ASOS Plc (ASC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first in-person results presentation over to users. Nice to see some familiar faces in the audience, and I know we've joined by a lot more people online. And today, I'm going to start by taking you through a high-level overview and a view on our outlook before Katy takes you through the results in more detail. I'll then come back and talk you through an update on the progress we've made in H1 against our strategic objectives, and then we'll have some time for Q&A. So let me start with the perspective on the results. So I think the first thing to say is that I'm really pleased with the fact that we've delivered revenue growth of 4%, in line with our guidance of mid-single digits, and adjusted PBT of GBP 15 million against what is the backdrop of probably the most challenging time I think our industry has ever faced. We've delivered really strong operational progress despite the backdrop of those industry-wide supply chain constraints, and we've worked really hard to restore our stock profile to optimum levels as we head in H2 and look to accelerate our growth. And despite this inevitable focus on the short-term challenges we faced in the first half, we've also made good progress against our medium-term strategy and we've accelerated change in several areas, which will set us up well for long-term growth. As a result, we approached the second half well set up. And whilst we keep our guidance unchanged, safe the removal of Russia, there was undoubtedly incremental uncertainty for consumers worldwide. I'm also really pleased today to announce that we have published our first annual Fashion with Integrity update, where we have reported on our results in full year '21 as well as our continued progress in the first half of FY '22. This is in line with the commitment that we made at our sustainability CME in September last year, where we committed to publish our full year results annually each year at the half year. Before I hand over to Katy, I'd like to spend some time reflecting on our performance in the first half and, in particular, on the backdrop against which we delivered our first half results. When we set our guidance last year, we could have never -- we can never have foreseen the level of geopolitical and economic volatility that we would, in fact, experience. When we guided for the first half, we knew we were facing into a challenging 6 months as we cycled a period of tough comps, particularly in the U.K., along with demand and supply pressures and significant cost headwinds. But of course, the rise of the Omicron variant in the run-up to Christmas generated incremental pressures, restricting consumer demand a key moment as well as exacerbating supply chain pressures as people isolated worldwide. And then at the end of H1, we were confronted with the reality of war in Europe, which weighed on consumer sentiment and is fast creating incremental cost of living pressures as food and fuel prices escalate. With this as the backdrop, I am really pleased with the revenue growth we've delivered and the adjusted PBT, and this is a testament to the resilience and sheer hard work of all of our ASOSers, but also a reflection on the significantly improved operational grip we now have. And I'm pleased that ASOS has been able to demonstrate a significantly improved capability to manage both short-term uncertainty while still working to deliver the long-term strategy. As we look ahead, we've kept our guidance in place with the exception of the removal of Russia, which has a 2% impact on revenues and a GBP 14 million impact on adjusted PBT. We are confident that the factors we outlined, which should support the acceleration of our growth, are largely playing out as we would have expected, but we are also facing into significant incremental uncertainty, especially as many of the cost of living pressures are still yet to be fully experienced by consumers. What we do know is that we head into this key trading period well set up, having significantly improved our stock profile and availability, and this should support our ability to capitalize on the factors we expect to support consumer demand throughout the second half of the year. It's absolutely clear that the consumer activity is picking up. The holidays are again a part of consumers' lives and that the summer of 2022 will definitely be a summer of events parties and weddings. Whether the sun shines or not, it definitely feels like consumers are determined to enjoy themselves. However, we're mindful of increased uncertainty as the geopolitical risk weigh on sentiment, and rising energy prices and food inflation will weigh on discretionary spend. The next 3 months will be telling as we see how these factors play out on consumer discretionary income. I'll now hand over to Katy, who'll take you through the key elements of our results.

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'll quickly cover our key financial results before taking you through the detail on the key drivers behind these numbers on the upcoming slides. We delivered revenue of just over GBP 2 billion for the first half, up 4% year-on-year in constant currency, which, as Matt said, is in line with the guidance we set out at the start of the year. Gross margin stepped back 190 bps versus last year, which I'll cover later in the presentation. Turning to overall profitability. While adjusted EBIT margin stepped back 460 bps, we did record an adjusted profit before tax of GBP 14.8 million. This reflects the expected nonrecurrence of the GBP 49 million COVID benefit seen in the prior year. Adjusting items will be covered on a later slide, and totaled GBP 30.6 million for the half. Our CapEx spend was GBP 86.5 million, up circa GBP 20 million versus half year last year, and we remain on track to spend circa GBP 210 million across the full financial year. Finally, we ended the half with a net debt of GBP 62.6 million. To give further context to our half year numbers, over the next 3 slides, I will cover 3 of the key operational elements that have impacted performance, starting with stock availability before turning to the launch of Lichfield and changes in consumer demand patterns. As we have mentioned, our stock availability was adversely impacted by the global supply chain constraints, impacting H1 sales growth. This is best demonstrated by our views availability metric over the period. We define views availability as the percentage of stock available on the product pages viewed by customers. This is an important metric for us as it indicates how effectively we can service customer demand across all of our markets and categories. The graph on the left of the slide shows how full price views availability has tracked total group level since the beginning of FY '21. As you can see, views availability has remained below our target level for the first half as supply chain disruption drove longer lead times for deliveries, which, in turn, led to backlogs developing at our fulfillment centers as stock arrived outside the planned schedule. This has, in turn, weighed on growth as we have not been able to fully service the available demand during this time. Just to note, the drop over peak is the usual trend for that period, driven by the high sell-through rates during Black Friday and the Christmas period. The same trends can be observed on the graph on the right, which focuses on full price views availability for dresses. This has been a particular challenge for sales in H1 as we've seen the relaxing of restrictions and the recovery of going-out mix across many of our key territories, which we have not been able to fully service. However, pleasingly, we have seen sustained improvement in views availability over the last few months, reflecting the improvement in our underlying stock profile, and we are in a substantially better position as we enter H2. The expansion of our fourth fulfillment center in Lichfield has progressed really well, with the scale up progressing ahead of expectations. Lichfield contributed to peak ahead of plan, enabling us to increase our stock holding and optimize availability. It also performed ahead of the original capacity expectations, adding 1 million units more capacity than we had originally planned, which also translates into higher throughput. Our automation continues as planned and remains on track for completion at the back end of FY '23. In the first half, we saw sales mix return to the more traditional balance of categories with going-out wear sales growing 15% year-on-year, as you can see on the graph on the left. As a core category for us, this is particularly pleasing. We expect demand for going-out wear to continue to increase in the second half, which we are well positioned for given our improved stock availability. The shift in sales mix into going-out wear comes with an associated increase in the returns rate. As you can see on the right, returns rates are trending back towards pre-pandemic levels. We expect this to continue. However, the pace and extent of this normalization remains uncertain. As an example, we have seen a higher step-up in returns rate in February than anticipated. However, we saw a similar dynamic in October where the returns peaked and then dropped off again. Turning now to our results by region. Despite industry-wide supply chain constraints impacting stock availability and newness across all markets, the U.K. and U.S. returned to growth of 8% and 11%, respectively. In the U.K., this was driven by strong peak trading across November and December as well as good performance across the Topshop brands, Face + Body and sportswear, reflecting good customer engagement with the full ASOS offer. Notably, the half and particularly P2 saw the U.K. cycle a period of lockdown, where customers were forced online by the closure of physical retail and hospitality venues. Against this comparative period where sales grew 39%, further growth in both sales and customer numbers was particularly pleasing whilst increases in frequency and our premier customer base in the U.K. are also strong indicators of a more engaged and loyal consumer. We also saw growth across visits, orders and conversion during the period, while ABV stepped back slightly due to increased markdown and a higher returns rate. We are pleased with our U.S. sales growth, which was undoubtedly constrained by supply chain disruptions and port congestion, which, in turn, impacted our ability to fully service the available demand. Performance strengthened throughout the period as we saw strong promotion mechanisms, drive sales over peak and specific events such as the Super Bowl. Active customers were up 6% versus last year while Premier customers were up 58% versus last year and 17% versus the start of the current year, reflecting the improvement of the premier offer in the U.S. Sales were also supported by the Topshop brands, which grew triple digit versus last year, and ASOS' wholesale business, which was expanded in the period to include ASOS Design as well as Topshop and Topman product. EU growth of 1% reflected both supply chain constraints as well as the consumer uncertainty linked to the Delta and Omicron waves and the associated restrictions that arose during and persisted throughout much of the period. Within the EU, performance in Germany remains solid with growth in the mid-single digits, while in France, sales declined as we observed customers returning to the high street resulting in lower visits. As we approach the end of the period, we saw demand in Germany increased, in line with the government's announcement that the easing of COVID restrictions will begin in March, with traffic, basket metrics and customer numbers all benefiting as a result of this as well as good performance over the sell days period in France where our localized approach to discounting resonated well with customers. Rest of World continued to decline year-on-year as delivery lead times constrained growth. For example, in Australia, the average time for express delivery was 6 days in H1 compared to our fastest delivery of 2 to 3 days. As announced in the RNS published on the 2nd of March, sales have been suspended in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and is expected to have a circa full year 2% impact on sales and circa GBP 14 million impact on adjusted PBT for the year. Taking a more detailed look at gross margin, which has declined 190 bps year-on-year, the main drivers of the decrease are consistent with P1 as increased markdown activity to clear spring/summer '21 stock and inflated freight and duty costs have continued throughout January and February. P2 gross margin year-on-year improved in part due to softer comps and pricing benefits from the low to mid-single-digit increases communicated as part of our P1 trading statement, which began to take effect in P2. Improvements in buying margin throughout the half were driven by sourcing benefits and supplier negotiations in the Topshop acquisition. From an outlook perspective, although we expect gross margin trends to improve in the second half of the year, we now expect gross margin to be between 100 to 150 bps down for the full year. This is primarily driven by 2 factors. Firstly, while we have locked in sea freights contractually for the balance of the year, these are at a higher rate year-on-year. And secondly, given the potential impact in H2 on consumer sentiment and discretionary income, we do expect a sustained level of promotional activity in the market. Now turning to the remainder of the P&L. Excluding the impact of adjusting items, we have seen increases across the majority of cost lines, but particularly in supply chain and marketing. Taken together, supply chain costs, being distribution and warehousing, have increased 190 bps year-on-year, reflecting the expected nonrecurrence of the COVID-19 tailwind, which drove a 49 benefit last year. In addition, within warehouse costs, wage increases and the opening of Lichfield as a manual facility have driven further increases in costs. The increase in wages is expected to be permanent. In contrast, work is currently underway to automate Lichfield, which means that the cost drag from manually processing orders at the site instead of Barnsley, which is highly automated, should drop away once automation is completed in late FY '23. As announced at the Capital Markets Day, a key part of ASOS' strategy is to invest in marketing to drive brand awareness. This investment, which is focused on broad reach marketing, begun in H1 despite the cost pressures we have faced elsewhere in the P&L and drove a 50 bps increase in marketing costs. Within other costs, we have continued to focus on removing costs from the business. Operational excellence initiatives during H1 have successfully targeted amongst other areas, savings across procurement and technology spend. Depreciation has increased versus last year due to truly global retail system going live in March last year and Lichfield being launched in August 2021. Finally, the 40 bps increase in interest cost has been driven by the interest expense on the convertible bond, which was issued in April 2021 and will annualize during H2. As mentioned in the results summary, adjusting items for the half totaled GBP 30.6 million. GBP 5.5 million of this was incurred as part of our transition to the main market of the London Stock Exchange, which was completed in February. And GBP 7.9 million relates to our acceleration of ASOS Reimagined, which in H1 is focused on the reorganization of the commercial function and an expansion of the executive leadership team. These were both guided in our P1 results announced in January. Consistent with the prior year, we continue to treat the amortization of intangible assets acquired as part of the Topshop acquisition as an adjusting item, consistent with market practice and to ensure comparability within the industry. Furthermore, there was a release of the provision for employee and other costs that were made as part of the acquisition and totaled GBP 6.4 million, which has been treated as adjusting consistent with the approach we took off for the one-off and acquisition and integration costs in FY '21. And lastly, the Leavesden impairment. For clarity, this is a one-off noncash impairment charge relating to part of ASOS' office space at Leavesden, which has been vacated and sublet to third parties. In line with accounting standards, despite the incremental cash flow from the lessee payments, the change in the use of the asset triggers an impairment review and the change in the value and use of the assets and has resulted in the right of use assets and associated fixtures and fittings relating to the sublet spaces being written down to their recoverable amount. In terms of our full year expectations for adjusting items, we expect no further costs relating to the main market transaction, Leavesden impairment and Topshop one-offs. However, we expect a further GBP 10 million to GBP 15 million of costs relating to ASOS Reimagined, and our full year number of amortization of the acquired intangibles will be circa GBP 11 million. At the end of the half, we are in a net debt position of GBP 62.6 million. As a reminder, due to our stock by profile, H1 is normally the lowest net cash position of the year. The decrease versus FY '21 year-end has mainly been driven by lower profitability in the first half of the year, which has been covered on the preceding slides as well as the working capital outflow. While working capital is always an outflow in H1, this year, it's more exacerbated due to the accelerated intake of stock ahead of spring/summer and extended storage capacity due to the launch of Lichfield at the end of FY '21 as well as the extended lead times affecting FOB and interwarehouse transfers, impacting stock that's not available for sale. While we talk about cash flow, I'll also touch on inventory levels. As you will have seen, inventory levels are up circa 40% on the year with additional stock driven by the impact of the network of the supply chain constraints, in particular, lead times, which requires higher stockholding and the cost of freight and stock. We are also carrying additional stock associated with the ramp-up of Lichfield. Combining these factors -- combined, these factors drive circa GBP 150 million of the inventory balance at the half year. Of the remaining amount, the proportion is driven by an increase in value per unit due to the mix of product as well as deliberate effort to bring stock in early for the start of the season. If you take all of these factors into account, salable stock cover is broadly similar to last year. CapEx of GBP 86.5 million also represents a step-up from last year, mainly driven by spend on automation of our sites in Atlanta and Lichfield as well as increased investment in technology centered around data capability, payment platforms and commercial systems. In terms of where we expect cash flow to land at year-end, given the impact of Russia, we would expect working capital outflow associated with the rebalancing of stock.

Thanks, Katy. Before I take you through an update on our progress in the half against our strategic objectives, I thought it worth us taking a moment to recap on why we believe we are well positioned to capture the long-term opportunity ahead of us despite short-term volatility. As hopefully you all know by now, our vision is to be the go-to destination for fashion-loving 20-somethings, and no one else actively and exclusively focus on this segment of the market. And that allows us to do 20-something fashion better than anyone else. Given our strong heritage of catering to 20-somethings, we remain well positioned to capitalize on the huge opportunity ahead of us. We've built an extremely in-depth understanding of our customer, a customer which spends 50% more of their disposable income on fashion than older consumers. And our unique combination of own brand and partner brand offer is highly relevant and differentiated for those consumers, which means they shop more frequently with good basket sizes. And this, in turn, drives favorable economics for ASOS and its shareholders. To support our unique offer, we've built a strong, scalable global platform and relevant infrastructure to leverage in our next phase of growth. And there remains a huge opportunity ahead of us with a TAM of GBP 430 billion in the markets in which we operate. And as you will hopefully remember, we have multiple levers for future growth and margin improvement, and we've already begun to execute this plan with a new level of discipline. You'll recall from our Capital Markets Day in November that our medium-term commitment centered on leveraging our platform and capabilities, amplifying our winning offer and doubling the size of the U.S. and Europe as we drive international expansion. And whilst this plan was never intended to be delivered in just 6 months, I will talk you through the key progress we have made on unlocking our medium-term potential today. Firstly, as part of our work to leverage our platform and capabilities, our first focus was on expanding our platform through the rollout of flexible fulfillment. As discussed at our P1 trading update, we rolled out our Partner Fulfills program in the U.K. in partnership with Adidas and Reebok in early November. This pilot stage of the program supplements our existing stock profile by offering additional availability of our existing range where we have stocked out, driving incrementality on sales. The first phase has proven successful, and the customer experience is working well. In parallel with this pilot, we have continued to make good progress in terms of the platform capability development. And specifically, we've developed the capabilities to take on Adidas product earlier in the life cycle even before we have received the stock in our warehouses. And we've been able to enable the first iteration of our range extension, which we are piloting currently with up to 250 new styles that aren't currently available on asos.com going live this month. In the half, Partner Fulfills accounted for circa 8% of our Adidas and circa 7% of our Reebok gross sales in the U.K., all of which we believe is incremental. And we sold over 77,000 units through Partner Fulfills. In the second half, we will expand our Partner Fulfills Adidas range in the U.K., and this will include the addition of more styles that are not currently stocked on ASOS.com, providing customers with even more choice. And we are also actively working on and remain on track to launch Partner Fulfills in select European countries by the end of FY '22. We also expect to onboard additional brands into the Partner Fulfills program by the end of the financial year and are working on new integration partners, which will open up a larger number of brand opportunities for the next financial year. Overall, I'm really pleased with the progress we've made, and everything we've seen so far suggests that the potential opportunity in this area is as significant as we initially thought. We also continue to deploy other changes in our technology to enhance our customer offer and have made improvements specifically through personalization, experimentation and tailoring of category experiences. There's a lot of detail on the slide, but overall, what we are seeing is that our increased level of experimentation is driving an ever-improving experience for our customers, one that is becoming more personal, more relevant and more engaging. There is much for us still to do, and we continue to invest to build our capability, but I'm pleased by the progress we've made so far. At the Capital Markets Day in November, we spoke to you in detail about the importance of our premier offer in driving increased customer loyalty and improved customer economics, with Premier customers in the U.K. shopping 5x as frequently as nonpremier customers. The results of price optimization and the launch of 2 Premier parties has seen a step-up of 24% in Premier subscribers across the group on the year, showing that customers are engaging with more parts of the ASOS offer, which we're really pleased to see. We saw the largest step-up in the U.S., followed by the Rest of World, which is supported by the resumption of the Premier offer in Australia. Growth in the U.K. was supported by the Global Premier party in October and the U.K. and Ireland Premier date in February. Turning now briefly to our brands. The Topshop brands have continued to perform well on the ASOS platform as we approach the anniversary of the launch on the 22nd of February. We've seen sustained triple-digit growth of nearly 200% on these brands, comparing against sales pre-acquisition on the ASOS platform. And even more pleasing is that customers who shop Topshop and Topman are highly valuable with higher frequency than our average ASOS customer and greater engagement with other aspects of our platform. And incredibly, but perhaps not surprisingly, given how popular we know they are, Topshop Jeans are also the #1 jeans brand on the ASOS platform. As we move into the second half of our year of owning these -- the second year of owning these iconic brands, we will drop 400 new styles on site every week, continuing to maximize our speed to market and elevating and differentiating the product. This will be supported by our new brand-led commercial structure, which I'll talk about in a second, which will enable us to unlock further opportunity. As we look towards the key categories we are focusing on, I also wanted to spend a moment on sportswear where, despite tough comparables and supply chain constraints, sales stepped up 12% on the half. Our sportswear sales have been supported by a unique female first fashion ends approach to the category. And I'd like to share with you an example of this approach through our collaboration with The North Face. We have worked closely with the team at The North Face over the past few years to cocreate best-in-class product aimed at serving an untapped fashion-loving 20-something female consumer with fashionable sportswear. And I think this is a great example of where we can bring our unique capabilities to bear to benefit our partners working in true collaboration to expand the range and fashionability of their products offer. This has involved from all other parts of our commercial team from design to the studio, delivering a truly differentiated offer. And you can see on the chart the results of this. Through our collaboration with The North Face, sales have significantly grown in recent years. And while sales have stepped up overall, what is particularly pleasing to see is that shift in gender mix of sales from 85% menswear in H1 '29 (sic) [ H1 '19 ] to 50:50 today, a unique achievement in a traditionally male-dominated category. As we evolve our dedicated partner organization, we will be able to deliver this for more brands, adding value to them, to our consumer and to ASOS. The build-out of our local operations has also progressed well. In the first half, we have appointed more senior trade heads for the U.S., France and Germany and Southern Europe. And in the second half of the year, we will focus on localizing our assortment with a particular focus on the U.S. where ASOS EDITION, ASOS Luxe and our plus-size range resonate well, and we will accelerate the rollout of more dedicated options. At the Capital Markets Day, we presented on our objective to build our awareness and consideration among U.S. and European consumers, and we embarked upon a broader reach of marketing activity and support of this in the first half. As we talked about at the time, the first phase rolled out on a test-and-learn basis, targeting 18- to 34-year-old females, and this was rolled out across multiple platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Hulu and Roku across a number of core test areas within the U.K., U.S. and France. The feedback we've had and the learnings we have received have been incorporated and iterated into the next round of testing, which is rolling out already. We will continue to test and learn, but we currently expect the scale-up of our broad reach efforts to take place from the fourth quarter onwards. However, we will need to do this in a deliberate manner, continuing our test and learn approach and ensuring we balance this against the reality of the consumer environment as it evolves. In November, we also successfully debuted our first drop in partnership with Nordstrom, a physical product, which featured an edit of ASOS Design, ASOS EDITION and ASOS Luxe ranges in 2 physical stores. In February, we further extended this offer to 2 additional retail concepts, providing customers with the opportunity to touch and feel everything at The Grove in Los Angeles, with a dedicated Glass Box and also a pop-up in store with 120 options available across both womenswear and menswear. The ASOS Glass Box concept featured a carefully curated assortment of ASOS styles, along with a wall-to-wall digital screen with featured content to inspire customers as they browse the selection of our product. The pop-up at The Grove featured a dedicated retail experience within the Topshop by Nordstrom store, and this featured a broader range of styles, merchandise from a selection of -- merchandise with a selection of other popular brands from Nordstrom that customers know and love. I'm pleased with our progress so far, and it is really great to be able to deliver an ASOS experience in a physical environment in store for the first time with Nordstrom, and we look forward to continued progress in the second half where we will expand to a further drop and edit of ASOS brands in 10 stores and online. As I mentioned earlier, today, we also published our first annual update as part of our Fashion with Integrity 2030 program, which reports on our progress for the full year '21. We last updated you much of our full year '21 progress in September at our Sustainability Capital Markets event, but we've continued to make headway across the goals underpinning the program since then. And some of the highlights include a reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions per order of around 59%, a 42% reduction in transport emissions per pound of profit. We've also mapped 100% of all our Tier 1 to Tier 3 ASOS own branded suppliers, and we are currently focused on mapping our Tier 4 suppliers with 89% of them currently engaged in this process. And we also launched a new package of policies to provide crucial support to colleagues going through health-related life events. As well as making progress on a number of focus areas, we have begun to optimize the business around 3 areas: delivering a seamless end-to-end product journey, having a fully optimized customer experience enabled by best-in-class data and digital product capabilities and delivering that experience in a tailored way globally. This will require fundamental changes to the way we work. The commercial changes I will talk you through shortly are the first step in creating a seamless end-to-end product journey, but we're also working hard to improve our end-to-end supply chain visibility and capability, and there's much more to come in this area. Our product journey today is good, but we can evolve it, improving our speed, agility and relevance. As we look to enhance our customer experience, we've recognized that our capabilities are not yet where we would like them to be. And so we've created 2 new roles on the executive to ensure we have the right level of focus and capability, a Chief Data Officer and a Chief Digital Product Officer in support of the elevated focus on these 2 areas. We've also begun to increase the size and scope of our dedicated geographical teams, but the size and capability of these teams will only increase further as we continue to build our model out. We are focusing on the U.S. at the moment, as you heard earlier, but we will apply what we learned to other geographies around the world. We are making good progress on these changes, but to be clear, this is a multiyear change across the organization. The last 6 months have seen a significant amount of change in this area, all in support of our strategy, but we know there is much more for us to do. In terms of moving our product offer on, we've begun a fundamental overhaul of our commercial model in support of the objectives we laid out at the Capital Markets Day to unlock the growth of our own ASOS brands, our partner brands, and to support our international expansion. This change is centered around the creation of a product-centric organization with dedicated teams focused on our own brands, partners, key categories and geographies. Previously, commercial was organized into 2 key divisions, womenswear and menswear. And within each, there were teams of buyers, designers merchandise who worked across all of the brands and geographies. What we are creating now are separate teams who will work collaboratively across buying, design and merchandising and sourcing in support of a particular great brand. We've also created a dedicated team focusing on our partner brands and clear geographical ownership. This means we are better prepared for future growth and have a natural way to add new brands, product options and channels or geographies. In turn, this approach will create more dedicated autonomous teams that should enable faster time to market by removing hierarchies and simplifying decision-making. It should also help us to provide a better, more seamless service to our partner brands as we pull them apart from our own brands as well as allowing even more resources to be dedicated to tailoring our experience for each territory. While this will take time to effect, we are extremely excited about what this can do for ASOS. It is the most fundamental overhaul of our commercial organization that we have ever, implemented, and we have consulted widely, looked at best-in-class and are confident that this will set us up for the future. We've also reassessed our data capabilities and data strategy and are looking to accelerate our efforts in this area to ensure data, data science and insights are pervasively woven into the fabric of ASOS to continue to enhance consumer value. Through this, we have defined 4 key changes, which will accelerate our efforts in this area. And these are: Setting up a dedicated data organization led by a Chief Data Officer with embedded data product management capability, improving our data governance and focusing on quality and ownership to drive improved business operation, evolving our data architecture to enable even greater agility and speed of development and continuing to scale our investment in data engineering and use case. These changes may well seem obvious or even overdue, but they are necessary and we were proceeding with them at pace. Let me now briefly summarize before we turn over to Q&A. We have delivered results in line with guidance despite a challenging environment, and we enter the second half in a materially better stock position whilst looking forward to the return of many of the traditional drivers of demand in the second half. We know there is heightened uncertainty in H2, but I'm still confident in our ability to deliver continued progress and accelerate our growth. Today, I've also spoken to you about how we've delivered on our strategic commitments, e.g., with the launch of Partner Fulfills. But as well as these commitments, hopefully, you've also got a sense of the extent of the change we are driving in the organization to set ourselves up for the long term, including how we are reorganizing our executive leadership, our commercial teams and how we are implementing our data strategy. These are essential changes in support of the delivery of our strategy centered on changing how the company delivers its outcomes. And so whilst H1 has been a challenging 6 months, I'm pleased with our progress to date, both operationally and strategically. I'd now like to open up the session to Q&A, and we're going to start with questions in the room. If you can raise your hand, someone will bring you a mic. And if you can say your name and institution, that would be helpful.

It's Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Paribas. So the first one, I'm afraid it comes in several parts, but effectively, what gives you confidence that you will see an acceleration in sales in the second half aside from the fact that a comparative basis is not as tough? Because I wonder whether you can sort of give us any color on current trading, how much you think that the availability problem was actually held back your ability to drive demand in the first half given that traffic wasn't exactly strong. And also, I suppose all wrapped in that, could you give us any kind of more color on the marketing effectiveness that you've seen through the broad reach campaign. That's question one, all related to confidence in the first half.

Shall I answer that before...

Yes.

Otherwise, I'll forget it and I won't be able to remember what question 1 is. So I mean, I think, what -- the things that always gave us confidence were around the expected uptick that we -- in consumer activity associated with our product. And everything we're seeing when you -- I mean, when you walk around London through to what we're seeing in terms of what we're seeing on our site right now is that people are absolutely 100% buying into the going-out categories, which have traditionally been a core strength of ours. And even though it was constrained by availability, we've just done our biggest ever season on dresses ever. So I think we're confident of the demand drivers, and we're also confident that we have got an appropriate stock profile to meet that demand. And it's definitely true to say that we lost sales in the first half because we didn't have an availability of the optimal product that we would have liked. So I think if you kind of look half-on-half, my expectation was you should see a demand pickup. The world is a very different place in April 2022 to where it was in September 2021, but also we're much better able to service that demand. I think the note of caution that we're applying to that is clearly around the effect of cost of living pressures on disposable income. And I think the challenge there for all companies, but definitely for us given we're announcing today, is that many of those are only really starting to impact consumers now. And therefore, it's very hard to read what the impact of those is going to be because they haven't been fully felt by consumers yet.

And the second question is related to sort of the full year guidance, obviously, implicitly the second half guidance. So you're now flagging that gross margins are going to be a bit softer than you previously anticipated, and I guess that means you have to offset that more with greater cost savings than you previously anticipated. Where do those incremental savings come through from? And with respect to the sort of the reversal of COVID tailwind benefits, you mentioned the GBP 49 million. It didn't look like returns rates had fully recovered through the first half versus pre-pandemic levels. So does that GBP 49 million have gone to 0 and then becomes a headwind ahead? Because you get the returns rates fully normalizing, plus incremental costs that you know you didn't have before. How should we think about the sort of the bridge on...

Yes. Let me -- I might ask Katy to comment on returns, but let me just drill on the overall COVID benefit. I guess we've seen in -- most of the COVID benefit, we always attributed to returns rates that weren't associated with product mix, i.e., consumer behavior. And that is, in effect, almost completely unwound now. So I guess what we're seeing is a neutrality on returns rates. I guess what we are seeing is elevated freight rates. I guess you could consider that to be a COVID disbenefit because it is actually a function of COVID. But we don't -- I guess we're putting that in a different bucket in the way that we describe it. And obviously, our guidance encompasses the freight rates. I mean, in terms of the -- your comments around gross margin, the -- clearly, as you've seen in the results that we've outlined, we've worked really hard on cost mitigation as to the tune of GBP 50 million worth of cost mitigation in the first half. A number of those activities will deliver benefit in the second half as well. And obviously, we will keep looking to mitigate the cost that we see. So we will continue to manage our cost base in a deliberate and agile manner, I guess, in dynamic manner to manage those pressures. Probably the only other point I'd make from a gross margin perspective is some of that gross margin impact is taking Russia out. So it's, in part, encompassed in the removal of Russia, which you mentioned at the start. Katy, is there anything you want to add on any of that or on returns rate?

I guess just on returns rates. We don't -- what you saw on the chart that we showed, the reigning difference is to do with the category mix. And while we will expect returns rate to go up as we mix back into the dresses and going-out in H2, we wouldn't expect to go back to pre-pandemic levels just because we've grown the other areas of the business that the mix will never revert back.

Mike Benedict here from Berenberg. I have a couple. Firstly on the views availability chart that you displayed. Do you have a number for the average reduction over the half? And then is there a rule of thumb we can think about, how that translates into revenue performance typically?

So I think I previously said we would target views availability to be between 75% and 80%. That's the balance between stock levels and servicing demand. We've, through the balance of the first half, and if you actually look to the annualization of peak, as Katy said, you always see a spike around -- down around peak because you build for peak and then you deplete your stock and then you rebuild it. On average, we are probably 2 to 4 points below that, depending on exactly where you strike it. So it's quite a significant degradation. The correlation between views availability and sales is not absolute. So it would be slightly misleading to give you an absolute number. But historically, we've seen a better than 1:1 return on every percent of use availability and what it does to sales growth. But it's not a robust number because they don't correlate perfectly, and it varies very much by geography. But what we know is as soon as we fall below the sweet spot, we feel it in the sales. And as soon as we go above it, we tend to be at an efficient level of stock, which will probably result in markdown. Hence, while we try and kind of keep it within that -- those trend lines as much as possible.

Great. And second one is on marketing. So in H1, it was up year-on-year. And I think in the statement, you said you had both positive feedback and constructive criticism.

Yes.

I wondered what the key learnings have been in terms of some of your early tests.

So I think, I mean there are a number of learnings. Some of them I'm going to struggle to do justice to in terms of the -- but I think, let me try and articulate it from my point of view. So I think we've -- the critical learnings were about how we activate the creative. And what's interesting is we saw a much better pickup in customers who were already aware of ASOS than we did in customers who weren't aware of ASOS, which suggests that we need to be, I guess, more direct probably in how we get that creative cut through. So a lot of the work on the plans for Q4 is focused on how do you get more actionability of the creative itself and get them kind of quicker to what does ASOS stand for. And that is a very nonmarketing way to try and explain marketing, but I've done my best. I think the other thing we've learned is all around the kind of media mix and how we optimize the media mix. And therefore, we will go for kind of always-on approach. Once we start, we will continue that. We've seen that, that consistent activation is better than short, which we've trialed consistent activation versus kind of bursts, and it can depend on what you're trying to activate as to which one works best. But we've definitively learned, which is what we would have anticipated to be honest, is that always-on approach works better. And therefore, we will take a geographical approach to that in the U.S. as we look to roll it out in Q4.

Andrew Wade from Jefferies. A couple from me. First one, just in terms of the reorganization on the sort of on the buying side of things, where you're talking about quite a big change there, obviously, what you're going to be getting through there. And I can see the logic for why you're talking about doing that in terms of giving power to the various teams. Just interested in sort of the trade-off of presumably you lose something from doing that as in there's a holistic view of doing womenswear altogether. That's why it's been done like that for years here, for example. Do you lose sort of ability to have an overall view of womenswear or an overall view of menswear? So what's the trade-off there? It's what i'm interested in.

I guess, at the highest level, the trade-offs control. So by the nature of being more agile and decentralizing decision-making, you lose control. I think the way we're looking to kind of protect ourselves against that is that we will -- there is a matrix hierarchy that sits over the top, and we'll look at both categories, i.e., dresses across the picture, denim across the picture, but also womenswear and menswear. So we won't lose that focus, but inevitably, I think it will shift. But Jose has been really passionate about -- ultimately, fashion is a speed to market. He often refer -- I'm going to use one of his favorite cliches. He often speaks about fashion being like fresh fish, speed and agility matters much more than control. And therefore, we genuinely believe that the benefits significantly outweigh the risk of it. And I think if we're honest with ourselves, yes, we've had the same structure for a long time. But potentially, we could have looked at doing it earlier. Again, we've looked to best-in-class companies both within our category and in other categories. And they've had some success with these kind of models. So it's not like we're doing something that's never been done before. So I'm kind of confident that we can learn from what we see in work and other places as well.

Second one, following on from Charlie's question on gross margin costs. It sounds like there's going to be some additional OpEx savings to offset some of the lower gross margin guidance even if some of it is Russia. Just in terms of those cost savings, are they structural cost savings that are going to be there for the long term or will we come back when the gross margin recovers? Because obviously, some of the stuff you're talking about in terms of the gross margin, the additional clearance and promo is...

Temporary.

Temporary. Will the cost savings come back? Or is that sort of structural change?

Look, I think -- Katy, what would your perspective would be? I think my simple answer would be some and some. There will be some mitigation that, for example, some of the stuff we're doing with suppliers where we're sharing the pain of some of the freight where we do FOB. I would expect some of that, we will then -- potentially, we'll work with suppliers and we won't necessarily retain all of those benefits and nor would we want to. But there'll be others where we found the structural efficiency in terms of how we do the supply chain that should be structural. So I guess, overall, so Katy, I don't know if there's anything you want to build on that.

Yes. No, I agree. I think that's fair.

Great. And then last one, how should we be thinking about Russia in outer years? Obviously, a very difficult one to answer, but...

Yes, I think almost an impossible one to answer.

I think I don't mean more generally. I just mean vis-à-vis you.

Yes, yes, No, no. But I mean, the reality is the 2 things are related, aren't they?

Yes.

So look, I think, we -- I guess what we have the benefit of is our supply chain into Russia was relatively simple. And therefore, we've not had to turn anything structural off that will be very difficult to turn back on again. We haven't got loads of physical infrastructure in the market or any of those things. So in that sense, I guess, we can and we'll keep an open mind with respect to Russia. And hence, we always talked about kind of suspending rather than stopping. So in that sense, I guess -- and we continue to engage with very many of the partners we use, the partners we use in other places. So in that sense, I guess we're keeping a watching brief is probably the best way to say it. At the moment, given what's happening, it feels to me that it's a relatively remote prospect that it's going to happen anytime soon. But I think we've all learned over the last few months that things can change much more quickly than you expected. So I guess a watching brief is the right approach. Adam?

Adam Cochrane from Deutsche Bank. A couple of questions. In terms of the management Board and things there, can you -- we waited about 3 years to get a full house at the top of the company, and some of them seem to have now departed and changed. What -- we used to have the sort of structure with the 5 boxes at the bottom. What does that look like now? And how many spots are you looking to fill within that at the moment?

So in terms of the structure, rather than we try and talk it through, I'm happy to maybe we'll add it as an appendix to the presentation that goes up on line because it's much easier for everybody to see it. But in essence, we've added 2 new positions to the executive, the Chief Data Officer and the -- effectively, the Digital Product Director. So they are new roles. We're actively recruiting for both of those. And one I'm quite hopeful we'll have an appointee in the very, very near term, but not done yet. The other one, we're still working through. We've also taken the opportunity to add some of our other leadership roles to the executive. So the GC and company sector, which is 1 role but 2 jobs, has joined -- the Group Supply Chain Director has joined the executive, and we've also added corporate affairs stroke comes to our executives. So that's why we'll put it out for you. So it's a more diverse group in terms of capability than it was before. And I think the reason that we've chosen to do that is to make sure that as we drive things strategically, we're getting consistent alignment across the whole organization. In terms of the kind of where we are in the changes, I think with the departure of a CEO and the level of change we're looking to drive that you've kind of hopefully got a bit of a sense of today, I think it's almost inevitable that there would have been some changes. We are -- we have interim arrangements in place for those roles. We're actually not replacing the strategy roles because it feels like we've moved kind of from strategy into execution, so that's the kind of permanent change. But we're actively engaging with permanent replacements. Clearly, there's some contingency on that and CEO. So there is a degree of uncertainty there. So I'm not uncomfortable with where we are and, certainly, as we engaged on this journey. It's something that was anticipated by the Board and me working closely with the Board. I'm also -- and it's much harder for you guys to touch and feel. But the depth of our leadership beyond the executive, actually, particularly in our customer-facing organization is substantially different from where it was certainly 2 years ago, but even 1 year ago. So there's a lot of depth of capability and hard for us to expose or water that, but I'm also really confident in that. So I feel, actually, we're in a position to go as quickly as we've ever been able to go. That doesn't mean we'd not like to be able to do more and that we'll bring new people in. And of course, we will. But I think we're comfortable with where we are.

Secondly, the profitability of Russia was maybe higher than I anticipated. If you look at the rest of the world now, does it have the same levels of profitability as Russia did? Or is that just because it's that Russia number is based on a marginal basis? It's because not that many of your costs are allocated to it, and it's just incremental revenues. So if you were to do the same thing, say, for example, Australia is not making any money, it doesn't work, the cost of closing it would have the same impact on the group profits.

I think there's probably 2 different ways to unpack that question, Adam. So Russia was not disproportionately profitable. On a short-run basis, our ability to kind of absorb the fixed -- or what -- I mean, probably better to describe the semi-variable cost is quite difficult. So I think I have talked about it before, but still, on average, on a 12- to 16-week basis, probably over 75% of our costs are variable. But on a 0- to 12-week basis, they're not variable. So things like warehousing in the -- sorry, people in the warehouses, again, we could deliberately construct a base and then we've got a variable element, but you commit resource plans for 6 to 12 weeks, similarly in the call center. So I think I would caution against reading more into Russia's profitability than we had to do it in a completely unplanned manner. We also bought stock for it, which we'll need to clear. There's a number of elements, which means you can't instantly recover the profitability in general because of that variable cost base over the medium term. If we just took a decision to exit a territory, it wouldn't necessarily have the same level of impact because you've managed it. It was an instant turn off over a very short period of time, which has driven that impact.

So if you look at Australia as an example now with the freight costs and all of the other challenges. If those freight costs don't normalize, is Australia a viable proposition?

Yes, because we price for them. And therefore, your offer -- it may settle at a level of sales, which would be lower than you would have it. But ultimately, we trade Rest of World profitably, and therefore, we're always looking to make a profit by territory, and we price our -- typically, not necessarily our product will price our delivery offerings consistent with the cost of delivery. So the cost of delivery in Australia that we charge today are higher than they were pre-pandemic.

The last one should be quite easy. In terms of income demographics of your customers, do you have a split of, I don't know how you define it, but ABC or et cetera, of your customer base. Just thinking in terms of all of the household bills, if you've got a whole load of your customers who are in their 20s living at home, they may not have the same gas bill that we probably have to put through. And their disposable income may not be as squeezed as homeowners or something else. Is it something you thought about?

It's something we've thought about. I'm not saying -- I'm not sure we've got really reliable data to be able to kind of income bracket everybody. I think -- as I think about it, I think -- I guess the way I think about it is as follows. I think in terms of where our consumer prioritizes their spend, it feels like they disproportionately prioritize going-out and fashion relative to other consumers. And that has meant that fashion spend has traditionally been quite resilient, albeit the precedents are relatively limited. I think in terms of -- as you say, and some of the factors you've outlined are some of the reasons for that. They're probably less exposed to long-term commitments like mortgages, et cetera, which means they've got more ability to flex their spend, but also probably energy bills aren't such a big consideration relatively, even if they might form a -- but obviously, their average incomes are lower. So you've got to kind of balance it all off. I think the other thing that -- I think from an ASOS-specific perspective, I think if we look at where our product offer spans and the range of price points that we are, I feel like in terms of the value we offer relative to the category, I feel like we were in a really quite a good place. I feel we're probably as competitive as we've ever been in the U.K., for example, from a price point perspective. And I think that will suit us well in this kind of environment. So it's -- I wish I could give you a more definitive answer, but that's the way we're trying to think about it and all the time looking at data to try and enhance our understanding of it.

It's Tony Shiret from Panmure Gordon. I've got a few questions. Firstly, on the U.K. sales performance at the end of the year. Correct -- I mean it looks like it was negative for the last 2 periods. So first of all, is that a correct calculation? And alongside that, bearing in mind you put prices up, the gross margin has gone up over the tail end of the half. Just wondered if you were seeing any sort of price elasticity of demand and your resistance to your price increases in the U.K. So that's the first question. You can answer individually or I'll give you three more. It's up to you.

Given my memory is not brilliant, let me answer it and then you can give me the next one.

Yes. Sure, sure.

And I might let Katy comment on gross margin, but let me deal -- so I mean, broadly, your calculation is correct, give or take. I think, the -- I think it's a function of a couple of things. I think it's a function definitely of the comparable and specifically the strength of the lockdown in the U.K. in January, February last year versus where we are this year, and I think that's a big and expected driver. We always expected P2 to be softer than P1 in the U.K. based on that. The other phenomenon that we've seen in the U.K. specifically, which related very much to that end of Christmas, early January period was we saw weaker performance in our big events in January than we would have anticipated, and it feels like kind of looking back on it now that, that was a function largely of Omicron creating uncertainty in consumers. And so a lot of the move period-on-period was actually isolated to the early part of January. So I think there is an effect of Omicron there, which is probably more pronounced in the U.K. because it kind of came and went more quickly than perhaps it did in Europe where it felt like it kind of eased in and eased out again. So I think that's a feature of our second period performance. I'm always cautious of reading too much into P2 because it's only 8 weeks versus 4 months. So you can end up with something like a 3-week spike in Omicron, driving quite an impact on an 8-week period, plus it's the sale period, which is not necessarily the most traditionally reliable. But those are, I guess, some of the reasons that we saw what we saw.

So what was the average price increase in the U.K. over that period?

Sorry. On the pricing, we saw an average price increase of low to mid-single digit. But over the whole of our portfolio, not just in the U.K., I don't believe -- and the elasticities are responding as we would have anticipated. So I don't think that price elasticity is a big driver of U.K. P2 performance would be my personal judgment. Katy, I don't know if you want to add anything from a gross margin perspective, more generally.

Just, I guess, the P1 to P2 gross margin year-on-year movement was mostly due to the base period. So yes, there was an impact because pricing came in P1, but the biggest impact was actually the comp.

Okay. In terms of marketing, the overall increase of 50 bps, I mean, the assumption, I guess, from everyone here is probably that's all focused outside the U.K. I just wondered if you could -- or the increase. I wondered if you could confirm that the U.K. marketing spend was either the same as a percentage or lower?

Without going into detail, that's broadly correct.

Okay, fine. And looking forward, bearing in mind the high rates of sales growth you've had in the U.K., do you feel that you're going to need to market more proactively in the U.K. as a percentage?

Not necessarily, no. I think the secular factors in P2 were not associated, I don't think, with consumer awareness and propensity to purchase. I think we're cycling through a period of time where last year, the only channel available was online. A lot of people haven't spent a lot of money over Christmas, and therefore, they had more disposable income in January and February than perhaps they did this year. So at the moment, and I guess time will tell, my expectation is it's driven by a number of secular factors. We have always said that, clearly, for long-term growth, we need to accelerate our growth outside the U.K. We're 50% up on a 2-year comp in the U.K. There was always an element of the fact that it probably was going to normalize to some extent. So I think we'll get a better read of it in the second half of the year, to be honest.

And one last question following up from Adam's question. You're not quite sure how many people there are in the Executive Board at the moment and prospectively, looks like sort of 10-ish.

It's not that I'm not sure. I just didn't want to try and draw you a diagram in the middle of the meeting.

Yes. The question is simple. How many women are there on the executive board?

There are 3 currently.

Out of roughly 10.

Correct.

Okay.

And that compares to 1 a year ago.

Good.

Very good. We're still working on it, but we're pleased with the progress we've made. All right. I think we're out of time, Obviously, if you've got any additional questions, and I apologize to the people online that we haven't had a chance, although there are actually a fairly limited questions online just looking at the screen. The ones that we have had, we'll try and follow up with directly. And if anyone's got any further questions, please do pick up with the IR team or with Katy or I, and we'll endeavor to answer them across the course of today. Thank you, everyone, for coming. It's been nice to see everyone in person. And hopefully, we'll see you all again, and we'll all be able to go back to normal lives. So thanks very much, everybody.