Tilly's, Inc. ($TLYS)

Greetings, and welcome to Tilly's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Gar Jackson with Investor Relations. Thank you, Gar. You may begin.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Tilly's Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Earnings Call. Nate mouth, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; will discuss the company's business and operating results, followed by a Q&A session with analysts. For a copy of the Tilly's press release, please visit the Investor Relations section of the company's website at tillys.com. From the same section, shortly after the conclusion of the call, you will also be able to find a recorded replay of this call for the next 30 days. Certain forward-looking statements will be made during this call that reflect Tilly's judgment and analysis only as of today, June 3, 2026, and actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on various factors affecting Tilly's business. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with any forward-looking statements, please see the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that is included in our fiscal 2026 first 2026 first quarter earnings release, which is furnished to the SEC today on Form 8-K as well as our other filings with the SEC referenced in that disclaimer. Today's call will be limited to 1 hour, and I will include a Q&A session after our prepared remarks. I now turn the call over to Nate.

Thanks, Gar, and to all for joining us today. The turnaround momentum that we began building in fiscal 2025 has carried meaningfully into the new year, and we are pleased with how we have started fiscal 2026. For the third consecutive quarter and ninth consecutive month, we delivered comparable net sales growth with total sales landing at the top of our outlook range for the first quarter. We posted a robust 22.9% comparable net sales increase for the first quarter with both stores and e-comm comping in excess of 20%. We -- in what is historically our smallest sales quarter of the fiscal year, we narrowed our net loss to just under $8 million from last year's first quarter net loss of over $22 million delivering our fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year profit improvement and coming in $0.01 ahead of the upper end of our earnings per share outlook range. The trend of our business has been moving in the right direction and it is doing so with increasing consistency. Returning to profitability in fiscal 2026 is our foremost priority. While there is still work ahead of us, the sales trends we have been seeing, assuming they continue give us genuine confidence that we're on the right path to potentially get there. Comparable net sales in fiscal May increased by 8.3% to start the second quarter, extending our streak of monthly comparable net sales growth to 10 straight fiscal months. That consistency is not something we take lightly. It reflects real progress in the business. We aim to continue building on this momentum as the year progresses. In terms of first quarter merchandise performance compared to last year's first quarter, all departments posted double-digit comp sales gains. Performance was strong across both proprietary and third-party brands with very few exceptions. Product margins improved by 400 basis points with improved full price selling from inventories that were more current in terms of aging versus a year ago. This was our sixth consecutive quarter delivering product margin rate improvement relative to the corresponding period of the prior year. We believe the work we have put in to more clearly understand and define our key customer profiles has helped us build and merchandise assortments, both in store and online with clear strategy and focus than in the past. This, in turn, has resulted in greater and more consistent customer engagement for us. as evidenced by both store and online traffic growth compared to last year's first quarter and customer loyalty program growth of 10% in terms of customers with activity within the last year, and a doubling of our TikTok following since launching our TikTok shop last March to meet our customers where they spend much of their commercial lives. We believe the dual impact of improved product assortments that are merchandised well, blended with impactful marketing strategies has led to these results, and these results speak for themselves. Customers are coming back. We believe that our efforts are moving the needle in a real and measurable way. In terms of stores, all geographic markets posted double-digit comp sales gains relative to last year's first quarter. As planned, we opened 1 store and closed 4 during the first quarter. We currently expect to open 2 new stores in late July and 1 more in late October and to close 1 existing store in mid-July and another at the end of the fiscal year. The improvement in our business has us looking forward with optimism including the possibility of expanding our net store footprint in fiscal 2027. We are not ready to commit to specific numbers or lower locations just yet, but we are having those conversations and that alone marks a meaningful shift and how we are thinking about future opportunities of this business. We continue to invest in our infrastructure to improve operating efficiencies. Over the last several months, we have been reviewing and making changes to various strategic and tactical elements relating to our online business and digital marketing efforts, which we believe are beginning to generate improved site performance and efficiency. In addition, we expect to launch an AI-driven merchandise allocation tool before the holiday season, to help us improve initial allocation accuracy across our stores and online. These are just a couple of examples among many others that are underway with the overarching goal of improving our execution quality and operating efficiency. In closing, I want to take a moment to recognize what this team has accomplished. Turning a business around his hard work. It requires discipline, focus and a willingness to make difficult decisions day after day. Our stores, field management distribution centers and home office have all risen to that challenge and the results we are seeing are a direct reflection of their effort and commitment. I'm genuinely proud of what we have built together over these past several quarters. That said, we are not done, returning to historical levels of store sales productivity and the operating performance this business is capable of is the goal we're driving toward, and we know there is meaningful work still ahead of us to get to that point. We are also clear eyed about the external environment. There are headwinds out there, but we have demonstrated that we can execute, and we enter the balance of fiscal 2026 with confidence in our plan and in the people carrying it out. The progress and momentum is real, and we look forward to continuing to share it with you. I'll now turn the call over to Mike to walk through the details of our fiscal 2026 first quarter operating performance and to introduce our second quarter outlook.

Thanks, Nate. Details regarding our operating results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to last year's first quarter were as follows: Total net sales were $124.7 million an increase of $17.1 million or 15.9%. Total comparable net sales, including both physical stores and e-commerce increased by 22.9%. . And as Nate noted earlier, 1 of the notice -- 1 of the strongest first quarter results in company history. Total net sales from physical stores increased by 12.1% and despite a 7.6% reduction in quarter-end store count compared to last year's first quarter and represented 77.2% of total net sales compared to 79.8% last year. E-commerce net sales increased by 30.9% and represented 22.8% of total net sales compared to 20.2% last year. Gross margin, including buying, distribution and occupancy expenses improved by 910 basis points to 28.9% of net sales from 19.8% of net sales last year. Product margins improved by 400 basis points compared to last year, primarily due to improved full price selling of inventories that were more current in terms of aging. Buying, distribution and occupancy costs improved by 520 basis points or $0.9 million due primarily to reduced occupancy costs associated with our lower store count and carrying these costs against higher total net sales. Total SG&A expenses were $44.2 million or 35.4% of net sales and improved by 550 basis points as a percentage of net sales due to carrying these expenses against higher net sales. Minor increases in digital marketing spend and home office and store payroll were largely offset by lower noncash asset write-off charges of $1 million. Pretax loss was $7.8 million or 6.3% of net sales compared to $22.3 million or 20.7% of net sales last year. Income tax expense was $137,000 or 1.7% of pretax loss compared to an income tax benefit of $139,000 or 0.6% of pretax loss last year. Both years' income tax results include the continuing impact of a full noncash deferred tax asset valuation allowance. Net loss was $8 million or $0.26 per share compared to $22.2 million or $0.74 per share last year resulting in an improvement of $14.2 million or $0.48 per share compared to last year's first quarter. On our debt-free balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with total cash and investments of $41.1 million compared to $37.2 million last year and no borrowings at any time with available undrawn borrowing capacity of $50.7 million under our asset-backed credit facility. This represents an important moment in our turnaround journey as we have returned to building cash year-over-year for the first time since the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2021. Total balance sheet inventory was 6.4% lower than at the end of last year's first quarter and meaningfully more current within 90 days aged than a year ago. Looking to the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Total comparable net sales for fiscal May ended May 30, 2026, increased by 8.3% relative to the comparable period of last year, marking our tenth consecutive month of comparable net sales growth. Based on current and historical trends, we estimate the following ranges for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Net sales of approximately $154 million to $160 million, translating to a comparable net sales increase range of 6% to 10%, respectively. Product margins to be flat to up slightly compared to last year's company record rate for a fiscal second quarter. SG&A of approximately $48 million to $49 million, excluding any potential noncash asset impairment charges, a year 0 effective income tax rate due to the continuing impact of a full noncash valuation allowance on our deferred tax assets. Net income of approximately $3.8 million to $6 million, respectively, to net sales and net income per diluted share of $0.13 to $0.20, respectively, based on approximately 30.3 million diluted shares. These results would represent a fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year profit improvement for us. We expect to end the second quarter with 221 total stores a net decrease of 11 stores or 4.7% compared to the end of last year's second quarter. We expect to end the second quarter with total liquidity in excess of $120 million comprised of cash and investments of approximately $59 million to $63 million and available undrawn borrowing capacity of approximately $63 million under our asset-backed credit facility. This compares to total cash and investments of $51 million and $63 million of undrawn borrowing capacity at the end of the second quarter last year. Operator, we'll now go to our Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] One moment, we'll only poll for questions. And our first question comes from the line of Matt Koranda with Roth.

It's Joseph on for Matt. Just wondering if we could start here on the cadence of comps during 1Q. If you could just talk about the month-to-month trends. I know you mentioned in May, you've seen of to a good start right at the midpoint of your 2Q guide, but if we could talk about 1Q comps during the quarter?

Sure. So as we announced with our last earnings call, fiscal February was up 20.1%. And then March was up 39.5%, and April was up 5.1%. The finished the quarter at 22.9%. We had the Easter shift this year. Recall Easter was a couple of weeks earlier, so it did shift business into March and out of April. So that's why you see such the wide disparity between March and April comps.

Got it. And as we look out to , I guess, 2Q, should we expect just qualitatively, if you could talk about comps into 2Q as we're entering the back-to-school season, anything to call out here?

Sure. In terms of size of the months, May is typically about 25% of the quarter and the quarter gets -- each month gets larger as you go through the quarter. So June is a 5-week month in the retail calendar. So it will be larger than May. And then the 4 largest sales weeks of the quarter are all in July in ascending order to where the very last week is the largest week of the quarter. So we won't really know the full answer of the quarter until we get completely to the end of the second quarter because the early stages of the back-to-school season kick in and especially in the latter half of July. So we'll have meaningfully higher weekly sales volumes as we go through July than what we have had through May and what we will have likely in June to finish out the quarter. And then the range that we put out of the plus 6% to plus 10% comp is really just rooted in recent years sales trends and how those cadences in second quarters performed capturing right in the middle, where we're sitting right now. There is opportunity for us to perform a little better than where we're seeing right now. The back-to-school season has been in recent years, the strongest performing period of the year for us. even in the years when we were struggling with negative comps through '22, '23, '24 first half of '25. And then, of course, as Nate noted, we know there's headwinds out there, too. So trying to give a little bit of room to absorb anything that might be unexpected things that are outside of our control that we might not be able to influence.

Got it. Okay. And just wanted to see if you can just hop down into product margin improvement. Just wanted to see how much is structural in the new baseline versus a recovery just wanted to see how you're thinking about product margins as we kind of Phase 2 and towards the back half of the year.

Yes. The first quarter, we had 400 basis points of margin improvement, and we don't expect that kind of level to continue through the rest of the year. We do expect to continue to improve our product margins year-over-year as we said for the second quarter to be flat to slightly up. We've produced 6 consecutive quarters of product margin improvement. So -- and we've actually been producing company record rates of product margin for the last few quarters. So we're performing very well, very healthy on the product margin side, inventory control, all those things working together to produce these kinds of results, and we expect our product margins to remain very healthy as we go forward.

And our next question comes from the line of Gashi Sri with Singular Research.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, yes.

Okay. Mike. I'll keep this tight and get straight to the questions. But what I did want to say is that the strong numbers kind of validates a lot of what you've been telling the market for the last 12 months. . And the trajectory seems to be clearly real. So my questions today are really about the durability and the mechanics of what comes next. So in terms of inventory buildup, as you're running at 2020 comps and you've talked about deliberately staying in the chase mode and making sharper upfront commitments and chasing winners. At what point does the strong complement um actually forced you to kind of build more inventory upfront than you're comfortable with? Have you had to lose on the inventory discipline to support the kind of the back-to-school floor set? And if so, is there any kind of comp deceleration risk in kind of the back half of the year?

We're planning for a successful back-to-school season. We actually have run into situations where certain key items have sold through so fast that we are running lighter than we'd like in certain areas. So to your question, as the business dictates, we're chasing as best we can to continue to fuel the momentum that is clearly in our business currently. Unfortunately, we've had a couple of key items where we haven't been able to replenish as fast as we would like to continue the momentum in a couple of areas. But broadly speaking, we're real happy with the age and the content of our inventory, and we're doing everything we can to continue to fuel the business. As we go into the second half of the year, we are going to start comping against what was the start of our positive comp trend, right? It started with August last year. We were plus 2% in Q3, and we're plus 10% in Q4. So purely from a comparable standpoint, we're going to start going up against positive comp quarters as opposed to negative comp quarters, which we've been going against the last 3 quarters. But we still expect ourselves to deliver positive comps against those numbers. Those are our plans.

Okay. And I know, Nate, we've talked about the 280 kind of the the range that you start generating profitability and kind of FY '25 ended at $2.60 per square foot. And now you've had kind of 2 quarters at plus 20 comps without giving the exact number, comfortable saying you're already past that 20 mark? Or what is the path to 300 actually look like from here in terms of comp rate required?

Yes, I can tell you, Gosh, right now, finishing the second quarter, we've gotten our sales per square foot metric up to 271. So still well below the 300 plus that this company has delivered in the past. So when we referenced that there's more work to do and and still work ahead of us to get back to profitability. That's what we're focused on is getting that sales per square foot store productivity level back above $300 million -- we are making progress a quarter ago, that was at $260, -- now it's at 270, and we're planning to continue to improve upon that as we go forward.

Excellent. And on the e-com, now that you guys have been in the range of around 20%, 22%. -- not -- could you definitely tell us whether TikTok is driving new customers or migrating existing new ones now that the both channels are kind of running at double-digit positive simultaneously. Have you gotten any better data on the customer acquisition through TikTok specifically? And is that 22.3% kind of structural breakout does the channel mix structurally normalize back once the clearance lap comparisons fully washes out.

Yes, I think it's a combination of both, Gosh, I mean, we -- certainly, we are gaining new customers. And certainly, there are some existing customers shopping, we have seen over on ticktock, in the end, the way the team and we are approaching this is it's all about this, what I would say is disciplined channel management. TikTok is expanding our total addressable customer base. It's also increasing the purchase frequency of our existing base -- and what we really like is it's reducing our long-term dependence on expensive paid acquisition. In the meantime, all of our blended comps remain positive. So in the end, I don't think our customer -- he doesn't think he doesn't -- they don't think in channels, they might discover us on tick talk researches on cloud and buy on our dot-com or buy Wever's most convenient for them at the moment. And we really have to be present where they are, and TikTok is where a large and growing segment of our customer base lives their commercial life. And our job really is to remove that friction between intent and purchase and TikTok Shop, frankly, eliminates steps in that journey for a customer segment that we would otherwise have to acquire at a much higher acquisition cost through paid search or another avenue.

Got you. Got you. And in terms of now that you are thinking about opening stores as well as an e-comm is growing double digit. What point does a distribution center become capacity constrained either e-com fulfillment or for store replacement? Is there any -- I'm wondering if there's any CapEx events in the next 12 to 18 months if this aided to expand the distribution center or add a second node because would that be a step change in CapEx that your current sub $10 million guidance doesn't appear to have baked in?

Absolutely not, Gosh. We have plenty of capacity in both our stores, distribution center and our e-com fulfillment center. Not expecting any major CapEx, major overhaul or needing to find additional distribution capacity for us. .

Thank you. And with that, this does conclude our question-and-answer session. And I would now like to turn the floor back to Nate Smith for any closing remarks.

So thank you, and we look forward to sharing our continued progress. .

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful rest of your day.