Cimpress plc

Welcome to the SEMPRESS Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call. I will now introduce Ms. Burns, Vice President of Advanced Relations and Sustainability. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lisa, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. With us today are Robert Keene, our Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Sean Quinn, EVP and Chief Financial Officer. We appreciate the time that you've dedicated to understand our results, commentary, and outlook. This live Q&A session will last about 45 minutes or so and will answer both pre-submitted and live questions. You can submit questions live via the questions and answers box at the bottom left on the screen. Before we start, I will note that in this session we'll make statements about the future. Our actual results may differ materially from these statements due to risk factors that are outlined in detail in our SEC filings and the earnings document we published yesterday on our website. We also have published non-GAAP reconciliations for our financial results on our IR website, and we invite you to read all of those. Now, I will turn things over to Robert Keene.

Thanks, Meredith, and thank you to our investors for joining us today. Before Sean reviews our Q3 financial results and our guidance updates, I'll share my thoughts on the recent progress we've made on the strategic and the operational themes of that we've covered in detail in our annual letter of July 29th and in our September investor day. Our Q3 earnings document highlights recent examples in a number of categories. First, elevated products are fueling a step function improvement in our per customer lifetime value and our wallet share. Every quarter, we're improving our ability to help millions of businesses build their brands stand out and grow thanks to our customized physical marketing products and branded merchandise. One metric which demonstrates our progress is that Vistaprint's variable gross profit per customer grew 13% year-over-year in Q3, and that's also our 13th consecutive quarter of growth in this metric. We see similar themes in our upload and print businesses as well. Second, investments in the Sympress MCP in our manufacturing operations, in cross-Sympress fulfillment, and in artificial intelligence are reducing COGS and operating expenses while increasing the velocity of new product introductions and user experience improvements. In the earnings document, we provide multiple examples of where we are leveraging our deep expertise and scale advantages in manufacturing where we're using AI to improve customer experiences and to drive operating leverage. Also, where we're using our shared software services to reduce costs and improve performance, and where we are growing the collaboration between our businesses, for example, deploying shared marketing capabilities. And third, we continue to march along a clear path to fiscal 2028 adjusted EBITDA of at least $600 million and significantly lower leverage. Progress in the areas I just spoke about has allowed us to start driving down the cost of goods sold and drive up the operating efficiencies that support our previously communicated plan to achieve these financial results. Our gross profit is growing in part due to the scale advantages we have in manufacturing new product introductions, and many production optimizations within our plants and between SimPress businesses. We expect more financial benefits in fiscal 27 and fiscal 28 as larger COGS efficiencies from ongoing manufacturing network optimizations kick in, and our new production facility startup costs, which are currently burdening our P&L, shift to incremental profitability thanks to volume growth. Additionally, we drove advertising efficiency in Q3 while continuing to grow revenue and gross profit. We expect more here in the coming years as we launch more elevated products that grow our wallet share with higher value of customers. We also implemented several OpEx reductions this quarter that will generate annualized savings of less of, excuse me, of $11 million between Vistaprint and National Pen. In last year's earnings, I'm sorry, in last night's earnings release, we announced two tuck-in acquisitions that we made in April. The first is Print Brothers' acquisition of 85% of Truall. They're the Spanish leader for elevated brand building print, packaging, and signage products. This acquisition allows us to expand our product offering into higher-end products while capturing immediate cost synergies through materials and shipping savings, which we bring due to our much larger purchasing power. Second, we've taken a 50% stake with operating control in Mixum, and that will marry Mixum's market-leading customer experience for books, catalogs, and magazines with the print group's manufacturing strength and their experience for these products. Both of these are in our upload and print segment, and we see them as great examples of where we can allocate capital to token acquisitions. We expect each of these acquisitions to generate base case returns on our capital well in excess of 20%. They continue a string of about a half dozen acquisitions within our upload and print segments over the past three years, and they are positioning us to bring our mass customization capabilities into the core of the very large markets, which still remain offline with traditional and less competitive production techniques. We always horse-raise the capital we allocate to acquisitions against share repurchases, against debt reduction, and against organic capabilities development. We generally have a higher hurdle rate for acquisitions, given their typically higher risk. However, our experience in these particular types of tuck-ins is that they are proving to be relatively low risk because of the attractive prices we're paying relative to the post synergy cash flow. In other words, we are proving to be relatively low risk, high return capital outlays. So to sum it up, we're executing well and we remain confident in our multi-year plan to significantly grow profits and to significantly reduce our net leverage. We are strengthening the value we deliver to customers, increasing operational efficiency, and accelerating the velocity with which we drive these improvements. We still have more work to do to deliver the shareholder returns we expect, but we are on the right path, and our path is clear. Now I'll turn things over to Sean to discuss the financial results of the quarter and our outlook.

Great. Thanks a lot, Robert, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. SIPRES delivered a strong third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA surpassed $100 million for the first time in a Q3 period, growing 11% year over year. And with strong year-to-date execution, we're again raising our fiscal 26 revenue and profit guidance, which I'll go through in a moment. Consolidated Q3 revenue grew 12% on a reported basis and 4% on an organic constant currency basis. Reported revenue was again aided by currency tailwinds and also the acquisition in our print brother segment that we completed during the second quarter. Vista print revenue grew 7% on a reported basis and 3% on an organic constant currency basis. The expected decline in business cards and stationary was more than offset by growth in our elevator products. As we noted in last night's release, severe weather in North America dampened results during January and February, and then we saw an acceleration in growth in March. Our upload and print businesses combined organic constant currency revenue grew 8 percent, driven by order count growth and cross-impressed fulfillment, with support also from regional elections. Reported revenue for these businesses grew 26 percent, combined with currency benefits and, again, the tuck-in acquisition that we made in Q2, which contributed $15 million to reported revenue during the quarter. Turning to profitability, adjusted EBITDA was $100.5 million in Q3, an increase of $9.8 million year over year. Q3 consolidated gross profit grew 10%, the result of revenue growth, cost improvements, benefits from currency, and again, the tuck-in acquisition. And we did have $3.3 million of production startup costs for the expansion of our North American production network, which weighed on EBITDA, although that was mostly offset by currency benefits of $2.7 million in the quarter. Adjusted free cash flow declined to $23.9 million to an outflow of $54.6 million. As I think most of you know, Q3 for us is typically a seasonal working capital outflow. That working capital outflow was higher this year, mostly due to timing, but also unfavorable currency movements on working capital. Cash taxes were also about $5 million higher compared to last year. From a balance sheet perspective, Net leverage at the end of Q3 was 3.0 times our trailing 12 months EBITDA. That's as calculated under our credit agreement. And that's consistent with last quarter, despite the fact that we repurchased approximately 288,000 shares at an average price of $76 per share in Q3. Maybe just as a point of reference, we have not purchased any shares in April. Turning now to our guidance. We again raised our revenue and profit expectations for fiscal 2026 based on the strong Q3 results, but also our expectations for the remainder of the year. It's worth noting that we do expect to experience cost increases associated with recent increases in energy and oil prices, and that is factored into this updated guidance. For the full year, we now expect revenue growth of nine to 10% after incorporating the recent acquisitions and currency benefits, and that translates to 4% to 5% growth on an organic constant currency basis. We expect net income of at least $87 million and adjusted EBITDA of at least $465 million. We expect operating cash flow of approximately $298 to $303 million and adjusted free cash flow of approximately $130 to $135 million. And we expect net leverage to be at or below 3.0 times by the end of fiscal 2026. That is also a slight improvement from our prior guidance. As we start to look now ahead to fiscal 27, we're going to provide more specifics with our year-end release in July, but we thought it was appropriate to start to share a little bit more as we expect to take another significant step towards our fiscal 28 targets next year. in terms of adjusted EBITDA growth. We're still finalizing our plans for fiscal 27, but we do expect adjusted EBITDA growth next year to be in excess of 10%. And we also expect to have meaningful growth in adjusted free cash flow. And I think it's worth spending a few minutes here. Our free cash flow conversion this year was lower, and that was expected based on the guidance that we have had in place throughout the year. Capital expenditures, and cash taxes were both higher this year. And then there's also some timing and working capital. And I just mentioned that was unfavorable for Q3. From a working capital perspective, there's nothing structural to that. It's really for us, it's not unusual to have some variability there. In fiscal 27, we expect the growth that we'll have in adjusted EBITDA that I just referenced greater than 10% to have much more flow through to free cash flow And I'll just go through a couple components there to set expectations. Capital expenditures we expect to still be at similar levels to this year as we complete the ongoing projects that we have in place. But we do expect capitalized software to be relatively flat. We expect cash taxes to be lower next year. And we expect working capital inflows to be more favorable. And so when you put that all together, we expect to have significant free cash flow growth in fiscal 27. And as Robert noted earlier, we do remain confident in our ability to deliver our fiscal 28 targets, which I'll again reiterate as 4% to 6% organic constant currency revenue growth, at least $200 million in net income, adjusted EBITDA of at least $600 million, adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of approximately 45%. Just doing the math, that implies at least $270 million of free cash flow. And from a leverage perspective, we expect to exit fiscal 27 with net leverage of approximately 2.5 times and exit fiscal 28 with net leverage below 2.0 times subject to capital allocation choices. Each quarter this year, we've provided increased visibility to the pillars of how we'll meet those fiscal 28 targets. And of course, we still have more to go. If you go back to our September investor day, I went through a session that walked from fiscal 25 adjusted EBITDA to the at least $600 million in fiscal 28. And in each of those pillars, we've made good progress. I just wanted to run through them each quickly now. Starting with the growth in fiscal 26, our latest guidance that I just went through is now $15 million higher than the guidance that we started the year with. We still feel good about the 70 to $80 million in efficiency gains. We had in that bridge, the midpoint there, 75 million. that we expect to have exiting fiscal 27. And we touched on some tangible examples of these initiatives in last night's earnings and throughout the call so far today. But just to reiterate, we have meaningful COGS efficiencies from manufacturing projects, from our work with focused production hubs and cross and press fulfillment. From an AI standpoint, we're seeing productivity improvements. And that extends well beyond the examples that we provided in the letter. Increased collaboration between Vistaprint, National Pen, and Build-A-Sign, including shared software services and marketing capabilities, is starting to take hold. And other operating cost efficiencies, including the $11 million of annualized cost reductions that we've already actioned between Vistaprint and National Pen late in Q3, as we talked about as well in the release last night. Our work on this one's not done. in terms of the overall cost savings, but we remain confident in our ability to deliver this pillar, and these are clear examples of our progress. The next pillar is the planned startup cost, which we expect to roll off as planned. That one is just math. On the M&A front, we touched on this in the letter as well, but with the three tuck-in acquisitions this year, we expect contribution in fiscal 2027 to be approximately $125 million of revenue. and $13 million of adjusted EBITDA. That's well above the $10 million of adjusted EBITDA over a two-year period that was in that bridge, and so we're ahead of plan there. Currency contribution is also tracking ahead of plan as well. The original contribution of which was set at $10 million total for fiscal 27 and 28 combined in that bridge, we're tracking ahead of that. And then the last pillar was just mathematically, what do you have to believe from organic growth contribution to get to at least $600 million of adjusted EBITDA? And when you update for everything I just stepped through, that leaves a minimal contribution needed from organic growth over the next few years to get to at least $600 million of adjusted EBITDA. Our results for this year and the momentum that we're building based on the progress that Robert outlined earlier leaves us confident here as well. Achieving these fiscal 28 targets will generate very meaningful per share free cash flow growth and also significantly reduce our net leverage. From the board down through our teams, we're laser focused on this. And so with that, Meredith, let's turn it over to questions.

Fantastic. Thanks, Sean. As a reminder, you can submit questions during this webcast via the questions and answers box at the bottom left of the screen. We did have a few pre-submitted questions, and then we'll jump into live questions as we get them. So our first question is for you, Sean. Can you explain why currency is benefiting operating income and EBITDA, but it had a negative impact on free cash flow this quarter?

Surely. Yeah, so that's been a theme throughout the year, that currency has benefited adjusted EBITDA. And as I just said in the remarks on our forward-looking guidance, really from fiscal 28, but it's true for fiscal 27 as well, We continue to expect currency to be favorable year over year in 27 and 28 from an adjusted EBITDA perspective. And that really just has to do with the direction of travel of our main currencies relative to the dollar, the euro being our largest net exposure from an adjusted EBITDA perspective. And we have a currency hedging program where we average in over each quarter for some currencies over a two-year period, for some currencies over a one-year period, depending on our forecast visibility. And so that means that as rates change, there's a little bit of a delayed effect of when we either benefit or get hurt from those currency changes. And right now, we're certainly in this period of getting help from that. So that's the story from an adjusted EBITDA perspective. And like I said, because we average in each quarter and we contract out for our largest exposures over a two-year period, that gives us visibility also to what we expect in fiscal 27 and fiscal 28, which will continue in the direction of positive impact. So then we mentioned that the currency impact on working capital was negative. That operates under a little bit of a different dynamic. And what we saw in Q3, I mean, just to do the kind of maybe an illustration of how the math works, you know, we have at the end of at the end of December quarter, we typically have a bunch of liabilities in our working capital that then get flushed out in Q3. And the opposite is true in Q2 and Q4. And so if you think about it, at the end of December of 2024, I don't have the rates in front of me, but I think the euro, that's our largest exposure. The euro is at, I think, 104 or thereabouts. And at the end of December of 2025, it was somewhere around 116. And so if you imagine you have, just for illustration, 100 million euros of liabilities that will flush through in Q3, um in at the end of december 2024 that was worth 104 million at the end of december 2025 that was worth 160 million so in us dollar terms and so that has a negative impact when you have an outflow quarter from working capital the opposite is true as well right so in q2 because it's a large working capital inflow quarter also for q4 the quarter that we're now in uh is a large typically a large working capital inflow quarter uh there we benefit from that dynamic so That's all normal stuff. And over the course of a year, tends to even out and certainly over a multi-year period. But that was the dynamic that we had in Q3.

Thank you, Professor Quinn. All right. I'm going to go to Robert for the next question. Robert, here's some more math. This is a fun call. We got a lot of math. Robert, am I calculating correctly that you paid $35 million for three acquisitions that are expected to yield $13 million of adjusted EBITDA next year? Is that less than three times forward EBITDA, or am I missing something?

Your math is correct, but it is important to note that math is based on our consolidated reporting, and we have two of the acquisitions where we purchased less than 100 percent because the founder of each of those has stayed active and kept his investment or each of their investments in their the businesses they founded and we really like that it creates great aligned incentives for both simpress and the founder but as we noted we bought 85 percent of truroll we expect to pay for the full acquisition amount that we the 85 percent over three years uh so not all that is up front but it will be a small use of cash in fiscal 27 and 28. We also bought 50 percent of Mixum. So the implied valuation is higher if you're calculating off the enterprise value of 100 percent ownership. That being said, even if you adjust for that, we paid very attractive multiples of both profit, of EBITDA, of cash flow, and our base case returns on the capital are also very attractive with a relatively short payback.

Thank you, Robert. Okay, a question for Sean on leverage. Sean, how will you be able to keep net leverage at three times trailing 12-month EBITDA at the end of Q4 when you have already spent $25 million on M&A in April and your free cash flow guidance has come down?

Yeah. The way it works under our credit agreement is we're able to take credit for trailing 12-month EBITDA when we do an acquisition. um so we don't get just what you know what is in our reported results but we look back over uh over a 12-month period and that makes sense um we also get to take pro forma benefit from any synergies that we uh that we expect to have and really and there we're limited to the things that are under our control so that tends to be the things that are on the cost side you know procurement savings and the like um the um The updated guidance that we provided for at least $465 million, that implies further year-over-year EBITDA growth in Q4, and so obviously that plays into the leverage expectations for the end of Q4 as well. And then if you do the math on our full year free cash flow guidance, you know, as is typical, like Q4 is a large free cash flow quarter. And we do expect significant free cash flow in Q4 as well. I think at the midpoint of the guidance range, it's somewhere around $80 million if you just do that math. So anyway, so that's how you get to the leverage guidance that we provided. And then just referencing back to the prior question as well that Robert just answered, We did pay less than three times for the recent M&A because of the dynamics that Robert just went through.

Thank you. Sean, I'm going to stick with you on this next one. Can you please comment on each segment? We get this question every quarter. Can you please comment on each segment's revenue performance in the month of April versus last year? What trends have you noticed?

We try not to get into too much detail on a particular month's performance, and so we'll stay true to that here. But yeah, I think the main takeaways, and I can understand why this question gets asked, especially in the current environment. I think the key takeaways are, one, we felt comfortable increasing our guidance for the full year. Obviously we only have one quarter left. And so, uh, that's based on what we're seeing in April. Um, it's also based on our forecast for the rest of the year. So, um, so I think that's a signal of confidence. Um, I know that there, that there's obviously a lot of focus right now on the health of SMBs, the health of consumers from a demand perspective. And I'll just say, we haven't seen the change there, uh, in April. And so, um, anyway, so we, we feel good about the updated guidance that we provided. And, um, Again, maybe I'll just also reiterate to the guidance that we have provided, which is increased for revenue and profitability, does also consider increased fuel and energy costs in that guidance. And we will have some of that in Q4.

Thanks, Sean. Robert, I'm going to shift to you for the next one. You bought some shares this quarter and your board authorized more purchases. That was in March, for anybody who missed it, a $200 million authorization that replaced the last one. Will there be more repurchases in Q4?

So we don't provide forward guidance about repurchases. I will describe how we think about it. It's the same as we've said many times before. First of all, we do want to repurchase shares when we think they are undervalued, and we do think our shares are still undervalued, although less so than earlier this year. Second, like any capital allocation, we horse-race share repurchases against other options. And we're in a cycle of higher than normal CapEx where we see excellent returns. And as we discussed a few moments ago, we have some very attractive talking in the acquisition opportunities. So we just have to take those into account. And third, from just the cash available, we are solving for a number of different things in fiscal 26. Sean's talked about higher cash taxes on favorable networking, capital timing, and very importantly, our commitment to deleverage, plus the normal seasonality of business. So we do have a very strong balance sheet, strong liquidity. We think we'd be able to continue to have attractive capital allocation opportunities in the future. We certainly will continue to look at M&A, I'm sorry, excuse me, share buybacks as a use of that. But again, I would go back to that leverage once again, I have called for net leverage to be below at or below three times by the end of this quarter, and it's really something that's important to us to achieve.

Thanks, Robert. Okay, Sean, a question for you. Based on everything you went through at the opening of the call, why aren't you updating your FO28 targets at this point? I know you said there's still work to do on the cost savings piece, but every other part of that bridge was favorable.

Yeah, I think it's a fair question and fully expected that question. If you take a step back, we've put these targets in place. I think the first time we started to talk about them was in Robert's letter to investors at the end of July. So we're talking about less than one year ago. And that was just after we finished a year where we did a little over $430 million in just the EBITDA. So at the time, we were basically saying that we'd grow our adjusted EBITDA around 40%. I think it's 39% or something over the next three years. And also with pretty sizable, sizably improved free cash flow conversion on that as well. And so that's a lot of growth. So just to keep things in perspective. But when we put the targets in place, we did it as this at least framework. And we had that in the guidance that we've used throughout this year as well. So that of course means could be higher. But from the board down through the management team, we're completely committed to delivering what we said we would do. And hopefully it's clear from what we outlined at the beginning of the call earlier that we're making good progress and we're confident that we'll meet or exceed those targets. But, you know, we still have a long way to go. Our updated guidance for fiscal 26 that we just went through is $465 million. So, you know, we still have a long way to go to make sure that we deliver against at least 600 million over the next, you know, two or so years. In our view, I think if you just model out what the free cash flow per share would be in fiscal 28 based on the targets that we have, and also, you know, with knowledge that that would also imply, you know, significantly lowered leverage, and that's part of our targets as well. I don't think that these fiscal 28 targets are today reflected in how we're valued. And so we'll keep updating each quarter on our progress, but we're going to leave our fiscal 28 targets as they are. There are certainly areas that were ahead of plan based on what I shared earlier. And so I think the main takeaway for investors should be that the probability of achievement has continued to increase each quarter based on the progress that we're making and the specific examples that we've shared. And it is an at-least framework, so we certainly could end higher. But we have two years to go, and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves because we want to be sure that if we provide a committed target, that we're sure that we hit it.

Great. Thank you, Sean. Sean, I'm going to stick with you for the next few questions here. So first up, are you able to estimate how much of a revenue benefit the upload and print businesses got from regional elections during Q3?

Yeah, we didn't break that out. Yeah, there's every quarter there's, you know, there's. There's always some change in activity. And this quarter, there happened to be in some countries in Europe, some nice volume growth attached to regional elections. And that tends to impact a few products in particular. You know, it wasn't like the dominant trend by any stretch, but but it definitely was definitely was a help. including in France. But we're not going to break out that specifically. But for posters, flyers, there was definitely some help there. It's sometimes hard to break. It's not like we can see it overall in the volume, but it's not like we're scanning the content of every order and then trying to categorize that as if we're an election or not. So that's why it's a little bit difficult to break that out, and we don't seek to do that externally, but definitely help this quarter.

Thanks, Sean. Next question for you. Can you provide more color on the weather disruptions to Vistaprint's revenue in January and February?

Yeah. If you'll recall, in each of January and February, there were some very significant snowstorms. You know, typically, like, you know, if we will look at bookings for, you know, each day on a map. Right. And so you can see that you can see that by state year over year trends, et cetera. You can get more specific than that if you really want to drill down even further geographically. But imagine you're looking at a map and you can see a bunch of green and red based on year over year bookings. Typically, what would happen when there is a severe snowstorm is, you know, all the, you know, the impacted states that you might expect if it was happening in the Northeast or if it was happening in the Midwest or whatever, you know, you could see very clearly in that visualization the states that are impacted and, you know, and that's pretty normal stuff. And one of the things that was different about the large storm that hit in January was that And also across the Southeast, there were significant issues with the electrical grid and freezing and winds and freezing rain. And so there were a lot of states where there were significant power outages. And of course, that impacts people's both focus on coming to Vistaprint in this case and ordering what they need, but also ability, right? Because they had power outages. We can see when that happens, like we can see it very clearly, like, you know, what states are impacted, whatever. And that was just a broader impact than what we would typically see when there's, you know, a snowstorm in the winter months. And so that's what we're referring to. And it's a real thing. Like it has a real impact. That dampened the results in January. There were some similar storms in February that were pretty severe. And then as we got towards the end of February and then into March in Vistaprint, we saw a definitive acceleration in results, leading to overall a strong quarter for Vistaprint.

Thanks, Sean. Okay, and can you provide more color on the cost increases that you expect from energy prices, and will you look to offset that with price increases?

Yeah. Well, there's obviously energy prices or oil prices are at some point an input to a lot of our either raw materials or logistics costs, inbound freight, outbound freight. So there's certainly impact. Some of that impact is a little bit delayed depending on the respective supply chain for the particular material. On the logistics side of things, again, for inbound freight, outbound logistics, that's a little bit more real time. The way a lot of our, for example, outbound logistics work is that contractually there's a fuel surcharge that is a variable that can go up or down depending on where oil prices are and if they're outside of a certain bound. And so the cost increases will happen. They're real. And I think that's to be expected. We do expect that, in large part, we would be looking to pass these on from a price standpoint. And to the extent that the increase specifically in oil prices and the flow through that impact that has on logistics costs, especially for outbound logistics, that also then as hopefully those prices at some point normalize that we would then bring that back down. And so so, you know, there's certainly we'll have some cost impact in Q4. You know, it's not it's not overly material, but it's notable. And we do expect that much of that will be will be offset by price increases.

Thank you, Sean. That brings us to the end of our pre-submitted and live questions. So I'm going to turn the call back over to Robert to wrap things up.

Thanks, Meredith. The key takeaways from our announcement today are we've raised our FY26 revenue and profit guidance for the second time. And we certainly expect to end the year, the fiscal year with net leverage that is more favorable than our prior guidance. Strategically and operationally, we're progressing in key areas that I discussed briefly today that we covered in much more detail in my July letter to investors and in our September investor day. At the top level, what we continue to do is enable millions of businesses to build their brand, stand out, and grow by leveraging our core competitive strengths in manufacturing and supply chain excellence and by continuing to improve the customer experience to drive efficiency gains. Our ongoing progress reinforces our confidence in our path to fiscal 28 EBITDA of at least $600 million and approximately 45% free cash flow conversion, coupled with significant reductions in net leverage. And achieving that result should really drive significant returns for long-term investors. So I'll wrap up by saying thank you again for joining the call, and thank you for continuing to entrust your capital with us. Have a great day. This does conclude today's program. Thank you all for joining and you may disconnect.