1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLWS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

I guess just some color. With the transaction, we are getting over 1 million active e-mail — e-commerce customers. So, we think that’s going to be very leverageable. And it’s early days, but we’re bullish that we’re going to be able to grow this revenue nicely. But as we’re starting, we’re creating a brand-new e-commerce site, which we’ll be leveraging, obviously, our platforms. So, we’re looking in the next couple of months to launch the brand again.

Chris McCann: And the key fact here, Michael, is, as I mentioned, similar to what we did with Shari’s — as you point out, similar to what we did with Shari’s Berries, similar to what we did with in the food stain, in the food space with Vital Choice, this gives us the ability to kind of land and expand in the personalization category. So, as we built and appended the personalization capabilities to our platform, now we’re able to leverage that part of the platform and expand as well. And I think it’s just consistent with our overall growth strategy, continued to get organic growth where we can at affordable cost and complemented with good M&A opportunities as we see these tuck-in opportunities. And when we see a larger opportunity like we did last with PersonalizationMall, we’re in position to do that as well based on the strength of the business and the strength of the balance sheet that we have.

Michael Kupinski: Thanks for the color. The automation of their distribution facilities, is that all behind the company now or is that fully reflected in this last quarter?

Bill Shea: Michael, there will always be automation opportunities for us, but the big spend is behind us. As we’ve discussed, in the past with our capital, two years ago, we were at about $55 million. Last year, we were at $65 million. And those were higher than our historical averages. This year, we’re bringing it back down to about $45 million. In that $45 million during the first half of this year, there was still the completion of our Atlanta, Georgia kind of major phase of automation there. So — but there will always be projects that we have to continue to automate and improve our operations, whether it be in our distribution centers, whether it be in our service center, but just ways to improve our operations.

Michael Kupinski: Got you. And then just regarding capital allocation, will we see share buybacks? Or is the focus still debt reduction, or both? Or can you give us a flavor of what the capital allocation is there?

Bill Shea: Yes. I think first and foremost, we always look at how we can bring the best shareholder value. But as we’ve been discussing and we’ve had just the smaller acquisitions in the last couple of years, but strategic M&A is our first priority. We think the best way to bring shareholder value is to grow this business; so, M&A, CapEx where we see, investments in the business that we believe can either drive up operating performance or help just drive performance, debt repayments, and then stock buybacks are always a component of our capital allocation.

Michael Kupinski: Great. Thanks. That’s all I have. Thank you.

Chris McCann: Thank you, Michael.

Operator: And our next question will come from Alex Berman with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Alex Berman: Great. Thanks very much for taking my question, and congratulations on a nice holiday season. I wanted to ask about the trajectory of getting gross margin back to historical levels over the longer term. As you think about kind of what your gross margin will be in the future, how is that going to compare to historical levels in terms of the components within that, things like product margin, freight, labor? Do you anticipate it being a similar mix to what you had historically? Or is there going to be kind of a different way to get to the same number when things start to normalize for you?