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

Mauricio Serna : Great. Thanks so much for all the details.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question today comes from Dylan Carden with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Dylan Carden : Thank you very much. Jared, just sticking with that last, the IRS refund, primary use of addition to that [ph] or how you think about that in full?

Jared Poff : Yeah, the lion’s share of it is on our revolving credit facility to adjust mechanically. As soon as that comes in that will immediately be used to pay that down. We will always assess as we always do current stock price versus liquidity and overall capacity to buy. So we aren’t committing to deploy that in one particular fashion. And on day one it would be used to pay down our ABL debt. But there’s no commitments or earmarked for those funds at this point.

Dylan Carden : Okay. And then I just want to make sure I understand kind of the balance of guidance. So you have a lot of tailwinds between comparisons in Nike, et cetera. But if the consumer sort of takes a leg down here, would that be sort of detrimental to guidance at this point, just given some of the rhetoric on?

Jared Poff : Yeah. So Dylan and you hit it on the head. As we look out for the year and how we built that guidance range, we are anticipating a pretty material shift in overall year-over-year performance than what we’ve experienced in the spring. That’s always been the case, and that’s what we’ve always communicated. And we do have some tailwinds and you hit them on the head. We’ve got easier comps. We’ve got Nike coming in. We’ve got some new branding advertising going on that I just talked about. So there certainly are tailwinds. At the end of the day, though, and we’ve been seeing it across the entire retail lens, especially people who sell to the consumer, the discretionary consumer, we’re seeing a lot of caution. And right now, I call it — I feel like we’re in a net risk position even as it pertains to our current guidance. But it really lies square with that discretionary consumer and how they’re feeling it going into fall.

Dylan Carden : And the last one, we haven’t talked about sort of the loyalty program in a while. I’m just kind of curious how these new brands interact with or essentially built on the back of the lower number that you had and how much of your sales would happen [indiscernible]? And anything part of retail?

Doug Howe : Dylan, this is Doug. Again, we’re pleased with the progress of the brands that we mentioned in the remarks, Keds and Topo Athletic. And then most recently Le TIGRE, very early days on, obviously. We’re excited about that as we were the first launch partner at DSW, but we believe that there’s opportunity to expand that outside of DBI channels of distribution, which is a broader opportunity as we move forward in general. So everything is performing to our expectations. We feel really good about that. And I think that just goes back to the strength of our business and the fact that we have the brand segment as well as the retail segment that we did realize those sales in our own channel. So just more confidence in the strategy that we’re going to be deploying going forward.

Jared Poff : The one thing I would add to that, Dylan, is — and I mentioned it with our SG&A, this month, we will be basically fully off that transition services agreement, actually a little ahead of schedule with Keds. So while, this has been a pretty transition late in the year for Keds, they’ve been performing at their acquisition model. We’re really excited to have them now on our infrastructure for wholesale, for DTC and really excited about positioning them to start having strategic growth now that they’re actually on our systems.