Torrid Holdings Inc. (NYSE:CURV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Lisa Harper: Thank you, Dana. We’re really pleased with how Studio is performing. The core product there for core fabrication is , but we also have four to five other fabrics that we’ve been testing and that will become part of the core assortment of that line. We are expanding as we move forward and adding polished denim, or studio denim in that line, some what I would call studio streetwear. So very happy. We see any time that we introduce a new idea is very compelling to our customer. It drives frequency, it drives conversion and a need to need that she absolutely has — so that’s exciting. We have learning in it now, and that’s a woman blend, and that’s doing well in addition to that. So great launch and more opportunity as we move forward. I’m not quite sure your second question about the fourth quarter. Can you?

Dana Telsey: The cadence of the quarter, how are you seeing the health of the consumer as the quarter ended? Or any update on how the consumer is?

Lisa Harper: Sure. So what we’ve seen is some positive momentum over the fourth quarter back to stores, which was very exciting. And at the beginning of this quarter, we also saw an improvement in store traffic. It has become choppy in the last couple of weeks, but we — there’s a lot of seasonality and lots of different conversations that could be had about that. But some really nice green shoots in terms of the customers’ recovery and return to the stores. That, combined with our focus in the stores on customer acquisition and getting that customer to the dressing room. So — and tracking conversion rates in the stores in conjunction with traffic, we’re seeing some nice improvement there. And the focus of getting the customers to addressing room, the conversion rate almost doubles what you get a customer in the dressing room.

And so we’ve done some additional training in the stores and onboarding in the stores that really focuses on that customer journey, and we’re seeing some very positive reaction from that, both from customer acquisition as well as conversion. Again, nice positive shoots a little bit choppy on the store return. And actually, we’re seeing some — now we had a little bit of softness online, I think as a lot of people have discussed and we’re seeing a bit more of a shift back online. Again, we look at it as an omni customer, and we baked in what we think are the most likely scenarios for this year with, again, one more year of really having a lot of moving pieces on the macro front that could have an impact at any time. And so really managing this as Tim says, controlling the controllables and being nimble and aggressive and a multi-tier environment.

So I’m happy with some of the things we’re seeing, looking for margin recovery this year, really thinking about that done in 2 steps on the merch margin side. And then I’ll let Tim who always love to talk to me about SG&A, tell you about SG&A.

Tim Martin: Dana, from an SG&A perspective, I think on a full year basis, we are going to see a slight deleveraging just because of the return of incentive compensation, although we’re going to do everything we can to mitigate that over time. I think you’ll see that start to improve itself by the back half of the year as we expect that the sales velocity in the back half will be better than the front half. We are still seeing a lot of the same things that other retailers talking about around wage pressure in stores and things like that. But we are focusing on a lot of efficiency activity around how we staff our stores, how we staff and run our distribution centers overall costing programs in terms of understanding how we source non-merch procurement, and my goal is to drive that number down as we talked about controlling the controllables and find a way to drive leverage in that number.

Dana Telsey: Got it. Thank you.

Lisa Harper: Thanks Dana.