© 2024 Alpha Spread Limited. All Rights Reserved.
www.alphaspread.com is not operated by a broker, a dealer, or a registered investment adviser. Under no circumstances does any information posted on www.alphaspread.com represent a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, investment advice or recommendations. The information on this site is in no way guaranteed for completeness, accuracy or in any other way. In no event shall Alpha Spread Limited be liable to any member, guest or third party for any damages of any kind arising out of the use of any content or other material published or available on www.alphaspread.com, or relating to the use of, or inability to use, www.alphaspread.com or any content, including, without limitation, any investment losses, lost profits, lost opportunity, special, incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages. Past performance is a poor indicator of future performance.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Pet Valu's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Chris, and I will be coordinating today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that following the formal remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to James Allison, Investor Relations at Pet Valu. Please go ahead, Mr. Allison.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Pet Valu's call to discuss our second quarter 2022 results, which we released this morning and can be found on our website at investors.petvalu.com. With me on the call is Richard Maltsbarger, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Grady, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements, including events and underlying assumptions. Forward-looking statements are based on expectations that involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed today. For a broader description of risks related to our business, please see our Q2 2022 MD&A and other filings available on SEDAR. I would also like to note that today's remarks will be accompanied by our earnings presentation for Q2 2022, which can be do live through our live webcast and is also available on our website. Now I would like to turn the call over to Richard Maltsbarger. Richard?
Thank you, James. Good morning, everyone. I will begin today with an overview of our accomplishments in the second quarter, along with highlights and observations for the remainder of 2022. Jim will then provide a more detailed review of our financial results and updated guidance for the year before opening up the call to take your questions. Pet Valu again delivered outstanding performance in the second quarter, capping off a strong first half of the year. We continue to be thrilled by the strength of the Canadian pet industry and more importantly, the invaluable dedication of our people to deliver exceptional customer experiences to devote pet levers across Canada. The efforts of our people, combined with our ability to flex our operations to all types of markets across Canada are why debt value has been winning share in an industry seeing its greatest ever increase in demand. Turning to Q2 financial results, we are very pleased with the growth across both the top and bottom lines. Same-store sales increased 21%. Revenue grew 25% for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA grew 23% and adjusted net income per diluted share more than tripled. While these numbers are fantastic in and of themselves, what stands out most to me is our Q2 system-wide sales have grown an impressive 75% since Q2 2019. This great performance is a result of executing across the 3 pillars of our growth strategy. First, expanding our store network; we opened 13 new stores in the second quarter, the bulk of which were franchised, bringing our total to 19 new stores year-to-date. We continue to increase our presence in all provinces and market types. And including the acquisition of Chico, we have added over 100 locations in the last 12 months. We ended the quarter with 717 stores across all 10 provinces, 68% of which are operated by our franchise owners. Second, driving our same-store sales, which is increased 21% in the quarter. While we had anticipated strong growth as we lapped ten weeks of curbside-only shopping in Ontario last year, we were delighted with the pace of growth across the country. Most importantly, when we look at our performance in the last 3 weeks of the quarter, where we were no longer lapping Ontario lockdowns, company-wide same-store sales growth continued firmly in double-digit territory. Our growth continues to be driven by resilient transaction trends, which increased over 19%, while average basket grew by 1.5%. We are seeing our customer shopping behaviors normalize with a return to more casual business such as for self-serve dog washes or just stopping in to say hello, while our devoted pet levers are out walking or socializing their pets. This has resulted in units per basket more in line with pre-pandemic levels, which when mixed with solid traffic growth on a same-store basis reinforces our view that we continue to acquire new customers and build share wallet with our existing customers even against the backdrop of heightened inflation. Growth was largely consistent across categories again this quarter. We are seeing strong consumer response to our new product lines such as our Performatrin Ultra and Fresh 4 Life, which was launched at the beginning of the quarter and continued growth in the natural enhanced scientific and culinary food formulas tied so closely to the long-term humanization trends driving the pet market. Same-store sales growth was consistent across store vintages, a key benefit from our thorough renovation and refresh program. We completed 7 renovations, expansions or relocations in the quarter, bringing our total year-to-date to 16, which is well along our way to our targeted 20 to 30 projects. On our digital front, we continue to see year-over-year growth and increased penetration in our online-generated sales, including growing adoption of our Click and Collect offering launched last year, even as customers return to inversion shopping. We continue to enhance our digital experience, such as launching local inventory and product review adds accessible through Google Search. We also continue to add net new members to our loyalty program, which is driving increased sales penetration above 70%. It is clear our customers were seeing the incremental value offered through our expanded frequent buyer programs, now covering key products for dogs, cats, and specialty animals. We are leveraging these insights for targeted promotions to key loyalty members, ranging from free bag reminders to product-specific offers to help build the basket. We have also further incorporated location data from our loyalty customers into our real estate decision processes using household level information to further improve our trade area optimization. And the final pillar of our growth strategy, enhancing our operating margins. As we have talked about previously, as a result of strategic investments we are making to scale our organization and drive future growth, we expect moderate operating margin compression in 2022. While our strong top line results are delivering excellent leverage on our fixed costs, our adjusted EBITDA margin contracted a modest 30 basis points compared to last year as we leaned into investments in wages, digital, technology, supply chain and proprietary brands, and had our last quarter of incremental public company costs. On the back of such strong performance in the second quarter, we have again raised our full year guidance, which Jim will discuss in more detail shortly. It is important to note that this updated full year outlook recognizes the strength of our first half results while we look ahead to the evolving macroeconomic environment. I will address our views on this through the lens of our growth formula. On new store growth, our team has successfully adapted to longer lead times needed to complete these projects in today's environment. As a result, we remain confident in our ability to reach our target of between 35 and 45 new openings this year. While we are seeing inflation in store opening costs, we have also seen a commensurate improvement in sales per square foot due to market and share growth, resulting in consistently strong unit economics for us and our franchisees. With Chico now fully onboarded into our real estate review process, we are focused on finding sites across all of Canada and are making excellent progress on our 2023 and 2024 pipelines. On same-store sales growth, we have increased our full year expectations to reflect sustained growth in the Canadian pet industry. Looking forward, our channel checks suggest surrender rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Indications point to the continued easing of the exceptional pace of industry growth seen during the pandemic towards its historical growth rates in the mid-single-digit range, driven by the underlying structural trends of humanization, and premium quality ingredients. As always, we plan to capture this growth as well as earn share when opportunities arise. One such opportunity for market share growth is the proactive actions we are continuing to take to strengthen our inventory position in the face of global supply challenges. As we prepared for a busy back half of this year, we accelerated purchases of our imported merchandise by a few months to ensure our stores are fully stocked ahead of the holidays. This has resulted in higher inventory on our books earlier in the season, much of which is already pre-ordered by our franchisees. We are very excited about our seasonal offering this year, which will showcase a larger array of a branded product compared to prior years as across categories such as apparel, bedding, toys and treats. We continue to expect inflationary pressures in product cost, freight and fuel to persist through the balance of the year. We monitor our customer demand closely and have not yet seen any material shifts in behavior, which speaks to the resilience of the pet category and our skew towards staples oriented food and other routine purchases. However, should we start to see shifts, we are well positioned given our broad proprietary brand portfolio priced at a discount to National [indiscernible] our valuable loyalty programs and our ability to target specific offers to our more than 2 million active loyalty customers. And finally, enhancing our operating margins over the long term. We continue to make strategic investments in human capital and supply chain designed to scale the business and drive future growth and operating margin expansion starting in 2023. We proactively increased wage scales across our organization in Q4 last year, which has resulted in a notable reduction in turnover during the first half of this year.
With regards to our supply chain, we have locked in incremental capacity to support our strong volumes ahead of the opening of a larger GTA facility in mid-2023. And last month, we welcomed Nico Weidel as our new Chief Supply Chain Officer. Nico brings with him more than 16 years of international end-to-end supply chain, industrial engineering and digital transformation experience. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Supply Chain and Logistics at Hudson's Bay. Before handing it over to Jim, I wanted to highlight an important milestone we will hit this month in our recently acquired Chico stores. As we speak, we are fulfilling our first orders of our proprietary brands to the Chico system ahead of our planned September 1st launch. Quebec customers can expectedly over 200 proprietary brand SKUs primarily consisting of Performatrin Ultra and Fresh 4 Life lineups, showing up in stores between now and the holidays. Together with our Chico franchisees, we are very excited to officially introduce our brands to Quebec. As I conclude my remarks, I want to again thank all our people from our franchise owners, ACEs, supply chain, and corporate teams for their dedication as we deliver on our mission to be Canada's preferred pet retailers. I would like to make a special call out to our marketing team, which recently received their first retail marketing award from the Retail Council of Canada for our incredibly successful "Love Lives Here" campaign. As we were up against a highly competitive field of seasoned retailers, I think this speaks volumes to how far we have grown as an organization, while leveraging innovative techniques to strengthen the bond between Pet Valu and devoted pet lovers across Canada. And with that, I will pass it over to you, Jim.
Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. I will start by reviewing our second quarter financial performance, followed by an update to our full year outlook. As a reminder, financial performance in Q2 includes a full quarter impact from the acquisition of Chico, which was completed in Q1. As a result, Chico impacts year-over-year growth rates across many metrics, except for same-store sales growth, which excludes the impact of Chico. Once again, we are incredibly pleased with our quarterly performance, with top line continuing to track ahead of expectations. Q2 system-wide sales increased 35% to $330 million. Excluding Chico, system-wide sales grew 24%, driven predominantly by strong same-store sales growth of 21%. Same-store transactions grew 19% and the average spend per transaction grew 1.5%. Recall that similar to Q1 in the second quarter of last year, our Ontario stores were restricted to curbside shopping for 10 weeks of the quarter, which constrained sales performance last year. On a 2-year stack basis, same-store sales were up 50%. We opened 13 new stores in the quarter, ending the quarter with 717 locations, 68% of which are franchised. Turning to our company performance; second quarter revenue was $228 million, an increase of 25%. Excluding Chico, revenue growth was in line with system-wide sales growth. Gross profit increased 27% to $85 million. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin rate was 37.5% versus 36.9% last year, an increase of 60 basis points. This increase was driven by leverage resulting from strong revenue growth and the impact of Chico. These factors were partially offset by increased franchisee demand for products, resulting in higher wholesale shipments compared to Q2 last year when Ontario stores were restricted to curbside shopping and increased franchise penetration. In addition, product margins were slightly lower than last year as we did not pass along all vendor price increases and incremental freight costs during the quarter. Selling, general, and administrative expenses in the second quarter were $46 million, up 13%. Excluding the IT transformation costs, share-based compensation and other non-operating items, our SG&A expenses were approximately $43 million, an increase of 27%, primarily driven by the investments in the headcount to support long-term growth as well as public company costs and higher software fees. Adjusted EBITDA increased 23% to $52 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 22.9%, which was ahead of our expectations. Our new public company costs and investments in SG&A, I just mentioned caused a modest 30 basis point decline. Net interest expense in Q1 was $5 million, down significantly versus the prior year, but represents an expected increase from the Q1 trend due to rising interest rates through the second quarter. We continue to expect our interest expense decline modestly through the back half of this year as we recognize higher rates. Net income was $25 million, down from $44 million in the same period last year largely attributable to a sizable FX gain last year, resulting from the repayment of our 2016 term loan and settlement of FX contracts. Excluding the items not indicative of our underlying performance, adjusted net income was $28 million, up from $9 million last year. Adjusted net income per share was $0.39, up from $0.12 last year. Now turning to the balance sheet; we remain in a strong liquidity position, ending the quarter with almost $40 million cash on hand plus access to our full $130 million revolver, which remained undrawn throughout the quarter. Total debt, net of deferred financing costs, ended the quarter at $342 million. Taking into account leases, our leverage ratio declined to just below 2x. Our inventory at the end of the quarter was $117 million, up 35% from a year ago.
The ending inventory levels were impacted by the timing of imported goods purchased a few months earlier than last year, inventory load ahead of the proprietary brand rollout at Chico, which is happening now and heightened product cost inflation. We are very comfortable with the quantity and quality of our inventory levels heading into the back half, with much of it preordered by our franchisees, given the demand expected during the holiday season. Free cash flow in the second quarter increased to $20 million from $19 million last year, driven by stronger cash from operations despite an incremental $5 million in security deposits paid for our new GTA distribution center as well as higher tax installments. Now, I will provide an update to our outlook. Based on our strong financial performance in the first half of the year, we have raised our full year expectations for 2022. We now expect full year revenue between $912 million and $928 million, supported by stronger same-store sales growth of 13% to 15% and 35 to 45 new store openings. As we enter the second half of the year, we are now lapping a more normalized operating environment in the back half of 2021. As a result, and consistent with our comments in prior quarters, we continue to expect year-over-year growth rates in revenue to be lower in the second half of the year compared to the 25% growth in the first half. The relative distribution of our system-wide sales and revenue across fiscal quarters is expected to be more representative of pre-pandemic years such as 2019. We have also raised our expectations for adjusted EBITDA to between $203 million and $207 million, up from a prior range of $191 million to $198 million. This increase balances our strong performance in the first half and momentum heading into Q3 with the current macroeconomic environment. As implied by our guidance, we expect the year-over-year growth rate and adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the year to ease compared to the exceptionally high year-over-year growth rate in the first half. This is attributable to lower 2H top line growth expectations implied by our guidance as well as lower gross margins compared to the second half of 2021 as we lap favorable FX rates, particularly in the third quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance continues to factor in the annualization of public company costs, intentional investments in human capital and supply chain through full capacity and higher freight and distribution costs related to external factors. On adjusted net income per diluted share, we now expect to reach a range of $1.47 to $1.51. These factors in our higher expectations on adjusted EBITDA, together with rising interest rates and an effective tax rate between 26.5% and 27%. We expect to incur approximately $8 million in information technology transformation expenses as well as $7 million in share-based compensation, both of which are excluded from the calculation of our adjusted figures. And finally, our expectations for net capital expenditures this year remains unchanged at between $35 million and $40 million as we fund new store growth, ongoing renovations across our store fleet as well as advanced payments on equipment and initial leasehold improvements for our new distribution center in the GTA. Before moving to Q&A, I also would like to thank our franchise owners, ACEs, supply chain, and corporate teams. Our ongoing success would not be possible without the enduring commitment of our people and the expert level service they provide to help devoted pet lovers make the best choices for their pets. They are critical to our exceptional market share gains during a period where our industry has undergone its greatest rate of growth ever. With that, we would now like to open up the call to your questions. Operator?
[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Martin Landry with Stifel.
Congrats on your results. My first question, I wanted to touch on your same-store sales. Year-to-date, the growth has been driven by traffic. But for the back half of '22, you are going to lapping more normalized results. There is not going to be any store closures. So I was wondering what you expect to be the main driver of your same-store sales growth in the back half. Is it going to switch the basket size, given the inflation?
Yes. Martin, it is Jim. I will take that. So as you mentioned, we are really pleased with the Q2 trends. In the first half, the Q2 trends we experienced and overall we experienced in the first half. But what we are starting to see and what we expect is a trend to old shopping habits, pre-pandemic shopping habits. We are starting to see a return of the casual visit, bringing the dog in for wash and just in general, socializing the pet. So we think that is going to result in more trips, but lower units per basket. So we have been talking about this expectation for some time, and we are starting to see evidence of it when we are in the stores, seeing that socialization. And then, like I said, we think that will result in a higher transactions and a return to pre-pandemic units in the basket.
Martin, this is Richard. And just to reiterate, the baseline, again, for pre-pandemic norm was for the 5 years leading up to the pandemic. About 60% of our same-store sales growth was driven by transactions and about 40% driven by ticket.
Okay. That is helpful. And Richard, in the past, you have mentioned that promotional activity was very low compared to pre-pandemic levels. And I was wondering, do you expect promotional activity to pick up again? And if so, when do you expect that to pick up? And then how much does promotional activity represent as a percentage of sales, normally?
So Martin, really, we have continued to see a noticeable takedown in promotional activity with Q2 now being yet a new record for the lowest level of promotional activity that we have experienced in the industry. Really probably largely tied to the supplying chain constraints, product availability, and inflation; so, we are really continue to be focused on providing value to our customers in other ways through our frequent buyer loyalty program through the expansion of our proprietary brands and have found that to be very successful and we have not had to tap into promotions in order to continue to drive that. We certainly believe there will be a day where discounts and promotional intensity begin to tick back up or ready to respond should that occur. We are just not seeing that as we sit here today.
Okay. And normally, how much would that represent as a percentage of sales?
We have not shared that, Martin.
The next question is from Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets.
Just following up on that last question. Generally speaking, because it does not sound like these are the ones that are going to be initiating the promotional activity, who is generally the most disruptive in the market in that sense.
Irene, I don't really want to talk to any particular activity of one of our competitors. So we do not generally lead with promotions. We are less promotionally intense operator given our premium positioning and especially given the strength of our loyalty system, which, as we quoted on the call, now represents more than 70% of our sales.
Fair enough. I think you or Jim mentioned in your commentary that I guess it was in the unit cost margins are down a little bit. Because of cost inflation, can you talk about the magnitude of what you are seeing in different categories and whether you do have more prices planned in the back half of the year?
Yes. Irene, it is Jim. So I guess the way I would say that is we are really seeing it across the board, the inflation across all categories. And as we talked about, when we pass it along, timing influences, where, what and how much and when we pass it along. Overall, we think and we see the industry being very rational as it has been in the past. But we are taking a position that I described in the last couple of calls, where we are very selective on what we pass along, how it is positioned on the shelf when we pass it along and really keeping a close eye on competition and customer behavior and the reaction to those price increases. From a magnitude size, it was a smaller influence on overall gross profit, as we talked about, as we led with. We saw great leverage in the quarter. So that gave us the ability to describe be very selective on what we passed along. On the future, we will just continue doing the same thing. We have a great track record of being able to pass it along. We do not see anything changing in the near term, but we are going to remain competitive and make sure we continue to offer the value to our customers.
That is great. And just to sort of take the final box. It sounds from your commentary as though at this point in time, you are not seeing any changes in consumer behavior in response to, I guess, sort of high inflation across categories like food and gas.
This is Richard. Consistent with prior quarters, we have actually seen robust performance across all categories, consumables, hard lines, or specialty categories. And the same story is even true when you cut it across our good, better, and best. And if anything, we are continuing to see a slight skew to the stronger growth in our more premium food tiers like culinary, natural enhanced, and scientific because again, as we noted on the call, those are the ones most clearly tied still to the long-term humanization and premium quality ingredient trends that were resident long before the pandemic.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Mark Petrie with CIBC.
I just wanted to ask about gross margin and just clarify that the main driver in terms of the expectation of increasing pressure versus what you have seen in the first half of the year is FX. Is that right?
Martin, it's Jim. So we are lapping the second half of last year where our gross profit was very favorably influenced by FX movement. So yes, that is a significant impact when comparing year-on-year.
Just as Jim said on the previous response, Mark. Just to clarify, right, too, that we are continuing to see inflationary pressures across freight, fuel, product costs, etcetera. But with the strong performance that we have had, we have been able to leverage our fixed cost to be able to offset that.
Yes, understood. I wanted to ask just a little bit about the new stores that you have been opening over the last couple of years. How is the 2021 or 2020 cohort performing? And I think you have been pushing into some smaller markets, and that is relatively important part of the future plan. So just wondering how that strategy has or that tactic has played out.
So Mark, we could not be more pleased. Strong performance, our algorithms are really doing a great job were helping us to hone in. We have actually further improved those algorithms, another step in the first half of this year, having taken the deeper penetration we now have in loyalty, again, representing more than 70% of our sales and more than 2 million active customers and leveraging that household level data to even further optimize exactly how closely and exactly how far our customers are traveling, but across all market types, rural, urban and suburban. Very pleased with the new stores we have opened in the '19, '20 and '21 classes and really excited about the ones we have already opened year-to-date.
Okay. And then just last one. I wanted to ask about the trends in e-commerce on your website. Obviously, it has been an area of investment, but also still pretty small. You called out penetration rates continuing to rise, but hoping you can just talk more broadly about the performance of the site. Trends that you are seeing in conversion rates or any other metrics that you are willing to talk about? And then how profitability of that channel has evolved?
Let me talk a little bit about some of the metrics and movement, and then Jim can talk to the profitability. Specifically very pleased with what we are seeing. Traffic is still strongly up. The good news is, is still continuing to see roughly a 50-50 mix on orders between click-and-collect and direct-to-customer. So good strong as I noted on the call, a good strong pickup in this click and collect. Just as a reminder, right, we did not actually finish the Click and Collect rollout until the end of September of 2021. So we are still annualizing our first year of having Click and Collect in the market. Well along the path of what we expect. Again, we do not have a penetration target for e-commerce, it is primarily an opportunity to offer to our customers the convenience of when, where, and how they choose to shop. And so we do not have any specific target, Mark, for how we are trying to move channels or not. We are definitely channel agnostic on all promotions and all approaches to allow the customer to engage as they choose. With that, I will turn it to Jim for profitability.
Yes. So profitability, it is really going to be a continuation of what we have talked about in prior calls. Last year, the mix of the business on e-commerce was driven by the lockdowns in Ontario. So we did not want to take too many insights in from that because we thought it was going to shift to our original expectations. And in fact, it has. It is still early days, but what I would say is the heightened profitability that we saw in the pandemic, it is coming down closer to our expectations, but having gone below that. And similarly, we are making good progress in driving cost efficiencies on the distribution side and expect more. So we are not going to share specific metrics at this time, given the small size of it. But I would say it continues to perform better than we expected the profitability, and we still see opportunity to refine the cost base and then, of course, get leverage as that business grows.
The next question is from Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank.
I just wanted to get a sense on forecasting and these unusual times that we are all in. Management seems to be up bidding guidance on a regular basis, and I understand the backdrop is volatile. But wondering if you are looking at your forecasting tools and if you are more conservative outlook have caused maybe some of your stores to be under-stocked and not ready for the demand to the extent that they could have been had you had a more forecast more in line with what was happening in the market.
Vishal, it's Jim. The short answer is no. As with lot of organizations, we have multiple forecasts used for multiple purposes. So the forecast that we provide to you guys is not the same forecast that we are purchasing inventory on. And you will see that with the increased inventory that we talked about during our prepared remarks. But, our merchandising team has what I would call a bit more optimistic outlook on it that they use to purchase the products to ensure we are in stock. And then we have credited some of the market share gains based on that. We feel that we have bought ahead, bought early, and increased our safety stock levels, and that has allowed us to take some share. So no, we are in a position right now where we are buying more than kind of what I would call the official company forecast. And once again, you see that reflected in our inventory levels.
Okay. And correct me if I am wrong, but I understood one of your specialty peers in the market may have had some up management of people over the last several quarters. And wondering if you are seeing any different strategies in the market that are causing Pet Valu to adjust incrementally? Or is it business as usual?
Vishal, for the most part, we are continuing to see a rational environment with no real changes in behaviors across the industry to what we have seen throughout the pandemic period. As noted in the earlier question, we are at very low levels of promotional activity. That is probably the only significant difference I would give you to normalized behavior we saw before the pandemic.
Okay. And maybe just more of a longer-term question here. In Canada, many of the larger retailers, larger general merchandisers, larger grocery stores, they have indicated that pet is a focus for them. But it does not seem like that seems to be detracting from Pet Valu. So wondering, as you take 10 steps back and this has been a longer-term trend as well, if not accelerating recently. Just wondering, as you look at the offer, is there something that you would point to that makes this category more resilient versus these larger, better capitalized players? Is it the format side? Is it the specialty in store? It is one of the few categories that seem to defend well against these larger players?
So when I answer this question, I will just go back to the same fundamental reason why I believe we win Vishal, which is people and service. When it comes down to it, there are moments where, yes, maybe you have certain customers that are not primarily in our target set for whom it is just buying a bag of dog food when you are out doing something else. For our devoted pet levers, the level of care, the level of focus, the level of love that they put into their pet is reflected in what they expect out of their retailer. And so the engagement they have with our franchisees, with our ACEs, with the expertise, and compassion that we bring into the aisle is absolutely the point of difference that makes our customers be more loyal, come back in more often. And it also helps us on even our people side where we have lower industry turnover than the average specialty retailer, definitely lower than the average mass or grocery retailer. And so you see similar faces who know your pets who have understood the journey and the lifetime of your pets when you come in. And that to us, Vishal makes all the difference. Then on top of that, you layer in a really strong proprietary brand offering. You layer in a model that is flexible for all types, rural, urban, suburban, smaller size, slightly larger size, different types of shopping centers, and our flexibility layer with our service, layer with our product mix. It is just really positions us very well for our target customer, the devoted pet lever, which again is roughly the top 75% of the market. Much of the other 25% that is outside of our target customer is primarily in the realm of the mass and grocery buy.
Sure. And when you are gaining market share, is it possible for management to discern where the share is coming from? Obviously, the market is growing, but is it from the general merchandiser or your specialty peers.
So it is both. The share tracking that we have done over the last 3 years Vishal has shown a combination of both some share take from specialty peers as we outflank specific shopping patterns through our new openings in suburban and urban markets. But we have also seen success in taking share from mass players, most especially in the rural and small town where prior to us entering as really the only specialty pet player in the town, the only choice you had within 30 to 40 kilometers was the grocery store. And so this allows us to get in there. And then the last smallest part of this is for mom-and-pop and independent consolidation that continues to occur across the industry.
[Operator Instructions] And it appears that we have no further questions. I will turn it over to Richard for any closing remarks.
Thank you again, everyone, for the investment of your time and interest in the Pet Valu and joining us for today's call. We look forward to talking to you again at the end of our third quarter. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.