Savers Value Village CEO Mark Walsh spoke to Cheddar as his company IPOed

<div class="block">Savers Value Village surged in its Wall Street debut on Thursday. CEO Mark Walsh was in the midst of the excitement on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange where he spoke to Cheddar&#39;s Kristen Scholer.</div>

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Savers Value Village Rings in Strong on Wall Street

I'm here with Mark Walsh, the CEO of SARS on a big IPO down here on the floor of the NYC Mark. What's the pitch to investors? Oh, it's a great circular, circular economy story. You think about the opportunity for us to grow. We've got a total addressable market of about 2200 stores coming off the base of 317 secular trends value thrift reuse powerful, powerful pieces of our growth story. So we're really excited about the future. We've got a great vertically integrated hyper local business that serves our communities in a way that's differentiated. And again, the value construct $5 that's hard to find in today's retail environment. Why did you want to tap the capital markets? Now, at this point, it was really about paying down debt. Our cash flow generation is plentiful. So we will use all of our cash flow just to fund our own growth. So no need for the equity we're raising is to pay down debt principally. And how are you going to expand the business with the money that you've raised? Again? It's about growing new stores. We're looking to open up about 7% new store base every year. But we've, we've got a strong opportunity to continue to grow our comp base over the last 15 years, every year. We've comp positive except for the COVID year of 2020. If a shopper walks in to a savers location, what can they expect you're going to expect? I think a unique experience for sure. Thrift love the fact that we're turning 15 times a year. So every time you walk into a saver store, it's fresh. We put 33,000 new items in each store every week. So it's contemporary. It's modern. The thrift loves the treasure hunt and we've got great team members who make the experience really special. How do you source the items in your stores? So we are, we are a registered fundraiser in every state we operate in. We accept donations on behalf of 100 great nonprofit partners. Those partnerships are durable and really long lasting of our top 10 non profit non profit partners. The average relationship is over 20 years. So someone would bring good to our store. We accept that donation on behalf of our nonprofit partner, we actually weigh the goods and that's how we pay the nonprofits. We have community donation centers attached to our stores. We have mobile green drop locations. And then there's more of the traditional where the, the charity will drive around a neighborhood with a box truck and pick up goods and they'll bring that to our store. And again, same principle it's weighed and we pay the nonprofit partner for the goods that we weigh. What are the data analytics involved that tell you the inventory that you need and the supply that would be in demand. That's a really interesting question. So the beauty of the model is this vertically integrated process, we match, it's like a light manufacturing business in the back of each store. So we're matching our production levels to the actual number of items we're selling our efficiency at doing that really creates. It's sort of sort of our secret sauce in taking a billion pounds of unsorted raw goods and turning it into $300 million dollar. It's all about data and how we utilize that data across that entire vertical supply. What's the average price point per item in your store? It's less than $5. And to that end is the business recession proof. We certainly believe it's recession proof in the great recession of 78, we did very, very well. And so again, over the last 15 years, every year, we've had a positive. So I think what's really interesting about that business is good cycles and bad from an economic standpoint. We're going to do well and we're going to grow our business and hopes for the future. Long term hope is that we continue to drive our mission in five years, 10 years from now. I hope we've done our part in making second hand second nature. I'm sure there's an eco friendly element as well. Sustainability is such a factor these days. Huge. So when you think about we were, we were before became an acronym. So we pay our nonprofit partners over the last five years, $580 million for the goods we've accepted. On behalf of them. You add to that £3.2 billion of goods kept out of landfills because of our process. Those are powerful, powerful metrics. My last question, what does a successful IPO look like to you? I think we're there. I think we're going to trade very well. Today, we've got a great investor base. We are really proud of. We've been able to get attracted to our stock. So we're very bullish about the future. And thank you for your time mark was CEO of SARS as an IPO is down here on the floor of the stock exchange mark. Thank you. Thank you.