Laird Superfood (AMEX:LSF) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below.

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Summary

LSF reported a 20% year-over-year increase in Q1 2026 net sales to $13.9 million, driven by acquisitions and strong performance in the wholesale channel.

The company completed acquisitions of Navitas Organics and Terasol Superfoods, funded by $110 million from Nexus Capital, which now holds a controlling interest.

LSF aims to integrate these acquisitions, leveraging shared capabilities to improve supply chain and broaden distribution across multiple channels.

Despite gross margin contraction due to higher commodity costs and tariffs, LSF expects margin improvement through synergies and commodity cost reductions.

The company provided a FY 2026 outlook with expected net sales of $138 to $148 million and adjusted EBITDA of $8 to $12 million, excluding one-time costs.

Management emphasized the strategic focus on building a comprehensive superfood platform, with plans for additional acquisitions to grow the portfolio.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Laird Superfood Inc. First quarter 2026 financial results. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press Star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Trevor Russo, Head of Investor Relations. Trevor, please go ahead.

Trevor Russo (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you and good afternoon. Welcome to Laird Superfood's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and webcast. On today's call are Jason Vieth, Laird Superfood's President and Chief Executive Officer and Anya Hamill, our Chief Financial Officer. By now everyone should have access to our earnings release which was filed today after market close. It's available on the Investor Relations section of our website, lairdsuperfood.com before we begin, please note that during this call management may make forward looking statements within the context of federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Please refer to today's press release and other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties. With that, I'll turn the call over

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

to Jason Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us on today's call to Discuss Laird Superfood's first quarter 2026 financial results. I'm Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer. With me today is Anya Hamill, our Chief Financial Officer. We issued our earnings press release and filed our Form 10Q after market close today and both are available on our investor relations website. The first quarter of 2026 marked a transformative milestone for Laird Superfood. On March 12, we completed the acquisition of Novitis Organics, one of the most trusted and established names in the premium organic superfood category. Founded in 2003, Navitas brings high quality organic superfoods with strong presence across natural and conventional grocery club and e commerce channels. We acquired Navitas to expand our product portfolio, broaden our distribution reach and accelerate our strategy of building a scale positive nutrition platform. Just weeks after quarter end on April 21, we closed the acquisition of Terrasol Superfoods. Terrasol is a vertically integrated branded superfoods platform offering nuts, seeds, dried fruits, powders, baking ingredients and functional beverage mix ins. IT sources globally, processes and packages in house and distributes through e commerce, food service and retail channels. This acquisition further expands our product assortment so strengthens our supply chain capabilities and broadens our footprint across multiple channels Both transactions were funded through our partnership with Nexus Capital management. The initial $50 million Series A preferred stock issuance in March funded the Navitas acquisition and the subsequent $60 million issuance in April funded the Terasal acquisition. These investments not only provided the capital to execute, but also brought strategic expertise as we build a larger, more diversified superfood company. Following these transactions, Nexus now holds approximately 73.8% of our common stock on a fully diluted as converted basis and we are operating as a controlled company under NYSE American rules. Strategically, these moves are about creating a comprehensive superfood platform and that can compete more effectively in a rapidly evolving category. Consumers continue to shift toward clean, minimally processed, functional foods with recognizable ingredients. By combining Laird's functional coffee solutions and performance focus, Navitas Premium Organic Superfood leadership and Terrasol's vertically integrated ingredient expertise, we are building a differentiated portfolio that spans daily use products, functional beverages and broad superfood ingredients. As we have stated previously, these two acquisitions represent just the beginning of our roll up strategy in the Superfoods and positive nutrition space and we expect to make additional acquisitions in the years to come as we continue to scale the platform. Through these transactions, we have created a much stronger enterprise that is positioned to generate positive EBITDA and cash flow in the future. Given these improvements, we expect to use our balance sheet to attain some combination of debt and equity financing to support those future acquisitions. We are already executing our integration playbook across the three businesses. For Navitas, which was with us for the final 19 days of the quarter, we are laser focused on aligning supply chain finance and commercial operations while also preserving the brand's authentic identity and strong consumer relationships. The early contribution from Navitas in both E commerce and wholesale channels validates the strategic fit. We have already integrated the Navitas organization into Laird Superfood and I'm pleased to report that we are attaining the expected synergies across the combined organization. Our team is now focused on delivering the cogs and distribution and brokerage savings that we had planned for the second half of this year and beyond. And with Terrasol now part of the family, we are applying the same disciplined approach, leveraging shared capabilities in sourcing, co manufacturing optimization and omnichannel distribution to drive efficiencies and accelerate growth. The addition of Terrasol is particularly meaningful. Its vertical integration provides greater control over quality and cost, while its broad product line in nuts, seeds and powders complements our existing offerings and opens new doors in food service and ingredient channels at the same time, Terrasol delivers Laird Superfood and enhanced online marketplace capability which we believe will greatly benefit our entire business in the future. Together, these two acquisitions significantly increase our overall scale, which we believe will improve our ability to invest in innovation, expand our consumer awareness and distribution footprint, and deliver better economics over time. Looking forward, we are confident that this platform positions us to capture a larger share of the growing positive nutrition market. We will continue to focus on driving repeat usage, expanding our customer base across both E commerce and wholesale, optimizing our supply chain and delivering innovative new products that align with consumer demand for functional clean label solutions. With regards to Q1, I am pleased to report that all of our brands achieved growth well in excess of the industry. Anya will share more details in a moment, but I can proudly report that our Q1 company growth was 20% versus last year driven by the wholesale channel and our Amazon platform and including more than two weeks of Navitas Organics post acquisition. Even as we integrate two businesses, our supply chain continues to perform remarkably well. And while we hit some margin pressure in Q1 related to inventory that was costed at higher commodity prices and with tariffs, we expect that to mitigate as we move forward through the balance of the year since the commodity prices have already come down and tariffs are now removed from our products. And I would be remiss if I did not mention that we are also leveraging AI in a very aggressive fashion and across our entire business we now have AI supporting our team in forecasting, planning and execution activities across all of our functions including supply chain, finance and marketing. We are already reaping the benefits of this technology in the organization as we transition the Navitas business to the Laird team with very little incremental headcount. I also want to share that we are making important shifts in our commercial engine. I am pleased to announce that Andy Judd has returned to the company to lead our marketing efforts. Andy was most recently at Poppy where he led the marketing activities as the brand rapidly scaled to to more than $500 million in revenue and to an eventual sale to Pepsi. Under Andy's leadership, we will be pivoting more work in house to drive greater efficiency, creativity and speed to market. This transition will involve some near term ramp up investment, but we are confident that it will deliver both better ROI and stronger brand storytelling and consumer activation across our portfolio. On the sales side, we are bringing in new leadership to accelerate our wholesale momentum, particularly in conventional grocery and club where we see substantial Runway. We'll be able to share more on that appointment during our next call. While the near term will involve integration, costs and complexity, we are energized by the strategic position that we have built and the long term value creation opportunity ahead for our customers, our team and our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to Anja to provide greater detail on the first quarter financial results.

Anya Hamill (Chief Financial Officer)

Anya thank you Jason and good afternoon everyone. I will now provide additional detail on our first quarter 2026 financial results. As Jason highlighted, Q1 was a foundational quarter for our platform. Now I will walk you through what drove our Q1 results and then spend some time on how we're thinking about the full year picture for the combined three brand business net sales for the first quarter of 2026 were 13.9 million, up 20% compared to 11.7 million in the first quarter of 2025. Navitas Organics contributed 1.6 million of net sales in the quarter, representing its first partial period contribution. Following the March 12 close, Wholesale was again the primary growth engine, growing 37% year over year to 7.5 million and representing 54% of total net sales. This was driven by the addition of Navitas wholesale revenues as well as continued distribution, expansion, product assortment wins in grocery and club and strong velocities at shelf. Our E commerce channel grew 4% to 6.5 million or 46% of total net sales driven by the addition of Navitas E Commerce revenues and continued strength on Amazon.com, partially offset by softness in Laird's direct to consumer channel. Gross margin in the first quarter was 33.3% compared to 41.9% in the prior year period, a contraction of 8.6 percentage points. I want to give you a clear breakdown of what drove this approximately 3.2 percentage points of the contraction was driven by a timing related inventory cost and benefit in the first quarter of 2025 that did not recur in 26. This was a priority item, not a reflection of current period performance. The remaining approximately 5.4 percentage points reflects a combination of unfavorable channel and product mix, inflationary commodity costs, particularly in coffee, and the impact of import tariffs on certain input costs. These are real pressures that we are actively managing. The total operating expenses were 7.7 million in Q1 of 2026 compared to 5.1 million in the prior year period, an increase of 50%, which I will explain was largely driven by one time acquisition cost. General and administrative expenses increased by 73% to 3.9 million. The increase was driven primarily by 1.3 million of Navitas acquisition and integration related professional fees which are one time in nature as well as planned increases in personnel costs. As we build the team to support a scaled multi brand platform, sales and marketing expenses increased 33% to 3.8 million driven by higher media spend, agency fees and increased selling costs on higher sales volume. GAAP net income for first quarter of 2026 was 1.8 million or $0.12 per basic share compared to a net loss of 0.2 million in the prior year period. I want to be transparent about what drove this the gap Net income figure includes 4.7 million discrete non recurring income tax benefit resulting from the release of a deferred tax valuation allowance acquired in the connection with Navitas transaction. This reflects the recognition of deferred tax liabilities assumed in acquisition, a one time accounting benefit, not a reflection of operating performance. Stripping out that non recurring item and looking at adjusted EBITDA which we believe is a better representation of our Underlying business performance Q1 2026 adjusted EBITDA was 1.1 million loss compared to positive 0.4 million in the prior year period. The year over year decline reflects the gross margin pressures that I described earlier such as commodity costs, tariffs and unfavorable product and channel mix as well as higher marketing and selling investments to support our growth strategy. As we integrate Navitas and Terasol and begin to realize procurement and operational synergies, we expect our adjusted EBITDA to improve meaningfully through the balance of the year. Turning to the balance sheet, as of March 31st, 2026 we had 10.5 million of cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash and no outstanding debt. Net working capital was 25.7 million up from 11.1 million at the year end 2025 reflecting the inclusion of Navitas working capital acquired in the transaction. Inventory increased to 17.3 million from 7.8 million at year end 2025 reflecting the addition of Navitas inventory. Cash used in operating activities was 3.8 million in Q1 of 2026 compared to 1.3 million in the prior year period. The increase was driven primarily by payment of Navitas acquisition related cost and changes in networking capital related to timing of receivables, collections and payables. I also want to give you an important post quarter data point on liquidity. On April 21 we completed Terasol acquisition for 48 million funded by the 60 million subsequent issuance of Series A preferred stock to our Nexus Capital Management Partners. After funding the acquisition. The remaining proceeds are available to support the payment of certain liabilities related to the acquisition as well as combined enterprise working capital needs. As of April 30, 2026, the combined company had approximately 24 million off cash and restricted cash. We believe this provides a solid liquidity position as we execute our integration plans. Now turning to 2026 outlook and let me walk you through our 2026 guidance for the combined platform for fiscal year 2026. The company expects consolidated net sales in the range of 138 to 148 million, reflecting full year of Layered Superfood and the post acquisition contributions of Navitas and Terasol. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of 8 to 12 million for fiscal 2026 reflecting full year of Layered Superfood and the post acquisition contributions of Navitas and Terasol businesses driven by top line growth and early synergy realization. Adjusted EBITDA excludes transaction and integration costs which are one time in nature. I want to reiterate one more time that this guidance does not include the periods of 2026 that we did not own each of the Navitas and Terasol businesses. We will provide updated guidance as integration milestones are achieved and our visibility improves. We also want to help dimensionalize how the entire business is growing in 2026, but that is difficult given that Terasol has not yet been audited on the GAAP principles. So for illustrative purposes only on a pro forma full year basis as of Navitas and Terasol were acquired on January 1, 2026. Aggregating all three businesses and comparing 2026 to 2025 using the same accounting methodology as each company utilized in 2025, we would expect full year 2026 net sales to grow in the range of 8 to 12%. In closing first quarter was a transitional quarter by design. We absorbed the cost of building the platform, acquisition fees, working capital investment and integration spending while continuing to deliver healthy top line growth. Our focus for the balance of the year is clear. Integrate effectively capture synergies across procurement and operations, continue to grow the top line across all three brands and convert that growth into meaningful adjusted Ebitda improvement. And with that I'll turn the call back to Jason.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you Anya. 2026 will go down as another pivotal year of transformation for Laird Superfood. With the successful acquisitions of Navitas Organics and Terasol Superfoods now complete, we have significantly expanded our scale, diversified our portfolio and strengthened our position in the fast growing positive nutrition category. We've brought together three strong complementary brands with leading positions across functional beverage premium organic superfoods made with close to the earth minimally processed ingredients, creating a powerful platform that is far greater than the sum of its parts. While the near term includes integration costs and some associated margin pressure, the long term opportunity is clear and compelling. We are building a scaled diversified superfood company with improved economics, stronger innovation capabilities and and multiple levers for sustainable growth. We remain confident in our ability to deliver positive EBITDA and cash flow as we execute our roll up strategy and continue to pursue additional strategic acquisitions. I want to thank our entire team for their tremendous work and dedication during this transformative period. Our new partners at Nexus Capital for their strategic support, and all of you for your continued interest in Laird's superfood. We look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the remainder of 2026. Thank you again for joining us today. This concludes our call operator. We are now open for questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one. To raise your hand to withdraw your question, please press star one. 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 Eric delaurier with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric Delaurier

Great. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on another acquisition here and the strong integration so far. My first question here is just on Terrasol. Just wondering if you could please expand on the vertical integration capabilities. Specifically you mentioned greater controls on quality and cost and then opening up new channels in food, service and ingredients. Just wondering if you could expand on that a bit for us. Thanks.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Hey Eric, great question. Thank you. It's nice to hear from you. Yeah. You know what, we're really excited about this Terasol acquisition. This is really a full circle moment for us at Laird Superfood because when I first came here four years ago, we were self manufactured. We had a facility up in Oregon and we were distributing out of it and we were just very subscale and not ready to to be undertaking those activities. So we ultimately had to shut that down, move to a co pack 3 PL outsourced manufacturing distribution system and frankly that's what saved the company at the time. We were able to flip gross margins from 15 to over 40 and to really take control of our business. And so that was a move that we undertook just around three years ago now. And to come full circle to this position, as I mentioned, where we are with Terasol, we're really excited because what it really is indicating from our perspective is that we now have the manufacturing scale and size of business that Laird having. Our own facility. The operators that were running Terasol, the owner Dennis Botts and his team, were doing a fantastic job at the size that they already were. They were operating pretty much, I think, actually everything being produced inside of Terasol, in fact, producing for other brands at different times as well in order to achieve scale and cost benefits. And so now, with the addition of Navitas and Laird and the opportunity to bring those brands into Terasol, to capture that vertical integration capability that they've built, I think is really exciting for us at this point. The Terasol facility is running really well, but it's not fully utilized. It's currently running really just one shift throughout the week. There's opportunity over time to add additional shifts, but also to add additional lines to the ship that's there. So in. In Terasol, we have a group of very efficient and proficient operators that really know how to run these particular products, which are very similar, as you know, to the Navitas and the Laird products. So we're not going to jump into that too quickly. We have a lot on our plate right now just integrating the Navitas business. Our integration strategy is essentially to integrate Navitas while we let Terasol operate on its own, in its own facility. And as we bring Navitas in, get that tucked in fully over the next couple of months, we'll put in place that plan to start looking at Navitas and layered into Terasol as well. So we'll. We'll take it in steps. We're going to do it very thoughtfully. We've seen others that have made messes of acquisitions. I've done a lot of acquisitions over the years. White wave, sobos, etc. I've seen the good and the bad. We're going to be very careful and thoughtful and we have a really great team down there that I think will be able to handle once we make that transition. So. And. Oh, sorry. And then just to flesh that out a little bit more. So they are producing out of that facility, as I mentioned, they're also distributing out of that and in the distribution, they're distributing to Amazon, to other online Marketplaces to food service operators and to a small retail business as well. And so we, you know, in Terasol we have operators that really understand how to run omnichannel manufacturing and distribution. And so we're really excited and optimistic about what that'll look like as we come up combine the businesses not only from a cost perspective, but enabling new capabilities as well. Regarding the channels, you asked about the channel, so, so I'll hit that. Pterasol is a really interesting business and very complementary to the other two brands that we already had in the portfolio. Terasol has a much larger food service component than either of the other two businesses. So with that we pick up over 3,000 distribution points that are being drop shipped out of the facility and right now are servicing carousel to those product sites or to those, those consumer sites. As we go forward, we obviously have two more brands with very complementary and interesting products for that same channel. So we're really excited about what that can look like. Those are, you know, those are facilities we don't currently get to retail facilities that we don't currently service in the other two brands. So, so it's completely additive to our existing footprint. We also, with Terasol acquisition, we also get a very proficient Amazon and marketplace operator that I think will help us to bring our other two business, other two brands to an even greater height in that, in those channels as well. So we would tell you that it fits really, really well with the other two businesses. There is some crossover in product, not as much as you would expect, but very similar products that are made the same way with the same type of a equipment in the same type of facility that get distributed on the same trucks but to different locations and with an additive online capability that we're really going to harness as well.

Eric Delaurier

Awesome. That's, that's great color and I'm really great to hear. Looking forward to what you guys can do with that over the coming quarters here and then just overall on M and A some. So you mentioned, you know, you guys are still, still active. You know, not, not stopping here. Of course you're going to have some, some integration time. Just wondering if you could kind of give us a high level sort of outlook here. How should we think about overall pacing of acquisitions? Is it sort of, you know, one or two a year or just any sort of framing on either timing or size of acquisitions would be helpful. Thank you.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, Eric, you know, this is, I'll just say this is not a strategy that is set in, you know, fully set concrete at this point we are, we're still working through that and really assessing not only what our appetite is, but what our aptitude is for being able to integrate and continue to move, obviously keeping an eye on the existing businesses. So we'll learn more as we work our way through Navitas and then Terasol. But I think you're pretty safe if you say one to two per year. But again, you know, like I mentioned last time around when we, we completed Navitas and I was asked, would you do another one this year? We would. So I, you know, if the right property became available over the course of the, you know, the 2026 calendar year or anytime in the next year, would we make a third? I think we would. We would absolutely look at it. You know, we would need, obviously we would need to be able to buy it right, buy it at the right price and, and believe that there is a nice synergy play or accretive play to the business that we have today. But we, I would say we have a nice muscle in this space that we're, that we've, that we're developing and improving out here with Navitas right now. And we have really great partners over at Nexus that help support that, that acquisitive strategy that we have. So this is going to be a roll up. We're going to continue to add additional brands, but we're going to be very thoughtful in the brands that we add. They're going to fit into this health and wellness space as close to the earth as we possibly can get. You know, minimally, minimally processed, real food type of, type of brands and those don't, you know, when they come available, we want to make sure that we're ready to, to take a hard look at those. So I think 1 to 2 is pretty safe assumption. But in this particular case where we've already done two, maybe you could kick off, start that year anew right now and say one to two in the next year might be a goal for us.

Eric Delaurier

That's very helpful. Well, excited to see what's to come with you guys and congrats again. Thanks, Eric.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Nicholas Sherwood with Maxim Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Sherwood (Equity Analyst)

Thank you for taking my questions. I'm kind of thinking about how you're, how are you going to be managing and facilitating the best practices across the three organizations, how you're sharing the e commerce and logistics specialties from Terasol versus maybe some of the more wholesale specialties at Navitas and Just making sure that lines of communication are clear.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, it's a great question. The reality is we're still very, in terms of the organizational size, we're still very small and nimble organization. We're leveraging AI very heavily. You heard me say that in the. In the pre record, we're leveraging AI very heavily. And it's really amazing how we're able to add on, you know, really double our business with very few required additional resources. And I think that's going to continue to be the case as we go forward. Terrasol is different for us because it is its own manufacturing facility. And we need to have an organization down there that's leading that facility. So you don't have the same capability with that as you have with, you know, the same opportunity, I should say, as you have with Navitas in terms of being able to really consolidate. But as we go forward and we make additional acquisitions and we fit more manufacturing into Terasil and we fit more brands into the overall. holdco. holdco, sorry. I think that you'll see that we can continue to. To stay very nimble. Very, very, very small. As a result, we don't have a lot of communication barriers between the companies. So what we've done thus far is we've integrated the Navitas folks that ultimately we're gonna stay with the business. They're working side by side with our team. You know, it's the. We don't have all the same geographical benefit. We do have team split between California, really California, Oregon and Colorado at this point. There are a few others, but we certainly are able to leverage the online tools that became available during, during the COVID time really effectively. And so I would say that the teams are really well integrated already. They understand the swim lanes responsibilities have been set very clearly. As I mentioned, we brought on a new wholesale leader that will be joining in the next couple of weeks. And more than wholesale sales leader that'll be joining in the next couple of weeks that we'll be able to talk about. And we brought on Andy Judd to run marketing. And each one of those two leaders is obviously going to be setting up the right processes and controls across the entire system to make sure that from a commercial perspective, we're coming to market with all three brands. Jared Larkin, who leads our supply chain, doing the same thing across the entire supply chain. So it wasn't outsourced. Supply chain now has a very large plant that's, you know, producing by far our largest producer. And it's producing over 50 of of all of the unit volume. So he needs to stay very close with that team and make sure that, that they're fully integrated. But it's really not a challenge. I think we were built to be able to do that by virtue of having a couple of locations already. And we're not siloed. We're a very flat organization. And, and so I think we're, we're, we're to see that that's not a problem at all.

Nicholas Sherwood (Equity Analyst)

Okay, perfect. I appreciate that detail. And then thinking about the food service opportunity, what sort of food service locations should we be thinking about? We're talking about fast casual restaurants, hospital cafeterias, university dining halls, airlines. You know, how should we sort of frame that new part of the business?

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I love that question. That is very early development for us. By virtue of these three brands. We think we have an opportunity in all of those channels. However, we, we will be prioritizing those and obviously with somewhat limited resource or relatively limited resource, making sure that we, we prioritize and attack them appropriately. To start, Terasol has a tremendous business that they've already built out in. Think of it as kind of that health and wellness oriented space. Two shops in particular will be looking at all of the coffee shops with the Laird lineup, but also all of the, the great products that Terasol and Navitas bring to the same operators. We think that that portion where health and wellness really lives in a strong way is a great opportunity, but you hit it on the head. I mean, hospitals, if you've spent any time in a hospital, it's one of the biggest kind of quagmires, I think. We try and send people that are sick to the hospital to get healthy and they don't eat well and neither does anyone that goes in to see them. And I think that that is a really great opportunity for us. Again with those lesser processed, close to the earth foods that we think we can get after over the next couple of years. And CNU is really important as well. You really have an opportunity to get to the younger generation that's proving they care a lot more about health and wellness than any anyone my age did at that age. And so we'll be prioritizing all of those. We already have a capability that I mentioned with Terasol to be able to drop ship directly to location that we think creates a real competitive advantage for that entire channel.

Nicholas Sherwood (Equity Analyst)

Thank you for taking my questions. I will return to the queue.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of George Kelly with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is Open, please, go ahead.

George Kelly (Equity Analyst)

Hey everyone, thanks for taking my questions. A few for you first. Maybe a follow up to one of the prior questions about your M and A pipeline. Curious where you think there's still opportunity or maybe it's within your product portfolio or capabilities. Like where else might it make sense to look for future M and A.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Great. Hey George, always a pleasure to take your questions. So, you know, this is a good one. And we are looking, you know, we have a view towards additional brands that fit really nicely into this portfolio that we're building in the superfood space. But exactly as you said, also looking at various capabilities that can, that we can leverage to take our existing brands to new locations. And that's, you know, Terasol really checked both of those for us, to be honest. The capability really, we, we were interested because of the products and then we realized really this incredible set of capabilities that I've been talking about today was there as well. So when you get the two for one, you get even more excited. But I think you're exactly right. We'll, we'll be looking at both of those areas as we go forward. Our focus is, is domestic, you know, looking at the U.S. maybe North America in general, but the U.S. as, as really our geographic kind of hub or main location. And I think within that, the product space, you know, the brands that are bringing new products, especially in those two areas that we've already highlighted in, in the queue, that being Coffee Solutions and Functional Foods. There are a tremendous amount of brands that are in that space that are, let's say, 40 to $80 million, give or take, you know, 10 or 20% to that, which is kind of the sweet spot of where we want to be looking. I wouldn't say we would look at something larger that can anchor the portfolio, but we really believe, you know, if we can take a handful of 50, 60, $70 million brands and take them up to 100 and then $150 million and beyond, you build a portfolio of those in the healthy food space. We'll have a really unique portfolio of products here. And so that's kind of the strategy on the product side, capability wise. You know, I just mentioned this food service space and our interest in getting there. If we found a particular product that was able to take us to a, into a channel, for instance, food service, but into a channel where it could bring real leverage that we could utilize for the other brands, I think that would be something we'd really need to look at as well. But, but you want, you know, if you're going to do that, I think we don't want to buy a brokerage. So really what you want is you want to a product that's been proven into that space. And so that's where you get yourself back to another Terasol type of acquisition, which is really the sweet spot. We would love to do, you know, five more carousels, to be honest with you.

George Kelly (Equity Analyst)

Okay, okay, that's helpful. And then other questions just around your guide, the full year guide. I know the first half is just a little messy because you're doing these acquisitions and they're layering in. But if we look at the back half, what's baked into your guide, is it fair to say that you'll be doing like a low 30s percent gross margin and around a 10% EBITDA margin in the back half of the year? So that's the first part. And then second part of the question is if I'm ballpark with those ranges, are there a lot of synergies that are not sort of fully baked into those numbers? They're longer term synergies. Maybe they'll be more fully realized in 2027. Is that a fair statement? So if you could cover those two questions, that would be great.

Anya Hamill (Chief Financial Officer)

Hi George, this is Anya. Thanks for the question. So I'll kick it off especially around margin and then Jason, jump in. So, you know, yes, in terms of the gross margin, we certainly have acceleration planned in for the balance of the year to be, you know, in the, in the range that probably low to mid-30s. And there's really four drivers to that acceleration. One is the top line build that we're anticipating from new distribution from reduced promotional spend as well as slot in charges that we incurred in Q1 for this new distribution. Then you know, there's some commodity favorabilities as well in Q1 we're still going through higher cost commodities that were purchased last year with tariffs. You know, the channel mix and product mix becomes more favorable in the balance of the year as well as tariff refunds that are anticipated. And then of course the, the fourth driver is addition of Terasol. That wasn't reported in our Q1 numbers since we didn't complete the acquisition until, you know, Q2. So. And then early synergy realization to your point is that we're early in the acquisition and you know, we feel like we are on track with our synergies expectation and it won't be a full year this year it will be partial but you know, we are, we feel good about it. Like I mentioned on track. And that will be reflected in the back half numbers as well.

George Kelly (Equity Analyst)

Maybe just to follow up, is the 10ish percent EBITDA margin in the back half realistic?

Anya Hamill (Chief Financial Officer)

I. I think that's a little high, especially, you know, with just putting those businesses together. So I think that's maybe mid. Would be mid single digits would be more appropriate.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think high single digits. So, George, the way I think about it is that you. We expect to be a double digit EBITDA business, but we need to get through the full synergy play. And so exactly as you asked, there are synergies that we won't get to in 2026. You know, moving the, the production into the Terasol facility is a great example. As I was talking about previously, we know that there are dollars that will be in play, quite a lot of dollars that will be in play when we do that. But that's staged for beyond 2026 or maybe to start later in 2020-26 and then bleed into 27. So I think that it would be a little bit aggressive to expect that we're going to be all the way to 10% plus EBITDA in the back half of the year. We'd love to. It doesn't mean we won't be pushing for it, but I think it would be a little bit aggressive just because the timing of some of these synergies as we work our way through the integration just won't allow us to get all the way there.

George Kelly (Equity Analyst)

Okay. Okay. All right. I appreciate. That's all I had. Thanks.

OPERATOR

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. To raise your hand to withdraw your question, please press star one. 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. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Jason for closing remarks.

Jason Vieth (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Great. Thank you. Thanks to all of you for joining us again today and for your continued interest in the company. We appreciate your time and all the thoughtful questions that came at us again today. And we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter where we'll have even more to share on the Navitas and Terasol acquisitions. This concludes our earnings call. Have a great day.

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