Shoe Carnival : First Quarter 2024 Transcript

Shoe Carnival, Inc.

NasdaqGS:SCVL

Earnings Call

Thursday, May 23, 2024 2:00 PM GMT

CALL PARTICIPANTS	2
PRESENTATION	3
QUESTION AND ANSWER	9

SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

Call Participants

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EXECUTIVES

Carl N. Scibetta

Senior EVP & Chief Merchandising

Officer

Mark J. Worden

President, CEO & Director

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary &

Treasurer

Steve R. Alexander

Investor Relations

ANALYSTS

James Andrew Chartier

Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co.,

Inc., Research Division

Mitchel John Kummetz

Seaport Research Partners

Samuel Marc Poser

Williams Trading, LLC, Research

Division

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

Presentation

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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Shoe Carnival's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference call is being recorded and is also being broadcast via webcast. Any reproduction or rebroadcast of any portion of this call is expressly prohibited. I would now like to introduce Mr. Steve Alexander, with Shoe Carnival Investor Relations. Mr. Alexander, please go ahead.

Steve R. Alexander

Investor Relations

Thank you, and good morning. Thanks for joining us today. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings press release for the first quarter of 2024. If you need a copy of the release, it is available on our website in the Investors' section.

Joining me on today's call are Mark Worden, President and Chief Executive Officer, Shoe Carnival; Carl Scibetta, Chief Merchandising Officer; and Patrick Edwards, Chief Financial Officer.

Management's remarks today may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risk factors. These risk factors could cause the company's actual results to be materially different from those projected in such statements. Forward-looking statements should also be considered in conjunction with the discussion of risk factors included in the company's SEC filings and today's earnings press release.

Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today's date. The company disclaims any obligation to update any of the risk factors or to publicly announce any revisions to the forward-looking statements, discussed on today's conference call or contained in today's press release to reflect future events or developments.

Today's call will reference non-GAAP measures. The non-GAAP or adjusted results referenced exclude the purchase accounting, merger integration and transaction costs related to the acquisition of Rogan's shoes.

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results is included in this morning's release. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Mark.

Mark J. Worden

President, CEO & Director

Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Let me start today by saying that sales momentum is accelerating across the company. We gained significant market share during the quarter. Our new digital- first marketing plans worked, and we sold a ton of sandals at Shoe Carnival.

During the quarter, net sales grew 6.8% to $300.4 million. Our sales growth surpassed the high end of our expectations for the quarter, and there are 4 key drivers I would like to highlight. First, Shoe Station net sales grew faster than planned, increasing low double digits as we entered new markets, engaged new customers and continued to rapidly grow share in the existing markets we serve.

Second, e-commerce sales continued to grow double digits during the quarter, driven by the relaunch of shoecarnival.com in the third quarter of 2023. That relaunch enhanced the customer experience, is driving significant gains in customer conversion and ultimately, in sales growth.

Additionally, our launch of shoestation.com in early 2023 continues to drive growth as the platform scales up customer acquisition. Third, Rogan, which we acquired during the middle of February 2024, delivered first quarter net sales in line with our expectation. The integration is progressing ahead of schedule, and we continue to be on pace to deliver the increased synergies in fiscal 2025 as discussed last quarter.

Fourth, and most encouraging to me, during the quarter trends significantly improved at our Shoe Carnival banner when we kicked off our new digital-first marketing campaign. The customer response to our

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

sample assortment has been outstanding, with total sales growth of 14% in sandals during the quarter and accelerated sales growth in April after the Easter holiday period ended.

The results are clear. Our new digital-first marketing approach and compelling product assortment are working. We launched the new sandal season, Easter holiday marketing campaign about a month into Q1 and accelerated investments as spring weather progressed.

Prior to the campaign launch, sales were soft in January and February with a declining sales trend similar to nonevent periods in the prior year. Once we started the new campaign, we saw an immediate improvement in results.

During March, sales accelerated to single-digit growth early in the month and continued to accelerate significantly in the days leading up to Easter with double-digit growth across both the Shoe Station and Shoe Carnival banners.

Coming out of the Easter holiday event period, we saw encouraging sample buying trends. So, we continue to engage customers with our marketing campaign focused on social, digital and targeted CRM activities. While April is not what I would consider a nonevent period due to it being an important seasonal event month for us, it did provide some early insights about customer buying behavior.

We need to see this play out over a longer time period to understand that this is a sustaining trend in 2024, but I can share that the customer was far more engaged and motivated to purchase across our banners, across our geographies and across household income levels in both March and April as compared to January and February.

We will be monitoring this encouraging pattern closely and investing appropriately into trends as they emerge ahead. Shifting from our sales growth to financial highlights in the quarter. We again delivered sustained margin performance in the quarter, with gross profit margin expanding to 35.6%, representing the 13th consecutive quarter above 35%.

Operating income in the quarter increased 7.5% and pretax income increased 8.5% to $23.2 million. Margin expansion over the long term has been a key driver of our profit transformation, led by our targeted promotional plans, smart buying strategies and growth of our Shoe Perks CRM membership. I'm particularly pleased with the merchandise margin expansion achieved this quarter versus Q1 last year.

And, at the same time, we were able to grow sales ahead of our expectation. And compared to 5 years ago, gross profit margin in first quarter 2024 expanded 600 basis points, and operating income grew 44% on sales growth of 18%, demonstrating our success to grow the business profitably over the long term.

Our vision is to be the nation's leading family footwear retailer and a core strategy of realizing this vision is profitable M&A activity. We've completed 2 acquisitions in our company's history, Shoe Station, which we acquired in late 2021 and then most recently, Rogan's, which we acquired in February 2024.

Starting with Shoe Station. We completed the integration about a year ahead of schedule and achieved both the efficiencies and synergies that we expected. A little over 2 years later, Shoe Station continues to significantly grow sales ahead of the retail footwear category, grow profit and expand margins.

We have added new stores as part of growing the Shoe Station banner, and we are well positioned to continue expanding our market reach, engaging with new customers and continue rapidly expanding the Shoe Station banner in the years ahead.

We also launched the shoestation.com website in early 2023, which is driving e-commerce growth. We fully integrated Shoe Station into our Shoe Perks platform and are leveraging our advanced CRM analytics and capabilities to drive deeper engagement with both new and existing customers.

Moving to Rogan's, which we acquired in February 2024. We're in the early stages of integration and continue to be encouraged with the progress. Rogan delivered first quarter 2024 sales and profit results in line with our expectation, and we continue to expect that it will be accretive to our results in fiscal 2024. We also continue to expect that the level of accretion will increase meaningfully in fiscal 2025.

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

As discussed previously, based on the early pace of progress of the integration, we accelerated the time line, increased the expected synergy amount to $2.5 million and accelerated the timing of the synergy capture entirely into fiscal 2025 rather than across fiscal 2025 and 2026.

Today, we continue to expect full synergy capture in the amount of $2.5 million, and we continue to expect the entirety of those synergies will be realized in fiscal 2025. Additionally, we are on pace to have Rogan's fully integrated into our Shoe Station Growth banner operations in early 2025 and expect that Rogan's will be a solid source of accretive profit growth in 2025 and beyond.

In 2025, with Rogan's fully integrated, we believe that our Shoe Station banner will be even better positioned to drive sales and profit growth. Including Rogan's, Shoe Station is currently at 59 stores, and we expect to surpass the 100 store count sooner than planned as part of our long-term strategy to surpass 500 total stores in 2028.

Shoe Station and Rogan's, both demonstrate our successful approach to M&A as a key component of our long-term growth strategy. To date, we've largely focused on acquisitions that provide market leadership in their regions are profitable and give us the opportunity to expand our market presence or further penetrate existing markets.

Going forward, we are well positioned to continue pursuing M&A as part of our growth strategy. Our balance sheet is strong, and we have 0 debt. We have the flexibility to consider using equity or modest debt to the appropriate M&A opportunity. But given our solid cash position, funding M&A with cash flow from operations has been our approach just as we did with Shoe Station and Rogan's.

In addition to M&A, another key component of our growth strategy is to continue leveraging our advanced customer analytics and capabilities. By doing this, we can better identify customer priorities at a market level and drive engagement both in-store and online. One of the primary focus areas in this strategy is to evaluate data on community characteristics, purchasing trends, product assortment and mix.

We gained valuable insights about our Shoe Station customer by doing this analysis and have defined many markets where Shoe Station stores can likely outperform. Specifically, we have identified existing Shoe Carnival locations for the customer and real estate characteristics better aligned with Shoe Station. We're now in the early test and learn development process of banner transitions, meaning closing an existing Shoe Carnival store and opening a Shoe Station store in the market where customer dynamics better fit our growth banner.

It's very early days on executing the strategy, but I'm excited about what the data indicates regarding the potential for profitable growth in the years ahead. I'll have an in-market test to discuss our next conference call, so, stay tuned.

Moving now to thoughts on the balance of fiscal 2024. As I discussed earlier, we are encouraged with the sales growth and profitability we achieved in the first quarter. We achieved sales ahead of our expectations and grew operating profit even faster than sales. Patrick will provide additional details in his remarks, but given the solid performance in the quarter, today, we are reiterating our entire fiscal 2024 outlook.

We are only 2 weeks into Q2, so I do not have a lot to share about this quarter yet. But I can provide a brief update on a few things we are seeing so far in May. First, sandals continue to sell very well with double-digit growth in the first 2 weeks of May, and this is particularly encouraging as we are now in the peak selling period.

Second, product gross margins remained strong and in line with what I would like to see for Q2. Third, we are continuing to see sales trends pace where I would like to see them to achieve our annual expectations across our banners.

Last, we're now entering a nonevent buying period until we get into back-to-school. It is not yet clear if the customer remains as cautious about buying in nonevent periods as they were last year. We will continue to monitor customer buying behavior closely during this period before back-to-school starts and pivot accordingly.

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

Before handing it to Carl to discuss Q1 category-level performance, I'd like to share a few summary comments. We are encouraged by the results we achieved in the quarter. We delivered sales growth and operating profits higher than our expectations.

We again delivered sustained gross profit margin performance exceeding 35% for the 13th consecutive quarter. Sales growth in the quarter was led by continued strength in our Shoe Station banner, e- commerce and Rogan's acquisition.

Trends improved sharply at our Shoe Carnival banner during March and April as we are having a strong start to the sandal season. Our digital-first marketing strategy is resonating with customers and our assortment of the right brands with the right depth is working.

Our strategy is to grow sales and increase profitability over the long term have put us in a competitive position of strength to continue growing market share and delivering shareholder value.

Our long-term vision is clear: to be the nation's leading family footwear retailer. And I believe we are very well positioned to continue advancing toward that ambition in 2024 and beyond.

And now, I'll hand it over to Carl to provide further color on our category's performance. Carl?

Carl N. Scibetta

Senior EVP & Chief Merchandising Officer

Thank you, Mark. As you discussed, sales momentum accelerated across the business during the quarter. From a category perspective, both children and adult athletics performed very well, and we did sell a lot of sandals at Shoe Carnival.

While competitive intensity remained high during the quarter, we delivered gross profit margin of about 35% for the 13th consecutive quarter, and we remain committed to our long-term profit transformation and targeted CRM strategies to continue delivering sustained gross profit margin performance.

Our merchandise margin in the quarter expanded by 50 basis points versus prior year, primarily due to lower inbound freight and shipping costs. During the first quarter, we continued to further optimize our inventory levels. Inventory at the end of the quarter totaled $411.6 million, an increase of $22.1 million versus prior year, primarily reflecting the impact of the Rogan's acquisition in February 2024.

Excluding the impacts of Rogan's, our merchandise inventory at the end of Q1 was lower by approximately 6% on a dollar basis than prior year. And on a unit basis, merchandise inventory was down approximately 9% versus prior year.

Excluding the impact of Rogan's inventory, we continue to expect fiscal 2024 year-end inventory to be approximately $20 million or 5% lower than fiscal 2023 year-end while maintaining the freshest product assortment for our customers.

Now, moving to sales by category for the quarter. Total Q1 comp sales were down 3.4%, which reflected our very strong performance in sandals, combined with growth in Athletics. And, as Mark discussed, our comp sales trends strengthened as the quarter progressed.

From a category perspective, total adult athletic comp sales increased low single digits in the quarter. Comp sales in women's adult athletics were up by mid-singles, led by court and basketball. Comp sales in men's adult athletics were download singles with the decline in running partially offset by strength in training and walking.

Children's comp sales were down very low single digit with athletic low single-digit and nonathletic down mid-single digit. The strong performance of children's athletic was led by Corden Running, the children's non-Fed performance was primarily due to softness in boots and dress partially offset by solid growth in sandals.

First quarter comp sales in women's nonathletic footwear were down high single digits with boots low 20s. Dress and casual were both down high teens. Sport was down mid-teens and sandals were very strong

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

in the quarter, growing 14% with performance trends accelerating during the quarter, led by flat handles, footbeds and slides.

Men's non-athletic comp sales were down mid-single digit. Dress was down low teens. Boots were down low double digit and casual was down low single digit. In casual canvas, casuals were down, partially offset by strong growth in sandals.

Coming out of the quarter, our inventory content is clean and in good position, including sandals. We are excited about the fresh new products coming to our stores in 2024. As our back-to-school inventory begins to arrive later this month and build in May and June, we are well positioned to in back-to-school by growing our children's business just as we did last year, providing the product assortment and mix that our customers want.

And with this, I'll turn the call over to Patrick for a review of our financials. Patrick?

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer

Thanks, Carl. Moving on to our financial results. Starting with top line. Our net sales in Q1 were $300.4 million, an increase of 6.8% versus prior year. Rogan's and continued growth from Shoe station, combined with strengthening trends at Shoe Carnival, were the key drivers to this strong performance.

Going into a little more detail. Shoe Station total sales performed very well with a low double-digit increase versus prior year on the strength of new stores and share growth in existing markets. Shoe Carnival total sales came in at a low single-digit decline. While sales trends were soft early in the quarter, they strengthened as the quarter progressed and demonstrated comparable store sales growth versus prior year late in the quarter on the strength of sandals and athletics.

Rogan's sales in the quarter approximated $19.6 million. As you will recall, we completed the Rogan's acquisition in mid-February of this year and therefore, only a partial month of Rogan's sales from February are included in our first quarter results.

Consistent with previous guidance, we continue to expect full year 2024 net sales for Rogan's to approximately $84 million. As a result of the 53rd week in fiscal 2023 that will not recur in fiscal 2024, the calendar weeks in each quarter shipped in 2024 as compared to prior year, which we discussed on our earnings call in March.

On a comparable store sale basis, which excludes the impact of this calendar shift, Rogan's sales and other new store growth, net sales declined 3.4% for first quarter, representing a significant improvement versus comparable store sale trends in late fiscal 2023.

As the first quarter progressed, and we continued to execute our digital-first marketing campaign, we saw strengthening comparable store sales trends and those trends turned to low single-digit growth versus prior year late in the quarter.

Q1 gross profit margin expanded to 35.6%, marking the 13th consecutive quarter that our gross profit margin has exceeded 35%. Compared to Q1 2023, gross profit margin increased approximately 60 basis points, with merchandise margins increasing approximately 50 basis points, led by stable product margins and lower incoming freight and e-commerce shipping costs during the quarter.

Buying, distribution and occupancy costs were higher in the quarter, primarily due to increased rent associated with operating more stores. Despite these higher overall costs in the quarter, BD&O leveraged approximately 10 basis points on the higher sales delivery versus the prior year.

SG&A expense in Q1 was $84.3 million, representing an increase of $6.7 million versus Q1 2023. Q1 SG&A increased on higher marketing investments that drove our strong sales performance in the quarter and higher selling expenses associated with Rogan's. As a percentage of net sales, our SG&A was 28.1%. We continue to expect synergies from the Rogan's acquisition into 2025, and we expect those synergies to lower our SG&A as a percentage of sales as they are achieved.

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

Operating income in the quarter totaled $22.5 million, an increase of 7.5% versus prior year on a GAAP basis and 9.8% on an adjusted basis. We were pleased that our operating income grew faster than net sales in the quarter. On a GAAP basis, operating income included approximately $500,000 of expenses from the Rogan's acquisition.

Our income tax rate in the quarter was 25.4% versus 22.6% in the prior year, resulting in a headwind to EPS of approximately $0.02 per share. This higher rate primarily reflects a lower benefit in fiscal 2024 from share settled equity awards. On a GAAP basis, net income for first quarter 2024 was $17.3 million or $0.63 per diluted share.

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding the Rogan's related costs, adjusted net income for the first quarter was $17.7 million or $0.64 per diluted share. At the end of the quarter, we had total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of approximately $69 million. Cash and cash equivalents increased over $24 million versus first quarter 2023, and cash flow from operations in the quarter increased approximately $15 million.

2023 fiscal year-end marked the 19th consecutive year the company ended the year with no debt. And through the first quarter of 2024, we have continued to fund our operations and growth investments, including the acquisition of Rogan's in February 2024 from operating cash flow and without debt.

During the quarter, we did not repurchase any shares and have $50 million available under our current share repurchase program. Inventory at the end of the quarter totaled $412 million, an increase of approximately $22 million versus prior year. The increase reflected Rogan's acquired inventory and the timing of purchases, partially offset by continued efficiencies from our ongoing inventory optimization improvement plan.

As Carl discussed, we continue to expect inventory will be lower by approximately $20 million on our business, excluding Rogan's by the end of the year. Moving on to our 2024 outlook. Based on first quarter results, today, we reiterated our entire full year 2024 outlook, including net sales growth in a range of 4% to 6% versus fiscal 2023 and full year fiscal adjusted EPS in a range of $2.55 to $2.75.

The phasing of our Q2 and Q3 quarterly results versus the prior year will be significantly impacted by the retail calendar shift. One of our highest volume back-to-school weeks will move out of Q3 and into Q2. As a result, we are providing additional information on our expected second quarter net sales and second quarter EPS.

We expect net sales for the second quarter to be about $330 million compared to $295 million in the prior year. This would be an increase in net sales of about 12% versus last year. This increase includes a benefit of approximately $20 million in the quarter as a result of the retail calendar shift. We expect a similar increase in our EPS, which would put EPS at about $0.80 in the quarter compared to $0.71 earned in last year's second quarter.

We continue to expect the combined total of Q2 and Q3 sales growth in 2024 versus prior year to be in line with our full year outlook of 4% to 6% net sales growth. To close, in the first quarter, we delivered net sales growth of 6.8% and operating income growth of nearly 10% on an adjusted basis.

Our strong balance sheet and cash flow continue to position us to fund internal growth, execute on desirable M&A opportunities and the continued ability to deliver long-term shareholder return. As previously announced, we will hold our Annual Meeting of Shareholders on June 25, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The distribution of information to shareholders for the annual meeting began on May 14. This concludes our financial review. Now, we would like to open the call up for questions. Operator?

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

Question and Answer

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Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Sam Poser with Williams Trading.

Samuel Marc Poser

Williams Trading, LLC, Research Division

Just a follow-up on the calendar shift stuff in the second quarter. I believe on the first quarter call or on the fourth quarter call, you inferred that it was going to be about a $25 million per quarter maneuver versus the &20 million you just said. I want to make sure I got that right, but what changed, if I did?

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer

Hi, Sam, this is Patrick. Great question. I appreciate you asking it. The $25 million versus the $20 million, the difference is the amount of benefits that exists in the first quarter that shifted into there, which is about 2%.

Samuel Marc Poser

Williams Trading, LLC, Research Division

Just so I get this right, you're gaining a $25 million a week, and you're losing a $5 million a week just at the beginning or lost a $5 million a week at the beginning of the quarter. So, my question on Q3 then is, theoretically, in Q3, you wouldn't lose as much because I believe the last week with the shift in Q3 is bigger than the shift out in Q1 Historically, and so, you're gaining $20 million in Q2 and you what loses about $18 million in Q3 or something like that?

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer

I'll try to just reiterate what we said here one more time and then if necessary, we can go a little bit deeper on it. But our Q2 net sales are going to be up 12% with $20 million of that caused by the shift. And as you said, $25 million coming in from Q3, $5 million coming out into Q1.

Q2 and Q3 combined are going to be about flat, leaving us with growth of 4% to 6% over both of those periods. And then you're right, Q4 has a more significant and material impacts where we just completely lose that 53rd week in its entirety, which is about $15 million.

Samuel Marc Poser

Williams Trading, LLC, Research Division

Which is going to be offset by, what, about $35 million from Rogan's? So, you lose to gain, yes.

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer

So, Sam, we know we've tried. For Q2, we've tried to give a lot of increased color around this because of the complexity that you're dealing with right now and the complexity that most retailers are dealing with right now. So, our goal is to provide a range around that $330 million in our EPS.

And, as we move through the year, we'll continue to do that. But the other elements of our growth and of our drivers, we're just not prepared yet to give that for Q2 or any other quarter. But for the full year, we're still expecting revenue growth of 4% to 6% on that unshifted basis and a cost decline of somewhere between down 3% to up 1% on a shifted basis.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mitch Kummetz with Seaport Research.

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SHOE CARNIVAL, INC. FQ1 2025 EARNINGS CALL MAY 23, 2024

Mitchel John Kummetz

Seaport Research Partners

I did kind of lose connection there for a few minutes. I apologize if you've already addressed something that I asked. I just want to start with, again, I want to get a little bit more color on the guide. So, for 2Q, you've given us the sales. Can you say what comp and what Rogan's contribution are embedded in that sales number?

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer

Hi, Mitch, it's Patrick. We are, again, trying to prepare a north star for everyone for the second quarter in the range of $330 million on the top line. We're not prepared to provide the individual other key drivers other than the impact of the shift, which is about $20 million.

Mitchel John Kummetz

Seaport Research Partners

Can you say how much of the -- so you said $0.80 of earnings. And I know you said that obviously the earnings benefit from the sales shift, but is there any way you can sort of isolate how much earnings are shifting from 3Q to 2Q?

Patrick C. Edwards

Senior VP, CFO, Secretary & Treasurer

Right. So, what we're providing is a 12% overall increase in our net sales. And then what we're seeing is an overall increase in EPS of the same about 12%. As Mark mentioned, what we're seeing so far into Q2, stable margins, some increased selling expenses and as acted at a higher tax rate.

If you think about our tax rate in Q2 of last year, that number was about 22.3%. This year, it will be more like 26%, in line with our annual guidance, and that creates a fairly sizable headwind to EPS in the quarter. So, that is why we provided that sort of 12% top line and in at about 12% bottom line sort of point of view on growth in the quarter.

Mitchel John Kummetz

Seaport Research Partners

And then, Mark, you started to talk about, I think, some of the improved sales trend when I kind of lost my connection. So, again, maybe you addressed this, but can you walk us through maybe the months in 1Q and then kind of how that's progressed into early 2Q, like maybe the comp by month and then what you're seeing through the first 2 weeks of May?

Mark J. Worden

President, CEO & Director

Sure, Mitch. Thanks for joining. Really pleased with the progression as the quarter when February was slow. And as we talked at the year-end, we were just kicking off our new digital campaign as we were heading into tax miss and the sandal season. And as soon as we did that, along with Carl's team's outstanding sandal assortment, we saw the consumer respond immediately.

Started again, February was down similar to nonevent period last year. We got into early March, started growing low singles, got towards Easter. We were growing double digit across banners, which was very encouraging to see it drive results at Carnival and station. And then as we got into April, that was going to be our first big unknown. I said earlier, it's not really a nonevent period because it samples core season kicking in.

But nonetheless, we weren't sure April was going to look more like January or last year's nonevents or if it would sustain trends. So, we invested and we continue to invest, like I said in the last call, in this marketing campaign and it worked. We accelerated sandals after Easter. Our sales results accelerated across the company after Easter. And in fact, as Patrick mentioned, comp sales grew after Easter.

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