This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So if you're looking for an out performer, you've got to check out Chairs and Build a Bear Workshop, because the stock, at least heading into today's session was up almost this year. UH company today reported record revenues, a special cash dividend, plus a twenty five million dollar share buy back. And I gotta say we had a fair share of the
company stuffed animals in our home and my daughter was growing. Hey, you know what after today's twenty seven after today's twenty seven increase in the share price, one of my gainers of the day. It's up fo seven percent this year, Carol. Yeah, it's been on such a run. So let's get to it. Joining us from the New York Stock Exchange is Sharon Price John. She is Build a Bear Workshops President and CEO. Sharon is so nice to have you here with Tim
and myself. Um, sounds like things are going really well. Give us some color on the quarter that was and the outlook that you expected to be. Yeah, thank you so much and really appreciate you being a customer of ours. Over the years. I always love to hear that. But we did announce this morning record revenues and pretext income for physical quarter. UM. As you mentioned, we declared a special dividend and authorized that dot by that program, but
also raised the annual guidance. And UM, you know it's really we're we're looking at a revenue long number that's the best in about a decade, as well as that pretext income that I was speaking of. UM, that's the best in our corporate history for the first the third quarter, in the first three quarters of the year. Yeah. Well, you know one thing I just wanted to ask you, Sharon, is is why the buyback? Why the special dividend? Is that the best way to use some of your cash
on hand? Well, it's one way to use our cash on hand. We have a robust capital plan, UM, and a portion of that we felt with these record earnings is just a great opportunity for two directly and immediately returned some of that value you to our shareholders. Of course, the stock buyback has a much different purpose. Uh. It's more of a recognition of the board noting and believing
in the future of the company. UM. But we also outlined some strategic objectives and opportunities for the future and how we're investing, and that's inclusive of continued and acceleration of our digital transformation as well as the evolution of our retail footprints and the way we go to market and continue to push into uh more robust approach to
omni channel. I know that people don't always recognize the Bill to Bear as an online retailer, but as with many through the COVID experience, we really did lean heavily into e commerce. We had already been on that road from a strategic perspective for a number of years. How much of your business is e commerce versus store? Because they're going to the store such an experience. I know it was something that my daughter are left to do well, you know, but Build the Bears now, which is important
to understand. Build Bears now multi generational. So we're coming up on our twenty fifth year. Don't let that make you feel old. We've just been around for a while, and that's okay because not only do parents of kids and want parents now want to take their kids, they actually want to experience Build the Bear again. And some of that is our collectibles product like Pokemon or Harry
Potter and they go online. So our business, uh, just a few years ago was more in the four or five percent range of total sales and now it's up to And what's the goal? How high do you want to get that? Well, we're really the key is to grow total revenue. And because e commerce for us is um on par from a profitability perspective to the rest of our revenue in stores, we just want to be there the way guts want to interact with us. If they want to go online and purchase, they can do that.
If they like to come in store and have that very special retail tainment experience that we're famous for, they can do that too. And it's really servicing different needs for different types of gifts. Clearly, if you're a gift giver, you might want to go online because we'll send it directly to the ind recipients. Hey, you gotta ask you, um, which we ask every leader of an institution or organization or company supply chain issues. How rough is it for
you guys? Yeah? You know, we like so many toy industry people, we do source from Southeast Asia and it has been a challenge and um, you know, we're we're juggling containers and products and re prioritizing on a regular basis. We did make a special note though in the call this morning, that we believe we have a robust, are a really strong inventory position for the remainder of the
holiday season. UM. We feel like that we have done our projections appropriately and really importantly, particularly for that special experience in memory that people want to make in our wars. We actually have enough bear builders, which would be our sales associate UM, to make sure, to the best of our ability, that everybody has that that great build a bear moment. So not worried about the holiday season? Right? Was that it now? Probably you know? There's all we're
always worried about the holiday seas. It's our biggest season, it's the biggest month of our biggest quarter. UM. But we feel as good as we can about what we've done. The team has been really strong and planning. We were way out ahead of this. We ordered a lot of products on we forward our Christmas orders, and we're actually in an increased inventory position versus last year same time. All Right, Sharon very briefly raised wages for these sales associates.
How much trouble are you having getting labor ten seconds actually ten seconds, Well that was my point. Um, we actually have been able to hold onto our labor force. We don't have as much turn as a lot of other people, and it's probably because it's fun to work at build. There is there a Build a Bear movie coming real quickly. Um, we have all kinds of movies, but that's going to take another interview. Apparently you're gonna
have to come back Build a Bear Entertainment. You guys are creating content, so I want to talk a little bit more about that. Do come back. Have a good and safe holiday season. We've been talking with Sharon Price John she's Build a Bear Workshops president CEO. That's stock, as we mentioned, up four hundred and seven percent this year. You're listening to Bloomberg and yes, you heard it right