VF’s June 30 Quarter Results; Pretty Impressive

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VF released its earnings and had its conference call back on July 21, but the 10Q was only released August 10th.  The results, as you probably already heard, were good. Revenue for the quarter was up 15.4% to $1.8 billion and net income rose 16.2% to $130 million. They accomplished this with a gross margin that fell from 47.1% to 45.9% partly by reducing their marketing, administrative and general expenses as a percentage of revenues to 35.7% from 36.5% in the same quarter last year.

The decline in the gross margin percentage was the result of product cost increases that weren’t fully passed on to their customers. The product margin was actually a bit lower as the reported gross margin benefited by 65 basis points from the closing of a European jeanswear facility. It also benefitted from the higher margins in the direct to consumer business.

They expect some further margin reductions in the rest of the year because of higher cotton prices and their decision not to pass through all the cost increases. They also note that cotton prices have fallen from $3.00 a pound to $1.00 a pound, and hope to see that positively impact product cost starting in 2012. 
 
VF has seen little impact from price increases on unit volume. But they are waiting to see how the consumer reacts to even higher prices in the second half of the year. All brands and retailers are waiting. VF is hoping that if cotton prices come down next year they might be able to recapture some margin they lost when they didn’t raise prices as much as costs rose.
 
Price increases accounted for 3% to 3.5% of the quarter’s total revenue gain of 15.4%. Two-thirds of that came from the U.S. jeans business. 
 
International revenues rose 30% in the quarter. They represented 29% of total revenue. Asia was up 30%. Europe was up 30%, Latin America 40%, and Mexico 26%.  They think international may hit 33% of total revenue this year, and they plan for it to reach 40% in five. If you’re interested in learning more about VF’s growth plans, you might go here.
 
Direct to consumer revenues were up 17% as a result of new store openings, a 46% increase in ecommerce revenue, and growth in comparable store sales. They’ve opened 44 new owned stores this year so far and are on track to open a total of 100. Operating margins for the direct to consumer business is up 3% this quarter, so you can see why they find it attractive.
 
There was no growth from new acquisitions this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. All $246 million came from existing businesses, though $43.5 million was the result of foreign currency translation. It’s great that VF breaks these numbers out in a separate table. 
 
VF, as you’re probably aware, divides its business into six segments they call coalitions. The quarter’s results for those segments are shown below.
 
       

Quarterly Sales

Change Since Same

Coalition Profit
       

In Millions of $

Quarter Last year

In Millions of $

Outdoor & Action Sports
  

$718
  

23.0%
  

$81.5
  

Jeanswear
    

$613
  

10.3%
  

$94.7
  

Imagewear
    

$244
  

15.6%
  

$26.0
  

Sportswear
    

$120
  

10.1%
  

$9.7
  

Contemporary Brands
  

$118
  

11.3%
  

$8.2
  

Other
      

$26
  

-3.2%
  

$0.0
  
                   
 
Most of our interest, for some reason, is in the Outdoor & Action Sports segment that includes Vans, The North Face, and Reef as well as other as six other brands. The North Face and Vans grew 21% and 22% respectively during the quarter. No mention, as usual, of what Reef did. The entire segment grew 14% domestically, and 42% internationally during the quarter (34% in constant dollars).  Revenues in Asia were also up 42% during the quarter compared to the same quarter the previous year.
 
These results don’t include the Timberland acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter.
 
The balance sheet remains very strong, but there are a couple of interesting things I want to point out. Just to give you a couple of numbers, the current ratio improved from 2.3 to 3.0 and the debt to total capital ratio fell from 24.5% to 18.7%. High current ratios are good, low debt to capital ratios are good for those of you who don’t have a financial background.
 
On January 2, VF changed its inventory accounting method from LIFO (last in, first out) to FIFO (first in, first out) for that inventory it wasn’t already accounting for using FIFO (about 25% of the total). The impact for the first six months of the year would have been to reduce their cost of goods sold by $8 million.
 
Okay, small number so why am I tormenting you with this technical accounting crap? If everything you put into inventory always cost the same, it wouldn’t matter. In an inflationary environment, the product you enter into inventory is going to be at a higher cost than the product you bought earlier. So if you decide you’re going to sell the older inventory first, you decrease your cost of goods sold and increase your profit. 
 
No big deal. This isn’t about VF but it’s about your need to be aware that this accounting change can matter if we’re dealing with product cost inflation, as we have been in the case of products made with cotton. 
 
On a related issue, inventory at the end of the quarter rose almost 17% from a year ago. But they note in the conference call that 9% of that was due to higher product costs. So units in inventory grew at a slower pace consistent with sales growth.
 
Three things stand out for me from reviewing VF’s quarter besides the good financial results. The first is the push into international. They’ve decided, along with a lot of other larger companies, that the growth opportunities are much greater outside of the U.S. The second is the growth of their direct to consumer business. Hardly a new industry trend, but I think we’ll continue to see more of it. Having this many brands with this kind of growth and margins makes it irresistible.
 
Finally, VF chose last year to make an incremental marketing spend of $100 million to promote their brands. They are continuing, and in fact have increased that spend slightly, this year. It shows a lot of confidence in their plan, as well as the strength of their balance sheet.     

 

 

A Couple of Things to Think About from VF Industries

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With a different company I’d probably do what I usually do; get down and dirty in the financial statements. Some of you like that. Some hit the delete key early in the article. A few tell me they fall asleep.

VF released its results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2010 the week before last. I spent most of this week in Florida with my college roommates without wives playing bad golf and having an occasional beer. I don’t suppose you need any further explanation as to why this didn’t get posted sooner.

But I digress. I guess I could spend lots of time analyzing VF’s balance sheet, but basically what’s you’d take away from that analysis is that it’s big and strong with assets of $6.5 billion and equity of $3.86 billion. They had revenues of $7.7 billion for the year (up 6.7%) and $2.13 billion for the quarter (up 11%). Net income for the year rose 23.9% to $571.4 million. Cash flow was in excess of $1 billion. They have no debt due until 2017 and paid down $200 million of higher cost debt. Acquisitions remain at the top of their priority list.  Check out the press release yourself if you want more details.
 
So instead of my usual, and sometimes pedantic, financial analysis let’s look at how the actions sports components of their business did (to the extent they give us that information) and then review some of the things they discussed in their conference call. There are some lessons to be learned and some insights into how the industry is evolving there. 
 
Revenue for the quarter in VF’s Outdoor and Action Sports segment, which includes Vans, Reef and The North Face in addition to other brands, grew 20%. The Americas revenue was up 17% and international 32% on a constant currency basis. The North Face) and Vans businesses each grew in excess of 40% in the quarter internationally.” Not sure if that’s constant currency or not.
 
With revenues of $896 million for the quarter, Outdoor and Action Sports is the largest of their 6 segments. Direct to consumer (stores and internet) revenue rose 21% in the quarter in this segment, with Vans and the North Face experiencing double digit increases. Overall, VF ended the quarter with 786 stores after adding 85 during the year. “The strong top and bottom line growth [in the quarter] was fueled in part by a nearly 60% increase in brand-building investments and initiatives during the quarter, particularly in The North Face and Vansbrands.” Of additional selling, general and administrative expense spending of $100 million that occurred during the year, over the whole company $45 million was spent during the fourth quarter.
  
Revenue in that segment grew 14% for the year to $3.2 billion. The next largest segment grew 11% in the quarter and 5% for the year.
In 2011, VF expects their Outdoor and Action sports business to “…grow at a mid-teen percentage rate.” All their other segments are expected to in the “mid-single digits.” Outdoor and Action Sports is becoming increasingly important to VF. They expect a lot out of Vans and expect to grow North Face to $3 billion of revenue in five years. As they announced at a North Face conference last fall, they plan to “…reach new consumers by focusing on the unique needs of athletes and enthusiasts who participate in hiking, climbing, performance athletic, and action sports. We call this our Activity Based Model (ABM), which is designed to deliver technically superior and relevant products across four consumer segments: Outdoor, Performance, Action Sports and Youth.”
 
Pay attention to this. Action Sports is much less specific as a segment or industry than it used to be. This isn’t a new trend and it’s certainly not unique to VF. I’m sure you all saw Transworld Business’ recent announcement, as reported on Boardistan, that they would start covering wakeboarding, motocross and BMX.
 
Okay, that’s a very brief summary of their financial results and comments on the Outdoor and Action Sports segment. Let’s move on to other issues they discuss in the conference call.
 
I stopped dead in my tracks when the first question from an analyst was how much of the increased revenue for 2011 would be from price increases. I hadn’t heard that issue raised for a long time. The answer, by the way, was “a few percentage points” of the eight to nine percent projected revenue increase. Once you discuss price increases, of course, you also have to discuss the impact on demand of higher prices. Let’s spend a little time on the price of cotton, costs and cost management, and how VF is handling it. As VF notes, “We’re aware that we are entering a new environment here in terms of consumer reaction to broadly higher apparel prices and that some trade-off in unit volumes is likely.”
 
Management notes in its opening remarks that it’s already taken some price increases across its brand portfolio in recent months to offset product cost inflation, and that they will continue to implement further increases during 2011, more in the second half than the first. These increases will be focused on products, especially jeans, where the cost of cotton is most critical. VF’s overall product costs will rise a projected 7% in 2011 and “Price increases and other factors positive to our gross margin comparisons will not entirely offset the pressure from higher product costs.”
 
Jeans represent about 20% of VF’s revenue and “…for these jeans products, costs are expected to rise by mid-teen percentages for the full year…” “Now while price increases will partly offset higher costs, gross margins for these businesses in 2011 will come down from 2010 by over 350 basis points.”
 
That’s quite a decline. Jeans operating margins, however, are expected to decline by less than 100 basis points. How are they managing that?
 
Well, by expense management of course. And by “reengineering” their products. That can mean removing features, using different materials, or just be smarter in how you make things.
 
VF also has an advantage is dealing with rising cotton prices because they make 65% of their U.S. jean products in their own plants. That doesn’t help them with price increases in denim, but they believe they can keep their labor costs flat by bringing more volume into their own plants. Most of you who are reading this and sell jeans or other denim products don’t have that advantage.
Another thing they note is that VF purchases 50% more denim to carry into 2011 than they normally would. Obviously, that’s to stock up before price increases. It’s a great idea if you have the balance sheet to pull it off, and I’m sure VF isn’t the only large company doing it. But that increases demand and stocking up has some impact on prices all by itself. If you aren’t one of the companies that can do it, you’ll face even higher prices when you do your purchasing.
 
Here’s another way VF thinks about the impact of price increases: “On the domestic front where we are so heavily penetrated, particularly in our Jeanswear business in the mass and mid-tier, an increase in cost of denim has a much more severe inflationary impact on our pricing to consumers. In Europe and in Asia, where products are so much more expensive to begin with at a base level, the percentage increase from the inflation is relatively minor and relatively easy to pass through. This is a much lower percentage of higher priced products.”
 
So the percentage increases in Europe and Asia are smaller and, therefore, less noticeable to the consumer because the average retail price there is 50% to 75% higher there than in the U.S. But they note that the gross margin impact of higher costs not offset by higher prices will still be around 200 basis points.
 
VF management is, I think, very realistic about what’s going on in the U.S. “You raise a real issue that particularly American consumers face is cost inflation across their lives. And that comes home particularly strongly in the mid-tier and mass channels, where as consumers pay more for food and for gasoline, for their cars and for their apparel, it’s going to put pressure on what they spend their money on.”…“That’s what gets us to the mid-single digit unit declines in our Jeanswear business, which we just haven’t had. But that’s why we’re seeing that is we expect great cost pressure to really influence how much consumers can afford to spend on apparel.
 
I think VF is right, and if they are thinking about the impact of inflation on demand for their products, we all need to be thinking about it.
 
Overall, then, what does VF see that we might want to focus on as well? First, cost inflation that isn’t going to be easy to pass on and will impact consumer spending because food, gas, and other necessities come first. Second, that there’s more opportunity internationally than domestically. They plan to open 100 new stores in 2011. 60% will be opened outside of the U.S. due to the strength of the operating performance they are achieving internationally in their stores. Hardly a surprise since that’s where incomes are rising and more “middle class” consumers are popping up. Income has at best stagnated in this country over the last ten years.
 
Third, they see great opportunities in direct to consumer, and it seems that the distinction between brick and mortar and on line is blurring. I think they’re right and that’s probably worth a separate article. Fourth, making their own product in their own factories is an advantage in an inflationary environment. And the inflation they are talking about ain’t just in cotton prices.
 
Finally, the push they are making with The North Face tells us something about how they think about the action sports market. It’s outdoors and it’s youth culture and not nearly as exclusive as we use to think.
 
Your business is probably a bit smaller than $7.5 billion, but those are all issues that will impact it anyway.

 

 

Action Sports Market Evolution as Reflected in VF’s Quarterly Results

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VF released its earnings and held the quarterly conference call yesterday at 8:30 Eastern time. I’m not quite dedicated enough to listen to it at 5:30 AM on the West coast, but I did listen to the replay later in the morning. You can see the press release here. Remember, we don’t have the SEC filing on the quarter yet, so though the numbers are the same as what you’ll see in the 10Q, we do get management’s spin on things- their “happy dance,” as I like to call it.

The Numbers 

There’s no doubt VF had a good quarter.  For the quarter ended September 30, revenues were up 7% to a record $2.2 billion and gross margin at 46.5% was the highest ever. Net income for the quarter was up 11.4% to $243 million. For nine months, sales have risen 5.1% to $5.576 billion and net income is up 31% to $517 million. They accomplished this while increasing marketing, administrative and general expenses in both the quarter and the nine months compared to the same periods the prior year. The balance sheet is very strong with $403 million at the end of the quarter. They’ve got no real financial limitations in carrying out their strategy.
 
You may recall that VF divides their business into six segments they call coalitions; outdoor and action sports, jeanswear, imagewear, sportswear, contemporary brands, and other. The table below, taken from the press release, shows sales and  what I think are operating profits for each segment, though they just call it profit. As you can imagine, they were almost giddy with the
 
 
results and opportunities they see in outdoor and action sports.   They said that revenues for the North Face and Vans rose in the quarter by 17% and 19% respectively. The whole coalition rose 14%. The coalition’s growth for nine months was 12%. For the quarter, the outdoor and action sports coalition generated 59.3% of total coalition profits and 46.9% of sales. For nine months, the numbers are 50.5% of profits and 41.4% of sales.
 
You can understand the focus on outdoor and action sports. The other coalitions didn’t perform as well and aren’t as large. Jeanswear is actually down for nine months and up only slightly in the quarter. That was impacted by VF exiting the jeans mass market segment in Europe. Imagewear revenues are up 10% for the quarter but just 5% for the year. Its profit, however, increased pretty dramatically as you can see.
 
Sportswear revenues were down for both periods and profits fell rather precipitously, especially in the quarter. This is explained partly by some Nautica shipments being moved from the third to fourth quarter.   Contemporary brand revenues were up 11% for nine months, but pretty much level for the quarter. But profits in that segment fell hard in both time frames.
 
You can see why they spent so much time on outdoor and action sports. It’s the biggest chunk of their business, it’s performing well, they see lots of opportunity, and the news in some of their other segments isn’t as good.
 
Implications for the Action Sports Market
 
What I really found interesting- more than the financial statements- were a handful of observations made about their business. Those included:
 
  • They have 779 retail stores (retail comps were up about 3% for the quarter) and are on track to open 85 stores for the year. Direct to consumer revenue was up 10% for the quarter (18% in outdoor and action sports).
  • Marketing spending is up 35% for the quarter. Year to date they’ve spend an additional $50 million and expect to spend an incremental $45 million in the fourth quarter. Half of this will go to the North Face and Vans.
  • They are “…adding top freeride and slopestyle skiers, and halfpipe snowboarders to our athlete team to extend the reach of The North Face(R) as a snowsports brand during the upcoming winter X Games.”
  • In the fourth quarter and going forward into next year, they expect gross margins to be “stable.” That is, not up though in another context they note it is improving in retail.
  • They expect that their average wholesale price will be up next year. There was a lot of discussion about the cost of cotton.
I slept on this to see if an eloquent way to tie all this together would explode fully formed into my brain. It didn’t, so I guess I’ll just start writing. The North Face as a snowsports brand just sort of stopped me in my tracks. Can any brand that makes anything to be in cold weather become a snowsports brand if they have enough resources to establish the marketing position? If you’re a snowsports brand, are you an action sports brand?
 
Just what is the action sports market these days anyway? I don’t think the action sports market grows just because VF (or Nike, or Billabong, or Burton, or Quiksilver, etc.) sells one more piece of stuff to one more person who’s never been near a skateboard, snowboard, or surfboard. I know that there’s still a meaningful connection between some people who don’t participate and the “core” market of those who do, but as you get further and further from that connection and deeper and deeper into the distribution can you still talk about being an action sports brand in a meaningful way?  That is, in a way that helps you run your business.
 
Growth in the action sports market is related to growth in participation, and I don’t think we’re seeing much of that right now. As a brand, it’s dangerous to believe yourself an action sports brand once you move beyond the participants and its relatively immediate environment because you just won’t have the customer connection you think you have. 
 
VF, of course, doesn’t see itself as an action sports brand, but as a portfolio of brands some of which are in action sports. Maybe they’ve got the resources and management to make The North Face into a snowsports brand (Please, no North Face snowboards).   That won’t make it an action sports brand, but it will contribute to the confusion (at least to my confusion) about what this market is and is becoming.
 
Meanwhile, they’ve got 779 retail stores and counting. And speaking of confusion, which brands will they carry in their stores? Just their own or brands they don’t own as well? Will the brands they carry but don’t own want to be in those stores? Can they afford the possible sales decline that will occur if they aren’t in those VF (or Billabong, or Nike, or Quik) owned stores? Do more brands have to open more retail stores as a strictly defensive move to preserve their sales volume? 
 
And this is all going on while cotton costs are going to lead to some inevitable price increases and no growth in gross margins while consumers are cautious about their spending. This is happening to VF (and others, we already know) even with their sophisticated systems, supply network, and negotiating power. How will it impact smaller companies?
 
Those of you who have been around a while remember when it was clear what was and was not the action sports business. You knew who your customers and potential customers were. My suggestion, if you really are and want to be in the action sports business, is that you go back to that.   I’m not saying don’t grow. But don’t delude yourself into believing that the real action sports market and your target market is $10 billion or $20 billion or whatever the apparel/fashion/lifestyle market is. That is not the action sports market no matter how many big companies with their very own retail chains say it is.

 Dance around the 800 pound gorillas. Not with them.  

 

VF’s Quarter Ended June 30- Good Numbers, China, and Retail Strategy

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VF Corporation, the owner of Vans, Nautica, North Face, Reef and a whole lot of other brands released their results last week for the quarter ended June 30. 

They also held a conference call I listened to.

They had a strong quarter and we’ll get to the numbers.  Oh hell, let’s start with a summary of the numbers.  Revenues were up 7% to $1.577 billion.  Their gross margin reached 47.1% (a record) and net income rose 48.7% to $111.5 million.  The balance sheet is strong to the point where don’t have to worry about analyzing it, though I would note that inventories fell almost ten percent from a year ago.  Lower inventory on higher sales points to good management.

But aside from the numbers, I thought there were three things that were worth discussion.  First, and probably least important, is that there was no mention of Reef.  That really only matters because in our industry we’d like to know what was going on with it.  It’s an awfully small piece of VF.

It’s no secret that Reef has had some difficulties.  You’ll probably recall that shortly after its acquisition by VF, they dropped “the butt” in their advertising and promotion.  I wouldn’t say that was the cause of the problems, but I’d note that when the going got tough, the tough brought back “the butt.”  I, for one, was glad to see it, so to speak.

On a more meaningful note, there was a discussion in the conference call of China and the costs there.  Let me give you a little background.

China has built its economic growth model (very successfully) on cheap labor and exports.  But they know that’s coming to an end and that they have to transition their economy over time to one where growth is driven by domestic consumer demand.  That means more skilled labor input and higher wages.  This is just normal economic development stuff and China would hardly be the first country where it’s happened.

You’re probably aware that there have been some recent and ongoing strikes in China for higher wages.  The government has at some level encouraged or at least tolerated these because they are aware of the economic evolution (described above) that needs to happen.  But at the same time, they want to control this process and when these strikes take place outside of the government union organization, as some have, they get nervous and worry about their control.  This is happening while the Chinese currency is being allowed again to gradually strengthen and after and after the big recession based drop in demand eliminated a lot of capacity which is now missed.

In the conference call, VF management noted that there were pressures from supply and demand imbalances.  As they described it, manufacturing capacity fell dramatically at the economic bottom, and hasn’t caught up with the rebound in demand.  Cotton (which VF obviously cares about) is at an all time high and demand is ahead of supply.  There are labor shortages in quite a few countries, they note.  Freight costs are running higher.  They indicated that only 200,000 shipping containers went into service last year.  In a typical year, it would be around two million.

As a result, they expect product cost increases of a few percentage points next year.  But they point out that less than 25% of their supply comes from China, that they own and operate a third of their manufacturing, and that they have been running factories for a century (well, not the same guys I guess).  That gives them the experience and operating acumen to manage the issues better than others.

The next issue is retail.  At the end of the quarter, VF had 768 stores across its brands.  They are on track to open 80 to 90 this year.  Total direct to consumer revenues increased by 7%, “…driven by new store openings in the quarter.”  If you’ve read what I’ve written about what Billabong, Genesco, and other multi brand companies are doing, you know that the push into retail by brands is only going to continue.  They have the size, the systems and the operating sophistication to be very successful in retail and the extra margin they can earn by putting their own brands into their own stores is just too attractive to pass up.  So the question for small specialty retailers (and maybe some not so small ones eventually) and brands that don’t retail is how do you compete?

Sorry, this isn’t the place to go into that, but you’d better be thinking about it.  I’ve been beating this drum for a while and expect to keep pounding it.

VF noted that Van’s revenues were up 24% in the quarter.  It grew 20% domestically and doubled in Asia.  The domestic growth was 75% from the wholesale business.  The remainder was from opening new stores.  They didn’t give any comparable store numbers.

They noted that the Vans business in China had nearly doubled and the brand was very strong there even though Vans only started there a couple of seasons ago.  Being small makes doubling easy, I’d point out.  They are investing in Vans which they see as a very strong brand.

 Gross margin improved 370 basis points.  A reduction in product cost added 200 basis points, retail performance was responsible for 70, and the rest just came from operating well including clean inventories.  They noted that big increases were easier to get quarter over quarter due to how bad things were last year.

They continue to be focused on making acquisitions and are especially interested in the outdoor and action sports area.  They haven’t made any this year and suggest that it’s because the prices being asked are too high.  They note that they have the ability to make a billion dollar acquisition, but that historically, they have focused on smaller ones.  Look for more deal from them.

The outdoor and action sports segment generated $584 million in revenue during the quarter, or almost 37% of the total.  That’s up 11.6% from the same quarter the previous year.  It is the largest of their six segments by revenue and generated $81.5 million in operating profit.  They said during the conference call that segment is outgrowing other parts of their business and offers higher margins. 

Finally, they noted that there was a note of caution back in people’s voices right now for spring bookings, though they hadn’t seen any meaningful cancellation.  I think we all share the sense that maybe we’re not coming out of this recessions quite as fast as we hoped; not as we expected, but as we hoped.  I for one am not surprised by that, though I am disappointed.  Financially caused recessions suck.