Destination XL Group, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Destination XL Group Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Shelley Mokas, Vice President of Financial Reporting and SEC Compliance at DXL. Please go ahead, Shelley.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on Destination XL Group's Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Call. On our call today are President and Chief Executive Officer Harvey Cantor and our Chief Financial Officer Peter Stratton. During today's call, we will discuss some non-GAAP metrics to provide investors with useful information about our financial performance. Please refer to our earnings release, which was filed this morning and is available on our investor relations website at investor.dxl.com for an explanation and reconciliation of such measures. Today's discussion also contains certain forward-looking statements concerning the company's long-range strategic plan and expectations for comparable sales and other expectations for fiscal 2026. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those assumptions mentioned today due to a variety of factors that affect the company. Information regarding risks and uncertainties is detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Harvey Cantor. Harvey?

Thank you, Shelley, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate all of you joining us today for our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. To begin, I want to provide a quick update on the merger agreement with Full Beauty Brands that we entered into on December 11, 2025. Since that date, we have been diligently working with our advisors, our attorneys, and the Full Beauty team to work through key deliverables required between signing and closing. A proxy statement will outline the combined company pro forma financials, the background, and rationale for this merger. And other information useful to investors will be one of the most critical elements to present to our shareholders as we seek their support for this merger. One key gating element to completing the proxy is the filing for our fiscal 2025 Form 10-K. which we expect to be completed later today. We are hopeful that the preliminary proxy statement will be completed and filed within the next 30 days, and we expect the transaction to close in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and shareholder approval. As we move through this process, we'll continue to provide updates as appropriate. I want to thank all of our employees for the hard work and dedication to our company as we work through this transaction. Now, the second topic that I want to talk about is our operating results, both year-end 2025 and early fiscal 2026. I expect many of you saw our press release from earlier this morning where we reported for the fourth quarter of 2025 that our comparable sales decreased 7.3% and our full-year comparable sales decreased 8.4% as compared to fiscal 2024. Prior to the severe Arctic weather event in mid-January, which disrupted much of our nearly 300-store fleet, our Q4 quarter-day comp sales were down 5.8%. As we moved into 2026, we are optimistic. Our optimism is driven by the improved sales momentum that continued into February and improved to a negative 1.3%, and March is following a similar trend. Our expectations for 2026 are for continued comp sales improvement over the first two quarters, moving to break even before summer's end and turning positive later this year. We've seen improvements in traffic to stores and average order value, which are both contributing to our recent trends. While we are only halfway through the first quarter, we are encouraged by the trends we've observed quarters to date. The positive shift in sales is a welcome departure from the major storylines in fiscal 2025, which reflected the ongoing challenges facing the big and tall retail sector. Given the directionally improving sales shift, we are continuing to focus our efforts on our strategic initiatives, fit map, assortment, and strategic promotions, which are the elements we are believing will provide a reason for the more discerning consumer to shop and purchase at greater levels. At the same time, we are and will remain highly oriented around our regiment and the discipline we have as the core pillars for running DXL. Our discipline to regiment revolves around tightly managing our expenses, proactively driving very structured inventory receipt flow and investment, and our work to protect margins in response to tariffs and promotions. The fruits of this as we exited fiscal 2025 were a clean inventory position, no debt, and $28.8 million in cash and investments, which provides flexibility and resilience as we navigate the year ahead. As I noted earlier, we are continuing to focus our efforts on our strategic initiatives, FitMap, assortment, and marketing, which we believe are the elements that matter most to our customer and our future. We've rolled out FitMap more broadly across the chain, expanded our private brand offerings and sharpened our promotional cadence. We have enhanced the launch of our customer loyalty program and deepened our strategic relationship with Nordstrom. We believe the actions taken throughout 2025 have positioned us to capture a larger share of big and tall demand over time as we move forward. In 2026, at the highest level, our strategic focus remains to stabilize the business, and continue to drive back to profitable growth. That means staying close to our customers, carefully controlling costs, leveraging our inventory, and being prudent with how, where, and when we invest cash and our capital. We know we must drive top-line revenue in the short term through tactics that deliver greater value while continuing to build the long-term growth drivers, brand building, improved access and convenience, and a continuously better digital and loyalty experience. With that high-level voiceover now complete, I plan to focus on just two areas for the remainder of the call. First, I will provide a more detailed update about our performance in Q4 and highlight a very few specific areas where we have made progress against our strategic plan. And second, I'll outline in greater detail our plans, priorities, and the catalysts that we either have launched or are in the process of launching in fiscal 2026. We are not providing specific forward-looking financial guidance for fiscal 2026 at this time, but we will revisit this after completion of the merger. So let's start with a quick review of the fourth quarter in which our comparable sales declined 7.3%, with stores down 8.6%, and directs down 4.3%. The progression in comp sales across the quarter was mixed, with November down 5.3%, December down 6.1%, and January down 12.9%. As I've already noted, our sales results in January were impacted by severe Arctic weather, but we have rebounded nicely in 2020 CISC. The sales story in Q4 was driven largely by traffic pressure in stores, with conversion and holding up better than traffic, and the average transaction value relatively steady, but with a small uptick. In the digital business, performance was most impacted by a slight decline in conversion, reflecting both demand softness and a highly competitive promotional environment. During the holiday period, we again used targeted loyalty and strategic promotion events to provide customers with incremental value, and we saw periods where those offers helped improve engagement, and sales efficiency. These results reinforce our view that to drive the top-line improvement in the near term, we need a disciplined surgical promotional approach in 2026, focused on the cohorts and categories where the returns are strongest while continuing to protect the long-term health of the brand. Another element that we managed well, and despite the challenging environment, is inventory. Our inventory balance at the end of Q4 was 73.5 million, down 2.6% from 75.5 million last year, and down approximately 28% from 2019. Our clearance penetration was 9.9% compared to 8.6% a year ago, and remains below our historical benchmark of approximately 10%. Our buying strategy has remained deliberately cautious. to mitigate risk while staying agile enough to flex up if demand improves. The team's discipline in receipt management and using selective markdowns to avoid any buildup of excess inventory while working to protect merchandise margin continues to be an important strength for DXL. When we look at our quarterly results through a merchandising lens, once again, we saw our private brands outperform our national collection brands. Casual pants, denim, and tailored clothing were strong performers this quarter, and our Oak Hill Tech pant continues to stand out. And as we move from Q1 into Q2, we are excited about the bigger launch of ThermaChill, which incorporates technical fabrics now more broadly than just the pants and shorts from the initial launch. Conversely, shorts, specifically sport shirts and knit shirts, were more challenging as a classification. National collections did improve over the prior quarters driven by more strategic use of promotion with a more focused and disciplined framework that emphasizes relevance and value. We must continue to evolve our promotional strategy to drive stronger engagement with those customers who are more influenced by pricing. The next area I want to cover is new store openings. Our consumer research has consistently reinforced that better access to stores remains one of our more meaningful opportunities. Big and tall consumers tell us they don't shop with DXL because there's no store near them or no store conveniently near them. Those insights continue to support a long-term opportunity to expand our footprint, which we have done over the last 24 months and then opened 18 new stores in attractive white space and more highly penetrated markets across the U.S. This past year, We continue to improve access by opening eight new DXL stores, converting two casual mail retail stores and one casual mail outlet to DXL retail stores, and converting two casual mail outlets to DXL outlets. As we have shared in the last few earnings calls, given current economic headwinds, we pause further in new store openings for this year. Our short-term store development plans will be more focused on converting a few remaining casual mail stores to the DXL format, store relocations, and other capital projects needed to maintain our existing store portfolio and distribution center, along with technology-related projects that support our business. For fiscal 2026, we expect capital expenditures to range from $8 million to $12 million net of tenant incentives and primarily for technology and other infrastructure-related projects. Another strategic initiative that we continue to be excited about is our alliance with Nordstrom. We remain active on Nordstrom's online marketplace and continue to refine our assortment, onboarding initial brands and styles as we learn what resonates with the Nordstrom consumer. Customers primarily discover our products through Nordstrom.com search and browse, and we continue to collaborate with Nordstrom's on a more robust go-to-market plan that includes personalized content and email support. While this channel remains a relatively small percentage of total sales, we remain very optimistic about its long-term growth potential. I'd now like to provide some color on the key strategic initiatives we're advancing in 2026 to strengthen our market position, improve the customer experience, and drive more profitable growth over time. These initiatives are grounded in the work we've done across FitMap, assortment, marketing, and technology, and they're designed to address both the opportunities of big and tall category and the realities of today's environment, including heightened promotional pressure, tariffs, pricing headwinds, and demand shifts tied to GLP-1 usage. I'll walk through each initiative now at a high level. First is Scaling Fitmap as a fleet-wide differentiator and activating marketing to increase adoption. Second, continuing to evolve our assortment rebalancing our brand portfolio, expanding private brands, and strengthening opening price points to enhance value perception. Third, marketing, a more disciplined promotional framework and an evolved CRM and loyalty approach. And lastly, a dedicated effort around the digital experience, driving improvements informed by a comprehensive UX audit across discovery, product, and checkout. Now, Let me turn to FitMap, which we believe is one of the most differentiated assets in the big Intel space. FitMap is our proprietary contactless digital sizing technology and which we hold an exclusive license for big Intel men until 2030. It captures 243 unique measurements and provides personalized size recommendations across 29 brands, helping remove one of the biggest friction points in apparel shopping, uncertainty around fit. Over the past three years, we've developed and we've tested FitMap, and to date, we've scanned more than 63,000 customers. We've now completed our initial rollout, and FitMap is live in 188 stores, and the mobile application is live as well with our latest size recommendation engine, allowing the in-store scan experience with the online fit recommendation tool. The result is a more seamless, consistent guest journey across channels. In 2026, the focus shifts from rollout to activation, and we're approaching that through a few concrete strategies. First, we are working to increase guest-level scanning penetration, both in-stores and online, so more customers enter the FitMap ecosystem. Higher penetration supports better conversions, lower returns, and increased multi-channel engagement. That will require operational reinforcement, associated coaching, and the right incentives to make scanning a natural part of the selling process. Second, we're using some of our marketing dollars to launch a marketing campaign to build awareness of FitMap, highlighting the benefits of scanning and reinforcing DXL's leadership in fit innovation. We began with an email program to generate early learnings and refine our messaging, and those insights now will inform the broader campaign. Third, we plan to test FitMap-enabled promotions using scanning insights for personalized offers, loyalty-driven incentives, and targeted outreach to scanned guests so we better understand how FitMap can drive incremental revenue and strengthen loyalty. and we're already seeing promising signals in the data. Using lookalike modeling, we continue to observe that scan guests deliver a higher customer value and higher average order value than their control groups. Importantly, a meaningful driver of lift is what happens on the day of the scan, where associates are able to convert the fit moment into a broader outfitting moment, increasing units per transaction and average unit retail. We're also beginning to see a greater share of the incremental lift occur online after the scan experience, which is exactly the omni-channel behavior SIPMAP is designed to unlock. The next initiative I want to cover is assortment, specifically how we are rebalancing our brand portfolio, expanding private brands, and sharpening our opening price points to strengthen value perception. Over the next two years, we are strategically evolving the assortment to further prioritize private brands. Private brands deliver consistent fit, give us greater flexibility to balance trend-right fashion with core essentials, and enhance value for the customer while generating higher margins for DXL. Our objective is to increase private label brand penetration from approximately 57% at the start of fiscal 2025 to more than 60% in fiscal 2026 and over 65% in fiscal 2027. To support that shift, we are reducing investment in underperforming national brands and redeploying that inventory and marketing capacity towards higher return opportunities. We're doing this in a more disciplined way, aligning sales and inventory, driving productivity and faster turns, and leaning into the categories where we see momentum, such as casual bottoms, denim, and activewear across key private brands. This portfolio rebalance improves inventory efficiency, supports stronger GM ROI, and gives us more control over storytelling and fit innovation, both in-store and online. And within that assortment work, opening price points remain an important part of the strategy. We will continue to broaden a more comprehensive opening price point offer to lower barriers to entry, respond to shifts in buying behavior, and further improve overall price value perception. Combined with more intentional brands and product marketing, along with clear in-store presentation that reinforces each private brand's role, these actions are designed to build loyalty, drive customer acquisition, and position DXL as the destination for big and tall men who want great style, great fit, and great value. Now, let me provide you a little greater color on marketing, starting with promotions, then CRM and loyalty. Our view is to win a greater share of the big and tall market, we must show up with value in a way that is relevant and targeted without undermining the brand. Over the past year, we've been refining our promotional approach with a more strategic framework, where promotions are managed as a distinct category with clear objectives around timing, product focus, and customer targeting. The goal is to maximize the return on every markdown while supporting our broader strategic priorities. Within that framework, you should expect three complementary motions. First is what we call always-on value, everyday value-driving initiatives aimed at specific cohorts available when a customer is ready to shop. We've intentionally moved away from broad store-wide and site-wide discounting and toward offers that improve acquisition, increase shopping frequency, and reinforce confidence that DXL is competitively priced. Second is the surgical use of targeted promotions by leveraging customer segmentation and behavioral insights. In 2026, our CRM approach is focused on improving performance in key lifecycle and behavioral segments, where we see potential to change FOD behavior in a meaningful way. The intent is to deliver more personalized communications by brand, category, and shopping mission so that customers get offers that they feel are relevant and not generic. Third is loyalty. We see loyalty as an important lever to increase repeat revenue and reward our best customers. While our top tiers are performing and we continue to test incremental benefits, We also recognize that engagement in our classic tier has been limited. Addressing this challenge is part of the broader CRM work I just described, improving how we activate customers earlier in their lifecycle and giving them clear reasons to come back. Furthermore, we are continuing to build on enhancements to DXL rewards, including capabilities to make it easier for customers to earn and redeem benefits and exploring additional tiering options over time. The key is to execute the vision while driving discipline in markdowns and responsibly deploying promotion where the returns are greatest. We do expect some margin pressure from the incremental promotions, but we continue to view a portion of these markdowns as a form of marketing investment to acquire and retain customers. Finally, let me shift to the digital experience. In 2026, our focus is to drive higher conversions and customer competence through a simpler, more intuitive shopping journey. We're leveraging a comprehensive UX site audit to now prioritize the highest impact improvements and to further inform a focused roadmap across discovery, product detail, and checkout. This is practical work, reducing friction, clarifying navigation, and making it easier for customers to find the right product the right size quickly. A few specifics. We are elevating our visual presentation with updated photography standards that create a more aspirational and less clinical experience across key parts of the site. We're also prioritizing improvements that reduce checkout friction and support more seamless site store behaviors. Over time, personalization and shopping assist capabilities including thoughtful use of Gen AI, can help customers discover products faster and shop with greater confidence, especially in categories where fit drives decision-making. We're also reshaping our demand generation mix. We've transitioned to an affiliate agency at the end of the third quarter, and our new agency is helping overhaul the program from one that leans heavily on coupons and rewards to a more balanced approach that prioritizes reach, and new customer acquisition. In parallel, we're building new affiliate and influencer programs designed to broaden awareness and introduce DXL to more big and tall men who may not yet be in our ecosystem. And now, I'm going to ask Peter to run through the fourth quarter financials before I come back with some closing thoughts.

Peter? Thank you, Harvey, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate all of you joining us on the call today. I'm going to take a few minutes to provide you with some additional color on our fourth quarter in full year financial performance. Let's start with sales for the fourth quarter, which came in at $112.1 million as compared to $119.2 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024. Comparable sales decreased 7.3% for the quarter, with stores down 8.6% and the direct business down 4.3%. For the full year, total sales were $435 million compared to $467 million last year, and comparable sales decreased 8.4%, with stores down 6.9% and direct down 11.8%. Moving past sales, our financial statements include some wins and some challenges, which I'll highlight for you next. Starting with gross margin, For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, gross margin inclusive of occupancy costs was 40.8% compared to 44.4% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024. The rate declined primarily due to lower merchandise margin and occupancy deleverage on lower sales. For the full year, gross margin inclusive of occupancy was 43.4% compared to 46.5% last year, Again, reflecting occupancy deleverage and the impact of tariffs and promotional markdown activity partially offset by a favorable mixed shift toward private brand merchandise. The impact of tariffs on merchandise margins was approximately 110 basis points in the fourth quarter and 50 basis points for the full year. As we enter 2026, we are continuing to monitor the situation with tariffs. Our sourcing exposure to any single country remains limited as we have always had a broad and diversified supplier network. We believe the direct impact from tariffs under currently understood scenarios is manageable. We are also staying close to our national brand partners to understand how they are navigating tariffs and what, if any, impact that could have on pricing. We have taken selective price increases on certain programs this year, We have renegotiated cost sharing with our suppliers, and we've remained agile to opportunistically relocate programs across the globe. Our sourcing and merchandising teams are actively tracking developments and preparing mitigating actions as needed. Now moving on to SG&A. SG&A expense for the fourth quarter was 42.4% of sales compared with 41.7% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024. For the full year, SG&A expense was $187.4 million, down from $198.3 million, or 5.5%, as compared to fiscal 2024. As a percentage of sales, SG&A expenses were 43.1% of sales, compared with 42.5% last year. Marketing costs were 6.3% of sales for the fourth quarter compared to 6.2% a year ago and 6.1% of sales for the full year compared to 6.8% last year. On a dollar basis, marketing costs were down $5.2 million for the year. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year was $1.6 million compared to $19.9 million last year. We ended the year with $28.8 million of total cash and investments and no outstanding debt, with excess availability under our credit facility of $55.1 million. I also want to call to your attention an important judgment that we made in Q4 regarding our deferred tax assets. As we've discussed, the challenges we've faced in the big and tall sector over the past two years have weighed heavily on our operating results and contributed to our net operating loss in fiscal 2025. Realization of our deferred tax assets, which primarily relate to net operating loss carry-forwards, depends on the generation of future taxable income. While we believe that profitability will return over the longer term, our current year net operating loss, coupled with our near-term forecast, presents sufficient negative evidence which outweighs available positive evidence regarding the realizability of our deferred tax assets. Accordingly, we took a non-cash charge of $20.4 million in the fourth quarter to establish a full valuation allowance against our deferred tax assets. The valuation allowance has no impact on our tax returns, cash taxes paid, or our ability to utilize our NOLs. I'm now going to turn it back over to Harvey for some closing thoughts. Harvey?

So hopefully it's clear, and as I noted at the end of our prior earnings call, our team is working hard to navigate the cycle with discipline. We expect that the operating rigor we have in place and the foundational work we have completed will position us to benefit meaningfully when demand improves. We remain excited and optimistic about the proposed merger, the growth opportunities in the broader inclusive apparel sectors, and what we believe it will return to our shareholders. And lastly, As I wrap up, and before we take questions, as I always do, I want to thank the DXL team that I work with every day. Their hard work and dedication in the stores, in the distribution center, in the corporate office, and in the guest engagement center provides a level of optimism for the opportunity ahead. The passion and commitment our team has for our underserved consumers is our reason for being, our purpose, and why we do what we do. Thank you for all your hard work and your commitment in our pursuit of serving big and tall men and making DXL the place where they can choose their style and wear what they want. And with that, operator, we will now take questions.

If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Our first question comes from Jeremy Handlin with Craig Hallam.

Thanks for taking the questions. And I wanted to ask a bit more about the FITMAP technology, which I think you have a license here for the next five years. Just to give us a sense for the momentum that's building in that particular technology, I think you said You've scanned 63,000 customers to date. The rollout is live, I think, in 188 stores. Can you give us a sense for, you know, kind of the incremental velocity, like of the 63,000, how many were scanned in 2025? What type of training needs to be offered for your sales associates managing stores to kind of maximize the opportunity behind that?

Jeremy, hey, it's Harvey Cantor. I'll attempt to walk you through that, and then Peter will supply any greater level of insight beyond what I remember to share. We have had really a fit map moving forward in the most demonstrative way really probably since September, October of last year. I don't recall the exact specific cadence, but I'll remind you that generally it was 25, 50, 62, 88 stores. That's kind of how it went down in terms of the stores. And then the 88 up to 188, which was the 100 more stores, was really a February-March completion. I think we literally just finished the last eight stores in the last 10 days. And we're now, if you will, at 188 stores. And that is what we expect to be maturity, or at least for the time being. The elements that we've been encouraged by as we've moved through this process, first is to get more people scanned. Then from scanning to look at incremental revenue, the value of that consumer in the prior 12 months and in the post-12 months, which obviously that's literally 24 months at a time. And like everybody said, we've gone slow to go fast. And when I say that, we didn't get all frothy, if you will, with respect to what we thought would happen. We were pretty thoughtful. It's not overly intense in its capital or cash requirements to roll out to more stores, but what is more intense is the training and the process of engagement. Equally so is bringing the technology forward in more meaningful ways, which we've now done inclusive of any mobile device, Initially, it was the iPhone, which is the majority of how consumers engage with us in a mobile setting. And then the Android in the last, I think, 30 days has been finalized. And the reason I walk you through some of these elements is there's a lot of moving parts. And the thing that is probably the most challenging is getting one trained and up to speed to ensure that our measurements, which are literally 243 digital measurements standing there in your bike shorts, which takes less than 90 seconds, which is pretty remarkable. But if those measurements aren't right, whether it's the custom-made clothing, which is something that we're delivering typically in three to four weeks to consumers based on ordering, which they have the capacity to order just a whole different bunch of ways, motels and buttons and cuts and trim, equally so, but is the application being used via the app and they're doing that at home? And then in both cases, the 29 brands we're mapping to, which is basically, for lack of a better way to describe this, if you're buying something that might be Brooks Brothers, which is a more traditional block in terms of the way the style executes, you might be a 2X. But if you're buying Hugo Boss, which is a brand that's more European-inspired and is fit, you might be a 3X. And the need to have each one of those independent sizes across all 243 measurements, accurate, and then apply that to the mapping or the custom is a process which we've really just begun in earnest to train our team about. So our hope and expectation is incrementally, we see double-digit incremental revenue from each customer in the 12 months, excuse me, post-scanning. The customer value post-scanning is measurably improved The average transaction value for that scan and each purchase is greater. The frequency of shopping with us is greater. The units per transaction is greater. And the repeat rate of that customer coming back is greater. And directionally, the customer that has been scanned has directionally, in the aggregate, done all of those things I just referred to. They are shopping with us more frequently. They are spending more money. They are buying more things. they are spending more money on day of visit, they are converting, and they are being scanned and in many cases buying really custom-made clothing, which is delivered in three to four weeks. And those all add up over time in our view over the next 12 to 24 months to be a tremendous opportunity to grow the comp in those stores and to determine whether or not in smaller stores with less traffic, we can still bring forward an incremental T&L outcome But that would be the goal. I think I've covered pretty much all of it, Peter. If there's something else that I missed, feel free. But there's a lot of ground there. And, Jeremy, why we're most excited is the proprietary element through the period of time we talked about in the end of 2030 gives us an ability which actually the provider has done a podcast, which I remember him saying, we think we are so far ahead in the technology that by the time people catch up to where we are, we will be even farther down the road. And that was in response to a question in that podcast where the interviewer asked the interviewee, which was literally the founder of the company we partnered with. And that founder said, look, we just think we're so far ahead that we're happy to share this because it was built around a utilization of belief that people buy clothes and then throw them away and fill landfills. And that's not great. And so his view was, We're providing a way to get people to buy the clothes they want in the styles and sizes that fit in a way that no one else can, and we're happy to share that with others because by the time they catch up to us, our technology platform will be that much farther down the road. So it's a very interesting dynamic world we live in, but it represents a great opportunity for DXL, and the exclusivity of what it provides to engage customers is pretty powerful.

That's intriguing. I know it's been tough out there in the big and tall market overall, not just for DXL, but wanted to get a sense for, as we enter 2026, the promotional environment that you're seeing. You noted that your customers have been gravitating a bit more towards private brand and away from the national brands. Can you give us a sense for the kind of competitive responses that you're seeing from other retailers in the big and tall category at store level, but also in what you're seeing in the online channel of business.

Yeah, it's Harvey Kanner again. I'll try to talk you through this and then Peter can backfill again at any level that makes sense. But I think what we believe is that our customer who is in the sea of all apparel, and that's women's, kids, men's, men's big and tall. Men's big and tall is one of the categories that is probably most impacted by customer malaise and just general desire to spend money on lots of things but not necessarily clothing. That's just plain and simply he does not shop as frequently as a normal men's customer and certainly not as frequently as a women's customer. When you think about the multiple elements that we're all living through and the volatility, whether it's tariffs, whether it's the impact of GLP drugs, which we do believe is having an impact in terms of the customer's weight and they're going up and down and how they're thinking about clothing or the price of gas, especially in today's environment. But, you know, the gas, well, it's come down. It's still meaningfully impactful. Food, groceries, going out to eat, all those variables we believe are affecting the sector. And, you know, the hope and belief we've shared before is at some point he has to come back. He needs clothes. He has shopped for need, not want. He may still be shopping for need, not want for a period of time. But at some point he needs clothes. He's wearing them out. And we see certain elements like that. Like it may be remarkable, but our underwear business is really good right now. That is one of the markers that we always look at to see. But he needs clothes and he hasn't bought them and he will come back. So there's a belief that he will come back in a period of time. And obviously, the government subsidy and then lack thereof, the inflation, not as bad, then far worse and improving today. Interest rates, GLP drugs impact. There's a lot of moving components, including tariffs and what we've had to do to try to navigate an offset at some level, which, mind you, we haven't fully offset yet. the impact of tariffs that, you know, looking backwards 12 months and who knows what really is going to transpire in the next 12 months. When you put all that together, it is having an impact on a customer who just doesn't love to shop. But our view, and we can see that, you know, the reason we called out the Arctic Challenge in January, literally, and you can see this, we just reported November, December, we were basically minus six-ish. January became minus 12-ish. And that impacted a quarter that was looking more like minus 5 and changed to become minus 7 and change. But we did see, as we reported this morning, a negative 1.3 in February, which is very encouraging. That's with 600 basis point improvement from the quarter or even 400 basis point improvement from the impact of the weather. And although you haven't asked the question, I will lead you here. We are seeing some of the very same challenge right now, literally 1,000 basis point difference in regionality in the northeast and southeast and midwest at moments in time as the storms pass through, and they've been pretty heroic. So, you know, there's a lot of moving parts, and unfortunately, I can't give you the black and white answers I would love to give you, and I'm sure you would love to get, but that that hopefully gives you a better sense of what we're navigating through. But we've also painted the picture that we expect to move to break even hopefully before the summer and then throughout the summer improve to the point where driving comes in the back half of the year. And, you know, it's six weeks in, but six weeks in our business is definitely better than six months ago and even four or five weeks ago, end of January.

Got it. And then a question on insurance. the private label or the private brand initiative. So going from, you know, 57% of inventory mix private brand to 65% in 27, what would you expect the gross margin impact of that initiative to be over the course of years?

I'll talk about it at a high level that Peter probably will circle back on this one. You know, the reality is our national brands on an IMU basis hover in the mid-50s. Our national brands on an IMU basis basically are in the mid-70s. And so there's a distinct starting point differential. The customer, the consumer is buying private brands mostly because they represent higher quality, a better fit, and that's because we are defining that very specific fit, whereas The national brands work with us, but they all have their own view of what that fit looks like. And then the value we're bringing to market, it is demonstrably lower price point on an absolute price point. And when you compare the quality and the fit, those values are enhanced. And ultimately, that gives us the ability to the point you just really asked the question about, can we drive it? We're assorting more deeply. We're bringing in more inventory. And we do have the capacity to promote that product at some greater level in a profitable situation versus national brands. And the flip side is equally so national brands because they're unfortunately higher price point. And that's not to say we're getting out of national brands, but we're definitely trying to navigate a different view of national brands to use those price points are really friction for the customer. And if we can't get them to buy at the level that we want to sell through prior to a markdown or liquidation, then that margin that is already initially short becomes that much shorter when you have to accelerate markdowns to manage that inventory. Peter might have some more specifics, but net-net, you know, it starts out higher and it ends higher. And the mix, you know, as you've alluded to, is going to move from 57 to hopefully 67 or greater. So that 10-point differential on what literally is a 15, 20-point differential on IMU does mean something to us.

And Harvey, yeah, I think you more or less answered it. It's that there's going from, you know, mid-50s, 60-ish up to the mid-70s is how I would think about it. Jeremy, I mean, that's certainly going to vary depending on what the product is, but at a very high level, I think that's a fair way to represent it.

So, just to clarify, I'm just looking at from a gross margin perspective, you would say maybe it could be 100 to maybe even 200 basis points, the gross margin?

Yeah, well, it could be. I mean, I don't want to put a number out there so discreetly like that because, you know, as we've been talking about earlier, we've definitely been more promotional this year. You've certainly seen that in the merchandise margin. There are some different puts and takes, but overall, we should end up in a net positive the more that we're going to be shifting to private label.

Understood. All right, last one for me. In terms of just looking at the store fleet today and kind of the pausing of opening new units, which makes sense, how should we be thinking about, you know, the fleet? Obviously, economics have been impacted negatively by the you know, the comps and the lower margins, you know, or what are we thinking in terms of, you know, kind of right-sizing the store fleet in 2026?

Yeah, in 2026, we are set. We are not moving anywhere. We will look and hopefully re-engage in 2027 with consideration of greater stores. I think, Jeremy, the answer to the question is really based on the customer. And when I say that, we have direct shipments. And we can look at our direct business, which is still roughly 30% of our revenue, and look at, are we shipping to places we don't have store representation? And then in other markets like Houston, which we've used before as an example, where Sugarland in the southwest corner of Houston was not a geography within the Houston area that we were covering very well. And we clearly did, through our CRM analysis, see customers coming from there and how far they were traveling, will then drive what we would call white space opportunities in markets that we exist already or in potentially markets that we don't exist vis-a-vis the direct business. You know, what we've articulated before is we don't have this belief that we're a 600, 700-store chain. We do have a belief that we could be 325, 350, maybe 400 stores, but we haven't defined that specifically as much as generally saying, that based on our research was fact-driven, that customers have told us literally nearly 50% of the reason they don't shop with us is there's no store near them, or one-third of customers who don't shop with us said not conveniently near them. So that is direct feedback that says if we open a store near you, we should see the market improve, and we do see that. The other thing you mentioned, which I do want to comment and not circle back is, You are correct. Our stores initially did not open at the level that we expected. We think that it is part and parcel of the overall sector challenges, but we can tell you with confidence and fact-driven data that our stores continue to move towards maturity. I think the maturity curve is probably longer than we had hoped for and believed, but they are not standing still. They are continuing to move based on awareness and then customer trial and then repeat rates and and improve as a performance of units overall with the 18 stores we've opened.

Thanks for taking my questions.

You bet. I think we're up to Keegan.

Hey, it's Mike Baker. Can you hear me? Hey, Mike. How are you? So, first of all, let me ask you, before I ask the question, are you guys willing to talk about anything around the full beauty transaction? Sometimes, you know, management teams just say, we're not talking about it until it's closed. If you are, I would ask a couple questions on that.

Yeah, Mike, I would tell you we've talked about the proxy coming out, hopefully, in a not-too-distant period of time in the future. And at the moment, that's the extent of what we're going to talk about relative to that. There's a lot of information in there, which I think will be helpful. quite informative, but nothing beyond that on today's call.

Yeah, okay, that is, just wanted to clarify that. Okay, then a couple other quick ones here. One, when you have these storm events like you saw in January, historically, you guys, you know, you're a Northeast retailer, you see these types of things a lot. What is the recapture rate, or do you see a rebound, or does that just typically end up being lost sales?

Yeah, no, I think we see a rebound. I don't know that we can tell you it's one for one, but I can tell you when you literally don't open 124 stores on a day, and in January, I know that number, it was 124. The next day was 84. Two days in a row, like literally nearly a third of the chain, we can see the customer rebound. We can see a little bit of movement online, but we can definitely see a rebound. Would I say it's one for one and and we get it all back instantaneously? No, we don't. But I definitely would tell you we see a rebound. And the weather has been so drastic, like, you know, literally yesterday versus the day prior. You know, in the southeast and the northeast had just terrible winds. Mike, I know you're in Boston. I don't know if you were there. But the winds are just amazing and the snow. And so we literally see thousands of basis point movement because of the stores not opening or not pulling.

Yeah, no, I am in Boston. You're right. I felt that yesterday. Okay, fair enough. One other one I wanted to ask you, you had mentioned in the answer to one of the previous questions, an impact from GLP-1. So, you know, I remember at one point the idea was customers would change sizes but still be within the big and tall ecosystem, so it might actually be a positive. I'm not sure it's playing out like that, so... Can you talk about the impact of GLP-1, what you're seeing and how that compares to your original thesis?

Yeah, I think it's definitely evolved. I was literally just in the stores last week traveling with our chief stores officer and spent a lot of time in the California market. And we hear my commentary, just so you're clear, is anecdotal because we are unable yet to document some of the things we believe, and we've done primary research, we've done secondary research, we've done consumer research, and none of it is really demonstrative at the greatest level that we feel, for lack of a better way to say it, has an R-square of 0.9, but when the day is done anecdotally, what we've evolved is We didn't think it was going to be impacting the business as much as at the level we think today it is. And I can't characterize, you know, what that means at basis points. It's not like 20% decline or anything like that. But what we see is that our consumers coming in is definitely telling us he's more needs driven. He's on a weight loss journey. In some cases, you know, he may have bought Polo and Psycho Bunny, and now he's buying Harbor Bay. And when you ask the question, He said, look, I'm on my journey, and I don't want to – he doesn't use that word, but he says I'm losing weight on my GLP drugs, and he's actually not in any shape uncomfortable telling us that. And he said, when I get done, I'll come back and buy Polo, but right now I'm going to buy Harbor Bay because it's great quality and it's a great shirt, and it's literally $20-some versus Rappler might be $120, and he's not done with his journey. We are definitely also seeing some customers size out of our size or at least competitively. They can shop at Nordstrom's, which is a partner of ours, or Macy's or any other host of retailers they want to shop at because they're now a 1X as opposed to a 3X or 4X. But we're also seeing a lot of customers that might be a 6X that are now a 3X. So they are moving around, and we also have been told and see customers that are moving around both moving down in size but also, for whatever reason, on the drugs and drugs. decide to get off and they're moving back up. So there's just a lot of volatility. I don't know that we're going to see what I would tell you, some level of stabilization of the consumer relative to GLP drugs for some period of time. We think might be as much as 25% of our customers are using them. And typically weight loss of any kind up or down is a friend of ours. But I think right now we're in a pattern where they're losing weight and they're on a journey and they're trying to not buy clothes until they're done with that journey. So We do think it will come back. We think it's a sector issue as opposed to we're doing something materially wrong or it's materially more competitive than it's been. And the reality is, though, that there's a lot of great benefits for our guests as well as just customers in general losing weight and being more healthy. So we're just trying to navigate through that. And hopefully I've answered at some level your question. It's kind of a moving target, and I think that's really what you have to appreciate, that there's not a black and white answer yet.

Yeah, thanks. That's pretty clear. Thanks. Appreciate the caller.

Okay. Well, thank you all for joining our call today. We will all talk with you next quarter, and I wish you the very best for spring and stay warm. Take care. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.