Leslie's Inc
NASDAQ:LESL
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Leslie's Inc
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Good afternoon, and welcome to the Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call for Leslie's. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today on the company's website.
I will now turn the call over to Matt Skelly, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Thank you, and good afternoon. I would like to remind everyone that comments made today may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. These statements speak as of today and will not be updated in the future if circumstances change. Please review the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's earnings press release and recent filings with the SEC.
During the call today, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's earnings press release, which was furnished to the SEC today and posted to the Investor Relations section of Leslie's website at ir.lesliespool.com. For this quarter, we have opted not to post an earnings presentation as we continue to refine our materials under our new Chief Executive Officer.
On the call today are Jason McDonell, Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Bowman, Chief Financial Officer.
With that, I will turn the call over to Jason.
Thanks, Matt, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. I'd like to take this opportunity to share how appreciative I am to serve Leslie's customers, team members and shareholders as our new CEO. I'm not only a long-time admirer of the 60-year legacy of the Leslie's brand, but I'm also a long-time customer. And I'd like to thank the Leslie's frontline team, our corporate team members and our Board of Directors for the warm welcome I've received. Also, to our shareholders, I want to make it clear that shareholder value creation is top of mind as I enter the role. I believe Leslie's has a strong set of near-term and long-term opportunities. And the team and I are very motivated to build on the legacy of Leslie's and ensure that we perform while we transform.
Understanding the needs of our customers and our employees who serve them is critically important to me, and I plan on putting the customer at the center of everything we do. Since joining the Leslie's team in September, I've had the pleasure of visiting over 40 stores, multiple distribution centers and regional commercial service centers across more than half a dozen states, including California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina. While I'm less than 80 days in my role, I've captured a lot of learnings in that short period of time.
And while spending time in the market, I've been really pleased to witness the pride and expertise with which our team members care for the customer. When I step back and put my customer hat on, one thing really resonates with me. We do a lot more than just sell pool supplies. At Leslie's, our purpose is to enable joy through customized pool care solutions. And when you're in our stores, you can see and feel the passion of our purpose with our frontline team members. They take pride in serving customers, and I've seen this exemplified with [ Clara ] in Texas, [ Don ] in Florida and [ Scott ] in Arizona.
I saw this firsthand when a customer came into our store and called our general manager by their first name. That relationship mindset, whether it's assisting a residential or as I call it, a DIY customer with our best-in-class AccuBlue water testing technology, helping our local PROs with liquid chlorine so they can get on their way or helping our retail customers with an equipment repair. Our employees' commitment to serve is unwavering. Leslie's represents an empowered team that provides trusted care for DIY and PRO customers with customized pool and spa care solutions.
I have also had the opportunity to connect with many of our vendor partners, and each conversation has deepened my appreciation for this industry. The pool industry has experienced one of the most dynamic 5-year periods in its history, which, of course, Leslie's has experienced as well. We believe our industry has been and will remain advantaged for the long term. The installed base of pools and spas at over 14 million bodies of water with a total addressable market of approximately $15 billion typically grows 1% to 2% every year. And those pools need to be maintained.
As we turn the page to the next chapter of Leslie's history, one observation has been abundantly clear, sharpen our focus on the fundamentals of retailing presents a compelling opportunity, and that's just what we plan to do. So what does that mean? It's about getting back to basics, blocking and tackling, retail 101. At Leslie's, we remain the only national large-scale omnichannel player in aftermarket pool and spa care that serves both DIY and PRO customers.
In addition, we are closest to the pools. In fact, our 1,000-plus store network is within 20 miles of 80% of the pools in the United States. In the Sun Belt, we're even closer with almost 88% of our pools within 10 miles of a Leslie's store. Our footprint remains a major competitive advantage that we plan to leverage to deliver more value to our DIY and PRO customers through our omnichannel approach.
In addition to our proximity advantage, Leslie's has a well-known pool expertise and capabilities that are key to personalized customer care. Our brand strength and NPS scores are strong, driven by our ability to serve the DIY and PRO customer quickly and efficiently. So we believe our industry and our company remains advantaged. The next logical question is, how do we leverage those advantages even better going forward? What you can expect from Leslie's is a clear focus on fundamentals and that we plan to leverage our competitive advantages to drive long-term profitable growth.
It starts with 3 strategic themes: customer centricity, convenience and asset utilization. Each theme has a set of related priorities and defined initiatives intended to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and fuel long-term shareholder value. I will speak to these 3 themes today and plan to expand on them each quarter in fiscal 2025.
The first strategic theme is customer centricity. As I noted, we are putting the customer at the center of everything we do. Since 1963, the Leslie's brand has been synonymous with trust and expert care. While our marketing research still indicates these words are associated with our brand, I believe we can take these to the next level in the future. Continuing to elevate our customer care through pool expertise for the DIY and the PRO will make it even more rewarding to shop with us. As we look to the future, we can elevate this experience with a more personalized approach.
The customers who choose to take care of their pool know the value of Leslie's. In fact, over 8 out of 10 DIY customers are members of our loyalty program. That is extremely powerful. We know a lot about them and their pool, including location, size of their pool, whether it is a salt or chlorine pool, equipment preferences, the health of their pool following a water test and even their last purchase of an inflatable for their family. This wealth of information allows us to know our customer more deeply, offer more personalized solutions and inform us on what winning in service can be.
Having had experience in loyalty programs, I believe that we have an ability to elevate our loyalty program even further for both the retail customer and the PRO. Our primary goals will be to increase the awareness of the program to attract new loyalty members and enhance its value proposition to the loyalty member and for Leslie's. Lastly, in this customer centricity theme, I believe we can build traffic by increasing awareness around our best-in-class water testing, our differentiated expertise localized for the customer's neighborhood, our product availability and by customized services leveraging our omnichannel approach.
Our second strategic theme is convenience. We believe this theme is core to us winning within the DIY and PRO customer. Being closest to the pools with a best-in-class footprint is a key competitive advantage to helping customers with their pool needs, whether it's a part a PRO needs to make their customers' equipment work, specialty chemicals for a DIYer to balance their pool to be clean, safe and beautiful or that special pool toy to brighten a child's day. We want to be able to satisfy any pool need quickly.
Convenience is such an important aspect of being a trusted total solution provider. Time to solve a customer's problem often determines who wins the sale and who is key to delivering on our customers' expectations. A major element of enabling this through inventory and store assortment. With a solution orientation, we're reframing availability with a customer-centric and convenience approach in terms of minutes, hours and days. In our portfolio, some products have customer availability expectation of minutes. They have a need and time is of the essence.
Included as part of that thinking is our new inventory segmentation, I like to call, never outs. For these items, we measure in minutes, and we have to have the best in-stock performance, and we can never be out. To complement to this line of thinking, we are evolving Leslie's focus towards localized assortment. There are regional and local differences in the pool market, and we need to have the right inventory in the right place at the right time. It's about being able to get to the place of precision inventory in our local markets. This precision inventory approach will better leverage our existing advantage footprint. It can also speed up reverse logistics, lower inventory adjustment expense and reduce shrink. To reiterate, this is about convenience as a competitive advantage, and we expect improving inventory management will help accelerate our time to serve.
Our third and final strategic theme is asset utilization. The areas of focus in improving asset utilization include our physical assets, our technology and data assets and our human capital. First, on improving our physical asset utilization. I've already discussed our best-in-class footprint, including our 1,000-plus stores. But our physical assets also include our strategic network of distribution centers and commercial service centers.
In fiscal 2025, we expect to add approximately 3 stores to our footprint. That said, the majority of our attention will be getting more out of our combination of assets to drive higher organic sales. Expanding average sales per store will drive comp growth, fueling positive leverage through the P&L. Internally, the company has made significant investments over the past couple of years to enhance our technical capabilities, such as adding the Blue Yonder tool. And I believe we can do more to maximize the value that these strategic investments can bring to our processes and our operations. We will plan to also prioritize incremental investments that enhance our ability to serve the customer as we pursue our strategic objectives for the coming year.
Finally, in the area of human capital, we believe we can use our national scale and local community presence to make a stronger positive impact in the communities we serve. As the industry's market leader, Leslie's workforce is dedicated to making human capital a positive differentiator through the expertise we provide our pool and spa customers and the care they entrust in us to keep their pool clean, safe and beautiful.
These 3 strategic themes: customer centricity, convenience and asset utilization will be supported by empowering our teams to drive a continuous improvement culture. At Leslie's, we will focus on the customer and the fundamentals and prioritize what helps achieve our objectives and deprioritize what does not.
Turning to our results for the fourth quarter and for fiscal 2024. Sales for the fiscal fourth quarter were $398 million, down 8%, which was in line with our revised guidance from July. Sales for fiscal 2024 were $1.33 billion, down 8%, also in line with our expectations. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.02 for the fourth quarter and a loss of $0.01 for the year. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $43 million and was $109 million for the full year.
Consistent with our primary capital allocation priority of reducing debt, we expect to pay down approximately $25 million of our debt balance during the current quarter. Scott will detail further our financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year during his prepared remarks.
During the first 7 weeks of the fiscal year, trends were in line with our expectations. We had some positive demand activity from post-storm cleanup in Florida and throughout the Southeast. However, as I mentioned earlier, the macro environment continues to be dynamic, and we're in the process of orienting our business around our 3 key strategic themes and related initiatives.
Given these factors, at this time, we're only providing financial guidance for the first quarter of 2025, which includes top line sales expected in a range of down 3% to up 1% year-over-year. We continue to form our thoughts on the year ahead and expect to update the market with some of that thinking on our next earnings call.
I'll now turn it over to Scott to give his remarks. Scott?
Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to remind everyone that my comments on our quarterly and annual performance are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise indicated. On the top line, we finished fiscal fourth quarter and year in line with our revised guidance we communicated in July. Our profitability was mainly impacted by items that we expect to be onetime in nature, which I will address in my prepared remarks. I will also provide commentary on how we see the start to the year, including our first quarter fiscal 2025 guidance. But first, I'll take you through our fourth quarter and annual performance for fiscal 2024.
For the fiscal fourth quarter, we reported total sales of $398 million, a decrease of 8%, driven primarily by continued softness in traffic and larger ticket and discretionary products. Comparable sales decreased 8.3% and noncomparable sales contributed $1.5 million in the quarter. With respect to sales trends by consumer group, residential pool declined 10%, PRO pool declined 1% and residential hot tub declined 5%. We were encouraged to see relative strength in our PRO pool consumer group, which outperformed with a low single-digit sales decline through the second half of the fiscal year, which is our peak pool season. That compares to a total company sales decline of just over 7% during the same period. This consumer group has proven to be resilient during a very dynamic season, and we see more opportunity for this group going forward.
Gross profit was $143 million compared to $160 million in the same period last year, and gross margin rate decreased 105 basis points to 36%. The decline in rate was largely due to 77 basis points of deleverage on occupancy expense and to a lesser extent, deleverage on DC costs. Additionally, we had a onetime item of approximately $5 million in the quarter related to rebates and warranties on a vendor contract. This contract has since been revised to eliminate this issue for 2025 and going forward. Excluding this onetime item, gross margin would have been 37.3%, an increase of 20 basis points versus the prior year.
SG&A was $117 million for the quarter, a decline of 4% or $5 million and represented 29% of sales. We continue to make solid progress on our cost management initiatives, which we expect to help fuel our operating leverage when we return to positive sales growth. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $43 million compared to $59 million in the same period last year and was primarily impacted by softer sales and a onetime gross margin item, partially offset by lower SG&A expense.
Interest expense was $17 million in the quarter, approximately flat compared to the same period last year. Adjusted net income was $4 million compared to $26 million in the same period last year, and adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.02 compared to $0.14 in the same period last year. Diluted weighted average shares outstanding were 185 million.
Now turning to our fiscal full year results. For fiscal 2024, total sales were $1.33 billion, a decrease of 8% compared to the prior year, with comparable sales down 8.8%. Noncomparable sales totaled $8 million for the year. As mentioned earlier, our total sales were in line with our revised guidance communicated in our July release.
With respect to trends by consumer group, sales for residential pool declined 9%, PRO pool declined 4% and residential hot tub declined 9%. While we experienced another year of softness in our core residential category, we were encouraged by sequential improvement in our PRO pool and hot tub consumer groups. We expect further improvement across our consumer groups in fiscal 2025 as industry conditions continue to normalize, though, as Jason noted, the macroeconomic environment remains dynamic.
Gross profit was $477 million compared to $548 million in 2023, and gross margin rate decreased 193 basis points to 35.9%. The year-over-year decline was primarily due to headwinds from the June 2023 chemical price actions, the expensing of previously capitalized DC costs and deleverage on occupancy costs. These were partially offset by favorability in inventory adjustments and DC costs. Full year SG&A was $420 million, down $26 million from a year ago and represented 31.6% of sales. We continue to look for further opportunities to optimize our cost structure as we focus on increasing asset utilization across the company.
Fiscal 2024 adjusted EBITDA was $109 million compared to $168 million in the prior year, and adjusted net income was a loss of $1 million compared to income of $51 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was impacted primarily by lower sales, partially offset by favorability in SG&A expense. Interest expense was $70 million for fiscal 2024, an increase of $5 million compared to the prior year, which was primarily due to higher interest rates.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was a loss of $0.01 in fiscal 2024 compared to income of $0.28 in the same period last year. Diluted weighted average shares outstanding were 185 million. Related to income tax expense, we established a valuation allowance of approximately $11 million in the quarter in order to provide an offset to our deferred tax assets. This balance is subject to change as the realization of future deferred tax assets changes over time.
Moving to the balance sheet. We ended fiscal 2024 with cash and cash equivalents of $109 million compared to $55 million in fiscal 2023. The increase was primarily due to significant efforts by the team to reduce inventory through improved analytics and operational efficiencies. Inventory ended the year at $234 million, a decrease of $78 million or 25% compared to the prior year, even as our in-stock position, service metrics and Net Promoter Scores all remain very strong.
At the end of fiscal 2024, we had $784 million outstanding on our secured term loan and no amounts outstanding on our revolving credit facility. This compares to $790 million on our term loan and a 0 balance on our revolver at the end of fiscal 2023. Overall, our debt levels were $6 million lower than a year ago, and our leverage ratio was 6.2x. The effective interest rate on our term loan was 8.1% for fiscal 2024 compared to 8.2% in the prior year.
With that, I'd like to turn to our first quarter of fiscal 2025 outlook. Considering our recent CEO transition, we are providing our outlook for only the first quarter of fiscal 2025 at this time. Our first quarter outlook reflects expectations for continued softness in larger ticket and discretionary categories in a balanced view of year-to-date company performance in the current macroeconomic environment.
As Jason outlined earlier, we believe we have a great opportunity to improve how we serve the customer, leveraging our themes of customer centricity, convenience and asset utilization. We expect these strategic themes and resulting initiatives to help drive sales and market share growth and [ to boost ] incremental efficiencies in working capital and capital spending.
All combined, we are working to maximize free cash flow generation to serve our #1 capital allocation priority, the reduction of debt and corresponding leverage levels. While we won't see these initiatives contribute meaningfully to our first quarter results, we expect them to begin contributing to our performance later in fiscal 2025.
For the first quarter of fiscal 2025, we expect the following: sales of $169 million to $176 million, adjusted EBITDA of negative $29 million to negative $27 million, adjusted net loss of $39 million to $37 million, adjusted diluted EPS of a loss of $0.21 to $0.20 and target debt paydown of $25 million in the quarter. After the first 7 weeks of the year, we are trending broadly in line with our expectations and slightly above when accounting for hurricane-related demand incurred during this time period.
We are seeing strong results in our PRO and e-commerce channels with other channels showing sequential improvement from the fourth quarter. Although we are very early in the fiscal year, these are encouraging signs as we continue to position ourselves to win pool season in 2025 and to generate long-term sustainable growth. I would like to remind everyone that the first 2 quarters of our fiscal year are historically smaller in volume and thus have an inherently higher degree of operating leverage embedded within them.
From a balance sheet perspective, we continue to improve our cash position in order to enhance liquidity and pay down debt. With $109 million in cash to start the fiscal year, we believe we have the ability to pay down debt and execute on our strategic priorities. We expect the magnitude and timing of future debt reduction to be determined by general business trends, the need to build inventory in the first half of the year and the amount of excess cash generated in the back half of the year during pool season.
Moving to capital allocation. We plan to pay down debt by $25 million in the current quarter with further guidance on paydown to be communicated during our February call. As a result, we expect to limit new store openings and M&A activity to focus on our debt paydown priority.
I will now turn it back over to Jason for closing remarks.
As we move forward in fiscal 2025, I believe there is strong value creation potential for Leslie's and all of our stakeholders. We believe we have what every successful retailer needs to win with the customer. We believe Leslie's is in an advantaged industry, has key competitive advantages, differentiated omnichannel solutions and a great team to serve our DIY and PRO customers.
Our 3 strategic themes of customer centricity, convenience and asset utilization will drive our key initiatives and be fueled by the pride of our employees. We believe that their pursuit of excellence in execution provides a value proposition that our customers are going to embrace. As we let the Leslie's pride shine through, we are going to ensure we have a clear focus on the fundamentals. Over the coming weeks and months, I look forward to continuing my conversations with our stakeholders to frame our opportunity set, solicit their valuable feedback and then go and win with our team.
I will now turn it back over to the operator for Q&A. Please proceed.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs.
Jason, I wanted to ask a little bit more about the strategic focus for Leslie's. Just which one of those strategic themes do you think will make the largest impact in the near to medium term?
Thanks, Kate. Thanks for the question. Firstly, when I look at the strategic themes, for me, what I love about those themes is that they are strategic themes that are developed by the team members. And it's a result of listening and learning through the early days that I've been CEO here at Leslie's and helps shape our go-forward plan. The other piece is it focuses on the comp sales side of the growth and also making sure that we have focus on driving improved efficiency to drive leverage through the P&L.
So on your question specifically around impact, having that as a backdrop, asset utilization is the one area and the one theme that I think does the best job of that because it helps us focus on optimization, but it also helps in regards to how we improve same-store sales. So early on and when looking at Leslie's prior to starting and then often when I came in and spending time looking at the stores and DCs, I identified that this is an area with the team that we should have as a critical focus. So as I broke that out between physical assets, technology and data assets and then obviously, people and human capital, I think there's an opportunity here for Leslie's.
Our proximity advantage -- sorry, our proximity of assets really demonstrates that we are structurally advantaged at Leslie's. And with that, with combination with our supply chain and our DCs as well as our customer service centers, and where our proximity of stores are is one thing that we can really leverage. And I think that, that's an area of focus that I want to make sure we, as a company, have to make sure that we're delivering on customer needs going forward.
Another piece of the physical assets is inventory. I'm pleased with how the team has reduced inventory in '24. That said, I think from visiting stores, et cetera, in DCs, I think there's also an opportunity to drive some optimization, optimization, meaning further reduction over time, but also this concept of precision inventory, which I mentioned in my opening remarks. The precision inventory for us is about how do we make sure we have the right product at the right place at the right time. And not every part of the country is equal in terms of our assortment that needs to be there.
On the tech side, we have a tool that's going to help us with that. We have an inventory management tool that enables us to really bring precision there and really drive the precision around the depth and the breadth of the inventory that we have. So in that combination, I think we have opportunities both in breadth, but then also depth. And I want to make sure we have the right depth and things, as I mentioned, around never outs, the most important SKUs for our company.
Another piece on the tech side for asset utilization is one item around first-party data. We have a lot of information regarding our customers and how they know a lot about their pool and how they operate and what their -- and how their day-to-day operations of their pool are and how we can best serve them. I think there's an opportunity for us to even get more personalized. And we have that personalized ability through our water test where people come in and get their water tested. And we can provide that level of technology and trust for them.
So I feel great about that. I got to see this firsthand in California. And when I was standing there, I saw a customer come in and the GM leaned over to me and said, this lady comes in every week. And I said, really every week? He said, yes, she just wants to see what her score was. So she was excited when she got over an 80% on her score. And I asked her, I said, so you come in every week. She goes, yes, I just love the ladies here. So that showed me a real key area around the other part of leveraging our assets, which is literally our human capital. And our people in the front line are great, and they have a really opportunity to share their expertise and build confidence.
So in a nutshell, I think it's asset utilization to answer your question. And I firmly believe it's the balance that -- of really a clear focus here for comp sales growth and then driving efficiency to drive leverage through the P&L. And then, as Scott mentioned, continuously pay down the debt.
And I just wonder if I could follow up with a second question. Just wondered if you could talk a little bit more as to why you're seeing the relative strength in the PRO business versus the rest of the business and what you think is driving that?
Yes, I'll take that one, Kate. Thanks for the question. A couple of good things going on in the PRO business. Under Dave Caspers' leadership, he's really engaged the team to driving sales and so -- and knowing what's important to the PRO, right? And so we've done several flash sales that we've done in the past, and we've kind of reinvigorated those. and have seen really good response. And so it's really more targeted kind of promotional activity around more kind of an event or flash sale has played out well. We continue to add more PRO Partners. So we have 4,400 PRO Partners today. It's about 14% higher than last year. And so those PRO Partners spend in excess of $10,000 a year at Leslie's. So another positive.
And then just really dialing into pricing in all of the key SKUs to understand where the market is and where we need our pricing to be the most competitive. And so that's paid big dividends because as you probably know, the PROs are very price sensitive. They want to shop at Leslie's, but we have to be competitively priced. And so that's another area where I think we're doing better and getting more refined data, and it's paying off with our PROs.
Our next question is from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley.
I guess the first question is just on comps of negative 8.3% for the quarter. Just curious if you can break this out between ticket and traffic. Was this driven by one more so over the other?
It was driven more by traffic. So very similar to what we've seen in recent quarters. Traffic has been the main driver of our comps. And so as Jason talks about some of the initiatives, it's really laser-focused on driving that top line and really leveraging our competitive advantages in our stores and in other channels. And so that's one of our main focuses right now to drive traffic.
Okay. Great. That's helpful. And I guess our follow-up is just on the unit growth. So you -- current focus is to focus on the current assets you have and you talked about opening 3 stores for fiscal '25. Can you talk about how this maybe changes your long-term unit growth outlook of the 2% to 3%? Is that still something we can get to in the medium term?
I think so. I think at some point, our near-term priority is to pay down debt. And so we generated a lot of cash last year and ended the year with about $108 million on the balance sheet, puts us in a good position to start executing that paydown on debt. And that will remain our key priority for the near term from a capital allocation standpoint. As we think about future growth, whether it be a buy or build situation, there's still plenty of opportunities out there. And so when we get to a point where we're comfortable with an adequate paydown of debt, we will start engaging on new store builds in a bigger way and more M&A activity.
But that being said, the other reason is just we want to focus on the core, right? We want to really focus in on our initiatives, improve the core profitability and top line. And then after we get some traction with that, we'll be in a better position to reengage on growth.
And just to build on that, I think the biggest piece of us from a focus standpoint on growth, and I'm glad you asked that question, is because it is a crystal-clear area of focus for us in terms of baseline growth. And really, it has to do with going deep with the customer. We believe that we have some really strong competitive advantages in the marketplace around proximity, obviously, the quality of the product portfolio, the expertise that we have in our stores, the water testing technology that we have, an omnichannel approach that we need to continue to work to bring more awareness to and that can help us drive some traffic.
In addition to that, when we are driving that level of awareness and people are visiting Leslie's is to then continue to bolster our loyalty program. We have a strong level of personalized data today that gives us information about our customer, but I think we have the opportunity to even go further with that. Both of those are going to allow us to build plans to drive long-term sustainable growth at Leslie's.
Our next question is from Ryan Merkel with William Blair.
I wanted to start off on gross margins, which have been sort of a disappointment and were again this quarter. So what are some of the strategies you're thinking about to improve gross margins? And are you thinking you need to have more cost takeout from here? Or is your focus on more improving the top line?
Yes. Good question, Ryan. I think -- well, first off, I think it's more top line focus, okay? And so this past quarter, we had a little bit of higher inventory and scrap entries. Some of that was kind of weighted towards the back half of the year. And so we'll always have that, probably a little bit of room to reduce that. But by and large, I mean, I think we control our DC expenses pretty well. And it's all about driving that top line so we can get leverage, right? So our deleverage on occupancy alone was almost 80 basis points last quarter. We had more deleverage on DC costs as well.
And so as we look at it, we'll continue to refine kind of the DC operations and inventory adjustments and so forth. So some marginal improvement there to be had, but it's really about driving top line so we can leverage those fixed costs. And so it really comes back to what Jason is talking about and kind of those key initiatives that we see that we can start to engage on to drive the top line in PRO and other categories.
Okay. That's helpful. And then a question on inventory. Do you feel like you're rightsized here? Or do you have to cut more? And I think you mentioned the localized assortment and the precision inventory. So just how do we balance all those things?
Yes, good question. We -- as we look at it, there's still some room to take out inventory, not nearly as much as we saw this past year. But as Jason has walked a lot of stores and distribution centers and commercial centers, there's a lot of inventory out there that is kind of stuck, right? And so from an allocation standpoint, there's a pretty nice opportunity to consolidate some of that inventory, get it back to our warehouses and really just tighten up our allocation strategy, especially on the high-ticket items. So that initiative will help us free up dollars to put more dollars into those specific items, those never outs that are so important to our customers and our PROs.
I think the big word I used in discussing this with the team and as we're proceeding is this word, like as you mentioned, precision. And it is about making -- we have the benefit of having stores so close to all the pools across America that we can build an efficient assortment because we can be very tailored to the pools in those neighborhoods. And I think that, that's a significant opportunity for us. And then at the same time, we leverage some of the technology we've had and we have and further utilize it even better to then really manage the breadth and the depth of what we're talking about from an inventory standpoint, so we can do the level of utilization and almost [ any ] efficiency that we need for inventory, which is what Scott mentioned.
Our next question is from Jonathan Matuszewski with Jefferies.
The first one was just on 2025. Without formal guidance for the year, maybe you could just share some high-level qualitative views in terms of some of the underlying trends that you expect, maybe just some -- any nuances in terms of how you're thinking about chemical demand versus equipment or AOV versus traffic? I know this past year, it was a big theme between discretionary versus nondiscretionary. So any high-level views would be helpful.
Yes, sure. Yes. So a lot there. I think for us, from an equipment standpoint, still down 15% or so. We are seeing some bright spots in that category. And some of the promotions that we ran targeting equipment, free installs and things like that, has resonated quite well. And so I think there's some learnings that we've taken from the last quarter that we can further deploy this year to try to boost that business. But at the end of the day, a lot of this is going to come down to consumer behavior and just how willing they are to spend those dollars on the more discretionary items.
That being said, we have made some improvements in our hot tub business. So we were down 5% for the quarter, down 9% for the year. And that is really a function of the team really engaging more with the leads that we generate and having better tools to execute against those leads and then being more creative, having more hot tub events at Costco and other areas has really paid big dividends for us.
And so part of it is on us just to really spur that demand with those kind of targeted events and promos. And part of it is external. But the way that we think about it is how can we improve what we do to make sure that our pricing is right, make sure the awareness is there, make sure that marketing is targeted to draw those customers in and then just leverage our competitive advantages. We have so many advantages. We think there's still more to do there to take full advantage.
That's really helpful. And then just my follow-up question was on e-commerce. I think it's annualizing around or in excess of 20% of total sales. So just wanted to understand the opportunity there. I think historically, Leslie's has been a large chunk of Amazon's pool and spa care business. So where does that business stand today? And is there incremental growth there?
Yes. So it's kind of 2 sides of the business really. Our marketplace business and somewhat our -- in the swim business is much more kind of price sensitive and especially Amazon to get that buy box, you got to have your pricing sharp. And so that's a piece of it that we continue to get better with. And the other part is just making sure the availability is there and that prime, we're hitting all the targets to make sure that we're on prime. So it's really just making sure we have the right products there and we're competitively priced and we make adjustments almost on a daily basis.
For the Leslie proprietary site, a little bit different story. I mean, Leslie's proprietary site was actually positive in the quarter. And certainly, there's some synergies there and tie-ins to our store with that site. We can offer promos on equipment, offer free installs on that site, and that gives us a big advantage. And so there are some threads there that we're going to continue to work on that can leverage that site probably more than the other 2.
Just to build on that, the -- what you're sensing here is that the opportunity for us is really about taking an omnichannel approach going forward as well. And sort of looking at the digital side, which is not only the e-commerce site, but it's also the effectiveness of our mobile app, how do we connect both the digital way of doing business with our brick-and-mortar and finding the best ways to serve our customers by making sure that we meet them where they are. And that's one of the pieces that we're very focused on is how do we leverage some of the successes that we've had around e-commerce, as Scott just mentioned on some of those, but do so in an integrated way to best serve the customers' needs. And it's really about us spending a lot of time going deep on each of the customer journeys, candidly for both DIY and for PRO and meeting them and providing them with the solutions that they want going forward.
Our next question is from Steven Forbes with Guggenheim Securities.
This is Rene Marin on for Steve Forbes. Jason, Scott, can you just expand on the $5 million contractual gross margin headwind? I guess, was it volume-related? And then as you think about your sourcing agreements across all product categories, are there any other risks we should be aware of as we reframe the out-year gross margin profile?
Yes. First off, we don't really see any additional risk. So as far as kind of the vendor contract language, what happened there is late in the year, we renegotiated one of our supplier contracts. And what it involved was taking on some responsibility for warranties in exchange for a higher volume-based rebate. And so in doing that, we had a fixed rebate that we had had over the years that was actually taken out of that contract as well. And so it's kind of a total recast of that agreement.
What we saw is that the warranty costs were escalating and much higher than what we thought they would be. And so we quickly renegotiated with that vendor and talked through a scenario that could work for both of us and ultimately came up to an agreement that no longer had us liable for those warranties as of the first day of this fiscal year, okay? And so I think it was an anomaly where we saw those escalating warranty costs. We reacted with the vendor pretty quickly, got a new contract in place, and so that won't be an issue going forward.
Got it. And then as a follow-up, can you break down or provide any additional color on the 1Q gross margin pressures as implied by the guidance into various factors?
Yes, sure. First off, based on the old contract with that supplier I just talked about, we did have some fixed rebates that hit in the first quarter. And that will cause about 75 basis points of pressure there. Without that, our kind of our product margin will actually be slightly favorable, which is a function of some lower cost. We also will see a little bit higher cost and some DC costs and some inventory adjustments, and that's really a function of doing things like cycle counts on a more regular basis instead of kind of waiting until a physical inventory. And we've done that in the past, but based on some of the adjustments we saw in fourth quarter, tells us that we need to do more cycle counts on a regular basis and kind of spread out the cost of those inventory adjustments and keep track of it. And other than that, the main drag is occupancy. So occupancy will be about 100 basis points of drag in the quarter.
Our next question is from David Bellinger with Mizuho Securities.
I appreciate all the prepared remarks from Jason. Our question, just on the -- some of the internal initiatives you guys laid out and maybe some of the retail fundamentals maybe not where they should be at this point. Could you talk about any potential reinvestment that's needed? I know you talked about building awareness. Is there a certain level of dollars that have to go back in to get awareness where it should be and get Leslie's back to being on top of the mind for the consumer? And then anything about wages, too? Should we expect some kind of increase in wages to get that that asset leverage out of the store base that you're talking about?
Yes. Thanks for the question. I think, firstly, we're at the early stages of the development. The team is going through, as I mentioned, the collaboratively around the focus of the clear priorities around those 3 initiatives, and then they're building the plan around the specifics around those initiatives. And I'll be able to discuss that more from quarter-to-quarter as we go throughout the year, and I'll make sure to do that.
Maybe to answer the second part of your question regarding maybe just investments in the spirit of delivering -- driving traffic. For me, it's not determined yet in terms of additional funding that's required. I sort of look at 2 things when thinking about driving critical traffic for Leslie's going forward. The first is, is I want to make sure that we look at, I guess, maybe the art and the science of that being an answer. The art being what's the key messaging and the communication that we need to do to our customers so that it persuades them to obviously come to Leslie's and drive traffic. So I think the foundation of the competitive advantages we have around obviously being the proximity around being in their local neighborhoods to our -- sorry, to our -- the water testing capability we have, the expertise we have in stores. These are all things that we can then communicate to our customers and make sure we do so.
The science part of this -- and that would be the art, the science to me is I've spent a lot of time in my career as early as maybe 2006 on marketing mix modeling. And when looking at marketing mix modeling, it doesn't necessarily build awareness, you need to just add marketing spending. You can reallocate your current marketing spending to areas that drive efficiency and drive the best performance based off of good modeling and leveraging data and analytics to then see what kind of best return we can get from the investments we make and choose the mediums appropriately. So I plan on doing both with the team is defining the best message and obviously the best in supporting our initiatives around that, but then doing so the right way with a prudent approach on how do I leverage the consistent -- the spend we have today and do it as most efficient as possible.
Great. And then my second question, it looks like you're essentially pausing new store growth, likely pausing some of the tuck-in M&A activity. We think about 2025, the vast majority of free cash flow going to debt paydowns. Is there any way to frame up just how much that could be in addition to the $25 million you mentioned in Q1?
Yes. Good question. And it's hard to frame up the exact dollar amount for the remainder of the year. But I think the point here and the message here is that we are committed to that priority. It will remain our #1 priority to pay down debt for the foreseeable future. Store growth and M&A is important to us. And long term, it plays a big role in our growth. And so in the meantime, we'll continue to build the pipeline and to fine-tune where those next stores will be. We already have a pretty robust pipeline of M&A targets, and we'll continue to build on that. And so when we're ready to reengage, we can shorten the time window that that's going to take.
Our next question is from Justin Kleber with Baird.
First one was just on -- I wanted to ask about chemical AUR trends. We noticed you've been highlighting a new low price on shock. Curious if that's you being proactive in passing through lower product costs? Or are you following others in the industry that are taking price lower? And then just how do we think about any sales or margin impact from this change compared to some of the broader chemical price reductions you took in June of '23?
Sure. Yes. So first off, it's not near the magnitude and really not comparable to June 2023. What I would say is we're being kind of targeted on pricing, and it's particularly in the PRO area. I mentioned earlier that we need to be more competitive on PRO pricing, and we're doing that, and it's showing some good top line results. And so that's where we're kind of placing our chips right now is in the PRO area. In the kind of the residential customer, pricing is pretty stable. And so we haven't really had to move too much at the retail customer level. In order to fund kind of lower pricing on PRO, we have had some better pricing come through on our key chemicals. And so that is basically covering most, if not all, of that reduced price.
Got it. And then just a follow-up to David's question regarding investments. Can you just talk conceptually about the SG&A line? Certain states that you operate in continue to raise minimum wages. So I guess the question is, can you continue to reduce SG&A dollars on a year-over-year basis like you did this past year while simultaneously making these investments that are needed to turn the traffic on the top line?
Yes. Good question. I think it's more difficult for sure because we have made some pretty significant reductions in SG&A. And we want to be thoughtful about that, right? We want to make sure that we have the structure to support the business and the growth of the business. And so really, our mentality on SG&A is that we will continue to invest in that area, but we want to follow the growth, right? And so we want to start to see the growth first and then we'll follow with the SG&A growth behind that. I think one thing to keep in mind as we move forward here, the incentive compensation has been quite low in the last 2 years. And so I think one thing to think about when things do pick up a little bit, that incentive compensation will move higher as that happens. But all the other areas in SG&A, I think we have a really good handle on, and we have good control over. And we're very mindful on spending additional G&A, and we'll do that to take care of our teams and to make sure we're funding the growth.
Thank you. That's all the time we have for Q&A today. Thank you for joining the call. You may now disconnect.