Edible Garden AG Incorporated (EDBL) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Edible Garden Incorporated 2026 Second Quarter Business Update Conference. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ted Ayvas, Investor Relations at Crescendo Communications. Ted, the floor is yours.

Thanks, Jenny. Good morning, and thank you for joining Edible Garden's 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Business Update. On the call with us today are Jim Kras, Chief Executive Officer of Edible Garden; and Kostas Dafoulas, Interim Chief Financial Officer of Edible Garden. Earlier today, the company announced its operating results for the 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2026. The press release is posted on the company's website, www.ediblegardenag.com. In addition, the company has filed its quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which can also be accessed on the company's website as well as the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. If you have any questions after the call, would like any additional information about the company, please contact Crescendo Communications at (212) 671-1020. Before Mr. Kras reviews the company's operating results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and provides a business update, we would like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this conference call, including statements regarding our future results of operations and financial position, strategy and plans and our expectations for future operations are forward-looking statements. The words aim, anticipate, believe, could, expect, may, plan, project, strategy, will and the negative of such terms and other words and terms of similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the company's current expectations and projections about future events and trends that it believes may affect its financial condition, results of operations, strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to several risks, uncertainties and assumptions as described in the company's filings with the SEC, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. Because of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in the conference call may not occur, and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance or achievements. In addition, neither the company nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any duty to update any of these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. All forward-looking statements attributable to the company are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements as well as others made on this conference call. You should evaluate all forward-looking statements made by the company in the context of these risks and uncertainties. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jim Kras, Chief Executive Officer of Edible Garden. Jim?

Thanks, Ted, and good morning, everyone. The second quarter was another period of solid progress for Edible Garden. Revenue grew 12.8% year-over-year to $3.6 million, while total sales increased by more than 31%. What was particularly encouraging was the breadth of that growth. Cut herb sales increased more than 42%, driven by continued growth with existing customers and newer programs with major retailers, including Kroger, Target and Weis. We saw growth across potted herbs, international vitamins and condiments as well, while expanding our relationships with retailers, including Target, Walmart, Wakefern, ShopRite and the Fresh Market. In addition, we extended a multiyear private label contract with a major Midwest retailer. More recently, we were awarded fresh-cut herb distribution through a key Target Midwest distribution center, further expanding that relationship and broadening distribution of our premium fresh cut herb portfolio across the region. We believe the award demonstrates our ability to leverage our Midwest production and distribution infrastructure to efficiently support additional volume as our retail programs expand. Overall, we see a core business that continues to gain traction across customers, products and channels. Improving the underlying economics of the business remains an important priority. In Metro North, for example -- in Metro New York, for example, we are transitioning more volume from direct store deliveries to retail distribution centers and regional logistics hubs. We believe this can reduce transportation and delivery-related costs, simplify the network and create better operating leverage as we grow. At the same time, the retail relationships, distribution capabilities and infrastructure we have built through our core business gives us a foundation that can be leveraged well beyond traditional produce. That brings me to what we believe is the most significant long-term growth opportunity in front of Edible Garden, our Farm-to-Formula strategy and the development of the ready-to-drink RTD manufacturing platform at Prairie Hills in Webster City, Iowa. We believe this has the potential to fundamentally change the scale and profile of our business over time, and we made significant progress during the second quarter. Most notably, we successfully completed prototype production at Tetra Pak's new product development center. This is much more than a product development exercise that allowed us to run our proprietary clean label formulations under commercial processing conditions, generate production data, further optimize the products and advance our preparation for customer sales and commercial manufacturing. In parallel, we continued moving forward with the physical development of Prairie Hills forward with Structura Architects and E2 Building Group supporting the design, engineering and construction process. Together, these milestones represent meaningful progress towards a scalable commercial manufacturing platform we envision. The reason why we are so focused on this opportunity is the potential scale. Prairie Hills is being developed as a flexible, high-capacity platform for shelf-stable, clean label nutritional beverages utilizing advanced Tetra Pak processing and packaging technologies. At full production, we expect the facility to have capacity to manufacture more than 100 million beverage units annually, providing the potential to participate across sports nutrition, protein beverages, functional wellness, meal replacement, GLP-1 support and other better-for-you categories. Importantly, the platform is being developed to drive our own brands as well as private label and co-manufacturing opportunities, giving us multiple potential paths to build volume and create value from the facility. What makes this opportunity particularly compelling is that we are not starting from scratch. Our products are already available in more than 6,000 retail locations and growing. We've spent years developing relationships with national and regional retailers along with food safety, supply chain and -- commercialization and retail execution capabilities needed to serve them. Combining that existing commercial infrastructure with scalable domestic RTD manufacturing has the potential to significantly expand our addressable market, diversify our revenue base and over time, improve the earnings profiles of the business. That is really what Farm-to-Formula is about. We started with controlled environment agriculture and fresh produce, expanded into higher-value branded nutrition and functional foods. And now Prairie Hills gives us the opportunity to take another significant step into shelf-stable, clean label nutrition. We view Prairie Hills as much more than a new manufacturing facility. We believe it has the potential to become an important growth engine for Edible Garden and a key part of our evolution into a broader clean label food and nutrition platform. Our focus remains on execution, growing the core business, improving operating efficiency and advancing Prairie Hills towards commercial production and developing the branded and private label opportunities that can ultimately utilize that capacity. We believe the pieces are increasingly coming together, and we're excited about the direction of the business and the opportunity ahead. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kostas to review the financials. Kostas?

Thanks, Jim, and good afternoon -- good morning, everyone. Revenue for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, increased 12.8% to approximately $3.6 million compared with approximately $3.1 million in the prior year period. The increase was driven by continued growth in our cut herb and potted portfolio, which increased approximately $0.5 million or 50% year-over-year. Revenue growth was supported by underlying volume gains concentrated in select categories with total gross sales increasing [ 7.6% ] year-over-year. While cut herbs and condiments drove the growth, our financial focus is on converting that higher volume and revenue into improved operating performance as we continue to scale the business. Gross profit for the quarter was approximately $0.6 million, essentially flat with the prior year period. While we continue to generate top line growth, cost of goods sold remained elevated and improving profitability of that growth remains an important focus for us. One of the more meaningful improvements during the quarter was in selling, general and administrative expenses. SG&A declined approximately $0.9 million or 21.5% to $3.1 million, compared with approximately $4 million in the second quarter of last year. We believe this reflects a continued focus across the organization on managing expenses and improving operating efficiency as we scale the business. Net loss improved year-over-year to approximately $3.3 million from approximately $4 million in the second quarter of 2025. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. Total debt increased approximately $14.2 million from approximately [ $1.9 million ] at year-end, reflecting $13.5 million of new financing this quarter related to our initial investment in the Prairie Hills manufacturing facility in Iowa. Cash and restricted cash together were approximately $10.7 million at June 30, 2026, though approximately $10 million of that was held in a restricted account for the Iowa facility, leaving approximately $0.7 million of cash available for operations compared with approximately $1.1 million of unrestricted cash at year-end. Total assets were approximately $27.7 million compared with approximately $20.6 million at December 31, 2025, and total liabilities were approximately $22.1 million. We continue to focus on strengthening our capital position as we fund the business and invest in Prairie Hills. Operating cash flow was positive for the second consecutive quarter with net cash provided by operating activities of approximately $0.9 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, compared with cash used in operations of approximately $6.8 million in the prior year period. As we look ahead, our financial priorities remain closely aligned with the operating strategy Jim discussed. We are focused on continuing to grow revenue [indiscernible] opportunities we believe can generate the greatest long-term returns. At the same time, we are continuing to invest in the development of Prairie Hills and the RTD platform. As we make those investments, we intend to remain disciplined in how we deploy capital and balance the requirements of the existing business with the opportunity we see in building a scalable domestic clean label beverage manufacturing platform. We believe the combination of continued revenue growth, a more efficient operating structure and disciplined investment in higher-value growth opportunities provides a path towards improving the financial profile of Edible Garden over time. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Nick Sherwood of Maxim Group.

My first question is about the new expansion and the new Target expanded distribution. Can you kind of contextualize what that distribution was before and how big of a win or a gain this new distribution is?

Nick, yes, it's significant. We've had a long-standing relationship with Target, and we've made quite a bit of investment in -- just in the relationship and being able to be positioned for this type of opportunity. And there's been market conditions. I think obviously, some produce suppliers, not us. We're very fortunate. We're in controlled environment agriculture, which means we control how we grow and we have incredible safety -- food safety processes in place. With that said, this is one of their largest, if not one of their largest, pretty close. They just opened up a new fresh distribution center since they've been growing this part of their business, Target. So -- but this has been the long-standing largest. And so we had picked up some business earlier in the year, this year. And then this based on performance and market conditions, there's just a lot of consolidation in CEA right now with major -- some of our major competitors basically going out of business. We're a trusted supplier with best-in-class fill rates and on-time rates. And so with the changes, the concerns, some of the instability in the business, Target reached out and wanted us to be able to pick this up for them because they wanted to know that they would hopefully have a partner where they wouldn't have anything to worry about. And so for us, it's very significant since it's in Iowa, helps align with our facilities out there as well as the fact that they're based in Minnesota, which isn't that far from Iowa. And thus, like I said, this is really kind of central to their business, and we're very fortunate and happy to have gotten this opportunity. And like I said, there's quite a bit of consolidation. We have put out a press release, I think it was maybe even a week or two ago that just talked about the fact that my phone has been ringing off the hook with people trying to align with Edible Garden since my team does such a great job of execution, and it's always been the key for us. So yes, it's pretty significant. But any other specifics on that, Nick, that I can answer. I hope that helps.

No, yes, I think that's a perfect explanation for what I was thinking about. And kind of one thing that you mentioned in that answer was some of this consolidation that's kind of going on in the industry. Can you kind of give us a little bit of an insight on maybe how that may have accelerated in the past year and kind of what it's looking like through the end of the year and kind of the opportunity that might still remain available to Edible Garden in addition to this Target distribution expansion?

Well, yes, there's been quite a bit of consolidation, and I think it's really driven by where people put their investment dollars and the fact that Edible Garden had put an investment in their distribution platform and the relationships. And so there's going to be issues in these types of business, whether there's supply chain issues or whatnot. There's always just issues. And I think what's happened is that our competitors put a lot of money into technology, a lot of money in trying to talk more about yield per square foot than really going out securing the relationships in parallel, making investments like we have in the customer -- the customer experience. Yes, we have technology with GreenThumb and it's patented and it helps with our supply chain efficiency, all those great things. We -- when we bought the greenhouse in Michigan, we did a retrofit versus doing a greenfield project. Just things like that, that have kept the business -- and you could see it in our numbers this quarter, just tighter and tighter and tighter as we've continued to drive the business, the delivery part of the business, as I like to say, the on time and in full in-stock rates. And so all of that has really just led to us being positioned to really pick up the ball when it's been dropped by our competitors. And I think this sort of build it and they will come attitude in this category, specifically has not worked out well because you really -- it's really ultimately about people buying your products and making sure that, that loop gets completed. And I think that's just somewhere where we've really done a nice job. I think Kostas has brought a discipline to the business that's allowed us to really focus on cleaning up SG&A and doing some things just to be more and more efficient. We're still in serious growth mode. Obviously, with the Iowa facility, that's going to really take the company to the next level, excited about that. But I think most importantly here, I think we've earned our stripes to be where we are and are people calling us because they just don't -- they don't want a headache. They want people who are going to service their business, and that's something that my team has been really focused on. And so I think it's paid off.

Yes. I mean it sounds like there's definitely a continued opportunity there. And then kind of switching gears, this Tetra Pak opportunity, it really is one of the key opportunities that it seems like for your company going forward. Can you kind of just give us some insight on is that timeline still intact on building out the facility? Any specific insights into the completion of the prototype production at Tetra Pak's new product development center? And just kind of tell us what do you still need to bring in or to do to make sure that everything remains on schedule for this?

Well, first of all, we're still on track, and we're looking at the tail end of 2027 to see the first bottle come off the line. We have, once again, having the reputation that we have for our service levels, our execution., We've got presold commitments for 100% of the facility, which is just unheard of, which tells you an idea of what the demand is there. It's -- we have a nice blend of our brand as well as private label. We knew there was a shortfall in the industry. Protein is hot. It continues to stay hot, continues to grow. We continue to innovate as well. Obviously, kind of building that bridge from farm to formula is a big thrust for us to harness and really add another dimension to what we do in the greenhouse. So we're really excited about that. And there's a lot of things on the horizon here that are just -- I think are going to be just tremendous. But we're on track. We are going to be starting with a co-manufacturer this year, at the end of Q4 to allow us to kind of continue to prove out the formulas to allow us to go to market quickly and see the revenue from that and not have to wait over a year to really capture some of this pent-up demand for these type of products. So it's -- Tetra Pak has been just an unbelievable partner. They're just such a great company. And consider us fortunate to continue to work with them. The development process at their state-of-the-art facility in Denton, Texas was just phenomenal. And we have some real significant players on our team that have been working with Tetra Pak for decades that came on to Edible Garden, Dr. Chuck Sizer is one of them. He helped develop the majority of the patents for Tetra Pak on some of their packaging. He's on our team and advises us and was there on the run to develop the product. But great tasting, clean labeled product that right now is just really exciting to be able to work with. So it's really pretty tremendous. And to be able to leverage off a growing core business, I think just really continues to uniquely position us for the type of growth. I think this is going to be a much different company as we head into Q4 next year and especially in 2028 as we're pumping out product out of Iowa, and we're really focused on driving that business. So yes, it's really exciting. It's going really well. But honestly, we just have a great team and people are excited about what we're doing between our Zero-Waste Inspired mission and trying to cut out waste and have an eye on recyclable packaging. Tetra Pak obviously plays into that to this formula notion that I think is quite novel that I think will continue to shake up the industry and get us positioned properly with not only our own brands like Kick, which we'll be launching in Q4 but also a lot of the development work that we're doing with major retailers on this product. So once again, really exciting. And I think what we've done and how the team is executing and where we focus our time and energy and just sticking to our knitting and getting to where we are, it's been challenging, but I mean, that's part of business. And I think everybody that I work with wants to compete and hopefully continue the wins that we have going on, whether it's in the herbs, whether it's in pickles with the Safeway win this past year and Woodman's, whether it's continued growing Pulp with Wakefern this year and some other retailers or just the RTDs, which I think is just going to be just incredibly awesome to be quite frank.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from [ Nicole Kaufman of Blackridge Capital. ]

Congratulations on the quarter results. Jim, you've talked about the significant opportunity you see at Prairie Hills and the ability to support both Edible Garden brands and private label and co-manufacturing customers. Can you talk about the level of interest you're seeing from potential customers and how those discussions are progressing?

Well, the interest has been just phenomenal. I mean that's really why we did this was because retailers were coming to us and saying, hey, you guys are an innovative group. You're in a really challenging category. You've done a great job servicing our business. We want more of what you're doing. Have you thought about doing this and taking what it is that you grow and potentially put it into a beverage, helping us with our current milk and whey-based products, can you do something there? I've got years of experience working at companies like Nature's Bounty and Ajinomoto. So that always gave me some credibility that I could figure this out with the team. And -- but really, what's happened is I think it's been, once again, a real collective effort, leveraging from a very advantageous position where people are coming to us. It doesn't happen that way in this industry. I said to somebody, it's been a long time since I've been managing where am I going to put my time and how do I prioritize who we work with based on opportunity and collective vision versus just trying to sell more widgets. So once again, I mean, major retailers, everyone from the major retailers that we currently deal with to even new people who are coming that we haven't necessarily worked with before on the fresh side saying, hey, can you do this for us? Look, private label continues to grow. There's a place for both. And it's very -- it's underserved, the private label part of it for a multitude of reasons. There's just not enough capacity out in the marketplace. There's not -- there just isn't -- there's just -- there's a pent-up demand, especially on private label. If you go into most of the grocery stores, you won't see a private label RTD. There's reasons for that. A lot of it is just capacity. And so we're going to solve that problem, to solve with some of the major retailers. Like I said, we've got commitments on -- pretty much on the whole factory. And so right now, we're just focused on executing and getting it up and running. And then as there will be other opportunities, we'll continue to do that. And we're also -- we're seeing the ability to start to get some pricing power here on the herbs, which hopefully will lead to the RTDs as there's -- once again, it's like consolidation on the herbs and not many companies who do what we do and do it as well as we do. So that obviously retailers will pay a little bit more now. And then because they want -- they don't -- they want some of the problems to go away and they want product. And if they don't have product on the shelves, they lose that sale. So we help take some of that risk away from them. And then on the RTDs, it's once again, I think we'll continue to capture that void of volume, and I think that will help us across the board, whether it's just driving top line or being able to price accordingly so that everybody sort of wins.

Well, that's great. I guess this kind of leads into my next question is that you guys delivered double-digit revenue growth this quarter and your SG&A significantly declined year-over-year. So what we are you seeing as the biggest opportunities that would translate into the continued revenue growth and improved profitability and operating leverage?

Well, look, I think it's kind of the conventional wisdom that many of our costs will stay relatively static as we put more volume into the existing greenhouses. We're not building any more greenhouses. Currently, we've got 2 greenhouses. We can continue to not only drive our signature potted product and expand that, but also continue to drive more fresh cut herbs, which are not necessarily contingent on how much growing space we have. And so I continue to see that revenue line continuing to go forward in that core business as well. And look, we'll make some investments in -- obviously, in Iowa, but we have a lot of people already that can do a lot of things and work across the whole platform. And so we're going to see some good gains on revenue. We'll see some incremental staffing that will be strategic that will be probably more focused on the Tetra Pak facility more than anything else. And some of that information will be forthcoming. But for me, I think it's like let's continue to grow the top line. We're streamlining costs really on the greenhouse business, and there's still some more work to do Kostas and his team have done a very nice job, I think, of that especially this last quarter of focusing on the SG&A. We're working to procure better on some of the things that -- some of the suppliers that we use. As we continue to be consistent with our orders, it allows us to negotiate better terms and with our suppliers. And a lot of that -- I probably don't speak enough about that. I think we've been -- I know that we've been doing this for over a decade, and we've got some really good suppliers that partner with us, and they're happy. Our business is growing. They're happy. They're obviously making money with us. And so as we scale, they're scaling and our costs go down as we get scale. I mean that's always right, the idea around economies of scale, and we're starting to see that pick some of that up and help limit our costs and be more efficient in what we're doing. So revenue will continue to climb here with costs being minimized and relatively static, some key strategic investments in people, which I think is our most important asset. And then from there, we'll continue to do what we need to do to capture the opportunities and make the investments in the relationships or branding or anything else that we feel is warranted to make sure that we continue in the current trajectory.

Well, we have no further questions in the queue at this time. I will now hand back over to Jim for closing comments.

Thank you. Before we conclude, I want to leave you with a few thoughts. We came into 2026 focused on strengthening our core business while continuing to build the foundation for Edible Garden's next phase of growth. Through the first half of the year, we believe we made meaningful progress on both fronts. Our core business continues to grow, supported by expanding relationships with leading retailers, broader growth across our product portfolio and we -- continued efforts to improve operating efficiency. We believe that business provides an increasingly strong commercial foundation for where we want to take Edible Garden next. At the same time, we are making tangible progress with Farm-to-Formula and Prairie Hills. The work completed with Tetra Pak, along with the continued development of Prairie Hills facility brings us closer to our goal of building a scalable domestic RTD manufacturing platform capable of supporting both our own brands and private label opportunities. We believe Prairie Hills has the potential to significantly expand the scale and reach of Edible Garden while we combine that opportunity with retail relationships, distribution network and operating capabilities we have already built. We believe we have the foundation to evolve Edible Garden into a much broader clean label food and nutrition company. There's a lot of work ahead, and our focus remains on execution, but we are encouraged by the progress we are making and excited about the opportunity in front of us. Thank you to our employees, customers, retail partners and shareholders for your continued support. We look forward to updating you on our progress. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you very much. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.