Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Urban Outfitters, Inc. 2nd Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to introduce Ona McCollough, Director of Investor Relations. Ms. McPolin, you may begin.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the URBN 2nd quarter fiscal 2022 conference Earlier this afternoon, the company issued a press release outlining the financial and operating results for the 3 6 month periods ending July 31, 2021. The following discussions may include forward looking statements. In today's commentary, unless otherwise noted, All comparisons will be made to the Q2 of fiscal 2020 referred to as LLY. It's important to note at this time, The global COVID-nineteen pandemic has had and continues to have a significant impact on URBN's business. Given the uncertainty about the duration and extent of the virus' impact to the global retail environment, content discussed on today's call could change materially at any time.
Accordingly, future results could differ materially from historical practices and results from current descriptions, estimates and suggestions. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results is contained in the company's filings with the On today's call, you will hear from Richard Hayne, Chief Executive Officer, URBN and Frank Conforti, Co President and COO of URBN. Following that, we will be pleased to address For more detailed commentary on our quarterly performance and the text of today's conference call, please refer to our Investor Relations website at www.urbn.com. I will now turn the call over to Dick.
Thank you, Ona, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, we announced record breaking second quarter results. So I'll begin my prepared remarks by thanking all brand, creative And shared service teams for a truly remarkable performance. Your hard work and careful execution produced one of the strongest quarters in URBN's history. So thank you.
I will now provide a brief high level overview of those results and then provide some thoughts on the consumer and our prospects for the Q3 and beyond. Total company sales grew by more than 20% reaching a record $1,160,000,000 in the quarter. Total Retail segment comp sales advanced by 40% versus LY And 22% against LLY. Powerful consumer demand across most product categories, especially apparel plus strong execution by our teams drove positive double digit retail segment comps at all brands. The 2nd biggest accomplishment in the quarter, just behind the amazing retail segment comps, was the strength of full price selling and the corresponding decrease This helped to generate outstanding merchandise and gross profit margins despite large increases In delivery and logistics expenses, the combination of strong gross profits with tightly controlled SG and A expenses led to record Q2 operating income and earnings per share of $1.28 more than twice WILI's result.
As we look to the back half of the year, we believe that URBN's prospects shine brightly. Most importantly, consumer demand for our products Continues to be robust. She remains optimistic, has money to spend and wants fashion newness in her wardrobe and home decor. To date, we have seen negligible impact on sales from the recent rise in delta cases and all brands continue to experience strong regular price comps. Comp sales in August at the Free People and Anthropologie brands are approximately in line with their 2nd quarter results, while the Urban brand comps have slowed beginning in mid July.
This is primarily due to much lower back to school promotional activity versus 2 years ago. The Urban brand has intentionally walked away from most back to school discounting as it seeks to reposition its price value equation. We believe retail segment comps for the Urban brand in Q3 could moderate to the high single digit range. August to date, Total URBN Retail segment comp sales are mid teens positive and we believe Q3 comp sales We'll most likely end in that range. Now I'll turn the call over to Frank, who will provide more details on the segment and brand performance and our thoughts on the Q3.
Thank you, Dick, and good afternoon, everyone. I also want to start by congratulating all URBN teams on a remarkable quarter. We recognize these results come amidst a still challenging environment and are grateful for your hard work and dedication. Thank you. Now I will give you some more details on our results.
Starting with the Retail segment, Store performance improved significantly from recent quarters. Stores registered healthy AUR and conversion gains that largely offset negative store traffic. Comp store sales in North America landed down just slightly, while comp store traffic was high teens negative. By region, traffic in the Southeast and Southwest markets continued to outperform the major metro markets in New York and California, But all markets showed impressive improvement from Q1 levels. In Europe, while all stores were open during the quarter, Traffic levels remained below that in North America as some jurisdictions continue to impose severe operating restrictions.
The already booming digital channel in North America continued to flex its impressive muscles registering mid double digit sales increases, which easily offset the low single digit negative store comp. In Europe, the digital channel recorded another blockbuster performance Barely missing triple digit growth for our 2nd consecutive quarter. In total, digital performance was driven by increased sessions, Improved conversion and higher AOV. Moving to the wholesale segment. Sales decreased by 30% versus LLY.
This decrease was a result of lower sales at Free People Wholesale. As we have discussed previously, over the course of the past year, Free People Wholesale has adjusted its customer mix, cutting back some accounts to better align with its go forward strategy of concentrating on full price selling. While the strategy has reduced sales in the short term, we believe this is benefiting the overall brand And this has resulted in strong operating profit in the quarter despite supply chain cost increases and we believe this strategy will result in better operating income versus LOIs in the second half of this year. Partially offsetting the decline in Free People wholesale sales is the Urban Outfitters wholesale business. Urban delivered $5,000,000 of revenue in the quarter, up 4 80% from LLY.
Urban Wholesale launched in fall of 2018, offering their BDG line of sustainably produced denim jeans and separates to select retailers. The Urban brand continues to build on their initial BDG launch success and has added their ES Frost line to their wholesale distribution. We are looking forward to the Urban brand continuing to build on this growth success. I will now provide more details by brand, starting with the Urban Outfitters brand. The Urban brand delivered a 20% retail segment comp versus LOI.
This was the result of strong double digit sales and positive store comps. This Impressive sales performance came despite a significant decrease in promotional events during the quarter. As Dick noted earlier, The brand is repositioning itself, moving away from frequent promotions and moving to offering an everyday accessible opening price point in key categories. Due to the strategic focus on key price points, regular price selling has accelerated and promotional activity has been reduced significantly, resulting in the brand delivering its lowest ever 2nd quarter markdown rate. Full price selling, which jumped by more than 40% was led by Women's Apparel followed by HomeGoods.
A strong retail segment sales comp of 20% fueled by stronger regular price selling led to mid teens operating profit for the brand. Now turning to Anthropologie. The brand delivered a 14% retail segment comp versus LOI, which represents significant improvement from previous quarters. Retail segment comp sales accelerated each month in the quarter fueled by double digit digital sales, which more than offset Negative comp store sales. From a product perspective, all categories were comp positive.
Home continued to perform exceptionally well, But the improvement in total comp was driven by pronounced acceleration in apparel, whose trend improved nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter versus Q1. Accelerating top line, significant improvement gross profit margin and well controlled expenses resulted in strong mid teens operating profit for the brand. The Anthro customer is shopping again and is looking to refresh her wardrobe with newness in all categories. Not only is she refreshing her wardrobe in the more occasion based categories such as dresses that she has not worn in some time, but she also continues to respond to newness in the more casual aspects of her wardrobe. Due to the strength in apparel, The brand took the opportunity to execute toward a more regular price business by decreasing apparel promotional events by 82% versus LOI, which contributed to a historically low 2nd quarter markdown rate for the brand.
Early fall reads are nicely positive driven by similar trends within apparel. This past weekend, the brand launched a rebranding campaign for Pilcro Sustainable, inclusive denim that will continue through the fall. Anthro believes it has the opportunity to be a denim destination for their customer and believes the rebranding of Pilcro will enable the brand to capitalize on this opportunity. Now I will call your attention to the Free People brand. Once again, the Free People team produced an extraordinary quarter With retail segment comps achieving a staggering 53% gain versus LOI.
Every product category recorded at least A strong double digit comp, while the FP Movement brand retail segment sales grew by over 300% versus LOI. The total Free People brand generated powerful triple digit direct comps, which easily offset the slightly negative store comps. Store sales showed sequential improvement in the quarter with July store comps turning positive. Free People's Extremely low markdown rates for the quarter led to over 400 basis points improvement in merchandise markdown rates. Strong sales and gross margin growth all led to an impressive 20% retail segment operating profit rate for the brand.
Lastly, I will speak to Noovie. As noted on our last call, as the country began reopening this spring, our subscription rental business saw a positive shift in customer behavior. Many subscribers who had paused their subscriptions last year resumed their monthly deliveries. During the Q2, our growth of subscription slowed due to the low availability of inventory in certain categories the consumer was demanding such as dresses. We then chased into a better inventory position in these categories and our subscriber trends have improved.
We are looking forward to Now I will discuss our thoughts on our Q3 and full fiscal year 2022 financial performance. As Dick noted, similar to the Q2, we remain optimistic about the opportunity ahead of us this year. Of course, there are always challenges to overcome and risks to our plans. The impact of COVID-nineteen is still driving numerous problems and In many areas of the business logistics, sourcing, fulfillment and the overall labor market remain constant areas of focus right now. We have several strategies in place to try and mitigate the impact of cost and performance challenges in these areas.
We believe the 3rd quarter could continue to show healthy sales improvement versus FY 2020. We believe our retail segment comp sales growth could land in the mid teens range, while the wholesale segment sales could decrease at a rate similar to the second quarter due in part to the realignment of the Free People brand customer base to focus on more regular price selling. Together, this would result in total company sales in the low double digit range. Based on current sales performance and forecast, We believe our gross profit margins for the Q3 could show over 100 basis points of improvement in FY 2020. Much like the Q2, this improvement could largely be driven by lower markdown rates as a result of strong consumer demand, Solid product performance and disciplined inventory control.
We believe favorable markdowns could offset lower initial markups and deleverage in delivery and logistics expenses. Lower initial markups are likely to be due to increased freight and commodity price increases. The leverage in delivery and logistics expenses are likely to be driven primarily by the increased penetration of the digital channel as well as increased labor expenses. Now moving on to SG and A. Based on our current sales performance and plan, We believe SG and A for the Q3 could grow at a rate just below our sales growth rate.
Our planned growth in SG and A is primarily due to greater marketing and creative spend to support our robust digital channel growth. Additionally, Our SG and A growth is a result of planned incentive based compensation, which was largely not achieved in FY 2020. As we've done in past quarters, our teams will manage SG and A relative to actual sales. Please note, We have managed our SG and A rate of growth well below our sales growth for the first half of the year. While I do believe we can continue to leverage SG and A in the 3rd quarter And back at the half of the year, I do think that our SG and A growth rate will trend closer to sales for the remainder of the year.
The difference between the first and second half is due to increased marketing expenses as well as increased labor expenses in stores and the home office. We are currently planning our effective tax rate to be approximately 24% for the Q3 and full year FY 2022. Capital expenditures for the fiscal year are planned at approximately $285,000,000 The spend is primarily related to providing increased distribution and fulfillment capacity to support our growing digital business and secondarily to opening new stores. Due to the logistics and sourcing extended lead times, we are strategically bringing inventory in earlier than normal in certain categories Like home and garden in order to try and protect holiday sales. We believe this will elevate our inventory a bit at the end of Q3 versus LOI.
Lastly, we are planning on opening approximately 26 new stores and closing 11 stores over the second half of the year. Our new store opening number does not include franchise partner locations in international markets. As a reminder, The foregoing does not constitute a forecast, but is simply a reflection of our current views. The company disclaims any obligation to update forward looking statements. I will now turn the call back to Jim.
Thank you, Frank. Before closing today, I want to give an update on 2 of our more prominent growth initiatives, FP Movement and Nuuly. FP Movement as you will remember is a sub brand launched by the Free People team that offers fashion, activewear and accessories across 3 channels of distribution: digital, Stores and wholesale. MVMT delivered another standout quarter in Q2, growing total brand revenues by more than 200%. The brand currently operates 54 shop in shop locations inside Free People Collection stores And 13 standalone stores, 9 of which have opened since the beginning
of Q2.
The The standalone stores are profitable and performing well above pro form a expectations. In fact, AOV, UPT and conversion in the standalone stores are all performing above Free People collection stores in comparable markets. We plan to open an additional 6 MVMT stores in the remainder of FY 2022 and another 15 to 20 in FY 2023. During the quarter, the MVMT team successfully grew their customer base by more than 80% versus LY And over 300% versus WLY. This led to strong triple digit direct channel growth.
The brand's rapid growth and continued success across all channels and categories reinforces our belief in the large market opportunity Moving to Nuuly. This brand currently operates a growing subscription rental service for women's apparel. Today, the brand announced the launch of its sister brand, Nuuly Threat, a peer to peer resale marketplace where anybody can buy Or sell women's, men's or kids apparel and accessories via an iOS device. The Nuuly team plans to launch It's up later this fall. Both Nuuly platformed, Trip and Rent will support its mission to be a curated destination For anyone who loves fashion and is exploring how to wear, buy and sell it in ways that are gentler on the planet and on their watch.
Noovie Thrift will give its sellers an option to receive their payout directly into their bank account or they can choose Noovie Cash And instantly earn an extra 10% on the payout. Nuuly cash including the extra 10% can then be spent Back at Luly Thrift or at any of the URBN family of brands online or in stores. This should create a cycle of buying and selling within the URBN ecosystem, while also creating a value for the customer. We're excited about the growth opportunity presented by MVMT and Nuuly. Both can be large businesses in their own right and both can integrate and be synergistic with our existing brands.
I expect you'll be hearing more about them on future calls. That concludes our prepared remarks. I want to thank our brand, creative and shared service leaders. I also thank our 19,000 associates worldwide for their hard work, dedication and amazing creativity. I thank our many partners around the world for their extra effort in helping us overcome numerous supply disruptions.
And finally, I thank our shareholders for their continued interest and support. I'll now turn the call over for your questions.
Our first question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson of Bank of America. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon. My question is about gross margin. Frank, you just put up over 400 basis points of margin expansion and you're guiding to 100 for the 3rd Can you talk about the puts and takes in 3Q and then also how we should think about each for 4Q? Thank you.
Hi, Lorraine. This is Frank. And I would say, while we believe we can still drive improved markdown rate in the Q3 versus fiscal 2020, We're not planning for the rate of improvement we saw in Q2. Both UO and Anthropologie brands posted Q2 record low markdown rates for their respective brand and Free People delivered over 400 basis points of merch markdown rate improvement. This is not to say that the brands are not performing exceptionally well right now because they are.
And that it's not Say that more improvement is not possible, but we just didn't want to plan for to hit records quarter after quarter. Hopefully, there's some opportunity in there. But as we're planning the business right now, that's the biggest delta from Q2 to Q3. It's in the magnitude of Markdown rate savings. As it relates to the Q4, I think in similar fashion, we still think that the markdown rate savings will Translate to gross profit savings, and just the opportunity will be the magnitude of what level of markdown rate savings we can drive.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kimberly Greenberger with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Okay, great. Thank you so much. Excuse me. Just joking on my water here. I just wanted to ask about the inventory Management strategy.
And Dick, you this organization has really extraordinary read and react muscle, where historically you've had roughly half of holiday inventory open to buy at this point in the year. And it seems like with the supply chain challenges, you're taking an approach that maybe it's prudent to actually bring it in earlier. So I just wanted to understand how you're thinking about inventory flow for the rest of the year? And what are the implications Of some of the delays we're seeing, are you still going to be able to read and react in season to try to chase business and maximize your revenue? Thanks.
Thanks, Kimberly, for the question. There is no question that the way we did it pre COVID Has changed pretty radically. Currently, we are trying to bring Inventory in earlier, and I would say earlier is anywhere between a few weeks to up to 6 weeks. And we have to do that because there's so much uncertainty out there. I would say our biggest concern right now is actually getting the Inventory, not when it's going to come in or how much it's going to cost.
Where We have a situation in Vietnam. I'm sure other people have the exact same situation where the country is completely closed. We have a lot of product there and we're trying to get it in. So we are just doing whatever we can to get it in whenever we can. So on the apparel side of things, Kimberly, we are bringing a lot of or most of our product in now by air To try to offset the port congestions and the shipping charges on ocean and the lack of containers.
So that's all going to impact margins, but we believe that bringing The inventory in as quickly as we can is the most prudent thing to do right now. As far as Chase, The idea of Chase is pretty much out the window right now for holiday. We're hopeful that things will settle down somewhat and we'll be able to get back to a more normal cadence beginning next year. But for holiday, as I said, we're just hopeful of getting all the product in And not worried about Chase.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you very much And congratulations to everybody on all of the team.
Thank you, Ed.
You're welcome. My question is, by the way, the stores look fantastic. The product looks spot on at all brands.
Thank you again.
You're welcome. So now I'll get to my question. I want to talk about the strategically sharp pricing, kind of like the accessible. Are you taking categories Down in terms of initial retail or are you just highlighting those price points? And then what's the opportunity for like for like Retail increases very selectively as we go into the early New Year because that's kind of what we're hearing across the landscape.
Thank you
very much.
Adrianne, first of all, let me talk about pricing overall and I'm going to ask Sheila to talk about it more specifically. In general, we have raised prices on probably almost half of our items, but we're doing it strategically and selectively. We are looking at opening price points, and Sheila will talk more about that and maintaining them. But what we're doing is raising prices on the typical items that are either mid or The more expensive items. And we're doing that, as I said, item by item and strategically, Because we believe that there's still the real possibility of sticker shock out there and we want to avoid that.
Sheila, you want to fill in on it?
Yes. So for the Urban brand in particular, I think myself coming in new to the brand just recognizes there's an opportunity To look at our product through different price architecture, if you would, and we have an opportunity to Gain market share by offering the right product at the right price from the beginning versus having to promote it. So this is we see this as an additive business Play versus trading down any current product.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Drbul with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks and congrats on a nice quarter.
Thanks Matthew.
So maybe on retail segment sales, May quarter to date was up mid teens last we heard from you. You delivered more than 20% growth in the second quarter. Now August is back to mid teens growth. So maybe Dick, could you just speak to category trends that you're seeing across concepts, Maybe larger picture, just how you feel today about the potential for a fashion cycle and maybe just overall thoughts from here?
Sure. First of all, 20% comps is pretty rare. So We feel pretty good about the idea that our projections for Q3 are In the mid teens. From category growth perspective, Wynn's Apparel still continues to do very well. The Urban Brand Men's Apparel continues to do very well.
Although I won't say that we're missing sales In both of those, by not having enough apparel inventory. As I said, Vietnam is completely locked right now. It will be locked for another either 1 week or 2 weeks. And hopefully, then it will be unlocked and we'll air it in and And try to get it in as quickly as possible. But in categories like dresses, we have A lot on order and some of our bottoms are on order from Vietnam.
And we're starting to Break sizes and see problems there. So apparel and urban is still strong, Not quite as strong as it was, but still strong. At Anthropologie, much the same thing is happening, where the apparel is strong, but we're missing sales for the same reason. And In Anthropologie, definitely in things like denim and dresses, we're missing sales. And As proof of that, there are several things.
You may have just seen the launch of the relaunch of Pilcro That was done last week, and that had to be delayed somewhat because we really didn't have the product in. So these are the kinds of things that are happening. So given the constraints of sourcing, we're quite pleased with that. Now on the home side of things, it's sort of the tale of 2 different worlds. On the Anthropologie side, home still Is very strong, both what they call the gifts and then also the decor.
On the urban side, we've seen not a decrease in sales aturbanhome, but rather we're seeing a up against a comp that we didn't comp. And I think Sheila can talk more about that. But I think really what happened was some of the product that is typically back to school, We had less of and some of the product that we have been selling extremely well for the last almost a year now Continues to sell extremely well. It's just we're missing that one spike. But we're also missing the fact that 2 years ago, the Urban brand had continual discounting and promotions To drive their top line during back to school.
And as Sheila just mentioned, we are no longer doing that. Julie, I don't know if you want to add anything else to that, but feel free.
I think you covered it. I would just say, we have healthy business at home And we just between the inventory mix in stores and select product, we just we know that has continued opportunity to grow and go after, slower business Chase, as we all acknowledge, that's definitely a big opportunity. Okay.
And Tricia, you want to add anything about the answer?
Yes. I think the home category for answer, as you mentioned, It continues to be very strong. I think we feel good about the inventory position we put ourselves in for holiday by pulling receipts forward as Dick mentioned. So our trend continues and we're feeling good about the home category.
Thank you. I think the overall good news, Matt, is As the consumer is still in a good place, there is plenty of demand that's out there. There is definitely a very strong fashion cycle that's out there that we've talked about Over the last quite frankly, over the last year or so. 2 years. Yes, exactly.
2 years. So to the extent that we can get the inventory in, We think there's definitely business to be had.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Altschwager with Baird. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to follow-up on You owe rebalancing of the price value equation. Just hoping you could expand on it a bit. You're seeing exceptionally strong margins You have today.
But I guess any context on where the merch margins are today versus where you would expect them to be as the promotional strategy is adjusted? And any thoughts on how we should be thinking about sales growth in fiscal 2023 versus fiscal 2022 as this repositioning is fully rolled out? Thank you.
Yes. This is Dick Cocking. I think that during Q2 when you saw Very, very powerful margins coming out of the Urban brand. It was largely because of low markdowns And those low markdowns were largely because we didn't do a lot of the promotions and discounting that we've done in previous years. If you go back into FY 2020 and even before that for a few years, They did tremendous amount of promotional discounting and the margins were slowly eroding.
So I think that this is the right strategy, and it has to be fine tuned. There's no question about it. And I know that Jill understands that, but I think that there's no question that long term, This is a better way to build a brand and maintain brand equity. Sheila?
I can re comment on the price architecture. I think we see that especially in select Classes, there's an opportunity to have market share wins for our consumer, denim, mid tops especially, Where we think that our price is too close together and if we could spread the architecture out, there's ability to Capture more market share on the low while not giving up the opportunity of higher AUR. I feel like our first attempt at this was the back to school with our $49 women's, BDG denim. And Honestly, it far exceeded all of our expectations, considering that we are up against historically baked 30% off All denim.
Yes, and BOGO. And what we found was is that it did not at all detract From the sales of the more expensive denim, the more premium denim. So I think it is the right way of thinking about it and We will continue to do it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jay Sole with UBS. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you so much. I'm just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on the trends you saw in the Q2 North America versus Europe. And then on your Q3 today comments, are you seeing consistent trends across both geographies? And if not, could you sort of explain how one is trending versus the Thank you.
Sure, Jay. I'll try to do that. During the Q2, I guess I should do it by channel. Store sales in the U. S.
Improved quite a bit. I think from a down 20 high 20 In terms of overall sales to less than 5%, It's actually 1% in Q2. So we made a lot of progress in North America. In Europe, the stores were coming off of actual closures in UK. So their traffic and their sales were down a little bit more.
Now on the In the digital side, even though the Urban brand had very strong 2nd quarter sales in the what we call the mid Digits mid double digits, sorry. European digital sales were almost triple digit. So I think that where they ended up was very similar with Europe being slightly Better than North America. We're seeing a similar issue right now. North America is Very good.
And Europe is a little bit stronger.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon and congratulations everyone. Dick or Dick or Frank, you mentioned about mid teens operating margins for the Urban and Anthro brand and I think a 20s in the Free People brand. How do you see the long term opportunity for the operating margins of the businesses and how is this relative to past peak? Thank you.
Hi, Dana. So yes, listen, obviously, we achieved some record low markdown rates at the Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie brands. And I think I quoted we were over 400 basis points of improvement at the Free People brand. All of that translates to really healthy operating profit margin. I don't know that necessarily those records will be sustainable over the long term.
But I think if you Sort
of take
a step back into our business coming into COVID, we were setting URBN record low markdown rates coming into COVID, Driven largely by Urban Outfitters and Free People and Anthropologie was lagging behind a little bit. Well, Anthropologie is certainly coming up and joining the pack now. And as things begin to normalize, we still think that there's opportunity to manage to a lower markdown rate than where This business previously operated pre COVID, which can add to the total operating profitability versus where we've previously run. As it relates to just what that long term operating profit model looks like, a lot of that's going to depend on exactly where stores And digital shakeout from a penetration perspective as well as what our longer term occupancy costs are going to look like. And I don't think we have a perfectly clear picture on that just yet.
Yes. We're still dealing with inflation in a number of areas. And so, it's difficult to pin down, but we certainly would enjoy trying to continue to have double digit
Our next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo, your line is open.
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Lauren Prash on for Ike. Thanks for taking our questions. We know you've been doing a lot of great work to right size the Free People wholesale business. Could you just talk about the progress you're making there, Particularly in terms of operating profit and how you see that over the longer term and when we might begin to see growth in that channel?
And Once we get there, is that going to be coming from mostly existing accounts or adding new healthier ones? Thank you. I can take that question around free people. We're excited about rightsizing the brand In wholesale, because it will mean that we get the opportunity to strengthen our brand. We've seen success and bigger pickups Over the past quarter in specialty stores, it aligns more with the sensibility and maybe a rightsizing of Our department store business and being understanding the customer super well, so our closeout sales and wholesale will continue to decline at the Same time, when we focus in on the different categories on wholesale, we think there's opportunity within shoes, movement, In Smiths and apparel, so across multiple businesses that we're currently seeing great success in direct today.
And Lauren, as it relates to your profitability question, I think you've seen really healthy operating profit from Free People Wholesale Over the first course over the first half of this year in the high teens, and we would anticipate we certainly believe the brand can continue At a high operating profit rate going forward, which should be favorable to what we saw in LLY in fiscal 2020 From the Free People Wholesale brand, where they were more reliant on some closeout counts and on some discounts and some givebacks, You're going to see a much healthier profitable business now over the back half of the year due to the repositioning that the brand has been able to execute. I I think as it relates to urban wholesale, it's still very early days, but I know Sheila and the brand are extremely I did about some of the early success that we've had within that business and certainly believe that brand can get Healthy operating profit margins as well as it begins to gain scale. And like I said, we've been really pleased with the results that we've seen So far with the partners that we've begun to test and trade with.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Lejuez with Citi. Your line is open.
Hey guys. Curious what sort of Volume you think you have to achieve in these newly businesses to breakeven, what sort of CapEx should we expect over the next Couple of quarters years and the same question on the SG and A side, what do you pencil in to get those businesses to greater scale? Thanks.
Hey, Paul. Thanks for the question. I think as it relates to the volume with the Nuuly businesses, we still have a ton to learn. We launched Nu. We Rent 2 years ago and I think in a very frustrating fashion, We sort of lost a year, if not more, of learning due to the pandemic.
We were moving along there Pretty well and growing subscribers at a pretty healthy rate and then obviously things changed during the pandemic. The great news for us is the subscribers are starting to grow again And we're starting to be able to interact with that customer now, understand how she's going to interact with the brand and the channel and gain that experience. And I think we're going to learn over time Exactly what that's going to look like from a profitability perspective, but we feel like the consumer demand is there and we're starting to grow that subscriber base again, which feels great. As it relates to the pretty exciting news of Nuuly Thrift this morning and that the brand getting into the resale market, Obviously, we haven't opened up the app for business yet. So we'll have our learnings over time.
I think as you saw in the release, it's a peer to peer. We're going to launch this peer to peer on app. So there's not heavy capital as it relates to I think it's like fulfillment and or inventory. It's really largely driven around marketing and around labor to support the technology and make sure That is up to snuff with our consumer demands. But I think it's still very early days for the brand.
We certainly are seeing the consumer Begin to trade into both of these channels and we're really excited to start to see the business grow and support where that consumer demand is going.
Thank you. And our last question comes from the line of Janet Kloppenburg with JJK Research. Your line is open.
Hi, everybody, and congratulations. I think a lot has been covered. But on the adjustment to the outlook on Urban Outfitters comps, I was just wondering, if that had all to do with the new pricing strategy and the termination of promotions Or if some of it also had to do with supply chain constraints. And I was just wondering if the guidance on mid teen comps embeds Shipment delays at a worsening rate versus the 2nd quarter. I'm just wondering How things look in terms of delayed receipts?
Thanks.
Yes. I can take the latter part of your question, then I'll hand it over to Sheila as it relates Irvin, so I think, once included, yes, you're welcome and thank you for the question. Yes, to the extent that we What we're planning for on the quarter embeds shipment delays as well as the urban business and some of the impact of pulling back on promotions. What I would say as a caveat is, it's what we know. And if you think about supply chain sort of 2 months ago, India was a big challenge and then things improved pretty meaningfully in India and then Vietnam popped up as a challenge.
And I'll tell you a ton of credit to our sourcing teams and our logistics teams and as Dick said, our partners At all different origins because we've had to be really nimble and really flexible. And thank you to the brands for being really patient on us as it relates to product flows. The only thing I can guarantee is that it's not going to be consistent over the back half of the year. New challenges continue to arise. So the forecast bakes in what we know today as it relates to some of those product challenges, but things that continue to change day in and day
Yes. And Janet, this is Dick. I've never seen the teams working as harmoniously as They are today in sourcing and production and transportation and the brands All working together to try to help solve this along with our partners, the sources people themselves. So I think that's the only way we've actually survived the last year And done as well as we have. Sheila, you want to
Yes. I think you touched on 2 of the main points. We do think that our top line is being affected by walking away from some promotional activity, although in the second and first quarter, both This actually benefited our bottom line in a great way. So we feel like we're making the right decision there. However, when we Planned our inventory, we planned it quite tight.
And I think in hindsight, the disruption in the logistics has caused us To miss some business because we're turning through our inventory quite fast. And It's a really good problem to have. We will continue to go after it, but it's not one thing. It's definitely the combination of the 2.
Okay. I think that concludes the call. I thank you all very much for attending and hope to see you in a few months.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.