Hugo Boss Ag S/Adr

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our third quarter 2023 Financial Results presentation. Hosting our conference call today is Yves Müller, CFO and COO of Hugo Boss. Before we get started, and just like in the past, allow me to remind you that all revenue-related growth rates will be discussed on a currency-adjusted basis, unless otherwise specified. I would also like to remind you that we kindly ask you to limit your questions during the Q&A session for a maximum of two.

So with this, let's get started, and over to you, Yves. Thank you, Christian, and also from my side, a warm welcome to all of you. Thanks for joining our conference call today, and thank you for your interest. As you have taken notice from our press release earlier this morning, at Hugo Boss, we look back on a successful third quarter marked by double-digit top and bottom line improvements. This performance is once again proof of our unwavering commitment to Claim 5 because one thing is certain. In an increasingly challenging market environment, sticking to our game plan of consistent strategy execution is and will remain absolutely crucial. I'm therefore all the more encouraged that in the third quarter, we have made further strong progress in all our five strategic claims. By focusing particularly on those areas of our business that have the biggest impact on today's consumers, we continued to successfully implement several brand, product, and omnichannel initiatives also in Q3. Most importantly, we further drove brand desirability following the launch of our two highly successful fall-winter campaigns, as well as spectacular fashion events. This enabled us to propel brand awareness and social engagement to new heights, something I will talk about in more detail in just a few minutes. Besides that, we also further strengthened the 24-7 lifestyle images of Boss and Hugo, while always putting strong emphasis on our superior price-value proposition. This also includes having launched several new license categories during the third quarter, including a joint luggage collection of Boss And last but certainly not least, we made strong strides in pushing ahead with our omnichannel approach to deliver best-in-class retail experience, both online and offline, and boost store productivity alike. In this context, we continued to drive forward with our comprehensive store optimization and modernization initiatives, which I will discuss in more detail later on. All this enabled our brands to once again claim their position in consumers' minds and further drive brand heat around the globe. In doing so, we continued to strongly outgrow our broader peer group, thus driving market share gains across key product categories. I'm particularly pleased that in Q3, our broad-based growth trajectory from previous quarters continued across both our brands, all regions, and all channels. We have thus added another strong quarter to the successful track record of our Claim 5 strategy execution. Overall, group sales increased by 15% currency adjusted, or 10% in reporting terms, mounting up to more than 1 billion euros and making the three-month period a record third quarter for Hugo Boss. Fueled by our robust top-line growth, EBIT increased 12% to 103 million euros, resulting in an EBIT margin of 10.0% up 20 basis points year over year. The strength of our two brands, Boss and Hugo, was once again the key factor behind our successful operational and financial performance in Q3. Both brands continued to build on the strong momentum of previous quarters, fueled by the launch of the latest fall-winter 2023 collections in August. The accompanying Boss campaign followed up on the powerful motto, Boss aren't born, they are made. The campaign showcases the personal stories of true bosses, such as Nomi Kempel, Gigi Hadid, Matteo Pierrettini, and for the first time, NFL superstar Pat Mahomes. More than ever, this campaign propelled brand awareness among Boss fans globally. At the same time, Hugo also strongly activated and engaged with its global community, as the brand's latest fall-winter campaign spotlights a number of music mavericks. While brand ambassador Bella Porch headlined as the face of the campaign, Hugo also celebrated the launch of a joint capsule collection in September, specifically targeting Gen Z consumers. Overall, we increased the number of social engagement by almost 10 times compared to the previous year period, underlining the sustainable success of our ongoing marketing activations. On top of this, our various fashion events further ignited brand heat for both our brands in the third quarter. Back in September, BOSS showcased its latest collection at a tech-inspired See Now, Buy Now event during Milan Fashion Week, featuring a high-profile, diverse all-star cast. Livestream on social media and in various Boss stores around the globe, our event achieved around 30 million views, thus tribbling the overall reach when compared to our Miami event in March. Thanks to all these exciting brand initiatives, Boss and Hugo continue to succeed in activating new and existing fans worldwide. In particular, on social media, our brands have clearly continued their strong dominance. first and foremost on Instagram and TikTok, and outperformed key competitors also in Q3. As a result, both brands recorded double-digit sales improvements in the third quarter. This development was driven by broad-based growth across all wearing occasions and key product categories, reflecting the improved perception of Boss and Hugo as true 24-7 lifestyle brands. Overall revenues were up 12% for both menswear and up 24% for Boss Women's Wear, and up 25% for Hugo, with the latter representing a quarter-on-quarter acceleration of four percentage points. With this, let's now move over to our channels, which all contributed to the strong growth in the third quarter. Starting with our digital business, which successfully continued its double-digit growth trajectory, posting revenues growth of 25%. This development is even more remarkable when considering ongoing double-digit improvements across all our digital touchpoints. In fact, this includes a significant 20% increase in revenue growth of our online flagship, sugarboss.com, driven by further enhancement in both traffic and conversion. With revenues projected to exceed the 700 million euro marks later this year, we are well on track towards our midterm ambition of driving digital sales to over 1 billion euros by 2025. And with a revenue share of approaching 20% of group sales, the strategic relevance of our digital business keeps growing towards our midterm ambition. We now switch gears to our brick-and-mortar wholesale business, which was up 21% in the third quarter. This development was driven by strong demand from partners around the globe, leading to double-digit growth across all regions. Importantly, and alongside a very robust order intake, this performance also reflects double-digit increases in our in-season replenishment business. All this reaffirms our optimism in the ongoing robust sellout data at our partner's point of sale, enabling us to sustain our trajectory of capturing market share at key department stores. This brings me to our brick-and-mortar retail business, where revenues expanded by 8% compared to the previous year. Growth in this channel was particularly pronounced in both the Americas and Asia Pacific, with double-digit increases each. At the same time, also EMEA recorded further revenue improvements in brick-and-mortar retail, and posted single-digit growth in the third quarter. Importantly, and despite a particularly strong comparison base year over year, our global brick-and-mortar retail business was still up a very strong 31% on a four-year stack basis, hence more or less at the same level seen in the prior quarter. This is all the more remarkable given the numerous store renovations took place during the course of Q3. Speaking of our store network, the vast majority of the overall revenue increase in own retail was once again related to store productivity improvements, whereas space expansion continued to have a minor impact only. Year over year, store productivity increased a strong 7% to a level of 12,400 euros per square meters, well above our mid-term store productivity target of at least 3% per annum. This development underscores our commitment to the ongoing optimization and modernization of our global store universe, including the rollout of our latest store concepts. On that, we continue to make considerable progress in converting our points of sale into true points of experience. Most notably, this includes our world's best-selling boss store in Dubai Mall, now showcasing the bold and vibrant branding refresh following its grand reopening at the end of September. In addition to Dubai, several other locations, including key boss stores in Amsterdam, Berlin, or Lisbon, to name a few, have been temporarily closed for several weeks and months. And while this also left its mark on our brick-and-mortar retail performance in Q3 to some extent, we consider the upgrade of our store network an important element of our omnichannel strategy to provide the best-in-class shopping experience for our customers. This brings me to our regions, all of which contributed with double-digit growth to our third quarter performance. Let's begin with the Americas, where we successfully continued our superior growth trajectory also in Q3. With revenue growth accelerating to 22% we once again recorded double-digit improvements across all of the region's markets. In this context, we are particularly pleased that our important US business gained further traction in Q3, posting remarkable growth of 20%. Most importantly, we continued to enjoy broad-based growth across all distribution channels, something that is all the more remarkable in the light of the general market trends. Meanwhile, our business in Canada grew 15%, and we also continued our exceptional growth trajectory in Latin America as reflected by revenue improvements of over 30%. All this, once again, demonstrates our many successes when it comes to leveraging business opportunities in the region and anchoring the 24-7 images of Boss and Hugo in the minds of the North and Latin American consumers. Moving over to EMEA, where we posted revenue growth of 12% year-over-year, thus further strengthening our growing market share across channels. Importantly, our robust momentum persisted throughout much of the third quarter with all of the regions, key markets, and all channels contributing to growth. As a result, Germany posted solid growth of 8% in Q3, while revenues in the UK and France were up 5% and 4% respectively. Now, with mounting macroeconomic uncertainties as well as an increasingly tough comparison base, allow me to remind you that our mid-term financial ambition for EMEA is looking for a sales cager in the mid to high single digits between 2022 and 2025. This in turn means that with currency adjusted growth of 12% in Q3 and 16% after the first nine months, at this stage we are running ahead our Acclaim 5 financial ambition with some further normalization factored in. To conclude on our geographies, let's take a quick look at Asia-Pacific, where sales expanded by 21% versus the prior year level. This development was driven by robust growth of 24% in Southeast Asia-Pacific, including yet another outstanding performance in Japan, as well as further recovery of our business in China. The letter saw sales up 17% year over year with strong support coming from both Hong Kong and Macau. On a two-year stack basis, revenue growth in China thus accelerated quarter to low double-digit growth in Q3. Overall, we are therefore satisfied with our most recent business performance in China, including robust trading during Golden Week. Equally important, we remain fully committed to exploiting our long-term growth opportunities in China as we continue to believe in the enormous potential of this important market. With this, let's now move over to the remaining P&L items. Starting with our gross margin, which totaled 60.7% in Q3, thus broadly on the prior year level. This development is mainly related to positive impact from lower freight cost levels, which largely compensated for negative channel mix as well as unfavorable currency effects. Speaking about our gross margin, let me point out that we continue to anticipate gross margin expansion in the final quarter of 2023. This development will be supported by the anticipated benefits from additional freight cost relief, declining product cost, and further support stemming from our latest pricing initiative. At the same time, we expect currency and channel mix effects to continue to weigh on our gross margin for the time being, while also the overall promotional environment may impact our gross margin to some extent in the short term. Consequently, for the full year 2023, we now expect our gross margin to remain broadly stable year over year, and thus at a level of just under 62%. Moving over to operating expenses, which decreased by 30 basis points to a level of 50.6% of group sales, mainly reflecting additional operating leverage generated in our brick-and-mortar retail business. The latter saw selling expenses in this important channel improving by a total of 60 basis points to 20.8% of group sales, supported by our various initiatives to further optimize and modernize our global store network. As a result, we were able to offset ongoing investments in marketing and digital, as well as higher fulfillment, variable rental, and payroll expenses following our robust top-line performance. Altogether, and as already mentioned, we recorded a double-digit increase in EBIT in the third quarter, up 12% to a level of 103 million euros. This translates into an EBIT margin expansion of 20 basis points to a level of 10.0%. To conclude on the bottom line, net income of the minorities also increased up 9% to 63 million euros, with the improvements in EBIT more than compensating for someone's higher interest expenses in the three-month period. Let's now turn to the balance sheet starting with inventories, which increased 32% currency adjusted. As in previous quarter, the majority of our inventory comprises core and fresh product for current and upcoming collection, with both playing an important role in supporting further top-line growth. This being said, and as outlined before, we have meanwhile implemented several measures to reduce overall inventory levels. And while we have seen an initial modest improvement with inventory to inventory levels as a percentage of group sales haven't reached their peak in the second quarter, we anticipate a more pronounced gradual normalization of inventory levels going forward. This progress fully aligns with our midterm ambition of bringing inventory down to a level of below 20% of group sales by 2025. This brings me to trade networking capital with a moving average of the last four quarters, increasing to 20% of group sales. This development is primarily driven by the higher inventory position and uptick in trade receivables, reflecting our strong performance in wholesale, as well as a 10% decrease in trade parables. The latter primarily reflects the lower order volume as part of our measures to reduce core merchandise inflow going forward. Looking ahead, also for the full year, we now project our trade and working capital ratio to come in at around 20%. And while this is somewhat above our mid-term target corridor, we are clearly sticking to our ambition of bringing our trade and working capital ratio down to a sustainable level of between 16% and 18% with strong improvements to be made starting in fiscal year 2024. Let's now shift focus to capital expenditure, which was up 64% on the prior year level, totaling 17 million euros in Q3. This development reflects the ongoing strong pickup in investments activity aimed at supporting the successful execution of ClaimFi also going forward. While focus areas continues to be centered around our global store network and our digital capabilities, we also ramped up our investments in logistics, fully in line with our strategic plan organized for growth. This also includes the strategic multi-year expansion of one of our logistic hubs near our headquarters in Metzingen, announced only last week, something that will become more visible in our CapEx from 2024 onwards, comprised total investments of more than 100 million euros by 2026. For the current fiscal year, however, we continue to forecast capital expenditures within the range of 250 to 300 million euros, translating to around six to seven percent of group sales. Last, but certainly not least, free cash flow amounted to minus 22 million euros in the third quarter, as our bottom line improvements were more than offset by the increase in trade networking capital, as well as higher CAPEX. This, ladies and gentlemen, concludes my remarks on our third quarter operational financial performance. Before opening the floor to your questions, let's take a closer look at our top and bottom line outlook for the current fiscal year. In light of our strong growth trajectory during the first nine months of the year and the sustained brand momentum of both Boss and Hugo during the third quarter, today we confirm our full year outlook for fiscal year 2023 which we have already increased twice this year. Above all, we will make 2023 another record year for Hugo Boss as we continue to expect group revenues to increase between 12 and 50% in reported terms ahead of our target CAGR of 11% by 2025. This means that we continue to anticipate revenues of 4.1 to 4.2 billion euros in fiscal year 2023, despite ongoing Forex headwinds with all parts of oil business set to contribute strongly. In light of the anticipated top line improvements, we also continue to forecast EBIT to increase within the range of 20 and 25% to a level of between 400 and 420 million euros in 2023. In this context, we remain confident of being able to offset ongoing investments into our business by further efficiency gains, in particular when it comes to our brick and mortar retail business. We thus continue to expect our EBIT margin to improve to a level of close to 10% this year. And while we are looking forward to the important final quarter with confidence, let me also emphasize that at Hugo Boss, we remain vigilant as the overall market environment has become increasingly challenging with mounting macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties weighing on global consumer sentiment. Against this backdrop, we will continue to stay focused on what we can influence directly, what has made us strong in recent quarters, and what has enabled us to raise the bar for the medium-term outlook back in June, our Claim 5 growth strategy. The ongoing successful execution of Claim 5 will therefore continue to take center stage and remain our top priority, not just in the two final months of 2023, but also in 2024 and beyond. We will not rest, but keep pushing the pedal to the metal when it comes to further fueling momentum for Boss and Hugo, inspiring and captivating fans and consumers worldwide, and investing into our business for long-term success. Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching year-end with great strides and remain well on track to achieve our financial targets for 2023. In doing so, we will not only make 2023 another record year for Hugo Boss, but reach another important milestone along our multi-year growth journey to ultimately deliver on our 2025 financial ambition of 5 billion euros in sales and EBIT of at least 600 million euros, and thus an EBIT margin of at least 12%. At Hugo Boss, we are convinced that we have everything it takes to continue outgrowing our industry and thus capturing further market shares in the months and quarters to come. With our winning formula claim five and our two strong brands, Boss and Hugo, we will ensure that by 2025, Hugo Boss will not only be much bigger company, but also a company that is more resilient more sustainable, and importantly, more profitable than it is today. This, ladies and gentlemen, concludes my remarks for today. We are now happy to take your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on the touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by 2. Anyone with a question may press star and 1 at this time. Our first question comes from Suzy Tibaldi from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Congratulations for your results. Two questions. The first one, can you share some comments on the current trends that you're seeing on the market? Many retailers are pointing to some rebound in November, given that Q3 was a bit softer impacted by weather. So it would be helpful to hear from you what trends you're seeing. And also when we think about the various regions, the guidance up update that you provided at Q2 is now looking quite conservative in some markets, especially in the U.S. So any comments around this will be very helpful. And secondly, just to dig a bit more on the building blocks of your gross margin in Q3, Can you discuss if there was any impact from promotional activity in the quarter and also how we should think about this factor for Q4? I understand it's still pretty much unknown, but perhaps some sentiment indicators that you're seeing from your wholesale partners. Thank you.

Yes, good morning, Susie. Thank you very much for your questions. So I will be starting with the current trading. So what I can confirm and be happy about that regarding our retail brick and mortar business, we are trading on the same level, which we're pretty strong in Q3. We are trading on the same level. And regarding retail digital, we are performing even slightly ahead of Q3. So we are somehow happy how we started into Q4. Regarding gross margin, actually, there is nothing really to talk about Q3. I think it was, like we all know, Q3 is a quarter where you usually don't have a lot of promotional activities because it's not the sale month. It's not included in Q3. So promotional, the environmental environment, did not have any effect, actually, or only a minor effect on our gross margin and can be actually more or less neglected. So going into Q4, I think you are right. This is the big unknown, what might be happening in terms of promotion activity for Q4. And I think I made it transparent to you in my presentation. Q4 will be the quarter where we will be exceeding last year's because we see some tailwind coming from less freight costs lower product costs, and the pricing will help us. The big unknown is the promotion activity, and we will have to see this, and we can react in a very short manner, especially in these days of Singles Day or Break Friday. So this is the big unknown, but overall we expect our gross margin to expand in Q4. Thank you.

The next question comes from Jürgen Kolb from Kepler-Chevreux. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you very much. Two questions from me. First one, I was wondering if you could maybe give us a little bit more details on the order book specifically. I think I understand that you collected the order so far for H1. I was wondering if you could maybe provide us a little bit more indications, especially the split leisure formal wear, but also by regions, what do you what you've seen there, and also maybe with a slight comment on Hugo Blue, how that developed. And the second thing is on the stores that remained open during Q3. I was wondering if you could provide us with some KPIs, i.e., on customer traffic conversion, what you've seen there, if things have, you know, been flat or deteriorated or actually improved, just to better understand what the bricks and mortar retail performance was. Thank you very much.

Yes, good morning, Jürgen. Thank you very much for your questions. So regarding the order books, so first of all, for the remaining of the year, I think our order books are well packed for Q4. So this is one. If you look at Q1, we make only a kind of qualitative statement, but I can assure you that the order books have been pretty strong across the board. I mean, Asia is is more or less neglectable, but in Europe and in the Americas, we still have seen a very strong order book. And if it comes to Hugo Ballou, the first orders have been actually above our own expectations, so we are actually quite happy how the order books developed for the summer season. If we come to the retail performance, I think it's worth mentioning that we have now two price increases as well in our books. And those price increases are helping us in terms of the average ticket that we are selling. So if you take our full price stores, we are now sitting at 290 euros as an average receipt. I think that's a very strong number. And that has increased double digit in comparison to the last year. So this is the KPI that I really want to highlight. that the price increases are now visible in our books in terms of net sales of transaction. And if you compare traffic and conversion, it more or less levels out, but the price increases is driving, you know, this kind of increase.

Fantastic. Thanks very much. Best of luck for the last quarter.

Thank you very much, Juergen.

The next question comes from Anthony Chachovsky from BNP Bariba. Please go ahead.

Thank you. It's Anthony from BNP Paribas. I have two questions, please. So first on EMEA, so it's not slowing much, up 12%. Would it be possible to have more clarity on the brick and mortar retail performance in Europe? I mean, it was up 8% for the channel, and if you say that APAC and Americas were driving the The average we can assume low single-digit growth for EMEA in retail. So could you quantify what was the performance? I mean, if we exclude your Dubai store, that is a top-selling one, and that was closed during this quarter. And if you can give a split between locals and tourists in Europe. So that would be my first question. The second one would be for the Americas region accelerating. I mean, it's again very impressive. To continue fueling the brand heat, could you comment on both willingness or not to take in 2024 the Formula One brand name of the AlphaTauri team? I've read some articles speculating that you were interested. I guess it can help strongly the brand hit, especially in the U.S. Also, you recently signed Fernando Alonso as a brand ambassador. So if you have any comment on that front, it would be helpful. Thank you.

Bonjour, Anthony. Thank you very much for your questions. I will start with the second question around the Americas. So clearly, I think we are really gaining a lot of shares in the Americas market, especially in the U.S. I think this plus 20% shows you that we really have, especially in comparison to our competition, a very strong performance. I think three or four major factors. One is clearly we have now established the image of both brands, Boss and Hugo, being a 24-7 lifestyle brand. This is somehow underlined and underpinned by these campaigns that we are doing. You can imagine bosses are not born, bosses are made. This is a campaign that really resonates with the U.S. consumer. They love this. We have been invested a lot in the U.S. with our Miami fashion event, gaining especially younger consumers into our base. And just recently, if you look at our cast, if you look at, You know, the collaboration that we are doing with NFL, with Patrick Mahomes, even now NFL is coming the next weekend to Frankfurt. So NFL is a big topic for the younger audience. It's a top sport. And I think we are making big moves there, big moves in the American market, and this is really helping us. So the underlying trend of the increasing amount of customers in our customer base The ongoing performance is, in the Americas, very strong and will remain strong. And I can somehow confirm what Susie or Jung was asking, that the Americas look quite conservative for Q4. So the first question is related to EMEA. So overall, it was up plus 12%, as you know. If you were asking questions around retail and if you look up the numbers, you see that retail Europe was growing low single-digit. But if you exclude all the store renovations that we were doing, it was not only Dubai, it was also Lisbon, it was Stuttgart, Berlin, Milan. So a lot of stores that have been renovated. So it would be a kind of mid-single-digit, close to high single-digit number. This is one, and you have to consider as well the four-year stack. So the four-year stack was with 31%, I think, overall for the whole retail environment, a pretty strong number if you look at this.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Bahar Majari from RBC. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, Eve. Good morning, Christian. Thanks for taking my questions. I also have two, if I may. The first is on the store estate. And I wondered if you could give any more color on the uplift in performance you see or you've been seeing from the most recently refreshed stores or some of the ones that you've refreshed this year. And then secondly, on the wholesale side of things, I wondered if you could give a little bit more color on how much of the wholesale, the brick-and-mortar wholesale growth is coming from space now. I think we've talked to it being about 50% in the past. Is it more light-to-light driven now? Thank you.

So, Manjari, thank you very much for your question. So I will start with the second question regarding wholesale. So I would say if you... I think if you would take a rough cut, I would say it's 70%, 75% is like for like, and 25% is still growth-driven out of two factors because with some major accounts, we are still gaining more and more doors, especially in the U.S., so we are gaining more doors on that side. And on top of this we are expanding our franchise business as we have told you during our capital markets day So this is actually driving additional space and there's more to come on the wholesale side So this is one thing and the other thing is the first question was related to To the to the store. I mean it really depends store by store, but if you look at the halo store Dubai fashion Dubai Fashion Valley and the Dubai Mall we have really a spectacular double-digit growth. After the renovation, we have Leidsestraat in Amsterdam, which we have just reopened, so the numbers really look good. We really changed the POS into points of experience. This makes us very happy. As you can see, this overall underlying and the store productivity, that overall our store productivity was another plus 7% now, is clearly above our midterm guidance of 3% as a CAGR. And this is the all-in number. So you can see overall we have now, overall at the year end, we will have 40% of our store universe in the new store concept. So we keep on investing. We keep on changing these points of these POS into the new store concept, and this is really helping us.

Great. Thank you, and well done again on the results.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Andreas Rehmann from Odoo. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello. First one on the retail selling area again. So if I understand you, if you're saying roughly 5% of the selling area was closed in Q3, and given that Dubai and other stores are open again, then it may imply that we can assume that it is less than 5% in the fourth quarter. This would be the first question. And then the second one would be on growth and complexity. So sales growth was 15% in Q3. What was roughly the volume growth? And linked to that, how about complexity? Is the number of SKUs at present decreasing despite 15% sales growth? This will be the second question. Thanks.

Andreas, sorry, this is Christian speaking. Can you repeat the second question, please? Either the line was broken or we didn't hear you right. But maybe you can repeat the second question, please.

Yes, so I was saying that sales growth was 15% in Q3, and I was asking about the volume growth in Q3. And linked to the volume growth question, how about complexity? Is the number of SKUs at present decreasing?

So I can take this second question. uh if you if you look at our growth rates it was driven by volume as well so so as we were saying we are gaining market share you can this is definitely one of the major drivers of the growth and we achieved this actually by reducing the complexity of our business especially in boss menswear which is which is the biggest part of our business and issues accessories so this is all well as planned we keep the complexity under control and we want to reduce the complexity and especially with boss menswear although we introduced the boss camel if you take it as combined those four brand lines we are now at the number that is under the under prior years complexity so we are really making a big progress and there is more to come on the complexity side

And I have the honor to take your first question, Andreas. And just by way of clarification, I guess, Yves did not make a comment on how much of our store network was closed during the course of the third quarter. But the point was, when it comes to Europe, I mean, we have definitely seen a number of high-profile stores being under renovation and being temporarily closed. as you called out Dubai, Milan, Lisbon, Berlin, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, just to name a few. And I think Yves' point was that the reported brick-and-mortar retail growth for EMEA was plus two in the quarter, but adjusted for that, for these store renovations, we would probably be some of the mid single digits. Yeah. So there was probably a couple of percentage points impact from these renovations, um, which should, um, be less of a little bit less, uh, I guess, uh, during the fourth quarter, because many of these high profile stores have meanwhile been reopened first and foremost, uh, Dubai mall. And as you've said, this is one of our biggest doors globally for both.

Okay. Thanks for this clarification. Yep.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Thomas Chauvet from Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning. My first question on your sales productivity, it's increased by over 10% in the nine months to €12,500. So you're very close to your 2025 target of €13,000. That would imply only 2-3% gain per annum from here. Is there not room, if you think, to do a lot better than this implied productivity gain in your retail business? Secondly, on inventories, so they're up 30% at the end of September, more or less. You mentioned a high share of core merchandise again, but also potentially greater promotion in the fourth quarter. So would you expect to do a sort of one-off, you know, clearance of your seasonal inventory in the coming weeks, something particularly in Europe, given the recent weakness? And just to clarify, the numbers reconcile the plus 12 for EMEA with, you know, France, UK, single-digit, Germany, plus states. So could you tell us what the kind of Middle East, India, Africa represents as a percentage of EMEA sales? And I guess that was probably up 50%. So I was curious to know if this is organic. Is this part of your expansion into franchise stores? that you talked about at the capital markets there in the summer. Thanks.

Yes. Thank you very much. So I will try to answer your three questions. So first of all, talking about the sales productivities, I can confirm that they rather look conservative from your perspective. and uh and it's i think it's good so it's wise so we don't know what's happening macroeconomic wise for the next year we are now sitting at 12 400 euros and and we we still try to focus on improving our store productivity because this is really driving the leverage of our business and we keep on doing so so this means optimizing our retail network will be one of our uh clear priorities, modernizing our store concept. We know that once we model the stores, the consumers are happy, the financial performance looks great. So we keep on doing this and drive with this, actually, the store productivity. Actually, by the way, especially, you know, those Halo stores, so these top stores, they generate a productivity which is well beyond the 20,000 euro mark. So it's really, we are really happy how they are performing. Your second question was related to inventories, and I can say that there will be no one-offs in Q4. So as we always said, the aging structure looks great. We keep on reducing the inflow, as we have said, to get the weekly coverages down. So there will be no one-offs in Q4. And the last question was related to the EMEA growth of 12%. You can say that those big markets like Germany, UK, and France, they make a little bit less than 50% of EMEA, but we have seen tremendously good growth in those areas where there are a lot of tourists, especially in Eberia, in Turkey. Middle East have been strong, and we have been growing our franchise business in Eastern Europe as well. You have seen a strong performance in these areas.

Thank you. Middle East, India, Africa, how much would it represent of total Europe? In percentage terms, is it 15%, 20% already? Thank you.

The next question comes from Rogerio Fujimori from Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Oh, hello, Yves and Christian. My first question is about CAMO, and my second question is about pricing. So could you talk a little bit about both CAMO? in China and Korea, and how the camel performance relative to black in Europe and America is given the, how do you see the performance given the softening market demand for aspirational luxury? And then on pricing, could you just confirm the level of pricing that we should model for spring-summer 24? And I imagine the autumn-winter 23 was mid-single-digit. Could you just confirm that? Thank you.

Rogerio, again, this is Christian speaking. Can you repeat the first question, please? The line was definitely broken this time.

Oh, sorry. It's about Boss Camel. Could you comment about the traction of Camel in the affordable luxury segment in Asia, specifically China, and how Camel performance compares to black in Europe and America? Thank you.

So, good morning, Rogerio. Regarding Boss Camel, so what I can say is clearly that Boss Camel is the brand line, of course, the fastest growing brand line that we are having. Boss Camel is great to elevate overall the Boss brand, which we intend to do. So already today in the Asian markets, it's between 20 to 25 after, you know, one and a half years or 50 months since we have introduced Boss Camel, it's 20 to 25. of the business and it's really growing into the right direction. The price value proposition is great and we keep on growing and this is clearly one of our focus points for the next quarters to grow the business. And regarding pricing, you're right. We did, at the end, we did two price increases. One was for winter 2020 or two. and another mid-single now for fall. So we have a combined rate, which is like low double digits. This is where we are standing. I think, and this is why I always highlight this, we have really one of the best price-value propositions because, as you might know, all the competitors were taking the prices up much further than we did. Now they are discounting their products. I think we did it in a very smart way, and that's how we can keep our gross margin developed, our gross margin in the fourth quarter. So this means if you talk about the summer 24, we have now, we are, like I said, during the call, we are low double-digit price increases that are now in the base.

Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Michael Kuhn from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Also two from my side. Firstly, on cash flow and inventory reduction. Looking at the aspired reduction and the implied earnings guidance for the fourth quarter, do you still see a chance to end the year with a neutral or slightly positive free cash flow? That would be the first one. And the second one would be on OPEX and specifically on admin costs. Those were north of 100 million euros over the past three quarters until Q2. Now we saw a drop in the third quarter. I'm wondering what caused that drop and what we should assume here in terms of the run rate going forward or in terms of overall OPEX growth. Thank you.

So good morning, Michael. Thank you very much for your two questions. So regarding cash flow, I can clearly confirm that we will end with positive cash flow at year-end. This is what we intend to do because we will get our inventory levels at year-end further down. And, of course, the retail business is huge in the fourth quarter. This will drive cash flow as well. So we are very much convinced that we can get to positive cash flows, free cash flows. Regarding OPEX, there are always, you know, some timing difference regarding OPEX. You should assume in your models usually, you know, the inflation rate that we have seen in OPEX, so this time it was a little bit lower. There are some timing effects here. There are nothing to worry about in your model. I would see a kind of mid-single-digit rate going forward.

Thank you. The next question comes from Terry Costa from SG. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Yvan, Christian. Two questions for me, actually rebounding on comments you've made. First, you've said that the big unknown in Q4 would be promotionality. I was wondering, how do you assess promotionality today? I mean, are we starting from a point where you think it's high, where you think it's low, or average process history in order to sort of measure the potential risk? And the second question would be how to reconcile the retail app 8% and the average ticket in the double digits. So what gives? Is it the double digits for full price store and the non-full price is diminishing as a proportion of sales? Or is it the store closures that you mentioned earlier, the negative space effect? Or is there an issue on volume? I mean, how do we reconcile the two numbers, please?

So the numbers is I was talking about the freestanding stores. So you have to look at the shop and shops and the outlet business as well. So there are different businesses. So having said this, you cannot compare these kind of numbers. And regarding promotional activity, what I can say around, you know, Q3, I would view them as I said during the call. Q3 is usually a month where you don't have extensive promotional activity. I would view this rather average, but we know that there are a lot of inventories with a lot of sitting with a lot of competitors, so this is the big unknown for Q4, and still we haven't started into the discount season yet, so it's not visible yet.

Okay, thank you.

The last question comes from Martin Benrada from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Morning, guys. Thanks very much for the questions. I've just got two, if that's all right. The first one is just on marketing and I guess your expectations into 2024. Is it right you'll manage your spend as a percentage of sales to be relatively consistent with what we saw in 2023 to date? around that 7% to 8% range. And the second one's just on the digital business. You know, you guys are seeing some pretty robust growth here while some of your peers are, you know, normalizing. I'm interested if there's anything you can attribute this to, if there's any change in strategy for your digital business. Thank you.

Yeah, so regarding marketing spending for the year 2023, We are sitting just below 8%. This has been pretty consistent so far, and we are really enjoying this great brand momentum. So we keep on pushing the pedal to the metal when it comes to marketing spendings. And regarding 2024, I'm sorry, Ben, we will have our guidance for 2024 in March. So let's talk about marketing spendings then. Regarding the digital business, I think it's a clear outperformance, so the performance has been very strong over the last quarters. I would like to remind you that in the last years, we were always a little bit lagging in terms of digital capabilities. This was one of the reasons why we introduced this one big claim lead in digital, where we really invested into the digital campus. So you can really see in terms of much more functionalities, much more personalized. We're having an app in Europe with a tremendously high success of downloads. So we are constantly improving our digital business and gaining market shares there. And we are now trying to surpass the competition that actually was these investments. We talk about a lot of these digital investments, and they are now paying off, and they translate into growth at the end, especially what we're very happy about of our HugoBoss.com, which was growing at 20% in Q3 and keeps on growing, actually, in Q4. Great.

Thanks.

Great. Well, thank you, Yves. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for dialing in. That completes today's conference call. If you have any further questions, as always, please do not hesitate to contact the Investor Relations team anytime. Thank you very much for your participation, and we look forward to seeing many of you on the road in November.

Thanks and goodbye. Bye.

In order to really ensure that inflation is back to target, you know, I think we think you do need to see some more labor market loosening.

We still have more and more evidence pointing in the direction of the labor market softening. I think there is still some underlying strength in the labor market. The jobs market now is coming into question in terms of how resilient it really is. The employment rate will move up. And as you know, I've mentioned before, I think we'll probably have a hard-ish landing.

This is Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene, Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz.

Let's get you to the weekend. It is Payrolls Friday, live from New York City this morning. Good morning, good morning. For our audience worldwide, this is Bloomberg Surveillance on TV and radio. Alongside Tom Keene and Lisa Bravitz, I'm Jonathan Farrow. Your equity market just about positive on the S&P 500. TK, your number, the estimate in our survey this morning, 183.

And a photo right into claims from yesterday, a double barrel, them and the answers. Claims came out. It was a yawn. It was a snooze fest. Do we get a snooze fest today or either way? Do we get some form of major market response? It's been interesting to see how markets have locked down since, say, 6 p.m.

yesterday. It's the first chapter of a three part acting. We've got CPI next week and then Lisa is on to the Federal Reserve.

Yeah. And how are they going to interpret this given the fact that they really haven't pushed back before the quiet period as much as some people thought that they might to the easing financial conditions. Just to give you a sense of how much financial conditions have eased spreads the extra yield and high yield bonds is now the lowest going back to 2021. We are talking about a massive retracement. of some of the risk on kinds of fields, which raises this question, okay, have we eased too much given the fact that we still have a robust labor market?

Do you want the pushback this morning? It comes from Marko Kalanovic over at J.P. Morgan. Here it is. Here's the quote, Tom. The risk reward in equities and other risk assets is worse than in cash or bonds. He calls it a catch-22 situation. We would need to first see some market declines in volatility during 2024, Tom, before easing of monetary conditions and a more sustainable rally.

It's a class note. He leads it with a single sentence of 2023. He thought it would be slow. It wasn't. He was wrong, period. So he readjusts. He recalibrates like everybody else. And the bet here is for a more subdued market.

What did Bramow say? We got the grow before we got the slow.

I think Steve Winning said that. Hold on a second.

There is this sort of question where people are betting on a slow and then grow. So can you bet on the growing before the slowing? And this is a real question because can you expect some sort of rebound in growth if we haven't even seen the downturn that's necessary to get there?

Thank you so much for clarifying that.

You're welcome.

Here are the scores this morning. Please, give us a map. We look a little something like this on the S&P. Futures just about positive by 0.05%. Three days without gains on the S&P. And then we bounced, and we bounced hard, led by big tech. In the bond market, yields a little bit higher by three basis points. On a 10-year bramo, 417.97.

There is only one event today. It is the 8.30 a.m. nonfarm payrolls report for the month of November. I'm watching the unemployment rate because even if you get a good payrolls number, do we see an ongoing tick upward in the unemployment rate? The expectation is for it to stay at 3.9%. If we get to 4%, even if it's a good number, does that change the conversation just a little bit about the nature of who's getting hired and who's not staying in the labor market? Today, we get reaction from the report from Jeffrey Rosenberg of BlackRock in the 8.30 half hour. And then in the 9 a.m. hour, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Mohamed El-Erian and Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su will be joining Jonathan Farrow. At 10 a.m., University of Michigan Sentiment Survey. I am really excited for this one because this gives you a sense. No, this actually is important this time. Yeah, yeah. No, no, it actually is.

I'm agreeing with you.

Okay, so the five to ten year inflation expectations ticked up in the last survey to the highest levels going back more than a decade. Do we see that continue or do we see that come back down? The expectation over the next five to ten years of 3.2%, which went up even as gasoline prices went down.

How can we look at five to ten years? That would be my arch question. I mean, who's making that guess?

You get me to ask that question every month, Tom. It's a beautiful thing.

I know they ask it, but I don't know what the value is because I really don't know, like... Where am I going to be in one year?

You put a lot of weight on it and then all of a sudden did not put a lot of weight on it. Kind of turned his back on all of that. Steve Whiting's with us, chief investment strategist, chief economist at Citi Global. Good morning, Steve. Good morning. Before we get into the big outlook for 2024, let's talk about 8.30 a.m. this morning. What are you looking for?

Well, look, I think that the forecasts for 180,000, you know, are unbiased. This is not the seasonal extreme of the year. We're still in a seasonal upswing in hiring in the month, but not as extreme as the month of October. I mean, the big picture on this is this year, employment gains 239,000, a little more than half of last year's gains. And you know what's coming? The coming year, it's going to be slower still. And that's going to matter for the Fed. It's going to be in a different situation for other parts of the economy, where we've had this very large rebound in labor-intensive services hiring for a couple of years now. And it's given us this period of monetary tightening deep, deep into a period when a lot of industries have adjusted, but labor markets have been strong. It's going to be an interesting story when that reverses in the coming year.

Do you agree with Bank of America's Michael Hartnett that essentially he has a fancier way of saying this, but bad news is now bad news, and that essentially if you get a rally in treasuries, that's going to be negative for risk assets?

Bad news for whom? For what? I don't really believe this. I think that productivity growth is rebounding. Again, it may have gotten exaggerated in the third quarter. The labor market has been strong. Inflation is measured. Inflation is going to come down. The Federal Reserve is going to swerve to try to protect the expansion that we have. And that's going to be good for financial markets.

I think, well, first of all, bad news is bad news is defined this morning as Juan Soto going to the New York Yankees. That is bad news is bad news for Red Sox.

That's bad news for the Red Sox.

That's bad news. Just like the way the Tots lost yesterday to West Ham. Just to be clear on that. Which is bad news. Unbelievable. You are the single best I know at folding profits into our economics. And the key thing here, and Lisa's wonderful observation of growing slow, is can we get both? Can we get a slowing economy and yet corporations will adjust to a lower nominal GDP and they're still going to grow profits?

So if we take a look at this year, for the most part, it hasn't been a great year for profits. Through mid-year, EPS were down 6%. The majority of industries had a decline in profits. This is why the S&P Equal Weight Index is up 6% and the headline's up 19%. you know, for market cap. This is the reason why most stocks are not doing well, right? Now, this is not a collapse. This is not a depressed period where you can have a V-shaped recovery from it. But profitability, I think, is going to be coming back. Manufacturing across the world has contracted for a year. Trade has fallen as much as 9% across the world. It's really quite coincident with what's going on with profits. We've had this pre-recession in industry, except for employment.

I like that phrase.

Well, the employment side, again, has been held up by this rebound in services. Everything's been out of sync since the pandemic. And everyone just focuses in on that. But that's the piece that I think slows going forward.

We just put up a nonfarm payroll survey, your middle tendency here in the parlor game. Give us the SPX parlor game. Fold your economics into... And I don't mean what David Bailyn says or Citigroup, just your basic idea that if corporations grow, can we have a more optimistic job?

Yes, I think we'll have a new record high in U.S. corporate profits by early 2025. It won't be quite as good as the consensus estimates, but those are known to be biased upwards. I think we're going to beat estimates for the next couple of quarters quite handily. While rates are coming down, employment is slowing and the Fed is swerving.

So you're whispering in Jane Frazier's ear, 6,000 on SPS?

Well, you know, someday. But that one's pretty far. Someday, there's the answer.

Is there a home bias to this call on stocks?

Well, I think, you know, we, for the last three, four months, you know, have been focused more in on U.S. performers. Small and mid cap growth stocks that are under levered have strong EPS growth and trading at 15 times earnings. You know, why were they all left behind? Last year's Magnificent Seven had EPS declines. Now they had very, very big gains. And if you take a look at that reversal, I think we're going to get other pieces of the U.S. market to rebound. And then I think we could broaden out to the world later on in late 24 into 25.

The banks are part of that story.

Well, it's very interesting. I mean, they're trading at 45-year relative lows in terms of performance. They could bounce back, and yet this is not really about long-term growth. We see a lot of areas of very interesting long-term growth that I think would be sustained for a longer period of recovery than a bounce back.

So I've been looking right now at credit pretty intensively because it's been moving along with equities and then some. I misstated earlier, high yield bond spreads are the lowest going back more than a year, April 2022.

Outperformed those small caps.

Outperformed the small caps, outperformed a lot of aspects of the equity market. People talking about a golden era for credit of all sorts. Is that fading now?

Well, look, I'm not sure that the rate environment really, you know, should be discounted here entirely and should look only at spreads. If you take a look at private credit yields, you know, 12 percent, you know, companies that are not part of the bond market paying 15 percent, you know, that are money good, you know, so yield levels, borrowing costs across the economy are up a lot.

But just really this, how we can have companies that grew up with paying 4% or 5% for their debt suddenly having to pay 15% and that that doesn't somehow diminish their credit worthiness in a material way. How have we gotten to this space where suddenly they can manage payments that five years ago people said was an impossibility?

Well, you know, zero was we never really got to the point of embedding zero forever, I think, in some valuations. And I think that the forthcoming maturity wall is pretty empty for 2024 for both high yield and high grade. And you look further out, it starts to become an issue. But I think we overshot a little bit on rates. Now, again, these are more normal yields than 2020, but we're not going to 1980 either.

I'll be criticized for this, but I'm going to go there. 2023 has been one big value trap. Everybody said, I got to go to value. And as a general statement, it hasn't worked out. What are the signals where all of a sudden value is not a value trap, where it has value?

You know, 2022 was the period where defensive value performed really well. You know, large cap pharma. Now you have some interesting stories to talk about a narrow market of, you know, GOP drugs and