Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Oxford fourth quarter and fiscal 2016 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the floor over to Ms. Anne Shoemaker for opening remarks and introductions. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Shayla, good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that certain statements made on today's call and in the Q&A session may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results of operation or our financial condition to differ are discussed in our press release issued earlier today and in documents filed by us with the SEC, including the risk factors contained in our Form 10-K. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures.
You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures in our press release issued earlier today, which is posted under the investor relations tab of our website at oxfordinc.com. Please note that all financial results and outlook information discussed on this call, unless otherwise noted, are from continuing operations, and all per share amounts are on a diluted basis. As a reminder, the results from the Ben Sherman business are reflected as discontinued operations for all periods presented. Also, on April 19th, 2016, the company acquired Southern Tide, which is presented as a separate operating group. Now I'd like to introduce today's call participants. With me today are Tom Chubb, Chairman and CEO, and Scott Grassmyer, CFO. Thank you for your attention, now I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Chubb.
Good afternoon, thank you for joining us. As we begin our new fiscal year, I wanna take just a few minutes to recap our 2016 results and then spend some time elaborating on Oxford's strategies for growth and success in the future. Overall, fiscal 2016 was a year of mixed results for Oxford, with some important successes as well as challenges and opportunities for future improvement. In the fourth quarter, we recognized $0.27 per share of charges related to our Tommy Bahama business, which were not included in the guidance we issued on December 6th, 2016. Absent these charges, our results for the quarter and year were within our guidance ranges. The charges were related to initiatives we are taking to improve the financial results at Tommy Bahama.
They included inventory markdowns, primarily of residual women's product, severance costs as back office headcount reductions were made in January, and costs associated with the closing of three outlet locations, including one in Japan. In the first quarter of 2017, Tommy Bahama's results to date are encouraging, with modestly positive comp store sales gains to date. Far, we have seen a strong response to our new 130-page direct mail piece, which offered a comprehensive view of the Tommy Bahama brand. The catalog has driven traffic to our stores and website. Items featured in this piece, including men's, women's and accessories, have sold very well. I will go into more detail about Tommy Bahama. Want to first spend a few minutes on the current environment and its impact on our industry and Oxford.
As we come out of 2016 and enter 2017, across the portfolio, we are dealing with several macro trends that are impacting our entire industry. The first is a significant shift in consumer shopping patterns from brick and mortar to e-commerce. This shift is being driven and enabled by innovation that uses commonplace technologies in new and creative ways that are disrupting traditional shopping patterns. Thanks to mobile devices and the internet, consumers now have unprecedented access to information about brands, products, and pricing, as well as the ability to communicate directly with brands and other consumers. In addition, they have access to multiple responsive distribution platforms. All of this makes it easy for consumers to find the lowest prices on products from brands they love and find substitutes for products from brands they are not emotionally connected to.
The shift from bricks and mortars to online shopping is being exacerbated by the coming of age of the millennial generation. Millennials are currently between the ages of 20 and 36 and have surpassed the baby boomers as the largest generation at over 75 million members. The combination of these two facts makes them very important from a consumer spending standpoint. Finally, as the first generation of digital natives, millennials grew up with digital technology always in hand and are inherently comfortable. Another macro trend impacting our industry is the rapid growth of the outlet mall, off-price, and fast fashion channels of distribution. These businesses all continue to experience robust growth and are putting enormous pressure on more traditional channels. Interestingly and importantly, the outlet off-price and fast fashion businesses are predominantly bricks and mortar rather than e-commerce businesses.
While there's a lot of attention appropriately being paid to the impact of Amazon and other e-commerce businesses on malls and department stores, a significant amount of pressure on traditional channels is coming from outlets, off-price, and fast fashion. The sum of these macro trends is creating significant disruption in our industry. The access to product and brands from around the world provided by the internet is diminishing the anticipation of discovery that once was part of the excitement of going to the mall and is eroding the relevance of the department store's traditional role as a curator of brands. The price transparency created by the internet, as well as the value offered by outlet and off-price stores, is making traditional department store promotions less effective and forcing the department stores to become even more aggressive in their promotions.
As a result, department stores are struggling and are no longer able to pull traffic to themselves or the malls that they anchor the way they once did. Availability of trend-following product and value at fast fashion retailers, combined with internet price transparency, mean that mall-based retailers that do not have distinct points of view but mostly offer commoditized products are also struggling mightily. As the department stores and mall-based retailers struggle, mall traffic is declining. In the absence of any other reason to exist, in a bid to survive, these retailers are increasingly resorting to intense price promotion, which is impacting the entire marketplace. At the same time, internet-based retailers, most notably Amazon, continue to grow and gain strength. This year, Amazon is on track to become the nation's largest apparel retailer. To date, Amazon has been particularly successful selling price-driven and commodity-type products.
That said, they are dedicating significant resources to becoming a more capable fashion retailer. In addition to the changes that are happening in distribution channels, there are also massive changes in the way that brands communicate and market. Like the changes in distribution, the changes in communication and marketing are being driven in large part by technology and millennials. Traditional large-scale marketing campaigns run through traditional media channels are being supplanted by targeted campaigns run through the modern media ecosystem, including email, social media such as Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, bloggers, influencers, and the like. In the old world of brand communication, most communication was from the brand to the consumer. This has been replaced with two-way communication between brands and their consumers, as well as communication between and among consumers.
The macro trends discussed above are also relevant to Oxford's strategy of operating a dynamic portfolio of businesses that is capable of delivering sustained, profitable growth. As a result of the shifts that are happening in distribution channels away from department stores and mall-based retailers and towards online outlets, off-price and fast fashion, as well as the changes from a consolidated to a fragmented communication environment, it is more important than ever that brands be very specific and definite in what they stand for, and that they remain true to that brand message. We believe that going forward, there will be fewer multi-billion-dollar mega brands and more smaller, more definite brands like Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer, and Southern Tide. It will be more important than ever to be the first choice of a few rather than the second choice of many.
Against this backdrop, we have seven key priorities for fiscal 2017. First, continue to monitor the impact of the macro trends I've just discussed on our business and refine our operating and strategic plans accordingly. Second, focus on improving the operating performance at Tommy Bahama. More on that in just a moment. Third, continue our conservative stance on new store openings and renewals of existing stores. This means that we will be exceedingly selective in new store locations. In addition, we will pay special attention to renewals to make sure we get an adequate return on the remodeling capital that is typically needed upon lease renewal. Fourth, we are going to play hard to our strength in e-commerce and mobile. All of our brands have strong, profitable, and rapidly growing e-commerce businesses.
We intend to fuel this strength with a particular focus on the increasing importance of mobile in our space. Fifth, we need to revise our approach to outlet stores and clearance of residual inventory in Tommy Bahama, the only business where we have outlet stores. Sixth, we need to manage our department store exposure very carefully. Department stores still provide meaningful gross margin contribution in each of our businesses and can still be a good vehicle for customer acquisition. At the same time, we need to be careful to not let their struggles end up tarnishing the integrity of our brands. Finally, we need to make sure we are staffed and organized appropriately to meet the challenges of today, as well as those that lie ahead. I now want to go into more detail regarding our 2017 plans for improving the operating performance at Tommy Bahama.
We believe Tommy Bahama's results are closely related to the macro trends affecting our industry. At the top of the list is the impact that shifts in the industry are having on traffic in our bricks and mortar stores. Our in-store traffic was down 10% for the year, which negatively impacted our comp store sales in 2016. Our stance going forward will be even more conservative and focused on making sure that any profit, any location we open, is expected to generate an acceptable return on capital. In 2017, a handful of openings will likely be offset by a handful of lease expirations and result in no net increase in the number of Tommy Bahama stores for 2017.
We believe the food and beverage component of the Tommy Bahama business, which generated both top and bottom-line growth in 2016, is a unique competence of the brand that we can leverage to our advantage. Our Marlin Bar concept at Coconut Point, Southwest Florida, has been a huge success. The restaurant has outpaced our expectations. We have been particularly pleased to see how much business it has driven to the retail side of this location with increased traffic, dwell time, and frequency. This location has comped at a very high rate. We are excited about what we think the Marlin Bar concept can do and are evaluating additional sites, as well as other ways that we might use what we have learned at the Marlin Bar to drive profitable growth at Tommy Bahama. Another area of focus is making improvement to our clearance strategy at Tommy Bahama.
Over time, Tommy Bahama's strategy to use outlets as a true clearance vehicle has become more challenging and is less effective as a means to clear end-of-season residual inventory. To improve this situation, we have developed a multi-pronged strategy that includes taking end-of-season markdowns selectively in our own full-price retail stores, which is a new practice for Tommy Bahama. We will also improve the merchandising and product presentation in the outlets by changing how we distribute product from the stores to the outlet locations. As mentioned earlier, we are closing a handful of outlets and took markdowns in 2016 to work more quickly through prior season women's product that had been clogging our outlets. In 2016, our women's product did not work as well as we had hoped.
While we received very favorable feedback on the aesthetic of our designs, our assortment did not have the right balance of styles to drive the sales that we had hoped to achieve. As a result, on a comparable sales basis, our women's business actually took a step back during 2016. In 2017 to date, we are seeing results with quintessentially Tommy Bahama women's products like swim and cover-ups, breezy linen styles, easy-to-wear knit dresses, and our new handbag collection. We are optimistic that products like these will help us gain much needed traction in women's. At the same time, we have also taken a more conservative approach to our forward inventory ties as we continue to develop this avenue for growth. Our friends and family Flipside and loyalty award card promotional events continue to gain traction, but as they grow in size, they put pressure on our gross margin.
We do not envision this trend reversing and are therefore very focused on improving both initial and maintained gross margin by reducing input costs and making selective price increases. All of that said, as I mentioned before, we are off to a good start in 2017 and are encouraged by our first quarter to date results. Tommy Bahama's position as the island lifestyle brand distinguishes it in the marketplace, and we are confident we will achieve improved financial results in fiscal 2017. Shifting gears to Lilly Pulitzer, fiscal 2016 was another terrific year for Lilly Pulitzer, with sales growth of 14% and our operating margin expanding to 22%. The combination of excellent plans and excellent execution of those plans, unsurprisingly produced excellent results. As we move into 2017, there are several key priorities for Lilly Pulitzer.
First, we need to continue our very careful approach to bricks and mortar store openings. That said, with Lilly's small door count, only 40 right now, and very high productivity at $840 in sales per square foot, we believe there is still room to grow. Our focus will include both traditional locations and smaller jewel box locations such as Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Opening in May, this will be the first company-owned store in that area of the country. To add to the fun, Lilly has collaborated with Ocean House Management to create a Lilly Pulitzer suite at the Watch Hill Inn and will provide Lilly pillows and towels for the Ocean House Beach Cabanas. Second, Lilly is already incredibly strong in e-commerce, digital marketing and mobile, and we want to continue to play to these strengths.
We will continue to invest capital in both systems and people in these areas. Third, Lilly is a proven leader in how to communicate market in the modern distributed media ecosystem. In this fast-paced world, we will work hard to maintain our edge in marketing and brand communication. Finally, we will continue to manage our department store exposure carefully. Lilly will stay focused on working only with department stores that can hit our brand standards and performance expectations. We are optimistic and confident about Lilly Pulitzer's prospects for 2017. While Lanier Apparel has executed admirably for the last several years, generating strong free cash flow with very little capital investment, the marketplace is presenting ever increasing challenges. Lanier's traditional, predominantly department store and big box markets are challenged. We're working towards matching Lanier's operational competencies with sales and marketing opportunities for long-term profitable growth.
For example, last year we folded the Oxford Golf business into Lanier Apparel, and we have just repositioned Oxford Golf as the Oxford brand, a complete line of terrific looking men's sportswear suitable for sale not only at green grass pro shops and resort shops, but also at top tier off-course independent specialty stores. The Oxford brand was officially launched at the PGA Show in January, where we presented the fall 2017 line. We are not walking away from Lanier's traditional businesses, but believe more sportswear opportunities like the new rebranded Oxford line will provide Lanier with alternative avenues for growth. Southern Tide, the newest and smallest of our businesses, is now well integrated into Oxford and delivered a nice performance in 2016 despite the environment.
Key opportunities for this brand include growth in its traditional wholesale business, where they are now seeing some early success with a small women's line, the expansion of the signature store concept, and growth in e-commerce, which represents roughly 20% of their business. We are excited about the future of Southern Tide and believe they will make a meaningful contribution to our company in the years to come. As we move forward with our strategic plans for our operating groups, we believe our plans for capital allocation are well aligned with the changes to our strategic environment. We are spending more than ever on IT and infrastructure designed to enhance our ability to delight our consumers on an omni-channel basis.
Our capital allocation policy is well-balanced between prudent, carefully vetted investments and organic growth, a reasonable dividend policy, a willingness and determination to add brands that have the potential to create long-term value for our shareholders, and maintaining financial flexibility as our industry transitions. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Scott Grassmyer to discuss our consolidated highlights and plans for 2017. Scott?
Walk you through a selection of highlights from our consolidated results for the fourth quarter, as well as our guidance for fiscal 2017. Please refer to our press release issued earlier today for the complete results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016, consolidated net sales were $261 million, compared to $260 million last year. Lilly Pulitzer sales increased 26%. About half of that increase was due to the January e-commerce flash sale, which was significantly larger than last year. Inclusion of Southern Tide sales this year also contribute to the increase. Sales at Tommy Bahama were lower this year than last year, as both our wholesale and direct-to-consumer businesses were affected by declining consumer traffic. Lanier also had lower sales due to a lower volume of private label business, in part due to shift in timing.
Our consolidated adjusted operating income in the fourth quarter was $16.7 million, compared to $29.1 million last year, negatively impacted by the $0.27 per share or $7.1 million of Tommy Bahama related charges and the lower operating results at Tommy Bahama and Lanier Apparel. Adjusted earnings were $0.63 per share compared to $1.09 per share in the same period of the prior year. Now on to the balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains strong and we have a capital structure well positioned to support growth. We believe inventory levels in each of our operating groups are appropriate for our future sales plans. Inventory increased to $142 million, reflecting the inclusion of Southern Tide. As of January 28, 2017, we had $91.5 million of borrowings outstanding and $186 million of availability under a revolving credit agreement.
Our capital expenditures for fiscal 2016 were $49 million, primarily related to opening, relocating, and remodeling retail stores and restaurants, IT initiatives, and facility enhancements for distribution centers and offices. Of the $49 million of capital expenditures, $6 million was funded by landlords through tenant improvement allowances. Cash flow from operations was $119 million compared to $105 million in 2015. Free cash flow for 2016 was $69 million, compared to $32 million in the prior year. I'd like to walk you through our projections for next year. In 2017, we expect our earnings to be negatively impacted by a higher effective tax rate. The tax rate increase is due to the impact of how the vesting of certain restricted stock awards are treated due to a change in an accounting standard.
In 2016, we also were able to take advantage of some operating loss carryforwards that will not be available to us in 2017. As a result, our effective tax rate is expected to increase to 39% from 37% last year. For the full year, adjusted earnings per share are expected to be between $3.50 and $3.70 on a sales range of $1.08 billion to $1.1 billion. On a comparable basis, fiscal 2016 sales were $1.023 billion and adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations was $3.30. For the first quarter of fiscal 2017, we currently expect net sales to grow between $270 million to $280 million. Adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations are expected to be between $1.00 and $1.10.
On a comparable basis, sales were $256 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016, and adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations was $1.26. The first quarter effective tax rate is expected to be approximately 41.5%, compared to 35.7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2016, reflecting the unfavorable impact of items described above. Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $55 million in fiscal 2017 to include expenditures associated with information technology initiatives, new retail stores, our retail restaurant location at Legacy West in Plano, Texas, and remodeling and relocating existing retail stores. Fiscal 2017, we expect cash flow from operations to significantly exceed our capital expenditures and dividend requirements. I'll move to our fiscal 2017 plans by operating group. Here's some additional details of our plans for Tommy in 2017.
Overall, we expect Tommy Bahama's top line to grow in the low single digits, comps to increase in the low single digits, and wholesale sales to decline slightly. We expect to open approximately six new stores, including Legacy West in 2017. We are also likely not to renew a comparable number of leases, so we're not planning an increase in door count for the year. We have planned modest gross margin expansion as we make progress on reducing input costs, make selected price increases, and clear end of the season goods more effectively. We expect to continue to improve our results in Asia Pacific, losses reducing by approximately $2 million. Operating margin expansion of approximately 100 basis points is planned for fiscal 2017.
Lilly Pulitzer is expected to continue to deliver strong top-line growth while maintaining a solid operating margin. For fiscal 2017, Lilly Pulitzer is expecting a single-digit sales increase compared to fiscal 2016, with comps in the mid-single digits. We expect to open five to six new stores in 2017. Gross margin should expand slightly as we expect a lower percentage of sales to come from the e-commerce flash sales. For Lanier Apparel, we're expecting a mid-single digit percentage increase in sales, with operating income flat with 2016. Southern Tide's plan for fiscal 2017 has sales of approximately $40 million-$45 million, and an operating margin in the low teens. The operating loss in our corporate other segment is expected to increase by approximately $2 million.
Before we take questions, I also want to mention that our board of directors have declared a cash dividend of $0.27 per share, as we continue to believe this is an important way to return value to our shareholders. Shayla, we are now ready for questions.
If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing *1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is *1 at this time to ask a question. We will take our first question from Corinna van der Laan of Citi Research. Your line is open.
Hi, Cor.
We will go to Jeff Van Sinderen of B. Riley. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. I wonder if you guys can speak a little bit about the e-com growth trend at Tommy and Lilly. Then also, could you give us a little more on the difference in traffic you're seeing between the stores with and without restaurants, and then also maybe what you're seeing at Marlin Bar? I know you mentioned that a little bit, and what we should expect for Marlin Bar this year. Do you think you'll start to open another or two of those? Maybe we can start there.
Well, maybe we'll start with the Marlin Bar, what we've seen with the Marlin Bar is all good news. It's simply been terrific. We opened it up back in November, and as we've been told by other tenants in the mall, it's literally moved the center of gravity in the mall to another part. It's not really a mall, it's an outdoor lifestyle center, but has moved it to Tommy Bahama. That's become kind of the heartbeat, and on the restaurant bar side, it's performed way beyond our expectations, and we're very thrilled with that side of it. Then what we really love is what it's doing on the retail side of the business, where it's driving a very strong comp store sales performance on that side. We really like the Marlin Bar. As we said in the prepared remarks, we're evaluating additional locations.
I'm not sure that we'll get any open during 2017, just because of the lead time on these things. We're also trying to take what we're learning at the Marlin Bar and evaluate ways that we can apply those learnings in our other existing restaurants. By that, I don't mean to suggest we're going to convert them to Marlin Bars, but I think there are things we're seeing in the Marlin Bar that will probably be beneficial in some of our other operations. I think you had a traffic question about-
Yeah, I was just-
Restaurants versus
Yes. Right.
Yeah. Our restaurants or in a location, the traffic's certainly all better than the ones without. Traffic's still down. The restaurant sales have held quite well. The comps at stores, retail stores with restaurants has held better than they have with the ones without.
Okay. The other thing I was asking about was your e-com growth trend at both Tommy and Lilly. Just wondering if there's anything to talk about there.
Well, it's certainly been strong in both of them. At this point in the quarter, we hate to get too specific on comp trends. I think we did comment that Tommy's overall comps are modestly positive. That's stronger in e-com than it is in stores. Lilly's e-com would be stronger than their stores as well. That's really, Jeff, that's been the case for seven or eight years now. E-commerce growth continues to outpace store growth.
Right.
We would expect that to continue.
Okay, good. If I could just squeeze in one more on Tommy Women's, just wondering, it sounds like you feel like you've picked some categories, it sounds like, where you're having success. Maybe the mix wasn't quite right last year, I guess, how should we think about the women's business at Tommy for this year?
Well, it's very early in the year, you can't read too much into it. Again, we've been very pleased with what we've seen so far. When I look at it and look at what's selling really well there What I would call quintessentially Tommy Bahama products. It's things like, there's a linen dress called the Two Palms Linen Dress that's done very well. There's a Two Palms jacket, also linen, that's done very well. The swim and coverups and those types of items have been extremely good. In my mind, there's a theme to all these, is that they're things that people think of when they think of Tommy Bahama. They're the types of products that they think of, and they're working well.
I think another piece of it that we talked about is the catalog that we sent out several weeks ago, hopefully you've seen this. If you don't have a physical copy of it, you can see a digital copy on the website, I would encourage you to look at it, because it's absolutely gorgeous, the consumer clearly liked it and clearly responded to it, because we've seen them come into the store with the catalog in hand, asking for products. We've seen a lot of the terminology that we used in the catalog show up as frequently searched search terms on our website. We know it's having an impact. It's very positive, that has a lot to do with having a great brand and great products, also communicating the full aspirational dream that is Tommy Bahama.
This catalog includes beautiful lifestyle shots, product laydowns, food and beverage shots. We've even got from our licensed partner, we've got several pages of the furniture in there. We've got pictures of cocktails, all these things that drive home that this is not just about a few printed camp shirts, but it truly is a lifestyle. We think these are the types of things that in the industry, in the marketplaces that's evolving, this is how we stand out, how we get noticed, and how we succeed. It's working.
Okay, good to hear. Thanks for taking my questions and best of luck for the rest of the quarter.
Okay. Thank you, Jeff.
We will take our next question from Corinna van der Laan. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you.
Hi, Corinna.
Hi, I'm so sorry about that. My line just got disconnected. I didn't mean to go straight in.
No, that's all right.
I was hoping to start with your distribution plans for this year. Hopefully, it wasn't asked earlier when I was dialing back in. How many wholesale doors are you planning to exit this year in terms of what's currently included in your guidance? Also, what do you see as the long-term retail store potential for both the Tommy and Lilly concepts?
You're talking about wholesale doors and how many we're planning on exiting?
Yes.
We've got some minor number of doors reduction, a minor door reduction in the plan. There are places where we're adding doors as well. Overall, I don't think we're looking to see a large drop in our wholesale business at all. It's just that we want to be very mindful of what's going on there. If you take Tommy, for example, our fall bookings, which are not completely done, but they're looking pretty good right now relative to last year. Our Southern Tide bookings are looking pretty good. It's not that we're looking for a wholesale to drop off a cliff or anything like that. We're just being mindful of what's going on there.
How do you reconcile that with the guidance you guys talked about earlier with the planned wholesale modest decline for Tommy for this year, if the bookings sound like they are positive?
That's for the fall bookings.
Yeah. Spring will be down a little bit. Some of that's just pushing less into certain doors. With our majors, we look at their maintained gross margins, there's some that, hey, that we need to cut back on what we're allowing to ship into those doors. We do that on a regular basis. Spring, first half of the year, we've got wholesale down a little bit, fall bookings look like they'll hopefully be up a little bit year-over-year.
Okay. Just a question on the retail stores for Tommy and Lilly longer term.
In Lilly, if you look at them with their 40 that they've got now, we've been adding, averaging, I think, five a year, really since for the last several years. With them, with their small footprint, as we said in the prepared remarks, their extremely high productivity, I think that we've got an opportunity to continue to add stores at our same pace for several years. The way we're selecting stores may change a little. Obviously, we've always been very careful, we'll be even more careful about where we decide to put a store. We're doing a couple of these jewel box locations that we talked about In the prepared remarks, we mentioned the one that'll be at part of the Ocean House sort of property there in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.
That one will be similar in a lot of ways to the one that we've had for several years down at Ocean Reef in Key Largo. We'll do some of those. Some of those stores will be more like the others that we've been opening. We think we can continue to open at the same pace that we've been opening in Lilly and Tommy Bahama for this year. As Scott mentioned, I think in his remarks, we've got what? Six opening, six leases that are going to expire that we probably won't renew. That's our thinking at this point. In future years, we're going to probably open a few less than we've been opening, we'll continue to look at the lease expirations very carefully.
What we're doing there, Cori, is just if they're in a place where traffic is declining, we're sort of evaluating where we think that's heading and making sure that we think they can make a good contribution going forward.
Okay, great. My second question was, can you just walk us through some of the puts and takes of your gross and operating margin expectations for the year? Just how much flexibility do you have around your SG&A expenses if you need to cut costs?
As far as gross margins, we're expecting some gross margin expansion in both Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer. Tommy Bahama, we've got several actions that we mentioned. Both we're going after trying to get lower input costs, working with our factories there. We have taken some selective price increases. Some of that'll benefit the second half more than the first half. We also, on the clearance strategy, we think just by, in the categories like women's, buying very conservatively, taking that first mark in our full price stores, we'll be able to have less to clear and net out at a better gross margin. SG&A, Tommy Bahama, we made some SG&A reductions right at the end of 2016. We'll continue to monitor it. Things like incentive comp obviously are very variable as far as if things got worse, that expense would get lower.
We're always watching it. Things like Tom Chubb mentioned on some of these store renewals, just having a marginal store that we have to put capital into. We're going to look very hard on whether that's an expense load we want to continue to carry or whether we close some stores.
Okay, thanks. If I could just sneak in one last question. Aside from the new direct mailer that you guys put out, is there anything that you can point to that's really driving the positive quarter to date traffic for Tommy Bahama? Has there been a noticeable change in your international tourist traffic trends, or is there anything else that you're seeing to help drive that positive momentum right now?
Yeah, I do think that the international tourist situation has gotten a little bit better in most of our locations, and we've seen evidence of that. The other big thing I would point you to is that we did have our friends and family event, which just wrapped up this past week, and that's an annual event. We completed that, and that in and of itself was very successful. It drove really good traffic online and in stores. It's nothing that we haven't done before, but it worked very well this year.
Did you guys mention how the Lilly comps are trending quarter to date as well?
It's early in the quarter for them, the reason being that Easter is so important to them, Corey, Easter is three weeks later this year than last year. For them, it's a little hard to call it a comp at this point. What we've seen to date is that stores are a bit negative. E-com is strongly positive. We still are optimistic about what we can do in the quarter, but the Easter shift makes it hard to really get a comp at this point. From a calendar date perspective, it's a comp, but from the way that the Lilly shopper shops, we're not really at comp till we get past Easter.
Right. That sounds fair. Okay, I'll jump off. Thank you guys so much.
Okay, thank you.
We will take our next question from Edward Yruma with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Hi.
Hi, Ed.
Thanks for getting me in here. Hi. Just a couple quick ones. First, if I heard you correctly, you said there was a $0.27 kind of bucket of charges really related to the Tommy Bahama repositioning. Could you give us a little bit more color on how much of that was the inventory markdown/impairment in the women's versus what was the outlet store closures?
Yeah. About $4.7 million was the inventory write-down. That was for older season, mainly women's goods in our outlets and some in the DC that hadn't flowed to the outlets yet. We had about $1.6 million related to the three outlet stores. We had another about $800,000 related to severance charges.
Was any of the comp acceleration that you saw at Tommy Bahama quarter to date related to closing out of the women's product, or is that women's product marked down or written off and sold through in the fourth quarter?
We don't include outlets in our comp. In our outlets, we're doing more markdowns on women's, but that does not go in our comp.
Yeah. The big drivers had, again, were the friends and family event that was fueled with the catalog. Post friends and family, we think the catalog is still having an influence on the customer, which is certainly what we hope to have happen. It seems to be the case.
Great. Two other quick ones. I think you indicated that the Lilly Pulitzer flash sale in January was maybe larger than it had been, or maybe you hadn't had one there before. I guess, what drove that, if I heard that correctly? The final question, I think you said that Asia losses should improve $2 million in this coming fiscal year. Just remind us again what the base was last year. Thanks a lot.
On the Lilly clearance sale, we had more inventory. We cleared more through the flash sale than we cleared in the brick-and-mortar stores. Just had more inventory to clear and cleared more through the flash sale. On Tommy, we're at $7.3 million this year. That includes some of that outlet store closure cost, a little bit of that's in that number also. We expect to take the $7.3 million hopefully down to $5.3 million or less in 2017.
Great. Thanks so much, guys.
Thanks, Ed.
We will take our next question from Pamela Quintiliano of SunTrust. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions, guys.
Of course.
For your extensive commentary, Tom, regarding the changing environment. That was very helpful to hear your insights on it. Quick point of clarification with the Tommy quarter-to-date commentary. Men's and women's, you're both encouraged? I guess following up on that, just how you are feeling about men's. Obviously, women's has been the bigger issue, but just what's going on there as well?
Yeah. What I'd tell you is that they both sold well, and we're pleased with where we are with both. Obviously, you have all kinds of issues going on in the industry, and this traffic issue is a very real issue. I know that you're very in tune with it because everybody's talking about it, and it is a real issue. We think we've got the tools to win in that environment. We've got great brands that really stand for something and are supported with great product. At the end of the day, that's what always prevails. We think that's what we've seen to date, quarter to date in Tommy Bahama. We've always had a great brand. We've got great products there, and we communicated it very effectively through this book, which I hope you've seen.
Again, if you haven't, would encourage you to at least look at the digital version, and we'll get you a print copy if you don't have one. The combination of those things, I think, even in this tough environment, is working, and it's worked to date.
I do have a copy, and it's beautifully done.
Oh, good.
How do you think about, you were talking about the quintessential women's product and how well that's doing now. Can we talk about the depth of that this year versus last year? If you've increased your emphasis on it year-over-year. Are you going to continue increasing your emphasis on it as we progress, at least throughout the first half of the year?
That's the essence of being a merchant is delivering to the customer the product she needs and wants. Last year, we had a lot of stuff that was really beautiful, and the customer loved the way it looked and all that but didn't buy quite as much of it as we would have liked to have seen. I think this year, based on the results we've seen to date, the products that we've got, not only is she loving them, but she's buying them, too, which is what we want. When you look at it, to me, and I'm not a merchant but I've certainly been around the game a long time and have watched this for a long time, and there's a theme to them.
The term quintessentially Tommy Bahama was mine, because to me, they're the kinds of things that when you think of Tommy Bahama, these are the things that pop into mind. Swim, which has always been a strength in Tommy Bahama Women's, is doing very well. The coverups and some of the other items that go along with that have done well. If you look in your catalog or online, it actually shows up in a couple of places in the catalog. There's a linen shift dress called the Two Palms dress that's very easy to wear, breezy linen, simple shift. To me, that just looks like what you would think Tommy Bahama Women's would be, and it's working. There's a Two Palms linen jacket, and there's a wonderful printed knit dress that's done really well.
All these things, again, there's this theme of sort of breezy, easy to wear, island inspired. Certainly, people can wear them anywhere, including New York. We'd be happy for you to wear it. They are at the same time, quintessentially Tommy Bahama, and I think we were just sort of feeling our way towards that last year, and it would appear that we're getting closer to the mark this year.
Is there a way to think about the depth? Any % numbers or even just any way to think about how much more meaningful the emphasis is this quarter versus last year?
On women's or on those products?
On those products in women's.
I think we certainly, if you look in the catalog, I think you see a lot of that kind of stuff in there. I don't have specific statistics. I don't know whether Scott's got anything.
I don't. I know we did some of those key type items. We went deeper in those key type items.
Okay.
On the maybe more fashion items, a little smaller buy.
Okay. Switching gears, because you had discussed the shift in the way the millennials are shopping, which is something we're all seeing. Obviously, Lilly, she's very plugged in. You have the app, she's always online. How do you feel about Tommy Bahama and the mobile experience and the opportunity there, is there any changes that you're trying to implement or any learnings from Lilly that you could pull over?
Certainly there's a lot of communication between the teams at Tommy and Lilly, and there's a lot that they can learn from each other. They are different brands with different customer bases. Some things that are appropriate for one brand, might not be appropriate or as appropriate for the other, certainly a lot that they can and do learn from each other. In terms of mobile, there's no question that, everywhere we look, mobile traffic is increasing. Including our friends and family sale this year, I don't have the stat with me right now, the mobile traffic was up dramatically, and that's what we're seeing everywhere.
What that means is that in all of our brands, we're really trying to adopt a mobile first mentality, because we have to think that more likely than not, the place that the guest is looking, is on their phone. We need to build our visual assets and our website and everything else to support that. That's going on across the company.
Okay. Last one, Amazon, can you remind me again your approach with Amazon? I know that there's Lilly product that shows up on Amazon. I remember seeing that, just across the brands, how we think about Amazon as a partner, the timing of the launches, if you're taking pricing in store, what happens on Amazon, that type of thing.
Yeah. Amazon, of course, owns Amazon and Zappos. They are a top 10 customer for the corporation. We sell them in Tommy, Lilly and Lanier Apparel. Zappos is a very good vehicle for fashion. In the Amazon world, we've got our toe in the water. We're trying to figure out how to build a mutually beneficial business there. We're seeing a lot of success. Obviously, it's a very different vehicle from a lot of other places, that we sell our brands. We want to make sure we understand how it works and make sure that we're doing it in a way that's not just volume dollars, but that's also brand enhancing and consistent. Maintaining our brand integrity.
We're certainly spending a lot of time and effort looking at it, working with it, trying to learn how we can best interact in that world.
Great.
They are a top 10 customer at this point.
Well, thank you so much, and thank you for giving me an excuse to go to the Ocean House this summer and grab a drink and see everything there.
Good. Good.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad at this time. We will take our next question from Danielle McCoy of Chelsea Advisors. Your line is open.
Hi, Danielle.
Hi, everyone. Hi. Thank you for taking my question.
Of course.
I was wondering if you can give us an idea on how many leases for Tommy Bahama are coming up for expiration over the next two years. Are there any areas where you're seeing greater pressure than others, or any areas that you are seeing some success in?
As far as the leases, we're roughly 10 a year. Tommy had been opening kind of that seven to 10 to 12 a year. Now we are kind of in the pace where every year We usually renew leases, and every year we have roughly 10 coming up. Danielle, in terms of strength or weakness, malls are not going away altogether, I don't believe. I think there's some challenges out there, but the best malls, which are the only malls we're in, they're going to figure it out. They're all working on adding other components to their lineup, like food and beverage, makeup bars, different things that will bring traffic into the mall as opposed to traditionally relying really primarily on the department stores to bring that traffic in. It's not that we think they're going away.
Are there some that are currently stronger than others? Absolutely. I'm not sure we're prepared to comment on that exactly. There's some that are not having the same level of traffic declines as others, and that's certainly as we look at lease renewals, that's part of the equation.
All right, great. Then can you give us any updated thoughts on Tommy International?
Yeah, we mentioned we expect to reduce the loss by a couple million dollars this year. We are looking for a partner in Japan. Australia is going well. In Hong Kong, we have one store. It's probably about a year out before we can get out of that lease. That lease, we're starting to get an insight on that one. I think the key is to find a partner in Japan, because Australia, we're happy with. We make some money there, and we've expanded there, and we've had success there. In Hong Kong, got an insight. Japan is really the market. We made some good inroads and made some good progress, but we really would like to find a partner to kind of leverage the brand awareness we've created there.
Great. Then just last, on Southern Tide, how many signature stores do you have, and where do you kind of see that going ahead?
We've got three open, and I think we expect that we'll get a couple more open this year. We think it's a good channel for us. It's certainly been a big part of the Lilly Pulitzer brand. It was enormously important in their growth and development way back before we even bought them. To this day, remains a very important part of the Lilly Pulitzer equation. For Lilly, I believe that it'd be about 15% or 16% of their business would be wholesale sales to signature stores. I don't know, we don't at present have a strong view on where this settles out for Southern Tide. We're excited about the partners we have and excited about the businesses that we're building together through those signature stores.
Great. Thank you guys so much. Good luck.
Thank you.
We will take our next question from Michael Kawamoto of D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.
Hey, guys, this is Michael. I'm for Andrew Burns. Thanks for taking my question.
Sure.
Just kind of a follow-up, just kind of a thought to a previous question. As you look at selectively opening Tommy stores down the road, do you think the majority of your store base will be in street and lifestyle centers? Will the stores with a restaurant or bar component ultimately be a larger piece of the mix given your success with the Marlin Bar, you think?
Yeah, I would suspect that the tilt towards lifestyle and street locations will continue. As you know, we're only 50% mall right now or even less than that. It's 45% or something mall. We already tilt a bit away from the mall, and I would guess that that would continue to increase. I'm not gonna say we'll never open another mall store, but I would certainly think that would be true. Will more include some type of food and beverage element? I would guess that yes, that's true. Not necessarily a bigger proportion of full-blown island retail restaurants, but as you suggested, the Marlin Bar concept may be a part of a significant number of the future stores.
Thank you.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
That concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I will now turn the call back over to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Chubb. Please go ahead.
Thank you again for your time this afternoon. We very much appreciate your interest and look forward to speaking to you again in June.
That concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect.