Greetings and welcome to the Torrid Holdings Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce Chinwe Abaelu. Thank you. You may begin.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Torrid's call today to discuss our financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, which we released this afternoon and can be found on our website at investors.torrid.com. With me today on the call are Lisa Harper, Chief Executive Officer, and Paula Dempsey, Chief Financial Officer. Ashlee Wheeler, Chief Strategy and Planning Officer, is also present and will be participating in the Q&A session. Before we get started, I would like to remind you of the company's safe harbor language, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Management may make forward-looking statements, including guidance and underlying assumptions. Forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements containing the words expect, believe, plan, anticipate, will, may, should, estimate, and other words in terms of similar meaning. All forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions as of today, March 20th, 2025.
These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For further discussion of risks related to our business, see our filings with the SEC. This call will contain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations to these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in the earnings release furnished to the SEC and available on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Lisa.
Thank you, Chinwe Abaelu. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let me jump right into it. As we enter the new fiscal year, we are excited about our product direction and positive customer response to our sub-brands. We are driving awareness through integrated marketing efforts, leveraging influencer programs, and enhanced storytelling. We have right-sized the level and quality of our inventory position, and we are chasing our successful sub-brand launches. We have developed and are actioning a clear path to optimize our store fleet, reducing fixed costs and freeing up funds to invest in growth. With that said, we recognize we are operating in an uncertain consumer and macro environment. Similar to what you've heard from other retailers, we experienced some choppiness in our business during the early weeks of the quarter, driven by macro and consumer uncertainty, as well as adverse weather in February.
That said, as the quarter has progressed, we are encouraged that we have experienced a trendline improvement in the business. We are managing the business with cautious optimism, controlling what we can control, taking an appropriate and prudent approach to spending, while operating with flexibility and agility and a clear focus on our three strategic priorities: enhancing our product assortment, driving customer growth, and executing our store optimization plan. Now, let me review our fourth quarter performance. For the fourth quarter, we exceeded expectations on both the top and bottom line, generating sales of $275.6 million and adjusted EBITDA of $16.7 million. We saw a positive response to our holiday and early spring lines that offered a variety of newness across our product portfolio.
Momentum continued to build into the latter part of the quarter, culminating in a productive Torrid Cash event in January and a very successful launch of three new sub-brands, which drove tremendous excitement and engagement for both new and existing customers. We are encouraged by the acceleration in our regular price comp trends, which increased 1.6% for the quarter, while simultaneously the negative drag from clearance sales began to moderate. This resulted in a comparable sales of negative 0.8% for the quarter, marking a significant sequential improvement. In apparel, we delivered a positive Q4 comp driven by strength in denim, non-denim bottoms, and sweaters, as well as dresses, which reached an all-time high demand in fourth quarter. We ended fiscal 2024 with $48.5 million in cash, an increase of $36.8 million compared to a year ago.
Throughout fiscal 2024, we remained focused on right-sizing both the depth and quality of our inventory position, and I'm pleased with our substantial progress. We ended the year with inventory up 4%, which was entirely related to higher in-transit levels. On a two-year basis, our inventory levels are down 18%, with a significantly higher mix of spring-forward goods. Importantly, we expect our sub-brands to comprise approximately 7%-10% of our total receipt investment for this year, self-funded by a reduction in depth across less productive choices and a more strategic approach to replenishment of core items. We remain disciplined in our approach to inventory management while also investing in white space assortment opportunities and maximizing the potential of sub-brands. Turning to fiscal 2025, we are focused on three strategic priorities: enhancing our product assortment, driving customer growth, and executing our store optimization plan. Let's start with product.
2025 is the year of the product at Torrid, featuring more new items in the first half of the year than we've introduced in the past six years. We've recognized that our product offering became too one-dimensional. Our focus for 2025 is broadening our assortments to cater to a wider range of fashion aesthetics and provide more unique, differentiated choices. This strategic shift will enable us to expand our customer base while increasing our share of wallet with existing customers. Our new sub-brand concepts, which command higher margins, began rolling out in late December of 2024, and the initial response has been positive. Customers are loving the newness, variety, and differentiated looks that we are now offering. Festi, our version of the boho trend, offers fresh silhouettes and a range of fabric treatments and textures and arrived in 250 stores and online in late December.
We are pleased with the response to Festi, which has exceeded our expectations, driving incremental traffic to stores and is having a strong halo effect on our core Torrid business. As a result, we are chasing into Festi for the back half of the year. In January, we launched Nightfall, an edgy, dark fashion aesthetic, and Retro Chic, a more playful, vintage-inspired collection online. Nightfall and Retro Chic launched with exceptional strength, ranking among our top revenue-driving campaigns. Customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with praise focused on the range of lifestyle aesthetics and end use. Both collections generated strong site engagement at launch, with key items selling out quickly. Paid media performance exceeded expectations, delivering high engagement and view-through rates. Most significantly, these sub-brands are attracting younger customers, with new buyers averaging in their mid-30s for both Nightfall and Retro Chic.
While our most engaged VIP customers have comprised the largest share of demand for these collections at launch, we anticipate a steady increase in new customer acquisition through these sub-brands as awareness expands. Initial results clearly demonstrate strong demand for these fresh lifestyle concepts and affirm our strategy of building an internal marketplace for this wildly underserved customer. As we continue to maximize the potential of these sub-brands, we remain equally committed to the modernization and evolution of our core Torrid assortment and are encouraged by the improvement we're seeing in the heart of the business. Turning to marketing, our marketing initiatives are centered on driving customer file growth. We have engaged a fresh lineup of influencers who truly embody the lifestyle and spirit of Torrid and each sub-brand. They live and breathe the culture authentically, seamlessly integrating our brand into their everyday lives.
We are bringing back Torrid Casting Call, our highly successful model search campaign, which remains one of our most productive new customer activations. We received over 11,000 applications to be the new face of Torrid last year, and we anticipate an even more successful campaign this year with 8-10 casting events and multiple in-store casting parties planned. In both physical stores and digital platforms, we're elevating our storytelling to create a seamless brand experience. Online, we've invested in richer content and influencer collaborations while using data-driven insights to personalize recommendations. In stores, we're equipping our teams with advanced tools like RFID technology and enhanced training to bring our brand story to life through visual merchandising, events, and strategic product launches across our sub-brands.
We see opportunities to enhance the expression of our brand in stores to align with the online experience, and we are in the early stage of testing a handful of store refreshes. Our priority is consistent messaging across all touchpoints, ensuring customers encounter the same compelling narrative, whether on social media, our website, or in our stores. This integrated approach drives deeper engagement, strengthens customer loyalty, enhances brand equity, and supports sustainable revenue growth. Our third initiative focuses on optimizing our retail footprint by strategically closing underperforming locations while creating a more balanced mix between enclosed malls and outdoor shopping centers.
We successfully closed 35 stores in fiscal 2024 and are targeting to close an additional 40-50 stores in fiscal 2025, with the potential for the number to increase as we continue to evaluate store performance alignment with channel demand, which would further reduce our fixed cost base and free up capital to fund growth investments. Importantly, our analysis of past closures shows consistent results with an average customer retention rate of 60%, rising to nearly 70% in markets with multiple store clusters. This demonstrates our ability to maintain customer relationships and effectively shift demand to nearby locations or our digital channels. These results reinforce our confidence in right-sizing our store fleet while substantially reducing costs. We're reinvesting a portion of these savings into targeted marketing initiatives that drive customer file growth through new acquisitions and reactivations.
Additionally, we're allocating more resources to our productive stores to better showcase our sub-brands, positioning us to generate higher profit flow-through over time. As I mentioned earlier, we significantly improved our cash position from $11.7 million a year ago to $48.5 million, and we ended the year with $158 million in liquidity. Our strong financial condition provides us with the confidence and flexibility to strategically invest in areas of our business that we believe will drive long-term profitable growth. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our teams across the organization, as well as the board of directors, for their hard work and dedication to support our efforts, position our business for success, and long-term value creation for all stakeholders. Now, I'll turn the call over to Paula.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.
I will walk through our fourth quarter financial results, highlight key drivers of our performance, and provide an in-depth look at our strategic priorities and fiscal 2025 outlook. We closed the year with strong execution, delivering results that exceeded our guidance. Our ability to navigate a dynamic retail environment, coupled with disciplined cost control, enabled us to drive profit expansion. Sales trends improved throughout the quarter, and we leveraged our inventory management strategies to maintain a healthy balance sheet while ensuring we met customer demand. As we look at our financial position, we ended the quarter with $48.5 million in cash and cash equivalents, a significant increase from $11.7 million last year. With a balanced approach to managing working capital, we are well-positioned to enter 2025 with solid liquidity and inventory discipline. Fourth quarter net sales totaled $275.6 million compared to $293.5 million last year.
Excluding the impact of the 53rd week in fiscal 2023, sales increased 1.4%. Comparable sales were down 0.8%, driven by a significant improvement in clearance price comp sales and regular price comps, demonstrating the effectiveness of our pricing strategies. Gross profit was $92.6 million compared to $101.2 million a year ago. Gross margin declined 90 basis points to 33.6%, primarily due to lower volume relative to last year, which was expected given the impact of the extra week in fiscal 2023. Excluding this timing shift impact on volume, our product margin performance increased year over year. As we continue to balance promotional activity with maintaining a premium product offering that resonates with our core customer base, SG&A expenses were $73.8 million, or 26.8% of net sales, compared to $80.6 million, or 27.5% of net sales last year.
This decrease reflects our ongoing efforts to control costs, optimize labor efficiencies, and streamline operational processes while still investing in key growth initiatives. Marketing expenses totaled $15.4 million compared to $16.5 million in the prior year, representing 5.6% of net sales in line with last year. We continue to refine our digital and omnichannel marketing efforts to maximize our return on investment and drive customer acquisition. We delivered net loss of $3 million, or negative $0.03 per share, compared to a net loss of $4.1 million, or negative $0.04 per share in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $16.7 million from $16.4 million last year, despite the prior year benefit of $2.3 million from the 53rd week. Our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 50 basis points to 6.1%, reinforcing our ability to drive profitability.
Our financial position remains strong, underscoring our ability to navigate the evolving retail landscape. We ended the quarter with $48.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and no borrowings on our revolving credit facility. Operating cash flow increased by 2x to $77.4 million from a year ago. Total liquidity, including available borrowing capacity, stands at $158 million. Additionally, we reduced total debt to $288.6 million, down from $312 million a year ago, further strengthening our balance sheet, adding financial flexibility, and improving our debt ratio by 22% to 2.2. Inventory management remains a cornerstone of our strategy. We closed the year with $148.5 million in inventory, a 4% increase from the previous year, primarily due to in-transit timing while reflecting an 18% reduction on a two-year basis. This disciplined approach ensures that we remain nimble, allowing us to quickly respond to shifts in consumer demand.
We continue to focus on improving product mix and sell-through rates, enabling us to deliver more compelling and profitable assortment. One of our key strategic initiatives is the ongoing optimization of our store fleet. This project is designed not only to ensure we operate in locations that maximize our unit economics, but also to align our sales demand channels more effectively. We remain strong believers in the power of physical stores. However, we also recognize an opportunity to optimize our footprint by closing underperforming locations and reinvesting a portion of those savings into marketing strategies that drive long-term customer growth. Our historical data, as well as insights from recent closures, indicate that we can retain up to 70% of our customers when a store closes.
Fiscal 2025 presents a significant opportunity to reassess our real estate portfolio, as nearly 60% of our leases are set to expire or have kickout clauses coming due this year. This flexibility enables us to exit certain locations without any financial impact. Additionally, this shift enables us to increase our penetration in outdoor centers, where we have consistently seen higher conversion rates and profitability, ensuring our locations align with our customer preferences. For fiscal 2025, we plan to close an additional 40-50 stores while selectively opening 4-8 new locations in high-performing markets. By optimizing our fleet, we can balance our store mix, better serve our customers, and drive higher profitability in the long term. As we enter the new fiscal year, we remain encouraged by the positive response to our product assortments and brand positioning.
However, like others in the industry, we're navigating a dynamic consumer environment. We are approaching the year with a balanced and strategic outlook, focusing on growth while maintaining financial discipline. Key components of our guidance include full-year sales expected to range between $1.080 billion and $1.100 billion, reflecting our prudent approach given the current environment. Adjusted EBITDA is projected to range between $100 million and $110 million, supported by ongoing margin expansion initiatives and cost efficiencies. Capital expenditures are forecasted to be between $15 million and $20 million, with a focus on continued technology upgrades that started in the prior year, store refreshes, and infrastructure improvements that enhance both the customer experience and operational efficiency. As Lisa previously mentioned, the first quarter got off to a choppy start, but we're encouraged by the trendline improvement we're seeing in the business.
In the first quarter, we expect sales to range between $264 million and $274 million, with adjusted EBITDA anticipated between $24 million and $28 million, reflecting our shift in our marketing spend. To better align with our fiscal 2025 strategies, we are reallocating marketing investments from the fourth quarter to the first half of the year to support our programs, such as the sub-brand launches and model search. Looking ahead, we're confident in our strategy and ability to drive sustainable growth. Our focus remains on delivering elevated product experience, enhancing our marketing approach, and refining the customer journey across all touchpoints. While the macroeconomic environment presents challenges, our financial discipline, strategic initiatives, and commitment to innovation position us well for long-term success. We remain committed to balancing short-term execution with long-term value creation, ensuring that we continue to strengthen our brand, optimize our operations, and enhance shareholder returns.
With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you.
We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. We do ask that you limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Good afternoon, and thank you for taking our question. Lisa, I was hoping you could elaborate on your latest thoughts on the health of the Torrid consumer.
What has driven the trendline improvement one Q to date, and what level of contribution do you expect to drive from the comp this year from scaling some of the recently successful sub-brands?
Thanks, Brooke. I feel the fundamental strength of the Torrid customer is still intact. As you know very well, we have an enormously dedicated customer, very high involvement in our loyalty program. Sorry about that. We still see that engagement. We're seeing positive traffic trends. They are being a little bit more conservative in terms of conversion in the short term. We see that to be a little bit choppier, but we're certainly getting traffic, eyeballs, and add-to-cart, I think overall a little bit softer, more cautious in terms of the actual final purchase. We've seen that improve, I think, over the quarter and continue to see it improve.
I feel that our strategy of what we're doing in terms of product, we are very careful to ensure that the core elements of the business that our customer relies on are covered in a kind of modernized way. We are seeing continual improvement in things like denim, which is core to our business, improvement in non-denim bottoms, and great dress business, I would say, as we are going into this year. We are seeing positive momentum in traffic, positive and core categories, kind of green shoots that we're seeing. That layered on with the sub-brand excitement and traffic that we're getting related to sub-brand shows us that this customer has an appetite for a broader range of products, for a broader range of aesthetics. Fundamentally solid, very consistent through the multiple cohorts in terms of household income and those types of things.
We're not seeing a distorted behavior on any of the household income cohorts. We're encouraged by the traffic that we're getting as spring kind of is ahead of us and the enthusiasm and excitement we're seeing around the evolution of the product as a whole.
That's great. Just for Paula, can you quantify the impact of the 40-50 additional store closures this year? What impact does that have to revenues within your guide, and what benefit does that have to EBITDA margins as you annualize these closures?
Yeah. The 40-50 closures, the majority of those will happen in Q4. We're going to take advantage of having the ability to exit some of our leases. The majority of these leases will be on, I want to say, January 31, 2026, which is still fiscal 2025.
You do not necessarily get that much of an impact this year. It primarily will be the next year. Having said that, we are planning on closing between Q1 and Q2 currently, just because some of the closures are already taking place anywhere between 10-13 stores right now. You will not see a large impact just yet. You will see that impact more in the next year. As I think about that impact, we are gaining, actually we will gain the benefits from the 35 closures from last year, right? In 2024, we closed 35 stores. We are going to see the benefits this year flow through our financials, not just in G&A, but also in margins. We expect to see higher improvements from the 40-50 stores in fiscal 2026.
Great. Thanks so much. I will pass it on. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Dylan Carden with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Sticking with that topic, you mentioned kind of the percentage of your stores you have this opportunity over the coming years. I mean, do you anticipate this being a prolonged campaign of closings? I'm kind of curious, that 70% figure, I assume that's kind of year one and that it might taper off over time. Is there an opportunity here to kind of come back to some of these markets with maybe a different store or re-engage these customers in another way?
Yeah. We do have the ability to review 60% of our store fleet this year. Having said that, of course, not all 60% of that fleet, a great majority of that is actually great stores currently.
I think as we think about that, we have the opportunity this year, and we'll also have a smaller opportunity coming up in the next year. I don't see this being a prolonged project, Dylan, necessarily. I would say probably in the next two or three years, we'll continue to review since we have a large portion of our fleet expiring. A lot of these stores are expiring, our stores that opened in the 2015 timeframe or around that timeframe. That's why we have the opportunity now. I think we will have opportunities depending as we're measuring these store closures and measuring the market. As we exit some of these leases, we may want to reopen in the same markets, just in a different format. For us, the majority of these stores that we're exiting are in enclosed mall locations.
Our preference and our customer preference today is in power centers, outdoor centers. We will continue to look for those types of locations.
Dylan, this is Lisa. As Paula said, just to reinforce, it is this year, and then we have some opportunity next year. If we go back to 2015, 2016, 2017, that is when we were really aggressively opening stores. A lot of those are coming up for review. The other thing is I think Ashlee answered the 70% transfer question, but I will say that we are testing other formats. As we learn more and more about sub-brands, as we learn more about the breadth of product that the customer wants to see, we are testing and looking at a larger store footprint that will be able to incorporate more ideas for the customer.
They want the variety, and we think our number one priority there is to provide as powerful an experience in the store environment as we provide online, and that we have a much more aligned presentation of the brand and really treating the stores as more of an innovative and exciting place to shop, which we're doing that not just with new store formats, but with updates in our existing stores. We are still investing in that. We still think it's important, but this is a very opportunistic time to kind of right-size some of the market. We re-blend into more outdoor centers and potentially, as we open stores, opening a little bit of a bigger store to incorporate more of these product ideas. We'll have Ashlee talk about the 70% recovery rate.
Hi, Dylan.
Related to the 70% retention or recapture rate, because we have such a high propensity of omni customers that are accustomed to shopping both of our channels, it is not a year-one retention, but a multi-year retention beyond that. It is really about just migrating the portion of her spend that she would otherwise spend in a closing store to a nearby store in that market or our online channel where she is accustomed to shopping. Got it. Thank you. Curious how new product performed in this period of sort of softer traffic, if there is any sort of insight there for the call. Yeah. What happened for us is we brought in a line on December 27 and then two new lines in the middle of January.
Unfortunately, at the very beginning of February, it was probably our we had the least amount of newness that we're planning to have. We have seen improvement since those first couple of weeks with traffic and engagement with that business and happy with kind of the recovery in the business that we saw post that time period. I will say that we have Belle Isle launching next week, which is kind of a feminine preppy or East Coast-oriented aesthetic. We have new deliveries of Festy, Nightfall, and Retro Chic all happening in April in conjunction with Torrid Cash. We feel that we have a very powerful lineup ahead of us that will give us a lot more insight into those types of questions.
Dylan, I would add that. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was going to add related to the newness and the sub-brands.
Even in an environment where I think there was a bit of uncertainty as we came into the year in February in particular, we've seen the sell-through on these sub-brands to be very, very high, and they've been excluded from all discounting. I think the consumer's appetite for newness and differentiated product remains even in an environment of uncertainty.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Stratton with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. This is Katie Delahunt on for Alex. Thank you so much for taking our question. I was just wondering, what is your guidance embedding on the tariff impact of the year?
Great. Hi, Katie. Right now, it includes all tariffs that we know about today.
There's, again, one of the approaches that we've had to the year is kind of a flat approach really to enable us to be able to navigate the types of changes that we're encountering on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis. Again, we have a lot of flexibility in our sourcing structure. We've divested and de-risked out of China. We are in Vietnam, and we're very cautious about potential opportunity there. We are expanding into Cambodia, into Indonesia, into Egypt, into Turkey, into Bangladesh. We have a flexible structure in our sourcing categories and very good relationships with our vendors who are being great partners in this time period. Again, we've only included what we know, and we're not hedging forward in terms of any type of additional tariffs. Essentially, we have no visibility to that at this time.
Great. Thank you.
Maybe I can just ask one more. What is your guidance embedding in terms of the macro environment? Is it embedding consumer kind of stays at this more pressured level or any sort of improvement throughout the year?
Yeah. This is Paula, Katie. We are being more prudent to our approach with our guidance in regards to our consumer during this time. As Lisa mentioned before and Ashlee, we have seen improvements in demand in the last few weeks.
We do not have a broad approach. We are more prudent in our overall approach to the year based on the volatility that we experienced early. We are not predictive of kind of other improvements or challenges as we move forward. We are looking at the overall consumer behavior in a very prudent way.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. Lisa, you mentioned in your remarks that the negative drag from clearance sales is moderating. I was just curious if you could talk a little bit more about the impact that you're seeing from promotions in your business and what you have embedded in the outlook going forward from a clearance and promotional perspective.
Sure. Hi, Corey. Thank you. The negative drag does moderate as we go forward into kind of positive territory. Particularly, February is a pretty high clearance month, and so we've got some positive comps in the clearance side. We think that'll moderate as the whole year goes out, and we look for improvement both in the clearance bucket as well as reg price as we move forward. We are anticipating more promotional activity.
I think that kind of begs the question about the consumer mindset and kind of lack of clarity in terms of how the macro plays out this year. We have embedded some pressure on first margins and related to potentially more promotional activity as we move along. I think you'll still see a solid margin kind of result for the year, but we've hedged that a little bit based on what could possibly happen for the year. There was something else that you asked about and what was embedded.
Just promotional and clearance cadence throughout the remainder of the year.
Yeah. I mean, I think, hi, Corey. This is Ashlee. As we've said before, we expect our clearance levels and the sales to come from them to be more representative or consistent with history. We no longer have the drag from anniversary and very aggressive liquidation in 2023.
We are seeing profitable clearance sales at the levels that we expected to at this point. We have had to respond to a little bit of the macro uncertainty with a little bit more promotion in the first quarter. We expect product margins for the year to be relatively flat year over year.
Great. That is very helpful. Then just on the infusion of newness into the business with the new sub-brands, I have seen the product online in stores, very exciting. It is selling out even online, certain items we have seen. Is there kind of a way to put into context how sizable these new brands could be from a SKU perspective versus the overall? How do you put that into context with how you are thinking about inventory growth for the remainder of the year?
I can take that, Corey.
Yes, I think we're nurturing these, I'll say, to start. They represent close to 10% of the business for the year and about 10% of our receipt investment. Not a huge investment per se off the gate. We're self-funding them. We've found opportunities in the core line to reduce inventory depth in some cases, SKU count reduction within the core line of those that were the long tail of choices that were less productive to fund these. Overall inventory for the year, we expect to be relatively flat. There will be some timing quarter to quarter that may look a little bit different year over year as we launch these. All in all, our average inventory for the year will be pretty consistent with the levels we saw last year.
I would just reinforce the goal with this is new customers, an average younger customer broadly in the business, build frequency, share of wallet, and then there's a margin expansion opportunity with the sub-brands as well. That in conjunction with what we're doing in the core line, I think our expression of the brand right now online particularly is as good as I've ever seen it. I think the kind of curated aspect of the core line, in addition to what we're doing with sub-brands, has been very, very well received by the customer, and there's a lot of excitement associated with that.
This customer has always told us, "If you give me more choice, I will spend more money, and we're going to call her on it this year." The fundamental of the customer file growth, the demographics of the customer, bringing a younger customer into the overall mix, going from 42 to 35 as our core, and then building that frequency is at the very outset as we're nurturing this, I'll have positive indications.
We're achieving our goals of reactivation with these as we planned so far. As Lisa noted, the average age of the new customers coming through these sub-brands are in the mid-30s, which is what we were aiming for. I think the new customer and the reactivated customer that's coming through, adopting this newness is allowing us to be less reliant on promotion in general. That's also a goal with this that we're pleased with.
Great. That's very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Cory.
Thank you. Our last question comes from Dana Telsey with the Telsey Advisory Group. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, everyone. Just one more focus back on the real estate optimization. Is there a store number that you're targeting or you think that's appropriate for Torrid after you rationalize the store base? On the gross margin and the SG&A, how do you think about the puts and takes and the cadence throughout the year that we should be mindful of, of what could be good guys or what could be bad guys? Thank you.
Hi, Dana. It's Paula. I don't think we have a number in our minds about how many stores we should keep or should not keep.
This is a pretty detailed analysis and review that we continue to make to make sure that our demand channel aligns with our sales channel. That is how we're going to continue to analyze, just making sure we're aligning exactly the demand and the sales channels. We believe because we have this opportunity in front of us this year with 60% of our leases being able to be exited and etc., we do have an opportunity to leave some of these older locations and older types of enclosed malls. This is where we are today. We believe that the opportunity right now in front of us, it's 40-50 this year, with potentially being higher depending on what we see with the closures, the continuing with the closures, right? That is one.
We continue really to be focused on keeping that balance of enclosed malls, moving more to outdoor centers, right? That is where we see that unit economics truly improve from a store perspective. We are going to continue to balance that fleet to be more in outdoor centers. The opportunity to open new stores remains there. We are still planning on opening four to eight stores this year, but it will be in markets and locations that we believe would be profitable locations for us. As far as our guidance for the year, we are taking a prudent approach to our top-line sales. As you know, our top line typically stays pretty even throughout the year.
When it comes to G&A, SG&A in general, you're going to see a little bit higher in the first half because we have shifted some of the marketing expenses investments that we typically do in Q4 into Q1 and Q2. Aside from that, we shouldn't really see that much more in G&A for the year compared to the prior year.
Thank you. Lisa, with the sub-brands that seem to be trending, what are the other categories of sub-brands that you're most excited about for 2025?
We have four more to launch, four more ideas to launch. Belle Isle launches next week. We will launch Lovesick in early July. Lovesick is for younger, more junior-oriented customers. I would think of Hollister. I would think of Garage as kind of the mindset there. We're relaunching Active as the concept called True by Torrid.
We're going to relaunch Wear to Work again with Studio and Studio Luxe as we get into September. That's enough. The team is like, "Okay, that's enough." I love Ashlee's word earlier that we're nurturing this. We have very specific goals and guidelines and expectations on each of these launches. We're being conservative and really using our ability to chase and manage our inventory in a very nimble way. I think that, and I think the marketing team has done a tremendous job with the launch of the first three that you can see online with Festi, Nightfall, and Retro Chic. That's really the story. Again, back to building an internal marketplace where we can fulfill every need of this customer that she's deeply underserved. She is deeply underscored.
We feel like we can leverage our knowledge of this customer, our knowledge of her fit, and all of our other capabilities to drive these new customers to the brand and build frequency in our existing customers. So far, so good, but I would love to keep you guys in the loop and let you know how that is working. I am very proud of the team's ability to execute on this and really think that the brand is coming together in a very powerful way.
Thank you.
Thanks, Dana.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back to Lisa Harper for closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us and for your interest in the company. We look forward to sharing the progress, and we will speak to you again in June in this format. Take care.
Great. Thank you.
This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.