Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Karen Short: Hey, thanks very much. Good to talk to you again. A couple questions with respect to your comp guidance and your results in 4Q, can you just talk a little bit about what traffic versus ticket was in 4Q and then how you’re thinking about traffic versus ticket throughout 2023 and then also triangulate that with what your expectations are for inflation in 2023. And then I just had one other question.

Chip Molloy: Sure, Karen. So traffic was just a hair down in the fourth quarter and then the ticket was up and we’re picking that up through both inflation or AUR, which is offsetting a slight decline in units. As we go into the year this year, we feel good about traffic. It’s so far year-to-date, it’s up slightly. Our expectations are that we’ll maintain traffic pretty steady throughout the year. Our expectations are inflation will still be with us year-over-year, but it will start to decline as we progress into the back half of the year. And at the same time as the sequential units for basket slows that year-over-year, that will improve and net-net you kind of get into that low single digit range.

Karen Short: Okay, that’s helpful. And then just wondering, when you look at sales growth versus EBIT growth, obviously I know what you’ve given in terms of margins, so you did say, I think on 3Q that you thought EBIT margins would remain more or less steady in. It looks like you’re kind of guiding to slight decline in EBIT margins. So I want to ask about that, but I also just want to talk just broadly about what you think the right relationship should be on sales growth versus EBIT growth.

Chip Molloy: Well, fundamentally yes, we did guide in a way that suggests that operating margin will decline here. We could we’ll get flat to some slight increase in gross through the year SG&A, we’re managing it really tight. We’re working it really hard as you know, with most of the retail landscape. Managing costs is becoming the challenge of the day and we’re working through that. We’ll probably have a hair of the leverage this year as we go forward. To answer the second part, I think it’s a healthy, we think it’s a healthy place to believe that our operating margin would essentially stay flat and that our sales growth and earnings growth will grow appropriate accordingly.

Karen Short: Great. Thanks very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from John Heinbockel with Guggenheim. You may proceed.

Anders Myhre: Good morning, Jack, Chip. You have Anders Myhre on for John Heinbockel. Nice results this quarter. So you plan on enhancing customer engagement in 2023, calling out the launch of your new marketing campaign and further personalization efforts. With that, we were curious on where we stand with the loyalty program when it might launch and how much incremental wallets shared might drive. Thank you.

Jack Sinclair: Yes. Thanks for the question. We’re spending a lot €“ we’ve done a lot of different experiments over the past couple of years in terms of trying to get at our target customer and encouraging them to spend a little bit more. We’ve made some progress in different categories and made some progress at different times of year, which we’ve been encouraged by. We’re looking at investing a little bit of money to try and understand what we can do to inspire our customers to come a little bit more often or spend a little bit more. We’ve got a customer base that we’ve talked about in the past that that really in terms of affinity to the brand, really truly love Sprouts and we’re encouraging €“ we’re looking at tactics as to how we can get them to extend and spend a little bit more on the one hand.

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