Ralph Lauren Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ralph Lauren first quarter and full year fiscal year 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions on how to ask a question will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during a call, please press star then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn over the conference to our host, Ms. Karina Vandekens. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Ralph Lauren's first quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. With me today are Patrice Louvet, the company's president and chief executive officer, and Justin Pacici, chief financial officer. After prepared remarks, we will open up the call for your questions, which we ask that you limit to one per caller. During today's call, our financial performance will be discussed on a constant currency-adjusted basis. Our reported results, including foreign currency, can be found in this morning's press release. We will also be making some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including our financial outlook. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees, and our actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Our expectations contain many risks and uncertainties. Principal risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from our current expectations are detailed in our SEC filings. To find disclosures and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures that we use when discussing our financial results, you should refer to this morning's earnings release and to our SEC filings that can be found on our Investor Relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Patrice.

Thank you, Cori. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. We started year three of our Next Great Chapter Accelerate Plan with continued momentum, keeping us on track with our fiscal 25 and long-term strategic commitments. Our first quarter performance underscores the power and growing desirability of our iconic brand around the world, with key moments that demonstrate our ability to resonate across cultures, geographies, and generations. This, combined with our diversified engines of growth and organizational agility, gives us confidence that our long-term strategy will continue to deliver, even through these dynamic times. First quarter results exceeded our expectations, led by international and positive retail comps across all regions, with continued momentum across consumer metrics. Performance in our global direct-to-consumer businesses and Europe wholesale more than offset plant softness in North America wholesale. At the same time, we continue to invest in our strategic priorities, including marketing, digital capabilities, and our targeted ecosystem expansion across our top cities. Fueled by our culture of operating discipline and increased efficiencies, These investments will enable us to drive long-term sustainable growth and value creation well beyond our current three-year plan. During the first quarter, we drove continued progress across our three strategic pillars. As a reminder, these include, first, elevate and energize our lifestyle brand. Second, drive the core and expand for more. And third, win in key cities with our consumer ecosystem. Let me take you through a few highlights from the first quarter. First, on our efforts to elevate and energize our lifestyle brand. From our recent activations in Milan, London, New York, and across China, to our rapidly expanding social media following, Ralph Lauren continues to be at the forefront of culture across geographies and demographics. Key campaigns from the quarter included First, our Women's Collection runway show in New York City this April, where we celebrated the timeless, easy elegance that has come to define our brand. The collection also tapped into some of our signature design codes, from Western motifs to shimmering liquid gowns and cozy, rich cashmeres, signaling a confident, quiet luxury as Ralph does best. The globally amplified event surpassed our goals driving 16 billion PR impressions as we were joined by celebrities including Jodi Turner-Smith, Jessica Chastain, Kerry Washington, Crystal Young, Rebecca Hall, and Morgan Spector. Heading into warmer months, we reinforced our position as the ultimate destination for effortless summer icons with our Only Polo campaign. Our teams delivered local activations spanning LA's Sunset Boulevard, Roppongi in Tokyo, Soho in New York, Miami's Design District, Dubai, and Seoul. The stars aligned in Milan at our Purple Label presentation this June, where Usher, John Legend, Chris Pine, and Rufus Wainwright, among others, honored our newest collection as part of Men's Fashion Week. During the city's renowned Home Design Fair, Salone del Mobile, we unveiled our first collection with our new licensing partner and invited the international design community to experience American style in Milan. Our 618 activations in China drove high double-digit growth that significantly outpaced our competitive set. Our teams are leveraging these events for longer-term brand building with a focus on high-quality sales and new customer acquisition. And finally, we're in the midst of a spectacular summer of sports. We kicked off our 2024 Paris Olympics campaign, unveiling our uniforms as official outfitter of Team USA, a cherished partnership over nine Olympic games since 2008. And beyond the quarter, we celebrated our 19th year as official outfitter of the championships at Wimbledon, marrying the traditions of this storied tournament with sophisticated spectator style. These activations are driving strong, sustainable growth in new customer acquisition and engagement. In the first quarter, we added 1.3 million new consumers to our DTC businesses, consistent with our long-term expectations and led by higher value in younger cohorts. Our net promoter scores increased globally, led by Europe. and our online search grew strong double digits, outpacing our competitive set. And we grew our social media followers by low teens to last year, surpassing 60 million, led by Instagram, Threads, Line, TikTok, and Douyin. Moving next to our second key initiative, drive the core and expand for more. While many aspire to become true lifestyle brands, Ralph created a brand that has epitomized the aspirational lifestyle for over 50 years. And as we look ahead, Ralph and our design teams will continue to leverage our powerful portfolio of highly recognizable core products with expansion into newer categories to realize our brand's full potential. Starting with our core products, which represent more than 70% of our business. Sales were up low single digits, slightly ahead of our total company growth in the first quarter. Highlights from this spring included our linen styles from sports shirts to tailored suits, newly relaunched stretch mesh polos, elevated heavyweight jersey and polo bear tees, and sweaters. In children's, linen also drove outside's growth, along with seasonal mini cable and flag sweaters and our expansion within the big kid segment. Our high potential categories, including women's apparel, outerwear, and handbags, together increased mid-single digits, outpacing our total company growth rate as we continue to drive our strategy of foundational pieces to anchor her modern wardrobe. Top sellers in women's this quarter included our iconic cable knit sweaters, linen and Oxford shirts, polos, and shirt dresses in easier fits, and our canvas city jackets. Within handbags, we drove strong growth led by Polo Women's, where continued momentum in our Polo ID collection is driving both revenues on higher AUR as well as new customer recruitment, as highlighted by Jennifer Lawrence sporting our yellow Polo ID bag this spring. Other exciting releases this quarter included our Wimbledon capsule featuring tennis-inspired sportswear, with sell-throughs up strong double digits to last year across men's, women's, and kids. And our Summer Olympics collections, including our opening and closing ceremony uniforms and Olympic village wear, an assortment of polo sportswear icons retold through the sophisticated lens of Paris. Turning to our third key initiative, win in key cities with our consumer ecosystem. Our key city ecosystems around the world are driving elevation and consistency across all of our consumer channels and touchpoints. Each of these ecosystems is anchored by direct-to-consumer channels, including our stores and digital commerce sites, where we offer our most elevated consumer experiences and engagement. In the first quarter, we drove solid DTC comp growth while also expanding our connected ecosystems across key markets. Comps were up mid-single digits in both our brick-and-mortar stores and digital channels. Globally, we opened eight new owned and partnered stores focused on our top cities, largely in Asia. And we recently welcomed consumers back into our newly renovated Chicago flagship on Michigan Avenue. In addition to our famed RL restaurant, the store now also includes our first Ralph's Coffee shop in the Midwest. With more than 30 coffee shops and 5 restaurants, we are now engaging with over 3 million consumers annually through our hospitality business, attracting a new generation of consumers to our iconic brand around the world. By region, growth was led by Asia, up another high single digits this quarter and consistent with our outlook. This was followed by better than expected performance once again in Europe, while North America was in line with our plan. Our China momentum continued with sales up low double digits this quarter over an exceptionally strong compare of up more than 50% last year. While we are watching macro developments and consumer behavior closely, our teams continue to successfully grow our brand desirability with domestic Chinese consumers. In addition, our ecosystem expansion remains disciplined as we largely focus on our six key city clusters. And finally, touching on our enablers, our business continued to be supported by our five key enablers. This quarter featured some incredible moments as we embed citizenship and sustainability in all we do. First, our groundbreaking artist-in-residence collaboration with Navajo designer Naomi Lasses recently won the Fast Company Innovation by Design Award in the fashion and beauty category. It was also recognized at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen. And we were proud to recently be named one of Forbes Best Employers for Diversity 2024 and on Parity.org's 2024 parody list, recognizing organizations that support equal advancement opportunities in the workplace. In closing, Ralph and I are encouraged by our team's solid start to this fiscal year. As we continue to operate with agility, we are successfully marrying the magic of Ralph's original vision with a data-driven mindset to support and grow our iconic brand across new generations and geographies. Shifting our business toward DTC and a more elevated wholesale presence. and leveraging our nimble global supply chain and culture of operational discipline in order to mitigate ongoing disruptions, drive greater long-term efficiency, and better serve our consumers. Entering the important fall holiday season, we remain on offense and in a position of strength to deliver on our strategic commitments. With that, I'll hand it over to our new CFO, Justin, to walk us through the financials and I'll join him at the end to answer your questions.