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Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Conference

Dec 6, 2023

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay, good morning, everyone. I'm Alex Straton, Morgan Stanley's North America Softlines, Retail, and Brands analyst here at Morgan Stanley. Thanks to all of you for joining us here today on the second day of our conference. I'm super happy to welcome the Bath & Body Works team today. As a quick introduction, and before I introduce both of these, these ladies up here, Bath & Body Works is about a $8 billion market cap business, segment leader focused on the home fragrance, body care, and soaps and sanitizers, categories that separated from its sister company, who we also have here today, Victoria's, back in 2021. Today, we're joined by BBW's CEO, Gina Boswell, and newer CFO, Eva Boratto. So thank you ladies for joining me here today.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Thank you.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great! So let me first run through the necessary kind of format, overview, and disclosures, and then we'll get into both of your backgrounds more fulsomely. So on format, it's a fireside chat. We're gonna explore some of the investor questions I've been getting most frequently. Also, if we have some time at the end, we'll take some audience questions. And then my favorite part of every one of these, to cover the disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosure. So that's the necessary part. So Gina, maybe rather than me giving a, a lengthy bio on you, perhaps you can kind of give us your quick background, where you were at before Bath & Body Works, why you, why you joined. I know it was about maybe a year ago at this point, so.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Exactly. Well, thank you. I'm happy to be here, and thank you for having us. Yes, so I, before joining Bath & Body Works, about a year ago, actually, I had led multibillion-dollar businesses in beauty and personal care and home care businesses, most recently with Unilever, starting out actually at Estée Lauder. And I also, from a functional point of view, had led sort of sales and marketing and product development and finance. So that's sort of my functional skill set. And then both businesses, domestically and internationally, and actually had run something outside of the United States, so that sort of speaks to the global piece of it. As I zoom out and think about my...

Over the course of my career, I've really worked in almost every distribution channel in which personal care and beauty products have been sold. And so suffice it to say, when I got the opportunity to work with Bath & Body Works, which is an iconic brand, clearly, and a, you know, differentiated model, vertically integrated, you know, I jumped at the chance to sort of utilize my full suite of skills. And I have to say, you know, having just completed the first year, we're having a ball. I'm really, really enjoying it.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's great. Much better said than I could have explained it. Maybe, Eva, same question for you. You joined a little bit more recently. Give us a little bit about your background, why you joined.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Sure, Alex, and thank you, and good morning, everyone. So, so my background has spanned three decades, more than three decades across retail and healthcare in Fortune 100, in Fortune 100 companies. And if you think about the common theme across my experiences, I'd point to two things. One, always being a strategic business partner to unlock value to help businesses grow and transform. And two, holding people accountable to results, to the goals that have been set and the commitments that have been made. So if I just highlight a couple of things, I was the CFO of CVS Health. As most of you may know, 9,000 retail locations, a company transforming to an integrated customer experience and, and expanding really into health services.

I drove the integration process with, of course, some of my peers there, driving the realization of synergies, reprioritizing our investments as we were transforming the company and really participating in a true transformation of the company. I was with Merck prior to that for about 20 years, where I held a host of different financial positions, but most notably, I'll call out my time in the vaccine business, where we evolved the business from a billion-dollar pediatric U.S.-centric business to a true global vaccine business, covering all cohorts from pediatric to adult with adolescent, and really took that business on a transformation growth. Similar to Gina, it's been a fast 4 months here, 2 earnings calls, headed into my first holiday season, and it's been great.

I have a great team behind me with tremendous experience in Bath & Body Works, so I'm continuing to engage and learn.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's a great overview. Maybe let's talk a little bit about, since you're both relatively newer to the business, I'll start with you, Gina, and then, Eva, I'll ask you the same question. Just on kind of where you feel in your first year as a part of the business, perhaps you've pushed the ball most forward in terms of strategic objectives. And then, as we're thinking about 2024, perhaps where is the most opportunity or runway still to go?

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Great. Yes. So when I first came in, really spent time setting the long-term strategy around elevating the brand, engaging the customer, extending the reach across, you know, categories, customers, geographies, enabling a seamless experience, and then enhancing operational excellence. So there was sort of a set strategy, and from the start, my priorities were really around a bit more on the, you know, I sort of said a sales and marketing background as well. So targeted marketing, personalization, improving the customer experience, was sort of where I focused first. And so I built the leadership team to sort of deliver those new capabilities, to really, you know, facilitate that strategy. Importantly, we also needed to separate from Victoria's Secret, which I'm happy to say we substantially completed in the summer, so spent time there. That is actually very important.

It's only 14 weeks ago now, but that sort of really is the foundational piece where we can actually do much more on the area of loyalty and marketing and the things that I, you know, sort of had set out. So when I think about initially, you know, we set a sales and earnings outlook from the beginning, and we are, you know, we knew going in, as I started, that we were facing continued macroeconomic softness as well as category normalization. And so with that, we were managing, you know, the short term, but we were importantly building the capabilities for the longer term.

You know, to just your point, to recap some of the progress we made, at the very early part of the year, we set a goal to deliver, you know, $200 million, remove that out of our cost base, with about $100 million in 2023, and we are actually on track to do $150 million in 2023. So feeling very good about that. Our operating income margin goals are pretty much on track with the beginning of the year targets, and we have, as you know, raised the EPS as we progress throughout the year. So feeling very good about that. I think now, you know, you alluded to opportunities going forward. With the Victoria's Secret separation substantially complete, we're really excited about building the capabilities to go forward.

Some of that, you know, includes things like marketing. So just to spend a little bit more on kind of marketing and what we're doing. You may know that we have some categories that are really fast-growing. One of them is men's. So just recently, we put together a whole sort of men's mobile, taking it on the road, if you will. This is really important because men's is a huge addressable market. Our awareness for our men's business, despite it, you know, now in the full, you know, 1,800 stores, is still relatively low. So we wanted to make sure that we were adding, you know, that fuel to really drive what is a big addressable market and growing. We also put together...

You know, and these, by the way, these mobile tours are sort of in different cities and, you know, there's samples there, and then there's a bounce back that drives traffic into the stores and so forth. So that's part of that. We also have recently done sort of a high-profile influencer program to support that. So really, you know, very big followers in the athlete arena, and that is also to drive the social media to really sort of say, "We have a men's business." And of course, it brings back to my point about extending the reach. It brings a new customer, for sure, with respect to men. So there's a whole thing around men.

Then on, we've just recently launched a campaign, a brand campaign called Come Back to Your Senses, and this notion is around how do we actually take this powerful brand and then bring it to life and actually draw a more emotional connection, you know, to the customers. And so with that, you'll start to see this a bit more and more, but since we're here in New York City, not too far away, we put. Right as we were heading into Candle Day, we put a 10-foot candle on Herald Square. 'Tis the Season is, you know, being big in holiday. And, this was, like, illuminated like a big candle and, you know, it was filled with fragrance, of course.

So these are just some examples of the kinds of things that we're doing from a marketing perspective, and the team is super excited to get going with all the foundational pieces in place.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great! That's all super clear. Maybe there's a few things I want to circle back on-

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Sure.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

in what you mentioned, but before I do that, Eva, how about I'll put the question to you. Same thing.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah. So let me add on to what Gina said as we work as a team here. So first, a huge priority for us is returning to profitable growth, right? And I'm sure we're going to get into that in a little while. I've spent meaningful time on our cost initiatives. As Gina said, we're really pleased with the results we're generating, exceeding our initial expectations. And I don't look at these initiatives as a one and done. It has to be ingrained in the culture, how we think about what we call fuel the growth, to enable and unlock capability to drive new investments in other areas and fund that journey. So really pleased with the progress that we're making there.

I've been spending time on capital allocations, making sure we take a disciplined and balanced approach to our capital allocations in returning value to shareholders, while also making progress toward our leverage goals. And finally, I'm four months in, so I've been learning the business as we go here.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's great. Maybe one of the questions I wanted to follow up on was that $150 million in cost savings that you guys have delivered. For those that are newer, maybe to the story, can you talk about what are some examples of what that included? How is it split, maybe across COGS and SG&A, just so we can kinda illuminate it a little bit. Did you want to take that?

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah, sure. I'll start. So I'd highlight it in a couple of areas. One, in our store operating cost, right? Doing a better job of matching our store hours with the demand in the stores, creating back-end efficiency so the stores can be more efficient. Home office expenses.

... you know, really scrutinizing all the investments we're making there. Continued, you know, we've optimized our call centers. Move is another area, right? Transportation. And transportation, yes, some of that comes from macro, but it's also us driving and optimizing how we run our program. So Alex, there are a few examples that I would provide.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's perfect and super helpful. Maybe now I'll turn to what from my end feels like the key focus here, which is the top line growth and how you think about the algorithm in the future. I think one question that I get super frequently is how this business was able to do such, I think it was high single-digit growth historically. So can you just talk about that? What have you learned as to what drove that historically?

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah, and it's a great question, and being here one year and then four months, we obviously the first thing we did upon arrival is to study sort of the secret sauce and the historical growth, and you are correct. I think it's basically five things that fueled the historical growth. Product innovation, for sure, a strong value proposition, category expansion. There was a time when there was no three-wick candle business, and that sort of grew. I think market share gains and also you know average unit retail that was consistently growing low- to mid-single-digit throughout. So those are sort of the five you know vectors, if you will, that kept the historical growth going.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Super clear. Maybe help me bridge that to, I think your long-term algorithm is about mid-single-digit growth. So help me think about that haircut that, and as you guys think about it.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Well, I think, So if you think about the, the recent sort of pre-pandemic, pandemic, post-pandemic, as we sit here today, and we spoke about this in on our last, call, and we speak about it pretty much every call. We even though 2019 feels like a long time ago, we harken back and sort of say: What is our, you know, CAGR relative to 2019, even in the last quarter? And it's around 9%. So if you smoothed it, now that, depending on which category, that can be roughly, you know, 2-3 times what categories grow or what we would be growing at.

So I just want to put that piece in perspective, but having said that, you know, there has been normalization because some of the post-pandemic mindset and people not being home as often, you know, this has obviously, you know, led to a bit of a decline in industry-wise as it relates to candles and sanitizers specifically. And so we speak about that, as one of the reasons why, you know, we've got the continued softness that we've been experiencing. So does that help answer the question?

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah, it does.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

I know you want maybe a bit more to go into the inflection point, but that's sort of what-

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

-happened.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

I think it's a nice segue into kind of how you guys think about reversion. It's one of few, and you guys are one of few, I might say, that has this dynamic. So maybe how you think about what inning you're in, in terms of the normalization that this business has been experiencing, your view on that would be super helpful.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah. So, as I said, at an industry level, candles and sanitizers have been normalizing, and that normalization has accelerated slightly between Q2 and Q3. And so, our business, of course, mirrors those trends. I think, you know, what is important to note, and we speak about it as a measurement of our success amidst that environment, is that we continue to hold leading, you know, market share in units for candles, and year to date, we have gained unit market share for sanitizers. And so, but if you look at, you know, sort of candles and sanitizers, they are elevated versus 2019 levels, and, you know, more than the rest of shop. So that has sort of that backdrop. But that's how we think about it.

Now, as for the ultimate sales growth potential of the business, you know, we're building all the capabilities that I spoke about earlier. We're driving customer acquisition, we're driving growth, we're expanding the operating income based on some of the fuel for growth initiatives that Eva mentioned, even amidst some of the macroeconomic pressure that we have been recently experiencing and continued category normalization. So we do expect both of those to continue in the fourth quarter and into 2024, as we had talked about in our last earnings call.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So keeping on the topic of top-line growth, one thing you guys did on your last earnings call is you made it very clear that in terms of the cadence for next year, you think the back half is when you can return to growth. So maybe help us understand how you arrived at that, how we should think about what the drivers are of that cadence.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah. So I'll start, and you might want to chime in, Eva.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay, sure.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

I think some of the tests and, you know, pilots that we've been putting in place since the 14 weeks separation from Victoria's Secret are bearing fruit, but they're on a small scale, and we would expect those to sort of build and compound as 2024 continues. So recognizing that a lot of that loyalty, we just finished one year in loyalty, and so we're moving from sort of enrollment a little bit more into engagement. So those things and the tests will take a bit more time, you know, sort of in the back half. But in addition to that, you know, we have a portfolio of categories, and as part of our our long-term strategy of extending our reach, we see a lot of opportunity in men's, in laundry, you know, in lip, and in hair.

Hair will be fully rolled out in the spring, and so there, you know, there's sort of a reshaping of the portfolio, if you will, that starts to build, you know, more momentum in the back half together with these new capabilities that we would expect to bear fruit.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

... And I think, for those that are new to the stories, you think about some of those categories. Men's is a $12 billion market. Laundry is a $14 billion market. These are large markets that we're going into and penetrating. Lip enables us to bring in a little younger audience, right? And we've seen in the stores that we're in with lip today, we've seen real excitement about our presentation and the product that we have. And I think, Alex, it's a near-term, medium-term story, right? We haven't expanded our adjacencies. As Gina said, we've just recently separated from a technology perspective.

So all of the work we're doing today on personalization, loyalty, are those green shoots that Gina references, that gives us the confidence that in the back half of the year, we will return, we will return to growth. We also, and it hasn't come up, as we look at the business, you know, AURs have been flattish, if you will, right? As we're able to do more personalization, less broad-based promotion, it's our goal to return AURs to that low single digit contributor to the algorithm over a longer period of time. Alex, I'm not sure if this was in your question, but we've gotten the question before: Why now? Why did you, why did you give the outlook for 2024?

And in the spirit of communication with the investor base, we saw a disconnect with where expectations were and what we were seeing with the business, where we were confident in the business going. So we chose, in the spirit of good communication and transparency, to provide some preliminary outlooks as we looked at 2024.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's a perfect overview. Thank you. Maybe one thing I wanted to dig in on that, that you mentioned, and Gina, you did as well on AUR, is the business's historical ability to take AUR. It sounds like year in and year out. Can you just remind us, where do AUR sit versus, like, pre-pandemic levels? And then, how has the business been able to drive that higher so consistently over time? What enables that?

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

I would take the back part, which is, you know, we have a number of different ways of getting at AUR growth over the long term. We do raise ticket prices, and we raise our everyday deals. And so an example of that would be a five for $25, we raise it to five for $27, and we're able to get sort of more AUR through there. There's a bit of mix as well, and as we said, historically, you know, the business does deliver, you know, low single-digit to mid-single-digit AUR. Now, relative to 2019, I don't know if you wanted to comment on that.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah, overall, our AURs, again, harkening back to 2019, and as the business changes, that'll become harder and harder, right? But our portfolio is significantly up from that level, about 35% as you look at net sales, and AURs are a portion of that. We haven't disclosed the breakout between volume and AUR. So we have been able to hold on to a meaningful portion of the price actions we were able to take. I'd say more near-term focus, given the macro backdrop, it has been challenging, right? And that's how we say we're agile to adapt to where the customer is. We've seen customers pressured. Their basket... We don't see them trading down, but we see them managing the size of their basket.

As we manage to drive both top and bottom line, right, we'll evaluate all of our pricing actions and promotions that we take.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

I think the two other things, you know, we are early innings on really leveraging the full capabilities, for example, of loyalty and customization and personalization. But we had been, you know, historically using a lot of broad-based promotions, so think direct mail and, you know, there could be subsidized volume because it's not necessarily targeted. As we develop those, that's another lever for AUR growth as well. We are no more promotional than we were. And so it really is not that. It's more about how do we meet the customer where they're at?

This business, what I've been super impressed with this business, is the read and react capability, and the fact that we are vertically integrated end to end means that, you know, we, you know, for example, we only have to purchase really, you know, 60% or, you know, of what we need, and so there's this chase ability. What does that do for AUR? Well, you're not, you don't have inventory that you have to then clear, and therefore, you don't have to, you know, pile on sort of the promotion fees. That's really wonderful. But also, we can read the business every week, and so we kind of know, you know, can we get AUR growth? Where should we get AUR growth?

And where, in those cases, based on elasticities, based on basket pressures, is it more optimal in terms of driving top line and bottom line, so bottom line? So it's a very agile model. I've. It's, it's one of the things I've actually never experienced before, to be able to have that ability to see end to end.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah, I'm glad you actually touched on that because I think the read and react ability is something that I spend a lot of time, kind of educating people on. We got the pleasure of seeing the Beauty Park, I think, about a year and a half ago. So maybe can you elaborate a little bit on that for those that don't... aren't as familiar with the story? What is the Beauty Park? How does it work? So people can kind of understand why it's such a advantage.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah. Yeah, so taking absolutely no credit for that, sitting here, a very prescient approach that essentially within five miles of Columbus, we have a network of suppliers that really is responsible for, you know, a huge percentage of our total, you know, supply chain. And so this brings so many differentiating and competitive advantages for us. One is speed. So when you have somebody who's, you know, creating the bottle and you have somebody who's, you know, developing the juice, if you will, within minutes of each other, just think about there's no transportation from, you know, one to the next. And so even on an ESG level, to be quite honest, there's some credit there with respect to how we get things done.

But then if you think about how we develop product and having a background in product development, you know, you used to have to go somewhere to sort of get a comp to take a look at it. This is literally our merchandising people can get, you know, in a car and just spend a few minutes to go to Beauty Park and working with some of the finest suppliers in the industry, and they're all there. And this was done, you know, more than a decade ago. So now, a very, you know, well-oiled machine with respect to what it can do. Now, we have this ability to chase based on demand.

So a perfect example of that that happened earlier this year is we had a collection called Gingham, which is a number of different variants, if you may remember, from a fragrance point of view. Well, you never, you know, get a forecast perfectly right. Maybe you have one that is a runaway, and we did have one, and the other ones were not growing as fast. So what Beauty Park delivers to us is this ability to only, you know, manufacture the winning one and not be sort of hampered with the rest of this inventory. So it is a big differentiator for us.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's a great overview. Maybe a similar line of questioning. We'll move away from top line from the other topics and go down to profitability. This business has also been, when you look, you know, historically at how it delivered with an LB, remarkably consistent from a profitability perspective, 20-ish% EBIT margin. So from your point of view, can you talk about how the business was able to do that historically? And I'll just start with that, and then we can move to how we get back thereafter.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Well, I'll start, but I'd love you to add. I think we have what we, you know, have as our long-term goal, which is 20% operating margin, which would best-in-class sort of operating income margin, and that's comprised of sort of 45%, you know, gross margin and then 25%, SG&A. Historically, I mean, I don't know if you want to speak to sort of because it was part of a bigger company, obviously, as part of L Brands, but it, to us, that's sort of the shape of as we go forward and what we're aspiring to get to.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

So, Alex, I'll go back to 2019, right? As we look at the company, we were at about 19.2% operating margins. The algorithm that drove that were strong merchandise margins, right? Benefits from that low single digit, mid single digit pricing impact, strong growth in digital and online and a very productive fleet of stores. And obviously, the backdrop of a strong portfolio of product to drive customer demand and growth. As you look at the last several years, where that's brought us to, right? We've, as many industries have, realized significant cost inflation affecting the business to a large extent.

Also, to a lesser extent, a step up in technology investments, as well as store operating cost, wage rate pressure, if you will, and, you know, some of the costs related to a standalone, to a standalone company. So that's what's put pressure on our overall margins. As you look at the tail end of your question, as you look going forward, what's going to get us to that 45, 25, 20 that Gina highlights, right? First, focused on improved merch margins, continuing to drive that, whether that's our cost optimization programs, utilization of the beauty, continued cost deflation, a more personalized AUR. We just had a chat about the AUR, right? So ability to return to that AUR is a key contributor of growth. Two, we talked about this earlier, our cost optimization initiative. Not one and done.

We have to continue to be disciplined around our cost management. And then finally, turning back to top line growth and the green shoots in the product portfolio and growing our customers through the personalization and the loyalty are the formula longer term. And we haven't hit on this yet, loyalty. While we have nearly 41 million members in our loyalty program, we're only a year in, and I'd say in the infancy stage of really unlocking value of how we can engage, retain, and expand value from that loyalty program.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah, that's great. I wanted to zero in on the cost inflation piece. You guys gave that great margin bridge when you first joined about a year ago. And I think cost inflation was the biggest deterrent in that bridge, and that was keeping and constraining margin. Where are we at in that journey? Where can we go from here in terms of bringing that down?

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

So the last couple of quarters we've spoken to, we've seen cost deflation. We expect that to continue in Q4, but our costs remain meaningfully elevated from those 2019 levels. We'll continue. It's, you know, it's stable until it's volatile, right? And we'll continue to push on levers we can control and manage as we look at purchasing raw goods and materials, taking advantage of the marketplace. But our costs are still meaningfully elevated from those pre-pandemic levels.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great. And then one other piece that you mentioned that's impacting the margin are the tech investments.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Mm-hmm.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Are most of those behind you as you separate from Victoria's, or is it also more investment to come as you have all these initiatives in marketing and in digital, and then just to drive the top line? How should we think about that?

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah. So, you know, I'll take, I'll take that. So as you think about it, the last period of time has been really focused on that separation work, separating us from Victoria's Secret and creating our own infrastructure. As we've spoken about, we do expect our tech investments to remain at an elevated level as we pivot from separation to some of these more strategic areas: the loyalty, the personalization, the data analytics that Gina highlighted.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's perfect. So thank you. Maybe I'll zoom in here with you guys and see what you're able to say so far. So perhaps remind us what your kind of holiday outlook was, how you were thinking about the fourth quarter, and then whatever you've been comfortable sharing on so far, what you've seen, whether high level or whatever you're most comfortable.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Okay. So I'll start with what we shared for our fourth quarter guidance. Our fourth quarter top line guidance, and people have all of this published, right? Sales down 3 to up 1.5, and it's a wider range than a typical quarter. It's a very significant quarter with a lot of events. We saw some pressure in September in particular. October rebounded a bit as you looked at traffic. So the midpoint of our guide assumes really a continuation of what we saw in October with our customer base. The upside, returning more to trends that we experienced in the first half of the year, a stronger consumer response to our holiday assortment, and the downside, the macro environment getting worse or a softer consumer response. So that's the backdrop that we described.

As we sit here today, I would remind, I would remind folks that there's a significant amount of the quarter ahead of us, and with what we've seen to date, we remain confident with the range that we provided on our earnings call, and we're pleased with how we're executing through the season thus far, and we remain focused to, to drive the business forward. And we'll have more to say as, as we get to the end of the year.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Wonderful. We'll look out for it. Before I turn to the audience, there are a few questions that we're asking each company that joins us for the conference, and I think one that actually requires maybe a little bit more elaboration on your end, and you alluded to it here, Eva, is just on capital allocation. So how you think about it for the business between, you know, dividends, buyback, you know, debt paydown. Maybe walk us through how you're thinking about that for next year.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Sure. So I'll speak not particularly to next year, but more strategically and philosophically, right? Our first priority is to invest in the business to drive profitable growth. We will always look to return value to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks and be disciplined in our approach there. As folks have heard us say, we're... Our leverage targets, we're not at our mid 2.5 times leverage targets, so we've been opportunistically paying down debt as our bonds were trading below par year to date. We've paid down through December 1st, about $465 million, while we've also been able to repurchase shares in the market through December 1st, again, $115 million. So we'll continue to take a balanced approach, balancing all of the priorities that we have.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's great. The two other ones that we have are just, first, as you think about demand trends heading into next year, three potential answers: accelerate, decelerate, or stabilize or kind of flat. If you guys were to answer that, how do you think about it? What influences your view?

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Well, as we discussed on our recent earnings call, you know, based on the consumer behavior that we saw in the third quarter, you know, we expect that macroeconomic pressure to continue and the category normalization to continue as well. You know, at the same time, we said we're building the capabilities that are designed to drive the customer acquisition, retention, and so forth. And as those are fully implemented, you know, that's when we expect that sort of inflection point in the back half of next year.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great. And the second, or I guess technically the third and final, is on how you guys think about margins for next year. Sounds like the trajectory is upwards from here, but the options are up, down, flat, and kind of what influences it. We've talked about a lot of the different levers here, but if there's any others you wanted to hit on.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Yeah. Alex, I appreciate the question. As we look at next year in particular, we'll have much more fulsome guidance to provide, as we always do on our earnings call. We're in the throes of our budgeting process. We have our most significant quarter still partially ahead of us. So, the levers we've talked about, whether it's deflation, whether it's our cost optimization work, we'll continue to push on those levers to drive long-term sustainable benefits.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay, maybe one final one for you, then we can open up for questions. Is just any final key messages you wanted to leave us with before we open it up?

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

All I would say is that, you know, we're managing the short term, and we know the impacts. We're executing against the strategy, and we feel very confident as we see these green shoots, that over the long term, that our 20% ROI and our $10 billion aspiration from a top line, you know, is in pursuit. So, I want to thank you. Thank you for allowing us to spend the time. Was there any key message from you that you'd like to land?

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

No. We're good.

Alex Straton
Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Perfect. I did want to open it up if there was any questions from the audience. We could probably take one or two. We've got about a minute left or so. Side Group, you guys can get interrogated in your meetings. But if there's no questions, thanks for joining us, and thanks for having us.

Gina Boswell
CEO, Bath & Body Works

Thank you.

Eva Boratto
CFO, Bath & Body Works

Thank you.

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