Earnings Labs

Weyco Group, Inc. (WEYS)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 4, 2026

$34.27

-0.19%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Weyco Group, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, simply press star 11 again. Please note, this conference is being recorded. Now it is my pleasure to turn the call over to the Chief Financial Officer, Judy Anderson. Please proceed.

Judy Anderson

Management

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Weyco Group, Inc.'s conference call to discuss fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. On this call with me today are Thomas W. Florsheim, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John W. Florsheim, our President and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin to discuss the results for the quarter and year, I will read a brief cautionary statement. During this call, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding our current expectations concerning future events and the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution you that these statements are just predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We refer you to the section entitled Risk Factors in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, which provides a discussion of important factors and risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our projections. These Risk Factors are incorporated herein by reference. They include, in part, the uncertain impact of U.S. trade and tariff policies, which remain highly dynamic and unpredictable, the impact of inflation on our costs and consumer demand for our products, increased interest rates, and other macroeconomic factors that may cause a slowdown or contraction in the U.S. or Australian economy. Overall net sales for 2025 were $76,800,000, down 5% compared to $80,500,000 in 2024. Consolidated gross earnings were 44.1% of net sales compared to 47.9% of net sales in 2024. Earnings from operations were $10,200,000 for the quarter, down 12% from $11,500,000 in 2024. Net earnings totaled $8,700,000 for the quarter, down 13% from $10,000,000 last year. Diluted earnings per share were $0.91 per share in 2025 compared to $1.04 per share in the prior year's fourth quarter. Net sales in our North American wholesale segment totaled $56,700,000 for the…

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Thanks, Judy, and good morning, everyone. Our overall company sales were down 5% in the fourth quarter and 5% for the full year. While we are never content with the decline, given the challenges we faced related to tariffs and dampened consumer sentiment, we are proud of the work done by our production and sales teams to navigate these economic headwinds. For an extended period during the second quarter, we faced tariff rates that rendered trade with China, our largest sourcing country, commercially prohibitive. Because the second quarter is a primary manufacturing period for our key fall shipping window, this created a strong likelihood of disrupted deliveries to both our wholesale partners and our direct-to-consumer business. By strategically keeping production running on key programs and holding finished goods overseas, we positioned ourselves to deliver nearly 100% of our fall shipments on time once tariffs were reduced to commercially viable levels. Throughout 2025, new tariffs increased the cost of our products by 19% to 50%, resulting in gross margin compression despite a 10% price increase that took effect in July. Over the past year, we have made significant progress in diversifying our manufacturing base to be less China-centric. Sales of our combined legacy business declined 7% in the fourth quarter and 4% for the year. Given the uncertain economic environment, particularly in soft goods, our accounts continue to take a conservative approach to inventory management, which negatively impacted fourth quarter shipments. The Florsheim division reported a 1% decrease for the quarter and a 2% increase for the year. The brand achieved $92,000,000 in sales in 2025, an all-time record, making it one of the few men's brands outside of the athletic category to sustain this level of post-pandemic growth. While the nonathletic brown shoe category has been in secular decline, Florsheim…

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. And as a reminder, if you have a question, simply press 11 to get in the queue and wait for your name to be announced. To remove yourself, press 11 again. One moment, please. Again, that is 11 if you have a question. One moment for our first question. The line of John Eric Deysher with Pinnacle Value Fund. Please proceed.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Good morning, everyone.

Judy Anderson

Management

Good morning.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Solid year in a difficult market. Just a couple of quick questions. You mentioned you paid approximately $16,000,000 in incremental tariffs. How much of that did you recover in terms of price increases?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

I would say that, you know—Judy, I do not know if you—our wholesale margin is down about 400 basis points from last year, more or less. You know, so we had a 10% price increase, but it did not cover a significant portion of how the tariffs impacted our business. Are you—yeah. That was John speaking. John, are you looking for a dollar amount?

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Well, a percentage would help. In other words, did you recover 50% with price increases, 30%, 70%—just the rough percentage.

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Yeah. It is hard. It is a confusing answer because the tariffs from different countries varied a lot. You know, the last several months from India, we had a 50% tariff, so the 10% increase just got us a small percentage of the tariff back. And most of the other countries were at around 20%. But that also varied during the several months of the second half where China—China was originally higher and went down to 20%. I believe it was 30% for a period, and then it was over 100% for a period. And so we took a very methodical approach to increasing prices because we are in a tough market as far as consumer sentiment. And so what we were trying to achieve with that was mitigate part of the tariff impact but also maintain market share as best as we could. And so it is not an easy answer, and I am sorry if we are not giving you exactly what you want there.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Oh, okay. That is understandable. The lawsuit for the refund—about how much are you looking to retrieve with that lawsuit?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Well, we are hoping to retrieve the whole thing. As the administration's attorneys took this up through the court system, they—I cannot remember if it was the federal appeals court or the Court of International Trade—but they basically said to the court, please do not stay this because if the Supreme Court rules this unlawful, we will pay back these incremental tariffs, the IEEPA tariffs, with trust. And so they are on record in the court system as saying they would pay this back. Once the Supreme Court ruled, the tune changed a little bit from the administration, saying they might litigate it. And I think that is going to be difficult for them because they were so clear in what they said to the court as this moved up to the Supreme Court. Now it goes back down to the Court of International Trade for remedy. And so we are optimistic, but we have also seen that things can get tied up in litigation no matter what. So we are going to wait and see, but we are optimistic about getting back the whole $16,000,000.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Oh, okay. So that was the refund that you are seeking, $16,000,000 or so?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Exactly. You state a number when you file the lawsuit. It is just a refund on all the IEEPA tariffs.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Right. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned China. I am just curious. Last year, what percentage of the cost of goods sold were imported from China roughly?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

I would say it was about 65% to 70% from China. What we have done, John, last year was a busy year for sourcing. And what we have done is we have established a much better footprint in Cambodia and Vietnam than we had prior to 2025. So we are in a really good position to continue to grow our sourcing outside of China. You know, we were thrown a little bit of a wrench into the works because we have a big base of manufacturing in India. And when China was hit with tariffs early on at very high levels, we moved product to India, and then India got hit with 50%. So the uncertainty around these tariffs makes it difficult. But we are learning to live with that uncertainty, and we have set up a much more flexible supply chain for the future.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Okay. Great. That is good to hear. And I guess finally, on the e-commerce business, the increase in sales reserves—can you give us some color on that? Why that was necessary?

Judy Anderson

Management

That was just a standard adjustment that was made in the fourth quarter. It just happened that our sales declined by not that much, a small amount, and it is just that adjustment to the sales reserve was a little bit more than that. So it seemed significant in relation to the change in the sales for the quarter.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Okay. Are any of your e-commerce customers facing any kind of pressure at this point?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

John, do you mean our actual direct-to-consumer customers? Or—

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Well, both, actually. I know it is a pretty competitive business, and I was curious if there is any pressure on either the wholesale business or the e-commerce side.

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

I think what we are seeing out there is that our end customer is shopping for deals. And two things are going on. One is our inventory is extraordinarily clean right now. In 2025, we had more clearance, but it really dwindled throughout the year. And so we just do not have as much clearance to offer customers, and, as such, they are moving to look for deals on Florsheim or BOGS or Stacy Adams on other sites. The other thing in that dynamic is that, as the owner of the brand, we are trying not to be out there discounting as much in terms of our ongoing line. But we do have wholesale partners out there that carry our ongoing top patterns, top styles, that will discount from time to time. We are seeing a migration of our consumers from our site to other sites in terms of purchasing. So I think our overall wholesale e-commerce business is holding up relatively well. Our own websites are down just because of the two reasons I just communicated.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Okay. Good. Very helpful. Just one more quickie if I might. We are all hearing about higher oil prices, and I was just curious if that impacts your vendors in terms of, I do not know, foam costs or anything like that. Have you thought about how that dynamic might play out?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

As far as what cost did you say?

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Foam costs or any other, you know, parts of the shoe that are oil-impacted.

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Yeah. No. I think that there are two impacts that I can think of. The first one is that if this goes on for a while, it is going to reduce discretionary spending on the part of the consumer because more of that spending is going to go to filling up their car and for heating bills and everything. The second impact, as far as our products go, is really more with shipping. I mean, you might see the shipping lines raise their prices if it goes on because that is a big part of their cost. As far as the actual impact on components going into footwear, unless this goes on for a long time, I think that would be very minimal. And so we do not see a major impact other than maybe the consumer being more stretched. Other than that, from the standpoint of the cost of the shoes, we do not really see a big impact.

John Eric Deysher

Analyst

Okay. Good. That is it. Thanks for taking my question.

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Thanks, John.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Christine Sutton with Shopify. Please proceed.

Christine Sutton

Analyst · Shopify. Please proceed.

Yes, thanks for the context, and I appreciate the discipline around not discounting directly as you just explained, which protects wholesale partnerships as well as the brand. But I wanted to ask about the dynamic of customers who already buy bypassing the wholesale and coming directly for the e-commerce, seeing that that was just asked. My question is if the customer is already coming to your brand sites, would being able to increase the conversion size directly while circumventing the discount shopping—would that be a helpful aspect to layer on while still keeping the wholesale partnerships, which is obviously a critical part of the earnings success for the last quarter? Is that something that will help?

Thomas W. Florsheim

Management

Yeah. We are always looking for ways to increase conversion. I want to do that in a way that is healthy for the business. I think the situation right now is we just have less clearance, and the consumer is under pressure right now. And I think that is affecting soft goods in general. So when consumers have less money in their pocket, they are looking for deals. And if we have less clearance, it lowers our conversion rate, and that is just something that we work through. But we feel actually pretty good about how our e-commerce business is performing, but you are going to have these types of changes based on the obsolescence in your inventory.

Christine Sutton

Analyst · Shopify. Please proceed.

I appreciate that. Thank you for the answer.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes our Q&A session. I will turn it back to Judy Anderson for closing comments.

Judy Anderson

Management

Thank you for your support of Weyco Group, Inc., and everyone have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.