The ODP - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Adjusted EPS of $0.51 beat S&P Global consensus $0.36, while revenue of $1.586B was modestly below consensus $1.591B; GAAP EPS was breakeven and adjusted EBITDA was $47M. EPS beat vs consensus; revenue slight miss; EBITDA generally inline to above (see Estimates Context table)*.
• Management raised FY25 adjusted free cash flow outlook on the call to “exceed $150M,” above the press release’s “over $115M,” creating a positive catalyst tied to cash generation and balance sheet strengthening.
• Traction in hospitality (≈1,000 properties onboarded), improved B2B revenue trends (~200 bps better YoY/seq), and better retail comps (-5% vs -7% LY) underpin momentum heading into H2.
• Retail footprint optimization (23 closures; 834 stores) and fixed-cost deleveraging remained headwinds; macro softness weighed on enterprise demand.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Improved trends across segments: B2B revenue trends improved by ~200 bps YoY and sequentially; retail comps improved to -5% from -7% LY. “Sales trends improved month over month throughout the quarter”.
• Hospitality expansion momentum: ~1,000 properties onboarded; OS&E demand showing robust month-over-month growth; adjacency categories reached 45% of B2B sales. CEO: “We are very encouraged by the early momentum we are seeing as we enter the hospitality market segment”.
• Cash generation and balance sheet: Adjusted FCF $13M (+160% YoY), total liquidity $658M, cash $177M; CFO: “helped us pay down approximately $35M in debt so far this year”.

What Went Wrong

• Top-line decline: Sales down 8% YoY to $1.586B, driven by fewer retail locations and softer enterprise demand; Office Depot -10% YoY, Business Solutions -6% YoY.
• Fixed-cost deleveraging pressured margins: Business Solutions operating income fell to $18M (2% margin) from $29M (3% margin); margin pressure cited from lower revenues and fixed costs.
• Ongoing retail traffic headwinds and footprint reduction: 23 store closures in Q2; lower store/online traffic; 834 stores at quarter-end.

Transcript

Speaker 4

Good morning and welcome to The ODP Corporation's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines will be on a listen-only mode for today's call, after which instructions will be given to ask a question at the request of The ODP Corporation. Today's call is being recorded. I would like to introduce Tim Perrott, Vice President Investor Relations and Treasurer. Mr. Perrott, you may now begin.

Speaker 3

Good morning and thank you for joining us for The ODP Corporation's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. This is Tim Perrott and I'm here with Gerry Smith, our CEO. Also joining us on the call today are Max Hood and Adam Haggard, our Co-CFOs. During today's call, Gerry will provide an update on the business, focusing much of his commentary on our results and accomplishments for the second quarter of 2025, including the progress we are making on our strategy and our expansion into higher growth industry sectors. After Gerry's commentary, Max will then review the company's results for the quarter, including highlights of our divisional performance, followed by Adam, who will highlight our balance sheet and outlook. Following our comments, we will then open up the line for your questions.

Before we begin, I need to inform you that certain comments made on this call include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect the company's current expectations concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. A detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties is contained in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. During the call, we will use some non-GAAP financial measures as we describe business performance. The SEC filings, as well as the earnings press release, presentation slides that accompany today's comments, and reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, are all available on our website at investor.odpcorp.com.

Today's call and slide presentation is being simulcast on our website and will be archived there for at least one year. I'll now turn the call over to Gerry Smith.

Speaker 0

Gerry, thank you Tim, and good morning everyone. I'd like to start by thanking everyone for joining our call today to review our results and accomplishments for the second quarter of 2025. As always, we appreciate your continued interest and support as we execute our strategy and position The ODP Corporation for long-term growth. This morning I'll provide an overview of our improved performance in the quarter and highlight the progress we are making on our overall strategy. As I cover our performance, I want to focus on a few key takeaways that I think reflect our progress and provide context for our results. These key points are shown on slide 4 of the presentation. To start, our results this quarter clearly demonstrate that we're executing our strategy and making meaningful progress.

Our strategy centers on leveraging our supply chain and distribution strengths to accelerate growth in our B2B segment, reinforcing our traditional business while expanding into higher growth areas like hospitality and adjacent markets. At the same time, we remain focused on maximizing value and cash flow from our retail segment. Our Optimized for Growth plan underpins this strategy, directing assets and capital toward higher return B2B opportunities while reducing fixed costs in our business. Second, our progress this quarter is driving meaningful improvement and momentum across the business, surpassing average external expectations. By most measures, we've improved year-over-year trends in our B2B segment and in our consumer business. We're driving significantly stronger results and, most importantly, our improved performance is leading to significantly higher adjusted free cash flow, positioning us to further strengthen our balance sheet and liquidity position.

Lastly, looking ahead, we expect these positive trends to continue in the second half of the year, driven by additional top line improvement in our B2B distribution business and sustained strength in our retail channel. Let me expand on these points and provide more details on our performance for the quarter, starting with slide 5 of the presentation. Our improved performance this quarter underscores the positive momentum we're building across our business as we remain focused on operational excellence and disciplined execution of our strategy. We delivered stronger revenue trends that improved month to month throughout the quarter, resulting in solid adjusted EBITDA and robust growth in adjusted free cash flow, both exceeding expectations on an adjusted basis. We delivered $47 million in EBITDA and generated $13 million in free cash flow for the second quarter.

This strong cash generation is especially notable as we typically see cash outflows in Q2 due to inventory build ahead of the back to school season. These impressive results were driven by improved performance in both our B2B and consumer segments. In our B2B segment, we drove stronger revenue traction, with comparable revenue trends improving by approximately 200 basis points both sequentially and year over year. This was driven by continued progress in onboarding, new business wins, and stronger demand from new customers despite the ongoing softness in general enterprise spending. We're particularly excited about our progress with CoreTrust, a group purchasing organization with over 3,500 enterprise members which we announced last quarter. Onboarding is progressing well and we expect this, along with other recent wins, to further benefit our performance in the second half of the year.

Additionally, although still small, our early stage expansion into the hospitality segment is gaining momentum and beginning to contribute to our results. I'll provide more details on this shortly. Turning to our retail segment, Office Depot, our team continued to deliver strong results, driving improved top line trends both year over year and sequentially. This performance, fueled by targeted sales initiatives and operational excellence under our Optimized for Growth plan, is translating to strong results and increased free cash flow. While planned store closures impacted total sales, comparable store sales trends improved by 200 basis points versus last year. Additionally, when excluding the impact of an industry-wide e-commerce marketplace program that benefited sales last year but was discontinued in 2025, our comparable sales showed even greater improvement on an apples to apples basis. This performance represents a significant turnaround from last year.

Our team's execution is creating meaningful value in our consumer business with higher average order volumes, increased loyalty program enrollments, and improved performance in key categories like paper. Although it's still early in the back to school season, our strong performance has continued through July, giving us stronger confidence in our momentum for the remainder of the year. In our supply chain business, Veyer, we achieved 90% year over year revenue growth from third party customers, and we're expanding our new business pipeline. Operationally, Veyer generated a 32% increase in EBITDA from third party customers, underscoring the strength of our supply chain capabilities and growing market presence. Veyer remains a key asset supporting our global operations, navigating the evolving tariff environment and enabling effective inventory management, particularly as we expand into the hospitality segment.

We're also making progress in optimizing Veyer supply chain assets, working to improve fixed costs and operational efficiency through our Optimized for Growth plan. I'll share more details on these initiatives shortly. Finally, from a cash management perspective, our team continued to execute effectively, optimizing business operations and inventory to maximize cash flow. Cash conversion remains strong, resulting in $13 million in adjusted free cash flow for the quarter, more than double the amount generated in the same period last year. This is particularly impressive given that we typically see a use of cash in most second quarter results given the inventory buildup in advance of the back to school season in the third quarter. As we move forward, we are intensifying our focus on inventory management, which we expect will drive further improvements in working capital in future quarters.

I want to thank the team for their dedication and disciplined approach to cash management. Now I'd like to provide an update on our progress in the hospitality market. This is shown on slide 6. We are making significant progress in our entry into the hospitality industry. About six months ago, we announced a major strategic partnership with one of the world's largest hotel management organizations, becoming a preferred provider for operating supplies and equipment, which includes essential items like towels and linens and amenities like soaps and shampoos and many other products. This agreement marked a major milestone, positioning The ODP Corporation to enter the $16 billion hospitality segment, a growing market that demands high service capabilities and aligns perfectly with our core strengths in supply chain and distribution.

This partnership covers approximately 15,000 members with hotels and related assets, which serve as a strong foundation for future growth in hospitality and adjacent markets. Over the past several months, we've established key supply agreements with leading industry suppliers such as Sobel, Westex, and Hunter Amenities, ensuring access to premium hospitality products. While inventory build and sourcing took longer than anticipated, we made substantial progress and have improved our position to meet the expected growing demand in the future. We've also recently strengthened our team by adding experienced sales professionals to drive future growth in this segment. The new talent we've added during the quarter brings many years of proven expertise in building successful supply businesses within the hospitality industry. Our team is energized and ready to hit the ground running, and we're excited about the value they will bring as we execute our plans.

Also, this quarter we broadened the launch of our OS&E product offering, directly engaging with potential hospitality customers, and we've onboarded about 1,000 new hotel properties under our current partnership. While building momentum takes time, we are encouraged by the strong early response and growing demand that we're beginning to see in the market. While still small, we have seen robust month-over-month growth, and importantly, our expanded offering is driving increased interest in our traditional office products among hospitality customers, both existing and new. Initial data indicates a meaningful increase in demand for our traditional products among existing hotel customers following the expansion of our offering to include OS&E hotel products. These early results demonstrate that our broader product assortment is beginning to have a positive impact on overall sales. We're encouraged by early results and the positive industry dynamics.

We've added a key sales leader with deep hospitality expertise and are in advanced discussions with over a half dozen additional large hotel management companies to become their preferred supplier. We expect to sign agreements with one or two more major hotel management companies this year. Overall, we are very encouraged by our progress and believe hospitality will become a more meaningful contributor to our sales beginning in the second half of the year. Finally, I want to highlight the progress we're making with our Optimize for Growth restructuring plan. This is shown on slide 7. As a reminder, this initiative is focused on streamlining our fixed cost infrastructure to improve our margin profile while leveraging our core strengths to accelerate growth in our B2B market segments. This includes our expansion into new enterprise verticals such as hospitality as well as in healthcare and other adjacent sectors in the future.

We continue to make meaningful progress this quarter, further optimizing both our retail store operations and supply chain infrastructure to better serve customers and drive greater efficiency. Under the plan, we closed about two dozen retail stores and three distribution facilities in Q2. While there's more work ahead, we are on pace and we're confident that these efforts will lead to a more efficient operating model and drive margin improvement in the future. Before I turn it over to Max Hood, I want to thank our team for their dedication to our core business and commitment to operational excellence. We are making solid progress on our strategy, delivering stronger year over year revenue trends while driving strong increases in adjusted free cash flow.

Based on our performance so far, we expect to maintain this momentum into the second half of the year assuming a relatively stable tariff environment and no major changes in the broader economy or enterprise market regarding the tariff environment. While we're not immune, we believe we are well positioned to adjust and we have taken proactive measures to position ourselves effectively to help mitigate potential impacts as the situation continues to evolve. Supporting our outlook as we enter the second half of the year, we anticipate driving additional top line improvement at ODP Business Solutions while maintaining strong results in our retail channel. We are ahead of expectations on cash generation and now expect adjusted free cash flow to exceed $115 million for the year, further strengthening our balance sheet and liquidity. We remain focused on executing our strategy, driving our core initiatives and delivering value for our shareholders.

With that, I will turn it over to Max Hood for a review of our financial results.

Speaker 1

Thank you Gerry and good morning to everyone on the call. I'm Max Hood, Co-CFO. I would like to cover our results for the second quarter on Slide 9. Please note that our results as presented are for continuing operations. We generated total revenue of $1.6 billion for the quarter, an 8% decrease compared to the second quarter of last year. However, this result represents an improvement in year-over-year trends. The decline in overall sales was primarily driven by 60 fewer stores in operation, reduced consumer traffic, and lower enterprise sales. Despite the positive momentum in recent performance, GAAP operating income in the quarter was $9 million compared to $0.4 million in the prior year period. Our GAAP results in the quarter included $16 million of charges, primarily related to $13 million of restructuring expenses largely associated with our OPTIM.

Through this plan, we closed 23 retail store locations, 3 distribution facilities, and 1 satellite location. The balance of $3 million was associated with non-cash asset impairments of operating lease right-of-use assets associated with our retail store locations and supply chain facilities. Excluding these charges, adjusted operating income for the second quarter was $25 million compared to $33 million in last year's second quarter. Unallocated corporate expenses were $15 million in Q2. Adjusted EBITDA was $47 million in the quarter compared to $57 million in last year's second quarter. This includes depreciation and amortization expense of $24 million in the second quarters of 2025 and 2024, excluding the after-tax impact from the items mentioned earlier. Adjusted net income from continuing operations for the second quarter was $15 million or $0.51 per diluted share compared to $20 million or $0.56 per diluted share in the prior year period.

Now turning to our improved cash flow generation in the quarter. Operating cash flow from continuing operations in the quarter was $16 million, which included $9 million in restructuring spend. This compared to cash used in operating activities of continuing operations of $1 million, including $25 million in restructuring spend in the same period last year. The year-over-year increase in operating cash flow reflects our strengthening business model and disciplined working capital management as we successfully converted inventory investments into cash. As we indicated last quarter, this led to strong cash conversion in the quarter. Capital expenditures were $12 million in the second quarter of 2025 versus $19 million in the prior year period, and we continue to prioritize capital investments towards B2B growth opportunities supporting our supply chain operations, distribution network, and digital capabilities.

Adjusted free cash flow in the quarter was $13 million, a significant increase as compared to adjusted free cash flow of $5 million generated in the same period last year. This result is especially noteworthy given that we typically experience cash outflows in the second quarter due to inventory build ahead of the back to school season. Now turning to our consumer business, Office Depot. As shown on slide 10, Office Depot delivered another quarter of improving results with year over year top line trends improving in the quarter as targeted profitable sales strategies continued to gain traction. Reported sales were $716 million in the quarter, down 10% compared to the prior year. This result represented an improvement in the year over year trend we reported in the same period last year.

Overall sales were impacted primarily by 60 fewer retail locations in service associated with planned store closures as well as lowered traffic and online sales, partially offset by higher average order volumes and the positive impact of targeted sales promotions. In total, we closed 23 retail stores in the quarter and had 834 stores at quarter end. On a comparable store basis, our targeted sales initiatives continue to drive meaningful improvement in comparable store sale metrics. On a same store basis, sales were down 5% year over year, representing approximately a 200 basis point improvement in our same store comp over last year's second quarter. From an operational standpoint, operating income for the quarter was $12 million. On a percentage of revenue basis, this result was flat with last year.

As we move forward, we're continuing to execute on our profitable sales initiatives in our retail business, balancing our pricing and promotion strategy with demand elasticity. We continue to make progress, and as Gerry Smith mentioned, we carried that momentum into the month of July and are closely monitoring our progress as we head into the highly competitive back to school season. We're also continuing to execute our Optimize for Growth plan, focused on efficiency gains across the organization and help us lower fixed costs. Now turning to ODP Business Solutions as shown on slide 11. As Gerry Smith mentioned, we're pleased to report improved top line trends this quarter. Reported revenue was $859 million in Q2, down 6% year over year but representing more than a 200 basis point improvement over recent trends.

While enterprise spending remains generally soft, our results benefited from stronger sales traction with new accounts and continued progress in onboarding recent business wins. Additionally, although still early, sales in our hospitality categories grew month over month throughout the quarter and began contributing to our overall performance with our expanded offering including OS&E products. We are also seeing a meaningful increase in sales of traditional product categories among existing hospitality customers. Overall, sales to hospitality customers rose by a low double digit %. Our pipeline of new business continues to grow and we are continuing to make progress in converting the recent large new customer wins representing over $500 million in annual spend when at full run rate.

Looking ahead, we remain focused on converting these new customers, strengthening relationships with existing clients, and driving growth in hospitality to help offset softer enterprise spending and support continued improvement in the second half of the year. From a product perspective, while most categories were lower year over year, we saw slightly improved sales traction in products such as paper and began to see initial demand for our hospitality products. Additionally, adjacency product categories accounted for 45% of total revenue this quarter, up from 43% in Q2 of last year, a key performance indicator for our business. On the operating front, lower revenues and related fixed cost deleveraging resulted in operating income of $18 million in the quarter compared to $29 million in the prior year period. Reducing fixed costs within our supply chain operations remains a top priority as we work to drive future margin improvement.

We are encouraged by our improving position for the future as we execute our strategy and expand into new market segments. We expect to continue driving sequential improvements in the second half of the year with greater contribution from the hospitality sector. Now turning to our results in our supply chain business as shown on slide 12, Veyer’s reported top line performance reflected lower sales from its internal customers, ODP Business Solutions and Office Depot, partially offset by revenue growth from third party customers. Overall, the year over year sales trends improved versus the prior year. On a total segment basis, Veyer delivered sales of $1.1 billion in the quarter, primarily derived from supporting the purchasing and supply chain operations of ODP Business Solutions and Office Depot, which are eliminated upon consolidation.

Veyer continued to make progress in executing its strategy to serve third party customers, adding new logos to its customer list and driving a strong increase in external revenue, being mindful that some of Veyer’s third party profitability is accounted for as a contra expense instead of flowing through revenue. For Q2, Veyer delivered third party revenue of $19 million, up 90% over last year. There drove third party EBITDA of $5 million, a 32% increase compared to the prior year period. Now I'll turn it over to Adam to cover our balance sheet highlights and outlook.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Max, and it's great to be here with everyone this morning. I'm Adam Haggard, Co-CFO. Turning to Slide 14, our balance sheet and liquidity position continued to improve in the quarter, supported by our strong cash generation. Adjusted free cash flow was $13 million in the quarter, a substantial increase compared to last year. The changes we are making to our business model have resulted in our stronger cash generation year to date and have helped us pay down approximately $35 million in debt so far this year, further strengthening our balance sheet. In total, we've generated $58 million in adjusted free cash flow, a more than 160% increase compared to the first half of last year. As we move forward, we're also sharpening our focus on inventory management opportunities, which we expect will enhance future cash generation.

We believe this strategy positions us to maximize cash flow, further improves our balance sheet, and provides a pathway for long-term sustainable growth and value creation. Our balance sheet at quarter end included total liquidity of $658 million, consisting of $177 million in cash and cash equivalents and $481 million in available credit. Under the fourth amended credit agreement, total debt was $245 million. Moving on to capital allocation, we continue to execute our capital allocation strategy, primarily investing in our core to drive the future of our business. We invested $12 million in CapEx in the quarter versus $19 million in the prior year period, targeted in our supply chain operations, distribution business, and digital capability to set ourselves apart in the industry.

As we move forward, we expect to prioritize our capital allocation towards investment in our core B2B resources, positioning us to capture the growth opportunities we discussed earlier. We believe investing in our B2B business and expanding into new market segments will drive the highest ROI and create long-term value for shareholders. Now turning to our outlook for 2025, as shown on Slide 15, as we look to the second half of the year, directionally, we are expecting the following dynamics and outlook for our business. First, we expect to drive top line improvements in the second half of the year at ODP Business Solutions as we continue to make progress on customer conversion and drive stronger sales and hospitality. Next, we expect to continue driving strong performance in our retail channel in the second half of the year, helping us support continued strong cash generation.

As you heard from Gerry, we continued to see strong results through July in this channel, which gives us more confidence heading into the second half of the year. Lastly, we now expect to generate over $115 million in adjusted free cash flow for the full year 2025 as we execute our strategy and continue to focus on working capital management. Our outlook considers a relatively stable macroeconomic environment and minimal additional impact from the evolving tariff. As we stated earlier, while we are not immune from the potential impacts related to the changing tariff structures, we believe we are well positioned with a diverse sourcing structure and flexible operating structure to help limit potential impacts to our business. With that, I will turn the call back over to Gerry.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Adam. Before we open the call for questions, I want to once again thank our team for their dedication to operational excellence and their commitment to building a stronger foundation for profitable growth and long-term value creation for all our stakeholders. To reiterate, we are making excellent progress on our strategy, driving improved performance in both our B2B and consumer businesses, expanding to high-growth industries, increasing cash flow, and further strengthening our balance sheet. We are encouraged by our momentum, and we expect to deliver continued improvements in the second half of the year. Our expansion into higher-growth market segments like hospitality is already showing early positive results, and we anticipate gaining additional traction in this area, contributing more meaningfully to our performance in the second half of 2025.

Additionally, our improving performance is leading to stronger adjusted free cash flow results, which further reinforces our foundation for sustainable growth in 2026 and beyond. With that, operator, we're ready to take your questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Michael Lasser with UBS Investment Bank. Your line is now open.

Speaker 0

Good morning.

Speaker 2

Thank you so much for taking my question. Gerry, during your tenure at The ODP Corporation, you've been aggressive in pursuing strategic alternatives to try and maximize the value to shareholders of ODP. As you stand today, are there alternatives that you're exploring given where your stock price stands and what you see for the future? Is the focus more so on simply executing the game plan to continue to perform as you anticipate, which is maybe the way that you expect to maximize shareholder value?

Speaker 0

Thank you. Matt, good morning. Michael, great to hear from you. My job and the Board's job is to always maximize shareholder value. That's our primary focus as a Board and as the CEO, I will say that I can't comment on any activities or it's not our policy to talk about any rumors or speculation. That's my answer to that piece. I'm super proud of the team. We're executing our strategy. We have a daily operations focus across all our businesses and we're driving tremendous results. I think our cash results and our EBITDA results demonstrate that. My job is to maximize shareholder value. I'm going to go out and do that. Our team is executing very, very well.

Speaker 2

Got you. Thank you very much for that. One follow up is on the expectation that The ODP Corporation can generate $150 million of.

Speaker 0

Free cash flow this year. There are some signs that the labor market is weakening.

Speaker 2

What have you assumed from a macroeconomic standpoint, particularly the labor market within that expectation? If we do start to see the unemployment rate rise, how would that impact your expectation for free cash flow generation this year?

Speaker 0

Oh, obviously you know us pretty well. You know Max and I as well. We're conservative in our pieces. We've done, we've made a lot of progress and we teased it pretty hard in the presentation. We have a daily, weekly focus on inventory. Our merchants, our B2C and B2B teams have done a great job of really looking at our merchant strategies as well as our supply chain teams, and working with vendors, vendor consolidation, product consolidation, looking at turns. We have line of sight into a lot of cash coming through the business. We're making this a gigantic focus. We're pretty confident in $115 million plus. Remember, the plus was there on purpose. We're seeing, honestly, we saw strength in the business in July, especially on the consumer side. The last three or four days have been super strong as well.

The reason we put the comment in, barring any changes in the environment, is because we think we're performing well in this current economic environment and we're performing well from a tariff mitigation perspective and are super pleased with the momentum we've seen in the last 45 days from a hospitality perspective as well. For example, yesterday was our biggest day ever in the hospitality business. I want a lot more. So does David Centrella, the President of our B2B business. We literally have a daily call every day with our hospitality sales leaders. Kevin does it with me on the B2C side and we're doing it on the B2B side. I want our investors to hear we're focused on operational excellence. We're focused on daily execution, and we have 100 day plans. We have our top 10 priorities.

We're executing extremely well, and we're ready to tackle any environment that's thrown at us. The $115 million-plus is important. It shows the strength of our balance sheet and it shows the ability from a liquidity position to get even stronger. Over time, as we continue to build that, we will continue to look for growth opportunities with that cash in the future.

Speaker 2

Okay, two last questions. One is on the tariff piece. What percentage of your assortment, roughly speaking, is being subject to a tariff? In response, how much are you going to anticipate taking price up to maintain your margin?

Speaker 0

Let me take that.

Let me give you the structural at the top and let Max and Adam jump in with the details from a tariff perspective. We started daily tariff forums when it first came out. Our procurement and merchant teams have done an incredible job. Eric Mian, AJ, and a number of people, Andrew, across the board, have done a great job of mitigating that. A lot of our tariffs actually hit in areas, Michael, where you have a MAP pricing, which is minimum average pricing, where the vendor sets the price. What the vendors have done across tech and ink and toner, a number of areas, they've already had price increases in that, so the whole market floats up. Obviously, there could be softening of demand. We haven't seen a lot of that yet.

A big priority, a big percentage of our tariffs were there, and we'll flow through appropriately where we see tariffs in other areas. Adam, do you want to jump in first and then Max? Yeah.

Speaker 6

No. Hey, Michael, it's Adam.

One thing that should be clear.

It comes to the tariff environment for.

Speaker 0

Us is that we were very focused.

Speaker 6

On bringing in inventory early on in this tariff environment, if we go all the way back.

Speaker 0

To when we were buying ahead for a port strike, which feels like it.

Speaker 6

Was 10 years ago now, but last year at the end of the year.

Speaker 0

We were starting to get ahead.

Speaker 6

Port strike, we were starting to get ahead for tariffs. We had a really good inventory position, a good cost base that we were really happy about coming into Q2. What allowed us to do with that cost base was be competitive on pricing. One thing that should be very clear is that there were no real pricing impacts to Q2. We had a stable pricing environment, and all the trends in our business are organic trends for us. They're not pricing related. That should be something that everybody.

Speaker 0

Takes away from this call.

Speaker 6

To put a finer point on what Gerry just alluded to, about 57% of our inventory is either MAP priced or exempt in the tariff environment. We have a lot of flexibility in this space moving forward, and we feel really comfortable as long as the macro doesn't turn sideways on us, which is the plan at this point.

Speaker 0

In my last question, I apologize.

Speaker 2

Taking so much time, but my last question is for those who want to invest in ODP Corp stock. One of the key questions is at what point does the positive, through the positive development of all the offline actions that you've been taking, such as hospitality adjacent category, all those that you've laid out to offset the decline in core office supplies and other factors such that the top line of the enterprise can return to overall growth, is that a 2026 outcome?

Speaker 0

Potentially. Michael, you broke up a bit in the beginning, but I'm going to try to hit it at a high level, let the guys jump in as well. I believe we're tremendously undervalued today. If you look at our balance sheet position, our cash position, our liquidity position, the potential we have in hospitality, and the execution of our B2C teams. We are, from a market cap perspective, at a two and a half times multiple, which is, in my mind, a liquidation multiple, which isn't fair at all. With the potential, the cash position, the momentum we have, we should be, in my opinion, at a much stronger multiple going forward. I think with the potential of hospitality as a growth segment in the future and the cash position we have in the balance sheet, I personally think we're a strong buy, Michael.

As CEO, my job is to maximize shareholder value. We're going to keep executing to go up and do that. We have a strong balance sheet position, we have a strong cash position. We just took guidance up on cash $115+ and we have a segment we've entered into, we're starting to see a lot of traction on that is a growing market segment. The timing of that is hard to predict. Now's the best time ever from a value perspective because I have confidence in this business. Guys, thank you very much and good luck. Go ahead, Michael. It's Max.

Speaker 1

Just wanted to add to that.

Just a reminder, we expect to.

See our retail business continue to decline based on the industry. However, that's very stabilized and performing better than we think it is. Right now, our focus is on, as.

Smith mentioned, a growing industry in hospitality.

We've converted over a thousand properties in just the one contract that we began with. We're making really good progress. I just want to reiterate that it's a second half story where we really expect to see some momentum. I would keep watching and focusing on the performance this year in the second half.

Speaker 2

Okay, thank you very much. Good luck.

Speaker 0

Thanks so much, Michael.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Burns with Sidoti & Company. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Good morning.

Speaker 0

You've given us a lot of detail.

Speaker 5

On the momentum on the hospitality space, I just wanted to get maybe a little bit more color on where you're at with those larger new deals you've signed in the more traditional office categories on the B2B side. How are those progressing in terms of their onboarding, the pace of onboarding, are they where you thought they would be, and what kind of momentum are you seeing from those deals in the second quarter and as we move into the third quarter?

Speaker 0

Yeah, I mean, obviously I can't get into a lot of detail because some of that's competitive information. I will say we're active, active conversations and are confident that we will have contracts in place this year with additional parties that are significant to our overall growth plan.

Okay.

Speaker 5

I was more asking about the ones you've already announced and signed, just where you are in terms of the pace of onboarding. Any momentum you're seeing in those?

Speaker 0

For the ones we have.

We're optimistic with the momentum. I mean, signing a thousand properties, we are sending our teams out and they're knocking on doors and they're getting wins. Again, we're looking at this every single day. The goal is to, how do you double that thousand to two thousand? How do you go to two thousand to four thousand? How do you go to fifteen thousand? All of a sudden we're pleased with the momentum of the other two signings we've had. We mentioned CoreTrust, and that's been a very strong relationship for us. That is growing as well as the other one we announced in November. We're onboarding people on an ongoing basis on all three fronts. Adam, anything?

Speaker 5

Okay, great.

Speaker 0

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6

Greg, it's Adam. Thanks for coming on the call today. One thing that's important to know is that the CoreTrust agreement and some of our other bigger agreements that we've signed have had some impact in Q2, but we really do expect that they'll have a more prominent impact in our business as we move through Q3 and Q4. Last quarter we did allude to the fact that we were a second half story, and that was in regards to a lot of the contracts that you're referring to. We expect incredible momentum as we move through the back half of the year with some of those contracts that you're talking about. We see early signs right now in Q2 that it's starting, and that gives us hope in what the back half of the year is going to look like from a.

Speaker 1

Top line and bottom line perspective.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. The margins on the solutions business were down a little bit sequentially. Is that just some of the newer business coming in at a lower margin and needs to gain a little bit more scale? What was driving that sequential decline in operating margin this quarter?

Speaker 0

Max and Anne take that.

Yeah.

Hey Greg, yeah, it's Max.

Speaker 1

Related to the margins, just to be clear on the product margin itself, we've held strong. We've seen consistent product margin and been able to keep that high overall margins.

We're still, we're still.

Continuing to see while we made good progress in our sales trajectory going to a negative 6% decline in ODP Business Solutions, we still have a deleveraging impact and an impact of our fixed costs on our profit margin. This comes back to Optimize for Growth, which we launched last quarter. We're making excellent progress.

We have some details in the release.

We essentially closed a variety of facilities to tighten up our supply chain, and that's going to drive very direct profitability improvement in the business solutions.

Speaker 5

Okay, thanks for that. Lastly.

Speaker 0

What are going to be the cash charges this year?

Speaker 5

For restructuring and the Project Core.

Speaker 0

Optimized for Growth cash charges should be.

Speaker 1

Roughly around $5 million a quarter.

Speaker 0

Okay, great. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Anthony Gomes with NOBLE Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Speaker 0

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start out real big. I just want to start out real.

Speaker 6

Big picture, you know, on the business solutions side, you know, making some good progress there. The 200 basis point improvement in sales trends.

Speaker 0

What though do you, as you sit here today, do you think needs to happen or to occur for that segment to get back to positive revenue trends? I think it is just continue the executional focus we have. It's, you know, we are 100% blanketing hospitality. That's a growth market. How do I get out of Dave and his team and who's the B2B of our business drive from 1,000 properties to 2,000 properties to 3,000 properties to 4,000 properties. We're going to go do that, and we're deploying sales teams. We did. I want to mention that we brought a very experienced leader to run our inside sales team that had, you know, 15+ years experience in a hospitality provider and did a great job there and is a wealth of information and experience. I think he's going to do a fantastic job for us.

I mean, Joe Brothers running our team for us and all other sales leaders are, again, we have a daily hospitality call Dave runs. I participate on it. Adam and Max are on as well. We are laser focused on driving operational excellence to go off and drive this business. That's where we're going to get the growth from and from CoreTrust and from the other large deal we had in November and any other deals that we'll continue to look for going forward. It's about operational focused, and I think we've tripled down on that, and I think we've done that all year, and that's showing in the results in Q1 and Q2.

Speaker 6

Hey Joe, it's Adam.

Can I pull on that thread?

A second as well? One thing to note is that our change in trend in the ODP Business Solutions top line is really coming from hospitality and our hospitality contract. When we see momentum, like a 200 basis point change in trend because of this new adventure that we're on, we are going to continue down this path.

It's just going to get stronger.

Stronger as we move throughout time, when we look at the change.

In trend there, that has a lot.

It's a material impact. We're going to continue on that front and executing in that space because we can see the dividends that it's paying back to us. We're laser focused on hospitality and some of these other contracts Gerry just alluded to.

Speaker 1

I'll just add one quick point to that too.

What we're noticing is an extra benefit here is that in our traditional space, our sales are growing there as well.

Speaker 0

We explore hospitality as well.

Speaker 1

I mentioned earlier low double digit growth in our traditional space. These are things like pantry cleaning. Our traditional space is increasing as a result of our expansion in the hospital.

Speaker 0

A great way to say would.

They're viewing us as a total solution provider, not just an office products company. More. Now we can. One truck can do cleaning and break room, it can do snacks, it can do hospitality products, it can do traditional office products, it can do furniture, it can do tech. We've done deals in some of these places in all those categories. I think it's a really important strategic point you made, Max, that in these pieces we're seeing and these customers, we're seeing growth across the whole, across our whole portfolio. Great. One other one for me. You see some improvement over at Office Depot on the retail side. You know, guesses out there for back to school could be down anywhere.

Speaker 6

From the mid to high single digits.

Speaker 0

If that were to occur, you know.

These thinking still see improved comparable store sales.

Speaker 6

Sales trends at Office Depot, are you looking at it, you're not seeing those types of declines.

Speaker 0

Are being forecasted out there. I'll take that. First, I want to thank Kevin Moffitt and his team. They've done an incredible job in Q1 and Q2. They had an incredible July and this week has been strong as well. It's really a merchandising strategy shift of offering value across a number of product categories. It's a daily execution by our store teams. Carlos, Chris, and Billy do an incredible job. We're operationally looking at every day's scorecard. I think that we're early in the flight weeks. This week is a big flight week and we've had really strong performance Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. That's a good indicator that we can continue the strength. I can't predict what's going to happen the next three and a half, four weeks.

We think we're incredibly positioned with the merchandising execution of our merchandising teams, the performance of our store teams, and the way we scorecard it and are managing every single day at every single store, every single district, every single region. We're doing the same thing with our key product categories and it's working. I have to applaud that team because they have built tremendous momentum. I was on the call today at 8:30 A.M. before this call and another great day. Thank you team for doing that. We're going to try to continue every day. I hope that all our call listeners are hearing strategies working, operational excellence is working, daily focus is working. I have strong hopes for the B2C team this quarter. Guys, anything else to add?

Speaker 6

I think you summed it up well. The only thing I would add to.

That is coming in.

Speaker 0

To this first beginning of the flight.

Speaker 6

Weeks that Gerry was alluding to, we're seeing nice momentum, and usually that's a good sign for things to come. We don't know exactly how things will pan out, of course, throughout the remainder.

Speaker 0

Of the quarter, it's early.

Speaker 6

Signs, good July, early signs to the.

Speaker 0

First couple weeks that are here.

Speaker 6

We are encouraged by what we're seeing early on here in the beginning of back to school.

Speaker 0

Great. Thanks for that, guys. I'll hop back in queue. Thanks so much. Thanks, Jeff.

Speaker 4

That concludes the Q and A session for today. I will now turn the call back over to The ODP Corporation CEO, Gerry Smith, for any closing remarks.

Speaker 0

Yeah, I just want to thank everyone.

for joining the call today. I want to just reiterate that I'm really proud of this team. I want to thank my leadership team, my senior leadership team, all the employees of the company, and our partners as well. We're demonstrating strong strategy execution. We're demonstrating operational excellence. We have very focused, prioritized plans of how we run the business every single day. I think that's really had great results in Q1 and Q2. Very pleased with the cash forecast increase across the business. A lot of us have faith and we're returning to that every day across this business as well and look forward to being, you know. Thank you for joining the call today. We look forward to continue to drive and maximize shareholder value. A lot of us will keep praying for success. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Thank you for your participation. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.