Kirkland's, Inc. (NASDAQ:KIRK) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call June 6, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Caitlin Churchill - Investor Relations
Amy Sullivan - Chief Executive Officer
Mike Madden - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jeremy Hamblin - Craig-Hallum Capital Group
John Lawrence - Benchmark

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Kirkland's Financial Results for the First Quarter ended May 4, 2024.

Joining us today are Kirkland's Home CEO, Amy Sullivan; EVP and CFO, Mike Madden; and the company's External Director of Investor Relations, Caitlin Churchill. Following their remarks, we'll open the call for your questions.

Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Churchill. She will read the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements.

Caitlin, please go ahead.

Caitlin Churchill

Thank you. Except for historical information discussed during this conference call, the statements made by company management are forward-looking and made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause Kirkland's actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. Those risks and uncertainties are more fully described in Kirkland's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A webcast replay of today's call will be available via the link provided in today's press release as well as on the company's website at kirklands.com.

Now, I would like to turn the call over to Kirkland's CEO, Amy Sullivan. Amy?

Amy Sullivan

Thank you, Caitlin, and good morning, everyone. As we have previously communicated, over the past year, we have been dedicated to improving our performance by returning to our value heritage and reengaging our core customer. Kirkland's has a strong history with an incredibly loyal customer, and we are well positioned in our industry with our value-oriented, differentiated, and curated product assortment to once again thrive. During this time, as we work through our repositioning that is currently underway, we are staying focused on executing our strategic initiatives, controlling the controllable, and driving improvement across all areas of the business.

Our first quarter top line results reflect a continued challenging industry environment, with total comparable sales down 3.5%. However, we continued to see early indicators that our strategic initiatives are gaining traction. Our store channel delivered a 2.8% comparable sales increase, driven by our marketing and merchandising strategies. In fact, overall units sold was almost -- was up almost 20% in Q1 compared to last year as growth in value decor offset the lower demand of higher-priced goods.