Good afternoon, everyone. Now presenting will be Scott Harvey and Brian Meadows from Jones Soda.
Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us today. We just want to walk you through our story, what's happened to us since Brian and I joined Jones. We'll just click through some slides and have a great conversation here over the next 25 minutes or so. Really, just to walk you through some of the company overview of Jones. Jones, again, we're evolving from a craft soda company to a multifunction company, meaning that we initially started off our brand about 30 years ago. It was our anniversary this year. We've been in business for 30 years, started in Vancouver, transitioned over into Seattle, and over the last 30 years has really focused on the people's soda, really creating craft soda without high-fructose corn syrup and made out of real cane sugar.
We're really starting to evolve into a multi-category beverage company, meaning, we've elevated into different channels now. We have three specific channels, which we'll get into later, that really just talks about our craft soda, our modern, and our adult products. Really, again, looking at the leverage of the strong brand equity that the brand has. Brian and I have been here for the last day and a half, and I don't know about how many of you in here, how many of you not heard of Jones before? Most everybody does. I think Brian and I have run into one individual so far today that says, "I don't know who you are." Right? It's like going, wow, we appear to be a lot bigger than what we actually are. The brand is out there.
People do recognize the brand, and we're really trying to manage that and leverage that as we continue to go. Really, from a leadership point, Brian and I both had joined the company a little over a year ago, about 14 months. My background comes out of, I've been in the restaurant space for over 30 years, ran manufacturing facilities, CPGs, direct-to-consumer companies such as Black Rifle Coffee Company, Nathan's Famous, and I've been with Einstein Noah Restaurant Group before there was an Einstein Noah Restaurant Group. I started with one of the founders, left when we had about 890 stores. I'll just have Brian take you through a bit of the company snapshot here.
This is just giving you an overview of our share price history. Shares outstanding, a little close to $119 million. Market cap today, around $34 million. Last 12 months share performance and some of our top holders. Management directors reflected below Heavenly Rx. I'll go next slide. This is a trajectory of our revenue. I'm going to talk about our financial performance here. As you can see, 2024, we did around $18 million. The company lost around $8 million in EBITDA. Scott and I entered in in 2025, by the way. In 2025, we grew that to $25.3 million, about a 42% growth rate in revenue. Cut the adjusted EBITDA loss from $7.8 million down to $2 million. In the fourth quarter, we achieved over $12 million in sales and positive adjusted EBITDA, about $500,000 .
2026 guidance, 60%, a little over $40 million is our expectations. We did our first quarter already. It was over $12 million. Again, positive adjusted EBITDA. As well, it was our first quarter of net income positive.
Really part of the story is about us arriving on the businesses. Really what we spent the first six or seven months doing, which was re-level setting the business. We came in, there was a lot of dysfunction within the organization, a lot of people making decisions across the organization. There was no flow through it. People were signing contracts on. We really came back in and just set the foundation, meaning nothing gets done, nothing gets approved unless it goes through a financial review, a legal review. Has to meet our key performance indicators of what we want to achieve out of the deal. Nobody signs an agreement unless it goes through legal, and the only two people in the company that can sign the agreement are Brian and myself. Whereas before, we were doing that.
We really spent the first six or seven months just really trying to clean up, level set the foundation of the business for us to be able to go ahead and start raising the walls. Making sure that throughout the organization that we started to develop muscle memory on our organization as to how the process worked in order for us to do this. As well as, there was a lot of things we had to overcome in regards to some of our vendors. We owed a lot of money on accounts payable, a lot of distrust from a lot of our vendors, and Brian and I spent a good portion of the time talking to every single vendor that we had, being full disclosure with them, full transparency, what we were doing, how we were going to do it, how we were going to get them right.
Telling them exactly what our business looked like and establishing a payment cadence with them, of which started to build trust with them. One of the things that we lived up to with them, and what we still hear back from them, is what we told them we were going to do, we did. Right? With that, we built credence, we built a relationship with them and trust with them that allowed us for some of the growth potential that we started to see later on in the year with some of the partnerships that we had. Literally the first six or seven months, it's like we're finding the skeletons, burying the skeletons, and re-level setting the company as we go forward. With that came the introduction of Fallout. Fallout is a partnership that we had with Bethesda, of which we started to maximize.
When you start looking at some of the Jones advantage, one, again, we had that strong brand equity, 30 years in the business. You look at the multi-category portfolio. When we look at core, modern, and adult, really the taste superiority. When people taste our products, they will go, "Hey, there's a great flavor profile." As well as there are some far-reaching taste profiles, like when we did Fufu Berry, Birthday Cake, some of the way out flavor profiles that people would not expect from a soda company that we have been able to manage. As well as they actually taste good, and they are out there where people want to be able to go and actually test them. It is really about the trial and repeat. Like I said today, everybody knows who we are.
They see us in delis, they see us in grocery stores, they see us in convenience channel. There is a lot of that out there, and I think what we are looking to do and how we are going to go forward is we think we have lost a bit of our base simply because of sugar. People do not want to consume sugar, we are actually getting ready to roll out a zero line. Same great flavors, but in a zero format. Again, mask any of the other aftertastes that are out there. Again, we will see that rolling out here in the next 30 days, which we believe will grow trial, and we will see it permeate across the rest of the country. When we look at our portfolio strategy, again, we have broken it down into three things.
Prior to Brian and I getting here, there was a lot of different things. Our leadership was chasing a lot of different things out there. We all know that you cannot do a lot of great things. You can only do a few great things and do them really well. We have narrowed this down to three specific categories, which is our core soda, which encompasses our core products, modern soda, which would be a Pop Jones, a better-for-you type product, and then our adult beverages. When we first got here, we had a cannabis section, of which we in turn sold that piece off, and it encompassed into HD9 or the other category, as well as an adult beverage, a Spiked Jones, which was an alcohol-based beverage.
Our belief is that we are going to stay within these three categories, these three verticals, go deep, stay narrow, go deep and continue innovation within each one of those categories going forward. We cannot chase every new idea that is out there, as long as they fall within the categories, we will continue that development of that product. Partnerships, as I talked about, are core to us. People will say, "Hey, look, you are working with Bethesda, you are working with 'Fallout.' Is 'Fallout' fatigue going to set in at some point?" Potentially will, we are not waiting for that to happen. We are going out and actively looking for additional partnerships that are out there. In addition to the "Fallout" today, we also have a partnership with Folds of Honor, which you will see out on the grocery store shelves throughout the summer, as well as Crayola.
Last year, we did a Crayola online. We sold a 12-pack, branded such as you see there with Jones on everything that is in there, with coloring papers inside and a box of crayons. We sold out very quickly. This year, we are going to reintroduce it into the system, not only with a 12-pack and a six-pack format that you will be able to purchase online as well as available at the retail outlets as well. In addition to that, there are other properties that we are actively pursuing today to be able to bolster that, so that when people look at us going, "Well, you are only doing this just because of 'Fallout.'" We believe that, one, the success of "Fallout" was our nimbleness on how we did it, the creativeness of how we created a product.
When we put it into some of our club channels, it was not just a case. If you look up in the top right-hand corner, this is the newest one that just rolled out, and it is in a majority of clubs across the country. It is those flavors that are intrinsic to the game, but there is also an inclusion inside the box. It is not just soda. We add in a premium inside of the box. How does that premium attach itself to the "Fallout" series? It is part of the game. It is bottle caps. Bottle caps play a big portion of the game. Not only the bottle caps, they are Blue Star bottle caps, which is even better if you play the game of "Fallout." What the other piece was is a bottle opener.
We included a bottle opener, bottle caps, and in a nice carrying pouch that is inside there. They refer to that, as most of you probably know if you shop at Costco, as a treasure hunt. We have improved that as well as it allows us to gain a premium for that because it is just not the pack that is there. We have done it. We have done it very well. We have done it very quickly. In the fourth quarter last year, we rolled out the first one into the Northeast. Minimal trucks, 25 trucks that they sent POs in for. It sold so well, it spread across the country. We went from 25 trucks, within a week, we went to 309 trucks, of which we had to figure out how to do.
We did, and we got it done, and we actually exceeded some of the thresholds that they use as a benchmark for success that is out there. Again, we believe that it is replicable, what else does it do? You may say that it is, "Well, you are just doing partnerships. What about the Jones brand?" Every time you buy a product, our name appears. What we are is we are building impressions of the brand. We are building impressions of what Jones is, what Jones stands for. How do you go to market with that piece? We believe that that is also another way for us to be able to build the brand recognition that is going out there. In addition to what I had said, we are not only just relying on those, but we are also rolling out our own products. The zeros that are out there.
In Texas today, there's a Texas 250 pack celebrating the birthday of the country in a club down there. It's made specifically for them in the Jones Soda. It's not branded elsewise as well. What else does this do for us? The success that we've had within the club chains and with the partnerships, we're getting more calls from other consumers and other chains out there going, "How do I participate?" Whereas last year, they may not have wanted to talk to us, but now the phone is ringing more actively because people want to be able to participate in it. Again, the growing excitement and demand. This gentleman here in the upper left-hand corner, every time we put out a product, he posts something online. Again, it goes viral. We posted things online about "Fallout." One of them had actually 27.5 million impressions online.
Calculate that out, what it would cost for us to be able to do that. He did it with a post, and the repost, and the repost after that. We're utilizing these things again to be able to talk about Jones, talk about what our abilities are to be able to grow the brand. Again, you look at this, Sunset Sarsaparilla is another one. We have the "Fallout Quantum variety pack" is the one that's in club today. We've been able to replicate this quarter by quarter with these products and create new flavors. If you're a Fallout fan, you know that within the game, there are sodas. We create those. We create the flavor profiles from them. The best-selling one that we've had so far is Sunset Sarsaparilla. It's a mixture of a root beer with a vanilla finish, right? Amazing product.
People said we're not maximizing it enough, we should be rolling it out through the rest of the system. We're able to do that. What you will see coming out through the balance of the year, you'll see some really cool and other interesting products that we will have rolling out. We reference to what happens with Jones and Bethesda. We have two more years on our agreement with them. Super satisfied, great results for them. We're probably within the top five of licensing partners that they have. We get more compliments from the Fallout fans is that Jones is doing more for the Fallout fans than other people are doing for themselves. We're pretty appreciative of that as well. Direct- to- consumer. In 2024 when we got there, or before we got there, they were probably doing about $100,000 . 2025, it did $1 million.
This year we're expecting about.
$7 million.
$7 million this year on D2C. What are we doing? We're reinvesting within the brand. We're reinvesting in the technology out there. We're looking at the store, we're looking at the products, we're looking at how we go to market. What are the offerings that we can put on there? My background comes out of D2C, so we're really focusing on what the UI/UX experience is for the consumers when they come in. We want to be able to maximize on the MyJones piece, if you're familiar with that, where you can take a picture of yourself and we'll put you on a bottle. If you look at it, a lot of our other bottles that are out there, even this one on Fufu Berry, that is a customer that sent us in one of their pictures, and we use those to put them on our bottle.
Here's another piece that launched in December last year. We went to market with this. It's a rocket bottle designed specifically for Fallout. Made in Italy, decorated in Poland. It's in country today. It's actually going to start shipping here in the next couple of weeks. We sold out within a week, 17,000 bottles at a $50 price tag per bottle. We have five more rotations that we're getting ready to key up to roll out more additional rocket bottles. Somebody would say, "Why are you spending $50 on a bottle?" Because they're collector items. This one actually has their numbered bottles that are out there, so the packaging will be numbered. People will buy one, they'll buy two. They are much sturdier than some of the other rocket bottles because they're hand-blown over in Italy as well.
Again, it can also be used as a weapon if you really need it to later on in life. From consumption to the conversation, consumers don't just drink brands, they share them. That's what we see. We see people reliving this. I hear this today. Brian checked in at the registration desk, again, the same kind of conversation. "I used to drink Jones when I was a kid." They take the Jones name, there's memorable memories that they have about utilizing Jones and consuming Jones. Our job, Brian and ours, is to be able to revitalize that and to make it come up front and get it out in front of people. Thus, the reason why anything that goes out has Jones on. I think that, again, is another asset that we have. It's really cultural, it's viral collaborations.
We know that there's other partners out there that we want to be able to work with. We have active conversations out there, which I think most of you will be super excited about when we start rolling some new items out at the balance of the year, some of the partnerships that we're working on, we think they're pretty unique as well. Distribution expansion. Again, we talked about club channels. Costco rotation success is driving the reorders. There's also other interest from BJ's and Sam's Clubs as well. What are we doing for them, how do we get that done for them as well? Our DSD networks expanded the coverage to new regions to drive velocity and local availability. Again, our D2C continues to grow, and we will continue to focus on that as we continue throughout the year.
Our omnichannel distribution strategy, you can see we cover most of the majors that are out there. In addition to the direct- to- consumer, we do some business on Amazon, but we're not where I think that we need to be today. I think there's a whole another segment in there that we should be driving to. If you look at through our distributors, we do work with the large ones, but we also have a good DSD network that's outside of this network as well. Management team. Everybody on the top row is new to the business. Brian Harmon was my supply chain person that worked for me at Black Rifle. Eric, our Chief Marketing Officer, comes out of Kohler and Meta. Darcy comes out of noosa, Kellogg's, and Planterra Foods.
What we did want to do and what we continue to do is to make sure that the people coming to the organization understand that you have to get in, roll up your sleeves. This is not an organization where you're going to have many levels. Everybody has to do everything. It's just an accepted piece of when they enter into our business set. Our board, all majors out of Kellogg's, Kraft, Kimberly-Clark. Super supportive of what we're doing. Step up and actually help us get items done as well. Investment highlights. Jones, like I said, is an evolving business for us. I can tell you, Brian and myself, we're super happy with where we're going.
It has not been an easy trajectory for us, but we certainly do believe that we haven't even tapped our full potential yet as far as how we are going to continue. I know Brian can touch on a couple of those other avenues that we're looking at to continue to grow that business. Really, we want to be able to leverage our strong brand equity. I think that is a major opportunity for us because everybody knows it. Now we have to make sure that we get it into people's hands and start for them to be able to consume them. More importantly, work on innovation. We will not chase bright, shiny objects. We will stay focused on our channels, we will innovate within those channels, and we will come to market with the best absolute products that we have. I think that's it.
That is it.
I believe so.
Questions?
Yeah. Questions? Yes, sir.
What are some of the upcoming catalysts in the next 6-18 months?
The question was, what are the upcoming catalysts for the next 6-18 months? Again, it's still continue with partnerships. It's rolling out of some of the new products that we have. Again, I think our D2C play is also super important for us, is an ongoing growth channel for us. It's innovation of new products. Again, when we look at modern and such, modern is a crowded field. Everybody knows that. There's five big horses in there. It's the Olipop, the Poppi, and such, and there's about 20 other brands out there, us being one of them, trying to compete for that space. How do we outplace them? We can't outspend them, so we have to be ingenious in how we go to market there. We're looking at better-for-you products that are different. The same thing goes for even our adult beverages.
We have two segments in there now. One is the HD9 products, but we know that's now going to go off the table sometime in December. We thought there'd be a moratorium on that, but doesn't appear that that's going to happen. As well as if there isn't, state by states are putting in their own regulation, which makes it even more difficult for operators like us to be able to do it because each state is asking for something else on the can. In regards to the Spiked re-innovation, we've got some partnership stuff that we're working on that we think we got some pretty cool ideas that we're going to be able to execute against that. Yes, sir.
Can you tell us anything about your cash position? I know over the years
Yeah.
Not very big amounts.
Right.
Regulations.
Yes. The question was, how are we in our cash position and about the uplist. I'll let Brian take that.
I mean, I can refer you to the Q1 numbers, is a little over $4 million. It was up from year-end. We're in a much better, stronger position with doing over $12 million a quarter right now. I think I have guided on our calls that our break-even level is around $10 million a quarter. When we exceed that, we're making positive adjusted EBITDA, and in the first quarter, it was positive net income. We keep on that track and get our guidance. We're very comfortable with 60% growth, and it's over $40 million. May ebb and flow a little bit between quarters. In terms of the uplist, it is something we think the company needs to do. We get that feedback, especially working with our Hayden IR partners, that institutions are looking for us to be on NYSE or Nasdaq.
We think we need to have a good story in order to move up, and I think we've got that now. We've certainly turned around the business from when we walked in the doors a little over a year ago, and as Scott said, there's a lot of pipeline of innovation and revenue in front of us. Other things we think about are our M&A ideas. One of the things that has helped us on the margin side is the volume from our club channel. How can we improve our volume not only through organic growth, but perhaps there's some M&A targets that make sense for us, one plus one equals three kind of idea.
May I ask another question?
Yes.
How did you
Brian, you can.
Well, I'll start. I was formerly CFO at TRUBAR, which is a company that was sold for a couple of million dollars last year. I left.
I meant more than a couple.
A couple hundred million, yeah. I was involved from the get-go of turning that around in 2020. Paul Norman, who's the Chairman of Jones, was also on the board of Trubar Inc. When I left that organization, he asked if I would join Jones, which it's been fun.
Yeah.
It's been fun.
I was head hunted, so they came and found me. You may ask why, right? The question was, is that when we launched Einstein's, Jones was the soda that we put in the case. Again, so I knew it from way back when as well. Yes, sir.
With 60% revenue growth, what kind of operating leverage can you get on that?
In terms of our margins? Yeah, we're seeing opportunities across the board in terms of our cost of goods sold as well as our freight lines. Packaging, it's a big product cost, so we're able to, with much higher volumes, negotiate much better pricing. Co-man fees to make the product, we can get those down.
Yeah.
As we got larger and larger amounts of product going to the clubs, we're able to drive down our freight costs. Although it was challenging in the second quarter, as we warned, with the oil prices being so high, those are coming back down to earth, thank goodness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think if you think about just scale of what you're thinking about, as an example, last year we bought about 12 million glass bottles. This year, we're on track to buying 40 million glass bottles. 40 million glass bottles. We leverage that back through our partners who trusted in us, now we trust in them going, "Your volumes are increasing. Now how do you help us lower our cost as well?" No, please. Go.
I was just going to say, we did 28% gross margin last year, adjusted. We did some one-time write-offs with our HD9 business. We're now looking, we were in the low 30s in the first quarter. We think with a mix of more D2C coming into the fold, we could probably get up to mid-30s by year-end.
From the operating line, for every 10% growth of revenue, how much growth are you seeing in OpEx?
For our SG&A, some of those are tied to revenue, licensing fees and broker fees. The main SG&A, we're very much flat on. We can do a lot more revenue without growing the head count. We have a broker network as well, which is pretty variable. We don't see much growth in the SG&A. Legal, audit, finance, those are all pretty stable.
Today they are.
We cut them pretty hard last year.
Yes. Yes, sir.
Another question. Regarding D2C.
Yep.
You said next this year.
Yep.
How do you explain that versus what the company has done in the past with the shipping, which shipping?
Well, basically, you build most of that into your cost basis. We've done a couple other things. We're transitioning our D2C at 3PL to a different 3PL that's more attuned to that kind of a delivery. How are we growing that? Rocket Bottle plays a big part in that, just based upon the volume. If you think about $50 a bottle times 17,000 times X, it's there. We also have other initiatives that we launched, Fufu Berry, Birthday Cake. Again, I think coming back out of it, my experience is got to make the website easy to use, got to make sure that the technology works, communications with them to be able to drive people into the website. Because what we had seen prior to that was, is that the conversion rate was very low, part of that was based upon the user experience.
We're working on actually developing that to be able to make the experience so that cart conversion is a lot higher than where it is today. Any other?
Time for one more question?
Right. Thank you all for coming in to spend some time with us. We certainly appreciate you letting us tell you our story.
Thank you very much.