Hello everyone, this is Olga Levinzon, Coty’s Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today for the prepared remarks portion of Coty’s Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings. On Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at approximately 8.15 a.m. Eastern Time or 2.15 p.m.
Central European Time, we will hold a separate live Q&A session on our results, which you can access via our Investor Relations website. Joining me for our presentation are Sue Nabi, Coty’s CEO, and Laurent Mercier, Coty’s CFO.
Before I hand the call over to Sue, I would like to remind you that many of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to Coty’s earnings release and the reports filed with the SEC, where the company lists factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
In addition, except we're noted, the discussion of Coty’s financial results and Coty’s expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of the company's release. Thank you. I will now turn it over to our CEO, Sue Nabi..
Robust growth across all regions, and outperformance in APAC, EMEA and the Travel Retail channel. And, solid growth in our key categories of prestige fragrances, prestige cosmetics, and skin care.
In the quarter, we saw minor impact from retailer restocking in the prior year, with a much more significant headwind from restocking expected in the fourth quarter, as we have previously discussed. The category’s continued strong growth and Coty’s sell-out momentum meant that retailers in key markets continue to hold healthy inventory levels.
In Consumer Beauty, revenues grew 6% like-for-like in Q3 and 7% like-for-like fiscal year-to-date. Our Q3 Consumer Beauty growth was driven by growth across all categories, with particular strength in mass fragrances, skin care and body care momentum in Europe, LATAM and Asia excluding China.
Geographically, all regions contributed to the strong like-for-like growth of 10% in the quarter. In Americas, like-for-like sales grew 11% in Q3 and 13% fiscal year-to-date, with Latin America, Canada, and the regional Travel Retail channel delivering very strong double-digit percentage growth in the quarter.
In the EMEA region, like-for-like revenues grew 9% in Q3 and 12% fiscal year-to-date supported by growth in most markets and the regional Travel Retail channel here again. In Asia Pacific, like-for-like revenues grew 11% in Q3 and 16% fiscal year-to-date fueled by strong growth across many markets and the regional Travel Retail channel.
As we have continued to discuss, we are focused on driving balanced growth across the Portfolio. An important piece of this balanced growth agenda, is that our sales growth is supported by a combination of volumes, pricing and mix.
In Q3, we saw low to mid-single-digit percentage volume growth in both Prestige and Consumer Beauty, supporting mid-single-digits percentage volume growth for total Coty. Volumes also grew low-single-digits year-to-date.
Our modest volume growth in Consumer Beauty included volume growth in the Brazil business and in mass fragrances, partially offset by moderate declines in the rest of the business. In Q3, price grew an estimated high-single-digits percentage, primarily reflecting the carryover from earlier pricing actions.
As we have discussed, we will remain very targeted in any future pricing actions. At the same time, the estimated impact from mix and other was slightly negative in the quarter largely driven by the strong performance in our Brazil business, while mix had an estimated positive low-single contribution fiscal year-to-date.
Our intent is to continue to drive this balanced growth in the coming quarters and years fueled by volumes and premiumized mix, complemented by targeted pricing. I will now hand the call over to Laurent to take you through our financial results..
Laurent Mercier:.
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Ongoing premiumization of the portfolio coupled with the benefit from carryover pricing. The positive impact of easing inflation and continuous supply chain productivity. While Q3 gross margin was negatively impacted by excess & obsolescence expenses, the trend has continued to improve over the course of the year.
With the strong Q3 gross margin expansion, our fiscal year-to-date gross margins grew by 20 basis points to 64.4%. And with further gross margin expansion expected in Q4, even if more moderate than in Q3, we continue to expect modest gross margin expansion in fiscal year ’24.
We remain focused on executing on our multi-part, multi-year gross margin attack plan, as we drive our gross margins to the mid to high-60s in the next few years. Let me now walk you through our marketing investments. In Q3, A&CP investments represented approximately 28% of sales, increasing approximately 1 percentage point from the prior year.
We are continuing to both support core icons and invest behind new launches like Infiniment Coty Paris, Marc Jacobs Daisy Wild and Cosmic Kylie Jenner for Prestige, and CoverGirl Simply Ageless Essence and Rimmel Wonder Bond Mascara for Consumer Beauty.
We continue to expect A&CP to be in the high-20s percentage level of sales in full-year fiscal ‘24 and beyond Moving tour profit delivery for the quarter. Our Q3 adjusted operating income grew a strong 17%, driving 90 basis points of margin expansion.
Our Q3 adjusted EBITDA grew 10% year-over year to $200 million, with the Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin increasing 30 basis points to 14.4%. Our year-to-date adjusted operating income grew 19%, resulting in an 80 basis point increase in year-to-date adjusted operating margin.
And adjusted EBITDA totaled $927 million, growing 15% from the prior year, with the adjusted EBITDA margin up 30 basis points, at the upper end of our full-year guidance. We continue to expect strong income growth and margin expansion going forward.
And, that brings me tour adjusted EPS Excluding the impact from the equity swap, our Q3 adjusted EPS totaled $0.06. Our headline diluted adjusted EPS of $0.05 included an EPS hurt of $0.01 from the mark-to-market on the equity swap due to the stock price decrease in Q3.
Fiscal year-to-date, our adjusted EPS excluding the swap totaled $0.041 and grew by 8% year-over-year. Our headline fiscal year-to-date EPS included a $0.02 per share negative impact from the mark to market on the equity swap. Looking ahead to fiscal year ‘24, I would like to outline certain drivers of our adjusted EPS.
First, we continue to expect depreciation to be in the $230 million to $240 million range. Second, we continue to anticipate net interest expense for the year to be in the mid $200 million.
Third, we anticipate the adjusted effective tax rate for fiscal 2024 to be in the high-20s, including some potential discreet tax benefits in Q4, which we expect to balance the discrete tax hurts we incurred in Q1.
Finally on fiscal 2024 share count, we executed the first tranche of our equity swap agreement of 27 million shares on February 22 at the very attractive price of $7.40, which partially benefited Q3 and will fully benefit Q4 share count. We expect to exit Q4 with a diluted share count of 875 million.
Moving tour free cash flow Q3 is our seasonally weaker cash flow period, with outflow of $234 million this year. This compared to outflow of approximately $180 million prior year. The year-on-year decline in free cash flow in Q3 and fiscal year-to-date reflected to two key drivers.
First, the payment of income taxes for prior years, which totaled over $50 million year-to-date; and second, the timing of working capital payments, pretax, which should reverse in Q4.
Looking to the full-year, we expect our free cash flow to be solid and broadly consistent with fiscal ‘23 at approximately $400 million, as the strong profit expansion is balanced by a step up in cash tax payments related to prior year balances as well as higher working capital particularly as we’ve built up inventory to support our business in the current dynamic environment.
In FY ‘25, free cash flow is expected to grow, on stronger profit and lower cash tax payments. Moving tour capital structure. We ended Q3 with net debt of approximately $3.7 billion.
As a result, our leverage at the end of the quarter was around 3.4 times, up from around 3.1 times at the end of Q2 due to the seasonally low Q3 cash flow coupled with the impact of the share buyback at a cash cost of $200 million. Factoring in our Wella stake, we ended the quarter with economic net debt of approximately $2.6 billion.
We remain committed to reaching an investment grade profile, targeting leverage towards approximately 2.5 times exiting calendar ‘24 and towards approximately 2 times exiting calendar ‘25, which we believe we can reach through our organic free cash flow generation and EBITDA expansion.
At the same time, we also continue to target divesting our Wella stake by end of calendar ‘25. Looking ahead, our strong continued progress on deleveraging and debt paydown support our expectation for our interest expense to steadily decline in the coming years I will now hand it back to Sue to review our strategic progress in the quarter.
Ongoing premiumization of the portfolio coupled with the benefit from carryover pricing. The positive impact of easing inflation and continuous supply chain productivity. While Q3 gross margin was negatively impacted by excess & obsolescence expenses, the trend has continued to improve over the course of the year.
With the strong Q3 gross margin expansion, our fiscal year-to-date gross margins grew by 20 basis points to 64.4%. And with further gross margin expansion expected in Q4, even if more moderate than in Q3, we continue to expect modest gross margin expansion in fiscal year ’24.
We remain focused on executing on our multi-part, multi-year gross margin attack plan, as we drive our gross margins to the mid to high-60s in the next few years. Let me now walk you through our marketing investments. In Q3, A&CP investments represented approximately 28% of sales, increasing approximately 1 percentage point from the prior year.
We are continuing to both support core icons and invest behind new launches like Infiniment Coty Paris, Marc Jacobs Daisy Wild and Cosmic Kylie Jenner for Prestige, and CoverGirl Simply Ageless Essence and Rimmel Wonder Bond Mascara for Consumer Beauty.
We continue to expect A&CP to be in the high-20s percentage level of sales in full-year fiscal ‘24 and beyond Moving tour profit delivery for the quarter. Our Q3 adjusted operating income grew a strong 17%, driving 90 basis points of margin expansion.
Our Q3 adjusted EBITDA grew 10% year-over year to $200 million, with the Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin increasing 30 basis points to 14.4%. Our year-to-date adjusted operating income grew 19%, resulting in an 80 basis point increase in year-to-date adjusted operating margin.
And adjusted EBITDA totaled $927 million, growing 15% from the prior year, with the adjusted EBITDA margin up 30 basis points, at the upper end of our full-year guidance. We continue to expect strong income growth and margin expansion going forward.
And, that brings me tour adjusted EPS Excluding the impact from the equity swap, our Q3 adjusted EPS totaled $0.06. Our headline diluted adjusted EPS of $0.05 included an EPS hurt of $0.01 from the mark-to-market on the equity swap due to the stock price decrease in Q3.
Fiscal year-to-date, our adjusted EPS excluding the swap totaled $0.041 and grew by 8% year-over-year. Our headline fiscal year-to-date EPS included a $0.02 per share negative impact from the mark to market on the equity swap. Looking ahead to fiscal year ‘24, I would like to outline certain drivers of our adjusted EPS.
First, we continue to expect depreciation to be in the $230 million to $240 million range. Second, we continue to anticipate net interest expense for the year to be in the mid $200 million.
Third, we anticipate the adjusted effective tax rate for fiscal 2024 to be in the high-20s, including some potential discreet tax benefits in Q4, which we expect to balance the discrete tax hurts we incurred in Q1.
Finally on fiscal 2024 share count, we executed the first tranche of our equity swap agreement of 27 million shares on February 22 at the very attractive price of $7.40, which partially benefited Q3 and will fully benefit Q4 share count. We expect to exit Q4 with a diluted share count of 875 million.
Moving tour free cash flow Q3 is our seasonally weaker cash flow period, with outflow of $234 million this year. This compared to outflow of approximately $180 million prior year. The year-on-year decline in free cash flow in Q3 and fiscal year-to-date reflected to two key drivers.
First, the payment of income taxes for prior years, which totaled over $50 million year-to-date; and second, the timing of working capital payments, pretax, which should reverse in Q4.
Looking to the full-year, we expect our free cash flow to be solid and broadly consistent with fiscal ‘23 at approximately $400 million, as the strong profit expansion is balanced by a step up in cash tax payments related to prior year balances as well as higher working capital particularly as we’ve built up inventory to support our business in the current dynamic environment.
In FY ‘25, free cash flow is expected to grow, on stronger profit and lower cash tax payments. Moving tour capital structure. We ended Q3 with net debt of approximately $3.7 billion.
As a result, our leverage at the end of the quarter was around 3.4 times, up from around 3.1 times at the end of Q2 due to the seasonally low Q3 cash flow coupled with the impact of the share buyback at a cash cost of $200 million. Factoring in our Wella stake, we ended the quarter with economic net debt of approximately $2.6 billion.
We remain committed to reaching an investment grade profile, targeting leverage towards approximately 2.5 times exiting calendar ‘24 and towards approximately 2 times exiting calendar ‘25, which we believe we can reach through our organic free cash flow generation and EBITDA expansion.
At the same time, we also continue to target divesting our Wella stake by end of calendar ‘25. Looking ahead, our strong continued progress on deleveraging and debt paydown support our expectation for our interest expense to steadily decline in the coming years I will now hand it back to Sue to review our strategic progress in the quarter.
First, we’re excited to announce that we now have eight carbon neutral sites, labs and offices. And, we’ve expanded solar panel use across four sites. We are also continuing to steadily expand refillable formats, including Cosmic Kylie Jenner and Infiniment Coty Paris, and implementing screw neck caps for new prestige fragrance bottle designs.
Additionally, following our breakthrough introduction of carbon-captured ethanol in our fragrances, Infiniment Coty Paris is the first globally distributed full fragrance collection manufactured using 100% carbon-captured ethanol.
And, finally, we continue to make solid improvements in our ESG scores across the leading rating platforms, including ISS ESG, where Coty was awarded Prime Status, putting Coty on par with industry leaders.
While there is still a lot of work to be done, I am very proud of the progress we’ve made in Q3, and we’ll continue to be guided by our Beauty That Lasts sustainability framework. And that brings me tour outlook for fiscal ’24.
Before I discuss our guidance, I want to frame the results we delivered fiscal year-to-date and our expectations for the fourth quarter. The beauty market remains a strong and outperforming category, even as over time, we expect the exceptional growth of the past two years to converge closer to medium term trends.
As you can see, in Q3 the prestige fragrance market growth accelerated sequentially to mid-teens percentage growth. On our side, we experienced a minor impact from restocking last year, with Coty’s prestige fragrance business outperforming the market. Importantly, we outperformed the market in Q3, with our sell-out growing high-teens percentage.
Looking to Q4, we anticipate continued strength in category demand. At the same time, we’re expecting a mid-single-digit percentage headwind tour Prestige shipments and revenues due to difficult comparisons last year, as retailers restocked their supply in conjunction with improvements in our service levels.
Of course, on a sell-out basis we target to continue to outperform the market. All of this sets the stage for Coty’s LFL growth to accelerate sequentially into first-half of ‘25 from the anticipated Q4 levels, even when taking into account the very elevated growth we delivered in Q1 of this year With this backdrop, let me share our outlook for Q4.
We expect low-to-mid single-digit percentage like-for-life revenue growth in Q4 reflecting an estimated mid-single-digit percentage headwind in Prestige from retailer inventory restocking in the prior year.
For reported revenues, in Q4, we expect an FX headwind to revenues of 1% to 2% and a headwind from the divestiture of the Lacoste license of approximately 2%.
We expect the significant easing in COGS inflation to drive year-over year expansion in our adjusted gross margin, even if the improvement is more moderate than in Q3 given the more moderate revenue growth. And we estimate Q4 adjusted EPS excluding the equity swap of $0.05 to $0.06.
For the full fiscal ’24 year we expect revenues to grow at the high end of the 9% to 11% like-for-life range, above previous guidance, and supported by outperformance in Prestige.
Fiscal ‘24 reported revenues are now expected to include a roughly 1% headwind from ForEx, and a 2% scope headwind in the second-half from the divestiture of the Lacoste license. We continue to expect modest fiscal ‘24 gross margin expansion year-on-year, consistent with our growth algorithm.
We now target fiscal ‘24 adjusted EBITDA margin expansion at the upper end of the guidance range of 10 basis points to 30 basis points. We expect fiscal ‘24 adjusted EBITDA consistent with prior range of $1,080 million $1,090 million range as EBITDA margin at the upper end of the guidance range is partially balanced by ForEx headwinds expected in Q4.
We now expect total fiscal ‘24 adjusted EPS to be at the high-end of prior guidance range, excluding the equity swap, of $0.44 to $0.47, implying strong year-over-year growth at the upper end of plus 16% to plus 25%.
And we continue of course to target further reduction in leverage towards approximately 2.5 times exiting calendar ‘24 and towards approximately 2 times exiting calendar ‘25 fueled by our cash generation and EBITDA expansion.
So to sum up, we continue to see a strong and dynamic beauty market, with our diversified portfolio and strong execution enabling Coty to once again outperform. Coty's global and multi-category presence is proving to be a key area of strength and differentiation.
In this attractive backdrop, we are successfully executing on the strategy we laid out over three years ago, with momentum across our core categories and wins in the many significant white space opportunities we are pursuing. And we are delivering a best-in-class medium term financial growth algorithm, active deleveraging, and capital returns.
As we celebrate our 120th anniversary, we are reinforcing our position as a pioneer and beauty powerhouse and remain excited by our many opportunities ahead. Thank you for joining our Prepared Remarks call today. As a reminder, we'll be hosting a separate Q&A session on Tuesday, May 7 at 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time or 2:15 p.m. Central European Time..
Operator:.