Tilly's Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call - Sales Surge Narrows Loss as Turnaround Gains Traction

Operator: Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Gar Jackson with investor relations. Thank you, Garr, you may begin.

Gar Jackson, Investor Relations, Tilly’s: Good afternoon, welcome to the Tilly’s fiscal 2026 first quarter earnings call. Nate Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will discuss the company’s business and operating results, followed by a Q&A session with analysts. For a copy of the Tilly’s press release, please visit the investor relations section of the company’s website at tillys.com. From the same section, shortly after the conclusion of the call, you will also be able to find a recorded replay of this call for the next 30 days. Certain forward-looking statements will be made during this call that reflect Tilly’s judgment and analysis only as of today, June 3rd, 2026, and actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on various factors affecting Tilly’s business. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with any forward-looking statements, please see the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that is included in our fiscal 2026 first quarter earnings release, which is furnished to the SEC today on Form 8-K, as well as our other filings with the SEC referenced in that disclaimer. Today’s call will be limited to one hour, and I will include a Q&A session after our prepared remarks. I now turn the call over to Nate.

Nate Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tilly’s: Thanks, Gar, and to all for joining us today. The turnaround momentum that we began building in fiscal 2025 has carried meaningfully into the new year, and we are pleased with how we have started fiscal 2026. For the third consecutive quarter and ninth consecutive month, we delivered comparable net sales growth, with total sales landing at the top of our outlook range for the first quarter. We posted a robust 22.9% comparable net sales increase for the first quarter, with both stores and e-com comping in excess of 20%. In what is historically our smallest sales quarter of the fiscal year, we narrowed our net loss to just under $8 million from last year’s first quarter net loss of over $22 million, delivering our fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year profit improvement and coming in one penny ahead of the upper end of our earnings per share outlook range.

The trend of our business has been moving in the right direction, and it is doing so with increasing consistency. Returning to profitability in fiscal 2026 is our foremost priority. While there is still work ahead of us, the sales trends we have been seeing, assuming they continue, give us genuine confidence that we’re on the right path to potentially get there. Comparable net sales in fiscal May increased by 8.3% to start the second quarter, extending our streak of monthly comparable net sales growth to 10 straight fiscal months. That consistency is not something we take lightly. It reflects real progress in the business. We aim to continue building on this momentum as the year progresses. In terms of first quarter merchandise performance compared to last year’s first quarter, all departments posted double-digit comp sales gains. Performance was strong across both proprietary and third-party brands, with very few exceptions.

Product margins improved by 400 basis points, with improved full price selling from inventories that were more current in terms of aging versus a year ago. This was our sixth consecutive quarter delivering product margin rate improvement relative to the corresponding period of the prior year. We believe the work we have put in to more clearly understand and define our key customer profiles has helped us build and merchandise assortments both in-store and online with clearer strategy and focus than in the past.

This, in turn, has resulted in greater and more consistent customer engagement for us, as evidenced by both store and online traffic growth compared to last year’s first quarter, and customer loyalty program growth of 10% in terms of customers with activity within the last year, and a doubling of our TikTok following since launching our TikTok Shop last March to meet our customers where they spend much of their commercial lives. We believe the dual impact of improved product assortments that are merchandised well, blended with impactful marketing strategies, has led to these results. These results speak for themselves. Customers are coming back. We believe that our efforts are moving the needle in a real and measurable way. In terms of stores, all geographic markets posted double-digit comp sales gains relative to last year’s first quarter.

As planned, we opened one store and closed four during the first quarter. We currently expect to open two new stores in late July and one more in late October, and to close one existing store in mid-July and another at the end of the fiscal year. The improvement in our business has us looking forward with optimism, including the possibility of expanding our net store footprint in fiscal 2027. We are not ready to commit to specific numbers or locations just yet, but we are having those conversations, and that alone marks a meaningful shift in how we are thinking about future opportunities of this business. We continue to invest in our infrastructure to improve operating efficiencies.

Over the last several months, we have been reviewing and making changes to various strategic and tactical elements relating to our online business and digital marketing efforts, which we believe are beginning to generate improved site performance and efficiency. In addition, we expect to launch an AI-driven merchandise allocation tool before the holiday season to help us improve initial allocation accuracy across our stores and online. These are just a couple of examples among many others that are underway with the overarching goal of improving our execution quality and operating efficiency. In closing, I want to take a moment to recognize what this team has accomplished. Turning a business around is hard work.

It requires discipline, focus, and a willingness to make difficult decisions day after day. Our stores, field management, distribution centers, and home office have all risen to that challenge, and the results we are seeing are a direct reflection of their effort and commitment. I am genuinely proud of what we have built together over these past several quarters. That said, we are not done. Returning to historical levels of store sales, productivity, and the operating performance this business is capable of is the goal we’re driving toward, and we know there is meaningful work still ahead of us to get to that point. We are also clear-eyed about the external environment. There are headwinds out there, but we have demonstrated that we can execute, and we enter the balance of fiscal 2026 with confidence in our plan and in the people carrying it out.

The progress and momentum is real, and we look forward to continuing to share it with you. I’ll now turn the call over to Mike to walk through the details of our fiscal 2026 first quarter operating performance and to introduce our second quarter outlook.

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Thanks, Nate. Details regarding our operating results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to last year’s first quarter were as follows. Total net sales were $124.7 million, an increase of $17.1 million or 15.9%. Total comparable net sales, including both physical stores and e-commerce, increased by 22.9%. As Nate noted earlier, one of the strongest first quarter results in company history. Total net sales from physical stores increased by 12.1%, despite a 7.6% reduction in quarter and store count compared to last year’s first quarter, and represented 77.2% of total net sales compared to 79.8% last year. E-commerce net sales increased by 30.9% and represented 22.8% of total net sales compared to 20.2% last year. Gross margin, including buying, distribution, and occupancy expenses, improved by 910 basis points to 28.9% of net sales from 19.8% of net sales last year.

Product margins improved by 400 basis points compared to last year, primarily due to improved full price selling of inventories that were more current in terms of aging. Buying, distribution, and occupancy costs improved by 520 basis points or $0.9 million, due primarily to reduced occupancy costs associated with our lower store count and carrying these costs against higher total net sales. Total SG&A expenses were $44.2 million or 35.4% of net sales and improved by 550 basis points as a percentage of net sales due to carrying these expenses against higher net sales. Minor increases in digital marketing spend and home office and store payroll were largely offset by lower non-cash asset write-off charges of $1 million. Pre-tax loss was $7.8 million or 6.3% of net sales, compared to $22.3 million or 20.7% of net sales last year.

Income tax expense was $137,000, or 1.7% of pre-tax loss, compared to an income tax benefit of $139,000, or 0.6% of pre-tax loss last year. Both years’ income tax results include the continuing impact of a full non-cash deferred tax asset valuation allowance. Net loss was $8 million or $0.26 per share, compared to $22.2 million or $0.74 per share last year, resulting in an improvement of $14.2 million or $0.48 per share compared to last year’s first quarter. On our debt-free balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with total cash and investments of $41.1 million compared to $37.2 million last year, and no borrowings at any time with available undrawn borrowing capacity of $50.7 million under our asset-backed credit facility.

This represents an important moment in our turnaround journey as we have returned to building cash year-over-year for the first time since the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2021. Total balance sheet inventory was 6.4% lower than at the end of last year’s first quarter and meaningfully more current within 90 days aged than a year ago. Looking to the second quarter of fiscal 2026, total comparable net sales for fiscal May ended May 30, 2026, increased by 8.3% relative to the comparable period of last year, marking our 10th consecutive month of comparable net sales growth. Based on current and historical trends, we estimate the following ranges for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Net sales of approximately $154 million-$160 million, translating to a comparable net sales increase range of 6%-10% respectively.

Product margins to be flat to up slightly compared to last year’s company record rate for a fiscal second quarter. SG&A of approximately $48 million-$49 million, excluding any potential non-cash asset impairment charges. A near zero effective income tax rate due to the continuing impact of a full non-cash valuation allowance on our deferred tax assets. Net income of approximately $3.8 million-$6 million respectively to net sales and net income per diluted share of $0.13-$0.20 respectively, based on approximately 30.3 million diluted shares. These results would represent a fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year profit improvement for us. We expect to end the second quarter with 221 total stores, a net decrease of 11 stores or 4.7% compared to the end of last year’s second quarter.

We expect to end the second quarter with total liquidity in excess of $120 million, comprised of cash and investments of approximately $59 million-$63 million and available undrawn borrowing capacity of approximately $63 million under our asset-backed credit facility. This compares to total cash and investments of $51 million and $63 million of undrawn borrowing capacity at the end of the second quarter last year. Operator, we’ll now go to our Q&A session.

Operator: Thank you. With that, ladies and gentlemen, we will now 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 that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For any participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Matt Koranda with ROTH. Please proceed with your questions.

Joseph, Analyst, ROTH: Good afternoon, it’s Joseph on for Matt. Just wanted to see if we could start here on the cadence of comps during 1Q, if you could just talk about the month-to-month trends. I know you mentioned in May you’ve seen off to a good start, right at the midpoint of your 2Q guide, but if we could talk about 1Q comps during the quarter?

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: As we announced with our last earnings call, fiscal February was up 20.1%, and then March was up 39.5%, and April was up 5.1% to finish the quarter at 22.9%. We had the Easter shift this year. Recall, Easter was a couple of weeks earlier, so it did shift business into March and out of April, so that’s why you see such the wide disparity between March and April comps.

Joseph, Analyst, ROTH: Got it. As we look out to, I guess, 2Q, how should we expect, just qualitatively, if you could talk about comps into 2Q as we’re entering the back-to-school season, anything to call out here?

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Sure. In terms of size of the months, May is typically about 25% of the quarter, and each month gets larger as you go through the quarter. June is a five-week month in the retail calendar, so it’ll be larger than May. The four largest sales weeks of the quarter are all in July, in ascending order to where the very last week is the largest week of the quarter. We won’t really know the full answer of the quarter until we get completely to the end of the second quarter because the early stages of the back-to-school season kick in, especially in that latter half of July. We’ll have meaningfully higher weekly sales volumes as we go through July than what we have had through May and what we will have likely in June to finish out the quarter.

The range that we put out of the +6% to +10% comp is really just rooted in recent years’ sales trends and how those cadences in second quarters performed, capturing right in the middle where we’re sitting right now. There is opportunity for us to perform a little better than where we’re sitting right now. The back-to-school season has been, in recent years’, the strongest performing period of the year for us, even in the years when we were struggling with negative comps through 2022, 2023, 2024, first half of 2025. Of course, as Nate noted, we know there’s headwinds out there too, so trying to give a little bit of room to absorb anything that might be unexpected, things that are outside of our control, that we might not be able to influence.

Joseph, Analyst, ROTH: Got it. Okay. Thank you. I just want to see if you can just hop down into product margin improvement. Just want to see how much is structural in the new baseline versus the recovery. Just wanting to see how you’re thinking about product margins as we kind of face 2Q and toward the back half of the year.

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Yeah, the first quarter, we had 400 basis points of margin improvement. We don’t expect that kind of level to continue through the rest of the year. We do expect to continue to improve our product margins year-over-year. As we said for the second quarter to be flat to slightly up. We’ve produced six consecutive quarters of product margin improvement. We’ve actually been producing company record rates of product margin for the last few quarters. We’re performing very well, very healthy on the product margin side, inventory control, all those things working together to produce these kinds of results. We expect our product margins to remain very healthy as we go forward.

Joseph, Analyst, ROTH: Got it. All right. I’ll go ahead and take the rest offline. Thank you.

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Thank you, Joseph.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gowshihan Sriharan with Singular Research. Please proceed with your question.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Good evening, gentlemen. Can you guys hear me?

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Yes.

Yes.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Okay. Thanks for taking the time, Nate and Mike. I’ll keep this tight and get straight to the questions. What I did want to say is that the strong numbers kind of validates a lot of what you’ve been telling the market for the last 12 months, and the trajectory seems to be clearly real. My questions today are really about the durability and the mechanics of what comes next. In terms of inventory buildup, as you’re running at 2020 comps and you’ve talked about deliberately staying in the chase mode and making sharper upfront commitments and chasing winners, at what point does the strong comp momentum actually force you to kind of build more inventory upfront than you’re comfortable with? Have you had to loosen the inventory discipline to support the back-to-school flow set?

If so, is there any kind of comp deceleration risk in kind of the back half of the year?

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: We’re planning for a successful back-to-school season. We actually have run into situations where certain key items have sold through so fast that we are running lighter than we’d like in certain areas. To your question, as the business dictates, we’re chasing as best we can to continue to fuel the momentum that is clearly in our business currently. Unfortunately, we’ve had a couple of key items where we haven’t been able to replenish as fast as we would like to continue the momentum in a couple of areas. Broadly speaking, we’re real happy with the age and the content of our inventory, and we’re doing everything we can to continue to fuel the business. As we go into the second half of the year, we are going to start comping against what was the start of our positive comp trend. It started with August last year.

We were plus two in Q3, and we were plus 10 in Q4. Purely from a comparable standpoint, we’re going to start going up against positive comp quarters as opposed to negative comp quarters, which we’ve been going against the last three quarters. We still expect ourselves to deliver positive comps against those numbers. Those are our plans.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Okay. I know, Nate, earlier we talked about the $280, the range that you start generating profitability and at $525 ended at $260 per square foot. Now you’ve had two quarters at +20% comps. Without giving me exact number, are you comfortable saying you’re already past that $280 mark, or what does the path to $300 actually look like from here in terms of comps rate required?

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Yeah, I can tell you, Gowshihan, right now, finishing the second quarter, we’ve gotten our sales per square foot metric up to 271. Still well below the 300 plus that this company has delivered in the past. When we reference that there’s more work to do and still work ahead of us to get back to profitability, that’s what we’re focused on, is getting that sales per square foot store productivity level back above 300. We are making progress. A quarter ago, that was at 260. Now it’s at 270. We’re planning to continue to improve upon that as we go forward.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Excellent. On the e-com, now that you guys have been in the range of around 20%, 22% now, could you definitely tell us whether TikTok is driving new customers or migrating existing new ones now that the both channels are kind of running at double-digit positive simultaneously? Have you gotten any better data on the customer acquisition through TikTok specifically, and is that 22.3% kind of structural breakout, or does the channel mix structurally normalize back once the clearance lap comparisons fully washes out?

Nate Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tilly’s: Yeah, I think it’s a combination of both, Goshy. Certainly, we are gaining new customers, and certainly, there are some existing customers shopping we have seen over on TikTok. In the end, the way the team, and we are approaching this is, it’s all about this, what I would say is disciplined channel management. TikTok is expanding our total addressable customer base. It’s also increasing the purchase frequency of our existing base. What we really like is it’s reducing our long-term dependence on expensive paid acquisition. In the meantime, all of our blended comps remain positive. In the end, I don’t think our customer, he doesn’t think, and she doesn’t, they don’t think in channels. They might discover us on TikTok, research us on Claude, and buy on our .com or buy wherever is most convenient for them in the moment.

We really have to be present where they are, and TikTok is where a large and growing segment of our customer base lives their commercial life. Our job really is to remove that friction between intent and purchase. TikTok Shop frankly eliminates that steps in that journey for a customer segment that we would otherwise have to acquire at a much higher acquisition cost through paid search or another avenue.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Got you. In terms, now that you are thinking about opening stores as well as an e-com is growing at double digits, what point does a distribution center become a capacity constraint, either e-com fulfillment or for store replacement? I’m wondering if there’s any CapEx event in the next 12-18 months, either to expand the distribution center or add a second node, because would that be a step change in CapEx that your current sub $10 million guidance doesn’t appear to have baked in?

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Absolutely not, Goshy. We have plenty of capacity in both our stores distribution center and our e-com fulfillment center. Not expecting any major CapEx, major overhaul, or needing to find additional distribution capacity for us.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Awesome. That’s all I had, guys. I’ll take the rest offline. Thank you for your call.

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Thank you.

Gowshihan Sriharan, Analyst, Singular Research: Congratulations.

Michael Henry, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tilly’s: Thank you.

Nate Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tilly’s: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. With that, this does conclude our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back to Nate Smith for any closing remarks.

Nate Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tilly’s: No, thank you, and we look forward to sharing our continued progress.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. We thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful rest of your day.