Specialist
Former SVP at Christian Dior Couture (Christian Dior SE)
Agenda
- Dior’s (PAR: CDI) organic growth outlook, discussing implications of coronavirus restrictions in China and growth opportunities in China, Europe and the US across categories
- Dior’s pricing strategy across categories, including scope to increase prices above inflation
- Channel analysis – retail expansion and online growth
- Gross and operating margin outlook
Questions
1.
We’ve heard from LVMH that Dior has been going through a rapid growth phase over the last few years. Given the macro climate in 2022, how are you expecting organic growth to perform for the brand across its three key regions, Europe, North America and China?
2.
Obviously in 2021 there was a strong outperformance of the US market given the stimulus cheques post lockdown. Are you still expecting strong growth in this market in 2022, given the tough comparables and potential tightening of purse strings by the US consumer, so perhaps a slowdown in US consumption?
3.
What sort of YoY door expansion could we see in the US market for Dior? How many doors per year could realistically be opened?
4.
What are your 2022 growth estimates in China for Dior? Obviously, this market has seen high growth over the last few years, but recently has struggled due to the lockdowns related to the zero-COVID strategy.
5.
How are you expecting Europe to respond to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and what could that mean in terms of luxury consumption?
6.
How does Dior manage high growth alongside maintaining brand equity through exclusivity? Obviously, the risk is that you flood the market with too much volume.
7.
Which Dior categories do you see outperforming in the current context?
8.
It seems the Dior offering is quite fashion-forward in the ready-to-wear collection, so what is the fashion risk associated with this?
9.
Where are the gaps in Dior’s product mix?
10.
How integrated or separate are the couture and perfume segments within Dior?
11.
Obviously pricing continues to be key in terms of growing revenues for mega brands such as Dior. How have we seen prices adjusted in 2022 so far and how much further headroom is there over the next few years?
12.
How much headroom do you think there is in terms of price increases before the end of 2022?
13.
What typical YoY price increases does Dior implement across categories?
14.
What broader retail expansion opportunity do you see for Dior, having discussed the US market?
15.
What do you think a saturation point looks like in terms of number of doors in China?
16.
I think Louis Vuitton has quite a lot more stores than Dior in the mainland China market. Given that Dior is looking to reach the same size as Louis Vuitton, why do you think the company could operate at a similar sales level with fewer stores?
17.
Do you have a view on Dior’s rough e-commerce penetration levels and how that could grow over the next 2-3 years?
18.
How competitive is Dior’s e-commerce channel in terms of product offering, pricing and customer experience, compared to other luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton?
19.
You mentioned some innovations around connecting to apps. What additional innovations do you expect?
20.
What are your best estimates for gross margins at Dior? What is the scope to improve those margins?
21.
You’d expect to see improved costs relative to top-line sales due to top-line growth, so how do you think about that in terms of EBIT, so operating margins?
22.
What do you think is Dior’s rough EBIT margin?
