At this time, I'd like
to turn the call over to Ms. Pam Quintiliano. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to our Q4 2020 earnings call. Joining me today on the call are Fran Horowitz, Chief Executive Officer and Scott Lipesky, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued our 4th quarter earnings release, which is available on our website at corporate. Agrocrumby.com under the Investors section.
Also available on our website is an investor presentation. Please keep in mind that any forward looking statements made on the call are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations and assumptions we mention today. A detailed discussion of these factors and uncertainties is contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, we will be referring to certain non GAAP financial measures during the call.
Additional details and a reconciliation of GAAP to adjusted non GAAP financial measures are included in the release issued earlier this morning. With that, I will turn the call over to Fran. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 earnings call. I hope you, your families and your loved ones are safe and healthy. Looking back on 2020, I am proud of our accomplishments and the positive change we drove.
Despite the difficult operating environment, we grew digital penetration to 54% of revenue from 33% last year, removed 1,100,000 gross square feet or 17% from our global base, expanded our gross profit rate by 110 basis points and fortified our balance sheet to end the year with $1,300,000,000 of liquidity. Today, I can confidently say that we are closer to our customer and stronger, faster and smarter than ever before. Importantly, our brand positioning, product execution and financial strength have enabled us to enter 2021 on the offense. Before turning to Q4 results, I want to take a moment to thank our global store, distribution center and home office associates, as well as our partners for their unprecedented level of creativity and resiliency. There is no other group I would rather be on on this journey with.
Now on to the Q4. The results exceeded our internal expectations. Total company revenues declined 5%. This was at the high end of our upwardly revised plan for VIBISE in January for a 5% to 7% decline and reflected a solid finish to the quarter. Results were driven by digital, which grew 34% to $639,000,000 or 57% of sales.
We continue to realize significant year over year improvement in traffic to our websites and apps and delivered our highest ever quarterly digital sales and best digital gross margin rate in 8 years. Digital strength was offset by ongoing weakness in stores. We ended the quarter with 88% of our global base open as multiple countries across EMEA reentered lockdowns, including our largest international market, the U. K. This compared to 97% open at the end of Q3.
Among our open stores, we continue to experience reduced hours and capacity restrictions. Across channels, our customer response to product newness and messaging. We realized higher year over year AUR for the 3rd consecutive quarter driven by on trend product, lean inventories and lower promotional intensity, including over the Black Friday period and into the Christmas peak. We continue to utilize our agile supply chain by as close as possible, ending the quarter with inventories down 7% on our 5% revenue decline. These factors all contributed to gross profit rate expansion of 230 basis points.
Overall, we were very pleased with 4th quarter performance, especially in light of continued disruptions across stores, factories and our transportation network. While the holiday season was uniquely challenging, I am proud how we navigated. Listening to our customer has been paramount to our success. Today, all 4 brands have clearly defined edit points and our product voice experience are more aligned than ever before. Our new and existing customers have been responding with our average transaction value up year over year, reflecting dramatic digital growth, we estimate that new to file customers in the channel grew over 35%.
Turning to brand performance. We continue to be pleased with the results of Hollister, which achieved another quarter of double digit digital expansion. This is offset by ongoing store challenges. The Hollister more impacted than our other brands given its larger global surveys, including over 110 locations in EMEA and its lower digital penetration. Despite these challenges, how does we realize improvements in average transaction value?
Our focus on assortment architecture, high margin must haves and our top 30 items continue to pay off, allowing us to pull back on promotions and expand our gross profit rate. For girls, fleece tops and hip bottoms were standout. Our guide also responded well to soft and cozy offering with strength in sweatshirt and sweatpants. At Gilly Hicks, we had another impressive quarter of double digit sales growth and more than 100% digital growth year over year. Customers responded well to updated assortments, including turkey tops, bottoms and our loungelift matchbacks.
Our active collection Dilly Go also continue to resonate and as we shared last quarter, we have dedicated additional resources to the important global growth vehicle. Throughout the Q4, we continued our productive partnership with social media stores, Charlie and Dixie Vermillion, integrating sisters across our How For Marketing campaign, including their own gift guide, which drove incremental sales. We also launched 2 new co created products and offered Charlie's new book online, which generated buzz and quickly sold out. During the Q4 alone, Charlie and Dixie's 36 social posts for Hollister resulted in over 200,000,000 impressions and views. Post holiday, we had a third collaboration.
We are thrilled with our ongoing relationship, which has yielded quantifiable positive results and is bringing a new audience to Hollister. Looking ahead, we are excited to find new ways to expand our relationships with Charlie and Vicky. At A&F Adults, which caters to a young millennial, we reduced our promotions leading to grow. Results benefited from double digit digital sales growth, but we achieved record volumes in over 2 thirds of our categories. In addition, we also experienced sequential improvement in store sales.
Glutenants continued to outperform as our team constantly pushed boundaries and set trends with each new delivery. While both categories registered sales improvements over last year, knits, sweaters, outerwear and jeans led the way with our customers finding well to elevated fashion content. Across genders, our Soft AF and 90% hours collections continue to resonate and gain traction. As we look ahead, it's the opportunity to build on both franchises. At Epikodie Kids, we experienced continued double digit digital growth and increased interest in soft and cozy fabrics like Sherpa, color sleeves and faux fur.
Capitalized on the trend, we introduced our So Soft collection for the holiday. We also introduced Abercrombie and Samus collection featuring matching outfits for the whole family, including sweatshirt and band tees. Turning to marketing, adults and kids focused on expanding our Abercrombie family, establishing ourselves as an industry leader with best in class social selling and continuing to lean into our purpose and value. At AMS, we successfully doubled down in social selling, which accelerated and was a positive contributor to the quarter. Our vast influencer and affiliate network proved to be extremely powerful with our AMS Women's High Rise SuperSkinny named the number one teen in 20 20 across the Like TO Know It app, which is one of the most popular social shopping apps in the world.
In fact, I'm pleased to announce that later this month, AMS will be receiving the 1st ever Influencer Marketers of the Year award by RewardStyle and Like TO Know It. Congrats to the team. Q4 also proved an opportunity to expand Abercrombie's purpose and value. Following the recent launch of the Abercrombie Equity Project, the brand's social and racial justice initiative, we announced our partnership with the Seed Fund, the nation's leading non profit organization specifically devoted to the mental health and emotional well-being of young people in color. Recently, Hollister and A and F offered their first ever Black Concerts Month collection, which were co designed with our associates and affiliates and modeled by members of our BIPOC and Allied Associate Resource Group, with the net proceeds donated to our philanthropic partners at the Academy Group, The Steve Fund and A Conscious Kid.
Today, we are celebrating the 2nd annual World Teen Mental Wellness Day, a global event that Hollister created in partnership with the National Day Calendar to disrupt the stigma surrounding teen mental health. In support, Charlie and Dixie will be the prize and type for virtual top up mental health discussion. This is a great example of the community that we are fostering and how we are listening closely to our customers while living by our values. We also remain committed to our environmental and social sustainability efforts and have made many advances this year as we work towards our longer term goals. We provide training to our 3rd party factory workers in Cambodia, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh on a variety of topics, including life skills, anti human trafficking and health and safety management and confirmed 100% commitment of our 3rd party Tier 1 Cambodia factories into the PACE program.
Recently, we also executed a 100 percent renewable electricity contract for our Ohio corporate office in BC to begin in 2023 that will support our goal of reducing total Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2,030. As it relates to our product, we adopted PECO WASH for majority of our genes and continue to partner with the better cotton initiative. We are excited by our progress, but recognize that there is much work left to do. We will continue to support the communities we serve as we work to create a future we can all be confident about. In addition to our focus on corporate and social responsibility, we've also been hard at work on our transformation initiative.
Global sort network optimization has and continues to be a top priority. Since I joined the company in 2015, we've introduced new productive prototypes across brands while proactively removing 2,000,000 underproductive gross square feet or roughly 28% of our total company square footage. As we remain in our path to strategically refine our global footprint, we've increased our digital penetration from 24% in 2015 to 54% of net sales in fiscal 2020. The majority of store closures have been in A and F where the customer over indexes to digital and our legacy flagship and moth fleet is older, larger and more expensive than that of Hollister. In fiscal 2020, we took out 1,100,000 gross square feet or 17% of the base, reflecting the closure of 137 locations.
We sold 100 and 29 non flagship stores, removing roughly 850,000 gross square feet. This included 73 A and F stores or approximately 25% of its space and 56 college resorts for 10% of its space. The closed AMF locations averaged 8,300 gross square feet or close to double our preferred prototype of 4,500 close square feet. We also closed 8 AMF flagships, including the 7 discussed on our Q3 call and one additional Dublin, Ireland ahead of its natural lease expiration this month. As we move into 2021, our principles have not changed.
Aligning store footage with digital penetration is the most important lever to maintain and improve profitability as we continue to transform from a store led to a digitally led business model. And while the role of the store continues to evolve, our commitment to our customer is resolute. They've made it very clear, they want us to have a physical presence, but that experience needs to be seamless with our digital platform, user friendly and efficient. Reflecting our ongoing journey as well as the broader evolution of the retail landscape, we purposely keep our lease terms flexible, with 50% of our lease up for renewal on a rolling 2 year basis. This gives us the ongoing ability to refine our base by exiting, relocating or rightsizing legacy larger format flagship and mall based locations, while continuing to find the right spaces to provide our customers with exciting and authenticate on brand new omni channel experiences.
With our financial strength and digital penetration, we remain disciplined with our approach and look forward to working with our global landlord partners to find spaces that are at the right size, right location and right economics. Hand in hand with our store optimization strategy is our digital and omni transformation initiative. We've got the plan in place to continue to invest in digital and omni capabilities and enhancements to create best in class customer experiences while growing profitability across channels. Turning to our supply chain initiatives. As COVID reshaped customer behaviors, we flexed our model to fulfill elevated digital demand and utilize data and analytics to offer the right products at the right time and the right price.
In '21, we will continue on that path as we reposition our West Coast distribution center to a larger, more automated facility that will increase capacity and improve speed to customers. Last but certainly not least, regarding brand positioning and customer engagement, we are leveraging data, including our loyalty programs to engage customers across channels and drive more efficient and effective marketing spend. We also have made key investments in senior talent, including building our user experience and data and analytics. Before I turn it over to Scott, I'll summarize our mindset as we head into 2021. Building on momentum from recent results, we are pleased with our start to the Q1 and are optimistic about the long term global growth opportunity we see across all 4 brands, including significant runway domestically and in EMEA and APAC, where we are realizing an increasing impact from our growing regional team.
Here on the offense, as we work towards recapturing sales loss due to COVID-nineteen, while we continue to operate in uncertain environments, we will focus on what we can control. Specifically, we are planning to accelerate digital data and technology investments to increase agility and improve the customer experience, strategically invest in marketing momentum across brands and geographies, continue to focus resources on Gilly Hicks growth, optimize global store footage and the opportunistic and domestic and international store expansion and build on our important CSR work with our associates, partners and other stock leaders. Following a surreal 2020, I am excited for our future and more confident than ever that we are on the right path to deliver profitable growth in 2021 and beyond. And with that, I will turn it over to Scott.
I'd like to first reiterate Fran's thanks to our global teams and better partners for their hard work in 2020 to help make ANF an even stronger company for the future. Turning to our results, I'll start by covering Q4 and full year 2020 and finish with thoughts on 2021. For Q4, we delivered net sales of $1,100,000,000 down 5% to last year. As expected, this year's pattern was different than the past with the peaks lower and the troughs shallower. Net sales declined 8% for Hollister, which includes Gilly Hicks and 2% for Abercrombie, which includes kids.
By region, net sales declined 3% in the U. S, 8% in EMEA and 23% in our smallest region, APAC. In the U. S, store traffic declines were consistent with Q3 levels, while it may have worsened due to renewed lockdowns. Globally, soft store traffic was partially offset by ongoing year over year improvements in conversion and average transaction value and 34% digital sales growth.
Looking specifically at reopened store performance, 4th quarter global store productivity was roughly 75% of prior year levels. By region, reopened store productivity was 75% in the U. S. And 70% in EMEA and APAC. As of yesterday, all stores were opened in the U.
S. And APAC, while roughly onethree of our stores were opened in EMEA. We continue to be encouraged by the impact of our growing on the ground teams in both EMEA and APAC, which are focused on localizing our product and messaging. As we continue to get closer to our customer, we are offering region specific assortments such as our Lunar New Year collection in APAC, which was very well received. Moving on to gross profits.
Our rate of 60.5 percent was up 230 basis points to last year. Results were driven by higher AUR with promotions below last year across brands and slightly lower ADC. Turning to inventory, we are comfortable with our positioning having entered Q1 with inventories current and down 7% to last year. Since the onset of COVID, we have transformed our inventory management mindset, which is something we will carry into the future. With the ongoing disruption across the transportation network, we will continue to pivot and react to ensure we are delivering newness in a timely manner.
I'll now cover the rest of our Q4 results on an adjusted non GAAP basis. Excluded from our non GAAP results this quarter are $16,000,000 of pretax asset impairment charges principally attributable to COVID. These charges adversely impacted results by $0.23 Last year, we excluded $2,000,000 of pretax asset impairment charges related to certain flagships, which adversely impacted results by $0.01 Operating expense, excluding other operating income, was $551,000,000 versus $566,000,000 last year and deleveraged 140 basis points. Stores and distribution expense decreased on a dollar and rate basis, driven by a decline in store payroll and store occupancy, including the recognition of executed COVID related rent abatements and partially offset by increased shipping and fulfillment expense on elevated shipping costs and higher digital sales. Marketing, general and administrative expenses rose on a dollar and rate basis, primarily driven by increased performance based compensation, partially offset by lower non customer facing controllable expenses and in store marketing costs.
As always, we remain focused on tightly managing expenses. We made good progress in our cost base in 2020, putting us in a position to fund key customer facing areas in 2021. Operating income was $131,000,000 compared to $125,000,000 last year and included a $15,000,000 benefit from FX. The effective tax rate was approximately 18%. Net income per diluted share on an adjusted non GAAP basis was $1.50 compared to $1.31 last year or $1.48 on a constant currency basis.
Turning to fiscal 2020 results, the full year excluded approximately $73,000,000 of pre tax asset impairment charges principally attributable to COVID. These charges adversely impacted results by $1.10 Last year, we excluded $13,000,000 of pretax asset impairment charges related to certain flagships, which adversely impacted results by $0.13 Net sales were $3,100,000,000 down 14 percent in 2019 with Hollister declining 15% and Abercrombie declining 12%. By region, net sales declined 12% in U. S, 14% in EMEA and 33% in APAC. Global store traffic was below last year impacting volumes and was partially offset by ongoing digital sales growth.
Digital sales grew 39% to a record $1,700,000,000 or 54% of annual revenues versus 33% last year. Gross profit rate was 60.5%, up 110 basis points from last year on higher AUR and relatively flat AUC. Operating expense, excluding other operating income, was $1,800,000,000 compared to $2,100,000,000 last year. Although expenses were down on a dollar basis, operating leverage declined 190 basis points due to the reduction in net sales. Stores and distribution expense decreased on a dollar basis driven by the same factors I described for Q4.
This year's results also included a $12,000,000 benefit related to the exit of certain flagship stores compared to a $47,000,000 charge last year primarily related to the exit of our Hollister Soho flagship. Marketing, general and administrative expenses decreased slightly on a dollar basis with lower non customer facing controllable expenses and in store marketing costs partially offset by increased performance based compensation. Operating income was $52,000,000 down from $83,000,000 last year and included a $20,000,000 benefit from FX. Due to COVID, the effective tax rate for the year was adversely impacted by the establishment of additional valuation allowances and other tax charges. These tax impacts adversely impacted EPS by $1.61 Net loss per diluted share was $0.73 compared to net income per diluted share of $0.73 last year and included a $0.29 benefit from FX.
We exited the year of strong financial position with cash and cash equivalents of $1,100,000,000 and total liquidity of approximately $1,300,000,000 For the year, we had capital expenditures of 102,000,000 dollars with $57,000,000 attributable to stores and the remainder from digital technology and maintenance needs. On the store fleet, we closed 137 locations in fiscal 2020, including 8 flagships and 129 non flagships, reducing gross square footage by approximately 1,100,000 square feet or 17%. Of that amount, approximately $240,000 related to flagships and $850,000 related to non flagships. As we transform to a digitally led business model, it is more important than ever that our stores are the right size and have the right economics to support profitable growth into the future. The majority of the stores closed this year were significantly oversized compared to our current prototypes.
It was time to close and look to reposition into smaller spaces in certain markets to support the omnichannel experience. Regarding flagships, we entered fiscal 2020 with 15 and are exiting with 7. Brussels, Madrid and Fukuoka closed in natural lease expirations. London, Paris, Munich and Dusseldorf closed as a result of early exits discussed last quarter. The last store in Dublin has been closed due to renewed COVID restrictions and will not reopen ahead of its lease expiration in March 2021.
We remain committed to these markets and have opened or are currently looking for locations that better align with where our customers shop. Please refer to our investor presentation for further details related to the flagships. Looking ahead, we have roughly 2 80 locations up for renewal in 2021. We will continue to be thoughtful with our approach to the fleets and continue to see more opportunity to close and rightsize our U. S.
Abercrombie fleet. We remain committed to stores as they are a critical part of the omnichannel experience. We plan to build on the 25 new global experiences we delivered in fiscal 2020, which included 15 new stores, 4 remodels and 6 rightsizes. As of the end of 2020, approximately half of our global fleet is in a modern format with a higher percentage of Hollister stores, which introduced its updated prototypes earlier. I'll finish up with how we are approaching 2021.
Reflecting ongoing global uncertainty, we will continue to conservatively manage inventories, optimize our DC capacity for digital demand, position the business for chase and tightly manage expenses. We will also put some of the savings realized in 2020 back to work in customer facing areas. For the year, we are planning to make progress recouping COVID driven sales losses. Although there was too much uncertainty regarding ongoing store operating restrictions, the consumer recovery and supply chain constraints to provide an outlook today. For gross profit rate, we will continue to manage inventory tightly with a goal of maintaining and potentially building on 2020 progress.
For OpEx, we expect to see incremental occupancy savings on top of levels reported in 2020, reflecting the aforementioned store closures and rent negotiations. We also expect to see offsets as certain expenses come back as we lap COVID related closures and target the acceleration of marketing, digital and data investments. Regarding capital allocation, we expect to carry cash and liquidity above minimum levels in the first half as we manage through continued store closures and restrictions. That said, we are committed to putting cash to work. As always, we will prioritize investments in the business, including capital and OpEx investments.
CapEx is currently signed at approximately $100,000,000 for the year, with around half of that related to digital and technology. We will continue to evaluate other growth opportunities, including launching new brands and or acquiring brands to expand our portfolio. We will continue to look at ways to delever the balance sheet by paying debt down in fee economics work. We've increased our share repurchase authorization to a total of 10,000,000 shares from the previous authorization of 3,200,000 shares. Our dividend remains suspended.
Therefore, we will focus on share repurchases, pending market conditions, share price and our ability to accelerate investments in the business. For the Q1, we are planning as follows. Net sales will be up 30% to 40% to Q1 2020 sales of $485,000,000 We currently do not expect an increase in government mandated store closures from today's levels, and we do not have clarity on when certain countries may reopen in Europe. Gross profit to be up at least 500 basis points from 54.4% last year. As we lap 2020 COVID related inventory impacts, we are cautiously optimistic in our ability to drive AUR improvements through lower promotion and clearance activity and to realize potential FX benefits.
Operating expense, excluding other operating income, is planned up in the low single digits to last year's adjusted non GAAP level of $430,000,000 reflecting lower occupancy, offset by the return of certain 2020 COVID related savings, higher fulfillment costs and higher marketing and digital project spend. With that, operator, we are ready for questions.
Thank you, We'll take our first caller, Dana Telsey with the Telsey Advisory Group. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. And certainly nice to see the progress that's been made. As you think about 2021, Scott, how much of the savings that you had in 2020 comes back into the fold as you grow? And then you mentioned that you would look at acquisitions or other brands. What are you looking for that would enhance the portfolio?
And just lastly, on port congestion, what are you seeing and how you're planning inventories going forward? Thank you.
Okay. Let's go.
All right.
On the first question, so 2021, how much savings? We made great progress on the cost base. We started talking about this in Q1 when COVID hits. We really took a different lens as we looked at every expense in the company and made great progress, made significant progress on store occupancy and that's one where we'll make some additional progress as we go into 2020. But there will be expenses that come back.
Look, we had furloughs in our stores and we went through the store closures. Hopefully, that will come back as we reopen and hopefully all of our stores are open this year. So we'll see that come back. And then we'll continue to see ongoing fulfillment expense as we continue to see nice digital nice strong digital business. But then we're going to make some strategic investments.
We're going to continue to increase our marketing spend as we go through the year. We love what our teams are doing from a marketing perspective. The product is right. They're connecting that message to products better than we ever have. So we're going to make investments there.
And then the last piece is we'll continue to invest in digital and data. As you can imagine, we have great opportunities there long term. Okay. I will pivot the acquisition of other brands. Yes, this is one opportunity that we have.
When you take a step back and look at the financial position that we've come into the year with, dollars 1,100,000,000 in cash, dollars 1,300,000,000 in liquidity, it gives us the flexibility that we were looking for as we went throughout 2020. Looking at the balance sheet, it is strong. This is one opportunity we have as a company, whether it's acquire brands or launch brands due to that financial flexibility. It's about driving growth. And we feel like we have growth with our core brands, specifically each brand in the U.
S. As well as Europe recapturing that and APAC is a significant white space opportunity for us. But if we can fold in other brands or build other new brands, that could be an additional accelerant. Okay. Last piece here, the port issues.
It is a very difficult situation in the ports. I think everybody sees the article. It seems like there's one per day now whenever you open up the Wall Street Journal in the morning. So it is a challenge. There's no doubt about that.
I think everyone sees what's happening in the port in the West Coast here in the U. S. There's an imbalance around the world of containers. That's been a challenge. There's a difficult air market out there, but all we can do is read and react.
We have an amazing transportation team that is managing this day by day. The focus of this team has changed dramatically as we've gone through all 2020. First, it was slowing down transportation, then it was trying to deal with the supply chain constraints on the shipping to customers in Q4. And now it's really transportation of products around the world. So we'll read and react.
We have great partnerships around the world. We'll flex those as much as we can. Our goal is to deliver on a timely basis.
And just to underscore, Dan, just on that last one. A shout out, as Scott did, to our team that managed through some challenges from deliveries in 2020. And we are prepared for whatever comes at us. They're agile, they're nimble, they did a terrific job in 2020 and we expect to see the same in 'twenty one.
Thank you.
All right. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Lejuez with Citi.
Hi, this is Kelly Crigall on for Paul. Thanks for taking our question. I guess first, could you just dig in a little bit further here on the assumed comps? Is it fair to say that given the significant reduction in square footage that total comps overall were pretty close to positive or maybe in the U. S.
That's a fair statement? And any color by brand would be helpful.
Hey, Kelly. We haven't talked in comps this year. The majority of our stores closed here in late January. So we've been talking in total net sales and that's been very, very close to comp for us. So nothing much to add there.
In terms of brands performance, not too much to add there outside of what we put in the release. Abercrombie outperformed Polyester a bit in the quarter. The U. S. Continues to outperform Europe as you could imagine with the renewed lockdowns across Europe.
So I'd say things are playing out consistently as we've gone through the back half.
Yes. Just as a quick reminder, Hollister has a larger store based business, Abercrombie has a larger digital penetrated business. And so that's also influencing the business because the majority of short footage in Europe, as Scott mentioned. Yes.
And I guess, why exactly is Hollister less digital focused? I would assume that customer was a pretty digital oriented customer. So just bigger picture about Hollister, it has kind of consistently underperformed AMF here even pre COVID. So could you just talk about what you think is happening in that business that perhaps may you need to address going forward? What progress have you made so far?
And what are overall margins you think that will shake out in F 'twenty one relative to future Hollister?
Okay. So to start off, Kelly, we are very pleased with our Hollister business. The product and the marketing is resonating incredibly well with our consumer. In 2019, I think is what you're referencing. We had a renewed focus on our top 30 and our key items.
The team went for that and we're seeing really strong success in those items. The difference is the size of the store base and Hollister has a larger store base than Abercrombie does. And the kids, they are very digitally savvy, the Hollister team customer, but they also socially like to go to the mall. So our expectations, we head into the future that both digital brands, both digital parts of the business will grow as they certainly did through 2020 and that was across brands and regions. So we are very pleased with where we are with Hollister.
Yes. Just close it up on the last piece of margins. All brands are performing quite well from an AUR perspective and expanding gross margin. So that's our expectation go forward. We continue to have opportunity across our brands to recapture some of that margin that we've lost over the years.
And that really starts with products and it starts with lean inventory and strong inventory management. That's what we're focused on. And so hopefully, we can build on the progress we made in 2021 in 2020 as we move through 2021.
Got it. Thank you. And just last question. Thanks for the update on the flagship exposure. Is there any way you could quantify what the drag of those 8 stores that you closed this year were on the P and L?
And I think you've mentioned one more opportunity in F21 to close flat ships. Just want to make sure I'm right about that. Any other opportunities you see in the near future? And where ultimately are we getting out of every single flagship or where that ultimately lands? Thanks.
Long term, we'll likely get out of the large majority of flagships. There might be 1 or 2 that hang with us across the Europe base. This year, we've closed 8. We talked about 7 on our last call. We've had one more that we added there in Dublin, Ireland.
Due to renewed lockdowns in Ireland, we closed that store a month or 2 back and it will not reopen ahead of its expiration this month. The collection of those stores had a drag of about 10 basis points on our op margins and that's looking at 2019 levels. Clearly, things are a little tougher here in stores in 2020, but we haven't updated that at this point. But we are excited about the opportunity this is for us. It frees up expense dollars.
It gets rid of some pretty big boxes and lets us reposition in these markets to more local areas. I'd like to say we can spread more bets across these markets versus having 1 giant store in a very tourist heavy and tourist dependent location. So we like what this does for the fleets and we're right now looking for locations in each of these markets.
Got it. Thank you.
Next question comes from Ryan Vaughn with Niam.
Hi, Ryan, Scott. Thanks so much and great job on the quarter, the year. Two questions for you. 1, great to see the store square footage rationalization. I think Fran, I heard you say 8,300 with the average store size and your prototypes are 4,500.
Can you just touch on the improved productivity that either you're seeing or you expect to see with a smaller store size? And then number 2, Scott, you sit on $1,100,000,000 of cash, you're going to generate a bunch of free cash flow this year. Just with the explosion online, dollars 1,700,000,000 does the platform today with the distribution infrastructure, is it set up and ready for $2,000,000,000 $2,500,000,000 over, call it, the next couple of years?
Thanks.
Okay. I'll kick off with the second one and then kick it over to Fran for the first. So great cash balance coming into the year, dollars 1,100,000,000 It was nice to see our infrastructure supports the big growth that we saw in 2020. Didn't expect that sitting on the first tee there in March of last year, but it was amazing to see that flex up as we saw the growth in 2020. As we go forward, we are expanding into a new facility on the West Coast in the U.
S. That was planned at the beginning of 2020 and we'll open that facility here later in 2020. So that's part of expanding our infrastructure to make sure we can keep up with this demand. We're always looking at the transportation network and the DC network globally to make sure that we can fulfill our customers' needs. We'll continue to do that.
We're constantly studying. And if we need to add capacity, we have the financial flexibility to do that and we'll do it in a smart way profitability wise.
And regarding the productivity of the stores, we have opened over the past couple of years several 100 new and really exciting prototypes for both brands and we're seeing strong customer acceptance to them. They're smaller, they're omni enabled, they're efficient. And as we head into 2021, we will continue to be opportunistic about finding some of those opportunities.
All right. The next question will come from Susan Anderson with B. Riley Securities.
Hi, good morning. Nice job on the quarter and managing through the year. I was wondering if you could give some more color on the OpEx side for Q1. How much will FX benefit and then occupancy, I think, deleveraged significantly last year. Then with those other items being higher, I guess, how much of the deleverage in OpEx can you get back from Q1 of 2020?
Hi, Susan. I'll grab this one. Yes, Q1 is going to be a very interesting OpEx and so is the full year. Lots of things were happening. But the good thing about Q1, we'll continue to see some nice pickup in store occupancy as you can imagine with the store closures, the rent negotiations that we have done last year.
We'll continue to see a nice pickup year over year in Q1. Store payroll is one where we'll start to see some expenses come back in. With the closure of the stores in mid March last year, many of our employees went on furlough there towards the end of March. So we picked up that month of benefits OpEx wise in April. So we'll see that come in.
We hope that means the stores are open. We'll also increase some investments in marketing and in some digital projects. So all in, we're looking at that as an up low single digits to last year's $430,000,000 There's going to be some wild swings in there. But the great thing is when you take a step back is that we're reducing the fixed cost side of our business by taking out that occupancy and increasing that variable side when we talk about adding back store payroll, fulfillment expense as well as marketing.
Great. That's helpful. And then I'm curious on Gilly Hicks. If you can maybe talk about what percent of Hollister Gilly Hicks is now? Not sure if it's gotten to any significant size, but then how big do you think it can be longer term?
And maybe if you could give some color on your plans to drive the growth there in 2021?
So we're excited about the customer response to Gilly, both from a product and a messaging perspective, as well as some of the new categories that we launched this year like Gilly Go has been really well received. We have not discussed, what percentage Gilly is yet at the Hollister business. Obviously, it's a smaller percentage that we have not discussed at this point, but nonetheless, super excited about how the brand is resonating. We decided to, I would say, relaunch Gilly. It was based on a lot of feedback from our consumer and our associates and strong affinity for the brand.
So we're excited about where we're headed and we're going to continue to have new offerings and we'll continue to update you this year as those things come to be.
Yes, Wirtz. Just one thing to add, we're excited about the investments we've been making in Gilly. We're building our teams. We're building our marketing plans. This is a global opportunity, as Fran always says, and we're excited to see the future ahead for Gilly.
Next, we'll go to Jay Sole with UBS.
Hi, good morning. This is Maurizio Serna on behalf of Jay Sole. Just wanted to ask a couple of questions. If you could provide some color on your performance so far in February, maybe compared to 2019 levels? And then if you could talk a little bit more about digital growth has been exceptional over the last year.
How has that translated into the profitability of the business? I know you don't disclose the margins compared to stores, but just to get a sense of whether that has made it that has made the business more leverageable? Thank you.
So good morning. We are pleased with our start to the quarter, coming off with some nice momentum for the Q4 where our products and our messaging continues to resonate with the consumer. It's the smallest month of the quarter and we still certainly have some unknowns ahead of us, but we're pleased with where we are. So I'll kick into the second.
Yes. On the second piece, we've been pleased with the profitability we've seen over the last three quarters. The way we've gotten there is really the path that you would expect. We've reduced store occupancy. We've seen digital fulfillment flex up.
And the nice kicker is that we've been able to expand gross margins. So the profitability has been solid and we're pleased with the way that's transpired here in the back half. And that's the formula we're going to take into the future. We want to continue to reduce the fixed side of the business around store occupancy and try to make the model more variable. And so we feel that we can be profitable.
We can be more profitable as we become a digitally led business model. And that's what we're focused on. Feel that we're building the right P and L for that. We're building the right cost structure. Great progress made in 2020, and we look to take that into 2021 and beyond.
Great. Thanks. And if I may, just one last one. I mean, how should we think about, I mean, your view on the reopening of the stores that remain closed in the near future?
I wish we knew. When these stores are reopened, clearly out of our control. And what we're doing right now is the same playbook that we've used throughout past almost a year now sadly is when stores close, we quickly shift to digital. We work to keep that inventory moving in store through ship from store or click and collect or pop ins. So that's the playbook.
We'll continue to leverage that playbook until the stores hopefully stay open for the long term.
Got it. Thank you very much. Congratulations.
And next we'll go to Matt Boss with JPMorgan.
Great. Thanks. Maybe, Bren, how do you feel about the brand positioning today at Hollister versus Abercrombie? And with that, I guess my question is, where do you think the largest opportunity by category is to gain market share as we exit the pandemic at each of the two concepts?
Hey, good morning, Matt. So I feel better than ever about where our brand position is at Hollister and A and F. We've worked for the past several years solidifying both of those positions and Hollister is really the global teen consumer and A and F is appealing to that young millennial. So we are very steadfast in where we are. The teams are doing a great job staying close to the customer and really our product is resonating and so is our marketing.
As far as categories go, oh gosh, there's so many opportunities. I would tell you that today our Abercrombie women's denim business is terrific. She is responding to all the new fashion that we're putting out there. There's a shift now in denim and in fashion, which is exciting for that category. The skinny jeans become less important.
Has to be a balance, but it's becoming less important in straight jeans and the different rides are becoming even more important. So denim certainly has been and continues to be an opportunity for us. We had a strong another good example of Abercrombie Women's, a strong outerwear business coming out of 4th quarter. Outerwear has always been a must win category for us. So we head to 'twenty one.
Across brands, lots of opportunities. Just one last one, dresses. Our Abercrombie women's dress business in 'twenty was very strong. Once we get into the back half and there's opportunities for our consumer to be even more social, we expect that business to continue to grow. So lots of exciting opportunity.
And then maybe to as a follow-up on gross margin, 2 part question. What's your comfort with inventory on hand is number 1? And then as we think about the product margin puts and takes, I guess what's the best way to peg gross margin this year as we think about 2019 was 59.5% basically and 2018 was 60% and change? What's the best way to think about gross margin this year as we think about some
of the puts and takes?
All right. On the first part, yes, we are comfortable with inventory coming into the quarter. We were down 7% coming into the quarter on sales down 5%. We continue to have lower clearance levels than last year. We are in chase mode across our brands and genders and we're very excited about that.
On the margin puts and takes, it will be an interesting year in 2021. There's a lot of things happening out there in the market. We've already discussed transportation. Cotton has come up a little bit more recently. But then on the other and those would be headwinds I would say.
And then on the other side, the supply demand dynamics I would say are still tilted in the favor of the retailer as demand is still down in apparel in general across the Hopefully, we can recoup some of that across the industry and across our company in 2021. But the way we're thinking about margin, big picture is we did 60.5% in 2020. The way we're thinking about 2021 is we want to maintain that and hopefully build on top of that 60.5%. With inventory in the right place, Fran just mentioned the brand positioning is in a great place, our product and messaging is in a great place and we want to leverage all of that to continue to push AURs higher.
Yes, I just want to underscore the first part of that question. Inventory management was probably one of the best learnings that we took out of 2020 from COVID and tightly managing our inventory and staying really close with our team to make sure that we are agile and nimble and how we're reacting to the business is a very important learning if we head into 'twenty one and one that we're going to stay very diligent to.
Great, Holly. Best of luck.
Thank you.
We'll take our next caller, Janine Stitchner with Jefferies.
Hi. Thanks so much and congrats on the progress. I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the inventory comments about the change in mindset you've had from COVID. Maybe just talk a little bit about some of the back end workings around the supply chain, where you've gotten quicker and how that's enabled you to chase better into the inventory that you need?
So keeping our team very fluid when they think about their open to buy and their inventory management has been the biggest one. It's something that we focused on candidly, Janine, before COVID, but really excelled as we headed into the year. Scott and I would normally work with the team, for example, on a monthly basis. We got into weekly inventory meetings with the teams because there was so much happening and changing all at once, working very closely with our sourcing team who has set us up in 17 countries around the world to be incredibly agile and how we can react to the business. Regarding Chase, it's a part of how we run the business.
We buy product every literally every single week when we see the results after the previous week. So it's just ingrained in what we do. All right.
Thanks very much. And then just maybe just a follow-up on the remodels. It sounds like you're planning to do more new experiences this year. Any update on the remodel performance at Hollister and also how it compares to Abercrombie? Thank you.
We delivered 25 new experiences in 2020. We will do more than that in 2021. We continue to work through opportunities, closing our stores, reopening in some of these markets. So there'll be more to come as we go through the year there. The remodel performance, 2020 was a tough measuring stick with the impact of the stores with COVID, but we are still as positive as ever on the remodels.
We need our stores to be in this more modernized, smaller, digitally enabled format because that's what the customer demands. And as we shift to become a digitally led model, then these stores are there to support that digital business. So we're building our formats to make sure that they can do that.
What's exciting is heading into 'twenty one of the offends and the balance sheet that we have, we will continue to be opportunistic globally when the right size, right location, spaces become available.
Great. Thanks so much.
We'll take our next question from Kate Fitzsimons with RBC Capital.
Yes. Hi. Thanks very much for taking my questions and congratulations on a nice quarter. I guess I wanted to circle back to earlier comments that were made about the promotional environment. Scott, you said, inventory far below demand.
I guess at a higher level, Fran or Scott, in your experience, when was the last time you saw the environment this rational with demand really outpacing inventory? Just be curious on your perspective there. And then Fran, in your prepared comments, you noted again analytics, data, clear focuses for the business into 2021. What are some investments that you are making in the coming quarters to allow us to get that much closer to the customer? Maybe give us an update on some of the loyalty initiatives?
That would be helpful. Thank you.
I will start off with the first question. So the answer is it's been a long time. That as I mentioned earlier today, the outperformance of the inventory has been a really big win for us. That's also coupled with the fact that we're seeing very strong product acceptance. And as you mentioned, the closest to our consumer is certainly helping us identify what those opportunities are.
But the opportunity is to take those learnings as we head into 'twenty one. So it's been rational. It's exciting. Q4 tends to be the most promotional quarter of the year, yet we were able to reduce our promotions and even during the Black Friday week and into holiday peak. So a big one, very exciting opportunity for us.
The second part, let's see. Regarding getting closer to our customer, as we did mention, we're building up those teams, we're building up our user experience team, our data analytics team, and we're using those opportunities to continue to get closer to the customer. We've got a strong customer insights team that helps us talk to our consumer on a consistent basis. We're very strong in our social channels and digitally, but we can also have constant conversations with our consumer.
Yes, We have a continued opportunity to evolve our digital experience. That's where we'll continue to invest dollars. We'll also be building and we're modernizing our data infrastructure to enable that. It gives us a quicker customer feedback loop that we can then react in a more agile way whenever we're updating our experience. So excited about the infrastructure that we're building.
Again, this is necessary as we continue to shift this model to a digitally led business model and we're excited about the opportunities ahead.
Thanks very much.
All right. Your next question comes from Janet Kloppenburg with JJK Research Associates.
Good morning, everyone. How are you? Congrats on a good year. Couple of questions. Scott, what's happening with the inventory in Europe that maybe is trapped or maybe you moved to the digital channel?
Just wondering what's going on there. And if you think that the mid March opening schedules that they're talking about in the U. K, are realistic. Also on occupancy, Scott, it was down, I think about 400 basis points in the Q4. Should we look for that tailwind in the 1st, 2nd and third of this year offset by an equal level of payroll and marketing hikes?
Just want to understand how that balances out. And Fran, for APAC, business is accelerating there for many brands. And I'm just I know you've opened an office in Shanghai. Maybe you could give us
a perspective on what's going on in
that region and the outlook. Thank you.
Yes. I think we'll start backwards, Janet. Okay. Regarding APAC, it is our smallest and it's our newest region. And as you mentioned, we did open up an office.
We put some really terrific talent in there. I'm excited how we're getting closer to the customer. That team is in charge of products and pricing and messaging. And we're making progress. We have an opportunity for brand awareness in that particular region and we're working hard on improving that.
We did do a Lunar New Year collection this year through that team, which was very successful and well received by consumers. So I continue to be optimistic about that region as we head into the future.
Right. I'll start with inventory and EMEA. Comfortable with those levels. Our teams throughout the pandemic have been holding back on allocations to stores knowing that we don't know what's coming the next day. And so we've been working through that.
Many of these countries have been locked down kind of pre Christmas. So we've been living through this for a while. So we've rightsized that inventory in stores and flexing up in digital. The mid March reopening, who knows, I would say is my answer. Clearly out of our control, we'll react as we learn more.
Hopefully, things are going in the right way. It seems like the vaccine distributions in the U. K. Are going well, but we only see what you see. So we'll react whenever we learn more.
Occupancy, as we think about 2021, in total, we should continue to see some progress versus 2020 levels. It'll be a little bit different as we go throughout the quarter. I'm not going to go into detail there, but likely a bigger opportunity here as we step into Q1 as some of those abatements that we saw as we've gone through the closures in 2020 hit towards the back end. So, you should see a nice benefit here in Q1 versus last year.
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Altschwager with Baird.
Hi, good morning. This is Sarah Goldberg on for Mark. Thanks for taking our question. First, I was hoping you could give an updated view on the longer term EBIT margin potential of the business given all of the learnings over the past year and changes to the store fleet? And then secondly, as a positive update
on the social selling front, if
you could just elaborate further on the steps you're taking there and maybe some trends you're seeing on the customer acquisition costs in the channel? Thanks.
Good morning, Sarah. Regarding our EBIT margin potential, we are still committed to the 5.8%. We are excited to your point about the progress that we were able to make in 2020. We've not put a date out there on that because '21 still has a lot of uncertainty to it as we manage through continued closures and inconsistency in the business. So our eye is still on that number, just not with a set date at this point.
Social selling, incredibly, incredibly exciting for us. In fact, we're using it in all of our brands today. Abercrombie has had a very successful quarter, particularly as we built into these affiliates to sell our products on Instagram and other social channels. It's a very exciting new way to do business. Another great example in Hollister is our partnership with Charlie and Dixie and how well that product has resonated since them selling on their social channels.
So it's just it's a new way to do business and it's very exciting for us.
All right. And next we'll go to Marni Shapiro with Retail Tracker.
Hey guys, congratulations. The stores have been just so much fun to be in on a regular basis lately.
So could you just talk a
little bit about, I guess, 2 things. Regional trends, are you seeing in regions where restrictions are less onerous, are you seeing a change in her behavior already in what she's buying? And is that helping to inform how you set the stores in other regions? And then could you just also talk about, I think the company hit 54%, is that right, DTC for the year? Does that imply that that's amazing.
I guess not surprising the stores closed as well. But I guess does that imply Abercrombie was higher than that? And what should that I guess post COVID, which is so hard to really look at, but in your mind, what should that shake out at?
So we are incredibly excited about our digital business, Marni. The investments that we made prior to COVID that we were able to lean into this year to drive those results. It's super exciting. We are going to learn this year. The customer is going to teach us as we go into more consistent store openings and some of these restrictions being lifted.
So we are a digitally led business to 50 4%. We're going to continue to make those investments, but we're going to learn a lot this year is the answer to that. Regarding regional trends, the U. S. Business has been and continues to be our strongest business and more consistent with our with the stores open.
EMEA, obviously, discussed a couple of times this morning, anticipating those stores to reopen at some point during the quarter.
Are you not seeing regional differences within the U. S. Though?
Not dramatic. When you look at some of the states that are a little, I'd say, more open like the Texas and the Florida, you're seeing different dynamics there. You do see some strength in some of the stores, but you also see Florida specifically, there's still not a lot of international tourism coming into those key markets. So in some of those giant malls, they're still down pretty dramatically because you're missing that international tours. Now the local customer is there maybe a little bit stronger than some of the other places.
In Texas, similar, some of those border stores where there's less movement across the border will have some impacts versus the local customers. So the good thing is the digital business has remained strong across all these regions and our teams are managing kind of a store by store. It's been kind of a roller coaster as each of these stores open, the markets go hot cold. So that's all we can do is read and react. And hopefully at some point, we'll get to a point where the capacity restrictions are lifted or softened a little bit and that'll give us a better feel.
Fantastic. Thanks, guys.
And we'll take our last question from Dylan Carden with William Blair.
Great. Thank you very much. Just curious, Scott, you kind of quantified the drag from the flagship closings. Any way you could do either sales or EBIT margin drag from the stores you closed this year? Do you have that handy or when
you provide Yes, sorry. We have not provided that number at this point. What I would say is that we're happy with the progress we made this year on occupancy. The stores that we have closed are underproductive versus other stores. The majority of the Abercrombie stores are oversized and a majority of the stores are less productive than the rest of the fleets.
And so it was a good time for us to close some of these larger stores and put ourselves in a position to hopefully quickly react in some of these markets and reopen smaller digitally enabled stores. So the right time for us to make this move as we continue to flex up digital. We'll see as the market starts to normalize when people come back out and go back to the malls, we'll see where the productivity shakes out. But we firmly believe we're doing the right thing for the fleets as we continue to balance the P and L between occupancy and fulfillment expense.
Sure. And I guess the natural follow-up there is, I guess, more of a clarification. When you talk about kind of filling in some of these markets where you close stores, does that go beyond just the flagships? And is that a way, particularly on the Abercrombie side, to kind of more efficiently build out some of the new prototype stores? Is that the right way of thinking?
Exactly. Exactly. You nailed it. In some of these markets, we've been talking for years that we haven't made as much progress rightsizing Abercrombie and Fitch fleets. So we are going to try to accelerate that process.
We closed these stores, some of these larger stores. We're willing and able financially to reopen in some of these markets, but we need to have the right location at the right economics. So we continue to talk to our landlords about opportunities as we go forward, and we're hopeful that some of these moves will help us accelerate that evolution for that brand.
Okay, great. And can I just I'll just sweep 1 more here, Shari? I'm just curious, you spoke to strong thank you, strong margins strong margin improvement on the digital side this quarter. Was that just a factor of scale and gross margin? Are there some tangible things kind of behind the scenes, that allow us to be a more profitable business?
Those are by far the 2 biggest levers in that business. The and there's a fixed cost base and then the rest is pretty much variable. It's nice to see the gross margin. That flows right to the bottom line and then just balancing the fulfillment expense. But again, leveraging those expenses, as you said, those are the 2 ways to grow it.
Awesome. All right. Well, hey, nice work. Thank you very much.
All right. Thanks. All right. With no further questions, I'd like to turn the call back over to Fran for any additional or closing remarks.
Sure. Thank you all for participating
in our call today. We look forward to
sharing more with you on our progress in our Q1 earnings call.
And that does conclude today's conference. We thank everyone again for their participation.