Laird Superfood Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Navitas Acquisition and Nexus $50M Investment Turn Laird Into a Scaled Superfood Platform

Operator: I’ll now hand the conference over to Trevor Rousseau, Head of Investor Relations. Trevor, please go ahead.

Trevor Rousseau, Head of Investor Relations, Laird Superfood: Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to Laird Superfood’s fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. On today’s call are Jason Vieth, Laird Superfood’s President and Chief Executive Officer, and Anya Hamill, our Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company’s earnings release, which was filed today after market close. It is available on the investor relations section of Laird Superfood’s website at www.lairdsuperfood.com. Before we begin, please note that during this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the context of federal securities laws. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Please refer to today’s press release and other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Jason.

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’m Jason Vieth, CEO of Laird Superfood, and I’m joined by our CFO, Anya Hamill. We appreciate you taking the time as we review our first quarter and full year 2025 results, which we released earlier today. Fiscal 2025 was a pivotal and transformative year for Laird Superfood. We delivered record net sales of $49.9 million, up 15% versus the prior year, and in line with our revised guidance. In the fourth quarter alone, net sales rose 15% to $13.3 million. This growth was broad-based and especially strong in our wholesale channel, which surged more than 40% in both Q4 and for the full year. That momentum came from meaningful distribution expansion paired with continued strong velocities in grocery and club outlets.

Retail consumption data through the latest quad-week ending February 22, 2026, confirms the health of that wholesale acceleration. Across measured natural and MULO channels, coffee posted the strongest full year performance of any Laird Superfood product group, +45% dollar growth on +18% TDP growth over the last 52 weeks. Shelf-stable creamers delivered +15% dollar growth for the year, maintaining the largest share of our portfolio at 28%. I am also excited to report a very successful relaunch of our refrigerated creamers during late Q4 into early Q1, which included reformulation to what we believe is the cleanest and best-tasting liquid creamer product in the market. In addition, we repositioned our creamer to an extended shelf life refrigerated product packed in a post-consumer recycled plastic bottle.

We believe that these changes to a cleaner formula and an already recycled bottle improve our positioning with both our retailers and our consumers. After a challenging 2025 for this product, we are already seeing strong momentum in the latest four weeks, up 7% in the natural channel versus the same period last year. I want to be clear that these results are no accident. They are direct proof that our strategy to win in coffee solutions, which includes coffee, creamers, and lattes, is working. Consumers are responding to our complete ecosystem of functional better-for-you coffee and coffee companions, and that is translating into outsized velocity and distribution gains in our core categories. E-commerce remained resilient at roughly half of total sales in Q4.

Softness in our direct-to-consumer platform was partially offset by strong continued growth on amazon.com, further reinforcing the power of our coffee solutions portfolio with the everyday convenience shopper. While we appreciate the core set of consumers that come to our DTC site to explore and purchase our Laird Superfood products, we harbor no illusion that Amazon will not continue to win online volume in the future. For this reason, we will continue to leverage Amazon as the growth engine for our e-commerce sales. I also want to give a heartfelt acknowledgment to the entire Laird team for the outstanding job they did of managing through the chaos of sharp commodity inflation, new tariff pressures, and ongoing supply chain volatility.

Throughout 2025, they proactively secured strategic inventory ahead of tariff increases, built safety stock to protect service levels and avoid out-of-stocks, and maintained tight operational discipline across procurement, logistics, and cost control. That level of foresight and agility under pressure is exactly what allowed us to deliver top line growth while keeping the business running smoothly, and I couldn’t be more proud of how this team showed up every day. Now on to the other big news that we have shared over the last couple of months. Just two weeks ago, on March 12, we closed the acquisition of Navitas Organics, funded by the $50 million investment that we completed with Nexus Capital. This transaction is perfectly on strategy and represents a major step in our vision of building a scaled superfood platform.

Navitas brings to Laird Superfood a premium, purpose-driven brand with more than 20 years of history, $45.3 million in 2025 net sales, and a 31.8% gross margin. It adds complementary products, stronger reach in conventional grocery and club channels, new customers, and greater geographic diversity. Together, Laird and Navitas instantly become a larger, more diversified platform with enhanced scale, cross-selling opportunities, and supply chain efficiencies we expect will drive both revenue growth and profit expansion in the years to come. The financing structure itself underscores our confidence in this path. Nexus invested $50 million upfront through the purchase of Series A preferred stock.

Importantly, the investment agreement also gives us the option to call an additional $60 million from Nexus anytime within the next 270 days after closing, or up to 360 days if we’re actively in discussions on another strategic transaction. These proceeds are earmarked for an acquisition or other growth initiatives with any remainder available for general corporate purposes. This financial structure gives us tremendous flexibility to move on additional opportunities should they arise. Of course, this investment did result in meaningful dilution to our common equity. On an as-converted basis, Nexus’ stake represents approximately 56.2% of the company today.

We are very transparent about that dilution because it is being exchanged for something that we believe is far more valuable, the immediate addition of a profit accretive business that we expect will strengthen our overall earnings power and cash flow generation going forward. In short, we expect to be trading some ownership percentage today for a much larger, higher quality earnings stream tomorrow. We are genuinely excited about the potential for additional acquisitions as we build out the leading superfood business in the country. With the capital access provided by Nexus and the integration playbook we now have, we see a clear runway to continue consolidating within the superfood and functional food space. Our goal is to keep building scale, broaden our product portfolio, deepen our retailer partnerships, and ultimately create a category leader that delivers sustainable, profitable growth for years to come. Looking ahead, our priorities remain clear.

Drive continued wholesale momentum, protect and expand gross margins through synergies with Navitas, and execute a seamless integration while staying opportunistic on further M&A. With our strengthened balance sheet, expanded platform, and talented combined team, I have never been more optimistic about Laird Superfood’s future. Before I turn it over to Anya for the detailed financial review, I want to thank every single Laird teammate, our retail partners, our consumers, and now our new Navitas Organics colleagues. 2025 proved we can grow through turbulence, and 2026 is going to be the year that we show what a true scaled superfood platform can achieve. Anya, over to you.

Anya Hamill, Chief Financial Officer, Laird Superfood: Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now provide additional detail on our fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025 financial results. As Jason highlighted, we closed the year with record net sales of $49.9 million, which was up 15% year-over-year, and Q4 net sales of $13.3 million, also up 15% versus prior year. I’ll build on those headlines with the underlying financial details. Our wholesale channel was the primary growth driver, increasing 44% year-over-year to $7.0 million in the fourth quarter and representing 52% of total Q4 net sales. For the full year, wholesale grew 41% to $24.9 million, representing 50% of total net sales.

This channel mix shift is a direct reflection of our strategy to transition Laird Superfood to wholesale-led business, and the numbers confirm we are executing against that plan. E-commerce contributed $6.4 million, or 48% of Q4 net sales, reflecting a 6% decline year-over-year as softness in our direct-to-consumer platform was partially offset by continued growth on amazon.com. For the full year, e-commerce contributed $25.0 million, or 50% of net sales, down 3% versus 2024. As Jason noted, we are focused on Amazon as the growth engine within e-commerce, and our DTC channel continues to benefit from a highly loyal repeat customer base. Gross margins in the fourth quarter was 34.1% compared to 38.6% in the corresponding prior year period.

This contraction was driven primarily by increased product costs from inflationary commodity prices and the residual impact of tariffs that have now largely been canceled for our raw materials, as well as the settlement recoveries recognized in the fiscal year 2024 that did not reoccur in 2025. For the full fiscal year, gross margin was 37.9% compared to 40.9% in 2024. This year-over-year decline was driven by the same dynamics as in Q4, commodity and tariff pressures alongside the non-recurrence of prior year settlement benefits. Despite these headwinds, we delivered full-year gross margins in the upper 30% range, consistent with our stated expectations. Our supply chain team continues to drive efficiency through direct partnerships with key raw material suppliers and co-packing partners, and we remain confident in our ability to sustain gross margins at levels competitive with best-in-class CPG companies.

Total operating expenses for fiscal year 2025 were $22.3 million, compared to $19.9 million in the prior year, reflecting planned investments in sales and marketing to support our top line growth, partially offset by continued discipline in general and administrative costs. Net loss for the fourth quarter was $1.8 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, compared to net loss of $0.4 million or $0.04 per diluted share in the prior year period. This year-over-year increase in loss was driven primarily by $0.9 million in professional fees incurred in connection with the Navitas acquisition, as well as higher commodity and tariff-related procurement costs.

For the full fiscal year 2025, net loss was $3.3 million or $0.31 per diluted share, compared to $1.8 million or $0.18 per diluted share in 2024, a year-over-year increase of $1.5 million. Let me be clear about what drove that. The $0.9 million in Navitas acquisition-related fees and $0.7 million in Picky Bars intangible assets impairment charge. Together, those account for $1.6 million, essentially the entirety of the year-over-year change in net loss. Excluding these two discrete non-recurring items, our core business net loss was essentially flat year-over-year, even as we absorbed significant commodity inflation and tariff headwinds. That is a result we are proud of and it reflects the underlying earnings progress of our business.

I also want to highlight our adjusted EBITDA performance, which I believe is an important measure of our underlying business progress. For the full fiscal year 2025, we delivered positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.3 million, which is a significant improvement from $0.7 million loss in 2024, and consistent with our commitment to achieve at least a break-even adjusted EBITDA for the full year. This represents $1.0 million year-over-year positive swing and reflects the operating leverage that we’re beginning to generate as our top line scales. Now turning to our balance sheet. We ended fiscal year 2025 with $5.3 million in cash and no debt.

Accounts receivable increased to $3.9 million from $1.8 million at year-end 2024, reflecting the timing of large wholesale shipments at year-end of 2025, which was subsequently collected in the first quarter of 2026. Inventory ended the year at $7.8 million, down from its peak of approximately $11 million in the second quarter of 2025, consistent with our strategy to draw down the forward purchases we made earlier in the year in order to mitigate the impact of tariff-related cost increases. Cash used in operating activities was $2.8 million for fiscal year 2025, compared to $0.9 million provided by operations in 2024. The year-over-year change was primarily driven by working capital dynamics, specifically the inventory build in the first half of the year and the timing of year-end wholesale receivables.

As those receivables have since been converted to cash and inventory levels continue to normalize, we expect operating cash flow to improve throughout 2026. Now on to 2026 outlook. While we are not providing detailed formal guidance for fiscal year 2026 at this time, I do want to share our directional expectations for the combined business. As a starting point and for context, Navitas generated net sales of $45.3 million and gross profit of $14.4 million, reflecting a gross margin of approximately 31.8% for fiscal year 2025, and reported net income of approximately $1.6 million for that period. These results are on a historical standalone basis and were not included in Laird Superfood’s consolidated 2025 financial statements.

Combined with Laird Superfood’s $49.9 million in 2025 net sales, we are building from a meaningful combined revenue base. Looking ahead, we expect net sales for the combined business to grow by at least high single digits% in 2026, and we expect adjusted EBITDA to increase, driven by top-line growth and the realization of integration synergies across procurement, supply chain, and operations. We will provide specific full year 2026 guidance in connection with our first quarter 2026 earnings release, and we look forward to sharing more details at that time. With that, I’ll turn the discussion back over to Jason for any closing remarks.

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Thank you, Anya. In closing, fiscal 2025 was a year that tested our resilience and proved our conviction. We delivered record revenue, strengthened our wholesale momentum, successfully relaunched our refrigerated creamers, and most importantly, took a transformative step forward with the acquisition of Navitas Organics and our partnership with Nexus Capital. We are no longer just a promising coffee and creamer brand. We are now a scaled, diversified superfood platform with greater reach, enhanced capabilities, and a clear runway for accelerated growth and margin expansion. The foundation we’ve built, combined with the talent and dedication of our combined teams, positions us exceptionally well for what’s ahead. To our shareholders, thank you for your continued belief in our vision. To our retail partners, your support and partnership have been instrumental. To our consumers, your loyalty and enthusiasm for better-for-you functional products inspire us every day.

To every member of the Laird and Navitas teams, thank you for your hard work, creativity, and unwavering commitment through a year of significant change. We enter 2026 with tremendous momentum and optimism. This is just the beginning of what we believe will be a multi-year journey to build the leading superfood company in North America. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to updating you on our progress when we report first quarter 2026 results. Operator, we are now happy to take questions.

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Nicholas Sherwood of Maxim Group LLC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Sherwood, Analyst, Maxim Group LLC: My first question is, how much crossover in retail locations exists between Laird products and the Navitas products? Has there been a substantial improvement in average items carried?

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Hey, Nicholas, this is Jason. I caught the first part of your question, but what was the last part?

Nicholas Sherwood, Analyst, Maxim Group LLC: The last part was, has there been a substantial improvement in average items carried with the combined portfolio?

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, to dimensionalize the portfolio a little bit, in two words. In the case of Navitas, you know, I think about this business. They’re pretty similarly sized business to Laird Superfood. They have more exposure to the wholesale channel than we do. You know, I think that they don’t have as large of an online business as we do. There’s a significant amount of crossover when you consider retailers similar to their superfood. They are predominantly natural channels. They grow through the natural channel and largest channels in the whole business model. Very similar to the Laird Superfood portfolio that exists from the transaction. In terms of average assortment, you know, we’re usually working on both of these brands. We’re combining both brands.

I wanna be real, really clear on that. This is a play as we go forward where we will be managing multiple brands under the LSDF ticker symbol, but we’ll have everything as a house of brands. Navitas being equally important, equally sized at this point to Laird Superfood. It’s a great portfolio of products. You know, they compete in different categories, but also a very similar temperature state, you know, shelf-stable bag or pouch products that very, very much like what you see with our superfoods. There’s not really a consolidation of items that makes sense. This is, you know, actually an expansion of items as we consider both brands.

There is quite a lot of overlap, and we’re working through that now with the combined sales organization, which will really allow us to go to market in a more impactful way. All of those retailers that I mentioned as well, just giving us additional avenues, we’re going to approach retailers in a newer space where we’ve long indicated that as being the largest go-forward opportunity for us. Now we can go in with two exceptional brands and really play a much more important role to those retailers as well. We’re really excited about the assortment opportunities that this creates, being able to leverage one brand for the next brand. Those relationships are super important, and being able to utilize those across the two brands, we expect to see some really nice distribution gains in years ahead.

Nicholas Sherwood, Analyst, Maxim Group LLC: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that detail. Kind of switching gears, you know, what have commodity prices looked like in the last month? You know, with oil prices higher, are some of your suppliers, you know, having to raise their prices due to, you know, increased shipping costs and the like?

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Yeah, it’s a good question. We’re not seeing a lot of impact, you know, some small cost increases on the margins thus far, but we’re margining contracts that we entered the year with, where we have

Strong pricing buys that were made. As we look at those relative to what’s going on, really it’s very little product that’s impacted. Those routes are not really impacting our products. It has been more fuel and distribution related, and that has not shown up in our cost structure at this point. We’re cautiously optimistic that the routes that we run are in place, which are largely Asia, South America, we’ll be able to get and a bit of an update in, especially in the west side of Africa, we’ll be able to kind of miss most of what’s happening with regards to any inflation out of the East.

Nicholas Sherwood, Analyst, Maxim Group LLC: Okay. My last question is, what sort of efficiencies can we see with the consolidation of Laird Superfood and Navitas’ logistics? You know, is there gonna be warehouse consolidation, you know, better like more freight cost savings? Can you kind of talk about that?

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Yeah, it’s a great question. One that, you know, we see obviously a timeline and diligence, and we’ll have a lot more time as we go forward. You know, we essentially have built a structure here that’s slightly different rather than is an asset-light model. We’re using co-packers and third-party distributors for really all of our logistics today, all our manufacturing logistics. There will be opportunities certainly to combine those. We’re working our way through the supply chains to identify not only costs, but capability opportunities. I think we have optimized costs, the broad portfolio leveraging the scale that we have. You know, we’ve suddenly become a $100 million business, and you know, doubling that obviously doubles the opportunities for the various suppliers to our business as well.

We have some great partners. Navitas has some great partners, and we’re working our way through both sides of that ledger to try to do more business in the future. Certainly we expect there’s some opportunity there for our business.

Nicholas Sherwood, Analyst, Maxim Group LLC: Awesome. Thank you for all that detail, I’ll return it to the queue.

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.

Operator: If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Your next question comes from the line of George Kelly of ROTH Capital Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

George Kelly, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe to start, I was hoping you could break down a little bit your growth, just the directional guidance you provided of high single digit growth. I was hoping you could give us a little more just on sort of expectations around each business, if possible. Are there certain product categories at each business that maybe you’re gonna deprioritize and that’s also factored into your guide? Just any context around that would be helpful.

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Thanks, George, for asking on that. Certainly something that we wanna make sure we hit. Look, I mean, you hit it on the head with the portfolio evaluation that needs to take place here to make sure that we’re in all the right products. We certainly across the business have some opportunity as we put the two businesses together to put focus from a profitability perspective against the right SKUs and make those the SKUs and categories frankly that we look to grow as we go forward. We’re in the midst of that right now. I believe that there could be a little bit of deceleration for that reason as we go through this year. But the target list is still being identified.

We still have some work to do as we consolidate the two portfolios. As a result, we’re calling out that high single digit growth as a number that we feel confident that we should be able to do, as we push the two businesses forward together as one portfolio.

George Kelly, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay. Okay. I guess a follow-up to that. Through that process, do you imagine that gross margin was kind of, you know, fluid, I guess a lot of tariffs, you know, all the different complications in 2025 with the core business. What kind of gross margin expectations with, you know, tariffs going away and the Navitas prioritization, I would imagine those are lower margin categories. Like can you get the core business back in the high 30s%? And should there be an uplift at Navitas as well, or how should we think about gross margin in 2026?

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Yeah. I’ll kick that off, George, and then I’ll let Anya jump in as well. You’re exactly right. You know, the margins on the Navitas business are not as strong, have not historically been as strong as they have been on Laird Superfood over the last number of years. We see opportunity by virtue of combining these businesses and working our way through the portfolio to really highlight and grow those businesses and those SKUs that have higher margins. We see other opportunities as well to improve gross margin as we combine the two businesses, as I just mentioned, putting the footprints together and then on the sourcing side there’s some opportunity as well. Our expectation is indeed to get back into the upper 30% as we go forward.

It’s just gonna take a couple of months to shake that out here, a couple of quarters rather, to shake that out and also to get through some of the procurement contracts that we’ve been in as singular businesses so that we can start to get some better volumes and better pricing as a result on the combined business. We will head back towards the upper thirties. We just need a little bit of time to let the digestion process take place here.

George Kelly, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay, that’s on a consolidated basis. Do you think you can get back there?

Anya Hamill, Chief Financial Officer, Laird Superfood: George, this is Anya. I think I would just add to what Jason said. I think once we internalize the acquisition fully, then on a run rate basis by the end of 2026, with the help from synergies, which will partially come from supply chain, we can get back to kind of the high 30s% on the gross margins where Laird core business has been.

George Kelly, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay. Okay, that’s great. Last one for me is just on some of Laird’s innovation items. You mentioned the liquid creamer. You’re pleased with the launch, and I know there was the coffee product, the Instinct coffee product. Curious if you could just talk high level about the performance of each, and maybe the distribution plan or sort of medium-term expectations for the liquid product. Do you think you have the right product now to take it more broadly? That’s all I had. Thank you.

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Yeah. Of course. Yeah, we’re really excited about the liquid relaunch. As you know, you’ve been following us for quite some time, and we’ve been through a few stops and starts on that liquid product. We’re now in, I would tell you, the best package that we’ve ever been in, and I would say most preferred by consumers and retailers. It’s a beautiful plastic bottle with post-recycled content. You know, it’s a bottle that’s already lived one life, which is really important not only with consumers, but especially in the natural channel with the buyers there. We’re really excited about that packaging. Inside of that, we’ve got now the cleanest formula we’ve ever had. In fact, I think it’s safe to say it’s the cleanest on the market.

You know, we’ve taken out by going away from the long shelf life processing, the aseptic processing and getting to a formula that really is incredibly clean with no more stabilizers in there and a fiber intact to hold it together. Every ingredient is one that you know. So this is a great product, George, that we have now and you know, we expect that and we’re putting it in front of retailers. We expect to see some significant distribution gains over the next years. We’ve held onto that product because you know, it’s not a sizable part of the portfolio, but it’s such an incredible addressable market full of products that really aren’t very healthy.

We see that this is an opportunity for us that we have to continue to grind against until we get it right, and we think we just did. We’re really excited about that. Beyond that, we did launch the protein coffee product that you were alluding to as well. That had a nice launch with one of the natural channel retailers that we gave exclusivity to. We’re still working through the data on that and now starting to take that out to additional retailers, so we should see some expansion coming against that product over the next quarters as well. It’s a great product, obviously hitting on the big protein trend with 10 grams per serving and I think it tastes like nothing else in the market.

We see a lot of opportunity for that product and that’s just on the Laird side. You know, over on the Navitas side, we’ve had some really great success recently with the trail mix product that went into club, and now we’re starting to see some further expansion on that online and we look to take that more broad, as well as the bites products, which is just a wonderful superfood, great tasting superfood bite across now a number of SKUs, and a growing portfolio, and it’s starting to see nice uplift with retailers and we see opportunity there and frankly across a lot of the Navitas portfolio. There’s just so much white space for both of these brands, especially in that brick-and-mortar world of conventional grocery.

As we go forward with now a sales team that’s twice as large as it was previously, we think that there’s just incredible opportunity for us to expand distribution on all those products.

George Kelly, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Thank you.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Jason Vieth for closing remarks.

Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Laird Superfood: Thank you, operator. Thanks all of you for joining us again today. We’re extremely proud of everything that our team has achieved in 2025. We delivered strong results through focused execution and through relentless innovation. As we look ahead, we’re genuinely excited about the transformative opportunities that lie in the combined future with Navitas. We appreciate your continued support and your interest in the journey, and we look forward to updating you all on the progress throughout the year ahead. Thank you and wishing you all a great day.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.