V.F. Corporation (VFC) Q4 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the V.F. Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal '26 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Alleg Perry, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Coming to you live from Vans headquarters in sunny Southern California. Welcome to V.F. Corporation's Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2026 Conference Call. On today's call, we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These uncertainties are detailed in documents filed regularly with the SEC. Unless we say otherwise, amounts that are referred to on today's call are all on an adjusted constant dollar continuing operations and excluding Dick's basis, which we've defined in the presentation that was posted this morning on our Investor Relations website. We use those as lead numbers in our discussion as we believe they more accurately represent the true operational performance and underlying results of our business. We may also refer to reported amounts, which are in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Reconciliations of GAAP measures to adjusted amounts are found in the supplemental financial tables included in the presentation where we identify and qualify all excluded items and provide management's view of why this information is useful to investors. Joining me on today's call are V.F. President and Chief Executive Officer, Bracken Darrell; EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Abhishek Dalmia; and EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Paul Vogel. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. I'll now hand over to Bracken.

Allegra, I've got to correct you, it's not sunny here. It's 5:00 in the morning. Let's be honest. Although it always feels sunny in California, and we had a pretty sunny quarter. Thanks, Allegra. Everybody, thank you for joining the call. We finished this year strong. We exceeded our fourth quarter guide and took another big step towards transforming V.F. We returned to sales growth for the year. For the first time in 3 years, our portfolio is getting healthier. In fiscal year 2024, taking you back away, including Dickies, 43% of our business was growing. Now as we finish fiscal year '26, 70% of our business is growing. We also expanded operating margins to 7% in fiscal year '26. But to remind you, that's an expansion of 220 basis points over the 4.8% we had in fiscal '24, including Dickies. Over the last 3 years, we've paid off over half of our net debt, excluding lease liabilities -- I'll repeat that, over half of our net debt is paid off, excluding lease liabilities. Net debt has dropped from $5.8 billion to $2.7 billion. As a result, we've dropped our leverage from 5.1x to 2x, a full 2 turns in 2 years, a lot of strong progress on growth, on cost and on the balance sheet. We strengthened our financial position while we've increased our investment in brand building, product creation and ultimately, in growth, which is what it's all about. Our results demonstrate that our strategy is working, that we're well on track with V.F. transformation. I'm very confident in our ability to drive strong performance and shareholder value in the years ahead. Now let me turn briefly to Q4. We believe we delivered our strongest revenue performance in 3 years, with revenue up 3% versus last year, ahead of our expectations and despite an evolving macro environment. In the Americas, our largest market, we accelerated growth to 10%, including a return to growth for Vans for the first time in almost 4 years. Our revenue performance helped drive stronger-than-anticipated operating income of $54 million. So we ended the fiscal year with a strong Q4, growing revenue and expanding margins while further strengthening our balance sheet. Now let me talk just about a few brand highlights for the quarter. We're continuing to see progress across the portfolio, starting with The North Face. The brand grew 7%, driven by broad-based growth across categories and advise stellar performance in the Americas, up 16%. Our investments in product creation and innovation are delivering results. Softshells and were key drivers in apparel. Our investment in footwear is showing strong results or continues to. And in fact, we have now delivered 5 consecutive double-digit growth quarters. Finally, we made an exciting announcement last week, which I hope you saw, which further underlines the performance credentials of this brand. We announced a new multiyear strategic partnership for The North Face with the U.S. ski and snowboard team. In other words, we'll be out hitting the U.S. ski and snowboard athletes as they compete on the world stage, including at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games. As the exclusive performance apparel sponsor, athletes North Face across all major events, including the World Cup -- all World Cup events and, of course, the Olympic Winter Games and official trading camps through at least 2034. Of course, our customers can also buy this apparel and we sure they're well. The brand will be front and center on the world stage, further submitting its commitment to Elite Mountain and Adventure Sport Athletes. This is an exciting time for The North Face, and we're making progress on our path to doubling this business over time. There are so many ways we can grow this brand, category growth, market share growth, new categories we can expand into and finally, elevation to more premium versions of the products we already sell at higher price points. We have a lot of pent-up opportunity to drive growth at The North Face. Let's turn now to Timberland, which grew 2% this quarter as expected. Our DTC growth was up 8%, driven in part by full price stores. Wholesale was slightly down versus last year, primarily due to lower distressed sales. Six-inch premium boot continues to be the key engine behind the brand's momentum. We're also seeing good results from the boat shoe, which is growing across all regions with significant growth potential ahead. We'll continue to both build on the strength of the iconic boot but also introduce more innovation across the rest of our footwear assortment. And starting this fall, we're resetting our apparel proposition to create a better head-to-toe expression that matches our footwear offering. As part of these efforts, we're also focusing on our women's business, and you'll see more there, too. We're driving the brand's energy and leveraging its cultural relevancy through collaboration, seating and partnerships. We're continuing to see positive brand search interest in the U.S. and the U.K. More recently in April, Timberland was awarded the Fashion Maverick Award of the Year at the American Image Awards. We also, as you know, are expanding our distribution footprint with 11 full price stores now open and operating in our home market. The outsized productivity shown by our new stores are early proof points of our new operating model working as planned. We have exciting plans for Timberland in coming season, as we continue to set the stage for long-term profitable growth ahead. This brand can become much larger over time, and I'm confident we're taking the right strategic steps to ensure that happens. Now let's talk about Altra. Altra had an exceptional Q4 performance. Another fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth here, too, across regions -- all regions and channels. Revenue grew 45%, driven by broad-based growth everywhere and new launches. Growth for the year was over 30% with revenues surpassing $270 million. Performance was led by successful franchise launches, including the original loan peak, now the loan Peak 9 and the experience and strong execution in both DTC and wholesale. We have a really differentiated product in this space, and we're continuing to drive awareness, which remains very low. I talked about investing in product creation and marketing and Altra's brand where we've absolutely increased the investment to drive growth. We're excited to see outsized growth in search interest, traffic and new consumer acquisition. This brand plays a very large -- plays in a very large addressable market. And we believe this can be a $1 billion-plus brand over time. There's so much opportunity here. Now let's talk about Vans. Q4 was down globally by 5% year-over-year. What I'm most excited about by far is our progress in Americas DTC. Remember, DTC is where we are closest to the consumer with our products and our marketing. Americas is more than 50% of our total business, and it's where the trends start for Vans. If you remember, our e-comm business in the Americas first turned to growth in Q3 of '26 with 4% growth. Then in Q4, America's total DTC grew 5%. Americas is a foundation for the brand's energy. This is where we said the recovery would start. And as the Americas DTC continues to grow, its brand heat will start to show up elsewhere. These tangible green shoots are a result of our focus on product and brand energy advance. You'll hear Abhishek talk more on the work we're doing on speed to market, which helps us with newness. Newness continues to build across the assortment as we reenergize our core icons, one silhouette at a time. As an example, the paralyzed drops are having great consumer response and driving improving results within the old school franchise. Another icon, the authentic delivered outstanding growth in the quarter, up 80% versus last year and slip on its return to growth, too. Apparel also returned to growth in Q4. Vans continued to leverage a social-first culture-led marketing approach, amplifying product stories and driving traffic, particularly in the digital channels. During our fourth quarter, we launched our Off The Wall campaign, anchored around the authentic and it resonated with consumers and supported improved search and engagement trends in key markets. Our strategic investments in design, brand energy and demand creation have been instrumental in driving improved performance for the brand. We are excited about the progress advance. Turning to fiscal year '27. Paul will go deeper in a minute. I feel very good about our forecasting abilities. And today, we're reinstating annual guidance. We're expecting our second consecutive year of growth and strong progress towards our 10% operating margin [indiscernible] term goal. I also understand better the seasonality of our business today, especially because on wholesale order flows and the mix of our business based on the wholesale order flows and the mix of our business quarter by quarter. As you'll hear from Paul, we expect Q1 revenue to be down slightly low single digits. Remember, it's a very small quarter for the year and has no impact on our ability to deliver our guidance for the year. With respect to Vans, First, let me say that for the full year, we're going to move from a double-digit decline last year to a mid-single-digit decline this year. The more important signal is that we will continue to deliver growth in Americas DTC throughout fiscal year '27. Overall, the front half will be weaker than the back half. Wholesale will start weaker and pick up steam as the DTC growth drives order flow. We still have work to do in our wholesale business in the U.S. and around the world. We'll be focusing on continuing to accelerate in DTC and developing a stronger global wholesale growth engine. In the near term, as Abhishek and Paul will also tell you in a minute, we're operating in an unusual macro environment. with 2 wars at least in tariffs in flux. Like others in our sector, we're impacted by the developments in the Middle East. Despite these headwinds, we're on track to deliver our medium-term targets. Important, I'd like to emphasize our confidence in getting to the 10% margins we promised. And now we've returned to growth in fiscal year '26 and will grow again in '27, and we're not going back. We're shifting our initial turnaround phase to our growth phase. So this next part of our story is all about driving durable, profitable growth for many years to come. Overall, looking ahead through fiscal year '27, just like looking back on the past 2 years, you'll see more growth better margins, lower debt and better leverage in the coming years. Today, I've asked our Chief Operating Officer, Abhishek Dalmia, to provide an update on our turnaround strategy, a year on from our last Investor Day. We've really accomplished a ton over the last year. And all these building blocks are contributing to both near-term success and will contribute a lot more as we move forward. So Abhishek, welcome to the earnings call. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Bracken. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here, and I'm excited to speak directly about the work our teams are doing every day to transform this company. What gives me energy is that transformation is no longer just a plan or a set of initiatives. It goes up in the way we operate, the decisions we make and the results we are delivering. As you heard, gross margins of 55% plus, leverage ratio improvement of 2 turns and positive growth for full year [indiscernible]. In October 2024, we shared with you our plan to transform [indiscernible] strengthening the balance sheet and creating a more durable foundation for profitable growth. Paul will share more detail around our commitments, but we remain focused on delivering against these medium-term commitments. Gross margin of at least 55% and exit run rate operating margin of 10% in FY '28, a leverage ratio of 2.5x or less [indiscernible]. We are 2 years into a 4-year journey to our medium-term targets. While macro environment has become more complex, our commitment has not changed. At the start of the turnaround, our primary focus was liquidity and leverage. You heard from Bracken, we have made meaningful progress there. And this matters because it gives us flexibility to reinvest behind our brands to pursue. Beyond portfolio moves, our turnaround has been focused on 3 [indiscernible] pending gross margin, controlling SG&A and accelerating top line growth. All 3 are progressing in parallel to create fuel for further growth, strong EBITDA and target operating margin. Let me start with gross margin, where we have made significant progress and have more room to improve. In FY '24, V.F.'s full year gross margin, including Dickies, was 51.6%. In FY '26, we finished the year at 55.2%, an expansion of approximately 360 basis points. Now about 100 basis points came from Dickies divestiture. The remaining 260 basis points came from the work we have done across several work streams across our brands and portfolio. So how did we achieve this? We strengthened our product creation engine and inventory planning capabilities that are improving decisions across the business. The work we are doing to strengthen our capabilities has driven gross margin expansion in certain key areas. One, we are driving a stronger mix of higher-margin products; two, we are taking targeted pricing actions; and three, we are executing sharper markdowns. For example, The North Face and Timberland Americas were the first to deploy our improved markdown capabilities at scale using AI and stronger in-season analytics. The result has been a meaningful uplift in gross margin dollars. We have reengineered our processes, built new capabilities and upskilled our talent. As we scale them across our brands and regions, we expect to drive further improvement in gross margin rate and dollars. Let me talk about SG&A now. Since FY '24, including -- excluding Dickies, we have taken out more than $225 million of sustained savings, now fully in the run rate. These structural savings, not temporary actions. We have taken significant actions to simplify the organization to drive efficiencies in DTC and distribution and to optimize our digital and technology expenses. For example, in distribution, we consolidated some of our footprint and balanced it more between our owned and 3PL DCs. In digital and technology, as an example, we deployed faster more cost-optimized commerce platform, which allowed us to elevate our consumer experience at a much lower structural cost. Now while we have made good initial progress, we continue to streamline our cost base. As you can see, when we commit to something, we deliver. SG&A savings have been partially offset by ForEx impacts and inflation, and we have deliberately made some incremental investments in product development and marketing. Marketing is an investment engine for V.F., and we are shifting it towards more working media spend, which means more of our dollars are reaching consumers directly and supporting brand momentum and demand creation. The work we have done on gross margin and SG&A sets the foundation to drive growth and hence, I'm talking about it now. That is why we are here. Now let me get into a little bit more details there. As Bracken mentioned, we delivered full year FY '26 revenue growth of 1%, our first year of growth in 3 years. Deeper understanding of our consumers and building back consumer love for our iconic brands is central to driving this growth. We started the work by segmenting consumer demand to make clear choices about where each brand will compete and win. This commitment continues to shape what products we design and how we curate relevant experiences for our consumers. Ultimately, we need to get the right products for our consumers at the right time. This is where our product go-to-market process matters. As you all know, in our industry, go-to-market cycles are long, speed is and will continue to be a critical enabler to accelerate this growth. And we have done a lot of work there. So let me share a few examples from Vans. In fall 2025, Vans' pull-forward products originally planned for season fall 2026 and delivered them in less than 6 months. Roughly 1/3 of the time, a standard cycle would take. We did that by working more closely with our vendors, being more precise in our product briefs and making sharper decisions with creative confidence in design. And that speed mattered. It allowed the team to test new silhouettes on smaller scale, REIT consumer responses and make better decisions about what to scale, what to refine or what to discontinue. Some styles were dropped from fall 2026 line, while others were refined with those insights. This kind of speed enables improved Vans performance in Americas DTC, as you heard from Bracken. At the same time, Vans has been rebuilding brand energy through a more social-first content-led model. Targeted product and content drops with artists, including Cortes, Cesar, Williams, Travis Barker, are helping recorrect the brand with culture and drive consumer engagement. These efforts are becoming visible in the marketplace. It is early, and we are clear about the work ahead advance. This combination of speed product newness and shapper marketing will be the building blocks we continue to execute into the next year and beyond. That's the growth engine we are building across V.F. brands. Looking ahead, let me reiterate our priorities, keep expanding gross margin, maintain cost discipline and accelerate growth across our brands. We are encouraged by the momentum we see in the business. We have made significant gross margin progress which gives us fuel to drive growth, and we continue to realize additional margin expansion opportunities. We have mitigated outsized external challenges while continuing to invest in accelerated growth. Now while we manage our cost discipline, we have 2 near-term cost challenges, oil price fluctuations and potential tariffs. On oil price fluctuations, there are 2 areas of impact, freight and product cost. For freight, we are leveraging scale with our carriers and partners and driving cost discipline across the supply chain. On product cost, we are consolidating materials across brands and leveraging our V.F. materials library to drive pricing scale while also reviewing our pricing strategies. On service levels, we are adjusting sourcing flows, monitoring logistics and working closely with our regional teams. We have contingency plans in place and are operating with extreme flexibility. On tariffs, we are closely watching a potential step-up to take effect mid-July following the conclusion of the Section 301 investigations. Over the past year, we have been actively mitigating, rebalancing our sourcing footprint, reducing exposure to higher tariff routes and working with partners to share cost burden. Putting this all together, we continue our work across several initiatives and remain extremely confident in our ability to achieve margin targets in FY '28. We have many opportunities ahead, including the ones that I can highlight in particular. First, our faster go-to-market enables us to drive outsized growth in DTC channel, which in turn generates a higher level of profitability and fixed cost leverage for us. Second, our return to top line growth and a more efficient marketing approach that we are deploying results in further leverage on marketing spend. And finally, AI is creating incremental optimization opportunities across our brands and corporate functions. We are leveraging AI where we see clear value, scaling what works and embedding it into how we operate. You will see us communicate progress in terms of operational outcomes, margin dollars, inventory quality, speed and productivity, not just AI investment dollars. The work is not finished, but V.F. is operating with more discipline, more speed and more focus than it did a few years ago. The conversation inside this company has shifted from turnaround to growth, and that is what gives us extreme confidence in the next phase. With that, I will hand it over to Paul.

Great. Thank you, Abhishek. Welcome to the call. As Bracken and Abhishek illustrated earlier, we made important strides in fiscal '26. We returned to top line growth, expanded our gross margin to 55% and achieved an operating margin of 7%. I want to underscore what Abhishek just said, leverage is down a full turn compared with fiscal '25 and now 2 full turns versus 2 years ago. Let's turn to the financial view for the fourth quarter. We closed out the year with another quarter of revenue growth. Q4 revenue was $2.2 billion, up 3% versus last year and above our guidance of flat to up 2%. Wholesale demand in the quarter drove our better-than-forecast results led by The North Face. By Brand in North Face grew 7%, led by the Americas region, which had another quarter of double-digit growth. Vans was down 5%, as expected, including about 2% benefit from earlier orders from wholesalers. And lastly, Timberland grew 2%, its sixth consecutive quarter of growth. By region, the Americas grew 10% in the quarter, and up 3% for the full year, reflecting the continued progress in our largest region. EMEA was down 5% as we're navigating the macro headwinds in the region and APAC was up 1% driven by demand across North Face and Timberland. And lastly, we grew across both channels. ETC delivered another quarter of growth at up 2% and wholesale is up 3%, aided by higher-than-expected demand. Before I review the rest of the P&L, I want to address a few items that impacted comparability in the quarter. Following the Supreme Court's in February related to certain tariff refunds, we recognized a net benefit to our gross margin during Q4. We also elected to accelerate select restructuring costs in the quarter, which drove a higher SG&A rate and partially offset the gross margin benefit. On a normalized basis, excluding these items, operating income would have to the midpoint of our guidance range. Gross margin for the quarter was up 240 basis points versus last year to 56.4%, helped by a roughly $50 million net benefit from the tariff receivable and offsetting charges. Normalized gross margin was roughly flat versus last year, driven by the benefits from targeted price actions offset by mix and FX. SG&A as percentage of revenue was up 70 basis points versus last year or down slightly excluding the accelerated restructuring costs. Our operating margin for the quarter was 2.5%, up 170 basis points versus last year. In Q4, net interest commence was $27 million, while tax expense was $25 million, reflecting a full year adjusted rate of 36%. This should be the peak year in tax rate with the expectation that a reported rate should be in the low 30s in fiscal '27 and back in the '20s beyond that. Finally, Q4 adjusted earnings per share was $0 versus a loss of $0.14 in Q4 of last year. Now turning to the balance sheet. Inventories declined 11% in constant currency and inventory days were down year-over-year, reflecting improved inventory discipline across the organization. Net debt was down approximately $800 million versus last year or down 16% following the repayment of the EUR 500 million maturity made earlier this year. As noted, year-end leverage improved to 3.1x and down 1 full turn versus last year. Our free cash for the year was 50 million including our $100 million cash benefit from the net impact of the pension termination. Normalizing for this activity, free cash flow of $405 million was approximately $90 million above last year. Now on to our outlook. As Bracken mentioned, we are reinstating annual guidance effective fiscal '27. For the full year, we expect another year of growth in operating margin expansion as we advance towards our medium-term targets. We expect revenue to be up 1% to 2% in constant dollars. And by brand, we expect continued growth at The North Face, Timberland and Altra driven by our ongoing focus on investing in product and marketing. We expect Vans to deliver moderating declines for the year as a whole with improving trends in H2 relative to H1. We recognized that 1% to 2% is the somewhat specific range. Incorporated into this guidance is our belief that we will grow in fiscal '27 but that there are real headwinds related to the Middle East conflict and that we expect about 0.5 point benefit from the 53rd week. Today, we've had some impacts to our operations in the Middle East, in particular, on the wholesale side, we are anticipating the conflict in the Middle East to negatively impact revenue by about 100 basis points. While we have full confidence on where we will land for the year, we expect slower top line trends across the first half of the year. This is reflective of the slowdown in the Middle East and Europe due to the war and company-specific trends, including wholesale timing shift, which can have a disproportionate effect given the relatively small size of Q1 in particular. And as such, we expect Q1 to be down low single digits. For Q1 operating income, partly driven by some investments we were making in the quarter, and particularly around investments in Altra and DTC, both of which Bracken highlighted earlier, we do expect a $100 million loss for the quarter, about $40 million more than last year. This is all contemplated in our annual guidance. And for Vans, we feel very good about the direction of the business and the underlying momentum. Execution is translating into tangible improvements, particularly in the Americas, where DTC continues to lead the recovery. I'll reiterate what Bracken said earlier. For the full year, we expect then to be down mid-single digits compared to minus 11% in 2016 and down 15% in fiscal '25. Americas is our most important region. And DTC Americas is approximately 40% of our global business and the DTC Americas business has turned. The progress here is clear harbinger of where we expect -- where we are headed for Vans. For Q1, on a reported basis, we do expect a softer performance relative to Q4 '26, mainly related to the wholesale timing I mentioned previously. On a normalized basis, the growth across the 2 quarters is roughly the same. Now moving down the consolidated P&L. We expect fiscal 2017 operating margin of approximately 8%, supported by gross margin expansion and a lower SG&A rate relative to last year. Full year operating cash flow will be up versus last year, and free cash flow will be flat to up versus last year when you exclude the $100 million net impact of the pension termination from both years. On the working capital side, we're making additional investments in inventory to support top line growth and expect inventory to be up year-on-year. This is an intentional decision to invest behind our -- a few of our brands, and we still see our overall inventory in the long term, heading lower and expect our inventory days to be flat this year and lowering moving forward beyond that. We also expect a step up in CapEx this year, about $100 million year-over-year increase with new full year store openings of Timberland as one key driver. We continue to focus on strengthening the balance sheet, and we expect to exit the fiscal year with leverage between 2.6 and 2.9x, driven by both a further reduction in net debt as well as improved operating [Audio Gap]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Michael Binetti with Evercore.

Just a couple, the D2C improvement, are you -- maybe you could just help us understand what you're seeing if you're seeing the same level of improvement itself through wholesale. As you're seeing a D2C, we're trying to parse together how you're looking at it in total, but I know you're managing sell-in to some extent on wholesale. So I'm curious what you're seeing at sell-through at wholesale, how similar it is to D2C? And what you think is the difference between the 2 today? Just kind of help us understand how you're looking at it for the year. And then any comment on how you think we should model Vans for first quarter would be helpful.

I'll take the first one, and I'll give Paul a second one. Yes, sell-through, it wouldn't be as strong as our DTC because the DCC has a different mix. And also DTC includes e-com, we're able to really drive a lot of traffic to our own websites -- and we're not strong -- we don't normally drive everywhere else. So I would say the sellout in wholesale is not as strong as in our DTC in the Americas. Our DTC is a good harbinger of what's going to come because products that we have in our wholesale -- sorry, our DTC are coming. So the piece 1 by one, they'll come into the wholesale network, both online and offline. And so you'll see a stronger and stronger set of products in the portfolio. And I think you -- we view that as a really clear harbinger of what's to come. Now what's the time frame on that? We're being a little cagey on that intentionally. So we're going to wait and see how it plays out, but we feel very strong about the trend line on DTC and then how it's going to play out in wholesale over time.

Yes. And then on Vans, so I think for Q1, the reported number will be slightly lower than what we experienced in Q4 of this year. Again, keep in mind, we did have some demand that pulled forward some orders into Q4 and given the size of Q1, it does impact that. So on a normalized basis, Q4 and Q1 are roughly the same. But on a reported basis, Q1 will be slightly worse than Q4 and then we expect it to improve throughout the year.

And I know normal practice for V.F. has been to take a conservative approach to DTC as you get further out in the calendar. Is the confidence in the improving growth rate in advance through the year related to something you could tell us about with the order books on wholesale?

We normally don't talk about order books. I mean our confidence is really built on everything we can see internally, especially the DTC sellout just looks really, really strong. And new product performance, in particular, is really strong. And of course, we also get to look at what you can't see at all, which is the new products that are coming. And we're seeing in a room, it's about 400 feet from where we look at 1 and 2 and 3 seasons out, and we just feel really, really good about what's coming.

Your next question comes from the line of Denise District with BTIG. [Operator Instructions].

Sorry about that. There's still some work to do in U.S. wholesale. Can you help us understand exactly what that means. Is that a reference to need to clean up more distribution? Or is that a reference to kind of need to build back the order books? And maybe give us some thoughts on how you're thinking about the U.S. wholesale distribution currently.

Yes, it's mostly just really building back the order flow into the business. The distribution looks pretty good. We're going to continue to edit that. Remember, we took down the value channel pretty significantly over the last year. We've done some editing -- we may have overcorrected there a little bit, so we're going a little bit back into that, but not dramatically. So overall, though, I think our distribution about right in wholesale. It's really more about just going to continue to follow the DTC performance, make sure that our wholesale partners really get to see that and they have and then have the orders that kind of hide it. So it's really much more of a follow the leader mode now rather than add on to the number of players in the market.

Great. And then just on DTC. It sounds like a lot of that improvement is coming from online. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what's going on with stores in terms of both traffic and conversion?

Yes. Certainly, traffic has gotten a little better and conversion has gotten a lot better. I think our execution at retail has really improved. We put in -- we had a new leader go in in 2 quarters ago. and he has really reenergized the team got focused on execution, and that's really -- that performance has really improved on retail and e-com. So bricks-and-mortar and e-com, he's now taken over the rest of the world, as you know, and we're bringing some of that magic into the rest of the world over this year. So that's another reason we feel so strongly about our ability to deliver kind of the performance we're seeing in DTC in the U.S. into the rest of the world and into the wholesale U.S. over time, and we're excited about it.

Your next question comes from the line of Laurent Vasilescu with BNP.

I've got a quick question as the sun comes up here in California. But it's a question about, I think you mentioned, Paul, that the gross margin for 4Q would have been flat, if I understood correctly, on the tariffs -- ex the tariff benefit? And if that's the case, how do we think about 1Q gross margins? And obviously, there's no precedent with this tariff refund, but how do we think about the tariff benefit for the fiscal year '27 guide relative to the gross margin and the free cash flow guide?

Yes. So for Q4, yes, if you back out the receivable gross margin, it will be roughly flat for Q4. So that is correct. Q1 gross margin will be up. SG&A is also going to be up, as we mentioned, some of the investments we're making. Q1, in particular, is a smaller quarter. And so we're starting the year with some investments we think are really going to help throughout the full year. So that's why you're seeing that dynamic in Q1 with a better gross margin, but the higher SG&A, which is why the OI is down year-on-year in Q1. But again, that's all part of our plan for the fiscal year '27, and you see our expanding operating margin to 8% for the full year on the better gross margins and leverage of SG&A. So you'll see, again, higher gross margins in Q1, higher SG&A. For the full year, you'll see higher gross margins, leverage on SG&A, you'll see us get to the 8%. So that's how it works out. On the tariff side, yes, so we're assuming that the tariffs are back in place at the end of July. And so we expect to have sort of a full year impact of tariffs of an incremental $70 million to $80 million for the year. Again, we'll see how it goes. Obviously, it's very fluid. It could be better, it could be worse, but we're assuming they're going to be back in place. And we're assuming it's going to be, call it, roughly $70 million $80 million impact -- negative impact on our gross margin.

Paul, that's super helpful. And then I think you mentioned to Michael, there were some timing shifts between 1Q, 4Q due to the timing shift on wholesale. Maybe can you quantify that number? I think you said anywhere they would have been roughly equal. So it seems like a pretty big delta. And then are you assuming that there's some timing shift from 2Q to 1Q and -- so I know you're not ready to guide for 2Q, but should we at least assume that there's probably 2Q be flat for the year on the top line?

Yes. The biggest impact was Q4 and Q1. So we just had some stronger demand and orders just came in earlier for the season, which is obviously a positive sign. We knew that. So again, with the Vans number, the guidance, it was in there in the guide, we knew the demand was going to be there. It was about 2 points in each quarter. And so kind of -- that's why I say if you normalize it out, the gross is about the same. And if you look at the trends relative to kind of the normalized trends in Q2 and Q3 and Q4 and Q1 are again slightly better from a kind of normalized trend in terms of the client's advance. And the one thing I should add also because it also impacted The North Face as well. North Face also has had some really strong demand as well. That impacts -- it was a benefit to them in Q4. Given the size of Q1, it actually has a bigger -- the negative benefit on the actual growth rate is higher in Q1, just it's a smaller quarter. So one of the other things that's impacting again, growth just for Q1, but not for the full year is, again, some of that timing shift for The North Face as well. And so again, the demand was there, which is great, fell in Q4 versus Q1. That has a disproportionate impact on North Face in Q1 in particular. But again, we still expect good growth in North Face for the full year again. So there's a lot of things going on that just kind of specifically impact Q1, but don't really impact the -- what we think will be a stronger -- or fiscal '27.

Your next question comes from the line of Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs.

In the prepared remarks, you talked a little bit about some of the drivers of product cost as a result of some of these higher oil prices that will be flowing through the P&L. You mentioned several mitigating factors, including pricing. Can you unpack for us a little bit more what that annualized headwind is going to be when it gets fully into your inventory cost? And how much pricing actions you're contemplating both this year and into next year as a result of these inflationary factors, whether it is oil cost or tariffs or other factors in the environment?

So the impact on fiscal '27 is pretty minimal. We are obviously looking at oil prices in general in terms of product costs and how that could impact fiscal '28. So I think it's kind of a wait and see where oil prices sort of net out between 80, 90 at the low end, 100 to 110, maybe even more at the high end. And so we have it out there. Again, it's really not getting back to product cost all that much in fiscal '27 if anything. And then we'll give you more guidance as we get towards the back half of the year, what that may or may not do from a headwind for fiscal '28. And then from a pricing standpoint, we're just being strategic across the brands. There's nothing really incremental new to call out on pricing, just sort of strategically going through the portfolio and changing prices where appropriate.

Great. And then just a follow-up. Can you unpack the trends that you're seeing in EMEA? What assumptions are you embedding for Western Europe beyond the 100 bps related to the Middle East? Are you seeing any change in demand in that region for any of your brands?

I'd say, generally speaking, no. I think it's been weaker. I mean Europe has been weaker for us. And in general, I think the whole macro environment is kind of swirled Europe. The traffic has been down across the board, across the whole industry, and it certainly affected us. So it has been weaker for us. We sort of -- looking forward, we're not expecting magic there. I mean the good news is our DTC is stronger than our wholesale there. So that feels good. It kind of echoes the same story we told about the bands in the U.S. in general. So I think as we go forward, we expect -- we certainly expect it will get back to good growth over time. We've also got new -- we're taking a new approach there. We've learned so much as we brought the -- just to take you back a few years even -- we brought this European platform for our commercial engine into the U.S. It was a very successful multibrand platform. We weren't doing that in the U.S. We put it in the U.S. It certainly has driven improvement in the U.S. Then we've upgraded that even further by getting focused on our DTC in the U.S. and really improving our execution engine. Now we're bringing that execution over into Europe. So it's kind of an illustration of this whole value of having multi-brand, multi-category, multi-region business like we have, where we're going to keep learning in different parts of the world as we tap into a new vein of understanding and insight it improves our business. We're going to bring it to the rest of the world and the rest of our brands. That's exactly what's happening now. So you'll see that happen. It's already happening in the U.S. That's why you saw such a strong quarter. And I think you'll see it in the quarter and certainly years ahead around the world.

Your next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo.

Can you hear me?

Perfectly.

Excellent. Bracken, Paul, clarification and a question. I think for Paul, the refund benefit you saw in the first quarter, should we basically be modeling that as a bad guy, $50 million in the fourth quarter of next year? I'm assuming we should I just want to kind of make sure that, that's the case.

It's not really a bad guy. So if you really -- if you think about it, so the full -- if you think about the full year, the full year just basically assumes that we didn't have to pay the tariffs. We took a receivable to account for that, which all hit in Q4. So we tried to normalize out for Q4. So just as a level set, like the operating margin, the 7% operating margin in fiscal '26 is a good clean margin. I wouldn't think about the -- is it a benefit in Q4. I think more a function of if the tariffs are put back in place at the end of July and if we're back in an environment where where we're having to overcome the tariffs, it will impact the back half of the year. That was the $70 million to $80 million or so that I mentioned earlier in terms of the incremental impact we would see in the back half of the year. So it's not really -- we had a benefit, we didn't because it's not really a benefit. It's just we had been assuming we're going to have to pay something we didn't. So there's no impact really at all. We have a clean 7% margin in '26. But next year, we will potentially have to face increasing tariffs if the July announcement goes through and then we have higher tariffs. It will make Q4 a tougher compare, but it's not really like-for-like. It's more that we will potentially have tariffs back in the mix through Q4 of next year, I'm sorry.

And Paul, if I can just add. I think 2 things. One, to underscore the point that the 7 points of operating income in FY '26 is clean. It doesn't have the tariff impact. And two, the $70 million to $80 million that Paul is talking about, we do have mitigation action, as I highlighted as part of the work that we have been doing over the last 1 year in terms of thinking about our sourcing footprint, thinking about readouting the product and also working with our vendors. So we do feel confident of mitigating almost all of it in FY '27. So that's what we are saying when we are committing to the guidance of 8%.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then as a follow-up on the fiscal '28 margins, I know at the Analyst Day, I believe you guys said you were committed to achieving a margin of at least 10% in fiscal '28. I think now you're saying it's a run rate. I know there's noise, there's tariffs and things like that. So that's understandable. But can you just elaborate what a run rate means that coming in a lot of things? Is there any more clarity you could kind of give us into what your expectations for the annual margin in '28?

Yes. Let me be crisper. So when we gave that, we said in fiscal '28, we would deliver 10%, what we meant was a run rate, and we then got a lot of feedback, very understandable, like, so you mean for the full year and we said, no, we didn't mean for the full year. We never intended that to be the full year. The idea was that during the year of fiscal '28, we'd reach that point where we'd be a 10% margin business. So we redescribed that a couple of quarters ago. We've tried to reiterate that to everybody, that it's -- so we used the term exit rate. So you can kind of count on it as an exit rate, fiscal year -- as we exit fiscal year '28, we've got a 10% operating margin run rate. So the other way we could have said it, maybe we should have said it is full fiscal '29, you can count on 10% or better. So during fiscal '28, we'll hit 10% sometime during that year, and we've committed now to a 10% exit rate. Is that clear enough?

Yes. Appreciate it.

Thanks for asking that. We were hoping we'd get that. If you had ask Abhisek and Paul.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Jay Sole with UBS.

Can everybody hear me now?

We can hear you perfectly.

I just want to ask about the free cash flow guidance for this year. Maybe can you elaborate on what flat to up means? And then what are you comparing to? Because it looks like in the slide deck, you're comparing it to $405 million for this year? And maybe how do we think about the pension expense and the pension termination cash benefits from this year? Are you excluding those from that number? If you can just maybe just define the fiscal '26 number, what's in there. and then tell us how you think about free cash flow in '27 in a little bit more detail, that would be great.

Yes. Sure. So yes, so the pension benefit was when we terminated the pension, there was a cash benefit of about $100 million. So our free cash flow, including that is $505 million. On a normalized basis, we obviously don't expect that. That was a onetime thing. We won't get that every year. It's real cash in the door. But so on a normalized basis, it's $405 million is our free cash flow. Now that's up $90 million versus last year. And so again, we had said all along that we would have free cash flow in fiscal '26. That will be flat to up versus last year, and we obviously delivered $90 million more than that. So the base rate -- the base number we're talking about is the $405 million. So it's excluding the pension, it's $405 million. And then we said free cash flow will be flat to up this year. Again, the biggest variable there is we are upping our CapEx spend this year, which I mentioned. We're investing about $100 million more this year in CapEx than last year. A lot of that is going to investment. Some of that, as we talked about, is on the growth in Timberland and the full-price stores that were we're growing in Timberland. So even with that increased investment, we still believe that we will have free cash flow that is equal to or better than last year. We're going to continue to delever. So as we said, we finish this year at 3.1x. It's a full turn better than last year, we'll get below 3x this year. So between 2.6 and 2.9 is what we said. We're still on track to be at 2.5 or better in fiscal '28. So everything is on track. And given the fact that everything is on track, and then we actually had an even better improvement in our leverage ratio for fiscal '25 or fiscal '26, we are giving ourselves the ability to invest even more, particularly on the store side in fiscal '27. So hopefully that was clear.

It was.

Your next question comes from the line of Samuel Poser with Williams Trading.

I have a handful here. One, the 53rd week in fiscal '27. I assume that, that will be gross margin accretive because most of that additional business comes from DTC. The wholesale part of that is small. Would that be a fair assumption?

I mean, it's small. We haven't really quantified. It is small. I mean your logic is definitely sound, but it's pretty small. And then just while you're on the 53rd week, just to be clear, we said it'd be on a revenue side, about -- at about 0.5 point growth overall. So that is helpful because it somewhat mitigates the point or so impact we see from the conflict over in the Middle East.

Got you. And then in in The North Face, how long will it take to double? And then with Vans, how -- you talked about the speed to market, given some of the strength of some of the new shoes how like if -- like when could a wholesale partner write an order for right now and expect to get some deliveries? And lastly, there's a new authentic called the authentic kickdown which apparently isn't on your website, but is being sold through some like urban and free people. I'm wondering just the strategy there because you talked about your DTC, but that's the shoes that appears to do decently but isn't showing up on your website. So that's -- there's a lot of questions, a lot of stuff I want to understand.

Sure, sure, sure. Absolutely, Sam. So first, on the doubling of TNF, we're not committing to a time frame, but we're very optimistic about it. And I do think at some point, because we're really laying a lot of groundwork right now to grow across multiple categories around the world, we're really putting the next phase of planning in to drive that long-term sustainable growth. The growth should start to accelerate. Now we're not committing to that, and we're not going to do it today. But at some point, maybe at an Investor Day, we'll lay kind of a time line out for that. In terms of brands? And can you place an order today? Absolutely, they can. You know as well as anybody, maybe better than anybody else in this call how wholesale works. They can play absolutely place orders today. They've also got product in their currently in their stores. So it's a process of one by one by one. And we were just a cookout last night with our wholesalers for Vans as a matter of fact. And there's a lot of optimism out there, but this is going to take time. You've got to keep the momentum going. We've also got approved to them, as you know, from being a former buyer. We got to prove to them. These things are selling. I think they're now seeing it. So the optimism is starting now it's got to turn into orders. So...

My question was, if I wrote an order today, could I get it in 3 months? Or would it still take the speed situation.

Let me take that, Sam, because you actually asked a really good question, which is one of the big unlocks we actually executed on last year. So we had a lot of success with Super Lowpro as you know, on Vans as well. And that was a great example where we actually saw the initial buys. We saw the momentum in the product. We actually chased down and got the product back on the floor in exactly 77 days. So we did demonstrate that we have the capability, the capacity and the partners on the supply chain side to actually accelerate any product chase if it's on the same silhouette and the same with the variation of fabrication and color and material. So that's good news. On your question around wholesale, if we do get the order we feel very confident that we can meet it. And that's what the team does in the works for in terms of looking at their open to buy and really figuring out what, where we can actually drive. Your last question that you had around a particular style available only in the wholesale partner. Now this is the kind of another shift in mindset that we are seeing at that we are constantly going to be testing different ideas and scaling them pretty fast. Like one of the ideas could be that do we actually take a particular style, a particular silhouette, test that in wholesalers, take that in DTC stores for take that in online first. So this was one of the examples. I'm glad you observed it, which is where we are testing that what if we actually kind of push a certain style more at a rapid speed in wholesale partner first, see the velocity there, see the sell-through there and then replicate that across the other channels.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Anna Andreeva with Piper Sandler.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can.

Terrific. Yes. Thank you for the color this morning. Very helpful. We wanted to follow up on Timberland. I think you mentioned wholesale declined on lower distressed sales in the fourth quarter. What was that amount? And is that dynamic continuing into fiscal '27. Just any color on that would be great. And then secondly, you talked about marketing and moving towards the upper funnel across the brands, which makes a lot of sense. Just what was your marketing as a percent of sales for the year? And how should we think about that for '27?

Yes. On the Timberland side, it's just the inventory is actually in a healthier position. And so we were selling less distress there. And so that's some impact on that, that falls through into the beginning of this year. But it's actually all a good sign because we're in a really good place there.

Yes. Just to answer your question on cost. So we're investing, I would say, pretty strongly in marketing. So we're at 8.6% about fiscal year '26. And our game plan is to continue to invest pretty strongly in marketing. I do think there's somewhere in the future where we can bring that down a little bit. We're probably at the high end of the upper quartile of the industry right there. But given where we are and what we're seeing from a responsiveness standpoint, we'll probably stay in that range for a while, but we'll eventually bring it down.

Your next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America. [Operator Instructions]

I was hoping that you could have been -- just help talk through a little bit of the strategies you've used to turn Vans America to really move that around the world.

We got part of your question, but let me try to restate it and see if I got it right, just say yes. You want to understand a little bit of the Vans strategies that have driven the turnaround in the DTC in Americas and ultimately presumably that will move around the world. Correct?

Exactly.

Yes. So it's pretty much what we've been laying out from 2 years ago. It comes back to product, marketing and in this case, really good great commercial execution. So the product is coming. You've seen a lot of new product from us. If you're not already and I'm sure most of you are, if you're not following us and all the social media you should you'll get a lot of color on what we're doing, and you'll see just the range of things we're doing and the excitement around them. I'm sitting on -- literally, I just wanted to -- I was going to bring this out for those of you who are looking at the video, but this shoe, we just launched. We had lines in front of stores and all the places we sold it. We actually had flights in front of which we're not proud of. But we're generating that kind of heat for some of the collaborations that are harder to get is and then bringing those same attributes like the pearlized down into more available, more affordable shoes that you can buy almost everywhere is really part of our game plan. So we're doing that, and we've got really, really great product out and coming. The second thing we're doing is we're really trying to make sure that our marketing is, you mentioned upper final and lower funnel. We're really doing a lot on both ends of that spectrum. We're trying to make sure our low-for marketing is really strong in brand building, too. And so we're -- you've probably seen the character of our marketing change. It used to be a lot of skateboarders, and now it's a lot more about California lifestyle, some skateboarding and some just off-the-wall stuff. We've got a new campaign on off the wall. But generally speaking, we're trying to more and more you'll see us tie it directly to individual silhouettes and products because we want to make sure it really converts into sales. The third thing we're doing is really great commercial execution. I think hats off to Brent Hyder who's taken -- took over the American was now running our global commercial team. He's really done a super job of raising the caliber of play there, and he's got a fantastic team under him, including Shack and so many others that have really raised the execution level in our stores and in our e-commerce execution. Abhishek is sitting next to me. His team did a great job of building websites that are more responsive, they look better, they feel better, they sell better. So just all the elements that you would expect us to be doing, I think we're really doing in the DTC, and that's going to make its way around the world and into wholesale over time.

Your next question -- the last question for today will come from the line of Blake Anderson with Jefferies.

For most of them. I just wanted to ask Bracken, first on Vans. I would be interested to hear how the customer base is evolving kind of versus your expectations over the last year. Maybe talk about the growth of new customers versus existing and there are a lot of loyal Vans customers out there. Anything on retention rates and how the younger female demographic is trending? I know you guys have mentioned that as a key segment as well.

Yes. I'll give you a little color, but I'm going to go a little deep on parts of this. I'd say the most important thing to point out is that the customer base is predominantly meant. I think when we came out of the gate, we really felt like there's -- we have a lot of opportunity in women, and we have a lot of opportunity in women and we have a lot of products out and more coming that are going to be able to women. We've really doubled down on men and it's in our DTC in the Americas, and it seems to really be working, and we're going to keep that up. And now we're also doing a lot more than that. We think there is a big opportunity in men. Now we're also focusing on a couple of different segments, and I won't bore you with our segmentation strategy. But let me just say they tend to be kind of the people that you tend to notice if you walk down the street. They are the ones who look a little cooler, seem like they're on the edge of a trend and we have different segments to go after it. Now that said, we've also expanded our marketing footprint a little bit because we have a lot of lapsed users and even older users who love the brand and just we kind of fell out of favor with. So we've broadened our media buys a little bit so that we're reaching even some of these older people as old as people like me who love Vans and want to buy like the latest stuff that's coming out. So we have a very clear specific targets, very narrow, but we're opening the aperture sure a little bit to make sure that the -- our awareness is staying up among that a broader group that really wants to buy, and that seems to be working.

That's really helpful. And if I could ask one more. I was curious, Paul and Abhishek on SG&A and COGS. I know there's big initiatives to generate savings there. Can you quantify at all how much you're taking in savings this year versus last year? Just was curious, directionally, if you can talk anything about how much you're able to generate, excluding revenue, just taking cost out of the business this year versus last year?

Do you want to take that, Paul.

Yes. I mean we're not going to be overly specific other than to say Well, a, what Abhishek already said, right? So we have taken out $225 million out on a run rate basis. Some of that's been offset by inflation and then specific and decisive investment decisions, we will get SG&A leverage this year, but we're not going to specifically talk about the overall numbers other than to say, to get to the 8% operating margin on, call it, 1% to 2% revenue growth, we're going to see both gross margin expansion leverage on the SG&A side?

Yes. And the only thing I would add is like I want to underscore the point that I made on the gross margin. We did expand 350 basis points, 360 basis points, but 100 of that was actually through the Dickies divestiture. So we do see the composition of that 10% that Bracken talked about for the full year FY '29 and beyond, it could be a little bit of a different mix than what we said earlier between gross margin and SG&A, but we definitely see opportunities both in gross margin dollars as well as in SG&A dollars going forward.

Okay. I think that was the last question. The sun is up and very bright here, as it often is in California at this time of the day. Just to close, we return to full year growth in fiscal year '26, and we expect to keep growing in fiscal year '27. We're going to continue to expand our margins and continue to reduce our leverage. So all the things that we've been doing, we're going to keep doing in more, and we're going in the right direction, and we'll see more improvement. North Face and Timberland are growing. We're seeing tangible signs of momentum advance led by Americas DTC. We didn't get that from that call, we said it many times can we feel so strongly about it. We're growing for the first time in over 4 years in America DTC. We're on track to achieve our medium-term targets, an exit run rate of 10% operating margin in fiscal '28 and a leverage ratio of 2.5x or lower by fiscal year '28. So this has been a very strong year for V.F. And I am super excited about the momentum we have and that we're building for the future. So thanks, everyone, for the call. Thanks for all the questions, and we'll see all of you -- many of you around the world as we do investor meetings and things in the quarter ahead.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, and thanks to you.

Thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.