Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Pet Valu's Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Kiki, and I will be coordinating today's call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that following the formal remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the headset before pressing any keys. We kindly request that you limit your time to one question plus a follow-up before cycling back into the queue, so that we allow time for as many of you to ask a question as possible. I would now like to turn the call over to James Allison, Investor Relations at Pet Valu. Please go ahead, Mr. Allison.
Good morning, and thank you for joining Pet Valu's call to discuss our Q2 2024 results, which were released this morning and can be found on our website at investors.petvalu.com. With me on the call is Richard Maltsbarger, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Linda Drysdale, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements, which include guidance and underlying assumptions. Forward-looking statements are based on expectations that involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed today. For a broader description of risks related to our business, please see our Q2 2024 MD&A, 2023 annual information form, and other filings available on SEDAR+. Today's remarks will also be accompanied by an earnings presentation, which can be viewed through our live webcast and is also available on our website.
Now, I would like to turn the call over to Richard.
Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. As we've often said, the Canadian pet industry has a strong track record of resilience throughout economic cycles. The industry's needs-based nature and long-term humanization and premiumization tailwinds have supported three decades of continuous growth. The mettle of the industry's resilience is being tested in today's economic environment, and we are pleased to see that it continues to prevail. Looking at our Q2 results, same-store sales and our needs-based consumables and services categories, which account for over 80% of our sales, continue to grow at a healthy pace, driving recurring trips and revenue. The few pockets of demand softness continue to be in more discretionary hard lines and specifically in the urban markets of Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area.
Most importantly, for our long-term success, we continue to see the fastest growth in our premium foods, holistic kibble, and culinary, such as frozen raw, freeze-dried, and gently cooked recipes. These dynamics, together with our shelter channel checks, give us confidence the key tenets underpinning the long-term resilience of our industry remain intact. We are the industry leader and have grown in line or faster than the market by tapping into multiple growth avenues such as new stores, e-commerce, customized loyalty, in-store services, and exceptional merchandising. But we don't stop there. Perhaps one of our greatest actions is fostering a culture capable of delivering strong profitability through all phases of a demand cycle, and our Q2 performance was a prime example.
While total same-store sales growth remained muted, we grew revenue 3% and increased adjusted EBITDA by 7%, allowing us to maintain and expand our healthy, adjusted EBITDA margins to almost 22% and deliver another quarter of solid free cash flow. Importantly, it is our team's commitment to calibrating spending to today's demand environment, while also delivering our most critical strategic initiatives that position us for long-term profitable growth and elevated returns to shareholders once economic conditions begin to normalize. Let me cover some of these in the framework of our four focuses. Our first focus is to be Canada's local and everywhere pet specialty retailer. We opened 5 new stores in Q2, bringing us to 16 new stores year to date and 799 locations by quarter end. In early July, we and our franchisees opened our 800th store.
Owned and operated by longtime franchisees, Kevin and Bernadette Clipperton and their daughter, Cassandra Harvey, in London, Ontario. This is their fourth store in the greater London market, where they have grown with Pet Valu over the last decade. Their story is one shared with many of our franchisees, whose ongoing success is a culmination of years of experience and local involvement in over 370 communities across Canada. Our franchisees form the heart of our coast-to-coast network that is further cementing our leadership and omnichannel convenience. In addition to new stores, we renovated, expanded, or relocated another nine sites in the quarter and 16 year to date. Add to this more than a dozen smaller touch-ups that we've completed, and our real estate team is on pace to complete over 100 projects this year to keep our network modern and deliver consistent shopping environments.
We continued to enhance the local element of our neighborhood stores through the expansion of our franchise community. Over 100% of our net store growth in Q2 and over the last few years has come through new and resold franchise stores. While in recent years, we have tapped into the strong demand from current franchisees looking for an additional store, so far this year, we've welcomed a higher proportion of new faces to our franchisee community and are excited to help grow their business alongside ours. On the digital front, we successfully transitioned our website over to a new platform mid-quarter.
Enabling greater adaptability and flexibility for back-end processes and launching several key customer-facing improvements, like faster site speeds, broader access to assortment, and the introduction of wish list to share with friends and family, or for our rescue partners to create lists of products needed for local donations. The team has built a full roadmap of enhancements so that we continue to employ industry best practices and meet customer expectations for a smooth and seamless digital experience. Our second focus is delivering the best pet customer experience in Canada. Our merchants just completed our biannual assortment refresh in consumables, including hundreds of new items that tap into key long-term growth trends. Examples of these new and on-trend items include solution-based foods, diversified protein toppers, and supplements. We also continue to adapt our offering to meet growing humanization needs.
For example, we recently introduced an Asobu line of insulated water bottles for dogs. These water bottles mimic high-quality human insulated water bottles and include a detachable bowl to make it easy to share water or snack while on the go. We continue to complement national brands like these with a growing portfolio of proprietary brands. In Q2, our proprietary brands entered some exciting product segments with the rollout of Jump retractable leashes in April and entry point litter accessories under our Essentials brand. Through these and other launches over the past year, we saw our hard lines proprietary brand penetration increase year- over- year for the second consecutive quarter. Perhaps the most exciting entry was the successful launch of Performatrin Culinary, marking our first proprietary brand entry into the freezer.
We have been pleased with the trial and repeat purchases we are seeing across this new portfolio, with almost 100% uptake by franchisees in the first month and having shipped over 400,000 pounds in total of Performatrin Culinary products since launch only a few short weeks ago. In fact, the adoption curve of our gently cooked recipes has accelerated faster than we had projected, quickly establishing Performatrin Culinary as the number one gently cooked brand within our network. We are excited to invest in this high-value, on-trend food category, which has grown at a 30% CAGR over the last three years, and whose customers visit our stores and spend twice as much on average. On the pricing front, the targeted pricing investments on key value items rolled out in April and May have successfully recalibrated our competitiveness against key peers.
As I mentioned earlier, we continue to see good momentum in our needs-based consumables and services category. At the same time, softness in hard lines, especially pet, has persisted through the Q2. It is here where we see some pockets of increased promotional activity and where customers are willing to defer or substitute as they search for ways to grapple with the increased cost of living. We have seen these trends before, and we expect them to be cyclical. This is why our teams remain vigilant, balancing discipline with targeted actions, such as expanding our proprietary brand options, often priced 5%-20% less than reference national brands. Another mechanism being increasingly utilized is our loyalty programs. We continue to add additional brands to our free bag program, including the recently launched Performatrin Culinary and multiple small animal brands, as we broaden the appeal to multi-pet households.
Our journey to enhance personalized offers to our over 3 million active customers continues as we leverage our data to target a broader set of behaviors. And finally, our marketing team continues to expand the boundaries of traditional pet industry marketing. In the Q2, we teamed up with Chatelaine Magazine to produce a first-of-its-kind integration, a special edition, custom, cat-themed cover, Catelaine, celebrating the deep bond between Canadians and their feline companions. This collaboration is an opportunity to leverage the scale of Chatelaine's audience of devoted pet lovers to drive awareness and amplify the reach of Pet Valu, showcase our product assortment and animal care expertise, share the story of one of our VIP customers, and shine a light on our Companions for Change program. And our third focus is to fortify strong retail and wholesale fundamentals to support long-term profitable growth.
A critical element of this is the continued work on our supply chain. First, let's talk about our operations in the Greater Toronto Area, servicing Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. We recently lapped the one-year anniversary of the opening of our new 670,000 sq ft DC in Brampton. Over the last year, our teams have ramped up bulk picking, and similar to Q1, we saw the benefits of favorable variable costs as we leveraged the incremental capacity together with advanced warehouse management systems. At the same time, we set up and tested our goods-to-picker automation, which went live in early July. Over the coming months, our teams will ramp up this capability while simultaneously winding down operations in our last legacy building in the GTA.
All this progress at the GTA DC continues to enable our ability to better serve our Chico franchisees in Quebec by expanding our Chico wholesale shipment catalog. In the Q2 alone, we opened up eight more brands for wholesale ordering by Chico franchisees. We are pleased with the continued uptake and are well on track to our goal of at least 50% penetration by Q4 2025. In Metro Vancouver, we're happy to announce just last week, we have now activated our new warehouse for bulk and piece picking. We are actively transitioning all inventory and staff and are on track to exit our legacy facilities by the end of the year. We remain on track for our Calgary DC, where we intend to transition to a larger DC for bulk and piece picking activities in 2025.
We are currently assessing potential sites with several viable options under consideration. We want to pause here and specifically note a change to our original supply chain transformation plan. In accordance with our capital allocation framework, we continuously assess our uses of cash to optimize returns. Given the current market environment and actions we have already taken to generate higher picking productivity, we enacted an opportunity to defer automation in our Metro Vancouver and Calgary DCs until 2026 or later, when we believe we can more efficiently leverage these investments. This provides the immediate benefit of freeing up cash flow for other higher return opportunities or returning it to our shareholders as we move into 2025. Our fourth and final focus, which is to enhance free cash flow and return on invested capital.
In light of slower top-line industry growth, I could not be prouder of our team's diligent focus on balancing growth, efficiency, and investments to promote our long-term profitable growth mandate. Given all our actions, we continue to track towards delivering free cash flow inflection late in 2024 and our target of more than CAD 100 million in free cash flow in 2025. Now, I'll turn it over to Linda to walk through our Q2 financials in more detail before reviewing our updated 2024 guidance. Linda?
Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. Overall, despite the tepid demand environment, I'm extremely proud of our team's ability to adapt to deliver solid profitability for our business in the Q2. Let me start with an overview of our KPIs. System-wide sales increased 3% to CAD 354 million in the Q2, driven by contributions from 41 new stores opened over the last four quarters, including 5 in Q2. We ended the quarter with 799 locations, 72% of which are franchised, up from 70% in Q2 last year, as we continue to grow our franchise mix over time. Same-store sales were flat year over year, with a 2.5% increase in average basket size, offset by a 2.4% decline in transactions.
As Richard mentioned, we continue to see steady growth in necessity-based categories such as consumables and services, while hard lines and urban markets remain soft. Q2 revenue increased 3% to CAD 265 million, growing at a similar pace as our system-wide sales. Gross profit was CAD 88 million, down 5% from last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin rate was 33.1% or 34.2%, excluding 110 basis points of costs related to our supply chain transformation.
Excluding these costs from Q2 and the comparable period last year, gross margin decreased 190 basis points, primarily driven by higher fixed distribution and occupancy costs from the new GTA distribution center and higher wholesale merchandise sales, due in part to our accelerated rollout of distribution to our Chico franchisees and higher discounts related to planned promotional activity. Selling general and administrative expenses in the Q1 were CAD 54 million. Excluding costs not indicative of business performance, our SG&A expenses were approximately CAD 48 million, down 4% compared to last year, and 140 basis points favorable as a percentage of revenue. Our teams continue to tightly control non-critical projects and discretionary spending to drive consistent profitability, which in turn fuels future growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased 7% to CAD 58 million.
As a percentage of revenue, our Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 80 basis points, slightly better than expected due to our diligent cost control. Net income was CAD 18 million, compared to CAD 24 million last year. Adjusted net income, which excludes items not indicative of our underlying performance, was CAD 26 million or CAD 0.36 per diluted share, similar to last year. Now, turning to the balance sheet, we ended Q1 with CAD 24 million of cash on hand and total liquidity of over CAD 150 million when including our revolver, which remained undrawn through the quarter. Total debt, net of deferred financing costs, was CAD 285 million. Taking into account net lease obligations, our leverage ratio of 2.1 times continues to provide us with financial flexibility.
Inventories at the end of the Q2 were CAD 134 million, up 2% compared to Q2 last year, similar to our growth in revenue. Our teams continue to leverage new tools and software to manage inventory at responsible levels, even while transitioning to new buildings and activating new automation. We remain comfortable with the quality of our stock across our DCs, corporate stores, and franchise networks, which in turn provides flexibility for our merchants to promote responsibly and encourage a stable trading environment. Net capital expenditures were CAD 12 million in the quarter and are trending at CAD 24 million year to date. Based on spend to date and adjustments to timing of certain supply chain transformation expenses, we now expect net capital expenditures for 2024 to be roughly CAD 50 million. free cash flow in the quarter was CAD 8 million.
On a year-to-date basis, we generated almost CAD 31 million in free cash flow, well above the CAD 4 million dollar outflow last year at this time. We are pacing well to grow our free cash flow in 2024 on our way to exceeding CAD 100 million in 2025. Now to our outlook for 2024. Our business continues to deliver on all the operational initiatives we mapped at the outset of the year. This includes the successful launch of Performatrin Culinary, the re-platforming of our transactional website, the activation of goods-to-picker automation in our new GTA DC, and as of last week, having activated our new Metro Vancouver distribution center. We are also pacing to open between 40 and 50 new stores this year, while growing our wholesale shipments to Chico.
At the same time, our merchant store teams and supply chain teams have done an excellent job navigating the evolving demand environment to protect share while preserving profitability. Simply put, we continue to control the controllables within our business. However, industry-wide sales growth has materialized slower than we had hoped in response to pullbacks in discretionary spending, predominantly in hard lines. Given performance year to date, what we're seeing so far in Q3, and subdued outlooks from economists for the balance of the year, we are now anticipating a slower growth rate for the industry for 2024 overall. We continue to take steps to adjust our operations to the slower growth environment and have done much to curb the impacts to our annual financials. Nonetheless, we have made adjustments to our full year targets.
We now expect 2024 revenues between CAD 1.08 billion and CAD 1.11 billion, representing 2%-5% growth over 2023, driven by contributions from new store openings, increased wholesale shipments to Chico, and flat same-store sales growth. Based on Q3 trends seen to date, we anticipate year-over-year revenue growth to ease sequentially in the Q3 compared to our Q2 trends, before improving in Q4 as we comp up against a relatively weak 2023 holiday season. For adjusted EBITDA, we now expect to deliver between CAD 243 million and CAD 248 million, growing faster than revenues as we leverage SG&A expenses through diligent cost controls. And finally, on adjusted net income per diluted share, we expect to reach between CAD 1.50 and CAD 1.55.
Recall that this includes the absorption of approximately CAD 20 million pre-tax, or CAD 0.20 per diluted share of incremental depreciation and interest expense associated with the new distribution centers in the GTA and Metro Vancouver. In summary, our financial position remains strong, providing the flexibility for our teams to make the right long-term investments to fuel growth while we navigate the suppressed discretionary demand in the near term.
Thanks, Linda. In closing, I want to once again thank all our people and franchisee owners for their unwavering dedication to practice safety, compassion, expertise, and efficiency, especially in today's uncertain economy. In equal measure, I am humbled to see devoted pet lovers step up to help those in greater need than themselves. In June, we held our annual Pet Appreciation Month and hit a new record, raising CAD 2.2 million dollars in product and cash donations for over 400 local pet rescues, shelters, and charities across Canada. The compassion of Canadians, and in particular, devoted pet lovers, never ceases to amaze me.
It's our service to these deeply compassionate, devoted pet lovers, our commitment to the long-term support of our franchise owners, and our team's hard work to balance cost management with investing in key strategic initiatives that have led this business to deliver over 60% revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth over the past three years. Even as we navigate the current market environment, we will hold true to these fundamentals that have helped create this company's 48 years of success. With that, we are now happy to take your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the headset before pressing any keys. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. We kindly request that you limit your time to one question plus a follow-up before cycling back into the queue, so that we allow time for as many of you to ask a question as possible. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. The first question comes from Mark Petrie from CIBC. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks, and good morning. Just first on the top line, thanks for all the comments so far, but hoping you can provide a little bit of color on two things. One, your views on market share. Sounds like you believe the slower sales growth is industry driven, but any comments there specifically on market share would be helpful. And then also, how are your new stores performing or the stores opened in the last 12 months? Are those ramping, as you would have seen, you know, historically?
Good morning, Mark. This is Richard. I'll take both of those. First on market share, based on third-party analysis that we have, as well as our tracking of what's going on in the marketplace, all indications are, is that we continue to see pretty similar share with no significant differences across the industry year to date. So that would give us indication that yes, this is an industry thing. Slightly different complexion. We're very strong in consumables, especially premium, and culinary and other products that drive regular, weekly, and monthly visits, and we're a bit weaker in hard lines, more discretionary categories, where we do see a bit of shift in that market as others are somewhat irrationally promoting those categories and chasing after sales, sometimes to unprofitable means.
The complexion of the share might be a bit different, but the overall share. No significant shifts in our year-to-date tracking. On new store performance, our new stores over the past year that we've opened continue to meet our expectations. Are well within line. We actually look at this every 6 months in detail, not only for last year's new stores, but for all stores within their first 4 years of activity. And all of those continue to track, which gives us confidence that we are making the right long-term, 10+ year decision, that we are making to continue to open, whether times are great or times are a little more constrained. We continue to adjust our expectations given the market, but the stores are continuing to meet or exceed our hurdle rates.
... Okay, thanks for that. And if I could just follow up on the promotional piece specifically, could you just delve into that a bit more? How's that investment being deployed? What sort of consumers and behavior are you targeting? And you commented that there's increased activity from your competitors, specifically in hard lines, but you also called out some investment that you're making on the consumable side. So any color there would be helpful. Thanks.
Certainly. So let me talk first with what we're doing, since that's the more and most pertinent to this conversation. We are continuing to lean in primarily through our loyalty program. While we do run our normal flyer-based programs every month, and within which we are highlighting things like deals under CAD 20, deals under CAD 10, these aren't necessarily items that are for sale per se. They're not even necessarily at promotional prices. They may still be at the same everyday value that we've taken, especially with the roughly 1,000 or so price changes that we took during April and May. So in many cases, we're promoting the core elements of value that we provide to the market every day.
When it comes to our loyalty program, we're leaning a little heavier into marketing and promotion to those customers that we know have the highest lifetime value, specifically those that purchase our premium kibble and our culinary products. Our culinary, especially for dog, continues to do very well with greater than 30% CAGRs for the past 3+ years, including year to date into this year, for our business. So we're continuing to lean into those categories that drive the weekly and monthly sales. And then we are doing some sparing promotions into hard lines and other less shopped categories. That alternatively, though, to answer the second part of your question, is where we continue to see greater promotional intensity, primarily from regional players.
One or two promotions out of national players, but really some odd behavior from some of our regional competitors, who seem to be much more invested in going deeper on discounting for those non-core items.
Appreciate all the comments, and all the best.
Perfect. Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. The next question is from Irene Nattel from RBC Capital Markets. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and good morning, everyone. If we could just continue the discussion, please, around consumer behavior, and you know, what you're seeing in response... And how, you know, maybe what you thought you're seeing now and how that plays into, I guess, the trim and guidance.
I'm sorry, Irene, you cut out twice during answering that question. All I heard was the word consumer behavior, and now. If you could possibly repeat that.
Sorry about that. What I was saying is, you know, you trimmed your guidance. If you could talk about how you had thought the back half of the year was going to evolve versus what you're seeing today, and I guess your outlook, if this new spending behavior is the new norm versus just a temporary blip.
Certainly. Let me talk about the consumer behavior, Linda, to give a little more specifics around the change in our back half, sort of outlook and what we're thinking there. So on the consumer, quite frankly, many of the trends we've heard us discuss in the last quarters are still happening throughout the Q2. And while I covered a lot of this in prepared remarks, I'll just quickly summarize some of the key points again. Look, the momentum for us is in our consumables and services. About 80% of our system-wide sales, very solid comp sales. Again, this is where we're putting our primary focus, 'cause this is what ties most specifically to long-term customer value with the devoted pet lovers that are at the core of our business.
It shows that we remain the retailer of choice for those core customers and their most critical trips. We continue to see positive humanization effects. Our premium foods, like culinary, as I quoted earlier, continue to outgrow our other food tiers. But there are pockets of value-seeking behavior. Specifically, we continue to see really strong performance out of Performatrin Naturals, one of our proprietary brands. As I also noted, that while we see declines in our discretionary hard lines, especially pet, you'll also note on the call that I highlighted the strength we're seeing because we have introduced incremental proprietary brand products into those hard line categories. So we are seeking to provide long-term value to the customer, about 5%-20% lower price points compared to reference national brands.
In the near term, that puts a bit of suppression on same-store sales as we lower the prices for customers to enter those categories. But long term gives us the advantage of having those customers now become focused on using our brands. And then finally, we do continue to see most of the pullback acutely in the metro areas, primarily Metro Vancouver, Greater Toronto Area, and a bit, to a lesser extent, but also in Montreal. These also are typically where the consumers, of course, have higher debt levels and are a little more susceptible to the higher interest rate environments, as housing costs continue to increase across Canada.
So every day, we continue to look for ways to continue to operate and introduce value to customers, not always through promotions, as much as any other, also through permanent price reductions, like we did in April, May, or introducing of our proprietary brands, like Performatrin Culinary, which not only is an exciting launch that provided over 400,000 pounds of product already shipped across the country, but did so also at a price comparison reduction to the referenced national brand. So overall, pretty similar to patterns we've seen in the past. I think that is the lead-in to Linda. It's the fact that those patterns haven't changed, that are setting up some of our change. So, Linda?
Yeah. Good morning, Irene. This is Linda. We contemplated a variety of scenarios, revising our 2024 guidance. Each demand cycle is different. The discretionary pullback we're seeing today is different from cycles we've experienced in the past. What I mean by that is industry growth year to date and expectations for the balance of the year are materially slower than we'd expected, mainly driven by the macroeconomic backdrop. We have seen inflation slow across many key categories, which is a good thing for all of our customers over the long term, but it does have an impact on our reported same-store sales growth. As a result, we now expect same-store sales growth for the year to be roughly flat, similar to our trends through the first half of the year.
As I said during my prepared remarks, we expect growth to be lower in Q3 before improving in Q4 as we comp up against a relatively weak Christmas season in 2023.
Thank you for that. That's very helpful. If we were to assume that this-- that there are no further changes to consumer spending and that going forward, what we're seeing today in consumer behavior will be sustained, what further changes would be required, or would further changes be required to, in order to drive same-store sales, notwithstanding this environment? Pardon me.
So we believe the changes we've undertaken are the right changes in this environment, realizing that in the short term, there are some impacts, most specifically in the Hard lines categories. We also understand with overall macro demand being pulled back, it's gonna be those categories. While the depth of the pullback and the length of the pullback is different from the prior recessions that we've seen within this century, the behavior of consumers pulling back that, but continuing to invest in foods and better for their pet quality products hasn't really changed. So it gives us good understanding of what's going on. It also gives us good confidence that over the long term, we would expect a return to more industry norms. The underlying humanization and premiumization hasn't changed. It's simply what people are doing to economize in the near term.
Thank you.
Thanks, Irene.
Thank you. The next question is from Martin Landry from Stifel. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, guys. You know, there's been a very large price increases that have been put through by the food manufacturers in the last years, and I'm wondering if you're starting to see some price deflation from vendors on the food side.
Good morning, Martin. This is Richard. I'll cover that. Let me pull us back up a little bit to a higher level to overall inflation, and then I'll get more specifically to your question around what we're seeing from vendors. So look, first and foremost, we're pleased to see that overall inflation across the industry has decelerated from the heightened levels that we were experiencing the past few years. It's good for all participants, especially our customers. Having said that, there is a near-term impact to our same-store sales growth. We're seeing a slightly different number than what you'd see in overall published CPI figures. While they're a good indicator, remember, they do include all price movement and promotional intensity across the entire spectrum of pet food and other supplies.
So while industry inflation has decelerated, our internal inflation is not quite as low, because, again, we have relatively lower promotions, and we're seeing higher growth across our premium-oriented products. What we're seeing from our vendors would indicate to us that we are seeing an alignment of vendor cost increases, slowing. I wouldn't necessarily go so far as saying that we're seeing a deceleration or deflation within our vendors. Our vendors are continuing to bring forward cost increases, so while the pace and the magnitude of their cost increases are not what we were seeing over the past two or three years, don't mistake that as our vendors are coming to us asking for less.
We continue to have to negotiate substantially with our vendors, as they continue to bring forward cost increases, because while maybe ingredient costs have come down, minimum wage and other costs across Canada that are also input into production have not slowed at the same pace.
Okay, that's helpful. Just had a question on your distribution center. You've you've anniversary. It's already been a year now since you've opened your GTA distribution center. Could you update us on the benefits you expect to realize from a cost side with that new distribution center and the timing?
Yeah, certainly. As you heard a bit in the prepared remarks, we have already begun to see incremental productivity from the GTA, greater than we were actually expecting in the first 6-9 months of ramp-up, which has been quite positive. We just went live in the first week of July with the Auto Store automation. So we're looking forward to having that ramp up to full productivity as we move through the back half of this year and into the beginning part of next year. The biggest benefit to date, of course, in addition to that leverage that we're beginning to see, is the expansion of wholesale shipments to Chico, which is well on track.
To our 50% of all shipments to Chico run rates by Q4 of 2025, and helping to contribute to our revenue growth despite some of the sales softness. Then, of course, we would not have been able to continue our new store growth trajectory had we not increased the capacity that's coming from that GTA. So on all fronts, we like what we're seeing. I will turn it to Linda again just to flesh out a little bit more on the ability of the productivity increases we're seeing elsewhere to help offset some of our investments in the overall DC infrastructure automation. Linda?
Yeah, sure. As Richard shared in the prepared remarks, we are constantly reassessing our capital allocation in accordance with our framework to ensure we're investing in the right combination of projects that drive long-term growth and the highest aggregate returns on investment for our business. And as such, we did decide to delay the automation for Calgary and Vancouver. So, and that is in part because in addition to the supply chain transformations currently underway, our supply chain team is focused on improving the baseline productivity of our existing DCs through process improvements. And they've been really successful improving productivity by double digits.
So combining this higher productivity with the capital costs and slower growth environment, it provided us an opportunity to defer the implementation of automate, of that automation into Vancouver and Calgary DC until 2026 or later, without impacting our ability to serve our stores and direct-to-home consumers. So this decision unlocks additional cash flow in the near term to put towards higher return alternatives, and it could include potentially returning cash to shareholders, given our current valuation.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you, and best of luck.
Thank you, Martin.
Thank you. The next question is from Michael Van Aelst from TD Securities. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. You've covered a lot, so I have a few smaller questions instead of one bigger question. But first on the promotions or the price investments that you made in April or May, I think you mentioned about 1,000 SKUs. Sounds a little bit more than what I was understanding in prior quarter. Is this still restricted or limited to mostly items that are kind of newer in the pet adoption phases?
No. No, Mike, though it was never restricted to items that were more specific to earlier in the pet adoption phases. While some of those items were absolutely included, many of these items were in core consumable foods, that we wanted to make sure that we maintained. We've been really excited about the fact that just those changes we made in April and May have been able to recalibrate our competitive across a wide range of targeted items and categories. But to your note, we continue to monitor this. So we continue to make everyday price changes to ensure that we maintain the same price competitiveness to all of our competitors across all different types of categories as a normal course.
Okay, so what would have been your average price investment across those SKUs?
Yeah, Michael, I'm not going to divulge that. I don't want to give that away to my competitors, nor do I want to specifically which items we gave it away to. The key thing that I would tell you is, I'll reiterate what we've provided in the past, which is for core products, our target pricing strategy within ± 5% of our key competitors. Most of the pricing actions that we took were specific to ensuring that we maintain that price competitiveness. And they were gaps that were larger than that going into the year that we felt that we need to adjust to keep back to our overall pricing strategy.
Okay, but you're able to maintain your gross margin, you know, level at a pretty reasonable, I guess at a pretty reasonable level. So, were you able to offset elsewhere?
We were able to offset primarily through the incremental productivity in our DC that we've already achieved in the GTA. As I noted to Martin's question, we've been pleased with the incremental work that our teams have already taken in the first year of the GTA to find, incremental productivity than what we actually immediately...
Okay. All right, thank you. And then just the last question was on your depreciation and interest outlook. And when I look at the difference between your, your EBITDA guidance changes and your EPS guidance changes, it seems like your, you know, the numbers below the EBITDA line went up CAD 2 million. Is that accurate, and, and what would account for that?
Yeah. So, as you know-
So, Mike, I'll take that real quick. Yeah, it, you did note it. We might have thought Michael Van Aelst might ask this question. So you did note the difference. What I would say is, look, when we constructed our original guidance, we made assumptions on the timing of several actions, which are kind of historically subject to minor shifts in timing. This includes new store openings, escalations at lease renewals, corporate resale dates. As a result, we are expecting our depreciation to be slightly higher than we originally budgeted, which will result in a slightly different impact, as you noted on the bridge, from Adjusted EBITDA to Adjusted EPS. So part of this, and most of this, Michael, is just timing on some of those shifts.
All right, thanks, Richard.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from Vishal Shreedhar from National Bank Financial. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just on the, on the mix of consumables still, seeing growth. You know, that's, even if you assume modest growth in consumables, it's just the discretionary 20% of the business is, is declining mid to high-single digits. Is that a, is that a fair comment that I'm making based on the comments you provided earlier?
So Vishal, as you know, we don't really get into very specific performance by category. But what I would indicate to you is, yes, with services and consumables ranking higher than the company average, it clearly would indicate that the trends that we have seen to date, within the hard lines specifically, and specialty pet secondarily to that, continue to be materially lower than the company average.
Okay. When should we... Is Q4 the time that we should really expect that to see that anniversary? I know that trend started kinda midway last year, but it seems from your comments, you're thinking that a Q4 would be an anniversary point for that. Is that a fair comment?
I wouldn't classify, Vishal, as an anniversary point. I would indicate that we had a relatively weak Q4 Christmas period last year, comparison to what we normally see in terms of hard lines and other category lifts. Look, people gift for their pets, right? Bedding, apparel, holiday sweaters, even the ugly holiday sweaters we put out for dogs and cats, toys, et cetera, are typically what we see some incremental lift on. We just simply didn't see that lift last year during the holiday period. So, we are still expecting some of that lift this year. Albeit given the reduction in our overall guidance outlook, you'll note that we're not expecting that lift to be quite as much as we were at the beginning of the year.
Okay. And, just one quick one here. Given the changes in the timing of the supply chain revitalization initiatives, could you help us understand when the costs, when the peak, when the efficiencies will start eclipsing and, when we'll hit that transition point? Is that still an early 2025 story, or how should we think about it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll let Linda kind of take you through how to think about the implications of the timing.
Yeah. So, as you know, this year, we're absorbing CAD 20 million step-up in occupancy and equipment costs with our new GTA and Vancouver DCs, and most of this is captured in our cost of sales, which impacts our gross margins. Starting in Q3, we will start appreciating our operation equipment in the GTA as it comes into use, and we'll incur other transition costs as we open the Vancouver DC. So we expect gross margins in the back half to be lower than in the front half. And then, you'll see us continue to step up next year as we lap those transition costs that we had this year. So we expect that inflection to happen, you know, towards the back half of 2025.
And I'll just remind you that we do see also the free cash flow. We want to make sure that we point that out, as we, as we get through these major, you know, significant investments in our supply chain. So we also expect to see that inflection in the back half of this year.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Vishal.
Thank you. The next question is from Adrienne Yih from Barclays. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Adrienne, or Mike?
Hello, Adrienne.
Can you hear me?
Your line is now open.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, we can hear you now.
I'm not on mute.
All right, Adrienne-
Oh, sorry, I wasn't on. That was weird. Good morning. I was just saying. Sorry about that. I wasn't on mute, so that was weird. But what I was saying, it's nice to see the flexibility in the model. Richard, I wanted to know, you know, the industry growth is, you had said, is materially slower than you had expected. What is the kind of like. What is the forecast that you're using or were using, sort of, as you entered the year in 2024? How is that different, and what was it, what, you know, what was the industry growing in 2023? So I'll start there. Thank you.
Certainly. So if you look over the past few years, let me start. Long term, it's about a 6%, so roughly mid-single-digit CAGR over a 30-year period. Leading up to and including the pandemic era, it was a 9%+ CAGR. So we fully expected it to come back down to no more than industry average, if not lower, as we went into the year. That's what drove our original same-store sales guidance. The forecast we were using, primarily, the top five banks across Canada, their overall economic forecast for Canada and personal consumption throughout the year, as well as other forecasts that are more specific to pet. All indications are that overall GDP expectation in Canada is lower.
So while we're not economists, we read closely what the economists across Canada indicate, and then we understand how we need to adjust our spending and our expectations of market around that. Overall economist perspective on the back half of Canada has come down pretty appreciably from where it was in January, and our outlook helps to reflect that.
Okay, that's very helpful. When we think about the release or the rollout, full rollout of Performatrin Culinary frozen and gently cooked, what % of sales sort of is the expectation? Kind of ultimately, where are you in that kind of roadmap? And then when we think about where are you getting new customers coming in from that who are trading down or trading into you, or are you seeing a trade up from current customers? So just trying to figure out kind of how much growth there is in that in terms of the active customer base.
Yeah, certainly. So, the overall culinary segment, which would include frozen raw, gently cooked, and freeze-dried, is typically across pet specialty, anywhere from 3%-10% of overall sales of the store. We're well within that range today, even before we launched Performatrin Culinary into the market. As we launched Performatrin Culinary into market, what we're primarily seeing is actually continued trade up into this. So one of the critical parts of this launch is gently cooked. So while frozen raw is great, and we continue to see strong growth in our frozen raw segment, and we do provide value, compared to the leading national brand in frozen raw, gently cooked is a game changer for us in the introduction.
So gently cooked, while frozen and giving us up to or more than a year of shelf life, puts us squarely into the fresh pet feeding market that we had not been in prior. So gently cooked allows us to introduce a fresh type product to customers, which is a growing category across Canada. But since it's in the freezer, it provides a shelf stable more than one year, as compared to many of the fresh options on the market only have weeks of shelf stable.
Yeah
... because they're refrigerated. And so, so that for us is the most exciting part. An already fast-growing category with freeze-dried and frozen now has the potential to become even faster growth as people are looking at us now as an option that they didn't before, if they like to feed fresh.
What is the margin profile on that category relative to where they're trading from, up from?
So, I would indicate the margin profiles are still pretty similar. It's a consumable product, right? And so margin profiles are still pretty similar. The great advantage for us with culinary is now we also have an incremental margin associated with, we do get higher wholesale and retail margins out of our own proprietary brands.
Yep, exactly. And then, which leads me to my question, where is proprietary label brand penetration today?
Yeah, so, as we entered the year in our AIF, you would see 26% overall enterprise penetration. That of course at one time was 30, but then we bought Chico, right? And so we're still ramping up-
Yeah
... penetration Chico and healthily. But we have relatively flat consumables penetration. But as we noted on the call in our prepared remarks, we had our second straight quarter of increased hard lines penetration as we continue to lean in to providing value to customers in those segments.
Okay, very well. And then my final question, Linda, for the ramp, and the inflections on both the free cash flow and the margin, that was helpful. But where are we in sort of capacity utilization, and how should we think about the postponement of the automation to impact margins in 2024 and 2025. Well, I guess largely in 2025, if you're pushing that, the automation to 2026. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, it has a small impact, but not significant enough to note a material change from what we've suggested in the past. So I talked about the step up in depreciation and interest this year and next year, you know, we'd say that's gonna be roughly half of what we had this year. And that hasn't changed dramatically.
Yeah, I think the key.
Okay, and then-
... on utilization. Yeah, just utilization-
Yeah
... utilization well within our path, well within our plan. Really ultimately, this comes down to a productivity conversation, just the great work of our supply chain team to find more productivity out of our regular traditional picking path processes. Just really allow us to postpone the fixed cost investment into automation. So it actually helps our near-term utilization of the space, because we're not adding incremental capacity, beyond what we need today.
Yep. Yep, that's, that's.
Thank you.
Good. All right.
The next question is from Chris Murray. Hello? Yes. The next question is from Chris Murray, from ATB Capital Markets. The line is now open, please go ahead.
All right, thanks, folks. Maybe turning back to some of the enhancements in the new digital platform. A couple questions around this. One, you know, I was wondering if it gives you an opportunity to tap into the loyalty program, either in a different way or a more advanced way. And then just looking at, you know, what we're seeing in terms of the transaction velocity, is there anything that we should be thinking about that you now have the ability to maybe tune or improve with the new platform?
... Good morning, Chris, and thanks. Absolutely there are things we can tune and improve now. That was really sort of the core of why we did this. We've now been able to take a little more of the control into our hands. We're no longer reliant for our front-end development on an overall sort of monolithic third-party provider. We can now actually adapt more quickly using our own pods and our own development capabilities, which really has excited us 'cause there are certain things within our business like wish lists.
I'll just highlight that, as I said on the call, people think about wish lists like things like wedding registries, but in our business, wish lists are really important to our rescues because our rescues like to make sure that their donors and our stores know exactly what it is that they need within their business. Tapping into the loyalty program, absolutely. The two teams both report in to the same executive leader and are already looking at how we can incrementally lean in to more automated, more trigger-based, more very specific behavioral-based, including things that we were not previously able to do in terms of retargeting and other activities, leveraging activity on the web back to activity within our loyalty program.
Overall, quite excited, really proud about the team delivering it on budget, on time, being able to create the development capacity to go at a higher velocity of future customer enhancements. Right away, Chris, I'd tell you, even in the first month, the site's already faster, the checkout's already smoother, and we're already seeing benefits.
All right. That's helpful. And then just maybe cleaning up some of the capital comment and maybe the moving around of some of the development. I think, Linda, you'd mentioned previously you thought, you know, probably, you know, the baseline CAD 25 million in CapEx plus maybe kind of CAD 5 million-10 million in additional development for 2025 in terms of CapEx. Can you just maybe if there's any updates to the kind of the CapEx rollout plan over the next couple of years with with shifting around some of the development, any updates there would be appreciated.
Yeah, I mean, we mentioned the CAD 5 million decrease from our original outlook this year. And so there's, you know, that's a minor change that will... That's being pushed out. But otherwise, there's not a significant change in the rollout plans, or impact on long-term capital, especially with respect to the supply chain.
Yeah, all I wanna add, Chris, is what we shared in the past, and that's why Linda reiterated. We had already indicated that the capital for next year would go down, and then the capital for the year after that would decline further. This helps to continue to support that path. So really the biggest immediate change is the CAD 5 million reduction that Linda just covered in guidance for this year.
Okay. But it's not... We shouldn't be thinking those CAD 5 million just gets tacked into CAD 26 or CAD 25 or something like that?
Not at this point, no.
Okay, great. That's just what I wanted to check. All right. Thanks, folks.
So thanks. So, Kiki-
Thank you.
We probably have time for one more question.
Yes, sure. The next question is from Ty Collin from Eight Capital. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning, Richard, Linda. I'll keep myself to one. I know we're tight on time here. I just wanted to circle back on the pricing discussion from earlier. Could you maybe touch on where your competitors or where the market has moved on pricing since you made those investments in April, May? Are you still kind of sitting within your ±5% range, or are you expecting that you might need to do a little more catch-up later this year as the backdrop continues to be challenging?
So Ty, I would indicate that right now we're well within our competitiveness range, and we have not, through our ongoing monitoring, and again, just to reiterate, we monitor key competitors every other week, smaller competitors at least once a month. We are not necessarily seeing any movement further from where people were. If you'll remember, we postponed our original price reductions to watch the market for an incremental month or so back in late February and March, as we had begun to see some competitors bring prices up. So that allowed us to recalibrate our, our decrease. That has helped contribute to us containing the impact to gross margin as we move through the year.
The one thing I would say that is different from what we originally expected at the beginning of the year was the increased and continued level of promotional activity from certain competitors. So while we are really responsible and focused on where we promote, we do expect that we'll have to have slightly higher promotions than what we originally expected. But again, nothing outside of the responsible, focused approach that we take, and primarily through our loyalty program to the specific customers that make the most value to our company.
Thank you. This is the end of Q&A session, and I'd like to hand over to Richard for closing remarks.
Thank you once again for your investment of time, investment of money, and interest in our overall company. We appreciate the support. We look forward to talking to you again with our Q3 results in early November. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you very much.