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Excellent. Good morning, and welcome to this next session of our thirty second Annual Global Retailing Conference. My name is Brooke Roche, and I cover the apparel, softlines and brand sector here at GS. And I'm thrilled to introduce our next session with Gap, Inc. Here today with me is Richard Dixon, CEO. Welcome, Richard.
Thank you, Brooke.
Before we get started, we do have to read a couple of quick disclosures. Whitney, go ahead.
Before we begin, I want to remind you that the information shared today contains forward looking statements that risks may cause our actual results to differ materially and that more information on these risks is available in our most recent annual report and other filings with the SEC, all of which are available on gapinc.com. Back to you, Brooke.
Great. Thanks, Whitney. Richard, you're now two years into Gap, Inc. Transformation. Where are you in the transformation journey today?
Well, two years in, feels like twenty years in. We're obviously in a remarkable journey. And ultimately, our aspiration is to become a high performing house of iconic brands that shape culture. It's lofty. It's a big ambition.
We do talk about our business in the context of transformation. And transformations of this scale do take time. I would, with confidence, say that we're off to a good start. I think when we think about where we are in our transformation efforts, it's also to some extent important to reflect where we were and then ultimately where we're going. And it wasn't just too long ago, just a couple of years ago, that we were in a difficult situation, which many of you were privy to and followed our story.
We had declining top line. We had brands that were losing share. We had an aging fleet. We had bloated inventory. We had a lot of margin pressure.
We had bloated costs. We had low morale. So this was a portfolio of brands that were iconic and recognized, but the performance of business didn't reflect, if you will, both the legacy and the IP value that was inherent in our portfolio. We in my sort of summary of what happened was as portfolio of iconic brands that were well known, that were built on incredible merchandising product and storytelling, somewhere along the line, we lost that plot and became a retailer, a promotional retailer that ultimately sold apparel. And the communication dialogue in relation to our branded story got masked by price promotion and we were ultimately chasing revenue.
So it was an interesting moment to then sort of set forth how are we going to transform this company. And we did so by sort of creating a journey that had short, mid and long term objectives. And we defined those chapters, which by the way, we don't or haven't really shared publicly. It's an internal road map that now obviously is an external view as to how it's all working inside. But in the context of that dialogue, we put forth short, mid and long term objectives and we established what hopefully many of you are familiar with, which is our strategic priorities, maintaining financial operational rigor, reinvigorating our brands, strengthening our platform and then energizing our culture.
And so in the fix the fundamental stage, as we entered into this journey, driving goals and objectives around our priorities, we executed. And as we sit here today, with last quarter behind us, which of course, we just did last week, we're really proud of our progress. Six quarters of continued comps, which is amazing in the context of our history, consecutive comp growth. We are outpacing the market. So we're resonating with consumers, which is most important.
Our brands are winning in the marketplace. From when we look back from 2022 to 2024, we've had significant margin expansion, 700 basis points, and continue to drive at historical highs in reference to our current margin profile. I do believe, and I hopefully you all agree as you watch our story, that our brands are becoming much more relevant. And I speak about relevance often because relevance can drive revenue. And that combination also feeds into our playbook, which we can talk a little bit more about.
But from a financial metric perspective in terms of our progress, 've we controlled the controllables. Our SG and A is in line. We have a good balance of investments now while we're controlling SG and A. We reported EPS growth, the strongest actually in six years. And we now have a very strong balance sheet, 2,400,000,000.0, which is up significantly, giving us real comfort.
And when we look at the profile, again, in our chapter of Fix the Fundamentals, we feel good about our progress to the extent that now, as you can see from our date and time lines, we're moving now into what we call Phase two, which is truly build momentum.
That's really helpful color. With the progress you've made in the transformation to date, what are the opportunities that you believe can fuel continued growth in the business?
So we believe it's incredibly important as an organization to do what we say we're going to do. Consistency is a fluency that we practice. And we have an extraordinary culture now that speaks fluently in that context, has accountability to doing what they say they're going to do. And ultimately, in that narrative is incredibly internally, externally with our investors and most importantly with our customers so that they can rely on us. In order to continue that, which we believe in the next phase of building momentum, if we can continue to have continuous improvement in our core apparel brands and the proposition by executing against the playbook, which is our brand reinvigoration priority number two.
As you can see from Navy, Gap, Banana and we're working on Athleta, When you execute the playbook well, it becomes a flywheel. And we'll talk a little bit more, I think, probably about the playbook. But ultimately, executing the playbook with consistency is going to drive more relevance and more emotional connectivity and demand creation for our brands. And as long as we drive that product proposition to meet that traffic, we have a formula that we believe can continuously be successful. We called out categories within our industry that we believe we have a rightful place to win.
Strategically well intended chosen categories, active, denim and kids and baby. Active is the number one category in the industry. Denim is the number two category in the industry. And we have the largest market share opportunity existing to continue to grow with kids and baby. So we chose those three categories, not ignoring the other categories, but dialing up the presence and acceleration that we believe we can go after.
And then last but not least, in terms of that continuous improvement model, our omni channel experience with the consumer. Hopefully, you've all checked out our websites over time and you continuously see great brand storytelling, cleaner consumer communication, of course, great product. That dialogue with consumers is incredibly important. And the connection to our stores, which transparently, we have work to do. But we're now at a point where we've had some tests, some refreshes, some remodels.
We're getting great indications of that progress. And so we're at a really interesting stage of reimagining our store experience and starting to invest in that human connection, where we believe, obviously, there's really important continued growth. And as you think about that, of course, kind of the fundamentals of our business continuously improving, driving our core proposition to continue to accelerate, then we're at a point now where we're laying down the seeds to where do we dial up to invest in the accelerate growth. Because as we sit here today in the build momentum phase, to get to accelerate growth, you've got to start now. And we're in a ready position to do that.
So there's two categories that we believe already that resonates with our consumers through tests and dialogue that we've had. And ultimately, within our portfolio today, there's somewhat sleeper categories, and those are beauty and accessories. And with intention, we believe that those are two very big opportunities for us to go after attracting new generation as well as high margin businesses that will complement our apparel business.
That's really helpful. You talked about reinvigoration as you move into this next phase. Last week, you reported the sixth consecutive quarter of comparable sales growth with positive comps at your three largest brands. What gives you confidence that your brands can continue to comp the comp going forward?
That is the sort of big question. Comping the comp is essentially what sort of marks continuous improvement. Now six quarters of comping the comp is good. We believe that executing against our playbook, relentless repetition and focus within the framework of the playbook, which is how our organization is operating today, gives us more confidence that we have additional growth ahead as we see the playbook start to really play out. Now each brand is in a different stage of its reinvigoration process.
And every brand has a different story to tell, but it's all within the context of this framework. When you look at this framework, you could argue, is it sequential? You start with purpose, you then move to product relevance. Yes, there is a sequential order to it. But when it's really successful, it's harmonious.
And that's when you start to get that flywheel execution going, when you recognize a brand's narrative, when you feel it, when you hear it, when you see it and the consistency that we deliver from end to end becomes ultimately the unlock, if you will, to have the confidence that we can have that continuous growth model. I think probably the best example and one of the points of pride that we deliberately drove, which was our flagship brand Gap. It is the namesake of our company. It is a point of pride. It is the brand and the one store in San Francisco in 1969 that started this extraordinary portfolio of brands.
So it was really important back two years ago that we said, okay, we're really going to drive and take a lot of pride in our flagship brand, in addition to, of course, changing our symbol on the stock exchange from GPS to GAP. No better form of marketing, by the way, for a stock than walking around with your symbol. But in any case, in the context of how this playbook works, you start with why does a brand exist? Does anybody really need another pair of jeans or a T shirt or an Oxford? Why us?
And that's a really important question to ask of any brand. What is your purpose? And in that context of the conversation, you get a lot of feedback. But you also need to hearken back to what made you great to begin with. We're inheriting brands that have legacy.
How did they start? What made them famous? How do we take that purpose, that breakthrough and interpret that for today? And in the case of Gap, our purpose is we champion originality and we inspire self belief. Now that to some extent could sound lofty, but ultimately Gap provides you with incredible basics and some style and some fashion to be your best self.
It's how you wear Gap. And so how do we start to inspire that purpose through our product offerings, through our marketing, through relevant narratives that ultimately drive that message, through experiences that we could provide our consumers, whether online or in our stores or special events. And then ultimately, in retail, we all know retail is detail. So execution, by the way, is everything. You can have a great product, you got a great campaign, but if you can't execute, it's really just a kind of good story without a good ending.
And so what you see happening here in the context of our playbook playing out is there's a harmonious moment now with Gap. We started this campaign, if you will, with linen. We chose linen and we did an incredible campaign with Tyla and Jungle and we tied in music and we executed from end to end extraordinarily well. We followed that up with another campaign called Get Loose. By the way, this is all trend based.
So we saw baggy jeans, we saw the loose trends starting to come up on the marketplace, and we said we're going to take a stake in it. We're going to be a leader in that category trend and we're going to drive our playbook from end to end and really own that. We drove incredible product offerings. We created a relevant campaign with Troy Savant, who was very specifically chosen as a Gen Z attractive talent, if you will, to really court a new generation to get interested in Gap. We added music and digital dialogue and executed really, really well.
We then came back again, as you see the playbook start to play out as a flywheel with another campaign with Parker Posey, which was feels like Gap. And incredibly well timed in the context of White Lotus and Parker having a moment, but most importantly, you think about it from behind the scenes, one of the really important parts of Gap is the concept of bridging the generation gap. And so when we think about our brand as a nostalgic brand, but one that needs to be current, how do we appeal to that previous audience and make sure that that customer still loves us and attract a new audience that can begin to introduce or love us. And so that combination is what you see playing out in our playbook. And Parker Posey is a really good example of generational appeal.
Today's campaign, hopefully, you've seen it. If you haven't, I encourage you to see it. In fact, I think I'll probably have a walkout and we'll force you to watch it. But it's called Better in Denim. And it's the latest release of our playbook.
We chose low rise denim, which was intentional to really sort of own that trend. It is part of our history in the Gap in the 90s with low rise denim being a trend. So we're bringing that back and in the context of it, worked with Cat's Eye, a global girl group, which is a phenomenon, created an incredible choreography with incredible talent to execute against the Milkshake song, which of course, if you don't know, I'd be curious why. And the results have been really extraordinary. We were number one search on TikTok.
We've had, I think, billion impressions total. I'm sure my team will tell me it's 8,000,000,000 by now, but 8,000,000,000 is quite a number. 400,000,000 total views. And in the first three days, it was 20,000,000. These are not small stats.
And what's really encouraging is you see the continuous improvement model of our playbook. Each one of those campaigns that I shared was better than the previous one. This release was better than all four combined. And so the context of our flywheel and the continued momentum that we have is really encouraging. We're going into seven consecutive quarters of comp gains, 4% as we shared the last quarter.
That's on top of, by the way, 3% comp as well. Gap is in the conversation again. We are in fact bridging the generation gap, and it is shaping culture. And so when you think about our words in the context of becoming a somebody is playing it. I love it.
I don't mind being interrupted by my milkshake song. But when you think about the words that we talk about and the execution and proof points around doing what we say, it's playing out and it's playing back to us through obviously the consumer just loving our work. It is a framework for all of our brands. If we had time, I'd take you through with a lot of pride and excitement how each one of our brands is executing against this playbook and ultimately, it shows up. But to answer your question in the context of opportunities and how we see moving forward, it's really relentless repetition and dedication, the freedom and the framework that this provides our organization and ensuring that we stay at the speed of culture.
Very clear. You mentioned category leadership earlier as an opportunity. Talk to us about the approach and strategy you have here.
So category leadership, really important to when you have almost representation in every category in the industry, where do you guide? How do you think about long range plans? How do you evaluate within that matrix? Where do you sort of surgically with precision guide the organization at scale to really go after with a right to win? And so as I mentioned, we chose specific categories within our world that we believed we could accelerate and have a rightful place.
Active is one of those categories. Now it's sort of an obvious category. When you're in the apparel business, it is the largest category within the industry. It's four times the size of the number two category, as mentioned, which is denim. And so we've gone after active and in particular with Old Navy.
Old Navy is the number one specialty apparel retailer in the country. It is synonymous with family, fashion and value. And so it was a perfect opportunity for us to accelerate what was already within our business, but start to dial it up and feature it and become known to the consumer that we have an incredible offering of innovative style, quality and fashion performance wear. And it's been doing really well. We are already the number five player in the active category.
Now when you think about that and you look at, well, who are the top four, they're all performance brands. They're all very specific to being performance brands. We are a lifestyle brand that's ranking top five in the active category with a lot more room, in our opinion, to continue to grow. We executed against that strategic intent, driving innovation because that category is driven by innovation. We launched Studio Smooth.
We just launched Bounce Fleece. So they're driving franchise concepts that consumers start to get recognized for and we get recognized for that drive depth of purchase and a dialogue around innovation in the performance category. We carved out space in all our stores and created shop concepts. And then we executed our playbook with a culturally relevant narrative and creative campaign starring Lindsay Lohan, a variety of other celebrities that ultimately brought this category to life in a really meaningful way. We believe that we've got a lot more growth left to go in Active.
Denim. We are in a fabulous denim trend cycle, which we're enjoying as an industry, by the way, but ultimately, portfolio is doing quite well in the space. We are the number two category sorry, number two company in the category. So we have a significant denim business between Old Navy and Gap combined. It is a heritage category for us, particularly with Gap.
And as you can see with our current campaign, executing against that strategic intent is delivering for us. We extended fit and function and style and campaigns against our playbook to drive more of a familiarity and destination for denim within our stores. Gap, in particular, has been doing a great job with it, but Old Navy is also doing an excellent job with denim. If you go to our stores, you'll see we created denim shops. We extended fit.
We have fit guides. We've rolled them out to all of our stores. It's been supported by media as well, and we're currently number three in the category. Again, when you think of Old Navy in the context of its ranking by category and you think number three denim brand in the country is Old Navy. And we believe we have more opportunity to grow.
So denim is a good one. Kids and baby, we're the market share leader in kids and baby. That doesn't mean we can't grow the kids and baby business. In fact, we should be growing the kids and baby business because we have the most recognized, most beloved brands within the category in the country. Gap and Old Navy are synonymous with style, quality and value.
We are part of families' lives in the context of that conversation. And as that life cycle grows, we have a lifetime value opportunity with that consumer. In kids and baby, a large part of the kids and baby business, despite our size, is driven by an entertainment calendar, movies, content. Licensing is a really important part of that proposition. I have background in that.
I know it well. And in the context of that conversation, when we looked at our kids and baby business, we weren't really measuring or merchandising against an entertainment calendar or really robust in the licensing business. So of course, we work with Disney to get that conversation and strategic partnership up and running, knowing the opportunity that we have there. And Old Navy is a great example of the progress that we've made with Disney. We've rolled out a robust licensing program with great marketing execution, which was a tour around the country.
Disney has been an extraordinary partner with us, allowing us to really create almost outside the lines with their, of course, guidance and approval. So we created incredibly exciting product. Again, shops in our stores, it was really strategic coordinated effort that proved that when we can tie in strategic partnerships or license programs with an entertainment calendar, not only can we drive volume, but it's a category traffic driver. It drives mom in, it drives kids in, it drives families in. And then ultimately, when we look at the basket, we're enjoying not only a kids purchase, but of course, an adult purchase.
So it's probably a lot, very quickly sort of telling you at least three categories and the strategy around how and why we went after it. But all of those categories are proving successful. And again, we believe that we're just moving into the build momentum phase.
As we move into that build momentum phase, you mentioned earlier a few high potential categories that can drive long term growth. What are they? What led you to pursue them? And when can we expect to see them?
So again, I want to make sure that we don't we're very excited at this phase of build momentum and accelerate growth, but not at the expense of our continuous improvement model. So as I teach you on the next journey of acceleration outside of our core category, rest assured, we are with relentless focus driving the continuous improvement model on our core assets. That being said, we do have some interesting smaller businesses within our brands that we believe at this time with the proven credibility that we have in doing what we say we're going to do, that we can start to dial up and become more important to the consumer in those spaces. And those are beauty and accessories. The beauty business is a phenomenally exciting business.
It's one of the fastest growing and most resilient categories in The U. S. I think it's expected to surpass $100,000,000,000 in 2025. CAGRs in the 4% to 5% for the last five years. Within the context of how beauty is done, mass beauty represents about 60% of that number.
So our value proposition speaks well to the core business as to what it can represent. It is a margin driver, high margin business. It's a traffic driver and it attracts younger consumers. We've done a lot of study, as you can imagine, around the beauty category. We're in the space already.
So there's some small pockets of beauty within Old Navy and historical fragrance collection at Gap. But we intend to really start to invest in those categories and start to build them up as true businesses within our brand and within our portfolio. When we looked at it, of course, not only surface, we went really deep with a lot of rigor and research and consumer insights and speaking to thousands of customers, our customers as well all around the country. We found great excitement around the idea of our namesake brands in the space, which again gave us a lot of encouragement and confidence to continue to pursue it. From a financial perspective, as I mentioned, of course, it's a big industry.
It's a great margin business to be in. But when we look at other fashion brands that have entered or have validity in the beauty space, they can run at a low of 5% to 25% or 20%, 25% as our insights have shown. When you think about our businesses, Old Navy, Gap, the size and scale and the base that they are, if you're anywhere between 525% over time, that represents a really nice significant growth opportunity on top of the continuous improvement model of our core business. So we're sort of stacking, if you will, at this point in the build momentum and accelerate growth phase that we believe, again, propels and gives us quite a lot of opportunity to continue to grow our business. When you look at accessories, very similar.
We already have a nice accessory business. Nice is nice, but we believe it could be much more important. Our customers want it. It resonates with our customers. We just haven't really gone after it with intent.
And so we set forth a strategy around accessories. We're structuring around that strategy. We're filling in that structure with the right talent associated. And ultimately, we'll apply the same methodology to the accessory category as we're doing in the beauty category. And we believe based on that insight that we have with our customers as well as transactions that we see on a daily basis, in fact, Old Navy just launched a collection of bags, which hopefully you can go see if you shop Old Navy.
And we believe that this can potentially be a great category for us for growth and a broader business opportunity that is in its early stages of development, but is a complement to our existing core business.
Very clear. Let's switch gears to your store base. You've been experimenting with new store formats for several of your brands. How does this play into your broader transformation journey?
So again, I may repeat myself, which is also consistent. But I think in order to understand, again, where we are and where we're going, I think you have to understand where we were. And it's no secret, five years ago, we were a fleet that was underperforming, I mean significantly under a lot of pressure. And we executed a fleet rationalization that dated 2020. In 2020, we began that.
And it was heavy lifting over the course of those years. We closed over three fifty stores. And we called that retail fleet and we're still in the sort of the tail end of that a bit, but ultimately kind of a pivotal moment where we believe at this juncture, our fleet is actually really well positioned. We love our stores. And we believe we've got a very powerful asset and footprint that once invested in and against our playbook and driving traffic with that type of scale, we believe that we've got a really exciting opportunity ahead.
That being said, we have to enhance that consumer experience. And we've done so. There are some great examples that we have today of our stores starting to dial up new experiences, new aesthetics, execution and merchandising. If you remember that Playbook experience is in that slot, that's where the store starts to really show up. Banana Republic is one of those that we've been spending a lot of time reengineering around our heritage as a travel brand.
And so I encourage you to go to our SoHo store. We just also renovated Tysons Corner, Century City as well. For those of you that go to L. A, please visit. These are new formats, new stores.
They're all doing very well in the context of our expectations and encouraging us to continue that rollout. Gap is another really terrific story of test and roll. We have a store here in Fifth Avenue on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District, which we used as a lab, if you will, to create kind of a Gap two point zero, much cleaner conversation with the consumer. We created zones, if you will, of heroic iconic categories, the khaki shop, the denim shop, the fleece shop. We added a lot of visual elements and references that honor our past, but take you into the future.
I really encourage you to go see Flatiron as an example of where we're headed in the context of that new experience. It's working incredibly well. It's actually outperforming the district double digit. So we're very pleased with the performance, and we've been testing that format, learning and pulling those assets and starting to roll out in our fleet. There's about 40 doors now that have denim shops, very similar to the look and feel that you'll see in Flatiron.
It's a really strong pull through of our campaign work as well. When you see the execution through the playbook and the store experience, you can start to really feel the harmony coming in the context of how we're executing. And we'll be continuing to assess the performance, and we're at a stage with Gap where we're getting more bullish and confident that we have opportunity to continue to grow the fleet as we get more success behind our belt. Old Navy, we announced that we're opening up Herald Square. We are so excited with that opportunity and the location.
We're really going to be dialing up what's called the new Old Navy, where we'll have an extraordinarily new and fresh creative expression of the Old Navy brand. Bar none, it will be the best in class retail experience. That's our aspiration. I think from a creative perspective, it's going to be really exciting as we drive family, fun, fashion and value. We want to invite people to come play with style.
And so with that said, that door will be a really important door for us from a creative perspective because once we get that, you'll start to see the thread pulled in what is a 1,400 door fleet. So you can't make all of those, if you will, flagships, but you can take the cues from a creative perspective, a merchandising perspective, a visual narrative and start to roll that out with consistency. So a really important, I'd say, sort of broad stroke overview of the four brands or at least Athleta, which I didn't mention, is also under its reset going to start to get refreshed. But collectively, I think what you kind of start to see is a more optimistic and confident approach with test and learn behind us and the rigor that we put into studying and then ultimately, a well thought out rollout plan that will continuously improve.
Richard, we've covered a lot this morning. Is there anything that you want to close the session with?
I think I hope what stands out to all of you and what I believe is we have a lot of people who love our brands. And we love that you love our brands. And we've been working really hard to fix the fundamentals and to get to this stage where we feel confident and excited around the next phase, which is, of course, building momentum. Our market share has been leading across the categories that we intend on driving. We are the number one branded e commerce business in The U.
S. We have scale. It's an incredibly powerful engine for us that has opportunity for even more growth. We're the largest specialty apparel business in The U. S.
We have a proven playbook that's proving itself out in the context of how our teams executing. It's not a secret playbook. We expose the playbook. But the secret sauce is in the talent. It's in the execution.
It's in the passion, the perseverance and the love of our brands. And this company has a lot of love for our brands and a lot of purpose that's built into our heritage. And we believe we're at a really exciting pivotal moment to start to build upon that momentum. We do what we say we're going to do in the consistency of our deliverables. We'll continue to operate in that way and with transparency.
We've got a scaled supply chain that we believe can be leveraged in a really powerful way as well. And ultimately, we believe in our future. So I thank you for the questions. And hopefully, the sort of long answers gave you a good perspective as to kind of where we were, where we are and ultimately where we're headed.
Great. Thanks so much, Richard.
Thank you.
With that, I think we will give you a little taste of milkshake. Okay.