Educational Development - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY2026 net revenues were $7.11M, with net loss of $(1.08)M and diluted EPS of $(0.13); management ran discount promotions to boost cash, compressing gross margins near term.
• Sequentially, revenue improved vs Q4 FY2025 ($6.64M), and losses narrowed YoY (EPS $(0.15) in Q1 FY2025), reflecting ongoing cost reductions despite lower sales.
• Brand partner activity declined further to 7,700 (from 9,400 in Q4), with management emphasizing new title introductions, IT upgrades (Guest Checkout), and incentives to re-energize recruiting and sales.
• Building sale/leaseback of the Hilti Complex remains the key catalyst; due diligence was extended to July 28 with close expected by end of September, and a “Plan B” exists to eliminate bank debt if Plan A fails.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Loss metrics improved YoY despite lower revenue: loss before taxes shrank to $(1.45)M (vs $(1.75)M), net loss to $(1.08)M (vs $(1.28)M), and EPS to $(0.13) (vs $(0.15)).
• Cost discipline and working capital progress: inventories fell to $42.0M (from $44.7M), and revolver borrowings were reduced to $4.2M, meeting the bank step-down requirement.
• Strategic initiatives: “Guest Checkout” rollout, incentive challenges, and regional summits boosted engagement; CEO: “The Guest Checkout process has been received very, very well”.

What Went Wrong

• Continued top-line pressure and gross margin compression due to discount promotions; management acknowledges near-term margin impact to accelerate cash generation and inventory turns.
• Brand partner count decline and recruiting challenges; direct selling environment remains tough amid high inflation and lower disposable income among target families.
• Transaction timing risk: Hilti Complex sale due diligence extended; closing is still pending, making debt reduction and liquidity improvements dependent on execution in the coming months.

Transcript

Speaker 3

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Educational Development Corporation's financial and operating results for its fiscal 2026 first quarter results. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. On the call today are Craig White, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan O'Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the fiscal 2026 first quarter results. The release will be available later today on the company's website at www.edcpub.com. Before turning to the prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors.

We refer you to Educational Development Corporation's recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company's financial condition. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Craig White, the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Craig?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone to the call. We appreciate your continued interest. I wanted to quickly mention that Heather is taking time to be with family, as there was a recent death in her family. I will start today's call with some general comments regarding the quarter, then I'll pass the call over to Dan to run through the financials, after which I will provide an update on sales and marketing and finish up the call with an update on our progress of the sell/lease track of our headquarters, the Healthy Complex. During the first quarter, we experienced decreased sales compared to the prior year's first quarter. This was driven primarily by our reduced brand cover levels within our PaperPie division, along with continued customer sales events offered to promote our PaperPie sales division and generate cash to meet our lenders' requirements.

We view these sales events as short-term tactics used to generate cash and to reduce our borrowings with our bank. Over the past year, we have seen our brand cover levels decline due to several factors, including the challenging sales environment with high inflation and reduced disposable income of families with small children. Further, this direct sales industry, especially those within the product sector, has experienced a challenging period for new consultant recruiting. While we have been through downturns in the industry before, the current environment is having a short-term impact on our operating levels. While we generated less sales during the quarter, our loss before taxes declined from last year. This reflects our continued focus on reducing expenses during this difficult environment. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dan O'Keefe to provide a brief overview of the financials. Dan.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Craig. For our first quarter results compared to the prior first quarter last year, net revenues were $7.1 million compared to $10 million. Our average active brand partners for the quarter totaled 7,700 compared to 13,400 in the first quarter last year. Loss before income taxes totaled a negative $1.4 million compared to negative $1.7 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2025. Net loss totaled $1.1 million compared to $1.3 million loss last year. Loss per share totaled $0.13 compared to a loss per share of $0.15 on a fully balloted basis. Now, for an update on our working capital positions, net inventories decreased $2.7 million from $44.7 million at February 28, 2025, to $42 million at May 31, 2025.

Borrowings on our working capital line of credits totaled $4.2 million as of May 31, 2025, meeting the step-down required by our bank agreement to be under $4.5 million starting June 1, 2025. That concludes the financial updates, and I'll now turn the call back over to Craig White. Craig?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dan. As I mentioned earlier, we're continuing to make strategic changes to bring new initiatives for success for our brand partners. We concluded a successful incentive challenge. We've launched our next incentive trip, which has gone very well so far. Our % sales decline has been lessened. I've started going to more industry-type events to just kind of give a perspective around the industry, which has been great. We've made some great connections from not only vendors but other companies, and that's I'm going to continue to do that. From an IT perspective, we launched Guest Checkout, which the goal of any IT project is to make it easier to do business with us, whether it's our customers or our brand partners. The Guest Checkout process has been received very, very well.

We've had a successful partnership with Ticket to Dream, allowing us to place thousands of books into the hands of foster kids and families. We've also concluded our summits, which took the place of conventions for this year. We had Dallas, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Philly, and we just had Philly in the last few weeks, and we left there very encouraged. There seemed to be a lot of excitement. As each summit happens, we have more information as to our financial stability, our sales, or our inventory levels. At some of these more intimate-sized level meetings, I'm able to have one-on-one conversations. It's things that I can't say from a stage without any kind of context or explanation that people that have been with us for 10, 15, 20 years I can have conversations with.

We started promotions to encourage promotion to leadership, which in turn encourages recruiting, but we've got to have new titles. As we have a clearer picture of whether we're going to complete the sales transaction, we've already started coming up with our phase one, two, and three plan for purchasing new titles and replenishing bestsellers. All these things are necessary to make it look like we're a thriving business to ourselves for. That concludes our sales and marketing update. Now for a building sale update. In May, we executed an agreement to sell the Healthy Complex. This agreement outlined a 90-day due diligence period. Recently, we announced an amendment of this agreement extending the due diligence period as well as a shortened close period. The purpose of this amendment was to give the buyer more time to perform their due diligence and structure the building acquisition financing.

We continue to work with the buyer group and provide requested information timely so they can perform their necessary work as quickly as possible. We continue to expect the sale to be completed before the end of September. The proceeds from the sale are expected to fully pay back the bank, leaving us with no debt, and we expect to have limited borrowing needs moving forward. Lastly, I want to thank all of our shareholders for their patience, our employees for their commitment to our mission, and our customers and brand partners for their loyalty during this difficult period. I am confident in our collective's ability to emerge stronger and more resilient than ever before. I think I'll turn back over to the operator for questions.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Please ascend onto the line and we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised, and should you wish to cancel your request, please press star followed by the two. If you're using a speakerphone, please place your handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question.

Speaker 1

Hey, Paul.

Speaker 3

Hey.

Speaker 1

Are you there?

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Paul Carter from Capstone Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi. Good afternoon, Craig. Good afternoon, Dan. I know the, the Healthy Complex sale has obviously taken a lot longer than expected. At this point, it's clear that the viability of the business hinges on getting that done. Brand partner count is down another 18% this quarter, and there's no clear sign of stabilization, and you explained kind of why that is. If this latest transaction falls through, and hopefully it doesn't, if it does, what is the board's contingency plan, and would you be prepared to hire an advisor and formally explore strategic alternatives for the business? I don't think you can afford to just try again and then push this resolution or push the resolution of this transaction down the road another five or six months.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Good question. Yeah, certainly to the point. We have, not only do we have other offers, I understand your point of not going through another 90 to 100-day to 120-day process, and I agree with you. That's not necessarily where we want to go. Anything that we do obviously has to have bank input, if not final approval. We have a plan B, a viable plan B. Our plan A is to sell the building, which brings us the most proceeds, but our plan B also gets us out of bank debt, and we can move forward. My intention is that one way or another, we will have executed plan A or plan B and have it finalized by the end of September.

Speaker 2

Can you share anything about the plan B?

Speaker 0

We've had other offers that have a quick close contingency. There's a couple of pieces to it that we've kind of curated, if you will, over the last six months. They're not quite as good as plan A, but they're definitely better than not having any plan at all. There's some smaller loans and things like that that would get us out. I don't anticipate that this, I actually feel pretty good about this, and I've said this multiple times, and you can take that with a grain of salt, that this group is from Oklahoma. They understand the environment. They understand the area. They've known about this building for a long time. There's several, multiple groups kind of coming together as a total investor group. I feel good about it, but I've learned over the last 15 months or so that that's just not good enough.

We've developed a plan B that we feel very good about, and if it comes to it, then that'll be known pretty quickly as well.

Speaker 2

Okay. I think I mentioned or I asked last quarter if you're able to share anything more about this buyer group. It's PGOTC, I think it is. Are you able to share any more about them? Is this just sort of a group of individual investors, or is it a real estate like REIT or something like that?

Speaker 0

It is a real estate company. They kind of reached out for advice from friends, if you will, that may become partial investors in the group. I would feel a lot more comfortable after this initial due diligence period is closed. Since we gave them a 30-day extension, I think it closes July 30th.

Speaker 2

28th.

Speaker 0

July 28th is the end of this initial due diligence period, in which case cash or deposit goes hard. We'll know a lot more by the end of July whether we're moving forward with plan A or pivoting to plan B.

Speaker 2

Perfect. Okay, great. My second question is just a governance question. Apart from you, Craig, nobody on the board holds a material stake or a material equity stake in the company. Has the board considered implementing minimum ownership requirements just to better align director incentives with long-term shareholder value? I know that's generally considered good governance, especially in small-cap situations like this. I'm just wondering if that's something that's been discussed or is being considered.

Speaker 0

Yeah. We're trying to, over this last couple of years, you know, been focused on growing the business back. Board makeup and governance has been near the front of my mind as well, though. We're kind of been transitioning to make it, you know, more my board than the previous, my predecessor's board.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 0

Board members don't make too much money for being here on our board. We have started giving them small amounts of stock. We're trying to make it more like a big company board, if you will. We've got some strides to make, and we're not there yet, but there's still going to be some changes over the next 9 to 12 months, hopefully partially the compensation and then partially the board makeup.

Speaker 2

Okay. That's good to hear. That's great. Good luck, and we'll just, I guess, hope for plan A here coming through.

Speaker 0

Yeah, I appreciate you, Paul.

Speaker 2

All right, thanks very much.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Once again, should you have a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, press star and one to ask a question. Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Duncan. Please go ahead.

Hi, both of you. My question is surrounding these three phases of buying new titles. Why do you think this strategy would work when we've got such significant levels of inventory already?

Speaker 0

We have to have new titles. That's what energizes the sales force. All of our inventory is still going and selling through at a rate, but we have to have new titles. Phase one, two, and three are very conservative. They're not adding much to the inventory. Each phase is made up of half new titles, which may be 15 or 20 new titles, and then replenishment of some good sellers, which may be another 10 to 15 titles. It's a very conservative approach. It's not going to increase inventory levels that much. That's the first green flag, if you will, that shows our sales force that, hey, we're still a viable business and we've got new product coming in, and we want you to reach out to your customers and kind of energizes them.

I see. What would the shuttle process be for the remaining two months for new titles that come through?

We won't have to drastically change prices of older inventory. As we kind of said earlier in the call, we've had strategic sales, but that's just to try to bring in infusions of cash to pay down bank debt. We know that strategy is short-term. If we continue drastically reducing the sale of our product, we diminish the value of our products, and that's just not a long-term strategy at all. We're trying to break that cycle where we don't have to discount. All of our product sales, of course, there's some that's getting a little bit longer, older in length of time that we've had it, and we may discount stuff a little bit, but that's always been the case. We've always done that as a strategy to reduce older inventory. On a big scale, we're trying to get away from that going forward.

Okay. With this normalization, what sort of target net revenue run rate? What sort of target average stands out? What does this normalization really look like for Educational Development Corporation?

It's going to take some time. We got to slow it down, and then we got to start rebuilding. We're starting to put the pieces in place. We're very strong from an IT perspective. We're making it easier to do business with us. We're coming out with new projects that excite the field all the time. All these things lead to recruitment of new salespeople. If our current salespeople are happy, then they're going to bring more people into the business. It starts with making it easy to do business with us, having new titles, then making more money. It's going to be a slow, gradual build. Hopefully, you know, I wouldn't say, I'm absolutely not saying hockey stick. Once things kind of get rolling again, they kind of start compounding. What's the goal?

We have to do forecasts for different entities, be it banks or investors or potential buyers and things. We've targeted a low, medium, and high expectation, and they're all conservative. It's going to take some time.

Has there been any discussion in terms of similar businesses which might be interested in some sort of small acquisition of Educational Development Corporation?

I get requests occasionally, and we vet them for how serious they really are. We use our IR firm or our previous IR rep who's now on our board to kind of vet these offers, and most of them are not very serious. You know, we haven't seriously entertained any serious offers.

Right. Why do you think that would be?

Probably because we haven't gotten.

Why?

No, money off to buy our company? I've gone and got, yeah, since I've been here for eight years, Daniel, we've never had an unsolicited offer to buy the company that I'm aware of. Who knows why that is? Maybe we're not on many people's radar. I really don't know. I can't even speculate on that. We would entertain it. That's not our first thought right now at all. We want to get through this transaction and grow the business back to where we know it can be.

Just a final question. What's the thought of the banking relationship at the moment? I mean, obviously, they've continued to give some sort of flexibility. What does your personal relationship, how does your personal relationship play into that? Is it likely to be that once we've retired those outstanding debt balances, there will still be that relationship with the working capital? Like, the facilities, would that still continue?

That's probably not the goal. I'll never say never, but so far, our relationship's been good. I mean, obviously, each amendment gets a little more restrictive, and that's just to make sure we're completely focused on bringing in whatever cash is necessary to pay them back. They've understood every step of this process and supported us through every step of the process. Now, you know, there is a sense of urgency to be paid back. Again, they agree with every step that we've taken. They're involved with every step, and so it's been good so far.

Okay. When's the next piece of earnings release?

It will be in October. We have an announcement on this call date, but the second quarter earnings call will be in October, probably around the 10th or that timeframe. It should be after completion of this sale process.

That's great. Thank you, Craig, and thank you, Dan.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Speaker 3

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Craig White for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call. Appreciate your continued support and expect to provide additional updates on the headquarters sale progress prior to the next scheduled meeting in October. We'll file, you know, is it 8-K, 10-Ks? 8-K. 8-Ks as necessary. You'll probably know before the next board meeting or before the next earnings call. Good questions. I appreciate everyone's support. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.