PUMA : Transcript earnings call

CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS

Arne Freundt PUMA SE - CEO

Hubert Hinterseher PUMA SE - CFO

Gottfried Hoppe PUMA SE - Head of Investor Relations

CONFERENCE CALL PARTICIPANTS (Q&A)

Adam Cochrane - Deutsche Bank

Anne-Laure Bismuth - HSBC

David Roux - Bank of America

Edouard Aubin - Morgan Stanley

Graham Renwick - Berenberg Bank

Jörg Philipp Frey - Warburg Research

Jürgen Kolb - Kepler Cheuvreux

Krista Zuber - Cowen

Prial Dadhania - Royal Bank of Canada

Simon Irwin - Credit Suisse

Warwick Okines - Exane BNP Paribas

Zuzanna Pusz - UBS

Please note that the transcript has been edited to enhance comprehensibility.

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PRESENTATION

Gottfried Hoppe	Thank you very much, Francy. Dear ladies and gentlemen, also
	from my side, a warm welcome to PUMA's second quarter 2023
	earnings call. Our presenters today are Arne Freundt, PUMA
	Group CEO, and Hubert Hinterseher, PUMA Group CFO. We'll
	start with a presentation by Arne and Hubert, followed by a Q&A
	session. Now, without any further ado, over to you, Arne.
Arne Freundt	Thank you, Gottfried. Ladies and gentlemen, also good afternoon
	from my side. I have the pleasure to guide you through today's
	earnings call for Q2. I will start with a quick business update,
	before I hand over to Hubert to guide you through our financials
	and then I'll close with an update on our strategic priorities
	before we give an outlook on the remainder of the year 2023.
	When we look at Q2, it's clear that we have celebrated a great
	brand and product momentums in the last quarter. The most
	important for us was for sure the victory of Manchester City
	winning for the first time the treble. It's the first time the club
	has won the treble, and it's also the first time in PUMA history,
	in our 75 years of being in the industry, that we were the proud
	partners of the team winning the treble.
	But it's not only on the club side, it's also on the federation side
	where we were having great momentum and celebrating great
	success. The next generation of champions from Uruguay won
	the U20 World Cup in Argentina and our Israeli team became a
	strong number three.
	Talking about next generation, we also had an exciting signing
	of Xavi Simons, who's currently one of the Dutch national players
	and will join Red Bull Leipzig as of next season. He's only 20
	years old. For us it's one of the most exciting players and one of
	the true kings on the pitch.
	Currently we're in the Women's World Cup. For us it's a great
	moment not only to celebrate the beauty of the game, but also
	to push the boundaries for equality in football. We're the only
	brand who offer a women-specific fit in all three football siloes,
	making sure we support our female athletes in the best way. We
	believe women's fit is so important for an athlete, not only to
	enhance their performance, but also to prevent injuries in
	female football. 90% of our 90 players are endorsing product and
	it shows that there is a real demand for women-specific football
	shoes in football business.
	But also outside the pitch we were celebrating great successes
	with our athletes. Our para athletes during the World Champs in
	Paris were winning gold medals, most importantly Omara, with
	three gold medals, underlining that she's one of the greatest
	para athletes. But also, our normal track and field athletes were
	celebrating great successes during the Diamond League
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competitions. Also here we were able to strengthen further our roster of strong ambassadors by signing our sprint sensation, Julien Alfred. She already competed in our PUMA shoes at Budapest World Champs and has a clear chance to win the 100m gold medal.

But it's not only about the professional athletes, it's also about the everyday runners. And here we continue to focus on road running and further elevating and establishing our strong NITRO position in the market. It is clear that with NITRO we have one of the best foam technologies out there in the market, and now it's about creating awareness and consideration among the everyday runner. This is why we need to be present and visible where the runners are at the running events world-wide.

On the golf side, we were celebrating another victory with Rickie Fowler, celebrating his sixth PGA Tour victory in total, and on the basketball side, we were taking LaMelo on a European tour to celebrate and activate him among our European fans. We took him to Milan, Berlin, Paris and London, and made it a great moment of engagement together with our retailers, like Foot Locker and Basket4Ballers.

But it's not only about the current stars, it's also here about the future generation and for us, the future is Scoot. Scoot is one of the key rookies, he was the number three Draft in the NBA and is now playing in the next season for Portland. He's our face for All-Pro NITRO and he will also receive as the first rookie a dedicated signature boot launching December 21, right on time for the Christmas business.

Also in Formula 1 and motorsport we made huge strides. We announced our landmark deal with Formula 1, giving us the opportunity not only to equip the officials, but also to produce exciting collections for the fans. This further underlines our dominant position in the emerging F1 category.

When you look at all this strong brand and product momentums, it is clear that we are continuing to gain market share in all important performance categories. In football, in performance running, in basketball and golf, we are continuing to gain market share across the board.

But it's not only on the performance side where exciting stuff is happening, also on the sports style side. Sneaker Freaker is publishing every single week their hottest five drops in the market. Only in the first six months PUMA had already eight mentions. This is a strong lineup, which we have never ever had before and it shows the real hype which is building up around the PUMA products. One of the very important shoes, which was also highlighted by Sneaker Freaker, is our Palermo, speaking exactly to the emerging terrace trend which is currently in the

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market. For us it is a clear model which we're positioning also with the female consumer, in vibrant colours, and we have Dua Lipa as the face of that shoe. The first products have already dropped in July and saw a strong sell-through, and we will follow up with this one in the course of the second half of this year.

Talking about strong sell-throughs, we also had a great collaboration with Noah, which went live in the last few weeks. It was for Noah one of the strongest collaborations they ever had, resulting in immediate sell-out. Then in terms of collaboration, I think everybody is excited for seeing the first Rihanna product coming to market in Q3. In September we will drop her point of view on the emerging terrace trend, then we will follow up in November and later on in December with a third drop, but then we are going to bring back an icon through the lens of skate. I think it's been a great partnership so far and in only six months from design development, we are able to bring it live to the market.

This was the past six months. If we look at the next six months ahead, I think we're very confident about the lineup and I think the best is yet to come. We have LaMelo Ball launching its MBO.03 boot, we have Fenty coming up in September, and we have Las Vegas coming up with the first Grand Prix race in Las Vegas in November. I cannot remember that we had such a strong lineup ever for the second half of the year.

Also on the partnership side we continue to make further progress of establishing ourselves as the best partner, not only for the retailers, but also for the suppliers. We conducted in June a supplier summit and had more than 80 suppliers, tier- one and tier-two suppliers, here in Herzogenaurach. It was the first time for them to come to Herzogenaurach in more than ten years. It was very important for us to underline that they are an integral part our PUMA family and to share our strategy with them and make sure we are continuing to evolve our partnership going forward.

Also on the retailer side, we continued to strengthen our partnership. We had a big select summit together with 70 customers around the Paris Fashion Show, and these select customers are our highest tier of opinion-leading accounts, and combined that with a very successful seller meeting.

When we take all these brand and product moments together, it is clear that we are well on track to achieve our full-year outlook after our Q2 numbers. Q2 came in with an 11.1% currency adjusted net sales growth, and let me go down in a bit more detail how we achieved the growth.

Wholesale was showing a growth of 7%. This is perfectly in line with our ambition to be the best partner to retail. We are working

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