Family Dollar Stores Inc (FDO) First Quarter 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Howard Levine, Chairman and CEO, Family Dollar Stores Inc
Sure. We’re pretty much where we thought we were going to be in terms of the unit list that we had projected when we took the price investments and it is nice to see that has been pretty consistent since we have done that. In terms of where we are, do we need to invest more or less, as I have tried to talk to you about is the pricing environment is an iterative process that it is not solely dependent on us. It is a lot of competition impacted and we are very sensitive to that and continue to make tweaks even as we speak, where necessary.

We do not think we have a substantial spin coming there. We are pretty much through the balancing out of the strategy, the promotional strategy and how it relates to the everyday low pricing piece of it. I would say asI have talked about in the prepared comments, we are about done with that. We still got a few tweaks to go, very keenly focused on remaining competitive with our everyday assortment and continuing to drive strong promotional events at the same time.

Charles Grom, Sterne Agee
Okay, great. Thanks a lot Howard.

Howard Levine, Chairman and CEO, Family Dollar Stores Inc
Thanks.

Kiley Rawlins, VP of Investor Relations and Communications, Family Dollar Stores Inc.
Joshua, as we are getting close to the top of the hour, I think we will take one more question please.

Operator
Thank you, ma’am. Our last question comes from Meredith Adler with Barclays.

Meredith Adler, Barclays
Hey. Happy New Year, guys. A lot of great questions were asked. I was wondering if you could comment at all about SNAP, it was never a huge piece of your business, but whether you saw anything different in the latest quarter or in December.

Howard Levine, Chairman and CEO, Family Dollar Stores Inc
Not really, Meredith, our food business continues to grow and we continue to gain market share there, but no significant trend changes with SNAP. SNAP is only about 3% of our transactions, so it is not a material amount at Family Dollar.

Meredith Adler, Barclays
Okay. I thought it was a little higher, but okay. Then I was wondering about your remodels. I know you talked about continuing to do them with a focus on fixturing and putting in checkpoint, but are you also still taking these steps to make the stores generally look better, or is it just a focus on those two kinds of opportunities?

Howard Levine, Chairman and CEO, Family Dollar Stores Inc
Yeah. No, it is the whole renovation program, Meredith. The stores are getting checkpoint and that is part of it, but that’s not the renovation piece of it. The renovation is just as we have always talked about. It’s with steel and with the layout changes and the other areas with the painting and the whole cleanup of the stores. No, that effort continues. What we are doing though is we are currently testing a less costly renovation that we get most of what we want to get, but without the capital investments there. Again, we continue to work through that. We are continuing to significantly invest and renovate those stores along with the checkpoints and other items.

Meredith Adler, Barclays
Great. Then just one other question about, you have had some corporate defections, which in my experience is not unusual under the circumstances. But what do you do when the people have left? Do you go out and do a search to replace them or do you reconfigure the work and who does it so that you just end up with lower corporate staff?