BUDA Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Operator (AI Assigned): Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Dennis, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Buda Juice Q1 2026 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Brian Siegel, investor relations. Please go ahead.
Brian Siegel (Senior Managing Director): Thank you, Dennis. During today's call, Horatio Lonsdale-Hands, Buda's Chief Executive Officer, and Clint Bowers, Buda's Chief Financial Officer, will discuss Buda's financial and operational results that were reported this morning. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call during the prepared remarks or in the question-and-answer session, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results in the future to differ materially from those discussed on today's call. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties disclosed in Buda's periodic and annual SEC filings. Buda assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast.
Brian Siegel (Senior Managing Director): Please note that our earnings release is available on the investor relations page of the Buda Juice website and has also been filed on form 8-K with the SEC. Finally, on this call, we will refer to non-GAAP measures, including non-GAAP net income and EPS, free cash flow, and adjusted EBITDA. Please see our earnings release for an explanation of our use of non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to GAAP measures. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Horatio.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Q1 2026 was our first full quarter as a public company. Revenue grew 17.7% year over year, which is about the mid-teen outlook we discussed on our last earnings call. Importantly, that growth came entirely from our existing customer base. Gross margin during the quarter was impacted by a temporary disruption in citrus supply. In February, lime costs spiked significantly following disruptions in western Mexico that interrupted normal supply routes. This was a temporary issue, and conditions have now stabilized. Even with that temporary pressure, labor costs as a percentage of revenue improved by more than 150 basis points year over year, which reflects continued operational efficiency across the business. We entered 2026 from a position of strength.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Profitable, debt-free, and well capitalized following our IPO, which we believe positions us well for long-term expansion. Looking beyond our Q1, on Monday this week, we announced a major milestone for our company, expansion of our products into 256 stores across 9 states, including Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky, all with a new customer, Walmart. This expansion takes us from 1 state to 9 states and increases our store count by more than 75%. The Buda Fresh Cherry Limeade is now available in these Walmart stores in both the 12-ounce single-serve and 32-ounce multi-serve formats. The products are being merchandised in the fresh produce department, reinforcing our Ultra Fresh within the retail environment.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): These new products are manufactured at our Dallas facility, where we recently invested in additional capacity and automation following our IPO to support future growth. When we went public this year, we had built a strong and profitable business concentrated primarily in Texas. This expansion now diversifies both our geographic footprint and customer base as we continue building the business beyond our historical Texas concentration. When we went public, we outlined a clear strategy: expand distribution, grow responsibly, and bring Ultra Fresh products to more consumers across the country, all while maintaining profitability and balance sheet discipline. We believe we are executing directly against that strategy today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Clint for a review of our financials.
Clint Bowers (CFO): Thank you, Horatio, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll walk you through our Q1 financial results and provide context on the key line items. The first thing, as Horatio said, revenue for the Q1 was up 17.7%. This represented a half million dollar increase to $3.5 million from $3 million in the prior year period. Gross profit was $1.4 million compared to $1.3 million last year. Gross margin was 39.5%, down from 44.9%. This decline was driven primarily by the temporary spike in lime costs Horatio previously described. This resulted in a roughly 300% lime cost increase starting in late February and continuing through March due to the cartel-related supply chain disruptions in Western Mexico.
Clint Bowers (CFO): For additional context on this, when we normalize Q1 lime costs to prior year, our resulting gross margin would have been closer to historical levels in the mid-40% range. Further, since the end of Q1, we have seen lime prices stabilize and get back towards normalized levels. Therefore, with the recovery of lime costs, we expect to trend back above 40% gross margin for Q2. Partially offsetting these transitory increases in cost, production labor as a percentage of revenue improved by more than 150 basis points year-over-year. This remains a key area of focus as we scale. Our general and administrative expenses increased to $663,000 from $416,000 in the prior year.
Clint Bowers (CFO): The increase reflects three main items: normalized executive compensation as we transition to a public company, additional facility lease expense from our Q3 2025 capacity expansion, $183,000 in public company costs, mainly from audit fees, legal costs, insurance, and investor relations. Please note these costs did not exist last year. We continue to believe public company costs will be around $1 million annually. Operating income was $0.6 million, compared to $0.8 million in Q1 2025. Moving to other income and taxes, we recorded $137,000 in interest income and $359,000 in federal income tax expense.
Clint Bowers (CFO): For context, the tax expense includes the 21% corporate rate for the Q1 earnings, plus a one-time 182,000 non-cash charge related to our LLC to C Corp conversion on 1 January 2026. As a C corporation, we're now subject to federal corporate taxes. GAAP net income was $0.4 million versus $0.8 million last year. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $0.6 million, and earnings per share was $0.05, with weighted average diluted shares outstanding for the quarter at 12.35 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $850,000, down just slightly from last year. Also, importantly to note, free cash flow was strong at $1.1 million, up 36.5% year over year. We ended the quarter with approximately $20 million in cash and no debt. Thank you.
Clint Bowers (CFO): Operator, with that, we're ready for questions.
Operator (AI Assigned): At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question is from the line of Ryan Meyers with Lake Street. Please go ahead.
Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst): Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the good quarter. Just wondering if you can start by unpacking the revenue growth during the quarter. You know, how much of that just came from, let's call it maybe new doors at your 2 large customers versus how much of that was just increased volume at existing doors you guys were in?
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Good morning, Ryan. Basically, the good news is all the revenue from Q1 was from existing customers not the new customers that we now have. It's really organic growth from existing customers.
Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst): Got it. As we think about, you know, the announcement on Monday, first off, congrats on being able to bring Walmart on board. You know, how should we think about the potential growth rate for, you know, this quarter as well as the rest of the year as you know, continue to see this strong organic momentum within existing customers and then in addition to the customer that you guys just brought on?
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Yeah, that's a great question. Well, it will bring incremental revenue, and profit. However, we're not really able to share that with you, unfortunately, since we're not doing any guidance in that regard on revenues. It will be incremental.
Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst): Okay. Got it. Then just lastly, the rollout within Walmart. Can you just kinda walk us through how you guys plan to do that? Is it, you know, you're gonna start with 100 stores that then accelerates into the 200 and then the remaining roughly, let's call it 50 stores or so? Just walk us through kind of the plan there and sort of the rollout of, you know, when you guys will fully be in all of the stores.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Okay. That's another good question. As of Saturday, last week, that's what? 4 days ago, we're on all the shelves in those 246 stores in nine states. Our products, if you go to any of those stores, the products are on our shelves right now. We have the 32 ounce, a multi-serve Cherry Limeade, and we have the single serve 12 ounce Cherry Limeade already on the shelves.
Ryan Meyers (Senior Research Analyst): Okay, got it. No, that's great to know. Congrats again. Thanks for taking my questions.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Thank you, Ryan.
Clint Bowers (CFO): Thanks, Ryan.
Operator (AI Assigned): Once again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question is from the line of Eric Des Lauriers with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead. Eric, your line is open. Please check to see if you're muted on your end.
Eric Des Lauriers (Senior Research Analyst): Oh, thank you very much. Appreciate you taking my questions here, and congratulations as well on the Walmart announcement. Very exciting.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Thank you, Eric.
Clint Bowers (CFO): Morning.
Eric Des Lauriers (Senior Research Analyst): First one from me, just wondering if you could just comment on how conversations with other retailers are going and, if we should be kind of thinking about potential shelf resets in terms of timing for potentially getting into new retailers or if they're all sort of, you know, on different schedules and not necessarily waiting for, you know, official shelf resets?
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Basically every day, we're working on growing the business with existing and new customers coming online. We have, should I say several, you know, hopeful customers coming on board over the next few months to years at different times. I can't really give you, again, because of the guidance, give you what's happening, as we couldn't mention Walmart until we're on the shelves. I would say that I'm very encouraged by all the meetings we're having and the response to the Ultra Fresh category, which I think is really important because it's incremental revenue to all these grocery stores that need more foot traffic. The fresh produce department is bringing in the foot traffic for these big retailers.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): We have something that basically everyone wants. The consumers want fresh, and if the consumers want fresh, then how do these grocery stores produce fresh? It is either they do it in store or they come to us. I think we're in a good position here because we're able to scale through our cold chain, the fresh products, the citrus products, these wonderful lemonades we have, or the shots. That's very exciting for everyone because we can actually give these products to them today.
Eric Des Lauriers (Senior Research Analyst): Yeah, no, it's very exciting and encouraging, and certainly highly attractive category from a retailer perspective. Thank you for that. Just next one from me. If we kind of look at your sort of main historical customer, we'll leave Walmart to the side for right now. Can you just help us understand how much additional room you see for growth in your existing store base? Like, how big of a variety do you see in overall velocities between, let's say, your lowest and highest performing stores? Is there an opportunity to kind of take best practices across the footprint, or is each store a little different?
Eric Des Lauriers (Senior Research Analyst): I guess just overall, like, would you say we're still in the early innings of driving growth with that existing store base, or should we expect just sort of a natural deceleration, you know, in the, I guess, you know, on the horizon as distribution matures and you guys start adding, several new doors as well? Thank you.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Yeah. Eric, that's another great question. I think the last question is actually the way to start answering this question, which is, you know, we feel we're at the early stages of our growth. Even in Texas, which, as you know, is the most competitive grocery market in the country, we feel there's so many more customers that we can bring on board. There's continuing organic growth for our existing customers, which we feel will continue for several years. If you think about it, you know, once you have fresh, you always want that taste. You want the fresh taste.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): What we're doing also is the value piece of, you know, As an example, you know, you can buy a wonderful family-sized lemonade, you know, 52 ounce fresh lemonade for like, you know, $5.98 in one group and $5.99 in another. You can have, you know, the Walmart 12 ounce lemonade, the single-serve lemonade, they're priced at $1.50, actually just slightly under that. I mean, that's very affordable. What we're doing is we're bringing fresh, clean, great-tasting products to the mass market, which it hasn't existed before. It's a whole new category, which is, you know, we call Ultra Fresh, which we feel is really good. You know, it's great to start in Texas 'cause it is so competitive.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): We feel this is definitely a nationwide Ultra Fresh category, which, you know, we're seeing the early stages with Walmart of kind of getting it out of Texas now. There's a lot to come.
Eric Des Lauriers (Senior Research Analyst): Yeah, very exciting to see, to see what's on the horizon and, you know, great second win with Walmart here getting you guys out of Texas. Congrats again, and thanks for taking my questions.
Horatio Lonsdale-Hands (Co-Founder and CEO): Thanks, Eric.
Operator (AI Assigned): At this time, there appear to be no further questions, and this will conclude today's question and answer session along with today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect and have a great day.
