Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Q2 2022 conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the conclusion of the prepared remarks. Today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeremy Brooks, Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and thank you for joining our second quarter earnings call. I'd like to remind you that during this call, we will make forward-looking statements with respect to future events and financial performance, including guidance for fiscal 2022 and our long-term outlook. Although we believe these statements reflect our best estimate and all available information, we cannot make any assurances that these statements will materialize, and actual results may differ significantly from our expectations.
The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of these statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after today's call. Additionally, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures should not be considered replacements for and should be read together with our GAAP results.
A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures for the most directly comparable GAAP measure, along with an explanation of how and why we use those measures, appears in Exhibit 1 to the press release we issued earlier today. This call should also be considered in conjunction with our periodic and annual filings with the SEC. The call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our Investor Relations website. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Laura Alber, our President and Chief Executive Officer.
Thanks, Jeremy. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm excited to share our second quarter earnings today. Q2 marks another quarter of strong performance, delivering an 11.3% comp on the top line and earnings growth of over 19% to $3.87 per share. These impressive results reflect the strength of our multi-brand portfolio, the success of our growth initiatives, and the ongoing execution of the team.
We continue to demonstrate our ability to perform by offering high quality, differentiated, and sustainable products that our customers know and love. Our performance was driven by three factors, strong order fulfillment, positive demand comps, and our successful continued elimination of site-wide promotions. I'm very proud of this performance, especially given the macroeconomic backdrop and the strong compares we are up against, all while delivering an impressive 41.1% comp on a two-year basis.
It is this continued outperformance that gives us the confidence to reiterate our 2022 guidance and longer-term outlook today. Our positioning in the industry is a competitive strength. Our industry is large and fragmented, with more than half of sales from small brick-and-mortar retailers that do not have sophisticated e-commerce capabilities. With the arrival of the millennial generation to the household creation stage, this is a huge opportunity for ongoing market share gains for us while the rest of the players try to catch up.
At the same time, our digital first, but not digital-only channel strategy provides a competitive edge in scaling the business into the future compared to both retail and marketplace-only players. All of this creates an environment that is ripe for disruption and for us to take market share.
We continue to win because of our key differentiators, which include our in-house design capabilities with inspirational, exclusive, sustainable, and high-quality products at compelling price points, our digital first, but not digital-only channel strategy, and our values rooted in sustainability, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are becoming even more fundamental to purchasing decisions for many customers.
These differentiators set us apart as a leader in the industry. Now, I want to highlight one of our opportunities, business to business. Our B2B business had another terrific quarter, driving a 32% increase in demand in Q2, and it is well on track to becoming a $1 billion business this year. We continue to grow in this space by focusing on diversifying our product pipeline across a range of industry verticals.
In Sports and Entertainment, we are excited to service our first collegiate sports facility at San Diego State's new Snapdragon Stadium. In Hospitality, we continue to gain market share through renovations and new builds, leveraging our diversity of brands. In our Commercial Office pipeline, we are encouraged to see the momentum continue as companies return to the office and workspaces are reimagined.
To drive the B2B growth, we are focused on the continued development of our sales team and expansion of our contract-grade product assortment. We remain optimistic and excited about the potential of this business as there is no one else providing the full suite of services and offerings that we do. Moving to sustainability, we are thrilled to announce the recent publication of our 2021 Impact Report, highlighting the progress and fulfillment of our industry-leading ESG goals.
We remain committed to prioritizing sustainability, diversity, philanthropy, and worker well-being as key differentiators for our business. In the report, we detail progress on our long-standing commitments, including responsibly sourced cotton and wood, waste diversion, and increased fair trade premiums. We are also one of the first home furnishing brands to set a science-based target for reducing our emissions across our company, and we have made progress decreasing our carbon intensity.
Now I'd like to talk about our Global business. We continue to believe that global expansion represents a sizable opportunity, and we are focused on a multi-channel strategy in key markets. In Q2, we continued building momentum with our franchise partnerships. Our presence in Mexico continues to drive growth, and we launched the Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids websites in India, with stores beginning in Q3 of this year and further expansion into 2023.
In our company-owned business in Canada, we continue to expand our family of brands with the launch of our Pottery Barn Teen website and the relaunches of Williams-Sonoma, West Elm, Pottery Barn, and our Pottery Barn Kids websites in the market, all with great customer response. Before we get to the strong results of the brands, I want to update you on the supply chain.
U nfortunately, this is an area where we continue to see significant disruption, inefficiencies, and cost pressures. Although our in-stock position has improved, we have still room to improve our on-time shipment to customers. Also, we continue to incur higher distribution center costs to support our growth, as well as higher ocean freight. We are still incurring added costs to ship out of market and multiple shipments to service our customers.
We expect this pressure will continue in the second half of this year and the first half of next. This is reflected in our guidance and our outlook. Now, let's turn to the performance of our brands. Pottery Barn delivered another extremely strong quarter with a 21.5% comp, or 51.1% on a two-year basis. All channels and product divisions contributed to driving incremental demand.
Our high-quality proprietary furniture business continues to lead the growth. Pottery Barn continues to innovate with product and incremental growth initiatives. For example, in July, Pottery Barn launched the Accessible Home, an exciting new concept designed to enhance the quality of life at home for the aging in-place community and people living with disabilities and injuries. Our customers have responded enthusiastically about our efforts to address this underserved market, and we believe this could be a significant opportunity across our portfolio of brands.
Moving to West Elm, West Elm delivered a 6.1% comp in the second quarter, on top of 51.1% last year, or 57.2% on a two-year basis. We're excited about our new businesses in kids and bath, which continue to drive outsized growth for the brand and w e launched our dedicated B2B e-commerce experience and expanded assortment there. Looking forward to Q3, we are focused on three key areas of growth at West Elm. One, improving furniture in-stocks and lead time reductions. Two, expanding our depth in seasonal decorating, hosting, and entertaining categories. Three, launching innovative collaborations across the brand.
With the ongoing success of our strategic initiatives, we remain confident in our ability to drive West Elm to become a $3 billion brand. Now I'd like to update you on our Pottery Barn Kids business, which delivered a sequentially stronger quarter with a 5.3% comp in Q2. During the quarter, we benefited from improving inventory receipts out of Vietnam, which followed factory closures that occurred in the back half of 2021.
Also, we successfully launched our biggest ever back-to-school collection, and we enabled functionality to ship dorm products to any store and any brand in our fleet across the country. Early results also indicate the seasonal holiday business will be a success, given the early positive reaction to Halloween. In the Williams-Sonoma brand, I want to highlight our recently announced change in leadership.
Felix Carbullido, previously our Chief Marketing Officer, has assumed the role of President of the Williams-Sonoma brand. Felix brings incredible talent to the position through his experience in strategy and operations, in addition to a breadth of merchandising, e-commerce, and marketing expertise. Felix is only three weeks into the role but sees clear opportunities for the brand, particularly in key areas including, one, leaning further into the brand's heritage of inspiring those who love to cook at home with relevant and useful storytelling across all channels.
Two, the importance of offering the best product and ensuring customers can rely on Williams-Sonoma to be in stock across the key essentials of a great home kitchen. Finally, there are white space opportunities, not only in our core offerings, but also in new categories that have clear adjacencies to the kitchen.
In Q2, Williams-Sonoma came in at a positive 0.5% comp, with accelerating comps throughout the quarter. This was driven by an improved in-stock position, newness in the assortment, as well as higher conversion on the site, driven by our ongoing e-commerce initiatives that have improved imagery and shop paths. In-stock continues to improve, and we believe we will see further recovery in the back half. As part of the Williams-Sonoma brand, our Williams-Sonoma Home business ran a high double-digit % comp again this quarter and continues to be an opportunity.
Given the strength of the Williams-Sonoma brand name, our expertise in the furniture category, and the clear opportunity in the high-end home market, we believe that Williams Sonoma Home is destined to be a product leader of a distinctive design-led, high-quality home furnishings. In summary, we are proud of our performance, and we remain committed to executing on our growth initiatives and operational improvements to drive market share gains and strong long-term financial returns.
I want to thank our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. We are committed to delivering for all of you. With that, I'd like to turn the call to Julie to go through all the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Laura, and hello, everyone. We had another outstanding quarter with revenues, operating margin, and earnings all exceeding expectations. Our performance and execution remained strong. Our comps outperformed due to positive and healthy demand comps and accelerating order fulfillment. Our growth strategies continued to build momentum and our operating margin continued to grow above expectations due to running a more regular priced business and another quarter of advertising and employment leverage.
These factors enabled us to outperform on both the top and bottom line with double-digit comps and another quarter of operating margin expansion. Our results this quarter further validate that we are one of the best positioned to succeed in the short and long term with strong, profitable growth.
Moving to our second quarter results in more detail. Net revenues grew to $2.1 billion, with comparable brand revenue growth at 11.3% on top of 29.8% last year for a two-year stack of 41.1%. This includes double-digit growth in both channels. In retail, we delivered an 11.4% comp despite retail traffic down almost 19% to 2019. In E-commerce, we delivered an 11.3% comp and grew our E-commerce penetration 60 basis points year-over-year to 65.4%. Moving down the income statement, our gross margin continues to hold near historic highs at 43.5%, which was 60 basis points below last year's record Q2.
Our merchandise margins remained strong with another consecutive quarter of merchandise margin expansion year-over-year as we continued to preserve our pricing integrity by remaining committed to our decision to no longer offer site-wide promotions. The gross margin decline was driven by higher freight costs from our strong furniture demand, higher backorder fulfillment, and global supply chain disruptions driving freight rates higher for all.
We also incurred incremental freight costs in order to best serve our customers to get product to them timely by shipping from out-of-market distribution centers, and in some cases, shipping multiple times for multi-unit orders, which typically would have been done in a single shipment.
Occupancy costs at 9% of net revenues were flat to last year, with occupancy dollars increasing 9.6% to approximately $193 million, which includes incremental costs from our new distribution centers on both the East and West Coast. These new distribution centers will allow us to support our ongoing growth, optimize service times for our customers, and drive efficiencies in cost over time.
Given our ongoing retail real estate optimization efforts, we were pleased that we were able to help mitigate these incremental costs and hold the occupancy rate flat. Our SG&A rate continues to be at an historical low at 26.4%, leveraging 90 basis points over last year, driven by advertising and employment leverage from our strong top-line performance and ongoing operational efficiencies.
Across the company, we continue to operate with a disciplined approach, challenging all expenditures to maximize the return from our spend. These results once again led to a record quarter of earnings with our most profitable Q2 ever, including operating income growth of 12% to $366 million and an operating margin at 17.1%, expanding 40 basis points over last year. This resulted in diluted earnings per share of $3.87, up 19.4% from last year's record second quarter earnings per share of $3.24. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of $125 million with no debt outstanding and year-to-date operating cash flow of $384 million.
This year-to-date cash flow allowed us to fund the operations of the business and to almost double our capital investments to support our growth. In addition, we returned excess cash year to date of almost $880 million to shareholders through $113 million in dividends and $766 million in share repurchases, a significant increase over last year at this time. These elevated share repurchase levels reflect the confidence we have in the long-term strength of our business and demonstrate our commitment to maximizing shareholder returns.
Moving down the balance sheet, merchandise inventories, which include in-transit inventory, were $1,542 million, increasing 32% over our reduced levels last year. Inventory on hand increased 28% over last year but was only up 1% to 2019 versus sales up 56% over the same time frame.
In the quarter, backorder levels decreased. However, they continue to be too high in total. We are working hard to get these goods in to fulfill our customer orders. We believe that we will be able to return to normalized backorder levels next year.
Turning to our expectations for the remainder of the year and beyond, we are reiterating our fiscal year 2022 and long-term financial outlook of mid to high single-digit revenue growth, growing revenues to $10 billion by 2024, with operating margins relatively in line with fiscal year 2021. Our reiteration of our outlook simply acknowledges that the economic backdrop remains uncertain with currently unknown outcomes surrounding spending trends, inflation, interest rates, supply chain pressures, and global unrest.
The fundamentals of our business remain strong, evidenced by our first half outperformance and the accelerating demand comps we are seeing as we enter the third quarter. Our confidence to achieve our revenue outlook is rooted in three tangible drivers. Our year-to-date trends, which continue to outpace the industry and reflect market share gains, our continued improvement in our inventory receipts expected through the back half, which will enable us to fill prior orders and lower our elevated backorder levels, and our ongoing strength in our growth initiatives, which continue to build momentum.
From a profitability perspective, we expect cost pressures to continue in the back half and into the beginning of 2023, particularly across our supply chain, from the incremental distribution centers and related costs to support our growth, plus higher ocean freight and other freight-related costs resulting from the global supply chain disruptions and our efforts to best serve our customers by delivering product to them as timely as possible.
Despite these pressures, we remain confident in our ability to achieve fiscal year operating margins relatively in line with our fiscal year 2021 rate at 17.7%, which was an all-time high, given our strong start to the year and our culture of strong financial discipline. In summary, we are very proud of the results we continue to deliver for our customers, associates, and shareholders.
These results further validate our ability to deliver sustainable strong growth and profitability. As we continue to navigate the dynamic changes in the macro environment, we are confident that our strong foundation of differentiators and our operating model, as well as the momentum of our growth initiatives, will continue to keep us ahead of the competition.
This combined with an environment where consumers are shifting increasingly online and are prioritizing value and sustainability in their purchases now more than ever, leave us uniquely positioned to continue to take market share and profitably. Finally, I would like to thank all our associates for their hard work and relentlessness in driving these great results. I would now like to open the call for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to give everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll take our first question from Max Rakhlenko with Cowen and Company. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks a lot. Nice job in the quarter. So first, just on top line, can you share what demand was in the quarter and then just provide any more color on early 3Q trends? Just bigger picture, what do you attribute the outperformance to and ways that you can play offense from here as the environment does get tougher?
Hi, Max, it's Julie. You know, as we said in our prepared remarks, our demand comps remain positive, and healthy, and in fact, you know, accelerated as we entered into the third quarter. They are lower than our double-digit net comps. We had alluded to that in our last call that we had seen the demand comps start to moderate.
They're nothing like what we've heard others indicate or report. We're pleased to see that we were able to deliver accelerated comps this quarter, both driven by healthy demand and our accelerating net sales, and we're seeing both of those accelerate into the third quarter.
Max, to your question about why we're winning and how come we're outperforming, first of all, thank you for the great question. You know, we think it's a couple reasons. First, we've said over and over what our key differentiators are, and they're truly setting us apart. Let me just talk about the first one first in more detail than I have in the past.
We talk about in-house design, which allows us to have proprietary product that is of high quality and of the best value, and also happens to be sustainable. It also allows us to innovate and bring in collections that no one else has and see white space. This culture of innovation that we have is driving a lot of the great wins for our business.
Truly, I don't believe we'd have these results had we not continued to deliver these important points. Each one, you know, is a seed that grows and some into very large brands. In Pottery Barn, example A is Accessible Home. You know, really obvious and sizable business opportunity. We just got started. You know, they also have in Pottery Barn a bunch of great collaborations that they've been launching.
You know, my favorite one with Hailey Bieber, which is really fun if you want to check that one out. Pottery Barn Kids has always had really wonderful, exciting collaborations in, you know, different licenses that kids love, from Beatrix Potter to Disney to Emily & Meritt, Harry Potter, and those continue to drive relevancy for the brand and delight the child.
For West Elm, you know, in terms of innovation, we've talked about B2B, we've talked about kids and bath. But we also had some collaborations that really are working there, like the Sarah Sherman Samuel. I don't know if you've had a chance to see that.
That's also in Pottery Barn Kids too. This has really set us apart and gotten us more attention on our kids' growth in our West Elm business. We're still really low awareness that we even have a West Elm Kids business. So those are just some of the examples. When we say innovation, we say that it's a differentiator that we design our own products. It's this culture of innovation that really, I think, is what's making us outperform.
Got it. That's very helpful. Just on promotions, bigger picture, can you speak to the strategies ahead? We've seen the depth increase, but maybe not the breadth, and you obviously haven't returned to site-wide promos. Just ahead, what should we expect from you? I guess ultimately, would you be willing to leave some top line on the table to maintain margins, even if the industry does get very promotional in some of the quarters ahead?
Yeah. First of all, the industry is already very promotional, particularly with the big box retailers faltering. There's a lot that they're flushing through, and that's been going on for more than just, you know, a couple of weeks here. You've been watching this happening most of this year. I believe, Julie, you did detail the difference between our MMU and our-
Not financially, but yeah, MMU has expanded.
Right.
The delta on our gross margin is simply just the shipping cost.
Right.
Still remains strong. It's another quarter of, you know, expansion that we're seeing.
Okay.
Even with the promotional environment, we're still able to drive.
I think that's the key point that I want to make sure that no one confuses when they just do the quick read of the gross margin, that you understand where it came from and where it didn't come from. You know, we are committed to the elimination of site-wide promos. We believe this is absolutely the healthiest way to run our business for long-term success. It's a function of the products that we sell that have great design, as I said, and great quality and are sustainable.
As long as we continue to maintain that value weight equation in the product and the innovation, I believe we're really equipped to maintain this posture because no one else has the same product out there in the market. That said, this commitment doesn't mean that we're not going to use markdowns to manage our inventories.
We are very aggressive about managing our inventories, and markdowns are part of any retail business, and we will take markdowns, particularly in seasonal products and slow-moving SKUs, but we have not expanded the amount of promotions that we're running.
Got it. Thanks so much. Best regards.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Cristina Fernández with Telsey Advisory Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, and congratulations on another good quarter. I wanted to ask about inventory receipts for the back half. I mean, inventory has been tight, but it seems like it's improving. Do you expect better inventory flow in the second half of the year as what you've seen, so far in the first half?
Yes. I mean, I would say we do. We certainly expect it to improve as we move throughout the back half. I think what's important to remember is that, I mean, first of all, as far as our growth to date, you know, it's 32%, but it's still 1% on a three-year basis versus 56% up on sales.
We are dealing with a lot of. You know, we're shifting more to furniture and bigger cube items, and we're dealing with inventory coming in both to fill back orders but also to fill our current demand. So that creates a lot of inventory coming in at the same time. Yet at the same time, we still need to get more inventory in to be in stock.
We still, as Laura mentioned, need to be thoughtful about the inventory that's aging to be able to get it pushed out so we have more room in the distribution center. As we move through the back half, we do expect our inventory levels to get better, but we'll still have elevated backorder levels into the first half of 2023.
Yeah, I think just to add to that, you know, the good news is as we've gotten back in stock, which is really important to our customers, we have seen backorder creation rates come down. Backorder levels have decreased, even though they are still too high. Our cancel rates have moderated. Also just another thing under the covers is that we have industry-leading lead times in our domestic in-house upholstery.
Nobody else is shipping custom upholstery faster than we are. As much as our on-time shipments are not where we want to be, we are extremely focused on getting back in stock and every day working to serve our customers the best we can in this environment.
I do believe as we go through the balance of this year and next, early next, we should be in much better position.
Just a quick follow-up. On the merchandise margin, it seems like promotions are, let's say, flattish year-over-year. What are the other drivers that are allowing you to expand the merchandise margin?
It's an interesting question. Without giving too much competitive information away, you know, I think you know that we have taken some price raises. We've been very selective. We don't pass those costs on unilaterally to our customers. We look to see where we're underpriced and where we can still offer value to this customer. You know, at this point, we are sort of plateauing on not raising our prices.
We're also starting to see that certain raw materials and fuels come down in price. Over time, honestly, this should allow us to get price reductions from our vendor partners that could help our margins and that would also potentially allow us to lower some of the prices to our customers.
Thank you, and best luck this quarter.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Congratulations again. You just keep the trend going. Laura, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about household income brackets and kind of the lower end obviously feeling much more of the pain and having that creep into kind of the median household income in the second quarter. You guys stay pretty high up, but I'm curious, the strength that you saw at Williams- Sonoma Home speaks to that really higher end. West Elm would seem to me to be maybe more median-ish in terms of household income. Can you talk about what you're seeing with regard to these different target income brackets and how they're behaving?
Sure. First of all, Williams- Sonoma Home for us is still very small, coming off a small base, so I wouldn't read much into that for the total high-end industry.
In terms of customers, you know, it's. I'm always looking at this data to see what we can see. I mean, we don't see a ton of inconsistency across even location. Slightly better Southwest, Southeast, slightly better, but it's not material. Gen Z and Millennials do continue to be our fastest-growing segment, which is awesome.
There isn't much differentiation with the income levels except it's not based on income, it's about how much they spend. We're seeing people who spend more than $1,000 accelerate and people who spend less than $200 decelerate. But that's also not surprising given that furniture is the strong growth vehicle for our business that you would see that they're buying more furniture from us versus anything else.
So, I don't- y ou know, I'm sharing this with you to share that we are looking at all these factors, and we're not seeing it. Although one could conclude that we're more insulated because our customer is in a better situation from an income perspective. I think the bigger thing about the macro is that, although there's been some slowing of the housing market, most of our customers have seen significant house appreciation, okay?
Mm-hmm.
Our customers love their home, and it's one of their largest assets, and they are engaged with improving that asset. This, I think we all know, we're all spending more time in our homes, working, entertaining, and investing in them, of course. We also know that home furnishings always lag the home sale and the home remodel.
Therefore, the current period metrics on home sales and interest rates don't necessarily align with the home improvement journey. As a result, we continue to believe there's significant runway ahead for home furnishing sales. While I'm talking too much, I might as well just add that although there's a lot of smart people out there predicting a recession, we're also seeing consumer sentiment improve as inflation cools.
All right. Yeah.
There's a lot of reasons, I think, you know, believe we're gaining share and that we're in the right business. You know, we've looked at a lot of different data sources, and it is really in a couple data sources very clear that we're gaining share, significant share.
Okay. For Julie, my follow-up is, custom orders versus in-stocks. I know in-stocks have been hard to keep in stock, so I'm wondering if you've seen any noticeable difference in the movement to custom orders. Those are obviously stickier and tend not to have cancellations because of the deposit. Any trends in that would be super helpful. Thank you.
I'll take that, Adrienne. Custom orders, most of our upholstery business is custom, okay? People always want to choose their own fabric and their own frame. We don't do much stocked upholstery at all, so there's no dynamic there really that's changing. What's stocked is our, you know, bedroom furniture, dining furniture, all those, wood pieces. Most of our Upholstery business is custom.
Okay. Thank you very much. Best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Good afternoon, and congrats on a great quarter. My first question is just thinking about the outlook for the back half of the year. If 2022 operating margins are in line with 2021, that implies some modest decline in the second half operating margins after a strong performance in the first half. What's driving that slight decline? Is it some of the additional supply chain pressure, or is there anything else that might be at work here?
Yeah. There's two things there. First of all, I mean, we are obviously reiterating our strong guidance, giving a nod to the fact that the environment's uncertain, so we're being cautious on that. There is definitely some pressure that we're going to feel on the op margin line, particularly associated with these ongoing supply chain costs. We're going to continue to have incremental, you know, distribution center costs.
We've got ocean freight costs that are higher, along with dray and demurrage costs. There's all the costs that are increased to get the goods to us. Then incrementally, we are doing the right thing by our customer to accelerate getting the goods to them. There'll be incremental costs for out-of-market shipments and for multiple shipments that we typically would have done in a single shipment.
The one thing from a modeling perspective to make sure you're aware, if you remember last year in Q3, we had higher spot rate charges. That will help us to partially offset some of that incremental cost in Q3, but Q4, we didn't have that last year. You'll see that the Q4 is going to be a bigger impact than the Q3.
At the end of the day, of course, we'll do everything we can to mitigate it as we always do. You know, thankfully, with the strength that we've had in the first half of the year, we are very confident in our ability to hit our, you know, operating margin in line with 2021, which, as you know, is a 17.7% and the highest we've ever had.
That's really helpful. Then, relatedly, as your inventory starts to normalize, you'll have more clearance and need to mark down slow-moving SKUs. How much has that been benefiting you for the last two years, and what kind of reversion can we see an impact on margins over the next year or two?
I mean, I wouldn't assume that that would go up, per se. I mean, we've always had inventory that ages, and we've always had to clear it. We've had warehouse sales for a while now. So, I don't think there's anything there that is a significant shift that should be concerning from a promotional stance or margin perspective.
Remember, you know, most of what we sell is core, and so we're different than, you know, the apparel companies and so forth. As you get more inventory and you come back in stock, if it comes in late, there's a lot more pressure for them to push it out and get it out of the distribution center. For us, it's just a base play. We'll continue to have, you know, markdowns and things like that where we need to get rid of aged inventory, but there's no substantial shift that should occur.
Great. Thanks a lot, and good luck.
We'll take our next question from Anthony Chukumba with Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you so much for taking my question. You know, congrats as well on a great quarter, particularly, you know, given the tough sort of macro environment. Just a real quick question, just more of a clarifying question. You know, in prior calls, and I don't mean to nitpick, particularly given the fact that you had a really great quarter. In prior calls, you know, you talked about, you know, the emerging brands and gave us, you know, updates there in terms of comps and your thoughts there. I was just wondering if there's any color you would provide on the emerging brand performance in the second quarter. Thank you.
Yeah. I'm so sorry I didn't do that. That's just actually because we are being more edited in our prepared remarks, so we have more time for Q&A. They're both really driving profitable growth. Mark and Graham, let's see. Julie won't want me to give the specific quote. Can I give him a specific comp? I can tell you double-digit, okay?
Same with Rejuvenation, double-digit comp on both these brands. In Rejuvenation consumer and B2B business are both performing consistent to each other and seeing strong performance across DTC and retail and Rejuvenation. We still would love to have a few more stores because stores are really good in driving brand awareness for Rejuvenation.
In Mark and Graham, we're really, you know, we're pushing the trends that are post-pandemic trends like travel, social sports, home entertaining as primary drivers of the incremental, brand growth. You know, we're seeing particularly resurgence of tennis and golf, pickleball fueling this business. It's a really fun gift business, and we're starting to see, people really notice us and come to us for their gifts. We're excited about both Mark and Graham and Rejuvenation as growth vehicles for our company.
Got it. No, that's really helpful. Yeah, I appreciate you adding your comments, but don't edit your comments just so you can hear more questions from the likes of sell-side analysts like me. Anyway, just second real brief question. I mean, obviously, you know, very strong free cash flow in the first half of this year.
I would expect you to see continued to be strong free cash flow in the second half. You've been very aggressive about buying back stock. Obviously, you have the dividend. How do you think about, just near term, about, you know, capital allocation, you know, in, particularly like in the back half of this year?
Yeah. I mean, we're going to continue with, you know, buybacks and our dividends of course. Maybe not to the same degree. We'll see. Certainly, we still believe our stock is undervalued. It has recovered nicely. We're pleased that we were able to buy the stock back on average for about $138.
Obviously, the stock is much higher now, but it's still undervalued. We're going to continue as long as we have the really strong free cash flow and are generating this kind of, you know, earnings and cash that we are. We think the right thing to do is to return it to our shareholders. We're still committed to doing that.
I think also the buyback signals also the confidence we have in our guidance.
Got it. Very helpful. Keep up the good work. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead.
Hey, how you guys doing? Good afternoon. Nice quarter. You know, on our math, it looks like your backlog really continues to gain steam, which is obviously a good thing for your customer. Is it possible to size up where you are today on the backlog versus maybe where you were last year? Is there a banner where the backlog levels are more severe than others?
Yeah. I mean, we haven't disclosed the total amount, as you guys know, but it has come down, but it's still incredibly sizable. I think we may have said before that most of the back orders associated with furniture. Certainly, you know, Pottery Barn and West Elm have a sizable amount of back orders, but every brand has them. You know, the good news is we are starting to bring that backlog down, and certainly that's a tailwind for the back half and as we move into 2023.
Okay. Is there a banner that it's higher? Would you say PB is higher than maybe Sonoma or West Elm?
Well, Williams-Sonoma's obviously lower, less furniture.
Yeah. Pottery Barn's our largest brand, so.
Okay. All right, cool.
Hopefully that helps.
On the 9% or so increase in occupancy dollars year-over-year, it sounds like the distribution center openings are an incremental spend on that line item. I guess, is there a way to think about the occupancy line over the next couple of quarters given those openings?
Yeah. It will be a little bit higher, kind of similar to where it has been now because of those incremental distribution centers. At the same time, we've had some off sites that should be coming off. You know, we've got some incremental hubs that over time will come off. I think the bigger play, as you know, is our retail real estate optimization strategy.
Most of our stores that we plan on closing close at the end of the year. As you start to lap into the new year, you'll get the benefit again from that reduced, you know, occupancy cost associated with those stores. In the shorter term, yes, there'll be pressure on that line.
All right. Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Chuck.
We'll take our next question from Jonathan Matuszewski with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions, and nice quarter. First one was just on supply chain. Laura, you mentioned, you know, challenges still persist there. Just curious where you guys are from a diversification standpoint. I think a while ago you mentioned reducing China exposure by half. So just curious, you know, how much there is to go on that initiative. That's my first question. Thanks.
Yeah, I think that's an ongoing journey. We have significantly reduced the China exposure. What we're working on now is just having multiple high-quality vendors who can make some of our high-risk furniture for kids. It's been harder to find multiple vendors who can do that. To also hit the sustainability marks that we're looking for.
We're really always looking for additional high-quality suppliers, would be what I would say to that. The continuation out of China has happened. You know, it doesn't mean you're moving it to a place that is free of any other issues. There's a lot of different issues in all these places around the globe, including the domestic market. We just have to have more options.
You know, in terms of where we are, I think this is going to be, you know, a continued issue for a while, because these factories are skittish to open too, you know, much further than they are and to accelerate given the recessionary fears that everyone has out there. I think we're going to continue to see pressure on flow from some of the highest quality vendors.
That's helpful. Then my follow-up question. You know, Laura, you mentioned Millennials and Gen Z, the fastest-growing cohort you're seeing. A question on marketing strategy for you. You know, it feels like you guys are leaning in a bit deeper into, you know, brand ambassadors, influencer marketing from what we see on social media.
You launched the West Elm Collective not long ago. You know, I never really thought about Gen Z as really a core demo for your business, but, you know, it is a group that leverages some of those channels. You know, just your thoughts on, you know, how you've been, you know, leaning in more to that channel, how impactful it's been.
You know, you guys have always done a good job with digital marketing, but it seems like you guys are making a bit more of a pivot, at least from what we see. So, any thoughts there in terms of the impact? Thanks.
You know, it's interesting. Felix just happens to be with me, and since he's still doing two jobs, I'm going to make him make a few comments, too. You know, video is very engaging. Whether it's video on TikTok, on our site, on Insta, you know, we're doing more video. You know, as much as a lot of Millennials and Gen Z get credit for liking video, don't we all like video?
The stuff we're doing for that generation, I think, is appealing to all. We're certainly always pushing to try these new channels, whether it's Pinterest or TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest has been, you know, much better than I expected, frankly, and I think there's still a lot of room to go there.
You know, the TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube group is also showing that their engagement is, you know, multilayered and different than just a product ad on Google. Felix, do you want to add anything to that?
I think it's undeniable the impact that TikTok has on customers of all ages, particularly those demographics to which you talked about. They bring a couple of things. They extend the reach of our brand. They introduce our brand to new customers, but some of the design collaborations also bring new aesthetics. It's about offering a diverse point of view or expression of our brand to customers so we can acquire more and introduce our customers to some of these new looks and some of these new influencers. It's. You're correct. We've leaned more into that because society has and we want to make sure we're as relevant as we always have been.
That's helpful. Thanks, guys. Best of luck.
We'll take our next question from Bradley Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, let me add my congratulations as well. Great first half of the year here. You know, it's a little early probably to talk about the holiday season, but that's obviously your most important quarter of the year. Wondering, Laura, Julie, if you could just comment a little bit about maybe, from a merchandising standpoint, how you plan for this year, how you're thinking about the consumer and any differences in how it may show up here for the holidays, and any nuances of how the mix is a little bit different during that quarter. Thanks.
Yeah, we really love the holidays. Frankly, we have a great lineup, and it's always good to see, you know, the Halloween off to a good start, as I alluded to, and the Kids business also off to a really good start, and PB & Williams-Sonoma as well. I should have said that. You know, we built on last year's great sellers. We sold out very fast last year of a lot of our key holiday products.
We're going to get a chance to, you know, fully, you know, leverage those ideas that barely made it to the floor last year. You know, we're excited about Williams-Sonoma. You know, the Williams-Sonoma holiday season was disrupted last year by COVID. Let's remember, Thanksgiving was not exactly easy.
My family, not be able to make Christmas because of COVID. This year it should be a much easier celebration for people to come together, and we're really looking forward to being a part of that and giving our customers great experience and, great products to celebrate the holidays with. Felix and his team are really working on holiday preparedness right now on the website. In fact, Felix, I think you had a meeting today with our district managers.
Yeah. I mean, before this meeting, I spent four hours with our district managers. They flew across the country to come in and look at holiday because it is such an important part of our business, but it's critically important for retail. We walked through the assortment. I think everyone's super excited about it.
Laura mentioned a number of things that I'm excited about, but seasonal holidays are another one because there's always every single month, there's a reason to celebrate. You know, there's no better brand to celebrate. With, then Williams-Sonoma. I'm super optimistic about this holiday and the holidays going forward, for this brand. Stay tuned.
That's great. Thank you so much.
We'll take our next question from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, Julie and Laura. I wanted to ask about the tone of the consumer. Last quarter, there was some mentioning of, I think, some choppiness coming into this quarter. It sounds like things have picked up and the sentiment has gotten better, and demand comps have gotten better. I want to make sure that that's the right read and you're not seeing the tentativeness that maybe you were at the early part of the quarter.
No, that's exactly right. I mean, as we said in our last call, as we started that call or that quarter, you know, we saw demand comps moderate. We're really pleased and excited to see them coming back and accelerating and being strong heading into the third quarter. We haven't seen, you know, again, what others are mentioning out there. It's really different for, you know, certain retailers. Thankfully we're one of those that are seeing real strength in our business. Remember, we're only three weeks into the quarter, so don't overread this, but this is what we've meant to signal to you is exactly what Julie just said.
B2B, the growth, I'm assuming is outpacing the house average in terms of comp. Can you share at least the spread? Is that spread widening? Is it narrowing? And is B2B concentrated among any of your brands?
Yeah. It's a consistent beat to last year in growth. We're seeing, you know, also a lot of innovation from the brands to feed B2B. As we mentioned, you know, bringing in product that we can offer is a big part of the strategy. More contracts mean more sales for B2B because they can do even more in the project. You know, in terms of penetration, you know, Rejuvenation, by nature, a small business, but large percent B2B, has always been. Trade has been a big part of that as people furnish hotels with their custom configured lighting. West Elm and Pottery Barn are really very strong in B2B, and Williams-Sonoma has a lot of opportunity.
You've heard us talk about the gifts that we do with Williams-Sonoma holidays and business to business, and there's a lot more room, particularly as we expand the assortment in Williams-Sonoma Home, because right now the assortment is so small, it's hard to do large scale projects with Williams-Sonoma Home. Lots of opportunity across the board.
Thank you. Good luck.
We'll take our next question from Oliver Wintermantel with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, guys. I have a follow-up question to the B2B question from Simeon. Can you maybe give us a little bit more details what the margin is on the B2B business versus the rest of your business?
Yeah, we've said this. I mentioned this to you in the past, but it's accretive to our total company operating margin at this time. As that business continues to grow, we get the, you know, incremental benefit on the bottom line.
Perfect. Thank you. With now the success and also, not just the e-commerce, but also in your stores, have you reconsidered, you know, closing, you know, what you disclosed before? I think it was 25% of your store base. Is that something that you're having a different look at now with your success over the last few quarters?
Great question. We, you know, we continue to reassess and review our real estate strategy. While we have been closing stores, we've also had incredible success in repositioning and relocating stores in their current market. Perfect example, in our backyard, we moved our Williams-Sonoma Corte Madera store into a smaller space, and we are off to a very strong start in that store.
As I look at the other Williams-Sonoma stores that we've repositioned, they are outperforming their forecasts too, as customers embrace the new design that provides an improved inspirational shopping experience. We look at this as an opportunity to improve our retail fleet, not to just think of it as a line item on the P&L.
Of course, there are some stores that underperform or are in areas that are not as vibrant, and we are always going to look for the best location in town.
Got it. Thanks very much and good luck.
Thanks.
We'll take our next question from Marni Shapiro with The Retail Tracker. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Congratulations. I just want to touch-
Thank you.
Again, on the B2B, not to beat it up, I'm actually asking on the positive. Can you just talk a little bit about how the expense structure works there? I'm assuming you have a sales team, but it sounds like the products are coming from the brands. So, is the design and R&D part coming from the brands? Because that feels like a really brilliant way to leverage what's already done. Then can you just touch a little bit-
Yes.
... on the relaunch of Hold Everything? Because I thought the timing of it was interesting, and I always liked that brand, so I'm curious about that as well.
Okay, great. This is fun. You're absolutely right, Marni. The structure is we have a dedicated sales team, and then we have Josie , who runs it, who's a powerhouse, looking and working with the brand presidents to identify opportunities for categories that appeal to her clients. If she sees white space, she says, hey, let's work on this area. The brands work together and they develop new products, or we have to get products contract grade approved, which most of them are. They were already, and then some we had to test. Some we actually had to change to make them more durable. Which by the way, I think is pretty good for consumers too, to make something more durable-
Absolutely.
... as I look at this incredible list of client examples, you know, I mean, she's got not just the ones I mentioned, but-
Mm-hmm.
... you know, whether it's Marriott Headquarters Hotel , Waldorf Astoria, Marriott Vacations, Hilton Boston, New Orleans, Charlotte, Curio , Scottsdale, IHG, Kimpton, InterContinental San Antonio, Hotel Indigo, Hyatt Regency, Huntington Beach, Fairmont. I mean, I could just go on and on and read you all these projects that we are doing that are so exciting. It's just new space, you know, for us to be in.
Yeah.
As we said, we want to furnish any space with Pottery Barn's furniture. This has been just a wonderful partnership between the B2B team and the brand team.
That's brilliant.
And then, the question about-
Hold Everything.
... Hold Everything. We always had this great brand called Hold Everything back in the day, and then we closed it. Wasn't doing so well. We saw an opportunity because storage is so relevant to bring it back, really under the Williams-Sonoma banner. We've designed in-house beautiful, high-quality products. You know, we just made it more visible on the site. We have, I think, up to 50 products now. My favorite being the expandable storage organizer for your drawers, which if you check out, you'll see why, it's great because there's versions of that online, but they really break, and it makes your kitchen look like a custom kitchen, and who doesn't want to be more organized? You know, it's been a very successful initiative, and it's gaining steam, and its real volume for us.
Oh, that's really exciting. Best of luck. The storage looks fantastic.
Thank you.
We'll take our final question from Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs.
Thank you so much. Thanks for taking our questions. I'm just going back to a previous question that was asked with regards to the freight costs. I just wondered if there was any way you could compare the cost between what you're experiencing in Q1 versus Q2 and how you expect that to change? Just because you have been dealing with backlogs and multiple deliveries for some time. I just was curious what the change was between quarters and going forward.
Yeah, I think that the bigger change is in the ocean freight side of things and the dray and the demurrage. You know, as we're getting these big volumes of inventory coming in, you know, there are containers that need to be moved around, need to be stored accordingly. Ocean freight rates, as has been the case for everybody, have gone up. You know, that happened sort of, I think it was May or June. Then as you know, you know, those sorts of charges get capitalized onto the balance sheet as part of inventory, and so you don't recognize those until you make a sale. It's a function of turn, which is why we're starting to feel some of those more towards the back half. But that's the reason.
Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude today's conference call. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.
Thank you. Appreciate your support. Happy shopping.