Kirkland’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:KIRK) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Madden: Yes. I think you’re pretty much on it. I think our second quarter margin, just given seasonality in the business, second quarter is a little bit lower in terms of total sales dollars than Q1. So there’s a deleveraging effect there. And it’s also kind of a — it’s been more of a discount-heavy quarter historically. So that is true, sequentially down from Q1 is the right way to think about it. But on a year-over-year basis, I think we have more opportunity to grow the margin, both the merchandise margin and the gross margin in the second quarter and then for the rest of the year. I think what we’d like to see is our ability to get back toward that 30% number for the year. And the sales and the margin mix will determine where that ultimately shakes out but that’s how we’re positioning ourselves going into the back half year.

Jeremy Hamblin: Got it. That’s helpful. And then, as you’ve had a chance to assess the store portfolio, any changes in terms — it sounds like you’re pretty happy with the centers that you’re operating in. Also sounds like you’ve had some opportunity maybe to renegotiate some of your lease deals. But I wanted to get a sense for, is there any thought on relocations, additional closures? It looks like maybe you’ve closed a couple of locations quarter-to-date, but any color you can share on your store portfolio?

MikeMadden: Sure. We’re definitely in what I would call maintenance mode in the store portfolio. We want to hold our store count up. There’s a lot of changes here we talked about today that we think we’ll have an enormous benefit on our store performance. And where we see a store that’s in a good retail center that’s around a lot of our customers, we want to make a good deal and stay. And that’s how we’re looking at this. We are relocating a couple of stores this year. I think it’s two, and it will be later in the year as we accomplish those, but that would be better positioning successful markets that we’re in. And we will do some house cleaning, I would call it, in terms of stores that are not as profitable or not profitable.

And that will really come toward the end of the year. And I think it will look a lot like last year. We could close 10 to 15 stores, but they will largely be underperforming stores that we’ve concluded that’s the right move for us to go ahead and exit. So that will come at the end of the year when most of our leases actions actually have to be dealt with. A lot of our leases really coincide with the end of our fiscal year, and we’ll be working on that diligently for the rest of the year.

Jeremy Hamblin: Got it. Thanks. Last one for me is you noted that advertising expense was down. Your overall SG&A was down year-over-year by a few million dollars. I wanted to get a sense in terms of the plan that you’re going to execute here, how should we be thinking about that on a go-forward basis, particularly in the back half of the year? Are you still planning — advertising expense down, should that normalize? And how does that impact your SG&A overall on a year-over-year basis here as we get into the second half?