Urban Outfitters Inc Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Staples Conference
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Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I'm Adrienne Yih, Barclays Specialty Retail Apparel and Footwear Analyst at Barclays. It is my pleasure to welcome Frank Conforti, Co-President and Chief Operating Officer of URBN, Tricia Smith, Global Chief Executive Officer of Anthropologie Group, and Melanie Marein-Efron, CFO. I always like to give a tiny little bio for those who are new to the story. Frank, you joined URBN in March of 2007 as Director of Finance, and you just moved your way up through the career ranks, throughout your career there. You were CFO before Melanie, and in 2020, were appointed Chief Operating Officer.
Tricia, you joined the Anthropologie, or URBN, in April of 2021 as the Global Chief Executive Officer of Anthropologie Group. Prior to that, you had been at Tillys, and before that, merchandising and many different functions at 25 years at Nordstrom. Then Mel, you had joined in 2013 and were promoted simultaneously to CFO in 2020 when Frank was promoted to COO. The past five years, six years, since you both had changed jobs and since you came on board, have been tremendous successes in terms of the overall business. The business is so different today, and I think I've covered the stock, dare I say, 20-some odd years.
I knew you- I was watching Tricia's face when you said 25 years.
Yeah. You could've just said, "Nice tenure at Nordstrom.
Yeah, exactly. I know. But the company, I remember when we had started covering it, was two brands.
Yeah. It was those two brands, and we were constantly wondering which of them was uptrending, and overall, it was very apparel-centric.
I think today, really what the company has transformed into is the very unique business model of a platform and a portfolio brand. It is not easy to manage a portfolio of brands, all of which are growing.
No. It's not. I think that that has been sort of the secret sauce here.
I was looking at stocks, the performance, and you're one of the few that's up year to date, so that's A-plus there. But also those who are trading within 10% of the 52-week high, and that is an even smaller cohort. I think that speaks to the fact that you moved outside of maybe a shorter-term, un-investable philosophy, and you're now on the radar screen of a long-only investable compounder. So long introduction, but I guess let me start, Frank, we're starting the conference this morning with everybody talking about the macro and the consumer. Oil is back over $100, or darn near close to it. Gas is back over $4. Doesn't seem like things are moving necessarily in the right direction for the back half.
Talk about the health of the U.S. and the European market, beginning of the year to your second quarter, and then as you've seen all the earnings unfold around you, are you seeing any differences in any of those markets?
Yeah. Well, thank you for having us, and thank you all for being here on behalf of URBN. As it relates to the macro consumer, obviously we can only speak to our customer, which, if you believe there's the K shape, we're sort of on the top side of the inflection of the vertical of the K. But from a macro perspective, employment remains strong. Wages are going up. Yes, there's inflationary pressures. They've been there for some time now. What we see is an incredibly resilient and very healthy consumer. We're seeing no price resistance. We are certainly in, and have been in, a strong fashion trend. The bottoms trend, and silhouettes and fabrications, those types of things have changed, but the bottoms trend has remained strong. And our business has remained strong.
I do not think it is very different in Q1 to Q2 than it has been for even longer period of time for us in that our consumer has remained incredibly resilient and very healthy. Like I said, our best gauge of that is being able to look across the strength, as you talked about, the portfolio. Look across multiple brands, multiple geographies, and multiple platforms, whether it be stores or digital. We see strength across all of our modes of sales, and across all of the brands, and it is regular price that is driving it, right? It is not a promotional cadence or creative marketing that is driving it. Obviously marketing is critically important, but I meant marketing from a promotional standpoint. So the consumer, for us, remains in a very healthy position, and we think that is going to continue.
We are excited. Great. Melanie, I am going to ask you about the five brands in different stages of growth.
So we have got the more mature Anthropologie. We have got a turnaround happening in Urban Outfitters.
Go on. You can go through.
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