John Haugh
Analyst · Guggenheim. Please proceed
Thanks Jaime. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. On today's call, we will review our fourth quarter and full year 2016 results. We will provide guidance for 2017 and we will update you on the key initiatives for the Company. Before going into the financial details, I would first like to share with you the progress we're making on the strategic plan that we outlined at our Investor Day in November. As highlighted in our presentation, we believe the three key elements to drive an increased shareholder value are number one; organic growth, number two, a portfolio management approach to brand ownership, and number three, an improved balance sheet data. I'm pleased to be able to state today that we have taken positive steps in each of these areas. To fuel long term organic growth across the portfolio, we are more actively managing our brands. For example, we have a stronger presence than ever this week at the collective and project trade shows in Las Vegas which is where we are today. At the shows we are featuring seven of our brands including an expanded upstairs Danskin active wear collection, a new PONY footwear collection, Ecko Function, an athleisure line for Ecko and Starter Black, the halo of legacy Starter jackets. We also remain focused on increasing market share in the digital space. In 2016 we embarked on a strategy to improve communication and have a stronger e-commerce business across our portfolio. We are developing content rich brand websites for enhanced consumer engagement and communication. We’ve been clear about our intentions to take a portfolio management approach to brand ownership and in December we made the decision to sell Sharper Image for $100 million. As the only consumer electronics brand in our portfolio, Sharper Image did not fit into our go-forward strategy. After careful consideration we determined that we could better leverage our resources and generate greater returns focusing on other areas of the business. We generated a significant return on investment from this transaction. Iconix acquired the brand in 2011 for $65.6 million. The Company previously sold the e-commerce rights in U.S. catalogue business for $10 million and the brand generated over $60 million of royalty revenue since its acquisition. In total, we got back approximately $170 million on our original investment of $66 million. We use the net proceeds from this transaction plus additional cash to pay down approximately $115 million of debt. Reducing our debt and delevering the balance sheet is a top priority for our company. Since the beginning of 2016 we have paid down over $300 million of debt including $105 million of our 2018 convertible notes, $113 million of our senior secured notes, and $90 million of our term loan. We entered the year with a gross leverage of approximately 8.4 times which has been reduced to approximately 7.7 times today. With today's earnings release we have changed our segment reporting to break out the international as its own segment consistent with the way we run the business internally. The five segments we are now reporting are as follows; women's, men's, home, entertainment and international. The international segment does not include our entertainment brands. The global results for our entertainment brands are recorded in the entertainment segments. Turning now to our performance in the fourth quarter and full-year 2016. Total revenue was down approximately 7% for the fourth quarter and down 2% for the full-year. This excludes revenue from the Badgley Mischka brand which was sold in the first quarter of 2016. In the Women's segment excluding Badgley, revenue was down approximately 12% for the fourth quarter and 6% for the full-year. The two largest contributors to the decline for the quarter and the year was the Candies brand at Kohl's which was renegotiated to a lower guaranteed minimum but at a higher royalty rate when we extended the contract through January 2021 and the Bongo brand at Sears, which has been impacted by store closings in overall soft trends at that retailer. In the fourth quarter royalties were also negatively impacted by Danskin Now's tiered royalty structure, which hit a lower royalty rate earlier this year versus last year driven by higher overall Danskin Now sales of Walmart. The Danskin brand remains one of our strongest performing brands and was up for the full year. We are also pleased to announce that we have agreed to an additional two years with Danskin Now at Walmart. In the fourth quarter we signed additional licensees for our women's brands including kids for Candie's, kids and hosiery for Material Girl and tech accessories for London Fog. These newly signed categories are expected to launch in-store in mid-2017. New licensees should help to offset some of the challenges we anticipate in 2017, however given that most of our women's business is tied to large direct retail programs, we expect the women segment to be down year-over-year. For our women's brands we are focused on maintaining our share within our current partnerships and will be working closely with our partners to ensure that our brands have the right positioning and product. Our Men's business was down 10% for the fourth quarter and down 12% for the year. While fourth quarter results were slight improvement from the third quarter, the turnaround of our men's fashion brand is taking longer than we had originally anticipated. We have made a change in the management of our managed business and Mary Gleason, a veteran in the industry will now be spearheading the men's turnaround initiatives. In the men's portfolio we are seeing a good momentum for our Ecko and PONY brands. We have positioned PONY to capitalize on the resurgence of the retro trend and in spring 2017 are launching a new footwear program with plans to roll out additional categories later in the year. For Ecko 2016 was focused on stabilizing the brand following our transition to a new core apparel partner at the end of Q1. As we entered 2017, JCPenney continues to be substantially support Ecko with the intention of opening mega shops in roughly 30 key doors to maximize the brands presentation of retail. We will also be launching a new collection under the Ecko Function label targeting incremental distribution within the active department. As we have mentioned before, our Starter brand is down at Walmart but we are working on a number of exciting initiatives for the brand. Starter's co-branded team jackets continue to serve as a strong halo for the core business. The legacy jackets featuring retro team logos have had very strong sell throughs and are being proactively worn by a number of celebrities and athletes, we have great affinity for the brand. We believe some of our men's fashion and active brand are of the greatest opportunity for growth within our portfolio. Our home business was up 9% for the fourth quarter and up 5% for the full-year. Our home portfolio remains extremely stable with our strong partnerships including Royal Velvet at JCPenney, Charisma at Costco and Fieldcrest at Target. The Waverly brand is having success with new distribution at Walmart and Walgreens, two of the world's largest retailers. The brand's tremendous archive of patterns and designs plays very well in the home crafting and gifting space and we expect the Waverly business to continue to grow in 2017. As anticipated, the entertainment segment was down as we're up against the premier of the Peanuts movie in the fourth quarter of 2015. The entertainment segment was down 20% in the fourth quarter but up 5% for the full year. The Peanuts brand had a very strong year driven by continued momentum from the movie which we believe speaks to the power of this global brand. In 2016 the Peanuts special It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown won the Emmy for outstanding children's program and the Peanuts new shorts were nominated in the Best Kids Animation category for the 2016 International Emmy Kids Awards. For Peanuts in 2016 we entered into collaborations with top global designers including Gucci, Coach and Hoff. We opened the Snoopy Museum in Tokyo and the Snoopy and Belle in Fashion exhibit towards three international cities. Our international business excluding entertainment and adjusting for the sale of Badgley Mischka was up 28% in the fourth quarter and flat for the year. The increase in the fourth quarter was partially related to easy comps in the fourth quarter of 2015 but is also reflective of the significant progress we're making in signing new deals in key markets such as China, Southeast Asia and Brazil. We continue to build out our international platform and in 2016, we expanded in-market staff in China, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Poland. This brings our international footprint to 21 offices in 18 countries. With 100% control and ownership of China and the shift to more traditional licensing model in that territory, we have more than doubled our revenue in China for the full-year. We're also adding enhanced expertise to our business in Europe and believe with expanded talent in day-to-day operations, we will see improved results. We expect our international business to continue to grow in 2017 as we reinforce the strength of our global power brands of Umbro and Lee Cooper and continue the expansion of core brands such as Starter, Ecko, Danskin, OP Ocean Pacific and Zoo York. I will now turn the call over to Dave Jones, our Chief Financial Officer.