G-III Apparel Group Ltd. (GIII) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

G-III Apparel Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: GIII) Q4 2022 earnings call dated Mar. 17, 2022

Corporate Participants:

Neal Nackman — Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analysts:

Paul Kearney — Barclays — Analyst

Jay Sole — UBS Securities LLC — Analyst

Susan Anderson — B. Riley FBR, Inc. — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the G-III Apparel Group Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Neal Nackman, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Neal Nackman — Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Good morning and thank you for joining us. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that certain statements made on today’s call and in the Q&A session may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed, or implied in forward-looking statements. In addition, during the call we will refer to adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure.

We have provided reconciliation to this non-GAAP financial measure to GAAP measures in our press release, which is also available on our website. Important factors that could cause actual results of operations or the financial condition of the company to differ are discussed in the documents filed by the company with the SEC. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

I will now to call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Morris Goldfarb.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning and thank you for joining us. Also joining me today is Neal Nackman, our Chief Financial Officer. Fiscal year 2022 was a testament to the power of G-III having gained market share and delivered significant growth and earnings for our shareholders. We saw strong demand across our power brands DKNY, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Karl Lagerfeld Paris, and we narrowed the losses in our retail operations. We delivered the highest annual EBITDA and net income per diluted share in our company’s history exceeding pre-pandemic fiscal 2020 results.

We bought back $17 million of our stock, and our Board authorized total shares available for repurchase up to 10 million. We ended the year in a strong financial position with $1 billion in liquidity compared to $800 million last year. This affords us the flexibility to continue to invest in our future growth, and further elevate our position as a leader in fashion. Now, let’s review the full year and fourth quarter fiscal 2022 results. Net sales for the full fiscal year were $2.770 billion, an increase of 35% to $2.06 billion last year.

Importantly, the Wholesale segment net sales for the fiscal year reached $2.7 billion, an increase of 41% compared to net sales of $1.9 billion last year, and almost back to pre-pandemic levels of fiscal 2020. For the full fiscal year 2022, we generated $350 million of EBITDA as compared to $285 million in pre-pandemic fiscal 2020. Full fiscal year GAAP net income per diluted share was $4.05, the highest in our company’s history and exceeding our guidance. This compares to GAAP net income per diluted share $0.48 last year, and exceeded pre-pandemic fiscal 2020 of $2.94 by 38%.

GAAP net income per diluted share for the fourth quarter was $0.98 compared to $0.30 in last year’s comparable quarter. We had strong growth across all our key categories that outpaced our expectations. In addition to the continued growth of our casual businesses which benefited from the consumer behavior shift during the pandemic, our broader lifestyle categories including dresses, and wear-to-work sportswear continue to build momentum. And we successfully incorporated core fashion collections into each of our brands during the past year. Our team has the foresight to anticipate trends, capture market share, and deliver end demand product to our retail partners despite significant supply chain challenges.

We’re see continued momentum and are well positioned for another strong year ahead of fiscal 2023. Athleisure, jeans and casual sportswear continue to do well across our company. Customers responded to an assortment of layering pieces that offered additional functionality heading into the cooler season. These completed pieces like zip-front hoodies, light weight jackets, puffer vest, and sweaters have expanded the opportunities for our classification businesses. With the first full year of being in the jeans business behind us, we quickly built into one of the fastest growing categories.

Further entry into this category with our power brands has enabled us to capture market share. Jeans has now become a meaningful contributor to our overall business. Outerwear in the fourth quarter was led by casual product. We saw solid sell-throughs late into the season and are encouraged by the transition to spring driven by styles that continue to support an active outdoor lifestyle. Our newly launched Bass outdoor brand capitalizes on this secular shift and is off to a strong start. We began selling to consumers late last year in 150 Macy’s stores, Nordstrom, Anthropologie, macys.com, and bass.com.

Further, we’re developing a footwear line which will round out our offering. This brand puts us in a whole new category and the team has quickly developed the expertise to create an authentic, and functional outdoor line. We believe there is a significant runway ahead in this business and are excited to expand the distribution. The momentum in footwear for DKNY, and Karl Lagerfeld Paris, and handbags for DKNY, Calvin Klein, and Karl Lagerfeld Paris are rapidly developing into a sizable business. As we’ve seen across our other categories demand for dress wear and occasion based products is accelerating and our collections reflect this trend.

In dresses and career wear we experienced strong sell-throughs across our power brands. Momentum has picked up in both dresses and career wear as pandemic related restrictions were lifted and customers resumed their professional and social activities. Our teams have done an excellent job of pivoting to fulfill the robust demand and have positioned us to capture what will likely be a strong dress and career wear year. This past year our Karl Lagerfeld Paris business outpaced our expectations. We concluded a successful launch in Macy’s.

Total brand wholesale and retail sales in North America totaled approximately $175 million surpassing pre-pandemic levels by almost 30%. We added nine new retail stores this past year ending with a total of 22 stores along with a digital site all of which are increasing our consumer base and are performing well. Karl Lagerfeld was a larger than life legend whose name is globally recognized as one of the most influential and iconic designers and fashion. The Karl Lagerfeld brand embodies the spirit of the designer with the Parisian seek flair compared in the modern way, and appeals to a global consumer across a broad range of categories for men and women.

In keeping with Karl’s legacy, sustainability is a core value of the business with a focus on building a better future for people and the environment. We’re in the beginning stage of tapping into the potential of this brand and believe the brand has a $500 million annual net sales opportunity in North America alone. Turning towards the key priorities across all our businesses, we continue to accelerate the growth of digital as we strive to become a best-in-class omni-channel organization. Compared to two years ago, digital sales for the quarter on our partners’ sites increased 35%, and our own DKNY, and Karl Lagerfeld Paris sites increased over 60%. In China, digital sales are now larger than store sales. Vilebrequin’s digital sales were also up by strong double-digits compared to last year.

We remain focused on several digital priorities. We continue to improve our technological and operational capabilities. This past year, we put significant resources into building our digital business, including investing in talent. With new leadership, we’ve built a strong digital division, and laid the foundation for our global digital strategy across sales channels. By increasing our partnership with retailers they are now helping us better understand the customer to collectively drive our businesses. Additionally, progress is being made to further integrate our product and marketing on their sites.

As we enhanced our direct-to-consumer distribution capabilities, we continued to broaden our offerings to consumers. Sizable strides have been made this year to increase our presence on pure play global retailer sites including Amazon, Zappos, Zalando and Fanatics. Our newly created Amazon team is dedicated to building and mutually growing the partnership. We’re unlocking data in a more effective way than ever before — than even before to optimize marketing efforts, acquire new customers, drive incremental conversion, and foster a more seamless shopping experience for our brand. This work has resulted in strong performance in our digital business.

Our improved DKNY and Karl Lagerfeld Paris sites are boosted by a new look and feel recently launched loyalty programs and enhanced CRM capabilities. These are powerful consumer engagement tools that are resulting in strong increases in traffic and new customer acquisition as well as strong double-digit increases in sales from repeat customer who are driving average order value. With further investments, site enhancements will continue to evolve this year. Marketing investments have allowed us to engage with new audiences and drive qualified young customers to our brands.

This has resulted in greater than a 50% increase in new to brand customers. For fall, the DKNY campaign featured the [Indecipherable] relatable influencers with exciting product stories delivering our strongest social audience growth. This spring the campaign is designed to reinforce consumer’s desire for self expression of value intrinsic for the DKNY brand ethos. In Karl Lagerfeld Paris highlighted the new Apres Ski Collection and delivered exceptional results. We saw significant engagement with both repeat and new customers who are discovering the brand.

This coming fall the Karl Lagerfeld brand’s collaboration with Cara Delevingne is expected to create significant global awareness. The collection launches here in New York City during fashion week in September. Trends across metrics in our retail operations including traffic, conversion, and dollars per transaction continue to improve despite the lack of tourism. We added nine new Karl Lagerfeld Paris stores all of which are off to a really good start, and ended the year with an aggregate of 60 DKNY, and Karl Lagerfeld Paris stores.

The team is driving omni-channel growth by leveraging our retail store base to service digital sales as well as the in-store virtual selling program that continue to gain momentum. This coming year we expect to add approximately 10 new stores. The losses from our retail operations significantly decreased this past year and we believe we can expand our omni-channel footprint, and further leverage our expense base. Our international business for DKNY, and Vilebrequin exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the quarter.

For DKNY, our European business although small, grew through retail, wholesale partner expansion and pure play sites. In China, which is even less penetrated, sales grew significantly driven by digital sales. The Middle East has had significant expansion where our partners already operate 44 free-standing DKNY stores and plan to open seven additional stores in the coming year. Our distributors operate 243 standing stores and two stations [Phonetic] globally for the DKNY brand. Vilebrequin, our luxury swimwear brand saw good momentum across the business, with strong sales increases across channels which exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

We opened additional stores in warm vacation destinations like Florida, where we now have seven stores, which have quickly become some of the best-performing stores in the fleet. As we think about our future, we see significant opportunities outside North America. We’re excited to continue to expand DKNY and Vilebrequin and re-launch our recently acquired Sonia Rykiel brand. This is the beginning of creating a new platform for growth. Licensing continues to enable our brands to grow awareness and their consumer base by expanding into additional lifestyle categories and international markets. Our dedicated team has created a solid licensing royalty income base and a capital-light way that is highly accretive.

We have best-in-class partners supporting these opportunities in categories like fragrance, home, kids, optical as well as jewelry and watches. The strength and awareness of our brands has enabled us to create a strong and growing licensing business unit. In conclusion, this past fiscal year 2022, we continue to build upon our strong foundation and delivered our best earnings ever. Before moving to our guidance, let me address the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All of us have watched in these many events unfolding abroad.

Our hearts fill out to the people of the Ukraine. We immediately put together a support package to the Ukraine humanitarian crisis with financial contributions and co-donations. From a business perspective, we have no directly operated stores in either Russia or Ukraine and have halted all shipments to the regions. Looking ahead to the upcoming fiscal year, we’ve carefully considered the many factors the company is facing in the world.

We remain optimistic about the momentum of our business and the many opportunities for growth. As consumers continue to return to a more normal way of living, reentering the office, traveling and attending social functions, G-III is well-positioned to capitalize on this shift. We anticipate full fiscal year 2023 net sales to be as approximately $3 billion with net income per diluted share in the range of $4.20 and $4.30 per diluted share.

I’ll now pass the call to Neal for a more detailed financial discussion of our fourth quarter results as well as our guidance for our first quarter and full fiscal year 2023.

Neal Nackman — Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Thank you, Morris. Net sales for the fourth quarter ended January 31, 2022 increased approximately 42% to $748 million from $526 million in the same period last year. Net sales of our Wholesale Operations segment increased approximately 47% to $719 million from $488 million last year and was up 13% to pre-pandemic levels of $635 million in fiscal year 2020. Net sales of our retail operation segment were $45 million for the fourth quarter and relatively flat compared to last year’s net sales of $44 million. Last year was impacted by the pandemic and the restructuring of our retail segment.

Sales at our DKNY and Karl Lagerfeld Paris businesses were both up over to 50% compared to the prior year, which were impacted by the pandemic. Our gross margin percentage was 33.7% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to 35.6% in the previous year’s fourth quarter. Last year’s gross margins included benefits from COVID-related adjustments. Our gross margins were 33.3% two years ago. The current year’s increase compared to two years ago benefited from the reduction of promotional environment, which was partially offset by the significant increases in freight costs we incurred in the quarter.

Wholesale Operation segment gross margin percentage was 31.9% compared to 35.5% in fiscal 2021 comparable quarter and 30% two years ago. Wholesale gross margin percentages in this year benefited from clean inventories at retail resulting in less promotional activity combined with selective price increases. These improvements were partially offset by the significant increase in freight costs, which we had anticipated would have more of an impact on gross margins in the second half of last year. Last year’s gross margins included substantial one-time benefits from reversals of previously accrued higher royalties resulting from favorable negotiations with our licensors.

The gross margin percentage in our Retail Operations segment was 51.3% compared to 32.2% in the prior year’s quarter and 45.9% two years ago. Last year’s percentage was negatively impacted by the restructuring of our retail operations segment, which resulted in the liquidation of inventory in connection with closing stores. SG&A expenses were $177 million in this quarter compared to $151 million in last year’s fourth quarter and $187 million pre-COVID in fiscal year 2020. The current quarter’s SG&A as a percentage of sales was 23.7% compared to 24.8% pre-COVID.

This year’s SG&A rate benefited from the restructuring of our retail operations last year. Net income for the fourth quarter was $48 million or $0.98 per diluted share, compared to $15 million or $0.30 per diluted share in last year’s fourth quarter and included direct losses from Wilsons and Bass store operations of $9 million or $0.17 per share. Net income for the fourth quarter two years ago was $25 million or $0.52 per share and included direct losses from Wilsons and Bass store operations of $16 million or $0.33 per share.

Now let us review results for full-year fiscal year ended January 31, 2022, in which we delivered the company’s highest earnings ever. Net sales for full fiscal year were $2.77 billion, up from $2.06 billion in the same period last year and $3.16 billion two years ago. Net sales of our Wholesale Operations segment increased to $2.7 billion or 41% from $1.9 billion last year and were almost back to pre-pandemic levels of $2.9 billion. Net sales of our Retail Operations segment for the year were $118 million, lower than last year’s net sales of $170 million, which included $92 million of sales from Wilsons Leather and Bass stores, which were closed by the end of the year.

Full fiscal year 2022 gross margin percentage was 35.7% compared to 36.2% in the prior year and 35.4% two years ago. This increase in gross margin percentage compared to two years ago was primarily driven by the gross margin percentage in our Wholesale Operations segment, which was 34.2% this year, 35.9% last year, and 32.7% two years ago. Last year’s wholesale gross margin percentage was positively impacted by the pandemic-related items including the reversal of previously anticipated markdown accruals, due to the reduced wholesale sales volumes.

Compared to two years ago, gross margins benefited from a lower promotional environment combined with selective price increases and was partially offset by the significant increases in freight costs. The gross margin percentage in our Retail Operations segment was 50.9% compared to 33.6% in the prior year, which included the results from store liquidations for Wilsons Leather and G.H. Bass stores. This year’s gross margin of greater than 50% are a great indication of the ongoing retail operations with our globally recognized brands DKNY and Karl Lagerfeld Paris will provide higher margins in the retail segment.

SG&A expenses for the year were $648 million compared to $605 million last year and $832 million in pre-COVID fiscal year 2020. The full year’s SG&A as a percentage of sales was 23.4% compared to 26.3% pre-COVID. This year’s SG&A rate benefited from the restructuring of our retail operations last year. As for net income, we reported our strongest earnings in our company’s history. Full year net income was $201 million or $4.05 per diluted shares compared to $24 million or $0.48 per diluted share last year and $144 million or $2.94 per diluted share two years ago.

Net income per diluted share included a [Indecipherable] for the Wilsons and Bass stores operations with for $1.14 last year and $0.65 two years ago. Looking at our balance sheet, we ended the quarter in a lower net debt position of $54 million compared to $160 million in the prior year. We have cash and availability under operated agreement of over $1 billion. We believe that our liquidity and financial position provide us the flexibility to take advantage of acquisition opportunities and invest in our future growth. As Morris mentioned, also we repurchased $17.3 or 656,000 shares of our own stock in the past quarter.

Additionally, of Board of Directors approved the share repurchase program up to 10 million shares. Accounts receivable were $606 million compared to $493 million at the end of the fourth quarter of the previous year. Inventory increased to $512 million from $417 million at the end the fourth quarter of the previous year. As for our guidance, as Morris indicated, based on the strong demand for our product and our order book, we feel good about our business giving us the confidence in our outlook for the year. For the full fiscal year ending January 31, 2023, we expect net sales of approximately $3 billion compared to $2.77 billion this past year.

Adjusting for the closed Wilsons and Bass stores sales of $252 million in fiscal 2020, the current guidance exceeds pre-pandemic sales levels in fiscal 2020 by approximately 4%. We expect net income for the full fiscal year 2023 to be between $205 million and $215 million or between $4.20 and $4.30 per diluted share. This compares to net income of $201 million or $4.05 per diluted share this past year and $144 million or $2.94 per diluted share in pre-pandemic fiscal year 2020. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, we expect net sales or approximately $600 million and net income in the range of $25 million and $30 million, or $0.50 and $0.60 per diluted share.

This compares the net sales of $520 million and net income of $26 million or $0.53 per diluted share in last year’s first quarter. Let me add some details for purposes of modeling. We expect full fiscal 2023 gross margins to be flat to slightly up to this past year’s gross margins. We expect the price increases to lift gross margins, which will be partially offset by higher freight costs that were most significant in the second half of this last year. So, putting that together, we expect gross margins in the first two quarters in fiscal 2023 to be lower than fiscal 2022.

Then as we anniversary the increases in freight in the back half of the year, we expect gross margins to be higher than in fiscal 2022. As for SG&A, we expect to slightly delever based on inflationary pressures, increased headcount and warehousing costs. We’re estimating a tax rate of 27%. For your reference, disclosed in our press release issued this morning is the impact by quarter for the fiscal year 2021 and 2020 of the Wilsons and Bass stores operations.

That concludes my comments. I will now turn the call back to Morris for closing remarks.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Neal. And thank you all for joining us today. G-III had its best earnings here in the company’s history. I couldn’t be more proud or thankful for what our team has accomplished. We’re more agile and flexible today than we’ve ever been. Anchored by our globally recognized power brands and our dominance in the diversified range of lifestyle categories, G-III remains a vendor of choice in our industry.

More broadly, as we look ahead our strategic priorities to deliver continued long-term profitable growth will include driving our power brands across categories, further expanding our portfolio through ownership of brands and their licensing opportunities, extending our reach by developing our European-based brand portfolio, maximizing our omni-channel opportunities and leveraging data and continuing to innovate to stay relevant for our customers.

We’re confident in our ability to deliver on these priorities, because of the strong foundation we’ve created which includes our high performing forward thinking team, and experienced senior leadership, merchant expertise in product development, dominance across a broad range of product categories, our specifically developed, and agile sourcing, and supply chain infrastructure, a diversified distribution network to reach consumers.

Our ability to unlock the potential of brands has enabled G-III to become a leader in fashion. We’re financially strong and can use our balance sheet, talent, expertise, and capabilities to further extend our global reach and capitalize on opportunities. We’re well-positioned to gain market share over time and increase shareholder value. I’d like to thank our entire G-III organization and all of our stakeholders for their continued support.

Operator we’re now ready to take some questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Paul Kearney with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Paul Kearney — Barclays — Analyst

Hi everybody. Thanks for taking my question. On the price increases, can you talk about what’s already been implemented? And can you quantify what you are expecting this year in the cadence of these price increases? And then are they on all brands and categories? Any more color on that. Thanks.

Neal Nackman — Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Yeah Paul. Thank you. We selectively increased prices last year, and what occurred was last year’s freight increases really escalated as the year rolled out, so this year we’ve got a much clearer vision of what those are going to be. We’ve got a good feel for our input cost which have also had some increases, and we’ll be raising prices essentially across all categories, and for the most part across many, many products assuming that every product can take it, so we’re somewhat judicious as far as where we lift price, but we expect that will happen for all of the programs throughout this year.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

As an enhancement to. I’m sorry. This is Morris. As an enhancement to our margins, as we grow our company-owned brands, we don’t pay a royalty for the use of those brands, and as they grow as a percentage of our overall volume, you’ll see an improvement in margin that comes with it. DKNY is a good example of it, Karl Lagerfeld, and G.H. Bass as well as the growing brand that we’ve had for years, Marc New York. So those brands are — they’re margin-accretive compared to where we’ve been in the past.

Paul Kearney — Barclays — Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then just secondly can you talk about the marketing investments that you’re making. Are you making any shifts in where you’re spending and how you’re spending that money, and what are you doing differently today that you’ve had in the past, and what kind of returns are you seeing so far from those marketing campaigns? Thanks.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

The bulk of our marketing campaigns are targeted towards digital and social media where we’re deriving great benefit. It’s showing up in our traffic on our own sites as well as our customer sites. Our retailers such as Macy’s, Dillard’s, Nordstrom’s as well as Pure Play Amazon we’re spending a fair amount of money collaborating, and marketing on the Amazon site, and Macy’s as well as driving traffic to our own current campaign that we’re doing very frequently, and we have fairly aggressive plan on now that we’ve got a strong foundation on Karl Lagerfeld.

They’ll be a good spend on Lagerfeld which gets every day marketing through the recognition of Karl, this iconic man and a skill set that is, was, and will always be unique to the world. He is the preeminent icon in fashion. So, there is not a day that there is not editorial free press that relates to Karl, and it’s a global. It’s a global brand that gets global recognition every day. And we’re spending a fair amount of money as we are positioning Bass in the lane that we’ve chosen, and the market is accepted as well as DKNY.

So, there is a little bit of a distortion on our spend. When we license brands such as Calvin Klein, and Tommy Hilfiger, the marketing spend is included in our royalty base now that — and they do a wonderful job, I might add of marketing. They’ve made it possible for us to grow both brands and in very rapid time in categories that never existed before. So we respect their marketing piece, but that’s not really included in our own spend which is focused on our company owned brand.

Paul Kearney — Barclays — Analyst

Thank you. Best of luck.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Jay Sole with UBS. Please go ahead.

Jay Sole — UBS Securities LLC — Analyst

Great. Thank you so much. I have sort of a three-part question. The first part is that maybe can we just talk about some of the building blocks for the plan for 2023. Give us a little bit more detail around that? And then secondly within that can you maybe talk about your guidance. How much does it assume inventory restocking versus incremental strong demand, driving the sales growth that you expect? And then lastly can you just give us a little bit of an update on China given the lockdowns that are there because COVID cases have popped up. What have you seen so far? Do you anticipate any kind of disruption? How should we think about your factories in China given COVID over there? Thank you.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for your question, Jay. The building blocks for our growth in 2023 are fundamentally the same, and further expanding, and penetrating the brands that we operate in, categories that we operate. The projections, the inventory, all of it kind of speaks. I guess the answer to the question probably relates into our order book. Our order book is larger than ever. We do carry inventory to support growth, and fulfill reorders, and generally where that retailer that can respond quickly either through supply chain performance, or residual inventory that we carry to support the customers that we have.

So, it’s not a guess. It’s factual. Our order book is — I hesitate to give you the percentage of growth because what we’ve got in there is supply chain issues that relates to your third question. We’re pretty certain that we’re well covered in the guidance that we’ve given and we factor in non-deliveries, we factor in cancellations, and we don’t factor in a new event as a tsunami occurs, or a volcano or a war on another front, but everything that’s logical is factored in, so we’re comfortable that our guidance is appropriate. And your question on.

Jay Sole — UBS Securities LLC — Analyst

Maybe on just restocking versus incremental demand.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Restocking is basically what I addressed on the order book. We do provide inventory for restocking, that’s what we do. We plan it through just an amazing team of planners to not to be overstocked. There is demand for our product that comes into play later in the season that’s not committed for and we take advantage of that at full price. So, we’re really good at projecting at that this is history as far as G-III is considered. We’ve done it for over 50 years planning appropriately for the needs of the consumer in later months.

As far as supply chain in China, that’s is a little bit of an unknown. There is a COVID issue. There are factory closures. There are difficulties in transporting product to the peers to load off the containers. Hopefully, it’s not going to last long. If it does, I would say that we have a problem as the world does. We’re not solely China as we were about four years ago. China comes in second to Vietnam today and we’re pretty much globally sourced. It’s not, by all means it’s not just China, and we’re hedging our bet on third and fourth quarter opportunities that become available on production.

Jay Sole — UBS Securities LLC — Analyst

Got it, and maybe Morris, if I can ask you one more, just a little bit about margins and your expectations for margins this year. Obviously last year was an unusual year for supply chain cost. I mean, do you expect a reduction at part of the P&L this year, or do you think it’s going to remain elevated or you can go higher year-over-year and put more pressure on margins? Thank you.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Cost is certainly going up, anything that you touch has got an element of an increase in it, whether it’s selling charge, raw material charge, freight charges, gasoline surcharges, for in-land freight, all of that is likely to continue to rise. Container costs are not going to be $30,000 a container, they’ve leveled off. We’ve contracted with our providers in a very fair rate that doesn’t move us around very much on increase of prices. But yes, there are increases. We’ve tested price points throughout calendar ’21. They’ve worked. There’s an acceptance by the consumer to our fashion, to our brands and we are a fashion business. We’re not gasoline. We’re not a dozen eggs and we’re not a loaf of bread. Fashion has got elements that you get paid for. It is in a form, it’s an art, and if your art is in-demand and woman wants it in her closet, she’ll pay a little bit more for it.

Jay Sole — UBS Securities LLC — Analyst

Got it, okay. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Susan Anderson with B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Susan Anderson — B. Riley FBR, Inc. — Analyst

Hi, nice job on the quarter. I was wondering if maybe you could talk about the retail business now that DKNY and Karl stores, I guess, how are those trending versus pre-pandemic levels? And then if you could talk about the profitability of those stores and when you expect to get to a breakeven or profits? Thanks.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you Susan. Thanks for your question. DKNY we’ve rightsized the fleet, we’ve closed several non-performing stores. Our product is significantly better than it was pre-pandemic. It’s a broader assortment, it’s a much more educated assortment, as we get acclimated to the brand and today, we’re pretty much close to full maturity. We have our brand codes; we have our brand message and the consumer is respecting it. We see a big difference in wholesale. Our retail is doing significantly better. And our digital site is doing better. It’s very difficult to do business in brick and mortar when your stores are closed.

We have an aggressive retail team that has begun to do, not begun, throughout the year they did, virtual sales that helped enhance our business and our profits. But when you’re faced with European, your best stores, which for us are our European outlet stores, when they’re closed, they’re closed. There’s nobody at the register. There is — as great as the product is, as competitive as it is, and in high demand, there’s no traffic permitted in those centers, you’re not doing business. So, we were faced with a good deal of that within DKNY. Karl Lagerfeld, a little bit different. We’re not in Europe in our piece of that business. We’re a North American based, North American licensed and partnered, and that helped us a little bit.

The marketing that’s done globally as I described before to Jay, is really helping us. We have virtual sales that are done at store level that are just amazing. The dollars per square foot that have been generated in Karl Lagerfeld are significantly better than they were before and better than DKNY. There’s no price resistance to Karl at all. We do casual groups that are, believe it or not, in our outlet stores, we do casual groups that are higher retails than our department store product. So, we take advantage of the brand relevance, the brand demand and we’re more aggressive on opening Karl Lagerfeld stores today than we are at DKNY. So, we believe that at fiscal 2024 we will be profitable. This year, the plan is to significantly reduce our losses and 2024 the goal is to be profitable.

With that operator, thank you very much.

Operator

Okay. And Speakers, I’m showing no further questions at this time.

Morris Goldfarb — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Thank you all. Have a great St. Patrick’s Day and thanks for listening to our story.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]