Clarus Corporation

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Claris Corporation's financial results for the fourth quarter ended December 31st, 2025. Joining us today are Claris Corporation's Executive Chairman, Warren Kanders, CFO Mike Yates, President of Black Diamond Equipment, Neil Fisk, and the company's External Director of Investor Relations, Matt Berkowitz. Following the remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before we go further, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Berkowitz as he reads the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. Matt, please go ahead.

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, we'll be making several forward-looking statements, and we will make these statements under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements reflect our best estimates and assumptions based on our understanding of information known to us today. These forward-looking statements are subject to potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results of operations or financial conditions of Claris Corporation to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. More information on potential factors that could affect the company's operating and financial results is included from time to time in the company's public reports filed with the SEC. I'd like to remind everyone this call will be available for replay starting at 7 p.m. Eastern time tonight. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release, as well as on the company's website at clariscorp.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to CLARIS Executive Chairman, Warren Kanders.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining CLARIS Earnings Call to review our results for the fourth quarter and full year. I am joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Yates, who will cover our Q4 results, including adventure segment performance, as well as Neil Fisk, who will discuss our outdoor segment. In 2025, we remain focused on positioning Clarus for sustainable growth over the long term, prioritizing our most profitable products and styles in the outdoor segment and executing incremental operational progress in the adventure segment. Our financial results reflect a challenging market characterized by weaker consumer demand, tariff impact, supply chain disruptions, and broader macro headwinds. As you will hear from Neil, during the fourth quarter, we experienced the most unfavorable seasonal conditions in 50 years in key ski destinations in the United States. Against this backdrop, we continue to advance our overall strategic plan to simplify our businesses to drive share gains as market conditions normalize. Across both segments, we implemented targeting cost outs and tariff countermeasures that will enhance profitability on an annualized basis and set the stage for long-term value creation. At Outdoor, we have fundamentally reshaped the business over the last two years, simplifying the portfolio, exiting low margin categories and rationalizing SKUs, while upgrading leadership and reallocating investment toward higher growth areas. At the same time, we have meaningfully reduced our cost structure, modernized our systems and sourcing capabilities, and expanded product margins by more than 300 basis points before factoring in the impact of tariffs. Together, these actions have positioned the business to operate more efficiently and profitably moving forward. I would also like to highlight the continued success of the Black Diamond apparel line, which saw sales growth of 10% in the fourth quarter despite unusually adverse seasonal conditions in both the U.S., West, and Europe. We see very strong momentum in key businesses unit heading into 2026. Turning to adventure, our results continue to be affected by market pressures. Q4 gross profit was impacted by several one-time and external factors that Mike will discuss in greater detail. While 2025 was a challenging year for the segment, we have taken corrective action to position the business for a stronger, more innovative future. Importantly, as we discussed last quarter, we identified that pricing in several of our markets, particularly Australia, had not kept pace with inflation or our cost base, contributing to margin erosion. And we have moved forward with price increases across all brands and markets, effective Q1 2026. We continue to believe that adventure is only beginning to tap into significant growth opportunities around the world, and we have begun to see green shoots, particularly in Europe and Japan, where the steps we have taken to improve service levels and shorten lead times have helped to accelerate growth and drive new customer wins. Additionally, our commitment to fitting more vehicles led to a record number of new fitments delivered in 2025, strengthening our competitive positioning and supporting future revenue growth. There is certainly more work to be done, but we have been pleased with the continued progress on our strategic initiatives at Adventure. Overall, Aquarius is far better positioned to navigate uncertainty and market weakness than we were a year ago. Supported by a debt-free balance sheet and a streamlined organizational structure, we will continue to advance our multi-year growth plans while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation and a clear focus on maximizing shareholder value. With that, thank you for being with us today, and I will turn the call over to Neil.

Thanks, Warren. Turning to slide six, I will review the outdoor segment's Q4 performance and our expectations heading into the remainder of 2026. Overall, Q4 came in somewhat softer than our expectations due primarily to adverse seasonal conditions affecting our ski segment that Warren mentioned. That said, Our more focused, simplified business showed growth and resilience in our core go-forward priority categories. The aggressive reshaping of Black Diamond over the last three years has allowed us to weather a year of tremendous disruption, tariff impact, supply challenges, and macro headwinds. It's worth putting that multi-year effort in perspective. Since 2023, we've dramatically simplified and narrowed our focus, exited low-margin, underperforming categories, PEEPs, bindings, jet pours, to name a few, rationalized styles and SKUs, reduced headcount versus the 2023 baseline by 38% in total and 30% excluding changes in manufacturing. We've upgraded key leadership positions key leadership positions, reallocated headcount and investment to support apparel growth. We've stood up Black Diamond Asia's sourcing and product development, launched a new e-comm platform in supporting MarTech stack, launched a new S&OP system to support better supply-demand alignment, modernized our ERP and EU with a new North America ERP in process, We've substantially improved the quality of inventory, concentrating our mix into high-volume A-styles while reducing markdown exposure and the level of discontinued merchandise. We've moved BD to a more full-priced, lower-discount model, and we've engineered more than 300 basis points of improvement in product margin pre-tariff through line simplification, new product introductions, mix management, sourcing, and supply chain improvements. In short, we are leaner, more focused, more agile, and more competitive. The core of the business is strong. Thanks to the hard work of our teams over the last few years, we've set the stage for sustainable, profitable growth and operating margin expansion in the years ahead. Now, let's turn to Q4 results. As with my last update, I'll address tariffs and currency at the top of my remarks and exclude the PEEPS brand, which we divested in Q3 in year-over-year comparisons. First, tariffs. In early May, we initiated the first phase of our tariff mitigation plan, which included raising prices, negotiating vendor concessions, air freighting products where necessary, and accelerating our exit out of China. By moving quickly and decisively, we were able to offset about half of the impact of tariffs in 2025. We estimate that the net unrecovered impact from tariffs and duties for the year was approximately 3.4 million to adjusted EBITDA. As we roll forward into 2026, we've now offset nearly 75% of the tariff impact as best we can estimate today, leaving a $2.8 million unrecovered gap in this coming fiscal year. Over time, we believe we can reduce that gap still further through pricing, sourcing, new product introductions, and value engineering. In the event that we are able to recover tariffs as a result of the recent Supreme Court decision, Black Diamond would receive approximately $6.5 million for the reciprocal IEEPA tariffs we paid in 2025. Note that the most punitive tariffs on our business, the 50% Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, are not covered by the Supreme Court decision and remain in effect. And of course, the IEEPA tariffs have largely been replaced by new ones under a different claimed authority. Now, let me address currency. As noted last quarter, while we benefited from the translation of the higher Euro to the dollar, we incurred significant losses on FX contracts in 2025. These losses, which amounted to a $2.2 million EBITDA swing year over year, flowed through and suppressed product margins. We've now rolled off these contracts and expect a run rate pickup of $1.6 million in EBITDA in 2026 at the current exchange rate. Turning to operating results, revenue for the quarter was down 2.1% to prior year, down 2.9% in constant currency, excluding FX contracts. The largest drag on the top line was our ski business unit, which was down 30% to prior period, due to a combination of our rotation out of low margin categories like bindings, beacons, and airbags, and the most unfavorable seasonal conditions in 50 years in key ski destinations in the U.S. Moreover, while our ski apparel line started strong through October and November, the growth trend tapered in December with the unusually poor conditions in both the US West and Europe. Still, apparel for the quarter was up 10% compared to Q4 2024, and we continue to see very strong momentum in that business into 2026. Meanwhile, our mountain and climb business units were both up for the quarter, 0.4% and 4.3% respectively. Taken together, these three categories of apparel, mountain, and climb grew 3.7% in Q4, accounting for 86% of our sales in the quarter and 90% for the full year. This is where our simplification strategy is paying off, and we expect this strategy to drive profitable growth at BD in the future. By channel and region, North America wholesale excluding FX contracts was down 10.4% due to planned exits in the ski category and somewhat softer replenishment orders in December. North America digital DTC was down 0.8% compared to the fourth quarter of last year, which was a significant improvement in the run rate from previous quarters. Europe wholesale excluding FX contracts was up 12.1% in US dollars and 3.2% on a constant currency basis. Your digital B2C, which is a relatively small part of the region's revenue at 7.3% of total sales, was down 29.9% or 36% in constant currency. Our international distributor channel was up 19.3% for the quarter. In 2024, we realigned our deliveries to better suit the needs of our international market. That means our year-over-year results are now comparable in timing. I'd also like to highlight results of our design for the deep winter catalog, which far exceeded our expectations and validated an important new part of our marketing mix. We had taken a break from marketing via the catalog, and this past winter, success gives us confidence and we expect to continue with the catalog marketing program going forward. Turning to gross margin, Q4 gross margin rate declined 280 basis points versus prior period due to the impact of unrecovered tariffs and FX contracts as well as write downs for exiting inventory. Breaking that down, Tariffs had a 390 basis point impact in the quarter, while FX contracts accounted for another 240 basis points of drag, and inventory exits cost 80 basis points. Stripping out these non-comp factors, our comparable underlying gross margin showed a 450 basis point improvement, reflecting the progress we've made in simplifying the line and focusing on higher margin styles and categories. This helped produce the impact of what would have otherwise been a 730 basis point declining margin. Operating expenses excluding restructuring and legal costs from both periods were essentially flat year over year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at 2 million for the quarter, down 2.1 million to prior period with unrecovered tariffs and loss on FX contracts amounting to a $2.4 million drag on earnings versus the prior year period. Adjustments to EBITDA reflect the latest phase of our restructuring efforts, which have been designed to help offset the higher cost of tariffs and trade in this environment. These actions occurred in Q4 and January of 2026, and include continued streamlining of our organization and overall headcount, completing the exits of PEAP, Jet Force, and finding businesses, exiting our 3PL in Canada, initiating a project to restructure our logistics and fulfillment operations in Europe, closing additional Black Diamond stores, and slimming down our athlete roster. For Q4, these actions resulted in approximately 0.9 million of restructuring charges. We also expect to incur another 1.5 million in 2026, which will be reflected in our Q1 results. We do not anticipate any further restructuring at this point, yet remain mindful of the dynamic and changing macro environment. Finally, inventory ended the year at 64.9 million. On the surface, that looks like a significant increase versus last year's ending position, excluding PEEPS, at 53.5 million. However, the biggest factor in the increase was a change of inventory recognition from delivered at place, or DAP, to recognition at FOB shipment this year. meaning our in-transit inventory on the books appear much larger this year than last. This is 7.9 million of the difference to prior year and is strictly a matter of timing. The two other factors raising this year's number are tariffs and currency, which together inflate the value of inventory approximately 5 million. We've made great progress in improving the quality and composition of the inventory over the last few years and enter 2026 in good shape. In closing, I will again thank our teams around the world for their incredible perseverance, creativity, and drive in the face of this turbulent, often chaotic, and unpredictable global environment. With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Mike Yates.

Thank you, Neil, and good afternoon, everyone. On today's call, I'll provide some brief comments on the Adventure segment, and then we'll conclude with a summary of our Q4 financial results, followed by the Q&A session. Let's take a closer look at Adventure. Q4 revenue declined $2.1 million year-over-year, or 10.4%, driven primarily by reduced demand from two OEM customers compared to the prior year quarter. Also contributing were weaknesses in the U.S. bike market and customer transitions in our home markets of Australia and New Zealand. Offsetting this pressure, our European expansion continues to gain traction. The new 3PL warehouse we opened in the Netherlands has improved service levels and shortened lead times. enabling accelerated growth and new customer wins in Sweden, Norway, the UK, Spain, and Eastern Europe. We also expanded our international distribution footprint, adding a new partner in Japan and multiple partners serving key off-road markets in Africa. In our home markets of Australia and New Zealand, we secured a chain-wide placement of Rhino-Rack product with a large retail customer across all 300 locations in Australia and New Zealand. This partnership is expected to become a top five customer in 2026. In North America, strengthened relationships with rack specialty retailers and upgraded point of sale displays have driven new placements for Rhino Rack and Rocky Mounts, filling product and price gaps not addressed by competitors. While we continue to set ourselves Up to grow the right way, fourth quarter gross profit, in addition to being pressured by lower sales volume, was impacted by several one-time and external factors, including a significant inventory reserve write-down adjustment of $3.4 million relating to excess and old inventory, including some old packaging for in-house assembled goods. We also incurred higher customer rebates in the fourth quarter and higher impacts from U.S. tariffs. Corrective actions are underway. Specifically, the group has implemented price increases on fast-turning Rocky Mounts SKUs in November, is renegotiating unfavorable customer contracts in our home markets of Australia and New Zealand, and has now executed price increases across all brands and markets affected Q1 of 2026. These important actions positioned the business to restore margin performance moving forward. Operationally, we are streamlining our footprint to reduce costs and overhead and improve scalability at Adventure. In the fourth quarter, we closed the high-cost Wellington, New Zealand facility and transitioned to a 3PL in Upland, that is closer to customers and will better support growth. We also closed Brundale in Queensland on March 1st of 2026, consolidating the former Maxtrax operations into our Eastern Creek headquarters. What this means is we've combined Maxtrax and Rhino-Rip businesses under one roof. Product development remains a core focus. Our investment in vehicle fitments delivered a record year in 2025, with more new vehicle fits completed than in any of the prior 10 years. This strengthens our competitive position and supports future revenue growth. Beyond fits, we expect multiple new innovations and product platforms will be launching in the next 18 months. With that, now let me turn to the consolidated results and detailed review of the segment financial review, I'm on slide eight. Fourth quarter sales were 65.4 million compared to 71.4 million in the fourth quarter of the prior year. The 8% decrease in total sales was due to softness in the North American wholesale market at outdoor, lower global DTC revenues, and lower PEEPS revenues due to its disposal in July of 2025. and significantly reduced global demand from two OEM customers in a challenging wholesale market in Australia and Rhino Rec in the adventure segment. The decrease in the adventure segment was partially offset by increased contributions from the acquisition of Rocky Mounts. The consolidated gross margin rate in the fourth quarter was 27.7% compared to 33.4% in Q4 of 2024. Gross margin was impacted by higher inventory reserves at both segments, 3.4 million and a half a million, respectively, at Adventure and Outdoor. The half a million at Outdoor addressed slow-moving obsolete inventory. The 3.4 million, as I mentioned, also dealt with slow-moving and old obsolete inventory at Adventure. Tariffs impacted growth margin at both segments. Lower volumes at the outdoor segment due to the sales peeps along with unfavorable foreign currency impact at the outdoor segment were a drag on margins. These decreases were partially offset by favorable product mix and lower PFAS inventory reserves at the outdoor segment compared to 2024. Consolidated adjusted gross margin reflecting PFAS related and other inventory reserves and inventory fair value adjustments as a result of purchase accounting was 33.6% for the quarter compared to 38% in the year-ago quarter. I want to note that actual gross margin includes significant headwinds from tariffs and FX and inventory reserves in the quarter. This is a key point to make sure everyone understands as they look at our financials here for the quarter. Outdoors actual gross margins for Q4 2025 was 32.3% compared to 35.2% in Q4 of 2024. The significant efforts at outdoor under Neil's leadership to improve our gross margins are being realized as he outlined earlier, but these improvements were completely wiped out in Q4 2025 due to tariffs and FX, which were approximately a 630 basis point headwind in the current quarter compared to last year. Adventure's actual gross margins for Q4 2025 were 16.0% compared to 28.9% in Q4 2024. Actual Q4 2025 gross margins include the $3.4 million of inventory reserves I mentioned earlier. Excluding this inventory reserve, our gross margin at Adventure for Q4 2025 would have been 34.5%. With this inventory reserve, we believe we've taken a significant step in improving the quality of our inventory to venture. Fourth quarter consolidated selling general and administrative expenses were $25.5 million compared to $27.8 million, or down 8% versus the same year-ago quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower employee-related costs lower costs from PEEPS due to the divestiture, and other expense reduction initiatives to manage costs across the segments and at corporate. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $1.2 million, or an adjusted EBITDA margin of 1.8%. Our adjusted EBITDA is adjusted for restructuring charges, transaction costs, stock compensation expense, contingent consideration benefits, and other inventory reserves. Additionally, as noted in prior quarters, beginning in the first quarter of 2024, we adjusted legal costs associated with the Section 16B litigation and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, DOJ, investigation known as the CPSC and DOJ matter. These legal costs were $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and $4.7 million in total for the full year of 2025. The fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA by segment was $300,000 at Adventure and $2 million at Outdoor. Adjusted corporate costs were $1.2 million in the fourth quarter. Let me shift over to liquidity in the balance sheet. Free cash flow defined as net cash provided by operating activities, less capital expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2025. was $11.6 million, compared to $14.4 million for the three months ended December 31, 2024. This strong cash flow generation was expected and is consistent with our historical practice. The decrease versus the prior year is due to the timing of the inventory receipts at outdoor that Neil walked us through. Total debt at December 31, 2025 was zero. At December 31st, 2025, cash and cash equivalents were $36.7 million compared to $45.4 million at December 31st, 2024. The $36.7 million balance is consistent with the expectations I shared last quarter that our consolidated cash balance would be in the range of $35 to $40 million by the end of the year. Let me move on to our outlook. I'm on slide nine. In 2026, we expect full year sales to range between $255 and $265 million and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $9 million to $11 million or an adjusted EBITDA margin of 3.8% at the midpoint of the revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We have tried to take a reasonable approach to guidance and we have a decent understanding of our revenue. The key for us this year will be improving gross margins. We have our SG&A costs under control, but to achieve our guided adjusted EBITDA, we need to hit our gross margin targets. We are initiating our 2026 segment guidance as follows. Adventure $80 million for the full year and outdoor $180 million of sales for the full year 2026. This total of $260 million is the midpoint of the consolidated sales guide range I gave above. Adjusted corporate costs should be around $8 million or $2 million per quarter. We expect capital expenditures to range between $6 and $7 million for the full year and free cash flow to range between $3 and $4 million for the full year 2026. First quarter sales are expected to be between $60 and $62 million, and I want to reiterate Our outlook does not include any expense for the ongoing litigation specifically relating to Section 16B matters, the CPSC matter, or the DOJ investigation. With that, let me give an update on legal. I'd like to provide an update on the outstanding Section 16B securities litigation matters that the company is pursuing, as well as an update on the open matter with the CPSC and DOJ. We continue to proceed in our lawsuit against Hap Trading LLC and Mr. Harshay Padilla for disgorgement of short swing profits under the securities laws. In early 2025, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants. We filed a timely appeal and an oral argument was held on February 12th of 2026 before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. the court has invited the SEC to file an amicus brief within 60 days or by April 17th, 2026. By March 10th of 2026, the SEC is to advise the court if it does not intend to submit a brief. And if it does, the parties have 21 days to respond to it. We also filed a lawsuit against caption management and its related entities and controlling persons. On February 24th, 2026, we entered into a settlement agreement with CAPTION to resolve the company's claims. And on March 2nd, 2026, CAPTION paid the company an undisclosed sum in exchange for, among other things, mutual releases and dismissal of the claims with prejudice. With respect to the open matters with the CPSC and DOJ, In late 2024, the company was notified by the CPSC that the unresolved matters involved in vines against Black Diamond had been referred to the Department of Justice. To date, the DOJ has not pursued a civil lawsuit regarding this matter. However, in early 2025, the DOJ served the company and Black Diamond with grand jury subpoenas in connection with a criminal investigation with requesting categories of documents related to Black Diamond's avalanche beacons. We have cooperated with the DOJ in responding to its discovery request and have produced substantially all of the documents requested. The DOJ has sent letters to John Walbrecht, Black Diamond's former president, and Rick Vance, Black Diamond's former director of quality, advising them that they are targets in its investigation. And the DOJ has also served subpoenas for grand jury testimony on a current and a former employee of Black Diamond. In conclusion, we see Claire's today is a far better position to drive sustainable, profitable growth supported by simplified and narrowed business focus, as well as a strong balance sheet with zero debt, We look forward to taking the next steps in our transformation in 2026 and delivering significant long-term value for Eclair shareholders. At this point, operator, we're ready to take questions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from the line of Matt Coranda of Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Just wanted to hear a little bit more about the pricing actions that you guys took, I guess, at the end of the year and then in January. So maybe just between breaking them out between outdoor and adventure. Could you just talk about sort of the magnitude of pricing that was taken and how that impacts the outlook for growth for 26 between the two segments?

Certainly. Neil, you want to talk about BD and I'll cover adventure?

Yeah, sure. Hi, Matt. Thanks for the question. So maybe give you a sense of magnitude on the pricing actions we've taken at Black Prime and really with the goal, of course, of offsetting the impact of tariffs. If you look at the gross impact of tariffs on the black diamond business, it would be about $11 million, $11 to $12 million a year impact on margin and earnings. With pricing and with some sourcing work that we've done, we're able to offset all but $2.8 million of that, so something around 75%, 80%. And so I think you can assume that there's about $7 million, $7 to $8 million of pricing that we've taken in the black timing business in order to offset tariffs. Obviously, that's not the whole amount. We didn't get all the way back to $11 million, but we pushed it as far as we thought we could push it relative to what competitors were doing and what we thought the consumer would accept in this environment. And then over time, our goal is to continue with smaller price adjustments, product line reengineering, remixing, to close that remaining $2.8 million gap. but about a $7 to $8 million overall price increase.

Okay, that's helpful. Before Mike answers the adventure, I guess, Neil, just clarify, the $7 to $8 million, was that taken in two tranches? You mentioned some May actions from 25. I just want to make sure I understand the impact of 26 and how that feeds into sort of the growth outlook, especially for outdoor.

Yeah, thanks. Good clarifying question. That's the result of both sets of actions we've now taken, the initial price ups we took in May and then the ones we took at the beginning of 2026. It's both of those.

Okay. Should we think half and half in terms of impact or any breakout, I guess, between those two actions that were taken?

I don't think I have an accurate estimate offhand of this split.

Yeah. Okay.

We'd love to get back to you.

We can take it offline. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. And then Mike, go ahead on adventure. Thanks, Neil.

Yeah. So, Matt, I did venture. We took price specifically at Rocky Mouse back in November for my prepared remarks. You know, that's a nice bump, probably around 5% price increase there. And then here in the first quarter across the Rhino Rack business, we took price up as well, pretty much on the Primary, you know, Pioneer, the platform racks are primary categories that we sell. All in, I think we would expect to get about $2 million to $3 million of price this year. Got it. Okay. All right. Very clear. We are fighting volume. You know, the market's challenging, as we've talked about and as some of our competitors have reported.

Yeah. Okay. Understood. And it seems like embedded in the expectation for 26, especially if it pertains to adventure is a pickup in growth and unit volume as the year moves on, I guess, just maybe what are the components that you're assuming there that they give you confidence in that return to growth?

Yep. No. So it's volume, it's price, and then there's an FX tailwind as well. It's really, it's, you know, it's, Some of that volume should recover in the Australian, in the home market, but also through some of the expansion I talk about. We have some growth in Europe and elsewhere, specifically when you think about the bike business here in North America and some of the other things I mentioned in Japan and so forth. So that's where it comes from, is a combination of all three of those things.

Okay, got it. And then maybe just any commentary from you guys on how we plan to use the balance sheet this year. Obviously, you're in a much better position from a cash perspective, no debt. Access to capital, I assume, is solid. Are you finding anything in the funnel in terms of M&A that's interesting? It's just a really dynamic time in the markets, I guess. And maybe there's more stuff shaking loose, but I'd love to hear your perspective on that. Maybe Warren's on there.

Yeah, I think I'm on. That's a good question. For right now, I think we're really focused internally on our two respective businesses and making sure they're well-positioned for the future and that we can grow those businesses. So I think we're just going to sit on our cash for at least the first half of the year.

Okay, seems fair. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks. Thanks, Blan.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Anna Kleschen of BeWise Securities. Your line is now open.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I'd like to start on the category breakdown within Black Diamond. You know, you used to disclose the breakdown between mountain, climb, ski in the case. It's been a while. I think by the prepared remarks, it implied that ski was roughly 10% of the business. Was that accurate? And is that the right number going forward to expect? Or should we expect some compression as we fully lap the exit of findings, etc.? ?

Well, I think what we talked about here, and Neil can follow up, but we talked about 86% of our revenue coming from apparel, climb, and mountain. And that's a direct result of our simplification strategy, leaning into our best products that are our most profitable products and that are core to our business. We're not disclosing those categories. In the 10-K, we just filed it, but we're really focused on those three categories going forward, and that's where the growth's going to come from, and that's what we're focused on, Anna. Got it. Go ahead, Neil.

I could add just a little bit of this, appreciating, Mike, you don't want to break out specifically the categories themselves yet, but basically mountain climate apparel, For the year, we're 90% of our sales. Ski is less than 10% because we also have a little footwear segment in there that we don't normally talk about. It's primarily focused on rock shoes. So ski is less than 10%. And we expect that to drop by a couple more percentage points on the mix. as we complete the rotation out of peeps and jet force and bindings. So I think if you think about the go-forward business, mountain climb and apparel, it'll get pretty close to 93, 94, 95% of the business going forward. That's helpful.

Got it. Thanks. Yeah, that's really helpful. Shifting to broader market expectations, I understand you've talked about that it continues to be a challenging environment, but just wondering, general tone you're hearing from retailers and expectations for sell-in versus sell-through, should we expect those to be more aligned, or are there still pockets of destocking that you expect in this year? Thanks.

Do you want me to take that mic? Yeah, go ahead, Neil, to talk about it.

Yeah, I can certainly speak to Outdoor on that, and Mike can comment on Adventure. I would say it's really hard to read. I don't think there's a clear trend or a clear pattern that's yet emerged. And the only constant is change, as they say. And so I think we're just in that environment. As a result, I would say retailers are being cautious and maybe keeping their powder dry in terms of where they spend their money, deferring open-to-buy decisions until the latest possible moment, trying to keep a little bit more of their open-to-buy in the at-once versus the preseason category. And I think particularly with the winter that we had this year and the Mountain West, in that particular segment, the retailers, I think, will probably be a little bit more conservative next year. But for the most part, we're pretty happy with our order book for 2026. and how it's holding up, and very happy with the strength of our wholesale relationships from the big accounts like REC and MEC to a very much revitalized and rebuilt specialty business for us. I think our wholesale relationships are the strongest they've been in more than five years, and I think that'll keep us in good stead this year.

Great, thanks.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Laurent Veselescu of BME Paribas. Your line is now open.

Hi, this is Leah for Laurent. Just following up on the overall trend, can you talk about the recent trends in the outdoor segment, particularly like What are you saying in terms of consumer demand and also channel inventories?

So, I can, you want me to take that mic?

Please.

Well, sorry, let me be clear on channel inventory. I think we're through the kind of heavy days of the destocking trend that came in the post-COVID correction. And now I'd say for retailers, it's more fine-tuning and and ongoing rebalancing of their inventory in normal course. So I don't see any kind of major overhang right now, at least from the Black Diamond business as we see it in retail. And that gives us some good confidence for where we are in our inventory and where our retail partners are in their inventory in the year ahead. And I would say trends... In our business, apparel has the most momentum right now. It's up 10% in Q4. It was up 25% in Q3. We expect it to be up again double digits in 2026. We have seen mountain, our big mountain category, which includes trekking poles, lighting, gloves, and some of our real power categories, return to growth in 2026 and even a little bit in Q4. And interestingly, we're seeing a bit of a rebound in climb right now. I'm not sure I'd call that a trend yet. But what I would say is if you take those three big business units together, mountain, climb, and apparel, they grew in the fourth quarter significantly. We're seeing that they'll grow again in 2026.

Awesome. Thank you. That's very helpful.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Dernix of Lake Street Capital Markets. The line is now open.

Hey, guys. You got Alex on for Mark Smith today. Thanks for taking my questions. First one for me, looking at the Rocky Mountains contribution in the quarter, could you just talk about how that business is performing so far, how meaningful you expect it to become within that adventure segment over time?

Well, it is meaningful. It's an excellent product. It's specifically here in the North American market. It did about $5 million, a little more than $5.5 million, I think, of revenue here in 2025. We continue to expect that to grow. I mentioned the point-of-sale. We've made some investment in point-of-sale marketing that's being specific to the Rocky Mountains business that's out at our bike shop location. and wholesalers that we work with. So we're excited about that. I think it's a good business. It's a great product, and we expect that to be part of our growth story going forward.

Okay, that's great. And then the last one for me, you highlighted encouraging traction in Europe following the opening of the Netherlands warehouse. Could you expand on how meaningful Europe has become for the venture segment, and then how do you see that opportunity developing going forward?

So what the warehouse in the Netherlands is giving us the opportunity to do is just expand our footprint and serve some of our smaller customers. Our bigger customers in Europe who've been our legacy customers, they're still taking inventory from our business in Australia. They're ordering a full container and it's shipping. The warehouse in Netherlands is allowing us to, you know, fulfill orders that are smaller than a full shipping container. And that's where you see, you know, growth in Spain, growth in, you know, the Nordic region, you know, growth throughout Europe where we weren't penetrating at all in the past. So I'd say that's going to be about a million dollars this year of incremental revenue for the adventure business.

All right, that's great. Thanks for taking my questions. Okay, certainly.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back to Mike Yates for closing remarks.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference.

Does this conclude the program?

I'm sorry, it was muted. Thank you, everyone. I want to thank everyone for attending the call this afternoon and your continued support and interest in CLARIS. We look forward to updating you on our results again next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. To just conclude the program, you may now disconnect.