VRA

Greetings. Welcome to Vera Bradley's first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Mark Dely, Chief Administrative Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome everyone. We'd like to thank you for joining us for today's call. Some of the statements made during our prepared remarks and in response to your questions may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that we expect. Please refer to today's press release and the company's most recent filed Form 10-K filed with the SEC for a discussion of known risks and uncertainties.

Investors should not assume that the statements made during the call will remain operative at a later time. We undertake no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. I would now like to turn the call over to Vera Bradley's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ian Bickley. Ian?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Vera Bradley's first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call. I am pleased to report that our first quarter results demonstrate continued momentum in our Project Sunshine transformation journey to reclaim Vera Bradley's joyful optimism while building operational excellence across the business. We made meaningful progress across multiple fronts that give us confidence in the path forward. Most notably, following a clear trajectory of sequential improvement, our first quarter achieved a return to positive year-on-year growth of nearly 8%, marking our first quarter of overall revenue growth since Q4 FY 2022. This achievement marks an important inflection point in our turnaround, reflecting the cumulative impact of our strategic initiatives and the hard work and commitment of our entire team. Our first quarter performance was not solely a top-line story.

On a non-GAAP basis, we generated year-over-year gross margin expansion of 430 basis points to 51.8% and continued to manage expenses prudently, with total costs down $5.6 million compared to the prior year, or a favorable decline of nearly 15%. This fueled a year-over-year improvement in our operating loss of $10 million or 76%. We achieved these results while reducing our year-over-year inventory by 26% and improving our operating cash flow for the period by $12.7 million, or a 70% improvement over last year. Based on the solid start to the new fiscal year, we are now expecting our year-over-year non-GAAP operating loss improvement to be at least 50%. Although we have much work to do, I am very pleased with our first quarter performance. We still have a tremendous opportunity to increase market share and return the business to long-term sustainable growth, profitability, and cash flow generation.

The improvements we achieved this quarter provide a strong foundation as we continue executing the five strategic pillars of our transformation. Before providing more details on our first quarter performance, I want to personally thank the entire Vera Bradley team for their focus, adaptability, and passion during this pivotal transformation. The progress we are making across our strategic initiatives is a direct result of their exceptional commitment and dedication to reclaiming Vera Bradley's joyful optimism while building operational excellence across every function. Overall sales for the first quarter were up 7.8% versus Q1 of the prior year, with growth across nearly all channels of distribution. We achieved strong sequential improvement in our direct segment with revenue growth of 4.1% compared to the prior year, representing our fourth consecutive quarter of sequential improvement.

This performance is building confidence in our teams and reinforces that the direction we are taking is resonating with our consumers. Our indirect segment revenue grew approximately 26.6% year-over-year, driven by improved performance in our specialty and department store accounts, as well as shipments related to strategic wholesale partnerships, including Target. We are seeing stabilization in our existing specialty retail accounts and stronger sell-through in department stores, notably Dillard's, which is very encouraging. It is important to note our indirect segment benefited from several key account collaborations. Excluding this benefit, our indirect channel growth would have been approximately flat year-over-year, which still represents meaningful stabilization in this channel.

We are seeing significantly higher levels of interest and engagement with both existing and new wholesale accounts, which is further validation that our product and marketing efforts are yielding excitement and interest beyond our direct channels, giving us confidence in the future wholesale growth pipeline. During the quarter, we continued to strategically manage our pricing and promotional cadence to drive sell-through of aged inventory while expanding gross margins year-over-year. We are pleased with the discipline our team demonstrated in balancing inventory clearance with margin enhancement, and we continue to make progress working through the remaining discontinued product from Project Restoration. Now let me provide an update on our continued progress across the five strategic pillars of Project Sunshine. Pillar one, sharpening our brand focus. As I have shared on previous calls, we had lost sight of what made Vera Bradley distinctive and beloved by our customers.

We had become less differentiated in the marketplace and too dependent on promotional activity. Sharpening our brand focus is fundamentally about bringing our unique brand positioning back to life through compelling product, authentic storytelling, and strategic distribution choices. Since taking on a leadership role one year ago, our primary emphasis has been on driving the relevancy of our product offering. Building on the 20% influence we had on the assortment in Q4, we successfully impacted nearly 80% of the spring collection, and I'm pleased with the positive response and strong engagement from customers. In addition to the positive sales trend, this was the first Q1 with year-over-year customer growth in our direct channels since calendar 2021. For back-to-school season and moving forward, 100% of our assortment will be influenced by the work we have done collectively over the past year.

Very exciting considering we are in the early stages of recouping customers across all our channels. Customers clearly responded to our focused product strategies, which drove the results. We leaned into cotton as a material, which is now returning to historic levels of importance. We reintroduced beloved heritage styles and prints in addition to fresh, innovative designs. We focused on more impactful IP collections with more qualitative design and execution. We successfully won back many of our loyal customers and fans, while at the same time engaging with a new generation of customers. Across the business, our cotton material performance nearly doubled versus prior year. In brand, our Winnie the Pooh collection was a huge success, strongly selling through in less than two weeks.

At the same time, six of our top 10 non-IP products were new styles, with the small beaded Roxbury bag at $150 and the original 100 Bag over-indexing with Gen Z customers. Our iconic duffle in both IP and heritage prints, like Cambridge Blue, was a winner across generations. In outlet, colorful, fun beach and spring prints, as well as the Stitch and Honeydukes IP product resonated across cohorts, while the return of Vera Originals re-engaged many of our longtime fans. The product changes we've implemented remain firmly rooted in the brand attributes that define our DNA. Vera Bradley is feminine, creative, cheerful, whimsical, joyful, fun, colorful, approachable, high quality, and smart value.

To amplify the substantial product progress we've made, we're now intensifying our marketing efforts to drive engagement through an enhanced, cohesive, social-first marketing approach, focused brand storytelling with product as hero, and a unified brand framework consistent across all channels, all designed to connect with both our loyal customer base and new audiences. From a creative perspective, under new marketing leadership and leveraging our core brand attributes, we developed and launched a new spring campaign that embodies our return to joyful optimism and authentic Vera Bradley character, including our cut-through Cherry On Top campaign in brand and Strawberry Girl Summer in outlet. This refreshed creative went live across our website, in stores, email marketing channels, and social media platforms, where we saw improved productivity and higher customer engagement on lower marketing spend.

Our Bespoke 100 Bag campaign was also a first, demonstrating our ability to elevate Vera Bradley in social and cultural conversation. Teased on social media, over 30,000 people queued up online for the release of 52 Bespoke 100 bags, ranging in price from $95 to $145, which were sold out in less than 3 minutes. This activation generated significant buzz, built our social footprint, and created a halo impact for our iconic 100 Bag, which we subsequently featured in our Meet the Icons campaign in social and online. Beyond product and marketing, we're also concentrating on our distribution channels to sharpen brand focus and extend our reach. Let me highlight the importance of our wholesale strategy and partnerships within our overall distribution.

While the wholesale landscape has evolved significantly, we firmly believe that thoughtfully rebuilding this channel with the right partners is essential to regaining brand relevance and expanding market share. Under new wholesale leadership, our retail partners are realizing meaningful year-over-year margin expansion, underscoring improved assortment productivity, and healthier full price sell-throughs. Strong performance is being driven by elevated print execution and the reintroduction of iconic legacy styles, reinforcing brand equity and accelerating wholesale growth. In addition to stronger sell-through performance and increased open-to-buys with key department store and specialty accounts, we've also been encouraged by the growing recognition of our brand momentum from leading retail partners. On June 1st, we launched a focused back-to-school Vera Bradley capsule collection in 89 Nordstrom doors and on nordstrom.com for the first time. Of significant note this quarter were the success of our strategic collaborations with Bath & Body Works and Target.

These collaborations represent the kind of high-impact partnerships that drive buzz and expose the brand to new audiences. The collaborations ignited strong user-generated content and customer engagement. Approximately 80% of consumers who engaged with us through these collaborations were new to Vera Bradley's social channels, demonstrating the power of these strategic partnerships in generating brand heat, growing our social footprint, and attracting new customers. The success of these partnerships has also generated additional inbound interest in future collaborations, which we are now exploring. The progress we're making in sharpening our brand focus across product, marketing, and channels validates that we're on the right path, and we remain committed to this strategic direction as a cornerstone of our transformation. Turning to our second pillar, resetting our go-to-market approach.

As we've shared previously, we've been fundamentally transforming how we work to deliver what our customers truly need and value, focusing on six critical areas. Concentrated investments in hero products and bigger ideas, strategic channel assortment alignment, social-first integrated marketing supporting key moments like back to school, enhanced planning and inventory management to drive improved turns, disciplined pricing and promotion governance to enhance margins, and strengthened analytics and business intelligence capabilities to enable better data-informed decision-making. Our objective has been to rebuild the operational engine that converts our creativity into measurable commercial success while fostering a more integrated and agile way of working. In Q1, we saw continued evidence that this reimagined approach is positively influencing our business performance.

The team has advanced its cross-functional collaboration, examining and refining how we operate from product development through buying, marketing, and channel execution, ensuring our products reach customers through their preferred shopping venues and experiences. At the top of the funnel, we've now deeply embedded consumer insights into our operating rhythm through comprehensive customer research and segmentation work, including in-home ethnographic studies, AI digital twins to product test across customer segments during the product development phase, and Gen Z focus groups for co-creating our assortments. These insights are actively shaping product development decisions from silhouette selection to print development, helping us address customer needs and preferences more precisely. Operationally, we've demonstrated greater agility in Q1, leveraging real-time data to optimize promotions, marketing initiatives, and digital communications to meet evolving customer needs.

These data-driven approach contributed to the strong 430 basis point gross margin expansion we experienced in Q1, while also enabling continued inventory management discipline. For Q1, we executed a streamlined promotional plan that was more focused and less complex to implement, which we believe contributed to our margin performance. Our marketing and data analytics teams have been working on building a single connected customer journey enabled by a unified customer data platform, email service provider, and SMS ecosystem. Powered by predictive AI analytics, this connectivity is aimed at driving a significantly higher level of personalized customer engagement across channels. We're also making strides in how we approach our go-to-market timeline. Our design and development teams are now engaging with factory partners much earlier in the process, which is enabling us to streamline our overall go-to-market calendar.

One benefit is that we were able to have our first-ever sample line for pre-market, allowing for account order validation prior to Vera Bradley's investing in buys for our wholesale accounts. Additionally, we've aligned our wholesale buying cycles with standard market practices by transitioning to four seasons from two, bringing us in sync with how the accessories industry operates and making it easier for wholesale partners to work with us. Overall, we're encouraged by the operational progress we've made and the increasing effectiveness of our integrated approach. The foundation we're building through resetting our go-to-market approach with a centralized calendar, aligned milestones, and clear owners for decision-making is strengthening our ability to translate creative vision into commercial results while working with greater speed, efficiency, and collaboration across the organization. Turning to our third pillar, rewiring our digital ecosystem.

Our digital-Commerce business across owned sites and third-party marketplaces represents a significant and highly profitable component of Vera Bradley's overall business. Historically, our various digital platforms have not delivered a cohesive, seamless customer journey. We've been working to fundamentally transform this, building on the organizational changes we made in Q4, where we consolidated the P&Ls of all digital platforms, including DTC e-commerce and third-party marketplace operations. I'm pleased to announce that our new head of digital commerce joined the team on May 4th. This leader brings exceptional credentials and relevant experience, having built significant digital businesses and operations for multiple brands, including Adidas, Talbots, and Crocs. His expertise in scaling digital commerce businesses on existing platforms like Amazon and Target, as well as emerging platforms like TikTok Shop, will be instrumental as we execute our integrated digital strategy and drive future growth and profitability.

Under this new leadership, we're taking a comprehensive approach to optimizing our digital ecosystem. We continue to enhance our e-commerce platform with improved site navigation and an elevated overall customer experience. Our data-driven approach to pricing and promotions has enabled us to operate with reduced promotional intensity while sustaining strong customer engagement and improved margins. We've also deployed enhanced digital capabilities designed to drive deeper customer engagement and streamline the path to purchase. The progress we're making in rewiring our digital ecosystem, from organizational integration to platform enhancements to strategic marketplace positioning, is strengthening our ability to meet customers where they are. Delivering compelling digital experiences drives profitable growth through our digital channels. We were proud this year to have been named the Target Plus 2025 Partner of the Year on their marketplace. Moving to our fourth pillar, Outlet 2.0.

As a reminder, our Outlet 2.0 initiative represents a strategic transformation in how we approach our outlet channel. This initiative is designed to create an elevated customer experience while preserving our smart value proposition and extending our reach to customers in markets where we don't currently operate brand stores. The enhancements we've implemented include a more curated and focused assortment with an initial 35% SKU reduction while strategically incorporating new brand products from our heritage collections and select IP collaborations. We've introduced elevated visual merchandising standards and elements throughout the stores that drive greater category clarity and enable easier customer navigation, including mannequins, light boxes, and brand fixtures that showcase our signature use of color, pattern, and lifestyle storytelling. Our enhanced selling experience incorporates updated training programs and improved in-store tools that enable our teams to deliver better selling support and personalization for our customers.

This transformation is moving us towards a more engaged, curated experience that reinforces brand equity while simultaneously driving conversion and profitability. Under a newly appointed visual experience leader, we're building on the pilot program we launched during the holiday season while maintaining a disciplined test-and-learn approach. We continue to see encouraging results that not only validate this direction but inspire us to be bolder in our approach. Beyond the positive qualitative feedback that we're receiving from both customers and store employees, we're observing measurable improvements across key retail performance indicators. This sustained momentum demonstrates that the Outlet 2.0 experience is resonating with consumers and creating a more meaningful brand engagement, which we believe we can build upon. Looking ahead, we're planning to open four new outlet stores while evaluating enhancements to this strategy as we approach holiday.

Our approach remains measured and data-driven, ensuring we capture learnings from each conversion to optimize the model before broader implementation. Importantly, through Q1, our outlet channel has now achieved four consecutive months of positive comparable sales growth. Finally, turning to our fifth pillar, reimagining how we work. Streamlining our organization while strategically building and investing in new capabilities. We are rebuilding Vera Bradley for long-term sustainable growth and profitability. We are fundamentally redesigning our organization to be future-ready, cultivating new capabilities and making deliberate investments in talent that will drive our transformation forward. In summary, we are encouraged by our first quarter results and the continued progress we are making across all five pillars of Project Sunshine.

The sequential improvement we have achieved over multiple quarters validates that our strategic direction is gaining traction and represents the right path forward to revitalize the Vera Bradley brand, expand market share, and return the business to long-term sustainable growth, profitability, and cash flow generation. We're building a best-in-class team with relevant experience and proven track records that will enable us to move with speed and win in the marketplace.

We're reimagining how we work, fostering a culture of performance, agility, accountability, and strong cross-functional collaboration while leveraging data-driven insights to make intelligent decisions that drive our business forward. We are stabilizing our business and gaining better visibility into underlying growth and efficiency opportunities. While we still have significant work ahead, we are encouraged by the momentum we are building and the alignment and commitment of our entire team. With that, I will turn the call over to Marty for a detailed financial review, and then we'll be happy to take your questions.

Thanks, Ian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. For the sake of clarity, all of the numbers I am discussing today are non-GAAP and exclude the charges outlined in today's press release. A complete detail of items excluded from the non-GAAP numbers, as well as a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP, can be found in that release. We are pleased to report continued sequential improvement in both our direct and indirect segments as our strategic initiatives demonstrate results. We delivered meaningful margin improvements in both gross margin and SG&A leverage, driven by lower promotional levels and disciplined expense management. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, our consolidated revenues totaled $55.7 million, compared to $51.7 million in the prior year first quarter.

Net loss from continuing operations for the first quarter improved 75%, totaling negative $2.5 million, or negative $0.009 per diluted share, compared to $10.1 million last year, or negative $0.36 per diluted share. In terms of segment performance, Vera Bradley direct segment revenues increased 4.1% to $44.9 million from $43.1 million in the prior year first quarter. Comparable sales increased 13.4%, which represents the fourth quarter of sequential comparable sales improvement. Positive growth was driven by improved e-commerce conversion and higher average ticket across all channels, as well as increased traffic in our outlet and full line stores. Total revenues year-over-year were also impacted by 14 store closures since the prior year first quarter. Vera Bradley indirect segment revenues increased 26.6% to $10.8 million from $8.6 million in the prior year first quarter.

The increase was driven by improvements in specialty and department stores, while custom-made order sales enabled continued growth across key accounts. First quarter gross profit totaled $28.8 million, or 51.8% of net revenues, compared to $24.6 million, or 47.5% of net revenues in the prior year. The 430 basis point increase in year-over-year margin rate resulted from favorable sales mix and lower freight and duty costs. SG&A expense totaled $32.7 million, or 58.8% of net revenues, compared to $38.3 million, or 74.2% of net revenues for the prior year first quarter, a reduction of $5.6 million and 1,540 basis points improvement as a percent of net revenues.

The decrease in expense was primarily due to cost optimization initiatives begun in fiscal 2025, which are enabling lower personnel costs, optimized marketing spend, which allows us to reduce and rephase spending throughout the year and reduce lease costs through store closures and renegotiations.

First quarter operating loss from continued operations totaled negative $3.3 million, or negative 5.8% of net revenues, compared to negative $13.6 million, or negative 26.3% of net revenues in the prior year. Overall, we are pleased with the sequential progress we are making across both segments, which reinforces that we are on the right path. Now turning to the balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter totaled $12.5 million, compared to $11.3 million at the end of last year's first quarter. Cash flow for the first quarter, while negative, improved 68% to negative $6 million versus negative $19.1 million in the prior year first quarter. We had no borrowings on our ABL facility at quarter end.

First quarter inventory decreased 26% year-over-year to $73 million, compared to $99.2 million at the end of first quarter of fiscal 2026, representing the company's leanest first quarter inventory position since fiscal 2011. The decrease is driven by improved assortment planning, buy management, and sales performance, as well as the $5.3 million Project Restoration inventory reserve. For fiscal 2027, we continue to plan for sales to be in the range of $255 million-$270 million as we remain focused on stabilizing the direct business and rebuilding our wholesale business under new leadership, while at the same time placing less emphasis on liquidation channels. Although we are encouraged by our sales growth in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, we see consumer headwinds from higher inflation and more specifically, fuel prices, creating some friction we will be working to overcome.

We are raising our operating performance improvement to be at least 50% from 40% due to expected full year gross margin improvement and continued diligence around cost management. We expect quarter-to-quarter improvement to be uneven. In closing, the Vera Bradley team has delivered an excellent start to our fiscal year, demonstrating agility, creativity, and strong execution. While we still have work ahead of us, we are confident in our strategic direction and our ability to drive sustainable profit growth over time. Now I will open the call to your questions. Operator?

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Eric Beder with SCC Research. Please proceed.

Good morning. Congratulations on the quarter.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

Let's talk about back to school. It's a big piece for you guys. Historically, it expands the consumer base by a lot. What should we be seeing and what should your Vera Bradley customers be seeing here as this rolls out, and what are the key touch points that we're going to focus on and we should be focusing on as the rest of us for it?

Thanks, Eric. Great question. Thank you for your comments on the quarter, which we obviously are very pleased with. As you pointed out, back to school for us and the second quarter is really a critical quarter for Vera Bradley. I think we all firmly believe that it's a moment and an occasion that this brand can really authentically own. Together with our teams, we've put a lot of emphasis into the preparation for back to school. Just to give you a few examples, on the product front, I believe we have much stronger backpack innovation, in addition to actually being much better positioned in our core backpack inventory. Last year, despite the strong results we had, we actually had a tremendous number of out-of-stocks in our core colors in the backpacks.

Secondly, we are starting our back to school promotion three weeks earlier than we did last year. We think the back to school momentum is building much sooner in the cycle, and we prepared ourselves for that this year. We also have developed a very strong assortment around personalization as well as an expanded small bag assortment that we believe will particularly resonate with our Gen Z customers. We also are promoting what we are calling teacher totes, and that's primarily in our outlet channel. Beyond that, we're also going to have significant new distribution with the rollout in Nordstrom to 89 locations, which is basically a whole back to school capsule. It's going to, I think, give us significant additional reach with new consumers that may not be able to purchase Vera Bradley today.

I think those are just a few of the examples, I think overall, we are feeling well-prepared and cautiously optimistic. Obviously, we have to be realistic about the overall environment for consumers out there right now, which is definitely we're facing some headwinds. However, we think back to school as an occasion that people are going to need to purchase for, and I think Vera Bradley can position itself as a go-to resource.

Great. Speaking about the outlet and the Outlet 2.0, you mentioned opening. I just want to confirm this. Are you opening four new outlet stores or converting four more outlets to Outlet 2.0 stores?

No, we are opening four new outlet stores.

Okay. What is the potential to expand the Outlet 2.0 beyond the seven to nine that you're testing right now? What do you see as the longer term in terms of their ability to generate better returns than the outlet stores?

Yeah. Great question. First of all, I think if we think about the outlet channel, the biggest opportunity for us is to improve the productivity of our existing stores. Not to go out and open a bunch of new outlet stores. That's something which we are doing very opportunistically and where we see opportunities from a distribution perspective. The real opportunity is really on driving same-store sales growth in our outlet locations. Which are, from a productivity standpoint, significantly off where they were during the peak. With regards to Outlet 2.0, we're continuing to really refine the model. We definitely have seen improved retail KPIs in our Outlet 2.0 stores, but we are still making adjustments and want to have a much higher degree of certainty before really doing a more substantial rollout. I think we're continuing to really take a test-to-learn approach with different things.

I think if we can really hit Outlet 2.0, we'll be a significant contributor to how we close the gap on productivity in our outlet locations. In addition to, I think also enhancing the overall brand image and experience with customers across the fleet, because as you know, one of the rationales for Outlet 2.0 is that we have outlet stores in a lot of places where we don't have coverage, either by wholesale or by brand locations.

Right. Marty, how should we be thinking about the inventories going forward? How are tariffs flowing into all of this? Thank you.

With regard to inventories going forward, we still see opportunities to improve turn, and we continue to focus on working through the Project Restoration inventory that we have on hand. We'll see further reductions with that. Then investing back in styles for the core business going forward, as we see lift off on consumption with those. I think we'll continue to be in this $60 million-$75 million range is the I think where we're going to land from an inventory standpoint. With regard to tariffs, we have applied for refunds just like everybody else, based on what was paid. Year-over-year, we're seeing the absolute rate with the Supreme Court decision drop from 19%-15%, and currently they're communicating a 10%-12.5% rate under the Section 301 tariffs that will probably take effect. We should see less pressure from tariffs on margins going forward, based on what we know today.

Great. Thank you. Good luck with back to school and the rest of the year.

Thank you.

Thanks, Eric.

There are no further questions at this time. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you for your participation.