Gary Friedman
Welcome to the world of RH. Albert Einstein's three rules of work, "Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity," seem especially relevant at this moment.
Where compounding clutter from tariffs, global discord as a result of war, and the most dire housing market in decades, can make it difficult to separate the signal from the noise. It's important to remember necessity is the mother of invention, and our most important innovations were birthed during the most uncertain times.
Transforming an nearly bankrupt Restoration Hardware into RH, the leading luxury home brand in North America, was not a feat for the faint of heart. While the external challenges are somewhat familiar, our internal opportunities are massively different.
We're not closing stores and fighting to survive. We're building a never seen before brand that's positioned to thrive.
Before we get into the details of our strategy, let's start with a few facts that should quiet some of the noise. In 2025, RH achieved revenue growth of 8% and two-year growth of 15%, far outpacing our furniture industry peers by 8 to 30 points.
Adjusted EBITDA reached $597 million or 17.3% of revenues versus $539 million or 16.9% of revenues in 2024. Free cash flow of $252 million versus negative free cash flow of $214 million in 2024, an increase of $466 million year-over-year.
Those results were despite 2025 being our peak investment year, with $289 million of adjusted CapEx to support our global expansion, plus an additional $37 million to purchase the Michael Taylor, Formations, and Dennis & Leen brands to support the launch of our new concept, RH States. A strong performance considering the unusual circumstances.
Let me shift your focus to our strategy and how we expect our growth to accelerate over the next several years. We believe there are those with taste and no scale, and those with scale and no taste, and the idea of scaling taste is large and far-reaching.
We believe our goal to position RH as the arbiter of taste for the home will prove to be both disruptive and lucrative as we continue our quest to build one of the most admired brands in the world. We'd like to use a simple question to frame our significant opportunity: Who is the home brand for the luxury customer, the LVMH, Hermès, Cartier, or Cucinelli customer?
RH has curated the most compelling collection presented in the most inspiring spaces in the world. Our brand attracts the leading designers, artisans, and manufacturers, scaling and rendering their work more valuable across our growing global platform.
Our product is both categorically and stylistically dominant, enabling RH to address the largest market of any brand of its kind. We curate across the seven major product categories: furniture, upholstery, outdoor, lighting, linens, rugs, and decor.
We integrate across the three dominant product styles: traditional, contemporary, and modern, which we refer to as RH States, RH Interiors, and RH Modern. RH States, our newest brand extension launching this spring, will address the traditional market where the RH brand is currently underpenetrated.
60% of luxury homes feature classic or traditional architecture, which influences the majority of furniture purchasing behavior. RH States will feature the introduction of RH Bespoke Furniture, customizable collections from our recently acquired Michael Taylor, Joseph Jeup, Formations, and Dennis & Leen to-the-trade brands.
RH States will also include the introduction of RH Couture Upholstery by Dimitri and Co., tailor-made sofas, sectionals, and chairs of arguably the highest quality upholstery available anywhere in the world. Designers will be able to order custom-made sizes and finishes, plus specify COM fabrics.
RH Bespoke Furniture and RH Couture Upholstery will enable interior design firms to now specify RH for their most discerning clients and custom projects. RH States will also include collections from many of the most talented designers and artisans in our industry.
Let's take a look at some of their work. RH States will premiere at the opening of RH Milan, the Gallery on the Corso Venezia, a 70,000 square foot former palace during Salone, the largest design show in the world, with an estimated 500,000 visitors descending on the city that week.
The launch of RH States will include a dedicated Source Book mailing mid-May, an international advertising campaign, and free-standing States Galleries in Greenwich, Connecticut and the San Francisco Design District opening early summer, and the West Hollywood Design District opening in 2027. We believe RH States will become our largest and highest-margin brand extension, driving significant growth over the next several years.
Let me shift your attention to our multidimensional, physical-first global ecosystem, the world of RH, that goes far beyond a typical multichannel approach, inspiring customers to dream, design, dine, travel, and live in a world thoughtfully curated by RH, creating an emotional connection unlike any other brand in our industry. The question we often are asked is, why physical-first in a digital world?
Let me explain. Furniture remains the least digitized large retail category with an 80/20 store-to-online split, with luxury furniture estimated to be as high as 95/5.
Why do stores still dominate? Comfort, scale, finish, and quality are hard to judge online.
Even when customers purchase on a website, most experience the product in a store. We believe the physical manifestation of a brand will continue to be significantly more valuable than an invisible online one.
We also believe most retail stores are archaic windowless boxes that lack any sense of humanity. That's why we don't build retail stores.
We create inspiring spaces, spaces that are a reflection of human design, a study of balance and symmetry that creates harmony, spaces that blur the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality, spaces with garden courtyards, rooftop restaurants, wine and barista bars, spaces that activate all of the senses, and spaces that cannot be replicated online. While most have been closing or shrinking the size of their stores, we've been building some of the largest and most immersive spaces in the history of our industry.
Let's take a look at our most recent work. We believe our investments in building completely unique, immersive experiences in Paris, Milan, and London will set the stage for RH to become a truly global luxury brand.
It's important to understand that there are several strategically significant businesses embedded in our Galleries, including RH Interior Design, where we've become the largest residential interior design firm in the world, with projects from San Francisco to Sydney, Los Angeles to London, Miami to Milan, and Dallas to Dubai. We offer design services including interior architecture, landscape architecture, art and antique curation, and turnkey installations.
Another important business embedded in our Galleries is RH to the Trade, a specialized team that calls on, services, and supports interior design firms, assisting in the design, curation, delivery, and installation of many of their projects. RH Hospitality operates beautifully integrated restaurants, wine and barista bars in our Galleries that generate significant traffic and brand awareness.
While our Galleries might see several hundred customers per week, our restaurants feed several thousand. With 26 restaurants in operation today and scheduled to reach 40 by the end of 2027, RH is one of only seven globally owned and operated luxury restaurant brands with 20 or more locations worldwide.
We believe our Galleries create a unique competitive advantage that will likely never be duplicated in our lifetimes as the cost of construction at the luxury level has doubled post-COVID. To address that challenge, we've developed several immersive new Gallery concepts that will enable us to scale in a faster and more capital-efficient manner.
The first, and most revolutionary, is what we call an RH Design Compound, currently in development in Naples, Miami, and Walnut Creek. A compound is 6 to 8 independent buildings connected by beautifully landscaped garden courtyards with a sun-filled atrium restaurant anchoring the project.
Due to the absence of multiple stories that require steel structures, grand staircases, elevators, complex mechanical systems, and long development timelines, we believe we can build Design Compounds significantly faster and more capital-efficient than our prior Design Galleries. Another new approach to deploying the RH brand in a faster and more capital-efficient manner is what we call a Design Ecosystem, currently under construction in Greenwich and Palm Desert and in the development process in West Hollywood Design District.
An ecosystem is a multi-building brand presence on a street, in a neighborhood, design district, or shopping center. Our first ecosystem will be in Greenwich, Connecticut, and includes our Gallery at the historic post office, our new Outdoor Gallery opened last year, and our new RH States Gallery with an integrated restaurant opening in the former Ralph Lauren building this summer.
We've also developed a new single-story Gallery ranging from 15,000 to 20,000 square feet with a dramatic courtyard restaurant targeting secondary markets. We're currently under construction in Los Gatos, California and are in design development for Galleries in Ridgefield and Milwaukee.
We've been extremely pleased with our performance of our first freestanding RH Interior Design office in Palm Desert, California, and have plans to open a second Interior Design office in Malibu this fall. In total, we have an opportunity to expand our presence in 27 existing markets and open one of our new design concepts in 48 new markets across North America, representing a $2 billion opportunity.
Let me shift your attention to our business model and balance sheet. While we believe it's prudent to plan conservatively this year due to uncertainties around interest rates and inflation, and a plan revenue growth in the 4% to 8% range in 2026, we do expect growth to accelerate to 10% to 12% in 2027 and reach $5.4 to $5.8 billion by 2030, adjusted EBITDA in the 14% to 16% range for 2026, reaching 25% to 28% by 2030.
We expect cash flow of $300 to $400 million in 2026 and $500 to $600 million in 2027, inclusive of $200 to $250 million of asset sales each year. We expect cumulative cash flow of $3 billion by 2030, inclusive of the asset sales, and expect to be debt-free by 2029.
While one might look at the current market discord and argue that RH has been in the wrong place at the wrong time, I would argue we've used this period to position our brand to be in the perfect place at the perfect time. Let me explain why.
There are two important factors that will meaningfully expand the size of our market over the next 10 years. One is the exponential spending of high and ultra-high-net-worth consumers on the home.
Ultra-high-net-worth consumers with a net worth above $20 million own on average 3.7 homes. Billionaires own 10.
Ultra-high-net-worth consumers spend 6.4 times more on home furnishings than a consumer with a single primary residence. Two is the estimated $30 to $38 trillion wealth transfer projected to take place over the next 10 years, which is more than double the past 10 years.
Not only does the absolute dollar amount more than double, it's estimated that the dollars transfer from one to an average of seven people. It's possible over the next 10 years, our market will be multiple times larger than the past 10 years.
When you combine that with our efforts to elevate and expand our product, globally expand our platform, generate significant revenues and brand awareness with our immersive hospitality venues, I would argue that the RH brand is in the perfect place at the perfect time, and we will emerge from this period of clutter, discord, and difficulty as one of the highest-performing and most admired brands in the world.
Operator
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, simply press star one again.
We kindly ask that you limit your questions to one and one follow-up for today's call. You may requeue for any additional.
We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley.
Please go ahead. Thanks.
Simeon Gutman
Hey Gary, hey Jack. First question, I want to talk about demand signals from the consumer.
This has been a transitional period for the company. I realized the demand is outpacing a lot of other home furnishing companies, but it's coming at a pretty big cost to margin.
Expectations around demand improving while we see the margin of the business begin to turn. That's my first question.
Gary Friedman
Simeon, the margin pressures is somewhat disconnected and unrelated from the demand. The margin pressure is really from the kind of the investment cadence we have as far as expanding the business throughout Europe and some of the margin pressure coming from the tariffs from a transition and timing and resourcing.
You've basically have kind of an inflection point of we're in a kind of a peak investment period from a capital and a expense and cost perspective based on the investments we're making both from a global expansion and North American expansion point of view and from a product point of view with the launch of RH States. I think you have to think about the launch of RH States in Q2 will have significant cost with Source Book and advertising and launching costs without having much revenue until we get into the third and fourth quarter.
States, remember, is basically running late. Our original plan was to have States in the third and fourth quarter last year.
We have some timing issues, I think, when you think about the significant investments we're making both from a capital and expense perspective and we're going through kind of an unpredictable time. I think that's why it's important, as you're looking at the business, you're looking at the model, you're thinking about being an investor here, you have to have a longer-term view than a shorter-term view in periods like these, and in many ways, a lot of people are going left and we're going right.
As people are pulling back and trying to manage the margin side of their business, we're investing in the most significant way we have in our history, and that's just going to create some timing dislocations from an earnings perspective.
Simeon Gutman
Then my follow-up, you've made a couple of executive leadership changes. One, a new president, and two, a second person, and in the release it talked about potentially helping monetize some of the real estate.
Can you talk about both of those hires, what prompted them, and then, what does it speak to about the direction the business is heading in?
Gary Friedman
I think it's it's it's explained in the press releases. I don't know if there's anything different than that.
We mentioned we're extremely happy to have Dave Stanchak rejoin Team RH. He's was has made a significant impact while he was here both from a North American transformation point of view and a a global transformation point of view, and was involved in really setting up the structure of the real estate for our European expansion.
It's good to have Dave back and yeah, I think Dave is probably the most experienced experienced real estate executive on a retail point of view because he's, both not someone who's just been involved with mall leasing and, which is typical when you think about most retailers. Dave's been involved in in that real real estate investments.
He is an investor, he's had his own shopping centers and controls real estate himself, he's he comes at it from an investor perspective, a much bigger perspective, and, is a kind of transformational leader as you think about a a unique business like ours and the platform we're building, which is unlike anything anybody else is doing or has done, at a level of quality and locations and, on and so forth. There's not, not anything that isn't talked about, I think, in the press release.
Then with Veronica's joining RH, we've known Veronica for a long time. We've been able to observe her in her leadership and her ability to build what we think is, one of the leading manufacturing businesses in North America from an upholstery point of view.
Mostly what we I think think about here is not just, the the upholstery part of our business, but if you think about the the best luxury models in the world, whether you're looking at Vuitton or Hermès or Chanel or others, one of the things that is very unique with their business models is they have a very concentrated core business. 80% of their business is in, the leather goods and accessories part of the business.
It's very similar to our business from a penetration point of view. 80% of our business is furniture.
That's, that's typical if you look at the home furnishings business. If you're if you're in all categories, that's going to directionally be the mix, depending on how you position those categories.
We think there's an opportunity when you look at our business from a global scale of building a unique platform that's that's synergistic and appropriate for the unique platform we're building from the selling side. I think we built the have built and are building the most unique physical selling platform in the world, and I think it deserves and will be, positively impacted by building the most unique manufacturing and sourcing platform in the world.
Eliminating, when you think about the inefficiencies of manufacturing when you don't when you don't control your distribution, there's there's quite a bit. Long-term, we think, we can build a unique manufacturing platform and, as I said in the press release, a combination of owned, joint-ventured, and, outsourced that can be very unique and significantly accretive from a we think both a revenue and a cost perspective and a margin perspective.
We're excited. We think Veronica's the best person in the industry we've met.
We think she's a unique talent and leader. She's an engineer by education and experience, and has a big and very big and kind of strategic view of manufacturing and sourcing.
It's a new level of talent in the company. We've never had someone of this kind of pedigree and experience and talent, and we think she's going to do some incredible things long-term.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Forbes with Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.
Steven Forbes
Good afternoon, Gary, Jack. Gary, with Milan and London slated to open here in short order, curious if you could give us an update on RH Paris, and/or just comment on the anticipated revenue contribution from the broader RH international strategy behind the 2020 2030 reference year you laid out in your prepared remarks.
Obviously, just looking today for any color to help support or build conviction around those longer-term outlooks you laid out today. I'm
Gary Friedman
not sure I picked that question up correctly.
Jack Preston
The impact of international as it relates to the 2030 targets, how we think about that growth, how about that?
Gary Friedman
I think what we've articulated most recently over the last few quarters and really since I think our start, that the opening of Paris, Milan, and London is kind of the brand foundation to build on when you think about European expansion. They're the three most important cities in Europe.
We think they're important from a positioning of the brand and a brand awareness point of view, and besides, again, RH England, which is out in the countryside, which was important from a brand impression and awareness perspective and how to kind of make an entry into the European market, but these really are where we have significant investments in the presentation of the product, hospitality experience, which we think is going to be critical long-term to building brand awareness throughout Europe. Then one of the keys here is really not just these key stores, because as we assess the business in Europe, and we have since day one, believed that the basic distribution and where the sales will come from will be, long-term, more important in suburbs and second-home markets than cities.
That the cities are really going to be the key to brand awareness and driving the brand and positioning the brand, and we'll do significantly more revenues we believe in Paris and Milan and London than we will in other cities, and if we were ranking them, clearly London we believe is going to be the biggest market for us, as it should be, but our distribution of business is significantly suburbs and second-home markets in North America. 90, 90-92% of our business is in suburbs and second-home markets, and second-home markets are kind of like a suburb, right?
About 8% of our business is in the cities, and we think that distribution is going to be similar throughout Europe. If you looked at Apple's real estate strategy and you looked at their distribution throughout Europe, which we believe was a good kind of model for us to look at as far as a higher-end consumer, and you looked at Apple's North American kind of distribution versus our North American distribution, their penetration in suburbs, our penetration in suburbs, there's similarities there.
We're more highly probably penetrated in second-home markets than they are. Most people have their phone with them.
It's one of the keys for I think Dave's joining the company, too, is just to continue that leadership into Europe and building out into the suburbs and into the second-home markets to cover the business. Strategically we're setting up the business in the kind of key markets that you would from a brand and awareness perspective.
Not that we don't think that the business is going to have revenues there, we just think the biggest revenues are going to come long-term when you think about the longer-term plan as we expand into the suburbs and markets where people really buy much more furniture, both indoors and outdoors.
Steven Forbes
Thanks for that. Maybe just a quick follow-up.
Obviously, great to hear Dave rejoining the company.
Gary Friedman
You talked about 250
Steven Forbes
You talked about $250 million of asset sales in each of the next two years. Sort of a two-part question.
One, can you speak to sort of the value of the non-core assets or the assets that you don't plan to operate in the future versus the value of the assets RH is still planning to operate in the future? Then maybe any color on sort of timing for 2026 asset sales as we think through the potential interest expense savings?
Gary Friedman
As far as that mix, I'd say the majority of the asset sales are assets that we will be operating that are kind of sale-leaseback kind of properties, and then there's some investment properties that we had in Aspen and a few other things that we've decided not to pursue for whatever reason. We own a building in Madrid, and we're not going to pursue the development of that.
We're fine with the location we have today. It's just taking a look at our balance sheet and just turning those assets into cash as we said we would be doing.
We've said we have about a half a billion dollars of real estate assets that we could monetize, and yeah, we're going to begin to monetize those. Dave has got tremendous experience on that end of real estate.
He feels very confident in what we're going to be able to do. Some of these are properties that we had purchased and had developed over the last two to three years, I guess.
You've got to think about a lot of our investment horizons are pretty long, when you think about some of the Galleries that we've built, you've got significant time to design and develop and get through the approval process and then you've got significant time building them. You have a relatively long holding time, and I think post-COVID, all the construction costs have went up, particularly at the luxury level, and those prompted us, as we communicated in the video, to develop just other, faster, more flexible ways to deploy the brand.
When you think about the Design Compounds and think about where the first couple of are going, in Naples, we're taking what was formerly a Nordstrom site. In Walnut Creek, we're taking what was formerly a Neiman Marcus site.
Then in Miami, we're developing kind of a parking lot site kind of a key visible area in Miami, that is a kind of a Bank of America, but we think about those opportunities to be significantly faster, more capital-efficient. We've built most of our big kind of, I'd say, the higher investment, higher capital side of the business.
We've been transforming the real estate here now for 15 years. Even on a European and global point of view, I would say that we have Sydney coming, but that's a different model that's really being built by the developer, it's not going to take much capital from RH.
We have significant assets. We're going to now monetize, turning to cash.
Then we've got some assets in Aspen and other things like that that we'll monetize over time. A lot of that will come off the balance sheet.
Jack, do you have anything to add?
Jack Preston
I think from a timing perspective, Steve, we'll just keep you posted. We're not ready to commit as to the cadence in 2026, and we'll just update you as appropriate.
Steven Forbes
Thank you both.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Max Rakhlenko with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Max Rakhlenko
Hey, thanks a lot for taking my question. First, on States, can you provide color on how you're thinking about scaling the collection?
We know when the books will hit, but how are you thinking about the cadence of the product rollout into the Galleries? How are you looking to buy inventory, etc.?
Just if you could compare and contrast this collection versus the Modern and then Interiors launches that you had a couple years back.
Gary Friedman
Sure. The books will hit kind of mid-May, and gosh, we've got a handful of stores that will get the initial product that we'll be able to kind of test and get some reads on, but we feel very confident in this collection.
We've went out with a bigger inventory buy, and a lot of it based on just the data. You've got 60% of luxury homes in America that have classic and traditional architecture.
It is really the next big trend. As you think about how the trends cycle through, a lot of the product you're going to see cycle through, it's why we made some of the acquisitions that we made, whether it's the Michael Taylor brand and the famous dining table and so on and so forth, to really be able to not only have authority, but be able to have intellectual property rights for a lot of the kind of key products that are going to come.
We just think it's going to be a big building trend, but in the second half, we'll be in how many Galleries do we think? 30, about 30, 40 Galleries, our top 30, 40 Galleries, in the large Design Galleries will take over the first floor with RH States.
This is a significant launch, and it's a significant bet.
Max Rakhlenko
Got it. That's helpful.
Then just a two-parter on margins. If you could just isolate how you're thinking about the impact of tariffs for 2026, both the cadence and magnitude, as I don't think you discussed that in the letter this time around.
Then separately, if we exclude tariffs and some of the timing shifts that you discussed earlier on the call, how healthy are your product margins as we think about the long-term targets you laid out? How much higher can the product margins go as you do continue to add these new collections that I think come with much higher margins?
If we just think about the core, where can the business go from a product margin perspective?
Gary Friedman
I think we're not giving detailed margin forecasts, but our product margins are relatively healthy, except for some bumps we're going through from a tariff point of view. I think we've been able to perform reasonably well.
If you exclude kind of the weight that we have from this investment cycle and the drag from Europe and you kind of take a look at the business and yeah, I think one of the things we're doing as we think about this business, a lot of times with brands, as you go through the history of brands, you've got kind of the levels and the transformations you make to kind of get to where you want to go, and this cycle we're in now, it's a key investment cycle. Clearly we've spent a lot of capital.
We've made big investments to kind of position the brand, not only in North America, but position it in Europe for the long term. Once you get past those cycles, we're going to have great leverage.
Opening Galleries like we're opening and restaurants like we're opening are significant costs, especially when you're doing them in a different country. There's just more travel, more expense from hiring people and building the organizations and so on and so forth.
I just think it's not just the product margins. It's really just the overall margin structure of the business.
Once we go post-peak here on this investment cycle both from a capital and from an expense and cost point of view, I think the model of this business is going to look like one of the best models people have ever seen in our industry. If not the best model, I think it's going to be the best model anyone's seen.
We feel confident in that. We're also from a global perspective navigating through very uncertain times.
We do have a product mix that is going to be somewhat more cyclical and have more of a drag. When you're really focused on the furniture business versus the home furnishings, the broader furnishings business, accessories business, tabletop business, kitchen businesses, on and so forth, you're going to have more weight during times like these.
That's going to require you to fight for more business, but throughout our history, we've always fought for the business in times like these. We've always been more promotional than less promotional in times like these, and we think it's times like these that there's a lot of fallout.
There's going to be a lot of competition that's not going to make it through these times. There's been greater fallout in the furniture business, as most people know over the last few years, than in any time in history.
I think as long as the housing market remains difficult, there's just going to be a lot less competition, and we're going to be better positioned than we've ever been for the other side of the cycle. Think about the States expansion over really a five-year horizon from a product point of view, I'd say over the next five years, States assortment is going to grow, it's going to build, it's going to become more dominant, the trend is going to that wave is going to keep building over the next 5 to 10 years, right?
I just think about the whole model of the business, and that's why we're very confident in the long-term model. I think what confuses people is most public companies go public, and they kind of manage the business, right?
They have a simple rollout, and they're going to do so many stores a year, and the stores are all the same, and everything's really predictable, and most of them go through their rollout cycle of 5 to 7 to 10 years, what amount of time they stay relevant for, and then usually becomes kind of a dated concept over time. That's why we like to say that most retail malls are graveyards for short-lived ideas.
Most retail concepts don't live out the first term or second term of their leases. We're going through one of those investment cycles that will leapfrog this business forward, and you're looking at kind of peak investment cycle and kind of trough kind of economic cycle, right?
Even with those two, you've still got a business here with a kind of a mid-teens EBITDA margin to high teens EBITDA margin, and once you get past this cycle, there's a lot of leverage in this model. Yeah.
Jack Preston
Max, I'll add on tariffs. In Q4, we talked about last year tariffs having an impact of 90 basis points in terms of a drag, and Q4, we had talked about 170.
We ended up at 190 in Q4. The way we characterized that in the last call is that's ultimately by Q4, you're fully baked into the sort of prior tariff regime.
Obviously, things have changed now with the Supreme Court decision, but tariffs come out in and out on turn, as you know. While in the, let's say in the first half, you might have some tailwinds from that relatively lower rate that exists under Section 122 today, who knows what happens in the second half.
There's obviously a sprint to replace all those tariffs and potentially more, as Trump first said, under Section 301 in the back half. We're just playing by ear and being, as we're nimble and we're dynamic.
As far as last year's tariff impact, what sort of fully baked in by Q4, a bit of an indicator as to how things play out the first half, but obviously, the math will tell you that there's going to be some relief there as far as that direct tariff drag is concerned. We'll keep you updated as things play out.
Gary Friedman
Obviously, we're watching it like you guys are watching.
Max Rakhlenko
Got it. Thanks a lot, guys, and best regards.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Zaccone with Citi. Please go ahead.
Steven Zaccone
Great, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.
I wanted to ask about the cadence of the year from a revenue growth perspective, because the first quarter obviously calling for revenue to be down, but then the full year it looks like an acceleration in the back half. Can you just talk through the points of the acceleration?
I assume States is a big piece. How much is international?
Any details you could share would be helpful.
Gary Friedman
Clearly it's international and States. The cycling of States across the entire platform, international, from opening cadence and just what we think, the growth in the first couple of years.
RH England is kind of our best point of history and we know how that ramps, we expect the international stores to have a ramp to them over the first several years. When you think about the back half, sure, you've got openings in North America, you've got openings in Europe, you've got States, in Q3, Q4, you'll start seeing the revenues flow from demand in Q2, and you'll see a ramp in States.
You'll have a second mailing of the book, you'll have newness in both Interiors and Modern. All of those things combined, we believe, is a big step up in the business in the second half.
We would have expected more in the back half of last year and the first half of this year because States would have been part of that cadence.
Steven Zaccone
Understood. Then second question I have is just on the margin recovery of the business, right?
Because we've been in an investment period for the business for some time, and I think you've used the term leapfrog in terms of margins in the past. For the longer-duration investor, when you look at the business, what do you think is the biggest factor holding back margins from improving?
Is it just the fact that some of the investments have taken a little bit longer and have been a little bit higher than expected? Has it been the top line, the macro environment?
How do we think about some of the unlocks to see that margin improvement on the other side come back stronger? Thanks.
Gary Friedman
I think you've just outlined it. We're in peak investment cycle and trough economic cycle, especially from a home point of view.
Not just trough investment cycle, you've had the whole kind of chaotic tariff cycle that's caused kind of significant disruption on the business. We've resourced kind of 40% of our assortment, business of our size, resourcing 40% of your core assortment, which is really 40% of the assortment's probably bigger, it's a larger part of the business.
It's all of those things together, Steve. This is a good time to buy our stock.
This is when people create generational wealth, right? This is no different than trough times in a real estate market, trough times in any kind of a transitional time for an industry or business, and all businesses in our industry get hit in these times, and all businesses that survive to the other side get a lift in this time.
I think what's different is we've historically been investors during times like this. It's when we've seen the biggest opportunities.
This time is, I think, different than previous times because we're in a kind of a real peak investment cycle. We're opening Europe, we're launching new businesses, and the opportunity to have a leapfrog.
If we're more right than wrong, and we don't have to be completely right. We just have to be directionally right here.
We say, don't let perfect be the enemy of great, and yeah, we've got a lot of experience here in this company. We've been doing this a long time, and I think we've proven that we've been a lot more right than a lot more wrong.
If you think about the transformation from what was Restoration Hardware before to what is RH today, if you think about the transformation of this brand over a 20-plus-year period, and try to say, name other brands that have made transformations like that, name other brands that are positioned like we are, these are the times that businesses like ours separate ourselves even farther from the pack. You have to make those investments.
You have to take that level of risk to be able to do that. We are not a kind of a management culture or leadership culture and we're constantly innovating and investing.
This is one of those significant cycles that just happens to be, yeah, during a significant down cycle, especially focused on our industry. We're in a better position than we've ever been from a historical point of view to weather the storm.
I think if you just think about what does the next 5 years look like from an investment point of view? We're going to come off if you take that $37 million and the 280, $9 million, you've got kind of a peak kind of investment year historically, and then we come off that peak and we come into the $250 to $260 million, and then that's going to drop to $150 to $170 million a year.
You think about the company growing, the capital investment period coming down, and it's not just the capital, right? The investment, but it's also all the expense that's connected to that capital, all the expense that's connected to bringing up those stores, training the people, building the infrastructure, building the distribution capability in the business, all the marketing and advertising that supports a launch, all the time and energy to kind of build out the assortments, develop all the products at scale to create a leapfrog, not to kind of slightly outperform.
It's no different than taking a $300 million business that was losing $40 million a year, that was Restoration Hardware, and creating RH that's $3.5 billion business. Think about what the next cycle looks like.
The next cycle is, I think, even more magnified. That we've even given you our framework for the model, and the biggest pieces of the model are the pieces we're talking about.
If I was on the outside looking at this, I'd say, hey, what is the outlook for capital investments as they go forward? Not just thinking about the capital, but what is the cost investments that are connected to that capital?
How does that change over the next 5 years, and how does it change over the next couple of years, right? Just over the next couple of years, the investment cycle is post-peak and is going to turn down and accelerate in a downward way just as revenues are going to accelerate in a positive way, right?
When you have those two things going in different directions, that's when you have inflection points in return on invested capital, on margins, earnings, et cetera, et cetera. The framework for the math is pretty simple.
I think the strategy, because it's never been seen before, can be suspect and could be hard to understand. There can be less believers than more believers at certain times.
Look, and I don't blame anybody for kind of saying, hey, this looks like an uncertain time to invest, whether it's in our stock or any stock in our category. Especially, you've got to kind of believe in the longer-term bet here.
We think this is going to be one of the best bets that people will make, as referenced by my personal investments here. That's how we think about it.
Steven Zaccone
Yep, thanks for all the detail. Best of luck.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Lasser with UBS. Please go ahead.
Michael Lasser
Good evening. Thank you so much for taking my question.
Gary, you've laid out this ambitious and aspirational plan to take advantage of what seems like a very large and growing addressable market, and yet the market's not really willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Part of that is RH has been averse to and does not really look at its business on the same-store basis, which is understandable, and that's long how you've articulated it.
At this point, that has defaulted to the narrative where RH needs to grow concepts, extend its physical footprint in order to drive growth, and that comes with a significant cost. As a result, it may not be able to realize its aspirations.
Understanding that it's come a long way from its origins, but the market relies heavily on the recent experience. Why, based on the recent experience, is the default of the market wrong?
Gary Friedman
I think it's what I just said. You have to think about peak investment period, and what hopefully is a low point in the trough from a market perspective.
Again, I think if you pull out the investments, if you just pull out the European drag of the investments, think about we're investing in Europe. The European market is worse than the American market right now.
That we're investing in a time you likely would like to not invest, but you can't make long-term real estate investments and expect to get them all right, right? The why is the simple model, Michael, of saying I'm cycling peak investments and I'm cycling, hopefully what is trough growth, right?
We've got significant growth opportunities as we've laid out, and the costs are going to kind of go away. A lot of people thought Amazon wasn't going to make a lot of money until it did, right?
I think it's that simple. I think that the key is, don't bank this cost structure into your model right now.
You're looking at a peak cost structure both from capital and an expense perspective. These Galleries that we're opening are the most expensive Galleries that we've opened, both from a capital and a cost point of view.
Michael Lasser
Got you. Thank you.
Very helpful. To put it in parlance that the investment community would think about it is essentially this is the peak of the destruction.
There will be significant same-brand growth that will lead to sizable margin expansion, especially as these investments moderate. Now, the counterpoint would be, hey, we're living in a world of high uncertainty between the geopolitical, the technological, and other factors.
What would be the sensitivity to your outlook for free cash flow in the event that sales in the back half just don't materialize like you would expect? Without asking you to show your hand, but it is important to the investment case, what options would you pursue in the event you needed more financial flexibility to execute on your strategy?
Thank you very much.
Gary Friedman
That's no, it's I think it's a great question, Michael. Look, we we've got the ability to pull back investments further, right?
When I when I think about the major strategic investments that, we had a we had a we had to decide to go international, invest into Europe years ago, right? These these weren't short-term decisions.
These were 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago, right? We, were making some of these decisions and investments, and the those decisions are easy, like are are not easy to pull back on, right?
The but we're cycling those. We've got a lot of flexibility when you think about the next waves of investments, whether it's, expanding in North America, whether it's expanding in Europe, you're you're looking at much smaller investments.
You're looking at much more flexible real estate, many more choices, et cetera, et cetera. You you're just not going to have the same kind of cost.
We're going to the the cost of building some of the new concepts that we've laid out, just the the way we're thinking about deploying capital in North America through compounds and ecosystems and secondary market Galleries that are in the 15 to 20,000 square foot range, just the real estate risk, the investment risk of those, the financial participation of, developers and landlords is much higher than when you're investing in major cities internationally. It's just a very different investment cadence.
We just have a lot, yeah, and they don't and you don't have the same time horizon, right? There's just a lot of a lot more flexibility.
When I I look at, I'd I'd say, peak investment, peak risk right now. You're you're looking at peak investment, peak risk, and, who knows from day to day or hour to hour about the geopolitical and, and economic environment.
Of course, this is, kind of different times, and there's, major news headlines are made by, tweets and posts today, right? They happen all day long.
I I just think that if you if you're just trying to say, okay, how do I think about the go-forward, there's just a lot less risk. I there's a lot more risk, I'd say, over the last couple of years than over the next couple of years.
Is there is there further risk to the housing market? There There always could be further risk.
There always could be, other things. Could the war escalate?
Could China try to take Taiwan? Could Yeah, there's a lot of things that can go the wrong way.
We can all kind of imagine what those look like. It's no different than calculating what the federal funds rate's going to be, right?
Like everybody's been wrong on that, and unfortunately, that's been bad for our business, right? There was supposed to be three cuts to the federal funds rate this year.
Now it looks like there's going to be no cuts and there might be hikes. Or does that raise some short-term risk?
It does. Is, can we navigate through that?
We can. Do we have more upside than downside in the second half from a revenue, demand and revenue point of view?
We do. I I I kind of say, look, if I was on the outside of this today and I had the information that, the outside world has that we're giving you today, I'd I'd say it's, you're you can I would Look, I I bought this stock at what, $216 a share.
I I bought $10 million of this stock. I was wrong, what's is the low point.
I I don't see, too much more downside risk in the model. Most of the work is behind us, building the Galleries, getting the people trained, bringing up restaurants internationally.
We the the product side I think is a lot less risky. We're not going into some unknown aesthetic or trend.
We're we're betting on, what is kind of the biggest market, the traditional classic market, and it just so happens if you look at the trend that's going to come through, that is going to be the next trend. Your question's right.
We we have toggles we can pull. We have assets that we can monetize, and we're we're pretty good at navigating through times like this.
We've got it, yeah, this is my 26th year here. I've seen cycles, and this team's seen cycles, and we've navigated through, I would say, somewhat similar times, if not completely similar times.
Michael Lasser
Got you. Very helpful.
Thank you so much, and look forward to doing another 26.
Gary Friedman
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Brad Thomas
Hi, thank you. Gary, first I wanted to follow up a bit more about the RH States line.
You I believe alluded to working more with designers and decorators in this, and so I was hoping you could talk a bit more if the selling process or how you go to market needs to be different on this line that seems to have so much potential for you.
Gary Friedman
We do a big business with interior designers today. We have I think, well, I outlined in my comments that we have multiple businesses embedded in our Galleries.
We have a trade team that services interior designers and decorators. That's a meaningful part of our business.
We think it will become a bigger part of our business, especially with the launch of RH Bespoke Furniture and RH Couture Upholstery, because that's going to open up the ability to have kind of more customizable products from a size, fabrics, finish, and so on and so forth. That will open up I think it should open up that market pretty significantly.
We have some other strategies to address that market that you'll hear more about that will kind of support what we're doing from a marketing point of view. States I think is when you think again about the high-end part of the business that we're going to address with States, and that's just kind of the beginning.
We'll also address that throughout the entire brand, but let's say States represents the launch of RH Bespoke Furniture and the launch of RH Couture Upholstery, kind of framing those, think about those across the whole business long-term.
Brad Thomas
That's helpful. If I could ask a follow-up on the 2030 margin targets, just wondering if there's any high-level framework to think about perhaps how international fits into that and how much mix or leverage from sales factors into that.
Thanks.
Gary Friedman
We have it, we have some data now. We kind of know, as we've opened some of these, how they're evolving, how to think about how they might evolve and grow and so I think we have very reasonable targets internationally mixed into this.
I don't think there's anything that's a stretch perspective. When you just look at the total composition of kind of the top line accelerating in the out years to 12% growth, I think the way I'd think about that is you've got about 4 to 5 points from the platform expansion.
You've got 3 to 4 points, maybe 5 points from the product expansion, and you've got at some point here, we think there's a couple of points the housing market coming back. I don't think we're going to be in a 9 or 10-year downturn of the housing market.
Let's hope not. If it doesn't come back, it's not like we've got a big number out there for the housing market.
We've got a kind of a 2 to 3 point hope in the out years of that plan that we'll see some lift in the housing market. If we see a lift in the housing market, based on where it's been, you could argue there's a 10-point lift from the housing market in the out years.
If that happens, you don't have us growing at 10 to 12, you have us growing at 18 to 22.
Brad Thomas
Thanks, Gary. Looking forward to getting my States book in a few months.
Gary Friedman
Thanks, Brad.
Operator
Your final question comes from the line of Marius Morar with Zalman. Please go ahead.
Marius Morar
Thank you, and good afternoon. Just a quick question on the growth outlook for next year.
Gary, I think in the video, you mentioned that it's a bit conservative. I was just wondering, at the low end, do you sort of embed any sort of deterioration in the housing market or maybe an increase in interest rates?
Gary Friedman
I think we're conservative throughout the second half. Obviously, we have embedded the growth from our platform and the new Galleries and the Galleries that are cycling, and we've got growth from States and some of the newness and expansion of the assortment in Interiors and Modern.
Do we have the housing market getting worse? I'd say we have embedded in this the current environment right now, which I believe is worse, and mostly from a geopolitical point of view and a perception point of view of more things can go wrong than maybe can go right.
I think that's how the markets generally risk times like these when you've got uncertainty and you've got global tensions and war and oil issues and the endless amount of things that oil impacts, right? Did the housing market get better when interest rates came down somewhat?
Not really. Is the housing market going to get worse if we get 25, 50, 75 basis points, we get three hikes?
I don't think it gets much worse. I think you've got to think back at history and say in 1978, there's 4.06 million homes sold, and that was a low point.
In 2000 and 2003, '4, and '5, you had 4.06 million homes sold, on average, 4 to 4.06, somewhere about 4.03. That's with 53 I think it's 53% more people, right?
It's hard to believe it gets worse than this. Could it get worse than this for a small period?
None of us have seen a world war in our lifetimes, right? Is a risk of world war?
I don't think so. I think cooler heads will prevail, but this is uncertain times.
I think whether the interest rates go up or down, 25 to 75 basis points to 100 basis points, I don't think it's going to change much in the housing market. If the interest rates go up 300 or 400 basis points, I think that's different.
I think they go down 100 basis points with pricing coming down, which if pricing is coming down across the market, I think you're going to see a housing market acceleration. I'd say short-term, handicap it as even.
I think we're seeing pressure right now. Longer-term, I think you have to kind of handicap it as a positive, because we're now in the fourth year of the worst housing market in 40 to 50 years.
That hasn't happened in my lifetime. I've never seen two down years, seen one and a half down years in my career.
I've never seen three down years, and I surely never seen a fourth down year. I don't think anybody has.
How long does it stay here? I don't know, call today the new normal and build out from here.
At some point, I think housing market comes back, and I think it's more likely to come back than go down. If the interest rates are moving 50 to 75 basis points to 100 basis points, I don't know if that moves the needle.
Plus or minus, on the minus side, you're getting closer to affordability, right? On the upside, you could have some moderate slowing.
I think that the bigger thing is if we have real inflation and interest rates have to rise 3, 400 basis points, that's a problem.
Marius Morar
That's helpful. Maybe a quick follow-up.
In the first quarter guidance, do you also embed any drag from the back order and special order similar to the drag you had in the fourth quarter?
Gary Friedman
Can you answer that?
Jack Preston
That's something that's going to take probably until the second half to fully resolve itself, just because of the complexities of resourcing. There's something that
Gary Friedman
we faced that drag in, yeah.
Marius Morar
Is that getting worse in the first quarter?
Jack Preston
There's some modest impact that's over and above what we felt in Q4, and then we'll see the resolution of that in the second half.
Marius Morar
Very helpful. Thank you.
Gary Friedman
It's basically from the amount of resourcing and just the new factories being brought up in different countries, being able to ramp up fast enough. That's the biggest hit is coming from tariff-related resourcing of furniture, outdoor furniture, specifically metal outdoor furniture, lighting is a big one, rugs is a big one, and furniture is a big one.
If you think about our business, and you take the furniture part of the business, which is about 80%, and then you take lighting and rugs, which are the next biggest pieces, those are all being impacted. The by far biggest part of our business has been all impacted in a bigger way.
Resourcing things like bedding, pillows, throws, accessories, picture frames, things like that, which are not, from a percentage point of view, not a very big part of our business, much easier to resource those things, much easier to move picture frames, pillowcases, throws, tabletop, glassware, accessories, things like that, much, much easier. When you talk about ramping furniture factories, lighting factories, rug factories, moving those categories, it's just more complex.
It's just slower to scale and transition. When you think about just being on the manufacturing side, our manufacturing partners moving from one country to another, building factories, scaling them, and then all of a sudden having tariffs change and going, "Oh god, what do I do now?"
Right? Am I doing the right thing?
Think about the rug business, and for a while there, India was a big source of rugs, and you get hit with a 50% tariff, and you're sourcing rugs to other countries. There's not that many places that have that kind of capacity to move those businesses.
Same thing with lighting. Lighting is very different than any other kind of an item.
Again, the more accessories, more seasonal parts of the business, you want to resource Christmas ornaments, things like that, very simple. When you're resourcing the core part of our business, much more complex.
Operator
That concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Gary Friedman for closing remarks.
Gary Friedman
Thanks. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. We know this is an uncertain time in our business.
Hopefully, we've shed some light to give you more certainty and more confidence in our outlook and our strategy. We believe this is the most important period in our history, and we've never been more excited about the outlook and what we believe will be the outcome.
We look forward to talking to you soon. Thank you for all the leadership and partnership from our teams and our partners all around the world.
Everybody's working hard to kind of get to the next place. Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining.
You may now disconnect.