Victoria’s Secret & Co. (NYSE:VSCO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Looks a lot like what I’ve just said and is helping very much. We also see that where our customers buy into those third parties, they also buy into Victoria or PINK at the same time, and they’re our most valuable customers with the highest spend per customer. So, is it an important part of our strategy go forward? Yes, it is. We think it’s a very, very good tool and it’s an area where we can broaden the appeal of the franchise without needing to do all of the lifting within Victoria on her own. So, I hope that helps.

Operator: Our next question comes from Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Your line is open.

Adrienne Yih: Great. Thank you very much. Martin, I was wondering if we can go back to kind of the remedy to the PINK apparel piece of the business. You talked about some corrective actions. What exactly sort of have you identified as the core of the issue? I would imagine that you immediately started changing the merchandise that takes about six months, and that takes us kind of into the first — the end of the first quarter, second quarter. But what exactly you think that the issue is? And then for TJ, could be ask you two things on Adore Me. Should we assume that the sales seasonality also follows the cost, right? So, a little bit more than should be last of in the first quarter or so and then maybe kind of matches the seasonality to VS in the back half? And then for advertising expense, what was it for the year? And I would imagine that Adore Me being DTC is significantly higher. So how should we think about ad expense consolidated for 2023? Thank you so much.

Martin Waters: Yes, there’s a lot to unpack there. We’ll have a go. We’re making no frankly on all the questions you asked. I go to in — what’s the challenge on PINK apparel? Well, PINK apparel has been remarkably successful for us over a long period of time. It’s been a relatively edited and tight assortment of frames with renewed graphics over time. That’s been a very high-margin business and a very predictable business for us. So, boy, we’ve enjoyed this part of the business over the years. And top 10 when businesses are really, really good and very healthy. We forget to renew them and we lose focus on the product life cycle. Maybe we hang on to them a little longer than we probably should. So, as we look now at what’s happening in the marketplace at large, relative to our PINK apparel assortment, we say, yes, we’re missing some stuff.

We’re not quite as trend right as we should be, and we’re overly reliant on a logo business and overly reliant on frames that we’ve had for a number of years. So, time for a refresh. And so, thinking differently about logo, thinking about being more minimal, less over thinking about new fabrications, thinking about new raw materials, better outfit starters and just a fresher approach. So, we have completely scrubbed all aspects of the business, and we’ve edited out things that we think don’t fit. And we’ve accelerated quickly with the help of our vendor base, things that we think will be really on trend and fashion forward and we’ll be ready to come out of the box strong, particularly for the fall season, but we should see early signs of recovery in late Q2.

T.J., do you want to take the like a questions?

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