Hamilton Beach Brands Holding (HBB) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

Thanks, Gilliam. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the second quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast for Hamilton Beach grants. Earlier today, after the stock market closed, we issued our second quarter 2026 earnings release, which is available on our corporate website. Our speakers today are Scott Tidy, President and CEO, and Sally Cunningham, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.

Our presentation today includes forward looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed from either our prepared remarks or during the Q&A. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties is available in our 10Q, our earnings release, and our annual report on Form 10K for the year ended December 31st, 2025.

The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward looking statements, which may not be updated until our quarterly conference call, our next quarterly conference call, if at all.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report a solid second quarter, highlighted by meaningful improvement in our underlying operating performance, even before considering a significant one-time tariff refund we received during the quarter.

Net sales increased low double digits driven primarily by the recovery of U. S. consumer volumes that we lost in the second quarter of last year. As you will recall, several retailers paused purchasing to reevaluate their inventory levels in response to the tariff environment at that time. We also experienced a nice improvement in gross margin. In Q2, we again benefited from our foreign trade zone, selling inventory that wasn't subject to additional tariff charges, in addition to other tariff mitigation actions, including diversifying our sourcing strategy and selectively raising prices.

This margin expansion more than offset increased investment in marketing and some non-operational expenses that Sally will detail shortly to deliver higher operating profit than a year ago.

As you saw from our earnings release, our reported results benefited from refunds following the U. S. Supreme Court February ruling on IE at the tariffs. We were very pleased to have received these funds, especially after the amount of work and cost we incurred after they were implemented in April of 2025. Our current plan is to reinvest a portion of these proceeds back into the business to help drive long-term growth.

Turning now to our five strategic growth pillars, I want to update you on the progress we made in each of them during the second quarter.

Starting with driving growth of our core business, our new product pipeline continues to progress well. We remain on track to launch two new single-serve coffee platforms in the second half of the year, which will bring much needed innovation to that category. We're also pleased with the initial results from our recent placements at a leading mass market retailer, and we've added shelf space at two of the top wholesale membership clubs, both of which we mentioned last quarter.

We're also ramping up with our new advertising agency, which will help oversee and drive our digital marketing strategy, providing significant awareness of the Hamilton Beach brand starting in the second half of the year.

Moving to gaining a larger share in the premium market, we launched Lotus Professional to the broader market during the second quarter, building on strong results we saw from last year's initial rollout. We remain on track to launch Lotus Signature in the fourth quarter of this year and early next year, and we continue to believe the premium category represents a significant long-term growth opportunity, given our still small share of that market.

At the same time, our chee business is also building the minimum. A leading mass market retailer continues to support three chee steam irons and three chee garment steamers in stores and online, and we've expanded the online assortment with a new chee collapsible steamer and chee deluxe retractable port steamer. Another national retailer added the chee travel steamer in the second quarter while leading warehouse club added the chee lava 360 precision iron online earlier this year.

Also, based on strong results from a recent test at a top department store, we're expanding the chee 360 precision iron to all of their doors in the third quarter.

Turning to leading in the global commercial market, we are on track to add our clips blender at the head at a leading national coffee chain, while at the same time we picked up a spindle mixer placement at a leading U. S. fast food company's central miracle locations. And as we anniversary the launch of our Sunkiss commercial juicers and sectionizers, that business continues to exceed our expectation.

In new product news, we are launching our high performance Titan food processor in the fourth quarter, targeting the roughly 90 million global food processor market. We believe our features and pricing will be highly competitive, and interest from several regional food chains soon testing the product has been higher than any new product launch we've seen in years.

In hospitality, we've recently added our irons and hairdryers to a national hotel chain across approximately 770 U. S. locations, and now we're pursuing the same program with six to seven additional flagship chains.

Moving to accelerating our digital transformation, we're advancing, advancing three coordinated initiatives to make sure Hamilton Beach stays discoverable and preferred as consumers shopping shifts to AI driven search. First, we're scaling AI optimized content across our catalog with a 500 skew content build underway to structure our products for discovery on leading AI platforms.

Second, we're piloting paid AI advertising as a new growth channel, running a controlled three month test on chat GBT's newly launched ad platform to inform a scale decision ahead of the fourth quarter. And third, we're building the measurement infrastructure to give us product level visibility into how AI platforms recommend us versus our competitors, so we can turn this investment into a measurable driver of revenue.

Finally, on accelerating growth of Hamilton Beach Health, the second quarter marked the fourth consecutive quarter of profitable growth for this business, and we are on track to increase sales by 50% this year. We've now managed more than 1.2 million injections, and that number is projected to keep growing as we continue to make excellent progress expanding our reach by adding more specialty pharmacy and pharmaceutical company partnerships.

And as announced last quarter, we are broadening our connected medical device platform beyond our core injectable medication management with the third quarter pilot launch of our pill management platform, which is designed to improve medication adherence and provide valuable patient feedback. We are initially targeting dermatology and rheumatology treatment areas with plans to expand to other therapeutic areas as we validate the platforms effectiveness.

This expansion represents a significant opportunity to address additional patient pain points and grow our distribution network with large specialty pharmacies.

In closing, we are pleased with the underlying momentum in the business. With the investment we are making in promotions and marketing, we believe we are still well positioned to continue driving top line growth in the back half of the year and beyond. I want to thank our teams for their continued hard work and execution this quarter. Their efforts to navigate a still evolving tariff environment while improving our margins and profitability reflect the resilience and commitment that defines our organization.

With that, I'll turn it over to Sally.

Good afternoon everyone. Echoing Scott's comments, we are pleased with our start to the year, especially our gross margin and operating profit performances. For the second quarter, revenue was $142.6 million, up 11.6% compared to $127.8 million a year ago. The increase was driven primarily by the recovery of our U. S. consumer business as retailers paused buying in the year ago period as they assessed inventory levels and price increases following the implementation of higher tariffs for the U. S. and April of last year.

Turning to gross profit and margin, gross profit was $77.5 million in the second quarter compared to $35.1 million in the year ago period. And gross profit margin was 54.3% compared to 27.5% in last year's second quarter. The significant improvement in gross profit margin was driven by the $36.5 million IEPA tariff refund while approximately 260 basis points of the increase year over year was from sell through inventory that was priced in anticipation of IEPA tariffs that were eliminated following the Supreme Court's ruling in February.

Excluding these benefits, gross margins in Q2 this year were 26.1% in line with our expectations. Selling general and administrative expenses increased at $34.3 million compared to $29.2 million in the second quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily driven by higher performance based and incentive expense as last year was lower than normal due to our projected performance at that time along with $1.4 million in accelerated depreciation of our legacy ERP system which we were in the process of replacing.

Our operating profit increased $37.3 million to $43.2 million compared to $5.9 million. And the second quarter of 2025 driven by the tariff refund income tax expense was $10.9 million compared to $1.6 million in the second quarter of 2025. And our tax rate was 24.5% this year compared to 25.9% last year.

Net income in the second quarter was $33.7 million or $2.49 per deleted share compared to net income of $4.5 million or $0.33 per deleted share a year ago.

Now turning to our balance sheet and cash flows. For the six months ended June 30th, 2026, net cash provided by operating activities was $61.5 million compared to net cash used for operating activities of $23.8 million for the six months ended June 30th, 2025.

The increase was primarily driven by IEPA tariff refunds and lower working capital due to lower inventory levels. Inventory on June 30th, 2026 was $115.1 million down 28.2% from $160.4 million on June 30th, 2025.

During the second quarter of 2026, we allocated our cash flow to repurchase approximately 98,000 shares, totaling $2 million, and paid $1.7 million in dividends. At the end of the second quarter, our net cash position was $51.5 million compared to a net debt of $38.7 million on June 30th, 2025.

Turning now to our outlook for the remainder of 2026, as a reminder, our initial outlook for this year didn't include any potential tariff refunds. Therefore, to provide a clear view of our projected operating performance, we are excluding the refund from our forward-looking comments.

Year to date, the business on an operating basis has performed in line with our expectations, and we continue to expect 2026 revenue growth to approach the mid-single-digit range.

With respect to gross margins, as we said in our Q1 call, we are reinvesting the upside from the sell-through of inventory in our free trade zone that was priced in anticipation of IUBA tariffs into additional promotional programs to drive demand. While on the second quarter, gross margins also benefit from the sale of tariff-free inventory, this upside is largely offset in the second half of the year by higher commodity costs and higher freight rates.

Based on our results thus far and based on the current tariff rates, we are now expecting our 2026 gross margins to improve modestly over 2025 levels from our prior outlook for gross margins to be similar to slightly better.

Operating profit is now expected to be down high single digits, inclusive of incremental $6 million in planned advertising spend in 2026 to support our gross initiatives, and approximately $6 million in accelerated depreciation associated with our legacy ERP system, compared to our prior guidance for a low-teens percentage decline.

Cash flow from operating activities plus cash used for investing activities for 2026 is still expected to be in the range of $35 to $45 million, reflecting an outsized increase due to the normalization of tariff-related impacts on networking capital.

With respect to the refund, we plan to reinvest a portion of the proceeds over the second half of 2026 into an additional brand building and marketing programs aimed at driving awareness and demand next year and beyond.

Also, regarding next year, we believe we have opportunities to further improve our gross margins, excluding any impact from future changes in tariff rates, thanks to the actions we've taken around pricing and sourcing over the last 12 months. Combined with the continued growth of our higher margin commercial and health businesses.

To close, we are pleased with our performance year-to-date and we continue to be optimistic about our prospects in the second half. Our diversified business model, strong brand portfolio, and the work we've done strengthening our foundation positions the company to capitalize on improving market conditions this year and create a platform to deliver sustainable growth and shareholder value over the long term. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now turn the line back to the operator for Q&A.

Hey, Adam. It's Sally. Good to hear from you again. Our capital allocation philosophy hasn't really changed. Our share repurchases are continuing to be based on a number of factors, including our outlook, what we plan to do with the cash and other strategic initiatives, as well as, honestly, the float that's out there, and it's available for repurchases. So I think we haven't made any deviations from our philosophy and we're continuing to buy shares accordingly.

I mean, I'll start and if that wants to add to something that would be great, but the philosophy hasn't really changed. I mean, the board of directors and management continue to be very invested in long-term shareholder value, and whether that's returning that value through dividends and share repurchases or whether that's future investments into the company to help drive growth and hire EPS.

So, you know, we take it very seriously and we're looking at it on a very frequent basis, but that hasn't really changed. Scott, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

I think, Adam, you know, again, we look at, we think we've got great momentum across the strategic initiatives and we think there's areas to be investing in those to drive additional growth. And so we're going to continue to look at those opportunities and invest appropriately.