莱斯利 (LESL) 2026财年第三季度业绩电话会：因销售额下滑8.4%撤回业绩指引

核心要点

• 2026财年第三季度销售额同比下降8.4%至4.585亿美元，可比销售额下降6.2%，主要归因于交易量和客流量的减少。
• 调整后EBITDA从8160万美元降至5570万美元，反映出销量下滑及毛利率承压。
• 毛利率由39.6%收缩至36.5%，主要由于高毛利产品销售疲软、产品组合不利以及配送中心和制造成本上升。
• 销售、一般及管理费用（SG&A）下降17.9%至1.064亿美元，其中包括信用卡刷卡手续费结算带来的1750万美元一次性收益。净利润增加2610万美元至4780万美元。
• 鉴于宏观经济环境的发展以及旺季客流量弱于预期，Leslie’s撤回了此前发布的2026财年全年销售额和调整后EBITDA指引。
• 公司正在与部分金融利益相关方探索战略替代方案，以提高财务灵活性并降低杠杆率。目前尚未确定或保证会达成任何交易。

核心财务数据

业务与经营业绩

不利的天气抑制了门店和线上渠道的需求，导致通常拉动高毛利特种化学品购买的泳池维护需求有所减少。管理层还指出，本季度竞争对手采取了更为激进的、受库存推动的定价策略。

Leslies.com实现了可比销售额正增长，管理层认为这表明在其客户能进行直接价格对比的渠道，调整后的定价策略已显现成效。然而，公司指出，价格和转化率的改善尚未转化为稳定的门店客流量增长。

Leslie’s报告称，在重新激活过去一年未在公司消费但曾在2021至2024年间购买过的客户方面取得了良好进展。管理层将这一成效归因于精准营销、价格调整以及重塑的客户价值主张。

公司完成了全店培训，改善了门店运营，并保持了核心“常备不缺货”产品的强劲现货率。管理层表示，尽管总交易量和客户数量有所减少，但这些举措支撑了良好的店内转化率以及单笔交易商品件数的增长。

存货下降了15%，而关键产品的现货率保持强劲。截至2026年7月4日的资本支出为1050万美元，而上年同期为1910万美元。

管理层指引

Leslie’s撤回了此前发布的2026财年全年销售额和调整后EBITDA指引，且未提供替代性展望。管理层指出的原因包括宏观经济环境的发展变化以及旺季客流量低于预期。

公司继续预计2026财年资本支出将远低于2000万美元，反映出主要专注于门店和配送中心日常维护的严格资本分配策略。

风险与关注焦点

• 客流量和交易量持续承压，管理层将其列为公司当前面临的核心运营挑战。
• 消费需求疲软、不利天气以及促销活动加剧对销售额和产品组合造成压力。
• 高毛利特种化学品销售额下滑以及配送和制造成本增加拖累了毛利率。
• Leslie’s在本季度末拥有7.53亿美元的净长期债务，目前正在评估战略替代方案，其中可能包括降杠杆交易以及一项或多项融资交易。
• 管理层强调，目前尚未就资产负债表相关交易做出决定，也不能保证会达成任何交易。

财报电话会议完整文字记录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call for Leslie's. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today on the company's website.

I would like to remind everyone that comments made today may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. These statements speak as of today and will not be updated in the future if circumstances change. Please review the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the company's earnings press release and recent filings with the SEC.

During the call today, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's earnings release, which was furnished to the SEC today and posted to the investor relations section of Leslie's website at ir.lesliespool.com.

On the call today is Jason McDonell, Chief Executive Officer; and Jeffrey White, Chief Financial Officer.

With that, I will turn the call over to Jason.

Jason McDonell

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our third quarter fiscal 2026 results. First, I want to take a moment to recognize our Leslie's team members across the country. Whether in our stores, our distribution centers, our field organization or our corporate offices, our people have continued to show up for our customers with care through this pool season. I also want to thank our vendor partners, many of whom have worked closely alongside us on training, product availability and promotional support this year. We appreciate your continued partnership.

During the third quarter, we continued to execute our comprehensive transformation plan in a challenging operating environment marked by softer consumer demand, heightened promotional activity and evolving customer purchase behaviors. While these dynamics continue to weigh on our financial performance this quarter, we remain focused on making progress on our strategic initiatives. By continuing to execute our pricing strategy, reactivate customers, enhance our store operations, optimize costs and improve our asset utilization, we aim to create a more efficient business model to help drive long-term value over time.

Before I get into our third quarter results, I want to provide a brief update on our financial position. As we discussed in May, we continue to evaluate opportunities to address our long-term debt obligations and strengthen our balance sheet. As part of that effort, we have begun exploring strategic alternatives with certain of our financial stakeholders to provide the incremental financial flexibility needed to continue delivering on our strategic priorities and drive sustainable growth.

Such strategic alternatives may include, but are not limited to, a deleveraging transaction, potentially combined with one or more financing transactions. No determinations have been made at this stage, and there is no assurance any such transaction will result. While this work is underway, we are committed to operating our business effectively and will continue to provide updates as appropriate.

Turning to the quarter, sales were $458.5 million and adjusted EBITDA was $55.7 million. Total sales declined 8.4% year-over-year, with comparable sales declining 6.2%, primarily reflecting lower transactions and customer traffic. Unfavorable weather patterns during the quarter had an effect on both demand and traffic in our stores and online, resulting in fewer prescribed pool problems that typically drive traffic and purchases for higher margin specialty chemical offerings.

While we saw modest improvements in mid-June, it was not sufficient to overcome the operating leverage headwinds we faced through the balance of the quarter, particularly as competitors reacted with more aggressive inventory-driven pricing actions. Despite these pressures, we maintain disciplined cost management while continuing to invest in the initiatives we believe should help strengthen the business over time.

Importantly, we saw operational proof points supporting the strategic actions we are taking, particularly with respect to our ability to redirect customers of our stores that we recently closed to nearby locations and our digital platforms. Our new pricing strategy continued to resonate with customers. And through our research and customer feedback, we believe that our targeted marketing campaigns are reaching our core audiences who are responding positively to our pricing improvements. Notably, we delivered positive comparable sales on leslies.com this quarter, where customers most often make direct price comparisons.

That said, translating this positive response into consistent store traffic improvement takes longer, and we remain focused on specific targeted marketing and promotional efforts to help drive sustained traffic gains across our physical locations. Despite declines in overall transaction count and overall customer count in the quarter, I am pleased to share that we saw momentum in reactivating customers this quarter, achieving strong growth with customers who did not shop with Leslie's last year but did shop with us in the period between 2021 and 2024.

This is a proof point that our pricing strategy, targeted marketing efforts and renewed customer value proposition are successfully bringing former Leslie's customers back into our ecosystem.

In addition, we continue to strengthen the fundamentals of the business through investments in our people and our store operations. We completed full-scale training across our store organization, continued enhancing the customer experience through improvements in our store operations and maintained strong in-stock levels across our never-out SKUs, supporting healthy in-store conversion rates and units per transaction growth in the quarter. Taken together, these operational improvements reinforce our confidence in the strategic actions we are taking to reposition Leslie's as America's one stop for pool care.

At the same time, we are continuing to evaluate our cost structure and overall operating model in light of the evolving macro environment in order to realize the benefits of these initiatives and support our long-term growth objectives. While this work is underway, we are sharpening our focus on a number of fronts. We believe that traffic generation, not just pricing or conversion, is now the central challenge in front of us. And we are taking a hard look at how we drive new and retained customers into our stores and onto our digital channels.

For new customers, this includes a combination of competitive pricing solutions and clearer communication of our expertise and convenient offerings to help us show up and win when customers are actively looking for solutions. In addition, we intend to continue to focus on our core values, providing loyalty, unmatched service and deep expertise to keep new and existing customers coming back.

With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff for a detailed review of our third quarter financial results and additional context on our capital structure.

Jeffrey White

Thank you, Jason. I'll begin my remarks today with a review of our third quarter financial results, followed by an update on our liquidity and balance sheet and outlook for the remainder of 2026.

Sales for the third quarter decreased 8.4% to $458.5 million compared to $500.3 million a year ago, reflecting softer customer demand in our retail business during the quarter as well as the loss of sales from the closure of 80 underperforming stores as part of our ongoing efforts to improve our cost structure. Excluding those closures, comparable sales decreased 6.2% in the third quarter compared with the same time period in fiscal year 2025. Gross profit margin for the third quarter was 36.5% versus 39.6% in the prior year period, driven by lower sales of higher margin products, a shift in product mix, and higher distribution center and manufacturing costs.

We continue to tightly manage controllable expenses during the quarter. SG&A decreased $23.2 million or 17.9% to $106.4 million compared to $129.6 million a year ago, reflecting lower labor and store operating costs as well as a $17.5 million one-time gain related to a credit card interchange fee settlement, partially offset by investments in technology. As a percentage of sales, SG&A improved 270 basis points year-over-year to 23.2%.

Compared to the third quarter of the prior year, net income improved by $26.1 million to $47.8 million and adjusted net income improved by $12.6 million to $37.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter was $55.7 million compared with $81.6 million in the third quarter of 2025. The year-over-year decline was primarily driven by lower sales volume and gross margin pressures during the quarter.

Inventory at the end of the quarter was $233.4 million, down 15% compared to $273.2 million at the end of the third quarter of 2025, reflecting continued progress on our inventory optimization initiatives, in part driven by the previous closures of unprofitable stores and continued cleanup of our non-go-forward inventory. Notably, even with these reductions in inventory, in-stocks on key products remain strong during the quarter.

Capital expenditures as of July 4, 2026, totaled $10.5 million compared to $19.1 million a year ago, primarily related to maintenance of our stores and distribution centers. We remain disciplined in our capital allocation and expect full-year fiscal 2026 capital expenditures to come in well below $20 million.

Turning to liquidity, we ended the quarter with $30 million outstanding under our revolving credit facility, compared to $20 million in the prior year. We also had $753 million of net long-term debt. As of quarter end, we had approximately $207 million (sic) [ $207.1 million ] of availability, including cash on hand and borrowing capacity under our credit facility. We continue to have meaningful liquidity to operate the business in the normal course as we evaluate opportunities to strengthen our balance sheet and address our long-term debt.

As Jason mentioned, we are engaged in constructive discussions with certain of our financial stakeholders as we explore strategic alternatives to provide incremental financial flexibility and delever our balance sheet. Throughout this process, we remain focused on maintaining financial discipline while continuing to execute on our comprehensive transformation.

Finally, turning to our fiscal 2026 outlook. Given the evolving macroeconomic environment and lower than anticipated customer traffic during our peak season, we are withdrawing our previously issued full-year sales and adjusted EBITDA guidance and are not providing an updated outlook at this time.

With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.