Tapestry, Inc. (NYSE:TPR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Lorraine Hutchinson: Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to get your insight on the promotional environment. You called out a more promotional — some more promotional selling at Kate. What are you seeing at the Coach brand? And what is your outlook for both brands in the second half and beyond?

Joanne Crevoiserat: Well, maybe I will kick it off and then again, have Todd weigh in on the Coach brand. What I will say is, as we think about the environment that we saw in Q2, particularly this is really a North America focused comment, definitely seeing a more cautious consumer through Q2. We delivered a slight revenue decline which was a continuation of our first quarter trends and the macro environment is challenging. And this holiday, we saw what I would call a more normalized promotional environment versus a year ago when we were — and many were supply constrained. This holiday, we delivered record Thanksgiving week and Cyber Monday sales results, which I think shows that consumers were value-driven and they were more selective in their spending outside of those peak periods.

So it was a reversion to what I would call more normalized traffic patterns in the environment in North America. But even in that context, we just talked about it, we drove higher handbag AUR in North America, which is a testament to the product innovation and the data driven business model that we are applying and we’ve been disciplined in our approach to managing our brands and our business for the long-term that allowed us to deliver higher gross margin, operating margin and profit dollars versus last year in North America despite the softer demand environment and the external pressures we are seeing. So we are continuing to take a prudent approach to running and forecasting the business with an eye on continuing to build our brands for the long-term.

And I will pass it to Todd on Coach.

Todd Kahn: Thanks, Joanne. It is a promotional environment. We know that particularly in the holiday quarter, it always has been. What separated us, I think, is the journey we’ve been under for the last couple of years in focusing on our icons, reducing the tail of our products that drive markdown expectations and liability and leaning in on expressive luxury and leaning in on purpose and leaning in on values. And that is evidenced by our gross margin. So we didn’t have the pressure that we had to deal with, and I feel very good that that’s going to continue. Again, it goes back to this idea that we can separate ourselves when we focus on our customer, focus on our product, create a storytelling around the product that really is compelling. And ultimately, being 90% direct-to-consumer, we have a greater opportunity to control our own destiny.

Operator: Our next question is from Matthew Boss of JPMorgan.

Matthew Boss: Great. Thanks and congrats on another nice quarter. So maybe a two-part question. So, Joanne, could you speak to maybe the cadence of top line as the second quarter progressed. How best to think about trends you’re seeing notably in North America at the Coach brand maybe post holiday? And then, Scott, as we think about gross margin, is there a way to break down the driver of the 50 basis points gross margin upside in the second quarter? And then if you could just quantify or maybe even directionally help walk through some of the key puts and takes for gross margin in the second half outlook, I think that would be really helpful.