Dorel Industries Inc. Class A

Dorel Industries Inc. Class A

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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 11, 2026

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by.

Welcome to Dorel Industries fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode.

Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press * then 1 on your telephone keypad.

Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may reach an operator by pressing * then 0. Before turning the meeting over to management, please be advised that this conference call will contain statements that are forward-looking and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated.

I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded today, March 11th, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Martin Schwartz, President and CEO.

Please go ahead.

Martin Schwartz

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining us for Dorel's fourth quarter earnings call for the period ended December 30th, 2025.

With me today are Jeffrey Schwartz, CFO, and Jason Quasnick, Vice President of Finance. We'll take your questions following our comments.

Please note that all figures mentioned during this call are in US dollars. Dorel Juvenile delivered strong performance in 2025, demonstrating resilience amid ongoing tariff-related pressure in the US and mixed market conditions globally.

While these external factors moderated revenue growth, improved margins and disciplined cost management contributed to an 84.7% increase in adjusted operating profit for the year. Fourth quarter results were marked by a return to growth in the US, coupled with exceptional results in Europe and across several international markets.

Innovation across core categories, particularly rotating car seats and Maxi-Cosi products, continues to support the segment's competitive positioning. These results underscore the benefit of Dorel Juvenile's diversified geographic footprint and the segment's ability to execute in a challenging operating environment.

During the fourth quarter, Dorel Home operated a lower sales environment, reflecting constrained product availability, deliberate SKU rationalization, and the final stages of its restructuring plan. Notwithstanding these pressures, the segment advanced its operational initiatives, including cost reductions associated with facility closures, workforce actions, and administrative consolidation.

Adjusted operating loss improved year-over-year in the quarter, reflecting the benefit of a reduced cost base. With the conclusion of our major restructuring activities and the disposition of non-core inventory near complete, Dorel Home enters 2026 with a streamlined operating footprint and a simplified business model intended to support improved execution and performance.

As always, Jeffrey will walk you through our results, but first I want to add color to our press release, starting with the Juvenile segment. At Juvenile, throughout 2025, our international footprint allowed us to offset challenges in the US, principally due to the uncertainty around tariffs and increasing retail price points.

In prior conference calls, I articulated how well we're doing with our divisions in Australia and Canada and other export markets, and this continued into the fourth quarter. In Chile, Peru, our operations were profitable in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2022 as the team adjusted the business model to full omnichannel capabilities.

In the fourth quarter, we are particularly pleased by the results of our US operations. As previously disclosed, revenues in the US until the end of the third quarter were actually down versus prior year, but this reversed in fourth quarter, and we posted a small single-digit increase.

The increase came from our traditional retail partners as we successfully reset modular items and introduced new items and price points. We had strong e-commerce sales, including our own direct-to-consumer fulfillment.

Traditional car seat models like the Scenera, the Grow and Go, and the Finale did well, as did new introductions that hit key price points supported by targeted promotional activities. Our opening price point strollers did well, and Maxi-Cosi continued its growth path in the US.

This all illustrates clearly how our multiple price point brand strategy allows us to compete from opening to high-end categories, and we did so with improved margins. Finally, in Europe, despite a slight decline in revenue, we gained market share and delivered improved earnings in the quarter.

We are taking business from our competitors, and our product line is as good as it has ever been in Europe. Fourth quarter in general is quiet in terms of customer events, but I do want to call out a few highlights in certain markets.

In Chile, Infanti was named number one juvenile retail brand for the third consecutive year, according to the Omnichannel Index 2025 by Altavia. This achievement reflects the team's continued commitment to omnichannel excellence and digital transformation, reinforcing Infanti's leadership position in the Chilean market.

In Brazil, we were prominently featured on Auto Esporte, a leading Sunday program on TV Globo, as part of a special Children's Day edition focused on child car seat safety. The four-minute segment showcased the latest innovations from Maxi-Cosi, Safety 1st, and Infanti, including i-Size technology, 360-degree rotating seats, height-adjustable models, and lightweight foldable designs, along with guidance on keeping children rear-facing until at least 15 months.

Finally in Canada, we made a strong return to the Toronto Baby Show, engaging with attendees across two lively booths for Maxi-Cosi and Safety 1st. The event delivered excellent visibility and standout commercial results with strong sales in strollers, travel systems, especially the Zelia travel system, and car seats like the new Maxi-Cosi Andi and other Maxi-Cosi products.

This success reinforced the value of direct consumer engagement in the Canadian market. Now for Dorel Home.

We concluded 2025 with the majority of our restructuring complete. There remains certain legacy costs that we are working to eliminate in 2026.

Fundamentally, our cost structure has been reduced to where a return to profitability is possible. I already elaborated at the end of the third quarter the extent of the changes in 2025, and we delivered on those changes.

The most significant restructuring event in fourth quarter was the migration to our juvenile IT systems, a task that was delivered within nine months of concept, which is a great feat by our team. I want to thank everyone involved in that project.

I know it took a lot of work outside of usual tasks and was only made possible by the sheer effort and determination of our employees. As of today, we still have some work to do, the main ones being the final liquidation of Americo forward SKU, the sublease of our lease commitment at our former manufacturing facility in Cornwall, Ontario, vacating space in Dowagiac, Michigan with the major lease expiring in Q2 of 2026, and a sublease of excess space in our East Coast warehouse in Georgia.

Unfortunately, we were unable to kickstart our supply chain despite our new borrowing facilities. This meant our product availability was lacking, and we did lose sales as a result.

As of now, that is resolved, and product is flowing again. We are working with our supplier partners, and we are slowly reestablishing the right level of inventory needed to support sales.

For fourth quarter and even the start of 2026, we are not seeing the sales rebound that was expected. Our core Costco business remains strong, but getting our traditional everyday living furniture categories back to the sales levels that we expect is taking a little longer than anticipated.

I'll now ask Jeffrey to review the financials. Jeffrey?

Jeffrey Schwartz

Thank you, Martin. It's going to be pretty brief here.

As far as the consolidated numbers for the fourth quarter, our revenue decreased 14.7% to $278 million. That decline, as we said, is all in the home area and partially offset by some improvements in the juvenile.

As we said in the home, we reduced our SKUs significantly. We've got out of a lot of lines of business.

We're building a new business. We also did not have a lot of inventory in the fourth quarter, and all of that lines up together to have the negative results there.

On the juvenile side, we did see improvements in revenue and organic revenue in the fourth quarter. US, Australia, Chile, and Canada sort of led the growth, while we had some declines in Brazil.

In Europe, we actually had some organic decline of only 2%, but a growth when you convert it over to the US dollar. Where we did do quite well in our gross profit area is we increased that by $10 million, or 21%, in the quarter.

The margins increased by 600 basis points. That's coming from the juvenile segment.

Obviously, there were declines in the home segment. The juvenile increased its gross profit and gross margin in fourth quarter was primarily driven by improved volumes, improved mix, and FX exchange as well, all contributed together to get us there.

At the end, we reported an operating loss of $8.7 million, compared to $23 million in the previous year. Finance expenses increased by $5 million to $15 million during the quarter.

The increase is mainly explained by the interest on the preferred shares that we issued at the end of the third quarter and higher debt balances and a higher interest rate as well. If we move over to juvenile in itself now, a little bit more detail.

Quarter revenue was $226 million, or 6.6% above last year. As I said before, we improved in the US, Australia, Chile, Canada.

In the US, the improvement was market share gains. Car seat performing quite well.

We do have, as everyone knows, a car seat manufacturing facility in Columbus, Indiana, which is growing and doing well there in this tariff environment. Australia, we never really talk about Australia, but it's really becoming a key element to our business.

The Australia, New Zealand group that we have is doing extremely well through brand growth of Maxi-Cosi. Martin mentioned Chile and Peru turned around and were starting to see some positive results there, and happy to see the momentum in Canada as well.

The gross profit for the quarter increased by $13 million, or 24%. Gross margin was 29.9%, representing an increase of 440 basis points.

As I mentioned, higher sales volumes, better mix, selling more higher margin product, and a favorable FX all contributed towards that. Operating profit, $14.6 million, compared to $1.6 million the year before.

If we move over to Home, obviously, the top line, a large decline there by $61 million, or 54%. Again, we're getting out of the old business.

We're getting into a smaller, more streamlined business, which is really a Costco business and an additional business, we like to call it the plus business, which is a limited number of SKUs on the furniture side. I'm not going to get into gross margins and gross profits, incredible amount of noise here.

None of those numbers really mean anything. We've took down a lot of inventory.

We're clearing out inventory. We're closing warehouses and all of that.

A very, very noisy quarter and it produced the results that you see, which is, excluding restructuring costs, we still had a loss of $2.9 million, sorry, the loss decreased by $2.9 million to $8.8 million this year. With that, I'm going to pass it back to Martin for any questions, any other comments.

Martin Schwartz

All right. Thanks, Jeffrey.

For our outlook, as we enter 2026, we remain focused on building on Dorel Juvenile momentum while managing continued market uncertainty. Priorities include operational efficiency, strengthened supplier participation, and continued investment in product innovation.

While volatility is expected to persist in the US and in certain Latin American markets, the company's diversified international footprint and disciplined execution provide important sources of resilience. We expect 2026 to continue the trend of year-over-year earnings improvement.

At Dorel Home, we remain focused on completing the final stages of our transformation and cementing the foundations of a more efficient operating model. With the principal restructuring actions mostly completed and the cost structure materially reduced, we are positioned to focus on stabilizing the business and improving execution.

Key priorities include completing the sell-through of remaining non-core inventory, advancing an integration with Juvenile's operational ecosystem, and reigniting our everyday living furniture business alongside our successful Costco folding furniture product line. As we start 2026, we continue to drive down legacy costs, and the ramp-up is slow on our traditional furniture product portfolio.

As such, earnings improvement are expected as 2026 progresses. With that, I'll ask the operator to open the lines for questions, and please limit your questions to two in the first round.

Operator?

Operator

Thank you. To join the question queue, you may press * then 1 on your telephone keypad.

You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys.

To withdraw your question, please press * then 2. The first question comes from Stephen MacLeod with BMO Capital Markets.

Please go ahead.

Stephen MacLeod

Thank you. Good morning, guys.

Just turning to the Home business. You might have talked about completing the material parts of your restructuring in Q4, I assume when we turn the page to 2026, we should see an improved operations.

I'm just curious, given that now you have mostly restructuring in the rearview mirror, are you able to give some color around what the run rate sort of cost base is in that business in 2026? I guess a follow-up to that would be, do you expect to return to profitability on an adjusted EBITDA basis in 2026?

Jeffrey Schwartz

You're asking now about the Home business in itself?

Stephen MacLeod

Yes, the Home business, yeah.

Jeffrey Schwartz

The Home business. Okay.

The Home business, the cost base, I don't have that number for you because we're still creating this new business, to be honest with you. The Costco part is kind of okay as far as not a ton of changes there, but the other part, we're still doing that now.

We're still seeing what works, to be honest. It's a bit of a work in progress.

That's about a third of the business that we're still trying to figure out what the best costs and efficiencies are for that. I don't have a go-forward run rate on that.

We do expect to see some profitability by the second half of the year. As Martin mentioned, it was challenging.

Once we finally gotten a good position with our suppliers, you don't just press a button and they start shipping. They had their factory orders in, they have to start slotting us in with new orders, ordering the inventory.

It took a while to get the new inventory that we needed to start pushing the business forward, and we saw that in Q4 and Q1. It's a bit of a process there.

It's a lot murkier. We see a fairly clear path on the juvenile side, but it is a little bit more of a work in progress.

It's a very difficult marketplace. Just staying around is challenging.

A lot of our competitors and a lot of the retailers are actually going out of business here. We do believe there's an opportunity and, like I said, part of our business is doing well in Home, and we're still building that second half of the business.

Stephen MacLeod

That's helpful. Then maybe just on the juvenile side, you cited in the outlook just some volatility that you expect to persist in the US and Latin America.

Is that just related to tariffs, or is there some other volatility that we should be aware of?

Jeffrey Schwartz

In the US, tariffs, yeah, for sure, tariffs. What's going on with the oil prices, with the war, are they spending?

It's just more volatile than it's been in a while in the US. The economy for consumer products is just tougher.

Having said that, we do believe in our products. We do believe that we will pick up market share, like we're doing around the world.

We have some good momentum, which we're pleased with. The market challenges are much harder there.

We're coming out of a difficult period, Chile's getting better, but it's still a challenging area.

Stephen MacLeod

That's helpful. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Operator

The next question comes from Derek Lessard with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Derek Lessard

Good morning, gentlemen. Maybe I'll ask the question a different way than Stephen.

Would you say it's fair to say, and this is more pertaining to Home, that you guys are past the worst the business?

Jeffrey Schwartz

For sure. For sure.

Let's say an analogy. The analogy is we ran out of gas at the end of the third quarter in the business on the Home side.

On the juvenile side, we still had momentum. Things were slower, things where we didn't have all the inventory we wanted, but everything was moving.

We stopped the business for a number of months. There's a number of SKUs, I won't get into the SKUs or the customers, but that were lost because we didn't respond properly in the tariff environment.

Since Q4, we have responded. Responding means probably change the items so that the price points were different, or added features, or did what we had to do.

We've gotten those items placed again. We had a couple of items that we lost for six months.

What I mean? It's just been really difficult because the business stopped.

Not, again, I don't mean we stopped shipping, but we couldn't move forward on a lot of things, and then you got to put some gas in the tank and then start the process and start. We're in that.

The process is going. We're getting more listings, winning things back.

We're getting in front and delivering to our customers, but all of that needed to be done in the Home business, which was ended up being more challenging. I think that's the reason.

Derek Lessard

Okay. I think Martin touched on it in his opening remarks, but could you just maybe, and I know you're close to the end of the restructuring process in Home, but maybe just remind me as to the sort of the biggest components of that restructuring that you have left?

Jeffrey Schwartz

We still have a couple of pieces of real estate that I don't think it's technically restructuring, but we call legacy costs. There are some costs that we're still paying that we're getting no value for, we're in the process of looking for subleases.

That's probably the single biggest area. It's not people anymore.

We've brought that down. We're just looking for the best, the most efficient way to continue to operate.

How do we pull some costs out, maybe join costs with the juvenile group, increasingly doing that. Other than some real estate, there's no major restructuring that we're facing.

Derek Lessard

Okay. Maybe turning to more of the positive story on the juvenile side.

Jeffrey, in your prepared remarks, you alluded to volumes, mix, and forex as the drivers of the improvement in the gross margin. Were they all equally weighted?

Jeffrey Schwartz

I don't have the weighting for me. I do know that they're all all important.

Certainly, our FX is, the winds are behind us for a change. What you got to look at is, you've got an adjustment of FX, but in the following quarter, you're now, your margins are higher because you're paying, like in Europe, the euros, what we're collecting euro dollars, paying in US dollars for the product.

Our margins going forward end up being higher as well, right? It's hard, I don't have that adjustment to say, well, if it was $1 million one-time hit in Q4, does that affect Q1?

It does.

Derek Lessard

Like I said,

Jeffrey Schwartz

I don't have those numbers, but you know what it's not it's not just a one-time adjustment, even though it is an adjustment in Q4. Going forward, we're seeing some, and we've been hedging at some of the new rates.

The the impact of being a global company is the probably coming to the to the forefront more than in the history of our business. While we have some challenges in the US, even though we're making, we're doing okay and we're making money and we're growing, if it was just a US business like a bunch of our competitors, it wouldn't be as a rosy picture.

We're we're able to drive the rest of the world at a pace significantly faster than the US, which is allowing for, I'll say, a better growth than most of the people in our industry.

Derek Lessard

I just want to make sure that volume and mix was a meaningful contributor, if that's a better way to ask the question.

Jeffrey Schwartz

Yeah.

Derek Lessard

Okay. Thank you, guys.

Operator

We have a follow-up question from Stephen MacLeod with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Stephen, please go ahead.

Stephen MacLeod

Sorry, my bad. I was on mute there.

I just had a follow-up question regarding the Home business again and the outlook, and I know that there are still some moving parts with respect to some of the restructuring initiatives that haven't been done. Just again, trying to get a sense of the run rate on things, considering that's probably the business that has the most moving parts right now.

In terms of D&A, we saw D&A sort of take a pretty significant step down in Q4, and I'm just wondering if that's potentially a new run rate or is that maybe related to a Q4 full-year true-up or something like that?

Jeffrey Schwartz

I'm going to say on the Home side, any number you see in Q4 is not a valid number for projecting forward. It doesn't matter what it is.

It's about as noisy as you can get when you're taking things down, when you're restructuring, when you're running out of inventory, when you're discontinuing stuff, and you've got factories that are still operating, but they're not operating, yeah, it's a very messy quarter to do any analysis on. The best thing I can just tell you is, again, it's going to be much better than last year, right?

Last year we lost $40 million. Our bad quarters are not going to be a pro forma off of last year.

It's probably going to take till the second half before we see a turn in the profitability to a positive level.

Stephen MacLeod

Understood. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Appreciate it.

Jeffrey Schwartz

Yeah.

Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Martin Schwartz for any closing remarks.

Please go ahead.

Martin Schwartz

Thank you. I just want to say to everybody thanks for joining us here today, and hope you all have a great rest of the week.

Thank you.

Operator

This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines.

Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.