Earnings Labs

Urban Outfitters, Inc. (URBN)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 9, 2015

$69.89

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Transcript

Executives

Management

Oona McCullough - Director-Investor Relations Francis J. Conforti - Chief Financial Officer Tedford G. Marlow - Chief Executive Officer - Urban Outfitters Group Trish Donnelly - President-North America Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer Margaret A. Hayne - President, Free People & Chief Creative Officer, URBN David W. McCreight - Chief Executive Officer, Anthropologie Group

Analysts

Management

Lindsay Drucker Mann - Goldman Sachs & Co. Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC Adrienne Yih-Tennant - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC Neely J. N. Tamminga - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker) Paul L. Lejuez - Wells Fargo Securities LLC Dana L. Telsey - Telsey Advisory Group LLC Janet J. Kloppenburg - JJK Research Simeon A. Siegel - Nomura Securities International, Inc. Marni Shapiro - The Retail Tracker LLC Betty Chen - Mizuho Securities USA, Inc. Courtney Willson - Cowen & Co. LLC Ike B. Boruchow - Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc. Matthew J. McClintock - Barclays Capital, Inc. Christian Roland Buss - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Richard E. Jaffe - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Urban Outfitters fourth quarter fiscal 2015 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce Oona McCullough, Director of Investor Relations. Ms. McCullough, you may begin.

Oona McCullough - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Good afternoon and welcome to the URBN fourth quarter fiscal 2015 conference call. Earlier this afternoon the company issued a press release outlining the financial and operating results for the three and 12-month periods ending January 31, 2015. The following discussions may include forward-looking statements. Please note that actual results may differ materially from those statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results is contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We will begin today's call with Frank Conforti, our Chief Financial Officer, who will provide financial highlights for the quarter; Ted Marlow, CEO, Urban Outfitters Group; and Trish Donnelly, President, Urban Outfitters, North America, will provide a brief update on the Urban Outfitters brand; Richard Hayne, our Chief Executive Officer, will then comment on our broader strategic initiatives. Following that, we will be pleased to address your questions. As usual, the text of today's conference call along with detailed management commentary will be posted to our corporate website at www.urbanoutfittersinc.com. I'll now turn the call over to Frank.

Francis J. Conforti - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you, Oona, and good afternoon, everyone. I will begin my prepared commentary discussing our fiscal year 2015 fourth quarter sales and net income results versus the prior comparable quarter. Then, I will conclude my prepared commentary by sharing our thoughts concerning our plans for fiscal year 2016. Total company sales for the quarter increased by 12% to a fourth quarter record of $1 billion. This was our first ever $1 billion quarter, a nice milestone to hit with all of our brands delivering positive Retail segment comp sales. The total sales increase was driven by a 6% Retail segment comp, a $46 million increase in non-comparable sales, including the opening of seven net new stores and a 21% jump in Wholesale sales. The 6% increase in Retail segment comp sales was driven by strong direct-to-consumer growth, which more than offset a narrowly negative sales comp at the stores. Direct-to-consumer growth resulted from increases in sessions, orders, average order value and conversion. Negative store sales comp resulted from a reduction in transactions and units per transaction, which were partially offset by an increase in average unit selling price. By brand, our Retail segment comp rates increased by 18% at Free People, 6% at Anthropologie Group, and 4% at Urban Outfitters. Free People Wholesale continued to deliver yet another quarter as sales rose 21% to $58 million. These results came from double-digit sales growth at specialty stores and department stores. Now, turning back to total company performance, URBN gross profit for the quarter increased by 5% to $350 million, while gross profit rate declined by 207 basis points to 34.6%. The deleverage in gross profit rate occurred primarily due to lower initial merchandise markups followed by higher markdowns, which were primarily driven by the underperformance at the Urban Outfitters brand. Overinvested…

Tedford G. Marlow - Chief Executive Officer - Urban Outfitters Group

Management

Thank you, Frank, and good afternoon to all that are joining us on this afternoon's call. I will begin the overview of the Urban Outfitters brand with a high-level view of the brand performance in fourth quarter. Trish Donnelly, the President of Urban Outfitters North America, will then provide her comments on some of the positive signals which we are currently seeing in the North American business. Twelve months ago on this call, we spoke about our plans to rejuvenate the Urban Outfitters brand through exciting product, an expanded lifestyle offering, compelling imagery, inspiring content, overall a richer brand experience for our 20-something customer. In September at our Investor Day, we advised this was a work in progress from which we were seeing positive signs. As we have traveled through fiscal 2015, we have put new processes in place and reworked our organization structure with these objectives as our focus in the interest of returning the Urban Outfitters North American business to positive sales performance. In addition, through this work we have untapped a tremendous amount of creativity in our brand which is true to our heritage. Over this past year, our team has conceived and executed many exciting projects, some of those being: Space Ninety 8 in Williamsburg Brooklyn, which has a community minded emphasis with its own local marketplace; Herald Square in Manhattan, our largest store to date, offering additional services, including a hair salon and an eatery; Honolulu, our first store in Hawaii, a particularly fun opening for us as the social advocacy we developed helped us deliver the second largest opening day in our company's history as well as some of our most engaged social posts nationally; and finally, the launch of Without Walls, our own active lifestyle brand and a new business opportunity whose experiential…

Trish Donnelly - President-North America

Management

Thank you, Ted, and good afternoon to all on the call. It is my pleasure to speak with you today. As Ted pointed out, one of our biggest priorities was to re-establish positive sales momentum which we started to deliver on in Q4 posting our first positive Retail segment comp in several quarters. While it was not at the margin we know we are capable of, it was a step in the right direction. From a product category standpoint, our customer is reacting positively to the businesses we've intentionally distorted into in both the retail and direct channels. Specifically, we're seeing very positive reads in home, both in the electronics and the decorate categories, in intimates; in women's accessories and in beauty. The regular price activity we're seeing here is meaningful volume. Within these categories, we are pleased with our product execution, and we still see opportunity to further capitalize on what the customer is telling us she or he wants. Our largest category, women's apparel, was challenging from both a sales and margin standpoint throughout last year. As Ted pointed out, we started to see some momentum as we moved through Q4, and today, we are seeing that momentum continue in the women's apparel reg price top line. At this time versus last year, we have clearer reads on what is working and why; we have healthier sell throughs in many of our top styles in several categories; we are executing IMU improvement strategies which we believe will materialize in the back-half of the year; we are focused on 4-wall contribution by category and we are beginning distorting ideas, attributes and classifications where appropriate. By no means are we claiming that the business is fixed, and we know we still have a lot of work to do, but we…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from Lindsay Drucker Mann of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Lindsay Drucker Mann - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks. Good evening, everyone. I just wanted to ask on UO. As we think about the ultimate margin potential for the business as we continue to drive comp and reduce some of the markdown activity, should we think about the range of merchandise margins for UO as somehow structurally different than it was in the past maybe with the shift to direct-to-consumer? Or are there other factors or when UO realizes its full margin potential, is it the same as what we might have expected to see from it historically? And just to clarify, you said that AUR was up but markdowns were also up in the quarter. So help me understand how that math works. Thanks. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hi, Lindsay. This is Dick talking. Operating margins, we think that Urban has a meaningful opportunity to get back to its historic margins, but we don't believe that it will come probably anytime this year. It may indeed take two or even three years to achieve. And for those who think that there might be some structural change that would preclude us from doing this, I would direct your callers' memory to the Anthropologie brand two, three years ago, when people were saying that Anthropologie would not have a chance to get back to historic margins, and they've recorded record margins in the last few years. So I think it is possible. I think it's going to be a slow and steady progress, but we are pretty confident that we can get there. The question on AUR, since we're limiting it to one per caller, I'll direct to offline.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Kimberly Greenberger of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Kimberly Conroy Greenberger - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great, thank you so much. Dick or Ted, my question is on pricing. And the overall apparel market, particularly the younger segment, call it the teens and 20-something segment, seems to be experiencing some price deflation. And obviously not Urban Outfitters, but some of the others in the space are it seems like in a race to the bottom on price. You obviously have a strategy to extract yourself from that dynamic and delivered, I think, Dick, you said double-digit increase in average unit retail price in the quarter, and so it seems like you're at least initially having some success with that. I'm wondering if you can just help us with the way that you think about any of the deflationary forces in the market, and how do you counter downward pricing pressure in the apparel sector generally with what's the sort of secret sauce that Urban is applying in order to try to prevent the downward pressure from affecting that division? Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Kimberly, this is Dick again, and then I'll ask Ted to say a few words about it as well. As far as pricing is concerned, we don't believe that that you have to raise to the bottom as you put it in pricing and decrease our prices. We think that when prices product around what the brand value proposition is and that value proposition is created by a number of things including those we said on the call, some of the direct-to-consumer marketing, the store experience, our association in the music world, and a number of other things that creates the value proposition. I'd direct your attention to, you can go into a Forever 21 and they have some stripe tops in there right aisle for under $11, and you could then go someplace else in the mall and find Michael Kors that has the similar top for $50, but they cost probably relatively the same to make, of course, probably a little bit more, but still it's relatively the same. But, the Kors can get the $50, because of the value proposition. So our job as merchants is to create that emotional link with the customer and get the value proposition up and that will support a full price. Ted, do you have something to add to that?

Tedford G. Marlow - Chief Executive Officer - Urban Outfitters Group

Management

Sure. Kimberly, the only thing I would offer in addition to Dick's point of view there would really have to be – would really have to do with self-inflicted deflation. And we're quite intent on not outpacing our sales rhythm and appropriately inventorying the business so that we can do a better job of maintaining AUR based upon our inventory management. In regard to the creative voice of the brand and the product offer that we choose to bring to market, we have every confidence that we can deliver a product and an experience that will allow us to sell product that enables us to attain the margins that we've previously attained.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Adrienne Yih of Janney Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Adrienne Yih-Tennant - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst

Good afternoon. Congratulations on the improvement at UO, Ted, Trish...

Tedford G. Marlow - Chief Executive Officer - Urban Outfitters Group

Management

Thanks, Adrienne.

Adrienne Yih-Tennant - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst

They really do look clean additive to current trend, so I just wanted to make that point. Dick, you mentioned total positive comp for U.S. for the past three months; this is for Urban Outfitters. Is it fair to say that DTC reg price obviously is still positive, but is it fair to say that the reg price at stores is also positive comping? And, in the past, when you've looked at the time it takes to see that recovery in stores, what's been the lag time between DTC recovery and stores? Thank you. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, Adrienne. I think that would be a fair assumption. Our regular price comp is up very slightly. I don't think it's anywhere near what – or I know it's not anywhere near what the direct-to-consumer regular price is and we wouldn't expect it to be. There is still a shift, and we talked about this shift. I think for the better part of five years or six years, there is a shift going on from the stores in to direct-to-consumer. And so we would expect the comp increases to be exaggerated in direct-to-consumer and less pronounced in the stores. And just to clarify for everyone on the call, we are paying close attention to the regular price sales. We would love nothing more than having the promotional sales decrease, even if that meant a lesser comp. And so, yes, we're focused on regular price and they're up.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from Neely Tamminga of Piper Jaffray. Your line is open. Neely J. N. Tamminga - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Great. Good afternoon. Congratulations first of all to UO team and certainly execution the other divisions isn't boring, either. So, hey, question here on that following up a little bit on Adrienne's question, are we going to see then maybe – is it really that you guys are inventory constrained at this point, you haven't just been in-sourced for the weekend, I mean was just like one bralette on the wall at UO, right. I mean, is that what this mapping of inventory receiving is all about? Has there been more product in the right categories that's selling well? Is that what you're constrained at this point? Thank you. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Adrienne, I hope you picked that one bralette off. Yeah, so I think that there's a lot of opportunity for us to improve what we do at the Urban brands in allocation and planning and in the buy itself. And I think that in the bralette area, you've touched on one of the areas is doing quite well and it doesn't surprise me that we are a little low in stock. So there is a lot of opportunity and we're working on that diligently and expect improvements this year.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Paul Lejuez of Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Paul L. Lejuez - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey. Thanks, guys. Just wondering if you think positive store comps are achievable this year. How do you feel by brand about that potential? Thanks. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, Paul. I think that yes, positive store comps are achievable and that's certainly what we're working toward. The Free People brand obviously has the hardest comp to go against, because they've comped now three years, four years in a row. But, we still see the trend right now being positive. Anthropologie has absolute opportunity as does Urban to comp positive in the store. And I think that the good news is then when you add that to what we see is a very robust comp in the direct-to-consumer, our Retail sector comps, we hope, would be up nicely.

Paul L. Lejuez - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks, good luck.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from Dana Telsey from Telsey Advisory Group. Your line is open.

Dana L. Telsey - Telsey Advisory Group LLC

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone. As you think about some of the changes to the product extensions that you've brought in, whether it's Without Walls, movements in Free People, how much of these product extensions are leading the positive comps in either the Urban brand or Anthro or Free People? How do you see product extensions as being the driver of comp in this upcoming year? Thank you. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, Dana. I think that the product expansions are extremely important in producing the comps. You heard my commentary where the Wholesale division of Free People is accounted for over 40% of the additional sales and it is indeed driving and that includes the intimates group, the footwear group and as you mentioned hopefully later very late in the year or early next year a push into the movement, which will be the next product expansion in Free People. And at Anthropologie, we expect a very strong push from the home product and I will let both Meg and David talk about that. At Urban Outfitters, we see the beauty sector doing very, very well and while it isn't the largest business, it certainly is adding to the comp. Meg, do you want to add something about Free People? Margaret A. Hayne - President, Free People & Chief Creative Officer, URBN: Yes, at Free People, we protect the core business, which is what we grow our business on. So every year, we look at that business that we've driven and make sure that we're increasing the comp on that. And then in addition we look at the other extended categories to see how much they can increase. So we absolutely pay attention to the business that we've started with sportswear and make sure that we're comping that every year. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. David, do you want add something?

David W. McCreight - Chief Executive Officer, Anthropologie Group

Analyst

Similarly to Meg, we're focusing on our core categories to drive the vast majority of how we delight our customer. And as Dick mentioned, we began to test two categories towards the tail end of last year. We'll continue to the first half and then expect to see material contributions for one or two of those categories in the back-half of the year. So comp growth across core and the back-half being even more heavily influenced by the new category extensions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Janet Kloppenburg of JJK Research. Your line is open.

Janet J. Kloppenburg - JJK Research

Analyst

Hi, everybody. Congratulations on a nice quarter and on the progress. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Janet.

Janet J. Kloppenburg - JJK Research

Analyst

I think Trish and Ted might have talked about the top category. I was wondering if you could talk about that, whether or not you're seeing strength there on both the men's and women's side and if there's any pricing resistance in some of the basic categories? Thanks so much.

Trish Donnelly - President-North America

Management

Hi, Janet. It's Trish. Yes, we're seeing some really nice growth in those few categories in both men's and women's, pretty much across all price points. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Janet, I don't think that that it is the fastest growing, but it is nicely growing. And there are other categories in the women's apparel that are also growing and there's categories such as accessories and intimates that are growing very nicely as is the home area. So there is a lot of news going on in product out there.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Simeon Siegel of Nomura Securities. Your line's open.

Simeon A. Siegel - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Good afternoon and congrats on the results. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Simeon A. Siegel - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst

So it's small, Frank, but you did have your first quarter of leverage in over a year. Does the low double digit guidance include currency impacts or was that before accounting for any of the SG&A translation? And then I guess what just – what's the leverage point at this point? Thanks.

Francis J. Conforti - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Simeon. So the leverage point will depend on exactly where the penetration lands for the year with direct-to-consumer versus stores. So we don't give that out anymore as to where the leverage point is on the comp. With that being said, the low double digits – and its very low double digit SG&A growth rate plan for the year does include the effects of foreign currency translation as it were to stand today. The primary drivers of that growth are new store growth where we're looking for approximately 6% of square footage growth for the year. Web, mobile and omni initiatives around website optimization, check out, search, personalization and many mobile and mobile app enhancements. Also, we're looking to continue investing in marketing as we begin supporting the new category expansions in a bigger way. For example, Anthropologie home and Free People shoes, you may see elevated marking levels related to these categories, which will hopefully leverage going forward as sales momentum builds under the new categories. And last and certainly not least, we continue to look to invest from a creative standpoint. We're very focused on creating a more interactive, creative and unique web experience. We've always been proud of our experience in the retail group and the web can be – can't be treated any differently. We believe our ability to connect with our customer creating a shared interactive community is extremely important to continuing to build our brand with our customers.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from Marni Shapiro of The Retail Tracker. Your line is open.

Marni Shapiro - The Retail Tracker LLC

Analyst

Everybody, congratulations. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Marni.

Marni Shapiro - The Retail Tracker LLC

Analyst

Ted, my favorite new line is self-inflicted deflation. I'm stealing it. So could you talk a little bit about Urban Outfitters? You've talked a lot about the SKU assortment, culling the SKU assortment, cleaning up the assortments in the store. When I go online, I see very clear stories. And so should I start to see in-store more what I'm seeing online as far as execution as to stories and point of view? Is that what I'm looking for? Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good question, Marni.

Trish Donnelly - President-North America

Management

Thanks, Marni. That's exactly right. In looking at the store assortment, we felt the need to really start to tell a much clearer story, and we're able to do that online. So the distortion of really pulling back and looking at the over-assortment and pulling back on the redundancy, you should definitely start to see that in stores, and we're really excited to be working on that.

Tedford G. Marlow - Chief Executive Officer - Urban Outfitters Group

Management

And, Marni, I think that one of the things you'll start to see in the stores like you see on the web is products grouped by concept or category as opposed to just a mix of product that is more akin to what we used to do maybe 10 years ago.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Anna Andreeva of Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, next.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Betty Chen of Mizuho Securities. Your line is open. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Betty Chen - Mizuho Securities USA, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Congrats on a great quarter. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Betty.

Betty Chen - Mizuho Securities USA, Inc.

Analyst

I was wondering. Perhaps Frank can walk us through, when we think about the 100 bps of margin gain this year, certainly that accounts for improvement for the UO brand, especially in the back half. Is that also assuming that Anthropologie and Free People can maintain the kind of performance they had a year ago, or could we see that they might have additional margin opportunity, especially given the momentum and some of the product extensions? Thanks.

Francis J. Conforti - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Betty. Good afternoon. So yes, we are planning for 100 basis points of improvement. Obviously, this is retail and a lot can happen in the next 10 months, but that plan does plan for the Urban brand to continue to make progress, and it plans for Free People and Anthropologie to maintain their current strong performance. We believe this is achievable despite approximately 50 basis points of deleverage that we are planning to experience related to our East Coast fulfillment center relocation from South Carolina to Gap, Pennsylvania. As you said, you're correct. Much of this improvement is not planned to incur until the back half of the year. This is when we begin to see more meaningful improvement in the Urban brand IMU and we get past some of the fulfillment center deleverage.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Oliver Chen of Cowen & Company. Your line is open. Courtney Willson - Cowen & Co. LLC: Hi, this is Courtney in for Oliver today. Thanks for taking our question. Can you just talk about the promotion strategy at Anthropologie going forward and then also what trends you're most excited about from a fashion perspective at Urban Outfitters? Thank you.

David W. McCreight - Chief Executive Officer, Anthropologie Group

Analyst

Hi, Courtney. It's David speaking. As we mentioned earlier, I guess when we were talking about Q4, certainly it was a very promotional environment, but fortunately we were able to maintain near record operating margins in that environment. And we will where necessary and when we feel necessary develop some call to actions for our customer to engage, but all in all we continue to focus in, as Dick mentioned, on the best measure of brand strength, which is reg price comp growth, so no change in strategy.

Trish Donnelly - President-North America

Management

Courtney... Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We'll take your second question offline.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question is from Ike Boruchow of Sterne, Agee. Your line is open. Ike B. Boruchow - Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc.: Hi. Congrats and thanks for taking my question. At the UO concept, I guess, my question was, are you planning IMU pressure to subside in the back half of the year, or are you simply planning to offset that ongoing pressure with lower markdowns at UO? Thanks.

Francis J. Conforti - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Ike. This is Frank. So as it relates to the timing of our plans for Urban's IMU improvement, they're still going to face challenges in the first quarter. Those challenges won't be as significant as what the brand experienced in the back half of last year, but we'll still be challenged in Q1. As we start to come through Q2, we start to see some improvement, and then the real meaningful improvement really starts to hit in the third and the fourth quarters. So even though you're starting see markdown improvement based on our plans for the first quarter within the Urban brand as we have more product hitting and certainly inventory is in a better position, that markdown improvement could be offset by the IMU challenge for the first quarter as well as some of our transition expenses related to our fulfillment center. So second quarter start to show a little bit of improvement, but much more meaningful as we get into the third quarter and fourth quarter, as it relates to Urban IMU. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And, Ike, was your question what's driving the IMU? Okay, next.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Matt McClintock of Barclays. Your line is open.

Matthew J. McClintock - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Yes. Good afternoon and congrats on reaching $1 billion, Dick. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you very much.

Matthew J. McClintock - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

So my question is just on Without Walls. Not much said about that today; and in the categories that were called out at Urban Outfitters, I don't believe that was one of the categories called out. Just what are you seeing with that business as it's evolving? Our channel checks indicate the product looks great. Just the space dedicated to it in your stores just doesn't seem large enough relative to what looks like a sizable opportunity. Thanks.

Tedford G. Marlow - Chief Executive Officer - Urban Outfitters Group

Management

Surely, this is Ted. I'll take the Without question. The business did launch in March of last year, and it was certainly a year of learning as it pertains to doing our own product in a category that was for brand spanking new to us. So getting the inventory right in regard to not only the product offer, but the quantification of the product offer was much of what we put up with coming through last year. We've gotten very positive response to the concept, the lifestyle attributes of the concept and its appropriateness for our customer. And as we got into the back half of the year, we decided to take it to additional stores outside of the simply the shop-in-shop formats, and thus we put it in a smaller statement in a number of stores in fourth quarter. As we've gotten into this year feeling as well positive about the opportunity, we will be merchandising larger presentations as we go forward through the year within the men's area and within the women's area in that we find that that is how we get the best response to the product offer in the overall assortment within the stores. The direct side of the business has over-performed its expected penetrations from day one and it has performed very well on the Urban website.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Christian Buss of Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Christian Roland Buss - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yes. Could you provide some perspective on the supply chain initiatives that you have underway, and when you should start to see benefits from some of the speed improvement initiatives? Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. We have been working on the supply chain speed now for a couple of seasons, and our goal has always been to get it somewhere around 60% of the product delivered in about 20 weeks, 25% in 12 weeks and 15% in six weeks to eight weeks. And, that's where we're working toward, and we're getting actually very close to that. There is other things in the supply chain. And, one of the things to help us ramp-up our IMU this year will be to start to move some of our production out of Southeast China, where the labor market is becoming overheated and take it into other parts of China and to Vietnam. And we're also looking to make some initiatives using more boat freight rather than air freight. As you know, we've been primarily dependent on air freight and that certainly helped us during the port strike, but it's an inhibitor to margins and we want to try to switch some over to boat. So those are the kinds of things we're going to be working on this year and we hope to have a lot of success.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our final question comes from Richard Jaffe of Stifel. Your line is open. Richard E. Jaffe - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thanks very much, guys. Can you talk about Anthropologie, the cause of the negative traffic and the solution? Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Richard, let me turn that over to David.

David W. McCreight - Chief Executive Officer, Anthropologie Group

Analyst

Richard, I'm not – do you want to clarify the negative traffic comment? Richard E. Jaffe - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: And then what's the solution.

David W. McCreight - Chief Executive Officer, Anthropologie Group

Analyst

I think if you're talking about malls and traffic in general, there is a decrease in traffic in the stores in general of somewhere in probably mid single digits. And that's not unique to Anthropologie. Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban are all subject to those same walk-by-traffic phenomena, but I don't think it's impacting the Anthropologie anymore than any of the other brands, and I think that what we see is still a robust amount of traffic coming into the stores and certainly there's robust traffic on the web. Dave, do you want to give some clarification?

David W. McCreight - Chief Executive Officer, Anthropologie Group

Analyst

Sure. Richard, as we look at the traffic and as we measure it, we're relatively pleased with the amount of passerby that we're getting to come into the store and actually the conversion rates that's coming through the stores. We think we delivered a really industry-leading in-store experience in our space in terms of the imagination, the way the store is set visually, and we continue to be very pleased with what we're doing in the stores. As Dick eluded to in terms of the channel shift, we've seen a commensurate, if not overall a year-on-year strong growth in touch of the brand across many different devices and across all channels. So we think we're doing a wonderful job balancing the shift and it really focus less on driving traffic to a specific channel and more about making sure that we have a delightful and integrated and seamless experience across all of them. And our customers, and they are telling us we're doing a pretty good job there. Richard A. Hayne - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think it's fair to say that we are reasonably agnostic about where she shops with us. Our primary goal is to make sure she does shop with us and that we create that emotional link to the customer. So thank you all very much and that concludes our comments.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Have a wonderful day.