Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Matt Bilunas: Yes. Consistent with what we’ve seen this year, most of that contraction is coming from transactions. ASPs have been a bit down, as we mentioned, and we expect them to probably come down a little bit in Q4. It’s more of the transactions that are causing that top line deceleration on a year-over-year basis. But importantly, too, what we said is if you think about where we sit against FY €˜20 and Q3 and as we start our growth for this holiday season will likely come a little different than it did last year and more of those sale events driving more sales later into Q4 out of Q3. So for most of that organic is coming from transactions versus ASPs.

Corie Barry: To your question about customer cohort, we don’t €“ I mean, it varies a little bit week to week to week. But in general, what we’ve been seeing is a pretty consistent customer mix both versus last year and versus pre-pandemic. And when I say customer mix, I mean kind of demographically, we actually are seeing a pretty consistent mix of customers. Like I said, it can vary a little bit week-to-week depending on sales profiles and the values we are offering. But at the highest level, we are actually seeing pretty consistent behavior amongst our customer cohorts.

Scot Ciccarelli: Got it. Thank you.

Corie Barry: Thank you.

Operator: We will now move on to our next question from Chris Horvers at JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Chris Horvers: Thanks and good morning. You mentioned some comments on 2023. Can you take us through the building blocks of margins next year? Is the basic math that we add back all the incentive comp savings this year and saying hypothetically low-single digit positive comp environment, it just becomes a leverage story, or are there still structural SG&A savings and any comments on gross margin as well?

Matt Bilunas: Yes. There could be a number of scenarios we are planning for next year, and we aren’t going to provide guidance. But we try to lay out some puts and takes around what’s happening in business now to provide some context. We just talked about it here. The largest drivers of our decline year-over-year versus pre-pandemic have been those investments we are making. And as we talked about, Totaltech, it also applies to health that we would expect some of those €“ some of the contraction to kind of a base of that as we get into next year. But importantly, even as you look into FY €˜24. So, we would expect some of those initiatives, the pressure from coming from would lessen a little bit as we get into next year, but more so even later into FY €˜25.

I think from a short-term incentive perspective, you are right, we will reset our performance tables next year, and we will likely have to add back anywhere from $200 million to $250 million of SDI expense when we reset those tables and start next year’s plan. So, that will obviously be a pressure we are managing through. At this point, we don’t necessarily see a lot of change to the product margin rates from next €“ from this year into next year. But obviously, we are early in our planning process. And lastly, you are right, most importantly, where our OI rate might €“ is going to be impacted by the level of sales that happened and we are still in the middle of trying to understand what type of sales environment will happen next year, but it is a large impact to how we plan what the overall rate will be.