I would now like to introduce your host, Tina Romani, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Gap Inc.'s Fourth Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that the information made available on this webcast and conference call contains forward-looking statements. For information on factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, as well as a reconciliation and descriptions of non-GAAP financial measures, as noted on page two of the slides supplementing Teri's remarks, please refer to today's earnings press release, as well as our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our subsequent filings with the SEC, all of which are available on gapinc.com. These forward-looking statements are based on information as of February 23, 2017, and we assume no obligation to publicly update or revise our forward-looking statements. Joining me on the call today are CEO, Art Peck, and Executive Vice President and CFO, Teri List-Stoll.
As mentioned, Teri will be using the slides to supplement her remarks, which you can view by going on to our investors section at gapinc.com. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Art.
Thanks, Jen. Hi to everyone on the call. Thanks for joining us today. As we close out 2016, which is my second year as CEO, I want to spend a moment to reflect. Reflect on where we've been and where we are and where we're going, both in terms of the work that we're doing, but the overall industry context as well. When I took over two years ago, that's two years that has flown by, we and I knew our performance wasn't where it needed to be. We knew that we were in an industry that was changing dramatically. Looking back on it now, I think we probably all underestimated the magnitude and the speed of the changes taking place. It's been pretty stark what's been happening over the last year as we've looked at some competitors have exited the market.
That said, we finished the year strong, and Teri will take you through our results. I'm pleased with the progress that we've made, but we are in a market that is in significant disruption. Let me share a couple of truths, at least as I think about them, that are on my mind. First, the apparel market is growing. Whether you peg the number at 2% or 3% or 5%, we're in a market that has long-term structural growth, has continued to grow, and that is a good thing. Secondly, the market is, and we have clear evidence of this, continuing to move towards rewarding size and scale.
Whether that's vendor relationships that provide favorable pricing and innovation, whether it's us with a multi-brand portfolio doing business with our landlords to optimize our real estate footprint, or frankly, whether it's our balance sheet and income statement where we see scale in investments, whether it's technology, innovation, or other forms. This is a market that is moving towards rewarding size and scale, and we believe that conveys us a significant structural advantage. The third, omni. Almost a cliche word at this point because it isn't like omni is in the future. Our customers are omni today, and that is a fundamental reality. Many of our customers begin their journey with our brands on their phone, and they finish it in our stores. Many of our customers begin their journey with our brands in our stores, and they finish it on their phone.
We've been doing work, and we will continue to do work to really line up with where our customers are, not where they're going, but where they are today. Again, I'm pleased with the progress, we have more work to do. Finally, we believe fundamentally there is a significant market share opportunity. If you read the headlines today, you'll see the words dead, dying, sick. We are none of those. We are healthy and strong and have a plan and clear direction. We can all pick our favorite company that's no longer in business, and when the lights go off and the windows get boarded over, that is market share that is made available to the rest of the industry. She's not stopping shopping. She's shopping someplace else. A time of disruption means that market share becomes more fluid.
If we put what we believe are our structural advantages together, along with much of the work that we've been doing on product and experience, we believe we have a significant opportunity to consolidate and gain market share going forward. I've said it many times, and I'll say it again because it is foundational. We are a product company, and we are a retailer. If we don't get our product right, we will not win, regardless of how good we are in digital or many other things. It starts with emotional product that she connects to that has the right quality, the right fit, and the right value proposition. Two years ago, when I got into this seat, we really approached product in two ways.
One was some quick fixes, particularly addressing quality, the aesthetic, the value, and the fit, and some longer-term work that we've been doing where we've made significant progress. Where we have done the quick fixes, and they weren't actually quick because they required work, where we've gotten fit right, particularly in bottoms, but other parts of the assortment, where we've reestablished the quality that she is looking for, where the aesthetic is on progress and tracking with where our brands need to be. We've gotten credit for it. We've really gotten credit for it. You can see this anecdotally if you look at the reviews. You can see this in the performance of the underlying core categories where we've done this work and the customer has responded. It's taken longer. I expected, to be honest, a bigger bounce out of this work.
It was akin to the work that I did when I was running Gap back in 2011. We have seen and continue to see the validation that this work is paying off, and that she is reengaging our brands in a way that makes us very optimistic. There was the longer lead time work, and what it really is what I call de-risking our product model. Time is the enemy in this business. A typical industry average development cycle has, for much of the industry's history, been 10 months. We've done the work now to get many of our programs and many of our categories down, in some cases, to 8 to 10 weeks. In fact, a third of our product across the company can be produced within the quarter. This allows us to buy differently, and this allows us to chase trend differently.
This allows us to manage inventory differently. A big unlock here was to separate our core basics, which we can purchase very cost effectively and efficiently from our fashion items, which have more risk. We now platform nearly 60% of our fabrics, committing to the fabric in advance, positioning that fabric at our vendors, and having access to capacity to be able to cut and sew garments immediately at the release of a PO. We've also substantially increased our testing of product, whether that's crowdsourced testing, which we now have validation results in better commercial outcomes, or testing physically in our stores, oftentimes in stores that are seasonally ahead of where we are, so that we can use that to inform our buys. Another thing we haven't really talked to you much about is the tools to do this.
In Gap, which is leading the way, we're moving also to a demand-based buying model. This requires tools that are different than what we've historically used. Historically, the tools that we use to merchandise, to do inventory management, to do sourcing and costing, there were 18 separate tools that we were using to do that. Needless to say, some of them were on green screens and many of them didn't integrate. We have moved now to one platform that can be used across all inventory, pricing, the assortment building, and in-season management. We're well underway for the implementation of that platform in the company. That conveys, obviously, a productivity advantage, which is important for our cost structure.
Most importantly, we believe that it really helps us to get the right product in the right place at the right time, to improve the outcome for our customers and to improve the productivity of all of our inventory. Last on that front, there's a lot more, but the last thing I'm going to talk about is the fact that we've been making significant investment in our logistics infrastructure. We've traditionally run, as much of the industry has, with separate direct distribution for our online customer and retail distribution. We have the, I guess I'd call it the gift, maybe the luxury, of having large retail distribution centers that are not fully utilized. The work that we're doing right now, number 1, is an investment avoidance issue where we need to continue to add direct distribution capacity.
We're actually doing the work to convert the retail DCs to be able to ship both direct and retail fulfillment out of 1 pool of inventory and 1 DC. It allows us to avoid some form of incremental asset investment in new buildings. It also allows us to leverage and be very flexible with 1 pool of inventory. We are part of the way through that. We have a clear plan for making that happen. There was a slight setback associated when we had the Fishkill fire, but not significant, and we'll make material progress on that in 2017 and plan to wrap that up in early 2018. There's a bunch of things underway. There's much more that I can talk about in this call, and I'll look forward again to engaging with many of you as we spend time out meeting you personally.
Let me shift now to talk a little bit about our brands in Q4. I'll start with Old Navy. As you can remember, we had a tough Q4 in 2015. I have to give kudos to the team, and quite honestly, kudos to the brand. We diagnosed the issues. We made changes. We leveraged our responsive capabilities. We modified appropriately places in the assortment. I expected that really to take probably 2 quarters to fix, and we got traction faster than that. Historically, types of misses that we had in Q4 would really have taken a year, and it really took us 4 months before we started to see traction and the brand really getting back on track. That yielded, this last year, Old Navy's fifth consecutive year of sales growth and a business that is approaching $7 billion in annual sales.
I have to repeat it because I'm proud of it, but I have to repeat it, which is a 12 comp in December and a 5 on the quarter, which I believe under any metric represents a market share gaining performance. This was driven by a strong commercial plan, cut through marketing, and great product acceptance. There was tough traffic, but we beat the traffic headwinds to deliver a positive top line by driving a strong sales over traffic. This was really what was happening with everything going on inside the store. A few call-outs. We emerged as the leading market share competitor in women's dresses on a rolling 12-month basis. Again, you've heard me say market share many times, and I will continue to say it. Market share today is really omni market share. Market share historically was square footage.
As we think about market share going forward, it is omni and it is category specific. The entire company is moving in the direction of really being category market share focused. Women's dresses was a big win, and we were able to drive very high double-digit comps, not by guessing and buying into the category in a big way, but by feeding units into the business off a responsive platform, really led by customer demand. It's just really the inverse of the historical buying model. I continue to believe that Old Navy is very strong, and our aim is to continue to invest in and build that business. It's a market share play. The brand is incredibly well-positioned across family fun, value, and fashion. We have clarity of brand equity.
We have a strong marketing voice, and really most importantly, we have operating discipline, which is big on my mind. You will hear Teri talk about that as well. The consistency and discipline is something that we have not had as consistently as we needed to across the company, and Old Navy really is the shining example of that in my mind. We continue to believe we have a winner in the brand with significant market share opportunity in front of us. Let me turn to Gap. Progress has been slower than I expected, but I'm really pleased to see some bright spots. I look for, under the covers, period-over-period improvement in key places in the business, and I have not been disappointed in seeing it inside of Gap.
Jeff and the team at Gap are doing heavy lifting right now to continue to transform the product and the operating model. Probably the most important thing going on in Gap, again, is building on our responsive capabilities, moving to a monthly and demand-driven based buying model. I would be remiss, however, to say that Gap, as we report it to you, is a very complicated composite of channels and geographies. I point that out because obviously we have a big business in Japan. Japan has been a tough market for many to do business in. A large presence in Europe, and a growing presence in China, as well as the North American business across the three channels and a franchise presence.
As I look at Gap, I look under the covers to see what the leading edge indicators are, product acceptance, the women's business, et cetera, and I'm pleased with what I see. If I look at 2016, Gap is a brand in the relevant categories where responsive capabilities matter. They have moved the majority of their business onto a responsive operating model. A couple of standout examples are the women's knits business, which for Gap is a big business, and the wovens bottoms business, also a big business, leading the way. By Q4, those categories had grown to high single-digit comps with margin expansion up to 500 basis points. Again, that it starts with on-trend quality product, but it also sits on a platform of the responsive capabilities beginning to show what they can do. I'll move on to Banana Republic quickly.
As you've seen, I've made a change in leadership there. I've not yet put in a new brand president. I've taken advantage of this moment to really roll up my sleeves, get into the business personally, and understand what's going on. Here's what I would observe. There's a lot to like and a lot right in the business, not enough. In categories where we lost our dominance and lost the trust of our consumer, we put our shoulder against realigning those categories. Categories like pants, our Four Fit women's pants complex. Categories like suit separates. Those categories we're seeing excellent traction with the consumer.
Suiting as an example, double-digit comps with a 400 basis points improvement in margin. We need more faster, and that's really what I'm focused on right now, which is taking the next steps and taking them quickly to continue to turn the business around. I'm not pleased with the performance. I'm disappointed with the performance. I do believe there's a lot of potential in the brand. We don't break out Athleta, but I have to talk about it. I am nothing but pleased with the brand's performance and the team's performance. The customer continues to respond to the assortment, continues to respond to the aesthetic, continues to respond to product fabrications, and the very strong marketing of the Power of She campaign.
We are seeing continued excellent growth. We believe the brand is positioned in the sweet spot, right at the intersection of performance and lifestyle, which we as a company are very interested in, Athleta is leading the way on. I'm bullish on Athleta and I'm bullish on the brand's growth prospects. Let me pause. I want to hand it over to Teri. I met Teri several months ago. We've gotten to know each other over that time period. We've been working now here together for five or six weeks. I would tell you that I just couldn't be more pleased with having her partnership. I'll make a few more comments on that, I want her to talk a little bit about 2016 and then the perspective moving forward.
Great. Thanks, Art. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by first saying how happy I am to be part of Gap Inc. and its portfolio of iconic brands. As Art said, this marks my sixth week with the company. So far I've been extremely impressed by the passion and the commitment that Art and the teams have around continuing to move the company forward in this difficult environment. Over the last few weeks, I've been diving deep into the business to better understand where we've been, the progress we've made, and the opportunities ahead. I'm really excited to be in the role. I welcome the opportunity to help continue to sharpen our operational discipline and execute against our transformation strategies that position the company for long-term growth. For those on the call that I don't know yet, I look forward to meeting you and working together.
Moving on to the fourth quarter and full year performance, starting with sales. Our sales for the fourth quarter were up 1% to $4.43 billion. Comp sales were up 2%. Net sales for the year were $15.5 billion, down 2%. Comp sales were also down 2%. Moving to gross margin. Fourth quarter gross profit was $1.5 billion, representing gross margin expansion of 110 basis points to 33.9%. Merchandise margin was up 50 basis points with positive AUR at all brands. Rents and occupancy leveraged 60 basis points, driven by the positive fourth quarter comp and the benefit from certain restructuring actions. For the full year, gross profit was $5.6 billion and gross margin was up 10 basis points to 36.3%. Merchandise margin was up 30 basis points, rents and occupancy deleveraged 20 basis points on the year.
Regarding SG&A, as we've noted, we expected Q4 SG&A to deleverage as we invested more in the business. We also had an increase in incentive-based comp as we lapped bonus accrual reversals in the fourth quarter of last year. For the fourth quarter, total operating expenses were $1.2 billion, which includes the following items: $26 million of restructuring costs associated with the company's previously announced store closure and streamlining initiatives, a $71 million goodwill impairment charge related to Intermix, and a $73 million benefit from insurance proceeds related to the fire at our Fishkill DC. In line with our guidance, marketing expenses for the quarter totaled $195 million, up $26 million versus last year. For the full year, marketing expenses increased $23 million to $601 million. For the full year, total operating expenses were $4.4 billion.
Excluding total restructuring charges of about $197 million and the fourth quarter goodwill impairment charge and insurance proceeds, adjusted operating expenses were $4.3 billion, $156 million above last year. Regarding taxes, our fourth quarter reported effective tax rate was 22.8%. During the quarter, we realigned certain aspects of our legal structure to provide additional flexibility going forward, which resulted in a non-recurring tax benefit. Our adjusted effective tax rate was about 10 points higher, excluding this benefit, as well as the tax impact of the restructuring and impairment costs during the quarter. As a reminder, the adjusted Q4 tax rate benefited from changes in our geographical mix of tax earnings. For the full year, our effective tax rate was 39.9% and about one point lower on an adjusted basis. Turning to earnings. On a reported basis, fourth quarter earnings per share were $0.55. Full-year EPS totaled $1.69.
On an adjusted basis, fourth quarter and full-year earnings per share were $0.51 and $2.02, respectively. Full-year adjusted earnings per share excludes a $0.41 impact from restructuring costs, including the impact from a higher tax rate, a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $0.18 related to Intermix, a $0.11 benefit from insurance proceeds related to the fire at our Fishkill distribution center, a non-recurring tax benefit of $0.15. Additionally, it's important to remember that foreign exchange negatively impacted full-year adjusted EPS by an estimated $0.15, or about six percentage points of growth on an adjusted basis. Regarding stores and capital expenditures, during the year, we completed the wind-down of our Old Navy Japan business and the closure of a number of dilutive Banana Republic stores, primarily internationally.
As we've said, these closures will allow us to better align talent and financial resources against our most important priorities in 2017 and beyond. On a total company net basis, we closed 75 stores in 2016, and our square footage as of the end of the year was down about 3%, in line with our previous guidance. Capital expenditures totaled $524 million, also in line with our previous guidance. Balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the fourth quarter with inventory down 2% year-over-year. Our full-year free cash flow was an inflow of about $1.2 billion, including approximately $73 million of insurance proceeds related to the Fishkill fire. As anticipated, we paid down $400 million of term loan in full during the fourth quarter and ended the year with $1.8 billion in cash.
Moving on to 2017, before we get to guidance, I wanted to lay out some changes to our reporting practices. As we have looked at our practices relative to the industry, as well as our approach to planning and operating the business, we've decided it is more appropriate to provide additional perspective on anticipated results for the year while moving away from monthly sales reporting. While our intent is to maintain our level of transparency, we believe this approach will allow us to focus more on driving excellent execution of our plans to strengthen the business for the future. Going forward, we'll continue to provide guidance on full-year earnings per share. We'll also add perspective on expected full-year comp sales, as well as full-year capital expenditures and store count. Where there may be other significant factors affecting our planned results, we'll also provide that perspective as needed.
In addition, we'll provide perspective for the first half of the year, specifically regarding EPS and inventory. As I said, we're committed to continuing to maintaining transparency with you and our investors through our quarterly and annual reporting. We believe this approach to providing guidance better aligns the investment community with the way we approach the planning and operations of the company to build shareholder value. Moving to guidance. As Art mentioned, we have an incredible opportunity to capitalize on the changing retail landscape to further differentiate ourselves within the competitive set and, importantly, to capture displaced market share.
In 2017, we're focused on capitalizing on our improved product quality to improve sales with healthy merch margins, investing strategically in the business to strengthen our brand equities, and to support growth for 2017 and beyond, maintaining our operating discipline and driving efficiencies by leveraging scale, and returning excess cash to shareholders. With that mindset, we expect earnings per share for fiscal 2017, which includes the 53rd week, to be in the range of $1.95 to $2.05. We currently expect that foreign exchange will continue to be a headwind in 2017. We estimate an impact of about $0.09 of earnings per share, or about five percentage points of growth. This expected EPS range assumes 2017 comp sales are flat to up slightly. We expect net sales growth to lag this, given an expected negative impact of foreign exchange.
Let me take a moment to provide some color around the relationship between the first and second half of the year. During the first half of the year, we'll be continuing some of the increased investments that began in the back half of 2016. Additionally, it's important to remember that the back half of 2017 will include the benefit from the 53rd week. With that in mind, let me take you through some expectations for the first half. First, we expect continued investments in marketing, primarily at Gap brand, as we seek to leverage the incredible brand awareness that exists and translate it into top of mind purchase intent. Second, we are lapsing minimal incentive-based compensation accruals last year that will pressure SG&A in the first half.
Third, as Art discussed, we're making investments in our digital and omni strategies that we believe support the long-term growth of the business. Fourth, as noted previously, rent and occupancy will include the pre-opening costs associated with our Times Square flagship locations scheduled to open in the back half of 2017. Lastly, per published reports, traffic has decelerated February month to date, which we have factored into our comp assumptions for the first half. As a result of these factors, we currently expect first half earnings per share to decrease relative to adjusted EPS for the same period last year. We expect the percentage decrease to be in the high single digits. Regarding several other relevant metrics, we will, as Art mentioned, remain focused on disciplined management of inventory levels, learning from our experience following the Fishkill fire, and leveraging the benefits of our investments in supply chain.
Based on current trends at the end of the second quarter, we would expect total inventory to be down low single digits. Recognizing that this is a point in time measure, we'll be looking for sustained improvement in inventory management efficiencies. With our investments in responsive, we would expect inventory levels to decrease over time. Factoring in jurisdictional mix of earnings, we expect a full year effective tax rate of about 39%. Excluding an estimated $200 million of spend related to rebuilding our Fishkill distribution center, we expect capital expenditures to be about $625 million. As a reminder, we expect insurance proceeds to cover the cost of rebuilding our Fishkill DC. While the 2017 expected capital expenditures are above 2016, it's important to note our expected spend still remains below our five-year average of approximately $660 million.
This spend reflects a balanced approach to invest in the business strategically to support long-term growth. About half of this spend will go towards store investments with the remainder largely related to IT and supply chain investments to support our omni and digital strategies, as Art discussed. Regarding company-operated stores, during the year, we plan to add 40 net new stores. Openings will focus on Old Navy and Athleta. Closures will be weighted towards the Gap brand. Regarding our store investments, we, of course, will be very thoughtful and prudent around these investments, and we'll adjust the level of spend as needed, depending on our performance and expected returns. Finally, turning to cash. Our priorities for use of our cash remain unchanged. First and foremost, investing adequately but responsibly in the business. Second, maintaining our commitment to our dividends, which currently provides a 4% yield.
Finally, returning excess cash to shareholders while maintaining sufficient liquidity to comfortably support our business. Given our bias to repay the $400 million term loan, we didn't complete any share repurchases during 2016. That said, we have $1 billion remaining on our share repurchase authorization, and based on our current investment plans for the business, we would intend to use a portion of that authorization this year. Our current thinking is to repurchase at least sufficient shares to cover the dilution from our option exercises. Our current plan would be to repurchase $100 million in shares in the first part of the year. From there, we'll monitor the business and make other determinations about whether additional share repurchases are appropriate. With that, I'll turn it back over to Art.
Thanks, Teri. Really appreciate it. As I mentioned, and she mentioned, we've been working now side by side for really six weeks. One of the things that I saw in Teri as I was getting to know her, and I've seen in spades since she has joined the company, is that she comes from a culture and a background where operating discipline and cost control are sort of second nature. She also comes from a culture and a background where the power of innovation and brand building are equally second nature. I said it before, I'll say it again. I'm very much looking forward to her partnership. We are both committed to ongoing cost control, and we view many of the initiatives that we are taking as ors, not ands.
In this environment, with the competitive turmoil we're seeing, with the skittish consumer that is out there, having a lean cost structure is not just a competitive advantage, it's an imperative. I also believe that in the environment that we're operating today, with the volatility that we're seeing, we would be remiss if we were not constantly grinding away at our cost structure and looking for opportunities for efficiency. I do want to highlight the fact that underlying that, we are working very hard and are more done than not to really rewire the operating platform of the company. What I mean by that is, historically, we had many functions that were duplicated across our brands.
We have been working really over the course of the last 12 plus months to bring those together in what I call a best-in-class and best-in-cost operating platform, where wherever we can work on a shared basis and work more effectively and more efficiently, we will do that on a centralized and shared basis. While of course, skinning that platform for everything that faces the consumer and everything that needs to be expressed through the brand fingerprints and the brand DNA, so the brands continue to show up as the brands that they are. It's another place where, as we're getting that work done, we see advantage, structural advantage from our multi-brand portfolio as we build this best-in-class and best-in-cost operating platform.
I've talked about market share a lot. I want to do a slight deeper dive on market share. I want to highlight the active and performance category. You all know that this business continues to grow. We have a very significant business in the space already, well north of $1 billion. It is on its way to being 1/3 of U.S. apparel spend. It remains a key driver in the overall apparel market. It's a market that we're committed to, certainly through Athleta. It's also a market that we're committed to and excited about in our businesses that continue to build inside of Old Navy and Gap. One of the things that significantly differentiates this space versus much of the rest of the apparel market is technical innovation.
You've heard me say this before. I'll say it again. You'll hear it again. We believe that there is a significant opportunity, particularly in the intersection of performance and lifestyle. A couple examples of this proactive innovation are the Sculptek fiber and the Powervita fiber that we have in products inside of Athleta, which has seen significant success in their bottoms business. To further push technical innovation, we have created a small, focused, and nimble innovation center focused on proactively driving innovation at the fiber, yarn, fabric, and chemical level, rather than being a passive taker of innovation like we have been historically and much of the industry is. We have hired a super interesting individual to run it. His name is Tetsuya O'Hara. He was leading innovation at Patagonia. I think we can all agree that Patagonia has been an incredibly innovative company.
He's just on board. We're really excited about what we expect to see out of this innovation center. Again, that's a center that we have not duplicated across many places of the business, but a center in service to all of our brands. Let me talk for a moment quickly about experience, because it's critical. When I say experience, it's both the digital experience and the physical experience. Really importantly, it's where digital and physical come together. I want to give you a couple examples of the progress that we're making and what I'm starting to see in terms of how this can potentially significantly change the way that our customer is engaged with our brands. Number 1, we believe that as a multi-brand portfolio, we have a structural opportunity to exploit some places for experience that we have not exploited historically.
Today, we have a loyalty program that is single tender and connected to our credit card. We are in the process right now of building out a multi-tender, multi-brand loyalty program that will deliver a rich mobile-delivered experience for our customer. We believe, we've actually seen results to support this, that a program like this can drive higher share of wallet, higher engagement, increased personalization, and also really offer us very efficient, very effective direct communication with our customers. It's a path towards cost-efficient marketing and engagement versus broad-based advertising. We think it's a win-win. We're in the middle of it now. We introduced our first Old Navy native app just several weeks ago and have gotten very good engagement from our customers. We're continuing to move this forward. Let me give you another example.
We, as much of the industry has, have traditionally operated with a point-of-sale system that is hardwired terminal-based in our stores. We are largely complete in moving our POS off of hardware into the cloud and making it browser-based. What this does is it obviously gives us efficiency in the back end in terms of IT. The most important thing it does is it puts capabilities in the hands of our sales associates and our customers on the floor that were never there before. If you go back to Old Navy's Q4, what you see is a really exceptional sales over traffic spread. Not insignificantly, this was driven by the fact that we have deployed across many Old Navy stores, a mobile POS, which also has the ability to do stock checks, to check inventory levels, to open credit cards, et cetera.
What we're seeing is when a sales associate has this, it changes fundamentally the way they interact with our customers in a very positive way. Okay, let me wrap up. I just want to summarize here for a moment. As I look across the landscape, I've learned over the last two years, we've seen the industry continue to change and that change continue to accelerate. I am convinced that winners will dominate in four areas. First, product. If you don't win at product, you won't win at anything, and we are well on the way towards modernizing our product capabilities and de-risking our buying processes. That's innovation, that's quality, that's fit, that's on-trend every day. Secondly, brand. Brands matter. Strong, healthy, relevant brands will win the day. We have some of the best global brands in the world, and we're working to make them stronger.
At the same time, we're continuing to build brand awareness around an emerging brand like Athleta. Third, unique and differentiated customer experience. This is where we are working very hard to solve the omni equation, to put capabilities in our hands that customers haven't historically had, to change the way our sales associates interact, to make sure that every unit of demand in every place that it sits inside of this company, every piece of demand, every customer is matched with every unit of supply in a seamless, cost-effective, and frictionless way. Those three things together, we believe, yield a significant market share opportunity. All of that sits on a disciplined, best-in-class, best in cost operating platform. This is a journey. It's one that we're approaching with urgency, with determination. I'm a realist.
I can see where we have made mistakes. I can see where I can get very excited as the proof points begin to materialize. My money is on Gap, not only to survive this changing environment that we're in, but to emerge a very clear winner. Let me turn it back over to Jen and open up the call to questions.
That concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open up the call to questions. We'd appreciate limiting your questions to one per person.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, it is star one. We'll take our first question from Richard Jaffe with Stifel.
Thanks very much, guys. If you could just think back to what happened at the Fishkill campus and the learnings that you've realized in the fourth quarter of operating with a very different inventory level at the Gap brand, and how that will translate into what's going to happen this year, 2017, by brand in terms of inventory level in stores, online, and some metrics we could perhaps use in our modeling as well. Thank you.
Let me just give you a few thoughts, and then I'll turn it over to Teri. I don't know if she's prepared to give you a lot of specific metrics right now that are down at brand and channel level. Obviously, we had a lot of inventory that was taken out of service. The primary impact was on Gap. We had a big impact on our online and our outlet business, as well as the specialty business. I wouldn't have wished for the fire to happen, we did see that with that reduced inventory, we were able to see really nice progress on some of the key metrics of the business in terms of AUR, the productivity of our inventory, and that kind of thing. It has very much informed how we're thinking about inventory going forward and the size of our buys.
That all said, I do believe over the long run that continuing to gain market share is going to come both through better and more productive inventory, but also through units. The other thing that we exercised with the reduction of inventory selectively was our responsive capabilities to be able to feed units back into the business where it was appropriate. Again, I've said this a lot. The vision on my mind is to be able to always buy conservatively and be responsive enough in key categories to be able to feed units into the business like Old Navy did in its dresses business in Q4, where we see we have real upside in terms of unit growth. Teri, do you want to add to that?
Yeah, I would really just echo Art's comment and then translate that into kind of an intuitive view that there should be room for more efficient management of our inventory levels. Now, we've guided to down low single digits in the first half. In my gut, I would expect us to be able to do better than that. I'm not in a position to commit to that this early in the game, but for all the reasons that Art cited, as we get better at our responsive capabilities and these systems come online that we've invested in, I would expect us to be able to continue to make good progress on inventory discipline.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo.
Hey, Teri. Just two quick questions. I know you gave us the 53rd week being in the guidance. I am sorry if I missed this, did you let us know what the sales and EPS benefit will be to you this year in Q4? When you gave us the 50 basis points of merch margin expansion for the quarter, I just want to make sure that was on the adjusted gross margin. Thanks.
Yeah. Answering the last question first. Yes, that was on an adjusted basis, the margin guidance. In terms of 53rd week, we didn't give you the specifics. What I would say is that on an EPS basis, we expect it to be in the range of $0.04-$0.05, about a couple of points on the growth rate.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lindsay Drucker Mann with Goldman Sachs.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to ask about traffic and maybe just expand a little bit more in terms of what you're seeing in traffic and how you're thinking about specific initiatives to drive traffic into the stores across the year.
I'm sure you see the public data. You can tell that traffic continues to be tough. As I've said, we had a pretty consistent downturn of about 3% a year, and now it's gone deeper than that. Sometimes we see deeper than that. The public data would say that February started out significantly deeper than that due to a number of things, not the least of which was the holiday shift. We will have as our backdrop, a negative traffic assumption that we're using as planning. We think that is appropriate and conservative. That all said, it's really two things, which is how do you beat the overall traffic number, and that is one of the specific reasons that we are putting marketing back into the business. A lot of it is not the traditional advertising.
A lot of it is digital marketing that has a line of sight to returns. We can look and see how do we spend down on an ROI basis to the appropriate level of return and know when we're at a diminishing level of return from our spend. The second thing, it was really exciting to see was, and to me, it demonstrates the relevance of Gap brand as an example. We had this '90s reissue collection, and with a very simple amount of marketing behind it, we got 2 billion impressions out of spending not very much money. It shows you, again, when you get something right in a brand like that has ubiquitous recognition and a lot of love, how much you can get for not spending if you go out, craft it, and do it in the right way.
Marketing is really about being the traffic spread. I wouldn't underestimate also the importance of what's happening inside the box. I was in stores again this morning, as I like to be before we do every one of these calls, and I am often in stores. There is a relentless focus across all of our brands to what I call monetize the footsteps that are coming across the lease line. If there are fewer of them, how do you do better with them? It's why I highlighted the deployment of the mobile POS. Old Navy drove a terrific SOT, and part of that was by driving conversion in some of these stores. Some of these stores during the holiday period, they were ringing 50% of their transactions on the floor, and that results in a very different level of engagement with our customers.
It's really one of the first times that I've seen in my time at the company when conversion, which can be just a relentlessly sticky metric has moved in a way that is very convincing. It's outside the store, beat the trend, inside the store, monetize the footsteps. The last thing is, let me go back to where I started. Apparel is a growing category, and the traffic is out there. It is an awful lot digital traffic at the end of the day. I've been saying inside the company that a headwind's only a headwind if you're facing in the wrong direction. A lot of the work that we're doing is really about aligning ourself with where the customer is, beating the traffic trend in our stores, which she still values, and then monetizing the traffic inside our stores.
Art, if I could ask just on February, as it relates to the broader industry, does the downshift in traffic or the very weak traffic trends, do you think those are explained by the holiday shift or something else, or is something bigger sort of afoot?
I'll do the forensics on February when we have February in the bag. I'm really not going to try to assign a coefficient to the delay in tax refunds and the weather and the holiday shift, et cetera. What I do know is that product acceptance when she's in the store, product acceptance is excellent for us, and she hasn't stopped buying clothing. I'm really skeptical that it's some big things typically don't happen in the matter of a couple of weeks. Obviously with Old Navy in particular, we had a super strong holiday and carried that strength through into January. Again, I'll do the forensics when we can look back and put a bow around it rather than speculate right now.
Got it. Thank you.
Yep.
We'll take our next question from Matthew Boss with JPMorgan.
Thanks. On the margin front, how would you rank drivers of the 50 basis points merchandise margin expansion? Just the best way to think about the cadence. Do you actually see gross margin up this year after we think about ROD and FX, or are those offsetting factors?
Sorry, what was the last part of your question?
Overall gross margin after we think about
Okay
rent occupancy, depreciation, and FX. Is it flat, up, or down?
Yes. You're asking for a lot of detailed modeling questions, and we'll be happy to spend a little more time with you offline. Just broadly speaking, if we think about the impact on margin, I'd have to go back and look at the exact ordering, but as I said, we're expecting some AUR progress, but we have the marketing investments, and we do have the bonus accruals, which are fairly sizable. That's a big part of what we're seeing on the overall margin impact. There is an FX impact on gross margin this year. I think we had about 50 basis points of impact. We'll have a similar effect next year. There are countervailing effects there between some of the positives on AUR and then the offsets. We'll take you through more detail offline, if that's helpful.
No, that's helpful. Just to follow up on the SG&A side, what comp do you need this year to lever your expense base?
On ROD, I think we said low single digits. Maybe low to mid-single digits, I guess.
Okay, great. Best of luck.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, please limit your questions to one per participant. Our next question comes from John Morris with BMO Capital Markets.
Thanks. Really nice work on holiday, everybody. Nice improvement and really good improvement in gross margin, the margin pickup in particular. Art, I think my question's for you on product. You've said, and we totally agree, it's all about the product at the end of the day. Maybe tell us a little bit about where your merch team sees the opportunity for the spring season for product. What you've picked up on, particularly at the Gap division, and maybe expand a little bit more on Old Navy, but the opportunity for spring this year versus last year. Thanks.
John, I think the opportunity's gonna be across a number of things. I'll just share some observations, and I'd encourage you, obviously, as you probably do, to get out to the stores. I was in all of our brands this morning across the entire portfolio, from Old Navy to Intermix. I guess where I see strength right now, we're getting traction across the entire company in bottoms, and that is a really good thing. We're seeing that at Old Navy, both in men's and women's. We're seeing it inside of Gap, and they have a very strong bottoms development plan going forward. As you know, to a certain extent, as goes bottoms, so goes the business. They are a loyalty category.
If I go to BR with their 4 fits and the resonance that we've gotten across that 4-fit bottoms complex, then Athleta, which has had a super bottoms business, partly driven by their responsive platform and then fiber innovation as well. Those are opportunities for us as a company. We're always strong when we have a strong bottoms business, and I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing. I'm not gonna, probably for this call, it's probably not right to go into a trend-by-trend assessment. Some of these trends are continuing out there in women's tops. Obviously, cold shoulder and off-the-shoulder continues, and all the brands have embraced that. It's really the strength in the bottoms business that gives me confidence, quite honestly, and the consistency that she has registered, particularly about our fits across all of our brands.
Great. Thanks.
Yep.
We'll take our next question from Adrienne Yih with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Art, I wanted to ask you. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Okay, great. I wanted to ask you what has given you sort of the confidence to reinvest in advertising, particularly television at the Gap brand, and kind of along with that, the changes that you've made at Old Navy
Why the operational improvements? Why have those taken longer at the Gap brand? Thank you very much.
I think that was two questions.
Sorry.
No, that's no problem. I'm sorry. I was thinking. Can you state the first question again, just really quickly?
Yeah. The confidence that you've had to reinvest.
Yeah. On marketing.
Yep. Exactly.
Yeah. The confidence really comes from starting out slow, reading whether or not we're getting the payback, which we did a little bit in fall, and then in holiday, and then we put more money into it. You would've hopefully seen our ad that we have on the Grammys. It's confidence we got through relatively low-cost marketing vehicles where we're seeing the ROI. It sits on a foundation of the fact that we're connected to our customers, and where our customers are responding to the product in the store. When they feel like it's right for the brand, it's the quality, it's the fit, it's the trend, it's the fabrication, et cetera. I've always said that that's the moment when you go out and you start to get a little bit louder in inviting guests back into your home.
That's really what we're doing right now is I was not willing to do that back in 2011 until I felt like the product was up to what the brands want. What we're really doing with our customers is saying, "Come back in and give us a try. We believe we have what you want, and we want them to trust us." We're seeing, again, it's not a go out and blow it up in terms of huge campaign, but it is building on some of the validation points that we've seen that suggest that we can get the incremental payoff by putting additional money into the business.
Great. Thank you. Can you answer the second part?
Yeah.
Thanks. Time on Gap.
The time on Gap. Yeah. Frankly, the issue with the time on Gap, I would say, is a couple things, not the least of which was Gap had wandered much farther away from its core equities than Old Navy had. I do brands, and Teri and I spent a lot of time talking about this because she obviously grew up in an environment where brands were paramount. Brands at their core are about trust. When we have done this where we have swung the aesthetic, where we've gone away from categories she has expected, where we don't deliver the quality and the value that she has learned that we stand for, that's a trust issue at the end of the day.
The deviation inside of Gap brand as we wandered away from the aesthetic and did some of these other things, was much larger than what we had in Old Navy. Secondly, as we've said also, Old Navy's responsive capabilities were more developed than Gap's were. It's a combination of reestablishing the equities of the brand and also building the responsive capabilities out underneath. Old Navy clearly is also in the value space, and the value space is very strong and checking right now. I think if you look at those two things, it explains a little bit of the latency between the work we've done and seeing the results show up in the numbers.
Great. Thank you very much.
We'll take our next question from Anna Andreeva with Oppenheimer.
Hi, this is Sam Landman on for Anna. Thanks for taking our question. Mine is on the Gap division specifically. I think you cut SKUs at Gap a few quarters ago. Any color on how that's resonating? Are there specific categories where you see additional opportunity? Additionally, I think you've talked about ticket and maybe evaluating ticket at the Gap division. Can you talk about that as well? Thanks.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I may have broken up in the call. What was the first phrase that you used at Gap brand? We missed it here.
I was saying that, I believe you cut SKUs at Gap a few quarters ago, and I was wondering how that is resonating and any specific categories where you see additional opportunity.
Yeah. We definitely had gotten over-assorted in the women's business. If you go back to summer of 2016 as an example, in the knits business, we had way too many CCs on. I think we had six knits programs, which she really responded to. We found that the color depth that we had across CCs was way more than we needed. We've tightened, gone into these programs, and season over season, really tightened these things up. That's another case also where in Gap, they've really gotten traction with a category we call snits, which are knits but seem like sweaters. We've tightened up our traditional knit fabrication in order to create some space for snits. It's a wonderful spot to be because it also gives us AUR lift as well. Frankly, she's responded to it.
You see it in the stores. The stores are cleaner. They're easier to shop. They've got a stronger point of view, et cetera. I was in the store this morning at Aventura Mall, and I haven't seen as clean a presentation of that in a long time, where the store was just clear what we stood for, the categories were well presented, and it was a very easy store to shop. Sorry, I think you had an add-on to that question as well.
I was asking about ticket.
Ticket
You talked about you maybe evaluating it.
We've done work now. We've been doing pricing work to really start with ticket integrity from a competitive standpoint, and then understanding how the competitors and we play into whether it's a high-low model, an everyday low price model, or whatever. We're just getting some of that work completed at Gap, and it's yielded some very interesting things. Overall, we believe that we have really high-quality integrity in our ticketed prices, and that's again, that's work benchmarked against the competition from the standpoint of the value and the quality that a customer is getting for the ticket. We are doing work, and we have shown progress under the covers of reducing our frequency and depth and breadth of promotion.
If you've been inside a Gap store over the last three or four months, you would notice that we have largely eliminated our, what we call POS events, where we go further in the store. That's an example of continuing to, under the covers, back off of some of the discounting we've been doing. We have a lot more to do, I'm not going to kid you, but we've made some progress there, and we have confidence. What we haven't done is any kind of wholesale repricing or anything like that. Frankly, we don't think it's necessary. There may be some categories where we think bringing tickets down makes sense in terms of competition. The work has also shown that some categories where frankly, we have more authority than we've been pricing for as well.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Paul Lejuez with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Just curious, within your flat to slightly up comp expectation for the year, can you give any color by brand, what you expect concept by concept, even just directionally? Also just hearing what you said about first half earnings, curious about first half or second half comp expectations. Thanks.
Yes, we're not going to get down to brand-level margin guidance. Happy to talk about some of the broader company drivers offline. We're not going to get down to the brand level. As we said, we expect the comp on the year to be flat to slightly up. That's based on our current expectations factoring in the start to the year and what we anticipate going forward.
Sorry, Teri. I wasn't asking margin by concept. I was asking about comps by concept. Any directional color there?
No. We won't go down to the brand level. Sorry.
Okay, thanks.
We'll take our next question from Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I just wanted to follow up on SG&A. There had been about $275 million of cost reductions coming out of some strategic actions last year. We think about the SG&A line, I know you went through a lot of offsets to that, but how much of those have been realized at this point? Is there an opportunity to have SG&A dollars down in 2017 because of those reductions?
Yeah. We did begin to realize some of that savings in the current year. We haven't disclosed the specific amounts, but a meaningful portion of those were realized this year, and the remainder will be realized next year. Those are largely offset, more than offset, by the investment we're making that we talked about in terms of the digital capability and the advertising spend. You're not going to see a reduction in SG&A. You'll actually see some growth, and it's just a bit of a lagging as we make these investments, and then we'll start to see the benefits come as we move forward.
I would just jump in there also and say, reiterate the comments that I made, and I know Teri feels the same way, is we're never done on looking for opportunities for efficiency inside the company. One of the reasons I really welcome Teri's eyes, one of the many, is a fresh pair of eyes sees opportunities that we may not have seen sitting here. That is very much on my mind. I'm not previewing anything in terms of another cost restructuring or something like that, but I remain convinced that we have to continue to get to a lean cost structure, as I said.
Thank you.
Yep.
We'll take our next question from Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group.
Good afternoon, everyone. As you think about the store base and the footprint, you mentioned about the net openings. What do the closings look like by brand, and how do you think about the store footprint over time? What do you want it to look like? Thank you.
We do have some planned closings. I don't think we've disclosed the specifics, but they're largely associated with Gap. Following on some of the programs that we had this year, we had closings in BR International, largely, and Gap. There will be some additional closings next year.
The other side of it is, Dana, and it's nice to hear from you. I view Old Navy as an opportunity to incrementally open some additional stores. Have some infill opportunity there. We're experimenting with a small store format. That number, as you know, is a net, and it's a very different story if you look at an Old Navy or an Athleta versus Gap on the other side of the equation.
The last thing, not unlike inventory and SG&A, where Art said we'll be looking at everything with a fresh set of eyes. The real estate footprint is the other thing that we need to look at over time, and we'll continue to think about whether we have the right locations and the best footprint overall.
Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today, and you may now disconnect.
I'd like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today. As a reminder, the press release, which is available on gapinc.com, contains a full recap of our fourth quarter results as well as forward-looking guidance, including our prepared remarks. I'd like to apologize that we did not get to everyone's question, but I wanted to let you know that Teri, along with the investor relations team, will be available after the call for further questions. Thank you.