I'm a customer of 20 years almost, and here's what I gathered from the call:
-WF toadally, really, has the best products being sold
-People just don't know how good WF's products are, so advertising is going to be ramped up
-The customer experience will be re-emphasized, but somehow with fewer employees working overall
-Computers will save us all
-Maaaaybe WF might sorta lower prices? They tried and it didn't work ;)
-A wizard will fix it
Wow hear comes the bullshit corporate speak. Suggesting to keep drinking the cool aid even tho there's a bug turd in it.
To say that the company cares about their team members is laughable. You are getting rid of your best people! They don't seem to care as long as they can 'offer SO many new jobs' at part time
To 193163, good one. Sometimes new team members quit before the very first punch in the time clock. 193144, you are obviously in Austin.
Yes, your 91,000 TM's are the heart and soul of the company. Minus of course, the 3,000 TM's that "were" also the heart and soul of the company. I'd rather be working than laid off from a job I loved and a company that I totally believed in, once.
Low turnover? Hahaha.
As I highlighted earlier, while we are making progress on many of our initiatives, in this dynamic marketplace we recognize we need to move faster and go deeper to rebuild traffic and sales and create a solid foundation for our long-term profitable growth. These are the steps we are taking to communicate our differentiation, improve our price perception, and fundamentally evolve our business:
1.We are committed to a fundamental restructuring of the cost side of our business and have already taken steps in this direction. We have a plan to reduce expenses by a $300 million run rate by the end of FY17. We are systematically looking at every aspect of our business to eliminate costs that do not produce value for our customers. We recently eliminated more than 2,000 positions, are transforming our purchasing operations to allow us to function more productively, be more competitive, and better leverage our growing size and scale, and are looking for similar opportunities in other key areas. We have also introduced a new labor-scheduling tool to our customer service teams, with plans to expand to additional teams over the next year.
2.We will innovate faster to further differentiate the Whole Foods Market shopping experience, with a focus on our Exclusive Brands and prepared foods. We are operating some of the highest volume restaurants in the country, and no house brand comes close to the quality standards of our EB products. Totaling close to $5 billion, or one-third of our sales, our Exclusive Brands and prepared foods are key differentiators for us, and we plan to partner with our suppliers to widen our competitive advantage in these areas. As part of this initiative, we have created a new Global Vice President of Culinary and Hospitality position, which we expect to fill in the coming months.
3.We will improve our value perception through increased promotional activity and selective and strategic price reductions. We will utilize new talent, tools and systems, as well as consumer insights, benchmarks, and KPI progress reporting, to better track how our promotions and investments resonate with customers and impact our results.
4.We will support our differentiation and value strategies through enhanced external marketing efforts. We will use media to support our pricing efforts across all major markets, clearly communicating not only our pricing investments but our quality as well. We will holistically address the way in which we communicate our value and values to our customers at every touch point, including our online, digital and social platforms.
5.We will invest in digital strategies to convert the strong traffic we generate online into sales. We have integrated Instacart into our app, will soon launch a national sales flyer, and will continue to make upgrades to provide more functionality and streamline our customers’ digital experience. We have been very pleased with our affinity pilot, in terms of the information we are gathering and the sales lift it is generating. We are committed to the program and have plans for tests in additional markets to further enhance the customer experience and refine the economics, before rolling it out nationally.
6.We will invest in our technology platforms to provide a better shopping experience and enable us to run our business more efficiently. We will replace our disparate core legacy platforms with unified scalable solutions. The rollout of our OnePOS system to all U.S. stores by the end of calendar 2016 will provide faster checkout times, improved labor productivity, and better data visibility across all channels In addition, it will enable us to provide personalized offers and new experiences at checkout via our mobile app. We also just launched our groundbreaking partnership with Infor to co-create a next-generation cloud-based retail, merchandising and supply chain management platform. Admittedly behind in this area, this new retail platform will be unlike anything available today and will bring us many new capabilities such as perpetual inventory, replenishment, retail space planning and price optimization.
7.We will launch our second growth vehicle, 365 by Whole Foods Market. With eight leases signed to date, we plan to open three stores in FY16 and up to 10 in FY17. The time is right to take the high quality standards we have developed over the last 35+ years, and make them more broadly accessible through a streamlined, value-focused format and serve communities we would not be able reach with our larger Whole Foods Market stores.
8.While we remain confident in our long-term growth potential, we will increase our square footage at a more moderate pace this year. Having consecutively accelerated our store openings over the past six years, we plan to grow our square footage at a more moderate pace in FY16, which will lessen the negative impact of cannibalization on our comps and allow us to focus on the other areas we have outlined.
9.We will continue to affirm our culture. Our 91,000 team members are the heart and soul of our company and the “not-so-secret” ingredient in creating our customer experience. We believe our full time ratio is among the highest and our turnover is among the lowest in the industry, and we will continue to invest in our team members’ development and growth, including creating thousands of new jobs over the coming year.
I will now turn to our outlook for fiscal year 2016, which reflects the impact of these initiatives. We remain focused on the metrics we believe are key to the long-term health of our business and for this fiscal year are targeting:
As of right now the stock is sitting at a fresh 52-week low. If they had an ounce of dignity or class the executive team would resign. If the board of directors doesn't take action now, when will they take action? FIRE this gang of self-serving idiots already. Jeez. What are they waiting for?
So much for spending on "lower prices" and "technology." Instead the company has announced that it's going to go onto the credit card to incur long-term debt of up to $1 Billion. And where is that money going? If you guessed "make the rich richer", you're right. They're increasing the dividend by 4% and plan on spending $1 Billion to buy back more shares to support the stock price. The press release gushes that it's "a new capital allocation strategy that reflects confidence in the Company's future growth and cash flow generation, while expanding its commitment to return capital to shareholders." In other words, pay the shareholders off and pray for a miracle! LO freakin' L!!!! They're borrowing almost 18 times what they earned in the fourth quarter to go on a stock buyback spree to put more cash into the shareholders' pockets. Well no wonder. Shares aren't exactly in high demand these days and the 1% still need new vacation homes, fine china and yachts. Wow! Well the market isn't impressed with this buyback at all as shares are now down 7.2% after hours. That's probably because contrary to the press release, it doesn't seem to reflect confidence at all to spend so much on this scheme. From Marketwatch: Whole Foods Market Inc. said Wednesday it earned $56 Million, or 16 cents a share, in the fiscal fourth quarter, down from $128 Million, or 35 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue in the quarter reached $3.44 Billion, below analyst expectations of $3.47 billion. Comparable-store sales declined 0.2% in Q4, the company said. Analysts had expected the grocer to report earnings of 35 cents a share in the quarter. (NOTE: That's a huge earnings miss.)
Jeez!!!
It started just after 4pm. So far shares are plummeting in after hours trading, down 8% as of 4:09pm eastern. This usually means that earnings and/or sales did not meet expectations for the quarter and/or year. Probably cast a shadow on fiscal year 2016 as well. Shares had rebounded a couple of bucks in the past three days or so but this is obviously bad news for management. Stay tuned.