Duluth Holdings Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Duluth Trading's fourth quarter financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Steffes, Senior Associate, Duluth Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to today's call to discuss Duluth Trading's fourth quarter financial results. Our earnings release, which was issued this morning, is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.duluthtrading.com under News Releases. I'm here today with Stephanie Pugliese, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Hina Agarwal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, management will provide prepared remarks and then open the call for questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the comments on today's call will include forward-looking statements, which can be identified by the use of words such as estimate, anticipate, expect, and similar phrases. Forward-looking statements by their nature involve estimates, projections, goals, forecasts, and assumptions, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those that are described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings as applicable. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this conference call and should not be relied upon as predictions of future events. And with that, I will turn the call over to Stephanie.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Duluth Trading Company's fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 results. I am extremely proud of the team's continued discipline in managing promotional resets, controlling expenses, streamlining operations, and optimizing inventory. This strong execution led to the third straight quarter of enhanced gross margin, lower costs, reduced inventory, and improved profitability. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year rose more than $10 million to $24.9 million, and we delivered almost $17 million in positive free cash flow. a $42 million improvement over fiscal 2024. Our business reset is well underway. We continue to work diligently on simplification, expense control, and productivity. Our SG&A decreased by $5 million in the fourth quarter. We also ended the year with inventory down $35 million or 21% versus last year. Looking specifically at this past holiday season, we successfully executed our operational goals. This represents the culmination of a year's worth of effort by the team to focus on and improve the customer experience. Better forecasting and effective positioning of inventory across our fulfillment centers cut the average click-to-ship time in half compared to last year, and our wait times for customer service were dramatically reduced. We were in stock in our stores, and we were able to deliver with higher conversion as customers came to shop in our retail locations. Throughout the peak season, we stayed the course on our more disciplined promotional strategy, offering 30% off discounts coupled with select standbusters versus last year's 50% off across the board. This approach continued through December with Giftables, and a final 30% off promotion, expanding gross margin and delivering customer satisfaction. Overall in the fourth quarter, men's and women's apparel drove strong margin improvements despite year-over-year sales declines. We saw key wins in outerwear and the souped-up sweats collections across both genders, with men's souped-up more than doubling in sales versus last year. We drove margin gains from Holiday Under's inventory and strong giftable products. And finally, AKHG grew in sales and margin across both men's and women's. Our marketing success in the quarter was driven by an effective balance of brand awareness and conversion efforts. By running our national advertising spots for extended durations, we achieved significant improvements in ad recall and overall brand lift. High-affinity podcast reads and December Good Morning America integration increased brand sentiment, new customer conversion, and direct site visits. We focused on high-value retargeting during Black Friday and Cyber Week, and localized college football buys increased retail foot traffic and sales. After the key holiday selling period, we pivoted to clearance messaging in order to maximize post-season demand. Looking ahead, we are continuing to build brand awareness with a full funnel marketing approach, which includes exciting new spots running during March Madness and NHL games. Now turning specifically to our channel performance. Our efforts in digital to reduce reliance on promotions while building brand acceptance and revenue per customer improved profitability year over year despite reduced traffic. Overall conversion was strong, sales per customer increased 4%, and average order value improved by 10% for the full year. Our retail portfolio was a continued bright spot, with net sales growing 4.7% to $71.6 million in the fourth quarter. This performance was fueled by the opening of two new stores, an increase in average order values, and improved in stock levels. allowing us to capitalize on key traffic moments like Black Friday and throughout December. And our improved operational results impacted not only retail stores, but our entire network. In the third quarter, we moved decisively to position a day or so at the center of our fulfillment operations. And in Q4, we strategically held 69% of our inventory there. a marked increase over last year. This positioning allowed us to fulfill the majority of peak orders from this single facility, demonstrating efficiency that will enable us to rationalize further our distribution network in 2026. In addition to the current year improvements, we have made progress on our longer-term initiatives, starting with our logistics network. We have now completed the first two phases of streamlining and the consolidation of fulfillment operations by closing Dubuque in October of 2024 and now Salt Lake City in February of 2026. Concurrently, we are enhancing the fully automated Adairsville Fulfillment Center's efficiency and capacity. And for 2026, we plan to further boost Adairsville's productivity with investments in cross-stock capabilities and improved labor management. Next, our efforts to improve our retail portfolio results, driven by targeted local marketing in priority areas, an engaged and energized team, and better inventory allocation for higher in-stock positions, have successfully delivered positive comp store sales for the fourth quarter and the full year. We saw lower price sensitivity following the promotional reset and achieved more favorable lease renewals, driving a 550 basis points improvement in four-wall profitability year over year. Every store in our current fleet is profitable, and both of our recently opened new stores are projected to achieve payback in three years or less. In 2026, an additional 10% of our fleet will be due for lease renewals. We will proceed with these renewals only if they meet our predetermined profitability requirements. Third, the enterprise planning process is driving an integrated business plan by connecting forecasts across various functions, including marketing, merchandising, supply chain, and stores. This integration is continuing to deliver significant benefits such as higher forecast accuracy, right-size inventory buying, receipt time management, and optimal allocation across locations to best serve our customers across all channels. Lastly, our direct-to-factory sourcing initiative has matured. Currently, almost 60% of our product is sourced directly from factories, with the remainder coming through our two primary vendor agents. We continue to scale with our current vendors to deliver cost savings, diversify our sources to enhance supply chain agility, and maintain our focus on innovation and quality. As we move into 2026, we still have work to do in this turnaround, and it remains our primary focus, particularly in continued disciplined efforts in the first half of the year. Our ongoing priorities are building pricing and margin integrity through promotional reset, efficient inventory management, SKU reduction, and maintaining rigorous cost discipline, in part to offset the now annualized impact of tariffs. But we are not stopping there. This year, we are intensifying our focus on strategic brand initiatives. reinforcing the brand identity around our core product assortment, strengthening our leadership in workwear, delivering a memorable experience through our unique storytelling and our actions to re-engage and attract valuable customers, and further embedding operational excellence across the organization. While we expect that these efforts will benefit us more heavily in the back half of the year, We have begun to see some green shoots from our focus on core product and are pleased with the trend that we are seeing so far this quarter. Products like flex fire hose, double flex denim, and souped-up sweats are resonating in a positive way as we tell our story of innovation and long-lasting durability to both new and renewed customers. In addition, new product launches like our lightweight fire hose shirt and the poppies print that just landed for women are getting strong initial responses. Our marketing has become more effective at driving higher levels of traffic to our site and to our stores. We are executing a full funnel approach to marketing this year with the intent to reactivate our customer base, build retention, and attract new fans to the brand. As an example, we are running our new Max Gluteus ad featuring our best-selling underwear in March Madness and NHL games while supporting core product visibility and sales in lower funnel efforts like SEO and branded search. We continue to monitor response in traffic, conversion, and brand sentiment to optimize our spend with agility. To fuel the second half of the year, We are making targeted investments and creating synergies with our product and marketing. These include customer-facing improvements, such as integrating Apple Pay on our website to streamline the checkout process and fully leveraging our comprehensive full-funnel marketing strategy. Our product assortment is stronger year over year, with tighter SKU counts and a focus on core products that speak to our customers' hands-on, hardworking lifestyles, and our stores will be supported to deliver another year of increased sales. We have confidence that we will see the results of these efforts with improved sales trends and profitability in the second half of the year. In closing, I want to extend my thanks to the entire Duluth team for a year of significant progress that positions us for future success. We have entered 2026 in a stronger financial and operational position with better liquidity, improved inventory levels, a more focused assortment, and positive team momentum. We have a complete and highly capable leadership team prepared to execute our plan, and we look forward to presenting a detailed multi-year strategy during our first quarter earnings call in June. With that, I'll pass it over to our CFO, Hina Agarwal, to discuss our financials in more detail.

Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning, everyone. I am pleased to share our fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2025 results, which reflect the incredible progress our team has made in executing our strategic turnaround. We successfully achieved the goals we set at the beginning of the year, fixing our promotional strategy, restoring price integrity, improving cash and inventory management, and strengthening operations. We effectively handled tariffs through targeted price increases and cost mitigations. We delivered a full-year adjusted EBITDA of 24.9 million, an increase of 10.3 million versus last year, As a result of focused and disciplined effort combined with our agility in responding to macroeconomic conditions, we have achieved three consecutive quarters of improved year-over-year net income margin and free cash flow. We ended the year in a strong liquidity position of over $141 million as we reduced inventory by 21.1% and had zero debt on our asset-based lending facility. we generated $16.6 million in free cash flow for the full year, a $41.8 million improvement over the prior year as a result of improved profitability and working capital management. Let me now review our fourth quarter results followed by a more in-depth review of the full year. Starting with our results for the fourth quarter of 2025 with comparisons to prior year. We reported net sales of 215.9 million, a decline of 10.5%. When excluding the 53rd week from the prior year, the sales decline was 8.3%. Growth margin expanded by 890 basis points to 53%. We delivered net income of 7.8 million, an increase of 13.4 million. As a result, our reported EPS is 22 cents and adjusted EPS is 23 cents, an increase of 33 cents. Adjustments to EPS include net restructuring expenses of 0.3 million for the closure of Salt Lake City Fulfillment Center. To note, we have not adjusted EPS for tax valuation allowance, which would have reduced adjusted EPS by 4 cents this quarter. Adjusted EBITDA reached 17.5 million marking an 8.9 million improvement. This represents a margin increase of 460 basis points to 8.1%. Moving on to full year 2025 with comparisons to last year, net sales were 565.2 million, a decline of 9.8%. Excluding prior year's 53rd week and wholesale, net sales declined 9.4%. Growth margin for the year expanded by 420 basis points to 53.4%. Our reported EPS loss is 47 cents and adjusted EPS loss is 43 cents, an improvement of 63 cents. Adjustments to EPS include 0.9 million of net restructuring expenses and 0.4 million of net impairment expenses. To note, we have not adjusted EPS for tax valuation allowance, which would have improved adjusted EPS by 11 cents for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA for the year is 24.9 million, an improvement of 10.3 million, representing an increase in margin of 210 basis points. When discussing the top line, it's important to note that all comparable sales figures exclude the effects of both the prior year's 53rd week and wholesale. Full year net sales declined 9.4% as a result of our promotional reset and pricing strategy. The direct channel was impacted throughout the year by the pullback on promotions, resulting in a 16% decline for the full year. This was primarily driven by a decrease in web traffic, partially offset by double digit growth in average order values from higher average unit retail prices. Mobile sales penetration increased by 160 basis points. In contrast, the retail channel grew sales by 3.5%, fueled by comparable sales growth and the launch of two new stores late in the third quarter, partially offset by one store closure in the second quarter. The retail channel outperformed the direct channel as retail customers showed lower price sensitivity to the promotional reset. The in-store experience continues to drive a high conversion rate among new and existing customers who report five-star reviews on satisfaction and continue to purchase at higher year-over-year average order values. The promotional reset resulted in a decline in both men's and women's sales with drops of 9.2% and 9.7% respectively. However, sales grew in key categories for both genders, including outerwear, AKHG, and our soup tubs reps collection. With fewer promotions and increasing average prices, profitability improved across product categories and sales channels. Notably, the full year profitability of the store portfolio improved by 550 basis points, with every store in the fleet being profitable. Gross margin rate for the full year was 53.4%, expanding by 420 basis points, driven by restoring price integrity through reduced depth of discounts, the flow-through of lower product costs as a result of our direct-to-factory sourcing initiatives, and tariff mitigation, overcoming a tariff impact of approximately $11 million. Average unit retails increased by 12% over last year, driven by a pullback on the depth and frequency of promotions, targeted price increases in the back half of the year, and a higher mix of full-price sales. Gross margin expanded by 640 basis points in the second half despite static costs. SG&A expenses for the year were $310.5 million, which is $27.1 million or 8% lower than last year. we successfully exceeded our target of $10 million in expense savings this year as we took action to right-size our cost structure. SG&A as a percentage of sales increased by 100 basis points, primarily due to the drop in sales. Advertising costs represented 10.3% of sales, a 50 basis points improvement due to a more effective balance between upper and lower funnel spend. Variable costs were lower in dollars, driven by lower unit sales, partially offset by reticketing labor to execute price increases. Costs deleveraged as a percentage of sales by 50 basis points, with a greater penetration of retail sales this year. Overhead expenses were down by over 4% and deleveraged by 170 basis points, largely due to the decrease in sales. Inventory at year-end was $131.3 million, a $35.2 million, or 21.1% reduction compared to prior year. This follows a 17% reduction in Q3 and 12% reduction in Q2, marking the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvement. This performance was achieved through two key factors, the enterprise planning process and skew rationalizations. The planning process successfully aligned inventory with sales plans and balanced the timing of receipts. In addition, our inventory allocation strategy maximized stock at the automated Adairville Fulfillment Center and significantly improved store in-stock position by over 500 basis points during the peak season. Our inventory mix at year-end consisted of 82% in current products and 18% in clearance goods compared to 11% in clearance at the end of last year. We have since reduced the mix of clearance inventory, which stood at 13% at the end of February 2026, compared to 11% in the previous year. Our capital expenditures for the year were $17.8 million, compared to $17.4 million in the prior year, with funds allocated primarily to investments in the Manhattan Warehouse Management Systems, the opening of two new stores, and ongoing maintenance. The transition to an asset-based lending facility in 2025 resulted in both lower borrowing costs and greater flexibility. Our net liquidity position has strengthened sequentially over the past three quarters, culminating in $141.3 million in net liquidity at the end of fiscal 2025. This includes no outstanding debt on the ABL facility and 16.3 million in cash and cash equivalents. Due to improved profitability, better working capital management, and a disciplined approach to capital allocation, we generated positive free cash flow of 16.6 million for the year. This represents a material improvement of 41.8 million compared to 2024. Now turning to our outlook for fiscal year 2026, Our full year guidance is as follows. Net sales are projected in the range of 540 million to 560 million. This forecast anticipates that the first half decline will be similar to the prior year's trend, followed by stabilization in the second half of the year. Adjusted EBITDA in the range of 26 to 30 million for the full year. Capital expenditures of 12 million allocated between growth, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance. Starting with the top-line projection and assumptions. Full-year sales are projected to be approximately minus 1 to minus 5% compared to 2025, driven by the continued promotional reset to restore price integrity and annualization of price increases from 2025. This outlook does not assume additional headwinds from changes in the geopolitical environment. In the first half of 2026, we anticipate a sales decline in the range of minus 6% to minus 10%, similar to 2025 due to a combination of factors. The declines are driven by ongoing adjustment of our promotional depth and frequency. The annualization of price increases implemented in the second half of 2025 and the decision not to repeat the Big Dan clearance event in February and the wholesale program. These are expected to be partially offset by strengthened sales of core items, higher average unit retails, a greater mix of full-price sales, and annualization of new store sales. For the second half of 2026, we anticipate sales stabilizing within a range of minus 2% to plus 2%, as we anniversary the promotional reset and price increases. We will continue to realize the benefits of a higher mix of full-price sales from right-sized inventory purchases. This will be further complemented by our edited assortment focused on core products our customers value most and a healthy return on our full-funnel marketing investment. Moving on to gross margin assumptions. We anticipate gross margin for the full year to expand by approximately 100 basis points to 54.4% from continuous promotional reset, annualization of price increases, greater mix of full price sales, and sourcing savings, partially offset by annualization of tariff impact. With the ongoing uncertainty regarding the timing and rates of alternate tariffs, our outlook assumes the tariff rates in effect prior to the Supreme Court ruling and does not include recovery of previously paid tariffs. We expect SG&A to reduce in dollars versus prior year, but deleverage by approximately 50 to 100 basis points as a percent of sales, driven by structural fixed overhead costs and continued investment in advertising. This is partially offset by efficiencies from streamlining the logistics networks and store portfolio. We expect optimization efforts to drive greater efficiency moving forward. We are focused on continuing to right-size our inventory, targeting a 5% to 10% reduction driven by a double-digit decrease in our SKU count and disciplined planning to align receipts with the sales plan. We have planned capital expenditures of approximately $12 million a reduction of almost 6 million versus 2025, capped at 2.2% of sales. This capital is allocated across growth initiatives, infrastructure improvements, and ongoing maintenance. Key investments include the final phases of Manhattan Omni for the website and stores, growth capabilities like Apple Pay that drive higher conversion online, and investments in receiving and crosstalk capabilities in a digital to fully maximize its utilization. In closing, fiscal 2025 was a defining year for the company, marked by the successful implementation of our strategic turnaround, leading to more robust operations and financial stability. Moving into 2026, we will build on this strong base characterized by a disciplined promotional strategy, stronger operations, leaner inventory and enhanced cash flow. Our focus will be on stabilizing sales through increased assortment productivity, ensuring healthy returns on our full funnel marketing investments, and strengthening our brand to retain valuable existing customers while successfully acquiring new ones. We are confident that we have established a resilient foundation capable of delivering sustainable, profitable growth. We look forward to providing a comprehensive overview of our long-term strategy and vision during our first quarter conference call in June. With that, we will now open the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, Please press star and then two. Our first question comes from Dylan Cardin with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I'm just curious on the retail channel holding up better than online. Can you remind us, was that because you started kind of your promotional pullback earlier in that channel or – I guess, to what do you attribute the strength? Maybe it's just sort of being in stock. Any sort of further commentary there would be helpful.

Yeah, hi, Dylan. This is Hina. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think there are a few key factors that have helped the retail channel. The promotional reset was started at the same time. We have the same pricing online and in stores. But what we see is a greater resilience and less price sensitivity. for customers who come to our stores with higher conversion. And so they are looking for more full-price products, willing to pay the better prices and higher average order values. In addition, we had a strategic inventory allocation strategy where we made sure that there was greater in-depth assortment available in stores. And that's why we also saw in-stock go up by over 500 basis points during the peak season. In addition, we have a fabulous store team that is really serving our customers, as you can tell from our five-star satisfaction reviews, and we have very high conversion rates. So all those factors helped the stores not only increase sales, have positive pumps, but also improve profitability for the total portfolio by over 550 basis points.

Dylan, hi, this is Stephanie. The one thing that I would add to what Hina just shared is our marketing efforts. We've seen really positive results in driving traffic to retail locations, both through the full funnel approach. So, you know, even our upper funnel marketing is driving that awareness that then drives the traffic to the stores. But we've also coupled that with more localized marketing in our retail store locations.

So then why pace the year sort of down more in the front half, sort of a stabilization in the back half if you're kind of theoretically carrying that momentum in that channel? Is it just that direct suffers more early on from the sort of promotional reset?

Yes, that's absolutely right. So we are assuming positive bumps for retail stores for the full year. The reduction is really coming from digital channels, especially in the first half.

Great. And then just on inventory, I'm curious, do you think you need to be – your turns are kind of two times a year. Do you think sort of the efficiency that you can foresee in the model getting you to four times, or is there some further reset there on that?

Yeah, I think there are a couple of factors, Dylan, that will improve our turns over time. One is the reduction in SKUs, so allowing us to – to be more focused on the products and be able to create more productivity per product or per SKU that we have in the assortment. The second piece of it is as we continue to become more efficient and productive in our supply chain, and that's all the way through the supply chain from our vendor base to our The distribution centers, as we mentioned, a day or so we've been more and more focused on creating a hub there throughout the pipeline so that we can move faster getting our product through the pipeline out to our stores. And that all cuts days and weeks off of the term assumptions that we have. As we look forward, we'll see improvement this year, but it won't stop there as we become more efficient, not only in the supply chain, but how we think about our SKU counts and what we focus on in the assortment.

Excellent.

Thank you very much. This concludes our question and answer session and the Leith Trading's fourth quarter financial results conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.