Good morning, everyone. My name is David Kirk, and I'm pleased to welcome you as Chairman of KMD Brands Limited to our 2025 Annual Shareholders Meeting. I extend a warm welcome to all shareholders joining us online today through our virtual meeting platform provided by our Share Registrar, MUFG Pension & Market Services. I declare that a quorum of shareholders is present, and the meeting has been duly convened. I'm also pleased to officially open online voting. Before we start the formal business, I would like to introduce my fellow directors to you: Brent Scrimshaw, our Group CEO and Managing Director. Thank you, Brent. Our non-executive directors, Abby Foote, Andrea Martens, Philip Bowman, and Zion Armstrong. I also welcome Peter Taylor from KPMG, Carla Webb-Sear, Group CFO, and Frances Blundell, Company Secretary.
In terms of the format for today's meeting, I will start by making some brief comments about the 2025 financial year for KMD Brands, and then hand over to Brent, who will provide more details on our Next-Level transformation strategy and how it's going to change our business, as well as a summary of the Group's financial performance. We will then move to the formal business of the meeting. There are two resolutions to be considered by shareholders today, and these are set out in the Notice of Meeting. An opportunity will be given to shareholders to ask questions about or make comments on the items of business on the agenda for today's meeting. All voting on the resolutions to be put to today's meeting will be conducted by way of a poll.
For shareholders joining us in person today, you would have validated or been given your shareholder voting card. If you are a shareholder and did not register on arrival and wish to vote, please make your way to the registration desk outside the room, and staff from MUFG will assist you. Please mark your voting intention for each resolution, and the voting cards will be collected at the conclusion of the meeting. Shareholders joining online will be able to cast their vote using the electronic voting card received when online registration is validated. To vote, you will need to click "Get a Voting Card" within the online meeting platform. You will be asked to validate your registration by entering your shareholder or proxy number, which can be found on your proxy form.
Once your registration is validated, you will receive an electronic voting card, which will enable you to cast your votes on each of the resolutions that we will consider today. You can cast your votes on the resolutions at any time during the meeting today. Please mark your voting card in the way you wish to vote by clicking "For," "Against," or "Abstain" on the voting card. Once you've made your selection, please click "Submit Vote" on the bottom of the card to lodge your vote. If you have any issues with registration or voting, please refer to the MUFG Pension & Market Services Virtual Meeting Online Portal Guide that can be accessed through the virtual meeting web link or call the helpline on 0800 200 220.
There will also be an opportunity after the resolutions set out in the Notice of Meeting have been considered for shareholders to ask any questions of a more general nature. To ask a question online, you will need to validate your registration. Please use the question function, and your question will be conveyed to the meeting. If you need further information about how to ask a question, please refer to the Virtual Meeting Online Portal Guide or call the helpline. I would encourage you to send through your questions as soon as you can. Questions may be moderated or combined with other questions where they relate to the same topic. The Minutes of the 2024 Annual General Meeting held last year have been reviewed and approved by the Board and signed by me as a true and correct record of the meeting.
These are available to view at the registration desk. I also note that the Company's Financial Year 2025 Annual Integrated Report is available to all shareholders through the Company's investor website. Any shareholder who has not received a copy of the Annual Integrated Report in the post but would like to request a physical copy can do so by contacting the Company Secretary or our Share Registrar, MUFG Pension & Market Services. We will address any questions from shareholders on the Annual Integrated Report or financial statements under general business later in the meeting. Now, just a few words about the year just passed. It will not have escaped your notice that Financial Year 2025 presented a very challenging operating environment for KMD Brands and the wider industry.
Group sales were modestly up on last year, with Rip Curl and Kathmandu delivering slight growth and Oboz seeing a small reduction in sales. Gross margin declined, reflecting greater promotional activity, which was required to maintain market share in a highly competitive trading environment. Our operating expenses remained tightly controlled in the face of global cost pressures. Disciplined inventory management contributed to a reduction in net working capital. Net debt also decreased, leaving the balance sheet in a solid position. Despite the trading challenges in 2025, we believe KMD Brands is materially undervalued. We know that our brands and our group structure, with geographic, channel, and seasonal diversity, has the potential for much greater growth and profitability.
We have taken steps to manage the cyclical downturn and market volatility we have seen in the last year and to emerge more resilient and ready for our next phase of growth. Part of this is executive team change and capacity building. In the last quarter of the financial year, the Board welcomed Brent Scrimshaw as Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Brent had served on the KMD Brands Board since 2017 and brings extensive global experience in building and scaling consumer brands, including an 18-year career with Nike across three continents. In his short period as CEO, Brent has led a major reset of the Company's strategy and capacity to execute the strategy. Brent will talk more to this shortly.
Towards the end of Financial Year 2025, we launched KMD Brands Next Level, a new transformation strategy and operating approach that is designed to sharpen our focus, accelerate performance, and unlock growth. Next Level reflects our ambition to operate with greater agility, accountability, and alignment across our brands and markets. It is already guiding our key decisions and investments, and will continue to shape how we deliver sustainable profitability and value for our shareholders. Again, Brent will take you through this in greater detail later in the meeting. With the right team in place and the Next Level Transformation Strategy underway, we are confident KMD Brands is heading in the right direction. In closing, I sincerely thank my board colleagues for their hard and ongoing commitment to the Group.
I extend our gratitude to all KMD Brands employees, including the Group Chief Executive Officer and Group Executive Team, for their continued dedication. Finally, we thank all our shareholders for your ongoing support and confidence in KMD Brands. As you'll hear from Brent, our new strategy is showing early signs of momentum, and we're confident this will carry through into Financial Year 2026. I'd like now to invite Brent to address you.
Okay, thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. It's great to see you all here. My name's Brent Scrimshaw, and I'm really pleased to address you all today for the first time as the Chief Executive Officer of KMD Brands. Today, I'm going to talk you through the FY25 financial summary and operational highlights, provide a high-level recap of our next-level three-year strategy that David just referred to, and, of course, a trading update you may have seen this morning for the first quarter of FY26. FY25 continued to be a challenging year for our Group and the industry at large as cost of living pressures, geopolitical issues all weighed on consumer sentiment. As a result, global market conditions continued to be mixed. However, we were able to grow revenue by 1% above the prior year with improved results in the direct-to-consumer channel, including e-commerce.
Group gross margin decreased by 1.9% of sales year-on-year to 56.5% as we focused on maintaining market share with increased promotional intensity and a deliberate strategy to clear aged and excess inventory to make way for fresh, innovative product in the marketplace from Q4. The profit result was clearly not where we wanted it to be, and while sales grew slightly, the combination of a decrease in gross margin and continued operating cost pressure meant that underlying EBITDA decreased to $17.7 million. After accounting for a one-off non-cash impairment of Oboz intangible assets, the Group's net loss after tax was $93.6 million, and on an underlying basis, the Group's net loss was $28.3 million. Now, despite this challenging trading environment, we continued to prioritize cash flow, reducing our inventory and net working capital year-on-year. Pleasingly, net working capital ended $40.6 million lower than July last year.
As a result, the Group's balance sheet ended the year in a stable position with NZD 52.8 million in net debt, lower than the July balances of the last two years, with funding headroom of approximately NZD 235 million. Our brands continue to deliver iconic product to market. Rip Curl launched the new Search GPS 3 Watch in April, allowing surfers to plan, track, compare, and share every session, with the Search iOS App functionality also enabling surf tracking for users of the Apple Watch for the first time. Oboz released a limited edition of its iconic Sawtooth Shoe in a collaboration with New York creative studio Blackbird Spy Plane, which sold out in minutes and captured the attention of trend-focused consumers worldwide.
In addition, Kathmandu was recognized for pushing the boundaries of product innovation, winning two ISPO Awards for the Feather Flight, a best-in-class lightweight carry-on, and another for the women's Seeker Short, which uses fabric made from captured carbon emissions and recycled materials. The new Rip Curl Bondi women's store marked the beginning of our next-level integrated marketplace strategy, which will align consumer product marketing and a renewed segmentation of our store portfolio in each geography. The Group also maintained its commitment to sustainable innovation as each of our brands continue to be B Corp certified and demonstrate their leadership, particularly through the use of new responsible materials in product development. To be clear, sustainability remains integral to the DNA of our brands and how they develop products.
Given our FY25 performance, in early September, we introduced KMD Next Level, a reset and transformation plan designed to address our challenges and what we acknowledge has been unacceptable performance. For myself and the team, it is time to reset expectations of our brands, of our business, and of ourselves. Whilst growth is what we are ultimately committed to delivering, it is also crystal clear that we needed to immediately reset our cost base to deliver enhanced profitability and at the same time provide the opportunity to self-fund future growth investments. In the last few months, we have already begun to execute against the Next-Level Strategy, and there are three strategic priorities that are fundamental to our success that I would like to recap for you this morning.
Firstly, to succeed with brand and product-led offense, we need to add speed and style to our technical product foundations, delivering iconic and distinctive product franchises and accelerating our go-to-market capability. Secondly, data-driven processes and AI tools are going to enable our team to simplify an overly complex business to make better data-led decisions. There'll be a continued focus on working capital off the back of Q4 of last year and our investment. Our supply chain and marketing spend allocation will continue to be focused for efficiency. We also have a laser-sharp focus on profitability, only releasing our cost investments in line with our financial guardrails, delivering sustainable profitable growth. Now, the KMD strategy house here summarizes all of the components of our new transformation Next-Level Strategy.
Whilst we've not changed our purpose and vision, we have reset our strategic priorities, our growth drivers, and importantly, the behaviors that are going to get us there. We've enabled our plan with a clear step change in both thinking and an obsession with execution in both our brands and our corporate functions. With a clear strategy, a renewed growth mindset, and obsessive execution, we're already making significant progress to drive more positive outcomes. On slides 16 and 17, we've summarized our priority strategic initiatives that apply both across the Group and within each of our individual brands. Firstly, as you can see at the Group level, our shared functions become growth enablers for each of our brands, providing functional expertise and continued efficiency that our brands must leverage for growth.
We've set clear financial guardrails for our brands to operate with, always with a focus on driving sustainable profit growth and increased efficiency in the areas of working capital investment and supply chain, helping to deleverage our balance sheet and enable our brands to grow. We've also made strategic shifts in each of our three brands. Now, just to be clear, these are not incremental shifts. We're not tinkering around the edges or making small trade-offs. These are bold strategic shifts specifically designed, if we can just keep moving forward, specifically designed to drive an efficient and different outcome for each of those brands. At Rip Curl, we've reset towards a youthful brand for the next generation. We've contemporized the relevancy of our brand equity in the search, and we've redefined what it can mean to a whole new generation of consumers.
We will grow beyond core surf to include beach consumers for the first time. While still serving core surfers, we can also address clear market capacity with relevant product along with the right new distribution channels to address the significant but untapped growth potential. Lastly, as you know, there's been significant uncertainty in the USA marketplace, and in response to this, we've made swift and responsible decisions to protect our profitability in that geography. For Kathmandu, product distinction and separation are fundamental to the brand and our portfolio's success. Also critical is the way that our product stories show up in a newly segmented store portfolio. Lastly, I think it's also a responsible and a clear decision that we've reset our international strategy for Kathmandu to be digitally and distributor-led, again, immediately reducing cost.
For Oboz within the footwear industry, the trail category is hot right now, and the locations of Bozeman and for those of you who enjoy Netflix content, Yellowstone, which is the home of Oboz, are also hot right now. We have accelerated our product creation agenda at Oboz to impact the market in a much faster way and much earlier than was originally planned. At the same time, we aim to introduce the brand with the help of new vault, heritage, and all-terrain style-based products to a whole new group of consumers in new channels of distribution. Beyond the strategic intent of the transformation of our business through the Next-Level plan, I want to be really clear about the financial expectations.
We're on track today with a $25 million cost reset from our cost base to mitigate cost pressure and, importantly, to help self-fund our strategic growth agenda into the future. Now, this cost reset will be driven from initiatives such as the organizational restructure and a store network review that we've already completed and announced to the marketplace. The Next-Level Plan also identifies $15 million of these savings to be reinvested in the FY26 fiscal year to drive growth over the medium term. This will be a staged approach to reinvestment in growth such as product, store formats, and performance marketing, reallocating resources to fuel the areas that deliver the greatest return across a portfolio. Now, this deliberately provides our plans with intended flexibility with a stage-gated approach to investment based on growth, enabling cost and results.
We anticipate realizing net savings in FY26 after reinvestment of $10 million, which allows us to offset baseline cost inflation. With these financial guardrails in place as part of next level, the good news is we're already making early progress, and there are three strategic examples I wanted to highlight today to demonstrate those proof points of KMD next level in action. The first is a heightened focus on product, product innovation, and in particular Kathmandu. This includes, as an example, our Feather Flight carry-on, which I mentioned earlier, winner of the 2024 ISPO Global Product Innovation Award. From a single, highly innovative carry-on that sold out almost instantly, we've pivoted this season to extend and expand into a range that will now provide and strengthen our position as a leader in premium adventure travel gear.
Building on this momentum, our Trailhead Pack has been recognized as the 2025 ISPO Global Product Innovation Award winner as well. This pack, which only launched this week, redefines global outdoor gear through a trademarked, fully customizable design that combines sustainable materials, advanced performance features, and self-expression opportunities for consumers that set a new standard for adaptable adventure equipment. What you should expect is to see more of this caliber of product and innovation in a relentless flow from Kathmandu into the future. Secondly, along with this step change in product, we're also elevating our storytelling capabilities through our integrated marketplace strategy that I mentioned earlier. This is the Rip Curl Bondi Beach precinct, an iconic brand at the world's most iconic beach location.
On the left is our first Australian Rip Curl women's store, and on the right is the newly refurbished men's and kids flagship store. Our new CEO for Rip Curl, Ash Reid, and eight-time surfing world champion, our own Stephanie Gilmore, recently opened this precinct to much fanfare at this iconic location. Both stores have been purpose-designed and merchandised to set a new standard for Rip Curl's authentic surf and beach stories that connect with our core consumers. A purpose-built wetsuit area also anchors the store experience, reinforcing Rip Curl's authority in technical performance and product innovation. Most importantly, the shopping experience of our first Australian women's store sets a new benchmark, a space designed specifically to reflect her energy, her confidence, and her lifestyle.
We have spoken previously about the new Kathmandu next-generation concept store, and I'm really pleased to say that last month we launched Kathmandu Riccarton in our hometown of Christchurch. Now, this is the ultimate expression of the Kathmandu brand in a store experience that is fresh, open, and designed to evoke the calm and clarity of the outdoors with innovative technical displays, digital mannequins that all showcase our product and technical credentials in motion, highlighting design and enhanced performance. Moving inside the store, the experience is quite a departure, I hope you all agree, from the historical Kathmandu store format. It's contemporary, it's bright, most importantly, it's easy to shop with sustainable materials embedded throughout the space.
Lastly, you can see here how an increase focused on product storytelling and merchandising brings the Trailhead Stretch Jacket to life, demonstrating purpose as well as design for a more connected and integrated customer experience. In the coming weeks and in time for December trade, we'll also open Chatswood in Sydney with a CBD flagship store in Melbourne to follow in the second half of FY2026. A core part of our integrated marketplace strategy also includes e-commerce. We know our brands are underpenetrated in digital. It's a huge opportunity for us, and we're sharpening our focus and our investment to accelerate growth in this channel. Our Shopify platform launch has already shown fantastic user experience results for the Kathmandu business.
Moving to slide 31, our premium lifestyle and studio photography supported by a dynamic focus on video showcases the new Trailhead Pack I just mentioned, inspiring consumers to express themselves through personalization. You can see how product, channel, and storytelling start to come to life. We've also recently relaunched or launched Rip Curl on Shopify as well across Australia, the United States, and Europe, all in time for Black Friday Trade, delivering a faster and more dynamic online experience that brings the energy of surfing to life through immersive storytelling integrated throughout the site. Like Kathmandu, it not only connects customers with the brand through this premium photography and video, most importantly, it showcases product and simplifies the shopping experience to drive additional conversion.
Finally, alongside product innovation, our integrated marketplace strategy, you can see the power of change already in the last few months. We have also focused on finding and building the right team with the capabilities that we believe can deliver on our Next-Level Plan. Now, more than half of our leadership team is newly appointed. I believe we now have the talent, the energy, and the experience to deliver on this transformation. Ash Reid joined us five months ago as CEO of Rip Curl following a global career at Nike. Most recently, he led the fast-growing Pacific Region. Ash is unique. He brings a global business perspective, having worked around the world, and a deep cultural connection to the world of surf. In July, we also welcomed ASX-listed executive Carla Webb-Seager as our Group CFO.
Carla joins us from Qantas, where she was the Chief Financial and Strategy Officer of the Loyalty Division, bringing over two decades of financial leadership across the consumer, media, and technology sectors. Finally, to drive operational execution of our strategy, Jonas Gowers joins the group as our Chief Operating Officer. Jonas has over 20 years of international experience across retail, consumer goods, operations, and consulting, as well as private equity. It is great to be able to attract great talent to this portfolio of brands. Together, with this strengthened leadership team, we bring the right balance of industry experience and global perspective to deliver on our shared ambition. I hope you all agree.
Now, for an update of our trading performance in the first quarter of the FY26 financial year, total group sales for the first three months of the new financial year were +7.9% above last year. Break that down by brand. Rip Curl total sales were +6.6% above last year. Kathmandu total sales were +13.9% above last year, and Oboz total sales were -1.3% below last year. Now, Direct-to-Consumer Same-Store Sales results, including online, for the full 14 weeks ended 2 November 2025, were Rip Curl +3% above last year. Kathmandu +14% above last year. The group gross margin result for the first quarter of FY26 is 55.8% of sales.
Now, this is approximately 120 basis points below the first quarter of last year due to, as I mentioned, a continued focus by all brands to clear excess and aged inventory and enhance our balance sheet position, but most importantly, to make way for new season product. I note that the first quarter gross margin result for the group is above the gross margin result achieved in the second half of the last financial year. At the end of October, the group inventory position was NZD 8 million below October last year, continuing to demonstrate our focus on managing working capital. As I spoke to earlier, the NZD 25 million reset of our cost base remains on track. Now, moving to our outlook, the encouraging news is we're seeing some green shoots, as you can see from our sales performance in Q1 of the new financial year.
However, the group's first half results, as you all know, are dependent on the key Black Friday and Christmas Retail Trading periods to come. The forward view of our wholesale order book remains stable and slightly above last year. Thank you for your time. I appreciate your attention today, and I'm now going to hand back to David to conclude the rest of the meeting. Thanks.
Thank you, Brent. That was an excellent and comprehensive review of the reset that Brent is leading, and I hope you will all appreciate how comprehensive that is, including the change in people and a very much sharpened focus on brand and product and a significant cost reduction opportunity which is being executed right now.
We're very grateful for the progress that's been made early and some early encouraging signs from the trading update, but no one's counting their chickens before Black Friday and Christmas. We now move to item three on today's agenda, which are the resolutions. We begin with resolution one, being the election of directors. As noted in the Notice of Meeting, the NZX listing rules require that a director must not hold office without re-election past the third annual meeting following the director's appointment or three years, whichever is longer, and a director appointed by the board must not hold office without re-election past the next annual meeting following the director's appointment. Pursuant to the NZX listing rules, Andrea Martens retires at today's meeting and offers herself for re-election by shareholders. Andrea was appointed to the Board on the 1st of August 2019 and was last re-elected in 2022.
Her details are set out in the Notice of Meeting. I'll invite Andrea to speak to her re-election.
Thank you.
Kia ora, and good morning, shareholders. I'm Andrea Martens, and I'm standing for re-election as a non-executive director. I joined the KMD Brands board in 2019, as David mentioned, and I joined the board because I saw enormous potential in this group: iconic brands, strong customer communities, and the opportunity to build a truly world-class omni-channel outdoor business. That potential remains as strong as ever, and I would be honored to continue contributing to this next phase of growth. I bring more than two decades of senior leadership experience across Unilever, Giliq, and ADMA, leading major transformation programs, managing substantial P&Ls, guiding organizations through complexity, and helping brands grow across global markets. My career has always focused on building customer-led, digitally capable, future-ready businesses.
In my current role as CEO of ADMA, I work closely with more than 600 leading organizations on data, digital capability, privacy reform, AI readiness, and emerging digital standards. This gives me a clear view of how companies are preparing for the future and, importantly, informs the governance lens that I bring into the KMD boardroom. This is particularly important for KMD Brands as we modernize our digital and data foundations and operate in markets where customers' expectations, technology, and regulatory requirements are moving quickly. As David said, FY2025 was a challenging year, but it was also a very, very important year with steps taken to strengthen the group. The board supported the leadership transition and the launch of the Next-Level Transformation Strategy, a strategy which was very much designed to sharpen focus, lift capability, and create greater alignment and agility across our brands and regions.
It is against that backdrop and the areas where I can contribute most directly, particularly around the digital and data transformation oversight, deep expertise in how operations modernize their digital and data ecosystems, which are absolutely essential as we build a more connected, scalable, technology–enabled group. AI privacy and governance expertise, active involvement with the industry and regulators on responsible AI, privacy reform, and digital standards, ensuring that our governance anticipates future requirements and safeguard risks. Transformation leadership at global scale. Having led digital, organizational, and brand transformation across 23 markets and major business resets, I understand what it takes to deliver sustainable change. Strong commercial and customer orientation. Years of managing large portfolios and delivering growth ensures I bring a commercially grounded, customer-focused perspective to the board discussions and strategic decisions. An overall commitment to continual governance improvement.
As a board, we remain focused on strengthening this to ensure alignment with evolving expectations and best practice. With that in mind, I'd like to share why I'm seeking re-election. KMD Brands is at an important inflection point, and we now have a refreshed leadership, a clear transformation agenda, and the foundations of a modern, data-enabled ecosystem that will support long-term value creation. Together with my fellow directors, my role is to help ensure this transformation is governed well with clarity around technology, data, customer insight, capability, and risk. I believe strongly in the strength and purpose of our amazing brands and the community that we serve. I care deeply about this business, and I'm committed to supporting the group as we deliver the Next-Level Strategy. Thank you for your time, and I respectfully ask for your support in my re-election.
Thank you, Andrea. I note that each of the directors other than Andrea recommends the re-election of Andrea Martens as a director. I will now move the following as an ordinary resolution: that Andrea Martens be re-elected as a director of the company. Have we received any questions for discussion on the resolution?
No questions from online.
Thank you. Coralie?
Yes. Coralie van Kempen here. Hold on. This is not personal, Andrea. It is about the cost of bringing in overseas directors to sit on this board. Andrea, you have been here for six years. The transformation has been a long time coming, if indeed you can pull it off. I have to vote against on the basis that you have been there six years. I cannot see that the value of bringing in overseas directors is reflected in any way in the past financials. I have to vote against it.
Thank you. That doesn't need a response, but thanks for your giving us your position. Are there any other questions? If there are no further comments, we'll now proceed. The proxies have been received in respect of this resolution, and are set out on the screen. As noted in the Notice of Meeting, I as Chair intend to vote all undirected proxies in favor of the resolution. Please cast your votes now for resolution one if you have not already done so. Please now select either for, against, or abstain for resolution one on the voting card. Thank you. The second resolution on the agenda today relates to fixing the remuneration of the company's auditor for the 2026 financial year. As noted in the Notice of Meeting, KPMG is the current auditor of the company and has indicated its willingness to continue in office.
I move the following as an ordinary resolution: that the board be authorized to fix the remuneration of the company's auditor for the ensuing year. Have you received any questions for discussion on the motion?
No questions from online.
Thank you. There are no questions from online. Are there any questions from the room? If there are no further comments or questions, we'll now proceed. The proxies have been received in respect of this resolution, and are set out on the screen. As noted in the Notice of Meeting, I as Chair intend to vote all undirected proxies in favor of the resolution. Please cast your votes now for resolution two if you have not already done so. Shareholders should ensure that they have now submitted their votes for the two resolutions set out in the notice of today's meeting. Voting cards will be collected by our registrar, MUFG Pension & Market Services, who will now move through the room to collect your voting cards. For those shareholders voting online, you can now submit your vote. Voting will be open until the close of the meeting.
Once voting is closed, MUFG will tally the votes. The results will be announced to the NZX and ASX once counting has been completed. Thank you. Very good. I would now like to give shareholders an opportunity to ask questions concerning any matters addressed at this meeting or of a more general nature concerning the company. Anybody who now wishes to ask any further questions, please ask your questions using the Ask a Question button if you're online. If we run short of time and are unable to answer your question online today, we will endeavor to respond to you after the meeting. Have we received any questions for discussion, Frances, online?
We've received some questions in advance of the meeting from shareholders. Shall we run through those first?
Yeah, let's do those.
Okay. There is a question asked by Matthew Ashton. Are you considering exiting any of your brands in the short term? If not, why is this not being considered?
The brief answer to that is no. We're not considering exiting any of our brands at the moment, but I'll just ask Brent to speak to the reasons for that.
Yeah, I think there's two key points that we've spoken about publicly prior. One is consumer research tells us the brand health for each of our brands is very strong. So consumers identify with our brands. Our job is to leverage the deep connection that they already have and drive that into more sustainable revenue and profitability growth over time. The second thing that we've said publicly is that I'm sure as a board and also as a management team, we're always looking for opportunities to unlock capital where we believe investments don't provide a competitive advantage, but that does not include brands at this point in time. Rest assured, if there are opportunities to unlock capital, we're considering those as part of our Next-Level Strategy. You should all feel quite content in the fact that consumers continue to covet our brands and identify with our brands.
We need to do a better job of creating iconic product that leverages that brand strength into financial outcomes.
Thank you. We'll take another one from prior, and then we'll come back to the room.
A question also from Matthew Ashton. The return on capital for KMD Brands has suffered considerably since the purchase of Rip Curl six years ago. How do you plan to address this?
I think firstly, it's important to note that there's no direct connection between the decline in the return on capital and the acquisition of Rip Curl. Time has shown that the acquisition price of Rip Curl was appropriate, and indeed, Rip Curl's earnings and return on capital has held up the most strongly of all of our brands through very challenging trading conditions. Those two things are not related. The question asker asks a very pertinent question. What are you doing to increase the return on capital in the business because it has declined? It's declined through very difficult trading conditions. People will be very aware of this because the question asker references six years ago. During that period, of course, we've had COVID shutdowns when most of our stores were closed in most parts of the world for extended periods.
We have had high inflation and high interest rates, which have cramped consumer spending. More recently, we have had global political instability and an absolute moving feast of tariffs, all of them pretty negative one way or another. It has been a very challenging operating environment. The reality is, KMD Brands, like a number of other brands, are consumer discretionary brands. For a long period of expansion and growth in economies around the world, we forgot, and some people forgot, that economies and the world go through economic cycles. Consumer discretionary brands are the most hardest hit during economic cycles by definition. If it is a discretionary purchase, then people can choose to put it off. That is what we have seen.
The good news in that story, though, is that as you go through the cycles of economic ups and downs, as you come out of those, you see rapid increases in consumer discretionary spending. We are not predicting the future, but we do feel as if we are bouncing along the bottom, and our first quarter results have been heartening in this FY2026 year. As I have said before, we are not counting our chickens given the big trading coming up on Black Friday and into the Christmas period. We will take a question from the room now if there are questions in the room.
Thanks. Alex Paul, New Zealand Shareholders Association, proxy holder. Very encouraging that you've reset your strategy. Very encouraging that you've got Brent on board. Very encouraging that Brent's rebuilt the capability in his executive team. So you're all set to go. The one question really I had is the one thing you haven't done is improved your CEO remuneration disclosure. It's not a surprise I'm raising it because all of us talked to you about it. It is one of the worst on the NZX50. I'm just asking when you will look to improve the disclosure around the measures in which the board will assess the performance of Brent and, well, Brent, but obviously his team too. That's my question, and I have an invitation afterwards, but I'll wait for that.
To you, Chair. Fair question. Just make the point we absolutely disclose according to governance requirements. There have developed practices in New Zealand which have led to greater disclosure, but it is not a requirement to do. We are not in breach of any requirement at all. This is a question that has been posed to us a number of times, and we have given an undertaking to other shareholders who have posed it. It is nice to be able to say in this forum as well that we, in our March People and Remuneration Committee, we will be looking comprehensively at our disclosures and moving them more into line with what is typical in the New Zealand market. That is an undertaking we are happy to execute on.
Thank you. My invitation's really actually to you, Chair, which is you've been involved with the board quite a long time now. One of the comments, one of the topics we haven't talked about is board succession. It's an invitation really to whether you wanted to say anything about your own tenure and your own plans.
Yeah. I said this when I was elected last year. This is my last term, and it is a three-year term, and we are one year into it. I will be stepping down from the board within the next, it is difficult to put an absolute date on it, but we can do the maths. It is kind of 18 months, that type of period.
Thank you.
We'll take another one from the room, and then we'll go to one out wherever you would like to go.
I am very pleased with your new store look. I've been encouraging you to do that for about two or three AGMs. That's exactly what I thought you should do, Brent. I like your enthusiasm for it. I hope you keep your enthusiasm. It's the sort of store I would go into and buy from, not the dark heavens that have been of the past. Just one question. I had to skim through the financials this morning quickly before I came. Was there a big loss written down in Oboz?
There was a write.
If so, what was it?
There's a write-down of Oboz delivers a small operating loss, relatively small on the scale of the company, but a write-down in the value of Oboz, which needs to be taken through the P&L. That accounts as a loss in the Oboz accounts, but it's not an operating loss. It's not a trading loss. It's a reduction in the carrying value of the company.
Does that mean you paid too much for it?
It does. In the current conditions, yes. It means that we can't justify the valuation that was being carried out in the books, and that was set by the price we paid at the time. Yes.
Does that apply to Rip Curl as well?
It does not apply to Rip Curl whatsoever. There's lots of headroom there. Okay, we'll take another one from the sent in beforehand.
Yeah, another question submitted prior to the meeting by Matthew Ashton. Macpac is now the most common winter jacket brand, and the asker, I have seen little in strategic thinking when it comes to targeting a recovery in this area in the coming years. What do you mean?
Okay. Firstly, completely 100% wrong. Macpac is not the leading winter jacket brand. In fact, it's not leading in any categories that we are competing. KMD is comfortably the largest insulation, rainwear, anything you like to note. I think Macpac have gained a little bit of market share over the last year. That's largely been done by opening more shops more quickly and also operating at lower gross margins. In other words, discounting their product more, which we don't believe is in the best interest of the long-term health of the brand or of the business to be a discount competitor. We have maintained higher gross margins and less discounting, and that's meant we've given up some short-term market share. You have heard today from Brent a real focus on brand and product and investment in each of our brands.
In this case, we're particularly talking about KMD, and we intend to get any lost market share back, but in the right way through consumer preferences, buying our products at appropriate margins, which are strong margins. As Coralie and others and Brent pointed out, our in-store environment is part of that process, but so is the quality of the newness and the innovation in the product.
Maybe if I can just add one point, David. I mean, just so we're really clear about our ambition for product, our ambition for product is not to be the most common brand. Our ambition for product is to be the most distinctive brand. That's the way that we will continue to drive better outcomes for shareholders through financial performance. When you think about product in the outdoor space, our goal is for KMD to be regarded as separate and distinctive from common brands.
More questions from the room?
Hi, my name is Richard, recent new shareholder, and thanks for your explanation. When I first came to the meeting in this room, I saw one thing is no signs of even introducing your name, your position, title on the table. I also find that the material on the Notice of Meeting, so I tried to look at the photos inside. I did not find a clear sign of, for example, your products of the clothing they are wearing. Is it marketing for which brand? I am not too sure whether there is a general problem of marketing. The second thing I would like to discuss is, can you explain more about the overhead reduction? The third is that because of the difficulty financially for this company, do you find it is necessary to even perform recapitalization in a way similar to natural performance?
Thanks. There's at least three questions buried in there. I'll start with the first one. No, we have no intention of any equity raise or other recapitalization of the company as it's not necessary. That's number one. I'll jump to the first one. I'm not sure if you're a little late coming in, but we introduced all the directors at the beginning. That was the way in which we, yeah, I guess we've all been around a while, and many of the shareholders here are probably familiar with the directors, but we did introduce everyone. In terms of the booklet, that's definitively not a marketing booklet for the products of the company. It's for the Notice of Meeting. The screens, again, before the meeting showed a lot of our product and showcased the brands.
That's how we've dealt with it at the meeting. Thank you. Anything more online prior to meeting, sorry?
We've got a couple of new questions that have come through from online. A question asked by Richard Wilkins. I understand that net debt has gone down, but why has trade payables ballooned from NZD 157 million to NZD 188 million? Seems like we are not paying our debtors.
Okay. That's just a cyclical thing. They go up and down according to months. Sometimes they slip into the next month, and we get a benefit. Other times they're paid before the end of the close. Carla, did you want to add anything to that?
A further question online from Richard Wilkins, which you've just touched on. Can you please advise whether we still have support of our creditors, given the fact that debt and interest is being funded by funds borrowed? If not, will you look at a capital raising or selling off brands to keep the business afloat? Which would you look to first?
Yep. We have absolute support of our banking syndicate. They're great. We're in good shape there. As I said earlier, we have no intention of raising equity capital, and there's no intention or need to sell any brands.
A further question from Richard Wilkins. Has any consideration been given to reducing the size of stores when the lease period of that store comes to an end? They seem to be very large, so it seems an easy way to save money.
Good question. I will pass over to Brent again because this is a big issue for us, and he's executing on it.
Thank you. I guess that's related to KMD, Frances. So I'll make a comment regarding KMD stores. What I would say is we've been through a rigorous portfolio review. That rigorous portfolio review includes every store in the KMD and Rip Curl profile. We've segmented stores from what we would call factory or value stores through to mall and high street stores through to the next generation flagship stores. Each of those stores has been targeted with improved financial performance where it warrants. And we've also been really clear about what we believe the optimum store size is for each of those formats based on yield and return with specific targeted product assortments in each of those channels to drive operational upside and yield from each store.
There is no magic number as it relates to store size overall, but within each part of the store portfolio, our goal is to optimize return. In some cases, you will see, as per Riccarton or in Chatswood, a great expression of the entire KMD brand. In other smaller store formats, you'll see a much more targeted product segmentation relative to the consumer that shops in each of those channels. To try and bring some clarity to that, in years gone by, we've had all the same product in all the same store, regardless of store format. From a consumer standpoint, if you're in Far North Queensland or if you're in the South Island of New Zealand, the assortment should be very different relative to the geographic conditions and the consumer footprint.
You'll see us change the assortment and the store format relative to the geographic and weather conditions of each store to drive optimum performance into the future. That will take a little bit of time, but as each lease comes up in each location for each store in each of our brands, that is the process that we're going through, building into a marketplace vision that's three years forward. What do we believe our brands should look like in each of the key cities, in each of the geographies that we operate in around the world relative to our existing distribution and where we see growth opportunities for consumer shopping and sentiment?
Great. Thank you. Any other questions online prior to?
No further questions online.
Okay. Any in the room? Yep.
Thank you. Yeah, my name is Heidi Cheng, shareholder for KMD for a number of years. I wish I had read the annual report, and this is one of the companies that all the directors have quite a high number of shares in the company, all directors, because some other companies, they do not have all the directors owning the shares. That means that directors have very great faith in the company. So do I, yeah. I have one comment to make is that the company still needs improvement because recently, reading the New Zealand Herald, Macpac got number one customer service. Previously, KMD is always on the top, but now it is overtaken by Macpac. We need to investigate that, why it is dropping not even of the top 10 companies. I think that will improve the performance of the company in the long run.
Yeah.
Thank you. We.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We completely agree. In-store service is very important, and we will investigate that because it is certainly not consistent with my personal, and I do secret shopping quite a bit between the brands, and that is not consistent with what I have seen. I do not think people in KMD are recognizing me when I am doing it, but we will investigate that. Thank you for that. Yep. Thank you.
The reset of management in the company, did that come within or from outside the company?
The reset of?
The new management that is running.
New management. Yep.
Did it come within the company or from outside? Was there redundancies? What cost was that to the company?
Yes, there was redundancies. Mostly it came from outside the organization, but there have certainly been some promotions and rearrangements inside, but it's really new blood. As Brent talked about, Ash Reid, for instance, long career with Nike. Really high-quality people. We've gotten new people join the business. With regard to the redundancies, there would have been redundancy payments, and that has taken through the P&L in the normal way. I don't have it. My finger's just actually what the dollar amount was.
Yeah. I mean, I can tell you the dollar amount. It was announced in our full year results. It's annualized $5 million initially. We also made comments that there were further opportunities to optimize the organization over the course of the balance of the fiscal year.
Any other questions from the room? Thank you. In closing, on behalf of the board, I'd like to thank the management team and in particular our new Group CEO, Brent Scrimshaw. He's had his hands full for the last six months. Thank you all for attending today as well, whether online or here with us in person. We appreciate your continued support and attendance today. I now declare the meeting closed. Join us for a cup of tea. Thanks.