SWAG

Greetings. Welcome to the Stran & Company first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Alexandra Schilt. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Stran & Company's 2026 first quarter financial results and business update conference call. With us today are Andy Shape, Chief Executive Officer, and David Browner, Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, we issued a press release detailing our results, which is available on our website at ir.stran.com. Before we begin, please note that today's remarks may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy Shape. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ally. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. The first quarter of 2026 demonstrated that Stran has reached a genuine inflection point in profitability. It validates the strength of our platform, the depth of our client relationships, and the scalability of our operating model. Most importantly, it confirms what we've long believed, that investments we have made over the past years are now translating directly into profitable growth. During the first quarter, total revenue grew 8.9% year-over-year to $31.2 million, reflecting continued momentum across both existing client relationships and new business wins. Even more importantly, that growth translated into significantly improved profitability and operating leverage across the organization.

Gross profit increased 13.7% to $9.6 million, while gross margin expanded more than 100 basis points to 30.9% when compared to the prior year. These results demonstrate the strength of our execution, the value of our client relationships, and the benefits of the operational discipline and strategic investments we've made over the last several years. We've also achieved significant profitability milestone this quarter, generating net income of $744,000 compared to a net loss of $393,000 in the prior year period. In addition, EBITDA improved to $1 million versus a negative $201,000 a year ago. A year-over-year improvement of $1.2 million. These are not incremental improvements. This is a fundamental shift in the earnings trajectory of our business.

What makes these results especially encouraging is that we're delivering profitable growth while simultaneously investing in the future of our company, expanding our technology capabilities, deepening our enterprise client relationships, and building toward the significantly larger market opportunity ahead. We have turned the corner on profitability, and we intend to keep widening that gap. As we continue to scale, we are seeing tangible operating leverage throughout the organization. Total operating expenses remained essentially flat year-over-year at $9 million despite meaningful revenue growth. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses improved to 28.8% from 31.4% a year ago, a 260 basis point improvement. I also want to highlight the dramatic turnaround within the Stran Loyalty Solutions Segment during the quarter.

SLS generated $532,000 of operating income in Q1 2026 compared to an operating loss of $462,000 in the prior year period. This reflects both the successful integration of Gander Group business and the sustained operation discipline our team has implemented. Importantly, the SLS segment gross margin expanded to 28.7% from 21.8% in Q1 2025, a nearly 700 basis point improvement. Beyond the financial results, the first quarter is also marked by several highly strategic client wins and relationship expansions that reinforce the growing relevance of our solutions in the marketplace. One of the highlights of the quarter was the extension of a three-year multimillion-dollar partnership with one of the world's premier nonprofit running organizations.

This renewal reflects the trust our clients place in Stran and validates our ability to execute complex, high-impact engagement campaigns. In addition, we secured a new multimillion-dollar agreement with a leading gaming company to support a large-scale rewards and loyalty initiative. This win demonstrates the growing demand for integrated promotional products and incentive solutions, particularly among consumer-facing brands seeking innovative ways to strengthen customer engagement and loyalty. We're also proud to add 2 top global 100 law firms as new clients. These re-relationships further diversify our customer base and reflect the increasing appeal of Stran's solutions among sophisticated professional service organizations that require premium service, strategic execution, and scalable technology capabilities. Collectively, these wins highlight several important themes that we believe position Stran for future sustained long-term growth. First, we continue to gain traction with enterprise-level clients that value strategic partnerships rather than transactional vendors.

Second, we are expanding into new verticals and end markets where branded merchandise, loyalty solutions, and employee engagement programs are becoming increasingly important components of customer acquisition and retention strategies. Third, our technology investments are creating meaningful competitive differentiation. We recently launched Stran Digital Solutions, our proprietary SaaS-based platform designed to enhance client engagement, streamline campaign execution, improve analytics capabilities, and generate recurring revenue over time. This is a platform that makes Stran harder to replace and more valuable than ever to every client we service. With Stran Digital Solutions, we are moving beyond being just a best-in-class promotional products provider and becoming an integrated marketing ecosystem partner. We are adding scalable software capabilities that deepen client relationships and create opportunities for higher margin recurring revenue streams, the kind of revenue that compounds over time and expands our long-term earning potential.

This is an important strategic initiative because it positions Stran at the intersection of branded merchandise, technology, and data-driven engagement solutions. As more companies seek integrated marketing ecosystems rather than isolated service providers, we believe our combined physical and digital offering creates a compelling competitive advantage. Equally important, we continue to maintain a strong balance sheet that provides significant flexibility to support future growth initiatives. We ended the quarter with $12.8 million in cash equivalents, and investments. This financial position allows us to continue investing in technology, expanding our sales and marketing capabilities, evaluating strategic acquisition opportunities, and pursuing initiatives that enhance long-term shareholder value. Looking ahead, we are not just optimistic, we are confident. This quarter demonstrated the power of Stran's growth model, revenue growth, margin expansion, and profitable operations all delivered simultaneously.

We believe the promotional products and loyalty industries continue to benefit from strong secular trends, including increased corporate focus on customer engagement, employee retention, experiential marketing, and brand activation. At the same time, clients are increasingly looking for partners that can provide integrated, scalable, technology-enabled solutions with measurable ROI. Stran is exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize on those trends. Strategic acquisitions also remain a core pillar of our long-term growth strategy. While we continue to evaluate opportunities actively, we are being increasingly disciplined and selective in today's environment, focusing on targets that enhance our technology capabilities, expand our client base, strengthen our vertical expertise, and create clear long-term shareholder value. With our strong balance sheet and improved profitability profile, we believe we are well positioned to pursue the right opportunities at the right time.

We are entering the remainder of the year with strong momentum, an expanding pipeline, growing enterprise relationships, two profitable segments, and a platform we believe can continue compounding. The promotional products and loyalty industries are large, fragmented, and shifting towards integrated partners with technology and scale, that describes Stran. Our focus remains on driving sustainable, profitable revenue growth, expanding margins, deepening client relationships, and continuing to build a platform capable of generating compounding value for our shareholders. We have the strategy, the team, the balance sheet, and the momentum. The opportunity in front of us is significant, we are executing. While trading blackout restrictions prevented us from repurchasing shares during the first quarter, we intend to resume our buyback program as a direct expression of our confidence in the business.

We believe the current share price meaningfully undervalues Stran. We view repurchases as an attractive and disciplined use of capital as we continue to build long-term shareholder value. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, David Browner, for a more detailed review of our financial results. David, please go ahead.

Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to provide a detailed overview of our financial performance for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. Total sales increased 8.9% to $31.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from $28.7 million for the prior year period. Sales by our Stran segment increased 11.9% to $23.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from $20.9 million in the prior year period. The increase in sales was primarily driven due to higher spending from existing clients as well as new customers. Sales by our SLS segment remained approximately flat at $7.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026 when compared to the prior year period.

Total gross profit increased 13.7% to $9.6 million or 30.9% of sales for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from $8.5 million or 29.6% of sales for the three months ended March 31, 2025. The increase in the dollar amount of the total gross profit was primarily attributable to the shift in customer mix and effective cost management. Gross profit of our Stran segment increased to $7.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from $6.8 million for the prior year period. Gross profit for our SLS segment increased to $2.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from $1.7 million for the prior year period.

Total operating expenses decreased 0.2% to $9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses improved to 28.8% for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from 31.4% for the three months ended March 31, 2025. An improvement of approximately 260 basis points reflecting the operating leverage now embedded in our model. Operating expenses of our Stran segment increased to $6.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, from $5.6 million for the prior year period. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses of our Stran segment decreased to 26.6% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, from 26.9% for the prior year period.

The increase in the dollar amount of the operating expense was primarily due to the investment in the Stran Digital Solutions, higher expenses related to our Magento open-source e-commerce platform, and higher sales and marketing related costs. Operating expenses of our SLS segment decreased to $1.7 million for the three months ended March 31st, 2026 from $2.2 million for the prior year period. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses of the SLS segment improved to 21.9% for the three months ended March 31st, 2026 from 27.7% for the prior year period. The decrease in the dollar amount of the operating expense was primarily attributable to a reduction in headcount and lower sales-related costs.

Operating expenses for the other, which represents unallocated corporate costs, decreased to $1.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026 from $1.2 million for the prior year period, primarily driven by lower legal and accounting-related expenses due to the re-audit of our historical financial statements. Our net income for the three months ended March 31, 2026 was $744,000 compared to a net loss of $393,000 for the prior year period. This marks a clear inflection in profitability driven by gross profit growth outpacing revenue growth and essentially flat operating expenses. As of March 31, 2026, we have approximately $12.8 million in cash and cash equivalents and investments. Now I'll turn the call back to Andy.

Thank you, David, and thank you everyone for listening. Before we conclude, I'm very excited about the results that we posted, but I'd love to open it up for questions. Operator, please open it up for questions, and we'll answer anything that anyone would like to know.

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one.

All right. It doesn't look like we have any questions, thank you. Looks like we've answered a lot of things, and I'm sure we'll have other questions as time goes on. Thank you everyone for listening, and I'll wrap things up. Before we conclude, I do want to acknowledge the incredible team at Stran whose dedication and execution made this quarter possible. I also want to thank our clients for the trust they place in us and our shareholders for their continued support. Q1 2026 is proof that our strategy is working, and we're just getting started. We believe the first quarter demonstrating meaningful, measurable progress, revenue growth, margin expansion, operating leverage, and a genuine profitability inflection. We've turned the corner, and we believe we're still in the early stages of locking the full potential of this platform.

We are highly confident in the strength of our business, our market position, and our ability to execute. The investments we have made in our people, technology, client relationships have built the foundation for a durable compounding growth. We will continue to expand margins, deepen client relationships, pursue strategic opportunities, and deliver results that reflect the quality of this business. The best is ahead of us. With that, thank you again for joining us today and for your continued interest in Stran. We appreciate your time and support, and we look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the quarters ahead. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Welcome to the Stran & Company Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Alexandra Schilt. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Stran & Company's 2025 fiscal year financial results and business update conference call. With us today are Andy Shape, Chief Executive Officer, and David Browner, Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, we issued a press release detailing our results, which is available on our website at ir.stran.com. Before we begin, please note that today's remarks may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy Shape. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ali, and good morning, everyone. 2025 was a defining year for Stran. We delivered strong financial results while clearly demonstrating the scalability and long-term potential for our business model. We reported revenue of $116.2 million, representing a 40.6% growth over the prior year. This growth was driven by both robust execution and continued momentum across the business. Importantly, we achieved 12.9% organic growth in our core promotional products business, fueled by increased spending from existing enterprise clients and the addition of new customers. What stands out is the high quality of this growth. We're seeing deeper engagement with our clients, continued expansion of programmatic relationships, and clear proof that our platform is scaling effectively. On the expense side, we made meaningful progress in improving operational efficiency.

Total operating expenses declined to 31.1% of revenue in 2025, down from 37.2% in 2024. While we did incur elevated legal, accounting, and other public company costs, including expenses related to the re-audit of historical financials in the first half of the year, these one-time items are now largely behind us. Public company-related expenses totaled $5.2 million in 2025, compared to $3.3 million in 2024. On profitability, we generated $34.2 million in gross profit, reflecting strong demand and improving efficiencies as we scale. We significantly narrowed our net loss to $747,000 compared to a $4.1 million net loss in 2024.

Even more importantly, we achieved positive EBITDA of $184,000 for the full year, a substantial improvement from a negative $3.6 million in 2024. These results highlight the underlying strength of our operating performance and the scalability of our model. These accomplishments are especially noteworthy given the significant tariff-related volatility we faced throughout the year. Elevated tariffs increased product costs, particularly for direct import orders in our loyalty segment. Although we're able to pass along a portion of these costs to customers, margins were still compressed. In addition, tariff uncertainty created hesitation among buyers, particularly in our loyalty and casino segments, which impacted both revenue and profitability. While some uncertainty remains, we believe tariffs have now stabilized to a point where we can work effectively with vendors and customers without further material impact on our growth margins going forward.

Stepping back, it's clear that this strong performance is not a one-off event. It is a result of deliberate long-term strategy that is now compounding. We've intentionally built Stran around long-term programmatic relationships, a diversified and expanding customer base, and a technology-enabled platform that supports efficient scaling. Today, we serve more than 2,000 active customers, including over 30 Fortune 500 companies. An increasing portion of our revenue comes from program-based engagements that provide greater visibility and recurring revenue streams. Our customer relationships are becoming deeper and more strategic. Clients are no longer engaging with us for just one-off campaigns or individual products. Instead, they are leveraging multiple areas of our platform, including promotional products, loyalty and incentive programs, e-commerce solutions, print services, warehousing, and logistics.

As customers adopt more of our capabilities, we become more deeply embedded in their operations, driving higher retention and greater revenue durability. We continue to invest in solutions that strengthen these relationships and expand our value proposition. A prime example of this is the recent launch of our new client-branded gifting platform. This builds on our core e-commerce capabilities, enables clients to deliver curated, scalable gifting experience for employee recognition, customer engagement, or marketing initiatives. Importantly, it introduces a more recurring programmatic revenue stream while further integrating us into the client's engagement strategies. We have also strengthened our leadership and governance. Over the past year, we added experienced public company and industry leaders to our board of directors. These additions bring valuable experience, expertise in capital markets, operations, and strategic growth, and we are confident they will play a key role in supporting our future initiatives.

Looking at the broader market, we operate in a large and highly fragmented industry. The promotional products market alone was $27.7 billion in 2025, with a significantly larger total addressable market when including adjacent categories. Given the lack of a dominant player, we see substantial opportunities to gain market share through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Our strategy remains focused and consistent. Deepen relationships with enterprise clients, expand programmatic revenue, invest in technology, and pursue acquisitions that enhance our capabilities and geographic reach. When you combine these elements, it's clear we've built a business that is not just growing but accelerating. As we look ahead to 2026, we are encouraged by the momentum that we see early in the year.

While we are not providing formal guidance, we do expect a meaningful improvement in first quarter profitability, driven by continued customer demand, increased operating leverage, and the strategic progress we have made in 2025. We believe this positions us well for sustained momentum throughout the year. Before I conclude, I'd like to briefly address our warrants. As detailed in our filings, these warrants have an exercise price of approximately $4.81 per share and are scheduled to expire in the fourth quarter of 2026. We view this as a meaningful near-term catalyst. As the warrants expire, we expect the overhang on our stock to be removed, which should simplify our capital structure and present a clear, more investable equity story. In closing, our priorities remain clear.

Drive sustained growth, expand our programmatic revenue base, improve profitability, and execute on strategic acquisitions that enhance our platform and create long-term shareholder value. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, David Browner, for a more detailed review of our financial results. David, please go ahead.

Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to provide a detailed overview of our financial performance for 2025 fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. Total sales increased 40.6% to $116.2 million in 2025 from $82.7 million in 2024. For our Stran Promo segment, sales increased to $82.1 million in 2025, $72.7 million in 2024. The increase in sales was primarily due to higher spending from existing clients as well as business from new customers. For Stran Loyalty segment, which consists of the former Gander Group business, sales increased to $34.1 million in 2025 from $9.9 million in 2024.

The increase in sales was primarily attributable to the inclusion of a full year of consolidated operations, including the Gander Group assets, which were acquired in August of 2024, and therefore only partially reflected in our results of operations for the prior year. Total gross profit increased 32.6% to $34.2 million or 29.5% of sales in 2025 compared to $25.8 million or 31.2% of sales in 2024. The decline in overall gross profit margin is primarily attributable to the inclusion of the full year consolidated operations, including Gander Group's assets, which historically operate at a lower gross profit margin from the Stran business segment.

For our Stran Promo segment, gross profit increased to $27 million in 2025 from $23.7 million in 2024, and a gross profit margin increased to 32.9% in 2025 compared to 32.7% in 2024. For our Stran Loyalty segment, gross profit increased to $7.2 million in 2025 from $2.1 million in 2024, and the gross profit margin increased to 21.1% in 2025 compared to 20.8% in 2024. Additionally, tariffs did have a negative impact on our gross profit margin in 2025, notably related to our Stran Loyalty segment. As Andy mentioned earlier, we believe that these have stabilized and the results expected to see improvements in our gross profit margin going forward.

Total operating expenses increased 17.8% to $36.2 million in 2025 from $30.7 million in 2024. As a percentage of sales, total operating expenses decreased to 31.1% in 2025 from 37.2% in 2024. For our Stran Promo segment, operating expenses increased to $28.3 million in 2025 compared to $27.6 million in 2024. As a percentage of sales for the segment, operating expenses decreased to 34.5% in 2025 from 37.9% in 2024. The increase in dollar amount of operating expenses was primarily due to increases in legal and accounting expenses related to the re-audit of our historical financial statements, increased headcount, and higher expenses related to our e-commerce platform, Magento.

For our Stran Loyalty segment, operating expenses increased to $7.9 million in 2025 from $3.1 million in 2024. As a percentage of sales, the segment's operating expenses decreased to 23.1% in 2025 from 31.4% in 2024. The increase in the dollar amount of operating expenses was primarily attributable to the inclusion of the full year of the consolidated operations which were acquired in August 2024, and therefore only partially reflected in the 2024 financial statement. Our net loss for the year ended December 31, 2025, was approximately $0.7 million, compared to a net loss of approximately $4.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. This change was primarily due to an increase in gross profit, partially offset by an increase in operating expenses.

As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately $11.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and investments. I'll now turn the call back to Andy for closing remarks.

Thank you, David. As we reflect on 2025, we're very encouraged by where we stand today. Over the past year, we delivered strong growth, deepened our customer relationships, expanded our platform with new capabilities like our gifting solution, and continued to strengthen the business. Our focus is serving our clients at a high level, executing with discipline, and driving measurable value. Looking ahead, we see a clear path to continued growth, margin expansion, and profitability driven by operating leverage, deeper client integration and ongoing investments into our platform. We are confident in our strategy, encouraged by our momentum, and excited about the opportunities ahead. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued support of Stran. With that, we'll now open the call to questions. Operator?

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Andy for closing remarks.

Thank you. Apparently we addressed every question or we addressed any outstanding questions, since we didn't have any. Thank you. Once again, we're encouraged by the results of 2025. We stated that it was a year to continue looking for growth, increase our profitability. We accomplished both of those by seeing 40% growth and really seeing positive EBITDA versus an over $3 million EBITDA loss last year. We're very encouraged by that. We're very encouraged by the future of the business. We again look at our growth strategy as very simple, and it's getting business from our existing customers, new customers, expanding our offerings, expanding our technology, and looking at acquisitions that make sense in a very highly fragmented and large industry that we really believe in.

Thank you everyone for the support of Stran, and we look forward to speaking to the future about our continued success. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.