Earnings Labs

Clarus Corporation (CLAR)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 7, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Clarus Corporation's financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2025. Joining us today are Clarus Corporation's Executive Chairman, Warren Kanders; CFO; Mike Yates; President of Diamond Equipment, Neil Fiske; and the company's External Director of Investor Relations, Matt Berkowitz. Following the remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Berkowitz as he reads the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. Matt, please go ahead.

Matthew Berkowitz

Management

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, we will be making several forward-looking statements, and we will make these statements under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements reflect our best estimates and assumptions based on our understanding of information known to us today. These forward-looking statements are subject to potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results of operations or financial condition of Clarus Corporation to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. More information on potential factors that could affect the company's operating and financial results is included from time to time in the company's public reports filed with the SEC. I'd like to remind everyone this call will be available for replay starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time tonight. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release as well as on the company's website at claruscorp.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Clarus' Executive Chairman, Warren Kanders.

Warren Kanders

Management

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Clarus' earnings call to review our results for the third quarter of 2025. I am joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Yates, who will cover our third quarter results, including Adventure segment performance as well as Neil Fiske, who will discuss our Outdoor segment. During the third quarter, despite a difficult global consumer market, we made progress executing against our strategic plan. Our quarterly results reflected incremental financial improvement as we continue to reshape our organizational structure, product offering and go-to-market approach while also balancing the real-time evolution of global demand trends and consumer sentiment. Clarus generated net sales of $69.3 million, in line with our expectations, which was a 3% increase over the same period last year and quarterly adjusted EBITDA increase of 15%. Mike and Neil will detail the segment figures, but at a high level, these increases were driven by strong outdoor demand in North American wholesale, our largest channel, and success with the new adventure customer in Australia and sales from RockyMounts. A key highlight in the Outdoor segment has been the success of the revamped Black Diamond apparel line, which saw sales growth of 29%. Apparel is critical to our growth strategy, and we continue to be encouraged by positive signs that our new approach to apparel and enhanced creative direction is resonating with customers in both the retail and direct-to-consumer channels. Neil and his team have done an outstanding job prioritizing our best customers and our most profitable products and styles, evident in the stronger quality of revenue. Full-price product sales increased, sales from discontinued merchandise declined significantly, and the highest margin A styles represent approximately 70% of our inventory, which is a figure that has continued to trend upward in recent quarters. Now turning…

McNeil Fiske

Management

Thanks, Warren. Turning to Slide 6, I will review the Outdoor segment's Q3 performance and our expectations for the remainder of 2025. Overall, we delivered solid results for Q3 in the face of stiff macro trade and consumer headwinds. I'm pleased with our continued progress, the strengthening of the Black Diamond brand and reshaping of the business to be more focused, more profitable and more competitive. Revenue, gross margin and EBITDA were all up for the third quarter compared to prior year's third quarter, excluding PIEPS. Costs were down and inventories ended the period in great shape. As with my last update, I'll address tariffs and currencies at the top of my remarks. My remarks exclude the PIEPS brand, which we divested on July 11, 2025, in the year-over-year comparisons. First, tariffs. In early May, we initiated the first phase of our tariff mitigation plan, which included raising prices, negotiating vendor concessions, airfreighting products where necessary and accelerating our exit out of China. On our last call, we estimated that in 2025, we could offset roughly half of the tariffs that were in place at the time, which included 50% on steel and aluminum, 54% on China and a 10% reciprocal tariff on most other countries. Since then, reciprocal tariffs have increased from the original 10% to a range of 20% to 35% or more. We estimate the unrecovered impact of tariffs on EBITDA will be $2.5 million to $3.5 million in 2025. With the second round of tariff mitigation actions going into effect in 2026, we expect to offset about 70% of the annualized tariff impact next year or approximately $7.8 million out of the $11 million in tariffs, leaving us again with approximately $3.2 million in unrecovered tariffs. We believe that $3.2 million represents the downside as we…

Michael J. Yates

Management

Thanks, Neil, and good afternoon, everyone. On today's call, I'll provide a brief comments on the Adventure segment and we'll then conclude with a summary of the third quarter financial results followed by the Q&A session. Let's take a closer look at Adventure. Our team delivered 15.9% year-over-year growth versus the third quarter of last year. Excluding the RockyMounts acquisition, organic growth was 7.4%, which is a solid step forward. Consistent with our strategic focus on expanding our customer base, a strong pipeline filled with a new Rhino-Rack customer in Australia drove much of the growth, which was partially offset by declines in the recovery product line. Adventure's adjusted EBITDA came in at $349,000, which is about $100,000 ahead of last year. Gross margin at Adventure continues to be pressured, mainly due to additional tariffs in the U.S., inventory clearouts and cost of freight to customers. We made price adjustments to the RockyMounts line in the U.S. at the end of the third quarter, which will help offset the tariff impact and protect our gross profit dollars moving forward. In Australia, we haven't done a good job capturing price on an annual basis. The lack of price capture has meaningfully contributed to margin erosion, and we are implementing an updated pricing strategy for ANZ that will be one of our near-term actions to recover profitability. With that said, we do expect gross margin percentages to stay below historical levels as these changes work through our P&L. On a more positive note, we reduced SG&A by $600,000 versus third quarter of last year. That improvement came from the reorganizations we've completed in November of 2024 and July of 2025 as well as tighter control over travel, marketing and event spending. As Warren noted, on an annualized basis, we have taken out…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Laurent Vasilescu with BNP Paribas.

William Dossett

Analyst

This is William Dossett on for Laurent. So my first question was just parsing out the Outdoor segment sales, they were flat in the quarter, but Black Diamond apparel was up 29%. And so can you just parse out what was the offset to the Black Diamond strength?

Michael J. Yates

Management

Well, I'll let Neil expand too, but this -- PIEPS was essentially 0 in the quarter. So that's a year-over-year a headwind. The real challenge, and I think Neil covered in his remarks, was the D2C business. The North American D2C business was down 16.5% and the European D2C business was also down 16%. So the short answer is no PIEPS, D2C was weak across the globe and that offset the North American wholesale strength. And the apparel business is part of the North American wholesale, that's where we capture that as part of the wholesale business.

William Dossett

Analyst

Okay. I appreciate that. And congrats on the success of Black Diamond. And my other question would be on just how your retail partners are ordering for the spring of 2026 in the Outdoor segment. How much more conservative are they going to be in this backdrop? And as well while we're looking forward, just wanted to get any thoughts that you had on the holiday this year. I appreciate it.

Michael J. Yates

Management

Well, I would I can start with that. I think the holiday is always kind of a little bit of an unknown, right? The coming net...

Warren Kanders

Management

Mike, why don't you let Neil answer that question?

Michael J. Yates

Management

Yes, sure.

McNeil Fiske

Management

Yes. Let me -- on the first question, William, regarding spring, our order books look pretty good for spring and certainly reflects some caution on the part of our retail partners. But we -- our order book is up. And of course, ultimately, it comes down to how much of that sticks. But I think the indications are quite positive. And we feel like we have really good momentum in the wholesale channel, both with our big national accounts, REI and MEC as well as Amazon and real strength in specialty. So I think looking ahead to spring, we feel as good as we can in this environment about the strength of the wholesale channel. And so that's part one. Regarding the fourth quarter, I think that we're just cautious. And as Mike said, it's too early to tell. We do see the environment being more promotional. We see retailers being cautious and not wanting to take on too much inventory. But I would say 90% of the game is still to be played in the fourth quarter. So we're cautious. I think it's prudent to be cautious in this environment, but it's really hard to find a trend line at this point for Q4.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mike Yates for closing remarks.

Michael J. Yates

Management

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. I want to thank everyone for attending the call this afternoon, and your continued support and interest in Clarus. We look forward to updating you on our results again next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day. Bye.