Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Lipesky: Yes. The peaks, I would say happened probably earlier this year, and shipping costs are tough to pin down. There’s indices all over the place. But when you don’t shift from just the index point somewhere in China to maybe the West Coast, we ship from multiple countries in Southeast Asia. So there’s no one index that I can just grab. But what I would say is they’re down pretty significantly from the peak. And with the demand environment that we’re seeing out there, a lot of retailers, including us, pulled back on Q4 receipts whenever the businesses fell off earlier this summer. So the demand environment is good. Hopefully, that’s tilted back in the favor of the retailers. We’re seeing that come in the pricing and optimistic that, that will stick in Q4 and beyond.

Operator: Thank you. Janet Kloppenburg, JJK Research Associates. Please go ahead.

Janet Kloppenburg: Good morning, everybody. And congrats on the great progress. Fran, just a couple of quick — first of all, clarification. I think you’re saying you expect your promos to be flat for the fourth quarter and were they higher in the year-over-year in the third quarter to declare the Hollister product, but improved at A&F as driven by the AUR gain? That’s the first question. Second question, what’s going on with A&F men’s? And should we have any concern there? And then secondly, when you look at Hollister assortments for go forward into spring, are you encouraged that we could see an inflection in Hollister’s comps sometime in the first half? Thanks so much.

Scott Lipesky: Hi Janet, I’ll clear up the first one real quick and then Fran can get into it. For Abercrombie in Q3, it was down for Hollister as we pressed on pricing to clear that back-to-school inventory. As we think about going into holiday, our main promotions, the percent of stores or the promotions that we’re running outside the store should be relatively consistent year-over-year. As a reminder, we rightsized that Q4 and forward inventory buy for Hollister. Where we’ll focus any excess markdowns in Q4 will be on Hollister carryover inventory. So we’ll see how that plays out in the selling mix in Q4. And then I’ll kick it over to Fran.

Fran Horowitz: Sure.

Janet Kloppenburg: Wait — can you hear me? Can you hear me? What about Hollister though? Just for my notes, I just want to clarify that promos were up, would you say meaningfully, Scott, for Hollister in 3Q?

Scott Lipesky: I wouldn’t say meaningfully. We turned through our back-to-school inventory a little more clearance pricing. You take it a little bit lower on the markdowns, but I wouldn’t call it meaningful.

Janet Kloppenburg: Okay. Thanks so much.

Fran Horowitz: And regarding men’s. So in my script, actually get, it’s exciting second quarter for men’s, we talked about seeing some green shoots. But in the third quarter, we actually saw some growth. So we are encouraged that the men’s consumer is seeing how Abercrombie is back, like the women’s consumer has been seeing it for quite some time now and responding to some good categories in our top, strong. Our outerwear business is strong. So we’re actually very encouraged with what we’re seeing in the men’s business.

Janet Kloppenburg: That’s A&F?

Fran Horowitz: A&F, exactly. Yes. And then for Hollister it was great to see quite some improvement this quarter. Our expectation is to continue to see some sequential improvement. We’re seeing good business on the top, as I mentioned, the consumer is looking to update their outfits. So they’re buying a new top perhaps to go with their jeans. There’s also a lot happening in non-denim bottoms. We’ve chased into categories like cargo pants, which the consumer responded to quite well during back-to-school. We didn’t have enough, so we’ve chased into those. So our expectation is to continue to see sequential improvement in Hollister quarter-by-quarter.

Janet Kloppenburg: And do you expect a lag in Europe, Fran?