Greetings, welcome to the Oxford Industries third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Kevin Strasser of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, and good afternoon. 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 operations 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. Now I'd like to introduce today's call participants. With me today are Tom Chubb, Chairman and CEO, and Scott Grassmeyer, CFO and COO. Thank you for your attention. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Chubb.
Thank you, Jevin. Good afternoon, thank you for joining us for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 OXM conference call. As most of you know, our purpose as a company is to evoke happiness in our customers with the products, services, and experiences we offer through our portfolio of brands. When we are successful in evoking that happiness, our businesses deliver profitable growth. Of course, sustained profitable growth is what allows us to accomplish our objective of driving long-term shareholder value. We certainly did that during the third quarter, delivering our sixth consecutive quarter of record adjusted earnings. Strong top line growth across all our brands, combined with the acquisition of the Johnny Was brand in September, fueled a 26% sales gain.
Sales in the aggregated group of Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer, and Emerging Brands grew 19%, with Johnny Was contributing an additional $23 million of sales for the quarter. At the same time, adjusted gross margin improved an impressive 120 basis points. All of these factors, along with our repurchase activity, helped drive a 23% or $0.27 increase in adjusted earnings per share from $1.19 last year to $1.46 this year. The biggest contributor to our increased earnings was our largest brand, Tommy Bahama, which delivered 20% top line growth and a $9 million increase in adjusted operating income for the quarter, with excellent results in all channels of distribution. Lilly Pulitzer also had a successful quarter, with sales growing 16% and positive comps in both retail and e-commerce.
Our newly constituted Emerging Brands group had a revenue increase of 22% during the third quarter. We have also recently advanced a number of strategic initiatives. I will highlight just three among many. During September, we added the Johnny Was brand to our portfolio of lifestyle brands. The brand has clearly defined positioning, which drives emotional connection and strong engagement with its very loyal customer base. Johnny Was is priced a bit higher than our other brands and sits in the very attractive, affordable luxury portion of the market. The brand has an excellent balanced distribution model with 40% of sales coming through e-commerce, bolstered by a fleet of 60-plus carefully located stores with attractive unit economics and a brand-enhancing and mutually profitable wholesale business.
Currently generating annualized sales of over $200 million with operating margins in the mid-to-high teen range, Johnny Was has a profitable growth trajectory ahead of it. The brand is led by an excellent management team that has been in place for many years and is well-aligned culturally and strategically with OXM. The Johnny Was and OXM corporate teams have been working hard on the integration and laying the foundation for future growth in the brand. I'm grateful to all of them for their extraordinary efforts and the successes that they have achieved so far. In November, we were also pleased to announce our first Tommy Bahama branded hotel, the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort, which should open in late 2023.
Tommy Bahama is a longtime player in the hospitality business, with a restaurant business that's over 25 years old and does more than $100 million in business annually. Our customers have long viewed a resort hotel as a natural extension of our hospitality business. One of our most successful restaurants is located in the Coachella Valley in California, where we've been operating a bar, restaurant, and store in Palm Desert since 1998. We also opened a Marlin Bar in Palm Springs in 2018. For those of you who are familiar with the Coachella Valley and or are tennis fans, the location of the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort will be in Indian Wells, which is also home to the BNP Paribas Open. We have a fantastic partner in The Lowe Group and have been discussing this opportunity with them for a number of years.
We're glad to see it coming to fruition. We look forward to the opening of the hotel and hope that all of you will be able to visit. Third, we continue to make excellent progress in our ability to attract and retain customers and drive customer engagement. As of the end of the quarter, our customer base, excluding Johnny Was customers, increased by 16% versus last year's third quarter. Including Johnny Was, as of the end of the quarter, we had 2.5 million identifiable unique customers who have transacted in the last 12 months. We not only brought in more customers, but they spent more with us as well, with average annual spending increasing across all of our brands. We believe that most of these gains are attributable to our digital marketing efforts, which have been a strategic priority for us across the enterprise this year.
Included in those efforts have been the establishment of a Marketing Center of Excellence, whose principal function is to service the brands within our Emerging Brands group. This team was built during this fiscal year and began posting some very impressive results during the third quarter, particularly during the Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend. With a little less than three weeks to go before Christmas, we feel very positive about the holiday selling season and our ability to deliver a strong fourth quarter. Scott will elaborate more in a minute. Our inventories are in excellent shape to support holiday season as the result of more normalized levels, as well as bringing in inventory early to avoid any supply chain snarls. As I do every quarter, I would like to thank and express my gratitude to our incredible team of people.
Whatever their role within the company may be, their commitment and dedication to evoking happiness in our customers is simply unparalleled. A great example of this occurred during the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. Notwithstanding the fact that it struck one of the most important markets we have in the entire company, and notwithstanding the challenges the hurricane had on their personal lives, due to the commitment and resilience of our people, we hardly missed a beat, and we were operating on a business as usual basis within a very short time. This is just one example among many of how focused our people are on serving our customers. We are very grateful to all of them and wish all of them and all of you a very happy holiday season.
I'll now hand the call over to Scott, who will provide more details on the quarter and our outlook for the balance of the year. Scott?
Thank you, Tom. We're thrilled to deliver our sixth consecutive quarter of record sales, gross margin, and adjusted earnings in the third quarter of 2022. This excellent performance was driven by revenue expansion in all of our brands and distribution channels versus the third quarter of 2021. Consolidated net sales were $313 million for the third quarter, which included $23 million of sales for Johnny Was, growing 26% above last year's third quarter sales of $248 million, which included $4 million of sales from Lanier Apparel. This growth was strong across all distribution channels, with increases of 22% in full price bricks and mortar, 26% in full price e-commerce, 32% in wholesale, 17% in restaurants, and 15% in outlets. We also had increased sales of $9 million in the Lilly Pulitzer e-commerce flash sale.
Adjusted gross margin expanded to 63.4%, which is 120 basis points above last year's third quarter. We benefited from lower freight costs, which included less air freight due to the earlier receipt of inventory and from lower freight rates. We increased IMUs. This was partially offset by the impact of Lilly Pulitzer's larger flash sale this year due to extremely lean inventories last year. Adjusted SG&A expenses were $171 million in the third quarter of 2022 compared to $131 million last year. This increase was driven by the addition of Johnny Was operating expenses, as well as increases in our other businesses for employment costs, advertising costs, variable expenses, and other expenses to support sales growth.
The result of all this yielded $33 million of adjusted operating income compared to $27 million in the prior year period, with improved operating income driven by the strong results in Tommy Bahama and the inclusion of Johnny Was for half the quarter. This level of operating profit, combined with a $0.07 benefit from our share repurchase program, led to EPS growth of $0.27 to $1.46. I'll now move on to our balance sheet, beginning with inventory. With inventories up 61% year-over-year on a FIFO basis, we're in a good position to capture the sales momentum we built throughout the year. Two strategic actions contributed to the inventory growth. $25 million of additional inventory from our acquisition of Johnny Was, the early receipt of $20 million of incremental inventory to mitigate supply chain disruptions.
Increased product costs raised inventory balances as well. Comparing back to 2019, our 25% revenue growth for the first nine months of the year significantly outpaces our FIFO inventory growth of 14% over the same period, even with the earlier receipt of product. From a liquidity standpoint, we had $15 million in cash and cash equivalents versus $188 million of cash equivalents, and short-term investments at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2021. We also had $130 million in borrowings outstanding under our revolving credit agreement at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2022, increasing from no borrowings at the end of the prior year period.
The change in our liquidity position was clearly driven by our funding of the Johnny Was acquisition which we believe will yield significant long-term benefits to our shareholders. As of today, we have returned $134 million of capital directly to shareholders in the last 12 months via dividends and open market share repurchases. $100 million of this came from repurchasing 1.1 million shares, or over 6% of total shares outstanding at the inception of the program in Q4 of 2021. $5 million of these repurchases occurred in the fourth quarter of 2022. This represents the completion of the $100 million share repurchase program. Looking forward, I'm pleased to announce that our board of directors declared a dividend of $0.55 per share for the fourth quarter payable in January.
I'll now spend some time on our outlook for the remainder of the year. For the full year, we're raising our sales guidance to a range of $1.395 billion-$1.41 billion, up from our prior range of $1.375 billion-$1.405 billion, and compared to sales of $1.142 billion in fiscal 2021. Accordingly, we expect adjusted EPS for fiscal 2022 to be between $10.60-$10.75, up from our previous guidance of $10.25-$10.60, and compared to $7.99 in 2021.
We expect sales in the fourth quarter of 2022 to be between $366 million and $381 million, compared to sales of $300 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. More than 60% of the sales increase is expected to be from Johnny Was sales. These updated guidance figures also reflect strong holiday sales to date, while contemplating the uncertainty as we believe shoppers are returning to pre-COVID holiday shopping patterns after shopping earlier in 2021. We also anticipate modest gross margin improvement in the fourth quarter. These higher sales and improved gross margins are expected to be partially offset by increased SG&A, higher interest expense, and a higher effective tax rate.
The fourth quarter of 2022 will include a full quarter of interest expense after the third quarter only included about a half quarter of interest expense as we were debt-free until acquiring Johnny Was in mid-September. We expect the effective tax rate to be higher this year, as Q4 of the prior year included certain non-recurring favorable items. After considering these items, fourth quarter adjusted EPS is expected to be between $2.01 and $2.16 versus adjusted EPS of $1.68 last year. The fourth quarter will be the first full quarter of operations for Johnny Was as part of the Oxford family.
We're excited to have added a business with annual net sales in excess of $200 million, the opportunity for double-digit top-line growth in the future, the expectation of approximately 65% gross margins, and mid to high teen operating margins, excluding any inventory step-up charges and amortization of intangible assets. Thank you for your time today. We will now turn the call over to for questions. Diego?
Thank you. ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will conduct our question and answer session. If you would like to submit a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two 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. Once again, to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Edward Yruma with Piper Sandler. Please state your question.
Good afternoon, guys. Congrats on the quarter, and thanks for taking the questions. I got two questions for me. First, more of a modeling question. How should we think about Johnny Was from a seasonality perspective? You know, are there particular quarters where, you know, revenue or profitability has outsized impact? I guess just a more short-term question, you guys seem to have been very successful over the Black Friday shopping season with actually a less promotional strategy than years past, which is very different than obviously the rest of what we're seeing in retail. I guess, how do you contemplate kind of the remainder of the holiday season? Does your guidance contemplate maybe potentially having to be more reactive to what looks like an intensifying promotional holiday? Thank you.
Thanks, Ed. It's always good to hear your voice. I'll answer the one about BFCM and the remainder of the season, and then Scott and Jevin can chime in with additional thoughts on that, as well as the seasonality of Johnny Was, which is a great question. I think what's happening this holiday season in the aggregate is very much what we thought would happen. We thought that the season would sort of normalize. You'll recall well that for us and for many others in the market, last year, customers started shopping super early and super hard. They shopped during October, which is still third quarter. They shopped hard during the first part of November.
They, you know, shopped through the holiday season, but it was much more tilted towards the first part of the season than it would have been in a normal year. The second thing that was very unusual last year is that for the first time in many years, the market was just not very promotional at all, primarily because people were short of inventory. This year, we expected things to normalize, and they have. We planned accordingly. The Black Friday, Cyber Monday, 5-day period ended up being really the kickoff of the holiday season, which is the way that it's traditionally worked. The level of the promotions in the marketplace, much greater than last year. I'm not sure they're really that much greater than they were back to pre-pandemic.
It's, you know, there's a lot. We expected that. That's, you know, that's really how it's playing out. We expect it to continue, to be like that for the remainder of the holiday selling season. We built our guidance based on that assumption.
As far as the seasonality, Johnny Was, it's really not that seasonal. It's pretty level, quarter to quarter. You know, where other businesses seem to have the spring spike in the lower third quarter, Johnny Was is, you know, pretty level each quarter throughout the year.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ed.
Thank you. The next question comes from Paul Lejuez with Citigroup. Please state your question.
Thanks. It's Tracy Kogan filling in for Paul. First, I was hoping you guys could give us some color on the regional performance and performance in some of your bigger states. What are you guys seeing from your wholesale partners? Are you seeing any cautiousness at all, like we've heard from some others, or is it really are they continuing to place big orders 'cause sell-throughs are good? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Tracy Kogan. On the regional performance during 3rd quarter, it was kinda good everywhere. You know, very happily for us, some of our biggest markets were actually the strongest of the strong. Hawaii was really good. The Desert was really good. West Florida, even with Hurricane Ian that happened down there, still was just fantastic. The regional, you know, lineup really worked well for us during the quarter. Again, there wasn't really anywhere that was particularly weak, but the strongest of the strong were really in the places that we would like to see it the most. That was, that was really a great outcome for us. Then in terms of retailer costs, and I think going into spring of 2023, they are definitely very cautious.
Most of the big retailers and really most of the small ones too have cut back their open-to-buy dollars pretty meaningfully for spring of 2023. We actually think that's a healthy thing for the marketplace. It means they'll be appropriately inventoried, and we'll sell more at full price. In terms of our own bookings, I think we're getting much more than our share in that environment. Bookings, depending on the brand or sort of flattish to down very modestly, which we think can, you know, in the environment is actually we're really getting more than our share of the open-to-buy dollars. We think that's based on the performance and strength of our brands.
Just yesterday, I was looking at last week's selling from some of our major wholesale partners, where we get good reporting out of them on a weekly basis, and it looks really, really good. You know, over the long term, that's what we need to do to have successful wholesale businesses. I think we're doing that quite well at the moment.
Great. Thanks very much, and happy holidays.
Thank you, Tracy. You too.
Our next question comes from Noah Zatzkin with KeyBank. Please state your question.
Hi. Congrats on the quarter. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on the strong improvement at Lilly, could you just provide a little bit of color on kind of the change in marketing strategy and how that kind of played out in improving trends through the quarter? Then second, you know, across a lot of your peers, we're seeing kind of stronger performance from brick-and-mortar relative to DTC, but you guys had a pretty even split in terms of growth rates. Just have you seen any different behavior among consumers shopping brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce or, you know, has the behavior largely been the same? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Noah, for the question. Thanks for being on the call. What I would say is I think brick-and-mortar is having a great year. We're really happy with what we're seeing there. While it is true that, you know, when you take the Johnny Was, you know, impact out of the picture, it was really sort of evenly balanced in terms of year-over-year growth in e-com versus brick-and-mortar. If you think back to last year and then even the year before, you know, it was much more tilted towards e-com. The fact that brick-and-mortar is having the growth that it is this year, I think is a different trend line than what we've seen before. We've been really happy to see it. You know, it's wonderful. We expect to see that really continuing through the holiday.
Actually, as we get closer to Christmas, kind of think that bricks and mortar will continue to get stronger. Great to see that. Love to see e-com still growing too, and it's a good picture all the way around. Then in terms of the improvement at Lilly, it was really about changing, you know, the partners that we were working with in the digital marketing arena, and then sort of using that as the jumping off point to make sure that we were attending to all the fundamentals in the right way in our digital marketing arena. I think that work is well underway. Obviously, it's well underway, and we've seen some great results to date. There is also more to come there. There's more work to be done.
Also, I think more, more room for us to improve our performance there. We were delighted to see the positive comps in Lilly during the quarter in both bricks and mortar and e-commerce.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the floor back to Tom Chubb for closing remarks.
Thank you, Diego, and thanks to all of you for your interest in our company. We hope you enjoy the holidays, and we'll look forward to talking to you again in the new year.
Thank you. That concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a great day.