On Wednesday, MillerKnoll (NASDAQ:MLKN) discussed fourth-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
This content is powered by Benzinga APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/.
View the webcast at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/wewf26bx/
Summary
MillerKnoll reported a 4.4% year-over-year increase in fourth-quarter revenue, reaching over $1 billion, driven by growth in North America contract and global retail.
Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.55, aligning with the high end of the company's guidance.
The company highlighted three areas of focus for fiscal 2027: enhancing operating discipline, maintaining cost control, and strengthening the balance sheet by reducing debt and improving cash flow.
Global retail segment showed strong performance, with plans to open more Herman Miller and Design Within Reach stores in fiscal 2027.
The company plans to improve operational efficiency by consolidating manufacturing facilities and leveraging dealer relationships in international markets.
MillerKnoll expects fiscal 2027 net sales to range from $3.93 billion to $4.13 billion, with adjusted earnings per share between $1.85 and $2.15.
Management emphasized the need for clear priorities and financial discipline to leverage creativity and improve execution across the organization.
Full Transcript
Wendy Watson, Vice President of Investor Relations
Good evening and welcome to MillerKnoll's Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Wendy Watson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Good evening and welcome to our fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2026 conference call. On with me are Jeff Stutz, MillerKnoll's Chief Operating Officer and incoming Interim CEO, and Kevin Veltman, Chief Financial Officer.
Joining them for the Q and A session are John Michael, President of North America Contract and Debbie Propst, President of Global Retail. We issued our earnings press release for the quarter ended May 30, 2026, after market closed today and it is available on our investor relations website at millerknoll.com. A replay of this call will be available on our website within 24 hours. Before I turn the call over to Jeff, please remember our safe harbor disclosure regarding forward-looking information.
During the call, management may discuss information that is forward-looking and involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results to be different than those expressed or implied. Please evaluate the forward-looking information in the context of these factors which are detailed in today's press release. The forward-looking statements are made as of today's date and except as may be required by law, we assume no obligation to update or supplement these statements.
We also refer to certain non-GAAP financial metrics and our press release includes the relevant non-GAAP reconciliations. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff.
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Thank you, Wendy. Good evening everyone and thanks for joining our call. I'll start by sharing my initial observations and priorities as incoming Interim CEO and from there I'll discuss highlights from fiscal 2026, including a recap of our consolidated results and our current outlook. Let me begin by saying that I am honored to step into this role at an important time for MillerKnoll as we build on the exciting work and momentum underway across the business.
After 25 years with this organization, I continue to be proud to stand alongside this tenured and committed leadership team who work tirelessly to drive our organization's success. I've been spending significant time with our teams, dealers, and customers, reinforcing that my focus is enabling their success while driving improved performance and execution. I've also recently had the opportunity to engage with our partners and A and E community at three marquee events for the contract and design industry: Clerkenwell Design Week in London, where our showrooms at the Sands were at the center of the show; three Days of Design in Copenhagen, where Hay and Muuto served as anchor brands; and design days in Chicago's Fulton Market, where MillerKnoll is the pioneering tenant in what has become a vibrant and design-oriented district that more than 75 furniture providers now call home. I always leave events like these with pride knowing that MillerKnoll shines brightest in these settings. They serve as a good reminder of so many things we do well as an organization.
At the same time, I want to be clear that our financial performance is not where we want it to be and we're entering fiscal 2027 with three clear areas of focus. The first of these will be to elevate the level of operating discipline we bring to setting priorities. Second, we're focused on cost discipline across our businesses and third, we remain committed to strengthening our balance sheet by reducing debt and improving cash flow. Turning to our fourth quarter results, Kevin will cover the details shortly, but let me highlight a few points.
We delivered another quarter of steady top-line growth with revenue of just over a billion dollars, up 4.4% year over year and above our guidance driven by growth in North America contract and global retail. Adjusted EPS of $0.55 was at the top end of our guidance range and for the full fiscal year net sales topped 3.8 billion with an adjusted earnings per share of $1.86. Moving on to some highlights and trends in our segments, in North America contract, we're pleased with another quarter of solid sales growth and year-over-year expansion in both gross margin and adjusted operating margin driven by volume leverage and price capture.
As expected, orders were down in the quarter compared to last year, primarily from lapping 55 to 60 million dollars in prior year order pull ahead as a result of customers placing orders ahead of tariff-related surcharges and price increases. We continue to see encouraging demand signals across key leading indicators despite macro uncertainty. Traffic and showroom visits during design days were up nicely and the internal forward demand indicators we consistently track were all up both year over year and sequentially.
Industry benchmarks show that across geographies, healthy leasing demand continues in calendar Q1. Four-quarter rolling net absorption reached its highest post-pandemic level and Class A spaces continue to outperform, which reflects demand for the higher quality spaces that we are well positioned to serve. And finally, you may recall that we recently announced the consolidation of our manufacturing plant in Muskegon, Michigan into other facilities.
We will continue to evaluate capacity utilization opportunities across our manufacturing operations with the aim of improving overall operational efficiency. In the international contract segment, global geopolitical concerns impacted segment order activity in the core, but we remain encouraged by ongoing signs of strength in key Asian markets as well as Central and Eastern Europe where order growth has been strong over the past year. I've personally spent a great deal of time on the ground with our team members and many dealer partners across these regions of the world and our potential for further profit growth is clear to me.
Our international team is looking forward with a strategic approach to targeting key growth opportunities and managing cost in a disciplined manner. Our global retail segment delivered a strong fourth quarter and continued to gain market share, which Kevin will detail shortly. We remain confident that we have the right strategy and the right leadership to successfully scale our retail business as we grow. We're learning every day and applying our learnings to refine our approach.
We will continue to expand our store footprint across North America, deepen our product assortment and increase our brand awareness while focusing on operational discipline. Now with that said, I want to be clear that we are making some strategic shifts to drive both growth and returns going forward. More of our new stores will be the smaller, approximately 1,800 square feet Herman Miller store format. These locations are resonating with customers, broadening our demographic reach and delivering attractive economics.
They require lower upfront capital, reach productivity more quickly and generate payback in well under three years. These stores further build brand awareness and are an excellent lead generator for our contract business, serving as a gateway to our broader ecosystem to support demand generation across both retail and contract channels. In fiscal 2026, we opened eight Herman Miller stores and we expect to open nine to 11 in fiscal 2027. At the same time, we remain enthusiastic for Design Within Reach, our channel to market in North America for our portfolio of brands that serve residential and hospitality environments.
We will maintain a measured pace of new openings, incorporating learnings around location strategy, store productivity, cost structure, and marketing effectiveness. In fiscal 2026, we opened seven DWR stores and we expect to open five to seven in fiscal 2027. Another important priority within global retail is improving the performance of our Holly Hunt business. Holly Hunt remains a premier to-the-trade brand in the ultra-premium segment of residential furnishings.
Lagging demand patterns and operational inefficiencies for this business proved challenging for us in fiscal 2026. In response, we've implemented a range of actions aimed at repositioning this storied brand for long-term success. These include restructuring to better align costs with demand and strengthening leadership to enhance commercial execution. We are confident that our repositioning efforts will help improve performance over time while preserving the brand's strong market position.
And with those opening comments, I'll now turn the call over to Kevin, who will take us through the numbers.
Kevin Veltman (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks, Jeff, and good evening everyone. I'll begin with our fourth quarter results and segment detail, followed by a review of our full year highlights, including an update on our uses of cash during the year. I'll conclude with details on our outlook for the first quarter and full year of fiscal 2027, along with some framing of the full fiscal year. As Jeff mentioned, in the fourth quarter we generated adjusted earnings per share of $0.55 compared to $0.60 in the same quarter last year.
Consolidated net sales for the quarter were $1 billion, up 4.4% year over year on a reported basis and 3.7% higher organically, driven by growth in our North America contract and global retail segments. Orders at the consolidated level for the quarter were $972 million, down 6.3% as reported and 6.9% lower on an organic basis. As noted earlier, prior year orders included 55 to 60 million dollars of pull forward ahead of price increases in our North America contract segment.
Adjusting for this, orders in the quarter were down approximately 1% year over year. Our consolidated backlog was $679 million at quarter end, down 10.8% from a year ago, reflecting both the prior year order pull forward dynamic and the timing of shipments at year end. Fourth quarter consolidated gross margin increased 20 basis points to 39.4%. Turning to cash flow and capital allocation, we generated $65 million in cash flow from operations in the quarter and reduced our total debt by $15 million.
We finished the fourth quarter with $572 million in liquidity and our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 2.8 times as defined by our lending agreement. In April, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of 18.75 cents per share. This dividend is payable on July 15 to shareholders of record on May 30, 2026. The annual indicated dividend of 75 cents per share brings a yield of 4.7% based on yesterday's closing stock price. For the full year, we generated 200 million in cash flow from operations, invested $122 million in capital expenditures, reduced our outstanding debt by $41 million, and returned approximately $67 million to our shareholders in the form of $51 million in dividends and $16 million in share repurchases. Our capital allocation remains focused on reinvesting in the business, reducing debt, and returning capital to shareholders. With that, I will move to our performance by segment in the fourth quarter. Net sales in the North America contract segment were $530 million, up 6.9% on a reported basis and 6.7% higher organically. Orders were $511 million, down 10% on both the reported and organic basis from prior year.
Adjusted for the prior year pull forward, orders in the segment would have been essentially flat year over year. Operating margin was 8.2% and adjusted operating margin was 10.4%, expanding 40 basis over year primarily from gross margin expansion driven by leverage on higher sales and pricing realization partially offset by inflationary cost pressures. The international contract segment sales were $179 million, down 3.8% on a reported basis and 5.8% organically year over year.
Orders were $173 million, down 8.7% versus prior year on a reported basis and down 10.6% organically, driven primarily by lower orders in parts of Europe, the UK, and parts of Asia and Latin America, partially offset by strength in China and India. Fourth quarter reported operating margin was 7.5% with adjusted operating margin of 8.2%, down 470 basis points compared to last year, primarily from deleverage on lower sales driven largely by the uncertain macro environment in many regions associated with the Middle East conflict, regional sales mix, foreign currency impacts, and the timing of program spend.
In the global retail segment, net sales were $295 million, up 5.5% on a reported basis and up 4.5% organically. Segment comparable sales increased 3.6% and comparable sales in North America increased 4.2%. Orders in the quarter improved to $288 million, up 2.8% year over year on a reported basis and up 2% on an organic basis. In North America, where we continue to outpace the market, orders grew 8.7%. Operating margin was 4.6% in the quarter. On an adjusted basis, operating margin was 5.4%, down 110 basis points year over year, primarily reflecting planned investments in new store openings and the underperformance of the Holly Hunt brand.
To our teams across MillerKnoll, I am proud of your commitment to delivering the best products and experiences for our customers and dealers. Thank you for your diligence and hard work this fiscal year. Now let's turn to fiscal 2027 and our Q1 and full year outlook. Our Q1 guide reflects the normal seasonality we experience in the global retail segment as consumers shift spending into experience and travel in the summer months. It also reflects the order pull ahead in Q4 of fiscal 2025 that shifted sales into Q1 of last year.
Taking these things into consideration, in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, we expect net sales to range between $928 million and $968 million. Gross margin is expected to range from 38.7% to 39.7%. Adjusted operating expense is expected to range from $316 million to $326 million, and adjusted earnings are expected to range between $0.33 and $0.39 per share after tax. For the full year, we expect net sales of 3.93 billion to 4.13 billion, reflecting 5% growth year over year.
At the midpoint, adjusted earnings per share are expected to be $1.85 to $2.15, an increase of 7.5% at the midpoint. We also want to provide expectations for the cadence of our fiscal results during fiscal 2027. Our guidance contemplates approximately 40% of our full year estimated EPS in the first half of the year and 60% in the second half of the year, driven by two primary dynamics. First, as maturing retail stores opened in fiscal 25 and 26, we're increasingly offsetting the incremental impact of new store investments.
Second, as the benefits of reaching pricing actions to mitigate inflation layer into our results over the course of the year in fiscal 2027. From an operating expense perspective, our guidance assumes estimated incremental new store expense of approximately $6 million per quarter on a year over year comparison. We are also returning to a more normalized incentive compensation program which represents incremental year over year cost, full year basis of approximately $25 million.
For all other details related to our outlook, please refer to our press release. With that overview, I'll turn the call back over to Jeff.
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Okay, thank you, Kevin. As we begin the new fiscal year, I'm optimistic about the progress we expect to make on our key initiatives this year. To our employees, thank you for everything you do to drive this company forward. To our dealers, thank you for showing the industry what successful partnerships look like, and to our investors, customers, and other external stakeholders, thank you for your support as we embark on a new chapter to move this great company forward.
And with those opening comments, we will now open the call and take your questions.
OPERATOR
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, simply press Star one. Again, we will pause for just a moment to compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Greg Burns with Sidoti Co. Please go ahead.
Greg Burns
For the full year guidance for revenue, could you give us maybe a little bit of detail by segment of expectations for growth embedded in that guidance?
Kevin Veltman (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, Greg, it's Kevin. We're not providing a full year guide across the segments, but definitely we expect to see growth driven through retail as we continue on our new store opening journey. But not going to call out specifically for all the businesses as there's a number of moving parts related to mitigating inflation and things of that nature.
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Yeah, Greg, this is Jeff. I just would tag one additional comment to that and I agree with Kevin. We're not going to unpack details by segment. But I will say this. We have an expectation that our operating margin performance in the global retail segment will show year over year expansion in each of the four quarters. And I think that's just an important point to highlight in terms of our go forward expectations.
Greg Burns
Okay, great. And then last quarter you called out specifically some order delays or shipment delays in the Middle East. I think the number was like 12 million and some inflationary impact from oil. Now that looks like that's unwinding. So how will that impact? Do you see that still impacting the business in the first quarter or are we unwinding that and there'll be a little bit of a benefit going forward?
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Greg, this is Jeff again. I'll let Kevin kind of provide any additional color he wants to. But I will say this ironically, the order performance in the Middle East for our business exceeded our expectations coming into the quarter. I think that where we felt the challenge was kind of the derivative impact of the energy inflation on demand patterns, mainly across Europe, UK, and Ireland. Our opening comments kind of highlighted there were a couple pockets that like Central and Eastern Europe were pretty good.
But the impact of the Middle East conflict seemed to have the biggest economic impact on our business, at least in the short run in those regions of the world. But the Middle East itself, we ended up with an ability to ship more into the region than we thought and we took more orders than we were expecting. Kevin, if you'd add anything.
Kevin Veltman (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, no, I think the ability to ship through some of the alternate ports in the Middle East was helpful. So part of our over delivery of the top line was doing better from a Middle East perspective. And then on the demand view, as a reminder, we've sized the Middle East as typically been about $50 million a year of annual sales for us. And in the fourth quarter, our order levels were 13 million. So roughly the quarterly pace would be 12.5 million.
So we had a fairly typical level of orders during the quarter. Longer term, we continue to expect the Middle East to be a growth region for us. Particularly healthcare is an area we feel very suited longer term as an opportunity. But that's kind of the state of where things are at for us right now in the region.
Greg Burns
Okay. And then just lastly, Holly Hunt, how much revenue does that business generate and how much is it down? Could you just give us a little bit more color on the challenges that business is currently facing?
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Greg, this is Jeff. Let me start with a perspective, but then Debbie, you can chime in and talk a little bit more about the types of things we're going after with the restructuring. We've never sized individual brands within the portfolio and so I'm not going to provide that level of color here. But principally the challenges that we're facing are cost related and candidly we had some leadership challenges that are being addressed. Go ahead, Debbie, and add any additional color.
Debbie Propst, President, Global Retail
I'd say longitudinally we've had a lack of product development in that particular brand and then unis that was launched has not been resonating. So we are course correcting on our creative and design capabilities in that brand. And then we think that there are many opportunities for leverage across our total businesses as it pertains to manufacturing, sample logistics, etc. So we've got a series of tactics underway to right size the operating income and invest more in revenue driving initiatives than we have been.
Greg Burns
Okay. All right, thank you.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Philip Blee with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Philip Blee
Thanks for the question. So there's been a lot of noise and volumes over the past few years. Things like it seem to be moving in the right direction, but the macro still remains pretty choppy. So outside of sort of these larger forces that are outside of your control, what levers do you have at your disposal that could improve demand or accelerate share gains on the contract side? And then to what extent are you leaning on those currently?
John
Want me to take that, Jeff? Sure. Thanks for the question. This is John, I think, you know, primary lever of demand is doing a great job solving customer problems. And as we're engaging with customers in the market today, we're seeing really a different set of questions from them and issues that they're trying to tackle than maybe we've seen over the past couple of years. Specifically a lot of focus on improving the employee experience and how tailoring the space to specific team needs, balancing focus and collaboration.
Those types of issues have an impact on their ability to attract and retain talent, as well as get as much productivity out of those associates as they can. They're also preparing for new ways of working. Right. Obviously a lot of talk across all channels around AI and the impact that'll have on teams, the future of work, et cetera. And I think they're also really rethinking real estate success. In the past that conversation has been very metric driven around cost.
And I think we see a lot more alignment with HR and a focus on people outcomes in the workplace as more and more people are returning to the office. And then finally a lot of clients jettisoned a lot of real estate over the last few years. Now they've got a lot more people coming back into the workplace and they're trying to figure out how to deal with that. So those are all things that we do really well in terms of supporting our clients in those areas.
And we do that through research and insights, one on one consultations, as well as a lot of collaborative work on workplace strategy. So I think we got a lot of levers and we obviously have the portfolio of brands to support those solutions that we develop.
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Yeah, Philip, Jeff here and I might just add a little bit of color that's specific to the international contract segment of our business. I spent a fair amount of time on the ground with our team over the last year in many of those markets. And I'd say two levers or two operations opportunities for us. We continue to expand dealer relationships in key markets. This past year we added nine dealer relationships. This is always proven to be a helpful and effective tool for us because it's an opportunity to find more channel or more distribution or access to the customer.
But it doesn't require a great deal of overhead investment on our part. So it's kind of a low cost way of finding path to the customer. In addition to that, we've really been highlighting what we view as some of the highest growth potential markets in adding targeted selling resources that can kind of run alongside and work in conjunction with those new distribution opportunities or partners that we have.
Philip Blee
Okay, excellent. That's helpful. And then kind of on the flip side of that, so price, there's been a lot of price taken in furniture both on the commercial and residential side of the industry over the past few years. So can you maybe just talk a bit about demand elasticity on both sides of the business, contract and retail, if you leaned on discounts or promotions a bit more, would the incremental volumes from winning a big new project or new consumer be enough to help kind of offset the gross margin impact?
Or are the macro factors that are impacting demand in the space just too tough to overcome? Or even a bit of a give back on price isn't really enough to help stimulate conversion here.
Kevin Veltman (Chief Financial Officer)
Phil, it's Kevin. I'll start with maybe some contract commentary and then pass it over to Debbie for retail. But contract one thing. Over time, the industry and ourselves within the industry has been very consistent and able to. When there are cost pressures, whether it's supply chain disruption from a few years ago or tariffs or the current situation, it's tended to be something very consistent and we've been able to where we've needed to pass along the cost.
That said, we're also constantly looking at are there other things that we can do within our business? And so the closure of the Muskegon facility is a good example of that. Are there things within our portfolio that can help mitigate the need to pass along price and are there other ways that we can provide value? So that's the perspective I would provide from the contract side and then I'll pass it over to Debbie for retail.
Debbie Propst, President, Global Retail
From a retail side, Philip, we actually took our biggest price increase of the year in Q4. We took about a net 8% increase in North America midway through the quarter. And we believe that the consumer absorbed that really well. We actually took our discounting rate down 50bps year on year and held the number of promotional days flat. So we took that pricing increase really for two reasons. First being that the market has created room for that. As you noted, the market has taken a lot of moves over the last few years.
But we're also just seeing incredible elasticity in our icons where we feel like we have the authority to set the price on those products.
Philip Blee
Okay, great. And then just one more if I could. So you talked a bit about prioritizing margin expansion or better follow through on sales and then a cleaner balance sheet during your opening remarks. What are some of these cost buckets that you're going after more near term? Is it more about kind of cutting overhead or improving efficiencies? And then to what extent could any sort of brand portfolio optimization play a role here? Thank you all.
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Yeah, thanks, Philip. Good question. So maybe take, let me take a step back and offer, maybe this can be filed into the category of just observations. You know, after, after a short amount of time in this new role. You know, I maybe would just simply start by saying we are here at MillerKnoll good at many things, but we can't do everything that comes before us as an opportunity. There's a real need, I think internally here to establish clear priorities for the organization and establish improved hygiene and discipline around managing those priorities.
The great strength of this business has always been creativity. In many ways, we're this kind of creative machine as an organization. And if I think back over our history, we're at our best when that collective creativity is focused on problem solving and unlocking opportunities and innovation. And as I look at our business today, I think there's no question we can do a better job turning up the volume, if you will, on that creativity and being guided by it, but making sure that it's within a framework of clear, you know, wide eyed, clear priorities and financial discipline.
And I think an important point I want to make, this does not from my perspective require reinvention of MillerKnoll. This is more an exercise in reinvigorating skills and capabilities that we have and have always had. So now to your question. When we talk about elevating our performance, it's really about focusing all of those efforts that will help us grow the top line and improve profitability. And a key piece of that needs to be improved discipline on costs and cash flow.
And that means finding ways to better leverage our manufacturing capacity, which was alluded to in the prepared comments. Focus on productivity improvements and being really selective where we choose to add incremental costs to the business that support the priorities that we need to define. And I would also add cash flow and debt reduction really needs to be a renewed focus for the business as well. So that's just maybe a high level overview of what we were trying to highlight in the prepared comments.
Philip Blee
Excellent. Thank you guys. Best of luck.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Reuben Garner with the Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.
Reuben Garner
Thank you. Good evening everyone. I understand you don't want to get into the segment necessarily breakdown of your outlook, but maybe just a little more color. Jeff and Kevin, you both obviously were at design days a couple weeks ago. What specifically you're seeing in North America of late? It's kind of hard to tell with the results and the price increases in pull forward and everything else going on of late. How confident are you in that business and maybe what's embedded in your outlook from just a macro perspective?
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Yeah. Reuben, thanks for your question. And as we step back and look at some of the elements of our business to your point, the order pull ahead creates some comparison challenges to have a look through. And so we look to a lot of the pre order metrics and if you look at things like our full year funnel, how much is getting added to the funnel, the value of projects 1 mock ups. We were seeing both year over year and sequential improvement in those types of metrics. So we feel like there's good activity from that perspective as the quarter unfolded. Maybe another point I would call out is if you set aside some of the year over year noise from the order pull ahead just our average weekly order rates on a consolidated basis we're going up each month as we went through the quarter and so we're feeling fairly supportive.
Obviously in our prepared remarks we talked about pockets in different places. Like Middle east was flattish compared to last year. From an order perspective, better than we thought it might be. But that will probably continue in that type of zone. But those are some of the things that we're kind of looking at. Some of the class A spacing and lease absorption I think are good things to call out as well. If you look at a couple of the external measures or even dealer sentiment and what their view of the world is recently has been fairly supportive.
Reuben Garner
Okay, great. And then in terms of the priorities, Jeff, you mentioned a couple of things on the retail side that sounds like gives you confidence that profitability is going to improve on a year over year basis. Is the same kind of thought process there in the contract space or you know, are the operational and profitability improvement targets more geared towards global retail?
Jeffrey Stutz, Chief Operating Officer
Oh no. I think my comments on priorities were meant to be maybe an assessment of at the enterprise level. I think we would do. We do ourselves a great favor by helping our own associates that show up every day and you know, are doing great work helping them with a bit more clarity on where we where specifically we think we have some, some advantage to go leverage in the marketplace and as a result of that provide a bit of a maybe a better than we have in the past screen for how and where we should place our time and energy and investment dollars, both expense and capital.
So this is not a specific comment to retail. I think it's opportunity for us to just sharpen our execution across the broader enterprise.
Reuben Garner
And then from a pricing perspective, Kevin, I think you mentioned more of a layering expectation as the year comes along is that I guess update us on your latest pricing actions. I know that there was a combination of surcharges and list increases. Have the surcharges been pulled and there's more of an emphasis on the list increase and that takes time to continue to flow through. Or is this a new increase that's recently been announced. Just an update on what you're seeing from a pricing and a price cost standpoint.
Greg Burns
Yeah. So if there's a lot of moving parts right now in price cost, as we all know, and if you look at it, the three things we've been focused on have been one navigating tariffs, two, just regular, more traditional inflation, and then the recent inflationary pressures that are moving around a little bit like diesel has been a little bit sticky even as oil has moved. But it's all of those moving parts that we've been focused on. And the way I would net it out in both Q4 and Q1 is slightly favorable from a price cost perspective.
And how that comes out is we continue to capture the tariff related things that we're going to offset. So that's been helpful. In April, as Debbie was talking in our retail business but also in our contract businesses, we had a standard list price increase and so that will start to flow through and that was a regularly scheduled type of increase for core inflation. And then right now we have an inflation surcharge in place that went live at the beginning of June and we're also looking internationally at a September list price increase for that business.
So we have a number of levers. We're utilizing the playbook that we've used. But some of those will continue to roll forward in the first half of the year as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, as they gain traction. But the net of all of it has been slightly positive from a price cost perspective.
Doug Lane
Great. Thanks guys. I will pass it on.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Doug Lane with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Doug Lane
Yes, thank you and good evening everybody. Looking at the sales number, it looks like the number beat pretty handily. And as I go through the segments, the beat looks like it really came from North America contract where sales accelerated in the quarter on a much more difficult comparison. So did North America contract beat your outlook in the fourth quarter and where was the upside versus maybe what you were looking coming into the quarter?
Greg Burns
Yeah. So couple that I would call out and I'll let John provide some color on North America contract, but we had both North America contract and international sales come in higher than our expectations. So those were the two key drivers for us relative to what we thought at the start of the quarter. I don't know if you want to chime in with any additional John on I think we also saw the velocity of orders through the manufacturing facilities be even a little more, even faster than we expected.
So some orders that we thought maybe would have shipped out into Q1, actually entered and shipped into Q4. And so that was really more of a positive impact of some timing and a shout out to our OPS team who does a great job getting the products out the door in an efficient manner.
Doug Lane
Okay, fair enough. Thanks for the color. And then looking at gross margins where again, North America contract showed nice gross margin expansion throughout the year and international contract showed some gross margin expansion in the quarter even with down sales. So are those are we solidly in gross margin expansion mode in the contract business heading into 2027?
Kevin Veltman (Chief Financial Officer)
Hey Doug, this is Kevin. Thanks for the question. Price, cost in Q4 and Q1. I would echo the comment earlier that it's been slightly positive for us as we navigate. Some of it is the continued progress we made on tariffs as well as regular price increases and then dealing with the more near term inflation. So we have to get to the other side of the near term inflation. And that's a little bit of the factor as to how our mix of earnings is in the first half of fiscal 27 versus the second half that we talked about in the prepared remarks. But when you step back overall, obviously volume is key to us as well. When we see growth, we're going to get leverage through our fixed manufacturing plants as part of that.
Doug Lane
Right, of course. And then looking at the global retail business, I know you called out segment margin expansion in all four quarters, but what is the cadence on gross margin expansion for retail next year or this year?
Debbie Propst, President, Global Retail
So we expect a key driver to the operating margin expansion comes from the scale. We started this journey towards the back half of FY25 and as we continue to open stores. And then I think the other key is as we shifted our fuel mixture to the Herman Miller stores and the DWR stores, both important vehicles for us. But as those Herman Miller stores in particular ramp up quickly, that's going to be a key driver of it. Pricing is another area that we're looking at and continuing to be very disciplined about what's the level of discounting that's required in the market.
Debbie referred to the pricing activity that we had in Q4 that is just really beginning to flow through our business. So a number of levers that will contribute to helping us expand operating margins next year. I may just add we're continuing to get sequential improvement in our marketing economics as well. Where our marketing spend as a percent of orders was down 40 bits year on year. And so as we continue to invest differently in our marketing funnel, we're getting more leverage out of that.
Doug Lane
Okay, that makes sense. And just lastly, Kevin, let's talk about capital allocation in 2027. I noticed that your leverage ratio actually stepped back a half a point from 2.75 to 2.80 in the fourth quarter. And I thought the goal was to go the other way. So what do you see for leverage as the year progresses and what does that mean for stock buyback and capital expenditures?
Kevin Veltman (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, Doug, the minor tick up in the quarter was really tied to our total debt was paid down during the year. But the bank definition of net debt there was a little bit of tight timing noise. So we ticked up just a touch, but that was really a blip in the general. The trajectory that we have continues to be. We want to get in the midterm to the 2 to 2.5 range for our net debt to EBITDA. And so the priorities as we have them right now is invest in areas where we see an opportunity to earn a strong return on capital, pay down debt, and then continue to maintain a dividend and be opportunistic on share repurchase when we see opportunity.
Doug Lane
Okay, that's very helpful. Thanks, everybody.
OPERATOR
There are no further questions. We turn the floor back to Vice President of Investor Relations, Wendy Watson for any closing remarks.
Wendy Watson, Vice President of Investor Relations
Thank you, everybody, for joining tonight, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
Login to comment