ahead, the first quarter is off to a good start. In 2024, we have many initiatives planned that we believe will keep driving sales and to attract more shoppers to our stores.

Availability of quality branded merchandise in the marketplace continues to be outstanding. We are in a terrific position to continue flowing a fresh assortment of goods to our stores and online this spring and throughout the year. Longer term, we see many opportunities to capture additional market share across our geographies, and we are laser focused on increasing the profitability of TJX. We are convinced that our flexibility and commitment to value will continue to be a winning retail formula for many years to come. Before I continue, I'll turn the call over to John to cover our fourth quarter and full year financial results in more detail.

John Klinger: Thanks, Ernie. I also want to add my gratitude to all of our global associates for their continued hard work. Now I'll share some additional details on the fourth quarter. As I recap the fourth quarter results, I'm going to speak to everything on a 13-week basis, which excludes the extra week in the quarter. Reconciliations detailing the impact of the extra week on our results and other adjustments can be found in today's press release and on the Investors section of our website. Adjusted net sales grew to $15.5 billion, a 7% increase versus last year. As Ernie mentioned, consolidated comp store sales increased 5%, above the high end of our plan and were entirely driven by an increase in customer transactions. A quick note that on prior calls, we have referred to customer transactions as customer traffic.

But for the sake of clarity, we'll use the term customer transactions going forward. Back to the results. In the fourth quarter, our consolidated comp sales increased in both our apparel and home businesses. In terms of divisional sales performance for the fourth quarter, we were pleased to see strong comp sales increases at every division, all driven entirely by customer transactions. At Marmaxx, I also note that we saw comp increases in both our apparel and home categories. Fourth quarter adjusted pretax profit margin of 10.9% was up 170 basis points versus last year. Our adjusted pretax profit margin came in well above our plan primarily due to a higher merchandise margin. This includes a larger-than-expected benefit from shrink and freight, lower markdowns and better mark on.

We also saw some expense leverage on our above-plan sales. Adjusted gross margin for the fourth quarter was up 340 basis points versus last year. This was driven by a higher merchandise margin, including a significant benefit from lower freight costs and shrink strong mark-on and lower markdowns. Fourth quarter adjusted SG&A increased 190 basis points versus last year, primarily due to higher incentive accruals and incremental store wage and payroll costs. Adjusted net interest income benefited fourth quarter adjusted pretax profit margin by 10 basis points versus last year. Lastly, we were very pleased that adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.12 were well above our expectations and up 26% versus last year. Now to our fiscal '24 results.

Once again, for the full -- for our full year financial results, I'm going to speak to everything on a 52-week basis, which excludes the extra week in the fiscal year. Adjusted net sales grew to $53.3 billion, a 7% increase versus last year. Full year consolidated comp store sales were up 5%, entirely driven by customer transactions. We were very pleased to see mid-single-digit comp sales increases in both our apparel and home businesses. Adjusted pretax profit margin of 10.9% was up 120 basis points versus last year's adjusted 9.7%. Adjusted gross margin for the full year was 29.9%, up 230 basis points versus last year's 27.6%, primarily driven by a significant benefit from lower freight costs as well as strong mark-on and 10 basis points of shrink favorability.

Shrink was an area that we were laser focused on as an organization all year long. I want to recognize and thank all the associates who worked extremely hard on our initiatives throughout the year. Importantly, we managed our in-store initiatives while delivering a very strong top line and providing a pleasant shopping experience for our customers. We remain focused on shrink and continue to look for ways to improve this area going forward. Full year adjusted SG&A was 19.3%, up 140 basis points versus last year's 17.9%. This was primarily due to incremental store wage and payroll costs and higher incentive accruals. Adjusted net interest income benefited full year adjusted pretax profit margin by 30 basis points versus last year. Lastly, full year adjusted earnings per share were $3.76, up 21% versus last year's adjusted $3.11.

Moving to inventory. Balance sheet inventory was up 3% versus fiscal '23. We are happy with our inventory levels and the plentiful availability we see in the marketplace. We are well positioned to flow fresh assortments to our stores and online this spring. I'll finish with our liquidity and shareholder distributions. For the full 53-week year, we generated $6.1 billion in operating cash flow and ended the year with $5.6 billion in cash. In fiscal '24, we returned $4 billion to shareholders through our buyback and dividend programs. Now, I'll turn it back to Ernie.

Ernie Herrman: Thanks, John. I'll pick it up with some full year divisional highlights. As we saw with our strong fourth quarter sales, every division delivered comp increases for the full year, with customer transactions driving the increases across the businesses. Again, we believe this is a strong indicator of our ability to continue gaining market share and it underscores our wide customer demographic. Beginning with Marmaxx. Overall sales well exceeded $30 billion. Comp store sales increased a very strong 6%. We also surpassed 2,500 total T.J. Maxx and Marshalls stores. Marmaxx's apparel and home categories, both comp up for the year. Further, we saw consistently strong comp sales increases across regions and income demographics.

As to Marmaxx's profitability, we were extremely pleased to see full year adjusted segment profit margin improved significantly to 13.7%. As we look ahead, we are very excited about the opportunities to see -- that we see to grow our customer base, drive sales, open new stores and increase the profitability of our largest division. At Sierra, which is reported with Marmaxx, we were pleased with the continued sales growth. At our online businesses, we added new categories and brands throughout the year to deliver the same freshness and excitement online as we do in our stores. At HomeGoods, annual sales grew to nearly $9 billion and comps grew 3%. It was great to see the home business return to positive comp sales trends. We are particularly pleased with the acceleration we saw in the second half of the year, with comp sales increasing high single digits.

Similar to Marmaxx, we saw consistent performance across regions and income demographics. HomeGoods adjusted profitability also improved significantly to 9.4% and getting closer to our goal of returning this division to a double-digit profit margin. During the year, we opened a combined 34 HomeGoods and HomeSense stores. Long term, we see exciting potential to bring our eclectic mix of home fashions to even more consumers across the United States. Moving to TJX Canada. Full year sales were $5 billion and comp store sales increased 3%. Adjusted segment profit margin on a constant currency basis was 14%. With more than 550 stores across Canada, we are one of the largest apparel and home retailers in the country. We are a top destination for consumers seeking branded merchandise at amazing value.

We continue to see opportunities to expand our footprint across Canada and attract new shoppers to all 3 of our banners. At TJX International. Full year sales approached $7 billion and comp store sales were up 3%. Adjusted segment profit margin on a constant currency basis was 4.6%. As a reminder, in the second quarter, this division's profitability was significantly impacted by a reserve related to a German government COVID receivable. In Europe, we believe our sales growth outperformed many other major brick-and-mortar apparel retailers in a difficult economy. Australia delivered very strong sales growth, and we continue to open stores in new markets. Going forward, we are confident that we can grow our retail banners in each country that we operate in and are highly focused on improving this division's profitability.

Going forward, I am confident that we are well positioned to continue our growth around the world and in many kinds of economic and retail environments. Let me briefly remind you of the key characteristics of our business that we believe are tremendous advantage. First is our relentless focus on offering our shoppers great value on every item every day. For us, value means delivering consumers the right combination of brand, fashion, price and quality as always. Second is the flexibility of our business model that allows us to shift our buying, distribution and store mix to quickly react to the hottest trends in the marketplace and changing consumer preferences. Further, the globalness of our business allows us to create a differentiated treasure hunt shopping experience in every country that we operate in.

Third, we successfully operate stores across a wide customer demographic. Our ability to offer a differentiated mix of good, better and best merchandise at each of our stores allows us to appeal to value-conscious shoppers across a broad range of income demographics. Further, each of our divisions continue to affect an outsized number of younger customers to its stores, attract an outsized number of younger customers to our stores, which we believe bodes well for the future. Next, we are extremely confident that there is more than enough inventory available in the marketplace to support our growth plans. In 2023, our more than 1,300 buyers source goods from a universe of more than 21,000 vendors, including thousands of new ones. As we continue to grow our top line, we believe we become even more appealing to vendors as we offer them an attractive way to grow their business.

Fifth, we continue to see opportunities for store growth around the world. We believe we can grow our global store base by at least another 1,300-plus stores over the long term with just our existing banners in our current countries. Last, but certainly not least, is our exceptional talent and strong culture. I truly believe the depth of off-price knowledge and expertise and the longevity of our talent within TJX is unmatched. We continue to invest in teaching and training our associates to develop the next generation of leaders within our company. Finally, I am so proud of our culture, which I believe is a major differentiator and another key component of our success. Turning to corporate responsibility. Our teams across the company did great work on our initiatives in each of our 4 pillars: workplace, communities, environment and responsible business.

Our 2023 global corporate responsibility report summarizes our efforts and progress within this work, as I shared last quarter. Our value mission extends to our corporate responsibility efforts, including supporting our associates, giving back in our communities, helping mitigate our impact on the environment and operating our business ethically. I'm pleased to share that in fiscal 2024, we supported more than 2,000 nonprofit organizations globally through our TJX foundations including nonprofit partners in all 50 states within the United States. Through our grant funding and in partnership with our generous customers, we provided more than 30 million meals through our nonprofit partners that people experiencing food and security. And our associates across the globe continue to be engaged in this work, running give a dollar campaigns in our stores, participating in our associate nominated grants program, helping to build homes for those in need, serving his career coaches for students and more.

These are just some examples of work our teams are doing in our communities, and we invite you to visit tjx.com to learn more. Summing up, we are very proud of our team's performance in 2023 and are in a great position as we enter 2024. We are confident in our plans this year, and as always, we'll strive to beat them. We remain committed to investing in our business to support our future growth. Longer term, we believe that the combination of our key strengths and history of strong execution sets us up extremely well to continue our successful growth around the world. I am convinced that plenty of opportunities remain to drive sales increased profitability and capture additional market share going forward. Now, I'll turn the call back to John to cover our full year and first quarter guidance.

And then we'll open it up for questions.

John Klinger: Thanks again, Ernie. Now to our fiscal '25 guidance beginning with the full year. We are planning overall comp store sales growth to be up 2% to 3% in fiscal '25 over a 5% comp increase in fiscal '24. For the full year, we expect consolidated sales to be in the range of $55.6 million to $56.1 billion. We're planning full year pretax profit margin to be in the range of 10.9% to 11%. This would be flat to up 10 basis points versus fiscal '24 adjusted pretax profit margin of 10.9%. Moving to full year gross margin. We expect it to be in the range of 30% to 30.1%, a 10 to 20 basis point increase versus fiscal '24 as adjusted gross margin of 29.9%. We expect this increase to be driven by a higher merchandise margin partially offset by our supply chain investments.

We're planning for both freight and shrink to be flat versus fiscal '24. For full year SG&A, we're expecting it to be approximately 19.3% and flat to last year's adjusted SG&A. We're planning incremental store wage and payroll costs to be offset by lower incentive compensation costs and a benefit from items that negatively impacted us last year. We're planning full year net interest income of about $118 million, which would delever fiscal '25 pretax profit by about 10 basis points. For modeling purposes, we're currently assuming a full year tax rate of 26.0% and a weighted average share count of approximately 1.14 billion shares. As a result of these assumptions, we're -- we expect full year earnings per share to be in the range of $3.94 to $4.02.

This would represent an increase of 5% to 7% versus last year's adjusted earnings per share of $3.76. Moving to our first quarter guidance. We are planning overall comp store sales growth to be up 2% to 3%. We expect first quarter consolidated sales to be in the range of $12.4 billion to $12.5 billion. We're planning first quarter pretax profit margin to be in the range of 10.5% to 10.6%, an increase of 20 to 30 basis points versus last year. Next, we expect first quarter gross margin to be approximately 29.8%. This would be an increase of 90 basis points versus last year's -- last year primarily due to a higher merchandise margin which includes the annualization of lower freight costs from last year and favorable mark-on, partially offset by supply chain investments.

We're expecting first quarter SG&A to be approximately 19.5%, up 50 basis points versus last year. We expect this increase to be primarily driven by incremental store wage and payroll costs. For modeling purposes, we're currently assuming a first quarter tax rate of 25.8%, net interest income of about $37 million and a weighted average share count of approximately 1.14 billion shares. As a result of these assumptions, we expect for our first quarter earnings to be -- earnings per share to be in the range of $0.84 to $0.86, up 11% to 13% versus last year's $0.76. Moving on to our fiscal '25 capital plans. We expect capital expenditures to be in the range of $2 billion to $2.1 billion. This includes opening new stores, remodels and relocations as well as investments in our distribution network and infrastructure to support our growth.

For new stores, we plan to add about 141 net new stores, which would bring our year-end total to almost 5,100 stores. This would represent a store growth of about 3%. In the U.S., our plans call for us to add about 45 net new stores in Marmaxx and 40 stores at HomeGoods, including 17 HomeSense stores. At Sierra, we plan to add 26 stores. In Canada, we plan to add 10 stores. And at TJX International, we plan to add 15 net stores, in Europe and 5 net stores in Australia. Lastly, we also plan to remodel about 480 stores and relocate approximately 40 stores in fiscal '25. As to our fiscal '25 cash distribution plans, we remain committed to returning cash to our shareholders. As we outlined in today's press release, we expect our Board of Directors will increase our quarterly dividend by 13% to $0.375 per share.

Additionally, in fiscal '25, we currently expect to buy back $2 billion to $2.5 billion of TJX stock. Looking beyond FY '25, we continue to believe that on a 3 to 4 comp increase, our pretax profit margin can be flat to up 10 basis points. As I've said before, this assumes no outsized expense headwinds. Also, our plans do not contemplate assumptions for macro factors such as geopolitical events, foreign exchange volatility or consumer behavior. In closing, I want to emphasize that we are laser-focused on growing our top line, increasing profitability and will strive to exceed our plans. We are in an excellent position, both operationally and financially to take advantage of the opportunities we see to further grow our business while simultaneously returning significant cash to our shareholders.

Now, we are happy to take your questions. As we do every quarter, we're going to ask that you please limit your questions to 1 per person so we can keep the call on schedule and answer as many questions as we can. Thanks, and now we'll open up for questions.

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