Wolverine World Wide Inc (WWW) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Greetings, and welcome to the Wolverine Worldwide Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, star one. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jared Filippone, Head of Investor Relations. Jared, you may begin.

Good morning and welcome to our third quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. On the call today are Chris Huff-Nagel, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Taryn Miller, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the third quarter of 2025 and guidance for fiscal year 2025. The press release is available on many news sites and can be viewed on our corporate website at wolverineworldwide.com. This morning's press release and comments made during today's earnings call include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures, including references to the ongoing business, were reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in attached tables within the body of the release or on our investor relations page on our website, wolverineworldwide.com. I'd also like to remind you that statements describing the company's expectations, plans, predictions, and projections, such as those regarding the company's outlook for fiscal year 2025, growth opportunities, and trends expected to affect the company's future performance, made during today's conference call are forward-looking statements under U.S. securities loss. As a result, we must caution you that there are a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These important risk factors are identified in the company's SEC filings and in our press releases. Additionally, during the quarter, we elected to change our accounting policy for certain inventory from LIFO to FIFO. The majority of our distribution warehouse inventory was already accounted for using FIFO, and this change aligns all warehouse inventory under a consistent policy. The financial statements in today's release and the numbers referenced on the call reflect the impact of this accounting change for both the current and prior year periods, which have been retrospectively adjusted. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chris Huffnagel.

Thanks, Jared. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on today's call. In the third quarter, we exceed our expectations on both the top and bottom line. Revenue grew approximately 7%, in line with our long-term target of mid to high single-digit growth, and was again driven by our two largest brands, Maryland Saucony. Healthy revenue growth, coupled with another quarter of record gross margin and strong execution, delivered adjusted earnings per share of 36 cents. Adjusted EPS grew at more than triple the rate of top-line growth as we continue to prudently manage the business, balancing needed and important investment into the business while expanding profitability. Our strategy and discipline execution continues to deliver solid results, and our team remains focused on executing our brand-building model with distinction, centered squarely on building awesome products, telling amazing stories, and driving the business. As I reflect on where our portfolio is today and where we need to go tomorrow, it's clear our brands are at three different stages of development. First, Maryland and Saucony are moving at pace. taking market share and generating consistent revenue growth around the world. Our aim here is to continue to thoughtfully manage these brands to sustainably scale them to their fullest potential. We've made real progress in elevating design and innovation within their product pipelines, as well as in strengthening their brand positioning through impactful marketing activations. For 2025, these two brands are expected to represent nearly two-thirds of the company's total revenue and record mid-teens, year-over-year growth combined. Second, we believe Sweaty Betty has begun to turn the corner, the result of a lot of hard work in developing a new strategy and beginning to execute it over the past six months. The brand has delivered on the milestones that we believe are critical at this point in its evolution, which started with margin expansion and has transitioned to sequential improvement of year-over-year revenue trends. And finally, the Wolverine brand and our workgroup have not made the progress we anticipated. While I'm disappointed in our performance here, I believe we have a firm handle on the work that's necessary to get this business back on track. And importantly, we have new leadership in place. As of Monday, following a thorough search process, I'm pleased to announce Justin Cupps as our new workgroup president. Justin is a veteran leader with deep experience across a host of great footwear, apparel, and accessory brands. He's a strong addition to our leadership team. And for some context, workgroup revenue represents less than a quarter of the company's consolidated revenue and is now expected to finish the year down high single digits compared to 2024. In aggregate, I'm encouraged by the progress we've made and continue to make as a company. This year, we've elevated our teams and talent by adding excellent leadership like Justin, as well as new product design, merchandising, marketing, and sales talent across our brands. We've improved our processes, including our integrated business planning approach for more efficient demand and inventory management. We successfully completed the integration of Sweaty Betty's tools and processes into the company's ecosystem, advanced the adoption use of AI across the business, and developed plans to further elevate and modernize our e-commerce tools and platform next year. We've developed new muscle to drive impact in the global marketplace with our key city strategy, and we fostered a new culture centered around growth and winning together. In addition to the above, we expect to deliver solid financial results for the year. The midpoint of our guidance reflects revenue growth of approximately 6%, an increase in adjusted earnings per share of approximately 50% compared to 2024. Before I turn the call over to Taryn Miller to provide greater detail on our third quarter results and outlook for the year, I'd like to share some additional insights on our brands and their continued progress. I'll start with Saucony, which grew 27% in the third quarter. Saucony is uniquely positioned as a disruptive challenger brand at the intersection of two of the fastest-growing categories in the market, performance and lifestyle running, and the brand continues to win in these highly competitive arenas. In the third quarter, Saucony grew performance-run revenue by strong double digits globally compared to last year and again took market share in the important U.S.-run specialty channel, Powered in part by the brand's core four franchises, the Ride, Guide, Hurricane, and Triumph, which target its move maker consumer. While the brand successfully tapped into this broader market opportunity, it continues to maintain a strong focus on pinnacle innovation for elite runners with its endorphin franchise. The collection includes the Endorphin Speed for serious training, the Endorphin Pro for race day, and the Endorphin Elite Supershoe for ultimate performance. In 2026, the brand plans introduced the all-new Endorphin Azura, a premium, non-plated trainer targeting a larger consumer segment and growing opportunity within the market, in addition to further elevating franchises within the core four, with innovation incubated within the aforementioned Endorphin series. On the lifestyle side, Saucony drove strong revenue growth globally and took significant market share here in the U.S. as we continue to focus on prudently growing this segment of the business around the world. The brand's deep product archive enables it to authentically capitalize on a variety of different trends. The ProGrid Omni 9 and Ride Millennium, two of the brand's retrograde silhouettes, again drove significant growth in Q3. While classics like the Jazz Original and Shadow 5000 are encouragingly beginning to spark interest for 2026 with influential Tier 0 and Tier 1 retailers. Saucony continues to fuel brand heat with culturally relevant collabs, releasing new drops over the past few months, including 316, Keith Haring, J Tips, and Engineered Garments. Saucony collaborated with Metagirl on a release last quarter as well, which successfully leaned into the brand's significant opportunity with women, the beginning of a deeper anticipated partnership with the influential designer going forward. Envision the brand plans on dropping its first collaboration with prominent creator Westside Gun in December, with an expanded relationship and more drops expected next year. Saucony's brand is strong around the world and we continue to invest in the brand in the last quarter, in part through our key city strategy. Saucony continued to leverage Tokyo in the Asia Pacific region with a flagship store open in Harajuku earlier this year and is on track to open a host of new stores more broadly in China with our partner there. We expected APAC over the fastest growing region in the world for the brand this year. In Europe, Saucony took over Central London as a title sponsor of the London 10K in July, as I.D. filled at our last call, and followed this up with its sponsorship of the shortage 10K in September. Bookends to a powerful quarter for the brand in London, and more broadly in the EMA region, which has a hold on track to deliver strong double-jet revenue growth this year with momentum heading into 2026. Looking ahead, Saucony plans to expand its key stage strategy to Paris, sponsoring the Eiffel Tower 10K next month, and opening our next Pioneer store there in 2026. Brand interest continues to ramp up globally, and affinity for the brand continues to increase with runners, and more specifically, the younger consumer. While we continue to have success here in our home market, I'm equally excited about the global potential of the brand. Saucony's positioning within the fast-growing run lifestyle market is unique, and a compelling combination of heritage and authenticity, coupled with best-in-class innovation and developing cultural relevance, and the brand is setting the pace. 2025 is proving to be a great year for Sauncony, which is on track to deliver all-time record revenue and profit as a brand. Moving to Merrill, which grew revenue 5% in the third quarter, driving increases in most regions and in both the performance and lifestyle sides of this business. Merrill, the category leader in Hike, remains focused on modernizing trail as an authentic outdoor lifestyle brand with more athletic and more versatile product design and innovation. In the third quarter, the brand accelerated its long-running market share gains in its core hike category in the U.S., having taken share in 11 of the last 12 quarters, a category which encouragingly again improved sequentially to flat year-over-year. The Moab Speed 2, which is becoming a force on the trail, and the world's number one hiker, the Moab 3, both continue to drive growth at U.S. retail. The Agility Peak 5 drove strong growth on the trail running side. Looking headed to the next spring, Merrill plans to introduce the new Agility Peak 6, combining plush Float Pro foam cushioning with aggressive Vibram MegaGrip traction. Merrill's lifestyle business grew strong double digits in the third quarter, driven by a strong ramp-up of its disruptive wrap collection, along with steady growth from the iconic easy-on-easy-off jungle market, U.S. retail. In 2026, we anticipate the brand's lifestyle product pipeline will take a meaningful step forward. We're introducing trend-right low-profile silhouettes with the relay, modern iterations on the Jungle Mock, lifestyle materializations of the SpeedArc collection, and a consistent flow of energy-enhancing collaborations. While we're fairly distancing ourselves from the competition hike, we know a significant global opportunity exists in outdoor-inspired footwear, apparel, and accessories. In the third quarter, Merrill drove increases in brand interest and affinity, particularly with women, and the brand's key stage strategy continues to feed momentum for the brand around the world, as it has done for Sauncony. Merrill's urban hike guide activation, which included media events, collabs, and influencers, drove brand heat in Paris and contributed to another quarter of solid growth in broader EMEA, turning to sweaty Betty, which outpaced our expectations in the third quarter, with revenue down 4% versus the prior year. The team is aligned around a clear strategy and is executing with a high level of conviction and increased confidence. As we reinvigorate Sweaty Betty as one of the original activewear brands focused on empowering women through fitness and beyond. Our efforts started with reestablishing Sweaty Betty's premium brand positioning, which underpins our entire strategy. Bold and distinctive storytelling behind the Wear the Damn Shorts campaign in the second quarter and the Weather Whatever campaign last quarter have continued to reinforce the brand's uniquely Sweaty Betty female-focused positioning. As a result, brand awareness and affinity continue to increase in the quarter, with noteworthy gains among younger consumers and more premium buyers. At the same time, gross margins expanded once again as the brand continues to strengthen both its product pipeline and positioning in the marketplace. Along with the improved business results, we're also making meaningful progress against the three pillars of our brand's new strategy. First, we are delivering growth within our DTC business in Sweaty Betty's home market, with both e-commerce and stores growing in the third quarter. We started to elevate the brand's product line by introducing more newness, enabling a fresher offering with trend-right design and more thoughtful assortments, diversifying the brand's leadership in bottoms and expanding outerwear. This effort has produced some encouraging results, with pants and outerwear both up very strong double digits across our DTC business in the quarter. Within our digital channels, we remain focused on enhancing the consumer experience. One example is the new Sweaty Betty app, which we launched last quarter, where consumers are converting at a higher rate and spending more per transaction. In brick and mortar, we've taken action over the past few months to further optimize our retail footprint, relocating three stores, opening one new store, and closing a store. The new locations are performing well, and before the year is done, we plan to open five more new stores. Second, we're making early progress in expanding distribution in certain key markets. We've launched the brand's new partnership in China and opened a pop-up store in Shanghai, opened a second store with our partner in New Zealand, and developed plans to open additional stores in australia and india next year in the third quarter the brand's international third party business was up meaningfully along with the email wholesale business albeit both still on small bases third are resetting our u.s operations focused on a full price more premium online ddc business we anticipate this transition will take some time and put some pressure on the brand's global growth numbers in the near term but we believe it's necessary this pivot is in motion with the business mix already shifting to more full price premium selling we're making progress in recent overall sweaty buddy business and we believe the brand product marketing team are strong we've seen improvement in the year over your top line trends and expect this to continue in the brand's critical final quarter of the year and now finishing with wolverine which was down eight percent in the quarter with a broader work group down three percent wolverine's performance remains inconsistent our return to running a better brand and business is taking longer than than we initially anticipated. This said, we believe we have diagnosed the challenges and effectively using our proven playbook can return the brand to steady growth in the future. The addition of Justin Cupps to the team is a win for the company, and I anticipate they'll accelerate the need of progress here. We're already well on the way to strengthen Wolverine's product pipeline, enabling more thoughtful segmentation in the marketplace and bolstering Chen Wright products and premium price point offerings with collections like the Rancher Pro, the USA-built Workshop Wedge, and the all-new Infinity System, the brand's pinnacle expression of its performance comfort technology. Wolverine is in the process of amplifying its storytelling as well. The brand has partnered with country music star Jordan Davis this year in a variety of activations, featuring both in-line and dedicated products. I'm excited to announce this morning that Wolverine will be an exclusive presenting partner for Season 2 of the Paramount Plus series Landman, with a premiere in just a couple of weeks on November 16th. Both of these partnerships align well with the Wolverines brand and extend its reach significantly with consumers. As the product and marketing improvements begin to take root, we plan to focus on recalibrating the marketplace, better balancing inventories and aligning distribution with the brand's category leadership role, more premium positioning, and go-forward strategy. More to come on this as we enter the new year. I'd like to hand it over to Taryn Miller to take you through our third-quarter results and outlook for the remainder of 2025 in greater detail. Taryn?

Thank you, Chris. and welcome everyone. We delivered another quarter of strong results, exceeding expectations on both revenue and profitability. Our third quarter performance reflects disciplined execution of our strategy and the dedication of our teams. Our focus remains on implementing our brand building growth model across the portfolio, starting with our two largest brands, Merrill and Saucony. Prioritizing investments in these brands has led to improved performance and market share gains in key categories. We are also seeing encouraging signs of progress in other areas, including another quarter of sequential improvement for Sweaty Betty. While there's still more work to do, particularly in the work group, we remain confident in our strategy and the path forward. I'll now take you through the key highlights from our third quarter. Revenue was $470 million, ahead of the $455 million midpoint of our guidance range. The over-delivery was driven by stronger-than-expected performance in the active group, along with an approximate $3 million benefit from favorable foreign currency. Revenue increased 7% compared to the prior year, and on a constant currency basis, revenue increased 6% as favorable foreign currency provided a $6 million benefit. Revenue growth in the third quarter was led by global wholesale, which increased 11% compared to the prior year, with international wholesale up mid-teens and U.S. wholesale up mid-single digits. DTC declined 5% compared to the prior year, primarily due to lower promotional activity in the U.S., partially offset by international growth, mainly in EMEA. Active group revenue in the third quarter grew 11% compared to the prior year, ahead of our guidance of mid-single-digit growth. Saucony revenue increased 27% in the quarter, driven by broad-based growth across channels and markets. The brand saw solid growth in both the performance run and lifestyle categories from continued positive sell-through trends at retail and expanded distributions. Merrill revenue increased 5% in the quarter, driven by low double-digit growth in wholesale. This growth was supported by another quarter of market share gains in the hike category and strong sell-through at key accounts. This was partially offset by the DTC channel, as the brand continues to lap elevated promotional activity from the prior year. Merrill has been implementing targeted initiatives to strengthen its DTC foundation, including refining its promotional strategy, elevating marketing to reinforce premium positioning, and enhancing digital capabilities to drive higher quality engagement and conversion. These efforts contributed to an improvement in the mix of full price sales and gross margin expansion in the quarter. Sweaty Betty revenue declined 4% in the quarter, which was better than expected. As Chris mentioned, the brand is now executing on a clear strategy to reset the Sweaty Betty business, which aided in delivering growth in its core EMEA market across both wholesale and DTC. Group revenue declined 3% compared to the prior year and was slightly below the midpoint of our guidance range. Performance in the quarter was largely driven by lower-than-expected sell-through that impacted replenishment orders. Consolidated gross margin for the third quarter was 47.5%, an increase of 240 basis points compared to the prior year and 50 basis points above our expectations. The year-over-year improvement reflects product cost savings, lower promotional activity, and a timing benefit from our tariff mitigation effort net of incremental tariff costs. Adjusted operating margin was 9.1%, an increase of 150 basis points compared to the prior year and 80 basis points above our expectations. This performance reflects gross margin expansion, continued investment in our brands, talent, and key capabilities, as well as the net timing benefit from our tariff mitigation efforts. Top-line growth and operating margin expansion led to 29% increase in adjusted diluted earnings per share to $0.36, compared to $0.28 in the prior year, and our outlook of $0.28 to $0.32. Net debt at the end of the third quarter was $543 million, down $20 million, or 4%, compared to the same time last year. before moving to our outlook i want to provide an update on the impact of tariffs this has been a dynamic situation with rate changes and evolving clarity around the timing of when the new tariffs took effect on our last call we shared that we expected to offset the majority of the unmitigated impact in 2025 which we estimated to be approximately 20 million dollars We also noted that the majority of the impact was anticipated to occur in the fourth quarter. We now expect the unmitigated impact in 2025 to be approximately $10 million. The reduction in the estimated impact reflects a timing shift between 2025 and 2026. We took quick and decisive action when trade policy changed in the second quarter of this year. As a result of those actions and the timing shift, we now expect to more than offset the $10 million impact in 2025. On an annualized basis, we estimate the unmitigated impact from tariffs to be approximately $65 million, representing an incremental $55 million impact on 2026. We're encouraged by the progress we've made in navigating these cost headwinds and remain focused on delivering gross margin within our aspirational value creation framework of 45 to 47%. While we are not providing formal guidance for 2026 at this time, based on what we know today, we expect gross margin to be between the lower end and midpoint of our aspirational range next year, as we work to offset the tariff-related headwinds over time. Turning to our outlook, fiscal year 2025 revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.855 to $1.87 billion, an increase of approximately 6.4% at the midpoint and 5.6% on a constant currency basis compared to 2024 ongoing business. The impact of the 53rd week in fiscal 2025 is expected to provide a 60 basis point benefit to revenue growth. At the midpoint of the range, we expect active group revenue to grow low double digits on a constant currency basis, fueled by the momentum we've built in our two largest brands, Merrill and Saucony. New products are resonating with consumers, our key city strategy is driving focused international growth, and we're seeing continued success in expanding our lifestyle offerings. We expect the workgroup revenue to decline high single digits on a constant currency basis. As Chris shared, we haven't made the progress we expected in workgroups. While we're encouraged by recent steps in product innovation and marketing, the path to stronger, more consistent growth is taking longer than originally anticipated. We're excited to have Justin join the team, and we remain focused on improving execution across the four pillars of our strategy. Gross margin is expected to be approximately 47.1% at the midpoint of the range, up 280 basis points compared to the prior year. The majority of the improvement is driven by product cost savings, a healthier mix of full-price sales, and a timing benefit from our tariff mitigation efforts, net of incremental tariff costs, reflecting the pace of our actions relative to the phasing of the cost increases. Adjusted operating margin is expected to be approximately 8.9% at the midpoint of the guidance range, up 160 basis points in the prior year. The year-over-year improvement reflects strategic reinvestment of a portion of gross margin gains to support our brand-building model, including marketing, talent, and key capabilities. Interest and other expenses are projected to be approximately $27 million, down from $39 million in 2024 due to the reduction in net debt. The effective tax rate is projected to be approximately 16%. As a result, adjusted diluted earnings per share is expected to be in the range of $1.29 to $1.34, including a $0.02 foreign currency benefit versus prior year. At the midpoint, this represents constant currency growth of 50% compared to last year. Operating free cash flow is expected in the range of $85 to $95 million, with approximately $25 million of capital expenditures. Moving to our fourth quarter guidance. Revenue is expected to be in the range of $498 to $513 million, a year-over-year increase of approximately 2.2% at the midpoint and 0.5% on a constant currency basis. At the midpoint of the range and on a constant currency basis, we anticipate the active group revenue to grow high single digits and work group revenue to decline by low double digits compared to the prior year. Gross margin in the fourth quarter is expected to be approximately 46.3%, an increase of 270 basis points compared to last year. A portion of the improvement reflected timing benefit from our tariff mitigation efforts net of incremental tariff costs. Adjusted operating margin is expected to be approximately 10.5%, an increase of 60 basis points compared to last year. As a result, adjusted diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter is expected to be in the range of 39 to 44 cents compared to 40 cents in the prior year. To summarize, we're encouraged by our third quarter and year-to-date 20-25 performance, as well as the expected continued momentum in the active group, which reflects the strength of our strategy and the discipline of our execution. At the same time, we recognize there's more work to do. We remain focused on driving consistency across the portfolio, sharpening our operational rigor, and continuing to invest in areas that will fuel long-term growth. We're staying responsive and resilient as we manage through a dynamic macro backdrop, including evolving consumer environment and tariff-related margin pressures. With that, let me hand the call back to Chris before we open it up for questions.

Thanks, Taryn. The company has made significant strides in becoming a builder of great global brands over the course of the past two years. We're squarely focused on our consumers. We're investing in our brands through enhanced product innovation and elevated marketing. And critically, we're prioritizing responsible brand management in the marketplace. focused on consistent brand experiences thoughtful distribution decisions reduced promotional activity rigorous brand protection and driving sell-through we believe wolverine worldwide is well positioned in the global marketplace and well positioned to navigate that dynamic and uncertain macro environment we're executing our brand building playbook with pace and urgency all focused on making every day better for our consumers our teams our communities and our shareholders. With that, thank you to all of you for taking the time to be with us this morning, and we're happy to take your questions. Operator?

Thanks, Chris. And at this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, star one. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one primary question. Then if you have additional questions, you can rejoin the queue. Thanks in advance. And we will pause just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. All right. Looks like our first question today comes from the line of Peter McGoldrick with Stiefel. Peter, please go ahead.

Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. I was curious on the Saucony opportunity. Within the 25% constant currency growth, can you help parse the contribution from new distribution and like-for-like growth.

Yeah, thanks, Peter. We're really pleased with Sockley's performance in the quarter and certainly the performance year-to-date. We describe it really as broad-based categories and channels and regions which we're encouraged by. I think if we had to put a number on the new distribution contribution for the quarter, about a third.

Okay, that's really helpful. And then as we think of the split between lifestyle and performance, I was curious if you can help us think about how that splits within your footwear categories. And then as you plan the business going forward, how should we think of the balance between lifestyle footwear, everyday running, and then the high-performance running footwear?

Yeah, great question. I think you're hitting on something that was really important to us as we began to build a new strategy for Saucony several years ago. So in thinking about both the elite performance one run segment, the more casual everyday lifestyle runner, and then certainly the lifestyle piece. And I think that reset of strategy has really helped us gain traction and certainly helped propel Saucony forward. A lifestyle piece is growing faster than the performance piece, but performance is also growing. And we're gaining share in both lifestyle accounts as well as the critical run specialty channels. So I'd say that we are encouraged that growth is coming from both parts. certainly our new entry into lifestyle coming off of a smaller base is helping to accentuate those year over year gains.

All right. Thank you for the question, Peter. And our next question comes from the line. And our next question comes from the line of Mauricio Cerna with UBS Financial. Mauricio, please go ahead.

Great. Good morning. And thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just talking to you to elaborate, you know, it seems that you've had pretty good success with the expansion in Lifestyle. I think you had alluded to 1,300 doors for fall 25. Any thoughts on where do you see that door count going into spring 26?

Yeah, good question. And certainly, we've been encouraged by the receptivity to the moves we've made in Saucony and certainly by that door expansion. We have open doors in Saucony Lifestyle. We've talked about that. We still believe that we're in less than a quarter of full door potential and i would say that we're sort of maniacally looking at sell throughs one of the things that we're committed to is responsible brand management and we want to make sure that where we open new distribution where we go put ideas we're really moving towards a pull model versus a push model and so as we open new doors we said early on this would be a test and learn and i would say that our doors some doors are over performing um what we anticipated a lot are performing at what we what we hoped and anticipated and frankly some doors are underperforming. And we need to react to that change where the consumer is, learn from where we have momentum and how do we capitalize on that responsibly. At the same time where we aren't generating the sell-throughs that we want, look to pivot away from that and diagnose what the issue is. I think the doors where we are underperforming on sell-through rates, we largely attribute to low brand awareness, which is something working on simultaneously with the brand as we invest more in marketing dollars. So something we're keenly watching. Every single week we look at sell-throughs. We're staying very close to our customers and our consumers and making sure that as we drive this growth for the brand, we're doing it responsibly, managing for the long term.

Great. Thank you, Mauricio. And our next question comes from the line of Laurent Vasilescu with BNP Paribas. Laurent, please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask with regards to fourth quarter, the active high single digit growth. Can you maybe, Chris, can you unpack that a little bit more in terms of expectations for Saucony? And then I have a follow-up with regards to for 2026. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I think for the fourth quarter, for the active group, we remain and continue to be encouraged by the progress we've made and the momentum that they've generated. Saucony, we anticipate, will be a little better than Merrill in the fourth quarter. At the same time, Saucony's comparisons are a little easier, given that Merrill is comping growth from 2020, 2024. But still encouraged. Again, I think if you think about how we've talked about the business, our long-term value creation model, our aspirations, this company does extraordinarily well amid the high single-digit revenue growth in the consolidated, and our goal is to get all brands working at that pace, and hopefully certainly some better than that pace.

Okay. Very helpful, Chris. And then, you know, I think in the beginning of the year, it was about 900 doors. Then for the second half, it was about 400 doors. You mentioned right before that, you know, you're still under 25% penetration rate. what kind of numbers should we think about high level in terms of number of doors for spring 2026? And I'd love to hear more about unpacking what you're seeing in terms of the underperforming doors. I think you mentioned brand awareness, but can you just give us a little bit more color of what you're seeing, what measures you're going to put in place for those underperforming doors? Thank you very much.

Yeah, good question, Laurent. I appreciate that. We do anticipate first half of 26, the door count to be higher than the first half of 25. That's how we're thinking about the business. And then obviously we continue to manage really week to week with these accounts. And in the doors that we have not met our sell-through expectations or our partner sell-through expectations, we are working to diagnose what performed better, men's or women's, how were the assortments, how were we merchandised, what was the consumer feedback, and then trying to triangulate that with our own data. You know, our own e-commerce metrics, what are where our files are, what sort of demographics and zip codes do we do better with? And I think these are things that brains are going through a growth curve like this. You know, we have to manage and we have to imagine that is just a reality situation. The good news is that we believe is going to achieve all time record revenue and all time record profit this year and carry the momentum into 2026. So there is work to do.

And I would say, as with any business, if you're not swinging and missing a few times, you're probably not thinking about the business uh critically enough um and i would say you know where are doors that we have underperform that that's the thing that we can learn and then move from thank you very much best luck thanks a lot thank you and our next question comes from the line of jonathan comp with baird jonathan please go ahead yeah hi good morning chris if i could follow up could you just maybe more directly talk to some of the sell-throughs you're seeing on more of a near-term basis, and as you think about heading into 2026, can you give a little more comfort or color on the indications you see for the active group into 2026 in terms of growth potential there? And then, Taryn, just to follow up, I appreciate the gross margin commentary for 2026. Should we think that you're at a near-term peak for margin here, or given the timing of some the tariff impacts um are are there areas you can leverage to continue to drive operating margin expansion just at a you know initial level here as we look forward given the you know that the goal to get back to uh you know much higher multi-year operating margins i'll answer the first one and i think the question is really is premised on sort of expectations uh for maryland saucony and i would say again and i tried to outline this in preferred remarks you know i I would bucket our brands in different stages of evolution.

And I would say that Maryland Saucony, our two biggest brands are moving at pace. And I would say that was where we applied a tremendous amount of effort in the early days of the turnaround to get our biggest brands moving. And I'm encouraged by that rigorous deployment of that playbook, how we've built the product pipeline, how we're working to create demand. And then frankly, how the Wolverine Worldwide team is driving the business each day, I'm encouraged by. We've talked about market share gains, you know, Saucony gains share in the Run Specialty Channel, has gained share in lifestyle. I think Merrill has 11 of 12 consecutive quarters of gaining share at a rate that's actually accelerating. Performance and lifestyle for Saucony grew in the quarter. Performance and lifestyle for Merrill grew in the quarter. And I'm encouraged by some of the work that we're doing with that new Merrill team to think about the broader outdoor lifestyle opportunity beyond the trail. So it is not certainly easy days out there. We're obviously, with everyone, thinking about where the consumer is, how we had the holiday, how we think about 2026.

But I think for the things that we can control with our own team, I think we've got a lot of things going the right direction, and where we do have some challenges and opportunities to do better, I think we've diagnosed those issues, and we're going to quickly get after And Jonathan, to your question on gross margins, we are pleased with the performance that we have made to date in terms of expanding our gross margin, and at the full year of our guide, we're at around 47.1% for gross margin on the year. that's up 280 basis points year on year. And the primary drivers of that are what we have been talking about for some time of the product cost savings that we've been driving with our supply chain organization, as well as more full price sales. As we're building that brand building model across the brands and channels, we're able to get more full price sales. We're able to get the more premium price points. So that's the primary driver. The tariff timing piece that I spoke to in the prepared remarks for the full year, that's providing 40 BIPs of basis points of improvement year on year. So you can see the vast majority of that 280 improvement is really the sustainable part of our business. I think in terms of the tariffs, why is it providing a net benefit this year? Let me explain that one a little bit. While the trade policy continues to evolve. We did start taking actions early in the year to mitigate those headwinds in the second quarter. So for 2025, the benefit of our actions started to materialize in the third quarter. However, we aren't seeing the full impact of the higher tariffs until the fourth quarter. And even then, I would note that a lot of the inventory sold in our U.S. channels reflects product that was imported when the incremental tariffs for most of our sourcing countries we're at the 10% rate, not the current 20%. Therefore, as a result of that timing, then you can see that our mitigation actions are ahead of the incremental cost hitting the P&L. But like I said, the majority of that 280 on this year is really the sustainable piece. The timing piece would be that 40 basis point impact from tariffs.

Okay. And sorry, just to be more clear, I guess Thinking about operating margin, the 8.9% guide for this year, significant progress, still well below your mid-teens aspiration. So, should we think that 2026 might be a step back on operating margin, or are there other areas you could drive leverage to help manage through the tariff headwinds? Thanks again.

Yes, it's too early to talk. Details on 2026, we'll do that in February. The reason we gave the gross margin is we were just trying to put some context around how we were looking at the broader tariff impact in 26 and our plans to mitigate. We continue to look for and find opportunities to expand growth and operating margin. We're obviously going to be doing that now in the face of a larger tariff impact, but our value creation model stays intact. just the timing of the tariffs is what we're looking at offsetting. We'll have more to share on 26 in a few months.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Jonathan. All right. Our next question comes from the line of Sam Poser with Williams Trading. Sam, please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. I'd just like to dig into Saucony a little bit more on the lifestyle side. Can you Can you give us some idea of what's the breakdown between sell-in and sell-through on the lifestyle product? And then you mentioned, Chris, that you were seeing some changes between men's, women's, and kids, and so on. Can you give us some color on the sell-through rates, on the rates you're seeing between them, and how that may be balanced, and you know where I'm going on this?

Yeah, I mean, I think – thanks, Sam. Appreciate the question. Like I said, in answer to a previous question, you know, I think I break down our performance in the early days in these livestock counts is, in some places, it's well outpacing what our expectations were. In a lot of cases, it's in the range of what we need it to be. And then in some cases, it's at a slower rate. And so, I think for us, as we try to create a really strong pull model, manage the inventory, manage the brand, manage the marketplace really well, We'll look to responsibly grow indoors where we've overperformed, and then, frankly, we'll pull back indoors where we've underperformed. And I think that is incumbent upon companies that want to run good brands. I think historically we may have tried to force product in and not be responsible and really focus on selling and not sell through. And we're trying to pivot to really obsess about the sell through. Encouragingly, though, we are pleased with the progress that we've made in fairly short order. We're pleased with the growth rates. And then I'm encouraged by what I see for the product pipeline for 26. And then even as trends emerge and evolve with the consumer, I'm thankful that I've got a century-old archive in Saucony that I can pull from. And some early indications are maybe a move back to some classifications where Saucony has historically been very good. So we remain encouraged by the progress in lifestyle. We're watching it very closely. We talk about it every single week. and it's something that as I think about how we want to responsibly grow stock in the long term, responsibly growing that lifestyle business is paramount.

I really wanted to talk about the genders though, the men, women, and kids, not the lifestyle. I really wanted to get the breakdown on is men performing better? Overall, men are better, women are better, kids better, and so on because historically a long time ago, stock needs been more appealing to women more than almost any other brand out there and it seems like a lot of it may have been sort of the sell in on men's may have been higher than it may have should have been women's may have bigger opportunity and so on that's what I'm really that's where I'm going that's a good question I wasn't trying to be elusive I totally forgot that you asked about the gender split down so I apologize Sam um uh selling selling like we talked about men's and women's, I would say, women's has performed really good, really well for us, along with kids.

Kids has done very well for us. So we're seeing a very strong reception to the women's piece and certainly the kids' piece. Interestingly enough, the way we do sizing for the lifestyle piece is a lot of unisex. Unisex numbers actually growing very high, which we assume a lot of those are buying smaller sizes for the female consumers. So I'd say we've made really nice progress with her uh we just did a collaboration with metagirl which we think will deepen deepen the connection to her she's a very influential creator um who we're fortunate to partner with and i think that product sold out uh before lunch the the day it launched so um uh we're very focused on her um i think it's a great opportunity with her and on the men's side i mean is the men's side living up to the expectation or is the women's side exceeding that's that's where i'm going here i think uh That's a good question. I think, again, in lifestyle and total, we're very pleased with the progress. Pleased with the sell-throughs, pleased with receptivity, pleased about what we believe that it's doing for the brand. I think we're really happy with the pickup we've seen with her.

Thanks very much. Good luck.

Thank you, Sam. And our next question comes from the line of Ana Andriva with Piper Sandler. Ana, please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking the question. This is Noah on for Ana. Yeah. So just wanted to touch on Merrill. You'd mentioned that the brand was in the early stages of evolving its distribution. Should it follow the same playbook as Saucony with additional new door step up and specialty into the next year? And then have you quantified what that new door opportunity could look like? And then just a quick follow-up on Saucony, can you remind us what brand awareness is now versus a few years ago? Thanks.

Sure. As it relates to Merrill, the new door expansion isn't as great for Merrill as it is for Saucony. Saucony is a very well distributed brand. For me, it's more talking about the evolution of that distribution and what other doors could we possibly target, especially with her. So while I do think there is door count opportunity expansion, it probably won't be at the pacing, which we are able to do for Saucony. I think for us, the biggest opportunity in Merrill is moving beyond the trail, making both the trail lighter and faster, more modern at the same time, I think a much broader outdoor lifestyle opportunity for the brand, specifically for her, which is why we're encouraged by the receptivity of some of our new product launches. the ability for us to sell the moab speed to the speed arc and where those products are showing up are really encouraging and i think we're equally excited about what we can do next year especially with the low profile with the relays and what that can mean from a fashion trend standpoint and then certainly cold and wet weather boots we think is an opportunity so um i think the door count expansion for merrill isn't as great as it was for sauncany at the same time i think chasing a bigger outdoor life opportunity uh is a giant opportunity for for merrill um and then as it relates to awareness, we see awareness slightly up, sort of quarter on quarter. We measure twice a year we do brand health surveys. We see awareness slightly up, but importantly, we see bigger movements in affinity and heat for the brand, which we're really encouraged by. So I think that really is driven by a shift in how we've chosen to invest our marketing dollars. I think we've really consciously tried to make a bigger play in upper funnel advertising and launch meaningful campaigns behind these brands. to certainly raise awareness but then obviously it's important for us to build strong brand affinity and importantly a brand heat and i think specifically the places the cohorts that we've seen pickups are with core runners and then encouraging that younger consumer great thank you very much for the question and our next question comes from the line of mitch kumitz with seaport research mitch please go ahead uh yes thanks for taking my questions um the first one One is, I'm just curious, was there any pull forward that occurred in the quarter that

might explain some of the upside, the over-delivery in the quarter, as well as why the fourth quarter growth rate maybe doesn't look as strong as 3Q? And then I also have a follow-up.

Yeah, Mitch. No, there was, I wouldn't call it any pull forward or timing shifts in the third quarter relative to the fourth quarter.

Okay. Okay. And then on Saucony, Chris, I think your comment around door count was that first half of 26 will be higher than the first half of 25. You added doors in the back half of 25. So I'm curious if, you know, 1H26 is going to be above 2H25 in terms of door count. And then also, you know, with some of these new doors that you've opened, I would imagine that the assortment going into those new doors wasn't, you know, a full assortment.

And I'm curious with the doors that you've recently added, let's say for, you know, 1H26, if you think that the doors that you've added in the last 12 months will have more product than what they had, you know, the prior year when you added those doors. hopefully that question makes sense no it makes perfect sense and i think that that's part of is it is part of our test and learn and how do we optimize the new doors that we've opened and that part of it is is where we put assortments in um how did that assortment resonate men's women's kids how is it shown how is it presented is there opportunity for for for adding adding skews to those assortments now that part of the optimization work at the same time it's also making sure that doors where we did underperform uh we're quickly moving past those doors and finding new places to grow. It's too early to call a door count second half of 26 versus the second half of 25. Obviously, those plans are still in development, and we're looking at both at a U.S. door count as well as a global door count. So just to reiterate, first half 26 doors will be an increase over first half of 25 doors, and we're still working on the back half of 26 into 27 i guess maybe you misunderstood my my question i'm wondering if door camp for first half of 26 will be above second half of 25 and then that's it for me uh for no that sorry that was the thing was embedded in our remarks i think first half of 26 will be fewer doors than second half of 25 because we're working um working to to rationalize that door count in places that we've underperformed uh move past those doors and go out go look for new growth opportunities All right.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mitch. And we have a follow-up question from Mauricio Cerna. Mauricio, please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Maybe could you elaborate on the DTC growth that you're seeing for the Saucony brand and the quarter? How does that look? And then on SG&A, it sounds like you're continuing to invest in demand creation and other enablers.

How should we think about that growth rate going into 26 because i think part of the algorithm is to get some leverage to get to that uh you know aspirational mid-team uh ebit margin thank you yeah i'll talk about the dc performance first and hand it over to taryn i think just let me talk about broader dtc in total um uh the quarter was generally in line with their expectations and i think in 25 we're really trying to prioritize for our dtc operations a couple of things uh first running a brand accretive dtc business out of the stores and e-commerce sites that that we run uh do do more than just just drive revenue how do they also help build brand how are they positive brand experiences to our consumers how do they deepen emotional connections at the same time be a profitable channel force um we've worked hard this year to become less promotional on our e-commerce sites um in in 24 we certainly were promotional as we're working through some obsolete inventory and working to turn the organization around and we made the choice this year to really try to become less promotional across the entire portfolio and i'm encouraged by the progress we've made i think in the quarter we're at 430 basis points in gross margin uh because we because we are becoming less promotional uh and at the same time also drive more full price more premium selling and then importantly have better and more consistent storytelling across all of our experiences uh as we like the stocking stocking was a bright spot in the quarter up mid-teens um on in their e-commerce business which which we're certainly encouraged by and clearly brands that have managed the marketplace well, have compelling product, new and fresh innovation, those brands are winning. I also say that Sweaty Betty UK, the UK portion of that e-commerce business was positive in the quarter too, which is really encouraging to see that brand begin to turn the corner for us. So that's how we approach the DGC business. Obviously, everyone is very focused on the few weeks remaining in the year, driving a successful holiday season, a successful conclusion to 25, and then carrying on to 26.

And to your second question, Mauricio, in terms of our value creation model, the revenue growth combined with our disciplined SG&A management and cost management overall, frankly, are key to our growth algorithm, as you pointed out. And how I would describe it is we're working to balance the importance of making sure that we continue to expand margins in this inflationary environment, as well as making those key strategic investments that we need to make. And this year in 2025, as I identified earlier, we have grown gross margins with sustainable solutions. And we are reinvesting a portion of those gains in those key areas we're talking about, about driving that fuel for the growth so that we can get that leverage in in upcoming years those investments are in areas like marketing like chris has talked about the key cities we've talked about the ground gain our talent and product development as well as key processes that chris called out as well in terms of integrated business planning so we've made a lot of progress as we've been trying to balance that growing margins as well as investing for the future. Too soon, as I said earlier, to talk about 2026, but that core discipline of driving revenue growth and being disciplined with our SG&A remains true.

Thank you. Great. And that does conclude our Q&A session today, as well as today's conference call. Thank you all for joining today, and you may now disconnect. Have a great day, everyone.