Earnings Labs

Under Armour, Inc. (UA)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 24, 2014

$6.14

+2.94%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Under Armour, Inc. First Quarter Earnings Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Tom Shaw, Director of Investor Relations. Mr. Shaw, you may begin.

Tom Shaw

Management

Thanks, and good morning to everyone joining us on today’s first quarter conference call. During the course of this call, we will 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 and in the 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 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 to our 2014 outlook. After the prepared remarks, Kevin and Brad will be available for Q&A session that will end at approximately 9:30 AM. Finally, a replay of this teleconference will be available at our website at approximately 11:00 AM Eastern Time today. And with that, I will turn it over to Kevin Plank.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Thanks, Tom and good morning everyone. Our first quarter results are a great example of what happens when we executed a high level. We grew revenues 36% this quarter and the strength was evidence across genders, categories, geographies in both our wholesale and direct distribution channels. Our top line growth exceeded 20% for the 16th consecutive quarter, that’s four straight years. And we saw meaningful acceleration in both our footwear and international businesses. Our first quarter results also illustrate two key elements of what I would like to discuss today. First, what we are capable of delivering today as a North American based brand and second the boundless opportunities that exist for our brands both here at home and in markets beyond our source. I want to start today by discussing three product categories that demonstrate both our ability to execute the opportunities that still lies out in front of us. I will hit running first, then cover golf and then outdoor. Of the three categories, running represents the biggest revenue opportunity for us, given the size of both the footwear and apparel components as well as the fact that it’s an important category across all geographies. We have only had a strong earning presence in apparel with our focus on tremendous amount of resources the past few years in cracking the code in footwear. I think it’s safe to say that given the strong loss this past quarter of our SpeedForm Apollo footwear, we are on a trajectory to become a significant player in the global running marketplace. While the number of pairs we sold them was limited, we did a great job of executing the SpeedForm launch and set ourselves up to broaden and deepen the platform for the balance of 2014 and beyond. So, while we saw…

Brad Dickerson

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Kevin. I would now like to spend some time discussing our first quarter 2014 financial results, followed by our updated outlook for 2014. Our net revenues for the first quarter of 2014 increased 36% to $642 million. As expected, we experienced the strong rate of growth during the quarter given sustained momentum in apparels, broader range of product in running footwear, and international market expansion. This quarter marks the first time since the third quarter of 2011, where each of these key growth drivers surpassed 30% growth. Taking a look at apparel, we grew this category 33% during the quarter to $459 million compared to $346 million in the prior year. This represents the 18th straight quarter of at least 20% growth for our largest product category. Overall, we saw strong apparel growth from our training, golf, hunting and fishing lines. In women’s, our Studio line remains a standout, while Youth registered notable gains in trainings and baseball during the period. Taking a look at some of our product programs, we experienced broad-based strength in Fleece, UA Tech, and Baselayer, while also offering new innovations with ColdGear Infrared and ArmourVent. First quarter footwear net revenues increased 41% to $114 million from $81 million in the prior year representing approximately 18% of net revenues for the period. We were encouraged by the strong sell-through rates of our SpeedForm Apollo running shoe while also offering a broader running assortment at key price points, including the Assert, Engage and Spine Evo styles. We are also seeing success in baseball as our cleated business taking market share despite a somewhat slower start to the season given adverse weather conditions. Our accessories net revenues during the first quarter increased 43% to $52 million from $36 million in the prior period, primarily driven by our…

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. (Operator Instructions) And our first question is from Matt McClintock with Barclays. Your line is open.

Matt McClintock - Barclays

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open

Hello, yes. Good morning, can you hear me.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Yes, Matt how are you doing.

Matt McClintock - Barclays

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open

Thank you. Good morning, great quarter. Kevin you talked a little bit about the women’s business and you had good success with the studio line and you talked about the brand holiday. I was just wondering if you can maybe go into some more detail on the product that’s coming off this year that gets you excited. And maybe some of the innovation that’s you plan to launch throughout the year or where into the year surrounding the brand holiday? Thank you.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

So a few things, no one is (indiscernible) anytime we talk about women’s that people give us the perspective of congratulations on launching women’s. We forget sometimes we have a $500 million wholesale business of women’s today. So we are certainly not in launch mode, we are in perfecting mode. And I think we are incredibly proud of the team and that always begins with leadership. (Leone) who joined our company a little less than two years ago, her first season will be hitting floors this fall and partner with I think the outstanding leadership that we already had here of really understanding what the female athlete wanted and transitioning I think evolving with our consumer into what the athletic female wants. We have – we want to make sure is well we never lose that athletic credibility. We want 16 year old girls that are playing hockey and volleyball and basketball and soccer and La Crosse. We want them to feel like Under Armour is their brand and we just want to demonstrate that we got additional chapters in two and three and four that we can grow up and we can grow overall as well. I think the one thing you must see and I think the innovation is second is the commitment that we have as being successful in this space. You won’t see that any more clearly articulated and what we are going to be doing with our second holiday that we will be hitting as I mentioned in my comments later in the summer. And holiday seems to work with 100% committed and without limits. Brands are about points of yield and I think we are incredibly excited about the credit that we have in the state and publicity making about Under Armour’s commitment to…

Matt McClintock - Barclays

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open

Thanks for that Kevin. We will make sure to break it down everyday.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Binetti with UBS. Your line is open.

Michael Binetti - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Hey guys. Thanks and congrats on a great quarter.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Thank you. Brad one quick question for you. Can you discuss a little bit in case I missed it, how much the improvement in the fulfillment rates you guys had which obviously continued in the first quarter from the fourth quarter, is there anyway you can help us estimate how much that contributed in the first quarter and then is that completely go away is an opportunity in the second quarter? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Brad Dickerson

Chief Financial Officer

The fill rates, the metrics from the fill rates are relatively comparable year-over-year that change though I think is the way we got there relative to achieving those fill rates. So fill rates by request date and fill rates by cancel date. The fill rates by request date were around 70 and the fill rates by cancel date were kind of in the mid-90s. The difference being last year took some more unnatural ways to get there relative to air freight product and to get there on time. But this year that product flow is a little more naturally so that (bust) the call out of the benefit in margin because air freight expense. So as we get forward into the rest of the year, we started to see in Q2, Q3 and Q4 so we started a comp better supply chain performance last year. So we are going to see less of that benefit in Q2, Q3 and Q4 especially in the back half of the year where we needed to started to improve that supply chain performance in the back half of last year. So we are still seeing some cost benefit in Q1 here that we will start to say in the Q2 and become less so in Q3 and Q4.

Michael Binetti - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Okay, great. And then Kevin if I could ask you just a bigger picture question since you guys announced your acquisition there has been a lot of media coverage on what’s going on the digital part of the athletic industry, you guys obviously acquired MapMyFitness recently you have seen headlines that Nike has been moving away from at least from the hardware side of their Fuel business, could you give us the state of the union on how the integration is going and maybe how you see the industry moving forward with digital investments like this and how it fits in your longer term thinking?

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Yes, thanks very much Mike. It’s a great question. I think it’s an opportunity that everyone looks at and I was wondering where is this category going and what does it means. So let me start by saying that proactive health was reached – coined the term connected fitness. We believe it’s a massive opportunity. I think as a company we are positioning ourselves to put ourselves in a position to really look as this being one of the next major industry. Proactive health means not waiting for your shift to go the hospital, but how you are being prevented with that. And things like predicted analytics and the science and the technology that are out there are things that just aren’t being applied to your own body and think about it for a second. People know more about their car today than they knew about their own body. You know how fast you are going, you know how much gas is in the car, you know how much oil is in there, you know the tire pressure, yet you don’t have an idea yourself when you think about your own health you go to the doctor every 12, 18 or 24 months. He pulls out a manila folder and he starts with the subjective question of how do you feel. And your thinking, my gosh there is got to be more data and more analytics available to the world than that. So we have been positioning ourselves for quite some time around this base of biometric measurement and understanding the best way that Under Armour can play there. Where we did and in fact we are going back to last year we made the decision of looking at things like the wearables and the hardware, but that wasn’t really…

Michael Binetti - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Thanks a lot again. Congrats.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question is from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Your line is open.

Sharon Zackfia - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Your line is open

Hi, good morning and congratulations on a really great quarter. Question on the international side, so as we think about international longer term and the way you grow internationally, could you talk about direct-to-consumer and the role it will play in the international growth, I am assuming and maybe incorrectly that direct-to-consumer will be a bigger driver of how you grow overseas given the distribution, but would love some perspective on that?

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Sure. Let me grab that and I have been doing a good job of giving long answers, so this one isn’t going to get short, the world’s is a big place. I have spent a lot of time on the road in the last couple of years and beyond Investor Day, but just as we made that commitment to being a truly global company which our definition of that is some day more than half of our revenues will come from outside of our home country. I am standing here today we are less than 10% of our revenue will be coming from outside North America. That’s an incredibly large statement to make. Last year, I did over 230,000 miles of travel. This year, I am on pace to break that. Just in the first quarter alone into Latin America to launch our brand in Brazil, visited a couple of our other markets down there. I have been to Europe in our headquarters in Amsterdam as well as to London and see Tottenham Hotspur play in London where they won. The Middle East to meet with, select our future distribution partners there and heading to Asia in just a few weeks here. So we are without question focused on global. And I love that statement that we claimed of what is the role of global there and the one we have got these forced in North America. And as we say we believe that our North American growth and cash creation are going to the engine that feeds our global ambition. That means we need to continue to win in the U.S. And so I want to be really clear that we are giving and providing resources to the U.S. to be successful. But ultimately it gives us the ability…

Sharon Zackfia - William Blair

Analyst · William Blair. Your line is open

That’s super helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is Omar Saad with ISI Group. Your line is open. Omar Saad – ISI Group: Thanks guys.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Hi Omar. Omar Saad – ISI Group: I wanted to ask a question about your philosophical approach to SG&A so to speak, you had this kind of sales acceleration in the last couple of quarters. You talked about boundless opportunities for the brand. It’s still a very early stage growth company in so many ways. How do you think about pouring money back into the business to take advantage of this and perhaps expanding a higher kind of growth rate curve looking out over a longer period of time versus kind of providing upside in the number, I think you even had some – a little bit of SG&A leverage this quarter because the top line number was so strong that what is your philosophy around investing, reinvesting back in the business?

Brad Dickerson

Chief Financial Officer

Omar, I had a couple of things on that I think one there is always going to be some nuances in timing quarter-by-quarter, so we tend to look more on an annual basis of how we want to invest in our business and the timing of how we want to invest in our business to best and while we are trying to do initiatives, we are trying to do during the course of the year and the timing of that. So you will see some nuances. And we are calling those out relative to marketing spend and so forth. And we have had some incentive compensation, nuances also last year and this year as far as timing also. But as far as the level of investment how we approach that. We really have consistently kind of looked at investing in our current growth drivers that are performing for us at the highest level by also balancing that with some mid-term and longer term needs of our business. So as an example of that investing in our direct to consumer business in the near-term around expanding square footage in our factory held stores, building brand house out and putting money into our ecommerce business here in North America is a return that we tend to get by the way in our business. So we tend to put more of our SG&A investments in this kind of short-term as the return is parts of our business. That doesn’t mean that we are going norm some of the longer term successes we need. And Kevin just talked about international. And yes, absolutely international is in a deep investment mode right now relative to not only growing our existing business in Europe, starting our business up in Asia in the last two years, but…

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Let me jump on the back end of that too. We have got a couple of deals that and agreements that we keep with one another. And number one first of all when we talk to the street we are committed I think for the operating line that we have committed to and the ability that we see in our business to maintain and at times show leverage and drove that. At the same time with the top line growing in the way that it is it means the dollar investment in Under Armour is – has the benefit of the top line growth that we are enjoying. Here based on our latest outlook as we see the year we will be adding roughly $600 million in revenues what we did in 2013 and 2014. So it’s just south of $3 billion for the year. And within 11% roughly commitment to marketing we have got $330 million of standard marketing. When we look at the largest post marketing assets out there in the world it really doesn’t put us out of the game for anything. We could theoretically build by anything we wanted to do. But we don’t have to hold the money in the world and we just have to be really thoughtful and we have to pick the right deals. I have two great examples of doing that. Number one, I mentioned in my script regarding Jordan Spieth hopefully we use a phrase here at Under Armour humble and hungry. We placed a bet on Jordan really ahead of the curve when he was still at sophomore at the University of Texas in making the decision to turn pro that we would get behind and sponsor endorsement. So we are incredibly proud of finding someone like Jordan and…

Brad Dickerson

Chief Financial Officer

Yes. ASPs, they have been trending kind of in that mid single-digit range for us over the course of the last couple of quarters or so. I mean, they are little below that to mid range. Again, that does back to what you are talking about Omar, a lot of our new innovations coming at higher price points and so forth. So we are definitely seeing some of that kind of in that 3% to 5% range over the course of the last few quarters.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

But one thing we are seeing too Omar is that discountings is not – we have talked to some of our partners about that the way it works to the market, I mean, go back to last holiday season. And there was a tremendous amount of discounting happening in the marketplace. And frankly, we didn’t participate. And I think we are really proud of the 35% growth that we put up in the fourth quarter and look whether it makes this all a lot smarter, but it wasn’t a consumer coming in and just choosing price is that, there is a consumer that needs and take a decision based on price, but there is a bit of a barbell effect that continues to take place and Under Armour continues to differentiate itself as the premium player in any market. So as long as we are delivering newness in innovation and whether that newness is SpeedForm, whether it’s (indiscernible) our ColdGear Infrared which is an incredible product we haven’t tried it when it’s cold outside, whether it’s our new MagZip we are going to be introducing on 400,000 pieces of jackets in other words end of this year what is effectively is that differ that is has a magnetic life on the bottom of it that allows you to zip your jacket with one hand. And if things like that we need to make sure we continue to do in the market and not relying on playing the (indiscernible) plenty of people doing that. So Under Armour stands for innovation, we are going to stand for newness on the floor. We will continue to give our partners reasons for their consumers, all of our consumers and customers to walk into their stores and find what’s next and what’s latest and greatest at Under Armour. Omar Saad – ISI Group: Thanks guys. Very helpful to us.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Thanks very much Omer.

Operator

Operator

Alright, thank you. And our last question is from Camilo Lyon with Canaccord Genuity.

Camilo Lyon - Canaccord Genuity

Analyst · Canaccord Genuity

Thanks. Good morning guys, also great quarter. So Kevin you talked – you started the conversation talking about running and the momentum you are seeing on the products side, but you also mentioned capital and I think about a month ago or so you made a pretty significant hire of Fritz Taylor, I was wondering if you could just shed some light on what you think you will bring to the category to the business, what you can do and where do you think you can take the business to?

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Well, first of all it’s great that we have industry veterans and Camilo is referring to Fritz Taylor who is our new head of running Under Armour in 25 plus years that as you know Brooks 90 and he is someone who brings a really strong point of view of what the consumer is looking for. I think we are really proud specifically of footwear business overall, but running is probably the most easiest way for us to find where are we and where are we going. So our company has started as an apparel company I think he has taken us in – as we are in our 8th year in the footwear business as a whole to really find our stride as to what is the product that really comes through from Under Armour. Again not unlike our Women’s business in 2013 we finished our footwear is just under $300 million in revenue. This year we are north of a $400 million business for footwear in 2014. Now we have got a long way to go. We are beginning to create some scale and that will allow us to grow much faster in the future. SpeedForm for us was something again. This happened prior to Fritz being here. Most difficult thing about the footwear business is the long lead time, the long time it takes to get people on board. The good news is as excited we are about, just this is not one person. I know I think we have got 3 or 4 people coming up in nuance piece at the end of this month are going to be joining our offices both here and Baltimore as well as in Portland. Every month it’s like that, people are coming off of non-compete and we are lucky…

Camilo Lyon - Canaccord Genuity

Analyst · Canaccord Genuity

Great. And just my final question for Brad, Brad just on the guidance and how to think about the clearly the sellers and that you are talking about here in Q2 and Q3, could you just help us understand why the strength that we have been seeing in Q4 on the top line now in Q1 should not continue into Q2 and Q3? And then just finally on the fourth quarter, could you remind us what you think the benefit from weather was in the fourth quarter of ‘13 and really because that seems to be the tougher comparison of the business. If you could just provide some color on that, that will be great?

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Sure. As far as the flow from the first quarter to second quarter, there is a couple of things going on there. One there was, there is just some timing in the quarters on the seasonal basis front half of the year in some of our business. So footwear and international we were seeing stronger growth in Q1 versus Q2 and it’s just the timing issue in the season both business obviously are going to have strong growth rates for the full year, but a little more escalated in Q1 versus Q2. So that’s part of it. Also in the second quarter, if you recall, last year we kind of re-launched our bags business with better margin product in the second quarter of last year. So that will be the first quarter that we are comping that over the last four quarters. So we had a little bit of a benefit there in Q1 of comping bag business where we are kind of pulling back last year in anticipation of our re-launch in Q2. In the supply chain performance which I talked about earlier, Q1 is probably the last quarter of some pretty decent year-over-year comparisons just the performance of how we are getting product to the retail floor. By the time you get to the second quarter, we start to see little bit tougher comps against that as we started doing much better than that last year in the second quarter. So those three things are why you are seeing some of the growth from Q1 to Q2 changes in Q2. As far as the back half of the year, specifically around Q4, a couple of things in Q4, you mentioned the weather that was definitely one thing if we are taking into consideration. I believe on our last…

Camilo Lyon - Canaccord Genuity

Analyst · Canaccord Genuity

So to be clear you will have the ability to change product and go after more sales if those headwinds that you are planning for become tailwinds?

Brad Dickerson

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, we are putting ourselves in a position if weather is called again in this fourth quarter we are putting ourselves in a position to be able to deliver and we are also putting ourselves in a position if DTC over drives like it did last year. We are putting ourselves in a position to be able to deliver but we want to be very careful obviously how we approach that relative to our guidance and our expectations.

Camilo Lyon - Canaccord Genuity

Analyst · Canaccord Genuity

It sounds great and thanks a lot and good luck for the rest of the year guys.

Brad Dickerson

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Camilo.

Kevin Plank

Chairman

Thanks Camilo. Alright, thank you for joining us on the call today. We look forward to reporting you our second quarter 2014 results which has been scheduled for Thursday, July 24 at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. Thanks again and good luck.