Vince Holding Corp.

Good morning all, good afternoon all, and welcome to the Vince Q3 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Adam and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, reduce or by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the floor to Akiko Okuma to begin, so please go ahead when you're ready.

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Vince Holding Corp third quarter fiscal 2025 results conference call. Hosting the call today is Brendan Hoffman, Chief Executive Officer, and Yuji Okamura, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me remind you that certain statements made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those that the company expects. Those risks and uncertainties are described in today's press release and in the company's SEC filings, which are available on the company's website. Investors should not assume that statements made during the call will remain operative at a later time and the company undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed on the call. In addition, in today's discussion, the company is presenting its financial results in conformity with GAAP and on an adjusted basis. The adjusted results that the company presents today are non-GAAP measures. Discussions of these non-GAAP measures and information on reconciliations with them to their most comparable gap measures are included in today's press release and related schedules, which are available in the investor section of the company's website at investors.vince.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Brendan.

Thank you, Akiko, and good morning, everyone. We are extremely proud of our third quarter performance as we drove healthy sales growth across all channels and exceeded our expectations for both top and bottom line. Our assortments are resonating across both our women's and men's businesses, but most encouraging is the acceptance we have seen to the strategic price increases implemented this quarter, as well as in the momentum in our DTC segment, given the enhancements we have made to the customer experience. In our women's assortment, which has the highest impact from tariffs, prices increased more than our overall average increase of approximately 6%, but units were nearly flat to last year, validating the quality and value of our product in the marketplace. Beyond the pricing actions, our teams have done an exceptional job in continuing to manage the evolving tariff environment. Our goods are flowing smoothly despite significant changes in sourcing, and importantly, we've maintained our quality standards throughout this transition. With respect to customer experience, following the store renovations from earlier this year, we enhanced our e-commerce site in Q3 with a strategic site refresh, increased marketing support, and the launch of Drop Ship. Our e-commerce site refresh elevated the customer experience with more modern, creative elements and enhanced site merchandise. We are now using AI-generated video content to enrich product detail pages and introduce more service elements, like our cashmere care guide. This investment in our digital platform contributed meaningfully to our strong performance, and we're seeing the benefits flow through in both conversion rates and average order values. Our e-commerce site also significantly benefited from the marketing investments we made in mid-funnel marketing this quarter. Through this work, we drove triple-digit growth in site traffic late in the quarter and supported full-price new customer acquisition as well. And at the end of the quarter, we went live with a new dropship strategy, which we believe will be a significant growth opportunity for us moving forward. In the first month since launch, we have seen significant increase in volume. Our initial launch focused only on shoes, but we have plans to expand to other categories, capitalizing on our partnership with authentic brands and the category expansion opportunities that provides. The dropship strategy allows us to not only offer more fashion-forward products that we might typically feel comfortable procuring directly, but enables us to showcase a more diverse assortment to our customer, providing learnings on customer preferences that we may incorporate into our store channel as well. In addition to these initiatives, we opened two new stores this quarter in Nashville and Sacramento, following our successful store opening in Marleybone, London, earlier this year, which continues to exceed our expectations. Moving to our wholesale business, we delivered solid growth versus last year, with some of this reflecting the timing benefits from the Q2 shipment delays that we discussed previously, as well as ongoing performance of key partners. We were excited to recently celebrate our 2025 holiday collection, along with our continued partnership with Nordstrom, with an immersive experience in LA with Nordstrom's top clientele, Nordstrom's VP fashion director, and our creative director, Caroline Bellhumer. It was a great event to kick off the holiday season and highlight our holiday campaign, which celebrates our brand spirit and showcases connections through stories and gift giving with a 360 degree omnichannel strategy. Thus far, we have seen a very strong start to the holiday quarter, including record sales across the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend in our direct-to-consumer business. Given the strength of Q3 and the momentum we are continuing to drive, I am more confident than ever in the trajectory ahead for Vince Holding Corp and the prospects we have to leverage our platform further to drive growth. We continue to successfully navigate the tariff challenges while maintaining the quality and brand integrity we are known for. We are beginning to reinvest in the business, particularly in marketing initiatives that we have pulled back on earlier in the year, and we're seeing positive returns on these investments. The underlying fundamentals of our business remain strong. We're operating with disciplined execution while positioning for growth. With that strong foundation and the momentum we're building, I'll now turn it over to you to discuss our financial results in more detail and provide our updated outlook.

Thank you, Brendan, and good morning, everyone. As Brendan reviewed, we are very pleased with our third quarter performance as we saw momentum continue across the business, enabling us to begin to reinvest in key areas of the business. Total company net sales for the third quarter increased 6.2% to 85.1 million compared to 80.2 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2024. With respect to channel performance, our wholesale channel increased 6.7% And our direct-to-consumer segment increased 5.5%. As Brendan reviewed, part of the growth in wholesale reflects the timing of shifting, given the delays we experienced earlier in the year with tariff disruption. Our teams are doing an excellent job in continuing to manage our supply chain, and our goods are flowing smoothly and expect to be back in line to normal course timing by spring. Gross profit in the third quarter was $41.9 million or 49.2% of net sales. This compares to $40.1 million or 50% of net sales in the third quarter of last year. The decrease in gross margin rate was primarily driven by approximately 260 basis points due to the unfavorable impact of higher cash and approximately 100 basis points due to increased pay costs partially offset by 140 basis points increase due to favorable impact of lower product costing and higher pricing, and approximately 110 basis points due to favorable impact of lower discounting. As Brendan reviewed, we are very encouraged by customers' response to our strategic price changes and our team's ongoing focus on tariff mitigation efforts. Given timing and mix of sales, we experience less of a headwind than originally expected from CARES during the quarter, but expect these costs to ramp into the Q4. Selling general and administrative expenses in the quarter were 36.5 million, or 42.8% of net sales, as compared to 34.3 million, or 42.8% of net sales for the third quarter of last year. The increase in SG&A dollars was primarily driven by approximately 1.1 million related to compensation and benefits and $760,000 of increase in marketing and advertising costs as we reinvested into mid-funnel activities. Operating income for the third quarter was $5.4 million compared to operating income of $5.8 million in the same period last year. Net interest expense for the quarter decreased to $1 million compared to $1.7 million in the prior year. The decrease was primarily due to lower levels of debt under our term loan credit facility. At the end of third quarter fiscal 2025, our long-term debt balance was $36.1 million, a reduction of $14.5 million compared to $15.6 million in the prior year period. Income tax expense was $2 million compared to zero income tax provision in the same period last year. The increase is due to the impact of applying our estimated annual effective tax rate to the year-to-date ordinary pre-tax income. In the prior comparative period, we had a year-to-date ordinary pre-tax losses for the interim period, and as such, we did not record any tax expense for the same period last year. As a reminder, following the change in controls that earlier this calendar year, we have limitations to use of the NOLs that we did not have last year, also impacting the cash tax expense comparison to previous years. Net income for the third quarter was 2.7 million, or income per share of 21 cents. compared to net income of 4.3 million or income per share of 34 cents in the third quarter of last year. The year-over-year decline in net income was driven by the increase in tax expense. Adjusted EBITDA was 6.5 million for the third quarter compared to 7.4 million in the prior year. Moving to the balance sheet, net inventory was 75.9 million at the end of the third quarter as compared to 63.8 million at the end of the third quarter last year. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by approximately 4.2 million higher inventory carrying value due to tariffs. Turning to our outlook, as Brendan discussed, we have seen a very strong start to the fourth quarter with a record holiday weekend sales performance in our DTC segment. Our outlook for the period assumes that this momentum continues with the growth and DTC segment expected to outpace our total net sales growth for the period, which is expected to increase approximately 3 to 7%. This guidance also takes into account potential shifts in timing with respect to wholesale shipments given end of the year seasonality. In addition, we expect adjusted operating income as a percentage of net sales for the quarter to be approximately flat to 2% and for the adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of net sales to be approximately 2 to 4% compared to 6.7% in the prior year period. Our guidance for the quarter takes into account approximately 4 to 5 million of estimated incremental tariff costs that we continue to expect to partially offset for our mitigation strategy. Given our year-to-date performance and our outlook for the fourth quarter, we expect full-year net sales growth to be approximately 2 to 3% adjusted operating income as a percentage of net sales to be approximately 2 to 3 percent, and for the adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of net sales to be approximately 4 to 5 percent compared to the 4.8 percent in the prior year period, despite incurring approximately 8 to 9 million of incremental tariff costs compared to last year. This concludes our remarks, and I'll now turn it over to the operator to open the call for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star followed by 1. Your telephone keypad now turns to the queue. If you're prepared to ask a question, please ensure you are unmuted locally. And our first question comes from Eric Beder at SEC Research. Eric, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Congratulations on a great Q3. Thanks, Eric. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about some of the potential drivers here. So you have just started to roll out some of the licensed product We've seen handbags and suiting in our store tours. I'm curious, you know, you mentioned it also in your comments, where do you think that goes? And I know that the tariffs kind of slowed down the rollouts, but what should we be thinking about the potential for that in 2026 and beyond?

Well, you know, I think it's, I'm even more bullish now after the last month based on my comments on dropships. what we saw with Drop Ship with Calaris and shoes in the last four or five weeks is truly spectacular. And so the opportunity to launch that in an e-commerce in the spring on these other categories and then figure out how to better utilize that within the stores, in addition to obviously showcasing the product, I think it has a it can have a real impact on our business more than I was anticipating prior to the dropship launch.

And when you look at, you know, I know that you've been also looking at putting, you put some COH denim into some of the stores, you know, how should we be thinking about that potential opportunity to kind of collaborate with other key fashion brands to kind of help both of you?

Yeah, that's something that we're going to continue to explore and prioritize. Very happy with the Citizens of Humanity CoLab. It also highlights the opportunity we have in Denham. So whether we do that in-house, although that's a long haul, or continue to do partnerships in Denham with citizens and look for other categories that perhaps ABG isn't licensing at this point. you know, we can bring to kind of round out our assortment. So that was another good win for Vince.

Great. And you opened up two new stores in new markets. I know it's very short. Could you give us a little bit of thought process on that and kind of what you'd be thinking about? I know that we pulled back on that a little bit this year just because of things going on this year. But given the results here, what

is the store opportunity kind of back on full swing for next year and going forward thank you yeah thanks i mean you know we're pleased with um uh the way the uh nashville and sacramento have been received within the community you know it's still early days um also we'll be monitoring what it does to our e-commerce business you know i think we have 60 stores now between the outlets and um and full price and i wouldn't expect that number to move much maybe a couple more, a couple less, depending on opportunities. We continue to be really pleased with our Marliobone store in London. So going to see if there's opportunities in other parts of Europe, both to do business where we can be profitable like at Marliobone and also provide some visibility for us in regions where we have a wholesale business and stores can just reinforce that. You know, we'll continue to monitor the direct-to-consumer opportunity led by e-commerce. But, you know, as I've always said, it's not an either-or with direct-to-consumer and our wholesale business. It's both. It's an and. And I think they just reinforce each other. And we saw that in Q3 and continue to see that in Q4.

Great. Congrats and good luck for the rest of the holiday season.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Michael Kapinski from Noble Capital Markets. Michael, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. And I'd like to offer my congratulations as well. Sales were obviously much better than what we were looking for. Were there any particular bottlenecks or limitations that could have delivered even better sales? And I'm thinking, you know, any inventory constraints for particular items, for instance?

I mean, you know, there's never a crystal ball, so you always, you know, there's certain things you wish you had a little bit more of, but I think overall we were in a good inventory position, you know, really working through the first half of the year disruption from tariffs as we discussed. So as I'm doing my store tours, I'm not getting too much pushback from the stores about where they need more inventory. I think Vince also Since I was here last, it's doing a much better job with our logistics and operations, refilling the stores on a timely basis. So I think we have a good handle on that. Again, not to harp on it, but I am so excited about it, this dropship opportunity, which allows us to take full advantage of Calaris' shoe inventory. I mean, that's a big deal because that's where we did have some holes in our inventory assortment. because it's a little bit more difficult with our third-party partners to properly procure ahead of time. So this opens up a really big opportunity for us going forward, as I've been saying. But overall, the inventories, I think, were in a good position and helped fuel the growth we saw.

Thank you for that. And how much of this strong revenue growth was driven by price versus product volume? I know that you touched on that in your comments, but I was wondering if you could just expand on that.

Yeah, well, I mean, we were really pleased that the units held steady and actually grew at the higher price point. So, you know, we had anticipated, given the price changes, that we would see a little bit of erosion in our unit velocity. No, so far we haven't seen that, you know, and the customer seems to be trading up with us. I don't know if that's because they're trading down from other luxury brands and as those prices skyrocket, but our core customer continues to see us as a value. And as I said in my comments, women's was where we had to take the largest price changes and the units held strong. So, you know, it was a a win-win, and that's continued into, you know, into the holiday. So, we'll continue to monitor that, continue to see if there's even a little bit more opportunity to push up price, you know, where we think the customer will react positively, but definitely a driver was the strength in the units.

And then, given that wholesale and direct to consumer look like the revenues were the revenue growth were pretty much similar, but I was wondering if there was any divergence between the two channels in terms of product sales and particularly as you go into the fourth quarter.

No, I mean we. You know E commerce, our E commerce was clearly the big winner and driver when you look across all the channels, but overall. saw strength at the register with our wholesale partners. We continue to work with Sachs Global to make sure that we're able to properly service their business while they go through their transformation. So that creates a little bit of noise. But overall, as we start December, the product's checking at the register everywhere.

My final question is, can you just talk a little bit about trends in freight costs? I know that I was just wondering if you'd negotiate annual contracts and if you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing there.

Yeah, certainly. So, yeah, we are seeing freight cost increases. That's also partially due to the fact that we are changing sources as well of where we're sourcing our products. It's really more the product of, depending on the shift in timing, we're airing more stuff or certain pieces are taking longer in terms of distance-wise to get here. So it's not so much of the actual inherent sort of freight contract and the pricing related to that. It really is more along the lines of the timing of when we want to bring in the product, which method we're using to bring in the product.

Roger Spreen, Gotcha. Okay, thank you. That's all I have.

Roger Spreen, No further questions at this time, but as a final reminder star followed by one. Roger Spreen, We have no further questions. So I'll hand it back to the management team for any closing comments.

Roger Spreen, Okay, well thank you all again for your participation today and We look forward to updating you on our year end results in the spring and happy holidays to all. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you very much for your attendance. You may now disconnect your lines.