National Vision Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EYE) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 8, 2024
National Vision Holdings, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.1482 EPS, expectations were $0.28. National Vision Holdings, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2024 National Vision Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Tamara Gonzalez, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Tamara Gonzalez: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to National Vision’s first quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Reade Fahs, CEO; and Melissa Rasmussen, CFO. Patrick Moore, COO, is also with us and will be available during the Q&A portion of the call. Our earnings release issued this morning and the presentation accompanying our call are available in the Investors section of our website, nationalvision.com. A replay of the audio webcast will be archived in the Investors section after the call. Before we begin, let me remind you that our earnings materials and today’s presentation include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections.
These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in the release and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The release and today’s presentation also include certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of these measures is included in our release and the supplemental presentation. We would also like to draw your attention to slide two in today’s presentation for additional information about forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. As a reminder, National Vision provides investors presentation and supplemental materials for investor reference in the Investors section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Reade. Reade?
Reade Fahs: Thank you, Tamara, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As you saw in our release this morning, we delivered first quarter top line results in line with our expectations of relatively flat adjusted comparable store sales growth. And we’re pleased to report total company adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.32, which reflects our team’s continued disciplined approach to expense management. On a continuing basis, first quarter net revenues increased 4.2% and adjusted comparable store sales increased 0.4%, primarily driven by ongoing strength in our managed care business and growth within America’s Best. On our last call, we shared that the softer start to the year was related to weather during January.
This, along with the slower start to the tax refund season, adversely impacted sales and transactions in the quarter as consumers remain cautious in their spending. During the quarter, we also saw higher average ticket and higher exam revenues driven by pricing actions we have taken. In addition, the greater percentage of managed care purchases resulted in a mix shift between our 2-pair offer and single-payer eyeglass sales as Melissa will discuss. Our business remains in the midst of a transformation that we began in earnest last year, and we’ve made significant progress over that time, thus giving us a stronger foundation for future growth. We remain keenly focused on our customers while maintaining a disciplined approach to expense management by closely managing our cost structure, both in the stores and at the corporate level.
We are continuing to adapt our model to meet the realities of our industry today and the needs of our customers. With that, I’d like to share my thoughts on the quarter in terms of what went well and where we see opportunities to improve. Let’s start with what went well. Our key focus for the past year has been on ensuring that eye exams are available for our customers when they want them. To accomplish this, we’ve focused on retention and recruitment of optometrists and leveraging remote exam technology. From this perspective, things went well in the first quarter. Our retention levels remained healthy and recruitment remains on track with our 2024 goals. And on the remote exam front, we made some real progress. Recall that our remote technology allows doctors working from other locations to perform an eye exam on a patient in the store.
We find that recruiting doctors is easier with the remote model given the flexibility it offers them. On our last call, we shared that our rollout efforts were hampered by certain large states that restrict or do not permit tele optometry. We shared that we believe the general evolution will be towards authorizing more telemedicine options, but that certain states have not yet adopted the practice. We specifically mentioned Texas as a state where we could really use remote to help improve exam capacity. Since our last call, based on recent updates to the regulatory environment, we’re pleased to say that we’re moving forward with remote in Texas this year in addition to our original locations planned for the year. Since we began piloting remote exam technology in our America’s Best stores just three years ago, we’ve enabled over 550 locations as of the end of 2023.
On our last call, we shared that we plan to enable 50 additional locations with remote this year and complete the expansion of electronic health records, or EHR, throughout America’s Best. With these latest positive developments, we now expect to add remote to at least 150 stores this year and allow the EHR rollout completion fall into next year. Therefore, we anticipate ending the year with approximately 700 remote-enabled stores. Note that in the first quarter, remote exams represented over 7% of all exams provided and in remote-enabled states, they were in the low double-digit percentage range. Recall that our rollout of remote is dependent on the state-by-state regulatory environment, and we intend to continue adding select locations where feasible and advantageous.
Importantly, remote doctors now perform approximately the same number of exams as optometrists practicing live in the store per day. Additionally, several stores are already at the point where they can perform as many exams a day with only remote options as they do with live doctors, which gives us further confidence in the benefits of our remote model. In summary on this point, we feel quite good about how our efforts on retention, recruitment and remote helped to drive an improvement in exam capacity in the first quarter compared to the prior year. Moving on to where we see opportunities. You are well aware of the challenging macroeconomic environment. The retail industry is up against, especially for retailers like us who appeal to lower-income consumers.
As such, we’ve seen the kind of pressure on our business that you’d expect in this environment. Our comparable store sales remain below our target of mid-single-digit growth, and this is our number one focus. Last quarter, we shared that we were waiting for March results as a data point for normalization in the purchase cycle following the green shoots we saw in the second half of last year. However, March did not prove to have as robust of a demand backdrop as we would have hoped. However, with much of the year still ahead, we remain focused on executing on our goals, and we are reaffirming our earnings outlook for the year. Melissa will go into more detail on our outlook in just a moment. The data remains inconsistent, and we believe it is still too soon to declare that the optical purchase cycle has normalized, particularly as our core uninsured customer faces ongoing macro-related headwinds.
Our lower income consumers remain stressed given persistent high inflation. This is reflected in the lower contribution of our cash pay customers to our overall sales as this group raised daily purchases such as groceries and gas with the necessity to see clearly. As such, we did not see the growth in cash pay customers as we did in the fourth quarter. We did continue to see strength in managed care, which as of the end of last year, represented about 35% of our business. While we cannot control all the macro factors impacting our business, we believe the actions we are taking provide us with a strong foundation for growth. I’m pleased with the execution our teams are delivering against this challenging backdrop. We also continue to tackle inflationary pressures on our business with pricing.
In fact, on a continuing basis, exam net revenue fully offset doctor costs during the quarter for the first time in the past 12 months reflecting the price increases we took at the end of the fourth quarter as well as increased doctor productivity. We will continue to look for ways to offset inflation with pricing where we see the opportunity to do so. As we shared last quarter, Eyeglass World is not performing to our standards. We’re pleased with the actions the new leadership team has taken to improve that business and reenergize the brand. The primary focus has been to standardize operations by taking a page from our America’s Best playbook, which includes improving coverage to better align days and times of coverage to meet our patients’ needs.
We began implementing remote technology in select stores this quarter. Also, as we mentioned on our last call, we reallocated marketing dollars to provide Eyeglass World with higher advertising this year to improve brand awareness. During the quarter, we largely completed the previously announced conversion of the 20 Eyeglass World California stores to America’s Best. We are early in the conversion and some opportunities remain, but overall, things are going well. Our training teams are doing an amazing job helping the staff and doctors transition to the new model. Additionally, we recently equipped California stores with EHR and plan to use remote in at least some of those stores fulfilling coverage. Before closing, I’d like to share with you an update on our white space opportunity and some exciting AI developments at Tokyo.
During the quarter, we completed a detailed analysis of a white space opportunity. The new analysis is based on updated modeling by a third-party real estate data analytics provider that we’ve used for many years. Based on these results, we increased the white space opportunity for America’s Best by an additional 350 locations for a new total of at least 1,650 America’s Best locations. Our analysis assumes maintaining Eyeglass World’s total white space opportunity of at least 850 locations as we work to improve performance in that brand. Our total updated white space opportunity is now believed to be at least 2,500 stores, which is more than double that of our current store count. As we think about opportunities and our new store opening plans, it’s important to note that 2/3 of the America’s Best stores in our new white space opportunity are in currently remote-enabled states, a figure that will increase over time as we enter more states.
Further, the majority of our new stores opened with full doctor coverage, most with live doctors or some form of hybrid live and remote doctor coverage. For the year, we continue to expect to open 65 to 70 new stores and will provide details on our annual new store opening plans at the beginning of each year. Looking ahead, we are excited about the many opportunities AI brings to the optical industry. While still early stage, we’re pleased with the progress being made by Toku Inc., the AI start-up we have invested in. This quarter, we were excited to be the first retailer in the U.S. to launch a pilot of bio age, Toku’s wellness product that utilizes retinal images to determine a person’s biological age, which can give an indication of their overall health.
We are currently piloting this in a handful of stores. Toku was also granted its second breakthrough designation by the FDA. This time for its chronic kidney disease assessment AI which follows the designation granted for its cardiovascular assessment AI late last year. Both of these products can use retinal images collected at routine eye exams, which further demonstrates that the eye offers a window into broader health. And with that, I will turn the call over to Melissa to review our results in more detail.
Melissa Rasmussen: Thank you, Reade, and good morning, everyone. As Reade noted, we delivered first quarter adjusted comparable store sales in line with our expectations on both the total company and a continuing operations perspective. And we have continued to progress our initiatives, including expanding exam capacity by addressing both dark and dim stores. Given the termination of the Walmart management and services agreement in the first quarter, our historical legacy segment is now presented as discontinued operations for the current and prior year period. As you review our financial statements, note that the earnings impact from the termination of the Walmart management and services agreement can be found in one line item entitled Discontinued Operations.
Today, my review of first quarter results will be focused on continuing operations unless otherwise noted. Now moving on to first quarter results in more detail. For first quarter, net revenue increased 4.2% compared to the prior year, driven primarily by growth from new store sales, which was partially offset by a slight drag from the conversion of the 20 Eyeglass World stores in California. The converted stores were closed for a short period of time prior to reopening as America’s Best locations. These stores will continue to be reflected in total net revenue performance and will be added to the comp base in the 13th full fiscal month following the completion of the conversion, which is consistent with our comp methodology. Adjusted comparable store sales growth for the quarter was 0.4%, driven by an increase in average ticket supported by the pricing actions taken at the end of last year, partially offset by a decrease in customer transactions.
The timing of unearned revenue benefited revenue in the period by 50 basis points. We opened 14 new America’s Best and converted 20 Eyeglass World stores to America’s Best in the first quarter. Unit growth in our America’s Best and Eyeglass World brands increased 6.5% on a combined basis over the total store base last year. And we ended the quarter with 1,201 stores. As a percentage of net revenue, cost applicable to revenue increased approximately 60 basis points compared with the prior year quarter, driven primarily by a 110 basis point decrease in product gross margin, offset by a 50 basis point expansion in service gross margin. The decrease in product gross margin was largely attributable to the mix shift in revenue given the strength in managed care and the underutilization of the two-pair offer as the cash pay consumer remains stressed.
The 50 basis point expansion in service gross margin was driven by increased exam revenue due to pricing actions and growth in exam count, which more than offset the deleverage in optometrist-related costs. This is detailed on slide eight in our presentation. Adjusted SG&A expense as a percentage of revenue decreased 70 basis points compared with the first quarter of 2023. The decrease in adjusted SG&A as a percentage of net revenue was primarily driven by a decrease in performance-based incentive compensation, partially offset by increased occupancy and other operating expenses. We continue to be very disciplined with expense management and have implemented efficiencies to streamline processes and reduce costs. For example, during the quarter, we modified our store staffing program to better align store performance and demand without sacrificing customer service.
Depreciation and amortization expense was $23.6 million compared to $22.7 million in the prior year period. Adjusted operating income was $35.8 million compared to $33.9 million in the prior year period. Adjusted operating margin increased 10 basis points to 6.6% compared to the prior year period due primarily to the factors previously discussed. Net interest expense was $4.3 million compared to $4.9 million in the prior year period. As a reminder, our interest guidance excludes noncash mark-to-market and deferred financing costs which totaled $3.3 million for the period. Excluding these costs, interest expense was $1 million. Adjusted diluted EPS increased to $0.30 per share in the first quarter of fiscal 2024 from $0.27 per share a year ago, and reflects an effective tax rate of approximately 31%.
As a reminder, our adjusted results exclude the impacts associated with onetime charges, including the wind down of AC Lens, cost savings initiatives, charges related to our ERP and CRM implementations among other items detailed in the reconciliation table in our earnings release, for our adjusted results on both a total company and a continuing operations basis. As it relates to the ERP project, work streams are progressing well, and we are on track to substantially complete the first phase of the project by the end of fiscal 2024. Turning next to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of approximately $150 million and total liquidity of $444 million, including available capacity from our revolving credit facility. As of March 30, our total debt outstanding was $459 million net of unamortized discounts.
For the trailing 12 months, we ended the year with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of two times. During the quarter, we generated operating cash flow of $24 million and invested $20 million in capital expenditures, primarily focused on new store opening and investments in technology. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet and healthy cash follow to support our growth and capital allocation priority as detailed on slide 10 of our earnings presentation. Moving now to the discussion of our 2024 outlook for the total company, which includes the impact from discontinued operations as well as continuing operations for the full year. As stated in our press release, we are reaffirming our outlook for fiscal 2024. The expected effect of Walmart and AC Lens operations on fiscal 2024 results are reflected on slide 13 of our earnings presentation.
Walmart store operations now reflected in Discontinued Operations, delivered $18 million in revenue and an adjusted operating loss of $800,000 and for the first quarter of fiscal 2024. These results include $3 million from unearned revenue and the impact of additional costs incurred after the contract termination not assumed in our original outlook. As a reminder, our AC Lens operations will remain in continuing operations results through June 30. We now expect AC Lens to deliver approximately $122 million of revenue and $2 million of adjusted operating income in the first half of the year, half of which was achieved in the first quarter. In addition, our outlook for fiscal 2024 assumes a range of scenarios with respect to consumer sentiment ongoing success with our America’s Best brand and performance improvement in our Eye Glass World brand.
As Reade noted, we experienced a less than robust tax refund season, while March and April both comped positively in the low single-digit range, we would need to see a greater improvement in adjusted comparable store sales growth trend through the year to achieve top line results towards the higher end of our guidance range. That said, it is still early in the year, and we are controlling all aspects of performance that we can control. We remain acutely focused on executing our strategic initiatives to drive top line growth which includes expanding our remote exam capabilities into Texas. We believe expanding remote exam capabilities into Texas will benefit sales in the second half of the year. In addition, we continue to believe that the pricing actions we took at the end of last year as well as our ongoing focus on disciplined expense management will support our profitability objectives.
As I mentioned, we have evolved our store staffing guidelines to better adapt to changing consumer trends, and we are continuing to benefit from the cost savings actions we implemented late last year. As a reminder, at the midpoint of our guidance, we would expect operating income margins relatively in line with fiscal 2023, driven by gross margin expansion of approximately 200 basis points which is expected to be entirely weighted to the second half of the year, given the timing of the transition out of the lower-margin Walmart and AC Lens businesses. Adjusted SG&A as a percentage of revenue is expected to deleverage by approximately 150 basis points, primarily driven by the year-over-year decline in revenue in the second half of the year given the termination of the Walmart and AC Lens businesses.
Looking further ahead, as we have previously discussed, fiscal 2024 results and a return to mid-single-digit adjusted comparable store sales growth, are critical steps in achieving our fiscal 2025 target of a mid-single-digit adjusted operating margin. While we cannot control the macro environment, which continues to pressure our core uninsured consumer, as reflected in our slower start to 2024, we remain committed to controlling all aspects of business performance within our control by taking the appropriate actions to improve productivity while driving gross margin expansion and expense leverage. We remain focused on achieving our objectives and delivering value to our shareholders. Thank you for your time today. I will now turn the call over to Reade for closing remarks before we open the call for questions.
Reade?
Reade Fahs: Thank you, Melissa. To summarize, we’re pleased to have delivered sales in line with our guidance on our last call. We remain intently focused on disciplined expense management, which led to stronger-than-expected profits in the quarter. Our doctor retention and recruitment levels during the quarter remain on track, and we’re excited to move forward with enabling our stores in Texas with remote technology, which will allow us to improve coverage in that important state. And our Eyeglass World team is making progress to improve and reenergize the brand. While the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain, the National Vision culture remains strong. It gives me great joy to see the passion associates and doctors bring to our stores every day to serve our customers.
We’re keenly focused on the areas of business that we can control and are committed to continuing to make progress on our strategic initiatives to drive shareholder value. And with that, we’ll now turn the call over to the operator for questions.
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