Solo Brands (NYSE:SBDS) released second-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below.

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Summary

Solo Brands reported a 4.1% decline in consolidated sales for Q2 2026, with Stove segment sales down 14.7% and Chubbies down 8.6%, while Water Sports saw a 59% sales increase.

The company improved adjusted EBITDA to $13.5 million, a 15.3% margin, and reduced operating expenses by 25.5% year over year, reflecting progress in profitability and cash generation.

Solo Brands initiated restructuring efforts, closing two facilities to streamline operations and reduce costs, while successfully transitioning Oru fulfillment activities to a main distribution facility.

International sales grew by 46% year over year, with the ongoing expansion in Europe, Canada, Asia, and South America, as part of their strategic focus on international growth and market diversification.

Management emphasized the importance of product innovation, with new launches such as the Infinity Flame Premium Propane Fire Pit and expansion into new product categories like indoor fireplaces.

Future guidance includes continued investment in growth capital for product innovation, with a focus on sustainable growth across brands and maintaining a capital-efficient operating model.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Solo Brands second quarter fiscal 2026 financial results conference call. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone, and to withdraw your question please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Anderson, Senior Director, Treasurer and Investor Relations.

Please go ahead, sir.

Mark Anderson, Senior Director, Treasurer and Investor Relations

Thank you and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining us for the Solo Brands conference call to review the 2026 second quarter results. Joining me on the call today are the Company's President and Chief Executive Officer John Larson and Chief Financial Officer Laura Coffey. This call is being webcast and can be accessed through the Investors portion of our website at investors.solobrands.com. Today's conference call will be recorded. Please be advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of any replay or transcript reading date.

I would also like to remind you that the statements in today's discussion that are not historical facts, including statements about future financial and operating performance including guidance, liquidity and cash flows, covenant compliance, business strategy including product innovation, introduction of new products, cost savings, benefits of technological advances, receipt of tariff refunds, trends in seasonality, transition of order fulfillment activities and international expansion are forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Forward-looking statements by their nature are uncertain and outside of the Company's control. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Please refer to today's earnings press release for our disclosures on forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Solo Brands assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law.

Management will refer to non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures are included at the end of our earnings release. Finally, the earnings release has been furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K. Now I would like to turn the call over to John Larson.

John Larson, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mark, and thank you all for joining us today. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for analyst and investor questions. We entered the second quarter with some solid momentum and saw encouraging trends across our portfolio. While sales softened in June, particularly across our DTC channel, retail point-of-sale demand for Chubbies and Water Sports, which includes the Oru and Isle brands, grew year over year. Consolidated sales declined by 4.1% compared to the prior year, with the Stove segment sales down 14.7%, Chubbies down 8.6% and Water Sports, though still a relatively small contributor, posted an impressive 59% increase in sales. At Stove, new product launches accounted for nearly half of our DTC channel sales for the second quarter, with Solo Stove Summit and Field Fire Lines winning numerous awards including Forbes Vetted's Best Product Award and Men's Journal's Best Outdoor Griddle Overall recognition. We believe these achievements demonstrate strong customer adoption and reinforce innovation as an important component of future growth. While we are not satisfied with top-line sales performance, we continue to make meaningful progress to advance our profitability and cash generation priorities.

This quarter we narrowed our GAAP losses, returned to adjusted profitability, further reduced operating expenses by 25.5% year over year and increased adjusted EBITDA to $13.5 million, representing a strong 15.3% adjusted EBITDA margin. As Laura will discuss in more detail, we generated substantial operating cash flow and fully repaid our revolver balance during the quarter. These results reflect the significant progress we have made in building a leaner, more disciplined company focused on profitable growth, strong cash generation and attractive returns on invested capital.

We recognize the importance of driving top-line growth and our priorities are clear: accelerating sustainable growth across our brands, expanding profitability, generating cash and allocating capital with discipline. We believe our actions over the past year have strengthened the foundation of the business and positioned us to create meaningful long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call to Laura to review the financials.

Laura Coffey, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, John, and good morning everyone. Before turning to second quarter results, I'd like to highlight a few developments during the quarter. First, we began reporting Water Sports as a separate operating segment this quarter, reflecting its growth in revenue and profitability. Second, we continue to streamline our distribution operating model. During the quarter, we announced the closure of two facilities, a U.S. distribution center and the Oru manufacturing facility in Mexico, which we plan to move to a sourcing model that improves costing.

We have also started the planned transition of Oru fulfillment activities to our main Texas distribution facility. We have now reduced our U.S. distribution footprint from five facilities in 2025 down to one beginning with the fourth quarter. These initiatives, together with personnel and compensation actions implemented earlier this year, have contributed to a lower cost structure moving forward and tighter SG&A on a run-rate basis until we anniversary these actions next year.

Finally, we remain focused on protecting margins as we navigate the evolving tariff environment. During the quarter, gross margins benefited from approximately $2.4 million of out-of-quarter IEIPA tariff refunds recorded as reductions to cost of sales. We received our final $600,000 of refunds in July. Please refer to our Form 10-Q for additional information regarding tariff impacts to the results of operations. Turning to second quarter results, consolidated net sales were $88.5 million, a decline of 4.1% compared to the prior year period.

The decrease was driven by lower DTC sales, which was partially offset by strong growth in Water Sports retail and continued expansion in our international markets. International sales increased 46% year over year to $9.8 million, reflecting the ongoing expansion of our business outside the United States. John will speak to our international strategy and recent progress in more detail shortly. Although Chubbies sales declined 8.6%, overall sales in the Chubbies retail channel increased versus the prior year quarter.

Importantly, we continue to narrow our year-over-year sales decline, improving by more than 14 percentage points relative to the first quarter. Second quarter gross margin was 59.9% compared to 61.3% in the prior year period. The decrease primarily reflected channel mix shifts and a raw material inventory write-off associated with the closure of the Mexico manufacturing facility, partially offset by tariff refunds received during the quarter. SG&A expenses were $42.6 million, down 10.6% from the prior year, reflecting our ongoing cost reduction initiatives including lower distribution costs, reduced employee-related expenses and disciplined marketing spend, particularly within Solo Stove. Restructuring and impairment charges were $1.9 million compared to $10.3 million in the prior quarter, lower this year as we progressed through our transformation. Net interest expense was $7.9 million compared to $6 million in the prior year. We reported a net loss attributable to Solo Brands of $4.4 million compared to a net loss of $13.5 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted net income attributable to Solo Brands was $3.9 million compared to essentially breakeven adjusted net income in the prior year period.

Adjusted EBITDA was $13.5 million, an increase of 28.6% compared to $10.5 million a year ago, reflecting the benefit of our transformation initiatives, disciplined expense management, prior period IEIPA benefit and the growth in key areas of our business. During the quarter we generated substantial operating cash flow of more than $36 million. We also paid cash interest and funded the initial term loan amortization of $600,000. We ended the quarter with no outstanding borrowings under our revolver and $30.4 million of cash and cash equivalents.

We continue to actively manage inventory and working capital with no material debt maturities until 2028. On June 30, we remained in compliance with all financial covenants. As we discussed last quarter, we expect to invest approximately $2 million to $3 million in growth capital this year, primarily toward product innovation across our portfolio. At the same time, we remain focused on aligning our cost structure with revenue, driving profitability, generating cash flow and strengthening long-term earnings power of the business.

With that, I'll turn the call back to John.

John Larson, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Laura. As we strengthen and diversify our portfolio, we are making targeted investments in our leadership team to support the next phase of growth. We recently added a seasoned Senior Vice President of Sales with significant international experience to help scale our North American and global expansion effort and strengthen commercial execution across regions. In addition, we recently welcomed a Chief Digital Officer to lead our DTC business, strengthen our digital capabilities, deepen consumer engagement and unlock growth opportunities across our portfolio.

As Laura and I discussed, the sales momentum we experienced in spring moderated in June and those trends continued through July. Our priorities remain unchanged and our strategy to build the top line is centered on three key areas: delivering product innovation, investing in our highest return channels and products, and accelerating international expansion. At the same time, we remain hyper focused on improving the economics of the business. We continue to streamline fulfillment, simplify operations, rationalize assortments around our strongest product categories, and leverage technology and our AI tools to improve productivity, decision making and scalability across our organization. Although international expansion remains a compelling opportunity, we also understand it will take some time. Sales lift was encouraging and we plan to continue pursuing a disciplined market-by-market approach, partnering with experienced distributors and retailers to extend the reach of our brands while maintaining a capital-efficient operating model across the portfolio. Our international footprint continues to expand and we look to accelerate that.

Solo Stove products are now available across Europe, Canada and parts of Asia. Chubbies has expanded into markets throughout APAC and South America and our Water Sports business has further established a presence in Asia. While still in the early stages, we remain optimistic about the global appeal and scalability of our brands. Looking ahead to the fall and the holiday season, our product pipeline remains robust. We are introducing new, innovative products across the portfolio, including the Infinity Flame Premium Propane Fire Pit with a new upscale design.

We are also launching an indoor chiminea fireplace that creates an inviting atmosphere in any room in the house. An exciting new accessory in our stove lineup is our new chiminea topper that turns our very popular Summit 19.5 and Bonfire into a stylish outdoor fireplace with increased warmth. Turning to Chubbies, we are testing a new denim line and launching an assortment of new fabrics and styles designed to expand and further engage our highly loyal customer community.

This quarter demonstrated the benefits of our increasingly diversified platform. We see contributions from new product introductions, expanding retail partnerships, new international partners and the continued development of our Water Sports segment. We have always believed this transformation would be a multi-year effort. While there is more work to do, we believe the foundational changes we have made are strengthening the business. Finally, we look forward to engaging with both existing and prospective investors.

Please reach out to our investor relations team if you would like to connect with us. With that, operator, we're ready to take your questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Again, to ask a question, please press star then 1. And the first question will come from Mitchell Sachs with Grand Slam.

Please go ahead.

Mitchell Sachs, Analyst at Grand Slam

Hey guys, can you walk me through all the adjustments to gross profit so I get a better understanding of what it, you know, might have really looked like?

Laura Coffey, Chief Financial Officer

Sure, Mitch. This is Laura Coffey. Thanks for joining this morning. We only had one adjustment to our cost of goods sold—well, I guess we had two. We had the $2.4 million for the prior period IEIPA benefit. Only about $900,000 of that was for 2025. The rest was for Q1, so about $1,500,000 for that. And then we did have a write-off of $1.4 million of raw material inventory for the shutdown of our Mexico operations for our Oru brand.

Mitchell Sachs, Analyst at Grand Slam

Okay. So basically I'm just taking the 1.5 against the 1.4. So it really didn't have much of an impact. Would that be correct?

Laura Coffey, Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, one was going—yeah, they kind of offset each other if you think about it that way.

Mitchell Sachs, Analyst at Grand Slam

Yeah. Okay. And then just kind of walk me through a little bit on international, how you're attacking it and how you view that from a, you know, a gross margin standpoint and a revenue, you know, potentially revenue growth standpoint.

John Larson, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Hi, Mitch, John Larson here. Nice to talk to you. Appreciate the question. You know, we've really been underserved in the international market. And if you think of our key brands, if you think of both Chubbies and Solo Stove, they very much started as domestic companies. And so given where we stand, we think there's substantial opportunity internationally. We've been pushing for the last year—obviously strong results in the second quarter. I would say that will be a little lumpy as we get key new partners in international markets. India was a very favorable partner that we had for Chubbies in Q2 of this year. That led to a lot of our increase year over year. On the positive side, we have brought in experts on both the distribution side and the retail channel side internationally for markets in Europe, the UK and Asia for Solo Stove, re-upped our efforts in Asia for the Water Sports division and are looking to South America in addition to what we've done in India and ultimately are already talking to some partners in Europe right now.

On the positive front, we did sign three contracts with those key distributors we've been working on and so are moving into market fairly aggressively. It will take some time, but we really view this as upside or blue ocean for us. As it relates to gross margin and profitability, the beauty of some of those markets is we don't have the same tariff issues we do have in our U.S. domestic market. So from a gross margin perspective, it's very favorable when we ship directly into those markets, and that to a large degree can offset the expense you have of using distribution partners to move quickly in those markets.

Of note, the key partner we've signed up in Europe and the UK and some other ancillary markets is Hectic, and they've distributed a number of brands internationally. Most notably, they worked with YETI for an extended amount of time and so really understand the markets that we're moving into, the categories, the right partners, and we're excited about them accelerating our growth in those markets.

Mitchell Sachs, Analyst at Grand Slam

Okay, thank you very much.

OPERATOR

And this will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. John Larson for any closing remarks. Go ahead.

John Larson, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you everyone for your continuing to follow our company, and we look forward to providing our third quarter results and updates on strategic initiatives in a few months. Have a great day.

OPERATOR

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. 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.