Prestige Consumer Healthcare - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY2026 revenue of $249.5M and diluted EPS of $0.95 declined year over year due to Clear Eyes supply constraints and an expected headwind from Q4 accelerated order timing; gross margin improved YoY and free cash flow was solid at $78.2M.
• The company announced a definitive agreement to acquire Pillar5 Pharma (current Clear Eyes supplier) to secure near-term supply and expand long-term sterile ophthalmic capacity; transaction expected to be approximately neutral to EPS and close in Q3 FY2026, subject to conditions.
• FY2026 guidance was lowered: revenue to $1,100–$1,115M (from $1,140–$1,155M) and diluted EPS to $4.50–$4.58 (from $4.70–$4.82); free cash flow of ≥$245M maintained.
• Relative to S&P Global consensus, Q1 missed on revenue ($249.5M vs $260.4M*) and EPS ($0.95 vs $0.992*), driven by eye care supply shortfalls; back-half supply acceleration and Pillar5 acquisition are key narrative catalysts for a recovery.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• International OTC segment revenue grew 6.1% YoY to $37.0M, driven by broad-based geographic growth.
• Gross margin expanded YoY, and non-GAAP EBITDA margin improved to 31.9% in Q1 FY2026 from 29.8% in Q1 FY2025; operating income was stable at $71.8M.
• Management delivered strong operating cash flow ($79.0M) and free cash flow ($78.2M), supported by working capital timing and lower interest expense.
• Quote (CEO): “We experienced momentum… including strong international segment growth, year-over-year improvement in gross margin, and solid quarterly free cash flow.”

What Went Wrong

• Clear Eyes supply constraints reduced shipments and were the primary driver of the 6.6% YoY revenue decline; North American OTC revenue fell to $212.6M (from $232.3M) largely due to Eye & Ear Care.
• The company absorbed an expected headwind from Q4 FY2025 accelerated order timing, impacting Q1 comparability.
• Guidance was lowered for FY2026 (revenue and EPS), reflecting eye care supply shortfalls expected to persist in H1; organic growth outlook moved to an approximate 1.5%–3.0% decrease from prior +1%–2%.

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2026 Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc. earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Phil Terpolilli, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Operator, and thank you to everyone who's joined today. On the call with me are Ron Lombardi, our Chairman, President and CEO, and Christine Sacco, our CFO and COO. On today's call, we'll review our first quarter fiscal 2026 results, discuss our full-year outlook, and then take questions from analysts. A slide presentation that accompanies today's call can be accessed by visiting prestigeconsumerhealthcare.com, clicking on the Investors link, and then on today's webcast and presentation. Remember, some of the information contained in the presentation today includes non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and slide presentation. On today's call, managers will make forward-looking statements around risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in a complete Safe Harbor disclosure on page two of the slide presentation that accompanies the call. These are important to review and contemplate.

Business environment uncertainty remains heightened due to supply chain constraints, high inflation, and geopolitical events, which have numerous potential impacts. This means results could change at any time, and the forecasted impact of risks is a best estimate based on the information available as of today's date. Additional information concerning risk factors and cautionary statements are available in our most recent SEC filings and most recent company 10-Q that was released this morning. I'll now hand it over to our CEO, Ron Lombardi. Ron?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Phil. Let's begin on slide five. Q1 sales were approximately $250 million. We were disappointed by the start to the year, which did not meet the $258 to $260 million revenue forecast we communicated back in May. At the time, we had forecasted a year-over-year decline in Q1, largely based on the timing of sales orders between Q4 last year and Q1 this year, as well as modestly lower sales in eye care. Unfortunately, a planned production shutdown in eye care, scheduled for early May, stretched longer than anticipated, resulting in a significant shortfall for Clear Eyes in Q1. We will discuss the action steps we are taking to address this, including the announcement to acquire Pillar Five on the next page. Elsewhere, our business performed largely in line with our expectations, including strong international segment growth and healthy long-term consumption trends for many of our key U.S.

brands, such as Dramamine and Fleet, as well as the continued recovery of Summer's Eve. In addition to this, we experienced gross margin expansion of 150 basis points to 56.2%, thanks to ongoing cost-savings efforts, resulting in a gross margin similar to our forecast. For EPS, we delivered $0.95, which was below our expectations due to the sales miss but still up approximately 6% versus the adjusted prior year, thanks to the gross margin expansion, marketing expense timing, and lower interest expense. Free cash flow of $78 million was a quarterly record and continues to enable capital deployment used to enhance shareholder value. In Q1, we repurchased over 400,000 shares and maintained our leverage ratio of approximately 2.4 times. Now, let's turn to page six to discuss our eye care supply.

Given the challenges faced in our eye care supply over the past year, we wanted to give a detailed update on our actions to address the issue. Over the past year, we began accelerating our long-term efforts focused on how to best position our supply chain to support Clear Eyes' sales growth. The first phase of this was to bring on two new suppliers to supplement our long-term supply requirements and better align to our business needs. This phase has made significant progress with the first of these suppliers providing product deliveries in late Q1. The second supplier is on track to begin supply in early Q3. The second phase was to further invest in our North American-based partner to expand their capacity. Over the past year, we have made progress with them, but at the same time, have been significantly impacted by shortfalls in production.

As we evaluated our options to address this, we decided the best course for us was direct ownership of the facility to help secure and expand long-term supply, resulting in today's announcements of the agreement to acquire Pillar Five Pharma. This direct ownership will allow us to accelerate the expansion of capacity, including the startup of a new high-speed line that we expect production from in Q3, as well as future capacity additions to fully support our expected growth in eye care demands. As a result of these actions, we believe we will see some improvements in supply late in Q2, but a more meaningful recovery in the second half of fiscal 2026 and into fiscal 2027. With that, I'll pass it to Chris to walk through the financials.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Ron. Good morning, everyone. Let's turn to slide eight and review our first quarter fiscal 2026 financial results. As a reminder, the information in today's presentation includes certain non-GAAP information that is reconciled to the closest GAAP measure in our earnings release. Q1 revenue of $249.5 million declined 6.6% from $267.1 million in the prior year and 6.4%, excluding the effects of foreign currency. EBITDA was approximately flat in Q1, and diluted EPS increased approximately 6% versus the prior year, as the revenue decline was offset primarily by improved gross margin, the timing of marketing spend, and lower interest expense versus the prior year. Let's turn to slide nine for detail around these consolidated results. As I just highlighted, our Q1 fiscal 2026 revenues decreased 6.4% organically versus the prior year.

By segment, excluding FX, North America segment revenues decreased 8.4%, and international segment revenues increased 7.1% versus the prior year. As Ron noted earlier, our Q1 sales declined due to our inability to move supply-constrained eye care product to customers to meet demand, as well as the expected order timing of a certain e-commerce customer that benefited Q4 of the prior year. Excluding these factors, we experienced organic growth. Positively, our international segment experienced organic sales growth of 7%, thanks to broad-based sales growth. We also experienced impressive double-digit year-over-year consumption growth in the e-commerce channel, continuing a long-term trend of higher online purchasing. Total company gross margin of 56.2% in the first quarter was largely as anticipated and up 150 basis points versus the prior year. Looking forward, we still expect a 56.5% gross margin for the year, with a Q2 gross margin of 55.5%.

For tariffs, we now anticipate a full-year potential cost of approximately $5 million as of today. This is the estimated cost prior to any strategic actions which we'd expect can fully offset the current tariff outlook. As a reminder, we have a predominantly domestic supplier base and have a diverse and only modest exposure to high-tariff countries, as well as certain products that are currently exempt from tariff under USMCA. Advertising and marketing came in at approximately $35 million, or 14% of sales in Q1, down versus prior year due to the timing of marketing programs. For fiscal 2026, we now anticipate an A&M rate of just over 14% of sales and up in dollars versus prior year. G&A expenses were 11.4% of sales in Q1 due to the timing of certain expenses. For the full year, we now anticipate G&A of approximately 10% as a percent of sales.

Diluted EPS of $0.95 increased versus an adjusted diluted EPS of $0.90 in the prior year, as lower revenue was offset by improved gross margin, the timing of A&M, and lower interest expense. For full-year fiscal 2026, we now expect adjusted EPS of approximately flat to 1% growth due to the latest revenue forecast. We still expect EBITDA margin in the low to mid-30s, consistent with long-term trends. Finally, looking below the line, interest expense of approximately $10 million benefited from the effects of our continued debt reduction efforts. Our Q1 tax rate was approximately 23.2%, and we anticipate a normalized tax rate of approximately 24% for the remaining quarters of fiscal 2026. Now let's turn to slide 10 and discuss cash flow and capital allocation. In Q1, we generated $78 million in free cash flow, driven largely by the timing of working capital, along with disciplined debt reduction efforts.

We continue to maintain industry-leading free cash flow and are maintaining our outlook for the full year of $245 million or more. At June 30, our net debt was approximately $900 million, consisting of attractive rate fixed debt, and we maintained our covenant-defined leverage ratio of 2.4 times. In the quarter, we repurchased approximately 400,000 shares for $35 million, and we'll continue to evaluate further repurchase opportunities in the remainder of fiscal 2026. Now let's discuss some details around the announced acquisition of our primary Clear Eyes supplier, Pillar Five Pharma, that Ron mentioned earlier. Based in Ontario, Canada, Pillar Five is a well-established pharma manufacturing site who we have partnered with since 2016. With over 200 employees, the site's core capability is multi-dose sterile OTC ophthalmic products. In terms of financial impact, we anticipate the estimated purchase price of approximately $100 million to be funded from cash on hand.

We expect the transaction to have a minimal impact to our P&L and to be approximately neutral to EPS on a normalized basis. As a reminder, this would exclude any one-time costs associated with the acquisition. Given the size, we'd also anticipate the acquisition to be leverage neutral. In terms of CapEx, we anticipate modest ongoing CapEx requirements, bringing our total company CapEx outlook to 1% to 3% of sales annually versus 1% to 2% previously. We would expect to close in fiscal Q3 based on fulfillment of certain closing conditions. With that, I'll turn it back to Ron.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Chris. Let's turn to slide 12 to wrap up. We continue to have confidence in our diverse and leading consumer healthcare portfolio and its long-term growth opportunities. Although the strong fundamentals of our business remain unchanged, we are disappointed in our start to the year. The actions we've outlined today give us confidence for an improvement in Clear Eyes' supply. For fiscal 2026, we now anticipate revenues of $1.1 billion to $1.115 billion, with organic revenue down approximately 1.5% to 3% versus last year, with this change in revenue outlook largely in the first half of fiscal 2026. This update to guidance is primarily driven by the anticipated eye care first-half supply constraints, with an additional headwind related to the current retail environment.

For Q2, we're expecting revenues of approximately $256 million to $259 million, down year over year, largely due to Clear Eyes' supply chain timing, as well as lower retail order patterns experienced in July that are not consistent with our stable consumption rates outside of eye care. Beginning in the second half, as discussed earlier, we anticipate significant improvement of Clear Eyes' shipments into retailers to support in-stock levels. For diluted EPS, we now anticipate adjusted EPS of $4.50 to $4.58 for the full year, and for Q2, we'd anticipate EPS of approximately $0.97. Lastly, we continue to anticipate free cash flow of $245 million or more, and we have ample capital deployment optionality that has a history of maximizing value for our shareholders. With that, I'll open it up for questions. Operator?

Speaker 0

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Good morning and thanks for taking my question. On the change in retail order patterns and the inventory de-stocking, just curious if that's broad-based across retailers and then how to think about the magnitude of that impact for Q2, whether you expect that to continue beyond Q2.

Speaker 3

Yeah, good morning. My question is, Chris. You know, we talked about the impacts to the full-year outlook, the first, of course, being our expectations around eye care supply. The second aspect that we talked about relates to the current retail environment. You know, we're hearing what you're hearing from other CPG companies concerning the environment, and we have seen increased order volatility from retailers in July, one in particular where we've seen big swings week to week in orders that are disconnected from consistent consumption levels. There's a degree of expectation that what we've seen thus far will significantly impact Q2, but we are expecting to return to more normalized retail order trends in the second half.

OK. No specifics on the impact of that headwind for Q2?

If I think about the call down for the year, we talk about the majority being eye care, and think of it as a 60/40 split, really, 60 being eye care.

OK. That's helpful. Going to Clear Eyes, I'd love to hear your confidence in supply normalizing in the back half of the year. Would you expect to recover some of these lost sales in FY 2027 and beyond?

Sure. Good morning, Rupesh. Let me start maybe by stepping back a little bit on our decision and announcement on Pillar Five and touch on some of the topics we've talked about in the past, right? The sterile eye care sourcing strategy that we've been talking about and announced the Pillar Five acquisition on today really has been in development for a long time. We've been scouring the globe for years to understand sterile eye care capacity and the options available to us. That led to what we started to describe about a year ago, actually over a year ago, where we talked about adding new suppliers and focusing on investing in our current suppliers to expand their capacity. We started to see the beginnings of deliveries from one of those new suppliers at the very end of June.

We anticipate the second will come on early in our third quarter. As we evaluated the two long-term suppliers that we've been working with over the years, it became obvious to us that Pillar Five was meaningfully ahead of the other supplier in terms of being able to expand their capacity. We've talked about the expectation that a new high-speed line will come online later in Q3. With those three elements, the two new suppliers working with direct oversight on Pillar Five once we close and the addition of this high-speed line is going to provide a significant level of stability in sterile eye care that we've forecasted will add meaningfully to the sales level in the second half of the year. A bit more detail than maybe you asked in your question, but I just thought it'd be good to step back and pull all the pieces together, Rupesh.

OK. You feel good about getting back to normalized supply at this point for the back half of the year?

We do, right? That was our expectation that we talked about back in May. We thought it would be slower in the first half, not to this extent, but expected that the new suppliers and the additional high-speed line at Pillar would be in place for the second half.

OK. My final question, just on Clear Eyes as well, just from a market share out-of-stock perspective, what's happening from that perspective?

Yeah, over the past year, up through May, we had fairly steady supply concentrated around our biggest SKUs. Despite the fact that we saw volatility in shipments into retail, we still had decent supply and availability at shelf. That all changed in late May as a result of the disruption at Pillar Five Pharma. We saw a significant decrease in late May and June and into July in our share. We expect to see that recover as shipments get back in. As a reminder, Clear Eyes was by far the number one volume leader in redness relief, nearly 50 million units a year sold at retail, and that's a big presence. We would anticipate that we'd be able to begin to recover that share over time.

We have seen some lost distribution for the SKUs that were around the big movers, like Cooling Comfort and Complete Care and some of the other SKUs that we have. That'll take a bit more time, but we would expect to see the recovery over time of our leading position in redness.

Great, thank you for all the call. I'll pass it along.

Thank you, Rupesh.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Quick question on the eye care manufacturing. I guess bringing that in-house, does that change the margins at all for the segment, that segment of the business? Also, did you say what % now of your eye care business will be internally manufactured?

Speaker 3

Good morning, Susan. It's Chris. We're not expecting any meaningful movement in our gross margin or actually any of our financial metrics as a result. We talked about expecting it to be largely neutral to the P&L. No on that. We didn't disclose the %. Obviously, the benefit of having more than one, more than two suppliers at this point allows us the flexibility to flex back and forth. That'll be determined over time, and we'll evolve it as we go.

OK, great. I guess just looking at the model, maybe if you could talk about the puts and takes of gross margin for the year. It looks like you're going to still maintain the gross margin despite the pressure from the eye care business. I guess, you know, what do you expect to be driving that performance the rest of the year? Thanks.

Yeah, so from a gross margin perspective, it's kind of the same, you know, steady as she goes, right? Largely a variable cost model. Most of our channels and our brands have a similar margin, so not a lot of outliers there. We may see some shift in mix, and that's the movement you'll see, I think, as we go through the quarters. Nothing meaningful there. We talked today, we updated the tariff number. It used to be $15 million. We brought it down to about $5 million. Again, we would expect pricing and cost-saving actions to mitigate that, but that could have some impact on the mix, excuse me, on the margin. All in all, when you put it together, it's really, you know, no change as a result of eye care. We are expecting to recoup a significant portion of the sales in the back half.

OK, great. I guess just looking out to the back half now in the cough-cold season, what are you expecting out of the season this year? I assume you're planning it to be normal, which I assume would be up over last year with kind of a weaker season.

Yeah, no change to the initial guide on cough-cold. We were forecasting a modest decline in the category. It's a little bit too early to tell at this point, so we're maintaining that at this point.

OK, great. One more, if you could talk about just how you feel about the inventory within your segments in the channels. Do you feel like there's any areas that are still over-inventoried, which you would expect some de-stocking going forward? Do you feel that within your categories, the inventory is pretty clean?

Yeah, we do review our largest customers, and we do not see any meaningful ramp-up of inventory. As we talk about the current retail environment and these kind of big swings that we're seeing in order patterns, it's really disconnected from consumption, and it's not starting from a place of inflated inventory. No, we are not seeing any meaningful opportunities for folks to take significant amounts of inventory out at this point.

Yeah, that's interesting. I guess one last one just on the women's health business. You talked about Summer's Eve continuing to recover. I guess are you expecting that business to be positive the rest of the year?

Speaker 2

Good morning, Susan. It's Ron here. We continue to feel good about the Summer's Eve momentum and trends. If you take a look at performance of the different categories during the quarter, it's tough to get a handle on them because of that shift between the fourth quarter and the first quarter. Even with that shift, our women's health category had growth in the quarter ended June. It gives you a little insight into the strong trends there versus where we were a year ago when we hit bottom for the Summer's Eve brand. We continue to feel good about it for the remainder of the year.

OK, great. Thanks so much for all the details. Good luck the rest of the year.

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from a line of Glen West with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Hi, guys. Glen West on for John Anderson. Some of what I wanted to hit was kind of asked, but maybe piggybacking back on the Clear Eyes situation, can you elaborate kind of on the cadence of that improvement in the second half? I know there's a new supplier coming on during Q3, and then the new high-speed line will be coming on in Q3 as well. Does that mean, you know, full supply recovery isn't really going to be until Q4? Or maybe just a little more color on that back half recovery.

Speaker 3

Yeah, hi, Glen. Yes, we are anticipating the third quarter and the fourth quarter to significantly step up from the first half. It's not all fourth quarter loaded. It is also an increase in the third quarter.

Speaker 2

Glen, it's Ron here. In terms of recovery, it's going to take more than a couple of quarters of improved output at our suppliers to catch up. We've been shipping in well behind potential demand for the brand for a good year now. We would expect that full recovery to continue into 2027.

OK, thank you. On capital allocation, you said the deal would be paid for entirely in cash. I think you said $100 million, but still said you'll look to opportunistically maybe repurchase shares. Looking forward, how are you thinking about the capital allocation since, you know, you're using a large chunk of cash here? Is there maybe opportunity to pursue purchasing more suppliers in the future? What are you guys thinking there?

Speaker 3

Yeah, Glen, it's Phil. The waterfall of our capital allocation priorities really hasn't changed. You know, with the leverage ratio we've achieved over the last few years as we've paid down debt and the approximate $1 billion in free cash flow we'd expect over the next four years, we think we have a lot of firepower to create value in multiple buckets. We're continuing to pursue M&A and staying disciplined around that, looking for opportunities. From there, the second pillar is repurchases. You saw the 400,000 shares in Q1 to offset dilution. Beyond that, look for incremental opportunistic repurchases over time. Still thinking about net reduction and cash build as sort of the fourth element to enable those other pillars. No change to that waterfall that we've laid out in the past. The acquisition of Pillar Five is one of many of those deployment priorities.

Appreciate the color. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 0

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from a line of Anthony Le Banzinski with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking the question. First one here is on Pillar Five. I know you said it's going to be earnings neutral to EPS this year. How should we think about, you know, fiscal 2027 as you have a full-year impact of that? If you could just give us some maybe directional guidance on that, that'd be great.

Speaker 3

Yeah, Anthony. Hi, it's Chris. We're talking about expecting it to be largely neutral to the P&L. I think I mentioned, we're thinking tens of basis points, not hundreds here. Given the investment that Pillar Five made in the facility and maybe the different objectives the financial sponsor might have in running a facility like this, there's also an element of cost avoidance here, as we would expect Pillar Five, as well as other options we explored, to be looking for significant capital investments from us, as well as significant price increases in the years to come. That doesn't affect my current gross margin or my margin structure. Just a reminder, think about this acquisition differently than a brand acquisition, right?

We did this transaction to better secure supply for one of our largest brands, as well as to ensure the ability to increase capacity in a space that we believe will provide nice growth as we move forward. That's how we're thinking about it at this point.

Speaker 2

Yeah, a couple of other comments on it. Anthony, you know, to put it in perspective, right, Clear Eyes is a high single digit of our sales. So that in and of itself isn't going to have a major impact on the total company's financial profile. You put the high margins in there, and you end up with a small relative level of purchase costs in the P&L. The second is, right, our sole focus as we sit here today is about recovering supply at this point. It doesn't mean that we won't have a sharp pencil and a focus on making this as accretive as possible and finding ways for that facility to be more effective from a cost standpoint going forward. For now, it's all about stability of supply going forward. Then we'll get an eye on the ability to be more cost-effective over time.

Got it. OK, thanks a lot. That definitely helps. Now, just thinking of Clear Eyes, we've had the few quarters of supply chain issues for Clear Eyes. I'm just wondering what steps are you taking to ensure that the brand remains in a strong position and top of mind for consumers, as some, because of not having adequate supply at retail, maybe some consumers have shifted to other brands. How are you guys thinking about just the ability to maintain your strong position for Clear Eyes?

Yeah, so first is, as I think I commented earlier, our focus has been trying to maximize availability of our top SKUs. Our base redness and our max redness have been a primary focus for what we produce. The second part of it is to maintain the right level of connections with consumers for the brand. The last thing we want to do is drive them to the shelf with an expectation that the product is available in the channel that they're happening to look to buy at and be disappointed when they get to the shelf. That's the first part of it. The second part of it is, where are we seeing the shift in our share go to? The first is, the entire redness category from a unit's standpoint is down. We're number one by far from a unit basis, and we're impacting the entire category.

We're seeing the category decline. Where we do see a shift in share, it's kind of spread across a broad number of players who are in that redness category. There isn't any one big winner here. It's kind of spread out. As I just mentioned, we're seeing the category shrink.

Got it. OK. My last question here, as far as the international segment, obviously nice performance there. How do you guys think about your ability and confidence to be able to sustain that growth internationally?

Speaker 3

Yeah, Anthony. Hi, it's Christine. In the quarter, we had solid international consumption just ahead of our long-term forecast. It was pretty broad-based growth by brand and by geography. For the full year, we're expecting a little bit of a softer trend versus the 7% you saw in the first quarter, some of which is timing, but still in line with our longer-term algorithm of 5%+ for this segment. We've talked in the past about opportunities as we expanded our Hydralyte rights, as we look to expand other brands geographically, and then just executing the same kind of brand-building playbook in the other regions that we have done here in North America. We feel pretty confident in our ability to keep that long-term algorithm going for the years to come.

Thank you very much, and best of luck.

Thanks, Anthony.

Speaker 0

Thank you so much. As a reminder, everyone, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of Doug Lane with Water Tower Research. Your line is now open.

Thanks, Operator. Hi, good morning, everybody. I'm relatively new to Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc., but I have followed OTC pharmaceutical companies in the past, and I don't remember talking about supply constraints in this category. What is it about eye care that has caused so much consternation as far as supply is concerned?

Speaker 2

Good morning, Doug. Good to speak with you. I think I touched on this a little bit earlier. We've been evaluating sterile eye care supply options for over a decade as we looked for the ability to support Clear Eyes' growth over the long term. What you find is generally the bigger players have their own in-house manufacturing. As a result of that, there isn't a lot of available high-volume sterile eye care capacity that's out there because the brands that are out there generally don't have that $50 million unit annual volume requirement that Clear Eyes has. It isn't out there to tap into. When we look to add to our supply base, it begins with having to make meaningful investments in suppliers to get them to acquire and install high-capacity, unique fillers that match our unique Clear Eyes bottle, right? We're not in a Boston round.

We've got that great, iconic, flattish-style bottle out there. The simple answer is there isn't the kind of capacity out there available that wouldn't require years, three, four, five, from start to finish and meaningful investments. As we've gotten to the inflection point of setting ourselves up for long-term success here, it became obvious that we needed to bring this in-house to be in the best position long term.

Is this going to require an accelerated capital spending for maybe next year, if not this year, to get that capacity and be comfortable to have what you need for the next several years?

As I said earlier, we thought Pillar Five had a significant head start to our other options. They've got HVAC infrastructure ready to go. They've got this new high-speed line that we should be seeing production set up for. They're far ahead of the other options that we had, including the amount of capital. I think in Chris's prepared remarks today, she gave an update that we'd be expecting our capital to move from 1% to 2% of revenues to 1% to 3% over the long term. That's another $10 million on a billion one. The short answer is we're not expecting any meaningful step up either in the short term or the longer term for capital, even with the ownership.

I'll compare it to our Lynchburg facility, which will be producing 2X the sales value of output versus Pillar Five, still only requires single-digit millions of capital spending each year to support that level.

OK, that's helpful. You said in your slides your double-digit consumption growth in e-commerce, which continues to be strong, but that doesn't sound like it was shipments from you guys. Is that where some inventories were worked off in the quarter?

Speaker 3

Yeah, Doug, this is Christine. Yes, that is an area where we saw a meaningful disconnect from consumption levels, which have been very consistent over time.

Speaker 2

Some of that was expected. When we gave our outlook for the quarter end of June, we had called the $7 million or $8 million shifts from the fourth quarter into the first quarter. We anticipated that for the first quarter.

Yes, I remember that. That inventory build, if you will, that you called out last quarter has been pretty much worked off at this point?

Speaker 3

Right. It has. The guidance that we're calling for the adjustment is largely in Q2 for what we've experienced in July. As I mentioned in the Q&A session, inventory levels were not at inflated levels, so meaningful disconnect there so far.

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. OK, thank you.

Thank you, Doug.

Speaker 0

Thank you so much. This does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Ron Lombardi, CEO, for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Operator. I want to thank everybody for joining us today. We look forward to providing an update for Q2. Have a great day.

Speaker 0

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.