Earnings Transcript for BIRD - Q1 Fiscal Year 2024

Operator: Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Allbirds' First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to Christine Greany, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Christine Greany: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today are Joe Vernachio, CEO; and Annie Mitchell, CFO. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that we will make certain statements today that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements about our financial outlook, including cash flow and adjusted EBITDA expectations, 2024 guidance targets, impact and duration of external headwinds, strategic transformation plans and related plan efforts, go-to-market strategy, planned transition to a distributor model in certain international markets, anticipated distributor model arrangements, expected profitability, cost savings targets, gross margin estimates, product plan timelines and expectations, third-party partnership strategy, marketing strategy and other matters referenced in our earnings release issued today. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please also note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. Also, during this call we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures that adjust our GAAP results to eliminate the impact of certain items. These non-GAAP items should be used in addition to and not as a substitute for any GAAP results. You will find additional information regarding these non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures to the extent reasonably available in today's earnings release. Now I'll turn the call over to Joe to begin the formal remarks.

Joe Vernachio: Hello. I'm pleased to be here today hosting my first earnings call as CEO. I've been in the seat for nearly 60 days, and it's been gratifying to see that our teams are coalesced around our transformation plan, leaning into the tasks at hand and operating with purpose. Today's headline is that we know what needs to be done, and we're executing with urgency. We're pleased to share that first quarter results were in line with expectations, highlighted by our ability to achieve significant improvement in gross margin and narrow our adjusted EBITDA loss despite a 28% sales decline. We're delivering strong execution against the key pillars under our strategic transformation plan, which are

Annie Mitchell: Thanks, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased to report a fifth consecutive quarter of operational and financial progress under our strategic transformation plan. Our first quarter performance reflects strong execution by our teams with revenue meeting and adjusted EBITDA exceeding our guidance. Notably, we delivered significant gross margin expansion and a 4% improvement in adjusted EBITDA on a 28% sales decline. Q1 revenue totaled $39 million, primarily reflecting a few key factors

Operator: Thank you. We will now begin our question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Janine Stichter from BTIG.

Janine Hoffman Stichter: I wanted to ask first off about the Wool Runner 2 and the Tree Runner Go. It sounds like you've had 2 kind of early successful relaunches of prior products. Any learnings from that? Maybe help us contextualize how important those were in terms of overall volume and then anything you've learned from those 2 launches that you'll be carrying forward into your strategy. Thank you.

Joe Vernachio: Yes, hi. Thanks for joining the call and your question. The Tree Runner Go represents a really important step in our icon strategy. It's an example of how we're leaning into the runner franchise and just designed a different version of the shoe with a slightly different use occasion. Not only is it attracting new customers, but it's also really important for us to prove to ourselves that we can add to these franchises and lift the entire franchise and that we have not seen any cannibalization within the franchise or across the line. This is the very early sign that our long-term icon strategy is the right one and is one that will lift our entire business. Now we just need to bring through all the rest of the products that we have in our pipeline.

Janine Hoffman Stichter: Great. And then as you think about marketing support for some of that newer product in the back half of the year, just wanted to clarify. I think you talked about building expense in the U.S. Should we still expect it to be down year-over-year just to a lesser degree? Or would you expect it to start increasing on a year-over-year basis?

Annie Mitchell: Hi, Janine. When thinking about marketing spend and timing, yes, we do anticipate overall marketing spend to be down each quarter and for the full year. What will happen in the back half of the year is we'll start to get some of the savings from the next set of international transitions, but that will be offset by the incremental investment that we plan to make, really putting that towards upper funnel, driving awareness, especially as we bring some of these new products to market later this year and into 2025.

Operator: Next question comes from the line of Alex Straton from Morgan Stanley.

Alex Straton: I've got one for Joe and then one for Annie. Joe, welcome. I know you're new to the CEO role. Maybe talk to us about what KPIs you're monitoring to measure success at the organization right now and as you execute this turnaround. And then for Annie, maybe just on the full year guidance, it looks like it embeds an improvement in the revenue trend from the first quarter level. Can you just talk to us about what gives you confidence there and whether you leave the first quarter with more or less or maybe the same confidence in your ability for Allbirds to return to topline growth next year? Thanks a lot.

Joe Vernachio: Yes, I'll take that first part. Thank you. Allbirds' DNA is to be a full price brand. And I would say one of our number one KPIs is our full price selling. And starting in January, coming off of liquidating our inventory and getting our inventory healthy last year, I'm really happy with the results that we've seen returning back to full price and bringing back our customer as a full price customer. And especially against some of these new products like we just saw with the Tree Runner Go. I would say that's one of our key full indicators that we're watching closely.

Annie Mitchell: Great. And Alex, to your question about sort of the cadence of quarterly sales year-over-year, we anticipate that Q2 and Q3 will be relatively similar to Q1 in terms of year-over-year growth. As we get into Q4, we do expect an uptick. And there's a few reasons or a few puts and takes across each quarter between now and the end of the year. We will continue to close doors largely in Q2 and in early Q3. And in the midyear, we anticipate transitioning the additional international geographies. Both of those will be headwinds on the topline. But as we get farther into the year is when we will be bringing some of those additional products to market, and then again, putting the marketing dollars behind them to support those launches. It's a couple of things dampening the top line and then to be offset by our overall commitment to strategy around product and brand.

Operator: (Operator Instructions) The next question comes from the line of Dylan Carden from William Blair.

Dylan Carden: I guess to some modeling, thanks for all the color on the cash flow statement. Did you in that mention CapEx for the year?

Annie Mitchell: I did not mention CapEx. And the main reason why I did not is that it's going to be extremely minimal. Since we've stopped opening sale doors, that was really the place where we used to spend CapEx, and so it will be almost immaterial for the rest of the year.

Dylan Carden: If you run rate first quarter, is that the right way to kind of think about it? Or would it be even lower than that?

Annie Mitchell: If I were to look at Q1 in terms of OpEx -- excuse me, excuse me, CapEx, excuse me. I think that's fair to use that as a general run rate, yes.

Dylan Carden: Great. And do you anticipate -- you kind of gave the store closures for the year. Do you anticipate at the end of this to have any international owned stores once you kind of reposition that business?

Annie Mitchell: Yes. If we look at our overall retail base internationally, we'll continue to operate stores, specifically in the U.K., and we will continue to look at our overall European marketplace and evaluate the potential for stores in conjunction with our shift to a distributor model in some portions of the EU.

Dylan Carden: Got it. And then last one, OpEx this time. Kind of taking the guidance, $15 million to $20 million steady-state revenue, kind of leaves you at 90% of revenue, $190 million or so in operating expense. I guess as you think of the model, those are probably some moving pieces there, but maybe as you engage more of a wholesale model, what's the right level dollar amount potentially for the sort of business that you envision as far as sort of how you're going to drive leverage? I don't know if you're still sort of providing that 2026 or so positive margin target. But yes, just trying to think about sort of your cost structure as you've kind of radically changed the business here a little bit just from a distribution capacity.

Annie Mitchell: Sure. We feel good about the work that we've done to right size our overall cost structure. You mentioned there's a little bit of timing impact there and there is. For the full year of 2024, we expect SG&A dollars to be down versus prior year. And the expected decline will come from the full year benefit of previous workforce reductions and partial year savings related to 2024 store closures and effectively zero OpEx in the international regions that have transitioned to a distributor model. All of that will then have the full year impact as we go into 2025. We -- go ahead.

Dylan Carden: No, I don't want to ruin your flow. This is great.

Annie Mitchell: And this is a quick reminder. This year, in the second half of the year, we will have more OpEx savings than we do in the first half due to the timing of those store closures and the international transitions. If I kind of state simply when I think about our OpEx, we've strengthened our operating model and lowered our cost structure, positioning the business to grow and achieve profitability at a smaller scale.

Dylan Carden: Got it. And last one for me, if I kind of map out the guide, you gave some sort of cadence there a little bit, but it looks like kind of a fourth quarter inflection in the United States business. And I guess does that just follow from product introduction, marketing spend, kind of -- I don't know what you want to say, sort of a reintroduction around holiday? Is that kind of what you're thinking as far as sort of what might drive that low double-digit declines to maybe something closer to flat? I know comparison is on a strike basis, but --

Joe Vernachio: I think you did a really good job of listing out almost exactly what the back half of the year looks like for us. It's product introductions. It's a little bit of an inflection in our marketing spend and just gaining some base momentum in our business.

Dylan Carden: Excellent. Thanks a lot for all the detail.

Operator: As there are no further questions at the queue at this time, this concludes our Q&A session. I would like to turn the call over back to Joe Vernachio, CEO, for brief closing remarks.

Joe Vernachio: Well, thank you, everyone for joining, and we look forward to seeing you next quarter.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.