Participants

Ernie Herrman; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; TJX Companies Inc

Debra McConnell; Senior Vice President, Global Communications; TJX Companies Inc

John Klinger; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Executive Vice President; TJX Companies Inc

Paul Lejuez; Analyst; $Citigroup Inc(C-N)$.

Lorraine Hutchinson; Analyst; BofA Securities

Matthew Boss; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co

Brooke Roach; Analyst; Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Michael Binetti; Analyst; Evercore Inc.

Chuck Grom; Analyst; Gordon Haskett

Chad Britnell; Analyst; Morgan Stanley

Adrienne Yih; Analyst; Barclays Bank

Marni Shapiro; Analyst; The Retail Tracker

Laura Champine; Analyst; Loop Capital

Mark Altschwager; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co.

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the TJX Company's fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, February 26, 2025.
I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ernie Herrman, Chief Executive Officer and President of the TJX Companies Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Ernie Herrman

Thanks, Courtney. Before we begin, Deb has some opening comments.

Debra McConnell

Thank you, Ernie, and good morning. Today's call is being recorded and includes forward-looking statements about our results and plans. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to vary materially from these statements, including, among others, the factors identified in our filings with the SEC.
Please review our press release for a cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements, as well as the full Safe Harbor statements included in the investor section of our website TJX.com. We have also detailed the impact of foreign exchange on our consolidated results and our international divisions in today's press release and in the investor section of TJX.com, along with reconciliation to non-GAAP measures we discuss.
Thank you, and now I'll turn it back over to Ernie.

Ernie Herrman

Good morning. Joining me and Deb on the call is John.
I want to first take a moment to share our care and concern for everyone affected by the wildfires in California. While many of our associates were affected, we are grateful that they are all safe. We have offered resources to our associates and also made emergency donations to World Central Kitchen and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank to help provide support for people who most need it.
Now to our business update. I am very pleased with our outstanding fourth quarter. Our sales, profitability, and earnings per share were all well above our expectations. I am particularly pleased that our overall comp sales growth of 5% was driven by strong consistent comp increases of 4% or above at each of our divisions. Further, our comp sales growth across all of our divisions was once again driven by an increase in customer transactions.
Clearly our great values, gifting assortment, and freshness of our mix resonated with our shoppers during the holiday season. For the full year, overall sales surpassed $56 billion and we opened our 5,000th store, a milestone for our company. I want to recognize the excellent execution across our company which led to our above planned results.
Full year comp store sales growth of 4%, a significant increase in profitability, and a double digit increase in our earnings per share were all above our guidance for the year. We are confident that we continue to attract new shoppers in every country we operate in, and that there are plenty of opportunities to further grow our customer base going forward.
I want to thank all of our global associates for their excellent work in 2024. I am extremely grateful for their continued dedication and commitment to TJX and to our customers every day. As we begin 2025, we are excited about the opportunities we see in our business and have many initiatives planned that we believe will further drive sales and traffic to our stores and online.
Availability of merchandise is fantastic, and we believe we are in a great position to execute on our merchandizing plans and keep delivering our shopper's outstanding values on great brands and fashions throughout the year.
I'll speak more about our full year performance and our confidence and our growth opportunities over the long term in a moment. But first, I'll turn the call over to John to cover our results in more detail.

John Klinger

Thanks, Ernie. I also want to add my gratitude to all of our global associates for their hard work and commitment to TJX this year.
Moving to our results, as a reminder, last year our fiscal calendar had an extra week in the fourth quarter. Therefore, where applicable, we'll be referencing adjusted numbers for last year's results which exclude the impact of that extra week. Now I'll share some additional details on the fourth quarter. Net sales grew to $16.4 billion, a 5% increase versus last year's adjusted sales.
As Ernie mentioned, our fourth quarter consolidated comp sales increased 5%, which was well above our plan and driven by an increase in customer transactions. We were very pleased to see strong comp sales increases in both our overall apparel and home categories. Pre-tax profit margin of 11.6% was up 70 basis points versus last year's adjusted 10.9%.
Our pre-tax profit margin was 70 basis points above the high end of our plan. This was primarily due to a benefit from lower shrink as well as expense leverage on our above plan sales, partially offset by higher incentive compensation accruals.
Gross margin was up 100 basis points versus last year's adjusted 29.5%. This was primarily driven by a benefit from our year-end true up of shrink expense and strong mark on. SG&A was 19.2%, up 30 basis points versus last year due to incremental wage and payroll costs. Net interest income was neutral to pre-tax profit margin versus last year. All this led to diluted earnings per share of $1.23 up 10% versus last year's adjusted $1.12 and also well above our plan.
As for our divisional performance in the fourth quarter, we saw strong comp store sales growth at every division, all driven by increases in customer transactions. We were particularly pleased with the outstanding sales performance at our international divisions with TJX Canada comp, with TGX Canada's comp sales increasing 10% and TJX International comp sales up 7%.
Now to our full year fiscal '25 results. Net sales grew to $56.4 billion a 6% increase versus last year's adjusted sales. Consolidated comp store sales were up 4%, entirely driven by customer transactions. Pre-tax profit margin of 11.5% was up 60 basis points versus last year's adjusted 10.9%. Gross margin was 30.6%, up 70 basis points versus last year's adjusted 29.9%. This increase was driven by a strong mark on lower freight costs and 20 basis points from shrink favorability partially offset by higher supply chain investments.
Regarding shrink, we saw favorability across all our divisions. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the great collaboration and tremendous efforts of our associates who worked extremely hard on our initiatives throughout the year. SG&A was 19.4%, up 10 basis points versus last year's 19.3%. This was due to incremental store wage and payroll costs. Net interest income was neutral to the full year pre-tax profit margin versus last year. All this led to a full year earnings per share of $4.26 up 13% versus last year's $3.76.
Ernie will talk about our full year divisional highlights in a moment. Moving to inventory, balance sheet inventory was up 8% and inventory on a per store basis was up 1%. We feel great about our inventory levels and the outstanding availability we're seeing in the marketplace. We are well positioned to flow fresh assortments to our stores and online this spring.
I'll finish with our liquidity and shareholder distributions. For the full year, we generated $6.1 billion in operating cash flow and ended the year with $5.3 billion in cash. In fiscal '25, we returned $4.1 billion to shareholders through our buyback and dividend programs.
Now I'll turn it back to Ernie.

Ernie Herrman

Thanks John. I will pick it up with some full year divisional highlights. I am extremely pleased with the consistency of our sales performance across our divisions. Each business delivered comp store sales growth of 4% or above, and importantly, the sales were entirely driven by an increase in customer transactions. We believe this highlights the strength of our value propositions. Our ability to gain market share and the power of our wide customer demographic.
At Marmaxx, overall sales for the full year exceeded $34 billion and comp store sales increased 4%. Marmaxx's apparel and home categories both saw comp sales increases. Additionally, comp store sales increased across all of Marmaxx's regions and income demographics. At Sierra, which is reported with Marmaxx, we were very pleased with their strong performance for the year.
As to profitability, full year segment profit margin increased to a strong 14.1%. With more than 2,500 total TJ Maxx and Marshall stores today, we still see plenty of opportunities to open new stores, attract more shoppers, and further grow our sales.
At HomeGoods, annual sales grew to $9.4 billion and comp store sales increased 4%. During the year, we opened our 1,000th store for this division, a great milestone. We were very pleased to see this division's segment profits surpass $1 billion and see its margin return to double digit levels at 10.9%. We are by far the largest off-price home fashion's retailer in the United States, and we continue to see plenty of opportunities to capture additional market share with both our HomeGoods and Homesense banners.
At TJX Canada, full year sales increased to $5.2 billion and comp store sales were up 5%. It was great to see consistent performance at all three of our Canadian retail banners, which each delivered similar comp store sales increases. Segment profit margin on a constant currency basis was 13.5%. As Canada's leading off price apparel and home fashion retailer, we believe our winners, Marshalls, and Homesense banners are all on track for continued successful growth.
At TJX International, full year sales exceeded $7 billion and comp store sales increased 4% with strength in both Europe and Australia. As to profitability, I am very pleased with this division's improvement in 2024. Segment profit margin on a constant currency basis was 5.8%.
In Europe, we continue to grow our footprint in our existing countries and announced our plans to open our first stores in Spain in calendar 2026. In Australia, comp stores sales growth was outstanding, and we continue to expand the reach of our TK Maxx banner across the country. Long term, we are confident that we have opportunities to captured market share in each country that we operate in. At the e-commerce, overall sales increased and we added new categories and brands to our assortment across our sites to further enhance our online treasure hunt shopping experience.
Okay, moving on, I'd like to highlight the key differentiators of our business that give us great confidence in our continued successful growth around the world for many years to come.
First is our value leadership in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. We believe that our relentless focus on value every day through a combination of brand, fashion, price and quality will continue to resonate with shoppers.
Second is our very wide demographic. We want to sell everyone and believe our offerings across good, better, and best brands appeal to shoppers across most income and age demographics.
Third, we believe we have one of the most flexible business models in retail. This allows us to buy close to need and adjust our selections as macro trends and consumer preferences change.
Next is our differentiated treasure hunt shopping experience driven by our rapidly changing assortment. Our stores receive multiple deliveries a week of fresh branded merchandise to surprise and excite our customers. We believe this can inspire shoppers to visit us more frequently to see what's new.
[Beth] is our world class buying organization. I believe the depth of experience among our 1,300-plus buyers around the world is unmatched and that we have the best vendor relationships in retail. Our merchants source from an average changing universe of over 21,000 vendors and from more than 100 countries.
Further, we continue to see a significant opportunity to grow our global store base. We are increasing our long-term store potential to a total of 7,000 stores or over 1,900 more stores in just our existing and announced geographies. This now reflects the long-term potential for HomeGoods to expand to 1,800 stores. Sierra to expand to 325 stores, and our base in Spain to grow to 100 stores.
In addition to our future store growth opportunities, I want to reiterate my excitement for our newly formed joint venture with Grupo Axo in Mexico and our recent investment in Brands For Less in the Middle East. We see both of these as a great way to participate in the growth of our price in different areas of the world.
Lastly, I am so proud of our culture which I am convinced is a key component of our success. We continue to invest in teaching and training to develop the next generation of TJX leaders.
Turning to corporate responsibility. We are excited about the progress we have made over many years and the work we have underway. On our conference calls over the past year, I've shared updates on how we support our associates and communities, our work to mitigate our impact on the environment, and our commitment to operating ethically.
Today, I'd like to share more about some of the remarkable efforts our TJX foundations and associates made this past year to have an impact on the communities where we live and work. In addition to the support I mentioned earlier for people affected by the California wildfires in 2024, we also helped with the relief efforts for those affected by hurricanes in the southeastern United States and flooding in Austria and Poland.
Further, we supported more than 2,500 non-profit organizations globally through our TJX foundations. Associates across the globe play an important part in this meaningful work by volunteering, running donation campaigns in our stores, participating in our Associate Nominated Grants program, and more. These are just some of the examples of work our teams are doing in our communities, and we invite you to visit TJX.com to learn more.
Before I close, I want to emphasize that our primary focus remains our value gap versus traditional retailers. I am very confident that the key strengths and flexibility of our business will allow us to navigate through the current China tariff environment, just as we have successfully navigated through many other types of retail environments in our nearly 50-year history.
In closing, we feel great about our strong performance in 2024. We are confident in our plans for the year and as always, we will strive to beat them. Longer term, we remain laser focused on growing our business and are convinced that we can continue to increase our market share in the United States and internationally.
When I look at our growth opportunities ahead, the globalness of our business, our deep talent base, our wide customer base, and the consumers continued desire for value, I am very excited about the future of TJX.
Now I'll turn the call back to John to cover a full year and first quarter guidance, and then we'll open it up for questions. John?

John Klinger

Thanks again, Ernie. I'll start with our full year fiscal '26 guidance. We're planning overall comp store sales growth of 2% to 3%. Starting in fiscal '26, our comp store sales will include e-commerce sales, which as a reminder are a small piece of our total business. We do not expect e-commerce to have a material impact in our comp sales growth.
For the full year we expect consolidated sales to be in the range of $58.1 billion to $58.6 billion, up 3% to 4%. We expect favorable foreign exchange rates to have a 1% negative -- I'm sorry, we expect unfavorable foreign exchange rates to have a 1% negative impact to consolidated sales growth. We're planning full year pre-tax profit margin to be in the range of 11.3% to 11.4%, down 10 basis points to 20 basis points versus last year's 11.5%. This guidance assumes a 20 basis points negative impact due to the unfavorable foreign exchange rates and transactional [FX].
Moving to our full year gross margin, we expect it to be in the range of 30.4% to 30.5%. This would be down 10 basis points to 20 basis points versus last year's 30.6% due to unfavorable transactional foreign exchange and inventory hedge. We're also planning for a slight improvement in shrink.
We are expecting full year SGNA to be 19.3%, 10 basis points favorable to last year's 19.4%, driven by a benefit from the annualization of last year's higher incentive compensation accruals. We're planning net interest income of $98 million which we expect to deliver fiscal '26 pre-tax profit margin by 20 basis points. We're currently assuming a full year tax rate of 25.1% and a weighted average share count of approximately 1.13 billion shares.
As a result of these assumptions, we're expecting full year diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $4.34 to $4.43, up 2% to 4% versus last year's $4.26. This EPS guidance assumes a 3% negative impact to EPS growth due to unfavorable translational and transactional foreign exchange.
Lastly, our fiscal '26 guidance assumes a small negative impact in the first half of the year from the current China tariffs on merchandise that we were committed to when these tariffs went into place. We have a great team. We have seen tariffs before and we are confident we can navigate our way through the current China tariff environment on our future buys.
Moving to first quarter, we expect overall comp store sales to increase 2% to 3%. While weather was not favorable to the start of the quarter, we have been pleased with what we've seen recently as weather has normalized.
We expect consolidated sales to be in the range of $12.8 billion to $12.9 billion. Pre-tax profit margin to be in the range of 10% to 10.1%, down 100 basis points to 110 basis points versus last year's 11.1%. Gross margin to be in the range of 29.8% to 29.9%, which would be down 10 basis points to 20 basis points versus last year's 30%. This is primarily due to unfavorable inventory hedges.
SG&A to be 20%, up 80 basis points versus last year's 19.2%. This is primarily due to incremental store wage and payroll costs and the lapping of a one-time benefit last year. Net interest income of $27 million which we expect will deliver our year over year pre-tax profit margin by 20 basis points. Tax rate of 23.2% and a weighted average share count of approximately 1.13 billion shares.
As a result of these assumptions, we're expecting first quarter diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.87 to $0.89 versus last year's diluted earnings per share of $0.93.
I want to mention that there are several factors causing our first quarter pre-tax profit margin and earnings per share to be planned lower than the remainder of the year. This includes a benefit from lower incentive compensation accruals planned in the last nine months of fiscal '26, the lapping of a benefit from a reserve release in the first quarter of last year and the expected timing of certain expenses.
Importantly, this first quarter guidance implies that the last nine months of the year we expect pre-tax profit margin to be flat to up 10 basis points and earnings per share to be up 4% to 6% versus last year.
Moving to our fiscal '26 capital plans, we expect capital expenditures to be in the range of $2.1 billion to $2.2 billion. This includes opening new stores, remodels, relocations, as well as investments in our distribution network and infrastructure to support our growth. For new stores, we plan to add about 130 net new stores, which will bring our year-end total to over 5,200 stores. This would represent a store growth of about 3%.
In the US, our plans call for us to add about 40 net new stores at Marmaxx, 30 stores at HomeGoods, including 9 HomeSense stores. At Sierra, we plan to add about 20 stores. In Canada, we plan to add 12 stores, and at TJX International, we plan to add 22 net stores in Europe and six net stores in Australia.
Lastly, we also plan to remodel about 500 stores and relocate approximately 40 stores in fiscal '26. As to our fiscal '26 cash distribution plans, we remain committed to returning cash to shareholders. As we outlined in today's press release, we expect our Board will increase our quarterly dividend by 13% to $0.425 per share. Additionally, in fiscal '26, we currently expect to buy back $2 billion to $2.5 billion of TGX stock.
In closing, I want to emphasize that we are in an excellent position both operationally and financially to take advantage of the opportunities we see to further grow our business while simultaneously returning significant cash to our shareholders.
Now we're happy to take your questions. As a reminder, please limit your questions to one per person so we can answer as many questions as we can. Thanks, and now we'll open it up to questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you, we will now begin the question-and-answer session.
(Operator Instructions) Paul Lejuez.

Paul Lejuez

Hey, thanks guys. Curious if you could talk about what drove the stronger performance in Canada and international? If there's anything that changed in the macro that you think worked in your favor? Or was it simply better execution? And also curious if you expect those businesses to continue to outperform this year?

Ernie Herrman

Sure, Paul. Yeah, obviously, very pleased with both Europe and Canada. And common denominator with both of them was the way we flow -- first of all, you're in a gift-giving time period in Q4, and we've typically done well in Q2. These two divisions specifically executed a flow plan in terms of how late they shipped freshness in prior to Christmas.
That it was extremely beneficial to their pre-Christmas, the 10 days before Christmas time period, and this applies to both Europe and to Canada. And then even the post-Christmas business in both was exceptionally strong.
So I give them a lot of credit on that as well as what they did in addition to going after specific gift categories, which I think was a big improvement in owning those in more depth versus the prior year. It was the balance of good, better, best across the board in Europe and in Canada as well.
They also both had healthy home businesses, which helped their total because, as you know, home spikes in Q4. And we have certain categories there that are great gift-giving categories. So I think there was a bit of a tactical execution benefit from the way they flowed and then a mix advantage in both. By the way, it applies to both of them. Thanks for the -- we were very pleased with both of those divisions.

Paul Lejuez

Yeah. And Ernie, you expect them to continue to outperform? And then I guess on a related --

Ernie Herrman

Yeah, Paul. Yes, we've seen both of them continuing to -- very happy with the way they've been performing, and they both have really some seasoned management across those areas. That gives me a lot of faith between our -- over there, they call it merchandise, between our planning and allocation area as well as all our head merchants. We have a lot of seasoning there. And people that have gone to some of the new key roles, starting about two years ago that I think is going to set them up, I think, for strong execution over the next year.

Paul Lejuez

Thank you.

Ernie Herrman

Yeah, thank you, Paul. Great question.

Operator

Lorraine Hutchinson.

Lorraine Hutchinson

Thanks. Good morning. Ernie, I wanted to ask about customer behavior on both ends of the spectrum. Are you seeing trade down at the higher end? And then at the lower end of the assortment, how are customers reacting to some of the sharper price value offerings?

Ernie Herrman

Yeah. So it's hard for us to really measure on that because part of our success -- and again, this was an extremely pleasing quarter for us to have. Every division running a 4% or better. When you have Canada -- by the way, the other thing to remember is we were up against a good quarter the year before in Q4. So it becomes tough to measure on the good, better, best, so to speak, or the demographics on income because we were pretty much performing at every level across every banner that we have.

John Klinger

We did see when we look at our -- and again, this is where stores are the store performance in different demographic areas. We saw nice increases in both our below 100 and above 100 income demographic areas.

Ernie Herrman

And I think, Lorraine, part of the evening off that happens is with the -- and you've seen a lot of the write-ups. So I know consumer comp is down a little and we have store closures in different pockets of retailers across the US, Canada as well, by the way, Europe as well. And the reason it's tough of all that noise is because, obviously, in some of those cases, we're picking up the market share.
Home would be one of the more obvious ones where either business that had a home business as part of it or home only have closed. And so there's almost not a demographic issue. They're more of a category market share gain, which has been more what John and I would see in the divisions, as we have gained market share, not where it's easier to measure is not by income demographic, just across all the income demographics, but in certain categories, we have outpaced.

Lorraine Hutchinson

Thank you.

Ernie Herrman

Welcome.

Operator

Matthew Boss.

Matthew Boss

Great thanks and congrats on another nice quarter.
So two-part question. First, on the continued strength in transactions across divisions that you saw in the fourth quarter, maybe could you elaborate on new customer acquisition trends? And just how, Ernie, would you rate the breadth of your product assortment and value proposition into the spring?
And maybe with that, just near term, could you maybe elaborate on the more recent trends you've seen in the business? Or is it fair to say that you haven't really seen any change in underlying business momentum if we parse through the impact of weather?

Ernie Herrman

Okay. Yeah, Matt, great question. I was waiting for you to throw in the part about the weather. So John, do you want to talk the transactions and then I'll talk to the breadth of products?

John Klinger

Yeah. Again, we continue to see strong transaction growth, and we are seeing us attracting more customers to our stores. And when we look at the age demographic they tend to skew a little bit more towards that 18 to 34 age ranges what we've seen consistently. So we're quite pleased to see the sales growth based on, again, more customers coming to our stores.

Ernie Herrman

Which ties in, I think, Matt, with the other part of your question, the breadth of product because, obviously, we're conscious about continually expanding our vendor base, our category of items base, probably HomeGoods is one of the, I would say, would be the epitome of that in terms of how we are always opening new vendors and new categories. We do it in every division. They just jump out where it's a little more obvious when you walk the store because you'll find items and categories that are now expanded versus a week before in a very dramatic fashion.
So I would say our breadth of product as we go into spring is, I would say, kicked up a notch from even last year. Again, that's part of our success this past fourth quarter. And in the last couple of years is to continually try to bring in new vendors and new product categories while not alienating customers or category purchases on the other side of it, which is one reason we're always talking. I'm always talking about trying to sell as many people as possible. That was in our script. That's what we always talk to you about. I know we've talked many times about it.
So our breadth, we line up our plans for spring and a very wide product breadth, vendor breadth. Having said that, when you start to get other than the weather issue, which John mentioned, when the weather was -- in the areas where it was normal weather, we were pleased with how we were performing. It's just we had those pockets of weather that hit us on those spots. But again, we're feeling very good about the normal weather pattern areas and where we'll head in the future. So I don't know if I answer that about the product breadth?

Matthew Boss

Yeah, you did. You did ticked up a notch relative to a year ago.

Ernie Herrman

Yes. Have a direct quote on that, that's very good.

Matthew Boss

Thank you. Best of luck.

Ernie Herrman

Thank you, Matt.

Operator

Brooke Roach.

Brooke Roach

Good morning and thank you for taking our question. I was hoping we could elaborate on your expectations for continued expansion in merchandise margins. Can you contextualize what you're embedding in your outlook for merch margin expansion as you contemplate mark-on versus tariffs? And then, John, on gross margins, can you speak a little bit more about your expectations for shrink for the year? Thank you.

Ernie Herrman

So Brooke, I'll start off with our approach on the mark-on and merchandise margin, touch on tariffs briefly and then John can pick up on the actual financial components. I thought we would talk about this to really try to keep it crystal clear on our approach, how this works. First of all, on the tariff situation, it's been a little gray. There's a short-term -- keep in mind that the direct imports for China for us is an extremely small percentage of our business. And so although there could be like in the short term, a little bit of a -- perhaps a little bit of a cost associated there. Over the medium and long term, that really doesn't become the issue because of the way we approach our buying.
So to give you an example, I guess the silver lining is with consumer confidence down and a bit of a rocky environment out there and the way our buyers operate, which is the buyers go out and they really assess at the retail level, what we can retail product for and then they work it backwards to what the cost should be. And they really don't -- their strategy is not to factor in tariffs or any other costs that actually can play into the picture here.
The way they approach is, they're going to look at what's the out-the-door retail on the liked item and we need the gap in retail between us and they're off the door, that's going to provide the amazing value for our consumer.
And from there, they work on the cost they can pay, and it's really not up to them to have to worry about what the vendor is getting caught up with in terms of tariff or inflation or other costs. Because remember, we've been to the movie before recently. A few years ago with extreme inflation and we navigated right through that, just as we will on this. It's a different headline. It's just the same approach. So whether there's tariffs, no tariffs, our buyers really their focus is on buying the goods, determining the cost based off the retail we can put the goods out at.
So because of the environment we're in, where there's a lot of, I think, consumer confidence stores closing, et cetera, I'm thinking there's more availability out there over the next six months, even more than there's been, which is going to create more buying opportunities for our teams. So back to your margin that, that at a high level, I think, plays into our ability to look at margin opportunities. I'll give you another thing is we mentioned this briefly is the wide demographic, which I've talked about a couple of times, that also plays into our ability to be more flexible.
So with our buyers or merchants don't see something in one vendor or one good, better, best range, they can always be more flexible in terms of the way they handle the market. They can move from a good item to a better item if that's where the better buy is. And I think we have that advantage versus most of our competition doesn't have that flexibility. So again, great question. I'm excited about this. I'm excited about the sales and margin opportunity in this environment because this is pretty much textbook situation coming up here.

John Klinger

Right. And then, Brooke, to answer your question on the shrink, we're very pleased with where our shrink rates came in this year. We still have our shrink committee. We're still staying very focused on this. So we do have a small improvement baked into our plan this year, and it's really centered around the annualization of the initiatives from last year. But we're also, at this point, analyzing data on the shrink results, and we will use that data to lean into some of the things that worked last year.
So we're doing a number of things. Again, the overarching strategy is to continue to maintain a great shopping environment for the customers, a safe shopping environment for our associates and customers as well.

Brooke Roach

Great, thanks so much.

Operator

Michael Binetti.

Michael Binetti

Hey guys, Congrats on an awesome quarter. Very happy to see it. I don't ask you a lot, but flow-through for the year on a [2% to 3%] comp is 10 basis points, if we exclude the currency. I'm guessing that with less of the lingering contribution from some of the snapback COVID areas like freight and shrink and even your market a little bit for tariff this year. Is 4% still the long-term leverage point? Is there anything changing there?
And then I just wanted -- I'm just curious on real estate availability in the US. When we speak to some real estate brokers recently, they said new development is almost nothing. So there's a lot of competition for boxes from the retailers that go bankrupt. I'm curious if you see any tightness in the availability of real estate in the US, either for getting your boxes in? Or any reason to think that there could be some rent inflation in the years ahead if those dynamics hold? Thanks.

John Klinger

Yeah. So on the flow through, yeah, the model still stands where on a 3% to 4% comp with no outsized expense increases, we would expect to be flat to up 10 basis points. But again, that's an overarching model. If we see years where we have an opportunity to do better than that, we certainly will bake that into our plans.
As far as the real estate availability, so we do see a lot of availability going forward. As we've talked about in the past, we do see an opportunity to expand into some more rural areas where the department store of the area closes, and we can fill that void in those areas.
Also, you're still seeing large box closures that we have the opportunity to either go into a new area or to relocate a store to a better shopping area. So again, we still see opportunities, and that's kind of reflected in the increase to our store potential.

Michael Binetti

Thanks a lot guys. appreciate it.

Ernie Herrman

Thanks.

Operator

Chuck Grom.

Chuck Grom

Great quarter. Ernie, can you talk about the 5% comp in the context of category performance across apparel, home, footwear, accessories and gifting? And then when we look ahead to 2026, how you're planning those businesses across those categories?
And then for John, on the shrink rate improvement, can you just remind us where your shrink accrual levels actually are today relative to 2019, so we can get a sense for how much is left to continue to improve on that front? Thanks.

Ernie Herrman

Yeah. Chuck, obviously, I can't give specifics on some of these categories, but directionally, I can talk to -- well, with that strong comp, we were up in apparel and home. But I would say the home and some of our accessory businesses were stronger than apparel, and that would be a similar way that we're looking for those businesses to perform in FY26. If you start getting into some of the smaller category breakout information, we just don't give those specifics out there.
But directionally, obviously, when you run a 5%, you have to have pretty decent apparel business also. Otherwise, you can't offset it because it's still a significant percentage of our business. The business, I continue to be even more bullish on is our home business in total. As you know, it's kind of third plus of TJX and if you look at the domestically here in the United States and you look at how HomeGoods has performed versus the industry, I think that's a great sign. And some of the other new housing starts and interest rates change to be more favorable.
I look at how our teams there are performing now and think that could even be more potential upside for us. So that's why we're very bullish on home. We're the only ones that do it the way we do it. And that team, specifically, what's neat on the way our home business is done, which how many people think about this. There's been discussion on tariffs at China, et cetera.
Well, we actually -- our priority on our home business is to do goods out of Europe because that is a differentiator for us. And it creates an umbrella of fashion and brand and quality that other home retailers don't do.
So one reason it performed extremely well in Q4 in our home business and that Europe piece of differentiation, I think, is going to help propel us going forward. And by the way, Europe and some of our other accessories categories that I was talking about, where we performed better than the store. I think we utilize it there also as an offensive sales driver and customers love that piece of our mix. So that is a highlight I can talk about, and we have that plan to be big going forward. John?

John Klinger

Yeah. So Chuck, on your question about the shrink rate, we don't publicly disclose our shrink rate. But going forward, we still think we have some opportunity to continue to improve our shrink rates.

Chuck Grom

Great, thank you.

Ernie Herrman

Thank you.

Operator

Alex Straton.

Chad Britnell

Thanks. This is [Chad Britnell] on for Alex. My question is on segment margins. You closed the margin gap between HomeGoods and Marmaxx quite a bit in the back half of 2024. So with this recent move lower in ocean freight rates and HomeGoods higher exposure there. It seems like the setup to close that gap even further in 2025 is pretty favorable.
Is there anything structural keeping HomeGoods from running at or closer to Marmaxx levels over the long term? And then any color you can provide around the moving pieces of margin in both segments in 2025 would be helpful? Thank you.

John Klinger

I mean if you look at one of the major moves as was obviously the homegoods.com closure. I mean that was something that was significant, but Ernie?

Ernie Herrman

Yeah, I think we can, Alex, directionally keep moving closing the gap. Our expectations aren't that it would never necessarily get there because you have some categories that are innately higher margin in a Marmaxx versus a home business. On the flip side, I think our home business, the way we're track is probably one of the most profitable home business in the country or the world with the margins we're at. If we didn't own TJ Maxx and Marshalls, we'd probably be saying, wow, look, how high this is.
But we do, we have the higher bar to your point. So we think part of that is the nature of some of the apparel closeout business that are in a Marmaxx are very profitable margins. But our goal is to obviously to keep pushing the needle there and trying to close the gap between the two. So I mean, it's a good callout. It's hard for us to kind of look and be that firm or specific in the future on it, but good call out.

Chad Britnell

Thanks, I'll pass it on.

Ernie Herrman

Thank you.

Operator

Adrienne Yih.

Adrienne Yih

Great, thank you very much. Okay, great. So to music to my ears, it's setting up to be textbook off-price environment. So with that, my focus is really on kind of long-term store growth that you talked about kind of this incremental 1,900. That's probably about 1,800, 1,700 for each of the divisions at Marmaxx. When you're going into these kind of next 800 stores, how are you selecting locations differentiated between TJX and Marmaxx? And is there an opportunity even in the US to do smaller footprint stores beyond that?
The follow-up would be for Grupo Axo and Brands For Less. They're both joint ventures. I remember you doing Trade Secret and buying that outright. What's the revenue sharing model there? And what's the plan for both of those? Thank you.

Ernie Herrman

Adrienne, so let me talk to -- John and I will both jump in here. So first of all, when it comes to the stores, we take every deal separately and John's involved here as well. So when we look at a potential site --

John Klinger

We're opportunistic.

Ernie Herrman

We're opportunistic. We look at what other brands we see in which vicinity, we measure potential transfer sales. However, to your point, what we're seeing is some smaller markets and smaller footprint store, which I think you brought up when you're asking your question. We do see that. So a good call out, we do see that as an opportunity because there are other areas in the country where we can put in a smaller format store, which won't create too much transfer. And as you know, we've had stores -- we have a store -- a group of stores where we have all five brands down the street here, [Naris], and they all work extremely profitably.
As you know, we've put in home sensors in their HomeGoods, with minimal transfer sales and in some cases, have actually increased our sales. So we're bullish on being able to add those stores in different areas something like Sierra or HomeGoods. We were probably -- again, as we grow in HomeGoods, we were pretty conservative in our 1,500 number, which was the more recent number. And so the teams have looked at different locations, different demographics, population density and feel it's very realistic to go the other 300 stores, which is a bigger, probably the biggest change that you're seeing incrementally.

John Klinger

Right. We added Sierra and then Spain as well to the store opportunity list. Just to talk about your question about Brands For Less and Axo. So Brands For Less is an investment. That's not a joint venture. Axo is a joint venture. And I'd say it's early days to be talking about the long-term opportunities other than to say that we are very optimistic about what that promoter brand can do down in Mexico in the long term.

Adrienne Yih

Fantastic. Great job, best of luck.

Ernie Herrman

Thank you.

John Klinger

Thanks, Adrienne.

Operator

Marni Shapiro.

Marni Shapiro

Hey guys, congrats on a great year, and congrats on being part of what I thought was one of the best social media trends during the holiday season.

Ernie Herrman

Thank you, Marni. I'm glad you enjoyed. The social media was very beneficial even though, again, we weren't behind a lot of it.

Marni Shapiro

I know you weren't, but it was stunning and then I was actively seeking it out when the algorithm wasn't feeding it to me on a regular basis. It was brilliant. Two quick ones, one big one, one smaller. Just can you repeat because you walk through them pretty quickly the store openings for fiscal year '26 across the globe?

John Klinger

Yeah, certainly. So we've got a total of 130 net new stores. The plan calls for 40 net new stores in Marmaxx, 30 stores in HomeGoods, which includes 9 at HomeSense. At Sierra, we're adding 20 stores. In Canada, we're adding 12 stores. In Europe, we're adding 22 net new stores and Australia, six net store openings.

Marni Shapiro

Perfect. And then, Ernie, this is kind of a bigger picture question, but I'm curious what your thoughts are here. There's been a lot of consolidation on the brand side, some companies that have taken the IP or have just a lot of brands within the one big company. So on that side, it's kind of the bulk of the business. And I'm curious of the bulkiness of the business, I'm curious if this is benefiting you guys as a company because you could match their size.
And then conversely, on the flip side is you have so many of these much, much smaller brands that are really popping up, doing well, making some noise. Is your team having success breaking into these smaller brands as well? Because obviously, it's hard to know which one of those smaller brands is going to be the next big thing, so developing those relationships early. I'm curious if you could talk about that in the market.

Ernie Herrman

Absolutely, Marni. Well, first of all, both of those situations are priorities for us and the teams. The buyers and the merchandise managers, even top to top management with some of the brands that have consolidated under one house, even though they want to keep as many brands as possible because they know brands are important for them, so that they don't lose their business to the private label retailers per se. They're good at wanting to consolidate that way. We're always trying to nurture those relationships. And they know that we're probably their best outlet to have goods in an eclectic mix, nonvisible manner.
So those relationships are actually extremely desired on both sides of the equation for all of those obvious reasons. What you're talking about on the second one is the more interesting because we salivate over that because we like a lot of new niche, but we call them little niche brands that keep popping up year after year, which is really what generates our -- when we give you that 21,000 vendor list, it's not a stagnant list.
Meaning, we have vendors a couple of thousand that fall off every year, and then we're adding a couple of thousand new every year. And because we want all these new vendors typically, oh my gosh, 90%-plus of them are anxious to have us in their back pocket because they know they're relying on say, a specialty store business, and they know they're going to have X amount of leftover inventory and they need to have a home for even though they're not big, to your point, Marni.
So, and our buyers are trained on. We want to look at all desirable product, whether it's with a little vendor or a big vendor, and that's what makes our treasure hunt shopping experience more exciting. We don't want narrow vendor, narrow big vendor assortments, we want eclectic mixes. So that's why I love your question and that we see that as more and more happening to your point. We often start these little niche vendors online because they'll start -- some of them just start online strangely enough without a store.

Marni Shapiro

Great, that's fantastic. I'll leave it to somebody else. Thanks guys.

Ernie Herrman

All right, thank you, Marni.

Operator

Laura Champine.

Laura Champine

Thanks for taking my question. A follow-up on the Q1 guide. Just trying to get to the underlying profitability. How much -- I think you mentioned that the timing of expenses. I'm not sure what you said there, but if I look at the timing of the expenses and the reversal of the reserve release a year ago, what would kind of apples-to-apples pretax profit margin be?

John Klinger

So I mean the way to look at it is that I mean -- and these are pretty equal. We had a onetime item, which is we had a Cares Act benefit last year that benefited us. So we're up against that year-over-year. Interest is negatively impacting us by 20 basis points, as we said in the call. We've got timing of hedge, inventory hedge. So we had a benefit in Q4 that reversed in Q1 and then wage and payroll. So I mean, that kind of explains why we have 100 basis points of deleverage.

Laura Champine

Okay. Can you quantify the wage and payroll piece or talk to us about inflation you're seeing year-on-year just on that one line?

John Klinger

No. We don't get into the details of our specific wage. But again, we see legislative increases come pretty much every January.

Laura Champine

Understood. And then a small one. So the TK Maxx business adding 22 stores, pretty significant step-up. Any markets to call out or better real estate available there? Sort of what's driving that?

John Klinger

Yeah. So the opportunities in Europe are largely in Germany, although we have opportunities in Austria and the Netherlands, Poland and the UK, but in Ireland as well. But the large majority of them opportunity is in the UK -- excuse me, in Germany.

Laura Champine

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Mark Altschwager.

Mark Altschwager

Good morning. Thank you. I don't think I heard this, but how are you thinking about AUR in 2026? And the strong mark on performance, what's driving that? How should we think about the further opportunity on mark-on?

John Klinger

Well, again, I think when we talk about the opportunity, it's a combination of what the -- there are a number of things that go into the benefit that we see in our gross profit, whether it comes from higher price or a better buy. So we haven't been parsing that out.

Ernie Herrman

And then, Mark, on the -- I think you're asking about the mark-on as we look forward on the buying. So the way we're looking at it is, again, this environment which as you can see, we've made healthy progress in the last couple of years on that front. I feel as though some of those situations slow up a little bit, obviously.
I think the environment right now, however, is a bit of, as I said earlier, it is textbook with more availability, I think, heading to almost every one of the divisions that we have because of the environment. And I believe a consumer confidence slowdown, as well as you have, again, a lot of public companies are aggressive on cutting merchandise in advance because they have to grow their earnings.
So no reason to believe that our buyers aren't going to have additional opportunities to bit by bit, get more meta nice margin as we move forward here. The environment is just kind of set up for that, fortunately. So although a challenging environment overall, but those tend to work pretty well for TJX.

Mark Altschwager

Great, thank you. Best of luck.

Ernie Herrman

Thank you, Mark. And thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to updating you again on our first quarter earnings call, which will be in May. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call for today. You may all disconnect. Thank you for participating.