The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

We’ve made investments in areas like our sustainability program. So we have made a number of investments that, other than the shocks that we’ve had over the last couple of years, have been investments that were needed in the company. Certainly, as we look forward, we are looking at, as I said before, the profit recovery program is both focused on gross margin because we’re not back at the gross margin levels that we were at in fiscal ’19 or even before. And we also are looking at expense areas, everything from our procurement program where we expect that we can get some savings there, to other org efficiencies. So more to come in January, February, actually when we give you our second quarter results on what the final plan will look like. But it’s — believe me, we are as focused on the P&L structure recovery as you are, Jason.

Fabrizio Freda: Yes, just I would like — Jason, just I would like to add the point on the fact that in really the profit recovery plan needs to rebuild gross margin. And as you said, also our new capability that we invested in that Tracey mentioned also in IT in many other areas needs to align to our current sales levels. And that’s the work we are going to do as well. So those are the 2 big areas of focus. And in February, we will give much more specifics and details how will affect — will impact 2025 in the majority in 2026. And so it’s a pretty clear plan. I just want to say the entire organization is aligned on this plan. We have teams already working on this. We are completely committed to deliver that. And I just want to make a clarification on the programs that we announced in 2020 because you said it didn’t deliver saving.

It did deliver saving in the area of selling. That was the focus. Remember, this program was tailored a lot to the fact that the COVID had disrupted the go-to-market part of the business and then increased our sales online versus the sales in brick-and-mortar. So we need to reallocate resources more to online and less to brick-and-mortar and to create the right future in — the future balance of cost between the 2 areas, that’s what we did. In fact, we invested in the online progress. Today, we are still leveraging the benefits. And we did reduce our cost in the brick-and-mortar selling areas accordingly to the trends that COVID had created. So when we did in the past these kind of programs, we have been pretty successful in delivering what we wanted.

Operator: Our next question comes from Olivia Tong from Raymond James.

Olivia Tong: A bit of a multipart question and follow-up to a few. But first, just a point of clarification on the global retail number that you gave of up mid- to high single digits. What’s that for you or for the category? And then on travel retail, can you give us a sense on your visibility into how much inventory is still sitting with the groups or individuals versus in a brick-and-mortar duty-free channel, which we have a little bit better clarity in?

Fabrizio Freda: Yes. Yes, it was — it’s our retail sales I was referring to. So calendar year-to-date in 2023, our trend of retail is mid-high single digit up to date. And our estimate for the future is to continue improving that trend. So my point is that retail is solid. And the negative net sales that we see in this first 6 months, for sure, our — first, this month of the fiscal year are related to the readjustment of inventories that Tracey was mentioned. Second, on the visibility on these inventories in travel retail and — by the way, when we say this retail, we say ex the travel retail numbers, just one clarification. So it’s once the travel retail number. The point we are trying to make is that when the travel retail number, the retail and the net will be aligned, and we said they will be aligned as of the end of the third quarter.