Greetings. Welcome to the Oxford Industries, Inc., Second Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Jevon Strasser. Thank you. You may begin.

Jevon Strasser - Director of Financial Reporting

Thank you and good afternoon.

Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that certain statements made on today's call and in the Q&A session may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results of operations or our financial condition to differ are discussed in our press release issued earlier today and in documents filed by us with the SEC, including the risk factors contained in the Form 10-K. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures in our press release issued earlier today, which is posted under the Investor Relations tab of our website.

And now I'd like to introduce today's call participants. With me today are Tom Chubb, Chairman and CEO; and Scott Grassmyer, CFO and COO. Thank you for your attention.

And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Chubb.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. We are pleased to be reporting an incredibly strong second quarter of fiscal 2022. I will provide some highlights of the quarter with more detailed commentary from Scott to follow. Outstanding results are not possible without outstanding people, and we have a team that is second to none. I would like to thank each and every member of our dedicated team for all of their hard work, which enabled us to deliver our sixth consecutive quarter of record earnings.

During the quarter, the strength of our brands, our products and our customer experiences fueled 14% comparable direct-to-consumer sales growth and expansion of our already healthy gross margin. Favorable market conditions during the quarter included the continued return of the consumer to physical retail, the continued return to in-person work and social events, the continued growth in year-round population in many of our key markets, and the continued rebound in leisure travel. All of these factors, which play to the strength of our portfolio of brands continue unabated and augur well for the balance of the year.

On an adjusted basis, we recorded consolidated second quarter sales of $363 million and EPS of $3.61, which was an 11% increase over last year's record second quarter EPS of $3.24. Adjusted gross margin expanded 30 basis points to 64.6% and adjusted operating profit increased 8% to $78 million or 21.5% of sales. The biggest contributor to our record earnings was the performance of our largest brand, Tommy Bahama. Compared to last year, sales grew 17% versus 2021 to $244 million. Adjusted gross margin expanded to 64.3% and adjusted operating margin increased by 150 basis points to an exceptional 24%. These results exceeded our expectations for the brand this quarter and at the risk of sounding modest or spectacular.

The success starts with our powerful Live the Island Life brand message, which our team brings to life through beautiful, inspirational creative messaging, differentiated products that are relevant to today's consumer and marketplace than delivering all that through wonderful customer experiences on our website, in our stores, bars and restaurants and through our carefully selected wholesale partners.

As noted a minute ago, market conditions are playing to the strength of our portfolio. The return to leisure and vacation travel and permanent migration of so many people to warmer climates are obvious advantages for us. What is possibly less obvious is how much we benefit from the return to in-person work and social events.

While Tommy Bahama is famous in menswear, for our colorful camp shirts, polos, teas, shorts and swimwear, we also have a powerful assortment of long pants and long-sleeve woven shirts that are appropriate for most post-pandemic workplaces and a wide-variety of social events. A couple of our notable everyday go-to long sleeve shirts include the Sarasota stretch and the St. Lucia stretch, both of which present a very polished look and also feature the luxurious fabrics and the high degree of comfort that Tommy Bahama is famous for. One of the most exciting merchandising developments in Tommy Bahama over the last couple of years has been the growth and strength of our men's pant business. It started with the Boracay Chino which quickly gained popularity with our guests, and we have extended into shorts, jeans, five pockets and even women's.

More recently, we have added the IslandZone performance pants, the Chip Shot performance side pocket and the On Par performance flat front pants. All of these pants are examples of product that is on brand while being relevant to today's consumer and are resonating across all channels of distribution. They are a perfect purchase for the guest who is getting out about more, whether that is to go to the office or out to dinner. What we love about building a substantial pant business is that it tends to be a repeat business. Once a guy finds a pant that he likes, he will tend to come back for it over and over again. And every time he does, we can refresh his pant inventory and have a chance to show him other products that he will love.

At Lilly Pulitzer for the second quarter, we posted modest top line growth and a very healthy 24% operating margin. The sales growth was driven by solid increases in both our wholesale and retail channels, which saw healthy comp store sales gains with some contraction in e-commerce. This contraction was due to some temporary challenges that we faced on the marketing front. A hallmark of the Lilly team has always been an incredible drive to improve in all areas of the business, even those where we already excel. Lilly has long been a leader in digital marketing. Against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving digital marketplace and landscape and in an effort to maintain and even increase our digital marketing edge, we implemented some new technology and changed some of our marketing agency partnerships. This transition created some temporary headwinds that we believe suppressed our second quarter results, keeping them somewhat below our expectation for the quarter.

We felt the impact primarily in our e-commerce business as the digital marketing issues impacted our flow of new customers. Our team reacted quickly and has made appropriate adjustments to our marketing approach effective in August. We are already seeing the benefit of the changes, including a strong gift with purchase event over this past weekend. As there is some ramp-up period before the full impact is realized, we expect to see some benefit during the third quarter and should be in excellent shape for the fourth quarter. Our consumer remains as excited about the Lilly brand and our product as ever and with the changes we have made, we expect to finish the year strong.

Our Emerging Brands Group posted an impressive 31% year-over-year sales gain during the second quarter with all three brands Southern Tide, The Beaufort Bonnet Company and Duck Head delivering solid growth. The growth was driven in part by our efforts to enhance the EBG's digital and omnichannel capabilities. Gross margin for the EBG was suppressed during the quarter as the result of an inventory markdown that we took in this operating group to address an over-bought position. We have taken an appropriate markdown to deal with the long inventory position and have worked with the emerging brand teams to fortify our inventory planning and buying processes. We could not be more bullish about the future opportunity for Southern Tide, The Beaufort Bonnet Company and Duck Head and look forward to the outstanding results we expect them to deliver in the second half.

Across the enterprise, we continue to make excellent progress towards our strategic pillars; growing our brands for the long term, enhancing our digital and omnichannel capabilities, operational excellence, managing our portfolio, capital allocation to draw long-term shareholder value, and developing our people and team.

Our share repurchase program illustrates the continued execution of our objective to maximize long-term shareholder value. Since initiating the plan in December 2021, we have used this vehicle to return $86 million to our shareholders, repurchasing at an average price of $89 per share, enhancing the already high returns from our stock performance and dividend payments of $32 million in the last 12 months.

While we are aware of some of the macroeconomic headwinds, the momentum that we created in the first half of the year has continued into the early part of the third quarter. In addition, we are in a much healthier inventory position than we were a year ago. Our excellent results in the first half, healthier inventory position and the outstanding plans we have for the second half should allow us to deliver double-digit top and bottom line growth with some modest operating margin expansion for the year.

I'll now turn it over to Scott for more detail about second quarter results and our forecast for the remainder of the year. Scott?

Scott Grassmyer - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Tom. We executed well during the second quarter and once again delivered record performance, as Tom mentioned earlier. Our strong quarter was driven by sales growth across all distribution channels and particularly notable sales growth in Tommy Bahama of 17%. In the second quarter of fiscal 2022, consolidated net sales were $363 million, 11% increase over last year's second quarter net sales of $329 million. Excluding $8 million of sales from Lanier Apparel in the prior year period, sales increased 14% year-over-year. Our full price e-commerce business grew significantly, up 13%.

On the bricks-and-mortar front, we generated full-price retail comps of plus 14%. Performance of our food and beverage locations was healthy as well with 6% growth over last year. Our second quarter adjusted gross margin was 64.6% compared to 64.3% in fiscal 2021. This 30 basis point improvement was fueled by a shift in sales mix towards full-price direct-to-consumer channels and higher IMUs, particularly in innovative new performance offerings. Higher freight costs of approximately 50 basis points and inventory markdowns within the Emerging Brands Group offset some of the margin improvement. Our operating profit increased to $78 million on an adjusted basis or 21.5% of net sales with notable operating income growth in Tommy Bahama. This excellent operating margin was highlighted by 24% operating margins at both Tommy and Lilly.

Our business is supported by our strong balance sheet. Here are some highlights. Our inventory balance at the end of the quarter positions us well to execute on our sales plan for the second half of fiscal 2022, which calls for revenue growth in the high single to low double digits.

Inventory increased $58 million on a LIFO basis and $71 million or 53% on a FIFO basis compared to the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2021. Inventory balances at July 30, 2022, represent a more normalized level after inventory levels were lower than optimal throughout fiscal 2021 with a stronger-than-expected rebound in consumer demand outpaced inventory purchases. Also, inventory increases included early receipt of an incremental $27 million of fall inventory to mitigate supply chain delays or disruptions, inventory to support anticipated sales increases in the second half of fiscal 2022 and higher product costs. Compared to the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2019, on FIFO basis, inventory decreased by 3% while the sales for the first half of fiscal 2022 were 23% higher than the first half of fiscal 2019. To crystallize where we are on inventory, our trailing 12-month FIFO inventory turns at the end of the second quarter of 2022 were 3 times compared to 2.3 times in 2021 and 2.5 times in 2019.

Our liquidity position is healthy with no debt and $186 million of cash and short-term investments at the end of the second quarter. Our sizable cash flow allowed us to invest in our businesses, return capital to shareholders via multiple approaches and still have a significant amount of cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet.

Today, we have repurchased approximately 970,000 shares for $86 million, representing over 5% of our shares outstanding since the December announcement of our Board's new share repurchase authorization. As Tom noted, we are very pleased with the results of our repurchasing program to-date. We have further returned $32 million of capital to investors through dividends over the last 12 months. Looking forward, I am pleased to share that our Board of Directors declared a dividend of $0.55 per share for the third quarter.

I'd now like to walk you through our projections for the remainder of 2022. After outstanding performance and EPS beat in the second quarter, we are raising our guidance for the year. We expect our e-commerce business to continue to expand. Also, our physical locations are seeing encouraging comp sales as consumers continue to return to in-store shopping, and we continue to have a very robust forward order book in our wholesale channel for 2022. For the year, we still expect modest gross margin expansion as we continue to see the benefits of higher IMUs, partially offset by what we expect to be a somewhat more promotional environment. For the year, we expect some modest SG&A leverage, driven by a significant leverage in Q1 despite inflationary cost pressures, including a challenging labor market. Putting together these dynamics, we expect to deliver double-digit top and bottom line growth with operating margin expansion for the full year. Full year sales are now expected to increase to a range of $1.3 billion to $1.325 billion compared to $1.142 billion in fiscal 2021, which included $25 million of Lanier Apparel sales.

For the full fiscal year, we now expect adjusted EPS in the range of $9.85 to $10.10 compared to $7.99 in fiscal 2021. Third quarter sales are expected to increase from $248 million last year, which included $4 million of Lanier Apparel to a range of $270 million to $280 million, reflective of strong quarter-to-date results in our direct-to-consumer channels as well as substantial wholesale sales planned in the quarter. On an adjusted basis, we expect EPS in the range of $0.90 to $1.05 in the third quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to $1.19 last year. In the third quarter, similar to the first two quarters of the year, we anticipate some modest gross margin expansion. This expected gross margin expansion includes our expectation of lower freight costs and higher IMUs in the third quarter, partially offset by a change in sales mix with an increased proportion of Lilly Pulitzer's e-commerce flash clearance sales.

As a reminder, the third quarters are smaller sales and earnings quarter of the year due to the seasonality of our brands. Thus, as our business continues to expand, the higher SG&A associated with the growing business often results in deleveraging in the lower sales third quarter, but also allows for additional SG&A leverage and earnings growth in our higher sales quarters during the year. Our effective tax rate for fiscal 2022 is expected to be between 24% and 25%.

Thank you for your time today, and we will now turn the call over for questions. Alex?

Question & Answers

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Edward Yruma with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Edward Yruma - Piper Sandler - Analyst

Hey, good afternoon guys and thanks for taking the question and congrats on the quarter. A couple from me. I guess, first, I know that some of your regions are performing strongly relative to others from a tourist perspective. I was wondering, if you can kind of talk about some of the regions holistically and kind of where is New York, Hawaii, Las Vegas, etc versus kind of previous peak?

And then as a follow-up, I know you've had the strategy of raising AUR, adding more content to the product. How much more headroom do you think is still available? Are you seeing any signs of price resistance? Thank you.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Okay. Thank you, Ed. Great to have you on the call today, and I would comment on the regionality, and Scott has always may add some color to this. But really, the only area that's still sort of lagging, if you will, is New York City itself where we have the big Tommy Bahama store bar and restaurant. And I suspect you've been into the city recently, and New York is just not fully back, not really even quite close to fully back and we are definitely seeing that in that store. Other than that, I think all other regions of the country really performed well. There were a couple of small pockets in California that were kind of flattish for the quarter, but really no laggards at this point other than New York City.

And then in terms of raising AUR by increasing the sort of features in the product and the differentiation in the product, we continue to have great success with that. I think as long as the customer perceives that we're delivering additional value to them, I think we've got plenty of room to run on that.

And Scott, if you would, please add anything.

Scott Grassmyer - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, we are seeing - we're really not seeing resistance in the price increases we took and then our AURs are often part of that is to price increases on existing items, but part is also just going out with more higher cost items that we do put more value into the product and we're not seeing resistance to that either.

Edward Yruma - Piper Sandler - Analyst

Thanks so much.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Thank you, Ed.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Marotta with CL King & Associates. Please proceed with your question.

Steve Marotta - CL King & Associates - Analyst

Good afternoon everybody. Tom, I was wondering, so many other retailers are reporting that consumers kind of turned on a dime in late May and early June, particularly in traffic to brick-and-mortar locations, did you experience anything like that? Was there any discernable change in consumer behavior during those months?

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Not really. I think, Steve, and you're a great student of the industry, you know this. There is a very real bifurcation going on. So in the moderate and lower end of the income spectrum, people are really getting squeezed hard by the increases in gasoline prices, food prices, housing costs, healthcare costs, all these things and we're very empathetic to that.

And from a bigger macro picture, we've got our eye on that and we're very sympathetic to those people. We recognize that people are feeling real pain and they're cutting back their discretionary spending. But in the part of the market that we play in, which is really the top 20% or 25%, that group, their discretionary spending has not been impacted nearly as much by the very real inflation that's out there. They're getting out about more going to the office, maybe not all the time, but more than they were a year or two ago, going to more and more social events, leisure travel continues to be very, very strong. All of these things really play to our strengths. And so we really didn't see the pivot and really haven't seen one since the end of the quarter. Our August sales were very strong. We had a great comp in August and have started out September very strong. And I think part of it is the consumer we play to. And then a big part of it, of course, is the strength of our brands and our products.

And last but not least, I would add the outstanding customer experience that we deliver. And just today, for example, we were named by a major news magazine as one of the top five retailers in the country for customer service in our Tommy Bahama stores. That's the second year in a row that we've been in there and we are the only retailer to be in there two years in a row. And I think that's part of our success, and that's part of why we're so proud of our teams because they're the ones that deliver those great experiences.

Steve Marotta - CL King & Associates - Analyst

Congratulations on that honor. Relatedly, have you looked at customer retention since the pandemic began? In other words, for the customers that were gained during the pandemic, are they acting any differently than customers that were active prior to the pandemic, either in average annual spend, frequency of spend, lifetime spend or churn, anything like that?

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

I have to tell you, Steve, I don't know that we've separated that cohort out, those added during the pandemic to see what their performance was versus people that came in more normal times. I will tell you that as a general rule, all our customer KPIs have continued to improve. So we really haven't seen any degradation. But I can't say that we've separated that cohort and looked at it. It's a good question though. The customer analytics team might have just gotten a new assignment.

Steve Marotta - CL King & Associates - Analyst

Sure thing, I'll take the balance offline. Thank you again and congrats.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Okay. Thank you, Steve. Alex?

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Our next question comes from the line of Noah Zatzkin with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Noah Zatzkin - KeyBanc Capital Markets - Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the quarter.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Thank you.

Noah Zatzkin - KeyBanc Capital Markets - Analyst

Strong performance from your Emerging Brands during the quarter. Hoping you could provide some color on the performance of Southern Tide during the quarter as well as how you're thinking about the long-term opportunity for those brands? Thank you.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Southern Tide had a great quarter. We were very proud of their performance. They continue to perform well in the wholesale, which is sort of their heritage, but they've also done a great job through this year of growing the e-commerce business, which we've always believed was a tremendous opportunity for them, not that they didn't have a great e-commerce business, but we've just thought that there was so much more potential there, and they delivered well on that year-to-date. And then as we mentioned in the prepared comments, with what we've got going on, on the digital marketing front in the Emerging Brands Group, we think there's just a lot that we're going to realize there.

And then finally, in their own company-owned retail stores, we're still early in that experience, and we've got five open, six open now. Five now, yeah - excuse me, I get mixed up sometimes, but five open now very happy with them. I think we're learning a lot every single day and getting better and better at doing retail ourselves in Southern Tide. So there's a lot of opportunity there. And when you look at the brand and what it's offering is the demographic that it's appealing to, I just think there's massive opportunity there. We're not even at $100 million yet and I think the idea that this brand longer term is multiple hundreds of millions of dollars doesn't stretch the imagination too far at all. I'm not giving you a timeline for that exactly at this point, but I think this brand can run a long, long way.

And then the other two emerging brands, The Beaufort Bonnet Company and Southern Tide are still significantly smaller at this point in earlier in their trajectories, but we feel equally good about them. Duck Head does not yet have any of its own retail stores, but has a great and nicely growing wholesale business and then a very strong and rapidly growing e-commerce business, and we'll get company-owned retail there in the foreseeable future. And then Beaufort Bonnet has a couple of retail stores open. We like what we're seeing there. And of course, I've got a terrific e-commerce business and a nice wholesale business, and we're actively looking for additional sites in Beaufort Bonnet as well as Southern Tide. In terms of potential, the EBG is an operating segment, did 31% growth in the first quarter and we think it will be our fastest growing segment we would expect for a good while to come.

Noah Zatzkin - KeyBanc Capital Markets - Analyst

Very helpful. Thank you very much.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Thank you, Noah.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Paul Lejuez with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Brandon Cheatham - Citi - Analyst

Hey guys, this is Brandon Cheatham filling in for Paul. Just wondering, if we could kind of expand on the promotional environment that you're expecting for the second half? As you look at kind of environment around you, it seems like there's kind of a glut of apparel out there. So just wondering, what like guidance is expecting for the promotional environment? And then do you think you're going to be able to kind of separate yourself from some of the other apparel players that seem to be dealing with quite a bit of inventory at the moment?

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Yeah. So what I would say, Brandon, is I think if you look at what's happening out there, there are a lot of retailers that are over-inventoried at this point and that traditionally have led to a lot of promotion. You do have a few that are talking about hoteling product, as I call it, where they're just going to put it in the warehouse and dust it off this time next year and put it out. So that might take a little pressure off. But I do think there'll be a lot of promotions going on in the marketplace and that is not a complete non-issue for us. But what I would tell you, Brandon, and you can look at our long history on is, we don't really play that game. And in the world, there are kind of two kinds of brands and retailers. There are those that compete on price and there is that compete on brand and product, and we're in the latter group. And so our proposition is not about competing with our peers to see you can offer the consumer the lowest price or the biggest discount. Our proposition is who offers the strongest brand method and has the product that backs that up. And that's what we've done very, very successfully for 20 years now. And so we do think we will be able to come through this environment. And as we said post double-digit top and bottom line growth for the year and modest operating margin expansion.

And I'll give you an example, Brandon. You can see this in another industry. If you want an example of if you're going out and buying a car, you can go to Ford and Chevy and a couple of other places and negotiate price spend your whole Saturday negotiating price. And those guys will deal with you. And you can get a significantly lower price, if you're willing to work at it. Then you look at Tesla. They don't do that. The price you see is the price you pay. They've got the brand, they've got the product. The price is the price and they're able to do business on that basis. And I would tell you that we're in a similar position. We've got great brands. We've got great products, the differentiated products. Our customers are very loyal to us. And we've got a 20-year track record of navigating through tough markets and still being a full-price retailer.

Now, I'll let Scott comment on what we've got baked into guidance.

Scott Grassmyer - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. We mentioned we expect to expand gross margins, but that will be with some higher promotions, and it's mainly because last year, we were so lean on inventory. We just had very little product to promote. This year, our inventories are we feel more appropriate type levels, but that does mean Lilly's flash sale later this month will be bigger than last year's. And that's not a bad thing. It just means we've got more and more appropriate level. So we will, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we'll be - the market is a little more promotional and we will be a little more promotional mainly through just the clearance events. But it's really due to the compare we're going against was last year was extremely low from an in-to-season promotion standpoint.

Brandon Cheatham - Citi - Analyst

Got it. Yeah, makes sense. And one more, if I could, just any update on kind of supply chain headwinds. It seems like some of your competitors are seeing that alleviate? What did you see in the second quarter and what are your expectations for back half of the year? Thanks.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

I do think it's getting a bit better, Brandon. It's still not where we'd love to see it sort of pre-pandemic normal, but it is improving over-time, both at the factory and then in the whole freight chain, if you will, from the foreign port all the way through to the warehouse in the US. And then from a freight cost standpoint, we've got some of that in our guidance.

And Scott, you might want to tell Brandon what we've got there.

Scott Grassmyer - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. Last year, in the second half, we were close to 300 basis points of margin freight headwind. And this year, we've still got some freight headwinds, but it will be considerably lower than last year. Another thing, I think maybe we're having a little less disruption than many because we did adjust our merchandising calendars and we mentioned that at the end of the second quarter, we had $27 million more fall inventory on our books than we did at this time last year. And a good part of that was due to the fact that we moved our merchant [Indecipherable] calendars out four to six weeks. So we were accepting product that much earlier to help alleviate some of that. Not that we've been immune to the disruptions, but I think we maybe navigated them a little more effectively than some in the market.

Brandon Cheatham - Citi - Analyst

Got it. It is helpful. Thanks and good luck.

Scott Grassmyer - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer

Thank you.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Thank you, Brandon.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And ladies and gentlemen, I'm seeing no further questions in the queue. I will now turn the call over to Tom Chubb for closing remarks.

Tom Chubb - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Okay. Thank you, Alex, and thanks, everybody, for your attention and your interest today. Stay safe, and we look forward to seeing you again in early December.

Operator

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Q2 2022

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