RideNow Group, Inc. (RDNW) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the RideNow Group, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. This call is being recorded on Monday, March 9, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jerene Makia, VP of Finance. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for RideNow's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are Michael Quartieri, RideNow's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President; and Josh Barsetti, RideNow's Chief Financial Officer. Our Q4 and full year results are detailed in the press release issued this afternoon and supplemental information will be available in our Form 10-K once filed. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that comments made by management during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, RideNow's market opportunities and future financial results. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could affect RideNow's actual results and cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of RideNow. A discussion of material risks and important factors that could affect our results can be found in our filings with the SEC, which are available on our Investor Relations website and at sec.gov. This conference call also contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast. Monday, March 9, 2026. RideNow assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as required by law. Also, the following discussion contains non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. Now I'll turn the call over to Michael Quartieri.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for RideNow's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Well, what a difference a year makes. Over this past year, we've made tremendous progress in our turnaround and we are only scratching the surface of our full potential. You've heard me state on every call a common theme of remaining laser focused on improving what we can control within the four walls of our business getting the right people in the right place at the right time, doing the right actions. Focusing on execution and continuous improvement across all aspects of our operations, across the stores and our back office support center is driving the momentum in our results. This momentum has been building in our business throughout the year. In Q2, we generated year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA. In Q3 and now again in Q4, we delivered year-over-year improvement in gross profit and adjusted EBITDA. All of this was achieved despite the nearly complete loss of our transportation business, Wholesale Express. Effective as of the end of December, we've shut down all operations at Wholesale Express to focus all of our attention and effort on the powersports segment. We expect this momentum to continue in Q1 as the macro environment continues to improve, which will help position us for a potential refinancing of our term loan in the near future. Our year-over-year improvement in our top line metrics in powersports, coupled with a maniacal focus on driving waste out of our operations led to $9.7 million in adjusted EBITDA for Q4, a year-over-year improvement of over $7.5 million. Our tactical plan balanced on near-term initiatives to improve financial performance and structural changes to reset the strategic direction of the company is continuing to drive long-term value creation for our shareholders. The near-term initiatives of getting the right leadership in place, reevaluating the cost structure and reinstalling a disciplined approach to store performance, are continuing to progress and are positioning us to generate even further improvement in our operating results as the sales cycle continues to turn positive. During Q4, we took further action with our store portfolio. We sold our two locations in Southern California. In Tucson, we consolidated our Indian store into our neighboring RideNow location, and consolidated our two Harley-Davidson locations to under one roof. As a result of the disposition of our two Southern California locations, coupled with the closures of our stores and Sturgis, Cincinnati and our used only store in Houston earlier in the year, we have enhanced our financial disclosures to provide same-store sales data, which Josh will take you through shortly. Our team is aligned with clear goals, performance metrics and a culture of accountability. My conviction in our ability to execute and deliver improved results continues to grow each day. We are poised to build from our momentum to deliver even more adjusted EBITDA and increased free cash flow, which we intend to deploy with a discipline of an owner-oriented company. As we proceed into 2026, we are well positioned to return to growth through acquisition, which, coupled with our focus on operational excellence is the value creation engine that RideNow was founded upon. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Josh for a more detailed discussion of the Q4 and full year results.

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start by reviewing our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025, followed by an overview of our balance sheet. During the quarter, we generated total revenue of $256.9 million compared to $269.6 million in the prior year quarter. This decrease was driven by the expected reduction of our Wholesale Express business, which, as Mike mentioned, was [ wound ] down at the end of the quarter. Excluding Wholesale Express, our revenue was flat year-over-year. I'm also happy to report that our adjusted EBITDA increased 341% to $9.7 million up from $2.2 million in last year's fourth quarter. Adjusted SG&A expenses were $59.9 million or 84.5% of gross profit compared to $62.3 million or 92.3% of gross profit in the same quarter last year. During the quarter, we sold 15,642 major units up 294 units or 1.9% from the same quarter last year. Total new powersports major unit sales were 9,924 down 293 units or 2.9% compared to Q4 of last year and pre-owned unit sales totaled 4,125 up 200 units or 5.1%. Higher total powersports unit sales, coupled with continued improvement in revenue across each of our revenue categories, led to a $6.5 million improvement in powersports gross profit dollars, which totaled $70.7 million during the fourth quarter. New unit gross margins improved to 13.2% for the quarter compared to 10.8% for the same quarter last year. Pre-owned gross margins also improved from 12.3% in last year's fourth quarter to 14.4% in the fourth quarter of the current year. Our fixed operations businesses consisting of parts, service and accessories delivered $48.5 million in revenue and $22.7 million in gross profit. GPU for our fixed operations business was $1,615, up $60 compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Our finance and insurance teams delivered $24.1 million in revenue or GPU of $1,715 up $117 compared to $1,598 in the prior year's quarter. As Mike mentioned, as a result of the store closures during 2025, for the fourth quarter and going forward, we will report certain same-store sales metrics, including same-store revenue, gross profit and unit volume for our powersports segment. Since this is the first time we have presented information on a same-store basis, we included a supplemental table in the earnings release to provide quarterly information for 2025 and 2024. The composition of the same-store stores of these periods excludes the five stores permanently closed as of year-end 2025 and any fleet-related units. Same-store revenue was $256.9 million during the fourth quarter of 2025 as compared to $241.6 million in 2024, a 6.3% increase. Gross profit was $66.8 million this year compared to $58.7 million in the prior year, a 13.8% increase and total unit sales was 15,420 in Q4 of 2025 compared with 14,320 in Q4 of 2024. Q4 is the second consecutive quarter of same-store growth in revenue and units sold and the third consecutive quarter of same-store growth in gross profit. For the full year of 2025, we finished with $1.08 billion in revenue and gross profit of $298 million. Wholesale Express revenue in the prior year was $58 million and gross profit was $13.4 million. Adjusted SG&A was lower by $26.2 million and came in at $243.8 million, a 9.7% reduction year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $46.2 million, 40.4% higher than the prior year. Additionally, we sold a total of 61,894 powersports units this year compared to 64,988 last year. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $42.9 million in total cash, inclusive of restricted cash. Nonvehicle net debt was $189.3 million and availability under the short-term revolving floor plan credit facilities totaled approximately $123.1 million. Total available liquidity, defined as unrestricted cash plus availability under floor plan credit facilities at the end of the year totaled $152.6 million. Cash inflows from operating activities were $15.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, and free cash flow was $10.3 million as compared to $99.4 million in cash flows from operating activities and $97.4 million in free cash flow from the same period last year. Last year's cash from operating activities and free cash flow were impacted by proceeds from the sale of a finance receivable portfolio and the reduction of excess major unit inventory during the period. With that, we'd like to begin the question-and-answer session. I'll turn the call back over to the operator now to open the lines.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Eric Wold from Texas Capital Securities.

A couple of questions. I guess, one, obviously, you've done a job kind of taking costs out of the system as per your plan starting last year. Give us a sense of how much was taken out last year, how much actually flowed through the P&L versus kind of what the annualized amount would have been? And then how much is left do you think still to potentially take out going forward?

So in terms of what was taken out during the year, I don't have that exact number in front of me. From an annualized perspective, we did a lot of that cost takeout toward the prior -- towards the tail end of the year. So I would say going forward, there's opportunity there that maybe we're not seeing in 2025. We do believe that there's continued opportunity to take costs out of the business. So we have really focused on the front end in 2025. In 2026, we're really focusing on the back office and looking at what we can do there to make things more efficient from a cost perspective.

Perfect. And then a follow-up question. With the store closures, simply on the Houston pre-owned store closure, maybe talk about the decision to close that location and whether you believe that's a model that could work in other markets or if that's just not the right direction if those market specific or the model itself that wasn't right?

Well, I think it's a combination of a couple of things. So one, used only stores for us from a profitability perspective. It's better for us to just have that inventory in the existing four walls of our RideNow locations and the Harley stores, as there's no incremental costs associated with moving that inventory. So once until you can make the investment to get into a more scalable model for us and where we wanted to achieve and where we are as a company, making that investment just wasn't going to pan out for what the returns would be by just putting that extra inventory into existing four walls of our buildings.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Craig Kennison from Baird.

I'm wondering if you could comment on year-to-date retail trends for new and used powersports units and maybe address whether the oil price spike, which I know is very recent and tax refund season has had any impact on your results? .

Yes, I'll take it. Look, I think there's a couple of ways to look at what current trends are right now. So one, if you're looking at it from an OEM perspective, OEM inventories are healthier today than they were a year ago. And so we're seeing positive influence there on our trends. In addition to that, when you're just thinking the consumer, yes, the Big Beautiful Bill has helped them from a tax refund perspective as refunds are up about 9%, 10% right now. But obviously, as you see the number of refunds is, I'd say, returns processed is slightly behind. So we think there's still upside to come from that in when it helps the middle class with the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, et cetera, that everybody are well aware of what the Big Beautiful Bill brings. The other aspect on trends is around interest rates. Interest rates being lower and the fact that approximately 2/3 of our customers are financing. So as long as interest rates continue to decline, it provides more purchasing power on our customers to be able to take on more from a payment perspective. So with all of that in place, that's why you've kind of seen that throughout the back half of the year where momentum improved from Q2 to Q3 to Q4, and we've continued to see that into Q1. And -- so yes, although the uncertainty in the market with the Middle East crisis that's ongoing right now, look, we all woke up this morning to a bunch of red lines on our stock apps -- and by the time we got to the end of the day, they were all pretty much green. So the one thing I will highlight is the level of uncertainty is the only constant that we're dealing with. So from our perspective, we're just focusing on what's in our four walls getting that right and the rest will work itself out. .

And you've done a nice job improving the status of your inventory -- could you comment on how fresh your inventory is today and then put that in the context of the competitive landscape? Have your competitors made sufficient progress on inventory in order to kind of reduce the overall discounting in the environment?

We believe -- I'll start with overall industry. It seems everybody has taken those appropriate steps. We're not seeing a lot of discounting across the Board from all of our locations or not say, locations, but from our competitors. But from an overall health perspective, our inventory -- look, we want to stay between 3 to 4 months' worth of inventory, and we're right in line with that. And at the same time, the vast majority of our inventory is below the 120-day category perspective. So look, I think we're happy with our inventory. We see good returns from our inventory. Would we always like to have a bit more on the used inventory side. But that's fine. But the reality is you've got to buy used inventory that's going to make yourself profitable. And so we're not in a position where we feel the need that we need to go chase inventory at this point in time.

[Operator Instructions] We do not have any questions. This is the end of our Q&A session. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.