Good evening, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I'm Bobby Griffin, cover consumer hard lines and retail here at Raymond James. Today, we are privileged to have La-Z-Boy here at our conference. With us from the company, our CEO, Melinda Whittington, CFO, Taylor Luebke, and VP Investor Relations, Mark Becks. Today's format's going to be a fireside chat between us three up here. We're going to head to a breakout afterwards. If there's any Q&A or stuff there, we could talk at the breakout. First, before we get started, I just want to say, Melinda, Taylor, thank you for joining us. Thanks for your support. You guys are always very nice to attend here. We're very appreciative to have you.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks, Bobby.
You know, I wanted to kick us off. Let's talk, you know, first, congrats on some of the momentum you guys have delivered. You know, you had a very good quarter here a couple of weeks ago. Maybe for the new investors in the room and maybe some of the generalists here, could you give us a high-level overview of La-Z-Boy, the business units, kind of where you compete, and, you know, have some questions to dive in from that?
Sure, absolutely. Thanks for spending time with us today. La-Z-Boy Incorporated is a 98-year-old company as of this month. I have been with the company for seven years, first as its CFO, and now going on four years as CEO. Our history is as a branded manufacturer of highly comfortable, high-quality furniture, all revolving around the iconic recliner. Our recent years have been around expanding that pretty significantly. In the four years since I stepped into the role, we kicked off our Century Vision, which was around how are we going to build on the foundation of our now 98 years of a great foundation, but then have ourselves ready for the next 100 years. The biggest pivots around that really is we step back and look at strategically what are the greatest assets of our business. Our first one continues to be the La-Z-Boy brand name.
We have done a lot of research around that to know that that is still an asset that we can continue to drive further into the future. The second one is around our building presence in the D2C realm and moving from being just the wholesale manufacturer of furniture to a retailer as well. We are increasingly owning more and more of that entire integrated process. That is great for the consumer because we can own that and make that a comfortable process all the way around and learn more about the consumer to better serve their needs. It is also great for us financially. The industry overall has been challenged for the last several years. We grow because of what housing does, and that has been somewhat stalled.
We are driving growth even in that environment while building our foundation to do even better once the industry does come back in a stronger way.
Yeah. Before we dive into some of the industry trends, maybe let's talk about the Century Vision, the roadmap for 2027 and beyond, you know, kind of what are some of the key pillars of this Century Vision strategy? What are some of the goals that you're looking to build through this?
Sure. First, when we talk about really building the La-Z-Boy brand, we have invested in the last about four years for the first time ever in in-house consumer insights and really bringing in that how do we understand what the consumer wants and then make sure we meet that need. It's a space that there's a lot of opportunity in our industry, which is highly fragmented both for the retailer and for the manufacturing environment. We are the second biggest player in the industry. We are 90% U.S.-based in our consumer profile, and we're still a single-digit share. We have a lot of opportunity there. When we did the consumer research, we recognized that consumers broadly know us and have very positive feelings towards us from the standpoint of quality and strong emotions tied to our brand.
They don't recognize that we have something for them. That really set us off on the journey from our campaign, our Long Live the Lazy campaign, to our product innovation, to even how we shop to make sure that a broader group of consumers recognize that we have something for them. They trust us already, but how do we make sure they know that we have something for them? The next piece is really around expanding our retail presence. That is from leveraging our existing footprint, but also from building new stores. We're building at a pace of, on average, 10 a year. It will be more like 15 for this year. Additional stores and building that footprint for the longer term.
We sell La-Z-Boy product through our own company-owned furniture galleries, through independently owned furniture galleries, and through multi-branded retailers, key strategic partners. We are looking to actively buy back some of those independent furniture galleries where those opportunities afford themselves. Again, we can control that entire process for the consumer. Last but not least, underlying that is really the supply chain foundation to ensure that we can do customized furniture in a short time period based on our North America footprint to really delight the consumer.
Good. In doing all that, our goal is to grow 2X the market from a top-line sales standpoint as well as get margins to double-digit over the long term.
I am going to circle back to the double-digit. We are going to dive into that. Do not worry. First, let's maybe hit on the campaign as well as the product development because I think that is two things that have been very interesting as part of this journey here is kind of the new messaging and as well as where we are stretching the product a little bit.
Sure. As we did the study on where our product appeals, it's the confidently comfortable consumer. This is a psychographic behavior around consumers who are interested in investing in high-quality furniture that is going to meet a need for them from the comfort and sort of the usability of their furniture. They want it to look good, but not at the expense of the comfort side of things. They're going to invest a little bit more. Our consumer is generally an upper-middle-income consumer, and they're going to invest in the quality of that furniture. Once we really penetrated that, what we unlocked is the Long Live the Lazy campaign, which catches the attention of a broad set of demographics, both in age, gender, and a variety of behaviors, but really is around that type of a consumer that's interested.
They have a well-earned lazy moment, and they want that to be a great experience. We've had the campaign out now for about a year and a half and have been very pleased with the early reads. Again, our purchase cycle is seven years, so we believe on average for our industry. We believe we'll be able to leverage that campaign and keep it fresh for a long period of time. It is very ownable because it's got lazy in the name, and it is about an earned lazy where you deserve to treat yourself into this pampering kind of product. That carries into the product side. Our first opportunity was that we actually have a much broader product portfolio than many recognize. Long Live the Lazy campaign is around helping people understand that and getting the traffic in to understand what we already offer.
But then also backing that up with a more advanced product innovation pipeline. We're in the early stages there, but most recently, we have introduced some made-in-our-own factories in the United States and able to customize, but some on-trend sleeker lines. They feel as comfortable as the La-Z-Boy, but they don't look like a motion piece of furniture when you first look at them, which is very much on-trend. Part of what we're doing in understanding that consumer is making sure we're out not necessarily on the bleeding edge of innovation, but we certainly should be on-trend with our product offering, still staying true also you can still get the very traditional kind of, you know, your dad's La-Z-Boy, which many people are still seeking. At the same time, how do you stay on that motion and comfort and quality trend with some sleeker lines?
Maybe let's touch a little bit on the retail side of things, level of store growth, kind of where you see opportunities at. You know, it's the second pillar of the three-pillar strategy.
You want to take one?
Yeah. As Melinda had mentioned, our legacy and history is of manufacturing and wholesale. That is all we were for most of our 98 years up to, you know, call it a decade, 15 years ago. The company made a pivot. Where we sit today is we are about 50% direct-to-consumer, 50% wholesale. We like that for several reasons. One, very near and dear to my heart. We will get to that one in a second. One is we own the consumer experience from, call it from start to finish, from procurement to manufacture to distribution, in-home, in-store, and then after service. We get to delight them consistently across all of our locations. We also get to understand more about what him or her wants, which helps inform the flywheel of either messaging, in-store experience, product innovation. Love all that.
All that culminates with also a very financially attractive picture where we garner the full vertically integrated benefit of the wholesale through the retail sales as well as margins. We have made a big change in that transition. We continue to disproportionately grow our retail presence. We are doing that both through, as Melinda had mentioned, new store standups. This year, we will be about 15, give or take, permanent timing with a target of, again, 10 plus in the coming years to get to what we believe is a goal by fiscal 2027 of 400 stores, mostly company-owned, continuing to acquire back independent licensees, which we have averaged about, we will call it one DMA a quarter now for quite some time. Third, just continuing to improve our store productivity. You know, five years ago, we were in a $3 million-$4 million range per store productivity.
Now we're at five. We have some stores that are doing 40% plus, 50% design sales. We have some that are less. Just a ton of opportunity across the spectrum to continue to disproportionately grow retail.
That may be third pillar.
Probably doesn't get talked about as much, but you guys do have a pretty unique supply chain versus I would call the core furniture as maybe most investors think about it with the domestic-based supply chain. Talk a little about what Century Vision has for the supply chain aspect, where that is today, kind of where do you think it needs to go?
Sure. Again, today, our sales in really rough numbers are around about 90% U.S., about 5% Canada, and 5% rest of world. In order to years ago, when a lot of manufacturing went offshore, we made the decision to stay with the unique footprint of manufacturing final assembly in the U.S. to service that U.S. consumer. Importantly, what that gives us is the ability to customize with speed to the home. In four to six weeks, you can come into one of our stores. If you want something that week, what you see on our floors, you can buy, and we have that, and we'll get that into your home. You can customize, and we will have that into your home in well less than two months. It is important that we have that domestic footprint. That is key to our overall business.
About half of what we sell overall, about half of what we manufacture is custom. That is a very important piece of our business and on-trend to today's consumer that wants that personalization side of things. That has been our platform for an extended period and will continue to be. Our manufacturing footprint is primarily in Tennessee as our largest plant, and we are also in Arkansas and Missouri as our largest overall footprints. Importantly, that causes us to focus a lot on managing costs, but at the same time, we are focused very much on the agility of the supply chains to be able to meet the ever-changing consumer side of things as well. We do have, of course, you know, all production has some level of global footprint, and we continue to diversify suppliers and make sure that we have got a nice wide base.
Certainly, the last five to 10 years has taught us that on many levels. The majority of our raw materials as well are North America and U.S. source to be able to support that footprint.
I guess I'll go ahead. It's moving around a little, but given the news cycle, we'll go in gobbledy-terrif question here. I think you guys might be the first one to present your sense.
Great timing, right?
It's the late day one.
First time we've got that question today. Yeah, that is the news cycle now. It breaks by the minute. We've been watching our phones by the minute today, and I'm sure likewise many of you have. We have been planning against a lot of eventualities since November. This is just one of them. We'll see. It should go into effect tomorrow. How long it lasts or doesn't last, we continue to monitor. We have plans for this. What we do is, as La-Z-Boy Incorporated and as our management team is, we try not to knee-jerk our company around or our supplier base. Our, call it, standard action right now is we see what happens. If it's a fact, we sit on it a week, and then we take action. We'll be refining those over the next week.
It is a combination of one. We are, I would say, better insulated and better positioned versus many others with our primarily North America-based supply chain, but vast, vast majority of our final assembly in the U.S. and most of our inputs in the U.S. With that being said, we will see what comes out the rest of the day and the balance of this coming week. We have plans that both leverage the agility of our supply chain, whether we change vendors, sourcing, or others, or potential pricing actions to ensure we maintain our margin that we have worked hard to gain.
Maybe back to Century Vision a little bit. We've talked about kind of the three key pillars. Let's talk a little bit about Joybird fits into that smaller piece of the revenue pie, but an interesting opportunity. Kind of where do you see that working its way into the Century Vision strategy?
For those that aren't familiar as much with our story, almost seven years ago now, we bought a small company by the name of Joybird. It was a vertically integrated retailer, less than $50 million at the time. We were interested in it because at the time, our industry was really disproportionately sort of adjusting into it was one of the last industries to really go heavily into e-commerce. We liked that, and we liked learning about a different consumer, a somewhat younger and more urban consumer. We bought the Joybird brand. We're seven years in, and as with many acquisitions, it's been an interesting ride exacerbated by the pandemic and so many things that happened within a lot of different industries. Where we stand today is we actually took a pause the last two years.
Once disproportionate growth of e-com kind of slowed, we took a step back. A lot of purely e-commerce players just went out of business. We believe there's something meaningful with the Joybird brand. We took a two-year pause on any expansion and really tooled every aspect of the business to make sure that we had a viable business at kind of a standard. Our industry historically has grown 3-4%. What would our business look like at that rate? Could we make sure that it was a profitable business?
I'm proud to say that pretty much every aspect of that business has been tuned out through great efforts of the team and a lot of learnings, even in the shopping space, the store space that we've taken from our La-Z-Boy brand and brought that over to the Joybird brand and really cross-fertilization across the two brands. As of now, we just had a great quarter for Joybird, written and delivered. We're both up, I think, 9%. The business is back to a sustainable break even. We are ready to start growing a bit. All furniture, we believe, the consumer is now looking for some level of an omnichannel experience. In the same way that our La-Z-Boy consumer will likely finish their purchase in store, we have to have an incredible digital experience to get them to the store.
That is part of our journey as well. We did not spend as much time on that, and we still have a lot of opportunity there, but to really give an incredible omni experience to get them in the store in the first place. Our Joybird consumer may be more likely to buy purely online, but we find that stores are incredibly accretive, and we can figure out exactly where to put those stores because we have got the digital footprint of where those consumers are. We called out a number of years ago as part of Century Vision that we saw a path to 25 stores as a starting point. We stopped at 12 while we got the business model right, and we now plan to kick that back up again in a very prudent and controlled manner to make sure we really have the business model right.
We're looking at three to four stores a year for Joybird right now. Again, it's about that omnichannel consumer. Joybird is a younger consumer than the La-Z-Boy consumer, a more urban consumer. They tend to be, whereas the Joybird, the La-Z-Boy consumer is about high-quality comfort and a level of pleasing aesthetics. Joybird is very much about an expressive consumer that really wants to be able to have also that customization side, but it's really much more about color forward. We just had a partnership with Pantone, the first furniture company to have a Pantone partnership. That consumer, we understand better who that consumer is, what the business model looks like, and we'll start some slow expansion. It fits into our overall portfolio.
While La-Z-Boy will continue to be our core largest brand and our primary strategic focus for some time to come, it's good to have some additional green shoots around that. What we're doing with Joybird is another D2C vertically integrated specialty brand. We think it fits in very well to where our expertise lies.
Taylor, you mentioned briefly with me to circle back to it, just kind of putting that all together, Century Vision, what does that mean for kind of goals on revenue growth versus industry or operating margins?
Yeah. Century Vision, so we'll grow 2X the industry, which, check, we've been doing that. Over time, we'll expand operating margins to double digit long term. I would say lastly, from a capital allocation discipline, 50/50, 50 back into the business, 50 to shareholders over time. Any given year could fluctuate depending on opportunities to invest back into the business, but we have a good track record there. On the sales growth I hit on, we've been doing that. We've been showcasing that even in the last three quarters, top line growth versus industry flat to down, much better than most of our peers. On the margin, I'll segment it into two ways. Retail back to double digit margins, which we have proof point of having done that in the past.
Wholesale. Wholesale back to double digit.
Yeah. Retail back to mid double digit. Sorry. Thank you, Linda, which we have proof point of having done it in the past. Last 12 months, we're about 12%, which we're very pleased with where we're at given kind of the malaise in the market as well as the culmination of a bunch of new stores we've been standing up. With a little bit of industry tailwind as well as building out our fleet back to mid teens. Wholesale business, which used to be sustainably double digit, went through the most disruption through the pandemic. We stood up new greenfield sites in manufacturing to meet the unprecedented demand. As those were all up, the world kind of changed the opposite way. We had to right size our supply network.
We're working projects across our entire supply chain and operation, whether it's procurement through final assembly, through distribution on margin enhancement activities, which we're pleased in what we see in the pipeline. That's going to help bridge half that gap to get us back to the double digit. The other half is really dependent on we need normalized industry volume and growth, which right now, not there, but we know over the medium to long term, it will come back because the furniture industry has a very lengthy historic track record of 3-4% growth, and particularly coming out of these lull periods where housing was a bit stagnated, a good 5-10 year run-up to recover that natural progression.
Okay. And then I think that gets you to consolidate it. We get you consolidating into a double digit margin. You mentioned kind of the malaise in the industry. We use choppy. There's a lot of different words to call it, but maybe let's switch gears and talk a little bit about where the industry is today. Kind of what are you seeing from some of your consumers? You also have kind of the unique view that you do sell the product to some third-party retailers as well, and you get to hear from them. So maybe just kind of level set what's going on in the industry today from a U.S. furniture perspective. And what do you see as the outlook for your different fiscal year? But let's look calendar 2025.
Certainly. The first one, I guess a quick myth buster. Sometimes there's the narrative that there was a huge pull forward of furniture during the pandemic. Our data would say that's simply not true. There was a ton of disruption, but there was a big pause while manufacturing wasn't open and there was disruption and stores weren't open. People started buying, but it couldn't be serviced. You saw a lot of choppiness over the years, but our data would say there wasn't a huge pull forward. In fact, in the two, three years since the pandemic and once backlog was serviced and everything, there's actually been quite a lull. The industry has just been down. To Taylor's point, versus kind of a historic 3%-4%, we believe there's actually pent-up demand.
The second thing is our data would show that the industry grows when people are moving. Housing starts, housing turns are really what drive the industry overall. Between affordability of housing, interest rates, availability of housing, we know those are all pent-up opportunity for the long term. For the last three years, they've been at some pretty historic lows. We are very optimistic about what comes eventually. In the meanwhile, our work is around strengthening our company to disproportionately leverage that tailwind when it does come. We are growing in the near term. We are fortunate that our upper middle income consumer can still be motivated to buy when they're inspired and given the right product, the right product and the right experience. We are driving that.
Everyone, we joke often everyone asks us exactly when that turn is going to come, and I wish I could call it.
That was my next one.
There you go. For a while, we were giving it a date just to see how that worked, but right or wrong. Unfortunately, I think a tariff situation may delay that a little bit longer. As we look into we're in the middle of our fourth quarter now. As we look into next year, we're going to plan prudently, keep making sure we take share, strengthen ourselves for the long term, and look to be eventually positively surprised on sort of that tailwind.
Let's talk maybe a little bit about the balance sheet. I haven't studied every company, but this might be the cleanest balance sheet in furniture with $315 million or so in cash and no debt. I like the conservative aspect. Let's talk a little bit about the cash balance, kind of what the plan for capital allocation is. It's looking good today, I guess, with a little bit of a tariff environment that's unknown.
Yeah. There is a long story to history in furniture of those without clean balance sheets ending up on the wrong side of it. We are proud of the strength of where we're at. From the pandemic throughout it, through where we've been with the furniture recession, level of volatility, uncertainties obviously been there. We have managed our capital a little bit more conservatively. We'll say that. That is both because of the unknown, but also we wanted to make sure we had the flexibility to play offense when others maybe could, whether that's new stores, investments in land or buildings to facilitate the new store development, acquisitions, etc. We've been very disciplined, as I mentioned before, about over time, 50% back into the business, 50% back to shareholders. We'll continue to operate that playbook and be pretty disciplined.
As I look forward at a point where we have a more normalized industry outlook, we would look to deploy more of that capital. Where we sit today with the news that dropped 15 minutes before we get to come on stage here, I do not know that we are there yet. We feel good about where we are at. Again, back to this principle of creating our own momentum and executing our strategy, which has shown to win as the market has been in a choppy malaise, whatever, will enable us to continue as long as this lasts and will disproportionately benefit because of it.
One of the uses maybe on the capital side, we talked about it earlier, but it's a little unique for, I guess, in the furniture industry, maybe in retail, is buying back the independent gallery. Let's talk a little bit about that, kind of how that process goes, what you're paying for these, kind of how creative can these be, size of them at times. I think we mentioned at least getting one DMA done per quarter on average or something like that.
I'll start, and then you can talk about the financial side of things. Thirty, forty years ago, when we saw ourselves forever as a wholesale manufacturer, we partnered with a variety of players out there to open up furniture galleries, and they were licensees. They were beholden to buy only La-Z-Boy product, and they were the face of the consumer other than multi-branded retailers. That network is strong, and we believe that network can be up to 400 stores and potentially more than that. What we're now looking to do is we really want to own that consumer experience. We want to own as many of those as we can.
We're working with those folks that wrote those contracts with us literally decades ago to, one, increase the performance of all the stores so that the consumer has a great experience no matter what, but then find the opportunity either where performers aren't compliant and/or where they're just ready for an exit to be able to buy those stores back. We are finding, as you said, about one transaction a quarter. We buy at a market at a time, and we're very interested in continuing that trajectory. I know I'll let you spend the last minute or two on the financial.
Yeah. Each of these is obviously an arm's length transaction. We look at our DCF of a business case moving forward under our ownership to get an attractive rate of return and as well as the value for the licensee. Generally speaking, that's usually about a four to six, even a multiple is how they settle out. We love this investment of capital for a couple of reasons. One, from day one, it's net sales, profit, accretive, and cash flow positive. Two, from an M&A perspective, little to no risk because we're just assuming a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery, which we already know how to operate on very, really well. That's generally how we work out.
What about the tail of it? When you look at the potential going forward, how would you look at the tail of opportunities? Could this be a five-year story, 10-year story?
We will continue. I do believe there's still a nice tail. We still have 40-some independent DMAs out there, and they're all in different stages and life cycles. It's an emotional transaction for them. It's both an arm's length financial transaction, and it's emotional when you've been running this sometimes for multi-generations. As we continue to partner, I think we'll still see a nice path forward.
Very good. I think that brings us to close to conclusion. Thank you again for the attendance. Sorry for being right at the news of the tariff. Worked out very well. Thank you again.
Thanks, Bobby.