Levi Strauss CFO: Company comfortable with liquidity, cash flow

By Jennifer Lanning Drey

Portland, Ore., April 13 - Levi Strauss & Co. is comfortable with its current liquidity position and believes its cash flow will be sufficient to fund business activities underway that aim to achieve the company's strategic objectives, Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer of Levi Strauss, said Tuesday during its first-quarter earnings conference call.

Levi Strauss had $315 million of cash and cash equivalents and $193 million available under its credit facility at Feb. 28.

The cash position represented a $45 million increase from three months earlier.

Cash provided by operating activities was $76 million in the first quarter, compared with $10 million in the same period in 2009.

"We delivered strong cash flow and continued to build our liquidity position during the quarter while making progress on several of the growth initiatives we called out last quarter," Jorgensen said.

The increase in free cash flow was primarily due to the company's operating results and focus on inventory management, Jorgensen said.

Levi Strauss reported first-quarter net revenues of $1.04 billion, compared to net revenues of $951 million for the same period of 2009.

"Despite continued challenges in key markets around the world, we demonstrated strong performance in the first quarter of 2010," Jorgensen said.

Looking ahead, the company will continue to invest in strategic initiatives it believes will deliver long-term growth, Jorgensen noted.

"To augment long-term profitability and cash flow, we are investing in productivity initiatives, and we continue to focus on generating greater levels of cash flow to reduce our debt over time and to be in a position to pay a dividend to stockholders, where financial conditions and debt covenants allow," he said.

Levi Strauss ended the first quarter with net debt of $1.51 billion, down from $1.58 billion at the end of 2009.

Levi Strauss is a San Francisco-based clothing company.

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