Haverty Furniture Companies - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue of $181.6M grew sequentially modestly weaker versus Q4 but exceeded Wall Street consensus; diluted EPS of $0.23 beat consensus, with gross margin up 90 bps YoY to 61.2% on mix and product selection. EPS consensus was $0.14* and revenue consensus was $177.8M*; HVT delivered an EPS beat of $0.09 and a revenue beat of ~$3.8M*.
• Comparable-store sales declined 4.8% and written comps fell 6.3%, reflecting weak housing turnover, winter storm disruptions and softer President’s Day event; however March trends improved to flat written sales, and average ticket rose ~4% to $3,314.
• 2025 guidance largely maintained: gross margin 60.0–60.5% unchanged; fixed/discretionary SG&A $291–$293M unchanged; variable SG&A lowered to 18.6–19.0%; CapEx cut to ~$24M (from ~$27.1M) amid tariff uncertainty.
• Management emphasized tariff planning and supply-chain repositioning (halted most direct China shipments; shifting production to Vietnam/Cambodia/Mexico), inventory build to delay tariff impact, and selective pricing actions; liquidity remains strong with $118.3M cash and no debt.

Values retrieved from S&P Global for estimates.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Margin and EPS outperformed: gross margin rose to 61.2% (vs. 60.3% LY) and diluted EPS improved to $0.23 (vs. $0.14 LY) on merchandise mix and expense control. Management: “Gross margins remained strong for the quarter, coming in at 61.2%… pretax profits… $5.3M”.
• Average ticket and design sales mix improved: average ticket up ~4% to $3,314; designer average ticket >$7,400 (+9%); design consultants accounted for 33.2% of written business (vs. 32.4% LY).
• Proactive supply chain and pricing: halted most direct China shipments (145% tariff risk), shifting to Vietnam/Cambodia/Mexico; minimal consumer price impacts expected due to supplier support and targeted pricing actions.

What Went Wrong

• Demand headwinds: comps -4.8% and written comps -6.3%; President’s Day sales down ~10% over two weeks; weather impacted multiple markets; categories weakness in dining/occasional.
• Sequential softness vs Q4: revenue $181.6M (vs. $184.4M Q4), gross margin 61.2% (vs. 61.9% Q4), EPS $0.23 (vs. $0.49 Q4), reflecting seasonality and promotional cadence.
• Tariff uncertainty complicates planning: 90-day reprieve adds near-term relief but creates mid-year visibility risk; management reduced 2025 CapEx by ~$3M to maintain flexibility.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Richard Hare, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Richard Hare (CFO)

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. During this conference call, we'll make forward-looking statements which are subject to risk and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those made or implied in such statements, which speak only as of the date they are made, and which we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include economic and competitive conditions and other uncertainties detailed in the company's reports filed with the SEC. Our President and CEO, Steve Burdette, will provide additional commentary about our business.

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Good morning. Thank you for joining our 2025 first quarter conference call. While the first quarter has felt more like a roller coaster ride with the ups and downs, we are very satisfied with our result. Our Q1 sales were $181.6 million, which was down 1.3%, with comps down 4.8%. Total written sales were down 2.6%, with comps down 6.3%. Gross margins remained strong for the quarter, coming in at 61.2% compared to 60.3%. Our pre-tax profits for the quarter were $5.3 million, or 2.9% operating margin, compared with $3.2 million, or 1.7% operating margin in Q1 2024. Richard will provide additional details later on this call. Despite the housing market continuing to operate at 30-year lows, fueled by affordability issues, inflated interest rates, and declining consumer confidence, the quarter's written sales began positively.

However, by mid-January, our business faced disruptions from several winter storms over the next 30 days, impacting several markets throughout our footprint. The presidential inauguration on January 20 shifted the mood from optimism to cautious concern due to the magnitude of executive orders coming from the White House and the potential tariff discussions. Sales for our biggest event of the quarter, President's Day, were disappointing, down roughly 10% over the two-week period. However, we saw a bounce back in written sales to roughly flat after President's Day until the end of March. While our traffic did soften over the quarter, it remained positive in the low single digits. Conversion rates continued to stabilize with some improvement compared to last year. Our average ticket rose by approximately 4% to just over $3,300.

Our design business continued to improve to approximately 33% of our business, or 15+ % of our tickets, driven by our special order business. Our designer average ticket grew to over $7,400, which was up over 9%. The merchandising team is continuing to push new products to our floors, creating excitement for the sales and design teams as well as our customers. Motion furniture with zero gravity recline and triple power, stationary upholstery with color options, and bedrooms in more contemporary designs with upholstered beds and sleek, clean lines. While our upholstery, bedroom, and mattress categories are performing in line with our business, we have seen some weakness in our dining and occasional categories. As mentioned in our last call, we will begin rolling out our new point of purchase and tagging program later this quarter.

This initiative will improve the in-store customer's experience by centralizing our special order fabrics to improve the ease of choice and introducing a new tagging system that visually provides our customers with more choices that are not shown on the floors. Also, it simplifies for our sales and design consultants the available configurations by collection. We aim to complete this rollout by Labor Day. Our merchants have been working very closely with our suppliers to address the ongoing tariff issues. The 90-day reprieve on April 9 was very helpful from the percentages that were first being floated out. Resolving the tariff issues beyond the 90-day period will enable us to make longer-term decisions around our pricing and supply chain. Our suppliers have been great partners, helping us navigate through these difficult times of uncertainty. Due to their partnership, we were able to keep our inventories moving without any disruption.

We will see price increases for products from Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, and Europe due to the tariff. However, these increases will be minimal due to our suppliers' support. Also, there will be pricing impacts on our domestic upholstery suppliers who source parts and fabric from China. The majority of our products from Mexico will not see any price increases as this product is exempt from tariffs under the USMCA agreement implemented in 2020. We have halted most direct shipments from China due to the tariffs, which would be applied to our products at an additional 145%. We expect this to cause some temporary supply disruptions for these suppliers as they look to move production to Vietnam, Cambodia, or Mexico. Currently, approximately 15% of our total purchases come directly out of China, mainly in motion and stationary leather.

What will happen after the 90 days expires in early July is a guessing game right now, making supply chain planning very difficult. We need the administration to provide clarity around these tariffs to prevent further disruption for the consumer. Our supply chain team started executing our strategy to increase inventories of best-selling products during Q1. Inventories have risen approximately $5 million, or about 6%, since year-end 2024, and our expectations are that they will continue to rise another $3 million-$5 million in Q2. Our initial expectations to increase inventories were focused on providing faster service to our customers as we felt we became too dependent on just-in-time inventory with our suppliers. However, we have inadvertently pushed the impact of the tariffs out into the latter part of Q2 or early Q3 because most of this inventory increase will be tariff-free.

Our merchants have proactively collaborated with the marketing and store operation teams to test more impactful promotions within our stores during Q1. We marked the kickoff of our 140th anniversary by sending a private email to our current email subscribers, expressing gratitude for their loyal support by presenting them with a special savings offer. This initiative was extremely successful, generating over $8 million in revenue in Q1. Our credit costs remain well controlled. We are implementing additional promotional strategies and credit offerings to increase the savings story in our marketing and stores, further enhancing the purchasing decisions of our customers. We continue our push to open five new stores a year, but we'll be cautious in our approach based on current conditions. We are relocating our Daytona store due to a lease expiration.

Our real estate team has secured an old Bed Bath & Beyond location, which opens tomorrow, enabling us to remain in the same area to serve our customers. Also, we are planning our third store in Houston to open in the Valley Ranch area of Northeast Houston in late Q3. Additionally, we are looking to open two more stores in the Houston market in mid to late 2026, giving us five stores in the Houston area, moving us closer to our goal of having six-plus stores to properly serve the market. We have decided to close two stores this year: our Buckhead store in the Atlanta, Georgia market on June 30 and our Waco, Texas store on September 30. Our decisions regarding closures are always based on lease expirations and the store's long-term profitability.

While we have several stores that are in the LOI phase in existing markets, we are unable to provide any further updates at this time. Our goals remain to leverage our current distribution network as we grow the company during these very uncertain times. Our distribution, home delivery, and customer service teams continue to furnish happiness to our customers. Our regret-free experience is an integral part of our service that we provide to our customers. We are able to flex the staffing in these areas of our business with the current business trends due to the natural turnover, which has allowed us to maintain nice controls over our expenses. The issues facing us today—housing affordability, high interest rates, tariffs, market volatility, inflation concerns, and recession fears—are something we have experienced many times in our 140-year history.

We are well positioned to grow from these challenges due to our strong brand, debt-free balance sheet, consistency in our operations, integrity, customer focus, and our people. I will now turn the call over to Richard.

Richard Hare (CFO)

Thanks, Steve. In the first quarter of 2025, we reported net sales of $181.6 million, a 1.3% decrease over the prior year quarter. Comparable store sales were down 4.8% over the prior year period. Our gross profit margin increased 9 basis points to 61.2% from 60.3%. This increase was due to product selection and merchandise mix. SG&A expenses decreased $2.2 million, a 1.9%, to $107.2 million. As a percentage of sales, these costs approximated 59%, down from 59.4% in the prior year quarter. We experienced decreased selling costs, advertising, warehousing, and delivery expenses during the quarter. Income before income taxes increased $2.1 million to $5.3 million. Our tax expense was $1.5 million for the first quarter of 2025, which resulted in an effective tax rate of 28.6% compared to an effective tax rate of 25.1% in the prior year quarter.

The primary difference in the effective rate and the statutory rate is due to the expected state income taxes and non-deductible items for the year. Net income for the first quarter of 2025 was $3.8 million, or $0.23 per diluted share on our common stock, compared to net income of $2.4 million, or $0.14 per share in the comparable quarter last year. Now, turning over to our balance sheet at the end of the first quarter, our inventories were $88.7 million, which was up $5.3 million from December 31, 2024, and down $3.4 million versus the Q1 2024 balance. At the end of the fourth quarter, our customer deposits were $42.8 million, which was up $2 million from the December 31, 2024 balance, and up $1.8 million versus the Q1 2024 balance.

We ended the quarter with $111.9 million of cash and cash equivalents, and we have no funded debt on our balance sheet at the end of Q1 2025. Looking at some of our cash flow usage, CapEx was $6.1 million for Q1 2025, and we also paid out $5.2 million of regular dividends during the quarter. We purchased approximately $2 million of common shares under our share repurchase program during the first quarter of 2025, and we have approximately $6.1 million of existing authorization in our buyback program. Our earnings release lists out several additional forward-looking statements indicating our future expectations of certain financial metrics. I'll highlight a few, but please refer to our press release for additional commentary. Our 2025 guidance includes tariffs currently in effect as of April 30 and does not include the effect of additional proposed tariffs that have been paused by the Trump administration.

We expect our gross margins for 2025 to be between 60%-60.5%. We anticipate gross profit margins will be impacted by our current estimates of product and freight costs. Our fixed and discretionary-type SG&A expenses for 2025 are expected to be in the $291 million -$293 million range, which is an increase over the prior year resulting primarily from our store growth and inflation. The variable-type costs within SG&A for 2025 are expected to be in the range of 18.6%-19%. We anticipate continued reductions in third-party credit costs and warehouse and delivery expenses. Our planned CapEx for 2025 has been reduced to $24 million. Anticipated new or replacement stores, remodels, and expansions account for $19.6 million. Investments in our distribution network are expected to be $1.8 million, and investments in our information technology are expected to be approximately $2.6 million.

Our anticipated effective tax rate for 2025 is expected to be 26.5%. This projection excludes the impact from vesting of stock awards and any potential new tax legislation. This completes my commentary on the first quarter financial results. Operator, we would like to open the call up for questions at this time.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing those star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti & Co. Please proceed with your question.

Anthony Lebiedzinski (Senior Equity Analyst)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the questions. Certainly nice to see the better than expected Q1 results here. Good morning, guys. Thanks for providing the information about the monthly trends, how that progressed. Any way to put a number as far as the impact of the winter storms? Just also curious whether you saw any notable changes in terms of the geographic composition of your written comps?

Richard Hare (CFO)

Let me start off, Anthony. Good morning. With our written business trends by month, and then Steven can give some additional commentary. January, we were down almost 2% in written business. February, we were down on the same day-of-the-week basis about 5%. We were flat in March. We saw some pretty good improvement there in March for the quarter being down about 2.6%.

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Yeah, Anthony, it is Steve. We do not quantify the—we usually do not talk about weather, but there was just an inordinate amount of storm. I think there was about four to five different storms that impacted us. Usually, that will impact one or two stores. Each one tended to impact a greater quantity. We did not quantify that exactly, have an exact number on that. Certainly, that plus what—as we got in the latter part after the inauguration, we started to see things slow. We were disappointed in President's Day, as we said. That event was not—and I think the industry, the retail world, was a little disappointed at that time. We were very encouraged to what we saw after the fact, as Richard just said, ending the quarter out in March.

Anthony Lebiedzinski (Senior Equity Analyst)

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, thanks for that. Given the increased tariffs, have you guys implemented any price increases so far this quarter in response to that?

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Yeah, we are. We're going to get in front of that like we did before, but it won't be a cross-the-board deal. It will be targeted. Our merchandising team is looking at that based on the product and the vendor and whether we're trying to maintain our good, better, best price points. There will be price increases that will go into effect basically immediately. We'll kind of monitor that as we go forward. They will be minimal, as I said. Our suppliers have worked with us. If the tariffs stay where they are right now, I really don't see much impact to the consumer in that we will be able to navigate through this fine. If tariffs go back to 40-50% or where they were, that'll be a different story.

Anthony Lebiedzinski (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. It sounds like you think it's not going to have much of an impact on unit volumes, whatever price increases you'll be putting in place.

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

We're not anticipating that. Right now, where we are.

Anthony Lebiedzinski (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Okay. Just thinking about what's going on here as of late here, have you seen any notable changes from the competition in your markets just in response to everything that's going on with concerns about the economy and also tariffs?

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

We've seen some marketing where people were trying to take advantage of the tariffs and trying to get out in front of that to push that out to the consumer and trying to keep the price points advertised, their price point deals. April is not a big marketing month, especially with Easter in it overall for the industry. As far as President's Day itself, I mean, it was a typical pretty aggressive promotions, and whether it's credit or whether it was discount percentages that our competitors were advertising.

Anthony Lebiedzinski (Senior Equity Analyst)

Understood. Okay. Lastly, for me, as far as the reduction in CapEx guidance, I think it was about $3 million less. What exactly is that for? Just wanted to get more color on that. Thank you.

Richard Hare (CFO)

Yeah. We took out about $3 million for right now in terms of our store expansion. Steve talked about in his comments earlier, we're focused on Houston. Just with the tariff uncertainty, we thought it'd be wise to just kind of hold back a little bit on CapEx until the dust settles.

Anthony Lebiedzinski (Senior Equity Analyst)

Understood. All right. Thank you very much, guys, and best of luck.

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Richard Hare (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Cristina Fernandez with Telsey. Please proceed with your question.

Cristina Fernandez (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning, and congratulations on the good result for the quarter. I had a couple of questions as well. The first one is on the tariffs. I just want to confirm on the guidance that what you're assuming on the gross margin is that the tariffs that are in place now as of yesterday are in place for the full year. Is that what you're assuming, that that 10% tariff on Vietnam and all the Asian countries gets extended and stays that way?

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

That's correct. We feel comfortable with that guidance.

Cristina Fernandez (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks. On the piece that's out of China, that 15% that you're currently pausing, I guess at what point do you need to make a decision whether to ship that out to other countries or place some orders just to not have big holes in your assortment as we move through the year?

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Our vendors have already been in that, and we're already ahead of that in the first quarter moving in case something were to happen. They are securing or in the midst of securing additional production, like I said, in either Vietnam, Cambodia, or Mexico. Some already had production there, so they've got to move what they were producing in China to those particular factories. That will be some of the disruption. Again, Christina, I mentioned about our inventories increasing. We brought in a lot of inventory ahead of time on our best sellers, so we don't think that'll be an impact and will allow us time or allow them time to get repositioned.

Cristina Fernandez (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. That's helpful. I wanted to go back to the performance on some of the big weekends. I mean, President's Day weekend this year seems like there was some weather impact as well. More broadly, as you look at some of the big events and weekends over the past year, we definitely seen some weakness on some of the prior ones. I know a lot of players are getting very competitive and promotional on those weekends. Do you feel like it's the consumer or perhaps that Haverty's is not being as promotional as others are on those weekends, and that's leading to some share losses?

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

I don't think it's the promotional activity. Last year, President's Day 2024, we were very pleased. We had a very good President's Day. Memorial Day, Labor Day were disappointing. July 4th was a good promotion for us. After Thanksgiving was good for us, and New Year's was good for us. I don't think that's it. I mentioned in my commentary there that we certainly are looking. We did some testing of things we did, and we're going to get more aggressive with our promotional activities to make sure we're there. We're looking forward to Memorial Day, which is the biggest holiday event of the first half of the year.

Cristina Fernandez (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

My last question is on the new store openings last year. It seems like they're doing well based on the spread between total written orders and the comp orders. Can you talk more about how those stores are ramping up, what kind of benefit you're seeing? I think some of them have been open for six, nine months. Any color of the new stores would be helpful.

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Yeah. We've been very pleased overall with the new stores. It allows us to leverage because we're using our current distribution. Of course, that's a strength of ours. You've seen our expenses there. We've been able to control it. It has created more leverage, certainly, within our distribution. We still got opportunities with them, Christina. Their new stores, our conversion rate, our closing rates tend to take a little bit of time to grasp with a new team as we go forward. We certainly are pleased with where they're moving. Houston was new, opening up in December and February. We need to get that store count there so we can increase our marketing. Initial reports and initial traffic has been good, and we're pleased with where we're heading.

Overall, all positive, and we're looking forward to getting that third store open in Houston in third quarter. Of course, we're looking forward to the relocation of Daytona that happens tomorrow. That should be basically right next to where we were. We just moved buildings because of lease expiration.

Cristina Fernandez (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Steve Burdette (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Richard Hare for closing comments.

Richard Hare (CFO)

Thank you for your participation in today's call, and we look forward to talking to you in the future when we release our second quarter results later this year.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.