Urban Outfitters, Inc. (NASDAQ:URBN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Frank Conforti: Yes. Adrienne, I guess, just to take a step back from the pieces of in-transit comp what was here and what wasn’t here. I think the crux of your question is could we manage to a negative inventory next year and drive positive sales in both Retail segment and Wholesale, certainly for the first half of the year. I think you are being — I think our inventory could be negative and still drive positive sales in both channels as we did have some excess inventory in certain categories and classes at each of the brands.

Richard Hayne: And I just want to be careful here, while I believe what Frank just said is absolutely correct that we could have negative inventory and still have positive comps. We have to be also very concerned and aware of the AUR, the Retail price versus the units as — anybody that’s been in this business for a while knows, you need a certain number of units in the stores to make the stores look full. So the merchants — the core merchants are dealing not only in cost and Retail, they’re now having to look very closely in units.

Adrienne Yih: Okay. And I guess that was my follow-up was, does — so mall traffic, do you expect mall traffic to be negative, flat and conversion to be higher? I’m just trying to figure out if AUR is effectively flattish, units are flattish or down. So how — what’s the back fill? Is it conversion? Is it traffic with footfall has to go up, right?

Frank Conforti: I think when we look at traffic, we look at it in total. And whatever channel the customer wants to shop us, we’re happy to serve the consumer, right? Whether it’s digital or stores, we want to drive traffic to our business. And that always has been and always will be our jobs. And I think about the momentum that both Anthropologie and Free People have in their new acquisition, net new customers going right now as we enter into holiday and then into next year, we feel like there’s good momentum that they have there to continue to drive increased transactions as we look forward next year both going their customer bases. Obviously, Urban is facing a different macro environment and a different level of execution right now.

But certainly, we believe with cleaner inventory and some of the work that the brand is doing right now, there is opportunity for them next year. So with AUR may not be as big of a tailwind as it was this year, I think the growing customer our job to continue to drive traffic both to retail or stores is how we’re thinking about driving positive growth next year.

Richard Hayne: Yes. And to that point, I think that you can take a look at both the Anthropologie and Free People brands and see the difference the Anthropologie brand has excellent store traffic and put up nice store comps as a result whereas the Free People had basically flat traffic in the stores and flat store comps. However, they grow 8% comps and all through the digital. So it’s a little — I don’t think that we’re necessary — I don’t think we necessarily need store traffic in the malls to go up in order to drive nice comps. If it happens and it happens because we’re executing better wow, that’s great. But I don’t think it’s a necessary functions.

Operator: Thank you. Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Matthew Boss: Great, thanks. So Dick, could you just elaborate on current selling trends that you’re seeing in November, your overall view of consumer spending this holiday season? And then, Frank, on the expense front, could you just elaborate on the investments that you cited next year to drive sales? Or how best to think about SG&A dollar growth maybe relative to sales next year?