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Text: These uncertainties are detailed in documents filed regularly with the SEC.
We use adjusted constant dollar amounts as lead numbers in our discussion, because we believe they more accurately represent the true operational performance and underlying results of our business.
You may also hear us refer to reported amounts, which are in accordance with U.S. GAAP.
During the fourth quarter of 2020, the company determined that the occupational workwear business met the held-for-sale and discontinued operations accounting criteria.
Accordingly, the company has reported the related assets and liabilities of the occupational workwear business in discontinued operations as of the date noted above and included the operating results of this business in discontinued operations for all periods presented.
As always, I hope our comments today find you and your loved ones healthy and safe.
As we put behind us, we've unfortunately experienced a tumultuous start to 2021 highlighted by the political and ideological divide in our nation as well as ongoing challenges presented by the pandemic across the US, UK in other countries around the world.
Even so I remain optimistic about the year ahead and to improvements in our geopolitical, macroeconomic and pandemic related situations and I'm confident in VF plan to accelerate growth, continue advancing our business model transformation and deliver on our commitments to our shareholders and stakeholders around the world.
VF performance during the third quarter was largely ahead of expectations despite additional COVID related disruption to our business.
Consumer engagement with our brands remains strong and we have conviction that the secular trends related to casual externalization, health and wellness and the desire to get outdoors will be enduring.
Our business is on track to return to growth in the fourth quarter and I am confident that the strategy we have in place positioned us well to accelerate growth as we head into fiscal 2022.
At that time, our business had essentially fully reopen across the globe and underlying business trends have continued to stabilize.
We saw strong momentum in China and across our digital platform, which we continue to view as leading indicators for our business.
Confidence from this momentum, as well as early signs of stability and recovery across our portfolio more broadly, supporting our preliminary outlook for fiscal 2021 and the decision to raise our dividend.
Further, in early November, we announced the acquisition of Supreme.
Our willingness to execute the transaction during the pandemic was a function of the resiliency of Supreme's business model, our early and decisive actions to ensure liquidity as well as our increased confidence in the trajectory of our organic portfolio.
Fast forward to today, our business has continued to perform ahead of expectations and our confidence and visibility heading into fiscal 2021 [Phonetic] continues to improve.
While the environment has proven to be somewhat more difficult than expected, the performance of our business demonstrates the resilience of our portfolio.
While the full extent of these headwinds was not contemplated in our initial fiscal 2021 outlook, we were able to more than absorbed these impacts as a result of the continued strength of our digital and China businesses as well as better than expected performance from our North Face and Timberland brands globally.
As a result of the momentum we see building across our portfolio, fueled by our business model transformation, coupled with the closing of the Supreme transaction, we are raising our fiscal 2021 outlook.
Scott will impact the details in a moment.
Before getting into the highlights for the quarter, I'd like to provide an update on our progress against our business model transformation.
Understanding and focusing on our consumer connectivity is at the heart of our transformation journey.
Our teams continue to activate capabilities to better understand and build more intimate relationships with our consumers.
Digitize the go-to-market process and enhance and integrate the online and offline consumer experience.
The continued impact of the pandemic has forced an ongoing reaffirmation of our priorities and we remain committed to both the near-term brand specific initiatives and long-term enterprise wide platform investments.
Continued investment behind our transformation is critical to our success and long-term growth aspirations, I'm pleased with the significant progress we've made throughout 2020 as evidenced by the resiliency of our performance during this past holiday season and the momentum that is building across our portfolio as we head into fiscal 2022.
A recent proof point of these accelerated initiatives has been enabling our brands to build omni-channel consumer journeys and optimize supply chain efficiency.
On our last call, we shared that ship from store functionality was activated across the majority of our Vans and North Face full price stores, ahead of the holiday season, specifically within our EMEA platform.
Our teams engineered homegrown solutions to deliver buy online pickup in store, ship from store and reserve online buy in the store right before lockdown down measures applied across the region.
These businesses were able to utilize retail inventories and leverage ship from store capabilities when the stores were forced to shut down, supporting an 80% increase in digital revenue.
Phase 2 of this project is currently under way with the plan to go live in the coming months, including save the sale functionality, which will allow our brands to leverage retail inventory when an item is out of stock online.
Turning to our brand highlights from the quarter.
Vans revenue continued to sequentially improve declining 8% as 48% growth in Digital was more than offset by brick and mortar store reclosures in the Americas and EMEA markets.
The brand accelerated to 9% growth in APAC, led by 58% digital growth and 20% growth in China.
From a product standpoint, all-weather MTE styles increased at a double-digit rate and the Ultra range increased high single digits as Vans consumers turn to more outdoor and active oriented franchises.
Vans ranked number one among the largest brands during the Singles' Day on Tmall getting 700,000 new consumers.
Also in November Vans customs launched on Tmall becoming the first global brand offering a full customization engine on this platform, the collaboration with Dave drove the launch generating 870,000 unique visitors on the customer site that day.
The Vans family member base continues to grow globally with membership approaching 14 million consumers.
Although the headline number for Vans reflects the challenging brick and mortar operating environment in the US and Europe, we remain confident in the underlying trajectory of the business and expect at least low double-digit growth in the fourth quarter on a reported basis.
Continued momentum in China and across the digital platform normalized inventory levels across all regions and strong consumer growth and engagement support the brand's return to growth beginning in the fourth quarter.
Moving on to the North Face.
Revenue declined 2% with continued sequential improvement in the Americas and double-digit growth in Europe and Asia.
Europe remains a bright spot for the brand with 17% growth, including a 112% digital growth, offsetting the impact of significant store closures in the region.
Global TNF digital increased 61% with accelerated growth across all regions driving a return to positive growth in D2C.
In North America, the VIP loyalty program drew 40,000 sign ups, a more than 90% increase versus last year.
TNF continue to drive a significant increase in consumer engagement through authentic and purpose led marketing activations.
Core off mountain icons such as the New-C [Phonetic] franchise performed well and the TNF Gucci Ecolab generated tremendous brand energy with over 15 billion media impressions since its December launch.
Yes, you heard that right over 15 billion media impressions since its December launch.
On mountain product also performed well highlighted by future like to expansion deeper into the product assortment leading to triple-digit growth versus the prior year.
The new footwear platform Vective [Phonetic] has been well received exceeding our initial sell and targets for this spring's launch.
We are pleased with the performance of the North Face and encouraged by the brand strong momentum heading into next year.
On a reported basis, we now expect fiscal 2021 revenue for the North Face to declined less than 10% including greater than 20% growth during the fourth quarter.
Timberland revenue declined 17% relative strength from apparel and positive growth in both outdoor footwear and the pro-business were more than offset by softness in classic footwear, which was significantly impacted by limited inventory availability.
Timberland continues to drive brand energy with key influencers and retailers to high profile collaborations and the launch of new franchises.
The new work Summit boot was launched this quarter contributing to record traffic to Timberland pros digital site, which saw more than a 100% growth.
We're encouraged by the opportunity for true cloud.
A new innovative eco-friendly franchise made from renewable and recycled materials and green straight a new franchise anchored in outdoor.
While still early, and I'm pleased with Timberlands progress in the evolution and diversification of Timberlands new and innovative product portfolio.
Continued momentum from Timberland Pro, apparel and non-classics footwear coupled with improving demand and inventory levels for core classics position the Timberland brand for continued progress heading into fiscal 2022.
Dickies revenue increased 7% with strong demand across all regions and growth across all channels.
The work inspired lifestyle product portfolio continues to develop at a rapid pace increasing at a double-digit rate across all three regions.
Work inspired lifestyle product now represents about a third of global brand revenue.
Brand interest accelerated in the quarter-over-indexed toward the key 18 to 24-year-old consumer demographic supported by the United by Dickies global campaign and focus on the brands icon stories.
Finally, we are thrilled to have closed on the acquisition of Supreme.
This move is further validation of the actions we've taken over the past four years to position our portfolio into those parts of the market where there is strong consumer engagement in demand.
We are confident that the Scream transaction will serve as a spark for another layer of transformative growth and value creation for VF and our stakeholders.
In early January we announced the transformation plan for APAC operations.
This represents the first significant action under Project enable.
Highlights include the following.
We will transition our brands center of operations to Shanghai.
We will transition the Asia product supply hub to Singapore, I'll also redeploying some of the product supply talent and resources throughout primary sourcing countries to work more closely with key suppliers and drive greater efficiency.
We will establish an additional shared services center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to serve as the home for central activities within our enterprise functions.
As you would expect we will take great care as we move through the transition process during the next 12 to 18 months.
And as always, we are committed to supporting the personal needs of all impacted and relocating associates and their families.
I'm encouraged by the recent performance and resilience of our business and optimistic about the growth outlook for our brands as we move into fiscal 2022 and beyond.
As we said from the onset of the pandemic with great change comes great opportunity.
I am confident VF will emerge from this pandemic an even stronger position ready to build upon our storied history an established track record of delivering strong returns to all stakeholders.
What a year beginning with the unprecedented enterprise preservation actions at the onset of the pandemic to the acquisition of Supreme this has been an unbelievable period for VF and I'm grateful for the work that's been done by our teams around the globe to position us for growth and success moving forward.
To recap our quick and decisive actions to ensure liquidity have allowed us continued invested throughout this disruptive period highlighted by our ability to acquire Supreme a perfect complement to our portfolio and accelerant to our long-term strategy and transformation agenda.
Our aggressive control of inventory while prioritizing newness has allowed us to maintain brand momentum while positioning us for a return to profitable growth from the beginning of the fourth quarter and into the next fiscal year and our sharp control on discretionary spending and the launch of project enable presents a tailwind toward operating leverage moving forward, and the ability to direct more dollars to our highest priority growth investments.
So while the near-term environment remains noisy including lock downs, store closures and inventory constraints I could not be more pleased with the overall health of our enterprise and the composition of our portfolio heading into next year.
I'll open with a quick update on Supreme which I know is of interest to many of you.
As announced on December 28, we closed the acquisition for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.1 billion subject to customary adjustments.
We expect Supreme to contribute about $125 million of revenue and $0.05 of adjusted earnings to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
As disclosed that announcement, we expect Supreme to contribute at least $500 million of revenue and at least $0.20 of adjusted earnings in fiscal 2022.
We're now moving into the integration phase and carefully on boarding Supreme into the VF family.
Focused on applying the appropriate amount of governance and oversight where needed while maintaining a light touch approach in other areas to avoid over burdening the brand.
We're committed to keeping it business as usual for the brand and its teams, while at the same time understanding how we can begin to enable the brand's growth and strategic vision while activating synergy opportunities where appropriate.
While it's early days, there is a lot of excitement about the future among both the VF and Supreme teams and we're off to a great start.
Moving on to an overview of the operating environment across the regions.
Starting with the Americas continued virus related lock downs and disruption present near-term challenges.
With that said, the outdoor and active categories continue to outpace overall apparel performance and demand trends have remained resilient.
Retailer inventories appear to be well positioned to exiting the holiday season but do remain abnormally low in certain categories and channels.
Despite continued traffic headwinds our Americas business sequentially improved with nearly 50% digital growth offset by store closure headwinds.
Moving on to the EMEA region where we've seen a second wave of the virus introduce more severe lockdown measures than previously anticipated.
As a result the broader EU economy has been among the hardest hit by the pandemic this quarter.
As the vaccine rollout is starting across Europe.
The region is bracing for another wave of COVID 19 and the UK recently extended more restrictive locked downs until February.
There are reasons for optimism however with digital acceleration continuing throughout the region, as we've seen across our own brands and with our digital partners such as Zalando and Asos.
VF EMEA digital business grew more than 80% in the quarter despite half of our brick and mortar stores being closed for a large portion of the quarter, the EMEA region, saw a meaningful sequential improvement and returned to positive growth on a reported basis.
Finally, the APAC region continues to offer greater stability than any other even as the effects of the pandemic leaner.
China has seen a pickup in consumer spending with positive growth in apparel and footwear categories.
We continue to view APAC is the leading indicator of the larger macroeconomic environment.
Our Mainland China business grew 15% led by strength at Vans which grew 21%.
The D2C business in Mainland China accelerated to percent growth led by 24% growth in digital.
China retail partner inventory continues to improve and our partner, comp sales return to growth this quarter.
We're excited by the continued momentum in China and have high confidence in our outlook of 20% growth this year.
Now turning to highlights from the quarter.
Total VF revenue declined 8% in line with our expectations.
International declined 4% as a 4% decline in EMEA was offset by 1% growth in APAC, including 11% growth in Greater China.
Our D2C business also declined 4% driven by store closures and continued soft traffic in the Americas and EMEA.
Our digital business grew 49% with strong performance across virtually every brand in the portfolio.
Including our pure play digital wholesale partners, our total digital business represented about one third of total revenue in the quarter.
We now expect D2C digital revenue growth to exceed 50% for fiscal 2021 on a reported basis and including our digital wholesale business, we expect total digital penetration to approach 30% for the year.
Gross margin contracted 150 basis points to 57%, the third consecutive quarter of sequential improvement aided by moderating promotional activity.
The decline versus last year was primarily driven by higher levels of promotion and 90 basis points from FX transaction partially offset by 90 basis points of favorable mix benefit, while the promotional environment remains a headwind, it has slightly better than our expectations.
As we move into the fourth quarter and into fiscal 2022.
We expect the impact of promotions and discounting to continue to moderate.
Our SG&A spending decline about 4% relative to last year as we return to more normalized levels of strategic investment spending, including demand creation, approaching historical levels of investment.
As expected, we did experience cost pressure from higher freight and distribution expenses, although these were more than offset by reductions in discretionary spending and leveraged elsewhere throughout the cost base.
We expect to continue to invest in our strategic priorities in the fourth quarter as we return to growth.
Inventories were down 14% at the end of the third quarter, consistent with our prior expectations.
We expect to exit our fiscal year end March with inventories at equilibrium in support of our forward growth outlook.
We also see relatively clean inventory levels at retail globally positioning our brands for a return to more profitable growth heading into next year.
As expected, service and in-stock levels improved as COVID related disruptions had less of an impact in the quarter.
Our liquidity position remains strong.
We ended Q3 with approximately $3.9 billion of cash and short-term investments in addition to roughly $2 billion remaining undrawn on our revolver.
After funding the Supreme acquisition, we expect to exit fiscal 2021 with more than $1.5 billion in cash and nearly $2 billion remaining undrawn on our revolver.
Our capital allocation priorities remain consistent supported by our robust liquidity position.
We remain fully committed to growing our dividend, which continues to be an integral part of our TSR model.
Our share repurchases program remains on hold as we focus on deleveraging the balance sheet following the acquisition of Supreme.
So now turning to our updated outlook.
We are raising our fiscal 2021 outlook and now expect full-year revenue to be between $9.1 billion and $9.2 billion and full-year earnings per share of approximately $1.30.
The increase in our outlook includes the accretion from Supreme in the fourth quarter results, implying a modestly higher outlook for the organic business.
We're also raising our free cash flow outlook to approximately $650 million.
I know many of you are eager to understand our initial expectations for fiscal 2022.
While it's too early to provide a preliminary outlook at this time, I will provide a few high-level comments to help you understand how we're thinking about the evolution of our business as we head into next year.
Overall, we see an improving consumer backdrop, particularly in our core categories, along with brand momentum across our largest properties globally.
The accelerated shift toward digital in China are beneficial to our fundamentals and recent portfolio actions are immediately accretive to our revenue growth and margin profile.
We continue to see encouraging signs of stabilization in the retail marketplace and a normalization of inventory flows from a healthier supply chain.
We intend to continue to distort investment toward our strategic priorities and business model transformation in support of our powerful brand portfolio.
Taken together, I remain optimistic about the strength of our growth algorithm going forward and I'm confident in our ability to emerge from this crisis in an advantaged position.
The portfolio actions we've taken over the last five years have left us well positioned to continue delivering superior returns to our shareholders.

user
sees fy adjusted earnings per share about $1.30.
sees fy revenue $9.1 billion to $9.2 billion.
qtrly revenue from continuing operations decreased 6% (down 8% in constant dollars) to $3.0 billion.
as covid-19 uncertainty continues, vf expects ongoing disruption to its business operations.
qtrly increase in direct-to-consumer digital revenue of 53% (49% in constant dollars).
inventories were down 14 percent in quarter compared with same period last year.
intends to continue to pay regularly scheduled dividend & is not currently contemplating suspension of dividend.

assistant