Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to Day 2 of Sidoti's March Conference. My name is Daniel Harriman. I'm an analyst here at Sidoti. This afternoon, we are going to hear from Brilliant Earth Group. That's ticker BRLT. We have the pleasure of having in attendance Jeff Kuo, the company's CFO. We also have Colin Bourland as a reference point as well. He's the VP of Strategy, Business Development, and Investor Relations. Brilliant Earth has been here several times, and they know the drill. For those of you who are new, we're going to give them about 20 minutes to go through the presentation, after which time I'm going to open it up for Q&A. If you do have any questions at any time during the presentation, please feel free to type those into the Q&A box.
Time permitting, we'll get to as many as we can. With that, please join me in welcoming Brilliant Earth and Jeff. With that, we'll hand it over to you. Thank you so much for being here.
Thanks, Daniel. Thank you, everyone. It's a pleasure to be back here again at the Sidoti Small Cap Conference. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. I'm Jeff. I'm the CFO of Brilliant Earth, and I've been with the company since 2015. Before we proceed, we'd just like to highlight our safe harbor language regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. You can also read these in the presentation that's been posted to our Investor Relations website. Brilliant Earth is the next-generation jeweler for today's consumer. We were founded in 2005 with a mission to really create a more transparent and sustainable jewelry industry. We've been transforming the industry with a combination of our authentic, mission-driven brand, beautifully designed, trend-leading proprietary products, a seamless omnichannel experience across our now 41 showrooms and digital platform, and an asset-light and data-driven business model.
This is all translated into our ability to profitably grow, gain share in the large and fragmented jewelry industry. This page walks you through some of the highlights of our company history, and it showcases our leadership in areas like product innovation, media engagement, and partnerships, and then some of our financial milestones, as well as examples of how we give back to our communities. There's a number of points to highlight about Brilliant Earth. If you've heard from us before, you know we've talked about these. One, that we operate in a vast industry that is ripe for disruption with an agile, data-driven, and tech-enabled business model that can really swiftly adapt. We use data to inform our decision-making. We have an asset-light model that is not burdened by holding excess inventory.
A well-integrated omnichannel shopping experience provides a joyful and seamless experience to our customers. A set of values strongly resonates with our customers. We have a history of driving net sales growth, reaching $422 million in 2024 net sales, and that's a 16% CAGR over the years shown here. We also have been able to deliver strong gross margins, increasing to a gross margin of 60% in 2024. This really demonstrates the resonance of our brand and our products with our customers and our premium positioning, as well as the effectiveness of operational efforts such as our price optimization engine, procurement efficiencies, as well as our extended warranty program in driving strong gross margins.
Just to highlight a few of our results from Q4, we delivered $119.5 million in net sales, which was at the high end of our guidance range. That included a 10% year-over-year growth in total orders and an even higher year-over-year growth in repeat orders at 18%. We had a strong gross margin at 59.6%. We had a very strong adjusted EBITDA at $6.9 million, which was a significant outperformance versus our guidance. That was our 14th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. That is all the quarters that we have reported since going public in 2021. We also ended the year with $106 million in net cash, which was our highest net cash position since the end of 2021, which was shortly after our IPO. This next slide is some of the same statistics, but for the year instead of for the quarter.
We'll move on to the next page. Just to go through in a little bit more detail some of the other highlights. As I mentioned, you know we delivered net sales in Q4 that are at the high end of our provided guidance. This was our 14th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. Also, just more specifically to the holiday, we had our largest day of bookings in company history on Black Friday. We were well prepared, and we delivered during the holiday season in Q4. Another meaningful highlight is the success that we've been having in fine jewelry. In December, we expanded fine jewelry to a 27% of our total bookings mix, which was a new record for the company and an expansion of 600 basis points on the same metric year-over-year compared to the prior year.
We really have been having a lot of success in driving fine jewelry, which is a big strategic opportunity for the company. We amplified both our new and existing product offerings. Also, this next point, we were able to drive a significant amount of year-over-year leverage in marketing expense as a percentage of net sales. I think this was a highlight. You know we were able to drive this leverage both for the quarter and for the year. For the year, this represented us being one year ahead of our schedule when we introduced our medium-term outlook about a year ago. We had talked about driving leverage year-over-year in marketing expense as a percentage of sales starting in 2025.
We're pleased to have done that in 2024, a year earlier than we had mentioned, and expect to continue to drive leverage over the next few years. We see that as an opportunity for us in terms of EBITDA expansion. We opened a couple of new showrooms in Boston and New York, including our first street-level location in Manhattan. That took us to 40 for the end of the year, and we're now at 41 as we recently opened a location in Southlake, Texas. We continue to operate with an efficient working capital model with inventory turns that are significantly higher than the industry average. That's definitely a benefit to our business model. As I mentioned before, the Q4 ending net cash position was our highest since 2021, shortly after our IPO. For these, we've covered a lot of these statistics already.
These are in the presentation if you'd like to view, but we can go on to the next page. I think just to highlight maybe one point here on our AOV. Our AOV in Q4 did go down due to both growth in fine jewelry, which has a lower average price point than our assortment overall, as well as comparatively strong performance within sub-$5,000 engagement rings. As we continue to expand and grow in fine jewelry, we do expect that that would bring down AOV on a blended basis for the company. This is expected and in alignment with our strategic initiative of really wanting to continue to drive fine jewelry growth. It's a big opportunity for us because it's a smaller part of our business, but the industry as a whole is majority fine jewelry.
That's a big opportunity for us as we expand into the future. Just these points and images here really highlight some of the product-centric brand campaigns that we have driven and the success that we're having. I won't go through all of these points point by point, but I think some of the highlights for the last year included the launch of our Jane Goodall Collection, which you may have heard us talk about before, which has been our most successful fine jewelry launch to date, as well as the Flawless collection. We continue to drive strong results in fine jewelry, as well as in wedding anniversary bands in Q4 with continued outperformance in areas like men's wedding bands. We're engaged with our community with partnerships like with VIP brides, as well as influencers.
I think we really, through a combination of our strong proprietary products and premium brand, have really been able to successfully engage with our customer base. This is just to highlight some of our business model. You may have heard us talk about this before, but our business model is compelling in that we're able to operate with an inventory-light model and operate with negative working capital. We have a design-your-own model and a virtual inventory model that allows us to offer a curated and broad selection to our customers while still keeping our inventory balance sheet low. This allows us to just manage working capital efficiently, to keep inventory turns that are significantly higher than the industry average.
You can see that our inventory ended just about 1% higher year-over-year in Q4, even as we drove significant growth in fine jewelry and expanded our showroom footprint. Our quarter-end cash of $162 million was about $6 million higher year-over-year, even after capital investments and reductions in our debt principal balance. As I mentioned before, our Q4 ending net cash of $106 million being the highest it has been in a number of years was really a highlight. I think that the combination of profitability, efficient working capital, and a strong balance sheet really provide us with strengths and competitive advantages to make the right investments and continue to set us up for success in the future. Just to touch briefly on our omnichannel model, we do really strive to create a seamless experience for our customers between our digital and our physical footprint.
This is a considered purchase, and we really want to be able to cater to customers how they want to shop, when they want to shop, where they want to shop. I think our combination of digital leadership as well as our expanding showroom footprint allow us to meet customers where they are. When we open showrooms, we do look to drive uplift overall in the metros where we open them, and we continue to see compelling showroom uplift in our showroom footprint. We also continue to evolve and test and learn with new experiences in our showrooms. For example, our most recently opened showrooms feature our try-on bars for fine jewelry. That has been a new experience and a way for people to get closer to and really experience our fine jewelry collection in a compelling way. This is also true in our digital experience.
We continue to iterate to create a very compelling and engaging digital shopping experience. I think this all combines to drive successful metrics like some of those that you see here. As mentioned, we are currently at 41 showrooms, including the Southlake, Texas location that recently opened. We are targeting two to three new locations for 2025, including the Southlake location. Just moving on to priorities for the year, you know these are some of the areas that we're really focusing on for 2025 and wanted to spend a moment on these. One is to really continue on our path to become the world's most loved and trusted jeweler, both for today and tomorrow's consumer. I think we've been successfully executing against that.
We also continue to innovate on the product front, creating distinctive ownable collections that blend our innovative craftsmanship and designs, as well as offer customers the opportunity to personalize to their tastes and preferences. We continue to strive to deliver really distinctive omnichannel experiences to delight our customers and foster lasting, hopefully lifelong relationships and really endeavor to be the standard setter for modern luxury retail. As always, we continue to invest in innovation, data, technology, people to really drive operational efficiency and to capture long-term sustainable and profitable growth. I thought it'd be helpful to go through our medium-term targets that you may have heard us talk through before. In terms of our medium-term targets, which we're talking about through 2027, we anticipate net sales growth accelerating to a low teens year-over-year growth rate in 2027.
We expect this to be driven by a number of factors, including the gradual normalization of engagements, growth from our showrooms, continued outperformance in fine jewelry and other non-engagement assortments, as well as growth of our brand awareness. For gross margin, we expect this to remain in the high 50% through 2027 as we continue to drive strong gross margin through our premium brand, our proprietary product collections, our price optimization engine, procurement efficiencies, and our warranty program. On the expense side, from 2025 - 2027, we're targeting continuing to build on the success that we had last year, driving leverage in marketing costs as a percentage of sales from 2025- 2027. We expect that contributors to this include growing brand awareness, increased conversion from our showrooms, continued success in fine jewelry.
We think that all of these will help contribute to driving increased leverage in marketing costs from 2025- 2027. We expect that we are driving towards an adjusted EBITDA margin reaching a double-digit margin in 2027. That is just a brief summary of how we're thinking about our medium-term targets and outlook. Really to recap, our premium brand, our differentiated business model, including our data-driven decision-making, our seamless omnichannel platform, and our asset-light structure demonstrate our ability to deliver profitability and achieve our strategic and financial objectives in a variety of different environments. I'd like to thank you again for taking the time to hear from us today, and I'd be glad to answer some questions.
Okay, Jeff, thank you so much for that presentation. As a reminder, if you do have any questions, please feel free to type those into the box.
We should have enough time to get to all. Jeff, we've had quite a few come in already, and I have some of my own. Just to kind of kick things off, you know I've seen you speak about the Jane Goodall collection for the last, you know, couple of presentations. Can you talk a little bit about your strategy for collaborations and how you look at that and, you know, any major collaborations that you may have in the pipeline moving forward, understanding there's, you know, certain things you can't say about some that may be planned?
Sure. With respect to our collaborations, we're looking to a number of things. One is alignment between us and partners that we're working with. I think that's one of the factors that has made the Jane Goodall collection successful is the alignment of our values and hers.
We're really proud and honored to collaborate, you know, on that front. I think another is really to be innovative in design. You know, customers come to us for our leadership in design, and we really want to imbue our product collections with our design language and style and bring something that's innovative to our customers. I think that's something that's also important. We want to bring it to life. You know, we want to bring that to life in how you can experience the brand and be able to see the product and touch the product in our showrooms. I think all of these different factors are some of the ways about how we think about driving successful partnerships.
Don't think there's anything particular about upcoming collections that we have to share at this point, but we, you know, we continue to expect to deliver really compelling product assortment as we're going through the year.
Perfect. Thank you. Then it's great to see, you know, fine jewelry be in 27% of total bookings. I know that you've touched on this, but for investors new to the story, can you talk a little bit about why fine jewelry is such an important part of your strategic process moving forward and why it presents such a great opportunity for the company?
Yeah. There are a few different reasons. One that I alluded to earlier was that it's a compelling market opportunity. You know, it's a minority of our business, but for the industry overall, fine jewelry is the majority of the industry.
It really represents a significant growth opportunity for us to expand into fine jewelry. I think beyond that, there are a number of different strategic reasons why I think it's compelling. One is that it opens up additional touch points that we can engage with customers. It can be for additional life events and special occasions that you can purchase fine jewelry for gifting and self-purchase. We believe that this is beneficial in terms of being able to drive additional repeat purchase behavior, as well as be accretive to both revenue and customer acquisition economics. I think that the success that we've had, including our Q4 results and collections like the Jane Goodall collection, really illustrate that we have a formula that works in fine jewelry, and we're looking to continue to accelerate.
We're excited by the potential to continue to expand in fine jewelry and offer something really compelling and exciting for our customers.
Wonderful. Some of these may be repetitive because you've touched on them at previous presentations with us. You know, as we think about your showroom strategy and you're at 41 now and you expect to maybe finish 2025 at 42 or 43 total showrooms, can you talk a little bit more about, you know, what you look for in the market in which you may be putting a showroom? Are there any, you know, regions in the U.S. where you may be a little bit underrepresented right now that you may look to expand to?
Yeah. In terms of what we look for in a market, we have an advantage in that we have e-commerce and digital customers across the country.
We have data about where customers are, what they're buying. We use that, of course, to help inform our decision-making in terms of showroom expansion. We combine that with a lot of market-specific factors, including like how people are shopping, where people are shopping in those locations, considerations about specific real estate opportunities that may emerge. We combine all of those in terms of looking through what's the range of opportunities that we could expand into. We're always looking for a compelling ROI as we're opening new locations. That's some brief description of what we're looking for. In terms of regions in the U.S., we do now have with our 41 showrooms, you know, coverage across many different metro areas. You know, I think there continue to be opportunities, both first-time showrooms in a given metro area.
You've also seen us open up clusters, so multiple showrooms in a given metro area. You've seen this in areas like New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Southern California. I think that there are opportunities to cover more, you know, more of our customer base with an efficient footprint. Our showrooms tend to be destinations where people come because they want to, they already know about Brilliant Earth and they want to experience more. That is compelling and helps us achieve that efficient coverage. We're amplifying that by making it easier with some of our newer showroom footprints and formats for people to walk in and discover us. It's a nice complement between the appointment-driven model as well as allowing for retail and walk-in discovery and purchase.
Perfect. Some questions have come in regarding margins.
You know, in the fourth quarter, you talked about, you know, going through a competitive and promotional holiday season, but at the same time expanding margins. You know, the 15%, I believe it was 15% five-year CAGR, 16% CAGR that you've seen in gross margins. Can you talk a little bit about the strategy behind that and what's led to the expansion despite, you know, a difficult environment and what, you know, the company's really been able to do to see that growth on an annual basis over the last five years?
Yeah. Maybe first just on the CAGR point for five years, that was the net sales. You know, that was the net sales CAGR, which I believe was 16% over the five years shown. We're proud of the growth that we've been able to drive there.
In terms of the factors that have driven gross margin, because gross margin has expanded, you know, during that time, you know, we think that it's been driven by a combination of different things. One, you know, like our premium brand and really being focused on premium brand differentiated products. We're not discount-oriented like many others in the industry may be. Our price optimization engine, which allows us to continually test and optimize for that right mix of top-line capture as well as gross margin capture. That is something that is a living, living, breathing thing that we're continuing to iterate on and improve as we get new data. Also things like procurement efficiencies and our extended warranty program. Those have all contributed to our strong gross margins.
We expect to continue to work to drive as much gross margin performance as we can using some of those same levers.
Perfect. My apologies on messing up the metric for the 16%, but you're right, it was net sales. Can you touch a little bit upon the competitive landscape and maybe, you know, how that plays into your strategy moving forward?
Yeah. The competitive landscape for jewelers is, you know, approximately two-thirds of the industry is independence. You know, it's a relatively more fragmented industry than, you know, certain others in the retail and consumer space. We think that that presents opportunity for a company like us that has a compelling brand and assortment of products, a really distinguished omnichannel shopping experience, and really to take all of those things and really make a difference and offer something differentiated to our customers.
We think it's a large industry. It's a fragmented industry. We think that we have a very compelling offering to make to our customer base.
Yeah. It's been fun to, you know, to follow the story as you've been coming to these conferences over the last year or so. We've got about a minute or two left. I just want to turn it back to you for any closing thoughts or parting thoughts for investors that may be watching this that are new to your story.
Yeah. No, thanks, Daniel. It's, again, a pleasure to be here. You know, I think that we do really offer a compelling mix of our brand, our experience, our products, and a business model that set us up to be a differentiated and disruptive player in the jewelry space. We thank you for the chance to be here.
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in and look forward to connecting in the future.
Great. Jeff, great to see you again. For all of you in the audience, thank you for your participation. I think we were able to get to most, if not all, of the questions. Jeff, on behalf of the attendees and everybody at Sidoti, thank you for sharing Brilliant Earth's story again and being with us again at this conference.
Thanks, Daniel. Thanks, everyone.
Have a great day, everyone. Thank you so much.