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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Welcome to the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session after the presentation. This call is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Elise Wang, Vice President of Investor Relations, to discuss the non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking statements. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. This call should be considered in conjunction with the press release that we issued earlier today. Unless indicated otherwise, our discussion today will relate to results and guidance based on certain non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the 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 Exhibit 1 of our press release.
This call also contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which address the financial condition, results of operations, business initiatives, trends, guidance, growth plans and prospects of the company in 2019 and beyond, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements.
Please refer to the company’s current press release and SEC filings, including the most recent 10-K for more information on these risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call.
I will now turn the conference call over to Laura Alber, our President and Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, Elise. Good afternoon, everyone. On the call with me today are Julie Whalen, our Chief Financial Officer; Felix Carbullido, our Chief Marketing Officer; and Yasir Anwar, our Chief Technology Officer.
We continue to deliver very strong results. In the second quarter, comp revenue growth accelerated to 6.5%, operating margin expanded 10 basis points, and EPS grew double digits for the sixth consecutive quarter. The growth strategy that we outlined at the beginning of the year is driving results and giving us the competitive advantage to continue to outperform. West Elm, our biggest growth opportunity, continues to accelerate, the Pottery Barn brands have returned to strength, and our cross-brand initiatives such as The Key and Business-to-Business are becoming more impactful levers of growth. We are also improving the customer experience through innovation and experimentation, and we are seeing the results of this work fuel brand level performance across our portfolio. In addition, our data-driven performance marketing is producing outsized returns on our digital media investments.
Our performance year-to-date demonstrates that our initiatives are successfully driving consistent profitable growth across the business and we are confident that we will build on our market share gains in the second half and longer term. As a result, we are raising our full-year guidance for net revenues, comp revenue growth, and EPS.
I would now like to discuss in more detail the underlying drivers of our second quarter performance across our brands starting with the first pillar of our growth strategy and our biggest growth opportunity, West Elm. West Elm had an outstanding quarter with comp growth accelerating to 17.5% on top of 9.5% last year. The brand is hyper focused on delivering on the promise of helping our customers elevate their everyday, combining industry-leading design, value, and the quality that comes from our vertically integrated model. In Q2, our West Elm results were driven by strong execution across all of our key growth strategies, accentuating our designs and value leadership, expansion into product white space, enhanced strategies to drive new customer acquisition and growth across all channels including B2B.
New product introductions and line extensions with differentiated design and value attributes drove our product performance this quarter, while continued growth across both higher and lower price point categories points the strength in new and retained customers. Also worth highlighting is the notable acceleration in our e-commerce growth. Furthermore, our new West Elm stores continue to perform above expectations delivering incremental topline and bottom line growth.
Overall, the market continues to respond to West Elm’s unique offering of industry-leading design, function, and value, reinforcing our potential to capture significantly more share domestically and abroad. We are executing on an aggressive growth strategy and are well on track to doubling the brand's revenue.
The Pottery Barn brands also had a strong quarter with comp growth accelerating to 4.2% and 3.7% for Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids and Teen respectively. In Pottery Barn, growth continued to be led by furniture with strength in our proprietary, upholstery business driven by our talented in-home design teams and the service culture in our stores. Our digital experience has also improved materially through an increased focus on inspiration and friction-free shopping, which are driving more traffic and product engagement.
As we outlined a couple years ago, we've been executing on an aggressive plan to reposition Pottery Barn for growth. We've diversified our product offering with more aesthetics and scale including the launch of our successful new businesses Pottery Barn Apartment, and marketplace, both of which are driving new customer acquisition and brand reconsideration. We've also improved our value equation across all product categories, transformed our digital experience with more content and functionality, and optimized our retail experience through remodels and value-added, in-home services.
We are pleased to see all of these initiatives taking hold and positioning the brand for strong, long-term growth. The Pottery Barn Kids and Teen brands delivered their highest two-year comp in four years. Our baby business continues to be an important growth initiative where we are fueling growth and customer acquisitions with our market leading offering of GREENGUARD, gold certified furniture and organic textile. In the quarter, we saw significant growth across our back-to-school offering, namely backpacks, eco-friendly food storage, and dorm furnishings, and we made strides with our mobile-friendly digital shopping experience and in-store services during this peak shopping period.
We continue to see strength in the foundational furniture category where we pride ourselves in marrying unique design with the highest safety standards and quality that lasts. Across our children's brands, we are committed to creating products that are good for kids and good for the planet. We are making substantial progress against our sustainability goals which we believe is an important differentiator in the children's home furnishings market.
Our emerging brands, Rejuvenation and Mark and Graham, drove another quarter of solid profitable growth. And in our global business, we saw continued strength, particularly in our franchise operations. In addition to our entry into India early next year, we are looking forward to expanding our wholesale network in both New Zealand and Ireland in the second half of this year.
I'd now like to discuss the Williams-Sonoma brand. While we are disappointed with the negative 1.1 comp this quarter, we did have a positive comp in our full-price business and new introductions were solid. However, they weren't strong enough to overcome the clearance volume. This is in tabletop and a very successful launch of Instant Pot last year.
Instant Pot continues to be a high-volume product, and we are building around it with exclusive food and complimentary assortments. Areas of strength in the quarter included savory food as well as our Williams-Sonoma branded cookware and bakeware. We also continued momentum in our Williams-Sonoma home business despite pulling back on promotions.
Now let me spend a moment on the leadership transition that we announced in early July. As most of you already know, Ryan Ross has been appointed the President of Williams-Sonoma. Over the past month, Ryan and the team and myself have identified some immediate opportunities for improvement. Our priority remains balancing the brand's long-term growth with improved profitability.
We will aggressively execute on our transformation plan, which includes delivering innovation and relevancy to the customer along with the expansion of our proprietary private label business. We'll also reduce promotional activity and rationalize SKUs to drive margin improvements with the opportunity in our digital business and our marketing and content strategy. And we will continue to improve our technology roadmap and assortment opportunities. At retail, we are reducing unprofitable stores, leveraging our high impact remodels and building on our in-store experience. Together, these initiatives will drive meaningful improvements in the business over time.
Another key driver of our accelerated growth is the focus on our portfolio of brands. Our cross-brand loyalty program, the key continues to be an impactful driver of customer engagement and revenue growth. We added another 1 million key members over the last three months, bringing total membership to 6.4 million. Even more encouraging are approximately 70% of sales from these key members come from multi-brand shoppers, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the program in driving cross-brand sales.
To further improve the key member experience, we replatformed our mobile wallet capabilities this quarter, which now include digital reward card and personalized mobile notifications regarding promotions and reward expirations. Another important driver of customer loyalty is our branded credit card program. Our credit card holders are currently among our most valuable customers, spending on average five times more than non loyalty customers.
We are improving the user experience with more advanced digital capabilities such as in-reward redemptions and POS access. And we are in the process of expanding on our existing programs to drive more customer engagement across brand spending. Our cross brand, Williams-Sonoma Inc. Business to business division, delivered double digit growth this quarter and our strategies continue to gain traction. We're executing aggressively on two priorities.
First, putting in place the cross brand cross functional infrastructure to support the growth. And second, expanding our large scale project pipeline with more strategic partnerships across industry verticals. Our newly formed cross-functional team is prioritizing the development of scalable processes and a robust roadmap of technology enhancements to best serve the needs of the business to business customer.
To drive more strategic selling, we are adding more experienced talent to our sales team and expanding our contract grade product offering across the brands. We're also making strong progress in our discussions with a number of Fortune 500 companies, which continues to reinforce our competitive edge in the business-to-business market and delivering high quality, sustainable products that are customizable to individual client needs.
Also this quarter, we made substantial progress on our ongoing efforts to improve the customer experience from order to delivery. We have significantly fast tracked our tech experimentation agenda with the launch of over 80 new capabilities over the last six months across each of our brands to deliver more engaging content rich customer experiences.
So far, over 30% of these tests, which span across product recommendation, merchandising and search have already generated notable improvements in revenue per visitor. We're in the process of scaling them across brands. This test to learn results-driven approach allows us to bring innovation to market at and is yet another example of our continued evolution into an agile technology rich retail organization. In the supply chain highlights this quarter include the launch of our SMS furniture delivery scheduling, which gives customers the option to schedule their delivery on their mobile devices.
We expect this functionality to improve our self-service scheduling participation rate from 50% to 75% and create a more convenient in home delivery service for our customers. Also in furniture, we're pleased to see the favorable trend in our in home delivery service rating continued in Q2. And we reached another historical high of 4.88 stars out of 5. Following the first go to launch of our string of pearls order tracking capability which gives our customers and associates unparalleled visibility into their orders at up to 13 milestones, we have added further enhancements such as email and SMS notifications that if you have an over a 20% reduction in order tracking related customer calls.
Another milestone in Q2 was the opening of our West Elm West Coast DC in Fontana, California. We expect the DC to be fully operational in September, facilitating faster delivery times to our customers on the West Coast and reducing our operating costs in the region. Our in-house manufacturing operations Sutter Street continue to also to be a strategic advantage. Shipments including from our newly established Tupelo facility were 30% year-over-year as we continue to drive operational improvements to enable more domestic production, which helps to mitigate the impact of the China tariffs.
As we've said throughout the year, we start executing on our tariff mitigation strategy earlier than most and as an evidence buyer results this quarter, we were able to cover the financial impact of List 3 tariffs. Julie will discuss the tariffs in more detail shortly. But before I turn the call over to her, I'd like to provide an update on our very important CSR initiatives. As all of you know, we are a value driven company and is our priority to make a positive impact on the world through the way that we do business. Across our brands, we are rapidly closing in on our 100% sustainably sourced cotton goal as well as achieving more GREENGUARD certification in furniture as our customers increasingly demand products that are certified as safe and non-toxic.
We're also pleased to be recognized as a leader in landfill diversion having been ordered a reprieve champion of sustainability for diverting 25 million plastic bottles from waste streams. Our deep commitment to workplace diversity was also recognized this quarter as we were named one of Forbes best employers for women. Our focus on worker well-being also extended far into our supply chain, where we are proud to be the first home furnishings retailer to make a commitment to fair trade. In October, we'll be celebrating the fifth year anniversary of our partnership in creating safe and healthy working conditions for those who manufacture our products.
Each of these achievements adds the reasons why customers choose us over our competitors. And why we are focused on amplifying our CSR efforts more broadly across our brands and through the publication of our annual CSR report in fall of this year. As we look to the back half of the year, we are confident that our product and digital strategies, coupled with the strengths of our brands and cross brand initiatives will enable us to continue to outperform. I want to thank our team for the strong execution and relentless commitment to serving our customers.
And with that I'll turn the call over to Julie for a financial review of the second quarter and a more detailed update to our fiscal year 2019 guidance.
Thank you Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. Our second quarter results reflect the continued acceleration we are seeing in our business and our ability to drive both top line and bottom line out performance, executing upon our roadmap for growth and our operational initiatives has resulted in strong revenue growth, which along with the ongoing success we are seeing with our cost savings initiatives drove another quarter of operating margin expansion, double-digit EPS growth and is fueling our confidence in our outlook for the rest of 2019 and beyond.
During the second quarter, we generated net revenues of $1,371 million for a year-over-year increase of 7.5%. Comparable brand revenue growth accelerated 300 basis points from the first quarter to 6.5% on top of 4.6% last year. This growth was led by another quarter of our performance from West Elm with a comp growth of 17.5%, strong acceleration across our Pottery Barn brands including Pottery Barn at a 4.2% comp. Solid growth from our emerging brands Rejuvenation and Mark and Graham had another quarter of almost 9% growth from our international operations.
Gross margins for the second quarter were 35.4% versus 36.5% last year. Gross margin was impacted by higher shipping costs which were primarily driven by a larger mix of furniture sales, the incremental impact of the implementation of the List 3 China tariffs, as well as the growing share of our business coming from franchise and trade, which is diluted to the gross margin but accretive to the operating margin. This was partially offset by another quarter of occupancy leverage of approximately 50 basis points, which resulted from our ongoing retail optimization initiatives, and the corresponding benefits we see from reduced rent and other occupancy related costs.
Occupancy costs increased 3.5% or $6 million to $176.8 million compared to $170.8 million last year, primarily reflecting the timing of depreciation and other occupancy related costs, as well as the rent associated with our new West Elm, West Coast DC. SG&A for the second quarter was 28.5 % this year versus 29.7% last year. The 120 basis point leverage across employment, advertising and general expenses was driven by leverage from higher sales and the continued benefits of our cost savings initiatives across the business, as well as our overall expense discipline.
SG&A expense increased 3.2% or $12 million year-over-year to $390.7 million, primarily resulting from higher variable costs to support the top-line results, including higher labor and digital advertising and credit card fees, as well as an overall increase in performance-based incentive compensation resulting from our year-to-date out performance. We were pleased to see the despite this increase in SG&A expense, we were able to generate record level of SG&A leverage. This resulted in operating income growth of 8.9% over last year to $94 million and operating margin expansion of 10 basis points to 6.9%. The effective income tax rate during the second quarter of 24% was relatively in line with last year's rate of 24.5%. And this resulted in bottom line diluted earnings per share of $0.87 which was $0.10 or 13% higher than last year.
On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of $120 million versus a $175 million last year. During the second quarter, we maintained our balanced capital allocation approach by investing $41 million in the business and returning nearly $77 million to stockholders through dividends and share repurchases comprising approximately $39 million in dividends and $38 million in share repurchases.
Moving down to balance sheet. Merchandise inventories were $1,188 million or an increase of 8% over last year, which includes the pull forward of inventory receipts associated with a List 4 China tariffs. As we had discussed last quarter, we had strategically planned to expedite these receipts to help mitigate the corresponding tariff impact. And therefore, we had expected our inventory levels to be higher. We are continuing to pull forward as much inventory as possible this quarter, which appears to be a good idea in light of the most recent tariff announcement. Remaining inventory growth is primarily driven by West Elm, one of our biggest growth initiatives and Pottery Barn where customer demand continues to shift to more drop ship and custom-made product versus stock inventory.
Operationally, our inventory initiatives continue to drive significant improvements across all brands with backorders currently down more than 20% to last year. And backward trade rates at all-time lows, driving further cost efficiencies and an improved customer experience.
Now I would like to discuss our fiscal year 2019 guidance. Given our out performance year-to-date and our growing confidence in the substantial growth engines that we are executing against, we are raising our fiscal 2019 full-year guidance for the second time this year. This revised guidance includes raising our net revenues and our comparable brand revenue growth, as well as our EPS and reflects the financial impact of all confirmed China tariffs including List 4 tariffs and the recent increase to List 3 tariffs, both of which were not contemplated in our previous guidance.
As we outline last year, we are executing our an aggressive tariff mitigation plan which includes cost reductions from vendors, moving production out of China, cost savings in other areas of the business, as well as selective price increases. We now expect net revenues to grow to a range of $5.740 billion to $5.900 billion, an increase of approximately $60 million to $70 million from our previous guidance range. We expect comp growth to be in the range of 3% to 6% compared to our previous range of 2% to 5%. And we are also raising our diluted earnings per share by $0.05 on both the low and high end of the range to $4.60 to $4.80.
We are reiterating our commitment to maintain a balanced capital allocation strategy by utilizing our strong operating cash flow to first invest $200 million to $220 million in the business in those areas that will fuel our growth and provide the highest returns. And returning excess cash to our stockholders in the form of share repurchases and dividend payments.
In closing, given the success we are seeing from our growth and operational initiatives and the momentum we continue to see in our business, combined with our market differentiators including a multi-channel shopping platform with an industry-leading ecommerce penetration, a portfolio of strong brands that serve a range of demographics and aesthetics, a vertically integrated supply chain from design to manufacturing to in-home delivery and a winning culture distinguished by our unwavering focus on the customer, our deep commitment to quality and sustainability. A performance driven mindset and an emphasis on strong financial discipline. We remain very confident that we are in a strong position to continue to take market share and to drive sustainable, long- term shareholder returns.
I would now like to open up the call for questions. Thank you.
[Operator Instructions]
Our first question today from Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs Group.
Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to follow up on some of the tariff commentary if that's okay. Julie, I wondered if you could quantify how much it did impact gross margins in the second quarter. And I think originally you had said 15% of your COGS were exposed to Lists 1 through 3, but that was coming down. I wondered if you had an updated number in terms of what that represented today, and how we should think about Q4 and how much that represents in COGS?
Sure. Hi, Kate. Thanks for the question. As far as the quantification of how much was the tariff piece of the gross margin, I put it in order. We haven't quantified the exact or provided the exact basis point amount, but it's in order. So, we started with a higher shipping cost and then said that it was the tariff impact. What we have said about the total impact is that we are taking the amount that we're producing out of China and taking it down to half next year. We have not disclosed the total dollar impact of what this means to us, but obviously it's material and obviously it continues to be a moving target. But given the strength of our underlying business and our proactive mitigation strategies that are clearly working, and the fact that we are able to cover that cost within the P&L in the second quarter obviously still has margin expansion. And the fact that we've now covered it within our future guidance gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to do that.
And so, as we've said before, the fact that we have been executing on this tariff mitigation strategy and continuing to move products out of China, accelerating tariff-related receipts, driving incremental cost renegotiations, implementing select price increases, and all of the material cost reductions that we're seeing with the SG&A at 120 basis points to leverage, we feel very confident in our ability to cover the impact of these going forward.
Okay, great. And if I could just follow up with one question on prices. I think you mentioned too that you did raise prices slightly because of the impact from tariffs. I just wondered in your guidance for the rest of the year or how much you're contemplating with regards to unit degradation as you've had to increase some price.
Sure. Kate. It's Laura. When it comes to price increases, every brand, every category, and every product is different and what's reflected in our guidance is based on -- the extensive testing we've been doing on pricing, elasticity with our customers, and also the cost savings we've identified in the P&L. And of course, we're doing everything else we can to protect our customers and not raise prices including as Julie went through resourcing and renegotiating costs with our vendors and finding cost opportunities in other areas of the business. Because, as you know, our focus remains on providing the best value to our customer.
And we're always testing, we're always refining our pricing strategy, and the good news is that we've been able to take select price increases because our value is so strong. And we've also, as Julie said, moved products out. We've renegotiated with our current vendors, and we are also adding more value-oriented collections across the brand, which are going to allow us to continue to offer our customers' top-quality at the best value.
Next we'll hear from Michael Lasser with UBS.
Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. The last week you probably had a plan in place that was going to influence what your guidance for the full year is. And then Friday the new tariffs were announced. So, what changed within your plan from last week prior to the announcement of the new tariff to today?
Thanks for the question. This is Julie. Our guidance would have been higher is the short answer to that. So clearly given the news that we got on Friday afternoon, it made us rethink about our guidance and the fact that we're committed to absorbing the List 4 tariffs and the List 3 tariffs going from 25% to 30% now List 4 going to 15% that made us rethink our guidance. But for those tariffs, it would have been much higher.
And I would say that we are -- as much as there's a lot of macro uncertainty and we're well aware of what's going on in the world, we’re not seeing any weakness with our customer with our brands. We're seeing very strong metrics across the board from traffic to the website, new customer accounts, and really strong reaction to our introductions and our big bet. So, we don't want to be overly conservative either but we're seeing really strong results and we're very optimistic about the balance of the year and let's hope that we get to a trade agreement that is a benefit and more upside.
And then my follow-up question is if you look within the Pottery Barn business, how much of the 4.2% comp is being driven by new product launches, some of the new concepts and how much is just business that had been in place for a long time?
I'd say that the big unifier in all this growth is furniture, both new and core. What's great about furniture is that once you find something that's working, it has a longer life than you do in fashion apparel or even in textiles. So, it's really, it shows you that you have the same opportunity for quarters to come because you can build on the collections, and oftentimes we'll bring in one piece of a collection and test the new finish, and then we bring in the whole suite. So that is a really good indicator of future business and then we maximize it by adding to the collections.
Next, we will hear from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley.
Hi. This is Josh Kamboj on for Simeon Gutman. Can you talk about the relationship between top-line growth and maybe the inventory you bought ahead of time in the quarter? Like how much of the comp growth was tied to inventory purchases you made ahead of tariffs? And did you find yourself needing to maybe promote a little bit more than usual to sell-through some of that or was the merch margin on those sales pretty healthy?
No. So first of all the inventory that we're talking about pulling forward is ahead of the List 4 tariffs. And so those would have been items that we sold in future quarters. So there was no need to take inventory that we pull forward and sell-through it quicker. In fact from a gross margin perspective, if you back out a lot of the-- fairly so a lot of big noise but if you back out the noise associated with the shipping costs and the China tariffs and the higher franchise and trade volume that I went through in the prepared remarks, our merch margins were actually slightly up.
So just to be clear the gross margin decline is nothing to do with the fact that we had to get through a bunch of inventory. We feel the health of our inventory is pretty good. If you look at it from an 8% growth perspective, our top-line growth grew 7.5%. So it's in theory 50 basis points above, but if you factor in the impact from the tariffs absolutely and then the impact from the tariffs we pulled forward, it's actually below our revenue growth. So that was not a driver of our gross margin results.
All right. That's very helpful. Thank you. And then just as a quick follow-up, can you talk about the trajectory of outward, how you expect the top and bottom line growth to evolve in that segment. And some of it's going to be consolidated into financials next year. And if so, it's been kind of run writing it in maybe $0.25 EPS headwind for the full year. That how we should think about modeling it next year?
Obviously, we're not providing guidance for next year, but as far as what our plans are for the non-GAAP side of it, we will be rolling through the operational piece of it. You have to remember that within that non-GAAP number, however, is also the amortization of the acquisition cost. And that's a sizable piece of it. So you don't think you can take the run rate of what you're seeing from a non-GAAP perspective and assume that's going to roll through from that perspective because the amortization of the acquisition cost will continue for two more years. It's the operational piece that will come through.
Our next question comes from Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett.
Hey, good afternoon. This is actually John Park on for Chuck. I guess given the 2Q gross margin performance understanding that compares do get a little bit easier, how should we kind of think about gross margins here for the balance of the year?
Well, as we've said before I mean certainly we don't give per se guidance on gross margin, but as we've said before we do expect there to be continued pressure as we move throughout the year, particularly associated with the tariffs. Now obviously it depends on the mix of the products that we sold, which ones are still in China, which ones have we know the relatives negotiation we've had with those particular vendors. And so you'll see some pressure from that. And certainly directionally with the fact that we've got a full quarter of the list 3 tariffs the 25% moving to 30% and then the list 4 layered in. However, at the same time what you will continue to see is incredible occupancy leverage.
We've had one of the lowest occupancy rates we've had as we continue to optimize our occupancy costs. And as we committed to, we may have some geography play where you have pressure on gross margin, but we're making up for it within SG&A. And you saw again that we have a second quarter row of some of the best SG&A leverage we've ever had. And so we're committed to doing that going forward.
Got it. Great. And then I guess just how does it I guess calendar shift impact sales in 2Q and any way to parse out the headwind here in the back half year.
It wasn't material. It was slight pieces of the non comp call it 70 basis points. It wasn't material piece of it. In Q3, we don't expect it to be even as much as that and Q4 obviously it'll be a drag because that is the quarter where we had the 53rd week. And so you can do the math on that from --to some degree on the $85 million that we committed to or told you it was worth last year. You can do the math on it for the fourth quarter. On the year the $85 million is worth the 160 basis points.
Next we'll hear from Jonathan Matuszewski with Jefferies.
Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess just to start off for West Elm; you mentioned expanding into product white space. Could you just elaborate on a few examples of new categories that could be contributing to some of that visible acceleration we saw this quarter? Thank you.
Yes. Sure. Great question. We've expanded into the bathroom area again. We had been in that business previously and we gotten out. And in fact, we've really had great response in all channels to our baths assortment. And we've just begun on that. We also continue to see opportunity to build on our children's business with the West Elm PBK collaboration which is interestingly enough driving almost equal amounts of volume both in West Elm and PBK. And again very just the beginning innings of that work. And then the other area older children dorm business very important business. And one that there's no one person really leading.
We've had great results this quarter in Pottery Barn Teen and in our dorm business, but we also see opportunity because the stores base of West Elm to even better service that customer that is near West Elm store. So those are some of the areas that we are building on. I would say that the other thing that's happening with West Elm is that we continue to see it really work in different parts of the world and different suburban and urban areas. And so diversity of scale and aesthetic becomes very important and while the West Elm look is pretty original and people know when it's West Elm, the truth is there are a lot of varieties within that in different ways for you to furnish your home with a brand. And as we expand on that we're getting more customers which are really exciting.
And the thing also to remember is that although it's doing this well, we think the runway is so much greater because the market awareness is so low still. So as we look at market awareness is only 20 now and you think about that versus matured brand you can do the math on why we are certain that this brand is very large.
Yes. That's helpful. And leads into my next question. I guess I know that the partnership with Rent the Runway is still very early, but any comments there in terms of what you've been learning from that partnership. And whether you'd be open to pursuing other alternative distribution channels for that brand or other brands? Thank you.
Thanks. It's really too early to comment. I'd say that there's been tremendous customer interest in that. And we've had some great events for them. And a lot more to come and we're open to try new things and being where the customer wants us to be and sustainability is really important to us. And so sometimes people don't want to buy things forever. They are moving often and we're going to be there serve them.
Next we'll hear from Oliver Wintermantel with Evercore ISI.
Hi. Good evening, guys. Julie, it's a follow-up question for what you described it on your gross margin and SG&A leverage. So looking at the first half, we had leverage in operating margins and you said there's continued pressure on closed margins the leverage on SG&A but looking at your full year guidance it looks like it's flat year-over-year. So should we expect then margins to be down in the second half and is that more driven by more deleverage from gross margins or less leverage on SG&A?
I think on the year we've guided to essentially flat to last year which could be higher. I mean we think we're staying relatively in line with last year. So I wouldn't necessarily guide your op margin to be below last year. You will see pressure as I said earlier on the gross margin and that should be offset with SG&A. And so we're still committed to delivering op margins that are flat or higher to last year.
Got it. Thanks. And then to follow up on working capital that seems to be a bigger outflow this year in the first half on working capital then last year's free cash flow was down in the first half. Can you help us with the flow through for the rest of the year maybe on working capital or free cash flow?
Yes. That's primarily associated with accounts payable and it's really due to timing. We had elevated levels at year end in comparison to the prior year. And so when you compare it to the Q2 year-to-date it just distorted it. And so it's all timing and so you should see that come back in the back half. I wouldn't read anything more into it.
Next we will hear from Bobby Griffin with Raymond James.
Good afternoon, everybody and congrats on a good revenue quarter. First, I just want to unpack a little bit more detail about the price increases. When you look across your portfolio maybe just on average what is the ultimate price increase the consumer is seen from the tariff? Is it mid-single digits, high single digits or low double digits? Anything to help us frame what the consumer might be seeing.
It's not even close to that.
So like low single digits when you translate all the impacts from Lists 1through 3 and then would it maybe move a little bit higher with list 4?
You have to remember, it's not -- every season we bring in a lot of newness. And so it's not the same product necessarily and there's also -- it's different value equations as I said earlier, but it's not a material change in pricing. It's one that we feel very comfortable with. And the most important thing as I said earlier is to make sure that on an item-by-item basis, the value equation is still better than anyone else including when you add the shipping in. And that's how we think about it. So it's not -- to do any averages on this wouldn't be appropriate.
Okay. And then is it possible given that it's such, that it's not as meaningful maybe some of us would have thought originally that there really might not be that much unit degradation or have you seen any change in unit volumes really at all?
It's an interesting question. We haven't seen material degradation, no in unit selling based on these slight price increases.
Okay. And then lastly for me is more just a further out type question. When we look at the long-run revenue targets of mid to high single digit revenue growth, how new store growth start to play into that after you gets through some of the closings here.
On the stores we have seen very strong results from our new stores and our reloads. I mean the reloads have been really materially incremental and the West Elm stores have been better than plan as I said earlier. And we still haven't even really started to open. Not to say that's our focus, but retail is really the motor around our business. And we are a direct-to-consumer company with a retail motor. This way I want you to think about it. And whenever we open a store, we see awareness go up, it gives them confidence in buying online and it's a great ecosystem. We're also really working with the lifestyle centers to open in these great new centers, where people can just park their car, maybe go grocery shopping and then come into our stores and that's a really exciting new kind of real estate strategy for us as we think about the future.
Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets has our next question.
Thanks. Good afternoon and good quarter. Wanted to ask about SG&A, it's been very well controlled the last few quarters here. And I guess as you all think about the business the next few years is this low single-digit growth rate something that you think is sustainable and would be enough to plant enough seeds to continue to drive the long -term financial targets you're outlining? Because it's really been some impressive control here these last few quarters.
I mean, yes, obviously we're not giving guidance for the out years on the SG&A line, but it's certainly something that we are very focused on. And we've demonstrated that we've been able to do. And that the good part is that it's across multiple lines, it's not one particular line that we've been working towards. So in particular this quarter last quarter, we've seen incredible leverage on employment even though it's a sensitive subject we had the reduction of force in Q1 and that it's really helped us and that'll continue to help us with the lower employment cost.
We've already lapped some of the higher hourly wages, some of that will come back, but we've lapped a big piece of the higher hourly wages that we needed to. And so that's helping drive leverage as well. And then from an advertising perspective, we're continuing to shift more advertising dollars away from catalogue into digital advertising that is much more efficient. And so we think that's an opportunity to continue to do that maybe Felix do you want to talk a little bit more about that?
Yes. I think as Julie said, we will continue to find higher performing marketing vehicles. And our growth in our customer base is in line with the sales growth we reported for the quarter. And I think even though we're getting more efficient with our marketing spend what gives us confidence is that we began a year with a record high number of actives. And for the past two quarters, we continued to grow on top of that base resulting in an all-time high as we head into the back half of the year.
So we're very excited about the customer growth and the momentum it gives us for the next two quarters for the years ahead.
That's very helpful. And if I could ask the follow up on the trends in Williams-Sonoma, that business becomes seasonally more important when you get into the fourth quarter. I was hoping you could give us an early look on maybe what you could do to try to drive positive comps in that brand in 4Q.
Sure. We obviously recognize how important it is in Q4. And so we've been going through everything that we have in place to ensure that we have the big buys on the right stuff. And I think a really important thing that will allow us to even further differentiate us is to really return to more content messaging. And more recipes and experience in our stores, but also digitally and to really take the next step in digital reinvention about how we really expand our food education of our customers, which is the thing that the brand has always been famous for.
And so we have some really nice launches coming up that we're seeing some good early bites on, and we are going to continue to reduce our promotional activity. We've done a good job reducing clearance in the stores. We're also going to continue to exit these stores that are not performing as well, which is a good thing to do and we have some closures at the end of the year that as we've talked about are coming up. So that's going to give us even more leverage on the occupancy. But really the growth here is going to continue to be online. And so we're going to continue to focus on the PIP, the conversion, content storytelling, our messaging to our customers and we believe that that is going to drive improve business not just long-term but in the back half.
Next we hear from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer.
Hi, good afternoon, nice quarter. So question right, it's part of the strategy you are continuing to tweak your store base. So is this occurs or these efforts occurred any update on the sales recapture rate as you're shutting stores and presumably helping to drive -- to hoping to drive those sales through other stores or your e-commerce effort?
There is some but it's not as mature as I'd like it to be honestly. But it does is it helps make that neighboring store even more profitable. But you're not picking up the whole thing and nor do we need to because in some cases those sales aren't profitable anyway. Is that answered your question?
Yes. I get it. Because I know in the past other retailers have talked about a specific number, but it sounds like it's not -- that's not really how --
It kind of depends. So for example, if you're in a store market where the store is 15 minutes away, you're going to get more pickup than if the store is 45 minutes away. So we have models that tell us exactly on that store how much we pick up and generally speaking we're doing better than those models. But it can be anywhere from 5% to 25% depending, but it's certainly not in the 75 ranges I wish.
Got it. And then a second question I have a bigger picture you and others are talking about tariffs and the efforts here with your vendors to mitigate the impacts in pricing. Have you considered as you think about the balance of this year what impact, again, it's obviously very fluid with tariffs, so what impact is the tariffs could have on the consumer broadly? And with your business being discretionary nature could that be some type of sale, a bigger sales headwind?
I'm not seeing that. I mean, the customer -- we're in the business of home and people is our biggest asset. And they've shown us that it continues to be the thing they value the most. And home prices are still up. We've seen the good numbers. We've seen the consumer confidence numbers. And we're continuing to take share from really the mom-and-pops, the retail people who had all these little stores. In our business 50% comes from all these small players. And 80% of the industry is actually done at retail and so we're one of those special disruptors who are going to be able to benefit from that disruption from retail to online.
And the advantage we have actually it's funny. The advantage we have is that we're a great online player, but we also have these retail stores that give the customer the confidence about the quality and allows them to go visit things somewhere near them. So they can feel --they can buy a whole home full of furniture. So we're actually, I actually see the future as really in our favor as people shop more and more online and we take share from all these mom-and-pop on the street people who people are not shopping with as much anymore.
Next we'll hear from Marni Shapiro with Retail Tracker.
Hey, guys. Congrats on a great quarter. Could you give us you a little bit of an update on the international business? You have some exposure in the UK and I know Brexit things have been a little up and down there. And then just in Australia and then could you also give us a little guidance about furniture is going very well and has been for quite a while. And you've talked quite a bit about moving furniture back to the US and things like that. Could you just talk about where the company stands today as far as furniture production here versus China versus other countries in general?
Sure. Our total international business continues to show strength. We see a lot of strength in Canada actually in a franchise business and our franchise business continues to accelerate in the same -- on a same-store basis. And that's despite a challenging business environment across the globe. And as you know, we're going into one of the biggest markets. We're so excited to go into India. And our UK business is solid. Our Australia business is probably the weakest honestly, but there we are able to continue to reduce costs as we change our operating model there. So that is a good thing too. And we are in general very optimistic about our ability to really grow in these international markets and do it profitably.
As it relates to furniture, we are always looking for the best quality and the best place to make things. And as we've said before that the shipping cost overseas on the upholstery offsets the labor increase in America. And so you're able -- we're able to move a lot here. And we've been doing it for a long time. It also gives us the ability to do more made-to-order. And we've opened another location in Tupelo and we already need more space. So we're going to continue to grow here carefully. And we're making a beautiful product. The great value for the customers and clearly through the sales they recognize it.
We have not moved case goods, our case goods are in many places but mostly Vietnam now and China and we have a lot of flexibility there. We double source and triple source many of our products in our case pieces. But that continues to be overseas with the exception of some Rejuvenation and Williams Sonoma home product that we make domestically.
And as you guys have moved stuff out of China to places like Vietnam other countries. Have you been able to get the same kind of efficiencies and product quality and shipping because China is a very mature manufacturing market and the others are fairly mature but not quite to the same level. Are you finding that it's been a fairly seamless transition?
I mean I'd say I don't want to make it sound too seamless because our teams have worked so hard.
I would say fairly.
It's not pleasant and rather be working on other things, but they have done a beautiful job and we're not having any quality degradation. We're not seeing any disruption in shipments. The vendors are great. They've been our partners and our team is amazing.
We'll move on to Seth Basham with Wedbush.
Thanks a lot and good afternoon. My question is a follow up Laura. You mentioned that you haven't seen any material degradation in the units' space and the slight price increases you've taken because of tariffs. In your guidance are you planning for any unit demand pressure in the second half? And, if so, how much?
First let me understand your question a little bit more. For some reason it was muffled. Did you say am I planning for demand degradation like --?
Yes. Any demand, unit demand decline because of price increases in the second half in your guidance.
Absolutely not, no.
Got it. Okay. That's awful. And then secondly, I am sorry, do yo want to continue?
No, no. I just want to make sure I'm getting your question right.
Sure. And then secondly, Julie, recent quarters you talked about trends in product margin. Could you give some color on how much product margin decline this quarter and confirm the outlook is for declines in product margin in the back half of the year?
Yes. So what I did say is that if you take out the impact from the higher shipping cost and obviously the China tariffs which is relatively new especially going to 25% this quarter. And the impact from the higher franchise and trade volume, the pure merch margins, the health of the business of what we're selling the product at, if you will, is up slightly. And that's how I qualified it.
Okay. In that context how that compared to the first quarter of the year?
It's relatively similar and obviously it will ebb and flow as it move to the back half, but certainly we're holding that level of merch margin which makes us feel really great about our promotional strategy. And the fact that it's working and we're being more thoughtful about how we're promoting products and being more relevant and personalized with our marketing strategy. So we feel good about it.
Next we'll hear from Cristina Fernandez with Telsey Advisory Group.
Hi. Good afternoon and congratulations on a good quarter. I had a big picture question, you have a lot of initiative to drive the accelerated comp at West Elm and Pottery Barn, whether it's product marketing, improvement to the website. If you were to rank these initiatives how would you feel about their contribution to the comp?
What's the contribution to the comp you mean this quarter?
Yes. The accelerations you are seeing this quarter.
Yes. I mean, we, you can see the comps and PB and West Elm where PB was even better than we expected. West Elm was also better than we expected. I would say the other thing that's embedded that you can't see that we can see is how material this business-to-business is to us. And in fact, I'll say it out loud it drove almost a full comp line business to business this quarter. And that's all incremental. So it's an accelerator. It makes me think about what, how much more can we add in the future because we're still only sort of gathering. We're not hunting yet. We're taking calls in and we're not ready yet to go get them. And so can you imagine if we're driving almost a full comp right now in business-to-business what that could be worth.
We said that, we laid out the strategy in the beginning of the year. And we talked about West Elm, cross brand initiatives, Pottery Barn, restore to growth and we're delivering on all of them and in some cases they're bigger than we thought. So that's what gives us a lot of confidence in the future beyond one quarter, but really in the future.
And as it relates to the cost savings that you've been a able to pull out of SG&A, how should we think about the incremental cost savings to offset the List 4 tariffs versus what you thought for List 3, like what areas are those coming from?
We should expect them to continue, quite frankly, on all lines but remember that it's not just an absolute increase from the fact we're adding List 3 and List 4. We are still proactively addressing those costs themselves. So whether it's again continuing with the resourcing of the product out of China, or going back and getting -- being more aggressive with the negotiations, I mean, with the devaluation of the WAN certainly, we've opened up the door again with our vendors to say, hey, how about more money please. They've been great about it. And so we're attacking it from every angle, so it's not just an SG&A play that we need to do but I have absolute confidence in our ability to continue with our cost cutting initiatives and drive that for the back half of the year.
We're actually the -- think of it is this way. We've identified a lot of things and we have some cost savings but some things are just in the works that haven't yielded the cost savings yet. And you may remember, I think it was a quarter ago that we talked about this big bucket that we call indirect vendor savings which are all the other non-product vendors and we've actually pulled that all together. We have a team specifically dedicated to cutting costs, renegotiating -- doing things differently to be an additional offset to tariffs. And so that does come in the form of SG&A but it's as real as a vendor savings that comes from a product vendor.
Next, we'll hear from Anthony Chukumba with Loop Capital Markets.
Good afternoon and thanks for taking my question. Just had a --.
Got in under the wire.
Yes just under the wire. Better late than never, right. So I'll keep this quick given that it's just under the wire. I just wanted to talk a little about or delve a little bit more into West Elm, and I know you talked a little about this in response to one of your earlier questions, but you just saw such a nice sequential comp acceleration there, including on a two-year stacked basis, actually a little better on a two-year stacked basis. I was just wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about what specifically is driving that. I know you talked about the new product introductions, the line extensions, e-commerce and sounds like B2B. If you could just give us a little more color on that, that would be great.
Sure. I mean, you do have the list right. So thank you for recapping that. But our Q2 performance was strong across the board, success in all of our key growth strategies. Our design and value leadership is probably the most important thing about this brand. It's very accessible to people and the design and the product quality is great. And we're one of the few people who can do the whole home. I mean, it's not just a single chair that's well priced that you can find if you're hunting on a site on the Internet. This is a full lifestyle brand. As I said earlier, we expanded into new product white space like the bath.
We enhanced our strategies, our digital strategies to drive new customer acquisition which is working. And we had growth across all of our channels, new stores, and including B2B. But really the biggest growth is the notable acceleration in our e-commerce performance, which continues to really climb and feed on itself, and that is not just because of all things I mentioned earlier but because of technology advancements we're making online and all the testing and experimentation we're doing across all of our brands to put the best experience online for our customers. And so, it's been a big priority this year to double down on West Elm, give it more resources, and give it more attention from all of us. We have a great team in place and they are really executing.
End of Q&A
That will conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'll now turn the conference over to Laura Alber, CEO, for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you, you guys, I really appreciate all the great questions today and your support. And I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.