Earnings Call: Q1 2020

Apr 30, 2020

Greetings, and welcome to Floor and Decor Holdings, Inc. 1st Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Wayne Hood, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin. Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Joining me on our earnings conference call today are Tom Taylor, Chief Executive Officer Lisa Laube, President and Trevor Lang, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone of the company's Safe Harbor language. Comments made during this conference call and webcast contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Any statement that refers to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events, including financial projections or future market conditions, is a forward looking statement. The company's actual future results could differ materially from those expressed in such forward looking statement for any reason, including those listed in its SEC filings. Warranty Core assumes no obligation to update any such forward looking statements. Please also note that past performance or market information is not a guarantee of future results. During this conference call, the company will discuss non GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. We believe non GAAP disclosures enable investors to better understand our core operating performance on a comparable basis between periods. A reconciliation of each of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings press release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.flooranddecor.com. A recorded replay of this call together with related materials will be available on our Investor Relations website. Let me now turn the call over to Tom. Thank you, Wayne, and thanks to everyone for taking the time to join us on our Q1 2020 earnings conference call. Before we get started, I just want to thank our entire Floor and Decor team, particularly our store associates. They have enthusiastically come together in a way that protects the health and safety of all of our associates and customers. Their efforts have truly been inspirational and are a real testament to the culture of our organization, which continues to rise to the occasion to face new challenges that have been placed in front of them. The global spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic impacts we are facing is truly unprecedented. On today's call, I will discuss some of the highlights of our Q1 2020 earnings results and then spend more time discussing some of the operational changes that we are making in our stores and store support center to enable us to continue to serve our pro and do it yourself customers and retain sales during this challenging and uncertain time. I will discuss in more detail how we are building on our successful and convenient curbside pickup model that we pivoted to in March by adding pro appointments and are now rolling it out across the country. Additionally, I will touch on our limited customer entry approach that is happening in 2 of our Utah stores today. We do see a path forward to restoring growth against the challenging headwinds that we and others are facing. We are encouraged by the impact all of our strategies are now having on our sales trends and to the response from our pro appointment strategy and white glove service it offers that sets us apart. All of our actions have been and will continue to be taken with an eye towards first protecting the health and safety of our associates and customers. Later, Trevor will review our Q1 financial performance in more detail and then discuss how we are managing our liquidity, cash flow and profitability in a way that not only bridges us through the COVID-nineteen pandemic, but ensures we are well positioned on the other side. Strength of our balance sheet and access to liquidity enables us to continue to provide our customers quality, trend rate assortments at the lowest possible price. This will directly contribute to further market share growth in 2020 beyond as consolidation in the hard surface flooring industry likely accelerates as many independent flooring retailers may struggle to maintain liquidity in this unprecedented time. Let me start with our Q1 earnings. As you saw in our press release, our fiscal 20 2Q1 sales increased 16.3% to $554,900,000 and our comparable store sales grew 2.4%. Our Q1 comparable store transactions declined 1% and our comparable store average ticket increased 3.4%. Prior to the last 6 days of fiscal March, which is our largest sales month of the quarter, we were pleased that our quarter to date comparable store sales grew 6.1% in line with our expectations. The growth during that period reflected a 3.4% increase in comparable store transactions and a 2.7% growth in comparable store average ticket. We are pleased with our Q1 2020 sales results considering we experienced a sharp unexpected 46% decline in comparable store sales in the last 6 days of fiscal March as the impact from COVID-nineteen pandemic broadened to more of our markets. In response to the pandemic, we proactively began limiting our store operations to convenient curbside pickup on March 21. And in some cases, we were forced to completely close stores. Despite the unexpected sales declines in late March, we are pleased that our Q1 fiscal 2020 GAAP diluted earnings per share increased 20.7 percent to $0.35 from $0.29 in the Q1 of 2019, primarily due to a favorable gross margin and lower than planned corporate expense. Our first quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share increased 17.2% to $0.34 from $0.29 in the Q1 of 2019 at the high end of our expectations. Now let me discuss in more detail some of the near term operational changes that we have made during this period of uncertainty. In late March, we assembled cross functional leaders to develop strategies and procedures designed to quickly adjust our operating model while implementing safety protocols for our associates and customers. The collaboration within this group and the creativity of the entire organization has enabled us to retain a significant amount of sales even as our stores have limited operations or in some cases are completely closed. As a point of reference, we had as many as 33 warehouse stores or 26.8 percent of the company completely closed at some point in late March. Today, there are only 4 warehouse stores that are completely closed. The remaining stores are open with shortened operating hours for convenient curbside product pickup of product, which can be ordered online via phone or through our pro app. We are slowly allowing our stores across the country to conduct pro appointments in our showrooms. Additionally, in our 2 stores in Utah, we are testing allowing both DIY and professional customers to enter our showrooms with appropriate occupancy limits. As local conditions change, we intend to do this across the U. S. At this juncture, it is difficult for us to know when our stores will return to full operations. We do expect our reopenings will be staggered and dictated by local, state and government authorities and health official mandates. Because we do expect our stores to eventually open to full operations, we have chosen to protect our full time associates from furlough, albeit they are working reduced hours. All 4 of our distribution centers are open and fully supporting our stores today, including shipping personal protective equipment to our stores. Nearly all of our store support center associates are supporting our stores remotely, which speaks to the strength of our business continuity plans. The curbside model that we pivoted to in March focuses on our strengths. As customers enter our parking lot, they will be met by a greeter outside who will qualify the needs of that customer. Once the needs are determined, the customer is sent to a designated area to be served or loaded. Additionally, we moved a small selection of bulk out installation materials outside and added designated runners that can quickly grab samples in the store, thereby making it more convenient and safer for our customers. In fact, many pros would like us to maintain this level of concierge service post the impact of the pandemic. We strongly believe that our pros will remember how we are helping them to continue to operate their business during this challenging period. It is exactly during these challenging periods that we believe we can build on our brand awareness and our long term relationships to further grow our market share. From a merchandising perspective, we have moved most of our best selling SKUs outside and believe our large rolling inspirational merchandising fixtures give us a unique competitive advantage as they allowed us to easily move our great displays outside. This is particularly important when we are displaying luxury vinyl plank, large format tile, designer picks and other hard surface flooring products. Finally, we added the capability for customers to pay curbside with a mobile point of sale register. Now turning to our new stores. We have opened 3 new warehouse stores in the Q1 of 2020, including new warehouse stores in La Quinta and Sacramento, California and Algonquin, Illinois. The Q1 openings brought the total number of warehouse stores that we operate to 123 stores, up 19.4% from 103 stores at the end of the Q1 2019. We had originally planned to open 2 more stores in late March, but due to the pandemic, we have delayed those openings. The pandemic, which has caused state and local restrictions on new construction, which has forced us to push some of our new store openings to later in the year or into 2021. For the fiscal 2020 full year, we now believe it is financially prudent to temporarily slow our new store growth when we consider all of the near term headwinds caused by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. To that end, we're now anticipating open 11 warehouse stores and a design store pilot in Dallas in 2020 compared with our prior plan of 24 new warehouse stores and a design store pilot. We are taking a partnership approach with our landlords, and we are engaged with them to discuss near term rent deferments. We can't be specific about these fluid negotiations, but we are encouraged that our landlord partners are sympathetic to the challenges we and others are facing with reduced store operations and closed stores. That said, we are leveraging our legal options under our lease agreements and renegotiating locations with unexecuted leases. I think most of our landlords recognize that we are one of the few retailers that have plans to open stores over the long run and want to work with us as a tentative choice. Trevor will cover in his remarks the capital spending and cost out savings that we expect from the temporary reduction in new store openings. Moving on to our comparable store sales. As concern about the COVID-nineteen pandemic mounted in March, we were still seeing pros continuing to shop with us despite other parts of the economy that were beginning to shut down. So we were pleased that our Q1 comparable store sales grew 6.1% through Friday, March 20. That changed during the last 6 days of the quarter where we experienced a 46% decline in comparable store sales as we were forced to close stores, reducing our operating hours and shift to curbside pickup. While it is not our normal practice to provide inter quarter sales information, we do want to share that our 2nd quarter to date comparable store sales have declined 50%. While none of us are satisfied with this rate of decline, recent trends are slightly improving and we have seen a surge in our sample sales, which tells us customers are interested in flooring projects. This, coupled with our strategies to recapture sales and more phase full store openings in the coming months leaves us optimistic about the further improvements going forward. Turning to our Q1 sales performance within some of our merchandising categories. Consistent previous quarters, our best performing category was our laminate luxury vinyl plank category, which increased 28.2% and represented 23% of our total sales compared to 20% in the Q1 of last year. This category continues to resonate with our customers as it has superior technical features, is very durable and easy to install. We were also pleased with our sales in installation materials, which increased 18.7% and represented 17% of our sales. The changes we have made in how our installation materials are presented and our improving operating processes is driving sustainable growth in this very important category for our professional customer. Our adjacent category business, which includes vanities, shower doors, countertops and bath accessories continues to grow, and we'll be adding product throughout the year in many of our store locations. While the sales dollar volume in this category is not material today, the growth is strong, and we believe it offers incremental growth opportunities. As I mentioned, it has been inspiring to see how our store and store support center associates have enthusiastically rallied together in creative ways to meet the unique combination of challenges caused by the COVID-nineteen pandemic to continue to serve our customers. Let me discuss another example. Due to the high demand from our customers to still engage with our product offering, we introduced a virtual design appointment experience in April that is now operating in all of our stores. This is an example of how we are building on our connected customer strategies and our stores and designers are excited about this service offering. By providing this free live virtual video and chat experience, we expand our ability to connect and collaborate with customers that are contemplating a flooring project, but might be under shelter in place restrictions or just prefer the ease of starting their project at home first with a cloud based video conference. This strategy leverages our website resources, including our room visualizer, my order quote builder and allows our designers to connect with customers while maintaining social distancing guidelines. Designers can virtually walk customers through a store and share inspirational ideas and collaborate with customers on their desktop browsers and on mobile devices in high definition. Meetings are easy to schedule through our website and additional participants can be invited. As we have previously discussed, when a designer is involved in a project, our average ticket and margin rate is significantly higher than the company average. We have modified our advertising spend in messaging. We did this with an eye towards letting our pros and do it yourself customers know that our stores are open with banners and yard signs and how they can continue to shop with us for hard surface flooring products online or via the telephone. We choose to protect our spending on search, social, YouTube and Pinterest as we see customers are still using this media looking for ideas and inspiration. We have also extended our 18 month no interest credit offering through May 31, which will give our pros and do it yourselfers an additional line of liquidity for projects. Additionally, in May, we will launch our Pro Premier rewards incentive program where they can earn double and triple points based on their spend. We have decided to pause the Q2 2020 launch of our Pro Premier credit card until the operating environment improves. Flooranddecor.com and our call center have been critical to staying engaged with our professional and do it yourself customers. The multi year investments we have made in our connected customer strategy is paying off to help customers find us, educate themselves and be inspired virtually. As customers gain comfort and ultimately buy online and pick up in stores or have shipped to their job site, our technology allows for simple and safe social distancing access to our full product assortment. As we move to the curbside operating model, our e commerce site has made it very easy for a customer to place an order online and then just pick it up at the store. Since the model change, our e commerce business is sequentially up 270% and now represents approximately 60% of our company sales. We have also invested in the talented call center team and when combined with advanced technology, it has allowed us to flex up and to handle the significant increase in call volume we are experiencing. To help manage the overflow, we added store support center associates to assist on the phone who are working with customers to help them complete their projects in this new business environment. Beyond providing critical support during these challenging times, our call center also has emerged as a functional business that drives revenues through its follow-up programs, which we began testing late last year. We continue to make great progress in investing and growing the all important professional and commercial customer base. We continue to find pros, cultivate relationships and serve them well. Our value message is clear and easy for the professional customer to understand. We are open and we are your hard surface flooring supply house. It all starts with substantial quantities trend right in stock inventory at consistently low prices combined with services such as a dedicated pro team, free design services, free storage, a great loyalty program and credit. Once pros are identified and input into our proprietary CRM solution, we have many ways to serve and communicate value to them, including through our Pro Premier Rewards loyalty program, email marketing, direct communication from our in store pro teams and through our pro app, which continues to be used at higher and higher rates. We are confident these strategies continue to work. Two simple examples. In the Q1, our top 500 pros spent over double what they have spent a year before with us. And our commercial big job sales, which are generally sold to commercial clients and are much larger than our normal sales, were up 67% in the Q1. During this difficult time, we know these investments and unique solutions are important to our professional customers. We have heard loud and clear from our pros that they appreciate how we are proactively working with them to safely support them during this challenging time and they like us look forward to us reopening our doors again. The economic outlook and associated sales and liquidity challenges facing many retailers cause us to believe that we will see further store closures and industry consolidation, and we plan to remain the hard surface flooring retailer of choice on the other side. After the COVID-nineteen pandemic starts to fade, this will be time for us to take more market share. Moving on to some of our near term cost saving measures. We have taken steps to judiciously resize our cost structure to protect our liquidity, profitability and cash flow during this uncertain period. While most of these decisions were difficult for us to make, we made them with an eye towards not placing at risk our longer term growth priorities and our competitive position. In late March, we made the difficult decision to resize our store and store support center payroll costs in anticipation that sales could continue to decline for some period of time from the COVID-nineteen pandemic and that a recovery could be slow once the economy begins to reopen. We were forced to furlough about 2,000 of our part time associates. Part time associates account for about 30% of our in store associate hours and our full time associates account for the remaining 70%. While we have currently not furloughed our full time store associates, we did reduce their hours to 32 hours from approximately 40 hours per week and our department head hours from to 40 hours per week from approximately 45 hours per week. As business conditions improve, we are prepared to play offense by flexing up the hours of our full time associates. The base salaries of our senior management team as well as other teammates in our store support center were temporarily reduced by graduated amounts. I will not receive a base salary other than the amount that will cover the benefits provided by the company. The base salaries for Lisa LaVie, our President and Trevor, were both reduced by 50%. Our Board of Directors also agreed to temporarily suspend their cash retainers. Let me close by saying again how inspiring it has been to see how our store and store support associates have rallied together to the unique combination of challenges caused by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Their tireless and creative efforts have enabled us to continue to serve our customers, particularly our pros that operate small businesses. We have ended fiscal 2019 and the Q1 of 2020 in a strong financial position with our sales, EBITDA and liquidity at the highest levels in our 20 year history. We believe we have correctly resized our cost structure and capital spending plans to have adequate access to liquidity to bridge us through this challenging time. Our confidence in the power of our business model and our ability to navigate this crisis is unwavering and we will remain committed to long term profitable growth. I will now turn the call over to Trevor to discuss in more details our Q1 financial results and how we are thinking about managing our liquidity, profitability and cash flow during these unprecedented times. Thank you, Tom. Let me begin by saying that our entire executive leadership team is extremely proud of how we have quickly changed our operations to meet the challenges of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. It is a testament to our incredibly talented associates and the investments we have made in our business model and technology that enabled us to quickly pivot to a curbside model and leverage our e commerce investments. As Tom mentioned, since we implemented curbside pickup, our e commerce business is up 2 70% sequentially and now represents 60% of our company sales. The investments we have made in e commerce and changes in our store operations have enabled us to retain a significant amount of sales while our stores are close to the public. I am proud of the thoughtfulness, immediacy and resilience that our organization has demonstrated how it has bonded us even more than before the crisis. We are confident that we will come out of this as strong as ever and will continue to grow in the future. As you saw in our press release, we, like many other companies, have chosen to withdraw our prior sales and earnings guidance and outlook statements with respect to fiscal 2020, as we believe there are just too many unknown variables that will affect our results. I would tell you, we have never worked harder and closer as a team to manage our business. Florida Core is blessed to have an experienced Board and management team that has been together for a long time. We believe the short and long term decisions we have made will set us apart and we look as we look past this pandemic and we will remain strong on the other side of COVID-nineteen. I'm going to begin by focusing on how we are managing our liquidity, cash flow, profitability during these challenging times and then briefly discuss our Q1 results. First, we are fortunate to have refinanced our term loan facility and our revolving credit facility on February 14, 2020. Our performance, conservative leverage and refinanced debt has put us in the best financial position in our 20 year history, including the most liquidity in our history. Through our refinancing gives us access to higher levels of cash at lower costs with maturity dates far in the future. Me point out some of the features of our credit facilities that give us financial flexibility if needed. At the end of the Q1 of 2020, we had $144,600,000 outstanding under our term loan facility with a maturity date at February 14, 2027. Our term loan facility includes an accordion feature that allows us under certain circumstances to increase the size of our facility by an amount up to the greater of $270,000,000 or 100 percent of consolidated EBITDA. We also could increase the term loan facility by an additional amount under certain conditions, including if such an increase is secured on a pari pursued basis with loans under the term loan facility up to a consolidated leverage ratio of 2.5. If such, it is secured on a junior basis with the loans on the term loan facility up to a consolidated secured leverage ratio of 3.5. And if such increases is unsecured up to a consolidated total leverage ratio of 3.5, subject to certain adjustments, Under certain circumstances, we can also increase our consolidated total leverage to 4.5. Any ability to increase the facility, of course, assumes the debt markets are functioning and currently they are, albeit at more expensive levels than when we renegotiated our debt agreements in February. In conjunction with our term loan amendment, we also amended and upsized the asset based lending agreement or ABL facility to $400,000,000 and extended its maturity date to February 14, 2025. The amended ABL facility has an accordion feature that allows us to increase its size up to $500,000,000 or an even higher amount if agreed to by our lenders. We can draw on our ABL facility up to certain percentages of available borrowing base of inventory and credit card receivables less certain reserves. As a precautionary and proactive measure, we drew $275,000,000 or approximately 80% of what was available on our ABL facility in late March as uncertainty in the credit markets escalated. At the end of Q1 of 2020, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA excluding preopening expenses was 0.52.7 on a lease adjusted leverage basis. In order for our leverage to go to 3 times, which would not be an aggressive leverage ratio, our debt could increase by approximately $715,000,000 or 6 times our Q1 net debt position. While we have no intentions to borrow anywhere near that amount or close to that level, it shows the liquidity we have in our model at the end of the Q1. We have no material debt maturities and no financial maintenance covenants on our senior secured term loan. The ABL has a fixed charge coverage ratio if borrowings exceed 90% of availability. We had $375,600,000 in unrestricted liquidity available to us at the end of March, including $289,900,000 in cash and cash equivalents and $85,700,000 in borrowing under our ABL facility. We believe the immediate liquidity available to us coupled with our credit facilities and actions we have taken to reduce costs provide us with the liquidity we need to manage through the impact of COVID-nineteen is having on our business. That said, we continue to prudently examine all financing alternatives to ensure we have the greatest possible financial flexibility if needed. We have also evaluated the CARES Act and assessed its impact on our liquidity and financial statements. We currently anticipate benefiting from 3 main sections. First, we are amending our tax return to take advantage of the temporary 5 year net operating loss carryback allowance and the technical correction for qualified leasehold improvements, which changes 39 year property to 15 year property eligible for 100 percent tax bonus depreciation. 2nd, we expect to benefit from the temporary deferral of employer payments for Social Security taxes. And third, we expect to benefit from employee retention credits and potentially other provisions within the CARES Act. We are finalizing our estimated positive cash flows from the CARES Act provisions and expect them to provide us tens of 1,000,000 in cash in the coming months to further help with liquidity. Let me spend a few minutes discussing how we made spending reductions to right size our cost structure and protect our cash flow until we are able to restore our stores to full operations. We made cost reduction decisions collaboratively with all of our leaders with an eye towards reducing or deferring cost aggressively in the short term, but also knowing this too shall pass and focusing on maintaining the long tenured full time employee and partnerships we have created over the last decade so that we will remain a valued sought after employer and partner. Inventory and the associated supply chain cost to get the inventory to our distribution centers and stores is our largest cash spend by far. We have good technology and a large team of smart leaders that evaluates our on hand, in transit, on order and replenishment purchases so that we can quickly adjust our inventory and supply chain purchases. We have materially slowed our inventory purchase orders based on these factors and we believe we are appropriately balancing the current slower demand with our future planned sales and in stock levels. We have also worked with our vendor partners to temporarily extend our payment terms to further support our cash flow. The next big bucket of spending is capital expenditures. As Tom mentioned, we have slowed our 2020 new store opening plan as well as reduced other areas of our capital expenditures in response to the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Total capital expenditures are currently planned to be between $147,000,000 to $157,000,000 compared to approximately $255,000,000 to $265,000,000 we had originally planned. Based on these changes, we expect our depreciation and amortization to be approximately $91,000,000 to $93,000,000 in 2020. Our planned capital expenditures and depreciation could vary materially from our estimates as we are operating in a very unique environment, but this is our current best estimate. We have reviewed each line item in the P and L and have cut costs judiciously, including temporarily freezing most new hires, reducing our advertising, non essential store operating expenses, incentive compensation, travel and entertainment, professional fees, recruiting in a new location and new store preopening expenses. We have proactively worked with our landlord partners to reduce our near term store occupancy costs. We have created great relationships with these value partners over the years and we know they appreciate our collaborative approach. As one of the few retailers who has been averaging 20% unit growth for the past 7 years, we have built strong relationships. We intend to grow new stores and we know this has value to our land to the landlord community. We also intend to grow at a faster pace in the future and we know this has value. We believe that it's being thoughtful and realizing these partners have businesses to run to, this will pay dividends now as well as in the future. We have lowered our cash expenditures for fiscal 2020 by around approximately $400,000,000 consisting of lowering our operating expenses by about $100,000,000 our capital expenditures by $110,000,000 and our inventory and associated supply chain costs by approximately $190,000,000 As previously outlined, we are not giving sales and earnings guidance, but our current expectation and modeling support for potential flow through on lowered sales to be in the 25% to 30% range on our sales below our previous guidance. While we have modeled this flow through level in detail, it is difficult to forecast in this environment and our flow through could be different. We have taken on some incremental COVID-nineteen expenses that are separate from our normal operations and have called those out in our earnings release and intend to do so, so long as they are material. One final point on liquidity before I go into our Q1 performance. We enhanced our already detailed financial models for the rest of 2020, including downside scenarios and stress tests of our liquidity. Our current view is our liquidity position will remain strong throughout 2020. We estimate we will use approximately $130,000,000 to $150,000,000 of cash from the end of the Q1 through early June as our sales will be negatively impacted by COVID-nineteen and as we pay bills that were incurred pre COVID-nineteen. As we get past early June, we are modeling increasing cash balances due to improved sales, assuming our stores reopen to the public and expenses are lower due to significant changes we have made in our cost structure as previously described. Forecasting in this environment is obviously difficult, but I'm happy that we have outperformed our model in April both from a sales and liquidity perspective and we are putting ourselves in a position to have enough cash to completely pay off our ABL in the Q4 should we choose to do so. Let me now turn to our fiscal 20 2Q1 earning fuels. Our Q1 gross margin rate increased 30 basis points to 42.5% from 42.2% last year and was slightly above our expectations. The year over year gross margin expansion was largely driven by higher product margins, modestly offset from higher distribution center costs related to our new Baltimore distribution center that opened in the Q4 of 2019. The improved product margin reflects the benefit of lower costs from the elimination of certain tariffs as well as merchandising strategies to improve product gross margin. Turning to our Q1 2020 expenses. Our Q1 selling and store operating expenses increased 20.2 percent to $153,100,000 from 127 $400,000 last year. The expense rate deleverage of 88 basis points to 27.6% from 26.7% last year is due to opening 20 new stores since March 28, 2019, as well as the lower than planned sales the last 6 days of March and $1,300,000 in unique costs associated with mitigation of COVID-nineteen on our business. Our comparable store selling and store operating expenses as a percentage of comparable stores decreased approximately seventy basis points as we leveraged occupancy, advertising and incentive compensation expense. General and administrative expenses, which are typically expenses incurred outside of our stores increased $700,000 or 2.2 percent during the 13 weeks ended March 26, 2020 compared to the corresponding prior year period due to the continued investments in personnel for our store support functions and increased depreciation due to technology investments to support our store growth. Our general and administrative expenses as a percentage of net sales decreased approximately 80 basis points to 5.6% from 6.4% in the corresponding prior year period due to lower accruals for employee incentive compensation during the 13 weeks ended March 26, 2020 as a result of COVID-nineteen. Preopening expenses for the Q1 increased $1,400,000 or about 35% from the same period last year. The increase is primarily the result of higher occupancy costs due to a longer period of possession prior to the store opening as well as an increase in the number of new stores that we are preparing to open compared to the prior year period. We opened 3 stores during each of the 13 weeks ended March 26, 2020 and March 28, 20 19. 1st quarter net interest expense decreased $1,100,000 or 38.1 percent from the same period last year. The decrease in interest expense was primarily due to a decrease in interest rates as well as an increase in interest income earned compared to the corresponding prior year period. Our Q1 effective tax rate was 17.4% compared to 16.6% in the same period last year. The increase in the effective tax rate was primarily due to a higher discrete expenses for loss contingencies related to uncertain tax positions, partially offset by the recognition of a higher income tax benefits related to stock option exercises compared to the corresponding prior year period. Moving on to our profitability. Our Q1 adjusted EBITDA increased 21.7 percent to $73,100,000 from $60,100,000 in the prior year quarter as our adjusted EBITDA margin rate increased 60 basis points to 13.2 percent from 12.6 percent over the same period. Our fiscal 20 2Q1 GAAP net income increased 20.6 percent to $37,100,000 from $30,700,000 last year. Our Q1 adjusted net income increased 21.3 percent to $36,300,000 or $0.34 per diluted share from $30,000,000 or $0.29 per diluted share last year. We ended the Q1 with 105,500,000 diluted weighted average shares outstanding compared to 104,300,000 shares last year. In closing, I want to personally thank all of our associates for their tireless work and dedication in serving our customers during this challenging circumstances. With that, I think we'll turn the call over to questions. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer Our first question comes from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question. Thanks and hope everyone is well. My first question, I wanted to get your view on housing and home improvement demand and realizing there's no guidance here. Some have a view that the downturn could look a little different for this segment for a bunch of different reasons. Curious what your take on it is. Do you think home improvement ends up being more insulated than a normal downturn? Hey, Simeon, this is Trevor. I think we're all expecting things to be tougher. The consumer is going to be in a tough spot. They're going to build back their personal balance sheets. And so I do think the sector will be impacted just like a lot of sectors will. I will say though, if you go back and look in history, back to that 2,060, 2008 timeframe, peak to trough over 2.5 year period, flooring sales declined 35% and that's a lot obviously. During that time, 44 did pretty well. We had adequate products so we could sell to people who needed it. We have incredibly low prices, very inspirational design center and our prices are low. And so when you look at the overall value that exists, we think our attributes are accentuated during this environment. So yes, we think the environment will be tougher as we look forward, but I think value matters and we have value in the sense of lots of product, low prices, really good looking product, great salespeople, integrated website, protein to serve a professional customer. And so all those things give us conviction that yes, it's going to be a tough environment, but all the things we have will allow us to outperform the market like we have for a long period of time. Okay. Thanks. And then my follow-up is on the competitive environment and then something that Tom had mentioned. Can you share what you're seeing competitively? You do operate against a lot of smaller businesses. And I wonder if others have stayed open through an essential classification. Any anecdotes you're getting about hardship against competitors? When you open up, do you think you're going to open up to a full slate of them? And then related to what Tom said about leaning in following this period, does this mean that if things are back to normal in 2021, do you open up the stores that didn't get open this year and you add them to the expected 2021 class? That is a long follow on question. I'll try to get to as much of it as I can. Certainly, we have we put the safety of our customers and our associates first and we made the decision very early on to go to a curbside only model. That's evolved and we're operating 3 models now. We've got a curbside model. We've got pro appointment model and we do have 2 stores in Utah that have limited entry models. And the competitors are all over the board. Some cities, they are doing what we do. Some cities, they're staying completely open and it really varies by market. And that's just as I've told my team, who's very aggressive to get us back opened up, safety for our customers and our associates to be first. And we'll as the government allows, we'll continue to open our stores. So that's the first part of it. I So that's the first part of it. I think the other side of this, it's hard to tell who will be standing. Certainly, if the independent, the smaller flooring stores, they're going to have a hard time maintaining liquidity in this environment. And we anticipate they're time maintaining liquidity in this environment. And we anticipate there'll probably be some more consolidation at the end of this. And then last question, our plan and I didn't I know I probably didn't get to all the questions, but as many of them as I could. Our plan is to get back to 20% unit growth next year. So it's just everything's kind of shut down. It's kind of hard to get the stores built. So assuming that the economy reopens in a good fashion, our plans are to get back to our original plan. Thank you. Good luck. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Forbes with Guggenheim Securities. Please proceed with your question. Good evening. I wanted to focus really on the trends in the business post the transition to the curbside model. I mean, is there a particular category or region that differs greatly from the chain since that transition from a performance standpoint? And anything you can call out that's driving that difference, whether it's just geographical presence, urban versus suburban, county exposure, etcetera? I mean, the curbside model is doing it's been pretty consistent since we've opened. It's actually started to get a little bit better as time has gone on. It's hard to it's really hard to pinpoint saying, okay, until we reopen the stores and let customers come in on a normal basis, I think it's going to be hard for us to see if it's going to be better in urban or better in rural. It's just hard to give an answer on that. On a product standpoint, we're not seeing any difference really. The consumers are buying what they bought, they're just buying less of it. I would just add 2 things. 1, we exited last year. I think our comp was at 5.2% in the Q4. And we said before COVID-nineteen hit those last previous to those last 6 days, we comped up 6.1%. So we thought our business would accelerate a little bit and it did. So we were pleased with that. The trends across the business continued where rigid core vinyl continues to be our best category. The natural wood category continues to be probably our challenge category. Our newer markets continue to outperform our existing markets. So everything just got a little bit better. And I do think I want to mention one more thing that the follow-up on Simeon's question about real estate. What has been interesting throughout this period of time is we're now getting opportunities in real estate locations that we are that we would have loved to have been in and would have jumped in a long time ago. And so I do think that some of the benefit out of this is the way we've handled ourselves and negotiated with our landlords and just the strength of the business is we're now getting opportunities in dense markets that would have been difficult for us to get into otherwise. So we are one bright lining of this difficult environment is the real estate opportunities are getting better for us. And then just a follow-up on the design services, right? You spent some time in the prepared remarks on the virtual services and just the engagement with the pro. But maybe just expand on whether your recent experience here and the engagement with both the DIY and the pro consumer has changed your investment plans as it relates to design services. And whether that's just number of design associates in the stores or any sort of marketing plans around that, etcetera? Yes. Since most of our full time associates, a lot of them were designers, they're still working. We've tried to just accelerate a virtual design opportunity for customers. And we're the acceptance has been incredible. People still want to engage with our product. And so it's there are new appointments and some customers that had previously been worked with. The number of appointments that we're doing has increased every week since we started it. The feedback has been terrific. I was in a store last week and watched a virtual appointment and it's designer walking around the store and showing customer products and giving them inspiration, it's pretty incredible. So it's been a great experience. We're very excited about it. We're telling people on our website about it so that they know and that they can engage in it. I don't know, Lisa, if there's anything that you want to add about the appointments. No. The only other thing that I would add is that, it has done extremely well. I think probably better than we expected. And I would say that going forward for this foreseeable future, we don't know how comfortable people are going to be, out and about. And we think this virtual design appointment is going to be a great way for our customers to engage with the store and with the product before ever coming in. So we think it's a unique competitive advantage. And even when the stores are opened, we plan to continue to give the customer the option to have a virtual design appointment, or come in and see one of our designers in person. We apologize, but in the interest of time, could you please limit yourself to one question? Our next question comes from the line of Chris Hovers with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question. If there's one really long question, does that count? So a question. So first, your quarter to date comp is pretty consistent with the last week of the quarter and it seems like you have a lot more stores open. Is that right? And why not better? Is it less DIY? Is it less pro where the consumer doesn't want that professional coming in and making the installation? Is there some sort of lag impact that's going on or maybe the pro becoming non essential in more states? Can you talk about that trend overall? I'll start and I'll let Trevor jump in as well. Chris, it's been pretty consistent since we went to curbside. And at first, I didn't know how it would go. I really I wasn't sure if when we went to curbside that it was going to be people just finishing projects. And so it may start off good and then slow down. And that hasn't been the case. It's been consistent. And then recently it's gotten better. And I think as time goes on, people are they're still engaged with the product and they still want to do product. I mean, look at how many virtual appointments we're doing, how many samples we're selling out of our on our website. People still want to engage in the product and they still want to do it. So we're going to try to do our part in helping our pros think about how they can be safer in customers' homes and how they can make sure that their customers as they're getting into the end users' homes that they can execute the right social distancing and they can be taking the right measures to make sure that that customer feels safe in their store. So I mean that's a question mark on how the consumer will feel. But from what from people that I've talked to and from what I've seen and from what I've seen and it's only it's a small sample of stores, but we have reopened a couple of our stores where there's not shelter in place guidelines and their comps went from really negative to positive. So I think there's still a need for the category, still desire for the category. And it's hard to really too, Chris, to say, is it a pro or DIY? I mean, everything's kind of slowed. I think the pros, when you go to the stores and you watch the curbside model, a lot of pros still picking up product. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Sigman with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Hope everybody's doing well. I wanted to ask about the investments that you had initially planned for this year. I think it was expected to be somewhat of an elevated year of investments in store growth and some other areas. Does that just shift into next year? Or conversely, is this a situation that serves as maybe a catalyst for longer term efficiency? Should we actually be thinking about perhaps better operating leverage coming out of this as sales start to normalize? This is Trevor. When it first all happened, we went through and as we mentioned in some of the prepared comments and looked at every single line item, anything that we didn't feel was mission critical, we decided to delay on or cut. And so I think we cut our capital expenditures by about, I think, below 40% cut. And we really tried to do everything that wasn't customer facing or needed to be done. So we had a pretty big cut in our CapEx. Obviously, going down to 11 new stores plus the design center had an impact as well. We actually sort of increased our budget a little bit for the class of 2021 just because of what we think we're going to open early next year. And hopefully this one other silver lining of this is, it's likely that we will have an equal cadence of openings in fiscal 2021. And so I think on the operating side, we still have some more homework to do. There's we are learning things in this that we would have probably never learned before. And so I think it's probably too soon to tell, but I don't know if Tom or Lisa if you had anything, but that's that would be my answer. No, I think that's right, Trevor. I do think it is that we are learning about different ways that we can operate, which could take some costs out of the business. And we'll be thoughtful in that approach and take the right steps to try to be. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Lasser with UBS. Please proceed with your question. Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. So you've offered a lot of varying data points and viewpoints on this call. So Trevor said that during the last recession flooring dropped 35%. This time around, unemployment will matter more than anything. Tom, you mentioned that when you open a couple of stores, they comp positive. There may or may not be pent up demand because produce have been allowed in consumers' homes. So putting all that together, I think the critical factor that we're all trying to determine is once the whatever the new normal is up and running, call it, in the 3rd Q4, should we think about relative to that benchmark that you set of flooring being down 35, should flooring be down maybe half as much this time around? And because of the competitive positioning of flooring to core, you could do twice as better than that. So if the category is down 15 to 20, in light of everything, it's reasonable to expect that maybe your comps are down mid to high single? Yes. This is Trevor. One other thing I think it's interesting, we're obviously a much bigger company. When the last downturn in the company was like $200,000,000 and this time around that COVID-nineteen, we would have been around $2,500,000,000 So much bigger company. But one of the benefits of being a bigger company is we just have a lot more information and data. Lisa's team has done a really good effort in helping us understand our customer better. And when we've done through some of that, our average customer income now, we estimate is between $100,000 to $125,000 versus the U. S. Median in the $60,000 range. We age up, we're probably 35 to 64 years old. They've lived in that house for 11 to 15 years. And so when you add all that up, that consumer, that person who's buying from us has a good amount of discretionary income. And when you look at the people who are unfortunately being impacted by this, it's the lower income level folks that are being heavily impacted by that. And so I do think that with the combination of when you look at the industry with all the success we've had, with all the success the home centers have had over the last 10 years, the majority of the industry today is still 65% smallish independent type companies. And I think they will struggle on this. And as I mentioned before, the value player, value meaning price, value meaning trend out assortment, value meaning in stock inventory, we believe we'll take a disproportionate share of market share during this period of time. So I don't know exactly what that looks like. We're all trying to figure that out over the coming months, but we have certainly, we believe, put ourselves in a position by keeping all of our full timers, by taking care of our professional customers, by taking care of all of our vendor partners, that we are in the best shape possible to take care of our customer when we open the doors. And as Tom mentioned, it's only a 2 store test or 2 stores that we've opened this in, but we went from comping not negative to positive. And so we'll see we've got a lot of lot to learn over the next coming months, but we're in a fantastic position to take the most amount of business that's available as we open our doors. Our next question comes from the line of Matt McClintock with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Sounds like you've been quite busy. A lot of detail on this call, so I really appreciate it. I guess the first quick question is, I kind of want to ask this pro question differently. Tom, when you maybe do surveys of the pro right now or talk to the pro when you're in the store, what are they saying about job cancellations versus just jobs being pushed back in terms of deferral? Like I'm just trying to get a better sense of how much demand outright was just cut off versus how much demand is likely there waiting for people to be able to go back feel comfortable again to get have these contractors come in their house, etcetera? I have heard the majority now anecdotally, right? So talking to the stores and our operators and talking to some pros where I've been able to be in stores, it has been more pushback and but not cancellation. And I we have an installation partner that's kind of an arm's length relationship that we can recommend to customers. And they're telling us the same thing that it's not job cancellations, it's job pushbacks. And I think that as restrictions ease and as pros get educated on how they have to communicate to the end user, how they're going to enter the home, how they're going to wear masks and how they're going to wear gloves and how they're going to disinfect during the job and how they're going to maintain social distancing, then I think consumers will become more and more acceptable of them entering their homes. But we're not I don't think it's a big cancellation of jobs. I've absolutely heard it's more of a delay in jobs. Our next question comes from the line of John Baugh with Stifel. Please proceed with your question. Thanks. I was curious if you think there might be some longer term reaction to source product coming from China whether you factor that into your longer range sourcing strategy? Hi, it's Lisa. So it's a really interesting question. On the immediate term, thankfully, most of the countries have reopened and we're starting to get product. So we've not, at this point, seen any customer preference change. As the tariffs and the ADD and CBD changes have happened over the last year and a half or so, we've dramatically reduced our reliance on China for sourced product. Pretty much the only thing left in China right now are those things that can only come from China. And so if we have another country option, we've moved product to those countries and we will continue to do that. So whether it's working with some of our manufacturers to open up manufacturing in other countries or finding resources that we didn't know about in other countries, that landscape continues to change. But yes, I think for us, we will continue to make sure that we're diversified and that we have the products that the customers want and expect from us. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Keith with Piper Stanley. Please proceed with your question. Hi, thanks a lot. Congrats guys, it's tough environment. You guys seem to be doing a great job. And Funny to say, good job would be down 50%. I guess we thought it'd probably be worse than that. So that feels not so bad given everything that's going on. There's a thesis going around that people are spending a lot more time at home that they're probably getting a little more fed up on their flooring and other aspects of the home. And I was wondering if you could give us some commentary on maybe what you're seeing with your web traffic. It might be a little hard to disaggregate with stores closed, but does it feel like there's a little bit more browsing, more shopping going on that could suggest potentially some pent up demand in the back half of the year? Well, it's very hard to say because with the curbside model, I think we Tom had mentioned in the script, something like 60% of the sales right now are coming through the website because of the curbside model. So it's a little hard to look at that differently, but we do look at traffic and the traffic is up on the site. So conversion is obviously where the majority of those sales are coming from. So people that were browsing before and then going into the store to purchase, they're now purchasing online and then going to store to pick it up. But yes, we have seen definitely an increase in traffic, increase in time spent, increase in visualizer utilization. And so I do believe that in this new environment, we will see more customers shopping online and either picking up or maybe even having the product delivered for us. But yes, we are gearing up and we are working on other things to do for our website to make that an even better, easier shopping experience for the customer going forward. I think, Peter, the other thing I'd say, and again, it's not it's more anecdotal, but it's there's we are hearing a lot of as people have had the shelter in their homes and stay in place that there is lots of they're finding a floor that they may not have liked or a backsplash that they're tired of or a bathroom that's really old. And so if people are going to travel less and they're going to while the economy reopens and the country reopens and they get out, they still they may put some of that discretionary income that they had that they would have used for vacations, they might put that into their house. So we are hearing some of that as well, but no one really knows. We'll see. Our next question comes from the line of Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett. Please proceed with your question. Hey guys, good afternoon. Hope you're doing well. You stated in certain markets, I think the 2 in Utah, you've opened up the stores and comps have turned positive, which is obviously a great sign. When you look ahead, it seems like you're being a little bit conservative on when you guys could open the majority of the chain. There's a number of companies, even Macy's today articulated the plans to open up all their stores by the middle of June. So I guess just what are you guys looking forward to open up those stores? And as a follow-up to that, just curious in the April quarter to date number of down 50%, if there's any geographical differences in between the coast to the middle of the country down south, what you guys are seeing would be helpful. Thank you. Yes. I'll take the first part on the openings. And the last part, we're really not seeing much difference geography wise. It's hard it's really hard to ascertain that, but we're not seeing much of a difference there. I will say that we'll open up a bunch of stores tomorrow. As states have lifted some orders, we'll be able to get some of our stores opened into a limited entry controlled amount of customers that will be allowed. That will vary by local jurisdiction, but we'll have a decent amount of stores that get to let customers back in starting tomorrow. And we anticipate that by the end of May, we would have about 70% of our stores open. So that could change. We are going to we're going to follow as we said in my prepared comments, the reopenings will be staggered and they'll be dictated by local state and government authorities and health official mandates. So we'll be thoughtful in the way that we do that. But as we sit here today, I was I'm actually a little surprised that we're going to be able to open up more stores tomorrow. And but we do anticipate by everything I read and see that by the end of May 70%. Our next question comes from the line of Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question. Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Just following up on the question earlier about the supply chain. It doesn't sound like you're having any major supply constraints right now. But just wondering too in the current state of the world and the environment if suppliers are willing to negotiate any more on price? It's interesting question. So far, we have had some luck on that. I mean, currency has helped us. The fuel and pricing has helped us some. So yes, I do think there is some opportunity on that front going forward. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Melch with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question. Hi, thanks. One quick follow-up. Did you guys say that DIY was stronger than Pro since you closed the stores? I thought I heard that, but it cut out for a second. No, we didn't say that. Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Matuszewski with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question. Great. Thanks for squeezing me in. You guys alluded to the pro appreciating some of the concierge like services you're offering at curbside mentioned that many of them are asking for those to continue on the other side of this. So are there other changes that you've made in the business beyond the virtual design appointment that you would anticipate to carry over on the other side of it? We are looking at that. I mean, there's absolutely if you go pre COVID-nineteen when a customer wanted to pick up something in our store, they pulled up to the back of the store, they checked into the command center, then they had to go back outside and wait and we've changed to this where you pull up to the store, there's someone outside that greets you and finds out gets your determinations, communicates to inside the store to get the product out quicker. And certainly, every pro that I've talked to is like, this is terrific. I don't have to get out of my truck. I really like that. So I think we'll have to pay attention to that. And I think we'll have to react to some of that. And I think between that and I think the virtual design is a learning. I still don't think virtual design, it's doing good because customers can't come into the store. I think it'll do good, but it won't replace customers wanting to touch and feel the product and get inspiration out of our stores. So I think that they want to continue to come in. But a big part of we'll have to change lots of the way that we operate. We're learning and we're surveying people that are buying in the stores today to get an understanding of what they like and what they don't like and we'll react accordingly. Great. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Please proceed with your question. Thank you and good afternoon. My question is pretty simple. Could you give us any color on what you're seeing from a mix perspective as it relates to good, better, best? Are you seeing customers trade down at all or trade from one category to another? Thank you. At the end of the Q1, our best category continued to be our best performing category. The comps on our best SKUs are better than our good and are better than our better. So we haven't seen the trade down and so far even during the drive through, we really as we've gone to a curbside model, we haven't seen customers trading down to just buying opening price point or things of that nature yet. We'll see as thing goes, but the value of our best products is so significant and the looks of our best products are so great that we still think when a customer is going to take on this type of project, I still think they're going to lean towards the better stuff. Our final question comes from the line of Greg Melsch with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question. Hi, thanks for letting me back on for the question. I'd love to hear if there's anything in the CARES Act that you guys are able to take advantage of and or that you could help some of your pro customers in particular use as they try to manage their business through this tough time? Thanks. Hey, Greg, this is Trevor. So there is, there's 3 main pieces of the CARES Act that are going to help us and it's going to be in the tens of 1,000,000 of dollars. The biggest one for us is most of the CapEx we spend on our stores, the IRS makes us depreciate that over 39.5 years. They've changed that to where we get to take an immediate deduction for that. That's going to be in the tens of 1,000,000 alone. The government has also allowed companies to not play the to defer the payment of the 6.2% social security taxes, the employer portion of that. That's probably about $10,000,000 for us that we will then pay back in 2021 2022. And then there's also components of the CARES Act that relate to employee credits for people that were negatively impacted by COVID-nineteen. So if we had to make someone stay home or someone in Brazil, we'll get several million for that we think as well. We've also analyzed there's lots of opportunities to borrow the banks and as you know the banks and the government are still figuring that out. We've analyzed all of those as well. As we said in the prepared comments, we don't think we really need to borrow anymore and we don't think we would use the government funds. We have access to capital markets. The banks would love to lend to us, credit CLOs and those folks would love to lend to us. So we've analyzed that too, but I don't think we would go down that path either. One other thing I think just based on some of these questions at least and Tom answered this that I thought was interesting that Luke talks about the demand is we've seen our sample sales go through the roof and we already had a strong sample process already. And so that also gives us a bit of an indication that customers are looking and they're wanting to see things. And through our CRM tools, we have the capabilities to follow-up with those customers. And so as we open our doors, as Tom said, we're going to open a lot of doors this Friday. We'll hopefully have 70% of the doors open in the month of May. And then June, all of our stores will be opened in a different environment. We're going to be aggressive in following up with those. And one last thing just on the pro piece, I talked to a couple of pros as well. And what they had said before is they had as much backlog as they wanted in the past. And now they just they saw the backlog, it's just not as much as it was. And so I thought those were some interesting components. Our pros are still busy. They just need to be able to get back into our stores. And when the consumers feel more comfortable with it, I think they still have a backlog to work. This concludes our Q and A session. I'd like to hand the call back to Tom Taylor for closing remarks. Well, thanks. First, I'd like to thank everyone for their interest in our company, and we appreciate everyone joining our call. I also know there's a lot of associates in the store support center and in our stores that are listening to the call and I'd like to thank them for all of their hard work and for our associates in our stores for putting safety first and adhering to our safety protocols. It's a tough time to talk about business with all of the human tragedy that's come about because of COVID-nineteen pandemic. And the priorities of the country and the world have to be to stop the spread and to find a cure. That's the most important priority. But when it comes to Floor and Decor, it's we ended 2019, as we said in our script, with record sales, record profit, highest liquidity levels ever, highest service scores ever and an incredible culture intact within our store support center and within our stores. And we've tried to be thoughtful in the way that we think about this. And we do see a path forward to restoring growth again. We like I said earlier, we believe that 70% of our stores will be opened during the month of May. We do believe that in 2021, we will get back to 20% unit growth. And we're fortunate because of the cuts that were made. We were thoughtful and our store support center associates are still there and our full time associates are still there and we're able to ramp them back quickly. So we're poised to come out on the other side of this pandemic in a really strong position and should have a great ability to take share. So again, thanks everyone for joining the call and we look forward to updating you in the next quarter. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.