lucid sound is not a licensed brand it is is an own it's an own brand for akko brands it's largely dedicated to retail and it's exclusively supporting gaming consumers epos has a bit of a different consumer set it's predominantly focused on enterprise It is a brand that has unified certification certificates across most of the solutions that are in the market today, including things like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet. So it serves a different purpose. It serves a different consumer. It's typically higher quality sound and audio solutions. So there are opportunities for us to expand the EPOS brand to serve more customers, more consumers within our portfolio. We're early in the integration efforts. We have focused the initial integration efforts on ensuring that we're doing no damage to the company. So the IT infrastructure, getting the synergy conversations complete and behind us. We just now are starting to focus on the growth opportunities and growth synergies. So we're excited about what the potential is for the EPOS product portfolio and capabilities within our organic product portfolio, but we're early in identifying those growth opportunities. As we said in our prepared remarks, we're very pleased with EPOS in the first few months of ownership. They've overachieved our expectations. We've inherited a great team, really strong capabilities, a great product portfolio. So we're excited about the future.

Great. Thank you.

Your next question from the line of Kevin Steinke with Barrington. Kevin, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. So, you know, you raised your full year guidance for sales and adjusted EPS, despite some cautious comments about the second half of the year. So is that just that raise being driven by the stronger back-to-school season or kind of any other factors that you would point to?

No, I think that's right, Kevin. I think, you know, we've had a strong first half, and it flowed through to the full year. Our expectations for the back half are fairly consistent with what we've been saying all along. But I do think we've had a stronger first half than we had previously provided.

It makes sense. And you talked about the softer industry demand for technology peripherals. I think, you know, previously you had made some comments about a pretty good pipeline for computer accessories. And do you think that demand eventually comes back or I know you're putting a lot of emphasis on the technology peripherals strategically going forward. So maybe just, you know, what the pipeline looks like or what your view is longer term on that, those categories.

Yeah, good question, Kevin. And so we continue to be optimistic about the future growth opportunities within our technology peripheral categories. Long term, we see them as very attractive growth opportunities for the company. We think our brands have a strong position in the categories in which we compete in that we can leverage for growth. Our pipeline has been disrupted in the short term within our enterprise businesses, predominantly supported by our Kensington brand globally. enterprise spend has slowed particularly in the second quarter the beginning of the year was consistent with our expectations in the planning process but q2 saw a significant slowdown and some of our end-user demand and our pipeline while still robust our close rate is just slowing we think those deals are just getting postponed as enterprises are trying to absorb the additional hardware expenses that they're experiencing, and they're navigating a fairly dynamic AI environment that's taking up operating budgets that were probably initially focused on accessory spend. So there's a number of dynamics that in the short term are disrupting demand, but we do think long term these are very attractive categories for our company to compete in.

Great, that's helpful. You mentioned some better than expected performance in Mexico. Maybe any factors of what was driving that strength there?

Yeah, so last year we made some aggressive changes in how we went to market, including some aggressive price increases. we have really looked at that business very strategically looked at how we go to market our pricing in our core categories our sales incentive plans our product assortment and I think it's just a combination of a number of changes that we've made strategically in the market our team there is doing a great job of executing against our strategies and you can see it in the results okay thanks for taking the questions I'll turn it back over thank you Kevin Your next question from the line of Hale Holden with Barclays.

Hale, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I had just two questions. The first one is you guys are doing really well with the integration of the EPOS acquisition.

And I was wondering where that kind of leaves you in terms of future M&A pipeline or ability to integrate another acquisition that size soon or would you need more time yeah it's it's a good question Hale so we certainly want to be careful about our pipeline we're excited about opportunities we see in the market we are getting close to the completion of the internal integration of EPOS and starting to shift our efforts towards growth initiatives and growth synergies but we do think the pipeline is attractive we think in the near term there may be opportunities for us but we obviously can't comment on any specifics but we're close to the end of the integration efforts for EPOS and and should be in a position to do something again relatively shortly.

Great and I just wanted to kind of pull the thread on the i guess kevin's question before me so the just the thought pattern there is that ai integration or spending in enterprises was reducing pc buys or overall tech accessory buys and that could continue for a couple months couple quarters we're not really sure until things get back into balance yeah so so you may have seen or you may start seeing hardware really being impacted by these shifts and these cost increases and disruptions.

Accessories, particularly our accessories, tend to flow along with hardware deployments. And so with PC sales being down, it's impacting our accessories' attach rates.

Great.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Your final question from the line of William Reuter with Bank of America. William, you are now unmuted. You may go ahead.

Good morning. So, Deb, you mentioned some incremental inflationary impacts. How has that cost increased this year, and I guess how much greater cost do you expect versus your expectations at the beginning of the year?

Yeah, so we started seeing some in the second quarter that were a little bit greater. You know, I think as we look to the back half, there's a lot of factors that weigh into how much inflation will actually come through, you know, how long the conflicts continue and how long fuel is questionable. So we've, again, as I said, kind of programmed the back half very comparably to what we've done in the past. Our price increases generally lag, you know, when you're thinking of kind of our international segment and some of the global entities around the world. So we're kind of comparable to where we were, except for we're a little hesitant to, a little more hesitant as we see these conflicts going longer.

Got it. I guess, you know, you mentioned the timing of price increases. Are you having to meaningfully raise your prices as a result of these higher input costs?

So our pricing strategy is different by market and geography and product category. So we're looking at each one of our categories, each one of our geographies, assessing the ability to pass through price. We don't want to harm demand in an environment that's already got a cautious consumer and business spending dynamic that we're trying to navigate through, but we do anticipate having to push through additional cost increases globally, and those will differ by market and differ by product category.

Got it.

I'll leave it at that.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Tom Tedford for closing remarks.

Thank you everyone for joining us. We are pleased with our second quarter results and expect the combination of the EPOS acquisition, momentum from our growth initiatives, and positive foreign exchange to drive revenue improvement in 2026. Our commitment to operational excellence through continued cost management and productivity programs position us to deliver improved profits and cash flow. With our optimized operational structure and momentum with leading brands, we have a strong platform to generate consistent free cash flow while strategically repositioning ACCO Brands towards faster-growing technology peripheral categories. I want to thank our ACCO Brands team for their dedication and good work this quarter. We appreciate your interest in ACCO Brands, and I look forward to talking with you when we report our third quarter results in October.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.