Earnings Call Transcript - SNBR Q4 2025

Operator, Operator

Welcome to Sleep Number's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded today, Thursday, March 12, 2026. The conference call will be available on the company's website. Please refer to today's news release to access the replay. On today's call, we have Linda Findley, President and CEO, and Amy O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer of Sleep Number. Before we proceed, we will review the safe harbor statement. The main purpose of this call is to discuss the results of the fiscal period ending on January 3, 2026. Commentary and responses to questions may include certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties outlined in the company's earnings news release and discussed in detail in the annual report and other periodic filings with the SEC. The company's actual future results may differ significantly. Moreover, any forward-looking statements reflect the company's views only as of today and should not be seen as representing its views on any future date. The company specifically disclaims any obligation to update these statements. Please also refer to the company's news release and SEC filings for a reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures and supplemental financial information included in the news release or that may be discussed on this call. I will now turn the call over to Linda Finley, Sleep Number's CEO.

Linda Findley, CEO

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I want to welcome Amy O'Keefe, our new CFO. After an extensive search, she joined us in December and brings with her decades of experience leading operational and financial transformations across public and private companies. Her focus has been on streamlining our business operations and strengthening our capital structure to support our turnaround strategy. You'll hear more from her shortly. In today's call, I will cover three things. First, how we're executing on our strategy, both for growth and cost cutting; second, why we believe that our new marketing and product strategies are working; and third, what we're doing to manage liquidity and the capital structure. First, on delivering our strategy. 2025 was a pivotal year for Sleep Number as our ReShape team drove significant turnaround changes at every level of the company, from retail and corporate operations to marketing strategy and the rapid development of our new product line. Importantly, we delivered on the guidance we provided in our last call. Full year net sales were $1.41 billion, in line with our guidance despite reduced marketing spend and lower traffic throughout the year. Adjusted EBITDA was $78 million, exceeding our guidance of $70 million. Our use of cash for 2025 was $18 million compared to the $50 million guidance. For the full year, pro forma adjusted EBITDA margin was approximately 9%, and Amy will discuss how we plan to improve margins further in 2026. The long-term benefit to adjusted EBITDA margin comes from two places. First, the renewed growth from our product line redesign; and second, the significant cost savings we have already realized and will continue to realize this year. We radically reset the business by lowering our fixed cost structure and built a leaner, more nimble organization. We removed more than $185 million of annualized costs and have identified another $50 million of annualized fixed costs that we are executing on now. We are still in full turnaround mode, and our progress in 2025 doesn't change the fact that we still have hurdles to clear in 2026. We saw the same pressures as the rest of the industry in January and early February from severe weather and macroeconomic impacts. We had 236 stores that were closed for at least one day in the month of January, and therefore, sales at the start of the year were significantly down. We adjusted our marketing spend and strategy to lean in when things improved, and we have seen sequential improvement into February and March, driven mostly by our product launch. That brings us to our next point about why we believe our product and marketing strategies are working and will carry us through the next phase of the turnaround. We launched our first new bed and a new adjustable base in January and the response from customers has been fantastic. The Comfort mode mattress priced under $1,600 gives us access to a new group of customers while maintaining personalized comfort as the core of the experience. As of the end of February, sales are 3.5 times what we expected and nearly twice all the sales of all three C Series beds that this bed replaces. In addition, we are seeing very strong attach rates for adjustable bases and bedding. The success of the first Comfort bed is an important indicator for the rest of the portfolio we announced this morning as it's built off the same principles and the same value proposition. We listened to both current and prospective customers and built a product line that addresses their most critical needs of comfort, durability, and value. We also refer to the core of what only Sleep Number can offer: personalized comfort, adjustability, smart technology, and temperature benefits, the only bed in the industry that bed owners can fully control whenever they want. It's comfort that shifts with you night after night. With four new beds available in-store and online starting March 23, Sleep Number beds will now reach a broader set of consumers in the premium category. We are leveraging years of innovation and experience servicing luxury materials, features, comfort, temperature management, and adjustability at better price points than ever before. This enabled us to build more value per dollar in each bed, protecting our margins while also achieving a lower price point for today's premium customer. In addition to these innovative new beds, we are also making it easier to find the right bed for you by simplifying the buying experience in-store and online. With this launch, we are reducing our core lineup from 12 mattresses to 7 organized into three clear collections. First, Comfort mode is our new entry point to the brand. It delivers personalized comfort and temperature management controlled without an app, all at an accessible price. In January, we launched the 10-inch comfort mode bed, and now we're adding an 11-inch model called Comfort mode Luxe with a three-zone comfort layer and advanced temperature materials starting at just $2,099. Second, the Comfort next line, starting at $2,999 for a queen is our biggest innovation in the launch with three all-new beds, including two that feature our new Tribrid design. We are the first company to combine foam, advanced temperature materials, and microcoils on top of air adjustability to deliver improved comfort, pressure release, and durability with personalized comfort we are known for. These exceptionally luxurious beds will be the start of our smart technology in our portfolio that will track and improve your sleep at incredibly competitive price points. Third, we have our climate collection starting at $5,499 for a queen and it includes our existing Climate Cool and Climate 360 beds that differentiate with true active temperature management. This category represents the ultimate and luxurious comfort. When combined with the base, it remains the only line of mattresses on the market that offers personalized firmness, smart technology, adjustability, and active temperature control, all in one bed. In fact, our temperature programs on Climate 360 result in up to 52 more minutes of restful sleep per night. But the new product alone isn't what gives us confidence. The marketing changes we have made are substantial. As I've said before, we can do more with the dollars we spend, and that is happening. First, we rebuilt our marketing foundation and modernized how we identify and attract customers. As a result, we saw meaningful improvements throughout 2025 in our funnel metrics. Our marketing into Q4 maintained this improvement, and we're seeing accelerated year-over-year improvement in cost per acquisition so far in 2026. Second, we also started refreshing our creative and messaging last year in social and digital channels. We also recently launched our first new commercial in more than two years with a dedicated comfort mode spot where recent performance has now surpassed our prior campaign and current competitive benchmarks. The combination of this work is showing up in our annual brand tracker that we completed in January just before we announced our partnership with Travis Kelce. Despite overall pressure in the industry, we saw significant increases in every aspect of Sleep Number's brand. Brand consideration among premium shoppers grew 10% and achieved the highest consideration in the premium category. We also saw the highest levels in six years of critical consideration drivers, including value, quality, aspirational fit, comfort, and individualized comfort. Now it's up to us to build on that success and turn that brand strength into sales growth. The marketing changes are still underway, and you will continue to see new creative, new strategies, and our partnership with Travis Kelce comes to life. Finally, let's talk about liquidity and capital structure. It isn't news to anyone that we need to fix our capital structure. I knew that when I joined the business less than a year ago and it remains our top priority. Three things hit us particularly hard in the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026. The industry-wide softness we already spoke about, our work to clear out inventory as we roll out the new product line, and our continued careful management of marketing spend as we lap a very high inefficient spend of Q1 last year. This puts pressure on our liquidity, and we are implementing a plan to address this. As part of that plan, we hired Guggenheim Securities to evaluate the inbound interest we have received and advise on other opportunities to refinance our credit facility as we shape Sleep Number back into a profitable growing company. Amy will talk about this in more detail. Before I turn the call over, I want to thank our team members. Delivering a product reset of this scale in just 10 months, work that typically takes more than two years, reflects a new level of speed, collaboration, and execution across the company. Our work is focused on delivering better value for our customers, shareholders, and team members and on bringing Sleep Number back to profitable growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Amy.

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

Thank you, Linda, and good morning. I joined Sleep Number in mid-December because I view it as a company whose intrinsic value far exceeds its market capitalization. While Sleep Number is in the midst of a turnaround, the value of its underlying assets is undeniable: leading brand recognition, differentiated product, and the tens of billions of hours of sleep data that validate the benefit our beds have on the quality of your sleep. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but fortunately for me, Linda and the team have already done a significant amount of the hard work to put the company on a path to profitable growth. One, rightsizing the cost structure to a lower revenue base by executing on $185 million of annualized cost reductions with line of sight to an incremental $50 million to be executed in 2026. Two, executing in record speed for Sleep Number on a completely new line of products that Linda described, which we are launching on March 23; and three, modernizing our marketing engine with new leadership, new creative, new channel-specific media strategies, and a new partnership with Travis Kelce to strengthen the brand and drive top line growth. This is a pivotal time for the company, and I'm excited to partner with Linda and add my deep turnaround experience to unlock value for our shareholders. I want to thank the team for their very warm welcome and efforts to get me up to speed quickly. Now let's get into Q4 results, which were better than expected. Net sales were $347 million in Q4 or 8% below the same period in the prior year. As a reminder, fiscal year '25 benefited from a 53rd week, which favorably impacted year-over-year results by approximately 660 basis points. Notably, the performance trend across the year improved sequentially while the number of stores decreased by 40, exiting the year with 600 stores. And as Linda noted, the impact of our improved marketing offense continues to drive efficiencies. Gross profit margin was 55.6% in the quarter, a 430 basis point decline versus the prior year, primarily driven by a $9.6 million nonrecurring inventory obsolescence charge associated with our new product launch and the impact of unit deleverage and higher tariffs. Excluding the impact of the inventory charge, adjusted gross profit margin was 58.4%. Operating expenses in the quarter were $197 million, down 9% year-over-year, excluding restructuring and other nonrecurring costs. The reduction was driven by ongoing cost savings initiatives to rightsize the fixed cost base and lower variable selling expenses. Media investments were comparable to the fourth quarter of the prior year despite a 53rd fiscal week. Adjusted EBITDA was $19 million, down $7 million versus the same period last year. For the full year, net sales were $1.41 billion, consistent with our expectations but down 16% versus the prior year. Full year gross margin was 59%, and down 60 basis points year-over-year and aligned with the guidance of 60% that we shared last quarter when excluding the impact of the fourth quarter inventory charge. Operating expenses for the full year were $824 million, a $136 million reduction from the prior year, excluding restructuring and other nonrecurring costs. On an annualized basis, we've executed approximately $185 million of cost savings initiatives, which gives us an estimated $50 million tailwind as we head into 2026. As Linda mentioned, 2025 adjusted EBITDA was $78 million, exceeding our most recent outlook of $70 million. Importantly, for the full year, pro forma adjusted EBITDA margin was approximately 9%, a 200 basis point improvement versus the prior year. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the year in full compliance with our credit agreement and debt covenants. Total liquidity, including cash and revolver capacity, was $58 million at year-end, well above the amended $30 million covenant floor. Full year free cash flow was a use of $18 million, which was just over $30 million favorable to expectations. However, it was unfavorable by $21 million compared to the prior year, primarily due to top line pressure and nonrecurring cash restructuring costs. Capital expenditures of $14 million were down $9 million compared to the prior year. Looking ahead to 2026, as Linda mentioned, January demand was soft versus last year and our internal expectations. As we planned, the media investment in January was down significantly year-over-year and reallocated to after the launch of our new products when the return on investment is likely to be much higher. Moving into February, we saw a sequential improvement in performance during the President's Day event as we launched Comfort mode. Not only were we pleased with Comfort mode sales performance, but gross margin is well above our legacy opening price point beds. This provides another proof point that we can regain competitive positioning in the premium opening price point as we planned. We're excited to launch the rest of our product line in late March. Given the magnitude of the change that we are executing in 2026 as part of our turnaround plan, we will not be providing guidance today. However, I will provide some indications of our performance expectations for the balance of the year. I will also note that we are planning cautiously to ensure that our cost base and our liquidity planning are set appropriately as revenue ramps sequentially over the balance of the year. While we expect Q1 net sales to decline in the high teens because of the softness we saw at the beginning of the year with the full impact of the new product launch in the second quarter, along with an increase in year-over-year media spend, we expect a significant improvement in year-over-year revenue performance in Q2. We further expect double-digit sales growth in the second half with the full benefit of, one, new products, two, new creative assets, and three, marketing reach with our new strategic partner, Travis Kelce. As a result of cost savings initiatives and the expected ARU improvement from new products, adjusted EBITDA for the full year is expected to increase in the high teens to mid-20s percent range year-over-year, and we expect free cash flow to be positive. Lastly, but importantly, and as Linda mentioned, while we are seeing improvement in the business, the softness from the start of the year and the clearance of our existing products have put pressure on our liquidity and covenants. We are actively implementing a plan to address this as further detailed in our Form 10-K and have engaged an advisory bank, Guggenheim Securities, to help us. We will continue to monitor our liquidity position and covenant compliance and we'll work with our advisers to address our credit facility and evaluate inbound interest and other opportunities to improve the company's liquidity, balance sheet, and financial flexibility. With that, I will turn it to the operator for Q&A.

Operator, Operator

Your first question today comes from the line of Dan Silverstein from UBS.

Dan Silverstein, Analyst

Congrats on the announcement of the product launch. First question is just on that. So with the new product launches, what were the main pain points you were trying to address? And then the Comfort mode product replaced its predecessor at a higher margin. How will this new announcement today, how will these new beds reset the impact on ASPs, cost per bed, and margins going forward?

Linda Findley, CEO

Sure. I'll begin by addressing both points, and then I'll let Amy add her thoughts. First, thank you for the congratulations and your questions. Regarding the challenges, we're focusing on expanding our audience and serving our current customers, especially targeting younger demographics that seek the benefits of a Sleep Number bed. We prioritize comfort, value, and durability in our offerings. One of our strengths is the significant investments Sleep Number has made in innovation over the years, which have been beneficial for this product line. We are now able to use luxurious materials, temperature control technology, and other innovations in comfort, such as foam and our new micro coils in two of our new beds. This allows us to offer luxury materials at a more accessible premium price point. Consequently, we can better address comfort and enhance sleep based on our previous innovations while providing better value to our customers. We also have a clearer step-up strategy now, featuring beds that don’t require an app, allowing first-time users to experience our brand, and then transitioning to our smart technology options. We designed these beds with manufacturability in mind, which tackles a challenge we’ve faced previously: maintaining margins while selling up the line. Our climate series beds are doing exceptionally well, but we wanted all beds in our lineup to have a strong margin profile so that our sales team can confidently offer the best options to customers without margin concerns. Our comfort mode bed has a margin profile comparable to our climate 360 beds, enabling us to serve customers effectively while protecting our margins. So, while this addresses two parts of your questions, we’re really excited about this launch and its implications for customers and our margin profile. Amy, do you have anything to add?

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

I’d like to address gross margin. We anticipate a sequential increase in ARU as we phase out these products and discontinue the legacy products. For those of us in finance, the exciting part is the gross margin. Taking the comfort mode bed as an example, this SKU is already exceeding our expectations by performing at 3.5 times the plan. The most remarkable aspect for me is the gross margin. When I compare it to the two beds in the C Series that it replaces, there is a 10 percentage point gross margin improvement compared to last year. This is truly exciting not only for the early performance indicators but also for the business's margin profile.

Dan Silverstein, Analyst

Very, very helpful. And just one quick follow-up. Could you just touch on the major sources of the $50 million of additional savings you think you can drive this year? And will there be any further clearance activity as we approach March 23?

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

Sure. Last year, Linda and the team made substantial cuts to our costs, amounting to $185 million on an annualized basis. These cuts were somewhat urgent, as the team needed to act quickly to safeguard our liquidity. In recent months, we have been examining more targeted areas where we can still reduce costs. In terms of the additional annualized $50 million in savings, we're focusing on various aspects such as logistics, delivery, and restructuring our last mile labor model, as well as reviewing our corporate overhead. These are the main efforts contributing to the $50 million savings.

Linda Findley, CEO

And importantly, just to add to that, all of the $50 million has already been identified, we're already executing on it, and it is all fixed costs.

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

Yes, all fixed costs.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bobby Griffin from Raymond James.

Bobby Griffin, Analyst

Congrats on the first product launch there. I guess, first for me, I think the release or maybe the prepared remarks called out March 23 as the date, but like what's the phasing as we look at getting these six new beds now that you talked about on the floors and kind of across the portfolio, how is that phasing work throughout the year? And if you can, just give us a date that you feel the floors will be largely set, the stores will look as you want them to be?

Linda Findley, CEO

I’ll go ahead and address that. We launched the first bed, which is the comfort mode, earlier this year. Along with this initial launch, there are four new beds and a new base that will be available for purchase starting on March 23. This announcement completes our product reset, in addition to the existing climate series we already have on display, like Climate 360 and Climate Cool. All beds will be up for purchase starting March 23, and we will begin setting up our displays on the same day, starting with our highest volume stores. Most of these stores will be ready by mid-April, with a few additional ones possibly rolling out into May. However, the primary stores will all be set by mid-April.

Bobby Griffin, Analyst

Okay. So basically, Floor will be in good shape for the Memorial Day holiday. That's what I was getting at.

Linda Findley, CEO

Absolutely. That is exactly what we're planning for. Yes.

Bobby Griffin, Analyst

That's very encouraging. I understand the reluctance to provide guidance, but could you clarify if the EBITDA growth you're mentioning is compared to the reported number from 2025, rather than the pro forma number?

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

That's correct. That's correct. Of the $78 million adjusted EBITDA base, mid-20s percent range improvement.

Bobby Griffin, Analyst

Yes. Okay. Perfect. And then if that comes to fruition and you guys are able to deliver that, would that translate into positive free cash flow for the year? I understand this business typically has really good cash flow metrics, but it would?

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

Absolutely.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Keith from Piper Sandler.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

This is Sarah on for Peter. First, just on marketing spend, given the meaningful reductions in 2025, how are you guys thinking about investment in '26? Should we expect those marketing dollars to start trending back up particularly as the new product lineup rolls out? Or is current on kind of sufficient to drive demand?

Linda Findley, CEO

Right. So as we spoke about before, what we're actually doing in 2026 compared to 2025 is you'll see marketing held flat as total spend in 2026 over 2025. But what that means in reality because 2025 had very high spend in Q1, much lower spend in Q2 and Q3, and then moderated sort of relatively flat spend in Q4. That was the shape of the curve in 2025, someone compared it to a square root at one point. So when you look at 2026, what we're actually doing is evening that spend out across the entire year. So you don't have any peaks and valleys of spend that can create inefficiencies, and so what that means in reality is Q1 is actually down because, again, Q1 spend last year was extremely high before I joined the business. So Q1 spend is slightly down. Q2, 3, and 4 will be up year-over-year relative to last year because of the fact that we're evening out the spend. So you are going to see increased spending, as Amy mentioned, in line with our full rollout of the products.

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

I would add that Q2 is higher than the back half, which is roughly flat, but the significant change is really between Q1 and Q2.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

Yes. Okay. Very helpful. And then just a quick follow-up on the clearance of existing products. Was that primarily greater markdown than expected? And then did you say that was expected to be a headwind once with those newer products and on the reduction?

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

Sorry, are you finished with your question?

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

Yes.

Amy O'Keefe, CFO

Got you. We are going to see unquestionably some margin pressure in Q1. So this new product rollout is monumental compared to other product launches in the company's history. I mean, I think we say we haven't seen such significant change in a decade and so with a hard stop, and we definitely didn't want to do a rolling change of these products because we wanted to get the revenue ramp and the margin benefits as early as we possibly could. So we're definitely going to be taking some discounting and hits to margin in Q1 because of the hard stop and the softness that we talked about in January and February. We had a little bit more inventory hangover than we would have liked, and we're working through that in the month of March.

Linda Findley, CEO

Yes, I would just add that regarding your question about expectations, we did anticipate some clearance work, which is pretty standard for a launch of this scale. We are particularly excited about the launch of Comfort mode, which has outsold our plan by 3.5 times and is also outperforming all three replaced beds by two times. This gives us leverage through volume, which is a significant aspect of our long-term strategy. We recognize there are trade-offs in all that we evaluate, but this was anticipated.

Operator, Operator

And as we have no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the conference back over to Linda for any closing remarks.

Linda Findley, CEO

Thank you very much for your time today. We're excited for our customers to experience our new product lineup later this month, and we remain very focused on the key elements of our turnaround strategies as we actively address our capital structure. I look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the coming months. As always, if you have any questions, please contact us directly.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.