Lew Frankfort
Analyst · Barclays Capital
Thanks, Andrea, and welcome, everyone. As noted in our release this morning, we were very pleased with our holiday results, including strong sales and earnings growth and exceptional comparable store sales in our North American Retail businesses. Our performance clearly demonstrates the brands of vibrancy across channels and geographies and bodes well for future growth. Beyond the top line, we were also very pleased with our high levels of profitability and substantial cash generation. In addition, we made continued progress against our global business initiatives, including international expansion, Men's, and digital media. We experienced strong response to our new collections, and our pricing and assortment strategy continued to resonate with consumers worldwide. We're well situated to build upon our leadership position and continue to gain market share. Further, the announcement today of the authorization of a new buyback program reflects our financial strength and our confidence in Coach's future. While I will get into more detail about the outlook for the category and our business shortly, I did want to take the time to review our quarter first. Some key highlights of our second fiscal quarter were: First, earnings per share rose 33% to $1 compared with $0.75 in the prior year; second, quarterly net sales totaled $1.26 billion versus $1.1 billion a year ago, an increase of 19%; third, Direct-to-Consumer sales rose 17% to $1.1 billion from $934 million in the prior year on a comparable basis; fourth, North American same-store sales for the quarter accelerated, writing 12.6% from prior year, while total North American Direct-to-Consumer sales rose 17%; and fifth, sales in Japan were even to prior year in constant currency and rose 8% in dollars; and finally, we continue to generate very strong sales growth and significant double digit comps in China. During the quarter, we opened two North American retail stores both in Canada, as well as one factory store. Thus, at the end of the period, there were 347 Full Price and 129 factory stores in operation in North America. Moving to Japan, one Coach shop-in-shop was opened in addition to a travel retail location. At quarter end, they were 171 total locations in Japan with 20 Full Price stores, including eight flagships, 117 shop-in-shops, 27 factory stores and seven distributor-operated travel retail locations. And in China, we added three new locations all in the mainland. At the end of the quarter, they were 52 Coach locations in China, including 10 in Hong Kong, two in Macau and 40 locations on the mainland in 16 cities. As we've discussed previously, we are building a multichannel distribution model in China, including flagships, retail stores, shop-in-shops and factory stores. Indirect sales increased 28% to $168 million from $131 million in the same period last year. This gain reflected significant growth in shipments into international wholesale and U.S. department stores given positive POS sales trends notably in the international business. Specifically, sales for the quarter at retail and international wholesale locations were very strong driven by double-digit gains in same-store sales and new distribution, while sales at POS and U.S. department stores rose 3% for the quarter. We estimate that the addressable U.S. Handbag and Accessory category rose at a 5% to 10% rate in the holiday quarter, similar to the increase it experienced in the preceding nine months of the calendar year. At the same time, Coach's bag and accessory sales rose about 14% across all channels in North America during the most recent quarter. In our Direct businesses in North America, Handbag and Accessory sales rose 18%. Importantly, it now appears that the category will increase to $9 billion in FY '11, surpassing its previous peak achieved three years ago. Separately, it's worth noting that we've seen continued modest improvement in our customer's outlook for the economy with over a third of those surveyed now believing that the U.S. economy is improving, the best reading in over three years. Her intention to purchase Coach over the next year is significantly higher than where it was a year ago, with over 2/3 of consumers surveyed noting they probably or definitely would purchase a Coach product in the next 12 months. Our total revenues in North America rose 17% with our directly operated businesses up similarly, driven by 12.6% in same-store sales increases and new distribution. Fueling these overall strong comp results were significant gains in conversion from prior year and modest traffic growth, partially offset by a slight decline in average transaction size. We were particularly pleased with the improvement at conversion since it's a driver that we have the most control over through product and service. Mike Tucci will discuss our performance in more detail in just a moment. In Full Price stores, conversion was the primary contributor to our comp growth, while average transaction size was also modestly higher compared to prior year. Traffic trends was slightly lower year-over-year. In factory, where our business remained remarkably strong, we saw increases in traffic and conversion, while transaction size declined modestly. Our factory store growth continued to be driven by increased spending of factory channel, loyal Coach shoppers and by new consumers entering the franchise. As noted, in Japan, we posted an 8% increase in dollars on a flat performance in constant currency. Our market share further expanded against continued contraction in the category. Our growth in share reflects the relevance of our accessible luxury positioning with the Japanese consumer who is becoming more value-oriented. Once again, I want to call out China, our fastest-growing business. During the quarter, our sales continued to rise sharply from prior year fueled by distribution growth and significant double-digit comps. Clearly, the Coach proposition is resonating with this consumer who is participating in this category and increasing numbers. While Mike Devine will get into more detail on our financials and I will discuss our outlook in some detail, I wanted to give you this recap. Now I will turn it over to Mike Tucci to discuss our North American Retail businesses. Mike?