V.F. Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 20, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: VF returned to full-year revenue growth in fiscal 2026 for the first time in three years, with full-year sales up 1% and operating margin expanding to 7%.
  • Positive Sentiment: The North Face, Timberland, and Altra all showed strong momentum, with The North Face up 7% in Q4, Timberland up 2%, and Altra posting 45% growth and more than $270 million in annual revenue.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Vans remains a turnaround story: global sales fell 5% in Q4, but Americas DTC grew 5% and management said U.S. DTC improvement is leading the recovery and should flow into wholesale over time.
  • Positive Sentiment: The balance sheet improved materially, with net debt falling from $5.8 billion to $2.7 billion over three years and leverage declining from 5.1x to 2.0x on management’s stated basis.
  • Neutral Sentiment: FY2027 guidance calls for continued growth and margin expansion, with revenue expected to rise 1% to 2%, operating margin around 8%, and leverage ending the year between 2.6x and 2.9x, while tariffs and Middle East-related disruptions remain key risks.
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Earnings Conference Call
V.F. Q4 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the VF Corporation fourth quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you have dialed in to today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. I will now hand the conference over to Allegra Perry, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Allegra Perry
Allegra Perry
VP of Investor Relations at VF Corporation

Hello, everyone. Coming to you live from Vans headquarters in sunny Southern California. Welcome to VF Corporation's fourth quarter fiscal 2026 conference call. On today's call, we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These uncertainties are detailed in documents filed regularly with the SEC. Unless we say otherwise, amounts that are referred to on today's call are all on an adjusted, constant dollar, continuing operations, and excluding Dickies basis, which we've defined in the presentation that was posted this morning on our investor relations website. We use those as lead numbers in our discussion as we believe they more accurately present the true operational performance and underlying results of our business. We may also refer to reported amounts, which are in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

Allegra Perry
Allegra Perry
VP of Investor Relations at VF Corporation

Reconciliations of GAAP measures to adjusted amounts are found in the supplemental financial tables included in the presentation, where we identify and qualify all excluded items and provide management's view of why this information is useful to investors. Joining me on today's call are VF's President and Chief Executive Officer, Bracken Darrell, EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Abhishek Dalmia, and EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Paul Vogel. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. I'll now hand over to Bracken.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Allegra, I've got to correct you. It's not sunny here. It's 5:00 in the morning, let's be honest. Although it always feels sunny in California, and we had a pretty sunny quarter. Thanks, Allegra. Everybody, thank you for joining the call. We finished this year strong, exceeded our fourth quarter guide, and took another big step towards transforming VF. We returned to sales growth for the year for the first time in three years. Our portfolio is getting healthier. In fiscal year 2024, taking it back a way, including Dickies, 43% of our business was growing. Now, as we finish fiscal year 2026, 70% of our business is growing. We also expanded operating margins to 7% in fiscal year 2026. To remind you, that's an expansion of 220 basis points over the 4.8% we had in fiscal 2024, including Dickies.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Over the last three years, we've paid off over half of our net debt, excluding lease liabilities. Let me repeat that. Over half of our net debt is paid off, excluding lease liabilities. Net debt has dropped from $5.8 billion to $2.7 billion. As a result, we've dropped our leverage from 5.1x to 2x, a full two turns in two years. A lot of strong progress on growth, on cost, and on the balance sheet. We've strengthened our financial position while we've increased our investment in brand building, product creation, and ultimately in growth, which is what it's all about. Our results demonstrate that our strategy is working and that we're well on track with VF's transformation. I'm very confident in our ability to drive strong performance and shareholder value in the years ahead. Now, let me turn briefly to Q4.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We delivered our strongest revenue performance in three years with revenue up 3% versus last year, ahead of our expectations and despite an evolving macro environment. In the Americas, our largest market, we accelerated growth to 10%, including a return to growth for Vans for the first time in almost four years. Our revenue performance helped drive stronger than anticipated operating income of $54 million. We ended the fiscal year with a strong Q4, growing revenue and expanding margins while further strengthening our balance sheet. Now, let me talk just about a few brand highlights for the quarter. We're continuing to see progress across the portfolio, starting with The North Face. The brand grew 7%, driven by broad-based growth across categories and by stellar performance in the Americas, up 16%. Our investments in product creation and innovation are delivering results. Softshells and fleece were key drivers in apparel.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Our investment into footwear is showing strong results, or continues to, and in fact, we have now delivered five consecutive double-digit growth quarters. Finally, we made an exciting announcement last week, which I hope you saw, which further underlines the performance credentials of this brand. We announced a new multi-year strategic partnership for The North Face with the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team. In other words, we'll be outfitting the U.S. Ski & Snowboard athletes as they compete on the world stage, including at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games. As the exclusive performance apparel sponsor, athletes will wear The North Face across all major events, including the World Cup, all World Cup events, and of course, the Winter Olympic Games and official training camps through at least 2034. Of course, our customers can also buy this apparel, and we're sure they will.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

The brand will be front and center on the world stage, further cementing its commitment to elite mountain and adventure sport athletes. This is an exciting time for The North Face, and we're making progress on our path to doubling this business over time. There's so many ways we can grow this brand. Category growth, market share growth, new categories we can expand into, and finally, elevation to more premium versions of the products we already sell at higher price points. We have a lot of pent-up opportunity to drive growth at The North Face. Let's turn now to Timberland, which grew 2% this quarter as expected. Our DTC growth was up 8%, driven in part by full price stores. Wholesale was slightly down versus last year, primarily due to lower distressed sales. The six-inch premium boot continues to be the key engine behind the brand's momentum.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We're also seeing good results from the boat shoe, which is growing across all regions with significant growth potential ahead. We'll continue to both build on the strength of the iconic boot, but also introduce more innovation across the rest of our footwear assortment. Starting this fall, we're resetting our apparel proposition to create a better head-to-toe expression that matches our footwear offering. As part of these efforts, we're also focusing on our women's business, and you'll see more there, too. We're driving the brand's energy and leveraging its cultural relevancy through collaboration, seeding, and partnerships. We're continuing to see positive brand search interest in the U.S. and the U.K. More recently, in April, Timberland was awarded the Fashion Maverick Award of the Year at the American Image Awards.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We also, as you know, are expanding our distribution footprint with 11 full-price stores now open and operating in our home market. The outsized productivity shown by our new stores are early proof points of our new operating model working as planned. We have exciting plans for Timberland in the coming seasons as we continue to set the stage for long-term profitable growth ahead. This brand could become much larger over time, and I'm confident we're taking the right strategic steps to ensure that happens. Let's talk about Altra. Altra had an exceptional Q4 performance. Another fifth consecutive quarter. The fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth here too, across all regions and channels. Revenue grew 45%, driven by broad-based growth everywhere and new launches. Growth for the year was over 30%, with revenues surpassing $270 million.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Performance was led by successful franchise launches including the original Lone Peak, now the Lone Peak 9, and the Experience, and strong execution in both DTC and wholesale. We have a really differentiated product in this space, and we're continuing to drive awareness, which remains very low. I talked about investing in product creation and marketing, and Altra is a brand where we've absolutely increased the investment to drive growth. We're excited to see outsized growth in search interest, traffic, and new consumer acquisition. This brand plays in a very large addressable market, and we believe this can be a billion-dollar-plus brand over time. There's so much opportunity here. Now let's talk about Vans. Q4 was down globally by 5% year-over-year. What I'm most excited about by far is our progress in Americas DTC.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

DTC is where we are closest to the consumer with our products and our marketing. Americas is more than 50% of our total business, and it's where the trends start for Vans. If you remember, our e-com business in the Americas first turned to growth in Q3 of 2026 with 4% growth. In Q4, Americas total DTC grew 5%. The Americas is the foundation for the brand's energy. This is where we said the recovery would start, and as the Americas DTC continues to grow, its brand heat will start to show up elsewhere. These tangible green shoots are a result of our focus on product and brand energy at Vans. You'll hear Abhishek talk more on the work we're doing on speed to market, which helps us with newness. Newness continues to build across the assortment as we re-energize our core icons, one silhouette at a time.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

As an example, the Pearlized drops are having great consumer response and driving improving results within the Old Skool franchise. Another icon, the Authentic, delivered outstanding growth in the quarter, up 80% versus last year. Slip-Ons returned to growth, too. Apparel also returned to growth in Q4. Vans continued to leverage a social-first, culture-led marketing approach, amplifying product stories and driving traffic, particularly into digital channels. During our fourth quarter, we launched our Off The Wall campaign anchored around the Authentic, it resonated with consumers and supported improved search and engagement trends in key markets. Our strategic investments in design, brand energy, and demand creation have been instrumental in driving improved performance for the brand. We are excited about the progress at Vans. Turning to FY 2027. Paul will go deeper in a minute.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

I feel very good about our forecasting abilities, and today we're reinstating annual guidance. We're expecting our second consecutive year of growth and strong progress towards our 10% operating margin medium-term goal. I also understand better the seasonality of our business today, based on the wholesale order flows and the mix of our business quarter by quarter. As you'll hear from Paul, we expect Q1 revenue to be down slightly, low single digits. Remember, it's a very small quarter for the year and has no impact on our ability to deliver our guidance for the year. With respect to Vans, first let me say that for the full year, we're going to move from a double-digit decline last year to a mid-single digit decline this year. The more important signal is that we will continue to deliver growth in Americas DTC throughout fiscal year 2027.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Overall, the front half will be weaker than the back half. Wholesale will start weaker and pick up steam as the DTC growth drives order flow. We still have work to do in our wholesale business in the U.S. and around the world. We'll be focusing on continuing to accelerate in DTC and developing a stronger global wholesale growth engine. In the near term, as Abhishek and Paul will also tell you in a minute, we're operating in an unusual macro environment with two wars at least and tariffs in flux. Like others in our sector, we're impacted by the developments in the Middle East. Despite these headwinds, we're on track to deliver our medium-term targets. Important, I'd like to emphasize our confidence in getting to the 10% margins we promised.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Now we've returned to growth in fiscal year 2026, and we'll grow again in 2027, and we're not going back. We're shifting our initial turnaround phase to our growth phase. This next part of our story is all about driving durable, profitable growth for many years to come. Overall, looking ahead through fiscal year 2027, just like looking back on the past two years, you'll see more growth, better margins, lower debt, and better leverage in the coming years. Today, I've asked our Chief Operating Officer, Abhishek Dalmia, to provide an update on our turnaround strategy a year on from our last Investor Day. We've really accomplished a ton over the last year, and all these building blocks are contributing to both near-term success and will contribute a lot more as we move forward. Abhishek, welcome to the earnings call. The floor is yours.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Thank you, Bracken. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here, and I'm excited to speak directly about the work our teams are doing every day to transform this company. What gives me energy is that transformation is no longer just a plan or a set of initiatives. It shows up in the way we operate, the decisions we make, and the results we are delivering. As you heard, gross margins of 55%+, leverage ratio improvement of two turns, and positive growth for full-year FY 2025. In October 2024, we shared with you our plan to transform VF with a focus on strengthening the balance sheet and creating a more durable foundation for profitable growth. Paul will share more detail around our commitments, but we remain focused on delivering against these medium-term commitments.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Gross margin of at least 55% and exit run rate operating margin of 10% in FY 2028, and leverage ratio of 2.5x or less by FY 2028. We are two years into a four-year journey to our medium-term targets. While macro environment has become more complex, our commitment has not changed. At the start of the turnaround, our primary focus was liquidity and leverage. You heard from Bracken, we have made meaningful progress there, and this matters because it gives us flexibility to reinvest behind our brands to pursue growth. Beyond portfolio moves, our turnaround has been focused on three key areas: expanding gross margin, controlling SG&A, and accelerating top-line growth. All three are progressing in parallel to create fuel for further growth, strong EBITDA, and target operating margin. Let me start with gross margin, where we have made significant progress and have more room to improve.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

In FY 2024, VF's full-year gross margin, including Dickies, was 51.6%. In FY 2026, we finished the year at 55.2%, an expansion of approximately 360 basis points. About 100 basis points came from Dickies' divestiture. The remaining 260 basis points came from the work we have done across several work streams across our brands and portfolio. How did we achieve this? We strengthened our product creation engine and inventory planning capabilities that are improving decisions across the business. The work we are doing to strengthen our capabilities has driven gross margin expansion in certain key areas. One, we are driving a stronger mix of higher-margin products. Two, we are taking targeted pricing actions. Three, we are executing sharper markdowns. For example, The North Face and Timberland Americas were the first to deploy our improved markdown capabilities at scale using AI and stronger in-season analytics.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

The result has been meaningful uplift in gross margin dollars. We have reengineered our processes, built new capabilities, and upskilled our talent. As we scale them across our brands and regions, we expect to drive further improvement in gross margin rate and dollars. Let me talk about SG&A now. Since FY 2024, excluding Dickies, we have taken out more than $225 million of sustained savings, now fully in the run rate. These structural savings, not temporary actions. We have taken significant actions to simplify the organization, to drive efficiencies in DTC and distribution, and to optimize our digital and technology expenses. For example, in distribution, we consolidated some of our footprint and balanced it more between our owned and 3PL DCs. In digital and technology as an example, we deployed faster, more cost-optimized commerce platform, which allowed us to elevate our consumer experience at a much lower structural cost.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Now, while we have made good initial progress, we continue to streamline our cost base. As you can see, when we commit to something, we deliver. SG&A savings have been partially offset by Forex impacts and inflation, and we have deliberately made some incremental investments in product development and marketing. Marketing is an investment engine for VF, and we are shifting it toward more working media spend, which means more of our dollars are reaching consumers directly and supporting brand momentum and demand creation. The work we have done on gross margin and SG&A sets the foundation to drive growth, and hence I'm talking about it now. That is why we are here. Now let me get into a little bit more details there. As Bracken mentioned, we delivered full-year FY 2026 revenue growth of 1%, our first year of growth in three years.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Deeper understanding of our consumers and building back consumer love for our iconic brands is central to driving this growth. We started the work by segmenting consumer demand to make clear choices about where each brand will compete and win. This commitment continues to shape what products we design and how we curate relevant experiences for our consumers. Ultimately, we need to get the right products for our consumers at the right time. This is where our product go-to-market process matters. As you all know, in our industry, go-to-market cycles are long. Speed is and will continue to be a critical enabler to accelerate this growth, and we have done a lot of work there. Let me share a few examples from Vans.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

In fall 2025, Vans pulled forward products originally planned for season fall 2026 and delivered them in less than six months, roughly 1/3 of the time a standard cycle would take. We did that by working more closely with our vendors, being more precise in our product briefs, and making sharper decisions with creative confidence in design. That speed mattered. It allowed the team to test new silhouettes on smaller scale, read consumer responses, and make better decisions about what to scale, what to refine, or what to discontinue. Some styles were dropped from fall 2026 line, while others were refined with those insights. This kind of speed enables improved Vans performance in Americas DTC, as you heard from Bracken. At the same time, Vans has been rebuilding brand energy through a more social-first content-led model.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Targeted product and content drops with artists including Curtis, SZA, Hayley Williams, Travis Barker, are helping reconnect the brand with culture and drive consumer engagement. These efforts are becoming visible in the marketplace. It is early, and we are clear about the work ahead at Vans. This combination of speed, product newness, and sharper marketing will be the building blocks we continue to execute into the next year and beyond. That's the growth engine we are building across VF brands. Looking ahead, let me reiterate our priorities. Keep expanding gross margin, maintain cost discipline, and accelerate growth across our brands. We are encouraged by the momentum we see in the business. We have made significant gross margin progress, which gives us fuel to drive growth, and we continue to realize additional margin expansion opportunities. We have mitigated outsized external challenges while continuing to invest in accelerated growth.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

While we manage our cost discipline, we have two near-term cost challenges: oil price fluctuations and potential tariffs. On oil price fluctuations, there are two areas of impact: freight and product cost. Freight, we are leveraging scale with our carriers and partners and driving cost discipline across the supply chain. On product cost, we are consolidating materials across brands and leveraging our VF materials library to drive pricing scale while also reviewing our pricing strategies. On service levels, we are adjusting sourcing flows, monitoring logistics, and working closely with our regional teams. We have contingency plans in place and are operating with extreme flexibility. On tariffs, we are closely watching a potential step-up to take effect mid-July following the conclusion of the Section 301 investigations.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Over the past year, we have been actively mitigating, rebalancing our sourcing footprint, reducing exposure to higher tariff routes, and working with partners to share cost burden. Putting this all together, we continue our work across several initiatives and remain extremely confident in our ability to achieve our margin targets in FY 2028. We have many opportunities ahead, including the ones that I can highlight in particular. First, our faster go-to-market enables us to drive outsized growth in DTC channel, which in turn generates a higher level of profitability and fixed cost leverage for us. Second, our return to top-line growth and a more efficient marketing approach that we are deploying results in further leverage on marketing spend. Finally, AI is creating incremental optimization opportunities across our brands and corporate functions. We are leveraging AI where we see clear value, scaling what works, and embedding it into how we operate.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

You will see us communicate progress in terms of operational outcomes, margin dollars, inventory quality, speed, and productivity, not just AI investment dollars. The work is not finished, but VF is operating with more discipline, more speed, and more focus than it did a few years ago. The conversation inside this company has shifted from turnaround to growth, and that is what gives us extreme confidence in the next phase. With that, I will hand it over to Paul.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Great. Thank you, Abhishek. Welcome to the call. As Bracken and Abhishek illustrated earlier, we made important strides in fiscal 2026. We returned to top-line growth, expanded our gross margin to 55%, and achieved an operating margin of 7%. I want to underscore what Abhishek just said. Leverage is down a full turn compared with fiscal 2025 and down two full turns versus two years ago. Let's turn to the financial review of the fourth quarter. We closed out the year with another quarter of revenue growth. Q4 revenue was $2.2 billion, up 3% versus last year and above our guidance of flat to up 2%. Wholesale demand in the quarter drove our better-than-forecast results, led by The North Face. By brand, The North Face grew 7%, led by the Americas region, which had another quarter of double-digit growth.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Vans was down 5%, as expected, including about 2% benefit from earlier orders from wholesalers. Lastly, Timberland grew 2%, its sixth consecutive quarter of growth. By region, the Americas grew 10% in the quarter and up 3% for the full year, reflecting the continued progress in our largest region. EMEA was down 5% as we're navigating the macro headwinds in the region, and APAC was up 1%, driven by demand across The North Face and Timberland. Lastly, we grew across both channels. DTC delivered another quarter of growth at up 2%, and wholesale was up 3%, aided by higher than expected demand. Before I review the rest of the P&L, I want to address a few items that impacted comparability in the quarter. Following the Supreme Court's ruling in February related to certain tariff refunds, we recognized a net benefit to our gross margin during Q4.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

We also elected to accelerate select restructuring costs in the quarter, which drove a higher SG&A rate and partially offset the gross margin benefit. On a normalized basis, excluding these items, operating income would have come in at the midpoint of our guidance range. Gross margin for the quarter was up 240 basis points versus last year to 56.4%, helped by a roughly $50 million net benefit from the tariff receivable and offsetting charges. Normalized gross margin was roughly flat versus last year, driven by the benefits from targeted price actions offset by mix and FX. SG&A as a percentage of revenue was up 70 basis points versus last year or down slightly excluding the accelerated restructuring costs. Our operating margin for the quarter was 2.5%, up 170 basis points versus last year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

In Q4, net interest expense was $27 million, while tax expense was $25 million, reflecting a full-year adjusted rate of 36%. This should be the peak year in tax rate, with the expectation that a reported rate should be in the low 30s in fiscal 2027 and back in the 20s beyond that. Q4 adjusted earnings per share was $0 versus a loss of $0.14 in Q4 of last year. I'll turn to the balance sheet. Inventories declined 11% in constant currency, and inventory days were down year-over-year, reflecting improved inventory discipline across the organization. Net debt was down approximately $800 million versus last year or down 16% following the repayment of the €500 million maturity made earlier this year. As noted, year-end leverage improved to 3.1x, down one full turn versus last year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Our free cash for the year was $505 million, including a $100 million cash benefit from the net impact of the pension termination. Normalizing for this activity, free cash flow of $405 million was approximately $90 million above last year. On to our outlook. As Bracken mentioned, we are reinstating annual guidance effective fiscal 2027. For the full year, we expect another year of growth and operating margin expansion as we advance towards our medium-term targets. We expect revenue to be up 1%-2% in constant dollars. By brand, we expect continued growth at The North Face, Timberland, and Altra, driven by our ongoing focus on investing in product and marketing. We expect Vans to deliver moderating declines for the year as a whole, with improving trends in H2 relative to H1. We recognize that 1%-2% is a somewhat specific range.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Incorporated into this guidance is our belief that we will grow in fiscal 2027, but that there are real headwinds related to the Middle East conflict and that we expect about 0.5 point benefit from the 53rd week. To date, we've had some impacts to our operations in the Middle East, in particular on the wholesale side. We are anticipating the conflict in the Middle East to negatively impact revenue by about 100 basis points. While we have full confidence on where we will land for the year, we expect slower top-line trends across the first half of the year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

This is reflective of the slowdown in the Middle East and Europe due to the war and company-specific trends, including wholesale timing shift, which can have a disproportionate effect given the relatively small size of Q1 in particular, as such, we expect Q1 to be down low single digits. For Q1 operating income, partly driven by some investments we are making in the quarter and particularly around investments in Altra and DTC, both of which Bracken highlighted earlier, we do expect a $100 million loss for the quarter, about $40 million more than last year. This is all contemplated in our annual guidance. For Vans, we feel very good about the direction of the business and the underlying momentum. Execution is translating into tangible improvements, particularly in the Americas, where DTC continues to lead the recovery. Let me reiterate what Bracken said earlier.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

For the full year, we expect Vans to be down mid-single digits compared to -11% in 2026 and down 15% in fiscal 2025. Americas is our most important region, and DTC Americas is approximately 40% of our global business, and the DTC Americas business has turned. The progress here is a clear harbinger of where we are headed for Vans. For Q1 on a reported basis, we do expect a softer performance relative to Q4 2026, mainly related to the wholesale timing I mentioned previously. On a normalized basis, the growth across the two quarters is roughly the same. Moving down the consolidated P&L, we expect fiscal 2027 operating margin of approximately 8%, supported by gross margin expansion at a lower SG&A rate relative to last year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Full-year operating cash flow will be up versus last year, and free cash flow will be flat to up versus last year when you exclude the $100 million net impact of the pension termination from both years. On the working capital side, we're making additional investments in inventory to support top-line growth and expect inventory to be up year-on-year. This is an intentional decision to invest behind a few of our brands, and we still see our overall inventory in the long term heading lower and expect our inventory days to be flat this year and lowering moving forward beyond that. We also expect a step-up in CapEx this year, about $100 million year-over-year increase, with new full-year store openings of Timberland as one key driver.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

We continue to focus on strengthening the balance sheet, and we expect to exit the fiscal year with leverage between 2.6x and 2.9x, driven by both the further reduction in net debt as well as improved operating performance. Our plans for fiscal 2027 represent another step towards our medium-term goals, namely an exit run rate of 10% operating margin in 2028 and lowering our leverage below 2.5x by fiscal 2028. As we continue to progress towards our operating margin targets, we are seeing gross margin come in even better than planned, with our SG&A percentage slightly higher. Much of this can be attributed to the elimination of Dickies in our portfolio, where that brand had structurally lower gross margins and lower SG&A. While the makeup of our 10% margin target may be slightly different, the goal is still the same and we are on track to achieve it.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

To close, fiscal 2026 represented meaningful progress for VF, we remain on track to achieve our medium-term financial targets. With that, I'll hand it back to the operator for your questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Kindly limit yourself to one question per person. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand using the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. If you have dialed in to today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Michael Binetti with Evercore. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Binetti
Michael Binetti
Analyst at Evercore

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking our question here, and thanks for all the detail. Just a couple. On Vans, the DTC improvement, maybe you can just help us understand what you're seeing, if you're seeing the same level of improvement at sell-through at wholesale as you're seeing at DTC. We're trying to parse together how you're looking at it in total, but I know you're managing sell-in to some extent on wholesale. I'm curious what you're seeing at sell-through at wholesale, how similar it is to DTC, and what you think is the difference between the two today, to just help us understand how you're looking at it for the year. Any comment on how you think we should model Vans for first quarter would be helpful.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

I'll take the first one, and I'll give Paul the second one. Yeah, on sell-through, it wouldn't be as strong as our DTC, because the DTC has a different mix, and also DTC includes e-commerce, where we're able to really drive a lot of traffic to our own websites. We don't normally drive it everywhere else. I would say the sell-out in wholesale is not as strong as in our DTC in the Americas. Our DTC is a good harbinger of what's going to come, because the products that we have in our DTC, are coming. One by one, they'll come into the wholesale network, both online and offline. You'll see a stronger and stronger set of products in the portfolio. I think we view that as a really clear harbinger of what's to come.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

What's the timeframe on that? We're being a little cagey on that intentionally, because we're going to wait and see how it plays out. We feel very strong about the trend line on DTC, and then how it's going to play out in wholesale over time.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

On Vans. I think for Q1, the reported number will be slightly lower than what we experienced in Q4 of this year. Again, keep in mind, we did have some demand that pulled forward some orders into Q4. Given the size of Q1, it does impact that. On a normalized basis, Q4 and Q1 are roughly the same.

Michael Binetti
Michael Binetti
Analyst at Evercore

Okay.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

On a reported basis, Q1 will be slightly worse than Q4, and then we expect it to improve throughout the year.

Michael Binetti
Michael Binetti
Analyst at Evercore

I know normal practice for VF has been to take a conservative approach to DTC as you get further out on the calendar. Is the confidence in the improving growth rate in Vans through the year related to something you could tell us about with the order books on wholesale?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We normally don't talk about order books. Our confidence is really built on everything we can see internally, especially the DTC sell-out. Just looks really, really strong.

Michael Binetti
Michael Binetti
Analyst at Evercore

Okay.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

The new product performance, in particular, is really strong. Of course, we also get to look at what you can't see at all, which is the new products that are coming. We're sitting in a room that's about 400 ft from where we look at one and two and three seasons out. We just feel really good about what's coming.

Michael Binetti
Michael Binetti
Analyst at Evercore

Okay. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thanks, Michael.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

By the way, the sun's coming up, if you were wondering. This is now sunny California, almost.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Janine Stichter with BTIG. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Oh, drama on this one.

Operator

A kind reminder, if you've dialed in, you will need to unmute your line by pressing star six.

Janine Stichter
Janine Stichter
Analyst at BTIG

Sorry about that. We're back.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Okay.

Janine Stichter
Janine Stichter
Analyst at BTIG

Thanks for taking our question. On Vans, you mentioned that there's still some work to do in U.S. wholesale. Can you help us understand exactly what that means? Is that a reference to need to clean up more distribution, or is that a reference to need to build back the order books? Maybe give us some thoughts on how you're thinking about the U.S. wholesale distribution currently. Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

It's mostly just really building back the order flow into the business. The distribution looks pretty good. We're going to continue to edit that. You'll remember we took down the value channel pretty significantly over the last year. We've done some editing. We may have over-corrected there a little bit, so we're going a little bit back into that, but not dramatically. Overall, though, I think our distribution looks about right in wholesale. It's really more about just continuing to follow the DTC performance, make sure that our wholesale partners really get to see that, and they have, and then have the orders that come behind it. It's really much more of a follow the leader mode now, rather than add on to the number of players in the market.

Janine Stichter
Janine Stichter
Analyst at BTIG

Great. Just on DTC, it sounds like a lot of that improvement is coming from online. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what's going on with stores in terms of both traffic and conversion? Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Yeah. Certainly, traffic's gotten a little better, and conversion's gotten a lot better. I think our execution at retail has really improved. We had a new leader go in two quarters ago, and he has really re-energized the team, gotten focused on execution, and that performance has really improved on retail and e-commerce. Bricks and mortar and e-commerce, he's now taken over the rest of the world, as you know, and we're bringing some of that magic into the rest of the world over this year. That's another reason we feel so strongly about our ability to deliver kind of the performance we're seeing in DTC in the U.S. into the rest of the world and into the wholesale in the U.S. over time. We're excited about it.

Janine Stichter
Janine Stichter
Analyst at BTIG

Great. Thanks very much.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thank you very much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Laurent Vasilescu with BNP.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Hey, Laurent.

Operator

A kind reminder to press star six to unmute.

Laurent Vasilescu
Analyst at BNP

Good morning.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Good morning.

Laurent Vasilescu
Analyst at BNP

Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. Hi, Bracken. How are you?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Good.

Laurent Vasilescu
Analyst at BNP

I've got a quick question as the sun comes up here in California. It's a question about, I think you mentioned, Paul, that the gross margin for Q4 would've been flat, if I understood correctly, on the tariff, ex-tariff benefit. If that's the case, how do we think about Q1 gross margin? Obviously, there's no precedence with this tariff refund, but how do we think about the tariff benefit for the fiscal year 2027 guide relative to the gross margin and the free cash flow guide? Thank you so much.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

For Q4, yeah, if you back out the receivable gross margin, it'll be roughly flat for Q4. Q1 gross margin will be up. SG&A is also going to be up, as we mentioned, some of the investments we're making. Q1 in particular is a smaller quarter. We're starting the year with some investments we think are really going to help throughout the full year. That's why you're seeing that dynamic in Q1 with the better gross margin, but the higher SG&A, which is why the OI is down year-on-year in Q1. That's all part of our plan for the fiscal year 2027. You see our expanding operating margin to 8% for the full year on the better gross margins and leverage of SG&A.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

You'll see, again, higher gross margins in Q1, higher SG&A for the full year. You'll see higher gross margins leverage on SG&A. You'll see us get to the 8%. That's how it works out. On the tariff side, we're assuming that the tariffs are back in place at the end of July. We expect to have sort of a full year impact of tariffs, of an incremental $70 million-$80 million for the year. Again, we'll see how it goes. Obviously, it's very fluid. Could be better, could be worse, but we're assuming they're going to be back in place, and we're assuming it's going to be, call it roughly $70 million-$80 million impact, negative impact, on our gross margin.

Laurent Vasilescu
Analyst at BNP

Paul, that's super helpful. I think you mentioned to Michael there were some timing shifts between 1Q and 4Q on revs due to the timing shifts on wholesale. Maybe could you quantify that number? I think you said they would've been roughly equal. It seems like a pretty big delta. Are you assuming that there's some timing shift from 2Q to 1Q? I know you're not ready to guide for 2Q, but should we at least assume that there's probably 2Q be flat for the year on top line? Thank you so much.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Yeah, the biggest impact was Q4 and Q1. We just had some stronger demand and orders just came in earlier for the season, which is obviously a positive sign. We knew that, so again, with the Vans number, the guidance, it was in there in the guide. We knew the demand was going to be there. It was about two points in each quarter. That's why I say if you normalize it out, the growth about the same. If you look at the trends relative to kind of the normalized trends in Q2 and Q3 and Q4 and Q1 are, again, slightly better from a kind of normalized trend, in terms of the declines Vans.

Laurent Vasilescu
Analyst at BNP

Super helpful. Thank you very much and best of luck.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

One other thing I should add also because it also impacted The North Face as well. North Face also has had some really strong demand as well. It was a benefit to them in Q4. Given the size of Q1, it actually has The negative benefit on the actual growth rate is higher in Q1 just because it's a smaller quarter. One of the other things that's impacting, again, growth just for Q1 but not for the full year is, again, some of that timing shift for The North Face as well. Again, the demand was there, which is great. Fell in Q4 versus Q1. That has a disproportionate impact on North Face in Q1 in particular. Again, we still expect good growth in North Face for the full year again.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

There's a lot of things going on that just kind of specifically impact Q1 but don't really impact what we think will be a stronger FY 2027.

Laurent Vasilescu
Analyst at BNP

Very clear. Best of luck.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thanks, Laurent.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Brooke Roach
Brooke Roach
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Good morning. Thank you for taking our question. In the prepared remarks, you talked a little bit about some of the drivers of product costs as a result of some of these higher oil prices that will be flowing through the P&L. You mentioned several mitigating factors, including pricing. Can you unpack for us a little bit more what that annualized headwind is going to be when it gets fully into your inventory cost and how much pricing actions you're contemplating both this year and into next year as a result of these inflationary factors, whether it is oil costs or tariffs or other factors in the environment? Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Want to start, or you want me to start, Paul?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Go ahead.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Sorry. The impact on fiscal 2027 is pretty minimal. We are obviously looking at oil prices in general, in terms of product costs and how that could impact fiscal 2028. I think it's kind of a wait and see where oil prices sort of net out between $80 million-$90 million at the low end, $100 million-$110 million, maybe even more at the high end. We have it out there. Again, it's really not going to impact the product costs all that much in fiscal 2027, if anything. We'll give you more guidance as we get towards the back half of the year, what that may or may not do from a headwind for fiscal 2028. From a pricing standpoint, we're just being strategic across the brands.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

There's nothing really incremental new to call out on pricing, just sort of strategically going through the portfolio and changing prices where appropriate.

Brooke Roach
Brooke Roach
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Great. Just a follow-up. Can you unpack the trends that you're seeing in EMEA? What assumptions are you embedding for Western Europe beyond the 100 basis points related to the Middle East? Are you seeing any change in demand in that region for any of your brands?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

I'd say generally speaking, no. I think it's been weaker. Europe has been weaker for us. In general, I think the whole macro environment's kind of swirled Europe, that traffic's been down across the board, across the whole industry, and it's certainly affected us. It has been weaker for us. Looking forward, we're not expecting magic there. The good news is our DTC is stronger than our wholesale there, that feels good. Kind of echoes the same story we told about the Vans in the U.S. in general. I think as we go forward, we certainly expect it will get back to good growth over time. We're taking a new approach there. We've learned so much as we brought Just to take you back a few years, even, we brought this European platform for our commercial engine into the U.S.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

It was a very successful multi-brand platform. We weren't doing that in the U.S. We put it into the U.S. It certainly has driven improvement in the U.S. We've upgraded that even further by getting focused on our DTC in the U.S. and really improving our execution engine. Now we're bringing that execution over into Europe. It's kind of an illustration of this whole value of having multi-brand, multi-category, multi-region business like we have, where we're going to keep learning in different parts of the world as we tap into a new vein of understanding and insight that improves our business. We're going to bring it to the rest of the world and the rest of our brands. That's exactly what's happening now. You'll see that happen. It's already happening in the U.S. That's why you saw such a strong quarter.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

I think you'll see it in the quarters and certainly years ahead around the world.

Brooke Roach
Brooke Roach
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thanks so much. Best of luck.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thanks, Brooke. Thank you, Brooke.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Hey, guys. Can you hear me?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Perfectly.

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Excellent. Hey, Bracken.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Hey.

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Paul, clarification on a question, I think for Paul. The refund benefit you saw in the first quarter, should we basically be modeling that as a bad guy, $50 million in the fourth quarter of next year? I'm assuming we should. I just want to kind of make sure that that's the case.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

It's not really a bad guy. If you think about it, if you think about the full year, the full year just basically assumes that we didn't have to pay the tariffs. We took a receivable to account for that, which all hit in Q4. We tried to normalize out for Q4. Just as a level set, the operating margin, the 7% operating margin in fiscal 2026 is a good, clean margin. I wouldn't think about is it a benefit in Q4. I think more a function of if the tariffs are put back in place at the end of July, and if we're back in an environment where we're having to overcome the tariffs, it will impact the back half of the year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

That was the $70 million-$80 million or so that I mentioned earlier in terms of the incremental impact we would see in the back half of the year. It's not really a, oh, we had a benefit, we didn't, because it's not really a quote-unquote, benefit. It's just, we had been assuming we were going to have to pay something we didn't. There's no impact really at all. We have a clean 7% margin in 2026. Next year, we will potentially have to face increasing tariffs if the July announcement goes through, and then we have higher tariffs. It will make Q4 tougher compare, but it's not really like for like. It's more that we will potentially have tariffs back in the mix for Q4 of next year.

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Got it.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

For this year. I'm sorry.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Paul, if I can just add.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

For sure.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

I think two things. One, to underscore the point that the 7 points of operating income in FY 2026 is clean. It doesn't have the tariff impact. Two, the $70 million-$80 million that Paul is talking about, we do have mitigation action, as I highlighted, as part of the work that we have been doing over the last 1 year in terms of thinking about our sourcing footprint, thinking about rerouting the product, and also working with our vendors. We do feel confident of mitigating almost all of it in FY 2027. That's what we are saying when we are committing to the guidance of 8% operating income.

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. As a follow-up on the fiscal 2028 margins. I know at the analyst day, I believe you guys said you were committed to achieving a margin of at least 10% in fiscal 2028. I think now you're saying it's a run rate. I know there's noise, there's tariffs, and things like that, so that's understandable. Can you just elaborate what a run rate means? That can mean a lot of things. Is there any more clarity you could kind of give us into what your expectation is for the annual margin in 2028?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Let me be crystal clear. When we gave that, we said in fiscal 2028, we would deliver at 10%. What we meant was a run rate, and we then got a lot of feedback, very understandable, like, Oh, so you mean for the full year? We said, no, we didn't mean for the full year. We never intended that to be the full year. The idea was that during the year of fiscal 2028, we'd reach that point where we'd be a 10% margin business. We redescribed that a couple of quarters ago. We've tried to reiterate that to everybody. We use the term exit rate. You can kind of count on as an exit rate fiscal year, as we exit fiscal year 2028, we've got a 10% operating margin run rate.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

The other way we could've said it, maybe we should have said it, is full fiscal 2029, you can count on 10% or better. During fiscal 2028, we'll hit 10% sometime during that year, and we've committed now to a 10% exit rate. Is that clear enough?

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks, Bracken.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Great. Thank you.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thanks for asking that. We were hoping we'd get that. If you hadn't, Abhishek was going to ask Paul.

Ike Boruchow
Ike Boruchow
Analyst at Wells Fargo

My pleasure.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Okay.

Operator

A kind reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand using the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. If you have dialed into today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand. Your next question comes from the line of Jay Sole with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Hey, Jay.

Operator

A kind reminder to unmute yourself locally.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Sure.

Jay Sole
Jay Sole
Analyst at UBS

Got it. Can everybody hear me now?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We can hear you perfectly.

Jay Sole
Jay Sole
Analyst at UBS

Super. Bracken, thank you so much. I just want to ask about the free cash flow guidance for this year. Maybe can you elaborate on what flat to up means? What are you comparing it to? Because it looks like in the slide deck you're comparing it to $405 million for this year. Maybe how do we think about the pension expense and the pension termination cash benefits from this year? Are you excluding those from that number? If you could just maybe just define the fiscal 2026 number, what's in there, and then tell us how you think about free cash flow in 2027 in a little bit more detail, that'd be great. Thank you.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Yep. Sure. The pension benefit was when we terminated the pension, there was a cash benefit of about $100 million. Our free cash flow, including that, is $505 million. On a normalized basis, we obviously don't expect that. That was a one-time thing. We won't get that every year. It's real cash in the door. On a normalized basis, $405 million is our free cash flow. That's up $90 million versus last year. Again, we had said all along that we would have free cash flow in fiscal 2026 that would be flat to up versus last year, and we obviously delivered $90 million more than that. The base number we're talking about is the $405 million. It's excluding the pension, it's $405 million. We said free cash flow will be flat to up this year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

The biggest variable there was we are upping our CapEx spend this year, which I mentioned. We're investing about $100 million more this year in CapEx than last year. A lot of that is going to investment. Some of that, as we talked about, is on the growth in Timberland and the full-price stores that we're growing in Timberland. Even with that increased investment, we still believe that we will have free cash flow that is equal to or better than last year. We're going to continue to delever. As we said, we finish this year at 3.1x. It's a full turn better than last year. We'll get below 3x this year, between 2.6x and 2.9x is what we said. We're still on track to be at 2.5x or better in fiscal 2028.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Everything is on track, and given the fact that everything's on track and that we actually had an even better improvement in our leverage ratio for fiscal 2026, that we are giving ourselves the ability to invest even more, particularly on the store side in fiscal 2027. Hopefully that was clear.

Jay Sole
Jay Sole
Analyst at UBS

It was. Paul, thank you so much.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Yep.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Great.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Samuel Poser with Williams Trading. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Hi, Sam.

Samuel Poser
Samuel Poser
Analyst at Williams Trading

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a handful here. One, the 53rd week in fiscal 2027, I assume that that will be gross margin accretive because most of that additional business comes from DTC. The wholesale part of that is small. Would that be a fair assumption?

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

It's small. We haven't really quantified. It is small. Your logic is definitely sound, it's pretty small. Just while you're on the 53rd week, just to be clear, we said it'd be on a revenue side at about 0.5 point to growth overall. That is helpful because it somewhat mitigates the point or so impact we see from MEA from the conflicts over in the Middle East.

Samuel Poser
Samuel Poser
Analyst at Williams Trading

Got you. In The North Face, how long will it take to double? With Vans, you talked about the speed to market. Given some of the strength of some of the new shoes, when could a wholesale partner write an order for right now and expect to get some deliveries? Lastly, there's the new Authentic called the Authentic Kickdown, which apparently isn't on your website, but is being sold through some Urban Outfitters and Free People. I'm wondering just the strategy there because you talk about your DTC, but that's a shoe that appears to be doing decently but isn't showing up on your website. Just a lot of questions, a lot of stuff I want to understand.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Sure. Absolutely, Sam. First, on the doubling of TNF, we're not committing to a timeframe, but we're very optimistic about it. I do think at some point, because we're really laying a lot of groundwork right now to grow across multiple categories around the world, we're really putting the next phase of planning in to drive that long-term sustainable growth. The growth should start to accelerate. We're not committing to that, and we're not going to do it today. At some point, maybe at an investor day, we'll lay a timeline out for that. In terms of Vans and can you place an order today? Absolutely, they can. You know as well as anybody, maybe better than anybody else in this call, how wholesale works. They can absolutely place orders today. They've also got product currently in their stores.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

It's a process of one by one by one. We were just at a cookout last night with our wholesalers for Vans, as a matter of fact. There's a lot of optimism out there, but this is going to take time. You got to keep the momentum going. We've also got to prove to them, as you know from being a former buyer, we got to prove to them these things are selling. I think they're now seeing it. The optimism's starting. Now it's got to turn into orders.

Samuel Poser
Samuel Poser
Analyst at Williams Trading

My question was, if I wrote an order today, could I get it in three months, or would it still take six months given the speed [inaudible].

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

No.

Samuel Poser
Samuel Poser
Analyst at Williams Trading

Understood.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Yeah. Let me take that, Sam-

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Yeah.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

because you actually ask a really good question, which is one of the big unlocks we actually executed on last year. We had a lot of success with Super Lowpro, as you know, on Vans as well. That was a great example where we actually saw the initial buys, we saw the momentum in the product. We actually chased down and got the product back on the floor in exactly 77 days. We did demonstrate that we have the capability, the capacity, and the partners on the supply chain side to actually accelerate any product chase if it's on the same silhouette and the same, with the variation of fabrication and color and material.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

On your question around wholesale, if we do get the order, we feel very confident that we can meet it, and that's what the teams are in the works for in terms of looking at their open to buy and really figuring out what, where we can actually drive. To your last question that you had around a particular style available only in the wholesale partner. Now, this is the kind of another shift in mindset that we are seeing at VF, that we are constantly going to be testing different ideas and scaling them pretty fast. One of the ideas could be that do we actually take a particular style, a particular silhouette, test that in wholesale first, take that in DTC stores first, take that in online first. This was one of the examples.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

I'm glad you observed it, which is where we are testing that what if we actually kind of push a certain style more at a rapid speed in wholesale partner first, see the velocity there, see the sell-through there, and then replicate that across the other channels.

Samuel Poser
Samuel Poser
Analyst at Williams Trading

Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thank you, Sam.

Operator

A kind reminder to limit yourself to one question per person. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you've dialed into today's call, please press star nine. Your next question comes from the line of Anna Andreeva with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Anna Andreeva
Anna Andreeva
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Great. Thank you so much. Can you guys hear me?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Yes, we can.

Anna Andreeva
Anna Andreeva
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Terrific. Yeah, thank you for all the color this morning. Very helpful. We wanted to follow up on Timberland. I think you mentioned wholesale declined on lower distressed sales in the fourth quarter. What was that amount and is that dynamic continuing into fiscal 2027? Any color on that would be great. Secondly, you talked about marketing and moving towards the upper funnel across the brands, which makes a lot of sense. What was your marketing as percent of sales for the year, and how should we think about that for 2027?

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

You want to take the first?

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Yeah, on the Timberland side, it's just the inventory is actually in a healthier position. We were selling less distressed there. There's some impact on that that follows through into the beginning of this year. It's actually all a good sign because we're in a really good place there.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Yeah, just to answer your question, of course. We're investing, I would say, pretty strongly in marketing. We're at about 8.6% for fiscal year 2026, and our game plan is to continue to invest pretty strongly in marketing. I do think there's somewhere in the future where we can bring that down a little bit, or we're probably at the high end of the upper quartile of the industry right there. Given where we are and what we're seeing from a responsiveness standpoint, we'll probably stay in that range for a while, but we'll eventually bring it down.

Anna Andreeva
Anna Andreeva
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you so much. Best of luck.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead. A kind reminder to unmute yourself locally. If you've dialed in, please press star six to unmute.

Lorraine Hutchinson
Lorraine Hutchinson
Analyst at Bank of America

Hi, everybody. Good morning. I was hoping that you could just help talk through a little bit of the strategies you've used to turn Vans America to really move that around the world.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We got part of your question, but let me try to restate it and see if I got it right. Just say yes. You want to understand a little bit of the Vans strategies that have driven the turnaround in the DTC in Americas, and ultimately, presumably, that will move around the world. Correct?

Lorraine Hutchinson
Lorraine Hutchinson
Analyst at Bank of America

Exactly.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Good. Yeah. It's pretty much what we've been laying out from two years ago. It comes back to product marketing and, in this case, really great commercial execution. The product is coming. You've seen a lot of new product from us. If you're not already, and I'm sure most of you are, if you're not following us on all the social media feeds, you should. You'll get a lot of color on what we're doing, and you'll see just the range of things we're doing and the excitement around them. Literally, I was going to bring this out for those of you who are looking at the video, but this shoe we just launched. We had lines in front of stores and all the places we sold it. We actually had fights in front of a couple of them, which we're not proud of.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Generating that kind of heat for some of the collaborations that are harder to get and then bringing those same attributes, like the Pearlized down into more available, more affordable shoes that you can buy almost everywhere, is really part of our game plan. We're doing that, and we've got really, really great product out and coming. The second thing we're doing is we're really trying to make sure that our marketing is. You mentioned upper funnel, lower funnel. We're really doing a lot on both ends of that spectrum. We're trying to make sure our lower funnel marketing is really strong in brand building, too. You've probably seen the character of our marketing change some. It used to be a lot of skateboarders, and now it's a lot more about California lifestyle, some skateboarding, and some just Off The Wall stuff.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We've got a new campaign on Off The Wall. Generally speaking, we're trying more and more to You'll see us tied directly to individual silhouettes and products, because we want to make sure it really converts into sales. The third thing we're doing is really great commercial execution. I think hats off to Brent Hyder, who's took over the Americas now, is now running our global commercial team. He's really done a super job of raising the caliber of play there, and he's got a fantastic team under him, including Jacques and so many others that have really raised the execution level in our stores and in our e-commerce execution. Abhishek is sitting next to me. His team did a great job of building websites that are more responsive. They look better, they feel better, they sell better.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Just all the elements that you would expect us to be doing, I think we're really doing in the DTC, and that's going to make its way around the world and into wholesale over time.

Operator

Your next question.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thank you, Lorraine.

Operator

Hold. The last question for today will come from the line of Blake Anderson with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Blake Anderson
Blake Anderson
Analyst at Jefferies

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You answered most of them. I just wanted to ask Bracken first on Vans. Would be interested to hear how the customer base is evolving kind of versus your expectations over the last year. Maybe talk about the growth of new customers versus existing. I know there are a lot of loyal Vans customers out there. Anything on retention rates and how the younger female demographic is trending? I know you guys have mentioned that as a key segment as well.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Yeah. I'll give you a little color, but I'm going to go a little deep on parts of this. I'd say the most important thing to point out is that the customer base is predominantly men. I think when we came out of the gate, we really felt like we have a lot of opportunity in women, and we have a lot of products out and more coming that are going to be available to women. We've really doubled down on men in our DTC in the Americas, and it seems to really be working, and we're going to keep that up. Now, we're also doing a lot more than that. We think there is a big opportunity in men.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We're also focusing on a couple of different segments, and I won't bore you with our segmentation strategy, but let me just say they tend to be kind of the people that you tend to notice if you walk down the street. They're the ones who look a little cooler, seem like they're on the edge of a trend, and we have different segments to go after it. That said, we've also expanded our marketing footprint a little bit because we have a lot of lapsed users and even older users who love the brand and just we kind of fell out of favor with. We've broadened our media buys a little bit so that we're reaching even some of these older people, as old as people like me, who love Vans and want to buy the latest stuff that's coming out.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We have very clear, specific targets, very narrow, but we're opening the aperture a little bit to make sure that our awareness is staying up among a broader group that really wants to buy, and that seems to be working.

Blake Anderson
Blake Anderson
Analyst at Jefferies

That's really helpful. If I could ask one more. I was curious, Paul and Abhishek, on SG&A and COGS. I know there's big initiatives to generate savings there. Can you quantify at all how much you're taking in savings this year versus last year? Just was curious directionally if you can talk anything about how much you're able to generate, excluding revenue, just taking costs out of the business this year versus last year.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

You want to take that, Paul?

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Yeah. We're not going to get overly specific other than to say, well, A, what Abhishek had already said, right? We have taken out $225 million out on a run rate basis. Some of that's been offset by inflation and then just specific and decisive investment decisions. We will get SG&A leverage this year, but we're not going to specifically talk about the overall numbers other than to say to get to the 8% operating margin on, call it 1%-2% revenue growth, we're going to see both gross margin expansion and some leverage on the SG&A side.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Yeah. The only thing I would add is I want to underscore the point that I made on the gross margin. We did expand 350 basis points, 360 basis points, but 100 of that was actually through the Dickies divestiture. We do see the composition of that 10% that Bracken talked about for the full year FY 2029 and beyond could be a little bit of a different mix than what we said earlier between gross margin and SG&A. We definitely see opportunities both in gross margin dollars as well as in SG&A dollars going forward.

Blake Anderson
Blake Anderson
Analyst at Jefferies

Thanks so much. Best of luck for the year.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Thank you.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Thank you.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

I think that was the last question. The sun is up and very bright here, as it often is in California at this time of the day. Just to close, we return to full-year growth in fiscal year 2026, we expect to keep growing in fiscal year 2027. We're going to continue to expand our margins and continue to reduce our leverage. All the things that we've been doing, we're going to keep doing and more, we're going in the right direction. We'll see more improvement. The North Face and Timberland are growing. We're seeing tangible signs of momentum at Vans led by Americas DTC. If you didn't get that from that call we've said it many times because we feel so strongly about it, as we're growing for the first time in over four years in Americas DTC.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

We're on track to achieve our medium-term targets, an exit run rate of 10% operating margin in fiscal 2028, and a leverage ratio of 2.5x or lower by fiscal year 2028. This has been a very strong year for VF, and I am super excited about the momentum we have and that we're building for the future. Thanks, everyone, for the call. Thanks for all the questions, and we'll see all of you, or many of you, around the world as we do investor meetings and things in the quarter ahead.

Abhishek Dalmia
Abhishek Dalmia
EVP and COO at VF Corporation

Thank you, everyone.

Bracken Darrell
Bracken Darrell
President and CEO at VF Corporation

Thank you, and thanks to two of you.

Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel
EVP and CFO at VF Corporation

Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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