Coach Conference Call Highlights

Coach Inc COH reported its third quarter earnings on Tuesday. Shares of the company are down 6 percent.

Below are some key highlights from its conference call.

• We held our second-ever New York Fashion Week presentation in early September, showing our Spring 2015 Collection to the fashion press.
• And once again, the press was overwhelmingly positive, building on the response to Fall 2014 in driving fashion, credibility and buzz, a key to elevating the brand perception in the mind of the consumer.
• We are also on track to launch Stuart's product in outlet stores globally this spring.
• And in North American department stores, we continue to grow our exclusive products program.
• While we are looking forward to our first stores to open or reopen with our new modern luxury concept starting tomorrow with our flagship in Shinjuku in Tokyo, these stores represent a more complete expression of our transformation.
• Over the next few weeks, we will be reopening our store at Time Warner Center in New York City and our Rodeo Drive flagship in Beverly Hills.
• Prior to holiday, we expect to have a total of 20 stores opened globally in the new concept, including two more here in the U.S.; Fashion Valley in San Diego and Americana in Manhasset, Long Island.
• And we're on track to renovate a total of 150 retail locations in FY 2015 and open 60 new stores globally in this new concept.
• In North American department stores, we have already completed 140 projects, installing open sell environments and replacing the old case lines and have seen an improvement versus the balance of doors. We now expect to convert over 300 locations from case line presentations to open sell this fiscal year.
• We also successfully launched the Shop Manager Program (05:29) in the wholesale channel, adding approximately 25 managers in key doors, with the goal of adding a total of 50 shop managers in fiscal 2015.
• We are in the process of finalizing negotiations to close approximately 70 retail locations, with the majority of closures occurring shortly after the holiday season.
• And we remain on track to fold 13 men's only outlet locations into existing stores, leveraging the team and the cross-shopping opportunity.
• We expect that these will happen after holiday to minimize disruption during the busy selling season.
• We also expect to close the two outlet stores identified in key markets as part of our learning agenda during the second half.
• On the marketing and customer experience front, we dramatically increased our print advertising pages with improved positioning, notably in the September fashion books.
• We also saw significant increases in editorial mentions and rank in all three major markets; North America, Japan and China.
• By the end of FY 2015, we expect to be down to one to two events per month.
• We are continuing to evolve our customer experience model to align with the evolution of the product and the new store concept.
• Second, earnings per share totaled $0.53, excluding transformation-related charges, as compared to $0.77 in the prior year's first quarter.
• Third, international sales increased 4% to $381 million from $365 million last year.
• On a constant currency basis, international sales rose 6%.
• As expected, China sales rose 10% with positive comparable store sales, while sales in our directly operated locations in Asia and Europe rose as well.
• And fourth, North American sales fell 19% to $634 million from $778 million last year, on a 24% comparable store sales decrease.