Gildan Activewear Inc. (NYSE:GIL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

On the free cash flow for the full year, free cash flow, we’re calling above $425 million. Effectively, if you look in the first quarter, we had negative free cash flow. We had good free cash flow in the second quarter, and we expect good cash flow in Q3 and Q4. If you look versus last year, we had inventory build going on. Now we do not have inventory build overall. We’re as we talked about earlier, our inventories are coming down, and that provides good support to free cash flow. So I would say we feel very good about our free cash flow. And that supports our competitive position in the market. We’ve got a strong balance sheet. And we’re very pleased about it that we can return capital to shareholders. We had good return this past quarter, and we’re planning for good return as we go forward with the announcement of the new 5% NCIB program.

Brian Morrison: No, that’s very helpful, Rhod. Just a question, you have $325 million of negative working capital in the first half of the year. Where will that end up by year-end? Will that be flat, positive?

Rhodri Harries: If you look at working capital basically this quarter, we are around 45%, 46% of sales, right? If you look at it on a LTM basis. What we called out in prior calls and we’re still focused on it is effectively working capital at around 35% by the end of the year. So we’ll drive that working capital basically to the, I would say, closer to our target level as we get to the end of the year. And so we do feel good about the way that’s unfolding.

Brian Morrison: Thanks for the color

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Martin Landry of Stifel. Your line is open.

Martin Landry: Hi. Good morning. I just want to come back on the guidance revision. Your sales for the quarter came in ahead of expectations. Your point-of-sale trends were positive in Q2 in North America. So I’m wondering what’s driving the — what’s changing in the outlook? Are things decelerating in July for you to revise your guidance lower? Anything would be helpful just to understand, given the positive trends you’ve seen lately?

Rhodri Harries: Yes, I mean, the simple way to think about it, Martin, overall, is it is the mix that’s driving effectively the change in the outlook for the full year. So, yes, we came in better than we anticipated for Q2. That was driven by volume. And as we talked about the positive POS and activewear overall, flat POS in underwear and hosiery, which is improving now as we go into the back half. Glenn talked about the distributor inventory in the channel was flat, but it came in a bit higher than we anticipated. And that will reverse out as we go through the back half. But it’s mix. Mix is the real driver ultimately of what’s going on in the forecast. And if you look again for the full year, the full change in our outlook is driven by mix, and we’ll see that in Q2, and we’ll see it in Q3.

We have — the POS is actually performing well as we’ve talked about and we’re driving market share gains in volume. If you look full year, it is exactly where we expected it to be. So we feel very good about the business overall. But this shift in the marketplace that’s going on to lower price point products, obviously, we’re dealing with that. And the good news is we have the broader range to be able to deal with it, and we have the cost structure to be able to deal with it. So we are well-positioned as we move through the end of the year into 2024.

Martin Landry: Okay. And then just a follow-up, just to better understand that mix shift. Is it happening across all your end markets because you do have end markets that have very different dynamics. You have some that are more recession resistant and more — some that are more cyclical. Just trying to understand a little bit, is this across the board or in certain end markets?