Takeaway: Several near-term risks were mitigated this qtr. In addition, we're taking up our 'already high' long-term growth forecast. 2 yrs = $60.

RH’s $0.02 ps beat far understates the significance of the company’s earnings report. After running the numbers and listening to the call, we walked away with the following thoughts:

1)      Confirmation that this management team is executing on one of the most intriguing business opportunities in retail. Comping 26% on top of a 22% in the same quarter last year, and that’s before the launch of new businesses like Tableware and Objects of Curiosity.

2)      Not only is the Design Gallery pipeline robust, but management seemed to have a (borderline odd) epiphany that it could open significantly larger stores with far more favorable rent structures than previously anticipated. Given that increased furniture sales will put a natural damper on margins over time, lower occupancy hurdles are a nice offset.

3)      We made a rather significant change to our model, in that we took the average size of a Design Gallery up from 25,000 square feet to nearly 35,000 over the next three years. The Boston store, for example, is nearly 50,000 square feet. With a weighted average of 35k sq feet and our estimate of 15 Galleries by the end of 2015, it gets us to weighted average square footage growth of 15% by that time period. The interesting element here is that bears (and even common logic) will say that current comp trends will roll, and over 2-3 years we’ll be looking at a stabilization in sales/square foot trends. With that being the case, the acceleration in square footage still drives 15-20% top line growth through this model. We think that’s the biggest part of this story that people are missing.  

4)      Find us a company that is taking UP expectations for both revenue and earnings for the upcoming quarter and year. It would have been easy enough for them to give initial guidance right in line with existing estimates. #confidence.

5)      De-risking Sentiment. Like it or not, sentiment is a major factor with this stock. We’ve been positive on the name since the IPO, and when we bring it up with investors it’s pretty clear to us that it’s not too far from JCP as it relates to being hated. The two most common reasons. 1) There’s not enough float. 2) The company is probably going to do a secondary (that probably explains why 1.4mm shares of the 4.2mm float is short). That’s ironic when you think about it. Half the people don’t like the lack of float, and the other half don’t like the one event that could fix the ‘small float’ problem.

Regardless, there are three things that happened this quarter that we think de-risk sentiment and improves ownership characteristics for RH.

  1. First, simple as it may be, the fact that RH finally ended what may be the longest quiet period in modern retail history is a positive. Other retailers are getting ready to report 1Q in 3-4 weeks, and RH is just getting out its 4Q numbers. It’s been a black hole of info, and it has not helped sentiment one bit. That’s over.
  2. IPO-related charges are out finally known, booked, and out of the way.  They made financial modeling a bear – and now that’s no longer an issue.  
  3. While we usually could care less about company guidance, the fact that RH issued quarterly and annual guidance is a massive positive for a levered and newly public company like this.

The reality is that so many people have had zero appetite for the name given such little float, funky accounting, no guidance, and such a huge delay in the earnings report.  The 4Q print ameliorated many of these concerns.

In the end, this remains one of our favorite longs. Its so rare to find a defendable high-end brand with such an obvious, yet fixable, distribution problem. Having stores that are only large enough to showcase 20-25% of the company’s product is like having a fleet of Ferraris and only a two-car garage. This is the one instance in retail where bigger stores is not only a positive, but it is a necessity. As these stores grow, the company can scale into new categories (kitchen, kids, art, flooring, art, collectibles, textiles, etc…), and subdivide existing ones  to drive productivity.

We think that the earnings guidance of $1.29-$1.37 for the year will prove conservative by at least 10%, and ultimately this is a company with $3 in earnings power over 3-years.  If that’s right, we’re looking at over a 20% CAGR in EPS, which makes 20x $3 in the realm of possibility. Granted, that is by the end of 2014, so there’s some time to go. But until people start to realize this potential, we’re not concerned about the stock being expensive.