Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Giles Wilson and I on the call this morning. You've hopefully all read the statement, in a moment we'll open up to your questions, but before we do, let me give you a brief update on our strategic progress to date.

This year, my first in the role, is a year of pivot. What do I mean by that?

Making the necessary changes to set us up for sustained, profitable growth. As I've said each time I've spoken to you, these changes can involve hard decisions, such as returning to a disciplined approach to promotions and incurring the top-line headwind as a result.

It means simplifying our operating model and ways of working to ensure our people and processes are truly consumer first and contribute to making this the world's most desired premium footwear brand. It means the hard work optimizing each market for the right distribution so our wholesale partners and our DTC offering complement each other instead of acting in competition.

It means reducing reliance on off-price deals, particularly in America wholesale, which if you remember was a top-line benefit in FY25. It means starting to assemble a lineup of fantastic distribution partners in new markets such as LatAm and UAE, where it doesn't make sense for us to have a DTC presence, but where there is still untapped demand for our brand.

Those are some of the things that this pivot is about. Our Q3 figures demonstrate the progress we're making.

I'd call out Americas where, on a two-year stacked basis, our growth rate has accelerated by almost 20 percentage points. This growth was across both retail, through great in-store execution, and wholesale, particularly with our largest partners.

Wholesale across the group performed well, and Q3 is the first quarter in over three years where we've achieved wholesale growth in all three regions. You will recall me talking about the importance of wholesale growth in this strategy.

APAC saw a strong full-price revenue performance, and again, I'd call out the important market of South Korea as a standout market for us. E-commerce was the channel particularly impacted by our planned reduction in promotions and clearance, and you'll see that across all three regions.

EMEA also continued to experience a challenging consumer backdrop, which I'm sure you've heard from other companies, and coupled with our disciplined approach to promotions, this has impacted our DTC results in EMEA. It is worth highlighting, however, that overall EMEA pairs were slightly up in the period, we're continuing to get pairs on feet, as well as grow our bags and accessories business.

We will deliver all four of our strategic objectives this year. What are they?

Reducing reliance on discounted pairs in America wholesale, driving pairs growth in those new product families I've told you about, Buzz, Zebzag, Lowell, opening in new markets through our capital-light structure, and simplifying our operating model so we better serve our consumers. As we talked about in November, the primary financial metrics we'll focus on this year are quality of our revenues, profit before tax, and cash.

On all three, we're performing in line with our plans and happy with our progress. We remain on track to deliver significant year-on-year growth in PBT through a combination of healthy margin and good quality revenue and strong cost control.

We're in year one of a multi-year strategy at Dr. Martens changing from a channel-first mindset to a consumer-first mindset, there remains much work to do.

While we're pleased with progress, we continue to be laser-focused on execution. You'll hear me talk about that again and again.

With that, I'll open it up to questions. Nadia, over to you.

Morning, everyone. A couple from me.

The first question is, could you talk about the sell-through rate in the US wholesale, and sort of more generally, the quality of the stock in both wholesale and DTC at the end of the period, you sort of pretty happy with where you are? My second question is just on the US price increases for spring/summer, which you are putting through to offset tariffs.

Can you talk about how these have been put through, what sort of level of increase has gone through in the end, and are there any early indications on how they've been received? Thanks very much.

Yes. Kate, as this is just a a Q3 trading update.

Where we're happy with sell-through rates, it's it's the reason why the order books are healthy, because as the as partners sell through, they place future orders, and because of that confidence in the performance. We're happy with sell-through rates, I'm not going to give you any specific figures, but the the health of the order book is is the ultimate signal that that is in a good place.

In terms of quality of stock, we're also really happy with with what we have and with what our partners have. There is some in-season orders that the that our partners place, but it really is the order book, the forward-looking order book for autumn/winter '26 and spring/summer '27 that gives us the the gives us the confidence in the order book.

They have the right levels of stock, inventories are significantly down, and more importantly, they have a broader assortment of product than what they probably had 12, 18 months ago. On US price, it's still early days.

We're still in the third week here, but we have no reason to be not no evidence to be worried about that. Those price increases were different for different products, I can't kind of give you a a specific increase by individual products.

In in terms of how the consumer is reacting to that, it's early days, but we've seen nothing to worry to worry about. The most important point is to again mention that while this is this is to mitigate tariffs, this is really the first price increase we've taken in three years in America, we are not expecting any negative consumer reaction, but we will continue to track how that performs in the market.

Just to say that we're now seeing it in the marketplace. Wholesale customers, you might have now taken that increase through, it's not we're getting pushback from our wholesale partners.

Perfect. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

All right, morning, guys. Two questions from me, please.

First one just on the EMEA, it seems like obviously EMEA has been undermined, I guess, to a degree by discounting within the wholesale channel. How do you deal with that, and does that change your thinking in terms of channel mix going forward?

Second question is just on the order book for autumn/winter '26, which I guess we're in the sort of build for at the moment. Can you talk about how that's going, both in terms of, I suppose, overall size of the order book and also the quality of the order book, we've talked about in the past, obviously, the sort of mix of product that's going in there?

I'll answer the second question first, and it's very similar to what I said to Kate about the overall order book. We're happy with the quality of the order book, it's a healthy order book, our partners are buying a spectrum of products, they're backing our core products, but also backing our new stories, and as I've talked to you previously, we can go into more depth in the full year, how we really work closely with them over multiple seasons as opposed to just give them a portfolio of products to place an order on.

We're really happy with the diversity and the spectrum of assortment that are buying, and that's definitely the case in EMEA. As you've seen, EMEA wholesale is in growth, and so that's a really healthy relationship there.

Then maybe, and I wanted to answer that first, because the second question, Q3 was promotional in EMEA, and the consumer, generally speaking, across categories, not just in our sector, was looking for deals. Wholesale has a really good role to play for us in that.

We've never said that this business shouldn't have promotion. It is right to reward the consumer with a deal, and particularly in that as you approach sort of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, that whole period leading up to Christmas, the consumer rightly so, and all of us do it, looks for a deal, and it is important that our wholesale partners, who have a spectrum of brands to think about, can offer the consumer a deal.

I think what we do is to make sure that in our DTC offering that we don't have to stretch as much as the wholesale partners do. I talk to you how we need to think about DTC less in competition with wholesale and much more as working in complement.

There are times when I'm really happy for wholesale to offer the consumer a discount, a promotion, and that's how the consumer will get that product from us, and our DTC will remain more full price, more with some of our DTC exclusive offerings. I'll give you an example, we did really well with our collaborations in Q3, whether that was something like Wednesday or the Marc Jacobs, those are not available in wholesale, they only sold in DTC at full price.

That's the way we think about the marketplace. Every different channel has a role to play, and so I'm not critical of our wholesale partners who offered some discounts, I just want to make sure that in DTC we don't think that we have to play the same game.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

I've got two questions, please. The first one is about the return on advertising spend.

I'm just wondering if you've been able to size up the effectiveness of your new marketing approach at this point. Then the second question, just about availability.

Did you order too lightly in any particular product areas or for any particular regions? Could you have sold more perhaps in DTC?

Thank you.

Return on advertising spend, I think probably it's a good question. We're constantly reviewing it.

We've got much better data through our customer data platform, we can start to see how to be much more targeted about the way we're doing that type of advertising. I think in terms of the bigger campaigns, we obviously have a big campaign one or two a year.

We saw real interest from the rain boot. That particularly was one that generated a lot of interest and a lot of discussion around the product.

How you measure the exact returns is more, I suppose, you see through footfall. I think the other bits I think I would say is that we are trying to be much more targeted and understand how we work it through the e-com machine.

I think you should see it. In terms of the second question, which I think is more about lines, it's like all things.

We had a couple of really good products this year. We talked about it at the half year, the Casey boot.

We talked about the fact that actually that sold through really really quickly. We saw that with the Dunwich Flower Sandal, and yes, it would have been lovely to have had some more of that.

It was pent-up demand, and it's great, because it generates that interest. Generally, stock availability is pretty good.

The US particularly has been challenged if any area that we would say. We've seen two or three really good products that have gone really well.

The Casey was a good one, we saw it with the Dunwich, we've also seen it with the Mary Jane, and the courage is to make sure we source it. Ultimately, we're pleased with our overall, I suppose, levels of inventory.

It's always nice to have a product that hits the scarcity as well.

Hey, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

I'll have two, please. The first one would be on the US market, and specifically the US footwear market.

How would you characterize the market backdrop and the performance specifically of the boots category? How would you qualify the competitive environment, how do you think it's evolving, and how would you describe Docs' relative market share?

My second question would be on the different cost initiatives. How have they tracked relative to your expectations, and in the event of a softer environment in Q4 and into next year, what further scope would there be for cost rationalization?

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Adrien. I'll take the first question and Giles will talk to you a bit about about cost.

As you can imagine, and as you've probably heard from lots of other people, there is some there is a bifurcation happening in the in the consumer market in in the States, and a lot of it is is to be honest playing to our benefit. There is a I know I think it's called the K-shape, there is a consumer who is really squeezed at the bottom, that sort of sub-$100 price point, that that consumer is is is has been squeezed and we see in the footwear market that that's a tighter space.

In the space In the premium space we we participate, we've seen the customer react really well, particularly to new products, to more of our more elevated products, so that's continued to do well. When I When you speak about boots specifically, while we are in decline, I just want to point out a couple of things that give us that we're quite excited and and pleased about.

One is again our discipline of not chasing promotions is part of part of what we are not confident. If you remember where we were 18 months ago with inventory, there was there was a significant amount of promotional boots in the marketplace which which was part of what were what were confident.

We're not doing We're not doing that this year. When I look at some of the other the newer products that we've brought in and talked about some of them, the the Casey High, the Buzz High, the rain boot, those products have done really well.

When I look at our products, boots that we've done through our collaborations, those have done incredibly well to the point of actually generating scarcity. We're confident that we can in in time turn boots into positive growth.

We see enough green shoots in full-price boots to be confident about that, and we just have to get through this pivot piece of moving away from from discount. Overall we we feel good about that.

As a As a category, there is limited insight that you can take from that, because often consumers are not buying are not just going into the market to look for a boot, they're looking for a certain kind of boot, and so but but it it when I think about it as a category, yes, it has been in decline, that decline is flattening, and our own business shows that there are enough green shoots to turn boots into into positive. I'll let Giles talk about costs.

I think obviously we did the big cost action program last year. We definitely see the benefits of that coming through.

There is always opportunity to to to manage costs. I think there's a I think the bigger thing I would say is the cultural shift in in the focus on cost has been is is is a is a real a real change year-on-year.

As you look forward, there's always there's always opportunities to focus on being, more diligent about how we procure. We continue to see good work done in the supply chain and continue to work with our suppliers on on in on those particularly sweetening some costs in things like some of the tariffs.

I'm comfortable with the way that we're managing cost. You will see that in the full year.

You'll see better than planned costs year-on-year coming through.

The discipline here at all times that you can expect from us is with a high-gross-margin business is to manage through the P&L. You'll continue to see us talk about that and work that through to make sure that we are constantly delivering a profitable business.

That's the focus, that's a big part of the pivot, and continue to expect that from us.

Thank you. Good morning, team.

Apologies, I got cut off earlier, sorry if this did get asked in the meantime. Two for me if that's okay.

Just wondering if you could share any color on how retail stores kind of performed across the different markets, and maybe what that shape looked like. Then, the second one just coming back again on the wholesale and the more promotionally driven product that was going through the partners there.

Any kind of color you can share in terms of the sell-out and what lines that's really coming through, is it more focused into the boots, is it more in shoes? Anything you could share there would be interesting.

Thank you.

Thanks, Alison. I'll take the second question, which I'm going to be fairly short on, and then Giles can talk about color on retail stores.

As we've said, shoes have done really well, and that's across the board, across channels, across markets, and the sell-out in those is really good. When I look at the order book, though, you begin to see a bigger mix, and so like us, our partners are excited about the wider spectrum of product.

If you're asking about Q3 performance, it's a trading update, I'm not going to go into too much detail on that, but obviously, we're really pleased with the performance of shoes, we're really pleased that we're beginning to see the turnaround in boots, and as we move into the spring season, we're excited about our sandals offering. It's a broad spectrum of success that we're beginning to see, and again, still early days, but shoes is the silhouette that is performing the best.

Retail, it is definitely different by region. I think it's as you say, clear.

We've seen good performance in our US retail, we've seen good performance in our APAC retail, particularly in South Korea, which we referenced, solid performance in Japan. EMEA has been the drag on retail generally, that's being driven by both the promotional activities.

Obviously, they happen more in stores here in this part of the world. Just generally consumer backdrop, EMEA has been the drag on the overall retail, but a good overall performance, and actually really strong performance in APAC and US.

That's great. Thanks, guys.

Thank you, everybody, so much for your time this morning and engagement. If you have any questions later on today, please do reach out to Bethany Barnes.

I look forward to seeing you all in May when we present our full FY26 results and give you a fuller update on our strategic progress. Thank you so much, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Bye-bye.