BURL - Executing well; waiting on more consistency given tough macro & competitive landscape; Initiate Hold/$305 PT

Research evidence excerpt

BURL - Executing well; waiting on more consistency given tough macro & competitive landscape; Initiate Hold/$305 PT

Truist Securities

KEY DEBATES

Is there risk to the off-price model as AI tools improve vendors’ inventory mgmt?

While we understand the concern, we believe that these mirror questions that the group faced over a

decade ago as ecommerce penetration accelerated. Despite the revolutionary new tools open to

brands and growing ecommerce penetration, off-price retailers have continually proved to be

incrementally more valuable to brand partners. We expect that to remain the case moving forward

for a few key reasons: (1) Even with AI tools, we believe there will always be some delta between

inventory and demand, which will create the need for markdowns. (2) We believe more advanced

demand forecasting tools will highlight that the channel expands the overall market for goods with

less cannibalization to the brand’s full-price/owned channel. (3) The off-price channel offers brands

the opportunity to take more chances on assortments (both in terms of how risky they want to be

from a new fashion perspective and how much inventory they are willing to commit to) because they

know they have a secure/trustworthy secondary outlet. (4) The channel itself can act as a significant

market research engine that reaches a wider & more value-conscious audience, who the brand is

not actively engaging with though its own channel.

Are higher fuel prices a key risk to off-price?

While we think rising prices certainly create potential headwinds for FY guidance, we believe that (1)

incremental macro pressures tend to drive more customers their way and (2) recent AUR increases

across the space should also help provide some cushion. For BURL, we are more cautious on the