Olaplex Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:OLPX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

I think it’s good to come back to the point here that we’ve seen sell in and sell out now go in unison, right? We’re past the customer inventory rebalancing issues that we had to bear through particularly in the first half of last year. And so we’re not really seeing one-offs in the specialty retail channel. We were pleased to report with an improved trend in specialty retail in the first quarter. And with all of the investments, actions, initiatives we’re putting in place, that’s a trend that we expect to continue to improve as we progress through the year.

Amanda Baldwin: Olivia, just building on that as well. I think also this is someplace that we have a new Chief Revenue Officer, Stuart and I have spent a lot of time with these partners, both domestically as well as internationally and really understanding where their priorities are or what we can contribute to the business. I think we’ve had a lot of very positive conversations and I believe very strongly in the power of those relationships, and you’ll start to certainly see things as we progress through the year that are implementing on the conversations that have been happening and they’ve been really positive, we’re excited about the future there.

Olivia Tong: Got it. Just on Q2, consensus expectations are for sales to effectively stabilize in the June quarter. Do you think you’re on track for that? When does some of this regimen building marketing that you talked about hit the market? And how long does it take for you to — how long do you think it will take you to work through the diversion. So just trying to get a better sense of your thought process as the year progressing.

Amanda Baldwin: Yes. And I think we expect that all three channels will continue to stabilize and strengthen as the year progresses. As you know, it does take time to get everything lined up. And certainly, we’ve taken the time in the first quarter to make sure that we’re having the right conversations that we’re developing. We spoke a lot in that — in our first call about marketing, sales and education being key focuses for us this year. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time. We’ve put together a lot of additional initiatives to make sure that we’re thinking through what we’re launching, when we’re launching it, how we’re speaking to it we’re getting there. I think we’ll start to be able to see things. I talked a little bit about some campaigns that are coming up in Q2 — towards the end of Q2 that’s really as quickly as we thought we could do this and do this well, and then accelerating through the end of the year.

And we also have our launches coming up in the back half that we’re very excited about. So we’re just almost getting to a place where we really can make an impact on what we believe the future can be for this brand. But I certainly would say that it will be the beginning and not the end of that story.

Eric Tiziani: And just one build, Olivia, on your distributor rationalization question again. The actions we’ve taken this year, we expect to have an impact throughout the year, and that’s what we built into our guidance and still consistent with the build that we expect in net sales as we progress through the year.

Operator: Our next question comes from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays. Please state your question.

Lauren Lieberman: Great. Thanks. Good morning. So I know you spoke about — you was talking about improving trends sequentially in market. But I was just curious if you could share a little bit more detail on retail sales. Are sales up yet in specialty multi, I know you talked about olaplex.com. I guess I was curious what the other DTC channels kind of retail trends that you’re seeing. And if things are still down, and I know we’re early in the — we’re fact-finding and planning, not in full turnaround mode yet. But given all the brand health metrics that you cited, if you’re not growing yet, why do you think that is? What is — who is growing or give me names. So why isn’t Olaplex growing yet at retail?

Eric Tiziani: Lauren, I’ll start. What we said is that the sell-through trend, including the sell-through trends in specialty retail that we experienced in the first quarter in absolute dollars was quite consistent with the sell-through trend that we saw in the back half of last year, of course, adjusted for some seasonality. We’re not commenting on that number specifically or we’re growing in certain accounts or not, but what I will note is that we’ve noted what we’re lapping from the prior year. And lapping the negative media moment we had in the beginning of last year and really only reached this point where we started to talk about stabilizing the trend in Q3 or the back half of last year. So just the sheer comping until we get to lap that point is a factor. And again, that is all built into the way we put together the guidance for the year.

Amanda Baldwin: And just to build on that, Lauren, in terms of as we look forward, I think that growth is about new product and new marketing and those are the things that we’ve been continuing to talk about and continuing to focus on as a team and certainly spoke a little bit about how we’re thinking about that both in the short run as well as over time for our long-range plan. And both of those things are in progress. I’m very pleased with the pace at which we’re moving. But as you noted as well, it does take time and we’re — this is 3 months into the year.