Good morning, and welcome to Somnigroup's 2026 Investor Day. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Lauren Avritt, Director of Investor Relations. It's our pleasure to host you both in person and virtually. Before we get started, I would like to note that this presentation includes forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve uncertainties, and actual results may differ due to a variety of factors that could adversely affect the company's business. These factors are discussed in the company's SEC filings, including its annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. This morning's commentary will also include non-GAAP financial information.
Reconciliations of this non-GAAP financial information can be found in the appendix to the presentation, which will be posted to the company's website at www.somnigroup.com. We'll begin this morning with remarks from our chairman and CEO, Scott Thompson, but first, we'd like to share a brief video. With that, please welcome Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Scott Thompson.
Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us today, whether you're here in New York or joining us remotely. My name is Scott Thompson. I'm Chairman, President, and CEO of Somnigroup International, SGI on the New York Stock Exchange. Hopefully, you're in the right room. For those of you who do not know me, I've been with the company as CEO for over 10 years and have had the privilege of leading the organization through industry cycles, business expansion, innovative product launches, and significant acquisitions, including the most recent one, our transformational combination with Mattress Firm and reorganization as Somnigroup International, which today is the largest, most profitable bedding company in the world. Let me quickly walk you through what we have planned for you today. First, I will share a strategic overview of Somnigroup's vision, performance, and our priorities for the coming years.
Cliff Buster, CEO of Tempur Sealy International , will provide insights into Somnigroup's leading brands, products, portfolio, operational excellence, and diverse omnichannel strategy. Hansbert Weinacht, Executive Vice President International, Tempur Sealy, will discuss our unique global platform and international growth strategy. Steve Rusing , CEO of Mattress Firm, our U.S.-based retailer, will provide an update on Mattress Firm's integration, retail strategy, and customer experience initiatives. We'll take a short break. After the break, Tom Murray, our Chief Marketing Officer, will present our approach to brand building, our new powerful marketing strategy for Mattress Firm and Somnigroup. Jonathan Hertz, CEO of Dreams, will join us via video to provide an overview of our market-leading retailer in the U.K. market. Bhaskar Rao, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our recent financial performance, capital allocation priorities, and long-term targets. We'll conclude with a Q&A session.
With that, let's begin. Why invest in Somnigroup? What makes the company different, and why now? First, global scale and vertical integration. We're the world's largest bedding company. We have leading end-to-end capabilities across the globe, from design and manufacturing all the way through to retail. That vertical integration is unique in this industry, and it creates advantages that are extremely hard to replicate. It allows us to move faster, operate more efficiently, and capture more of the value chain than anyone else. Our integrated model also gives us the agility to adapt quickly to change in demand, input cost, or consumer trends. Second, omnichannel reach and iconic brands. We have a portfolio of the most trusted brands in bedding: Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Stearns & Foster, Mattress Firm, Dreams, and others.
We've built a unique platform that allows us to reach customers wherever they choose to shop, online or in over 2,800 company-owned stores globally, or through a robust network of wholesale partners. Omnichannel distribution is powerful engine for growth and provides resilience. Third, relentless innovation driven by consumer insights. We invest more in R&D and marketing than any other player in the industry. That fuels a pipeline of differentiated products and services supported by high-impact advertising that drives widespread awareness and adoption. Because we now own and operate extensive retail platforms, we have access to real-time consumer insights that uniquely positions us to anticipate and shape demand. Consumers are increasingly focused on sleep as central to health and wellness, which supports higher ASP. Somnigroup is at the forefront of that trend. Fourth, operational excellence and operating leverage.
Our scale unlocks industry-leading efficiencies in sourcing, logistics, and supply chain. Additionally, we have significant structural advantages as the industry recovers. This translates to incremental sales into oversized profits and cash flow growth. That is a powerful operating leverage in a business like ours that has low capital requirements as sales grow. Fifth, resilient cash generation and disciplined capital allocation. Even though industry troughs, and we've been in one for the last few years, Somnigroup is very profitable and is generating robust cash flow. That cash flow supports reinvestment and growth and a clear commitment to return capital to shareholders. We have strong balance sheet and significant financial flexibility, which in our industry is a significant competitive advantage. Six, connected, proven leadership. This is actually my favorite point. We have a seasoned management team with a track record of execution and growth across all of our business units.
This is a team that knows how to win. We operate with strong alignment, constructively challenging one another while maintaining a disciplined, collaborative approach that drives consistent performance. Every member of our senior team has a material amount of their net worth in SGI stock. We and the board are aligned with your success. Seventh, we are poised to experience an industry recovery. The global bedding market is a $120 billion industry. It's structurally sound and is poised to rebound. We are uniquely positioned not only to benefit from that recovery, but to drive it, to capture share, to deliver success for our customers, our partners, and our shareholders. Let me be clear.
The actions we have taken over the past several years, culminating in the transformational Mattress Firm acquisition just over a year ago, have set the stage for Somnigroup to continue to capture market share, drive growth, and deliver success. The best is yet to come. A little background. With the acquisition of Mattress Firm, we renamed the company from Tempur Sealy International to Somnigroup International to better reflect our position as a global provider of sleep solution with an integrated omnichannel strategy. We also refined our corporate structure to ensure that we can operate with optimal efficiency and effectiveness with Somnigroup as the parent company and Tempur Sealy, Mattress Firm, and Dreams as our operating business units. At the Somnigroup level, we focus on high-level strategic direction, corporate governance, and capital allocation.
That is where I spend most of my time, along with Bhaskar and other corporate timber members. Our three business units operate in a decentralized manner. Each is led by a dedicated CEO who is responsible for tactical go-to-market decisions, operational excellence, and delivering the best outcome for our customers. This structure allows us to move quickly, stay close to the customer, and leverage the unique strengths of each business unit while capturing the benefits of our combined scale and vertical integration at the parent company level. Let me put some numbers around the business. Tempur Sealy is the leading global bedding manufacturer. It's present in 100 markets. It has over 70 production facility and over 425 retail stores.
We offer complement portfolio of iconic brands, Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Stearns & Foster, private label, and OEM products that span the full range of customer price points and preferences. Mattress Firm is the leading mattress specialty retailer in the United States. It operates 2,100 stores across 45 US states, supported by over 5,400 highly trained sleep experts. Mattress Firm retails all of the leading bedding brands in the industry, including Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Stearns & Foster, Kingsdown, Sleepy's, Beautyrest, Serta, Simmons, Purple, Nectar, and more. It is truly a multi-branded strategy. Dreams is the leading multi-branded bedding retailer in the UK, with over 225 brick-and-mortar stores, a robust e-commerce platform, and a vertically integrated private label manufacturing operation. In 2025, Somnigroup's totally generated $7.7 billion in sales and $1.3 billion in Adjusted EBITDA.
We operated over 2,800 store locations and have approximately 20,000 talented associates around the world. When you look at our sales mix, you can see the balanced contribution across Tempur Sealy North America, Tempur Sealy International, which includes Dreams and Mattress Firm. This is a global, diversified, scaled platform, that platform is what enables us to execute on the investment thesis I just laid out. As part of forming Somnigroup, we ensure that we have the right management team to lead the company in each of the business units. I'm enormously proud of the deep depth and quality of our leadership team at Somnigroup level, as well as at Tempur Sealy, Dreams, and Mattress Firm. What you see on this slide is an industry-leading management team with decades of combined experience across manufacturing, retail, operations, marketing, technology, and finance.
We have leaders who have built businesses, turned around businesses, integrated acquisitions, and delivered results through multiple business cycle. You'll hear from some of the management team members later today. The depth of our team's expertise is a significant competitive advantage in a dynamic industry. Let me take a moment and talk about why we do what we do. Following our transformational acquisition of Mattress Firm, we broadened our mission and vision to encapsulate the full scope of our operations and our opportunity ahead. We're not just a manufacturer anymore. We're a fully integrated sleep solution company. Our mission is to transform how the world sleeps. That's a big statement, but it's what gets us up at night and the morning.
Sleep is fundamental to health and wellness and quality of life. We believe we have the responsibility to make better sleep accessible to more people across all price points, lifestyles, and markets. Over the last decade, we have sold over $300 million sleep products to help improve health and well-being of people worldwide. That's a real impact. It is a testament to the quality of our products, the strength of our brands, and the dedication of our teams. Our vision is to be every customer's choice for better sleep. We'll work to earn that position through relentless innovation, exceptional service, and deep expertise. Let me show you a couple of data points that illustrate where we are today and why we believe we are at a unique inflection point for Somnigroup and our shareholders. I'll not sugarcoat it.
As you can see from the graph on the left, the U.S. bedding industry has been in a prolonged downturn since 2021. U.S.-produced mattress units declined about 30% from the peak in 2021 to where they are today. Volumes currently sit below 20-year trough levels. Here is what's important. This is a structurally intact $120 billion global industry with a long track record of stable growth. When I look at that data, a few things stand out to me. The 10-year average for U.S.-produced units is well above current production levels. In fact, U.S.-produced units per capita have declined significantly, suggesting consumers have been underserved for several years and a recovery is overdue. When I think about the industry recovery, advertising is a key driver, and we are going to be a player, play a significant role.
Part of the thinking behind our Mattress Firm acquisition was to change and align our advertising messaging to drive the category, awareness, and demand, put more customers into the purchase funnel, and engage consumers throughout the buying journey. We're investing in advertising at record levels, and we're encouraging our suppliers and retail partners to do the same. In the graph on the right, you can see how industry players have shifted their advertising spend over the last few several years. They've been heavily shifted towards low-funnel conversion-driven digital advertising and away from upper-funnel brand and awareness advertising. That's compounds the awareness issue when overall spending is also down. This is one of the things we are addressing head-on with our new powerful marketing strategy. Tom Murray will talk about that later.
The short version of it is we're investing in upper-funnel brand-building advertising to drive category interest and traffic, not just for us, but for the industry. Even in a challenging environment, we have managed to generate significant cash flow. This means that when the industry rebounds, we will be in an even stronger financial position, able to invest in more growth, capture more market share, accelerate success for our stakeholders. Our resilience through the downturn positions us to capitalize fully on the upswing. To build on that last point, let's talk about how a rebound in the bedding industry provides Somnigroup with significant opportunities. I know that's top of mind for many of you. In this graph, you can see the 2025 consumption volume was about 11.4 million units below long-term trend line.
That is a big gap. It represents both a near-term challenge and a multi-year long-term opportunity. We are operating in a depressed market. The opportunity is that when the market normalizes, there is a lot of upside. As I mentioned a minute ago, we're confident that the current volume levels are cyclical, not structural, and we believe that the market is poised to normalize and, at a minimum, return to its historical growth trends in the near term. This industry confidence is supported by aging population, health and wellness trends, increased upper-funnel advertising, consumer confidence, pent-up demand, future growth in housing formation. The question is not if the industry will recover, but who will be positioned to succeed when it does. We believe the answer is Somnigroup. While the market is depressed, we're not retrenching. We're investing. We're building brand equity. We're strengthening our infrastructure.
We're positioning ourselves for success when the recovery comes. I should also note that on a relative basis during this cycle, we've seen the premier customer demonstrate more resilience compared to the value customer. This is a continuation of a long-term premiization trend that we've observed in the industry over the last two decades. The vast majority of industry profits are associated with these premium customers. We believe this long-term trend will continue, and we are uniquely positioned to continue to capitalize on it. As I just mentioned, we are confident that Somnigroup is uniquely positioned to continue to lead the bedding industry, both in North America and globally. Why do we believe that?
To start, we're the only company in the industry with global leadership across the entire value chain, with key advantages across product, brand, channel, ensuring that we are the customer where customers want to shop with differentiated product they want. Starting with product. We have the best technology in the industry. We invest significantly in R&D and have a regular cadence of new product launches driven by consumer insights. We have iconic brands across product and retail brands in all key markets. Think about Tempur-Pedic, Mattress Firm. They're clearly category leaders and have deep brand awareness, which is difficult to replicate. On top of that, we have the leading share of U.S. industry marketing spend, ensuring continued awareness of brand and store concepts.
In our robust owned channels, we have national retail coverage through Mattress Firm in the US, Dreams in the UK, as well as Tempur Sealy-owned stores around the world. We have leading omnichannel presence online, offline, providing seamless integration across the customer journey. A key piece of Somnigroup's story is how it all fits together under our vertical integration strategy. From design to retail, we leverage each stage to create customer value, drive operating efficiency, improve product performance, and enhance returns. Stage one is innovation. We have four industry-leading lab sites and more than 110,000 sq ft of dedicated R&D space. This is where we develop next generation of sleep technology, things like cooling, pressure relief, and smart bases. Stage two is production. We have over 70 strategically located plants globally, supported by a resilient supply chain.
For instance, we manufacture the vast majority of our products we sell in the U.S. right here in the United States. That gives us control, quality, speed, and insulates us from some of the tariff headwinds others are facing. Marketing, stage 3, we have the largest marketing budget in U.S. bedding, over $700 million in ad-average in advertising spend in 2025, and continue to increase our global marketing spend to support strategic international launches. That is a competitive weapon. It gives us the ability to drive awareness, traffic, and conversion in a way that no one else can. Stage 4, wholesale distribution. We serve over 20,000 retail partners globally. They're valuable, they're long-term relationships, and they remain a core part of our go-to-market strategy. Finally, stage 5, DTC retail and e-commerce. We operate more than 2,800 retail stores globally and 40 e-commerce platforms.
That gives us leading omni-channel presence. This is where we control the final mile customer experience and where we capture the real-time consumer insights that inform everything upstream. The Mattress Firm acquisition solidified our position at this stage of the value chain, making us an even stronger end-to-end player in the industry. This end-to-end integration is unique in the industry, it is a sustainable competitive advantage. The strengths I've just discussed create a powerful flywheel that benefits everyone, our shareholders, consumers, and partners. At our core, for over a century and a half, our leading products and iconic brands, differentiated innovation that consumers trust. Now we have optimized our omni-channel distribution, ensuring we are everywhere the customer wants to shop. That distribution is powered by the strongest share of voice in the industry, which drives traffic and conversion.
As we grow, we increase our scale across the value chain. That scale drives operational leverage, which improves margins and cash flow. That cash flow allows us to reinvest in our operations, better products, better stores, better marketing. We're also committed to returning cash to shareholders and maintaining our financial flexibility and strategic optionality for value-creating M&A. The flywheel will keep spinning. Growth drives scale drives efficiency drives cash flow, cash flow supports reinvestment and returns. It's an endless cycle that benefits everyone in our ecosystem. Now let me talk about our financial ambitions.
As we mentioned in our most recent earning call on February 17th, Bhaskar Rao will talk about it a little bit later today, we've updated and increased our financial targets through 2028, reflecting both the strength of our platform and the accelerated momentum we are seeing across the business. For 2028, we are now targeting EPS of $5.15, representing a 24% compound annual growth rate from 2025, mid-single-digit annual sales growth, and mid-teen annual Adjusted EBITDA growth. These targets are driven by a few key assumptions, industry normalization, return to growth, continued market share gains across all of our business units, margin expansion from operational excellence and leverage, and full realization of our synergies from the Mattress Firm acquisition.
We're looking forward to providing additional color on our 3-year target this morning, including segment-level color from our business unit leaders. To provide additional color on our global Tempur Sealy business, I will turn it over to Cliff Buster , CEO of Somnigroup International, who will provide insights into Tempur Sealy's leading portfolio of innovative products and brands, operational excellence, and diversified omnichannel strategy.
Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. I'm Cliff Buster , Chief Executive Officer of Tempur Sealy International. I joined the company over eight years ago and most recently served as the Chief Executive Officer of North America before assuming the role for global Tempur Sealy International in 2025. Prior to Tempur Sealy, I held executive positions at Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group and Group 1 Automotive. My experience working at consumer discretionary companies has shaped my leadership approach at Tempur Sealy, which is laser-focused on anticipating and meeting evolving consumer preferences, driving operational excellence, and expanding into incremental addressable markets both domestically and globally. Today, I'm excited to talk about how we are building on Tempur Sealy's competitive advantages to further strengthen our position as the world's largest bedding manufacturer and to advance Somnigroup's strategy to drive profitable growth, margin expansion, and success for shareholders.
Hansbart Wijnand, our EVP of International, will walk you through our Tempur International business and growth opportunities later this morning. My presentation will mostly focus on our North American business. Before we dive in, let me provide a quick overview of Tempur Sealy International. As most of you know, we're a global bedding manufacturer and manage a portfolio of iconic brands including Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Stearns & Foster, and private label and OEM products that span the full range of consumer price points and preferences. We maintain a broad distribution and manufacturing footprint across both North America and our international markets, supported by wholesale and direct-to-consumer channels and a wide range of product families. Our products are sold in over 100 markets globally, where our distribution includes more than 425 standalone retail locations and representation through 20,000 third-party retail doors.
With over 70 production and distribution facilities around the world, we have global scale that is unrivaled by our competition. In our international markets, we operate a wholly owned Tempur business as well as a 50/50 joint venture for our Sealy operations, which is not consolidated into our reported financial results. Our broad geographic footprint, omnichannel approach, and diversified product strategy create resilient sales streams that enable us to consistently deliver strong results even in challenging macroeconomic environments. As an example, in 2025, Tempur Sealy' s reporting segments, which include Dreams, achieved global sales of $4.9 billion on a standalone basis and approximately $1 billion of Adjusted EBITDA. I wanna turn to our competitive advantages for a moment. Our competitive position is built on four structural advantages. First of those is consumer-centric innovation.
Our proprietary materials and real-world sleep solutions informed by consumer insights create competitive advantages, elevating industry innovation, driving share gains, and supporting premium pricing and margin. Second, our comprehensive brand and product portfolio. Our brand spans super premium to value tiers with differentiated features for every consumer segment. Additionally, our industry-leading brand portfolio delivers pricing power, retail preference, and outsized consumer consideration that Tom will discuss further in his presentation. Third, advanced manufacturing capabilities. Our global vertically integrated manufacturing platform delivers quality, flexibility, and cost efficiencies, the latter of which supports our ability to reinvest in our capabilities and our products. Fourth, our omnichannel strategy and diverse sales streams. We reach consumers wherever they want to shop across 100 markets worldwide and multiple channels. This not only broadens our addressable market, but also reduces earnings volatility and supports consistent growth.
Over the next few slides, I will walk you through our competitive advantages in greater detail to give you a clear view of why Tempur Sealy is the leading bedding manufacturer in North America and a leader globally. It starts with the consumer. We're a consumer-centric company, which means that anticipating and addressing our customers' specific sleep needs is at the core of everything that we do. Our product development is rooted in deep consumer insights using qualitative research to identify what drives consumer purchase decisions. What is important to the consumer and what will help them achieve their best night's sleep is at the heart of this research and guides our development priorities. This allows us to deliver targeted solutions, whether it's pain relief, sleep climate, or sleep coaching.
These value-added features address real consumer sleep needs, differentiate our brands and products from the competition, and support our premium pricing. As a result, our Sealy and Tempur-Pedic brands are the number one and number two selling brands in the United States based on their ability to deliver features and benefits that meet a wide array of consumer sleep needs while simultaneously delivering higher ASP for our retailers. In terms of our research, we further utilize our consumer research to strengthen our retailer relationships. By educating retailers on consumer sleep needs as well as the customer purchase journey, we can help them optimize their merchandising, advertising, and the in-store experience to drive top-line sales. Let's talk about innovation for a minute.
We are the industry leader in innovative sleep solutions, investing over $30 million annually in research and development, led by a dedicated team of 75 employees across four R&D facilities worldwide. Through these efforts, we deliver what we call purpose-driven products that are designed to directly address consumer sleep needs. Things like TEMPUR-Breeze and TEMPUR-ActiveBreeze for climate, IntelliCoil and PrecisionFit Coils in our Stearns & Foster and Sealy products to deliver superior personalized comfort, and our ProSmart bases to enhance rest and relaxation. These advanced features and products create a discernible difference for the retailer and for the consumer, fueling a favorable product mix and a higher ASP at retail. While the industry's had a challenging last four years, our focus on premium products and features has driven continued growth and share, as well as stability in sales as consumers focus on improved health and wellness through quality sleep.
Our innovation efforts and products have been widely recognized. As an example, we were recently honored to receive the 2025 Product Development and Management Association's Corporate Innovator Award, which was a true testament to the innovative efforts that go into our products to deliver long-term value to the consumer. On the product side, we've received numerous awards, including the J.D. Power Award for Tempur-Pedic for five out of six years from 2019 - 2024, as well as the best mattress in the online category for four consecutive years from 2021 through 2024. On the Sealy side, Sealy has been recognized by BrandSpark as the most trusted brand by American shoppers in the mattress category, and also recently received the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for our Sealy Posturepedic line.
Finally, Tempur Sealy was named one of Newsweek's most trustworthy companies in the consumer products category. This recognition speaks to the quality, innovation, and value of our brands and provides an added benefit in the form of additional brand impressions and customer awareness. One last point I'd like to make on innovation. In 2025, we made an investment in and entered into a long-term licensing agreement with Fullpower-AI, a technology company we have partnered with and invested in for over eight years previously. Our joint focus is on expanding our proprietary sleep technology platform that integrates with our smart adjustable bases. This platform provides its advanced sleep tracking capabilities and industry first in automated snoring response, acoustic massage, and relaxation features, all of which enhance the customer experience and improve sleep quality.
In summary, our scale and integration with Somnigroup allows us to sustain industry-leading R&D investment, fueling a pipeline of differentiated products and supporting our long-term growth. I want to turn to research for a minute and how we use that to identify what products we bring to market and which brands. Through our research, we've identified six key need states that influence mattress purchases: performance, wellness, luxury, indulgence, reliability, and value. To the left, you can see examples of what the consumer references on these specific points. As shown on the graphic on the right, our diversified brand and product portfolio spans all need states at all price points, from our value-oriented Sherwood private label brand to our performance and wellness-focused Tempur-Pedic brand.
Irrespective of the purchase decision driver, our differentiated, innovative, and aesthetically appealing products have been designed to meet the needs of virtually every consumer, which increases our opportunities to win on the retail sales floor. One additional point I'd like to make on this slide is that our research found that only 50% of respondents selected price when asked what broad product attributes are important to you when thinking about buying a mattress. We believe this underscores the importance of innovation and delivering features and benefits that address specific consumer sleep needs as the consumer continues to understand the connection between a good night's sleep and overall health and wellness.
In addition to the consumer need states, our research also allows us to identify the target customer for each brand based on what is important to them, not only from a functional standpoint, but also an emotional need standpoint. This customer segmentation allows us to tailor product features to maximize appeal and conversion, supporting both higher balance of share and increased selling prices at retail. Additionally, it allows us to develop targeted advertising relevant to the primary consumer, facilitating a more effective and efficient marketing investment. The segmentation also provides valuable insights for our retailers that they can consider in merchandising their retail floors and in their own advertising plans.
Now to give you all a clear view of how research, innovation, product development, and customer focus come together at Tempur Sealy, I'd like to walk through a case study, the 2025 launch of our Sealy Posturepedic line. This launch was the largest launch in our company history and was intended to reposition the brand to capture share and grow our addressable market. It included new differentiated innerspring technology and a completely revamped product portfolio of four specific brand families from Posturepedic to Posturepedic Elite. Supported by a new national advertising campaign targeting a specific customer segment, the launch was a success, clearly demonstrating the features and benefits of the products. To put that in perspective, we shipped over 65,000 floor models and realized year-over-year growth in volume, combined with an increase in average selling prices from a higher merchandising mix at retail.
In addition to the ad campaign that we launched, our retailers leaned into that ad campaign, resulting in an almost 50% increase in Sealy's share of voice in 2025, which heightened our overall brand awareness in the marketplace. I'm gonna shift gears a minute now. We're gonna talk about manufacturing. Our focus on our products and our innovation would not be successful without the backbone of our business, our vertically integrated global manufacturing and logistics operations. With more than 70 manufacturing facilities around the world, whether they're wholly owned, joint ventured or licensed, we manage every critical step from raw material sourcing to component production to final assembly, warehousing and delivery. This structure supports flexibility and efficient scalability, it drives margin improvement, and it ensures that we can deliver quality products to our consumers on time and in full.
All of these things are critical to driving sustainable growth with our retailers. I wanna expand on our manufacturing capabilities a little bit for a moment. First, we operate 4 global Tempur-Pedic foam pouring and mattress manufacturing facilities, giving us extensive capacity and the ability to produce everything from commodity-based foam to our proprietary, highly specialized Tempur material. Additionally, we have a standalone latex pouring facility that produces material not only for our own use, but as well as for third parties. We also have a specialty foam pouring facility dedicated to pillow manufacturing and compressed product assembly. On the traditional innerspring mattress side of the business, we maintain a network of 20 Sealy assembly factories in North America, in addition to two fabrication facilities for compressed product assembly.
Within our Sherwood subsidiary, Sealy Mexico and our Sealy Asia joint venture, we manufacture the springs that go into our mattresses. This has proven to deliver meaningful cost productivity and inventory efficiencies within the operations, as well as provide a platform for future expansion. These diverse capabilities and expertise allow us to expand into adjacencies such as OEM products, meaning we produce products for other brands such as Purple. This gives us visibility to categories where we may not otherwise choose to participate while driving our fixed cost leverage in our manufacturing facilities as well as top-line sales. These operations are supported by our global sourcing team, which is focused on ensuring continuity and diversity across a complex and often evolving supply chain, while also leveraging our substantial purchasing scale to drive cost efficiencies globally.
Finally, our logistics and delivery capabilities leverage both in-house and external resources to optimize service and efficiencies to retailers as well as end consumers. In short, our manufacturing platform is not only unmatched in scale, but also in flexibility and our expertise. This operational backbone supports our ability to innovate, to adapt and grow while delivering strong margin performance and cash flow. Turning from manufacturing to distribution, let's talk about our omnichannel. How we reach the consumer is critically important, and that purchasing landscape changed dramatically over the last decade with an expanding number and type of retail channels. As the consumer evolved, we have as well, investing in our own stores, e-commerce channels, expanding into non-traditional retail channels like big box retailers and online marketplaces, and continuing to grow in more traditional specialty bedding, furniture and department store retails globally.
Today, Tempur Sealy has the leading omnichannel distribution model in the industry, ensuring we reach consumers with the product they need wherever they shop, whenever they shop. I wanna spend a few minutes on our traditional brick-and-mortar wholesale channel, which is our largest distribution channel in North America. We serve a vast network of third-party retail partners ranging from national chains to regional independents with 20,000 retail doors on a global basis. What truly sets us apart with retailers is our partnership approach. That obviously starts with our comprehensive product lineup, which makes us a one-stop solution for retailers aiming to meet diverse consumer needs. Our scalable manufacturing capabilities, combined with a nationwide logistics and distribution footprint, ensure reliable, on-time delivery and service, which is critical for retailer satisfaction and long-term retailer loyalty.
Beyond that, we deploy a partnership model, and we provide value-added services that differentiate us from our competition, creating mutually beneficial, cohesive relationships with our retailers. Starts with our sales team, our ground game, as we call it, who focus on building brand advocacy by educating the retailers on our differentiated products, features and benefits, and consulting on merchandising mix. Further, the sales team supports the retailer with training, not just on products, but also on the customer purchase journey with a focus on driving conversion and sales growth.
Our collaborative marketing programs and dedicated customer marketing teams provide consumer research, marketing insights, best practices, as well as marketing tools and co-branded assets designed to help our retail partners drive traffic and sales, boosting their business as well as ours. Our ground game also includes sales analytics support with tools and capabilities designed to provide value-added insights about the demographics, the opportunities, and the competitive landscape in the retailer-specific market. These tools can also aid the retailer in identifying opportunities to optimize performance to improve product mix, increase average ticket, and drive incremental sales. Our ability to support retailers at scale is a distinct competitive advantage, delivering value-added offerings unmatched by our competition. We believe this unique asset strengthens relationship, expands distribution, and drives shared profitability. Speaking of brick-and-mortar retailers, I'd like to highlight the benefits of our relationship with our largest retailer and our sister company, Mattress Firm.
The acquisition of Mattress Firm has already unlocked significant value for Tempur Sealy. We've expanded our balance of share at Mattress Firm, which has fueled sales growth and profitability even in a challenging market. This increased sales volume in turn drives increased manufacturing throughput, which improves our fixed cost leverage. In addition, we're able to better coordinate efforts on inventory levels and order timing, enhancing our operational productivity and efficiency, and allowing us to level load production during peak periods, improving our overall service level and also, as a byproduct and a huge benefit, allowing us to reduce turnover. From a product perspective, Mattress Firm's retail expertise and first-hand consumer insights will help inform future product development activities, while secured distribution at the largest retail in the country will enhance our ability to bring products to market, whether on a test basis or for broader rollout.
On the operations front, our teams have worked together to identify and realize synergies in numerous areas, including sourcing, warehousing, logistics, and home delivery, just to name a few. To use home delivery as an example, Tempur Sealy will leverage Mattress Firm's home delivery network rather than relying on external third parties for our home deliveries for our DTC and TRS stores. As a result, we'll realize substantial cost savings while also improving the customer experience during the final mile of the de-delivery. The reason for that, Mattress Firm's dedicated team of home delivery specialists whose expertise is the delivery and setup of mattresses and adjustable bases. They've already driven significant improvement in our Net Promoter Score in a very short period of time.
Lastly, with the oversight of Somnigroup's Chief Marketing Officer, Tom Murray, we're able to better coordinate our advertising with Mattress Firm, focusing on quality upper funnel activity that will drive retail activity across the industry. You'll hear more on that from Tom in just a bit. Complementing our wholesale business are our direct channels and our alternative channels. These are powerful contributors to Sealy's growth and profitability. The direct side of the business, consisting of the owned stores and e-commerce sites, is highly profitable. It captures both the retail and the wholesale profit components of each sale. These channels allow us to directly engage with consumers that prefer to buy directly from the manufacturer while allowing us to deliver a controlled, informative, and quality purchasing experience.
Our Tempur retail stores are strategically positioned in non-traditional locations that allow us to leverage favorable customer demographics while taking advantage of our national advertising as well as traffic from complementary retailers, thus requiring no incremental advertising to drive traffic to the stores. These stores showcase our products exclusively in a luxury store environment focused on outstanding service and product education in a low-pressure sales environment. Our e-commerce platforms provide best-in-class product education and a seamless transaction. Unlike multi-brand retailers, our sites are tailored exclusively to our products, providing a depth of information and product assortment that others just can't. Further, our scale as the largest manufacturer advertiser in the category drives more efficient customer acquisition costs than pure-play DTC competitors.
Turning to our alternative channel, which is part of our wholesale business, we view club stores and online marketplaces as incremental opportunities to capture new customers while also increasing brand impression share. Club stores provide access to captive memberships who purchase both in-store and online. Additionally, as research has shown, a substantial number of consumers begin their product research online, and marketplaces like Amazon drive significant impression share and capture customers who prefer to transact online or who are looking for value-added offerings. What's next for Tempur Sealy? Our top priority is capitalizing on the growth levers that I discussed at the beginning of the presentation. We'll continue to collaborate with the Mattress Firm team to execute on synergy opportunities.
We'll continue to innovate and diversify products across the portfolio to drive balanced contributions across all of our brands. We'll pursue market share growth and channel expansion to reach more consumers and grow our top-line revenues. Lastly, we will maintain a relentless focus on cost efficiency to drive productivity and expand margins, allowing us to continue to fund investment in product innovation and capabilities. In summary, Tempur Sealy is in an outstanding position in the industry and central to Somnigroup's long-term value creation. We are the global leader in bedding with a strategic and operational focus that differentiates us from the competition and fuels our long-term growth. We have iconic brands and industry-leading products supported by the leading industry share of voice in the industry. With our global reach and operational capabilities, we're well-positioned to capitalize on our own growth initiatives as well as an overall industry recovery.
The benefits of the Mattress Firm acquisition only further strengthen our position. With that, thank you for your time. I will now turn it over to Hansbart Wijnand, Tempur Sealy's EVP of our international business, who will share deeper insights into our Tempur International operations and explain why we are all energized by the significant long-term global growth opportunities ahead.
Okay, thank you, Cliff, and hello, everybody. I'm Hansbart Wijnand , and I serve as Executive Vice President International at Tempur Sealy. I joined the company in 2001, and I've held various leadership roles across our international division, including as Vice President, Finance and Operations International, and the President of Europe, Middle East, and Africa, before assuming my current role in 2022. Over more than 2 decades here, I've helped to drive our international growth strategy and our expansion into new markets. Today, I'd like to give you an overview of the competitive advantages and outlook for our international business, and specifically our Tempur business. Our international business is strong and is positioned for continued global growth. The global bedding industry is attractive, here at Tempur is present across all continents.
We are the only true global player in the industry, giving us a unique edge versus our local competitors. That edge is amplified by the fact that we see similar consumer and industry dynamics across all regions, allowing us to capture the key benefits of scale and representing significant competitive advantages and a long-term growth opportunity. We have a clear growth strategy in the international markets focused on targeting consumers at a wide range of price points and with a broad product selection to expand our total addressable market and increase our overall market share, which is currently below what we enjoy here in the U.S. Quick overview of the international business before going into our competitive advantages and our strategy in more detail.
As Scott mentioned, Tempur Sealy is the leading global manufacturer in North America, but we're also the only true global player in the industry. Our global scale, omnichannel reach, and strong continued innovation all position us for continued industry leadership in the international markets, which we estimate make up roughly 60% of the global bedding industry. Since we introduced the world's first-ever viscoelastic mattress in Sweden in 1991, we've continued to expand and evolve globally. Today, we're present with Tempur in more than 90 markets, and we have at least 30 years experience in all of them. In 22 of those markets, we sell through our wholly owned subsidiaries, signified with the lighter color on the map, and the rest of the markets are served via longstanding partnerships with third-party distributors, which is the darker color.
In our own markets and in most of the distributors' markets, we're present in all sales channels just like here, ensuring that we can meet consumers wherever they shop. We sell wholesale via furniture and bedding retailers and online platforms, and we sell direct via our own Tempur stores and our e-commerce sites. A key factor in our global market success remains our unmatched scale with our products available all over the world and with our key markets being the U.K., Germany, and France in Europe, and South Korea, Japan, China, and Australia in Asia Pacific. Notably, our competitive position in the U.K. has been enhanced in recent years following our acquisition of Dreams, the U.K. number one bedding retailer in 2021. We work closely together in the U.K. to drive mutual success and support improved consumer outcomes.
You'll hear more about the Dreams business a little bit later from Jonathan, the CEO. Okay. There are 3 key competitive advantages that set us apart from our international competition. First are our iconic Tempur brand and materials. They have made us the global leader in super premium bedding, a position we drive forward through continuous innovation. Second, our scale and financial strength that allow for a focused strategy and consistent execution, and at times, valuable patience. As the industry has faced a challenging landscape over the last few years, we have maintained a steady leadership presence, we've grown our distribution and our sales across all our regions, and we are uniquely positioned as the industry recovers to expand our sales and market share.
Third, our robust supply chain and omnichannel capabilities, which enable us to be a trusted partner for our retailers and give exceptional support throughout the customer journey. Let me talk about those first two key advantages and walk through how the similarities in global demand, combined with our scale, directly support the consistency and the strategy and execution. First, when we look at international markets, the fundamentals are very consistent. In all our regions, we see consistent consumer demand for the same value proposition and technologies, such as spring, foam, and hybrid in luxury, premium, and mainstream segments. This puts Tempur in a unique position to capture demand, leveraging our Tempur brand recognition and differentiated materials. We are the leader in the super premium market segment in the vast majority of the markets that we serve, with a significant runway for further market expansion.
In addition, although every market has some unique characteristics, we find that the margin structures and the requirements of the various players are similar across markets as well. This alignment allows us to run an integrated, efficient operating model, meaning we don't need to completely come up with a new playbook for each individual geography, and we can focus our energy on doing the core things well across all of our markets. Second, our footprint is broad enough that we're not dependent on the cycle on any individual market. Some regions may slow at times, and others will accelerate, but our diversification provides balance, which gives us the ability to make decisions with a long-term view. You know, time and time again, we see local market cycles and dislocations having an impact on local-only players.
In these situations, often without financial reserves, they resort to ad hoc actions like lowering prices or rushed product introductions. We are not forced into reactive moves based on what's happening in any given market in any given quarter. We are the only bedding company with true global scale and financial strength, and that combination is rare in our industry, and it puts us in a fundamentally different position than the local operators. It allows us to invest ahead of the industry and maintain resilience through cycles, all while consistently executing on our strategy regardless of the local market conditions. The bottom line is consumers across the world want to buy Tempur, and retailers love selling it just like they do here in the U.S., and that gives us a global advantage.
When we say our scale and strength enable focus and consistency, then this is what we mean, an integrated model, a balanced global presence, and an unmatched resilience and competitive position. Turning to our third key competitive advantage, our supply chain and omnichannel distribution capabilities. We have our central Tempur manufacturing in Denmark, and this facility serves as the principal product development, production, and distribution hub for the total international business. Its central location gives us efficient access to the majority of our key markets, enabling a streamlined and cost-effective supply chain as we ship finished goods to our own subsidiaries and our third-party partners worldwide. For select markets and products where it enhances the efficiency, we have now supplemented this model with local assembly, allowing us to meet the demand more effectively while maintaining the quality and the consistency of our products worldwide.
We work with double and often triple-sourced raw materials through long-standing industry relationships, and this is a true competitive advantage, especially as global supply chains and the disruptions become more common. For example, during COVID and other more recent global disruptions, we were one of the only manufacturers worldwide that kept our production running and distribution throughout. This enabled us at the time to gain incremental market share and deep customer loyalty across the world. Our Denmark-based compliance team has 30 years' experience across 90 markets, which is key in helping us navigating the increasing demands from regional and local regulatory bodies, as well as retailers and consumers all over the world.
Because we invested significantly in wholesale and direct online platforms over several years, we were ahead of the curve when it came to developing our omnichannel distribution capabilities in our industry. We offer both offline and online purchase options in the vast majorities of those 90 markets that we operate in, which allows us to get ahead of major shifts in global consumer shopping behavior. Building on those key advantages in 2023, we shifted our international strategy to expand our total addressable market and further drive our global market shares. Historically, we employed what you could call a super premium strategy, and with success.
Over the last three decades, we've consistently grown our sales and profits to lead the super premium price points, like I said, in the vast majority of the markets that we operate in, but with a relatively low share when compared to our business here in the U.S. With our strategic shift, we set ourselves the goal to continue to grow the business at the super premium price points, but while expanding our focus to target an incremental consumer through premium and top mainstream price points. We introduced several and different consumer-facing innovations, which we levered to create product options for channel and customer differentiation at a variety of price points. Crucially, we did this while decreasing the complexity at the plant and simplifying our manufacturing process.
These additional price points and product options created an opportunity to increase our distribution both off and online. All these elements combined allow us to increase our advertising spend, which heightens brand awareness, drives more traffic into stores, increases conversion, ultimately drives sales, and ultimately grows our market share closer and closer to what we enjoy here in the U.S. I'll provide a little bit more color on each of those elements. Expanding our assortment to cover a wider range of price points and capture additional market share was our primary objective. While we introduced a new product called Pro at our historical super premium price point, we introduced two new product lines, Form and Ease, in the $2,000-$3,000 segment. With those new ranges, we now cover the same price points as we do here with Tempur-Pedic in the United States.
With the expansion of our price point offerings, our assortment has increased its relevance for our retailers. In most of our international markets, the majority of retailers focus their merchandising on the larger premium and mainstream segments. With our new ranges, we now have products that fit directly into those strategies. As a result, we're seeing a strong increase in our third-party distribution. Since rolling out 2023, we've expanded our distribution with 19%, and that's driven by additional slots at existing partners, but also in significantly the increase with new retail partners across the world. It's a clear validation that our broadened assortment meets the retailer needs and resonates with consumers worldwide. Listen, while we're pleased with the progress, there's still a meaningful opportunity ahead.
Our broadened price points and enhanced product offering, gives us a significant runway to further increase our retail penetration in years to come, supporting our long-term growth ambitions. Quickly on that product build, that we introduced in our plant in Denmark. Historically, each of our mattress had its own specific core. When designing our new assortment, we took inspiration from the common component platforms you see, for example, in the car manufacturers. In our new ranges, our mattress core are to a high degree the same across the types, with the differentiation achieved by the cover that are interchangeable, offering the consumer preferred innovations that you've heard about already, like quilting or cooling.
In the end, this allowed us to build a broader assortment of mattresses at different price levels and in channel and customer-specific variants while maintaining the manufacturing efficiency and our sales margins. Turning to the distribution. As I mentioned before, high-level industry characteristics are generally consistent. Across the world, we see bedding products sold in wholesale, in direct, offline, and online channels, and the margin structures and requirements, like I said, are similar. On the ground level, there are differences and nuances for every market. For example, the primary sales channel varies. In Europe, just like here, the dominant channel is wholesale. In Asia, the dominant channels are often direct or direct mono-brand distributors. Other differences are the presence or the absence of strong multi-brand furniture and bedding chains.
If the incumbent players are, for example, predominantly premium or mainstream, that determines the average price level historically in any given market that we're in. Finally, importantly, the competition rules and regulations vary across the world, that results in different competitive dynamics. Navigating these ground-level distribution specifics is the key task of our experienced local teams. Here, our global scale and strength as Somnigroup allow us to hire and retain strong talent across our markets. Most of our people are long-standing employees with deep expertise of their respective markets. It's a core competitive advantage that allows us to navigate the individual market nuances while operating around the world. As mentioned, besides product price points and variance and simplified manufacturing, increased distribution, we also set out to heighten our brand awareness.
The teams created a fully integrated marketing strategy and an impactful launch campaign. For our Asia market specifically, we leveraged a popular figure and respected cultural figure in that region, as David Beckham. Overall, since our 2023 pivot, we have increased our marketing spend and efficiency through a highly disciplined media strategy. This increased spend and efficiency will be a key driver of growth far into the future. In conclusion, the bedding industry is attractive across all the regions that we operate in. We have long-term key competitive advantages, and our track record shows that we know how to develop and retain our leading market presence and execute on our new strategy. Leveraging Somnigroup's strength, combined with our evolved international strategy that has significantly expanded our addressable market, we expect the international business to remain a long-term growth driver.
With that, I would like to turn it over to Steve Rusing, the CEO of Mattress Firm. Thank you.
Good morning. I'm Steve Rusing, President and CEO of Mattress Firm. I've spent more than 30 years in the bedding industry, leading teams across sales, product development, merchandising, and retail advertising. I began my career in 1992 at Sealy and spent over two decades advancing through roles in district and regional sales and national accounts. Most recently, I served as President of US Sales for Tempur Sealy from 2020 through early 2025. Across those three decades, I've worked directly with retailers through many evolutions within this category. That experience has shaped how I lead Mattress Firm today, the deep understanding of the customer, a clear view of where the industry is headed, and a commitment to building a stronger, more innovative business under Somnigroup. That's what we're here to talk about. Today, you're going to hear a clear and consistent message.
Mattress Firm is the number one U.S. mattress retailer, advantaged by scale, assortment, expertise, and data. These strengths position us to continue to lead the category and deliver long-term value for both our customers and Somnigroup shareholders. Throughout this presentation, I will discuss our competitive advantages in detail. Let's start with foundation, our scale. Mattress Firm operates from a position that no one else in the industry can match. We are the largest omnichannel mattress retailer in the United States, providing customers with a personalized, high-touch experience, whether they choose to shop in-store or online. Today, we operate more than 2,100 stores nationwide, giving us a category-leading physical footprint and the convenience customers expect. At a time when retail presence is decreasing nationwide, we have found that most consumers still prefer to see, touch, and compare mattresses in-store.
Our scale provides us with a unique advantage to continue providing the best experience for our customers. Approximately 82% of Americans live within 30 minutes of a Mattress Firm store, ensuring we remain top of mind for the majority of consumers in their own communities. Our border-to-border, coast-to-coast presence gives us the greatest reach and is essential to our leading national name recognition. Combined with our digital platform, this positions us as the most accessible sleep retailer in the country. In 2025, our broad scale helped us achieve nearly $3.9 billion in sales, a testament to the strength of our reach, our brand, and our customer value proposition. Behind our stores is an equally powerful logistics engine.
Our more than 60 distribution centers create a nationwide network that enables speed, convenience, and reliability, delivering the experience that earns us best-in-class Net Promoter Scores and builds long-term customer loyalty. We drive traffic to our stores and website with significant and sustained demand generation. Over $300 million annual media investment gives Mattress Firm an unmatched share of voice in our category, ensuring that we're top of mind throughout the customer's shopping journey. Generating strong sales and achieving widespread consumer recognition isn't just stores and advertising, it's also people. Every day, more than 5,400 highly trained sleep experts serve our communities. They are trusted guides, uniquely trained to help customers make confident decisions about something deeply personal, their sleep. Today, we estimate that we hold over 20% market share, the largest in the category.
With the significant transformations underway, we are positioning the business to expand that share. Over the past year, we have taken deliberate steps to strengthen our merchandising platform and better position the business for long-term performance. We have aligned Tempur Sealy's balance of share to consumer demand, resulting in a significant step-up in sales of the TSI portfolio of products. We have formed new or deeper partnerships with consumer-preferred brands that invest in national advertising, helping increase awareness and bringing more qualified customers into our ecosystem. At the same time, our merchandising team is leveraging its product development expertise to create differentiated, branded, exclusive collections. In categories with significant saturation, such as adjustable bases, we are streamlining SKUs to simplify the assortment and improve overall productivity.
We increased inventory levels to improve in-store and ready for next day delivery availability to ensure that when customers are ready to buy, we can fulfill quickly and consistently. We are implementing a fully integrated system that unifies demand forecasting, replenishment, inventory optimization, and merchandise planning. This transition replaces manual siloed processes and enhances speed and accuracy across our supply chain. These initiatives create a more strategic and technology-enabled merchandising platform designed to improve traffic generation, strengthen conversion, and drive consistent, healthy growth. Our diversified product portfolio strengthens our ability to appeal to every customer. Our goal is simple. Provide customers with the brands and technologies they prefer across all comfort levels, styles, and budgets while optimizing profitability and driving loyalty. We do this by leveraging a balanced, multi-tiered portfolio that includes leading national brands, exclusive brand partnerships, and our own private label offerings.
Each tier plays a unique and strategic role in our assortment. First, our national brands. These brands are household names that drive engagement and trust early in the shopping journey across all consumer segments. They generate organic traffic, increase in conversion and average order value, while positioning Mattress Firm as the premier sleep solutions destination. This is where our leadership position is incredibly powerful. Customers expect to find the leading brands with us, and they do. Next, we have our exclusive brand partnerships, which are major differentiators available only at Mattress Firm. They serve premium and luxury segments, drive higher margins through exclusivity, and create unique marketing storylines competitors cannot replicate. This exclusive brand strategy differentiates the Mattress Firm experience and directly supports increased customer loyalty and sustainable revenue growth. Finally, our private label offerings, which provide compelling value alternatives that build loyalty among value-driven shoppers.
They deliver strong margins and velocity while targeting high volume segments seeking simplicity and immediate value. By offering accessible solutions that meet a wide range of comfort and technology preferences, we ensure consistent customer engagement and capture across diverse market segments. When you look across national brands, exclusive and private label, you see a highly intentional portfolio strategy that is engineered to capture market share while delivering strong profitability. Another core advantage that truly separates Mattress Firm from every other retailer in the category is our proprietary sleep expert model. We have the largest and most highly trained sales force in the industry. Our sleep experts are the foundation of the customer experience and a defining part of the Mattress Firm brand, enabling us to build trust and lasting relationship with consumers through a high-touch personal sales experience.
Every sleep expert receives approximately 100 hours annually of training covering sleep science, product knowledge, customer engagement, and technology tools. This level of investment in frontline expertise is unmatched in the mattress category, and we are widely recognized and sought after by consumers for the strength of the shopping experience we provide. A major differentiator in our model is Mattress Matcher, our proprietary omnichannel recommendation engine used by our sleep experts nationwide as well as online. It guides customers through a short, intuitive assessment and translates that data into clear, confidence-building recommendations. In our experience, building trust materially changes buying behavior. Our Google reviews average 4.9 stars, reflecting exceptional day-to-day customer satisfaction across the country. Our Net Promoter Score stands at 86, one of the highest in any retail category.
These numbers are the outcome of a deeply trained sales force, disciplined performance accountability, and proprietary technology that enhances the customer experience. We are making a $150 million investment to refresh select stores by 2027. These upgrades modernize the environment, improve shoppability, and make the overall experience simpler, more comfortable, and more engaging. Essential part of our in-store transformation is a rollout of Tempur-Pedic brand walls. These displays highlight the technology, performance, and benefits behind the products, making it easier for customers to understand what they're buying and why it matters. In test markets, we've already seen meaningful lifts in both conversion and Tempur balance of share. By the end of 2026, we will have these brand walls installed in all stores, creating a consistent, premium visual experience and helping customers navigate the assortment more intuitively.
When you look at our sleep expert model and our in-store transformation together, the story is clear. We are elevating the shopping experience, increasing customer confidence, and strengthening our ability to win at every price point. Our scale and our sleep expert model generate extensive customer insights that we're leveraging to optimize our in-store execution, develop stronger customer relationships, and steer improved business outcomes. One of our most exciting advancements is Sleep Expert AI, a proprietary intelligence-driven platform that embeds AI directly into the Sleep Expert toolkit. Through a platform that supports our sleep experts in live customer interactions and in training, Sleep Expert AI is designed to enhance customer interactions, accelerate training, and continuously elevate the quality and consistency of service across the enterprise.
Chat mode uses the latest Google large language models to support our sleep experts during live customer interactions and empowers them to identify customer needs and support them in making confident decisions. The second is a component that we call Practice Lab, and it's our AI-powered training and development engine. Practice Lab personalizes practice and learning for each associate by simulating realistic customer personas and scenarios and guiding sleep experts through an interactive AI-driven conversations. This capability allows us to deliver consistent, high-quality training at scale to ensure our sleep experts can continue to reinforce our brand equity and drive sales. Together, these capabilities support our sleep experts and drive continuous improvement powered by AI. We also apply data and digital capabilities to one of the most important drivers of our long-term growth, our real estate strategy.
By combining our historical performance data with advanced machine learning analytics, we can more accurately identify where to open new stores, which locations to relocate or close. This combined data ecosystem, our proprietary performance history, customer insights, competitive intelligence, and market-level demand signals allow us to understand how communities are evolving, where our core customers are concentrated, how discretionary spending patterns are shifting, and how co-tenants and competitors influence traffic. Our data-driven real estate platform enables faster, more disciplined site selection with higher confidence in long-term returns. By identifying high potential markets earlier and shedding underperforming locations, we deploy capital where it generates the greatest impact, driving stronger store productivity from day one and aligning our footprint with actual customer behavior. Our real estate strategy continues to advance, driven by stronger data, improved AI-driven forecasting, and deeper analytical rigor.
These enhancements are directly translating into smarter site selection and stronger new store performance. The impact is clear in the results. Average year two sales for stores opened in 2022 and 2023 are over 15% higher than those opened in 2018 and 2019. This increase reflects the measurable value of our more sophisticated approach. This capability is a key competitive advantage, building a portfolio of high-performing assets that deliver consistent returns, maximizing capital efficiency, and creating a strong foundation for scalable long-term growth. Bringing these capabilities together, Mattress Firm is not just maintaining our leadership position, we are uniquely positioned to continue to gain market share. With an unmatched retail footprint in our industry, we meet customers wherever they are, physically and digitally. No one else in the category comes close to our reach, our visibility, or our accessibility.
Our significant sustained investment in marketing gives us category-leading share of voice, ensuring that when consumers begin their shopping journey, they are more likely to start with us. This combination, scale plus demand generation, continues to drive high-quality traffic to our stores and website. We are also differentiated in the industry in how we convert that traffic. Our proprietary sleep expert training and tools, including AI-powered solutions, enable our associates to deliver co-consistent high-quality customer experiences that build trust and confidence. Coupled with our significant investment in the in-store environment and merchandising strategy, we increase conversion and average order value, ensuring we capture the full potential of every customer interaction. When you combine traffic leadership, strong conversion, higher average order value, advanced technology, and a consumer-centric approach to merchandising, the outcome is clear. We are poised to extend our lead as the number 1 U.S. mattress retailer.
As part of Somnigroup, we have a strong, committed ownership model that empowers us to take a multiyear view of strategy and investment, enabling us to pursue the transformation initiatives we've outlined today with conviction and speed. This means we can invest in our people. We can modernize our stores. We can scale our technology platforms. We can optimize our marketing and merchandising strategies. We can innovate without being constrained by short-term decision cycles. Most importantly, we can focus on guiding customers to their ideal sleep solution. As Tom will cover in detail shortly, we're also transforming how we show up to consumers. With our new Sleep Easy campaign, we're shifting our marketing to problem and solution-oriented advertising, helping customers understand better sleep can improve their lives and how Mattress Firm can help them achieve it.
This will allow us to shift the perception of Mattress Firm from simply selling mattresses to solving real sleep problems for our customer. This approach strengthens our brand, drives consideration earlier in the purchase journey, and increases the effectiveness of our media spend. Another major advantage of being part of Somnigroup is the closer collaboration and best practice sharing, which enables better decision-making. Finally, we're implementing annual equity grants for leadership to strengthen long-term alignment with Somnigroup's value creation strategy and enhance retention of key talent. As we look ahead, the path for Mattress Firm is clear and grounded in the strategic advantages we discussed today. Our transformation is well underway, and we are building meaningful momentum. Let's review the near-term priorities and growth drivers.
Our first priority is optimizing our product placement strategy by leveraging Somnigroup-owned brands while expanding and strengthening our relationships with third-party brands that invest in national advertising and drive category interest. Our second priority is to grow and build upon the positive impact of our Sleep Easy campaign to reinforce our position as the customer's trusted guide to better sleep. The third priority is rolling out the latest in-store traffic visibility technology, giving us a clearer understanding of customer behavior and helping us improve store and marketing performance to drive stronger results. Mattress Firm is well-positioned to continue extending our lead as the number one U.S. mattress retailer. We have unparalleled reach and scale amplified by a more strategic, more effective marketing engine. We have a differentiated sales process and merchandising strategy that elevates the customer experience and drives higher conversion.
We are making data-fueled decisions that enhance operational efficiency. We are further strengthened by synergies unlocked through our acquisition and our position with Somnigroup. Together, these advantages create a powerful platform for sustained growth, improved profitability, and long-term value creation. Thank you. Lauren?
Thank you, Steve. We're going to take a brief break. We are going to resume our presentation at 9:56 A.M. Thank you.
Hi, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to resume our presentation shortly. Please find your seat.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to resume our presentation in about a minute. Thank you.
Hi, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to get started. We'll resume our presentation with remarks from our Chief Marketing Officer, Tom Murray.
Good morning and welcome back, everybody. My name, as Lauren mentioned, is Tom Murray, and I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at Somnigroup, and also serve in that same capacity at Mattress Firm. I joined Tempur Sealy in 2018 and served as its Chief Marketing Officer from 2020 to last year's acquisition of Mattress Firm, when, as I'll discuss today, I took on the added focus of establishing a new marketing direction for that company and brand. 2026 marks my 33rd year in consumer goods marketing and my 20th year in executive marketing leadership positions.
Over the course of my career, I've had the opportunity to both build and bolster industry-leading brands across a number of diverse companies and sectors, including Duracell, Gillette, and Procter & Gamble in consumer packaged goods, TomTom, Carbonite, and ADT in consumer technology, and of course, most recently, Tempur Sealy within bedding. Having introduced myself, I'd like to now provide you all with a high-level overview of Somnigroup's marketing strategy, which, as I noted, has evolved quite a bit since our acquisition of Mattress Firm. Somnigroup's overall marketing strategy is focused on driving consumer demand for our product brands, namely Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, and Stearns & Foster, and our retail brands, namely Mattress Firm and Dreams, by clearly and compellingly distinguishing these brands from other alternatives available in the marketplace.
We target each of our brands to distinct and complementary audiences, and having defined its respective audience, tailor our product development, our distribution, our advertising, and our selling efforts accordingly. To maximize awareness, consideration, and purchase intent for our brands, we invest in industry-leading levels of advertising across such media channels as national television, streaming and online video, radio, social media, and search. We complement our own direct-to-consumer marketing activities with investments in marketing actively conducted for Tempur Sealy in cooperation with our retail partners, and for Mattress Firm and Dreams in cooperation with our vendor partners. This cooperative activity includes advertising, new product launches, and the deployment of in-store point-of-sale materials and training programs that are designed to further enhance the visibility of an advocacy for our brands with consumers.
Their combination gives us significant influence on the overall voice and messaging within the industry. As the world's largest bedding company, Somnigroup benefits from several competitive advantages that enable us to effectively deploy these marketing strategies to the benefit of each of the company's businesses and brands. Perhaps most notable to our discussion today is the company's industry-leading investment in brand-building advertising. On an annualized basis, Somnigroup invests over $700 million globally in advertising. This advertising supports each of our product and retailer brands and to demonstrable effect. For example, in the U.K., our Dreams retail operation is the overall market share leader and enjoys the highest share of voice, advertising awareness, top-of-mind awareness, and consideration of all mattress specialty retailers in that important market.
In our largest market, the U.S., our marketing investments, combined with our brands' long-standing presence, broad distribution, and exceptional reputations and advocacy to support each brand's standing within the industry. Specifically, our newly acquired Mattress Firm brand enjoys the leading share of voice, awareness, consideration, and purchase intent amongst national mattress retailers across the U.S. Our Tempur-Pedic brand enjoys the leading overall share of voice amongst mattress manufacturers and is consumers' number one ranked brand for both consideration and purchase intent. Our Sealy brand is ranked second only to Tempur-Pedic for overall share of voice, consideration, and purchase intent. Last, but certainly not least, our Stearns & Foster brand enjoys the highest share of voice amongst premium innerspring wholesale brands and has been the industry's largest premium innerspring brand since 2023.
In the next few slides, I'll discuss how we're working to optimize Mattress Firm's marketing to drive growth for the broader Somnigroup business and the industry at large. The potential to leverage Mattress Firm's marketing efforts in a way that amplifies its power while also promoting our other brands and the mattress industry as a whole was one of the main reasons we combined with the company. We are already seeing some very positive results. As Scott indicated earlier, the Mattress Firm acquisition occurred during a period of sustained post-pandemic declines in category demand and an array of macroeconomic challenges. The sustained reduction in demand substantially hindered most manufacturers' abilities to maintain their historic level of advertising.
On a related note, it also prompted many mattress retailers to both reduce their overall investment in advertising and to reallocate a substantial portion of their remaining spend to so-called lower funnel tactics, particularly search engine marketing and things that were focused on driving conversion instead of creating demand. This is appropriate as retailers were attempting to capture their fair share of a declining market, but has nonetheless had profound impact on the overall demand level within the industry. Some retailers, including Mattress Firm, also began focusing their efforts on an unproductive attempt to brand their store name and shifted their advertising focus to doing so. In lieu of focusing on the mattress brands themselves, which have historically been key to driving demand and traffic into their stores.
As the industry's largest investor in advertising, Somnigroup has both the opportunity and the need to support what is now a broader array of its constituents, including, namely, the mattress industry overall, the newly acquired Mattress Firm brand and business itself, and now the Tempur Sealy portfolio of brands. As we consider how best to support these various constituents and the importance of Mattress Firm's advertising investment to the overall equation, and ultimately the somewhat non-traditional messaging that Mattress Firm had been putting into the marketplace over the last several years, we determined that a new direction was required in order to help both Mattress Firm, to help Tempur Sealy, and to help the industry. To inform this new direction, we first revisited Mattress Firm's brand positioning and refocused that positioning upon what we deemed to be the brand's primary sources of competitive advantage.
This new brand positioning is perhaps best captured and conveyed within the following video.
At Mattress Firm, we understand. We understand that your sleep matters to you and to your loved ones, to your health and well-being, to helping you be the best you can be every single day. We understand that both you and your sleep needs are unique and that getting quality sleep can often be difficult. Discomfort, aches and pains, hot sleep, stress, even your partner's snoring can disrupt your sleep, sometimes every single night. We understand that your mattress can play a critical role in giving you the deep, restful sleep you need. But with so much choice and complexity, finding the right one for your unique needs can be overwhelming and, well, exhausting. We understand, and we can help because at Mattress Firm, sleep is what we do. In fact, it's all we do. We are the sleep experts.
We have the experience, know-how, and tools to help identify your personal sleep needs and challenges. We offer the industry's most expertly curated range of proven brands and products, all rigorously tested to meet our high standards and competitively priced to meet your budget. We are committed to guiding you through the decision-making process to ensure that we match you with your perfect mattress. That's why more people trust us to help them sleep better than any other retailer in the United States. Mattress Firm, we make Sleep Easy.
Having established Mattress Firm's new brand positioning and our brand promise of making better sleep easy, we then embarked upon the process of developing a net new advertising campaign to bring Mattress Firm's story to life. As I suggested earlier, this new campaign has been specifically designed to support Somnigroup's multiple constituents. For the industry at large, the campaign educates consumers about the role a mattress can play in overcoming the most common and most troublesome sleep disruptors that often get in the way of their ability to get a great night's sleep. For Mattress Firm, the campaign showcases how its sleep experts leverage their industry-leading training, expertise, and tools to successfully guide mattress shoppers to the perfect solution for their particular sleep disruptors.
For Tempur Sealy's brands, the campaign far more productively utilizes the over $100 million in annual co-op spending that Tempur Sealy has historically invested through Mattress Firm by meaningfully integrating brand visuals and benefit messaging linked to how the products showcased in a given ad address the sleep disruptor depicted within that ad. Notably, in addition to integrating Tempur Sealy's brands, we also feature non-Tempur Sealy brands in their own dedicated executions within the campaign. The campaign, which we call Sleep Easy, was developed and market researched in the months immediately following the acquisition, and it launched in late July of last year. To familiarize you with the campaign and how it is bringing Mattress Firm's brand positioning and brand promise to life, I'm pleased to share three representative TV executions.
Two of these executions highlight actual sleep disruptors, while the third highlights the reality that for far too many consumers, even the prospect of shopping for a mattress can keep them up at night. As you view the ads, you will note that each takes a very straightforward and modular approach to dramatizing a specific and commonly experienced sleep disruptor as the creative hook that drives relevance and our audience's attention throughout the remainder of the ad to overtly and meaningfully showcasing specific mattress brands or products as examples of the solutions that Mattress Firm offers that can help with that particular sleep disruptor. Finally, to emphasizing the importance of the Mattress Firm sleep expert as the helpful guide who has the knowledge, experience, and tools to match you with the perfect solution to your specific sleep problem.
Sound familiar? At Mattress Firm, we understand there are many problems like snoring that can keep you up at night. Our sleep experts have the extensive training, unrivaled know-how, and advanced tools to match you with a sleep system designed to help. Like the TEMPUR-Ergo Smart Base, it automatically detects, responds, and helps reduce snoring, and it's on sale now for up to $500 off. For the great sleep you deserve, visit Mattress Firm. We make Sleep Easy. Does your bed feel more like a toaster? At Mattress Firm, we understand there are many problems like hot sleep that can keep you up at night. Our sleep experts have the extensive training, unrivaled know-how, and advanced tools to match you with a perfect cooling mattress like the TEMPUR-Breeze.
It's designed to help you feel up to 10 degrees cooler, and it's on sale now for up to $500 off. For the great sleep you deserve, visit Mattress Firm. We make Sleep Easy. Need a new mattress but confused by all the options? At Mattress Firm, we understand that so many choices can make mattress shopping overwhelming. Our sleep experts have the unrivaled know-how to identify your sleep needs, guide you through the best options, and match you with your perfect mattress, with select brands on sale now for up to $500 off. For the great sleep you deserve, visit Mattress Firm. We make Sleep Easy.
The modular approach we utilize in developing the Sleep Easy campaign affords us the opportunity to easily extend it by showcasing, for example, updated dramatizations of our original sleep disruptors, additional sleep disruptors that we have not yet depicted in the campaign, and of course, different mattress brands, products, and promotional offers. This modular approach will enable the campaign to remain essentially future-proof and is substantially more cost-efficient than the previous manners in which Mattress Firm structured its campaigns. Even more notable than its modularity is the fact that the Sleep Easy campaign has consistently and significantly outperformed Mattress Firm's prior advertising campaigns in all of the market research we have conducted. This research, primarily conducted via Ace Metrix, who's an industry leader in advertising creative testing, suggests, first of all, that the Sleep Easy campaign is delivering on its objective of helping the mattress industry at large.
More specifically, the research indicates that over 90% of respondents felt the ads were helpful to their understanding that a particular mattress can actually help them to achieve a better night's sleep, with over half of the respondents indicating that the ads were very helpful to that understanding. Importantly, the Ace Metrix research also indicates that the campaign is working particularly well relative to its objective of further elevating the Mattress Firm brand itself. More specifically, the research indicates that Sleep Easy, which is depicted here in dark blue, is significantly outperforming all Mattress Firm prior campaigns individually and collectively over the 8 years for which we have Ace Metrix benchmark data.
The superior performance is also true, as you can see here, across the entire suite of Ace Metrix KPIs that their methodology associates with strong performance in the actual marketplace itself, including their overall Ace Score and the underlying KPIs of attention, persuasion, relevance, information, and even some not shown here, including likability. Beyond these encouraging Ace Metrix results, additional research that we conducted using another industry-leading research tool called Lucid Impact Measurement indicates that the campaign is also having demonstrable impact upon consumers' perception of Mattress Firm. More specifically, the research indicates that the most recent campaign, which aired in 2024 and 2025, has now been significantly surpassed by the Sleep Easy campaign's results across literally every positive attribute measured in that research. Having charted a new and high-potential messaging direction for the company, we've now also started to shape the composition of Mattress Firm's media investments.
As background, pre-acquisition, a substantial and increasing portion of Mattress Firm's media investment was being allocated to so-called lower-funnel channels, and most notably to paid search advertising. This concentration was understandable as the company sought to capture demand in a difficult market and also to position itself for sale at that time. It was otherwise suboptimal relative to consumers' media consumption habits and the notion of serving our three previously described constituents. Subsequent to the acquisition and linked to the strength of our new messaging campaign, we have therefore rebalanced our media spend. Our 2026 plans reflect our ongoing effort toward this rebalancing. 62% of investments will be allocated toward upper-funnel channels such as television, online video, radio, and social media, while only 38% will be allocated toward lower-funnel activity.
This compares to 56% and 44% respectively in 2025. This so-called richer mix of media will enable Mattress Firm to more fully derive the benefit of our industry-leading spend and share of voice via a larger allocation to these upper funnel channels, which are more typically associated with demand creation. Notably, this richer mix also reflects insights from our internal media mix models, which consistently suggest that we derive both higher revenue and higher ROIs from these channels. In addition to the positive impact the changes to Mattress Firm's marketing strategy will have on the overall mattress category and Mattress Firm itself, they are already delivering substantial benefits to the Tempur Sealy brand portfolio. As established earlier, the structure of the new Sleep Easy campaign now enables us to much more meaningfully integrate Tempur Sealy brands into the Mattress Firm brand story.
The reach and quality of Tempur Sealy brands' exposure has already improved as Mattress Firm's media mix have shifted to upper funnel channels. Given these shifts and the magnitude of Tempur Sealy's co-op investments, its brands' share of Mattress Firm spend and upper funnel channels increased a full 20 percentage points since Q1 of 2025. Tempur-Pedic specifically has enjoyed a doubling of its share of spend since Q1 and was supported by over one-third of Mattress Firm's upper funnel spend in Q4 of 2025. The net of this is that Mattress Firm's increase in its advertising allocation to Tempur Sealy is now delivering far greater and better exposure and benefit to Tempur Sealy's brands, and especially to Tempur-Pedic. This increased and higher quality exposure has contributed to the Tempur Sealy brand's balance of share gains within Mattress Firm since Q1 of last year.
The changes to Mattress Firm's marketing approach that we've instituted to date have also and already enabled Somnigroup to realize substantial savings. We concepted and developed the new advertising campaign in-house, and consequently ended our relationship with Mattress Firm's external agency of record. We successfully applied our scale, leverage, and best practices to achieve significant savings in our 2026 television upfront media buy. We have revisited the company's two search engine marketing investments to eliminate redundancies. As we now look forward, we still have additional opportunity to realize marketing operational and financial synergies in 2026 and beyond. These synergies will likely be realized via further agency negotiations and consolidations, the establishment of Somnigroup functional centers of excellence for shared service marketing functions, and an even more expansive coordination of our media planning and buying activities.
To summarize, I'd like to leave you with the following takeaways from my presentation today. The changes to Mattress Firm's advertising campaign and media strategy that we executed in 2025 have already demonstrated positive impact for the Mattress Firm brand and business, for the Tempur Sealy portfolio of brands, and for the mattress industry overall. We have started to optimize Mattress Firm's marketing strategy to realize significant cost synergies and to drive growth for the broader Somnigroup business, and we anticipate that our performance will continue to benefit from these changes for years to come, and that Somnigroup will further benefit from our pursuit of the additional marketing synergies we have identified. As marketing is admittedly both an art and a science, it will naturally take some time for us to find the optimal balance of spend that drives sales and maximizes our ROI.
That said, we have clearly embarked on a journey and over time, expect to have continued good news to report. With that, I'd like to now introduce Jonathan Hirst, the CEO of our market-leading Dreams retail business in the U.K., who's joining us via video to provide an overview of their business and growth outlook. Thank you kindly.
Hi, I'm Jonathan Hirst, Chief Executive Officer here at Dreams. We're the U.K.'s number one bedding retailer. At Dreams, our job is simple. For over 40 years, we've been providing a better night's sleep for all by matching every customer with their perfect bed. I've worked in retail for more than 25 years across many different sectors, including mixed electricals, home improvements, and now bedding. I'm in my 12th year with Dreams, and this is my fifth year as CEO. Leading over 2,500 colleagues is a privilege and responsibility I take great pride in. I was part of the original management team that took Dreams from private equity ownership to joining Somnigroup International in 2021. Somnigroup is a hugely supportive owner, giving us both the space to develop our business and the support to help us too.
Being part of the Somnigroup family has helped Dreams turbocharge our growth plans. It has given us the financial security and backing to make long-term investments for our future and access to some incredible talent across the group that empowers us to drive the business forward in areas such as technology, innovation, and retail strategy. Additionally, as you've heard from Hansbart earlier, Tempur is a critical partner for the Dreams business. Becoming part of Somnigroup augmented the growth strategy for both the Tempur U.K. and Dreams business, enhancing our ability to work together to drive mutual success and improve consumer outcomes. The competitive U.K. bedding market is fragmented, with approximately half the market made up of small independent bed stores and websites, the rest of the market splits between multi-category retailers and national bed specialists.
Since the acquisition, we've continued to secure Dreams' position as a market leader now with annual sales in excess of $600 million, allowing us to retain and attract customers. We are the U.K.'s largest multi-channel bedding retailer with over 225 stores and the U.K.'s second-largest mattress producer. To give you a sense of our scale now, our bed factory makes over 500,000 mattresses and bed bases each year. Around 60% of all the mattresses we sell have been made by us and proudly display the Dreams brand. More than 98% of customer orders are fulfilled by a Dreams home delivery crew. In an average week, we'll make over 11,000 individual bed deliveries. Our power is our position in the market. We operate as a fully vertically integrated business. We are a manufacturer with a thriving direct-to-consumer model.
Alongside this, we offer unparalleled levels of customer service and a unique range of products, allowing us to retain and attract customers. Our SleepMatch machines in-store help customers find their perfect mattress using 3-D fit technology to measure the body and assess individual support needs. SleepMatch has been perfected over the past 20 years and is backed by 25 different patents. We also offer a variety of products to meet the needs of all shoppers, including Dreams brands and also private labels, complemented by our trusted brand partners, including Tempur and Sealy. Looking ahead, we see significant opportunities to strengthen Dreams' market position even further, driving sales and profitability. By leveraging our vertically integrated business model and broad product range, we're confident we'll continue to deliver exceptional value for our customers and sustainable growth for the business.
Thank you for taking a moment to learn more about Dreams, the U.K.'s most loved bed and mattress retailer. We're excited about the future and look forward to continuing this journey together.
Thanks, Jonathan. I want to thank you all again for joining us today. It is great to have this opportunity to walk through our story and the opportunities that we see ahead. For those of you I have not met, I joined Tempur Sealy in 2004 and served in a variety of roles throughout the finance organization, supporting the transformation into the global leader that we are today. Since I joined the company more than two decades ago, the company evolved into meeting the shifting needs of the consumer and shopping preferences. From navigating economic cycles and COVID, leading shifts to DTC, and capitalizing on strategic opportunities that have shaped where we are today. 25 was a big year for Somnigroup. We feel good about what we've accomplished as a combined company. Let me start with an overview over the last 12 months.
First, we successfully integrated two discrete organizations, Tempur Sealy and Mattress Firm, under the newly established Somnigroup umbrella that created the leading vertically integrated global bedding company. More importantly, brought us closer to the end consumer. We have worked hard to make the integration seamless by unifying our teams and our goals. Everyone across the organization is aligned on the right things, an integrated strategy, teamwork, and execution. Second, we have leveraged the benefits of our vertical integration and scale to unlock efficiencies and drive synergies across the organization. We began by optimizing combined supply chain and improving manufacturing productivity, refocused Mattress Firm's marketing and merchandising strategies, and improved efficiencies across the organization. Third, we outperformed the industry and captured market share in all of our geographies.
In particular, the acquisition of Mattress Firm unlocked a major market share gains domestically by simplifying the consumer journey. Fourth, we drove adjusted EPS growth and delivered record financial performance, as recently announced on our fourth quarter earnings call. We achieved record full-year net sales and adjusted EBITDA, our strongest adjusted EPS since 2021, and record cash flow, demonstrating the power of our business model. We also successfully executed the largest launch in the bedding history with Sealy Posturepedic collection. We continue to drive international growth. The bottom line, we emerged from 2025 as a fully integrated, combined company that is positioned well for the long term. Turning to 2026 guidance. We covered this in our fourth quarter earnings call, but let me quickly recap the key metrics we expect.
Adjusted EPS to be between $3.00-$3.40, with sales at the midpoint of approximately $7.9 billion after intercompany eliminations, and adjusted EBITDA midpoint of $1.45 billion. Our guidance assumes that we capture share across all of our business segments. From an industry perspective, global bedding will grow slightly versus the prior year, driven by low single-digit growth in the first half of the year. A way to think about industry sensitivity is that if the industry were to grow by 1% or decline by 1% in 2026, that would result in an impact of about $0.10. With our strengths and position as a vertically integrated company, we feel confident in our ability to deliver on these targets. Let me talk about where we're headed for the next few years.
As Scott previewed, we recently updated our 2028 EPS target $0.30 from $4.85 to $5.15. This new target represents a 24% CAGR over the period. It also assumes mid-single-digit sales CAGR, mid-teens Adjusted EBITDA CAGR. Relative to our initial $4.85 perspective, this updated view represents additional progress and in momentum in our business, including additional share gains across our global business units, including those achieved in 2025, realization of sales synergies at Mattress Firm, incremental cost synergies resulting from the Mattress Firm combination, and line of sight to additional productivity efficiencies across our global supply chain. These incremental opportunities are partially offset by a revised industry outlook, which now assumes the industry will underperform our initial expectations by mid-single digits in both 2025 and 2026.
We have maintained our assumption for the industry to grow at its historical mid-single-digit rate in 2027 and 2028. As you heard today, each of our business unit CEOs laid out their sales growth strategies. It comes down to an algorithm of brand, product, channel, operational excellence, traffic, conversion, and average order value. Overall, we expect mid-single-digit sales CAGR, which includes share gains at all of our business units and low single-digit industry tailwind resulting from the assumption I mentioned a moment ago for the industry to be slightly up in 2026 and returning to its normalized mid-single-digit normalized growth rate in 2027 and 2028. Therefore, we have not assumed a benefit from the release of pent-up demand, which should it come to pass, would be an incremental opportunity.
As you heard from Cliff this morning, we're well-positioned to continue to leverage our global competitive advantage to drive growth for Tempur Sealy. In North America, we are targeting mid-single-digit sales CAGR over the period with the drivers including our consumer-centric introduction of new innovative products, our leading brands sold through our diverse omnichannel platform, all supported by world-class manufacturing and logistics capabilities. As you heard from Hans Bart, we have made great strides in expanding our Tempur international business, and we have significant runway to further enhance our position over the long term. We're targeting high-single-digit sales CAGR over the period, driven by our leading Tempur brand, which is now merchandised to a broader addressable market through a robust supply chain and omnichannel strategy, reaching the consumer where and how they want to shop.
As you heard from Steve, Mattress Firm is well-positioned to drive mid-single digit sales growth. Supported by category-leading national footprint, consumer-led merchandising, executed through our proprietary sales process and supported by robust data insights. As Jonathan noted, Dreams is well-positioned to drive mid-single digit sales CAGR through the period. Our vertically integrated business model and broad product assortment, while delivering exceptional value to our consumers. Finally, as you heard from Tom, we expect to continue to invest in advertising to support our business units, our partners, and the broader global industry, employing a marketing strategy to drive our leading share of voice. As we step back and look across the Somnigroup portfolio, each business has a tangible growth plan, and our teams are executing against those plans with discipline and focus that will drive results.
We feel good about our ability to drive market outperformance worldwide over the next few years. As we move down the P&L, we expect 300 basis points of gross margin expansion and a 100 basis point benefit from operating expense leverage, resulting in a cumulative 400 basis points operating and margin expansion from 2025 to 2028. Our focus is to continue servicing our customers and delivering shareholder value by driving operational excellence throughout the organization. Our objective is to do more with less through productivity initiatives across the entire chain, from sourcing to logistics to manufacturing. This means ensuring we have the right strategic partners who can scale with us, creating win-win scenarios. When our partners benefit, we benefit. Optimizing our raw material and source product supply chain.
Designing products that not only meet consumer needs but are also easy to make and reducing cost and complexity. Optimizing the labor it takes to convert raw materials into finished goods. Creating best-in-class products with low return rates because returns are expensive and detract from the customer experience. Ultimately making sure the final mile is executed flawlessly because that is the last impression that we make on our customer and is critical to drive consumer satisfaction. As a reminder, approximately 30% of our COGS and 55% of our operating expenses are fixed. We have seen significant cost deleverage in recent years due to industry trends, but we still continue to grow adjusted EBITDA. That is the testament and resilience of the business model. Going forward, we expect to get fixed cost leverage as sales grow.
Before discussing our synergies in more detail, I wanted to highlight a couple of additional margin opportunities that have not been included in our target. First, we are undertaking a network study across our combined U.S. logistics operations to identify further areas of potential efficiencies. Second, this plan assumes we continue to fully invest in marketing, which we believe is critical to driving long-term category growth. As Tom mentioned, over time, we will continue to consider the optimal level of marketing. As a result, this could be future margin upside. Let me give you an update on where we stand with Mattress Firm synergies. As we discussed on our most recent earnings call, we are targeting $225 million of total run rate EBITDA synergies from the Mattress Firm acquisition.
$125 million from costs and $100 million from sales. Here's how that breaks down by year. By the end of 2026, we plan to have achieved the full $100 million of sales synergies and $75 million of the cost synergies. Looking ahead to 2027, we anticipate realizing the remaining $50 million of cost synergies, which will bring us to the full $225 million run rate target. As you heard from Steve earlier, Mattress Firm's market-driven merchandising strategy has resulted in meaningful expansion of Tempur Sealy's balance of share, which reflects strong consumer demand for our brands and products. On the cost synergy side, we are leveraging our expanded scale and vertical integration to drive operational efficiencies across sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics. Now, let me bring it all together and show you what we expect from our three-year EPS target.
The key drivers are sales growth, gross margin, operating expense leverage, and capital allocation. In terms of capital allocation, we generate a meaningful amount of cash, we are not expecting large capital expenditure needs going forward. Our normalized CapEx run rate is about $200 million. The majority of our excess cash will go toward paying down debt in the next quarter or two, then towards share buybacks and dividends after we return to our target leverage range. As a reminder, we have executed our usual Q1 share repurchases related to employee equity vestings. Our plan assumes we will return to our target range of two to three times in the next six months, then we will manage the business to the midpoint of 2.5 times thereafter. Here's how we're thinking about our capital allocation priorities going forward.
Number 1, we always prioritize reinvesting in the business to drive competitive advantage. 2, maintaining our debt to EBITDA leverage in our target range of 2 - 3 times. 3, paying a modest dividend to our shareholders. As a reminder, we increased our quarterly dividend 13% to $0.17 for 2026. 4, meaningful share repurchases. 5, opportunistic M&A. Before I discuss our future capital allocation plans, let me briefly review our track record over the past decade. From 2015 to 2025, we generated $5 billion in operating cash flow. We returned $3.1 billion to our shareholders over this period, demonstrating our commitment to returning value to shareholders. We also deployed $3.3 billion to strategic accretive M&A, which strengthened our market leadership position for Somnigroup over the long term.
Highlights include our acquisition of Sherwood Bedding in 2018, which expanded our product offering in the value segment. Specialty U.K. bedding retailer Dreams in 2021, which enhanced our international retail footprint. Most recently, the acquisition of Mattress Firm, which we covered today. Throughout, we maintained financial discipline, raising $3 billion in debt to support our strategic investments. In total, we allocated $8 billion of capital, balancing investments and growth to returning value to shareholders and maintaining a prudent capital structure. With this foundation, I will now turn to our future capital allocation strategy. Here's what our capital allocation approach looks like over the next three years. We expect $3.7 billion of operating cash flow and to raise approximately $300 million of debt to maintain the midpoint of our target range, resulting in approximately $4 billion of capital to deploy.
First, we will continue to invest in the business through maintenance CapEx and targeted strategic initiatives. Our normalized capital expenditures is expected to be $600 million over the period, with an additional $200 million allocated to store investments. This leaves significant dry powder for returns to shareholders and strategic flexibility. We intend to deploy at least 50% of free cash flow to shareholders in 2026, and then have assumed we allocate capital at the midpoint of our target range thereafter. This outlay will be through a combination of dividends and more aggressive share repurchases. Our dividend policy targets a modest but reliable payout, while the majority of capital will be through buybacks. We believe this approach is both disciplined and responsive to market conditions. No acquisitions are included in this view, but as consistent with our historic strategy, we will continue to explore opportunities.
This view also assumes we're at the midpoint of our target of 2.5 times Adjusted EBITDA. I should note that a half of turn of leverage would result in an incremental $1 billion of dry powder to deploy. Our plan ensures we can continue to deliver on our growth ambitions, maintain financial strength, and consistently return value to shareholders throughout the target period. Finally, let me provide a bit more color on our M&A strategy. We have a successful track record of acquisitions, more than 10 deals under the current leadership, and we understand what makes an acquisition successful. Our strategy is straightforward. First, we are opportunistic buyers. We pursue transactions that strengthen our competitive position and have strong cash flow potential. Two, we look to add value and build partnerships.
We want to build long-term relationships with management teams and create win-win scenarios. Third, we seek targets that diversify our capabilities, geographic presence, brands, and channels across the industry worldwide. That could mean upstream acquisitions like the Leggett & Platt opportunity. It could mean downstream acquisitions like Mattress Firm or Dreams. It could mean horizontal acquisitions that extend our brand portfolio across geographic reach. We are regularly evaluating opportunities that drive long-term value, and when the right one comes along, we move decisively. In closing, we are excited about the potential of Somnigroup. We are targeting mid-single digit top-line growth and compound annual EPS growth of 24% through 2028. That's industry-leading performance, and we believe it is achievable given the platform we have built and the competitive advantages we have.
Importantly, these targets are set against the backdrop of an industry that is poised to normalize. As the bedding industry returns to growth, we are well-positioned to capture share of that upside. During this period, we expect to continue capturing market share by leveraging our competitive advantages, our scale, our vertical integration, our iconic brands, our innovative pipeline of products, and our omnichannel distribution. We're gonna drive operational excellence, expand margins, and generate strong cash flow. We're going to return value to shareholders through dividends, buybacks, and a disciplined capital allocation approach. With that, I'll turn it back to Scott.
Thank you, Bhaskar. Before turning to our investment thesis, I wanna touch briefly on another strategic initiative that we've announced, which you're likely tracking. We've submitted a proposal to acquire Leggett & Platt in an all-stock transaction, which values the company at $12 per share. We're confident this proposal will deliver significant value to Leggett & Platt shareholders through a compelling premium and a tax-advantaged participation in our combined platform, while also being accretive before synergies to all Somnigroup shareholders. The strategic rationale here is straightforward: vertical integration. Leggett & Platt is a key supplier to the bedding industry. They supply critical inputs like innerspring units, specialty foam, and other components to the bedding producers globally. By bringing Leggett & Platt into Somnigroup's fold, we'd further strengthen our value chain advantages, unlock additional synergies, and enhance our competitive position.
We're currently conducting due diligence and are active discussions with Leggett & Platt's board. There's no certainty that these discussions will ultimately lead to a transaction. I wanted to flag it for you because it's consistent with our overall M&A strategy: build scale, capturing efficiencies, creating long-term shareholder value through disciplined, accretive transaction. We will not be expanding today on the status of the proposed transaction. With that said, let me bring us back to where we started. We have a clear and compelling investment thesis. We will continue to leverage our competitive advantage to drive profits and generate cash. The bedding industry has attractive attributes, strong long-term growth prospects, and is poised to normalize. Our unique position within the industry creates strategic optionality. We are in the early stages of capitalizing on our long-term potential.
I'll say it again, the actions we have taken over the past several years, culminating in the transformational transaction Mattress Firm's combination, we've set the stage. The best is yet to come. Thank you. That concludes our prepared remarks today. We'll now host a Q&A session. The rest of the presenters here are in person today. Come on up to the stage. Additionally, Scott Vollet, our Executive Vice President in Global Operations at Tempur Sealy, and Brent Pfister, our Senior Vice President of Brand Management and New Product Development at Tempur Sealy, are also here this morning. They'll join us as a panelist. Lauren, we're ready to start Q&A.
Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. While we get the stage set, I'll just provide a brief overview of the Q&A session. Mikayla and I will be down here on the floor walking around with microphones. Please raise your hand as you have a question. Please wait until you have the microphone to ask the question so those joining us virtually are also able to hear what's being asked. We do ask that you initially limit yourself to one question, and then we'll circle back for follow-ups as time permits. Finally, we would appreciate you stating your firm name and your name before asking your question. We'll just give the stage one moment to get set, and then we'll begin.
Thank you. Now we'll welcome to the stage the rest of the Somnigroup team.
Welcome to the stage, Steve.
Great. With a show of hands, does anyone have a first question?
Thank you. Susan Maklari from Goldman Sachs. First, I just wanna say thank you all for the presentation today. It's impressive to see the depth of the team experience and your global competitive reach with everything that you've talked us through. My question is around the 2026 to 2028 targets. Can you talk about the potential to see some upside from the synergies that you've outlined, just given the progress that you've already made, the way you're thinking about this year coming together? How should we think about the potential upside and what that could mean relative to the targets that you've set?
Sure. Let me start with that, and then Bhaskar, why don't you clean me up and pass it along to the extent we should. you know, first when Bhaskar called it out in his prepared remarks, any improvement in the industry. It's a, we believe, a conservative estimate of the overall industry. That would be the first one I would point out. The other one that was indicated in Tom's presentation is, we'll call it additional synergies that are not in the forecast. We have some that we've told you about. Some we're working on that we are kinda in the funnel, we'll call it, but we're not far enough along yet that we're ready, quote, "To commit to them and put a number on the street." Tom talked about marketing.
We're clearly doing a lot in the marketing area. We're not pushing to optimize marketing yet. It's unrealistic to think that during that period, there won't be some more synergies, would be our expectation. The question we have on the marketing side is, to the extent that it becomes more effective, do we leave it as a spend and have it drive sales for the industry or go after share, or do we take it to the bottom line? We have not kinda worked through that. We're confident there's something there, but we have not put it in synergies or in the sales number. The other item that comes to mind for me, Bhaskar, is the major logistic project. Mattress Firm had a huge logistics operation. Tempur Sealy has a huge one.
Getting that combined, okay? The good news is there's more opportunity there than we thought. Bad news is it's gonna take longer than we thought 'cause it's more complex. We've got some consultants in. We're working through that, and we're gonna spend 2026 making sure that we know exactly what we're doing, quantify it. Remember, while we're working on this logistics issue, we also have to do everyday business. We gotta fix it while it's working. We're working through that during the period. Scott, as I remember, $450 million is what we spend in logistics between the two companies.
Yep.
There's something more there. There's not any of that in the projection. Bhaskar probably also, she's just doing upside. I can do upside for quite a while 'cause I like upside. Thank you. Upside is you're running at 2.5 leverage in the model.
That's right.
As I recall, you know, clearly at times we might run over that if we see an opportunity, either through additional stock buyback. There is no acquisitions in the model. Obviously we're also kinda working on an acquisition that's fairly public, but there's no acquisition activity during the period. As I recall on your stock buyback, I think you had like a 25 or
27
PE
Mm-hmm
to try to kinda pull down any impact of actual stock buyback even on the stock buyback. On top of that, anybody else. Oh, I'll give you. Right here in real estate. You heard Steve talk about Mattress Firm's real estate. We spent the first year, once we acquired Mattress Firm, to make sure we fully understood the organization. In one area, we spent a lot of time on is real estate and what the real estate strategy should be going forward. It's basically put on pause. You know, don't open any stores for a while. Let's see how this works. Let's make sure we understand what we're doing. Let's look at real estate as a total return on invested capital, capping out the leases.
You know, let's think about this and what we're trying to do. We're gonna finish that analysis in 26. We're getting closer. Probably, during the period, I think it's likely that there's store growth at MattressFirm. You might not get a lot of the impact till later on. The, the incremental piece that, that was interesting for us, and maybe some of y'all, you've already kinda clicked on it, is once we shifted the floor, okay, the cash flows from, we'll call it a new box, are much different for the consolidated Somnigroup than it was just for MattressFirm, because you got the balance of share shift. That is significant, and we wanna work through that. The economics are much different once the balance of share has shifted. Bhaskar, it's your model.
The only thing.
You signed off on it.
The only thing I would add is what's interesting is, Scott has mentioned this a couple of times before, which is as we're having discussions around synergies, is it a synergy or is it a productivity? As you noted, or as I noted today, is that we took our estimate up $25 million on the cost side, and that's basically a function of once you get in and you start seeing some things, there's incremental opportunities. As I think about the future is as we get in and start learning, there's more likely than not there are gonna be some incremental opportunities there. Is it a productivity or a synergy? That will be the how we classify it.
Great. Next question, please.
Thank you. It's Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Good to see everyone. Echo the comments. Great content in the presentation today. One slide that we get asked about a lot is where we are in the cycle right now. You guys like to show U.S.-produced units at levels below 2009. The reality is that since 2009, there's been a lot of import units coming in. How should we think about where we are from a total unit standpoint, U.S. and domestically produced? On that front, second part of the question, the imported units are sold heavily online. How do you think about that online competition, specifically from something like Amazon?
I can do most of that, I think. Bhaskar, help me. I think if I, if I put the import units in there, the trend line's the same.
That's correct.
You might not get the exact same number. I think we show down 30.
Yes.
You would get the same trajectory. Maybe it's 24. If you just add them on, it'd be taller, so I think you get the same curve. You know, in doing import units, there's an argument of what's an import unit and what you find and the codes and stuff. That's the reason we don't use it. I don't think the trend line changes. If you talk about the online business, which is also where I look for changes in import activity, we work with the large online companies. We don't see anything in there that looks unusual. Their growth has not been very good this last year. Was probably flat-ish in sales. I talk sales, not units. The units you're talking about that are being sold there are generally $200 and below.
60%-65% of them are twin mattresses, not really in our fairway very much. We're not seeing a lot of new activity there. The other place that I look at, because the guts of your question is there something else going on that we're not capturing when we look at the downturn, okay? We look at the import data. We talk to Leggett about springs. We talk to the large houses that sell online. We obviously have online business.
The other place we go is we go actually to the market, and we go look at our talk to our salespeople, look at the retailers, say, "Hey, you see any mattresses come into the floor that are new brands that are usurping other brands and maybe there's a Chinese mattress over there, they're selling a lot of beds, and we're losing balance this year?" We don't see that. Sales force doesn't see that. You can go do your channel checks. We don't see a lot of that activity. I think we've got a pretty good handle on where the industry is, the data is not clean. You're absolutely right. It's not perfectly clean. Bhaskar, you got anything else on that one?
Well said, Scott.
Studied it. Thank you.
This is Keith Hughes, Truist. Back on marketing, so on the 100 basis points leverage, you're not assuming a change in percentage of sales going towards advertising. Do I have that correct?
That's correct.
Are you assuming the effectiveness of that advertising changes? Okay.
Yes, we are.
Well
Basically what we've assumed in the model is that we have more eyeballs for the same dollars. We're reinvesting those dollars. Holding rate, more eyeballs.
Okay.
Yeah. But let me answer your question a little there. He's correct there, have we added sales incrementally to the model just because of this effectiveness? No.
No.
expanded our market share because of the advertising?
No.
The answer to that's no.
Okay.
Okay.
Also on the same topic, you showed a graph that you've shifted from Mattress Firm spend to Tempur-Pedic spend over the last four quarters just in dollars. Is that going to stay in the future? How will that breakout look at, say, in 2028, when you get to the end of this plan?
Are you talking about the area where Mattress Firm was advertising the brand Mattress Firm?
Yes, the brand Mattress Firm, that advertising
Tom, you wanna talk about it?
contracted in Tempur-
Yeah, I would expect that what you're seeing now is more consistent with how it will look moving forward. You know, as we made the point, the focus on the retailer brand itself without linkage to the mattress brand is not necessarily as effective, you know, from Tempur Sealy perspective historically as well as what we've learned at Mattress Firm. You know, I think one way to think about it also is the mattress brand story is integral to telling the Mattress Firm story because what we're in the business of doing is matching consumers with a product that will help them to get a better night's sleep. As opposed to that being a displacement of a Mattress Firm story, it's actually a component of that story.
I think therefore the model that you saw today will indeed continue, and you could expect the allocations to continue accordingly.
Great. Next question.
Great. Good morning. It's Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Thank you again for all the detail this morning and a lot to be excited about. My question is, really indirectly about the proposed Leggett transaction. I know you're not gonna wanna address that.
This one is very indirect.
I know you're not gonna wanna comment on that specifically, so I'll try to make it a broader question really about organizational bandwidth to do another deal. Can you help us think about the company's ability to execute on what is really two sizable deals in potentially a short amount of time?
Yeah. First of all, if you were in our M&A group, they know, like job one, if we don't do anything we can't do. Like if we're not ready, we wouldn't do something. There is no acquisition budget at Tempur Sealy, so there's no pressure to do a deal. You know, we don't have people say, "Okay, we've got, you know, $50 million here in the budget. We gotta go get something." We've always been that's why we describe it as opportunistic. That's actually that's fundamental. The reason we could look at another large transaction at this point is because of the success of the Mattress Firm combination.
Both the quality of people we found at Mattress Firm, their willingness to make some changes, the willingness of the Tempur Sealy people to work with the Somnigroup restructuring. We're able to take some of, Mattress Firm's staff and people and move them up into Somnigroup, which has been great. We're able to move Steve and Tom to kinda help out. Tom's kinda doing dual role over there at Mattress Firm. That may look like it was a heavy lift. I mean, it was a big company and everything else. Because the organizations knew each other so well, the people got along so well, the cultures were so connected, it wasn't as big a lift. To answer your question, we are ready to do more.
you wanna talk about the combination as long as we're kinda on it?
Yeah, I would just say that the reception from the Mattress Firm team or all the employees has been pretty remarkable. When you think about Mattress Firm, we're the 5th owner in 25 years. They really embrace the concept of a forever owner. The focus was not on selling Mattress Firm, the focus is on selling mattresses. It was evidenced by our engagement survey that went from a 70 for the entire company to a 76. It went up 600 basis points. When you look at acquisitions or mergers, that just doesn't happen. I think the important thing to note is that they're all in, they're excited about it, and they can focus on taking care of our guests.
Morning, everyone. This is Dan Silverstein from UBS. I'll echo great presentation and thanks for having us. One thing that stuck out to me was just the number of internal opportunities cited at Mattress Firm. Putting aside the synergies, but the store refreshes, new store technology, things like that, how should we think about a normalized margin structure for this business today or in the future versus what it's achieved in the past? Thank you.
Great, great question. Stepping back a second, some of y'all know Mattress Firm well. Mattress Firm had an appropriate business strategy for that entity at the time that was a little bit more like vendor roulette. Okay, we're just gonna trade vendors off each other, the focus was always on getting something more from the supplier, okay? Less customer-centric. One of the big pivots that we're in the middle of, quite frankly, is being more like a what I would think of as a traditional retailer, okay? Focus on the customer, and the customer is centered all that, all that we do. Steve, from the brand walls to your merchandising, I think he's right.
I think there is a lot of opportunity. I think you're gonna see it in share gains. They're not embedded in any forecast yet. It's a major cultural shift. Not that they weren't... They were customer-focused. I wouldn't say that the customer was the center of their focus.
Yeah.
Great. Jon Matuszewski from Jefferies. Thanks for the time this morning. appreciated the update on Practice Lab and the Mattress Matcher. Steve, maybe you could give us some perspective on just the average productivity of a sleep expert today, where your top performers are, and maybe how you can close that gap with new technology and more adoption of these initiatives.
Oh, yeah, you're all over that. Go for it.
Yeah. We'll start with Mattress Matcher. We're at a point where about half the consumers are exposed to it, which we're fine with because there's some consumers that come in and we don't wanna force it on them. We think that the utilization is where it's at. We did do some secret shops, and when we do secret shops and compare folks that don't use Mattress Matcher when they should versus the ones that do, there's a noticeable increase in the productivity, right, in terms of the trust that's established, the experience. Sleep Expert AI was we did a soft launch last summer, that was really about chat.
We just launched it at the end of January, and that's in terms of the Practice Lab. Our goal is to have the sleep experts do about 2 million Practice Labs on an annualized basis. Our run rate right now is about half of that, but we don't wanna take a stick to them on that. We want them to use it. We'll build up the people that use it and we see results from them. That's how we wanna drive the change management and the adoption. You know, for us, it's an adjacent tool. You know, the payback in terms of effectiveness, if our sales go up 20 or 30 bips, it's a home run.
It's really about, again, building on what we see as our lead in terms of our sleep experts, being superior to the rest of the industry, and really enhancing their ability to engage with consumers.
Bhaskar, I think the other part of his question was how do you think about normalized margins?
At Mattress Firm. When you think about the margin expansion that I spoke to, not only the network study as well as just the leverage, will flow through both entities, but specifically on the Mattress Firm side is 40% fixed or 40% flow-through. As that revenue starts coming back and the industry starts coming back and Mattress Firm starts taking share, it will be very helpful as it relates to the incremental dollar at Mattress Firm.
Great. Next question. As a reminder, when you ask your question, we would appreciate you stating your name and your firm's name before asking.
Hi. Thank you. It's Rafe Jadrosich at Bank of America. Bhaskar, just following up on that, can you talk about the incremental margins you would expect by segment as we get a potential volume recovery here? That 400 basis points of operating margin expansion you're talking about, can you maybe help us disaggregate, you know, how much of that is synergies versus volume leverage versus productivity gains?
Sure. Let me do the last one first. When I think about 300 basis points on the gross margin side. Let's think about a little bit less than half of that will be the associated with leverage as the volumes come back. When you think about the next biggest component of that, let's call it a little bit less than 100 basis points, is gonna be in and around the productivity initiatives that we have line of sight toward, and then the synergies. Now, embedded in the efficiency number is that we have assumed the normal fixed. Every year, let's assume fixed goes up about 3% just from an inflation factor, and we've also assumed some commodities as well.
On the operating side is we've taken nothing as it relates to marketing, so the vast majority of that is just doing more with less, and getting the benefit from a leverage standpoint. As sales go up, getting leverage on the right side of it. What's the first part of your question?
Just the incremental margins by segment on volume recovery.
Absolutely. We talked about Mattress Firm. Let's think about that as about 40%. At a big hand wave on the Tempur Sealy side is let's think about that somewhere between 30%-35%. Obviously, if it's coming from Tempur, it's gonna be more toward the high end of that, if not over that. When you think about Sealy, it's gonna be on the lower end of that range.
Hi, Jeff Lick with Stephens. Question for Steve. Steve, interestingly enough, you know, prior to your running Mattress Firm, you were actually the senior leader of Tempur Sealy on the other side of the transaction or other side of the ledger. I'm just curious, in your experience as you were, you know, with Tempur, you probably said, "Boy, if I was ever the CEO of Mattress Firm, this is how I'd do things." I mean, Scott alluded to certain things. I'm just curious maybe you could drill down on areas that now that you're running Mattress Firm, you know, you see as opportunities. Maybe just building on that, I think your percentage of Tempur product on the floor was probably 40% or so or in that area.
You guys are guiding towards, you know, the low sixties. Just curious, what gives you comfort that that's the right number and that there, you know, might not be any, you know, holes there or whatnot?
Well, to be fully transparent, I never really thought I would be the CEO of Mattress Firm.
I can confirm that.
Yeah.
You know, when I went in, I didn't have preconceived notions. I went in wanting to listen to, you know, understand what their issues were. I knew enough to know that there were certain levers that you could pull. One of the levers that we pulled is that the field was heavily distracted. We have district managers and RVPs that go into the stores to train, to develop, to help drive the business and work with our sleep experts. There was a lot of clutter, self-inflicted from other departments and also the sales team itself. What we did is we put this initiative together, which was clear the path, because we needed to get back to a focus on operational excellence and execution.
That enabled our district managers and RVPs to get in stores Tuesday through Friday, no meetings, no due dates or nothing from corporate. The first thing was to get that level of focus. The other thing that I did notice when I worked with other retailers is many retailers were very reactionary, okay? You know, you'd see them go through a, you know, period that may be tough, and then all of a sudden there's a whole set of new, different initiatives and directives. There was a lot of guardrailing. That type of thing also happened at Mattress Firm, where there was a lot of guardrailing. If they had two weeks of bad sales and all of a sudden you're going in a different direction.
The problem with that is nothing ever gets executed really well because they assume it's always going to change. One of the big things that we did is we laid out, here's what our strategy is, here's what our focus is, and finally after six or seven months, they've realized, wow, they're serious about it and they're sticking to it. That's really about driving the execution. I think in a nutshell, you know, taking what I learned in how other retailers operated, was to deliver that focus and really that steady hand and stay on strategy, and the reception from the team has been great.
Because now they can focus on continuous improvement. In terms of the Tempur Sealy and the balance of share, which was in the low 40s and now we're, you know, low 60s, that balance of share, why I'm confident, that balance of share really was suppressed. Scott talked a little bit about the vendor roulette type of situation. There were numerous little thumbs that were on the scale that really kept Tempur Sealy balance of share contained. Really it was about leveling the playing field, advertising the brands, in terms of a share of voice that they should be, and you saw that it happened pretty quickly. I think it feels that we're right now at about what the consumer demand is, and it feels like it has sustainability.
Thank you. Next question.
Well done.
Yeah.
No follow-up.
Philip Lee from William Blair. Thank you guys for hosting us today. Can you maybe break down the mid-single-digit growth assumption for Mattress Firm? How much of that is coming from the refreshes and relocations? How much is that is coming from marketing improvements, maybe an uptick in ASP? Then you mentioned there could be some potential for new stores. Is there anything else major that we should be considering for upside of Mattress Firm? Thank you.
Well, we probably can't do that detail. Certainly, ASP has been a driver.
Yeah.
As I spoke to in the prepared remarks, the high-end customer has been very strong, been very accepting of price increases, and ASP has been a major driver. Traffic has still been flattish. Is that fair?
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, we gave some pretty detailed information about Mattress Firm's performance on the earnings call recently, primarily because the weather was so bad in January, everybody was all curious about what it was things were going to be. We've had a little activity in the Middle East, as long as I'm FD protected, we have to roll it forward a little ways because everybody's worried about that. I can tell you as we sit here today, we've done a couple of things. One, Bhaskar, you studied all other, Middle East activities or European wars.
Yes.
Why don't you, why don't you give them your conclusions on that rather than me speak for you?
What I would tell you is that it is super interesting in the from a United States or North America perspective, it's hard to really discern during the event. I think that's just the U.S. consumer has got so used to things happening from a global standpoint. The week prior, you look at it during the couple of weeks during and the week after, there's really maybe a little bit of a dip, but it bounces right back. What I would go to on the international side, specifically around Ukraine, obviously a different set of circumstances there, is that international blowing and going before, during a couple of week period, you saw a dip down. Super interesting, again, the consumer gets their head around it comes back.
Yes, there is some, there's an impact. However, again, it goes to the nature of the consumer. Once you kinda get a new normal, the consumer is back. I think Hansbart, you had a story that you told to Scott a couple of years ago. He was like or a year ago. It was, "How are you able to do what you're doing when you have this war happening?" And your comment was?
There's always a war somewhere.
Exactly.
Yeah.
If you look at the numbers right now, we're comping positive at Mattress Firm quarter to date. Okay? We're comping positive at Mattress Firm since the actions in the Middle East. It has not had a dramatic effect. We're comping about a push-ish at Dreams. From our perspective, it's been relatively minor so far. No one knows what the future is, so I can't predict past today, but it's not been, or it hasn't been impactful, is what I'd say. If you go to the Tempur Sealy side of the house, we're comping low double digits quarter to date in sales.
Thank you. Further questions or follow-ups?
Look at you look eager.
Always excited to talk about the Tempur Sealy, the Somnigroup story. Still trying to get the Tempur Sealy out of my brain after all the years of covering the company. Want to follow up on product development. It seems to me that in owning Mattress Firm, you have a known captive audience for products you develop. Can you talk about how you may change innovation and when we might see that come to fruition?
Sure. You're right. We've always had a close relationship with Mattress Firm on product development, and quite frankly, we have a close relationship with all retailers in product development. I'll let Cliff and Brent here talk about the process, you know, going forward. I really think it's gonna be more streamlined and probably additive. Plus you've got additional insights that we're getting through actual retail data, which before is just the manufacturer. To get the retailer to actually give you real data. You know, that didn't work very well. Cliff, Brent, you guys wanna?
Yeah, Brent.
play with that for a while?
Brent, you wanna take that from the standpoint of how you guys and your team interact with Matt Firm and how that'll help inform future product development ideas?
Yeah. As Scott said, it's always been a really constructive relationship with Mattress Firm and with a lot of retailers, we're always looking to get more and more first-party voice of customer data. With the transaction, getting closer with those colleagues, there's definitely some opportunities there. As Cliff showed you on the slides, you know, those big key consumer needs, those are pretty sticky. What we're working on is how do we continue to improve upon them, get close to 'em, and spending even more time now with sleep experts and some of their regional managers to hear kind of firsthand what's working, what's not working, so we can keep tweaking and optimizing to do it better.
I think the only thing I would add to that is in the case of specific products, whether it's something like an Active Breeze or we've got something that we call the Heritage Collection that will come out as a fast follow to the Stearns & Foster launch, knowing, I referenced it in the presentation, we have a large retailer that we can look at specific slot placement and say, "Okay, we know we can put these products." Don't fit every retailer, but they will fit certain stores, certain demographics, and we've got to some degree a captive customer. We always have to earn our slot space. It gives us the ability to move forward with those product development cycles on some things that may not have a really broad audience initially, but allows us to test and learn in an environment that is somewhat controlled.
That's a good point, Cliff. It does de-risk some of the launches.
Absolutely.
without question. The other thing, it's a, it's a little bit different, Steve, at least I think it is, and you can correct me, feel free. You know, now that they're in the family, there's a better balance of private label, branding versus branded label. You know, Sleepy's versus a Sealy.
Yeah. Prior to the acquisition, Mattress Firm was, I would say, overweighted into private label, and they took it too far up the price ladder, which is where, really where brands play best. So we had a rebalancing. This product was within the family. It was produced by TSI's OEM plant. So we rebalanced that and because brands fit more in those price points than where private label was for that product.
Thank you. Next question.
Hey, thank you for doing this. [Parshant Patel with Janney Montgomery Scott] . One question just on consumer health, maybe near term. Looking at President's Day, you said, coming out of the quarter, Mattress Firm is positive comp, Tempur low double digits. Have you seen anything on the consumer side that's maybe a little bit different than what you described with respect to the premium customer outperforming the value end? Did the value side kind of come back maybe through that weekend? Also wanted to ask just with respect to, you know, low single digit market growth and potential upside, you know, we have tax refunds coming in...
Yeah
...lower rates coming in, general, you know, looks like consumer retail earnings are pretty positive. Just kind of curious if there's any, you know, optimism going into the next few months?
Yeah. Let me I can do some of that one. Yes, there's actually quite a bit of optimism about all the tax refunds, rates coming down and everything. It's not put in our numbers because-
We haven't built that in.
...we've been burned for the last four years. We'd get you know, optimistic, and then something happened. I totally agree that there's certainly a foundation there, that could be some certainly near-term optimism. When you come to what you see in consumers, I don't think we've seen very much different. You seen anything different anywhere? I don't think we really see anything much different.
No. No.
I mean, You've heard everywhere from every retailer, high end is strong, and the low end is, you know, just not really in the marketplace for the most part. The good news in this industry is we don't make a lot of money on the low-end beds. They'll come back some. They do cover some fixed cost.
Thank you. Further questions?
Thank you. It's Peter Keith again from Piper Sandler. I wanted to ask actually on the international front, just how you've really dominated the US in a way with this multi-brand approach and have done a good job of sort of, capturing the full price spectrum. When you think about the international opportunity, is there still so much low-hanging fruit for Tempur-Pedic that that's where the focus is? Or can you start to leverage some of the US practices in those international markets with a multi-branded, broader price spectrum approach?
That's a good question. Scott asks me that...
Yeah
on a regular basis. From Sealy.
I didn't set you up, Hans.
No, no. This was not planted.
No. No plant.
Okay. No, there's a lot of runway with Tempur at this stage. It also makes sense from the highest return that we get from driving Tempur. It will be a long time before I think the economics would work to introduce, for example, on a wholesale level, Sealy across the world. A lot of runway with Tempur as we have moved in from the super premium, like above $3,000 to and up, which is the meat of the market to a large extent. Yeah, there's a lot of runway there.
Let me kind of make sure, 'cause it's a little bit of a complicated organization when you go internationally. Hans Bart is mainly focused on Tempur, okay? If you go to Dreams, which would be part of your attack if you were going, is Jonathan, which is a different business unit. We certainly are in the marketplace in continental Europe for possibly another retailer, small retailer. If you have that, then you can do some things with the Sealy brand or kind of at the lower end market. If you go to Asia, most of the Sealy product is done through the Asian joint venture. Which is a 50/50 joint venture. They generally are high-end.
Generally, those markets at the low end, as Cliff knows very well from being on the board, it is really low end. I mean, it's like you don't wanna be there kind of business. I think going forward, if you give me years, not quarters, I think it's likely we do something in Europe with small couple of retail tuck-in kind of stuff that would be not material to the Somnigroup, but would be material to those business units, I think is probably, is probably likely. I think Hanspart's gonna be very successful getting Tempur more in the meat of the market. High-end, but the meat of the market.
Thank you. Next question.
Thank you. Keith Hughes, Truist. The comment on double digit at Tempur Sealy, what do you attribute that to given, you know, the industry's kinda flat at best right now? I assume that's Tempur-Pedic, but just any kind of detail you could give would be great.
No, I mean, I can do detail. You got me mic'd up to the world. No, it's actually not just Tempur-Pedic. It's also the successful Sealy launch at Sealy Posturepedic. It's driven a lot by Mattress Firm and balance of share at Mattress Firm. Hospitalities certainly been very strong also. I think that's pretty close to the. Anybody got any other details?
That's right.
Yep.
Susan Maklari from Goldman Sachs again. Steve, coming from more of a manufacturing background, can you talk to what the reception of retailers have been as you've stepped into this new role and how you perhaps have leveraged your background to help drive those relationships?
Yeah, great question. you know, it was about a year ago that I called all the retailers and told them that I was coming to Mattress Firm and the reception was very positive. They were all very gracious about it. Several of them said, "If, you know, if I can ever help you or, you know, provide any advice, feel free to call me." The relationships have been very good. I think that they know that we're going to compete, but we're gonna play clean, hard football. We're gonna do it the right way in a way that elevates the industry. I think the other thing that, and a lot of the conversations I've had with them and gotten a lot of positive comments about our new campaign.
I've been really beating the drum with them that, as an industry, we're all somewhat responsible for where we're at due to the fact that we're so focused on lower funnel advertising, and we're leading the path by investing in upper funnel advertising. I really encourage them to do that and to, you know, come up with their own version of problem solution. I would say it's been, it's been a positive.
Hi, Rafe Jadrosich at Bank of America. Scott, can you talk about the data that Mattress Firm had when you acquired it? What is the opportunity to utilize and leverage that going forward? I think somewhat related to that, the industry shipments were very strong from, say, 2018-2022. How do you think about, like, the replacement cycle of that potentially coming up here in the next few years?
First, let's just talk about data. I think one of our big surprises, once we actually acquired Mattress Firm and sat in management meetings is I think we were at first, quite frankly, just surprised, then probably a little bit confused, then quite frankly, impressed. Kind of went through all those cycles because we did not realize that they had as robust data collection, processes in place. We had no idea that they had ever many data scientists, have a complete department. That the management team was truly data-driven, and I might say even maybe too far data-driven and might need to do a little human intervention occasionally. Because look, we are a manufacturer and, you know, we did not have much raw data for our people to look at.
It wasn't we weren't data-focused, we just didn't have a source where we were getting the data. You know, Tom, you'd be the best person to talk about some of the stuff with Nate or Steve.
Yeah.
How you're using it and how you, how you see it going across the organization.
I would echo your observations there, Scott. I think we've been very impressed, and I'll speak to marketing...
Yeah.
I think that the point is broader than that.
Yeah.
You know, they have developed by virtue of having that data and data scientists who are very sophisticated, they've developed really sophisticated models to help inform forecasting and given the magnitude of our marketing investment, you know, the media mix model that I referenced during my presentation. It is, you know, considered to be, frankly, by professionals who run media mix companies, you know, best in class amongst retailers. One clear opportunity is continuing to leverage that combined with our judgment to run the Mattress Firm operation, but then starting to apply some of those tools to Tempur Sealy. I mentioned some of the centers of excellence that we have created at the Somnigroup level. Data and analytics is amongst those. We'll use the tools now to better, you know, inform the Tempur Sealy operation.
They won't still have necessarily all the data that we have at Mattress Firm. I think the capability is something that can be stretched. Additionally, we have really robust data on who's actually buying products at Mattress Firm. You could envision standing up clean rooms born out of that insight about who's buying what brands and what products, and then using that to become even more sophisticated in our targeting efforts as we deploy our sizable marketing investment. You know, we're early stage in all of this. It definitely is in place, and I would expect that it's gonna benefit, you know, the overall Somnigroup operation.
What was the second part of your question?
Replacement cycle.
Replacement cycle. Thank you. Again, no data that you can really prove because it's not like a car from the car industry. You don't have bins, I don't know every bed's age and all that. This is my perception. It's an informed perception. Actually, the Leggett people work on this too. There's, I don't think any doubt that the average unit in the installed base, we'll call it, is aged quite a bit. You can look at the stats. There's no question that five or six, seven years ago, a wave of cheap imports, bed in the box, Chinese foam came in, those units got put in the marketplace, they don't hold up. I mean, I think even the people that sell them know that.
They're basically a disposable bed, and I think of that industry as almost a separate bedding industry. It's designed to be disposable. We make some lower-end beds for, you know, they're generally twins. They're basically college students, people in apartment complexes. When people, you know, basically have a new house, they want a grown-up bed. They want a real bed. We can't prove it, but there would appear to be pent-up demand, if nothing else, just in replacement cost. It's aged out. It's aging. The difference in the car business is you know when your car is worn out, you turn the key and it doesn't start or something. In beds, you have to be triggered to think about your bed.
You know, you're not sitting there going, "Huh, I wonder how old my bed is and whether it's worn out," until you bump into one of Tom's ads. That's why advertising can be so important in this industry. You have to trigger somebody to think about their bed. Then once you're thinking about them, it's a good chance you got a hook into them and you've got them in the, in the, in the purchase journey.
Hi. Philip Lee from William Blair again. Since we were just talking about marketing and the improvements there, has there been any sort of meaningful change in the marketing co-op dollars you're getting from third-party brands? Are they potentially putting more dollars as you get more sophisticated and you seem more successful in the campaign, or has there been any pullback from following the merger? I guess how should we think about that piece evolving over time? Thank you.
Tom, I don't think there's been any change in marketing at Mattress Firm other than your incremental.
Right.
payments for the slots, right? Other than that, everything's pretty much been the same.
We have had 2 manufacturers since we launched the campaign ante up and say that they wanted to participate in it.
That would be incremental-
Yeah.
above their contractual commitment, to be clear.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right. The initial feedback from when we put some of that advertising in the market from them has been very encouraging. That's something we would expect and hope to continue in 2026 and beyond.
I think Tom mentioned it in his prepared remarks, but it's a big deal. You know, $100 million, I think. You know, the $100 million that Mattress Firm was getting from Tempur Sealy in co-op, part of the problem was that was not being used very effectively. That is like a, that's a $100 million gift that Tom's been able to turn into much more productive advertising. It is not an insignificant, call it synergy, that has not yet been captured yet, what I would call it in the numbers. We're working through it.
Thank you.
I had a question about the changing customer journey. In the past, I think the discussion has been around search queries leading to, you know, in-store experience. Now it's a lot about back and forth with chat agents.
Mm-hmm. AI. Yeah.
Yeah.
No question.
How is that changing the advertising spend on online interactions, and are you working directly with, you know, OpenAI, Anthropic, to get into that customer thinking so that the agents can help them think about what mattress is best?
Yeah. My executive summary is the world has changed some. Google searches aren't quite as effective, and it is changing, and we have people working on the change. Tom, if you want to tell them where you, where you think things are.
Yeah, indeed. I mean, you recognize the trends, what's happening with, you know, kind of we'll call it historical search, and it is evolving. I think, you know, if you think about Mattress Firm particularly, but also obviously Somnigroup at large, given our leadership position, we have both the need and the opportunity to establish and reinforce our expertise to consumers who are typically, when they're using AI, seeking guidance, right? They're not only looking for a search result, but they're typically seeking guidance. Still early days for us, but we're definitely on it. We have a team focused upon it specifically.
You know, we have to start with making sure that we appear in those searches and that the credibility that we rightly have is conveyed to consumers, and then they have reason to look for our, you know, Tempur Sealy brands and then seek guidance from Mattress Firm.
I'd say we started probably looking at it last June or July.
As you probably know, it's complex. Absolutely the world's changing. It's a good call-out.
Thank you.
A question on the logistics front that, you know, post Mattress Firm acquisition, you guys from middle mile to last mile cross-docking, first mile, you have huge scale and you're moving a huge amount of units. In a, you know, weaker industry environment, are third-party retailers surfing on your infrastructure more? As you think about optimizing the logistics network, if customer demand originates from a Tempur direct store, tempur.com, a Mattress Firm, wherever it is, or a third-party retailer, could you move to a drop shipping model like mattress logistics as a service, you know, like Wayfair is doing with CastleGate?
Scott, I think he's been working on your logistics consulting project.
That's right.
Hear him drop that cross dock on you?
Right.
Be careful, he knows. What you talking about?
Maybe I'll hit a couple of points. One is on the Mattress Firm, TSI network study we're doing. We're doing a clean sheet view of, you know, if we're drawing it up from scratch, what would that look like? It will absolutely result in all sorts of things around maybe adding or taking away some DCs, combining DCs. We have a pilot in Phoenix, you know, here about end of second quarter. The Mattress Firm DC in Phoenix will shift into the Tempur Sealy DC, so we'll combine it, leverage the space. There'll be inventory improvements because we'll have a fence between both sides, but we won't be taking product out of our DC in a truck, shipping it over there, delivering it, and it will lower inventory and then some costs associated with that.
We'll probably do that in a much bigger way across the network as we get through our network study this year. Then there's other more structural fundamental things that we will look at in order to optimize. Separate from all that, we're always trying to optimize our TSI's transportation and with volume sort of being lower overall, driven by the low end of the product base, it becomes challenging, but we're trying to optimize and get as many units on a truck as we can when we go out and do a multi-stop delivery. There's things you can do there, but clearly as volumes increase over the next few years, which we're planning, a lot of that's gonna ride for free and it's gonna drive productivity. It's not fixed cost productivity, it's variable productivity.
Instead of delivering 4 units to that retailer, it might be 5 or 6, and those 1 or 2 extra will ride for free. Lots of opportunities there. Another area on logistics in general is, and we've had an effort on this that is showing good results, is quite often after we do deliveries, we'll come back empty. We have a pretty significant backhaul effort underway to find other people are moving product to our base location and that's looking really good as well. We do have some customers that we drop ship for versus ship through their DCs.
Yeah.
Hey guys, Jay Suchotliff from Millennium. Good to see you.
Good to see you.
What I think is lost is if you look at your, you know, 2028 target going from $4.85 to $5.15, you would assume the industry would grow low single digits in 2025, low single digits in 2026. It was down in 2025. We're saying flattish 2026, and every point of industry is $0.10. So there's, call it $0.40-$0.50 of earnings power that you made up. You know, part of it is the incremental revenue synergies, part of it's.
Mm-hmm.
The $25 million of costs.
Mm-hmm.
What else is there that makes up that gap?
Where we overperformed the industry expectation?
Got it.
From a bridge standpoint, you called out that is the right way to think about it. Those first two years, 2025, let's call it mid-single digit decline, we were expecting some kind of growth. 2026, we're expecting flattish to perhaps slightly up. However, our expectations, meaning we had incremental share gains in 2025 and in 2026. A part of the offset is that we've done better than what we thought we would from a market share standpoint, number one. Number two is in the original assumption, there was no revenue synergies. Steve and team partnering with Scott Thompson, we realized that faster than we expected, call that $100 million. We got $25 million more cost synergies than we originally had thought about. We think there's upside there.
You've heard it across the panel here where that upside could come from. What I would finally say is from productivity standpoint. At some point, is it a synergy? Is it a productivity? Right now, we got good line of sight in each bucket, but incrementally and how not only did we make up the softness in the industry in those first two years, but now how we've exceeded the expectations going to 515 was around productivity. We have line of sight to just doing more with less, both from a logistics standpoint as well as manufacturing. Some of that's probably just in the way we forecast. We really do try to forecast, you know, middle of the fairway, a little conservative.
We're careful not to put synergies or efficiencies, as we call them before we did Mattress Firm, you know, into our numbers until the line of sight is like right in front of us, because you never know for sure.
A follow-up just on the, where you're seeing the share gains, obviously, a little bit sticky. Is that with some of your competitors at third-party distribution either being kicked out, being severely reduced? Where are you seeing those share?
Cliff, you wanna do the share gain stuff? I mean, a lot of it's gonna be in Mattress Firm.
Yeah, a lot of it's Mattress Firm.
You don't wanna call out too many retailers by name in general.
No, I won't mention retailers.
It's mainly velocity.
A lot of it's velocity. If you think about, as I mentioned in the presentation earlier, where we were in the product life cycle with Sealy as an example, we were coming on four years of product. It was tired. We, through the design of the product, really sought to reposition Sealy to take share in the marketplace, and that's what we saw in the back half of the year after the product came into the market. We have similar expectations as we come to market with Stearns later this year that we will see growth not only in slot count, but also growth from across the aisle and taking share from competitors.
I think it's a combination of our overall sales efforts and how we connect with the retailers day in, day out, the fact that we are driving advertising in the industry, and we're driving awareness of our brands. Retailers are aware of that. The innovation and the products that we're bringing to market, whether it's Sealy, whether it's the upcoming Stearns, or whether it's gonna be the new Breeze product in 2027, bringing products to market that differentiate themselves from the sea of sameness on that retail floor.
I mean, the advertising's strong. I mean, you predispose a customer to your brand when they walk into a multi-branded store, and that helps. Certainly, RSAs are very aware of when products are advertising and bringing customers in.
Thank you. That ends the time for today's presentation. Thank you all so much for joining us.
Thank you very much.
... in person and virtually.
Thank you. Thank you.
Good job, guys.