Outdoor Holding Company (POWW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Outdoor Holding Company's Fourth Quarter FY 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to the company's Investor Relations representative, Michael Bacal. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me from Outdoor Holding Company's leadership team are Steve Urvan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Paul Kosowski, Chief Financial Officer; and Jordan Christensen, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements that address Outdoor Holding companies' expectations, strategy, future performance, operational results, margins, cost structure, legal matters, capital allocation and other matters. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. For more information about these risks and uncertainties please refer to the risk factors and other cautionary statements described in Outdoor Holding company's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and periodic reports on Form 10-Q and the company's earnings press release issued in advance of this call. Today's conference call includes non-GAAP financial measures that Outdoor Holding company believes can be useful in evaluating its performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, please see the reconciliation table located in the company's earnings press release. The information discussed on this call is current as of today, June 22, 2026. Except as required by law, Outdoor Holding company disclaims any obligation to publicly update will revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. Before we begin, please note that certain non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call including adjusted EBITDA, are reconciled in the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the company's earnings materials. Reconciliations for the first second and third quarters of the fiscal year are available in the applicable quarterly earnings releases posted on the Investor Relations section of the company's website. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Outdoor Holding Company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Urvan.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 Earnings Call. After just over a year as CEO, I'm excited to report that annual results reflect remarkable improvement for the company. I'm extremely proud of the tremendous progress we have made. Fiscal 2026 was a year of meaningful improvement across the business. And the fourth quarter gave us a strong finish with continued operating momentum, stronger cash generation, growing profitability and clear progress, exceeding the profitability goals I laid out last August. First, I will review our quarterly results. then Paul will review our financial performance in greater detail before I recap our accomplishments in fiscal 2026 and our priorities for fiscal 2027. In the fourth quarter, net sales were $13.9 million, an increase of over 10% or almost $1.3 million compared with the prior year period. despite the cautious consumer spending environment. Gross margin remained strong for the quarter at 87.6%. Gross merchandise value, or GMV, increased to $229 million from approximately $205 million in last year's period. Due to sales mix of increasing firearms GMV versus non-firearms GMV, we experienced a modest decline in our take rate to 6.06% from 6.15% in last year's period. We continue to execute our strategy of operating as a streamlined pure-play e-commerce marketplace. In the fourth quarter, we made further progress reducing operating expenses. Total operating expenses declined significantly year-over-year for the tune of $23 million. During the quarter, the company resolved an open litigation item with a $4.4 million payment to fully and finally settled the DCP matter. We inherited numerous litigation matters and have been working hard to resolve these matters as evidenced by many successful resolutions in the fiscal 2026 year. We continue to demonstrate that [ Kunberger.com ] can be operated as effectively as a smaller, more streamlined organization by reducing redundancies and rightsizing our personnel to match the scope of our operations. Even after absorbing the onetime $4.4 million settlement expense in the DCP matter, which dramatically reduced our net loss from continuing operations in the quarter to $2.7 million compared to a loss of $27 million in the same period last year. This translated to a loss from continuing operations per share of $0.02 for the quarter versus a loss from continuing operations of $0.23 for the prior year period. Importantly, significant cost improvements once again drove strong cash generation for the quarter despite the restructuring costs, share repurchases, legal expenses and other costs offsetting these cash gains for the quarter, which Paul will discuss in more detail. We view this continued recurring contribution to cash flow from operations is one of the clearest indicators of the underlying health of the business. The fourth quarter results reflect the continuation of the trends we've seen in the last few quarters. For fiscal 2026, net sales and gross margins grew from fiscal 2025 levels. More importantly, we have been executing on our cost reduction efforts and curtailment of legal expenses, resulting in a significantly lower year-over-year operating expenses. The net result was a dramatic reduction in operating losses from continuing operations and positive cash flow from operations for the year. That positive cash generation is a milestone worth underscoring, as it's a direct result of the concerted efforts our team has put in place to increase operational efficiency. Before I turn things over to Paul, I would like to touch on a key metric we use to evaluate real-world performance, adjusted EBITDA. We believe this non-GAAP metric provides helpful insights into the underlying performance of the business given the level of nonrecurring items impacting reporting results. To help clarify our performance results and identify adjustments, we include a table detailing adjusted EBITDA in both our earnings release and Form 10-K. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA demonstrates our progress as we delivered more than double the adjusted EBITDA in the quarter of $7.7 million compared to $2.9 million in the fiscal 2025 fourth quarter. Just as encouraging is the trajectory for the year, quarterly adjusted EBITDA grew from $3.1 million to $4.9 million to $6.6 million to $7.7 million from the first to fourth quarters, respectively. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA improved to $22.3 million from $15.3 million in fiscal 2025. We are outperforming the run rate of $25 million adjusted EBITDA that I set as a goal just 10 months ago. I'm especially proud of the tremendous work our team undertook during fiscal 2026 to overhaul and strengthen our financial reporting infrastructure. culminating in the successful remediation of all previously identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting by year-end. I will now turn it over to Paul Kosowski, our Chief Financial Officer, to discuss the quarter and year's performance in greater detail.

Thanks, Steve. I'm pleased to share some highlights from our fourth quarter. Outdoor Holding Company's fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $7.7 million, a robust 55% of net sales. Q4 net revenue was $13.9 million, 10.1% higher than the fiscal 2025 fourth quarter. This marks the third consecutive quarter of sequential and year-over-year revenue growth. GMV was $229 million, 6.2% higher than Q3 and up 11.8% from Q4 of fiscal 2025. Firearm unit sales were up over 8.7% from last year's quarter, while adjusted mix increased 1.6%, resulting in an increased share of adjusted mix by 40 basis points. The significant increase in GMV was driven by firearms while the non-firearms category showed a slight increase versus the prior year period. In Q4, we saw sales growth in both pistols and rifles with sales of new units slightly outpacing sales in use. The overall change in sales mix resulted in a modest decrease in take rate for the quarter. The company completed its integration with a compliant FFL transfer platform to improve the transfer process for items subject to FFL regulations. This integration has reinforced our commitment to reducing transaction friction and improving the user experience while generating incremental revenue. Our overall strong adjusted EBITDA was driven by our continued improvements in operating efficiency, reduced expenses and increased GMV compared to last year's fourth quarter. The company's strong operating model and continued positive cash flow from operations helped the decline in our quarterly cash position for $1.8 million. Even after spending $4.4 million to resolve the DCP matter, incurring continuing legal indemnification expenses, repurchasing $1 million in stock and resolving other legal disputes. After including $0.5 million of interest income, we ended the fiscal year with a cash balance of $68.1 million, a substantial increase from our closing fiscal '25 cash balance of $30.2 million. Regarding cash deployment, the company will continue returning cash to investors through the share repurchase program. Looking at full year results for fiscal '26 net sales increased 3.5% to $51.5 million as compared to $49.4 million of fiscal year '25. Fiscal '26 gross margins improved to 87.2% versus 86.9% in fiscal 2025. We expect our gross margins will continue to remain strong. A new revenue stream beginning of fiscal '27 for FFL services will be accretive to sales but not at the same 87% profitability rate. Full year GMV was $823.5 million, up 3.2% from fiscal 2025 GMV of $798 million. As a percentage of adjusted mix, [indiscernible] share of firearm sales by 41 basis points for the year. The take rate for the year improved modestly to 6.21% from 6.19% in fiscal '25. Reducing operating expenses and improving the user experience will continue to remain a focus. For fiscal '26, our adjusted EBITDA was $22.3 million or $0.19 per share compared to $15.3 million or $0.13 per share in fiscal '25. Executing on this strategy and maintaining our focus on financial discipline has increased adjusted EBITDA by $7 million. This is a 46% improvement compared to fiscal year '25 and includes over $5 million in reductions across SG&A following the corporate restructuring, less legal expenses and lower bad debt expense. The net loss from continuing operations was $4.9 million for fiscal '26 or a loss of $0.04 per share. a significant improvement over the $65.2 million net loss or $0.55 per share in fiscal '25. Just as important as our positive financial results, the company also remediated all material weaknesses. This was a key priority for management, and we completed a well before anticipated deadline. Management continues to emphasize the importance of executing on these controls effectively going forward. Now I'd like to turn it over to Steve for some final remarks before we address your questions.

Thanks, Paul. This was our third consecutive quarter of improved reported financial performance since I became Chairman and CEO of the company, approximately 13 months ago. As this concludes our 2026 fiscal year, now it's a good time to look back and reflect on our progress in achieving the objectives I discussed in my shareholder letter last August. My biggest goals for the year were to substantially reduce the company's SG&A overhead cost structure and to increase adjusted EBITDA. I'm thrilled to report that we delivered on both fronts. We have reduced corporate expenses, reduced our physical footprint and cut recurring ordinary course operating expenses by $5.4 million. Those actions translated directly into improved profitability with fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA more than double what we achieved in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Importantly, the fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA also demonstrated that we passed the $25 million adjusted EBITDA annualized run rate that I identified as a goal last August. We are proud to achieve that milestone ahead of schedule, but we are not done. We still see opportunities to simplify the organization, improve efficiency and build on this momentum in fiscal 2027. Paul also highlighted a major part of the story. Our operating model continued to generate positive cash from operations even while we work through legacy matters and other onetime costs, that positive cash generation give us capital allocation options. In the fourth quarter, we began to execute on our stock repurchase program, purchasing a little over 500,000 shares for over $1 million. And we expect to continue buying stock in a disciplined manner in the quarters ahead as trading permits. We have been disciplined in our capital allocation to support long-term shareholder value selectively investing in new features like streamlining FFL compliance to improve the user experience on [ gunbroker.com. ] We will continue to target similar select high-return enhancements to the platform with the goal of increasing traffic, transaction volume, conversion and ultimately, revenue. We will continue to leverage AI to improve the experience for both buyers and sellers on the site. In March, we deployed an AI-powered listing tool to produce standardized and marketplace optimized product descriptions that we expect will reduce listing creation time, promote consistency and increased conversion rates. Within the next month or so, we expect to release AI-driven virtual customer service to improve our customer support by providing faster and more accurate resolution to customer issues. To further take advantage of AI, we recently announced the hiring of Eric Berger as Director of AI Strategy and Implementation. Eric will lead the development, coordination and execution of AI initiatives across the company. Finally, as we look ahead in fiscal 2027, I am optimistic with our strong margins, more efficient operations, positive cash generation from operations and platform improvements each incremental dollar of revenue has the potential to create meaningful profitability and shareholder value. This concludes our prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Matt Koranda from ROTH Capital.

I wondered if you could talk a little bit about sort of the shape of demand during the fourth quarter in terms of overall GMV and firearms units, the unit data that you shared was helpful. And then, I guess, since the quarter closed since we're kind of a couple of months now into the first quarter, any trends to call out on demand in sort of the April, May timeframe and maybe even a month to date in June in terms of what you're seeing on firearms demand.

Sure. Matt, thanks for the question. So we've continued to outperform the market. I think mix was up a little bit in the quarter. we were up substantially more. So that tells me that we're continuing to gain market share. And we're continuing to execute on our plan to basically make our sellers happy, make our buyers happy and make [indiscernible] a very seamless experience for both sides of the transaction, and that's leading to increases in market share. Obviously, we don't -- we're not going to preview kind of financial results for the time past the end of the quarter. But demand in the marketplace seems better this year. I think that it's hard to -- it can be hard to predict exactly why, but you've got midterms coming up, you've got the elimination of the tax on silencers. And I think that, that's the just the whole suppressor. There's a lot of built-up demand for suppressors and I think that's just kind of had a generally positive impact on the firearms market in general. And so demand seems to be continuing to be -- it to be good. It's not 2020, 2021 good, but it's better than it's been in the last couple of years.

Okay. That makes sense, thanks for the commentary, Steve. And then I wanted to hear a bit more about the AI strategy, about the hiring of a Director of AI strategy and implementation, sounds interesting, and it sounds like you see it as a large opportunity for the marketplace. So I wanted to hear a little bit, I guess, about where he's going to be focused around is it first around seller initiatives like the listing tools that you mentioned? Is it more around experience and buyer initiatives like the customer service initiative that you also talked about? Maybe just what the primary first areas of focus are going to be and where you see the sort of the biggest areas of opportunity?

It's a great question. So obviously, he's been on the job just since the first of June. So step 1 is kind of get your feet wet, meet with everybody and start understanding the organization and understanding behind the scenes, how we conduct business. To me, there's so much that AI can do. There's a lot of repetitive tasks that it can perform. There's a lot of things that we can do 24 hours a day, whereas people aren't working 24 hours a day. And so we're focused on -- we're not really focused on anything. We're kind of focused on figuring out where we should be focused, and some of the opportunities we've already seen, obviously, are we have vast amounts of data. The site has been around since 1999. We have pricing data. We have descriptive data. We have all kinds of information about firearms. And using AI, we've -- in the past, we've used traditional data mining tools to kind of help us figure out pricing and certain other things. AI can do it so much more efficient efficiently because it's capable of kind of interpreting things a little more loosely. And so figuring out what we can do with that data, how we can better use that data, help our sellers sell things, help our buyers find things, marketing, AI [indiscernible] content generation. It's great -- there's a lot of task that you can perform with AI. And so Eric's job is to really jump in and help us identify where we should be focused and then the next step would be specific -- putting specific implementations to solve specific problems. The one that we've already -- we were pretty far down the road, we're actually very far to the road even before he joined as customer service. We're probably about a month away from launching that. And that one for me, I think, is huge, because questions come in 24 hours a day, and we don't have people working in customer service 24 hours a day. And so being able to get you kind of immediate answers and really good answers. I think, is going to be game changing for the organization.

Great. I appreciate all that detail, Steve. And maybe just the last one. there's still a little bit of residual noise, I guess, from some of the litigation matters. And so just trying to get my arms around how to think about core operating expenses now that you got the DCP litigation out of the way and the SEC matter is settled, maybe I don't know if Jordan is on and wants to talk about that or if Paul wants to take a crack at just how to think about core OpEx and the run rate going forward now that those matters are sort of mostly behind us.

I'll tell you, we have -- the only open litigation issues are the class action shareholder derivative lawsuit that were filed in Arizona. To the best of my knowledge, everything else has been resolved. And so we don't foresee -- we don't know what the end result of that will be. But aside from that, we don't have any visibility or knowledge of kind of any -- like $4.4 million settlements that we're going to have to make. Like everything else has been cleaned up. So the one -- really that one issue looked at the shareholder derivative matter in the class action, if you kind of look at it as kind of one interrelated issue. Aside from that, we believe everything else has been settled. Now we still are paying indemnification to ex officers for the SEC charge them in Arizona, and that's ongoing. And that's going to kind of come and go in waves. You've got -- like when you go to trial, there's a -- there's a lot more expense. In other times, there's a lot less expense. It's definitely kind of chunky. But that ongoing cost is that in the class action really last 2 buckets of kind of onetime expenses or legacy litigation expenses that we foresee.

Okay. And the indemnification sort of expenses as they come will be called out, I guess, and sort of onetime items. I would assume...

Yes. We -- it ends up in our adjusted EBITDA bridge.

Our next question comes from Dave Kanen from Kanen Wealth Management.

First question is actually was posed by Matt, but I'm going to take a stab at it in a slightly different way, and it's in regards to any momentum. Did the momentum continue in fiscal Q1 and what you called out was the [ NICS ] data was slightly positive and how you outperformed it and grew share. So -- what is your confidence level? The question is, going forward, what is your confidence level of continued outperformance of the mix and continued share gains?

So thank you, David. I feel very positive about the way we're trending right now.

Okay. And then in terms of the cost for indemnification of the former officers, is that -- just remind me, is that being pulled out? And does the adjusted EBITDA number exclude it? Or we're throwing that in there?

That is that is a cost that is pulled out for the purposes for adjusted EBITDA.

And then the last question is what are some of the opportunities that you see incrementally in order to grow the business organically?

Absolutely. So first of all, we continue to -- as you see from the outperformance relative to NICS, we continue to just basically capture market share. So that's one thing that we've been doing, and I believe will continue going forward. We brought the [ Master FSL ] system online. That has now become a revenue source in prior quarters, it was -- we were implementing it. So there was cost of no associated revenue. Now it's generating revenue. As we go forward, advertising, I think I've spoken about advertising in the past. We -- our ad business, when I owned the company, it was private. Our ad business was substantially larger than it than it is at presence -- present. We're working on that. We want to drive more advertising sales. That's something that wouldn't affect take rate. It's kind of a completely a separate but complementary business line, but it's something that we feel could be generate substantial revenue growth and substantial profitability as well. And then we're continuing to make progress on universal payments. Again, some of our sellers don't accept credit cards, don't have the ability to accept credit cards. And we believe that, that is both a substantial revenue opportunity but also a very substantial potential driver of GMV, just eliminating the friction and having go to the bank and then go to the post office and get a money order and mail it off and what have you as opposed to just throwing down your credit card to make a purchase, we think that, that will drive substantial incremental GMV as well.

One more question I thought of as you were speaking. It's been quite -- things have been quite calm in the country, relatively speaking, in terms of civil unrest or catalysts that spur people to go out and buy guns and firearms. So could you give us like a reference point in the past, for example, when they were like during the George Floyd riots and other events like that. In terms of run rate, historically, what you've seen in the business in EBITDA in case something like that happens, so we can get a sense as to what the earnings power and EBITDA potential is?

I mean in early 2021, through 2020, you had kind of a triple win. You had COVID that you had the defund the police, you had protests and some riding and loading, and then you had an election. And so going into the first quarter -- first calendar quarter of 2021, we were on a run rate that was in excess of $100 million in EBITDA. And of course, at that time, we were private, this isn't -- it's -- I guess, we were different accounting standards. So I don't want to get us in trouble or what have you, but we were in excess of $100 million in EBITDA as a run rate. And so when people -- when you have political events, like, for example, in 2008, 2 days before Barack Obama got elected, our sales like -- they literally doubled and then they doubled again. During COVID, our sales again, we ended up on a run rate of in excess of $100 million. You can have -- the size of the spikes can be massive. It can be from a GMV standpoint, it could be double and triple and quadruple the GMV that you're currently doing in a kind of a calmer period. So any kind of political changes, what you were talking about, things like social unrest, these things could really drive massive increases in revenue and GMV.

Well, I add on to that, Steve. I mean, the big point is it's very scalable. Our operating expenses are pretty fixed. And when the top line grows, we don't need to invest a lot more in the business to support it. It's pretty scalable. So we were at 55% adjusted EBITDA as a percent of sales, and I think it would expand that growth.

And we have no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Steve Urvan for any closing remarks.

I want to thank you for participating in today's call and for your interest in Outdoor Holding company. We look forward to sharing our ongoing progress when we report our fiscal first quarter results in August. Thank you all, and have a great day.

This concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.