Donald W. Blair
Analyst · Citigroup
Okay. Thanks, Charlie. Like the global economy, growth across the individual components of NIKE, Inc. will not always be uniform. As both Mark and Charlie discussed, the strength of our portfolio allows us to invest in opportunities for growth while delivering consistent profitability. Let me highlight 3 points to put this into context: first, that our portfolio lets us leverage our innovation and brand strength to attack commercial opportunities across multiple dimensions. You saw that reflected in our Q1 results as our brand strength and past innovations drove powerful revenue growth across categories, geographies and product types. And you'll see it in our future results as we fully commercialize this year's brand stories and innovations such as Flyknit and Digital Sport. Second, that the diversity of our portfolio and the strength of our balance sheet allow us to more effectively manage risk. As we face pressures in one part of our business, we're well positioned to manage the impact of those pressures over time, while leveraging the stronger parts of our portfolio to drive solid near-term profitability. And third, that our portfolio and business model allow us to invest for long-term growth while delivering increased profits and cash returns in the near term. In Q1, those investments and product innovation and brand development delivered consumer engagement and revenue growth our competitors can't match. Going forward, we'll continue to take a disciplined approach to making those investments that have the greatest potential for strong returns. There were many great performances in Q1, both on the field of play and on the P&L. I'll be speaking about many of the latter as I recap our Q1 results. But before I do, I'd like to address 2 areas of the business that are currently a significant focus for our management team, and that's China and gross margin. Let me take China first. We're the clear industry leader in China, and we intend to expand that lead. There is tremendous potential for profitable growth in this market, and we're taking the appropriate steps now to capture that potential. Even so, the marketplace in China is changing in predictable ways but at an unprecedented pace. Charlie described how we'll continue to leverage our brand strength, deliver product assortments more sharply focused for Chinese consumers and transform our distribution network. As we reset the market, we will tighten our futures orders to ensure a quality order book and work with our retail partners to clear the marketplace of excess inventory. Combined with the slowdown in the Chinese economy and the shakeout in the broader industry, these actions will create some near-term volatility in our financial results. As these changes take hold, we expect to see improved retailer inventory turns and store productivity creating the foundation for sustainable profitable growth for NIKE and our retail partners. The second area of focus for us right now is gross margin. Q1 gross margin was 80 basis points below the prior year, slightly better than the guidance we gave last quarter and continuing the quarter-by-quarter trend of improvement. As we've said before, our gross margin has a large number of moving parts. When we dig into the details, we're encouraged by the trends. We continue to see benefits from our ongoing product cost reduction initiatives. And the pricing actions we've taken over the last 4 seasons largely offset the impact of higher input costs, which are starting to ease. We're also delivering gross margin expansion from our fast-growing Direct to Consumer business. That said, we've seen shifts in the mix of our business that are accelerating growth in revenue and profits but putting pressure on consolidated gross margin. The revenue growth delivered by our North American business in Q1 was exceptional, reflecting a great start with the NFL and ongoing strength in our overall business. Both the North America geography and the NFL licensed product generate lower-than-average gross margins. We're delivering a significant amount of innovative product into marketplace. Gross margins are typically lower for these products when they're first introduced. For the Converse brand, we've converted China from a license market to direct distribution. That drives higher growth and profitability but lower gross margin. And looking ahead, we will begin to see increasing gross margin pressure from weaker foreign currencies starting in Q2. As we've said before, we don't manage any line item of our P&L in isolation. It's our job to manage the company holistically to make the right investments and deliver growth in profits and cash flow. We're confident in our ability to drive margin expansion over the long term and continue to expect margin expansion in the second half of FY '13, with the full year essentially flat. Now let me provide a recap of our Q1 results. First quarter reported revenue for NIKE, Inc. grew 10%. On a currency-neutral basis, NIKE, Inc. revenue increased 15%, as the NIKE Brand grew 16% and our Other Businesses grew 9%. NIKE Brand futures orders increased 8% on a currency-neutral basis, driven by a 5-point increase in units and a 3-point increase in average price per unit. Every key category increased, led by Running, Basketball and Men's Training, which each grew double digits. Futures were higher for every geography except China, which declined 6%. On a reported basis, futures grew 6%, reflecting weaker international currencies. As expected, our first quarter diluted EPS were below the prior year, down 10% to $1.23. Although our underlying revenue growth was very strong, unfavorable currency translation, lower gross margin and planned demand creation investments reduced our bottom line. Excluding Cole Haan and Umbro, businesses we expect to divest this year, EPS for Q1 would have been about $1.27, 9% below last year. Demand creation grew 29% for the quarter, driven by investments in the Olympics and Euro Champs as well as product launches for the NFL and Digital Sport. Operating overhead grew 12% for the quarter, reflecting mid-teens growth in Direct to Consumer costs and low-double-digit growth for wholesale and corporate overhead. The translation of foreign currency-denominated profits, net of year-over-year currency gains and losses that are reported in Other Income, reduced reported EBIT by about $28 million in Q1. This downside was driven primarily by weakness in the euro and emerging market currencies. The effective tax rate for Q1 was 27.5% compared to 24.3% for first quarter of fiscal 2012. The increase was largely due to a shift in the earnings mix to higher tax countries, most significantly the U.S., as well as the higher tax rate for our international operations. Q1 inventory grew 10% versus last year, in line with revenue growth. NIKE Brand unit inventories grew 3%, slower than the 5% unit growth in futures. Overall, we're pleased with the progress we've made. Inventories in North America are tight, and Western Europe has come out of the Olympics and Euro Champs in good shape. As a percentage of our worldwide inventories, closeouts are in line with the prior year. Our main area of focus now is China, where we continue to manage down inventories on our books and in the market. As I said earlier, we'll continue to buy product against the quarterly order book -- a quality order book, and we'll aggressively move closeout product to position ourselves for growth. Our balance sheet remains strong as we held $3.3 billion of cash at quarter end with less than $400 million of debt. Our trailing 4-quarter return on invested capital was 21.3%, down 130 basis points from the prior year, largely reflecting the timing of earnings growth across quarters. As we've said on many occasions, we're committed to consistently increasing cash returns to shareholders. Last week, we completed our most recent share repurchase program, $5 billion, 1 year earlier than planned. For the program, we repurchased almost 60 million shares at an average price just over $84. Last week, our board approved the new $8 billion share repurchase program, which we expect to execute over the next 4 years. Now let's take a look at our performance by segment, starting with North America. Our momentum in North America accelerated in Q1 as revenues increased a phenomenal $500 million, up 23% on both a reported and currency-neutral basis. Every key category grew, with Running, Basketball and Men's Training reporting growth of over 20%. Footwear revenue increased 20% and apparel revenue grew 26% due in part to the addition of the NFL. Direct to Consumer revenues grew 23%. Q1 EBIT for North America grew 17% as revenue growth, operating overhead leverage and improved gross margin were partially offset by an increase in demand creation. In Western Europe, Q1 revenues increased 6% on a currency-neutral basis, driven by growth in all territories except Italy and Iberia. 6 of 7 key categories grew, led by double-digit increases in Running, Football and Basketball. On a reported basis, Q1 revenues for Western Europe declined 5% and EBIT declined 4% as higher gross margin was partially offset by demand creation investments in the Euro Champs and Olympics. In Central and Eastern Europe, Q1 revenues increased 16% on a currency-neutral basis led by double-digit growth in Russia and Turkey. Revenues for all categories increased, with Running, Football and Sportswear the biggest growth drivers. On a reported basis, Q1 revenues for CEE increased 2% and EBIT declined 13%. The EBIT decline was driven by weaker currencies, as well as higher demand creation investments. In China, currency-neutral revenue grew 7% in Q1, reflecting double-digit growth in Running, Basketball, Action Sports and Global Football. For the quarter, Footwear revenue advanced 12%, while apparel was down 1%. On a reported basis, Q1 revenue for China grew 8% and EBIT decreased 4% as higher revenues were offset by increased operating overhead and investments in demand creation. In Japan, currency-neutral revenues decreased 7% in Q1, driven by weakness in Sportswear, as well as Men's and Women's Training. On a reported basis, Q1 revenue for Japan declined 6% and EBIT declined by 29%, driven by lower revenues and gross margin, as well as SG&A deleverage. Our Emerging Markets geography continues to drive outstanding growth as Q1 revenues grew 22%, the 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Revenue growth was broad-based as every territory and 6 of 7 key categories posted double-digit growth. On a reported basis, Q1 revenue grew 8% and EBIT grew 17%, driven by revenue growth and gross margin expansion. First quarter revenues for our Other Businesses increased 9% on both a reported and currency-neutral basis, driven by low-double-digit growth at Converse and mid-single-digit growth at NIKE Golf and Hurley. EBIT for these Other Businesses increased 16%, driven by higher profits in every business. Beginning with Q1, we're reporting the results of Cole Haan and Umbro, as well as the costs associated with divesting of them as Businesses to be Divested. For the quarter, revenue for the Businesses to be Divested grew 4% and EBIT was flat as EBIT growth at Cole Haan was offset by a decline at Umbro. Let me now turn to our outlook for the remainder of FY '13. As we did last quarter, we'll provide separate guidance for our ongoing operations and our Businesses to be Divested. Let me start with the Businesses to be Divested. We're continuing the process of identifying buyers for Cole Haan and Umbro and preparing those businesses for sale. Both sale processes are on track with multiple prospective buyers. At this stage, we cannot predict the ultimate financial impact of these businesses on FY '13 results. However, the following reflects our current estimates. The financial impact will be comprised of 4 parts: Part 1, the operating results for Cole Haan and Umbro. As you know, these results are subject to a number of variables, most notably the timing of the divestitures and the commercial performance of the businesses. Taking into account actual results for Q1 and assuming both businesses were owned for the duration of FY '13, we continue to expect they would report a consolidated pretax loss of $50 million to $75 million. Part 2, the costs for executing the transactions and other costs related to the divestitures. Although the total cost for these items is not known at this time, we don't expect these costs will be material until we execute the transactions. Part 3, noncash charges related to the divestiture of Umbro. Upon the sale of the business or when the ultimate selling price becomes estimable, we expect to incur noncash charges to liquidate certain balance sheet accounts, most significantly the cumulative translation adjustment and deferred tax assets related to Umbro. Based on the August 31, balance sheet, we anticipate a pretax charge of $155 million -- or $100 million after tax for the CTA and an after-tax charge of $32 million for the deferred tax assets. And Part 4, gains or losses on the sale of the businesses, we cannot -- which cannot be estimated at this time. For Q2 of FY '13, assuming neither Cole Haan nor Umbro is divested during the quarter, we estimate a consolidated pretax loss from these businesses of approximately $25 million. Our guidance for ongoing operations excludes FY '12 and FY '13 results for Cole Haan and Umbro, as well as the FY '13 impact of divesting them. This guidance includes our preliminary estimates for China as we begin to implement the marketplace strategies we outlined earlier. We expect Q2 and FY '13 constant-currency revenue growth at a high-single to low-double-digit rate. However, on a reported basis, we continue to expect mid- to high-single-digit revenue growth, reflecting weaker foreign currencies, particularly the euro. For gross margin, we expect the year-over-year decline in Q2 to be generally in line with Q1 actual results as improving input costs and the benefits of higher prices are more than offset by weaker foreign exchange rates. For the second half of FY '13, we continue to expect sequential gross margin improvement quarter-on-quarter, with margins essentially flat for the full year. We expect Q2 and full year SG&A to grow at or slightly higher than the rate of revenue growth at a high-single- to low-double-digit rate as we continue to invest in our brands, DTC and innovation while driving leverage in our core operating overhead. We continue to expect the FY '13 effective tax rate will be about 26.5%, with the second half of the year roughly 1 point lower than the first half. For me, there were 3 key takeaways from our Q1 results: One, we have tremendous brand strength and a deep pipeline of innovation that will continue to fuel our revenue growth in FY '13 and beyond. Two, the pace of growth across individual dimensions of our business may vary, but the breadth of our portfolio and our financial strength will enable us to manage risk in an uncertain environment. And three, we have the flexibility and financial discipline to invest for long-term growth while delivering near-term profit and cash flow. We're now ready to take your questions.