Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Lululemon Athletica Inc. First Quarter 2020 Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Howard Tubin, Vice President, Investor Relations for Lululemon Athletica. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Welcome to Lululemon's First quarter Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today to talk about our results are Calvin McDonald, CEO; Sun Choe, Chief Product Officer; Meghan Frank, SVP, Financial Planning and Analysis; and Alex Grieve, VP and Controller. Before we get started, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements reflecting management's current forecast of certain aspects of Lululemon's future. These statements are based on current information, which we have assessed, but which by its nature, is dynamic and subject to rapid and even abrupt changes. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business, including those we have disclosed in our most recent filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any of these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q and in today's earnings press release. The press release and accompanying quarterly report on Form 10-Q are available under the Investors section of our website at www.lululemon.com. Before we begin the call, I'd like to remind our investors to visit our investor site where you'll find a summary of our key financial and operating statistics for the quarter. Today's call is scheduled for 1 hour. [Operator Instructions] And now I would like to turn the call over to Calvin.

Thank you, Howard. It's good to speak with all of you again to provide an update on our first quarter, how we are adapting to and navigating the unique challenges presented by COVID-19 and the trends we're currently seeing in the business. I'm pleased to be joined today by Sun Choe, our Chief Product Officer, who will share some product highlights. You'll also hear from Meghan Frank, our SVP of Financial Planning and Analysis. Meghan is one of our seasoned veterans within the finance organization, who has stepped into an expanded leadership role while our CFO search is underway. I'm excited to be working closely with Meghan and appreciate the support she's providing to the organization. Also joining us for the Q&A portion of the call is Alex Grieve, our VP and Controller. Given recent events, I'd like to begin by sharing some thoughts on the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many others and the global outrage over long-standing issues of racial injustice and systemic discrimination. Black lives matter. Lululemon unequivocally denounces the unacceptable racial violence and oppression that directly impacts the black community. We are listening and learning and taking action. As a company, we are committed to increasing our investment in education, behavior change and diverse representation within our organization, and calling on our global community to drive positive change into the future. I look forward to sharing more details and our progress on these commitments going forward. Let me turn now to our overall business performance in quarter 1. Total revenue decreased 17%. Due to the significant number of stores closed during the quarter, we are not reporting same-store sales. Our e-commerce business was particularly strong in quarter 1, accelerating as the quarter proceeded. E-commerce comps increased 70%, which is…

Thanks, Calvin. First, I'd like to voice my support of Calvin's opening comments on the global movement to eradicate racial injustice and discrimination. I am a person of color and an immigrant, who through hard work and lucky breaks, have been able to overcome racial barriers that tragically still exist today. I am proud to be part of lululemon and to be part of the team committed to driving meaningful and enduring change. Thank you. And with that, I'm happy to be here to share our product results. We continue to leverage our Science of Feel product platform to solve guests' unmet needs and fuel our future growth. We brought new innovation to our assortment in Q1, and I'm excited with what we have untapped for the coming months and quarters. Despite COVID-related store closures, we saw strong demand across key areas of the business driven by the following: One, continued innovation with new launches in the train category; two, the new normal of working and sweating from home; and three, our ongoing ability to leverage our core franchises. Let me share a few highlights on each. From an innovation standpoint, early in Q1, we relaunched our proprietary Everlux fabric in 2 new styles, Wunder Train and Invigorate. These styles are designed for train and our guest response was strong to both. In fact, we saw virtually no cannibalization within our key pants styles, and our women's pants business was one of our best-performing categories in the quarter. Midway through the quarter, as our guests began adjusting to working and sweating from home, we saw a significant increase in demand for our Yoga products, including our Align bottoms, Yoga mats and blocks. We are also seeing our guests gravitate to our train products. In women's, we saw strong demand for…

Thanks, Sun. I'll start by providing details on our Q1 performance. And although we are not providing specific guidance, I will offer some color on our outlook for Q2 and the remainder of the year. I will also discuss specifics on our balance sheet, including our cash position, liquidity and inventories. For Q1, total net revenue decreased 17% to $652 million as our business was impacted by the spread of COVID-19 and related store closures. In our digital channel, we posted a 70% constant dollar comp increase on top of a 35% increase last year. Our store comp definition removed stores that were closed for greater than 30 days. Given the significant number of temporary store closures in Q1, we do not feel store comp is a meaningful metric to evaluate performance. Therefore, we are not reporting total comps or store comps. As we evaluate our top line performance, we are focused on total revenue, our digital business trends and open store recovery trends, which I will offer some additional color on as we move into our outlook. Square footage increased 15% versus last year, driven by the addition of 34 net new stores since Q1 of 2019. During the quarter, we opened 4 new stores: 2 in Mainland China, 1 in South Korea and 1 in Hong Kong, and we are pleased with initial performance. Excluding the temporary closures related to COVID-19, we closed 6 stores in the quarter. These were predominantly the ivivva-branded store closures, which we had planned. None of our permanent store closures were related to COVID-19. We also completed 3 planned optimizations. In terms of our digital channel, e-comm contributed approximately $352 million of top line or 54% of total revenue. Our constant dollar e-comm comps were consistent with our Q4 trend through the end…

Thanks for the update, Meghan. I'd like to close by letting you know that we remain fully committed to our Power of Three growth plan, which we laid out for you last year. COVID-19 is impacting our performance in 2020 but we remain focused on our 3 key growth pillars and our goals to double men's, double digital and quadruple international by year-end 2023. Within our quarter 1 results, we have much to celebrate, including seeing retail-only guests beginning to transact with us online and transition towards becoming an even more loyal omni-guest. The overall strength and acceleration of our e-commerce business globally with breakout results in Europe and Australia, strong performance from our core franchises, new innovations and the strength of our product pipeline, and the early recovery we are seeing in reopened stores with ongoing strength in our e-commerce business. Finally, I'd like to thank our teams around the globe for their resilience, agility and passion during this period. The enthusiasm for our guests and our community, shared by everyone across lululemon, demonstrates the enduring strength of our brand. Operator, we can now open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Matt McClintock of Raymond James.

Yes, everyone, and may I say congrats, good job to the entire lululemon organization. Calvin, and probably Sun, too, I wanted to start with consumer behavior changes because prior to COVID, there seemed to be a shift towards comfort within the apparel industry, and it seemed to be something that was in your wheelhouse. And now that COVID happened, it seems like this shift towards product that feels good, et cetera, has accelerated. And I want to know, is that a onetime acceleration? Or is that something that you think the trend will actually now remain at heightened levels of growth? And then when you brought up market share today, I was wondering if you could talk about, are your market share gains, the function of that, maybe you're just more trend-aligned with this? Or is that maybe because some of your competitors have wholesale businesses that rely on more challenged distribution points? That's my first question.

Great. Thanks, Matt. And I'll start off, and I'll tackle the 2 parts of the question, starting with the last part, which is around market share. And the market share that we look at is the athletic apparel categories within -- I quoted a North American U.S. number. And it definitely is a category that has performed better than other apparel categories over the last number of quarters for a variety of reasons. I think it is comfort. I think it is lifestyle. I think it is a shift to less formal wear. And we've always performed well and beaten the growth in that category. In particular, for this quarter, our performance, I think, does show a shift -- a greater shift to the guest to both our brand as well as to the category, as you mentioned, which I think serves well as we look forward to where our opportunities continue to be. Heading into this, there is less behavior and want. And certain things won't change as a result of COVID-19 and definitely some things will change. And I think the things that won't change play to our strength, and that's living an active, healthy lifestyle. And the things that will change equally play to our strength, and that is more work-from-home, looking for comfort, the role that digital and omni play in that behavior and wants that the guest has. So the shift is, in my opinion, very positive for our brand and the role that we play in it. It has been something we've been building and innovating towards. It's what's driven the success of our products through the work that Sun and the team has done. Sun mentioned On The Move for women's, which is something we've been working on and we'll be launching in quarter 2, which we're very excited about. Again, I think, timely, but something that has been worked on for quite some time to deliver a very unique, exciting product. So I'm excited about the shifts that are happening and how it plays within our category and our role within that. And what we experienced in quarter 1 and will, quite honestly, for a little bit through 2020, are some short-term operational challenges. But the demand for the brand and the demand for the category, I feel, has only strengthened through this. And those short-term operational challenges will mitigate. They will go away. And I feel very good about the long-term position and our strategy and focus on the power of 3 behind that.

And then my follow-up is just you said that you can react to multiple demand scenarios in the back half of this year. And this is an industry where manufacturing can often be a barrier to entry, a constraint. And I was just wondering if you can maybe comment a little bit on how you treated your manufacturers and your ability to maybe get that capacity at a time where, if possible, there could be a lot of -- I don't know of the out of stocks, but a lot of people were trying to run and trying to case at the same time.

No, for sure. And I'll take it from just a very high-level strategic position. And it really is interesting when I reflect and look back on the quarter, the different moves that we shifted to where early on with COVID 19, when it was predominantly in China and we were closing our stores, we were very much focused on ensuring our raw material sourcing was well-secured, working with many of our partners on building out sort of quantity of raw materials, so we could get to production of finished goods. And then as it continued to expand, we started to shift and close stores. It started to shift to demand and total quantity that we would need, making decisions in the short term to support our vendor partners, as I mentioned, equally looking forward to quarter 3, quarter 4 and what our current buys were and how we wanted to make adjustments to those. And where we stand coming out of quarter 1 is, obviously, a higher inventory number than some of our peers, but that's because we haven't actioned through markdowns. We haven't actioned by pushing back and not honoring commitments we made. And we have a large portion of our inventory that's not seasonal, that is core, that are colors that sell year-long, and there's a high demand for that product. And as stores open up, that demand will only increase. And as we look forward to the end of the year, we plan to manage, through having more inventory now into managing into more of a traditional inventory level while able to work with our vendor base on pivoting and reacting quicker on styles and/or colors if we deem necessary. So there is a lot of flexibility built in. And I think the commitments we've made and where we stand right now allows us to play in a very effective way heading into the back half of this year.

I really appreciate it. I wish you all the best of luck.

Thanks, Matt.

Our next question comes from Matthew Boss of JPMorgan.

Great. Calvin, maybe can you speak to the interplay that you're seeing today between e-commerce up over 100% and brick-and-mortar productivity as stores reopen in North America? Maybe specifically, what kind of store comps are you seeing today in North America? And are you seeing e-commerce moderate in any regions where stores have reopened so far?

Thanks, Matthew. I think it's too early to really assess where we're going to sort of find the new norm and mix. What we are seeing -- and I would put this into context with our own team. We have one of the most productive retail models in the industry. Smaller stores, highly productive per square foot, which means we are moving through a lot of volume in small space. And the reality is, as we open up these stores, there are operational constraints through social distancing that we are honoring and respecting and supporting to protect our teams that are going to restrict us hitting those levels as quickly as we might like or, quite frankly, as quickly as the demand of our guest is as a result. I think that we're going to see our store productivity improve as we move through the year. It is currently in and around 75. Some stores are at 100%. It really does balance between market and time in. Stores are doing a wonderful job in how to service the guests and address the needs outside of the store, so we can get those that would have shopped inside the store. But that's how I'm viewing the store productivity number. Heading into quarter 2 with e-commerce, we mentioned growth coming out of April of 125%. We've seen that accelerate coming into May and June. I think throughout the quarter, we're going to probably see that settle back in and around the 125% range. But as of right now, we have about 50% of our fleet in North America open. We're happy with the productivity numbers. We know it's going to be a little bit longer for us to hit our industry-leading numbers. But e-comm has currently accelerated, and we'll see where that mix is back. But I think both are just an indication of a strong demand for the product, short-term operational challenges that we're working through, but very positive in terms of the demand for the product and what we're seeing from the guest.

That's great to hear. And then just a follow-up on gross margin. What's the best way to think about mix versus markdowns as we think about product margins, maybe in the second quarter or back half of the year relative to the 180 basis points of expansion that you saw in the first quarter?

Yes. Thanks, Matt. It's Meghan. We're not going to provide specific guidance on product margin as we move throughout the year, but what we are providing is that we expect gross margin pressure to be slightly more in Q2 versus what we saw in Q1. And then we also expect gross margin performance in the second half of the year to be better than the first half as sales recover. I'd also note that we are expecting $40 million in overhead cost savings within our margin bucket, similar to the buckets we called out in the $130 million in SG&A savings we expect for the full year.

Our next question comes from Lorraine Hutchinson of Bank of America.

I wanted to follow-up on the inventory number. Can you talk to what proportion of that inventory is core? And then also, how much of your buys have you committed to for the back half at this point?

Lorraine, thanks, it's Meghan. Yes. So in terms of the inventory proportion that is core, it's 40 -- approximately 40% of our assortment. We have, at this point, committed to our second half purchases through winter. We do have some flexibility within that as a large part of our assortment is core in that 40%.

Our next question comes from Paul Trussell of Deutsche Bank.

And first, let me just say that your comments and statements on Black Lives Matters is noticed and appreciated. So thank you for that. In terms of the P&L, just as we think about the channel mix, with such strong and robust online growth, could you just remind us of how we should think about the profitability and margins in that channel and how they may differ, if at all, from your sales. I mean, your store sales.

Thanks, Paul. So our e-comm channel is more profitable than our store channel. However, we do look at the business as an omnichannel business. Over the longer term, as the situation normalizes, we expect to remain committed to our long-term growth strategy of sales in the mid-teens, modest gross margin expansion, modest SG&A leverage and EPS growth in excess of sales.

Our next question comes from John Kernan of Cowen.

Congrats on all the momentum. Could you just dive in a little bit more in terms of the in-store trends you're seeing currently? I think you said you have about 50% of the fleet in North America open. Just given the digital guidance you're giving us, I'm curious in terms of how you want us to frame our models for the in-store sales and what you're seeing versus what you're seeing right now?

Great. Thanks, John. It's Meghan. We have approximately 60% of our stores open at this point globally. 100% in Australia and New Zealand, 95% in Asia, 60% in Europe and 50% in North America. We do expect that we'll open almost 100% of our stores by the end of June. If we think about the productivity we're seeing within those stores, as Calvin mentioned, in the initial weeks, we've seen some variability. It's still very early, but we're seeing that in the range of 75% to over 100% of last year's productivity. And at the same time, we've seen our e-commerce business accelerate in early weeks of the quarter. As I shared, we expect total revenue to improve in Q2 to a high single-digit decline. And we expect e-comm for the quarter to grow at approximately 125%. So moderating throughout the quarter as stores ramp and reopen.

Helpful. I guess my follow-up is I think Celeste was on the call a couple of quarters ago talking about the larger experiential stores that you wanted to invest in, and I think would become 10% of the overall store base at some point. Calvin, are you still committed to that? Have you seen anything in terms of consumer behavior that would make you want to back away from that commitment?

Thanks, John. Listen, it's hard. My first response would be no. I think this is very difficult times to evaluate our -- the value of our retail fleet and to make any dramatic shifts and changes from a strategy that, 8 weeks ago, was relevant. Guests were shopping, and plus 20% was our combined comp, and our stores across our very flexible fleet were performing incredibly well. There's no doubt coming out that our online business, I believe, will find a new norm that's higher than where we began. That we definitely know we're going to have more omni-guests, which is incredibly exciting, because an omni-guest shops more often and spends more with us and is more loyal to the brand. But they're still an omni-guest, meaning they shop both physical and our online business. And I think it's too early to determine if there's going to be any dramatic shifts. We have very powerful stores. They are core to our connection with the community and how we build the brand and the loyalty. Recruiting guests, it's our #1 vehicle, still to recruit guests. And we were already shifting to a very flexible scenario of smaller seasonal into the experiential stores. So we will come out. We will continue to manage and see guest behavior. My anticipation is that those larger stores, the experiential and what they're delivering in the community and the role that they were going to play, were always designed through an omni-lens, and these are just going to be stronger, more powerful locations for us. And we were never looking at this as being the dominant number of stores in our fleet. We're being very selective. And I think there's, in fact, a lot of exciting opportunities of the role they can play within the omni-lens being rooted in the community and how guests are interacting with us, both online, virtually, as well as in stores. So nothing and shouldn't anticipate a significant shift. We'll learn, but still very committed to the growth in our store fleet, because we know we have a -- relative to others, a moderate number of stores and still opportunity to grow in markets.

Our next question comes from Erinn Murphy of Piper Sandler.

Great. I guess my first question is just on China. I think you said that brick-and-mortar comps were up 20% for those -- the doors have been opened. Can you just break down what you've seen in terms of traffic versus ticket? And then how has digital been performing in China?

Yes. No, absolutely. And I'll walk through sort of coming in and the progression through sort of the 3 phases I laid out into -- in Q2, because I do think it's -- we use it as an interesting and helpful benchmark of how stores will build. And saying that, the rest of the markets, as they come on, are accelerating this growth curve to getting back to sort of a productivity level quicker than what we saw our stores in China. But heading into the -- coming out of quarter 4, and obviously, we were impacted much quicker in Q1 in China, the e-commerce business did accelerate relative to the incoming trend. We don't share specific numbers, but it was a meaningful acceleration as we close stores. When stores reopened, what we saw was it took a number of weeks to get back into a positive comp in March. The total business was positive, but that was driven through a very successful e-commerce growth as a mix where our store comp growth was still negative. And then into April, we saw single-digit growth as stores got closer to sort of breaking -- or positive comp to no longer declining, and our e-commerce business continued to be strong. Most of that in-stores was driven by conversion and ordering. We have seen a slower return to traffic numbers. But as stores got to growth, and as we've mentioned, they've been in the last few weeks, getting now into that 20-plus percent comp growth number, and we've been holding very strong e-commerce growth. So our China business has really returned to where it was pre-COVID-19 in that marketplace. It's driven on conversion in that highly engaged guests. Traffic is improving, but is definitely probably in retail the trailing metric in that sales equation.

Super helpful from a progression perspective. And then I guess my second question is just on your loyalty program. I recognize it's only in a handful of stores or state or city, if I should say. But have you noticed anything meaningfully different on the digital trends from those cities or those metro areas versus the rest of North America? And then how has COVID-19 shaped how you're thinking about rolling out your loyalty program or your membership program further?

No, great question. We've -- in particular, we launched a number of digital sweat offerings to our guests. It was one of those areas where I'm so proud of the way the team jumped on the opportunity to innovate. And we really tested and learned and accelerated a lot of initiatives forward so that we could really be present and offer what they were looking for. And that's across Instagram, our YouTube channel, Facebook. It's leveraging our ambassador community to really provide those. We launched a move event on Strava, which the results are significant in terms of the number of miles ran or bike or other activity and the number of guests that participated. So really energized about the engagement that guests are having with our brand with digital sweat. And also, one of the things that I think is very exciting is it validated what we know, which is the power of this brand and the relationship with our guests and the ability to be in conversation with them and have them interact with us outside of just purely transactional needs. We are in daily conversations with a number of our guests. They were interacting with our brand day-to-day, week-to-week. So when it came time to buy, when it came time to think about the category, just reinforces the role that our brand plays in their lives and the role that we can play in their sweat. So excited about what we're seeing with digital. As it relates to membership, the program today is a balance between physical sweat as a driver product. And we always had planned on providing digital solutions as well as a part of the membership package. We have pushed out a broader city launch to early '21 at this point in time as a result of, quite honestly, it's more about the uncertainty than it is about guest engagement and demand for this membership program. In the cities, we've had Austin, Denver, Chicago and Edmonton, incredible engagement. They've continued to be engaged in the program even during this. They've engaged in our online activities. We have some unique offerings planned for them. We are going to repeat in those cities this fall. We're going to add one new city to the program so we can continue to learn. But we pushed off the broader launch that we had planned for to early '21, more because of the uncertainty than really demand. Demand remains very strong. We're excited about it. We're going to be able to add to the guest mix on that. Some more to come. But there will be, in those cities plus one more this year, is the current plan.

Great. Super helpful. All the best.

Operator, we'll take one more question.

Certainly. Our final question comes from Alex Walvis of Goldman Sachs.

My question is on the demographic of new guests that are joining you online. Are you seeing a material different demographic that's new to the lululemon brand during this period of disruption? And then maybe a second question on the stores that have opened. Is there any discrepancy by geography or store type or anything else you care to call out on which stores are performing better out of the gates versus those that are a little slower to ramp?

Thanks, Alex. I'll take the first part of the question and let Meghan talk to the store performance and if there's any differences across the markets. In terms of the guest perspective, we had a wonderful balance across a lot of demographics in new guest acquisition prior, and I would say they haven't really fundamentally changed. If there was one that's noteworthy, our stores and stores, in general, remain a significant acquirer of new guests for a retail business. And we have definitely seen online pick up a portion of that as a result of stores not being open. But our stores, in particular, equally were a significant acquirer of men new guests. And I would just indicate that if there's been any shift in the last few weeks, we've seen an acceleration of more women new guests. As a result, the ratio of men new guests has dipped below our trend. I believe it is only short term. It is a reflection of being online and our physical stores being closed. And the overall health number of new guests across both gender and other profiles, youth and others, is still very, very encouraging and very strong. So I'm trying to share anything that would be a bit of a nuance and difference. But the overall numbers and metrics across all are still very healthy and encouraging as we think about that as a growth channel for us continuing moving forward. And Meghan, did you want to comment on stores?

Yes. Great. Thanks, Alex. So in terms of differences in what we're seeing in trends, we're not seeing significant differences either by format or location. I would share we're seeing modestly better performance in non-mall locations, and we are benefited by approximately 2/3 of our store locations being outside of malls.

That's all the time we have for questions today. Thank you for joining the call, and have a nice day.