The Aaron’s Company, Inc. (NYSE:AAN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 3

Kelly Wall: And comps comp sales at BrandsMart to be negative in Q1 as well. The other thing I’d point out here, Kyle, is from a write-off as a percentage of lease revenues, our view on 2024 is that they will be higher, again driven by greater mix of ecomm originated agreements as well as more new customers. And so our view of this year is that we’re going to land on a full year basis, somewhere between 6% and 7% and will be higher in each quarter of this year year-over-year.

Stephen Olsen: And Kyle, one last thing. Just to wrap that conversation up is we are seeing those higher write-offs are because of the growth that we’re seeing, this 100% ecomm growth and high single-digit overall delivery growth in the business. So we’re super excited about that, and we’re deploying working capital into this growth cycle.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Scott Ciccarelli of Truist.

Joseph Civello: This is Joe Civello on for Scott. Just wanted to follow up on the BrandsMart discussion a little bit. The recovery you’re kind of thinking about in the second half. Can you just talk about the drivers of that on the product side, maybe or anything — any color we can give there would be great.

Stephen Olsen: Joe, this is Steve. So what we believe what we’re expecting is some of the demand pull forward that we experienced during the pandemic to release. And we’re already seeing some signs of that in some of the short life cycle products like computers, cell phones, gaming systems and things like that.So what we believe is, as we move further and further away from those peak periods during the pandemic that even these larger durable categories like appliances, like TVs, we should start seeing some of that demand pull forward release. They’re also obviously comping over weaker comps last year. So that’s helping with the guide as well.

Joseph Civello: And then just switching gears a little bit. I think last quarter, you guys talked about seeing like a slightly higher income credit customer shopping a little bit. Can you just talk about any trends there?

Douglas Lindsay: Yes. We haven’t really seen anything material at this time in terms of changes in our customer coming into Aarons. However, BrandsMart, I think we’ve mentioned before, we’ve got a first and second look credit provider there that represents about 30% of our business. And we’re seeing them tightening credit standards. That started at the end of last year and that’s continued through the first quarter. That’s helping our BrandsMart leasing business, but we’ve not seen any material increase to decisioning scores of Aaron’s. I think importantly, we have not also baked in any benefit from a credit trade down in 2024 in the Aaron’s business outlook provided.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] At this stage, we have no further questions registered. So I’ll hand back over to Douglas Lindsay for any closing remarks.

Douglas Lindsay: Thank you, operator. Thank you for joining the call today, and thank you for all of our — thank you to all of our company and franchise team members at Aaron’s, BrandsMart, BrandsMart Leasing and Woodhaven for your continued contributions. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Take care.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

Follow Aaron's Inc (NYSE:AAN)

Page 3 of 3