Birkenstock Holding plc Ordinary Shares

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Birkenstock's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. The company allocated 60 minutes in total to this conference call. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn over the call to Megan Kulik, Director of Investor Relations.

Hello, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. On the call are Oliver Reichert, Director of Birkenstock Holding PLC and Chief Executive Officer of the Birkenstock Group, Eric Mossman, the outgoing Chief Financial Officer of the Birkenstock Group, and Ivica Krola, Chief Financial Officer of the Birkenstock Group, as of February 1st. Klaus Baumann, Chief Sales Officer, David Kahn, President Americas, Miko Buja, President EMEA, Alexander Hoff, Vice President, Global Finance, will also join us for the Q&A. Today, we are reporting the financial results of our fiscal first quarter of 2025, ending December 31st, 2024. You may find the press release and a supplemental presentation connected to today's discussion on our investor relations website at birkenstock-holding.com. We would like to remind you that some of the information provided during this call is forward-looking and, accordingly, is subject to the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in this morning's press release, as well as in our filings with the SEC, which can be found on our website at birkenstockholdings.com. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. During the call, all revenue growth rates will be cited on a constant currency basis unless otherwise stated. We will also refer to certain non-IFRS financial information. We use non-IFRS measures as we believe they represent the operational performance and underlying results of our business more accurately. The presentation of this non-IFRS financial information is not intended to be considered by itself or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of IFRS to non-IFRS measures can be found in this morning's press release and in our SEC filings. As a reminder, this quarter marks the first quarter we are reporting under a new operating and reporting segment. the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. We filed a 6K on January 16th with a recast of fiscal 2023 and 2024 segment results to align with the new reporting structure and to aid in your analysis of our results. With that, I'll turn it over to Oliver.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining today's call. Before I start the quarterly review, I want to thank Eric for his strong leadership and guidance over the past two years as we navigated the IPO process and first year as a public company. Eric, I wish you all the best in your future personal and professional life. And of course, I want to welcome Ibiza Chrollo to the Birkenstock family. Ibiza brings the operational background we need as we allocate our resources to the most attractive opportunities for both revenue growth and cost containment. IBISAR also brings the technical background to continue Eric's effort to level up our finance functions across all areas, including audit, tax, and FP&A. I look forward to working with you as we write the next chapter of our success story. Welcome, Ibiza. We are proud to report a very strong start to our fiscal 2025 with record first quarter results, which came in ahead of our expectations, driven by very strong holiday demand for Brittenstock products. We delivered 19% revenue growth in the first quarter, above the high end of our 15% to 17% target for the full year. Revenue growth was supported by double-digit volume growth and mid-single-digit growth in average selling price. Growth in our B2B business benefited from very strong sell-through and reorders from our key wholesale partners throughout the holiday season. And our D2C business also strengthened during the critical holiday shopping period as strong gifting demand for styles such as the Boston Clock led to record traffic to our website. We are starting fiscal 2025 much in the same way we exited fiscal 2024, with strong and growing demand from our core markets and products by leaning into the wide space growth opportunities we have identified, closed-toe shoes, the APAC region, and owned retail. During the quarter, revenue from closed-toe silhouettes grew at over twice the rate of the overall group and increased share of business by 600 basis points, accounting for well over half of the revenue in the quarter. Our peak winter quarter. During the first quarter, 12 of our top 20 selling silhouettes were closed-toe, including six in clogs and six in traditional lace-up shoes and food category. We are very successfully turning Wittenstock into a four-season brand. Our APEC business grew at 47%, two and a half times the pace of the overall business. And we opened four new own retail doors during the first quarter, bringing the total to 71 stores globally. By channel, as expected, We saw continued strength in our wholesale business, which grew by 30% during the first quarter of 2025. Once again, over 90% of the growth came from within existing doors as our partners continue to allocate more shelf space to the Brittenstock brand. Our DTC business grew 10%, a strong result when compared to the 30% growth in the year-ago quarter. As we look to Q2 and the remainder of 2025, we expect more balanced growth between our DTC and B2B businesses, with DTC likely to grow slightly faster than B2B in the second half of the year as we continue to add additional stores and invest in our digital business globally. Our membership base continues to grow nicely, reaching 8.8 million loyal members, up nearly 30% year over year. Now let's move to a brief discussion of segment performance for the year. Within our largest segment, the Americas, we experienced strong consumer demand for our brand throughout the quarter, especially around the peak holiday shopping period. Revenue in the region was up 16% compared to the first quarter of 2024. Closed-toe share of business reached nearly two-thirds driven by the incredibly strong demand for clocks, a category like sandals that is becoming synonymous with the name Birkenstock and making us a year-round wardrobe staple. B2B was especially strong as many of our strategic partners allocated more space to Birkenstock and experienced very strong holiday sell-through with many high-demand styles. such as the Boston Clock, selling out at most retail partners. America's DTC, which is almost entirely from our digital business, strengthened late in the quarter as shoppers sought out high-demand holiday gifting items, including clocks, home shoes, and our shearling executions, especially as the cold weather set in. Search for Birkenstock clocks was up 70% over the critical holiday shopping period versus last year, driving increased traffic to bildenstock.com. We expanded our physical retail presence, opening our Boston Newbury Street store during the quarter, the ninth location in the U.S., and we plan to add several additional stores later this year. In EMEA, we delivered growth of 17%, which was growth-based across all countries. This result stands out in the current market environment, characterized by flat market growth, macroeconomic challenges, and uncertainty. As consumers switched to their winter wardrobe, they remained loyal to the Birkenstock brand. Closed-toe, including clogs, grew over two and a half times faster than sandals, driving ASP higher. Lace-up shoes and boots were up over 50% and increased share of business by 300 basis points. In our online channel in EMEA, 16 of our top 20 selling styles were closed-toe, including seven boots. Shoes became the number two category in EMEA, showcasing strong growth in this important expansionary category. In our B2B channel, We doubled share of business in shoes compared to last year and continue to see strong growth in our order book for spring summer 25. We were pleased to see that Wittenstock was the top choice on holiday wishlist with sell-throughs at our key retail partners increasing up to 30% year over year during gifting season. We opened a new store in Amsterdam, Netherlands during the quarter. bringing our store count in EMEA to 35, and identified key locations throughout Europe for additional owned retail stores through 2025. The APEC region was again the fastest growing segment in the quarter, growing 47%, two and a half times the pace of the overall business, and now representing 13% of total revenue, up from 10.5% a year ago. Growth in the quarter benefited from an accelerated pace of store openings and earlier shipments to some B2B partners as we continue to make progress toward penetrating this significant white space for the Birkenstock brand. Aligned with our roadmap and commitment to the region, we added two new own retail stores, bringing our total to 27 in the APAC region. We also expanded our strategic partnerships, increasing our monobrand partner doors by 19. We expect the pace of openings to moderate in the coming quarters, leading to a more normalized APEC growth rate of double the group average. Greater China made up approximately 30% share of APAC revenue and grew above segment average. We are still in the early stages of our market rollout there, but are steadily building brand awareness and demand through our increased retail and online presence. It is a market where we see a tremendous opportunity for strong brands to take share. We opened our first own store in Chengdu in October and will turn our successful pop-up store in Shanghai into a permanent store later this year. I will now turn it over to Eric to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Oliver, and good morning, everyone. Before I jump into the quarterly results, I want to thank you all for your partnership, support, and patience as we navigated the IBO process and first year as a public company together. I wish IWISA and the entire Birkenstock family continued success in the future. Now, I'm happy to share with you one last time Birkenstock's exceptional performance for the first quarter of 2025 which came in ahead of our expectations. First quarter revenue, where Euro 362 million, growth of 19% in both reported and constant currency, above the high end of our 15 to 17% annual guidance for the year. B2B was up 30%, and our D2C was up by 10%, a strong result. D2C share of business was 49% in the quarter, down 400 basis points from a year ago. As Oliver mentioned, we expect more balanced growth between D2C and B2B for the remainder of 2025. Ross margin for the quarter was 60.3%, slightly down 70 basis points year over year, primarily due to the higher B2B mix this year. Selling and distribution expenditures were Euro 118 million in the first quarter. representing 32.7 percent of revenue, down 130 basis points, primarily due to the lower D2C penetration compared to last year. General administration expenses were Euro 24 million, or 6.7 percent of revenue in the quarter, down 120 basis points year over year. primarily due to the operating leverage from strong revenue growth and lower IPO-related expenses. EBITDA in Q1 of Euro 102 million was up 25% year-over-year, and margin of 28.2% was up 130 basis points year-over-year due to the strong improvement in SG&A. Adjusted net profit of Euro 33 million in the first quarter was up 99 percent, and earnings per share was 18 Euro cents, up 100 percent from a year ago. Cash flows used in operating activities during the first quarter was Euro 12 million, an improvement of 34 million Euros year over year. This was driven by the strong EBITDA growth combined with improved working capital efficiency. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of Euro 299 million, down from Euro 356 million at the end of fiscal 2024, due to the normal seasonality of our working capital usage. We improved our inventory to sales ratio to 39 percent, down from 42 percent in Q1 2024. Our DSO for the quarter were 15, down from 19 a year ago, despite the higher B2B mix. During the quarter, we spent 90 million euros in capital expenditures, adding to our production capacity in Paaswijk, Görlitz, and Aruka. Our net leverage was 1.9 times as of December 31st, 2024, up slightly from 1.8 times at the end of fiscal year 2024, due to the seasonality of our working capital. I now hand the call over to Ivica, to discuss the outlook for the second quarter and remainder of fiscal 2025.

Thank you, Eric, and I appreciate your support during this transition. As we look forward to the remainder of fiscal 2025, we believe we are well positioned to meet our stated growth and profitability objectives. For the remainder of 2025, we see more balanced and healthy growth from both D2C and B2B, with D2C coming in slightly ahead of B2B overall for the year. We are reiterating our growth and margin targets for the year. We forecast revenue growth of 15% to 17% in constant currency Gross profit margin should improve year over year as we increase utilization and efficiency at our production facility, moving closer to our 60% target. And we expect adjusted EVTA margin in a range of 30.8 to 31.3%, an increase of up to 50 basis points compared with 2024. CapEx are expected in the range of €80 million, and we see net leverage of approximately 1.5 times by year-end. As you know, the second quarter is an important quarter for our B2B business, with significant shipments to our partners for the spring-summer season. We feel good about where we are relative to our full-year revenue growth guidance of 15% to 17%. The mix in Q2 is more heavily weighted to B2B, so we expect the usual seasonal decline in gross margin and increased EBITDA margin when compared to the fiscal first quarter, but all within the context of our full-year margin guidance. And now, I'll hand it back to Oliver for his closing remarks.

Thanks, Ibiza. We are off to an excellent start in 2025 with strong double-digit revenue growth, excellent margins, and success leaning into the wide space areas we highlighted over a year ago. Our brand strength was evident as Birkenstock proved to be one of their clear winners this holiday season, and that strength continues with a very strong order book into the important spring-summer season. We are leaning into the strong consumer demand in both our B2B and D2C channels and continue to carefully execute on our proven engineering distribution strategy to drive ASP growth, ensure healthy stock levels, and maintain strong full-price realization. We are entering the next chapter of growth as we tap into our wide space opportunities and see a long runway for growth in all three, closed-toe shoes, own retail in APAC. Globally, we are increasing brand awareness, educating the consumer on the purpose of the Birkenstock footbed, and growing our retail and digital presence to gain share. I would now kindly ask the operator to open our Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. In the interest of time, we ask that participants limit themselves to one question on today's call. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. And the first question today is coming from Jay Sol from UBS. Jay, your line is live.

Great. Thank you so much. I have one question in two parts. You know, the first question is, Oliver, the quarter is really strong. Why aren't you raising the guidance for the full year, given the strong beat that you had in first quarter? And then secondly, can you address the strong B2B growth that you had? You know, what drove the strength? And why will the growth be more balanced between channels as you look over the rest of the year? Thank you.

Hello, Jay. Thank you for your question. Yes, we are off to a great start into 2025. But keep in mind that Q1 is the smallest quarter of the year. In 24, it was made up only 17% of the total annual revenue, so we still have over 80% of the year ahead of us. Also, we have a very strong order book, but keep in mind that there is a lot of macroeconomic uncertainty, interest rates, currency movement, tariffs. The inflation in the U.S. is over 3%. In the Eurozone, we're facing an inflation of 2.5% at the moment, and all this is before the impact of any new tariffs. So the potential impact on the global economy and global consumer is highly uncertain. And we have a big DTC business in the second half of the year, which is not that good foreseeable compared to all the books we're playing in the wholesale. So while we're off to a great start in business, it's strong for all of those reasons. We think it's prudent to stick with our current guidance for the year. And coming back to your second question or second part of the question, our sell-through was up around 40% full price. 40% up full price. With an average price increase of around 10%, I think these are very strong metrics for the wholesale business. And the average inventory was only up 10%. Stock-to-sales ratio is very healthy. Our B2B business continues to be a very strong indicator of the overall end-user demand, especially in an environment where consumers, especially the younger target groups, are returning to in-person shopping. So this is a great wholesale business, and we love our wholesale business. Be assured, our demand is super strong, and we will never, never compromise our distribution strategy from pull to push. Don't expect such a thing from us. Going forward, B2C, we see more balanced growth as we accelerate our own global retail store growth. Our own retail business was up 70% in the quarter on a small base. But we're also seeing more global opportunities to grow our digital business in the future. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And the next question is coming from Laurent Vasilescu from BNP Paribas. Laurent, your line is live. Good morning.

Thank you very much for taking my question. Eric, thank you for your leadership and support over the last 18 months, and I wish you the best in the future. Levita, welcome. As you looked at the opportunity to join Birkenstock, what was it that excited you most? What do you see as the biggest challenge, and how do you plan to address that? And then I have a quick following up on the model. Thank you. Thanks, Laurent, for the question. And I'm looking forward to working with all of you in the future. It's a lot about the opportunity at Birkenstock, which is very attractive to me. To state the obvious, we have significant growth opportunities for the company over the next decade and beyond. It's really rare to find a company with a 250-year-old legacy that still has such substantial growth ahead, and that's very exciting. Then culturally, I think it's a great fit for me. I love the brand. I love the history, its purpose, and I'm just really looking forward to help to guide the company through the next leg of growth together with a great team. On the biggest challenges, well, the challenges obviously any rapidly growing company is facing. So making sure that systems, infrastructure, and team are scaling in line with the business. So keeping up with the growth that we're seeing is certainly a big challenge and be leading in terms of technology, processes, and communication. The good news is I'm coming to a company with a very, very strong foundation and the resources to ensure the proper investments are made and scale the business right away.

Very clear.

And then it's good to hear that DTC and B2B should be balanced growth going forward. Should we assume that for the second quarter? And should we overall assume too few overall sales to be roughly in line of that revenue range of 15 to 17? Or should we assume it's a little bit higher or a little bit lower?

Thank you.

Hi, Lauren. It's Megan. I'm going to have to ask you to repeat that question. We had a siren going by right when you were in the middle of the question.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah, I apologize.

Okay, hopefully there's no fire. Yeah, thank you, Megan. Yeah, so the quick question here is it's great to hear that B2B and B2C will have balanced growth for the year. I think that's a big debate out there in the investment community. But just curious to know, Should we assume that for the second quarter? And overall, I think last quarter you called out for 1Q to be on the slightly higher range of 15% to 17% growth. Should we assume a certain range for 2Q for overall sales?

Thank you very much.

Hailing around, this is Alexander speaking. Overall, we said we want to achieve a balanced growth between the channels B2B and D2C on a full year level 2025. We also called out that there are some fluctuations between the quarters. This can always happen depending on how we ship. But overall, with that outperformance in B2B in the first It is fair to assume that we expect over the next quarter cumulative stronger growth in D2C compared to B2B.

Okay. Thank you very much. Best of luck. Thank you. The next question will be from Mark Altschwager from Baird. Mark, your line is live.

Great. Thank you for taking my question, and Eric, we wish you well. So you delivered some nice EBITDA margin expansion in Q1, well ahead of the run rate for the annual guide with improvement in SG&A. I was hoping you could talk us through the drivers here and the implications for the balance of the year. And could you see upside to the guidance for 50 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion, given the strong start that you delivered? Thank you.

Hey, Mark. This is Alexander. Great question, first of all. And let me guide you a little bit through the first quarter as a starting point. Essentially, the biggest driver of the improvement in the EBITDA margin was really the shift in channels in the quarter. So, as you recall, we have always said that our B2B channel has a significant lower gross margin compared to D2C. But it has a slightly higher EBTA margin, and this is what we are now seeing as a result in the first quarter, because those channels, the D2C channels, have a much higher selling distribution expenses compared to B2B. So, with the stronger B2B growth in the first quarter compared to D2C, this had an impact on the SG&A comparison year over year, and as I've said in the first question, As we look into the full year 25 and the more balanced growth between the channels, we expect the upcoming quarters not to be impacted in that way how it was in the first quarter. Based on those trends, there should be less an impact on SG&A as well as EBITDA margin year over year in the next quarters. So we stick here with our guidance in EVPA margin of up to 50 basis points for the full year. And you shouldn't assume that the 130 basis points improvement in the first quarter carries through the remainder of the year.

Thank you. And maybe just a quick follow-up there related to gross margin then. For the first quarter, you did not call out incremental pressure related to the facility expansion. So it sounds like that ramp must be going well. And then with the channel dynamics you talked about, perhaps less of a pressure on gross margin in the second quarter. So I guess as we put all that together, should we expect gross margin expansion beginning in the second quarter? Thank you.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. We didn't call that out in the first quarter, any impact from capacity expansion. It's quite the same than last year, so it has not an incremental margin impact in the first quarter of this financial year. And as we said before, we are expecting that in the second half of the year, we expect a positive impact from the utilization of our factories. So you can, at a full year basis, expect a modest improvement in gross margin.

Great. Thanks again.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Matthew Boss from JP Morgan. Matthew, your line is live.

Thanks. Congrats on another nice quarter. So, Oliver, maybe could you elaborate on key drivers of the revenue upside in the first quarter, maybe particularly the direct-to-consumer acceleration that you cited to exit the quarter. And then just relative to the larger picture comments on macro uncertainty, I guess, have you seen any softening at all in demand momentum post-holiday and in the second quarter? And just anything you're seeing in terms of visibility for the back half aside from just the larger picture macro uncertainty?

Hi, Matt. Thank you for the question. I'll take the first part. We don't see any softening at all. We believe that the brand demand is super strong globally, by the way. I think the ultimate truth is in wholesale, if you perform as we do perform in wholesale with this full price realization, very high sell-through ratio, it's It's an unbelievable strong demand out there, and the people and the customers, they should decide where they want to shop our product, and they do it, especially the younger target groups. But Nico and David can give you some more detailed color than this. We see a very strong audible. We see very strong demand globally, so we're fine on this.

Hey Matt, this is Nicolas. Thank you for your question. I'll touch a bit on the growth drivers in Q1. So as we heard in the earlier part of this call, it is really a broad-based demand across all regions. So that's something that we have to consider that we're very pleased with. Particularly, we had a very strong holiday and gifting season. So as consumers, even in the areas of our globe where it was getting colder, as they switched into the winter wardrobe, they really remained loyal to us. We are becoming much more of a full-year brand. Furthermore, I'd really like to share that we see a very strong growth contribution from the wide space opportunities we share during our IPO. CloseToe, as we shared earlier, is going at twice the speed compared to our overall growth, and the share of business is up 600 basis points, and now making up more than 50% of revenues. In the Americas region, it's two-thirds of the business driven by CloseToe. In EMEA, our online business is the same. Two-thirds of the business is CloseToe. Retail is our fastest growing channel. And be reminded that we just opened four new stores, totaling now at 71 stores globally. And the bigger part of expansion is still to come. So we're bringing the 71 stores closer to 100 in this fiscal year. So you see us opening many more stores, again, across all the regions. And finally, I want to touch on the APAC region. Again, a very, very strong growth, strong results. with accelerated partner store openings. We opened 19 partner stores. And that's also paying into the B2B revenue recognition. And we generally see an increase in brand awareness in that region that results in strong demand, especially in higher price points. That's also something really worth mentioning compared to other brands.

Thank you. And the next question is coming from Randy Koenig from Jefferies. Randy, your line is live.

Hey, good morning. Maybe give us some perspective on the amount of allocation improvement or space, shell space gained that you got in 2024, maybe dimensionalize that for us and maybe give us some perspective on what you see in 2025 and maybe kind of characterize how you also see pricing versus units you know, looking into the year to come up with your guidance on overall top line. And then relatedly, maybe just give us some perspective on APAC. It's obviously growing extremely well in its early days. Just maybe give us some, again, some perspective on where you are with allocation there, you know, wholesale partners, et cetera. Just the building blocks of that business or that geography would be super helpful. Thanks, guys.

Hey Randy, this is David. Thanks for the question. As you know, the word allocation ties to the term engineered distribution we use. We are a true sell-through company, not a sell-in company. So as we take share, we manage the allocation to make sure the stock-to-sales ratios are always healthy. As Oliver said when he answered the opening question, when you're delivering selling results, in an aggregate of retail partners that's 30 to 40% and above 40% increases on an average stock level that's only up 10%, your stock to sales ratios are incredibly healthy. And where we're taking share goes beyond our traditional sandal category. I think that's the beauty of this. The growth rate in closed-toe shoes is twice the rate of the rest of the collection. In the Americas, closed-toe shoes was two-thirds of the revenue in the quarter. So you're seeing a much broader-based acceptance for the brand. Clogs are leading the way, but it's clogs, it's shoes, it's shearling, and sandals. So very broad-based success in the quarter, and we continue to allocate against that. And as Oliver said in the opening question, we will never compromise the allocation, the So suffice to say, as much as the demand increases and as much as there's an appetite in the wholesale market to increase our shelf space, we manage that very strictly.

Hey Randy, this is Alexander. Second part of the question brief and quite straightforward. So we expect and reiterate two-thirds unit growth and one-third in ASP. And ASP were continuously driven on the one hand by product mix, with consumers continuously buying into more higher price points, and secondly, like-for-lifesizing. And with a balanced growth between channels, for 25, you should not expect an impact from channel mix.

Just on Asia.

Hi. Can you just repeat the question on Asia?

Just give us some, just further give us some perspective on where we are with that. Obviously, we're early days. You know, where are we with distribution? You know, where can we expect to go with distribution over the next couple of years? That would be super helpful.

Hello, Andy. This is Klaus. So, you know, as we always said, we are expanding in a mixed model. So, we are having partners in Asia. running monobrand stores. As you have seen, we are very strong in opening our own fleet in B2C. And also this season, we had the first holiday season with this setup, and we said that it's coming in very strong. So we will keep the pace of opening, but in a very good, premium way. Important is to really do the brand, building the brand awareness and being strong on spreading the word of the brand in the territory that consumers really getting the right message here.

Thank you. The next question will be from Louise Singlehurst from Goldman Sachs. Louise, your line is live.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Just wanted to have some commentary with regard to lots of new product coming through on the new launches and the opportunities for price mix that that might provide for you as you work your way through 25, but also looking further down the line. And the new products, are they... Can you just give us a bit of color in terms of the appetite from the consumer? Is that more of a loyal customer coming in and broadening out the Birkenstock range at home, or is that a good new customer acquisition tool as well? That would be very helpful. Thank you.

hey luis this is nico again um i can give you some color on the latest launches uh in q1 um in emea so um we are very pleased to see that in emea uh shoes uh one of our expansionary categories had a record quarter um so um as oliver was referring to the majority of the top 20 and the top 10 um selling styles was closed shoes but also boots at a price point of 200 euro So how we usually spearhead that success is we venture into our DTC business where we have the most loyal customers. And what we see is we can easily migrate them into new styles, into higher price points, and that's also what we saw with the shoes category. Now, you might recall that we also doubled the order intake, because what we do is for B2B, we take the success from B2C and bring it into B2B. We doubled the order intake for autumn winter 24 on shoes, and we just see now very promising sell-through results. So this is how we expand with our expansionary categories, starting with B2C, with our most loyal customers, and then going into B2B to reach a more critical mass and drive penetration in the market. And there's more to come on this one.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question will be from Paul Lijuez from Citi. Paul, your line is live.

Hi, this is Kelly on for Paul. Thanks for taking your question. Just wanted to clarify a comment from earlier on the gross margin. Did you say the capacity ramp of your Pass the Walk facility was still a drag in 1Q? Any way to quantify that, I believe it was only a 50 basis point drag at 1Q last year. And just given it was a pretty significant headwind to gross margin in 2Q last year, should we expect that to flip to a tailwind beginning in 2Q this year? And then just any other, if you could just give us any more detail on the puts and takes to gross margin at 1Q, how much did pricing benefit gross margin and what we should expect for pricing

going forward thanks hey Kelly this is Alexander speaking yes on the gross margin in the first quarter you're right it was still an impact but the same impact than the previous year's first quarter so not an incremental pressure on margin and we expect in the back half of the year So, starting second, third, fourth quarter to be a little bit positive against that 150 basis points on full year for the year 24. And we confirm also that we want to completely offset this 150 basis points margin pressure in the third quarter of 2016. So you will see a constant improvement quarter by quarter on the gross margin piece from the underutilization from the positive factory.

Just on pricing?

Yeah, on pricing. I mean, we are regularly reviewing our pricing structure. I mentioned before that ASP will be not only driven by product mix, but also by like-for-like pricing. We are doing it very surgically, those kind of adjustments. So it will be in the single digit, low single digit amount each year. We are doing it style by style, not on average for all of those products, depending on how we wanna price each of the products. And yeah, on inflation, so clearly the goal is to offset inflation by pricing, but we are also working internally on cost structure and supply chain to further gain shares here.

Got it. Just one follow-up on just the flow of the year from the top line perspective. Is it fair to assume that given we're coming up on some of your biggest quarters here in and the share of closed-toe, I assume, given as we move to spring, becomes a lower penetration of the assortment. Will we assume 2Q, 3Q are sort of towards the low end of the guidance range? Just any color you can provide there would be helpful.

Thank you. Yeah, we're not guiding specifically for quarters, Kelly.

I think we've given a little bit of... Guidance around how we see margins in the next quarters, but we are not specifically guiding quarters.

Got it. Thanks. Best of luck.

Thank you. The next question will be from Simeon Siegel from BMO. Simeon, your line is live.

Thanks. Hey, everyone. Nice broad-based growth. Eric, it's been great getting to know you. Best of luck in the next chapter. And Avika, welcome aboard. Looking forward to meeting you in the future. So we can hear your comfort and health of the B2B business in the qualitative comments, but you also offered some quantitative color. I mean, you brought up the improving DSOs and their remarks. Any further color you could share on composition of receivable health? Maybe talk about how much of the B2B growth has come from deeper, going deeper within existing doors versus new. David, I assume from your comments, safe to say your retail partners would still love to take more if you're willing to give them more. So anything further on that would be helpful. Thanks, guys.

Yeah. Hey, Simeon, just a quick comment on that. As we've said, 90 plus percent of our wholesale growth is coming from existing partners and existing doors. So that indicates that on this growth level, it's clearly taking share and it's clearly expansion from our basis business. So, you know, the stronger the businesses, the more we continue to expand, slowly and very deliberately. We had a very, very strong holiday sell through and the business was strong going into the holiday season. So, you know, obviously results, you know, correspond to future order book and demand. And clearly you're absolutely right. There's probably not a retailer out there that would not want more product. And then it's contingent upon us to determine how much they get. and in what quantities and how the brand shows up at retail. So we can be very intentional right now about where we're taking our business and continue what we've been doing based on the results.

That's great. And then would you guys be willing to quantify the gross margin drivers this quarter at all anymore, just thinking through product, geo, channel mix shifts, higher ASP, et cetera, anything in terms of how Q1 played out? Thank you.

hey Simeon this is again yeah I think I touched a little bit already on the first quarter growth margin so it's it's quite straightforward in this quarter so the the really the biggest part of the 70-bit decline is relating to the change of the channel mix with 400 basis points less b2c penetration that gives you approximately the gap you're looking for and all Yeah, all other drivers have been not material. So we managed to offset inflation. So this was not a big driver by the targeted price action. Product mix was not a big driver. So essentially, I called also out Parzivax. So essentially, it's only then the channel mix.

Great. Thanks a lot, guys. Best of luck for the rest of the year.

Thank you, and we would like to remind participants in the interest of time today to please limit yourself to one question. The next question is coming from Dana Telsey from Telsey. Dana, you're live.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Nice to see the progress. As you've touched on faster DTC growth than B2B as we go through the year, any more perspective on e-commerce versus owned stores, how you're seeing current store opening performance versus the base, and how you're thinking about store openings by region this year. Thank you.

Hey, Dana. This is Nico speaking. It's a great question. I'm happy to take the question. So as I touched on, retail is the fastest-growing channel and will remain the fastest-growing channel when we look into the future. We operate 71 stores. We just opened four stores in this quarter, and we're going to bring the total number closer to 100 this year. So we will be opening many, many stores. What we see is the newly opened stores, they deliver higher ASP, a better conversion rate, and a better square meter productivity. So it's a proven store model that you know. We are not looking for locations at a triple A location. We are going to this side street next to the AAA location. We operate stores at 120, 150 square meters. The capex payback is and will be at between 12 and 18 months. So it's a really highly proven store model and we definitely see success. On some locations that we have secured, so there will be locations across all three regions where we open new stores. There will be a new store in London, another store in Paris. We'll also look into the Spanish region, but you'll see opening every quarter dynamically growing into every region. So on the online business, we do believe we have a very strong online business. As you know, it's 90% of our DTC, and we still do see a significant growth opportunities from a regional perspective, but also from a customer perspective. Just be reminded, in our Asia region, in the APAC region, we just opened four new countries as new dot-com destinations. Our business in dot-com in Middle East Africa is just two years old, so really in its infancy, and you see further growth coming from those regions. And just to close off with new customer audiences, as we expand with expansionary categories in our online business, and we just shared the great results there, we also acquire new customers, and that's going to continue also into the next quarters and the next two years. So we are very, very positive about the DTC and the outlook that we have with this channel.

Thank you. The next. The next question will be from Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of America. Lorraine, your line is live.

Thank you. Good morning. As you run scenarios around potential tariffs into the U.S., what levers are you considering?

Do you plan to offset potential tariffs with pricing? Thank you, Lorraine, for your question.

It's Isabel speaking. As you know, our final assembly is entirely in Germany, so we would only be impacted by tariffs on imports from Germany. And the good news is here that we have historically had the ability to take pricing action globally that offset these inflationary pressures, including tariffs, without any impact on our business. This is something that we will obviously monitor closely and do whatever we can do to mitigate the impact through cost initiatives and pricing adjustments. So it's not about just pricing adjustments, but it's overall for us to gain efficiency through cost initiatives. One point I want to mention in addition is that besides we may see a couple of indirect impacts as tariffs may drive inflation generally. and may impact also consumer sentiment, which certainly adds to the uncertainty Oliver mentioned in his initial statement. But overall, we're watching that closely.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Michael Benetti from Evercore ISI. Michael, your line is live.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking our question and for all the detail on the call here. Congrats on a great quarterback. Just to double-click on the earlier question on gross margin, I think in second quarter last year there was a pretty big step up in the gross margin pressure from the factory to leverage relative to 1Q. I know you did speak to it. I can hear your confidence in the gross margin in the second half. Is there any puts or takes that are unusual that we should think about on the gross margin in the second quarter that holds you back from saying, you know, there's a step up in the gross margin there, or is it just conservatism given it's a bigger wholesale quarter? I guess, and then maybe a bigger picture, one for David, as you look across some of the parts of the wholesale channel in the U.S. that's stocked out, which we saw in a lot of our work, stocked out of key gifting items this Christmas. How do you think about adjusting the strategy relative to that level of unmet demand for next holiday? I know you're always balancing this, David, with managing the corporate first principles at Birkenstock for managing scarcity. Just any thoughts you have as you look across the results in this holiday.

Hi, Michael. Alexander here, speaking for the first part of the question regarding gross margin. Yeah, the puts and takes, again, we are not guiding specifically quarters. But what I can say is that we are not seeing a substantial impact from channel mix in the second quarter. And on the Pasewag impact, as I said before, we are not expecting additional pressure. But quarter by quarter, you will see now that 150 bips from last year turning into a positive impact quarter by quarter.

Michael, I'll take the second part of that. This is David. As you know from following our brand in the market, allocation and distribution is half art and half science. I mean, we do it with a lot of data. We have planners. We have analysts on a door-by-door, on a style-by-style basis. We're always going to make sure that the stock-to-sales ratios are always healthy. So while we don't want stockouts all over the market, clearly some of that unrequited love and the demand that it creates for the brand is part of this flywheel impact that we get, and that's why demand keeps increasing. And what we keep finding continually is, the more we put additional product into the wholesale market, the more the demand continues to increase. And again, just remember our D to C base is already at 40% penetration with 90 plus percent of it being digital. So as we open more of our own doors, the white space category that we've been talking about, that's just more points of distribution where we can fulfill that demand. So, it's all really part of one ecosystem. Suffice to say, the stock-to-sales ratios that are maintained very healthy in the wholesale market are basically the foundation for the entire business model.

Okay. Maybe just one quick follow-up on the model. Is there a Related to your very last comment there, is there anything in the guidance for the year assuming a price increase that's directly earmarked for tariffs, or would that be incremental if tariffs happen and it's not included in the guidance at this point?

Hey, this is Oliver. You know, I think there's no big sense in discussing the possible tariffs up and down because it's really impossible to foresee this. I think the tariffs will have more an impact overall inflation and the overall macroeconomic, because, you know, as I mentioned in my first question and the answer, it was, you know, inflation in the U.S. is above 3%, and that's before, you know, all the tariffs kicks in. So this is why we are concerned about the tariffs. As you know, we constantly adjust our pricing every season, very, very precisely, style by style, It's the opposite of what you can see from the luxury industry, where they're pricing all over by 10%, 20%, 15%, 30%. We go step by step, very precise, leather, this article group, textile, different one. And that's what we're doing. So I would call it price adjustments. And yes, if something happens, price increases on raw material side, on tariffs, whatever, then, of course, we try to balance it out within our collection, but don't expect an overall price increase to happen with us. Okay. Thanks again, guys. Congrats.

The next question will be from Ana Andreeva from Piper Sandler. Ana, your line is live.

Great. Thank you so much for all the color and taking our questions. Could you provide a little bit more color on your loyalty program? I think you said 8.8 million people this quarter, so nice growth versus, I think, 8 million you called out last quarter. Just curious, how is it performing versus expectations, and what are some of the recent KPIs of how you measure how success is going to look like in 25? And then we had a quick follow-up.

Yeah, thanks. Great question. Our members are very important to us. As you know, people who wear Birkenstock aren't just consumers. They become our fans. They become our brand missionaries. And the more we wrap our arms around them, the better the return on investment is for us. Our membership at over 8 million right now is 30% higher year on year. I can certainly see it moving to 10 million quite quickly when you do the math on it. marketing to our members has been very successful. Um, I believe almost 50% of our DTC business came from members in the past quarter. And just remember our members tend to spend 30% higher per transaction. Um, so the return on investment as we market to them and as we share new products, um, you know, if you've worn Birkenstock in any product, if you came to us by way of the sandal or the clog and you've experienced the footbed, Odds are much higher you're going to adapt for another use occasion a closed-toe shoe or an outdoor shoe or recovery or if you work in healthcare or hospitality or professional shoes. So as our membership grows, we see that as a key drive for our D2C business. And just remember also the more touch points we have as we open retail stores around the world, those retail stores also become vehicles for memberships.

That's awesome. That was very exciting. Thank you, David. And just as a follow-up, so APAC was up very nice, 47% in one queue, and you mentioned accelerated pace of door openings and also deliveries during the quarter. Should we think there's a timing shift which could negatively impact the second quarter growth rate in the region, or that should affect the current quarter?

Hello, Anais Klaus. You know, we always said we are very fine with the growth rates in APAC having double of our mature markets. And this is also what we keep. So I think that answers the question, right?

Got it. Well, thank you so much.

The next question is coming from Sam Poser from Williams Trading. Sam, your line is live.

Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. Just quickly, You mentioned that Q2 is another big sell-in quarter, and I'm just trying to balance out how the DTC for the year is going to grow faster. Do you anticipate DTC to grow faster than wholesale in Q2, or is that DTC growth going to be driven a lot by these new stores that are going to open and impact the second half of the year?

Hey, Sam. This is Alexander speaking. We cannot be that specific. What we said is that we want to grow in the remaining quarters more in D2C to come then on the full year basis to a balanced number. Will it be quarter two, three, four? That would be really too specific and it's also depending on how we ship into the wholesale account.

I understand.

In general, as you know, Sam, because you know the business best, probably the first half is wholesale heavy and the second half of the year is more D2C heavy. So that probably gives you the best direction how to think about this.

And so that also would be a balance off the gross margin. Another reason for the gross margin in the second quarter was while it may increase year over year to being the biggest wholesale quarter to keep it, you know, well, you know, underneath Q1 and underneath the full year average, I would think. Is that a good way to think about it?

Absolutely. That's correct.

Thanks very much.

Thank you. The next question will be from Erwin Ramberg from HSBC. Erwin, your line is live. Yeah, hi, good afternoon.

And best of luck to the outgoing and incoming CFOs, if I can put it that way. Two little follow-ups. First of all, on closed-toe shoes being comfortably above 50% of the business in Q1, where do you see this going in Q2 and maybe for the full year? I think you mentioned 600 basis points of incremental contribution in Q1. How should we think about the full year I think you were a bit above 30% contribution for the full year of the last year. I don't know if you've said what difference the ASP is relative to average. And then secondly, a follow-up on wholesale for David or possibly Nico and Klaus as well. It's quite stunning that you're growing 30% given that 90% of the growth is with existing doors. So sorry for the naive question, but how much more space Can you actually, you know, can they actually accommodate? And at some stage, even though I understand you're more pull than push, will you not need to sign up with new partners at some stage to, you know, to increase the visibility of the brand? Thank you.

Hey, everyone. This is Nico. Thank you for your question. I'll take the first part and then I guess we're going to share a bit the second part of your questions. So yes, you're right. So close to increased by 600 basis points. It's two times faster than the rest of the business. Why our open tool business is also growing double digits. And I think that's really worth mentioning. We have to be reminded that this quarter is probably one of the quarters with the highest closed-toe penetration due to seasonality. So don't expect us to deliver the same share of business in the coming quarters. We have given not ourselves a specific target for quarter, but we see great opportunity coming out of this quarter in the closed-toe business and also specifically in closed-toes, as I just shared early on with the great results we have seen in closed-toes.

And maybe just on the ASP point, how much more expensive, you know, in terms of ASP at close to versus the average of the business?

So just as you can imagine, closed shoes is a much higher ASP than sandals. So I refer to the boots example that we had great success in Q1 with boots, and they are sold at 200 euro price point. And that's adopted by the consumer. So you can imagine what's the sort of potential difference in ASP between those categories, between sandals and closed shoes.

Thank you. The next question will be from Jim Duffy from Stiefel. Jim, your line is live.

Oh, thank you. Very clear momentum in the B2B. Following up on that last question, very interested in the evolving product mix at wholesale. Can you speak to what you're seeing in the order book by product type and ASP mix within the orders, specifically interested in whether the wholesale channel partners are embracing more premium offerings and how that's balancing with interest in EVA offerings like the Berkey?

Thanks.

Thank you, Jim, for your question. Great question. What we do definitely see is, and I'll start with the consumer, consumer continue to seek our premium product. The leather share is increasing. Clocks category is doing extremely well, not just the Boston, but also Clocks Derivates. So that's another premium category that is doing extremely well. And what we also just shared is the great adoption of boots in Q1. So, yes, the consumer is seeking for our most premium product, and that's also reflected in the B2B buys, in the B2B order book, as retailers are expanding their assortment and widening their assortment with us beyond just candles.

Thank you. Thank you. And the next question will be from Janine Stitcher from BTIG.

Hey, thanks so much for all the color and for taking our questions. One more on B2B. I was hoping you could comment on what you're seeing in some of the newer doors within adjacent categories like outdoor, professional, and run specialty. So how penetrated are you in these categories and just maybe what you see in terms of shelf space potential? Thank you.

Hey, Janine. It's David. In the new distribution, which, again, is a little bit limited to our traditional base, we're seeing immediate adoption of the brand. whether we show up as a recovery sandal, a recovery product and run specialty. It's the exact same place that we were in when we went into some of these other accounts 10 to 12 years ago. The expansionary categories in our heritage business have been adopted very quickly. I mean, again, when we talk about over half of our business being non-sandals, that's pretty substantial compared to a couple of years ago. When you see the brand out at retail, you're certainly no longer seeing a sandal-based brand. So as we go into some of these other categories where it's a different use occasion but it's the same footbed, whether you're outdoors, whether you're wearing house slippers, whether you're a professional, and wearing it in a work environment, it's the footbed. And the more we bring the footbed to different use occasions, the more it's being adopted. So I think it's more a matter of how many use occasions do we continue to expand into and what's the share of closet? I mean, as you remember, the average Birkenstock consumer has owned 3.4, 3.6 pairs of our product. Anecdotally, we think that's even higher. So I don't think there's a limit to how many Birkenstock products our fans can own in their closet. And the more they see it out in those environments where it's validated, the quicker it's being adopted.

Great. Thanks so much for the caller.

Thank you. There were no other questions. And this does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.