Jeff Boyer
Analyst · KeyBanc. Your line is open
Thanks, Kosta, and good afternoon, everyone. As Kosta mentioned, we continue to operate in a disruptive environment. During this period of disruption, our focus continues on improving our overall profitability while also strengthening our balance sheet. While our topline sales have been challenging, we are pleased with our progress to improve profitability through both gross margin expansion and reduced operating expenses. We expanded gross margin rate to 53.3%, an increase of nearly 300 basis points, and we reduced expenses by $48 million or 15%. We are also pleased with our progress on the balance sheet, as we improved our net-debt position by nearly $280 million with our debt balance at $230 million and our cash position expanding to $271 million by the end of the first quarter. We reported net loss of $12 million for the first quarter compared to a net loss of $48 million last year. $48 million at last year. Our reported loss of $0.25 per diluted share included New World Fossil restructuring charges of $0.16 per diluted share and included a gain on sale of intellectual property to Google of $0.33 per diluted share. Last year, our first quarter EPS was a loss of $0.99 and included a restructuring charge of $0.35 per diluted share. Excluding these items, our adjusted EPS was a loss of $0.42 this year as compared to a $0.64 last year. Currencies, including both the translation impact on operating earnings and the impact of foreign currency hedging contract had an unfavorable $0.08 impact on our EPS in the first quarter. Sales, which were within our expectations, decreased 18% to $465 million and decreased 15% on a constant currency basis. While store closures unfavorably impacted sales comparisons during the quarter, profitability in our direct business improved significantly as we exited unprofitable stores and were less promotional overall in our retail concepts. Store closures negatively impacted total year-over-year sales comparisons by approximately 160 basis points. We have closed 59 stores since the first quarter last year and ended the quarter with 461 stores. Overall, retail comp sales decreased 9% as a 7% positive e-commerce comp, was more than offset by declines in our retail stores. Our first quarter underlying core sales results were negatively impacted by lower promotional levels, off-price and liquidation sales, and a display watch availability issue. The supply chain issue on our display watch product has been corrected but it will take through the second quarter for inventory levels to build to appropriate levels. Our traditional wholesale channel remains the most challenging. Our wholesale business declined double digits in the Americas and Europe as sellout trends remained soft, while Asia wholesale business increased double digits in the first quarter. Our watch sales declined 15% in constant currency for the quarter with decreases in both traditional and connected products. Sales in our traditional watch business generally performed within our overall expectations, with continued weakness in the Americas and Europe, modest growth in Asia and the unfavorable impact of licensed brand exits. While our next generation smart watches are resonating well with consumers, connected sales decreased moderately during the quarter, largely due to delays in inventory receipts the impact of store closures and reduced liquidation levels as compared to last year. Our connected watch business delivered $62 million in sales, representing 17% of total watch sales for the quarter, as compared to 18% last year. Total Fossil brand sales decreased 9% in constant dollars compared to last year with declines in watches and leathers, and a modest increase in jewelry sales. Fossil Watch sales decreased 6% in constant dollars, driven mainly by the closure of underperforming stores and significant declines in the traditional wholesale business in Europe. Our connected business continues to gain traction, positively impacting the category growth rate by about 4 percentage points. Despite display watch availability issues and difficult liquidation comparisons, our Fossil brand connected business did grow 10% in the quarter, primarily driven by Gen 4 product introduced last fall. Excluding business exits and store closures, direct channel Fossil Watch sales increased single digits in the Americas and Asia, while sales decline single digits in Europe, largely driven by a more challenging macroeconomic environment. Total sales decreases in our retail stores driven by a reduction in promotional activity to increase profitability combined with store closures, drove an overall 11% decrease in our total direct channel, while our global direct e-commerce sales increased double digits. Store closures negatively impacted our total direct channel by approximately 430 basis points. Michael Kors brand sales declined 35% with declines in both watches and jewelry. Kors watch sales declined 32% for the quarter as liquidation sales that occurred last year mainly in older generation connected products were not repeated. We continue to partner closely with the Kors team to bring great new watch product to market globally. Regionally, Kors watches decreased double digits in both the Americas and Europe, while decreasing modestly in Asia. The Kors jewelry business continued to be negatively impacted by the reposition of the line as we transitioned into a higher price assortment. In the Americas, first quarter sales decreased 24% on a reported basis to $190 million with declines in our three main product categories. Sales declines were primarily driven by softness in the wholesale channel, retail store closures, reduced promotions, lower levels of liquidation sales as well as license brand terminations. Wholesale sellout trends remained down double digits to last year with retailers continuing to tighten inventory levels. Our overall retail performance in the Americas declined as e-commerce growth was more than offset by negative store comps, driven by lower promotions especially in our outlets, the negative impact on sales from closing on product stores and delays in connected inventory receipts. While retail sales declined, profitability increased solidly. Fossil Watch sales in the Americas were modestly negative with declines in traditional watch sales partially offset by strong growth in connected sales. On a core sales basis, excluding store closures and a minor currency effect, Fossil Watch sales in America were slightly positive. In Europe, reported sales decreased 24% to $153 million. On a constant dollar basis, sales declined 19%, representing decreases across all product categories. During the first quarter, soft sales trends continued across all channels, reflective of the challenging macroeconomic environment and general softness in the European markets in the mid-priced fashion watch segment. Retail comps were moderately negative with negative comps across all concepts partially offset by modestly positive e-commerce comps. Fossil brand decreased double digits in Europe, driven by softening sales trends due in part to fewer promotions in the retail channel and delays in connected inventory receipts. Display watch inventory levels should normalize during the second quarter. Within our watch portfolio, sales declined across most brands. Across the Eurozone, sales were down in most major markets with the greatest declines in Germany, France and the UK. In Asia, we reported a sales decline of 1% on $117 million of sales. And on a constant currency basis, sales increased 4%, driven by the wholesale channel. Retail sales decreased modestly as strong e-commerce growth was offset by the negative impact of nonproductive store closures, reduced levels of liquidation and display watch inventory details. Excluding store closures and business exits, our underlying core sales growth in Asia was positive 7%. Fossil brand decreased modestly in Asia with decreases in watches and leathers. Emporio Armani, which became our largest brand in Asia this quarter, posted strong double-digit growth, driven by traditional watches. Most other brands in our portfolio were relatively flat to modestly down in sales for the first quarter. Strong growth momentum continued in China and India, primarily driven by third-party e-com and wholesale growth. Hong-Kong and Korea posted modestly positive results while Australia, Japan and Taiwan were down moderately during the quarter. Gross profit increased to $248 million and gross margin increased 280 basis points to 53.3%. The gross margin expansion was driven by decreased op price sales mix with improved margins, favorable region and product mix from higher margin Asia sales, and stronger Emporio Armani sales. Lower promotions and markdowns as well as the benefits from our New World Fossil initiatives also contributed to improved gross margin. These benefits were partly offset by unfavorable factory cost absorption on lower sales volumes and an unfavorable currency impact of approximately 50 basis points. On a reported basis, first quarter operating expenses were $268 million, including $10 million in restructuring costs. Last year, operating expenses were 316 million and included $21 million in restructuring costs. Excluding restructuring charges, operating expenses decreased to $37 million in the first quarter as compared to the prior year, and included a $9 million favorable currency impact. The lower expenses in the first quarter resulted from lower store expenses, given the significant number of stores we've closed since last year, corporate and regional infrastructure reductions driven by our New World Fossil initiatives and the currency effect of the stronger dollar. Our first quarter operating loss was $20 million, an improvement of $8 million compared to a year ago. Interest expense decreased $3 million to $8 million on lower outstanding debt. First quarter, other income of $26 million was favorable to last year, mainly due to a $22 million gain on the sale of intellectual property to Google in the first quarter. Income tax expenses were approximately $10 million in the first quarter on pretax losses of $2 million. The resulting negative effective tax rate was driven primarily by the recognition of deferred tax asset valuation allowances. Income taxes in the prior year were $7 million on a pretax loss of $41 million. We continued to establish valuation allowances on a deferred tax assets in the U.S. in certain international subsidiaries given our operating losses in those jurisdictions, thereby increasing our effective tax rate. We improved our net debt position by $277 million compared to a year-ago, and ended the quarter with more cash than debt by almost $45 million. Cash was $271 million compared to $230 million at last year and debt was $227 compared to $463 million a year-ago. During the quarter, we invested $7 million in CapEx. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $35 million, resulting in a trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA of $234 million. Our first quarter bank leverage was 1.0 times. Comparable inventory levels at the end of the quarter were down 28% versus a year-ago, driven by reducing slower-moving traditional product inventories and clearing our previous generation connected products. Additionally, our display watch inventory levels were constrained due to supplier delays through the first quarter. Accounts receivable decreased by 15% to roughly $200 million and wholesale DSOs increased four days as compared to the prior year as we did not participate in early paid discount programs in the Americas as terms were not economically attractive this year. Depreciation and amortization expense totaled $14 million for the quarter. Now, let's move to our 2019 outlook. As we outlined in our February call, and Kosta mentioned earlier, we are working aggressively to change sales trends and drive improved profitability. However, given our limited visibility on top line revenue due to watch and accessory market disruptions, it remains prudent for us to continue plan our finances conservatively. As we look to the remainder of 2019, we’re maintaining our guidance for the Q2 to Q4 period while adjusting full-year guidance for the actual results in Q1. As a result, for the full-year, we expect total reported sales to range from negative 12% to negative 7%. The upper end of the sales range reflects additional opportunities in connected and e-commerce across our owned and third-party platforms, while the lower end reflects the potential change in sales trends, given macro factors. As a reminder, our full-year sales guidance includes approximately 250 basis points of headwind, related to store closures and business access as well as 150 basis points of headwinds from changes in foreign exchange rates. We’re continuing to see momentum in gross margin through our New World Fossil program in addition to regional and channel mix benefits. We expect these drivers to continue through the balance of the year to deliver roughly 100 basis points of gross margin improvement, though changes in currency rate will offset most of the underlying improvements. Overall, we expect our full-year gross margins to be 52% to 53.5%. Operating expenses for the full-year are expected to be $1.13 billion to $1.19 billion, inclusive of restructuring charges expected in the range of $40 million to $50 million. Our full-year expenses are declining compared to 2018 due to the ongoing success of our New World Fossil program. In addition, we continue to refine our store base with an expected reduction of store count of 30 stores in 2019. Therefore, for the full-year, we expect an operating margin of 1.5% to 3%, excluding restructuring charges, adjusted operating margin is forecast to range from 3.5% to 5.5%. Overall, unfavorable currency fluctuations are expected to have a $20 million negative impact on our operating income metrics. In constant currency, the midpoint of our guidance reflects modest growth in adjusted operating over last year. Looking at 2019 on a sequential basis, reported sales are expected to improve as we move throughout the year due to tougher comparisons in the first two quarters which moderate in the back half. As a reminder, first half results in 2018 were stronger, primarily driven by currency fluctuations, as well as higher liquidation levels early last year. For the year, we are maintaining our prevailing rate assumptions for the euro and the British pound of $1.14 and $1.27 respectfully. For the second quarter, we expect sales in the range of negative 16% to negative 10%, which includes approximately 300 basis points of negative headwind from store closures and business exits and approximately 200 basis points negative impact due to foreign currency fluctuations. The second quarter will also be negatively impacted by lower inventory liquidation sales compared to Q2 last year. New World Fossil will continue to deliver gross margin expansion as we move through the year, but this will be offset by moderating channel mix benefits and a larger negative impact from currency in the second and third quarters. For the second quarter, we expect gross margin of 52.5% to 54.5%. Operating expenses for the second quarter are expected to be $265 million to $279 million, including restructuring charges expected to range from $9 million to $11 million. Therefore, we expect second quarter operating margin of negative 2.5% to positive 1%. Given lower debt levels, we expect interest expense to decline in 2019 with relatively flat sequential interest expense throughout the year. We expect full-year net interest expense to be $31 million. Based on the foreign exchange rates embedded in our final assumptions, other income and expense is expected to be flat to a modest positive for each remaining quarters. For the full-year, we expect other income expense to be approximately $29 million, primarily driven by the first quarter gain on the sale of assets to Google. Therefore, we expect full-year earnings before tax of approximately $30 million to $75 million. And we expect second quarter earnings before tax of approximately negative $17 million to negative $3 million. Based on the profile of our geographical earnings, including the tax loss in our U.S. companies, we expect tax expense to range from $20 million to $30 million, and we expect second quarter tax expense to be approximately $3 million. We're planning to invest approximately $30 million in capital expenditures in 2019. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to open up the lines for Q&A. Thanks.