Good day, and welcome to the Burberry Group EOC Third Quarter Trading Update and Interim Management Statement Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Miss Stacey Cartwright, EVP Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome to Burberry 's third quarter trading update call. With me this morning, I have Fay Dodds, our IR Director. As usual, I'm going to provide a brief summary of our performance, and then we will be happy to take your questions. Through the third quarter, total revenue increased by 21% at constant exchange rates, 22% at reported rates. Retail accounted for over 70% of revenue in the third quarter and grew by 23% in total, 13% of which was from comparable stores, with mainline outperforming. There was double-digit mainline comparable store growth in Asia, Europe, and the rest of the world, and robust high single-digit comparable store growth in the Americas against a strong period last year. During the quarter, flagship markets, which benefit from the traveling luxury customer, such as London, Hong Kong, and Las Vegas, performed well.
Northern Europe continued to outperform the southern countries, and China comparable store growth was again strong, up around 30%, on top of the over 30% growth in the prior year. This retail growth was driven by the consistent execution of our key strategies. The average selling prices were up due to the outperformance of Burberry London, as well as higher full-price sell-through. Core outerwear and large leather goods contributed half of the mainline growth, and we saw strong growth from newer initiatives, such as men's tailoring and men's accessories. Across fragrance, eyewear, and watches, the combination of product innovation, the Burberry Body women's fragrance launch, and improved in-store presentation led to sales in our stores increasing by more than 60% in the quarter.
Turning now to wholesale, we continue to expect mid-single-digit growth for the second half as a whole, with good growth from Asia travel retail, emerging markets, and the targeted U.S. department store doors, where we're investing in dedicated shopping shops across all categories. As we've explained before, we've also taken advantage of the momentum in the business to further elevate the brand's positioning. Second half wholesale revenue would show mid-teens growth if we exclude the impact of these planned actions, which include converting Spanish menswear and our Saudi distribution to retail, further rationalizing the brand's distribution in Europe and also the U.S. The 4% growth reported for the Americas in this quarter is the net result of the robust retail performance I referenced earlier, plus the accelerated cleanup of U.S. wholesale. For the third quarter, wholesale revenue increased by 15% underlying, with early deliveries in Europe and emerging markets.
Our key wholesale accounts are now embracing monthly flow to bring newness to their customers, ordering more this year to support the November and December floor sets than they did in the previous year. Finally, on licensing, where revenue was up 12% on an underlying basis, Japan was broadly flat quarter on quarter, but we had excellent growth from our three global product licenses. The third quarter saw further progress on each of our five key strategies. Under the first, leverage the franchise, we continue to invest in digital technology in store. We have iPads now in nearly all stores and Retail Theatre in 180 stores. That's up from about 100 at the start of the year.
Combined with the refreshed burberry.com site and further innovation in social media, customers now have a pure brand experience across all mediums, and they can transact through whichever channel they choose, leading to further strong growth in digital commerce for the quarter, as an example. Under non-apparel, which is around 40% of sales, the third quarter retail performance was driven by core styles with innovation in the iconic Hay market and House Check, which together with the elevated solid leather collections drove strong increases in average unit retail. Men's non-apparel continued to show significant growth in all categories. Under the third of our strategies, retail-led growth, we've continued to invest in flagship markets. New openings in the third quarter included stores in Paris, São Paulo, and Hong Kong, and our major flagship projects in Chicago and Regent Street are on plan.
For the second half, we're now expecting between 13% and 14% space growth compared to our previous guidance of up at around 15%, reflecting some timing differences and a few additional closures of underperforming stores and concessions. In underpenetrated markets, we continue to see good growth in emerging markets, especially India, where we now have seven directly operated stores. During the third quarter, our next four franchise stores were opened, including our first store in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Zagreb, Croatia. Finally, the fifth of the themes, operational excellence, the clear highlight was the rollout of SAP in China, giving us now full global visibility for the first time, enabling further improvements in supply chains, the global buy, and optimizing replenishment. We continue to build our capabilities in consumer insight and analytics. In conclusion, we're pleased with our third quarter performance, especially in this all-important retail channel.
The consistent execution of our key strategies is serving us well and will be our focus in the future, mindful as ever of the challenging macro environment. With that, now pleased to take your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please press the star or asterisk key followed by the digit one on your telephone. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We will take our first question from Thomas Chauvet from Citigroup.
Good morning, Stacey and Fay. Hi, I've got two questions. The first one, I'm trying to understand what is the underlying growth rate of your developed market consumers, so the European and American, given there's a lot of moving parts here. On the U.S., could you give us an estimate of Americas retail wholesale growth, excluding the effects of wholesale rationalisation, but also excluding the effect of the advanced deliveries from Q4 to Q3 in wholesale? For Europe, similarly, would you be able to estimate the growth to the local clientele? Excluding tourism effects, I know you don't have CRM in place, but what is your best estimate? Secondly, in fragrance licensing, can you remind us the key terms of your existing relationship with Inter Parfums and what are the main options for you at the end of the re-evaluation period on the 31st of July? Thank you.
Okay, I'll take fragrance first. The terms of the license are that the license runs until 2017, but there is a clause in the license which allows us to seek a valuation of, and if we like the valuation and decide to proceed to buy that license out, with the key date there being July 2012. At the very least, we could carry on as we are, but we are looking at what the options might be that are more advantageous, both strategically and financially, to Burberry, and hence the discussions that we've commenced with Inter Parfums, both to invoke the license valuation exercise, but also to talk about what other arrangements might be put in place, some form of joint arrangement to run the business going forward. Those conversations are ongoing, and you're absolutely right, Thomas. A key date in that is July this year.
In terms of the underlying growth rate, you said it yourself, Thomas, we don't have CRM data right now, so it is very difficult for us to distinguish between the different consumer segments. I will say that, certainly if you're looking at Europe, Northern Europe is performing more strongly than Southern Europe. The Northern European local consumer, I would say, is definitely holding up better than maybe the Southern European consumer. You asked about underlying growth rates in the U.S. If you strip out, I think just about everything by the sounds of it.
Just wholesale rationalisation and the advanced deliveries.
Yeah, advanced deliveries isn't, you know, really that's why we give guidance for the half rather than for the quarter, to strip out the fact that if you ship something in the last week of December versus the first week in January, it can be very distorted to, you know, and give a misleading impression for the quarter. The important thing is that we're maintaining the guidance for the half as a whole. We're talking about mid-single-digit growth on a reported basis, mid-teens on an underlying basis, and within that, you've got good strong growth out of the underlying wholesale accounts, and you're offsetting that with the non-anniversary of off-price clearance, which is basically sales to people like Nordstrom Rack and Saks OFF 5th that, you know, we had been doing and we've terminated as of this year.
Thomas, If you look at that kind of clean mid-teens guidance for the second half as a whole, you will see that underlying U.S. department stores are performing better than that if you ignore the clear-up, as are emerging markets, as is Asia travel retail.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Thomas.
We will now take our next question from Warwick Okines from Deutsche Bank.
Good morning, both of you. If I may just try a couple more on the U.S. On the retail performance in the first half, I think you talked about the Americas being one of the strongest markets, which implies strongly double-digit, and you're talking today about single-digit. You referred to the comp space. I was just wondering if you could maybe just flesh out to what extent that slowing is purely a comp-based phenomenon.
Yeah.
Secondly, I think in the past you've given a sort of dollar value on U.S. wholesale sales. I think you've talked about less than $200 million. I was just wondering if you could say what proportion you would kind of call legacy, just to give us a sense of how much cleanup needs to take place.
Okay, I'll pick up the comp point. In the first half, absolutely, the Americas performed with one of the strongest reasons that it was up against the softest comps. They were broadly flat to negative in the first half of 2010-2011, for example. They bounced back very significantly in Q3 of 2010-2011 into double-digit comps. Clearly, the high single-digit comp is up against a much stronger comparable period last year. In terms of the off-price, I don't know whether we've. I don't want to get into specific numbers. I think the best way of answering that question is if you go back to the half to wholesale guidance, the discrepancy between the mid-single reports and the mid-teens clean number, the biggest part of that is the U.S. It's quite a significant factor in the second half, and you'll see a continuation of that into the first half of next year.
Okay, thanks very much.
We will now take our next question from John Guy from RBS.
Yes, good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions for me, please. First of all, with regards to average selling prices, I know you talk about them being strongly up. Could you give us a little bit more indication as to sort of price mix and the ASP movement during the quarter? Secondly, when I'm looking at the replenishment rates, could you refresh us in terms of where you are on rates of replenishment within men's and women's and within women's splitting out the outerwear and the leather goods business? Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, in terms of the average selling price, again, if you look at our comp growth, most of that is driven by average selling price increase, and that is fixed. It's outerwear, it's large leather goods, it's the strong outperformance of Burberry London and some really good growth in men's tailoring. They're very much a continuation of the trend that we've been talking about for quite some considerable time. In terms of replenishment rates, really no change from the trend that we gave you at the half year. Stronger on replenishment in non-apparel. Women's wear is stronger than men's wear, and that's largely driven by the strength of the outerwear business there.
Okay, and just to follow up, obviously, no comment specifically around margin today given that it's a trading update, but there seems to me to be quite a few signals that there are some positive implications around margin off the back of around 50% growth driven out of core outerwear, large leather goods. You talk around knitwear and men's accessories, again, positive in terms of margin. You beat estimates by in excess of 100 basis points on the retail wholesale gross margin in the first half of the year. It all seems reasonably positive in terms of looking out into the full year relative to where the street is today.
Yeah.
The full year numbers, yeah.
Yes, and all of those factors, you're absolutely right, John, contribute to our confidence in being able to say that we will be putting that modest improvement on retail wholesale operating margin for the full year. Yes, everything is contributing nicely to that.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, John.
We will now take our next question from Fraser Ramzan from Nomura.
Hi, good morning. Just one quick one. Do you have any comment you could make on inventories at this point, please?
Really, continuation of where we were in November. Inventories are pretty clean, nicely current, and clearly, we've got a lot of inventory that is replenishment focused. Again, it's bouncing in good stead. Should we be in the position of finding that we're over-inventoried, it'll just be a case of slowing down the pipeline of replenishment rather than needing to offload at a discount.
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
Fraser.
We will now take our next question from Julian Easthope from Barclays Capital.
Yeah, hi, morning once again. I just thought I'd ask a quick question about the licenses. Within the perfume license, obviously, you're looking at for the July period, but you've also got the watch license that comes up at the end of the year. I just wondered if you had any thoughts as to whether or not you'd want to gain more control over that one. Thanks.
I think it's too early to say anything on that, Julian. I mean, we're very happy with Fossil. I think they've stood us in good stead, and you know we will look to see what the most appropriate arrangement is when we come to that as well.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Julian.
We'll take our next question from Simon Irwin from Liberum Capital.
Good morning. Three quick ones for you. Firstly, just going back to licenses again, obviously, if you assume that Japan was flat within that, then you've obviously got some very strong trends within license income. How much of that is very much completely oriented around the launch of Burberry Body, and how much of a kind of follow-through would you expect in those kind of growth rates purely from that launch? Second question would be, have you seen any differing trends in terms of the kind of local versus travel percentage, such as you're aware of it, particularly within Europe? Thirdly, are you changing your behaviour or becoming more cautious about any of your wholesale partners, particularly in Southern Europe, in terms of the way you supply them?
Okay, so we've got a lot in there. First of all, on licenses, yes, Japan broadly flat, so very nice performance out of watches, eyewear, and fragrances. Fragrance, absolutely the standout performer, as you would expect, with the launch of Burberry Body. I don't know that we can give any growth rates for the future off the back of that other than, clearly having made this launch now, we're keen to keep that fresh and front of mind and to keep marketing levels up at, not quite the same as the launch, certainly front of mind as we go through 2012. The second question was around differing trends between local and the travelling luxury consumer. I go back to I don't know that we've got any solid CRM data yet that would enable us to give you anything meaningful there.
We do still see in many of the flagship markets a nice presence from the local consumer, but that is obviously less prevalent in the Southern European markets. Your last question around caution on dealing with European wholesale, I think, is where you were going. Clearly, we've been cleaning up a lot of the smaller legacy accounts in Europe as part of our specialty store cleanup. They're smaller, they don't have the same resources to portray the brand appropriately, and I think it's very timely in terms of the economy as well that these are exactly the guys who we've been turning off season after season.
Okay, in terms of the overall kind of progress of cleaning up European wholesale, what's the net impact at the moment in terms of that you're shutting down and that you're adding? I mean, should we think about it in kind of broadly flat terms, or is it still a drag?
Yeah, I mean, we think about it in broadly flat terms because we have got growth from the top 10 customers in Europe, nice solid growth from the top 10 customers, and there's a few million pounds of revenue that we are turning off from what can be hundreds of small specialty accounts.
Tremendous. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Julian. Sorry, Simon yeah.
We will now take our next question from Sophie Dargnies from HSBC.
Hello, [Foreign language]. I have three questions. The first one, can I have a thought? It's a quick follow-up on the U.S. Did you see some difference between East and West Coast in this last quarter? Also, if the rationalisation will continue next year, what could be the impact? Can you still have the same impact that you tell us for H1 2013? Just overall for the quarter, did you see some difference month by month, and did you see some difference also by region month by month, especially in the U.S. and Asia? The third one, can you tell us if you're still quite comfortable with the current PBT this year?
Okay, I'll go backwards up the list and let Fay pick up the end ones, I think. I think consensus has us at around GBP 375 million PBT for this year. We certainly don't see any reason for that to change today. In terms of quarterly trends, nothing of significance to call out. It's not that we saw any deteriorating trend or any converse trends across the three months. No real sort of trend aspects there. In terms of the East and West Coast, I don't think there's anything against the fallout there. It's more about the flagship markets forming that little bit more strongly.
In terms of the half one wholesale impact, clearly, we'll give you our full guidance in April once we've collected up the order books, but there is still going to be quite a significant impact from U.S. cleanup in that first half.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thanks, Sophie.
We will take our next question from Annabel Gleeson from Redburn Partners.
Morning. You've reported slightly slower space growth than we expected. How should we be thinking about CapEx for the year-end and also CapEx next year and space growth next year?
Okay, so space growth, I think we did say maybe around 15% for the half, and I'm saying 13%- 14% for the half. Nothing of any major significance there. There's not any particular projects that have been delayed or anything like that. It's more around square footage, once you've actually evaluated what net selling square footage is versus massive house square footage, a few roundings down there, and a couple of men's prospective concessions in El Corte Inglés that actually we've chosen to close rather than turn into concessions. In terms of space growth going forward, you know, we've said historically about 10% per annum, so this was always going to be a little bit of a bonus year, if you like. That said, we're finalizing the budgets as we speak for 2012-2013, and I would say the pressure is more to the upside of that 10% number.
CapEx, we talked about a range of GBP 180 million- GBP 200 million for this year. I suspect we'll be more towards the lower end of that range, but clearly, a lot depends on the timing of actual cash out the door around some of these big flagship projects, what goes out in March, what goes out in April. We still have a number of major flagship projects lined up for 2012-2013 as well. Again, against the backdrop of the 25% IRR that we look to achieve on all of our projects. I would say, again, I would be expecting that number to be not dissimilar to this year's CapEx number.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, Annabel.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach your equipment. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We will take our next question from Rogerio Fujimori from Credit Suisse.
Hi, Stacey and Fay. Just two quick questions. Any quick color on your other key Asian markets beyond China? I mean, Korea, Taiwan, and Australia. My second question is basically on your overall pyramid after recent outperformance of Burberry London. How has the composition changed? I mean, the weight of London and Brit versus, say, 12 months ago? Thank you.
Okay, I mean, in terms of the composition of the Asian region, we saw very good growth in what we call Greater China, so obviously China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau. Korea, which is a big mature market for us on the retail side, has been a little bit softer, but sees strong growth in the travel retail side. Nothing really to call out on the smaller markets. Okay, in terms of the London mix, yes, London is picking up a share of the mix. Historically, we always talked about Fossil being 5%-1 0% of the business, London being, you know, maybe 35% of the business, and Brit perhaps being more like 60% of the business. You're seeing Brit become more like 50% of the business overall now, with the extra being picked up by London.
Thanks . Is this kind of a structural change or more driven by cyclical factors?
I think it's structural. It is part of the next shift in the business and the elevation of the brand.
Great, thank you very much.
Thanks, Rogerio.
We will now take our next question from William Hutchings from Goldman Sachs.
Good morning, Stacey, and good morning, Fay.
Hi, Will.
Hi, I just had one question, which is on your like-for-like performance in China, which, I mean, we were surprised that it sustains up with a 30% rate. I wonder if you could give us a bit more color. Is this you materially outperforming peers, or do you just think the whole market is still running along with this?
I mean, I do, yeah, such as we get data on our peers, and obviously, we have recruited individuals in from other luxury brands, so we do pick up old snippets from time to time. We do think, yes, we're outperforming our peers. Remember, we've got some self-help factors that perhaps some of them don't have. We acquired the business back in September 2010, so we've got a new team on the ground. We put support in from the regional team. We've got new merchandising strategies in there. We've been improving the supply chain performance into the region. In the last couple of months, we've implemented SAP as well. There's quite a lot of infrastructure support which helps us improve the merchandising, improve the decision-making, and drive the business forward.
That's great, thanks. Sorry , just one more follow-up on that. Has that allowed you, not just on a like-for-like basis, but allowed you to change your thinking about store openings because you've got better visibility?
I don't think it's changing our perspective on sort of numbers of stores to go for. It may be that it's giving us further confidence to go to some of those bigger locations and know that we can get the productivity, the sales per square foot out of them.
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Will.
We will now take our next question from Louise Singlehurst from Morgan Stanley.
Hi, morning all.
Hi, Louise.
Just a quick comment from me, a quick question to end up. There's a lot of talk about Plan B at the end of last year, and obviously, you've come in with very good numbers over Christmas with 13% like-for-like. I mean, how are you thinking about the budget process going into the end of the year, and what's the tone internally? Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, the management team is obviously very alert and vigilant when it comes to trends or external metrics, etc. It's fair to say that everybody's being very responsible about how to budget for 2012-2013. We've talked about having a base budget in place in terms of investment, with the opportunity as we go through every month with dynamic reforecasting to release more monies as we go on the assumption that trading holds up. Everybody's being very responsible and going for a kind of a base budget approach and then add some should the opportunities be there.
I think it's worth reminding you that we're much better positioned in the event of any downturn this time than last time in terms of we've now got SAP globally, much higher percentage of our sales and inventories on the replenishment side. The planning team has been able to work with the regions to kick in and make sure they're buying the right inventory. A lot more solid infrastructure than we had last time around.
Super, thank you.
Thanks, Louise.
If there are no further questions in the queue, I'd now like to turn the call back to Ms. Cartwright.
Thank you very much, everybody, for your attention. We look forward to speaking with you again on the 17th of April, which is when we'll be publishing our second half trading update. Thanks very much.
That will conclude today's conference call, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.