Citi Trends, Inc. ($CTRN)

Good morning, everybody. I'm Jay Sole, UBS' Retailing Department Services and Specialty Softlines Analyst, and welcome again to the UBS 2026 Global Consumer and Retail Conference. We are super pleased in our us today. Ken Seipel, CEO of the company is here; Heather Plutino right here as CFO of the company; and Ken's going to go through a presentation today and talk to us about the company. And so without any further ado, Ken, please take it away.

Thank you, Jay. I appreciate it. Good morning, everybody. How's everybody today? I appreciate -- I'm going to probably just do this a little bit more informally here, if that's okay. And I think you can hear me fine. I've got a few notes on my laptop, and we're doing a presentation today because I know some of you maybe aren't familiar with our brands. So I'm going to kind of walk you through our brand just a little bit, talk about where we are. And then certainly at the end, we'll have plenty of time. So if you have any questions or anything, Heather and I will be up front here. We're more than happy to engage with you in question. So I want to do that. So anyway, thanks for joining us today. And as I just mentioned, Heather Plutino is our Chief Financial Officer. She's joining me today for the presentation, and we really appreciate all of your interest in CITIRENDS. Obviously, before I get started here, I want to remind you the forward-looking statement. I think you all know that. So I won't get into the details there, but I just appreciate that does guide our presentation today. So a little bit about me and a little bit about the history of the business next. So since I took the helm, about almost 2 years ago now, at CITIRENDS, we've been able to deliver industry-leading comp sales. Which we're excited about. This is driven largely by transaction increases, our broad-based product strength and disciplined execution across our business. So far, our transformation strategy is gaining some momentum. Our capabilities are building and advancing and our customer connection is getting much stronger. But really, we're still in the early stages here. We're not done. We have a lot to do, processes to refine categories to optimize systems to build. So today, I'm going to kind of walk you through where we are and outline, if you will, the path forward, where we have a really clear focus on a disciplined growth plan to deliver sustainable value creation over time for our shareholders. So over the past 40 years, my career has been kind of dedicated to value retailing. C-level jobs back in the early days. JCPenney, I was a buyer, started there and kind of grew up in those days in the '80s. All of the '90s with Target kind of get involved in their brand development and brand explosion and the development of that brand in those periods. 2000s, almost all of that was with Old Navy, very specifically involved with the growth and maturation of that particular brand over time. And then since about 2010, though, I stepped away from some of the bigger companies and wanted to get into private equity. A little bit of an entrepreneurial side. I mean I wanted to really kind of realize. And since I've been in private equity-backed retail, I served as both the CEO and co-investor and almost every adventure that I've been in. And I've kind of found that, that ownership structure has really kind of enabled me really successful lead three, and I dare say we're working on #4 successful turnarounds. We've delivered returns anywhere from 3x to 6x initial investment. And so I bring that same commitment today to CITIRENDS. And I just want to let you know that so far, since I've taken the chair, we've more than doubled our market cap, and we see a path to do that again in the future. There's a lot more on the table here. A little bit about the company, if you're not familiar with us, we're headquartered in Savannah, Georgia. We do have buying offices here in New York, and we're an off-price retailer. We specialize in family apparel, accessories and home categories. Our annual sales are about $820 million. This is fiscal 2025, and we operate currently 590 stores -- 592 stores in 33 states. And there are about 12,000 square feet boxes overall. We have a strong penetration in the Southeast, and we're strategically positioned in our customers' neighborhoods. I'll speak more about that in a moment, but it's a key point of our business. So we're in the early stages of our transformation, as I mentioned. We've got a clear line of sight to achieve about $45 million of EBITDA in fiscal 2027, which is driven dominantly by consistent comp sales growth, gross margin expansion, operating expense leverage and a strategic new store expansion. So I'll get into each of these here just a little bit, I wanted to kind of give you the framework. So far, our customers have really kind of quickly responded to the improvements that we've made. We're delivering consistent comp store performance as a result. In early January, we released holiday sales, which were at 9.3%, which is on top of the 7.1% of the prior year. So we've got about a 16.4 2-year stack. Year-to-date through December, and by the way, we haven't released our annual sales yet. That will be next week. Our comp is running about 7.1% increase to last year -- excuse me, $9.8 million. I should have said that for the year, which is a 2-year stack of $13.3 million. And as you can see here in the graph, we have a very consistent quarter-over-quarter sales performance. Really, it's been 5, it was about to be 6 quarters that we've had very good consistency. So the transformation is guided by a 3 phased framework designed to deliver sustainable profit growth. So in the initial phase there, repair, we focused on restoring fundamental and foundational practices to make sure that we have a really strong foundation for our business. This has kind of included building a sharper, more refined clarity on the Black customer. A 3-tiered product assortment to appeal to these customers at all income levels, style and their trend sensibilities. Implementation of AI both software to -- for product allocation to improve our in-stocks reduced markdowns and faster inventory turns and there are many more practices that we put into place to enable consistency. In the execute phase, we're focused on implementing our best practices so that this is all areas of the business to improve our productivity. This includes enabling SG&A leverage. And so we're focused on increasing the speed of our supply chain to reduce cost and also leverage our operating cost of working capital. We have also introduced a pay-for-performance program, which helps us kind of make sure that our employee performance is aligned with EBITDA and EBITDA is associated with driving specific KPIs in each area of the business. As a result, the teams are incented more than ever to drive measurable results and continuous improvement. In addition to our long-term incentive program, it's linked to the EBITDA objectives and further ensuring that our management and shareholders remain aligned. And although we're kind of in the early stages of our progress, we do see significant work ahead, and I look forward to providing a little bit more details here in our annual report coming out next week. So CITIRENDS has built a differentiated competitive position within the high-performing off-price retail sector. We're the only off-price retailers specifically focused on the black customer, delivering styles, brands and trends at compelling prices that resonate with this really underserved demographic. This focus has created a very uniquely loyal, high-frequency consumer base, it's enabled us to build over 600 locations or nearly 600 locations, I should say, where our customers live and shop. Our stores are embedded in communities that we've been for years. This is proximity and word-of-mouth really are powerful traffic drivers for the business. and we operate a debt-free balance sheet with ample liquidity. This financial strength gives us the ability to invest in growth initiatives while maintaining our operational stability. And we developed a clear, tangible and internally controllable path to accelerate our shareholder growth. The up-price retail sector has demonstrated consistent strong fundamentals. The off-price model works if you're not familiar, by capitalizing on supply chain inefficiencies and vendor overstocks. Our merchant team source quality products at significant discounts in manufacturers face surplus inventory delivery timing or any other type of disruption. We turned this inventory quickly and frequent product newness and scarcity creates urgency to purchase, which drives higher visit frequency. Our research has shown that this treasure hunt element really resonates particularly well with our customer, who views shopping both as a practical necessity but also an enjoyable activity. Off-price retailers have historically grown significantly faster than traditional retail. They've generated the highest returns, commands the highest multiples. And we believe that CITIRENDS has a clear path to improve operating margins, and we believe there's an opportunity for the market to assign a multiple to our business commensurate with the off-price sector, which gives us an additional path of growth. So our product strategy really centers on a 3-tiered approach designed to serve customers across all income levels. At opening price point, we offer value-focused basics clearly signed in store with Citi Score for our most budget conscious customers, excuse me. The core of our business is the better tier. These are quality products with the breadth of selection and fresh styles, typically priced in that $7 to $12 range. This assortment drives customer loyalty, consistent performance across the categories of men's, women's, kids, footwear and our home categories. And at the very top end, we're expanding our best tier with two distinct approaches. So first, we're adding more trend-relevant product, fashionable styles at prices well below retail in specialty. And second, we're building our extreme value capabilities. These are well-known brands that we go out and purchase at extreme value discounts, often 75% of MSRP. And these deals really capitalize on supply chain disruptions that I mentioned a moment ago. Our goal is to grow this extreme value segment to about 10% of our overall mix. and these branded treasurers drive both traffic and basket growth, while still delivering exceptional gross margin performance. So our strategy is built around a clear and unwavering focus on style, price and trend's abilities of the black customer. It's really at the center of everything that we do. The average age is around 40 years old, often families with children or multi-general households. Our neighborhood locations create proximity and convenience that drive engagement and more than 1/3 of our customers shop with us weekly or biweekly. These are our most frequent shoppers with household incomes ranging 75 to 150 and account for about 40% of our revenue. Our next tier visits monthly, and these are typical incomes that are about 50 to 75, and this makes up about 50% of our customer base while driving 45% of our revenue. And we serve a third segment, which is a little bit less frequent but more budget conscious customers that have a little lower household income. I really think what's important to understand in all of this is that we're serving customers across all income levels, right? With our 3-tiered product strategy. We have a significant portion of average and higher income customers of recognizable brands, exceptional prices that align with their style and trend preferences, and our customers have really, really responded positively some of these changes, and we've been excited to see the traffic growth in our business. So cultural relevance is really a competitive advantage of our business. Flat customers have historically been trendsetters, and early adopters of fashion, music and culture. And understanding this dynamic allows us to curate assortments with both immediate appeal to our core customer and broader market relevance to the secondary customer. Our customers really are discerning. They understand that value is more than price and they're willing to spend more when the style is for them. The fashion is on trend and the quality is right. So in short, value is not just price. So it really shapes our brand promise, which is styles that so, prices that amaze you and trends that tell your story. This past holiday, you might have seen it out there because it was really widely accepted, but we launched our Joy Looks Good on You marketing campaign. This is where we refreshed our branding and social media and online. Our objective here was to kind of ensure that CITIRENDS is an important part of the black community by connecting with our customers in the terms of their lives. So I'm excited today to share with you the video, and then we'll talk a little bit after that. [Presentation]

Always enjoy watching that. Kind of gives me a little bit of a lift. And since we've launched this video, it's had over 55 million viral views and engagements online. So first of a series of videos that we released. We have some other segments that we've released as well, and you can see them all at cititrends.com. And we're still seeing some additional leverages from this future advance in our marketing, really good. So prior to the video release for holiday, our growth really has been driven largely by word of mouth, as I mentioned earlier, shopping visits. Beginning in 2026, though, we're going to be adding external marketing. And during our selling key weeks during -- to increase our brand awareness and drive incremental traffic. So as I noted, we've refreshed our social media efforts as you see here on this slide. We also are using targeted marketing in select markets to drive local awareness. For example, in December, we wrapped brand messages on city buses and added branded moments and bus stops. We had good results, and we look forward to continuing to refine our localized marketing efforts as we go forward. I think it's important to understand that CITIRENDS locations are really at the heart of their neighborhoods. They're more than just a retail location. They're community anchors. This is where our customers will know they'll find value in product and belonging with friends. Our store managers and associates are often friends and family and neighbors. They grew up together. They've created genuine trust and the connection really extends beyond the transaction in our store. The community connection is a competitive advantage that drives measurable results. Transaction growth has consistently accounted for the majority of our comp sales increases over the past 6 quarters. Word-of-mouth remains a powerful traffic driver in our community, and this is fueled by relationships our teams have built over the many, many years in these communities. Our neighborhood positioning also creates a defensible market position. Stores have been embedded in these communities for years. And in many of these communities, we are the primary and often the only value retailer, making us both essential and irreplaceable to the families that we serve. So in fiscal 2025, we refreshed 62 of our high-volume stores, averaging about $2 million in annual sales. This is a remodel cost was about $100,000 per store. So the remodels transform the look and the feel of our stores, updated fixtures. We've improved the signing. We've added better lighting, enhanced the presentation standards that really just make it a much more enjoyable and easier experience for the consumer. The impact though goes well beyond the sales lift. These refreshed stores really inspire our teams, they elevate the brand and the community, and they send a really strong signal to the customer that we're investing in their neighborhood. So looking ahead, we'll continue remodeling about 50 stores per year as part of our ongoing fleet maintenance program and the market share investment strategy that we have in place. This disciplined approach allows us to progressively upgrade our fleet and our store base while achieving the planned returns well on our invested capital. So looking forward, we're positioning CITIRENDS for strategic new store growth. In 2026, we plan to open approximately 25 new stores. And from 2027 onwards, we expect to continue opening about 40 stores per year. taking our store count to about 650 at the end of 2027. Our expansion strategy really focuses on 2 approaches. One is backfilling our existing markets where we have brand awareness and proven performance and selectively entering new markets with strong demographic alignment to our customer base. We've piloted successful market backfill approach this fall in Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida and Columbia, South Carolina. We opened two new stores in conjunction with remodeling the existing stores in the market. And our objective here is really to increase market share by strengthening the brand presence and the store presence and reinvigorating brand awareness. Both markets are off to a great start, and they're serving as good testing and learning grounds for us for our future expansion plans. So our new store expansion is guided by a disciplined approach of analytics, market expertise and financial metrics. So using AI tools, we've analyzed about 3 years of actual transaction data from every single store location combined with comprehensive geo location studies, to understand the specific customer and the market characteristics that drive success. So this AI-driven data approach has demonstrated approximately a 90% accuracy in sales prediction. This will help us identify and replicate our most successful stores and profile while minimizing the risk that we have with expanding our footprint. But beyond analytics, we're applying strict financial criteria to every store. Targeting mature store averages of around $1.5 million in sales and about mid-teens in our 4-wall contribution. This 3-part approach of AI-driven analytics, local market expertise, and disciplined financial hurdles, positions us -- okay, positions us to expand intelligently while minimizing the returns on our investments. Our balance sheet provides significant strategic flexibility. As I mentioned, we have a debt-free facility with ample liquidity. This financial position allows us to invest in growth opportunities while maintaining operational stability. Over the past 3 years, we've invested in capital projects with demonstrated return on investment, primarily new store remodels or openings, technology infrastructure and AI-based system. The total capital spend is expected was $23 million in 2025 and is expected to be $40 million to $45 million as we get forward in '26 and '27. Our disciplined approach to capital allocation emphasizes investment of operating cash flow to fuel growth while preserving our financial strength. Over time, this strength will enable the company to selectively pursue strategic roll-ups and synergistic acquisitions to further drive enhanced shareholder value. CITIRENDS has a clear and tangible path to creating shareholder value, one that is grounded in discipline detail and execution. Our strategy is not aspirational, it's actionable. It's backed by a very measurable set of initiatives that are designed to deliver results. Compared to fiscal 2024, we are targeting total store sales growth of about $150 million, achieving $900 million or more in sales in fiscal 2027. Our gross profit expansion rate is 400 basis points. It takes us up to 42% and SG&A leverage of about 200 basis points, resulting in a planned EBITDA increase of $60 million which is achieving finally a $45 million overall EBITDA profit margin of around about 5% in fiscal 2021. And I want to emphasize, these really are not distant goals. These are achievable outcomes that are backed by a very specific strategy that we're well underway executing. So, looking ahead, we're expecting consistent store sales growth to be in the range of 6% to 8% annually. This results in sales of well over $900 million, as I mentioned. And at the core of this strategy is the continued refinement and execution of our 3-tiered product assortments that I mentioned earlier and to accelerate our growth in the better-end product. We have added a highly regarded trend director in 2025 to assist our merchants in developing, procuring the emerging trends and really accelerating this exciting part of our business to expand better sales and better product. Plus, we'll improve store productivity by intensifying our efforts in key categories with double-digit growth like footwear, plus size, big man, young men's and Missy while continuing consistent growth in kids and our family-based the core categories. A lot of opportunity inside the box to really mature and in our company. Incremental to our plan, we build the external internal capacity to fully capitalize on this fast-moving world of deal making. And as I described earlier, extreme value deals are more than just transactions. They do create a lot of excitement in our store. They deepen our price perception. They set us apart as a retailer that bring style brands and prices that others just simply can't deliver. Our gross profit rate is on track to expand 42% in 2027 and to achieve this growth, we're leveraging technology and innovation. Our newly implemented AI-based planning system, I mentioned earlier, is transforming how we manage inventory. It's improving our inventory efficiency. It's reducing our markdowns and aligning our product assortments with customer demand at individual store level. So this is resulting in fueling growth where the opportunity is the strongest, while minimizing excess inventory in our lower volume locations. Plus in the near future, we're implementing markdown optimization to further optimize our profitability. Additionally, we see an opportunity to improve margins through reduced shrink and lower freight costs. Think rates are expected to improve as we adopt enhanced practices, including stronger internal data accuracy, new investments in facial recognition camera systems. And on the supply side, we also have ongoing efficiency work in our DCs to improve both our operations there as well as the freight rates of transportation. Our plan will deliver strong profit flow-through as sales growth, fueled by margin rate expansion and disciplined cost controls. We anticipate over 200 basis points of improvement in SG&A, which will create meaningful operating leverage. All of this leads up to a significant step change in EBITDA of about $45 million at the end of 2027. And importantly, this is just aspiration. This is tangible, detailed road map, but that really does backed by a lot of measurable initiatives. And in the end, it will generate tremendous shareholder value. So the progress I mentioned here at CITIRENDS is well underway. As I noted today, we're in the early stages with significant opportunity to head. We have processes to refine, categories to optimize and systems to build. Our tracker record of consistent comp store sales increases does prove that our strategy is working, our execution is more consistent and our customer connection is stronger than ever. We're debt free, disciplined and positioned for growth. We have a clear path to profitable expansion, stronger earnings and lasting shareholder value. And we're more than just a simple retailer. We're a neighborhood destination for black families designed and delivering style, trend and value and trust that no one else can deliver. The CITIRENDS is executing the discipline. We're growing with purpose and unlocking sustainable growth minimum. I really do appreciate your time today. The future is ours, and we're just getting started. So thank you all for joining us today. And again, we'll be available up here for any questions that you might have. Thank you all.