Guess’, Inc. (NYSE:GES) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Guess’, Inc. (NYSE:GES) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript March 20, 2024

Guess’, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $2.01, expectations were $1.56. Guess’, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Guess?’ Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to turn the call over to Fabrice Benarouche, Senior Vice President of Finance, Investor Relations, and Chief Accounting Officer.

Fabrice Benarouche: Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us today. On the call today with me are Carlos Alberini, Chief Executive Officer; and Markus Neubrand, Chief Financial Officer. During today’s call, the company will be making forward-looking statements including comments regarding future plans, strategic initiatives, capital allocation and short and long-term outlooks. The company’s actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on risk factors included in today’s press release and the company’s quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC. Comments will also reference certain non-GAAP or adjusted measures. GAAP reconciliations and descriptions of these measures can be found in today’s earnings release. Now, I will turn it over to Carlos.

Carlos Alberini: Thank you, Fabrice. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. On behalf of Paul and myself, I would like to begin by thanking all of our associates worldwide for their valuable contributions throughout the past year. Our teams performed very well delivering solid top line growth, improved gross margins, and disciplined expense performance. The results speak for themselves, and we couldn’t be more proud of our team’s accomplishments this year. We closed our fiscal year with a very strong fourth quarter performance resulting in adjusted earnings per share of $3.14 for the year. The last time that our company reached this level of EPS performance was 12 years ago in fiscal year 2012. Revenues for the year increased to $2.8 billion, up 3% in both U.S. dollars and constant currency, and we delivered an adjusted operating margin of 9.2%.

Our ability to deliver this performance was the result of our strong brand momentum around the world, the robust customer response to our great product assortment, and the amazing attitude and discipline our teams continue to demonstrate. Our performance in both the fourth quarter and the full fiscal year shows the benefits of our unique diversified business model and how we are leveraging our powerful platform across multiple product categories, geography, and channels of distribution. We are at an inflection point in our company’s development, and we couldn’t be more excited about our future. Before I turn to our fourth quarter performance, I want to touch on two exciting announcements. First, the special dividends. As you know, returning capital directly to our shareholders is a high-priority for our board.

Over the past five years, we have returned nearly $840 million in capital to shareholders, either through share repurchases or quarterly dividends. In line with our commitment to reward our shareholders, our Board approved a special dividend of $2.25 per share, in addition to the regularly quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share. Both of those dividends will be paid on May 3, 2024 to shareholders of record as of April 17, 2024. We are very pleased with this action and proud of our performance that enabled it. Next, I would like to turn to our recently announced acquisition of rag & bone with the global management firm, WHP Global. This is the first acquisition in the 43-year history of Guess?, and we are thrilled to add such an iconic brand to our portfolio.

As Paul noted at the time of our acquisition announcement, rag & bone is a brand that is well-known for its preeminence in American fashion, that over the years, has stayed true to its roots and founding values, with an unwavering commitment to quality and authenticity. The brand is known for blending traditional craftsmanship with modern cultural references. And over the years, it has become synonymous with effortless quality clothing for men and women, with an innovative-yet-understated New York aesthetic and a strong expertise in denim. The brand appeals to a very attractive customer base that is complementary to that of our Guess? and Marciano brands. Currently, rag & bone directly operates 34 stores in the U.S. and two stores in the UK.

The stores are highly productive and generate healthy forward contributions. The product is also distributed in high-end boutiques, select department stores, and through e-commerce platforms globally. Last year, rag & bone generated sales of $252 million and adjusted EBITDA of $18 million. We are excited about the opportunities to grow this brand, and I’ll speak more about those later on the call. Now moving to our fourth quarter results. We are very pleased with our performance as we deliver results ahead of our expectations for revenue and earnings growth. Revenues grow by 9% in the period, and adjusted earnings from operations reached $130 million, growing 21% versus last year. We achieved an adjusted operating margin of 14.6% in the quarter, which was 150 basis points ahead of last year.

Our segment results were impressive this quarter, as all of our five business segments grew revenues with Americas Wholesale, Asia, Licensing, and Europe posting the biggest increases to last year, all segments, but Americas Retail posted operating earnings growth in the period and delivered operating margin expansion. Regarding product performance, we continue to see different levels of performance across regions, with accessories, footwear, and Marciano performing best during the quarter. We closed the year with a strong inventory position, in spite of the ongoing supply chain challenges that we are facing due to the Red Sea crisis. Inventories were down 9% at the end of the year, and our inventory composition was in line with our plan. During the last few years, we have been able to re-architect our business to optimize inventory productivity and cash flow generation.

We believe that these changes represent a permanent improvement to our model. During our last earnings call, I spoke briefly about our strategic planning process and the six critical objectives that we are focused on going forward. Just to remind you, this relates to organization and talent; growth; brand relevancy; customer simplicity and digital expansion; product excellence; and last, optimization to drive efficiency, profitability, and return on invested capital. I would like to provide an update on our ongoing work in connection with this objective. Starting with our organization and talent objective, we have completed an organizational assessment and have identified key opportunities to improve accountability and facilitate decision-making.

We plan to act on this assessment and develop detailed plans in the next few weeks. In addition, we remain committed to building strong management capabilities across the organization to support growth and have launched three key searches for senior roles that will be based in Europe. Regarding our growth objective, we made tremendous progress during the period. We have already completed the internalization of the G3 licensed businesses; finalized the design of all products, including full new collections of outerwear and dresses; taken orders from our wholesale customers; and we are in production as we speak. With respect to our new GUESS Jeans brand, the first seasons collection has been developed and offered to customers around the world.

The first sales campaign for GUESS Jeans has been completed and the results were ahead of our initial expectations. As part of the brand’s launch, we have already secured a few locations to open new GUESS Jeans stores in the U.S. and several key cities in the European market. We strongly believe that this brand and its products will serve Gen Z consumers around the world very, very well. In connection with the launch of the GUESS Jeans brand, Nicolai Marciano led two events to launch the brand worldwide. In October, GUESS Jeans launched exclusively to its top press and trade partners in Milan with a private exhibition hosted at Spazio Maiocchi. This was an exclusive immersive event showcasing the history, innovation, and sustainability of GUESS Jeans.

Following Milan, GUESS Jeans had its first public introduction at the January 2024 edition of [The Duomo] (ph) in Florence. With over 3,000 people in attendance, it was a monumental event for the brand. The exhibition, which spanned across four days, featured a denim-centric retrospective of the brand, and showcased the first look of the next 40 years of denim, with the introduction of GUESS AIRWASH, a state-of-the-art sustainable alternative to stone washing. Also during the quarter, we negotiated the purchase of the Guess? business in Chile and Peru, which was built over the last several years by our exclusive distributor in that market. The business consists of 15 Guess? stores, an e-commerce business, and a hotel business. This acquisition was executed a few weeks ago by a joint venture that we formed with Grupo Axo, our partners in our Mexico business for the last 18 years.

The stores are well-located and they have the potential to deliver about $20 million in sales annually in the short term, as we reposition and recapitalize the business, including strengthening inventory buys that have been insufficient for some time in the market compared to the potential of that market. And speaking about growth, probably the most exciting news of fall relates to our recently announced acquisition of rag & bone that I mentioned earlier on the call. Paul has jumped in with both feet to build on this dream. We have an ambitious vision for rag & bone and we plan to expand its product offering to a combination of own product development and licensing-specific categories that we believe have significant potential for growth. We also plan to expand the brand’s presence and distribution internationally.

Guess? and WHP Global combined have an outstanding global distribution network and powerful licensees that will enable us to drive the growth of the rag & bone business globally. Leading up to the signing of the agreement to acquire rag & bone, Paul and I had the opportunity to spend time with Andrew Rosen, Chair of the Board, and the rag & bone management team. And we couldn’t be more impressed with the quality, expertise, and depth of the leadership and of the overall organization, including store personnel. We can’t wait to begin working together. Turning finally to optimization of our operations, we just launched a project to convert our distribution center operation in the U.S. to a third-party provider. We selected our logistics partners in Europe to run our facility located in Louisville, Kentucky.

This company is the number one global company in the business. Our Kentucky operation currently services our entire U.S. retail and wholesale businesses. We also plan to sell that facility and our partner will lease it back to operate it. We are currently negotiating a sale transaction with several interested parties. This change should have a positive impact on our cost structure and the expected benefits have been incorporated into our guidance. We look forward to further updating you on our strategic plan as the year progresses. This includes specific initiatives to address the observations our consultants have identified together with other key initiatives and strategies that we have developed, such as plans to optimize our product assortments and pricing, grow our digital business, enhance customer engagement, and increase the use of data and technology, all with the goal to improve our decision-making and operations further.

Moving to our outlook for the new fiscal year, we expect to grow our top line between 11.5% and 13.5% and deliver revenues of over $3 billion for the first time in our company’s history. We also plan to generate adjusted operating margin between 7.5% and 8.5% and adjusted earnings per share of $2.56 to $3. This outlook includes the benefits of the rag & bone acquisition, the growth of our core business, and the other growth initiatives that I mentioned earlier. Markus will elaborate further about our guidance in just a minute. In closing, we are very pleased with our results this year. I’m very proud of our team’s accomplishments. The company’s performance demonstrates how Paul’s vision and our team’s efforts over the last few years to elevate our brand and transform our business are paying off.

We are enjoying strong momentum across the world with the Guess? and Marciano brands and customers are responding well to our product assortments across categories. We appeal to three distinct customer groups with our Guess?, GUESS Jeans, and Marciano brands. And now, by adding rag & bone to our portfolio, we are positioned to expand into a more affluent and very attractive customer base. We have a strong and highly diversified business model and a solid capital structure. We have built a platform that can power a bigger business, generate synergistic growth, and margin expansion, and deliver significant value creation over time. We have expertise in virtually every distribution model in which our products are sold. We work with wholesale partners from large department stores to Mom & Pop.

And we have developed a network of licensee partners that supports our portfolio of several different product categories. Over the past 43 years, those powerful capabilities have clearly served the Guess? brand well, bringing us to the precipice of a $3 billion company. The inflection point, the evolution for us, is that we view these capabilities as a platform to drive outsized growth. A platform that gives us the power to do things that others simply cannot do; the power to take a smaller regional or national brand and make it global, the power to leverage our portfolio of product categories and build a mono-category brand into a lifestyle brand, the power to make something exponentially bigger because we can grow it across multiple dimensions.

That’s not easy to do, but we feel that we have built the right platform to do it. This is why we are so excited about our future. As we build this bigger ecosystem, we will continue to be opportunistic with the use of capital to drive our performance and create value, including continuing to invest in the business and opportunistically consider strategic acquisitions as well as continue to return capital to our shareholders. And with that, I conclude my remarks and pass the call to Markus. Thank you. Markus, please go ahead.

Markus Neubrand: Thank you, Carlos, and good afternoon, everyone. We surpassed our expectations for revenues, operating profit, and earnings per share in the fourth quarter. We grew revenues by 9%, expanded gross margin, and carefully managed costs. All of which enabled us to deliver an adjusted operating profit growth of 21% compared to last year’s fourth quarter. Let me take you through our fourth quarter results in more detail. Total company revenues in the fourth quarter were $891 million, with all segments exceeding expectations. The fourth quarter’s extra week accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total revenue increase in the period. Turning to our Segment performance, starting with Europe; in the fourth quarter our European business growth continued, driven by the extra week and strong demand for our collections with revenues rising 9% in U.S. dollars and 10% in constant currencies.

Fourth quarter retail comps including e-commerce increased 6% in U.S. dollars and 7% in constant currency. Our stores achieved a strong store comp growth of 12% in constant currency, which was mainly due to continued high AUR apparels and higher conversion. Our e-commerce comps declined by 8% in constant currency, compared to Q4 of last year, with our own website performing better than marketplaces. Our revenues in European wholesale improved 6% to last year when adjusted for currency fluctuations. Supported by the GUESS Jeans launch, our European wholesale orders for the fall/winter 2024 collection has increased by mid single-digits in constant currencies. The operating margin in our European business increased by 200 basis points to 18%. Higher initial markups and higher revenues were partially offset by the unfavorable impact from currencies and higher markdowns.

Americas Retail posted a 1% increase in revenues in U.S. dollars and was flat in constant currency, mainly driven by the benefit of the extra week. American retail comps, including e-commerce declined 2% in constant currency. In our North American stores, comps also dropped by 2% in constant currency. While traffic remained under pressure, similar to third quarter trends, we are very pleased with the improved conversion and high units per transaction. Our U.S. and Canada e-com comparable revenues decreased by 3% compared to Q4 of last year. Lower traffic to our website was offset by business initiatives that drove a high average order value and the higher conversion rate. Americas Retail posted a 15% operating margin compared to 15.4% operating margin a year earlier.

Before the basis points decrease in operating margin was mainly driven by the unfavorable impact from negative stock comps, partially offset by the favorable impact of currency. In American wholesale, revenues increased by 44% in U.S. dollars and 39% in constant currency, mainly driven by higher shipments in the U.S. and continued strong momentum in Mexico. Operating margins reached 28.5%, a meaningful improvement of 7.6 points from Q4 of last year, mainly driven by improved products margins, the benefit of higher revenues and expense leverage. In Asia, revenue grew 18% in U.S. dollars and 19% in constant currency. Revenue growth was driven by the extra week. Net new stores in Korea, e-commerce in Korea and China and our new business in India, retails comps including e-commerce for the region decreased 1% in constant currency.

Operating margin improved 200 basis points to 4.8%, driven by higher revenues and partially offset by lower product margins and higher expenses. We are very pleased to return Asia to a full-year profit. We improved the full-year earnings from operations by $13 million from negative 5 million to positive 8 million, mainly driven by Greater China and Korea. And finally, our Licensing segment had a strong quarter, and exceeded our expectations with revenues increasing 15% in both U.S. dollars and constant currency. Handbags, footwear and eyewear had a very strong performance during the quarter. Segment operating margin was 92.7%, and operating profit increased by 21%. In Q4, total company gross margin reached 45.4%, up 120 basis points from a year earlier.

Improved IMUs and high revenues were partially offset by negative currency impact and higher markdowns. Adjusted SG&A expense for the quarter increased 8% to $275 million from $254 million a year earlier. The 53rd week accounted for more than half of the increase in adjusted SG&A expense. For the quarter, our adjusted SG&A rate improved 30 basis points to 30.8%. Improvement is due to leverage, partially offset by moderate inflationary pressures on our cost structure, investments in our infrastructure, especially in Europe and currency headwinds. On a constant currency basis, our adjusted SG&A increased 7%. We exceeded our expectations for adjusted operating profits as it rose to $130 million for the quarter, a 21% improvement compared with last year’s fourth quarter.

Our adjusted operating margin reached 14.6%, 150 basis points higher than last year’s Q4, mainly driven by higher revenues and higher IMU, partially offset by the negative currency impact, higher expenses, and higher markdowns. In the quarter, we reported non-operating net income of $30 million. The income was primarily due to an unrealized gain to mark our SERP and deferred compensation plan assets to market and to realize gain on the sale of other assets. And we recorded an adjusted effective tax rate of 17.5% in the fourth quarter. For the fiscal year 2024, our adjusted effective tax rate was 22.2%, 3.5 points higher than last year as we recorded a discrete tax benefit in the prior year. Adjusted Q4 diluted earnings per share was ahead of our expectations, that’s $2.01 compared to $1.74 of earnings per share in last year’s fourth quarter.

Moving to the balance sheet, we delivered on our plan to reduce inventory across all regions. We ended the quarter with $466 million, down 9% in U.S. dollars and 6% in constant currency compared to last year. Overall, we are pleased with our inventory composition and forward orders and feel we’re well-positioned to support our business. Our receivables were $315 million, an 8% decrease compared to last year’s fourth quarter. On a constant currency basis, receivables decreased by 5%. For the year, capital expenditures were $74 million, mainly driven by investments in store remodels, new stores, and technology. This compared to $90 million last year. We ended the quarter with $360 million in cash, compared to $276 million a year-ago. The most significant drivers of that $84 million cash builds over the last full quarters include $248 million of free cash flow offset by $63 million in dividends, debt repayments of $62 million, and $31 million of net outflows related to the January exchange of convertible notes transaction.

We ended the quarter with a total of $392 million of borrowing capacity on our various global facilities, so, roughly $752 million of available liquidity. Our annual cash flow significant exceeded our plans for the year. That performance resulted both from our careful working capital management as well as sizable cash infusions from non-recurring events, including a litigation settlement and an investment sale. Also, as we previously announced in January, we exchanged an additional tranche of our 2024 convertible notes, which had been due next month, deferring $67 million of maturities into 2028. Again, we are pleased with the strength of our balance sheet that enabled both decision to improve a special dividend of $2.25 per share in addition to the regular quarterly dividend of $0.13 per share.

Turning now to our outlook for fiscal year 2025, overall we expect to see cautious consumer that is mindful of discretionary purchases in light of inflation and high interest rates. Regardless of the external environment, we will remain focused, and expect to make progress in executing against the critical strategic objectives that Carlos discussed. We are expecting opportunities that will transform the direction of our core Guess? and Marciano businesses in fiscal year 2025, based on the growth drivers that Carlos mentioned in his remarks. Overall, we anticipate our core Guess? and Marciano businesses to increase revenues in the low to mid single-digit range in fiscal year 2025. We are very excited about the rag & bone acquisition, and we expect to close this transaction in the latter part of the first quarter of fiscal year 2025.

Therefore, we have included the benefit of this business in today’s guidance. With the expectation that it will contribute roughly two-thirds of this year’s total company and revenue growth. Based on these assumptions, I’ve outlined, for fiscal year 2025 we expect revenues will increase in the range of 11.5% to 13.5% in U.S. dollars, and 12.5% to 14.5% in constant currency. This includes a net growth impact of roughly 1.5 points on revenue growth from the loss of the 53rd reporting week in fiscal year 2024. Based on the prevailing environment, currencies will be a headwind on revenues in the first-half of fiscal 2025. As we consider this year’s profitability, we expect the headwind on inbound freight from the Red Sea crisis is roughly two-thirds of our global sourcing volume has impacted.

We anticipate that the rate pressure will moderate in the second-half of fiscal 2025 and have incorporated the development in our outlook provided today. Our expectation is that rag & bone will be modestly accretive to earnings this year. These assumptions reflect the fact that we will make investments into the brand and support the distribution expansion into U.S. and internationally throughout this year. In addition, to support our growth drivers outlined earlier, we continue investing into our infrastructure. Based on these assumptions for the full-year, we expect an adjusted operating margin between 7.5% and 8.5% and adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.56 to $3. Turning the first quarter, we have couple of factors to keep in mind as you model the revenue growth.

The rag & bone acquisition is expected to close later in the first quarter. In European wholesale, the timing of our deliveries will be a headwind of roughly $15 million on revenues in the first quarter compared to last year. Overall, our wholesale business in Europe continues to be healthy, and our shipments in the second and third quarters should more than compensate for the low volume in the first quarter. As a result, for the first quarter we expect revenues will increase in the range of 1% to 2% in U.S. dollars and 3% to 4% in constant currency. We expect an adjusted operating loss margin between 2.3% and 2.8%, and an adjusted loss per share between $0.37 and $0.41. Overall, we expect revenue growth to accelerate in the next two quarters of the year as the second quarter will be the first quarter to fully benefit from the rag & bone acquisition, and the first out of our shipments in North America are planned to be delivered in the third quarter.

Going into the fourth quarter, we expect that revenue growth will be impacted as we go anniversary last year’s 53rd week. Turning to operating margin, we do expect an adjusted operating margin of 6% to 7% in the second quarter and a modest sequential improvement in the third quarter. The fourth quarter should represent an opportunity for adjusted operating margin expansion compared to last year. We anticipate generating a free cash flow of roughly $160 million for the full-year. With the expected closing of the rag & bone acquisition later in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, approximately 56.5 million of purchase price will become due. We are currently working with our bankers to include certain acquired assets from rag & bone in the borrowing base of our asset-based revolving credit facility in North America and increase our borrowing capacity.

Our priority is to invest in our brands and businesses to support sustainable growth. We will remain highly disciplined in the way we allocate capital across projects. In closing, our performance in the past fiscal year and our plans for fiscal 2025 demonstrate the strength of our diversified business model and talented global team. And with that, we can now open the call up for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Corey Tarlowe: Thank you and good afternoon. Carlos.

Carlos Alberini: Hi, Corey.

Corey Tarlowe: Hi, how are you?

Carlos Alberini: Very well, thank you.

Corey Tarlowe: Great. I wanted to ask you about the idea of Guess? being a platform versus a brand. And I think that this is maybe not something that’s necessarily new to you, but it’s definitely a point that feels like you are putting greater emphasis on more recently, given the announced acquisition of rag & bone. So, I wanted to, maybe it would be really helpful if you could just dive into the aspects of Guess? that you believe position the business well from a platform perspective and the scalability of the enterprise to build other brands bigger and to become more profitable overall, as opposed to just a specific brand. So, again, this idea of platform versus brand would be great to get your view on.

Carlos Alberini: Yes, I would be happy. Thank you very much for the question. Frankly, this is at the center of why we are calling this our inflection point for the company’s development. As we have been reflecting and thinking and doing a lot of work on our strategic vision for the company, it became very obvious to us that over the last 43 years, Paul and his brothers, they have built a pretty incredible machine here, where one brand benefited from multiple capabilities, including understanding how to run each and every one of the channels where we sell product with. So, we have capabilities in retail, in e-commerce, and we know how to do wholesale business. We have probably every single product or business model that you can imagine in our industry is represented in our network, one way or the other; franchisees, distributors, licensees, and so forth.

We happen to have a brand that has been expanded into a lifestyle, a very significant lifestyle for both women and men, and that incorporates over 25 different product categories that are part of this portfolio. So, we have expertise in all those product categories, whether those are done internally, or with the help of licensees that represents the brand for their respective products. And these relationships are very long-term. We’re talking about 20, 30 years plus in some cases. And that gives us tremendous strength, and it’s an ecosystem that is very difficult to replicate. We happen to be in the international marketplace, not just in one area, but we are currently in 100 countries, and we have representation locally in multiple markets with local management teams that really run those territories, which is another incredible strength that the model has.

So, when you think about all this, for all these 43 years, this whole ecosystem has serviced the Guess? brand very well. But then we started thinking, well, why couldn’t we just bring additional business through this platform and really give them access to all these capabilities and also just contribute to growing those different opportunities in different markets or different product categories? So, we put it all together, and you think, well, so you think about an opportunity like rag & bone. rag & bone brings an incredible match to what we think that this platform can offer. First, the customer base that rag & bone just works with is very complementary to all the other customer bases that we have as part of our portfolio of brands. And we think that this brings a great opportunity to really capitalize on a new market that is very attractive, very affluent consumers.

And, of course, that is why and it’s based on the price positioning that the brand has, which is very strong and very attractive. So, just at the same time, rag & bone is relatively concentrated in terms of the business in the U.S. I believe that about 90% of the business is in the U.S. And we think that this is a case where you have a very strong brand that the business doesn’t represent the potential and size of the brand itself. So, we feel that there is a big opportunity to really take that brand internationally and offer additional product categories that today, maybe they are represented but very limitedly, or they are not represented at all and we have access to all those. So, we are just super excited about this opportunity to really bring those capabilities to bear to help the brand become significantly bigger, become present in multiple markets that it’s not well known today, and into product categories that we think that those product categories belong with the lifestyle that the brand represents, but today they are not represented.

That is just one example of the type of business that we think our platform can benefit. And for that reason, we call it a platform as opposed to a brand. Just of course, the Guess? brand will continue to benefit from this. And we think that there are other benefits that can come from it, like just in the long-term, using a vendor base that could be really very additive to what we’re doing with our brands internally today. I don’t know, maybe some days we are going to find synergies, but frankly, if you go back to rag & bone, that’s not what motivated us to do this acquisition. And that is not a priority today. Our priority is to really invest in expanding the awareness of this brand, bringing the brand to other markets, bringing the brand or products into the brand to expand the reach and the assortment that we offer to that consumer.

Corey Tarlowe: That’s great. Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Carlos Alberini: So we are super exciting. Thank you.

Corey Tarlowe: Great. I did just have a follow-up on the outlook for this year. Obviously, the organic growth, as well as the acquisitive growth that you have planned in there from a sales perspective is very attractive. I was just curious on the margin point for the full-year operating margins in fiscal year 2024 were over 9%. And then, at the midpoint for the outlook, you’re looking for about 8%, so a decline of a little over 100 basis points. I’m curious if you could talk through some of the puts and takes and headwinds and tailwinds that you’re anticipating to impact the operating margin for the full-year of fiscal 2025.

Carlos Alberini: I’m going to just say a couple of words and then just Markus to answer this. But you know, just that we are looking at this year as a year of investment and as a year where we continue to build capability to support the growth. We talked a little bit about investing in people and some new roles. We think that in this particular year, just investing in the brand will also take some marketing power. And we think that it’s absolutely the right thing to do, not only for rag & bone, but also for the new brand, GUESS Jeans, that we’re launching. And all of that is embedded into our guidance. And we feel that maybe we’re being conservative, but we think it’s important that we anticipate the level of investment that is going to be required to really pursue the potential that our business and in particular, this new brand has. So, Markus?

Markus Neubrand: Thank you, Carlos. Hi, Corey. For the full-year, as you’ve seen from the press release and prepared remarks, as we project 11.5 to 13.5 revenue growth in total. FX is a headwind for the full-year of roughly at one point. As you’ve seen in the prepared remarks, I talked about that rag & bone represent roughly two-thirds of that revenue growth we are projecting for fiscal year 2025. And Carlos and I think talked about those several concrete initiatives that we have that will drive the growth in the core Guess? and Marciano business, like GUESS Jeans, also like markets, also like India, Chile, and Peru, also that Carlos touched on, and the internalization of the outerwear and dress category in North America. If we look at the [Autobots] (ph) puts and takes, I think FX, of course, is on the revenue side, I think it’s a headwind.

On the revenue side, also the 53rd week represents a headwind. The SBA won’t be comping 53rd week in the fourth quarter. When we put all of it together and I think getting to the operating margin, Carlos touched on the investments in the infrastructure, investments also in rag & bone as well. Red Sea, I touched on it. I think then also the Red Sea crisis has an impact on our freight rates and on the inbound costs that we have incorporated in today’s guidance, where we expect increasing freight rates, especially in the first-half of fiscal year 2025, and then they were expected to be moderated in the second-half of fiscal year 2025. rag & bone acquisition, we expect that it will be modestly accretive, so there will be some margin dilution from rag & bone.

And there are some other benefits that we’ve incorporated in our guidance, like the KYDC, Kentucky DC operations that have been outsourced to a logistics partner. All of this has been incorporated in the guidance we’ve been giving in operating margin that we see between 7.5% and 8.5% for fiscal year 2025.

Carlos Alberini: Then just I would add, not everything is perfect here. We are also facing some challenging businesses. North America has been tough for us, especially the U.S., and we are seeing negative traffic into our stores that continues to impact us and we have to be prudent and careful. We want to sell product at full price, so we have been very careful not to over-promote. And of course, that is also having an impact on our top line, in addition to the customer traffic issue. So, we are incorporating this thought into our guidance as well. And I think that Markus talked about this in his prepared remarks, but we expect that in the first quarter, we are going to have timing in our wholesale European business that is impacting us in a negative way, $15 million, I think that is the number.

The good news here is that this is not a reflection of the business contracting. This is only a timing issue, and we know, based on our order book and everything that we are seeing in terms of trends in our business, that we have plenty of volume coming in the following two quarters. That is definitely more than compensating the partial change in the first quarter because of the timing. So, we feel good about that. We feel good about Europe. Our business continues to be very healthy in the direct-to-consumer business. We have some weakness in e-commerce, but it has not been just something to be concerned about. We are seeing that the stores continue to do very well. We had a great fourth quarter in Europe, and we think that this speaks loud and clear about not only our position in the marketplace as a brand, but it speaks loud and clear about how good the product is, and how the customers are embracing the product assortment that we have in the launch today.

It is a good moment for us.

Corey Tarlowe: Great. Thank you so much.

Carlos Alberini: Thank you, Corey.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] One moment for our next question, please. It comes from the line of Mauricio Serna with UBS. Please proceed.

Mauricio Serna: Great. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking our questions. I was hoping you could elaborate a little bit more.

Carlos Alberini: Hi, Mauricio.

Mauricio Serna: Hi, hi. Yes, maybe if you would elaborate a little bit more on what you saw in the Americas region. It was pretty nice to see the comp sales improve, but then the commentary you just provided, it seemed like things got a little bit slowed down a little bit in the Q1, so maybe a little bit more detail on that. And then, it seems Europe still performed very well. That should be the case for this year. Maybe just what do you think is driving that ongoing outperformance? And I don’t know if you could maybe give us an idea of if we just think about the core Guess? and Marciano businesses by themselves, what kind of operating margin were you thinking for them, fiscal year 2025, excluding rag & bone and maybe any additional investments that you will be doing for that business? Thank you.

Carlos Alberini: Okay. Thank you, Mauricio. I was just talking a little bit about our Americas business, the challenges that we faced with negative traffic. That in the fourth quarter got a little better versus the trends that we had experienced in the third quarter, and that helped us. And we ended that quarter with a plus one, I believe, in terms of revenue growth, but that was impacted positively by the 53rd week, so it’s not our comps. We’re still negative, and we do not anticipate that, that is going to change just in the next few months, and that it’s kind of in line with what we are experiencing today, and that has been embedded into our guidance. We think it’s clearly an issue with traffic. We don’t know exactly what’s happening in the industry at large.

I think in our case, this has been somewhat consistent, and for that reason, we have been predicting the business and anticipating inventory buys in just taking that into consideration. Interestingly enough, our business in the U.S. was the most difficult one, but we had a very good business in Canada, and we’re talking about positive comps, improved profitability, just a good conversion there, and kind of like a very different story than what we see in the U.S. So, we think that just then you look at the different pieces in the U.S., the tourist stores did better than the non-tourist stores. We don’t know exactly what to read into that because of the strength of the dollar and how that is impacting the pockets of tourists, but that is the real numbers, and we are analyzing all this as much as we can to really make the right decisions.

When you go to Europe now, on the other side, this has been very, very strong. We had a great fourth quarter, as I said before, and positive comps have been now present there for quite some time. We’re talking about several quarters. We think it has a lot to do with how good the product assortment is and how that customer is gravitating towards the brand. We are seeing good traffic now. Just many of those markets have more than recovered from pre-COVID trends, and that’s very significant. And also, when you talk about Europe, this is not just one mass of customers or one mass market. There is a lot of different, just unique characteristics of each of those markets or countries. We have some countries that have done incredibly well. I think Turkey we talked about, but there are many other examples like that, and there are some other countries that are more challenged, like Germany has been in a more difficult place.

We were very pleased with our business in the Mediterranean Basin during the fourth quarter. Italy had a very good quarter. Spain had a good quarter. I mean, there are a lot of good things happening too, in spite of how challenging some of the markets may be. I think that is probably unique to us, again, because I think the brand is so strong and so well embraced by the customer. The great thing about Europe is that if that market is working for us, I mean that means that a lot of the companies are working. Just that business last year represented $1.5 billion for us. So, that’s a pretty massive business and a very big influence on how the company does. If Europe does well, we have a very good chance to do well as a company. And it’s not just the volume, but it’s also the profitability.

The business is very healthy. We have a great wholesale business. The wholesale business, I think, during the last four years has grown 30% from about €480 million to about €630 million now. When you think about that, and this is with COVID in between, so I think this speaks loud and clear about the strength of the business and the brand in those territories. And I think that something that we did very well, and this is a credit to Paul also and the product team, is the expansion of key categories. We introduced leisure as a new category to the assortment. And this happened during the COVID times. And that business went from zero, literally zero, to representing about 7% of our apparel business in about two or three seasons. I mean, it happened so, so quickly.

And then, after COVID was behind us, we didn’t know what to expect about this brand because people were changing their lifestyles and so forth. But we are super pleased with that because we see huge strength from this category. As recently as the season we just closed, Athleisure was one of the big growers within all the categories. So, that’s an example. Just expanding categories can be very powerful for us to continue to grow our business.

Markus Neubrand: Corey, if I may take the last part of your question regarding the operating margin that we’re expecting for the full-year of fiscal year ’25. We talked about those opportunities for growth. I’m not going into them again. From a revenue perspective, the headwinds, we had a 53rd week foreign currencies. From an operating margin perspective, rag & bone is modestly accretive. So, meaning in other words, it is a little bit of the margin dilution from rag & bone that we have incorporated in our today’s guidance for the operating margin. Carlos talked about it before and we touched on it as well. We are making investments in our infrastructure. I think Carlos talked about several, also about the key searches we’re making.

We talked about the platform earlier. I think that we are building. So, this is all being incorporated in our today’s guidance. And on top of it, I think I’ve mentioned before and also in prepared remarks, we have the Red Sea impact on shipping costs incorporated on our total company guidance. And the 7.5% to 8.5% operating margin incorporates the core Guess? and Marciano business as well as also what we expect as a contribution from rag & bone.

Carlos Alberini: And the investment in marketing, right?

Markus Neubrand: Yes, exactly, investment in marketing and growth in the Rag $ Bone.

Carlos Alberini: So I think at the end, it’s fair to say that if you were looking at just the core business before rag & bone, you would be looking at a higher operating margin. Tiny, tiny, but higher operating margin, and we don’t think that this should be the case forever because we see that there is tremendous potential in rag & bone to even be more profitable in the future. But for now, and for this year, that’s the way we are planning the business.

Mauricio Serna: Understood, very helpful. Thank you so much.

Carlos Alberini: Thank you, Mauricio.

Operator: Thank you. And one moment for our next question. And it comes from the line of Eric Beder with Small Cap Consumer Research. Please proceed.

Eric Beder: Good afternoon. Congratulations. Two questions, one, GUESS Jeans, when is that, you previewed the collection, so when is it going to start to roll out and where is the focus in terms of where the product’s going to be, your own stores, your region? How should we be thinking about that rollout and how it impacts the guidance? The second unrelated question, you guys did the special dividends, you’ve done regular dividends. The stock repurchased program is completely used. Again, congratulations. Do you plan on revisiting that as we go forward in this year? Thank you.

Carlos Alberini: Okay. Thank you, Eric. So, let me start with GUESS Jeans. GUESS Jeans, we’re talking about a month from when the product is coming. So, we’re super excited about this. Initially, the whole brand has been offered as a wholesale opportunity. So, we have a big drive in Europe. All our showrooms have presented the product to their customers and there is a tremendous campaign that is going on. We just finished and the initial results, I think I said it, have been very just ahead of what we had expected. But it’s primarily a wholesale business. That being said, we think that there is a big opportunity here to start exploring the presentation of the brand in its own environment. So, for that reason, we have selected a few new locations to present the brand.

And one of them is in Melrose in Los Angeles, Hollywood. It’s an incredible location, great corner. It has tremendous traffic, both cars and food traffic. And we think that it’s going to be a phenomenal presentation for the brand. And we are selecting some other locations in key European cities where we think that the brand is going to be well represented and will represent what this whole lifestyle is for the brand to attract that younger consumer. But also, we don’t see it as an exclusive young consumer type of product. We think that everybody will find what they’re looking for in that store. So, this is not going to be a major expansion of stores you notice that we are planning, but we will consider opening strategically, just as the brand continues to develop.

We’re working on marketing. Nicolai is working very hard on the whole marketing campaign and how we think about presenting the brands and keynotes. He’s working on collaborations and so forth. And I will keep you informed when we have more to say, but overall it’s all happening. The initial numbers are very good. We think that the product is right on. The reception from our wholesale customers has been very, very positive, and the two events that I mentioned during my prepared remarks that Nicolai led have been incredible, number one, to really make this story known, also capitalizing on the history of our company and the experience that this company did on category, which is remarkable, and having discovered a strong washing at the time. So, not only that, but just the creativity that was displayed into this two events showing how the product has been treated, what the major change in sustainability that this techniques are going bring into the industry, it was really very compelling and people are just thrown away with the level of innovation that was displayed during the two events.

So, all that is a big way to really tell the story, we got tremendous coverage. I think there were — I don’t know how many articles, but my team, newspapers, TV programs, they all featured everything that was happening in both Milan and Florence. So, I’ll stop there. With respect to your second question on the special dividend, I think that your question was more about share repurchases, and you are right, we don’t have an open pool for share repurchase. But we will continue to be opportunistic in the way we use capital, and I think that we have proven that in the last five years a lot of things have been used to really reward shareholders, and we believe strongly on that. And our Board is completely just at the forefront of this, and we think that so far we have used the capital in a very smart way, and strategic, and the great thing is that we have plenty of capacity.

So, we have very strong balance sheet. I think that Markus said just when you think about our debt, just even if you consider the convertible warrants that we just exchanged in the last few months. And you put that against our cash at the end of the year, just we’re talking about nominal net debt, we’re talking about less than $100 million of net debt. So, the balance sheet is very strong, and that’s why the Board was encouraged and excited about declaring the special dividend.

Eric Beder: Great. Congratulations for the rest of the year.

Carlos Alberini: Yes, thank you, Eric.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. One moment. It comes from the line of Jeff Lick with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed.

Jeff Lick: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Congrats on a stellar quarter and a great year. Maybe just, Markus, maybe in Q1, you drilled down a little bit on everyone’s questions about the operating margin, it would appear relative to last year where the operating margin was 30 bips. There’s probably a 250 to 300 bip variance year-over-year. If you could just give us anything about where that’s coming from in terms of the gross margin, it’s probably like a $25 million, $30 million swing, so any help there would be appreciated?

Markus Neubrand: Thank you for the question. The Q1 guidance, some of the key initiatives that we have talked about benefits the later part of the year. First of all, we have GUESS Jeans and outerwear, often they benefit mostly in the second-half. We are having both transactions as we talk about before flows into the latter part of Q1, and will have relatively minimal impact compared to the rest of the year. Carlos and I talked about it in the prepared remarks. If you look at the timing of the shipments in Europe, there we expect headwind of roughly $50 million on revenues on the first quarter moving from the first quarter into the second quarter and third quarter, mainly due to a delay of product deliveries, I think, due to Red Sea impact.

I think we talked about, but more importantly, also in general, due to our delivery cadence that we have and how we plan to deliver the product to our customers for us to start our fall/winter products. If we look at the first quarter as well, and you’ve seen it also, our picks will be a headwind in the first quarter, but also in the second quarter as well. If you look at the operating margin, I think that you’ve seen our guide is minus 2.3% to minus 2.8%. We have incorporated the impact of the timing of the wholesale shipments, and we have talked about the Red Sea impact on freight cost as well that will impact, especially the first and second quarter, and after we expect that impact to moderate. And on top of it, also now rag & bone will close, but in terms of all the expenses, I think that also cost will also have an impact on later part of the first quarter.

And we incorporated all of these aspects, all of these factors in our Q1 guidance.

Carlos Alberini: Sorry, Jeff, I just wanted to say I think that Markus hit all the key points. I think that in the case of rag & bone, we will pick up one month of their operation, and just that is a significant number when it comes to the increase in expenses relative to our expenses. And of course, the first quarter is a low productivity quarter for us. So, that brings an additional level of pressure on the margin and profitability of the quarter. It all tolls towards the end of the year, of course.

Jeff Lick: So, you are saying rag & bone will close here probably in the next 10 days, and it’s going to close on April 25, because that explains — [multiple speakers]

Carlos Alberini: No, no. This numbers and our expectations assume that it closes reasonably quickly.

Jeff Lick: Okay, that make more sense in terms of there’s going to an expense drag without gross margin dollar pick up in Q1?

Carlos Alberini: Yes, exactly.

Jeff Lick: Okay, thank you.

Carlos Alberini: Thank you, Jeff.

Operator: Thank you. And with that, I will close the Q&A, and turn it back to Carlos Alberini for final remarks.

Carlos Alberini: Thank you. Well, thank you all for your interest in our company. We just closed a great year with a solid performance from our teams and strong results. As we look at the new year, we are thrilled about our opportunities really. And this includes our very exciting rag & bone acquisition. I’m sure you sense our excitement, and also the multiple growths that I mentioned, that we have identified, including GUESS Jeans and some of the others. We look forward to updating you on the progress that we make with our plans, and we will do these as the year progresses. Thank you. And we will speak with you soon.

Operator: Thank you. And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating, and you may now disconnect.