XCEL BRANDS INC. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Xcel Brands second quarter of 2026 earnings call. We greatly appreciate your participation and interest. With us on the call today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Robert D'Loren, and Chief Financial Officer, Jim Haran. By now, everyone should have had access to the earnings release for the quarter ending June 30, 2026. In addition, we filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. The release and the quarterly report will be available on the company's website at www.xcelbrands.com. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on the company's investor relations website. Before we begin, please keep in mind that this call will contain forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from certain expectations discussed here today.

These risk factors are explained in detail in the company's most recent annual report filed with the SEC. Xcel does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The dynamic nature of the current macroeconomic environment means that what is said on this call could change materially at any time. Finally, please note that on today's call, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP diluted EPS, and adjusted EBITDA. Our management uses these non-GAAP metrics as measures of operating performance to assist in comparing performance from period to period on a consistent basis and to identify business trends related to the company's results of operations.

Our management believes these financial performance measurements are also useful because these measures adjust for certain costs and other events that management believes are not representative of our core business operating results. Thus, they provide supplemental information to assist investors in evaluating the company's financial results. These non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as alternatives to net income, earnings per share, or any other measures of financial performance calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. You may refer to the attachment to the company's earnings release or the Form 10-Q for a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures. Now, I'm pleased to introduce Robert D'Loren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Bob, please go ahead. Thank you, Seth.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start today's call with a brief update on recent developments since the Q1 filing of our quarterly Form 10-Q and our outlook for moving forward. After that, our CFO, Jim Haran, will discuss our financial results for the quarter in more detail. To begin, we continue to work hard with all of our licensing production partners, talented influencers, and strategic retail partners to drive our business. Over the past 12 months, we announced the formation of our new influencer-led brands with Cesar Millan, Gemma Stafford, Jenny Martinez, Coco Rocha, and Shannon Doherty. As I previously mentioned on our last call, we launched two of these brands toward the end of Q1 and expect the balance to launch this fall, except for one that will launch in 2027.

These influencer-led brands grew the social media following in our brand portfolio from 5 million to over 46 million in less than one year. Our investor community has asked, why is this important? What is the earnings and value potential of influencer-led brands, and why are we so excited about influencer-led brands? The answer is: AI is changing a lot in business today. A recent AI-related event came in May of this year. Google changed Search, and AI mode became the default. White links are no longer the primary discovery surface. The search box was redesigned for the first time in 25 years. This comes with very broad and significant implications, especially in certain industries. This has had a dramatic negative impact on informational queries, such as product comparison articles and buying guides like those published by magazines, but left transactional and branded search intact.

This means that the middle of the classic marketing funnel has been significantly diminished, perhaps eliminated. Therefore, we are left with just the top of funnel that drives awareness and the bottom of the funnel to drive conversion of sales. Retail search is absorbing the discovery that the middle of the funnel used to handle. This is a redistribution of where discovery happens, not a disappearance of it. Video content is not being replaced. It is being cited. YouTube accounts for 23% of all AI overview citations, the single largest source. Brands cited inside an AI answer earn about 120% more organic clicks per impression than uncited brands on the same query. So if the top and the bottom of the funnel survives, then significant awareness comes from video and social sources, and conversion comes from retail search and the retail shelf space.

An AI answer engine can compress an article or text, but it cannot compress a video demonstration. Attributable authorities such as YouTube content featuring a credible voice in a category is highly citable. Anonymous editorial is not, and an AI system builds answers from sources it can attribute. To put this in the context of Xcel's strategy, a named expert with two decades of broadcast history and a significant social media following is exactly the kind of source that creates attributable content that AI engines use to answer questions about products. The game has moved from ranking to being the source the answer is built from. This is exactly why we are creating brands with people like Cesar Millan, Jenny, Gemma Stafford, and other influencers. Influencers like Cesar and Gemma have names customers associate with expertise and are highly visible to AI platforms.

Also, in the case of Cesar Millan and Jenny Martinez, they reach both English and Spanish-speaking consumers, and we build that content bilingually from the start rather than translating it afterward. More than 60 million U.S. residents speak Spanish at home, and we do not see a competitor in these categories that is positioned to match that. In summary, awareness that already exists is awareness you don't have to buy. We believe that we are now on the ascent as a company. We will continue to build the brands that we launched this year and based upon our pipeline of new influencer-led brands, we are on track to reach $100 million across our brand portfolio. I should be clear, though, a follower count is an input, not a result. What compounds is what we own.

Our product designs, the existing awareness of our brands, the content library we produce, our retail search presence, and the licensee supply chain network behind each brand. We began wholesale shipments with our licensees for two of our influencer-led brands during the first quarter, and on-air programming commenced for them on QVC and HSN in the second quarter. The other influencer-led brands will be shipping and launching throughout the rest of 2026 in interactive TV and with e-commerce retailers like Amazon, followed by bricks retailers. It's important to note that there is a product design and development period of approximately 12 to 18 months from the time we execute an agreement with an influencer when products first are offered for sale, depending upon category and where the goods are produced.

I should add that our TV and streaming content reaches well over 100 million households and generates tens of millions of media impressions per month. All of this generates added top-of-funnel awareness for our brands. We are pleased with the progress and category diversity of our brand portfolio, and we believe revenue growth is in front of us. I would also remind everyone that this model is capital light by design. We deploy no manufacturing capital, we carry no inventory, and we take no markdown exposure. Our revenue is derived from a royalty on licensees' or retailers' sales. Finally, in summary, as mentioned, our investors and licensing partners have asked why we are so excited by the influencer-led brand opportunity. Last quarter, we discussed the size of the influencer-led brand market, which is reported by Goldman Sachs as expected to exceed $2 trillion by 2035.

That, coupled with recent changes in search, is why we are focused on these types of brands. As we mentioned last quarter, we believe we have fully entered the fast-growing market and will continue to penetrate it over the coming years. We believe that each of our eight existing brands has the potential to generate, on average, $7 million per year in royalty income by the end of 2030, based upon the proven experience of our team and platform, our influencer-led brands, and the macro changes in our industry being driven by AI. Lastly, the revenue and EBITDA exit multiples for fast-ascending influencer-led brands are significantly higher than those associated with legacy brands. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, James Haran, to cover our financial results for the quarter.

Jim? Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone.

I will now briefly discuss our financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $1.1 million compared with $1.3 million for the prior year quarter. We were $2.3 million for the first six months of this year, compared with $2.7 million for the first six months of last year. These year-over-year decreases were primarily attributable to the divestiture of the Judith Ripka brand. We continue to explore opportunities to sell certain of our legacy brands and closed the sale of our Judith Ripka brand at approximately six times gross royalty income in the second quarter. This is consistent with the sale multiple of our formerly owned brand, Isaac Mizrahi, and is further confirmation of the value of our brands. Now turning back to our second quarter results.