Good morning, and welcome to the Fiscal 2022 Third Quarter Conference Call for Leslie's, Inc. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, management will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you should require any operator assistance during the call, please press star 0 on telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today on the company's website. I will now turn the call over to Caitlin Churchill with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. I would like to remind everyone that comments made today may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. These statements speak as of today and will not be updated in the future if circumstances change. Please review the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's earnings press release and recent filings with the SEC. During the call today, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's earnings press release, which was furnished to the SEC today and posted to the investor relations section of Leslie's website at ir.lesliespool.com. On the call today from Leslie's, Inc. is Mike Egeck, Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Weddell, Chief Financial Officer.
With that, I will turn the call over to Mike Egeck. Mike?
Thanks, Caitlin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us, and please note that we have posted a deck on the Leslie's IR site to supplement our discussion. I'm going to discuss three things today. Number one, the overview of our Q3 results and underlying performance drivers. Number two, the execution challenges in one of our distribution centers that was the primary driver of our Q3 sales and margin shortfall and the steps we have taken to correct the issue. Number three, supply chain challenges and increased industry promotions, which also impacted results for the quarter. After that, Steve will review in detail our financial results and change in full-year guidance. Our Q3 performance continued our streak of record results, but it fell short of our internal expectations.
Our organization and leadership team fully understand that this outcome is not acceptable and that we missed a significant opportunity to serve more customers in the quarter. There is a heightened sense of urgency and accountability across our organization, and we are hyper-focused on the actions necessary to rapidly and sustainably improve our execution. Despite our disappointment in underperforming our expectations, our year-over-year performance illustrates our continued market share growth, driven by our competitive advantages in serving the aftermarket pool industry. Sales for the quarter increased 13% to $674 million, with broad-based strength across our three consumer groups. Residential pool grew 7% for the quarter, Pro pool grew 17%, and residential hot tub grew 94%. Comp sales increased 7% for the quarter, and the two-year stack comp for the quarter was 27%.
Page 15 of the supplemental deck utilizes third-party credit card data to compare our year-to-date sales performance by quarter versus our competition. As you can see from the chart, we continue to gain share. Gross profit for the quarter was a record $304 million. However, margin rate decreased 250 basis points, driven by business mix, product margin headwinds, and DC. expense. Adjusted EBITDA was a record $183 million for the quarter. Moving to the industry backdrop, the pool and hot tub industry continued to benefit from strong consumer demand in the quarter, and the secular trends driving that demand remain intact. First, consumers investing in their homes and backyards. Second, the desire for a healthy outdoor lifestyle. Third, migration to the Sun Belt. Fourth, a heightened sense of safety and sanitization. Finally, hybrid and work-from-home schedules.
With regard to inflation, product cost inflation was approximately 8% in the quarter. For Q4, we are now planning product cost inflation to be in the high single digits, and we will continue to manage our suggested retail prices to offset the increased costs. Now, I would ask you please turn to page 7 of the supplemental deck. Given the noise in our results this quarter, we've included a bridge between our third quarter expectations and our actual performance to help explain the moving parts. As you can see, a significant driver of the sales and margin miss was the result of challenges at our New Jersey DC. We operate six distribution centers in total, and the New Jersey DC. fulfills store and digital demand for our Northeast region.
The New Jersey DC. shipped about 30% fewer units than planned in the third quarter, which resulted in significant store out of stocks throughout the Northeast and also impacted our ability to serve digital demand in the region. A confluence of factors contributed to the facility's underperformance. First, the Northeast experienced wet and cold weather through April and May, which resulted in a late start to the pool season and concentrated demand into June at an unprecedented level. Concurrently, supply chain disruptions moderated, which resulted in unforeseen levels of vendor shipments and DC. receiving. Quite simply, we didn't have the staffing and plan in place to support this combination of factors.
As a result of this concentrated demand and unprecedented volume of receipts, we faced operating challenges that significantly impacted our ability to serve customers. As you can see, relative to our expectations, the challenges in our New Jersey DC. impacted sales by $35 million and margin by a total of $21 million in the quarter. We reacted quickly to the situation by increasing temporary headcount and adding work shifts. By the second week of July, the facility was back shipping to plan, but it was operating with twice the headcount of the prior year. Increasing headcount in the facility that quickly is highly inefficient. As a result, the facility both underperformed and added cost. The additional expense was approximately $3 million in Q3, and we have planned an additional $7 million for Q4.
We are taking action to ensure that we can manage through potential issues like this in the future. Prior to the start of the 2023 pool season, we plan to implement a seven-day-a-week, two-shift operating model for all of our DCs and add additional 3PL partners in specific trading areas, including the Northeast. This will ensure that we have the additional capacity to navigate potential headwinds like this in the future. Outside the impact of the DC, the balance of the business outperformed our internal sales expectations by approximately $14 million. Two other points to note on the bridges on page 7. First, decreases in product margin rate impacted margin by $8 million in the quarter. The decrease consisted primarily of two factors. Supply shortages from planned vendor receipts in season that required higher cost substitutes to serve consumer demand, and an increase in industry promotions.
Second, the strong sales performance of our lower-margin Pro and hot tub businesses resulted in an unfavorable mix that drove an $8 million reduction in gross margin for the quarter. This mix headwind is not new, but in the past, we've been able to counter it with margin growth in each of our businesses. The current macroeconomic and operating environment is challenging, and while we would certainly prefer a more favorable backdrop, our historical performance during challenging times gives us confidence in our future performance. As you can see summarized on page 14 in the deck, over the last two decades, Leslie's has been successful in profitably growing sales in periods of rising interest rates, inflation, housing industry slowdowns, GDP contraction, declines in consumer spending, and reduced rates of new pool builds.
With the addition of Leslie's Connect, the focus on our six strategic growth initiatives and our investments in talents and capabilities, we believe we are better equipped today to grow profitably in challenging macroeconomic conditions than at any other time in our history. Now let's review the performance of our six strategic growth initiatives in the quarter. The year-to-date contribution of each initiative is also summarized on page 9 of the supplemental deck. First, our consumer file. Total target file growth was -1.7% a quarter. The comparison to last year is distorted by outsized file growth in Q3 2021, driven by the pervasive media coverage of the chlorine shortage. Adjusted for that event, file growth was 5.5%. The unadjusted two-year stack was 14% for the quarter. Next, we continue to deepen our relationship with our consumers.
Our Pool Perks loyalty file grew 1% for the quarter and now has 18.7% more members year- over- year. The program's key benefits, the 5% reward earn rate and free shipping, continue to resonate with our consumers. Average revenue per consumer grew 13.7% in the quarter. The growth in average revenue per consumer exceeded the impact of inflation and reflects our growing wallet share. Third, our Pro initiatives are driving strong results. During the quarter, we finished converting 29 residential stores to our Pro format and building five new Pro stores. We are now operating 79 total Pro stores. Our Pro affiliate program continues to scale. We now have over 2,600 agreements in place, and our Pro affiliate partner sales grew 38% in the quarter.
The new and converted Pro locations, our expanding Pro affiliate program, and our dedicated Leslie's Pro e-commerce site helped grow Pro pool 17% in the quarter. Moving to M&A. In the quarter, we closed on the acquisition of Spring Dance, which operates four residential hot tub locations in the Greater Philadelphia area. Shortly after the end of the quarter, we also closed on the acquisition of Texsun, which operates six retail pool locations in the Greater Houston area. We continue to see a wealth of attractive acquisition opportunities in the industry, and we have entered into two additional LOIs that we expect to close by the end of our fiscal year. With regard to our white space initiative, year to date, we have opened a total of 14 new store locations, and we continue to successfully address underserved markets with targeted digital marketing.
Our current store count, including the recent acquired Texsun locations, is 987. Finally, AccuBlue Home. We are scheduled to receive just over 2,000 units of the version 2.0 devices this year. These devices will be used primarily for incremental refinement of our app interface and additional consumer testing. We are not planning for any significant sales from this initiative in 2022. Now I'll turn it over to Steve to share more detail on our Q3 financial results and revised fiscal 2022 guidance.
Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. As Mike discussed, our third quarter performance was impacted by difficult year-over-year comparisons, as well as discrete execution challenges within our distribution network, which are now behind us. Despite these challenges, demand for our core non-discretionary product remains solid, and we are focused on delivering against our updated outlook for the year. Before I discuss our outlook, I will review our third quarter and year-to-date fiscal 2022 performance. For the third quarter, we reported record sales of $673.6 million, an increase of 12.9% or $77.1 million when compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2021. Our comparable sales increased 7.4% or $44.6 million.
This increase is on top of our calendar-adjusted comparable sales growth of 19.4% in the third quarter of fiscal 2021 and represents comparable sales growth on a two-year stack basis of 26.9%. Our non-comparable sales increased by $32.5 million, driven by four completed acquisitions and 21 new store openings in the last year. We continued to see broad-based strength across our three consumer groups in the quarter as we generated comparable sales growth of 6% for residential pool, 17% for Pro pool, and 10% for residential hot tub. On a two-year stack basis, we generated comparable sales growth on a calendar adjusted basis of 21% for residential pool, 78% for Pro pool, and 33% for residential hot tub.
Weather for the full quarter was neutral to slightly positive, but the cadence of the start to the season impacted our performance in the Northeast. Gross profit increased 7.0% or $19.9 million when compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2021, and gross margin rate decreased by 250 basis points to 45.1% from 47.6% in the prior year. During the quarter, there were three main headwinds to gross margin rate: continued impact from business mix, lower product margins related to promotions and product costs, and incremental distribution expenses. First, as we've noted in prior quarters, the impact of business mix is primarily driven by faster growth in our Pro pool and residential hot tub businesses, which operate at lower gross margins.
In the third quarter, business mix accounted for 115 basis points of the decline in gross margin. Second, a higher promotional cadence in our residential pool business and higher product costs associated with supply chain disruptions accounted for an additional 115 basis points of the decline in gross margin. We believe the promotional cadence in the third quarter represents a more normalized level of promotions when compared to the prior year. Also, strategic efforts to procure product to offset supply shortages from existing vendors in season led to higher than expected product costs, and we expect this to continue through the end of the fiscal year. Third, during the current quarter, we incurred additional distribution expenses, mainly related to higher headcount and compensation costs. The additional cost negatively impacted gross margin by 45 basis points.
Total distribution costs increased by $5 million when compared to the prior year period, and we estimate the incremental expense due to the issues at our New Jersey distribution center totaled approximately $3 million during the quarter. We will continue to incur additional costs through the remainder of the fiscal year, but we are pleased that the New Jersey distribution center is now shipping to plan. As we've noted in prior quarters, occupancy leverage during the quarter favorably impacted gross margin. In the current quarter, occupancy leverage improved gross margin by 25 basis points. To summarize, the two key changes in margin drivers during the current quarter when compared to our recent performance and our internal expectations were the change in product margins and higher distribution expenses. Now I'll turn to SG&A.
SG&A increased 12.1% or $14.2 million when compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2021, and decreased as a percentage of sales by 15 basis points. While we continued to invest in information technology and merchandising systems to support our growth, we were very disciplined with expense management considering our execution challenges and the heightened inflationary environment during the quarter. We estimate inflation impacted SG&A by approximately $10 million and primarily related to payroll and digital marketing spend. The current year quarter also has an additional $4 million of non-comparable SG&A associated with acquired businesses. We generated record Adjusted EBITDA of $182.9 million, compared to $179.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2021.
Adjusted net income increased to $125.7 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to net income of $124.4 million in the prior year period. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.68 in the third quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to $0.64 in the prior year period. Now I'll turn to year-to-date results. Following are a few highlights. For the first nine months of fiscal 2022, we reported sales of $1.1 billion, an increase of 16.3% or $152.5 million when compared to the prior year period. Our comparable sales increased 10.7% or $100 million.
This increase is on top of our calendar-adjusted comparable sales growth of 23.4% in the first nine months of fiscal 2021, and represents comparable sales growth on a two-year stack basis of 34.1%. Non-comparable sales increased $52.5 million. Gross profit increased 12.1% or $49.5 million when compared to the prior year period, and gross margin rate decreased by 160 basis points to 42.0% from 43.6% in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA improved by $4.1 million to $192.7 million from $188.6 million in the prior year period.
Adjusted net income was $112.0 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2022 compared to adjusted net income of $111.0 million in the prior year period. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.60 in the first nine months of fiscal 2022, and $0.59 in the prior year period. Moving to the balance sheet. We finished the third quarter of fiscal 2022 with cash and cash equivalents of $193 million, compared to $307 million at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2021. The reduction in cash and cash equivalents was primarily due to share repurchases, investments in inventory, and higher M&A activity.
On inventory, we ended the third quarter of fiscal 2022 with $361 million, up $137 million or 61% compared to $224 million at the end of the prior year quarter. The increase in inventory is primarily related to equipment and chemicals. Both product categories are non-discretionary in nature and are not subject to technology or fashion risk. We have seen some recent improvements in supply chain availability as we received a significant amount of back-ordered product during the third quarter. However, we would still characterize the current environment as mixed. As a result, we view our current inventory position as appropriate given the uncertainty of supply through the balance of the year and into fiscal 2023.
On debt, at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2022, we had $800 million outstanding on our secured term loan facility, compared to $808 million at the end of the prior year period. The applicable rate on our term loan during the quarter was LIBOR plus 250 basis points. Our effective interest rate was 3.02%, and the facility matures in March of 2028. Funded debt less cash totaled $607 million at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2022. With regard to our outlook, today, we are revising our full-year fiscal 2022 outlook, the details of which are included in our earnings press release.
As we only have one more quarter left in the fiscal year, I will be discussing each metric in the context of our implied fourth quarter outlook. Fiscal fourth quarter sales growth will be in the range of 13%-18%, with comparable sales growth of 6%-9%. Changes to our outlook since May include two items. First, we lowered fourth quarter performance expectations by $21 million to reflect performance more in line with third quarter trends. In the third quarter, we generated comparable sales growth of 27% on a two-year stack basis, and our outlook reflects a range of 22%-25% for the fourth quarter. We don't currently see a catalyst to give us comfort to accelerate our comparable sales growth in the fourth quarter at a rate faster than the third quarter given the uncertain macro environment.
Second, we increased sales by $10 million related to completed M&A transactions. Our fourth quarter gross margin outlook includes a range of 42.8%-44.2%, compared to 46.0% in the prior year period. At the midpoint, our gross margin expectations assume a decrease of 250 basis points, which is consistent with our results in the third quarter. Our outlook includes continued margin headwinds related to business mix, product margins, and additional distribution center costs. Our outlook also factors in continued occupancy leverage in the fourth quarter. We expect fourth quarter Adjusted EBITDA to be $94 million-$104 million, and we expect fourth quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share to be $0.30-$0.36. Our outlook for the fourth quarter includes interest expense of $9 million.
This is approximately $2 million higher than the third quarter, and the increase reflects current rates on our floating rate debt. Finally, our diluted weighted average shares outstanding does not assume any incremental share repurchases. It is important to note that we are encouraged with our preliminary July performance, which is in line with our outlook. On capital allocation, we have a balanced and disciplined approach, and our priorities remain as follows. Our first priority is capital structure. Our second priority is to invest in growth through both capital expenditures and M&A. In the first nine months of fiscal 2022, we deployed $41 million towards acquisitions, and we invested $26 million in capital expenditures. Over the last year, we've accelerated the pace of M&A, and our pipeline of M&A opportunities continues to grow. Our final priority is to return excess cash to shareholders.
In the first nine months of fiscal 2022, we repurchased shares totaling $152 million, and we have $148 million remaining under our existing share repurchase authorization. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to repurchase shares based on investment opportunities to drive growth, our financial position, and market conditions. With that, I'll hand it back over to you, Mike. Thank you.
Thanks, Steve. I wanna wrap up by saying that we acknowledge our third quarter results reflect executional challenges that we should have been able to manage better. For our organization leadership team, that will never be acceptable. With that being said, we want to communicate three important points. The first is that we understand what happened with our New Jersey DC. and we have taken the actions to fix it. We have also implemented plans to improve the entirety of our supply chain and its ability to support our future growth. The second is that our year-over-year results and market share gains are evidence that the fundamental drivers of the pool industry, the durable competitive advantages of the Leslie's operating model, and the effectiveness of our strategic growth initiatives remain intact.
The third is that we have a long and successful history of profitable growth in the face of all kinds of macroeconomic headwinds, and that we are better equipped today than we have ever been to continue that success and win in the market. With that, I'll hand it back to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. So that we may address questions for as many participants as possible, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Peter Benedict with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Oh, hey, guys, thanks for taking the questions. First, just around the increased promotional activity, Steve, I think you mentioned, or Mike, that you think it's back to kind of normalized levels. How does that make you think about the stickiness of pricing that has lifted sales, you know, in the industry here over the last couple of years? Then the related kind of follow-up is curious about the trichlor inventory levels across the industry. We're seeing more promos in that area, suggests that those levels are healthy, at least relative to demand. Just help us understand your thoughts around the future of promotions, the stickiness of price, and then a little color on trichlor. Thank you.
Yeah, Peter, thanks for the question. Let me kind of walk through how Q3 worked. It's been pretty well documented. I think it was a cold and wet start to the season, particularly in two key markets, Northeast and the West Coast. This was going on at the same time that the industry was comping the chlorine shortage news from the prior year and a relatively strong Q3 for the industry. At the same time, macro pressures intensified for the consumer, and what we saw was some increased price sensitivity. You've got retailers coming off of a cold start to the season, trying to comp the chlorine spike from the prior year. They see a more price sensitive customer. Yeah, we saw some more promoting in the industry in which we participated.
You know, we have a price position in the marketplace, and we want to hold that, price positioning. I think it's important too, to make the distinction between promotions, and the way we look at this is promotions are a measure and our way to get our share of our industry traffic. It's actually not related to inventory. Promotions are not distressed inventory markdowns. To your question on trichlor. You know, trichlor is in much, much better supply this year than it was the prior year. It's at elevated costs for us and for everyone else. But promotions do tend to focus on chemicals in the industry because they have, broad use across the industry and because they are, I would say, the most effective, traffic driver for us and for the industry.
That being said, I would characterize the level of increased promotion, which across the entirety of our revenue is 120 basis points, is more normalized versus the last Q3, where there was a lot of shortages of product in chemicals particularly, and very, very little discounting.
That's helpful. I guess my follow-up then, Mike, would be, as you think about next year, and the price, just the inflation levels for trichlor and that type of thing. You've said in the past, you think that those levels are unlikely to come back down. Are you rethinking that here? How should we think about trichlor inflation, and just inflation more broadly across the product portfolio for the next 12 months? Thank you.
Yeah, I'll speak to trichlor specifically. We still think there's a lot of cost pressure on the trichlor across the manufacturing base, particularly in North America. We don't see what has been established as the new retail prices coming down, but we would expect a more normalized promotional rate, which is what we believe we saw in Q3. I'll make the point, too, that Q3 is traditionally the most promotional quarter for the industry, really Memorial Day through the Fourth of July. As Steve mentioned, in the month of July, we've got our preliminary results in, that promotional level has come down. Next year, I would expect Q3 to be somewhat similar. I don't think we're gonna see any significant decrease in trichlor costing. Based on that, I think the industry pricing will hold.
Got it. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Morning.
Steve, you mentioned that higher product costs were gonna impact the rest of the year. I think you also said uncertain supply was gonna be a factor. Can you just walk us through those again, and maybe when do you think you're gonna be clear of those issues?
Sure. Happy to. Thanks, Ryan. Yeah, and again, part of the commentary was, you know, very mixed environment. As we talked about some of the pressures in the Northeast and our DC, we talked about elevated receipts. You know, when you look year-over-year from an inventory perspective, most of the inventory growth is in trichlor as well as equipment, but not all equipment, some equipment. When you think about the challenges we had kind of in season, making sure we stayed replenished across our network, it really related to kinda non-trichlor chemicals. In some cases, those are DSD, you know, going straight to stores. Other cases working through our own distribution network as well.
When you have shortages and a vendor does not provide product, we are gonna serve our customers, even if that product we procure comes from different sources, and not gonna be through our traditional contracts, or at traditional pricing. We're gonna pay a premium to get those products into our stores on an expedited basis from vendors who we do not necessarily consolidate all of our spend with. We really saw that happen kind of post Memorial Day. If you look at the quarter, when we talked about that 115 basis points of product margin pressure, I characterize it as most related to our promotions, but some product cost feels like in Q4, that as Mike just talked about, promotions feel like they've moderated.
Product costs will stay a little elevated as we stay in stock through the rest of the year. When you think about longer term and you're kind of working into next year, and again, not providing guidance today, but I do think that you know, promotional environment, if you know were normalized at current levels should moderate, and the inventory product costing we should work through over the next couple of quarters. As we prepare for next season, we will look at opportunities to ensure that we don't have similar issues as we did this year with outages.
Got it. That's helpful. Okay. My second question is just on the Q4 guide, just so I understand it. It sounds like you're extrapolating what you saw in Q3. Sounds like it might be a little conservative. We have an uncertain macro. You saw July. That sounds pretty decent. You said promotions are not getting worse. Is the right read here that underlying industry demand is not slowing down dramatically? You know, the industry outlook is still pretty good, and you think that promotions, the worst of that's behind you.
Yeah, Ryan, I'll take that one. I do think you described it correctly. We were pleased to see promotions stabilize in July. When you look at industry demand, you know, the issue we had with our DC cost us about 700 basis points of comp in a residential business. Instead of running a 6% comp, we would have run a 13% comp. Industry demand, we think, is very much alive and stable. The change we really saw in Q3 was, as I described before, given the slow start to the season and comping the chlorine shortage and media coverage from last year and a consumer that blinked a little, there was some price sensitivity, and the industry reacted with some promotions. You know, it's not typically a promotional driven industry. We don't expect it to become one, and we think we saw that recovery in July.
Perfect. Thanks.
Our next question is from the line of Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking our question. I wanted to ask quickly about some of the incremental costs that you discussed, particularly around the distribution center issues. I know some are persisting into fourth quarter. Is that mostly headcount related? Given that the situation seemed to be somewhat of a backup with regards to the supply chain, is that headcount being considered more temporary, or is this now in the base?
Yeah, good question, Kate McShane, and good morning. I think the right way to think about it is for the quarter and for Q3 as well as for Q4, it is primarily payroll headcount related as we have more individuals to get the capacity that we need to serve both stores as well as digital demand. As we get into next year, Mike Egeck talked about you know setting up a different approach particularly in a market like the Northeast, where we need you know seven days a week, double shifts, third parties to kind of assist with the volume. I would characterize the spend as being reallocated most likely as we go forward.
Again, if that spend stays at current levels with the incremental demand that we did not serve this year, it isn't necessarily gonna be a headwind from a margin rate perspective. I think from a dollar perspective, again, too early to say exactly, but will be higher than previously expected, going into the quarter. It will be good spend to serve incremental demand.
Okay. Thank you. My second question is, can you talk to ticket versus traffic during the quarter in terms of how it drove the comp?
Yeah, Kate, I'll answer that one. Good morning. If you look just at our comp residential business, transactions were down just over 1%, about 1.3. Average order value, the ticket was up about 9%. Put those together, and you get to our 7% comp. You know, and I'll note again, the DC cost is about 700 basis points of comp there. That was a big impact. Across the total business, the transaction count was +3% in the quarter, and the average order value was 10%. Those two combined get us to our 13% sales growth.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Liz Suzuki with Bank of America. Please proceed with your questions.
Great. Thank you. I'm just curious how much market share you think you could have gained if you hadn't had the issues with the Northeast DC, and then what percentage of your stores does that DC serve?
Yeah, that, you know, the Northeast is an outsized portion of our business in Q3 because it's a very concentrated season in the best of years. This year it was more so with the slow start. I think the way to characterize it is, you know, $35 million, about 700 basis points of comp on our residential business would have increased the share we had, as we show on page 15, by that amount.
Great. Thank you. I'm just curious, you know, Leslie's has obviously been around for a while, company was founded in the '60s, so this wasn't the first time you've had a cold spring. Why do you think the Northeast and DC was caught off guard by this increase in demand as the weather warmed up?
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, that's a great question. It's a question that we've asked ourselves a lot internally. You know, the season got a late start. We were well positioned with inventory in the stores to start the season. The start to Memorial Day weekend was, I'm gonna say, okay, a little more promotional than normal, but okay. The first week of shipping, replenishment shipping following Memorial Day weekend, the DC had some issues. That's not unusual for a DC in ours. We have DCs have bad weeks. They tend to get caught up. In this case, we saw the reverse, and the performance deteriorated all the way through June. You know, it's a combination of a very tough staffing environment.
When you add people and shifts quickly to the situation to rectify it, which we did, you run into a lot of problems and challenges in getting the right supervisory talent to manage those additional shifts. It was just a highly inefficient process. To be clear, we should have managed it better, and we should have seen it coming. It's very disappointing internally for us not to have managed that better.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Matuszewski with Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.
Great. Hey, Mike. Hey, Steve. Thanks for taking my questions. First one on gross margin. You know, with the shortfall this quarter, can you just help us think about the low end and the high end of the implied gross margin forecast in guidance? I guess, you know, what's embedded in each of those beyond the impact of higher or lower sales? You know, what is your low end and high end imply in terms of maybe, you know, promotionality in the industry from here? Sounds like maybe it stabilized in July, but are you planning for any incremental promotions in Q4? Thanks.
Yeah. Good morning, Jonathan. I'll take the part on promos, and Steve, you can talk about the building blocks of the margin. We think promotions have settled down. We've got Labor Day weekend coming up. We expect it to be fairly normalized to next year. The second part of the product margin challenge, and Steve mentioned this earlier, is some unexpected short shipments from vendors on particularly specialty chemicals. That's a very active situation. We're managing it day-to-day. I'll note that it's completely different than last year. Last year, the shortages and supply challenges were focused on trichlor and equipment. Trichlor inventory is in good shape. Equipment inventory, for the most part, is in good shape.
Things like shock, liquid chlorine, dry acid, algaecides, you know, we got short shipped 30%-40% from some of our proven vendors on those products. To meet consumer demand, we've gone to the open market to purchase, and that has been, that's come at a much higher cost. That pressure, we see continuing into Q4 as part of the product margin. Promotions, we think will stabilize and become less of a factor.
Jonathan, with respect to the margin rate change in Q4, kind of midpoint implied 250 basis point decline, which is consistent with Q3. You know, again, I had made a comment that, you know, a little bit different mix as we think about how it will play out in Q4, a little more business mix impact in Q4, given some of the M&A and, you know, the strength of the hot tub business in Q4 relative to Q3.
When you think about what Mike just kind of walked through promotionally, feel like it's a little less impactful, but still higher than last year. Product margin related to product costs is really dependent on our ability to get the incremental product from existing vendors. Partially why we have the range we have is the uncertainty of you know when or if we get to replenish from some of those existing vendors or if we have to rely on our newfound partners or existing or new relationships to drive more product into the network.
That's cool. Then my follow-up question, just in terms of the customer mix, it looks like Pro percentage residential [inaudible]. You know, curious whether you're seeing any indications of homeowners looking to engage more in DIY maintenance of their pools as maybe they tighten their household expenditures. Are you hearing that from store associates, Pro partners, anything like that, presumably, you know, work to your advantage?
Yeah, Jonathan, I would say that in past macroeconomic slowdowns, there has been an uptick in DIY pool maintenance from residential consumers. I believe we would have seen that this quarter without the challenges associated with the New Jersey DC. On the pro side, we haven't really seen any slowdown in that business. You know, we're a much smaller player in that business to the total. So we've got lots of room to grow, and that business was all very positive. I think the only challenge we had there was similar to what Steve was mentioning. We did have some periodic shortages of supply trying to service the Pro business. Outside of that, we're very pleased with how the affiliate program is working and the pro initiative overall.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Carter with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Sorry, I was on mute. Just wanna make sure, and, 'cause I'm a little confused here. Early June, the commentary was adverse weather, which you alluded to in the late start. You then suggested that would have been a neutral to positive impact. To be clear, if I understand this correctly, the DC issue didn't allow you to fully capitalize on the favorability. Kind of to that end, would you have known that there were kind of issues with this DC if there wasn't a kind of a change in the end market demand that was that abrupt? Finally, I'll just ask kind of all in one, I appreciate your reviewing the remainder of the network, but how can you kind of assess this risk at other locations? Could there be any stepped up investment, SG&A, CapEx, whatever, next year to fix any other deficiencies? Thanks.
Yeah. Andrew, thanks for the question. You know, when we were out the first week of June, speaking to investors, like I'd said earlier, we'd come to Memorial Day weekend. It was slow, but not terrible. It was more promotional, but we had a lot of momentum in the business. The Northeast region, in particular, was outperforming at that time the rest of our store fleet. The situation with the DC started when they had trouble fulfilling the replenishment shipments into the stores they served that first week of June. Like I said before, and we've seen, it's not unusual for one of our DCs to have a poor week of shipping. So we were concerned, but not overly concerned.
The challenge was there wasn't a recovery from that, and the situation got worse and worse for several weeks. Caught us by surprise. Should not have caught us by surprise. Should have been able to manage through it better. As you can see in the results, it was a big hit to the quarter. In regards to the DCs, we've grown in the last three years, 60%+. We've invested in our DCs. We'll need to continue to invest in our DCs. The situation with New Jersey has put us on high alert from a learnings perspective in evaluating the balance of our network. That's for sure.
Yeah. Andrew, this is Steve.
Thanks. Oh.
I think the other thing to think about in the Northeast, it does have the most acute change even with a normalized cadence as you go from kind of Q2 to Q3, you know, really kind of peaking into end of May, early June from a volume perspective. You don't have the same acute volume changes at other facilities. But as Mike said, we've certainly seen those facilities operate well, and they may have a day or two or a week where there's challenges, but kind of pick themselves back up and continue operating as normal. As Mike said, you know, we've talked a lot about investments in distribution and supply chain.
It's part of what we've been talking about all year from an investments perspective as well. Given the pace of growth and the fact that we continue to have kind of six full line distribution centers across our network, even with the elevated sales volume, you know, it is an opportunity for us to revisit efficiencies and opportunities to supplement in season.
Thanks. I'll pass it on.
Our next question is from the line of Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just want to get clarity on the sales outlook for the fourth quarter. I believe you said you've reduced your prior outlook by $21 million, but at the same time, it sounds like the DC issue is now resolved. You did comment on macroeconomic challenges, which obviously we're aware of, but at the same time, you've talked in the past about 80% of the business being non-discretionary. Just help me understand a little bit better about that reduced sales outlook. Is there something we should be concerned about going forward?
Yeah, good question.
Well, I think we.
Go ahead, Mike.
Go ahead.
All right. Good morning, Keith. From an outlook perspective, we're looking at a basic growth of 13%-18% comp of kind of 6%-9%. If you think about Q3 where we were at as 7%, you know, basically midpoint of that outlook is consistent with Q3. As you pointed out, DC is behind us in the Northeast and kind of shipping to plan, which is good. Again, given the macroeconomic uncertainty, doesn't feel like, you know, now's the right time to basically accelerate the pace of expectations in Q4. We're pleased with July as we talked about, but I think at this point, you know, feel comfortable with our current outlook, which overall for the year is 15%-17% top line growth, and comp of, you know, call it 9%-11%.
Okay. If I just look at the Q4 gross margin, I think you also said at the midpoint you're down 250, so it's down, you know, similar amount as Q3, but at the same time, the promos are abating. Are you just trying to give yourself some cover here, on the promos and then this mix issue with the elevated product cost? Because it seems like the gross margins sequentially should have less pressure.
Yeah, it's different pressure. Talked about, you know, likely more business mix headwind in Q4, promotions less headwind and product costs more headwind is probably the right way to think about it. You know, feels like consistent with last quarter is the right place to be at the midpoint.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please state your question.
Great. Hey, guys. This is Michael Kessler on for Simeon. Thanks for taking our questions. First, I was hoping you could maybe help distinguish a bit more, I guess, between the challenges that you had at the New Jersey DC, which had weather issues, the supply chain moderating at the same time coming in relative, I guess, to other regions. Were there also shipment issues from vendors, like, across the country, more widespread? And then relatedly, can you speak to just the Northeast region sales performance relative to the rest of the country and also versus your plan? Thanks.
Yeah, sure. The combination of a late start to the season combined with a really significant peak in receiving from vendors impacted all of the DCs. It wasn't expected, but we were able to manage through it in all but the New Jersey DC. There was a similar pressures, I would say, across our network, amplified in New Jersey with, as Steve has explained, you know, a very strong peak in that region in terms of replenishment. Season happens very quickly there, and with a slow start, it concentrated demand.
At the same time we had seems like most of the vendors caught up at the same time in the supply chain, and we took on those receipts, but it made for a very crowded and a problematic challenge, particularly in the New Jersey DC. The Northeast region, we don't really break out comps and performance and size by region, but it was the only region in our network of seven regions that had a negative comp. That was very specifically the impact of the DC that serves that region.
Got it. Okay, that's helpful. A follow-up, just on margins and starting to turn the page a little bit to next year, thinking about normalized margins for the business. There's some moving pieces now with maybe potentially some higher costs in DCs. You have the mix shift as the DIY continues to grow. Maybe promotions have to be annualized at a lower rate. Can you talk about, you know, I guess, where you see that all normalizing and any, I guess, you know, on the other side, offsets in a, from a tailwind standpoint, just as we're trying to kind of calibrate where, margins are going off of this year then relative to where you were at pre-COVID?
Yeah. Good question.
Yeah.
I'll take this, Mike.
Yeah, go ahead.
You know, we're not providing guidance for 2023 today, and we're not changing our long-term growth algorithm either. When you think about and step back, you know, longer term, the aftermarket pool industry fundamentals remain intact. When you think about our algorithm and how we've talked about it, we have business mix headwind. It's been there since we went public. It'll continue to be as we you know develop relationships with new consumers and new channels. We generally derive product margins higher in each of our businesses. We do that through our direct vendor relationships, which is unique in the industry relative to most of the competition. Our proprietary brand strategies. We've talked about our ability to continue to expand in that area.
Our vertical integration around distribution and manufacturing. Those should provide efficiencies and leverage across the business, kind of year in, o ver the long term. Then again, expect continued occupancy leverage. Those are kind of the core drivers that continue to we think are gonna continue to drive gross margin in the future. I think we do have some noise over the next few quarters and we look forward to providing guidance as we get through Q4.
Yeah. The only thing I would add is with a stabilized supply situation, and it's getting better, though as Steve described it's still mixed, and a stabilized promotion situation, which will be reset more normalized, and I think we've seen that happen in the fourth quarter, we can manage margins. We can manage margins to our long-term growth algorithm. We got surprised by some factors in this quarter, and that really led to the product margin degradation that you saw.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Garik Shmois with Loop Capital. Please proceed with your questions.
Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just wondering how you're viewing some of your growth initiatives, the pace of the Pro conversion acquisitions, new store openings, just given the more uncertain macro.
Yeah. Garik, I would say we feel very good about the Pro initiative. Like I said, comp 17% for the quarter, would have been higher without some periodic shortages of product, particularly larger sizes of shock. Feeling very confident there. On the M&A side, continue to see lots of opportunities. You know, we're gonna look to accelerate that. The residential stores that we are opening, new stores, are performing well, as is our marketing, digital marketing efforts to underserved areas. We had talked about the file growth starting to moderate. You saw that this quarter. Also point out, though, that just this year was a very unusual year between the Texas freeze, which impacted the entire industry, and the chlorine media coverage of the chlorine shortage last year.
Two really extraordinary events that put a lot of noise in the year with regard to consumer acquisition. If you look at our two-year stacks in the quarter +14%, we feel good about that, and +16% for the year. Bumpy ride on the consumer file growth, but believe with those events behind us, we'll get back to a steady growth in the file at a lower level. You know, we've said 100-300 basis points. I think that's where you'll see us next year.
Got it. Just wanted to follow up one more time on the New Jersey DC. I think you mentioned you're shifting to a seven day a week, two shifted day model. Just kind of curious, you know, how does that compare to before and how universal is that model across your network?
Yeah. Well, that's the model we're gonna put in place across the network. You know, we had an acute problem with the New Jersey DC, but we were running all of our DCs right at max capacity for the season. Seven days a week with a large e-commerce business like we have, I'm gonna say is the norm. We're currently operating about 5.5-6 days a week. We had run second shifts in most of the DCs over the course of the season. However, it was not a seven days a week. The challenge here is really, you can add temporary DC staff, and you can train them up for a season.
What we learned this season is the challenge is really around supervision, and we're gonna make the investment in second shift and weekend shift supervision that we'll just put in place in the DCs year-round, and then they will really have their specific tasks during season.
Got it. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Our final question today comes from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group. Please proceed with your questions. This question is from the line of Dana Telsey. Your line is live for questions.
Hi. Hi, everyone. As you think about inventory levels, given what happened in the New Jersey DC, where should we be seeing inventory levels perhaps at the end of the fourth quarter? Then with the changes in product procurement that you mentioned, Mike, how much of that continues going forward, and how much of the New Jersey DC costs continue or are sticky and that's the way the business continues to operate? How much is permanent versus how much is variable? Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Dana. I'll take the first part of that on inventory. As we think about year-end, not gonna guide to specific numbers, but we expect inventory to remain elevated. Again, the two primary areas of increase year-over-year for Q3 were trichlor and equipment. On trichlor, the increase is relative to last year, which was more depressed, more difficult to come by, and so we're in a much better position from a trichlor perspective across our network, all stages, raw materials, produced goods in our DCs and in our stores. When you think of equipment, the equipment is where we've had a lot of the uncertainty around timing of supply receipt. It does feel like that area of the supply chain is moderating.
It is getting better. It has resulted in elevated levels. When you think about the nature of our inventory, it doesn't have the same level of obsolescence as many other retailers. This is good product. If the choice is to take inventory at a little bit higher level today, going into the end of the year and to start off next year in a better position, you know, versus try to run leaner, we will take the former in the current environment. It's something we expect to actively manage into year-end and through next year. Don't necessarily view these levels as permanent increases, but in the current environment, it's the appropriate level of inventory.
Yeah. Good morning, Dana. I apologize. I had some trouble hearing the second part of the question. I believe it was around how much of the DC, of the elevated expense in the DC would be permanent. You know, the way I would answer that is, the DCs will be more expensive to operate on a go-forward basis, but it'll also give us the increased capacity we need, and we should be able to gain leverage on the DC expense as it goes up just through our standard growth profile.
Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to management for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank all of you for joining us today. We appreciate the continued interest in Leslie's.
This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.