The Buckle, Inc. (BKE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day. We are about to begin the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of The Buckle, Inc. Management will take questions later in the meeting. [Operator Instructions] I will turn the meeting over to Mr. Dan Hirschfeld.

Thank you. I am Dan Hirschfeld, Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Buckle, Inc., and I am calling this annual meeting to order at this time. We have present with us all but 2 of the members of the Board of Directors, and they are here virtually. So we are represented by everyone on the Board at this time. We will appoint an election inspector, as we always do, and I'm going to appoint Brady Fritz as election inspector this year. And at this time, I'm going to ask Brady if we have a quorum so that we can legitimately do things today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Board of Directors sets March 29, 2021, as the record date for determining shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting. An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that either a notice of Internet availability of the notice of the meeting, the proxy statement and the 2020 annual report to shareholders or the documents themselves were mailed on or about April 23, 2021, to all shareholders as of the record date and will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The shareholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 49,788,891 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote this meeting. They are represented in person or by proxy shares of common stock representing 46,620,762 votes or approximately 93.6% of the voting power on the record date at today's meeting. Since this represents more than a majority of the voting power of all issued and outstanding stock entitled to vote on the record date, a quorum is present for purposes of transacting business.

Well, that was a long answer to the question of quorum. We will assume that we are, in fact, legitimately entitled to conduct this meeting. And now we'll ask Ms. Fritz to briefly explain what we're going to be voting on today.

Under the items of new business, we are considering the following 4 items. The first is the election of 12 directors to serve until the next Annual Shareholder Meeting or until their successors are duly elected and qualified. Management of the company recommended the election of all individuals listed on the ballot for election at this particular annual meeting. The second item is to ratify the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as independent registered public accounting firm of the company for the fiscal year ending January 29, 2022. The third item is to approve the company's 2021 Management Incentive Plan. And the fourth item is to approve an amendment to the company's amended and restated 2005 Restricted Stock Plan.

Okay. Let me remind all those who are present virtually that you can still vote your shares at this time. You have a very short period of time to vote them if you haven't already voted. And also, you can submit your questions very -- before Dennis finishes his report. But we will, at that time, decide which questions are appropriate, and we will address the questions at that time. So I will call upon Dennis and ask him to give us a report of the company's operations. Dennis Nelson, CEO and President.

Thank you, Dan. Good morning. At last year's meeting, we were talking about reopening stores, and we're grateful to have 400 of our stores or about 90% of our stores opened by the 1st of June in 2020. This year, I'm very pleased to say all 441 of our stores are open. Our first quarter sales, we had $299.1 million sales, which were up over 67% over first quarter 2020 and up -- oh, I'm sorry, were up 48.6% over 2019's first quarter. Our e-commerce sales were up 67% over our first quarter 2020 and up 120% over first quarter in 2019. Also on May 21, we announced earnings of $57.3 million versus last year's loss of $11.8 million. On June 3, we reported May sales of $89.7 million, which was up 75% over May 2020 and up 46% over 2019 May sales. We also announced Bob Carlberg, Senior Vice President of Men's Merchandising, planned retirement at the end of January 2022. We thank Bob for his 37 years of dedicated service to Buckle and for his passion and energy he brought to building a strong men's merchandise team. During the quarter, we relocated 5 of our stores to new locations. And this week, we're opening our fourth Youth store in St. George, Utah. In the first quarter, we closed 1 store, and we finished the quarter with 441 stores in 42 states. I want to thank all of our leaders and teammates for their great work this past year. And at this time, we will take questions.

Okay. Before the questions, let me remind you that the voting has now ended, and you cannot vote your shares if you didn't. But we will tabulate the votes while we entertain questions that have been appropriately submitted.

Dan, I'm happy to report -- or so I'm happy to report, we have not received any questions for consideration at this annual meeting. And because there are no questions, this portion of the agenda is closed.

Okay. Are we ready to announce the voting?

Yes, Dan. The ballots have been counted, and I'm pleased to report that all director nominees have been duly elected and that proposals 2, 3 and 4 have been approved and adopted.

Okay. Wonderful. That's good news. And we're -- we were not too surprised they have no questions because business has been so good. We only get questions when things are bad, and they are the opposite of bad right now. There's no further business to bring before the shareholders today. I would like to mention that this is our 29th Annual Shareholders' Meeting. And we have some shareholders that have been with us from the very first year, and we thank them for their support. And we are thankful to all our shareholders for entrusting us with their investment. And we purposed to do, I know Dennis would second and third this, the very best that we can for them to accomplish their goals and investment. So we look forward to seeing some of you or maybe all of you and more of you at our 30th meeting next year. But at this time, since there is nothing else on the agenda, I declare that the meeting is closed.

This concludes our meeting today. You may now disconnect, and thank you for joining.