Welcome all. Welcome to Accent Group Investor Day for 2026. I'm Daniel Agostinelli, the Accent Group CEO. I'm joined today by Matt Durbin, our Finance Director. Today, we're excited to outline our 2030 growth strategy and share some of the exciting things we have ahead of us.
Thanks, Daniel. To kick off, we wanted to introduce our new vision and strategic pillars to drive growth to 2030. We have an action-packed agenda and aim to leave you with confidence in the future for Accent. Daniel, what are your thoughts on where Accent is today and our plan for the future?
Thanks, Matt. I see our business as the region's leading destination for performance and lifestyle. We have scale in the market and access to 10 million customers through our 900-store footprint, including our websites, a large integrated and growing digital business, exclusive distribution agreements where we are the brand custodians in Australia and New Zealand for a number of the world's best performance and lifestyle brands. Our multibrand retail businesses and vertically owned businesses make us a key partner for brands in the market. On the screen, we demonstrate an ambition of AUD 1.9 billion by 2030. Personally, I'd like it to be more, that's AUD 1.9 billion.
I have a personal long-term held ambition to grow the Accent business to AUD 2 billion in sales, and whilst there have been some margin challenges in recent years, I feel we have a clear plan for margin rebuild in the short term and medium term.
The focus of this morning's session is to speak to our core capabilities, what differentiates us, and what helps support a leading position in the performance and lifestyle market. As shown on the right-hand side, we'll also cover our 2030 ambition and a path to a bigger, more profitable Accent. Our customers and brands are core to everything we do. We currently have more than 25 brands in our portfolio. Our distributed brands have global scale, and in ANZ, we're the brand custodian for these brands, driving end-to-end execution, including supply chain from factory of origin, end-to-end marketing in the Australian-New Zealand market, distribution to wholesale customers, direct to customer through digital and our brand concept stores and outlets, and through our multibrand stores, where we enable instant scale and reach to these brands.
We believe this integrated model creates a number of benefits for Accent, with diversification of revenue and attractive margins. Almost 50% of group sales are achieved from our distributed brands. Over the last six years, we've driven a strategy to grow our own vertical brands. This started with accessories and then evolved into apparel. These vertical brands currently contribute 9% of sales and will continue to grow as we incubate and test new brands and products to capture market opportunities. Daniel, what's the Accent advantage, and why is it important?
We have a range of capabilities and strengths that combine to deliver sustainable growth and performance. We are the trusted custodians of distinctive brands that we have retained and built over nearly 40 years. We've actually never lost a brand that we distribute. We have a proven and repeated ability to scale brands. We have done this across brand types such as distributor brands and multibrand retailers like Platypus and The Athlete's Foot and our incubator vertical owned brands. Our scale and reach are significant, with 10 million customers and online orders of approximately AUD 3 million a year. Finally, we have a resilient portfolio model driven by attractive gross margins, vertical products, replacement-based products like sportswear and strong retail execution.
Accent Group has significant scale across footwear and apparel in ANZ, with stores located in every major shopping center. We hold a clear market-leading position in footwear as the largest network in the region. We estimate more than 70% of the Australian population have access to an Accent physical store. Over the last three years, we've served more than 10 million known customers, including 5 million in the last 12 months. This is also supported by a scalable logistics capability. Our physical footprint means we have strong and material relationships with all the large retail landlords and many other landlords around the country, and a deep understanding of our local area customer, how they shop and where they shop and when they shop. Combined with our digital presence across 31 websites and our strong distribution network, it creates a very effective integrated omni-channel business.
Daniel, how do you think about brands and their importance to Accent?
A core element of Accent's success is that we are the trusted brand custodian in this part of the world. We are the distributor for nine of the largest footwear brands and a key retail partner for many others. To win in performance and lifestyle requires partnering with access to large global brands. We do so by making ourselves an indispensable partner for the global brands in our region. Accent has built a long-standing partnership spanning up to 38 years with a proven track record with brands such as Skechers, Vans, and Dr. Martens. These relationships also extend to key parent companies, including VF Corporation and Deckers Brands. In addition, as Sports Direct continues to scale, we expect to further strengthen these partnerships and drive growth across both distributed and third-party sports brands.
This will also be supported by leveraging Frasers Group's global relationships with leading international brands such as Nike, adidas, and others.
We have a demonstrated ability to grow brands in our region. For our distributed brands like Merrell, Dr. Martens, Skechers, Vans, and Timberland, we've delivered strong growth over the past decade, supported by our multibrand retail network. On the screen on the left, you can see the compound annual growth that we've delivered in those brands over the last 10 years or so. More recently, the performance in HOKA highlights our ability to scale new brands rapidly in the ANZ market. Over the period that we've been the distributor, we've been able to triple brand awareness and double sales over the current distribution partnership. What's very exciting about HOKA from where it is today is that brand awareness in ANZ currently sits at around 38%, compared with other global sports brands that typically exceed 90%.
This highlights a substantial runway for future growth in HOKA as awareness and market penetration continue to increase. In our vertical brands, we continue to scale Nude Lucy, Stylerunner, and Ode. Nude Lucy delivered around AUD 70 million of sales and more than AUD 10 million in fully costed EBIT in the last 12 months from a standing start just over three years ago. We'll continue to build these brands through category expansion, scaling e-commerce, and early stages of international expansion. This is in Nude Lucy in particular, in wholesale channels. We've shipped Nude Lucy to 150 specialty stores in the U.S. already.
Over the last five years or so, we have built capability in vertical apparel, and accessories continues to grow for us. There's been a big learning curve for us, given we started with simply socks in this market and making our own instead of selling third-party socks. I'm just delighted what the team has built. You will meet some of those teams across the road after this session. From our point of view, we are simply just getting smarter, better. Better factories, better people joining us, and the learnings are just moving as quickly as I've seen anything else move across the Group. We're very pleased where that, this vertical capability is going, and hopefully, we can improve on that moving forward. We haven't necessarily got everything right.
We've, you know, we've experimented. We started and exited many brands over the last six years. However, with these learnings under our belt, we believe the success achieved with Nude Lucy is replicable, particularly with our next candidate, which is named Ode, and we will show you some of that capability in the next section.
Moving to the current state of play.
We operate in a large growing market. We operate in a large and growing market segment, and today have strong market share positions in the lifestyle and sports footwear markets. This reflects Accent's heritage. Moving forward, we have significant opportunity for further growth in sports footwear and expansion in adjacent categories through apparel. Matt, what are your thoughts about the market?
Based on what we're seeing in market and industry reports, the sports segment is expected to continue to grow strongly in the current years. Our core goal is to grow in these sports footwear and apparel markets, and this has been the ongoing rationale for our investment in The Athlete's Foot and the partnership with Frasers to build Sports Direct. It's evident that Accent currently has a small share of the lifestyle apparel market. The addition of Lacoste, together with the continued expansion of vertical brands Nude Lucy, Ode, and Stylerunner, strengthens Accent's position and represents another key growth market. Accent has consistently delivered strong sales growth throughout its history, achieving more than AUD 1.5 billion total sales over the last 12 months. We've outperformed the broader market in each of the last 10 years based on ABS data.
Even in more recent times, revenue growth, and I'm talking about 2023 to 2026, which has no doubt been more challenging, has continued to exceed our growth in store numbers and the broader segment growth, again, based on ABS data. This performance is aided by our flexible business model and strong brand partnerships, which provide early visibility into emerging consumer trends. This allows us to move quickly to commercialize winning products then across our more than 900-store network. The capability to rapidly introduce and scale new brands has enabled Nude Lucy and HOKA to achieve meaningful scale in a relatively short period of time, and we see similar potential with Lacoste and even more with Sports Direct. Daniel, we've talked a lot about the good stuff. It's worth noting some of the recent challenges we've faced.
Yes, it's more than clear that lifestyle footwear is under pressure globally. I really mean lifestyle. You only have to have a look at Nike, who saw a CAD 5 billion drop in revenue in 2025 compared to 2024. The lifestyle footwear industry is facing challenges in product innovation, and for at least 18 months has lacked heat in the pipeline. Adidas, for example, has performed well with the Samba in the last few years. The Samba, for those of you that don't know, is a very strong shoe that we had in the market. Since then, they haven't got anything new in the market of significance, and even Nike have had limited production innovation.
To illustrate the impact on numbers, over the last 18 months we sold approximately 140,000 fewer pairs of Samba, representing around AUD 25 million loss in revenue than the prior corresponding period. I have a picture of a physical shoe that I'll show you soon about what the Samba actually is. That's a significant drop on one particular style in the lifestyle space. More broadly, softer like-for-like sales across the lifestyle segment, combined with elevated promotional activity and inflationary cost pressures, has impacted profitability.
We have to acknowledge the challenges aren't just market-based. We've had some internal challenges as well.
Yes. Firstly, we had to close our loss-making businesses with Glue and OZSALE. While Glue ultimately did not succeed, it played an important role in the development of Nude Lucy. This is where Nude Lucy was born within those stores. As we have called out for a while, the Vans brand has shrunk significantly over the past three years. It is only now that we have been able to fully action store closures and wholesale volumes to reset Vans in the market for the next three years. It is worth calling out. We have been operating for nearly 40 years and have successfully navigated multiple retail cycles, including periods of challenges, i.e., COVID. Through that, we have consistently emerged stronger through those cycles. We believe we have the scale, capabilities, and market position to continue capturing growth opportunities where they exist and ride the waves.
Speaking of waves, I wanted to share something with you that just dropped only 10 days ago, about Vans.
[Presentation]
This is the actual shoe, guys. It was launched I don't know, it looks like another Vans shoe, but this is the market we operate within. It launched at AUD 120 retail. It's now selling for AUD 1,600 this morning. That means brand heat is coming. That's how things start in our world of lifestyle. We are seeing early signs of sneaker hype coming back. As shown, Vans is gaining traction through limited release sneaker drops in New York City, and that also extends to other brands such as Nike. Whilst Nike are not my best, I guess third-party partner, purely because of margins, they offer less margins, they are the smartest in the business. They are the biggest by a long way, and I'm very convinced that they're gonna come back strong.
It's just a timing thing. We see innovation emerging with brands introducing new products to market: HOKA, Dr. Martens, and Vans as well. Brands also continue to leverage iconic models making a comeback, and we are well-positioned to capitalize on this. As an example, we sold roughly 13 million pairs of shoes last year.
While we face some macro headwinds this financial year, we are more than happy with our growth in sports and in vertical own brands. Sports is an attractive and high-growth market. The TAF model performs well in this segment, and we are confident that this growth will only accelerate with the rollout of Sports Direct stores. Likewise, our omnichannel presence continues to grow, and digital is now over AUD 300 million of sales and more than 20% of total group sales. Our network of stores also provides easy access to Click & Collect , which has grown at 19% per annum over the last few years and will continue that momentum. On the screen there you can see some of the, I'm not gonna call them segment results, but the differential results that we've achieved in sales.
It gives you some idea into the profitability when you look at the lifestyle and footwear banners having only grown at total sales of 1% over the last three years. We're not pleased with that, but in a high inflationary environment, that's created margin jaws, and we now need to work hard to reverse that trend. Daniel, what's the 2030 strategy to deliver earnings uplift and growth?
Our strategy is focused around three pillars: efficiency, evolution, and expansion. First, efficiency. We know we need to capture cost reduction opportunities across the business, rationalizing the brand portfolio by closing underperforming brands and stores and fighting hard on lease renewals. We are well underway on this. In the room, we have David Coombes, who controls our property department. I think he's the best in the business, having fantastic success. Second, evolution includes strengthening our core brands and retail banners to better capture market opportunity. This includes TAF, franchise buybacks, category expansion, and store refits in Platypus and growing the presence of distributed brands like Skechers and Vans. Third, we will drive expansion. We will never sit still and continue and not look to find new opportunities to grow.
Firstly, we are excited by the growth of the potential of Sports Direct, and we will continue to identify and grow Accent vertical owned brands such as Nude Lucy and Ode, and actively pursue further brand distribution opportunities aligned to our portfolio where we can supply the market and indeed, all the banners that we have in the different segmentations.
Moving on to cost efficiency and our first efficiency pillar. We continue to rigorously ensure that our business is running efficiently. This is nothing new, we have been on this journey now for four years and even more before that. However, we're announcing today AUD 30 million of total cost efficiencies that have been identified and targeted for FY 2027 and an additional AUD 10 million targeted for FY 2028. We talk about the 2027 efficiencies as identified and in progress being implemented. This isn't a target. This is actually what we've identified and what we're going to go after in the next 12 months. That full benefit, that full gross benefit will land in FY 2027.
After inflationary impacts, the net impact of those two amounts will be AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million over the next two years, with targeted cost of doing business percentage to reduce by 90 basis points-150 basis points . The cost savings come from three areas. Savings in reductions in the size of our support office team, including the offshoring of roles and the use of AI to reduce manual processes. No doubt that'll come up in Q&A, and we can elaborate more. Improving team rostering in stores, identifying stores that have higher labor rates than other stores and lower productivity, increasing the productivity of those stores. That's something that has been ongoing for a while, but we've actually ramped that up in recent times, and it's been a massive focus of the team over the last six months to reset rosters.
That's all now in place. We've started getting benefits from it in the back end of this financial year, and we'll get a full year of benefit into next year. Finally, areas like occupancy, which we'll talk plenty more about, I'm sure, where we're going very hard on lease renewals. We've talked for a long time about improving the efficiency of our marketing, in particular digital performance marketing, where we're using our own customer-owned channels and our access to 10 million customers so that we have to spend less money with Google and the other big performance marketing brands of the world. Cost efficiency targets only cover our 2027 and 2028 plan, and we'll continue to find and deliver improvements from 2029 and beyond, particularly as we implement AI-based systems and solutions, we expect further opportunities in costs to emerge.
In addition, as Daniel called out, we're always looking to strengthen our brand portfolio. At times, this requires rationalizing underperforming brands to ensure capital is deployed effectively in our stronger propositions. This includes exiting OZSALE, Superga, the Herschel distribution agreement, and closing Glue Store stores by the end of June 2026. You get a sense that that's four underperforming parts of our business that will all be wrapped up and have left by the end of June. This rationalization will deliver an AUD 16 million EBIT uplift in 2027 over 2026. That AUD 16 million is effectively the P&L losses that we've experienced in those brands that we leave behind at the end of this year. We go through a similar process with our store network.
There are more than 100 stores today that due to five years of inflationary pressures on rents may need to close at renewal. This is in addition to the 39 stores that closed or in the progress of closing across 2025 and 2026. These stores have been under pressure from lease rates. We expect to make a decision as these stores come up for renewal. We are targeting a minimum uplift of AUD 7 million over the next three years, three to four years, through lease negotiations, performance uplift in those stores or closures. As a team at Accent, we've turned our mind to if a store has to close because we can't get the right lease outcome, how do we capture that customer spend in digital and in our other banners in the center and in the catchment?
That's starting to become a major program for us. If we can shift 20% of our four-wall sales from a closed store to an existing store, the profit turn on that is quite profound. We have a strategy to do that, and we'll let everyone know how we're going along the way. I think that's the end of that slide. Oh, sorry. We'll go back. Sorry, guys. The closures release capital, which can be reallocated to higher return areas of the business. We also aim to open 20 stores across our growth brands per year, in addition to the planned rollout for Sports Direct, which we'll touch on shortly.
The Athlete's Foot continues to demonstrate strong structural growth, consistently delivering stable and growing comparable sales year-over-year . This reflects the strengths of the proposition and the strong customer connection with the brand. I'm quite amazed that this business has now had a five to six-year comp stack and continues to just grow. We also have Ian in the room today, who runs that business and who's doing a stellar job with him and his team. TAF offers a premium service experience reflected in a Net Promoter Score of + 86. For those that are aware of a Net Promoter Score, that is incredibly compelling.
We have also benefited from favorable category tailwinds as consumers can increasingly trade up into more technical performance footwear, including the growing demand for carbon-plated running and super shoe categories. Looking ahead, we have 30 franchise stores remaining to be reacquired between 2027 and FY 2030. Which we expect will contribute approximately AUD 14 million in EBIT uplift by 2030. The annual acquisition plan has been outlined in the appendix. Looking at future opportunities, Sports Direct represents a unique proposition in the sports market. It allows us to leverage global brands, access exclusive products, and strengthen our supplier relationships. The platform also allows us to enable us to expand presence in the sports and apparel categories while offering synergistic benefits through selling distributed brands in our stores.
While still early, we've seen strong sales performance across our digital Fountain Gate and Chatswood Chase stores. For those of you who are joining us this afternoon, you'll get to have a good unpack of the Fountain Gate store. At launch in November, the business was generating annual sales of approximately AUD 7 million. We had one store and a website, which has since increased to around AUD 15 million annualized sales across the two stores and online channel. Based on both our experience with The Athlete's Foot and Frasers Group experience with Sports Direct internationally, we expect an 18-24-month ramp up to maturity. In fact, last week was Sports Direct's best week ever in the Accent Group.
We're already seeing, as weeks go by, that business is strengthening as the customer gets to know it and wants to visit us more. You'll meet Steve and his team today, who are flat strap driving that business for us, amongst other things. There's a plan to open by the end of 2026, with approximately 30 stores targeted within the next three years to further build brand presence across Australia. Over the longer term, our ambition is to scale Sports Direct to between 50 and 100 stores, replicating the successful multibrand retail network strategy we've executed across other banners.
With our vertical brands, we look for opportunities to build and even acquire brands that are distinctive in the market and support customer trends. Platforms like Stylerunner allow us to test new concepts or third-party brands before scaling them across the network. Sports Direct further enhances this capability, particularly in men's sport and apparel. This will enable us to grow our sales share of vertical brands, which offer the most attractive margins for the business. We now have a replicable model to grow our new vertical brands.
Daniel, when it comes to us choosing who we'll distribute in this market, what do we look for?
We remain selective, focusing on brands with strong growth potential, market fit, and attractive metrics. We are always in discussions with brands across footwear and apparel, and are in the negotiations as we speak with a number of global brands currently. We have the capability to build both vertical brands and partner with new global brands in low-risk environment through testing and developing products in our large store network. We are constantly looking for new opportunities that offer strong and attractive returns. In terms of the brands, you'll see across the road when you enter the building across the road today, we have set it up so that when a brand comes to this market, we are the obvious choice to partner up with in order to get their distribution going.
We have Liam, sitting in the room, who heads up that division, doing a marvelous job with many of these negotiations we have going on.
Looking forward to FY 2030, we're focused on driving meaningful earnings growth through these initiatives with a forecast baseline objective of AUD 1.9 billion+ in sales and a 9%+ EBIT margin. In FY 2027, we have brand rationalization, cost efficiency, TAF buybacks, and significant currency tailwinds to margin. I'm sure we'll talk more about in Q&A. Everyone loves to talk about the currency. Beyond 2027, we expect further cost efficiencies as we close out the TAF reacquisition program. Significant sales-led growth across Sports Direct, our new distributed brands, vertical apparel, and an evolution of our core lifestyle brands. While macro conditions remain volatile, our business model enables us to navigate these conditions confidently. However, there are factors out of our control, including interest rates and FX rates. We have and will continue to factor these into our ambition.
In conclusion, we're confident that there's a clear path to growing. In terms of capital allocation, the group has paid out just over AUD 500 million in dividends in the last 10 years and remains a highly cash-generative retail model. In terms of major investments, the TAF franchisee reacquisitions have been at a return on investment of around 20%, and we are targeting in excess of 20% for the Sports Direct rollout. Most importantly, the business has sufficient capital and projected future cash flows to fund the growth strategy to 2030. We always maintain that cash not required for future investments will be used to pay down debt or return to investors over time. Coming on to why invest now.
Before we move on to questions, we're gonna pause on this slide, and Daniel's gonna come up with a closing statement, and then we're gonna have some Q&A. We're about seven minutes ahead of schedule, so that's more time for questions.
Which is good.
Over to you, Daniel.
I wanna stand up for this.
Yeah, great.
Because I woke up this morning thinking, "What's the so what in all this deck? I've read it 15 times." Look, from my point of view, there's a lot in this deck to digest, and I'm sure you'll have time to go through it when time permits for you. My version of a summary. The focuses for the team and I are top-line sales growth. We sold 14 million-15 million pairs of shoes last year. If we can get our customers to buy one more pair per store per day, that is game-changing. There's major upside. We're looking for 1% gross margin growth. Thankfully, Forex is going our way. Finding the efficiency across the business using technology and AI, allowing us to find cost savings.
A lot of that is happening as we speak. The closing of non-performing stores and transitioning to new performing banners. We've done this with four or five stores with great results. Looking for new brands that can be sold to our to our wholesale customers, and especially across most of our banners in different segmentations, will help that drive and desire to grow the margin. Executing on the Sports Direct rollout. We have a great partner who's done this before in many markets. They are supportive, especially with product and know-how about how to expand the business. So far, as Matt mentioned, we've opened some Sports Direct stores. Last week being our best week ever, the average customer doesn't even know who we are yet.
That will grow as we start to scale and start to increase marketing spends and so on. We still must be innovative and ensure that how we show up in markets is on point re our fit-outs, our websites, our product, our new banners, i.e. Ode, that you'll see across the road. The one percenters, as I call them, of how we show up in the field, merchandising, ambience, and we've got a great team that drives that day in, day out. Very, very important point, which sometimes gets lost in all of these prezos and where we're going, but customer satisfaction across all banners. That is just key. It's been key for us for many, many years, and we will continue to ensure that our customers are satisfied. Product. We must remain on trend.
That's what our business does. We're discretionary. We're a discretionary buy. Trend matters so strongly. We have to continue to strengthen our culture of can-do with our team and ensure that we've got tangible evidence that the culture lives. By that, I mean little things. If someone's having a party and they need that shoe today, and for whatever reason, we can't get it there on time, then get in the car and drive it there. Put in an Uber. Do whatever it takes. Customer satisfaction comes first. I believe that what you've seen so far in our strategy is disciplined and designed for earnings growth, and hopefully leads to a stronger shareholder value. We have a foundation. Our plan is already in motion, and we now must execute.
We simply hope you join us on our journey, and I thank you all again for attending today.
Guys, we're gonna open up to questions now. We've got, in addition to the 50 people in the room, about 100 people actually on the line, this is broadcasting live. We're not gonna take questions from the line, however, we are gonna take questions from the room. We have about 20 minutes of questions. If you'd like to ask a question, there's some mics so the people on the line can hear them. We'll, yeah, hopefully we'll have time for everyone to ask their question.
Thanks.
Hi, Matt and Daniel. Shaun Cousins from UBS.
Hey, Shaun.
Maybe just, sort of two questions. Maybe just the broader margin expansion ambitions that you have. Does that require an improvement in the lifestyle footwear category where you have high market share and that's been quite a challenge? Can you achieve that margin expansion if the lifestyle market remains subdued as it currently is?
Great question. It's one we grapple with every day. This is the shoe I was talking about before. We are 147,000 pairs less than the corresponding 12 months. That's how quick trends change. So we're looking for innovation. This is the innovation we're getting from Nike. Most of your kids bought these eight years ago. There hasn't been any change. Here's what's going on. Hopefully, some of you guys have got this shoe. We're a product business here. This sole is what it's about. This is the On shoe. We don't distribute this brand, but we are the, if not the biggest, one of the biggest sellers of this brand as third party, and it's growing big time. Again, innovation. And that's happening in the lifestyle space, Shaun , as well.
Some of you guys might recognize this. We've distributed this for 15 years. It's back on trend. I can't believe it, but it is. Women are wanting this in small sizes. That's how quick trends move. My favorites, this is HOKA, this brand we do distribute. We're having a jolly old time here across the business. It's now either number one or number two in The Athlete's Foot business. They week on week, depending on where it goes, and really super strong in Sports Direct so far. As I called out earlier, it's all about the plate in here, and we'll take you through some product later. This is all innovation, and it's starting to cross into the lifestyle space. Yes, Shaun , you know, is lifestyle gonna completely fall over?
I don't think so. Worldwide, there has been a lack of innovation. Lots of customers have moved to this cross-section of sport and lifestyle, and it's now showing back up in the lifestyle space for us. There's some great product coming our way.
Great. My second question is just around performance footwear. I think Rebel called out in their update last week or the week before around some sluggishness in performance footwear, that that's become a little softer. Just curious if you're seeing that, any sort of indications of the consumer not participating as much in that AUD 250-AUD 400 price point, or if they're trading down from maybe premium malls to sort of discount locations. Just curious if you're seeing any sort of sluggishness in performance footwear in recent months.
No. Not from our point of view. It's still strong. As I mentioned, Athlete's Foot is strong. That's a pretty good sample with 150 odd doors out there, including the franchisees. What is happening is that the good product is becoming more expensive, and the customer is accepting that price when technology is in the actual shoe. If you have a look at what occurred in Sydney the other day, just a little fun run of 30,000 people turned up. I mean, it's incredible. You can go to any one of your, wherever you may live, there'll be people running, catching up as run clubs. It's just getting stronger and stronger. I think sport is in for a good time.
Thank you. Hi, everyone. Sam Teeger from Citi. Just keen to understand the assumptions around marketing to sales ratios on the journey to the 9% EBIT margins. We understand you need to spend more marketing on Sports Direct, but is that incremental, or are you gonna be pulling marketing from other banners to fund Sports Direct?
Sam, that's a good question. The answer is the marketing will be incremental for Sports Direct, and I don't expect that overall our marketing percentage of sales will drop. In fact, in the early part of the plan, as we're growing the Sports Direct business, we've got, you know, some hefty marketing commitments built into that plan, which we think will be required to drive that as a new business. Where we are gonna save money in marketing is continuing to drive efficiency in the digital marketing spend. We still spend many millions of AUD in that performance marketing area. We will continue to drive efficiencies there.
As we invest in Sports Direct, particularly in the early part of the plan where we're investing ahead of the curve, you may even see marketing percentage to sales go up a little bit. The dollars we'll try and maintain, the percentages will go up a bit. And, you know, it's a, I'm gonna say a small part of what we need to do to achieve the 9%. You don't win by cutting marketing.
Morning, Matt. Morning, Dan. Sean from CLSA. First of all, post the presentation, I would love to come up and have a touch about that pair of Vans shoes, understanding why it's worth AUD 1,600. Matt, the question for me, AUD 40 million gross saving converting to only AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million net saving. My understanding is the bit of inflation, the leverage absorbed more than half of this into the program. Can you help us understanding what's the wage inflation and lease, rent inflation you've been putting into the net bill, especially given the Fair Work Commission recent announcement? Thank you.
Yeah. Great, great question. We put some sort of indicators on the slide of where we're thinking for those areas. This gets a little bit the question that Sean was asking as well about margin expansion. If you think about gross margin, and then I'll come back to cost, we do expect to have strong currency tailwinds in the next 12 months. You know, everyone can see that the dollar's currently sitting AUD 0.72, AUD 0.725. We've been buying into that and hedging more strongly through that period. We now have a fair bit of our position locked in for the FY 2027 year. We talked about 60% when we updated the market in February as being where we were heading.
Now that it's over 70, it's a bit higher than that. Coming onto cost of doing business, you saw on the slide that in respect of the FY 2027, we've put out an assumption of 0% - 2% LFL sales growth. It's part of the key assumption in how much of that AUD 30 million we get to keep. The answer there in terms of do we need to see a strong recovery in lifestyle in respect of FY 2027 to improve the margin, the answer is probably not. The first step there is that we've planned for, I'm gonna say low comp growth in that period, and that could be as little as 0% comp growth in that period to retain the AUD 10 million-AUD 15 million net off that AUD 30 million gross saving.
That's why that AUD 30 million has to be so big. In terms of the wage assumptions, we have had wage increases over the last three to four years of between 3% and up to 5%, including the shifts in the super guarantee over that period, which is now done. Everyone's aware that the junior pay rates have changed, so we've factored in a component for that. I don't know what the wage increase is going to be, but you would have to expect with inflation where it is, it's likely to be, you know, on the higher side, call that 4%+, then on the lower side being 2%-3%. You can imagine that, you know, we've sort of earned on the higher side as well in that equation.
In terms of occupancy, we've been transparent that about 21% of our business is exposed to CPI + rates in terms of the rent escalations. The higher the inflation, the more that impacts. Again, we've factored in a higher inflation into those numbers. We think that's fairly robust, and it's why there's, I'm gonna say, such a big tear between AUD 30 million and the bottom end of that range of AUD 10 million. That's how hard we have to work in a low comp environment. In the outer years of the plan, you can see we put 2 or 3%+ comp growth.
Again, going back to Sean's question, yes, from 12 months' time, the end of 2027 into 2028 and beyond, we will need to see some recovery in the lifestyle footwear sector, along with the growth that we're driving in sport. You know, I hope we've given you confidence that we're starting to see some of that coming through.
Thanks, Matt. That's very helpful. If I may just do a very quick question on Sports Direct. The language you used in February back then was 50 shops over the next six years.
Yep.
Using 30 shops over the next three years.
Yep.
50 to 100 in the long run.
Yep.
The language seems to be more positive than February. What has changed? I know you talked a little bit of the trading data from Fountain Gate.
Yep.
Chatswood Chase. What sort of really give you the confidence that seem to be the store ceiling can be double now from the language you used in February, please?
I might throw that one to Daniel.
Look, I mean, what's occurring is we simply opened the store. We didn't do that much marketing, a little bit of marketing, and let's see what happens, and launched the website on the same day. I've been quite surprised on the strength of that website because people are finding it. And it's fast. We've figured out how to deliver products next day or thereabouts. We're getting all the back-end systems right. As an example, we've owned the Hype store in Pitt Street Mall even before we owned it, the store's been there for 25, 30 years. That store is a very strong store. When I match it up with Fountain Gate Sports Direct, which is a bigger store, but it's still comparable in terms of what customers are doing.
The Fountain Gate store now beats Pitt Street Mall Hype, which is quite an extraordinary change, right? For something that is so new. While that's been going on, landlords have started to get a hold of, Jeez, this thing's starting to make some noise and some good numbers are coming out. From their point of view, they're very attracted to that. That's what gets customers into the centers. Sport, in particular, the big brands of the world, you know, they're marketing a lot of this sports stuff. What's happening is that centers that I never imagined we'd be talking to in the early part to open stores are suddenly talking to us about how do we, you know, how do we unlock some space.
One of those centers, is in Western Sydney, which I wasn't sure we'd ever get enough space of that size. Suddenly, they found the space. That's why there's some confidence there.
Good morning, Daniel and Matt. Garth Francis from MST Marquee. Thanks for taking the questions and for this today. Just in terms of the store rollout, that's adding around 1% of that sort of 5% per annum growth to get to the AUD 1.9 billion growth. You've called out like-for-like sales improving 2%-3%. Is the rest to come from mix, and is that attributed to Sports Direct growth?
There's a big chunk of that in Sports Direct, Garth. If you sort of look at where we are today, you know, let's call it the AUD 1.5 billion-AUD 1.6 billion mark. You know, you think about a rollout over that period to 2030 of 30 stores at those store metrics, plus a big online business. You can bridge a fair bit of that. There's heaps of growth still to come in HOKA. We talked about 38% awareness today, and that's already a big business. You know, do we believe we might be able to double that business in the next three to four years? Absolutely, we do. We've got, you know, more stores to roll out in that banner.
We've got growth to come from Lacoste over that period of time. You know, we're excited about that brand as well. You don't have to believe a lot in terms of comps and the new stores, you know, to bridge that AUD 1.9 billion.
Great. You called out 13 million pairs of shoes having been sold. On a per store volume basis, is that close to or well in advance of FY 2019? I'm just thinking that there was definitely, you know, a boost in COVID when people were purchasing and you're sort of sized, so you know, it would've been difficult to cycle. Has that then deteriorated to the point that you're sort of rebased?
No, I think it's been flat in, particularly in the lifestyle space. You know, every week we're selling 250,000 pairs-260,000 pairs, so it hasn't moved enough for what we need it to do. A lot of it's been, I think, because of innovation. As you know, I mean, you give us another one of these and we've got a different ballgame. The whole market is looking for it as we speak. No, I can't say that we're selling any less.
Okay. Just the gross margin assumption further out. You've got that gross margin holding flat. You have indicated that Sports Direct would have a, would pull gross margins down somewhat. You've got the currency benefits. What is helping you or what gives you the confidence that you can keep gross margins flat, especially in a scenario where input costs are rising and are you able to pass those on?
Yeah.
If you don't know, you answer.
Look, it is fair to say that in this environment, we're starting to see the ranges that are now gonna drop into our business in January, February, March next year. There are price increases coming through from suppliers on that. We're seeing those from our distributed brands. We can't back away from that. Absolutely it will be our intent to pass that through in price. You know, the proof point about why that might be possible is that every sneaker brand in the world is gonna experience the same sort of price increases. We're gonna see price increases across the board in our, in our segment.
You know, if you think about some of the brands we deal with, Skechers, who just are a powerhouse of volume and styles, they will be able to negotiate the best cost prices with factories because of their scale, and we'll have the benefit of that. You know, even Skechers will need to put their prices up most likely, and we will pass that on to our customers. Whether or not we're able to do that, well, that's all in the realms of speculation. Yep.
Garth, also can I add to that. I mean, the very reason of why Accent's very model has allowed us to grow from, you know, the humble one store, if you like, to where we are today, is because of its distributed brands. You know, we enjoy not just the margin benefit, but what we do enjoy is that we've got availability to product that, you know, is segmented. Of course, you know, we'll do our very best to make sure the whole market gets everything, but it makes us as a stronger business. If the Vans brand does what I think it can do moving forward, HOKA, Lacoste, these are all new sales and stronger sales than we had before, which means we should get the flow on effect.
Well, that's what history has shown or experience.
It's James Leigh from Goldman Sachs. Thanks, Matt and Daniel for taking the question. My question's around the health of the store network. I think we've called out 102 stores that we'll look at and the AUD 7 million EBIT uplift by FY 2030. Can you maybe talk to the concentration within banners within that? The follow-up to that is, as we see brands like shift a bit more into sports and lifestyle and the overlap there, how we think about brand banner differentiation between your different banners?
I might have a first go.
Yep. Okay.
at the spread of those stores. I would say there's a relatively even spread across banners. I'm gonna say less in the sports area, HOKA and TAF and more in the lifestyle, given where the comp growths have been over the last few years. There isn't a particular concentration. We've called out, you know, I'm gonna say the lack of growth in Vans and certainly there's a few Vans stores that are in that boat. Some that are closing and some more that will have to close over the coming period of time. You know, there's some in Platypus, you know, a very small handful in Skechers. Look, as I've said, a very small handful in Dr. Martens.
We feel confident we can, you know, we've got a strategy to grapple those sales into our existing banners, if those stores indeed have to close. Many of them won't. You know, we've been very successful with lease negotiations thanks to David and his persistence with the landlords. In terms of differentiation in Sports Direct, Daniel, perhaps you're best placed to answer that.
You know, we're not so interested in having the most stores. It's having the most profitable stores. Seems to be a big trend going on with, and Skechers are, in my view, one of the best in the game of how they do this. There are less stores being opened, indeed closing some smaller stores and opening bigger stores in the general areas, and that's been paying dividends. We're learning very quickly, we've probably done at least 10 of those that have been very successful. In terms of Platypus, some of the examples are, if we can't get the metrics to work, we're not afraid to close the store. We'll just close it. Online takes over, we start marketing that way.
Where we have come very close to closing some stores, even as late as yesterday, a store in northern Australia, we were ready to close it. We're not closing now. The rent's come down to what we need it to. It now hits our metrics. This was a profitable store, mind you. We were prepared to close it because we think we can get it online.
Maybe one follow-up to that in terms of if you do have some success with kind of shifting customers from closing stores to existing stores and online, will that change your thinking in terms of how potentially you could close more stores? How should we think about that in the next three years?
Certainly not my view. I think in order for the business to be healthy and also to be the distributor of brands, you need online to be growing as, or to hold, the current sales and grow. We've gotta keep the stores up there as our banners.
we'll ever be an online business, just an online business. No. We're retailers.
Thank you.
We've got time for two more questions.
Thank you.
One from Chami and one from Ray. Thank you.
Hi. Thanks for the presentation, Dan and Matt. Chami Ratnapala from Bells here. You provided some revenue, store numbers and EBIT margins for 2030. Maybe could you summarize how different the business would look in your eyes in that 2030 sort of setup, just to, for the market to understand. How different would it look versus today? Thank you.
I'll have a first go at that. Look, I think, you know, we've made it very clear that our objective is to grow our presence in sport, in particular. You know, we talked about, you know, that's sort of 40% of what we do today, and we wanna grow there. We think we've got the, you know, the initiatives already well-articulated of how we can do that. Similarly, we wanna grow our business in vertical apparel. You know, I think the biggest change will be we'll actually be more diverse, and we'll balance out where we're getting our revenue streams from over that period of time, and to have a little bit more and talk about the vertical that's in our control than we do today.
Is there any, I'm gonna say, what's the word, evolutionary or cataclysmic change? I wouldn't think so. You know, we've gotta remain disciplined and grow into those categories and keep being the powerhouse and maintain our position in lifestyle footwear.
Yeah, Chami, I mean, you know, eight or nine years ago in this very room, we had a meeting, I put up my very audacious goal. That was AUD 2 billion. That was the number I wanted. How are we gonna get there by 2030? We may miss my desire. We certainly can get to the AUD 1.9 billion based on the work we've done. I'm pushing to get it to AUD 2 billion. I think we'll be stronger in sport. I think our position in lifestyle will get stronger as we get newer brands. I have a desire that we will be very strong in vertical, which is based on the learnings I explained earlier.
Hopefully what you'll see across the road today will give you some color in where it could go and what we may look like.
Thank you. Question from Ray. Thanks, Dan.
Thanks. Ray Tollison, a long-term shareholder and also a member of Teaminvest . Daniel talked earlier about presently speaking to a number of brands to bring into Australia. Presumably, they are not, you know, taking them from another distributor.
Yes. No, we would be.
Is that likely to cannibalize some of the other brands? In other words, people move, "Oh, here's the latest and greatest," and you lose sales in another area.
I don't think so, Ray.
In other words, are you likely to increase the whole market or just shift what you're selling?
I don't think so, Ray, because, as an example, myself about 15 years ago, My Fault and our founder, Michael Hapgood, we looked at taking on the brand called Crocs. We didn't. Look what happened the in the last two years. It's been huge. That would not have cannibalized any of our brands. It's a total different customer. They wear it to the beach. They wear it to wash their car or whatever they do. It's not my kind of cup of tea of a shoe, but the market wanted it, and we were the beneficiaries of selling it as a third-party business in the last two years. I would love to have distributed it. No. Your question is absolutely right.
Would we go and chase a brand that is in direct competition to what we already distribute? No. Absolutely, we would not do that.
All right. Unfortunately, we're out of time for questions. Thank you everyone for those questions. We're gonna close off the line now. If we can close that off and confirm that's closed, and then we'll talk about next steps for the people in the room