Jason Vieth
Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss Laird Superfood's First Quarter 2026 Financial Results. I'm Jason Vieth, President and Chief Executive Officer. With me today is Anya Hamill, our Chief Financial Officer. We issued our earnings press release and filed our Form 10-Q after market close today, and both are available on our Investor Relations website. The first quarter of 2026 marked a transformative milestone for Laird Superfood. On March 12, we completed the acquisition of Navitas Organics, 1 of the most trusted and established names in the premium organic superfood category. Founded in 2003, Navitas brings high-quality organic superfoods with strong presence across natural and conventional grocery, club and e-commerce channels. We acquired Navitas to expand our product portfolio, broaden our distribution reach and accelerate our strategy of building a scaled positive nutrition platform. Just weeks after quarter end on April 21, we closed the acquisition of Terrasoul Superfoods. Terrasoul is a vertically integrated branded superfoods platform, offering nuts, seeds, dried fruits, powders, baking ingredients and functional beverage mix-ins. It sources globally, processes and packages in-house and distributes through e-commerce, food service and retail channels. This acquisition further expands our product assortment, strengthens our supply chain capabilities and broadens our footprint across multiple channels. Both transactions were funded through our partnership with Nexus Capital Management. The initial $50 million Series A preferred stock issuance in March funded the Navitas acquisition and the subsequent $60 million issuance in April funded the Terrasoul acquisition. These investments not only provided the capital to execute but also brought strategic expertise as we build a larger, more diversified super food company. Following these transactions, Nexus now holds approximately 73.8% of our common stock on a fully diluted as-converted basis, and we are operating as a controlled company under NYSE American rules. Strategically, these moves are about creating a comprehensive superfood platform that can compete more effectively in a rapidly evolving category. Consumers continue to shift toward clean, minimally processed functional foods with recognizable ingredients. By combining Laird's functional coffee solutions and performance focus, Navitas' premium organic superfood leadership, and Terrasoul's vertically integrated ingredient expertise, we are building a differentiated portfolio that spans daily use products, functional beverages and broad superfood ingredients. As we have stated previously, these 2 acquisitions represent just the beginning of our roll-up strategy in the Superfoods and positive nutrition space and we expect to make additional acquisitions in the years to come as we continue to scale the platform. Through these transactions, we have created a much stronger enterprise that is positioned to generate positive EBITDA and cash flow in the future. Given these improvements, we expect to use our balance sheet to attain some combination of debt and equity financing to support those future acquisitions. We are already executing our integration playbook across the 3 businesses. For Navitas, which was with us for the final 19 days of the quarter, we are laser-focused on aligning supply chain finance and commercial operations while also preserving the brand's authentic identity and strong consumer relationships. The early contribution from Navitas in both e-commerce and wholesale channels validates the strategic fit. We have already integrated the Navitas organization into Laird Superfood and I'm pleased to report that we are attaining the expected synergies across the combined organization. Our team is now focused on delivering the COGS, distribution and brokerage savings that we had planned for the second half of this year and beyond. And with Terrasoul now part of the family, we are applying the same disciplined approach, leveraging shared capabilities in sourcing, co-manufacturing optimization and omnichannel distribution to drive efficiencies and accelerate growth. The addition of Terrasoul is particularly meaningful. Its vertical integration provides greater control over quality and cost, while its broad product line in nuts, seeds and powders, complements our existing offerings and opens new doors in foodservice and ingredient channels. At the same time, Terrasoul delivers delayered superfood and enhanced online marketplace capability, which we believe will greatly benefit our entire business in the future. Together, these 2 acquisitions significantly increase our overall scale which we believe will improve our ability to invest in innovation, expand our consumer awareness and distribution footprint and deliver better economics over time. Looking forward, we are confident that this platform positions us to capture a larger share of the growing positive nutrition market. We will continue to focus on driving repeat usage expanding our customer base across both e-commerce and wholesale, optimizing our supply chain and delivering innovative new products that align with consumer demand for functional clean label solutions. With regards to Q1, I am pleased to report that all of our brands achieved growth well in excess of the industry. Anya will share more details in a moment, but I can proudly report that our Q1 company growth was 20% versus last year, driven by the wholesale channel in our Amazon platform and including more than 2 weeks of Navitas Organics post acquisition. Even as we integrate 2 businesses, our supply chain continues to perform remarkably well. And while we had some margin pressure in Q1 related to inventory that was costed at higher commodity prices and with tariffs, we expect that to mitigate as we move forward through the balance of the year since the commodity prices have already come down and tariffs are now removed from our products. And I would be remiss if I did not mention that we are also leveraging AI in a very aggressive fashion and across our entire business. We now have AI supporting our team in forecasting, planning and execution activities across all of our functions, including supply chain, finance and marketing. We are already reaping the benefits of this technology in the organization as we transition the Navitas business to the Laird team with very little incremental headcount. I also want to share that we are making important shifts in our commercial engine. I am pleased to announce that Andy Judd has returned to the company to lead our marketing efforts. Andy was most recently at Poppi where he led the marketing activities as the brand rapidly scaled to more than $500 million in revenue and to an eventual sale to Pepsi. Under Andy's leadership, we will be pivoting more work in-house to drive greater efficiency, creativity and speed to market. This transition will involve some near-term ramp-up investment but we are confident that it will deliver both better ROI and stronger brand storytelling and consumer activation across our portfolio. On the sales side, we are bringing in new leadership to accelerate our wholesale momentum, particularly in conventional grocery and club, where we see substantial runway. We'll be able to share more on that appointment during our next call. While the near term will involve integration costs and complexity, we are energized by the strategic position that we have built and the long-term value creation opportunity ahead for our customers, our team and our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to Anya to provide greater detail on the first quarter financial results. Anya?