Q2 2026 Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. Earnings Conference Call

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Q2 2026 Bed, Bath & Beyond, Inc. Earnings Conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Melissa Smith, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Melissa, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.'s second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Marcus Limonis, President Amy Sullivan, Chief Financial Officer, Brian LaRose, Chief Technology Transformation Officer, Kyla Robinson, and Chief Operating Officer, Lisa Foley. Today's discussion and our responses to your questions reflect management's views as of today, August 4, 2026, and they include forward-looking statements, including, without limitations, statements regarding our future business strategy, goals, financial performance, outlook for the remainder of the quarter or any other period, anticipated growth, thought price, profitability, macroeconomic conditions, the value of any of our brands and investments, relationships with third parties and agreements we are entering into with them, margin improvement, expense reduction, marketing efficiencies, conversion, customer experience, changes to brands or websites, product offerings, completed, pending, or contemplated mergers, expected change in listing exchange, expected name and ticker change, blockchain and tokenization efforts and strategies, and timing of any of the foregoing. Actual results could differ materially from such statements. Additional information about our risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, in our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and in our subsequent filings with the SEC. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our filings with the SEC, including our second quarter earnings release, which is available on our investor relations website at investors.beyond.com, contain important additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. A slide presentation with supporting data is available for download on our investor relations website. Please review the important forward-looking statements disclosure on slide two of that presentation.

With that, let me turn the call over to you, Marcus. thanks melissa good afternoon everyone thanks for joining us for the second consecutive quarter our base e-commerce business delivered year over year revenue growth after 19 consecutive quarters of decline across the entire omni-channel business revenue increased 28 percent orders delivered doubled and both revenue and gross margin improved looking through the merger and transaction related cost i was very pleased with our team and company's performance while two quarters are not a victory and the work is far from finished what matters is that the operating model is now producing measurable evidence that it is working revenue growth order growth margin expansion and early integration results from the businesses we've acquired when i officially assumed the role of CEO in January, we saw the company could no longer organize itself around disaster recovery. Protecting liquidity, building working capital, improving operations, and rebuilding credibility were necessary. But a company cannot build its future while looking only in the rearview mirror. We had to move from rescuing the business we inherited to designing the business we believe should exist and to begin allocating people, capital, and attention around what will go right. It has also become clear that the most important assets we've assembled through all these acquisitions are the people. Every business we brought into the company came with subject matter experts who have spent decades understanding one part of the home and one stage of the homeowner's journey. From storage design and organization to decor to flooring, kitchens, installation, brokerage, mortgage, title, and all the things in between. We're assembling operators who know how these businesses work and understand the value of connecting their expertise to a larger platform. That distinction matters. We are not collecting companies. We are not a roll-up. We are assembling capabilities, expertise, and relationship around the economics of home ownership. When we introduced our three-pillar strategy in January, we started with a basic observation. The average homeowner remains in a home for roughly 11 years. During that time, children arrive, parents age, careers change, rooms are repurposed, and all the things that happen inside the house. Insurance costs and interest rates move, equity grows, families renovate refinance relocate and eventually sell that's the home ownership journey the industry treats these moments as unrelated transactions the homeowner does not a family experiences one continuous journey yet must navigate disconnected companies systems and pieces of advice the monthly economics begin with the mortgage and waterfall through taxes insurance utilities maintenance, repairs, improvements, and the products that make the home functional, all competing for the same household income. We will never directly control the price of a specific home. What we can do is attack the friction and unnecessary costs around it, help first-time buyers prepare, help a family understand the full monthly obligation, make insurance and title more transparent, offer products at better values, plan projects more intelligently, and complete installations more reliably. That is our mandate. To create an operating system that makes the entire home ownership journey simpler and more affordable. The 11-year journey is not merely transactional. It's experiential. Bed, Bath & Beyond was part of the first apartment, the wedding registry the first home a growing family it also became clear that we did not want to depend entirely on retail history has shown both the opportunity and the risk of being purely transactional and inventory heavy but retail remains the essential gateway where we meet the customer earn trust through value and service and begin a relationship that expands beyond one single skew transaction Our first pillar is the omni-channel retail. You've heard me talk about it a lot. It encompasses our online marketplace business, our own inventory e-commerce business, and our physical stores. Over the next 12 months, our objective is to operate every single one of them as a connected portfolio while vehemently removing the incremental cost each would carry on their own. Each branch should retain a clear role, a capability, and a distinct reason or the customer to engage with it but the brand should not have to recreate the same infrastructure same sgna and the same overhead over and overhead behind the scenes we can preserve what makes them special by consolidating the functions the customer never sees and more importantly shouldn't have to pay for our retail foundation starts with overstock a founding member of this squad one of the leading online destinations for the home with strength across furniture area and rugs who has seen incremental and meaningful growth over the last 12 months the container store shows us how one acquisition can change the capability of an entire enterprise it moved us from selling products that we delivered to a doorstep to being experts in storage organization installation and change the relationship with the customer well kirklands it brought us global sourcing design and understanding how to create value through home decor but what it gave us the most was the ability to understand the margin possibilities through design and international sourcing but retail can only introduce us to the customer home services allow us to deepen that trust quite frankly it's where the real margin exists when a customer invites us across the threshold they're trusting us with an expansive and disruptive project inside of their home where their families live. L Fund Closetworks gave us our first meeting into the home services but we followed it up with the acquisition of Lumber Liquidators and Cabinets to Go, two of the best known names in Home Improvement. They combined design, product, and installation to give that homeowner what they need the final installation often defines the customer's view of the entire project so we wanted to control that entire service experience during the quarter we acquired ssv a detroit-based installation and renovation network that serves the entire country for alpha closet works lumber liquidators and cabinets to go they've been doing it for over 20 years and we have the evidence to proving as we mapped out the journey further we recognize some of the greatest barriers to affordability are the lack of clear choices and connected information around the home transaction itself that led us to enter into a purchase agreement with fathom a top 10 u.s real estate brokerage built around an asset light technology heavy model that brings us closer to the moment where the largest amount of value changes hands and the homeowner needs the most trust and guidance. Appraisals, cash offers, brokerage, mortgage, title, and closing are all valuable on their own. The larger opportunity is connecting them because a home transaction should not begin and end with a relationship. It should be one important moment inside of a relationship that last for years one of the jewels of the fathom acquisition and primarily why we bought it was the title business that operates in 36 states title is often treated as a blind item on a closing statement people don't know what it's for don't know how much it costs but it's but it is a business built on volume process and discipline as well as trust and homeowners deserve to understand what they're paying for and why the larger opportunity and maybe the more exciting one for our company with title is title is the foundational record where the home the owner and the transaction history come together and building one more and building on more than a decade of overstocks investment in blockchain and tokenization we intend to explore placing authenticated customer-controlled title records on that infrastructure. The technology is not the point. The point is giving homeowners greater control over the information and reducing the cost, delay, and uncertainty of rebuilding that same record every single time a transaction occurs. Over the next 12 to 15 months we intend to build the title business through acquisitions and organic growth and invest in the technology that supports that vision we also know that customers need trustworthy banking solutions from an institution aligned with its members not necessarily shareholders which is why we're excited to partner with alliant credit union to launch beyond credit union powered by alliance over the coming weeks and months we expect to introduce savings tools, first-time home buyer programs, renovation financing, education, all done digitally. Alongside a relationship with BILT, our retail and rewards experience, we'll have companies like Brown and Brown providing a choice model on insurance. The goal is not to force customers into products, it's to create transparent choices and keep the customer in control of their entire home ownership journey. As these pieces came together, one fact became crystal clear. We don't operate across the country in the abstract. We operate in neighborhoods, specific geographic areas where all of our companies do business. A national market is an economic statistic. Neighborhood is where families live, children's go to school, neighborhoods gather, all the things you would imagine. that recognition led us to the name neighborhood intelligence neighborhood describes where we do business intelligence describes how we intend to operate using a better understanding of the customer the home and the local market to make decisions more useful more personal and more economic i want to be clear about one thing our goal is not to gather data to exploit our customer it is to organize information so that the customer can use it putting useful versions of institutional knowledge in the hands of a family at the kitchen table what is my home worth what will the full monthly payment be how do i know how to manage home ownership and all the things that go along with it and the platform is not only built for traditional homeowners it serves everyone from the renter furnishing their first apartment to the older homeowner preparing to sell the job is just to make it simpler this vision requires massive technology transformation the company carries a lot of technical debt from systems and contracts that were innovative when built but no longer matched today's speed flexibility and economics i could say that from every business that we acquire the good news is we only have to transform it once. Over the next several months, we'll modernize the platform and create a more unified experience, creating a single sign-on, giving both the homeowner information about their own purchases and their own behavior, as well as the statistics associated with their specific asset before and after they transfer it. Neighborhood intelligence is also about the intelligence and size of our own company, knowing how to segment information, identify attractive neighborhoods, forecast demand, place inventory, and deploy and allocate capital for the greatest return to both the customer and the shareholder. As we bring all these businesses together to complete the integration, we believe there is more than $50 million of additional annualized costs that our company will realize over the next 12 months. This is not a plan for another broad headcount reduction. Unfortunately, most of that work has already occurred. This is an opportunity to shed assets without adequate return, consolidate supply chain, eliminate duplicative software and third-party agreements, simplify locations, and retire contracts the current technology environment no longer requires. There's going to be cash costs, like any merger, like any business being put together this way, and we will negotiate every obligation responsibly. Based on the plan today, we believe that we can aggregate a cash-on-cash return that is more than 100% as we exit and deploy capital to exit those things. Beginning in the third quarter, we expect quarterly net revenue to move into the low 500 million dollar range going forward not every acquisition is closed but that's the base that we can see right in front of us through that process we need to integrate the businesses we need to restock the shelves we need to eliminate waste and we need to make sure that the brands gain access to the full capabilities of the enterprise We have been opportunistic in every transaction that we have done, and we believe we bought capabilities during the trough in the housing and home-related markets, and each has shown us more underlying value than we initially expected. Roughly 4 million existing homes changed hands over the past year, versus a long-run level north of 5 million. Look, we are not being silly about it. We're not planning for a return to the peak. We don't think it's going to happen tomorrow. We're building around a more normal market and more than 85 million owner-occupied homes that must be furnished, maintained, improved, insured, and eventually sold. We also believe the market severely undervalues our interest in blockchain and tokenization assets, including T0 and grain chain, where management teams are refining infrastructure, controlling spending, and stewarding cash. We are encouraged by early discussions about monetizing proprietary technology and establishing clearer markers of value. And the T-Zero, the recent conversation around the T-Zero ROP holders converting into a different class of stock, gives the company greater flexibility while our ownership in our company in that company remains at approximately 50% as credible information becomes available on those two assets we will share it with our shareholders while respecting the management's responsibility to execute for to be declare the outcome today's announcement isn't about changing our name it's about giving a name to the company we've already been building retail is no longer the destination it's the entry point home services deepens that relationship home ownership extends it through one of the most important financial journey of any family's life neighborhood intelligence connects all of them that's why on effective august 17th our parent company will begin and become neighborhood intelligence trading on nasdaq under the tickle ticker symbol nxh we will continue to operate at bed bath and beyond on the new york stock exchange every single day until that transition happens well i step back this is not a story about a name change a collection of acquisitions

or a single improved quarter it's about the transformation of a business from disaster recovery into a platform built around the homeowner built by the employees from around the country with that i'll turn the call over to brian larose our chief financial officer thank you marcus i'll now turn to our second quarter financial results revenue increased 28 year-over-year in the second quarter with orders doubled in the period both revenue and orders were primarily driven by the merger with the brand house collective that was completed on April 2nd, 2026. This was partially offset by lower AOV in the quarter versus 2025. Importantly, gross margin landed at 26.8% for the quarter, a 310 basis point increase compared to the same period last year as we experienced a healthy mix shift in gross margin with the Brandhouse Collective merger. Both revenue and gross margin in the core of Bed Bath & Beyond and over-stacked business increased year over year sales and marketing expense improved efficiency of 160 basis points as a percent of revenue versus last year the result driven by disciplined spend and paid and improved return in own channels gna and tech expense of 82 million increased by 45 million year over year or 31 million if you exclude the impact of one-time costs related to the acquisition activities. This was mainly driven by the inclusion of store occupancy expenses associated with the Brandhouse Collective, including rent and store payroll. All in, adjusted EBITDA came in at a loss of $12 million or $4 million decline versus the second quarter of 2025. Reported adjusted diluted EPS was a loss of $0.53 a share, a $0.31 decline year-over-year. The year-over-year change in both adjusted EBITDA and diluted EPS reflect the cost associated with integrating our acquisitions during the quarter. Echoing Marcus's comments from earlier, we are committed to removing more than $50 million of additional annualized costs from the business moving forward. We ended the quarter in a position of strength with $164 million in cash-in-cash equivalents, restricted cash, and inventory net of our ABL balance. This represents an increase of one million dollars versus the first quarter of 2026. With that, I will turn the call over to Amy.

Thank you, Brian. The second quarter wasn't simply another quarter of financial results. It marked the beginning of a new phase for our company. This quarter wasn't about adding another business. It was about beginning the work of of becoming one company. For the first time, we began connecting brands, operating disciplines, and leadership teams that had never operated together before. We're still early in that work, but the progress we're seeing gives us confidence we're building the right foundation. Our second quarter results reflect that. We delivered our second consecutive quarter of revenue growth after 19 quarters of decline. We also grew active customers, transactions, and purchase frequency while expanding gross margin by more than 300 basis points those are encouraging financial results but more importantly they tell you they tell us we're beginning to see the first signs our brands together into one connected company is creating measurable value growing our customer base tells us we're reaching more homeowners higher transaction frequency tells us customers are finding more reasons to engage with us stronger margins tell us we're improving the quality of the business we're building Together, those results give us confidence that the operational decisions we're making are beginning to translate into measurable progress. We're also beginning to see the early benefits of integration. As we simplify the company and reduce unnecessary complexity, our goal isn't simply to reduce cost. It's to remove friction so we can build a stronger company while making home ownership simpler and more affordable. As we integrate these businesses, our responsibility is to ensure every investment we make, every capability we build, and every decision we take strengthens the entire enterprise, not just one brand or one pillar. The work we did this quarter wasn't designed to simply improve this year's results. It was designed to build a company that gets stronger with every brand we add, every relationship we deepen, and every area of expertise we bring together. At first glance, it's easy to see a portfolio of great brands. What's becoming clear is the value created by connecting the capabilities behind them. That's why we're organizing this company around one customer, one home, and one relationship, rather than around individual businesses. That philosophy has become the framework behind every major decision we make, whether we're integrating new companies, investing in technology, or evaluating future opportunities. Every capability we connect should strengthen the entire ecosystem. Our operating model is designed so the strengths we build in one part of the company make every part of the company stronger. That operating model extends across all three pillars of our business. While each serves homeowners in different ways, they become more valuable when they're connected through shared customer intelligence, technology, and operating capabilities. That's how we create a better experience for homeowners while building a stronger enterprise. Our omni-channel retail pillar is one example of how connecting capabilities across the enterprise is already improving the customer experience and strengthening the business. By connecting our physical and digital experiences, we're creating more opportunities to introduce homeowners to our brand, build lasting relationships, and better understand how we can serve them through their journey. For many homeowners, our omni-channel retail business is where the relationship begins, creating opportunities to build connections that extend across the entire enterprise. We're applying that same philosophy across the enterprise by sharing expertise in product development, supply chain, customer insights, and technology. Those capabilities become more valuable when they're shared because they help us make better decisions improve execution and create a stronger company regardless of which brand a homeowner chooses to engage with as those capabilities become more connected so does our understanding of the homeowner every interaction helps us better understand where customers are in their journey anticipate future needs and create more relevant experiences across our brands and services over time that allows us to build deeper customer relationships create more relevant experiences and become more efficient in how we acquire and serve homeowners. Building this company requires more than connecting brands, systems, and capabilities. It requires leaders who think beyond individual functions, share expertise across the enterprise, and operate as one company. Two leaders who are helping bring that strategy to life are Kyla Robinson and Lisa Foley. Kyla is leading our technology transformation, connecting data, capabilities, and technology across the enterprise to build the connected intelligence platform that will help us better anticipate customer needs, improve decision making, and create more connected experiences for homeowners. Lisa is leading the integration of our company, connecting capabilities across the enterprise, strengthening the customer experience, and building the operating foundation that allows us to scale as one company. Tyla, I'll turn it over to you to discuss the technology transformation that's making all of this possible.

Thanks, Amy. Technology only creates value when it improves the decisions we make and the experiences we create. As we connect customer information, home information, and capabilities across our brands, we are building the connected intelligence platform that helps us better understand homeowners, recognize patterns, and increasingly anticipate their needs. Every customer interaction makes that platform more valuable, and the intelligence improves demand forecasting, inventory planning, personalization, and capital allocation, better decisions across every part of the enterprise. Technology by itself is not a competitive advantage. The value comes from how it improves the quality of our decisions and the experiences we create for homeowners our objective is not to become a technology company it is to become a company fueled by technology where every customer interaction strengthens our understanding of the homeowner and every insight improves how we operate lisa over to you thanks kyla growth only creates value if the company becomes stronger as it grows and integration is how we accomplish that.

Integration is not simply bringing companies together. It is building a repeatable capability. So every new brand, every acquisition, every capability we add becomes more valuable by being connected to the strengths of the entire organization. In practice, that means shared systems instead of parallel ones. Shared sourcing and supply chain, a common view of the customer, and one operating standard across banners. It means simplifying processes, connecting teams, and removing friction wherever it slows execution. As Marcus laid out, that is real savings, and my teams own the work behind it. But the reason it matters is what it makes possible next. It lets us keep growing without adding complexity. Scale should make a company simpler to run, not harder. and that's the standard we're holding ourselves to. And it is what this capability is designed to deliver. We will use it on everything we acquire from here and we evaluate what we acquire in part on how well it connects to what we already have. Done well, integration is not a cost of growth. It is what makes the next acquisition worth more than the last. And now I'll turn it back to Marcus.

Thanks, Lisa. Before we go into the Q&A, I want to reset a couple of numbers. That was a lot of information to swallow and all of this information will be available at our investor site including the script, our shareholder letter, and all the supporting information. As we head into the third quarter one of the challenges we have is knowing when transactions are going to close and so we're going to take a more conservative approach based on the timing of certain transactions closing in providing what will start to become better guidance for quarters going forward. It is our goal in 2027 that we provide a much more rigorous forecast of what could be expected, including top line, margin performance, and earnings on a regular basis. We hope to be able to, in the very distant future, break the reporting out by segment between our omnichannel business, our home services business, and our home ownership and transaction businesses. For the third quarter, we're providing some guideposts. We expect revenue to be in the $505 to $525 million range, and we expect margins to improve materially from what we just reported to close to 30%, potentially touching 30%. What we will experience in the third quarter is something similar to what we experienced in the second. the cost of completing all these transactions, which should be separated out and isolated from the operating performance of the business. As we look at our overall SG&A, we know that we have made material progress. We also know that in order to bring these companies together, it will take money to terminate locations and contracts and part ways with certain individuals. We have factored that into our cash flow and are very comfortable that we have a business that is prepared to do so. For the original overstock business, the one that everybody likes to talk about, the asset light business, we continue to experience this as a clarifier, the same kind of growth in Q2 that we saw in Q1. Our other businesses will start to fold in and we will be as clear as we possibly can so that everybody can see the building blocks of both revenue, gross profit margin, how the mix is allocated, and what the operating results look like separated out from the transaction costs. I'll now turn the call over to the Q&A section. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. please stand by while we compile the q and a roster your first question comes from the line of stephen forbes with guggenheim your line is open please go ahead thank you and good afternoon everyone marcus um you mentioned in the letter or sort of hinted in the letter about supply chain needs and so i was wondering if maybe you could tease that out for us a little bit in terms of what do you think the sort of infrastructure needs of the holistic

enterprise is in terms of getting the business in the right place? And what does that mean in terms of like investment or I guess scope of investment as we think through sort of a full integration front?

Yeah. So I don't think about supply chain is just logistics. I think about the entire life journey from the design and procurement of the process, both internationally and domestically, all the way through it, arriving at our front door. And when we look at where we see friction in our margins and friction in our cost of goods, our contribution margin, we start to really study that there are about four things that are required. I think the first one is making sure that we have the right staff with the right knowledge about how to navigate across this geopolitical environment, particularly with tariffs, and finding alternative sources that are going to give us the margin growth that we're committing to providing. As I mentioned, we're committing to a 30% gross margin in Q3. As part of that process, it is collapsing the actual warehouse organization that exists today and consolidating them. And there are lots of warehouses all over the country and want to get down to two, maybe three, as we streamline the entire operation. I think it's part of that, when you look at the short haul and the LTL process, we need to do a much better job of understanding where products are and how they're going to get from point A to point B. And when you study where there's margin leakage through the whole process, We see margin leakage in every one of those steps. We are confident that in 2027, through this process, we believe we could start to see margins for the entire organization, which would mean all transactions in total, starting to be in the low to mid-30s. Now, we think it's going to take about $20 million over the next six months to collapse and consolidate and terminate legacy and technical relationships that have been out there, including the tech that is associated with it. You will not hear our company use the famous word of today that goes along with the word intelligence. Every company in America is using that technology. We want to use it to operate our business. We want to use it to remove costs. In some cases, it's human costs. In other cases, it's logistic costs. In other cases, it's putting the right inventory on the ground to improve our Jim Roy. We are not where we need to be in terms of a gross margin return on investment. Every single one of these businesses, particularly Kirkland's and Container Store, need massive improvement in that area. And we started to see the fruits of labor on that specific area.

That's helpful. Well, maybe just rounding that out, either Marcus or Brian, I think there's sort of a fixation here on the 2Q cash usage. You're calling out some future cash usage. You also have future integration of businesses that we're not probably aware of the current EBITDA performance of. And then you're talking about $50 million of annualized cost savings. So I don't know if there's a way to just frame it for us. You know, looking 12 months out, we're at an EBITDA neutral state the way you sort of are seeing it today. or what's sort of the easiest way to summarize everything you're saying today in terms of getting to a state of neutrality?

We believe that 2027 is that year where shareholders finally start to see cash generation as opposed to the opposite. And when you talk about cash usage in the second quarter, I want to point to the fact that some, in many cases, it went from cash to inventory. In other cases, it went from cash to terminating contracts. And so the actual core business is not burning money like it used to, but that money is being allocated towards different things, including inventory. When we get into the third quarter, you're going to see some of the same thing where it's going from cash to working capital in the form of inventory, not subjected to an ABL. I would expect that between now and the end of the year, there could be anywhere from $30 to $40 million deployed specifically around completing acquisitions, making integrations, terminating contracts, severance. When we started to do all of these transactions and we looked at the purchase price of those transactions, in each one of those negotiations, we calculated what the cash requirements would be in making those transactions. And we lowered the purchase prices or negotiated modifications of purchase prices to account for what we knew cash required would need to be to merge them in, complete the transaction, and start to collapse those things. As many people are aware, in all of the transactions that we've done thus far, they have been done with stock, but they have been done at a premium to what our current trading price is. In many of the cases, the stock was done at $7 a share, and if there was a convertible portion of that purchase price, that was done at $9.10 a share. So we see accretion through those transactions. But over the next six months, we do anticipate using a certain amount of cash. we believe the cash on cash return is more than 100%, which is why we're confident we're starting to see cash generation in 2027.

And I would just say, Steve, we are still in a position of strength on our balance sheet. We had $126 million of cash and restricted cash at the end of the quarter.

We had $164 million if you factor in the inventory net of the ABL balance, which is a slight increase from where we ended in q1 of 2027. your next question comes from the line of jonathan matuszewski with jefferies your line is open please go ahead great good afternoon and and thanks for the update and and the time here um you know my first question marcus was just on kind of touch points across your ecosystem you know the more uh a consumer interacts across what you've built should theoretically hand you an advantage relative to maybe traditional retail peers that don't extend beyond products. Is there a way you can kind of frame this for us, maybe kind of where you are today in terms of customer interactions across different pieces of your ecosystem and where you'll be in maybe six or 12 months in terms of understanding the consumer better? Thanks.

Yep. So we are in the middle stages, middle to latter stages of really aggregating the collection of all the data that comes in from all the data points. And whether that is buying something online or buying something in store or having a home service provided or anything else in between, the way we think about it is we look at the 11-year journey. And if you looked at it like a ruler, and instead of having 12 inches that had 11, all of those different marks are all the places where people can interact with us. They can get information, they can do transactions, they can have a service provided, they can get a quote on their home, they could sell their home, et cetera. As we bring them into our ecosystem, what I think is very unique about what we're building and using intelligence and technology and data to do so is that all three pillars are really anchored in this center point. And the center point is how do we bring data into the system and how do we put a unique identifier on that transaction? For us, those are two separate unique identifiers. Identifier one is the homeowner themselves and all the attributes that belong to them, including some of the things that may be publicly available about them. It isn't just about how many times did they ring the register. And trying to use very sophisticated predictive logic to know how to serve them something tomorrow that is very specific to them, as opposed to peanut butter spreading our marketing approach. We see a lot of opportunity there. Secondly, and maybe more importantly to myself, is the single asset that they domicile in today. And how do we aggregate not only the data as it sits today, but look backwards to everything that ever happened to that home and start to understand size, home, the public records, title, deed, survey, and really put all of those into a unique identifier as well. We think that's the first step in putting title on chain because it has to come with lots of other parts and pieces with it. Not only the work that that homeowner does while they live there, the permits they pull, the home services they provide, the products they buy, but the age of the home, the square footage, the mortgage, and what happens around that neighborhood as it relates to average income, average home price, new home sales, new home builds. And we believe that the cube that we have built allows us to pull all of that data together to build out that specific universe for that person. What do we expect to get out of that is the more important question. We expect to reduce the tack that is required to do business with people. We expect to extend the lifetime value and expand on the lifetime value of that relationship. And we expect to remove friction in our own business and in their own process so that we can deliver them the kind of margins that our shareholders expect, which is north of 30%, at the prices that are going to keep them sticky through our system. As we think about how that system will work, it will have a lot of predictive logic inside of it, trying to understand what move we think is next. When we see people start to raise their hand for a new kitchen system or a new flooring system, we want to be able to provide them with financing tools. When we believe that somebody is at the tail end of their home ownership journey, we want to make sure they understand what their home is worth, how they can get a cash offer, how they could sell it to maximize their value, and how they can transfer title and transfer equity into their next transaction, and we can start to rinse, wash, and repeat that transaction. This is a business that is built on two principles there's a very big installed base of 80 plus million homeowners that know these brands that are part of our ecosystem and there are millions of people who still aspire to own a home that struggle is very real that affordability is a problem and while we don't feel like we can solve the price around the home specifically we believe that every single capability that we have added will earn us the stickiness that we believe is required to maximize lifetime value. This becomes a home ownership company built on data and technology with retail being nothing more than a fire starter.

Really helpful. And then just a quick follow-up. As we think about, you know, geography down the P&L over the years ahead, In reference to your view of mid to high single-digit EBITDA margin potential in a mid-cycle housing market, how should we think about gross margin as a driver versus operating costs, you know, as we bridge kind of today's, you know, level of profitability versus, you know, what could come in a more normal housing backdrop?

Yep. To give everybody a little bit of insight of what a forward projection would look like, if you took all the transactions that were on the table today, it's north of $2.5 billion, and it'll depend on when those acquisitions come in. But generally speaking, it's north of $2.5 billion if everything closed. We know that in order for us to be successful, we have to prove that we can be cash flow neutral to positive in this kind of economic environment.

Well, what does this kind of economic environment mean?

The only thing that ultimately matters are the number of homes that are sold on an annual basis. That speaks to the health of the housing environment. And even though we're seeing significant growth in our online business and we're happy to see growth in other parts of our business, we know that getting the cash flow neutral or positive are all that really matter for us. In the last 12 months, there's been about 4 million homes sold. Mid-cycle, in my opinion, would be defined with anywhere between 5 and 5.3 million homes sold. We believe that in that environment, there are two factors that will contribute to our mid to high single-digit EBITDA margin on the revenue that we would generate. First, the amount of revenue that we would generate in a mid-cycle environment would probably be 15 to 20 percent or more higher than it is today so some of that is scale the other part of it is is that when you look at all of our the parts and pieces of our pillars it isn't accidental that we're leaning into the home services side of the business it's got great inventory turns it's got high margins plus 50 percent and we believe that managing the mix of all of those businesses and allocating our capital is going to be quintessential to doing that. What I mean by that is this is not a story about expanding our retail business into thousands of locations and going into every neighborhood in America. This is understanding the base, understand that we operate into hundreds of neighborhoods, and understanding where the margin profile is going to get us. It is our estimation that in order to hit mid to high single-digit EBITDA margin, our gross margins would need to be around 35 percent, and there would have to be $50 million of SG&A in our current form as we sit here today taken out of the business. We are well on our way to identifying what those items are, which is why I mentioned that it will take money to terminate relationships, end leases, and end contracts. That's a dollar that we absolutely unequivocally want to spend because the cash on cash return is so clear. It's spend a dollar and get it right back. We believe that dollar that comes right back will quite frankly be exponential in the coming years. So 35% margin, 5.2 million, 5 to 5.2 million homes being sold is how we arrived at that projection.

Jonathan, I would just tell you as the CFO, I like the hand that we're dealt. If you think about a business that can generate sort of, you know, low to mid 30s in gross margin, I like that hand a lot better than I would a business that traditionally has been in the low 20s. Operating expenses are all about efficiency. We believe that there's 50 million plus that we can take out of that run rate in the business. And having a business that can generate that low to mid 30s and gross margin puts us in a very, very strong position to generate that mid to upper adjusted EBITDA margin.

And if you look back over the last 24 months, this company has gone from margins in the high team, mid to high team, and has had margin accretion almost every single quarter. This particular quarter is no different. We're still not satisfied. I know that Amy and Lisa and Tyler are not satisfied with the margins, and we can clearly see where the friction exists and what it's going to take to remove it. We know that removing friction is good for our business. It's more importantly good for the customer because things have gotten too expensive.

Again, if you would like to ask a question, Please press star one to raise your hand. Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

So, Marcus, Sammy, and Brian, congrats on the quarter. I ask my two questions one at a time. So, now that I've had the opportunity to see one of your stores firsthand, which I thought was pretty impressive, How should I think about your efforts to promote your home-related services at your physical stores?

Tom, I'll take that question. So, first of all, I was so glad you got to visit a store in Nashville. We are actively rolling that strategy out, and similarly to how we approach the initial conversion stores in the Nashville market and in other markets, we've started in Fort Worth. We have Cabinets to Go, Flooring, and Alpha all represented in our first TCS Bed, Bath & Beyond conversion store. It has been open for less than a week, and so we are working through how we really maximize that services business. There's a pretty proven sales model within the TCS organization and structure and their history of selling closets through Alpha and ClosetWorks. And so we're eager to roll out that expanded category assortment and services assortment in those stores. And so I think you'll see it come to life pretty similarly to the store you experienced where you sort of merge the best of both worlds. And so Bed Bath & Beyond product will be in that store, Legacy Kirkland's and Legacy Container Store product will be in that store. But more importantly, we added about 2,000 square feet of home services space, which is what's going to drive this margin expansion that we're talking about for the future.

Thank you, Amy. I appreciate that very much. And then high level, you've talked a lot about margins. So high level and maturity, how should investors think about your contribution margins for your online and offline retail sales?

Well, our contribution margin is really a function of all the frictional. So we start with product margin. And the reason you heard me talk so much about supply chain is as we look at even the supply chain cycle for a marketplace business, it's not only the product on the way out, but it potentially is the product on the way back. And we've started testing this idea of having returns taken back to stores and our ability to resell those returns, and we're seeing the margin recapture being one of the small contributors to our overall margin improvement. We think that needs to be scaled over the next 12 months without taking on additional fixed costs, but we think there's a point, one whole point of margin in our marketplace business alone that can be improved through a better return process. Historically, the company would just have things return to a liquidator, and we would get cents on the dollar or return to the vendor, and it would be built into the pricing module. And every time you take a look at all the frictionals that exist in the online marketplace, we know that if you're not actually running a very lean e-commerce supply chain business, that you have to price your product out of the market. We've started to really adopt a market minus pricing strategy, which is why we think we've seen two quarters of consecutive growth on the top line. We're actually seeing for the third quarter a trend line that is better from an online marketplace revenue growth than we saw in Q1 and Q2. More importantly, we're seeing margin improvement happen at the same time. So this core business is actually performing well. And when I look at the projections that we provided for Q2, we outperformed the expectations that we told the market we would do. Where did that come in? A lot of it came in from SG&A, and the balance of it came in from better margin.

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

Okay, thank you very much, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter.

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