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Text: On the call today are Blake Krueger, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Brendan Hoffman, our President; and Mike Stornant, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
These disclosures were reconciled in attached tables within the body of the release.
I hope everyone on the call is safe and well.
E-commerce led the way, growing 84% during the quarter as our global digital strategy continued to deliver results.
Our two largest brands exceeded expectations with Merrell up nearly 25% year-over-year, and Saucony up nearly 60% in the quarter.
Both brands easily beat their 2019 Q1 revenue levels with Saucony up over 75% versus 2019.
The Company's international business was up 40% with every region growing over 35%.
Our DTC channels are outpacing the market and our wholesale order book is very healthy.
As we look to the rest of the year, demand for our brands is very strong and we've raised our full year guidance on the strength of this demand and robust outlook.
For today's call, I'll start by providing some additional insight on our Q1 performance and then Mike Stornant will detail our financial results, and update you on our financial outlook for the year.
Finally, Brendan Hoffman will share the latest on our strategic growth priorities, before I conclude.
In the first quarter, the Wolverine Michigan group revenue was up 20.1% on a reported basis and up 18.2% on a constant currency basis.
The Wolverine Boston group revenue was up 10.3% on a reported basis and up 8.2% on a constant currency basis.
Let me now focus on key brand performance starting with Saucony.
Saucony grew revenue nearly 60% and expanded operating margin nearly 800 basis points in Q1, a great start to what we anticipate will be a spectacular year for the brand.
All regions delivered strong growth, led by North America and EMEA [Phonetic].
Saucony.com revenue increased by over 150% driven by compelling digital storytelling and impactful product launches.
Product design and innovation remain at the core of Saucony's growth momentum, delivering both superior technical product in trend-right lifestyle collections to the global marketplace.
The brand's road running category nearly doubled in Q1 with the launch of new models for several of its biggest product franchises.
The new Guide 14 and Kinvara 12 drove significant growth with the Guide more than doubling year-over-year.
New colors and collection packs also drove excellent growth and freshness for the innovative Endorphin series.
Saucony also grew its trail running business with the launch of the Peregrine 11, which received the coveted Runner's World Editors' Choice Award.
New product launches that are fueling momentum in the brand's technical product category with existing runners and with the many new enthusiasts to the sport.
Saucony Originals, the brand's heritage lifestyle sneaker business also grew double-digits in Q1.
The brand continues to leverage its Italian product design and marketing hubs to build on its pinnacle positioning and success in Europe with elevated trend right product.
The new Jazz Court, a sneaker made with 100% natural materials and zero plastic launched at the end of Q1, driving substantial buzz in social media and immediately becoming the brand's top-selling product on Saucony.com.
Looking ahead, Saucony will continue its steady introduction of new product launches.
Both the new Ride 14 and Freedom 4 launched within the last few weeks and are off to a fast start.
Over the next several months, the brand will also roll out the next generation of all three models of the Endorphin collection, the Pro, the Speed and the Shift which has quickly become one of its largest franchises.
The brand will also introduce the new Triumph 19, a follow up to the award winning predecessor.
The momentum in the Saucony business continues to accelerate across both its performance and lifestyle offering.
Revenue grew nearly 25% in the quarter.
All regions delivered increases led by especially strong performance in EMEA.
North America grew double-digits, including DTC with Merrell.com up approximately 135% and Merrell stores comping up 30%.
Merrell kicked off its Future 40 campaign at the start of the quarter, celebrating the brand's 40th anniversary and amplifying its inclusive commitment to sharing the power of the outdoors with everyone.
The brand announced a significant partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America aiming to provide greater accessibility to the outdoors for nearly 200,000 youth.
Merrell continues to focus on cultivating its well-established product franchises, as well as delivering innovation across new product introductions.
In Q1, performance footwear grew by nearly 30% as the brand continued to advance its vision of faster and lighter footwear for the trail.
Building on the unmatched success of the world's number one hiker, the Moab, Merrell launched the all-new Moab speed and Moab flight collections, quickly exceeding sell through expectations, including selling out on Merrell.com and helping to drive very strong double-digit growth for the Moab franchise overall.
The Antora 2 and Nova 2 trail runners also continued to perform exceptionally well in the quarter.
Merrell has a steady stream of new performance offerings scheduled for the remainder of the year.
Merrell's lifestyle business grew approximately 20% in the quarter driven by the growth of the classic Jungle Moc and newer hydro Moc which more than tripled year-over-year.
The brand plans to continue to leverage the easy on-off trend throughout 2021 with new products in the Hydro Moc, Hut Moc and Jungle Moc franchises.
Merrell is well positioned with both its outdoor performance and lifestyle businesses, and we expect the brand's growth will continue to accelerate going forward.
Our work business, which represented almost 20% of our revenue in Q1 also delivered significant growth led by Wolverine, up nearly 30% and Cat footwear up over 30% with strong contributions from a couple of our smaller brands.
We are the market share leader in the U.S. work boot category which is currently trending with consumers and it's been an important consistent performer for the Company over time.
We expect growth in this category to accelerate in Q2.
Turning now to Sperry.
Revenue was down approximately 10% in Q1, a continued sequential improvement compared to prior quarters.
Despite more than $10 million of expected revenue which slid into Q2.
During the quarter, Sperry.com was up 40% and Sperry stores grew more than 20%.
The brand's full price business remains very healthy with gross margin expanding nearly 500 basis points in Q1.
Looking ahead, Sperry is back on the growth path for the remainder of the year.
Sperry possesses unique elasticity across genders, product categories and price points.
Its new float collection, a fun and affordable injected version of the boat shoe for younger consumers launched at the end of the quarter and quickly became Sperry.com's best selling product introduction in several years.
The brand expects to build on the success of the float throughout the year with seasonal drops, including the cozy float collection this fall.
Sperry also plans to capitalize on the easy on-off trend with the launch of the new Moc Sider collection later this summer and to drive energy through several product capsules, leveraging fashion, entertainment and pop culture icon, including collaborations with John Legend, Rebecca Minkoff, and the Netflix hit series, Outer Banks, Good Humor Popsicles Ice-cream and Rowing Blazers.
Before Brendan and I share some additional insight regarding our strategic growth priorities, I'm going to hand it off to Mike to review the first quarter financial results in more detail.
Let me start by providing additional detail on the Company's first quarter performance, and then some insight on our improved outlook for 2021.
First quarter revenue of approximately $511 million represents growth of 16% compared to last year.
As Blake pointed out, most elements of our global growth agenda delivered excellent year-over-year growth on the strength of expanding digital platforms and innovative product offerings.
This strong growth performance was achieved despite a meaningful shift of customer shipments into the second quarter.
Adjusted gross margin improved 290 basis points versus the prior year to 44.3%, due to our continued e-commerce expansion and favorable wholesale product mix.
Adjusted selling, general and administrative expenses of $174.4 million in the quarter were about $23 million more than last year, primarily due to the higher mix of DTC revenue, $8 million of additional investment in digital e-commerce marketing and more normalized incentive compensation costs.
Q1 adjusted operating margin was 10.2%, an improvement of 330 basis points over last year, as a result of healthy operating leverage.
Net interest expense was up $1.9 million and the effective tax rate was 16%.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $0.40 compared to $0.28 in the prior year.
Reported diluted earnings per share were $0.45 versus $0.16 last year, and reflect a partial settlement of certain insurance claims related to our ongoing legacy litigation, offset by a legal defense costs and specific COVID related costs.
Let me now shift to the balance sheet.
At the end of the quarter, inventory was down approximately 21% year-over-year.
Our global sourcing team continues to adjust to the supply chain headwinds, impacting our industry.
Our inventory position has improved nicely in the second quarter allowing us to fill nearly all of the orders that slipped from Q1 into Q2.
In Q1, we generated $26.3 million of cash flow from operating activities.
The Company finished the quarter with $506 million less debt compared to the prior year and total liquidity of approximately $1.2 billion, including $365 million of cash on hand and nearly $800 million of revolver capacity.
Our bank defined leverage ratio continued to improve, ending the quarter at a low 1.5 times.
I will now provide details on our improved outlook for 2021.
As we have shared, the trends in our business remained very encouraging, with revenue assumptions improving since we offered our annual guidance in February.
Our wholesale order book remains strong.
Our D2C business is performing well.
International regions have returned to strong growth and our inventory position continues to improve.
All of this provides us with a heightened level of confidence as we manage the business and invest in future growth.
As a result the Company now expects fiscal 2021 revenue in the range of $2.24 billion to $2.30 billion.
Growth of 25% to 28% compared to the prior year.
At the high end of the range, this is a raise of $50 million from our original outlook and nicely exceeds 2019 revenue.
We now expect reported diluted earnings per share in the range of $1.70 to $1.85 and adjusted diluted earnings per share in the range of $1.95 to $2.10.
In the face of unpredictable near term supply chain delays, the Company will continue to invest in air freight to ensure our ability to service the very strong demand we are seeing in the business.
These COVID-19 related air freight costs above normal levels are included in our updated guidance and will be adjusted from our reported results for the remainder of the year.
The Company is in an enviable position to invest in meaningful growth for 2021 and to continue to drive momentum in our brands.
With that, I'm going to hand it over to Brendan to share additional insight on our strategic growth drivers.
As we emerge from the pandemic, the power and relevance of our brands is evident as we execute our global growth agenda across the portfolio.
With roughly two-thirds of our business in running, outdoor and work, our brands are well positioned in the lifestyle and performance-oriented product categories favored by consumers and macro trends.
In addition to the unique positioning of our brand portfolio, our global growth agenda is driving strong momentum through three key pillars.
First, the brand's new product and marketing stories are resonating well with consumers including Sperry's Float, Merrell's Moab Speed and Moab Flight and Saucony's Guide 14, new Endorphin collections and several other new launches.
Our brands are focused on developing big, innovative and impactful product collections based on consumer insights, trend intel [Phonetic] and testing.
And recent investments in our advanced concepts and innovation Center of Excellence are proving invaluable.
Second, our ongoing investments in digital capabilities continues to fuel e-commerce growth, which is exceeding our expectations at this early stage in the year as we track toward our bold revenue goal of $500 million through our brands.com in 2021.
In Q1, we leveraged increased digital marketing investments to drive more traffic, richer digital content and storytelling to engage consumers, better merchandising to optimize conversion and additional testing and learning to improve site user experiences.
These assets and investments are also helping drive the online business of our global distribution partners and wholesale customers.
In the coming months, we anticipate integrating and launching several new innovations and technologies including a Merrell mobile app.
We are excited about the substantial runway that remains for our digital business.
Finally, our international business has recovered quickly from last year's shutdown with every region delivering very strong Q1 growth.
As Blake mentioned, our Saucony Italy business and its product design and marketing hub are helping drive upper tier distribution for our fastest growing brands.
Overall, EMEA continues to outperform and the investments in our Merrell and Saucony JV targeting a significant opportunity for our two biggest brands are beginning to pay dividends.
Our brands are well aligned with today's marketplace and consumer trends and our global growth agenda is fueling our biggest and most profitable growth opportunities.
I could not be more excited about 2021 and the future beyond.
Our strong start to the year is reflective of our intense focus on the consumer and our continued investments in talent, product design and innovation, digital and consumer research and insights.
The Company drove meaningful growth in Q1, despite the impact from short-term industry logistic headwinds and we are increasingly optimistic about the year ahead.
Vaccination rollouts appeared to be tracking well, consumer confidence continues to improve and our demand outlook remains very strong.
Our DTC business is performing well and our wholesale order book continues to provide good visibility to accelerated growth for the year ahead.
We are clear on our strategic priorities and enthused about the opportunities in front of us.
The Company's strong position is a testament to our team's tremendous vigilance, focus and hard work over the last 15 months.
Throughout this period, we focused on managing our brands for the post COVID world and continued to invest.

user
wolverine worldwide raises full-year outlook.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $1.95 to $2.10.
sees fy earnings per share $1.70 to $1.85.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.40.
q1 earnings per share $0.45.
sees fy revenue up 25 to 28 percent.
sees fy revenue $2.24 billion to $2.3 billion.

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