Celebrate Life. Express Love.® Signet’S Core Purpose Is to Help Our Customers Celebrate Life and Express Love
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2015 annual report Celebrate Life. Express Love.® Signet’s core purpose is to help our customers Celebrate Life and Express Love. It is our honor to help our customers express their deepest emotions with their loved ones. We do this by educating and assisting them in purchasing high quality jewelry and watches as gifts for their loved ones or themselves. We are able to do this because we buy, sell, assort and market diamonds and fine jewelry better than anyone else in the world. Our people are essential to achieving this purpose. They have made us an industry leader, and our Customer First commitment is one of the many ways in which we have made a profound impact in the jewelry industry. 2 Signet Jewelers 2015 Annual Report “The execution of our merchandise, marketing and omni channel strategies as well as our superior customer service drives success across our divisions and store brands. Our Team Members’ dedication, passion, and collaboration deliver significant value for Signet shareholders and position our Company for growth in the future.” MARK LIGHT, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Dear Shareholders, Employees Signet delivered a fantastic Fiscal 2015 by almost every measure (in thousands) including record sales and earnings; and stock price appreciation 28,949 of 52%. We completed the largest transaction in the history of the jewelry industry when we closed the purchase of Zale Corp on May 29, 2014. As the Zale integration progressed, we navigated important senior management changes without missing a beat. And so, it is our 17,877 18,179 pleasure to write our first joint shareholder letter to update you on an incredibly eventful – and successful – year. IT’S ALL ABOUT OUR TEAM The short list of highlights noted above, which barely touches on our many accomplishments, is the result of the passion and dedication of our 30,000 team members worldwide. We want to thank them and FY13 FY14 FY15 express our deepest and most profound appreciation for what they achieved in a year of tremendous change. Our people are central to our success, and collectively they are Sales Breakdown by Division our most powerful competitive strength. Our team members are $5,736.3m experienced, well-trained and highly motivated. They deliver best-in- class, comprehensive guest experiences. Zale Signet offers sector-leading, proprietary training to support our store $1,215.6m 21.2% teams and field management. This enables them to provide our guests with the product knowledge they desire and a feeling of satisfaction UK Sterling $743.6m and personal engagement. By providing an unforgettable guest $3,765.0m 13.0% experience, our team members build long-term relationships as we 65.6% help guests celebrate life and express love®. Other $12.1m Just as important, we offer our team members exciting career 0.2% growth and leadership development opportunities. In this spirit, we saw and continue to see inspiring collaboration between our newly acquired Zale division and the rest of our company. We promoted and repositioned several key individuals across divisions. These changes have helped foster the Signet philosophy of respect, dignity, and teamwork that is now ingrained within our company. The history of Signet Jewelers is one of organic growth as well as growth through acquisition. Our acquisitions and strategic initiatives enable Signet to become more vertically integrated within the supply chain. Therefore, beyond our stores and Field Support Centers in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, we also employ team 4 Signet Jewelers 2015 Annual Report members in our diamond polishing factory and our procurement and design offices in global diamond centers like Botswana, India and MANAGE A ROUGH-TO- New York City. POLISHED DIAMOND This expansion has made it all the more imperative that we FACTORY IN GABORONE, communicate with our team members openly and constantly – to BOTSWANA keep them engaged and to strengthen a passion for excellence that depends on a spirit of collaboration and sharing. We have even adjusted our short-term incentive plans so that now, many of our senior team members are rewarded more heavily on the performance result of Signet as an entire company rather than that of their specific division. OUR OMNI-CHANNEL APPROACH Our research consistently tells us the main reason people buy jewelry where they do is not price… not merchandise selection… but trust. The human trust factor is unique to jewelry retailing given the infrequent, highly emotional, and relatively higher price-point purchase occasion that our teams and guests engage in every day. All of our products are under lock and key, so our team members must engage with our guests if they are to make sales. Many of our guests – especially men – are unfamiliar with jewelry and perhaps even intimidated by the prospect of buying jewelry. Therefore, the efforts and expertise of our sector-leading team members are complemented by a very strong Signet online presence. Creating and maintaining compelling, engaging websites, web content and social media platforms has proven to be critical to our company’s success. Given the importance of jewelry purchases, people tend to research merchandise online using a variety of devices. But they also require the human element more often than not when it comes ENHANCED OUR to committing to a purchase. A growing percentage of our guests DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM who buy online choose to pick up their items in our stores because THROUGH OUR they want to engage with our team members and ensure their total satisfaction with their purchase. WEBSITES, MOBILE TECHNOLOGY Team members and guests also engage in this omni-channel fashion inside our stores – using our tablets and related technologies – AND SOCIAL MEDIA especially when shopping for personalized jewelry, custom jewelry, or for broader merchandise selections. Signet Jewelers 2015 Annual Report 5 Synergies of THE TEAM’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS $150 million to Because of the Signet team’s commitment and willingness to embrace $175 million positive change, the integration of the Zale division is off to a great start. Rarely in retail does #1 acquire #2 and still have such significant runway for opportunity. This is because of the highly fragmented 30% repair services nature of the jewelry marketplace. Because of the leadership of our and brand integration team, we are well on our way to delivering synergies of 50% cross Gross selling $150 million to $175 million by the end of January 2018. Margin Some of these operational synergies include executing advertising 20% SG&A media buys more efficiently; cross-selling branded merchandise between store brands and divisions; and centralizing our diamond buying program. Regarding this last example, last year Signet became a DeBeers sightholder which helps us secure long-term supplies of high-quality diamonds globally for all of our stores. In Fiscal 2015, our UK division delivered outstanding results for INCREASED SALES the second consecutive year. Comparable store sales increased 5.3% OF BRANDED and operating margin was up 80 basis points to 7.0%. After a few DIFFERENTIATED challenging years, followed by key management changes and strategic and process improvements, the Signet UK team is now well-positioned AND EXCLUSIVE for sustained success. The UK division is a model for what happens MERCHANDISE AS when our team demonstrates generous collaboration between and A PERCENT OF among all of our divisions. This instills us with even more confidence around our Zale integration process because the Zale integration is at MERCHANDISE SALES an earlier stage of maturity compared to the UK turnaround. The primary engine of our success remains our Sterling division, anchored by our Kay and Jared store brands. Last year, the Sterling team delivered a 4.8% comparable sales increase and a record operating income of $624.3 million, or 16.6% of sales, up 90 basis points. Sterling grew its proprietary and exclusive brand penetration by successfully testing and extending compelling merchandise collections. We also added nearly 5% more selling square footage, principally due to growth in outlet mall locations as well as Kay stores outside the traditional enclosed mall. Sterling launched a new outlet mall concept called Jared Vault with fantastic results. Jared Vault is an 6 Signet Jewelers 2015 Annual Report initiative that was implemented in response to a group of our acquired outlet stores that had been underperforming as a weaker, pre- acquisition brand name. The conversion to Jared Vault validated the power of the Jared brand and provides us with exciting new growth opportunities. THE FUTURE We believe that the successful execution of our strategic plan, “Vision 2020,” which you will read about in the following pages of this annual report, is already bringing significant value to all of Store Count Breakdown by Division Signet’s stakeholders. 3,579 Signet pursues goals and priorities organized around four Corporate H.Samuel Zale 302 Social Responsibility pillars where we believe we can have significant 716 impact: People, Responsible Sourcing, Environmental Stewardship, Jared and Corporate Giving. We strive to be a leader in making a positive 253 Kay difference in the communities where our team members live, work, 1,094 Ernest Jones and do business. We continue to leverage our leadership position 196 in the jewelry industry to embed Corporate Social Responsibility Piercing Peoples Pagoda 144 initiatives in all our operations and to promote Corporate Social 605 Responsibility across the value chain while being a valuable member Regionals of the local communities in which we operate, as well as society 269 at large. On behalf of the Board of Directors and our global team, we thank Diluted Earnings you for your commitment and loyalty to Signet Jewelers and we value Per Share the opportunity to be stewards of your investment. Together, we look 5.631 forward to another successful year.