All right, thanks. Good morning, everyone. So, kicking off day two of our Growth Frontiers Conference. My name is Peter Keith, Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler, covering hardline and broadline retail. No better company to kick off day two than Tractor Supply, who's based here in Nashville. The company doesn't need much of an introduction, but I'll do some bragging about them. They are the, I think, well, one of the country's great retail growth stories. They're the category killer in farm and ranch retail, with nearly $15 billion in sales, and roughly 2,300 stores. This is a company, it's one of my longest tenured buy ratings, and it has done very well during that time, so thank you.
So the team we have today is Kurt Barton, who you know is CFO. Very happy to also have Rob Mills, who normally, you're not in a lot of conferences, I don't think, but you're here today. You were just on our CIO panel, so I wanna dig into that a little bit. Rob is the Chief Technology, Digital Commerce, and Strategy Officer at Tractor Supply. We also have in the back Mary Wynn Pilkington, SVP of Investor Relations, and we also have Chris Bybee, who's head of FP&A. So great to see everyone. Thanks for coming.
Yeah. Good morning.
Good morning. All right, so I'm just gonna kick it off first, maybe to Kurt, and then we'll get into some of the technology and strategy questions, but just broadly speaking, there's a lot of confusion on the consumer whether the consumer is slowing, holding steady. What are you guys seeing with your farm and ranch customer in terms of overall spending, and if there's any dynamics between upper income and lower income?
Sure. I'd frame it up as from the beginning of the year to today, there's really not any significant change that we see in the consumer, and particularly our customer. The unemployment rate, while ticking up slightly, still, when you think over historical averages, we have a well-employed consumer group. And certainly in rural America, the employment is strong. There's no doubt there's inflation and in the areas of service, whether it be insurance or occupancy, the inflation is putting some level of pressure, but it's a consumer that's generally healthy. Our consumer has been just as engaged in the beginning of the year and as they are today.
We're very excited about and have a lot of confidence in, you know, our consumer in regards to, you know, their engagement in durable goods, their engagement with Tractor Supply. There's no doubt the consumer is a bit more choosy today. They're emphasizing their decisions based on value and needs-based. Believe that really plays well to Tractor Supply.
Yeah.
Some of our successes that we talked about in second quarter, in big ticket in other areas, emphasized if you have innovation and if you bring value to the customer, and we would also add that in retail today, when you bring great customer service, the consumer-
Mm-hmm
... continues to shop. And so we look at it as much like pre-pandemic. You know, there's a customer that, you know, is looking for the needs, looking for value, and really evaluating value in many different ways. And so we pivot basically to, how do we make sure that we've got the inventory, and that we're bringing what the customer views today as important value to them?
Okay. All right. So maybe to follow on that, and Kurt, obviously, you start, and Rob, one thing that's really, I think, unique about Tractor Supply is, we'll call you a COVID winner.
Mm-hmm.
You did very well during that, the two-year period where people were at home, but you're probably one of the only retailers that has really held in strong in terms of sales and even stock price.
Mm.
So, I wanna dig into that because that's four and a half years ago, a lot has changed. You guys have both been at the company for much longer than-
Mm
... 2020. So how has the company evolved in the last four and a half years to maybe hold on to some of these sales and these customers?
Yeah, certainly. I'll hit some of the last four-year path, and Rob can even talk about, you know, what we have done that, to capitalize on some of those structural tailwinds. But, you know, Peter, to your point, 2020 through 2023 was a three, 2020 through 2022, is a three-year comp store sales stack of 46%. And during that time, we know a lot of retail hit some peaks, and in many cases, gave all of that back. In 2023, Tractor Supply ran relatively flat in its comps, and 2024 is playing out similar to that. But to your point, the really exciting thing is the question about, would these, these strong 46% comp store sales, where it was relatively half transactions in unit growth and half ticket growth, would you see some reversion there?
And I think the last two years have said, you know, while some of the peaks may not have continued at that strong growth level, there's not been a reversion to that. And it really goes to, for Tractor Supply, the tailwinds of those comp store sales wasn't about certain products were the hot product, the thing people needed during the pandemic, it was really about rural migration and the amount of U.S. consumers that moved out of urban and suburban into ex-urban and rural. The growth of the lifestyle itself in being structural, a lot of that was fed from mobility of workers. And even today, while there's some return to the office, the hybrid environment allows the consumer, particularly that millennial customer, that a bit of a wake-up-
... to really say, "Hey, let's, let's launch that move out of urban and, and put our stakes into a house, and let's get some land and live sustainable." And that's what we've seen, and that's really been very sticky for us. And so, that's really the key and the differentiator is, we've seen customer growth and stickiness to it. We've seen unit growth and stickiness there. And even in today's environment, where, you know, goods to service switch is really kind of putting pressure on durable goods, it's still the customer traffic is really, you know, been a hallmark of the last four years. And, you know, Rob, I think to that, you know, some of the areas that we've emphasized, knowing that that migration has occurred and even the growth in Neighbor's Club, and how are we capitalizing on that?
Yeah, you know, over the last few years, first thing, to back up, Tractor's always been a company of test and learn, and that's one of the things I've admired, not just on the product side, but also on the capabilities, the business model. Just how are we continuously learning from, one, the industry, but our customer, listening, and then evolving? You know, we have transformed this company continuously over the years, but also specifically over the last five, six years through COVID. We've invested in, you know, core platforms around data with Neighbor's Club. You know, we're what? 36 million strong. We're using that data to drive personalization, making assortment decisions, fueling new growth, new business opportunities. We've invested in our digital business.
We've introduced new capabilities, subscription, Buy Online, Pickup In Store, but really focusing on how we're convenience, driving a convenience to our customers because they're busy, and back to Kurt's point, when you think about the rural America and the migration that has occurred, you know, these customers want convenience just as much as if they're in downtown New York or Chicago. They want it in the rural markets, too, so this is where we see, how do we leverage technology, digitizing our business, data, to fuel and continuously transform our business. And honestly, those are the things that I think makes us a really unique retailer.
Yeah. And I will just say, too, we interact with a lot of retailers in the channel. Some are pretty good sized, and they're very good businesses. They do not really compare in terms of the digital capabilities that Tractor Supply has done. So that's a nice differentiator for you in the channel. So just to dig into that some more, I think you're at about $1 billion of digital sales today, Rob. So what's kind of next on the roadmap for Tractor Supply to kind of leverage this data and continue to grow your convenience and digital offering?
Yeah. So, we have huge aspirations, and we see tons of opportunities around how we continue to fuel our digital business. There's really four key pillars or core strategies around that. One, we want to continue to be known the best-in-class, especially in farm and ranch, around our digital capabilities. We're on par. In many cases, we're above par, as you mentioned around farm and ranch, specifically. Two, our customer comes to us to check inventory, product information, availability, and they leverage buy online, pickup in store. That is a core differentiator for us. We will continue to double down on that. But also, how do we expand to give them capabilities and convenience offerings for delivery?
One of the nice surprises that we've had, as I mentioned, we're always testing and learning, not just around product, but around capabilities, is we introduced about a year, year and a half ago, subscription for both products. Minimal marketing, really put a focus when you're on the website, how do I buy pallets of feed, food, chemicals, you know, stuff for my property? And now it's about not just picking up in store, but how do I enable it through delivery? So big area will be around last mile. So nailing the basics, last mile. Assortment: How do we continuously complement the assortment that you see in store?
And then ensure, not just if you want to transact online, meaning get it delivered directly to the, to the customer's home, how do we ensure that we do that with speed and ensuring that we offer the best dependable, delivery options, but also in speed? And then lastly, what I would say is, you know, when you walk in our stores, you get this energy around this customer connection. You know, we're connected to the community. It is extremely powerful. To me, it's one of the things that makes Tractor very differentiated. How do you bring that digitally? And this is where we've invested in the mobile app. We're nine million downloads today, and we're continuously growing those downloads by 20% or 30% year over year.
We wanna be connected to that customer when they're in their property, when they need help about their animals, when they need to fix their fence. How do we ensure that that mobile app that they use at all times because of Wi-Fi or cellular connection, they're pulling it out, and we're the source that they're going to for that expert advice, that customer service, but also the dependability around getting the product to them really, really quick.
Okay, great. So, just where, as I mentioned earlier, we opened up the day with the CIO panel.
Mm-hmm.
Rob, you were there. It was a fascinating discussion, and, I thought you made some interesting comments around how you're leveraging AI. And I guess one thing that stood out to me was, like, all the customer data you have and how you're making decisions around assortment. So maybe you could just talk broadly about how AI is starting to get more incorporated into Tractor Supply to provide some competitive advantages.
Yeah, so over the years, Tractor's put a lot of focus on modernizing our tech stack, but what came with that really was looking at our data structure, and how do we clean up our data structure, think logically about our structure, and putting those components in place? And I have to tell you, with the explosion of AI, specifically GenAI, and keep in mind, we've been in AI for years. AI is not new. GenAI is a little bit new, and it's, it's rapidly getting traction out there. But how we're using our data now is really four components. One, it's about how do we drive better insights to our business to make faster decisions? Two, how are we using data to automate and drive sophistication to our forecasting, like replenishment, the needs that we have to restock our stores?
Three, how are we using data to help really fuel our team members and our customer around products? Now, our product could be fairly complex. How do we simplify them to serve up the right content when they're in the store or when they're on their property? And then lastly, how are we using data to drive automation just to make us more efficient, more effective, et cetera? One of the things, and I shared this on the CIO panel, that I've seen with a lot of my peer groups and other companies, is they're really running after trying to look for that AI use case. You know, they wanna catch the buzz. At Tractor, we took a different approach. We look at AI and how do we leverage that technology to solve business problems. We all have business problems. We all have technology roadmaps.
So, not to put technology first, but how do we take the problems that we're facing today and leverage AI to solve for that? And I have to tell you, through that, we've introduced an in-store app that we call Hey Guru, which today is deployed across 2,200 stores. We take about 15,000 questions a day across all of our team members about product, policy, information that they might need. We also have deployed Tractor Vision, which is all about computer vision in the store, to be able to service the customer much more efficiently, think differently about our staffing and our labor, which ultimately provides great customer service and more efficiency around our payroll dollars. And then we're leveraging AI on the back end.
When you think our financial systems, our inventory systems, to make smarter decisions and be able to react to the business much faster, ultimately makes us more agile and more nimble.
All right. And then-
As you can see, I'm pretty passionate about it.
I can tell. No, it's great. I know, Hey Guru, makes a lot of sense to me, maybe not to everyone. Just unpack that a little bit for people because I think it's important.
It's essentially a selling method, methodology about how we group, agree, uncover, kinda interact with the customer to identify their needs. And so we branded this tool, this system, this process to be Hey Guru. And essentially, at a very high level, it's an earpiece all driven through communication. And so a customer might walk in today and say, "Hey, I have a flock of chickens and I want them to produce more eggs. What's the best way to do that?" Through this system, just by asking a question, "Hey Guru, how do I produce more chickens?" It could serve up product information, it could give customer advice on how to kinda manage their flock. And ultimately, when we think about a great customer experience, you're immediately getting that information. You're not trying to sort through a website. So that's just one example.
That's great. Okay. So, Kurt, we'll come back to you. More of a financial question. You guys have been a healthy margin expansion story over time. Maybe just talk about gross margin specifically. The various puts and takes around gross margin here in 2024 that investors should be aware of, and then even just longer term, how should we think about some of those key margin drivers?
Sure. And recognizing, Peter, your question was specific gross margin, so I'll go-
Yeah
... that angle, but I'll start by saying, in our overall long-term algorithm, with a growth structure, with the investments for technology, our Fusion Garden Centers investments, we've said we are managing to our operating margin because there's going to be some puts and takes, even within years, in regards to gross margin expansion, that, you know, supports investments in SG&A. SG&A investments that actually drive, like on the supply chain, that drive gross margin expansion. So recognizing that, I'll just mention on the gross margin where we've seen, you know, significant expansion. Most of our operating margin expansion has been in the gross margin category. And this particular year, we've had really two really key themes that have been the fueling of our gross margin expansion.
We'll begin to cycle over that in the fourth quarter, but we absorbed a good portion of the pressure in transportation over the COVID years. We recognized that as one of the more transitory inflationary areas. And rather than overearning in those particular years, knowing the customer not necessarily wanting to pay for, you know, extra transportation costs, we absorbed that. It put pressure at times, if you look back in some of the years with gross margin, that actually had a year-over-year decline. We were in twenty twenty-four able to really recover some of that as we were coming through some of the reduction in transportation, but also because we've driven, like, 20% of the truck miles out of our supply chain over the last couple of years as well, too.
So we've seen a tremendous benefit this year on gross margin expansion. And then we've also really put a strategic effort in 2023 with our vendor partners to drive and claw back on some of that inflationary, and really leverage the scale of Tractor Supply growth in driving down cost and returning some of that to the customers, but also, you know, it's a gross margin expansion opportunity. That's driven gross margin expansion, in spite of some of the other pressures like product mix, where big ticket and C.U.E. has put pressure on that. Still a net net. So, for the back half of the year, we said we'd see Q3 very similar as the first half of the year on some gross margin expansion. In the fourth quarter, we'll begin to cycle some of that, so we see that flattening out.
I still see opportunity for scale of our size in merchandising on gross margin, growth in exclusive brands... and we still have opportunity to see some of the inefficiency in supply chain, be able to release some of that as we open up. We just opened up our tenth distribution center, and that should drive some expansion. So while not necessarily giving guidance at this point, in our long term, we still believe our operating margin expansion comes mostly from gross margin opportunities. So, still very bullish on improvement in gross margin over the long term.
This is where we do think, real quick, technology could add a lot of value, driving process improvements, efficiency around space planning in the store, and also introducing new capabilities, like with retail media.
Okay, great. So, we'll kind of round it out with one last question. And you had brought up Project Fusion, Garden Center. So I'll direct the question first to Kurt, and then we'll have Rob chime in. So one of the things I love about our conference here in Nashville is we were able to visit a Tractor Supply store on Monday. We had about 30 investors there. So the store had, like I said, all the bells and whistles. It was Project Fusion, it was Garden Center, and it looked great. Maybe, Kurt, just help us understand the roadmap, where you are in terms of the percent of stores that have those aspects incorporated and where that could go over time.
And then, Rob, if you could follow up, too, in terms of like assortment planning, space planning, and how you're using data models to learn how to better assort Garden Center, because it seems like that's an area that you're getting better and better over time.
Yeah, perfectly framed up, 'cause I think that's the right thing for both of us. So, we launched in our Life Out Here strategy, one of the biggest investment opportunities, one of the areas that drives additional market share in a larger TAM in Fusion and then Garden Centers, really getting into live goods and all the assorted categories. We continue to be super excited about that and pushing forward on it. Where we're at in the process, we said, as a reminder, from the beginning of that cycle to really 2028, we plan to convert 100% of our stores. It's a remodel from technology to the entire shopping experience, but really a complete upgrade of the entire store.
And so one thing that's exciting. Fusion basically puts us in a position where by the end of 2028, the entire chain will be upgraded to where you've got anywhere from brand new to three- or four-year-old, if they were the early stage stores, new fleet. And it really puts an extended terminal value on our brick-and-mortar stores. But today, we're at 1,000 stores already of the 2,250 stores have been converted to Fusion, 500 Garden Centers. When we're done, it'll roughly be two-thirds of our stores, we anticipate to have a Garden Center in the side lot and 100% of the stores transitioned. As a reminder, we have seen and continue to have evidence that in year one, Fusion-only, roughly a mid-single-digit lift against the control group chain.
If it's a combo, including a Garden Center, it's high single digit. So we're making great progress on the tailwinds, on the benefits of that. By the way, live goods continues to well outpace the chain average comp sales and the assorted categories that benefit from it, like grilling and bagged goods and garden tools, also beneficial as well. And so the top line, we're hitting on that. The other thing that's exciting is we've gone through financial engineering of the Garden Centers and Fusion to where we've been able to, from year one to today, we always saw this opportunity. Some of it's deflation, a lot of it is: How do you build a better, more economical Garden Center? Roughly 40% of the cost today has been taken out compared to the first generation of that.
We're believing in the ROIC calculation, we're hitting on the top line, and we're really driving lower cost to do that. It's really proving out that it's gonna have strong ROIC, very similar to what we call our hallmark is a great return on new stores. We got the same thing on the ability to take market share on new categories and that result from Fusion and Garden Centers.
Just to add to that, real quick, we think about kind of what I would say, the next evolution of Fusion is three components from strategy as well as from a tech perspective. Think about the investments we'll continue to make in merchandise, space planning tools, just to really optimize our square footage, how we're putting merchandise, where we're putting merchandise, and using the technology about how the customer is shopping in the store, but also, at the same time, drive localization. You know, how do we double down on localized product and assortment and get very scientific about this? This is where AI, our data, our platforms that we've invested over the years, but also in future investments that we'll continue to double down.
The second area is on digital, and why I reference that is because we know how the customers are shopping us, and to take that data real time to influence how we're merchandising the store is extremely powerful. Once again, this all comes back to our data platforms that we invested in, our AI platforms. And then, you know, the third component is about, once again, leveraging AI and some kind of the computer vision models. Because today, for example, in our Garden Centers, you know, there's peaks and valleys of how customers shops those Garden Centers. We are not always staffed in those Garden Centers because of time of day or the peaks and valleys. Using that technology, I can trigger real time that there's a customer that's shopping the Garden Center and ensuring that we're focusing on that legendary service.
How do we get that, team member out to the Garden Center real time, knowing through technology that somebody's in that Garden Center? So how do we get more productive and efficient with our team member use and our payroll dollars? To me, it's about localization, efficiency in the store, and then using our insights to drive products in the store.
All right. Well, that's a great summary. We'll leave it there in interest of time, but sounds like a lot of growth ahead. So,
Exciting.
Thank you both for attending.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, Rob.