LightInTheBox Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Record Q4 Profit as Branded Apparel and AI Drive Margin Expansion

Operator: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for LightInTheBox’s fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management’s prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today’s conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Serena Wang. Please go ahead, Serena.

Serena Wang, Investor Relations, LightInTheBox: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to LightInTheBox fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. The company’s earnings results were released via Newswire Services earlier today and are available on the company’s IR website at ir.ador.com. On the call from LightInTheBox today are the CEO, Mr. Jian He, and the CFO, Mr. Suhai Ji. Mr. He will provide an overview of the company’s strategies and highlights, followed by Mr. Ji, who will go over its financial results. Following our prepared remarks, we’ll open the call to questions. Before we proceed, please note that today’s discussion may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the company’s current expectations.

To understand the factors that could cause results to materially differ from those in forward-looking statements, please refer to the company’s Form 20-F filed with the SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Please also note that LightInTheBox earnings press release and this conference call include the discussions of unaudited GAAP financial measures, as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company’s earnings press release, which contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited GAAP measures. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to LightInTheBox CEO, Mr. He. Please go ahead.

Jian He, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), LightInTheBox: Hi. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining LightInTheBox fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. We are pleased to report excellent results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2025, marking a key milestone in our transformation into a global consumer lifestyle company. In 2025, we delivered consecutive profitable quarters with record quarterly profit in Q4 and a remarkable full year turnaround. Despite a challenging e-commerce environment, we regained a positive year-over-year revenue growth in fourth quarter of 9%, while achieving a record net income of $3.3 million for the quarter and $8.3 million for the year. Our strategy of evolving the LightInTheBox online platform into a consumer lifestyle company is clearly working. By capturing consumer preference and sentiment, we offer differentiated products that drive consumer engagement through deep emotional resonance.

The LightInTheBox online platform now focus on festivals, holidays, and special occasions, offering highly customized long-standing products that address consumers’ sentiment and lifestyle requirements rather than purely functional needs, thus allowing us to command premium pricing. To further complement and strengthen our positioning as a consumer lifestyle company, we also adopt a brand matrix strategy by launching three proprietary apparel brands successfully since 2024 in women’s fashion, golf apparel and light party dress. These brands build around the social attributes of women aged 30 and above, delivering emotional value and a more relaxed, enjoyable lifestyle experience across scenarios such as vacations, social golf, and parties. Together, LightInTheBox online business and the new brands create a powerful synergy, tapping on hot streams and forging emotional connections with our core customers. Such two-pronged unified approach towards consumer lifestyle positioning has yielded great results.

In 2025, our branded apparel business grew over 143% and already accounted for 17% of total revenue, up from just 6% in 2024. Helped by higher pricing power and the growth of our branded apparel business, we achieved a full-year gross margin of 65% in 2025, the highest level since becoming a public company in 2013, along with positive operating cash flow of $6.2 million. In addition, we have fully embraced AI to capture the real-time marketing trends and to drive operational efficiency across all aspects of our business, such as product design, photographic style, marketing channels and customer service. End-to-end AI automation has also contributed to a workforce optimization of 58% since 2023, thus further improving our profit margin and the financial results.

2025 was indeed a milestone in our history as a public company as we navigated through a challenging and intense competitive e-commerce environment, executed a business turnaround and a return to profitability. Looking ahead to 2026, we remain committed in our continual transformation to becoming a global consumer lifestyle company. We are confident in our ability to deliver overall revenue and profit growth. With that, I will now hand the call over to Suhai Ji to go through our financial results.

Suhai Ji, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), LightInTheBox: Thank you, Mr. He. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Before we go over our financials, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures are presented in U.S. dollars. As our CEO mentioned in his remarks, indeed, we delivered excellent financial results last year. In the fourth quarter, our total revenues were $63 million, up 9% year-over-year. Compared to the year-over-year decrease in previous quarters, this marked our renewed top line growth as we have successfully engineered a business turnaround not only on profit but also on revenue. The fourth quarter gross profit was $39 million, up 16% year-over-year. Gross margin improved to 63% this quarter from 59% year-over-year. This is largely driven by our higher margin proprietary product lines and bespoke offerings like print-on-demand apparel.

Total operating expenses in the fourth quarter increased 8% year-over-year to $36 million, of which fulfillment expenses increased by 7% to $4 million, reflecting the growth in top line revenues. Selling and marketing expenses increased by 15% to $26 million, while general and administrative expenses decreased by 15% to $5 million. Total operating expenses as a percentage of revenue remained roughly unchanged at 57%. Largely due to the top line revenue increase and the gross margin expansion, our net income in the fourth quarter reached $3.3 million, compared to just $0.5 million in the same quarter last year, marking a record quarterly profit since 2022. Moving on to full year 2025 results.

Total revenues decreased 12% year-over-year to $224 million, mainly due to our pivot to focus on profitability, with declines moderating significantly from the first quarter of 2025 to the third quarter and the fourth quarter regaining positive growth. The full year gross profit was $146 million, down 5% year-over-year. However, gross margin increased to 65% from 60% year-over-year, which was at the highest level since we become a public company in 2013. This is mainly driven by the successful introduction of higher margin proprietary product lines. Total operating expenses in 2025 decreased by 11% year-over-year to $138 million, of which fulfillment expenses decreased by 12% to $17 million. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 8% to $103 million.

General and administrative expenses decreased by 24% to $20 million. Total operating expenses as a percentage of revenue remained roughly unchanged at 61%. Largely due to gross margin expansion and enhanced operational efficiency, we achieved a net income of $8.3 million in 2025, compared with a loss of $2.5 million in 2024, showcasing a remarkable profitability turnaround. In addition, we generated a positive operating cash flow of $6.2 million in 2025. The details of cash flow statement can be found in our 20-F, which will be filed in the next week also. Overall, we had a remarkable turnaround year in 2025, and the financial results last year provide us with tremendous momentum and confidence going to 2026, which we believe will be another successful record-setting year. This concludes my remarks.

We are now open for questions.

Thank you.

Operator, please continue.

Operator: If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Joe Rameely with Ramsey Asset Management.

Joe Rameely, Analyst, Ramsey Asset Management: Yes. Hi, Jian He and Suhai Ji. I have a couple questions. One is, do you expect this next year to be a growth year? I’ll ask a second question.

Suhai Ji, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), LightInTheBox: Hi, Joe. Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, next year, we, you know, remain quite confident that we will deliver another year of growth, not only on profit, but also on revenues. We have not officially given the guidance yet, but we are delivering that until probably the first quarter.

Joe Rameely, Analyst, Ramsey Asset Management: Great. My second question is, can you describe your shareholder base? What percentage do insiders hold, and are there any other large investors? Thank you.

Suhai Ji, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), LightInTheBox: Yeah. I think together, insiders and the directors, hold roughly 70%, so it’s only 30%, roughly, is in the public float. The total share base is roughly 18 million ADS. Each ADS is about 12 common shares.

Joe Rameely, Analyst, Ramsey Asset Management: Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great, turnaround story. Pretty amazing job.

Suhai Ji, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), LightInTheBox: Thank you.

Operator: Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further questions at this time. I’ll now hand back for closing remarks.

Suhai Ji, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), LightInTheBox: Okay. Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact LightInTheBox Investor Relations through the contact information provided on our website. Have a great day.

Operator: That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.