Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ:LULU) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Calvin McDonald: I’ll tee up relative to the market, the success you mentioning at 23% of our sales and where we see the potential across the market. I’ll let Meghan speak to the margin. I think we indicated on the last quarter that in every market, every region we’re in, we’re profitable and early innings of growth didn’t seem that long ago when international was 14% of our total sales, 15% of our total sales. So to be crossing the 20% consistently to have it contributing to the growth of the overall business is incredibly exciting, to see every market we’re in, the business growing double digit and consistently and having some of the lowest unaided brand awareness we have in the company. It’s single digit in every market, except for Australia and the UK where we’ve been in the longest, but even there, it’s in the teens.

So, we have a significant runway of growth in international business. And at 23%, I think we really are just getting started. I’ve shared before that the potential of this brand is, I think, 50-50 beyond our current Power of Three x2. But I don’t see anything that would hold us back from being a global brand to that scale, diversified and balanced in multiple markets and all markets today being profitable with significant growth through product unaided brand awareness. And Meghan, if you want to touch on the margin mix?

Meghan Frank: Yes, absolutely. So, for the full year, we guided a 40 to 60 basis points of expansion in operating margin year-over-year. That’s about 20 to 40 basis points above 2019 levels. So, we’re really pleased with that performance. Within that international is still below North America profitability. As I mentioned, China being the closest really looking to maximize that market. And then APAC and EMEA, still some opportunity in terms of operating margin expansion in the near term as we continue to scale those markets. So, I would say, over the longer term, focused on driving into the brand awareness and revenue opportunity, store expansion we have in the international market, scaling and leveraging over time.

John Kernan: Excellent. My one follow-up is just on other categories. It’s obviously been a bigger driver of revenue. It should be well north of $1 billion annually this year. Can you talk to the growth of that category and line item and how we should think about that going forward?

Meghan Frank: Yes. So within our other categories, we’ve got our franchise businesses as well as seasonal pop-ups, those would be the largest components. We also have outlets in Lululemon Studio. I would say the growth being driven by new franchise markets as well as relatively consistent, I would say, performance in terms of seasonals and pop-ups. And so I would say we’ll continue to scale markets within that bucket and capitalize on the opportunity we have there with our franchise model with another going forward.

Operator: The next question comes from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Brian Nagel: Congrats on another nice quarter. I have two questions, I’ll shove together. I mean first, I apologize if this is — but you talked about the further strengthening of your business here into fiscal Q3, specifically August. So, can you help us understand better? I mean, where — what’s driving that? Are there particular product categories, particularly geographies you’re seeing that happen? Then I have a follow-up.

Calvin McDonald: Thanks, Brian. I think it’s a combination of some of the new innovation that came out at the tail end of Q2 that is set up in position for sort of back half needs in men’s. We’ve seen incredible response to the Soft Jersey and Steady State were geared up for the ABC campaign of Get Into It, which I’m really excited about, having men’s play along with women’s being featured in that. We’ve activated accessories across our bags. We’ve done some digital campaigning in certain regions relative to back-to-campus, which has resonated well and driven some of our core products in terms of the bottoms in both women’s and men’s. So, it’s been a variety of activations, a combination of getting at unaided awareness through campaigning, leveraging our core as well as some newness and innovation that is resonating, and both he and she are responding very well to.