Bassett Furniture Industries Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Weather and Tariffs Knock Sales and Margins, Growth Hinges on Pricing, Stores and E‑commerce

Latonya, Conference Call Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Bassett Furniture Industries first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mike Daniel. Please go ahead.

Mike Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Thank you so much, Latonya, for the introduction. Welcome to Bassett Furniture Industries earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended February 28, 2026. Joining me today is our Chairman and CEO, Rob Spilman. We issued our news release and Form 10-Q yesterday after the market closed, and it’s available on our website. After today’s remarks, Rob and I will be open for questions. We will also post a transcript of this call on Bassett’s Investor Relations website following the call. During this call, certain statements we make may be considered forward-looking statements and inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management’s present view. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

The company cannot guarantee the accuracy of any forecast or estimate, nor does it undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. Other filings with the SEC describing risks related to our business are available on our corporate website under the Investors tab. Now I’ll turn things over to Rob. Rob?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Hey, thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. First, I’ll provide some perspective on the quarter and then lay out our initiatives going forward to grow the Bassett business. After a solid start to the first seven weeks of fiscal 2026, the pace of business slowed abruptly in mid-January. As a result, consolidated sales declined by 2.2% due to a variety of factors. Against the backdrop of ongoing weak residential housing activity, severe weather interrupted both wholesale and retail sales as well as product distribution flow due to warehouse closures. We rely heavily on retail traffic during weekends. More than 50% of the retail fleet was closed due to weather through one weekend in January, followed by more than 25% of our locations being closed the following weekend.

On the positive side, we benefited from changes to our marketing strategy this year, which expanded our Presidents’ Day promotional event to three weeks. This helped us drive retail sales up for the back half of February. While written sales were essentially flat for the first quarter, we had a double-digit increase in written orders for the back half of February. These sales will be delivered in the second quarter. We had margin pressure on our retail business from our decision to eat the tariff impact until midway through the quarter. In fact, retail gross margins were down 170 basis points because we did not pass this along on goods sold in the fourth quarter that were delivered in the first quarter. With the tariff costs now included in the retail pricing, we expect to see improved retail margins going forward.

Wholesale margins decreased slightly, primarily due to lower volume in our domestic upholstery operation. Mike will cover the details on the financials shortly. We’ve been conservative in designing our plan, but SG&A for the quarter remained higher than we like for the revenue we delivered, and we’re addressing this. We’re operating in a macro environment of challenging housing, higher employee, political tensions, which continue as headwinds for our top line. To combat this, we have several initiatives in the works that are projected to save between $1.5 million and $2 million annually starting late in the second quarter. Looking ahead, we have organized our strategic thinking around 5 key initiatives to grow the Bassett business. The first is to generate comp store growth. We have a strong brand in Bassett.

We feel good about the product offerings we have in place, and we’re excited about what we have coming. Consumer response to our updated case goods collections has been good. We’ve also had good reception to the recent introductions of the Z4 Sleeper and the HideAway dining programs. Customers continue to love our True Custom Upholstery program, the most significant piece of our business, which showed a 6% increase in retail written sales in the first quarter. At the upcoming April High Point Market, Bassett will introduce new opening price point upholstery collections that offer excellent value with customized options for the consumer.

As we shared previously, the Bassett Outdoor line has been absorbed into the Lane Venture brand to further leverage the strong reception and rich history behind Lane Venture, which is now more than 50 years old. Since we acquired Lane Venture in 2017, Bassett invested in domestic manufacturing infrastructure to offer custom options and to improve lead times. In addition to our teak and wicker offerings, our domestic aluminum product now represents 45% of our outdoor sales. Second, we expect further growth to come from investing to open additional retail store locations, both corporate and licensed. As we announced, we will open corporate stores in Cincinnati and Orlando this year and will relocate a store on Long Island. The Cincinnati store is under construction and we will begin work on our new Orlando location next week.

Given the escalation of retail rents and construction costs since COVID, we will meticulously research the sales potential of future locations before we commit to a new store. Both the Cincinnati and Orlando locations have taken almost two years to come online by the time they open later this year. Also, we have opportunities to convert some current licensed locations to corporate stores as owners retire and exit the business. We have just finished this kind of conversion in the Greater Philadelphia market. The retirement of independent furniture operators with no succession plan is a trend that has picked up steam in the past several years, and Bassett licensed stores are not an exception. Under the right circumstances, this trend represents an opportunity for us to continue growing in existing markets by leveraging customer relationships and our brand.

Third, we are investing to increase e-commerce sales and build a successfully integrated omni-channel experience. Retail customers are responding well to the enhancement in our e-commerce site, allowing them to see the full breadth of our offerings. The investments we’ve made in presentation and functionality allow us to reach many more markets where we don’t have physical locations. Late last year, we began national home delivery to previously unserved geography. While overall traffic was down in the first quarter, more customers are generating more frequent transactions. Conversions was up 130% for the quarter, resulting in a 28% increase in orders. Our goal is to use our website to reach younger, higher-income demographics who represent a strong growth opportunity. Fourth, we are enhancing the model for Bassett Design Centers, which remain a critical part of our wholesale growth strategy.

With a footprint of 3,000-5,000 sq ft, the BDC is the best representation of our brand outside of a Bassett Home Furnishings store. During the first quarter, we added 2 Bassett Design Centers and currently seek to improve the visual merchandising standards and marketing programs for the BDC fleet this year. The little sister, Bassett Custom Studio concept at 1,000 sq ft, serves as a wholesale gateway for us as we have opened 60 studios in the 2 years since its inception. The custom studio product offering focuses exclusively on the merits of our True Custom Upholstery program. No inventory is required and the turnaround time is short. The studio model is a great way for the open market to test the Bassett brand. We aim to convert the best customers under the studio into full Bassett Design Centers and recently completed 3 such conversions.

Fifth, we are focusing on building the interior design channel. We believe that the styling of our assortment and our ability to customize our products beautifully fit the needs of today’s interior designer. We are enhancing our technology platform to cater to designers, and we are working with our independent wholesale sales force to equip them with the tools and mindset to adapt to the current world of design. To showcase our brand in a more design-centric fashion, this summer, we plan to relocate our wholesale showroom to better target this growing channel in time for the October fall market. Demolition is now progressing and extensive renovations are already taking place. This new consolidated showroom will include the Lane Venture brand, which historically has had showroom space separate from Bassett.

In concert with the design effort, we are developing the hospitality and commercial channel by leveraging the quality and brand equity behind the Bassett name. The launch of the Bassett Hospitality division is underway, and we will go after contract business across various commercial areas from hotels to senior living. We have put the team in place, but this will take time to gain traction. This five-point strategy articulates the blueprint that our management team is employing to ensure a bright future for Bassett. The challenging macro environment that we have experienced since the COVID boom makes for a difficult balance between investing to grow while controlling or cutting operating expenses. In short, we are doing both, reshaping our organization and technology to compete in a changing world and deliver improved shareholder returns. With that, I’ll turn things over to Mike for details on the first quarter results.

Mike Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Thank you, Rob. In my commentary, the comparisons I’ll discuss will be the first quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2025, unless otherwise noted. Total consolidated revenue was $83 million, a decrease of $1.8 million or 2.2%. This consisted of a $700,000 decrease in revenue from our retail stores and a $1.1 million decrease to our external wholesale customers, primarily due to the impacts of winter weather on store operations and retail and wholesale logistics. Gross margin at 56.2%, representing an 80 basis point decrease when compared to the prior year, primarily driven by lower margins in both the retail and wholesale business.

Selling, general and administrative expenses excluding new store pre-opening costs were 54.7% of sales, 70 basis points higher than the prior year, reflecting reduced leverage of fixed costs due to lower sales levels. Operating income was $1.2 million or 1.4% of sales as compared to income of $2.5 million or 3% of sales in the prior period. Diluted earnings per share were $0.13 versus $0.21. Now let me cover more details on our wholesale operations. Net sales were $53 million, essentially flat to last year. Net sales were impacted by a 0.6% increase in shipments to our retail core network and a 2.6% increase in Lane Venture shipments to wholesale customers, partially offset by a 5.3% decrease in shipments to the open market.

As previously discussed, we introduced the Lane Venture brand in the Bassett Home Furnishings stores during the first quarter of 2026 and have included those shipments in the above change in the 0.6% increase for the retail stores. Including those shipments in the total Lane Venture brand, shipments of that brand increased 32%. Shipments were negatively impacted by winter weather because our major distribution centers were closed for multiple days during the quarter. Gross margins decreased 50 basis points in the period due to margin decreases in custom upholstery operations due to reduced leverage of fixed costs that were partially offset by improved margins in the Bassett case goods operations due to improved pricing strategies. SG&A expenses as a % of sales were essentially flat compared with the prior year period. Now, moving on to our retail store operations.

Net sales of $52.5 million represented an $800,000 or a 1.4% decrease, again, primarily due to the impacts of the winter weather. Written sales, the value of sales orders taken but not delivered, decreased 0.2%. Gross margin at 51.5% represented a decline of 170 basis points due to lower margins on in-line goods, as we did not institute a price increase related to the increased tariff cost until mid-January. Total SG&A expenses as a percent of sales increased 20 basis points, primarily due to the pre-opening costs associated with the new stores in Cincinnati and Orlando and reduced leverage of fixed costs due to lower sales levels, partially offset by improved efficiency in the warehouse and delivery operation.

Prior to opening a new store, we incur such expenses as rent, training costs and other payroll-related costs. These costs generally range between $200,000-$400,000 per store, depending on the overall rent cost for the location in the period between the time when we take physical possession of the store space and the time of the store opening. These costs should be higher in the second quarter. Now let me address our liquidity position. Our liquidity remains solid with $51 million of cash in short-term investments. With first quarter historically being the lowest in cash generation, operating cash flow was a negative $5.5 million, which also included certain negative working capital changes which were expected. As we previously mentioned, we plan to open two new stores, relocate another store and move our existing High Point showroom during the year.

Which will result in additional capital spending for tenant improvements. As a result, we expect total capital expenditures to be between $8 million and $12 million for 2026. Considerably more than the $4.5 million we spent last year. We continue to pay our quarterly dividend and repurchase shares opportunistically. We spent $1.7 million on dividends and $147,000 on share buybacks in the quarter. We remain committed to delivering shareholder returns through dividends and, when appropriate, share buybacks. Our board also approved a $0.20 dividend to be paid May 29. Now we’ll open up the line for questions. Latonya, please provide instructions to do so.

Latonya, Conference Call Operator: Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile our Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question will be coming from the line of Anthony Lebiedzinski of Sidoti. Your line is open, Anthony.

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Analyst, Sidoti: Good morning, everyone. Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. Just, you know, thinking about the retail margins, can you help us better understand the impact of the delayed price increases that you took in mid-January and how that should impact the second quarter?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Well, that’s unfolding as we speak, Anthony, but we have seen since we implemented that. You know, the tariff thing last year was difficult for the whole industry to deal with, and everybody had their own take on it. Of course, we’ve got a wholesale consideration and a retail consideration. I’m giving you a little bit of the logic behind our decision. We increased wholesale and retail prices in July, and then there were some further adjustments to the tariffs. At that point in the fall, we said, you know, given the environment, we don’t wanna put on another price increase within 60 days of what we just did. We elected to go with, and as we’ve mentioned already, and you’re asking about, we had that 170 basis point decline.

I can’t predict exactly how these margins will come through in the quarter, but they will be closer to what we had last year than what we just reported. I can’t give you any more insight than that. Mike, maybe you can help. I don’t know if we’ll get all the way back up to 170 basis points, but we are seeing improved margins so far this quarter since we have implemented the increase.

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Analyst, Sidoti: Got you. Okay. Yeah, thanks for that. You know, given the recent spike in fuel prices, are you thinking about potential additional pricing actions and/or surcharges to offset the higher delivery and shipping costs? Just wondering, how you guys are thinking about what’s been going on since your quarter ended.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Well, on a retail side, we have a captive freight situation with J.B. Hunt, and we’re receiving surcharges weekly on that, which fluctuates with diesel prices. Yes, that’s already happening. We’re also getting increases from petroleum derivative products such as foam and poly and that kind of thing. Those are fairly significant, and we will have to pass those along. They actually have not been implemented yet, but there are various dates in the next few weeks that these things will take effect, and we will have to adjust for those increases.

Mike Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Anthony, yeah, on the

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Analyst, Sidoti: Mm-hmm.

Mike Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: On the freight surcharge, fuel surcharge side.

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Analyst, Sidoti: Mm-hmm.

Mike Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Try and build back from a wholesale perspective, the freight surcharge that we are charged from our freight partner. Yes, that fluctuates along. That surcharge that we bill out fluctuates with what we’re getting charged from our partner.

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Analyst, Sidoti: Gotcha. Got it. Okay. Just wondering, you know, if you can comment on the trends that you’ve seen in the business since the end of your quarter, which coincides with the start of the conflict in Ukraine, whether you’ve seen any noticeable differences in trends. I know your target customer is generally a higher income consumer, so maybe not as much impacted by fuel prices as lower income consumers, but obviously, you know, we’ve seen the stock market react negatively since then. Just wondering if you could talk at a high level as to what you’ve seen so far, you know, the first few weeks of your current quarter.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Pretty much more of the same, I would say, Anthony. We haven’t had a tremendous decline, but we haven’t had an uptick either. It’s still, you know, grinding it out, pretty much the way I would describe it. We, you know, obviously this is Easter weekend, and we’re closed on Sunday, and the week around Easter is always a tough week, so we’re gonna deal with that. More of the same is what we’re seeing. Not a lot up or down.

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Analyst, Sidoti: Gotcha. All right. Well, thanks very much for the help and best of luck.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Thank you.

Latonya, Conference Call Operator: Our next question will be coming from the line of Doug Lane of Water Tower Research. Your line is open.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Yes. Hi. Good morning, everybody.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Yes.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: The conflict in the Middle East, are you seeing any, you know, are you expecting price increases? You mentioned foam and some of the plastic derivatives. What about accessibility? Are you worried about accessibility to some components, maybe even aluminum? A lot of aluminum goes through that part of the world. Just what’s the outlook for accessibility to your materials in the near future?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: You know, Doug, the only thing that really goes through that area in the Hormuz and over there is product from India and for us. We really haven’t had a noticeable issue on this. We haven’t seen container prices spike. I think that’s just because of overall tepid demand across our industry and other consumer goods since all this stuff has started. We haven’t seen an accessibility issue at the moment.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Okay, fair enough. Switching over to the retail margins, segment margins down about $1 million. Second quarter, I guess we benefit from better pricing, but we still have new store openings. Can you give us a feel for, just directionally where we’re going? Are we gonna continue to have some losses on the retail side until the back half of the year, maybe even the fourth quarter, when those stores come online and start producing sales and profits? How does that look?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: That’s probably accurate. I think we can do better than we did this quarter with the better margins, and that will help quite a bit. You know, we’ve only baked in one of the store opening costs so far, and now we’re gonna have two come in this quarter. You know, in our model, we don’t have things on the shelf. We have 80% of the time, we have to go make the furniture when they buy it, and so that takes another 4 weeks or 5 weeks to turn into revenue. Yeah, we’ll be dealing with that the rest of the year, but we’re certainly not budgeting to have the margin that we just had in the first quarter.

Mike Daniel, Chief Financial Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Right. Just to clarify what Rob said. What happens, store opens, we’ll have a couple of three months of losses, as Rob said, kinda filling that pipeline before we get to a steady state. You know, that’s just the nature of the beast, the way our model is.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Got it. Have you talked about the potential for any tariff refunds with the Supreme Court decision? How did that decision impact the tariff landscape for 2026?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: I would say we don’t know.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Okay.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Yes, we’ve had some conversations on that, but I don’t have anything definitive to answer that question, Doug.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Okay, fair enough. Then you mentioned weather, and just help me understand. I get that the weekend’s bad timing and you had two weekends in a row you were impacted, but are those actually lost sales or just deferred sales?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: You know, we certainly hope they’re deferred, but they seem to be lost. I’ve talked to a couple guys on our board who have been in retail. We were kind of crying in our beer about that. Yeah, I mean, look, December is our weakest month of the year for written business. People don’t buy a lot of Bassett furniture or other furniture in the month of December around the holidays. January becomes a very important month and February as well. That really starts the year off, and we need it. We started the year off pretty well until we got this. We did mention that we had a nice increase in February.

I can’t really say that it was making up for what happened those last two weeks of January. It’s hard to point to that, but I mean, it hurt us and also hurt our deliveries quite a bit in the quarter. They feel like they’re lost. I hope they’re deferred, but they feel like they’re lost.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Okay, fair enough.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: A little bit more, give that a little bit more color. For that first 7 weeks, we were up retail written, you know, mid-single digits, low to mid-single digits. After that 2-week period, for that 9-week period, we went from up low to mid-single digits to down almost double digits for that 9-week period. You know, that 2-week period that we had the weather, pretty dramatic on retail written sales and wholesale orders.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: No, that was impactful. No kidding. Just one more for me. On the e-commerce sales, they’re up 28%, continues to be a strong channel for you. How much does e-commerce represent of your sales, and is this something you would consider breaking out separately when you report in the future?

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: We haven’t done that in the past and we’d, you know, have to think about doing it. It’s still a small number. You know, we’ve had, I think, six quarters now, five or six, of nice double-digit growth in this. We’re excited about it, and we continue to work on all the little nuances to improve the navigation of the site. We haven’t to date elected to break that out.

Doug Lane, Analyst, Water Tower Research: Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Latonya, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Rob for closing remarks.

Rob Spilman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett Furniture Industries: Well, thank you for attending today and I hope everybody has a good holiday weekend, and we will talk to you again in late June. Thank you very much.

Latonya, Conference Call Operator: This concludes today’s program. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.