Superior Group of Companies, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Superior Group of Companies second quarter 2026 conference call. With us today are Michael Benstock, chief executive officer, and Mike Koempel, president and chief financial officer. In addition, Jake Himelstein, president of the company's branded products segment, will join today's Q&A session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. This call may contain forward-looking statements regarding the company's plans, initiatives, and strategies and the anticipated financial performance of the company, including, but not limited to, sales and profitability. Such statements are based upon management's current expectations, projections, estimates, and assumptions. Words such as expect, believe, anticipate, think, outlook, hope, and variations of such words and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those suggested by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties are further disclosed in the company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Shareholders, potential investors, and other readers are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements made herein in our caution not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to update the forward-looking statements except as required by law. And now, I'll turn the call over to Michael Benstock.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. We are proud to have delivered a strong quarter with consolidated revenue up 3% year-over-year, a 160 basis point improvement SG&A, EBITDA up 27% to $7.7 million, and adjusted diluted EPS of 21 cents, more than doubling the second quarter of 2025. Excluding the non-cash trade name impairment that Mike will discuss and reflects the progress we're making on mixed margin and earnings power, our results highlight the benefit of our diversified business as we continue to navigate a choppy demand environment. Our outlook remains favorable given our longstanding and solid customer relationships, the strength of their brands, and our ability to support them with advanced technology, a flexible supply chain, and stellar service. Turning to our segments, I'll start with Branded Products. Our largest business revenue grew 6% year over year, driven primarily by higher volumes with existing customers. We drove gross margin expansion along with SG&A improvement as a percent of sales. Taken together, this led to a 25% increase in branded products EBITDA. As we look ahead, we believe our growing backlog and ongoing investments in sales talent, marketing, and technology will drive continued long-term growth. Our Hofstra apparel revenue declined 4% and gross margin decreased by 260 basis points, largely due to a non-cash inventory write-down tied to our recent strategic decision to accelerate the shift to a more focused product offering. While we were able to reduce SG&A, SG&A's percent of sales increased slightly on the lower revenue base and segment EBITDA declined by $1 million year-over-year. The quarter was undeniably challenging, but we view the shorter-term margin pressure and the transition under new leadership as necessary steps towards stronger, more sustainable margins and a more efficient use of working capital over time. Finally, in contact centers, as expected, revenue was down 4% year-over-year, but improved sequentially for the second consecutive quarter. The year-over-year decline reflects client attrition in 2025 Whereas the more recent sequential improvement is driven by a net increase in agents here today and stronger conversion from our significantly larger pipeline of new business that we had a year ago. Growth margin was lower due to higher human capital costs as we prepare for stronger growth ahead, which is more than offset by improved SG&A, leading to stronger EBITDA for the quarter. To sum it up, we had a strong quarter and we see clear opportunities ahead for both growth and margin expansion. Our solid balance sheet and growing operating cash flow give us the flexibility to invest strategically across each of our segments. I'll now hand it over to Mike to walk through the financial details before we open the call up for questions.

Thank you, Michael, and welcome again, everyone, to the call. Second quarter consolidated revenue was $148 million, resulting in a 3% year-over-year increase for the second straight quarter. The revenue increase was driven by branded products, which increased 6% to $98 million from volume increases with existing customers. Revenue for Healthcare Apparel was $27 million, down 4%, compared to the prior year due to tariff-free funds. And lastly, revenue from our Contact Center segment was $23 million, also off 4%, but sequentially improved from the first quarter's 8% year-over-year decline. Our second quarter gross margin of 38% was down 40 basis points compared to the year-ago quarter, Branded products grew a gross margin of 36.5%, up nearly a full percentage point from the year-ago quarter driven by customer mix. The healthcare apparel gross margin was 32.9% due to a $2.6 million incremental non-cash inventory rate down, partially offset by a $1.8 million net tariff refund benefit. The contact center's gross margin for the second quarter of 50.9% was down 170 basis points as Michael previously described. Second quarter SG&A as a percent of sales of 34.7% improves 160 basis points from last year driven by expense leverage in branded products on a 6% sales increase and an improvement in credit loss expense in the branded products and contact centers segments. Putting this all together, our second quarter EBITDA of $7.7 million improved from $6.1 million in the year-ago period. Moving further down the income statement, our net interest expense of $981,000 improved from $1.25 million in the second quarter of 2025 due to a lower weighted average interest rate and a decrease in average debt outstanding. In terms of bottom line performance, Second quarter net income was $1.2 million, or $0.08 per diluted share. In the second quarter of 2026, the company recognized a pre-tax non-cash impairment charge related to trade names in the healthcare apparel segment of $2.6 million, or $2 million net of tax, translating to $0.13 per diluted share. The charge does not affect the company's cash position or cash flow from operating activities. on an adjusted basis, which excludes the impairment charge. Second quarter net income was $3.1 million or 21 cents per diluted share, up significantly from net income of 1.6 million or 10 cents per diluted share for the year-ago quarter. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the second quarter with $23 million of cash and equivalents after generating first half operating cash flow of $18 million. and we remain well positioned to strategically invest in growth opportunities while returning capital to shareholders through both our attractive dividend yield and opportunistic share repurchases. Specifically, we paid $2.2 million in dividends during the second quarter and we have approximately $9 million available under our share repurchase authorization. Turning to our full-year outlook, we continue to expect 2026 net sales of $572 million to $585 million and look for adjusted diluted EPS of 54 cents to 66 cents, well above the prior year's diluted EPS of 46 cents. Once again, our guidance reflects the back half weighted cadence again this year, both top and bottom line. And now, operator, if you could please open the lines, Michael, Jake, and I would be happy to take questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. 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 the question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Michael Kopinski with Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning everyone. I was wondering if you can just maybe talk a little bit about Chris Hein's operational changes in the healthcare apparel segment and when should those initiatives really start to begin producing some measurable revenue growth and maybe margin improvement. I was just wondering if you could just kind of outline for us and maybe give us some color on some of the changes that he's making there.

Hi, Michael. This is Mike. Thanks for joining the call. Chris, obviously being just about three or four months into the business, obviously spent a lot of time just getting integrated into the business and understanding the specific operations of the business. I'd say where he spent a lot of his time up to this point is really in the product and assortment part of the business. So from an operating perspective, a lot around how we're looking at collections, the merchandising, the sourcing associated with that. And the reason why that is, as you know, that's the long lead time in the business. So it's important to get to that first because given the long lead time, it takes time to have the impact on the business. So he's really started with a product. beginning to formulate what he thinks is the appropriate assortment architecture going forward, which as we said in our prepared remarks is getting to what I would call a more focused assortment, so going, so to speak, narrow and deeper. So that's where he's really spent his time. You can see in the quarter there's some margin pressure associated with beginning to make that assortment transition. We would expect some shorter-term margin pressure to continue through the balance of this year, not to the extent that you're seeing in the second quarter, but I would anticipate still some margin pressure on a year-over-year basis, and then begin to see improvements in 2027. Gotcha.

Thanks for that color. On the contact centers, you know, the EBITDA was up strongly. Can you kind of just give us a little bit more color on the margin improvement and what maybe additional efficiencies remain available there? And then also, it seems like you're quite positive about the new business pipeline. Are those just recent client wins and the attrition is coming down? When do you expect maybe the segment to return to year-over-year revenue growth? Are you still kind of thinking that it's going to be in like the second half, maybe the third quarter?

Yeah, on the contact center side, the margin improvement in the second quarter continues to reflect improved SG&A. That's in part because last year we're lapping a credit loss reserve associated with a former customer last year, but it also continues to reflect the cost reductions and efficiencies that the business put in place. So what's really good is we continue to see that we're essentially sustaining those reductions in SG&A, which is driving an improvement in the EBITDA margin. What we said at the beginning of the year, and we're seeing it through the results, is that we expect the contact center segment to sequentially improve in the top line, which will drive EBITDA margin improvement as we go quarter to quarter, again, because of the SG&A leverage that we're getting. What you see in the second quarter is gross margins were down a little bit. There were some initial investments we're making to onboard new customers this quarter that won't repeat itself. So we'd expect the gross margin rate to improve in the back half. So I think between continued sequential improvement in sales, continuing to manage expenses, and gross margins rebounding, again, we expect the EBITDA margin of that business to continue to improve as we go into the back half. The sales growth is really, Michael, a combination of we've got some nice expansion with existing customers, so we've added some seats with existing customers, and we have an increase in the conversion of new customers the first six months this year as compared to the first six months last year. It's still taking. The decision-making is still slow, but despite that, we were able to convert more customers this year. And again, our expectation is that it will continue through the balance of the year, which again would drive incremental sales growth into Q3 and then in Q4.

Great. If I could slip one more in on branded products. Obviously, you had growth now for three consecutive quarters. I was just wondering if you indicated that you have the strongest pipeline that you've seen for a while. You indicated this quarter that it was driven mostly by existing customers. And I was just wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you see the growth for the rest of the year. And then on the margins were obviously structurally higher. It looked like 11.4%. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what's driving the margin improvement there, and then if you can just talk a little bit about the customer mix and just how things are shaping up for the balance of the year.

Hey, Michael, this is Jake Himelstein. I'll try to unpack those questions, and if I miss any, please let me know. But we'll start with the margins. You know, margins were largely driven by favorable customer mix. We also had some improved sourcing on some larger programs that we were able to deliver, and the overall resulted in really strong gross margins, which ultimately dropped into our EBITDA margins. You know, you mentioned pipeline. Pipeline is strong across the board, both with existing customers and new customers. We mentioned in the past couple of quarters that Pipeline has continued to be really strong. We've seen some of that Pipeline start to convert into programs that we've won that are delivering revenue both now and are going to continue to roll out into the rest of 26 and even into 27. So even though, you know, something we've mentioned before, decision-making is slower on RFPs, A big pipeline results in wins even with slower RFP decisions. So the pipeline continues to be strong even when we win programs or programs fall out of the pipeline or replenishing them with new opportunities, which has been really great. And, yeah, you're right. On the current quarter, much of the growth has been volume-driven from existing customers, expanding current programs, and increasing volumes with existing clients, which has been great. And then we're layering in some of those wins. So we're excited about where things stand. We have a really strong pipeline coming into the back half of the year. So, yeah, seeing those results are really exciting for us and we're looking forward to the rest of the year.

Great. Thanks, guys. Congratulations. Thank you.

The next question comes from Keegan Cox with DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to ask, you know, you've delivered a nice 2Q beat. I was just wondering if you can kind of walk through any of the assumptions embedded in your guidance. I guess, you know, what leads you to keep the guidance unchanged just by the solid beat on a top line and on EPS?

Sure. The guidance where we're reflecting, you know, obviously on the upper end of guidance, Keegan, we're reflecting, again, the back half weighted growth. And that would really be based on the fact that our healthcare business, which has become a little bit more cyclical, heavier in the third quarter, so it just reflects the fact that we've had typically a larger second half in healthcare and then also I mentioned in Mike's questioning that we expect sequential improvement in the contact center business which again would drive incremental growth in the back half. I think we also recognize, again touching on a prior question, that we are going through a transition in the healthcare business and so again you see some margin pressure here in the second quarter We expect some margin pressure in the back half of the year. To some extent, that will depend, obviously, on the demand in the market as we make changes in our assortment. I think the guidance reflects the fact that, again, there could be some variability associated with that transition as Chris is making changes in the business. We fell halfway into the year. with still a lot of business to go that it was just appropriate to hold guidance. We're still obviously very optimistic about the business, and we'll certainly re-look at guidance as we get through the third quarter.

Got it. And then a follow-up for me is on branded products. I know we've kind of talked about Some competitor weakness there before. Does it make sense to kind of go make an acquisition there now, given that the business is kind of growing in that healthy mid-single-digit growth range? I guess, are you still gaining share in the space organically is kind of the real question there.

Yeah, Keegan, we're gaining share organically, and we'll continue to do that. Whether we make an acquisition or not, we're going to aggressively pursue organic growth, both winning new clients and growing existing clients. That said, we're always on the hunt for acquisitions, and if a good one shows up, lands on our doorstep, we're certainly open to doing it. As Michael likes to say, we have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the right company, but we are constantly in conversation with our competition, trying to find the next great target, and if we do, we'll certainly look at it.

I'll add some color to that. Kagan, I'll add some color to that. Mostly what we're looking for are businesses that help expand our ability to serve as customers. Things we're not doing for customers, and there's a lot of areas in the promotional side of our business that we're not doing. It's not our skill set without buying a company or it would take too long to grow it ourselves. And it could be a channel that we're not in. It could be a customer base or a geography that we're not in. It would be related, of course, to branded merchandise in particular. But I don't think we have much of an appetite to buy your run-of-the-mill promotional company that basically is selling out of a catalog somewhere and just has a couple of good customers. That's not really what we're looking for. We're looking for something that's very additive to our businesses. And so, as Jake just reminded you, we kiss a lot of fries because a lot of people purport to be able to do a lot more than just the run-of-the-mill type of work that promotional merchandise companies usually do. And then when we get under the covers, we find out they're very, very normal and there's nothing special about them. So it'll take time.

And Keegan, by way of example, I mean, if you look back, over four years ago, five years ago almost, we acquired a company called Guardian Products. And that was an area where we were not in. It was promotional products and branded merchandise for auto dealerships. It's tangential. It's related to what we're doing. We were not in that market. We acquired our way into that market and have now grown it substantially since we acquired it. Organically. And that's the exact type of acquisition that's really beneficial for us. And it's in our space, but not something that we're currently doing. And it provides a great blueprint or roadmap for what we want to do in the future.

Got it. And then one more, if I can. We've kind of talked about the dynamic of hospitals and other institutional customers carrying leaner inventories. I guess As we look at this healthcare apparel transformation, is there any impact? How are inventory replenishment trends evolving? Is there any risk to kind of missing out on that trend as you focus that assortment?

Not this Michael, not really. I believe that in the past we've spoken about the institutional side conserving cash and with all the uncertainty around them and not knowing what the reimbursements were going to be from the government and everything else. I think most of that's behind them now. Their business has become very, very normalized and we're starting to see that rev up a little bit to more normal situation. I don't I think the bigger impact, the one where the truth has to is on the consumer. With consumer paying what they're paying for food and gas and rent and everything else that's gone through the stratosphere, I think a lot of the caregiver community doesn't have as much to spend as they might have a couple of years ago. And so they're being prudent. The good news with respect to that is our consumer product area, which is basically the Wink and the Carhartt scrubs that we sell, we have a good, better, best, and even a value channel for that. So if they're looking to spend less, they can go from best down to better or better down to good. We can service them at all levels, and if they're already loyal to our brands, it makes it that much easier for them to make the transition since their awareness is so high. Keegan, you there?

Yeah, great. Thank you. That does answer my question. Sure. Okay.

Our next question comes from Jim Sidoti with Sidoti and Company. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So branded products, this is third strong quarter. What are you hearing from your customers there? Are you starting to get the sense that they're a little bit more confident in the economy and what's going on? Or just overall, what's the customer sentiment?

Jim, this is Jake. I think the The tariff situation becoming a little bit more normalized has certainly helped. We had a couple of quarters last year where there was a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and that created client uncertainty, which created Buying Uncertainty. That has helped us, certainly. Additionally, us just pushing for more business within our existing clients to grow who we're working with. Remember with the HR department, if we push into marketing or we push into HR or we push into legal, that helps us. Every department in a large company is buying branded merchandise. whether it's uniforms or promotional products or gifting. So a lot of it is improved customer sentiment but a good part of it's also just us expanding share of wallet with an existing customers which a lot of times we tell our sales team that our best customer is a current customer because there is a lot of potential at our existing customers to continue to grow.

On the contact center's business, this is the second quarter with sequential improvement. Do you think that trend continues throughout the year, or do you think you hit the low water mark, I guess, at the end of last year? Do you expect that business to continue to grow every quarter?

We do expect, Jim, for it to continue. And as I mentioned earlier, our guidance reflects the continued sequential improvement and Contact Center. So I'd say we're, like I said, when we started the year, we expected Q1 to be better than Q4, Q2 better than Q1 and it's working out that way and we're seeing some improvement in conversion and just growth within existing customers. So we're optimistic and again, the team has done a great job staying focused on managing expenses with that growth and We talked about before, you know, we're leveraging technologies internally to not only improve the customer experience through various AI solutions, but we're also leveraging it to create more efficiencies, which, again, is helping to keep expenses in check and drop incremental growth to EBITDA.

All right, and then last one for me. You know, even with the 2.6 million write down for healthcare apparel inventory. Inventories down at a little over 90 million has been down this low in at least six or seven quarters. What's going on there? Is that a trend that continues?

There's still opportunity, Jim, in our view to create more efficiency in the healthcare inventories. So we're still focused on bringing those inventories down overall. With that said, as you might imagine, there's pockets of inventory that we're also chasing. So not all inventory is created equal, and I think that we see overall the opportunity to bring inventory down, but we also want to be very thoughtful around not reducing too much and negatively impacting sales. There'll be some decreases in, again, certain categories, and we'll continue to make investments in others based on demand. But, again, overall, we'd see that being a continued, I'll say, source of cash to us as we look at our cash flow projection going forward.

All right. Well, thank you. Thanks again for taking the questions.

Thanks, Jim.

Our next question comes from Frank DiLorenzo with Singular Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Just to follow up to M&A opportunities, can we expect any new acquisitions or even partnerships for the balance of this year?

Thank you. I'll answer that, Frank. As we've said, we have a certain level of urgency. in our contact center business, and either we will have an acquisition done this year or we will find ourselves doing a startup of a call center in the Philippines that will begin this year and begin to provide revenue next year. Other than that, I would say at this point in the year, I There would probably be no other acquisitions other than one in the call center business that might happen.

Okay, thanks.

Also, maybe not directly related to the business, but the cyclospora outbreak, could you talk about that a little bit? Has it had any impact whatsoever on any of your businesses? Thank you.

Not yet.

Okay, thanks.

Not yet. Okay, that wraps up the questions, Bailey.

All right, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Michael Benstock for any closing remarks.

Thank you all, and thanks, operator. We appreciate you joining us today. We always appreciate your interest in Spirit Group Companies and look forward to updating you as we move through the back half of the year. As always, please don't hesitate to reach out with any additional questions. and we look forward again to seeing many of you at upcoming conferences. Thanks again.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.