Unifi, Inc. New

Good morning and thank you for attending Unify's third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. During this call, management will be referencing a webcast presentation that can be found in the investor relations section of unify.com. Please familiarize yourself with page two of that slide deck for cautionary statements and non-gap measures. Today's conference is being recorded and all lines has been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Our speakers are listed on page three of today's presentation and include Al Carey, Executive Chairman, Eddie Ingle, Chief Executive Officer, A.J. Ecker, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Al Carey. Please turn to page four of the presentation.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. We're pleased to report that our year-long effort to reduce our cost base and improve cash generation is providing results. As a matter of fact, we're a bit ahead of expectations for Q3. AJ is going to take you through the full story in a few minutes, but here are the three top headlines. The Madison plant closure is complete. Number two, the much improved efficiencies in our current plant, and three, we've optimized our product lines and SKUs so that we don't have products that contribute no profitability to our lineup. These actions set us up for improved profitability, especially as revenue begins to pick up and we're able to see higher levels of capacity utilization. There was one area that did not see a reduction in costs over the last 12 months, and that was the work that we're doing on product innovations. These products will provide revenue growth for the future, so they're very important. We have begun to get traction with our customers on these products, and that'll move us into a very important priority right now, which is to begin to commercialize these innovations. The innovations are, first, textile to textile recycling. Second, products for categories that are outside of apparel and provide higher profitability. And third, profits with performance benefits that customers and consumers are looking for. Now, Eddie is going to take you through the full story on that in just a minute. The textile industry has still plenty of headwinds, especially as our customers navigate around the tariff complexities in the oil prices. We believe those headwinds will diminish and our profits will improve even in the current environment that we're in right now. I'd like to say one last thing and turn it over to Eddie. We are very proud of our team, the executives, the managers, and the frontline employees as well. Over the last 12 to 15 months, it's been a rough road, but the team has worked through the challenges collaboratively There really is a special resiliency about the people from Unify, and their loyalty has been very evident throughout this entire timeframe. So we are grateful for their big efforts over the last several months, and we're looking forward to returning to growth. So now I'd like to turn the speaker, speaking over to Eddie and AJ, who will provide you with the full story. Thank you.

Thanks, Al. And as Al just noted, this really was a stronger quarter for Unifi, and it clearly highlights the benefits of the actions we've taken to realign our cost structure and optimize our operations and improve the conversion margins through portfolio management and, of course, targeted pricing that Al has inferred. We've kept our inventories flat, spend was managed with discipline, and the margin improvement that you see in the numbers in part reflects this strong operational progress. We are a significantly more resilient business today, and despite geopolitical headwinds, we have managed our balance sheet very effectively. Structural changes to our customer contracts, combined with faster commercial decision making, have positioned us well to be able to respond more proactively to today's market conditions. I'm going to turn the call over to AJ now to walk you through the financial details for the quarter, and then I'll come back in shortly to discuss our near-term priorities, our innovation progress, and what lies ahead for Unify.

AJ? Thank you, Eddie, and good day, everyone. I'll start off by discussing our consolidated financial highlights for the quarter on slide four. Consolidated net sales for the quarter were in line with our expectations, down 11% year-over-year but up 7% sequentially. Our markets continue to be impacted by geopolitical events as well as trade and tariff-related uncertainties. Consolidated gross profit was $9.1 million and gross margin was 7% during the period compared to a gross loss of $0.4 million and gross margin of negative 0.3% for the prior year period. SG&A was $11.2 million during the quarter, a 9% improvement from one year ago, while adjusted EBITDA during the period was $4 million a nearly $9 million improvement on a year-over-year basis. These stronger results during the quarter, as Eddie and Al mentioned, reflect serious operational improvements, both on the cost and efficiency side, that we have implemented over the last several quarters, now translating into real results. Turning now to slide five, in the Americas, net sales were down 16% as the region continues to face volume headwinds. Despite the lower sales during the quarter, we did generate gross profit of $3.6 million in that segment. This is the first time we've been able to deliver positive gross profit in the Americas for some time now, which further highlights the benefits of footprint consolidation and cost actions we have taken to improve our domestic operational efficiency. Slide 6 displays our Brazil segment. which saw net sales increase by $1 million and gross profit decline just slightly by $0.2 million. Overall, the performance in Brazil during the period was solid due to a particularly strong March, with both volume and pricing contributing. This March for Brazil was our best sales volume month on record because of cost and price dynamics where the scales tipped in our favor. While this dynamic may normalize soon, we expect to see robust results in the fourth quarter for Brazil. On slide seven, our Asia segment net sales and gross profit declined to $22.6 million and $2.7 million, respectively, primarily due to lower sales volumes associated with the tariff uncertainties and pricing dynamics in the region. Margins have continued to hold up well in Asia, given the asset light model we employ there, and we did see some momentum in the region improve during March, which we are hopeful will continue. Slide 8 outlines our improving balance sheet and capital structure. During the third quarter, we generated $7.2 million of free cash flow, bringing year-to-date free cash flow to $20.5 million. The positive free cash flow in the third quarter was a major beat against our expectations as we were originally anticipating that we would experience some cash burn during this quarter. But thanks to our operational improvements and diligence, we experienced a nice increase in cash flow generation. CapEx for the quarter came in at just $800,000, and our CapEx on a year-to-date basis was $3.9 million, a 50% decline compared to the prior year period as we continue to closely manage all spending. Net debt was reduced to $68 million, a stark improvement from recent levels. And our working capital remains balanced, healthy, and lower due to our leaner operations in the US. This significant improvement to our balance sheet and capital structure was directly attributable to the hard work that our whole team has executed across the globe over the last few years. We aligned our costs, consolidated our footprint, and drove improved efficiencies. all of which have helped us establish a more efficient manufacturing base in the U.S. Looking at the fourth quarter, we do anticipate a moderate increase in working capital to accommodate a modest increase in sales and the higher cost raw materials purchased thus far. We estimate between $4 million and $7 million of working capital impact to the fourth quarter, which will obviously fluctuate in terms of amount and duration based on current geopolitical events. This concludes my financial review, and I'll now pass the call back to Eddie.

Thank you, AJ. And as you've just heard from AJ in quite a amount of detail, we are continuing to see the benefits of our operational improvements, and the business is demonstrating improved resilience and flexibility in what I consider an ever-changing business environment. So let's turn to slide nine for an overview of our priorities going forward. As we look ahead, our focus continues to remain on returning unified to long-term growth and enhance profitability. And in order to achieve this goal, we are keeping our efforts focused on four key areas. First, we will continue to build on the operational improvements that we've implemented and ensure we don't lose any of the enhancements to the businesses that we have made. At the same time, we will continue to invest in our capabilities and technologies and reinforce and scale our platform of sustainable solutions. Next, we have a culture built around innovation. And as Al mentioned, we haven't given up on those efforts. And new product developments will continue to invest and resources necessary to advance the customer adoption of our innovative solutions to support future growth. And finally, we are focused on making sure we do everything we can to navigate the current trade and geopolitical environment that is creating some challenges for us. We are also maintaining a sharp focus on positioning the business to drive more consistent top line growth as some of these global economic headwinds subside. It is good to see some momentum in a number of our innovative initiatives, especially in the US, with what we have called Beyond Apparel. You've heard us talk a lot about the potential we are seeing for our Beyond Apparel business, and while Q3 was still a work in progress, we are seeing real commercial success in Q4. Moving on to slide 10, a key highlight for the last quarter was the global launch of Luxail, a new yarn technology that delivers the look and feel of linen while adding performance benefits like moisture management, wrinkle-resistant, and odor control. It's made with Reprieve recycled polyester, including a minimum of 30% textile-to-textile recycled contents with our Reprieve take-back. Luxell is designed to help brands reduce environmental impact while maintaining the look and feel of linen with easy care. The innovation can be used in a wide range of applications from footwear, apparel, and home goods. And LookCell is just another example of how we at UniFi have continued to develop yarn technologies that can replicate the performance of natural fibers and enhance the technical performance beyond what nature can actually provide. And in our military and tactical markets, much of the success we are seeing is centered around our Fortison brand. We're seeing success here because we offer enhanced strength nylon yarns in natural white, all with color embedded into the yarns. And in addition, these products can be made with reprieved nylon as the base polymer. These advancements that we have made in this market with the performance promise backed up by Unified's quality systems, alongside a sustainable offering, are finally starting to move into the serious commercialization stage. So alongside the beyond apparel growth of military and tactical, carpeting is getting more traction. And packaging has continued to perform well, with volumes growing in both these markets, too. We expect to see further growth in the periods ahead. In Asia, we are beginning to see more activity in both Reprieve Take Back, our textile-to-textile fiber platform, and Thermaloop, our innovative circular insulation product. In a couple of quarters, I expect to be able to discuss openly which additional brands and retailers have been adopting these offerings once they themselves go public. Turning to slide 11. In February, we released our fiscal year 2025 sustainability snapshot, highlighting progress in scaling our reprieve recycled materials platform and advancing sustainable manufacturing. We announced a new goal to recycle 65 billion plastic bottles by 2030 and updated other established goals, such as converting the equivalent of 1.5 billion t-shirts worth of textile waste into reprieve products. The sustainability snapshot, as we call it, really helps telegraph to the brands and retailers how serious we are about helping them meet their sustainability targets. And, of course, how committed we are at Unify to product innovation and building out our already substantial sustainable product portfolio. Turning to slide 12, in April, which is recognized globally as Earth Month, we celebrated our partners through our Champions of Sustainability program, announcing the winners of our ninth annual Reprieve Champions of Sustainability Awards, recognizing brands and mills who are advancing circularity and responsible manufacturing across the textile industry. This year's program introduced new textile waste awards to spotlight partners accelerating circular solutions, reinforcing our commitment to scaling recycled and traceable materials globally. And since the event was held in our main U.S. manufacturing location in Yakima, North Carolina, We gave those who attended a view into the production of reprieve take back and the process. Moving to slide 13 for an overview of our outlook and how we anticipate sustaining our financial momentum. For the fourth quarter, we expect to see our Brazil segment benefit financially from the supply chain dynamics that currently exist in the market and we'll be able to leverage the long supply chain to our advantage in the coming months. In the Asia segment, there is an expectation that we will see increased adoption and resulting revenues from our technologies and circular solutions. The America segment should improve in terms of volumes and revenues, primarily from pricing actions and our value added beyond the power portfolio. However, we are still facing some demand challenges with our underlying business, specifically in Central America. To wrap up, we are encouraged by the progress that we've made which is now being reflected in our financial results. Our business is in a stronger position today than it has been in some time, and we are continuing to remain focused on ensuring that our operational enhancements translate into sustained financial improvement that will help create value for our shareholders. And before I hand the call over to the operator, I'd like to acknowledge that the improvements to the business was a team effort, and I want to take the opportunity to thank each of the teams in the regional businesses for their hard work and efforts. With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator?

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your question from the line of Anthony Dibidzinki with Sidoti. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking the questions. Yes, certainly nice to see the improvement in the earnings results and also the pretty good cash flow in the quarter as well. So, first, can you talk about pricing versus unit volumes in 3Q and how that might change in the fourth quarter here, given the increased input costs and some of the supply chain dynamics? I think Brazil is probably the one where you would probably see the most in terms of pricing actions. But I'm just wondering if you could comment on the quarter that you just reported that And plus also give some more details about the pricing and volume dynamics that you may anticipate here in the fourth quarter.

Sure, Anthony. It's AJ. A bit of a mixed bag, so I'll try to go slow on some of that and ask Eddie to help as well. But if we start from a year-over-year perspective, we have the majority of decline in the Americas is volume-based. There's some price and mix in there, but predominantly volume. When we look at Brazil, their year-over-year movement, again, Q3 versus Q3 was predominantly price. That was based on a lot of the competitive activity, lower prices coming from imported product. And third, in Asia, year-over-year, we did have a larger pricing impact versus volume impact as well. So now when we look sequentially, Q3 to Q4, like you asked, we do see generally flat volumes in the Americas, but certainly some pricing as we've had to make some responsive pricing actions given the movement in petrochemical markets. In Brazil, we will also see meaningful pricing increase, but also a bit of volume. And in Asia, we see a mix of volume and price there, again, partly with petrochemical-related inflation and partly with some of the recovery that we mentioned beginning with the month of March in Asia headed into Q4. And I'll ask Eddie to add on any more there.

Yeah, just to... I just want to add one specific thing around the velocity of the pricing. We are... in a situation today where much of our pricing is, more of our pricing is order to order and not index like it had been in the past. So we are able to react more responsibly. We are being careful, of course, to talk to customers and being responsible suppliers. But it has been, because of the nature of the raw materials and the sheet at which they've increased, we've had to react faster than we normally do. So during the quarter four, especially by the time we exit, We expect to be caught up on any raw material increases, unfortunately, that we have to pass on.

Got you. Thank you both. OK, so just to clarify, you expect the pricing actions to essentially fully offset any of the cost headwinds that you are seeing at the moment, right?

I think there'll be a little bit of lag in the US. But primarily, most of the cost increases will be passed on. as we move through this quarter. And we're seeing that already.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that, Eddie. Okay. And then, um, you know, just in terms of, uh, the Asia segment that you highlighted that you expect improved adoption of innovative and sustainable platforms, um, can you give, uh, you know, some additional details in regards to that? And then, um, as far as some of the new products that you have talked about, which one do you think has the most potential as far as to make a difference in terms of the sales contributions?

Yeah, here in the U.S. on the Beyond Apparel in Q4, we are expecting to see about a $2 million uplift in the quarter from these Beyond Apparel initiatives. which is primarily from our military and tactical Fortisim programs, our carpeting business, and also the packaging business that we have. And these are all margin accretive opportunities for us. And we're, especially on the Fortisim product, we spent a lot of time, we talked a lot about this on the calls, and it takes a long time to get traction, primarily because it's just such technically a difficult process product to make and then of course the customers are very sensitive to make sure that if they do make a switch that they're switching it to a product that can sustain itself and give them the advantages that we've described to them we're at the point now where we're getting adoption and I'm very excited about that I think the volumes potentially overall for the whole market will increase because of what's happening with Iran but overall we are certainly very positive about that market and where it can bring us in the next few quarters. But specifically in this quarter, it's not going to be huge, but we've got commercial programs that we didn't have just a quarter ago. And in Asia, it's a mixture of our Thermaloop, which most of the insulated jackets are made actually in Asia. So we don't expect to see any of that here in the Americas. And we're starting to get traction. This is the season to make insulation for the fall jacket sales. we have good programs there we have good programs in are reprieve and take back which is our text on the textile and also our technology such as I'm true time 365 and and subject they're also starting great action to our revenues in Q4 will be up in Asia primarily driven by our technologies and in Brazil we actually have increased the ratio of value-added sales which is in part why the revenues will go up.

Thanks so much for all that color. So, you know, this is more of a kind of a longer term, a bigger picture kind of question, but the, so as we look at the Americas, certainly it's your, you know, very asset heavy segment that you have taken out a lot of fixed costs out of the business. So even with lower revenue, you were able to generate a much better gross profit here in 3Q. So, As the segment recovers at some point, how should investors think about gross margin potential here in this segment with better revenue that you may see at some point?

Sure, Anthony. I'll start that and ask Eddie to add any, but we're certainly proud of what was achieved in this third quarter. Again, meeting expectations on what the team was able to accomplish in terms of getting cost out and improving efficiencies there. in the facilities that remain. From a long-term perspective, we certainly want to get back to some of those better levels that were around 10 years ago. Those margin levels were certainly healthy in the Americas and with a lot of what Eddie's outlined in terms of new programs, new customer penetration, and continued efficiencies and cost management in the Americas. we do see that as a relevant goal and an achievable goal when those catalysts do hit.

I just want to add, you know, we are very, very careful about our spends more than we ever have been before. And it's across every part of the organization. It's a new mindset. And all we need is a little bit of volume to really get those margins that AJ was talking about. So We still expect it to come back, especially in Central America. We're getting the right signals, but we're still just waiting patiently. But while we're waiting, we still believe we can manage our spend relative to the revenues that we have to continue to give us a positive gross profit in the Americas.

Anthony, this is Al. I'd add one thing to the Central America businesses. In many conversations with customers, all indications are they're going to use Central America for nearshoring because it's a good option for them to not be so dependent on China, and it's also a good option for a close-in supply chain. And we're just waiting. I think what's happening in the sourcing organizations of these companies is They're trying to determine with the tariffs changing so much, is the better deal to buy from the U.S.? Is there a better to ship from China, from China to Vietnam over to the Central America? It's going to happen, but it's, you know, it's just been very confusing. We're waiting for it to happen. All indications are it will happen.

understood the effects for all that color. And I guess somewhat of a similar question in regards to Brazil. So obviously the near-term picture looks bright there. But just looking back over the last few years, there has been quite a lot of volatility in the Brazil segment in terms of sales and gross margins. So maybe just if you guys could talk about what's different now other than just the supply chain dynamics? And how should we think about the longer-term opportunities and challenges beyond the current quarter?

Thanks for the question, Anthony. You know, the market is still continuing to grow because of the population, because of the general economy down there. So we are the only large player down in their market. We have talked about the dumping that's been going on from Asia into Brazil. With this dynamic, higher cost dynamic, we are advantaged a little bit, so we do expect our margins to become a little bit more stabilized. Like we've said on this call, Q4 should be pretty strong, and going forward we should get back to more normal EBITDA and more normal gross profits in Brazil on that business segment. The dumping has lessened simply because the Asians appear to be a little bit more constrained from a petrochemical perspective, and they are passing those costs on to the market.

Gotcha. Okay. That's very helpful context. Okay. Well, thank you very much, and best of luck.

Great.

Thank you, Anthony.

There are no further questions at this time, and this concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.