Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Samsonite International 2021 interim results conference call. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. William Yue, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, operator, good evening, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Samsonite's first half 2021 results earnings call. Today we have our CEO, Mr. Kyle Gendreau, as well as our CFO, Mr. Reza Taleghani, with us. Without further ado, we'll have Mr. Gendreau begin the presentation with a few opening remarks. Thank you very much.
Thanks, William. Starting on page four, I'll lead in with we're quite encouraged with what we're seeing in the recovery in the business in the first half, and particularly as we move into Q2 and the start of Q3. Sales recovery in the second quarter improved to down 52% versus Q2 of 2019, and that's compared to 57% in Q1. In June, we reached down 48%, and that trend has continued very strongly into July, just better than 41% down. The other really positive story for us is we've pivoted to profit starting in May with $3.5 million and then a very strong June EBITDA of $11 million for a quarter that delivered a positive $11.5 million of EBITDA. That trend really continued very strongly in July with our sales down, again, 40.9%, but in EBITDA, that's north of $20 million for the month of July.
This really is a testament to all of the work we've been doing to get this business positioned for a very strong recovery. Fueling the profit growth is a dramatic improvement in gross margin that we've been focused on, as you know. In Q1, our gross margin was 48.7%, and in Q2, our margin moved up to 52.4%. We're really heading towards normalized gross margin. For the month of June, our gross margin had reached 55%, which gets back into the territory of normal run rates for our gross margin that we messaged the last quarter. That's notwithstanding pressures we're seeing on raw material costs and shipping costs that we're seeing with general inflation across the globe.
Achieved positive EBITDA, as I said, for the quarter, $11.5 million, and that's on sales that are still down for the quarter, 52.2%, really a testament to how far we've moved the break-even profile of this business with the initiatives that we've had. As we messaged, and we had a press release on, we paid down $325 million in debt, refinanced our Term Loan B during the second quarter, and those two items produced $20 million in annualized interest savings on a go-forward basis. We dramatically decreased the cash burn in the business from $65 million in Q1 to $27 million in Q2, and a meaningful change in cash flow that I'll cover in just a bit versus last year.
It's really reflective of the tight expense management that we have and really strong cash controls that we've left in place across the business along with positive EBITDA for the quarter. I will tell you in the month of July, we're seeing positive cash flow for the business all in, which is really a wonderful moment for us. We've worked with our lenders, very supportive lender group, to get further covenant relief as the recovery is taking a bit longer than what we were anticipating. We now have covenant relief that will help us right through Q1 and Q2 of next year as the business continues its recovery. We continue to have significant liquidity. Even after repayment of debt, our overall liquidity is $1.2 billion, which is plenty for us to navigate the rest of the challenges as the pandemic continues. Sales recovery.
I'm on page five. The sales recovery, you've seen this chart before, our low of 80% down back in April of last year. Here you can see what we're seeing for Q2, particularly in June, down 48%, in July, down 40.9%. I would tell you, our look for August feels to be in the same ZIP code as July. This recovery trend continues. That's really, at this moment, being fueled by what we're seeing in North America and Europe, where in the month of June, North America was down 41%, and Europe started to really catch up here, down 47.8%. In July, the North American business was down 31.5%, so really starting to move strongly into recovery. Europe's trend continued very strong. In the month of July, Europe was down 43.6%.
Really, these two regions are driving much of the recovery that we're seeing right now. If we go to page six, this just gives a good snapshot of the trend here on sales, but importantly, the trend on EBITDA improvement. Again, as we stepped in the pandemic over a year ago in Q2, we had an EBITDA loss of $127. You can see we've made progress right along the curve, some tied to the sales recovery, but mostly tied to the initiatives. As we get to Q2, positive $11.5, and I've covered the months already, but April was slightly negative, but May positive, June strongly positive. In July, again, over 20% EBITDA or $20 million of EBITDA is what we're seeing for the month of July.
EBITDA margin starting to get just shy of teen EBITDA margin in the month of July, business down 41%. The travel recovery around the world is happening at different rates. I have a few slides on that. I'm on page seven. There's a lot of lines on this page. What we can see here is markets like Russia and China have been performing better. China's had a few dips. I'll cover that in just a bit. The U.S. market has kind of steadily improved. You can see Brazil's improving. Japan and India have had ups and downs, is the way I would describe it. Particularly India, which has had a very strong Q1, had a slip back to down 60%- 70% for Q2.
We're seeing in the month of July, India is back to down 35% and really starting to move in the right direction again. On the next page, just a little deeper dive on the U.S. and China. This is domestic travel, which is still today driving much of the recovery, is domestic travel. The blue line is China, and you can see China has really driven a lot of Asia's improvement over the past year. There was a small dip in Q1. We talked about that last time. This was really around the Chinese government slowing down the amount of travel that happens in the Chinese New Year. It quickly stepped back up into the second quarter. You can see the fairly rapid improvement in the U.S. domestic travel story.
I've been traveling almost every couple of weeks in the U.S., and it is busy, and you can really see it in the numbers as we go from February, March, April, May, June. Really meaningful increases in domestic travel in the U.S. On page nine, this is just another view of that. On page nine, this is number of planes flying. This is daily domestic flights in the U.S. The blue line is 2019, the orange line is 2020, and then the red line is 2021. You can see we start to get close to the same levels and some weeks actually in the same level as 2019 as far as domestic flights go and that trend continues in the U.S. as we speak today. On page 10. We've really achieved a positive EBITDA in Q2.
It's really driven by the actions that we've been taking in this business, coupled with the recovery that we're seeing. Positive EBITDA in Q2. On sales now 52%. Our first half EBITDA was a loss of just $17 million. If I move to July, our year-to-date EBITDA for this business is now positive as we get into the back half of the year. Again, as I said, in the month of July alone, we're approaching kind of low teens EBITDA margins as we move forward. Recovery continued, down 57% to '19. In Q1 down 52%. As I said earlier, June was 48% and July was 41%. As I also said, the margin story has really been an important push of ours. As you know, last year our margin was under some strain as we were clearing inventories and reducing and generating cash.
Here we are this year with Q2 margins approaching 53% versus 48% in Q1, very strong margin in June at 55%. July looks to be about the same. This is despite GSP in the U.S. not being renewed yet and the inflationary pressures we're seeing. We're seeing freight costs meaningfully up and raw material costs rising. As a company, as you know, we manage against those. We're managing both the increases, we're managing the price increasing where we need to, managing with our suppliers to move this business back to its traditional margin levels, which we're having very good success at. We continue to manage the cost structure. As you know, we generated over $200 million in annual run rate cost savings. In the second quarter, I would say we're fully realizing those benefits.
We had some work we were doing in Q1 of this year, still closing some stores. As we get into Q2 and we step into Q3, all of those actions we're taking, we're getting the full benefit of the initiatives on the cost side. We're continuing to manage advertising very closely, and you can see that in our numbers. We are allowing markets that are starting to move to lean into advertising again. You're seeing in our North America business, particularly us moving our advertising spend up for both brand Samsonite, brand Tumi, and all of our brands in the portfolio. We're starting to lean in as Europe gets moving and the recovery really starts to pick up in Europe, starting to spend more advertising dollars there as well. On the margin story, I'm on page 11.
I thought a page on margin's important because there's a lot here. One, as I said, we've really moved the needle on the gross margin. You can see Q1 of last year. Actually, Q2 of last year was 33.4% as we stepped into pandemic. Where we are today, Q2 of this year at 52.5%, again, June at 55%, really speaks to the work that we've done. It really is against some meaningful pressures. We're seeing raw material costs, labor costs, general inflation, working against us here. We're taking the actions that we need to manage that. The freight costs have increased substantially, and container availability is very limited at this moment.
We're actually seeing challenges in getting goods where we need them right now, we're staying ahead of the curve, we're really seeing the impacts of shipping delays, port congestions, and our teams are managing that very closely. We're pushing our sourcing teams to order ahead and really get ahead of this so that we're in a strong place as the business continues to recover. The non-renewal of GSP, which we fully anticipate will be renewed, has been delayed we're managing that. That really had an impact in the first half numbers that you're seeing of around $6 million against the gross margin. As that gets renewed, we'll see the benefits of that moving forward as well. The weakening U.S. dollar.
In many cases, we're buying in U.S. dollars in Asia, and so we're working with our vendors on that to manage the impacts of a weakened U.S. dollar and really leveraging the strong, longstanding relationships with our suppliers to collectively manage the impacts we're seeing on cost increase. This will be an ongoing effort for us when I look into the back half and into next year. Gross margin, it will be a very large focus here for all of our regions. What I would say is we're on top of it. We're looking at every avenue here to make sure that we maintain margins at historical levels. On page 12, it really is decisive actions that are building strong momentum in this business for us. Significantly reduced our fixed cost structure with over $200 million in savings, all being achieved.
This is what really is fueling the adjusted EBITDA positivity in Q2. That continues, we continue to manage the business very closely. We continue to manage temporary savings in advertising and cash flow items like CapEx and working capital to maintain and minimize our cash burn. As I said earlier, it looks like our July cash flow will be positive. Maybe I haven't said that yet, July cash flow, from where we're sitting today, looks to be positive against all of these efforts. We're managing liquidity and capital structure with a very supportive bank group. As I said earlier, we repaid debt. We refinanced our Term Loan B, we reset covenants. We're sitting with $1.2 billion of liquidity, which really gives us ample capacity to manage through the rest of the pandemic.
We've continued to invest in products and product development, I think on the last call, we talked about exciting launches of products with recycled materials or collaborations with other brands to drive the business. On top of investing in product development, we're also simplifying the business with a very robust SKU management initiative to really enhance the performance of our SKUs in our inventory. All of those are playing into our success story on the margin side. We're fully committed to transforming and leading this industry on the sustainability front with our responsible journey. We published our ESG report in May, if you haven't read it, I strongly recommend because it gives a wonderful picture of what we're doing to move the needle from a sustainability perspective and an ESG perspective for this business. All of our teams are well-trenched behind that.
Just lastly, in July, we sold Speck. Speck was a business we acquired a few years ago, and we took a decision to really allow the North America business to focus on its core and sell Speck. On top of that, and I've got a slide on it enhances the profit profile of our overall business and our North America business, as Speck was slightly dilutive on the profit side of the business. We took a decision to sell that business in July. Another big piece, I'll call it, of plumbing in the background is we've established Singapore as a brand development and sourcing hub in our new Asia regional headquarters. Really, this follows and builds on our 25-year history in Singapore.
It followed a global study where we really looked across the globe at our business and our areas of growth and really where we're taking the business on a forward basis. We determined that Singapore was the best location for us. We'll leverage this as a sourcing hub for Asia and the Middle East, and it'll also provide sourcing and administrative benefits for the North American and Latin American business. Our Samsonite Asia leadership team is moved to Singapore, is in the midst of moving to Singapore, and really to help establish and create this hub and drive our Asian business on a go-forward basis.
In the midst of that, we've shifted the economic rights to our IP, which was sitting in Luxembourg and continues to sit in Luxembourg, really to get a really sustainable global tax structure on a go-forward basis that aligns with the evolution of our business and the growth drivers in Asia as well as the rest of the world. As we'll cover a bit later, we've also shifted the economic rights of our European business to Belgium from Luxembourg as well to really reset the structure from an IP perspective in the business. All of that completed at the end of June. As I said already, we divested Speck in July. This was a business that we acquired about four years ago.
We sold it for $36 million, and it really was a non-core brand for us, and it allows our North America team to focus on driving the core business. On page 15, despite the pandemic, we remain committed to reaching our sustainability milestones. As you know, we launched our Responsible Journey as the pandemic was getting started. It's a journey that focuses on four key highlights. Innovative products, I'll talk about that in a second. Carbon actions and reducing our carbon footprint. Our supply chain. We're really about thriving supply chain and our engagement with our suppliers. Really people-focused and how do we better engage our people and teams, which is one of our best assets in the business. We continue to be focused there.
Our ESG report captures a lot of the great work we're here, and we continue to really significantly develop products using sustainable materials. If you go to page 16, this will be a first glimpse, more to come as we continue to build on our story here around how far are we moving the needle here on products that are incorporating sustainable attributes. In the first half of 2021, almost 15% of the products that we sold, or the sales in our business, were from products that had meaningful sustainable attributes. That compares to 7% in the first half of 2019 or the full year of 2019. Really amazing progress, and you will see more of this coming. You can see with core brands, every brand is having an impact. Samsonite, 10%. Tumi 's already approaching a fifth of its sales, 22%.
Gregory at 34%, American Tourister at 5%, and more to come on that front as well. The teams in the business are very focused. I can see the forward pipeline of innovation and products that we'll be launching into the end of this year and next year. For sure, this as a percent of our sales will continue to rise. On page 17, really, where I take heart in the recovery in our position and our ability to continue to drive our leadership position in the industry. We are set and have launched really amazing products over the past six months, particularly Magnum Eco, which hopefully you've seen by now. I think I was talking about this during the last call. This is a product that's made out of 100% recycled material, post-consumer.
The outer shell, the inner lining, all with post-consumer waste, either water bottles or post-consumer waste polypropylene. Then you can see Roxkin, which is a product that we're producing in our Hungary facility, made out of a material that is fully recyclable, the outer shell, and the inner linings are using rPET as well. Really two wonderful stories of product innovation. On page 18, this is IBON. This is really quite an interesting product with a frame case with a single point of opening in the middle. What makes this product quite interesting is it changes the way you think about packing. It opens up the product in a really interesting way where it takes less space when it's open, and you can pack deeper into each side of the case.
It has a rationing system, so you can really secure what's within the product as well. Inner lining is made out of rPET recycled material, really a very fascinating product if you get a chance to see it from a travel case perspective. This has been out there for about a quarter now, but we had a really successful and exciting product launch with a collaboration with McLaren. We have silhouettes here that capture the racing spirit. It incorporates carbon fiber within the products, interesting colors, and it's been better than we anticipated. We have more exciting launches against this collaboration coming in the fourth quarter. It's been well-received across all regions that Tumi has sold. Lastly, we're celebrating our 111th year. Last year, we had our 110th, and we had lots of plans, but COVID clearly took those off course.
This is a business that's been around for a while and knows how to navigate. We're excited for it, as we're excited as we see travel starting to open. We really have a commitment to a sustainable future in this business. With that, I'll turn it over to Reza for some financial highlights, and then I'll come back at the end.
Thanks so much, Kyle. We're on slide 22. Overall, the first half results, obviously sales, interestingly, were basically very similar to our sales in first half of 2020. As you may recall, the pandemic really kicked in full swing in the second quarter of 2020. Now we're pleased to be seeing that actually this quarter we're starting to see the reverse. We seem to be heading out a little bit in some of the regions, as Kyle said. Reporting sales of $800 million in sales for the half. The split of those, Q1, you may recall that we did $355 million and Q2, $445 million. That trajectory is improving. The story is really around the EBITDA, which Q1, we had negative EBITDA of -$28 million. Q2, +$12 million, for a total adjusted EBITDA of -$17 million.
That trend is continuing into July, as Kyle noted. If you go back in time, the quarterly evolution of the EBITDA, if we were looking at Q2 of last year, we were -$127.8 million. When we sit here with positive EBITDA of $12, we feel really, really good about how quickly this business has turned around. Again, it's still in an environment with sales materially down. Net income, it's a loss of $104 million on the half. We do expect that once we get into further territory on adjusted EBITDA, that'll flow through to net income as well. We would expect full profitability shortly. Looking at page 23, it gives you the split in details between the two quarters. I touched on the sales split a little bit as well as the EBITDA.
Really around gross margin, Kyle mentioned a little bit earlier, and I'll have a slide on it as well. This is a point that I do think bears mentioning, which is really the improvement in the gross margin between the quarters. One of the things that we're seeing in the market right now is demand is picking up and inventory levels in the channel are very low. All of the teams have been very good in terms of trying to manage the gross margin profile, so limiting the discounting that's happening, as well as trying to improve and manage the cost pressures that we see in terms of gross margin as well. Gross margin coming in at 52.4%, which is a very nice pickup from the 48.7% that we had in Q1.
Obviously, Kyle mentioned that in June that had improved further, and we're maintaining that in July and hopefully going forward as well. On page 24, just to recap the financial highlights, and then we'll get into it a little bit of greater detail. Obviously, we've covered sales in terms of how the recovery has been going. We'll get into the regional breakdown of that on a subsequent slide. Adjusted EBITDA of -$17 million, favorable to prior year by $106 million, even though sales are flat. That's really the power of the cost cuts that we had taken early and very aggressively. We're pleased that we have positive adjusted EBITDA in Q2 for the first quarter since the pandemic began, even though net sales are down 52.2%.
That operating leverage is something that I think we can all expect to continue going forward as well, in terms of every improvement in sales, really the flow-through of that down to EBITDA is very material. Fixed SG&A expenses, we are actually seeing the total flow-through of all the aggressive actions that we've taken. Obviously, we had talked about $200 million in annualized run rate fixed cost savings. You're seeing a $97 million reduction on a constant currency basis in these results. Again, there are still some temporary savings that are still flowing through. We had expected a lot of those to run out. That permanent base of $200 million in fixed SG&A savings is something that I think we can all count on going forward. Advertising spend for the first half is $16 million lower than the prior year.
We are planning on leaning into advertising as the sales recovery begins. In the quarter, we were a little back to budgeted levels, and we expect that to improve going forward as well, so long as we get an adequate return on the advertising spend. On page 25, our net debt position of a little over $1.8 billion. As Kyle mentioned, we did make $325 million of debt repayments as we feel better about the recovery around us. We are going to continue to evaluate that going into the end of the year and beginning of next year as well. Strong cash position with over $1 billion of cash and cash equivalents, and liquidity of approximately $1.2 billion. Have plenty of cash cushion. Again, we feel pretty good about our cash burn levels.
Really the cash burn, which we'll see on a subsequent slide, is really due to we're getting some inventory in just to make sure that we can adequately cover sales that are coming in in the remainder of the year. We paid down $125 million. That $325 million is broken down as $125 million of the Term Loan A, $100 million of the Term Loan B2, which was our most expensive piece of debt, and we also paid down $100 million of the revolver in Q2. We also refinanced the Term Loan B2 debt. The pricing was brought down from LIBOR plus 4.50% down to LIBOR plus 3.00%, and the floor was reduced by 25 basis points as well. It's about 1.75% of improvement on the margin of that instrument. Again, reflecting the better credit profile of the company as we emerge from the pandemic.
We also secured further relief of our debt covenants which ensures our compliance through next year. Cash burn has improved by approximately $200 million as compared to last year. Again, the cash that we are burning is really around a little bit of CapEx, as you’ll see, and really trying to build some inventory levels as we’ve talked about over the last couple of calls as well. Net working capital in June was $161 million lower than June 30th of last year. With a sales environment that has been under pressure, we have aggressively managed to keep our net working capital numbers in line and improving. Not an easy feat, that’s one of the reasons that you think about cash burn, is the reason that we feel that we need to make sure we have adequate inventory as sales rebound. CapEx still very low levels.
We spent $6 million in the entire half, which, as you can remember from prior years, this is a trickle compared to what a normal run rate. Again, it's one of those things that we have the ability to run an asset-light model when we need to, and that's what we've been doing and been very disciplined around store remodels, et cetera. On page 26, Kyle mentioned that we sold Speck in July. The cash proceeds were approximately $36 million. There is also an earn-out of $4 million if sales for the company end up being north of $107 million by the end of the year. There is a potential for that. Basically, what that allows us to do is to focus the North America business on the higher profitability components of it.
You should be aware that Speck was losing EBITDA, and so this is an accretive transaction to us. We're removing a loss-making business from both North America and the consolidated results as well. It improves the overall profitability of the business, and we managed to secure some additional proceeds, which will be used to further de-lever. You should expect approximately a $40 million pay down in debt that should happen in this quarter as well as a result of that transaction. During the first half of 2021, we had restructuring charges of about $6 million associated with severance. We continued to focus on SG&A. Not huge numbers compared to what we saw last year, but I think the message is that we do continue to look around the edges and manage SG&A, and there was some restructuring related to that.
Also, we had some non-cash impairment charges, largely driven by Speck. In total, impairment charges were about $30 million, of which $25 million was due to the Speck transaction. Even though Speck closed in July, we moved it to an asset held for sale at the end of the half, and that's why you see that impairment there in the North America CGU. On page 27, as we're looking at sales broken out by region, you can see that overall, all of the regions are starting to perform in terms of sales. When you're looking at the quarterly breakdown, I think you start to get a better feel for how Europe is starting to come back again.
If you're thinking about the half, it really started, whereas last year we had Asia. Really Asia was driven largely by China and India, until India had a bit of a hiccup, driving the sales recovery. As we think about what's happening in Q2, you're starting to see North America really firing on all cylinders. Both brands, both in terms of Tumi , American Tourister, Samsonite, everything is starting to recover in the North America business. We have absolutely seen that, although it's behind by about a quarter as compared to North America, Europe is starting to perform very well right now as well. Asia, it's a tale of haves and have-nots. There's certain countries that are still in lockdown. The vaccination rate isn't where it needs to be.
The Asia numbers, and you'll see this a little bit later on, is driven largely around China performance, Tumi performance across the region, as well as India starting to come back again as well. Latin America is starting to perform as well. We were very pleased to see that all of the regions are basically back in positive EBITDA territory as we head into July. That includes Latin America, largely driven by the Chile business recovering. On page 28, a little bit of greater detail, just to show you the quarter-by-quarter progression of the sales. Here you can see basically the North America business, as I just mentioned, going from down in Q1, almost 68% as compared to 2019, down 44%. In July, we're down a little bit north of down 30%.
A meaningful recovery, making the point that really when people start to travel and move, sales come back pretty quick. Asia, it's been a little bit less of a recovery. It's done a bit of a stutter step, if you're looking at it, and we put the ex-India numbers on there as well, because as you'd be aware, the last time we got together, we did have India in the middle of the Delta variant and impacting their sales. The good news is, as we enter July, India is starting to pick up again as well. Europe. We expect a similar recovery that we saw in North America happening in Europe, albeit one quarter behind. You can see that in Q1, we were down almost 71% in Europe. Q2, down 60%, and then July already down 43.6%.
That trend that you're seeing should continue in a similar fashion. Latin America is basically in July, a meaningful recovery just from the end of the quarter. As we get into some of the back-to-school season there, et cetera, we hope that trend will continue as well. On page 29, just to speak around channel and the mix between travel and non-travel. I do think it's helpful to probably give a little bit of flavor by quarter as well. In terms of the half, you're basically seeing similar performance by channel in terms of what we saw last year. Although, basically wholesale has started to come back again, largely driven by the strength of the North America business as well as retail.
If you're thinking about compared to last year when everything was shut in Q2 of this year, the stores are all open. In most of the areas, obviously, there's pockets in Asia where there's still some restrictions, but generally speaking, most of the retail outlets and wholesale doors are open. That's driving a greater push in those channels. In terms of the travel and non-travel mix, non-travel had been performing very well for us during the course of last year, and especially in Asia. As we think about the split right now, Q2 of this year, non-travel is 43.9%, and travel 56.1%. Just to compare it to last year's numbers, that 56.1% travel in Q2 is up from 44.6% last year.
What you're really starting to see is people that have been cooped up really desiring to get out and move, and that's basically driving the luggage side of the business right now. We expect that trend to continue for those geographies that are opening up as well. Yeah, in Europe specifically. On page 30, we've talked about gross margin a little bit. I think it just bears repeating. In Q1, gross margin at 48.7%. Q2, now at 52.4%. You can see the breakdown in June, we're already up to 55%. That sort of number is continuing into July and the beginning part of August as well. We have lower inventory obsolescence this year compared to last year. It is an important point that this about $6 million of GSP pressure is not in these numbers either.
That has a bit of a negative drag for us. We do hope that gets renewed, and we hope that it gets renewed with retroactive benefit as well. That could give us a little bit of upside there. This gross margin improvement is despite the headwinds that we've seen on GSP in North America specifically. On page 31, SG&A. Obviously, we've been very proud of the actions that we've taken, and really the message this quarter is you're seeing it fully in the numbers. In previous presentations, we've always outlined the actions that we've taken and what the run rate benefits are. Here you can actually see that they're showing up in the results. Fixed SG&A expenses, $89 million lower than prior year, not even 2019. As compared to 2019, we're about $200 million better.
We talk about run rate benefits that were north of $200 million. Obviously, this is just a half year. There's still some temporary benefits that are flowing through here as well. I do think the guidance that we've given previously that expect just on a run rate benefit or EBITDA improving by about $200 million is definitely the same ZIP code that we're in right now, and you're starting to see that play out into the numbers that we're reporting. On page 32, fixed SG&A specifically. One point of note here is, you see a red bar. This is basically giving you a bridge in terms of adjusted EBITDA and the benefits that we've gotten out of basically reducing our fixed cost base.
The first thing that I'd say is, keep in mind that constant currency sales for the period, we're $25.8 million lower in terms of sales. If you multiply that by our gross margin percentage of 49.4%, we have $12.7 million of gross profit decrease that comes just from the sales, our constant currency sales from half to half. Then what we've managed to do is that we had higher margin of about $9.4 million to offset that. Even though we have sales pressure, we've managed to improve our gross margin to offset that. That would've been $6 million even higher, so we would've more than recovered all of it if we had had the GSP renewal. Increased variable SG&A spending is not a bad thing. It means that sales are coming back, so that just flexes up a little bit as sales come up.
Then really the rest of the story is $113 million of SG&A savings between advertising and about $97 million of it, of fixed SG&A improvement, which really gets us to this bridge of down $17 million for EBITDA. In terms of cash burn on slide 33, every quarter we expected to have a little bit more cash burn in terms of inventory build between Q1, between Q2. Where we sit right now, actually, we've managed to keep the Q2 cash burn even better than Q1. Again, I think part of it is due to the fact that as inventory comes in, it goes right out.
Yeah
The sales is basically driving a lot of this working capital benefit that we get. -$27.3, we feel very good about these cash burn levels. It's all driven by us in terms of trying to build our net working capital position. As you think about Q3, et cetera, we're still going to try to build inventory, but we don't expect the cash burn levels to be anything material. Page 34, it gives you a sense in terms of the benefits of the cost reductions that we've talked about, both on adjusted EBITDA and then looking at the cash burn. I mentioned some of these numbers a little bit earlier in terms of the adjusted EBITDA that's happened quarter-over-quarter, and really the benefit on cash as well.
I think this is just largely driven, as you get to Q2 of this year, the positive $11.5 million of adjusted EBITDA resulting in cash. That cash, if we weren't building inventory, we would definitely be in positive territory. I think the message overall is we feel very good in terms of where the business stands, both from an adjusted EBITDA perspective because of the cost actions that we've taken, and cash is not something that we're overly concerned about, nor liquidity. On page 35, Kyle alluded to this a little bit earlier. I'll just spend a minute in terms of the tax impact of the change that we've had in terms of selling the economic rights from Luxembourg, first to Belgium. Our European IP, the economic rights of that have been sold to Belgium from Luxembourg.
Obviously, we have significant operations in Belgium, so it makes sense to have that there. The remainder, the Americas and Asia IP, has been moved to Singapore. That's in support of a brand hub that we've created in Singapore. We did a global review of the best place to locate that, given the growth in our Asia business, and the availability of talent in Singapore. We felt that that would be a good place to have that brand and sourcing hub. That's been set up now. As Kyle mentioned, in order to support that, we've relocated some of our employees from Hong Kong to Singapore to support that effort. The net-net benefit of this from a tax perspective is that our effective tax rate should remain within the historical range.
What that means is typically, we've had an ETR of anywhere around between 24%-26%, has been the range over the past few years, excluding one-time large items that we've had. As a result of making these actions, we expect that to be the ETR that we can expect going forward as well. Page 36. In terms of the balance sheet, I think we've been very careful in terms of managing the cash levels and the net debt. Net debt at the period in June, down to $1.8 billion. Obviously, we had the $325 million debt repayment. The other point of note is the covenant relief that we sought. I can touch on that on a subsequent slide, but basically, we've secured additional covenant headroom, which we think will last us through to next year and beyond.
On page 37, as part of the transaction, we paid down $325 million, obtained covenant relief, and got better pricing on our Term Loan B. These were all individual press releases that you saw since the last time we had our earnings release. Just to recap everything. I'm sure we'll get a question on it, so I'll just try to cover it right now. The way that our EBITDA is going to be calculated, we have the deemed EBITDA. Now we're sitting in Q3 of this year. The Q3 number is a deemed number. That will basically be plugged in. The Q3 number will be an actual number, and then the historical numbers will be deemed numbers.
What we're able to do as a result of the covenant relief that we got is to add another $65.7 million add back to each of these quarters. The logic around the $65.7 is we have repeatedly talked about the aggressive SG&A savings that we have achieved. What the banks and lenders were able to get comfortable with is that those run rate savings should effectively be treated as if they're a permanent improvement in our EBITDA structure. If you divide 263 by four, you get $65.7 million per quarter, and we're able to basically cap that as a run rate benefit on those deemed periods. In addition to that, other than that, the existing financial covenants remain unchanged. We're shifting from the liquidity covenant that we had.
As we enter this quarter, we're getting back to our net leverage ratio, which needs to be less than 5x , for the remainder of this year, stepping down to 4.5x next year, and an interest coverage ratio, which needs to be greater than 3x . Again, I think we feel really good about our covenant levels, and if anything, we've just secured additional cushion on top. The $325 million, you have the breakdown of the instruments that have been repaid here. We've obviously reduced the pricing as well on that Term Loan B2.
The net-net of all of this is at least $20 million of interest rate savings on a go-forward basis as a result of these actions. Again, this does not include the fact that we're also going to be paying down another $40 million of debt in this quarter as a result of the Speck transaction. On page 38, very tight working capital management. Really two points of note here is, in an environment where sales are down, we've managed to get our inventory levels down by $185 million. This is the reason where as we look at cash burn, we are aggressively trying to make sure that we source product, make sure that we're in a good inventory position because sales are coming back and there's very little inventory in the channel, we want to make sure that we're able to capture that.
Net working capital improved by $161 million, and our working capital efficiency continues to improve. Actually, we're getting close to our historical level, even though the sale base is significantly lower than it's been. All in all, a very good story around that. Just a couple of more points, just in terms of CapEx. We touched on this a little bit earlier, $6 million of CapEx, $2.1 million of that was in Q1, the remainder in Q2. Very tight management around that. We have a little bit of ERP stuff or EPM stuff that we're doing, as well as a little bit of store remodels, but other than that, we've kept it very tight overall. With that, I'll turn it back to Kyle for the outlook.
Okay. Thanks, Reza. For an outlook, just a couple of pages. One, as I started, we're very encouraged with the recent improvements we're seeing in our sales, particularly in U.S. and Europe. We're extremely happy to see positive EBITDAs as we get to Q2. As we step into Q3, a really strong start for July, and August looks like it's going to do the exact same thing. We're really encouraged by what we're seeing. With that said, COVID-19, as we all know, continues to pose challenges, recent surges in cases and the Delta variant kind of across the globe at this point, some markets with slower vaccination rates. As we look at Asia, which has been a bit behind on vaccinations, really country by country.
Big markets like Japan and Korea, which have more to go, and approaching vaccination levels that match Europe and the U.S. probably into Q1 and Q2 of next year will delay some of the recovery in some of these key markets. Nonetheless, our expectations are we'll continue to see strong recovery in the U.S. Clearly in the second half, we're seeing it come, as I covered earlier. We're very encouraged in Europe where we're seeing, one, the pace of vaccinations really moved. We're seeing stores open now. We're seeing many of our major markets really opening. Markets like Germany that had been locked down more than other countries within Europe are really moving. We're seeing a second half recovery that will really resemble what we've seen in the U.S., maybe in Q2. We're quite encouraged with what we're seeing there.
India, as we said, took a backward step in Q2, really had an amazing Q1. India Q1 was almost level for 2019, then ended up down close to 60% -70% for Q2. We get to July and it's down 35%. A really good story within India, which will really help drive our Asia story. Asia, as Reza said earlier, markets like China and India, I think will fuel a lot of what we'll see for recovery in the back half of this year. Some of these other markets will take a little bit more time as vaccination levels move up, particularly big markets for us like Korea, South Korea and Japan, where the vaccination pace has been a little bit slower. That'll all fuel into a stronger recovery in Q1 and Q2 for Asia, from where I can see.
I think China and India will prop up the rest of Asia as we move into the back half of the year. Latin America has really started to move again as well with a very strong July. Chile, for example, in July was down 11%, and that was down in the kind of 15% range in Q2. As Chile gets moving, which is a really important market for us, that will have big benefits for overall Latin America. I was quite pleased to see our Latin America business have positive EBITDA as we stepped into July, along with all of our regions in positive EBITDA territory. Despite the challenges that continue, we're quite optimistic with what we're seeing across all of our regions. As I said earlier, our gross margin remains under pressure, particularly with things like GSP not renewed.
Global freight costs really significantly up year-over-year. Raw material costs rising. Our teams are doing an amazing job, and this is one of the real strengths of our organization and our teams and the ability to manage the sourcing and costing. We have industry-leading brands. We can manage where the price positioning of those brands are to really make sure that we continue to manage on the gross margin side. You can see what we've achieved really in Q2 and as we step into June and July, getting really back to historic levels. I might take a moment to just say our sourcing teams have done an amazing job of, one, bringing inventory down, and their new task now is the challenging with shipping and the challenges with cost increase. This team just continues to deliver.
We are seeing challenges with shipping, with container delays, port congestions, these are having impacts on timing of products. As Reza said, we're bringing inventory in, but it's going out as fast as it's coming in. Our sourcing teams are really taking forward actions to get ahead of this and order quicker to mitigate some of that risk and really remaining nimble and making decisions and bringing in products that are drivers of the business and prioritizing what we're shipping in so that we get the full benefit of that. Again, I think we're well in hand on managing through this, though it's a full-time job for sure. We're managing the product cost increases. We're taking pricing action where we need to.
The whole industry is under the same exact pressure point. Everybody's in the same spot as far as moving and managing through that. As Reza said during his presentation, we remain very diligent and disciplined on controlling expenses, not only on the fixed cost, but everywhere we can have temporary benefits, we continue to manage those, which has been very helpful. CapEx completely tight as far as what we're spending. Really, we're going to stay in this mode right through the end of the year, really staying disciplined on everything that we can manage. We are looking at marketing and marketing expense. We continue to manage that very closely. It's one of the biggest levers we have. As we see certain markets starting to move, we're pushing forward on marketing.
We're still well below the kind of run rate historic levels from an advertising percent. You'll start to see us lean in as the market starts to move comfortably into profit territory and those markets start to move. We want to be out messaging our story with our core brands. You will see us continue to lean in on that as well. We're highly committed to our sustainability efforts and our innovation. As I said, with a few products, and I look at our forward pipeline, one of our real strengths will be what we deliver from a product offering perspective for the back half of the year. Really as we step into next year, I'm quite excited about what we have in front of us from real kind of innovation and products and a sustainable story. More to come on that.
We're very excited as a team collectively. We have tremendous liquidity. We're at $1.2 billion of liquidity. I think at the moment where we stepped into this, we were at $1.5 billion of liquidity. This is a business that's just navigated through one of the biggest travel disruptions you could imagine. We're sitting in a liquidity position that gives me full confidence in what we need to do to kind of get the business all the way to the other side of the story. I might just end on a last slide, which is an IATA projection, which we look at and really gives a kind of picture of travel trends and what the forward trends are. I think this captures how I'm feeling about 2022 and 2023.
This would say 2022, as far as kind of global passengers or travelers, where as we went into pandemic around 4 billion, we think that'll be at 88% level 2022 to 2019. Okay? Gives you a sense for what we see, which is a tremendous recovery from what we're seeing in the year that we're in right now. This recovery will continue. As I've always said, I think when you come out of travel disruptions, our historic views would tell you, when you get all the way out, it comes back even stronger. My view on the forward basis is we really get to the end of 2022 and step in 2023. You'll see growth in travel numbers that start to get ahead of where we were before pandemic. All this kind of lines up with what we're seeing.
It lines up with what I think our expectations are as we get into next year and into 2023. As you know, we've changed the profit profile of this business. As we get into these levels, you should really start to see a profit profile that comes out stronger than what we were stepping out of 2019. We've got the team laser-focused on that. That's what we have. My last slide is on Q&A, as travel is coming back. We're seeing it all over, and we're quite excited to see it coming back. William, back to you. We're very happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
Great. Thank you very much, Kyle and Reza, for your presentation. We're now open for Q&A. I think the first one on the line is Dustin Wei from Morgan Stanley. Operator, why don't you let Dustin ask the question? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to register for question, please press star one on your telephone. Our first question comes from Dustin Wei with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hello, management. Thanks for taking my question. First question related to sales. I think that's really quite positive to learn that the July sales are only down 41% versus 2019, and also positive to learn that the August trends stay. Just given the so-called Delta variant is really having a lot of impact, especially in China. Is that the situation where in China, the August sales kind of went down but got offset by the pickup from the U.S. and Europe sequentially? When you look at the TSA data from the U.S., actually in the past few weeks, the number of the air travelers is not growing sequentially just in the past few weeks. Do you see the demand for luggage still picking up, despite that maybe Delta variant, I guess, in the U.S. also kind of damp a little bit on the domestic travel?
Just kind of short-term question. You look at the second half, I remember last call, we talked about maybe 30+% decline for the second half of this year. If we in the third quarter are having a decline of the 47%, should we look for like decline of like 20%- 25% for the fourth quarter? If we look at the next year, 2022, I also remember that we talked about the full year 2022 management will look at decline of like 20%-30% versus 2019. If that equation still holds, what's the assumption behind the sort of the recovery rate of the international travel? Does that need to be a lot of the recovery of the international travel? In your equation of that down 20%-30% versus 2019, it still mainly depends on the full recovery of the domestic travel.
Sorry for these long questions on the sales side. On the sort of last question.
Let me get to those. We'll come back just so we don't lose track of your questions.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Do you want to start with?
Yeah, why don't you hit the sales? Yeah.
Dustin, let's start with your China question. Q1 China sales down 27.6% compared to last year.
If you're looking at Q2, it's the same ZIP code. We're down 26.7%, is where China is in Q2. The important thing about China to realize is, with China down in the mid-20s, it's in teens EBITDA margin already. Again, that's the power of the cost cuts that have happened there. Don't only think about it in terms of the sales, realize that that flow-through benefit to EBITDA is happening as well there. China's continuing to be in that area right now. There was a little blip for a couple of weeks. I know there's some certain provinces in China, where there was a little bit of COVID that started to wane again. This is all on the back of just domestic travel in China without any international, as you know.
We feel pretty good about the China business with no international travel being in that down mid-20s level, but still being in the mid-teens to even upper teens EBITDA margin. That was the first one.
I think, we're clearly seeing when we look at July and August, we're clearly seeing Europe continuing to build. The U.S. story continues to be very strong as well. We have in the U.S. where, it's a large base of wholesale customers. Wholesale customers are very quickly ordering in, so we're getting some of the benefit of that, which will continue into Q3, and Q4 as customers start to reopen the luggage categories themselves for us. That will fuel growth. I think you might see weekly noises, ups and downs, maybe on travel. For us, I think the trend will continue as everybody gets repositioned for the recovery that's playing out. Delta variant's impacting everywhere. I think that's really the chapter here, but we continue to feel, in markets that are really starting to move, they continue to move.
I do think Asia's going to be a bit more stuck. I think India and China will fuel a lot of what we're seeing. These other countries, as I was saying in my concluding comment, probably take yourself into Q1 and Q2 before we see some better movement there. You will see Asia probably stay in a ZIP code of down 50%, maybe trending a bit better in Q4. Really as we get into next year, it can start to achieve the results that we're seeing. North America for July, if I remember the numbers right, was down 31%. This is just continuing and the team is just as energized about what we're seeing in August. I think the big question will be: what do we see September, October, November, as we get out of the summer holiday travel period?
My view is Q4 is probably going to be down in the ZIP code of 30%-35%. That's really with Asia stuck. It's not so far off from, I think, what we had guided for the full year, when we were talking last. That's my best view as we sit today. As you know, at down 41%, we're producing a margin that's starting to get into really close to low teens. If we can get into this down 30%-35%, you'll see a continuing improving profit story for us as well. I'm still on the plan for next year, down 20%-30%. Somewhere right in the middle of that is I think where we'll end up in an outlook perspective. I showed you that last slide, which [audio distortion] the chart, which is what the expectations are.
The reality is that is going to be fueled largely by the domestic travel moving. It's really as we get into the back half of the year that I think you'll see international travel starting to move a bit more. I've already made, Reza and I were in Belgium two weeks ago, due to go to Italy in two weeks or three weeks. We're seeing international borders start to move. It's clearly moving between the U.S. and Europe, but still well below normal levels. I think Asia will be a bit longer before we see international borders there, which will be important for Asia, because I think that will untap some of the Asia growth as we get into Q2 and Q3 of next year to see some of that growing. We're not so bullish on the timing there.
I think that's going to take a bit longer to play out. I'm trying to get to, and I think I will get to Singapore in the month of October, just for example. You can start to move. It's just that it's not moving at the pace of historic levels. Dustin, that's the sales side. You can ask your next questions if you like.
Yeah. Thank you so much for all the details. Just lastly on the sale of Speck. Could we have a little more details for the profitability of the so-called non-core brands? Were they generally just lower than the three core brands in terms of the profitability? Is there something that we can rationalize further to improve the overall group's margin going forward?
Speck was the only real drag, Dustin. The other brands, as you know, we've been shifting and adjusting. When I think about a brand like Gregory, that's performing amazingly well. It performed very well during pandemic. Gregory's in a ZIP code that's not diluted, and it's probably our best performer on other brands, and continues to perform very well. As I think I talked on the last call, we rationalized eBags and have folded that into the business and eBags as a portfolio and a brand which is smaller in size as a business because we culled the third-party brand, but is now making profit margins that'll line up right with the North America business as we get into the back half of the year. Non-distractive, it's just folded into our core team.
The only other brand really to talk about is High Sierra, which is a North America business. Fully folded into the business a year and a half ago here in North America, performing at the same ZIP code as what we'd see in North America. Really non-distracting, they're more in line with our core business. Speck was just an outlier because it wasn't really lined up. It followed different industry trends to us. It was really following the launch of phone devices. It had distribution channels that were different, whereas everything else is in the similar distribution channel for us, really non-distracting. We're quite happy with them. The brand Lipault, which is very small for us, we've fully folded that into our French team. We have reset strategy there. Even brand Lipault, which is very small, is in profit territory.
Again, is in line with our core product offerings. I don't think you'll see any other rationalizations, but Speck was the one that was obvious for us to move on. From an EBITDA perspective, [crosstalk] .
Yes. Just so you get a sense for the Speck numbers, as of December 31st last year, the net loss before tax for Speck was $29.8 million. Net loss after tax was negative $21.5 million. Just to give you year-to-date numbers on it, just so you get a sense for it, the year-to-date 6/30 numbers for Speck were around -$5.4 million negative. For year-to-date last year was - $15.7 million. Out of all the brands, that was the one that was the biggest drag for us. We looked at it as it's non-core, it has negative EBITDA, and we can get a decent amount for it and repay some debt with it. It just seemed very logical to dispose of it.
Great. Thanks for this detail. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Great. Thanks, Dustin.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Anne Ling with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hey. Hi, management team. On just the EBITDA margin, just to follow up the assumption that you just mentioned with Dustin's questions on year 2022 estimate. If we are assuming versus year 2019, a 20%-30% decline in top line, is it fair to assume that we should be able to go back or even exceeding that of the year 2019 adjusted EBITDA margin, which is around 13%, 14%, given the permanent cost savings that we have done?
Yeah. We will be better than 2019. 2019 was an off year for us because, if you remember, we had tariffs working into the U.S. business.
Right.
We will be better. We'll be comfortably mid-teens. It's really starting to move into the territory that, I've been doing this for a long time here at Samsonite, territory that I've always thought we could get to. That's where the business still having room to recover. The actions we've taken have moved us there. I wouldn't be surprised in Q4, we're at the same levels as what you saw us exiting 2019 at, and that's with the business down, let's say, 35% or something like that. It definitely is going to play into the EBITDA margin for next year. We can see it. We're kind of pacing it in July right now, and it looks pretty good.
Okay.
You're already seeing the gross profit margin in the mid-50s already. You should expect that to continue and to probably even improve.
Okay.
Given the cost actions, that should flow through to the EBITDA margins to get to the mid-teens.
Yep.
Regardless of the rise in the raw material price, you still maintain your previous guidance about the mid-50s in terms of GP margin.
Yeah, we're very focused on that. We've had periods of increasing pressure, and we've been able to manage margins. There's a lot coming at the group, but we're very clear on what we need to do to manage that. It's a lot of work, but we're feeling very good. We're working very close with our teams to continue to deliver on that.
Right. Great. My second question is on competitive environment. Do we know the pace that we are recovering, are we better than market or some other players are stronger? The reason why I ask is that a lot of clients are interested in the company, and then they were looking at some of these market share data. I'm not sure whether data like Euromonitor, whether the number are correct or not. Somehow, for markets like U.S., for the whole Samsonite Group, the market share off a little bit in the past couple of years. Do we need to look at market share these days? Do we follow it? At this stage, the focus is more about the whole market recovery. At this stage, this is not the key focus.
Well, it's always a focus, right? I think the way I described in my concluding statement is we will continue to build on our leadership position.
Right.
We have this amazing portfolio of innovative products that we're bringing out. We've got kind of the scale to drive this business. Many competitors haven't really been able to move much during the pandemic, and we've continued to, in the background, invest and drive our business. My expectations is we will continue to gain share as we move forward, and probably even at a better pace off the back of what's been really challenging. I said on the last call, it's not that we're not going to have competition. It's all around still. It's there. Many competitors have just trenched in and are navigating. We will be driving this business with this amazing sustainability story, amazing product offerings, and I have every intention with our team to gain share. One of the advantages we have now is scale matters, and we're bringing in inventory and selling.
As we're getting placement and moving and bringing products in where many of our customers, let's use the U.S., for example, wholesale customers are struggling to get supply from others that we're able to gain share just by the sheer nature of our advantage to bring products in. I'm feeling very good. My expectations are we will continue to drive overall growth in the business that will be in line or slightly ahead of kind of the trends, and we should be gaining share in that scenario as well. That would say across all markets is my expectation.
The advantage of being the segment leader is as factories start to come back on, obviously we have deep relationships with our suppliers, so typically we get favorable treatment in that regard. We have our own factories. In an environment where it is hard to get supply, we can actually turn on our own factories a little bit to help with that. We are in a very good financial position, thankfully, as compared to our peers. I think from a market share perspective, that should continue.
Yeah.
I see. As the first half, we do see market share gain, we're doing better than the industry.
I'm going to be clear. I think we can sense it. We're not sitting here studying market share gain, right? We're studying recovery, cost management. We can sense it around the edges. As we really see the recovery turning on in the last two months, it's clear that we're able to get placement and gain share as we move forward. This is with markets like markets of Europe just really starting to get going, and we should be really well positioned, both from an inventory perspective and a store and capacity perspective to drive the business. Many of our suppliers weren't paying their vendors during this. We kept our vendors whole, we kept things open, we kept very strong relationships. That wasn't the case from what we hear in our relations with our vendors.
As Reza said, when things turn on, who do they want to partner with? It'll be us.
Great. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you once again, ladies and gentlemen. If I need to register for question, please press star one on your telephone. Thank you. The next question comes from Erwan Rambourg of HSBC. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hi there. Congratulations. It must be a relief for the team to see a profit. Well done. Two things I had. You were very clear on the margin profile for next year. I'm just wondering for this year, given the very slight loss in H1 and given that you are quote, "the low teens" in July, is it fair to assume a full-year margin between 7% or 8% for the full year? Secondly, with inventories being so low, I understand there's lots of discounting going on. I'm just wondering if there's any pricing power that you can exercise, and are you willing, or are you able to increase prices on existing products in the market?
Thirdly, I really enjoyed your sustainability tables by brand. I'm just wondering if you have any internal targets on where the different brands should go to and if you're able to share some of that. Thank you.
I think as we get into the start of the year, I had an ambition to try to get the overall business margin for this year in this kind of 9%-10%. I think I probably said somewhere along the way that was what I was pushing the business for. I think we'll be short of that because of the stall we saw in Q1 and the start of Q2, Erwan. I still think we'll be in mid-single digits full business for the year. Somewhere between 5%, 6%, and 7%, maybe on the low end of your range, is what I think you can expect for the full year. You can do the math that says, so that means we've got a meaningful kind of improving trend for Q3, which I've indicated, and I think Q4 will be slightly better than that.
Really what it does, we were on a senior team call this week. It really just sets us up for the story for next year, right? If you can exit in kind of that low teens with a business that still has plenty of recovery coming and in full control of its cost structure. The real question will be, can we manage margins, which is really your next question around pricing power, because we need to make sure that we're delivering on the gross margin side to let that all the way play out. There is pricing power. We're seeing general inflation price increases. We were seeing general inflation everywhere. To me, it's very real because there's underlying cost increases around labor and materials. One of the things I've always said is this is affecting this entire industry. It's not affecting Samsonite.
We will be adjusting prices, and the whole industry will be adjusting prices. There's clear pricing power in our brand, but it's also just pricing power within the space. We operate with decent margin profiles. Often our small competitors have very narrow, smaller profit profiles; you can imagine the challenges of significant cost increases in shipping along with raw materials and labor challenges. Our positioning will be that much better to kind of manage that. We are taking those actions. We are taking actions across regions as needed to make sure that we maintain the margin in the right place. I think there'll be some power with all that, and there's a lot of uncertainty on things like shipping costs and when does that start to settle out.
The power of all that is there'll be moments where that starts to adjust, and we'll be adjusting within our brands. We won't take advantage of that. We will look to manage our margin profile in the right ZIP code, which is that historic run rate. The real kind of historical run rate for this business is 56%- 57%, and we're touching on that in June and July right now. A lot of these pressures and costs will really carry into Q4 and Q1, and we're taking the actions as we speak and as we get into Q3 and Q4 so that we're well positioned for stepping into next year. As far as internal targets, I'm still working with the teams on it. It will clearly be a story of growth.
Just anecdotally, within one of the brands for innovations that I'm seeing, over 50% of the products that we're seeing for kind of new introductions, just for scale, are incorporating sustainable components. You can do the math to know that this thing will move. Tumi is a good example of a brand that's a little bit ahead of the pace. If Tumi is at 22% and Samsonite is at 10%, if Samsonite moves that direction, Tumi i s continuing to move forward, it's not unreasonable that we're north of 25% of our products not so far off in the future incorporating sustainable materials. The real question is, how far can we take that? We need a little more time as we continue to play it out, but it will continue to grow, Erwan.
Erwan, to that point, you obviously know we have a base of products that are global runners that are selling. For those, it's how do you introduce sustainability into it.
Yeah.
When you look at Magnum Eco and some of the others, when you have new products coming in, obviously the mix of that is going to be a lot more driven towards sustainable. You have the existing product lines that you're trying to weave it in, essentially.
I have in my office, Erwan, you've been here before, I have sitting right across from me 19 Degree Polycarbonate for Tumi, okay? This is an inline change that we've moved the shell to post-industrial polycarbonate into that shell, and the liner made of rPET. This will be an inline change that's a real runner for Tumi from a luggage perspective that we've now incorporated recycled material. If I showed it to you, if I didn't tell you wouldn't know that we've made an inline change fully incorporating recycled material. That's starting to work through many of our product lines. Maybe you don't get all the way on a shell right away, but we can get the liners right away. We're playing around with zippers and zipper tapes and using recycled components there.
We have a ton of work going on on packaging to make sure that all of our packaging is maximizing kind of a sustainable story. There's a lot going on here. I think you've heard me say over the last couple of calls, and the whole organization has engaged. It just naturally is going to continue to move in a wonderful direction here while delivering on everything that we always deliver on on our products. Durability, quality, stuff that's going to really last, which has been our longstanding sustainability story. Really giving materials a second purpose within our product. We're starting to really think about kind of the full circle and how do we recycle products.
Our European team is doing a lot of interesting work with third parties on the full circle and how do we kind of take things back and fully recycle. I think that'll be a wonderful story over the next five years as we continue to move on that front too. There's a lot going on here.
Excellent.
I'm very excited where we're going. Okay.
Okay. Looking forward to it. Thanks a whole lot. Take care.
Thanks, Erwan.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Louise Li with Bank of America Hong Kong. Just go ahead. Thank you.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is still on our expectation on the second half trend and the next year. I remember that last time when we gave this guidance, I think the COVID-19 situation is not that severe as now. Do we miss anything here? We're still very confident to maintain this expectation given current situation. Secondly is about our GP margin. You just mentioned that our GP margin improvement is partially due to the stocking up from the channels because they don't have enough inventories when market come back. If this is the case, can we expect the GP margin improvement can proceed in the seco nd half when the market remains at a relatively stable level? My last question is about the balance sheet.
Do we have any plan to pay down the other debts within this year? Thank you.
Okay. From a confidence perspective, I think my concluding comments also cautioned about everything that's around us. COVID is still here. It's still a challenge across markets. I do think we take those on board, but we're cautious about our kind of forward view. We're seeing markets like the U.S. continue and Europe continue. I'd caution that Asia is going to take some more time. That all factors into roughly these ranges that we're seeing. I think where I sit today, I feel pretty good about the guidance, but I would also caution that the world's in a very different place today. We base it off of the trends we're seeing. We're basing it off of reactions, but we're not being super aggressive in our expectations. I think it's just kind of the flow.
I have my own models that say it could be better than what we're saying, and we're tending to manage cautiously. I'd rather manage cautiously and manage the cost structure against that and over-deliver, and that's kind of what we're thinking. The reality is we're all watching this together, so we're going to need to see how it plays out and manage our levers, which is why I said we're managing everything close to the vest still as far as costs go and cash flow and CapEx, to just be cautious. I do feel pretty comfortable with what we're seeing as far as outlook, particularly for the back half of this year. Again, next year, we'll see, but I think we're feeling very good there. As far as gross margin goes, I don't think that has anything to do with people buying in.
Gross margin story is really around the transition from kind of rationalizing inventory levels and some discounting that was happening in the marketplace at the end of last year, really getting back to kind of the normal flow from a margin perspective. Just because we're selling into wholesale customers, that's not being done in a way that's artificially driving up gross margin. Really, we're starting to get back into the normal course. A lot of the margin pressure last year was around reserving for inventories and really kind of taking more aggressive stances on obsolescence and getting ourselves in the right position. We're really in stride now on margin, and so again, there's a lot coming at it on the gross margin side, but I feel very good that it's really a function of something that we can manage on a go-forward basis.
As far as debt goes, as Reza said, we're going to pay $40 million or so off of the Speck sale, and we'll get to a moment where we step into next year, probably Q1, Q2, where we'll really be assessing what do we do, because we're obviously sitting on plenty of liquidity. I want to see us get into the ZIP codes of what I've guided as we get into the start of next year before we fully decide on that front. You should expect sometime next year, I think ideally in the first half, there'd probably be some further debt pay down, but we'll be kind of managing that closely. Okay. Hello?
Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Great. Thank you very much, Kyle and Reza, for your time. I think this is a good point for us to conclude the call today. Thank you very much, everyone, for dialing in. As usual, if you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us. Thanks again for joining the call. Thanks again, Kyle and Reza, for the presentation.
Okay, thanks everyone. Thanks for joining. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Thank you for participation. This concludes the conference.