Suja Life, Inc. Class A Common Stock 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Sir, please begin. Good afternoon and welcome to Suja Life's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call.

With us on the call today are Maria Stipp, Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Peterson, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings press release that was issued earlier today and is available on the investor relations section of Suja Life's website at ir.sujalife.com. This call is also being webcast, and a replay will be available on the site shortly after this call concludes. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

These statements reflect the company's expectations and projections with respect to its financial results, opportunities, and its perspective on the business and industry environment, and are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's earnings press release and the company's most recent filings with the SEC for more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could impact these statements. The company assumes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements in the future. Additionally, during the call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a full reconciliation of these measures to their most closely comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release and on our SEC filings. We are unable to reconcile forward-looking non-GAAP measures without unreasonable effort.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Maria Stipp, Chief Executive Officer of Suja Life.

Thank you, John. Hello, everyone. Today, I'd like to share what I see in our second quarter results, what I see on the horizon for the rest of the year, and what I see in our team and our business that gives me confidence going forward. I'm proud of what we delivered in the second quarter. Net sales grew 11.6% to $83.9 million, adjusted EBITDA grew 50% to $14.6 million, a 17.5% margin up from 13% a year ago. That's strong flow-through on our top line. It's in line with the expectations we set on an overall basis. We outperformed the natural healthy beverage category relative to other players, gained share, and widened our performance gap in cold-pressed juice versus our primary competitor. Jeff will walk through the segment and margin detail in a moment.

We also continued building the platform, investing in our brands, expanding distribution with a 16% increase in TDPs in Q2 versus prior year, and scaling our Oceanside, California, manufacturing campus to support future demand. As I look to the rest of the year, we're seeing recent signs of softness in the third quarter, concentrated primarily in grocery. I want to be specific about what we're seeing and, more importantly, what we're going to do about it. The total beverage category grew 5% in the first quarter of 2026 versus prior year, the growth slowed to 2% in the second quarter of 2026 versus prior year, with price and mix driving most of that growth. NHB continues to outpace total beverage, up 4% in the second quarter, though at a more moderate pace than the double-digit growth we've seen in recent years, including 13% category growth in 2025.

We're also seeing shoppers lean into value with some channel shifting, most visible in grocery, where roughly a third of our mix sits as of Q2 versus about 12% in mass over the same time period. In response, some competitors are leaning more heavily into price and promotion. Over the last few weeks, these trends have started to impact bookings. Our team has been quick to take action to accelerate our performance. We've already built a specific list of actions to address it head-on, which I'll talk through in a moment. To be clear, we expect some near-term softness in the third quarter, led by grocery, we are not sitting back and waiting for the macro to turn in our favor. We're going on offense. Given what we're seeing, we're widening our full-year net sales guidance to $360 million-$369 million from our prior range of $367 million-$371 million.

This is an adjustment to reflect our near-term uncertainty. All other assumptions underlying our plan remain unchanged. We have a long list of commercial tactics already in motion to target the top end of this range. We are reiterating our adjusted EBITDA guidance of $70 million-$72 million. Our operational efficiencies and continued cost discipline give us confidence we can protect profitability even as we manage through a more dynamic top-line environment. We've been here before. Our growth has been strong over our history, though it has not always been perfectly linear. What we've seen time and time again is our ability to navigate periods of adjustment, emerge well-positioned, continuing to build our leadership position in the category.

I expect this time to be no different. Our cold-pressed juice business is a great example of why I have confidence in our team and our business. In 2023 and early 2024, Suja Organic saw early signs of category noise with an expanding set of consumer options. We took specific action, repositioning the brand around function, rationalizing the line and innovating on our core, strengthening our messaging, stepping up media investment, and refining our price tech architecture. That work has compounded. In the second quarter, Suja Organic posted a 21-point delta in dollar volume performance versus our nearest competitor, as reported by Nielsen. Suja Organic's cold-pressed juice scanned dollars grew approximately 18% in the second quarter, with our refresher lineup more than 75% and boosted juice up more than 30%, all versus the prior year, as reported by Nielsen.

Watermelon Love, our newest refresher, has been a standout. It just won Best Fruit Juice in People Magazine's 2026 Food Awards. We're leaning into that momentum with our Summer of Love campaign, featuring our Ginger Love, Turmeric Love, and Watermelon Love SKUs. What that story demonstrates is that we know how to identify where performance is falling short of our expectations, build the right action plan, and execute it in the market to change the trajectory. We're applying that same discipline now to our shots and Emerging Brands businesses. Both grew double digits in the second quarter. They came in below where we expected, and that gap is exactly why we're prioritizing incremental investment and commercial initiatives behind these products to drive demand in the second half. We are laser focused on the following action plan. First, we talked about how we invest 10% of net sales back into marketing.

We're sharpening that marketing investment to drive more immediate returns and velocity, shifting dollars toward the programs and channels with the clearest, most direct near-term impact anticipated. Second, we're planning to accelerate distribution with back half shelf resets, expanding shelf presence for key parts of our portfolio, including new flavor launches, already gaining acceptance with major retailers with continued runway across grocery, club, and away from home channels. You've heard me talk about the leadership position we hold in natural healthy beverage, and that in many of our retailers, we are the category captain. We see it as our responsibility to actively partner with them with the goal of growing the total category, not just our own shelf space. That means bringing forward sharp category insights, smarter merchandising and price tech architecture at shelf, and joint programming that can grow the pie for everyone.

Done well, this can drive our own distribution and placement gains, grow the category overall, and serve the customer better. A win for us, a win for our retail partners, and a win for our shared consumers. Going forward, we plan to go toe-to-toe with competitors on promotional activity where it matters, leveraging our position as the lowest cost producer in the set to fund reinvestment in our brands and protect our share. Because we know shoppers are actively trading toward value right now, we're working directly with our club and mass retail partners to accelerate programming built specifically to capture that shift. Value pack formats, targeted promotional support, and expanded distribution in exactly the channels where the value-seeking consumers are shopping. Finally, as we look to 2027, we're planning to launch meaningful new innovation to reinforce our category leadership and strengthen our competitive position.

This year, we launched Suja Organic Detox Juice and Watermelon Love, as well as Slice Dirty Soda, all of which climbed our SKU rankings quickly. We're proud of that work and we're building our 2027 pipeline with urgency. Our innovation pipeline is at the center of how we'll position this business for future growth. I want to leave you today with confidence. We've identified the softness. We have a clear list of actions with a goal to convert it to wins, and our team is fully committed to executing in the second half of 2026 and beyond to deliver what we believe this business can achieve. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff to walk through our second quarter results and full year outlook in more detail.