Torrid Holdings Inc. (NYSE:CURV) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So we’ve changed the process for development and we also have reinstated our chase mode. Our chase capabilities in the business that we’re being able to chase and as we go into the first quarter and just basically put some core disciplines into place, particularly in assortments by category and by channel meaning stores versus online assortments. So I feel very comfortable with the disciplines that we put in place that will help deliver some consistency as we move into spring and throughout the balance of next year and putting Chase back in place, leaving liquidity in our inventory will allow us to react to the customer more appropriately and help build some of that consistency. And I’m turning the last one over to Tim.

Tim Martin: The last one over here. So also answer a little bit of the question you had on inventory, we believe our guidance appropriate reflects any of the promotional activity will need to do in the fourth quarter to keep that inventory as clean as Lisa mentioned and position us for success going into the first quarter of 2023, which kind of dovetails into the conversation around debt levels. We can generate as a business pretty healthy returns on operating cash flows when our working capital and inventory are aligned with sales demand. As such, we’re going to generate a lot of free cash flow in the future of this business. We’ll look to invest that in the growth opportunities that we see. We have a significant amount of incremental store opportunities both in Canada and the US that will want to invest in and continue to grow this business at the appropriate times and we also will look at investing in technology where necessary or other things to bring the customer experience to a higher level.

As such though, we are comfortable with our overall debt level at this point in time and I don’t see any need to do anything in the short term to do that, but if we have extra cash flow beyond our investment capability to grow the business, we’ll look at doing something at that time.

Oliver Chen: Thank you. Happy holidays. Best regards.

Operator: Our next question is from Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group. Please proceed with your question.

Dana Telsey: Hi everyone. Can you, expand upon the customer base and the improving retention? Where are you now in terms of retention? How does it look? Does it look different online versus in-store? And can you expand on the product conversion in the different categories? It sounds like the Studio collection got a strong response too, what are you seeing in the other categories? And lastly, with the impact of inflation, what are you seeing both on a channel basis and regionally with your core customers? How does it differ?

Lisa Harper: Thanks, Dana. I’ll just talk generally. As we have an approach to our customer I spoke about it before. And we’re maintaining a consistent approach here. As we have new customer acquisition that we pay attention to retention and frequency and reactivation. We talked on the prepared remarks that our reactivation campaigns continue to yield very positive results. Our retention numbers are actually quite strong. And we do think we can improve that a couple of hundred basis points as we move into next year. And what we’re trying to do in addition to retention is to build frequency. What we found and what we know is that every time we have a launch like Studio, like Betsey, like a new offering, that engages our core customer at the highest levels and drives them to build frequency.