Full Transcript: Xcel Brands Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Xcel Brands (NASDAQ:XELB) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call. This transcript is brought to you by Benzinga APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ for a consultation. The full earnings call is available at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/dk3zkyjv/ Summary Xcel Brands reported revenue of $1.1 million for Q1 2026, down from $1.3 million in Q1 2025, primarily due to a temporary supply chain disruption for its Sea Wonder and Christie Brinkley brands. The company launched two influencer-led brands in Q1 and plans to launch more throughout 2026, with strong social media growth from 5 million to over 46 million followers. Xcel Brands sold its Judith Ripka brand in Q2 2026, aligning with its strategy to divest legacy brands and focus on influencer-led opportunities, which are trading at higher revenue multiples. The company reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $700,000, consistent with the previous year, and noted cost reductions that lowered operating expenses. Management is optimistic about future growth, expecting significant brand expansion and new product launches, with strategic partnerships potentially announced by Q2's end. Full Transcript OPERATOR Hello and welcome. My name is Ayesha and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Xcel Brands' quarter one 2026 earnings conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the prepared remarks there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, please press the star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Seth Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Xcel Brands' first quarter of 2026 earnings call. We greatly appreciate your participation and interest. With us on the call today are Chairman and Chief executive officer Robert DeLorean and chief financial Officer Jim Herron. By now everyone should have had access to the earnings release for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. In addition, we filed our quarterly report on Form 10Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Thursday. The release and quarterly report will be available on the company's website at www.excelbrands.com. this call is being webcast and a replay will be available on the Company's investor relations website. Before we begin, please keep in mind that this call will contain forward looking statements. All forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from certain expectations discussed here. These risk factors are explained in detail in the Company's most recent annual report filed with the SEC. XCEL does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The dynamic nature of the current macroeconomic environment means that what is said on this call could change materially at any time. Finally, please note that on today's call, management will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures, including non GAAP net income, non GAAP, diluted EPS and adjusted ebitda. Our management uses these non GAAP metrics as measures of operating performance, to assist in comparing performance from period to period on a consistent basis, and to identify business trends related to the Company's results of operations. Our management believes these financial performance measurements are also useful because these measures adjust for certain costs and other events that management believes are not representative of our core business operating results, and thus they provide supplemental information to assist investors in evaluating the Company's financial results. These non GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as alternatives to net income, earnings per share, or any other measure of financial performance calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. You may refer to the attachment to the Company's earnings Release or the Form 10Q for a reconciliation of non GAAP measures. And now I'm pleased to introduce Robert DeLorean, Chief Executive Officer. Bob, please go ahead. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Thank you, Seth. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start today's call with a brief update on recent developments since the recent filing of our annual form 10K and our outlook moving forward. After that, our CFO Jim Haron will discuss our financial results for the quarter in more detail. We continue to work hard with all our our licensee production partners, powerful influencers and strategic retail partners to drive our business. We launched two of our influencer or creator led brands toward the end of the first quarter and we expect to launch two more in the fall and another in spring 27th. As we previously mentioned, we announced our Influencer led brands with Cesar Milan, Gemma Stadtford, Jenny Martinez, Coco Rocha and Shannon Daugherty. These influencer led brands grew their social media following in our brand portfolio from 5 million to over 46 million. Based upon our pipeline of new influencer led brands, we are on Track to reach 100 million followers across our brand portfolio. We began wholesale shipments with our licensees for 2 of our influencer led brands during the first quarter and on air programming commenced for them on QVC and HSN in the second quarter. As I mentioned, the other influencer led brands will be shipping and launching throughout the rest of 2026 on interactive TV and at bricks and e commerce retailers. We are very pleased and optimistic given early results and demand for these brands. I should add that our TV and streaming content reaches well over 100 million households and generates tens of millions of media impressions per month. Many of our investors and licensing partners have asked why we are so excited by the Influencer led brand opportunity. Please allow me to illuminate this a little. According to a recent report issued by Goldman Sachs, the influencer or Creator economy generated $254 billion of sales in 2025 and is expected to grow to over $2 trillion by 2035. Why is this happening? Marketing dollars are shifting to influencers and influencer led brands given the relatively high return on ad spend. According to statistics from Shopify Influencer Marketing Hub Industry surveys note that 67% of consumers trust influencer recommendations over legacy brand ads. We believe we have fully entered this fast growing market and will continue to penetrate it over the coming years. We continue to explore opportunities to sell certain of our legacy brands and closed the sale of our Judith ripka brand at approximately 6x gross royalty income in Q2. This is consistent with the sale multiple of our formerly owned brand Isaac Mizrahi and is further confirmation of the value of our brand. I should note that recent analyst reports report that ascending influencer led brands are trading at revenue multiples as high as 15 times revenue. We generated an adjusted EBITDA loss of approximately 700,000 in Q1 flat from the prior year quarter which we expected. During the quarter we had approximately $100,000 in nonrecurring expenses and lower HSN sales in Q1 caused by a change in the apparel supplier for our Sea Wonder and Tower Hill by Christie Brinkley brand. While this change disrupted Inventory availability in Q1, we have significantly improved product quality which should drive sales going forward. Sea Wonder and Christie Brinkley remain two of the most popular brands on HSN and the new licensee that supplied product on HSN began shipping during this quarter. With the supplier transition behind us, we expect significant growth in these brands compared to the past two quarters. The Longaberger brand is scheduled to launch in spring of 2027 with new products co created by Shannon Doherty. Shannon has 3 million followers and is perfect for Longaberger. We are pleased with the progress of our brand portfolio and we believe revenue growth is now in front of us. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO Jim Herron to cover our financial results for the quarter. Jim Herron (Chief Financial Officer) Jim thanks Bob and good afternoon everyone. I will now briefly discuss our financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. Revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was 1.1 million compared with 1.3 million for the first quarter of 2025. The decrease from prior year was primarily attributable to HSN's transition to a new apparel supplier for our Sea Wonder and Christie Brinkley brands in the fourth quarter of 2025, which caused a temporary gap in wholesale shipments and negatively impacted sales for these brands and our associated licensing revenues during the current quarter. Direct operating cost expenses were 2.1 million for the current quarter, down from 2.3 million in the prior year quarter. This decrease from prior year was primarily attributable to cost reduction actions taken by management during 2025 which reduced payroll and benefit costs. Looking at our other operating cost expenses which were all non cash in nature during the current quarter, we recognized a small impairment charge of $61,000 to write down the value of the Judith Ripka trademarks which we then subsequently sold in April for 2.3 million in cash plus future earnout consideration. Our depreciation and amortization expense for the current quarter was essentially flat from the first quarter of last year at approximately 0.9 million. Also, the prior year quarter notably included approximately $0.3 million of equity method losses and other related charges and adjustments for equity investment. IMTCO, which we already disposed of in the fourth quarter of last year. Interest and finance expense was approximately $0.59 million in the current quarter, up slightly from $0.56 million in the first quarter of last year. As you may recall, however, under our term loan agreement, a majority of the interest due under our current debt will be paid in kind, meaning that will accrue and not require cash payments until starting in 2027. Overall, we had a net income loss for the current quarter of approximately $2.5 million or minus $0.42 per share compared with a net loss of 2.8 million or minus $1.18 per share in the prior year quarter. After adjusting for certain cash and non cash items, results on a non GAAP basis were a net loss of approximately 1.4 million or minus $0.24 per share for the current quarter and a net loss of approximately 1.4 million or minus $0.58 per share for the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the current quarter is approximately $700,000, essentially flat for the prior year. Once again, as a reminder, our earnings press Release and Form 10Q present a full reconciliation of our non GAAP measures with the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Now turning to our balance sheet and Liquidity as of March 31, 2026, the Company's balance sheet reflected stockholders equity of approximately $13 million, restricted cash of $1.1 million and unrestricted cash of approximately $0.2 million. I would also like to note that we have significant financing activity during the first quarter of 2026 extending into the month of April. In January 2026, we entered into a committed equity line facility, giving us access up to $15 million of funding over the next two years for working capital and potential acquisition opportunities at our discretion. To date, we have not utilized any funding under this facility. In February and March of this year we executed certain amendments to our term loan debt which set the stage for a significant debt financing transaction in April. In April, we repaid a portion of our variable interest rate term loan debt and entered into $3 million of senior secured notes at a fixed interest rate. And with that I would like to turn the call back over to Bob Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Bob thank you Jim. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our prepared remarks. Operator OPERATOR we are now opening the Floor for the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group. Please go ahead. Thomas Forte (Equity Analyst) Great, thanks. So Bob and Jim, congrats on the progress. I have one question and one follow up question. So Bob, can you talk about your current thoughts on your influencer pipeline and then remind us on how long it typically takes from the initial conversation to revenue generation? Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Yes, that's a good question, Tom. So generally speaking, from the date we sign with influencer,, it's a 12 month process to either get that influencer, on air with QVC or through doing live streams on any one of the platforms that are out there today. TikTok, Amazon or any of the others. It all relates to product design and development. That's generally the period that it takes and that's why you're seeing now many of the influencer,s that we signed last year are beginning to launch and we will be launching the first five that we executed with last year through the balance of this year. So Gemma Stafford, Jenny Martinez recently launched. Next will be Caesar and then Coco Rocha and then that will be followed by Shannon Doherty for the Longaberger brand. Thomas Forte (Equity Analyst) Excellent. And then can you talk about your current cost structure and how we should think about the flow through of incremental revenue dollars to the bottom line? Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) So we've been working hard to run the company as tight as we can. We were able to find some additional savings. We think that we will be able to continue to run at a lower operating cost. The goal is to get it down to around 7.5 million. And then as we ramp up because there's talent cost, which is all variable, expenses will increase as a percentage of the revenue generated by the influencers. Thomas Forte (Equity Analyst) Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Thank you, Tom. OPERATOR The next question comes from the line of Michael Kopinski with Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Michael Kopinski (Equity Analyst) Thank you for taking my questions. Looks like an exciting year is building for you guys. Just a couple of things I was wondering Bob, if you can give us an update on maybe some additional detail on the early performance of Mesamea by Jenny Martinez on hsn, including maybe sell through trends, reorder activity, consumer engagement metrics, things like that. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Sure. Both Jenny and Gemma are scheduled throughout this year and there's always a discovery period. Michael part is media discovery, which day parts work best for a particular influencer or on air guest. And then there's product discovery. We all do the best to design products that we think the customer wants, but sometimes you just don't get it right. Regardless of market research analysis that we do and then we adjust. But the first shows I thought were good and as expected, we will make some tweaks to the product mix. We found that for both Gemma and Jenny, there was a much stronger response to food products as opposed to hard kitchen products. So for the balance of this year, we'll lean more into food. The good news about food is we don't have long lead times on developing that product. All of that product is made in the United States. Michael Kopinski (Equity Analyst) Gotcha. Thanks for the color. And then I noticed that social media kind of stepped up for Cesar Milan recently and I was just wondering, do you have an update when Milan products will be launched? I know that you indicated in the fall maybe, but I was wondering if you have a specific date around that and then will this be a step rollout or will there be a significant number of products introduced all at one time? I'm just kind of curious on how the rollout is going to look like. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) So typically there's a cadence, Michael, to product categories when you build a licensing portfolio for any brand. But for cser, we expect there will be many more categories this year. In fact, our licensees are in the market selling as we speak for the fall into brick and mortar and e commerce retailers like Amazon. We do expect to launch Caesar's Amazon store in the next 60 days. The first products on the Amazon store will be ecostrong cleaning products and shampoos and conditioners and collars, leashes and dog apparel and other dog accessories. Michael Kopinski (Equity Analyst) Thank you. And then I know that I was just wondering if you can just talk a little bit about the retail expansion currently planned beyond QVC and HSS for some of your other brands as well. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) So all of the brands are planned for distribution in brick and mortar and e commerce retailers as well as on live stream platforms including QVC and hsn. Today, we believe, and we have always believed you have to be everywhere where people are shopping. You can't exclude any of those distribution points. And we will roll out all the brands across all of those retail categories. Michael Kopinski (Equity Analyst) Gotcha. And then has the disruption from QVC restructuring normalized now, have you seen any further impact from launch timing, vendor relationships or future distribution plans related to the qvc? Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) No, there was actually little disruption from their restructure. I think it was a brilliant job that management did at qvc. They are paying all vendors on time as usual, and I believe that they are in a very, very good place at the moment to move forward into streaming. Michael Kopinski (Equity Analyst) Gotcha. And I know in the past. I'm sorry, if I can sneak one more question in, I know in the past you talked a little bit about the potential for acquisitions. Any additional color on the pipeline for future acquisitions, whether or strategic partnerships? Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Well, there is a big strategic partnership that we've been working on for the last year, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to announce that before the end of second quarter. Then in terms of acquisitions, we look at many transactions every month, whether they're brand transactions or operating company acquisitions that would help with our distribution effort. And certainly if something were to come up along those lines, it would be transformative. Michael Kopinski (Equity Analyst) Well, thanks for taking all my questions and good luck to you guys. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Thank you, Michael. OPERATOR There are no further questions at this time. So I will now turn the call Back to Robert DeLorean for closing remarks. Robert DeLorean (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for your time this afternoon. We greatly appreciate your continued interest and support in Xcel Brands. As always, stay fit, eat well and be healthy. 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.