Olaplex Holdings, Inc. Price & Performance (OLPX)

Also, during this call, management will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Which management believes can be useful in evaluating the company's performance. The presentation of non GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for prepared in accordance with GAAP. You will find additional information regarding these non GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the company's earnings release.

A live broadcast of this call is also available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website, at ir.oleplex.com. Additionally, during this call, management will refer to certain data points, estimates and forecasts that are based on industry publications or other publicly available information. As well as our internal sources. The company has not independently verified the accuracy or data contained in these industry publications and other publicly available information. Furthermore, this information involves assumptions and limitations and you are cautioned not to give undue weight to these estimates. With that, I will now turn the call over to Amanda. Thank you, Allison. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. For today's call, will share with you our fourth quarter and fiscal twenty twenty four results and discuss the progress we have made on our strategic priorities and transformation. Then, Catherine will discuss our financial results [indiscernible] Following this, I will introduce our bonds and beyond strategic vision. A year ago, on my first call after having joined Olaplex, I shared my excitement for leading this truly powerful business with an extraordinary technical foundation and differentiated science, that delivers superior products that have garnered consumer and pro enthusiasm across the world.

At the same time, I acknowledge that we were at a pivotal moment in our transformational journey would take time as we focused on building a business and a brand for the long run. 2024 was a productive year in moving us towards that goal. We started to harness our innovation and marketing capabilities as well implemented important work streams to connect with our partners across the globe strengthen our business processes and attract talented executives to our team. In addition, worked behind the scenes to create a brand vision and strategy that we believe will capitalize on our unique strengths and position our company to deliver long term sustainable and profitable growth.

Overall, our financial performance and executional learning were indicative of a company in the midst of a transformation. With 2024 net sales and adjusted EBITDA below 2023 level.

We faced headwinds internationally as we focused on resetting the business for the future. And while we are confident in our overall marketing strategy, the investment has taken longer than expected to improve demand across our [indiscernible] That being said, I remain focused on our future and am encouraged by our our end of the year performance. As we continue to make progress against our strategic goals, expected holiday season. Let me briefly touch on our fourth quarter financials.

For the fourth quarter, we reported net sales of 100,700,000.0 and adjusted EBITDA of $17,500,000 For the year, net sales were 422,700,000.0 representing a decline of 7.8% from 2023. And adjusted EBITDA was $129,700,000 for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 30.7%.

At the start of the year, we identified three transformation priority. First, maximizing the impact of sales, marketing and education investments to generate demand. Second, strengthening capabilities and culture to support our future. And third, and future vision for Olaplex. Let me share some highlights of our progress against these goals. Our first priority was maximizing the impact of sales, marketing and education investments to drive demand. At the core of the Olaflex brand, is an R and D engine that powers high impact innovation. In 2024, we began to harness these capabilities by strengthening our product development function and our sales, marketing and education efforts, to elevate and differentiate our products. We focus on bringing new breakthrough products to market deepening engagement with our pro and consumer community, and more clearly articulating why Olaplex stands apart from its peers.

As we began these efforts, we kept our focus narrow targeting much of our marketing spend to drive demand for our new launches. This led to a strong performance for our third quarter launch of number 5L leave in conditioner. Outperformed our expectations and remained a top five SKU [indiscernible] At Sephora at year end.

In addition, during holidays, we did begin to see this marketing effort create a halo [indiscernible] Leading to improving sales trends for Olaplex, across channels and regions throughout the holiday season.

With oleplex.com as a bright spot.

In addition, according to SIRCONA data, Olaplex have the number one set in U. S. Prestige hair care during the 2024 holiday season. We have also focused on returning to our stylist roots and recreating meaningful connections with our pros. We amplified our support in multiple ways, listening to this community, to hear what would best serve them while we continue to develop new products to address their client needs.

Such as our Bond Shaper Coral Rebuilding Treatment.

We believe that focusing on our Pro Heritage is an essential part of our strategy. As we look forward to 2025 and beyond, we plan to continue to refine and amplify these efforts.

We finished the year with four out of five of the best selling prestige hair care products in 2024, according to SIRCONA data and we consistently ranked as a top brand in key accounts across our three distribution channels. In addition, we regained the number one position in earned media value in December.

Among U. S. Hair care brands per CreatorIQ.

Our second priority was strengthening our capabilities and culture to support our future. Building the right team has been a top priority for me since I joined Olaplex. And I'm very pleased to be able to say that we now have a highly experienced talented executive leadership team in place. During 2024, we were joined by Catherine Dunleavy, who is here with me today as our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer.

Katie Goeman, our Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Brett. Our Chief Revenue Officer.

In addition, this past year, we strengthened our extended senior team building an expanded innovation and R and D capability, as well as making key hires in our international sales and digital marketing teams.

Overall, we are creating a culture that promotes executional excellence collaboration, and data driven decision making.

We opened an office in New York City and another in London to provide our teams from across our organization with a space to come together in person. It's been incredibly rewarding and exciting to see our team united and working towards a common goal. Our business leaders and team members are energized, committed and passionate about the road ahead. I'd like to take a moment to share a bit more about what we've been doing to strengthen our innovation capabilities as it is so core to what Olaplex is and will continue to be.

We expanded the footprint of our laboratory, enabling our Chief Science and Research Officer and the R and D team to ideate and iterate more effectively and efficiently [indiscernible] In parallel, our newly appointed Chief Product and Innovation Officer, spearheaded the building of a new product development process that's intended to maximize our R and D capabilities and fuel future innovation. Leading to the introduction of a more successful and strategic product launch calendar. Innovation is just one area. Where we are seeing more rigorous processes improve our business.

We continue to enhance our go to market process and evolve our integrated business planning. Which you'll hear me speak more about as we move into 2025. Our third priority for 2024 was developing the long term roadmap and future vision for Olapac. Starting our future path required a deep under so revolutionary from day one.

As well as its continued strength and advantages and then developing our transformation strategy with those insights in mind.

It was also important to ensure that our future strategy is grounded in concrete research that targets the needs of each of the critical partners to our brand and is aligned with where our industry stands today and is going forward. We undertook multiple different areas of research including a brand perception study, that has influenced the direction and evolution of our brand and business strategy. Based on these insights, we believe there is considerable enthusiasm for Olaplex consumers pros and our partners.

Who all share a strong interest in what OldPlex is today and innovation we can bring to market in the future. Our Pro and Consumer Insights work indicated that our brand is still very strong with positive associations to build upon. Particularly around equities such as innovative, reparative, healthy and effective. We also uncovered key opportunities to broaden our reach upgrade our messaging, improve our education, and foster deeper emotional connections with our audiences. All of this is being incorporated into our future brand design and long term strategic plan. Outside of North America, focus on engaging with distributors and retailers to assess and realign our network to fewer, stronger partners. Who support our brand values. Upon joining Olaflex, I personally traveled to multiple countries across Europe and Asia meeting with our local teams and international partners to hear how we can more closely collaborate as we work to establish the right structure for the future. The feedback from these conversations was positive and highlighted that we have an opportunity to further develop our global brand by localizing to the unique customer and distribution channels across the world. As we have discussed, this is an ongoing process and we believe we are making good progress.

Transformations of our scale, we did not expect our path to be linear. But we did have some setbacks I'm proud of how our team worked together to evaluate and implement needed changes to move us forward in a positive way. And now, I will turn the call over to Catherine to review our 2024 financial results. Thank you, Amanda. Am pleased to speak with you today and share additional insight into our fourth quarter and fiscal year results and provide our 2025 outlook. As Amanda noted, we made progress on our strategic priorities with our financial performance reflective of our stage of transformation, while ending the year with a strong balance sheet generating positive cash flow. In the fourth quarter, net sales of $100,700,000 declined 9.8% from the fourth quarter last year. As noted on our third quarter call, we highlighted three factors that we expected to impact our fourth quarter sales performance. First, we anticipated a weaker performance from our international business as we reset for the future. Second, from a sales and marketing perspective, we had not yet experienced a lift from our brand marketing and felt it was prudent to assume this investment would take longer to increase demand.

We And third, we plan for increased promotional intensity across geographies as we prepared for a highly competitive holiday season. I am pleased to say that we did not see headwinds develop to the levels included in our November outlook. In fact, while we continue to have work to do on our international strategy, our international results were better than expected. In addition, consumer demand in North America strengthened in Q4 underpinned by the marketing investments we made in the second half of the year. And with improved level of demand, our promotional activity did not increase to the levels incorporated into our outlook.

Overall, we are encouraged to see this progress.

Turning to performance by channel.

Specialty Retail had an encouraging performance with Q4 sales up 5.7% to $28,800,000 compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three.

North America sell through improved during the holiday which led to richer replenishment activity as we closed the year. Based on feedback from our key accounts, we were top performing U. S. Hair care brand during Black Friday and Cyber Monday with our holiday kits selling out ahead of expectations. With this momentum, continuing through year end. Our Q4 D2C channel sales decreased 2.5% versus a year ago, with year over year growth at oleplex.com offset by strategic international rationalization. And finally, our professional channel sales declined 27.1% year over year with the channel seeing a greater impact from our focus on partnering with fewer but stronger international distributors that are aligned with our brand values and softer sell in across geographies. Adjusted gross profit margin for the quarter was 68.6%, which compares to 70.6% in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. This reflected higher promotional activity versus the fourth quarter last year, although the level of intensity was lower than we had expected giving us a better than planned performance.

Gross margin was also impacted by higher warehousing costs partially offset by improved channel mix. Adjusted SG and A was 50,300,000.0 up from $44,500,000 in last year's fourth quarter. This increase was mainly driven by investment in talent to support our transformation and long term strategic framework. As Amanda mentioned, we added executive leadership and key hires a across the organization. Of note, during the fourth quarter, we spent approximately $17,000,000 in non payroll related advertising We delivered 17,500,000.0 of adjusted EBITDA for a margin of 17.4%, which was below last year's as our sales decreased as discussed and we invested for the future. That said, adjusted EBITDA surpassed the expectations we provided in November. Turning to our balance sheet. We continue to have a strong balance sheet at year end. We had lower working capital needs during 2024 compared to 2023 as we reduced inventory. This, along with improved operating discipline, $2,020,000,000 dollars to $586,000,000 from $466,400,000 at the end of fiscal year twenty twenty three. In total, inventory declined $20,700,000 to $75,200,000 from $95,900,000 at the end of fiscal As we begin fiscal twenty twenty five, we feel good about the composition of our inventory and we will continue to remain disciplined with investment expected to be aligned with sales growth.

Finally, long term debt net of the current portion of deferred fees was $43,700,000 As it relates to the year ahead, we began 2025 having marked strong progress on a groundwork and experiencing early signals that give us the confidence to enter the next stage of our transformation. As Amanda will share momentarily, in 2025, we have a new brand vision and corresponding strategic priorities. These priorities are focused on generating demand for our brand, increasing our pipeline of innovation, and strengthening our capabilities to execute with excellence. Given the scale of our global business, this will require which is incorporated into our 2025 outlook. We expect to achieve progress on our strategy throughout 2025 and believe our efforts will position the company to advance our transformation and generate long term profitable growth. Let me walk you through our 2025 outlook.

Expect net sales to be between minus 3% to plus 2% versus 2024. In addition, while we plan our business annually, and give guidance accordingly, I will note that we expect our first quarter sales performance to be below the range we expect for the full year as we anticipate demand growth through 2025 as our investments and initiatives land in the market. Adjusted gross margin is expected to remain strong in the range of 70.5% to 71.5%, even as we introduce innovation that will not have fully scaled. Adjusted EBITDA margin is and to position Olaplex as the authority in foundational hair health and beauty. We've chosen to invest aggressively behind our U. S. Business which we believe leads our transformation to ensure that the brand work and new vision are visible to the pro and to the consumer. Addition, we've hired a talented team who will enable our growth over time. In short, we are investing today to build the capabilities that we believe are needed to grow the business for the future. And when our work is further along, we will talk to you about our longer term EBITDA margin expectations. Before turning the call over to Amanda, I wanted to reflect on my first six I joined Olaplex because I admired how the company disrupted the hair care category and saw a significant opportunity to join this fast paced company and helped architect and implement the strategy that allowed OLEplex to achieve its true potential.

I remain confident in our vision and strategy and look forward to sharing our progress along the way. With that, I will turn the call back over to Amanda to introduce our strategic vision, bonds and beyond. And now to the future.

Our bonds and beyond vision for Olaplex begins with its original breakthrough innovation and powerful origin. I believe that a great strategy harnesses and puts them in context where the broader industry and consumer trends are headed. In 2014, Olaplex revolutionized the hair care category through the introduction of our patented bond building technology, [indiscernible] and our number one bond multiplier and number two bond perfector product. This new two part salon treatment allowed pros around the world to repair disulfide bonds deep inside the hair that are broken during chemical services, such as coloring, perming and straightening. This new salon service changed the ability of Color's to pursue their craft and it's the alchemy of science and the pro community that is our reason for being and inspiration for our path forward.

We are fortunate to participate in the category that is poised for continued growth. As of February 2025, Euromonitor International forecast premium haircare to grow at a CAGR of 6% to 7% from 2024 to 2028.

In fact, of the overall haircare market in 2024, according to Euromonitor. In contrast, premium is estimated to represent on average approximately 47% of the market across color cosmetics fragrance and skin care.

We believe hair care is in the early innings of premiumization and that Olaplex is well placed to benefit from this potential. In addition to macro momentum in prestige hair, beauty, health and wellness are converging. And consumers around the world care now more than ever about what they put in, on and around their bodies. We believe our technology and original positioning allow us to focus on a uniquely important white space of highly efficacious hair care that is not just about band aiding or extreme damage repair, but about actually improving the health of the hair. Thus, our strategic vision is based on three pillars: First, is to move beyond damage repair and the bond building category we created to grow our addressable market and position Olaflex as a solution for everyday foundational hair health. Second, honoring and empowering the pro as a start of the flywheel of this business. The Pro is both a powerful distribution channel as well as the Muse, for all that we build in our brand. Without them, our formulas are incredible science but it is in the chair that they truly come to life. Third, while our products have always created fan based on their efficacy, we must find opportunities for our brand to generate the emotional connection that drives lasting brand relevance resilience and love.

Across the globe, the feeling of a great hair day is universal. And the unapologetic confidence that comes with it is a powerful human truth that we have the unique ability to tap into. Combining innovation, with brand storytelling will be critical to getting back to growth.

In conclusion, our vision is to create a foundational health and beauty powered by breakthrough innovation, that starts with and is inspired by the professional hairstylist. That is what we believe we are uniquely positioned to do. And that is the future of Olaplex. In 2025, we have three priorities, which we believe will position us to achieve our financial goal. And advance our vision as a foundational health and beauty company. First, generate brand demand. We will elevate our visual identity while that drives demand and honors and services to pro. [indiscernible] We will build a future pipeline of innovation that is grounded in foundational hair health and leverages our strengthened product development process. To continue to introduce breakthrough science while expanding our product portfolio. Thus reaffirming Olaplex as a revolutionary healthy hair authority from root to tip.

Third, execute with excellence. Our organization will shift from planning for the future to the ongoing processes, data and rhythms of implementation. We'll focus on continuing to evolve and refine our operational and strategic processes realigning our international partnerships and driving efficiencies across the organization to provide the fuel in support of our growth. Turning to our first priority in more detail, generate brand demand. Last week, began an exciting journey to surround the powerful Olaplex product with a new visual identity and brand marketing strategy that is intended to showcase our unique brand DNA, and build longevity for the future. Our new visuals are elevated, dynamic and relatable. Showing texture and warmth as well as the special bond between the client and the stylist that has always been part of our history.

We aim to show science in a technology forward and approachable way. While we show emotion and passion for a category that is deep in feeling and moves beyond the colorless and clinical look of the past. This Visual Identity was launched in The U. S. On February 25, and is clearly showcased in our new social presence and website, our in store visual merchandising, our three sixty media campaigns and will continue to roll out globally over the coming months. A key element of this update is the way we communicate. Visually and verbally the unique benefits of OLED clear compelling messaging across all digital and physical touch points, makes it easier for consumers and pros understand why and how to build. Their OLAPLEX routine. In addition, our visuals will showcase the Pro and their clients with a renewed focus on communicating our salon services. In 2025, we will begin to execute our updated Pro First strategy. We plan to improve education, drive engagement among the community with an elevated presence and lead with our ambassadors and pro collective. In addition, plan to strengthen our customer management and field sales execution provide us with a sustainable platform for success in the pro channel.

To bring the brand updates to life, we are taking a three sixty degree full funnel marketing approach. That moves us into the brand demand creation phase of our transformation. Leveraging a crater led point of view, and product messaging, that reframes the conversation from damage repair to healthy hair from root to tip. This began last week with campaigns that launched across digital channels and will continue throughout the year. In addition to our consumer focused efforts, everything we do will have a pro angle, from our digital presence to our physical events to how we communicate about our technology. We have developed multiple touch points for measurement that are intended to evaluate the impact of these efforts and allow us to adjust as needed. We believe we will need to invest strongly behind our new brand identity will continue to expand this effort international markets and modify our spend over time. Our second priority is to harness innovation. We have over ten years of experience developing products that target the disulfide bonds most important to foundational hair health. By reforming and replenishing bonds from Cortex Acuticle, through molecular level science. We believe we can continue to innovate beyond damage repair.

And leverage our R and D capabilities to unlock key signs of healthy hair. Strength and elasticity, shine and sheen, Smoothness and Frisk Control, softness and moisturization, and shape retention and integrity. We chose Scalp as the first innovation in 2025 as it perfectly aligned with our mission of foundational hair health.

Quite simply, healthy hair starts at the scalp.

Our R and D led us to an advanced understanding of the science of a healthy scalp and how to treat it through a holistic approach that not only addresses accelerated scalp aging, but also balances the scalp's microbiome and strengthens the scalp barrier by relinking the disulfide bond in the surface of the scalp. OldPlex's original patent was not only for the hair, but also covers the scalp. Allowing us once again take a unique approach to address a crucial element of overall hair health. Launched just last week, [indiscernible] Will be joined later this year with an additional specialized Pro service. Both clinically proven to establish the foundation for long term scalp and hair health. Combined with our best selling number three hair perfector, this innovation is emblematic of Olaplex's new vision its efforts to deliver lasting hair health and leverage innovation as well as reinvigorate our hero SKUs. Which will be important to driving overall brand demand.

Our third priority execute with excellence. In 2025, our organization will shift from significant behind the scenes work to plan for the future to daily implementation and executional rigor. To this end, we have built upon our product innovation process to develop a global go to market engine. Integrated business planning process and a new strategic planning procedure each of which is integral to enhancing the efficiency effectiveness of our internal workflows. In addition, we're mining for productivity to provide the fuel and support of our growth develop automated performance metrics to make faster, more informed decisions. International distributors are an important part of our business an area of significant opportunity. In 2024, we began rationalizing and transforming our partnerships to have fewer but stronger distributors.

While we continue this work, in 2025, we're also focused on enhancing our ongoing partnerships and introducing and executing localized strategies. This work is expected to enable our broader strategic vision as we work more in sync with our partners and incorporate the specific dynamics of each market. We believe that our brand remains desirable on a global basis with the right partners, who are well versed in their local markets, we believe we can drive brand growth.

These three strategic priorities represent the next stage of our transformation and will drive our financial performance this year and importantly continue to elevate our platform as we position our company for sustained long term profitable growth. We look forward to sharing our progress towards our priorities as we move throughout the year. We've accomplished much in my first year as CEO. We're a different company today with a clearer vision, an improved innovation engine, a new articulation of our brand and a talented organization directing and executing the strategy that is expected to maximize our competitive strength. What I shared with you today is the first step in our longer term vision. Overall, we believe this is the beginning of a bright and exciting future as we position Olaplex for its next chapter as a foundational health and beauty company, I want to thank our team for their exceptional work and commitment that got us to this critical moment. I'm honored to be leading this organization for the journey that lies ahead. Operator, we're now ready to take questions.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. Coming from Susan Anderson of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Nice job on the I guess Maybe just to touch on the professional channel. It sounds like you guys are still very committed there.

It does seem like competition has maybe been increasing there with other brands really trying to kind of get a foothold into there. So I guess I'm curious just how you're thinking about that and how much of the decline is really due to the back bar versus the front of the store? And then I guess, what else do you think you guys need to do to kind of like stabilize that channel? Hi, Suzanne, it's Amanda. Thanks for joining us this morning. Couple of thoughts on that. And yes, we definitely did hear loudly and clearly and we have been talking about this for really since I joined about the importance of the pro channel. I think there's a couple of elements to that. If First of all, is why is it important beyond being a part of our history. We believe that it's remains a significant channel as well as a really important marketing vehicle When you think about there's some really impressive statistics out there that two thirds of consumers look at the Pro as someone that can about styling products and about hair care products So we think of it as both a revenue generating channel, but also part of our marketing engine.

And that's why we're really focused on it. The second thing I would say in terms of this, how do you get after it in the right way? I think it's it makes sense to draw the distinction between what's happening back [indiscernible] of salon. We started as a services business That's really important to us. I think I also spoke about how the scalp retail product will have a service component. We think that that's a really important way to continue to drive consumers into the salon. That's important part of actually continuing to grow that channel. I think in terms of how we'll approach competing effectively, it really is across a lot of different touch points. And similar to how we think about our entire strategy, which begins with product, do we have the right product that really enable the pro to do do what they do as well as possible. That was certainly the motivation behind introducing something like our bond Shaper treatment back in September. Do they have the right support? The right education, the right materials, the right ability to talk about the product And then the third piece of this, which has been a really interesting and fun part something that we've been working across the aisle is that it's about building community.

And being in the right places, supporting them in the right way. I had a really great experience being in a room with a lot of pros teaching each other. And that was certainly something that was incredibly inspiring for me. So are we creating those environments successfully? So I think there's some very specific things that relate to product some very tactical things that relate to how we educate, how we support And then there are things that are the emotional aspects I think I've spoken about that a lot with respect to this brand that in addition to incredibly efficacious science, hair is an emotional category of crossroads and cross consumers and we really need to also lean into that.

Okay, great. That's really helpful.

If I could just add one more on the international business. I'm curious It may be a bit early, but any thoughts on how many distributors you think you'll end up with versus where you are at I guess how should we think about the sales there in 2025 Should we expect more rationalization, I guess, throughout the year or in the back half? Does that start to, I guess, kind of stabilize? I think we're not giving specific numbers around that at this time. As we spoke about on the last call, this is a very methodical country by country process. We have a very specific work plan around kind of how we're thinking about each one's of the geographies that we play in, what's the potential for it, who's the right partner.

We have a lot of really great partners. So I think I really want to make sure that everybody walks away from this conversation about international understanding that we remain very optimistic about international, that it's a huge opportunity for us One of the things that I think is unique and attracted me to this brand in the first place is that it is so successful around the world. What its services are, the brand resonates, but those are amazing things that shouldn't be taken for granted. This is really an operational and tactical aspect of how we get at that growth. So we're equally focused on not just Would we not want to be in the business, but I would say I'm more focused on who do we want to be in business with and how are we better partners. And that's an important part of this work stream as well. We talked about, I think it was back in the third quarter call that in order to really roll out our effective international marketing engine and even as we think about this new brand Visual Identity and the efforts that we're putting around that, we need to be great partners with fewer distributors in order to effectively execute that.

So there's really two sides to this. And I feel really good about the progress that we're making along that. Well, with everything that we're doing in this organization as we go through a transformation, We have a huge emphasis on moving quickly but also making the right long term decisions. We're always toggling back and forth between those. But we'll keep chipping away at this and I feel good about the progress we've made thus far.

Yes. And I'll just add that we think to be a little long term, we do have significant room for growth internationally. It will take time as Amanda just said, for us to execute that strategy.

For 2025, we expect North America to lead our performance and be moderated a bit by our for 2025.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Olivia Tong of Raymond James.

Great. Thank you. Good morning. Your fiscal twenty five outlook implies a turn to positive sales at some point in the year. So what's your view on what needs to happen in order to get there? And do you think you have the products already in market Or is there more to come?

And then what's your view on the growth rate in your categories in the state of competition not only for fiscal twenty twenty five but beyond? I can speak to those macro and then Catherine can talk a little bit about what we expect over the course of the year.

I think from a from a big picture, I feel that we're in a really good position to be able to compete effectively in our categories going forward. And there were a couple of elements to that really getting our business back to growth. The first is product and product innovation. That's why We spent a lot of time last year, really focusing on our innovation engine. And not just our R and D capabilities, but our ability to bring product to market in the right way was point number one. So that journey started with scalp last week and really making sure that we have big innovations coming in the pipeline is critical to our future. The second is the brand work that we did and that was a year long process I would say it's very fast in terms of making sure that we're getting to this quickly. And that has to do with our ability to market effect [indiscernible] it's not just the dollars that we spend on marketing, but it's how we spend them, the visual that we're using, our marketing team that's able to target media effectively, there's a lot of work that needed to happen last year to put us in a position to be able to actually tell our story effectively.

So what is that story? How does this look? How do we spend money against telling that story? Again, that's an engine that just started last week. We now have the leadership and the team to be able to go after that aggressively. So we think that those are really I believe that in any business you need to have both innovation and product a strong core and strong marketing happening all at once. And this is the year that we'll really begin that journey. So that's something that I would say that we're looking towards in terms of what's going to drive our growth. But execution lies behind this. That's why that is number three. And I would say that Catherine and I are laser focused on making sure that we're really getting into the rhythms of implementation that we have the right data fingertips that we're able to evaluate the decisions that we're making on a daily basis about where we're placing the spend and adjusting and learning as we go forward. So all three of those really are critical I'll let Catherine talk a little bit about the cadence through the year.

Yes, Ivy, I think that's Will said, Amanda. We definitely are focused on our three priorities. First, generating brand demand second, harnessing innovation and third, executing with excellence. And really the ability to hit the high end of the range is tied to the speed at which we make progress against those three things.

We feel confident in our new brand positioning and we expect it in our innovation to drive demand.

We As Manha just mentioned, we have spent the last six months putting in place very detailed strategic plans and metrics that will use to measure our progress and we'll use those detailed measurement systems to react quickly to what's working and adjust our investments. So we're confident in the range and it. We're ready for the next question. Certainly. The next question is coming from Jonah Kim of TD Cowen.

Please go ahead. Hi there. Thank you. This is Katie on for Jonah.

One question I'd like to ask is around the marketing investments and why do you think that they could be taking longer than expected to lead to that higher interest and customer acquisition?

Embedded within your plan for this year versus last year as you evolve your marketing strategy? And as a follow-up, what is the right level of marketing as a percentage of sales support growth?

Thank you.

I think brand building takes time.

And that any marketing engine that's really designed to build a long term brand does not happen overnight. And as an organization, we certainly are moving more into this demand creation phase. And by that, what I really mean is thinking about a balanced marketing funnel in a three sixty degree approach. That performance marketing you can measure by minute, right, and you have an impact There is a ceiling on Hawkfowler that will take you both in terms of the scale of your business as well as the longevity of your business. And I think we're focused on really improving both of those.

So when the reason that we've given ourselves time, the reason that we we've provided the guidance as we have is that we think we need to be aggressive in how we're behind particularly our U. S. Business.

And that those results will take time. We feel very confident in the reception to brand identity and what it enables us to do. Again, we have a team that's just been put in place under the leadership of Katie Goeman, who is that team is extremely strong and we're now have the right partners and the right strategy in order to enable us to market effectively. But we didn't think that it's prudent to expect that that happens overnight. This will be a build over time. And it certainly is something where we get better and better at it. And my back background is in product innovation and marketing, twenty years of this. And have watched how it what it really takes to build a brand.

And what the reasonable expectations are for performance over time. [indiscernible] All right. Then I won't add anything. Okay. Wanted to add that we're focused on 2025.

Right now. We're in the early stages of that renewed strategy that a manager shared. And we've really set ourselves up to be able to invest aggressively this year to reignite the brand and we expect that to be leveraged over time, but we need this year's learnings to help optimize our spend. So we're investing today to build the capabilities that we believe are needed to grow the business for the future And again, as we said before, we back to you once we learn more talk about the longer term marketing percentage and EBITDA margins. Thank you so much.

For the color. I really appreciate it. Thank you. The next question is coming from Ashley Higgins of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking our question. First, we can talk about trends in the professional channel. Are we still seeing consumers kind of extend length between appointments? And then what we should expect in terms of stabilization in 2025? And then if I could just squeeze in one more When you talk about the region specific approach to international markets, are you talking more of like a marketing approach or different assortments by region? So first, with respect to the pro channel, what we're seeing in the data is that there's certainly, I would say, over the past several years, I've put an emphasis on post COVID that visits have been extended, the time period between visits have been extended. There's nothing in the data that we're seeing that suggests that they have extended further. Or that they that we expect it to go that this is a trend that kind of keeps on going. I think it was more about what also call a reset.

That's driven by how frequently people often women are coloring their hair as well as the average length of women's hair, right? So those two things certainly have changed, which is why when we were talking earlier about the pro channel, giving other reasons to be in for services is something that's that's really important. It's something that's as I've a lot of conversations as we've done our own research around the pro community to really understand how can we support them. Idea of what else drives into the salon is a critical part. So that's really how we think about that is is what we're seeing right now is relative stabilization in those trends, but they certainly are down from where they were pre COVID. The second part of your question about international, I think that a great brand has to have global consistency, right? There's no doubt and I've privilege of working at several of them that there is a brand that's down across the entire globe. That's something that as we think about our Strategy is essential. The second piece of that is how do you localize that to really think about and every country has slight nuances of how the pro channel works how the retail channel works, the DTC channel.

So it's about channel mix, how you're approaching the channels, how you may communicate specific things that we've really learned about how consumers think about their hair on a global basis.

The benefits that someone is looking for in China are different than what they're looking for in France, just even the words that they use. So there's and that's why actually having a distributor partner is so incredibly powerful. Because they really understand nuances of their market. So it's about blending those things together and that's why a lot of this international work has to do with partnership on both sides and making sure that we're set up and we have the right infrastructure. We called out on the last call that we hired an SVP of international. We're setting up a marketing organization. Like those are the things when [indiscernible] investing in talent, that's why that's so critical and we have to do that now even ahead of getting those those markets moving in the right direction.

Great. Thanks so much. The next question is coming from Lauren Lieberman of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks. Good morning. I was just curious if you could talk a little bit about your pricing strategy.

Historically, everything was line price and you're moving away that now. So I just wanted to know if you could discuss like a more fulsome thought process on pricing going forward and any kind of early adjustment or like reaction you're getting from customers both retail and professional on that front? [indiscernible] Yes. I think that's a great question. And as we thought about the strategy in this business, everything has certainly been something that we've done thoughtfully and based on a lot of research. Where we feel that we have opportunity in pricing is really related to the competitive set. And where we sit within that, as well as how do we ensure that we're maintaining the appropriate gross margins as we innovate, right? Our products are jam packed with the best possible technology. And so we need to balance both of those things. So is pricing being reset like is the you're going to go across the line and kind of re pricing because again historically it was like there was a one price point no matter the product. And that's been shifting. So I just couldn't know if there's a reset period or is there like a price pack architecture to change the size of the bottles?

I'm just curious on how this gets implemented. It was less about price increases going forward and more about what the absolute setting of price and appearance on a shelf.

I think what you see in the market today is what we intend to do at this time. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is coming from Dana Telsey of Telsey Advisory Group.

Hi, good morning, Amanda. As you think about product launches for 2025 and the importance of the scalp, which we're beginning to see everywhere? How do you think of product launches timing, how many? And as you think about the product assortment, both globally and here in The U. S, Any differences we should be seeing in packaging size range And just lastly, on the adjusted EBITDA margin guide for 2025, What would make that come in better than expected? And are there any building blocks for adjusted EBITDA as we move forward into 2026? That would trend with a tailwind or a headwind. Thank you.

Good morning, Dana. To hear from you. So I'll take the product case and then I'll let Catherine take the EBITDA piece. With respect to products without giving away our future calendar, really what we're thinking about is getting into a structured approach around the timing of what we launched, the framework in which we're looking at innovation. One of the big things that we have talked about that we talked about today and I'll continue to talk about is balance the process with the creativity and necessary and that's something that again Catherine and I are very passionate about. So you will continue to see innovation from us. We've talked about two to three product launches a year I think there's always a balance of a couple of things that are happening in the decisions that we make. One is, are we do we really believe that the science is there to drive differentiation that will always be really critical to us. Do we feel that we have the marketing impact to be able to get something off the ground in the right way? And also are we balancing our core? One of the things that we talked about over time is that in order to really drive growth in this business, yes, innovation is critical, but reason that we talked about number three being paired with scalp is that that really is the best thing for the consumer, which is always where we're going to start.

But also in order to make sure that we're harnessing our core and building our core through this transformation is going to be really critical. We have 21 SKUs. We have a lot of opportunity. To continue to grow and to continue to innovate. We're always going to do it because we believe that we have something different. And because we believe it's the right time for that product to come to market. And scalp is a great sample of looking at our science, looking to your point about where the industry is going, and really feeling that we can, A, do something different, but also do something that made sense for old UltaPlex. And those two things have to happen at the same time. Yes, I'll just build on to the innovation point and then I'll switch to the EBITDA point. I mean last year, on an innovation perspective, we really turned on the innovation and engine with several key launches that are still building this year. We have the ProCurl bond shaper treatment, Pearl Gel, the number five leave in conditioner. And then 2025, we have additional innovation plans starting with the scalp that Amanda just discussed. And innovation is a larger percentage of our unit sales in 2025, but all three of our priorities that we've outlined today are important to us achieving our goals.

And that leads me into your second question, which is the high and low end of the range. And just to rearticulate those three goals, generate brand demand, harness innovation and execute with excellence, the ability to hit the high end of the range is tied to the speed at which we make progress against each of those. So we feel confident that our brand positioning and expect it to drive that demand how quickly we'll hit the high end, if it goes quick more quickly and we'll hit the low end if it goes a little bit more slowly.

We expect to monitor the progress using our deep [indiscernible] I say that over and over again because I'm really proud of the time that we've taken to put in place these metrics, measures of success as we call them.

That will allow us to really reasonably act Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, we have run out of time for today. Would now like to turn the floor back over to Ms. Baldwin for any closing comments.

Thank you. I just wanted to thank everyone for joining us. It's a pretty exciting time in Old Flex. We are appreciate everybody's interest and we wish you a great day. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines at this time or log off the webcast and enjoy the rest of your day.