Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the conference call for Pandora's full year 2022 results. I'm Bilal Aziz from the investor relations team, and I'm here joined with our CEO, Alexander Lacik, and CFO, Anders Boyer, and the rest of the IR team. As usual, there will be a Q&A session at the end of the call. If you could kindly limit yourself to two questions at a time, that would be great. Please pay notice to the disclaimer on slide two and turn to slide three. I will now turn over to Alexander.
Thanks, Bilal. Welcome everyone. Let me start by taking a step back and look at 2022 as a whole. As you all know, the year was marked by heightened macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, of course, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 situation in China. Delivered at the high end of our expectations. The organic growth ended at +7%, with our sell out growth at +4%. I believe the year very much demonstrates how we are able to navigate uncertain times, thanks to the combination of our strong brand and our diverse geographical footprint. As ever, our growth continues to be highly profitable. The gross and EBIT margins expanded. We saw some promising results from the price increase. I also want to highlight that we retained good discipline in our promotional activities.
Due to the weaker macroeconomy, we faced a more competitive environment in general and a sharper promotional pressure during Q4 in particular. Underpinning the resilience is our relentless execution of the Phoenix growth strategy. A couple of key points. Our core remains in incredibly good shape. We delivered solid sell out growth for Moments. During 2022, we expanded our store network. We opened a net 88 new stores. Network expansion is a very productive growth driver which has short payback and is a low risk opportunity in our toolbox. Of course, embedded within our strategy are our ambitious sustainability objectives. We made good strides on this front as well. We also received some important recognitions that I will come back to in a minute. Now let's move to slide four, please. Looking into 2023, we are confident. We remain vigilant due to the macroeconomic uncertainty.
Although we have so far only seen limited shifts in consumer behavior and have been quite encouraged by early trading this year. Our job is to prepare for all scenarios, and we have today issued our preliminary guidance for 2023 of organic growth of -7% and EBIT margins around 25%. The revenue range accounts in the lower end of economic backdrop than what we see today. As usual, we'll look to narrow the range and provide updates as we move through the year. Despite this, we have a strong brand with a diverse geographical footprint, as I mentioned, a favorable margin structure and a strong cash generation. We have already taken ability, and we are able to invest and accelerate. In addition to continued strong marketing and innovation efforts. A few words on current trading. It is small month for us.
Nonetheless, we've been encouraged by what we've seen so far with a good broad-based pickup in sell out growth in the first five weeks of the year. This will clearly moderate from now as it's held in 2022 due to Omicron and a slightly earlier timing of some product launches this year. Even accounting for that, we're pleased with the underlying health of the business. We believe trends are stable versus what we witnessed on an underlying base in Q4. To the quarter four results in detail, I want all the four pillars of our growth strategy, Phoenix, and some key takeaways from last year. First, our brand momentum remains strong. We're the most recognizable jewelry brand in the world and will continue to invest in marketing to retain this position. We continue to test new heights for the price increase, a good example of that.
Secondly, we continue to elevate our core business. Moments stand strong as the engine that drives... Was well received, and we have plenty more... iconic studded bracelet. We also remain focused on driving new platforms, Pandora to the world's largest diamond market. We are making better use of data analytics to get wiser on how to engage with consumers. One example of this is the launch of targeted marketing in the UK with SMS messages over the Christmas period. We have seen encouraging results from this. Finally, our fourth pillar is about growing our core markets and optimizing our store network. As mentioned already, we added 88 concept stores in 2022, and these are already contributing positively to our performance for 2023. Please go to... Additional elements in our strategy. We see that it supports our growth ambitions and aligns our actions with our values.
Low carbon business, successive, diverse, and fair workplace. The launch of Diamonds by Pandora in North America last year was a very visible mark of our ambition. Our lab-created diamonds have a diamond. On top of this, some recycled silver and gold. We have recently re-received the efforts, an A score from CDP. I'm happy that this will lead our industry on this agenda. Please. In great Moments to ensure we stay top of mind for our consumers, not least our collaborations, where we continue to see great traction, and we remain excited for 2023 with Disney's 100-year anniversary. You can also see how I'd already started to stretch our brand, and I'll talk more about this in a second. In short, our brand momentum remains strong, and we are focused on taking this even higher.
Next slide, please. As you may remember, we implemented a 4% global price increase across the portfolio in early October. It was the first time we did something like this in a systematic way. We based it on successful testing. I'd like to remind you that we did not change our opening price points on items of strategic importance. We believe the DNA of the brand and that will not change. This which indicate that this has Given the heightened such as ours, we interpret these results as very promising for the brand strength and future potential. We will now be moving ahead with an annual structured review of prices to identify further opportunities. It's too early to say how much or when. We will continue to be guided, stretch our pricing architecture further. Slide 10, please.
As mentioned, we are pleased with the resilience we have demonstrated. Although we saw pockets of macro-driven weakness in some markets, the core of the group remained stable. To remind you of the numbers through 2022. First quarter was obviously inflated by the pandemic in the comp base. The sellout growth was +2% in the second quarter, +1% in the third quarter, basically flat in the fourth quarter if you adjust for the fire at a distribution center in Hamburg. As you can see in the lower graph, the same is the case for sellout versus 2019. In fact, sellout versus 2019 increased through those three quarters. This stability speaks to the diversified footprint we have and the fact that consumers have a special connection to, in particular, the core of our business Moments.
This is why Moments was and is the number one priority in the Phoenix strategy. The captive business model is unique. The many million enables a strong and highly profitable recurring business stream from our charms portfolio. We are demonstrating day in and day out that we are the masters of this platform. Let's move on to the next slide to take a detailed look into the growth for the fourth quarter. Trading through the quarter was roughly flat with November in particular being impacted by the fire. We did see consumer behavior and trading being more in line with pre-pandemic trends, where Christmas shopping happened closer to the day. In that respect, we ended at -1% sellout growth, which is basically flat if you adjust for the fire, as I mentioned. As I said before, in Q4, we did see notably higher external promotional environment.
We partly expected this given the macro. We remained disciplined and were tactical in our approach. We ran our promotions, kept the absolute promotion level consistent. We play in the mass market, we will sometimes have to react, but it is controlled and it's surgical. In that respect, our promotions so far this year. We see that some of our key markets declined in Q4. There are reasons for this, let me talk you. As I'm sure you remember, we flagged at the start of the year that the U.S. business would decline in 22 due to the comping effects of the stimulus checks back in 21. This did indeed take place, was better than our initial expectation. Our U.S. growth in Q4 remains solid. Our total European growth was encouraging. We did see some macro impacts already, it was a continuation of...
Elsewhere, Spain was very strong and U.K. remained resilient despite the quite weak macro backdrop in there, in fact. We're generally encouraged by the performance in Europe and in the few markets where there is broader market data, we believe we are gaining market share. We will continue to invest in marketing to consolidate our position further. As expected, traffic 19 situation. It's still very early days with a lot of uncertainty, but we've seen some clear pickup in the brick-and-mortar traffic across our stores in January. We will be in the second half of the year, but right now it's too early to call how China ends up finally through the year.
Finally, in rest of Pandora, we saw good strong growth driven by many markets, particularly Mexico stood out with +34%, which also put them at the, no, not dollar, DKK revenue mark. Next slide, please. We launched Diamonds by Pandora in North America end of August. We did this with a selected distribution across 269 stores as well as online. Best performing stores adding 10% of incremental sales. There is the opportunity is vast. We believe the brand is ready to be stretched with the category selling at 15 times the average selling price from Pandora's traditional U.S. products. Looking ahead, we will now be scaling up our efforts and see three main opportunities. First, optimizing and adding more to our assortment. We believe a greater product range will appeal to a wider market.
Secondly, improving the salesmanship from learnings in the... Continue to sequentially expand into new markets. Our move into this category aligns well with our sustainability strategy. In particular, the relatively low carbon emission profile compared to mined diamonds. We grow the diamonds with 100% renewable energy, and they are set in recycled silver and gold. To carbon footprint similar to a pair of jeans, and arguably it lasts a bit longer than that. In conclusion, it's a promising start for us. Growth here will not be linear, but we remain convinced of the transformative nature of this move for the brand. Next slide, please. This is a slide that I'm sure some of you are getting familiar with, but the network opportunity is very important for us, so let's have a look at it again.
Our baseline for growth is strong with a very profitable and cash generative store network. In addition to this, we see an opportunity to expand the store network in areas where we don't have a Pandora store today. We see great untapped opportunities in making our brand more accessible in many of our core markets. As a starting point, we have mapped 13,000 location, and we plan to open new stores in the best 600 of those in the next few years. Next slide, please. As I mentioned already, our network expansion has become more visible in the numbers through 2022. We ended up opening 88 net new concept stores and 130 owned and operated shopping shops. Combined, this contributed to 3% of our organic growth.
We're now targeting an additional in 2023, which would add an additional two to three points of organic growth. Given the macroeconomic situation, we have the option to keep momentum here as access to good locations could open up. This means we'll be at least towards the high end of the initial guidance we gave in 2021 of 100 to 150 new stores over the period of 2022 and 2023. As always, the deals must be very attractive before we engage. We are focused on expanding our network with quality. There is a short payback of roughly one year on the CapEx investment, and new lease contracts are, in most cases, quite flexible and include regular break clauses, which significantly reduces our risks. Finally, we've been hard at work to develop a new store concept starting this year.
On that note, I'll hand it over to Anders for a little bit closer look at our numbers.
Thank you, Alexander, good morning and go to slide 16. The key takeaway for the quarter was that the performance was in the high end of our expectations, and not just on the top line and under the bottom line, but also on some of the other KPIs, such as cash conversions and earnings per share. EBIT on the following slide. On this slide, I'll just pick out some of the other KPIs. On gross margin, it remained strong, and it expanded a figure, and that's despite 90 basis points of headwind from foreign exchange in the quarter. That's an underlying gross margin expansion of more than 100 basis points, and that reflects a combination of, for example, our price increases and channel mix, and it's also a testimony to our good promotional discipline in the quarter.
On cash conversion, we saw, as expected, a big improvement sequentially, and landed at 110% in Q4. That number includes a decrease in the inventory level to just above, just around DKK 4 billion, as we also flagged back in the third quarter announcement. Most of you know that we decided to increase inventories during the initial part of 2022, and this obviously impacts the cash conversion for the full year. With this behind us now, that also means that in 2023, this year, we expect cash conversion to be back to the long-term sustainable level of around 70% for the full year. Go to slide 17, please. This is the revenue bridge for the quarter.
Organic growth came in at +4% for the quarter. On a three-year stack versus 2019, that's an acceleration to 17% growth, up from 13 that we delivered back in the third quarter. The first building block in the revenue bridge on the slide is sell out. The sell out growth was negatively impacted by the fire in the European distribution center by around one point. There's no insurance compensation for the revenue loss included in the Q4 numbers, and that will be a potential income in the financial statements for 2023. On top of sell out, we saw as already mentioned, a solid contribution of three points from network e-expansion. The network, by the way, doesn't just drive top line but also bottom line. Go to slide 18, please.
On the EBIT margin bridge, I'll just like to draw your attention to the dotted box in this bridge. That shows that our underlying EBIT margin was up 110 basis points versus Q4 of 2021. The reported EBIT margin was up even more, 280 basis points, and that was partly helped by some one-off costs that we had in Q4 back in 2021, and we've illustrated that in the left part of the bridge here. Let's move on to slide 20 and the guidance for 2023. We have obviously spent more time than normal re-reflecting on the financial plan for 2023 and our financial guidance.
Let me just start by giving you a few corner posts for our thinking behind the guidance. The first corner post is that, as Alexander showed, that revenue growth has been resilient during the last three quarters, despite the growing macro headwinds. Quarterly sell out growth has also been broadly flat, 19. The second corner post is that the external data show a challenging backdrop for consumers that macro is going to be weak in 2023 and with some markets being in a recession. The third corner post we would like to mention is that we con strategy in 2023, and does not change that. We're just making a few twists in terms of priorities. Of course, we also have a harder push on cost.
All of that has led us to give a relatively wide guidance on organic growth from -3% to +3%. As you can see in the bridge, the guidance includes a flattish to mid-single digit decline in sell out. The midpoint of that range is obviously a slowdown compared to the last couple of quarters, and it's a slowdown compared to the underlying current trading because the underlying current trading, as Alexander already mentioned, is in the high end of this guidance range. It's still early on in the year, and we prefer to be cautious, and let's see where we land the year.
To put it in another way, our key message with this guidance is that, first of all, that we are preparing for a difficult trading environment entirely driven by macro. We don't really see this in the numbers yet, not in Q4 and neither in the current trading. But now we've set the cost base to prepare for a difficult macro environment and thereby protecting margin in 2023. Then go to the next slide, please, the EBIT margin. We're guiding at around 25% EBIT margin for this year. This may probably look a bit narrow given the range on the top line guidance.
The way we think about it is that the current macro environment requires an extra element of flex, flexibility, and quick reaction on the cost side in Pandora. In short, if macro hits harder and growth lands towards the lower end of the guidance, we will take cost actions that we believe can keep the margin around 25% despite lower top line. If growth lands towards the upper end of the guidance, we would like to have and retain the flexibility to invest more in future growth if we decide to do so. We have laid out the building blocks for the margin guidance on the slide here, and we are happy to dive more into that if you have questions either here or in the, in a follow-up afterwards.
There's just two things I would like to note. The first is that the recent combined adverse movement of foreign exchange and commodities gives us a net 40 basis points headwind on the margin versus last year, versus 2022. The second thing is that within the guidance, we have absorbed the margin impact coming from higher than normal salary increases that we expect here in 2023. Some of you may also ask of what the current guidance means in relation to the Capital Markets Day targets that we issued back in September 2021. Clearly, the world has changed significantly since we issued those targets with the weaker macroeconomic backdrop and the ongoing COVID-19 situation that we are still facing in China.
Despite that, our new EBIT margin range is actually currently just within the targeted range that we set out back in at the CMD in 2021. For the growth guidance, I want to stress that there's a greater element of uncertainty. The upper end of the new guidance would place Pandora within the CMD range despite the macro situation. Let's see where we end up when the year has gone. Let's go to slide 22, please. On this slide, we have the other guidance parameters for the year. As Alexander has already covered this, the store network ambition. The other one to mention is the pick-up in CapEx to 6% of revenue this year.
This pick-up mainly reflects our investments in the store network, both new stores as well as refurbishments. It also reflects our new ERP platform and a number of other digital investments. The six points of revenue is in line with the target from the CMD back in 2021. Finally, we expect the effective tax rate to be in the same range as we guided for last year being 23%-24%. Go to the next slide, please. I'll finish off with an update on our cash distribution for the year. Our cash distribution for 2023 is a signal of confidence and a signal of strength. We have ample liquidity, we have a fairly low leverage, and we will continue to generate good cash in 2023.
We are therefore announcing this morning a total cash distribution to shareholders of up to DKK 6.4 billion. At the full amount, DKK 6.4 billion, that would be around 11% of the current market cap. This includes a proposed dividend of DKK 16 per share, and that's in line with last year, and it reflects actually a shift in our dividend policy from previously targeting a 2% dividend yield to now a progressive dividend per share. On top of this, we also this morning announced a new share buyback program of DKK 2.4 billion running until the end of June. With a clear ambition to get to DKK 5 billion as we move through the year.
With that, I'll hand it back to Alexander, and please go to slide 25.
Thank you, Anders. To conclude, we are very pleased with what we achieved in 2022, especially given the numerous challenges which emerged during the year. As I said, I believe the year reflects that Pandora can navigate uncertain times, thanks to the combination of a strong brand, unique captive business model, and a diverse geographical footprint. The brand has shown good resilience in a very turbulent environment. We are confident that our brand position in affordable luxury will continue to support financial performance during a potential recession. We've already taken a number of precautionary steps to protect profitability. We enter 2023 with confidence while well prepared for a range of scenarios. Our ambition is to yet again deliver a strong performance. Slide 26, please.
Before we open up for Q&A, I would like to invite all of you for our Capital Markets Day in London on October 5 this year. I hope to see you there for an exciting program and a great dialogue. With that, we'll open up the lines for Q&A.
Thank you. If you have a question for the speakers, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press five star again. We will have a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question is from the line of Martin Brenoe. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted. Martin Brenoe? We will take another one. The next question is from the line of Lars Topholm from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes, a couple of questions from me. First of all, congrats with another excellent quarter. Well done. I have some questions to cue from also to the trends you have been seeing in January. You of course comment on current trading, but I wonder if you can put some words on the ASP if you're seeing the consumer trading down in your product range for example, maybe also some colors on individual markets. You know, I'm very fond of you guys, but for example, why isn't it a red flag that U.S. is only 38% up versus 2019 in Q4, but 56% up in Q3? That would imply some kind of slowdown. A second question, if I may.
On your store expansion plans of 600 new locations, I assume that is concept stores, but maybe you can elaborate a bit on what kind of expansion you see within other points of sales. Then, Anders, I'm sure you have done the math, theoretically 600 new concept stores and some other point of sale, what would that add to revenue, everything else equal, and how much of that has already been captured with the store expansion you've already made? Thank you.
Okay. Where do we start? When I say current trading, I mean, we could include, let's say, Q4 into January, so we have a slightly longer time horizon. You know, at the end of the day, it's a rather low-frequency type of category. We are not really seeing anything on the basket nor on the ASP. If I take, let's say, the global average, there might be some ups and downs between the countries, but generally speaking, there is not a major difference. The difference in terms of outcomes is, and in fact, I should also add that traffic actually continues to be, was good in Q4 and continues into this year.
The delta is purely in some markets where we know that people are a little bit more cash-strapped, like Italy and France, as an example. We can see that that impacts a little bit the conversion rates. But that's pretty much it. This kind of down trading at the full level is not something that we are registering, to be honest with you. Oh, this one, I mean, this one is quite difficult. I haven't thought about it like this. The way I suppose we view the U.S. is we saw a sequential improvement from Q3 to Q4. It went from sellout growth from -9 to -7. That would have led, you know, a bit more.
That was on a much easier comp, wasn't it?
This is now versus 2019. Now I'm just trying to remember back in 2019 whether that was such an easy comp for the US. I don't think so really, because the, kind of the big push in the US came the following year in August, if you remember, Lars, when we actually changed a bit the marketing approach in the US. That's not really what I would see.
Yeah, that's a fair point, actually. You were down 18% in Q3 2019, and only 4% down in Q4.
Yeah.
Point taken. That actually answers my question.
Yeah. I know you guys always divide the world up in quarters, that's fair enough. The underlying business in the US, I think is, given kind of the stimulus backdrop, actually, the way I'm thinking about it is, you know, held up surprisingly well. Based on some market data we have, it seems like December was more of a normalized month, whatever that's supposed to mean. I find that the business in US in general is in a pretty damn good shape, given everything that's going on. That's probably how I would think about it. What else? There may be stores, Anders. Maybe you can help a little bit there.
Yeah. Let me do that. Thanks for the question, sir. I will just go back to the U.S. The organic growth, the drop that we see on the three-year stack in 2022 is actually coincidentally exactly the same as we saw in from Q3 to Q4 of 2021, where it went from 60 to 42. This year around of in 2022 from 56 to 38, so 80 points drop. It sits all the way back in the base in 2019 after the brand relaunch in, what was that? In August 2019.
Yeah.
Late August 2019. On the network, the 600 new locations, it's maybe at the Capital Markets Day, we said it would be roughly 80% concept stores, 20% shop-in-shops. That was a split. I think last year it was more evenly, actually with more shop-in-shops being opened. It might skew a bit more towards shop-in-shop than what we thought back in the back at the Capital Markets Day. Still, once executed everything, you can think about this as an additional incremental revenue of around DKK 4 billion, and give and take DKK 1.5 billion in EBIT.
So far we've only done a third, a third of that in round numbers. A little bit less, so still quite some way to go. A lot of upsides both for 23 and for the years to come. Obviously this is the first 600 location, the best of those. That doesn't mean that it's only the 600, but there's a limit to how much we can execute on at a time. Even if you start digging below from the store number 601 and below, so to speak, it's still a lot of opportunities, but we'll have to take it in steps.
Yeah.
Thank you very much, guys.
The next question is from the line of Martin Brenøe from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Hi. Thank you so much. Do you hear me now?
Yeah. Thanks, Martin.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah, first of all, congratulations. What a strong ending to a difficult year. I just have a couple of questions, and then I'll get back in the queue. First of all, I think that, you know, you were alluding to it. As the EBIT margin guidance is a bit narrow, while you have quite a wide top-line guidance. Can you maybe help me understand a little bit the dynamics? Just elaborate a little bit more for me, because it's difficult sort of, there are a lot of moving parts, and I think that the EBIT bridge is getting longer and longer for each year.
It sounded to me like you're already taking sort of the precautionary measures to sort of a recession scenario, so you're ready for that. In case the, the organic growth is higher than sort of or ending in the high end, then you will invest more money. Is that sort of the correct way to understand it? Maybe also just understanding what is the Phoenix investment, is that sort of relating to the China reopening, or how should we think about that? Thank you.
All right. Thanks, Martin, for the questions. Fair questions. I think the way to think about it is that if we ended up in the lower end of the range, let's say the -3% top line, then that would be, I think that would trigger cost actions that might not otherwise normally be triggered within a guidance range. Let's say in a normal year, we have been guiding 5%-7% growth. Let's just use the Capital Markets Day range, then it's a bit different cost dynamics. If we get into that negative territory on the top level, then things like, of course we would have to take another look at staff levels.
We would have to take another look at things like travel restrictions, and things that would not be in play in a normal year. That's why we are saying that there might, the framing the EBIT margin guidance in a different way than we would normally do. On the upside, then if we ended at the +3% organic growth, at least we would like to have the flexibility to invest even more if need be. It's not a given that we will do it, but we would like to have the flexibility to do it.
We saw back in the, during the pandemic that Opportunities arose to came up when times are difficult to invest, and we might, that might be the case here as well. That could be in the brand, in media, but it could also be in some other parts of the business. I hope that explains a bit on our thinking. On the Phoenix investments that we have included here, just to mention a few, we have the, yeah, ERP sits in here at the ERP investments that we started back last summer.
There's a range of other digital investments, personalization among others, that we keep putting incremental money behind. We actually keep investing incremental money also on the people side, on the talent development that ends up being a bit of money as well. Then another sort of fairly large bucket in there is incremental depreciations coming from Evoke 2.0, the new store format, that we have been investing actually very little in store refurbishment since 2018. As you know, we have been working on the new store concept for quite a while.
In the meantime, we have been holding back, and we do have a catch-up need on store refurbishment, and that will, that CapEx will feed into incremental depreciations in 2023. I hope that helps. China?
It helps a lot. Thank you.
Yeah. On your China question, in the current guidance, we have not included, you know, out-of-plan investment behind China. Reason being, obviously, that we're still kind of waiting for the China, you know, let's say, the fog to clear in a way. There are two aspects there which we are looking at. One is that we see that consumers actually come back into the stores, even though we, as I mentioned, in my opening words, that we've seen sequential growth in brick-and-mortar throughout January. It's still coming from rather low levels, we need to see that that actually continues to grow and comes back a bit more to what we were used to in 2019. That's point one.
The second one is also that we have a proper line of sight of what the government is thinking about when it comes to the pandemic. At least so we know that they're not gonna, you know, turn on a dime and close down because then a lot of this investment would be wasted. That's kind of things which we watch. The approach on investment, we're probably not, or not probably, we're not gonna go national in the first pass. We're gonna pick a couple of major cities and double down and make sure that the model which we've been working on actually is working. Then once we're comfortable with that, then we'll probably put even more firepower behind it.
We're into 2024 as far as I'm concerned. Maybe, you know, Q3 would be a timing that we currently have in our mind on when a kind of a brand relaunch as such would happen. Again, as I said, it would be in, you know, top five, six cities. Just to put some color to that, each city there is like 20-25 million people. When you put five of them together, you're talking about half of Europe or half of Western Europe. It's not nothing. The current investment level that sits in the base plan for China is similar to a going level in any other market. Of course, that's not gonna be sufficient to give it an extra punch.
So that's an out-of-plan item, which is also why we are thinking about this kind of doing a couple of cities to begin with.
The last thing I forgot to mention, Martin, on the investments in Phoenix, is sustainability agenda. It's not massive money, but it's actually still meaningful money in that bucket of 100 basis points of Phoenix investments, not least the premium that we are paying on recycled silver.
The next question is from the line of Autun Birch from BNP. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes. Hi, good morning. It's Autun Birch at BNP Paribas Exane. I have two questions. First of all, coming back on the store rollout plan, is it safe to say that there is an acceleration, maybe initially that puts a bit of pressure on the margins this year, with maybe, you know, some stores that are, you know, yet to achieve maximum profitability? Also could that mean maybe a bit of a seasonality in terms of quarters with, you know, whatever improvement in the margins maybe more happening in Q4? My second question is more broadly on the different moving parts, of course, margin in 2023, if you maybe would add a bit of granularity. Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Antoine. Thanks for the questions here. The line is a little bit shaky, so but I think we got the questions. On the store openings, I was almost tempted to see, I would expect none of the 100-150 stores in total to be margin dilutive. That's not the plan. Almost disregarding when they're being opened, even though they might only be opened by the back half of the year, which we by the way do expect that most of the stores will be in the back half of 2023.
They should still be as a minimum EBIT margin neutral for the company and on average there's definitely still margin accretive. It's sometimes when we speak internally in Pandora about it, I call it a CFO's dream to have this margin driver because it is quite mechanical, low risk, a lot of hard work, but with a almost instantly being EBIT margin accretive after a very, very short period after opening up the stores. The main. Then you the maybe elaborating a bit of that, then you may ask why not then go even faster? Again, that is two main bottom lakes. One being that we don't wanna jeopardize quality.
We would rather wait another year or two to get the right location in that city, on that street, rather than getting second level quality. It is, it's taking quite some time and efforts across many parts of the Pandora value chain to open up a new, open up a new store. I hope that that's it on the on that piece. On the gross margin bridge, it's true that the... I think you should think about the gross margin as being up next year, this year in 2023, and that's also what we talked about back at the Q Q3 announcement.
Since we spoke back at the third quarter announcement, we have had quite some headwind from foreign exchange, a bit from silver as well, but that's mostly head spot, but from foreign exchange. Now on the gross margin, the net impact of those more external factors, commodities and FX, it's a net headwind this year. 60 basis points of help from silver, give and take, 80 basis points of headwind from foreign exchange as it looks at the current foreign exchange rates. On the other hand, the gross margin will be driven up by the network expansion. It will also be helped by a bit lower forward integration than last year.
The, you probably remember there's a temporary hit on the gross margin when we do a forward integration. That's probably gonna be, I think we've said 50 basis points help on the gross margin this year. Then there will be a bit lower non-recurring cost from hopefully we don't have any extraordinary costs related to the pandemic in Thailand. Net-net, the gross margin will be up a bit here in this year. Then of course, you can also by that conclude that the OpEx ratio will be up as well. Otherwise, the bottom line EBIT margin guidance doesn't quite make that doesn't quite make sense.
It is true that we expect the OpEx ratio to be up a bit, especially in the first half of the year. Our base case is that a recession is gonna be a bit harder impact in the first part of the year than the second half of the year. I'm almost say, who knows? Let's see how it plays out. That's our base assumption. That also means that the OpEx ratio will be a bit harder hit in the beginning of the year than in the later part of the year.
Thank you. That's very clear.
Thank you too, Mr. BirchBrenøe. While they turn a few dials in Copenhagen, we will just give you a reminder that if you have a question for the speakers, you should press five star on your telephone keypad. Should you find that the question you are having is already answered, please go ahead and press five star again. We'll just have a brief pause while they switch to another line in Copenhagen. The next question is from the line of Kwame Sowade from Citi. Please go ahead, line will now be put on mute.
Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Benal. Okay, I'll go ahead. My first question on your revenue guidance. Last year for the 2022 revenue guidance, you provided some details on the moving parts by region. Remember there was quite a big divergence between the US, which you guided broadly down, and the rest of the world, which was up low teens. How would your 2023 guidance look like if you have to split, let's say US, Europe and the rest of Pandora? Would US, Europe be close to each other and rest of Pandora up strongly? On that rest of Pandora, which is about 30% of your business and outperforming so much last year.
I guess these are smaller markets where you may be interpenetrated. Do you feel you still have plenty of room to grow, you know, close to double-digit in terms of those markets, whether that's Spain, Mexico, you mentioned, other countries like Portugal, Holland or Scandinavia. My second question on the salary increase. You mentioned in your EBIT bridge and 100 base dilution, due to higher than normal wage inflation. Would that imply around 4% or 5% wage inflation globally? Is that a fair assumption this year? Would it be split differently between Thailand and the sales associated in your core markets between your manufacturing workforce and the sales associated in your core market? How does that compare to 2022?
Do you think that level of wage inflation is here to stay for two years, which would obviously put a bit of a cap on profitability? And to clarify one last thing, Alexander, you mentioned, or Anders you mentioned the change in dividend policy from 2% yield to flat to growing dividend. What is the rationale for that? Is it to allow potentially for more flexibility towards more buybacks and a lower payout ratio? Thank you.
Let me start with the revenue guidance. I mean, last year it was an anomaly given the stimulus checks in the U.S., and that was the sole reason for us to pull that out, given the sheer weight the North American business has in the group. But it's certainly not something we will continue with. We're not guiding by even by region. That's just not how we're structured. But then your question, which, you know, I think is interesting, is on the rest of Pandora, you know, the Spains and the Mexicos and all of those guys.
Of course, we had a really good run in Mexico, not just last year, but in fact over the last five years we've had a super run in Mexico and you know, it looks like there's plenty of steam to go. We do expect a good outcome in Mexico. There might be some other countries in the LatAm that maybe we could kind of, you know, look for a similar type of trajectory. Of course not of the same weight and size yet, but that's of interest to us.
Portugal, we just took over, I think midways through last year, and then, you know, posted quite some good numbers post the takeover, but it wasn't without pain, let's say in the beginning, which is not unusual when you take over, you know, a whole country, to be honest. There should be some interesting, you know, underlying performance that we could eke out of Portugal, and that's probably true in a couple of other places as well. That's probably as specific as I would get now. As the year goes by, we're happy to kind of share a bit more detail on those geographies. On the ASR piece, I mean, it is in the range that you suggest. It's different by market essentially.
You know, it's probably fair to say, that you know, that 4%-5% is probably the top end or is the higher ASR, as we call it, that we've seen over the last few years. It's also a reflection of what's going on around us, and we wanna try to support our employees as much as we can. Then I'll leave the dividend question for the two gentlemen next to me here.
Thanks for that, Alexander. On the dividend policy, we, the 2% dividend yield policy that we've had since the Capital Markets Day, it makes very good sense in a stable environment. Since September 21, I think the interest rate have gone up quite significantly. That was one of the reasons to set a 2% dividend yield. That was a reflection of what was the sort of the general interest level on the market. Obviously there's been some share price volatility.
If we had been six months ago and sitting, announcing our full year results back in the autumn last year, then a 2% dividend year would have resulted in 8 DKK of dividend, 50% down from 2021, which just doesn't make sense. While we would like sort of external circumstances to be more stable, they are not. We think it's a better reflection of how we think about the business, saying we pay out a dividend that's gonna be flat to up every year. It was 16 DKK in 2021. We are proposing the same this time around, meaning that we are skewing this year the cash distribution towards share buybacks.
We think that the concept of Progressive dividend, as we've called it, or flat to increasing in absolute terms makes more sense in this environment.
Thank you, Anders.
The next question is from the line of Maria Laura from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Thank you very much for taking my question this morning. Just one question on my side. With respect to the EBIT margin guidance that you have for 2023, what are the underlying assumptions that you have, both in terms of price, because during the call you mentioned that you could have incremental full prices potentially coming through this year. Perhaps on an underlying basis, can you discuss the type of promotional environment that you are seeing, and what is the promotional environment assumption that you have in your EBIT margin assumption? Thank you very much.
Thanks, Anna Laura for those or for that question. The EBIT margin guidance in the breaks that we have put into our the announcement, there's a bucket called cost reductions and price increases, 110 basis points. Give and take, half of that is assumed to be pricing increases. And you can probably do a little bit of math and in that assumes a very round numbers, a one-to-one elasticity on the price increases. That's our base assumption. So 50 basis points.
Sorry, just to be clear, it's not new price increases.
No.
This is the rollover effect of the price increase we did in October, just to be very clear on that.
Exactly. It's, yeah. It's just, yeah. In other words, we have not factored in additional price increases into the EBIT margin guidance. Then on the promo level, we are assuming that it's probably still gonna be a quite a promotional environment, but that we will remain disciplined and in, on a relative basis, if you can call it that, detoxing compared to the outside world. We'll obviously look at how the other brands are, what they are doing, but we will not go crazy. We will remain disciplined like we did in Q4 and like we've been doing in general.
In round numbers, I think the base assumption is that it will be unchanged, the promo level.
Thank you.
The next question is from Aniv Smith from SBSB. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Aniv Smith, your line is open. We will take the next one in line. That is Karina Nail from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Brilliant. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Just two quick ones from me. So firstly, you've seen an increase in your inventory levels, as a strategic measure to increase availability. Could you help us think about what the right level of inventory is for the business, and also how you're approaching your inventory strategy this year? Secondly, you've accelerated your store network expansion plans. Can you just give us some color on what criteria you look at in terms of location or economics when you're opening new stores? Thank you.
Sure. Start with the in-inventory. Thanks for the questions. If you take the midpoint of our revenue guidance for 2023, call that 0% organic growth, you should think about that we will end the year with inventories that are flat and maybe a touch down, depending a bit on how we think about the pandemic insurance premium that we have had in the inventories for a while. The inventories are very healthy as we stand and we're quite happy with the level. We see that the availability that we have across the products is generally quite good.
Even though inventories at this point in time is higher than where we were one or two years back, it net-net, it helps drive availability, and good availability on our individual products drives conversion and thereby revenue. The cash conversion drag from higher inventories is behind us.
In terms of the location, I think if you go back to page 13, partly answers your question. As I mentioned there, we've looked at our top 40 markets, analyzed, you know, 13,000 locations, and then you kind of boil this down. Of course, what we're looking for is where we get, you know, the highest incrementality of putting up a store. If I'm in a place where I have no Pandora presence, and there are plenty of those still, in particular in parts of the U.S., as we've been discussing in the past, then that is the key driver. Other than that, I think we use normal econometric metrics when we look at where to place a store, you know?
We make an assessment on the cost of establishing the store, running the store, and what type of revenue we can generate so that there's nothing peculiar about it. I think the point here was more that in the U.S., we found ourselves quite under-penetrated in rather large geographies. In the past, we've spoken to the West of the U.S., the South of the U.S. If you look at the East Coast, there we have a higher store density. Even there, you could argue if you compare to a, you know, U.K. or an average European country, then we're still, you know, the density is on the low side. We're focused on where we get a bigger bang for the buck, which is... Now we're focused on the West and the South primarily.
Of course, the same goes for Latin America, which was the second focus area where, you know, it was a matter of there's no Pandora at all. Where's the best location in the given kind of retail environment? China, similar story, and as you know, we've been a little bit more conservative of adding new stores to the China portfolio. It went a little bit low. It's. You know, you have In China, you have to swim to stand still in a way, and if you miss a beat, then actually your network can go backwards. We're essentially just right-sizing it back to where we think is the right level at the current business size.
Of course, once we can kind of unlock the China opportunity in a like-for-like performance, then we believe that there's still plenty of opportunity to drive the network in China, which is part of the 600 that we identified. There's, you know, there's no particular magic to it, but we have lots of white space where we still think the brand has a role to play.
Brilliant. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Klaus Kehl from Nykredit. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yeah. Hello, and a question related to a current trading and just to make sure that I understand what you are trying to say. Basically, you are saying that here in the beginning of January, you are seeing a flat like-for-like, and a positive effect from network expansion, meaning that your organic growth must be in the range of 3%-4% here in January. Is that correctly understood? Just a follow-up question to that, because I would actually have expected that you would be somewhat, you would have a more negative development here in January due to the tough comps. If I look at your organic growth in Q1 last year, then you actually had very high organic growth.
Is there anything in the comp base for January that is making this way to look at it, yeah, wrong? That would be my question.
Should I start out? Thanks for the question, Klaus. The way to think about it is that the pickup, we actually seen a pickup in the sort of the reported, if you like, sellout growth, in the first five weeks of 2023. It's broad-based, so it's not sort of one country, but across the globe. It's a fairly short period to look at five weeks, obviously, and January is not a big month. It's a little, an average, a little bit below average size month. As usual, we have to be careful when we look at the numbers.
There's a broad-based pickup in sellout growth for the first five weeks of the year. Two things to note there, and that is, one is that there is some Omicron in the base in Jan or the first five weeks of 2022. Omicron was an issue in Europe and the US as well, not hard lockdowns most in most countries, but still a lot of people being infected, so there's some of that in the base, especially in the first few weeks of the year. Then this year, we have launched a couple of products earlier than the new products that came into the market last year.
Last year in Q1 of 2022, one of the main new products in Q1 was the Marvel collaboration that came in mid-February something. Now we've launched a new iconic studded bracelet chain in early January of this year. All of that obviously gives impacts the numbers. What we're trying to do to hopefully help you is saying, well, underlying, when you filter out.
Pandemic filled out the timing of product launches. The underlying sell-out growth is in line with Q4. Let's call that flat. What we're trying to convey is that, yeah, the... Everybody talks about macro headwind. We didn't see that within the numbers in a big, in a big way in Q4. We don't see that yet either for the first 5 weeks of this year. When you go back then and look at Q1 of last year with the significant growth numbers that you're referring to, Carlson, then that was clearly held by the pandemic impact in Q1 of 2021, where there were a lot of markets were in hard lockdown. It's...
In that way, it looks like a hard comp base, but it's not really a hard comp base from that perspective. Hopefully we have all that pandemic noise behind us soon, at least when we get into the second quarter of this year, then we only are actually really Q1. We only have China. That is a bit of noise in the base from a pandemic perspective.
Okay. Just to be clear, that also means that your organic growth, if we look at the organic growth, so including your network expansion, then you are tracking at, I don't know, 3%, 4% for the first five weeks. Correct?
If you look at the full year, then, yeah, we've said two to three points of growth from network. That keeps rolling. There will be swings within the month, but for the full year, yeah, then the organic growth will be above the sell-out. I think that the line of thinking is right.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
The next question is from the line of Frederick Wild from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.
Good morning, Alexander and team. Just a couple of ones from me. First of all, on the lower end of the guidance range, can I just sort of probe a bit how apocalyptic you expect that macro environment to be? You know, given the ASP, same price increases, that implies volume down more than 5%. Is this a sort of consumer pressure in mind that the magnitude you've seen during the financial crisis, is it more or less, how bad do things have to get to get to -3%? Second is on the CapEx of 6%.
Assuming the step-up is largely that ongoing store expansion program, given this is expected to continue and, you know, you've got the Evoke 2.0 model coming up, do you still expect CapEx as a % of sales to drop from 2024 or potentially beyond? Thank you.
I think the first one. I don't know whether you can hear us clearly, but the line is super bad. You hardly hear it.
I think the first one is on how bad the macro. The guidance, in the way we've been thinking about, just to repeat what Anders said earlier on the call is, you know, the midpoint of the guidance is kind of what we see and experience as we sit here today. The low end of the guidance suggests that it's gonna deteriorate somewhat, okay? The higher end of the guidance suggests that maybe the macro is a bit better or some of our programs actually yield more than what we necessarily had initially expected or a combination thereof. This is not, it's not science. We don't have the crystal ball in the macro, wish we did, but that's kind of how we've been thinking about it.
You know, don't try to read more into it because we haven't. Okay, you can make your own theories if you want. Actually on the CapEx question, It was so bad a line, we didn't catch your question, so could you maybe repeat that just so we make sure we answer the right question here?
Sure. Can you hear me a little better now?
Yeah.
The core of the question is, do you still expect CapEx as a percentage of sales to drop in 2024 and beyond, given that the store expansion program is continuing apace?
I still don't get it. I think we've, that was one of the younger guys here who have better hearing than I have here. It seems like that you're asking whether the CapEx to drop in 2024 and beyond. It's, it's a bit too early to say. When we go back to the Capital Markets Day in 2021, we said that CapEx would be elevated in 2022 and 2023. The long-term level probably being, let's call that 5% of revenue. Then we said for a couple of years we will be at the 6%-7% level, at least in 2022 and 2023. That might stretch a bit, further into 2024 because we do have some backlog of store refurbishment ahead of us. We still...
We also might have a bit of elevated CapEx while we build the new manufacturing site in Vietnam. We'll talk more about that at the Capital Markets Day, that's nothing that has changed in the business. That doesn't mean that as an average or a longer cycle than we are at this 5% of revenue as the CapEx. Sometimes it's a bit above, sometimes it's a bit below. It's been below in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and now we'll have a couple of years where it's above.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Benal from Societe Generale. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just one quick one on the like-for-like. You said that for your 2023, it assumes a zero to mid-single-digit like-for-like decline. You said that the prices of the products has been increased by 4%. Just to be clear, are we expecting a volume decline for 2023, looking at just that?
When we did the price increase, the assumption going in that the elasticity would be such that there was no revenue pickup based on the volume, sorry, on the price, priced items. Meaning that you structurally improve the unit PNL but not necessarily get the volume gain coming out of it. Sitting here today, it's a little bit too early to say exactly what the revenue impact is. It's not worse than our ingoing assumptions, but I think we need to sit through another couple of months because we did it in early October, then we went straight into, you know, a fair amount of, you know, noisy months with Black Friday and Christmas shopping, et cetera.
We need to see this kind of more in a, let's say, non-promo environment to see exactly what the effect is. Probably in the next quarterly announcement, we can come back and report on what the revenue impact is on that pricing. As we built the budget, we kept the assumption that the elasticity is gonna remain 1, i.e., no revenue benefit necessarily. We put the EBIT in the bridge as you've seen, as Anders spoke to before.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
We have a final follow-up question from Lars Topholm from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.
Yes. Just one question on the refurbished stores and if you can comment on how they are performing compared to the normal stores. Thanks.
I mean, essentially you have three types, I would say. One is the stuff that we forward integrate, then you have newly established stores, and then you have the stores where we put in the new Evoke concept. You know, I don't know exactly what you have in mind, but let me comment on the overall on the whole network expansion, if I kind of put that under the umbrella. They perform at least in line with the average of our own and operated. I think that's point one. When you then look at the Evoke stores that we have done, and they are Evoke 1.0, it's not the 2.0 that we're actually gonna roll.
The difference is more look and feel rather than the actual store operation as such. In general, of the stores that we have up and running for a while, they perform better than the comparative stores. We can always debate what's a comparative store. Is that a neighborhood store or is that kind of the in a region of the country or the country? Literally across all those three metrics, they seem to be more productive than what we have in the current Evolution concept, which is that's kind of the typical Pandora store you would walk into, the white stores with glass and chrome, et cetera. The Evoke 2.0, we hope to do at least as good as Evoke 1.0.
Very clear. Thanks. Thank you very, very much.
Was that-
The final question is from the line of Anne Bismuth from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is on the investment side and the fact that, if assuming that things turn out to be better than expected and you end up at the higher end of the guidance range in terms of organic growth, what is embedded in terms of marketing spending, given the fact that you flagged that you could invest even more, you would get the flexibility to invest even more? Where the marketing-to-sales ratio could land in that case. The second question is about can you remind me what do you mean in terms of organic growth? What is the minimum threshold you need in order to get operating leverage? Maybe a final one on the rollout of Evoke.
You mentioned that you are planning to scale that up, this year, so we know many stores that you plan to roll out to this new concept. Thank you very much.
Okay. I'll do a sandwich. I'll take the top and the bottom and leave the middle to Anders. When it comes to marketing, as I've said all along, we have a range of 13%-15% of revenue. As I said, it depends on the year, it depends on the initiative, et cetera, but that's kind of the level at which we cruise. Then of course, last year we did a global pitch on the media, which also rendered lower, you know, GRP costs. Of course with this, with the lower spend, essentially I get the same bang for the buck. Sometimes we reinvest that, sometimes we put that in our pocket.
But from a, you know, from a modeling standpoint, if that's what you're actually asking, then the 13-15 is the range. The only kind of let's say outlier to this conversation would be an additional investment in China that would sit on top of that 13-15 range if and when we decide to go in a bigger way. We really haven't built that into the base plan as I mentioned. On the Evoke 2.0, what we have to do is we're gonna do this in batches, because what we need to do is we rolled out Evoke 1.0 in a number of places last year.
Of course, we've changed some of this furniture, we changed some of the material, and before we then push the button and say, you know, we're gonna change, you know, 2,500-3,000 stores all around the world, we need to ensure that actually the material works properly. We're gonna roll out a few now here in the first half, and on the basis of that learning, you know, that everything from a quality standpoint holds up to what we expected, then the kind of acceleration point happens in the back half of this year. Right now, I think we're probably planning something like 50-odd, and should everything go well, then that number will increase as we go through the year.
Remember, when we talk about the store expansion, we talk about net stores. It means that there in some instances we shut down an Evolution store and then when we then put the equivalent up, that's gonna be an Evoke store. The actual gross number of stores is higher than the net that we keep quoting here. We talk about the net because if you do your modeling, you know, you put a revenue number against a net opening, not the gross number, just to not to confuse things. Yeah.
Then on the question about operating leverage, if I heard the question right, otherwise correct me at the end here. A couple of thoughts. One, if you look at operating leverage in a bigger scheme and rolling forward a model for some years, then obviously there will be salary increases every year at a certain level, and typically also some inflation across the OpEx base.
If you think about if a normal year, if that exists of a, let's call that three points of salary increases across the globe as an average and then maybe one point of OpEx inflation on other types of OpEx, then the three, the first three points of growth every year, two- three points of growth every year would offset that in inflation. Unless you of course can find cost efficiencies, cost reductions that can offset the salary increases that's the bigger part of that annual sort of in automatic headwind, if I can call it that.
That's one way to think about as if as if we couldn't find additional cost efficiencies yet, then the first three points of growth or so that would be funding the salary increases and other types of OpEx inflation there might be in the numbers. There will be constant cost efficiencies. Obviously, we've done a lot, as you know, since 2018. We still have a couple of ideas. We have actually a dedicated team that of a few people that just sits hunting and looking for ways that we can run the company more efficiently and find cost reductions.
Then we move above and having funded that automatic headwind every year, then the, then there will be, let's call it 25 basis points of operating leverage on each point of organic growth, just around that level. I think that that's the number that we have talked about for a while. I hope that helps. Otherwise, we're happy to follow up in some more modeling questions if needed.
As there are no further questions, I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Okay.
Thank you very much. We certainly appreciate your interest in Pandora. We are passionate about it as I hope you can note. Before I do my closing remarks, I know that you guys represent a lot of companies, and I hope you do like we did to put a donation into the suffering children in Turkey and Syria. I think it's close to our heart. We have a big cooperation with UNICEF, so that's a good destination for any funds that you may wanna put to help people in need. On the closing remarks for the company, you know, I think we proved last year that Pandora is very good at navigating all these uncertainties and curveballs thrown at us. We put a record year out there.
Underlying the brand is very good. As I spoke to, we have a captive, rather unique business model. We have a diverse geographical footprint which reduces risks. You know, we took a number of precautionary measures last year to shore up our cost base. We stand ready to, you know, first of all, deliver our promises to our shareholders, but secondly, also having the agility to jump on any opportunities that we see in front of us. You know, there are always opportunities when things are rough around the edges. Our ambition is, as it's been all along, to continue delivering a very strong performance. On that, I once again thank you for the attention, I'll probably see you around on roadshows, et cetera, out there. Have a nice day.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.