Vince Holding Corp. Common Stock Noble Capital Markets Virtual Equity Investor Conference

Hello, everyone. I'm Michael Kupinski, the Director of Research at Noble Capital Markets and the analyst that follows Vince Holdings. The stock symbol is VNCE. I have an outperform rating. This presentation will be a fireside chat format with Brendan Hoffman, the CEO, and Yuji Okumura, the CFO, and I hope to address most of your questions that are on top of your mind, including questions about the recent OVO transaction. We're going to try and get to as many of these as possible. Gentlemen, welcome. Let's get started.

Thank you, Michael. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. Vince obviously delivered a very strong double-digit Q2 revenue performance, and that's continuing some favorable top-line momentum. Can you just tell the investors what's driving the durability of that full price demand across both of your channels, and how sustainable is that going into the back half of fiscal 2026?

Well, it starts with great product. When you are a mono-brand like Vince, it is all around the product, and our product has just continued to evolve and improve and elevate over the last few years. The customer is rewarding us for that. We feel terrific with how that momentum is going to continue in the back half of the year and into next year. Our direct-to-consumer customers are telling us that they love the product, as are our wholesale customers. Team is doing a great job taking that product and amplifying it across all channels.

It is interesting because it seems like economically, the macro environment, you have a challenging backdrop. We continue to hear that the U.S. consumer is discerning with their spend. How are you thinking about the health of the consumer today, as you are clearly continuing to drive results, but just give us your thoughts about the macro environment.

Yeah. Well, I think quite honestly, we are benefiting from the different dynamics that are going on out there. We play in the contemporary space. It is a little bit more upscale and luxury, yet it is not true luxury. Our consumer has the wherewithal to continue shopping. I think what we are also seeing is that luxury customer who can afford luxury just sees the pricing so outrageous at the super high end, and they just cannot bring themselves to pay those prices. They are gravitating towards contemporary, where we are the leader in the space. I think you see it in the department store world with Bloomingdale's. That is putting up double-digit increases, and contemporary is their sweet spot as well. I think overall, despite the challenges, it is playing to our favor.

That sounds terrific. I know you touched on this, but you have been expanding the Vince assortment beyond core apparel into categories like handbags and tailored clothing, footwear, and accessories, including your drop ship strategy. What are you learning from early customer response, and which categories do you believe could become a more meaningful revenue contributor over time?

Yeah. We're learning that Vince can expand beyond its core apparel categories. We always felt that, but in our prior life, we'd only really focused on shoes. But now with the relationship with Authentic Brands Group that bought 75% of our IP a few years ago, it's their mandate to go out and expand categories and find best-in-class partners to do that. And it's really proved to be very favorable for us. You mentioned drop ships, so we're able to benefit online and in our stores with the different categories without all the inventory risk, because we ship it directly from these third-party suppliers. It expands the reach of Vince. A lot more people are noticing us through these different categories. That was always true with our footwear. I think a lot of people found Vince through footwear.

But now when I walk into, let's say, Bloomingdale's, and I'm in the men's department, and I see Vince on the wall across the store, realize it's the tailored clothing license that's sitting next to names like Canali and other high-end names. I think it's been terrific. It's something that's going to continue to drive business and awareness for us. And we have the right partner in Authentic Brands Group to go out there and find different licensees. We've done shoes, as I've mentioned. We've done well with tailored clothing, handbags, accessories. We're starting again in other categories like home and jewelry and kids and swim, and again, it's just upside for the brand and for the business.

That's terrific, and I know that men's has been a key growth opportunity for Vince. You have a longer-term goal of increasing penetration from roughly, I think, 24% to as much as 30%. How is that business developing, and what are the biggest opportunities to get to that 30%? Is that greater penetration with existing customers, new customers, broader assortments, or additional wholesale distribution?

Yeah, I think the biggest driver has been and will be expanded distribution with our wholesale partners. And in some cases, it's rolling out to new doors in Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom. But in a lot of cases, it's stores we're already in, but we just have a much more expanded assortment. Nordstrom is a great example, where when I was here during my first tenure at Vince, we were in most of the stores, but it might just be a T-stand. Now we have a proper presence there. And so if you want to shop Vince men's at Nordstrom, you're getting a great reflection of the Vince assortment, and that's really supercharged the business. And so, as you mentioned, we think we can get it up to 30% of the penetration, but we also want our women's business to grow.

We are really expecting the overall pie to grow. We think that given that men's has been historically under-penetrated, we can get it up to 30%, and we are excited about that, and we are really excited about the way the collection looks.

Yeah. Brendan, as the product offering expands and the brands gain momentum, are you seeing any meaningful change in who the Vince customer is? Are you attracting a younger or broader customer while retaining the core Vince customer? How does that influence your thinking about product and marketing?

Yeah, I think there hasn't been a seismic change in who our customer is, but we continue to stretch on the boundaries, I think. I do think we are getting a slightly younger customer as we style the product a little bit differently. Focus group of one, my son, who is starting his investment banking career, says it's a big brand of choice now around his office, but that might be a little biased. I think that we do have that opportunity to introduce the brand to a younger customer. I think that's where some of the outlet stores really help. Nordstrom Rack, if you talk to the Nordstrom team, Pete Nordstrom, Jamie Nordstrom, they believe in the Rack equally to their full-price business because they believe that's the way they introduce people into Nordstrom, is through the Rack, and get them while they are younger.