Bracken Darrell
Analyst · BNP Paribas. Your line is open
Thanks, Joe, and thanks all of you for joining us. Just an upfront note that the sales performance we refer to will be in constant currency. Q1 gives us a good start to the fiscal year. The growth momentum we saw accelerate through last year continued right into Q1. Our retail sales grew 7%. While our normal trend since we started down this strategic path has been negative growth in the Profit Maximization categories, and double-digit in our growth categories, this quarter we saw relative balance. Both the growth and the profit maximization categories grew upper single-digits. That's better than you'd expect for profit maximization and not as good a growth. Vincent and I will take you through this deeper now. First, I'll drill down into the categories within our growth portfolio. Our growth portfolio grew 9% in Q1 and overall it continues to have a strong and improving product lineup in growing categories. Our newest edition video collaboration continued to perform very strongly and was our fastest growing category in constant currency in Q1. One of the key growth drivers was the Logitech ConferenceCam Connect. That's a very well received $500 portable all-in-one video conferencing solution. We also continued to see strong sales from the $1,000 Logitech ConferenceCam CC3000E that launched well over a year ago. Our Mobile Speakers continued to grow very strongly. This time our new premium speaker UE MEGABOOM was the new star. In fact, this highest price speaker became the second best selling product in the whole company, less than six months after launch and with constrained supply. UE BOOM continues to be an outstanding performer and again was the top selling product in the company. That's worth repeating the number one and number two products in the company in sales this quarter were the BOOM and MEGABOOM, a real tribute to the strength of our product innovation driven off our design focus. But there is more in store, so to speak, in Mobile Speakers, as you probably know by now. Barely having to get in the numbers is another new Bluetooth speaker, UE ROLL. It's an amazing little powerhouse speaker that began shipping very late in the quarter. UE ROLL features a go-anywhere waterproof build that carries the essence of the original UE BOOM and is made to be part of today's ultra mobile lifestyle. With UE ROLL, BOOM, and MEGABOOM, our mobile speaker offering is excellent, and we're well-positioned to continue delivering strong sales growth and share gains. Gaming was flat this quarter. There were two primary factors that held gaming back. First, was a steep sales decline of our legacy steering wheels. This was expected and a result of transition to the newer wheels we announced last month. New wheels for the PC, XBOX, and PlayStation, will begin shipping in the next few months. The second driver of the slower growth in overall gaming was lower PC Gaming sales in the Americas, particularly in mice where we've had such a strong growth trajectory in the past year. Lower category growth in the quarter was we believe temporary, but we are watching closely. Generally speaking, regardless of what happened to the Gaming Mouse category in the U.S., we have new gaming products on the way, particularly in the second half that should generate robust growth for fiscal year '16 in total. Our Tablet and other accessories category continue to perform poorly, while the decline in the Tablet market is no longer news, as a result, neither is our decline in Tablet Accessories. We have begun the process to simply our lineups and pace our innovation to a slower moving and smaller market. But you know us by now, and I assure you we have innovation to head there too. Our profit maximization category looked like a growth category this quarter, with sales of PC peripherals up by 8%, even though PC shipments declined almost 10%. We believe we appeal to the enormous installed base of PC users with simply great innovation. The best example of this innovation can be seen in Pointing Devices, which grew by 10%. This growth was driven largely by the success of our flagship mouse, the MX Master, which sells for $99. Both consumers and the trade press gives us a huge -- well, gave us a huge welcome and its reception has been much, much stronger than any of its processors. It's perhaps gotten the best press for mouse we've ever seen and there I'd say was deserved. Building on that momentum, at the end of the quarter we began shipping an equally innovative mouse, the MX Anywhere 2 mobile mouse. Another example of meaningful innovation is our Wireless Touch Keyboard K400 plus. This living room keyboard again targeted the installed base. The K400 Plus makes it easy to control your computer screen on your TV. Continued high caliber innovation in keyboards helps drive 7% growth in keyboards and desktops in Q1. Stepping back from the categories to the regions in which we play, it's really good to see the regional growth symmetry this quarter. The Americas delivered 10% growth, Asia-Pacific delivered double-digit growth, and EMEA, if you exclude emerging markets, which were dragged down by the continuing story of a week Russia and Ukraine, EMEA grew by 11%. So all three regions, excluding emerging markets and EMEA grew double-digits. We've grown double-digits for three of the last four quarters in AMR, consecutive quarters in Asia. And while this is the first quarter we've broken through the double-digit barrier in EMEA, excluding Russia and Ukraine, we've had consecutive quarters of growth overall there as well. Now, Vincent, will go into more details on our performance.