Estee Lauder Cos. Inc (EL) — Q1 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, everyone. On today's call are Fabrizio Freda, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tracey Travis, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Since many of our remarks today contain forward-looking statements, let me refer you to our press release and our reports filed with the SEC, where you'll find factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Our discussion of our financial results and our expectations are before the impact of accelerated retail orders that took place in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 due to the July implementation of our Strategic Modernization Initiative, which would have occurred in our fiscal 2015 first quarter. We will note the impact of the shift in orders on our fiscal 2015 first quarter results and full year expectations. You can find reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP figures in our press release and on the Investor Relations section of our website. I'll turn the call over to Fabrizio.

Thank you, Dennis, and good morning, everyone. During the first quarter of fiscal 2015, we delivered a solid financial performance despite a difficult global backdrop, highlighting the benefit of our broadly diversified business. Like many companies, we operated against several macroeconomic and geopolitical issues, ranging from foreign currency headwinds and slower growth in some of our markets to unrest in Hong Kong, the Middle East, and Ukraine. We weren't immune to the challenges, but many of our brands, countries, and channels were resilient and even vibrant. Our best-performing areas were our luxury and makeup brands, our online, travel retail, and freestanding store channel as well as the European region where we gained share. Our sales rose 5% in local currency, meeting our expectations and continuing a pattern of profitable quarterly growth. Earnings per share came in above our forecast. Prestige Beauty overall remains healthy, as consumers are constantly drawn to innovative products and the hottest trends. Our creativity and ability to react quickly have enabled us to capitalize on many areas that we are winning. Looking across prestige beauty, makeup is in the spotlight, generating the stronger growth. Our three fantastic makeup-focused brands helped fuel this trend with great success. Each one grew double digits. M-A-C is our largest makeup brand and a true powerhouse, generating another terrific quarter, with strong momentum globally and standout results in the U.K. and Latin America. We continue to build awareness and strategically fill distribution voids by opening freestanding stores and M-A-C created product launches continue to attract consumers. Lipsticks were strong sellers as well as our new innovative kits and assortment of palettes. M-A-C's next VIVA GLAM spokesperson, Miley Cyrus, is certain to bring attention to the brand and to aid age-related philanthropic causes when the new lip products launch in January. Bobbi Brown introduced exciting products that captivated consumers, including a new version of its iconic skin foundation stick and updated its counters with a new marketing campaign featuring its celebrity spokesperson, Kate Upton. Meanwhile, Smashbox's strength in the specialty-multi channel generated significantly higher sales globally. Makeup also lifted the Estée Lauder brand, led by its Pure Color Envy franchise, which launched last spring with lipstick and this quarter expanded to eyeshadow and is selling well globally. Foundations were also strong for Estée Lauder, helped by the launch of Perfectionist makeup and strength in Double Wear. Skin care remains our largest category and we are creating products that appeal to multiple demographics and add incremental sales. The most significant launches came from Clinique. Its Smart Custom-Repair Serum had a strong consumer reception and became the best-selling anti-aging prestige skin care serum in the U.K., where Clinique is the #1 prestige beauty brand. Clinique's Sonic System Purifying Cleansing Brush marks the company's first entry into the device category. It is selling particularly well in Asia and travel retail and recently launched in the U.S. We expect this new product to generate good momentum for Clinique in the second half of the fiscal year. Several other brands also have exciting skincare launches coming up in areas with strong consumer interest. Estée Lauder's new Enlighten line of products targets uneven skin tone, and its high-end Re-Nutriv ultimate diamond dual infusion will strengthen its position in premium skin care. La Mer and Origins are exploiting renewed interest in facial masks, with several offerings that treat different concerns. La Mer launched the Intensive Revitalizing Mask in many markets. In the U.K., nearly one-quarter of the units sold was to first-time consumers, which demonstrates the brand's success in creating innovative products that attract new users. Our powerful portfolio is filled with high-quality prestige brands. Our mix of midsized luxury brands, which cater to more affluent consumers, enjoyed the fastest growth, both in the U.S. and globally. Sales from Tom Ford, La Mer, Bobbi Brown, and Jo Malone rose double digits from both like-door growth and targeted distribution gains as they continued to expand to reach new consumers. In their early stages, these brands were among our smallest. But after rapid expansion in recent years, they have not only grown in size but have become significant contributors to growth. Channel diversity remains one of our strengths. Our E&M commerce business grew almost 30% globally. The impressive increase came primarily from organic growth. But we added four brand sites and refreshed other sites with new technology and navigation. Visits to our brand sites globally rose 22% this quarter and other metrics also show important gains. Sales from our freestanding stores also rose sharply, reflecting our strategy to build our business in this channel globally. Led by our luxury and specialty brands, our net sales in travel retail grew double digits. Our retail sales in the channel, however, rose 4%, slightly below the growth in passenger traffic, largely due to major product launches in the previous year from Estée Lauder and Clinique brands and a falloff in Chinese tourists in Hong Kong, where we have a very high share. Travel retail is one of our important engines, and we expect to return to retail growth ahead of traffic because of strong initiatives on the biggest brands, opening more doors, and expanding distribution in high-growth midsized brands. In travel retail, our net sales exceeded retail sell-through because we needed to supply new doors, and retailers were bullish ahead of the Asian Golden Week holiday travel. We expect a rebalancing of trade inventories in the second quarter. Geopolitical issues are making global travel factors more volatile, as reflected in our travel business. This quarter, the strongest retail growth was in the Americas, while in the last two years, Asia/Pacific had the biggest surge in sales growth. By being flexible, we directed and will continue to direct our investment to the biggest regional opportunities contributing to sustained growth. Outside of travel retail, our geographic strength was centered in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where we posted excellent growth despite continued economic malaise in many European countries. Our U.K. business remained excellent with double-digit growth at retail ahead of net sales, with most brands contributing. Our brands were strong in Western Europe but grew even faster in emerging markets in the region, led by Russia. Retail sales grew ahead of prestige beauty in many countries, enabling us to gain share. Emerging markets are an important part of our growth story and continue to provide much of our fuel. Excluding China, sales in our emerging markets rose more than 30%, with superb results in many countries including the Middle East, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa. This group is as large as China and continues to provide strong momentum, demonstrating the balance across our business and the scope of our geographic strength. China remains our largest single emerging market. Last month, I spent time there to get the first-hand update on consumer sentiment and current market dynamics. The fundamentals driving increased consumption in China remain positive and the country remains one of our major long-term opportunities. Wealth creation and disposable income continue to rise among the growing middle class. They are passionate about beauty products and aspire to prestige beauty brands. Near term, prestige beauty sales continue to grow and we are the leader, but the market has become more complex. Competition is intensifying in prestige, promotions have increased, and the gifting of luxury items has decreased. At the same time, Korean trends are gaining in popularity and some Korean brands have carved out the masstige tier, attracting some of the consumers stepping up from us. In total, our retail sales in China rose 5% against a slight net sales decline. We entered nine new tier cities and launched Origins on Tmall. Online is the fastest-growing channel for beauty in China, and our e-commerce sales doubled, although it is a small percentage of our business. Sales of the Estée Lauder brand declined slightly in the quarter, reflecting the previous year initiative and the high promotional environment I mentioned. Estée Lauder is the top prestige brand in China in its distribution, and we are working on many exciting new initiatives to further build its momentum and adjust to the new competitive reality. Nonetheless, all our other brands, from Clinique through to M-A-C, had robust double-digit retail growth this quarter in China, creating a more balanced brand and category mix. The recent introduction of Jo Malone is off to a great start and well ahead of our goals. Makeup is gaining momentum, and our makeup brands grew solidly by embracing Korean trends and appealing to consumers with the most relevant products and looks. As the global leader in prestige makeup, we anticipate China will become a more significant factor in our makeup business. During the quarter, fewer Chinese traveled to Hong Kong, where last year more than half of our domestic sales came from Chinese tourists. This was influenced by a change last fall that restricted group visas. In light of the recent protests, fewer individual tourist visas were issued. Despite fewer Chinese travelers, our Hong Kong sales in the quarter were flat. However, starting in the final days of September, large protests resulted in business closures and kept people away from key shopping districts. The situation has continued and is expected to sharply impact our business in Hong Kong in the second quarter. Balancing the softer-than-anticipated results in Greater China was positive news out of other Asia-Pacific countries, namely Korea, Japan, and Australia, where both net and retail sales generated strong growth. We had a strong turnaround in Korea, as our brands tapped into consumer preferences and leveraged local trends. Many of our larger brands had positive growth, including Estée Lauder, M-A-C, Bobbi Brown, and several of our smaller brands such as Jo Malone, Aveda, and La Mer resonated strongly in the market. As a company, we gained share in Japan in our distribution with Estée Lauder, La Mer, Jo Malone, and M-A-C showing excellent gains, while our online business grew double digits. In Australia, our sales grew double digits due to improved market conditions and growth in our brands across many channels. The U.S. remains our biggest market, and our brands hold the top 10 prestige skin care SKUs and eight of the top 10 makeup SKUs. Many of our brands showed healthy growth, including M-A-C, La Mer, Jo Malone, and Smashbox, all of which gained share. Although prestige beauty has accelerated overall from the pace a year ago, the majority of the growth is being driven by online as foot traffic in brick-and-mortar stores has slowed. It was a challenging quarter for our multi-category brands, Estée Lauder and Clinique, in the U.S., which posted lower retail sales versus the previous year in brick-and-mortar department stores where they generate most of their business. This was partly because they were up against difficult comparisons with the previous year when they launched reformulations of important iconic products. We believe fewer Chinese travelers also impacted the Estée Lauder brand in its home market. Both Estée Lauder and Clinique, however, had good growth in their e-commerce businesses in the United States. We expect the upcoming holiday season to be solid, with consumers paying particular attention to value and attractive online shopping offers. With that in mind, our brands will continue strong marketing investment against their recent product launches and have created compelling assortments of gift sets that offer desirable products with good value. They are also working actively with retail partners on their online sites to drive sales. We are actively working to drive growth in Estée Lauder and Clinique in the U.S. in the second half of the fiscal year, with multi-category innovations, and we'll continue to support our retailers with compelling advertising, merchandising programs, and in-store activities to increase traffic. We expect to generate sales growth of 5% to 6% this fiscal year, with significant contributions coming from M-A-C and our mid-sized brands. To maintain our steady annual growth, we are driving our portfolio on two main fronts. We are strengthening and expanding our existing brands to keep them relevant in all regions, and at the same time, we are actively seeding and nurturing the next generation, with an eye to creating the next big brands of the future. As part of this plan, we recently acquired two small brands that have long-term potential to contribute to our continuing growth. Le Labo is a high-end fragrance and sensory lifestyle brand that emphasizes craftsmanship and personalization. And RODIN olio lusso is a luxury oil-based skincare collection. Both brands have a unique position and are targeted to the ultra-prestige consumer, which is core to our strategy. With over 60 years of brand-building leadership, we are confident we can help these brands grow and prosper like we continue to do successfully with many other acquisitions such as Jo Malone and La Mer. The founders of Le Labo and RODIN will stay with the company, and together, we will execute our collective vision. We demonstrated this quarter that thanks to numerous growth engines, our ability to aggressively drive our best opportunities and our continued focus on managing cost efficiencies, we navigated short-term challenges and delivered solid growth and financial results. We are making progress and are determined to deliver the savings through our SMI program that are embedded in our long-term margin targets. Our July rollout of SMI Wave 4 has gone extremely well, and I want to thank all of our employees who have served this project with extreme dedication and terrific results. With our diverse brand portfolio, a balanced worldwide business, and increased exposure to the fastest growth channels, we believe we will continue to deliver sustainable profitable growth in the long term. We have a winning formula. More than two-thirds of our businesses are growing solidly, and we have discipline in our management of expenses. We will continue investing in marketing programs and capabilities that are necessary to maintain our long-term growth and remain committed to achieving our financial goals. Now I will turn the call over to Tracey.

Thank you, Fabrizio, and good morning, everyone. I will briefly review our fiscal 2015 first quarter results and then I will share with you our expectations for the second quarter and the full year. To better demonstrate our underlying business performance, my commentary excludes the first quarter and full year impact of the acceleration of retailer orders that shifted sales from the first quarter of fiscal 2015 and the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 related to our July rollout of SMI. The impact of that shift was $178 million in sales and $127 million in operating income, equal to approximately $0.21 per share. Also excluded is the year-over-year impact of restructuring and other charges. Net sales for the first quarter rose 5% as reported and also in local currency, in line with our expectations. Every geographic region and every product category contributed to constant currency sales growth in the quarter, demonstrating the benefits of our diverse portfolio. Our gross profit margin of 79.6% was 10 basis points below the prior year period, primarily reflecting the net of unfavorable mix offset by favorable pricing. Operating expenses improved 10 basis points to 62.7% of sales. Advertising and marketing investment decreased 140 basis points as planned, as we anniversary heavy spending from last year's major skin care and fragrance launches in the quarter, with the smaller product launches in this year's quarter. This favorability was offset primarily by a combination of higher retail store operating costs and investment spending behind key initiatives. As a result, operating margin remained unchanged at 16.9%, earnings per share increased to $0.80, above the top end of our guidance range, reflecting more disciplined cost management. All elements of working capital improved in the quarter, with inventory days to sell improving by 2 days to 193 days. During the quarter, we generated a $98 million improvement in cash flow from operating activities, primarily through working capital improvements. We invested $79 million in capital projects, primarily to support new retail stores and new counters. We utilized $207 million in cash to repurchase approximately 2.7 million shares of our stock, well more than the amount purchased during last year's first quarter. We also used $78 million through dividends to stockholders, ending the quarter with $1.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents. A small portion of cash was used in the second quarter as we acquired RODIN and Le Labo. Additionally, this morning, we announced a 20% increase in our quarterly dividend. Let me now turn to our outlook for the second quarter and for the full fiscal year. At this time, we are maintaining our view that the global prestige beauty will grow between 3% to 4% this fiscal year, but we do expect with the macro issues Fabrizio mentioned impacting Asia and other markets, it will now be toward the low end of that range. Our sales for the full fiscal year adjusted for the accelerated retailer orders are now expected to grow 5% to 6% in constant currency. This primarily reflects the recent retail disruptions in Hong Kong and a reduction in sales from Chinese travelers globally. The U.S. dollar has strengthened since we last provided guidance, and currency translation is now expected to negatively impact our full-year sales growth by approximately 3 percentage points versus the 2 percentage points we gave you previously. Our estimate assumes weighted average exchange rates for the full year of 1.24 for the euro, 1.62 for the pound, and 1.10 for the yen. We remain committed to both near-term and long-term margin progression. For fiscal 2015, we now expect constant currency operating margin growth of approximately 30 to 40 basis points. The reduction in expected tourism impacts our higher-margin channels, geographies, and product categories. Now that we have successfully completed the last major wave of SMI, we are actively engaged in driving the SMI benefits that we shared with you last quarter. As a reminder, efforts are underway to leverage the new processes and tools we have implemented to enhance our forecasting capability, which should result in progressive improvements in the inventory levels needed to support our sales, fewer sales returns, and less obsolescence. We are also working on improved management of the total cost of global and local product launches, which further enables our A&P effectiveness and is identifying additional procurement savings and productivity improvements. We have reorganized our internal team to more fully integrate SMI value creation and our efforts behind other cost savings initiatives to maximize the realization of benefits behind the biggest cost opportunity areas. As I have mentioned previously, these multiyear savings programs do enable us to reinvest a portion of those savings that are generated into capability areas such as product innovation and R&D, digital and e-commerce and retail capabilities and other areas critical to our success in sustainably delivering our strategic objectives. The net benefits of these combined efforts are reflected in our forward 3-year margin guidance. These efforts, combined with our brand growth strategies, allow us to continue to support our long-term margin goal of 17.5% by the end of fiscal 2017, despite the short-term macro headwinds we are managing through this year. For this fiscal year, we have adjusted our full-year EPS expectation to a range of $3.03 to $3.11. This compares to our fiscal 2014 EPS of $2.95 before charges and the accelerated orders. The 3 percentage points of negative currency translation on our top line this fiscal year equates to about $325 million or $0.13 of EPS. Excluding this currency impact, our EPS is now expected to rise by 7% to 10% versus 8% to 12% previously provided. Our expectations for reported full year GAAP results are for sales to grow 2% to 3% in constant currency. Earnings per share are expected to be between $2.82 and $2.90. Regarding the second quarter, our sales are expected to grow 3% to 4% in local currency. Translation could contract growth by approximately four percentage points. While our marketing investments behind recent product launches as well as our promotional activities around holiday should help drive sales growth, the Hong Kong challenges are expected to have the greatest effect in the October to December quarter. Our retail sales in Hong Kong fell more than 20% during the first weeks of October and declined over 40% in the affected areas of the protest. To put this into context, as Fabrizio mentioned, more than half of our business in Hong Kong is derived from Chinese Mainland visitors. Additionally, the sudden slowdown in both Hong Kong and travel retail is causing some retailers to recalibrate inventory levels. This pressures our net sales in the quarter but bodes well for reorders in the second half of the year. We anticipate that second quarter EPS will come in between $1.01 and $1.05. Approximately 4% negative currency impact on sales growth in the quarter equates to about $0.05 per share. When managing a broad global business like ours, disruptions in any part of the world can or are likely to happen periodically. Our agility in recalibrating our business while continuing to support our strategic objectives allows us to continue to deliver solid results without sacrificing our future growth potential. Indeed, the growth expectations for prestige beauty continue to be among the most robust and consistent in the consumer sector. Our position in prestige beauty is strong, due in part to the investments we continue to make in our brands and channels globally to enable their continued momentum. And that concludes our prepared remarks. We'll be happy to take your questions at this time.

A couple questions. Just thinking about your travel retail business, and you've been building that business by conversion partly. And I'm just curious if you can give us an update on that strategy. I think it was 10% of all shoppers going through duty-free were actually buying one of your products. And I'm just curious if you can give us an update on that. And then on the acquisitions, should we be thinking about a Smashbox type of growth curve here in terms of how it's going to contribute to your business? If you can just frame how we should think about these acquisitions and their impact on the P&L?

Okay, on travel retail, we are working very actively on conversion. Things like advertising in light boxes in the biggest airports for us, for example, marketing activities, airport online activities connected, and obviously launches and merchandising on the launches of our new initiatives. We started from about 10% of people we were converting. We believe this is growing, and now we are in the range of 12% to 15%. Over time, this may continue. Now, obviously, there is no perfect number for this, but those are numbers that we collect airport by airport from our experience there, so it's difficult to do an average global number after this. But we are sure that the conversion ability of our activity is increasing and we will continue to work on this strategy, which I believe is a very important piece of the continuous increase of sales in travel retail in the medium to long term. In terms of our acquisitions, those are very small brands that we have acquired really to grow for the long term. Our acquisition strategy includes the idea of taking some brands that we believe are outstanding, particularly those managed by outstanding entrepreneurs that we really love to have working with us on these brands to grow them over the long term in their space. Now we have capabilities. We cover 140 countries. We have great R&D capability. We cover travel retail and online. So we can give these small brands access to opportunities they didn't have before. This will drive, we believe, outstanding growth over the years. Think more of La Mer, when we acquired La Mer, it was a $1 million business and today it is the brand that it is. So that's the spirit, but it's not comparable to Smashbox. Smashbox was already a mid-sized brand and obviously has been growing fantastically, but is doing well from an already bigger base.

So the impact on our P&L this year will be de minimis and in the next few years, relatively small as well, although the brands are expected to have strong accelerated top-line growth.

And then just one question on skin care. I mean, you talked a lot about the initiatives that you have in place, but this is a business that's been soft for the last few quarters. And just curious, from a competitive standpoint, is there anything that we should be thinking about in a certain region or a certain competitor that might make your path back to growth a little bit more challenging?

So I think that we have been growing a bit less in skin care in the last quarters than we used to. This is because we have a big business and because some of our initiatives delivered below our original expectation. But I still believe our skin care innovation pipeline is very solid. The opportunity to grow skin care in the long term remains significant. The way we are thinking is we are increasing the amount of innovation in skin care; that's the concept. We have seen the growth of new categories in the skin care arena has been very interesting and promising, and we need to tap more into these new categories to grow more aggressively in skin care, which we are going to do.

A couple things I wanted to get some more clarity on. One is to go back to skin care. One of the drivers of innovation, I thought, as you mentioned last conference call, was R&D spend. We haven't seen that tick up, so want to get an update on that and if that's going to help your skin care numbers going forward. And how much of that skin care weakness was related to the Americas, which obviously, it was flat, the U.S. was down. We're starting to hear that some of the retailers are doing better in the mask area and want to know if you think that has an impact on your business. And then two other questions, more long term in nature. One is from the market rate, that you still believe in the kind of 3% to 4% range, albeit more towards the 3% range, but you're taking down your top line by about 1 point. Is that just kind of in the rounding, or do you think you're exposed more than the marketplace to some areas of weakness? And then the last part, I apologize, trying to squeeze it in, the last part is this year, you're saying 7% to 10% EPS growth x currencies, x SMI. As you look forward, can you give us a sense of what you think drives you back to double-digit EPS growth? And how much of that is macro versus how much of that is stuff that you're going to do yourself?

I will begin with the R&D investment. We are making incremental investments this year in R&D, with some of these focused on skin care. This should support our innovation plans over the next few years and is essential to our strategic growth. We have been increasing our R&D investment over the past couple of years and plan to continue doing so this year.

Yes, in the U.S., our skin care sector has not been growing as robustly as it once did, and that’s something we need to address. We must enhance our innovation in the U.S. market to remain competitive in a skin care market that is becoming increasingly challenging. There are innovations occurring across various skin care categories beyond just moisturizers and serums, such as masks and oils. The competition in skin care is intensifying due to simultaneous innovations in multiple areas. We are adjusting our strategies and anticipating strong new ideas to align with these future trends. Another important aspect of our skin care discussion relates to R&D. A significant portion of global skin care consumption originates from Asia, so when the travel patterns from Asia soften, it negatively affects skin care sales. Currently, we observe a dynamic where the reduction in Asian travelers impacts skin care sales compared to travelers from other emerging markets. Additionally, there are new trends in skin care, particularly from Asia, that we can pursue. Addressing these trends doesn’t always require R&D capability but rather the ability to transfer successful products between regions. We are actively engaged in this, and we will aggressively pursue these efforts to enhance our innovation programs in skin care. Regarding your last question about the projected 7% to 10% EPS growth excluding currency, this is a range we have updated from the previous 8% to 12%. This range will be primarily influenced by our sales performance and the sales mix, as different sales channels, categories, and brands yield varying profitability. Thus, the sales mix is a significant factor in this range. Additionally, the overall sales level and the impact of our cost-saving initiatives will also play a role in the current fiscal year. As Tracy mentioned, we are diligently working to maximize our savings year after year in alignment with our SMI goals.

This question really follows up on that question about the long-term growth rate, but looking specifically at the margin dynamics in two of your businesses. We've heard reports that your margins in the travel retail business are coming down just because of the extra investment spending you're doing there, just building out the light boxes in the airports and all of that. Can you talk about that specifically, just the margin trends within travel retail and where you see them going? And then secondarily, I know your margins were up strongly in Asia this quarter. And you talked about lower investment spending, I'm sure that's just a timing issue. But given what you talked about in terms of increased competition, heightened promotional activity, and what sounds like maybe a mix shift towards more makeup as opposed to skin care in Asia, should we expect Asia margins to kind of be flat to down? Again, I don't care about the second quarter, but kind of over the next 18 months to 24 months, is Asia going to be an area for margin compression, do you think?

Okay. So let me start, Wendy, with the travel retail question. Our travel retail margins are not under pressure. We have been investing in light boxes over the last few years and our travel retail margins have been steadily improving. So that is not an issue for this year. We have invested in opening new points of distribution for some of our luxury brands, our makeup brands, as well as Aveda. So a lot of the investment in travel retail this year is for new distribution, which certainly has proven to be productive and profitable for us. So we certainly are bullish on the travel retail business going forward and don't expect margin pressure.

Yes. And on the Asia margins, I think in Asia, the investments will continue and we will continue to invest in building the markets. Obviously, we will adjust the investments to the level of opportunities. The moment, like it was this quarter, where there was certain noise, certain softness, we felt that it was not needed to push the investment beyond reasonable levels because consumers were not reacting anyway. We are trying not to make Asia overly promotional. So we have tried, sometimes we accept lower volumes, like in this case, in China, to avoid it becoming over-promotional. These are choices for the long term. Yes, they may have an impact quarter-by-quarter, but in the long term, we don't believe there will be margin pressures because of needed investments. Now the evolution of the mix by countries could be a big positive. There are countries that are more profitable and countries that are less profitable, in China. So the mix is an element. The other element is the cost savings. Also in Asia, part of these cost savings that Tracey already referred to are also happening in Asia, where there is a lot of work going on in this moment on SMI value-creation activities. So the mix of all of this, I believe, will allow us to continue over time to develop, in the proper way, our margin in Asia.

And the only thing I'll add to that, Wendy, is clearly this year, and you said you weren't focused on the short term, which is good, some of the shortfall that we're seeing relative to our prior expectations is due to macro events, especially given the geography that they are impacting do impact the skin care business, which is a high-margin business for us.

Yes. I think we were very clear in the prepared remarks. Hong Kong skin care is among the most profitable businesses in Asia and, frankly, around the world. That's why it's difficult to offset it in a short term. It would also be the wrong decision, in our opinion, to try to offset it in the short term by cutting investments, which are, on the contrary, good investments that will provide long-term solid growth.

My question is around the guidance for the full year relative to the second quarter. Your comparisons are much harder as you move to the back half of the year, be it sales or margins. And so if your second quarter comes in at your guidance range, what are the factors that you think can drive sales growth and margin acceleration so much that you can get to the full year number? What's going to happen in the back half despite those tough comps?

Yes. So Caroline, actually the second half is a bit easier for us from a comp standpoint. As we said earlier in our prepared remarks, we had major launches in the first quarter of last year related to Estée Lauder and Clinique. We had softer launches, certainly, this year relative to last year. In the second half of the year, we have lots of good programs planned for both Estée Lauder, Clinique, as well as our other brands. We have the benefit of new door openings that have happened during the course of the back half of last year and the beginning of this year that will help from a growth standpoint. We are assuming that the Hong Kong situation is really a first half issue and that it will return to growth in the second half. Those are the things that are embedded within our second half earnings, both sales and profit, that lead us to provide the guidance that we did for the year.

There is also, in the U.S., in the third quarter, a low base of retail because there was one less week in retail. So the indexes would be helped by that situation, by the low base last year.

And the polar vortex.

Yes. And also, I mean, all of you will remember the toughest winter on earth that we had last year in the U.S. We have the expectation that this created a low base in terms of retail opportunities for this very big market for us. Finally, there are many markets that last year were under pressure, like Korea, where, as we just said, frankly this is very good news, that we are again growing in Korea, like Russia, like Australia, then there was the Venezuela issue last year in the second semester. Our assessment is actually we have an easier base, as Tracey said, in the second six months.

First, just talking again about U.S. retail. So in terms of the Chinese traveler impact, I know there are some stores where you have a dramatic, really significant data suggesting the prevalence of Chinese travelers in that store, in particular. So is there any data or even anecdotally you could provide to say how much traffic was in some of these very Chinese traveler heavy particular retail outlets? That's one. And then two, outside of that issue, just a little bit around the retail environment in general in the U.S., because I know that some of the data across retail mall traffic centers have been weak. So what are you anticipating as you look forward into the calendar fourth quarter for the holiday, and just what you think the overall health of the U.S. luxury market is outside of the Chinese traveler issue?

Okay. Let me start from the overall. The market grew about 5% overall in the quarter that we just closed, which was better than July-September last year. So the overall market in beauty, prestige beauty, in the U.S. continues to grow faster than mass. The fundamental phenomenon of that we had been driving over time and discussed with many of you that the ideal sourcing from mass and growing prestige faster than mass is still happening and is happening in a positive trend. The second reality is that, however, the way the growth is happening, the amount of growth which is happening online and in E&M commerce is increasing. We had strong growth online in the U.S. Our retail partners are having outstanding growth in their retail with us. The proportion of the growth that goes to retail is increasing. Consequently, the pressure on brick-and-mortar productivity is also increasing because there is less growth in the brick-and-mortar path, and that’s what you refer to regarding the fact that traffic in some malls is not exciting and that these two phenomena are related. It is very important, over time, that we are doing this with many of our retail partners to continue to look at the productivity of the brick-and-mortar and create traffic opportunities and continue to build traffic also in brick-and-mortar in the right way. We believe holiday will be a great opportunity for that.

And then, Lauren, as it relates to your question on Chinese traveling consumers and their impact in the U.S., in the doors that are measured where we know there is a disproportionate amount of tourists, we have seen a disproportionate impact in the first quarter related to softness in volume, so you're correct.

Tracey, you talked about sort of the significant cash balance that you guys have. And the cash flow was very strong in the quarter, and it looks as though working capital could be nicely favorable over the course of the year. Can you talk a little bit about sort of your attitude in terms of looking at the dividend increase, in terms of your ability to really ratchet up the cash return to shareholders as you get what could be, let's say, a 20% or 30% increase in free cash flow this year?

Yes. I think that's a great question. We demonstrated that last year. As our cash flow, our free cash flow increased during the course of the year, we increased our share repurchase activity. So we have, over the last few years, had a good mix of both dividend increases as well as share repurchase increases. Certainly, to the extent that we expect to continue to improve working capital this year, we would increase our share repurchase activity. As I believe I stated on the last call, similar to prior years, we are looking at redeploying our free cash flow into dividends and share repurchase. We announced an increase in the dividend this morning, and certainly, this year, our repurchase activity will increase as our free cash flow increases.

A lot of your competition is non-U.S.-based, so they get the currency tailwind while you have to deal with the headwind. So I’m kind of curious how that potentially impacts your marketing and spending plans for the year.

We plan to continue investing in marketing and activities for the year. That's why we are adjusting our estimates in EPS, to ensure that short-term issues do not affect what we consider long-term investments. This fiscal year, we expect our marketing investment to be higher than last year in absolute terms and to remain relatively stable in percentage terms. The stability in percentages is due to the stronger growth of our well-known advertised brands and those with lower advertising levels, such as La Mer and M-A-C, compared to our heavily advertised brands like Lauder and Clinique. There are mixed reasons for the stability in percentages, but we anticipate that the actual level of spending will increase. We believe this investment will foster growth in the medium and long term.

I have a couple of questions. For the second quarter, can you explain the difference between shipments and consumption in your guidance? I also have a follow-up.

Between shipments and retail?

Retail will be ahead of shipments.

Yes, yes. So and we had a little bit of the reverse in the first quarter. I think I mentioned in our prepared remarks that we expect that, that will cure itself in the second quarter, which is part of the reason for the guidance that we provided in the second quarter.

Yes. And the two markets where retail will definitely be ahead of shipments, in our assumptions, are travel retail and the U.S.

I have a couple questions. Fabrizio, just a point of clarification on the U.S., you mentioned sort of pressures on your brick-and-mortar customers. Just to be clear, you mean by that department stores? Or are you also saying that some of the special retailers, the growth in those channels has slowed somewhat? And then my second question really relates to, now that SMI is complete, really, are there perhaps opportunities for you to accelerate some productivity initiatives that you've been working on to offset some of these weaker macro trends?

Okay. So yes, I was referring to our business in department stores. That's where we have been challenged and we are going to improve our plans and work to go back to stronger growth. But I was referring to our business in brick-and-mortar department stores, not in specialty, which continues to grow very well. Also, the business in freestanding stores continues to work strongly, the business online continues to grow strongly, and that's the picture in the U.S.

And as it relates to SMI, you're correct. We finished the group 4 implementation in August, so we went live in July. The hyper care, this time, was the shortest that we've had. Again, flawless execution by the team, as Fabrizio mentioned. The team, along with many others in the organization, really throughout the globe are now focused on SMI value realization. We've combined what had been our former cost savings efforts and initiatives, which were a separate group from the SMI group, into one group. They're focused on leveraging the capabilities that we have gained in SMI from process and system, the additional visibility to information that we have gained, and really leveraging that to drive cost savings opportunities in the biggest areas of opportunity, which I outlined in our prepared remarks. The focus for us is on continuous cost improvement. So it's not a program, it's actually a habit going forward. As we have spoken about in the last few calls, when we look over the next few years in terms of where margin expansion will occur, we expect less in terms of gross profit margin and more in terms of the expense areas. This is a strategic enabler for us, and it is terrific to be able to leverage this tool over the next few years. We actually, for this year, given some of the softness that we've seen, have identified incremental cost savings over and above the cost savings that we had embedded into our plan and into the guidance for this year as an example.

The reason why we've done this is to defend the marketing investment. That's the key point.

This is Megan Cody calling in on behalf of Steve. We just have one question regarding how much macro non-currency deceleration was factored into your previous guidance compared to now.

Macro non-currency?

Yes. So you guys obviously upped your FX headwind, but kind of since you brought down on your constant currency sales growth guidance, what kind of non-currency-related headwinds do you have baked in there?

So in terms of our updated guidance, about half of it was related to currency and about half of it was related to the macro issues that we outlined for you in the prepared remarks. So it's about half and half.

Yes. That was the question, half currency, half Hong Kong, mainly. On the other half, that is not currency, a big percentage was the Hong Kong and Chinese part.

Can you guys just give a little more detail on an x-SMI shift basis, why were profits in the Americas down as much as they were, down 29%? And I guess, and I'm sorry if you said this already, but, Fabrizio, where in the Americas exactly will shipments lag consumption into next quarter?

The sales in the Americas were flat, as indicated in our press release. It is challenging to address this despite the cost actions implemented to counterbalance the flat earnings. Latin America showed an increase while the U.S. experienced a slight decline, resulting in the overall flat sales. This explains the deleverage in the Americas. As Fabrizio pointed out, we maintained some of our marketing expenditures and crucial investments, particularly in R&D. Regarding the shipments lagging behind retail, this trend will primarily be observed in the U.S.

In travel retail.

I have follow-up questions about the second half of the year. If I use the upper end of your guidance and adjust for the SMI shifts, it appears you are projecting second-half earnings to increase by 15%. I am trying to understand what improvements are expected. You mentioned that you anticipate Hong Kong returning to normal. You also indicated that while you are currently losing market share in travel retail, you expect to regain it soon. Does your guidance include these anticipated share gains in travel retail for the second half? Additionally, regarding the Estée Lauder and Clinique brands in the U.S., does your guidance suggest that these brands will return to growth in the second half or at least experience lesser declines?

Let's start with the U.S. We will revisit your calculations, as they don't align perfectly with our perspective, but your point is valid. It's important for us to improve our performance in the second half compared to the base. We have an easier comparison for that period. Additionally, while most of the profit growth is expected in the second half, the majority of absolute profit will come from the first half. The numbers indicate that around 60% to 65% of the total profit will be generated in the July to December period, compared to just under 40% in the January to June timeframe. We have more investment and cost flexibility to achieve profits in the second half compared to the first half, which underlies our confidence. Regarding improvements, several factors should enhance our performance. As Tracey noted, we do not anticipate the same issues in Hong Kong in the second half that we faced in the second quarter. We are also expecting a positive trend in the U.S. This improvement will come from strong performance in our M-A-C and luxury brands, alongside stabilization or slight improvement for Lauder and Clinique—it's a modest expectation for our two largest U.S. brands, while the rest of our portfolio is projected to continue performing exceptionally well. There are signs of improvement in travel corridors, and given the differences in base comparisons for the second half, we have several initiatives in travel retail aimed at exceeding prior traffic levels. That's our key goal and forms the basis of our assumptions.

Two questions. One, I wanted to revisit the China commentary about the slowdown and then the share gains in the masstige. I'm curious how you quantify the impact from some of those companies that are doing it, particularly given the long-term growth expectations from one of the larger Korean companies over the coming years. So do you know what you need to do to offer competing brands to retake share or to sort of stem what seems to be coming? And then secondly, just go back to Hong Kong. So some of your large prestige beauty competitors didn't call it out. I guess I'm curious like, is there something within your business that's a little bit different than theirs? Do you have more retail doors? Or is there some sort of online presence or more department store presence for one versus the other, maybe some sort of quantification there would be helpful?

Let me start from Hong Kong. Again, as we said in our prepared remarks, the real big impact in Hong Kong started end September, early October. In the course that we saw the initial softening, in fact, we were stable in Hong Kong. But our estimate is the impact that it will have on our business in the entire quarter. Our estimate is based on October observations. Also, I cannot comment on why a competitor didn't bring it up. It is an estimate based on an October observation, which, by the way, was not the first quarter. I think we made it very clear in our report. The second thing is yes, we have a very big business in Hong Kong. We have a very high market share in Hong Kong. Because our business is also strong in Mainland China, half of the Hong Kong business is done by Chinese, so also the market share of the Chinese that come in is very high. As a concept, we have a very high market share in Hong Kong. If Hong Kong gets a cold, we get a bigger cold than many of our competitors. There are other parts of the world that if that part of the world gets a cold, our competitors get a bigger flu. It's a matter of market share in certain areas. By the way, we are very happy to have a very high market share in Hong Kong because it's a super market for the long term, and we actually protect our market share with appropriate investment in the short term because again, we are there for the long term. Answering your second question about Korea and Korean trends, first of all, let me say that we have been seeing this coming for a long time. You heard me speaking about Korean trends as a big idea in the market for quite some time. We recognize Korean trends, the fact that Korea is becoming an exporter of pop culture and trends in the Asian region and possibly around the rest of the world over time. The same way we have recognized for years when trends were coming from America, bringing many brilliant American trends or Californian trends, like our Smashbox brand does every day, to the rest of the world or French trends or Italian trends or even British trends with the Jo Malone brand. We are able to recognize trends when they are, wherever they come. The way to compete with these Korean trends reality is actually to embrace them and to bring them around the world. Our brands, Clinique namely, have been one of the first brands in prestige to bring the BB creams and CC creams to the U.S., which is actually a Korean trend. Smashbox and Clinique today have a very high market share of BB and CC creams in the U.S. There are more trends that M-A-C has brought around the world on Korean looks. By the way, this is one of the key ideas behind M-A-C's success in Asia, is the embracing of Korean looks of this brand, achieved with amazing creativity. That's the first part of the answer is that our brands are embracing Korean trends. The proof that we are doing this well is that, as I just said, we are winning again in Korea. The fact that Estée Lauder brand is growing in Korea and that some of our brands and makeup brands like M-A-C or other skincare brands are winning big in Korea again means that we are using our activities to learn how to compete with Korean brands, leveraging local, relevant Korean trends in Korea so that we can then compete effectively in the rest of the world. The second part of your question was about Korean brands. Yes, there are some Korean brands that are particularly successful in creating these mass masstige players that are also sourcing from us, particularly in China and Korea, and yes, this is a very interesting phenomenon. While the amount of competition in the luxury area for the moment is limited and obviously big in Korea, it’s limited in China and not yet present in the rest of the world. But I think we are ready to compete also with Korean brands in the future, and we are prepared to manage these correctly.