Culp, Inc. (CULP) Q4 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day and welcome to the Culp, Inc. Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dru Anderson. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Culp conference call to review the company's results for the fourth quarter and fiscal 2026 year. As we start, let me state that this morning's call will contain forward-looking statements about the business, financial condition, and prospects of the company. Forward-looking statements are statements that include projections, expectations, or beliefs about future events or results, or otherwise are not statements of historical fact. The actual performance of the company could differ materially from that indicated by the forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are described in our regular SEC filings, including the company's most recent filings on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Additional risks and uncertainties that we do not presently know about, or that we currently consider to be immaterial, may also affect our business operations and financial results. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements made today, and each such statement speaks only as of today. We undertake no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements. In addition, during this call, the company will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the tables to the press release, included as an exhibit to the company's Form 8-K, filed yesterday with the SEC, and posted on the company's website at culp.com. An investor relations presentation is also available on the company's website as part of the webcast of today's call. I will now turn the call over to Iv Culp, President and Chief Executive Officer of Culp. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Dru, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today and for your interest in our company. With me on the call is Ken Bowling, our Chief Financial Officer. We would like to first wish everyone an upcoming happy July 4th weekend, and the celebration of our country's 250th birthday. I'll begin the call with some detailed comments and as mentioned in the introduction, we have posted a slide presentation to our website that provides some information that is supplemental to our results and strategies. That slide presentation is simply titled, Fourth Quarter FY26: Supplemental Information. Ken will then review the financial results for the quarter and the full year. After that, I'll briefly review our business outlook as we turn the page to fiscal 2027, and we will finish up with some questions. The main headline for our fourth quarter performance is the momentum we are building in key areas of our business as we closed out the fiscal year and now move into fiscal 2027. We are highly encouraged by our ability to achieve overall sales growth for the fourth quarter, both sequentially and year-over-year, in what remains a difficult macro environment for everyone, competitors, customers, and suppliers alike, in our bedding and upholstery markets. We were also pleased to deliver sequential improvement across several important measures, including gross profit, operating results, and the bottom line. We fully recognize that we have a lot of work ahead of us to reach the level of financial performance we ultimately expect here at Culp. But our progress this quarter clearly demonstrates to us that we are moving in the right direction. We are quite optimistic that fiscal '27 can represent a turning of the corner for Culp. The many initiatives we have undertaken and completed over the last two years to restructure our operating platform, integrate our bedding and upholstery segments, and sharpen the commercial focus throughout our entire business are beginning to produce tangible results. Thanks to the execution of the Culp team and dedicated partners spread amongst the U.S., China, Turkey, Vietnam, and Haiti, we enter the new fiscal year, 2027, encouraged about our performance trends, both above and below the line. Notably, our actions are expected to translate into more than $20 million of annualized savings, efficiencies and other benefits that should meaningfully improve our operating leverage as industry volumes recover and we continue to execute against strategic priorities. We've provided some illustrative detail regarding our sequential improvement and momentum to finish the year on pages 8 and 9 of the supplemental presentation posted on the website, as well as itemized details around the restructuring, integration, and other important milestones we've recently reached. That's on pages 5 through 7 of the presentation. Our bedding business, which is the larger of our two segments, finished the year strong and was an important contributor to the overall progress we saw in the quarter. That business delivered double-digit sales growth and a nearly 40% improvement in gross profit compared with the third quarter, reflecting the host of operational actions we have taken to streamline and add more agility to that business. Even against what remains a challenging industry backdrop, we were able to expand our bedding top line through continued share gains with major customers throughout our target market and by driving innovation across our product categories. Our team's ability to innovate within product design and development is an area where we've always been an industry leader, and our capacity to also follow through with commercial execution to translate innovation into profitable products was especially evident in our sewn mattress cover category during the quarter. We've been able to expand our sewn cover offerings and refine our ability to efficiently manufacture covers within both our offshore and our nearshore platforms in recent periods. By broadening the range of products we provide beyond just knitted fabrics, we are growing our relationships with targeted customers in a meaningful way. We're also increasing our opportunity to capture a better revenue share of the total mattress unit. Put another way, our value-add to each mattress unit is higher with sewn covers, and the more functionality we can provide our customers, the more we can drive higher revenue for Culp, which is an important part of our growth strategy. On page 17 of the supplemental presentation, you'll see a nice summary of some of our more notable product development successes over the years across both of our main segments, and that includes our platform development for sewn mattress covers. I'd like to take a moment to focus on market conditions in bedding given the amount of speculation regarding the prolonged downturn in demand we've all seen in the industry for several years now. We've provided some details on these market trends with some good information published by the International Sleep Products Association on Pages 19 through 21 of the supplemental presentation. You can see there that ISPA, which has a comprehensive data-centric view into market sentiment across the industry, given its advocate role, is currently forecasting that shipments may finally begin to improve some in 2027. We continue to align with the opinion that conditions are ripe for the bedding market to begin a natural replacement cycle. Mattress replacement activity among consumers in the U.S. has remained below normalized levels for an extended period now relative to past purchasing cadences. And like many in our industry, we believe that dynamic should create an opportunity for some pent-up demand to drive market stabilization. While we intend to continue growing our market position in this current challenging industry environment, as we showed with our revenue growth for the quarter, any material escalation in housing activity or consumer spending levels should only add fuel to our growth pace. With a more efficient global operating platform, expanded product portfolio, and greater ability to support customers across multiple price points and manufacturing locations, we believe our bedding business is very well equipped to convert improved market activity into higher sales and profitability. Now I'll turn to our upholstery business, which is experiencing more challenging headwinds at the moment. Like bedding, the upholstery market continued to face a difficult demand environment during the quarter. However, the residential furniture markets, which our upholstery business serves, are even more closely tied to home buying and consumer spending activity. And the hospitality furniture market we supply is heavily dependent on discretionary consumer spending on travel and leisure, all of which have been pressured and have impacted purchasing behavior as of late. In addition, the uncertainty stemming from geopolitical conflicts, including impacts on petrochemical prices, along with tariffs and inflation, have contributed to greater caution among our customers as well as end consumers. We have added some illustrations regarding these housing and consumer spending trends on Pages 22 through 24 of the supplemental presentation. Despite the headwinds from these macroeconomic factors, we were pleased to deliver sequential revenue growth and margin improvement in our upholstery business during the quarter. Additionally, we completed the final steps to integrate domestic operations within our bedding segment. Our U.S. upholstery operations are now fully relocated and integrated within our owned manufacturing in North Carolina that houses our domestic bedding operations. These moves generate some nice efficiencies and productivity gains, and our China upholstery operations are also now running more efficiently through a reduced facility footprint and an enhanced outsourcing model. At the same time, we've added more upholstery capabilities in Vietnam, including a new showroom to facilitate better product exposure with our growing customer base there. The integration of our upholstery business is an important part of our broader effort to streamline our platform, reduce complexity, and create a more flexible and efficient structure. While furniture demand remains below where we would like it to be, the actions we have taken to reduce cost, improve operating discipline, and bolster our Asian presence positions our upholstery business to participate more profitably with consumer spending and the furniture market as that begins to level back up. Additionally, in upholstery, we are continuing to lean into product innovation and re-emphasizing our fashionable line of performance products led by our premier performance brand, LiveSmart. Performance features are becoming table stakes for upholstery fabrics these days, and Culp has a long history and a leadership position in this category. This too is an encouraging and important development as we enhance our market position going forward. Looking at the overall business from a high-level perspective, we completed a lot of heavy lifting across our bedding and our upholstery segments over the last two years. And we move into fiscal '27 as a stronger, focused, and more resilient company with what we believe are significant competitive advantages. The changes we've made to better align our cost structure, go-to-market strategies, pricing, and supply chain capabilities with the realities of the current market and the customer needs are beginning to bear more fruit. Today, we offer customers an optimal menu of supply chain options in the home furnishings market. That includes multiple offshore options with dynamic U.S. and nearshore locations to accommodate programs more dependent on market proximity. This regional diversity is particularly valuable in the current trade environment, where customers are forced to continue to focus on tariff navigation. And we believe our hybrid strategy positions us well to convert any improvement in consumer demand into stronger operating performance. I want to reemphasize that our focus at Culp remains firmly on the areas within our control. While we cannot influence market conditions or consumer spending levels, we can be disciplined in how we execute operationally and manage our costs and our balance sheet. We view the improvement in our sales levels and financial results for the quarter as key success markers in these areas. Moreover, we made terrific progress in our initiative to reduce overall inventory with a $5 million favorable outcome in the quarter that Ken will review in more detail. We remain committed to our ultimate goals of returning the company to profitability independent of any changes in market conditions, while also reducing debt and creating value for our shareholders through sustained profitable growth. As I mentioned, while we're pleased to have completed our planned platform restructuring activities, I want to emphasize that we will not hesitate to make further adjustments to our model in fiscal '27 to achieve our performance goals if circumstances warrant. We have also implemented some new pricing actions across both segments of our business to keep pace with rising raw material costs from petrochemical and other supply chain pressures. Lastly, with respect to debt reduction, we are pleased to report that during the first quarter of fiscal '27, we have received approximately $7 million in IEPA tariff refunds that we were expecting following recent court rulings. These refunds should significantly reduce our debt levels and provide a meaningful benefit to our liquidity and financial flexibility as we move through the new year, as well as help counterbalance some of the elevated tariff expense we incurred in fiscal '26. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Ken.

Thanks, Iv. Here are the financial highlights for the fourth quarter. Net sales were $51.6 million, up 7.6% sequentially from third quarter net sales, and up roughly 6% from the prior year period. Gross profit for the quarter was $6.8 million, or 13.2% of sales, sequentially up 210 basis points and almost 30% from third quarter gross profit, and down from the prior year period gross profit of $7.7 million or 15.7% of sales. Higher sales, efficiency gains, and cost reductions generated from completion of the restructuring and integration initiatives Iv spoke to were the key drivers of the sequential improvement in gross profit. With respect to the year-over-year decline in gross profit, that was driven primarily by a $1.7 million benefit in last year's fourth quarter stemming from a policy change in how we value and reserve for our aged inventory. Notably, this new policy and methodology is working well since the adjustments were made a year or so ago, and we continue to refine our inventory management procedures to focus on turning inventory into cash. The company reported a loss from operations of $1.6 million for the quarter, as compared with a loss from operations of $3.7 million in the previous quarter, and a loss from operations of $2.2 million for the prior year period. Non-GAAP operating loss for the fourth quarter was $1.5 million, which represents a sequential improvement of over 50% from the non-GAAP operating loss of $3.1 million in the third quarter and a decline from the non-operating GAAP loss (sic) [ non-GAAP operating loss ] of $704,000 in the prior year period. This sequential improvement was driven primarily by higher bedding sales and operational gains from our restructuring and integration initiatives, while the year-over-year decline was driven primarily by inventory valuation policy change I previously referenced. Net loss for the fourth quarter was $2.2 million, or $0.18 per diluted share, a 35% sequential improvement from the third quarter net loss of $3.4 million, or $0.27 per diluted share, and a marginal increase from a net loss of $2.1 million, or $0.17 per diluted share in the prior year period. The improvement was driven primarily by higher bedding sales and operational benefits from our restructuring and integration activities. Notably, included in the $2.2 million loss was other expense of $581,000, of which $380,000 related to non-cash foreign exchange charges partially offset by tax-deductible foreign exchange losses related to China, which were included in income tax expense, reducing our income tax payments. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was a negative $560,000, a 74% sequential improvement from adjusted EBITDA of negative $2.2 million in the third quarter, and a year-over-year decline from positive adjusted EBITDA of $511,000 in the prior year period. The sequential improvement was driven primarily by the same factors driving our improvement at the operating line during the quarter, while the inventory valuation policy change materially impacted the year-over-year comparisons for adjusted EBITDA as well as net loss for the quarter. For the full fiscal year, net sales were $203.5 million, down 4.6% compared to the prior fiscal year net sales of $213.2 million. Loss from operations for the full year was $7.2 million, compared with a loss from operations of $18.4 million for the prior fiscal year. Non-GAAP operating loss for the full fiscal year was $8.6 million, a 5% improvement on lower sales from a loss of $9 million in the prior fiscal year. Once again, the improvement was driven primarily by the positive impacts of our restructuring and integration initiatives, including lower fixed costs. Net loss for the full fiscal year was $10.2 million, or $0.81 per diluted share, an approximately 47% improvement from a net loss of $19.1 million, or $1.53 per diluted share in the prior year. Notably, included in the $10.2 million loss was other expense of $1.4 million, of which $1.3 million related to non-cash foreign exchange charges, mostly offset by tax-deductible foreign exchange losses related in China, which were included in income tax expense, reducing our income tax payments. Adjusted EBITDA for the full fiscal year was a negative $4.7 million compared to negative $3.7 million in the prior fiscal year. Our effective income tax rate for the fourth quarter was a negative 2.7% compared with 10.5% for the same period a year ago. The effective income tax rate for the full fiscal year of 2026 was a negative 23.2%, compared with a negative 2.1% for the prior fiscal year. Our effective income tax rate continues to be impacted by the mix of earnings between the U.S. and our foreign subsidiaries, with an operating loss in the U.S., and income in China and Canada taxed at higher rates compared to the U.S. Now, let's take a look at our operating segments. For our bedding segment, sales for the fourth quarter were $30.5 million, up 12.5% compared with last year's fourth quarter. For the full year, sales were $116.6 million, up 2.4% from last year. Bedding gross profit for the quarter was $2.7 million or 8.9% of sales, up 38% sequentially from the third quarter and down from $3.1 million or 11.3% of sales in the prior year period. The sequential improvement was driven primarily by the same factors driving improvement in consolidated gross profit during the quarter, and the year-over-year decline was primarily driven by the inventory valuation policy change I spoke about earlier. The gross profit for the full year was $10.7 million or 9.2% of sales, up almost 35% for the prior fiscal year. The improvement was driven by higher sales as well as our restructuring and integration initiatives. In the upholstery fabrics segment, sales for the fourth quarter were $21.1 million, down 2.5% compared to the prior year period. For the full year, sales were $86.9 million, down from sales of $99.3 million in the last fiscal year. Upholstery gross profit for the quarter was $4.1 million, or 19.5% of sales, an approximately 23% sequential increase from the third quarter, and a decline from $4.7 million or 21.7% of sales in the prior year period. The sequential improvement was driven primarily by the lower fixed costs and other operational improvements. And the year-over-year decline was primarily due to the inventory policy change. Upholstery gross profit for the full year was $15.4 million, or 17.7% of sales, compared with $18.8 million or 18.9% of sales in the prior fiscal year. The decline was driven primarily by lower comparable sales, offset somewhat by operational improvements and lower fixed costs. Now I'll turn to the balance sheet. A key item that I'd like to touch on first is inventory. As Iv indicated, reducing and rationalizing our inventory position has been a key focus area for us. I'm pleased to report that our total inventory dollars as of the end of our fourth quarter were $47.5 million, which is a nice reduction from the total inventory of $52.2 million as of the end of the third quarter, and $49.3 million as of the end of last year's fourth quarter. We look to make more progress in the near term. With respect to net debt, we reported $8.3 million in total cash and $19.1 million in outstanding debt as of the end of this fiscal year, representing a net debt of $10.8 million. Our outstanding debt was primarily incurred to fund worldwide working capital and restructuring actions. Notably, we received the final payment of $4.8 million on the sale of our former facility in Canada during the fourth quarter as scheduled. As we have touched on, we expect to significantly reduce our outstanding debt through our recovery of approximately $7 million in IEPA tariff refunds, all of which were received in the first quarter of fiscal 2027. This is a meaningful source of cash that, subject to our needs for working capital to support growth, we expect to reduce our net debt to as low as approximately $5 million at first quarter end and greatly improve liquidity and balance sheet flexibility. With respect to liquidity, as of the end of fiscal 2026, we had a total of approximately $24.2 million, consisting of $8.3 million in cash and $15.9 million in borrowing availability under our credit facilities. Importantly, the tariff refunds will enhance our liquidity position substantially, but we will continue to strategically utilize borrowings as necessary under both our domestic and foreign credit facilities during fiscal year 2027. Other information. Capital expenditures were $596,000 for the year, down from $2.9 million for the prior fiscal year. This decrease stems from our current relatively narrow spending focus on maintenance items and strategic projects targeting operating efficiency and growth, future growth, with quick payback characteristics. We currently expect capital spending for fiscal 2027 to be in the $2 to $2.5 million range. Based on current expectations, depreciation for fiscal 2027 is expected to be around $3.5 million. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Iv.

Thank you, Ken. As we indicated in our press release, due to continuing macroeconomic uncertainty, a fluid global trade and tariff environment and related matters we continue to see, we are providing only limited forward guidance at this time. As Ken touched on, our outstanding debt is expected to significantly decline, with our recent recovery of approximately $7 million in previously paid IEPA tariffs, and for our liquidity and balance sheet flexibility to improve accordingly. At the top line, we expect consolidated sales for the first quarter of fiscal '27 to moderately improve, both sequentially and year-over-year, despite what we believe will remain a difficult demand environment for home furnishings. And finally, we expect the cost and efficiency benefits of our restructuring and integration initiatives to drive improving gross profit and lower SG&A expenses, and result in break-even to positive adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of fiscal year '27, even without the tariff refunds. We expect our receipt of the $7 million in tariff refunds to, of course, serve to enhance our profitability in the first quarter. With that, we will now take some questions.

The first question today comes from Doug Lane with Water Tower Research. We seem to be having some connection issues with Doug. The next question comes from Mike McCormack of Water Tower Research.

Just a few questions. Starting on the top line, we're seeing a revenue mix shift, obviously, towards bedding. Can you guys give us a sense for what the guidance anticipates in that revenue mix shift as we go through fiscal 2027? And then just a couple more sort of unpacking the segments, the upholstery segment being up sequentially, is there seasonality in that? And then on bedding, are you seeing consistent momentum there, or any sort of flattening out of the trends?

Yes, thank you, Mike, and good to hear from you. Appreciate you dialing in. Good questions. You know, we did guide a moderate consolidated increase in revenue for the first quarter. And that's sequential and year-over-year. We're really enthused about that in the challenging market that we're facing. We believe in both businesses. We're gaining share with targeted customers, we're innovating product very well, and just the potential seems good to us even in this pressured environment. I think we should see consistent momentum, as we have been seeing in our previous fourth quarter, with bedding having a little more upside short-term than upholstery only because I just feel like our competitive position is a touch stronger currently in bedding and that market is slightly less impacted than the current macroeconomic pressures. Housing has more pressure on our upholstery side. Encouraged about both. I don't want to leave anyone thinking we're not encouraged about both, but I think we should see the same type of sequential growth, higher numbers in bedding and maybe slower in upholstery for the short term. But growth in both.

Right. I guess moving on to the gross profit margins, we're seeing a significant difference in the segments area there. Part of that, I guess, would be because you're leaning into bedding, probably spending a bit more there. But any other differences as we think about those gross margins between the two segments?

Yes, another good question. Let's think about that this way. We've been on a 2-year restructuring journey. While this last previous year has been focused on putting domestic upholstery options inside of our domestic bedding operations and streamlining the businesses together, 2025 was a full mattress fabric reorganization with the closure of a major platform in Canada. So that was a very significant change. There's been a lot of inventory noise in the business. And we have gross margins spread, to your point. Upholstery gross margins have been fantastic. Bedding margins are improving. We're proud of that, but they're not where they need to be. And we think in '27, we can continue to move the bedding margin up. There's no reason we can't get that higher. I'm not going to guide it all the way to upholstery margins today. They're different models. Upholstery is a very asset-light business. Our mattress business, we have a very significant domestic operation and a nearshore operation that we operate, so margins can be a bit of a spread, but we should expect bedding margins to increase in fiscal '27.

Okay. And it looks like you're on a run rate to get about $22.5 million of cost savings as we look out through 2027. The 2027 savings, I guess, only right now are coming from pricing actions. And you mentioned it on the call earlier in your prepared remarks, but I presume there are potentially some additional expense savings as well.

Yes, I mean, I think everything we've listed in the supplemental deck and that we talk about when we quote the $22 million or more than $20 million includes annualized cost savings, restructuring actions, SG&A work, and pricing action that we've taken. So it's savings and benefits. And yes, look, we will continue to do more. It's a two-sided thing. If there's revenue growth, we don't have to add any cost to capture that revenue. So any growth drops to our bottom line at an increased pace. But if we don't see the business growing, then we'll have to take more actions, whether that be further cost reduction or pricing action or whatever it may be. We understand that we have to continue moving overall margins up and ultimately to profitability for the business.

Yes, I would say you've got some pretty good operating levers there based on the recent cost reductions. I guess just last question for me, and I don't know how far you want to unpack this, or Ken wants to unpack it, but the tariff refunds you're going to get to pay down debt. How should we think about the impact on interest expense?

Well, Mike, obviously the higher interest expense is in the U.S. So we're going to focus on that debt first. We've talked about, in China, we've at times strategically borrowed kind of more than we needed just because of the fact that we can almost pay for the interest expense through interest income. But that said, the higher interest rate is in the U.S. We'll focus there first, and that will significantly reduce our interest expense going forward.

Great. Thank you, guys, and great to see the revenue momentum here.

Mike, I might add just one comment. Ken said that very well. He said it. I just want to make sure everyone picked up on it. In some cases, we have taken on some borrowings in China that we may not necessarily need, but it feels very strategically smart to us that if it's offered to take it, it's at very low rates. It gives a lot of flexibility as we enhance our Asian platform. And as we just think about how tumultuous the market has been with tariffs and Vietnam moves and where we're going to operate, it's nice to have that flexibility. It's very low rate. So Ken is right on point. We will focus on the higher cost, secure debt first in the U.S., and probably keep some borrowings on our books that we may not need, just to give us flexibility. It seems smart to us.

Exactly. It's a good strategy. I appreciate the added color there.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator. And again, thank you to everyone for your participation and your interest in Culp. Again, we wish you a happy July 4th weekend, and we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.