There we go. Okay, great. Good morning, everybody. Happy New Year. My name is Adrienne Yih. I'm the retail analyst from Barclays, and I couldn't be happier to kick off another year. I love having you at the 8:00 A.M. slot because you always have good news, certainly for the past, you know, five years or so. So we've been a fan, and you've been our top pick, you know, pretty consistently one of our top picks for the past three years. This year is no different. We just did our outlook about a week ago, and Urban really is sort of, I'll say, killing it across many different businesses and lines of business.
I have with us Frank Conforti, Chief Operating Officer, Tricia Smith, Global CEO of Anthropologie Group, and she's been here since 2019, so she's going to tell us about the transformation, truly the transformation of Anthropologie, and Melanie Marein-Efron, Chief Financial Officer. I'm going to let you start off with a 7:30 A.M. press release this morning about your holiday sales. Give us an update on that, and then we'll go forward.
Okay, great. First, thank you for hosting us, as always, and thank you all for being here in sunny Florida with us this morning. So yes, we just put out our holiday sales release this morning. Very proud to report that we delivered record holiday sales for the period ending December 31st. That record sales dollars were driven by 9% total URBN sales growth for the holiday season. That 9% was fueled by a 5% retail segment comp. That comp was broken out with mid-single digit comps across both channels, both stores and digital. All brands were comp positive again, so we feel really good about that and about that performance.
I think if January holds for us, which we feel good about right now, that would be all brands would be comp positive for each quarter and for the full fiscal year 2026, so certainly a nice milestone for us to hopefully achieve. By brand, Urban Outfitters led the way with a plus 9% retail segment comp, so their turnaround continues to be alive and well and continuing to perform at a really high level, followed by Free People with a plus 5% retail segment comp, and then followed by Anthropologie with a plus 3% retail segment comp. You will note Anthropologie was a little lower than what we were anticipating and planning coming into the holiday season. They were slightly more promotional than what we had anticipated. We were coming into the quarter thinking about gross profit margin being up 25-50 basis points.
I think we'll probably be closer to that 25 for the quarter, but still with all brands and channels comp positive, a very strong quarter. I also want to point out that at the beginning of the year, we talked about 50-100 basis points of gross profit margin improvement for the year, and that's inclusive of the negative tariffs and the headwinds that are in front of us. So if we do hit that 25, we'll be very, very close to the 100 basis points, so the high end of gross profit margin improvement for the year. So certainly a performance that we're very proud of. Continuing along the sales, I do want to call out FP Movement with a plus 18% comp over the holiday period.
Very excited about the performance of that brand, how it's performing, how it's just continuing to be, I think, very differentiated in the women's performance apparel market out there and hopefully carrying that momentum into next year. Speaking of young double-digit growth brands, Nuuly delivered a plus 43% sales growth for the holiday period, fueled by 41% increase in average active subscribers versus last year, so they continue their strong double-digit growth trajectory as well, so excited about their performance, and last but certainly not least, a nice double-digit performance from Wholesale, which was, I think, plus 13% for the holiday period, fueled by Free People and FP Movement, so all in all, just a really strong holiday. Very proud to report record sales, 9% growth, positive comps across all brands and channels.
I think we're always anxious to get out of the holiday season where the consumer's back to buying for themselves and buying based on fashion and want. And so far, the post-holiday season has performed really well, especially reg price across all brands and channels, including Anthropologie. So we're really happy about how the new calendar year is starting off as well.
Great. So with that as the backdrop, I mean, obviously a lot of enthusiasm for continued success this year, but let's talk about what's on everybody's mind. It's the consumer.
Yeah.
This sort of horizon risk of the consumer from 2025 into the consumer of 2026, where you're going to see largely more broad-scale price increases. What was the kind of tempo? It's hard during holiday with promotionality to really see the tempo, but you're talking about the transition into more full-price selling. How are you thinking about and how are you feeling kind of the pulse of that, you know, let's call it the $100K-$125K consumer that is kind of like right in your kind of line of vision?
Yeah, I'm so glad that you pointed that out because I do think that's an important point. When we talk about our customer, we tend to serve that sort of middle-income and above customer, and for us right now, the customer feels good. You know, I think overall, we feel like the consumer's in a good place. Unemployment is low, job market's good, wages are growing, inflation is much lower than where it has been. Honestly, the stock market's up, which tends to put our consumer in a good mood as well, so we feel good about how resilient the consumer was in calendar 2025. I feel like it's a question every year. I go through and it's like last year's question, and fortunately for us, it has been a strong year, and I think as we start calendar 2026, the consumer gets back to purchasing for themselves.
We're seeing reg price sales very strong. We're seeing plenty of fashion trends that are out there, and the consumer feels like they're in a good place right now, and Tricia, I don't know if you just want to give a little more color on Anthropologie, which I think is largely indicative of where the rest of our brands are sitting as to how the year has kicked off.
Yeah, I mean, we're really encouraged, too, as Frank mentioned, and you mentioned too, Adrienne. I think the promotional time period, particularly coming off of Cyber before Christmas, really navigating through that time period when there is definitely some more promotionality, was more challenging, I think, for Anthropologie. But very encouraged, it feels like, in the weeks post-Christmas that as new receipts have hit, as we've been able to see spring transition, the customer's response to that, some really nice full-price sales, and I think it bodes well for how we feel confident about how fashion is resonating and what our customer's appetite is for newness and her willingness to pay full price.
Right. I'm going to stay with you for a second, Tricia. For those who are familiar with URBN and for those who aren't, I've covered the stock for 25 years. Dare I say 25 years, I think.
Right out of school.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And back then, it was Urban and Anthro, a URBN brand. The transformation today is five brands, right, with Anthro being the largest of those brands, you coming on board just before the pandemic and truly transforming Anthro from a boutique experience to just within the store. I mean, you walk in there and you have all of your private label brands. So can you talk about 20 consecutive quarters of positive comps? I mean, that is, we always talk about, oh, comping the comp and comping the comp again, and you've done it three, four years in a row. So can you talk about what you've done to really transform the business and what's durable about the business, notwithstanding a little more promotionality?
Yeah, thank you. We are very proud of our teams. We've been very intentional and focused on our strategic priorities over the course of the last few years, and that was really rooted in attracting a new customer to Anthropologie and really preserving what's special about the brand at the same time and not alienating our core customer. Very proud to say that the data is showing that that is working. We're seeing customers grow across all segments, both new, active, and reactivated, with active growing the fastest year- over- year, and I think that bodes well. I think that the new customer repeat purchase is up year- over- year as well, so new customers that we bring in certainly seem to be sticking. Their repeat purchases are up, and then across age, our brand is resonating.
So that was very important for us as we were to attract a new younger customer that we grow across all age cohorts. And so nice to see that we're seeing that growth over time. I think the other thing is, too, we were really focused on making sure that we increased engagement. So over that time period this past year, we've really seen both units per transaction and retention rates really start to take hold, which feels really good. And then as we think about brand and product, the opportunity for us to really leverage our own brand growth, as you mentioned, and as we've expanded that over time, our customers that are responding to our own brand growth have responded very positively. I think the other thing that we wanted to do is just improve our relevancy.
So we've expanded categories like denim, shoes, beauty, and that's allowed us to be able to kind of create a little bit more durable relevancy and the opportunity for the customer to shop with us more frequently. So frequency is up as well. So we really look at all of those measures to understand over time how that's working and proud of our teams because it feels like there's a durable, almost like sustainable opportunity then for us to be able to continue that, really focused on expanding our addressable customer base, really increasing engagement, and then over time really building improved relevancy for us as a brand.
So, it feels like we're in a really good place, and we feel like there's some durable momentum that we can build, barring kind of seasonality or things in the business like promotionality, I think, in holiday, that over time we feel really confident that we've built a real durable model.
Great.
Yeah.
And Melanie, so for you, the other kind of overarching question is going to be on tariffs and inventory, so whichever one you want to start with, kind of I think inventory, we've seen that you just exhibited your model is allowing you to exhibit this very strong discipline, even as we have kind of the tariff inventory flow through the balance sheet. You are obviously most of it, or a lot of it, the majority of it right now, which certainly helps with managing the inventory, so if you could talk about that, and then tariffs and how they kind of came through in the fourth quarter, if you can address that, or how we should think about kind of the rollover into the first half of the year and when we start to see them peter out.
I'll start with tariffs and then get to inventory, so our tariff game plan really began in the spring. We're really focused on managing our costs and trying to pass on the least amount of cost to our consumers, so as we manage our costs, that means negotiating with our vendors, looking at country of origin, as well as when possible, looking at the ability to move between air and ocean, and then we have taken some price, but we've been really, really disciplined about it and trying to only do so when the quality of the product can support it, and that really has come from the brands really looking, understanding their pricing architecture and maintaining them in the face of the tariffs and also preserving the opening price points that we've had in our brands.
In the front half, the tariff headwinds will be similar probably to the fourth quarter because many of them came into play in a significant way in our selling, not necessarily what we were buying at the time, but more in our selling inventory in the back half. With respect to managing inventory, the brands are super focused on making sure that our growth in inventory is in line with sales and we're not getting ahead of ourselves. That'll allow us to have the freshness of product that our consumers expect.
Okay, fantastic. So let's talk about the kind of sales drivers. So obviously the consumer backdrop, which we've talked about, is kind of the rising tide or the ebbing tide, but really you're in the fashion business, and a lot of times I think when we cover retail, sometimes we forget we focus on everything between the sales and the margin, and we talk about cutting this and cutting that and driving gross margin, which are all great, but let's talk about the fashion backdrop. We've been in a fairly strong, and this is probably for Tricia, but if you want to.
You don't want me to answer?
You are more than welcome.
Tricia would get a kick out of it.
She'll see if she'll agree or not. And so talk about kind of where we are in this silhouette shift that kind of started in 2019 and then paused and then really kind of kicked in again 2024 and kind of certainly kind of has come into its own as we kind of go into 2025. So where are we in that journey? How does Anthropologie take advantage of that? And how should we be thinking about 2026 relative to 2025? Better, stronger, same?
Yeah, I think our customer has a tremendous appetite for newness, and I think there's so much newness that we're able to provide and that the customer is responding to. I think we're still in a heavy bottom cycle and that's been going on for a while. There's certainly still newness that we can respond to with the customer responding very positively. I think we believe that the trend cycle is influenced by '90s, and so as the evolution of bottoms trends evolve and remain strong, there's definitely new opportunity, particularly to Anthropologie, to think about tops, fitted knits, resurgence in blouses that I think as you think about pairing back to the trends and silhouettes and bottoms, wide legs still very strong for us. Barrel still remains very strong. There was some newness in balloon shapes and some newness in bottoms overall.
So I think we feel like we're still well in a cycle where there's a lot of opportunity for the customer to respond to kind of the proportions and opportunity there. I would say particularly at Anthropologie, what has been fantastic has been the trends in footwear. So thinking about the pairing, we were having a conversation this morning about what footwear to wear back to all the different bottoms. And I think that spurred the customer's appetite for thinking about the perfect shoe pairing back to all the different bottoms. Footwear was one of the fastest growing categories for Anthropologie over the holidays, both from a gift-giving perspective as well as self-purchase. So we believe there's still a lot of newness. I think the trend cycle will always present new opportunities, but our teams are very nimble. They pay very close attention to the customer and what's happening.
We feel like there's still a lot of opportunity to offer newness to the customer.
Fantastic. So this is a question just kind of globally. I want to talk about the two kind of the two tails that can really move the URBN margin. And those two tails are the turn that's happening at UO Brand and Nuuly on the growth side. UO from the margin side. UO last year was a negative 6% segment margin. We are, in a perfect world, it's hard to close 600 basis points. So you had talked about on your calls about still having a negative low single digit segment margin, but this is a business that should be doing 10%. It's a quarter of the business, a little bit more than that, that should be doing 10%. That's 250 basis points of consolidated margin contribution, right, at its full expression. So talk about where we are on the journey.
The business was the one of everything that was out there that was definitively less promotional. I mean, there was no question that it was less promotional. So if you can talk about that, and then on the flip side, this growth of FP Movement, the two growth drivers, FP Movement and then Nuuly, so those two tails that can really drive URBN.
Yeah, so you're right. There's no question that Urban is in the thick of it. And sitting here last year, we were talking about reg price and you just hadn't seen it yet come through to the top line. And we were starting to feel it and starting to see some of that momentum. It's here. Certainly now the brand is performing exceptionally well. As you mentioned, they were far less promotional over holiday. Reg price was strong. They are going to have lower markdowns on a year-over-year basis. We do think the brand has the opportunity to get close to break even for this fiscal year 2026. It's really important though. There's a lot of pieces there and there's a lot to unpack. North America still has a significant opportunity to return profit back to the business.
The European business for Urban Outfitters has performed exceptionally well and has really helped that profit recapture this year. It's why I think you're seeing some of it a little earlier than we anticipated. Double-digit comps, just an exceptional year, an exceptional performance from Europe. We'll get the brand actually back to close to break even this year. Then you really have the opportunity, maybe Urban Europe moderates just a little bit. We don't expect them to be double-digit comps forever for Urban North America, which has recaptured a lot of their loss this year, but still has a ton of meat left on the bone. This year was primarily about margin recapture. As they had to walk away from those promotions, they had to reset the customer experience. They had to get the product, the experience, and just the overall voice of the brand, right?
They've just done an exceptional job. And we can't be more proud and give more credit to just Shea and her leadership and what Meg and Sheila have done to reset the brand. I think Shea used the phrase coming into the brand that we'd gotten a little too niche. And the brand was probably a little too one-note, a little too grunge. And they've reset themselves to be much more welcoming and have a much broader set of sensibilities now. And you can see that across the product. You can see it across the marketing. You can just see it in the overall voice of the brand. You can see the coolness factor back at the Urban Outfitters brand as well. Certainly you can see it with their collaborations, what they're doing on their on-rotation product on the website and with stores with their music events.
And that's just really important to that brand and how it operates. And they've also fixed their pricing architecture coming out of COVID in order to try and protect IMU and protect margins from some of those high inbound freight costs. They were a little upside down to how they historically operate, especially with the depth, their lack of depth in opening price point. And they've gotten that fixed now. I think they've got the pricing architecture back to where it needs to be and where it has historically been. And you're now seeing it in the performance of the business at a +9%. So as you head into next year, really Urban North America still has opportunity for margin recapture from MMU from a product perspective. They actually still have some IMU opportunity despite the tariff headwinds.
They still have some markdown improvement as well. Not as much as I sat here last year coming into this year, but they still have some markdown opportunity going into next year, and then it's going to be about driving that top line comp. I think obviously you're seeing them perform at a high level right now and at a 9%, and if they can stay mid to high single digits, they can really start to recapture a lot of that bottom line from a productivity standpoint where you'll see things like occupancy leverage. You'll see things like other SG&A expenses like payroll and things of that nature begin to leverage, and hopefully the brand starts to claw back into profitability next year and get closer to that 10% target that you mentioned. I'm glad you brought up our two growth-based businesses that are both delivering healthy double-digit growth.
When you think about FP Movement, still a young brand, very differentiated in the performance women's apparel market out there, and it is a mid-teens operating profit business. For a business that is still relatively new out there and relatively low from an awareness perspective, we're running that brand very profitably. So as it grows in an 18% comp over holiday, it grows at a very healthy rate to our bottom line, which is beneficial. You see new stores, us continuing to open close to, or if not more than 25 new stores a year. They're performing exceptionally well. There's still a ton of store opening opportunities, which also then benefits the digital business where they're capturing more and more customers and really growing at a healthy double-digit clip. And certainly, I'm glad you mentioned it. I don't want to leave out Nuuly. 43% growth over the holiday.
It doesn't seem so long ago that we talked about it being a billion-dollar business, and I think I got a lot of sort of, what do they call it, side-eye looks from people, and right now, I think we're very confident that it can be at least a billion-dollar business, and we talked about it being able to be a profitable business and 10% operating profit rate, and I got a little more side-eye, and we delivered our first full year of profit last year, and we're building upon that this year. The business still is acquiring customers at a really, really healthy rate, and the retention of those customers is very similar to day one, so we have not seen customers sort of churn through and fall off at a higher rate.
And there's still a ton of profitability opportunity, especially when you think about things like automation and logistics. I know some of you have had the opportunity to come out and see our logistics facilities out in Raymore, Missouri. And it is a very manual operation. And we're working on a lot there to be able to automate and add to the bottom line. So both with FP Movement and with Nuuly growing at a double-digit rate and both profitable and growing their profit rates, it certainly presents a very healthy opportunity for us going forward for the next several years.
Great. So I was just going to say 25 minutes with you goes very, very fast.
Yeah, even though I talked.
15 seconds each. Every year I do this because you're the first on, right? The first to give a prediction, however you want to do it for 2026.
All right, so I'm not going to, I'm a huge Steelers fan. Last game of the wild card tonight. I am absolutely not going to jinx my team. So I'm going to leave that alone, and I'm going to say, and I know you talked about the consumer and about concerns for next year. We feel really good about our customer, how they're heading into next year, and I think just how that macro environment is going to look and is going to perform for us next year.
Amen. I think I'll jump on the AI bandwagon. I think I'd like to think about that as less about kind of disruption and more about enablement. I think our teams are energized and excited by how AI has been helping our creative process, how it's going to help and automate a lot in our business. So I'm going to say we don't yet know what the opportunities are that present themselves to us yet for AI in 2026.
Just a continued strong consumer that we're seeing coming out of holiday for the new year, and hopefully a better year next year for the Eagles. I had to throw that in.
Oh, no.
Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.