You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So Academy Sports and Outdoors reported earnings earlier this week. It's stock rally more than on the news that was on Tuesday, the results causing five analysts to raise their price targets
on the stock by an average of eleven percent. Stock is up nearly fifty percent over the past year, compared with the S and P five, which is up around and the stock in what was a down day to day, actually eking out a six tenth of one percent gain for the Thursday session. Ken Hicks as Chairman, president and CEO of Academy Sports and Outdoors, joining us on the phone from Texas. Ken, how are you terrific? How are y'all doing today? We're doing really well. Um, what's working
so well for you guys? You know, we're just fortunate. And the fact that we sell fun and people want to have more fun, well, that's true, true, but they
don't necessarily want to do it. I mean, I think it's I think it's so interesting because you know, during the pandemic, so many people started spending time outside in a different way than they had done perhaps ever, and we saw this rise in e commerce, and you're sort of taking a different approach, doubling down on physical retail stores and saying that you're going to open eighty to stores over the next five years. Why are you so
bullish on physical retail space. Well, first of all, a lot of the things that we sell people want to touch and feel, like a baseball bat or a fishing rod. Second, a lot of it's very difficult to ship, really touch to ship a kayak or a treadmill um And the third thing, quite frankly, we're only in sixteen states right now with two d and fifty nine stores, and we've
got a great model. Our average store does over twenty five million dollars, and we've got, you know, a lot of the rest of the country to to grow into and to fill out some of our existing markets. And at the same time, you know, we're growing our dot com business and truly omni channel. And we had a very good fourth quarter up over with our dot com where many other retailers were down on dot com. How
many dot com purchases were there for Canoes? I just want to know a lot really, but yeah, well it's it's you know, the thing is a lot of people took up new hobbies during the pandemic and they're sticking with them. Would be that fishing or hiking, camping, different sports, exercise, and and we're seeing the benefit of that as people stick to their you know, the thing that they started. Plus we're you know, the trend for for wellness and health has been going on for some time and that's
where we are. We sell to you know, families, you know, the moderate upper moderate customer, and we have we have a lot to offer in our stores from as they say, sport camping or just you know, backyard grills and patio spits. You gotta be happy to that. The S and P small caps Exandred said we're gonna put you in the index, right. You guys got some juice off of that one too. Yeah, we we did get get a little juice as we
went into some of the funds. But I think those funds are now very happy they put us in After the last last week. Hey, Ken, how's your supply chain? You know we've been I don't I don't mean to sound like absolutely obsessed with the supply chains. We're asking everyone, how are you making sure that your shelves are full? It is to challenge and there are some categories that are just, you know, really really difficult. One of them this year is cleats. They're just no cleats anywhere for
kids who want to play baseball. But overall, we were in a much better inventory position, and we've taken a number of actions. One is we're alreadering on our merchandise early and working with vendors who we know that can supply. Another is we're using some of the UH secondary ports were located in Texas and we use Galveston, we used Charleston, and so we're able to get the goods in more.
And we're working with our shipping partners and trucking partners with long term contracts to make sure that they have the capacity to give us to get the goods to the stores. Did you say nobody has kids cleats? Uh? If if you don't have them by now, it's going to be very difficult to get baseball cleats this year.
What are you rethinking, if at all, about can your global supply chain in terms of where it exists, well, are are one of the things our supply chain in particular, we're fortunate in that we don't we're not as dependent on some of the very busy West coast um ports.
But also we've got three distribution centers that are along the southern part of the country, and we're looking to grow um more north and further east and then ultimately west, and we're going to have to build some new distribution centers at some point to be able to service those new stores. Right now, we have enough capacity, but with our with our growth plans, we're gonna need to continue to step up our supply chain capabilities. So if I look at your website, we've just got about forty or
fifty seconds. You know, there's lots of categories. There's backyard, this recreation, there's how fitness, men's, women's Kids. Which is your busiest vertical Where you're seeing the most growth, uh, team sports, footwear and apparel right now? And where are you not seeing growth the in in some of the fitness categories. Um, you know those those are a little bit more challenged. But we expect some of the categories as the weather gets warmer, like fifteen and our backyard
and pools, that should start to take off again. Well, I just love that people are are online ordering canoes. I bought a huge tub online years ago. You could, you can? You can like a tub? Yeah, like you can ship anything. UM can. Always love talking with you get some great insight and what consumers are up to. Ken Hicks is Chairman Presidency of Academy Sports and Outdoors. As I mentioned, their stock over the past year has been way out performing the S and P five hundred,
up about fifty percent in that timeframe. SMP just up around. Good luck if you're looking for cleats. I know it's too late, folks, find another sport. Mrs Bloomberg