Mavi Giyim Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. (MAVI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mavi webcast regarding the first quarter of 2025. Before starting, I would like to kindly remind you to review the disclaimer on the webcast presentation and consider all forward-looking statements and comments in accordance with the cautionary statements. In accordance with capital markets regulation, our financials are reported using IAS 29 financial reporting in a hyperinflationary economy. The financial figures in this presentation and all comparative amounts for previous periods have been adjusted according to IAS 29 and are finally expressed in terms of purchasing power of Turkish lira as of April 30, 2025. Historical information for selected key performance indicators is also provided only for information purposes. Our CEO, Cüneyt Yavuz, will be presenting the results now followed by a Q&A session. I would like to also remind you that this presentation is being recorded, please make sure to keep your microphones muted. Now I will leave the floor to Cüneyt Yavuz.

Thank you, Duygu. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our 2025 quarter 1 financial results update. Before going over the slides, I would like to make a few comments on the trading environment of the quarter and how we view our performance. Recall that the anti-inflationary measures implemented in Türkiye began to weigh in on consumer purchasing power and demand starting from mid-June 2024. The first half of last year was characterized by an exceptionally strong consumer appetite. As a result, we reported a particularly strong first quarter in 2024 marked by robust sales growth and record high margins. Given this high base, we anticipated that 2025 1st quarter performance this year would be a challenge on a like-for-like basis, and the results were broadly in line with our expectations. This quarter's top line performance was also affected by a number of external factors, and cooler than average weather conditions. On the other hand, we are very happy to witness once again that our strategic focus enables us to navigate this uncertain and challenging environment effectively. Through a strong brand strategy, agile product and price positioning, flexible sourcing capabilities and disciplined inventory and working capital management, we successfully protected our healthy margins and maintained a solid and resilient balance sheet. Focused on our long-term sustainable growth targets, we continue our retail investments with dedication. We still plan to reach net 20 new store openings and 15 expansions in existing locations in Türkiye, along with 8 new store openings in the U.S. We are also accelerating our new store concept transformations which proved to enhance customer experience and increase sales potential. Maintaining our leadership in jeans with a market share exceeding 25%. We remain among the top 3 brands in total apparel markets and we are the #1 destination for casual wear in Türkiye. In this highly competitive landscape, it gives us great confidence that Mavi continues to be the aspiration loved brand, the most trusted brands and the preferred choice of consumers. As demonstrated by our 2024 and this first quarter results, we firmly believe that Mavi remains one of the most resilient and investable companies in the current economic environment. In line with our commitment to protecting the interest of all stakeholders, and supporting a healthy and stable valuation of our stock market share. Our Board of Directors has decided to initiate share buyback transactions, reinforcing confidence in the company's long-term growth strategy. Details of the plan, including timing and scale were shared yesterday in accordance with regulatory requirements. Having said all of this, let's start reviewing our results for Q1 2025. On a very high base, consolidated revenue declined 14% year-on-year in Q1 2025 and realized at TRY 9.777 billion. Türkiye retail sales declined 14% and Türkiye Online sales declined by 11% in Q1 2025. Since many of you are comparing our first quarter results with those of other companies. Here, I'd like to highlight an important nuance. As you know, we operate on a noncalendar fiscal period, and our first quarter covers February to April. Last year, April was an exceptionally strong month due to the timing of the Ramadan holiday. If we were reporting on a January to March basis, aligned with the calendar quarters used by most companies, our sales performance in Türkiye Retail would have been approximately 6.5% growth in real terms. Our EBITDA in Q1 2025 is TRY 2.040 billion, resulting in a resilient 20.6% EBITDA margin. We managed to reach TRY 810 million net income this quarter. With continued positive cash generation, our net cash position increased 4% to TRY 6.071 billion. With 400,000 new customer acquisitions in the first 3 months of 2025, the number of active loyalty card members meaning the customers who have shopped with us in the last year reached 6 million. Moving on to review our channel performance on Slide 5. With all the underlying reasons we already talked about. Total Türkiye sales was 13% lower than last year's same quarter. International revenue now constituting 9% of total consolidated sales also contracted 14% in constant currency during the first quarter. The weakness was primarily driven by demand weaknesses across some of our international markets and prolonged SAP transitioning issues in Europe. The tariff discussions created uncertainty and put pressure on wholesale shipments in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, but seems to have normalized in the second quarter. The e-comm channel, which is our only direct-to-consumer channel for now was in the positive territory with 4% growth in the U.S. in U.S. dollars. The planned store openings in the U.S. will take place as of end August this year, and we expect to see notable revenue contributions as of next year. Looking into our Türkiye Retail business in more detail. We've increased our retail space by more than 8% last year, and we have a similar store rollout plan for this year, which we see as an investment in our sustainable growth targets for the future. We are committed to strengthening our physical presence in Türkiye and providing elevated customer experience across our locations. We take a disciplined approach to store openings, focusing on robust feasibility studies and short payback periods. All the new stores opened over the past year have delivered positive store contributions. As of end of April, we opened 1 store, closed 2 stores and expanded 4 stores in square meters in Türkiye, reaching 350 stores and 189,000 square meters total selling space. On Slide 8, let's elaborate on the like-for-like performance. In Q1 2025, like-for-like sales contracted 15.9% in real Turkish lira terms and 13.4% in volume terms in Türkiye. While the number of transactions was also down 14% in the quarter, basket size was down 2% in real terms but grew 35.7% in nominal Turkish lira terms. It is worth noting that the official clothing and footwear inflation in Türkiye was close to 17% year-on-year in April. With the base normalizing, we are seeing like-for-like dynamics improving in May with 41% nominal growth in Turkish lira terms and 14% volume growth year-on-year. Moving on to Slide 9 to review category-based developments in Türkiye Retail. The category performances were broadly in line with the overall performance with denim sales down 14% and short and net sales down 20%, non-denim-bottoms down 15% year-on-year. There was a shift in jacket sales from quarter 4 to quarter 1 due to weather conditions and hence resulted in 15% growth. Albeit being smaller ticket items, accessories share in customer baskets increased this quarter, which resulted in flat year-on-year sales performance. Going forward to review our online sales performance on Page 11. Global online sales, including the wholesale business partners constitute 10.7% of total consolidated revenue in Q1 2025. Online sales in Türkiye consisting only of direct-to-consumer channels was 11% lower than last year and constituted 8.4% of total sales in Türkiye. Decline in revenue was 15% on the marketplace channel and 6% in mavi.com. International online contracted 16% in inflation-adjusted Turkish lira figures, Online business makes up 32.4% of total international sales. Let's move on to review our consolidated financial results. Since the second half of 2024, declining purchasing power and intensified price competition aimed at stimulating consumer demands have exerted pressure on gross margins across the market. In this challenging environment, we are pleased to maintain our already strong gross margin levels. This performance reflects the strength of our planning function, our flexible and dynamic sourcing capabilities and our highly effective targeted campaign management. In the first quarter, our gross margin came in at 52.2%, reflecting a 160 basis point lower impact from inflation accounting adjustments and a 40 basis point negative impact from imputed interest rates. Moving on to Slide 14 to review our EBITDA performance. In the first quarter, our EBITDA margin declined by 340 basis points primarily due to a 320 basis point increase in the operating expenses to sales ratio. This increase was largely driven by lower sales volume which reduced our operating leverage. Despite the softer top line performance, both gross margin and EBITDA margin came in ahead of our initial expectations. On Slide 15, we look into our net income margin performance. The decline in operational profit margin was largely reflected in the bottom line. We generated TRY 810 million net income in quarter 1 with 8.3% net income margin. On Slide 16, we will review our operation cash flow and working capital performance. Through dynamic product planning and flexible sourcing strategy, we continue to efficiently manage inventory and working capital, ensuring operational agility. I am pleased to share that our inventory levels remain exceptionally healthy comprised mostly of fresh spring summer season products. The apparent Turkish lira increase in inventory is a result of sales transitioning from month-to-month in mid-season and is temporary. We created TRY 1.3 billion cash from our operations in quarter 1 2025 with a cash conversion ratio of 66%. Moving on to the next slide. In the first quarter, we invested TRY 428 million in capital expenditure resulting in a CapEx to sales ratio of 4.4%. This expenditure was primarily focused on retail investments such as store openings, expansions and renovations and the CapEx related to our new headquarters to which we will be moving in to early July. Our net cash position grew 12% in nominal terms, and 4% in real terms in the first 3 months of 2025 to reach TRY 6.071 billion. As always, the foreign currency debt reflected in our consolidated reports pertain solely to our subsidiaries, which borrow in their respective local currencies, thereby eliminating currency risk. We are keeping our guidance for the year 2025 unchanged at this point in time. We continue to prioritize being a reliable and responsible partner to our employees, customers, business partners and communities while remaining focused on our long-term goals with our forward-looking attitude. In support of our future sustainable growth aspirations, we will be opening net 20 stores and expanding 15 stores in Türkiye, while also opening our first 8 retail stores in the U.S. in 2025. We will continue to prioritize outperforming the apparel market, earned the love of our customers love and loyalty and delivery with an overall commitment to operational license. A note to provide some insight into the second quarter. With the base finally normalizing, we are seeing improved dynamics in our sales performance. In May, Türkiye Retail sales grew 46%, with 41% like-for-like growth and online sales grew 35%, with mavi.com delivering 42% growth. The growth figures for the first 9 days of June do not provide a healthy like-for-like comparison due to the calendar shift of the 8 holiday, but I can state that the sales performance is in line with our expectations. At this point, I'm happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you for joining us and listening to my presentation.

[Operator Instructions] Mustafa.

My question is regarding the contraction in your volumes, which is not very common in your case, based on historical -- your performance. I know the low domestic demand played the role. But from a market perspective, did you lose market share to a certain player or how were the developments in the market? Did we see this type of contraction in overall market? Or how specific it is for you?

Cüneyt speaking, first of all, thank you. Generally speaking, we think we are in sync with the market to the best of our knowledge. The market data, market share data comes in a bit later in the game. What we can read from talking to our competitors and observing the macro dynamics, we don't necessarily believe that we're losing market share. As you mentioned, it's more like the markets also shrinking in this time. There might be a slight category or product base or maybe women or men based depending on the brand shifts, but I think overall this year, as I'm also trying to elaborate in my presentation, we are quite confident that we will remain maintain or if not grow our market share this year also in the Turkish market. There might be -- I mean, there have been -- we have -- why I'm sort of leaving a bit of a leeway is there have been the lower-priced competitors with higher stock, giver harder discounts at the first -- beginning of the year, which might have sort of shifted some of the low-end customers from us into them to buy a bit more volume. But what we are seeing, starting with the end of April, May coming into buy run period, et cetera, that we -- our numbers are indicating a healthy growth and coming back to normal rhythms. If also we are -- I mean, just to elaborate a little more, we are tracking our price positioning vis-a-vis the competitors, vis-a-vis a certain index and purchasing power parity. And from that perspective, we are in a very -- we remain a favorable position. And hopefully, for those of you who are in Türkiye, when you go out to shop, you observe that we are doing our utmost to make sure that we protect the Turkish consumer. I'm really proud that we are able to do that and at the same time, maintain our margins. So that would be my take of the market, Mustafa. Thank you for the question.

Hello everyone, do you have any other questions. [Operator Instructions]. We have Ezgi Akalan.

Congratulations on the results. Do you -- looking at your EBITDA margins in the first quarter and with the challenging competitive environment, do you think there will be an upside risk on the margin side in your guidance?

At this point, I mean, we've gone through a relatively uncertain first quarter. We knew it would be a challenging first quarter. Plus, as you know, the weather went a bit cold and Istanbul got snowed out. There were also some political tensions going on here and there, which made it a bit more challenging. So there was quite a bit of uncertain times from a top line perspective. So actually, vis-a-vis our expectations, to be honest, we were expecting to sell a bit more, but that did not realize. Having said that, in terms of OpEx management, gross margin management, we came through with good results being as always agile and very prudent and capitalizing on the fact that we are in Türkiye and that we can move things around quite fast. For the time being, I mean, we're just getting out of this sort of uncertain times into a more normalized time. The environment, as you know, the inflationary numbers are coming in. The environment is getting a little more positive vibes. Therefore, things can get a bit better or not, I don't know so globally looking at things. Therefore, at this point in time, we find it quite premature to make a change in terms of our guidance. So I'm not trying to be low balling or high balling. I think the guidance is a good solid guidance that we propose. At this point in time, I would say let's stick to the guidance and not expect more or not expect less, but spot on.

[Operator Instructions] on the chat screen, I had a question from Erkan Edincik. He says, given how tight financing conditions are and the decline in economic activity, you used to find it more reasonable to use your available cash more effectively rather than buying shares. What made you change your mind?

Thank you for bringing this question up. As you know, because the financing costs are really high, we have been quite prudent and defensive in terms of keeping and holding on to our cash position. Actually, the buyback is on 2 fronts. One, we believe that the current trading environment and how Mavi is represented vis-a-vis its value was quite cheap. And therefore, we see a big opportunity of coming in and resounding the message and strengthening our message that we believe this is wrong and that we can do much better. And also to give you the investment community that Mavi is also confidently believing in its future performance in terms of coming out of a tough quarter in terms of looking into the next quarter that we will be delivering great results and that this value is not represented of what we stand for. Of course, the other thing is, as you can see from the tough quarter, we came out of it with good cash conversion rates, and we are being able to manage our cash position and the inventory position despite a bit of headline slowdown in top line sales. So when we sit down with the board and talk about and our CFO and the treasury team, we realized that this is a very good time for us to come in and put aside a certain amount of time, which will not impact our borrowing or cost or investment hindering any of our investment plans. Therefore, we are really happy actually that we are able to do this. This is the first time after 2017 since we went public that we came about. And we are doing it as a vote of confidence of our company but not only from a per share price position, but also to tell you the investment community that we have enough cash to do both. To be able to invest and grow and keep the business checking down while continuing to deliver cash paying versions in a positive way. So thank you for bringing up this question, Erkan.

We have our next question from Jan. What is the outlook for international markets that are declining for several quarters? What are the main challenges faced there? And when any reversal to growth would be expected?

Of our international markets, again, so I'm drumming up the same beat. When we talk about the international markets, we are predominantly talking about U.S. for us. We have business in Europe, and we have business in Russia, but they are more or less flat or in some instances, declining a bit. In Germany, we had a bit of a hiccup in terms of SAP transitioning, warehouse transitioning, et cetera, but that's over. From here on, it should be more like in euro terms, a flat business at a run rate. Russia is a bit more iffy. There are good quarters, there are bad quarters. It depends on the situation, but it's not a big portion of our business. For us, from here on, Türkiye remains very important. And from an international market point of view, U.S.A. remains very important. As I mentioned, we will be opening at least 8 stores this year in the U.S. And of course, the revenue stream and the impact of revenues coming from these stores will be negligible or visible next year. Therefore, from an international business perspective, I would say keep tracking Mavi. I will be updating you guys in terms of how we're performing in the U.S. First, of course, we have to get the stores up and running. This will be the third and fourth quarters of this year. And starting from next year, we should be able to see some real terms -- real-term growth in the U.S. market. So that's how I would plan for Mavi's domestic and international business, a growth platform here on.

Ladies and gentlemen, do you have any other questions? Okay. I have another question from Aleyna Derelioglu. Can you elaborate more on the sector, both international and domestic regarding the last question.

From our sector, I mean if you're talking about the consumer sentiment and the apparel industry, I think overall, the industry is probably shrinking or flat in Türkiye. Therefore, in this environment, for us, key thing is to be able to continue to maintain growth and growing market share. So from that front, it becomes very important that you have the right price, right product, right communication, right style, right service levels from a Türkiye perspective. These are all things we are really good at. And if you also look at the consumer behavior in the category of apparel which is the sportswear or casual wear category, is the more vibrant part of the category. Therefore, we are blessed with being in the segments where we have the jeans, T-shirts, sweatshirts, the casual wear, sportswear products that are really welcomed by the consumers. And that's where a lot of the dynamism is. Also, what we sell is quite ageless. So we can start at 13, 14 years of age and go all the way to 70, 80 years of age. So we cover the whole customer segment in terms of dress attire and their needs. Therefore, in a Türkiye context, our main focus is going to be continued to open up new stores, make sure wherever we can find the biggest store to increase our bigger square meters, have bigger square meters because what we see is the minute we have, we have, on average, 500-plus square meter shops. The minute we open up 1,000 square meters, it's up and running. So the consumers themselves are already ready to buy the products that we are willing to offer them. Therefore, Türkiye is more of a uphill battle in a constructive way of finding the space expanding square meters to deliver the doubling of the growth over the next 5, 6, 7 years. I'm really confident that we've come a long way, but we have so much more to gain and win in a Türkiye context. In terms of international markets, starting with last year, we called out the U.S. as a priority market. We've been working really hard in terms of determining the product portfolio, store size, store lay out, store design, categories, people staff, processes, warehouses, et cetera, to prepare U.S. for this new store opening that's coming ahead of us. So we start with 8, and we will continue on another 8, 10 and keep growing as long as we keep delivering good results in a U.S. context. In the meantime, we had -- you may recall, for Russia, for us, it was on hold, and it will remain on hold until there is more political certainty in terms of where the Russian situation ends up vis-a-vis the Ukraine war and its attrition with the West. So for us, I mean, we are able to trade. We are able to send products. We are selling our products, but we are not growing our business. We have around 18, 19 retail stores there. If you may recall -- you may recall that we had plans to go to 50, 60. We still have those plans, but only one we feel that there is a normalized relationship between Russia and the world. When it comes to Europe, we had a lot of technical groundwork that we have to cover which is the SAP transaction, warehousing, et cetera. So more of the fundamentals, which are behind us as we enter this quarter. So we remain quite confident from here on to look into Europe more and see what more we can do. In terms of the upside of Europe, it's going to be more e-comm and door penetration. But in terms of the total upside, it's not going to be like U.S. because opening retail means you go direct to consumer, both from a margin perspective and a revenue perspective, that's going to be more impactful. But I do expect that the coming years, we will be delivering maybe not huge numbers, but better numbers and growth numbers in the European context, which the European team is working on right now, having finished a lot of the groundwork and put that behind us. I hope that sort of gives you even further detail of how we are viewing the markets we're operating in. Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay. It seems like we don't have any more questions. Thank you for your attendance and contribution to our webcast. And if you have any follow-up questions, I'm always here as we are here as a team. And see you again in 3 months.

Thank you, Duygu. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference. And I wish you all a very happy summer and look forward to seeing its great results in the following quarter. All my best. Take care. Bye-bye.