Natura &Co Holding S.A. (NYSE:NTCO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Guilherme Castellan: Thank you, Irma. Thank you for your question. Yes, I’ll start talking about The Body Shop and then we go to the SG&A of Avon International in particular. Yes. So, we had still a challenging quarter in terms of top-line for The Body Shop. So, you saw that our core distribution channels basically had a reduction of mid-single digits in the quarter. It’s worse than the Q1, but not significantly worse. And we continue to see basically The Body Shop at Home with a very steep decline, right? And that part of the equation, of course, as it continues to decline more and more, you should start to see, of course, a lower impact in the overall size of revenues of The Body Shop. But as you mentioned, look, this is a new chapter for The Body Shop.

And again, we have focused a lot on a few priorities, right, since Ian arrived a few months ago. Basically, there are four fronts that we are working. The first one is channel, right? And again, there is a strong focus from the team on the rebalancing of the channel distribution to really meet beauty consumers. This is something that Fabio has been talking a lot as well in the calls about the change in consumer behavior, where they used to shop before, where they are shopping right now, and of course, how we try to optimize our store fleet. And of course, our franchisee business as well to meet the best of this demand, right? Digital is something that is a big focus for the team and a big area of expertise of Ian as well. Ian has been focusing a lot with the team, right, to try to speed up and accelerate digital sales for The Body Shop and should expect to see, of course, less focus — much less focus and a big deprioritization on The Body Shop at Home channel, which, by the way, was never the core channel for The Body Shop.

The second one is product, right? So again, I think that The Body Shop is known already for a long time to launch very high-quality products, but there is a sense of basically revamping a little bit the R&D and of course, to focus more in some categories such as skin care while continuing to defend Bath & Body. And as you know, Irma, The Body Shop usually has a very strong last quarter in the year, in Q4. One of the reasons for that, of course, is the holidays, but mainly pushed by the Christmas gifts, right, that we do. And one of the strategies right now that we are doing in The Body Shop, by the way, copying what JP and the team has done a lot in LatAm, is to bring the gifting occasion all year around, right, so for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and so on.

The brand is something that we already have been talking a little bit about investments on reinvigoration of the brand and establishing a clear point of differentiation. And finally, it’s the operational model. As I explained in my previous answer, we’ll continue to find savings, especially in non-working money for The Body Shop in the next two quarters in order to continue to optimize the margin. So, we don’t give guidance in terms of revenue. But again, you should continue to see, again, challenging trends, of course, in the short term. But we expected that as we see good results coming from those initiatives that I saw, we expect to see some stabilization of the revenues coming soon for The Body Shop. On SG&A for Avon International, one of the biggest impacts in this quarter was related to phase of expenses.