Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. 2027 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our second quarter 2026 results.

On today's call will be Ed Stack, our Executive Chairman, Lauren Hobart, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Navdeep Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer. A playback of today's call will be archived on our investor relations website, located at investors.dicks.com, for approximately 12 months. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release, in risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our last annual report on Form 10-K, as well as cautionary statements made during this call. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information.

Please refer to our investor relations website to find the reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call. I also want to note a couple of admin items. First, a quick reminder on our comparable sales reporting. Foot Locker will be included in our quarterly comp calculations beginning in Q4 of 2026, which will mark the start of their 14th full month of operations post-acquisition. Finally, for future scheduling purposes, we are tentatively planning to publish our third quarter 2026 earnings results on November 24, 2026. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ed.

Thanks, Nate. Good morning, everyone. From a sales perspective, the second quarter was strong, particularly for the DICK’S business, which delivered nearly a 5% comp sales gain. We continue to gain market share and saw many areas of strength across our portfolio. We are also encouraged by the response to our World Cup investments, which we believe positions us to benefit from increasing soccer participation over the long term. While the DICK’S business delivered the sales and profitability we expected, as the quarter progressed, it became clear that inventory levels were building up across parts of the industry, leading to a much more promotional environment. This pressured our overall company earnings. Consumer preferences are evolving, with athletes increasingly responding to newness, innovation, and a broader set of brands.

As demand continued to shift during the quarter, inventory built up in parts of the industry, particularly within certain legacy footwear silhouettes and apparel franchises that simply are not resonating the way they once did. The inventory built up across the industry supply chains and across the retail marketplace, which led to an increasingly aggressive promotional environment. In response to these changes in the market, we felt it was important to remain competitively priced to protect our leadership position. We have always managed our business for the long term. We believe protecting our leadership position will create long-term value, and we view the pricing investments we are making today as an investment in the future strength of our business. These challenges affected both DICK’S and Foot Locker, but to different degrees. At DICK’S, our diversified business model, broad category mix, and balanced brand portfolio helped us navigate much of this pressure.

Many areas of the DICK’S business, such as team sports and license, were particularly strong. New emerging apparel brands generated strong athlete engagements, and footwear categories such as running, cleats, and the outdoor category remained healthy. While the promotional environment created pressures on margins, we continued to gain share and deliver strong sales growth. As you would expect, given its greater exposure to many of the legacy footwear silhouettes, the impact was more significant at Foot Locker. In addition, Foot Locker is more dependent on launch and retro product. Not only were there fewer launches in the second quarter, but the launches we did see performed below industry and our expectations. This had a meaningful impact on the results across the Foot Locker business.

We are taking action to shift the mix toward in-demand brands, and while we expect the launch calendar to be more favorable in the back half of the year, the quality of those launches will be critical. We expect the broader promotional environment, particularly around legacy silhouettes, to remain challenging at least through the fourth quarter. In addition, the Foot Locker business in EMEA has been more challenging than expected. While our turnaround efforts are underway, we always anticipated EMEA to have a longer path to recovery than North America. The promotional environment remains very aggressive in EMEA. The industry is carrying too much inventory, and the consumer has been even more cautious than expected due to the geopolitical environment. The combination of the softness in EMEA and these marketplace dynamics has delayed the pace of improvement that we expected to see in the Foot Locker business.

Across the company overall, macroeconomic and geopolitical concerns also weighed on profitability during the quarter and impacted fuel, supply chain, healthcare, and other costs. Along with the marketplace pressures we have discussed, this led us to revise our expectations for the balance of the year. Navdeep will provide more detail on our updated 2026 outlook in his remarks. But let me be clear, we believe the DICK’S business remains strong, and none of this changes our confidence in the long-term opportunity at Foot Locker. We are still early in the Foot Locker turnaround. We continue to invest to strengthen the business for the long term. That includes investing in the Foot Locker brand through its first major brand campaign in more than a decade, which is being incredibly well-received, as well as investing in our Stripers who remain central to the consumer experience and a key differentiator for the brand.

We're also continuing to make progress with Fast Break. We surpassed our back-to-school goal of approximately 250 Fast Break stores globally and will continue to expand to more locations ahead of the holiday season. We remain very confident in the opportunity with Fast Break. Our brand partners continue to be highly supportive of both the DICK'S and Foot Locker businesses, and we believe they see us as the most important player in the global athletic ecosystem. The connection between sport and culture has never been stronger. We see it every day across our business, from House of Sport to more Little League games being streamed on GameChanger, to moments like the World Cup bringing millions together. No one is better positioned to capitalize on these opportunities than our combination of DICK'S, Foot Locker, and GameChanger. While at the present time the marketplace has become more challenging, our leadership remains clear.

We will continue to invest in the growth opportunities we believe will drive long-term value, including House of Sport, Field House, GameChanger, and the turnaround at Foot Locker. We are also making deliberate investments in price to protect and grow our leadership position. We have navigated environments like this before, and we remain confident in our strategy, our competitive position, and long-term opportunities ahead for both DICK'S, Foot Locker, and GameChanger. Before I turn it over to Lauren, I'd like to thank our more than 100,000 teammates across the globe for their commitment and their execution every day. With that, I'll turn it over to Lauren to share more on DICK'S.

Thank you, Ed, and good morning, everyone. As Ed mentioned, the breadth and diversity of the DICK'S business allowed us to deliver another strong quarter. Once again, we demonstrated the power of our strategy and execution. Our team continues its commitment to bring our four strategic pillars to life, a compelling omnichannel athlete experience, a differentiated on-trend product assortment, deep engagement with the DICK'S brand, and the strength of our teammates and culture. In Q2, we delivered total sales growth of 5.6% and comp sales growth of 4.9% for the DICK'S business. Importantly, our growth outpaced the broader industry by nearly 200 basis points, reinforcing our ability to strengthen our leadership position and gain market share. Our comps were driven by growth in average ticket and transactions, and we saw broad-based growth across footwear, apparel, and hard lines. The DICK'S business also delivered gross margin expansion during the quarter.

Growth businesses like DICK'S Media Network and GameChanger continue to generate strong returns and further diversify our earnings stream. Together, the contributions from these businesses, plus tariff refunds recognized during the quarter, helped offset the promotional pressure we saw across parts of the athletic footwear and apparel marketplace. As Ed discussed, we made the deliberate decision to invest in price to protect and grow our leadership position. The World Cup was another great example of how we're leading sports retail in the U.S. We invested significantly in marketing around the event, primarily through our Adidas partnership, and our team delivered outstanding results. I'm incredibly proud of how our teammates brought our vision to life for athletes across the country. We believe the World Cup will be a catalyst for long-term growth in soccer participation, fan engagement, and consumer demand across the U.S.

We believe that we're extremely well-positioned to benefit from that growth through our strong brand partnerships, national footprint, connections with athletes and families, and leadership position in youth sports. That same commitment to driving long-term growth is reflected in our continued expansion of House of Sport and Field House, which both continue to perform extremely well. During Q2, we opened five House of Sport locations and eight Field House locations. For the year, we expect to open approximately 14 total House of Sport locations and 20 total Field House locations. Within House of Sport, compelling new experiences, including Collectors Clubhouse and our Lids partnership, are driving athlete engagement and fueling sales growth. These stores are giving us access to some of the best real estate in the country, including Cerritos, Tysons Corner, and Palm Beach Gardens, and we believe they represent the future of sports retail.