Brilliant Earth Group, Inc. (BRLT) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Brilliant Earth Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I am Franz, and I'll be the operator assisting you today. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call back over to Allison Malkin with ICR.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Brilliant Earth's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. This is Allison Malkin with ICR. Joining me today are Beth Gerstein, Brilliant Earth's Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Kuo, Brilliant Earth's Chief Financial Officer. During the call today, management will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for a description of the risks that could cause our actual performance and results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect our opinion only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events unless required by law. Also, during this call, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of Brilliant Earth's non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures is available in today's earnings release, which can be found on the Brilliant Earth Investor Relations website. I'll now turn the call over to Beth.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We're pleased to report an outstanding second quarter with results that once again reflect the disciplined execution and success of our growth strategy. Q2 net sales grew approximately 6% year-over-year to $115.1 million, well exceeding our guidance range. Our outstanding net sales performance included strong ASPs, which were up year-over-year across wedding and anniversary bands and fine jewelry, and stable year-over-year in engagement rings. This ASP strength was a continuation from last quarter, and we believe reflects consumers' enduring desire for premium, design-forward jewelry, along with our strength with the higher-income consumer. Total orders were slightly down 2% year-over-year during the quarter, but as you know, we have been focused on sales at higher price points and excluding sub-$500 AOV orders, which represent just a few percent of our net sales, our orders were up 5% year-over-year. Fine jewelry was again a clear standout driven by a strong Mother's Day holiday. Q2 fine jewelry bookings grew approximately 32% year-over-year, up about 18% of total bookings in Q2 as we continue to drive diversification beyond bridal. We were again pleased with our performance in wedding and anniversary bands, where Q2 bookings grew at a double-digit year-over-year rate. And our engagement ring bookings held steady and remained about the same year-over-year. We also delivered outstanding results on both gross margin and operating expenses. We increased gross margin approximately 360 basis points compared to Q1. As we mentioned during our last call, we expected to increase gross margin from Q1. And I'm incredibly proud of how our team delivered ahead of our expectations. While metal prices eased toward the end of the quarter, that was only a small part of the story. The bigger driver was our team's agile execution on the operational levers that Jeff will discuss, highlighting our ability to outperform profitability expectations in dynamic environments. Even with sales exceeding our expectations, we managed OpEx in a disciplined manner and drove year-over-year leverage across marketing and adjusted employee and G&A expenses. Jeff will walk you through more of the specifics. The combination of our strong top-line performance, solid gross margin, and sustained discipline in driving OpEx leverage year-over-year enabled us to deliver a Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $5.8 million that far outperformed our expectations. These results underscore our ability to execute with discipline while investing in the growth drivers that continue to make Brilliant Earth a leading jewelry brand in the $350 billion jewelry industry. Let me take you through some additional highlights of the quarter. Mother's Day was a clear proof point of our brand's strength and resonance, with overall bookings up 15% year-over-year in the 2-week gifting window leading up to Mother's Day. This was our biggest Mother's Day ever and further demonstrates our ability to execute and capitalize on key gifting moments, thanks to earlier, more integrated planning across our creative, merchandising, and retail teams. We have strong customer reception for our new product collections, including our Butterfly collection and our Keepsakes collection, an assortment of lockets and medallions that expand our franchise medallion assortment. Beyond Mother's Day, we saw strength across our full product assortment. In engagement rings and wedding bands, our proprietary design-forward collections led the way, including our nature-inspired designs and the expansion of our Pacific Green offering. Fine jewelry continues to be a standout with ongoing strength in our core diamond essentials as well as our iconic and signature offerings. As I mentioned earlier, year-over-year average selling prices were up meaningfully across the assortment in Q2. That strength shows clearly at the higher end, demonstrating our continued resonance with higher-income consumers. In fact, fine jewelry bookings at the $500 and above price point where we are focused grew over 40% year-over-year in Q2. Our brand also drove standout cultural engagement this quarter through partnerships with creator Allison Kuch and her husband, Isaac Rochell, who celebrated the joy of Mother's Day with content that delivered very strong performance across our channels. We also partnered with Sports Illustrated model and entertainment reporter Camille Kostek to serve as our face of summer, featuring our whimsical Seaside Charms collection. And we're always thrilled to see Brilliant Earth worn by tastemakers, including Maude Apatow at the Met Gala, Emma Roberts, Bella Hadid, and Justin Bieber. These moments reflect the growing cultural resonance of our brand with a new generation of creators and drives our brand awareness. Our omnichannel experience also sets us apart. We continue to drive retail and walk-in interest into our showrooms. In fact, showroom bookings from customers without an appointment grew 47% year-over-year in the second quarter. This is a powerful proof point of the success of our experiential and personalized showroom strategy, and how customers are increasingly discovering Brilliant Earth through our showrooms. Our Beverly Hills flagship is off to a strong start, with bookings since opening up over 40% year-over-year through the end of Q2 versus our prior locations, and fine jewelry bookings in Q2 nearly double that of our prior location last Q2. Average order values through the end of Q2 for Beverly Hills appointments were about 10% higher than typical appointments. We continue to see our Beverly Hills flagship as a blueprint for the future of modern luxury jewelry retail. We also opened our 43rd showroom in San Antonio, Texas, the next evolution of our showroom of the future, and a demonstration of how that concept can also be applied successfully in a smaller footprint. Quarter-to-date, we have seen continued outperformance in wedding and anniversary bands and fine jewelry, ongoing strength at higher price points, repeat orders outpacing overall order growth, and continued gross margin strength. Jeff will share more details on our guidance and outlook. Of course, we continue to watch the consumer environment carefully, and we are observing the same bifurcation that has been widely reported across our industry and the broader consumer sector. Similar to last quarter, while we see some signs of softness at lower price points, demand at higher price points is holding up well. Our ASP strength reflects this dynamic and demonstrates the growing power of our brand with a higher-income consumer. We have exciting product launches and partnerships planned for this fall, which we'll share more about in the upcoming months. And we continue to focus on our strategic initiatives across brands, showrooms, and fine jewelry. And the outsized interest we are seeing for fine jewelry in our showrooms gives us confidence as we head into Q3 and our important holiday season later this year. Given our strong Q2 performance and confidence in the second half of the year, we are raising our annual profitability guidance. Jeff will walk you through these details. I want to close by thanking our incredible team. Their passion and commitment are the reason our momentum keeps building quarter after quarter. And the best is still ahead for Brilliant Earth. Now, I'll hand it over to Jeff.

Thanks, Beth, and good morning, everyone. As Beth mentioned, we're pleased to report an outstanding second quarter in which we continued to successfully drive our strategic initiatives, delivering net sales above the high end of our guidance range, sequential gross margin improvement, year-over-year operating expense leverage, and adjusted EBITDA that significantly exceeded our guidance. Let me take you through the details for Q2. Net sales were $115.1 million, up approximately 5.7% year-over-year and above the high end of our guidance range. While total orders were down approximately 2% year-over-year, they grew 16% on a 2-year stacked basis. Repeat orders continue to outperform total order growth, demonstrating the effectiveness of our customer acquisition and retention efforts and the resonance of our brand and products with consumers. As Beth noted, we've been focused on driving growth at higher-end price points. If you exclude orders under $500, which are only a few percent of our net sales, orders are up 5% year-over-year, illustrating the success that we are having at higher price points. Q2 average order value, or AOV, was approximately $2,238, up about 8% year-over-year, with stable year-over-year engagement ring ASP and year-over-year ASP growth across wedding and anniversary bands and fine jewelry. Like in Q1, this was driven largely by 2 things. First, customers are mixing into higher-priced items, reflecting our strength with the higher-income consumer. And second, we've made selective price increases as a result of increased precious metal costs. Gross margin was 57.9%, down approximately 40 basis points year-over-year, but up approximately 360 basis points sequentially versus the first quarter. As we said last quarter, we expected to increase gross margin from Q1, and we're proud of how our team delivered. While metal costs have come down since Q1, they are still high by historical standards. Our ability to outperform in gross margin by leveraging our price optimization engine, thoughtful product design and specifications, vendor procurement efficiencies, and other efforts to offset the impact of metal costs and tariffs illustrates the strength and agility of our business model. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $5.8 million, or a 5% adjusted EBITDA margin, far above the high end of our guidance range. This reflects the combination of our strong top-line performance, solid gross margin, and focused discipline to drive year-over-year operating expense leverage. Q2 operating expense was 57.5% of net sales compared to 59.4% of net sales in Q2 2025, representing approximately 190 basis points of leverage year-over-year. Q2 adjusted operating expense was 53% of net sales compared to 55.5% in Q2 2025, representing approximately 250 basis points of leverage year-over-year. Adjusted operating expense does not include items such as depreciation and amortization, equity-based compensation, showroom pre-opening expenses, and other non-recurring expenses. Q2 marketing expense was 22.8% of net sales compared to 24.1% in Q2 2025. This represents approximately 130 basis points of year-over-year leverage. We were pleased to extend the success we've had in the past 2 years, driving increasing efficiency while delivering strong top-line results. It highlights the strength and resonance of our brand and omnichannel model and the effectiveness of our data-driven approach and the internal technology capabilities that our team has developed. Adjusted employee costs as a percentage of net sales were lower year-over-year by approximately 40 basis points in Q2. We were able to achieve this leverage even as we expanded our sales team compared to last year, reflecting the benefits that the showrooms have in driving sales growth and profitability. Adjusted other G&A as a percentage of net sales was lower year-over-year by approximately 80 basis points in Q2, reflecting our balanced approach to disciplined cost management as we invest thoughtfully in the business for the medium and long term. We were very pleased to drive year-over-year leverage across each of marketing expense, adjusted employee expenses, and adjusted other G&A. This underscores our strong cost discipline and our use of data and AI to identify and capture opportunities for operating expense leverage. We've mentioned before the importance of thoughtful expense management while still making the appropriate medium to long-term investments. And this quarter's results exemplify this with our strong top-line performance coupled with year-over-year leverage in our 3 adjusted operating expense categories. Our inventory declined by approximately $1 million from Q1, and our inventory turns of approximately 4x remain significantly above the industry average. We maintain conviction that the agility of our data-driven, capital-efficient, and inventory-light operating model is a compelling competitive advantage. We ended the second quarter with approximately $75 million in cash and no debt on the balance sheet, a sequential increase in cash of approximately $16 million from the first quarter. Our ability to generate cash further differentiates us from many others in the industry and highlights the benefits of our asset-light, data-driven business model. Our strong balance sheet gives us the flexibility to continue investing in our strategic growth priorities while navigating a dynamic environment. Turning to our outlook, for the full year, we expect net sales in the range of $459 million to $462 million. Given our strong second quarter performance and our confidence in the second half, we are raising our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $13 million to $15 million. For gross margin, we expect gross margin to be in a similar range in Q3 as in Q2 and to manage to a mid to high 50s gross margin for the second half of the year, assuming metal prices and tariff rates remain similar to where they've been this week, reflecting the strength of our business model and the extraordinary agility of our team in managing operational levers to drive gross margins. We also continue to expect year-over-year leverage in marketing expense as a percentage of net sales for the full year, as we drive increasing efficiency while continuing to make selective investments to grow the brand. For the third quarter, we expect net sales to be about flat year-over-year. As a reminder, we are comping a very strong third quarter last year, when many consumers accelerated purchases in anticipation of potential tariffs. Our guidance implies a healthy 10% growth on a 2-year stacked basis. We expect adjusted EBITDA of $3 million to $5 million in the third quarter as we continue to focus on driving profitability while making medium and longer-term investments. In closing, our data-driven approach, including our agile price optimization, disciplined expense management, and our asset-light business model positions us well to outperform the industry while delivering profitable growth. This quarter's strong execution highlights our capability to identify and capture opportunities to drive sustainable, profitable growth, and create value for our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Thank you, and we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Oliver Chen from TD Cowen.

Regarding the beat of Q2 of $3 million to $4 million on the EBITDA relative to the full year guidance raise, it looks like it only captures a portion of the beat. Could you speak to what's happening there in terms of that dynamic and/or conservatism? Second follow-up is just how should we think about what's embedded for order growth in the second half, and will you continue to see the below $500 orders outpace? That would be very helpful.

Thanks, Oliver. Maybe I can start on the order growth. We are strategically focused on that $500-plus segment and as a result of the efforts that we've made in both our assortment and the premium experience that we have delivered and continue to hone and enhance. And so we're really pleased to see that $500-plus order growth at 5%. Sub-$500 is just a few percent of our net sales, as we mentioned in the earlier remarks. So I would expect this to continue in terms of the trend just based on the efforts that we have internally, and I think that that's actually reflective of the premium nature of our brand and a positive for the company. So I wouldn't expect anything dramatically different in the second half, but as always, the environment's going to be dynamic to respond as a company as we see changes to the overall environment. So, Jeff, do you want to talk about the first part of Oliver's question?

Yes. So, Oliver, regarding the Q2 performance, we were glad to deliver that outperformance driven by a number of things, including our strong top line, the ability to deliver in terms of the gross margin improvements sequentially that we've talked about, including using things like our dynamic pricing and our thoughtful product design and specifications, vendor procurement efficiencies. So I think we really had a successful look at Q2 gross margins and then also driving that operating expense leverage. And then in terms of our guidance, it actually does include taking the benefit from Q2 as well as an increased outlook in profitability for H2. So we actually have the beat that we had in Q2 and an increased outlook in H2 profitability that is embedded in our guidance. And we're confident as we're going into the second half of the year and feeling good about the initiatives that we have that are firing well.

And I guess 1 more thing to add on the beat is we're really excited to see such strong results. And it really starts on top line and seeing great reception to the brand, really nice resonance there, as well as really strong reception to the new products that we've been introducing.

Okay, very, very helpful. One follow-up on marketing spend as a percentage of sales. What's happening there in terms of the -- it's down a bit. There's probably a great opportunity to invest in marketing, and it may be more competitive during holiday. So how should we model that, and what are you seeing with customer acquisition costs in the marketplace, perhaps?

Maybe I can start with that. We do continue to take a balanced approach to how we invest in brand, and that's obviously very strategic for us to drive both the resonance and the awareness. But we want to balance that across how do we increase our marketing efficiencies. And we think there's continued opportunity on marketing efficiencies. Part of that is just the capabilities that we've developed internally, both in terms of the data capabilities as well as the technology. So we have a full-funnel marketing approach. We're constantly optimizing, and I think the team has done a really great job there in driving the efficiency while still making sure that we are investing appropriately. So it's really a balance there. Obviously, holiday is going to be a different environment and I think the strength of the team is how well we respond and just being able to be very dynamic regardless of what the environment that we're seeing.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from Anna Glaessgen from B. Riley Securities.

I'd like to start on the implied gross margin in the back half. Seems to imply we're inflecting to year-over-year expansion, particularly as we move into the fourth quarter. We'd love to understand a little bit better, or if you could help us dimensionalize the drivers there? Are you embedding any further price increases, and would just love your perspective.

I'd be glad to take that. So we've been working well on our operational levers and just as a reminder, that includes leveraging our price optimization engine, really being thoughtful in dynamically pricing, how we think about product design and specifications, working to capture vendor procurement efficiencies. And I think you really saw the success of those efforts in our Q2 results. And we're glad that even in an environment that remains dynamic and volatile, we're able to deliver those. As you mentioned, as we get into Q4, we will start comping where we saw some of the increases in metal prices last year. And we're glad to be able to continue to have an optimistic outlook in what we can do on the gross margin front. And I think what also stands out is that we're able to do this expansion in gross margin while driving top-line growth that we did in Q2 and expecting overall growth in the second half of the year. And so I think that really speaks to how you can use data thoughtfully and optimize to try and drive as much gross profit dollars as you can. And I think Q2 is a really great example of the success of those efforts.

Great, thanks. That's super helpful, Jeff. And then you shared on the call the stat that I think showroom bookings from customers with an appointment grew over 40%, maybe share -- maybe it speaks to growing consumer awareness of the fine jewelry offering? Maybe it's just having more showrooms and more foot traffic, being aware of the stores. Just how are you driving that and what can we expect from that metric going forward?

Yes, I would say we're really excited to see such strong receptivity in the showrooms, especially to our fine jewelry collections. I think the team has done a great job in terms of visual merchandising, optimizing the inventory we're bringing in. So the operational levers, I think, is done -- they are doing a great job. And I also think just the overall brand resonance, increased brand awareness, a lot of the marketing campaigns that we have been doing, have been resonating really well. So I talked about the Butterfly collection, for example, and that drove really nice interest with the customers inside our showrooms. So it's really, I think, a mix of a lot of the efforts, but as the brand continues to grow and resonate, and as we have these great new innovative product collections coupled with the marketing campaigns that we are using to amplify those collections, I think all of that is attracting more and more interest into the showrooms. And keep in mind, like, this is a Gen Z audience as well as our millennial audience. And Gen Z audience specifically is very interested in experiential retail. And so that's something that we are really proud of, we focus on. We're making the experience very personalized, but really want to differentiate and create a very premium experience for that customer as they want more and more in-person types of experiences. So it's a big strategic focus for us, and I think something that we're doing well on and continue to optimize. And as we think about Q4 and fine jewelry in the showrooms, I think we're really excited about being able to attract that customer, and it gives us confidence in our holiday season.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Beth Gerstein, CEO, for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us on our Q2 call. We were really excited with the results that we have shared with everyone, and we look forward to our next earnings call.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining, and that concludes today's conference call. All participants may now disconnect.