Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Simeon Gutman: Okay. And maybe my follow-up, maybe sticking with you on fourth quarter gross margin. I guess, we’re trying to build to the pieces, supply chain, mix, shrink. And we’re having trouble getting to the entire magnitude. Are you willing to share a little more magnitude by item, by driver? Because it doesn’t feel like the consumables mix goes up enough to justify the mix. So there seems like there’s something like markdown in there as well.

John Garratt: So as you look at the drivers of the additional pressure on Q4, it’s the same drivers as Q3, the order is a little bit different. As you look at what we anticipate as the key pressures on Q4 margins is still healthy flow-through, but less than previously expected. The big difference is, first the mix shift. We did see a mix shift in the consumables as customers face financial pressures. We want to go where the customer goes, and like the sales we’re seeing, but it does pressure your margin a little bit with the mix of the sales. The other piece — we did see — we mentioned as we progressed through Q3 is a greater headwind from inventory shrink and damages. And that shrink can have a tail to that. Rest assured, the team knows how to deal with this and is taking actions to address it.

But it does have a tail to it. And then while we are making good progress resolving our storage capacity constraints with the capacity online, we do believe, as we mentioned, that some of this will carry over into Q4, but be largely resolved by Q1. So that’s the big versus our previous expectations. Obviously, the other big one is LIFO. As you look at LIFO, we called out $148 million in Q3, while we believe the product cost headwind is beginning to moderate. The prior cost increases will continue to pressure Q4 LIFO, and you could do the math as you do — as you spread that across the year. So that’s really the key drivers. But again, I’ll just reiterate, many of these are transitory in nature. And as we look ahead to the future, we feel we’re well positioned to resume growing our gross margin over the long-term with the initiatives, the levers, our scale and the pricing position we’re in.

Operator: Our next question comes from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies.

Corey Tarlowe: Congrats on the continued top line momentum and share gains that you’ve witnessed. So with that in mind, maybe could you parse out a little bit what you’re seeing in terms of how the customer is behaving because it’s clear that traffic is up. The customer is visiting the store more and should — maybe shifting a little bit into private label. Could you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in that regard and how you’re investing to continue to support the growth in that segment? And then secondarily, as you see that mix shift happen more to the consumable side, how do you marry that with the continued growth that you’re likely to see in NCI, which should actually help to underpin, I would say, better profitability as we look ahead?

Jeffery Owen: Corey, this is Jeff. Thank you for your question. And I’ll start with the customer. I’ll reiterate the fact that her gainfully being employed is, again, a very important factor to economic health. And so when we talk to our customers, and I feel like our teams do that better than just about anybody. What we hear is she’s feeling the pressure of energy prices and fuel and just the everyday needs are — it’s hard to — for her to make ends meet. And so she’s behaving pretty much exactly the way we would expect her to in times like this. So what we’re seeing from her is, as you alluded to, she’s coming to us more often. She’s buying fewer items on each occasion. And one of the things that we’re very pleased is we’re being able to help serve her needs through affordability.