Conference Transcript - COTY 2026-06-10

Speaker 2

Okay, good morning our next presenting company is Cody Incorporated trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol C O T Y Their first time at the ideas conference, so we're very glad to have them here today Presenting on behalf of the company is Olga Levinson Senior vice president of investor relations and head of M&A

Speaker 1

Thank you everyone So it's my pleasure to be here today to introduce you to Cody, and we are one of the leading global beauty companies. My name is Olga Levinson, and I lead investor relations and M&A at Cody, and I've been at the company for 13 years. So I want to start with a fascinating statistic. Did you know that the majority of Gen Z consumers in the U.S. have a repertoire of over four different fragrances or perfumes that they rotate on a weekly basis and on a regular basis? And these same Gen Z consumers use fragrances at least three times per week. Maybe some of you have also noticed your own fragrance wardrobe at home also expanding in recent years. This is a drastic change from prior decades, when the average consumer had one favorite or signature scent that they returned to again and again, and only used periodically. Today's consumers have embraced what we call a fragrance wardrobe, buying fragrances that fit different occasions during their week, and tapping into new scenting trends as they emerge. this drastic change in consumer behavior is what has driven the u.s prestige fragrance market to more than double in the last six years to and it now surpasses over 10 billion dollars and as one of the top fragrance makers in the world who has been driving this category for over 120 years cody is squarely in the middle of this consumer trend and we will continue to benefit from this fragrance growth going forward. So if you take one thing away from this presentation, it is this. Kodi has the heritage, the brands, and the capabilities to turn our 120 years of beauty leadership into long-term shareholder value. What makes Kodi an attractive investment opportunity? I would summarize it in three points. First, we have a scaled platform in a very resilient global beauty market. If you look at the data over the last several decades, the global beauty market has consistently grown approximately 3% to 5% almost every single year. And this continues in the current environment as well. Even with the current macro uncertainty and pressured consumer sentiment, the beauty categories where we play are still growing 4% to 5% year to date. Second, Cody has a portfolio of highly desirable brands. Our brands all have distinct brand equities and positioning. We own many of our brands, but for the ones that we operate under a licensing structure, these licenses carry a long-term duration. And we operate this portfolio with a strong, vertically integrated business model, which is a point of differentiation for many of our competitors who outsource much of their operations. Third, we've recently unveiled a new strategic framework called Cody Curated, which aims to improve our business performance and execution. Cody Curated is all about sharpening our priorities, being more targeted with our investments, and establishing multiple levers for long-term profit growth. Let me share our beautiful portfolio of brands to give you a sense of who Cody is. How many of you have heard of Burberry or Hugo Boss? Well, we are the beauty partners of these iconic brands, taking their brand story and legacy and translating it into beautiful fragrances and makeup collections. We also own many of our own brands who are equally iconic and storied, such as CoverGirl makeup, Sally Hansen nail polish, and Philosophy skincare. The great thing about our portfolio is that it covers the full range of price points, from $5 nail polishes to $300 ultra-premium fragrances. In a K-shaped economy like we have today, this pricing diversification gives us a true competitive edge versus many of our consumers. and just as importantly we are not overly reliant on any single brand here you can see a snapshot of cody by the numbers we are the number two player globally in both fragrances and in mass cosmetics based on a portfolio of over 60 brands in the last 12 months we've generated 5.8 billion in sales and 880 million in EBITDA we have an employee base of over 11,000 employees and we have local operations in approximately 30 countries even as our products are sold in over 120 countries and we produce the majority of our products ourselves with seven manufacturing plants around the globe all of this reaffirms the Cody has the legacy the brands and the capability to turn 120 years of beauty leadership into long-term shareholder value. Beauty is a very unique category, operating at the crossroads of being a staple, a discretionary category, and a luxury and aspirational category. This is why it is critical that our executives have extensive beauty expertise. Nearly all of the leaders that you see on this slide, starting with our chairman and CEO have a deep knowledge of beauty from both Cody or other global beauty companies. And our five new independent board members who recently joined our board also come with many years of beauty experience. As you can see here, we play in many parts of the beauty market, including fragrances, cosmetics, skincare, and body care. However, we operate the business in two divisions. Our prestige division accounts for two-thirds of our sales and is primarily composed of our prestige fragrances, which sell in more premium channels like Sephora, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's at price points which are often $100 or more. Our consumer beauty division accounts for a third of our business, with products selling at more accessible retailers like Walmart and Target and Amazon at price points on often under $20. Our business is diversified geographically as well. As you can see here, North America and Western Europe are our biggest regions, and each of them are under 30% of our sales. We also have a strong footprint in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Latin America, and the global travel retail channel of duty-free stores we have premier infrastructure and a very strong distribution network across channels our global manufacturing capabilities are a key differentiator for us with seven manufacturing facilities across three continents producing over 1 billion products annually our manufacturing capabilities are a crucial competitive advantage in today's complex supply chain and tariff backdrop we also have extensive commercial and distribution reach with directly run operations in 30 countries our brands are sold across many channels including luxury department stores perfumeries mass retailers and e-commerce retailers and we distribute over several million orders annually reaching over 400,000 retail doors around the globe. There are few players who rival our commercial scale and reach in beauty. In the last seven years, we have been premiumizing our portfolio with our higher margin prestige business of premium brands consistently outpacing our consumer beauty business of more accessible brands. Fiscal year to date, our prestige business accounted for two thirds of our sales and over 90% of our profit looking forward there are two key things we are focused on with regards to this divisional mix first we're laser focused on continuing to overdrive our prestige business which is the growth and profit engine of the company and second we are focused on improving the performance and profitability of our consumer beauty division while in In parallel, our executive team and board continue a strategic review of this business. Cody has leading fragrance brands, innovation, and capabilities. Our unwavering focus on fragrances is grounded in both scale and strategic capabilities. In the highly attractive $50 billion prestige fragrance market, Cody is a top three player with 12% market share, right in line with LVMH. And we're also one of the few fragrance makers who operate licensing models, which is a critical part of our business. What this means in practice is that when desirable luxury brands like Burberry and Marc Jacobs want to enter beauty, they almost always choose to partner with a specialized beauty player like Cody to develop, manufacture, and market their beauty products. Such licensing arrangements are beneficial for both sides. The luxury brands benefit from our global scale, vertically integrated business model, and extensive beauty expertise, while receiving a risk-free royalty stream. At the same time, we build strong beauty brands which benefit from the awareness and desirability of the luxury houses. Amongst the top five global fragrance players, only Cody and L'Oreal operate licensing models. meaning luxury brands have a limited set of partners who can build scaled global and multi-category beauty businesses for them with this backdrop we continue to attract new and desirable licenses most recently adding swarovski etro and marnie to our portfolio reinforcing cody's position as a preferred partner for luxury brands key to operating a successful licensing business is diversification of the portfolio and reducing the license duration risk in the last couple of years we've proactively renewed and significantly extended many key licenses including hugo boss mark jacobs adidas and davidoff for an additional 15 plus years Crucially, 85% of our portfolio is either an owned brand, a perpetual license, which we view like an owned brand, or a license with a very long-term remaining duration of six years or more. Looking at our prestige division specifically, our business remains very long-term in nature with approximately 80% of our brands being either owned or long-term licensed. This underscores the strong foundations of our portfolio. We've also established a track record of building and scaling prestige beauty brands. Here you can see some of the biggest brands in our portfolio, including Burberry, Hugo Boss, Chloe, and Marc Jacobs. In the last six years, we've grown Burberry Beauty by a fantastic 140%, Hugo Boss by over 30%, Chloe by close to 70%, and Marc Jacobs by almost 50%. We are true brand builders, underpinned by our extensive beauty expertise and vertically integrated model. On the consumer beauty side of the business, we sell into mass retailers like Walmart and e-com players like Amazon, and Color Cosmetics is our largest category, accounting for 20% of our sales. we remain the number two player in mass cosmetics globally with 12 market share underpinning our number two position in mass cosmetics globally are several key brands with each one maintaining a strong position in a few core markets covergirl is our beloved north american icon representing easy breezy beauty and ranking number four in both the u.s and canada with five percent global market share rimel which embodies cool and edgy london beauty ranks number two in the uk and top five in poland and germany fueling four percent global market share sally hansen remains the undisputed leader in the nail category ranked number one in the us canada and australia and they are complemented by our smaller brands max factor and bourgeois within our consumer beauty division we also have a sizable business in mass fragrances which are fragrances sold in mass retailers usually priced under 30. key brands in the business include adidas fragrances vera wang and regional brands like bruno banani together they drive our 11 market share in developed markets putting Cody at number one within this fragmented category. Let me shift now to Cody's financial trajectory. In the four years between Fiscal 21 and Fiscal 24, we delivered significant revenue, margin, and profit expansion. Our sales on a like-for-like basis expanded by over 10% in Fiscal 22, Fiscal 23, and Fiscal 24. However, in fiscal 25 and in the last 12 months, we have seen more challenged business dynamics, reflecting both the normalization of growth in the category, some retailer de-stocking, and our own executional challenges. The lower sales volume, coupled with the impact from tariffs, have also pressured our gross margins. We expanded our gross margins by close to 500 basis points between fiscal 21 and fiscal 25 to approximately 65 percent fueled by a multi-pronged work stream on procurement revenue management and skew rationalization however with the recent challenges our gross margins in the last 12 months ended at 63.3 percent this sales and gross margin dynamic translated to our EBITDA margin and to our EPS between fiscal 21 and fiscal 25 we steadily expanded our adjusted EBITDA margin by close to 200 basis points, reaching 18.4% last year. In parallel, our profit expansion and reduced interest expense fueled a significant increase in our EPS, from $0.05 in fiscal 2021 to $0.50 in fiscal 2025. However, in the last 12 months, the more challenging business dynamics drove a reduction in both the EBITDA margin and EPS. Our strong profit and margin projection progression through fiscal 25 was fueled in part by a strong cost savings program. The organization has been actively identifying both fixed cost savings and ongoing productivity savings, contributing over $850 million over a five-year period. These savings were critical in funding reinvestment in the business to accelerate our growth, while in parallel strengthening our profit and our cash flow. We are on track to deliver an additional $200 million or more in savings this year, with additional savings identified for next year and beyond. One of the true performance highlights in the last five years has been our significantly improved balance sheet. In fiscal 21, our leverage was very elevated at almost seven times we make clear at that point that our number one capital allocation priority would be to steadily reduce our leverage towards more normalized levels targeting 2x over time and through the combination of strong organic free cash flow strong ebitda expansion and certain asset monetization we have reduced our leverage by over four turns in the last five years as a result we exited calendar 25 with leverage at 2.7 times the lowest level in almost a decade the strong execution in deleveraging and strengthening our operational and financial performance has also been recognized by the debt rating agencies since fiscal 20 we've been upgraded six times by moody's and five times by s&p we are now one notch below investment grade at all three rating agencies with a dynamic external environment and our recent more challenge performance we announced at the start of the calendar year a new chairman and interim ceo marcus strobel prior to cody marcus spent his career at png primarily in their beauty and personal care business after an initial assessment of cody's business marcus concluded that many of of the challenges Cody has faced in the last year stem from trying to do too many things at the same time, resulting in organizational focus and our resources being spread too thin. We therefore unveiled in February a new strategic framework called Cody Curated. Cody Curated is all about setting sharper priorities and deliberate choices, focusing our investments behind our core brands and core markets, And finally, ensuring that all new initiatives and launches are there to support the core business, as that is the only way to build sustainable growth in the long term. We have already begun implementing CODI Curated Framework in recent months. The organization is already focusing on the biggest brands and markets, strengthening our plans for the upcoming fall 2026 holiday season to ensure we win with the winners, and where it matters. Our resources will be concentrated behind our biggest bets, while we have cut smaller launches, which won't move the needle. with consumers increasingly engaging with brands and discovering new innovation online and over social media we are reallocating more of our marketing spend from content production to consumer and influencer engagement and advocacy and culturally we are refocusing the full organization and improving our market share rather than short-term financial delivery these changes will take time to drive results, and the path will not be linear. But we are confident that this focused approach will return CODI to a path of sustained top-line and bottom-line growth over the long term. So in sum, this is a really dynamic time in the world. Consumers are craving the small items that boost their mood and boost their self-confidence, and beauty is at the epicenter of this trend. I hope you come away from this presentation with the following points. Kodi has a scaled platform in a resilient global beauty market. We have a portfolio of highly desirable brands with distinct equities, long-term duration licenses, and a differentiated, vertically integrated business model. And the Kodi-curated strategic framework is setting in motion sharper priorities, targeted investments, and multiple levers for long-term profit growth. And the one thing I want to leave you with is this. Kodi has the heritage, the brands, and the capabilities to turn our 120 years of beauty leadership into long-term shareholder value. Thank you, and I'll be happy to take any questions now.

Speaker 7

First, thank you for showing up, I mean, to bring you an idea for a stock that's 90% over the last 10 years and 75% over the last year. It's trading at basically, I mean, if you look at the, it's trading at times EBITDA, is that basically what it's true? You said you have EBITDA of 880 million and the market cap's about 1.7?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, on an enterprise value, it's more like five or six, but yes, it's obviously down a lot.

Speaker 7

Yeah, and you compare yourself with a number of other brands and companies and you've done the worst of all those so i wanted to hear more like a reflection of what exactly went wrong and what exactly is changing because um as as recently as like a few months there was even a class action lawsuit that I think filed against Cody for telling stories that then weren't true. So can you talk a little bit about what have you learned and what is it that you're going to do different in a significant way to turn this thing around? Sure.

Speaker 1

I mean, I think it's always helpful to kind of set the challenges of the last 12 months versus a track record in the prior four years where there was actually very strong momentum. So I don't want to discount the progress that the company and the leadership team executed in fiscal 21, 22, 23, and 24. I mean, double-digit.

Speaker 7

It wasn't translated to stock gains for the investment.

Speaker 1

It was during that period. So our stock went from about $3 in 2020 to, I think, $12 to $13 in calendar 24. So it really did translate for a long period of time or a multi-year period into share price performance. Now, obviously, since that point, in the last year and a half, the performance has been challenged. And between that and some of the portfolio dynamics that are happening around one of our key brands, gucci which will exit the portfolio in the next few years um and we have to you know specify and share with externally exactly how to think about that in the coming years as well as some of the portfolio reviews i think right now the stock has pulled back a lot and part of it also reflects our executional challenges so on your question around what went wrong what can we do better on a go forward basis as i mentioned i think as the performance did well over a multi-year period resources went into too many different directions so you know trying to improve cosmetics trying to fuel fragrances trying to launch an ultra premium fragrance line trying to boost our skincare presence it was spread too thin and i think the results of that was underperformance and market share loss over a period of time and that is exactly what we're trying to course correct yeah so jb effectively actually built cody um you know in the early 90s uh they were they're effectively you know a holding company that set about acquiring different consumer brands and beauty brands that ultimately got split up on the consumer side into what is now record bank user And on the beauty side, what is now Cody? So they own Cody privately, you know, for about 20 years. They took it public in 2013. We've been a public company, but a controlled public company where they have consistently owned more than 50 percent of the shares. But they've obviously been very supportive. I mean, they've been behind the company for 30 years now.

Speaker 4

You have an interviewer seat to go right now. When will you have a firm seat to go?

Speaker 1

So, I mean, that's for him to answer, but I would say what he has shared, you know, in his conversations is that he needs to set the pace of the turnaround, really see it start delivering before remaining chairman, but passing, you know, kind of the baton on the CEO side. So, I think it's for the foreseeable future, he will continue to play in both roles. Yep. Yeah, so there's a strategic review underway for our consumer beauty business that's part of it but like any company we're also assessing the broader portfolio there's an you know obviously we have a new chairman but we also have new board members so there needs to be a holistic discussion amongst all of them to assess and you know and on us to come to you to the market you know ideally this calendar year with a framework around you know what is the end state portfolio

Speaker 3

will take you to to the point to re-accelerate your growth outside of the you know the internal executions that you're working on is there anything within the industry that cody as a

Speaker 1

company can expand the market to be accelerated yeah i mean i think the we have beautiful brands and really strong capabilities which we've proven obviously performance in the last year has been has not met the mark but it means that we're starting from a strong baseline right so purely improving the execution behind our brands will already you know closing that gap to the category if the category is growing three to five percent simply taking you know the execution and growing in line with the category will already mean strong you know acceleration and top line and in the business with 60 plus percent gross margins that by necessity also benefits the bottom line quite substantially as well and we're a very cash generative business you know in the last few years on average we generate you know 300 million plus minus in annual free cash flow like this is a very strong business so when the top line is working it really does you know benefit the full pnl cash flow and balance sheet now in terms of adjacent opportunities we want to do that but we want to do that in a target way so that we're not repeating prior mistakes of trying to chase too much at the same time so the firm the the top priority is focusing on the core but at the same time you know looking at adjacencies like ultra premium fragrances you know launching these beautiful collections of you know priced at you know two three hundred dollars plus we've done that under chloe we're doing that under burberry um you know there's uh there's other brands as well jill sander um we've launched fragrance mists so giving consumers who are maybe priced out of the category with products that are nice maybe not the sense not the same concentration not the same scent profile, but you can buy, you know, a Calvin Klein mist for $20 or $30. So it's bringing in Gen Z consumers. It's bringing in consumers who may not be able to afford, you know, the more premium products. So I think we want to, you know, approach certain adjacencies, but in a very targeted way. Yeah. so we've been very active and proactive around you know both extending and balancing out the maturity ladder so we had a sizable over a billion dollars of maturities due in calendar 26 we came to the markets last fall in the transaction that was significantly significantly oversubscribed um got very attractive you know cost of debt on that so now our first maturities come in calendar 28 but they're very staggered beyond that so it's not one giant kind of trunch

Speaker 4

yep um the nice thing about beauty is that there's pricing power now we don't want to abuse

Speaker 1

that pricing power it needs to be a very deliberate very targeted on the skew by skew basis but this is a category that is desirable for consumers it's one of the last things that they cut if you kind of map out price elasticity of different consumer categories beauty is one of the least price elastic categories out there so again we don't want to abuse that power but But there's room to take pricing if needed.

Speaker 6

I think I heard you say earlier that recent I think you suggested that your competition doesn't.

Speaker 7

So I guess from my point of view, it's capital intensive and puts at a lot of fixed costs. So what are the advantages of capital? I can see a lot of this advantage.

Speaker 1

When we look at, you know, so I think obviously when there are cycles you know having if you're in a down cycle if you have a nasa light model you know there's benefits from that but if you look over a cross cycle period we have one of the largest we are you know fragrances is our profit engine we have i think the largest fragrance manufacturing plant in the world in spain um if it's not the largest it's one of the largest which actually gives us, you know, objectively, like, some of the best cost of goods, cost per unit in the industry. I think that's a key point of differentiation that helps us fuel the investment behind our brands. The fact that we are not relying too much on external suppliers, particularly for the fragrance business, the fact that we have our own internal R&D means that we can actually differentiate our products in a much bigger way. for many of the not the very established scale global players but many of the upstart beauty brands they're all relying on the same third-party manufacturers who come you know in r d engines which means the differentiation between these upstart brands is really just their marketing engine for us we have our internal perfumers our own internal r d we have ip around different parts of the fragrance composition long lasting sense how it diffuses so the core technical differentiators for you know our core business it becomes very important that that that is in-house well great thank you everyone