The Gap, Inc. (NYSE:GPS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brooke Roach : I wanted to follow up on Old Navy. Can you elaborate on the competitive backdrop that you’re seeing in the business today, particularly as Old Navy competes for that value-oriented customer who has options, both online and with other discounters. And are you seeing any benefits from a trade-down customer in your stores?

Katrina O’Connell : Yes, Brooke, I mean what we’re seeing is that some of the brands that are really winning with our consumer are T.J. Maxx, Amazon, Shein, we’re definitely seeing those businesses gaining share. And those compete with our customer. We’re also seeing strong brands like Nike and Lulu and Adidas win, which tells us that great brands win in any economic environment. Old Navy has the benefit of being the #2 brand behind Nike. And so it is a big player in the branded space as well as being a retailer. So I’m thrilled to have Richard on Board with his experience in creating relevant brands. And that brand already has such a strong positioning. I think we have a lot to do there to keep winning in that space.

So more to come there, but we’re glad with their positioning for sure. Trade-down benefit, we’re not currently seeing any trade-down benefit. That said, we’re certainly positioned to add value to any consumer as we move forward since our goal is to have great fashion at a great value. So — but we’re not seeing that yet.

Brooke Roach : If I could just follow up on one other topic. We’ve heard a number of companies this week address credit and card portfolios amidst some of the macro concerns that we’re seeing in the environment broadly. Can you provide a brief update on how you’re planning your credit business and what might be planned in your outlook for the rest of the year?

Katrina O’Connell : Yes, it’s a good question, Brook. And certainly, we’re watching that, too. So any trends in credit card income that we see from industry reports or see within our own business are currently reflected in the outlook we provided today. We do see same as the industry reports loss rates increasing from the recent lows in ‘21 and ‘22. However, ours are not back to pre-pandemic levels yet. And we’re working with our credit card provider to adjust our underwriting strategies to make sure we’re mitigating risk of higher delinquencies, while still providing our customers with flexibility. So we’re actively monitoring the consumer environment. We’re watching the impact to credit and all of the trends on the credit card customer, again, are in the outlook we just provided.

Operator: Thank you. We’ve reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And I’ll now turn the call over to Richard Dickson for closing remarks.

Richard Dickson: Thank you. I’d like to thank all of you for your time, your interest and your questions. And I just want to reiterate my belief in Gap Inc., our people, our brands and how truly thrilled I am to be the CEO of this extraordinary company. I also just want to thank the people of Gap Inc. for this incredibly warm welcome and to thank Bobby in particular, for his tireless leadership over the past year and for igniting transformative work that I really am eager to pick up and run with. And all of you who joined the call today, I look forward to meeting all of you in the coming weeks and months, and thank you all for joining.

Operator: Thank you. That does conclude our conference call. You may now disconnect.

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