Greetings, and welcome to the Olaplex Holdings, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Patrick Flaherty, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and good morning. Joining me today are JuE Wong, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Eric Tiziani, Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I’d like to remind you that management will make certain statements today, which are forward-looking, including statements about the outlook of business and other matters referenced in the company’s earnings release issued today. Each forward-looking statement is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in or implied by such statements. Additional information regarding these factors appears under the heading cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements in the company’s earnings release and in the filings the company makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission that are available at www.sec.gov, and on the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at ir.olaplex.com. The forward-looking statements on this call speak only as of the original date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Also during this call, the management will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which management believes can be useful in evaluating the company’s performance. The presentation of non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. You will find information regarding these non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the company’s earnings release. A live broadcast of this call is also available on the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at ir.olaplex.com. Additionally, during this call, management will refer to certain data points, estimates and forecasts that are based on industry publications or other publicly available information as well as our internal sources. The company has not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of data contained in the industry publications or other publicly available information. Furthermore, this information involves assumptions and limitations, and you are cautioned not to give undue weight to these estimates. With that, I will now turn the call over to JuE Wong.

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As disclosed in today’s press release, following multiple years of strong growth, we expect 2023 net sales down 15% from last year and adjusted EBITDA down 32%, in each case, at the midpoint of our annual guidance range. This expectation follows an analysis of recent business trends, the issues we face and the growth opportunities in front of us. Based on this work, we realize that we need to invest more to keep pace with our rapid growth and current scale. As we look at our plan for 2023 with macro uncertainties and quickly changing market dynamics, reducing visibility, we see the need to reset and stabilize our core business with a long-term view. We are disappointed with this outlook and hold ourselves accountable for getting to this position and for improving the business. This year, we have a clear focus on increasing investments in sales and marketing, education and our partner relationships, and we believe this initiative will optimize our potential and position Olaplex to resume growth in 2024 and beyond. On today’s call, I will walk you through our analysis and how we are addressing the issues and opportunities. It is important to take a step back and acknowledge what we believe are the lessons learned. Going back to the very beginning in 2014, Olaplex disrupted and revolutionized the prestige hair care category, improving hair health for millions of consumers. And since then, we have experienced tremendous growth, quickly growing from $148 million in sales in 2019 to $704 million in 2022. During this time, we will focus on driving a synergistic omnichannel strategy, building out the infrastructure to enable our growth and investing in size and innovation capabilities to fuel further product introductions. We…

Thank you, JuE, and good morning, everyone. In the fourth quarter of 2022, net sales declined 21.5% to $130.7 million versus $166.5 million last year. We believe that fourth quarter net sales were negatively impacted by approximately $29 million at several of our key customers as these customers lowered their orders to rebalance inventory in response to lower levels demand and to target overall lower levels of month on hand than previously carried. By Channel, professional sales declined 3.9% to $54.9 million versus a 9% increase last year, which was in line with our expectations. This decline was driven by reduced purchases by our stylist community in the U.S. and the U.K., partially driven by the tougher macro environment impacting the professional channel. This was evidenced by the latest available Klein data, which showed total market front of salon sales in the U.S. declined by 2% in the third quarter, while Olaplex front of sale sell-through in the third quarter was up 2% compared to last year. Specialty Retail sales decreased 45.3% to $32.6 million, following a robust 332% gain in the prior year period. Performance was below the expectations we provided on our third quarter call, reflecting a softening in replenishment demand in an increasingly competitive environment, including heightened promotional activity during the holiday season. In addition, as we previously communicated, we were lapping the $15 million initial wave of Ulta pipeline fill in Q4 2021. And our direct-to-consumer channel sales were down 13.2% to $43.2 million following an 85% increase last year. DTC sales were better than our expectations, driven by strength during the key holiday selling weeks, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday across olaplex.com and our DTC partners. Sales were down across geographies with International down 13.4% and the U.S. down 28%. The U.S. largely linked…

[Operator Instructions] Our first questions come from the line of Bill Chappell with Truist Securities.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we can hear you.

I just want to, I guess, -- and you talk about the marketing promotion trial drive for this year. It certainly makes sense. Just trying to understand, as you look back, do you think part of the reason or the reason is kind of the shortfall as we move to the -- or slowdown in the back half of the year was because you weren’t doing enough in terms of marketing advertising? Or is this more to kind of enable you to hit the potential as we move 2, 3 years out?

Bill, this is JuE. I’ll take the question. So one of the things that we want to highlight is, obviously, it’s never going to be one reason. It is a combination of factors. If you look at what we have shared previously, that’s the macroeconomic environment. And we have always said, we are resilient, but we are not immune, right, to macroeconomic conditions. There is also increased competition, and again, we acknowledge competition is good because it elevates the awareness for the category, higher level of discounting, which you have heard us said, misconceptions about our brand, all of this play a factor. It gave us some pause. We looked at it, but what is very important to understand too is, our brand is still very strong. The fundamental of the brand is right there for us to see. Starting with our science or technology that we bring to the table, especially with our patented technology, we deliver very much superior performance and our innovation is set for multiyear. So hopefully, it answers your question on this point because if you look at even certain key metrics that we track primarily because it shows the health of the brand, which includes like retention. Our retention is strong. I mean this is based on independent third-party data that omnichannel retention across retail is significantly higher than the peer set retained from 2021 to 2022. We have also shared in the past that while our customer acquisition has slowed, but our brand’s final lapse rate is the lowest amongst peers. So I hope that this gives you some reasons to understand how we got here.

Yes. Absolutely. And I guess, just kind of a follow-up to that. Looking at the professional channel and kind of calling it probably the weaker of the 3 channels this year, have you already made strides or already been able to kind of turn the recommendations that, that seems such an important for recommending the whole portfolio that it comes from the stylists? And have you already -- and I know you’ve, over the past few months, seen a turn in terms of recommendations and improvement there. Or is that something we’re really expecting kind of over the next few months?

Well, we have already started working on improving our relationships with our stylist community. We have always done that. But what we are going to do is, we’re going to dial up, we’re going to amp up that coverage and the support of the stylist community, which includes both virtual and in-person as well as support in stores. So all of this will help with the communication, the messaging and the branding and stylists, as you know, love the interaction with Olaplex. When we do survey after survey and communications with them, the things that they love most about us is the community that we have built with them and around them.

Our next questions come from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

As you think about the brand and the product, how are you thinking about new product introductions, timing and magnitude? How are you thinking about the core product and addressing either do you need to remarket it in a way? Or how do you think of being able to get that core customer back? And has any surveys that you’ve done given you indications of what people need to see or what they’d like to see? And what does this mean in terms of pricing and how you price the product in this more promotional environment?

Thanks, Dana, for that question. Let me sort of like break it down. First of all, our product innovations and launches, as we have previously shared, we will continue to do 2 to 3 a year because we believe that by doing a very focused innovation launch anniversary, those launches will help with our retailers to partner with us to really drive representation, in-store and online and offline. In terms of our innovations to date, what you have seen in 2023, we have launched our 4D dry shampoo. And it is one -- in fact, it is the #1 dry shampoo in all of the channels that we have launched in, and we actually do have an exclusive launch at the moment with Pro and with a specific Specialty Retailer. So it shows you how powerful it is even when the launch is exclusive, we still retain and gain #1 position. In terms of studies and surveys of what we have learned, we continue to see very highly rank that recommendations by hairstylists on our products to their end consumer is key for the brand. And so this is the reason why you’ve heard me said during our prepared remarks that we are going to focus on an always-on No. 3 campaign, and No. 3, for all of us to understand, that is our core hero SKU. Even though all of our SKUs does very well because you can’t be the #1 prestige beauty healthcare brand without having all the SKUs rising, but No. 3 is our core, is our hero. And what we are doing is we are making sure that we have an always-on campaign to really educate, to message and to help stylists end consumers and our retail partners understand the usage and how it halos the rest of our offering.

Got it. And on pricing, JuE and Eric, how do you see pricing going forward?

Eric, you’re on mute.

Dana, so as you know, we’re a premium price product in the prestige category. We believe we’re at the right price for the consumer and relative to our competition. What we want to do is continue to offer our consumers and our stylists weigh into the brand, to trial the brand and in sizes and offerings that make sense for them. So we believe we’re adequately priced. Any promotional activity we do is only going to be focused on trial and building the regimen behind the brand. We’ve always said, we choose not to overpromote as a strategy.

Got it. And is the new cost structure of the business, would you say the cost structure going forward that would be a more normalized cost structure?

What I’d say, Dana, is that we’ve recognized the need to increase our sales and marketing investments as the market leader in the category, and that’s consistent with what we’ve said in the past. We’ve just recognized we need to do more, and that’s what we’re doing in this recent year of 2023. We expect that to continue. And as we’ve returned to growth as we regain the leverage from that growth. And I’ll also add, as we improve gross margin, when that leverage returns, we expect that to help fuel the investments that we’re making in the business.

Our next questions come from the line of Andrea Teixeira with JP Morgan.

This is Shovana on for Andrea. So you have mentioned before and even today as part of your focus for 2023 that you will be continuing to penetrate into premium and prestige salons where you are under in that. As such, can you please delineate or give us more color on what are some of the steps you’ve been taking? And when -- what is the response you’re seeing? And when do you anticipate to see some favorable aspects that reflected on your numbers?

Thank you. Thank you for the question. This is JuE. I will take that question. So first and foremost, we have added resources to our protein to make sure that those premium and prestige salons can be covered. We have also made sure that they have access to our direct-to-pro platform because most of these premium salons do like an automated process to place orders and to really get access to educational content as well as social media content as we see fit. Our head of program has been installed for more than 2 years is a specialist, and this is its know-hows in understanding and driving prestige and premium and key opinion leaders salon. So we have already kind of implemented a lot of the recommendations and the strategy that we believe will set us up right to really address this cohort of specialty and premiums salons. And it’s -- I will not be at a place to tell you exactly when we will see the results, but we are seeing a lot of adoption, especially from a direct-to-Pro app, where people are signing up and wanting to get more education, more understanding about the brand. So that’s a great solid first indication of how this program is working.

Just a quick follow-up. Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of how many salons you’re seeing or interest level? Or is that something you would refrain from right now?

What I would just give you is what the Professional Beauty Association data point, points to. While the premium key opinion leaders salons are relatively small. They do represent a very material part of the revenue generated by the salon community. But what is more important is the premium prestige and key opinion salons are the ones that really also set a lot of the trends and the conversations, and they are really also very much a community that really wants more information educational materials. And we are situated and really positioned right at this point to help stand with all of their wants and their needs.

Our next questions come from the line of Lauren Lieberman with Barclays.

Great. I guess, first, one thing that you haven’t addressed on the call this morning so far is just the investment in improving forecasting capabilities. So just wondering how that kind of is playing in? This is a very concrete business plan for this year, but as you think about some of the tools we discussed back in the fall about trying to build more visibility into inventory, not just in the U.S., but I guess, increasingly internationally. I was just curious about plans on that front to begin.

Thanks, Lauren. It’s Eric here. I’ll take that one. Absolutely. On our previous call, we talked about the need to improve our forecasting tools and processes. That progress is underway, and we’re happy with the progress we’re making. That includes new tools we’ve put in place in the demand planning space to better link sell-in and sell-through at our key accounts. It’s also new tools we’ve put in place, material resource planning tools through NetSuite. So we feel like we’re on good track there. We did hit within our guidance range in the fourth quarter, and it’s those forecasting tools that’s helping us take the signals we’re seeing from current consumer demand and project it forward into the outlook we’ve provided.

Okay. And then my other question was just -- I thought the focus on No. 3 was really interesting, and particularly in the context of an idea of a consumer having a more constrained wallet and needing to make choices so that maybe the full regimen is sort of less attainable, let’s call it. To what degree is that factoring in when you’re thinking about marketing and education sort of being a one product versus a regimen approach? And is that going to be part of the marketing going forward?

Thanks, Lauren. I’ll take the question, Lauren. One of the things that’s important to note is that Olaplex is a bond-building treatment that plays in segments of hair care that includes shampoo, conditioner, styling as well as hair mask. And when you look at that, the foundation of it is having your bonds repaired. When you get that repair, everything else falls into place, and that’s why the focus on No. 3 because there’s no other product or technology out there that can truly say it repairs the disulfide bonds the way we do. You have seen us with our patent. You have seen us articulated the pattern. While that is really all great, the science is powerful, we want to make sure that we are in a friendly consumer facing where the consumers can understand why bond building is such -- or bond repair treatment is such an important foundation for them. And then once that gets message well, educated well, and they understand the need for that, then the rest of the regimen becomes very much intuitive, right? Because you have to shampoo and condition your hair. You have to -- you do style your hair, and you also need to treat your head with a hair mask at least once or twice a week. So we believe by focusing on No. 3 back to our core, it will halo the rest of our other SKUs.

Okay. Great. And then sorry, one more. It was mentioned in the release on cost savings. G&A kind of as you look towards the back half, that kicking in. I was just curious, I was surprised to hear a mention of cost savings at all just given how the company has been. So how significant is this role of cost savings as you think about the profitability and OpEx equation for ‘23?

Of course, Lauren. As a normal course of business, we’re always going to be looking for opportunities to find efficiencies in our cost base that don’t have anything to do with those investments we’re making in sales and marketing and the core capabilities of the organization. That’s where we’re putting our money. So to give you an example, nonpeople-related costs in G&A, some of the money that we spend with consultants, those are efficiencies that we’ve been driving in 2022 and tend to in 2023. And the other key area here is in our cost of goods as we can better negotiate prices with suppliers as we can find efficiencies in how we go to market. We put a fuel for growth program in place to gather ideas from all across the organization to do exactly that. So I look at it as the classic good cholesterol, bad cholesterol type of approach.

Our next questions come from the line of Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity.

I was wondering if you could talk about just sell-throughs in the retail channel. I’m not sure if you mentioned that versus obviously sell-ins. I’m curious kind of where Olaplex performed in the quarter versus the industry.

Susan, thanks for the question. So let me start by saying that in the fourth quarter, the sell-through was robust, and one third-party data source that we can point to is NPD, where in the U.S. retail and DTC market, Olaplex grew well ahead of the category. As we enter into our Q1 outlook, we see similar sell-through trends across the specialty retail -- frankly, across channels. And I’ll just note here that because of the inventory rebalancing impacts that we’ve mentioned in both the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, our sell-through performance is actually materially better than the sell-in, the net sales declines that you’re seeing.

Great. And then maybe if you could talk about the performance of the dry shampoo. I know it’s probably early days, but just curious, any early reads there? And then also other new products you have planned for the rest of the year? And then I’m curious, can you talk about maybe just the dollar impact you expect in the sell-in for -- from new products in 2023?

Yes. Let me take that question. And I just want to preface, we don’t break down what we are selling in, in terms of launches. But what we can tell you is, our -- every one of our launch is validated by trade data has been the #1 launch both in unit sales and dollar sales. So it was no different. Last year, No. 9 was indicated as a top revenue-generating SKU in terms of its launch for the haircare prestige category. We’ve just launched dry shampoo, as you have seen, at the end of February, early March, exclusively with one Specialty Retailer, but also with our Pro channel. And that is the #1 dry shampoo in every one of those channels that we are launched in. So you can tell, again, when we put out a launch, it generally is the best in class because the world doesn’t need another shampoo, doesn’t need another dry shampoo. It has to deliver on what it says it does. And so we are very encouraged by the results, especially also by the -- proven by the ranking Hopefully, that answers your question. I apologize that we can’t break it down for you as such as to what the sell-in is for the launch.

Yes, that’s helpful. That sounds really good. And then lastly, if I could just add. I’m curious, so the professional channel, the first quarter guide is obviously pretty much more of a decline than what we saw in the fourth quarter. I know you have the inventory rebalancing. How much of that $25 million is in the salon channel? And then also beyond that, I guess, what’s driving those worse expectations?

Thank you. So we’re not breaking out the magnitude of the inventory rebalancing across Specialty Retail and Pro. But I will just say again consistently here that the sell-through that we’re seeing in the professional channel is better. The projection for that in the first quarter is better than the guide we’ve given on sell-in because of that inventory rebalancing. And it really is about all of the investments actions that JuE has mentioned throughout the call, some of which are directly focused on the professional channel and the Pro community. We expect those to take hold and they are taking hold now, but we expect them to have their fullest impact as the year progresses, and that’s why we’re calling out sequential improvement as the year progresses.

Our final questions will come from the line of Jonathan Keypour with Bank of America.

I guess I’m curious about -- so there’s going to be this $25 million lap in 1Q, and there’s the $10 million in pipeline. So it just looks like if you back out, if you try to normalize what 1Q looks like, it’s still about a 23% to 25% decline, factoring in all of the seasonal kind of impacts. Is that sort of where we should think about the state of demand? Is that like basically down 25% is sort of what is happening to underlying demand? Is that sort of a fair magnitude, I guess?

Jon, it’s Eric here. So that’s exactly the right math when you back out the factors that we’ve disclosed related to inventory rebalancing and pipeline lapping. Of course, there are other factors, but doing the math that way is accurate. And I think you get to that range of that minus 23% to minus 25% in the first quarter. If you apply that same math to the balance of the year, you see how we get to the midpoint of our range with some modest sequential improvement leading up to this return to growth as we exit the year and go into 2024. And fundamentally, that outlook is driven by the recent trends we’ve seen in consumer demand. Just keep in mind, we also believe we’re lapping particularly tough comps in that prior year 2022 period, and we seek to build the momentum as we go.

Right. Right. Okay. And then you’ve called this a reset year. I agree. That’s probably the right tack to take. I’m just wondering -- and there was a previous question about this, but is this a rebase year as well? Should we fundamentally kind of change maybe how we were thinking about what long-term growth and margins could look like? I mean it’s just like I understand that things are going to have to come down based on the inventory rebalancing, but right, there seems to be also some degradation in consumption and then kind of an acknowledgment of a need to spend more behind the business to properly communicate and compete. I guess should we think about this as being a rebase where 3 to 5 years from now sales won’t be able to be reaccelerated to where we thought they might have been able to go a year ago, and where margins are going to sit at a level comfortably lower than where we thought a year ago. Is that a fair thing -- a fair assessment to make?

So Jonathan, let me take this question first, and then I’ll have Eric build on it. I just want to kind of clarify and really double click on this. The fundamentals of both the brand and the category is very strong. If you look at where Olaplex is, we are at our early innings, right? We are not fully penetrated in so many of our distribution and yet we are ranked #1. So there’s a lot of opportunity for us. That’s why we want to double-click on the sales and marketing, on the education as well as really looking at our Pro stylists. And then if you look at all of the international where we have room to play, we are not in the Middle East in a material way. We are not in Latin America in the material. We are not in Asia Pacific or Asia in a material way. Those are all runways for the brand. So I would not look at it as a rebase here. It’s a reset year because what we want to do is continue to invest behind what we have already invested, which is technology, infrastructure, our capabilities in innovation and then double-click on the sales and marketing, the PRP, the education piece and our community building piece. All this would just get us to a stronger and better Olaplex. I want to turn it over to Eric because you also have some numbers questions that you want to clarify.

Absolutely. Thank you, JuE, and thank you for the question, Jonathan. The short term is important, but the long term is even more important, and that’s what we’re focused on. And I think you can appreciate the focus here has been on the reset for 2023 and repositioning ourselves to that return to growth. We’re not in a position to give new numbers or reframing our medium-term outlook here. We will do so at the appropriate time. I will just say, we believe in the long-term outlook and potential for this business. And that we expect to be growing this business ahead of the global prestige category and returning to profit growth as well, and we’ll bring more details when we can.

Okay. And then if I could have one more follow-up just on the distribution runway. You mentioned international and sort of the other kind of growth you guys could go into? It seems like the -- fixing up the U.S. is probably priority #1, at least in 2023. I’m just wondering if you could identify maybe some of the distribution opportunities you guys see in the states, and if you guys have taken kind of a different approach to where you are willing to play and where you’re not willing to play those kinds of decisions you’re making at this point?

So very quickly, Jonathan. If you look at 2023 in the U.S., we are only 15% penetrated at professional salons. That’s a huge run rate. We are now just early innings with the key opinion leaders salons. So on the Pro side, there’s tremendous opportunity for us. Our penetration at Sephora and Ulta are still very small. In the case of Sephora, we have been steadily growing, but in Ulta, it’s just year one going into our year two, and yet we are a top ranking hair care brand. So there’s a lot of opportunities in the U.S., in North America alone. And so if we focus on what we have going deeper, we will win.

We have reached the end of...

No, no. Go ahead, operator.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to you for closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us, and hope to see you again in our next earnings call. Bye.

Thank you. This does conclude today’s teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.