Advance Auto Parts, Inc. Price & Performance (AAP)

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This [indiscernible] Give your engine some love with Castrol Oil Change bundles at Advance Auto Parts. Now at Advance Auto Parts, get five cords of Castrol full synthetic mode Welcome to the Advance Auto Parts Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings I would now like to turn it over to Lavash Hehnani, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Good morning and thank you for participating in today's call. I'm joined by Shane O'Kelly, President and Chief Executive Officer and Ryan Grimzeland, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, will be referencing slides which are available to view via webcast. The slides have also been posted to our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, please be advised that management's remarks today will contain forward looking statements. [indiscernible] All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward looking statements. Including but not limited to statements regarding initiatives, plans, projections, guidance and expectations for the future. Actual results could differ materially from those projected or implied by the forward looking statements. Additional information can be found under forward looking statements our earnings release and risk factors in our most recent Form 10 ks and subsequent filings made with the SEC. Shein will begin today's call. Twenty twenty four results and 2025 guidance. Following management's prepared remarks, will open the line for questions. Now, let me turn over the call to our CEO, Shane O'Kelly.

Thank you, Lavesh, and good morning, everyone. I would like to begin today's call by thanking our entire team for their continued dedication and hard work during a difficult year. 2024 was pivotal for Advance. We reinforced our commitment to the blended box by taking transformative actions to divest non core operations and optimize our asset base for growth. We have rebuilt the organization under a leadership team that blends deep automotive knowledge with fundamental retail expertise. Most recently, we are excited to have Shweta Bhatia join as Chief Technology Officer and Jeff Vining join as General Counsel. We are operating the company with a customer first mindset and our field and corporate teams have been empowered to prioritize actions to serve our customers' needs. In November, we introduced a three year strategic plan with a focus on executing the basics, which will enable us to deliver adjusted Initiatives and I remain optimistic about the future of Advance and our opportunities for value creation. Moving to our results. Our fourth quarter and full year financial performance was broadly in line with the range of revised expectations we shared in November. We reported an improvement in comparable sales during Q4 although profitability was impacted by transitory costs related to our strategic actions.

We are in the early stages of stabilizing our operations and expect results to gradually improve as we move through 2025. Ryan will provide details later. Along with announcing our results this morning, we reiterated our three year goals and provided additional detail on our first quarter expectations. As we execute our strategic plan, we expect to get back on the path of delivering positive comparable sales growth and delivering more than 500 basis points of improved operating margin over the next three years. To support this plan, leaders across the organization have set clearly identifiable milestones and we are closely tracking against our KPIs. And our teams are energized for the path forward. We fuel that energy with Accelerate 2025, our national leadership meeting which returned after a ten year hiatus. Using the theme of Connect [indiscernible] and Advance, we showcased how we are connecting as one team to execute key priorities to advance our turnaround. Nearly 1,500 team members and more than 400 vendor representatives participated. The event provided our field leaders an opportunity to learn about new products and engage in training to better serve our customers. We recognized top performers and discussed how our three year strategic plan is geared to providing access to the right part at the right place with the right service for our customers.

I would like to thank our vendor partners that participated at the event. We continue to see overwhelming support from the vendor community in our efforts to turnaround the company. This was evident in some of the feedback from vendors who told us that one, they appreciate our commitment to improving operations by focusing on the basics two, they are experiencing a new level of energy and and three, they appreciate our partnership approach and sense of urgency to drive results. This feedback is important as merchandising excellence is critical to our success in the turnaround and I am pleased to see the progress made by our [indiscernible] Next slide. At the foundation of our strategic plan are three pillars that put us on a path to deliver consistent profitable growth. Functional teams across merchandising, supply chain, and stores have begun to implement specific plans to drive progress over the next three years. Importantly, to drive greater accountability across our teams, we have assigned a critical performance indicator for each pillar to track progress. In our view, this successful execution of these activities will improve the experience for our customers team members and vendors and enable the company to deliver stronger sales and profitability over the long term.

Now I will provide an update on the progress within each strategic pillar. [indiscernible] Our team has made considerable progress over the last year conducting line reviews for front and backroom assortment to secure quality products at the right cost. We are partnering with vendors on both product selection and growth opportunities. We expect the savings from lower product costs to build throughout the year with a larger benefit expected to be realized in the second half of twenty twenty five. Our merchant team has built strong analytical rigor to identify SKU needs based on car park characteristics, competitive insights and deep knowledge from our field team. In the process, we are gaining a better understanding of the universe of parts required in our system which is helping us better plan inventory across our store and DC network. To move parts closer to the customer, and to enable our store teams to access parts faster we are focusing on improved store based availability. Having the right parts at the store level for each designated market area or DMA will enable us to improve service levels for customers. During Q4, we piloted the new assortment framework in a DMA in the Southeast.

We created a top down assortment plan for each store, hub and market hub in this DMA, which at the store level led to the replacement of hundreds of SKUs. Since launching the pilot, we have seen an improvement in performance for stores in the pilot TMA compared to a control group of stores. Encouraged by these results, made the decision to roll out the new assortment framework across the top 50 DMAs over the next twelve to eighteen months, This rollout will cover more than 70% of our sales and we believe the phased approach will enable us to effectively manage the resources and implementation. The completion of this rollout will lay a strong foundation for increased access to parts for our stores and support our goal of improving store in stock depth to the high 90s range from the low 90s range where it is today. Improvement in the SKU depth will enable our field team to serve customers faster driving more repeatable business for the company. Next slide. In terms of supply chain, during 2024, we made significant progress on the transformation and build out of our multi echelon distribution network. We began our consolidation project in late twenty twenty three when we operated 38 DCs in The U. S. Since then, we have closed 10 and expect to close another 12 in 2025, including four DCs on the West Coast.

To end the year with 16 DCs. Our ultimate goal is to operate 12 large DCs by the end of twenty twenty six with an average footprint of approximately 500,000 square feet per facility, As we complete the consolidation of these DC and flow higher volume, we expect to drive incremental labor productivity measured in product lines per hour. At the end of Q4, we saw modest improvement in this metric and can continue to target consistent improvement over time. Performance on this metric is expected to be driven by effective allocation of labor in DCs optimization of pick pack processes and stronger collaboration with our merchant team to consolidate inbound volume. Also in 2024, we could We currently operate 19 with 17 of them opened in 2024. During 2025, we plan to open 10 more while simultaneously building our pipeline for openings in 2026 and 2027. The opening of fewer market hubs in 2025 compared to 2024 is due to a temporary reprioritization of supply chain activities to complete store and DC closures and the related rebalancing of inventory across our network. We expect to accelerate the pace of market hub openings in 2026 and continue to target 60 locations by mid-twenty twenty seven.

The market hubs are designed to increase our speed of service by placing which increases same day parts availability. A market hub typically supports 60 to 90 stores in its radius. Through the end of twenty twenty four, the market hubs and their network of service stores were delivering above target comparable sales growth. While still relatively early these results give us confidence in our strategic direction and our ability to drive stronger sales in the years to come. While we consolidate DCs and scale the growth of our market hubs, we have also begun initial work to optimize both the routing of replenishment orders from DCs and the movement of product between hubs and stores. We are in the early stages of implementing a new routing framework following changes to our store and DC footprint. This is expected to be rolled out in stages through the year. This optimization is designed to increase the number of stops that our delivery trucks make on each route, while also maximizing the amount of product delivered per stop. Based on our 2025 operating plan, we expect the combination of DC labor productivity and routing optimization to drive supply chain costs lower and improve gross margin in the second half of twenty twenty five.

Next slide. In our stores, the team is focused on improving speed of service. Faster service times Advance the utilization of our asset base which yields higher labor productivity. During Q4, we modestly improved our time to serve, However, we are still behind our goal of delivering parts to our Pro customers within thirty to forty minutes. Our merchandising and supply chain teams are making strides in expanding access to parts for our stores. To capitalize on this and to increase the speed and quality of service our store leadership is putting in place a standardized store operating structure, which guides our teams on store labor scheduling and better allocates resources such as delivery trucks We started testing this new model at the end of twenty twenty four and saw a clear divergence with improved performance in the test stores. The results of this test are encouraging when you consider that we are still in the early stages of accurately placing assortment at the store level. During Q1, we will be expanding this test to additional markets to further refine our resource allocation parameters and expect to launch the new model across all stores by the end of the year.

Based on feedback from field members at our national sales meeting last month, I sensed a new level of excitement around this operating model. As an example, today our GM spend more time than necessary on hiring, staffing and scheduling. The standardized operating model makes these activities more efficient, which frees up GM time to focus on training and customer service. During 2025, our plan assumes a sequential improvement in time to serve as we expand the operating model throughout the country. The improved service levels will enable to drive higher transaction volumes and position us to leverage expenses with an improvement in sales. To conclude my section, let me provide an update on our Immediately on the heels of the Worldpac sale, our team diligently assessed and identified store closure opportunities to better position the company for long term success. We made the difficult decision to close approximately 500 corporate stores and 200 independent locations. The process consisted of four major work streams. One, communicating to individual stores and preparing the stores for closure. Two, and transferring Pro customers to alternate locations. Three, negotiating lease terminations and four, the physical closure and handover of stores. I am pleased to report that our progress on each of these activities is meeting expectations against very aggressive timelines.

We began liquidating inventory at closing stores and DC locations in late November and expect to be largely We have successfully negotiated leases tracking favorably against expectations and we will exit the majority of our lease obligations by the end of the year. In January, we began the physical closure of stores and expect the closures to be fully complete by the March ahead of our original mid-twenty twenty five timeline. Regarding the independent stores, we stopped servicing 191 locations at the end of Q4. The bulk of those locations are in the West and serviced by DCs that are also being closed. Ending service to these independent locations will simplify supply chain logistics and help save costs. On the customer side, our pro sales team has proactively reached out to customers impacted by the closures in their service area and wherever possible, we have transitioned that Pro business to a nearby store. Our Pro team will continue to maintain regular dialogue with these customers and provide solutions to serve them effectively. Executing closures of this magnitude has been a major undertaking and I want to acknowledge the tremendous effort of our team. We have moved with urgency to close these locations ahead of our original timeline so that we can allow our teams to quickly pivot to long term Let me now hand the call over to Ryan to discuss our financials.

Ryan? Thank you, Shane, and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank the Advance team for their hard work over the past year and especially over the last few months. As we began executing our three year plan. I also want to thank our frontline team for their dedication to serving our customers every single day. As indicated last quarter, we made certain changes in the presentation of our financial statements. First, our results show a breakdown of continuing operations for the Advance business excluding discontinued operations related to the sale of Worldpac, Second, to provide a better understanding of our performance, we report select financial measures on an adjusted non GAAP basis, to exclude the impact of certain items. Our guidance and financial plan for the next three years is based on these adjusted financial measures. Lastly, we are providing detail on atypical items that impacted performance These items include transitory costs In our view, looking at our reported results, through this lens, we'll provide a helpful understanding of our underlying performance. Now let's turn to our results. As Shane mentioned, we moved with urgency to execute store closures. As a result, our fourth quarter and full year financials include costs associated with these closures.

Although comparable sales exclude closing store locations. Fourth quarter net sales from continuing operations were $2,000,000,000 a 1% decrease compared with Q4 last year. Comparable stores declined 1% and exclude closing store locations that generated $74,000,000 in liquidation sales. Our comp performance was stronger in the second half Q4 and especially in December. As extreme winter weather conditions drove demand for failure related items such as batteries. In terms of channel performance, our Pro comp was slightly negative and outperformed DIY declined in low single digit range. On a two year basis, our pro comp continued to track positive During Q4, transactions declined in the low single digit range in both channels. Although Pro performed relatively better. Average ticket grew in the low single digit range It was positive in both channels. From a category perspective, we also saw strength [indiscernible] and fluids [indiscernible] while discretionary categories remain pressured, Adjusted gross profit from continuing operations was $779,000,000 or 39% of net sales, resulting in gross margin contraction of 170 basis points compared to last The lower gross margin was driven by two transitory factors. Both of which are not included in our non GAAP adjustment. First, approximately 180 basis points of headwind related to end of year inventory adjustments associated with an annual review of vendor balances and inventory associated with DCs, closed during the year.

And second, approximately 100 basis points headwind associated with liquidation sales, Without the impact of these factors, our gross margin would have been in line with the revised expectations shared in November, reflecting seasonally lower gross margin in Q4 and expense deleverage due to lower sales volume year over year. Adjusted SG and A from continuing operations was $878,000,000 or 44% of net sales resulted in deleverage of 175 basis points compared to last year. And primarily driven by higher labor related expenses. As a result, adjusted operating loss from continuing operations came in at $99,000,000 or negative 5% of net sales. Adjusted diluted loss per share from continuing operations was $1.18 compared with a loss of $0.45 per share the prior year. We ended the year with negative free cash flow of $40,000,000 compared with negative $84,000,000 in the prior year. Free cash flow includes approximately $90,000,000 of cash expenses associated with store closures. Adjusting for these expenses, free cash flow would have been positive. There were atypical gross margin factors that negatively impacted Q4 results, which were not included in our reported adjusted non GAAP results. We estimate that these items amounted to approximately two eighty basis points of operating margin headwind, and approximately $0.68 of EPS headwind during the fourth quarter.

Next, let's recap our full year 2024 financial performance. For the full year, net sales from continuing operations were $9,100,000,000 a 1% decrease compared to last year. Full year comparable store sales declined 70 basis points driven by the deceleration in the second half of the year, attributed to the overall softness in consumer spending environment including deferral and spending for maintenance items as seen across the industry in 2024. In terms of channel performance, our full year pro comp was positive, while DIY declined in the low single digit range. Transactions declined in the low single digit range mainly driven by DIY, while pro transactions were relatively flat year over year. Average ticket grew From a category perspective, saw strength in batteries, filters and engine management while sales in discretionary categories were weaker. Adjusted gross profit from continuing operations was $3,800,000,000 or 42.2% on net sales. Advance expansion of approximately 30 basis points compared to last year. [indiscernible] Our full year gross margin performance [indiscernible] from lapping approximately 160 basis points of inventory related headwinds from last year. However, this benefit was partially offset by the $100,000,000 in price investments to realign our pricing to market levels and the expense deleverage associated with lower sales volume.

Also as indicated previously, transitory cost factors related to additional inventory adjustments closing store liquidation sales, loss of revenue due to Hurricane and system outages during the year impacted gross margin. We estimate these transitory factors collectively drove approximately 90 basis points of headwind for the full year and are not included in our adjusted non GAAP results. Adjusted SG and A from continuing operations was $3,800,000,000 or 41.8% of net sales driving a deleverage of approximately 50 basis points compared to 2023, primarily driven by higher labor related expenses. Our full year SG and A expenses were consistent with expectations provided at the start of the year, for aggregate spending to be flat to slightly up. Adjusted operating income from continuing operations was $35,000,000 and 40 basis points as a percent of net sales. Compared to 60 basis points last year. Adjusted diluted loss per share from continuing operations was $0.29 compared with a loss of $0.28 last year. To conclude my discussion of full year results, I am also pleased to report that we have successfully remediated all outstanding material weaknesses as of the end of twenty twenty four. I would like to thank our finance and accounting teams for achieving this in line with our original timeline and for their efforts in enhancing our control environment.

I am excited to welcome Michael Beeland as Chief Accounting Officer. Certain atypical items influenced results during the year, and we believe the disclosure of these items provides a clear picture of the underlying performance of our business. We estimate atypical items amounted to approximately 60 basis points of operating margin headwind and approximately $0.64 of EPS headwind during the year. As it relates to our cash and liquidity position, we remain committed to maintain sufficient liquidity over our three year planning horizon At the end of the fourth quarter, we had approximately $1,900,000,000 of cash on our balance sheet. The increase in cash compared to last quarter is mainly related to proceeds from the Worldpac sale in November. Net proceeds from the transaction are now estimated at approximately dollars dollars following payment of transaction fees, and preliminary tax assessment of the transaction. The tax liability is now estimated to be approximately $200,000,000 lower than our prior expectation. Separately, as indicated last quarter, we are incurring certain cash expenses associated with closures of stores and DCs. In aggregate, we now expect to spend approximately $300,000,000 which is in line with the low end of our prior expectation. This revised outlook is being driven by favorability and lease negotiations Shane referenced earlier lower than expected closure costs.

During 2024, we incurred approximately $90,000,000 of these expenses and expect the majority of the balance to be incurred in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. The combination of lower than expected tax liability for the Worldpac transaction and store closure expenses has further enhanced our cash position and strengthened our balance sheet. Our current cash position does not include availability under our revolving credit facility, which is fully undrawn. Moving to an update on full year guidance. As a reminder, 2025 is a fifty three week fiscal period, our guidance includes the contribution from an extra week in the fourth quarter. Starting with net sales. We expect net sales in the range of $8,400,000,000 to $8,600,000,000 which is a reduction of 5% to 8% year over year due to store closures. We expect comparable sales growth of 50 to 150 basis points on a fifty two week basis. [indiscernible] We expect sequential improvement in comparable sales during 2025 with stronger growth in the back half of the year supported by our strategic focus improving parts availability, and customer service levels. During the first half, will be cycling through the $100,000,000 of price investments from 2024 which will pressure comparable sales growth.

Net sales also includes contribution from 30 new stores planned to be opened this year. And 42 new stores opened last year that will enter our comp base. In addition, we expect the fifty third week to contribute approximately $100,000,000 to $120,000,000 in sales. Moving to margins. Adjusted operating income margin is expected in the range of 2% to 3%. There are four main factors influencing operating margin, for the year. First, following the sale of Worldpac, we will be cycling through approximately 30 basis points of intercompany margin from 2024. Second, we continue to expect to save a related to closing store and DC locations. The full run rate of the savings will begin during Q2 and as a result, we expect approximately half of these savings to contribute to margin favorability this year. Third, gross margin expansion is expected to be the primary driver of improvement year over year, supported by product cost savings along with improvements in supply chain labor productivity and transportation cost savings. And fourth, we expect SG and A expense to be down year over year with margin in the range of flat to slightly down. SG and A includes the impact of annual wage inflation and other field investments offset by favorability from labor productivity and indirect cost savings.

The range of operating margin guidance assumes various scenarios for realizing benefits from our strategic activities, across merchandising, supply chain, store operations. The timing of realizing these benefits combined with progress on sales growth could drive variability in performance during the year. While we don't typically provide quarterly guidance, we are providing additional color on our expectations for Q1. We expect net sales of approximately 2,500,000,000.0 with comparable sales decline of approximately 2%. We are seeing more week to week volatility in our sales performance thus far in Q1. And as a result, our performance tracking below expectations. We expect our trends to improve over the next few weeks as seasonal comparisons ease. Regarding profitability, we expect Q1 operating margin of approximately negative 2% primarily driven by closure costs. Gross margin is expected to improve compared to Q4 although still declined year over year due to the margin headwind associated with liquidation sales at closing locations, and lapping last year's price investments. For SG and A, we expect expenses to be slightly down year over year including the impact of closure costs, However, the lower sales will result in higher expense deleverage compared to Q4. Adjusting for these transitory closure costs, Q1 operating margin is estimated at slightly negative which is an improvement compared to Q4 and gives us confidence on the path for margin improvement.

Moving to full year EPS and free cash flow. We expect adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $1.5 to $2.5 This includes approximately $0.4 or $35,000,000 in interest income from short term cash investments and approximately $0.05 contribution from the fifty third week. We expect free cash flow in the range of negative $250,000 to $85,000,000 at the end of the year. Primarily driven by the estimated $200,000,000 of remaining cash and DC closures. Excluding these costs, we expect to generate positive free cash flow for the year. We expect to spend approximately $300,000,000 of capital expenditures this year on our strategic initiatives and IT store and supply chain infrastructure. Based on our 2025 planning assumptions, we are tightening our leverage ratio expectation to a range of 3.5 to four times. The improvement in our leverage ratio is expected to be primarily driven by improved operating performance during 2025. To conclude, I want to acknowledge that while we have reaffirmed our initial 2025 guidance set in November, We are also closely monitoring multiple developments in the external landscape and our guidance does not assume any impact from potential changes in the consumer spending environment tariffs, or other macro factors.

As I indicated previously, we remain focused on executing and tracking the progress of our strategic However, variability in the timing of realizing the benefits of could create volatility during the year. From a top line perspective, sales has started off weaker than expected entering the year. Which is factored into our Q1 expectations. I do want to note that if the lower sales environment were to persist, for longer than we anticipate, the low end of our guidance range would be a reasonable We believe we have the right strategy centered on core retail fundamentals to deliver our financial objectives. Shane and I are confident in the plan and the team's ability to execute with a greater emphasis on accountability and progress on KPIs. The implementation of activities under our strategic plan will continue through 2025 and 2026, as we expect to see the margin benefits build throughout the next three years to support our 2027 financial objectives. As we execute our turnaround, and improve the performance of the business, A reduction in leverage ratio remains a top priority. Our objective is to reduce debt leverage from more than four times currently to approximately 2.5 times the end of twenty twenty seven.

We expect to reach this target by repaying debt obligations at or before maturity reducing lease obligations and improving profitability. Before moving to Q and A, I want to provide a brief update on our supply chain finance program. Our total capacity under the program currently stands at $3,500,000,000 which accounts for a reduction in capacity following the recent credit rating downgrade. At the end of Q4, approximately $2,800,000,000 of payables related to our continuing operations were utilizing this program. We will continue to engage with our banking partners to ensure we have maximum operational flexibility in the short and long term. I want to reiterate we are confident in our path forward A strong balance sheet, improved liquidity position provides a solid foundation to execute our strategic actions to improve business performance, and deliver stronger shareholder returns over time. Thank you. And I will now hand the call back to Shane. Thank you, Ryan. In closing, want to thank everyone for joining our call today. And in particular, I want to thank our team members once again for their continued dedication We have charted a path forward for our turnaround and the entire team is energized and focused for our execution against our priorities.

With that, Operator? Thank you. The first question comes from Brett Schrodin of Jefferies. Brett, your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Could you talk about the new merchandising Hey, good morning. The new assortment, I guess, impacting 70% of your volume. Could you sort of give us more detail? Is that skewed towards private label or branded? Is it consolidating existing suppliers, and I guess some more color there. [indiscernible] The way I think about it, there's kind of two bodies of work that informed this. The first is how we look at what we should have in our stores based on the vehicles in operation, the car park, in and around stores. And in the past, we tended to index too heavily on what we physically sold vice what was in and around the in the in the car park. Secondly, as we've looked at what we put in the stores, we tended to let stores self solve a little bit. So we would consider parts available in the market as counting as being in stock. And I'll use an example [indiscernible] If a store only had four and you needed eight, we would let the store self solve between stores to get the eight that you needed we really needed to focus on being able to complete the order at an individual store level, that's a store based availability.

So Smriti Maheshwari, who's running our inventory programs has been pretty dedicated in looking at those two factors, looking at car park and then looking at the individual stores to solve it. [indiscernible] as you see what's in stock in the stores, we found that in common examples, there'll be several hundred SKUs that need to come out of a store and several hundred products that need to go into a store, which means we can say yes to an order more frequently at that store level without having to go anywhere else to take care of the customer. The next question comes from Chris Horvers from JPMorgan.

Chris, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. So my question is, I guess, can you talk about the reporting dynamics of one time versus not one time? It looks like inventory liquidation is being backed out, but you have this what you're describing as transitory costs costs. So like what makes one able to back out versus not being able to back out? Since it's an accounting question, I would just add, can you talk a little bit about the cadence of the year after your expectation on the first quarter on the comp side? Thank you.

Yes. Thanks, Chris. I'll answer that question there. So the kind of eight what we call the atypical items are items that happen within the quarter, not really tied to our strategic objectives, and initiatives, but there are items that take place within the quarter.

And this past quarter, as we were closing significant number of locations, divesting Worldpac, We also were doing work on our balance sheet to ensure our inventory assumptions, estimates, everything else was appropriately reflecting the RemainCo going forward.

So the adjustments to our non GAAP are really tied specifically to those actions we're taking on our strategic initiatives large scale. The atypical ones are items where they come up in the quarter but we wouldn't expect that to be reflective of the ongoing business going forward. And that's how I kind of phrase that. For the sequence of the quarters, going forward, we would I would expect sequential improvement every quarter going forward. As our initiatives start to take hold. Q1 obviously we gave expectations because it is messy quarter with the store closures taking place. We're going to close 500 locations and another 200 independents within the quarter.

That's going to have a pretty meaningful impact on the quarter. But as these initiatives take hold and as we start to roll these out, these assortment work that we're doing, that takes time to roll out over 50 DMAs.

The work merchandising is doing on merchandising excellence, the timing that that starts to hit cogs, really pushes forward. Also, our assumption around the macro environment, the macro environment [indiscernible] Half of the year that also is implied within our guidance. So I just expect sequential improvement over the quarters going forward. The next question comes from Simeon Gutman from Morgan Stanley.

Simeon, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask the 7%, 27% goal, the EBIT margin.

You kind of laid out comps grow, I don't know, I use 3% mid single.

Can you talk about leveraging SG and A in there? Or is it a lot of gross margin improvement maybe back to the mid-40s? And then as part of that question, Shane, I want to ask the importance I get of setting a strategic goal for the company versus not setting that guidance at all and maybe allowing the business to over deliver? And I know I'm looking backwards where there's some bad memories of old guidance numbers but or is there just something here, an unlock of gross margin that the business will naturally get such that that target is very attainable.

Yes, I'll start. Simeon, appreciate the question and I'll let Shane jump in.

From a 7% where we're getting it from, mid 40s margin rate is about what we're targeting there and below 40% on the SG and A rate as a rate of sales. That's how I would think about modeling that to get to the 7%. When we look at our initiatives specifically, Merchandising excellence work that we're doing that pillar is going to drive significant COGS improvement as well as the supply chain productivity consolidating those DCs down, getting productivity there, With store improvement, we will get productivity out of our stores. You'll see that in even our guide for this year where we will get productivity that will off offset the inflationary impacts on SG and A and we'll continue that work over the next couple of years as well. But from a rate perspective, lower than 40 on SG and A, mid 40s on margin rate would be the assumption.

Yes.

And Simeon, on the other part of your question, fair push, Ryan and I have been reticent to put out broader long term guidance. So we've effectively took a year before we did it. And as we thought about the 7% obviously aware that getting over our skis and putting numbers out there that that would be difficult to attain It could create issues that the company has seen in the past. But the way we thought about it is where we're looking to take the company, we view as a very reasonable trajectory. We think that for a company of our size in the industry that it's in with the characteristics, that that are part of what goes on in aftermarket auto parts.

That getting to 7% over a three year period is appropriate both externally, but also internally in terms of of how we grade and hold our team accountable. The idea that we're doing it over a period of years, the idea that we were willing to do the very tough foundational items to get there and think about that in terms of selling Worldpac and doing store closures. The residual business that we have and the pillars that we've outlined we think put us on a path that make us comfortable articulating that 7%. The next question comes from Kate McShane from Goldman Sachs.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking our question. It sounds like the vendor feedback has been solid, certainly since the meeting that you just highlighted in your prepared comments. How much progress are you making in improving your costs with the vendors? And what will that look like as we go throughout the year?

Yes. So let Brian talk about how it layers in over the year. But, I'll comment on just the high level per When we got together in January at our Accelerate event with 400 vendors, First, we hadn't done an event of that scale in a decade.

And letting our vendors interact with with all of our leaders and outside sales team members They have clear energy to see us succeed. I think having another leg of the stool makes the industry better from their perspective. And both in terms of a growth outlet and just in terms of the number of healthy players that they participate with. And that was reciprocal. By the way, our sales team eager to be with vendors, learn about new products, understand approaches that we can collectively take in the market. So that theme has been consistent since my arrival here. To see it viscerally and to now see that coming into play when we have discussions both in terms of where we can grow together where we can be effectively positioned from a cost perspective where we can jointly take costs out in terms of how logistics flow, how we order products, where we can take advantage of new offerings relative to what we have today, All of those are now moving forward. And I think with enthusiasm from both us and the vendors. Yes. And Kate, I'll just add from a numbers perspective, what we're very pleased with what we're receiving in that partnership and how we're working through that.

It's [indiscernible] a cost and improving our cost in terms also improving our promotional pricing that also has an impact on the COGS this year. We are seeing positive movement there on the cost perspective, you'll see that play out sequentially quarter over quarter as those costs start to come through. Is some of that work we did in 2024. And that will start to come through in Q2 and in Q3 and Q4 you'll start to see a lot of that work really start to show up in our rate. Remember though from a leverage deleverage, just a reminder, in Q1, we're cycling the price investments. So from a leverage deleverage, you'll see an impact just as we cycle that. That'll start to dissipate as we get closer to the back half of the year and then we'll be cycling over it and you really start to see the change in leverage, deleverage in the back half of the year. But I would expect that the benefit from that work the merchants are doing with our vendor partners to be a sequential improvement throughout the year. And more in the back half. The next question comes from Stephen Forbes at Guggenheim.

Good morning, Shane Ryan. I was hoping to maybe explore the critical metrics that you're referencing the initiatives and so maybe for my question, if we could focus on the time to serve curious Shane, if you could sort of talk about how much variability there is in this metric today across the core DMAs you serve, meaning are there any DMAs where the target time to serve is [indiscernible] And if so, can you frame up for us like how the current comp performance of the business compares between those DMAs where you're hitting those delivery time windows versus where you're currently not As we think about like what the real opportunity is from a productivity standpoint, as we look ahead to the year's 2026 and 2027?

Great question, Stephen. I'm going to come up for just a second and then borrow into your question.

As we develop these three pillars, these pillars are around helping us be successful and sell more products. And as we looked at at what was preventing that, We found that we didn't always have the right part So that's think about that's Brett's question around what are we doing to make sure we've got the parts physically in stores that a customer wants. The right place refers to how it flows there in terms of what we're doing in our our supply chain effort and then the right service. And this is everything from from who picks up the phone and what their expertise looks like. But then importantly, as you've noted on the critical metric, it's how long it takes to get there. And in the pro world, when you have a car on the lift and you've diagnosed what the issue is, [indiscernible] When we get the call, hey, do you have this part, yes or no, The next question is when can I get it? And it needs to be within the timeframe that helps that shop both get the car on and off the lift for the customer, but also keeping their techs productively employed.

And so what we found was before we really measured it, we would lose orders because because we'd get calls from shops and they'd say, hey, we like you Advance. We'd give you this order, but I can't afford to wait but pick the time frame two hours or I can't wait till tomorrow. I need that part now. And so as we looked at the aggregate measurement, which we've talked about today, which we think is it's higher than where we wanted. We put out 30 to 40. There is a broad spectrum across stores. We have stores where we're adjacent to a customer. We can literally walk them across we can walk apart across the street and we absolutely get more sales from customers when our time to serve is lower than both that shortened basis. And so we see that and so we want to replicate that across the network because we know it makes a difference. And from a common sense perspective, that's exactly what you'd want to see. If a pro customer knows reliably that when a car is on a lift, they get a part from us and they get that car service quickly we're more likely to get more orders.

The next question comes from Seth Basham from Wedbush. Seth, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks a lot and good morning. Good to see the progress resetting the business. My questions are around the first quarter in terms of the goal volatility you're seeing. What's driving that? Is it weather? What's tax refund seasons, early read? As we think about atypical costs in the quarter, can you help us quantify those? Thank you.

Sorry, can you repeat the last part of that question, that is typical? Seth, sorry.

Yes. Quantifying atypical costs that aren't backed out of adjusted results. Yes, absolutely. All right. So first, the volatility a lot of it is weather related also. In the quarter, we see week over week volatility One week doing great, one week down we see a lot of weather in been colder in different areas. So we have seen weather impacted. We have noticed we have been tracking tax refunds at think last week they were down 50% year over year in distribution. So, it looks like the refunds are slightly delayed in the quarter, but we track that regularly. We're ready We believe the stores are prepared. We've got the right inventory. Levels prepared for as the season breaks. The weather does break, we're ready to capitalize on it. So that's driving some of the volatility. We also think the consumer is still a little pressured as well. And so the consumer is pressured right now, especially the consumer at our Cohort We feel like there's a lot of pressures around them from inflation and other things that are still impacting their ability to purchase discretionary items make trade offs. And so we're monitoring that and how the consumer reacts in this environment.

Confidence report came out yesterday not favorable. So we're monitoring that to how much of that is impacting some of the volatility in the quarter as well going forward. As far as atypical items, so atypical items in Q4 specifically was about two eighty basis points on gross margin, about $0.68 on EPS, on the adjusted EPS. On the full year basis, that Let's see, full year was 90 basis points on gross margin, 60 basis points on operating income margin, and about $0.64 on the EPS And I think in the slides that we provided, give you a good depiction of those impacts. The next question comes from Greg Millich from Evercore ISI.

Greg, please go ahead.

Thanks. You mentioned a little bit of [indiscernible] Average ticket how much of that was inflation and how much of that might have been mix or items in basket And just curious where you you feel about your price gaps now in the market?

Oh, great question. We actually feel our pricing is in a good place, very competitive now. Again, we're a real strategy of just having a competitive everyday price and that $100,000,000 investment, put us in a good position both on the DIY and on the pro side. Inflation is about 1%.

And Greg, obviously, we'll keep an eye on the what the market's doing. And that could be on inflationary trends. We'll keep an eye on what the market's doing as it relates to tariffs.

We're a rational actor where there's an opportunity to pass along pricing. We're going to pass along price next question comes from Michael Lasser from UBS.

Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. In light of your DIFM business being down, slightly in the fourth quarter. It does seem like there were some share losses.

So where do you think those share losses occurred in terms of the type of customer Also, are you seeing any evidence that the store closures the restructuring plan are having an impact on the psychology of your DIFM consumer where they might be pulling back because of some of the uncertain uncertainty with the transformation? And then lastly, totally understandable Advance has a lot of opportunity to improve its KPIs versus where it's but is improving versus where it's been enough given that your competitors during this time are also going to make advancements that may keep the performance gap where it is? Thank you very much.

Hey, Michael, thanks.

A lot to unpack there. Let's start in the middle on store closures and psychology. Obviously, in the moment when you first unveil store closure action of that magnitude, I think everybody pauses for a second and says, hey, how do I think about this? For us, there's some good news in that the closures for the West Coast were complete in the sense that we exited the market in total. So there's not a residual psychology to worry about. On the East Coast, because the closures were not holistic markets, but rather individual stores We still have and maintain a very prominent presence in those markets. And so we don't see a psychological impact from that. I'll give you an example. I talked to one of our field leaders about the number of closures I said, how many do you have? He goes, well, I have a couple in my market. And I said, well, how do you feel about it? He goes, actually, I've been trying to close those stores for a while. They're underperforming locations. I haven't been able to turn it around. Whatever the interstate moved, whatever the case happens to be, And so the receptivity at the from our own field level is, hey, that's actually been a good thing for me to to prune some stores that weren't in good locations because our outside sales team members are still in force in the market.

So that psychology impact isn't a factor. So let's talk about that. On the KPIs, to your last part, we're obviously geared towards getting better. I think we compete in a very good industry.

We have very good competitors out there, but it's a big I use the expression, there's a big ocean of auto parts. So our success doesn't have to come one for one at the failure or diminishment of the performance of of other players. So we can be successful and they can be [indiscernible] And then I think you asked about where the store losses are going on the DIFM basis. My sense on the West, it was part and parcel. On the East, there's not a sort of a particular thing that we would say, gosh, it's this particular type of pro or large or small, I think it's just been a general headwind for us across the pro landscape. On a question we have time for today comes from Michael Baker at D. A. Davidson. Michael, please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks Quick two parter. One, if you could talk about the comp lift that you seeing around the hub stores, similar to what others have asked about. What you're seeing with the merchandise assortment and the time to serve, just curious what kind of improvement you're seeing there? And then secondly, your guidance assumes the economy gets better the second half of the year. We're all sort of amateur economists here, but just curious what you're seeing or what what would you believe that the economy will get better in the second half of twenty twenty five? Thank you.

Yes, great question, Michael. Thanks for asking. I'll take the first part on the hub stores and Ryan can jump in on the guidance. What we did on the hub stores is we set up testing control groups So we measure the hub store and then we measure we measure the radius of impacted stores and see what the comp sales is versus versus control. And we are seeing both broadly and in terms of the number of hub stores and across time that when a hub store is there, there is a positive impact to comp relative to control for hub stores, by the way, and the hub store itself grows because now that's a large skewed facility that functions as a store. But also a positive comp relative to control for the service stores. And it makes sense. It makes sense because you've seen this market paradigm in other players in the market. It makes sense because everything else being equal, you've now put an 85,000 SKU facility that can service these stores sometimes as quickly as within the hour. For parts that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to get. And so so we're pleased with that and are going to continue to roll forward with the market hubs.

If got 19 open. We'll get 10 more this year.

And then we'll continue and we put out 60 as our as our next sort of guidepost for that by mid-twenty seven. On the guidance, Ryan, Yes. As far as the back half of the year, we're not saying significant, we're saying normal market conditions in the back half, which would be a slight improvement from the front half where the consumer pressured. I think that's consistent with what external market forecasts are for us. And what others in the industry are predicting. Obviously, changes in that environment and update accordingly. Ken, I'm going to close with a quick comment for everybody. First, thanks for joining the call. As we go on this turnaround journey, Ryan and I have been at it with the team for If you look at the strategy, going with the blended box as our approach, and as you think about our willingness to do the hard things that we need to do to get this company on the right trajectory, selling Worldpac, closing stores, combining the supply chain, cutting costs, restructuring the organization, we're doing all of those things. We have firm footing in terms of we're in a good industry, we have a great cash position, and so those put us in good stead.

And then we've got great people.

And I want to end by thanking all of the men and women at Advance Advance day who've continued through these tough moves and by the way endorse the moves in terms of putting Advance on a footing to be in the auto markets industry as the player that our legacy hearkens back to. We've been around for a long time. We look forward to being around thanks everybody for joining the call today.

This concludes today's call. You very much for your attendance. You may now disconnect your lines.