Williams-Sonoma - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Williams-Sonoma Inc. third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the conclusion of the prepared remarks. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeremy Brooks, Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jeremy Brooks (SVP, Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations)

Good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. I'm here this morning with Laura Alber, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Howie, our Chief Financial Officer, Yasir Anwar, our Chief Digital and Technology Officer, and Felix Carbullido, our President of the Williams-Sonoma Brand. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that during this call, we will make forward-looking statements with respect to future events and financial performance, including updated guidance for fiscal 2023 and our long-term outlook. We believe these statements reflect our best estimates. However, we cannot make any assurances these statements will materialize, and actual results may differ significantly from our expectations. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of these statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after today's call. Additionally, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

These measures should not be considered replacements for and should be read together with our GAAP results. A detailed reconciliation of non-GAAP measures, the most directly comparable GAAP measure, appears in Exhibit One to the press release we issued earlier this morning. This call should also be considered in conjunction with our filings with the SEC. Finally, a replay of this call is available on our investor relations website. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Laura.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Thank you, Jeremy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Before we get into our Q3 results, I would like to take a minute to thank the incredible team at Williams-Sonoma, Inc. for another quarter of great results. Without their hard work, dedication, and focus, none of the results we are reporting today would have been achievable. We are proud to deliver another quarter of strong earnings, significantly exceeding expectations, despite a challenging economic backdrop for our industry. We beat profitability estimates with a record third quarter operating margin of 17%, with earnings per share of $3.66. Our comp sales, which reflect the larger macroeconomic backdrop, ran -14.6% in Q3, and our two-year comp was -6.5%, and our four-year comp to 2019 was +34.8%.

These results were achieved in an environment filled with ongoing consumer hesitancy on high-ticket discretionary furniture and elevated levels of promotional activity. Despite this environment, we continue to drive results because of our unique proposition in the marketplace and our relentless focus on customer service. Our advantage is our portfolio of brands serving a wide range of categories, aesthetics, and life stages. While people are currently buying fewer large ticket furniture pieces than last year, our portfolio of brands and product offerings has us positioned well for this shift into kitchen purchases, fashion textiles, dorm, baby, and seasonal holiday offerings. Our in-house design capabilities and vertically integrated supply chain are also key in producing proprietary products at the best quality-value relationship in the market. We remain firmly committed to reducing promotions despite elevated levels of discounting in the industry.

In fact, our third quarter promotional levels were meaningfully lower than last year. Instead, we are meeting our customers' needs for value by introducing a larger offering of new products at mid-tier and lower price points. Not only is this strategy good for profits, but we have also reduced friction with our customers as we give them better value without confusing them with short-term discounts. We strongly believe that this is the right way to run our business as it preserves the design value price equation that we offer and our customers appreciate. Moving on to customer service and the supply chain. We are seeing the year-over-year benefit of selling through inventories with lower supply chain costs, and we continue to increase selling margins by reducing out of market and multiple shipments. We have improved our customer service, returning to pre-pandemic and best-in-class levels.

Investments in the final mile delivery experience have resulted in fewer customer accommodations, lower returns, lower damages, and lower replacements. Customer metrics like on-time delivery are at record highs, and backorder creation rates have substantially improved. The total benefit from these supply chain and customer service improvements is significant, and you can see it in our results today. Regarding marketing, we increased our spend from Q2, but still leveraged in the quarter. We continue to ensure that our marketing investment gives us the ability to test new formats, to connect with new customers, and to showcase our offerings to our existing customer base and our highly engaged brand loyalists. We've seen increasing success with our marketing and product collaborations, and we will continue to build upon them. Our ongoing investment in building our proprietary e-commerce technology continues to improve our online experience.

We're focused on offering customers inspiring content and dynamic tools to assist with their design projects, and AI is accelerating these efforts. We see many opportunities for our business from developments from AI. And as early adopters of integrating AI, we look forward to leading the retail industry in this area, and we will focus on quality, authenticity, and responsiveness of this new technology. And as focused as we are on our e-commerce capabilities, we are also continuing to focus on delivering a best-in-class retail business. Our stores are beautifully designed and curated with inspirational assortments, and our continued retail optimization efforts have refocused our fleet on the most profitable, inspiring, and strategic locations. On the sustainability front, we are proud to report that in Q3, we were named the top score on the Sustainable Furnishings Council Wood Furniture Scorecard for the sixth consecutive year.

Using sustainable wood has been a key focus of our strategy and a differentiator of our business. Now, I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about our brands. Pottery Barn ran a -16.6 comp in Q3, but ran a +3% on a two-year basis and a +43% on a four-year basis. We have substantially reduced the promotional offerings in the brand and have successfully introduced new low and mid-tier programs at great value. And while furniture demand has been most impacted, we are seeing strength in textiles and seasonal decorating. We're excited for the holiday season, given strong early reads on our innovative proprietary collections. Earlier this week, we announced the launch of a new mobile shopping and design app for Pottery Barn, following the success of our Pottery Barn Kids and Pottery Barn Teen apps.

The Pottery Barn mobile app delivers a convenient customer shopping experience and makes it easy to create and manage a registry on the go. Now, customers can explore and shop full rooms, easily share their favorite products, and connect with a design expert, all through the convenience of their phone or tablet. The Pottery Barn Children's business ran a -6.9% comp in Q3 and was +11.7 on a two-year basis and +29% on a four-year basis. Across these life stage brands, we are focused on delivering compelling innovation and elevating the customer experience. One key area of focus in the quarter has been the evolution of our back-to-school offerings. Here, we saw standout growth in our dorm business as customers gravitated to higher design and quality.

We offer a compelling, complete solution that is easy to shop on our Pottery Barn Teen app, and given the size of the dorm market, we believe this represents a significant opportunity for us for years to come. We also continue to focus on another key life stage offering, which is baby, the entry point to the children's home furnishing brands. Here we are winning with our innovative nursery seating and a curated selection of high-quality baby gear. In our stores and across our mobile app, customers can register with Pottery Barn Kids and receive help from our nursery experts. Also, we're really encouraged by the strength of our innovative product introductions and fresh product collaborations, with strong response to our recent Super Mario and LoveShackFancy launches. As we look to the quarter ahead, we believe we have a compelling pipeline of collaborations that our customers will love.

Moving on to West Elm. West Elm is the brand that has been most impacted by the customer pullback in furniture. In Q3, West Elm ran a -22.4% and was -18.2% on a two-year basis and ran a +26.1% on a four-year basis. West Elm has the highest percentage of its assortment in furniture, the most underdeveloped in other categories, and a customer base that's the most impacted by the current macro environment. Despite current challenging dynamics, West Elm saw very strong reception to their new fall products, which marked a real evolution in the brand's modern design voice. Sales from this year's fall assortment are up to last year, with positive customer response to fresh furniture forms, mixed materials, and new textures and innovations in textiles.

Early holiday reads have also been positive in seasonal trim and tabletop, as well as hosting and entertaining categories. Given these positive reads, we see sizable opportunity in West Elm as it rebalances more into textiles, decorative accessories, entertainment, and seasonal offerings. We continue to be very optimistic about the long-term growth trajectory of West Elm with its industry-leading design and value. The Williams-Sonoma brand, which includes Williams-Sonoma Home, ran a -1.9% comp in Q3. On a two-year basis, the brand ran -3.4% and was +34.6% on a four-year basis. The Williams-Sonoma kitchen business ran a positive comp for the second consecutive quarter this year, primarily driven by retail. Earlier this quarter, we launched a successful collaboration in cookware with Stanley Tucci, who designed an exclusive collection with GreenPan for Williams-Sonoma.

Collaborations like Tucci's have been an excellent vehicle for growth and new customer acquisition. Kitchen continues to see strength in high-end electrics, particularly in coffee and espresso. The Williams-Sonoma Home business, while still negative, is beginning to see improved trends with a refreshed, more editorial point of view that showcases updated textiles and decorative accessories. Looking to Q4, Williams-Sonoma becomes a bigger part of our business, and early reads on holiday are positive, indicating a strong season of entertaining and gifting ahead. We have an impressive pipeline of new launches with engaging content and corresponding events for our customers to experience both in-store and online. Now, I'd like to update you on our other initiatives. We are pleased to report business-to-business delivered a positive quarter, running +1.5% in Q3, driven by 30% growth in the contract business.

Exciting wins in the quarter included a brand standard program for Pottery Barn, with Pendry Hotels for custom outdoor furniture, and a new partnership with a premier developer partner, Jamestown, for two new properties, including a senior living tower and a new residential development. We're also excited by the success of specific B2B product developments, like the expansion of our restaurant furniture program, that has been key to gaining momentum in the food and beverage space with clients like Dave & Buster's, along with clients in the sports and entertainment space. The future remains bright for this business. Now, I'd like to talk about our global business. Our global strategy has not changed, and we continue to focus on a franchise-first model. This business has, of course, been affected by the uncertain macro environment, particularly in the Middle East.

We are excited to see our brands exceed expectations in other markets, like India. We opened our third West Elm retail location in Pune and expanded our Pottery Barn brands into the world-famous Jio World Plaza, now open in Mumbai. The Mexico market is also showing strength, driven by improved in-stocks and furniture and strong back-to-school and seasonal assortments. And we continue to see momentum in our Canada business, fueled by our commitment to enhancing the customer experience both online and in retail. We have also grown the brand and service offerings available to Canadian customers by launching Rejuvenation and Mark & Graham online and relaunching gift registry in Canada. Lastly, I'd like to update you on our emerging brands. Rejuvenation delivered a positive quarter, driven by our remodel and refresh categories, as well as new growth initiatives.

Customers continue to update their homes, specifically in the spaces of kitchen and bath. We are continuing to grow the brand in new markets by opening a new store in the San Diego market and another new store opening this weekend in North Carolina. We continue to be excited by the opportunity we have for growth from the Rejuvenation brand. We are also pleased with our results in Mark & Graham, our gifting and personalization brand. We are optimistic for Q4 as we head into the key gift-giving holiday season. Customers will benefit from the brand's inspiring content and curated monogram gift guides organized by both recipient and price point. And at GreenRow, we continue to gain momentum in this new brand, which utilizes sustainable materials and manufacturing practices to create colorful, heirloom-quality products. While it's early, we remain optimistic about the potential of this brand and its aesthetic.

These successful and exciting emerging brands demonstrate our ability to develop new businesses that expand our portfolio of brands and address white space in our product offerings, all with minimal investment and low cost of entry, leveraging our knowledge and infrastructure. In summary, our outperformance this quarter drove a record Q3 operating margin of 17%. Although customers are shifting their spending temporarily away from high-ticket furniture purchases, we have a powerful portfolio of brands serving a range of categories, aesthetics, and life stages to meet the demands of customers. And despite our sales running down this year, our execution and the strength of our operating model produced strong earnings again this quarter, driven by our full price selling, supply chain efficiencies, and best-in-class customer service. Our early seasonal reads are strong, and we are optimistic about the holiday season.

As we put this all together, we are raising our guidance for the year. We now expect full-year revenues to come in at a range of -10% to -12%, and we are raising our outlook on operating margin to a range of 16%-16.5%. It is important to note that the reduction in our revenues outlook is more than offset by our raised operating margin outlook. With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff to walk you through the numbers in detail.

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Laura, and good morning, everyone. As Laura said, we're proud that once again, we've delivered earnings substantially exceeding expectations. Our Q3 results reinforce the themes we've consistently communicated over the past several quarters. First, our steadfast commitment to maintain price integrity and not run site-wide promotions. Second, how our earlier supply chain cost pressures will become tailwinds in the second half and beyond. And third, our ability to control costs and manage inventory levels. Our strong profitability this quarter, despite softer top-line revenues, demonstrates the durability of our operating margin. Now, let's dive into our Q3 results, followed by an update on our fiscal year guidance. In addition to year-over-year results, I'll reference 2019 as it's helpful to compare our performance with pre-pandemic levels. Net revenues came in at $1.854 billion.

While below our expectations, our revenues reflect the larger home furnishings backdrop and our commitment to maintain price integrity, even if it means foregoing some revenues in the short term. Our revenue growth in Q3 came in at -14.6% comp. Our two-year stack was-6.5%, and our four-year stack against 2019 grew 34.8%. Our Q3 demand comp, at -11.8%, was materially unchanged from our Q2 trend. Our two-year demand stack was -13.8%, and our four-year demand stack was a +33.2%. Our revenue comps this quarter reflect a normalized spread between demand and net comps. Our improvement across returns and appeasements offsets the majority of last year's outsized backorder fill. From a cadence perspective, our demand trends continue to be inconsistent and choppy, especially after Labor Day.

Moving down the income statement, gross margin at 44.4% exceeded our expectations. The 290 basis point improvement over last year reflects the supply chain tailwinds we've been guiding for several quarters. Merchandise margins increased materially over last year, driven by lower ocean freight costs flowing into our income statement and our focus on full price selling and price integrity. In fact, merchandise margins were substantially higher than Q3 2019. Selling margin also improved materially over last year, driven by supply chain efficiencies. Through our improved execution and investment in supply chain, we substantially improved our customer experience. Key metrics, including out-of-market shipping, multiple deliveries per order, returns, accommodations, damages, and replacements, are all performing at pre-pandemic levels, if not better. I'd like to congratulate and thank our supply chain organization for delivering these results.

Altogether, our selling margins were 450 basis points higher than last year, reflecting the full impact to our profitability of the supply chain tailwinds. Occupancy costs of $200 million were 1% lower than last year and decreased 2% quarter-over-quarter. Coming in at 10.8% of net revenues, occupancy deleveraged 160 basis points to last year, driven by the softer top line. Our Q3 gross margin, at 44.4%, is 840 basis points higher than 2019's 36%. Our SG&A expenses of $507 million were down 11% to last year, once again, reflecting our ability to control costs. Our 27.4% rate deleveraged 140 basis points to last year, driven by general expenses offsetting variable expense savings.

Employment expense decreased double digits versus last year, but deleveraged, primarily driven by favorability in last year's stock-based compensation. We continue to manage variable employment costs in accordance with top-line trends. Our advertising expense slightly leveraged in Q3, despite increased funding quarter-over-quarter, as we continue to test into higher levels of advertising spend. Our rate leverage reflects the competitive advantage of our agile, performance-driven marketing organization. Our in-house capabilities, first-party data, and multi-brand platform continue to drive efficient advertising spend. General expenses drove the majority of the deleverage on the quarter, resulting from timing of asset disposals and legal settlements. Overall, our year-to-date SG&A through 39 weeks is down 12% to last year and flat on a rate basis, and it's 100 basis points lower than 2019's SG&A rate of 28.4%. Regarding the bottom line, our results speak for themselves.

Q3 operating income came in at $315 million, and operating margin at 17%, a record operating margin for our third quarter. 17% is 150 basis points above last year and 940 basis points above 2019's 7.6%. Our diluted earnings per share of $3.66 was slightly below last year's third quarter earnings per share of $3.72, but significantly above 2019's earnings per share of $1.02. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of $699 million, with no debt outstanding. This was after we invested $42 million in capital expenditures supporting our long-term growth, and we returned over $61 million to our shareholders through quarterly dividends and share repurchases.

Merchandise inventories at $1.4 billion were down 17.2% to last year. Three important points I'd like to emphasize once again. First, we are well positioned to maintain our price integrity as we proactively manage our inventory levels in line with our demand trends. Second, going into the holiday season, our in-stock levels are near historical highs, and our regional inventory balance and composition is well positioned. Third, our Q3 ending inventory levels are up only 11% versus same period in 2019, and that's with revenue comps up 34.8% over the same time frame. This discipline highlights how we've improved both our inventory efficiency and turnover. Summing up our Q3 results, we're proud of delivered, earnings substantially exceeding expectations. I'd like to thank all our associates for delivering these outstanding results. Now, let's turn to our outlook.

Based on our Q3 results, we are updating our full year outlook. Our new guidance reflects both the ongoing top-line uncertainty and the strength in our operating margin. We now expect full year 2023 net revenues to be in a range of down 10 comp to down 12 comp, and we are raising our operating margin outlook to a range of 16% to 16.5%. It's important to note that our lower sales outlook is more than offset by our increased operating margin, producing higher implied EPS guidance. On the top line, our updated guidance is based upon the facts and trends we know today from our Q3 results. Specifically, a conservative view of our one, two, and four-year trends in Q3 connects with the implicit Q4 guide and our updated full year 2023 net revenue guidance. Given the macroeconomic environment, we believe this outlook is prudent.

On the bottom line, our supply chain tailwinds will continue to bolster our profitability, producing full year operating margin within our updated range of 16%-16.5%, with implied Q4 operating margins in line with historical builds from Q3. We continue to expect our full year income tax rate to be approximately 26%. Our 2023 capital expenditures are now anticipated to be $225 million due to timing of project spend. As we have communicated quarterly, we are committed to returning excess cash to our shareholders through dividends and opportunistic stock repurchases. We will continue to pay our quarterly dividend of $0.90 per share, and we have almost $700 million remaining under our current $1 billion share repurchase authorization to repurchase our stock opportunistically.

As we look forward to 2024, we will balance the macroeconomic uncertainty with our long-term growth potential, and we'll provide guidance in March. As we look further into the future beyond 2024, we are reiterating our long-term guidance of mid to high-single-digit top-line growth with operating margins exceeding 15%. We're confident we'll continue to outperform our peers and deliver shareholder growth for these reasons: our ability to gain market share in the fragmented home furnishings industry, the strength of our in-house proprietary design, the competitive advantage of our digital first, but not digital-only channel strategy, the ongoing strength of our growth initiatives, and the resiliency of our fortress balance sheet. With that, I'll open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and return to the queue for any additional questions you may have. Our first question will come from the line of Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead.

Chuck Grom (Senior Analyst and Managing Director)

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everybody. The compression in your top line in the third quarter and the implied slowdown in the fourth quarter really isn't all that surprising, given the backdrop today. But at what point do you run the risk of losing market share or mind share by not engaging? And then as a follow-up, you know, your gross margin control was actually more impressive. Can you talk about the drivers there and the sustainability into 2024, particularly on the supply chain front?

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, Chuck. Why don't we start with the last one, and I'll talk about gross margin, and then I'll turn it over to Laura to talk about our promotional posture. Gross margin exceeded expectations this quarter, really driven by the tailwinds I've been guiding for the past several quarters. There were three main drivers in order of magnitude. First, our lower ocean freight from rate normalization flowing into our income statement. Second, supply chain efficiencies, including lower out-of-market shipping, fewer multiple deliveries per order, and decreased returns, accommodations, damages, and replacements. And third, reduced promotional activity as we focused on full price selling and maintained our price integrity. Overall, the majority of the improvement came from ocean freight and supply chain efficiencies.

We've made significant improvements in our customer service, and you can see it in our results, and I want to once again thank our supply chain organization for really knocking the cover off the ball. Going to your question about how these will continue, here's what you need to remember. Our Q3 margins represent the start of the tailwinds we will see from supply chain efficiencies, and while we don't guide specific lines, we anticipate similar tailwinds in Q4 and even into 2024.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Hi, Chuck. So, you know, I don't think we should think about Gross Margin as a trade for share. The two are not necessarily as correlated as one might think. In fact, it's not clear that people who are running more promotions are going to gain more share, especially long term. And for our target customer, we are confident that we are gaining share and that the high quality, regular price customer is the one that we best serve, given what we do as brands. And trust me, we are very focused on returning to growth. In fact, we're very confident about our strategies and our ability to execute. It's the environment that is really the question mark for us as we look at the balance of the year in the short term.

And so we continue to test different things to see what makes sense, whether it's pricing, up, down, more marketing, less marketing. And trust me, when, as we see things that do not just benefit the short term, we are definitely focused on pushing them and building upon them for the long term.

Chuck Grom (Senior Analyst and Managing Director)

Okay, great. Thanks, thanks, thanks for that. And then, can we just talk a little bit about like for like SKU pricing today relative to 2019? I know there's been a lot of improvements, but if you find items that are actually like for like, where do we stand today relative to back then? Thanks.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

That's a good question, Chuck. I didn't expect that one. So 2019, well, it was a long time ago. It's, you know, hard to remember. You know, we took some price increases during the pandemic, as you know, and a lot of them have stuck and some we've backed off. And, you know, we've also gotten a lot of vendor price reductions, which is a great thing to see. And we've used some of those to reduce prices to our consumers so that we are very competitive with our value-to-quality relationship. The thing to remember also is that it's not just about reducing prices on existing products. We bring in a fair amount of exclusive, exciting newness, and we've been building into both our mid-tier and low-price points, and those things are full margins.

And so it's a very good way to continue to build value into the business. But, you know, vis-à-vis 2019, I actually don't have that number on how we exactly stand with the entire assortment versus 2019 in pricing.

Chuck Grom (Senior Analyst and Managing Director)

Okay, I'll circle up with Jeremy. Thanks, guys. Have a great day. Thanks for coming in.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from the line of Christina Fernández with Telsey Advisory Group. Please go ahead.

Cristina Fernández (Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning, and congratulations on the profitability. I wanted to ask on promotions, Laura, your comment that you were less promotional than a year ago. I know you've pulled back from the site-wide promotions a while back. So where—I guess, where are you lowering promotions? Is it clearance? Is it other items, like rewards, et cetera? It would be helpful to understand that trend. Thanks.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Yeah, thank you for the question. We've in fact pulled back promotions both sequentially this year and versus last year. And we've pulled back. We took away all up/down pricing that was site-wide. The site-wide promotions have been gone. We also did remove email overlay, all those hidden promo tactics that other people use, you know, coupon matches, double points. We don't offer any of those. But the level of clearance and promotions during our sale periods, which we call warehouse sales, is also lower.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from the line of Peter Benedict with Baird. Please go ahead.

Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst, Retail/Consumer Products & Services)

Oh, hey, guys. Thanks, thanks for taking the question. I guess, just maybe can you expand a little more on retail optimization, where you, where you stand in that process, what's still to come? Jeff, you know, you mentioned the occupancy costs down slightly, year-over-year in the third quarter. Is flat to down something that's sustainable in that line as you think in the 4Q and, and then into 2024? That's my first question.

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, Peter. You know, we continue to operate a world-class retail business, and our stores serve as billboards for the brand and operate as profit centers. They're beautifully designed and curated with aspirational assortments, and we believe we will continue to serve as a competitive advantage. We continue on our journey of retail optimization. Since 2019, we've closed about 15% of our store count, and over the next three to five years, about 50% of our leases come due, and we'll continue to guide that we anticipate about 20% of those will close over time. Now, there's multiple aspects to our retail optimization strategy. The first, obviously, you know, we'll close any of the least performing stores from a profitability standpoint or a brand denigrating. That's the low-hanging fruit.

The second point, which is really the exciting one, is the repositioning of our retail fleet. This is where we're taking a look at some of our older stores that in our older malls that the customer is not shopping as frequently in, and we're moving them to more vibrant lifestyle centers. Here we're seeing not only a better customer engagement, better top line, but better economics as well. We'll continue to look to reposition our fleet to right locations as leases come due. And of course, it all comes down to negotiations. It's part of the real estate business, as we all know. We're probably, and from an inning standpoint, we're probably in, you know, inning six, I'd say, inning five or six. And on our journey here, there's more work to do.

Like I said, we have a lot of leases coming due. But the key point here is we continue to improve our retail profitability. I'll give it one example of where this is continuing to resonate, and I know I used it in the last call, but it continues to be an outstanding example of where the strategy of retail positioning and retail optimization really works, and that's our Pottery Barn store in Westport, Connecticut.

Which we moved from downtown Westport, you know, not the best location for us, to a location on the Post Road that is more vibrant, more customer-friendly. I said in Q3 that the results were 30% better than the prior store. I mean, in Q2, that the results were 30% better than the prior store. They're now up 45% to the prior store. So this strategy continues to gain traction. The key thing for us is that our world-class stores, coupled with our best-in-class e-commerce tools, demonstrates a digital-first, but not digital-only channel strategy as a key differentiator in the home furnishings industry.

Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst, Retail/Consumer Products & Services)

Well, good. Nice to see my recent visit to the Westport store showing up in the numbers there, I guess,

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Thank you for your business, Peter.

Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst, Retail/Consumer Products & Services)

Yeah, not exactly. So, next question just would be around the cash balance, obviously continues to rise. You've slowed the buyback here of late. Just curious, is this just prudent caution, given all the macro pressures, the risks that are out there, is there, or is there something more strategic, that's maybe at play here in terms of, building the cash balance? Thank you.

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Peter, as you know, we don't commit to a consistent cadence of share repurchases. We do remain committed to driving long-term shareholder returns and will opportunistically buy back stock and drive total shareholder returns. You know, in Q3, we had extremely strong performance in our stock price relative to the broader market. We exceeded all three major indexes, a collection of hard lines retail and soft lines retail, so we have performed, so it's not what we consider opportunistic.

Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst, Retail/Consumer Products & Services)

Okay, fair enough. Thanks so much, and good luck.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Max Rakhlenko with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)

Great, thanks a lot, and congrats on the nice quarter. First, Laura, how are the brands performing against your own internal expectations? Which brands do you view to have the bigger opportunities to take market share from some of your struggling or closing peers?

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

It's a great question. You know, we are disappointed in the top line performance, as you know, in most of our brands this year, except for our emerging brands. We've seen slower than expected furniture performance. That said, we've seen really strong seasonal performance, and these life stage businesses and certain categories are better than expected. So it's a, it's a big change for us that we've really focused on and made the shift into quickly with our marketing and our inventory purchases. But as I think about the long term, and we think about where we sit vis-à-vis the market, market, as you know, is very large and very fractured. And so there's huge opportunity for us to gain share with all of our brands. I think that the names of our brands are stronger than the volumes that they produce.

You know, when you think about the Williams-Sonoma name, the brand Williams-Sonoma, you think about how small it is and the consolidation of the industry, and with Bed Bath & Beyond, you know, closing its retail footprint and others going out of business, and, you know, not seeing anyone deliver on exclusive proprietary products for high-end kitchen, you can see what a tremendous opportunity we have. And with that, also, we have Williams-Sonoma Home, which sits in that, that higher end space where there's not many, particularly in the, aesthetic that, that we're serving. I actually have Felix sitting right next to me, and we invited him today because we're upon the very large holiday season that we're looking forward to, and as you know, Williams-Sonoma really spikes during the holiday season.

And so, Felix, you want to make a few comments about how you see-

Felix Carbullido (President, Williams Sonoma)

Yeah.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

your brand gaining market share in the future?

Felix Carbullido (President, Williams Sonoma)

Sure. You know, I don't wanna give away too much of our winning formula, but it includes curating the best products out there, right? Inspiring customers how to use it, offering it in their channel of choice, whether it be online or in store. You know, I think some houseware brands offer products that don't inspire, and some inspire but don't have 150+ stores and a great website to purchase from. As Jeff said, our beautiful stores, our well-trained and passionate store associates, our inspiring catalog, and our multidimensional website are competitive advantages I don't think anyone really has. And as we head into the fourth quarter, this is the time that we celebrate the most. You know, we have Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's Eve.

These are reasons for people to come visit our stores, and I think we've pulled together the best assortment of gifts and holiday decor that we ever have had. So we're excited, and we wanna continue to gain market share, and all indicators are that in the kitchen business, it appears we are.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

And then as you look at our other brands, both, you know, the big ones, both West Elm and Pottery Barn, we, we have shown this year that there's areas within each brand that are very underdeveloped and where there's sizable opportunity, from accessible furniture for Pottery Barn and Dorm to, in West Elm, filling out the modern accessory textile piece, which we haven't addressed, and also more modern seasonal assortments. That is a big opportunity and one that has never been built. So we see us being able to pick up share in those two brands in specific categories. And of course, you know, the temporary furniture pullback is just that. This, too, shall reverse. And the great news is that we won't have built our business or held it up with promotions like others are at this time.

That is getting out of our base and it's going to continue to allow us to focus on delivering proprietary products and not just thinking about markdowns all the time, but thinking about how to build better collaborations and more relevant product lines that the customer loves. The last thing I'll just say is, you know, we've talked about B2B. It's across all brands. It's a big driver of market share for us because nobody is doing what we're doing. It's a very, very large industry, and we're still scratching the surface, and we are still, as Josie, who runs it, likes to say, we are still doing more gathering than hunting. And we have a lot more that we can do as we continue to build this muscle.

So we're excited about the growth algorithms for the future, and we do recognize that it's been softer than expected this year, particularly in furniture, but we're completely focused on that growth posture, looking out into the future.

Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)

That's great. Super helpful. And Jeff, I have to ask you a margin question, but when we think about the updated margin guidance, is there anything in it that makes you think that you can at least fold it, as we think ahead, especially once you start to leverage fixed expenses on top line growth?

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

You know, as I said in the answer to Chuck's question on gross margin, we anticipate that the results we saw in Q4, the tailwinds I've been talking about, will continue. I'm sorry, the results on Q3, the tailwinds I've been talking about will continue into Q4. These are pretty strong tailwinds. I talked about the impact of ocean freight, our supply chain efficiencies, and our full price selling. While we're talking about guidance, I also want to just point out that while we don't guide specific lines, in last year's Q4, our SG&A materially benefited from some large favorable items we recorded that we don't anticipate reoccurring this year. But here's the key takeaway: it's all contemplated in our guidance, which we've raised our full year outlook for implied EPS.

Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Simeon Gutman (Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hi, this is Zach on for Simeon. Thanks for taking our questions. On your view for top line, do you think this year will be the bottom? Your updated guidance implies an underlying deceleration in the fourth quarter across stacks. So do you think that the trends could inflect in 2024? Thanks.

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Good morning. You know, we'll talk more about next year after we get through the really important holiday season. Right now, that's where our focus is, and as Laura just touched on, you know, our primary objective in 2024 will be to drive both growth and margin, and we'll balance the macroeconomic uncertainty with our long-term growth potential. But we'll talk more about that in March.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from the line of Anthony Chukumba with Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Anthony Chukumba (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

Good morning, and let me add my congratulations as well on the strong profitability. So you talked about introducing a larger offering of new products at mid-tier and lower price points, and then you talked specifically about Pottery Barn introducing some of those products. I guess just two questions related. Are there any other brands where you've introduced those mid and lower tier products? And then you know, how do the merchandise, the selling margins on those products compare to you know, some of your higher price point offerings? Thank you.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Thanks, Anthony. The margin profile is the same as the rest of our products. So it's not that they're lower at all. In fact, they're the great margins. And we've done the same thing, also in West Elm. And you're gonna see us in West Elm, which I'm really excited about, continue to have more and more newness sequentially. So for fall, you might have heard in my prepared remarks that we had some just superb winners, in the furniture assortments. And in some cases, they were also at the higher price point. So we're building upon those. Many of them are sold out right now, and we're thrilled, but we are also chasing those products, and we'll be getting back in stock in Q1 in those.

That gives us confidence about where we want to take the brand aesthetically, not just from a price point, but where we think the modern customer wants to be now and where that evolution is going. So as we go into Q1 and Q2, I'm just really excited about the product line that you're gonna see in West Elm. And based on the wins that we have currently, I think it's gonna be a big change and the next really big step in the evolution, the next chapter, if you will, for West Elm's winning strategy.

Anthony Chukumba (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

You're welcome.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Haas with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Jason Haas (VP, Equity Research)

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. So I wanted to also ask about how you're thinking about the trade-off between comps and margins. I'm curious if you think that you could have driven gross profit dollars higher this year, if you had used more promotions, or do you think that that would have actually driven the gross profit dollars higher? My question is, you know, obviously, if you thought you could but didn't, you know, the reason would be because you don't want to destroy the pricing power over the long term. You don't want to harm the brand image. So I'm curious if you feel like that's the dynamic where you're basically sacrificing in the short term, you know, to hopefully have better results once, you know, the industry turns in your favor.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Yeah, I, Jeff and I are fighting over your question. I would say it's both short term and long term. It's not, it's not clear that reducing prices drives more. If you have less people buying furniture, you just reduce the price 20%, you got to have 20% more people buy it just to be even, right? So, you may think you're doing something, it's what retailers do. They mark stuff down when they want more sales, and it's not necessarily the case. In fact, we've done a lot of testing up and down to see where that sensitivity is. So that's, that's one. Secondly, for sure, it's not good for the long term, and you can see that, you know, the race to the bottom with promotions, if you look at the history of retailers who've done that, it's a bad idea.

We are not a low-price provider. We are a quality, high service, high design retailer, and so pricing is not usually why you come to us. You want the price to be great for the value and the design, but our, our quality is so much higher, and we're not willing to sacrifice it in the short term or long term to sustain a promotional strategy.

Jason Haas (VP, Equity Research)

Thank you. That makes sense. And then, as a follow-up, I was curious to ask about the West Elm performance in particular. It's good to see Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma performing well, both on a year-over-year basis, and then, you know, versus 2019. You know, that used to not be the case, where previously you'd seen West Elm was the stronger performer. I'm curious to know how much you think of that as external, given West Elm, I believe, tends to serve a younger, maybe less affluent customer than those other brands, versus how much of it is internal. You've talked about some of them. Can you talk about what changes are being made at West Elm, and when we should expect to see some improvements from those?

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Sure. There's no doubt that the metrics, the makeup of the West Elm business makes it more vulnerable to the external, right? You mentioned it. The younger customer, the less affluent customer, the higher furniture, the less developed seasonal business, or less developed decorative and textile business, those are all factors in the West Elm underperformance. That said, we do not think about not being able to do anything about anything. We are focused on what we can do, being served this set of circumstances. So, we have been working very diligently to give the customer other options other than just furniture and to make sure our stores have those things ready to go versus having them only online. It's a big change for us to push that business into the stores to drive repeat traffic, not just when you come to buy furniture.

So, we've talked about not just the development of those things, but I want to make sure you understand, too, the way we're using the channel strategy is to push things that are lower ticket and that are more for easy updates for the home versus the whole home. Also, we've been pushing collaborations and have had some really great success lately with Colin King and Joseph Altuzarra, and, you know, those things sold out. And we've got some really exciting ones in the pipeline, and we're having more confidence now to buy into those. And collaborations are very exciting for brands because they bring in new customer groups, and so that's a nice incremental change for us as well. And then in terms of the product design, and without, you know, going into it too competitively, you always want to lead, right?

You always want to lead with design, and we are making, as I just said previously, some pretty significant improvements in what we're bringing in in terms of newness, quantity, and also the relevancy, in my opinion. And so that's very exciting, and it's in the hopper. It's on order. We're filling in where we're out of stock currently on some winners, and we're excited to see that come to fruition next year. So, it's not, to me, that, I mean, that's what all of our brands do with their designs. It's not that there's a problem. It's more that you want to stay on top, and you want to lead, and this new leadership at West Elm, and the focus on product and focus on design is really exciting.

Jason Haas (VP, Equity Research)

Great to hear. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Brian Nagel (Managing Director, Senior Analyst, Consumer Growth & eCommerce)

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. So, first, I would like to add my congratulations on your continued profitability beat. So, the question I want to ask, and I know it's a bit of a follow-up here, but just with respect to just the overall promotional environment, so I'll ask maybe a couple questions within this question. I mean, one, you know, as you're monitoring the environment and the actions of your competitors, if you look at, you know, the promotions that have accelerated, do you believe this is more, you know, temporary, you know, either, you know, backdrop driven, clearance driven, or is this the kind of return to levels we saw pre-pandemic? But then the second question I have, and you...

Look, you've done a great job holding the line on your pricing, and we clearly see that in the margins. I guess the question I'm asking is, are you communicating with your customers then? Has there been a shift in marketing or shifts otherwise that you're saying to your customers, "Look, we have great brands. These are high quality, and you should not expect promotions from us?

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

There's still plenty of things on sale because we clear products. So, you can find, you know, if you're a promotional shopper, you can find sale prices on our websites for sure. So, let's not pretend we don't have any. It's that the quantity of those is so much lower than it's been. It's so much lower than our competitors. I don't like to name people by names, but we have scrubbed everybody's websites, and, you know, look at them, and they're littered with, i mean, in some cases, it's 80% red lines, 100% red lines of some really good names out there. And I don't know what they're doing, but I can tell you what the customer sees, and I don't know when they're going to go back to regular price or if this is the new strategy.

This is what, what's going on in the marketplace. You know, it's very important to us that the customer can count on the price, because if you buy a piece of furniture, it's likely not delivered for four to five weeks. If that price changes, and it hasn't even been delivered, you're, you're never gonna. You're gonna always wait until you get the sale, and you just create this, this up and down curve of customers waiting for sale. It's, it's, it's not a good cycle. What I said before about the newness selling, when you bring out an incredible product, and this is today, even with this depressed furniture environment, I'm talking about furniture, it sells out. Because when you have product that good, customers want to buy it.

But the key thing is the first time you price it, that price value relationship needs to be great. So that is where we're focused. What is the first price? Is that a great value? Is it the best value in the marketplace? And now we're looking at the competition and assuming they're gonna be 20 off, assuming they're gonna be 30 off. So, we're not just saying, is it the best versus the regular price, regular price? We're saying, is it the best versus their sale price? And that's the key driver here on creating value for the consumer and having them trust us. And when they trust us, they furnish their whole house with us.

Brian Nagel (Managing Director, Senior Analyst, Consumer Growth & eCommerce)

No, that's very helpful. If I could ask a follow-up, unrelated, but with regard to, again, gross margins, but I mean, now we're seeing the benefit of these moderating shipping costs and recognizing that there's a lot of accounting noise and how these costs are capitalized. But I guess, Jeff, maybe this is more for you, but I mean, how, so how long, how long will this dynamic prove a tailwind then for gross margins for, for Williams-Sonoma?

Jeff Howie (EVP and CFO)

Look, we've certainly said on the call that it will continue into Q4. And previously I've said it will continue to be a tailwind into 2024. But, you know, we're starting to hinge on 2024 guidance, which we'll address in March. But meanwhile, we're really laser-focused on delivering our Q4 results with the all-important holiday season ahead of us.

Brian Nagel (Managing Director, Senior Analyst, Consumer Growth & eCommerce)

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

I will now turn the call back over to Laura Alber for any closing remarks.

Laura J. Alber (President and CEO)

Well, thank you all. We really appreciate your time, and I want to wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great beginning to the exciting and beautiful holiday season with your family and friends. We look forward to talking to you again after the new year and take care.

Operator (participant)

That will conclude. Goodbye. We thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect.