Dive Brief:
- Vans dragged its feet yet again in Q2, but growth at The North Face, Timberland and smaller brand Altra helped lift VF Corp. revenue up 1% year on year to $2.7 billion. That doesn’t include the Dickies workwear brand, which the company sold about a year ago.
- The North Face grew 4% to $1.2 billion; Timberland grew 4% to nearly $526 million; and Vans tumbled nearly 10% to about $548 million. Without Dickie’s, “other brands” rose 6% to over $414 million, with the Altra active footwear line up 40%.
- Vans’ global direct-to-consumer sales grew, with wholesale improvement expected next year. Overall at the company, DTC inched up 1% to $915 million, while wholesale fell 6% to $1.8 billion.
Dive Insight:
Vans had some momentum earlier in the year, but Q2 marks the second straight quarter with disappointing results, in what Needham analyst Tom Nikic called an “excruciatingly long Vans turnaround.”
“While there are still green shoots at Vans, and guidance is for trends to improve significantly in [the second half of the fiscal year], the glacial pace of the turnaround continues to be frustrating,” he said in a Wednesday client note. “That said, we believe brighter days are ahead for Vans (eventually) and the rest of the portfolio is strong.”
On a call with analysts Wednesday, VF Corp. CEO Bracken Darrell said that in Q2, retailers were working through their Vans inventory and that orders for the next two quarters are picking up. That will include new styles, with “a pile of new things sitting next to me, and there's a bigger pile coming.” The brand also has opportunity in apparel and women’s footwear, he said.
Overall net inventories at the company were up 7% compared to a year ago to support demand for the second half of the year, VF said in a press release.
“We are super, super excited about Vans. I think we're really on a roll,” Darrell said. “I don't expect that level of innovation and renovation to stop. It's going to keep going. Probably it might even accelerate, but it'll keep going right through the end of this year, on into next year, and the year after that.”
The company’s running brand Altra could blunt the disappointment in the pace of Vans’ recovery. Last year, Altra notched $300 million in revenue and posted robust growth in Q2 “despite a challenging marketplace,” Nikic said.
“The brand is growing so fast that the growth in Altra footwear this year is expected to full offset declines in Vans footwear,” he said.
Also in Q2 at VF overall, lower product costs and currency exchanges helped boost gross margin, which expanded 290 basis points to 55.4%, not including Dickies. In Q2 the company’s net debt was down over $1 billion, a 20% drop from last year.
