Regis - Earnings Call - Q3 2020

Transcript

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Regis Corporation Second Quarter Fiscal twenty twenty Earnings Call. My name is Gail and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following management's presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session.

As a reminder, this call is being recorded for playback and will be available approximately 12PM Central Time today. I'll now turn the conference over to Biz Maxine, AVP Finance. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Gail. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me today, we have Hugh Sawyer, our Chief Executive Officer Kristin Zepfer, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Eric Bakken, President of our Franchise segment and Amanda Rustin, our General Counsel. Before turning the call over to Hugh, there are a few housekeeping items to address. First, today's earnings release and today's conference call include forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act 1995.

Forward looking statements are not guarantees of performance and by their nature are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward looking statements. Please refer to the company's current earnings release and recent SEC filings, including our most recent 10 Q and June 3039, 10 ks. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call. Second, this morning's conference call must be considered in conjunction with the earnings release we issued this morning and our previous SEC filings, including our most recent 10 ks. On today's call, we will be discussing non GAAP as adjusted financial results that exclude the impact of certain business events and other discrete items.

These non GAAP financial measures are provided to facilitate meaningful year over year comparisons, but should not be considered superior to or as a substitute for our GAAP financial measures and should be read in conjunction with GAAP financial measures for the period. A reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in this morning's release, which is available on our website at www.regiscorp.com/investorrelations. With that, I will now turn the call over to Hugh.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Biz, and good day. Although a lot has changed in the world and in our business since our last earnings call, we remain committed to a strategy, a strategy that we believe will enhance shareholder value. I expect Regis to become a company with significant long term potential, a business we can all be proud to own. Our multiyear strategy is built around completing a refranchising plan to position our company owned salons to a capital light model while positioning the company for sustainable growth in units, sales and profitability. The key elements of our strategy are unchanged and include converting company owned salons to a franchise platform.

As we reported today, approximately 74% of our portfolio has already been franchised. Transforming the business with technology, particularly customer facing technology, improved salon management systems and digital training. Eliminating nonessential, nonstrategic G and A. In January, we eliminated approximately $19,000,000 in annualized G and A costs, and we do intend to do more to rationalize our costs when the time is right to do so. We've been upgrading stylist recruiting and training with an emphasis, as I mentioned, on digital training.

We've been restructuring our portfolio in order to focus on five core brands, the Fab Five, which we expect to improve the precision and efficiency of our marketing. And we've been revitalizing our merchandise business, focusing on owned brands like DesignLine and Blossom. Now although our core strategy has not changed, we have intelligently adapted our salon operations for the new normal with an intense focus on safety. In March, various state and local government mandates resulting from the COVID-nineteen pandemic forced us to close, to hibernate, a substantial majority of our franchise and company owned salons. These closures significantly impacted our fiscal third quarter results and will continue to negatively impact our results in the fiscal fourth quarter as the majority of our salons in both our franchise portfolio and company owned portfolio remain closed during the months of April and May.

Now to mitigate the negative impacts of these salon closures, you may recall that we took immediate action, including a furlough program, wage reductions and aggressive management of our purchasing and payable cycles. As of the beginning of this week, approximately 68 of our portfolio has reopened. That's a combination of both our franchise and company owned salons. We are relaunching our salons safely but at a brisk pace, and we expect to reopen roughly 81% of our salons by the June, the end of this month. As we reopen salons, the health and safety of our customers and stylists has been and continues to be our highest priority.

As we previously reported, a cross functional Regis team led by Eric Bakken that also included a number of our franchisees worked with infectious disease specialists at the University of Minnesota's Medical School to ensure that the health and safety of our customers and stylists would be at the forefront of our salon reopening plans. These physicians provided recommendations on the proper PPE and additional safety measures that have been communicated throughout the company's entire salon portfolio in order to help educate and prepare the company's franchise partners and stylists for operating salons' safety with a safety emphasis in a COVID-nineteen environment. Moreover, in a manner consistent with our company values, James Townsend and our team in merchandise, including Andrew Priatka, proactively invested a very significant amount of capital in the personal protective equipment required to safely reopen our salons. In retrospect, that proved to be a very good decision here at Regis. Our new internal slogan is safety first and hair second, which I think emphasizes the company's focus on the moral imperative and doing the right thing because it's never wrong to do the right thing.

Despite the hibernation period caused by the pandemic, we continued to make meaningful progress in all areas of our strategy and remain committed to our transformation to a fully franchised capital light model on an ambitious timetable. During the quarter, we sold three seventy five company owned salons and transferred these salons to our asset light franchise portfolio. At the end of the quarter, as we reported, approximately 74% of our salon portfolio has been franchised. We've also previously reported that we expected to substantially complete our refranchising by the end of this calendar year in 2020. Given the hibernation of our business during the pandemic, this goal may be somewhat delayed.

But frankly, I'm still optimistic we will substantially complete transformation on an ambitious timetable. Our team is doing great work despite the challenges of the pandemic. In May, Kirsten and our finance team working with advisers at Guggenheim successfully amended our credit facility that expires in March. We believe the amendment of our $295,000,000 revolving credit facility will give us the flexibility and debt capacity to manage the business through our strategic transformation as well as the ongoing uncertainty that's generated by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. We think we're in great shape as it relates to that new amendment and our balance sheet.

As we previously said, the amendment is capital light excuse me, covenant light. And being covenant light means we were able to remove all prior financial covenants, including the net leverage ratio and fixed charge coverage ratio, and we only added a minimum liquidity covenant that we are comfortable with. Additionally, the amendment provides the company's lenders security in the company's assets. In closing, I want to thank our franchisees and associates for their many contributions to our business during this extraordinary period in the company's nearly one hundred year history. I also wanna recognize the University of Minnesota's Medical School and acknowledge their support during this tragic pandemic.

I'm also grateful to each one of you for your continued interest and support. I'll now turn the call over to Kirsten to take you through the numbers. Kirsten?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Sue, and good morning, everyone. As Sue mentioned, the last few months have been unprecedented, but we are committed more than ever to our strategy and we continue to be pleased with the results of our restructuring and the cadence of our vendition process given the major disruption of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. We reported this morning on a consolidated basis third quarter revenues of $153,800,000 which represented a decrease of $104,600,000 or 40.5% versus the prior year. The year over year revenue decline was driven primarily by the conversion of a net fifteen eighty one company owned salons to the company's franchise portfolio over the past twelve months and the closure of two zero eight nonperforming salons, of which the majority were cash flow negative and not essential to our future plans. In late March, we made the decision to refund to our franchise partners approximately $15,000,000 of previously collected cooperative advertising fund contribution.

Many of our franchisees were able to and have taken advantage of the government assistance program, which will help them recover. We wanted to provide some immediate cash relief by refunding previously collected AdSense dollars. Given the near term challenges faced by our franchisees, we concluded that this accommodation would ease the financial burden associated with the government mandated hibernation of the franchise bonds during the pandemic. This also contributed to the decline in revenue. However, it had no impact on operating income.

These revenue headwinds in the quarter were partially offset by a $2,100,000 increase in franchise royalties and fees and a $31,800,000 of rent revenue recorded in connection with the new lease accounting guidance adopted in the first quarter of fiscal twenty twenty. While I would normally not address technical accounting matters, it's important for me to comment on the $45,000,000 onetime noncash goodwill impairment charge related to our company owned salon segment that we reported during the quarter. This was a full impairment of company owned goodwill. This non cash charge is highly technical in nature and does not have any economic impact on our business model. Prior to the COVID-nineteen crisis, the company was on track to derecognize its goodwill over several quarters as part of our vendition strategy.

The economic disruption caused by the pandemic resulted in a charge this quarter, which eliminates future derecognition charges. Absent the goodwill impairment charge, the company owned goodwill would have been derecognized over the course of our transition to a franchise platform. For clarity, with the full impairment this quarter, there will be no further goodwill derecognition. Third quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $6,000,000 was $31,200,000 or 84% unfavorable to the same period last year and was driven primarily by the decrease in the gain associated with the sale of company owned salons of $17,800,000 and the elimination of the EBITDA that had been generated in the prior year from the net $15.81 company owned salons that have been sold and converted to the franchise portfolio over the past twelve months, partially offset by significant reductions in G and A and marketing. As we've previously discussed, you should expect the gain from the sale of company owned salons to continue to diminish as we enter the later stages of our transformation.

The COVID-nineteen pandemic also contributed to the decline in the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA by approximately $8,000,000 due to the government mandated hibernation of salons caused by the pandemic and a decrease in guest visits leading up to the salon closures as customers across the country began to shelter in place. As a reminder, all of our company owned salons closed near the March as did the substantial majority of our franchise salons. Since the closures continued into April and May and substantially ended revenue generation during this period, we expect to experience a much greater impact on our fourth quarter results. Although the pandemic had a dramatic impact on our earnings, we are reopening our salons at a rapid pace.

As Hugh mentioned, approximately 68% of our portfolio has reopened, and we anticipate that as we enter our new fiscal year, the majority of our business will be operational. Please note that excluding discrete items and the income from discontinued operations, the company reported decreased third quarter twenty twenty adjusted net loss of $4,500,000 or $0.12 per diluted share as compared to adjusted net income of $15,400,000 or $0.37 per diluted share for the same period last year. The year over year earnings decrease in adjusted net income was driven primarily by the decrease in adjusted gain from the sale of salons to franchisees and corresponding elimination of adjusted net income that had been generated in the prior period from the sold salons. These decreases were offset by a decrease in adjusted tax expense due primarily to the impact of evaluation allowance. On a year to date basis, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $52,800,000 was $30,100,000 or 36.3% unfavorable versus the same period last year.

The change includes a $6,900,000 increase in the gain, excluding non cash goodwill derecognition related to the year to date sale and conversion of company owned salons to the franchise portfolio. Excluding the impact of the gain and the non cash goodwill impairment charge, third quarter year to date adjusted EBITDA totaled $1,900,000 which was $37,000,000 unfavorable year over year. And like the third quarter results, this unfavorable variance is largely driven by the elimination of EBITDA related to the sold and transfer salons over the past twelve months. Looking at the segment specific performance and starting with our Franchise segment, third quarter franchise royalties and fees of $8,700,000 decreased $14,100,000 or 61.8% versus the same quarter last year. As I previously mentioned, this decline in royalties and fees is driven primarily by the onetime refunding of approximately $15,000,000 of previously collected contributions to cooperative advertising funds, which had no impact on operating results.

The decrease in advertising fund revenue was partially offset by an increase in royalties due to an increase in franchise location. Product sales to franchisees decreased $1,000,000 year over year to $15,300,000 driven primarily by a 3,700,000 decrease in products sold to TBG, partially offset by increased franchise salon count. Franchise same store sales were unfavorable 4.1%, and we believe negatively impacted by the reduced guest visits leading up to the government mandated closure. Third quarter franchise adjusted EBITDA of 11,500,000 improved approximately $1,700,000 year over year, driven by growth in the franchise salon portfolio, partially offset by lower margins on franchise product sales. The performance of our franchise portfolio was also challenged by the COVID-nineteen pandemic as well as operational complexity of onboarding new owners and transitioning salons to our more experienced owners, among other factors.

Year to date, franchise adjusted EBITDA of $36,400,000 improved approximately $8,300,000 or 29.7% year over year. Looking now at the company owned salons segment, third quarter revenue decreased $123,000,000 or 55.7% versus the prior year to $97,900,000 This year over year decline is driven by and consistent with the decrease of approximately fifteen sixty one company owned salons over the past twelve months, which can be bucketed into three main categories. First, the conversion of sixteen twenty eight company owned salons to our asset light franchise platform over the course of the past twelve months, of which three seventy five were sold during the third quarter Second, the closure of approximately two zero eight company owned salons over the course of the last twelve months, most of which were underperforming salons at lease expiration, and as I noted earlier, not essential to our future strategy. The next company owned salon reductions were partially offset by two fifty four salons that were bought back from franchisees over the last year and 21 new company owned organic salon openings during the last twelve months, which we expect to transition to our franchise portfolio in the months ahead. Third quarter company owned salons segment adjusted EBITDA decreased 18,500,000 year over year to negative $1,300,000 Consistent with the total company consolidated results, the unfavorable year over year variance was driven primarily by the elimination of the adjusted EBITDA that have been generated in the prior year from company owned salons that were sold and converted into the franchise platform over the past twelve months.

The quarter was also unfavorably impacted year over year by the reduced guest visits and temporary closure of company owned salons due to the COVID-nineteen pandemic and increases in stylist minimum wage and a decline in same store sales in our company owned salons pre COVID-nineteen. On a year to date basis, company owned salons consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $14,500,000 was $51,700,000 unfavorable versus the same period last year. The unfavorable year over year variance was driven by the elimination of the adjusted EBITDA related to the sold and transferred spot over the past twelve months, partially offset by management initiatives to right size the support structure in the field. Of course, it's important to note that our company owned salon performance will continue to become less critical to the future trajectory of our business as we continue our conversion to a capital light franchise model. Turning now to corporate overhead.

Third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $4,300,000 decreased $14,400,000 and is primarily driven by the $17,800,000 decline in net gains, excluding noncash goodwill de recognition from the sale of company owned salons, partially offset by the net impact of management initiatives to eliminate noncore, nonessential G and A expense and lower year over year equity compensation due to the reversal of equity expense related to performance of our beliefs will be met. In January, based on the improved visibility into the speed of transition, we began meaningful reductions in our G and A expenses by eliminating approximately two ninety positions, including 15 contractors across The U. S. And Canada, which is expected to result in $19,000,000 of annualized G and A expense savings. Lastly, I wanted to point out that vendition cash proceeds during the quarter were approximately $49,000 per salon compared to approximately $71,000 per salon in the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty.

As you may recall from our previous earnings calls, we've cautioned that we are venditioning more signature style salons this fiscal year, which could blow up net proceeds per salon due to the cost of converting some of these salons as part of our brand consolidation efforts, along with more SmartStyle vendition. Additionally, the COVID-nineteen pandemic caused us to temporarily suspend the vendition process at the March, and we've just restarted the process. Looking now at the balance sheet. At the end of the quarter, we made a $183,000,000 draw on our revolving credit facility. This draw was done to increase our cash position and preserve financial flexibility in light of the COVID-nineteen pandemic.

This increased our cash balance to $241,000,000 as of the March. As Hugh previously mentioned, in May, we amended our revolving credit facility that expires in March. This successful amendment provides relief for the maximum consolidated net leverage covenant and minimum fixed charge coverage ratio covenant. Given our successful vendition process, we have known for some time that our existing credit facility would not be appropriate for our end state franchise business and that we need to reengineer our credit facility to meet the opportunities inherent in our new business model. We are very pleased with the new credit facility terms and appreciate the support of our bank syndicate.

We believe the new amendment will provide the long term flexibility we need to see our strategy through to completion and enable us to successfully navigate the uncertainties caused by this pandemic. In summary, our third and fourth quarters have proven to be unprecedented in our history. However, despite the hibernation of our business, we successfully amended our credit facility and continued forward momentum of our vendition strategy. We continue to believe that we will complete our transformation and be well positioned to generate long term shareholder value. With that, I'd like to thank you for your continued support and interest in Regis.

And I'll now turn the call back to Gail for questions. Gail?

Speaker 0

Thank you, Ewen Kirsten. The question and answer session will now begin. Our first question is coming from Steph Wissink from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Sue, I have a couple of questions for you and then Kristen as well. I know you don't typically like to give comps by month, but I think it would be just helpful to scope the business coming through January, February into the downturn in March and then being down April, May, and then what you've seen so far in the recovery in June as your salons have reopened. If you're willing to just give us even contextually some shape of the comp performance, that'd be helpful.

Speaker 2

Sure, Steph. And I think what I'll do just at a high level, I'll set the table here for Eric. It's still such early days in the reopening cycle that you're right. We are reluctant to say more than we should say. But I think Eric can give you a pretty good flavor of what we're seeing as franchise was out ahead of the company owned salons on the reopening schedule.

So Eric, why don't you talk about what we're seeing in franchise business? Because that'll give you some good insight into the contextual, patterns we're seeing, Steph.

Speaker 3

Sure, thanks to you. Hi, Steph. Good question, and I think it is helpful to understand. I'll take both parts of your question. The first part, as it relates to the quarter, if you looked at January and February, we were performing very well on the franchise side.

Can always be better, of course. But we were up 2.4% in service and 1.5% in total. And for Supercuts, we were up 3.3% in service and 2.7% total. So that's for January, February across our franchise business. Then March, we were down 19, which pushed our number down to a negative four.

So so that that that, I think, clarifies what happened in the quarter. And what we've seen, you know, we started opening opening salons, on the franchise side in April 24, and Georgia and Oklahoma were our first two states. And and then we've been opening, you know, ever since, and now we have north of 4,000 franchise salons open. And we're we're starting to to get to the point where we have a meaningful number of salons that have been opened more than thirty days, so we can start to gauge what's happening with the haircut cycle. So I'll give you a high level kind of view of what we've seen.

Starting out that we when we opened in states, we we did a nice job of opening as soon as we could in most instances. We were we were very well prepared. Our franchisees did terrific work here. And so we would see pent up demand for the first week. I mean, very busy, you know, full on, you know, no no additional capacity, etcetera.

And then once you got first through that first seven days, you would see that demand start start to subside. And so we see that. So it would go up significantly then back down. And what we're seeing now, as I mentioned, since we have a meaningful number of salons that are past that thirty day period and getting into a haircut cycle, we're seeing it come back up again, which is very good news. You know, we knew we would get the first visit.

What we were what we set out to do with our safety culture is to make sure that our customers felt safe and our stylists felt safe in our salons. And we wanted to make sure, obviously, that that they would come back for future visits, and we're seeing that in the numbers. So, I won't give you the specific numbers, but I can tell you that's generally the way it's been working. And, of course, we're we're dealing with with issues in the salons and and doing good work with capacity constraints that we have. So, you know, in the salon, Steph, if you had six stations and you had three on each side, with social distancing, we're generally closing one of those stations on each side.

So we're going from six to four. And that can be okay on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe a little bit on Thursday. As we get into the busier times and for busier salons, that capacity can constrain our revenues even with increased hours. So we've been working creatively to free up that capacity in our salons, things like moving the front desk, to the front of the salon, adding a portable station. You know, even if you can get one more station in that example, one or two, you know, that's very helpful.

So so, Steph, that's what we've been seeing, and I'll stop there.

Speaker 1

And, Kirsten, I think it's

Speaker 2

true to say I think it's also true to say, Kirsten, that closed salons are not in the number, right, in the same store sales

Speaker 1

So the the decline that you see in comp, in March is, you know, people starting to shelter in place, but we still have the salon open. Once the salon closes, it's no longer included in the comp.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And our franchisees hung in there for a fair amount of time. And so when when we were moving through March, you're right, Kirsten. You are exactly right. You know, the the the the the transactions and the traffic, was curtailing dramatically even though they kept some of those salons open.

So, you know, if they were open for just a few hours, it would still go in the comp, and that hurt us as well.

Speaker 1

Okay, Kristen. That's a interesting kind of technicality. So when the salon closes, it falls out of the comp base. So when you report your June comps, will the months of April and May reflect zero salons? Why, you mentioned a few were opening in the April.

So if you just help us scope from a technicality perspective, will you report a fully loaded comp in the June or an adjusted comp? How should we be modeling the June? Yeah. I think that's that's a tricky one, you know, in in terms of of the comp. You know, it's it's been it's hard for us to focus the model on on a comp basis because because salons closed for a majority of the quarter.

So maybe we can take that offline in terms of modeling how we wanna do that how you wanna do that going forward with the uniqueness of what happened in April and May and both salons have been included in the comp. Okay. That's helpful. And then two really quick ones. Just on the share dislocation, clearly, independent chains and the independent salons are feeling a significant amount of pressure.

So if you can just help us maybe Hugh think through share opportunities for your franchise network in terms of those local salon visits. And then, Eric, for you, just remind us, are you seeing any price increases across the menu, or any surcharges being added to the tickets to cover some of the incremental COVID related expenses?

Speaker 2

So as to it's cute, Beth. As to the first part of your question, I I think and I think you've heard me say that the COVID pandemic is a tragic thing for the country and was very, difficult for our company. But I've been consistent in saying now for several years that, a recession would be very good for Regis. I I said that coming in the door in 2017 that the recession, particularly a jobs related recession, would enable us to recruit more stylists, which are production employee, and would bring significant pressure to bear on independent salon operators. I'm sorry that the recession came as a consequence of COVID, but, frankly, from a competitive standpoint, I'm delighted it's here because I think it will bring significant pressure to bear on small mom and pop shops.

And I believe that, many customers who had moved upmarket to higher priced, services will come back into the value chain, because there are, you know, so many families today are under economic pressure. And rather than go to a high end barbershop and pay $50 for a haircut, they're gonna come back to Supercuts and get a better haircut, for a much lower price. So COVID nineteen pandemic, terrible. Recession, good news, and I feel good about it. Pressure on the competition, and I believe it'll drive customers back into our salons, into value salons.

And I think it's gonna make hiring styles a lot easier than it's been over the last few years. As to pricing, you know, broadly speaking, I don't think any consumer facing business today is in a position where they can't adjust pricing. Think it costs more to run businesses safely in the COVID environment. And I think all businesses that are consumer facing are are in a circumstance where they've got to adjust pricing for the new normal. You know, we're we're certainly doing that in our business in both company owned salons.

And and our and I and I'm although we don't control the pricing in our franchise segment and don't want to, my understanding is a lot of our franchisees have have done the same. So whether you're in the restaurant business or you run a bar, or you run a hotel, or you run hair salons, It costs more to do some of the things we're doing today. And my own point of view is it's wise to adjust pricing for the new normal. We've done that in our company owned salons through surcharges, and our franchisees are adjusting and using several different mechanisms as we all continue to learn more, around what it costs to operate and what the volumes are going to be. But I think price increases are, at least from my point of view, I think they're inevitable.

Speaker 1

Right. Think should have

Speaker 3

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Steph. Sorry.

Speaker 1

No, please. Go ahead,

Speaker 3

I I got disconnected, so I missed most of it. So I'll be very brief because I don't wanna be redundant. But, yeah, on on the franchise side, virtually all franchisees are taking price, and and we'll likely take more as we go forward. Obviously, I'm I'm sure he mentioned our costs have gone up. Service times have increased.

And so so you'll see us, you'll see franchisees taking more price as we go forward.

Speaker 1

Okay. And last thing to

Speaker 2

do is see the I I I think you're gonna see the same thing too, Steph, in the restaurants, and, you know, everybody's gonna have to do it. So sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.

Speaker 1

No. I just wanted to just tidy up a housekeeping, number that you typically give us, which is the percentage of your remaining OpCo salons that are under LOI. I know you paused your venditioning cycle, but any update on the progress around some of those conversations?

Speaker 2

We've had a number of questions about that along the way. We had a substantial majority of our company owned salons who are in various stages of negotiation at the time we entered hibernation. And by substantial number, I mean the great majority. And the majority of those were actually under a written agreement. So we're working back through that list to make certain that we can close on those deals and move them into the franchise sector.

But I think Eric and I we've had such a terrific track record in this area. It's it's interesting stuff. Kurt Landwer, who runs a lot of our corporate development side and goes out and recruits new franchisees, said something interesting to me a few weeks ago. He said that during the period after 02/1989, in the last in the Great Recession, the period after the Great Recession, was one of the best times to be in franchise recruiting because so many corporate people who had lost their jobs as a result of the of the Great Recession decided they wanted to own their own businesses and control their destiny. So Eric may have a different point of view.

I'll let him speak to this too, but I think I still I'm really I feel confident that we're gonna get this done and that we'll move through the portfolio and that the timing will be on about what we originally thought. Well, we thought we'd get it done this calendar year. We may we may slip a little bit, but I don't think it's gonna be much. And, Eric, you can address that too

Speaker 3

if Sure. You'd No, that's spot on. We're feeling good about it. We stayed very close with the folks that we had agreements with to buy stores all through the closures, etcetera, and we continue to stay close with them, and, we're making good progress. It it does take a little more time now to to get them, transferred.

One of the things that lenders are requiring in many instances is that we open the salons first prior to transfer. So we're going through that right now. But, you know, we're optimistic that, you know, not only will we get through the ones that we have agreements on, but in the smaller number where we don't have agreements, we're making progress in those negotiations as well. It's not as, you know, simple as it was back in February, but but we're we're confident, as Hugh said, that we'll get these through. And we we're still recruiting owners, as Hugh mentioned, and and we're pleased with the way that's going as well.

Speaker 2

I really Steph, a good way to say this is I don't lose any sleep over the refinancing refranchising. I'm not losing any sleep on that. I'm not losing any sleep on g and a reductions. We've known for like, two years that we needed to address that, and we will. And, you know, the if you ask me, you know, what keeps me awake at night, it's just the lack of visibility.

We're gonna have to, you know, wait and see what this, you know, get a little more experience in the in the COVID environment and and, see how the salons look and the volumes look. And like any other business that has variable expenses, and cost will adjust accordingly. There you know, the new normal, isn't a catastrophic circumstance. It just means you adjust your you adjust your business for the the reality of the business you have. And it's not the first time this company's been in business almost a hundred years.

If we can survive the Great Depression and World War two and the the many other recessions that this company has gone through, we'll get through this too. We just gotta wait and see what the number get a little more visibility in the numbers, and we'll adjust just like we have so many other times.

Speaker 1

All right. Great. Thank you guys for the information.

Speaker 2

You bet, Beth.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 0

This concludes the Q and A portion of the call. I will now turn the conference back to Yu Yu.

Speaker 2

Well, thanks everyone. And we appreciate your ongoing support and interest, and we wish you Godspeed and stay safe. And please leave your homes and go get your haircut at a Regis salon near you. Thank you, everybody. Bye bye.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our conference call for today. If you wish to access the replay for this presentation, you may do so by visiting regiscorp.com in the Investor Relations section of the website or by dialing in +1 (888) 203-1112, access code 1 sorry, 515-3028. Thank you all for participating, and have a nice day.

Speaker 1

All

Speaker 0

parties may now