Energy and skincare products through a connected network of independent consultants around the globe. The company's Safe Harbor statements can be found in the Events and Presentations section on its Investor relations website. Let's get started. The MindBody GLP-1 System was launched in the U.S. in October, and since then it has driven strong double-digit sales growth in the America segment, which was up 46% in December and was up 30% in March. Steve, how has your thinking on MindBody evolved over the past seven months since the launch?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the short response would be that we continue to remain very bullish on this product. You know, we continue to have done clinical research. We will probably talk a little bit about the fact that we launched our product in the U.S. in October. You know, the launch was amazing to the point where we sold out of our inventory in two weeks. We had to deal with backorder and supply chain issues. It put a little bit of a wet blanket on it. I can, with confidence, say that all of those issues are behind us. Just a few weeks ago, we launched our international formula to all of our countries internationally. As part of that launch, we did an additional clinical study, both with our U.S. formulated product as well as our international formulated product.
We continue to find positive results at every turn. One of the things that I think we really are honing in on is that GLP-1, it is not just a weight loss hormone. It is so much more than that. Just even in this most recent clinical studies, you know, the other biometric findings that we found of improved, decreased body fat, reduction in overall subcutaneous fat, visceral fat decreases, skeletal muscle increases, and reduced inches around the body were all documented and found. What we're learning is that even in situations where maybe the weight loss wasn't significant, you know, say just four or five pounds of weight loss, those other things around body composition are still evident. People are reporting looser clothes and just feeling overall better. Our science continues to be reaffirmed with our studies.
You know, in addition to that clinical science-based results, we also get kind of the qualitative results where people report reduced in urges to snack, reduced in sugar cravings, reduced in alcohol consumption, and broad brain fog, and a lot of other things that I think, again, support our position that this isn't just a weight loss magic pill, but it is a long-term sustainable lifestyle change that we believe everyone should be on. Weight loss is clearly a part of this, but there are so many other benefits that people are also seeing, and it's why we remain so bullish about this product and where we are.
I know it's in some of your, you know, I was going on your website, and I noticed that it's in some stacks now. Are there synergistic benefits beyond just the product itself with the two SKUs working together? Does it also have a synergistic effect with, say, Protandim?
Yes, absolutely. With Protandim specifically, we've done testing along those lines. And Protandim clinically proven to reduce oxidative stress by 40% in 30 days. What we're finding is that oxidative stress, you know, it's tied to a number of inflammatory health issues. And there clearly is synergistic benefits between that reduction in oxidative stress and the increase in the GLP-1 hormone, the L cells that produce the GLP-1. Yes, and we will do, like we've done in other products, we'll continue to look probably next at the impact with collagen and MindBody. We have not completed that yet, but we constantly look at that synergistic benefit.
Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned a little earlier about the international launch of this system. It really just happened in the last six to eight weeks, I think. Talk about how it's going so far. Where are we in the process? Just a quick update on where we are so far.
Yeah, we officially announced it at our global convention, which was April 24th, I believe. What, three weeks ago, four weeks ago now almost. We followed the same cadence of that launch as we did in the U.S. We had kind of pilot groups who had access to the product for a month to two months. They were on it prior to this official launch so that they could experience the product, create their own testimonies, capture their before and afters, so that in each of the countries, we had that documented. Over the official launch at convention, and over the last few weeks, we've been on roadshows in all of these countries doing training and officially launching.
I just actually got back last night from a trip to Australia, where I was in four different cities and then in Thailand for the launches there. We've had people in Europe launching, in Mexico launching, Japan. We have taken this kind of very broad-based education and launch strategy in each of the countries, similar to what we did in the U.S. I can report the excitement in the markets is really high.
No stockouts.
No stockouts.
That's good to hear. Talk a little bit about the marketing of the product. Is it marketed the same as the MindBody GLP-1 System in the U.S., or are there different formulations and different angles to the marketing depending on the market? Just talk a little bit about the marketing specifically overseas.
Yeah, it is a slightly different formula. The reason we did the side-by-side comparison between the U.S. and our international is because we wanted to see if it was as effective as the U.S. I can say yes. We have now incorporated those findings into our U.S. patent. We have amended the patent in the U.S. We will have two formulas, a U.S. formula, and then all of our other countries will be on one international formula. It is marketed the same because of, I mean, there are slightly different ingredients or levels of ingredients. That is just to conform with country regulations. That is nothing new to LifeVantage or new to the supplement industry. You know, I think most companies, U.S. companies, formulate for the U.S. and then tweak to drive the same level of efficacy, but on a country-by-country basis.
We're really fortunate that we were able to find one formula for all of our markets as opposed to having to have multiple. It is marketed the same. There is a slightly different naming convention. Again, it's regulatory based. In the U.S., we call the system a MindBody GLP-1 system. In most of the international countries, we call it the MB system. Sorry, not MindBody, but MB system. In Thailand, we call it the MB set. All of that little naming is just because of the regulatory requirements in those countries. Yes, we're marketing it the same as the U.S.
On international, I know in the last conference call, you said that you're going to spend significant focus on returning international markets to growth. Obviously, MindBody has driven a sharp acceleration in growth in the America segment. You would think that MindBody would be a key catalyst, hopefully reversing the trends internationally. Maybe talk about besides MindBody being launched overseas, where do you see opportunities for improvement?
Yeah, no, you're right. I think in our last call for our fiscal Q3, U.S. in particular was up significantly. In total, all of our international markets were down. That's not something that really is acceptable. We do believe, I believe that MindBody will be a catalyst in these markets. You could just kind of feel the enthusiasm as I met with consultants as we did these roadshows. I think the other big takeaway as well is we have to think differently as a corporation on how we support these markets. I think for too long, we've tried to push a U.S.-centric approach and tried to make it global. These markets are different. We have recently announced some incentives and promotions that are very, I'd say, localized to the countries.
We're also looking at some organizational changes here in Utah so that we can, again, drive a better focus on those markets and not just try to peanut butter, if you will, U.S. thinking across all of the markets. We have to think much more localized than we've been doing recently.
That makes sense. You mentioned incentives. I think on your call, you also talked about at your global convention last month, some new sales incentives. Can you talk a little bit about what they were and how they're going to motivate your salesforce?
Yeah, yeah. The biggest one really is around a level within our Evolve Compensation Plan. It's a Senior Consultant 1 is the rank. To achieve that rank, you have to do $2,000 of monthly volume. When we designed the Evolve Compensation Plan going back a couple of years now, it's hard to imagine it's been that long, but that was really the focal point of how we felt we would drive significant and sustainable growth is by increasing the number of people that achieve that rank. The incentive that we put in place for our fiscal Q4 was to reward individuals for achieving that rank, as well as rewarding consultants who helped other consultants achieve that rank. Again, very laser-focused, not trying to spread it across a number of different things.
I think what you're going to see is we're going to focus very strategically on those key behaviors that we think will drive the most sustainable growth for us. Increasing the number of SC1s is one of those key milestone ranks.
Okay, we'll stay tuned and see how that plays out. Carl, you know, in the last couple of quarters, I mentioned the accelerated sales growth, which has been very impressive, but operating margins have been under pressure, which sort of seems counterintuitive to me. Can you go over where those pressures are coming from over the last couple of quarters, and how do you expect the margin picture to play out in fiscal 2026?
Yeah, sure. No, I'm happy to walk through that. You're right. If you look back into our fiscal Q2 and fiscal Q3, we definitely saw some elevated expenses in a couple of areas. Really, the primary area where we saw elevated expenses was in that commissions and incentives line, and particularly around elevated incentive costs. We had some pre-existing programs that we had in place. Just due to the massive success of MB, we had some significantly higher levels of qualification associated with those. In particular, we saw that CNI line really spike in fiscal Q2. It was around 48% or so. It did start to normalize a bit here in fiscal Q3. It came down to around 45%. I think here in Q4, it'll settle closer to that 44% or so once it starts to normalize a bit.
When I look forward back out to fiscal 2026, that's where I think on a full year basis, we'll be back below that 44% range. There's going to be at least 100 basis points of pickup in that CNI line as we look forward to subsequent years. I think on the SG&A side, there's also some leverage to be picked up in fiscal 2026 as well. In our fiscal 2025 here, there are some elevated expenses just associated with variable compensation, just associated with the employee's normal bonus plan, etc. Those targets will all be reset when we come out with our fiscal 2026 plan. I think there's up to another maybe 50 basis points or so of leverage to be picked up on the SG&A side.
As I look forward to FY26, obviously, we haven't come out with our guidance ranges here, but I'm optimistic that we'll continue to see improvement in overall EBITDA margins from where we are this year to going forward into FY26.
No, that makes sense. And then just briefly on gross margins, am I right that the MindBody system is a higher gross margin than average?
It is.
We should see a favorable mix shift there as well.
Yeah, yeah. Overall, yeah. MindBody overall is slightly accretive. As you know, our normal gross margins are right around 80%. MindBody is definitely accretive, slightly accretive to that overall margin ratio. You saw in our most recent Q3, we were closer. We were getting close to 81%. Definitely, as MindBody becomes a bigger proportion of our revenue, there will definitely see an accretive impact there.
That all sounds favorable. What about the impact from tariffs? We talked about the tariff impact to your margin structure next year. What about the margins in general?
Yeah, yeah. Obviously, as you know, I mean, it's a very fluid situation, right? It seems to be changing daily. The good news for us is as we have very high gross margins, and the product input cost is even a smaller percentage that goes in there. We're not going to be materially impacted. We were also able to pull forward, as we were building up safety stock of both Protandim and our MindBody GLP-1 System that has some ingredients that are sourced overseas. We've been able to build up a pretty good length of safety stock there. I think the impact in FY 2026 isn't significant. If things stay where they are, we could see a 50 basis point impact of gross margin deterioration if things kind of stay where they are currently.
I'm optimistic that it's not going to be an overly material impact to us going forward.
It is a fluid situation, as you mentioned. We'll stay tuned on that front as well. Let's talk about your balance sheet and cash flow for a second. You finished the March quarter with $22.5 million in cash. You have no debt, typically convert 100% or more of net income into free cash flow. What's the outlook for your capital allocation strategy in the next year or so?
Yeah, so we continually evaluate our capital allocation policy. As you mentioned, we're starting to build very healthy levels of cash. We anticipate to continue to generate 100% or more of our net income into free cash flow going forward. There are a couple of areas internally that we feel like we need to invest in the business. IT-related is improving our e-commerce platform. I think we've talked a little bit about that in a couple of the previous calls. That's certainly an area of when I think about internal investment that we'd be looking at on the IT front. Also, to the extent that we do not have the need internally, we just recently announced just with our earnings release last week, we did increase our regular quarterly dividend. We increased it again by about 12.5%.
This is the third year in a row that we've increased that quarterly dividend. Also, I think we still, I think that we may, based off of where the stock is currently trading today, I think we could be a little bit more active from a share repurchase front. We still have about $19 million remaining under our current authorization. I do think share repurchases are something that's more attractive to us now based in comparison to maybe where we were two or three months ago. Finally, we did, as you know, we did pay a special dividend in September of 2023. That also is still an option as we evaluate our overall cap position and what our needs are as we go through and finalize our plan for fiscal 2026.
More to come on that, but definitely an area of we've got a lot of options.
Yeah, no question. I see we're coming up on time here. I think maybe we'll leave it there for today. Steve and Carl, I appreciate you joining us on today's Fireside Chat.
Thanks, Doug.
Yep, thank you, Doug.
Catching up. To learn more about LifeVantage, please visit the investor page on their website, lifevantage.com, or access our research on WTR's website at watertowerresearch.com. Thank you for joining us. Please note that the views expressed in this Fireside Chat may not necessarily reflect the views of Watertower Research and are provided for informational purposes only. This Fireside Chat may not be distributed or reproduced without the written consent of Watertower Research and should not be considered research nor a recommendation. WTR is an investor relations firm, not a licensed broker, broker dealer, market maker, investment bank underwriter, or investment advisor. Additional disclaimers can be found at watertowerresearch.com.