Target Corporation
Q1 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 20 May 2020

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Target Corporation First Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will invite you to participate in a question-and-answer session. At the close of prepared remarks, we will open the queue for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, May 20, 2020.I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Hulbert, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[John Hulbert:]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. On the line with me today are Brian Cornell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; John Mulligan, Chief Operating Officer; and Michael Fiddelke, Chief Financial Officer.In a few moments, Brian, John and Michael will provide their perspective on the first quarter and our continued focus on our guests and our team as we navigate through the current environment. Following their remarks, we’ll open the phone lines for a question-and-answer session.This morning, we’re joined on this conference call by investors and others who are listening to our comments via webcast. Following the call, Michael and I will be available to answer your follow-up questions.And finally, as a reminder, any forward-looking statements that we make this morning are subject to risks and uncertainties, the most important of which are described in our most recently filed 10-K and the 8-K we furnished this morning. Also in these remarks, we refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted earnings per share. Reconciliations of all non-GAAP numbers to the most directly comparable GAAP number are included in this morning’s press release, which is posted on our Investor Relations website.With that, I’ll turn it over to Brian for his thoughts on the first quarter and the short-term and longer-term implications for our business. Brian?

[Brian Cornell:]

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate that you’ve joined us on this morning’s call, and we hope that you, your family and friends are safe and healthy. It goes without saying, but this quarter was unlike anything we’ve seen in our company’s long history. And while we didn’t establish another all-time record for this quarter’s EPS, I have never been more proud of our performance.Over the last few years, we built a strategy and operating model that’s designed to generate strong performance in a wide variety of environments, and the first quarter demonstrated the strength of that model. Unprecedented volatility within the quarter presented the most extreme test of our business and operations that I could have imagined. And in that environment, we drove industry-leading growth with a total comp sales increase of 10.8% and digital comp growth of more than 140%.As I reflect on all that’s transpired since the quarter began in February, there were two key factors in our success

[John Mulligan:]

Thanks, Brian. On these calls over the last few years, I’ve described our long-term journey in operations to completely transform our supply chain and fulfillment infrastructure, moving from our prior linear model based exclusively on store shopping to a unique modern structure, designed to support a broad array of fulfillment choices; to position our stores as the hub for guest fulfillment, whether a guest trip is based on traditional shopping, use of one of our same-day services, or delivering a package to their front door; to invest in technology, data and analytics to increase our inventory accuracy and better forecast demand throughout the network, leading to improved in-stocks, higher guest satisfaction, and ultimately, stronger sales; to transform how we collect and build store sites, moving from a rigid large format prototype model to a model in which we focus first on the neighborhood we want to serve, design a store to fit within the available space, and then curate a merchandise assortment to fit that particular neighborhood; and finally, to transform our store team, moving from a model based on general athletes to one in which different parts of the team have accountability for individual businesses, supported by tools and processes that allow them to make decisions in real-time and focus on serving our guests in new ways.One goal of all these changes was to make our operations and our team far more nimble and agile in support of our guests. And while the journey is far from over, this quarter demonstrated the benefits of everything we have already accomplished.As Brian already described, over the course of the first quarter, our team had to pivot dramatically and rapidly in response to multiple changes in shopping behavior, comps and Essentials and Food and Beverage moving from single digits in February to peaks above 50% in March, before settling down into the teens in April.Apparel trends moving just as rapidly in the other direction from positive single digits at the beginning of the quarter to trough declines of more than 50% beginning in late March, before resuming growth in the last half of April. With this volatility and category sales, managing our inventory has also presented a significant challenge.In apparel, given the recent dramatic slowdown in sales, teams have been working closely with vendors to make appropriate changes based on our current inventory and future purchases. Across the remainder of our core merchandising categories, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the pace of sales, causing out-of-stocks to rise well above where we’d like them to be.In need-based categories like Food and Beverage and Essentials, where comps have accelerated into the 20% range, we have been on allocation from multiple vendors as they work to ramp up production to cover the higher level of demand. Among some categories, like paper, in-stocks have been recovering in recent weeks. But across many portions of both Essentials and Food and Beverage, we continue to sell out quickly when we receive shipments of products from our vendors.In other categories like Home and Electronics, we’ve been increasing order quantities to match the higher pace of sales. However, given that many of these categories are primarily imported, we will likely see some persistent out-of-stocks until we can receive replenishment inventory from these overseas producers.Beyond categories, the volatility in shopping channels has been just as extreme, store comps moving from positive numbers to double-digit declines in late March and early April, then back to growth towards the end of April, digital comps moving from around 30% in February to nearly 10 times that pace in April. Through all of these extremes, the team maintained a positive attitude and demonstrated their pride in the positive role that they’re playing in our guests’ lives.I’m humbled and inspired by what they’ve been able to deliver on behalf of our guests. The ability of our team and our network to attain and sustain digital comps of nearly 300% for the entire month of April has been incredible to watch. There are too many stats to share, but I’ll tick through a few, because I think they’re helpful in understanding how remarkable it’s been.Multiple measures of unit volume, including Shipt from store, Target orders fulfilled by Shipt and overall digital or higher in the first quarter of 2020 than in the first three quarters of 2019 combined. Units provided to Drive-Up in the first quarter were higher than in all of 2019.Sales of orders shipped from stores or picked up in stores increased nearly 150% in the first quarter. Target sales fulfilled by Shipt were up more than 300% and sales through Drive-Up were up more than 600% higher than a year ago. In April, sales on Drive-Up increased nearly 1,000% compared with a year ago.These growth numbers reflect the fact that Drive-Up continues to be our most popular service. And the number of guests who are trying than repeatedly using Drive-Up continues to increase rapidly. Specifically, more than 5 million guests used our Drive-Up service in the first quarter, with 40% of these guests new to the service.And amazingly, despite this unexpected explosion in first quarter digital volume, the team continues to execute with amazing speed. Both the percent of orders shipped from store on time and the percent of pickup and Drive-Up orders picked on time was approximately 95% in the quarter and both measures were higher in the first quarter a year ago.One thing we’ve observed about this crisis is that it’s causing an acceleration in consumer trial and adoption of digital shopping. The ability of our operations to handle this unexpected acceleration has given us even stronger conviction that we have the right model and we have ample capacity to handle continued change in the future.Specifically, as part of our long range plans at the beginning of 2020, our first quarter digital volumes weren’t anticipated for another three years. But our operations accommodated that extra volume without any advanced planning. Like Brian said, it was an extreme test of our model and our team, and both performed admirably in the face of the challenge.Another area in which the crisis has accelerated existing trends relates to the amount of retail square footage in the U.S. We have long understood that the U.S. market is overstored and we’ve all observed the rationalization of unproductive retail space in recent years.But let me quickly say, we continue to strongly believe that the future of U.S. retail will be based on an omni-channel model, in which quality retailers will serve their customers through both physical and digital capabilities. That’s why we’ve consistently pursued a strategy based on investments to enhance both physical and digital shopping.And while we have temporarily slowed down our plans for remodels and new stores because of the crisis, that doesn’t mean we have less enthusiasm for these projects. Rather, we slowed down our plans for two specific reasons

[Michael Fiddelke:]

Thanks, John. As you’ve already heard several times today, this quarter was far different than anyone would have modeled 90 days ago across multiple dimensions of our business. And like everyone else for the last few months, our team has been deeply involved in the details, helping our business to effectively respond to the rapid changes in both our category and channel performance. But when you pull back from all the detail and day-to-day volatility, a couple of themes have clearly emerged.First, this environment has provided an accelerated real-time test of the investments we’ve been making in our longer-term strategy and operational model. And our business has performed better under these conditions than we would have ever imagined.Second, and also important, this environment provides a vivid illustration of why quarterly profitability isn’t always the best indicator of long-term potential. If you only looked at our first quarter EPS, which was down more than 60% compared with last year, you might be tempted to say that our performance was disappointing and that our long-term prospects have been getting weaker.But I’d strongly assert the opposite. Because of what our team has been able to accomplish and deliver for our guests, I believe our long-term prospects have gotten stronger over the last 90 days. Put another way, I wouldn’t trade Target’s future prospects for anyone else’s in the marketplace.With that context, I will run through our financial results, providing our longer-term perspective before I turn the call back over to Brian. Overall, our first quarter comparable sales grew 10.8%, reflecting some of the strongest growth our business has ever seen.Total sales grew 11.3%, about 50 basis points faster due to sales from our non-mature stores. Among the drivers of our comp growth, comparable traffic was down 1.5% and average ticket was up 12.5%, as guests consolidated their shopping trips into fewer bigger baskets. Among channels, store comparable sales increased to 0.9%, while digital comp sales grew 141%. As Brian and John highlighted earlier, quarterly averages for category and channel growth don’t show the volatility we saw throughout the quarter.On the gross margin line, our business delivered a rate of 25.1%, down about 450 basis points from a year ago. Obviously, this is well below what you would expect in normal times, but these times have been anything but normal. There are three major drivers of this quarter’s decline.First, we incurred hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental costs, including inventory impairments, resulting from the severe slowdown in apparel sales. For context on these costs, it’s important to note that prior to the first quarter, comp sales in apparel and accessories had been growing more than 5%, but quickly decelerated to more than a 20% decline in the first quarter. Put another way, if those prior trends in apparel and accessories had continued, first quarter sales in that category would have been more than $800 million higher.The second source of pressure was category sales mix, as we saw wide divergence in sales trends across our business. Our three lowest-margin categories

[Brian Cornell:]

Thanks, Michael. Before we move your questions, I want to close by reiterating some of the points we shared today. I want to start with something Michael said earlier. These times are anything, but normal. Guests are facing unprecedented changes in the way they’re living and the way they’re working.In a matter of weeks, the economy has moved from historically low levels of unemployment to some of the highest ever recorded. Not surprisingly, consumer shopping patterns have been changing significantly and frequently as everyone tries to navigate through these changes. And so, things that we might have once taken for granted have suddenly become front and center in our minds.We have a renewed appreciation for the things we need in our homes everyday items like food, paper goods, and cleaning products that are now more important than ever as we shelter in place and work remotely.In addition, we have a renewed appreciation for the people that make sure we have those products, including the people who produce them, the supply chains that move them and the teams that provide them in stores and bring them to our homes.The crisis has clearly demonstrated the essential role of our team members, as they offer compassionate, friendly service and do everything possible to ensure that their neighbors have what they need. Like John said, it’s humbling and inspiring to work alongside our team and feel their passion and resolve as they persevere through this crisis. They’re the heart and soul of Target. And the reason, I’m so confident in our future.With that, we’ll move to Q&A. John, Michael, I’ll be happy to take your questions.

[Operator:]

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] One moment, please for the first question. Our first question comes from Edward Kelly. You may go ahead.

[Edward Kelly:]

Hi, guys. Good morning, and congratulations on strong execution in a obviously challenging environment. Brian, I wanted to start with comps. So you obviously saw a significant acceleration in the back-half of April. What are you seeing so far in Q2? Any category color here would be helpful? What do you think drove this acceleration? Is it just stimulus? And what does it tell us at all about how to think about Q2 comps overall at this point?

[Brian Cornell:]

Ed, good morning, and thanks for joining us. We certainly saw an uptick as we reported starting on April 15 as stimulus checks arrived across America. And as we reported, we saw a return of a guest who was shopping in our stores, but continuing to use our digital fulfillment channels.And we started to see normalization across all of our categories, an uptick again, in categories like apparel and home, but continued strength in our entire portfolio. And that’s continued through the balance of April. That stabilization, normalization of category shopping has continued in May, as we continue to see an uptick in digital fulfillment.So while we’re not providing guidance today, we certainly are seeing a more normalized shopping environment, both in our stores and online and a guest who is shopping all of our categories, including those discretionary categories, like home and apparel.

[Edward Kelly:]

Maybe just one follow-up to that. In terms of where you have stores in states that have begun to reopen, how has performance of these stores compared to states where restrictions are still high and just kind of curious as to what you’re learning there? And how we should be thinking about the business once a broader reopening trend really emerges?

[Brian Cornell:]

Ed, we’re watching it carefully, it’s still very early. But I think what we’re seeing throughout these last few weeks is the trust that we’ve earned with American consumers who continue to turn to Target for those household essentials, their food and beverage, and now apparel and home items, as well as the strength we’ve seen in Hardlines throughout the quarter.As Americans still work from home and educate their families at home, we provide essential services throughout the pandemic and we’re seeing that continue as states open up across the country.

[Edward Kelly:]

Great. Thank you.

[Brian Cornell:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. The next question is from Chris Horvers with JPMorgan. You may go ahead.

[Christopher Horvers:]

Thanks, and good morning. So a couple of financial questions. The first one is, can you talk more quantitatively about the gross margin drivers, especially the markdown in inventory reserve and the digital Shipt component of the decline. You said hundreds of millions of dollars for the inventory component, which is $200 million, that’s 150 basis points. So, how close are we?And then, as you look ahead to 2Q, given what you’ve seen in apparel over the past month, has it cleaned – has your inventory cleaned up? And how do you think about the potential markdown risk in the second quarter?

[Operator:]

Please standby, we are experiencing technical difficulties. You will hear silence until the conference resumes. Thank you for standing by. The call will now resume.

[Michael Fiddelke:]

All right. Chris, can you hear me?

[Christopher Horvers:]

Yes. Well, the anticipation is very high, so.

[Michael Fiddelke:]

All right. I had a great answer that you heard none of, so I’ll try to do my best paraphrasing again. To decompose margin a little bit more, if I had to dimensionalize it into the three biggest drivers of what we saw in Q1, the first would be a set of merchandising actions that we took throughout the quarter. And the biggest of which, to your question, was the inventory write-downs and adjustments that we made, especially in apparel, given the deceleration we saw in apparel throughout the better part of Q1. That’s probably the biggest factor.And then, as I mentioned in my remarks, category mix at about 150 basis points, would be the second biggest factor. And then the third would be the pressure from supply chain, in general, and there’s a couple of things there. A portion of our investment in the team shows up in margin, because supply chain labor shows up in margin and then the mix shift to digital is there as well.But I think it’s worth pausing for a moment on that mix shift to digital in the rate pressure that comes with that, because I want to spend a second on how I think about digital economics, because I think there’s real risk in over-rotating on the profit rate headwind that shows up there for a couple of reasons.The first is, for the vast majority of those digital transactions and especially the ones where the guests taking advantage of our same-day services, the sales dollars, the market share dollars, and the variable profit dollars from those sales are definitely a good thing.And second, and this is most important, the economics of a digital transaction, as I’ve said before, are so much bigger than just the single transaction. When we see guests engage with more of our fulfillment choices, they become stronger customers of Target and we build relevance with them in total. And that’s where the economics of digital get most powerful.As I referenced in the Financial Community Meeting discussions a few months ago, when we see a guest use Drive-Up for the first time, they spend more at Target in total and even more in store than they did previously. And so there’s a powerful accelerant of guests becoming stronger users of all of our services, and we had 2 million guests use Drive-Up for the first time in this quarter. And so the long run prospects of that digital growth in terms of what it means with relevancy to our guests, I think are very powerful.

[Brian Cornell:]

Chris, it’s Brian. When I talk a little bit about Q2, and I’ll answer your question, but I think a question on everyone’s mind right now. And before I talk about Q2, we’ll go back to the volatility and rapid changes we saw throughout the first quarter, which makes it really difficult for us to project with any kind of certainty how consumers are going to continue to shop in the second quarter and for the balance of the year.As we sit here right now, I think, the guest that’s shopping at Target is still seeing the benefits of the stimulus check, they’re shopping in our stores, and we’ve seen store traffic increase. We’re seeing them shop all of our categories, while continuing to utilize our same-day fulfillment services.But our ability to project how that’s going to play out over the balance of the quarter or year is unfortunately something that we can’t do today. I think, there’s just too much uncertainty, too many different variables. As we sit here today, we spend lots of time each and every week talking about what will happen when and if students go back to school, or back to college. How will guest shop during the holiday season, starting with Memorial Day. It’s all to be determined right now.And one of the things that I think we’re most proud of as we think about our first quarter performance, is how we’ve adapted week-by-week, almost day-by-day to the changing consumer needs. And the flexibility that you’ve seen in our system is something that we’ll lean on throughout the balance of the quarter and the year.But I know everyone is anxious for us to provide a perspective on the second quarter and the full-year. Unfortunately, our perspective right now is that, we have to be flexible. We have to be adaptable. We have to continue to meet changing consumer needs. And I think we’ve demonstrated the ability to do that in the first quarter.

[Christopher Horvers:]

I guess, just to push a little bit on. I mean, to the extent that how do you – as you book that inventory reserve, I mean, how did you think about the ability to take some of that second quarter risk down? I mean, is there a scenario where you could see that gross margin impact from clearance be anywhere near what you just experienced in the first quarter?

[John Mulligan:]

Yes. What I’d say, Chris is, this is what our teams do each and everyday. And so we react to changing trends and take inventory actions appropriate. And I’d give just a huge hats off to our merchandising teams who have worked through the volatility and sales trends throughout the quarter, both the softness and apparel that leads to some of the write-downs we’re talking about in Q1, but in every category that’s seen trends deviate from history in such meaningful ways.

[Brian Cornell:]

Yes. And said another way, Chris, I think, we feel very good about our inventory position as we go into the second quarter.

[Christopher Horvers:]

Understood. Thanks very much, guys.

[Brian Cornell:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. The next question is from Ed Yruma with KeyBanc Capital Markets. You may go ahead.

[Edward Yruma:]

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking the question. You guys have done an incredible job ramping Drive-Up. I guess, as you kind of assess the service today, what are the key limiters in enhancing throughput there? Is it staffing levels, social distancing? Or is it literally like the physical parking spots?And I guess, as you think about ramping it into a more normalized environment, what’s your expectation on keeping some of those customers that are trialing it right now? Thank you.

[Brian Cornell:]

Ed, I’m going to let John answer this question, but I’m smiling. When I think about the fact that during the first quarter, our same-day services grew by 278%. I think John and his team have shown their ability to ramp up as needed.

[John Mulligan:]

Good morning, Ed. Yes, I I’ll just start with Brian left off there. I think that’s exactly right. And you saw it accelerate throughout the quarter. Like I said in the remarks, Drive-Up accelerated to 1,000% growth in the month of April.So from a limiter perspective, we think a couple of things, which we’re looking to address and we don’t really view these as limiters, as we know, these are things that come with volume. One is parking spaces, to your point. And you’ll see us add additional parking slots over the next several months.The second is in-store space, and we are already in process of adding incremental storage space, flexible and incremental storage space for the store team. So we feel good about that. But from a process perspective, from a team perspective, there are no limiters and we’ve talked about this for a few years now about the scalability of the model of using the stores as hubs. And I think that’s really shown through this quarter.The other thing I would add that we’re really excited about from a Drive-Up perspective. As I said, we’ve throttled back on expanding temperature-controlled, so fresh, frozen types of products into Drive-Up. Earlier this quarter, we’ve resumed that Minneapolis also added Kansas City. And early on our plans had been to get to three states this year and then pause and react and scale over next year.Our plan now is to accelerate that and to get to as many stores as possible over the next several months, because it’s clearly something that our store – or that our guests would like our stores to deliver. We’re excited about the opportunity there. We’re excited to deliver another service for our guests and the store’s ability to execute that has been just phenomenal.

[Edward Yruma:]

Thank you so much.

[Brian Cornell:]

Ed, sitting here today, I’ve said a number of times to the team, I think, we’ve accelerated our digital fulfillment awareness with a guest and fulfillment capabilities by upwards of three years. And I think we’ll come out of this first quarter with a much greater awareness around the type of services Target provides, the trust that we’re building in same-day, the knowledge that guests have today that if they place an order with target.com, within two hours, they can come to our stores and pick up.They can pull into one of our Drive-Up lanes and within two minutes, we’ll put it in their trunk. Or we’ll have a Shipt shopper, bring it to their home within two hours. So I think we are going to see a dramatic acceleration in awareness and utilization of those same-day fulfillment capabilities.

[Edward Yruma:]

Great. Thanks so much.

[Operator:]

Thank you. The next question is from Matt McClintock with Raymond James. You may go ahead.

[Matt McClintock:]

Hi, yes. Good morning and congrats to you and the rest of the Target team. Brian, I want to kind of think about this uncertainty in the macro from a different angle. How do you think about consolidation of the industry going forward, whether that be through your digital capabilities, or whether that be through, quite frankly, retailers that don’t reopen their doors? And how does this compare and contrast to prior economic difficult scenarios or recessions, et cetera, where maybe that type of consolidation didn’t happen, so when we try to assess your risk going forward, we can actually think about this relative to the past? Thank you.

[Brian Cornell:]

So, Matt, thanks for joining us again this morning. And I think for several years now, we’ve been talking about this movement towards consolidation in the industry and the bifurcation that’s been taking place over the last couple of years with pronounced winners and unfortunately, losers in the retail environment.I think unfortunately, and I do say that sincerely, unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I think, we’re going to see an acceleration in that bifurcation. And we’ve already seen a number of retailers filing for bankruptcy. We expect even further store closures over the next couple of years. And I think it’s going to only accelerate the opportunities that companies like Target will have to consolidate market share and continue to grow profitably in this environment.I also think from a consumer standpoint, as we survey our guests and as we talk to consumers, I think, we’re going to see a consolidation in how people shop. And I think our multi-category portfolio positions us very well in an environment where today’s consumer is looking to make fewer stops and the ability to come to Target and pick up their food and beverage needs, their household essentials, their beauty products, their home apparel items, and their household essentials and Hardlines each and every week, makes us an attractive choice in a consolidating environment.So sitting here today, during obviously a point of crisis across America, while we’re very humble as we look at our performance and the role we played, we’re equally optimistic about the future of Target. And we think this consolidation, both in the retail market and how consumers shop will benefit us for years and years to come.

[Matt McClintock:]

Thanks for that color. And then just as a quick follow-up. All in Motion, you clearly launched that into a difficult situation. But I was just wondering if we could get an update on that brand, because it does seem like athletic apparel has actually done quite well relative to the rest of the apparel industry during this time of crisis? Thanks.

[Brian Cornell:]

Matt, I’m glad you asked. And while we talked about obviously some softness in apparel throughout the quarter, one category that did perform really well was the performance category. As consumers are working from home and spending a lot more time at home, that was certainly a category that performed well, and we are very excited about the potential of All in Motion.

[Matt McClintock:]

Thanks a lot. Best of luck.

[Brian Cornell:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. The next question is from Karen Short with Barclays. You may go ahead.

[Karen Short:]

Hi, thanks very much. Congratulations on managing through obviously a very tough quarter. I just wanted to go back to the gross margin for a second. And I guess the question is, people who are a little more skeptical on how this year is going to shape out for you kind of harp on the fact that there will be significant inventory liquidations across all of retail, and that, that will be something that you have to address from a pricing perspective in your store?And I wanted to just get your thoughts on that a little bit, because it does seem that you have pulled forward some of the markdowns that you would otherwise see in 2Q and 2Q does seem like it might shape up to be better than you’d expected. But wondering if you could just give some thoughts on how you’re thinking about that in terms of your inventory from like a third quarter, fourth quarter perspective event?

[John Mulligan:]

Yes, I can start. Thanks for the question. As Brian mentioned, we feel really good about how our inventory is positioned, especially in apparel right now. So we feel like we took the right actions in Q1 to position us right to pursue the sales opportunities in front of us.With respect to the price and promotion environment, again, that’s something that we got a lot of history navigating. And we’ll be committed to be priced right with appropriate promotion in any environment around us and watch pretty carefully what’s happening in the competition. But especially to see some strength returned to apparel at the end of the quarter, I think, we feel really good about the go-forward prospects.

[Brian Cornell:]

Yes. And Karen, one of the teams that we really need to acknowledge as we sit here today is our Target sourcing team, who throughout the quarter, has done a terrific job of some points canceling and then chasing inventory as we’ve seen changes in trends.And the relationship we have with our own brand vendors, the strength of our vendor matrix that supports us each and everyday is something that’s really put us in a unique position. And that sourcing team is one of our key capabilities that allows us to adjust the market needs. So that team service well in the first quarter and will position us well over the balance of the year.

[Karen Short:]

Okay, that’s helpful. And then I just want to ask one other question. It seems like at least on the food side, we’re definitely seeing a lot of conventional competitors really raise prices pretty rapidly in light of the heightened demand. And you guys seem to be holding price points or price positioning. So can you maybe provide a little color on how you think that might be helping you gain share, because it does seem like the price gaps have widened to unprecedented levels? And I say that on the food side, specifically?

[Brian Cornell:]

So, Karen, as you’ve heard us talk about for a number of years now, we’re committed to being priced right daily each and everyday. And that includes during this pandemic, and as we go into the second quarter, and it certainly includes our Food and Beverage categories.So we’ve seen very little change in our everyday pricing throughout the quarter. You have seen a reduction in promotions based on obviously limited supply of certain products. But our commitment to delivering great value to our guests in Food and Beverage and in all of our categories persist as we sit here today.

[Karen Short:]

Great. Thanks.

[Brian Cornell:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. The next question is from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. You may go ahead. Simeon, your line is open. We can’t hear you. Can you check your mute feature, please? And we’re not getting a response. I’ll go to the next question.

[Brian Cornell:]

Operator, why don’t we move on and perhaps we can come back to Simeon later.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question is from Paul Lejuez with Citi. You may go ahead.

[Tracy Kogan:]

Thanks. It’s Tracy Kogan filling in for Paul. Two questions. I was wondering about the new customers you said you gained during the quarter. Are there – is there any particular demographic group you’re attracting? And then I was also wondering what you’ve seen with repeat purchases from those customers? And then I just have one follow-up. Thanks.

[Brian Cornell:]

Yes. So, Tracy, we talked about the fact that we saw 5 million new guests use target.com. And John talked about the number of new users for Drive-Up, 2 million new Drive-Up users during the quarter. So we’re certainly looking at the profile of that customer, but we recognize the stickiness that comes along with that.And I’ll let John talk about the reaction we get when people use our same-day services and the high Net Promoter Scores we continue to receive. And I think we’re going to recognize coming out of this first quarter in the pandemic, that guests are going to continue to gravitate towards the convenience and the contact-free element that Drive-Up allows. So we’re seeing a great response. Lots of new guests using target.com and Drive-Up, and we’ll expect that to continue over the balance of the year.

[John Mulligan:]

Yes. The thing I would add, the great thing we saw throughout the quarter and again, really proud of our teams is Drive-Up is our highest Net Promoter Score. Shipt is a very high Net Promoter Score. Pickup is a high Net Promoter Score and then the in-store experience, Net Promoter Score across all of those scores absent the usual week-to-week volatility that we see, all of them remain steady, even at the peak when we were, as the – as things accelerated very quickly into our digital channels, we saw great Net Promoter scores.And as Brian said, that is the best indicator of guests coming back to us. We’ve already seen 40% of the Drive-Up guests repeat purchase. So we focused all quarter long with all of our teams on ensuring that we can provide a great guest experience. And when we do that, we see them come back and use our services again.

[Tracy Kogan:]

Great. Thank you. And then my follow-up was, if you could comment generally on the national brand versus private brand performance in the quarter and then specifically how Good and Gather performed? Thank you.

[Brian Cornell:]

Well, I’ll start with Good and Gather and that was an important part of the over 20% growth we saw in Food and Beverage. You’ll see us actually, as we move into the second quarter begin to expand the number of items in the Good and Gather brand. So we feel really good about the guests response during the pandemic, and we expect that to continue over the balance of the year.And at this point, I probably need to just pause and thank many of our national branded vendors and the support that they provided us during the first quarter. Obviously, unprecedented levels of growth. We talked about the type of growth we saw in household essentials in Food and Beverage, but in so many of our categories.And our national branded vendors did a superb job of working hand in hand with our buyers, our supply chain team to meet the demand and get us the product we need, and a big thanks to all of our national branded partners. We appreciate everything they’ve done.

[Tracy Kogan:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. The next question is from Robbie Ohmes with Bank of America. You may go ahead.

[Robert Ohmes:]

Oh, hi, guys, my congrats as well on the execution, pretty incredible, so thank you for that, because I’m a customer. Actually, just some follow-up on digital. One was on Shipt. I was wondering if you could talk about the membership growth that you saw in the first quarter and we’ve seen pretty dramatic app download data on Shipt? And also are you signing up a lot more partners on Shipt?And then my follow-up would just be, maybe for Brian or John or Michael, just with this huge digital volume, are there anything you’re learning about, whether it’s going to be tougher, easier over the long-term, as you average out at much higher digital volumes? Are you seeing new ways to get the profitability up that maybe you weren’t seeing before this big ramp up in volume? Thanks.

[Brian Cornell:]

So, Robbie, why don’t we let John start by talking about the outstanding performance we saw with Shipt, and then we’ll come back and talk about digital profitability over time.

[John Mulligan:]

Good morning, Robbie, good to talk to you. Shipt, consistent with everything else we’ve said about digital, has seen – saw significant acceleration and that they and their team did an outstanding job hiring into that or getting Shipt shoppers. Order volume over the course of the quarter for Shipt business independent of Target’s portion of that order volume was up two times. In April, it was up three times. They had 60% growth in membership. So a significant acceleration in members.They engaged 100,000 additional shoppers, so doubling the number of shoppers they had going into the quarter. And so a significant acceleration across Target. We saw a 300% increase in sales to last year through our Shipt channel. So again, significant acceleration there.And like I said, on the previous caller that probably perhaps most importantly, the NPS score, very, very high. And they maintained that throughout the quarter, a few dips when sales really accelerated quickly within a week to 10 days. But beyond that, the team did an exceptional job and really getting shoppers to meet that demand. And so we’re really enthusiastic about the Shipt performance and encouraged by what we saw.

[Michael Fiddelke:]

And I can maybe just chime in on the prospects for increased efficiency over time. We’ve seen across wherever we’ve had growth, whether it’s the growth in Drive-Up over the last several years, order pickup, volume helps us. And with volume, we can bring efficiency. When it comes to digital, as John mentioned, we’ve been investing in planning and the capability to support this volume. We just thought it’d be three years from now.And so we’ve seen an acceleration for what we would expect it to take three years that’s now happened in a matter of weeks. And so as we get the chance to optimize some of our operations against that volume, we should be able to drive increased deficiency over time.But the thing I’m most excited about on the digital front that we’ve touched on a little bit already, is just the opportunity, we have to capture relevance with guests as their shopping habits change. We know over the long run that when guest behavior changes, and that’s why a family with a new baby in the house is such an important guest milestone for us where we want to show up, because that’s when shopping habits can change.Back to college, the first time you move into your new home, those milestones matter to us as a retailer and always have, because that’s when shopping habits can change. And I think across America right now, we’re seeing an acceleration in the change of shopping habits as it relates to digital. And the way we’ve shown up with 280-plus percent growth in digital on April means, we’re capturing a lot of that mindshare and those new routines as they’re forming.

[Brian Cornell:]

Yes. Robbie, I just – I’d finish up by going back to our strategy and using our stores as fulfillment hubs. And as we talked about our performance with digital, although 141% growth rate is a stunning number, the number I really focuses on is the same-day fulfillment, which grew by 278%. And that was all fulfilled by our stores.And if you actually look at a different metric, if we think about store-fulfilled comps during the first quarter, we grew by 10.8% overall. If I look at that store-fulfilled comp number that increased by over 9%. It means our stores are driving tremendous productivity and they are the center of our strategy. And that’s a number you’ll hear us talk about more and more and more.So when we talk about store comps during the quarter, they look relatively low at just under 1%. But those stores actually drove over 9% comp growth during the quarter. And from an economic standpoint, we know over time, that’s a really healthy and profitable transaction.So the stores did tremendous work during this quarter. And America turned to Target stores, because they trust our service and our liability and rewarded us with a store-fulfilled comp of over 9%. Operator, we have time for only one last question.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our last question is from Oliver Chen with Cowen. You may go ahead.

[Oliver Chen:]

Thanks a lot. Brian, what would you prioritize at some of the most surprising and/or permanent changes from the crisis? And John, I was curious about the future of automation and robotics, especially as you do a really great job using stores as hubs. How do you see that playing out in-store with Drive-Up and with inventory management accuracy? Thank you.

[Brian Cornell:]

Oliver, why don’t I start. And when I think about the quarter and some of the learning from the quarter, I’ll have to go back with the importance of stores. And at the start of the pandemic and we’ve talked about the different chapters, America turned to Target stores and that’s where we saw the uptick. That’s where they came for household essentials to stop – stock up on food and beverage.When America was asked to shelter in place, they started to use our same-day fulfillment channels, and we’re picking up in-store and driving to our parking lots to use Drive-Up, or using a Shipt shopper. But when I think about the quarter, it just reinforces to me the important role that stores play, both our traditional stores and even our smaller formats in urban markets.The number of e-mails I’ve received from guests in New York City and Boston and Chicago thanking us for that small format in their neighborhood that supplies all of their household and family needs during the pandemic. So my highlight and takeaway is, stores are vitally important, and stores will continue to play a really important role to America as we go forward.

[John Mulligan:]

And then on your second question, Oliver, on automation analytics technology, as you know, we’ve been pursuing that on several fronts. I think to the last half of your question about inventory allocation, inventory placement, as you know, we’ve been developing analytics and technology across something we call inventory, planning and control, IPC. We’re about a third of the way into that deployment.We paused much of that for this quarter. The teams are assessing right now what timeline we want to get back on to begin deploying that further across the chain. We feel really, really good about the opportunity for us to improve what we’re doing from an inventory placement with that technology and analytics.And then from an automation perspective, we’ve talked about we had analytics or a automation pilot going on in Minneapolis, also at Perth. In Minneapolis, we actually deployed that automation to four more locations. We have not started that up yet, because that will require some travel and we want to – we will take the safety of our teams into account as we think about getting back into the travel game. But when we are able to do that, we’ll get that to four more locations this year and then continue to expand.Out of Perth, the teams have made great, great progress here even while we haven’t been able to get into that building. And so when we do get into that building, we’ll do some final testing to scale it out and then begin, as I said, a couple of months ago, to think about where we deploy that next, somewhere within our network and an existing facility.So you’ll see us to continue to expand automation. When it comes to store automation, I think, we’ve shown the ability to scale very, very rapidly with our teams and with the technology that we have provided them. And so we feel very, very good about the productivity and scalability and reliability of our current processes in teams, and we’ll continue to explore other avenues as we go forward to improve that.

[Brian Cornell:]

Yes. So to John’s point, automation will be important, Oliver. But as we sit here today, I think, the most important thing to focus on is execution. And I think in this environment, we’ve earned the trust of American shoppers with great execution and our commitment to providing a safe shopping environment. And you’ll see us continue to commit to safety and trust as we go forward over the balance of the year.

[Brian Cornell:]

So, operator, that concludes our call today. I want to thank everyone for joining us. I hope you stay safe and healthy, and we look forward to the day when we could be meeting again face-to-face. So thank you.