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Earnings Calls: 
Limited Brands Third Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Maclintosh Kuhlengisa
123jump.com
Last Update: 2:02 AM EST December 01 2007


The specialty retailer reported a 48% drop in income to $12.1 million or 3 cents a share, driven by Victoria''s Secret Direct and the challenges related to the distribution center. The firm reviewed downwards its earnings outlook due to a drop in projections across all segments as a result of the difficult environment and negative traffic trend. The firm is now reevaluating its timing and approach to ongoing technology initiatives in order to minimize the disruptions to the business.

 
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Key questions and answers from the third quarter earnings call conducted by Limited Brands. on November 20, 2007.

Jeff Black (Lehman Brothers): Can you comment on the extend of the reengineering efforts at the distribution center?

Martyn Redgrave: With opening a new centre in August we had expected a slow ramp-up. We did, in fact, ramp up the development pace as were expecting to ramp-up that throughout the end of September and into October.

Over the last four weeks, as we have evaluated the performance of the center, we have concluded that that are some issues there that are going to cause us to have one of the capacity in center that will limit the capacity in center as we are entering a holiday.

The center is a new operation for us and it utilizes a number of new capabilities that we have not had in our other distribution centers before, things like the High Bay reserve storage capabilities that are not in our other centers.

We are using new high-speed multiple stage conveyor systems, new handheld and laser reading scanning technologies. It has just taken us longer than we had expected to burn in these new processes, these new systems and make sure that our associates in our distribution center fully understand how to utilize the new processes and systems. The center right now is operating in about 70% to 75% of our targeted capacity.

Jeff Black (Lehman Brothers): With the 70% capacity, can it handle spring volume?

Martyn Redgrave: It handles spring volume but not semi-annual sales peak volumes.

Michelle Clark (Morgan Stanley): On the square footage growth plans at Victora Secrets, any plans to scale back there given continued struggle in the business overall?

Stuart Burgdoerfer: We are very encouraged by the results that we have seen but we are monitoring it very closely and we will evaluate it once we have the holiday sales results and in terms of seeing what the results look like post holiday.

Brian Tunick (JP Morgan): How do you think about comping better than mall traffic and holding market share between the two brands with all those things that are down versus last year?

Sharen Turney: Our marketing spend as we are looking at going into the fourth quarter are both in terms of looking at what we are doing and our lineup around holiday are flat to last year.

All the marketing dollars this year are primarily focused on true gifting opportunities for this holiday season, which gives us the opportunity to continue to drive our market share as well as to drive the holiday.

Diane Neal: At Bath & Body Works, we launched Velvet Tuberose as a fragrance in October.

Eric Miller (Lehman Brothers): What is your commitment to maintaining a strong balance sheet as we face a tougher economic environment and where do you stand in terms of your commitment to in investment grade debt rating?

Stuart Burgdoerfer: We are committed to retaining financial flexibility. With respect to credit spreads, they are up for almost all retailers.

Lorraine Maikis (Merrill Lynch):Are you not putting the Victoria's Secret stores business at risk by not updating the systems?

Martyn Redgrave: We assessed Victoria's Secret stores and Mast for production and sourcing business, we will be proceeding with implementing part of those systems in 2008, particularly for the production and sourcing end of it.

Realizing benefits from those systems is a medium-term effort as evidenced by the implementation of the supply chain capabilities of BBW the last year. It took us longer to stabilize those systems in BBW than we had originally expected.

Lauren Levitan (Cowen and Company): How much more opportunity is there to control expenses?
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