Crocs - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 delivered modest top-line growth with consolidated revenue of $1.149B (+3.4% YoY) and the highest gross profit quarter in company history; adjusted diluted EPS was $4.23, above consensus, while GAAP EPS was a loss due to $737M in HEYDUDE impairments.
• Versus estimates: revenue beat by ~$6.6M and EPS beat by ~$0.21; EBITDA also exceeded consensus, reflecting resilient margins despite a volatile consumer backdrop and tariffs (values marked * from S&P Global).
• Management withdrew full-year 2025 guidance in Q1 and in Q2 provided only Q3 guidance: revenue down ~9–11% YoY and adjusted operating margin of ~18–19% with ~170 bps tariff headwind.
• Strategic actions—pullback in North America discounting, conservative receipts, and HEYDUDE wholesale cleanup—create near-term topline pressure but aim to protect brand health, margins, and cash flow; free cash flow in Q2 was $269M with $133M buybacks and $105M debt reduction.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Strong gross margin expansion: reported and adjusted gross margin rose 30 bps YoY to 61.7%, the highest gross profit quarter on record.
  • Crocs brand strength internationally: Crocs brand revenues +5% to $960M; International +18% (DTC +24.6%, Wholesale +14.1%), with China >30% growth, and strong social commerce traction (TikTok).
  • Cash generation and capital returns: Q2 free cash flow $269M; ~$133M repurchases (1.3M shares at ~$102) and $105M debt repaid; net leverage at lower end of 1.0–1.5x target.

• What Went Wrong

  • HEYDUDE brand impairments: $430M trademark and $307M goodwill impairment drove GAAP operating loss and GAAP EPS of -$8.82; adjusted OPS down 240 bps YoY to 26.9%.
  • North America softness and intentional promo pullback: Crocs NA revenue -6.5% as discounting was reduced to protect brand health; wholesale order books reflect cautious consumer and athletic category share competition.
  • Tariff headwinds: incremental tariff impact approximated $40M in 2025 and ~$90M annualized given sourcing mix, contributing ~170 bps margin drag to Q3 guidance.

Transcript

Speaker 6

Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Erinn Murphy, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Crocs, Inc.'s second quarter results. With me today are Andrew Rees, Chief Executive Officer, and Susan Healy, Chief Financial Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions, which we ask you to limit to one per caller. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the information provided on this call is forward-looking and accordingly is subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Federal Securities Laws. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially. Please refer to our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and other reports filed with the SEC for more information on these risks and uncertainties.

Certain financial metrics that we refer to as adjusted or non-GAAP are non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these amounts to their GAAP counterparts is contained in the press release we issued earlier this morning. All revenue growth rates will be cited on a constant currency basis unless otherwise stated. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Andrew Rees, Crocs, Inc. Chief Executive Officer.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Erinn, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our teams delivered a solid second quarter fueled by top-line growth and our highest ever quarterly gross profit, which drove strong free cash flow in the midst of what continues to be a volatile marketplace. I will start by highlighting the key metrics of the quarter and then discuss the strategic rationale behind the decisions we have made to drive profitability and support long-term brand health. Finally, we'll touch on deeper insights on our individual brands. At an enterprise level, second quarter revenues of $1.1 billion grew 3% to prior year. Crocs brand revenues of $960 million grew 4% to prior year, led by 16% international growth. HEYDUDE revenues of $190 million were down 4% to prior year, an improvement from the first quarter.

Enterprise adjusted gross margins of 61.7% gained 30 basis points to our prior year. Adjusted operating margin of approximately 27% supported adjusted diluted earnings per share of $4.23, a gain of 5% to prior year. Our strong margin profile fueled free cash flow of $269 million, enabling us to repurchase 1.3 million shares and repay $105 million of debt. Our net leverage ended the quarter at the lower end of our target range of 1 to 1.5 times. To remind everyone, over the last decade, we have deployed $2.4 billion to buy back approximately 30% of our total shares outstanding. This, along with continued deleverage of our balance sheet, has been a consistent driver of EPS growth and shareholder returns. Turning now to the current operating environment, we see the U.S. consumer behaving cautiously around discretionary spending.

They are faced with current and implied future price increases, which we think has the potential to be a further drag on an already choiceful consumer. Against this backdrop, our retail partners are acting more carefully and reducing their open-to-buy dollars in future seasons. As we have consistently said, we are not trying to manage our business quarter to quarter. We had a solid first half of the year, with our brands fueling strong gross profit and cash flow. The current environment in the second half is concerning, and we see that clearly reflected in retail order books. We strongly believe this is a time to make bold decisions for the future to sustain and advance our durable cash flow model. As a result, we have chosen to amplify certain measures in the second half of the year to protect brand health and profitability.

For the Crocs brand, in addition to adjusting our forward receipts, we pull back on promotional activity across the direct channels starting in May. While this has and will continue to impact our top line, we see this as an opportunity to drive margin dollars over time, support continued cash flow generation, and tighten brand control. For the HEYDUDE brand, we've accelerated our actions in the channel to support a clean and refreshed marketplace. This has resulted in us choosing to take back additional aged inventory and ensure more of our partners are reset with our current product lines. This will create further headwinds to sales volume over the next several quarters. From an expense perspective, we've already actioned $50 million of cost savings and are identifying further cost savings opportunities.

As it relates to inventory, we've opted to plan our business conservatively, proactively pulling back on receipts across both brands for the second half, primarily in the U.S. Without losing sight of the bigger picture, I want to remind everyone that over the last three years, we have made significant progress in diversifying our business, which will serve as a strong foundation to enable long-term sustainable growth. One, we've moved from one-brand to a two-brand enterprise, fortifying our leadership within the casual footwear segment. Two, we've diversified our clog offering and have six major franchises that make up the majority of our clogs business. In addition, we've developed strong sandals and personalization pillars that will offer unique wearing occasions and enable self-expression. Three, we've accelerated our international growth business, which has grown from 38% of Crocs brand sales in 2022 to 52% in the second quarter.

Collectively, this diversification should fuel durable long-term growth for years to come. Now turning to performance by brand. For the Crocs brand, all of our key product pillars, clogs, sandals, and Jibbitz charms grew in the second quarter. Clog iterations and emerging franchises drove growth within the clog category, including Echo, Bay, and InMotion. These results exemplify that when we deliver new innovation with clear storytelling through our marketing channels, the consumers respond with strong engagement. In Asia, clog personalization and hype continues to resonate well. Outside of clogs, sandals continue to yield strong results, providing new versatile wear and occasions for our consumer. During the quarter, we saw notable strength across our style franchises, which include the Brooklyn, Getaway, and Miami. As we moved into the summer season, the Miami went viral on TikTok, and we were chasing demand.

Our consumer is responding well to neutrals and new materialization, including glitter and patent finishes. As we look forward, the success of these three franchises is translating into shelf space gains, and we're adding new collections such as a Soho sandal next to Sprite. Within personalization, our Jibbitz charms growth continues to be driven by distribution expansion in our international markets, improved in-store presentation, and success around elevated charms. We remain laser-focused on our digitally led social-first marketing playbook, as this is a key ingredient in sustaining brand heat. In addition to bringing back franchise favorites like Cars, Pokémon, and Minecraft partnerships, we're also standouts in the quarter. We furthered our connection to sport, growing our NIL athlete roster with first-round NFL draft picks, Jaxson Dart, and Ashton Jeanty, who notably wore our Swarovski crystal-studded Crocs clogs on the red carpet.

We continue to lean into social comments as consumers more frequently start and end their shopping journeys on social platforms. During the quarter, Crocs remained the number one footwear brand on TikTok Shop in the U.S., and we recently launched on this platform in the U.K., where results have been strong out of the gate. Our plan is to continue to expand social commerce and live streaming platforms globally, and we expect this to drive new growth opportunities. Turning to performance by region, our growth in the quarter was led by our international business, which registered revenue growth of 16%, led by the direct-to-consumer channel. Our international business represented more than half of our Crocs brand revenue mix this quarter. In China, we reported another quarter of strong revenue growth in excess of 30%.

During the quarter, Crocs brand outperformed during mid-season festival, placing Crocs among the leading women's footwear brands on both Tmall and Douyin. We're deepening our connections with consumers through our roster of locally relevant celebrities and KOLs, including brand ambassador and actress Bai Lu and actor TJC. India saw double-digit revenue growth in the quarter, with outsized consumer demand across our Classic Clog and sandal franchises. We welcomed Reshmika Mandana as our first brand ambassador in India, and an inaugural Instagram post garnered over 400 million views. Japan grew nicely during the quarter, and Western Europe continued to perform strongly, led by France and Germany. Our North American business was down 6% to prior year as we pulled back on discounting on our direct-to-consumer channels, most notably on clogs. We continue to see sandals as a growth vehicle, increasing double digits in the quarter as we further diversify our business.

Last week, we held the grand opening of our newest retail concept in Soho, New York. This store houses our largest personalization experience to date, with expanded and upgraded Jibbitz charms opportunities. In addition to our mainline product, consumers can find New York exclusive products as well as a dedicated assortment of elevated EXP product line with dynamic digital storytelling. Turning to the HEYDUDE brand, we've been focused on three core pillars of our strategy: one, igniting the HEYDUDE community; two, driving the core and adding more; and three, prioritizing brand health as we stabilize the North American market. First, we've continued to ignite the HEYDUDE community. Over the past 12 months, we've been focused on speaking to a new female consumer while not losing sight of our core consumer.

The cumulative impact of our marketing efforts over this period has resulted in an increase in HEYDUDE awareness to 35% in North America. In addition to an uptick in awareness, we've also seen improvement in consideration and purchase intent. With these advancements, HEYDUDE is now poised to further engage our core consumer. In June, we launched our latest campaign, HEYDUDE Country. This campaign is rooted in authenticity and plays into several of our brand affinities, including music, pre and post-sport, and travel. We're excited about the future of this campaign and its broad appeal to our existing core consumer, as well as new HEYDUDE fans, both him and her. Second, we're building the core and adding more. During the quarter, we iterated on our icons, the Wally and the Wendy, through color, materialization, and partnerships.

In June, we leveraged our icon to release the HEYDUDE x Pat's Blue Ribbon collection, which sold out on our own.com. We also partnered with Margaritaville to release a collaboration featuring our H2O collection, which speaks to the core HEYDUDE consumer. Lastly, we launched the Wally Pro, an elevated iteration of our best-selling Wally silhouette at an $80 price point. Against our third strategic pillar, we continue to prioritize brand health as we stabilize the North American market while laying the groundwork for future international growth. We were pleased by continued growth of our direct-to-consumer channel, up 7% in the quarter. This was supported by our new store openings and strong performance on TikTok. While we are pleased with the strategic progress we have made against our three pillars, we have identified further opportunities to more rapidly reset our North American business.

We have focused our efforts against two primary actions. One, we pull back on bottom-of-the-funnel performance marketing investment to enable a more profitable digital business. Two, we've initiated incremental returns and marked down allowances to our retailers to improve the health of our inventory in the marketplace. This will simultaneously elevate our brand presentation at wholesale. While these measures will have a meaningful impact to the second half performance across both channels, we feel that they will stabilize the business more quickly. In closing, we believe the HEYDUDE brand potential and its community are much greater than the size of the business today, and we're confident that the critical steps we're taking will fuel the potential in the future. I will now turn the call over to Susan to provide more detail around our second quarter financial performance and third quarter outlook.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. Our second quarter enterprise revenues of $1.1 billion were up 3% to prior year. Crocs brand revenue of $960 million was up 4% to the prior year. Growth was led by wholesale, up 6%, while direct-to-consumer was up 3%. North America revenues were down 6% to last year as we pulled back on discounting during the quarter. These actions in part drove direct-to-consumer down 8%, while wholesale was down 4%. International revenue was up 16%, aided in part by timing shifts out of Q3 and into Q2 in select markets. China and India led the growth, while Japan and Western Europe also contributed strongly to these results. HEYDUDE brand revenue of $190 million was down 4% to the prior year, an improvement from the prior quarter.

Direct-to-consumer was up 7%, driven by the contribution of new retail stores and our strong performance on TikTok Shop. Wholesale was down 13% in the quarter. Enterprise adjusted gross margin of 61.7% was up 30 basis points to prior year. Crocs brand adjusted gross margin of 64.1% was approximately flat to prior year. HEYDUDE brand adjusted gross margin of 50.2% was up 110 basis points to prior year, primarily due to distribution and logistics efficiencies. Adjusted SG&A dollars for the quarter increased 12% versus prior year. Adjusted SG&A rate was 34.7%, up 270 basis points compared to prior year, driven by incremental investment in talent, direct-to-consumer, and marketing. This excludes the non-cash impairment charge of $737 million on HEYDUDE's intangible assets. This impairment comes as a result of a longer than expected timeline to stabilize the HEYDUDE brand and return it to growth, due in part to a weaker U.S.

consumer and the disproportionate impact of tariffs on HEYDUDE product. Adjusted operating margin of 26.9% was down 240 basis points compared to prior year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $4.23 was up 5% to last year. Our non-GAAP effective tax rate was 17.7%, which reflects the tax impact of intra-entity transactions and excludes the impact of the HEYDUDE impairment. Our inventory balance as of June 30 was $405 million, up 7% to prior year, in part due to the elevated cost of inventory from tariffs. Enterprise inventory returns remained above our goal of four times on an annualized basis. Our liquidity position remains strong, comprised of $201 million of cash and cash equivalents and $784 million of borrowing capacity on our revolver.

During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.3 million shares of our common stock for a total of $133 million at an average cost of approximately $102 per share. In the first half of the year, we repurchased 1.9 million shares, or 3% of our outstanding shares. We had $1.1 billion remaining on our buyback authorization as of the end of Q2. We ended the quarter with total borrowings of $1.4 billion and net leverage at the lower end of our target range of 1 to 1.5 times. Before I discuss our outlook, I want to briefly touch on tariffs. Last week, the U.S. extended the pause period on a series of incremental tariffs on countries in which we source our product. While we can't predict future tariff changes, we are planning our business at the current rates.

The impact from these incremental rates equates to approximately $40 million in the second half of 2025 and approximately $90 million on an annual basis based on our current sourcing mix. Now moving to our outlook, it continues to be difficult to fully project the financial implications of changing global trade policies, as well as to predict how consumer sentiment and purchasing patterns will evolve. Therefore, we are not reinstating full-year guidance at this time. However, we would like to provide some visibility for the third quarter. For Q3, we expect consolidated revenues to be in the range of down 9% to 11% at currency rates as of August 4th.

This revenue range is based on the visibility we have to orders from our wholesale partners, a reduction of discounts in our Crocs direct-to-consumer channels, the pullback of performance marketing for HEYDUDE, the incremental cleanup actions we have elected to take for HEYDUDE, as well as the potential range of outcomes against a weakening U.S. consumer backdrop. Within this range, we expect the Crocs brand to be down mid-single digits, led by declines in North America, offset in part by growth in international. This includes our expectation that the second half wholesale environment will be challenging for both brands based on the visibility we have in our current order books. Adjusted operating margin is expected to be in a range of 18% to 19%, including an anticipated approximate 170 basis point impact from tariffs and deleverage of expenses tied to our reduced revenue outlook.

We plan to continue to buy back stock and pay down debt while remaining within our target net leverage range of 1 to 1.5 times. Based on the current environment, we are rapidly actioning additional cost-saving measures across the enterprise in Q3. I will now turn the call back over to Andrew for his final thoughts.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Susan. While the current environment has created uncertainty for the industry and for our consumers, I'm confident that the increasingly diversified sources of growth we are developing and the strategic actions we are taking will position our brands for consistent and profitable long-term growth. At this time, we'll open the call for questions.

Speaker 6

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily for the first question. Our first question today will come from Jonathan Komp with Baird. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi, good morning. I want to start just by asking about Crocs North America and the outlook for Q3. I'm hoping you might be able to better isolate some of the unique factors impacting Q3 versus what might be lasting. As you look forward, especially into 2026, I know you've made some changes at the organization at the Chief Brand Officer level, Chief Strategy position. Just as you look forward beyond the next couple of quarters, could you give us more sense of the pipeline and the strategy in terms of reinvigorating the excitement for the brand?

Speaker 0

Great, thank you, John. I think as you look to the back half of the year for the Crocs brand in North America, there's a number of things affecting the business, some choices that we have made which we think will be productive in the long term and also some market-related factors. Our consumer is an incredibly broad-based consumer. If you look at our demographics and who we sell to from the Crocs brand, it's essentially the general population. As you look at the general population, there is a portion of that consumer base which we think is ample evidence that they are super cautious. They're not purchasing, they're not even going to the stores, and we see traffic down. We're certainly affected by that.

We see that flowing through into our back half in terms of really our wholesale business and a little bit of our outlet business where we see that lower-end consumer. We see our order books down and we see a trajectory for our wholesale business. That is unintended and not necessarily out of our control, but that is what it is. I think the second piece is our decision to pull back on discounting on the Crocs brand in North America in particular. That is a fact, that is an intentional decision we make. That's a revenue headwind, but a gross margin and ultimately an EBIT potential. We think that's important to do that because as we looked at the trajectory and the discounting over time, we saw it increasing, and we think that is detrimental to the long-term health of the brand.

That's really, I think, when you kind of look at the North American market. What I would say is we've got consumer innovation coming into the market. We've seen a strong trajectory in the past in the summer season from our sandal business. We think that grows next year. We see new product innovation on clogs and sandal coming on clogs coming in the fourth quarter. We have significant product innovation on sandal in the first half of next year. We're continuing to accentuate and grow our personalization business, both in Jibbitz and expanding that beyond Jibbitz into a broader personalization offering. I would also add that in Q2, we saw strong international growth for the Crocs brand and obviously growth overall. I think we've talked about repeatedly that we see international as a continued important growth driver for the brand.

I think the other thing you referenced was some personnel changes to strengthen our management team. I think we feel really good about those. Terrence is getting settled as the Chief Brand Officer over both brands, I think, and driving the level of energy and creativity, which we're excited to see come to market. We've strengthened our sort of growth and transformation with the addition of a Strategy and Growth Officer. We feel great about the team. I think it's going to be a difficult period to navigate in the next half year for the Crocs brand in North America, but we think we're doing the right things for the long-term potential of the brand.

Okay, great. I appreciate all that color. Just two follow-ups, if I could. Do you think in some of your core family channels, are you losing share in the order book at all as larger competitors come back with emphasis on the channel? Any more detail on protecting the profitability? I don't know if you were surprised by the magnitude of the revenue slowdown, just given the size of the deleverage that you're implying for Q3. It looks hard to see where you're seeing progress on protecting profitability just based on the Q3 outlook alone. Thank you.

Got it. Yep, that makes sense. If you look at the, I think what you're referencing, we do see an athletic trend in the marketplace. I think everybody's well aware of that, talked about that. There is a clear athletic trend. The consumer is migrating back towards athletic. We know that is a cyclical trend. As we look at some key athletic events coming up, we do think that will persist for a while. You've got the World Cup next year. You have the LA Olympics in a couple of years. I think the athletic brands are building innovation into that, which they typically do. That's a little bit of a headwind. I think we can fight that headwind in the long term. We also know that our brand is well positioned against pre and post-sport.

I think athletic headwind is providing some pressure on open-to-buy, combined with the consumer uncertainty of that very broad consumer base. In terms of protecting profitability, yes, I think there's a couple of things. If you look at Q3, 170 basis points of the deleverage are tariffs. Obviously, that will continue into 2026 and beyond. In a prepared remark, Susan gave you some good color on what that looks like. In terms of, I think, I'm anticipating that Q3 is a bit of a low spot in our EBIT potential. We've taken out $50 million of cost savings already. Some of those are spread between gross margin and SG&A. We are currently engaged in an extensive process to drive incremental cost savings or incremental SG&A reductions throughout the remainder of the year.

Okay, thanks again.

Thank you.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Chris Nardone with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thanks, guys. Good morning. Are you seeing anything in your Crocs international business that is implying a material step change for your back half outlook relative to the mid-teens growth in the most recent quarter? On your global Crocs direct business, is the slowdown that you're embedding in your 3Q guidance matching what you're seeing, or are you baking in a scenario where sales continue to sequentially get worse throughout the rest of the quarter?

Speaker 0

Okay, let me answer the international piece. I'm going to come back to you on the DTC piece. I didn't quite understand what you were asking there. From an international perspective, there are always a kind of few puts and takes between quarters, particularly around your distributor business. You're probably well aware, our distributor business is substantial. In the long run, a mid-teens growth trajectory for our international business, we feel very good about that. I think we highlighted in prepared remarks, strong growth in China, really successful mid-season festival, strong growth in India, another very large potential market, good performance in Western Europe, and actually a return to growth in Japan, which we're also excited about. I think our international business remains really important to us. It could be a driver of growth. I would also highlight in Q2, it was the majority of our Crocs business, right?

We passed the 50% mark in terms of the international business being bigger than our domestic business. I think puts and takes between quarters will be kind of around that longer-term trajectory. The second piece, I'm not 100% clear what you were asking there.

Yeah, I'm just trying to get a sense of, I know you're not guiding 3Q by channel, by region per se, but you know, we're a little over a month into the quarter. It sounds like the outlook's getting a little bit worse. Are you baking in things sequentially getting worse as we move through the quarter, or are you kind of calling the 3Q guidance based on the trend you're seeing as of today, you know, the first couple of weeks of the quarter?

Yeah, we're not baking in it getting sequentially worse as it goes through the quarter. From now, we do think the back half is worse than the first half, right, based on the things I talked about earlier. Do we see it sequentially declining from sort of our July trajectory as we go through the year? We're not anticipating that. I think there is an element of cautiousness, and we recognize the consumer is pretty unpredictable, particularly here in North America. We do see sort of fairly significant fluctuations week to week. I think we've got some cautiousness embedded in it, but we haven't embedded a downward trajectory month over month from now.

Got it. That's very clear. Just to sneak one more in, just on margins, I just wanted to get a sense of how you're thinking about taking price for both brands and what's included in your margin guidance in terms of mitigation strategies around tariffs. It sounds like you're pulling back on promos and direct-to-consumer, which is leading to lower volumes. I'm just wondering if that's making you rethink whether you think you can take price across both brands.

Yeah, I mean, this is a, I think we can, over the medium term, mitigate the impact of tariffs. That will come from cost savings in our supply chain, both negotiations with factories, which I don't think is a huge amount, but there's some there, but also just efficiency drive within our supply chain. It will come from some price, and it will come also from some reduction in SG&A through, again, looking much harder and driving to efficiency. In terms of your specific question around price, we have selective actions planned, some in the back end of this year for HEYDUDE. We are getting some net price, as you pointed out, through reduction in discounting. We will be announcing some price increases on Crocs, both in select styles and also in some of our international markets where we think we have opportunities.

We're going to, I think, be very strategic about where we get price. We don't think this is a market that we can be taking all of our prices up, you know, by a certain amount to simply mitigate the tariffs. I don't think that's realistic given where our brands sell and the very broad base of our consumer base.

Very clear. Good luck.

Thank you.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Adrienne Yih with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Great, good morning, and thank you very much for taking my question. Andrew, I guess my question is, you know, given the down 9% to 11%, how much of that is due to kind of the wholesale pullback? Is that a reaction to the front order book, or is that more of a proactive management given kind of everything that you know about what's happening and potentially with the consumer kind of demand environment? How do you think about philosophically balancing that with the risk of losing shelf space in the marketplace?

Speaker 0

Right. I would say the guide embeds the order book for both brands, right? We are not anticipating an erosion of order book. It embeds the order book where it sits today. I would say it also embeds conservative assumptions around, you know, returns or cancellations, right? We are definitely, I think, being very cautious about how we're anticipating the market flowing out over the next six months and how the consumer is going to react. In terms of shelf space, I think, you know, in response to John's question, I think in some channels of wholesale distribution, we are losing shelf space relative to other brands, relative to the athletic brands. I think we are working to make sure that we drive incremental shelf space with sandals. We certainly picked up shelf space in the summer with sandals.

We think we will pick up more shelf space in sandals next year. A significant part of our clogs business is done through our direct-to-consumer channels, right? It's done through our retail stores and our digital channels. Obviously, I think we're maintaining market share through those channels.

Okay, great. My just clarifying question, you said that within that guidance of down 9% to 11% at Crocs, if I heard correctly, it would be down mid-single digits?

Correct.

HEYDUDE will then kind of go, kind of the trajectory of HEYDUDE will worsen pretty significantly. Is that, are you seeing more of this wholesale kind of pullback and more of the actions, the reset actions at the wholesale brand?

Yeah, I think the principal driver of that leg down for HEYDUDE is the actions that we decided to take, right? The first is the reset of some inventory in the wholesale, and that's pretty significant. That will be done essentially in Q3. That's a meaningful amount. The second is the reduction of marketing, so performance marketing on our digital channels, where we've seen that creep up over a number of quarters. We got to a point where the marginal profitability was really not there. We took an opportunity to, we took a tough decision to reset that. It's principally due to those two things. I wouldn't say the wholesale trajectory, an audible trajectory is dramatically worse than Crocs. It's a little bit below, but those are the two biggest things.

Okay, thank you. Two clarifying questions for Susan. When you say the current tariff environment, you mean the August 1st, right? All that whole litany of kind of new numbers for all the different separate countries. Is that kind of the new $90 million annual growth unmitigated? Secondarily, the inventory up 7%. How much of that is now due to the cost of tariff? Thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Yeah, on the first part of your question, yes, that is an up-to-date number, I think, as of hot off the presses. That includes everything that we heard as of August, plus I think there is a 50% tariff on India that we have incorporated in that number. India is a meaningful but not the largest country from which we source exports to the U.S. Your second part of your question was about inventory. Up 7%. We don't break that out, but a meaningful portion of that is the cost of the tariffs. We capitalize that in our inventory and recognize that as we sell the product.

Okay, thank you very much, and best of luck. Thanks for all the information.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Anna Andreeva with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Great, thanks so much. Good morning, guys. Just a follow-up on the pullback in promotional activity at Crocs in North America. Did you quantify that impact in the second quarter or how we should think about that for 3Q? We still see Crocs run promotions around big events, whether it was Memorial Day or July 4th weekend. Just trying to understand how we should think about the magnitude of that pullback manifesting. Secondly, to Andrew, on the shelf space losses to athletic, just trying to understand athletic space has been strong for some time now. Why do you think your losses are accelerating now?

Speaker 0

Got it. We haven't quantified in dollars the amount of the pullback relative to the reduction in discounts. What I could say is if you look at Q2, which is down essentially, almost 6% for North America for Crocs. If we had not made that decision, it would have been down slightly. It was a pretty meaningful impact. Yes, to your question, we will still run, I would say, competitive discounts and promotional events around key events. Absolutely, we will. We are being careful about the depth and the breadth of those events and also making sure that we are not running significant events between those time periods. It is a very meaningful change in terms of dollars that we are foregoing in North America for future health of the brand. The second point, I'm not sure I agree with you in terms of the athletic trend.

There are some high-end athletic brands that have been performing very strongly in North America for some time, but they are selling at high prices and are principally selling to an elevated consumer. The broader athletic trend that hits the broad consumer base that we service has accelerated. That is, I think, principally due to some of the big players re-embracing a broader distribution strategy.

Speaker 5

Okay, that's fair enough. Just as a quick follow-up to Susan, did you guys quantify the timing shift in international? You said benefits 2Q and occurred 3Q, I believe. Yeah, we didn't actually quantify the shift. It's a part of the difference in the growth rate between international and international between Q2 and Q3, but we still would have been, it still would have been positive. As Andrew said, we have these shifts based on our distributor business from quarter to quarter on a regular basis, both this year and last year. All right, understood. Thank you so much, and best of luck.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Jay Soul with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you so much. Andrew, can you just elaborate a little bit on what you're seeing in China? I think you talked about China was up over 30% versus last year. Talk about what's driving the strength and maybe the outlook that you have for China in the third quarter and beyond. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Yep. I think what's driving our business in China is strong consumer engagement, right? The overall China business, and you look at it across many different brands, is not strong from a consumer perspective. Consumer purchasing is certainly not strong in the Chinese market. We're bucking that trend because we're driving brand heat for the Crocs brand in China. That brand heat has been driven by a set of social-first digital marketing tactics using key Chinese celebrities. We have a very large digital business in China, which has performed particularly well during mid-season festival. We're very familiar with how to operate during these festival time periods and maximize the business. We have also extended significantly on our monobrand stores through our distribution partners in China, with significant store openings both last year and this year.

I think our personalization aspect to our brand, the use of Jibbitz and the ability to personalize the shoes, have also been particularly effective in engaging that consumer. I think that's also effective in engaging sort of the broader Asian consumer. We see our personalization business strong in Southeast Asia, in Korea, and in Japan as well.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Rick Patel with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Can you unpack the disparity in performance between HEYDUDE in direct-to-consumer versus wholesale? You know, direct-to-consumer's performed well now for three quarters in a row. I guess what would you attribute the softer performance to at wholesale? As we think about the wholesale channel in particular, how long do you envision it'll take to right-size inventory so that sell-in and sell-through are in better alignment?

Speaker 0

Yeah, great question, Rick. Look, direct-to-consumer has performed well, but there are new points of distribution there, right? That's for, I would say, two principal reasons. We continue to open outlet stores for the HEYDUDE brand, which we're very pleased with, both the performance of those stores and also the role they play in terms of extending the HEYDUDE brand to new consumers, right? The HEYDUDE brand, while the awareness has improved, it has improved to 35%. That is a relatively low number compared to the 60%+ aided awareness for the Crocs brand. We've made progress on awareness, but it's still low. There's new points of distribution from an outlet store perspective embedded within that DTC growth. There is also TikTok Shop. You are aware that with both of our brands, we've been at the forefront of selling on TikTok Shop.

Crocs is the number one footwear brand on TikTok Shop, and I think HEYDUDE is the number three. That is number two, sorry, I've been told. I know it's two or three. That is an outsized performance relative to the size of the HEYDUDE brand in the U.S. marketplace. I would say new points of distribution is the big driver there.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Aubrey Tianello with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask on HEYDUDE. I think it's been a few quarters now since you've changed the approach to marketing, going more top of funnel. How are you feeling about the benefits you're seeing from that? How are you thinking about investment in the brand going forward? Any update on new leadership for HEYDUDE? Thanks.

Speaker 0

Yeah, I'll do your last question first. The current leadership for HEYDUDE is myself. I'm really enjoying being able to dig into the brand and work with the team. While we have not yet appointed a Brand President for HEYDUDE, I would say that we have appointed some key team members. I'm really excited about the strength of our leadership team for the HEYDUDE brand. I think they are doing a really great job and really grappling with some difficult situations, but doing it in an extremely proactive and productive way for the future. In terms of shifting the marketing, we have seen positive signs from that. We continue to invest in marketing. We have been experimenting with some different messages and different approaches. We have seen an increase of aided brand awareness, as I mentioned in the prior question, to 35%, which we think is a very productive trend.

I would say our latest campaign around HEYDUDE Country has been really well received by the industry as we talk to our wholesale partners. I think we are seeing some clear evidence it's resonating with consumers. We have also spent a good amount of time, as we've talked about in the past, speaking to her and bringing a younger, more female, younger female consumer to the brand. I think that has been productive. As we look forward, we are shifting more of our dollars and focus back to our core consumer and ensuring that we really resonate and capture and get the most productive purchasing from our core consumer. I think we're doing all of the right things. We plan to continue to invest in the HEYDUDE brand, and we see a trajectory that we think we will be pleased with and ultimately shareholders will be pleased with over time.

Thank you. If I could just sneak in a follow-up on capital allocation, in the first half, you're ahead of where you were last year in terms of share repurchases. Does that continue into the back half, or is that different now with the new revenue trajectory?

Speaker 5

Let me try to address that. Consistent with our past practice, we really don't commit ahead of time to our capital allocation, how we're going to allocate our free cash flow. As you can see from what we did in the first half of the year, we really believe our stock is an excellent value. Consistent with our one to one and a half times target range, we're going to continue to allocate free cash flow to buy back stock and pay down debt as we see the opportunities.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for taking our question. Susan, I was hoping you could elaborate on the cost savings actions that you've taken and that you're planning on taking. What additional areas of opportunity have you identified outside of the SG&A savings in the $50 million that was previously discussed? Can you provide any color on the magnitude or timing of these savings for the second half and into 2026? Thank you.

Speaker 5

Sure, Brooke. When we talk about the $50 million of cost savings, these are things that we've already identified and taken action on for the year. We realized $15 million of that in Q2, and that was really balanced across SG&A and gross margin. You can think about the remaining $35 million as being kind of evenly spread across Q3 and Q4 with a similar weighting on SG&A and gross margin. As we look to the further opportunities that Andrew mentioned, we're particularly focused on SG&A and steps that we can take to further simplify the business. We spoke a little bit about the marketing spend for HEYDUDE and being able to pull back on performance marketing where we don't feel there's an adequate return.

We're looking at our entire expense base with that lens to make sure that where we're investing the dollars are the ones where we're seeing the return for the long term.

Great, thanks so much. I'll pass it on.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Ashley Owens with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Maybe just to start on HEYDUDE, with the further pressure on the wholesale channel, is the assumption that this will come with incremental margin headwinds on the brand through the balance of the year? Additionally, I know you mentioned pulling back on some of the inventory receipts domestically for the back half. Can you help us understand how this shapes the product cadence? You've been strong in newness in collaborations for several years now. Should we expect a pullback in some of these efforts in SKU count until conditions normalize, or how are you thinking about balancing tighter buys with the need to maintain freshness? Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you, actually. Those things are clearly connected. Yes, from a HEYDUDE perspective, there will be incremental pressure on margins in the back half based on the actions we're taking, right? The cleanup, the continued cleanup of wholesale inventory is costly, right? That is a significant investment that we're making. In terms of inventory receipts, we're planning our receipts cautiously in terms of where we're purchasing and/or bringing in units that we think satisfies what we anticipate will be the future demand. We're not planning, I think, one of the comments we've heard from wholesale partners is, look, we're going to plan our inventories down, and if things perform, we will chase. We're not planning significant receipts for chase because that would be inventory risk that we think is not merited at this point.

In terms of SKU count and new product introductions, we think the wholesale returns and cleanup that we'll do will significantly refresh and reset the floors to current new inventory. Where we've done that, we've seen some nice improvements. It's about making sure that we do have newness and we do have new inventory and new styles within at the point of sale for our consumers. I would say we're seeing some really nice trajectory in HEYDUDE against stretch socks, which has been completely refreshed. We started that refresh at the beginning of this year. As we look at wholesale and direct-to-consumer inventory, that's been a significant effort. We're very pleased with the performance of stretch socks going forward. The Pool franchise has been a franchise that's performed well. We recently added the Pool Pro, which is an elevated version of the Pool with additional cushioning and a better footbed.

That's performing well. HEYDUDE performed well through the summer, which is our drain shoe for fishing or for those who are in and around the water. I would say also our work business for HEYDUDE, particularly the Comfto, is also performing well. The newness is performing, and the reason we're prepared to make what is a significant investment to refresh is we want more newness in front of more people.

Okay, got it. That's super helpful. Thank you.

Great.

Speaker 6

Our next question will come from Sam Poser with Williams Trading. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. Andrew, in the prepared remarks, you talked about, I just want to clarify, you talked about the weakness, the uncertainty and the potential weakness of your broad-based consumer, which I assume you're speaking both to Crocs and to HEYDUDE.

Speaker 0

Yes. I think, you know, what is different about us is that we sell at very democratic price points on both brands, right? That democratic price point means that we appeal to a particularly broad consumer base. There are other brands that are absolutely performing much better in this marketplace because they are focused exclusively on a high-end consumer. The low-end consumer is the consumer that we believe is most sensitive to price increases, is most nervous, and in some cases is not leaving the house.

You did also talk about how well you've been doing with sandals. Is this, and you're sort of implying it in what you're working on with HEYDUDE, is this an issue basically of you, for the sake of argument, don't have the right product for the broad base of consumer? It isn't innovative enough. They just aren't going to it. You talked about athletic getting better, so there may be more innovation there, and that may take some from you. How much of this is sort of macro consumer versus we need to make better stuff for our customers, for our consumers?

Yeah, I think we believe we are making very good stuff for our consumers, right? As we look at where our brands are positioned, particularly on HEYDUDE, I just talked about it. Refreshing the product line and refreshing the product that we're putting in front of consumers is proving to be very positive, right? I think the incremental improvements that we're making are strong. In terms of the HEYDUDE, sorry, in terms of the Crocs business, we also see strong trajectory on new product introductions, right? A lot of the growth we saw in sandals and the very successful sandal season, and the increase in market share in sandals was based on new styles that we think are meeting consumers' needs. We're very confident that sandal business will grow nicely into next year as we kind of think about next season.

I think the macro is a very important factor for our business. We're definitely seeing that for our brands. I think we're making some tough decisions in the back half of this year, which I know, given your kind of long-term understanding, you recognize are impactful to the business, but also costly.

I guess the question is, what % of your business, of your Crocs business was sandals this year? What was the penetration versus last year?

Yeah, we typically break that out at the end of the year. I would say it grew in penetration. I can tell you that. I think once a year we try and give you visibility to that. It was, we said it was 13% last year in terms of penetration. It was up double digits in the first half of the year. It'll be growing. It'll grow.

Speaker 6

Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Andrew Rees for any closing remarks.

Speaker 0

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today and your continued interest and support of our company. Thank you.

Speaker 6

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect your lines at this time.