Lifetime Brands, Inc. ($LCUT)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Lifetime Brands First Quarter of 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please also note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce our host for today's conference, [ Jamie Kirchen ]. Mr. Kirchen, you may go ahead now.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Lifetime Brands First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. With us today from management are Rob Kay, Chief Executive Officer; and Larry Winoker, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin the call, I'd like to remind you that our remarks this morning may contain forward-looking statements that relate to the future of the company, and these statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbor protection from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and factors that could influence our results are highlighted in our earnings release and other factors are contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such statements are based upon information available to the company as of the date hereof and are subject to change for future development. Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update such statements. Our remarks this morning and in our earnings release also contain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Regulation G promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Included in such release is a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures with the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. With that introduction, I'd like to turn the call over to Rob Kay. Please go ahead, Rob.

Thank you, and good morning. Continuing trends from the prior quarter, Life Time reported year-over-year growth in both top and bottom line. While 2025 was a difficult year for our industry, the actions Lifetime implemented on pricing, on cost, on supply chain and new product development have contributed to these results and continue to produce strong results, which have exceeded consensus expectations and most of our peer companies. Our first quarter results have continued this performance. Let me walk you through what drove the quarter, where we see the business heading and the framework for our full year guidance, which we are providing today. Q1 results reflected year-over-year growth. Net sales and EBITDA grew year-over-year. We outperformed most of our public peers and exceeded analyst consensus, and Larry will speak through this in more detail shortly. These results reflect, in part, the actions and strategies that we have implemented. Over the past 2 years, we have been consistently focused on the things we can control, cost discipline, pricing execution, new product investment and operational efficiency. In a quarter where many in our space continued to struggle, these efforts contributed to our performance. I would like to provide additional context. The pricing increases we implemented throughout 2025, which had a near-term impact on volumes are now reflected in our pricing structure and our customer relationships. Due to the staggered nature of the tariff policy implementation, we are now seeing a more complete impact of those actions in 2026 compared to 2025 when they were being phased in. We expect these factors to continue to support our performance. There are a few main factors that have been driving growth. Kitchen tools remains our largest category. It had a strong quarter. Farberware continues to perform well across all channels. KitchenAid, where we absorbed a meaningful market share reset at Walmart over the past 2 years is recovering. We have relaunched the Farberware kitchen tool line with new product and have recently introduced KitchenAid storage and early acceptance has been strong. Trajectory is improving, and we expect continued progress through the balance of 2026. Home decor also had a very strong quarter and continues to grow. This is a business that was essentially de minimis for us a few years ago. We have been deliberate about product development with brands, including Macassa and Elements, and that investment is generating real results. The club and dollar channels have become a meaningful driver here as well. Their sell-through on our home decor programs has been strong. And when Circana data reflects that performance, other retailers take notice, which creates pull-through demand that builds on itself. Our Home Solutions segment, which includes home decor, grew 22.9% in the quarter, driven by higher sales in the dollar channel and warehouse club programs. The Dolly Parton brand, which we have discussed on prior calls, continues to be a meaningful contributor to growth across home decor, cutlery, dinnerware and kitchen tools. We shipped approximately $18 million under Dolly in 2025 and expect substantial growth in the Dolly brand in 2026. Finally, as we have discussed previously, we continue to see a rebound in our sales of flatware from the disruption in 2025 related to the tariff implementation, which resulted in lost shipments for 2025. We saw shipments normalizing beginning in the fourth quarter of last year and into 2026. E-commerce declined at the start of the quarter, driven by annual negotiations with Amazon as well as a reduction in advertising spend during the quarter as we evaluated our 2026 plans. Trends improved in March, and these actions were completed, and we are seeing continued improvement into the beginning of the second quarter. We expect e-commerce to be a contributor to growth for the full year. In cutlery, which has been a growth category for us for a couple of years, we had a year-over-year decline in the quarter. Builder Board, a product line we launched 2 years ago, continues to contribute to profitability and remains a strong profitable business. However, we saw some normalization in the quarter. The underlying business remains stable. We are introducing new products in the cutlery line, and we expect that category to remain attractive and support overall growth. Our international business grew year-over-year in the quarter and continued its trajectory of improving profitability. This growth occurred despite challenging end market conditions in Europe, particularly in the U.K. and reflects in part our efforts to expand our sales footprint to national accounts from the legacy sales focus on independent retailers. We are not yet at breakeven on the bottom line internationally, but we have made progress toward breakeven. The final phase of Project Concord, our international restructuring initiative, encountered some legal and structural delays in 2025. We expect those to be fully resolved in the first half of this year, and we expect the completion of this work to contribute to improved financial performance. I want to address the macro environment directly because I know it is top of mind. We have been managing tariff exposure proactively and systematically for over 2 years. During this period, we have expanded our sourcing footprint away from China to other geographies. We were among the first in our space to implement price increases during this period, which had a near-term impact on volumes in 2025, however, supported our margin structure. Our supply chain is designed to provide flexibility to shift production across geographies as trade economics evolve. While we have established meaningful manufacturing capacity outside of China, in 2025, we sourced the majority of our product supply from China as the tariff adjusted cost of goods sold was more favorable. We expect this will evolve and over time, we expect sourcing from other established geographies to increase. On cost of goods sold, more broadly, we have not experienced a material impact from resin or freight costs related to recent geopolitical developments. We maintain long-term freight contracts and while these provide some protection in periods of acute rate escalation, we believe we are positioned to mitigate and respond to changes in freight costs, including those related to developments in the Middle East. We may experience a reduction in sales to the Middle East as a result of disruptions related to the war in this region, but our sales to this region is insignificant, being below $1 million a year. The relocation of our East Coast distribution center to Hagerstown, Maryland is on schedule. The facility, approximately 1 million square feet adds approximately 327,000 square feet of incremental capacity compared to our current New Jersey facility, and the facility is now operational. Capital and operational costs for this project are tracking below our estimates. We will implement our warehouse management system in the new facility, which we had previously implemented in our West Coast distribution center, where it contributed to improved labor efficiency. The establishment of the Hagerstown distribution facility is expected to `position Lifetime for future growth and cost efficiency. Let me spend some time discussing our view of the full year. Detailed in our earnings release this morning, we expect net sales of between $650 million to $700 million, adjusted EBITDA of $53.5 million to $56 million and adjusted net income of $16 million to $17.5 million. This guidance reflects continued top line growth, the full year benefit of 2025 pricing actions and a cost structure that has been reset to a lower base. It also reflects the costs associated with the Hagerstown transition, which are running through our P&L this year. We are continuing to invest in new product. Dolly Parton sales grew by approximately 150% in fiscal year 2025, and we expect substantial growth again in 2026. As discussed, this growth is across 4 of our product categories. This year, we will see an expansion of the Dolly line beyond the dollar channel to several additional retailers across a couple of channels. On M&A, we continue to monitor the M&A environment. We have observed reduced activity from financial buyers and lower valuation levels in certain segments. We are seeing real deal flow from businesses that need a larger platform for supply chain, for systems for the infrastructure required to navigate the current trade environment. We are actively evaluating opportunities. As has been our practice, we will remain disciplined in our approach and only move forward with opportunities that provide returns that meet our investment criteria. We will provide additional information when we have something definitive to report. We plan to host an Investor Day later this year, targeting the fourth quarter of this year. We look forward to providing a more comprehensive view of our multiyear strategy and the growth drivers we see ahead. Finally, and I will close with this, we entered 2026 with momentum, a cleaner cost structure and better visibility than we have had in some time. The actions we took over the past 2 years, decisions that were not easy and that carried real short-term costs are the reason we are standing here with a business that is growing on both the top and bottom line. We are focused on sustaining that. With that, I'll turn the call over to Larry to review the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Rob. As we reported this morning, net loss for the first quarter of 2026 was $4.8 million or $0.22 per diluted share compared to the net loss of $4.2 million or $0.19 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2025. Adjusted net income was $800,000 for the first quarter of 2026 or $0.04 per diluted share compared to adjusted net loss $5.3 million or $0.25 per diluted share in '25. Loss from operations was $2.2 million in the first quarter of '26 compared to income from operations of $1.1 million in the 2025 period. Adjusted income from operations for the first quarter of 2026 was $5.4 million compared to a loss from operations of $900,000 in the 2025 period. The '26 and '25 periods exclude acquisition intangible amortization of $4.4 million. Also, the 2026 period excluded expenses of $2 million for restructuring, $1.1 million for due diligence and $100,000 for East Coast warehouse relocation. The 2025 period excluded a $6.4 million nonrecurring gain related to a litigation settlement. Adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12-month period ended March 31, 2026, was $52.7 million. Adjusted net income, adjusted income from operations and adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP measures, which are reconciled to our GAAP measures in the earnings release. The following comments are for the first quarter of 2026 and 2025, unless stated otherwise. Consolidated net sales increased by 2.4% to $143.5 million. U.S. segment sales increased by 1.7% to $130.7 million. The increase includes the higher selling prices that went into effect during the third quarter of 2025 to mitigate the impact of tariffs imposed on foreign-sourced products. Within the segment product line increase primarily came from Home Solutions attributable to home decor products in the dollar channel and warehouse club programs. This is partially offset by a decrease in tableware products. International segment sales increased by 10.6% to $12.8 million. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange translation, the increase was 2.5%, driven by higher sales in the Asia Pacific region and to the U.K. nationals. Overall, gross margin increased to 37.7% from 36.1%. U.S. segment gross margin increased to 37.9% from 36.2%. The improvement in the gross margin percentage was attributable to favorable product mix and higher selling prices, partially offset by higher tariffs. International gross margin increased to 36.7% from 35.3%, driven by favorable customer and product mix. U.S. segment distribution expenses as a percentage of goods shipped from its warehouses was 10.9% versus 11.9%. The improvement was attributable to higher sales resulting in a favorable impact on fixed expenses, lower variable labor as unit sales declined but were more than offset by higher dollar volume from higher selling prices and lower facility supply expenses. This improvement was partially offset by higher freight rates. International segment distribution expenses as a percentage of goods shipped from its warehouses improved to 23.2% from 25% last year. The improvement was due to higher sales resulting in a favorable impact on fixed expenses and a decrease in inventory levels at third-party operated distribution facilities. This decrease was also partially offset by higher freight rates. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased by 16.8% to $36.8 million. U.S. segment expenses decreased by $1.8 million to $28.2 million. The decrease in expenses was attributable to lower employee expenses and the provision for doubtful accounts and advertising expenses. As a percentage of net sales, expenses decreased to 21.6% from 23.3%. The decrease was due to the impact of fixed costs on higher sales volume. International SG&A remained the same at $3.7 million. Decreases in employee expenses and commissions were offset by foreign currency loss on non-sterling denominated net liabilities. And as a percentage of net sales, expenses decreased to 28.9% from 31.9%. The decreased percentage was attributable to the impact of fixed costs on higher sales volume. Unallocated corporate expenses were $4.9 million compared to income of $2.2 million in 2025. Excluding $1.1 million of due diligence expenses in the current period and a nonrecurring legal settlement gain of $6.4 million last year, corporate expenses would have been $3.8 million in the current period versus $4.2 million. That's a decrease of $400,000. Restructuring expenses were $2 million in 2026, of which $1.2 million was for employee severance related to exiting the New Jersey distribution facility, $100,000 for the U.K. project Concord and $700,000 to downsize our Sterling Silver manufacturing operations in Puerto Rico. The high price of silver has made the Sterling Silver Flatware business no longer viable. The facility will focus on ornaments and other profitable Sterling Silver products. Interest expense, excluding mark-to-market adjustment for swaps, decreased by $400,000 due to lower average outstanding borrowings, partially offset by higher interest rates. Income tax rate for the current and prior periods were 26% and 3.3%, respectively. The difference in the 2026 rate compared to 2025 is primarily driven by nondeductible expenses and foreign losses for which no tax benefit is recognized, partially offset by federal tax credits. Our balance sheet strengthened during the 2026 quarter. During the period, we generated free cash flow of $30 million. This enabled us to reduce our net debt to $170 million. And at quarter end, the adjusted EBITDA to net debt ratio improved to 3.2x. At quarter end, our liquidity was approximately $110 million, which included cash plus availability under our credit facility and receivable purchase agreement. Lastly, we are pleased to report that our new East Coast distribution facility in Hagerstown, Maryland is in operation and beginning the process of receiving and shipping goods. We previously reported that the cost of the move to the new facility was on plan. We now feel confident that the spending will be favorable to that plan. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open the line for comments for questions.[Operator Instructions] And our first question here will come from Matt Koranda with ROTH Capital.

Congrats on a nice quarter. Maybe just starting with the guidance for '26. Just wanted to hear a little bit more about the pricing assumption that you embedded in the growth for sales. And then just any additional color on sort of the way to think about demand between the U.S. versus international?

So for pricing, we didn't bake in, in our 2026 view any incremental pricing related to further fluctuations and the pricing that we did do in 2025 were all related to tariffs. That's an evolving situation, but it has stabilized. And there were phases of it. And throughout 2025, we reacted that. Again, we aim to be margin dollar neutral in passing through prices, not necessarily margin percent neutral. And we did that effectively. So in 2026, you get the impact because you're getting the full year impact of those pricings were in 2025, they were phased in. So there's far less than that. In terms of international, Matt, it's a small part of our business. The bulk of our financial results are based off of North America and the U.S. There's -- I'm not sure exactly the question. There's a tremendous overlap in products. There's historically more of a divergence. But as we've restructured the business, we've done it to -- one of the things we've done is aligned the product offerings and aligned the product development. So there's a big overlap. For instance, the fastest-growing brand that we have internationally is Kitchen, where those products are all designed in the U.S., the same products that we're selling over throughout the world, and that's the fastest-growing area. So there is now much more alignment than we've ever had in the past where there was more separation between the business lines -- business units, sorry. Does that answer that question, Matt? I don't know I forgot.

Yes. No, that helps, Rob. And then I guess the margin expansion that is contemplated in the full year guide, at least on the adjusted EBITDA line, I wanted to hear a little bit about the way you guys built the expectations for margin expansion contribution from the cost cutting you've done in international versus just flow-through in the U.S. from good growth. wanted to hear how that kind of feeds into the expansion assumption for the full year? And then also, if there's any headwind that you're baking in from higher oil prices, component costs or shipping or anything like that in the '26 guide, that would be helpful.

Yes. So in terms of margin expansion, I believe you're talking about really EBITDA and bottom line as opposed to gross margin, but I'll just comment briefly on gross margin. Gross margin is -- we look at things on a bottoms-up basis. So any fluctuation, particularly in any given quarter with actual results and also as we look at the full year and what's baked into our guidance is a function of channel mix and product mix, right? So as we introduce new product, it may -- even if it's replacing existing products. So it could be a cut reset that's introducing another cut reset, but the new SKU is a little different. It will be of a different margin. So that gets factored in. And channel is different, right? When you club, off-price, mass, independent. So there's all those -- there's differentiation. So we add it up and then it is what it is. There is -- if you look at the bottom line, while again, it's not terribly material to the whole, but there's bigger improvement percentage-wise to the international business because that business wasn't making money, and we're driving that to the opposite direction to make money. So whereas the U.S. business has always been highly profitable and the majority of the increase in our bottom line, our EBITDA growth is coming from the U.S. business, where in both businesses, as we continue to grow the top line with a very streamlined infrastructure, as we had talked about, a disproportion of that amount is going to fall to EBITDA, fall to cash flow. So we get the benefit of that using our overhead more efficiently. As a matter of fact, the challenges we've had in the U.K. is there was too much overhead to feed the business. So the restructuring is addressing that overhead. So the infrastructure has changed to make it more profitable or to make it profitable. And that's been really the anchor, so to speak, in that business, and that's what we're addressing, and that's what Project Concord is attacking. I think those are the questions.

Yes. I appreciate the detail there, Rob. Maybe just one more for me. Curious if you've seen or if you could kind of note out any changes in behavior from your retail customers, if there is anything notable at all since the Iran conflict broke out in early March? Just curious if there's any more reticence to take inventory or if it's relatively business as normal. Just wanted to hear a little bit about sort of the demand trends that you're seeing from retail customers over the last couple of months.

Sure. Before I answer that, I realize there was a piece of your last question I did not answer in terms of headwinds. So we are seeing a COGS impact, and I think you're seeing a bigger driver in the global supply-demand imbalance. So it's still -- if you are sourcing product, you still have a lot of leverage, particularly when you can provide growth and more volume to factories that are just looking for volume. So you're seeing that. But we are seeing -- and Larry mentioned in his comments, we are seeing increased freight, both domestically and ocean freight. So container rates are starting to go up. We are unless -- which we're not predicting, there is some settlement in terms of the Middle East, it seems to us that container rates will continue to increase driven by freight cost -- excuse me, oil cost. So we have baked that into our analysis in terms of best we can see. In terms of retailer behavior, we haven't really seen anything. There was a tremendous amount. Look, most retailers are very sophisticated with very sophisticated finance areas that tracks the general trends of the economy. And we had seen a lot and saw a lot in 2025 and starting in 2024, a lot of retailers changed safety stock levels and that hurts you -- they're buying less. And there was a period of time that hurt our shipments because they're buying less because of managing their inventories more tightly. We are not seeing that. That kind of seem to have passed through, right? We can only do that so long. And there has been -- there's a lot of channel differentiations. Some retail channels are doing very well, some are not. But we have not seen anything. We've also seen more impacts on the supply side where -- look, there's a lot of competition out there, but people are hurting. And we believe that our continued investment in new product development where there's a lot less new product there has helped us gain placement and position at our customer base, which we're seeing in our results.

And our next question will come from Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti & Company.

Nice to see the better-than-expected start to 2026. So first, I just wanted to follow up on one of the last comments you mentioned, Rob, as far as new products. So would you say that now that new products as a percentage of overall sales, are they meaningfully up versus where they had been historically? Just maybe help us better understand as far as the relevance of new products and how that impacted not just the quarter, but your guidance for this year?

So I think more of the issue is we didn't slow down our new product development through all the gyrations that have happened over the last 2 to 4 years, right? Product development is a continuous cycle. And I think we've positioned ourselves favorably, we believe, as a result of that. If you look at Builder Board, right, which we talked about, right, I mean, that was really introduced its first big year with 2024, and it tremendously grew our cutlery business, right? And so we're constantly looking at what's next with Builder Board, but there's not as much new product there in 2026. There is, but it went from 0, right? If you look at 2023 and grew to 8 figures -- so you're not seeing as much new growth there in 2026. Whereas in home decor, there's been a lot of new products that we've introduced that have been driving substantial growth. We look throughout our portfolio, and we're constantly looking at where we can bring in new product, everything from highly disruptive to just lipstick on a pig. And what I mean by that is just looking at trends, right? We have a trend group. And if white handled knife became very popular, we started to introduce white handled knife. Now it's white handled with some trim, a little metal. And that's -- but we're putting that on a knife that we've always made, right? It's just looking a little different. So there's various levels, and we're constantly doing that. So there's -- the buckets may have changed, but overall, the mix in terms of new product has not necessarily changed. Again, except taking out newness, Dolly Parton was nothing in 2023, right? We had a little bit in '24, $18 million in '25 continues to grow, and that's all plus one opportunity for us.

Got you. That's very helpful color. And then did you give the sales number for Dolly Parton for the first quarter?

We did not. I can't tell you that I was saying 8. We were also -- we were down in Dolly and the dollar channel in the first quarter. It's just timing.

Okay. Got you. Okay. And then I just wanted to follow up about pricing. So I know your guidance for the full year is not including any additional price increases. But when we look at the first quarter of this year versus the first quarter of last year, which the year ago period was before Liberation Day. So just on a comparable period level, was there any -- can you just speak to pricing versus volumes just for the first quarter alone?

Yes. That's always a tough one. Certainly, units were down. We was made up with the dollar in dollar sales. It's in the single-digit percentages, the unit decline.

And the second quarter was a disaster in '25, that's past us.

Right.

On a volume basis.

Right, right. And lastly, as far as potential AEPA tariff refunds, how are you guys thinking about that? I assume it's not included in your guidance, but maybe if you could just speak to that.

No, it is not included in our guidance, and we think appropriate GAAP is not to recognize any impact to the financial statements. We are -- we did pay $41.7 million, and we're legally according to the Supreme Court of the United States, entitled and the Court of International Trade, a refund to that. But while that may be done by June, the administration could appeal. There's a lot. Garden for can pass, let alone, you have to pay taxes on that. But we have a refund of the tariffs that we paid subject to a refund is $41.7 million, not that we know it all.

Right. That's definitely a very meaningful number. So all right. So we'll stay tuned on that.

And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Rob Kay for any closing remarks.

Thanks, Joe. As always, thanks, everyone, for listening in, for your interest and for your support of Lifetime Brands, and we look forward to future communication.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.