iMedia Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMBI) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Peterman: Great question. Always one thing, you have to read the room. I think that the most important thing we discovered in the last, call it four years, was that that idea of capturing what the customer wants and the imagination of the customer that’s timely, and that you can often bet wrong on, is around consumer electronics and the big items like that of what you’re taking in. Those customers, the reason it’s so risky is that if you get it wrong, you’re sitting on a lot of inventory and those customers only come around once. You saw us really move out of consumer electronics for the holiday season in ’19 and ’20 and ’21 and we really only focus on our core wearable strategy. The elements that we do have, some of the gaming stuff and some of the fun stuff we do have is stuff that we sell year round, from the drones and the cars and these other things, and we do those internally so we can avoid the other mousetrap of consumer electronics, which is the low margins.

We feel like we have a great selection of products for ShopHQ, and some of the brands on ShopHQ we’re in better position as well – Christopher & Banks, for example. Last holiday season, we had some late shipments still because of the logistics. We were able to get all that in, in the first quarter and it’s just been waiting to be sold for nine months, and that is–so we feel like we’re in great shape there in the holiday season for Christopher & Banks.

Mark Argento: Last question from me, you had talked a little bit about capital allocation and prioritizing–you know, liquefying the balance sheet as much as possible. Is there anything that would prohibit you guys from potentially doing a buyback of any sort here? With the equity at market cap of roughly $15 million, even a small amount of dollars would go a long way there, but is there anything that’s prohibiting you guys at this point now, hopefully once you get the deal closed on the sale-leaseback, from potentially buying back some stock?

Tim Peterman: Great question. It is one that we wrestle with all the time. No, right now we’re focused on obviously the debt reduction and closing the transaction. In terms of the additional liquidity and what the IRR would be on that additional liquidity and how it’s deployed, we talk about all the time with our board and our stakeholders, and we’ll make that call when it comes up. But certainly there is an opportunity, a very large–as I would call it, a large disconnect between the equity value, the enterprise value as it relates to the business, what we’re doing and what we’ve done, so we think that’s going to work itself through. In certain circumstances, at one-time events, buybacks do have impact – I am a subscriber to the book, The Outsiders 8, where they–I think that was the name of it, where they talked about certain opportunities for stock buybacks.

Mark Argento: Thanks and good luck.

Tim Peterman: Thanks Mark.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Eric Wold from B. Riley Securities. Your line is now live.