Neil Cole
Analyst · Nomura
Thank you, Seth and Jeff. In 2015, we are projecting to achieve another year of strong top and bottom line growth, driven by a steady expansion in our domestic licensing business, our rapid growth in our international business, both inside our joint ventures and across the territories that we control, the excitement surrounding our upcoming Peanuts movie and the benefits of our recently announced Strawberry Shortcake and PONY acquisitions. We continue to see our international business as a key driver of growth for the company as we leverage our worldwide licensing and marketing platform, including our 8 joint ventures; to expand the revenue base of our global brands, Peanuts, Umbro and Lee Cooper; to secure new licenses in new territories and across additional categories in our fall brand portfolio; and to tap the underlying potential of the reacquired territories within Latin America. To recap our international joint venture strategy, our primary purpose is to bring our brands to market more efficiently, generating greater short- and long-term value than if we were to build out our own wholly-owned operations ourselves across a multitude of international offices. As our businesses in each territories' structure of management include marketing, licensing, acquisitions and finance, we may consider, where possible, acquiring full control ownership of our joint ventures, as was the case in Latin America in 2014. We believe that our approach to international joint ventures has enabled our brands to effectively increase licensing revenue, market share and profitability. For example, in Latin America, royalty revenue for our brands in the JV increased from $2 million in 2009 to approximately $12 million in 2014. When the Latin America JV was formed in December 2008, we had 16 licenses and 1 direct-to-retail agreement. Today, we have 53 licensees and 6 DTRs with the most successful big box retailers, including Falabella, Suburbia and Walmart. Since 2008, we have completed 11 transactions with local partners to establish and expand our international business. Going forward, we expect to form additional joint ventures, with the goal of developing markets that have not grown as quickly as we would have hoped. Moving on to acquisitions. We are excited to be expanding both our entertainment and sports platforms with 2 new acquisitions. In the entertainment space, we recently announced that we have signed a definitive agreement with American Greetings to acquire the Strawberry Shortcake brand, a great complement to our existing entertainment business. Through our Peanuts brand, we have a powerful worldwide platform that we believe we can leverage. With the acquisition of Strawberry Shortcake, we will be expanding this platform as we gain new partnerships with top entertainment companies around the world, including Netflix, Discovery Family, Budge Studios and The Bridge. Strawberry Shortcake has an impressive network of over 350 licensees and is highly recognizable around the world, with revenue outside of the United States representing approximately 50% of total sales. We currently estimate that Strawberry Shortcake will generate approximately $18 million to $20 million of annual royalty revenue. Our sports brands have been some of the fastest-growing in our portfolio, and they have proven to be truly global assets. To accelerate our growth in this area, we recently acquired the North American rights to the athletic brand, PONY, in partnership with a footwear company called AL&F, a leader in that industry. By leveraging our existing sports platform, including Danskin, Starter and Umbro, we believe we can grow PONY throughout North America, creating a profitable, multitier distribution strategy similar to our other successful sports brands. There's a high demand for authentic athletic lifestyle brands. And given PONY's strong brand recognition across both male and female consumers, we believe that PONY will generate approximately $7 million to $9 million of annual royalty revenue. Moving on to guidance. Based on our recent acquisition and anticipation of plans for incremental expenses to support our growing global platform, we are raising our 2005 (sic) [ 2015 ] guidance as follows. We are raising our revenue guidance to $490 million to $510 million. We are raising our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance to a range of $3 to $3.15. And based on our new free cash flow calculation, we are establishing free cash flow guidance of $208 million to $218 million. With the Peanuts movie launching in the fourth quarter and other strategic alternative -- initiatives anticipated later in the year, we expect revenue and earnings to be more back-half weighted, with approximately 45% in the first half and 55% in the back half of the year. In closing, as we approach our 10th year anniversary in June, our company is stronger than ever, with a diversified portfolio of over 35 brands and a growing global platform that includes over 50 direct-to-retail partnerships and over 1,100 licensees worldwide. We expect to continue to deliver growth through the expansion of our global footprint, our growing entertainment platform, continued execution on our acquisition strategy and opportunistic share repurchases. It has been an exciting 10 years, and we look forward to continuing to deliver value to our shareholders. I'd like to thank you all for listening this morning and for your continued support. And I will now turn it over to questions and answers.