Bath & Body Works, Inc. (NYSE:BBWI) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript May 18, 2023

Bath & Body Works, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.64, expectations were $0.26.

Operator: Good morning. My name is Christie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Bath & Body Works First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Heather Hollander, Vice President, Investor Relations at Bath & Body Works. Heather, you may begin.

Heather Hollander: Good morning, and welcome to Bath & Body Works’ First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call may contain forward-looking statements related to future events and expectations. Please refer to this morning’s press release and the risk factors in Bath & Body Works’ 2022 Form 10-K for factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Today’s call contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to this morning’s press release and supplemental materials for important disclosures regarding such measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measure. Joining me on the call today are Gina Boswell, Chief Executive Officer; Julie Rosen, President, Retail; and Wendy Arlin, Chief Financial Officer. I’ll now turn the call over to Gina.

Gina Boswell : Thank you, Heather, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you all joining us today. I’ll start this morning with a review of our first quarter results and then discuss the progress that our team has made so far in executing our strategy as well as some of the opportunities that we see ahead. This quarter, we continue to leverage the agility of our vertically integrated supply chain as well as our outstanding innovation capabilities, from product development through design and merchandising. We deliver newness and increased unit market share across our 3 major product categories. While home fragrance and soaps and sanitizers at an overall industry level, continue to contract driven by post-pandemic normalization, we continue to gain unit share.

Our customers remain highly engaged with the Bath & Body Works brand. A prime example of this is the excitement and strong sales of our single fragrance launches, including our new Gingham collection which Julie will discuss in more detail. This successful launch once again showcased our team’s ability to read and react, that is to respond swiftly and effectively to customer signals. When we observe that Gingham’s initial results exceeded our expectations, we quickly increased our supply to meet the heightened demand, fulfilling our commitment to the customer. It’s this ability to adapt quickly coupled with our intense focus on efficiency that helps us effectively manage the ongoing challenging macroeconomic environment. In the first quarter, net sales were in line with our expectations.

Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.33 were better than planned, driven by our efforts to improve average unit retails or AURs and the early benefits of our cost optimization initiatives. Given that our earnings this quarter outperformed our expectations accordingly, we are increasing our EPS outlook for the full year, which Wendy will speak to in a moment. These results would not have been possible without our terrific team and their quick response to implement our plans to profitably grow sales and better serve our customers. Now I’d like to share an overview of the major elements of our strategy. Having spent my initial months at Bath & Body Works evaluating our business, I am confident that we have a diverse set of opportunities to grow the business and enhance profitability.

Bath & Body Works has a highly differentiated business model, positioned at the intersection of consumer goods and retail, and we have a history of superior growth in free cash flow generation. The company has had a number of initiatives underway to drive top line growth and profitability, and I don’t see a need for major shifts in strategy. Instead, I see ways to build on the strong foundation that exists today. Importantly, our path to $10 billion in sales and industry-leading operating margins of 20% is not predicated on any one opportunity. Rather, we have multiple levers that we can pull to achieve our goals, and we’re pursuing them with focus and a sense of urgency. As we move forward, our team’s efforts are centered on elevating the Bath & Body Works brand and product, extending our reach, engaging with our customers, enabling a seamless omnichannel experience and enhancing operational excellence and efficiency.

So touching on each of these and starting with elevating the Bath & Body Works brand and product, I can say, having been in the beauty and personal care industry for more than 30 years, I’ve never seen a more engaged fan base than what I’ve seen here at Bath & Body Works. Our loyal customers are highly engaged. Whether they’re camping out for our semi-annual sale or celebrating International Fragrance Day or eagerly awaiting our next new mystery candle drop. However, there is opportunity to elevate the brand and product in a way that allows us to reach new customers, drive greater traffic, increase our pricing power and extend our position as a market leader. Our brand elevation efforts can be broken down into product, packaging and merchandising.

First, we will continue to optimize our core product offerings by leveraging and building on the company’s rich history of innovation to introduce new products and formulations. An example of this is the expansion of our new soap formulation made without paraben, sulfate or dye. This work has been underway and will continue. Another innovation callout is our surprise & delight product launches. An example of this is our recent ice cream candle drop, which sold out in near hours online and same day in store. We expect to increasingly leverage these types of events to drive traffic and generate brand excitement. In addition, we’re continuing to develop and introduce new types of packaging, while also staying true to the brand heritage. If you were to take a look at the product featured in our stores and online today, you would see items such as our White Barn Color Run collection and our neutral assortment with elevated presentation and packaging.

We see opportunities to bring this elevation to more of our products. And finally, merchandising, both in our stores and online. This will range from the look and feel of the floor sets in our stores who shop in shops and other enhancements. We’ll extend our storytelling beyond our compelling seasonal experiences to broader inspirational product storytelling, including recommendations for selecting and using the product as well as creating the perfect gift. Second, we plan to extend our reach. As one of the leading fragrance companies in the world, we deliver customers their favorite fragrances in multiple forms and categories and bring affordable luxuries in personal care and home fragrance, like no other company. We’re focused on leveraging our core strengths in fragrance and innovation to extend our product leadership into adjacent categories.

Julie will speak to our product expansion strategy and exciting upcoming tests and launches in a moment. We’re also committed to extending our reach geographically and we have an opportunity to drive significant growth in our international business through market expansion, new stores and digital growth with our partnership-based asset-light model. Next, the tremendous opportunity that we have to better engage with our customers. Bath & Body Works has a long history of connecting with the customer through fragrance, high-quality products and a terrific store experience and we now plan to deepen our connection across the entire customer journey. This represents a significant unlock for us that we expect will benefit both the top line and operating margin.

To drive this effort we started by analyzing our core customer segments and developing a better understanding of their unique needs and desires and identifying the discrete customer segments that present the biggest growth opportunities. For example, we know that the customer that we’ve identified as a fragrance fashionista, she considers scent to be essential part of their identity and a form of self-expression. The fragrance fashionista values quality over quantity and are immersed in the world of fragrance. Because they’re extremely invested in newness, they buy on average more than 30 uniquely fragrance items from us annually and are more likely to purchase our core fragrance categories as well as our newer categories. Their motivations are different, for example, from the customer that we’ve identified as a casual fragrance explorer who enjoy fragrance and the experience of shopping for new products, and it’s drawn to products that connect them to experiences and seasons, but does not necessarily consider fragrance to be part of their identity.

Our customer segmentation analysis is informing our innovation, our merchandising and our marketing to build deeper connections that drive more profitable customer relationships. Further, as we customize our merchandise and marketing to specific customer segments, we can be more effective and efficient in reaching them. As we’ve discussed previously, we’re also building our technology capabilities to engage with individual customers through more personalized targeted marketing. By leveraging data and analytics, we expect to induce trial, encourage cross-channel and cross-category shopping, increase trips, build the customer basket and deliver a more targeted promotion strategy to reduce our reliance on broad-based promotions. Though promotions will still be a traffic driver for our business, we’re working to sharpen our approach, make it more targeted to the individual customer and drive incremental sales at a higher margin.

With our IT separation from Victoria’s Secret expected to be substantially complete this summer, we will begin testing personalized marketing and optimize promotions. Our loyalty program is, of course, another critical tool to engage with our customer and meet them where they are. As you know, our loyalty program launched nationwide in August with one of the fastest enrollment speeds in the industry. We’ve enrolled a total of 37 million members to date and our loyalty sales represent approximately 2/3 of our U.S. sales since launch. Our loyalty customers also have, on average, higher spend, greater retention rates and they make more trips. And while we’re very pleased with our speed of enrollment, we are still only in the early stages of deriving value from this program.

We’re testing new loyalty capabilities in the second half of the year and focused on fully integrating our loyalty experience throughout our channels. Working in concert with more personalized marketing, we’re exploring future program enhancements like accelerators and flexible rewards. Next is enabling a seamless omnichannel experience. Though we have a strong digital business, we have a significant opportunity to drive future growth by moving from a largely transactional website and app to more experiential platforms. Our stores and our talented associates deliver an engaging shopping experience, and we expect to leverage our digital assets, along with customer data and analytics, to expand that experience, both inside and beyond the walls of our stores.

We’re working over the longer term to drive discovery and inspiration through personalized landing pages, video content, and product recommendations that result in more exploration, increased basket size and ultimately more purchases. Beauty and personal care customers value a seamless omnichannel experience. We are pleased to have completed our national rollout of Buy Online, Pickup In Store or BOPIS capabilities to our U.S. stores this quarter. And we’re focused on better connecting our stores and digital channels and eliminating friction in the customer journey. We know this is a significant growth opportunity because dual channel customers spend 3x more than single-channel customers yet dual-channel customers currently represent less than 15% of our customer base.

Finally, we are enhancing our operational excellence and efficiency by continuing our top to bottom review of the business to identify opportunities for margin expansion. As you know, we are targeting $200 million of annual cost savings across the company and are well on track to delivering over half of those savings in 2023. We recently announced changes to our leadership team, which support our strategy to accelerate our growth and improve profitability. Thilina Gunasinghe joined us last month as our Chief Digital and Technology Officer, and he has hit the ground running, leading our digital and technology strategy, our digital operations and data and analytics. Also, Maurice Cooper will be joining us next week as our Chief Customer Officer.

Maurice will be responsible for elevating the brand and developing a personalized and compelling end-to-end customer experience. As we recently announced, Wendy Arlin will be stepping down as CFO by the end of July, and we have initiated a search for her successor. On behalf of the entire Bath & Body Works team, I want to reiterate our sincere thanks to Wendy for her significant contributions to the company as well as our commitment to making this a seamless transition process. Looking ahead, we are moving with purpose, focused on taking actions and building the capabilities that will drive profitable growth. Despite the current macroeconomic pressures, I continue to be confident in our ability to reach our $10 billion sales target and deliver industry-leading operating margins of 20% over time.

We have a diverse set of opportunities and multiple strategic initiatives to support long-term top line growth and margin expansion with five key areas of focus: first, elevating the brand by optimizing our core through innovation and upgrades to our forms, packaging and merchandising; second, extending our reach through adjacencies and international growth; third, engaging with our customers by fully leveraging the strength of our loyalty program, enhanced technology and more personalization; fourth, enabling a seamless omnichannel experience by elevating our digital platform, and better connecting them with our stores; and finally, enhancing operational excellence to drive efficiency. Bath & Body Works has a strong foundation with leading market share, top brand awareness in our industry, and customers indicating a strong propensity to recommend our brands.

Once our categories normalize and return to a growth path, we are confident our strategic initiatives will position us well for consistent above-industry growth. Our team continues to leverage the key competitive advantage of our vertically integrated supply chain, which allows us to respond quickly to changing customer and macro trends and fulfill our promise to the customer by bringing products to market with industry-leading speed. We’re moving forward through the remainder of the year with a clean inventory position, a strong balance sheet, a favorable debt maturity schedule and very strong free cash flow generation. We’re confident that we have the financial strength and the strategic capabilities to manage through a rapidly evolving environment.

As we strengthen our position as a leading global omnichannel home and personal care brand, we are prioritizing actions which will deliver long-term shareholder value. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Julie, who will review our category performance and product expansion strategy.

Julie Rosen: Thank you, Gina. In the first quarter, customers responded well to our spring assortment and our promotions. In early spring, it is always important for us to connect with our customers’ various mindsets of either wanting to be transported away to the tropics, just sitting at home or spending time on self-care and relaxation. We also celebrate holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Easter and important cultural heritage moments like Black History Month. We began the quarter with a customer pleasing Among The Clouds product launch followed by Coco Paradise, which met the customer mindset at the right time and finished with our Gingham Ultra active collection. The speed and agility of our vertically integrated, predominantly domestic supply chain was critical in chasing these winners to deliver additional inventory and meet customer demand.

In fact, we were able to react quickly as additional customer response to our Gingham collection exceeded our expectations, and we produced significantly more units in the outperforming foams and fragrances for our national launch. These fragrances became customer favorites in fresh packaging that spans multiple categories and forms. Offering new products in multiple forms continues to be a competitive differentiator for us, and we find that it drives our strong customer loyalty and repeat purchases. Our men’s business continues to be one of the fastest-growing categories in body care as we test new forms and merchandising ideas. At the beginning of the quarter, we launched two new fragrances, Smooth Amber and Gingham Legend, both of which performed well and exceeded our expectations.

We continue to gain significant insights in this rapidly growing business that will guide our future innovation. Our wellness category resonated with the customer and outperformed the shops this quarter. Our curated collection and products for body and home are centered on a self-care mindset and aimed at elevating our customers’ daily wellness routines with fragrances such as Inner Bliss, Unwind and Fresh Start. These products were previewed during the holiday season and performed well this quarter, resulting in our decision to expand this assortment for spring and beyond. So men’s and wellness posted positive growth for the quarter. Sales of our broader body care category declined. We gained unit share even as the category units declined at an industry level.

Home fragrance also declined versus last year’s first quarter as expected, driven by pressure in candles. This is an industry-wide trend as the category continues to normalize post-pandemic. However, we are still the market leader in this category and continue to gain unit share even as the category experiences broader pressure. We remain focused on innovating and optimizing our assortment to position for future growth. We’ve seen our wallflowers outperform candles as customers are spending less time at home and we’re responding by continuing to increase our assortment of scent control wallflower heaters that offer our customers a choice in how much scent to enjoy in each room of their home. We’re also pleased to see the customer responding positively to our White Barn Color Run collection and our neutral assortment.

We plan to lean into this demand by expanding our home experience in a similar product aesthetic, fragrance in four ways. Fragrance in four ways includes candles, wallflowers, room spray and soaps, and we believe this expansion will fuel growth. As we work to elevate our brands and optimize the core business, we remain focused on newness and innovation as our key drivers. Earlier, I mentioned our Gingham Ultra active collection launch. This collection featured new product extensions to our heritage Gingham Fragrance and included four new scents, Vibrant, Gorgeous, Fresh and Legend for men. These products, which were introduced in preparation for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, exceeded our expectations. Looking ahead to summer, we’re focused on delivering fresh and compelling new sets such as our new and elevated Pride collection, Love Always Wins and our Hello Summer collection that is bright, fun and energetic.

We’re also introducing a home fragrance launch of Sweet Tea and Lemonade just in time for summer. As we continue our sustainability initiative, later this year, we will be offering soap decanters and recyclable cartons, which will enable customers to refill their soap containers and minimize waste. In addition, we continue to expand our new soap formulation that is made without paraben, sulfate or dye to include the entire soap assortment this quarter. As Gina shared, we’re also working to extend the reach of our brand and accelerate our growth. This includes leveraging our core strength in fragrance and innovation to expand into adjacent categories. To that end, we’re building on the success of our men’s business and expanding our portfolio to include grooming.

The first stage of our expansion focuses on face and beard care, just launched in advance of Father’s Day. We’ll follow with the expansion into men’s hair and shaving later in the year. As we discussed last quarter, we rolled out men’s antiperspirant deodorant to our entire chain, and we continue to see promising results. We plan to launch additional fragrances in the coming months, reaching a total of nine in store and 10 online by the fourth quarter. Following the successful launch of our men’s shop, which includes men’s skin care grooming products and body care, we’re excited to roll this offering out to all of our stores this month. As part of our continuous innovation cycle, we tested haircare products last summer, and we are pleased with the customer response.

We’re excited to launch haircare in approximately 560 stores and online in July, with shampoo and conditioner in five of our signature scents and dry shampoos in three. And knowing that our customers want to experience their favorite fragrances in multiple forms, we’re looking forward to the launch of our laundry line with many of our best-selling fragrances across approximately 80 stores and online, which we anticipate will occur this fall. Then in the back half of the year, we plan to expand our wellness category to include an ingredient-led collection, focusing on Shea Butter, Hyaluronic Acid and Colloidal Oatmeal. These products are intended to provide the additional moisture, hydration and sensitive skin solutions that our customers are seeking.

The customer is always at the center of our innovation process and we are excited to anticipate, meet and even exceed their expectations as we continue to add new compelling products and packaging to our portfolio, extending Bath & Body Works’ global brand potential. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Wendy.

Wendy Arlin : Thank you, Julie. Starting with our first quarter results. We reported adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.33, exceeding our guidance of $0.17 to $0.27 per diluted share. Our adjusted results exclude the gain on the early extinguishment of debt associated with our debt repurchases in the first quarter. We were pleased to deliver this outperformance, which was driven by better-than-expected merchandise margin rate and store selling expenses during the quarter. We expect to realize increased savings from our cost optimization initiatives as we move through the year, including savings in freight and store selling expenses as well as in home office and indirect spend. We are on track to meet our savings targets of over $100 million in 2023, and we expect that the savings will be fairly balanced between gross profit and SG&A.

Net sales for the first quarter were $1.4 billion, a decline of 4% compared to last year, reflecting a decrease in both transactions and average dollar sale. When looking at the first quarter net sales compared to the same period in 2019, our top line grew 46%. First quarter sales were in line with our expectations. The quarter began as expected before sales softened in mid-March, amidst a weaker macro backdrop. Sales improved in late April as our customers responded to traffic-driving events. In U.S. and Canadian stores, first quarter sales totaled $1 billion, a decrease of 2% versus the prior year. Store sales increased 45% compared to 2019. First quarter direct sales of $280 million decreased 12% compared to last year. Adjusted for BOPIS, direct demand decreased 4% in the first quarter.

As a reminder, BOPIS sales are recognized as store sales. We fully completed our rollout of BOPIS capabilities to U.S. stores this quarter. For the first quarter, international sales were $82 million and grew 13% versus last year, with all of our partners posting positive retail sales growth. Our international operations are conducted through franchise, license and wholesale partners and our recognized sales include royalties and wholesale product sales. Our international business continues to provide healthy and margin accretive growth, and we are forecasting double-digit international net sales growth in 2023. Our gross profit rate for the first quarter decreased 340 basis points to 43%. Roughly half of the decline was driven by buying and occupancy expense deleverage due primarily to lower sales, costs associated with our new direct-to-consumer fulfillment center as it ramps up operations in the spring season and increased occupancy expense from new store growth.

Gross profit was also pressured by a decline in the merchandise margin rate, primarily driven by continued inflationary pressure in raw materials and investments in product formulations and packaging innovation. Inflationary pressures totaled approximately $13 million in the first quarter, with the greatest pressure coming from raw materials. Our mix-adjusted AUR was flat, better than expected and an improvement versus what we experienced in the fourth quarter. Though we added select promotions to drive traffic, we balance AURs by increasing prices in other areas such as our everyday deal. Given sales trends and macroeconomic uncertainty, we continue to focus on disciplined expense management, which resulted in SG&A expenses below our expectations for the quarter.

Total SG&A deleveraged by 290 basis points, with technology accounting for approximately half of the pressure. The remaining deleverage resulted from lower sales combined with store wage rate increases and other corporate expenses, partially offset by efficiency in store labor hours. Taking all of this into consideration, first quarter total company operating income was $181 million or 13% of net sales. Turning to the balance sheet. We repurchased $84 million in principal amount of our senior notes for $76 million in the quarter. With our disciplined inventory management, we ended the quarter with inventory levels below last year. Finished goods retail units were down 10% and total inventory dollars were down 6% compared to last year. The difference between the dollar decrease of 6% and the unit decline of 10% is primarily due to inflationary pressures in product cost.

We have a very clean inventory position and agility in our supply chain to chase demand as needed. Looking now at real estate. We continue to be very pleased with the health of our store portfolio with approximately 99% of our store fleet profitable and stores continuing to significantly outperform pre-pandemic levels. In the first quarter, we continued to increase our off-mall penetration, opening 16 new off-mall North American stores and permanently closing eight stores, principally in malls. In our international business, our partners opened nine new stores in the first quarter, ending the quarter with 436 stores. Turning now to our fiscal 2023 financial outlook. We are providing our 2023 outlook with comparisons to 2022. As a reminder, fiscal ’23 includes a 53rd week.

So the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 will consist of 14 weeks. Our outlook includes the impact of the 53rd week estimated at $0.07 per diluted share. Also, please note that our second quarter and full year outlook excludes the impact of any future debt or share repurchase activity. For the full year, we are reaffirming our top line outlook for flat sales to mid-single-digit sales decline. Our forecast contemplates continued macroeconomic uncertainty, and a continuation of first quarter sales trends into the second quarter of 2023 with a moderate improvement in the back half of the year as we anniversary softer sales trends experienced in the back half of 2022. To the extent that demand is higher than forecasted as we move through the year, we will leverage our vertically integrated supply chain and industry-leading agility to respond to that demand.

We continue to expect the full year gross profit rate to be approximately 42%. We forecasting AURs roughly flat for the year. We still expect merchandise margin to improve sequentially as we move through the year, supported by modest cost deflation benefits in Q2 and increasing deflation benefits in the second half of the year partially offset by investments in formulation and packaging upgrades to reinforce our position as a market leader. Overall, we expect merchandise margin rate to expand by approximately 100 basis points in the second half of the year versus the prior year, resulting in roughly flat merchandise margin rate for the full year. We still expect buying and occupancy expense to deleverage for the year, driven by sales levels and increased expense from new store growth.

We expect less buying and occupancy deleverage for the remainder of the year versus the first quarter as our new direct-to-consumer fulfillment center is fully ramped up. Our plan still assumes a full year SG&A rate of approximately 26%, with the deleverage driven by lower sales levels, technology expense and increased store wage rates. We expect that these pressures will be partially offset by the benefits of our cost optimization work, including efficiencies in store labor hours, indirect spend and home office expense. As benefits from the cost optimization work build, we expect less SG&A deleverage in the second half of the year. We now expect full year adjusted net non-operating expense of approximately $310 million, reflecting interest expense favorability from debt repurchases in the first quarter.

We continue to expect an effective tax rate of approximately 26% and weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately $230 million. Considering all of these inputs, we are updating our full year EPS outlook to reflect better-than-expected first quarter EPS results while holding assumptions for the second quarter and the rest of the year, consistent with our previous guidance. For fiscal ’23, we now expect adjusted earnings per share to be between $2.68 and $3.08. We plan to have $300 million to $350 million of capital expenditures in 2023, focused on investments to support long-term growth. We are prioritizing investments in select remodels and new off-mall store openings, including approximately 90 new off-mall stores and 30 remodels to our White Barn store design, offset by about 50 closures mostly in malls.

In all, this results in square footage growth of approximately 4%. We are also investing in technology, distribution and logistics capabilities to better serve our customers. We now expect to generate free cash flow of $650 million to $725 million in fiscal ’23. Turning now to our second quarter ’23 outlook. For the second quarter, we are forecasting low to mid-single-digit sales decline, a continuation of trends in the first quarter. We expect the second quarter gross profit rate to be approximately 39%. The decrease versus last year is principally driven by deleverage in buying and occupancy driven by the sales decline and increased occupancy expense from new store growth. We are forecasting roughly flat AUR adjusted for mix. Our forecast includes modest cost deflation benefits in the second quarter, offset by investments in our product formulations and packaging innovation.

We expect second quarter SG&A rate to be approximately 28% of sales, with the rate increase versus the prior year, driven largely by investments in technology and increased store associate wages, partially offset by the benefits of our cost optimization work. We expect second quarter net non-operating expense of approximately $75 million, a tax rate of approximately 26% and weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately $230 million. Considering all of these inputs, we are forecasting second quarter earnings per diluted share of $0.27 to $0.32. Turning to inventory. We entered the second quarter with a very clean inventory position and expect to end the quarter with a high single-digit decrease in inventory dollars and units compared to the second quarter of 2022.

With regard to capital allocation, we are committed to taking a balanced and disciplined approach. Our first priority is investing in the business to drive profitable growth. We are also committed to returning cash to our shareholders, and we plan to continue paying an annual dividend of $0.80 per share with an intention to increase the dividend over time as earnings increase. Turning to capital structure. We are targeting a leverage ratio of approximately 2.5x gross adjusted debt to EBITDA. We ended 2022 with a leverage ratio of 3.1x. And in the first quarter, we repurchased $84 million in principal on our senior notes in the open market. We are committed to returning to our target leverage ratio over time. We will continue to evaluate the best use of our cash as we go through the year and as we gain better visibility into market conditions, considering options such as additional debt and share repurchases.

In planning for the year, we consider the macroeconomic backdrop and its impact on our customers as well as the trends we’re seeing in the business. As we go through the year, our team will leverage the agility of our vertically integrated supply chain, which allows us to respond quickly to changing customer trends and chase demand. We will also continue to build capabilities to drive future growth while also identifying opportunities for expense reduction and profit expansion. That concludes our prepared comments. At this time, we’d be happy to take any questions you may have. I will now turn it over to Heather for Q&A.

Heather Hollander : Thanks, Wendy. For our Q&A session, we ask that participants limit their responses to one question and one follow-up. We’ll now move to the Q&A session. Operator?

Q&A Session

Operator: Our first question comes from Alex Straton of Morgan Stanley.

Alexandra Straton : Hi, Gina, Wendy, congrats on a super great quarter. I just wanted to start with the AUR result, which is really nice at flat. It sounds like you guys were able to more effectively engage in select promotions and also lift price in some areas. Can you just give us additional color on what categories you did that in? And then also, is there data driving kind of those decisions? Or how do you decide to kind of evolve those strategies?

Julie Rosen : Hi, this is Julie, and I’ll take that question. So from an AUR perspective, yes, our customer is very value conscious, and our AURs were flat this quarter and up significantly to 2019. The good news is we’re not seeing our customer trade down. Our customers continue to be very selective in their purchases as evidenced by our lower UPTs and basket size with higher penetration in promotions and sharper price points. We saw softness and we were able to adjust promotions as needed and these events really resonated with our customers. So I would say from a pricing, we have a multipronged approach. So we basically raised prices this quarter in our products adding $0.95 endings instead of $0.50 endings. We also have a differentiated good, better, best pricing in many of our forms and we’ve increased our everyday deals in soaps and wallflowers from 5 for $25 to 5 for $27.

We also continue to use our very robust testing agenda and to continually test pricing to find out where we can garner more gross margin dollars.

Alexandra Straton : Maybe just one on the look forward. I know that the semi-annual sale wasn’t met with typical enthusiasm last year, a little bit more macro driven. So I’m just wondering, do you guys have any change to that strategically or timing-wise that we should be aware of?

Julie Rosen : Yes. So we are moving the sale up a bit, and we had a lot of learnings last year, and we are incorporating those learnings into our sales this year. We expect a better performance, keeping in mind that an industry level that two of our categories, home fragrance and soap and sanitizers, they’re still normalizing post-pandemic. I think the good news is that our beginning of sales inventory is positioned down to last year. So that really gives us an opportunity to manage markdown tightly, resulting in higher AURs. Additionally, we’re also focusing the share on selling non-sale go-forward full price assortment attached to all of our sales transactions.

Heather Hollander : Operator, we’ll take the next question.

Operator: Our next question comes from Simeon Siegel, BMO Capital Markets.

Simeon Siegel : Nice report in this environment. So recognizing that if the answer is conservatism, that’s always a good thing, but just any further thoughts on the 2Q GM drop. I guess just thinking about it sequentially and then maybe just looking at the pattern versus pre-COVID trends. It seems like inflation is working behind us, occupancy deleverage, maybe gets a little better with the ramping fulfillment and doesn’t sound like promotions should get worse. So just curious about that. And then if you could remind us with the expected store opening closure and remodel plans, what percent of the fleet should be on versus off-mall by year-end?

Wendy Arlin : Simeon, I’ll take that question. So in terms of Q2 and gross profit, we said a little bit in our prepared remarks, but we are starting to see some modest deflation in Q2 that will increase as we look at the back half. We, on the product side, are offsetting that deflation with restage and reformulation investment. So you heard both Gina and Julie talk about elevation of the product, and we’re working very hard to continue that process. And we have those investments forecasted in our rate in Q2 and for the rest of the year. In terms of buying occupancy, that is also resulting in deleverage in Q2. The biggest driver there for us is as we continue to open stores, we are seeing increased store occupancy and depreciation, and that given the sales guide, that results in deleverage on gross profit.

We do anticipate that, as we said in our remarks, that will improve as we look to the back half of the year. In terms of your question on real estate, right now, we’re roughly 50-50 in terms of mall and off-mall, and we will be over that amount as we end the fiscal year. Our ultimate goal as we look through over a multiyear period as we think that the right mix for our business is about 2/3 off-mall, 1/3 on mall. So it will take us several years to get there. Every year, we evaluate the real estate landscape and make decisions based on what we see, but that ultimately is where we anticipate getting the business at end state.

Gina Boswell : And just based on the leases, we have a lot of flexibility to do that.

Simeon Siegel : And then just one quick clarification, really encouraging to hear the mix adjusted AUR be flat. I just wanted to confirm, is the flat AUR guide for the year reported that you are or the same mix-adjusted like-for-like?

Wendy Arlin : It’s mix adjusted, AUR.

Heather Hollander : Operator, we’ll take the next question, please.

Operator: Our next question comes from Lorraine Hutchinson of Bank of America.

Lorraine Hutchinson : The robust new product pipeline for the remainder of the year allow for more ticket increases to offset some of the promotional activity?

Julie Rosen : Yes. We have a lot of new adjacencies coming this year that we are super excited about. So as we’ve said, we’re extending our managed portfolio to include grooming in advance of Father’s Day. Following that with hair and shaving later this year. And we have haircare launching, which we are very excited about in about 560 stores and online in July as well as our wellness expansion. So we think that there is opportunity in the new categories to potentially promote less or promote higher. And we’ll be testing that in our robust testing agenda to garner as much of margin dollars as possible.

Lorraine Hutchinson : And then how does the men’s product stand up to the rest of the assortment in terms of both pricing and margins?

Julie Rosen : So men’s stands up pretty much in line. I would say that the margin is where we are in body care, it’s higher than the most of the assortment. And I will say that men’s has been our fastest-growing category in body care and continues to be so. So we know men’s is a $6 billion market. We did about $400 million last year, and we believe that we have a lot of opportunity here. We did go from the #6 market share to #3 in one year just by focusing on it. So we are very optimistic about this path forwards.

Gina Boswell : And I’ll just add, Lorraine, that we love the incrementality, obviously, of the customer as well.

Heather Hollander : Thanks, Lorraine. We’ll take the next question.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Boss of JP Morgan.

Matthew Boss : So Gina, could you speak to traffic versus basket, maybe as the first quarter progressed, just elaborate on any changes you’ve seen in customer behavior, maybe more recently or in May, or anything you’re expecting in the second quarter?

Gina Boswell : Yes. So traffic is — it’s been positive for us. And that is true in mall, off-mall and actually exceeding the external mall lens that we look at. As far as, I think, the months go, we saw February strong, I think, in March, a bit of a falloff in — and certainly consistent with what we’re hearing from others. And that’s where we’re able to really use our agility as a company because we can use the promotions judiciously as a traffic driver to pull that back up and bring the customer back in increased trips, et cetera. So we’re pleased with that as well following the March drop, bringing them back in April. And then being able to pull that off with sort of AURs flat, I think, was a great success. So that’s how the months ended up from a traffic point of view.

Matthew Boss : Great. And then maybe, Julie, where do you believe we stand today on the category normalization curve that you cited as it relates to candles and sanitizers or maybe what do you see as the time line for assortment mix stabilization?

Julie Rosen : Yes, it’s a great question, Matt, and I wish I had that silver ball, right? But I think when I think about our categories, just to give you some relativity, body care was our top-performing category this quarter. So we had positive growth in men’s and wellness. Body care in total sales, declined but we gained unit share. So from a home fragrance perspective, performance was in line with shops, with declines obviously driven by pressure in candles as expected. We are still the market leader here, and we continue to gain unit share. And then soap and sanitizers, the categories that performed below the shop as the category continues to normalize post-pandemic. I think the most important thing is that we continue to read our business daily and we use our vertically integrated supply chain to really chase into fragrances in form to meet customer demand. So we are watching it daily and reacting accordingly.

Heather Hollander : Thanks, Matt. I will take the next question, please.

Operator: The next question comes from Olivia Tong of Raymond James.

Olivia Tong : My question is your view in terms of what’s driving sales in terms of the lower value tier consumer versus the upper tier consumer? Because it seems like from others in retail that it’s been the more value tier consumer that’s driven some upside for them. So I just wanted to see what you thought in terms of drivers of your top line?

Gina Boswell: From a customer’s point of view, we are seeing certainly the value-conscious customer in our profile. But we’re not seeing many differences in terms of the socioeconomic segments in terms of the impact. So yes, some pressures on basket sizes for sure. But when we look at our large customer data profile, we did not see anything. As Julie mentioned, we didn’t see trade down, but we also didn’t see any behavior differences at the top end of our customer or the bottom. But a function of maybe the value-conscious customers that we have coming in and getting the value. And when I say value, I mean the price quality sort of proposition that we offer them.

Olivia Tong : Great. And then great to hear loyalty continues to progress. Curious on your learning so far, whether the expansion of the program has impacted your view in terms of product assortment, promotion cadence, whether it’s impacting your guide in any way for this year? And if you could elaborate on that, that would be great.

Gina Boswell : I’ll start, and then I think Julie will add. I think the loyalty program is one of the best rollouts, as we said, it’s got the fastest speed of enrollment in the industry. But as I said in the remarks, we’re early stages in deriving the value. There’s a long runway to really put this incredible tool to work going forward. We’re testing these new capabilities in the second half of the year and then pulling that loyalty experience across the different channels. And that’s where some of the personalized marketing, the flexible rewards will come to bear. So Julie, I think you wanted to add something around.

Julie Rosen : I think that when I think about loyalty, we know that those customers make more trips, they spend more. They shop more cross category as well as more cross channel. And a meaningful number of our loyalty members are new to brand, which we’re absolutely thrilled about. I think of 2022 was really the year of enrollment, and we’re really thinking about ’23 as enrollment and engagement. So there are many tests going on in the back half of the year. We just finished our first customer segmentation work, and we’re using the advanced analytics with that, that will allow us to customize our loyalty offering, hopefully maximize enrollment and engagement. As Gina said, we’re hoping to attract more customers by fully integrating our loyalty program across social, physical and digital interactions.

And then we’re really looking at the back half how we can influence member behavior. So we’re going to be leveraging point-based incentives to drive incremental trips, we’re pivoting to more member-only events and special products. We’re looking to enhance our app to ensure a first frictionless experience. And then, of course, we have a 95% data capture rate. So we want to leverage that when the customer joins the program to enable a personalized and in the moment marketing triggers in order to drive program engagement. I think at the end of the day, we’re really looking to build a fully flexible loyalty program, really giving customers the ability to bank points and redeem them across all of our full suite of product offerings. So there’s a lot of testing going on in the back half, and we think that this program is ultimately going to be a huge success for us.

Heather Hollander : Thanks, Olivia. We’re ready for the next question.

Operator: Our next question comes from Kate McShane of Goldman Sachs.

Kate McShane : We just have two kind of drill-down questions. You had mentioned that there seems to maybe be a little bit of shift from candles to wallflowers as people go back to work and school. Is there a margin implication there between those two categories?

Julie Rosen : So actually, our wallflower margin is higher than our candle margin. So it’s a nice implication for us.

Kate McShane : Okay. Thank you. And then our second question was just around haircare. Could you tell us what fragrances you’re leveraging for this, of your existing fragrances? And is there a plan to get to the rest of the chain in fiscal year ’23 with the launch?

Julie Rosen: Say that again, the second part?

Kate McShane : Is there a plan to get to the rest of the chain in this fiscal year?

Julie Rosen : Yes. So we will be launching fragrances such as A Thousand Wishes, Japanese Cherry Blossom, Champagne Toast, . And we are planning, hopefully, in the back half of the year to roll out to the rest of the chain. So more to come on that. We did have a very successful test last summer, and that is what we are basing this off of. So thank you.

Heather Hollander : Thanks, Kate. And we’ll take the next question, please.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ike Boruchow of Wells Fargo.

Ike Boruchow : Just two quick questions. You had talked about the business improving towards the end of the quarter, I guess, based on some promotions. Can you talk a little bit more about what you’ve seen so far in May? And then a bigger picture, when we think about the business and the investments needed to run the business, is there enough that’s been done around systems upgrades, tech investments, the tech stack, drive digital. Just trying to think more larger picture into next year and beyond about what investments might still be needed to kind of sustain the growth of the business.

Wendy Arlin : I think I’ll take the business questions, and we’ll turn it over to Gina to talk about future tech investments and where we’re going with that. Yes, so we mentioned some of this in my remarks, the quarter — February started out in terms of being the best month for our quarter. In March, we saw some softening, as Gina mentioned, and then we were able to respond in April. And specifically, one of the things we did in April, which we saw resonate with customers, we added a very sharp price point soap event in April week 4 at the end of the quarter. And as we’ve talked about, our customers clearly value conscious right now. And when we add those events like a sharp price point soap event, the customer responded. So we ended the quarter strong, and we were pleased to be able to deliver those compelling offers while maintaining AUR flat.

So I think overall positive story. As we have started May, May — the beginning of May is Mother’s Day for us and a focus area, and we are pleased with our Mother’s Day performance. Our May performance to date has been incorporated into the guide that we shared this morning. So that is incorporated. As you think about Q2 for us and as we look at Q2 for us, June is by far the most important month in terms of top line size. And so June semi-annual sale is an important event for us. We think, as Julie mentioned, we’re well positioned, but that’s really what we’re looking to in terms of gauging performance in Q2. I’ll turn it over to Gina on technology.

Gina Boswell : Yes. Thank you for the question. Thilina, who, as I said, just joined us as Chief Digital and Technology Officer, obviously, he’s hit the ground running, but his remit is to certainly focus on standing up the capabilities from a technical point of view. And as you know, we’ve already invested in our separation from Victoria’s Secret. So our model assumes that the technology costs will continue at the current levels. And so as we roll off that, establishing the stand-alone capabilities and we’ll then be investing strategically to drive future growth. What does that look like? You’re absolutely right that the tech stack as it relates to MarTech and some of the things that will unlock the targeted marketing, the loyalty, the omnichannel seamlessness and all of that are those significant opportunities, and they all have a dependency on technology.

So we’re busy putting that roadmap together, and I’m sure we’ll have more to share perhaps on our next call. He’s only been here for one month, but we have been wasting no time getting to it.

Heather Hollander : All right. Thank you. So we have time for one more question operator.

Operator: Our last question comes from Mark Altschwager from Baird.

Mark Altschwager : I wanted to follow up on products. You discussed a lot of product launches that are — you’re planning and are ongoing. Just curious if there’s a way to frame up or quantify the level of newness you’re planning in the assortment this year versus prior years and how you see that kind of changing into next year, if that’s something that’s even going to accelerate from here? And then relatedly, men’s, it sounds like a big opportunity. Maybe touch on the marketing strategy there and what you’re doing to target men directly versus your core customer?

Julie Rosen : Yes. So newness is an incredibly important part of our assortment, and we deliver new stories every four to six weeks. So our level of newness this year is pretty much in line with next year. We just have new and different ideas that we will be delivering. I would say for men’s, we have a marketing strategy where we have launched men’s influencers. We have used personalized marketing based on our segmentation where we’ve been able to tag the data and find our men. We’re looking at look-a-like audiences and we also have a lot of women in our brands that actually buy for men. So quite frankly, we are targeting them as well. So we have some new things that we’re doing that we haven’t done before and again, continuing to target just our very core customer who right now today also we see buys a lot of them.

The interesting thing about men’s is one thing we’ve learned is this that younger customer who seems to be coming to us, hence the TikTok strategy and influencer strategy, trying to go about it in a different way to get a younger customer. So more to come on men.

Heather Hollander : All right. We want to thank you for joining today’s call. A replay will be available for 90 days on our website. Thank you for your interest in Bath & Body Works.

Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today’s conference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.