Shoe Carnival - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, and welcome to the Shoe Carnival's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. It is also being broadcast via webcast. Any reproduction or rebroadcast of any portion of this call is expressly prohibited. Management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risk factors. These risk factors could cause the company's actual results to be materially different from those projected in such statements. Forward-looking statements should also be considered in conjunction with the discussion of risk factors included in the company's SEC filings and today's earnings press release. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today's date.

The company disclaims any obligation to update any of the risk factors or to publicly announce any revisions to the forward-looking statements discussed on today's conference call or contained in today's press release to reflect future events or developments. I'll now turn the conference over to Mr. Mark Worden, President and CEO of Shoe Carnival for opening remarks. Mr. Worden, you may begin.

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

Good morning, and welcome to Shoe Carnival's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me on today's call are Kerry Jackson, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, and Carl Scibetta, Chief Merchandising Officer. As announced in this morning's press release, Shoe Carnival delivered earnings per share of $3.17 during the first nine months of the fiscal year, which is more than double any full year of earnings in our 44 years of operation, except for one. I'd like to thank our nearly 6,000 team members for this accomplishment and their commitment to excellence for our customers, our communities, and our shareholders. Throughout Q3, American households continued to face a challenging inflationary environment, putting pressure on their disposable incomes and on our traffic. Despite the macroeconomic volatility, the company's strategic plans to expand customer counts and double operating profit margins versus historical levels continues to work.

Q3 EPS of $1.18 exceeded consensus expectations, and profitability growth has continued to accelerate each quarter as 2022 progressed. Our merchandising organization, in close partnership with our strategic vendors, continues to deliver the freshest product assortments from our customers' favorite brands and eliminate unprofitable promotions while our operators provided exceptional customer service. This resulted in Q3 operating profit margins of 12.8%, the highest results of the year, and marked the 7th consecutive quarter in double digits. Similar to Q2, we were encouraged that the Q3 operating profit margins delivered sequential growth above the 12.4% operating margin achieved during Q2 and the 11.1% in Q1. To further illustrate the profit transformation the company has achieved, operating profit margin was 6.0% for the prior 10-year period.

As discussed in previous earnings calls, throughout 2022, we have been lapping the stimulus-impacted 2021 quarters. The more normalized quarters with no stimulus benefits in 2022 continue to provide management clear visibility into the sustainability of our operating profit levels. As such, we are raising our operating profit margin expectations for 2022 and providing guidance today to achieve between 11.5% and 11.7% operating margins, nearly doubling the company's prior ten-year historical levels. We believe the best way to understand the underlying sales and customer growth sustained at Shoe Carnival during these COVID-impacted and stimulus-benefited recent years is to benchmark back to 2019. Overall sales grew 21.9% for the first nine months of fiscal 2022 compared to 2019. For Q3, sales of $342 million achieved growth of 24.4%.

Customer counts for our loyalty membership surpassed 30 million for the first time at the end of Q3, setting a new record of 31.5 million members, up approximately 35% compared to 2019 and up over 10% versus 2021. The continued growth of loyal customers is the strongest indicator that our brand is resonating with customers across geographies, across demographics, and across our multiple banners. Looking at customer trends, non-athletic sales continue to be hot, up 35.1% versus 2019. Encouragingly, athletic sales stabilized in Q3 up 4.4% versus 2019, driven by improvements in inventory positions and reduced supply chain challenges as the quarter progressed. Carl will provide a comprehensive overview of category results shortly.

We're encouraged to share that earlier this month, we surpassed the billion-dollar sales mark, and that Q3 sales of $342 million was the second highest sales result of any quarter in the corporation's 44 years. During Q3 of 2021, the company grew net sales 29.8%. Compared to 2021, net sales retreated only 4.1% during Q3 2022, holding over 24% growth from the stimulus infused prior Q3, and as said, surpassing every other prior quarterly sales result. With $3.17 of EPS achieved during the first nine months of the year and approximately 10 weeks left in the fiscal year, we are on track to achieve earnings per share between $3.95 and $4.10.

With that said, we expect our customers face a historically high inflationary environment throughout Q4 and throughout this holiday season, which will put pressure on their disposable incomes and likely on our traffic. As such, we anticipate the most likely outcome is to deliver sales on the lower side of our annual 2022 guidance and to deliver EPS on the mid to lower side of our annual guidance. Moving on now to an update on progress for our key strategic plans. First, we continue to make significant progress on our fleet modernization program. Our plan to have over 50% of stores modernized by the summer of 2023 is on track, with 41% complete currently.

In addition to the modern Shoe Carnival experience rolling out now, we are grand opening a Shoe Station modernized prototype store later this month at new store openings in both Alabama and Georgia. Second, our Shoe Station banner continues to outperform expectations on all fronts. Sales surpassed $75 million during the first 9 months of 2022. We continue to expect Shoe Station sales and profits to exceed our original full-year expectations of $100 million and 10% operating profits by the mid-single to low double-digit range. Our integration efforts of the recently acquired banner continue to pace ahead of our preliminary timelines. We're starting to realize significant back-office synergies as well as gaining efficiencies and best practices across merchandising, operations, and marketing.

New store site identification efforts continue to progress throughout the South, and we expect to grow the 21 store chain acquired to approximately 30 stores by the end of fiscal 2023, and we aim to surpass 100 stores during the 2026-2028 horizon. To note, two new stores tentatively planned for January 2023 soft openings were shifted to spring of 2023 openings to enable the rollout of the new Shoe Station store prototype design and to open with the freshest spring product assortments. Third, we continue to elevate our advanced CRM, analytics, and digital marketing capabilities, which allow us to have one-on-one communication with our customers. These highly profitable tools give us a targeted platform to reach our customers via text and email, and we're able to drive sales at attractive margins and without deep unprofitable promotions.

During Q3, we completed the Shoe Station integration into our CRM organization and platform technologies. We extended our Shoe Perks loyalty program across both banners and are nearing the final development stages for the new shoestation.com rollout, which is targeted for holiday 2022 or early 2023. Many wins have already been achieved, such as adding over 1 million Shoe Station customers as a part of our loyalty program. With this data in hand, we've been able to confirm that the core Shoe Station customer demographics align with our initial expectations when it was acquired. That of a higher income suburban customer that is proving out to be resilient to the current inflationary environment. Two major customer advantages are now starting to be leveraged for incremental sales occasions and increased loyalty.

First, customers can now earn points and rewards at either of our banners and redeem those rewards across either banner. Second, we now can introduce all of our 31.5 million customers to a new banner to provide enhanced product assortments and pricing tiers, and to provide them more store locations to conveniently shop. Fourth, we are planning to expand scale of our store footprint of both banners over the next five years. The Shoe Carnival enterprise is on track to operate over 400 locations during 2023 and targeting 500+ stores in the 2026-2028 horizon through organic expansion and targeted M&A activity. We see the largest white space opportunity for store growth is with our recently acquired Shoe Station banner.

As shared earlier, we aim to grow to over 100 Shoe Station stores in the 2026 to 2028 horizon. Based on real estate availability with our targeted demographic and the timing of attractive new developments in strategic geographies, we anticipate approximately 10 new stores in 2023 and then acceleration in 2024 and beyond. In conclusion, Q3 marks the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit operating profits. Customer counts climb to the highest level ever, surpassing 31.5 million loyalty members. Earnings per share year to date has more than doubled all but one of the prior 44 full-year results, and we are on track to deliver against our EPS and strategic targets for the remainder of fiscal 2022. With that said, I will ask Carl to discuss our performance further. Carl?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Thank you, Mark. As Mark highlighted, today's results are strong evidence that our strategy is working. During the third quarter, we experienced a 50/50 athletic/non-athletic sales balance. This was a shift of 700 basis points to the non-athletic category compared to 2019. We anticipated this move in consumer demand to the non-athletic product and positioned inventories to take advantage of this fashion change. Issues continue to impact athletic inventory availability early in the quarter. However, we did see improvement in the athletic footwear deliveries as we moved through the quarter. Entering into the fourth quarter, inventories by category are in line with forward sales expectations. Our outstanding team of merchants continues to diligently manage the supply chain.

Looking ahead, we believe the supply chain issues we've been dealing with for over two years will continue to improve to a more normalized state as we move into fiscal 2023. At quarter end, our inventory forward weeks of supply was in line with 2019. Importantly, both aged inventory and seasonal carryover inventories are in line. As a result, we do not have a glut of inventory and see no need to provide deep discounts or dump goods in the fourth quarter. Turning to the results, as mentioned, our anticipated shift in sales from athletic categories to non-athletic categories continued in the third quarter. Sales in non-athletic categories were up in the mid-30s% versus 2019, and sales of athletic footwear were up in the mid-single digits%.

Sales versus 2021 were up in the mid-singles% for non-athletic and down in the low 20s% for athletic. By department, women's non-athletic was up in the mid-20s% versus 2019. Sales were driven by dress up in the mid-40s%, sport up in the mid-30s%, and sandals up in the high 20s%. Men's non-athletic sales were up in the high 30s% versus 2019. This was driven by men's casuals up over 50%, which further reflects the consumer's move from athletic to non-athletic footwear for the back-to-school time period. Men's boots were up in the high 20s%, and men's dress was up in the mid-teens% compared to 2019. Shoe Carnival continues to be the retailer of choice for children's footwear in the markets we serve. Children's non-athletic sales versus 2019 were up in the high 60s%.

Children's casuals growth increased up over 100%, and infants non-athletic sales were up in the low 60s%. Sales in children's athletic were up in the low teens%, and adult athletic were up in the low single digits% versus 2019. With the fashion trends we are seeing and the improved product flow, we anticipate strong sales results in the non-athletic categories for the remainder of 2023. Excuse me, 2022. As we have seen the past 7 quarters, we continue to deliver excellent product margins. These product margins continue to run up over 700 basis points versus 2019 and are a result of our transformational promotional strategy. We continue to use the data provided from our best-in-class CRM program to drive loyal customer growth.

This data provides us valuable insights into our over 31 million customers and enables us to engage with these consumers through smart, effective promotions that are not margin dilutive. The success we have seen utilizing this strategy has been a key factor in our sales and margin growth. As we move into the fourth quarter, the non-athletic categories traditionally increase in penetration to total sales. Our inventory position in those categories is much improved versus last year. Our seasonal boot inventory position is much better than last year, and our athletic inventory levels and freshness are the strongest they've been throughout 2022. With that, I will now turn the call over to Kerry for a review of our financials. Kerry?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Thank you, Carl. I'm excited to share with you the financial highlights from another successful quarter, which again demonstrates the transformed and sustainable profitability profile for the company. Similar to previous quarters this year, I will be comparing results versus 2019 as we see as the most relevant and normalized period prior to start of the pandemic. Net sales in Q3 were $341.7 million, which were the second highest quarterly sales in our history, surpassed only by Q3 last year. These sales increased $67.0 million or 24.4% compared to the pre-pandemic third quarter 2019, driven by sales from the Shoe Station banner and a comparable store sales increase of 18.3% from the Shoe Carnival banner.

This is the highest quarterly comparable store sales increase for the year, with Q1 increasing 16.8% and Q2 increasing 8.0%, resulting in a year-to-date comparable store sales increase of 14.4%. Our Q3 gross profit margin was 38.3%, a 740 basis point increase compared to the third quarter of 2019. An increase in the merchandise margin of 760 basis points was partially offset by a 20 basis point increase in buying distribution and occupancy costs. SG&A expense in Q3 was $87.3 million, or 25.5% of sales, compared to $66.6 million, or 24.3% of sales in Q3 2019.

The increase in the SG&A was primarily due to investments in advertising and store-level wages, along with the expenses for the Shoe Station banner acquired last year. Q3 operating income was $43.6 million, or 12.8% of sales. This is in line with our expectation of annual double-digit operating margins, which are more than double our historical run rate. Net income for the third quarter of 2022 was $32.7 million, or $1.18 in diluted earnings per share, an increase of 151% compared to the third quarter of 2019. Excluding the stimulus-enhanced 2021, this is the highest quarterly diluted earnings per share in our history, or the fourth highest including 2021.

We closed out our quarter with inventory of $392.3 million, which is up $94.3 million compared to the third quarter of 2019. Approximately 40% of the increase in inventory is for Shoe Station stores acquired last year or opened this year and in-transit inventories. Net of these increases, inventory is 19% higher than the end of Q3 of 2019. The increase in inventory is supportive of the 21.9% increase in net sales compared to 2019 and the expectation of increases in sales for the remainder of the year. During the third quarter, we repurchased 451,638 shares at a total cost of $10.0 million. We have $19.5 million available under our repurchase program, which expires December 31, 2022.

Summarizing our expectations for 2022 fiscal year, we expect sales to range from $1.27 billion-$1.30 billion, gross profit margin to be approximately 37.0%, operating income margin to range from 11.5%-11.7%, and diluted earnings per share to range from $3.95-$4.10. Implied in our annual sales guidance, Q4 comparable store sales are expected to increase between 14% and 26% compared to Q4 2019. However, as Mark mentioned earlier, we are cognizant that our customer may be challenged with higher inflation in Q4. Based on this outlook, our year-to-date performance, and fourth quarter expectations, we are more comfortable with the mid- to lower range of our annual guidance.

In closing, our third quarter results are a continuation of increasingly sustainable profitability for Shoe Carnival compared to pre-pandemic levels. We are confident in our ability to execute the remainder of the year, and we are poised for long-term growth through a combination of organic store expansion and modernization and selective acquisitions. This concludes our financial review. Now I'd like to open up the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to inform everyone if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Sam Poser with Williams Trading.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning. First of all, Kerry, just some housekeeping. Can you give us the merch margin and the BD&O leverage year-over-year instead of going back to 2019, please? My math is not that good.

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Our merch margin increased 760 basis points for the quarter, and we deleveraged BD&O by 20 basis points.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Versus last year?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

No, against 19.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Can you give us versus last year-over-year?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Let's see, Sam. Our merch margin was down 70 basis points. We deleveraged our BD&O by 140 basis points.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you. Can we talk a little bit about the inventory levels and sort of what you know, given that sales, total sales on a year-over-year basis were down in the quarter. I understand how inventory was last year, but you did a lot with less last year. What is sort of the optimum turn, inventory turn for the company on an annual basis?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

You know, Sam, I don't know that we're ready to give that information with the Shoe Station banner coming online, and how that business is going to accelerate with store openings. I know that the inventory levels a year ago were pretty much spotty based on deliveries. We feel comfortable where we are today and where we're planning going forward to achieve our goals.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Just for the sake of definition, because you guys, everybody defines it a little differently. Carl, could you discuss sort of in that sport, which is your non-athletic sort of sport casual product. Could you give us some examples? You don't have to tell me brands, but just some examples of what would fall into that sort of non-athletic, but it's more sport-oriented, while some of your competitors, I believe, may have those in the athletic category.

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Well-

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Can you give us some idea?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Yeah. Sam, the way we look at it is if you can play a sport, you can run, you can work out in it. If it's something that you can do physical activity in, it's in the athletic area. If it has an athletic feel but it's not functional, it goes into the sport area.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Where would a walking shoe be then?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

It depends on if it is a true technical walking shoe or more of a casual walking shoe.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Got you. Okay. We're not gonna get anywhere with that. Can you give us some like, and you mentioned that the supply chain was getting better. Can somebody dive into that a little bit, and just give us some more color there as well?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Sure, Sam. We're seeing more consistent on-time deliveries on product that was placed, as we move into third and early fourth quarter, across all categories of footwear. Over the last 12-18 months, it was spotty depending on the category, whether it was athletic, whether it was non-athletic. It tended to swing back and forth based on the timing and production and country of origin and COVID. We're not seeing that anymore. We're seeing products in all categories of footwear, athletic and non-athletic, being available on time, based on the way we place the orders.

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Sam, I'll add to that. From a cost standpoint, we're seeing in the first half of the year, we saw a penalty in our supply chain due to fuel and transportation costs of over 300 basis points for Q1 and Q2. This past quarter it was a little over 100 basis points. We're expecting to see that potentially drop a little bit in Q4. We're seeing cost savings also as the supply chains have healed.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

I know it's tiny. I know it's a tiny amount of business that you've done so far in the quarter, and the big and the huge weeks are coming up. Can you give us some color on sort of, I guess, how it's going? How much did the first couple weeks inform the guidance? Or is it just, you know. Just any color you can provide there.

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Sam, you hit upon it that it's really hard to give any guidance at this point because the big weeks of sales are ahead of us. So anything we're seeing right now is not really material to our overall expectation of what the quarter is gonna be turn out to be.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

In the fourth quarter historically, what is athletic to non-athletic, banner, and boots within that as well as a percentage of sales?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Boots in the non-athletic categories for the quarter tend to run about 45% of the total of the women's and the children's non-athletic business. I don't have the number in front of me, but typically non-athletic versus athletic in the quarter where we have been a 50/50 business tends to drop to more of a 60/40 non-athletic business.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Based on what you've seen on the overall trends, do you expect and you know, and how you've bought it, do you anticipate that, you know, we could see a 65-35 this year? Is it sort of going that direction from the non-athletic, athletic into this fourth quarter?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Sam, that'll be determined really by weather. As we move through the quarter, the weather has a major factor in the boot penetration. Weather seems to be turning colder, and we'll see what happens.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

You bring up a good point, and then I'll get off. Over the last 6 or 8 weeks, we've seen the weather get cold, then get warm, then get cold. Did your trends in that category follow that? Because I've heard from other retailers that, you know, they were feeling great about 4 or 5 weeks ago when the weather was cold. Then it got warm, and they were groaning, and then it got cold. It's getting colder again, they're feeling better. Are you seeing or have you seen the same kind of roller coaster over the last, you know, call it 6 weeks or so?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Yeah. Sam, we certainly see the weather, always, as always playing a factor. You have to look at the weather this year, last year, but it flip-flopped a little bit. What I know is we have great boot inventory. We're in a much better position than we were from a standpoint from a year ago. We fully expect, once the weather and we just have seen some movement in the weather, it stays consistent, we think we're ready for a great holiday season in the boot categories.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

All right. Thanks very much. Continued success.

Operator (participant)

Question comes from the line of Mitch Kummetz with Seaport Research.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. Kerry, on Q3, I don't think you gave the comp on a year-over-year, unless I missed it. I think you only gave it on a three-year. What was it versus last year? If you also give us the months or maybe just a little bit more color on how the months played out for the quarter.

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Yes, Mitch, we were down 9.9% against 2020, 2021. What we saw was that it was fairly consistent at that level except October increased over the average.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Just back to Sam's question. I know that the first couple weeks of October are small, but has that trend from October continued into November, or has it gotten better or worse?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

You know, Mitch, we typically give information how the quarter's starting when it's relevant to the overall. We don't shy away from doing it, but it really is immaterial, whether it's positive or negative at this point in time. Really, we'll start to see it day after Thanksgiving. That's when the real dollars of sales start having. The trend right now is not relevant to our guidance.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Sure. And then on merch margin, or I should say gross margin, I think you're saying 37% for the year. I back into something that's kind of in the high 37 range for Q4, which would be up, like 850-900 basis points on a three-year. That would be an improvement over kind of what the trend has been through the early part of the year. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe also in the context of kinda how you're thinking about promotional activity in the fourth quarter?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

Mitch, you're correct on those numbers. You know, the way we're looking at it is that we're, you know, Carl talked about how we expected to go from athletic to non-athletic in the fourth quarter, so we'll have a higher penetration in non-athletic. We drive a higher merchandise margin on our non-athletic part of the business. We also, as I mentioned earlier, that we're seeing our supply chain costs and our leverage of our BD&O come into play. Now we'd expect to see our, at the low end of our guidance, leverage on our BD&O, slight leverage in Q4, which here again helps that overall gross profit margin.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Okay. That's helpful. Just a few last things. Carl, on the athletic business, I think you said it was, like, down in the twenties in the year-over-year in the third quarter. Can you maybe speak to, you know, how constrained you were in athletic on the inventory side and how that's changing for Q4 and how that might impact your your outlook for athletic in Q4?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Sure, Mitch. Early in the quarter, as we came through those big back-to-school early weeks, deliveries were a bit late, so scrambling on getting product in those big weeks hurt us a bit. As we moved into later in the quarter, our inventory is much more in line. Today, with October deliveries setting us up for holiday, our inventory's in the best shape from a freshness, fashion, and quantity standpoint than it has been throughout probably the last year. We feel pretty good with that. With the athletic consumers out there, we're gonna get our share.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Can you also remind us how challenged you were on the boots inventory last year in the fourth quarter? If I recall correctly.

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Sure

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

There were a fair amount of things that didn't actually ship until or you didn't maybe get receipts until the first quarter.

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Yeah, exactly. Boot inventories were down significantly last fourth quarter. I would say a quarter of the boot inventory didn't hit in time to really take advantage of it during the meat of the season.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Just a couple last things. You know, we've kind of gone through a lot of vendors reporting earnings the last month or so, and some of them have talked about excess which has resulted in some cancellations. Others have talked about offering some of their wholesale partners discounts. I'm just wondering, Carl, if you're seeing any good deals out there on inventory as maybe some retailers are working through some excess and if that's having any impact on the margins in the fourth quarter if you are, you know, bringing in some good deals.

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

We take advantage of opportunities when they're presented to us and they make sense. I would say there's no more of an increase in that category than there has been in the past. There is a lot of product and people, both vendors and retailers are reflowing products, as we move through the remainder of the fall season and all the way into first quarter. It's really based on category, Mitch, on where those overages are. We don't see a big increase in promotional activity either from opportunistic buys for the fourth quarter or having to dump inventory 'cause of problem inventory.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Lastly, on the loyalty, I think you said that now Shoe Carnival and Shoe Station are integrated and customers of either banner can use points to redeem on the other banner. I'm curious what you're seeing. Like first of all, like when exactly did that happen? I'm curious to see what you're seeing on the Shoe Station side as you know a lot of you know Shoe Carnival customers become aware of Shoe Station and kinda different product assortment being offered there.

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

Yeah. We're thrilled. 31.5 million customers across two banners, up over 35% for 3 years. We have a critical mass now to market cross-banner, cross geographies, cross price tiers and assortments. It's too early to really share anything insightful as it just happened towards the end of Q3. We're getting that data in hand of over 1 million Shoe Station customers now, and we've learned what we hoped to have learned when we acquired them. First, they're a highly affluent customer. Second, they're a suburban customer. Third, they're coming from geographies across the markets where Shoe Carnival largely does not compete and was a space we wanted to enter.

That's allowing us to figure out how to move quickly from our current store count to, as I shared, our aim to have over 100 stores open by that 2026 to 2028 time horizon. Lots more to come from this. A lot more long-term sales, a lot cross-merchandising. We're really just at the first pitch of the first inning of leveraging all of the upward sales and profit opportunity from this new integration.

Mitch Kummetz (Senior Analyst)

All right. Thanks, guys. Good luck for holidays. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next question comes from the line of Jim Chartier with Monness, Crespi, Hardt.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First, just want to ask, you know, last quarter, I think you said Shoe Station would be 10% above your initial sales expectation for the year, and now it looks like it could be a little bit lower than that. Just any color around the reduced outlook, at least on the low end there.

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, it's Mark. I would just say we're widening the aperture. It's still expected to beat all of our expectations. Profits are coming in strong. We're finalizing our supply chain integration right now and really starting to leverage merchandising insights to drive for higher profitability. We've widened the aperture to take account for any, you know, minor changes that go through the supply chain during this moment in time in Q4. Either way, we're guiding toward beating the original $100 million and 10% operating profit by the mid-singles to low double digits. Just widening the range a little, not lowering.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Makes sense. What's the launch date for the e-commerce, if you have one?

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

Yeah. We're in great shape. The shoestation.com launch is in the final testing phase. Similarly, we're making sure the supply chain is flawless before we turn it on. We need an outstanding experience, and we think we're very close. It'll either launch just in time for this holiday, or if we're still fine-tuning the supply chain side of that, then it'll launch in early Q1. We're thrilled with what we're seeing and ready to ensure a flawless customer experience in the next couple months, if not the next couple weeks.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Just, you know, your merchandise margins are holding up great. You know, any color you can provide on the industry promotional activity you're seeing? Have your competitors from your vantage returned to historical promotion levels?

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

Hi, Jim, it's Carl. Depending on the retailer, we're seeing some of that. We're seeing it really done by global promotions, which is something that we have eliminated from our marketing strategy with additional coupons and value total messages. Our direct competitors, we're actually not seeing as much of it, but we're seeing it with some of the big nationwide retailers that are trying to move inventory or stimulate traffic in the stores. At this point, we're comfortable where we are and we think our margin goals are well within reach for the quarter.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Great.

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

This is Mark. Let me add 1 more point. You know, historically, Shoe Carnival had run well over 40 weeks a year of the buy one, get one half off promotion during the course of the year. This year, we've run none and have been pleased posting the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit operating profits. As we shared, the Q3, our most important quarter of the year, was our second strongest sales in history. We're confident the strategy is working while other retailers in our space continued with that outdated buy one, get one half off, you know, year-round. Many other competitors punctuated it during back to school. We've stayed true to what we said. We're gonna sustain double-digit operating profits, and we're gonna grow by targeted loyalty enhancements.

Case in point, they're now achieving 31.5 million people we can talk to about what they want, not just giving away our best product at a cheap price.

Carl Scibetta (Chief Merchandising Officer)

One more thing, Jim, I'll add there. Fourth quarter, we know in certain categories is a promotional quarter. We buy for that to run those promotions and make sure that the results of those promotions activity is not margin dilutive. Promotions you see from us from the fourth quarter are all planned and baked into the forecast.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Just, Kerry, you know, what's the CapEx requirement to fund new store growth next year as well as the remodels? You know, then what's kind of your thought on buybacks, you know, in lieu of that, you know, higher CapEx requirement next year? Thanks.

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

You know, we did it. We're expected to do about a little over $70 million in CapEx this year, and that's really being driven by the number of remodels or the modernization of our stores that we're doing. We're leaving ourselves some flexibility next year. We expect to have less CapEx. Between new store growth and the remodels, we should expect somewhere between $50 million and $60 million in CapEx between the two.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Just kind of, you know, big picture thoughts on the buyback. You got back in the market this quarter, but, you know, going forward, how are you thinking about that?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

You know, the same as we always have is that, you know, our first thought is how do we fund growth, and are there any opportunities there? Then we fund our dividend. If we have excess cash that we don't think we're gonna need to deploy and we can continue to build cash later, then we'll do a buyback when we see the stock being unfavorably viewed by the street. We'll still be opportunistic in the future. You know, we're really focused more on the growth side of the business. As we transition to store growth next year, that's gonna be our primary focus.

Jim Chartier (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Question comes from the line of Sam Poser with Williams Trading.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

I have two follow-up questions. One, we recently in the last week or so saw a buy one get one on some boots, and it looked like they were brands I didn't recognize. Was that one of those planned events, Carl, that we just saw online that you know it looked around 11/11 or something like that?

Kerry Jackson (Chief Financial and Administrative Officer)

You are correct, Sam. That was a planned promotion on a select group of boots, and they were purchased specifically for that promotion, as we have done in the past.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Mark, or both Mark and Kerry, I think that you said a couple stores from Shoe Station moved from Q4 to Q1. Is that correct?

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

That's correct, Sam. We moved two at the end of January into Q1, so we could ensure that we open them with our new store prototype versus, you know, have it outdated and have to remodel it in the future.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

There was no impact from that or de minimis impact from that store opening change to the widening of the guidance for Shoe Station?

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

Nothing material, no. It was gonna open the last week of the fiscal. We were just being transparent that the store count we had said would be 400 is now gonna be 398 with those two moving out shortly to meet the prototype.

Sam Poser (Senior Equity Analyst)

Got you. Okay. Thank you very much.

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

Thank you, Sam.

Operator (participant)

At this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Mark Worden for closing remarks.

Mark Worden (President and CEO)

I'd like to thank you all for joining our Q3 call and wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving ahead and a safe and healthy holiday. We look forward to talking to you all again at our Q4 year-end call.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.