Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Today's Six Month Report for 2019 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. At which time, if you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today on Thursday, the 27th of June 2019. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, CEO Karl-Johan Persson. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm very pleased to welcome you all to this conference call about the H&M Group's second quarter and six-month results for 2019. With me today is our CFO, Jyrki Tervonen, and our Head of Investor Relations, Nils Vinge. You will find the six-month report on hmgroup.com, investor relations. Before we start the Q&A session, I will give a brief comment about the quarter and current developments. Our transformation work continues at a fast pace, we can see clearly that we are moving in the right direction. We have continued the positive development of more full price sales, decreased markdowns, we increased market shares. This shows above all that customers appreciate the improvements we're making in the assortment and the overall customer experience. The third quarter has also started well. Our summer collections so far have been very well received.
We estimate that the sales in June will grow 12% in local currencies compared to June last year. We expect cost of markdowns in relation to sales will be lower also in the third quarter by approximately 1.5 percentage units compared with the corresponding quarter last year. This will be the fourth consecutive quarter with decreased markdowns. In the second quarter, sales developed well in most of our markets. Growth was strongest in markets such as the U.S., where we grew with 17%, Mexico 25%, India 39%, Russia 19%, and Poland 11% in local currencies, to mention a few. We also took market share in most markets, including in the U.K. and Sweden, where we grew despite challenging market conditions. Net sales for the group increased by 11% in Swedish kroner in the second quarter and 6% in local currencies.
Our strong online growth continued with online sales increasing at 27% in Swedish kroner and 20% in local currencies. Looking at our industry, fashion retail is going through a major shift, as you all know, with competition growing increasingly intense. New players are entering the scene. Many competitors are improving, while others are having a tough time leading to increased price and markdown activity in many markets. We also see a big shift in customer behavior, customer expectations are moving constantly higher. To meet this shift, we have made substantial investments, we are transforming large parts of our operations. We see that this is having an effect already. As customer satisfaction and sales have increased, the transformation work has been further intensified. In addition to investments in the customer offering, we have, among other things, made large investments in our tech infrastructure, AI, and logistics.
These initiatives involve costs that are dampening profitability in the short term, but they will benefit the company greatly in the long term. As we continue our transformation, we are driving change through a number of focus areas, and these areas are: to create the best customer offering for all our brands. This includes the assortment, it includes the store experience, physical stores, online experience as well, and to integrate the physical stores with online channels. We also want to make sure that we have a fast, efficient, and flexible product flow, which among other things, includes investments in the supply chain and building an AI model that is addressing the entire flow, from trend detection, to quantification, to allocation, and to price optimization.
We also want to make sure that we secure a stable and scalable infrastructure, our tech foundation, and then we want to add growth, as well, by expanding through our physical stores, the online stores, and through external digital marketplaces. As we are accelerating our adaption to customers' changing behavior, we lowered the number of new stores net to 130 for this year in favor of more digital investments. Looking ahead, we see this rapid change of fashion retail continuing, we are moving ahead at full speed with our transformation work. Many challenges and hard work remain, but we see that we are definitely on the right track. While costs have affected profitability short-term, we are convinced that our initiatives and strong customer focus will contribute to gradually improved profitability and to a positive long-term development for the H&M Group.
Thank you, now we are happy to take your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel that request, please press the hash key. Once again, that's star one to ask a question. Your first question comes from the line of Charlie Muir-Sands at Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one relates to operating costs. You talk about them being managed tightly but obviously incurring some costs around the transformation. I wondered at what point we might anticipate expecting to see local currency cost growth begin to moderate, notwithstanding your strong sales momentum. The second question relates to that current trading. Clearly, one month is a relatively short period of time, and we don't know how you traded through the quarter last year, and I guess you're trying to take less stock into the end-of-season sale in August. I wondered how we should think about that 12% in light of how the rest of the year might develop. My third question relates to CapEx guidance. Does the SEK 10.5 billion-SEK 11 billion constant currency guidance stand in light of your change of store and digital prioritization?
Thank you.
Okay. Thanks. Let's start with the CapEx guidance with the last question you had. We will remain the guidance that we had said before, SEK 10.5 billion-SEK 11 billion for the full year. The reason is, even though we are decreasing the opening of stores, we have shifted over the investments to the digital part of our business, so the guidance remains SEK 10.5 billion-SEK 11 billion. OpEx, we have a good cost control within the company in our operations. As mentioned also in the report, we are having a lot of activities. We are investing a lot. Of course, that will also be reflected in the OpEx growth. The SG&A growth rate in local currencies was approximately 7 percentage unit in Q2. I think it was the same in Q1. We believe that it will gradually become better. Exactly when, it's hard to say.
For sure, all these investments we are doing, they will pay off in the long term. The SG&A can fluctuate from quarter to quarter, but gradually, we believe they will improve. Exactly how and when, that's a little bit difficult to say.
Yeah. Of course, it depends on the second question as well, what the selling will be. Some costs are fixed and some are variable. If we continue to sell well, cost in relation to sales will improve. We had a good start to the second half of the year, but it's one month, and it's very important to remember as well, in the second quarter, in some big markets for us, market conditions were not favorable, connected to external factors. In June, it has been favorable in those big markets. We're getting help there in June. We didn't get help in the second quarter. The underlying performance, I believe, is better this year compared to last year. Then we'll see how much better and how the coming collections will be received by customers. We're positive that we are on the right track.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Adam Cochrane at Citi. As a reminder, please restrict this to one question.
Good afternoon, guys.
Good afternoon.
Well, one question. Let's make it a good one. Thinking about the reduction in new stores, what exactly is it that you saw that changed your view during the period of the second quarter that maybe you haven't seen in the last or the prior 12 months, both in terms of increased closures and in terms of lower number of new store openings? Is there any geographic trend within that you could try and shed some light on, please?
Yeah. First of all, I think it's important to point out that we still believe in physical stores, and we have that opportunity to expand. There will always be physical stores around, and the stores we open, there are good financial business cases connected to that, obviously. We have adjusted. The adjustment is a combination of fewer openings and also slightly more closures. We have decided in certain markets to hold back with new openings. We believe that in certain markets, rents are higher than they should be. It's being a bit tougher in negotiations or just not accepting certain levels that we are seeing. That's one reason. Another reason is that we are allocating more resources towards some of the digital initiatives that we have that we believe are really important and where we see good results.
In terms of the digital initiatives, are you happy with the online performance that you saw in the second quarter, and would you be able to talk about how you're evolving the H&M Club offer, both in terms of what the consumer gets and in terms of how many countries that you're now in, please?
We list some initiatives that we have. We have a lot of initiatives going on connected to the digital part, so to say. It's a good growth. I mean, 20% in local currencies, 27% in Swedish kroner. We were expecting a little bit more, but it's also been compared to June, where we had positive external factors that are unfavorable in many big markets for us during the second quarter. Considering that good growth. We see a lot of improvement opportunities in improving the digital stores for all our brands, connected to product presentation, navigation, site speed, deliveries, payment options, logistical investments that we're doing. A lot of important areas that we need to invest in and where we are just allocating more resources to improve further.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, please ensure that you are asking one question at a time. Your next question comes from the line of Atiyyah Vawda at Avior Capital Markets . Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question specifically relating to the operating profit in the Europe and Africa reporting segment. Can you maybe just explain what caused the decline there? If possible, can you maybe give us some color on how South Africa's profitability and revenue has progressed over the last six months?
Yeah. I think you're referring to the segment reporting in the report. Just to start, it doesn't reflect the underlying profit levels, because it should more or less on a yearly basis reflect, as should our subsidiaries, not be related costs. This is based on OECD transfer pricing and the OECD model for transfer pricing. This is based on a marked-up model and based on a budget per country. It could be different timing issues if we are not meeting the budget. There will be sometimes timing difference. It doesn't reflect the underlying profitability per segment. This is purely based on transfer pricing OECD models.
Specifically about the sales development in South Africa, we're happy with the development, and we see double-digit growth in South Africa.
Okay. In terms of profitability, can you maybe give us some color there?
We don't want to go into details. With that growth, we've had a good development as well.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Simon Irwin at Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon, everyone. Could I just ask about your confidence that you're going to see full year EBIT in positive territory year-on-year, if you're still confident that that can be achieved, and if so, what some of the metrics around, particularly around cost growth in the second half will get you there?
Yeah. Still almost six months to go. Good start to the second half. We aim for it, and we have a good chance of delivering on that. As we all know, the market is very uncertain. A lot of factors can influence that, but we have a good chance of achieving that, yes.
Okay. In terms of inventory, obviously, I note the lower markdown and your comments about the composition of it continuing to improve, but it still keeps going up in absolute terms. In terms of day sales, et cetera, we're still near record levels. Is there a stage when you will be able to naturally trade that inventory down?
Yeah, I think we will see. We're still not happy with the levels. It's higher than what we want it to be, but the composition has improved for the last three quarters. This quarter, the inventory levels increased less than sales. The composition is better. Markdowns is down. It will be down by quite a bit for our estimate for this third quarter as well. We will see gradual improvements connected to better collections and to many of the investments that we're making in connection to the transformation work. Yeah, it's heading in the right direction.
Okay. You've given us obviously some steer on markdown for 3Q.
Yeah.
Could you also give us a steer on the impact of price and FX in terms of your bought-in margin for the period?
Yeah. If you look at the external factors, especially the strong US dollar, it had a big negative effect on purchases we made for the second quarter. Will still be negative for the third quarter, roughly at the same level. Of course, as we all know, there are other factors influencing the gross margin. The external factors that we normally comment on will be negative and at the same level. As things stand now, it will be negative also for the fourth quarter, but not by as much as for the third quarter.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Olivia Townsend at UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good afternoon, everybody. It's actually Andy here. I've got a question on your percentage of sales at full price. I know apparel retailers don't like generally giving this number out because it's a very sensitive figure. In the past, some of your competitors, when they feel that they're at a low point, in terms of performance, they suddenly become very happy to give us a number. Can you shed any light on what percentage of garments you do sell at full price? If you can't do that, perhaps how far you are from your best year?
Sorry, we have to be a bit boring, and we won't go into those details. Well, we are improving. We've seen improvements in markdowns, more full price sales for several quarters, and we are confident that that will continue in the third quarter as well. There's still potential, to improve further. Although we're just moving in the right direction, big improvement year-over-year, we still think there's room for more.
All right. Obviously you're talking about with your Q3 guidance, that will be the fourth quarter of markdown-
Yep
reduction. You don't think that's a problem in terms of markdown improvement for the next one to two years?
No. There's still a lot of uncertainty. It depends on so many things. We have initiatives in place and big potential to see further improvements, not just for the third and fourth quarter.
All right. That big potential, I say is just looking at where you are now compared to even the average over the last 10 years, you'd say there is still quite a big gap?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
There's a big gap. There's big potential, not only to historic levels. A lot connected to the investments that we have made in our logistical systems, improved buying methods, investments in AI, in strong collections. Many different things that I believe will lead to more full price sales and lower markdowns.
Okay, excellent. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Anne Critchlow at Société Générale . Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hello, thanks for taking my question. I think you started the investment in the customer offering in the second half last year in the third quarter, then it accelerated a bit. What I'm trying to get at here is should we expect less of an impact on the gross margin from this as we go from here into the third quarter and beyond? Are you putting in just as much effort again on this on top of what you've done already?
It's our business idea. It's very important for all our brands to have the best offering, to constantly improve. We have seen in the past, being on the same level in this tough competitive environment, it doesn't work. We constantly have to improve, we have to give back to customers, we want to be better than the competition. We have to monitor what happens in the markets as well. In the third quarter, we will continue to invest, not as much year on year as during the second quarter.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Eley at Financial Times. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hello. I was just wondering if you could tell me a bit about your loyalty scheme and how you plan to use that to sort of improve things like return rates and logistics costs. I was staggered by the number of members you have in that, 43 million.
Yeah. We're happy with the Club or the loyalty scheme, and we're happy that members like it. Many want to join. That's great. In the short term, it will cost a bit more. In the long term, we believe it's good as we get a closer relationship with the customers, get to learn more and understand them better, so we can become even more relevant for them. Hopefully in doing that, we can improve the selling as well and through lower returns and markdowns and many other things. It's an important part that we are investing a lot in.
Okay. Are you planning any more changes to the terms? I think there've been some recently that try to sort of steer customer behavior in the way you'd like it to go.
Yeah. It's something that we're constantly testing, and again, it's part of the total customer offering, so we're monitoring what competitors are doing as well. We'll see how we act.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Georgina Johanan at JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is now open
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Perhaps just to help us understand how we might see the operating leverage develop in the third quarter. Presumably, the strong like-for-like trading in the current trading that you've called out was across both stores and online. I'd just be interested to know if that was quite consistent across both and the stores were back in clear like-for-like positive territory, please.
Yeah, the selling has been Was the question in June? Sorry.
In June, yes.
Yeah. Yes, it has been strong in many markets and in stores and online. Again, it's important to remember it's only one month. It's good, absolutely.
Perhaps just following on from that, if it's okay, just to understand sort of the cadence of the comparatives in the quarter. For example, was it a very easy comp on June last year and getting more difficult, or was it broadly evenly spread?
Quite evenly spread.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Rebecca McClellan at Santander. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good afternoon. Just one question, please. Can you in any way quantify what the benefit to constant currency sales growth or like for like you're seeing, thanks to increased full price sales?
Sorry, can you say, I couldn't hear you that well. Can you say again?
The impact of improved full price sales within the mix, what benefit that could be having on your constant currency sales growth or like for like?
It's difficult to back that out exactly. Of course, with improved full price selling and less markdowns, it helps with net sales and the profitability, but it will give you the reduction in markdowns. That's at least something in the equation.
Right. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Richard Chamberlain at RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. I've got a couple of questions, please. The first one is just in the statement, you talk about the new online platform and logistics systems have not yet achieved full efficiency. I wondered if you can just say when you expect that full efficiency to come through. That's the first one.
Yeah. It varies a bit from market to market. It will be a gradual improvement throughout the year. Sometime next year, I think we will be at levels where we want to be, if you take all of those latest changes.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. The other one was just on the, you obviously showed a very strong sales performance in June. I wondered, well, A, how much that was helped by the H&M Club rollout to the U.S., Canada, and Russia in May. Also, were there any significant calendar effects affecting the sales performance in June? Things like timing of public holidays, Christian holidays in Europe and so on.
No. If we look at June, it has nothing to do with the membership launch. I think the membership is good for the company in the long run. It has nothing to do with that, nor calendar effects. I don't think there's a positive calendar effect connected to June. What I could say is that market conditions, especially weather, has been more favorable in big markets for us in June. That was the opposite in quarter two, where especially in Northern Europe, summer came earlier last year and later this year. There we had the negative effect in Spain and some other markets in Southern Europe. It was positive in the second quarter. We have to look at it over a longer time period. Positive for us weather-wise in June, a bit negative in quarter two, but underlying performance is better.
Sure. Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. You do have a further question, apologies, from the line of Charlie Muir-Sands . Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. I have actually two, but I'll ask them one at a time. The first one relates to your plans to offer pay later against invoice. I just want to clarify, are you using your own balance sheet to offer that to customers?
No, it's done together with Klarna.
A partnership.
A partnership.
Great. Thank you. The other one relates to the rollout of RFID. I wondered if you could talk about the progress in the deployment and whether there are actually any customer-facing features which utilize that capability yet.
Yeah, the rollout is going well. We are increasing the amount of stores with RFID, and it's going ahead of plan. That's just the first version. Then, of course, we can use RFID in other areas of the business as well, but that's in the business development phase. Today, we have 15 markets. More markets will be added, and more stores will be added, and it's going according to plan.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are currently no further questions on the line.
Okay. Thank you all very much for participating in this conference call, and we wish you all a good day and a great summer. Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.
Thank you.