Jakks Pacific Inc Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the JAKKS Pacific second quarter earnings conference call with management, who review financial results for the quarter ending June 30th, 2026. JAKKS issued its earnings press release earlier today. The earnings release and presentation slides related to today's call are available on the company's website in the Investors section. On the call this afternoon are Stephen Berman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Kimble, Chief Financial Officer. Stephen will first provide an overview of the quarter and year to date, along with highlights of recent performance and current business trends. John will provide some additional comments around JAKKS Pacific financial and operational results. Mr. Berman will return with comments about the balance of the year and beyond, prior to opening up the call for questions. The line will be placed on mute for the first portion of the call.

If you'd like to be placed in the queue to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Before we begin, the company would like to point out that any comments made about JAKKS Pacific future performance events or circumstances, including the estimate of sales, margins, earnings, and our Adjusted EBITDA in 2026 and beyond, as well as any other forward-looking statements concerning 2026 and beyond, are subject to safe harbor protection under federal securities laws. These statements reflect the company's best judgment based on current market trends and conditions today and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements.

For details concerning these and other such risks and uncertainties, you should consult JAKKS' most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings with SEC as well as the company's other reports subsequently filed with the SEC from time to time. Today's comments by management will refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Earnings Per Share. Unless stated otherwise, the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics have been reconciled to the associated non-GAAP financial measure within the company's earnings press release issued today or previously. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Stephen Berman.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. Our Q2 financial results were modestly better than our expectations and an improvement over the same quarter a year ago. Globally, our net sales finished at $139.2 million in Q2, a 17% increase compared to prior year, when the sudden implementation of massive tariffs dramatically reduced customer orders. Year to date, our sales are 6% ahead of prior year at $245.9 million, our best first half since 2023. North America led the improved results, growing 20% year-over-year in Q2 and 3% for the first half. Our international business reflected smaller year-over-year growth of 3% led by Europe, but is up 20% for the first half of the year. Overall, this is the highest level of international first half shipping in JAKKS' history in over 10 years at $53 million.

Keeping the focus on the first half, our toys and consumer product business was up 5%. Those results were driven by the Action Play & Collectibles division, which was up as we supported the extremely successful second Super Mario Bros. film released in April. Led by an array of 5-inch figures developed specifically for the film, our product line also featured play sets, dioramas, and plush, and was very well received with solid sell-throughs. Building on that, we have another wave of new product introductions shipping now for fall planograms sets and promotional spaces, some of which are already on shelf. As retailers knew we had a solid opportunity with this film, through the first three quarters of shipping, we have sold in more movie-branded products than what we did for the first film, which is great, especially given the consumer reaction.

Fans can also look forward to a lot more focus on Donkey Kong in the second half with a feature play set shipping along with a new figure multi-pack. Our dolls, role play and dress-up business was up 12% in Q2, despite a lack of new entertainment support compared to the prior year. Of note, we have been steadily expanding our Frozen product line over the past 18 months, offering new role play patterns and refreshing key products. Although Frozen has been a cornerstone of our business dating back to the original film release, the business is up for the first half of this year versus prior year. In the fall, we have a strong retailer exclusive placed that will add more energy to this aisle as we build towards the Frozen 3 theatrical event in fall 2027.

Retail pricing of our Disney Princess and Style Collection assortments were heavily impacted by tariffs most of last year. As those price shocks have unwound over recent months, we see some customers bringing retail prices down closer to where they were pre-tariff, although admittedly, not across the entire product line. In general, it is true for the lower price points. We feel lower retails are contributing to improved velocity as consumers discover some of the strong, innovative items we launched last fall as well as this spring. We're also seeing expanded listings and resulting in positive point-of-sale results. The baby bath doll line launched in fall continues to sell extremely well, and our refreshed 6-inch Princess doll line with a sub-$10 price point has been a strong performer as well.

Retail toy and consumer products POS at the top two U.S. accounts was positive in the first half, accelerating to double-digit levels in Q2. Our Disguise business also performed well, up 8% in the quarter and 9% in the first half. The popularity of Toy Story 5 and the Super Mario Bros. films are positive contributors to our business this year, as well as our launch of KPop Demon Hunters costumes. Our outdoor seasonal business, which includes everything from activity tables and chairs to ball pits, to ride-ons, to skateboards and hula hoops, among other products, remained a slight drag on the results this quarter. We see this as a structural headwind rather than a transitory one. Retailers continue to reallocate in-store space away from large box items, and these bulky formats are poorly suited to the low-cost home delivery model that increasingly is shaping retail economics.

We are not waiting this out. We are managing this business with a multi-year lens and a clear plan on two levers, partnering with retailers to defend and recapture shelf space and lost sales, and re-engineering packaging and product design to shrink box sizes and improve delivery economics. We are already advancing on both fronts, and while these investments will take time to fully show up in the numbers, we are extremely confident they position this business for sustainable, profitable growth as the category continues to shift. We like where we are headed. For the quarter, we were down 12% and down 17% year to date to $11.1 million in sales. Gross margins held up very well in the quarter at 32.3%, slightly lower than last year's at 32.8%.

Tight management of sales, marketing, and overhead costs led to a slight operating loss of $142,000 in the quarter compared to a $2.8 million loss in Q2 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $5.4 million compared to $2.3 million in Q2 last year. That increases our 12-month trailing Adjusted EBITDA to $37.8 million. I will now pass it over to John for some comments, after which I will come back and discuss some product initiatives and areas of focus moving forward. John. Thank you, Stephen, and hello, everybody.

This has been a solid quarter, wrapping up a solid first half of the year. As Stephen has pointed out, everything has been going pretty much in line with our expectations, which is a plus when that actually happens. Our FOB-centric business model is alive and well. Our first half shipments were over 75% FOB, reaching as high of a level as we've seen this decade. From a seasonality point of view, we have planned this year as a bit more front-weighted than normal, given the strength of Super Mario, and since we do not have any new toy introductions in the second half supporting holiday theatrical releases. So far, that outlook is holding up. As I look at our financial results, I'm focused on seeing gross margin dollars increase 3% in the first half to a little over $80 million.

That's a pretty good outcome and reflects solid execution against what we saw as the opportunity. A bit better than the last two years and a couple of million dollars short of where we were in 2023. Ultimately, as a company, I want to see us optimizing for margin dollars and not margin percentages. As we do the extra work to identify incremental business outside of the traditional U.S. mass market, I believe that is going to require more complexity and financial creativity in how we assess new opportunities, which is something we're in progress on working through. Establishing more annuity-like evergreen revenue streams while continuing to thoughtfully manage overhead should create another flow of long-term bottom-line profitability, which I feel we're only starting to wrap our heads around.

As the majority of our overhead costs are fixed, I think we have an opportunity in this area given our momentum over the past couple of years, but it will admittedly take some time to build and prove out. To that end, we managed a bit of leverage in both selling and G&A in the first half, offsetting gross margin percentage being down slightly. That led to a slight operating loss in the quarter and a $5.7 million operating loss in the first half, improved over the $6.5 million loss last year in the same time period. Working our way down the P&L, that leads us to the topic of IEEPA tariff refunds. As mentioned last quarter, we applied for refunds for tariffs we paid under the regulations which the Supreme Court ultimately struck down.

We're pleased to share that we've had essentially all of those funds refunded to us as of the second quarter close. We don't anticipate any more refunds going forward. In the quarter, we took the opportunity to revalue on-hand inventory that was still burdened by those tariffs to essentially undo the excess carrying cost that the tariffs generated upon import, thereby reducing the value on the balance sheet. The remainder of funds received, we have recognized on the P&L this quarter as non-operating other income of $6.8 million. These refunds have raised our projection for pre-tax net income for the year, so our Q2 tax estimate has been adjusted accordingly. We have opted to back this gain out of our published non-GAAP projections of Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted earnings per share.

With that said, Adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.25 and $0.09 for the first half of the year. That compares favorably to $0.03 of earnings in Q2 last year and being break even year-to-date EPS at the same time last year. From a balance sheet perspective, we finished the quarter at $60.6 million in restricted and unrestricted cash compared to $43.1 million at the same time last year. That increase is largely driven by stronger operating results and the aforementioned tariff refunds. As of July 17th, the comparable cash on hand number was $47.1 million to give you an extra bit of context or remind you of the seasonality in our working capital. Our inventory level at the end of the quarter was $58.3 million, down from $71.8 million at this time last year, and up a bit from $52.9 million last quarter.

Finally, the board has approved our sixth consecutive quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share. The dividend will be payable to shareholders of record as of August 28th, and will be payable on September 28th. Now back to Stephen for some more discussion of what's ahead.

Thank you, John. Mid-year is always an exciting time in the business as we get closer to all the energy and excitement around Halloween and the fourth quarter holiday season, while also seeing the full lineup for the following year, solidifying and receiving positive feedback from customers around the world. As much as we've mentioned before, I cannot emphasize enough the traction we are getting, elevating our level of focus and performance outside of the U.S. We are increasingly working with key existing accounts in Europe on exclusive launches while listening to our customer needs and curating new offerings to open new accounts on the strength of our broad brand portfolios. We are additionally working with more distributors to specifically reach additional accounts in more fragmented markets.

Our evergreen brands and categories with global appeal create a platform where products designed toward lower price points can reach a very wide audience when we can form the right partnership between our vendors in Asia, the licensors, and the right distribution partner to reach smaller accounts around the world. We have recently added three senior sales professionals to our global organization to further drive our business to higher levels. In addition to opening our first office in South America with an eye towards longer term growth there. Turning back to the near term, I want to highlight some of the exciting areas as we move into the second half of the year. Our Disney Darlings line continues to expand both in the U.S. and in Europe, with broader listings which earn great sell-through success so far this year.

The Snuggly Stars doll sub-segment has recently launched in the U.S. in store and online, and selected accounts with rapid sell-throughs. You will see a much broader Disney Darlings assortment on shelf later this year, supported by a 360 marketing campaign across regions. As our baby dolls continue to be the happiest baby dolls you will find in the marketplace. There is no crying at JAKKS, and there is no crying in the Disney Darlings line of products. In Disney Princess, our ages and stages strategy is introducing new core large dolls and matching dresses. Our two featured items will be Grow and Style Rapunzel doll and our interactive Dance with Me Belle. The Belle doll will be featured out of aisle at key U.S. accounts as our must-have princess toy this holiday season.

With Disney Eevee, we are introducing a new range with lower price points to further expand the product portfolio. We are also investing with a focus on the serious Disney fan who has proven to be the most enthusiastic Eevee consumer. We see an opportunity by increasing our reach to more of them, especially given the current breadth and depth of this line. Moving to our Sonic business. This fall, we're launching Giant Metal Sonic, the biggest, most sophisticated feature, large scale action figure we've ever released as part of our Sonic the Hedgehog product line. Inspired by the Metal Sonic from the Sonic Superstars video game. At over 20 inches tall, it recreates the ultimate boss battle as Metal Sonic faces off with a two-and-a-half inch Sonic figure, which is also included.

With the menacing light-up eyes, sounds, and slashing arm action, it comes in the 35th anniversary packaging, and we believe will top many holiday wish lists. These large-scale toys have always been well received by the Sonic fan base, and we secured strong retail support and placement this fall. Also this fall, inspired by the DC Sonic crossover series, we have more new product arriving for the fall that we plan to announce soon. As I mentioned, fans should look forward to the new Super Mario inspired film product in fall with a mix of core items and strong retail exclusives. They'll also see our continued support and innovation within our evergreen Nintendo business, including a number of items themed to Super Mario Wonder game.

This past quarter, we also launched as a retail exclusive, a new collector doll line of DC Comics characters, featuring Poison Ivy, Catwoman, and fan favorite Harley Quinn. We saw nice pre-sale engagement and these dolls continue to sell through well. In the fall, we will be mixing in a range of other classic Warner Bros. characters that fans love and haven't been able to get in these products' executions. In our Disguise costume business, beyond the properties already mentioned, our product line this year features other new entertainment releases, including Disney's "Descendants 5", "PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie", and "Minions & Monsters", just to name a few. We remain on track to deliver a strong year of results in 2026, both financially and achieving, potentially exceeding our initial plans. More importantly, making substantial progress in building this business for growth in 2027, 2028 and beyond.

In 2027, we have two top tier theatrical releases from Sonic the Hedgehog and Disney Frozen franchises lined up for Q1 and Q4 respectively. Beyond that, there are a number of additional initiatives, some entertainment-led, some working with our key customers on private label opportunities, and some opportunities just classic new toy lines with innovation driven by creativity of our design and marketing teams. In addition, we and the trade are extremely excited to launch our anime, manga, and VTubers digital entertainer initiatives in 2027 and beyond. We're opening up brand new distribution channels while working differently with our well-established current distribution partners to bring a lot of different offerings to the market that we will discuss in more detail later in the year and throughout 2027. Now we will take a couple questions. Operator? Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session.

As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Eric Beder of SmallCap Consumer Research. Your line is now open.

Great. Congratulations. Thank you, Eric.

Let me ask a question about the domestic market here. We went through this shock. We're coming back out of it. How do you see the market changed? I guess, what are the opportunities from that that you can take advantage of?

Well, firstly, thank you very much. One of the things that we've seen versus last year is that the market adapted to the price changes that occurred throughout the industry, with prices being raised where appropriate due to the tariffs and also the volatility of the cost of petroleum with regards to resins as well as container costs. I believe, at least for us, we have mandated and have achieved what we needed to going into this year, which was reducing costs in various products to achieve bringing back the price points to the correct price points that we see more volume in. Those are the price points during usually the spring and summer under $30 retail. We've done that, adapted to it very quickly.

In addition, we've dove very deep in with the value trade and the specialty trade, such as the TJ Maxx's, the Ross's, and so on, as well as our strong major customers like Target, Walmart, and Amazon, going into the Five Below's, the Dollar Trade, and so on. We became very diversified through this, both on a FOB basis and slightly on a domestic basis. We're also seeing the appetite at retail that the POS is quite strong during the spring versus last spring. The appetite's there for the right product at the right price points.

Basically you've kind of taken your advantage and kept the prices where they would need to be and still maintain kind of the margins that we're seeing right now.

Yes, and plus. Yes. You mentioned about the international, it's a great opportunity.

Some of these markets aren't as concentrated as we are in the U.S. What does that mean for kind of the level of FOB you see internationally and the potential for margins going forward on that?

The great thing about international is it's growing in a great path in EMEA, Latin America, South America, and Southeast Asia. We're growing with, one, our product categories and lines are really more appropriate today than they were 5 years ago for the international markets. That's one. Two, we have the majority of the licensing rights that work in the territories. We have the right ones that are correct for our company. That being said, there are certain properties that work well in U.K., Germany, and France that don't work well in Italy or Spain. We really are very quick to market with the right product at the right country at the right level. The same goes for Latin America and South America and Southeast Asia. In addition, we have the FOB structure that we started since inception that is very much a footprint internationally.

Primarily, the majority of our sales internationally are on an FOB basis, which helps us then enhance our own margins internally, giving also a lower price to the customer, which they can enhance their margin as a customer and also then have a lower price for the consumer, which gives them a great price point to have. All of those combinations on top of great product, great licenses, and strong momentum in all of our different categories, it's allowing us to grow pretty rapidly and going forward for the next two, three years. We see strong growth diversification in various countries and just some really strong initiatives that we see going forward.

Okay. Final question. What are you thinking in terms of potentially either for new licenses, M&A? You keep on getting more cash. How should we be thinking about that kind of potential, I guess, near and longer term? Thank you. Thanks for that question.

One thing is we are a strong, healthy balance sheet, which gives us a lot of strength going forward and looking at different opportunities. The first part of the question, we have a lot of licenses, in which we have not been able to announce yet because some of them are under contract. Our license portfolio is diversifying very strongly in each of our categories of business, the five different segments that we focus on. We are a toy company. We are a kids' consumer product company. While a lot of companies are focused on the adult, which we are heavily focused on in the anime segmentation that we're moving into, and we are into that in certain other areas.

We are truly a toy kids consumer product company, and we don't forget about kids at the young age that will never change from that age group from birth to six, seven years old. That's a key focus that a lot of companies are moving out of, and that's a key focus that we're diving deeper in. With the understanding of kidult is a great market, and we've been in it since we did WWE decades ago and Nintendo and Sonic and The Simpsons. There's kidult involved, but the anime segmentation, manga, VTubers, and digital entertainers are truly kidult and above. We're in all the areas of business, but I do think it's interesting when I hear people focusing on more in the kidult area and not the true toy business where we're focused on. We're focused on that, acquiring licenses.

If there's an opportunity in the acquisition area in a segment that would benefit the company and our shareholders, we have been looking, we are speaking to bankers and so on and so forth. If an opportunity arose, we have the cash, we have the availability with banking to be able to get additional capital if needed. That's on our platform. Going into this year, we're looking at going into the 2027 and 2028, which we feel very strong and confident about, and we'll be sitting with the board of directors looking at different capital allocation initiatives. Going through the first half of the year, having a strong performance and then looking at what happened the last year back and so on and so forth, we're just really focused on shoring up our business, taking market share, and then looking to grow in the future.

Great. Good luck for the rest of the year.

Thank you. Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Forte of Maxim Group. Your line is now open.

Yep, Stephen, John, congrats on great quarter. I have three questions. Thank you, Tom.

I apologize. They're kind of on the boring side. They're points of clarification. The first point of clarification, John, can you clarify that there was no benefit to your gross margin in the quarter from the tariff refunds?

Correct. Thank you. Second, Stephen, the pace of your anime-related efforts, is it the same as you expected last quarter?

Yes. We are extremely focused and extremely aggressively putting the initiatives together in these various segments that I brought up, the anime, the manga, the VTuber, and digital entertainers. The way that we're launching this is a really grassroots marketing with the specific retailers that are focused in this genre at first, and then a wide distribution initiative in the fall 2027 with major of the major retailers that we know of that we work with today on top of the actual anime, call it Asian pop culture distribution retail channels. The same things goes for international in France and Latin America. There's very strong initiatives in anime. We are very much on path, very strong with it, and very excited about it, but it's a very methodical initiative and launch, and long-term expectations are still as strong as we were before.

Great. Stephen, as a quick follow-up there's nothing expected for 2026 revenue from the anime-related efforts?

Correct. Okay. Lastly, the media landscape, even by the media landscape standards, seems to be a little more cloudy.

Pixar had layoffs even though Toy Story 5 is on pace for $1 billion. The Paramount Warner Bros. deal seems to be in a holding pattern. Is this creating any additional opportunities or presenting any additional challenges for you?

Not challenges. All in all in the business environment, you see what The Walt Disney Company doing with Pixar and so on and so forth. Those are just common business practices that you go into and look for efficiencies and so on. The Paramount Warner Bros. deal, it's still business as normal with all the, call it the licensors and entertainment holders. Nothing's changed in the direction of where we're at as a company. We see a lot of opportunity right now just because of the traction that we have in the various segments that we're in. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, as we are focused in the kids' area of business, a lot of companies are focused on a kidult.

We see a huge opportunity and growth in our normal segments in addition to the kidult areas that we talked about, our cosplay and our Disguise division, our Halloween division. We just see things very strong moving forward and really looking forward to this year and going into 2027. We are very comfortable with the initiatives we're undertaking. Our private label initiative that we've done with some major retailers is picking up very strongly. We just diversified our company in a very healthy platform going forward.

Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, John.

Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Thank you.

This concludes the question and answer session. I'll now turn it back to Stephen Berman, CEO, for final remarks.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time today, and we look forward to speaking to investors after these calls today and tomorrow, and looking forward to our third quarter conference call and getting on the road. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for participation in today's conference.

This concludes the program. You may now disconnect.