Dorel Industries Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Doral Industries' third quarter 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may reach an operator by pressing star then 0. Before turning over the meeting to management, Please be advised that this conference call will contain statements that are forward-looking and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded today, November 10, 2025. I would like to turn the conference over to Martin Schwartz, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Well, good morning and thank you all for joining us for Daryl's third quarter earnings call for the period ended September 30th, 2025. With me today are Jeffrey Schwartz, CFO, and Jason Kwasnick, Vice President of Finance. We'll take your questions following our comments. Please note that all figures mentioned during this call are in U.S. dollars. The third quarter ended with a significant agreement with new financial partners that will fund our strategic agenda in accelerating the growth of the juvenile segment and executing the repositioning of the home segment. The lack of liquidity prior to these arrangements seriously impeded our ability to develop and bring new products to market. This was most acute in the home segment, but as the quarter progressed, it also delayed key product development initiatives in juvenile, a problem that has now been resolved. This internal challenge was compounded by external pressures, particularly in the US, where tariff uncertainty and higher retail price points are creating a slowing retail environment. Despite this, the REL Juvenile delivered a quarter characterized by stable revenue and strong international performance, led by our European operations, offset softness in the US. These results again demonstrated the strength of our global footprint and our commitment to building a more agile and competitive business. The rail home progressed on its restructuring plan, including the ending of manufacturing operations, further workforce and footprint reductions, and aggressive inventory liquidation. As always, Jeffrey will walk you through our results, but first I want to add some color to our press release of Friday, starting with the juvenile segments. In many ways, the third quarter was like our second. After a very strong start in the first quarter, sales slowed in the U.S., fundamentally due to the uncertainty being created by tariffs. And as in the second quarter, our international footprint allowed us to offset the challenges in the U.S., and strong revenue growth in our other markets offset the U.S. results. As of today, this uncertainty continues to exist with almost weekly pronouncements on potential tariff rate changes. But one thing is almost certain is that tariffs will not disappear, even if less erratic in their implementation. Higher input costs are almost certainly unavoidable on imports going forward. Higher prices are in the marketplace and retail velocity is slowing. This is true in both our juvenile and home segments. But with challenges come opportunities, and we did not allow the situation to slow our product development and market activation activities. We also have the benefit of domestic manufacturing in our best-in-class car seat facility in Columbus, Indiana, which is proving to be an advantage. One of the largest car seat production sites globally, the facility produces approximately 3 million units annually, supporting nearly 30% of the U.S. market. By leveraging local source materials and maintaining a strong U.S. presence, we can manage cost effectively, respond swiftly to market demands, and support American jobs. The strategic focus enables Doral Juvenile to provide families with safe, high-quality products while navigating ongoing trade policy and supply chain challenges. Let me now turn to some of the exciting developments across our brands and markets in the quarter. The marquee event of the quarter was our global preview at the Cologne Juvenile Show. This event brought together our teams from across regions to showcase new innovations and strengthen customer relationships. The event featured the global debut of Little Seeds Nursery Furniture brand and the introduction of Maxi-Cosi Slide Pro family, including the advanced Slide Tech 2 system. With contributions from all markets, the event fostered cross-regional collaboration and reinforced the REL Juvenile's commitment to innovation, connection, and global growth. We started several unique marketing initiatives in the quarter, including a nationwide brand awareness campaign on Reach TV, the largest in-airport television network in the U.S., present in over 70 airports. The campaign featured video content promoting three of our global brands. We also promoted our Made in Indiana initiative that highlights our domestic production, airing every hour and during live NFL game coverage. With an estimated reach of 30 million travelers, this initiative significantly boosted brand visibility among a highly engaged audience. And now for Darrell Holmes. As we announced last quarter, we are completely transforming the home segment as we look to reverse the losses of the last three years. This transformation is built on four key pillars. Elimination of domestic manufacturing, a reduced product line focused on the most profitable items and categories, a smaller distribution footprint, and full integration of back office activities into our juvenile segment. We are actively delivering on these initiatives, and as of today, we have accomplished the following. We ceased manufacturing in our Cornwall, Ontario facility. We exited two major leased warehouse spaces in California and Montreal, moving into much smaller space in juvenile-run facilities. We reduced our non-manufacturing headcount from 470 to 240, and we reduced third-quarter operating expenses by over 40% year over year. We did not see the benefits of all these actions in the third quarter, but we will see more in the fourth quarter and really more in 2026. We continue to work on exiting product categories that are now considered non-core, and this allowed us to exit these large facilities in California and Montreal. The next phase is to move inventory in our East Coast facility and our Michigan location as we drive to a footprint that matches our new business model. As I said last quarter, the work being done by our North American teams to make this happen has been incredible, including those of our team members who will be leaving us. As I said last quarter, I want to reiterate my appreciation for their commitment to helping Durrell move forward. During all this change, our sales, marketing, and product development teams continue to actively work on the new Durrell homes. We have a lot of exciting new products that we were unable to bring to market thus far this year as we work through our liquidity issues. I will let Jeffrey update you on how our new structure will allow us to move forward, but from a product development perspective, we can now work more actively with our supplier partners to bring these products to market. In October, we attended the annual High Point Furniture Show in North Carolina. Several of our top customers attended, and we shared our go-forward vision and several new items across our remaining product categories, and they were extremely well-received. I will now ask Jeffrey to review the financials.

Jeffrey? Thank you, Martin. Just before discussing the results, just want to reiterate some things about the new facility that Doral has because it really is – probably the most important thing that's happened to the company in a while. So as we announced on September 29th, we're all entered into a new financing agreement for the group of lenders led by the affiliates of TCW Asset Management that includes senior secured credit facilities in the amount of $310 million U.S. That consists of $175 million senior secured asset-based revolving credit facility, of which we borrowed $110 million, and a $135 million term loan facility. Also announced, we entered into an agreement with the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, INCO, for a private placement of preferred shares issued for the total amount of $75 million U.S. The company used the proceeds from the new credit facilities and preferred shares to repay Doral's previous senior secured debt LENDERS AND TO PAY FOR CERTAIN RESTRUCTURING COSTS IN THE DOREL HOME SEGMENT AND FOR WORKING CAPITAL PURPOSES. THE NEW CREDITED FACILITIES AND THE PROCEEDS FROM THE PREFERRED SHARES RECAPITALIZED DOREL'S FINANCIAL POSITION AND THE COMPANY NOW EXPECTS TO BE WELL POSITIONED TO ADVANCE THE STRATEGIC AGENDA, PARTICULARLY AN ACCELERATION OF THE GROWTH OF THE JUVENILE SEGMENT AND EXECUTING THE REPOSITIONING OF THE DOREL HOME BUSINESS. From a revenue standpoint now, the third quarter, Doral's revenue decreased by $55.7 million, or 15.7%. The revenue decline was in the Doral home area, with juvenile becoming, was essentially flat. As announced on June 30th, the Doral home operation was substantially reduced in size through the international market. intentional reduction of active SKUs that are now considered non-core. In addition, sales declined versus last year due to product availability issues, as well as customers holding orders due to the uncertainties of tariffs. So the revenue decline in the U.S., as Martin mentioned, began in the second quarter and was due to the Uncertainty that tariffs have brought to the marketplace, this general consumer product issues in which price points again are upside down, but probably more important is it doesn't, the changing in tariffs doesn't give the retailers an opportunity to strategically plan their product lines to meet the right and appropriate price points. All of this is just causing some chaos in the marketplace, and we're sort of seeing that in softer demand. I'm going to skip over any discussion of general gross profits and margins and stuff like that, because on the home side, there was an incredible amount of noise, as you can imagine. I'll just talk about some of the reasons for the noise, but It doesn't really help us in looking, analyzing any go-forward numbers based on the home results. The general operating loss was $25.7 million compared to a loss of $11.1 million the year before. If we exclude restructuring costs, the adjusted operating loss decreased by $1.1 million to $8.1 million. Financing expenses increased by 10.6 during the quarter compared to last year. The increase is mainly explained by the loss of extinguishment on debt in the amount of 9.7 million during the quarter. If we look at home, like I said, our home business declined by 40%, you know, in sales. due to the restructuring and the exiting of many SKUs and product categories. Even within that, we had product availability issues due to liquidity issues that were pretty acute in the third quarter. Many suppliers had moved us to a COD level, and we weren't necessarily able to get everything we needed. In addition, as I talked about before, we've got the problems of the uncertainty of the tariff rates, which affected strategic planning on both our customers and our site as well. Skipping over again all the gross margins, I just want to, again, find people what was done and when in Q3. So we shut down the, at the end of the quarter, we shut down the manufacturing facility in Cornwall and unfortunately had to give up quite a bit of severance and write down inventory and equipment, which some of that was done in Q2. But as you can imagine, as you wind down a facility, your efficiencies are horrible, and we had significant losses because of that. We exited our distribution warehouse in California at the end of September. which again necessitated an aggressive stance to move out of the inventory. We are exiting the Montreal facility, or it did exit the Montreal facility on October 31st of this year, but we again ran a sort of shrunken facility, expensive lease and other areas there that just caused massive inefficiencies. So that's behind us. as is the distribution of California warehouse. We did an inventory write-down of $11 million in the quarter, and we did have severance in the quarter of $4.3 million. So, again, we've talked about all this severance. We've talked about a lot of this stuff for a number of months now, but we didn't see any of the relief really in Q3. We had some employees not with us anymore, but generally we had all the facilities, we had all the overhead, and that was all put into Q3. We're going to start to see some relief in Q4. I'll move over to Juvenile, which had a flat quarter from a sales perspective. A little bit disappointing. We did have a weak August, although our business did rebound significantly in September last allowing us to have a reasonably decent quarter. The revenue declines, there were revenue declines in the U.S. and Brazilian market. The revenue declines were offset by improvements in other markets. So Europe, again, is experiencing some very nice organic revenue growth in most of their countries. And then we've had areas like Australia, Canada, Chile, our export markets. We're seeing significant growth in those markets as well. A lot of it is led by our Maxi Cozy brand, which is our premium brand, and that seems to be going very well. Gross profits in the quarter decreased by 1.6 million or 2.6%. The margin was 27.8 as it decreased to 50 basis points from last year. It's primarily due to the lower sales volume in the U.S., which is, again, caused by tariffs in that area. The operating profit is $4.9 during the quarter compared to $7.2, but if we exclude the structured cost, the operating profit decreased by only $1.4 million to an adjusted profit number of $6.6. With that, I will pass that back to Martin.

Thank you, Jeffrey. The outlook for Darrell Juvenile remains very positive, and a resilience to a difficult environment is evident in our results thus far this year. We remain confident in Darrell Juvenile's ability to navigate ongoing market challenges and capitalize on growth opportunities across our global footprint. As we look to the fourth quarter, we expect further improvement in our U.S. business, which, coupled with our other markets, gives us confidence that we will deliver results that will well exceed prior year. In the home segment, our focus remains firmly on executing the transformation of the segment into a leaner, more agile organization. We are confident that the structural change is underway, including back office integration with Darrell Juvenile, inventory liquidation, and facility consolidation will position us for improved financial performance in 2026. For both our segments, while the retail environment remains challenging and tariff pressures persist, we are actively working with our key customers and suppliers to stabilize pricing, rebuild trust, and reestablish momentum. Our team's resilience and commitment throughout this transition gives us confidence that we will enter the new year with a strong foundation to deliver significantly improved earnings. With that, I'll ask the operator to open the lines for questions. And please, as always, limit your questions to two in the first round. Operator?

Thank you. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. The first question comes from Derek Lessard with TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning everybody and thanks for taking my questions. Jeffrey, I just want to maybe just start on the juvenile segment. I'm curious if you had a sense of what the organic growth was excluding the U.S.

I believe organic growth was maybe down – oh, excluding the U.S. Yeah, because I think in the press release – I have it including the U.S. You know, it's down a couple of points now. organic growth. But excluding the U.S., I'd have to figure that out. Okay. We can maybe take it offline. Sorry, is that 9%? Someone's giving me a number. Yeah, because you said it was down three on a consolidated. Yeah, but I would say 10%. We're seeing some areas that some countries are growing at 30%. So we're pretty bullish on the general market. And you know what? Thank God that we're not just based in the U.S. because, yeah. So that number is somewhere between 5% to 10% if we exclude the U.S. It makes sense.

I mean, that would be in line with what you reported last quarter. I think it was plus 12 or something like that. Yeah. Okay. And then just maybe just on a similar vein, maybe talk about or compare and contrast the different operating environments in Europe versus the U.S., for example, in Juneau?

Well, I think, I mean, it's tariffs, right? Because at the end of the day, tariffs is causing chaos is the best way to describe it. You know, price points are changing, costs have gone up, but then... You know, not all price, not all like 100 percent of the price increases go through. Now we've got a reduction of 10 percent on goods from China. Right. So, OK, that's going to be good. That'll hopefully, you know, either or stabilize margins or bring down some price points, which maybe will stimulate demand a little bit. So, you know, that's a positive sign for the industry. We don't have those issues in Europe. We don't have those issues in Canada or Australia. And the new products that we're bringing to market are doing very, very well. I will say that the liquidity, if we're talking juvenile on the liquidity side, we definitely lost some momentum in getting our new products to market on time. That's back now. Like, I'm not saying they're all back in the market, but we no longer have delays. We got, you know, our supplier's Fortunately, stuck with us on juvenile, but a lot of them were not ready to commit investments until we caught up in our payables, which have been done. Right now, that's behind us. So I think if we would have been normal, we would have seen some newer items, which would allow for higher sales. But a lot of that stuff is coming in as we speak.

And how do you look, or how's the setup, I guess, heading into the holiday period?

Well, on the juvenile side, holiday's not that important. It's post-holiday, that is. So we're pretty upbeat. I mean, Q4 is going to be good. There's no question. I don't see any way it's not going to be a very successful quarter. We had a slower quarter last year. and everything seems to be finally clicking into place. So expecting a very good fourth quarter in juvenile and looking into next year with a lot of the new stuff, the momentum that we have, the ability to remove costs that, you know, again, we're very, very focused on taking out costs. That's why you see some restructuring charges on the juvenile side as we remove areas that don't make sense anymore. Being very aggressive there, very aggressive on the top line. We're pretty still upbeat, as upbeat as we've been. And I'm going to go out and say, look, we got new lenders, and they lent us based on what they also believe is the opportunity on the juvenile side. So they put their money where their mouth is. So we're pretty excited about that side. On the home side, really, it's a very different strategy. It's clearing out, getting through the restructuring, which, by the way, is on plan financially and somewhat time-level, like a time-related. It's not 100%, but we're pretty pleased this thing is under control. But what we need to do now is we need to... We need to... build our base back up of, you know, the SKUs, the customers. I mean, we had a very bumpy road with suppliers, much bumpier on the home side. Like I said, we were down to COD on the number of key suppliers. That's been rebuilt. And even on the customer standpoint, you know, a lot of them were nervous about our ability to go forward and maybe give us certain promotions that they were worried that maybe we wouldn't be able to bring in. That, again, is behind us now that we have proper financing. But the tariffs are still crazy. I mean, again, having a 10% reduction in China is meaningful. And hopefully that will allow, in many cases, I think you remember before, the customer's imported a lot of these goods themselves and they paid the tariffs. So what we're hoping now is with a reduction in tariffs that perhaps they can lower some of the price points, which would hopefully spur some demand in some of the categories. So a lot more difficult on the home side to look forward. Like it's harder to build a model there because we are looking, like I said, stabilized. What's our base and how do we grow from there? and make sure that we grow and we're not losing money while we do that. That's really the goal, and that's where we are.

Okay, and maybe I'll squeeze one last one. And just maybe on the outlook, you said that you're expecting, just for Q4 anyways, improvement in the U.S. business on juvenile and results that exceeded prior year. Curious how you look at that. Is that on operating income when you give that guide, year over year?

I'm going to stick my neck out and say it's on every metric right now. I mean, it's on sales, it's on operating, it's on EBITDA. Yeah, you know, again, U.S., I'm talking general, the whole segment. And, you know, my confidence comes from looking at the whole segment, including U.S., but not just U.S. I mean, we don't look at that. And if the success is because we're doing amazing in Europe, then that's great. Okay, thanks. I'll reach you. Thanks, everybody.

The next question comes from Stephen McLeod with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Just wanted to follow up on a couple of things. Just with respect to you talked a little bit about some of your retailer customers kind of being cautious on inventories. And I understand maybe a portion of that was due to liquidity issues. but the portion that was related to tariff uncertainty, have you seen them begin to get more aggressive on selling through what they have and bringing in new levels of inventory?

Yes and no. It's more chaotic in a sense where Because tariffs are changing, I mean, all of our products, let's say on the home side, is imported, right? And a lot of it comes out of China. Some of it comes out of other areas. So they're looking for the best landed costs they can get. And that changes, right? That changes based on what tariffs are put on different countries and other types of tariffs and things. It's making it difficult for them to say, yes, go to country X, and we want to back you, and we'll buy from country X. Because in many cases, they import it. We just do the design and facilitate the quality manufacturing and all that. It's just been difficult for them to sort of put their hands or fingers and say, that's what we want. So, yes, they're still buying. In some cases, there's been delays. But are they getting more aggressive? I don't know. I'm not sure. I think they still feel like everything's up in the air. And it goes beyond Doral Products, right? This is just a general consumer product thing. But we certainly feel it in the home area more than on the juvenile side. But I don't know that they're more aggressive yet. I think they're still figuring out where everything's going. I think Christmas is going to be a big indication of what to do.

Right. Okay. No, that's helpful. Thanks, Jeffrey. And then maybe just on the home business, I mean, obviously, you know, you're working through the restructuring and things are generally on plan based on your comments. So I was just wondering, you can kind of frame sort of what the potential profitability is movements look like as you kind of get through Q4 and into 2026, or is it still a bit too early to say?

We believe we're going to be profitable in 2026. My concerns are probably Q4, Q1. I'm hoping by Q2 things are turning, and really what it is is about building back the right products and having the right products in the inventory. I mean, we have a certain base that we have, and now we want to build off of the base. But, you know, even if tomorrow we get a confirmation from a retailer, you know, in the middle of November, we're probably not going to be able to, you know, have that inventory in until the end of Q1. You know what I mean? That's the kind of delays we're dealing with, so. But, yeah, I do think we will be because we've taken up so much cost, so much cost, whether it be facilities or people. I mean, that's the key here. This is not a high-cost business anymore. We just need to get the volumes up and the margins stable.

Yeah. Okay. No, that's helpful. And then just one other thing is I noticed you put in an NCIB that's effective, I guess, as of October 30th. or I guess November 12th, sorry. Are you expecting to be active on the NCIB? And I guess as you think about your balance sheet and the new balance sheet recapitalization, I mean, is that a priority for your capital allocation?

We have the funds put aside based on where our future plans lie. This is not a ton of money. But, you know, again, our stock's not very high. So, yes, we intend to be active on it. But I don't know that at the end of the day that's going to be a material amount of money. We don't believe it will be.

Right. So we'll see. Okay.

Okay. That's great. Thanks, Jeffrey. I'll get back in line. Okay.

We have a follow-up question from Derek Lussard with TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

Yeah, just maybe to follow up on Steve's question on the NCIB, are there any restrictions with the new lenders or covenants that would prevent you from buying back shares?

There is no restriction from doing it. There's a limit, which, again, I don't know if we have to disclose that, but There is a limit on how much we can, but like I said before, it's been pre-approved by our lenders that we can do this. So, yes. Okay. Thank you.

This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Martin Schwartz for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. I just want to thank everybody for joining us today and wish you all a great day. Thank you again.

This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.