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Text: Molly Langenstein, our CEO and president, also joins me today.
You should not unduly rely on these statements.
I'm excited to share our second-quarter results as they underscore the incredible progress we continue to make in our turnaround strategy despite pandemic challenges.
Our earnings per share of $0.21 is the best second-quarter performance we have posted since 2013.
This return to profitability was driven by our turnaround action plan that grew sales, expanded gross margin, and diligently controlled our expenses.
Our robust second-quarter sales growth of 54% was across all three brands and was propelled by our meaningful enhancements in product and marketing, which continues to significantly drive full-price selling, reduced markdowns, and increased gross margin.
Soma achieved the highest second-quarter sales results in the brand's history.
Not only did Soma post a 53% sales growth over last year's second quarter, comparable sales grew a remarkable 38% over the second quarter of 2019.
In fact, we have had four consecutive quarters of comp growth at Soma.
Congratulations to the Soma team.
Soma remains on track to delivering an incremental 100 million in sales this year.
According to NPD research data, Soma's growth outpaced the market in non-sports bras, panties, and sleepwear for the past 12 months compared to the same period in 2019.
In addition, as customers' preferences have shifted to comfort, soma strategically increased its wireless bra assortment, taking more market share than any other brand for the last 12 months compared to the same period in 2019.
We believe this data, along with our recent performance, is a strong indication that Soma is well-positioned to capture additional market share and explode into a billion-dollar brand by 2025.
The business strategies put in place in Soma around inventory, product, marketing and digital are working.
And we are confident applying this proven playbook at Chico's and White House Black Market will continue their sales momentum.
Exciting things are indeed happening at both Chico's and White House Black Market, as indicated by second-quarter sales growth of 59% and 48%, respectively.
At both apparel brands, customers are enthusiastically responding to our elevated quality and styling enhancements, which are leading to meaningfully faster sell-through rates, higher productivity and more full-price sales and better-maintained margins.
Our second-quarter results once again highlight the incredible progress we are making on our five strategic priorities.
So let me take a few minutes to update you on each.
Priority number one, continuing our ongoing digital transformation.
Over the last two and a half years, we have successfully transformed into a seamless digital-first, customer-led company, adding resources and making strategic investments in talent and technology.
We have been thrilled with the trajectory of our digital sales over this time frame.
As our store revenues continue to rebound, our second-quarter digital sales grew 23% over 2019 levels.
Style Connect and My Closet continue to gain traction.
And customers using this proprietary digital tools are more engaged and have our highest conversion rates, UPTs, and average order values.
These tools continue to drive new multichannel customer growth, and these customers are our most valuable, spending more than three times a single-channel customer.
Afterpay, the popular benefit launched in time for holiday last year, allowing for customers to pay for their purchases in installments, has also proven to be a terrific UPT and sales driver and is beating our expectations.
Priority two, further refining products through styling, fabric, and innovation.
At each of our brands, we are leveraging customer data and insights, and continually elevating our product to take market share and drive results.
Customers are clearly responding across all three brands.
Continual newness and creating comfortable, beautiful solutions are core to the Soma brand.
We are feeding a conveyor belt of innovation for wireless and sports bras, ensuring she has the absolute right bra for everything she does in her life.
Sleepwear and panties continue to be strong and drove double-digit growth over last year and 2019 levels.
Chico's customers are continually responding to our newness, comfort features, novel technology, and innovative fabrics with pronounced acceleration in the quarter in denim, pants, dresses, knits, and woven tops.
White House Black Market also continued to benefit from elevated styling and quality improvements, and customers responded to our new pants and short programs as well as knits and dresses.
Congratulations to the apparel teams for a great quarter.
Next, driving significant increased customer engagement through digital storytelling.
Through our enhanced customer data analytics and insights, we have elevated and targeted our marketing efforts, which are driving brand awareness, generating traffic, and acquiring new customers.
We continue to allocate more resources to digital storytelling, social influencers, and other social efforts.
Our social media customer engagement continues to grow and customers are responding to influencers and associates.
We continue to acquire new customers and their average age continues to trend younger than existing customers, which reinforces the runway for all three brands.
Priority four, maintaining our operating and cost discipline.
Our most meaningful second-quarter accomplishment was our gross margin performance.
In fact, we posted our highest gross margin rate in 13 consecutive quarters.
This was driven by strength in full-price sales and the corresponding reduction in promotions.
Our on-hand inventories remain strategically lean, down 27% versus last year's second quarter and down 20% compared to the second quarter of 2019.
Scarcity of products and social proofing continued to drive a sense of urgency for customer purchasing.
These factors should continue to strengthen gross margin performance.
However, we are facing certain headwinds in the back half of the year that will impact gross margin and sales, including cost pressures from logistics, sourcing, fulfillment, and the labor market.
These considerations are included in our guidance that David will cover later in the call.
And finally, our last priority, delivering higher productivity in our real estate portfolio.
We delivered strong store growth during the quarter, and stores continue to be an integral part of our overall strategy as data indicates that digital sales are higher in markets where we have a strong retail presence.
Prudent store growth makes sense where the investment delivers profitable returns.
We have successfully opened 47 Soma shop-in-shops inside Chico's stores, which are exceeding expectations, driving new customers to both brands, and further expanding our digital business.
More of these shop-in-shops are scheduled going forward with a total of 70 expected by first quarter of next year.
At the same time, we continue to rationalize and tighten our real estate portfolio for higher store productibility standard.
Accordingly, we will continue to shrink our store base, primarily as leases come due, lease kickouts are available or buyouts make economic sense.
We have lease flexibility with nearly 60% of our leases coming up for renewal or kick out available over the next two to three years.
We are still on track to close 13% to 16% of our remaining store fleet through the end of fiscal 2023, with 45 to 50 of those closures occurring this fiscal year.
During the quarter, we closed nine stores, bringing our year-to-date closings to 18, and we ended the quarter with 1,284 boutiques.
We are very pleased with our company's return to profitability, posting diluted earnings per share of $0.21 for the second quarter, compared to a $0.40 loss per share from last year's second quarter and a $0.02 loss per share for the second quarter of fiscal 2019.
Q2 is our best quarter earnings performance since 2013.
Second-quarter net sales totaled $462 million compared to $306 million last year.
This 54% increase reflects meaningful improvement in product and marketing, which drove full-price selling as well as a recovery in-store sales as our stores were temporarily closed or operating at reduced hours last year, partially offset by 29 net store closures in the last 12 months.
Looking at the second quarter compared to 2019, our comparable sales were basically flat, declining just 1.6% with Soma improving 38% and Chico's and White House Black Market declining 14% and 5%, respectively.
Total company on-hand inventories compared to 2019 declined 20%, with Soma up 19%; and Chico's and White House Black Market down 32% and 49%, respectively, illustrating that the strategic investments in Soma's growth and our turnaround strategy in Chico's and White House Black Market are working.
Second-quarter gross margin was 38.4% compared to 14.6% last year, which included the impact of significant non-cash inventory write-offs.
This year, we meaningfully expanded our margin rate as a result of disciplined inventory control, strategically reduced promotions, and more full-price selling.
This was our highest gross margin rate in 13 consecutive quarters.
SG&A expenses for the second quarter totaled $146 million or 30.9% of sales, an improvement of more than 400 basis points from last year's second quarter and nearly 300 basis points better than the second quarter of 2019.
We have continued our cost discipline and reduction initiatives, enabling us to realize leverage in the current year.
Regarding our financial position, we continue to build cash, and our balance sheet continues to strengthen.
We ended the quarter with over $137 million in cash and marketable securities, an increase of nearly $35 million over the first quarter.
Borrowings on our $300 million credit facility remained unchanged from fiscal year end at $149 million.
Our financial position liquidity continues to be bolstered by improving retail sales and a lean expense structure that better aligns cost with sales.
In addition, during the second quarter, we received a $16 million income tax refund related to the $55 million income tax receivable reported in the first quarter, and we expect to receive the balance of the $55 million in the third quarter.
We anticipate building cash throughout the remainder of fiscal 2021.
In the second quarter, we continued our lease renegotiation initiatives with A&G Real Estate Partners, securing year-to-date commitments of approximately $15 million, and incremental savings from landlords, the majority of which will be realized this fiscal year.
This is in addition to the $65 million in abatements and reductions negotiated last year for a total savings to date of $80 million.
Now turning to our outlook.
During the balance of fiscal '21, we expect improving year-over-year demand, but recognize that there is economic uncertainty as we continue to manage through the pandemic.
In addition, we are facing macro supply chain headwinds in the back half of the year that we expect will impact sales and gross margin, including higher freight cost, extended transit times, and product supplier handover delays driven by the pandemic.
Accordingly, given this uncertainty, we are not providing specific guidance, but instead offering high-level outlook expectations for the third quarter and fiscal year.
For the third quarter, we expect consolidated year-over-year sales improvement in the 18% to 22% range, gross margin rate improvement of 13 to 15 percentage points over third quarter last year, SG&A as a percentage of sales to improve 500 to 600 basis points year over year and an income tax rate of 34% to 35%.
For the full fiscal year, we expect consolidated year-over-year net sales improvement in the 32% to 35% range, gross margin rate improvement of 20 to 22 percentage points over fiscal 2020, SG&A as a percent of sales to improve 500 to 600 basis points year over year and an income tax rate of 34% to 35%.

user
compname posts q2 earnings per share $0.21.
q2 earnings per share $0.21.
compname says consolidated year-over-year net sales improvement between 18% to 22% for q3.
compname says expects consolidated year-over-year net sales improvement between 32% to 35% for fy 2021.

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