Designer Brands Inc. (NYSE:DBI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And then secondly, as we shared last quarter the return of Nike, we are very excited about continuing to elevate that partnership. So again those are two tailwinds. But again, as we navigate through choppy macroeconomic environment, we’re balancing, obviously those tailwinds with those headwinds.

Jared Poff : And I want to echo one thing that Doug had said to make sure it’s clear, we’ve reiterated this a few times. In our current guidance, which we reaffirmed, we are assuming there is a pretty material change in the current trajectory that we’ve experienced year-to-date. That’s always been the case, and we believe, especially as we get against easier comps, that is why we have belief. To date, we have not seen that, but we haven’t planned to see that yet, but that is what is anticipated, but that is why we called out. There is certainly, I would say, a net risk position as it pertains to the macroeconomic conditions and turning — seeing that turn to the degree that our current guidance has in there. But for now, it is on trend and that’s why we’ve reaffirmed guidance.

To your last two questions on the SG&A, I’m actually very glad you spoke or asked about that because in my mind, right now, where the consensus modeling is probably most disconnected for the fall. I want to take you back to a moment to our initial guidance for SG&A for the year. And what we had said was that we have done the reorg that we talked about and some cost savings initiatives that stripped about $25 million year-over-year out of our legacy business. But we also have about $50 million of SG&A to add into the overall company because of Keds, Topo and the 53rd week. And right now, I’m not seeing consensus reflect that on a total year basis. In fact, it’s looking like most consensus has that SG&A dollars below LY [ph]. So I think that’s one of the biggest disconnects that are currently out there in consensus.

So that and the new interest within the loan. I want to call you back to that which I gave guidance to, if we look at a change in SG&A dollars spring to fall, there’s about a $40 million shift to kind of get to what I just talked about our full year guidance. That’s coming from a few big buckets of work. One, we’ve got marketing. We shifted about $15 million of marketing across the company out of spring into fall as we were not seeing the traction or the incremental traction that we would have expected to see with that marketing. So we’ve moved that into fall. We use some of that for back-to-school. And we’re very excited to be launching for the first in a long some DSW branding top of funnel marketing, very video heavy in the fall as well.

So that shift has moved. We also have about $9 million of that 53rd week that’s being added in there. So again, that’s unique to fall, not happening in spring, and then about $4 million related to coming off the TSA with our Keds transition. That has always been the case. We just weren’t sure when that was going to materialize that final month, we have a month of catch-up to do, and that happens to be in Q3. So all of that together, along with selling expenses related to an improvement in our comp performance totals about $40 million shift in SG&A between fall versus spring and more in line with that total year guidance that we gave at the beginning of the year, which I just want to make sure you guys are properly modeling. And then the last question was repurchases.

Obviously, we have wanted to take advantage of what we think is a very opportunistic price. We funded that with term loan liquidity, and we’ve been executing. We did want to give, which we did cover in the current quarter because it was much heavier than even what we accomplished in the second quarter. And there is some remaining. We never commenced to future activities. So we quoted up through yesterday up to the fifth, but that’s, I think, proof of how confident we feel in our long-term strategy.