Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for this next session of the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference. My name is Brooke Roach, and I cover the apparel, accessories, and brand sector here at Goldman Sachs. Our next fireside chat will be with Gap Inc. Gap operates a portfolio of brands including Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta. Joining us today to discuss the company's strategic initiatives and Power Plan 2023 strategy are Sonia Syngal, CEO, and Katrina O'Connell, CFO. Sonia, Katrina, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Brooke. Thanks, Brooke. Good to be here. Sonia, I'd love to kick it off with a question about the Power Plan 2023 strategy. We're now approaching the first anniversary of this strategy. As you reflect over the past year, what do you believe are the most critical achievements you've realized so far? As we look ahead, what are the most important initiatives we should be watching for over the next 6 months- 12 months? Great question, Brooke, my favorite topic is talking about our company strategy. As you know, Katrina and I were insiders that stepped in just a little bit over a year ago. The opportunity of understanding the company deeply is that we were able to articulate our strategy, the Power Plan 2023 strategy, which is quite simple. It's threefold. It's the power of growing billion-dollar purpose-driven lifestyle brands, which we have four of, coupled with the power of our platform, right? This massive technology platform and operating machine that we have, coupled with the power of the portfolio, which is fueled by our 65 million customers that are loyalists today and growing fast. That combination of those three elements of the strategy is fueling our performance that we've seen, and we just delivered in Q2. We're pleased with the progress. All four of our brands have honed in on the clarity of their positioning, their creative excellence, and they're building on that. We've invested more than we ever have and continue to do so in technology, which we know is critical. Our maniacal focus on our customers and listening to our customers, now loyalists, is going to give us, we think, multiple years of growth ahead. I think the clarity of the strategy, shedding the unproductive non-strategic brands or unproductive real estate, have been real achievements for us over the last 12 months. As we think about the future, there's so much ahead. We are doubling down on investing in these brands and investing in our simple strategy of growing these purpose-driven lifestyle brands. We're seeing that. These four brands have a lot of reach. They've been around for a long time, and they have a very high brand health and awareness, which gives us an ability to grow them, both in the categories that we are active in today, which is apparel and accessories, but also as we think about consumer trends, over the long term. The trends being home centricity and the homebody culture that COVID fueled, as well as wellness. Our brands, we believe, have permission to explore expansion across multiple categories and therefore more addressable spend. Lots ahead over the next horizon and specifically for the 12 months. The investments we're making in marketing and in technology we think will allow the acceleration that we expect. That's great to hear. I'd love to start our discussion beyond the strategy with a little bit of a chat about the current consumer environment and the outlook. I'd love to hear your insights on the state of the consumer. What are you seeing in back-to-school trends so far? Can you provide some color on what you're seeing in light of the recent resurgence of the Delta variant? How has momentum changed these past few weeks? Have consumer behaviors changed? How are your consumers engaging with your billion-dollar brands? What's great about having a multi-channel model, right? We have our strong e-com business, our strong store business. Our customers go back and forth. While there may be short-term challenges in terms of preference due to COVID, people are shopping, and they're shopping for the products that we dominate in, right? We have a $4 billion kids and baby business that's a market leader in North America. We have a $3 billion denim business. We've got a $4 billion active business. These are all categories that are essential for back to school. What we know is kids grow. We know that bodies have changed during the COVID timeframe, and so people are really needing clothes and are wanting to go back to school well-dressed. This is the first back to school in a long time where I think people are excited to really have the full experience again, and so it matters to them, and they are embracing our brands between Old Navy and Gap, which have always led in kids as well as Athleta Girl, which is seeing some great business with back to school as well. That's great to hear. We've received a lot of questions about the company's second half outlook, and that implied acceleration in the two-year growth trend versus year to date. Can you unpack the most important levers of that outlook and maybe provide some color by brand and really help investors parse out that outlook between that strength of the consumer that you just spoke to and their excitement to go back to normal activities versus the company's new strategic growth initiatives? Yeah, maybe I'll let Katrina start, and then I can add on, Katrina, if that suits. Yeah, absolutely. I think what I would say is the thing about our strategy that I think is good for the near term as well as good for the long term. It's sort of a multi-vector strategy. When you think about the value creation in the back half and into next year, it's a combination of a variety of different elements of the strategy. It's the dominance in the core categories that Sonia articulated. Our dominance in denim, in active, in kids and baby, and our continued expectation to grow share as the consumer is healthy, in addition to some of the new categories that we're layering on to attract new addressable markets. We talked about the inclusive size launch at Old Navy, which is called BODEQUALITY, which is about addressing a different addressable market, which is the plus-size woman. Our belief that we think that's a very strong market for Old Navy in particular to play in. We've also launched that at Athleta. You combine current categories with new market share, that's important. You layer on top of that digital capabilities that we continue to build through our increasing technology portfolio. On top of that, this new multi-tender loyalty program that we launched in July, that is early days, but we believe will begin to drive better lifetime value by us being able to know and talk to our consumers. All of that leads to us believing that there's an acceleration over the back half. The supply chain issues that are out there and widely understood will potentially cause some lumpiness. That's okay. We still believe that over the back half, our strength and our categories, combined with our new capabilities, will allow us to compete and deliver that back half outlook that we gave. I don't know, Sonia, if you'd add to that. Yeah, no, I think that's great. I'd say, look, the big areas that we're ratcheting up investment in the back half relative to the first half is the marketing investment that we're planning, as well as technology investment. Now that we've moved to the cloud and we've largely got the modernization investments required for technology behind us, our technology investments are really driving value. Whether that's driving value in terms of digital capability via our e-commerce site or digitizing our operations, both of those are enabling, we believe, the performance. Each of our brands, they have a lot going on and big bold moves between the BODEQUALITY launch at Old Navy, which we think will hail it to the family, as new moms come in. Whether it's the Gap, two quarters in a row now, a great comp performance in North America, regaining strength and the fall launch of their campaign, which is getting great pickup. The product is continuing to be very strong there. Banana Republic repositioning and launch of the brand this week, in fact, and that's looking amazing, and we've seen fantastic consumer response and just, I think, a love for that brand, positioning itself in that accessible luxury space. Athleta going from strength to strength, coming off of the partnerships over the summer for the Olympics, then the launch in Canada, the launch of AthletaWell, which is its digital community for wellness. As Katrina said, big vectors by brand, big capability vectors such as the loyalty program, such as personalization through our tech investment, and then the combination of all four of these powerhouse billion-dollar brands working across the portfolio to assist. A great example of this, Brooke, is Athleta's launch in Canada. We launched just recently in Canada, and we were able to bring the whole force of the portfolio to bear to help that launch, right? We already are dominant in Canada across Old Navy, Gap, and Banana Republic. The entire suite of our cross-company portfolio of stores will help. The customer file that we have in Canada helps. Our understanding of the logistics and the real estate in that market. These are all capabilities of the portfolio that will enable the success of Athleta in Canada, which has had a great start. An example to bring it to life around the acceleration opportunities for us. That's really great to hear. I would love to dive into a few of those in more detail, because it is clear that Gap has a number of initiatives and growth drivers that are accelerating into the back half. Maybe we can start with BODEQUALITY. You recently launched this at Old Navy. Katrina and Sonia, you mentioned a little bit earlier in your remarks. This offers a new approach to inclusive sizing for the brand. Can you talk about the initial customer reaction to this launch? As you sit here today, how big is Gap Inc.'s plus-size business and market share, and what are your expectations for growth in this segment of the consumer going forward? Yeah, Brooke, this has been a long time coming. We started the inquiry and the investigation three years ago. It's been multiple iterations and prototypes to get us to this point of launch. We applied a design thinking approach. We went deep with customers all across the country to really understand what was missing for them. We know that the average American woman is a size 16 to 18. We knew there was an untapped market. In fact, the market's not even well-researched or understood in terms of size, we believe. We know that the customer was there. It started with deep design thinking work with the customer, and it led us to this place where really the two things that we were solving for was equality of price, equality of shopping experience, and equality of style. There's no one else in the top 20 mass market that is doing this, that is launching the entire women's assortment at the same price across stores and online. We've been in the plus business for many years online. Ultimately, the customer wants the stores experience, and we know that the halo happens across both channels when you offer it in both. That's a little bit of what led us here. We prototyped with one store. We then went to 30 stores about a year ago to get ready for this full suite launch across our 1,300, roughly, Old Navy stores. I think we're quite excited about what this can mean for us. So far, the customer response has been not only great, but also highly emotional. Because I think this customer feels valued, seen for the first time, and we're seeing that loyalty build. Certainly, it's showing up in our loyalty numbers as well. I'd love to dive into the loyalty program in a little bit more detail. You recently launched this new multi-brand loyalty program, which is enabling deeper customer engagement. Can you talk to the trends that you're seeing, maybe in AOV or wallet share among loyalty members versus non-members, the initial success of this program, and the opportunity that you see through higher AURs as you personalize your engagement with those loyalty customers? Well, it sounds like you've done your research, because that's all the things and the opportunities we see ahead. Look, we all know the value of a great loyalty program in any business, and this has been a long time coming for us. The team spent quite a bit of time making sure that this program was going to be world-class. For us, there's so many benefits. We do expect to see all of those levers that you mentioned, the higher AUR, the higher average spend, but also more importantly, the frequency and the love across our brands, right? The cross-shopping across the brands. All of those are expectations that are coming. One thing we can say is that the adoption by customers has exceeded our expectations, has been great. We're now north of 75% of our entire customer file classified as loyalists. Depending on what tier you are, you get different benefits. So far, so good. We're really happy with the launch and with both how it integrates with credit card, how it has base point loyalty. Then really the point of differentiation, which is the below the line capabilities, which give our customers the ability to engage with each brand and with the entire company in areas that are personal to them and values-driven. Which we know doesn't cost a lot for our company, but matters a lot to the customer. Pleased with the design and pleased with the launch. Katrina, I don't know if you want to add anything. Yeah, no, I think all of that's right. We know that the more we know our customers, the more we can personalize the way we engage with those customers and allow them to participate in experiences or offers that make them more frequent shoppers and potentially more valuable shoppers. Certainly, use their points and their ability to shop across our brands, which allows for another vector of value creation. I think we're extremely excited about what this gives us as far as insights into our customers and our ability to personalize for them going forward. Then to your point, Brooke, we're already quite pleased with the fact that we've been able to really pull back on discounting in all of our brands. As we've seen brand relevance driven by our strong product execution, being in the right categories, as well as the increase in really relevant marketing, and partnerships. That's allowed us to pull back on price. As we have loyalists, we'll also be able to personalize value for those people and really continue to pull back on average unit retail discounting go forward. We do see loyalty as an opportunity for us to continue to pull back on overall box promotions that drives down profitability. I'd love to follow up a little bit on that promotionality aspect of the business, because clearly Gap has a number of initiatives in place to improve the overall promo that you're offering product to that consumer at. The other thing that we're also seeing across the industry is lower promos industry-wide. Can you help us understand how much of that lower promo rate relative to pre-COVID levels is due to some of these company-specific initiatives, like loyalty versus some of the industry tailwinds? Maybe talk to your plans for promo into second half and into 2022. Yeah. Brooke, I'd say the first driver of being able to realize higher AUR is brand relevance and product, right? It starts there, and I think we did a deep work across all our brands. Old Navy's always been in a good place, as has Athleta. Gap and Banana have done such great work to position their brands appropriately and get the relevance back, which is the first and very important step in driving the realization on AUR. Second, operating excellence in terms of price management, commercial planning management, all that is very important as well. That's a rigor that we have expected now, and we're expecting in terms of management performance. All of that fueled by these capabilities we mentioned, such as loyalty. Certainly, there's industry tailwinds. We're seeing that across the board. I would say that we also think there's a lot of runway for us to see AUR growth for many years to come, because as you say, when we look at competition by competition for each of our four brands, right? You've got Old Navy at $12 AUR, roughly, or you've got Gap at $20. You've got Banana at $40, and Athleta at $60. We cover a very broad price band, and we look at the relevant competitors across the price positioning. We see a lot of runway ahead to continue to garner more through a combination of brand execution and capability enablement, whether it's loyalty or personalization. When you have a business as big as ours with 65 million customers that are loyalists, the opportunity, we think, is going to be multi-years of upside for us on the AUR front. We think it's enduring post the tailwinds. We really believe it is a function of the strategy. There's still lots of places out there to get discounted products. You can still see that out there. We're pleased with, I think this combination of brand and capability driving it for the long term. Great. One of the things that you mentioned there was the capability in addition to the brand. Katrina, one of the things that really stuck out on the second quarter call was some of the incremental initiatives that Gap has in data science and digital. You talked digitizing the enterprise, inventory management, shipping optimization, and you also just acquired Drapr. Can you give us an update on the near-term sales and margin benefits that you anticipate here, and how this might scale into 2022 and beyond? Yeah, I'm happy to, then I'd love Sonia to pile on. As we've talked about value creation as part of Power Plan 2023, we've been very clear that it's a multi-phase process. As Sonia said, really early value creation in the company has been through restructuring the fixed cost base to get rid of cost that just isn't adding value, and that's shown up in our divestiture of our small brands, our restructuring of our North America fleet, and now our partnering of our Europe market. In addition to that, we've been investing in brand health to be able to get our brands back to growth and to get this discounting sort of back on the right path so that we're getting AURs up. That's been sort of the early value creation in the plan. As you say, Brooke, this next phase of value creation is what we're calling digitizing of the operations. We also believe that there's a lot of value still trapped in the company by processes that are manual or don't address the value to be created in the company. The examples that you gave are the right ones, which we still have a lot of inventory management that happens through human intervention. Using AI, machine learning, and more data analytics to do better allocation, better assortments, better management through to realization of price is all something that we are testing right now at Old Navy. There'll be a small amount of value creation in the back half, but really, we're looking to scale in 2022 and then roll to the rest of our brands. That's an example of a capability that we're piloting in one brand and scaling for future value creation. The other thing you brought up is exactly right, which is as you think about in shipping, what causes a lot of shipping expense is splitting shipments. Thinking about sourcing optimization through machine learning and AI to better maximize the way we deliver product is another example of something we're just beginning that should add value more in 2022. Lastly, Drapr, which I'll let Sonia talk a little bit about, is a fit technology that we think that when we look at our returns, the number one reason why people return product is because it doesn't fit. Being able to leverage the technology that Drapr brings to be able to create a better fit experience, we think will show up in our return rate, which will be better profitability. We're going systematically after big problems in the business to be able to unlock future value as we march towards our 10% + operating margin goals. Sonia, what else would you add? Yeah, no, I think you've covered it really, really well. A great example of some of the data science that we're benefiting from right now is the allocation capability that Katrina mentioned. When you think about Old Navy, for example, 700 million units, of which roughly half go to stores, and you think about 1,300 stores and getting that right every single day, using the science to drive the optimization there has been and will continue to be a big benefit. We're starting with our basics, and we're scaling it. Then, as Katrina says, taking that across the portfolio to our full billion units, of which half go to stores, roughly a little bit more than half, therein lies the opportunity to get that right every single day. One thing that I wanted to talk about that dovetails into this is the digital business at Gap Inc. One question that we're asking all of our companies that attend the Conference is how they think about digital penetration into 2022 relative to what we saw this year and last year. Maybe as a follow-up to that, I'd love to hear how you're thinking about scaling some of the e-commerce profitability on a unit economic basis as we weigh some of these data science initiatives that you have in place that are starting to roll out relative to the increased cost of fulfillment that continues to be a pressure point for some online retailers. This is where scale is such an advantage, Brooke. Call it $7 billion of an e-commerce business. What that gives us the ability to do is leverage our scale, right? Whether it's fulfillment being advantaged through strategic partnerships with companies like UPS, or whether it's the technology investments we're making on scaling up capabilities such as units per package and the opportunity to reduce split shipments and what that does positively to the economics. These are all initiatives that will help us from a cost point of view. Certainly in terms of contributions to total, what I would say is the consumer is going to tell us. If we've learned anything the last 18 months is it's very hard to predict consumer behavior. Our whole attitude has been, we will be where the consumer wants us to be. We will be great in stores. We will be great online. I think if we're going to have those two main channels in North America, they're going to be great. The consumer will let us know, and we'll be prepared. More and more of our inventory through our technology investments will be omni inventory, so flexible. We're ready, and we're prepared for however the consumer chooses to shop with us. Yeah. The only other thing I'd say, Brooke, is that our financial goals contemplate a multitude of scenarios of what penetration online would look like, as well as how long an inflationary environment would last in the supply chain, for instance. All of that's fully contemplated, and it makes more important these initiatives that we're deploying, which are really about continuing to get value out of the other levers that we have in the business to be able to not only combat that, but also continue to grow operating margins into the future. We're very confident that this digitizing of the work that we do will unlock that future value and be important for 2022 and beyond as we start to really scale those up and deploy them. That's really helpful. One of the things that you mentioned there was some of these supply chain constraints. I will be the first to acknowledge that, Katrina, you were very clear on your call a few weeks ago that Gap is well positioned given its scale. I was wondering if we could dive into this in a little bit more detail and talk about your ability to chase additional product should demand surprise to the upside this fall and holiday season. As a follow-up, how long do you think that some of these freight and supply chain disruptions might persist? Into the spring, how should we be thinking about Gap's ability to continue to offset some of those cost headwinds? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Katrina, would you like to start, or you can start as well? Yeah. Yeah. Certainly the challenges are real, as you said, Brooke, we're all managing through them. Again, scale, this is where the reach of our sourcing, which spans over 30 countries, the flexibility we have with that, the logistics, multiple channels of fulfillment or logistics, meaning we use a combination of air, ocean, multiple lanes on ocean to get fast ships, slow ships. The ports are definitely certainly something that I think the whole industry is grappling with in terms of some of the COVID constraints there. We're navigating it with I think our long-standing experience dealing with port crises in the past. Again, I consider ourselves better positioned than most because of our experience and our scale. In terms of how long this will last, I would say, look, we expect that it's going to be here with us for a while, and we're planning for it and have planned for it in our long-range plan, using the various levers to manage through the bottlenecks, if you will. The bottlenecks are different, and we've been dealing with those bottlenecks since COVID hit, frankly, right? I think when you think back to 18 months ago and a different set of constraints. Really the attitude of the team is we will respond to whatever the blockage is in the supply chain and activate our network to navigate. Chase is going to be something that we'll continue to watch and leverage, and in some countries, it's easier to chase than others. We're monitoring that carefully. We also believe there's a lot of average unit retail upside if should demand continue to build or exceed expectations as a lever. Not necessarily needing always more units, but really optimizing the units that we have, and then chasing where it makes sense in the countries that are more accessible. Yeah. The only thing I'll add, Brooke, is we did say that one of the big levers, and I think Sonia nodded to this, is that early on, we did go out and procure a significant amount of air capacity at obviously higher rates than normal, but still favorable compared to if we were to try and go out and procure that air capacity now. We do feel like we were proactive in getting the air capacity. We'll do our best to get units here as fast as possible. We do think we're well positioned to have the right inventory to be able to compete. As Sonia said, the ports are the issue. The inventory might be lumpy, but overall, we are very confident in our team's ability to execute. We've been agile through all of COVID. If there's one thing we've learned, it's how to be flexible and agile as we navigate some of these crises. That's what the teams are committed to doing as we navigate the back half. We have fully contemplated that this could last deep into next year. That's all part of our planning as we think about driving capabilities to help drive profitability next year. Got it. That's really helpful. As we think about the path towards your 10% operating margin target by 2023 and your considerable progress against this goal this year, can you talk to some of the puts and takes that you're thinking about in terms of margin expansion path going forward as we contemplate some of the incremental cost headwinds from input, raw materials, and labor offset by some of these clear strategic initiatives that you've talked to us today? It's a balance, right, Brooke? We're very focused on market share growth and growing this business. That's really important. As we shed the unproductive sales and as we focus on that healthy core, we want to grow from that core. We will be making investments. At the same time, the headwinds you've talked about are contemplated in our Power Plan, which gets us to that 10%+ operating margin. Certainly, there may be unforeseen challenges that come up, but we also have a lot of positive levers that we started out in the call with, that we think we can activate as well. It's a balance, and I'd say we are balancing both sales growth as well as earnings growth in our planning. We feel good about the progress we've made, as you said, and we're just heads down focused on delivering the plan we've articulated. Yeah. We're really pleased with the progress we've made this year. I know, Brooke, you just said that we've gone from originally guiding to a 5% operating margin, lately updated to 7.5%. We're clearly making faster progress than expected against our goals. This year, that's because of the sales growth we've been able to achieve, the real estate restructuring that the team's gotten done, as well as the ability to navigate their average unit retails, and all while reinvesting in demand generation through marketing. We feel really good about the way the teams are executing and still delivering above where we thought we'd be for the year. That gives us a lot of confidence, again, as we now deploy this next phase of value creation through digitizing the operations, while we continue to grow. That will continue to drive this operating model that we think is sustainable for the company going forward, which is a continued commitment to sales growth, while continuing to grow our operating margin to that 10%+ by 2023. Yeah. I think, Brooke, one of the unique things about us as a company at this moment is, including what we delivered in Q2, we also shed 8% of sales. The performance we delivered with the top line and the bottom line included us leaving behind that first chunk of unproductive sales, which again is going to allow us to get faster and healthier at our core, with our core businesses growing both top and bottom line as the strategic vision of the Power Plan. I'm really proud of the teams for delivering on that, because that was deep execution work that needs to happen at this company. We're taking care of some of the challenges that Katrina and I stepped into and are getting through now, some of the structural adjustments that are needed, that had been needed for a while, and it's going to allow us, I think, to be just faster. Great. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Now that we're a year into the Power Plan 2023 strategy, can you provide us an update with how you're thinking about your portfolio and the portfolio construction? Are there any areas where you'd like to add? Any areas where you'd consider potentially trimming further? And what would be the key metrics that you would look at to make that decision? Yeah, no, it's a great question, Brooke, and we certainly set ourselves up with some key leading indicator metrics around the health of the portfolio, and we're always, as we showed with Drapr, evaluating opportunities to grow the business. The great thing about our four brands is they cover 80% of the addressable market for apparel. Between the price range of, as I mentioned, Old Navy, $12, Athleta, $60 +, and the price coverage, the end-use coverage, the age coverage, and the body shape coverage, apparel is well covered. We feel quite good about that. What we're paying a lot of attention to are some of the long-term consumer trends, right, as I mentioned, and really, what are the expandable aspects of these lifestyle brands? The Gap Home launch is a great example and a great testament to taking the design sensibility and the creative positioning of Gap into an adjacent category. With homebody culture and home centricity as being a big factor, that's intriguing around expanding the brands and therefore expanding the total addressable market opportunity for us. When you add in wellbeing, and AthletaWell is a great example of our foray into that, and you look at Gap Home, you look at some of these steps we are taking to get after adding about $325 billion of addressable market to us in these spaces. That's where we're leaning into, is more about category expansion. That's really helpful. We're almost up on time, but Katrina, I'd love to ask you one more question before we conclude. One of the positive results of the strategic initiatives that you've seen this year is this margin expansion, and as a result of that, you've seen very strong cash generation. Can you talk to your uses and priorities for cash and capital allocation going forward? Absolutely. We are always looking at our cash balances and thinking about the best and highest uses of cash. I would say our first priority is always to invest in the business to make sure that we are fueling the growth for the future. This year in particular, we have committed to $800 million of capital, which is going towards higher ROIC projects than we have in the past. Particularly as we've talked about digital technology, supply chain capacity, et cetera. That's our first and foremost highest use of cash. I would say secondarily, we're committed to paying a competitive dividend, and so we did go reinstate our dividend in the first quarter. We'll keep looking at that and considering what seems like the right competitive dividend for the company. Then we did reinstitute a modest share repurchase program to offset dilution. In addition to that, we are always, and I'm always deeply considering the right capital structure for the company and, over time, what's the best way to de-lever and restructure, so that we have the right capital structure to be able to build for the long term. That's always on my mind and certainly keep everybody updated as we think through the balance of our current notes and where those trade versus what seems to be a constructive market environment. More to come on that. That's about how we think about it. Then we'll see going forward, as the business grows, whether there's more opportunities in any of those for higher investment or higher return of cash to shareholders. Thank you so much for sharing those thoughts today. With that, we are at the end of our time here. I will say thank you to Sonia, thank you to Katrina, and thank you for everyone who's joined us in the audience today. I hope that you can join us for our next session. Thank you all, and have a great day. Thanks, Brooke. Thanks, Brooke.