Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. Stock

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Q3 2026 Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Ms. Jen Schultz, DVP, FP&A and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Spectrum Brands Holdings Q3 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. I'm Jen Schultz, Division Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations, and I will moderate today's call. To help you follow our comments, we have placed a slide presentation on the Event Calendar page in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.spectrumbrands.com. This document will remain there following our call.

Starting with Slide 2 of the presentation. Our call will be led by David Maura, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Faisal Qadir, our Chief Financial Officer. After opening remarks, we will conduct the Q&A.

Turning to Slides 3 and 4. Our comments today include forward-looking statements, which are based upon management's current expectations, projections and assumptions and are, by nature, uncertain. Actual results may differ materially. Due to that risk, Spectrum Brands encourages you to review the risk factors and cautionary statements outlined in our press release dated August 7, 2026, our most recent SEC filings and Spectrum Brands Holdings' most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Also, please note that we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in this call. Reconciliations on a GAAP basis for these measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation, which are both available on our website in the Investor Relations section.

Now I'll turn the call over to David Maura. David?

Thank you, Jen, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to Spectrum Brands' third quarter earnings update. I appreciate everybody joining us for today's call. As usual, I'll start the call with an update on the operating environment, then our operating performance, and I'll finally turn our attention to our strategic initiatives at the end. Faisal will then come on and provide more detailed financial and operational updates, including a discussion on the specific business unit results.

If I could have you turn to Slide 6. Let me start by sharing some of the significant accomplishments since our last quarterly earnings call. This quarter was marked by meaningful milestones, and I believe it reflects the strength of what this team is capable of, and we are focused on executing with discipline. I'm incredibly proud of what the global team has delivered, not just this quarter, but consistently over the past year in the face of a dynamic and changing macroeconomic environment. The results speak for themselves, and they reinforce my conviction that we do have the right people, the right strategy and the right priorities in place to drive both our near-term performance and long-term value creation for our stakeholders.

With that context in mind, let me walk you through a few of the highlights. First, our quarterly results once again outperformed expectations on both the top and the bottom lines. This is a trend we have sustained throughout the fiscal year. Net sales increased 7.7% versus the prior year with all 3 business units delivering growth. In fact, in our Home & Garden business, we delivered a record-setting quarter with net sales of $225 million, surpassing even the elevated demand levels we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Second, on a year-to-date basis, our company has returned to organic growth, a meaningful achievement against the challenging macroeconomic backdrop. While geopolitical tensions persist and volatile trade environments continue to create uncertainty and weigh on consumer sentiment, we've been encouraged by the resilience that consumers have demonstrated across most of the categories we serve. Our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses benefited from solid underlying demand. And while we are seeing some expected softness in the Home and Personal Care unit, the trends are consistent with our expectations.

Third, on the cost and tariff front, we continue to experience modest inflationary pressure, particularly across commodities and freight. And the tariff landscape continues to evolve with the recent expiration of the Section 122 tariffs and the announcement of new Section 301 tariffs.

That said, the proactive approach we took last year positions us well to navigate these pressures in the near term, and we do not view this as a significant headwind for the balance of this year. On the [ IEEPA ] refund front, we've made significant progress. While some refunds were collected within the quarter, a more substantial cash collection occurred subsequent to the quarter close. We have now collected substantially all refunds associated with Phase 1, and we filed over 95% of our Phase 2 claims. In the quarter, we did recognize a receivable for those refunds on our balance sheet, which reflects our confidence in the collection process and the progress we've made to date.

Fourth, if we turn to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with almost $260 million of cash. We have 0 drawn on the revolver, and we have a net leverage ratio of about 1x. This is well below the long-term target we've set for the company of 2 to 2.5 turns of leverage. We also repurchased approximately 200,000 shares during the quarter for about $15.8 million and with over $300 million of additional Board authorization still remaining. We will continue to be opportunistic in share repurchases to ensure flexibility as we look to capitalize on market opportunities and dislocations.

Fifth, on the operational front, in July, we completed our first S/4HANA deployment into the Home and Personal Care business here in North America, while also finalizing implementation across the remaining Global Pet Care and Home & Garden entities. With these completions, 100% of our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses and all but the EMEA region in Home and Personal Care are now operating on a single unified ERP platform. This is a significant milestone in our multiyear transformation.

If I could now turn your attention to Slide 7, and here, I'll give an update on our strategic priorities for the balance of fiscal '26. These priorities are serving us as a clear guide in our decision-making and our progress against each one of them reinforces the effectiveness of our strategy. First, with respect to financial stewardship, our core objective is delivering growth while maintaining a very healthy balance sheet and strong margin structures. Our quarterly results demonstrate how deeply the team has embraced this philosophy. Year-to-date, we've delivered $136 million of adjusted free cash flow through disciplined working capital and CapEx management, including approximately $3 million from tariff refunds. Operationally, our S&OP process continues to perform at a high level. In fact, we once again maintained fill rates above 95% across all 3 business units this quarter on a leaner inventory base. This reinforces the fact that we can deliver for our customers without sacrificing working capital discipline.

Second, if I move to operational excellence, I'd like to build upon what I shared earlier as it relates to the S/4HANA ERP transformation. As I mentioned, we're now in the final stages of this multiyear project with only the HPC EMEA region deployment remaining later this year.

I want to take a moment on this call to sincerely thank each one of our global team members who have driven this implementation. This has been a long, hard process and their dedication, patience and perseverance over the course of this journey has been remarkable. And reaching this point is a really significant milestone that should not be understated. That said, completing this implementation is not our finish line. It's simply the foundation. The real opportunity for our company lies in what comes next, leveraging this new platform to further standardize our processes, drive efficiency improvements and ultimately unlock the full potential of what a unified global ERP system can deliver for our business and our stakeholders. We do have meaningful work still ahead of us, but I'm confident that this -- that we have the right team in place to capture that value over time.

Now this brings me to our third key priority, which is investing in our people. At the start of the fiscal year, we set a clear intention to raise the bar on both talent and leadership, recognizing that building the right team is foundational to executing the strategy and long-term sustainable growth we desire for our company. This isn't something that happens overnight. But as I reflect on where we stand today, I'm genuinely proud of the progress we've made. Over the past year, we've made meaningful leadership changes within the Global Pet Care business, bringing in experienced CPG talent with a very strong focus on consumer-led insights and data-driven decision-making. These additions have already begun to strengthen our commercial capabilities and sharpen our go-to-market approach.

Our fourth priority for fiscal '26 is strategic transformation. Our key brands in both the Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses continue to deliver above-market growth, driven by consumer-led insights and bolder new product development. M&A remains a meaningful priority for us, and we are active in the market, evaluating opportunities across both our Pet and Home & Garden businesses. That said, we will remain disciplined in our approach, and we will only act when the right opportunity presents itself at the right value. Our balance sheet strength gives us tremendous flexibility to move decisively when the time is right.

Lastly, on the HPC front, our partnership with Oaktree is progressing well, and we are excited about what lies ahead. The foundation has been laid, and we are beginning to chart the path forward together. There are a number of potential exciting opportunities to create the right structure to maximize value at HPC. We look forward to sharing more progress with you as this relationship matures.

If everybody could turn now to Slide 8, and I'll cover the high-level fiscal '26 earnings framework. We continue to expect our net sales to be flat to up low single digits versus the prior year, and that's driven by growth in Global Pet Care and Home & Garden, which are more than offsetting an anticipated decline in our Home & Personal Care unit. In light of our year-to-date performance, however, we are updating and increasing our EBITDA expectations. Excluding the impact from tariff refunds, we now expect adjusted EBITDA to increase mid-single digits versus the prior year, reflecting the underlying strength of our core businesses and our continued discipline around expense management. And consistent with our prior framework, excluding tariff refunds, we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow to be approximately 50% of our adjusted EBITDA.

Before I turn the call over to Faisal, I'd like to sincerely thank each member of the Spectrum Brands team. Your commitment, your execution are reflected in these results. And as we enter the final stretch of the year, I'm confident we'll finish strong and we'll continue delivering value for our shareholders.

Now you'll hear more from Faisal on the financials, and he'll give you some more business unit insights. Over to you, Faisal.

Thank you, David. Let's turn to Slide 10 and review our third quarter financials, starting with net sales. Net sales increased 7.7%. Excluding the impact of $7.5 million of favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales increased 6.6%. All 3 businesses delivered growth in the quarter, led by our Home & Garden business, where favorable weather conditions drove point-of-sale consumption with our key brands continuing to outperform the market. Gross profit increased $106.3 million and gross margin of 49.2% increased 11.4 percentage points, including a onetime tariff refund of $60.6 million. Excluding this benefit, gross profit increased $45.7 million and gross margin of 41.1% increased 330 basis points, driven by higher sales volume, pricing, lower trade spend, favorable mix and cost improvement actions, partially offset by higher tariff costs.

Operating expenses of $354.5 million increased by 52.3%, including an impairment charge recognized in the current quarter for the HPC business related to the recent transaction with Oaktree. Excluding this impairment charge, operating expenses increased $25.5 million or 11.3%, largely attributable to increased investment spend.

Operating income of $15.9 million decreased by $15.4 million, driven by the higher operating expenses, partially offset by the gross profit increase I mentioned. GAAP net income and diluted earnings per share both decreased, primarily driven by the lower operating income and higher income tax expense. Diluted earnings per share benefited from a lower share count. Adjusted EBITDA was $158.3 million, an increase of $81.7 million. Excluding tariff refunds, adjusted EBITDA was $97.7 million, an increase of $21.1 million or 27.5% driven by the improved gross margin and increased volume, partially offset by the higher investment spend. Adjusted diluted EPS increased to $2.79, driven by the higher adjusted EBITDA and a reduction in share outstanding, including $1.90 per share benefit from tariff refunds. Excluding this benefit, adjusted EPS decreased to $0.89.

Turning to Slide 11. Our Q3 interest expense from continuing operations of $8.2 million decreased $200,000. Cash taxes during the quarter resulted in a net refund of $1.3 million, a decrease of $15.3 million from the prior year. Depreciation and amortization of $24.8 million decreased $300,000 from last year. And separately, share-based compensation increased to $6 million from $4.8 million in the prior year. Capital expenditures were $9.8 million in the quarter, which is $200,000 lower than the prior year. Cash payments towards strategic transactions, restructuring-related projects and other unusual nonrecurring investments were $7.4 million versus $8.6 million last year.

Moving to the balance sheet. We had a quarter end balance -- cash balance of $258.9 million and $494.8 million available on our $500 million cash flow revolver. Total debt outstanding was approximately $633 million, consisting of $496.1 million of senior unsecured notes, $76.9 million of finance leases and $60 million of HPC term loan. We ended the quarter with $374.1 million of net debt.

Now let's get into the review of each business unit, and I'll provide you more details on the underlying performance drivers of our operational results. I'll start the business reviews with the Global Pet Care business, which is Slide 12. Reported net sales increased 3.3% and excluding favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales increased 2.9%. Reported net sales in companion animal increased mid-single digits, while sales in aquatics decreased mid-single digits. In North America, sales increased high single digits led by strength in companion animal with modest category growth and continued market share gains across our key brands.

Our top brands across chews, stain & odor, and grooming, all maintained or gained market share in the quarter. Sales also benefited from a softer prior year comparison stemming from the temporary suspension of shipments to key retail partners during pricing negotiations, which deferred orders from Q3 to Q4 of last year. Results were also partially offset by an approximately $3 million headwind from e-commerce orders shipped early into the prior quarter. Organic net sales in EMEA decreased in the mid-single digits, including an approximately $6 million headwind driven by retail partners accelerating orders into the prior quarter ahead of our March 30 S/4HANA go-live, impacting both companion animal and aquatics.

Excluding this timing impact, underlying performance across both companion animal and aquatics was strong. In companion animal, Good Boy continues to outperform the competition, driven by distribution gains across Continental Europe and expanded market leadership in the U.K. In Aquatics, we gained market share within a declining category, where the e-commerce channel delivered strong year-over-year gains. Our commercial and go-to-market strategy remains rooted in consumer-led innovation, supported by targeted marketing and advertising that speaks directly to today's pet owner. A key pillar of this strategy is our evolving digital approach as we work to build a social-first marketing machine that meets consumers where they are.

Most notably, we recently launched TikTok Shops for both our Good 'n' Fun and DreamBone brands, a first for our GPC portfolio, creating a direct and engaging path to purchase in one of the fastest-growing social commerce platforms. Complementing our digital efforts, we are executing numerous media campaigns focused on driving increased brand awareness and engagement.

And lastly, on the revenue growth management front, you may recall last quarter, we shared that we were in the process of refining our price pack architecture across much of North American business. With the initiative now fully executed, we are actively supporting our portfolio value proposition and remain focused on reinvesting appropriately behind our brands and innovation pipeline.

Turning to EBITDA. Excluding tariff refunds, this quarter's adjusted EBITDA for the business was $51.9 million, an increase of $7.9 million versus the prior year, with adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 250 basis points to 19.7%. The improvement was primarily driven by pricing, favorable mix and cost improvement actions, partially offset by higher tariff costs and investment spend. As we look forward to the fourth quarter and conclusion of the fiscal year, we continue to expect to deliver top line growth for fiscal '26 in the GPC business, reflecting the underlying momentum across our key brands and markets. Our year-to-date performance has been strong, and we are confident in our brand's ability to continue gaining share in the marketplace.

In the fourth quarter, however, we anticipate sales will be down versus the prior year, driven by tougher comparisons related to both the stop shipment dynamic discussed earlier and Eukanuba order timing as retailers pulled purchases forward in the fourth quarter of prior year in support of a refreshed portfolio launch. We expect investment spend to remain elevated relative to the first half as we reinvest margin gains from our pricing decisions back into the brands in support of long-term growth.

Now let's move to our Home & Garden business, which is on Slide 13. We delivered a record quarter with reported net sales of $225 million, an increase of 19% versus the prior year, surpassing even the elevated demand levels we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Growth was broad-based with double-digit gains across all pest controls and herbicide categories. Favorable weather conditions across key regions in April drove strong retail point-of-sale activity and higher replenishment orders early in the quarter. While weather turned unfavorable in May with pockets of severe weather and excessive heat across the Eastern U.S., our April momentum and the underlying strength of our brands enabled us to deliver a record quarter despite these challenges. Notably, most of our key brands once again outperformed the market, including Spectracide, Hot Shot and Repel.

The strength of our sales is a direct reflection of our continued investment in innovation, consumer-relevant marketing and strong retail execution. Spectracide's nonselective lineup of fast-acting ready-to-use formulas to address unwanted weeds and grasses is winning in the marketplace with enhanced efficacy claims that are resonating with consumers at a superior value. In addition, the innovations brought to market last year continue to drive growth through expanded distribution.

The Spectracide Wasp, Hornet and Yellowjacket Trap, along with the Hot Shot Flying Insect Traps are outpacing the market through significant footprint expansion supported by strong media campaigns. Off-shelf displays continue to be a core part of our strategy, and we secured numerous promotional end cap and aisle displays with many of our retail partners.

In our cleaning category, we recently launched the Rejuvenate PowerMax Multi-Surface Mop, a 3-in-1 sweet mop scrub floor care solution built around consumer convenience and superior value. While distribution is in its early stages across select online and brick-and-mortar retail partners, we have additional placements already confirmed with rollouts underway.

Turning to EBITDA. Excluding tariff refunds, adjusted EBITDA was $48.4 million, an increase of $9.8 million versus the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.5%, representing 110 basis points improvement year-over-year. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by the higher sales volume and productivity improvement, partially offset by higher trade spend and inflation. The additional cost of tariffs was largely mitigated through a variety of actions, including pricing.

Looking ahead to the balance of the fiscal year, while our Home & Garden business delivered a record-setting quarter, the demand variability we experienced within the quarter tied to shifting weather patterns is a reminder that weather plays an important yet unpredictable factor in our overall performance. The unfavorable weather conditions experienced in late June continued into July with more widespread and persistent heat impacting much of the country. These conditions have also left certain retailers carrying elevated inventory levels, which we expect will temper replenishment orders and weigh on fourth quarter results. Latest weather projections for August and September indicate warmer-than-average conditions for a majority of the country with an increased chance of precipitation along the East Coast.

We will continue to partner closely with our customers to ensure we can appropriately supply the products to meet consumer demand and drive further expansion of the Fall Call Program. We remain focused on driving consumer-led innovation, and we will continue to strategically invest in our brands through the balance of the year. We are on track to deliver net sales growth with modest EBITDA margin expansion in fiscal '26 for the Home & Garden business.

Let's finally turn to our Home & Personal Care business, which is Slide 14. Reported net sales in this business increased 3.6%. Excluding favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales increased 1.1%. Reported net sales in the Personal Care category increased in the mid-teens this quarter, while sales in home appliances were down mid-single digits. Organic net sales in EMEA increased mid-single digits with growth in both home appliances and personal care. Sales across both categories benefited from a one-time reduction in trade spend in our e-commerce and DTC channels, offset by an increase in operating expenses. Underlying performance in both categories continue to be impacted by increased competition, particularly in the e-commerce channel.

That said, U.K. performance for the quarter was strong with double-digit improvements to POS across Personal Care and home appliances. This was driven in part by expanded distribution at key retailers and the continued success of our growing direct-to-consumer business. Further expansion of our DTC capability across Europe and beyond remains a key priority for our team. North American sales decreased in the mid-single digits, driven by lower sales in home appliances, reflecting softness across certain brands and the exit of our U.S. DRTV business. Despite this, Black & Decker continued to perform well, particularly in Coffeemakers and Fabric Care, where we saw positive POS and market share gains.

In Personal Care, sales increased double digits though results benefited from a soft prior year comparison due to the tariff-related pricing disruptions we've previously discussed. The Hair Care segment is showing signs of stabilization with sequential improvement in both the overall category and Remington performance. Recently, the hair care category returned to growth and Remington gained share within it, with particularly strong performance in the Curling Iron segment. In our Latin American region, organic sales increased in the high single digits, primarily driven by double-digit growth in Personal Care following new product launches across Mexico, Colombia and Central America earlier in the year. These launches continue to gain traction from brand-focused investments and partnerships with key retailers sustaining double-digit sell-out growth. Organic sales in home appliances also increased driven by incremental volume in Colombia and Mexico under our Black & Decker brand.

Our continued investment behind our brands is translating into tangible commercial wins across channels and markets, and I'd like to highlight a few examples. First, building on the success of our DTC expansion in the U.K., we're actively extending this approach to new markets. During the quarter, we launched a TikTok shop in the U.S. featuring our Remington brand with the Gloss collection as our debut assortment. We are encouraged by the early response and are continuing to build capabilities to support further expansion across other brands, categories and markets.

Second, we successfully reactivated our partnership with a key retailer in Australia across both our Russell Hobbs and Remington brands, following a period in which the retailer had shifted towards private label. We are pleased to once again bring our trusted market-leading brands back to Australian consumers through this important channel.

And third, we recently entered a partnership with America's Test Kitchen, showing the Black & Decker brand featuring the VacuSteam and Perfect Pint Ice Cream Maker through an integrated multichannel media campaign designed to increase awareness and drive meaningful consumer engagement.

Turning to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA, excluding tariff refunds was $14.4 million. an increase of $7.4 million versus the prior year, with adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 270 basis points to 5.4%. The increase was primarily driven by pricing, cost improvement initiatives and favorable foreign exchange, partially offset by lower volumes and higher tariff costs. Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, while softness in global consumer demand and a reduced U.S. product portfolio will continue to weigh on net sales, we expect the rate of decline to moderate relative to the first half, consistent with the underlying trends we experienced in Q3. Our focus remains on improving profitability with plans in place to deliver full year adjusted EBITDA growth versus prior year despite a projected decline in net sales for the full year.

Turning to Slide 15 and our expectations for fiscal '26. We continue to expect net sales to be flat to up low single digits compared to the prior year, driven by growth in our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden business, more than offsetting an anticipated sales decline in our Home & Personal Care business. Our year-to-date results support this view, though we anticipate some moderation in Q4 as Global Pet Care faces tough prior year comparisons and Home & Garden navigates unfavorable weather conditions late in the season. In light of year-to-date performance, we are updating our expectation for full year adjusted EBITDA. Excluding the impact of tariff refunds, we now expect adjusted EBITDA to grow mid-single digits.

The improvement versus the prior year continues to be driven by the expected sales growth in our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses, continuous improvement initiatives and FX favorability offsetting the anticipated lower volume in Home & Personal Care. Tariffs and inflation are expected to be largely offset through the various mitigation actions, which we've taken, including pricing. And lastly, excluding tariff refunds, we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA to be around 50%.

Now turning to Slide 16. Depreciation and amortization is expected to be between $115 million and $125 million, including stock-based compensation of approximately $20 million to $25 million. Cash payment towards restructuring optimization and the strategic transaction costs are expected to be between $25 million and $35 million. Capital expenditures are expected to be between $50 million and $60 million. Cash taxes are expected to be between $40 million and $50 million. For adjusted EPS, we use an effective tax rate of 32.8%, including discrete items and state taxes. The higher rate incorporates the impact of HPC transaction announced in May.

To end my section, I want to echo David and thank all of our global employees for their hard work and commitment. The results we've delivered year-to-date are a direct reflection of that effort, and I'm confident we have the focus and the team to finish the year strong.

Back to you, David.

Thank you, Faisal. Once again, I just want to thank everybody for joining us on the call today. I'll take a few moments like I normally do, just to recap some of the takeaways. The key takeaways will be on your Slide 18, I believe. Look, we're pleased with our third quarter and our year-to-date results, and they're marked by a number of significant meaningful milestones that I mentioned earlier. And these things reinforce the effectiveness of our strategy. All 3 businesses delivered top line growth in the quarter, and we did this despite the continued volatility in the broader macroeconomic environment, including the geopolitical tensions that persist, and evolving trade environment and uneven consumer demand across certain categories and regions. In Global Pet Care and Home & Garden, our brands continue to perform well in the market with consistent share gains across much of our portfolio.

And in Home & Personal Care, we're seeing signs of stabilization in the North American market, along with continued brand strength across Latin America. As for profitability, all 3 businesses expanded adjusted EBITDA margins in the quarter, excluding tariff refunds, a direct reflection of the cost discipline we continue to exercise across our organization. If I look forward to the balance of the year, we're focused on finishing strong, executing against our strategic priorities and continuing to invest in our brands and delivering on the updated framework we just gave you today.

Our fiscal fourth quarter will not be without its challenges. Unfavorable weather conditions are weighing on Home & Garden's final season. The Global Pet Care business faces tougher prior year comparisons as we've talked about. And the consumer and inflationary pressures remain. That said, we are pleased with the underlying performance of our brands, and we remain confident in this team and our ability to close out fiscal '26 strong with the same discipline and determination that has defined our performance throughout the year.

Lastly, I believe the future for our company and Spectrum Brands is bright. We will continue to build and look for attractive opportunities in the M&A market, but we are looking for the right complementary assets to build upon the strength of our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden portfolios. And we will remain disciplined. We will only act when the right opportunity presents itself to us.

On the HPC front, our partnership with Oaktree is progressing well. We're excited about what lies ahead. There are a number of potential exciting opportunities to create the right structure to maximize value at HPC, and we're looking forward to sharing more progress with you guys as that relationship matures.

Before I turn the call over, I want to take this last moment to thank every member of the Spectrum Brands team around the world. The results we delivered this quarter reflect your grit, your determination, your focus and your commitment. I'm confident that together, we'll finish this year strong.

Now I'll turn the call back to Jen, and we're happy to take any questions.

Thank you, David.

[Operator Instructions] And I show our first question comes from the line of Bob Labick from CJS Securities.

Congratulations on strong performance, particularly the 6.5%, 7% organic growth. So, kind of 2-part question involving that growth. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of price volume dynamic that you had and how much the timing of pricing, how much more that will benefit you right now? But the bigger question, too, though, is you've been talking about for a while leaning into innovation. Is there any way to give maybe kind of a vitality index or sales from new products and give us a sense of like is that fully up to speed? Do we have more new pipeline behind? Is that what's driving the growth? Or give us a sense of that as well?

Yes. I think I'll zoom out, I'll hit the bigger points, and then I'll have Faisal and Jen kind of fill in whatever I miss detail-wise. But look, I think we've taken a very long-term approach to managing the company over the last couple of years. We wanted to get the first fundamental building blocks in place. And you saw us deleverage the balance sheet very, very aggressively over the last 3 years. And so, we have this tremendously strong balance sheet. We then turned our attention to operations. We were not very good working capital managers. We didn't have a very robust S&OP process. And so, we've got, I think, pretty strong operational excellence. So, balance sheet is very healthy. The operational cadence and rhythm of this company, I would tell you, is light years ahead where it was, and I'm satisfied with it. There's always more to do, but we're in good shape. And what I think you've heard me talk about -- and if you're at any of my internal meetings, it's my soul -- it's the main goal now is commercial health. How do we really build -- if we have an outstanding balance sheet and we have outstanding operations, how do we get an outstanding commercial operation? And it's exactly the point you're talking about, Bob. We have got to continue doing fewer, bigger, better, bolder innovation around here. I do believe that Home & Garden, which, as you just saw, had an outstanding quarter, right? I mean they grew almost 20%, phenomenal third quarter at Home & Garden. Javier, who leads that team has spent 3 years rebuilding that culture, building real R&D and innovation capacity there and recently adding real marketing muscle. And again, I don't know if we share specifics on vitality. But I can tell you, yes, a lot of that growth is new innovative product. I think Faisal in his remarks may have talked about our Wasp and Hornet Traps. We have other small insect traps. These are highly efficient, very high-efficacy products that address consumer-led insight need, and they're priced appropriately. And so, in some of these cases, you have a business that was 0 and got to $5 million, now it's doing $10 million, should do $20 million. When you can move the needle $10 million or $20 million on one SKU on a $550 million, $600 million base business, it actually moves the needle on the whole company. And if you can get a couple of those SKUs working for you, you've got what you're talking about, which is vitality and you're hitting the consumer on a need that they've been asking for. So, it's white space, it's fresh, it's addressing consumer need and you're first to market. And he's got a number of those, we can always do better. In fact, we just hired new R&D talent for Javier. I would say Pet is a few years behind that. We just hired Ori. We've staffed some new senior leadership positions there. I mentioned them in my earlier remarks. But again, my focus, and it will be part of our AOP planning for '27 is how do I continue -- how do we continue to reduce some of the marketing spend that's getting lower yields and how do we reinvest that? Look, we need to address the younger consumer. We need to be more engaging. We need to be more exciting. We need to be crisper in our marketing and our storytelling. I'm in Middleton today in Wisconsin. This is the old headquarter buildings with Rayovac and our appliance business is still here and our shared services. We had the Board meeting here, and we toured some of the innovation in appliances. We actually have pretty amazing innovation. We need to do a much better job telling the consumer about it. And so, I've got a lot of work streams here. Sorry for this long-winded answer, but I'm very excited about what we can do with matching this innovation with really crisp, punchy, exciting, engaging digital marketing. And look, a lot of that does require additional talent because not -- you've got to upgrade human talent that understands what good looks like, what great marketing looks like and how to really communicate effectively to that consumer base. And if we can turn our share of voice up there, we can have something really exciting going on here at Spectrum Brands for the years ahead. So, for specifics, I'll let Faisal and Jen come in here.

Yes. Maybe I'll just quickly add just on the price volume question. So obviously, we have positive pricing in all 3 businesses. We do have volume growth now, not a lot, but we have volume growth in our GPC business. Obviously, in our H&G business, we have a lot of volume growth versus last year, but we're comping to what I would call a challenging quarter last year. But as I look forward to the year, I think for the full year, we will end up having both positive volume growth and pricing growth in GPC and H&G businesses. our HPC business will remain challenged on volume. And that's where we -- as we referenced earlier, we kind of have to think about how we price appropriately and promote to drive volume.

And I'll just add one last thing. Our formula has been, from an innovation perspective, launching products, making it successful. And then the second year, typically, they get a lot more distribution. That's what we're seeing now in H&G. The Wasp and Hornet as an example, and Flying Insect were launches last year, very successful, and now we're just counting on a much more broader distribution that's driving the volume for that.

Okay. That's wonderful. And then if I can, just one quick question. Obviously, you outperformed meaningfully, excluding tariffs. But with tariff refunds coming, what are the expected uses of tariff refunds as they come in?

Yes, I want to hit this hard because I see all my competitors' press releases and every people look at this as some type of windfall or lottery ticket, and it drives me crazy. We had to restructure division. We had -- if you remember a year ago, I was talking about a tariff torpedo. And I was looking at hundreds of millions of dollars of COGS challenging our business. And we had to take very tough decisions here, painful decisions. We had to lay off coworkers. We had to curtail investments. We had to pull back marketing. We suffered real losses because of the tariff environment. So, I'm very strict with my staff. I mean, this money is just -- it's like you have a divot playing golf and you got to fill the hole back in. So, look, we want to rehire people.

We want to invest in commercial activity. So that's where this is going. But this is just recouping some of the money that we lost last year. So that's -- I hope our press release is clear on that. I don't like the way other people are stating it. This is no windfall. I've read some of the sell-side pieces. Please don't say that about this. This is a recovery of prior losses. And that's how we're looking at it. And we don't want to include this in any ongoing numbers. This is one time in nature. It does not reflect organic earnings, and that's how we're treating it.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian McNamara from Canaccord Genuity.

First one on Pet Care. I'm curious if you could kind of speak about the channel dynamics there. A large online pet retailer gave some cautious remarks there starting in May on the market in general, but you and some of your competitors have kind of reported better sales for the last few quarters now after a tough few years. So, is that just a function of mass and pet specialty doing better? Any comments there would be helpful.

Look, I think you're right. Look, I think in general, pet in general has been in a tough spot since the COVID boom. And I think you're right. I mean, look, a lot of the specialty channels have had a lot of foot traffic problems. Pet continues to gravitate toward online purchases. And there's a lot of volatility in pet. Look, I'll be blunt. I think we've hired better talent in pet. I think we are making better investments in R&D in pet. I think we're doing a little bit better in market. We're nowhere near where I want to be. And we're doing a great job driving e-commerce. But just in my response to Bob, it's the same thing here. Faisal talked about it. We're just being more strategic.

Again, we're not where I want to be, but we're much more strategic with our pet portfolio and the price pack architecture that Ori and his team did, we started -- we brought some consultants in last fall. It's more of a good, better, best strategy. I think it's helping our retailers have more clarity in a brick-and-mortar, if you go to a shelf, it's easier to shop the shelf and you can more clearly see our products in terms of good, better, best and priced appropriately. And it's just helping us. So, I'm not trying to say we're doing everything great or perfect. We have lots of room for additional improvement. But I would say we have moved the needle from where we were a year ago, and some of this growth is unique to us.

Great. And then you guys had a great quarter in H&G, but it sounds like you'll give some of that back in Q4 where some retailers a bit heavy on inventories. Ideal weather for controls is a warm weather with moisture, right? So, like would it make sense to eventually diversify your weather exposures through M&A, a competitor with clearly different end markets and weather exposure spoke about a rough weather in May. So, any thoughts there would be helpful.

Yes. No, I mean, strategically, we totally get that. And we've been trying to focus on that through M&A. We've just released a new 3.0 Rejuvenate Mop. It's cleaning and is less seasonal. And it's early days. So, I can't tell you, I'm excited about it. I think it's a much better product than what was acquired years ago. I just think it's night and day compared to what we had, but it's -- we just got that placed. It's just rolling out to retailers. Without any support, it is doing a lot better than the old product. So early indications are positive there. But I need a quarter or 2 to see any sort of trend there or be bullish like I want to be in external communications. But no, I totally understand the point, but we have a great Home & Garden business, and that team has done a good job investing in innovation and gotten better at marketing. And yes, listen, I think if we could get a couple of sunny weekends here to finish out the year, that would help build retail confidence and get POS up and create some additional replenishment orders from our side, factory shipments from our side. But we're just trying to be transparent and open about, hey, listen, the last couple of weeks, weather has been difficult in that space.

And I show our next question comes from the line of Chris Carey from Wells Fargo Securities.

I wanted to pick up on the Home & Garden piece, very strong quarter. And -- but Faisal, you were mentioning just the volatility in consumption through the quarter and the excess inventory that you want to work down in fiscal Q4. Can you give us a sense of, number one, just what did that volatility look like intra-quarter? And more importantly, can you frame the inventory levels that you're looking at going into fiscal Q4? I mean most of this is really about understanding your potential to end the year with healthy inventory levels as you go into fiscal '27?

Yes. Look, I think one of the things -- great things about this year is that we started the year with really good inventory levels at our retailers. So ideally, that's where we want to end up again. And just to go back to your question about what was the volatility within the quarter from a weather perspective, we had really strong POS growth in April, double digits, right? And then we had a softer May. June was slightly better, but still softer. So, net-net, the quarter was still positive from a POS perspective. But the retailers ordered and took inventory based on a very strong April. So, a lot of our retailer partners now have inventory positions higher there than what they would expect because of the softer POS in May and June and then continued softer POS in July.

So that's why we're a little bit more guarded in where I think our Q4 goes for Home & Garden. But still, even with that, I think we'll have a positive -- a pretty good positive growth here for Home & Garden. We're still continuing to take shares in all of our brands. And I think those are the positive things that we want to focus on. We would like to end the year at a good healthy inventory level, and our projections right now kind of are tracking to that. That's kind of what we're embedding in our framework right now as we talk about it.

Great. And just as we go into fiscal '27, I think you mentioned confidence in growing top line volume and pricing and in Pet and Garden, correct me if I heard that wrong. What embeds that confidence? Is that early plans that you have, early discussions on shelf space going into next year? And then just give us a little bit of a sense of the inflation backdrop as we head into next year. It certainly feels like it's getting a bit better, but any way you can dimensionalize it.

Yes. So, look, it's really early to talk about next year outside of just our product portfolio, our pipeline and our brand performance. And the basis for my confidence comes from all of those things. This is a very weather-dependent business. We don't know what the weather is like. It's actually even too early to even know what the retailers' outlook would be like for next year. But all the things that are in our control are pointing in the right direction, and that's what gives us confidence.

And on the inflation dynamic?

Yes. Again, same thing. We haven't really experienced a lot of inflation that we've not been able to offset this year. Early days. There are clearly signs that we're seeing continuing inflation. Our business has not really felt it yet. I don't think I can with confidence tell you what '27 inflation looks like. But I'll point to the fact that we have successfully dealt with and offset all the inflation pressures we felt over the last few years. So, I remain confident in our management team's ability to offset that inflation as it comes. But it's too early for me to kind of forecast what that looks like for next year.

And I show our next question comes from the line of Stephen Powers from Deutsche Bank.

On the tariff refund front, can you just clarify a little bit on -- is there a way to quantify a bit more detail how much cash has been received to date associated with the refunds contemplated? And then as you look ahead, just any kind of magnitude on any additional earnings potential and subsequent cash benefit of refunds still in process?

Yes. Look, at the end of the quarter, we had actually booked all of our refunds, but received very little in cash. I can tell you since then, and our refund is kind of 2 phases, Phase 1 and Phase 2, and it was filed at different timing. all of which was booked on our P&L in the third quarter. At this point, we've received -- sitting here today, I can tell you we've received all of the Phase 1, and we've started to receive Phase 2. So, the total impact, I expect most of it will be received within the year by -- within the fiscal year. And definitely, by the end of the calendar year, we'll receive all of the cash. But I'd say about half of it is already in, and I expect most of it to still hit the fiscal year from a cash perspective.

Yes. That's great. And then, David, on HPC and the strategic alternatives that are being contemplated, I guess, as you work through it, are there specific operational or financial milestones that you need to clear before those alternatives become more actionable? I guess just how you're viewing that contemplated path over the next series of months and quarters?

No, there's nothing we need to clear. I mean at the end of the day, what you can control is your organic growth. And so that's always priority one. And so, you would -- if you look at the business from my eyes, we were basically battening down the hatches and trying to protect ourselves from a tremendous amount of tariff inflation that was destroying the P&L of the company a year ago. We play defense basically. And that's okay. Sometimes you got to play defense to see the next day. But with Oaktree's injection of capital, we really want to pivot to offense. And in fact, I had a town hall meeting here yesterday, and that was my message. We're underwriting 3 new growth pillars with our new partners at Oaktree. And again, I think Faisal is doing his best, but we can't look into '27 yet. We've just started the AOP process internally.

But at the end of the day, I think we have tremendous opportunity organically on those commercial levers that we talked about for the other businesses, which is we've got some decent innovation. How do we get some better storytelling? How do we become more relevant? How do we crank up share of voice on digital and really target younger consumers? So that's kind of some of what the growth pillars will be as we roll them out internally organically. But in terms of M&A, we're wide open right now, and we're looking at a bunch of stuff. And we think with the lowest levered balance sheet and an amazing partner that we have in Oaktree, we should be the consolidation platform of choice, and we think there's a lot of money to be made in the space. And as we see the relationship mature with Oaktree, we hope to share that detail with you. But we're wide open.

And I show this concludes our Q&A session at this time. I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Jen Schultz, DVP, FP&A and Investor Relations for closing remarks.

Thank you. And with that, we've reached the top of the hour, so we will conclude today's conference call. Thank you to both David and Faisal. And on behalf of Spectrum Brands, thank you for your participation this morning.

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

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q2 2026 Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jen Schultz, Division Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Spectrum Brands Holdings Q2 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. I'm Jen Schultz, Division Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations, and I will moderate today's call.

To help you follow our comments, we have placed a slide presentation on the Event Calendar page in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.spectrumbrands.com. This document will remain there following our call.

Starting with Slide 2 of the presentation. Our call will be led by David Maura, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Faisal Qadir, our Chief Financial Officer. After opening remarks, we will conduct the Q&A.

Turning to Slides 3 and 4. Our comments today include forward-looking statements, which are based upon management's current expectations, projections and assumptions and are, by nature, uncertain. Actual results may differ materially.

Due to that risk, Spectrum Brands encourages you to review the risk factors and cautionary statements outlined in our press release dated May 7, 2026, our most recent SEC filings and Spectrum Brands Holdings' most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Also, please note that we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in this call. Reconciliations on a GAAP basis for these measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation, which are both available on our website in the Investor Relations section.

Now I'll turn the call over to David Maura. David?

Thanks, Jen. Good morning, everybody. We want to welcome you here to our second quarter earnings update, and we thank you and appreciate you joining us this morning.

I'll kick the call off today with an update of the operating environment that we find ourselves in. I'll tell you about our operating performance, and then we'll hit our strategic initiatives. Faisal will then provide a more detailed financial and operational update, including a discussion on the specific business unit results.

If I could have everybody turn their attention to Slide 6, I think, on the investor deck. Let me start today's call by saying that I'm pleased to be here reporting another strong quarter for Spectrum Brands. Once again, our quarterly results outperformed the expectations, both on the top and bottom lines. This is a direct testament to the effectiveness of our strategy and, frankly, the dedication of our team. It's quite gratifying for me to see our disciplined approach and focused execution translating into our financial results in such a meaningful way.

I am pleased to also report that in the second quarter both of our reported net sales and adjusted EBITDA increased year-over-year with net sales increasing 4.9% and adjusted EBITDA growing by an impressive 17.8%. This is a significant milestone for our company as it marks our return to growth for the first time since the first quarter of 2025, prior to the trade policy changes and the overall deterioration in global macroeconomic conditions.

We continue to see signs of stabilization within the broader markets that we serve, with a generally resilient consumer despite the dynamic environment, except for some expected consumer demand softness in our Home & Personal Care business.

As we look ahead to the balance of the year, we're quite pleased with the overall improving conditions. However, we're also cautious about the resilience of the consumer, and we will remain vigilant as we run the business going forward, given recent geopolitical tensions, most notably with the recent conflict in the Middle East, increasing global fuel prices and the potential for more volatility that we expect in U.S. trade policy this summer.

On the cost side, we're also mindful of the ongoing challenges and volatility created by the broader macroeconomic landscape. Since our last quarterly update, geopolitical tensions have escalated, and this has resulted in some modest inflationary cost pressures, particularly across some of our commodities and our freight spend.

At this time, we do not view this as a significant headwind for the balance of this year, and we would expect to largely offset it with recent changes to U.S. Trade Policy.

We will continue to monitor all these developments closely as we have demonstrated in the past, and we will proactively address cost pressures as they arise to ensure our overall profitability.

If I could turn your attention back to the second quarter. We made focused investments in our key businesses and we returned to growth, all the while maintaining a strong balance sheet position. We continue to exercise discipline by optimizing working capital and keeping our net leverage low, while also returning capital to our shareholders.

We ended the quarter with approximately $125 million in cash, less than $30 million drawn on our revolver, and our net leverage ratio stood at 1.66 turns, well below the long-term target we've set for the company of 2 to 2.5 turns.

We did repurchase about 100,000 shares in the quarter for about $6.8 million. Since the close of the HHI transaction, we've returned over $1.4 billion of capital to our shareholders through our various share repurchase programs, and we've actually repurchased almost 45% of the entire share count of the company since the closing of that transaction.

We additionally have over $300 million remaining of Board authorized share repurchase programs left. We will, however, be judicious going forward on share repurchases to ensure flexibility as we look to capitalize on market opportunities. I'll talk more about that later.

On the strategic front, as we disclosed in our recent 8-K filing Monday of this week, we've entered into an agreement with Oaktree Capital Management to form a strategic partnership in our HPC business. My relationship with Oaktree spans over 20 years, and I'm excited to be partnering with a firm with a proven track record of taking businesses similar to HPC and optimizing them for stand-alone success.

Under the terms of the agreement, Oaktree will make $127 million investment in the HPC business, consisting of $67 million of preferred equity and the balance in the form of a term loan. Their investment implies a valuation for the HPC business of approximately 6x LTM EBITDA as of Q1 fiscal '26, and importantly, it is nonrecourse to Spectrum Brands Holdings. This transaction represents a meaningful step forward in Spectrum Brands in our previously communicated strategy to separate HPC from our other business units.

For the HPC business, this investment actually accomplishes several goals. It reaffirms our vision for the future of the business through this investment from a sophisticated counterparty. It establishes a separate dedicated platform for HPC to maximize focus and growth potential. And three, it creates optionality for HPC to become the strategic partner of choice for the industry. That's whether through a sale, M&A or a spin-off.

We are excited about our partnership with Oaktree, and we now have a well-capitalized stand-alone vehicle to maximize shareholder value.

If we can turn now to Slide 7, I'd like to update you on our strategic priorities for fiscal '26. These priorities continue to serve as a guide in our decision-making, and I'd like to share our progress on each of them individually.

First, if we can start with financial stewardship, I'd like to build upon what I shared earlier in regards to balance sheet health. A big part of that health is centered around disciplined inventory management, which has been a focus of ours for the last couple of years.

We now have a best-in-class S&OP process and it's yielding results and ensuring we have the right level and mix of inventory on hand. This isn't just my opinion. Exhibit A, we ended the second quarter with inventory actually $50 million lower than the prior year, and we still delivered fill rates well above 95% across all businesses.

We're demonstrating disciplined inventory execution without compromising service levels. This is an excellent demonstration of efficiency, and I'm extremely proud of the team for their continued diligence in driving working capital efficiencies while constantly and consistently meeting customer demand.

Second, if I can move to operational excellence, we continue to make steady progress on our S/4HANA transformation, which remains a foundational element of the long-term strategy here. We recently implemented S/4 on our Global Pet Care EMEA business, marking the first major international deployment of our new ERP transformation. With this milestone, over 95% of our combined Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses are now operating on a unified ERP platform.

While learnings from this deployment are informing how we operate today, our primary focus is on completing the remaining implementations, most notably within the HPC business to further standardize processes, strengthen controls and support scalable growth over time. As we continue to advance this project, the platform is expected to further enhance productivity, support better and faster decision-making and reinforce our ability to scale the businesses over the long term.

We also remain committed to our fewer, bigger, better strategy for our brand investments. This is enabling us to focus resources on higher impact initiatives while maximizing returns. This disciplined approach has driven share gains in several key categories and has strengthened our engagement with consumers. Later in the call, Faisal will share more details on our innovation pipeline and how it's fueling our growth across the portfolio.

This now brings me to our third key priority, which is investing in our people. I often tell the team that winning is simply more fun, and I think it's a philosophy the team is starting to really embrace. Achieving our goals and delivering results consistently, creates a positive and energizing environment where everyone feels valued and motivated. Success not only boosts morale, but it fosters a culture of collaboration, innovation and continuous improvement.

Over the past year, our company has faced significant challenges and we've had to make some really tough decisions. Yet our team's resilience has been remarkable. We are committed to providing the resources, training and support that our employees need to thrive, because we know that when our team is winning, our business and our stakeholders win as well.

Lastly, the fourth priority for fiscal '26 is centered around our strategic transformation. We are encouraged by the strong results in both our Global Pet Care and our Home & Garden businesses, with our key brands in both businesses delivering above-market sales growth.

Our team's focus on consumers' needs supported by our data-driven strategy, continues to generate positive results. Beyond organic growth, we continue to remain optimistic about M&A opportunities in both segments. We are committed to a disciplined process in evaluating acquisition targets and believe we are well positioned to be the consolidator of choice in both Pet and the Home & Garden categories.

Moving to Home & Personal Care. While Oaktree's strategic investment in the business represents a significant milestone in our journey towards becoming a pure-play Pet and Home & Garden business, it's important to note that our near-term objectives for our Home & Personal Care business remain unchanged. We will continue to be good stewards of the appliance business, maintaining our focus on operational excellence and maximizing profitability.

As we move forward through this transition, our team will continue to execute with discipline, ensuring that the business remains strong and is well positioned to capitalize on market opportunities.

We can now have everyone turn to Slide 8. I'll cover our high-level fiscal '26 earnings framework. We remain quite pleased with our performance in both Global Pet Care and Home & Garden, and we are on track to deliver top line growth for the year in each of these businesses.

And in Home & Personal Care, despite the decline in net sales, top line performance remains in line with our expectations for the segment. As anticipated, recovery in durable product categories is taking longer and reflecting ongoing softness in global consumer demand.

Importantly, our strong results in the first half of the year provide us with increased confidence and help derisk our outlook for the back half of the year, and this positions us well to navigate any potential headwinds.

While we continue to expect net sales to be flattish to up low-single digits versus the prior year, we are, in fact, raising our outlook for adjusted EBITDA, and we now expect adjusted EBITDA to increase by low to mid-single digits. We continue to expect adjusted free cash flow to be approximately 50% of that adjusted EBITDA.

Before I turn the call over to Faisal, I want to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of our colleagues worldwide. I want to thank them for their relentless focus and their determination. Those have been key to achieving our strategic objectives and they have positioned us well for continued success.

Now you'll hear more from Faisal on the financials and some additional business unit insights, and I'll pick you up in the Q&A to finish the call with you. I'll turn the call now to you, Faisal. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Let's turn to Slide 10 and review our second quarter results from continuing operations, beginning with net sales. Net sales increased 4.9%. Excluding the impact of $22.9 million of favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales increased 1.5%, primarily driven by a strong performance within our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses.

In addition to external factors such as the weather and accelerated retailer ordering that favorably impacted our results, our key brands in both businesses continued to perform well and gain market share. As expected, our Home & Personal Care business continues to experience soft consumer demand across both North America and Europe.

Gross profits increased $16.9 million and gross margin of 38.1% increased 60 basis points, largely driven by pricing, cost improvement actions and favorable FX, partially offset by higher trade spend and higher tariff costs.

Operating expenses of $226.8 million decreased by 3% due to a trade name impairment recognized in the prior year and lower investment spend, partially offset by additional restructuring and strategic transaction expenses and unfavorable FX.

Operating income of $43.5 million increased by $24 million, driven by the gross profit increase and lower operating expense I mentioned earlier.

GAAP net income and diluted earnings per share both increased, primarily driven by the higher operating income. Diluted earnings per share also benefited from a lower share count.

Adjusted EBITDA was $84 million, an increase of $12.7 million, driven by the improved gross margins. Adjusted diluted EPS increased to $1.25, driven by the higher adjusted EBITDA and a reduction in shares outstanding.

Let's turn to Slide 11. Q2 interest expense from continuing operations of $7.3 million decreased $200,000. Cash taxes during the quarter of $10.6 million decreased $13.3 million from the prior year. Depreciation and amortization of $24.2 million decreased $300,000 from last year. And separately, share-based compensation increased to $6 million from $5.2 million in the prior year.

Capital expenditures were $9.3 million in Q2, about $100,000 higher than last year. Cash payments towards strategic transactions, restructuring-related projects and other unusual nonrecurring adjustments were $5.3 million versus $6.4 million last year.

Moving to the balance sheet. We have a quarter end cash balance of $125.1 million and $470.8 million available on our $500 million cash flow revolver.

Total debt outstanding was approximately $599.7 million, consisting of $496.1 million of senior unsecured notes and $79.6 million of finance leases. We ended the quarter with $474.6 million of net debt.

Let's get into the review of each business unit to provide details on the underlying performance drivers of our operational results. I'll start with our Global Pet Care business, which is Slide 12. Reported net sales increased 11.2%, and excluding favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales increased 7.6%. Reported net sales in Companion Animal increased double digits -- low double digits, while sales in Aquatics increased mid-single digits.

In North America, sales increased mid-single digits, primarily driven by strength in Companion Animal, where our key brands continue to outperform the market. Good 'n' Fun, DreamBone, Nature's Miracle and FURminator all posted positive POS for the quarter in categories that were flat or slightly down versus the prior year. Sales performance in the e-commerce channel was particularly strong, achieving double-digit growth this quarter.

It is important to note that this result includes an acceleration of approximately $3 million in sales that were originally anticipated to be in the third quarter. Excluding this timing impact, underlying growth in the e-commerce channel remains robust, reflecting continued strong demand and effective execution of our digital strategy.

Our quarterly sales results from -- also benefited from the cost-related pricing actions during the -- taken during the last fiscal year.

Organic sales in EMEA increased in the high-single digits with strength across both Companion Animal and Aquatics. In Companion Animal, Good Boy is outperforming the competition across major European markets, fueled by expanded distribution in Continental Europe and sustained leadership in the U.K. Aquatics growth was driven by market share gains in our globally leading Tetra brand, which is celebrating its 75th year of providing innovative products for consumers' aquatic care needs.

In addition, on March 30, the GPC EMEA business went live on the SAP S/4HANA platform. In anticipation of the transition, which included ordering and shipping blackout periods during the days leading up to and immediately after go-live, GPC partnered with our retail customers to accelerate certain purchases into the period before implementation to ensure that retailers have adequate supply. This accelerated approximately $6 million of sales into our second quarter results.

On the commercial side, our innovation and associated marketing and advertising support are driving incremental growth. As pet owners increasingly focus on health and wellness of their pets, our DreamBone CollaYUMS dog chews enriched with type 2 collagen for joint health, stands out as a top choice in the market and is driving incremental sales volume for the business.

Within Stain & Odor, Nature's Miracle continues to outperform the market, driving growth in a declining category, in part, fueled by our innovation -- innovative product design with ready-to-use packaging and incremental sales growth in our cat cleaning products.

Our Good Boy brand, the #1 brand in dog chews in the U.K., is gaining market share through consistent innovation. Outside of the U.K., the expansion of Good Boy across Continental Europe continues to be a priority and has garnered strong support from our retail partners with expanded distribution.

We continue to support our brands through targeted marketing and advertising investments that are generating positive POS results across key retail partners.

Based on consumer research and market insights, we are in the process of refining our price pack architecture across the portfolio. This initiative is intended to reinforce category health and support sustainable long-term growth by improving value clarity, simplifying consumer choice and ensuring appropriate reinvestment in our brands and innovation pipeline.

This quarter's adjusted EBITDA for our GPC business of $56.8 million is $6.8 million higher than the previous year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 19% compared to 18.6% last year. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by higher sales volume, pricing and cost improvement actions, partially offset by higher tariff costs and additional trade and investment spend.

Our strong first half positions us well as we enter the balance of our fiscal year, and we are on track to deliver top line growth for fiscal '26 in the GPC business.

Our year-to-date results demonstrate that our strategy is working, and we expect to build on our momentum in the second half of the year through strong innovation and brand activations. As a result, marketing and advertising expenses are projected to sequentially increase during the second half of the year with the highest spending anticipated in the third quarter.

Also, as a reminder, in fiscal '25, our results were impacted by targeted stop-shipments with certain retailers during tariff-related pricing negotiations, creating an artificial shift in order between the third and fourth quarter of last year.

Now let's move to our Home & Garden business, which is on Slide 13. Net sales increased 11.3% in the quarter, primarily driven by double-digit growth in the Controls category, reflecting strong consumer demand for our pest control and herbicide solutions. Favorable weather trends highlighted by the warmest March on record in the U.S., led to a strong start to the season with higher retail point-of-sale activity.

Retailer reorder patterns for the quarter also reinforced our view that retailers started the season with appropriate levels of inventory to support incremental year-on-year sales execution, particularly in the Controls category. This positions us well to capture ongoing demand as the season progresses.

In addition to these external factors, our brands continue to win versus competition in the market with share gains in Spectracide, Hot Shot, Cutter and Repel.

This quarter's results demonstrate the effectiveness of our commercial strategy, and we will continue to prioritize innovation and 360-degree marketing support.

Under our Spectracide brand, we recently introduced a new liquid fertilizer innovation platform, providing an easy and affordable solution in lawn care. The 2-in-1 formula provides both a quick release for a fast green lawn and a slow release for long-lasting color. Distribution was secured at several retailers, including off-shelf displays driving further penetration. Consumer response has been strong and the product was recently recognized as the 2026 Product of the Year in the lawn fertilizer category.

In Repellent, Cutter, our area insect repellent brand, is performing well and gaining market share with expanded product offerings and advantageous off-shelf placement.

To further support our brands, we have successfully secured expanded display presence across key retail locations, ensuring our innovative products are highly visible and accessible to consumers throughout the peak season.

Adjusted EBITDA for our H&G business for the quarter was $34.8 million compared to $26.7 million last year, and the adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.5%, 300 basis points higher than the prior year.

The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by the higher sales volume, productivity improvement and operational efficiencies, partially offset by higher trade spend and unfavorable mix. The additional cost of tariff was largely mitigated through a variety of actions, including pricing.

As we look forward to the second half of the fiscal year, while we're encouraged by the strong start to the season and favorable weather conditions we are currently enjoying, weather by nature is uncertain, and therefore, our overall expectation for fiscal '26 remains unchanged.

Latest weather projections indicate a warmer-than-average summer, most notably across southern and western portions of the country. However, overall expectations for precipitations are mixed with potential for drier season in key regions. With these factors in mind, we believe it is prudent to plan for a normal weather season, which would be an improvement from the prior fiscal year.

Our sales team will continue to partner closely with our customers, and we stand ready to respond swiftly should consumer demand patterns shift. We are dedicated to driving consumer-focused innovation, and we'll continue to strategically invest in our brands through the balance of the year.

We remain on track to deliver net sales growth with modest EBITDA margin expansion in fiscal '26 for our Home & Garden business.

Let's finally go to our Home & Personal Care business, which is Slide 14. Reported net sales decreased 5.5%. Excluding favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales decreased 10.7%. Reported net sales in the Personal Care category were down low-single digits this quarter, while home and -- while sales in home appliances were down high-single digits.

Organic net sales in EMEA were down in the mid-teens with softness in both Appliances and Personal Care. Sales across both categories were impacted by elevated levels of inventory at a key retailer following soft consumer demand amid increased competition, resulting in lower replenishment orders within the quarter.

With that said, we believe inventory levels at this retailer are now generally aligned with current demand trends, which should support a more balanced replenishment cadence going forward.

The balance of our HPC EMEA business continues to be on a solid trajectory, and our core markets are showing signs of stabilization.

Further, our direct-to-consumer shift in strategy we introduced in fiscal '25 is yielding results with the direct-to-consumer growth for the quarter in excess of 200% compared to the prior year. While the DTC business represents a small portion of EMEA total sales volume, we are excited about the opportunity to build additional capability for further expansion across Europe and beyond.

North America sales decreased in the mid-teens, driven by lower sales in home appliances. Demand continues to be adversely impacted by overall consumer softness as higher product costs resulting from tariffs have led consumers to either delay or reduce purchases.

Sales were also lower from our SKU rationalization actions taken to address changes in trade policy to ensure overall profitability. Additionally, home appliances sales were impacted by customer inventory management actions to address pockets of excess inventory.

Despite these challenges, we are encouraged by the continued point-of-sales growth in coffee makers and particularly pleased with our Black & Decker brand outperforming the market in this space.

In LatAm, organic sales increased in the mid-single digits, primarily driven by sustained growth in personal care, following successful new product launches in the fiscal first quarter. The introduction of these products, including the [ Airweave ] and [ gloss ] collections continue to resonate with the consumer. And our key strategic customers once again reported double-digit sales growth in sell-out figures for the quarter.

Commercially, our focus remains on driving fewer, bigger, better consumer-relevant innovations that enhance our market position.

Under our Black & Decker brands in the U.S. and Russell Hobbs brand in EMEA, we recently brought to market a new VacuSteam Handheld Steamer. This product delivers breakthrough technology designed to deliver one pass perfection through a combination of suction, heat and steam power. While in early stages of distribution, we are excited about the innovative feature this product delivers that were designed with the consumer in mind. Consumer response has been strong so far and expanded distribution has been confirmed for the coming months.

This quarter's adjusted EBITDA for our HPC business was $8.1 million compared to $7.3 million in the prior year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 3.4% compared to 2.9% last year. The increase in adjusted EBITDA and margin was primarily driven by pricing, reduced investment spend, cost improvement initiatives, and favorable foreign exchange, partially offset by lower volumes and higher tariff costs.

Despite a challenging first half, we continue to expect sequential improvement in the second half as we lap softer prior year comparisons and benefit -- and realize benefits from the actions we have taken to strengthen our business.

With that said, reduced sales volumes are expected to continue for the balance of the year, driven by softness in global consumer demand and a reduced product portfolio within the U.S.

Our focus remains on improving profitability with plans in place to deliver full-year adjusted EBITDA growth versus prior year despite a projected decline in net sales.

Now let's turn to Slide 15 and review our expectations for fiscal '26. Consistent with our fiscal '26 earnings framework, we expect net sales to be flat to up low single digits compared to prior year. While we expect growth in both our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses, Home & Personal Care is expected to decline.

Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to grow low to mid-single digits, driven by the anticipated sales growth in our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses, continued expense management, continuous improvement initiatives and FX favorability, offsetting the lower volumes in Home & Personal Care.

Tariffs and inflation are expected to be largely offset through the various mitigation actions which we have taken, including pricing.

Also, while we are actively engaged in the process as outlined by the U.S. customs of securing tariff refunds following the Supreme Court decision, our framework does not include any such benefits at this time. And lastly, we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA to be around 50%.

Moving to Slide 16. Depreciation and amortization is expected to be between $115 million and $125 million, including stock-based compensation of approximately $20 million to $25 million. Cash payments towards restructuring, optimization and strategic transaction costs are expected to be between $25 million and $35 million.

Capital expenditures are expected to be between $50 million and $60 million. Cash taxes are expected to be between $40 million and $50 million, excluding the impact of recently announced strategic partnership in our HPC business.

For adjusted EPS, we use an effective tax rate of 25%, incorporating both discrete items and state taxes, but excluding impact of the recently announced strategic partnership in our HPC business.

To end my section, I want to echo David and thank all of our global employees for their hard work in a strong first half of the fiscal year.

Back now to you, David.

Thanks, Faisal. Thank you, everybody, for joining us on the call today. Let's take a few minutes and just recap key takeaways. I think that's on Slide 18. I'd like to start by highlighting the first quarter -- of the first half performance actually.

Despite a dynamic and challenging environment, we delivered solid results, underscored by a return to year-over-year growth in the second quarter. Net sales increased 4.9% and adjusted EBITDA grew nearly 18%, reflecting disciplined execution across the company.

Our ongoing momentum in Global Pet Care and Home & Garden is evident with consistent share gains across our portfolio. This underscores the effectiveness of our innovation strategy as we continue to support with targeted investments.

In Home & Personal Care, the top line did decline, and that was driven by continued consumer softness across the U.S. and EMEA, which was anticipated and in line with our expectations. Despite HPC's lower net sales, adjusted EBITDA actually improved modestly as we remain focused on maximizing the profitability of the business.

As we look forward to the second half of the year, the focus is clear for us. We are mindful of the evolving macroeconomic environment and continued pockets of consumer softness. Our priorities and strategic focus remain unchanged, and we are firmly centered on execution and financial discipline. We will continue to monitor closely inflationary pressures and geopolitical uncertainties and are prepared to address proactively any challenges to protect our profitability and sustain our growth trajectory.

With these factors in mind, we are reaffirming our full year earnings framework for net sales and adjusted free cash flow, but we are, however, raising our outlook for our adjusted EBITDA. We now expect adjusted EBITDA to grow low to mid-single digits compared to the prior year.

On the strategic front, the recent announcement of our partnership with Oaktree Capital in our Home & Personal Care business is a meaningful milestone in our long-term objective of separating HPC from our other businesses. While little will change in the day-to-day operations of HPC, we are confident that this partnership will help the team pursue new growth opportunities and deliver lasting value.

Our teams will continue to operate with the same dedication and focus, ensuring continuity and stability to our customers and employees. Outside of the appliance business, we continue to seek strategic M&A opportunities within both the Pet and Home & Garden segments.

With that said, we will continue to exercise discipline and prioritize the strength and stability of our balance sheet. We firmly believe that maintaining a healthy balance sheet provides us with a distinct competitive advantage, especially as new opportunities and deals emerge in the marketplace. This approach ensures we are well positioned to act decisively and capitalize on attractive prospects while safeguarding our long-term financial health.

Before I turn the call over for Q&A, I'd like to thank our team for their exceptional commitment and focus in a dynamic market environment. The results we achieved this quarter are a testament to the team's adaptability and determination, and I'm confident that our collaborative spirit will continue to drive us forward as we embrace new challenges and opportunities.

I thank you all for your hard work and for supporting our shared vision as we move ahead together.

Now back to you, Jen, and we can start the Q&A.

Thank you, David. And operator, we can go to the question queue now.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Bob Labick with CJS Securities.

It's Pete Lukas for Bob. You guys covered a lot in the prepared remarks. Maybe more just a general question. If you could talk a little bit about the characteristics of your fastest-growing brands in Pet and H&G? And is there an opportunity to replicate that across the rest of the brand portfolio?

I think what you see this quarter, I mean, we've got our balance sheet healthy, we've got our operations running tight. You saw double-digit growth in both Pet and Home & Garden. We haven't seen that growth in a long time. And I think, hopefully, these are early indicators that the fewer, bigger, better strategy of taking real innovation and storytelling and marketing, that is actually yielding some good results.

And we see that with the wasp and hornet trap in the Home and Garden sector, to just pick on one. Faisal commented on CollaYUMS. We have a type 2 collagen that we put into the dog bones for our Good 'n' Fun lineup, and DreamBones, sorry. And that has really resonated with the consumer and has resulted in tremendous growth.

So it's continued focus on -- it's the basics of commercial operations: focus on innovation, use consumer insights, bring things to market that the customer wants that helps meet a need or provides greater efficacy or lets them create a greater emotional bond with their pet, tell that story more effectively.

And quite frankly, I'm really pleased with the price pack architecture we're doing in Pet, too. I think that's going to bring real clarity to shop, a good, better, best strategy at the point of sale. I think it's going to actually help our retail partners, because right now, the merchandising in a lot of these stores is actually quite messy and opaque. Consumers go there, they're confused by the shelf. I think if we really bring some clarity and focus to the optical shelf situation, I think that's going to lift all ships for the category. So looking forward to the benefits of that activity as well.

Faisal, do you have others to add or...

No, I think you've covered it.

Very helpful. And then just one follow-up. Maybe you could discuss a little bit the -- how HPC International business is doing and the impacts that you're seeing from tariffs and the conflict in the Middle East?

So like I said in the prepared remarks, our International business, specifically in Europe, has been impacted by certain customer dynamics, where, because of consumer softness, inventory with certain key customers was high, which effectively reduced our ship into the customers, sale into the customers.

We believe that's evened out, which means our shipments to the customers and our ship out of POS would generally align better in Europe, which drives some clarity in our supply chain. But I think the consumer and overall environment in Europe still remains challenged for us. So we'll continue to be cautious about that.

And like I said, this year, we expect some pressure to continue in the second half. But as you think about comparison to last year, I think about this time last year, we had started to see a lot of the consumer sentiment degrade. So our comparisons to last year become a lot better in the second half. But as I said before, still expect that business to decline in the second half. That's kind of the consumer that we see in Europe.

Our business in LatAm is actually doing really well. Our HPC business has done really well in LatAm, and we've got really strongly positioned brands and really good distribution and customer relationships. So we expect to continue to grow that business in the second half. I think that's kind of the consumer health overall from an International HPC business.

Did you have a second part of that question?

No, that was it.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

I wanted to get a sense of just the outlook, right? So profitability outlook now better, which certainly seems unique in this environment where inflation is moving, but revenue unchanged. I think you're mindful of some of the drivers in the back half can always evolve like weather, the consumer. I think you also mentioned some timing dynamics in fiscal Q2. Obviously, still solid underlying. But maybe just give us a sense of whether you're factoring any of that into your consideration for revenue.

But yes, maybe just take a step back to this concept of revenue maintained and higher profit in this kind of a backdrop. Just maybe a bit more detail on some of your thinking going into the back half of the year? And then I have a follow-up.

Look, I think if we zoom out, right, we talked about tariffs in '25 being really disruptive to the business. I think if you turn -- if you tuned into kind of our Q3, Q4 calls last year, I talked about the business starting to heal. We did have to take some pricing. We did have to work with some suppliers. I think if you look at Q1 and Q2 this year, we've beaten both quarters, right? So we're trying to do what we said we're going to do and hopefully do a little bit better.

We clearly have greater vitality in our NPD. We clearly are taking market share in our 2 fastest-growing higher-margin businesses, which is Pet, Home & Garden. We've just attracted a strategic investment in our Appliance business, which we think is going to produce a lot of value for us and them going forward.

I think -- if you look at this quarter, I think we beat on both the revenue and EBITDA and EPS lines for Q2. That's a good thing, right? And if I look forward, I'm just trying to maintain vigilance, because I think Middle East turmoil, higher prices at the pump, that will generally hurt discretionary income.

I think the U.S. administration's tariff policy, Supreme Court knocked some stuff down. They're going to redo some stuff on 301. I would anticipate that to be later in the summer. So I think it would be overly optimistic to not assume additional distortion or challenges that are on the horizon.

And we want to continue to do what we said we're going to do and hopefully do better. So I think that's -- I'm trying to answer your question. Isn't that what you're asking me, what my outlook is relative to short-term performance? Or...

Well, yes, I get the context of being reasonable, given the unknowns and wanting to exceed. I guess the spirit of the question was whether there were any tangible offsets that you would be thinking about into the back half of the year? Or if it's more good progress, let's see where it goes, but we feel good about the visibility that we're establishing today.

I'll let Faisal take that.

Yes. Look, so if you just kind of look at our businesses, GPC, we've talked about how we're -- all -- most of our key brands are now outperforming the market, but we still remain cautious about the category overall. We've shown growth in categories this quarter that are either flat or declining. So the category outlook is what determines some of our cautious outlook for the top line.

And on the H&G business, most of the season is ahead of us, right? So it will be premature based on our second quarter early really good results to call the year up. I think we're being cautious. We're going to continue to monitor what happens. But again, the key takeaway here is our brands are outperforming the market. We are definitely gaining share. So there's a lot of strength going into the second quarter, but there's a lot of caution around, as David said in his prepared remarks, in the macroeconomic environment and what it does to the consumer.

Okay. Yes, that checks and makes a lot of sense. One follow-up would be on the HPC partnership. Can you give us a sense of just thought process over the years of thinking through strategic options for the business? And maybe just give us a sense of how you got to this point. And obviously, this creates more flexibility, which is very interesting. I just wanted to get a bit more sense of how this came to be and how you're assessing various alternatives.

Yes. Again, I think we've heard from our shareholders that they would prefer to see this business separate from the faster-growing, higher-margin Pet Home & Garden businesses that we own.

Look, we have looked at a lot of options for this business over the years. It's been unfortunate that when we've attracted strategic and financial interest for it that we got into a trade policy situation, which actually derailed the process.

If you look at the competitive set, other than SharkNinja, which is an amazing company doing exceedingly well, most of our competitors in this space are either overlevered, underperforming, suffering with negative sales growth and don't have a lot of optionality.

And if you look at our business, it's a strategic platform. We believe the business is going to generate $60 million, hopefully more. EBITDA should start to climb as we get into the back half, quite frankly.

So Oaktree has picked a good time to come in because we expect EBITDA to actually grow from here. I've known Oaktree for 20 years. They are very astute credit investors. They are exceedingly good capital allocators. They probably could have invested in any appliance company on the globe if they wanted to. They chose us.

And frankly, we see tremendous dislocation in this space. And we believe that with Oaktree, we can initially look at higher organic growth opportunities. And going forward, over time, look at inorganic growth opportunities with them. But we're going to be very judicious, and we are going to look to make a lot of money together with them.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian McNamara with Canaccord Genuity.

This is Madison Callinan on for Brian. First, how has the garden season started in April? And industry peers said yesterday that on-hand retailer inventories were low, which is a replenishment. Just give us any color on how committed retailers are to the category.

Yes. Look, we think as opposed to last year, retail inventory started out much more prudent, and April is off to a great start. So I will tell you that we're very bullish on that business right now.

I think Faisal made the comment, which is correct, the bulk of the season is yet to be. So until you get through May and June, you really don't know what you've got. All the weather forecasts look favorable, but you and I know the weather man, they can be wrong half the time and still keep a job.

So look, we want to be conservative in the outlook, but the business is having a great April. I agree with you that retail inventory has been lower than last year, which means more replenishment orders for us.

Great. And then second, do you think we've bottomed in pet, both for Spectrum and the industry as a whole, and that we're now set up for sustainable growth from here? And just anything on how pet ownership and buy rates are trending?

I think your question refers to, we had a big boom during COVID. Post-COVID, you saw the pet industry really take a break. I can tell you that I think pet specialty is definitely recovering, where they had a really hard time. For us -- again, I can just comment on what we're doing, and we're launching new products. We're bringing new packaging. We're bringing new claims. And we're bringing new marketing techniques, and we are growing our biggest brands at faster than category growth and we're going to continue to do that.

Our next question comes from the line of Olivia Tong with Raymond James.

I wanted to get a little bit more of your perspective on the sales growth this quarter and the sustainability of that and whether you think there maybe was some benefit from either destocking last year or tax refund this year? Because clearly, sales improved, though you left the full year sales outlook unchanged despite the stop-shipments in the year ago that hit second half and some FX favorability.

So is there something that benefited Q2 that you don't expect to repeat? Or are you being just mindful of the uncertain overall environment and that gives you some pause as you think about second half?

Yes, I'll go first and I'll let Faisal clean it up. I mean we did have a little bit of pull-in in pet. I think we mentioned the $6 million number, which it's not material. But we had some S/4 going live in EMEA and we wanted to give customers a heads up and just make sure that we kept everything flowing smoothly there.

But again, I think the main thing that you guys should be modeling is we're putting out better product. We're putting out price pack architecture. We're supporting our brands with new marketing campaigns. We got better packaging and better call-outs, and we're launching products that the consumer wants based on consumer insights, and we're taking market share.

I mean -- listen, a year ago, I was dealing with some of my biggest brands comping down 5%. This year, they're comping up that amount or more. And that is just fundamental improvement in the base business, period, end of story.

Yes, I'll just add. We called out last year Cutter as a brand that needed some more support and recovery, and we're actually seeing that happen this year. So in our H&G space, basically, all of our key brands are showing growth and gaining share, which is pretty amazing.

And same thing on our Global Pet Care business. Our brands are again outperforming the market and really strong performance overall.

There is some pull-in, as David said, in the second quarter, but we continue to believe that we'll grow our Home & Garden and Global Pet Care business. And at this point, we're growing above the category.

A lot of our cautiousness just comes from the fact that in Home & Garden's case, a lot of the season is still ahead of us. And overall, if you just look at the consumer health and consumer confidence, there are a lot of negative externalities that are keeping us cautious about the balance of the year.

Got it. So just a point of clarification. The only sort of pull forward was that $6 million in Pet?

It was $9 million in total in the Global Pet Care business.

Okay. Got it. And then my second question is just around the Oaktree investment. And is there any structure in place to enable full change in control? Does this preclude other potential bidders from making a go at HPC if something were to come along?

I mean we own 73% of it on a fully diluted basis. So if we want to sell to somebody who wants to pay a big number, we're fully able to do that.

Got it. And then just last question around the commodities outlook. Can you help us sort of quantify the impact of higher oil for fiscal '26 and what potentially is delayed until fiscal '27 just because of inventory on hand or what have you? Any rule of thumb you could offer in terms of if oil was at $80, $90, $100, what will have you -- what kind of impact that might have on you?

For the year, as we said before, I think we're reasonably covered. We'll see some inflation in -- really Q4 is when we'll feel some inflation. But I think -- with the tariffs being down, I think we kind of offset that.

And it's a little too early to talk about next year and how much inflation we actually capitalize into next year. But I would point to the fact that our recent experience with inflation has been that we're able to offset it either through productivity and price, and we'll continue to monitor. And our goal would be to just hold our margin profile and offset that inflation as we see it.

I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn it back to Jen Schultz for closing remarks.

Thank you. And with that, we will conclude our conference call. Thank you to David and Faisal. And on behalf of Spectrum Brands, thank you for your participation this morning.

Thanks, everybody. Have a good day.

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

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Quarter 2026 Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jen Schultz, DVP, FP&A and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Welcome to Spectrum Brands Holdings Q1 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. I'm Jen Schultz, Division Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations, and I will moderate today's call. To help you follow our comments, we have placed the slide presentation on the Event Calendar page in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.spectrumbrands.com. The document will remain there following our call.

Starting with Slide 2 of the presentation, our call will be led by David Maura, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Faisal Qadir, our Chief Financial Officer. After opening remarks, we will conduct the Q&A. Turning to Slides 3 and 4. Our comments today include forward-looking statements including statements about tariffs, which are based upon management's current expectations, projections and assumptions and are by nature or uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially.

Due to that risk, Spectrum Brands encourages you to review the risk factors and cautionary statements outlined in our press release dated February 5, 2026, our most recent SEC filings and Spectrum Brands Holdings' most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Also, please note that we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in this call. Reconciliations on a GAAP basis for these measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation, which are both available on our website in the Investor Relations section.

Now I'll turn the call over to David Maura. David?

Good morning. Thank you, Jen. Good morning, everybody, and we'd like to welcome you this morning to our first quarter earnings update for fiscal 2026. And again, thank you for joining us today.

I'll start the call today with an update on the operating environment and its impact on our company, on Spectrum Brands. I'll then talk about our operating performance, and then I'll talk about our strategic initiatives. Faisal will then provide a lot more color and detailed financial and operational updates including discussions on the specific business unit results.

If I could now have everybody turn to Slide 6. Our financial results for the first quarter demonstrate that our strategy is working. Fiscal '25 was a challenging year, and we took some tough but necessary actions that positioned us well for the future. We proactively and decisively addressed external forces beyond our control, and we are already seeing the positive impact of those decisions within our results. While the hard work is not over, we are confident that our actions will continue to create a competitive advantage for our company.

We are pleased that our first quarter net sales and adjusted EBITDA exceeded expectations despite continued headwinds. These results reinforce our belief that the most significant impacts from the tariff disruptions last year and the macroeconomic volatility, we believe these issues are largely behind us due to our decisive mitigating activities. As anticipated, we are seeing early signs of recovery in consumables while durable products are taking longer to rebound. These external realities are disproportionately impacting our Home & Personal Care business, where overall global consumer demand continues to be subdued.

We are pleased to report that our most profitable and our largest adjusted EBITDA contributing business, our Global Pet Care business has returned to growth this quarter and our brands continue to perform well in the marketplace. I'm particularly encouraged by our performance in North America where we saw share gains across our companion animal categories, fueled by our brand building investments that we've been making over the past couple of months and quarters. While these categories were modestly down for the quarter, our brands actually outpaced the category and delivered growth versus the prior year.

I want to take a moment and thank [ Ori ] and our entire Global Pet Care team for their efforts and, of course, these results. During the first quarter, we remain disciplined in maintaining a strong balance sheet. While this period is usually characterized by cash usage as we prepare for the Home & Garden season, I'm quite pleased to report that we generated nearly $60 million of adjusted free cash flow in the first quarter. We also repurchased approximately 600,000 shares this quarter, and we've continued to buy back our shares following the completion of the quarter.

Year-to-date through today, we have repurchased approximately 800,000 shares for roughly $42.3 million in total. Since the close of the HHI transaction, we've returned approximately $1.4 billion of capital to our shareholders through our various share repurchase programs, and we have repurchased almost 45% of our entire share count since the closing of that deal. We also recently have received board authorization for a brand-new $300 million share repurchase program. Our strong financial position affords us meaningful flexibility to capitalize on market opportunities, while continuing to invest in our businesses and return capital to our shareholders.

I can now have everyone turn your attention to Slide 7, I'll tell you about our strategic priorities for fiscal '26. Our priorities remain unchanged and they provide a clear framework that will continue to guide our decision-making throughout this year. During the first quarter, we made meaningful progress on each of our initiatives. And we -- these are positioning us well to capitalize on opportunities that we see ahead and to also address challenges as they may arise.

First, as you heard me say before, maintaining a healthy balance sheet and remaining good financial stewards is and will continue to be a top priority for us. I'm proud of the progress we've made in optimizing our working capital and exercising diligence in our spending, which has strengthened our financial position. We ended the first quarter with nearly $127 million of cash, zero drawn on our revolver, and our net leverage was 1.65 turns, well below our long-term targets. We did this despite returning $46 million to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in the quarter.

As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in our brands with a clear focus on generating meaningful returns. Our fewer, bigger, better approach is allowing us to concentrate our resources on higher impact initiatives maximizing the effectiveness of our investments. Later in the call, Faisal will provide insights into how our innovation pipeline is connecting with consumers. Highlighted by significant share gains in several of our key categories, which actually underscores the effectiveness of our approach.

Secondly, in regards to operational excellence, we continue to make steady progress for the remaining planned deployments of our SAP S/4HANA platform. As a reminder, we have already implemented S/4 in our North American Global Pet Care and our Home & Garden businesses. the preparation for its deployment in our appliance business and the remaining international regions is currently underway.

Operating and rolling out our new global ERP system has been a significant undertaking. And I would like to express my sincere appreciation to our teams around the world for their expertise, perseverance and their diligence throughout this project. This now brings me to our third key priority, which is investing in our people. As you know, fiscal '25 was a very difficult year for us, and it was marked by a number of hard decisions that directly affected our teammates. While these actions were necessary to position our company for long-term success and to avoid a lot of tariff disruption, we recognize the impact that this has had on our people, and we don't take that lightly. We are deeply appreciative of the resilience, the professionalism and the commitment our employees have demonstrated during this period of volatility.

Investing in our people goes way beyond hiring and development. It also means being honest about what's working, what isn't and making changes when needed. We are increasingly leveraging the expertise across the organization to address gaps to redeploy talent where it can can have the greatest impact and frankly, to ensure that our teams are set up to execute at a high level.

Our fourth priority, fiscal '26, is centered around transformation. Last quarter, I showed our expectation that both Global Pet Care and our Home & Garden businesses would actually return to growth in fiscal '26. At that time, we indicated that would lead the way with growth in the first fiscal quarter, which obviously it's done, while Home & Garden's growth will be weighted toward the second half of the year. We expected this first quarter for Home & Garden to be down, and that's due to some abnormal timing of some seasonal inventory build in the prior year's results.

Our first quarter results confirm these expectations with significant momentum, frankly, heading into the balance of the year. I am confident we remain on track to achieve our growth objectives in both of these segments. We continue also to be optimistic about the evolving M&A landscape. We will continue to be disciplined in our pursuit of acquisition opportunities in both our Global Pet Care and our Home & Garden businesses. We are confident that we are well positioned within this industry to be the consolidator of choice in both categories.

Lastly, on our Home & Personal Care business, we are committed to being good stewards with a focus on maximizing the results of this business unit and improving its overall profitability in fiscal '26. As the headwinds dissipate from '25, we will continue to work towards a strategic solution for this business.

Now if everyone could turn over to Slide 8, please. Here, I'll give a review of our high-level fiscal '26 earnings framework. Today, we are reiterating our expectations for full year net sales, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow. Thus far, this year is progressing as we planned and anticipated with overall consumer settlement consistent with our expectations. Before I turn the call over to Faisal, I'd like to thank each and every one of our global teammates. Their dedication, their hard work has been instrumental in advancing our company's strategic objectives and putting us back on a path to sustain growth.

Now I'll turn the call to Faisal, and you'll hear more about the financials and the additional business unit insights. The call is yours, Faisal.

Thank you, David. Let's turn to Slide 10, and I will review our Q1 results from continuing operations, beginning with net sales. Net sales decreased 3.3% excluding the impact of $18.5 million of favorable foreign exchange. Organic net sales decreased 6%, primarily driven by continued category demand softness in Home & Personal Care business and the impact of an accelerated seasonal inventory build by some Home & Garden customers in the prior year.

This was partially offset by our Global Pet Care business returning to growth with our key companion animal brands outperforming the market while also benefiting from a softer prior year comparison. Gross profit decreased $16.2 million and gross margin of 35.7% decreased 110 basis points, largely driven by lower volume, higher trade spend and higher tariff costs, partially offsetting -- offset by pricing, cost improvement actions, operational efficiencies and favorable FX.

Operating expenses of $214.5 million moderately increased by 0.7% with lower spend in advertising and marketing, partially offsetting unfavorable FX. Operating income of $27.1 million decreased by $17.6 million due to the decline in gross profit. Our GAAP net income and diluted earnings per share both increased primarily driven by a onetime tax benefit for the quarter, resulting from a favorable settlement and lower share count, partially offset by lower operating income. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $62.6 million, a decrease of $15.2 million, driven by lower volume and reduced gross margins. Adjusted diluted EPS increased to $1.40, driven by a onetime tax benefit and the reduction in share outstanding, partially offset by lower adjusted EBITDA.

Now let's turn to Slide 11. Q1 interest expense from continuing operations of $6.8 million increased $0.6 million. Cash taxes during the quarter decreased $4.2 million from the prior year. Depreciation and amortization of $25.8 million increased $1.3 million from last year. And separately, share-based compensation decreased $4.3 million from $4.7 million in the prior year. Capital expenditure were $8.1 million in the quarter, $2.2 million higher than last year. Cash payment towards restructuring transactions, strategic transactions, restructuring-related projects and other unusual nonrecurring adjustments were $4.8 million versus $8.8 million last year.

Moving to the balance sheet. We had a quarter end cash balance of $126.6 million and $492.2 million available on our $500 million cash flow revolver. Total debt outstanding was approximately $578.9 million consisting of $496.1 million of senior unsecured notes and $82.8 million of finance leases. We ended the quarter with $452.3 million of net debt.

Now let's get into the review of each business unit, where I'll provide you details on the underlying performance drivers of our operational results. I'll start with Global Pet Care, which is Slide 12. Reported net sales increased 8.3% and excluding favorable foreign currency exchange impact, organic net sales increased 5.8%. Sales in companion animal increased high single digit, while sales in aquatics increased low double digits.

In North America, sales increased in both companion animal and aquatics. This was partially driven by the strategic shift of orders by retailers in the prior year of approximately $10 million in preparation for our S/4HANA ERP implementation. After normalizing for the softer comparison, North American net sales increased mid-single digits, including the impact from tariff-related pricing actions taken during the last fiscal year.

In companion animal, our key brands continue to outperform the market. Good �n� Fun, DreamBone, Nature's Miracle and FURminator are gaining market share across chews, stain and order and booming despite our premium positioning and the modest softness in the overall category. We continue to be encouraged by improving POS trends across our core brands and top accounts within the category. The sales growth in aquatics was primarily driven by the pull forward in the prior year as overall demand in this category begins to stabilize.

Our European sales were positively impacted by favorable foreign exchange rates as the U.S. dollar weakened against the British pound and the Euro compared to last year. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, sales in EMEA decreased in the low single digits, primarily due to a decline in dog and cat food sales following their refresh portfolio launch within our Eukanuba brand in our fiscal fourth quarter.

The large prompted from retailers to accelerate inventory purchase to support the reset adversely impacting this quarter's results. This was partially offset by the continued strength of our Good Boy brand, which once again gained market share in the U.K. successful Good Boy expansion across Continental Europe continues to gain traction and new points of distribution. Aquatics organic sales increased with our global leading Tetra brand outperforming the market in a declining category and benefiting from a softer prior year comparison.

On the commercial side, our innovation continues to drive incremental growth. The investments we have made in Nature's Miracle are yielding results and have enhanced our position as the market leader in the stain and order category. We recently launched our Nature's Miracle outdoor stain and order remover designed to address pet stains and orders on outdoor surfaces.

In Grooming, our FURminator growth with expanded distribution confirmed in the coming months. Our Good Boy brand, the #1 brand in dog chews in the U.K. continues to grow market share, driven by consistent consumer-focused innovation. In fact, over the last quarter, Good Boy became the third largest brand in the overall U.K. pet market. The brand's expansion across Continental Europe continues to perform very well and new launch is expected to drive further growth in the coming months.

Our Goods 'n' Fun and DreamBone brands are winning distribution in key retailers and strengthened activation is fueling the brand's growth online. IM's advanced nutrition positioning is driving market share wins in the U.K. on both dog and cat, and the brand expansion in France is off to a good start. Tetra's NutriEvolution launches driving strong market share wins in Germany.

This quarter's adjusted EBITDA of $49 million was $2.5 million lower than the previous quarter, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 17.4% compared to 19.8% last year. The decline in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by higher tariff costs, inflation and additional trade and investment spend. These headwinds were partially offset by higher sales volume, pricing and cost improvement actions. We expect to see the first quarter's result sales trend continue for the balance of the year and deliver modest growth for fiscal '26 in the GPC business.

This quarter's results, coupled with trends in overall POS support our belief that the macroeconomic conditions are stabilizing. We are excited about the strong innovation and brand activation coming to market later in the fiscal year, expected to drive top line growth and market share gains. Despite this quarter's decline in adjusted EBITDA, we remain confident in our ability to deliver year-over-year growth for the fiscal year.

Now moving to Home & Garden, which is Slide 13. Net sales decreased 19.8% in the quarter. You may recall in the prior year, certain customers accelerated their seasonal inventory build impacting all pest control categories. It's important to note that the prior year's results were not typical and our net sales results for the quarter were in line with our expectations and historical averages.

Our fiscal first quarter is typically HNG's lowest sales quarter and represents a small portion of the annual consumer activity for this business. During this time, our team is predominantly focused on preparation and staging for the upcoming season. With that said, while our first quarter typically represents less than 15% of the total year's POS, our brand continued to perform well in the market, gaining share across the U.S. pest control category.

E-commerce is also a bright spot, where we delivered our best-ever first quarter for the business. Based upon discussions with our customers, we continue to prepare for our normal better pattern in fiscal '26 and we remain confident that our sales will pick up as the season unfolds, with normal seasonal POS expected to materialize beginning in the latter half of our second quarter.

In fact, early indications are strong as POS over the last 2 months has gained significant momentum. While customer inventory levels are generally healthy, we expect that they will be disciplined in building inventory for the season. Heading into the season, we continue to launch and support new innovations into the market. In fiscal '25, we launched the Spectracide Wasp, Hornet and YellowJacket Trap, which was a hit with consumers and quickly gained penetration within the category, earning one of the highest penetration of any new items in overall pest control.

POS performance was above expectations and we will build upon that success in fiscal '26 with expanded distribution, continued market support and increased capacity. Additionally, our Hot Shot brand continues to gain shares supported by the Flying Insect trap that we launched last year and was subsequently awarded Product of the Year. We expect continued growth in fiscal '26 with expanded distribution.

Lastly in Repellant, Repel our personal insect repellent brand continues to outperform the market, supported by our recently refreshed graphics and strong marketing support. We will continue to support its growth with sustained marketing investment and expanded display presence in fiscal '26. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $4.5 million compared to $9.3 million last year, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.1%, which is 400 basis points lower than the prior year. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by lower sales volume, partially offset by productivity improvements and operational efficiencies.

The additional cost of tariffs was largely mitigated through a variety of actions, including pricing. As we look forward to the balance of the fiscal year, we are pleased with the continued support from our customers for both the category and our brands. Our big bets continue to resonate with confirmed distribution gains planned for our fiscal second quarter. Spring is expected to bring above-average temperatures across the Southern and Eastern United States, which with precipitation levels projected to be average, which are favorable conditions for our pest control category.

We will maintain our focus on consumer-centered innovation and continue to support our brands through targeted investments throughout the year. Based on these factors, we remain on track to deliver net sales growth in fiscal '26 for the Home & Garden business.

And finally, moving to Home & Personal Care, which is Slide 14. Reported net sales decreased 7.6%. Excluding favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales decreased 11.1%. Net sales in the Personal Care category were down mid-single digits this quarter, and sales in Home Appliances were down high single digits. Organic net sales in EMEA were down in the mid-teens with continued softness in both Home Appliances and Personal Care. Sales across both categories were impacted when one of our retailers was left with higher inventory levels following a weaker-than-anticipated holiday season, resulting in lower replenishment orders within the quarter.

However, outside of this retailer, we are encouraged by the performance in our core markets, which are showing early signs of recovery. In contrast, organic sales in LatAm region increased in the high teens. The strong growth was driven largely by positive consumer reaction to new product launches in both the Personal Care and Home Appliances categories. The introduction of these products resonated well with the consumers. With many of our strategic retail partners reporting double-digit growth in sell-through figures following successful holiday campaigns.

North America sales decreased in the mid-teens driven by lower sales in both Home Appliances and Personal Care. Demand in both categories were adversely impacted by overall consumer softness in light of increased product costs from tariffs. You may recall that we were one of the first to negotiate pricing with our retail partners, and thus, our products were among the first to see tariff-related price increases hit the shelves. With higher promotional activity during the holiday season, some of the price increases across the industry were delayed, and we expect that this is still some -- that there is still some normalization to come in the next few months as all pricing goes into effect across the categories.

Despite overall demand erosion within Personal Care and Home Appliances, coffee and espresso makers saw positive POS and our brand performed -- and our brands performed well in this space, partially offsetting weaker performance in the broader category. Sales were also lower from our SKU rationalization actions taking to address changes in trade policy to ensure overall profitability.

On the commercial side, we are very excited about our recent multi-brand globalized cream maker launch. In the U.S., the product debuted under the Black+Decker brand during the holiday season and received a strong consumer response. Leveraging a centralized global marketing framework for this launch has enabled us to drive greater efficiency and have facilitated the sharing of consumer insights across markets.

On the Personal Care side, Remington was recently recognized as the #1 flat iron in the U.S. and the recently launched AIRvive continues to resonate with the consumers in international markets. Also, we previously shared the success of fiscal '25 launch of the TikTok shop in the U.K. in response to the evolving consumer landscape. Advancing our DTC approach globally has been a priority for us. With plans in place to build upon success within the U.K. and take these best practices to other markets. In our fiscal first quarter, we had rollout in both Germany and the U.S. modeled after U.K. success.

While the early stages of deployment, we are optimistic about the opportunity these new platforms bring. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA was $20.7 million compared to $26.7 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 6.4%. The decline in adjusted EBITDA was driven by lower volume and higher tariff costs, partially offset by pricing, reduced investment spend, cost improvement initiatives and favorable foreign exchange. Looking forward to the second quarter, we continue to expect softness in global consumer demand within Home Appliances and Personal Care categories.

In North America, we expect tariff-related disruptions will continue to reduce sales volume with a smaller subset of product offering as we continue to prioritize overall profitability. We continue to expect a decline in full year net sales for the HPC business as we navigate through category softness and a reduced North American product portfolio. As we look ahead to the second quarter, we anticipate that our results will continue to be impacted by continued softness in consumer demand and ongoing headwinds. The second half of the year is expected to show sequential improvement as we lap softer prior year comparisons and benefits from the actions we have taken to strengthen our business.

Now let's turn to Slide 15, and I'll talk about our expectations for fiscal '26. Our earnings framework for fiscal 2026 remains unchanged from our prior update. We continue to expect net sales to be flat to up single digits compared to the prior year, while we expect growth in both our personal kit and in our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses, Home & Personal Care is expected to decline.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to grow low single digits, driven by the return to sales growth in our Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses. Continued expense management, continuous improvement initiatives and FX favorability offering the lower volumes offsetting the lower volumes in Home & Personal Care. Tariffs are expected to be largely offset to the various mitigation actions we have taken, including pricing. From a phasing perspective, we expect the second quarter to be challenging year-over-year primarily due to the continued softness in consumer demand in our Home & Personal Care business. We continue to expect POS in Home & Garden to materially pick up late in the second quarter with retailers being disciplined in their buildup of inventory. As a result, we expect net sales growth for our Home & Garden business will occur in the second half of the fiscal year. And lastly, adjusted free cash flow as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA is expected to be around 50%.

Now let's turn to Slide 16. Depreciation and amortization is expected to be between $115 million and $125 million, including stock-based compensation of approximately $20 million to $25 million, cash payment towards restructuring, optimization and strategic transaction costs are expected to be between $25 million and $35 million. Capital expenditures are expected to be between $50 million and $60 million. Cash taxes are expected to be between $40 million and $50 million. For adjusted EPS, we used an effective tax rate of 25% in cooperating both discrete items and state taxes.

To end my section, I want to echo David and thank all the global employees for their hard work in helping us gain -- regain our momentum. Now back to you, David.

Thanks, Faisal, and thanks again, everybody, for joining us this morning for today's call. Look, I'll just take a few minutes right now, and we'll recap the key takeaways of today's call if you guys could turn with me to Slide 18.

First, look, although we experienced year-over-year declines in both net sales and adjusted EBITDA, we're actually pleased that first quarter financial results actually exceeded expectations. Our businesses continue to heal from the tariff torpedo that hit us in fiscal '25 as we have restored our supply chains and have taken pricing actions.

While the global macroeconomic conditions and environment remain challenging, we're encouraged by the meaningful signs of improvement, particularly in our consumables product portfolio. Our Global Pet Care business returned to growth this quarter, representing a significant milestone for us. Beyond the broader category improvements, our key companion animal brands have continued to outperform, and they're performing exceptionally well, further strengthening our market share positions.

In our Home & Garden business, we are seeing strong category POS trends currently and our brands are outperforming category. We are encouraged by the success of our new product launches in fiscal '25, and we expect to build on that momentum with expanded distribution here in fiscal '26. This year, we expect Home & Garden to be our fastest-growing business.

In our Appliance business, overall category demand continues to be soft, and we expect that to continue into the fiscal second quarter. We will continue to prioritize maximizing the performance of this business unit through disciplined expense management as we navigate a challenged market.

Secondly, as we look forward to the balance of the year, we continue to believe that our data-driven strategy of fewer, bigger, better initiatives will actually yield higher returns. The positive results we are seeing so far serve as clear evidence that this disciplined approach is actually driving and delivering the right outcomes. Our low leverage and strong balance sheet position us exceptionally well to navigate the current macroeconomic environment. And I actually believe we are in a tremendous position of strength to capitalize on opportunities with the evolving M&A landscape.

With respect to our Global Pet Care, Home & Garden businesses, we continue to look for highly synergistic assets that will allow us to maintain our low leverage. In regards to our appliance businesses, we remain committed defining a strategic solution for that business unit.

Last but not least, I'd like to conclude my remarks by reiterating our fiscal '26 earnings framework for flat to low single-digit growth in net sales, low single-digit growth in adjusted EBITDA and approximately 50% conversion of our adjusted EBITDA to adjusted free cash flow. The progress we made this quarter reflects the dedication of our team and our focus on delivering sustainable growth. We appreciate the trust and the support of all of our stakeholders as we work together to achieve both our short and our long-term objectives.

I'll turn the call now back to Jen, and we're going to be happy to take any questions.

Thank you, David. Operator, we can go to the question queue now.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Brian McNamara with Canaccord Genuity.

This is Madison Callinan. I'm on for Brian. First, one of your competitors stated their belief that we've reached a bottom in pet. I'm curious if you would agree with that assessment and provide any color around your view?

I've been humbled more than once in my life calling tops and bottoms. So I'm going to pass on that. But we're significantly focused on what we can do, and we're really pleased with the new leadership in pet and the investments we're making there and the fact that we're taking market share with our main brands. So yes, pet's been through some tough turbulence. There's still a lot of soft pockets out there. So I just don't have that kind of crystal ball to make that statement.

Fair. And you mentioned that retailers should be disciplined in inventory, but how committed are your retailers to the Garden category this upcoming season? And are you in a position to chase if the weather cooperates and demand is better than we've seen the last few years?

Yes. Look, I'm actually very bullish on our Home & Garden business. Javier, who leads that unit has done a great job of kind of fixing the culture, restoring a lot of operational rhythm. And frankly, our innovation there. Vessel talked about the Wasp and Hornet Trap. We've got a lot of new products, new innovation and actually it's not us, the consumer is endorsing it.

So we have some new SKUs launching, and frankly, we've seen some of these small pockets -- we see the business doubling and tripling in some of these new product launches. So I would also tell you, during times of macroeconomic volatility when the consumer is stretched, it's pretty nice to be the value price point brand.

And so honestly, as I look forward, I think we are the foot traffic driver to that category, and we see retailers leaning in with us because they get that joke, too. So look, it's been cold. So it's tough to look at weather forecast and say it's going to be warmer. It is a weather business. It does influence it. Q1, we knew it was going to be soft because we prebuilt a lot of inventory for one particular customer last year. We didn't do that this year.

But the POS trends that we see right now are very encouraging, and we're really bullish on what we can accomplish this season in Home & Garden, but the proof is always in the pudding. And I would tell you, Q2, I wouldn't get over your skis here as you model it. I think it will be flat, slightly up year-on-year, but that's just the phasing and then a big back half for Home & Garden, if that helps you with your modeling.

Our next question comes from Olivia Tong with Raymond James.

The comps get a fair bit easier after Q1. So can you talk about your views in terms of the arc of anticipated improvement as you get from the flat to plus low single digits that you're looking for, for the year? There were obviously a couple of comp issues in Q1 that are now in the past. So just talking about the cadence of improvement for this year.

Sounds like a tough question. I'm going to give that to Faisal.

Look, I think we talked about how our Pet business is definitely back to growth. We expect that trend to continue. We expect that business to continue growing in the second quarter. I think David just mentioned on the Home & Garden side that we don't expect a lot of growth in the second quarter because we think retailers are going to be more disciplined in how they build inventory versus last year. But we do expect a normal weather season, which means third and fourth quarter for us are going to be strong for H&G, so that makes it much more of a back half growth story for H&G.

For our Home & Personal Care business, I think we'll continue to see some pressure in the second quarter, and our comps start to stabilize as we go into third and fourth quarter. So, again, that's not a business we're expecting to grow this year, but I think our second half starts to stabilize versus our prior year a little bit more versus the kind of trend you're seeing in Q1. The trend you're seeing in Q1 on the top line probably continues in the second quarter and then it stabilizes. So it's different by business, but hopefully, that answers your question, Olivia.

Our next question comes from Bob Labick with CJS Securities.

This is Will on for Bob. Just broadly speaking, are the levels of investment in brands where you want them, might they increase or decrease? And same question at the corporate level.

Yes. So I think we -- I'll start with corporate. We talked about in the last quarter's earnings call, we talked about how we do have some headwind on the corporate side on the cost side that has to do with the exit of our ASSA ABLOY HHI transaction-related TSA income, and that was a $20 million headwind that we said will roughly cover half of that cost this year. So that stays true.

We were able to push some of our costs out of Q1, primarily because a lot of our S/4 go-lives occur in the second to the third and fourth quarter. So a lot of our cost is pushed out in the first quarter. So I think you'll see our overall full year outlook on corporate remains roughly the same. On the other businesses, I think we're going to be careful about how we invest. I think we're at the right level of investment for our Global Pet and Home & Garden businesses. I think on the Home & Personal Care business, you'll see us pull back some of the investments just based on when we see the recovery and when we see our top line coming back.

And so it's probably too early to say. I generally say given where the top line is, we have pulled back some investment on the HPC business compared to last year. But if the second half comes back strong, we can certainly dial that back up. And it's a lot -- this year is going to be a lot more about reconfiguring our investment dollars to be more productive. And we're just going to continue to measure the return on our investment -- on our advertising investment and try to put more dollars in areas where we see the return versus not. But on an overall basis, I would say for both Home & Garden and Global Pet Care, we are at the right level of investment.

That's super helpful. And can you talk about the innovation in your pipeline for FY '26 and beyond? Are you at the level of new product introduction you want to be at?

Yes, I think we've got a lot of good new exciting new products coming in. We talked about -- on the Home & Garden business, we've got some more products coming in, but we actually had really successful launches last year. And once we're able to get the consumers excited about it, you'll see us expand the distribution of those products a lot more this year. So that's going to be one of our growth drivers for Home & Garden business.

On the Global Pet Care business, we talked about the new products that we launched last year. And I won't get ahead of myself, but you'll see more exciting things come over the next couple of quarters. So I think we've got a very good pipeline in both those two businesses that we'll continue to invest in.

Our next question comes from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

When you think about the process with the HPC business, how would you characterize the progress that you think has been made towards your objectives or how things have evolved and are evolving maybe what has gone against you, obviously, from the external environment? And what gives you confidence that you can still execute on these plans that you have for the business? I have a follow-up.

Yes. Look, let's take it in two pieces, right? One is the operating piece and the other is the strategic piece. And when you look at -- we're sitting in February, right? So a year ago, I mean, we were staring at a $0.5 billion tariff problem. Like $500 million is a lot of tariffs for a company of our size to absorb. And we shut down buying for literally 2 months, like that puts a lot of air in your pipeline, right, if you're trying to sell a product.

And we dealt with the harsh realities of that volatility, and we were upfront with our retailers, and we took pricing immediately. And when you shut down buying product in your supply chain for 2 months and you raise prices double digits, on these type of items, you're going to run into something called elasticity really fast. And for us to put $20 million of EBITDA on the board in the last 90 days in that business, I'm pleased with it.

So again, I'm -- do we want to do better? Of course. But I can tell you, managing that type of volatility, not to pat ourselves in the back, I think we did it better than most. If I look at that industry, there's really one big player that's making all the money, taking all the market share and there's everybody else. And most of the other players are in a more difficult position than I am operationally and financially, very few players have an unlevered balance sheet and an outlook that's going to improve profitability. This company has both. So if you're looking at the neighborhood of small domestic appliances I like where we play.

And frankly, I think given our outlook for improved profitability in appliances in fiscal '26, that is going to cause the consolidation I'm sick of talking about to finally occur. And we believe we will be the strategic merger partner choice. So I think that's pretty crystal clear, but I'm pretty excited that we put $20 million of EBITDA on the Board. I'm telling you it's still a very challenging environment. I'm telling you that most of my competitors have got 6 to 12x leverage on their balance sheets. And good luck.

Yes. Yes. A lot of certainly come at you guys. That's helpful. When it comes to EBITDA for the year, as we think about cadence, I think you gave some good perspective which I interpreted as more top line. The outlook is more back half weighted from a profitability perspective as well. Just remind us of the anomalies that Q1 and the confidence as you get towards that full year objective?

Yes. Again, there's just so much fall going on right now. It's -- look, we were in a process for the business. It attracted a lot of interest, right? The tariff situation through cold water on that right now, the industry is trying to get back to, okay, what are my input costs? What's my new rate of sales? What's my margin structure? And can you underwrite these businesses, right?

So what I'm trying to describe is when you encounter that much volatility and disruption, it's going to take you more in a quarter or 2 to heal. So that business is in the process of healing. Again, to put $20 million of EBITDA on the Board in Q1 appliance is I'm proud of that. What is occurring right now, to answer your question directly is the North America market which took the biggest hit for us because of the tariffs coming into this country is healing and we're seeing things improve there.

What is also occurring globally is because barriers went up here, but not other places, cheap Chinese product is hitting the rest of the globe than it's being dumped into other markets. That is disruptive. It's causing issues for us right now in Europe. And so we've got to wrestle that to the ground here in Q2, figure out a better go-to-market strategy and get that humming again. But -- so Q2 is going to continue to be a little messy in this unit. With all the pricing in place and with all the supply chains fixed, and working on a better, more strategic go-to-market plan, we do anticipate kind of Q3 and Q4, resulting in such numbers that we actually report growth in EBITDA in the appliance unit in fiscal '26. Does that help?

It does.

Next question comes from Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer.

I just like to drill down a little bit more on GPC here. When we think about kind of the growth for the year, is there an opportunity to maybe grow faster than low single digits. And help us understand the demand in aquatics? Is that just kind of a comp thing or do you actually see like underlying demand improving?

Ian, good to hear from you. Thanks for the questions. I'll take the first piece and Faisal will fix it if I mess anything up. Look, on companion animal, I've got a new leadership team in Pet. I like what we're doing there. We spent a number of months here trying to get smarter strategically. And we're working on price pack architecture. We're doing some deep dives into some of the product portfolios. We're looking, as we've told you, a fewer, bigger, better. So we're trying to concentrate resources on higher return opportunities. We're really pleased with the early results, right?

In companion animal, if you look at kind of the big drivers, that's Good 'n' Fun, it's DreamBone, it's FURminator, Nature's Miracle to have four of these big brands back in growth feels good. More work to do. Somebody asked earlier, have we happy with innovation. Faisal said, yes, I'm never happy with it. We need more, more and more. I want more new products. I want more new excitement, and we want better margin mix. We're working on it.

Aquatics. We see recovery in Europe right now. North America still needs some fix. But honestly, I'm bullish because I've got a team finally underwriting that with a lot more intelligence. And I think there's some price pack architecture stuff we can do there. Within the next month, we're going to go out and sit down with our retailers, and we're going to talk about the new strategy, new price points, new ways to manage the category.

Tetra is the leader globally. It's time we start acting like it. Kids love aquariums, taking care of pets. It's therapeutic. It teaches responsibility. It's a phenomenal category. We've got to get our swagger back. But I'm determined to do it, and I've got a new leader who's going to help me make that happen. Faisal?

Yes, I'll just quickly add. One, aquatics is an effort of our business, right? So we don't -- that's sort of business to rely on for growth. Aquatics itself as the category is never really a growth driver. Recently, it's actually been the decline leader for us, but the overall market seems to be stabilizing.

As David said, we need to put more homes behind our Aquatic category and try to push that forward and act like leaders. And there's a lot of good ideas that we're going to execute against in the next few quarters. But our growth will primarily come from the companion animal side, and we're very bullish about how we performed in the first quarter. But to answer your question, which performed well, and we're showing growth in 1 quarter, we need to continue doing that every quarter coming forward to just give ourselves more confidence. But we're pretty optimistic about our performance here.

Our next question comes from Carla Casella with JPMorgan.

Just two quick ones. You talked a bit about some wins in terms of shelf space. Can you quantify at all your kind of net wins or net wins and losses and how they should impact the coming quarter?

I mean I think -- I don't think we're going to give you details on the call on exactly what those -- how those wins materialize into what kind of growth. But like I said in my earlier remarks, we're pretty jazzed about the growth we'll see on products that we launched last year that I think will gain distribution in both Home & Garden and on the Global Pet Care side. And I think we've got some good exciting products coming over the next couple of quarters as well.

Okay. That's great. And then just, I guess, given the movement with as the tariff costs flow through, should we expect any unusual changes in working capital this year? Or kind of -- would you expect working capital to be a source or use of cash for the full year?

I think you've seen our performance in the first quarter. Our working capital management has been really great. Overall, I don't think it will be a use of cash in a meaningful way this year. But I would say at this point, working capital would remain stable for the year. And our cash flow -- free cash flow projections reflect that.

And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Jen for any further remarks.

Okay. Thank you. With that, we have reached the conclusion of our call. Thank you to David and Faisal. And on behalf of Spectrum Brands, thank you for your participation this morning.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.

Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Spectrum Brands Holdings Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jen Schultz, Division Vice President, Financial Planning Analysis and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Welcome to Spectrum Brands Holdings Q4 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. I'm Jen Schultz, Division Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations and I moderate today's call. To help you follow our comments, we have placed a slide presentation on the event calendar page in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.spectrumbrands.com. This document will remain there following our call.

Starting with Slide 2 of the presentation. Our call will be led by David Maura, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Faisal Qadir, our Chief Financial Officer. After opening remarks, we will conduct the Q&A. Turning to Slides 3 and 4. Our comments will include forward-looking statements, which are based upon management's current expectations, projections and assumptions and are, by nature, uncertain. Actual results may differ materially. Due to that risk, Spectrum Brands encourages you to review the risk factors and cautionary statements outlined in our press release dated November 13, 2025, our most recent SEC filings and Spectrum Brands Holdings' most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Our statements reflect expectations regarding tariffs, which are based on currently known and effective tariffs and do not reflect tariffs that have been announced or delayed or other additional tariffs, which could result in initial costs. Also, please note that we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in this call. Reconciliations on a GAAP basis for these measures are included in today's press release and 8-K filing, which are both available on our website in the Investor Relations section.

Now I'll turn the call over to David Maura. David?

Good morning. Thank you, Jen. Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome everybody to today's fourth quarter earnings update. I appreciate everybody from the time to join us today. For today's call, I want to begin with a few big-picture opening remarks. First, I'm delighted and thankful to our teams for navigating the most difficult year. And I am excited to let you all know that we believe that the worst of the tariff and economic disruptions to our businesses are now behind us. .

Secondly, we expect our 2 highest value businesses, Global Pet Care and Home & Garden to return to growth in 2026. Our adjusted free cash flow of $171 million or approximately $7 per share beat our own expectations in fiscal '25 and our strong free cash flow generation will continue into fiscal '26 and beyond. Fourth, our balance sheet is strong with $124 million in cash at the end of the year, 0 drawn revolver, and we ended the year with just 1.58 turns of net leverage after returning approximately $375 million to shareholders throughout the year through buybacks and dividends in fiscal 2025. Last, but certainly not least, we are hell bent on improving the profitability and competitive positioning of our HPC appliance business. As the headwinds dissipate, we are excited to work towards a strategic solution for this business once again.

We are also highly confident we're well positioned within our industry to be the consolidator of choice within the Pet and Home and Garden industries. As we ramp up a very challenging year, now beginning through headwinds largely outside of our control, I again want to start this call by simply saying thanks. Thanks to every one of our global team members for battling through tough times. Thank you to our vendors and retailers for your partnership in addressing the macroeconomic conditions that we collectively continue to face.

And lastly, thank you to our investor base for your continued trust. I know this year has been tough but I am proud of how we have proactively and decisively reacted to these outside forces, and I believe that actually, it's creating a competitive advantage for us as we look forward to the future.

If I could have everyone now turn your attention to Slide 6. During the year, we saw a significant decline in the macroeconomic environment, which impacted overall consumer sentiment, not just here in the U.S. but globally. Trade policy uncertainty and volatility led to softening demand in the U.S. starting in the second quarter, and impacted global markets more noticeably in the second half of fiscal '25. When tariffs were at their highest point earlier this calendar year, we were looking at an annualized tariff exposure of approximately USD 450 million. This exposure is now approximately $70 million to $80 million on an annualized basis. And the good news is, thanks to the diligence and the incredible efforts of our global supply team, we are extremely happy to report to you that we have offset substantially all of this exposure through a combination of vendor concessions, painful internal cost reductions, supply-based reconfiguration and diversification and lastly, pricing actions.

I shared this with you last quarter that we had implemented a number of cost-reduction initiatives that will result in over $50 million of savings in fiscal '25. This included a reduction in force that spanned all 3 of our business lines and our corporate functions. While it's never easy to take these kinds of actions, we know that the impact has been tough on our employees. We also know, however, that it was necessary to rightsize our cost structure and to protect the health of the businesses. We have also made significant progress in diversifying our supply chain to increase both its resiliency and its flexibility.

Heading into fiscal '25, we had approximately $300 million of our -- of sourced product coming into the United States from China. We have since reduced these Chinese sourced products to the U.S. markets by nearly 50%. Further diversification will remain a priority for us going forward, and we expect to only have approximately $15 million to maybe $20 million of direct spend in China for our 2 most highly valued businesses, Global Pet Care and Home & Garden by the end of fiscal '26.

We will also continue to move product out of China within our home and personal care businesses when it's the right financial decision to do so. And when it does not sacrifice the standards that we have for our quality. I would also like to take the opportunity now to thank our agile global supply chain team who have worked tirelessly to navigate this volatile environment and to make sure that our supply chain going forward is much more resilient and flexible to whatever challenges may arise.

Earlier in the year, I emphasized that with all of this uncertainty, we would control what we could control. And one of the priorities when we pivoted our operating strategy was to maximize cash flow generation and deliver to you over $160 million of free cash flow in fiscal '25. And in fact, we overdelivered this number. We delivered $170 million plus in free cash flow through disciplined CapEx management and better working capital improvements. We ended the year with net leverage of 1.58x, well below the stated goal of 2 to 2.5, all while continuing to reward our shareholders with approximately $375 million of capital returns split between share repurchases and dividends in fiscal '25.

During just the recently completed fourth quarter, we repurchased an additional 700,000 shares of stock and we continue buying during our pre-earnings quiet period through a 10b5-1 plan put in place in June, which was amended by our Board in September to increase the capital net to $100 million. In fiscal 2025, we repurchased approximately 4.4 million shares, roughly $326 million. And since the close of the fiscal year, we have purchased approximately 0.4 million shares, roughly $21.5 million in total.

Since the close of the HHI transaction, we have returned over $1.37 billion of capital to our shareholders through our various share repurchase programs and reduced our share count by approximately 44% since the close of that deal.

If I can now have everyone turn to Slide 7, I'll give you a quick overview of fiscal '25 results. As I mentioned earlier, it was a challenging year for the businesses, and we were faced with a variety of external headwinds. The volatile trade policy landscape not only impacted consumer demand, but it also led to a temporary pause in shipments from China into our U.S. businesses when the tariffs were at their highest point. In fact, we paused all incoming and inbound traffic from China for about 6 to 8 weeks, and that impacted our ability to fill orders throughout the second half of the fiscal year.

Overall, fiscal '25 net sales declined 5.2% compared with fiscal '24 and this is after actually starting the year off with top line growth if you remember in the first quarter of '25. And while our fourth quarter net sales also declined by 5%, we're actually encouraged that consumer demand was stabilizing during -- throughout the quarter in our key markets and our categories as trade policy has become a little less volatile and the supply shortages we experienced in the second half of the year are now behind us, largely behind us, I should say.

We have been relentless in addressing the top line declines by initiating further cost reduction initiatives and cost savings. In addition to the fixed cost reductions, with the elimination of permanent salary headcount, we have also been reducing selectively our advertising and marketing spend in light of category softness, and we have significantly reduced our office and distribution footprint as well. All these actions are mitigating some of the EBITDA declines in the various macroeconomic headwinds.

If we can now look to Slide 8 and focus now on our strategic priorities for this upcoming year, fiscal '26. The fundamentals of our business are actually strong. And I'm confident the decisions we've made over the last 6 to 9 months actually make us stronger, more focused business. And that brings me to the first key element of our strategic focus. We will continue to be good financial stewards of the business as we navigate the current macroeconomic landscape. The actions we took in fiscal '25 while difficult, they were quite necessary to address the external headwinds we were faced with. And with that said, the hard work is not over. We have to continue to be diligent and we actually need to be more efficient with our spending and investing profile. We need to demand and we will demand better returns on our investments while continuing to reduce the overall complexity of our businesses.

The teams are now focused on fewer, bigger, better initiatives to maximize the impact of our investments. As you've heard me say before, we witness the strength of our balance sheet sets us apart from our peers. We will continue to remain disciplined in managing working capital while at the same time, maintaining high fill rates supported by our best in class supply chain team. The second element here is continued focus on operational excellence by leveraging technology advances that we're building for the future.

As you know, we've been on a multiyear journey to upgrade and implement new ERP system, SAP's S/4HANA. This is a project that's been the way for the last several years, and it started off with a successful implementation in our Global Pet Care North America business at the end of fiscal '24, and it was shortly, therefore, followed up by a successful go-live in our Home and Garden business, which is mostly a North American business.

Over the last few months, we've also started now to move portions of our international business over to the new platform. While no new ERP implementation program is flawless, we have been incredibly pleased so far with the progress we've made by implementing this without any -- or trying to minimize any sort of disruption to our customer base. We've also made the decision to extend the implementation of S/4HANA to our home and personal care business. Our other key element is centered around our people. And while we've had a challenging year and made a lot of difficult decisions, particularly around human capital has impacted our employees, I'm proud of our team. I believe that their focus and resilience are critical components of driving the next chapter of growth.

Our last key element is around transformation. And our continued plans to focus on becoming the pure-play Global Pet Care and Home and Garden business that we've set out a few years ago. Starting with Global Pet Care under Orin leadership, the team is embracing a new data-driven approach that has already yielded small wins and is resulting in improved operational trends. The innovation pipeline is strong with fewer, bigger, better new product launches on the horizon that are grounded in consumer insights.

I'll continue to push this team to go faster because I believe in the strategy, and I'm excited about the future of Pet. Moving to the Home and Garden business, as you may recall me saying before, we've been on a bit of a turnaround over the last couple of years since Javier has joined the team. Javier has the right tone for a high-performing team with a culture anchored around growth, development and employee engagement. We have had some highly successful innovation launches, and I'm really pleased with the progress the R&D team has made here. And these new products have landed well with the consumer and we're expecting this momentum to actually continue and build with exciting new product launches planned for fiscal '26.

I remain optimistic about the evolving M&A landscape. We expect to continue to pursue acquisition opportunities in both our global pet care division and our Home & Garden business as additional assets become available at better price points. Lastly, on Personal Care, the most impacted of our 3 businesses by the latest trade policy volatility, the team has stepped up to the challenge. They've made meaningful changes to address our current reality. And while we had a tough fiscal '25, we are committed to maximizing the business' value, and we expect an improvement to overall profitability in fiscal '26.

We remain committed to the vision of finding a strategic solution for our HPC business. If I can now everyone turn to Slide 9. I'm going to give an overview of our high level -- earnings framework. We expect net sales to be flat to up low single digits versus the prior year. The actual headwinds that suppressed consumer demand for the vast majority of fiscal '25 are expected to continue particularly in the first half of our fiscal year. Despite these external pressures, we believe Home & Garden and Global Pet Care are both positioned to resume growth in fiscal '26, offsetting an expected decline in our home and personal care business as we navigate through category softness in supply chain simplification initiatives that will reduce the product portfolio in North America.

From an adjusted EBITDA perspective, we are targeting low single-digit growth, primarily driven by continued expense management, cost improvement initiatives and favorable FX offsetting lower volumes. The additional cost of tariffs are largely mitigated through a variety of actions, including pricing. And lastly, for adjusted free cash flow, we expect another strong year ahead at approximately 50% conversion of adjusted EBITDA. Heading into the fiscal year, we are seeing signs of improved predictability in the macroeconomic environment, giving us the confidence to reinstate our earnings framework. We are focused on delivering on our goals to our investors. We believe this framework provides a challenging but achievable financial goal to the team as we look forward to a stronger fiscal '26.

Before I turn the call over to Faisal, I'd like to sincerely thank our outgoing Chief Financial Officer, Jeremy Smeltzer. He's been a tremendous asset to the company and helped us navigate through some really challenging times. I'm confident that Faisal will continue to drive strong execution and financial discipline in the years ahead, and I'm already enjoying my new partnership with him as my CFO.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Faisal to share more on the financials and additional business unit insights. The call is now yours, Faisal.

Thank you, David. Turning to Slide 11 and a review of our Q4 results from continuing operations, beginning with our net sales. Net sales decreased 5.2%, excluding the impact of $10.5 million of favorable foreign exchange. Organic net sales decreased 6.6%, primarily driven by supply constraints as a result of our decision to pause purchases from China for the U.S. market during the third quarter and continued category softness in our Global Pet Care and Home & Personal Care business. .

These headwinds were partially offset by a delayed start to the season for our Home & Garden business that benefited current quarter results. Gross profit decreased $31.4 million and gross margins of 35% decreased 220 basis points, largely driven by lower volume, unfavorable inflation and higher tariffs, partially offset by pricing, cost improvement actions and favorable FX. Operating expenses of just over $227 million decreased 14.6% due to lower spend in advertising and marketing and general expense management in light of category softness as well as lower restructuring-related project spend.

Operating income of $29.4 million increased by $7.5 million due to the lower operating expenses, partially offset by a decline in gross profit. GAAP net income and diluted earnings per share both increased primarily driven by onetime tax benefit for the quarter resulting from a tax entity realignment initiative, lower share count and higher operating income. Adjusted EBITDA was $63.4 million, a decrease of $5.5 million driven by lower volume and reduced gross margins, partially offset by lower operating expenses. Adjusted diluted EPS increased to $2.61 driven by a onetime tax benefit that I referenced earlier and the reduction in shares outstanding, partially offset by lower adjusted EBITDA.

Turning to Slide 12. Q4 interest expense from continuing operations of $7.9 million increased $1.2 million due to higher average borrowing on our cash flow revolver in the current quarter. Cash taxes during the quarter decreased $10.2 million from prior year. Depreciation and amortization of $23.9 million decreased $1.7 million from last year. And separately, share-based compensation increased to $5.8 million from $4.6 million in the prior year. Capital expenditures were $13.2 million in Q4, essentially flat to last year.

Cash payments towards strategic transactions, restructuring-related projects and other unusual nonrecurring adjustments were $7.3 million versus $10 million last year. Moving to the balance sheet. We had a quarter end cash balance of $123.6 million and $492.3 million available on our $500 million cash flow revolver. Total debt outstanding was approximately $581.4 million consisting of $496 million of senior unsecured notes and $85.3 million of finance leases. We ended the quarter with $457.8 million of net debt.

Turning to Slide 13 and an overview of our full year results. Net sales decreased $0.052 and organic net sales decreased 5.3%. The sales performance was driven by category softness in light of macroeconomic conditions and supply shortages from the 6 to 8 weeks pause previously mentioned. These had been significantly impacted results both in our Global Pet Care and Home & Personal Care business. Despite strong performance by our key brands, sales in Home and Garden business were modestly down, driven by unfavorable weather conditions.

Full year gross profit decreased by $77.4 million and gross margin of 36.7% decreased 70 basis points driven by lower volume, higher inflation, increased tariff costs and unfavorable mix. This was partially offset by cost improvement initiatives, pricing and favorable FX. Adjusted EBITDA decreased to $289.1 million. Excluding investment income of $52.7 million in the prior year, adjusted EBITDA decreased $30 million or 9.4%, primarily driven by lower volume and a decline in gross profit, partially offset by a reduction in operating expenses.

Adjusted free cash flow was $170.7 million or approximately $7 per share -- $7 cash per share, exceeding the $160 million free cash flow framework that we provided. During the year, we prioritized the health of our balance sheet through active management of CapEx investments and improved working capital.

Now let's get into a review of each business unit, where I'll provide you more details on the underlying performance drivers of our operational results. I'll start with our Global Pet Care business, which is Slide 14. Reported net sales decreased 1.5%, and excluding favorable foreign currency impact, organic net sales decreased 3.3%. Sales in Aquatics increased high single digits, offset by mid-single-digit decline in companion animal. In North America, our companion animal brands continue to trend favorably. Our brands maintained or gained market share driven by innovation and successful commercialization with our retail partners in spite of category softness.

In Aquatics, we successfully mitigated category declines and delivered improved results driven by distribution gains in pet specialty and mass channel. Comparisons for the quarter in both companion animal and aquatics were impacted by a strategic pull-forward of orders by retailers in the prior year in preparation of our S/4HANA ERP implementation, resulting in an appropriately $10 million headwind for the quarter. Also as expected, our decisions to pass shipments for a 6- to 8-weeks period when tariffs were at their highest point during the third quarter led to continued supply shortages during the current quarter.

Our inventory levels are now generally healthy and shortages are not expected to be a significant headwind heading into the fiscal '26. Conversely, results were favorable impacted by our decisions in the third quarter to stop shipment to a key retailer as tariff pricing negotiations stalled. By the end of third quarter, negotiations were complete but it did result in shipment delays benefiting our fourth quarter results. In EMEA, companion animal sales increased driven by the continued strength of our Good Boy brand, market share gains in the U.K. and expanding further in Continental Europe.

Net sales also increased in our dog and cat food, led by our Eukanuba brand. Aquatic sales also increased with the Tetra brand gaining shares in key markets, mitigating category softness. Our innovation continues to resonate with the consumer and is largely focused on further expansion into adjacent categories. You may recall, we recently launched [ Green Bond Colin ], a product that focuses on health and wellness benefits for pets. We also continue to launch new innovations in the treats categories, as our good and tasty product launches continue to flow with further plans of expansion and more unique innovations coming in, in the coming months. Our investments in Nature's Miracle also continued to yield results in the -- as the brand is gaining share and new points of distribution.

In the fourth quarter, Nature's Miracle -- pure play online, mass, food, dollar and drug channels. Our Good Boy brand is the #1 brand in dog chews in the U.K. and is the fourth largest brand in overall pet and continues to grow market share, driven by consistent innovation. The brand's expansion across Continental Europe used to perform really well, most recently becoming 1 of the top 5 treat brands in the Netherlands.

In dog and cat food, we are continuing to expand IAMS into more markets and recently launched a refreshed portfolio on [ Juba ]. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA of $49.6 million is $5.3 million higher than the previous year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 16.6% compared to 14.8% last year. The improvement to adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by expense management through cost savings initiatives announced earlier in the year, lower investment spend due to category softness and pricing. These actions more than offset the lower sales volume, higher cost and inflation experienced in the quarter. While GPC's fiscal '25 sales fell short of the prior year due to macroeconomic and category headwinds, we believe the business is well positioned heading into fiscal '26, and we expect to return to modest growth as underlying category fundamentals and macroeconomic trends begin to stabilize.

With generally healthy levels of inventory, we continue to be optimistic about our performance in the category. With the recent wins in product distribution and placement together with the positive pace of sales and consumer acceptance of our innovation, we believe we will continue to outperform the category. While consumers continue to be challenged, we are encouraged by the overall resilience and strength of our brands.

I'll now move to our Home & Garden business. which is on Slide 15. Net sales increased 3.2% in the quarter, reflecting a delayed start to the season that pushed volume from the third quarter into the fourth quarter. While July experienced favorable weather -- weather conditions, leading to an improved POS and strong retailer reorder patterns, unfavorable weather conditions across key regions in the latter half of the quarter negatively impacted POS and shipments.

Net sales in controls, which is our largest category in Home and Garden, were up high teens as Spectracide continues to outperform the category with a strong finish to the quarter in home, insect -- and herbicides. In Household pet, Hot Shot also gained share with the positive POS, while the overall category was flat. We are particularly pleased with the recent innovation launch of our flying insect traps that continues to outperform the rest of the category. Repellent sales were down mid-single digits with softness at key retailers, driven by unfavorable weather conditions. Net sales increase were also down for the quarter.

As weather patterns evolve and shift POS into the fall, our late-season program continued to gain incremental support from our key account partners with activations for the quarter at 4x the number of stores as compared to last year. Our big bet innovations are gaining support from our retailers and resonating with consumers, exceeding expectations. This year's innovation launch, the Spectracide wasp harness and yellow jacket trap was a hit with consumers and quickly gained penetration within the category earning one of the highest penetrations of any new item in overall pest control.

POS performance was above expectations with additional PAMs to expand distribution and capacity heading into fiscal '26. The Hot Shot flying insect trap launch also performed very well with its strong value proposition. We're excited to see expanded distribution on this new product as well in fiscal '26. Adjusted EBITDA was $16.9 million compared to $19 million last year, and the adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.1%, 200 basis points lower than the prior year. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was driven by unfavorable mix, inflation, tariffs and incremental brand-focused investments, partially offset by pricing, productivity improvements and higher sales volume as our innovation continues to resonate with consumers.

As we look forward to fiscal '26, we believe retailer inventory levels are generally healthy and we expect reorder patterns to closely align with POS. Our sales team will continue to work closely with our retail partners to understand consumer demand expectations and what it means to our production and shipment plan. We expect our category will continue to be well supported by our retail partners and the strength of our brands will continue to drive shareholders. While weather is unpredictable, early indications are that our retail partners expect a normal weather pattern for fiscal '26 with precipitation and temperatures expected to go back to historical levels.

Most of the POS for our Home and Garden business comes in the second half of our fiscal year, with the first half largely focused on preparation and staging for the seasonal business. As a result, timing of inventory builds can vary and impact quarterly results. Our fiscal '25 first quarter benefited from an earlier than normal seasonal inventory build as well as the plethora of orders in advance of our S4 go live by certain retailers that we would not expect to repeat in fiscal '26.

Overall, phasing of net sales in Home and Garden are therefore expected to be similar to fiscal '24. And finally, moving to Home & Personal Care, which is Slide 16. Reported net sales decreased 11.9%. Excluding favorable foreign exchange, organic net sales decreased 13.4%. Net sales in the personal care category were down low single digits this quarter, while sales in home appliances were down double digits. Organic net sales in EMEA were down double digits, with softness in both home appliances and personal care.

Lower consumer confidence continues to be a headwind in European markets. impacting both personal care and home appliances categories. We have also seen influx of Chinese competitors targeting the region in response to the higher tariffs in the U.S. We continue to be nimble and evaluate new strategies to ensure our brands remain relevant to our consumers in the current environment. As the consumer moves increasingly to digital markets, our near-term focus is increasing our digital shelf space and ensuring our presence in all relevant channels.

In addition, one of our retailers experienced high inventory levels following a major sales event that negatively impacted replenished orders within the quarter. North American sales decreased around 25%, driven by lower sales in home appliances. Much like GPC, HPC's fourth quarter results were impacted by inventory availability constraints from the 6 to 8 weeks pause on Chinese-sourced products to the U.S. when tariffs were at their highest point.

Our inventory levels are now generally healthy and shortages are not expected to be a significant headwind heading into fiscal 2026. Overall share also impacted by pricing taken to offset cost of tariffs. You may recall last quarter that we were 1 of the first to negotiate pricing with our retail partners, and thus, our product were -- inversed to see tariff-related price increase hit the shelves. We expect that this will normalize in the coming months as pricing goes into effect across the categories. First, appliances sales increased in both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce channels, benefiting from a softer prior year comparison.

Organic net sales in Lat Am grew high single digits with growth in both categories, driven by new product launches in Personal Care and distribution gains in the cooking category within home appliances. On the commercial side, you may recall, we recently launched the PowerXL Air Max at Walmart and our ad campaign is seeing strong consumer engagement. We also recently launched the Remington Glass collection exclusively at Target stores and -- dot com.

The new line filing tools is designed to deliver high glass results and offer a variety of styling tools. In Lat Am, our Remington brand saw record quarterly sales in the fourth quarter after brand refresh initiatives resulting in distribution gains. The TAM continues to be a compelling market for our HPC business and are excited about our plans to introduce our Russell Hobbs brand to the market in the coming months.

We continue to be pleased with our launch on TikTok in U.K., where our products are resonating with consumers, closing the year with another record month. We plan to build upon the success we're seeing in the U.K. and take these best practices to other markets in the near future. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA was $15.7 million compared to $19 million in the prior year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 5.3%. The decline in adjusted EBITDA was driven by lower volumes, unfavorable mix and tariffs. These significant headwinds were largely offset by pricing lower brand focused investments in light of tariff supply issues, reduced distribution costs and expense management as we actively address our fixed cost structure.

As we look forward to fiscal '26, we expect softness in global consumer demand for durables to continue. Compared to the prior year, this is expected to be most impactful to our first quarter results. In North America, tariff-related discussions are expected to reduce sales volume as we prioritize our overall financial health and rightsize the business. HPC will continue to evolve as we reduce our U.S. Q count to simplify our supply chain and diversify our supply base while maintaining over -- profitability through increased scale on a smaller subset of product offerings.

In EMEA, our largest market, we expect category softness and increased competition to continue while we expand presence in the direct-to-consumer channel, helping to partially offset consumer confidence headwinds. Now turning to Slide 17 and our expectations of fiscal '26. We expect net sales to be flat to up low single digits compared to the prior year. While we expect growth in both our personal -- in our Global Pet Care and Home and Garden business, our Home & Personal Care business is expected to decline due to continued category softness and our supply chain simplification initiative in the North American market.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to grow low single digits, driven by the return to sales growth in our Global Pet Care and Home and Garden business, continued expense management, continuous improvement initiatives and FX favorability, offsetting lower volumes in Home and Personal Care. Cash expected to be largely offset through the various mitigation actions, which we have taken, including pricing. I do want to point out that in our model, we have fiscal 2026 corporate costs at approximately $66 million, up from $4 million in fiscal '25. As you will recall, in fiscal '25, we had a little over $20 million in TSA cost reimbursements from our sale of HHI that do not repeat in fiscal '26.

We have mitigated approximately half of the cost headwind thus far and intend to address the remaining $10 million during the coming quarters.

From a phasing perspective, we expect the first quarter to be the most challenged, primarily due to the shifts in consumer sentiment in the middle of the prior year -- prior fiscal year. We also expect retailer reorder patterns will generally more closely align with POS which is expected to be most impactful to our Home & Garden business given the earlier buy-in of inventory in fiscal '25.

And lastly, adjusted free cash flow conversion as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA is expected to be around -- as we continue to prioritize the strength of our balance sheet. Depreciation and amortization is expected to be between $115 million and $125 million, including stock-based compensation of approximately $20 million to $25 million. Cash payments towards restructuring, optimization and strategic transaction costs are expected to be between $25 million and $35 million. Capital expenditures are expected to be between $50 million and $60 million. Cash taxes are expected to be between $40 million and $50 million. For adjusted EPS, we use an effective tax rate of 28%, including state taxes.

To end my section, I want to echo David and thank all of our global employees for their hard work during these very challenging times. Back to you, David.

Thanks, Faisal. Let's look at Slide 19. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today on the call. Again, I'll take a few minutes just to recap the key takeaways and findings on Slide 20. Fourth quarter financial results concluded a very challenging year for us. We took decisive actions. As I mentioned, they were necessary to protect the company in the balance sheet, but it did have short-term impacts on the P&L, and that's reflected in the numbers we reported today. We will continue to be good stewards of the businesses going forward. We'll be disciplined while utilizing a strong balance sheet. .

As you know, earlier in the year, with all the macroeconomic uncertainty, we made the strategic pivot and started running this business to maximize free cash flow. I'm proud this decision paid off. We were able to deliver over $170 million or roughly $7 per share in cash flow to our investors. And these actions are now embedded, quite frankly in our DNA and we're going to continue to focus on this going forward. We're really excited to report quite frankly both the Global Pet Care and Home & Garden businesses, which are 2 most highly valued businesses. They are going to return, we're expecting them to return to growth in fiscal '26. We're excited about that.

We believe in the categories, and we believe in our teams in these businesses. Our new product development pipeline is strong and we're going to continue to focus on launching fewer, bigger, better initiatives for successful commercialization as we move this comp forward. I also continue to be optimistic about the evolving M&A -- we expect additional assets to become available at better price points. And with that said, we will remain disciplined in our process as we look for highly synergistic assets while being mindful of maintaining our lower leverage.

We are confident despite the current headwinds that we -- that were largely outside of our control. We are a stronger, more focused company as we move the business forward and its strategic transformation. We will continue to be good stewards of this appliance business focused on overall profitability improvement as we navigate a challenging environment, and we remain committed to finding a strategic solution for this asset. As trade policy stabilizes and consumer sentiment improves, we believe synergistic growth opportunities are on the horizon with a higher probability of consolidations in this, which we believe, frankly, is long overdue.

We are committed to executing on our operational goals, delivering improved business performance and driving value to our stakeholders. Again, I think the good news today with today's call, we believe that the worst of the tariff and economic disruptions to our business are behind us. We expect our 2 highest value businesses, Global Pet Care and Global Home and Garden to return to growth in fiscal '26. We're going to continue generating a lot of free cash flow as we go forward. The balance sheet is strong. and we'll continue returning lots of capital to shareholders through buybacks and dividends as we move this business forward.

I'll turn the call back over to Jen, and we'll be very happy to take your questions. .

Thank you, David. Operator, we can go to the question queue now.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question coming from the line of Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

Can we just get updated thought process around the various options for the HPC business, both strategic but also fundamental as you continue to run the business? I realize you've had comments in the press release and the -- in the prepared remarks around still looking for strategic alternatives. But can we just dig a bit deeper into the potential outcomes that you're seeing, weather changing, tariff backdrop evolves, those potential outcomes? And just any sort of update on how you see the past year.

The short answer is no because I'm not going to discuss any opportunities on a live public call. A more broad response to your question would be it's pretty obvious when you're dealing with $450 million of tariff headwinds that it will sideline a process with strategic parties for completing a synergistic merger, if you will. And so we had a very robust process about a year ago at this time that got derailed by trade policy out of the United States. We pivoted to run the business to maximize cash. We're taking the fixed expense base of that business down to basically deal with the realities of the current economic situation. .

We've materially diversified the supply chain there, made it more resilient and less reliant on China. We're going to improve the profitability of appliances in fiscal '26 as we move the company forward. and we're telling you that as the trade situation becomes less volatile moving forward and macroeconomic headwinds subside, we are excited to resume strategic discussions around finding a strategic solution for the business, which we believe there are many. Frankly, this industry is littered with small competitors that are subscale and barely profitable and most of them over-levered and some of them will go bankrupt. We intend to capitalize on that because we're the strongest player in the space.

Helpful. Just on a follow-up on the pet category. You've worked through a period of intense competitive activity including from some large private label competitors. Where are we in the journey of the pet business? And I think you've said it a bit more confident about shelf placement and some stabilization and go-forward potential and return to growth. So can you just maybe help us understand the journey and how you see the next 12 months?

Yes. Really happy. Thank you for that question, and I'll turn it over to Faisal when I'm done for any additional remarks. But look, we are thrilled because we've infused that business with some new talent. It's got some new direction. It's got a higher level of energy to it. Team is embracing a more data-driven consumer -- I would tell you, geographic category, specific analysis of that business. .

In terms of your comment on private label, yes, we saw some competition there. Post COVID, the entire pet industry has kind of been in a recession. We were able to kind of reset some mods and some shelf space with some major players just a few months ago. We're seeing much better trends now with that done, you take away POS and frankly, shipments been improving pretty consistently. So that's why you hear a much more bullish outlook for the business looking into '26. But more importantly, there were branded ankle biters that entered into this space.

Anybody that had access to social media and the Chinese product could kind of come in here in nibble at you. We are seeing people go by the wayside. And we are seeing products like Nature's Miracle really a lot of market share because the product actually works, does what it says and a lot of competitive products simply does not. So look, I think it's still early innings. We're making progress. But we are launching a lot of new products. We are getting a better response from the retail customer and consumers seem to be buying our product at a greater rate. And then quite frankly, I think this is going to be a fantastic M&A platform. My vision of getting us to $3 billion of revenue and $500 million of EBITDA and PAT is unchanged from the prior call.

And in fact, I'm seeing more and more assets come to market at better prices. We have missed on a few of them, we simply refuse to overpay. But we will find highly synergistic businesses that complement this platform from both a cost synergy and revenue synergy standpoint, and I'm looking forward to that opportunity to capitalize on it . I appreciate the question. Faisal, I missed anything?

Well, I think you've covered it. The only thing I'll add is, if you look at our performance through the year, you kind of see the signs of stabilization and how our Q4 seems to be heading in the right direction for the global pet care business. And we do feel that's 1 business that returns to growth faster just based on where the category stands and to this point how are our products have recently done in each of the categories that we play in. And we see expansion opportunities like we referenced in our prepared remarks about expanding into adjacent categories there. So a lot of opportunity for the global pet care business.

Our next question coming from the line of Bob Labick with CJS Securities. .

Congratulations on solid execution. I know it's a kind of a category and product basis question. So maybe we can dig in a little and question is, how much is pricing going up at retail for your categories, products, et cetera, kind of in aggregate? And when do you expect to get clarity on consumer acceptance of that? And how has that been playing out so far?

Yes. Great question. Look, I'm kind of stunned at how little pricing mix we actually had to take I thought February, March, hardly sleeping, staring at $450 million of challenges that we have to take more pricing, we actually did. But that resulted in us having to take a lot of internal pain and make some very difficult decisions to remain competitive itself. We had to take down fixed salary headcount, and that's not fun to do. But we've done it, and it's in the past. We'll continue to address the fixed cost structure of the company going forward, particularly corporate overhead, and we're going to be aggressive on that as we move through '26 and complete the S/4HANA implementation in Europe. .

But again, in my opening remarks, I thanked our supply base, we've worked really hard with our suppliers to remain competitive, particularly given the consumer landscape and our retailers. So it's really those 3 levers, right, working really hard with your vendor base, frankly, taking out internal costs and being more efficient with what you have and then taking a little bit of price at retail. The greater price increases came on the durable side and appliances. We were the first to move there, believe it or not. And I don't think anybody in that space actually knew the numbers.

I think you're still figuring out elasticity of demand, particularly in the North American market. I think we took our pain early. And frankly, I think we're going to capitalize on that going forward. But we got our work cut out. I appreciate your comments saying that we executed pretty well. I'm not pleased with the performance yet, but I'm sure looking forward to get into '26 and seeing how we do. So appreciate the question. I'll turn it to Faisal if I missed anything.

I think you covered everything. And I think I'll just reiterate the point that we took our medicine early for our HPC business, and that's where we saw a lot of the impact of price elasticity, which should play in our favor going forward as we see the rest of the market kind of come up because I think everyone will have to eventually take us there.

Okay. Great. And then just for my follow-up, what do you see as the keys for you? And maybe you addressed it earlier, I guess, with new products a little bit, but maybe dig into -- and the keys to returning to above category growth over the coming years because I know that's been how you've operated in the past and generally as a goal. So what's it going to take to get back there above category growth in your categories?

No, it's a great question. Look, we still have to do a better job on the commercial side, and that's what we're trying to do here. And that's -- frankly, that's what we're in the early innings of I think in pet. Hopefully, that story can evolve to the narrative that I think it can be, which is, look, we have phenomenal products. We need to do a better job, and it's in process now. It's what I'm most excited about, about letting the consumer know that. And the most effective way we do that is by making claims that resonate with the consumer and get better packaging and communicate that on -- on shelf is always going to be our best market.

And we've got to continue to drive digital. We've got to continue to drive social media, and that's omnichannel. And we are seeing early success there. It's still earning innings, but Bob, that's away from operational excellence, supply chain management, working capital management, fill rates. All the rest of that we've taken 3 years getting right. We have still not gotten to the level that I want to be at from a commercial standpoint.

And it's innovation, it's advertising and marketing, and it's really getting efficient returns on that spend. Over the last couple of years, we've allocated a lot of resource to R&D, marketing and advertising. This year, the teams are challenged to figure out, "hey, look at all those line items guys and get more on the spend you're making and figure out where the deadweight is and get rid of it," because it's -- you got to do more with less in this market. So we're going to be more efficient with it. We're going to get more out of it, but it is exceptional -- for us. We're not there yet.

Our next question coming from the line of Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer.

Just wanted to ask you on the Power side and how you're thinking about it if we move back to a no tariff or kind of a pre-Liberation Day tariff scenario. Is there -- could you get back to -- can you keep anything? How do we think about that because I know you've taken a ton of different actions. And so a little color on how it would play out if things do get overturned?

Ian, I can only deal with the facts. I don't mean to be aggressive with the answer, but been a super volatile year. I've dealt with 16 different tariff rates, all at weeks apart. We've been really aggressive in responding to all that. I have no belief that tariffs will go back to 0 at all. And if they do, I'll deal with that. I really -- that's how I see it. .

Okay. And then just maybe as a follow-up, it looks like aquatics held in relatively well. And this has really been kind of a category that's just been somewhat tough for you guys, especially on the hardgoods side. Are you noticing any changes in the consumer? I mean has anything driven that? Is that just coming off of a very low base? Any kind of color you could give there.

We're the world's largest player in Tetra. We have the best brand, what's recognized without having to advertise it, right? You don't need any awareness. We've got a great product. Frankly, I'm excited about the new leadership in pack. I think we have a price pack architecture issue, and I think we have a lot of opportunity there. We're doing better in Europe than we have in North America. Kids like to live on these iPhones all day long. They don't like taking care of fish tanks.

The hobbyist community has been the installed base. We need to do a better job communicating they could actually love aquariums, taking care of fish teaches responsibility, and it's actually a very therapeutic thing to do as a family, and it's an enjoyable thing to have in your household. Orin's got a big task in front of him. He's addressing it. But we are the leaders, and we are responsible for changing the narrative in that space and driving growth no matter what the external environment is. We're doing a decent job in Europe. We got to get a better job going here in North America. I hope to achieve that during fiscal '26.

Now last question is coming from the line of Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank.

A couple of cleanups. Last quarter, I think you exited with about $20 million, $25 million annualized and tariff headwinds related to the EU and Southeast and Asian markets that you hadn't mitigated at the time. Just maybe an update on any steps you've taken to address those costs and whether you feel like you have addressed them -- '26, maybe to start there.

I mean I think we've eliminated most of them. I think there's 2 different numbers that we're giving here, right? We're giving you the gross exposure was $450 million. That was at $145 million out of China, plus all the other countries, right? And then we're giving you an updated 1 because China rate is lower. And -- so apples-to-apples, that's like 70 to 80, but we're telling that we've mitigated the vast majority of it. And then we're also telling you that look, things move around so much.

I mean I used to have $120 million of exposure to China just on pet. I think I just told you on this call that my gross exposure on global purchases for my 2 most high-value businesses, which is global pet and -- business is somewhere between $15 million to $20 million by the end of '26. I mean we've really worked this thing down to nothing. And we'll continue to flex it around, whether it's Cambodia, Vietnam, U.S., wherever we can do it. That's where it economically makes sense for us today. Faisal, if I messed the messaging up, please, clean up.

You're exactly right. And we have, for the most part, we've taken most of the actions, including pricing actions everywhere. There's a little bit more to do getting into next year, but we'll do that with a combination of, again, cost reductions, supply-based changes, supplier concessions as well as pricing. But vast majority of it is behind us.

Perfect. And 2 others, if I could. Just 1 is just your category growth expectations in '26 relative to your -- your own call for low single-digit top line growth. Just how you think like end market demand compares to your top line expectations? And then separately, as you think about rolling out S/4HANA, I think you mentioned moving that into HPC, David. Just any implications there on your ability to pursue strategically there while that's in flight. Just does that delay or cause any impediment to moving strategically as that business -- as that project is underway? And then are you able to implement it in such a way that it's sort of modular enough to potentially carve out if the separation is the ultimate solution.

No, it's a great question. I appreciate you answering. I'll take the second one. Faisal will touch on the first one. Look, the whole goal of S/4HANA is to get to a single source of truth and quit using 10 different systems all over the place and run the company more efficiently and then liquidate frankly, corporate costs, right? AI, the whole movements be more efficient, period, end of story. We're basically done with that in North America. We still have to get the synergies for it. Europe we're rolling that out. .

HPC is on a bunch of different platforms. It's been a series of acquisitions over 20 years. Putting that on a single source of S/4HANA is actually going to create a lot of efficiencies and create a platform there that enhances the business. It will in no way slow down anything that we have on the table now or in the future for strategic solution. We will pursue that. And if we find something great, we're going to execute it and you'll hear about it then. But in the interim, actually, we'll make that business more valuable to any potential partner in the future because it will have a more flexible dynamic operating infrastructure that can actually be more plug and play, which is, quite frankly, where the industry needs to go.

There are way too many subscale players selling products from the same supply chain to weigh too few retailers. That space makes no sense in its current configuration. And again, I think S/4HANA will be not only a great enhancement to the operating income and efficiency of the company that was -- that's in existence today, but we'll actually enhance it as an M&A partner for future combinations. That's mine. Faisal.

I'll just maybe address the first question. So I think home and garden category remains strong, but it's weather-dependent. Like we said, we expect a more normalized weather year next year, and that automatically gives you growth over this year. On the global pet care categories, Aquatics, I think we're seeing signs of bottoming out, and it's kind of flattening and turning around.

Same with our companion animal area. I think we're starting to see the category stabilize. Our growth is also dependent on just expansion in our own portfolio, including in adjacent categories, but as well as just gaining market share. We're actually seeing our products perform and our brands perform better in the marketplace. Home and Personal Care is the 1 category that remains under pressure. It will be for both Europe and North America going into next year. We have to see what the market does from a pricing perspective. I think our competitors will come in the market with the price. And in the next few months, we should see all that play out. So that should be the second half of the year play out to our advantage. But in the short term, that category remains very challenging for us. .

And that's all the time we have for our Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Jen for any closing remarks.

Thank you. With that, we have reached the top of the hour, so we will conclude our conference call. Thank you to David and Faisal. And on behalf of Spectrum Brands, thank you for your participation this morning.

Thank you, everyone, have a good day. .

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