Chewy Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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March 26, 2025
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Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Chewy Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Call. My name is Emily. I'll be coordinating your call today. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask any questions, which you can do so at any time by pressing I will now hand over to our host, David Reeder, Chewy CFO to begin. Please go ahead, David.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thank you for joining us on the call today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results for fiscal year twenty twenty four. Joining me today is Chewy's CEO, Sumit Singh. Our earnings release, which was filed with the SEC earlier today, has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website. In addition to the earnings release, a presentation summarizing our results is also available on our website at investor.chewy.com. On our call today, we will be making forward looking statements, including statements concerning Chewy's financial results and performance, industry trends, strategic initiatives, share repurchase program and the environment in which we operate.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Such statements are considered forward looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other factors described in the section titled Risk Factors and our annual report on Form 10 ks for fiscal year twenty twenty four filed earlier today and in our other filings with the SEC, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by our forward looking statements. Reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. Also note that the forward looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date. We assume no obligation to update any forward looking statements except as required by law. Also during this call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Reconciliations of these non GAAP items to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided on our Investor Relations website and in our earnings release. These non GAAP measures are not intended as a substitute for GAAP results. Additionally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons discussed on today's call will be against the comparable period of fiscal year twenty twenty three. Finally, this call in its entirety is being webcast on our Investor Relations website. A replay of the audio webcast will also be available on our Investor Relations website shortly.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

And with that, I'd like to turn

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

the call over to Sumit. Thanks, Dave. And thank you all for joining us on today's call. Our fourth quarter results mark a strong conclusion to the year. Our team's execution enabled us to successfully deliver on the strategic and financial goals that we outlined at the start of this year.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Additionally, the durability and power of our highly predictable business model shined and led to another year of market share gains. We innovated at pace, made smart investment decisions and maintained operating discipline throughout the year, allowing us to deliver both results that exceeded expectations and compelling returns to our shareholders. Now let's review our Q4 and full year 2024 results. We ended the year on a high note. Top line growth exceeded the high end of our guidance ranges for both the fourth quarter and full year 2024.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Q4 net sales increased approximately 15% year over year to 3,250,000,000 resulting in full year 2024 net sales of $11,860,000,000 representing 6% year over year growth. Fourth quarter net sales performance was underpinned by strong active customer growth, a modest return to growth for our hard goods merchandise and compelling Autoship customer loyalty across consumables and health and wellness categories. Our Autoship program represented 80.6% of Q4 net sales, delivering best in class service to our customers, while also providing predictable subscription like recurring revenue streams to Chewy. Growth in Autoship customer sales meaningfully outpaced overall top line growth, increasing by 21% in the fourth quarter and nearly 11% for the full year 2024. On the topic of active customers, I am pleased to report that our active customer performance in the fourth quarter maintained the strong momentum from the previous quarter.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We ended fiscal year twenty twenty four with 20,500,000 active customers, marking our first year over year growth in eight quarters. Our efforts to expand and refresh assortment, enhance on-site and mobile app experiences and refine our marketing strategy continue to drive outperformance across all areas of the active customer equation. Looking ahead, we believe that we have reached an inflection point with respect to active customer growth and expect to deliver active customer growth in 2025. Regarding profitability, our adjusted EBITDA margin for fiscal year twenty twenty four reached 4.8, the upper end of the guidance range we set last quarter and reflecting year over year expansion of approximately 150 basis points. This margin improvement was driven by both strong gross margin and continued operating expense leverage as we scale.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We converted approximately 80% of our adjusted EBITDA in the year to free cash flow, resulting in a record $452,500,000 of free cash flow in fiscal year twenty twenty four. Our increasing profitability and compelling free cash flow generation enabled us to not only invest in our strategic growth initiatives, but also return meaningful capital to shareholders as reflected by the $943,000,000 that we deployed to shareholders in fiscal year twenty twenty four. Now, I would like to share some updates on a few priorities at Shoei. Our sponsored ads business scaled meaningfully this year, reaching approximately 1% of net sales for full year 2024 in line with our expectations and was the largest contributor to year over year gross margin improvement. As planned, we completed our 1P platform migration, which going forward will enable us to enhance the supplier experience, expand our ad portfolio including off-site and explore additional content formats such as video.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Looking ahead, we continue to believe that the upper limit of our long term entitlement for Chewy sponsored ads business is up to 3% of total enterprise net sales over time. Turning to Chewy Vet Care Clinics or CVC, we successfully opened eight CVC locations reaching the upper end of our target range for the year of four to eight openings. Our clinic network continues to exceed expectations in both utilization and overall ecosystem benefits serving as both a strong customer acquisition channel and an engagement flywheel. As a result, both new and existing customers are deepening their engagement with Chewy. In fiscal year twenty twenty five, we plan to open eight to 10 new clinics, further expanding our presence in the approximately $25,000,000,000 vet services market.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We are excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to sharing our progress. Let me wrap up my section with the following comments. We believe that 2024 was an extraordinary year for Chuy and our strong performance underscores the team's ability to successfully navigate through a period of normalization for the industry. Our entire team at Chewy including and especially our fulfillment and customer care team members worked incredibly hard and I thank them for their dedication and commitment. As we move into 2025, the momentum in the business has remained strong.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

The team remains steadfast in executing Chewy's strategic priorities and delivering yet another year of share gaining growth. Further, on the dimension of profitability, we are increasingly confident in our ability to reach our long term adjusted EBITDA margin target of 10%. Twenty twenty four marks another year of strong progress towards this long term goal. And looking ahead, we expect to expand adjusted EBITDA margin once again in 2025. Overall, we remain optimistic about the opportunity ahead for Chuy and look forward to a productive year ahead.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

With that, I will turn the call over to Dave.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thank you, Sumit. And thank you all for joining us today. Our strong year end results showcase the power of Chuy's business model and our ability to deliver increasing levels of profitability and free cash flow, while simultaneously investing in the business to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders. Fourth quarter net sales grew 14.9 year over year to $3,250,000,000 bringing our full year 2024 net sales to $11,860,000,000 representing 6.4% growth year over year and exceeding the high end of the fiscal year guidance ranges we provided last quarter. Fiscal year twenty twenty four included a fifty third week, which added approximately $227,000,000 of net sales to the fourth quarter and the full year.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Excluding the impact of the fifty third week, fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four net sales grew approximately 6.94.4%, respectively. We returned to year over year active customer growth and fiscal year twenty twenty four with 20,500,000 active customers, reflecting a year over year increase of approximately 2.1%. We believe we have reached an inflection point in this area and once again outperformed across all elements of the active customer equation. New customers and reactivations grew year over year while gross churn improved over the same period. Auto ship customer sales increased by 21.2% to 2,620,000,000 in Q4 and 10.6% to $9,390,000,000 for the year.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Growth in auto ship customer sales outpaced overall top line growth by approximately six thirty basis points in Q4 and by four twenty basis points in full year 2024. Auto ship customer sales as a percentage of total net sales represented 80.679.2% of our total net sales in Q4 and full year 2024, respectively. Nestpac reached $578 as of Q4 twenty twenty four, representing an increase of 4.1% year over year. Q4 twenty twenty four included an extra week of operations, which added approximately $11 of benefit to NESPAK in the quarter. As a reminder, net sales per active customer equals the aggregate net sales for the preceding four fiscal quarters divided by the total number of active customers at the end of that period.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

As such, you can expect our reported NASDAQ for the first three quarters of fiscal twenty twenty five to include the benefit of the extra week in Q4 twenty twenty four. Moving to profitability, we reported fourth quarter gross margin of 28.5% and full year 2024 gross margin of 29.2%, representing 80 basis points of margin expansion for the year, which is double the amount of gross margin expansion we delivered in 2023. Sponsored ads was the largest driver of gross margin improvement in the year, followed by product mix shift into premium categories, including consumables and health and wellness. Shifting to operating expenses, please note that my discussion of SG and A excludes share based compensation expense and related taxes. We continued to demonstrate operating expense leverage in the fourth quarter with SG and A of $6.00 $1,000,000 or 18.5% of net sales, representing 150 basis points of improvement on a year over year basis.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

For the full year 2024, SG and A represented 18.7% of net sales, reflecting 100 basis points of improvements year. We continue to deliver SG and A leverage, driven by at scale fixed cost infrastructure and ongoing discipline and efficiency with respect to corporate payroll. Fourth quarter advertising and marketing expense was two thirty five million dollars bringing full year 2024 A and M expense to $804,100,000 or 6.8% of 2024 net sales, consistent with our previously stated expectation of coming in at the high end of our six percent to 7% of net sales target range. Fourth quarter adjusted net income was $120,000,000 and full year 2024 adjusted net income came in at $446,800,000 which translated into $0.28 and $1.04 adjusted diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter and full year 2024, respectively. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA came in at $124,500,000 bringing full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA to $570,500,000 representing a 4.8% adjusted EBITDA margin for the year, reflecting 150 basis points of year over year margin expansion.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

We are proud of the meaningful margin expansion we delivered this year, driven by the improvements in gross margin and SG and A leverage described earlier. In the fourth quarter, we reported free cash flow of $156,600,000 And in fiscal year twenty twenty four, we generated a record high $452,500,000 of free cash flow. Our full year 2024 free cash flow reflects $596,300,000 of net cash provided by operating activities and $143,800,000 of capital expenditures. In 2025, we continue to expect approximately 80% of adjusted EBITDA to convert into free cash flow and that CapEx will be between 1.52% of net sales. Our ability to generate increasing levels of free cash flow and our disciplined approach to capital spending have allowed us to not only reinvest back into the business, but also return meaningful capital to shareholders this year.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Recall, in Q1 twenty twenty four, we announced the authorization of Chewy's first ever share repurchase program of up to $500,000,000 Over the course of the year, we executed a number of share repurchase transactions, including open market repurchases made under this program as well as repurchasing additional shares directly from BC Partners, our largest shareholder. In 2024, we repurchased approximately 29,400,000.0 shares directly from BC Partners, reducing their overall ownership position in Chewy by approximately 16%. We also repurchased approximately 3,400,000.0 shares of Class A common stock, spending approximately $93,300,000 under our $500,000,000 share repurchase program. At the end of the fourth quarter, we had approximately $406,700,000 of remaining capacity under our existing share repurchase program for future repurchases. Collectively, the company repurchased and retired a total of 32,800,000.0 shares in 2024.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

We ended the year with approximately $597,000,000 in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and we remain debt free with an overall liquidity position of approximately $1,400,000,000 Now, I'd like to discuss our first quarter and full year 2025 outlook. We have an increasingly high degree of confidence in our ability to deliver on our strategic roadmap and the long term financial model the team outlined at Chewy's Capital Markets Day in December 2023. We made tremendous progress in 2024 towards those strategic and financial goals and believe against the backdrop of a normalizing pet industry, we are poised to continue to deliver share gain and growth and margin expansion in the coming year. Before we dive into our guidance details, I would also like to acknowledge that the company's increasing profitability profile has resulted in growing interest from the investment community regarding earnings per share metrics for Chewy. As such, we will be providing some supplemental information regarding adjusted diluted earnings per share expectations.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

With that, let's discuss the specifics of our 2025 guidance. We anticipate first quarter twenty twenty five net sales of between $3,060,000,000 and $3,090,000,000 or approximately 6% to seven percent year over year growth and full year 2025 net sales of between $12,300,000,000 and $12,450,000,000 or approximately 6% to 7% year over year growth when adjusted to exclude the impact of the fifty third week in fiscal year twenty twenty four. We expect our net sales growth to be driven by a combination of active customer growth, net SPAC growth and minimal price inflation. Based on the current environment we see today, we remain confident in our ability to deliver year over year active customer growth in the low single digit range with the level of net additions broadly consistent throughout the course of the year. Moving to profitability guidance.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

We anticipate full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin in the range of 5.4% to 5.7%. Furthermore, we expect twenty twenty five's quarterly profile of adjusted EBITDA margin to broadly follow the same trend observed in 2024 with modest sequential declines throughout the year due to typical seasonality and the timing of investments. Additionally, we expect first quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.3 to $0.35 For the full year 2025, we also anticipate share based compensation expense, including related taxes, to be approximately $315,000,000 and weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately $430,000,000 We expect twenty twenty five net interest income of approximately $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 and our effective tax rate to be in the range of 20% to 22%. And finally, embedded in our guidance is minimal expected impact from tariffs. In closing, I'd like to thank all of our Chewy team members for their disciplined and record setting execution in 2024.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

I believe Chewy is better equipped than ever to execute against our strategic roadmap, delivering compelling financial results and increasing shareholder value. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question today comes from David Bellinger with Mizuho. Please go ahead, David.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Excellent results here. Two questions from us. I want to start on the net actives.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

A big sequential jump Q3 to Q4. Can you unpack what's driving that change in a little more detail? How much is a function of a better pet spending environment? And how much is Chewy specific in share gaming with all the initiatives in place like the app adjustments and vet care? And have we got a follow-up as well?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thanks. Sure. Hey, David, this is Amit. Good morning. I'll start with that one.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So the short version is that the momentum that we talked about from last quarter continued into Q4, resulting in our return to year over year active customer growth for the first time in eight quarters. As we spoke about on the call, the increases that we saw happened across the board for the customer equation. New customers were up, reactivations were up and churn was better from a year over year point of view. And then finally, let me just reiterate that these results in our the purview that we're looking through and in our belief system, these are predominantly driven by execution and strength in the model relative versus the market meaningfully changing in any particular direction. Let me elaborate about some specifics that kind of talk to the evolution of marketing strategy and some of the tactics that we've put in place that drove the results.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So as I mentioned, last quarter in Q3, I talked about our focus on connecting the marketing funnel to give us an expanded reach. So we continued that effort through Q4 and are now optimized and ready going into 2025. Last quarter, I also talked about the ability to having a sharper ability to identify and target customers when on our platform to drive higher conversion, right? In addition to that, as we paid through Q4, right, we had a chance to put what I would call a completely rebuilt internal bidding model into perspective. And so, you know, what that so this these internal bidding models that we've built, right, are further driving a higher lift on campaigns while also optimizing for cumulative contribution profit or CCP, which is the guardrail of the ROI that we kind of put in place to make sure that our campaigns are running optimally and the ROI is nice.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So all of this allowed us to lean into the stronger demand signals that we were picking in coming into Q3 coming into and out of Q3 that we talked about in the previous earnings call and invest heavier in Q4, while simultaneously driving efficiencies across our investments and driving higher net adds as a result of that. So if you infer from the numbers specifically, we invested approximately 15% higher in Q4 marketing spend and yet our cost per gross adds increased less than 2%. And we added, right, as we clicked, over 400,000 customers in Q4. So we're pretty pleased with the way the marketing engine is humming. Now I should also add to the fact that Q4 is generally a quarter where there is incremental interest and the customer has a shopping intent.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So, you know, while we expect the momentum to absolutely continue and these changes that we've put in place, I haven't talked about the app and the improvement in experiences, so we can talk about that separately. But these improvements are durable, yet they're subject to normal seasonality and, you know, that occurs in the marketplace. So from that point of view, we might have gotten the benefit of we leaned in and took benefit of Q4 seasonality, but we expect the returns to be durable and continue through 2025, which is why we said we expect active customer growth in 2025.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

Hey, Kyle, that's very helpful. Yes, I just want to ask about gross margins in Q4. So up about 30 basis points year on year, but a little light versus expectations and a sort of a slowdown versus the past several quarters. Can you help us understand the momentum on the gross margin side? Anything specific to call out for Q4 that held margins back in some way?

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

Just how do we think about the expansion opportunity in 2025?

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thanks for the question. Let me maybe broaden it out a bit and then specifically get to your question. We expanded EBITDA margin 150 bps on a year over year basis, '24 versus '23. Of that 150 bps, about 60% of that was driven by improvements in gross margin underpinned by the growth in sponsored ads, product mix accretion as well as the normal efficiencies that you expect through the gross margin line freight and packaging, etcetera. So when you look at 2025 and in the context of fourth quarter, I would say fourth quarter was very much what we expected it to be.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Not a lot of surprises for us with respect to either gross margin or EBITDA margin for fourth quarter. So from that perspective, it played out pretty much almost exactly as we expected it to. For 2025, as you kind of project that into the future, we expect again the EBITDA margin growth in 'twenty five versus 'twenty four, kind of 75 bps at midpoint. And we expect a similar growth profile in terms of contribution from gross margin as well as

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

the other lines of

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

OpEx. So fourth quarter as expected and we expect the trends that we saw in 2024 to extend into 2025.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

Got it. Thank you very much.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thanks, David.

Operator

Our next question comes from Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Thanks for taking my questions. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about automation. Just I think you're around 50% of volume currently. Can you just update us there and then perhaps talk about kind of the bridge to the 70% to 80% that's expected over time? And then also just on gross margins, the sponsored ads being the largest contributor to improvement.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

With the OneTEAM platform migration complete, can you just help us understand some of the opportunities that, that opens up for you and the path to 3% over time?

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Yes. So with respect to automation, I think what, if you were to kind of go back through time, you've seen us increase the amount of volume that has flowed through the automated facilities or the more automated facilities from kind of 30 to approaching 40%. And as we sit today, we're north of 40%, not yet quite at the number that, that you've referenced, but north of 40%. You didn't ask a question about utilization, but the utilization of the network does remain very similar to what we quoted in Q3, which is around that 70%, seventy five % utilization range. And with respect to the bridge to the future for ramping more volume through the automated facilities, We have started to ramp more volume, for example, through our Houston facility.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

The Dallas facility still remains very important to us, particularly from a fulfillment perspective on the pharmacy side. But you have seen us start to ramp that Houston facility in a more meaningful way in the fourth quarter and then throughout 2025. From a gross margin perspective, the second part of your question, one second, sorry. Nick, you want to

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

On the automation, so the numbers that Dave was mentioning are all purely two gs numbers. If we consider overall automation that we've put in since the time we've met, that volume is over 50% of the volume, so your recall is correct there. And we continue to make improvements, as you can see, reflected in the overall OpEx scaling that we're bringing forward. So that plus the Houston enablement should actually continue to make this stronger as we move forward and bridge closer to the 70% to 80%. So we're not talking years out, but we are talking over the near to medium term out.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Back to Dave on sponsored ads.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thank you for that, Smedes. From a gross margin perspective, sponsored ads was the largest contributor to gross margin in 2024, as you referenced. We did talk about throughout 2024 how we were on a third party software platform. That didn't really give us all of the capabilities that we would like to bring to our offering on sponsored ads. We did rebuild or we did our first kind of custom build of our first party software through 2024.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

We did not launch it in 2024, but it has subsequently been launched now. So we are on first party software today. That first party software allows us to provide new media content. So we're able to provide video in a more meaningful way today. We're also able, or our vendors are able to onboard their content in much more self-service fashion as well as utilize other content that they develop for other channels and be able to onboard that in a pretty seamless way to our platform now.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

And then as well as the helping both ease of use as well as providing new media content, we're also able, to to take advantage of off-site ads, in addition to our historical on-site ads that we offered in '24. So very excited about the first party software stack. It has been launched. It is operating largely as we expected it to. And so full speed ahead on first party software sponsored ads.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Doug, it opens up the funnel up top. So long term entitlement, we would expect online to offline mix or on-site to off-site ads mix as standard in the industry somewhere in the tune of seventythirty, 60 fivethirty 5 range. And the margin profile will be appropriately adjusted. Obviously, on-site is much higher flow through. Off-site is slightly more diluted.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yes, so it but it opens up the TAM upfront to be able to achieve up to the 3%. And underneath of that, the capabilities that Dave is mentioning around video and branded campaigns and higher and more precise measurement plus not paying kind of the commission that used to go through to the third party. So there's multiple benefits of owning this ecosystem for us.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Got it. Thank you both.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Appreciate it.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thank you, Doug.

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, Eric.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Thank you so much. Maybe two if I can. First, in terms of thinking through the growth investments as a stimulant for 2025, could you delineate between what you see as the landscape for net new customer growth as opposed to potentially stimulating more levels of reactivations across the base as potential the driver of growth? And then in terms of the broader consumer landscape, you're looking across either the ages of your cohorts or the income level of your cohorts. Are you seeing any differences in behavior either in the forms of strengths or weaknesses versus expectations maybe you had ninety days ago?

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Thanks so much.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Sure. I can start. Dave can jump in. So in terms of if you think about net new investments, CBC is a net new investment that is a completely new channel that's bringing a much higher proportion of new customers than we forecasted. So we're very pleased with that.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Obviously, CVC is at a smaller scale, and so that will take its time to ramp up. When you look at existing strengths, but our focus improving in certain areas, So the specialty category is one where we're continuing to attract more and more customers. The mix is higher relative to where it was a year ago, and we feel we have headroom to continue to double down and grow this particular space. It's a highly attractive space that cuts across equine and pharm and so forth and so on. Then you've got to consider programs like App and Chewy plus which are on-site products, but they cut across demographics and they cut across they reach customers in a wider manner and they allow for conversion at all sorts of income levels.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So Chewy plus for example, the value that we're passing on through the Chewy plus program and the convenience that customers are associating themselves attaching themselves with is allowing for a very high conversion of free. Remember, the Chewy Plus program starts at a thirty day free trial period and then goes to a paid membership of $49 a year, which is an introductory fee that we've introduced now, right? So the conversion from free trial to paid is very high, higher than the expectations that we've modeled in while keeping our overall kind of costs in line. But it's driving a really healthy funnel of new customers that we perhaps wouldn't have, you know, attracted at first who perhaps would have thought that, hey, an ecom platform must provide sort of free shipping in their value prop. Well, with Chewy plus now you do get free ship.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

You know, the final one I would say is the app, right? So when you look at the app, our app performance continues to strengthen. Let me just kind of quote you a few numbers. So app installs in Q4 grew 20% year over year and the number of customers making their first app purchase grew by 34%. And these are customers that we weren't essentially seeing.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So these are customers that are not the typical leanedinecom customer, right, but it's gravitating towards us due to the fact that we're kind of the brand is expanding in multiple options, Chewy Plus is expanding, Autoship provides the value that they're looking for. Oh, by the way, Chewy Plus and Autoship are acting as flywheels into each other. So both are supporting each other's sort of growth, which is obviously a very healthy metric that we wanted to test out and we're essentially starting to see that come through. So I would say there's a lot of innovation internally that is customer facing, including some of the other ideas that are in the oven that we want to come out and talk about here as we move through 2025, because we're always looking for new and incremental ideas to offer to our customers. So I would say that is probably a good perspective on innovation that's happening inside the company.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

And to build on that and for the avoidance of doubt, other than perhaps a little bit of the mobile app and what Sumit mentioned with respect to CVC and Chewy plus were not any meaningful contributors to the performance in 2024. They're on a little bit longer timeline arc than perhaps even '25, but very encouraged by the results that we're seeing there. And then with respect to you asked the question about, some of the cohorts, the users in those cohorts. When we look at the cohort trends and profiles, they're quite strong. In fact, they look very similar to the cohort trends that we've seen since, really the advent of Chuy.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

So we're quite pleased with how cohorts are aging as they're aging. They're consolidating share of wallet with Chewy. In fact, if you look at some of the newer cohorts that, that we are capturing, they're performing, at or above even pre COVID levels. So, cohort trends remain strong, quite pleased with those trends. And we're optimistic about these new growth initiatives and how they contribute in the latter half of 'twenty five, 'twenty six and beyond.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Saccone with Citigroup. Stephen, please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Steven Zaccone
Steven Zaccone
Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail at Citi

Great. Good morning. Thanks very much for taking my question. Congrats on the strong results. Amit, I was curious for your assessment of pet industry landscape.

Steven Zaccone
Steven Zaccone
Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail at Citi

I cut off two in one. How are you thinking about pet adoption trends relative to the guidance you've provided? And then on the comment about guidance for the year, I think you mentioned minimal impact from pricing. So I was just kind of curious, what are you seeing from a promotional perspective out there in the pet landscape?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Sure. So, let's start by just recalling. So we believe we grew share, right, at a premium to the overall pet industry in 2024. This is supported by kind of the growth rates that Nielsen is reporting and other reporting sites are sharing. But the most indicative to us is Chuy's overall search performance was stronger than the market trend.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So e commerce grew relative to retail and then within e commerce Chewy grew at a premium rate. So we were happy about how Q4 performed. As we've gotten into Q1, right now we're not seeing much different. In terms of the pet adoption space, it's a nuanced it's a bit of a nuanced answer. We haven't seen much change there.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Net adoptions are still up relative out of the shelters and rescue community. Dog seems to be more flat, and cat seems to be up, which is sort of what's driving slight premium, but overall netted options are still up. So we'll see how these trends evolve. As of right now, I think it's a bit of a wait and watch approach. But regardless of how the market performs, we expect to continue to take share in 'twenty five.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

I think you had one more question.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Yes. The second question was really with respect to pricing inflation. I would say the promotional environment for fourth quarter was, again, very much as we expected. The team continues to do a really good job, to manage the promotional environment. As you know, a large portion of our portfolio is map protected or price protected.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

So that does provide some benefit to us as as we kind of look at where pricing is and where pricing's going. We do have a large portion of the portfolio that is, that is map protected. Specifically to kind of just inflationary trends in Pet, as we went through 2024, we had kind of mid single digit inflation in the first quarter. It moderated some more in the second quarter. It was essentially zero in the third quarter and it was very low single digits in the fourth quarter.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

And so as we look out into 2025, and included in our forecast as noted, we're not seeing a lot of inflationary pressure at this point in time across pet into 2025.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And on the flip side, the conversations that we've had with our strategic partners and suppliers, right, we're not also expecting at this particular time a broad deflationary pressure. We might expect private branded portfolios to start gaining some momentum if the environment kind of remains a little bit emotion led per se. But underneath of it, the strong map protection across the segment or the demographics is pretty much holding, and we haven't seen any elevation on any abuse so far either in incremental promos or in terms of pricing deflation. So far, so good. And by the way, our the ranges that

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

we

Steven Zaccone
Steven Zaccone
Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail at Citi

provided, the low end of our range incorporates these kind of wide scenarios that we're talking about. Okay. Thanks for all that detail. Best of luck this year.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thanks, Steve.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Sure.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

The next question comes from Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Curtis, please go ahead.

Curtis Nagle
Curtis Nagle
Director - Senior US SMID Cap Internet Analyst at Bank of America

Great. Thanks for taking the question. One, just in terms of for 2025 expectations for marketing as a percentage of revenue for the year, assuming that will still be 6% to 7%. And should we expect any quarters through the year to be above 7%? And then I'll have a quick follow-up.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Sure. Let me address that one and Sumit, if you have any comments, feel free to build on it. So for 2025, we're we're viewing advertising and marketing, very much within the range of 6% to 7%. If you were to look back at the last couple of years, twenty twenty three was 6.7% of net sales for the year. 2024, as noted, was 6.8%, advertising and marketing.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Even if memory recalls, I think 2022 was very much at those similar levels, kind of the 6.7% level. So as we roll into 2025, you know, we're we're very much viewing it as kind of the 6% to 7% in total and I would say very much in line with the trends that we saw in both 'twenty two, 'twenty three, and 'twenty four. With respect to any specific quarter, could we have a specific quarter above 7%? We really look at our advertising and marketing spend from a return perspective. And so while we don't have any specific target for a quarter, we do feel like for the year, we will be in line with where we have historically been.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

And then obviously, just based on the timing of certain campaigns, you may get a quarter that's slightly more or less than others.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Did you have a follow-up?

Curtis Nagle
Curtis Nagle
Director - Senior US SMID Cap Internet Analyst at Bank of America

Yes. A quick one. Just looks like hard goods outperformed consumables in 4Q. I think you called that out. I guess what's that relating to is anything in terms of people buying new crates or beds or stuff like that for new pets?

Curtis Nagle
Curtis Nagle
Director - Senior US SMID Cap Internet Analyst at Bank of America

Or yes, just what drove the outperformance for hard goods?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yes. It's a general combination of factors. We've talked about investing in improving site experiences on the site. So as you're moving through the funnel, our ability to convert has been a focus and hard goods, of course, is not exempt from that. B, the rise of App generally helps with attach driven categories like hard goods.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

It's easier to attach. You know, our recommendations are tight and precise when you're in the app, etcetera. So that definitely helps. Number three, the new customer file as increasing, right, also has a propensity to attach towards hard goods. So we benefited from the Q4 quarter and the really strong active customer files, some portion of that came in to buy gifts and hard goods.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Overall, we're seeing trends not the trends are still relatively similar to how we were perceiving to it and not major surprises. Although, we're happy with the traffic that we're driving to the site because we know that traffic in the retail channels, including search intent, has remained down. So from that point of view, we're happy to take the traffic and convert them when they're on the platform.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

And in terms of was there any specific category that outperformed or underperformed versus others? It was pretty broad based in the fourth quarter in terms of year over year improvement. I mean, leashes, collars, tech, beds, toys, I mean, we had categories kind of across the board that were all up on a year over year basis. And so, that speaks to a lot of the hard work that the teams have been doing to to increase, selection, assortment, search. And so quite pleased with the performance and very broad based.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Trevor Young with Barclays. Please go ahead, Trevor.

Trevor Young
Trevor Young
Analyst at Barclays Capital

Great. Thank you for the questions. First one, Dave, just to your comments on net adds of low single digit growth in 2025, that implies maybe around 600,000 adds throughout the course of the year. I also think you said fairly balanced throughout the year, so that would imply 150,000 Q on Q each quarter. Is that the right way to think about it?

Trevor Young
Trevor Young
Analyst at Barclays Capital

And then relatedly, why wouldn't it be stronger 1Q to 3Q given the key compares and then maybe a little bit softer in 4Q given the number you just put up?

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

Thanks for the question, Trevor. Without getting into a precedent, we're guiding each quarter of the year. I would characterize it, active customer growth in the low single digits, quite pleased by that. Actually, we do believe that we've inflected that we're going to have net adds in active customer growth in 2025. We do think it will be somewhat consistent in terms of absolute numbers kind of being added throughout the course of the year.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

So from that perspective, we see it as being kind of broad based and sustainable. So quite pleased by that as well. And then with respect to any quarterly guidance on active customer growth, I'm going to steer away a

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

little bit from that. Did you have a follow-up?

Trevor Young
Trevor Young
Analyst at Barclays Capital

Yes. A follow-up to the earlier questions around kind of fulfillment utilization and so forth. I think the CapEx guide, the 1.5% at the low end, that would imply CapEx growth of upwards of 30% year on year after having a flattish year this last year. Could you just help us understand what that incremental spend is going towards? And how do you feel about FC capacity overall for the next, call it, couple of years?

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

So when we think about CapEx, 1.5%, two %, we kind of guided as we got into 2024, we kind of guided that we thought we would be at the lower end of that range. We were indeed at the lower end of that range. We had CapEx of about $144,000,000 for the year. If you were to break down that CapEx, the kind of normal fulfillment center CapEx largely falls into the bucket of almost like maintenance and sustaining with some small automation projects that you would expect to refresh, automating a specific line, not a whole facility but a line. And so so the lion's share is still related to fulfillment centers.

David Reeder
David Reeder
Chief Financial Officer at Chewy

The lion's share is still related to the automation and kind of productivity gains within those fulfillment centers. But I would characterize that as very stable and pretty flat. Incremental CapEx, which we did have incremental CapEx in 2024, that's really related to both our improvements in health care, specifically related to satisfying the pharmacy demand. And then, of course, it's related to the vet clinics. And so as you think about kind of rolling that out or rolling it forward, I should say, into 2025, the low end of the range and roughly the number that you've quoted for 2025, that level of growth would primarily be associated with the growth in health care, both any incremental spend that's needed to satisfy pharmacy as well as the continued expansion of the vet clinics.

Trevor Young
Trevor Young
Analyst at Barclays Capital

Very helpful. Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thanks, Chip.

Operator

Thank you. We have time for one more question. And so our final question comes from Dylan Carden with William Blair. Please go ahead, Dylan.

Dylan Carden
Research Analyst at William Blair

Hey, now. Thanks a lot. Quick one here. End of twenty twenty three, you gave a number that about a third of the industry, the pet industry was online. Do you have a sense a year and kind of where that number is?

Dylan Carden
Research Analyst at William Blair

And is it your understanding that that kind of migration at this point coming out of the pandemic has normalized? Thanks.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Hey, Dylan, yes, you're right. I think the number I quoted was 28% to 33%. And I took out buy online, pick up in store, which was a trend, that was really shaping up. So our read of the industry was somewhere in that 28% to 30% on a normalized basis was online. Pharmacy was looking at or health categories were sort of mid teens level penetrated, and then, food and supplies were sort of in that 30% to 35% penetrated to sort of make up the number that we're talking about.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So with that sort of composition breakdown, yes, the migration has fully normalized. In fact, we believe the secular trend that was moving towards e commerce, we certainly saw it pick up in Q4 and we're not forecasting. At this point, we're hoping that it continues in 2025. So as the year plays through, perhaps we can have another conversation on this topic. And then where this metric is, we believe we're still capturing roughly $0.4 to $0.5 of every dollar that is moving online, which is a metric that we kind of monitor internally which we're happy about.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Did you have a follow-up, Selman?

Dylan Carden
Research Analyst at William Blair

Thank you very much. Not particularly. I mean, I guess the expectation at this point, you know, I know there's been some chatter that people are focused on sort of adoptions and pet growth broadly, but, you know, it it does it stand in your view that as online migration normalizes that you kind of will continue to capture share beyond kind of what the general category does?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Our assumption is that, yes. If we actually if we look in 2025, right, the market's expected to grow at roughly 3.5% to 4.5%. And based on our guide of 6% to 7%, you can tell we're growing at two times what the market expectation is. So we are capturing incremental portion of share. The second thing is as 2024 has normalized in our read, not all channels, right, where consumers shop, so e comm, independent retail, so for the drug and mass, etcetera, not all channels have normalized equally, right?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

E comm has picked up a bigger share of that normalization and conversion relative to the other channels, which we believe will continue to strengthen as we move forward from here independently given the secular trend. But Shoei should benefit more given the investment, the focus and the differentiation that we bring to the platform.

Dylan Carden
Research Analyst at William Blair

Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thank you, Dylan.

Operator

Thank you. Those are all the questions we have time for today. And so this concludes our call. Thank you everyone for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.

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Key Takeaways

  • Chewy delivered Q4 net sales of $3.25 billion (up ~15% y/y) and full-year 2024 net sales of $11.86 billion (up ~6% y/y), both exceeding the high end of guidance.
  • The company ended FY24 with 20.5 million active customers—its first y/y increase in eight quarters—and expects active customer growth in the low single digits in 2025.
  • Its Autoship program now accounts for 80.6% of Q4 sales, growing 21% y/y in the quarter and providing predictable, subscription-like revenue streams.
  • Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by ~150 bps to 4.8% in FY24, with ~80% conversion to a record $452.5 million in free cash flow, fuelling $943 million of capital returns including share repurchases.
  • Sponsored ads scaled to ~1% of net sales in 2024, supported by a migration to a first-party platform (long-term target up to 3% of sales), and Chewy opened eight vet care clinics in FY24 with plans for 8–10 more in 2025.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Chewy Q4 2025
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