Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (DKS) September 2026 Conference Transcript

Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to introduce Dick's Sporting Goods and to moderate our fireside chat. Today, we have with us Ed Stack, Executive Chairman of Dick's Sporting Goods. Ed served as the company's Chairman and CEO from 1984 through January 2021. We also have with us Lauren Hobart, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dick's Sporting Goods. Lauren joined Dick's in 2011 as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, and she became president in 2017 and CEO in 2021. We also have with us Navdeep Gupta, chief financial officer of Dick's Sporting Goods. Navdeep joined Dick's in 2017 as senior vice president, finance and chief accounting officer, and he became CFO in 2021. Navdeep, I'll turn it over to you.

Well, fantastic. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I wanted to read the disclaimer, but I'm guessing nobody's interested in reading it. So our Our non-disclosure agreement is actually filed on the website, and Nate, wherever you are, thank you for doing the reminder for me for that.

Great. Okay, so we'll get started. I guess right out of the gate, we'll just talk about the state of the athletic category, if that's okay. I think there is a good amount of concern out there about what is going on in footwear and apparel. So if I have this right, since COVID, we've been seeing a strong casual athletic trend, which has been underpinned by increasing health and wellness focus. But more recently, I think we've seen more cautious commentary out of the brands and more challenged results out of other athletic retailers. So could you maybe level set where you think we are in the athletic cycle for both footwear and apparel?

Yeah, I think that the, so thanks for the question and thanks for inviting I think the idea that the athletic cycle is over is overdone okay so when you take a look at what our footwear business is on the dick side our business on the dick side is really very good the specialty channel has been is a bit more challenged but on the dick side it's very good and a couple of things it's more the specialty channel so So Foot Locker on launch shoes was much more dependent on kind of the high launch retro shoes than we are at Dick's. The same with some other of the specialty players. But that business has slowed, and there's the ability to pivot to other areas of the business, which is, I think, what we've done at Dick's extremely well. Whether it's new brands that I would say are not emerging anymore but have emerged, such as Ann and Hoka have been great. And on the Dick side, we transitioned to those pretty quickly. Foot Locker was not able to or didn't do that and wasn't able to do that. You see other brands now coming up with it. Saucony, Solomon, Azix is coming back. And what's going on with Timberland, with Uggs, Birkenstock. So this business has just broadened out, which is really, we think, very good for us. The fact that there's more alternatives for us to go to and to build our business as opposed to having a small handful of brands that really dominated the industry. With that being said, I think that some of the brands that have been viewed as having a difficult time, there's some of these legacy silhouettes that have been an issue, but they've got some really interesting and great product in the pipeline, and you've started to see that. From a Nike standpoint, the mind shoe has been terrific. If we could get more in the marketplace as they work through the manufacturing process and get more there, there's a big opportunity from that. From a basketball standpoint around JAW and around Caitlin Clark, these shoes coming out. So I think this is a moment in time where there's a bit of a dip in the industry, but it's far from a real long-term program. And when you take a look at An and Hoka and some of these other brands that are out there, they're doing extremely well. And so I think it's way overdone. The margin pressure is real, which is really what's driven the performance for ourselves and some other retailers. The margin pressure is real as these legacy silhouettes have slowed down. And then some of the brands started discounting, and the discounting got pretty aggressive. and we felt that it was really important for us to stay with the market from a price standpoint. Some of you that we've talked to felt it's very difficult to have a young man or young woman who's working in the Dick's store or the Foot Locker store talk to a consumer or an athlete, as we refer to them, and they say, you know, we can buy this shoe for $25 less expensive on such and such a site. We didn't want them to go someplace else to buy that product. We felt that we really wanted to retain that consumer, and we felt that that was the right investment to make in our business. And when we talked on our call, I used the word investment very purposefully, that we do feel it was an investment in our business to make sure that we keep that consumer. We wanted that consumer to come back and shop with us at Christmas. We want that consumer to shop with us in the spring for his or her baseball cleats, softball cleats, soccer cleats, other product. and we didn't want to be viewed as high-priced in the marketplace and they get that mindset and don't come back and shop with us. So it was an investment in our business. We talk all the time that we make investments in our business, not for a quarter or two, but for a lifetime. We look at it that this was really a lifetime investment that we're making in our business, and we do think it's going to continue through the fourth quarter. But if we had a mulligan to do it all over again, what we did in the second quarter, we do it all over again exactly the same way because we look at this in a very long-term way.

Okay. Thank you. If we could maybe just go back to the legacy silhouette comment, it's been a category or a subcategory that I think that's been under pressure for a while, but Foot Locker U.S. was able to comp about 6% in the first quarter in spite of, I think, it still being somewhat challenging. So why do you think some of the slower growth in these styles may be caught up to Foot Locker in the second quarter. Did something meaningfully change? And when you think about the inventory situation, how many quarters do you think the industry needs to work through this inventory?

I think that there's a couple things. So those legacy silhouettes, Foot Locker did really very well in the first quarter. And a lot of it was really helped by the launch product, the Jordan retro product. The second quarter was a disappointment in that product across the Dick's business, the Foot Locker business, the other direct competitors' businesses, and the brands. So we think that that was a big issue there. These legacy silhouettes just they had been kind of trending down but somewhere in the second quarter they really slowed. But when a couple of these brands, and Nike in particular, brought out different materials and different embellishments on some of those legacy silhouettes, Air Force One or Dunk, so to speak. You couldn't keep them in stock. So if you take an Air Force One silhouette in a traditional triple white, triple black, or a traditional white shoe with the varsity colors, red, blue, black, those have slowed significantly. But a triple white Air Force One in patent leather, a triple white Air Force One in black, you can't keep those in stock today. So it's trying to get enough of those in the marketplace. Now, how long that has to run, I don't know. But right now there's the ability, if we had more of those products, it would be a very different scenario. And the discounting got pretty aggressive in the second quarter. And like I said, we expect that to continue through the balance of the year.

So maybe if we could go back to the guidance cut. Obviously, the market was surprised by the cut, both on the Dick's core margins and on the Foot Locker comp and margins. And you talked a little bit before how promotions are important and you're using it as an investment. But if maybe we could just focus on Dick's first. Do you think there's a degree of conservatism in your guidance, just given the strength of what you've seen so far in demand at the store? Footwear grew in the second quarter. So how much discounting do you think there really needs to happen? And is there any kind of broader discounting here beyond the footwear that we should be aware of?

I'll start with, so Dick's, we're really pleased with how the business is doing at Dick's. And in fact, as you know, we kept our comp guidance the same. We did reflect some of the promotionality from the legacy footwear, which affects the Dick's business as well. And we also reflected some conservatism toward fuel costs and health care costs, which we have been experiencing all year. But overall, we are so bullish on, well, we're bullish on the entire business, but the Dix business is very strong. We'll continue to manage through some of the impact of the margin and some of those other existential or exogenous impacts from fuel and health care. But overall, we never guide to the best possible outcome, but we feel really good about our guidance.

I think there's a concern out there that the contagion that is in Foot Locker will spread to Dix, and we don't see that. If you took a look at our footwear, we don't guide or disclose category by category what those comps are. But if you were to take a look at our comps and footwear, they're really quite good. You'd be pretty pleased. And part of this is the transition that the Dix team, we've been ahead of that from a legacy silhouette standpoint. But we still had to be competitive in the marketplace on those. But when you take a look at what's happening from a transition out of some sneakers, so to speak, into some other categories, whether it's Birkenstock, Uggs, Timberland, that's all part of the footwear business. And we really believe that an athlete, kid playing high school sports, male, female, they really need five different shoes. There's five shoes on their shopping list. One is the shoe that they're going to wear in their sport, whether it's baseball cleats, basketball shoes, whatever it might possibly be. Then it's also going to be a running shoe because everybody's got to train from a running standpoint. And then training today, those of you who watch, you know, from what's going on from a fitness standpoint, whether it's high rocks, whatever it might possibly be, this training, there's a very different pair of shoes that you're wearing to train in. It's not a traditional running shoe. So you need that training shoe. And then the recovery piece of this has gotten really extremely hot, the mind shoe. So the whole recovery aspect is really important. And then you still have the shoe that the young man or young woman is going to wear to be, kind of say who they are, what they're wearing to school, what they're wearing out with their buddies on a Friday night. So there's five shoes that they really have under consideration. And between Dick's and Foot Locker, we are the retailers best positioned to service that need.

So then maybe if we can go to the Foot Locker guidance cut, we'll start with the comp first. I guess we're curious why you think same store sales will take such a meaningful step back from what you originally predicted outside of the lifestyle silhouette issue that we just went through because just thinking about it another way you have a new assortment coming through all the footlocker stores you had an ad campaign that only started to make its way to the consumer maybe five or six weeks ago and you've only remodeled 250 stores to fast break getting them to I think 350 by the end of the year so just given the amount of change and the time it might take to work through the system do you think you might be underestimating what the comp response could be so our general counsel would say that's a very dangerous question okay you know sorry um but

underestimating i think we're given the guidance that we think is best kind of looks at where the business is today and there's some things that are happening so what has surprised us and surprised the industry as a whole, is the launch and retro product has been very difficult. And that's well chronicled. When we originally looked at giving our guidance for the year, we didn't anticipate that. And Q1 was pretty good. Q2 was pretty difficult. A couple of other things of what we did from a Foot Locker standpoint, taking this down, EMEA has been very difficult. And when we originally gave our guidance for the year of what we thought we were going to do from a Foot Locker standpoint, there was not a war going on in the Middle East, and that has had a really meaningful impact on Europe, and you can see that from other retailers in Europe of what they've talked about. And then the legacy silhouettes, it's taking longer than we thought to pivot some of these products and get more of these products in the store as the industry has got a really interesting problem that is short-term, but they've got an overcapacity issue in some of the legacy silhouettes, and there's an undercapacity issue on some of these new shoes that have come out that are really resonating with the consumer. So there's an imbalance going on right now, and we're not able to get more of these shoes in based on manufacturing constraints as we would like.

And so it sounds to me like this is more of a supply issue than a real demand issue.

Don't see this as a demand issue whatsoever. If you've got something that's new and innovative, that consumer will step into the plate to buy that product. Whether you can see that from an on-cloud tilt shoe that's really hot right now or what's going on with the Nike mine shoe, The Nike running construct around the nine block between Pegasus Structure and Vamero has been great. If there's something new and different out there that the consumer views as different and innovative, it's doing very well. That's most on the footwear side. And then on the other side, which is why we don't think there's a contagion from a Dick standpoint, whether it's baseball bat launches, what's going on from some other brands that we've brought into the store, such as Viore, we've got a number of stores, Gymshark, Free People Movement. There's a transition going on right now, and we're right at the center of it, and I think we are extremely well positioned. Great.

When it comes to discounting and moving some of the inventory, I would imagine it has to be a little bit delicate to have product discounted in the stores while trying to showcase new assortment and sell that through at full price. So how do you balance that, and how big of a role could Going Gone have as you manage through this?

Yep. Sure. It's not that difficult. The consumer knows what's new and what's hot and what's not. And so the consumer is very intelligent out there. or they know what's going on, and if you've got a mine shoe or you've got the Nike running construct or you've got the Cloud Tilt or you've got an Adidas running shoe and it's new and innovative and the consumer wants it, they'll know they'll come in and get that. And then the product that needs to be discounted is those legacy silhouettes, and right now those are out of favor right now.

This is, I think, one of the benefits of bringing these two companies together is Foot Locker often will experience a trend a little bit ahead of where Dix would experience a trend, And so on the Dix side, we can see, okay, this franchise is slowing or, you know, there's several examples. I don't want to be specific, but we can taper our buy at Dix accordingly, knowing that there's some softness, you know, that may come. And then at the same time, we are using going, going, gone. And our teams are working really well together to just help each other out when there is a clearance opportunity and just get through it.

There's also, Dick's has a longer tail with these franchises than Foot Locker does. The Foot Locker customer is a more fashion-conscious, faster customer than the Dick's consumer, and we can see what's happened at Foot Locker, and then we can build to that. An example of New Balance is a bit more difficult at Foot Locker. It's rocking in Dick's. So we can kind of see. We have the ability on the entire, with our acquisition of Foot Locker, we have visibility to the entire ecosystem of athletic footwear now. So with Foot Locker, we own a company in Tokyo called Atmos, which is a tier zero retailer, very similar to Kith here in the U.S., which gets all of the new product that a brand is trying to seed in there. It was an example. I was walking through the brand rooms in Germany with Bjorn, and there was a shoe that I looked at, and I picked it up, and I said, that is a very cool shoe. And Bjorn said, you don't get that shoe. And I looked at him, and I won't tell you exactly what I said, but I said, you know, what do you mean we don't get that shoe? He said, you don't get that shoe. He said, Full Locker won't get that shoe right now. You know, Atmos, they'll get that shoe. We're going to seat it there. So we've got Atmos that we can see what's coming with shoes that are being seated. And then as I talk about igniting a franchise, we can see that and do that with Foot Locker and those street kind of fashion doors that Foot Locker has in Dick's House of Sport. And then when it scales, we've got that in the Dick's stores and the traditional Foot Locker stores. And then also at the end-of-life product in our value chain of going, going, gone. So we've got visibility to the entire ecosystem of athletic footwear, and nobody else has got that kind of visibility that we have. So we've built this ecosystem across the entire platform that nobody else has and will really positively impact our business.

That's great. If I can maybe drill down on what's happening with Foot Locker, I think one of the critiques or concerns is that Foot Locker is an asset that would require quite a bit of CapEx and maybe take valuable attention and dollars away from a very healthy core to exporting How are you feeling about the asset today? And is there anything in your guidance acknowledging that there might be a bigger issue with Foot other than this sluggishness in the footwork category?

Yeah, I think that we're not taking assets away from Dick's to be able to do that. We've got a significant amount of capital available to us. We've got a billion dollars on the balance sheet right now. We've kind of started well on our way on the fast break process, and this is a pretty low capital-intensive change in the business. So we don't see that Foot Locker is going to take a significant amount of capital. to get this thing kind of where it needs to be. This is really how do we pivot away from some brands that aren't doing as well right now and into new brands. I was with a very important brand in the industry that we do a lot of business with that Foot Locker didn't. And when I sat and talked with the CEO, he said, hey, in the past, we didn't really trust Foot Locker. We didn't really want our brand in Foot Locker. We really weren't sure where Foot Locker was going to go. So Foot Locker couldn't transition to this brand because the brand wasn't going to be supportive to them. As we sat and talked, and he said, now that you guys own it, he said, we are fully invested and supportive of Foot Locker. So we've got that with a couple of different brands. So Foot Locker, believe me, this is not easy with Foot Locker. But there's some things here that we've got to transition into some other brands and change some allocation of inventory. and we're in the process of doing this. It's just taking longer than we anticipated, and we thought it would be quicker. We thought some other brands would be able to be more supportive quicker than they have been, more legacy brands, and that hasn't happened. But with that being said, though, we are looking at, I've had a number of people say kind of how are you looking at this. We are, and I think kind of what you're getting to a little bit, is we are creating a menu that all of you would expect us to create based on the environment we're in today and what we're seeing. So we've got no preconceived ideas of what has to be done. We're not going at this like, damn the torpedoes, we're going to make this thing work. We've owned it for a year and a week now. And now through this year, we've taken our time to really understand the business, what's working, what's not working, what's not working that could work, and what's not working that's not going to work. And we're creating this menu that you would expect us to create. And as we go forward, we'll give you more details as we kind of make some final decisions.

I would add one other thing. You mentioned or you asked the first question was sort of is Foot Locker distraction for Dix? I would say absolutely not. But on top of that, I think actually it's helpful to the Dix business that we're going to our core brand partners together, getting access to product, knowledge that we have, allocations. And so I think it's actually been a positive for the Dick's business.

And maybe, Kate, I'll build on that. If you think even from a P&L intensity perspective, we have talked about $100 million to $125 million of synergy, and that's a collective company synergy, similar to what Lauren was saying. You're now able to go and negotiate as a Dick's Inc. And so the benefit of that is not only on the Dick's side, but also on the Foot Locker side. So that's where the one plus one definitely is accretive. Like I said, it's going to take a little bit of time, and we are working through those scenarios.

Navdeep, maybe I can keep it with you for a minute just on the DICS core and SG&A. I do think that the flow-through has not been awesome. Just because... Well, thank you for putting it that way. I should have scripted it better. Has it been awesome? There's not been a lot of flow-through. That's fair. And so we wondered if you could maybe talk to us about some of the building blocks within SG&A that has resulted in that, and then how you think about the flow through the rest of the year.

Yeah, so it's a great question. I think maybe the way to contextualize this is, and I've said this to a lot of investors, that you can't look at SG&A in isolation. Because in our case, for example, Dix Media Network, Game Changer, if you look at the 80 basis points of gross margin expansion that was driven here in second quarter, was driven by Dick's Media Network and Game Changer. And those are the capabilities that we are, the investments for those shows up in SG&A. So it's a little bit of a geography shift that when you invest in Game Changer, the intensity shows up in SG&A, whereas the benefit sits in margin, in comp sales, as well as in the gross margin. So that's one aspect of it. The second aspect of that is there are, and we talked to certain investors earlier in the day, and we talked about it's about prioritization. When you think about the opportunities that we have, whether it is building these assets that we talked about or some of the investments that we are making in technology platform enhancements, so it's about prioritization of those investments. Having said that, you know, that point that you made that it's been running hot for some time now, it's not lost on us, and we are consciously focused on that. And then this is where the last point that I made in the prior question, the SG&A intensity will also get benefited from the negotiations that we are having from a synergy perspective. Great.

And then I wanted to just ask about the different units. So if we stick with CORE-DICS, just House of Sport, if you could maybe just talk again to where you are in the rollout of that, meaning not so much like number of doors, but how happy you are with that is it still providing the vendor relationships the comp lift that you've been seeing and you know how do we think about um that versus the traditional dick's locations yes so if anyone hasn't been to a house a sports store it is usually about 100 to 125 000 square foot experiential it's got a climbing wall field um and just an unbelievable experience both a retail experience and just athlete experience and we have been thrilled

with the performance of House of Sport. We're now in a few stores. We're in our fourth year. And what we've been able to share is that the margins, the ROI is quite good, as is the comp. So even in year two, year three, year four, we're comping the comp. And that's really important. But the other benefit to House of Sport, so it's also the inspiration for our new 50,000 square foot model, which is our real core, we called it Fieldhouse internally. But it's leading the way in terms of how we want to have products come to life and experience and service and all of that. And it's brought in a number of different brand partners. So House of Sport is a really safe way for new brand partners. And, you know, you look at Hoka came in through House of Sport. On came in originally through Public Lands and House of Sport. FP Movement came in. We have Gymshark just coming in through House of Sport. Viore just coming in. It's a way that in a very controlled environment, we can bring a brand to life like nobody else. I mean, head to toe. These little collab spaces that we have are absolutely amazing. And it's been a way for us to, that infiltrates through the entire Dick's banner eventually once people get comfortable. So it's just been a win, win, win.

Yeah. And Kate, maybe I'll, go ahead. No, go ahead. The other thing I'll build on is two things on the field house. The field house are doing fantastic as well. We talked about the economic returns on the field houses is great. The way the exporting goods will continue to come to fruition from the way how you see that experience will be either through a house of sport or a field house the other aspect of house of sport that is really great is we are able to test and learn the new concepts so think of dick's media network we tested that out in house of sport and now we are rolling that the collector's clubhouse is another like the trading cards destination that we have created we started out in house of sport so we are able to go and test these capabilities in house of sport how well they do then you are able to quickly move into the field house concept, and that's a great testing ground for us to test and then evolve that into a field house concept.

The last thing I'd say about House of Sport, too, is House of Sport is really one of the most unique retail experiences out there, and I think a lot of people would agree with that. Mall developers love House of Sport. They want a House of Sport in their mall, whether it's taken the place of replacing a vacant Sears department store, Penny's department store, some other department stores that have kind of exited the place. The traffic that's brought in there, the different consumer that comes in there has been phenomenal. What House of Sports has done for the mall to increase the sales in the GLA of the mall. And that's why now we have access to real estate that five years ago we would have never had access. to, whether it's building a house of sport in Palm Beach Gardens Mall in Florida or Barton Creek in Austin or Cerritos in L.A., Tyson's in Washington, D.C. It's access to real estate that we would have never had access to before. And when we've gotten into these better malls and the traffic that we build off the mall in these A malls, the sales have been phenomenal. So House of Sport is just doing great. We're going to continue and invest in this, and it's a big opportunity.

Great. Thank you for that. I just wanted to be sure to ask about the fast-break stores too, which is on the Foot Locker side of the house. So are the fast-break stores that we would see today considered the final prototype of what you think Foot Locker should look like longer term?

Well, in retail and the way we've done things at Dick's, we're never in the final stage. We're constantly trying to innovate and move things forward. But it's a pretty good representation right now. I think one of the things we talked about is that we thought we could take 30% of the skews out. And what Foot Locker always was, we kind of characterized as merely a run-on sentence of shoes. And we wanted to scale that down and edit that. what we have determined is that there's more editing to be done. So there's still too many. If we take a look at, and I'm not saying this is the exact number, but just directionally, you know, the 80-20 rule that's out there that 80% of your business come from 20% of the SKUs, et cetera, et cetera. When you take a look at the 20% of the sales, there's still too many SKUs in that 20%. It's too broad. We can take those dollars, reinvest those in colors of franchises that are working or deeper in sizes so that we're in stock better. So there's still some more editing to be done. So what you see from a Foot Locker standpoint right now from Fast Break is pretty close, but we're still editing that a little bit further. I think that there's a bit more apparel that we can put in there from trying some additional fixtures and some additional apparel, which is we get that right will help drive the margin rate.

Okay, great. Just in these last couple minutes, we do have four questions we're asking everyone today. So first, you do have a slightly higher income consumer that shops at Dick's, but maybe not as high an end consumer that shops at Foot Locker. Could you maybe talk about the different income cohorts and what your expectation is for the environment in the second half of 26 versus what you saw in the first half?

Yeah, I'll start and then pass it to Nopti. But so the consumer is clearly across the country is under pressure. And we've heard the same in EMEA. But the Dix consumer is holding up very, very well. And that's been for some time. And that's due to the prioritization of sport and outside health and wellness. I mean, everything, the trends are just sport and culture have come together like unbelievably never before. And you saw it in World Cup. And we will continue to see it as the years go on. So Dick's consumer is doing well. We saw that. We did not see trade down from best to better or better to good. We saw growth across all income demographics. I think the Foot Locker consumer may be a little bit more under pressure. However, when there is newness and innovation that's resonating across the Dick's consumer or the Foot Locker consumer, they absolutely are prioritizing and it's resonating.

Yeah, and maybe the only thing that I'll add to that is Amaya has a different cadence to that. The pressure is definitely much more in the MAM segment compared to the U.S. So that's been contemplated into our guidance as we gave for the full year.

And then pricing. Do you expect your prices to be higher, lower, the same in the second half of this year versus the first half of this year?

I think it would be similar to the second quarter. I wouldn't look at it half to half. I would look at it quarter to quarter. So I think, you know, the balance of the year will be similar to the second quarter.

And then our third question is on margins. do you see more margin headwinds or tailwinds in 27 versus 26 so go ahead go ahead no we haven't provided the guidance for 27 but i would say you know a couple of things that to keep in mind you know the balance would be making the right long-term investment because that is really important to us i talked about the house of sport so we'll be very conscious about the key areas of investment that are performing well continue to lean into it the second is there is a clear focus and collective work that is being done across the organization on productivity, and then we'll monitor the promotional and the pricing environment for next year.

Okay, great. And then our last question is on AI. Do you expect a significant increase in efficiency as a result of AI in 27 versus 26? And what part of your business would change the most?

I'll start. So we are leaning into AI in a number of different ways. I would say the way to think about it is there's efficiencies for our teammates, so we're taking work that's been formerly full of friction away from them. For our athletes, we view it as tremendous opportunity, and we're really leaning into our core differentiation. So when we think about what makes Dick's special, I'm speaking mostly on the Dick's side now, but we think about what we call the power of our opinion, and that's all the first-party consumer data we have through our scorecard program. It's the knowledge that our teammates have on all aspects of sport, what products are coming out, what launches, all of that. We are now starting to bring to life through a consumer-facing app called Coach by Dix, which is now embedded into the Dix mobile app. And I think that is where we're going to see the biggest input for next year. So removing friction, trying to delight athletes and really bring our experience to life. and you know at this point AI is still requiring investment and we will continue to monitor but we are not doing tech for tech's sake we are doing where we think we can really amplify the strategies.

All right and with that thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you everybody.