Crown Crafts, Inc. (CRWS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. everyone and welcome to the Crown Crafts Fiscal Year 2027 First Quarter Conference Call. During today's call, the company may make certain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may be beyond Crowncraft's control, and the company is under no obligation to update these statements. For more information about the company's risk factors and other uncertainties, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to President and Chief Executive Officer Olivia Elliott. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining this afternoon's call. Today, after the close, Crown Crafts reported very solid quarterly results, given the still-solved demand environment. We accomplished this by focusing on what we can control, and our team did a terrific job executing on our strategy. We were able to grow our net sales 8% despite the uncertainty that consumers continue to feel around high interest rates, inflation, and global geopolitical events. Improved inventory levels account for most of the growth, as we were able to better meet demand than during last year's tariff instability. Just as important, we were able to drive a higher gross margin, both on a GAAP basis and also when adjusting for tariff refunds, as Claire will walk us through in a moment. On an adjusted basis, our growth margin for the quarter climbed nearly three full percentage points year over year to 25.6%. As a result, we were able to produce positive net income versus the loss reported in the prior year period, and we once again generated positive operating cash flow of nearly $5 million, similar to the March quarter. Combined with a significant reduction in our debt balance during the quarter, our balance sheet is significantly strengthened. As we mentioned on our last call, during the June quarter, we relaunched Manhattan Toy Brands Groupie Girl. pleased to say that so far, sales of this iconic line of fashion dolls has exceeded our expectations, largely driven by the Canadian market. And we believe this bodes well for continued success of this retro-inspired beloved brand. Next, I'll provide an update on our strategic initiatives to grow both our top and bottom line. Our priority is our ongoing innovative internal product development to expand our product offering. Another initiative is to build on our recent margin expansion to further drive profitability. We're moving towards a favorable mix of higher margin products and, of course, our relentless spending disciplines. We're also striving to consolidate certain internal operations for greater efficiency, reduce our debt levels, and over the next two years, we'll be working on warehouse consolidation to further enhance our operating structure. These initiatives to create long-term value can often require upfront investment, and to that end, our Board has elected to right-size our quarterly dividend, which will provide us strategic access to a greater portion of our cash flow. That will also allow us to pay down debt and build the balance sheet strength that will support Crowncraft's growth well into the future. In essence, our new quarterly dividend allows for a well-balanced capital allocation approach that includes investing in growth initiatives and maintaining a solid balance sheet, while still rewarding our valued shareholders with what is now approximately a 4% attractive dividend yield. In closing, we had a solid quarter as we continued to execute on our business plan. While leveraging our inherent strengths, including our brands, our licenses, and our valued retail and licensing partners, our multi-pronged strategy that covers internal development of new products, reinvigorated marketing efforts, tight cost controls, and the strategic allocation of capital, positions as well for the creation of long-term shareholder value. And now I'll turn it over to Claire to provide additional details around our quarterly results before we take your questions.

Thank you, Olivia, and welcome everyone once again to the call. Our first quarter net sales of $16.8 million were up 8% over the prior quarter as improved inventory levels helped us capitalize on still soft consumer spending. As Olivia mentioned, we had strong growth margin performance. During the quarter, tariff refunds reduced our cost of products sold by $3.7 million. Even adjusting for this benefit, our gross profit of $4.3 million was above the prior year's $3.5 million and equates to a gross profit margin of 25.6%, which was up 290 basis points year-over-year. This section of our adjusted growth margin reflects both our strategic pricing initiatives and an increasingly favorable mix of higher margin products. We recorded marketing and administrative expense of $5.2 million for the first quarter as compared to $4.7 million a year earlier, although this quarter's figure includes just over half a million dollars of accrued incentive and compensation associated with tariff refunds. On a normalized basis, we reduced marketing and administrative expense as a percent of net sales to 28% versus 30.5% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, which speaks to our sharp focus on cost efficiencies, as Olivia mentioned. Moving down the income statement, we also successfully reduced net interest expense to only $190,000, well below the year ago $283,000 as a result of our efforts to reduce debt over the past year. From a GAAP perspective, we reported net income of $2.1 million, or $0.19 per share, well above the prior year loss of $1.1 million, or $0.10 per share. While first quarter net income benefited from the tariff-related adjustments described, I'll again note that on an adjusted basis, we still generated the first quarter profit versus the prior year quarter's net. loss. Turning to our balance sheet, as of June 28, we had total liquidity of $12.1 million, including cash and equivalents and availability on our revolving line of credit. During the first quarter, we significantly reduced our debt from more than 14 million at the start of the fiscal year to just 9.6 million at the end of the quarter. Not only do we reduce outstanding debt, but our net cash from operating activities of $5.5 million served to further support our balance sheet strength, putting us in a strong position to capitalize on future growth opportunities in a disciplined manner. In summary, this was another quarter of strong execution in which we focused on what we can control while economic conditions remained soft. Even adjusted for tariff refunds, we grew revenues, expanded our growth margin, and generated stronger earnings per share than in the year-ago quarter. further strengthen our balance sheet and are well positioned to make progress against our strategic initiatives as we move through the new fiscal year. And now And now, operator, if you could please open the lines, Olivia and I would be happy to take questions. Thank you.

We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. and again that is star 1 if you would like to ask a question and our first question will come from Doug Ruth with Lenox Financial Services.

Olivia and Claire, congratulations, fabulous report. I have several questions, so if you like I'm asking too many and I'll mind getting back in the queue. Could you give us a...

offer some commentary of what you think is happening with Groovy Girls? So Groovy Girls has done phenomenally well in Canada. And as we look back on history, even when, you know, before we acquired Manhattan Toy, the first time they launched Groovy Girls, it appears that it took off in Canada first then as well. So, yes. We have actually sold so much in Canada at this point in time that we're having to divert inventory that should be coming to the US to go to Canada. So we're really excited about the opportunity there. And then we'll be launching Groovy Girls at K&J in Germany for the European markets in September.

Okay. Is there a theory of why the Canadians like Groovy Girls so much?.

We don't know. I can tell you that our distributor, they are partnered with Indigo Bookstores who really put some marketing efforts behind it and they hosted an event so that probably helped with it to.

have such a large partner to launch with. Okay. What about, you had previously mentioned that ultimately the Groovy Girls will be on Amazon. Is there like a date that that might happen?.

We are still hoping to launch early fall the inventory having it take off faster than we expected, it may not be the full line, but we're still targeting October sometime with at least part of the line.

Okay, very good. And then could you explain to us what the status is of the I think you had told us there was maybe around 5 million, maybe 5 and 1 half million.

expecting more money or do you think that's it or we're hoping to get more money so we had Requested reimbursement for 5.6 to 5.7 million in tariffs. And so far we've received about 4.7 million. And that is the portion that we booked. Most of that was received in July. A very, very small portion had been received in the first quarter. There's about 900,000.

we still haven't received and we have not booked okay and then how is the balance sheet changed from or are you able to tell us anything about you know where the balance sheet is now versus where it was you know based on maybe tariff money.

You mean as of today versus the quarter end? Yes. It's certainly improved by getting $4-plus million in cash in in the month of July, but that's about all we can really tell you. Oh, okay. I didn't realize the $4 million came in in July. Okay, very good. Yes. So it was booked as other current assets as opposed to a trade receivable at quarter end and quarter end.

I see. So that's the other current asset that's on the balance sheet. Yes, and I think there's more information Claire just pointed out in – Footnote four. Footnote four. Okay, good. Okay, and then what can you tell us about the warehouse?.