Earnings Labs

Victoria's Secret & Co. (VSCO)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Fri, Dec 5, 2025

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Transcript

Amanda

Management

Good morning. My name is Amanda, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Victoria's Secret & Co.'s Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. All parties will remain in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today's call. I would now like to turn the call over to Priya Trevetti, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Investor Relations and Treasury at Victoria's Secret & Co. Priya, you may begin.

Priya Trevetti

Management

Good morning, and welcome to Victoria's Secret & Co.'s Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. The period ended November 1, 2025. I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements we may make today are subject to our safe harbor statement found in our SEC filings and in our press releases. Joining me on the call today is Chief Executive Officer, Hillary Super, and Chief Financial and Operating Officer, Scott Sekella. We are available today for approximately thirty minutes to answer any questions. Certain results we discuss on the call today are adjusted results and exclude the impact of certain items described in our press releases in our SEC filings. Reconciliations of these and other non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in our press release, our SEC filings, and in the investor presentation posted on the Investors section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Hillary.

Hillary Super

Management

Thanks, Priya. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to share that we delivered standout third quarter results, with outperformance on the top and bottom lines that far exceeded the high end of our guidance. These outstanding results reflect what we can achieve as we advance our path to potential strategy, which is built around four pillars: supercharging our bra authority, recommitting to PINK, fueling growth in beauty, and evolving our brand projection and go-to-market strategy. This is the first quarter that our new leadership team has been fully on board, and their impact is clear. When the implementation of our strategy is aligned and working in concert, it creates a powerful multiplier effect, accelerating global growth, elevating the distinctiveness of our brands, and unlocking greater value across our ecosystem to drive sustained shareholder returns. A great example of this multiplier effect was the iconic Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Brand-right product, a major upper funnel moment, and digital and social amplification came together, propelling us into the cultural conversation, ultimately driving mindshare, customer share, and market share. This translated into tangible business impact, particularly in our Intimates business. In the quarter, our Intimates business returned to growth, up mid-single digits, resulting in us gaining over 1% share in the U.S. Intimates market. Additionally, a big unlock for the quarter was customer acquisition. Before I arrived, there was not enough focus here, and as a result, our active customer base was shrinking. We have made reversing that trend a priority. For the first time this year, our total customer file grew, and importantly, we saw growth coming from an increase in new customers. Now let's walk through third quarter results. We delivered net sales of $1.47 billion, an increase of 9% versus last year, with robust…

Scott Sekella

Management

Thanks, Hillary, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. Our third quarter results significantly exceeded expectations, building on the momentum from our strong first half of the year. This outperformance was broad-based and reflects continued progress on our path to potential strategy. We continue to focus on the fundamentals while prioritizing investments in product innovation, brand strength, and customer experience. These investments are positioning us for long-term differentiation and success. Now let's turn to our third quarter results in more detail. Net sales for the quarter were $1.472 billion, an increase of $125 million or 9% over last year, with comparable sales growth of 8%, exceeding the high end of our guidance. These strong results build on last year's third quarter growth of 7%. As Hillary highlighted, these results reflect growth across all businesses: Victoria's Secret, PINK, and Beauty. This momentum was supported by broad-based outperformance across channels and geographies, improved sales metrics, including higher comp traffic and average order value, and increased regular price selling. We saw solid growth leading into the fashion show and then an acceleration following the fashion show. In North America, the Victoria's Secret brand delivered a strong mid-single-digit increase in sales versus last year, while PINK achieved a low double-digit sales increase. Traffic continued to outperform the mall, driven by enhanced product offerings, our digital-first and socially centric marketing approach, and haloed by the fashion show later in the quarter. AURs in the quarter were up 3% compared to last year, and excluding panties, which is a low AUR category, AURs increased 6%. As Hillary highlighted, customers also responded to the frequent drumbeat of newness. In the quarter, we were extremely pleased with our performance in intimates in the Victoria's Secret brand, where we saw major trend improvements from the first and second…

Hillary Super

Management

We feel confident in our ability to execute

Scott Sekella

Management

but are being thoughtful about the consumer, particularly post-holiday. Despite the uncertain macro environment, our fundamentals remain strong and resilient. Our outperformance in the third quarter, along with our market share gains and momentum into the fourth quarter, give us confidence in delivering the raised outlook for 2025 and positioning us for long-term success. I would now like to open it up for questions. Operator?

Amanda

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 1 and record your name when prompted. To withdraw your question at any time, you may press star then 2. As a reminder, we ask that each participant limit themselves to one question and one follow-up to allow ample time to respond to each participant that may wish to participate in this portion of the call. For our first question, we will go to the line of Mauricio Serna with UBS. Your line is open.

Mauricio Serna

Analyst

Great. Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. First, could you elaborate a little bit more on how you are maintaining the momentum so far post the fashion show and just give a little more detail on initiatives that you're thinking as you look into the start of '26 just to maintain, like, you know, the momentum around the brand? And generally speaking, I guess, where do you see the market share opportunities in bras and beauty, particularly with the comment about pink intimate returning to the quilt? Thank you.

Hillary Super

Management

Hi, Mauricio. I'll take that one. Momentum post fashion show. We are still in the halo of the fashion show. We see it in our traffic, which has been very, very strong in both channels, particularly in stores. We're seeing it much stronger than the balance of the mall. And internationally, we're seeing just incredible momentum. That is led and grounded by bras and sexy and glamour. And so the messaging from the fashion show and the work that we've done really build a sharp brand point of view is paying off. The initiatives are the initiatives in the path to potential. You know, we continue to focus on those categories. We are incredibly pleased with the progress we've made in top and bottom line, in increased market share, and in the growth of our file, particularly from new and reactivated customers and customers that are coming in on higher AURs and are being compelled by brand and product and not necessarily by deal. So all of that feels really good and feels like things we can continue to play forward and double down on in the future. As we enter 2026, we have a full pipeline of innovation in the bra world in particular as well as in the beauty world. We are building on what we've learned from partnerships and collaborations in pink. Pink we did well, as we said, with Love Shack Fancy. Very, very pleased with that, and there are many things that we have in the future that we can apply those learnings to as well as in the fashion show was a big surprise for us. The partnership with TWICE and the virality of that moment and how it impacted our PINK business was new news for us, and we quickly played that forward and impacted the first quarter of next year. So lots to be excited about here. And with all cylinders firing on our four key pillars, we feel very well positioned for 2026. Got it. Just a quick follow-up on the part of

Mauricio Serna

Analyst

promotions. Maybe could you elaborate on strategies in place to keep pulling back on promotions? How much and how much is this lever contributing to gross margin expansion?

Scott Sekella

Management

Hey, Mauricio. It's Scott. I'll take that one. So, yeah, we continue to pull back on promotions. We saw a good benefit to our gross margin in Q3, and that's even net of some increases in GWPs. And as we've talked on prior calls, having GWPs as a lever to provide value for customers as we pull back on promos. We've had a lot of success through that. While our promotional level is going to be much more similar in Q4 year over year, we have utilized the GWPs in a way where we've increased the amount that triggers the GWP, and we've seen great success into Q4 in the Black Friday period with that. The demand through our stores was very, very strong for those GWPs and getting customers to come in with a much higher average order value. And as we've talked, promotions will be a multiyear journey, so we'll continue to find these opportunities to drive more regular price selling, pull back on full box promotions, and continue to be more about emotion versus promotion as Hillary has said.

Mauricio Serna

Analyst

Great. Thanks for that, and good luck. Congratulations on the results. Thank you. Thank you.

Amanda

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Good morning and thank you for taking our question. Hillary, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the change in rate of new customer acquisition that you're seeing this quarter. Can you talk a little bit about the profile of those customers? Are they younger? Are they higher income? What are you seeing across your brands, particularly in North America? And what drives your plans for marketing as a result as you look ahead into '26?

Hillary Super

Management

Hi, Brooke. I'm happy to answer that question. So customer acquisition and reactivation is something that we are extremely focused on and very excited about. And happy to report that we are seeing it distorted to 18 to 24-year-olds. So that was our goal. We are seeing that come to life. Would also add that they're coming in on a higher AUR, so we feel like the quality and we know just anecdotally from interactions in stores that customers are coming in with their phones and showing videos and content whether, you know, whether it's Love Shack, whether it's better than braless, whether it's fashion show content. They're bringing their phones in and saying, I need this. And that is the ultimate goal rather than I want this price point. And so we feel really good about that. In terms of the cohorts, we're seeing growth across all cohorts. Maybe a slight uptick in higher income customers on the growth side, but I do want to just add that I know a big question has been how are all income cohorts doing. I'll just take this moment to say that we are seeing consistent positive performance across all income cohorts. And we're really pleased with that and feel like that's a real proof point as we move forward.

Brooke Roach

Analyst

Great. And then just a follow-up for Scott. Historically, the business had targeted a low double-digit EBIT margin profile. Is this rate achievable in your view? And how are you thinking about the potential pace of expansion offset by any reinvestment to continue the positive comp momentum?

Scott Sekella

Management

Yeah. So we definitely still see a low double-digit operating margin as achievable. I think the question is when over the next couple of years. The margin expand is continue to expand, number one, as we grow, and we've talked about we have that low leverage point for both our buying and occupancy expenses, but also our SG&A. So as we grow north of 1% to 2%, we're going to expand margin. That's still going to allow us to make select investments back into the business, in particular, in marketing. We've had success with some of that where we've seen positive ROAS opportunities. We'll continue to take advantage of those. But even taking advantage of those, we feel like we can get back to that low double-digit operating margin over the next couple of years through our path to potential growth strategy.

Brooke Roach

Analyst

Great. Thanks so much. Best of luck with holiday. Bye.

Amanda

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Your line is open. Great. Thank you so much. And really great to see the stores, the product, the brands really turning Hillary, I guess on that

Hillary Super

Management

the fall of this year, we really start to see that broad focus and the franchise bra focuses kind of calling out those products

Adrienne Yih

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open. Great. Thank you so much. And really great to see the stores, the product, the brands really turning Hillary, I guess on that

And it kind of reminded me of kind of historically when Victoria's Secret would regularly come to market with bra launches. And so I'm wondering kind of what do you have in the pipeline for 2026 to keep that going? And then on PINK, sort of more at the high level, kind of from a trend perspective, it does feel like and maybe I'm wrong here, but it does feel like we're kind of in a little bit of a retro, maybe, like, the tracksuits coming back. Some of that kind of juicy look that sort of, like, very good for pink. So I'm wondering if you can talk about some of that that's happening. And then Scott, really, kinda wanna talk about kind of the multiyear opportunity. We're sitting at a mid-single-digit margin. You just talked about a 10% opportunity. Promos are inflecting. And really wanted just to kind of understand where we are in that merch margin journey Seems like we're very in the very, very early signs of that. With some good underpinnings for long term. Thank you so much.

Hillary Super

Management

Okay. I will take those first couple of questions. So bras, bras franchises, and launches. Yeah. You're right. Extremely important, and we have been uber, uber focused on our innovation pipeline and our strategy around bra launches and have several in the pipeline next year for both brands. But the point that I want to make here is an unlock that we had in with the Flex Factor launch and throughout Q3 was that we were able to have a successful launch and continued growth across all bras. And that was a change for us. You know? We in recent history, have had a number of successful bra launches but often with a softening of the bras around it. And that was not the case this quarter, and I really credit our full funnel marketing strategy for that. That was able to talk about multiple things at one time and communicate our full breadth of range and wearing occasions, and we saw major payback for that. And we creatively emotionally connected with the customer in a way that just drove outsized traffic. So feeling great about the learnings there, feeling great about what's in the pipeline, and very confident that this is just the beginning of raw growth. For us as a total company. Pink and trend. Yeah. I think, you know, trends are cyclical. We're definitely seeing a number of trends that harken back to those early days of pink. We always wanna put a modern spin on it, but that's just one part of Pink's opportunity. We're seeing outsized growth in apparel, but also saw incredible improvement in both panties and bras. And that was a bit of a surprise to me. I was thinking that the opportunity was primarily in apparel accessories and beauty for pink, but we've seen that with the right cadence of fashion newness, we can drive growth across all categories in pink, which is an extremely, exciting learning and something that we're running with. I would also point to partnerships and collaborations as a lever that we have across the entire brand. And those take various forms. Sometimes as big as Love Shack, sometimes much smaller with, you know, an influential person that we're collaborating with, sometimes you know, it's an item rather than an entire collection, so you'll see us dipping toe into a lot of those different things, but we have clearly seen the power of getting the product right, getting the brand heat right, and having the right media strategy to get that in front of the right audiences is the winning ticket here, and we intend to run with those strategies forward.

Scott Sekella

Management

And taking Adrian, it's Scott. Taking the last part of your question, and building upon Brooke's question as well. You know, you mentioned promos inflecting, and that's absolutely the case we've been seeing and going to continue to see. But a couple points to just solidify that AURs in Q2, we talked about were up 1%. But when you exclude panties, they were up 8%. This quarter, as I mentioned on the call, AURs were up 3% and excluding panties are up 6%. So that's both pulling back in promotions, but also driving more full price selling. In Q4, I do expect AURs to be up, probably not to the same degree because it's a heavier promotion quarter, as you know. But that momentum from Q2, Q3 will definitely carry into next year. And, again, it's not just promos coming, but it's driving more of our mix in the full in the regular price selling. And one sort of antidote on that building upon the momentum we have with PINK and as Hillary was talking about, particularly PINK apparel, PINK apparel, we're seeing double-digit increases in AURs right now because we're driving that newness in that in that more regular price selling. And that's gonna help build these margins getting back to that double-digit operating margin over the long term. Fantastic. Great to see the progress. Best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Matthew Boss

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open. Great. Thank you so much. And really great to see the stores, the product, the brands really turning Hillary, I guess on that

Thanks and congrats on a nice quarter. So, Hillary, could you speak to the inflection in your performance relative to category growth as we think about market share capture relative to larger picture category trends in The U.S. Or globally. And then near term, could you just help break down the cadence of your monthly comps that you saw in the third quarter, particularly October or the exit rate And just elaborate on the strong start that you cited to the fourth quarter, maybe relative to 8% comps in the third quarter or relative to second half of the quarter or October? Have you seen any change in momentum or demand?

Scott Sekella

Management

You want to take that one first? Yeah. I'll take the last one first. So we saw strong performance through the entire third quarter. Started off with Pink Friday in the Loveshack Fancy co-lab. That momentum sustained into September. Particularly as we had a very sexy launch later in August and then a sort of a sport reset in September. But then the comps really amplified in October with the fashion show, particularly the back half. And sort of the virality of both shoppable collections, but also even the pink and the wear everywhere bras. So that momentum we've seen sustained into November through the Black Friday selling period. We are, though, cautious as we get sort of post-holiday you know, will we see a broader consumer pullback? And so that's contemplated sort of in our Q4 thinking right now. But the momentum from the fashion shows definitely carried through November into this early December selling period. But I'll let Hillary take the first couple.

Hillary Super

Management

Okay. So raw performance, Internet performance versus total share performance. I think what we have learned is that we can continue to perform and grow market share despite the market. And just as a point of reference, you know, we are the number one market shareholder. We all know that, but the next closest is about eight points less than us. So we really have we have a hold on this market. And when we execute well and when we connect emotionally with the customer and really talk about our innovation and the value we add to her life, we win. And we're seeing that. Bras and panties both grew market share in the quarter, and panties to, you know, a really impressive degree. And, you know, we're proud of that, and we see a long runway. And we're excited to keep that going.

Matthew Boss

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open. Great. Thank you so much. And really great to see the stores, the product, the brands really turning Hillary, I guess on that

Scott, maybe just as a follow-up. Relative to the benefit from lower promotional activity in the third quarter, I mean, to what extent did you embed opportunity in the fourth quarter? And maybe just what inning overall do you see this opportunity on the promotional front? Or is there a way to kinda bifurcate the margin to get to double digits relative to where we're at today? How much of this is promotional activity? How much of this is SG&A? Maybe just any way to break down that delta.

Scott Sekella

Management

Yes. So tackling the Q4 piece first, there's less promotional benefit in our Q4 margins right now just because it's a heavier promotional quarter as you know, but there is still a shift to more, I would say, regular price selling, which is a bit different than just a straight pullback in promo. So and, you know, an example is really, you know, we just this week, we had our second collab on Love Shack Fancy and Pink, and so that's gonna be more regular price selling sort of mix than what we've had in the past. And then as you think longer term, the promo piece, I think we're still in sort of the early middle innings, I would say, on the promotional pullback. So it is gonna be a multiyear journey, but the number one lever is we about margin expansion, is just how we're going to leverage our solid operational foundation, and that's both on buying and occupancy and SG&A as we grow north of 1% to 2%. That flow through to the bottom line will far outweigh the promotional pullback over the next couple of years.

Matthew Boss

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open. Great. Thank you so much. And really great to see the stores, the product, the brands really turning Hillary, I guess on that

Great color. Best of luck.

Hillary Super

Management

Thank you.

Amanda

Operator

Our next question comes from Dana Telsey with Telsey Group. Your line is open.

Dana Telsey

Analyst · Telsey Group. Your line is open.

Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on the nice progress. Two things. As you think about beauty, which I think you've always mentioned is the bigger market than intimate, how do you think about the beauty progress over the next year? What it could do on the top line and how it could impact margins? And then also the marketing being as effective as it is in attracting new customers. Any framework of those customers' age, income levels, anything that you're noticing? And what what what you do differently next year at all to keep the active customer growth going. And then just lastly, store the future. Thoughts on next year for Store of the Future? Any changes or enhancements that you wanna make? Thank you.

Hillary Super

Management

Thanks, Dana. I'll start out with the question around beauty. So as you know, beauty has been our stronger business for the last couple of years and has been has, like, a very impressive two-year stack. We have just started really reinvesting in beauty, reinvesting in the innovation pipeline, investing in talent, and thinking about how can we really supercharge this business. As I think about 2026 and 2027, in 2026, there are a number of insights that we have that are known to us. That we can go after, whether it's the fact that only 40% of our customer of our current customer base is shopping beauty and there's a lot within our own internal file that can be claimed and converted. And then continued customer acquisition and really integration of beauty within each brand to be an extension and more connected to each brand. And then Pink Beauty, we've only just very much scratched the surface of. So we think there's a lot of near-term known opportunities for optimization in beauty. 2027 and beyond, it's really about what's unknown today and the innovation pipeline and reaching into the future and bringing that to market. To really excite and delight our customers. So short term, double down on what we know the opportunities are and optimize the business. Slightly longer term. It's really about reaching into the unknown and innovating. Your second question is about marketing a new customers. Okay. So we're very excited about this both in the new and reactivated. We are seeing an uptick in 18 to 24-year-olds, which is extremely exciting. We're seeing growth across all income cohorts with a slightly larger uptick in high-income customers. But growth across all of them. And I would say most importantly, they were coming into the brand based on product brand, and emotion and not on promotion. Coming into the stores. They're showing associates photographs and videos and saying they need this. They want this. And, you know, that's exactly the place that we want to be. And so as we continue to fine-tune our brand heat initiatives, as we continue to fine-tune our creative, we're really going hard at what is culturally inspiring in this moment and how do we engage with that new customer?

Scott Sekella

Management

And then I'll tackle the store the future. You know, we're continuing to look at our store of the future concept and how do we optimize it with the path to potential strategy. So how do we better assort, you know, as we continue to supercharge bras, as we continue to drive pink, particularly pink apparel, but now with some of the learnings around pink intimates that we had in the quarter, how do we better optimize and assort pink in the stores and differentiate pink in the stores? So I think those are things we're taking away, these learnings, and applying them real-time. And it'll, you know, impact not only next year, but I would say the next couple of years. And then I think the last opportunity we're looking at with Store of the Future is how do we drive that cross with beauty even better, you know. And so you know, when we have a very sexy launch, not only on the intimate side, how do we tie in beauty with that sort of stuff. And so you'll you won't see a wholesale change to store of the future, but you'll see these enhancements to help better drive our path to potential strategy.

Amanda

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonah Kim with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Thank you for taking my question. Just curious on the apparel side, what's the mix now and where you see that trending over time? And, also, I know you've been working on your lead time on the apparel side. What is the lead time now, and is there further opportunities to expedite that? Thank you. Sure.

Hillary Super

Management

So when we first started talking about the pink apparel opportunity, we had shared that at one point it was about 70-ish percent of the business and it had gone all the way down to mid-30s. It's now above 40% and climbing. We think, ultimately, it's somewhere in between 50-60% of the total pink business. And we are extremely pleased. It was the leading category in the pink business in Q3. We saw that as Scott mentioned, at much higher AUR, lower discount rate. It was a very solid business. Lots of optimism about that. We also shared previously that we did the Love Shack Fancy collaboration in twenty-six weeks. We continue to look for opportunities to shorten timelines and gain that agility. You know, we have a wide range of ways to make chase into and make product and get to the market more quickly. And I think we have even further room that we can go in some cases, you know, we're doing things like making T-shirts in LA and get those very, very quickly. And, you know, we have core raw materials in all of our top iconic items. We can get into those quickly sub twenty-six weeks. And we continue to work on it. So I would say we are, you know, early to mid-inning on our optimization of how we go to market in pink apparel and lots of opportunity to optimize that in the future.

Jonah Kim

Analyst

Thank you so much.

Amanda

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Marni Shapiro with The Retail Tracker. Your line is open.

Marni Shapiro

Analyst · The Retail Tracker. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Congratulations. The stores have had so much energy. It's been a pleasure to shop. So I'm so curious. I wanna dig into beauty a little bit, dovetailing on what everybody has said. I really liked your home launch in Victoria's Secret, and I'm curious what I guess, what you're thinking about in the future specifically, you know, candles are a big opportunity in general in the market. I thought it looked really beautiful. And then just also in pink beauty, there, you know, with this brand coming back and the younger customer coming back in, the younger customer today is much more sophisticated than they were when Pink first launched. And there's a lot of good youth-facing brands that have come to market. So are you seeing a different kind of pink beauty? And I would assume, like, isn't there room for a real pink beauty business out there? In light of the way the customer has changed?

Hillary Super

Management

Yeah. The short answer is yes. We have recently just made some key hires in this area. Senior leader to oversee beauty and merchandising and another senior leader to oversee Pink. They were at once a combined role. And, you know, as with everything, you focused on the bigger piece. So we see the opportunity. We're gonna go after the and I couldn't agree more that this is a much more sophisticated consumer than twenty years ago. And I think there's a significant prize ahead for that business. And what a fun job that is. So I think we can't wait to roll our sleeves up and get into that. And then in home, we also think it's beautiful, and are excited about it, and we think it's we continue to believe it's an opportunity. In hindsight, I think we went, you know, very broad and very large or relatively unknown for us. So we've gotten very key learnings and are honing in on the best of the best and pushing that forward. And so, you know, we're gonna continue to iterate on that category and we feel good about it. We're proud of it. And then can I just ask one quick follow-up on marketing? You've done a lot of collaboration a lot of fun things this year. As we think about marketing as a percentage of sales into '26, are you guys gonna plan it up or sales increase? You're gonna keep percentage flat? Like, what's just the thinking, I guess, behind where marketing spend should be?

Scott Sekella

Management

Yeah. I think you'll see the marketing tick up both in and percent of sales. I don't know that it's gonna be a massive jump, but we'll keep inching it up. And we're, you know, as we saw positive ROAS opportunities, we continue to invest in the quarter. So there are even real-time decisions we can make there. And you know, our working media as a percent of total last year was closer to 70%. It's increasing more to 75% this year. And so even as the spend stays the same, we are shifting more of spend into sort of consumer-facing areas.

Marni Shapiro

Analyst · The Retail Tracker. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, guys. Best of luck for holiday. Thank you.

Hillary Super

Management

Thank you.

Amanda

Operator

Our last question will come from Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Hey, everyone. Thanks for squeezing me in. Scott, a couple ones on the gross margin, was hoping to ask. So just the way you're talking about ex the gift card breakage last year, the merch the gross margin you're planning ex tariffs is up 200 basis points. Is that is that accurate, ballpark? Yeah. That's a good description. Yeah. Okay. And that's a little bit lower than the ex tariff gross margin in 3Q because you're not planning as much as you are. So I guess that makes sense. I guess the other the follow-up question I would have to that is is this kinda run rate the way we should think about the first half assuming tariffs stay in place? And then obviously, margin trajectory is now starting to move up. Does next year kinda act as a buffer year to that just because of the first couple quarters of the year where you have to kinda, like, embed these tariff headwinds into the business. Just kind of curious like how much that throws you off your trajectory like just said differently, like can you take margins up next year despite those pressures that you guys have in front of you? Thank you.

Scott Sekella

Management

Yeah. And we're still working through our plans specifically for next year. But as you said, tariffs will be a headwind through the first half as they continue to come on. The other thing we do have is our mitigation efforts will increase through next year because a big chunk of them really aren't taking hold here till Q4. So we'll be able to anniversary that plus some of the select price increases we took in back half of this year will help offset in the first part of next year. So there'll be some headwinds continued with tariffs, but the mitigation efforts will be ramping through the year as well. So that's how to think about it right now.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Amanda

Operator

Thank you. I will now turn the call back to Hillary Super for closing remarks.

Hillary Super

Management

Thank you, operator. I want to end by expressing my sincere thanks to all of our associates for their passion and hard work and to our partners, our customers, and our shareholders for their support. We're energized heading into holiday and excited about what's ahead for our brands. I'd like to wish everyone a happy holidays, and we will see you in March.

Amanda

Operator

Thank you all for participating in the Victoria's Secret & Co.'s Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. That concludes today's conference. Please disconnect at this time, and enjoy the rest of your day.