Olaplex Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:OLPX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next questions come from the line of Andrea Teixeira with JP Morgan.

Unidentified Analyst: This is Shovana on for Andrea. So you have mentioned before and even today as part of your focus for 2023 that you will be continuing to penetrate into premium and prestige salons where you are under in that. As such, can you please delineate or give us more color on what are some of the steps you’ve been taking? And when — what is the response you’re seeing? And when do you anticipate to see some favorable aspects that reflected on your numbers?

JuE Wong: Thank you. Thank you for the question. This is JuE. I will take that question. So first and foremost, we have added resources to our protein to make sure that those premium and prestige salons can be covered. We have also made sure that they have access to our direct-to-pro platform because most of these premium salons do like an automated process to place orders and to really get access to educational content as well as social media content as we see fit. Our head of program has been installed for more than 2 years is a specialist, and this is its know-hows in understanding and driving prestige and premium and key opinion leaders salon. So we have already kind of implemented a lot of the recommendations and the strategy that we believe will set us up right to really address this cohort of specialty and premiums salons.

And it’s — I will not be at a place to tell you exactly when we will see the results, but we are seeing a lot of adoption, especially from a direct-to-Pro app, where people are signing up and wanting to get more education, more understanding about the brand. So that’s a great solid first indication of how this program is working.

Unidentified Analyst: Just a quick follow-up. Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of how many salons you’re seeing or interest level? Or is that something you would refrain from right now?

JuE Wong: What I would just give you is what the Professional Beauty Association data point, points to. While the premium key opinion leaders salons are relatively small. They do represent a very material part of the revenue generated by the salon community. But what is more important is the premium prestige and key opinion salons are the ones that really also set a lot of the trends and the conversations, and they are really also very much a community that really wants more information educational materials. And we are situated and really positioned right at this point to help stand with all of their wants and their needs.

Operator: Our next questions come from the line of Lauren Lieberman with Barclays.

Lauren Lieberman: Great. I guess, first, one thing that you haven’t addressed on the call this morning so far is just the investment in improving forecasting capabilities. So just wondering how that kind of is playing in? This is a very concrete business plan for this year, but as you think about some of the tools we discussed back in the fall about trying to build more visibility into inventory, not just in the U.S., but I guess, increasingly internationally. I was just curious about plans on that front to begin.

Eric Tiziani: Thanks, Lauren. It’s Eric here. I’ll take that one. Absolutely. On our previous call, we talked about the need to improve our forecasting tools and processes. That progress is underway, and we’re happy with the progress we’re making. That includes new tools we’ve put in place in the demand planning space to better link sell-in and sell-through at our key accounts. It’s also new tools we’ve put in place, material resource planning tools through NetSuite. So we feel like we’re on good track there. We did hit within our guidance range in the fourth quarter, and it’s those forecasting tools that’s helping us take the signals we’re seeing from current consumer demand and project it forward into the outlook we’ve provided.