I'd like to introduce our next presenter here at the Planet MicroCap Las Vegas, powered by MicroCapClub. We have Jerash Holdings.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Let me introduce myself. I'm Gilbert Lee, CFO of Jerash Holdings. Let me just get right into it. I'm going to leave some time after the presentation for Q&A, so I will run through the slides first. Please just hold your questions until I finish. Here is the forward-looking statements, which I don't want to go into any details. Okay, how many of you know who Jerash is? Oh, quite a few. Anyway, for the benefit of those who don't, let me just tell you that Jerash was the first Jordanian company that IPO in the U.S.. We are based in Jordan. All our operations are in Jordan, but we are incorporated in the U.S., and our business is really just contract manufacturing for the global premium brands. We are a garment or apparel manufacturer located in Jordan.
We are a trusted partner for leading high-profile consumer brands such as The North Face, New Balance, Timberland, Hugo Boss, and so on. We just added two facilities this year. In total, we have eight facilities located in Jordan, near Amman. Our manufacturing capabilities is state-of-the-art, we continuously expanding our facilities, improving our facilities. As of this last fiscal year, our capacity was about 24 million pieces annually. We have a successful track record of growing production capacity. We continue to grow, we have plans to continue growing our capacity because the demand is there, it is getting stronger and stronger. We have very good reputation in the garment industry. We're known for exceptional quality and on-time delivery. Just give you a little bit of history about our company. Actually, we started our business in Jordan in year 2000.
That was when U.S. and Jordan signed a free trade agreement, which was the first ever free trade agreement that U.S. had with an Arab country. In 2001, we began operating. Well, actually in year 2000, we started with a small factory with fewer than 100 people. 2001, the free trade agreement went into effect. We went through a period, more than 10 years of very slow and steady growth until 2013 and 2014, when we established our second and third facilities, also in the same industrial zone in Amman. After a while, in 2018, we successfully took over some contract manufacturing business from The North Face. The North Face started doing business with us, I believe it was in 2017, we got into a more significant growth period. In 2018, we IPO on Nasdaq.
At that time, we also signed an agreement with the Ministry of Labor in Jordan to start developing a satellite facility. In 2019, we acquired our fourth factory, also in the same industrial zone, and in the same year, we purchased two pieces of land in the industrial zone. One we were going to build a dormitory, and the other one we were going to use it to build another manufacturing facility. As you understand that, or you remember, at the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020, that's when COVID hit. During COVID, in 2020, at the request of the Jordanian government, we started making or manufacturing PPE products. All right. Mask, protective equipment, and so on. We got FDA approval, ISO designation for making the PPE products. At the same time, we also expanded our ESG and responsible growth initiatives.
Fast-forward to 2021 and 2022, we began construction of a 180,000 square feet housing facility, our first dormitory that we built ourselves. All throughout these years, we've been leasing smaller facilities for our dormitories, in 2021, we began building our facility, I think it finished in 2022. Now this facility is fully occupied, housing about 2,000- 2,300 foreign workers. In the same year, we also acquired a factory. At the end of that year, we acquired another factory. That would be our sixth factory, also within the same industrial zone. 2023, we began developing our market. In the past, it has always been to the U.S. customers. In 2022- 2023, we began developing our market in Europe as Jordan also enjoyed duty-free shipments to the EU, and we also got FTA, free trade agreement, signed with the U.K.
With this benefit, we began to increase or grow our sales into the European market. In 2024 and 2025, we continued to expand our existing facilities by adding more machines, adding more people. We were able to increase our capacity by 15%. We continued to look for opportunities to add other facilities or build on the land that we purchased seven years ago. As you understand, the war and also there were all kinds of instabilities in the region that hesitation prevented us to start the project. Finally, when we got to 2026, seems like, well, tariffs are behind us. The war seems to be stabilizing even though it's still going on. In 2026, we added two more facilities. We purchased one building, and we're going to turn that into a centralized cutting and centralized warehousing facility to improve the efficiency.
Also, we established another satellite factory at the request of the Ministry of Labor to provide employment opportunity for some rural area in Jordan. Why Jerash? Why do business with Jerash? Why invest in Jerash? Jerash is a very unique company. It enjoys, number one, the free trade agreements and the duty-free shipments to Europe, to U.K., to U.S., and to many of the surrounding countries. Then we are well-known in the global customer base. Global brands such as VF Corp, New Balance, European brands, even Armani, we're doing business with them, Walmart, Sam's Club. Everybody knows us, and we have very good reputation in terms of our quality as well as our delivery or our on-time delivery. We're very prudent and very conservative in terms of utilizing our capacity, utilizing our cash flow to expand. We don't take exceptional risks.
Because of our strategic location, you probably notice in the past five or six years, global customers, they are having a strategy to migrate or diversify their manufacturing bases outside of China and outside of Asia into countries that are more stable, that are not so much affected by all this political impact. Jerash really has been benefiting by this trend, global customers, they already told us that they want to put more manufacturing in Jordan. Just a brief overview. We have eight facilities in Jordan. We employ over 6,300 workers. By the way, there's a rule in Jordan that you can hire up to 70% of foreign workers as long as you keep a 30% local worker employment. We have 30% local Jordanian workers, and we employ 70% of our workers from Places like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and so on.
All these are skilled garment workers. They're very good at manufacturing garments, we pay them the same wage and the same salary of what we pay the local workers, they are still very willing to come over to Jordan and work for us. Jordan itself is in a very unique situation. It is probably the most peaceful and most stable country in the Middle East. Even though next to it is Israel, on the other side is Iraq, Iran. On top of it is Syria. All these countries, they're having a lot of turmoil. They're having a lot of instabilities and sometimes even war. You can sometimes see missiles flying across your head from Iran to Israel. None of them will drop onto Jordan. I can assure you that, because I've seen it multiple times.
In Jordan, even though the siren will go off, there's nowhere to run. They don't have these hideouts like in Israel that you can run into. It's all safe, I can assure you that, because I go there all the time. Jordan, it has a very small population. It allows foreign workers to come and work, especially the garment sector. The government is highly supportive of the garment sector. They allow foreign workers to come and work. That keeps the manufacturing cost down. Well, like I said, it's the global crossroad for highly skilled workforce from across the Indian Ocean. It's recognized by a lot of the brands as an apparel manufacturing center. Duty-free, we already touched on. The recent tariff developments really accelerates the opportunities.
Like you remember, in 2025, President Trump started this tariff war, really caused a lot of chaos all over the world. Everybody is getting hit by some tariffs. Eventually, it got away. It kind of faded away, now is okay. The brands, they hate this kind of disruptions and uncertainties. Jordan, having a long-term, a 20+ year free trade agreement with the U.S. and now with the EU, people feel that Jordan is the place to go. In the past five or six years, we've been getting a lot of our existing customers like VF, The North Face, and New Balance, and so on. They keep wanting to put more manufacturing in Jordan with us. Also new customers, like even Walmart. We just started with a new customer, a huge supplier of Walmart, in South Korea. The name is Hansol Group.
They are the largest garment supplier to Walmart, and they came to us last year and wanting to start doing business with us because Walmart asked them to come to Jordan, and they specifically asked them to seek out Jerash. Even we didn't do business directly with Walmart tell their supplier to come work with Jerash. The tariff thing is really stimulating a lot of additional demands. It actually has started five or six years ago. Our competitive advantage about the tariff, we're still having a 10% so-called tariff. Before, it was zero. Duty is still 0%. Comparing to China, you can see that China, depending on what type of products, what kind of material, it would be between 33%-50% tariff and duty. Okay. India is between 12.5%-42%. Same thing for Vietnam. Indonesia is the lowest, but still 19%.
These are the brands that we have been working for. The North Face, Vans, which is part of VF, New Balance, Hugo Boss, Skechers, Timberland, which is also part of VF, Calvin Klein, Adidas, and so on. This is the product mix that we do. 25% Outerwear jackets. Those are the more complicated, the higher ASP, higher margin type of products. Now, we also do a lot of pants and shorts. One big order from last year from Hansol was all on girls' shorts. That was 3.5 million pieces of girls' shorts. We finished that order in February and shipped it. That order will continue. Thank you. Our business strategy is to continue to increase our capacity. By diversifying our customer mix and also our product mix, now we're better balancing the utilization of our capacity.
In the past, it has always been the first half of the fiscal year has higher sales because we're producing for The North Face for the winter jacket. The second half usually will have a lower sales. Now with working with Hansol, we're producing even in the second half. This past fiscal year, our second half sales is actually higher than the first half sales. Social responsibility, environmental awareness, this has always been ingrained in our culture. Just briefly on the financial Q4 of this past fiscal year 2026, we grew, I think it was 40-some percent from the previous quarter, and gross margin maintained at 17-plus%. I can see that fiscal year 2026 was really a turnaround year. In the previous two years, we were hit by the war, tariffs, logistics issues, but 2026, it became stabilized, and we added new customers.
Going forward, I can just see that Jerash will continue to be very, very successful and we'll continue to grow our capacity and continue to add new customers and new sales. Revenue fiscal 2025, $145 million, 2026, $166 million, and our goal is to get to over $200 million as soon as we can. Like I said, the last two years was not too good. 2024 and 2025, we lost money, but 2026, we turned around. We continue to have a very strong balance sheet. We used more money this past year absorbing new business, but we always can produce sufficient operating cash. That's the balance sheet. As you can see, cash dropped slightly, but I'm pretty sure it will go back up. We have secure credit facilities within Jordan to support our working capital. Why invest in Jerash Holdings? Because the opportunities is there.
We are seeing a lot of growth opportunity. We're very carefully and gradually increasing our capacity by adding new buildings, by expanding within our existing facilities, and also by introducing automation and more high-tech type of machineries to improve our efficiency. Thank you very much. I know I used more time than I was supposed to. If you have any questions, maybe I can take one or two, or you can visit our booth at, what, 425? Yes. I'm happy to talk with you.
Just a question around the Q4 2025 results. Is it kind of safe to extrapolate your earnings from Q4 over next year? Is it okay, or is it reasonable to multiply Q4 of 2026 earnings by four? Do you think Q4 was one of the stronger months? Is it basically a little aggressive, this kind of view? What's your thought on that?
Well, I would never say that it is safe to use one quarter to extrapolate. You're right, Q4 of 2026 would be a good year to be as a reference. I mean, a good quarter to be as a reference. Overall, for the fiscal year 2026. By the way, our fiscal year, it ends on March 31st. 2026 actually started from April of 2025 throughout March of 2026. We continue to improve our efficiency throughout the year until 2026, until the first calendar quarter or our last fiscal quarter of 2026, it was a good quarter. We anticipate that it will continue on.
Maybe if you can talk a bit about the VM concentration. The Busana JV was supposed to be helping with getting away from that concentration. It doesn't look like we're talking about that anymore.
No.
The Maxsteam relationship, I think, is an attempt at that. What makes this new client, Hansol, any stickier than the Busana JV?
Well, the Busana JV was initiated about three years ago, and at the time, we were going to rely on them to bring new customers to our mix. However, it didn't work out that way. We didn't lose money on that. However, we just see that it's not going to work. I'm sure they have their own agendas, and we just decided to part ways. At the same time, we're seeing other new customers wanting to start doing business with us. We just say, "Oh, we don't really need Busana." Hansol from South Korea is a good example. They're bringing huge volume of business, which in turn actually help our efficiency because we don't have to change the styles that often. We would much rather do this than doing small quantities of many different styles.
Yeah, I think going forward, that will be the way to go.
Are you making World Cup products?
No, we're not. Okay. Thank you very much for your.