Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Lifetime Brands third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, I would like to inform all participants that their lines will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Jamie Kirchen. Mr. Kirchen, you may go ahead now.
Good morning, and thank you for joining Lifetime Brands third quarter 2026 earnings call. With us today from management are Rob Kay, Chief Executive Officer, and Larry Winoker, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin the call, I'd like to remind you that our remarks this morning may contain forward-looking statements that relate to the future of the company, and these statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbor protection from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Any such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and factors that could influence our results are highlighted in our earnings release, and other factors are contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such statements are based upon information available to the company as of the date hereof and are subject to change for future development.
Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update such statements. Our remarks this morning and in our release also contain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Regulation G promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Included in such release is a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures with the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. With that introduction, I'd like to turn the call over to Rob Kay. Please go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
Pardon me, this is the operator. We are going to pass the call over to Mr. Rob Kay to begin his portion of the call.
Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. The third quarter was a quarter of notable progress for Lifetime. Net sales grew 3.4% to $177.7 million. Gross margin expanded 140 basis points to 36.5%, and that is after absorbing a $3.3 million inventory charge tied to a SKU rationalization I will elaborate upon shortly. Adjusted net income was $8.4 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, up from $0.11 a year ago. EBITDA also grew noticeably in the quarter. Note that this morning's press release reported current period adjusted LTM EBITDA of approximately $84 million. The number should have read $92.4 million. LTM adjusted EBITDA before limitations was strong at that $92.4 million compared to prior quarter LTM adjusted EBITDA of $90.1 million, calculated under the terms of our credit agreement. We grew over last year, but we should have grown more.
Bringing a distribution center the size of our new Hagerstown, Maryland facility online is no small undertaking, and while we planned for startup costs and challenges, the ramp took longer than we had planned. As we noted on our second quarter call, we anticipated carryover of startup issues into the third quarter, and the transition resulted in missed shipments and added cost. These ramp-up issues have been addressed, and we are shipping in a normal cadence as of the beginning of the fourth quarter. We are confident the ramp-up phase is complete and now behind us. Hagerstown is a 1 million + square foot facility built to consolidate our East Coast distribution and to be our most efficient building. It is now positioned as the linchpin of Lifetime's North American operations. Now that it is fully operational, Hagerstown is already contributing to our operational efficiency.
In October, our peak shipping month, Lifetime shipped approximately $7 million of product, a near record for our company, excluding the COVID period. While the third quarter was adversely impacted by missed shipments due to these ramp-up issues, we do expect to recover some, but not all, of the shipments missed during the fourth quarter. As we move into 2027, we will have the full efficiency benefit of this building without the startup costs. Notwithstanding the Hagerstown ramp-up, the underlying business is performing well in an end market that remains soft in consumer durables. The end market continues to exhibit divergent performance across channels. Off-price remains the strongest part of the market, and we continue to grow there. Mass is performing solidly, and club has been a standout. We have grown meaningfully in the club channel this year, well ahead of the broader category.
There is a consistent theme here. When times are tougher, people eat at home more, and they cook and entertain at home more, and that plays directly to our portfolio. Kitchenware, our largest category, is performing well. The Farberware relaunch, our largest brand, is in the market and performing. As with any relaunch of that scale, we are refining the assortment based on what we are seeing on shelf, but sell-through has been encouraging. Tableware was our largest growth driver in the quarter, up 31%, led by flatware in the warehouse club channel. Home décor continues to be a growth engine, driving growth in home solutions. Demand for the Dolly Parton collection has stepped up significantly, and the line has become something of a collectible. For 2026, we are largely sold through supply of Dolly products.
We see strong demand going into 2027, and we expect the program to be a solid contributor. The program has also expanded beyond its launch partner. That launch partner is Dollar General, and it has become one of our best growth stories. We had essentially no business with Dollar General in 2023. This year, we expect wholesale sales to approach $20 million. We are now working with Dollar General on additional brands, and we see a long runway for that relationship. Project Concord is working. International sales grew 18.8% in the quarter, and the segment approached break-even. Asia Pacific, which had been losing money, is profitable year to date. In Australia and New Zealand, the top line is growing nicely, and we are focused on operations for that locale.
We have one significant step left in Concord in the U.K., which we expect to contribute meaningfully to the profitability of this segment, and we hope to share more on that in the coming months. This quarter, we took a $3.3 million charge, primarily in the U.S. with a smaller portion in the U.K., to mark down and exit slow-moving inventory. This timing was deliberate. When you are closing one building and opening another, it makes no sense to pay to move product which is slow-moving. This makes us leaner and more profitable going forward, and we have excluded it from our adjusted results. As previously disclosed, we completed a full refinancing of our debt this year. We expanded our low-cost asset-based facility and replaced our larger term loan with a much smaller one, which can be scaled up if we need it.
The result is a meaningfully lower cost of capital and a more flexible structure. You can already see it in the numbers. Interest expense was $2.8 million this quarter versus $5 million a year ago, and Larry will walk you through the details. Our new structure also removes restrictions that limited our ability to buy back stock under our old agreement. As announced this morning, our board has increased our repurchase authorization to $20 million from approximately $11 million remaining under the prior program. We view this as an important tool to have in place, and we now have the full flexibility to use it opportunistically. Put simply, we have rebuilt our balance sheet, and we now have significant capacity and flexibility to invest in growth, including acquisitions.
We plan to lay out our full capital allocation strategy at our Investor Day in New York on December 1st. Turning to guidance, we are raising the low end of our net sales range to $660 million-$700 million. We are maintaining our adjusted income from operations and adjusted EBITDA ranges. Our GAAP earnings guidance reflects the one-time costs discussed today. Looking ahead, we see a number of tailwinds built into 2027. Hagerstown startup costs and disruptions will be behind us. We will have the full efficiency of that building. We will have the full year benefit of Project Concord in International, and our refinancing lowers our interest costs. Additionally, we are growing with programs with many retailers, including Dollar General, as I discussed, and we have momentum in many of our categories, as I have just described.
We look forward to going into detail of our plans and strategies during our upcoming Investor Day. We will lay all of this out in detail on December 1st, and I hope many of you will join us. With that, I will turn it over to Larry.
Thanks, Rob. As we reported this morning, net loss for the third quarter of 2026 was $4.2 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, as compared to a net loss of $1.2 million, or $0.05 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2025. Adjusted net income was $8.4 million for the third quarter of 2026, or $0.37 per diluted share, compared to net income of $2.5 million, or $0.11 per diluted share in 2025. Loss from operations was nil in the third quarter of 2026, as compared to income from operations of $6.7 million in the 2025 period. Loss from operations for the current period included a charge for an inventory reserve for SKU rationalization of $3.3 million. Adjusted income from operations for the third quarter of 2026 was $13.8 million, as compared to $11.5 million last 2025 period.
The 2026 period included adjustments for acquisition-related intangible amortization of $4.3 million, warehouse relocation and redesign of $5.3 million, SKU rationalization of $3.3 million, and other expenses, approximately $900,000. The 2025 period also included adjustments for acquisition-related intangible amortization of $4.4 million, restructuring of $300,000, and warehouse relocation redesign of approximately $100,000. Adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12-month period ended September 30th, 2026, was $92.4 million before limitations. Note that in this morning's earnings release, we reported $84.5 million, which is after limitations. While we had no limitations in the 2Q report, it was our intention to be consistent and report before limitations. The limitations in this quarter were due to one-time expenses incurred for the move of our East Coast distribution operations and SKU rationalization. Reporting before limitations is consistent with how we reported our full-year guidance.
Again, adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12-month period ended September of 2026 was $92.4 million before limitations, an increase of $2.3 million for the current quarter. Adjusted information noted on non-GAAP financial measures, which are reconciled to our GAAP financial measure in the earnings release. The following comments are for the third quarter of 2026 and 2025, unless stated otherwise. Consolidated net sales increased by 3.4% to $177.7 million. U.S. segment sales increased by 2% to $161.3 million. Within the segment, product line increases were in tableware and home solution, driven by warehouse clubs, partially offset by decreases in kitchenware, driven by lower warehouse club and e-commerce sales, which included the impact to ramp up the new East Coast distribution facility in Hagerstown, Maryland. International segment sales increased by 18.8% to $16.4 million.
The increase was driven by higher selling prices in all regions and continued growth with retail customers in Australia and New Zealand. Consolidated gross margin increased to 36.5% from 35.1%. U.S. segment gross margin increased to 36.8% from 35.1%. The improvement in the gross margin percentage was attributable to lower-cost products resulting from reduced tariffs relative to the prior year and favorable product mix, partially offset by a $2 million SKU rationalization charge. International gross margin decreased to 34.1% from 35.5%, driven by the $1.3 million SKU rationalization recorded there, partially offset by expanded gross margin resulting from higher selling price and favorable customer mix. U.S. segment distribution expenses as a percentage of goods shipped from its warehouses, excluding non-recurring expenses, was 11.3% versus 8.5%. The increase was due to lower shipment volume, resulting in an unfavorable absorption of fixed expenses, higher occupancy, and depreciation for the new facility.
Also included were inefficiencies associated with operating the old and new facility concurrently. Freight out expenses increased due to higher freight rates and customer mix. Non-recurring warehouse expenses for the current period were $5.3 million, which related to one-time expenses to start up the new facility and exit the old one. These included labor, relocation of inventory, recruiting and training, setup costs, and duplicate rent for the non-operational portion of the two facilities. International segment distribution expenses as a percentage of goods shipped from its warehouses improved to 24.4% from 22.6%. The improvement was due to higher sales resulting in a favorable impact on fixed expenses. Selling, general, and administrative expenses increased by 7.6% to $38.2 million. U.S. segment expenses increased $1.7 million, or 6%, to $30.1 million. As a percentage of net sales, expenses increased to 18.7% from 18%. The increase in expenses was driven by higher incentive compensation.
International SG&A increased to $3.7 million from $3.4 million. This increase was driven by foreign currency exchange losses. As a percentage of net sales, expenses decreased to 22.6% from 24.6%. The decreased percentage was due to the impact of fixed costs on higher sales volume. Unallocated corporate expenses were $4.4 million compared to $3.7 million in 2025. The increase was due to incentive compensation and higher professional fees. In addition, we restored salary cuts implemented last year to partially mitigate the adverse impact of tariffs. Restructuring expenses were $600,000 compared to $300,000 last year. In the current year, $500,000 was for employee severance related to exiting the old facility, and $100,000 was for the U.K. Project Concord employee severance.
Interest expense, excluding mark-to-market adjustments for swaps, decreased from $5 million - $2.1 million due to lower average outstanding borrowings, favorable mix of the new debt structure, and $1.4 million of interest income received from tariff refunds. The loss on extinguishment of debt of $2.5 million relates to the write-off of the unamortized issuance costs related to the recent refinancing. The effective tax rate was 9.3% and 171.1% last year. These rates differ from the federal statutory rate of 21%, primarily due to the impact of non-deductible expenses in the current quarter and a partial valuation allowance recorded on deferred tax assets related to the goodwill impairment in the 2025 period. Looking at debt and liquidity, our balance sheet was further strengthened by the August debt refinancing. We amended our revolving credit facility and refinanced our term loan, which, among other things, extended all our debt maturities to 2031.
The new term loan, like the credit facility, is asset-based. The terms of the agreement will provide us with more liquidity and flexibility in the use of our capital. Quarter end, our liquidity was approximately $123 million, which included cash plus availability under our credit facility and Receivables Purchase Agreement. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star, then two if you would like to remove yourself from the question queue. For participants using a speakerphone, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the keys. Our first question for today will come from Matt Koranda with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. You mentioned, I think in the prepared remarks, about $5.3 million in adjustments for warehouse startup costs. I assume that is all for Hagerstown. Are there any inefficiencies, I guess, at that facility that you can call out that were not added back? Then, now that it is shipping normally as of the fourth quarter, can you just call out the benefits to operating expenses, how those show up in the P&L going forward?
Hi, Matt. All of the costs are related to Hagerstown. Larry went through a lot of the costs. There's different buckets of those costs, but there's inefficiencies as you're ramping up. Not everything is added back, particularly lost revenues when we had problems from the ramp-up experience. That's just lost and flows through our numbers, and it's not added back. It's really just the cost of ramping up the facility, the redundancy from a labor perspective, having two facilities, and a lot of things that Larry walked through. The biggest benefit we're going to see on a go-forward basis is, now that the facility's up and running, we won't have the ramp-up costs. Robbinsville, the New Jersey facility, is empty, will be shut by the end of the year. It's just cleanup and dilapidation at this point.
That will all disappear, and we'll be on a pristine, clean basis on a go-forward basis with no noise.
Yeah. Matt, just to make Let me just add something in response to your question. What we didn't add back, to be more specific if I can, is that in the new facility, because I don't want to get into GAAP issues here, but because we have a new lease, you have to straight-line the rent over the lease period, 15 years. So your rent expense is going up. But our cash rent is actually approximately what we're paying in our old facility. But nevertheless, GAAP, you have to record it that way. So, that will persist, as well as we bought new equipment for the facility, so our depreciation expense will be higher. Both of those don't get added back. The other thing is that it's just inherent inefficiency operating two facilities. Normally, that would be very efficient. I'd group them to one.
But during this period, we just have normal inefficiencies, not because of the actual move and training people, but because you have to Let's say you have a line and two lines in each location, and you'd normally have one supervisor. Well, if you have one in Maryland, you have to have also one in New Jersey. So those inefficiencies you don't get to add back over, let's say, maybe not the fourth quarter, but I think certainly in 2027, you'll see the distribution expense as a percent of shipping be pretty much as it had been before we moved.
Okay. Very clear. Appreciate the color on that stuff, guys. Just for the, I guess, the implied outlook for the fourth quarter looks good on sales, but you kind of held the adjusted EBITDA outlook unchanged for 2026. Maybe just wanted to hear a little bit about the drivers there that underpin the implied fourth quarter outlook and how to think about the margin sort of flow through the end of the year.
Yeah. I think that the big unknown that will play out in the quarter is any hangover from now that Hagerstown is operating as normal and recovery of some, as I said, but definitely not all, of some misshipments that we had. So, there's definitely upside, but there's a lot of unknowns, so we left things unchanged in terms of our guidance. But sales, we saw we were definitely running ahead, and that's why we wanted to narrow the range and moved up from the low end.
Makes sense. Maybe just last one on Project Concord, just an update there, I guess, since we're kind of hitting break-even in terms of profit contribution there. Wanted to hear a little bit about sort of how that may shift to a contributor in 2027 versus being a drag for the last couple of years. What's driving the really strong growth in the EU region? It looks really positive in the quarter, and how sustainable is that sort of the growth rate that you put up?
So, I'm going to punt on the first question mostly by saying that we'll give you full details a lot of next year in December 1st on Investor Day. But the business actually on a pro forma basis was break-even for the quarter. A lot of the growth is, we changed the business strategy. We also changed the product offering. If you look at the U.K. historically, which is the bulk of the business, historically that business was sold to dining cook shops, which would be the equivalent in the U.S. of independent gourmet shops. It's taken time, but we've transitioned that to the larger national accounts such as Dunelm and Next and Tesco and the like.
We are getting good traction there, which we have talked about, but those wins that we have had there are running through our shipments and financial statements now, and we are getting the benefit from that. That has been driving us. Unfortunately, the independent sector has, particularly since COVID, continued to decline. It is really the shift, and as we have shifted our product strategy to really products, a lot of them from the U.S. such as KitchenAid, is driving a lot of growth throughout the whole European continent for us.
Okay. Looking forward to hearing more.
Actually, in international as well, it is driving a lot of growth in Asia Pacific and Australia and New Zealand for us as well.
Okay. All right. Appreciate that color, Rob. Looking forward to hearing more from you guys on the outlook in December.
Thanks, Matt.
Your next question will come from Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking the questions. So, as we look at the reported numbers for revenue, how do we think about the pricing impact versus unit volumes overall for the quarter?
There was some reduction in pricing reflective of the lower cost in sourcing the goods because of tariffs. And which, by the way, helped our margins just because we kept the gross profit the same, just as when we implemented higher prices. We only increased it by the amount of our costs, so the gross profit percentage went down. So this had obviously the opposite effect. And you want to talk about units?
Yeah. I mean, in general, the market has been relatively flat on a dollar basis, but down unit, like overall. We've seen some of that, so we've been able to pick up some share. We've had some successes, as I talked about, and that's been helping us on both, but stronger on dollar than unit.
That's a very helpful context. As we think about the SKU rationalization that you guys did in the third quarter, on a go-forward basis, how do we think about the structural gross margin benefits from this SKU rationalization?
Our go-forward margin profile should be as we've expected and experienced in the past. If you look at what we did is, again, when you're moving facilities in one big facility, there's stuff that we could sell, but we didn't. It's more efficient and ultimately more economically beneficial to write off. We're preparing to do something similar in the U.K. The U.K. facility that we operate in is maybe 50% utilized. The last step in Project Concord is we're looking to exit that facility. In anticipation of that, we did a SKU rat there as well, and we're doing it all at once.
Mm-hmm. Okay. That's very helpful. Okay. You guys mentioned that you had some missed shipments and added costs in Q3 because of the move to the Hagerstown facility. Any way to try to quantify that or just basically how impactful do you think that was in the quarter?
Not very easy to quantify it in total detail. We are still working on that, but we believe it to be between $7 million and $10 million in impact negatively, obviously, in the third quarter.
Okay.
That is why my comments, Anthony, were, we did well and we grew. We would have done a lot better.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, all right. That certainly helps to kind of frame things. Okay, got it. All right. Lastly, as far as the share buyback that you announced today here, is this something that you think you will be looking to do right away, or what is the timeframe for that, you think, as far as when you think you can put that to use?
As we have discussed with the whole public and in view, we believe that the intrinsic value, the economic value is not reflected currently in this trading price. We would use the stock buyback to, we think, create value to all of our shareholders by buying back the stock at this level.
Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Well, thank you, and yeah, look forward to seeing you guys in early December.
Likewise. Thank you.
Your next question will come from Linda Bolton Weiser with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. You mentioned maybe a quarter or two ago on your call that you were still looking to diversify your outsourced manufacturing base. We will probably hear more about this in December, but can you talk about what areas you are looking at? Also, can you remind us what you are doing with the facility in Mexico? I think there was something there that you were working on, and I have not heard you mention it. Could you give us a little update on that? Thanks.
Sure, Linda. When we looked throughout the world, starting a bunch of years ago, when we came to the conclusion that West, I guess now U.S., has decoupled with China. We started everything from Turkey, which we really didn't do much. We didn't find, for a lot of reasons, that to be appropriate. Mexico, as you mentioned. We looked at resourcing the U.S., and made no economic sense. What made most economic sense was to, throughout many geographies in Southeast Asia, is where we moved a lot of our facilities. We did that in conjunction with our key factory vendor relationships, where we had not a controlling ownership interest, but we controlled the majority of the output of those factories.
Those factories invested throughout Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, which we've already had a big presence, but other things moved there, and built new factories with their capital and their management. These had ramped up, however, in 2025, because the all-in tariff impacted cost of shipping product was cheaper coming out of China, we moved a lot of that stuff back. In almost all those cases, it was to a factory that might have been in Malaysia, same ownership, same factory that we moved back in China. So, it's within the same vendor. But we shipped mostly out of China in 2025 because the economics made more sense, right? That's not, we believe, sustainable from a political environment, and that will ultimately migrate back to all these geographies.
In Mexico, we had an opportunity to make a small acquisition of a factory that we knew had a lot of benefits. At the time that we did this, it was very cost beneficial because of the various tariffs throughout the world to move product there. Over time, as trade and tariffs shifted throughout the world, it became uneconomical. It was very small, and it led us to the conclusion, as there's more stability in terms of outlook from relative trade situation, we shut that down. So, that's why you don't hear us talk about it. It was small. We were looking to ramp it up as we were looking at all different avenues several years ago. But as things worked out over time, it was not economical. We shut it down.
Okay. Thank you. You're talking a lot about the success of the club channel and your programs there. I am curious, sometimes for companies, club channel sales can be lumpy because there's programs that come in and out. Do you have a fair amount of regular program presence at the club channel, or is it just these programs that are going to come in and out? How should we think about the sustainability of that growth that we're seeing there?
Yeah, that's a great question, and we like to use the word, it's like quicksand in the club channel. You could have a great program, it does really well, and it doesn't anniversary. Our relationship at the club channel has done very well over time, and there might be programs that we run that shift. Like Rabbit, for a long time running, I think four straight years, had big programs at Costco, and the volumes were obviously very big. It did not anniversary, but we still grew at Costco because we're doing other things. One of the competitive advantages of a company like Lifetime versus a lot of our peers that we compete against is we can offer many brands, many different price points, many different categories, and that is how we operate in the club channel.
The mix may change, and there are certain things that do, like Mikasa has a very strong presence there, that do stay as a brand and category, but the product does change. But we shift what we're selling. We're very confident in terms of where we are and the future. Like home decor has done very well in club. If you look several years ago, we did nothing. It shifts, and we should have a steady progression. But that's how we get around the lumpiness of what you see traditionally in other companies.
Okay. Well, thanks for that. That's all for me. We'll see you in December.
Thanks, Linda.
Thank you.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Rob Kay for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Chuck. Well, thank you, everyone, for participating in our call. I will remind people once again that on December 1st, in our Nasdaq site in New York City, we will be hosting an Investor Day starting at 11:00 A.M. We hope to see people there. You can always listen in, and again, thank you for your interest and support.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.