At Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference, Rich Noll, HanesBrands Inc.’s chairman and CEO, said the company’s Champion brand is benefiting from its value positioning under Under Armour and Nike.
“Specifically in mid-tier department store and sporting goods channels, the business has been doing extremely well,” Noll said of Champion. “We expect double-digit increases in total this year and it's driven by space gains across a whole host of retailers from Kohl's to Sports Authority as well as online with Amazon. So we feel really good about the brand, it's resonating with consumers, and we expect good things going forward.”
Regarding its fan apparel businesses, Noll said HanesBrands now has the leading share in college bookstores with its past acquisition of Gear for Sports and also leads in the mass channel with its recent acquisition of Knights Apparel.
“We feel there's opportunity for continued organic growth both within those channels as well as expanding to some of the other channels and just continuing to penetrate genders and colleges, and continuing to drive that business,” said Noll. “So we feel good about it. Yes, there's a lot of opportunity for either consolidation or continued organic growth in the segment. We've got quite a strong infrastructure now with those two businesses as we pull them together.”
Due to its presentation, HanesBrands reaffirmed its 2015 financial guidance. Included in its guidance are expectations for sales of slightly less than $5.9 billion, adjusted operating profit of approximately $855 million to $875 million, adjusted earnings per diluted share of approximately $1.61 to $1.66, and net cash from operating activities of approximately $550 million. The guidance predicts solid double-digit growth expectations for sales, profit and EPS over 2014 results.
“There is not any real material changes versus our expectations, things are pretty well unfolding as we expected,” Noll said at the conference. “In terms of back-to-school, which we're now right in the midst of, we're seeing some ebbs and flows when you heard a lot of retailers report in August. They talked about July being a little bit soft but coming back in August. We saw the same exact type of trend. So overall, we feel good about our business.”
