Citi Trends, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTRN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

David Makuen: Great, Dana. Thanks. Yes. On the inventory piece, we will get back to better than negative 15, but I want to give you a couple of color comments on that. First off, that was our year-end number. We have a temporary disruption, but we’ve been building back. Once we got back, as we’ve noted and said week 3, and we’ve been using all of our ways to shift from drop ship to 3PLs to our own DCs to build back inventory levels as aggressively as we can. We won’t release today what we anticipate end of Q1 to be, but I can give you directionally that we’re going to build back to better than negative 15 and yet still drive really good terms and still be really rigorous about our inventory management, which, as you know, we’ve been delivering on since mid-last year.

And then, secondly, on CTx, we’re continuing to see the sort of mid to high single-digit lifts in those stores, and we’re pleased with how the customer is reacting to the new experience in those stores. But I think that summarizes your question. Makes sense?

Dana Telsey: Yes, yes. Thank you. Yep. Makes sense. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jeremy Hamblin: Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start by just making sure I understand a couple of things in the guidance. In terms of the contribution that you’re expecting for the 53rd week this year. Are you looking at like kind of 10 million to 15 million from a sales perspective? And what would the contribution be to either operating income or EBITDA?

Heather Plutino: Hey, Jeremy. This is Heather. I’ll take that one. Thanks for the question. From a sales perspective, we want you to think about the growth contribution from the 53rd week is about 150 basis points over prior year. And then, from a profitability standpoint, it’s negligible. It’s immaterial.

Jeremy Hamblin: Got it. And then, just drilling down a little bit on trends and what you’ve seen the callout of SNAP benefit reduction on March 1, as well as the lower tax refunds. Have you seen a difference because, if you look at kind of the tax filing statistics, refund money dispersed at the middle of February was quite a bit higher, 9 billion or so. And then there has been a pretty significant falloff over the last few weeks. Have you seen that play out in your trends within Q1 thus far? In other words, how have the post February 15th trends been relative to the very end of Q4 and into the very first couple of weeks of Q1?

David Makuen: Thanks, Jeremy. Good question. I’ll give you a slightly different nuance after I address your question. First off, timing of the refunds, we haven’t seen anything that’s statistically relevant. You’re right, it was a little heavy and faster, which is a good thing in the beginning, and it slowed a bit. But we’re pinning much more of the softness on the amount of the refund, less about the timing. And if you dissect, for example, the families that filed this year, their refund is substantially lower than last year and substantially lower than the national average, which is lower. And so, that’s what we’ve been more focused on, that our core family is quite a bit lower in refund amount than prior year. And that’s driving different decisions by them when it comes to discretionary shopping. So, less about the timing and the disbursement, much more about the amount TY versus LY.