Good morning. We actually have some seats here in the front row. This is like the first day at school. No one wants to be—no one wants to be—it's not like a fashion show, because at the fashion show, they really want to be seated in the front row. It's all about your seat. In any case, good morning and welcome to our interim results and our update on the Burberry Forward strategy. I'm Josh Schulman, CEO of Burberry, and with me is Kate Ferry, our Chief Financial Officer. One year into Burberry Forward, my belief in this extraordinary British luxury house is stronger than ever. Since we met last November, we have moved from stabilizing the business to returning to growth. I am encouraged by the signals I am seeing throughout the business, which provide initial proof points that our Burberry Forward strategy is working.
With our timeless British luxury brand expression and an improved product offer, our brand has become more desirable. We are attracting new customers to the brand while welcoming back existing customers, resulting in sequential improvement in customer growth. These customers are responding strongly to our autumn and winter collections, with a significant increase in sell-through rate compared to last year. We are accelerating our momentum in our iconic categories, outerwear and scarves, and now this growth is extending into additional categories. In Q2, we returned our retail business to comp sales growth for the first time in two years. Our most important wholesale partners are seeing the momentum as well.
We recently completed our summer 2026 wholesale market, and the reaction has been very positive, with a significant increase in orders from key opinion-leading partners in the U.S. and Europe, an incredible vote of confidence in our product and Burberry's relevance. While I am pleased with what we've achieved in our first year of Burberry Forward, these are just the first steps to reigniting desire. There is a lot more to do, and I am looking forward to building on these foundations in the year ahead. I will now turn it over to Kate to take you through our first half financial results, and I will then update you on our strategy, our progress, and our priorities as we look to year two of Burberry Forward.
Thank you, Josh, and good morning, everyone. For the first half, comparable retail sales were flat, with sequential improvement between quarters. In the second quarter, we delivered growth of 2%, our first positive comp growth in two years. Total revenue was GBP 1.03 billion in the first half, with adjusted operating profit of GBP 19 million. Free cash outflow was GBP 50 million, an improvement from this time last year and in line with our expectations for the half. When we launched Burberry Forward a year ago, we talked about actions to drive sustainable performance. We've returned to adjusted operating profit in the first half. Our gross margin is recovering, up 410 basis points at constant exchange rates versus last year to 67.9%, driven mainly by a healthier inventory position. We continue to bring scarcity back to our inventory model.
We've tightly managed buys throughout the half, with net inventory down 24% versus last year. Following the expanded restructuring program announced in May, we're on[management]. I'm going to take you through a more detailed overview of performance, starting with revenue by channel. I'll refer to changes at constant exchange rates. Retail revenue declined by 1% during the half. Space reduced by 1%, while comparable retail sales remained flat year- on- year. Wholesale revenue decreased by 11%, slightly better than our guidance of a mid-teens decline, reflecting phasing and some uplift in in-season orders from our key strategic partners following improved sellout of Autumn 2025. Licensing revenue was down 8% versus last year, with ongoing strengths in our fragrance and beauty businesses, including the Goddess and Her franchises, offset by the planned destocking of older fragrance lines.
As a result, total revenue for the first half declined 3% at constant exchange rates, or 5% on a reported basis. Turning now to regional performance, comparable retail store sales were flat or positive in all four regions in the second quarter. Traffic at our stores remained challenging throughout the first half of the year, but we're pleased with the improvement in conversion we've seen. Greater China led with the strongest improvement as compared with Q1, with 3% comparable retail sales growth in the second quarter. This was supported by a strong Chinese Valentine's Day. Globally, the Chinese customer group slightly lagged the regional performance, with growth in locals offsetting the decline in outbound tourist flows. Asia-Pacific also improved to flat in the second quarter, with the first half down 2%. Japan returned to growth in the second quarter, up 2%, offsetting decline in South Korea.
America saw 3% growth in the second quarter and the first half. The region is continuing to benefit from new customers, offsetting lower tourist spend in the United States during the summer months. EMEA remained in line with the first quarter despite reduced tourism activity, growing 1% in Q2 and the half, supported by growth in local and returning customers. Moving on to the income statement and staying with changes at constant exchange rates. Gross margin was 67.9%, a 410 basis point improvement year on year. I'll give more detail on this in just a moment. Adjusted operating expenses were down 5% year on year at constant exchange rates, following the delivery of our expanded cost savings program, as well as non-recurring store impairment headwinds in the prior year.
We remain on track with our cost program, expecting to deliver GBP 80 million in annualized savings by the end of the year. As mentioned the last time we spoke, we're investing behind our journey to reignite desire, restore growth, and continue on our path of sustainable value creation. We've prioritized investment in the first half, using some of these savings to invest in consumer-facing areas such as marketing. This year, we continue to invest a high single-digit percentage of sales in our brand, with a focus on maximizing our ROI. We delivered an adjusted operating profit of GBP 19 million, with an operating margin of 1.9%. Adjusting items amounted to GBP 37 million. This primarily related to restructuring costs resulting from the transformation program announced in May. The business has demonstrated resilience during this period, allowing us to progress swiftly through the program over the summer.
Our full-year guidance remains unchanged, with restructuring costs expected to be around GBP 50 million. As a result, we've reported an operating loss of GBP 18 million for the first half. The net finance charge was GBP 30 million, of which GBP 23 million was interest charge on lease liabilities, and GBP 7 million was other financing interest. Gross margin benefited mainly from the non-repeat of inventory actions taken last year. As a reminder, these inventory actions were a combination of provisioning and discounting. This year, we have significantly less inventory, down 24% at the end of the first half. We're also seeing the benefits of our transformation program in gross margin. We experienced a free cash outflow of GBP 50 million in the first half, an improvement versus this time last year.
Working capital was GBP 43 million outflow, given the seasonal inventory build-up ahead of the festive period, albeit still reflecting tighter inventory management than this time last year. Capital expenditure for the period was GBP 38 million, with investment targeted to those projects with the highest return on investment. In our retail network, we're focused on amplifying our most iconic categories. We've launched over 100 scarf bars to date and are on track to deliver 200 by the end of the year. We also opened a new showroom at our headquarters here in London, which is already driving cost efficiencies and enabling closer collaboration across our global retail teams. Borrowings reduced by GBP 221 million following the repayment of our September 2020 bond. We closed the period with net debt of GBP 93 million, or GBP 1.1 billion including lease liabilities.
At the end of the period, net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 2.2x . We remain comfortable with our liquidity and headroom and are focused on continuing to reduce our leverage through the actions we are taking to rebuild profitability. Turning now to the outlook for full year 2026. While we remain in the early stages of our turnaround, we're encouraged by the progress made so far and expect to see the impact of our initiatives build into the second half and beyond. The macroeconomic environment remains uncertain, but our focus this year is to build on the momentum in reigniting brand desire as a key requisite to growing the top line. We will deliver continued margin improvement with a focus on simplification, productivity, and cash flow.
To help you with modeling, in full year 2026, we expect no changes to our guidance of retail space remaining broadly flat and annualized savings of around GBP 80 million alongside a GBP 50 million restructuring charge. Within wholesale, we expect a mid-single-digit percentage revenue decline for the full year, slightly ahead of our original expectations and returning to growth in the second half. This reflects our key wholesale partners' confidence in our new direction. We expect capital expenditure of around GBP 120 million, slightly lower than initial guidance, as we've been very intentional in our investment approach, focusing on the highest return on investment projects during this year of transformation. Finally, we expect currency to be a headwind of around GBP 50 million on revenue and around GBP 5 million on operating profit, all based on the 24th of October spot rates.
Further detail can be found in the appendix of this morning's statement. As we move into our second full year of Burberry Forward, we are confident that we can build on the progress we've made in quality of earnings, continuing to improve performance and driving sustainable long-term value. I will now hand back to Josh.
Thank you, Kate. As we move into the second year of Burberry Forward, we are increasingly confident that we're on the right path to build brand relevance and value creation. If the strategy for the next year of Burberry Forward looks very similar to what we presented last year, this is intentional because we are now focused on accelerating and delivering on our four pillars with consistency. Placing the customer at the center of everything we do. We will continue to anchor Burberry Forward in timeless British luxury as we enhance our product, marketing, and customer experience to engage a broad luxury audience. This will be underpinned by an organization that is fit for purpose and executing at pace.
Starting with our brand, our traffic and sales inflected in August as we launched our Chinese Valentine's Day campaign, followed by the Back to the City campaign focused on a more polished expression of city dressing against a backdrop of iconic London landmarks appealing to our investor customer. Next, the elegance of our winter runway campaign set in a quintessentially English country house attracted our opinionated customer, while the winter wardrobing campaign showcased looks that could be worn every day, appealing to all of our customer archetypes. Collectively, these campaigns have driven an improvement in brand engagement in September. In addition to these fashion campaigns, we have continued our institutional outerwear campaigns with the latest installment of It's Always Burberry Weather, postcards from London, which launched in October across all of our channels.
Next. Fish and chips, please.
Just fish and chips?
Yeah.
Coddle had it. Pods are classic. Caddock is tastier, in my opinion.
I can't actually play.
That's okay.
How do you pronounce that?
Gluconstiershire.[Foreign language]
That place.
The worst [Kester Sheffiel. I feel sorry for you guys.
Anybody need a cheese and pickle sandwich?
Looking forward, we will continue to fully embed our timeless British luxury brand expression across all touch points, creating universally recognizable stories and imagery balancing town and country. Our marketing initiatives will celebrate our customers' cultural occasions around the world with a dose of British warmth and wit. We are looking forward to celebrating our 170th anniversary next year with a series of campaigns and activations to celebrate our iconic trench. This will include disruptive amplifications across product and marketing initiatives to drive broad global appeal. Even global icons are leaning into our most beloved Burberry codes and showing that when we have where we have the most opportunity, where we have the most authenticity. When influential personalities of the world come to Burberry, they are selecting to wear our most beloved brand codes.
From Olivia Dean wearing a modern interpretation of our iconic check to Tommy Paul and Jack Draper dressed in our ready-to-wear and Dua Lipa wearing a full check dress, it's clear that Burberry continues to resonate in popular culture. Just last week, we launched our festive campaign, bringing a warm and joyous rendition of the British holidays to our customers around the world. Amid the charm and commotion of party preparations, Jennifer Saunders is joined by an all-star cast, including Naomi Campbell, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Son Heung-min, who each share beautiful Burberry gifts with their friends and family.
Happy holidays. Thank you. Good luck with your goose. Don't overcook it. Oh, yes, you're going. Looks great. Tinsels, my angel, canapés,[Foreign language] little guest. Oh, darling. Oh, everyone's upstairs. Oh, darling, you look gorgeous. Sorry, I'm late. Take this in. You can take this in. Son.
How are you?
What is it? Great.
We are so excited about the early reaction to 'Twas the Night Before, our festive campaign, and we look forward to bringing other extraordinary experiences, including at Claridge's, where Daniel is designing a special tree decorated with Burberry textiles alongside a pop-up shop featuring iconic Burberry gifts. Building on our momentum in China, we are looking forward to celebrating Lunar New Year, the year of the horse. We will be increasing our investment in product and marketing with a more complete product capsule and an immersive campaign, including four well-known ambassadors. Moving to product, our customers are clearly responding to the timeless British luxury brand expression and the synchronicity between our runway looks and the commercial core that is allowing us to reach a broad luxury audience. Here you can see how the spirit of our runway shows has been interpreted to appeal to a broad luxury audience.
On the left is an extraordinary fringed runway trench from Daniel's Winter 2025 show. The item retails for almost GBP 10,000, and we had pre-orders from our most elite clients from the moment this walked down the runway. Now Daniel, together with our merchandising team, has reworked this inspiration into different silhouettes appealing to a wider audience. These looks are among our best sellers for the season, retailing at around GBP 2,500. Building on our success with Winter 2025, on the right, you can see we are taking the same approach to our summer runway collection. Summer 2026 captured the intersection between fashion and music and was yet another uniquely British story that only Burberry could tell. You could see the beautiful leather fringe trench that walked the runway and how this inspiration has been reinterpreted into classic gabardine with leather detailing to reach a broader audience.
The product mix and strategy is capturing the attention of new customers and attracting existing customers to return with sequential improvement in customer growth over the course of H1. In particular, we're seeing new customer growth among Gen Z. I was just in China a few weeks ago and walking stores with our teams there, and they were sharing how the evolution in our collection architecture is attracting different customer profiles to the brand. These customer profiles are now fully embedded in our product development cycle. Looking forward, we will be integrating even deeper consumer insights to ensure we're meeting all of our customers' wardrobing needs. As we enter the second year of Burberry Forward, we now have significantly greater knowledge of our customers, which is informing our product strategy. One of our priorities is to refresh our heritage rainwear assortment in the new year.
We will be introducing lighter tropical gabardine and strengthening the transseasonal appeal of our iconic trench. This will enhance customer centricity, allowing our trench to be worn in global markets year-round. Another observation is that we are only scratching the surface with wardrobing. Building on our foundational strength in outerwear, we are now completing the look with a stronger assortment of knitwear, trousers, skirts, and dresses. Across the assortment, we are developing with customers' needs in mind, including the right fabric, the right fit, and the right silhouettes for men, women, and children. In accessories, we have made progress on our foundation with the amplification of scarves and resetting the base in handbags. Looking forward, we are strengthening our assortment of leather goods and shoes with a focus on both subtle and overt branding, driving commercial shapes with clear brand signifiers.
Across categories, we now feel more confident to place bigger bets on selected families of newness to fuel our growth and improve our productivity. Moving to distribution. In our stores, we are creating more warmth and desire by increasing product density, enhancing our displays, and encouraging cross-category selling. We are so excited to have the majority of our scarf bars open for the festive season. These stores are already outperforming, positioning us strongly for the season ahead. Our stores now offer a richer experience, one I hope that you will all enjoy during the festive season. Our e-commerce channel was the first to turn positive and continues to outperform. We've elevated our product storytelling, seamlessly integrating shopping journeys with rich editorial imagery, and improved our styling across the offer.
Building on the success of our monogramming and scarf personalization services, we're expanding our personalization offer to knitwear and capes launching in the weeks ahead, just in time for festive. Looking ahead, our focus is on driving productivity. Building on our momentum with scarf bars, we're launching more category destinations in the year ahead, including for trench coats and polo shirts. We are also investing in clienteling capabilities, deploying new AI-enabled tools to support our client advisors and serve our customers with a warm and personal approach informed by data. Well wholesale only accounts for around 13% of our business, it serves several very important purposes. Our opinion-leading digital wholesale customers are the ideal place for customers to discover the evolution of Burberry alongside our luxury peers.
As I mentioned, we've seen growth in our wholesale order book from these opinion-leading wholesale customers globally who are enthusiastic about the new direction of Burberry. Being present on luxury platforms allows us to share our refreshed brand expression with a broader array of consumers than visit our own sites. Our omnichannel department store partners provide visibility in key locations. I am so excited to get on a plane next week and go to New York. We are literally lighting up the facade of Bloomingdale's, an iconic flagship, with an enormous sparkling Burberry check scarf. This activation is anchoring dedicated Burberry windows and pop-up shops throughout the store in the flagship and in key branch stores which tell our brand story. One of the things I am most proud of this year is reigniting our culture.
I continue to be encouraged by our incredible team around the world, whether it's the product triangle of design, merchandising, and marketing coming together, the regions working with the center, or our teams across stores, manufacturing sites, and warehouses delivering exceptional service for our customers. We are rekindling the creative and commercial alchemy that is unique to Burberry. We continue to uphold our commitments to social and environmental responsibility. This remains an integral part of who we are and is important to our colleagues and customers around the world. As we move into our 170th year, we are embedding the spirit of Burberry Forward into our purpose.
Burberry believes that new horizons open when you step outside, that whatever lies beyond the doorstep is worth braving the rainfall.
[Foreign language] Our purpose: embrace the elements with open arms.
Our values are to protect, explore, and inspire.
We are a source of protection and warmth.
Please take this.
No matter the forecast.
We innovate to open new horizons.
We brighten up even the cloudiest day.[music]
In the first year of Burberry Forward, we moved at pace to execute our strategy and stabilize our business. With the consistency of our timeless British luxury brand expression and an improved product offer, we now have begun to capture the attention of new customers while seeing existing customers return to the brand they love. This has resulted in comparable store sales growth for the first time in two years. As we look ahead, our ambition is to deliver sustainable performance, growing the top line while expanding our profit margin and delivering strong free cash flow. As I mentioned earlier, my belief in this extraordinary British luxury brand is stronger than ever. We now have proof points that illustrate that Burberry is at its best when it forges its own path, grounded in timeless British luxury and guided by authenticity.
Although it is still early days and there is a lot more to do, as we approach our 170th anniversary, we are confident that Burberry Forward is the right strategy to build brand relevance and value creation. I will now hand it over to Lauren for Q&A, and Kate and I will take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Josh. Hi, everyone. We'll kick off the Q&A. I just ask that you limit to two questions each so we can reach everyone in the room. Please state your name and your firm before you ask your questions. I can see Carol here right in front of me, and then we'll move over to this side and do Luca, Owen, and then I think I saw Grace as well. Oh, and Thomas, let's put you in there too. Thank you.
Thank you, Lauren. Hi, Carol Madjo from Barclays. Two questions then. The first one, I think you mentioned that you went to China or Asia just recently. Can you come back on what you're seeing there in terms of trends, mostly on the macro environment, any signs of stabilization that you saw on the ground on top of, I guess, you being doing some more work to see improvements of your China performance down there? That's the first question. Second one is about the improvement of, I guess, increasing new consumers at the brand. When you think of the chart you talk about, so the consumer being investor, conservative, hedonist, what kind of new consumers were you able to attract more if there is a way to put them in those categories? Thank you.
Yeah, two great questions. I'll start with China. It was a really wonderful trip that I took with several of my colleagues to China. Ironically, it was one year to the date that I took my first trip to China last year as part of Burberry. Literally, we could see the difference in the market year- on- year, but we could also see the difference in the expression of Burberry year- on- year and hear from our field teams, the people who interact with customers every day. In terms of the market, clearly, I do think there is a little bit of stabilization happening in the market. I do think that our inflection in China this quarter was probably driven more by our internal changes that we've made.
It was really wonderful to walk through our store estate and to hear about customers literally returning, people who they had been trying to get in for the last couple of years who did not see themselves in the product that we were offering. Now they were coming in, and their conversion was way up. We really saw customer engagement globally improve as we went through the quarter, particularly in China. Our earned reach was up 129% in China, which translated into new customer growth of 10% in China. They really led. On a global basis, we had 18% customer growth in Gen Z with substantially higher growth in Gen Z in China.
I think in the past, there may have been an idea that in order to attract younger customers in China, you need to be super edgy and kind of do what other brands are doing. Actually, what's working in China now is this authenticity, the timeless British luxury, the authenticity. We're seeing that across all of our customer archetypes. We're seeing that against younger, cooler customers. We're seeing that against more mature, sophisticated customers. The breadth of our customers coming back to the brand in China and globally and starting to attract new customers, especially in China and in the Americas, has been one of the most gratifying things that we've seen in the last couple of months.
I would also say that if you double-click on some of these metrics, you really see the quality of the business changing year- on- year in terms of the types of products we're selling, in terms of the channel mix, in terms of the breadth of customers that we're touching. It just gives us a lot of encouragement for what lies ahead.
Thank you.
Luca. Thank you.
Luka Solca from Bernstein. I have a question on these metrics and the double-clicking in particular. What you're seeing in terms of full price, sell-through, one of the pushbacks we're getting is that Burberry has been discounting a lot and is discounting a lot. I think, and I assume that that is connected with the phasing out of the old Burberry. If you could give us a couple of data points on how you see that has been evolving and how that is impacting, for example, your use dependence on off-price and factory outlets and discounts.
Yeah.
Maybe a second question, again, going back to the point about China. I see that there's a lot that you're doing yourselves in terms of improving your predicament there. Do you have a view based on what you see from the landlords and the shopping malls where you operate how the broader Chinese consumer nationality is doing? Thank you.
Okay. I really appreciate both questions, but on the first, let me walk you through how we're thinking about this and why I'm so encouraged about what I call the quality of sales. Normally, we don't talk about what's happening in the full price channel versus the outlet channel. I think it's important in this case because what we saw in the quarter was that the strength in the newness that we were delivering in our full price channel fully offset the declines that we were having in the outlet channel, the declines in traffic that we were having in the outlet channel. Traffic has been challenging in that channel in general, but also we just have less inventory going through that channel now, and we're discounting less. All of that is really good for brand health and for brand hit.
You will see that really across the business. In our full price stores, last year, we did an exceptional public clearance. We did that online and in stores. That contributed about 3 points to our comp in the festive quarter. This year, we are not doing that. We are reverting to our normal end-of-season activities, which are substantially smaller, more discreet, shallower, and less. All of these are contributing to what I call the quality of earnings. Finally, in our wholesale channel, where we are seeing the growth is from our strategic partners. These are the luxury pure-play digital partners. They are the US department stores. They are even travel retail. They are coming back because they are seeing their sell-out of Burberry in the autumn and winter collections. Their sell-out is going up. They are coming to our showroom enthusiastic about finding opportunity.
They loved what they saw from the summer collection, and they believe that their customers will likewise love it. That builds a virtuous cycle with the strategic wholesale partners. That is helping us to offset the planned decline in non-strategic partners. Overall, I would say this print is, as you said, no drama. If you double-click under the covers, there is a lot going on that we feel very positive about, and that sets us up in a good way looking forward. In terms of China, what I would say is there does feel to be a little bit of a market stabilization that is happening. What we understand is that it is very bifurcated and very specific in terms of how a brand is performing there, probably more polarized than the rest of the world.
Owen, we'll go to you next. Thank you.
Thank you. Good morning.
Good morning.
Owen [Homburg] from HSBC. Congrats on the consistency of messaging and execution quarter after quarter. I'll stick to two, even though I have probably 15.[laughter] You historically talked about good, better, best, coming back with maybe more palatable price points after being disconnected for a while. You just flipped positive in terms of like-for-like. Can you maybe just talk about the role of volume as part of that equation? I suspect mix is negative. I suspect pricing is limited. Yeah, maybe can you talk about how that like-for-like is built up and what we can expect for the longer term? You just mentioned that the disposition channel, the cleanup of obsolete inventories last year meant a 3% headwind on comp for H2. How should we feel about like-for-like for H2 in that context?
I think historically, Kate, you mentioned whether you were comfortable or not with consensus. I am going to be the one to ask the question. What do you think about consensus in terms of sales and EBIT? Are we at a reasonable level today? Thank you.
Kate, why don't I let you start on the headwind and our view on consensus, and then I'll come back on the other piece.
Yeah, sure. Yes, I think it's the usual veiled ask about current trading. I think as usual, I'll say we're not going to comment too much on current trading at this stage. I will say that Q3 has started well in line with the previous quarter. Josh has already helpfully highlighted the very public markdown that we had last year. As Josh said a moment ago, that was three points on last year's comps. We're not repeating those activities. I will just highlight that again. Of course, although we're pleased with performance so far in the quarter, we're mid-November. We've got Thanksgiving, Christmas, Lunar, New Year, everything to come. It would be premature to call it. In terms of, I guess, half one, half two, we would anticipate sequential improvement there.
I think on the consensus point, probably similar answer in that, look, we're broadly happy with consensus. Again, really, really important trading period ahead of us. I think it would be premature to change guidance at this point. I would just add that we also want to leave ourselves some firepower to invest. Depending on where we get to, you've heard it in the presentation there, we are spending more year- on- year on the kind of consumer-facing areas, specifically marketing. You heard there we are investing more in Lunar New Year, for example. I think leaving consensus where it is today feels the right thing to do for the business.
I'll pick up on the retail equation and what we're seeing in terms of pricing. We start, our inventory is down at 24%. When we look at our traffic in the stores, traffic remains challenging across the board and continues to remain challenging. However, our conversion is up in the low teens. Our AUR is down slightly, which was planned because we did the realignment of pricing along good, better, best, and with certain key categories like scarves outperforming. All what we would want to see at this point in the turnaround.
Any element of pricing in any market?
Not so much. We took some surgical increases in the U.S. specifically earlier this year. Pricing is relatively in line globally. Any pricing that we took on individual items was somewhat offset by the difference in mix.
Let's stay aggressive until last. Thank you.
Great. Thank you. Grace Smalley from Morgan Stanley. My first question would just be on marketing. You've mentioned a few times there that you've increased the marketing spend. You seem very happy with the results you've seen from the marketing campaigns. Just how are you thinking about the return on marketing spend and whether you're still tied to that marketing as high single-digit as percentage of sales or if there's actually room to further increase that and take kind of, I guess, capitalizing on this moment in time and shouting about what you're doing in terms of the brand?
Yeah. I mean, I think this also relates to what Kate was saying about consensus. We want to leave ourselves more firepower to invest in marketing. And my Chief Marketing Officer is in the front row over there. So he's listening very carefully to this. But we're very focused on having an ROI. And we're pleased that the initiatives we've had have resonated. We are seeing a direct impact from the marketing into the sales. A year ago, we didn't have that luxury to even consider given where the P&L was. Now we want to be very mindful of those opportunities and not let a moment pass without investing appropriately. I don't know if you have anything to add, Kate.
No. I think the key is, yeah, for now, maintaining the high single-digit percentage of marketing. Let's see where we get to.
Very clear. Thank you. My second one would just be on gross margin. Thank you for the helpful bridge slide. As you think about gross margin in the second half, could you just perhaps talk through those dynamics in terms of the inventory benefits, transformation benefits, and then also given Josh's comments on the improved full price sale through, how we should think about that impacting gross margin in the second half as well? Thank you.
Yes. I mean, recap, obviously, H1, you can see that it's 330 basis points, which essentially is the tailwind from this time last year, all of that inventory actions. I then did flag that we had, which was probably the bit over and above what you might have expected, was what we have badged as transformation benefits. I think the message there is that although mostly the transformation benefits have been in OpEx, we've been looking at cost across the business, and we have actually seen some benefit in gross margin. In terms of then what to expect for the full year, which will help you with the second half, I think guidance there remains the same. We talked about a 300 basis point tailwind for the full year, and that remains the same.
You'll remember that, of course, in the second half, in terms of phasing, the trend of the last two years has been for H2 to be lower than H1. You'll see that again. In terms of absolute H2- H2 margin improvement, yes, you'll see that because you'll remember it really was this time last year where we did a lot of non-repeatable heavy discounting. I think you'll certainly see that come back. Remaining the same on full year gross margin guidance.
Great. Thank you. Let's go to Thomas.
Good morning. [Thomas Homer] from Citi. Two questions. The first one on product newness and categories. If we look at your H1 performance retail wholesale by category, I know it's a bit diluted by the wholesale performance, but women's wear was already positive in the half, which is quite an achievement. Men's wear accessories down 3%-4%. Has men's wear and accessories improved sequentially in Q2? When you look at your upcoming spring-summer products, is there anything that excites you in terms of men's wear accessories offering to drive a bit of a catch-up and bring these categories back to growth where they should be?
We are very pleased that the initial improvement and the strength of outerwear and scarves is now spreading. We are obviously seeing that first and most importantly across women's, which historically has been challenging for Burberry. Yes, both men's and accessories improved sequentially during the quarter. As we moved into, I'd say, mid-August, September, and that winter wardrobing came into the stores, that has really ignited those categories, specifically on leather goods and shoes. If you double-click here, we reduced our inventory the most in leather goods. This is really where we really took out a giant amount of inventory. We said that we would test and learn this year. We have been doing that. We have some areas where we have green shoots where now we are going back and building those back.
I think we talked about the B-Clip bag last time. That family has been strong. We've recently done the first stage of a refresh of our iconic Vintage Check. We introduced a vanity case, which has been very strong. We currently have a novelty color in ruby, which is performing well. This is all in advance of a bigger relaunch of Vintage Check in the coming seasons. We have been very deliberate in how we've approached that category. It's interesting because we're seeing success in the good, better, best strategy across the estate, even in a category that we do not talk about a lot, like shoes. On the runway, there were these beautiful riding boots. We took a big bet on those beautiful riding boots, even though we had no history of selling very elevated product with minimal branding, frankly.
It's GBP 1,500 and up for the Cavalier boots. They have become among our best shoes and are meaningfully contributing to the growth of this small category. That was such an important lesson for me because it's such a quintessentially Burberry item. It's something that in your mind, you would think that you could go to Burberry and find a beautiful English riding boot. When we put it there in the context of that beautiful fashion show collection, the customer responded. Actually, it was one of the items leading to customer acquisition. I know I sound like a broken record with our team talking about the timeless British luxury brand expression and the good, better, best pricing architecture. It really is resonating with our customers.
Thank you. My second question on licensing. Could you give a bit of an update on your relationship, first on the eyewear with EssilorLuxottica and, of course, beauty? I think Coty CEO Sue Nabi gave interesting numbers recently, implying Burberry has been growing at about mid-teens percentage since 2019. Curious to hear your view here. Just on the cleanup of the older fragrance line that impacted your licensing revenue down a high single digit in H1. Understand it would be the case also in H2. That shortfall of licensing revenue, if you gross that up to wholesale, i.e., Coty's sales, there is quite a big number of bottles. I was just curious what's happening to these bottles. Are they heavily discounted by Coty? Are they being destroyed, gifted?
What is Coty doing to drive such a big decline in revenue given Goddess and Her, your top fragrance line, are actually doing very well? As I said, Sue Nabi mentioned mid-teens sales for Burberry Beauty in the last six years.
Yeah. Broadly speaking, we think we have two best-in-class licensing partners in Luke Sadecker and Coty. We are pleased with the trajectory. Within beauty and fragrance specifically, the fragrances that you mentioned, Her and Goddess, have been very strong. Similar to what we're doing in the core brand of focusing on the quality of sales, they're doing the same. Because Goddess and Her are in a position of strength, they're able to destock on some of these lines that are older and less relevant. That is why you see this significant decrease this quarter in the channel. Kate, I don't know if you have anything to add.
Yeah. I mean, I think the key being that we're still seeing good steady growth in those core lines. In terms of the look forward, obviously, it's not something that's just done in the quarter. We would actually expect the destocking to continue into the second half.
Be over by the end of fiscal 2026?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Great. I think we've got one final from Daria.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. It's Daria from Bank of America, and congratulations on your results. I have two questions. The first one, could you please talk about what you're seeing in the U.S. market? You saw flattish, no acceleration in trends in this geography. I was just wondering, could you please help us understand how it's shaping up into the holiday season? If I can just ask my second question straight away, outside of some marketing reinvestment that Kate, you already mentioned, are there any other initiatives that we should be aware of for the cost saving for the second half, like bonuses, remuneration, anything that we should be modeling? Thank you.
Kate, do you want to take the cost savings, and then I'll chat about the U.S.?
Yeah. Sure. So yeah, I mean, I guess there are a number of moving parts within cost. We've been very open about the incremental investment in marketing. Of course, the other piece is to consider, as always, there's inflation in our cost base. We've got a very high fixed cost base, 80% of fixed costs. That'll be inflating at around 2%-3%. You talk about people costs. Yes, there's the usual merit in there, and there will be potentially incremental performance-related pay reflecting the performance being below what we would have expected for the last couple of years. I guess those are probably the key moving parts. It'll be people, inflation, and marketing.
In the U.S., the U.S. was the first region to return to growth for us. What we've seen is that the brand expression and the way that we're showing up at retail in exciting ways is really resonating with the customer there. Our team in the U.S. has been very creative in terms of how, in a market where retail traffic is so-so, they're really going to the customer. They hosted, over the summer, an exciting VIC event in the Hamptons, inviting customers from across the country to stay with the Burberry team and have a one-of-a-kind experience in the Hamptons. They're planning something similar for the VICs for Aspen. That is really for our top of the pyramid customers. We also have an opportunity there to really build on the broad universal appeal of the Burberry brand.
That is why this Bloomingdale's facade takeover and activation is so powerful for us because it gives us an enormous stage to share with people the Burberry story and who may or may not come into our network of stores. It is that mix of how we do really high-end elite events and then customer-centric events with broad universal appeal for customer acquisition. We are really excited about the trajectory there. I would just kind of step back from the U.S. specifically and just reiterate as we are at the end of the, I think we are at the end of the Q&A. I would reiterate that after our first year of implementing Burberry Forward, we are more confident. I am more confident than I was 12 months ago. Twelve months ago, this was really a thesis. It was a thesis that we were too niche.
We were trying to be kind of a me-too of other brand strategies and that we were not true to our own unique DNA. As we have leaned into that at all levels, from the runway to the marketing campaigns to the type of visual merchandising you see in stores to our sites, that is resonating with customers. It is resonating with the customers we want to have. Long-term, I see this as a bigger opportunity than I envisioned a year ago. We are going to do the right thing with the brand and do it in a steady, slow way. We are not going to chase sales for the sake of it. We are feeling confident in the Burberry Forward framework that this is the right path for value creation and for the brand relevance.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Josh. I'll hand over to you for closing remarks.
Closing remarks.[Laughter] I'll come up here. Really, as we approach 170 years, I want to thank all of my colleagues around the world who have been working so hard to drive Burberry forward. You only see Kate and I up here, but this is literally the work of thousands of people around the world. I would also like to thank all of you, our investors, analysts, and partners who have supported us on this journey. Thank you.