Perfect. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Alex Perry. I cover the leisure sector here at BofA. I'm very pleased to have SharkNinja here with us today, including Mark Barrocas, Chief Executive Officer. SharkNinja is coming off a significant year of growth in 2024, growing revenue over 30%, adding $1.3 billion in net sales, with growth across 36 different subcategories, both inside and outside of the home. Thanks again for joining us today, Mark. To start, can you just talk about the new product roadmap? What products and categories are you most excited about for 2025? Products like a Cryo Glow or a Swirl, what an incremental new product could do in terms of top-line growth?
Yeah. Look, I think first off, we had a great product launch season in 2024. We had a number of really big hit products. I mean, we kind of planned these products to kind of be okay, but not home runs. I think in 2024, we came out of the season with a number of home runs. I mean, the Slushi, the Ninja Slushi, the Ninja Luxe Café, the Ninja Crispi. Our robot products did great. We had a lot of great momentum heading into 2025. In fact, a lot of those 2024 products only launched in the United States. They will not actually be fully rolled out in the world until we get into really the third quarter and even the beginning of the fourth quarter of this year.
For example, things like the Slushi and Crispi do not launch in the U.K. until the second quarter. Some of these products will launch in the third quarter into Germany and France and markets like that. One of the things we learned last year from launching 25 new products into the market was the need to space those launches out across the year. I think we had too much new product introduction in the third quarter in a very tight time period, and it did not allow for us to, one thing, tell our stories, but two, also react from a supply chain perspective. We have started the year, Alex, where, as you said, we have already launched a product called the Ninja Swirl. The product had a large waitlist even before we launched. We launched a product called the Ninja FlexFlame. That was our first large-format outdoor cooking appliance.
We launched a fan called the Shark TurboBlade. We're planning to launch at least two new product categories this year and have a great roadmap of products going forward. I think it's important to point out that, and I said this to some of the investors that we met with today, that I remember years ago, people waiting outside an Apple Store for an iPhone to come out, and you'd say, well, who is waiting outside actually to buy a product? I think what's been amazing about the Shark and Ninja products today is that before we launch any of these products, there's already a waitlist for the products. There's already a sign-up for the products. We've really been able to kind of create a lot of excitement with the new product introductions.
On top of that, it's also created a great halo to help support our base business, which came out of 2024 very, very strong.
Perfect. I think you may have alluded to this, but what new categories could SharkNinja explore that you think would complement your current offering, whether it be more sort of outdoor leisure types of products? What are the obvious categories that you're not in today that you think would complement the brand?
As we're successful in one category, it opens up the door for us to enter new categories. When we were as successful as we've been in hair care, that opened up the opportunity for us to expand into skincare. As you mentioned, we launched the Shark Cryo Glow in the U.K. in the fourth quarter of last year, and it just recently launched a few weeks ago in the U.S. It'll launch in the EU in the third quarter of this year. Skincare, I think, is a really exciting category for us to expand into. Outside of the home, I'm super excited about. We went into indoor-outdoor fans a year ago with the Shark FlexBreeze. I think you're going to see a lot more products from us in outdoor cooling and even potentially outdoor heating is a category that I think is ripe for us.
We'll launch this year into at least two new categories. We'll launch next year in 2026 into at least two new categories. We've got to answer two questions. I mean, one of them is, will the consumer allow us to be able to expand into that category? Will they accept our brands in that category? Two is kind of what gives us the right to be in the category? I mean, what are we bringing to the consumer that someone else is not able to bring to the consumer? I think you look at the products that we've talked about. I mean, take the Luxe Café.
Yes, there's a big defined espresso market globally, but I think what we're doing with the versatility that we're doing it at, with the price point that we're doing at, is something that is really bringing a lot of value to the consumer and bringing more people into the category. That is what I think is so important for us, Alex, is that we're not just going after large definable categories and trying to take share, but we're also trying to create new categories where we're kind of a dominant player within that category.
Perfect. You talked a lot about new categories and new product introductions. I guess if we shift and talk about the outlook for growth for some of the more mature categories. Take a vacuum category, for instance, that you've been in for a very long time. How are you able to continue to grow a category like that?
Look, I mean, the same way that Apple grows their base categories. I mean, how do we put our products into retirement before their usable life? I mean, how do we speed up the replacement cycle? How do we create more innovation? I mean, if I go back in the business 15, 16 years ago, I mean, the average American household had slightly over one vacuum cleaner per house. Today, they nearly have two vacuum cleaners a house. I mean, it's not unique to go and find an American household with a robot and a cordless vacuum or a corded vacuum and a hand vacuum. I mean, there are so many different categories. I mean, homes are changing. There's more hard floors in homes that are going into today. We are looking at a lot of two-in-one products, products that vacuum and mop at the same time.
Our international business, I mean, we're very, very low market share, and we're really just getting started in continental Europe. I mean, although we're number one market share in cleaning in the U.S. and Canada and the U.K., we have very small market share in continental Europe and in Latin America. I think the cleaning business, which last year for us grew over 16% in spite of the market declining about 5%, really came from new product introduction, expanding into new categories within cleaning, and then expanding our international business within the cleaning segment. I'll give you kind of one other interesting data point within that. In 2023, we launched into the carpet extraction category. It was carpet extraction and stain cleaning. We became the number one market share in vacuum cleaners in 2014 and haven't given it up since.
Retailers continue to keep asking us, how do you get into the carpet cleaning business? The honest answer was that the consumer would allow us to get into the category, but we did not have a disruptive innovation. Ultimately, in 2023, we developed a disruptive innovative product that cleaned carpets better and did it easier for the consumer. Today, we are the number one carpet extraction product in the market in the U.S. and are expanding that business into Europe. It takes some time, but I think once we kind of figure out the formula, Shark or Ninja is able to kind of define and gain its fair share within these categories.
Perfect. We have talked a lot about categories, different product introductions. If we shift and think about channels, what channels do you see the most opportunity in? How should we think about sizing the overall beauty category? How big could the opportunity in sporting goods be? I think that is a channel you just recently launched into.
Yeah. Look, we want to be relevant wherever the consumer chooses to shop for our products. It's not our job to select who the winners or losers are going to be in retail. I mean, we've got a great direct-to-consumer business. We're the most searched brands on Amazon in our space, and we're in every major brick-and-mortar retailer in our space. As you said, as we expanded these new categories like coolers last year, the entry point was into sporting goods. I think that what you'll see in sporting goods as we move forward is not just products like coolers, but I think those sporting goods retailers recognize that they can sell consumers products like our Ninja Blast, which is our cordless blender, our Shark FlexFreeze, which is our indoor-outdoor fan, some of our grills and our pizza ovens.
We're creating demand for these products out in the market, and I think they recognize that they could fulfill that demand with retailers, with consumers either going to their site or walking through their stores. We're in the outdoor retailers like Bass Pro and Cabela's. We're in the beauty retailers like Ulta and Sephora. We want to expand more into grocery. We think that products like cookware and cutlery and Thirsti will lend itself to going into retailers like grocery stores. The Ninja Slushi. I mean, this holiday season, some of our retailers are going to partner us with large beverage companies and do stackouts with our Ninja Slushi product and their beverages in grocery stores. We're kind of looking for opportunities kind of anywhere that we can kind of interface with the consumer or stop them at some retail site that they're in.
Perfect. I wanted to ask a little bit of a higher-level question and just get your view sort of on the overall health of your core consumer. Obviously, there's a lot going on right now from a macroeconomic standpoint. What are sort of the near-term demand signals that you're monitoring that gives you confidence in the health of your consumer? What is your outlook there?
Look, in terms of the demand signals, we look at daily POS. I know a lot of investors get Circana data or NPD data. That is way out of date. I mean, we are able to get daily POS down to the store level, down to the SKU level from every one of our major retailers. Access to data is not a problem. Our demand planning team then takes that data and adjusts our supply plans and our inventory plans against that on a weekly basis. In terms of the overall health of the consumer, look, I think the consumer is looking for the best product at the best value, and it is going to be enormously discerning. Let's keep in mind in our space that in 2022, our market was down 14%. I mean, our category of products were definitely one of those COVID overhang categories.
I mean, the market was down 14% in 2022. The market was down 10% in 2023. Market was down single digits last year. In spite of that, we grew our business 32%. I think our job is to make sure that we're giving the consumer the best possible product with the best possible quality at the best value. Our products are, you can get into the Ninja brand at $59. You can buy a product all the way up to $999. You can get into the Shark brand at $59 and buy a product at $899. I think from a brand perspective, there's a lot of entry points for the consumer into our products. I think that gives us a really large socioeconomic group of consumers that we're focused on. We sell everyone from Walmart to Sephora and everyone in between.
We have also got a really large demographic base as we have products that appeal to high school kids all the way up to our core 35- 55 year-old female consumer and male consumers with products like our outdoor cooking appliances or our coolers or our robots. I think the consumer is going to be tough, and I think it is our job to make sure that they feel like when they buy a Shark or Ninja product that they got a great product at a great value.
Perfect. I wanted to ask about the right way to think about the long-term algorithm here, especially for the top line. Is low double-digit % growth the right way to think about it? I mean, you did 30+% growth last year, but obviously the base has gotten bigger. What's the right way to think about the long-term growth rate here?
I started getting asked this same question when we did $400 million in revenue. The caveat always was, well, the base is getting bigger. I mean, the base is pretty big right now. It is $5.5 billion. What do I believe? I mean, you can cut our business a number of different ways and look at it. We grew our business last year over 50% internationally. We did over $1.7 billion. I think that our business is capable of being 50% outside of the U.S. and 50% inside of the U.S. I think there is a lot of growth and runway for us internationally. If you think about a double-digit growth business, you can look at the business and say, hey, can the domestic business grow 6-7%, and can the international business grow 15-16%? Together, you have got a double-digit growth business.
You can look at it across our three-pillar growth strategy, our existing category growth, our new category expansion, and international expansion. I think if you look at our business back in 2022, when the market was down 14%, our existing categories declined a little, but we drove growth through new category expansion and international expansion. You look at a year like last year in 2024, where we grew $1.3 billion in revenue, and the largest portion of that revenue came from existing categories. I think that we know how to grow the business organically. I think that we're continuing to invest in R&D and media to grow the business organically. There's a big TAM out there of $120 billion that we only have $5.5 billion of that total available market.
I think whatever way you cut it, I think it's not unreasonable to think that this business can continue to grow at double digits for the foreseeable future.
Perfect. I guess if we break down the components of growth, how should we be thinking about the international growth opportunity? I guess in particular, you've spoke a lot recently about France and Germany. What is the size of the opportunity in France and Germany versus where they are running at today?
Yeah. We'll finish this year with our business in the U.K. at roughly $1 billion. The market size in Germany is a little bit bigger than the U.K., and the market size in France is a little bit smaller than the U.K. If you put those two areas together, and that's the reason why we kind of talk about Germany and France separate to everything else, we think there's a $2 billion business there between Germany and France. We think that that gives us enormous runway for growth versus where we are today. I think the number one most important thing for an investor to look at is go and look at our online reviews in Germany and France. Go and look at what consumers are saying about our products, how they're rating us versus U.S. consumers.
We're in the process right now of going through our annual contracts with our international, with our European retailers. We just closed one of our largest French retailers, and we'll double our SKUs Christmas of 2025 versus Christmas of 2024. We think we're on a nice trajectory of growth within Germany and France. Let's put that as one bucket. I would say bucket two is kind of the rest of continental Europe that the European retailers are driving us towards. I mean, Fnac Darty has a big business in Spain. They just made an acquisition in Italy or are driving us towards Italy. Euronics has a big business in Poland and in Turkey. They're driving us towards entry into those markets. Currys, our largest retailer in the UK, owns Elkjøp in the Nordics, which is the largest retailer for our products in the Nordics.
They're pushing us into the Nordics. I think there's still a very sizable amount of business in what I would call kind of EMEA outside of Germany and France. The third bucket is Latin America. We're in the midst right now of acquiring back our Mexico distributorship. That will be completed by the end of this month, and we'll start shipping on April 1st as a direct business in Mexico. We'll obviously capture right away the margin and the revenue upside from that. I think Mexico is a $400 million-$500 million potential. I mean, our Canada business is about $500 million. I think that our Mexico business could roughly be the same as our Canada business over time. I think there's a lot of other potential within Latin America, with the biggest market being Brazil.
We launched into Brazil in the fourth quarter of last year, and it'll take some time for us to scale up in Brazil, but it's a very big social media market. If you actually go on social media in Brazil and you look at our Shark FlexStyle and you look at our Ninja Creami, there's a lot of consumer content and user-generated content that's being distributed around Brazil. I think as we get into 2026, that'll be a market that'll start showing scale for us.
Perfect. I wanted to shift and ask a little about your marketing and advertising strategy. Can you talk about, because I think this is a key part of your growth story, can you talk about your strategy and what is differentiated? How are you able to scale products so quickly and generate a significant amount of social media interest very quickly?
Yeah. The first important part to understand is that we want to be relevant wherever the consumer is choosing to ingest content. At times, investors might ask us, well, what happens if TikTok gets banned? I mean, there is a large content creator community out there, and consumers are getting their content through these platforms. If TikTok goes away, they'll migrate somewhere else. I mean, in fact, the fastest growing platform for us in 2025 is going to be Reddit. We're finding more and more that consumers are starting their searches on Reddit. We're expanding much more into YouTube long-form and YouTube short-form. Pinterest is becoming a much bigger platform for us. Obviously, Meta continues to be the largest platform for us. In terms of our ability to be able to scale, first, it starts with being able to have a product that tells a story.
I mean, you can't just go on social media with a MeToo product. I mean, we have a product that tells a story. We go out and we partner with reviewers. We partner with influencers. I mean, I think the Luxe Café is a great example of that. We went into the market, and we knew that we had to gain coffee credibility. We sent our product to a significant number of kind of coffee reviewers that gave honest feedback about our product. We partnered with very strong coffee influencers. As we got a number of units into the market, which is usually anywhere from 50,000-100,000 units, the user-generated flywheel starts to develop where users start developing their own content.
Where that becomes really exciting is if you take the month of December, 99.8% of the content that was posted on social media in the month of December for the Ninja Creami had nothing to do with SharkNinja. We did not pay for it. We did not generate it. It had nothing to do with us. It was strictly generated by consumers that bought the product and went online and told millions of their closest friends what their favorite recipes were or excitement or influencers. There are influencers today that are building their social media followership off of Shark and Ninja products. I mean, we went and we launched the Ninja Swirl. We sent the products out to 30 curated retailers. Before we launched the first product, we had 75 million impressions on social media. We did not pay a dollar for that.
All we paid for was the cost of the product of giving it to them for free. That was it. I think that model is super exciting. If you go on to social media today, what you'll see is influencers that are building big parts of their platforms on the content that they're creating from our products. I'll give you another interesting thing. We did an event the night before the Oscars with the Motion Picture Association, and there were a number of celebrities at the event. There were three other companies there, and there was SharkNinja. Our booth was packed the entire night. I mean, of celebrities coming up and telling us about the products that they own, products that they bought, products that they saw on social media, products that they wanted to get.
We had Paris Hilton that came and talked to us about the Cryo Glow that she's been using every day. We had Jesse Eisenberg come and talk about the Ninja products that he uses every day. I mean, what it shows is that our products are really part of culture. You'll notice that there are a lot of macro influencers, a lot of celebrities that are posting about Shark and Ninja products that we don't pay for at all. They're just things that are part of their life that they like, and they're putting on their stories.
Perfect. I wanted to bridge and ask that and maybe more sort of get to the financials behind it. Can you talk about your ability to leverage the sales of marketing expense longer term? As you're in growth mode here, is that not a leverage part of the model? Longer term, should EBITDA growth start to outpace revenue growth as you scale more significantly and gain some of these leverage points?
EBITDA growth over the last few years has been growing slightly faster than revenue growth. I think that's where I think we believe is the right place to keep it, that EBITDA growth should grow slightly faster than revenue growth moving forward. Why? Because there's still a lot of organic growth opportunities for us. I mean, there's new product categories. There's new markets for us to expand into. I think one of the exciting things about SharkNinja is that if you were to look inside of our P&L, there are a lot of losses in the P&L. I mean, there are a lot of products that have lost money that have yet to turn profitable. There are countries. I mean, we didn't turn profitable in Germany until the third quarter of last year. Now this will be the first full year that we're profitable in Germany.
It'll be the first full year that we're profitable in France. I think as long as there continue to be opportunities for us to grow organically, product-wise, country-wise, I think you should expect EBITDA to grow slightly faster than revenue, but I don't know that it's going to be significantly faster than revenue.
Perfect. I wanted to get your outlook on the competitive environment. Are you seeing any new entrants into this competitive set? I think low-cost competitors out of China get asked about a lot. What are you seeing in terms of the competitive dynamics out there?
Nothing different than I've seen in the last 17 years. Generally speaking, when SharkNinja puts out a product, the first 50 units are bought by competitors or Chinese factories as they try to reverse engineer what we've done and try to knock it off. It is no different today than it has been over the last 15 years. There are just more products for them, and we're just innovating at a much faster and faster pace.
Perfect. I now want to shift and ask about tariffs and supply chain. Obviously, a big focus here. Can you give us the latest update in terms of how you're thinking about tariffs, especially with the announced step up of tariffs to 20% on China versus, I think, the 10% you had contemplated in the guidance for the year? Do you anticipate an additional impact now? What's sort of the mitigation strategy as you think about tariffs?
Yeah. Obviously, it's evolving every day. What we can do is just quickly react to the news that comes to us. In the beginning of February, on February 1, the first 10% went into place. Within four days, we had mitigated fully the impact of that 10%. We mobilized hundreds of people in the company. We developed about 1,500 unique initiatives, both on the buy side and sell side. We were able to go out with our guidance on February 13 and say that we guided 13%-15% bottom line growth with the impact of tariffs as we know it today. Subsequent to that, there was the additional 10%, as you're pointing out, and there were also steel and aluminum tariffs as well. I would say that we're continuing to feel good about our 13%-15% guidance.
I mean, we've gone through the same exercise as we did in February. I think we've gotten good at this. I'm hopeful that we won't have to do this constantly every month. I believe that in a 20% tariff world with where we are today and with our continued movement outside of China, 90% of our U.S. production will be made outside of China by the end of Q2. We'll be able to effectively manage it and still be able to deliver the guidance number that we've put out.
Perfect. Can you talk about the new sourcing regions where you're shifting production to? I guess, in particular, can you talk about if you're seeing cost parity or better in terms of both product quality as well as product margins in new sourcing regions?
When we made our first product outside of China four and a half years ago, we made it at a 15% cost premium to China. Today, we make product outside of China at exactly the same cost as we make it inside of China. It is completely cost parity. In fact, for the last year when there were not tariffs, we had factories that we were placing orders to and letting them decide whether they wanted to make the product inside of China or outside of China as they scaled up their manufacturing outside of China. On the cost side, we are at parity. The quality side is where you have heard me talk about a lot of the investments that we have had to make in terms of consultants, contract labor, putting additional people into the factories in Southeast Asia.
That was at a very elevated level in Q4 of last year. It is at an elevated level in Q1 and Q2 of this year. It will start to tail off as we get toward the end of Q2 of this year. It will tail off as we get into the second half of the year. As far as product quality, our product quality is coming out great outside of China, but we have a lot of eyes on it. We believe that is going to need to continue as we move forward until we are able to fully scale up our business. We just think that is the right thing to do for our consumers and for our brands. As far as where we have moved production to, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, primarily kind of in that Southeast Asia region.
Perfect. I think in the past, you've talked about mitigating tariffs through a combination of cost share with suppliers, price, shifting sourcing, obviously. Can you talk within that, especially within sort of the ability to take price, the sort of elasticity of demand? Are there certain price points that you don't think you'd be able to take price in? You have to focus more on cost optimization. How do you sort of solve for that equation of the incremental cost pressure?
When we experienced significant cost pressure back a couple of years ago when we went through the component shortage, we did everything that we possibly could to try to mitigate passing additional costs onto the consumer. I think we did a lot of things around value engineering, driving initiatives on the cost side. We try to keep the sell side really to a minimum. I think what we've learned over the last few years is that we do have some pricing leverage, particularly on some of the hit products that we've gone to market with. We launched the Ninja Slushi originally at $279. Today, we sell it for $349. We launched the Luxe Café at $499. Today, we sell that at $549. We had expected that we would launch the Cryo Glow at $299. Right at launch, we decided to go out at $349.
I think we're trying to find strategic places for us to be able to take cost. When we've done it over the course of the last few weeks, we haven't seen any demand impact as a result of it. Now, that's not to say it's going to work everywhere, and that's not to say that we're going to do it everywhere. I think we have to find the right places for us to strategically do it. Look, fortunately, we're not in the opening price segments of the market. We're not selling $79 vacuum cleaners at Walmart where there's real price sensitivity. If we push that to $99, or if we're selling $99 vacuums, we push it over $99.
I think there is opportunity for us on the cost side to be able to start to realize what is the right fair price for the products that we're making and where can we find that balance where the consumer still feels like they're getting extraordinary value.
Perfect. We have about three minutes left, so I just wanted to scan the audience and see if we had any questions out there. Perfect. Could we talk about the product launch strategy and whether that's changed at all? Do you normally launch products on your direct-to-consumer channel as a way to sort of test and learn before rolling out more broadly? As you sort of think about the product sort of waterfall build in each year, can you just walk us through sort of year one versus year two versus year three when you launch a new product?
Yeah. We would like to launch products for the first 30-45 days on our direct-to-consumer site in order to be able to get as much consumer information as possible about the products. Are there troubleshooting issues? Are there returns concerns? We want that feedback, positive or negative, to be able to make improvements to the product. If I go back two years ago, I think that it was the aspiration of the company to launch a product globally at the same time where we could say the U.S., North America, the U.K., Latin America, Europe, we want to launch everything at the same time. I think we've recognized that that is very, very challenging to do from a supply chain perspective. What we saw at the end of last year was most of our new products really launched only in the United States.
As we move forward, I think you'll see kind of a staggered rollout approach from us. For example, the Ninja Slushi launched in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of last year. It'll launch in the second quarter of this year in the U.K. It'll launch in the third quarter of this year in the rest of Europe. Christmas 2025 will really be the first Christmas selling season where we have the product kind of fully distributed across North American retailers and European retailers. At the same time, we will also launch a next-generation slushie product into the United States fall of this year of 2025. By the time we get to 2026, it will be Christmas 2026 will be the first time that multiple slushie products will be on the shelf for a global consumer.
It really is kind of 18 months at least before the product is rolling out to the global markets.
Perfect. With less than a minute left, I wanted to ask about margins, and particularly gross margins. I think you were up 220 basis points last year. That was on top of over 700 basis points of expansion the year prior. How are you thinking about managing the margins and gross margin for 2025? What are the key drivers there?
Our margins today are approaching 50%. We operate in a very narrow band between, let's say, 40% and 60%. I mean, we don't have products that are 30% margin and products that are 75% margin. We work really hard to take cost out of the product as we scale the manufacturing in the first year of the product. We might start at a little bit lower gross margin knowing that we'll be able to capture more gross margin as we go through the year. I think on the margin side, we still believe that we can generate some incremental gross margin benefit this year in spite of the tariff headwinds that we're currently facing.
I'm also hoping that as we go into 2026, some of these tariff headwinds that we're dealing with this year will turn to some tariff tailwinds next year as we move that production outside of China and as we've kind of passed the page on what we're dealing with today. I believe that while we're not going to see 220 basis points of gross margin improvement, I think we will see some incremental margin improvement as we go forward for this full year.
Perfect. We are right at time, so I will leave it there. Thank you, Mark, for a great session. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right.