Bath & Body Works at BofA Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

Published 11/03/2025, 14:08
Bath & Body Works at BofA Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, Bath & Body Works (NYSE: BBWI) presented at the BofA Securities Consumer and Retail Conference 2025. The company highlighted its strategic growth initiatives, reaffirming its revenue guidance while acknowledging potential challenges such as consumer sentiment and tariffs. Bath & Body Works remains optimistic, driven by innovation and strong cash generation.

Key Takeaways

  • Bath & Body Works reaffirmed its Q1 and full-year 2025 guidance, expecting to reach the high end of its revenue range.
  • The company plans to expand its product lines and enhance its omni-channel experience.
  • Cash generation remains strong, with plans for strategic investments and shareholder returns.
  • Store optimization and international growth are key focus areas for 2025.

Financial Results

Bath & Body Works has reaffirmed its guidance for Q1 and the full year 2025, projecting confidence in achieving the higher end of its revenue guidance range of 1% to 3%. While the candle market is expected to remain flat, international sales are anticipated to return to growth. Despite gross margin pressures from new products and collaborations, the company aims to offset these through value engineering and sourcing efficiencies. The company also plans to maintain a 2.5x leverage ratio, with opportunistic share repurchases and a goal of starting the year with $500 million in cash.

Operational Updates

Innovation continues to be a major focus for Bath & Body Works, with plans to expand its everyday luxury assortment into men’s products and broaden its laundry offerings. Marketing investments remain strong, with a 3.5% of sales allocation and increased social media engagement. The company is also optimizing its store footprint, targeting 75% of locations to be off-mall and expanding North American square footage by 2% to 3%.

Future Outlook

Looking forward, Bath & Body Works aims to drive growth through innovation, marketing, and technology enhancements. The company targets a 20% operating income margin over time and expects average unit retail (AUR) to contribute positively to growth. Investments in technology are part of a multi-year strategy to enhance the omni-channel experience.

Q&A Highlights

During the Q&A session, share repurchase strategies were discussed, with the company utilizing open market purchases and potentially accelerated share repurchases (ASRs). There was also clarification on the Q1 guidance, confirming expectations to hit the high end of the revenue range.

In conclusion, Bath & Body Works presented a robust strategic plan at the BofA Conference, focusing on innovation and growth. For further details, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities Consumer and Retail Conference 2025:

Lorraine, Conference Host: morning, everybody, and welcome to the twenty twenty five Consumer and Retail Conference. We’re really happy this morning to kick it off with Bath and Body Works. I have Eva Borrado here to give us a quick overview of Bath and Body Works’ story, and we’ll leave a little bit of time for q and a at the end. So, Eva, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: for having us, Lorraine.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Thank you. You recently reported fourth quarter. You gave 2025 guidance. You reaffirmed that this morning. On the call, you said you were pleased with how the first quarter started.

Can we interpret that to mean quarter to date revenue is at or above your 1% to 3% guidance?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. Thanks for that question, Lorraine. And for those who didn’t see, we filed an eight ks this morning, as Lorraine referenced, reaffirming both our Q1 as well as our full year guidance. So go back to the call, right, we entered the quarter with momentum. We said we were pleased with how we entered the quarter.

Obviously, we were in the early days of our Disney collaboration. And as we sit here to set today, what I can say is we’re very confident in delivering the high end of that revenue guidance range that we provided. And I just I would add, it’s not just Disney working, right? It’s bringing all aspects of our innovation together and the shop. And we’ve talked a lot about our three legged stool of innovation, marketing and technology, and we’re pleased with with the results that we’re driving.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Great. Thank you. Very confident in the high end. That’s probably not something we’ll hear a lot today. So, that’s good news.

Can you give us an overview of how you think the year plays out? Any big headwinds or tailwinds we should be aware of?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. Again, Maureen, we just had our call a week or so ago, and the market continues to be quite volatile. But overall, for us, I would say, as I think about the headwinds, right, risk of consumer sentiment declining, we haven’t seen that, right? Our customer, we’ve been saying, has been value seeking. That’s continued, and we haven’t seen a real change.

Our input cost on the production side, we said, are basically flattish for the year across the portfolio. We’re watching that if there are any pressures given the market volatility. And then finally tariffs, right? As we said, China tariffs were baked into our outlook. We’re continuing to watch, monitor what’s going on in some of the other areas.

80% of our production is U. S. Sourced, but we still have about 7% between Canada and Mexico. So we have a team developing mitigation strategies, opportunities to help us offset those over time should they come to fruition. On the tailwind side, let’s be a little more positive.

On the tailwind side, obviously, fragrance continues to be on trend, right? Second, innovation and newness is the lifeblood of the company, right, and driving and delivering that for our customer. We’ve seen consistently that customers respond to that. And finally, we do have some benefits of, I’ll call it, wrap around of some of our fuel for growth from last year.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Great. And on your target consumer, you talked you pointed that out as a risk. How would you characterize the health of that consumer this year? And what purchasing patterns are you seeing? Yes.

So

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: overall, we’ve been saying for many, many months now, right, that we’ve had a value seeking customer. And value doesn’t just mean price, right? It’s value of the product, the quality of the product. We haven’t seen a change in that customer. We haven’t seen differentiation by income bracket, for example, how our customers are performing.

So also looking back at Q4, we had our highest retention rate ever, really strong customer retention. And in the fall, we started to make nice progress on attracting new customers. So we’ll continue through our three legged stool on this journey to grow our customership to drive customers into our stores.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Great. And maybe you could follow that up with, talking about some of the growth drivers for 2025 that you’re most excited about.

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yeah. So, Lorraine, that’s like asking which of your children is your favorite, right? But as we all kidding aside, as we look at our growth drivers, we you heard Gina talk a lot about our three legged stool. First, innovation second, marketing third, technology. So as I think about innovation, we’re going to be just as innovative in 2025 as we were in 2024.

Things like Colabs help us innovate in our core. We just had Disney. There’ll be more throughout the year. We expanded our everyday luxury assortment. We expanded that into men’s.

And just one other highlight around laundry, right? We’re going to be expanding beyond detergent and fragrance boosters. So they’re just a few examples of the innovation we’re bringing. Second, as you look at marketing, right? Just over a year ago, a little more than a year ago, we stepped up our investment in marketing to 3.5 of sales.

We’re pleased with the returns that we’re seeing, the engagement that we’re driving. We’re much more present in the social conversation on some of the social media outlets. So that’s working for us in technology. We’re on a multiyear journey, right, to enhance the omni experience, to give us better data capabilities around knowledge of our customers so we can take action digitally. Okay.

On the Disney topic, can you talk about the customer response you’re seeing to that

Lorraine, Conference Host: collection, what’s working and any takeaways you have for future collabs? Yeah. So

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: we’re super excited about Disney and the performance in the stores and the unique storytelling we were able to create across each of the Disney princesses. When you take two brands like a Bath and Body Works and a Disney, you’re really able to open and unlock a much broader customer excitement. And that spans age, it spans socio demographics. And we’re really pleased with the performance. Day one, we had earned a million TikTok views.

We were on national TV, right? So there’s a lot to be excited about there with Disney.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Great. And on the fourth quarter call, Gina talked about being excited about the 2025 product innovation pipeline. I know you can’t give us details on collaborations or specific products, but would you characterize it as a similar level of newness in the pipeline for ’twenty five as ’twenty four?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes, I would. And we highlighted I highlighted a few things a minute ago, right, whether it’s the Co Labs, whether it’s expansion in laundry, whether it’s EDL. Of course, we’re always going to work to be on trend with fragrance. So I would say we’re going to be just as innovative in 2025 as we were in 2024.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And maybe let’s talk about the candle market. That’s been a pressure on results for the past couple of years. When do you expect the market to return to growth? And does your 2025 guidance assume that this happens this year?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. Thanks for that question. It comes up a lot, right, Lorraine? I’m sure you get it a lot as well. Back in the third quarter of twenty twenty four, I’ll just take a minute to go backwards, right?

What we saw was, I’ll say, the normalization that we were experiencing in the market had moderated to a point that we didn’t expect a material impact. That played out in Q4 as well as you look at the overall market and that’s what we expect in 2025. The candle market does not need to return to growth for us to deliver on our outlook. And as the leader in the candle market, it’s a very competitive market, right? You see a lot of different players, but as the leader in the candle market, we will continue to drive innovation.

We spoke a little bit on the earnings call about a restage that we’re planning that will be coming up here shortly. But we’ll continue to drive innovation, whether it’s in fragrance, what have you to maintain our leadership in that market. So flattish candle market is the guidance? Yes, I’d say we don’t yes, flattish, right? We’re not expecting it to return to growth nor a material degradation.

So I think that’s fair.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And the adjacencies have been rolled out. What’s the focus in each of these adjacencies? I won’t ask you to pick favorites, but maybe if we could talk through some of the focus now that they’re all in the fleet. Where do we go from here?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. So adjacencies represent about 10% of our overall book of business. We expect the adjacencies to grow at a faster rate than the core given where they are in their life cycle, right? These are whether it’s men’s, laundry, these are large addressable markets for us, right, that we say we’re in the early innings of. So do you think about men’s?

I talked about we launched Everyday Luxuries. Last year, we had our first purchase within purchase celebrating during the holiday season, right? Just a bigger focus for us on that. On laundry, new form, as I said, more to come. That’ll be later in the year.

And lip, we’re super excited about lip. We had explosive growth last year driven by the new lip fixture, but it also enabled us to bring in a younger customer, right, and created somewhat of a playground around that fixture. So we’ll continue to bring new forms to our lip as we look out throughout this year.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Great. And then just pivoting to international, you guided to a return to sales growth in 2025. How much of that is due to stabilization in areas driven by the war versus organic growth drivers in new markets?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. As we look at international, if you look back prior to the war, the international business grew consistently in that double digit range, right, both from what we refer to as system wide retail sales, which is really the underlying health of the market, it’s sales in the end market, but as well as our net reported sales. Now let’s just think about Q4. In Q4, we had lapped the war, right, that had started a year prior in October. So the regions not affected by the war continued to grow nicely, grew at 20%, right?

They’ve seen they’ve driven double digit growth, whether that’s expansion in new markets, whether that’s growth in existing markets, right? We’re winning. We have brand relevance in those markets. And then in the markets affected by the war, we were down about 4% in the fourth quarter. So as we so overall, we were up 10% in system wide retail sales.

As we look forward to our guidance, we expect pretty comparable performance because we expect those more affected regions to stabilize and potentially return to growth, but at least be stable and continued consistent performance in the other regions.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Great. And then any change to your marketing strategy moving forward?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: I would say at this point in time, there’s no material changes to our marketing strategy. We like what we’re doing, right? We’re still we’re a year in, a year plus into this step up in investment. But focus areas around more social relevance, working toward the men’s customer, the younger customer. Last year, you did hear us talk about reducing our investment in some of our direct mail.

That will continue this year, freeing up some of our investments for other more social relevant channels.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And then just shifting to margin, you guided some slight 2025 gross margin pressure driven in part by merchandise margin headwinds from new products, collaborations. What are the ways you’re looking to offset this?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. I think we can wrap margins and SG and A together almost, Lorraine, as you think about it. So at the gross margin level, over the past two years, we delivered tremendous value from our fuel for growth, right? $300,000,000 over two years, of which 60 percent accrued to March ’2 thirds to margin, one third to SG and A. And I would think about that as that’s embedded in our DNA and we’ll look for opportunities to offset some of the things you highlighted higher costs through the elevation or the collabs, the royalty that we that come as part of the collabs.

What I would say is where are we going to look? We’re always looking to value engineer our production, our sourcing. Obviously, growing sales, right, and delivering leverage through B and O will also be beneficial to us. But what you’ve seen us do is optimize whether it’s our transportation cost, our distribution cost. We’ve successfully deployed some of those strategies and we’ll continue to look to do that.

Now on the SG and A front, our leverage is about flattish, right, in our outlook. This year, our tech investment is up slightly largely in the back half of the year. And I think about this as a multiyear journey that we’re on as it pertains to tech. And I wouldn’t expect it to keep growing, right? We’ve said we’ll be at this elevated level over several years, but it can be bumpy one year up a little, one year down a little.

And again, we’ve driven durable savings, whether it’s through our procurement efforts, whether it’s enhancements that we’ve made to using technology to drive automation of things. And we’ll continue to drive those programs to offset any cost pressures.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And then one gross margin driver you didn’t call out was promotions. I think that’s one of the toughest nuts to crack sitting outside the Bath and Body Works organization. How are

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: you thinking about the promotional cadence for this year? Yeah. So overall, as we look at promotions in our outlook in 2025, we’ve assumed no material change in promotions from the 2024 levels. We will always use our agile model to meet the customer where the customer is and where that’s opportunities to reduce promotional efforts as the newness is driving and we have strong traffic or where we need to to utilize promotions to drive the traffic in in a particular quarter. So overall, we’re we’re basically flattish, if if you will, on that level.

But this is where I think our agile model and our is a real competitive advantage for us.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And then, how about pricing? As you think about the pricing architecture for your products, are there any changes planned?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: There are no material changes planned right now as you think about the pricing architecture. We have a good, better, best product strategy, which we think in this value seeking environment serves us well. We’ve made some changes on our everyday deals again with the customer in mind and focus. Also, it’s again, I’ll go back to it’s not just about pricing, right? It’s about the value.

And we haven’t talked at all about loyalty, right? Loyalty is a key driver for us, right? Our loyalty program, we have very strong NPS scores, high engagement across a host of metrics, right, whether it’s trips, whether it’s units per transaction, right? Our loyalty members are highly engaged, and we’ll continue to look to optimize that to drive our business going forward as well.

Lorraine, Conference Host: What do you think? I get this question a lot about loyalty. What makes people loyal to Bath and Body Works if they could buy a cheaper candle on another website? Is it sent? Is it quality?

Is it burn time? Like, what what do you think are the key attributes of why people love the brand so much?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: I I think it’s all it’s it’s all of the above. Right? People have their tested true favorite favorite fragrance from, you know, from when they were younger or just their favorite holiday tradition that that creates emotion for them. Our newer innovations, right, have been right on trend, whether it’s vanilla that’s been on trend or Bose have recently been on trend, right, and that was highlighted. So it comes back to the innovation, Lorraine, that we bring that our customers are excited about.

And we’re at a price point, right, where we consider ourselves, Mastige, right? So we’re at a price point that someone can treat themselves with a very high quality product, while they’re value seeking. And you and your question, you use a candle as an example. Right? Our marketing given the competitive nature of the candle market is we’re the leader, our marketing efforts are focused on elevating around the quality of our candle, whether it’s the burn time, the consistency, the fragrance flow, we think that’s really important when there are other lower price point products out there.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. Thanks. So fourth quarter AURs were pressured by five fewer shopping days in the holiday. Can you just explain what that means? What why why that happened?

And was that part of your plan? Were you expecting that?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yeah. So so we were we were expecting it. If if you think about it, some of our strongest so let me take a step back, Leroy. Our AURs were down low single digits mix adjusted. There were two factors driving that, one you highlighted.

So as you had a compressed holiday period, some of our highest AUR days are in the final days of that shopping. People may not really realize that, right, because other retailers, as you see, you see sales prices increasing. We actually are able to reduce our promotional efforts during that period. So as the holiday period was squeezed, right, it affected the AUR and the number of days we were able to execute on that. The second area that drove our AUR is we were more promotional in fourth quarter versus L Y.

We were pleased with the results. We beat our guidance on both margin. We expanded margins in the quarter year over year. So we feel good about how we were paid for that. And the other piece of color I would add, when you look sequentially year over year, there was a deceleration in Q4 relative to Q3 promotional activity year over year.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And then just as you think about the 2025 algorithm,

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: is that an AUR driven sales growth? I’d say like I said, promotions relatively flat, so you can think about AUR is not is not a real contributor, mix adjusted, of course.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. You mentioned fuel for growth, 300,000,000 of savings over the past two years. Thank you. Next. What can we think about as far as the go forward opportunities for cost cutting?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. So on the go forward opportunities, first, I want to go back to your AUR question for a minute, right? As you look at the company, we would expect AUR to be a top line driver to our growth algorithm over time. In this value seeking environment, we haven’t been able to do that. I would say our EURs are still up double digit from pre pandemic levels, right?

So we have been able to capture it. And over time, we would expect that to be a contributor. On the cost front, right, we’re going to continue whether it’s value engineering of our product, how can we be more efficient in our operations. Obviously, driving top line to leverage our SG and A at 2.5% to 3.5% sales growth. We’ll be able to leverage our SG and A and our B and O at that 2% to 3% sales growth.

So we remain focused on the 20% OI being our target. We think that’s the right target, and we’re gonna work toward that over time through driving the top line as well as managing our cost.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. And you mentioned earlier the flat SG and A rate includes some investments. Can you talk about what exactly you’re spending on in IT? And then also if there are any offsets to potentially create some leverage on the SG and A line?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. So you heard Gina talk about this over a year ago, right? We have some tech debt that we’re building out of it building out of. I would put it in two buckets. One, customer facing and enabling and two, just back office support systems, right, that are needed.

So we’re working through a new point of sale system. We’re testing it in certain stores right now, enhancing our order management system that will ultimately this isn’t a 2025, but it’ll ultimately unlock greater visibility and insights of inventory to create an even better omnichannel experience. So there are a couple of examples there. On the off sets, right, some of the capabilities that we’ve built in the I’ll say in the data and analytics area, but it starts with the data. You need the data first to have the capability.

We’ve been able to build tools and engage with customers that are nearly lapsed, right, looking at that as a year longer lapsed and reengage with them digitally to bring them back into the brand, and we’ve had success there. So there are ways where there we’re looking for returns for these investments. Yeah.

Lorraine, Conference Host: And then as you think out to 2026, would you expect a similar level of investment?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: So I’m not going to guide to 2026 here today, Lorraine. But I would say on our investment strategy, right, this is a multiyear journey. So I wouldn’t expect the tech investments to come down in any meaningful way. We’ve said we have multiple years to invest here, but we’ll have more to say as we get closer to 26%.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. You talked about an off mall target of 75%, which was new. Is there a timeline for that goal? Should we expect any kind of accelerated store openings, closings, relocations in ’twenty five?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yeah. I wouldn’t expect an acceleration at this point. As you look at our ’twenty five As you look at our ’25 outlook, we said we expect to grow square footage in the 2% to 3% zip code in North America, which is pretty comparable to 2024. We took that target up, right? We were at two thirds previously and we’re sitting at 57% off mall today.

But as we looked at A, customer preferences, B, competition, C, performance, right? We believe now that 75% is a target. Will as you think about the malls, it’s the lower performing malls that that will be exiting. Certainly, there’s still a place for us in in the malls. And this is a multiyear journey, so I wouldn’t expect us to get to the 75% over the next several years.

It’s a multiyear journey, but it remains our target.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. I wanted to ask you to just touch on Beauty Park for a minute. I think probably a lot of those in the audience don’t really know what it is or the advantages that it gives you. Can you talk a little bit about it and how you’re using that to maybe potentially mitigate some of the tariff exposure?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. So many, many years ago, almost a decade ago, we formed partnerships in the Ohio area less than 10 miles from our headquarters with suppliers to produce our products, right? 80% of our production is U. S. Based and about half of that is in the beauty park.

And there are real advantages to that. These aren’t vendor supplier relationships. These are true partnerships. And for investors that have had an opportunity to go and visit or talk to any of those, right, they talk about it as a true partnership. We believe we’re able to move more rapidly in the market, right?

It’s a key enabler of our ability to chase. We talk about when we’re ordering inventory, we don’t have to order to the full level of our projections. We can order, I don’t know, 60%, seventy % upfront and see how the product is working in the market with an ability to chase. So we see this as a huge competitive advantage. And you’re right, as we look at tariffs and this was done in the past, right?

How can we leverage some of those U. S. Based sites to shift some of our production where need be, if need be to optimize and help with mitigating those tariffs.

Lorraine, Conference Host: How long do you think

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: that would take to move the China Mexico Seven Percent here? I think it depends, right? It depends on the form, the capacity that exists. So I don’t wanna provide an exact rule of thumb, but we’ve been able to do it quite quickly. Okay.

Okay. That’s interesting.

Lorraine, Conference Host: And then and 85 80% of your total production is done at Beauty Park or in North America? North America. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I before we open it up to audience questions, I wanted to ask about free cash flow. Mhmm. Probably should have started with, actually. $170,000,000 of dividend payments, $300,000,000 of share repurchase. That leaves you with about $300,000,000 of extra free cash flow generation.

How are you thinking about further share repurchase, debt repayments? How do you use that extra cash?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. Let me take a step back a little bit, right. We’re this

Lorraine, Conference Host: Bath

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: and Body Works generates a tremendous amount of cash, right? And our priorities are haven’t changed, invest in the business, right? Now that we’ve hit our leverage target, maintain our 2.5 times leverage and return cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. So as you referenced the excess cash, right, we’ll opportunistically look throughout the year for areas to return cash to shareholders just as we did in 2024, right? Our initial guidance was $300,000,000 of share repurchases.

As we got a couple of quarters under our belt, right, we took that guide up. So we’ll continue to look to do that as well. My the only area I would note is our cash is also quite seasonal and the majority of the cash builds in fourth quarter. And it’s important, we like to start the year with $500,000,000 of cash in order to provide ample liquidity throughout the year while we build the cash. So there are also factors we take into account, but we our priorities remain the same and we’ll return cash to our shareholders as we’ve done.

Lorraine, Conference Host: Okay. Let’s see if there are any questions in the audience.

Manan, Audience Question: Hey, Lorraine. Hey, Ava. Hi. Thanks for taking the time. My name is Manan.

I had just a quick follow-up question on share repurchases.

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yeah.

Manan, Audience Question: Can you just describe to us the framework that you guys use? Are you guys in the open market every day? Are you guys being opportunistic on the stock pending the seasonality comment you made?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. I would thank you for the question. I would say all of the above. I’ll speak more generally. We purchase shares in the open market.

We do try to be opportunistic. We execute on 10b5-1s, right, with tiered pricing, when our windows are closed to purchase. In the past, we’ve done ASRs as well. We have not in the past year and a half done an ASR, but we utilize all those tools.

Manan, Audience Question: And I have a second question, if that’s okay. You guys have done a really nice job over the last few years. You had declining sales, declining margins. You talked a lot about these initiatives. Obviously, in the second half of last year, you saw traffic and conversion inflect AURs continue to be at pressure.

As you guys have these pillars of growth, especially the first one in terms of innovation, can you just talk about where do you see that you’re not providing guidance, but where do you see that AUR potentially even inflecting along with the other two variables?

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Yes. It goes back a little bit to the question that Lorraine asked, right? As we look over time, right, we do expect AURs to be a positive contributor to our top line growth algorithm. As I said earlier, our AURs are still up pretty meaningfully double digits from 2019 levels, and I know that’s becoming a long time ago. And so over time, I can’t give you an exact date here today and what year, but what I can tell you is we will use our agile model to optimize the growth, the top line growth as well as margin expansion for the business.

And we’re focused on both.

Lorraine, Conference Host: We have time for one more if somebody has it.

Manan, Audience Question: Thank you very much. Just a clarification on your comment about toward the high end of your guide. Was that a 1Q comment? Just to clarify.

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: It was a 1Q comment. Thank you.

Manan, Audience Question: Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Lorraine, Conference Host: I think we are about out of time. Eva, thank you so much for joining us today.

Eva Borrado, Overview of Bath and Body Works, Bath and Body Works: Thank you, Lorraine. Thank you everyone for for your interest in Bath and Body Works.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Latest comments

Risk Disclosure: Trading in financial instruments and/or cryptocurrencies involves high risks including the risk of losing some, or all, of your investment amount, and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices of cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and may be affected by external factors such as financial, regulatory or political events. Trading on margin increases the financial risks.
Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider. All intellectual property rights are reserved by the providers and/or the exchange providing the data contained in this website.
Fusion Media may be compensated by the advertisers that appear on the website, based on your interaction with the advertisements or advertisers
© 2007-2025 - Fusion Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.