Revolution Beauty Group plc (REVB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Revolution Beauty Group plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand over to the executive management team from Revolution Beauty Group. Tom, good morning, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to everybody. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. We are delighted to be able to update everybody on the great progress that we've made since Adam and I returned to the business in September, just 10 months ago. When we rejoined, let's be honest, the company was losing money. It was losing revenue and it had lost its way. We set around -- set up a turnaround procedure and process. And we set ourselves one goal in the first month, and that was to be profitable in the second half of the year. And I'm also delighted to confirm that we've managed to achieve that. As you can see from this example of what we've achieved in the second half, the company returned a GBP 4.3 million EBITDA profit in H2 compared with a GBP 12 million loss in the 6 months prior to our return to the business. Whilst I worked on restructuring the business, Adam focused on what he does best, which is product, innovating great products at affordable prices and being fast to market. Restructuring and build, I want to assure you that we have a great, young, ambitious and motivated team that have already achieved great results. They've now been rewarded with a share scheme that is incentivizing them to increase the share price. So they are fully aligned with all shareholders. We've driven our success, as you can see, by a TikTok strategy. When we came back to the business, whilst the company was on TikTok itself, it didn't have a TikTok Shop. And our great digital team managed to get this opened by October, and that is now helping us to drive sales. As you probably know, TikTok has a dual benefit to the company. Firstly, obviously, offers a route to market for products, but also just as importantly, it gives us great exposure to the brand to the consumer. And we're now starting to see a halo effect in retailers as we promote products on TikTok Shop. We are obviously continuing to drive cost savings. To give you some indication of where that's been when this -- the last financial year started last March, 6 months before Adam and I returned, there were 212 people in the main business. By the start of this year, that's down to 128. And believe it or not, I think the company is running better and more efficiently since that reduction. There were too many people in the business, too many people making decisions, decision by committee doesn't work in a business of this size, and we are now much more organized, much more clinical, and we've got a strategic plan in place. As you may have seen recently, we've leveraged our relationship with Debenhams. We have a strategic license now signed and in place with them. This is a really exciting opportunity for both sides and gives great synergy between the 2 businesses. Debenhams, as you may know, has 15 million active customers on its sites and obviously sells affordable clothing and apparel to the type of customer that will be interested in buying makeup and gifting and fragrance. So we're really excited about developing some products for them. The first we'll be launching under the PLT brand later this financial year, and that will be followed by Boohoo Man and Karen Millen shortly afterwards. But we're really excited about this opportunity, and it gives both companies the opportunity of growing their brands and consumer base further. Our targets for this year are to grow profitably. We have a clear strategic plan in place to achieve that. There are 3 pillars to that growth plan. The first being is to increase productivity in our existing doors. Revolution is already in around 15,000 doors globally. What we need to do is improve productivity in each of those. We've been able to do that successfully so far in a number of different store groups and our plan is to continue to do that over the preceding 12 months. The second area of growth that we're targeting is to open some new doors carefully and in a profitable manner. We're delighted to confirm that we are launching right now in Etos in the Netherlands. We have 450 stores going live next month in August, and we're really excited about its opportunity. It's a great partnership for us in Continental Europe. And we've got several more confirmed announcements to be made later this year as a couple more further retailers come on board with Revolution. The third pillar that we're going to be expanding upon is new categories and brands. That will come a little bit later on, but it is obviously led by the Debenhams relationship as well as some exciting new prospects and brands that we're working on in the background. So we have a clear strategy to ensure that we grow. The backbone of Revolution's success has always been products. It's important that we're innovative, fast to market and affordable. And whilst Adam and I were away from the business, unfortunately, Revolution lost its way a little bit with products. It became too slow to market with too higher price point products. We've worked very hard with retailers to ensure that retailers around the globe now have the right products at the right prices in the right geographical areas. And this is -- an example of this is the fact that our average sale price in Superdrug for our bestsellers is 21% lower than it was this time last year. Incredibly, that is also with an increased gross margin. When I say lower price point products, I don't mean cutting cost and reducing retail prices. I mean putting products that our consumer wants into retailers. It's absolutely key to us winning back our core consumer is ensuring that we have the right price point products, and we're making sure that we do that. Execute efficiently. Obviously, it's really important that we do that. There's no point having great products if we don't execute well. But fortunately, we have a great ops team led by Steve, our COO. Now that we have a clear and realistic forecast and plan, it's enabled them to really do a great job. Over the past month, we've seen our service level to our main retailers grow to over 90% and this is even more remarkable when you consider that our stock on hand has actually decreased in the past 12 months. So I think this is only possible by ensuring that we have proper realistic planning and really good stock management. And I think the team we've got in place now have really grabbed hold of that as a target and ensure that we achieve it. Lastly, on this slide, we've ensured that we've got the right team in place. Revolutionary thinking can only be done by a passionate team that we have in place. We're determined to prove that this brand can be profitable again and grow again and become a global leader as it was in the past. We're really excited about the future and where it leads us. This chart gives you just some understanding of where we believe the growth is going to start. One of the questions that I've been asked many times was, have we hit the bottom of the trough on the reduction of sales. There's no doubt that over the last couple of years, revenue has declined. We've now ensured that we reached the bottom and we are starting to grow again. In the last 12 months, we reported revenue of GBP 102 million. However, it's important to understand that there were certain blocks in that GBP 102 million that won't be -- won't continue again this year. There were some outlet sales that previous management carried out at lower margin to raise cash. They also discontinued some brands and discontinued some categories, and there was also some store loss. So we've calculated that roughly our baseline sales are around GBP 92 million, GBP 10 million less than the GBP 102 million reported sales. But this is our baseline that we're working from now, and we are 100% confident we're now going to grow from that level. But just to put that into perspective, if we achieve level sales in this current year, we estimate that will be effectively double-digit growth on an underlying basis. Obviously, it was great to have a first half or second half that we achieved really good profitability back into the business, but that was a honeymoon period. What we need to make sure is that we continue that trend. And I'm delighted to also announce we've had a great start to this current financial year. Last first quarter, we made a loss of GBP 4.2 million. In this latest quarter, the quarter 1 of the current financial year, we've just started, we're now back into profitability. So we've got nearly a GBP 5 million turnaround in the first quarter alone. And that's with sales roughly flat year-on-year, which, as I've explained, actually is in real terms, an increase -- a double-digit increase in growth on our base sales. E-comm has also had a great resurgence, and that's leading the way. In the quarter 1 of this financial year, our total e-comm business has increased 26%. That's been driven by TikTok Shop. I think that it's really important as an indicator of brand health and points to a resurgence in Revolution brand. There's no doubt that if we launch products now that the consumer is interested in, they will start to buy them again. And if we launch products that they're not interested in and e-commerce business doesn't increase, that only gives an indication to where we might be in the future in the shops. So I think this is -- that whilst it's a relatively small part of the overall level of our business, it's a fantastic indicator to the fact that we are starting to get back the Revolution core consumer, and that has a great indicator for future sales within our retail -- our bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. There are some of the products that we've had great success with in the last year. These are all bullet points from data from Superdrug. As you can see, we've been #1 Eyeshadow Palette with our velvet rose during the past 12 months. We've also been #1 beauty products with our fixing sprays. We have a clear plan now to bring out new and more innovative products that Adam has been working on. Just a few examples here. They're not all low price points. There are a variety of price points, but we're just ensuring that our average price point is slightly lower to ensure that we capture and retain our true loyal Revolution consumer. I'll hand over to Neil now and he'll run through the financial review.

Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. I'm Neil Catto, Chief Financial Officer at Revolution. I'm going to take you through the numbers behind the turnaround that Tom has been talking about. I'll take you through the income statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow for the year to 28th of February '26. And I'll also touch on what that tells us about the shape of the business as we move into FY '27. So as you can see on this summary slide, the headline for FY '26 was that it really was a story of 2 very different halves. In the first half before Tom and Adam returned to the business and before we completed the refinancing, we recorded an adjusted EBITDA loss of GBP 12.5 million. In the second half, we delivered an adjusted EBITDA of GBP 4.3 million positive. And so that's a swing of nearly GBP 17 million half-on-half. And that GBP 4.3 million was ahead of our previous guidance. So a big recovery there, and that recovery was underpinned by gross margin improvement and cost savings. Gross margin increased from 32.2% in the first half to 41.4% in the second half of the year, so an improvement of 9.2 percentage points. And that was as we moved away from the clearance and markdown activity that had been used to generate cash ahead of the refinancing and back towards realistic forecasting and tighter stock management. Alongside that, we took out more than GBP 9 million of cost on an annualized basis. And that was across all our cost lines, operating costs, marketing costs and our administrative overheads. We completed the GBP 16.5 million equity raise that yielded proceeds of GBP 15.5 million, that was completed in September 2025. That allowed us to repay GBP 4 million of bank debt and refinance our remaining facility on improved terms, taking the net debt down from GBP 30.2 million at the end of the first half of the year to GBP 24.7 million at the year-end, lifting our cash balances to GBP 5.9 million. Turning to the income statement. Group revenue for the year was GBP 102.1 million, down 28% on last year. That decline was a function of the decisions taken by the previous strategy employed before the return of Adam and Tom in September, and that was about reducing SKU count and taking a narrower strategic focus. It was about that rather than any kind of deterioration in the underlying brand. And actually, since Tom and Adam returned, we saw the trend turning in the second half of the year. And revenue was GBP 49.4 million in the first half. That rose to GBP 52.7 million in the second half. And we've seen that improving trend continue so far in the new financial year with sales broadly flat year-on-year. Gross margin for the full year was 36.9%, down from 38.2% last year. But again, that was -- there was a big improvement in the second half of the year. In the first half, the gross margin of 32.2% reflected clearance activity generating cash ahead of the refinancing. In the second half of the year, the gross margin recovered to 41.4% and that was really as we return to disciplined forecasting and stock management. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was a loss of GBP 8.2 million. Again, that was driven by the performance in the first half of the year, which was a GBP 12.5 million loss. And that was offset to a large degree in the second half with that return to profitability and a positive GBP 4.3 million EBITDA. Below the EBITDA line, there's one thing worth flagging as we saw GBP 1.8 million of nonrecurring legal and professional costs relating to the formal sale process, the refinancing, but also the FCA investigation. I'm pleased to say that the FCA notified us after the year-end that's taking no further action and so we don't expect those costs to recur this year. So those exceptional items will be significantly reduced in FY '27. Moving on to the balance sheet. The big moment on the balance sheet was the September refinancing and equity raise. We extended our revolving credit facility to July 2028, and we reduced it to GBP 28 million from GBP 32 million and agreed a covenant lite terms until May 2026. So -- and combined with the equity raise, net debt fell to GBP 24.7 million from GBP 30.2 million at the end of the first half of the year. So I think the turnaround story is really quite clearly told on this chart here, which is the cash flow bridge for the year. We started the year with GBP 5.7 million of cash. You can see there the first half EBITDA loss of GBP 12.5 million was substantially offset by the GBP 4.3 million of EBITDA we generated in the second half of the year. We paid out around GBP 3.4 million relating to those exceptional items for restructuring costs and refinancing costs, legal and professional fees that I talked about earlier. Working capital was a positive and with tighter inventory management and lower receivables, overall working capital movements released around GBP 8.5 million of cash during the year, broadly offsetting the cash cost of the EBITDA loss and exceptional items, so the net cash used in operations for the full year was GBP 3.7 million. Below that, we invested GBP 6.2 million in capital expenditure on retail fixtures and equipment for our store presences globally, and we paid GBP 2.6 million of interest. The September equity raise brought in GBP 15.5 million of net proceeds, of which we used GBP 4 million to pay down the RCF as part of the refinancing with the balance strengthening our cash position. After a relatively small positive contribution from foreign exchange, we ended the year with GBP 5.9 million of cash. So that's the financial picture for FY '26. I'd like to hand back to Tom to summarize, and then we'll be happy to take your questions.

Well, in summary, I hope you can see that we've made some fantastic progress on profitability. It was the key driver and key goal when we came back into the business. Since Adam and I returned in September, we've been profitable each and every month since, and we will continue to do so. What's also encouraging is that our gross margin is increasing as well, and we expect it to be a couple of percentage points higher than it was in the second half even as we continue to move forward through this year. We're also returning to growth. There's no doubt now we are growing this business. We will continue to grow it. We have expectations to achieve double-digit growth through the next 3 or 4 years each and every year. We've got a clear plan, a clear strategy. What I outlined earlier, we've got retailers wanting to reengage with us. We've got a great pipeline of new NPD coming through. And we really believe now that we're on a real great path to growth again. This business was once GBP 190 million turnover, and we're determined to get it back to that sort of level. We've got great new products coming out, as I've mentioned. And the level of EBITDA that we're now managing to achieve means that we're marginally cash generative. We're targeting to be even more cash generative into next year. We've certainly completed our turnaround. We're now in a transition period, and then we'll be back into a full growth and full-throttle moving ahead period. But with our low level of CapEx, a low level of exceptionals and the interest that we're now paying, we are starting now to be cash generative. Our stock management has been much, much better. It's been a criticism of this business in the past, but I think we're demonstrated by the great service level results we've achieved lately and the fact that we've managed to decrease our overall stock holding in the last 12 months proves that we've got stock management back under control. To finish, we've made really good progress. We're going to continue to grow this business. We're going to continue to run it profitably. We're going to continue to execute it well. So watch this space where this business is going to go a long way. We've also got a really determined and motivated staff that are absolutely determined to prove that this brand can grow again and the resurgence of Revolution is here. That concludes our presentation, and we'd be happy to take questions.

Perfect. Tom, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. [Operator Instructions] I just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Guys, we have received a number of questions. So Simon, at this stage, so if I may hand over to you to chair the Q&A with the team. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you.

Are there any costs associated with the Debenhams license for the second half of the year? And will those impact your free cash flow for the second half of the year?

The simple answer is no. It's a CapEx-light model with Debenhams. Yes, we're producing some stock, but that's not a material change in our cash position, our investment in NPD in any case. And the main sales in the first few months will be online by the Debenhams platforms and also by our current distributors and retailers. We're already in discussion with some national retailers to take that stock. And in the future, that if possible, that could incur some CapEx. But certainly, in this current financial year, we don't expect any CapEx or real cash investment to get that license underway.

What level of borrowing do you think is appropriate for Revolution Beauty in the short term and in the medium term?

The current level of borrowing we've got is not affecting us positive or negatively. It's not precluding us from continuing to grow this business. We'll review that over the next 12 months with the Board, but we're comfortable with the current level. Obviously, we'd like to reduce it as we start to generate cash, but it's not a priority at this moment in time. It's not being restricted in any way.

In a highly competitive beauty market, what's Revolution Beauty's sustainable competitive advantage?

Revolution Beauty has always been about the passion of its products. That's the bit that Adam has brought to the business and continues to bring to the business now. We have a great range of products. They're fast to market. They're affordable, and they're different from some of the big legacy brands that take a long time to bring things to market. So that's always been our point of difference. I think that it's really important everyone understands that going back in history, Adam and I launched and founded this business in 2014. By 2019, we were the third fastest-growing company in the U.K. under the Sunday Times Fast Track awards. We've proven already that we're capable of growing fast the beauty business that we know how to do that, and we know how to do it in a profitable manner, and we're determined to do that again. And we're doing it already. This business is now growing again.

Given the size and strategic importance of the U.S. market, what specifically needs to change for this business to return to growth? And over what time frame should we expect to see improvement?