LL Flooring Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 8, 2024

LL Flooring Holdings, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Hello, and welcome to today's LL Flooring Q1 '24 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Bailey, and I'll be the moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions-and-answers at the end. [Operator instructions] I'd now like to pass the conference over to Bruce Williams with Investor Relations. So please go ahead when you're ready.

Bruce Williams: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today. I'm joined by Charles Tyson, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Bob Madore, Chief Financial Officer. As we begin, let me reference the safe harbor provisions of the US Securities Laws for forward-looking statements. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including the future operating and financial performance of LL Flooring. Although LL Flooring believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations of any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct.

Important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements are included in LL Flooring's filings with the SEC. During today's call, management will be discussing results on an adjusted basis, a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, and our explanation of why the non-GAAP financial measures may be useful are discussed in today's earnings. The information contained in this call is accurate only as of the date discussed. Now I would like to turn the call over to Charles. Charles?

Charles Tyson: Thanks Bruce, and thank you for joining LL Flooring for Q1 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call is Bob Madore, Chief financial Officer. During today's call, we will go through our first quarter results and provide an update on our strategic initiatives that we will believe will position LL Foreign as the premier national specialty retailer that delivers the personal one-on-one expertise of an independent with the value and scale of a national retailer. Our first quarter results continued to be challenged, as weaker existing home sales, elevated interest rates and inflation have led to softness in home improvement, remodel and big ticket discretionary spending. These challenging macro factors have pushed home improvement spend per housing unit, below its 50-year average, impacting the remodel industry.

The leading indicators continue to predict that spending on remodel activity will remain challenged through 2024. Now I will review our first quarter results. We continue to experience pressure from the macro environment. With that said, we believe that we are also impacted by our low brand awareness. During the quarter, we took steps to increase our brand exposure through brand partnerships to drive consumer sales and we also focus marketing initiatives to drive awareness with our Pro customer, which I will address later. We are also making progress on closing the gaps in store execution, which our field teams are aggressively tackling. Total revenues declined 21.7% and comp store sales declined 21.5%, driven by continued declines in traffic as well as lower average project sizes from our consumer and to a lesser extent, our Pro customers.

See also

10 Weakest Militaries in Africa and

25 Cheap Cars That Will Make You Look Rich.

To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here.