All right. It's 10:00 A.M. Let's get it going. I'm Mike Baker, one of the consumer analysts from D.A. Davidson. Very happy to introduce the management team from Citi Trends. We have Ken Seipel, who is the CEO. He's been the CEO on a permanent basis since November 2024, so a little bit more than a year, but been on the board since 2019. We also have CFO Heather Plutino, giving some hugs down there. She's been with the company since 2022. Prior to that, she was at Bed Bath & Beyond and Sally Beauty. I think this has been one of the most compelling turnaround stories we've seen in a long time. I cover 30 consumer names. Three have outperformed the market in 2024 and 2025. I'll tell you the other two. Find me after. I'll tell you the other two. But this is one of the three.
And by the way, massively outperforming already this year, even though it's off a couple% today. Still, so that's going to be three years in a row. I'll let Ken tell you why that's happening.
Thanks, Mike.
All right. Well, good afternoon, everyone. Or good morning, I should say. I'm Ken Seipel, Chairman, CEO of Citi Trends. And I've joined with Heather Plutino, and our Chief Financial Officer and Lisa Powell, our Chief Merchandising Officer. And today, I'm very pleased to represent the hard work of our talented management team. And I might ask your forgiveness. My voice is a little bit off today, so bear with me as I get through this. Before I begin, I want to remind you, of course, of our forward-looking statement. Dispense with the details here, but just advise you that this does guide our presentation today. So since I took the helm about 19 months ago, Citi Trends has delivered industry-leading comparable sales growth, driven by transaction increases, broad-based product strength, and disciplined execution across our business.
Our transformation strategy is gaining momentum, our operational capabilities are advancing, and our customer connection is strengthening. But we're not done. We still have processes to refine, categories to optimize, and systems to build. So today, I want to share the progress we've made and will outline our path forward, which is a clear, disciplined growth plan designed to deliver sustainable value creation and strengthen Citi Trends' position as a leading neighborhood retailer for African-American families. So over the past 40 years, my career has been dedicated to value retailing with C-level leadership roles across merchandising operations and strategy. I began in the early days at J.C. Penney as a buyer and operator in the 1980s and then helped drive Target's big brand development in the 1990s and the rapid growth that they went through and was instrumental in Old Navy's explosive expansion in the 2000s.
Since 2010, I've been focused on private equity-backed retail, where I served as both CEO and co-investor. That ownership structure created strong alignment with shareholders and has enabled me to successfully lead three retail turnarounds, each delivering returns of three to six times the initial investment. I bring that same level of experience to Citi Trends, where I'm the second-largest investor in the company. And so far, since taking the chair, we've more than doubled our market cap for Citi Trends, and I see a path to more than double again in the future. So this morning, we released our holiday comp store sales increase of 9.3%, which is on top of last year's 7.1%, giving us a two-year stack of 16.4%. Year-to-date through December, our comp store sales increase is running at 9.8%, which is a two-year stack year-to-date of 13.3%.
and as illustrated in the graph here, you can see consistent quarter-over-quarter sales performance for the past five and soon-to-be six quarters. Okay. Now I'd like to describe for you our differentiated business model and the strategies that guide our path forward. so Citi Trends is headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, with buying offices in New York. We're an off-price retailer specializing in family apparel, accessories, and home categories, with annual sales of about $820 million in fiscal 2025. We operate 591 stores across 33 states that are approximately 12,000 sq ft in size, with strong penetration in the Southeast, and we're strategically positioned in our customers' neighborhoods. so Citi Trends is really in the early stages of a compelling transformation. We have a clear line of sight to achieve about $45 million of EBITDA in 2027, which represents a $16 million increase from 2024.
This growth will be driven by consistent comp sales, gross margin expansion, operating expense leverage, and strategic new store expansion. I'll describe each of these metrics in detail later in the presentation. Citi Trends has really built a differentiated competitive position within this high-performing off-price retail sector. We're the only off-price retailer specifically focused on African-American customers, delivering styles, brands, and trends at compelling prices that resonate with this underserved demographic. This focus has created a uniquely loyal, high-frequency customer base and enabled us to build nearly 600 store locations in neighborhood shopping centers where our customers live and shop. Our stores are embedded in communities that we've served for years, with proximity and word of mouth serving as powerful traffic drivers. We operate a debt-free balance sheet.
At the end of this year, we expect to have approximately $65 million in cash, no borrowings on our $75 million revolver, and approximately $140 million in total liquidity. This financial strength gives us flexibility to invest in growth initiatives while maintaining operational stability, and we have developed a very clear, tangible, and internally controlled path to accelerate shareholder growth. A little bit about the off-price model. It's really demonstrated consistent, strong fundamentals over time. The off-price model works by capitalizing on supply chain inefficiencies and vendor overstocks. Our merchant teams source quality products at significant discounts when manufacturers face surplus inventory or delivery timing issues. We turn this inventory quickly with frequent product newness and scarcity, which creates an urgency to purchase and drives higher visit frequency.
Our research shows that this treasure hunt element resonates particularly well with our core customer, who views shopping as both a practical necessity and also an enjoyable activity. Off-price retailers have historically grown significantly faster than traditional retail, generating highest operating margins and commanded the highest multiples. Citi Trends has a very clear path to improved 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 for shareholder value creation. Our approach is pretty straightforward. Everyday low pricing on exceptional product values, no promotions or complex markdown cadences, and short buying windows give us flexibility to react to emerging trends and changing market conditions. So the Citi Trends product strategy centers really on a three-tiered approach designed to serve customers across all income levels.
At the opening price point, we offer value-focused basics, which are clearly signed in our store as Citi Score for the most budget-conscious customers. The core of our business is our better tier of quality products with breadth of selection and fresh styles, typically priced between $7-$12. This assortment drives customer loyalty and consistent performance across categories of women's, men's, children's, footwear, and home. At the top end, we're expanding our best tier with two distinct approaches. First, we're adding more trend-relevant product, fashionable styles at prices well below specialty retail. Second, we're building our extreme value capabilities, which are well-known brands purchased at steep discounts, often up to 75% off MSRP. These deals capitalize on supply chain disruptions and the surplus inventory that's in the market.
Our goal is to grow this extreme value segment to represent an incremental 10% of our total sales. These branded treasures drive both traffic and basket growth while delivering strong margin performance. Our strategy is really built around a clear and unwavering focus on style, price, and trends and abilities of the African-American customer, who is at the very center of everything we do. The average age is approximately 40, often families with multi-generational children or multi-generational households. Our neighborhood locations create proximity and convenience that drive engagement. More than one-third of our customers shop with us weekly or biweekly, and these are our most frequent shoppers with household incomes ranging from $75,000-$150,000. Our next tier visits monthly, typically with incomes in the $50,000-$75,000 range, and we serve a third segment of less frequent, more budget-conscious customers with lower household incomes.
I think what's really important here to understand is that we're serving customers across all income levels with our three-tiered product strategy. We have a significant portion of average and higher-income customers, which creates tremendous opportunity as we expand our assortment of recognizable brands at exceptional prices that are aligned with their style and trend, of course. Our customers have really responded positively to this shift, with many of our new trendy products quickly becoming some of our very best sellers. Citi Trends' cultural relevance is a competitive advantage. The African-American consumer has historically been trendsetters and early adopters in fashion, music, and culture. Understanding this dynamic allows us to curate assortments with both immediate appeal to our core customer and broader market relevance to our secondary customers. Our customers are discerning.
They understand that value is more than just price, and they're willing to spend more when the style is right for them, the fashion is on trend, and the quality is right. In short, value is not just price. Our value promise, our brand promise, I should say, is very clear: styles that see you, prices that amaze you, and trends that tell your story. So this past holiday, we launched our Joy Looks Good on You marketing campaign with refreshed branding on social media. Our objective is to ensure that Citi Trends is an important part of the African-American community by connecting with our customers on their terms in their lives. I'm excited to share with you the Joy Looks Good on You video right now. If you love yourself, let me hear you say yes. Believe in yourself, let me hear you say yes.
Heading to the top, let me hear you say yes. If you love yourself, let me hear you say yes. Believe in yourself, let me hear you say yes. Really a lot of fun to watch that video over and over again. Since we launched this video, we've had over 12 million viral views, and actually, I got an update just last night that's even more than that, but it's continuing to go. But you can understand why. It's really kind of hit the heart of our African-American consumer. This is actually the first of a series of videos that we're releasing, each highlighting moments of joy. And we're leveraging still images further to advance our marketing efforts. So Citi Trends' stores are at the heart of their neighborhoods. They're more than just retail locations. They're community anchors where our customers know they'll find both value and belonging.
Our store managers and our associates, often friends, family, and neighbors, create genuine trust and connection that extends well beyond the transaction. This community connection is a competitive advantage that drives measurable results. Transaction growth has consistently accounted for the majority of our comparable sales increases over the past five quarters. Word of mouth remains a powerful traffic driver in these neighborhoods, fueled by relationships our teams have built over the years in serving these communities. Our neighborhood positioning also creates a defensible market position. Our stores have been embedded in these neighborhoods for years, and in many of these communities, we are the primary and often only value retailer, making Citi Trends both essential and irreplaceable for the families we serve, so this year, we refreshed 62 of our high-volume stores that average around $2 million in annual sales, with an average remodel cost of about $100,000.
This remodel transforms both the look and feel of our stores with updated fixtures, improved wayfinding, signage, better lighting, enhanced presentation standards, all of this to make the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable. The impact, though, goes well beyond our sales lift. These refreshed stores also inspire our teams. They elevate the brand perception of the community, and they send a strong signal to the customers that we are investing in their neighborhoods. So looking ahead, we will continue remodeling about 50 stores per year as part of our ongoing fleet maintenance and market investment strategy. This disciplined approach allows us to progressively upgrade our store base while still achieving our planned returns on invested capital. So looking forward, we're positioning Citi Trends for strategic new store growth. In 2026, we plan to open 25 stores.
From 2027 onward, we will continue opening at least 40 stores per year, which will take our store count to approximately 650 stores by the end of 2027. Our expansion strategy focuses on two approaches: backfilling existing markets where we have brand awareness and proven performance, and also selectively entering new markets where strong demographic alignment to our customer base. We piloted a market backfill approach this past fall in Jacksonville, Florida, and Columbia, South Carolina, by opening new stores in conjunction with remodeling the existing stores in the market. Our objective is to increase our market share by strengthening the store presence and reinvigorating the brand awareness. Both markets are off to a really strong start and are beginning to serve as testing and learning models for our future expansion work. Our new store expansion is guided by a disciplined approach that combines analytics, market expertise, and financial metrics.
Using AI tools, we have analyzed three years of actual transaction data from every single store location. Combine this with comprehensive geolocation studies to understand the specific customer and the market characteristics that drive success. This AI data-driven approach has demonstrated approximately a 90% accuracy in sales prediction, so this will help us identify and replicate our most successful store profiles while keeping risk minimized as we expand our footprint. Beyond the analytics, we're applying strict financial criteria for every new store decision, targeting mature store averages of about $1.5 million in sales, mid-teens for gross contribution margins. This three-part approach, advanced AI-driven analytics, local market expertise from our real estate team, and disciplined financial hurdles positions us to expand intelligently while maximizing our return on investment. Our balance sheet does provide significant strategic flexibility.
As I mentioned, we operate debt-free and are projecting $65 million cash balance in each of the next three years, no borrowings, and about $140 million in total liquidity. This financial position allows us to invest in growth initiatives while maintaining our operational stability. So over the next three years, we're going to invest in capital projects with demonstrated return on investments, primarily store remodels, new store openings, and technology infrastructure, including our AI-based systems. Total capital spend is expected to be around $45 million in 2026 and 2027. Our disciplined approach to capital allocation emphasizes return reinvestment of operating cash flow to fuel growth while preserving our financial strength. Over time, this strength will enable our company to selectively pursue strategic roll-ups and synergistic acquisitions to further drive sustainable shareholder value.
Customers have quickly responded to our improvements, and we are delivering consistent comp store performance as a result. Through December of this year, comp store sales have increased 9.8%. And as I said in the last earnings call, we expect sales increases to continue on top of prior year strong performance. Our transformation is guided by a three-phased framework designed to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. So in the repair phase, we focused on restoring fundamental and foundational practices to ensure we have a strong foundation for growth. This included a sharper, more refined clarity of the African-American consumer, a three-tiered product assortment to appeal to all income levels, style, and trend sensibilities, implementation of AI-based software for product allocation to improve our in-stocks, reduce markdowns, and speed up our inventory turns, and many more practices that have enabled us to be much more consistent in our execution.
In the execute phase, we are focused on implementing best practices in all areas of the business to improve our productivity, thus enabling SG&A leverage. And we're focused on increasing the speed of our supply chain to reduce cost while working and reduce working capital in the product pipeline. We've introduced this past year a pay-for-performance bonus program, which now links bonus eligibility to EBITDA and to KPIs specific for each area of the business. As a result, our teams are incented more than ever to drive measurable results and drive continuous improvement. And in addition, our long-term incentive program is linked to the achievement of EBITDA objectives, further ensuring that management and shareholders are aligned. And I would say this, although we're pretty proud of our progress, we have to say that we're in really early stages, and we're humbly aware that we have significant work ahead.
Citi Trends does have a clear and tangible path to creating shareholder value, one that's grounded in discipline, detail, and execution. Our strategy is really not aspirational. It is actionable, backed by a specific set of initiatives designed to deliver measurable results. Compared to fiscal 2024, we're targeting total sales growth of $150 million, which is achieving about $900 million in fiscal 2027. Our gross profit rate expansion of about 400 basis points to 42%, leveraging SG&A by 200 basis points, which results in a planned EBITDA of approximately $45 million and a profit margin of around 5% in fiscal 2027, which is an increase of $60 million over 2024. These are not distant goals, but very achievable outcomes driven by the actions that we are currently executing.
So looking ahead, we're expecting consistent total store sales growth of 6%-8% annually, resulting in sales of over $900 million in 2027. At the core of this strategy is continued refinement and execution of our three-tiered product assortments I spoke of earlier. And to accelerate the growth and better trend product, we have added a highly regarded trend director in 2025 to assist our merchants in developing and procuring emerging trends for our customer, where we see opportunity to expand sales in our better product. Plus, we'll improve store productivity by intensifying efforts in key categories with double-digit growth potential in areas such as footwear, plus sizes, big men's, young men's, and missy apparel, while continuing consistent growth in children's, family basics, and our core categories. And incremental to our plan, we have built the internal capacity to fully capitalize on the fast-moving world of deal-making.
As described earlier, extreme value deals are more than just transactions. They create excitement, they deepen our price perception, and they set us apart as a retailer who brings style, brands, and amazing prices that others just simply cannot deliver. Our gross profit rate is on track to expand to 42% in 2027. To achieve this growth, we're leveraging technology and innovation. Our newly implemented AI-based planning and allocation system I spoke of earlier will transform how we manage inventory, improving efficiency, reducing markdowns, and aligning product assortments with customer demand at the individual store level. This means fueling growth where opportunity is 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 opportunity to improve margin through reduced shrink and lower freight costs.
Shrink rates are expected to improve as we adopt enhanced practices, which includes stronger internal data accuracy measures and new investments we've made in facial recognition surveillance systems. On the supply chain side, our ongoing efficiency work is expected to generate improvements in freight rates. Our plan will deliver strong profit flow-through as sales grow, fueled by margin rate expansion and discipline cost controls. We anticipate over 200 basis points of improvement in SG&A, which will create meaningful operating leverage. All of this adds up to a significant step change in EBITDA to $45 million by the end of 2027, and importantly, this is an aspiration. It's tangible, detailed roadmap of initiatives prioritized by their ability to generate real shareholder value, so progress at Citi Trends is underway. As I noted today, we're in the early stages with significant opportunity ahead.
We still have processes to refine, categories to optimize, and systems to build. Our track record of consistent, comparable store sales increases proves that our strategy is working, our execution is more consistent, and our customer connection is stronger than ever. We are debt-free. We are disciplined and positioned for growth. We have a clear path to profitable expansion, stronger earnings, and lasting shareholder value. We're more than just a retailer. We're a neighborhood destination for African-American families, delivering style, trend, and value and trust that nobody else can deliver. Citi Trends is executing with discipline, growing with purpose, and unlocking sustainable growth momentum. The future is ours at Citi Trends, and we are just getting started. Thank you all very much for your time today.