Under Armour, Inc. (UA) Q1 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Under Armour Inc. First Quarter Earnings Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Tom Shaw, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Ally, and good morning to everyone joining us today at our first quarter conference call. During the course of this call, we'll be making projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution that such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are described in our press release, in our Risk Factors section of our filings with the SEC. The company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Joining us on today's call will be Kevin Plank, Chairman and CEO; followed by Brad Dickerson, our Chief Financial Officer, who will discuss the company's financial performance for the first quarter, followed by an update for our 2013 outlook. After the prepared remarks, Kevin and Brad will be available for a Q&A session that will end at approximately 9:30 a.m. Finally, a replay of this teleconference will be available at our website at approximately 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time today. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kevin Plank.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Q1 2013 was another great quarter of growth for the Under Armour brand -- one that increases our confidence that the new products and initiatives we'll discuss today have us well positioned for another outstanding year in 2013 and beyond. But first the scoreboard. Total revenues up 23%, apparel revenues up 22% and Footwear revenues up 27%. In apparel, there are a number of great things to talk about: Our continued strength in Fleece and Women's; the strong performance of our Youth business, which is a great indicator of the breadth of our brand equity and the success of our new partnership with Marvel Entertainment and DC Comics, our Alter Ego superhero product. But first, I want to talk about the fundamentals in our ability to continue to grow our business at a market-leading pace while reaching new consumers with great new products and new distributions. This is essential element of our growth strategy and one that we continue to execute extremely well, driving 20-plus percent top line growth for the 12th consecutive quarter in total revenues and the 14th consecutive quarter in Apparel. In Q1, the best illustration of this strategy was our success in bringing newness to the market with our new Apparel product. It's safe to say that we've never had the breadth of new products in the markets as we do right now. Even in our most basic business like Tech Tees, we've brought stripes and more colors into the line and are flowing them into the market faster. This focus enables us to build multiple expressions for the athletes and make it available faster and in more ways than ever before. At the time of our IPO in 2005, we were predominantly a compression brand known for 2 things,…

Thanks, Kevin. I would now like to spend some time discussing our first quarter financial results and our updated 2013 outlook. Our net revenues for the first quarter of 2013 increased 23% to $472 million. Apparel grew 22% to $346 million during the quarter, from $283 million in the prior year, representing the 14th straight quarter of at least 20% growth for our largest product category. Two of the largest contributors to our Apparel growth during the first quarter were our new HeatGear Sonic Baselayer line and our expanded Fleece assortment, with Fleece revenues for the quarter nearly doubling year-over-year. We saw additional gains in Women's with new introductions in Studio, ArmourBra and running. Growth in our Youth business also continued to be impressive. Our Direct-to-Consumer net revenues increased 31% for the quarter, representing approximately 26% of net revenues compared to approximately 25% in the prior year period. In our retail business, we opened 1 new Factory House store during the first quarter increasing our domestic Factory House store base to 102, up 21% from 84 locations at the end of last year's first quarter. We remain on pace to open 10 Factory House stores during 2013. As Kevin mentioned, we also introduced our first UA Brand House store in Baltimore during the first quarter. In e-commerce, we achieved the highest growth rate in the past 4 quarters as our Brand Holiday helped generate improved traffic and average order value. First quarter Footwear net revenues increased 27% to $81 million from $64 million the prior year, representing approximately 17% of net revenues. New running products led by UA Spine Venom continues to be the largest contributor to category growth. Our Accessories net revenues during the first quarter increased 22% to $36 million from $30 million in the prior year period.…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Camilo Lyon of Canaccord Genuity.

Not to -- Kevin, not to completely firmer [ph] on the analyst day, but could you give us an early look on what direction international is taking now that Charlie's been there for about 6 months. What markets are you going to be focusing on first? Perhaps what sports will you leverage to penetrate those markets?

It will -- you're going to get a really great dive on Investor Day on June 5, so we're looking forward to that. And, I think, really introducing Charlie to the investor community and getting, I think, the same confidence that we have internally with what -- externally -- with what he's brought to the team here. So first of all, at a very high level, evolving the Under Armour business from being a North American company who's simply selling product in other countries to truly embracing being a global company. It's an initiative that we took on back in 2005 and 2006 when we first launched into Europe and over the last 7 or 8 years continue to make that evolution. Today I think that our goal is to be a global company that truly has 3 components where we're doing business, which would be the Americas, Asia and Europe. So checking off the list, we've seen success in international. We've had confidence that our brand will translate. But if you look across where we've been successful, it's time for us to make, I think, longer-term investments. I think we always talked about our growth being -- we're very fortunate to have a successful Apparel business, with the growth that you've seen of 14 consecutive quarters of growth there, north of 20%, as well as our Direct-to-Consumer business. And then we're starting to look for Footwear and then you'll see international come on and become important for us. So Latin America for us, for one, Mexico as these -- these markets, I don't think we'd really considered part of the conversation when we talked about things like Europe and China -- places like Mexico, places like Brazil, places like Chile, Argentina, Peru are places where we believe that we…

Sounds great. And Brad, moving on to just touching on the supply chain, something that Kevin mentioned. How are the improvements in the planning process of supply chain helping to drive improvements in the gross margin part of the equation? And can this be a source of upside as fill rates improve throughout the year?

Yes, Camilo. And I think it's a couple of things there from a short-term and a longer-term view. So obviously, from a short-term view, we've talked at length over the last few calls about some of the near-term challenges we had, especially relative to Fleece and servicing of our Fleece business that -- and some of the challenges we had last year and because of that, some air freight that we've had to incur towards the end of last year and early this year, also along with resourcing some of that Fleece product as we get into the back half of this year, and then obviously, that resourcing coming at a higher cost to us as we move into countries that are maybe -- have some more high duty attached to them. So there is some near-term challenges that we talked about at length the last few quarters that we'll see in the back half the year. And that's included obviously in our margin guidance for the back half of the year. As far as longer term goes though, a lot of positive things on the supply chain side. I kind of put it in the people, process, technology type, 3 buckets. From a people perspective, probably the most important as far as the first step, a lot of new leadership in the building the last 18 months or so. I think we have about 5 new VPs in the last 18 months just in the supply chain side. And 3 of them are on -- are on the planning side. So a lot of great leadership there, which turns into much better processes and more disciplines and how we forecast our business, how we order our business and how we flow inventory. And the last thing, I think it's systems, too. And I think we've talked the last few quarters again of some investments we're making in systems on the demand side and supply planning side of our business, which will help to give us a lot more visibility not only to ourselves but give a more clear visibility to our suppliers, which enables us to make better commitments out going forward. So although we see some near-term challenges here, I think some of these things that we've been working on in people, process and technology going forward should be a catalyst for us and start to see -- not only continue to improve our inventory management going forward in 2014 and beyond, but absolutely that should play a part in what we had hoped to be some gross margin gains as we get into the outer years. And obviously that's another topic in Investor Day we'll go into a little more detail on also.

Our next question comes from Sharon Zackfia of William Blair. Sharon Zackfia - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Just 2 questions if I could. I guess first on the updated revenue guidance. Obviously, 23% revenue growth on the first quarter, I think you raised to 21% to 22% for the full year. So is there anything that's kind of giving you caution as you look forward to the rest of the year? And then secondly, on the Brand House in Baltimore. I mean, it sounds like you're learning a lot there and it's pretty exciting. Do you see the opportunity for that kind of presence in other markets either domestically or internationally? And when you mentioned kind of leveraging that with your wholesale partners, could you give us some more detail of that?

Yes, Sharon, I'll take the revenue question first. Not really changing too much as far as our outlook for the year goes. I think you can look at Q1 and say that it came in a little bit better than anticipated. I think maybe the weather helped a little bit in Q1 as far as the little bit of an upside for us in our business as we had some good traditional product out of Q4 last year into the first few months of this year, which put some freshness on the floor, and obviously, we had the ability to service that colder weather business the first few months. In addition, our e-commerce business came in a little bit better than we anticipated in the first quarter, which was good. That obviously helped on the gross margin side a little bit, too. So looking forward, as we look past Q1, we don't see a lot of change in our -- from our initial guidance back in January for the rest of the year. We still have to look at the back half of the year and play a part in how, not only we but our customers, our retail customers, are managing their Q3 and Q4 inventory levels for fall/winter, obviously, coming out of 2 warmer winters. So there's probably an impact to that relative to some view towards the back half the year. But other than that, I think really a lot more of a consistent view for the rest of the year than we -- that -- as we had back in January.

Sharon, let me jump on the Brand House question that you asked about. First of all, I think we're really pleased with what we've seen so far. We're certainly not declaring victory at any level. Again, this is the type of store that we would typically open in a warehouse or someplace and make it more of a lab store. Having the ability to have real live bodies walk through and get a read on how the consumer reacts to it is something that's been eye-opening, it's been very telling and produced a tremendous amount of learning for us at the same time. So just some of the specific learnings we've had is that localized product has been really important to it. So I think there's something that people really personalized, with Under Armour about being that local hometown hero. And so when we play on that, whether it's graphic programs and other things, that really make the product feel like it's part of the community is very important. Doing that on a broad base is something that is why we have been a wholesale distributor for a long time because our partners do it very, very well. However, 2 of the big priorities we had was successfully elevating Women's and Footwear. That's 2 areas that we've seen really great growth, actually trending pretty far in front of what we've done and what we're doing currently in our wholesale business. Footwear, for instance, as a category, we're doing nearly 2x the volume that we're doing in the -- with our wholesale accounts. So I think really highlighting, getting the breadth of product, the ability for us to create an unedited merchandising assortment is something that really plays well for us and finding out the opportunities that we have with the…

Our next question comes from Jim Duffy of Stifel. Jim Duffy - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Brad, you mentioned in the script, mix was a drag to gross margin. Can you talk a little bit more about which were the categories that mixed up to work against the margin?

Yes, Jim. For Q1, for the first quarter, again most of these mixes were somewhat anticipated coming into the quarter. Factory House was a little bit of a drag as far as our excess versus made-for mix. That was more of overhang from last year's excess product that carried into the first quarter, so that came in a little bit more on excess side than we anticipated in the first quarter. And also on the Latin America side, we talked about good growth in our revenue in Latin America. Most of that is distributor-based business, which comes at a little bit lower gross margin, so that also impacted. That was anticipated and impacted the mix of our Q1 margins. Jim Duffy - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Got you. And then you're having good success with the Spine platform. Can you speak to any updates on where you are with Footwear gross margin and opportunities for improvement there over the balance of the year and looking forward?

Yes. On the Footwear margin side, we've been talking -- the Footwear gross margin's being kind of in the low-30s for us as an overall company. We're seeing relative consistency there right now year-over-year in Footwear gross margins. Again, I'd go back to my comments earlier on the supply chain side about short-term versus long-term. I think in the near-term, we'll see relative consistency in Footwear margins overall as we get through the year. But in general, longer-term, not -- pretty consistent with my overall comments in supply chain. A lot of things going on relative to how we plan our business, how we buy and flow our inventory, which should help, which obviously helps us manage excess inventory. And then obviously, just on the Footwear side especially, the ability for us working with our vendors and our suppliers and obviously getting talent in-house to be much more efficient and effective around cost management on the Footwear side should give us some ability longer-term.

Our next question comes from Lindsay Drucker Mann of Goldman Sachs.

I just had a couple of questions. First of all, on the direct side can you sort of part how e-commerce was versus your stores? And then within stores, how comps were versus maybe some of the new store productivity?

Yes. Lindsay, we don't really break out in our DTC numbers retail versus web for the most part. But what I can tell you is with the 31% growth in DTC, the web had a higher growth rate than our retail stores. That's pretty much all I can tell you. We don't really get into the differences and quantify the differences between the 2. And also we really don't talk about comps. For the most part, you have to remember that we have a lot of changes going on with some high growth in a lot of our doors and Factory House over the last couple of years, plus we're also upsizing a lot of doors, increasing square footage and so forth, too. So the comp number's a little bit challenging and difficult and I think a little less meaningful for us right now in our evolution.

Okay. Are we fully past some of the conversion issues and other problems that you guys had experienced on your website several months ago when we're looking towards a better operating platform?

Yes. I'd love to say we're totally past it, I think we have some good signs in Q1. I think we still have some work to do. Probably the biggest positive impact we saw was just really aligning that Brand Holiday Kevin was talking about with our business on the e-commerce side. And that -- really making sure that we're driving the right traffic and we saw increase in traffic relative to when we were spending during the Brand Holiday and also saw our average order values increase, which I think is a combination again of the Brand Holiday and also some better fill rates in our overall supply chain side of our business still, especially on the e-commerce side. So I think there's some positive signs there. We like the direction we're heading in. I don't think we're ever satisfied relative to where we are, we still see some room for improvement. But definitely with our growth rate -- with our growth rate really kind of approaching last year's growth rate relative to where we were in Q1 with the web, we feel like we're heading back in the right direction again.

Okay. And then lastly just pretty favorable spread between your inventory and sales growth. Just curious if you had any comments on that and how we should think about the implications for gross margins for next quarter.

Yes. Again, if you look at the rest of the quarters, if you go back to last year, and we talked about some challenges in getting product in on time and so delivery was kind of a challenge last year especially as we got into Q3 and Q4 last year. So I think some of this with inventory, we're guiding through heavy inventory growth ahead of revenue growth. Part of it is just kind of lapping some challenges we had last year, so we definitely anticipate flowing product much more efficiently this year, especially our Fleece product. And that'll cause some quarter end growth over last year. And by the fourth quarter, again, we're just kind of guiding slightly ahead of revenue growth. Again, I think some of the supply chain challenges lasted through Q4 into Q1 of this year. So again, a little bit more of a comp issue to where we were last year more than anything. As we've stated in the past, right now we're really focused on kind of that 3 turn in inventory. We were probably a little bit of ahead of that last year in the back half of the year especially, so we're focusing more on that 3 turn right now, which just means that you'll have inventory grow a little bit ahead of revenue. We're really focused right now on just more supply chain efficiencies, fill rate, servicing our customers and staying around that 3 inventory turns.

Our next question comes from Omar Saad of ISI Group.

It's Sam Lee in for Omar. My first question is on Footwear. It sounds like you guys have a lot of success in running with the charge in Spine platforms, but can you talk a little bit more about your plans for basketball and the opportunity there? I mean, when do you see this moving from building an authentic brand on court to more accelerating the pace of product introductions? And what will be the sign that you're there?

So I -- as we entered year 7 in Footwear and, again, just a little bit of history for anybody that isn't familiar with it, but 2006, we introduced football cleats; 2007, baseball cleats; 2008, training shoes; 2009, running shoes; and 2010 was basketball. So I think some of the success that we're seeing on the cleated side, particularly in football and baseball, has taken us 6, 7, 8 years to get there and really have breakthrough innovation with things like the Highlight cleat that is -- it's -- a, it's driving volumes on a unit basis, it's important, it's certainly not mass but it really is driving at 100 -- last year $130 and this year you'll see us price similarly. And so driving consumers at that $100-plus price point will be very important. But it's also going to do a tremendous amount to drive a lot of that volume in that $60, $70, $80 sporting goods wheelhouse, so continue to take advantage of that. I think basketball and, frankly, all of our categories are no different. We mentioned some of the success that we're seeing in running right now. I don't think that we're declaring victory by any stretch, but we're very encouraged by what we're seeing. The new Spine Venom is selling really well and really where we focus within our key sporting goods distribution, in places where we own 20%, 25%, 30% of the apparel floorspace, and making sure that we have a Footwear presentation that matches that. So we're excited I think about the commitment and, frankly, the recommitment we're getting from many of our accounts, of giving us the presentation that we think is that we're earning. So that will take time to happen. But all those categories -- I think, from cleated, we…

Our next question comes from Chris Svezia of Susquehanna Financial.

Brad, a question for you. I'm just curious on the gross margin trajectory. Any color you can add about the back half? Are things, particularly in the third quarter from a sourcing perspective, going to mitigate any opportunity to show any gross margin growth? And then maybe in the fourth quarter, is there are an incremental opportunity maybe driven by Direct-to-Consumer? Just any color you can add about the cadence as you think about gross margin in the back half?

Sure. So as we've been guiding, the front half of the year definitely has the gross margin upside versus the back half of the year. Again as consistent with our comments during the last earnings call back in January. Again, front half of the year, we're comping a pretty tough cost environment last spring, spring/summer '12 relative to cotton product that was being sold at that point in time and some of the cost challenges there. So the front half of this year comping that, we have some upside benefit year-over-year. So that's the biggest driver in the benefit. As we get to the back half of the year, we're talking about a modest full year gross margin benefit with the benefit in the front half, what that kind of guides to is maybe a slight decrease in the back half of the year in gross margin. What you have going on there is some things working in our favor like air freight would work in our favor as we are more efficient on the supply chain side. But we have talked about resourcing a lot of our fall/winter products, specifically our Fleece product, resourcing that from where it was last year to where it's going to be this year. It'll help service our business better but it'll come at a little bit higher cost. So unfortunately, that resourcing in the near-term is probably going to more than offset some of the benefits we've had in air freight in the back half the year. Most of that's going to be pronounced, really if you look at the timing of that in the back half the year, if you imagine what we were going through last year as we talked about the challenges delivering Fleece specifically in Q3, so we were…

Okay, that's helpful. And just quickly on the -- can you remind us again how much of your business now in the outlet side is made-for as we go into the back half versus last year?

Yes. On the made-for side on -- for retail, we are probably in the -- for the back half of the year, probably in the high 50s or so, close to 60% made-for last year. This year we'd probably see that maybe more than in maybe closer to 70%, upper 60s, so a little bit of a lift in made-for year-over-year.

Our final question comes from Faye Landes of Cowen and Company.

I was hoping you could -- 2 things actually. First of all, as you know, we've seen very strong growth from other suppliers of athletic footwear. Do you think -- is the market as a whole growing so dramatically or is something else going on?

I'd say I'm not sure that -- we're pretty focused on our own business and so we've got a dog fight that we go out to every day. And obviously we understand our competition is pretty good on the footwear side. And so breaking into that is something that we're digging in the trenches and follow -- a rising tide raises all ships and, of course, that's a great scenario, I'm not sure that we're banking on that either. We're viewing this as we need to, a, take share from others, so we're identifying places where we can win to do that. And then more importantly, we're also identifying places where we can create new share and create new opportunities. I think, again, what we've done in cleated with 7 or 8 years of expertise under our belt, creating silhouettes and styles and, most importantly, innovation that the market hasn't seen before. So we're happy to be a part of a rising tide, but I think we're not -- we're certainly not banking on it. But with 27% growth in the quarter, we're very happy for our team. I think we're making good progress. I think we see continued much brighter days ahead. And we are absolutely committed to Footwear.

Okay. But our -- on Apparel though, there is where everything seems to be growing. Correct, right now?

On the Apparel side? Yes. I think...

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. It's just that you've -- Nike had great apparel numbers. Also C9, for instance, it just seems like there's this tremendous robustness on the athletic apparel category in general? Is that a fair read?

I don't read the paper that much, Faye. So I focus on -- I read the end of [indiscernible] -- I know. We're aware of what's happening out there, so I think there's a good trend obviously. I think sporting goods, sports apparel, athletic wear in general, there obviously seems to be a bit of a trend toward it, a lot of factors pointing in toward that. The way we're positioned I think, again, we're beneficiaries. But I don't think that -- we're not playing our business to be part of some short-term or midterm trend as much as we're building ourselves for the long-term. It's what keeps us rooted in authenticity in sport but it also sees us expanding, particularly on things like the Women's side where I spoke a lot about just our commitment to expanding our distribution there as well as extending our product line and, frankly, selling product for Women's shop as well as having a point of view with product that women want to buy. And so with new leadership in place, our commitment to some of the things we're doing with our New York office, having Leanne onboard, you'll have a chance to meet Leanne at Investor Day as well. And I think here, from the broader vision we have on the Women's side as well as -- I think a lot of the growth, as the market leader in Men's apparel, as very close to that as we continue to drive on the Women's side too, we understand that we dictate the tempo for much of the trends that happen in the market. And so we believe that with the innovation we're bringing with things on the Men's side like Sonic Baselayer, from an innovation standpoint with exciting new stories we have like Alter Ego, with some of the things we're doing on the Women's side from our capris, our bottoms bar and also what we're doing just with color in becoming, frankly, a better company. We've been at it 17 years now, and at some point, you're going to start figuring it out. So we're very proud of the team, first and foremost, as that I think we're getting better, I think we're working together for a longer period of time and we believe that we can be the market leader and best in class. And so we expect to be the ones that are setting that tempo and dictating those trends.

All right, terrific. One quick cleanup -- one quick housekeeping. And I may have missed this and so I apologize. On Footwear, did you break out -- or give some sense of how much of the Footwear in the quarter was cleats -- cleated and non-cleated?

No, Faye, we did not. But what I'll tell you is, by far, from a volume perspective and from a growth perspective in Q1 by far, running was the leader of that.

So, running was bigger than cleated?

Yes.

Thanks everybody very much, and our hearts and prayers with Boston. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. You may all disconnect, and have a wonderful day.