On Wednesday, Advantage Solutions (NASDAQ:ADV) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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Summary
Advantage Solutions reported second-quarter net revenues of $757 million, up 3% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA declining 12% due to one-time factors and mixed performance across segments.
Experiential Services showed strong performance, with a 19% revenue increase, driven by demand for product demonstrations and improved execution, while Retailer Services had a softer quarter due to project timing and higher execution costs.
The company is focusing on integrating AI for enhanced efficiency and service, with initiatives like a new Chief AI Officer role and various AI tools to improve labor planning and operational execution.
Management reiterated full-year 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance, highlighting growth in Experiential Services and expected improvement in Retailer Services, while Branded Services faces a more gradual recovery.
Cash generation remains robust, with $19 million in adjusted unlevered free cash flow and a focus on debt reduction.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Welcome to Advantage Solutions’ second quarter earnings conference call. Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Growe, Chief Financial Officer, are on the call today. Dave and Chris will provide their prepared remarks, after which we will open the call for a question-and-answer session. During this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Actual outcomes and results could differ materially due to several factors, including those described more fully in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC.
All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by such factors. Our remarks today include certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measure in our earnings release. As a reminder, unless otherwise stated, the financial results discussed today will be from continuing operations, and revenues will exclude reimbursable expenses, and now I would like to turn the call over to Dave Peacock.
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us. First, I want to acknowledge our teammates. We have over 60,000 people who spend the majority of their days in service of our clients and customers, from our retail merchandising reps moving between stores to ensure our clients’ products are on shelf, to samplers delighting our retail partners’ customers with a pleasant experience and great products, to our key account managers calling on retailers in an effort to add a little more push behind the great brands that we represent.
These and thousands of others work in pursuit of exceeding client expectations, and I appreciate the energy and effort they bring each day. Second quarter net revenues of $757 million were up 3% year over year and 4% excluding the effect of divestitures, while adjusted EBITDA of $76 million declined 12% and declined 9% excluding divestitures, reflecting several one-time factors and mixed performance across our segments. Experiential Services delivered another very strong quarter, and both demand signals and execution continue to improve across this business, giving us confidence in second-half growth.
Retailer Services revenues increased 3% year over year, but adjusted EBITDA was down approximately 25% year over year, reflecting project timing and costs associated with early-stage project work that we do not anticipate repeating; we expect growth in the second half of the year. In Branded Services, revenue declined 13% year over year and was down 11% excluding divestitures, as the recovery is taking longer than expected and we are impacted by the same persistent challenges as our CPG clients.
Cash generation remains solid with $19 million in adjusted unlevered free cash flow despite an incremental working capital impact from our SAP final phase implementation. We ended the quarter with $102 million in cash. Turning to our growth initiatives, clients continue to prioritize programs that can demonstrate clear ROI, support trial and discovery, and convert demand into purchases. That trend aligns directly with the capabilities we have built across Advantage Solutions.
Experiential Services is the clearest proof point. Demand for product demonstrations continues to exceed our expectations, with meaningful opportunities to expand event volume across existing customers and support growth with new customers. We are adding capacity where demand signals are strongest and remain confident in our ability to recruit and staff as needed. We have seen strong growth across the spectrum of customers we serve both in the U.S. and internationally, with even higher daily event volumes in our international regions. We believe this provides a useful blueprint for what can be achieved in the U.S. as programs mature and as we continue to improve labor readiness and execution in our CPG-facing work in Branded Services. Merchandising projects were a relative bright spot. We are focused on scalable, high-return opportunities that can become durable, long-term relationships as we deploy a highly trained and experienced team against what we see as recurring issues and out-of-stocks at retail.
In addition, our Pulse selling system is improving visibility into on-shelf availability, item velocity, and distribution gaps, allowing our teams to target resources more precisely and helping clients connect spending to measurable returns. Finally, we continue to develop our alert-based execution model, allowing Advantage Solutions to see out-of-stocks, distribution voids, and missing displays in almost real time. Turning to our productivity initiatives, our productivity agenda spans labor planning, process standardization, technology, and operating visibility.
Together, these initiatives are designed to manage costs prudently, improve execution quality, and create capacity to support growth. Our centralized labor model continues to enhance labor planning and execution, which is critical as Experiential Services demand and Retailer Services project activity increase. Experiential execution rates of approximately 95% in the quarter demonstrate the efficacy of this model. We are also in the final stages of our enterprise technology transformation, and these new systems will help us support improved data integrity, process discipline, and operating visibility.
We plan to complete the heavy lifting of this transformation this year, and in 2027 we expect to fully leverage these platforms and realize the benefits of the investments we’ve made to drive better decision-making and efficiency. While many companies are grappling with the existential risks from AI, we are focused on the opportunities to enhance our physical network that was built over decades. We continue to prioritize integrating AI across Advantage Solutions in pursuit of better service levels, a better teammate experience, and greater efficiency.
We have established a governance structure, including a newly created Chief AI Officer role that is tightly aligned with our tech and data teams. We are prioritizing training and fluency across our organization and the deployment of the right tools to our teammates. We remain focused on empowering our people to opportunistically employ a wide variety of AI tools that best fit their respective use cases and to find efficiencies in everything they do.
We are making sure our teams are educated on the potential of these AI models, how to use them effectively, and encouraging them to find opportunities for efficiency, speed, or enhanced service quality. Our priorities range from personal productivity to enterprise-wide initiatives that deliver faster insights and more precise resource deployment. We have several pilots we have developed across our workforce operations that we expect to increase efficiency, including a new event manager compliance tool, photo verification tool, cart list automation, and a supervisor intelligence dashboard.
We continue to develop new AI-led opportunities to bring both efficiency and operational excellence to our business. Turning to the macro environment, the core consumer themes and K-shaped economy we discussed last quarter have persisted. Lower- and middle-income households remain highly focused on value, with purchases increasingly planned around promotions and price points. Higher-income consumers continue to shift portions of their baskets toward healthier and better-for-you options, but they are also becoming more deliberate about the value they receive.
Emerging brands continue to also gain share of the industry in many categories as consumers seek variety and gravitate to product discovery. Value-seeking behavior is broadening across income groups. We are also seeing greater price competition among large retailers seeking market share gains in traffic. These trends reinforce the need for highly measurable, cost-effective programs that can drive trial, discovery, and conversion. Advantage Solutions is well positioned to help clients navigate this volatile operating environment by supporting their growth plans and helping them gain market share in as efficient a manner as possible.
We have adapted our business accordingly by emphasizing execution quality, disciplined staffing, and measurable ROI. As a scaled outsourced labor provider, we are well positioned to support clients seeking flexible capacity and greater efficiency. We continue to monitor energy prices, tariffs, and geopolitical developments, which are affecting consumer behavior. Our outlook does not incorporate a major change in underlying consumer health. Now turning to our segment results, Experiential Services delivered another very strong quarter.
Event volumes increased 18% with strong incremental margins supported by healthy demand across existing customer relationships and new vendor activity. With revenue growing at a healthy rate, improving profitability remains a priority even as we invest in infrastructure to support higher long-term demand. We are focused on labor efficiency, stronger training and safety protocols, consistent execution, and a shift toward higher-return demos. We expect continued momentum in the second half of the year.
In Branded Services, the recovery is taking longer given constrained CPG spending, procurement-driven dynamics, client insourcing, and select client losses. Our focus is on stabilizing the revenue base while protecting profitability. That means strengthening client retention and executive engagement, improving pipeline conversion, hiring and retaining the right talent, and demonstrating measurable ROI through our data analytics and execution capabilities.
CPG merchandising projects performed well this quarter, and we are hopeful this is a leading indicator for the rest of the business. While we are not assuming a near-term inflection, we do expect modest improvement in the second half of 2026. Retailer Services had a softer quarter primarily due to project timing, a difficult comparison with an unusually strong prior-year period, and higher execution costs on merchandising projects. We view these factors as temporary and largely specific to the second quarter.
We expect performance to improve sequentially through the second half as larger projects ramp up. The pipeline remains encouraging, and we expect project-related earnings volatility to moderate in the second half. Our priorities in Retailer Services are clear: align staffing with demand, improve execution discipline and operating consistency, and better match costs with associated revenue streams. Cash generation remains a structural strength of our business and a core priority.
We saw unlevered free cash flow of $19 million, or 25% of adjusted EBITDA, in the quarter. For the first half, unlevered free cash flow was 79% of adjusted EBITDA. We have seen some expected pressure on cash flow from working capital, which we believe will improve in the second half as we have moved past our final SAP implementation phase. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We intend to direct free cash flow primarily toward debt reduction while maintaining the liquidity and strategic flexibility required to operate the business.
Turning to our outlook, we are taking a balanced view of the remainder of the year. That view reflects three dynamics: continued strength in Experiential Services; improving Retailer Services performance with a more normalized earnings cadence in the second half; and a more gradual recovery timeline in Branded Services. We are reiterating our full-year 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges, reflecting the successful execution of our growth initiatives and in consideration of the investments we are making into our business and our teammates.
We are also reiterating full-year guidance of adjusted unlevered free cash flow of $250 to $275 million and net free cash flow conversion of 25%, excluding debt refinancing costs. We are encouraged by the strength of our Experiential Services demand and the progress across our growth agenda. At the same time, we are clear-eyed about the work required to stabilize Branded Services and reduce margin pressure driven by business mix. We remain focused on delivering for clients, generating cash, and building a more durable and profitable Advantage Solutions.
I’ll now turn it over to Chris for more detail on our financial performance.
Chris Growe, Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Dave, and welcome to everyone joining us today. I will review our second quarter performance by segment, discuss our cash flow and capital structure, and provide additional detail on our outlook. I will outline our business results on a reported basis and also on an adjusted basis for divestitures, which weighed on our year-over-year performance in the second quarter. Businesses we have divested represented a year-over-year headwind of approximately $5 million to revenues and approximately $3 million to adjusted EBITDA, and for 2026 we still expect divestitures to represent a year-over-year headwind of approximately $20 million to revenues and over $10 million to adjusted EBITDA. So, turning to our divisional performance and starting with Branded Services, in the second quarter we generated $224 million of revenues and $22 million of adjusted EBITDA, down 13% and 36% year over year, respectively. Excluding divestitures, revenues were down 11% and adjusted EBITDA was down 30%. The segment continues to face pressure from ongoing client insourcing, softer CPG spending, and client losses.
However, we saw encouraging activity in CPG merchandising projects which contributed positively to results in the quarter. Our focus remains on stabilizing the revenue base, improving pipeline conversion, client retention, and maintaining disciplined cost management. We continue to expect gradual improvement through the balance of the year. Turning to Experiential Services, we generated $296 million of revenues and $34 million of adjusted EBITDA, up 19% and 32% year over year, respectively.
Results were driven by accelerating demand for product demonstrations, higher event volumes, and strong operational execution. Demand remained healthy across both existing and new customers, and we continue to see opportunities to further increase event volumes in the second half of the year. We are confident in our ability to recruit and staff to meet this increased demand. Finally, in Retailer Services we generated $237 million of revenues and $20 million of adjusted EBITDA, up 3% and down approximately 25% year over year, respectively.
Performance was impacted by project timing, a difficult comparison with unusually high project activity in the prior year, and higher costs related to execution issues on a new project in the quarter. We view these as unique and temporary factors and expect sequential improvement in the second half versus the first half performance. We also have a stronger project pipeline in the second half and expect project-related earnings volatility to moderate as these programs ramp, offsetting some of these headwinds.
Our private label business delivered a solid quarter as the industry backdrop became more favorable and the channel mix drag eased again modestly. Our focus remains on execution, staffing, alignment, and operational discipline to better align costs with project activity and drive more consistent earnings growth. From a cost perspective, during the quarter we saw more favorable health insurance cost trends which have been a meaningful pressure point over the last year.
Moving to the balance sheet and liquidity, we ended the quarter with $102 million in cash, reflecting our continued focus on disciplined capital management and strong cash generation. Our net debt level stood at approximately 4.5 times trailing EBITDA. Turning to cash flow and working capital, cash generation remains a core strength of the business and we view it, along with working capital discipline, as important long-term shareholder value creation drivers.
Our day sales outstanding, or DSO, remained elevated during the second quarter primarily due to the impact of our final SAP implementation and customer payment timing, both of which we continue to view as temporary. We expect DSOs to improve steadily through the remainder of the year, including in the third quarter, supporting strong full-year cash flow generation. Adjusted unlevered free cash flow was $19 million in the second quarter with a conversion rate of 25%.
The performance this quarter was negatively affected by an increase in DSO. As expected, we expect strong working capital improvement in the second half, which will contribute to free cash flow generation and support our cash flow outlook. Moving on to capital allocation, this year we have focused on debt reduction, particularly during the first quarter around our refinancing. In the second quarter, we repurchased approximately $15 million of our shares.
These repurchases were primarily intended to help offset dilution from stock grants and exercises. As we look ahead, free cash flow will primarily be directed toward debt reduction. Finally, turning to our outlook, we are encouraged by our second quarter performance and continue to maintain a balanced outlook for the remainder of the year. We are reiterating our full-year 2026 revenues and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges. Given a solid first half of the year, however, we’ve updated our guidance for interest expense and capital expenditures, which are now slightly lower than previously forecasted.
Our free cash flow outlook remains unchanged. From a business perspective, we continue to see strength in Experiential Services, sequential improvement and growth in Retailer Services, and a more gradual recovery in Branded Services on its path towards stabilization. Key factors influencing our outlook include Experiential Services demand and execution, Retailer Services project timing and second-half project ramps, and the pace of recovery in Branded Services.
Overall, we’ve taken a prudent view of the second half of the year regarding quarterly cadence. Given a stronger first half performance, our guidance implies the second half adjusted EBITDA will represent approximately 53% of the full-year total. We expect fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA to be higher than third quarter adjusted EBITDA. Our focus remains on improving execution, raising profitability, and delivering consistent cash generation. Thank you for your time.
I’ll now turn it back over to Dave.
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Chris. We remain encouraged by the momentum in Experiential Services and the expected improvement in Retailer Services as larger projects are ramping up. At the same time, we continue to focus on stabilizing Branded Services while protecting profitability. We’re also advancing our productivity initiatives across labor planning, process standardization, technology, and operating visibility while integrating AI to support stronger service levels, a better teammate experience, and greater efficiency.
Together with our focus on disciplined capital allocation and strong cash generation, we believe these efforts position Advantage Solutions to build a more durable and profitable business over the long term. I want to thank everybody for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Operator, we’re now ready for questions.
OPERATOR
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Greg Parish with Morgan Stanley.
Greg, your line is now open.
Greg Parish, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Hey, guys, good morning. Thanks for taking my question.
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
Morning, Greg.
Greg Parish, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Hey, maybe just on Branded, I know you called out maybe more gradual recovery in the second half, but thinking ahead to 2027 and beyond, in your view, what’s the catalyst that really gets this business stabilized?
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
I think if you think about it, Greg, we’re coming off a few kind of larger client losses, and there’s various reasons for those. But as we move into ’27 and talking about Branded Services, first we’re seeing parts of that business demonstrate growth, which is kind of giving us some optimism. And then you’re lapping—like I said, if you go back even three years, we had some resignations we talked about and then a couple key client losses, which has actually put us in a position to have a more kind of balanced, and I’ll call it more fragmented, client base.
And, you know, if I look at our top, you know, 25, 30 clients, year over year, they’re growing, and so all these things are signs to us that things are moving towards stabilization. It’s just, in a long-lead contracted business, you have to get through kind of these quarterly cycles until you can realize that shift or that pivot. And then you just heard our results in Retailer, which really are driven primarily by a tough comp. We had a pretty large what I’ll call one-time project in the second quarter of last year that did not repeat this year.
But the underlying business remains strong. And, you know, we’re never going to turn away significant project work, and we get it from time to time. But that business has been kind of a consistent, slower grower than Experiential, but consistent growing business for us. And we see opportunity with new lines of service that we can bring to our retail partners that give us optimism. And then Experiential—the demand signals continue to be very strong, both from large clients but also new business acquisition that we’ve been working on and we’ve realized as recently as the second quarter.
So all of those things give us optimism as we look at ’27.
Greg Parish, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Great, that’s helpful. And maybe just on the other side of the coin, just Experiential—obviously a lot of strength, three quarters in a row here, 20% growth. I feel like we sort of talk about this a lot, but there’s new demand, you have some new clients come on board, better labor availability. Not sure if I missed anything there, but maybe zooming out, thinking about next year and beyond, how durable is this outsized strength that you’ve been seeing in Experiential?
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
I think it’s very durable. Like I mentioned, the demand signals are very strong from our clients. But also, and think of it too from a macro standpoint, the growth of emerging brands in the industry and the growth of innovation and new products—even from more established or larger brands—is not slowing down. And so that stimulates the need for sampling and trial, and I think retailers, justifiably so, are realizing that sampling and experiential and in-store demo and retailtainment—all those things are really important for the customer as they come into the store—and so they compete on that level and that works to support that business.
And I want to give our team a shout-out because they’ve done a really good job on the execution front. And if I think about where we are deploying AI—I know it’s a buzzy term and everybody wants to talk about it—we only really do so when we think there’s real tangible benefits and where we see AI as an enabler to the business. I’d say Experiential is a good example of that where we’re really speeding up our time between application and when they actually are working at a cart, or compressing that, so we’re getting people through the funnel much quicker.
Photo verification, which is important in this business—we’ve found ways to really streamline that process. I rattled off a few in the prepared remarks. Those are just a few of the things that we’re doing where AI is bringing real advantage. When you put it all together, it’s just driving better execution rates and efficiency.
Chris Growe, Chief Financial Officer
Greg, I would just add to that. We talked about this really to start the year and after last quarter as well, just the investments we’re making in that business to sustain the growth. So you’re seeing that here in Q2, you’ll see it in the second half of the year. Really proud of the team to be able to put up nearly 20% revenue growth and that degree of incremental margin improvement. But I think I will make sure we just reiterate that, you know, we’re preparing and getting the business in a place where we can continue to sustain this rate of growth, do it in a very high-quality way.
And as you saw this quarter, we hit that 95% execution. So it puts us in a great place to be able to really grow the second half of the year into 2027.
Greg Parish, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks for all the color. Congrats on the quarter. I’ll pass it off.
OPERATOR
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Luke Morrison with Canaccord. Luke, your line is now open.
Luke Morrison, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity
Hey guys, thanks for taking the question here. So I think you called out CPG merchandising projects as a relative bright spot, possibly a leading indicator for the rest of branded. Can you just help me understand sort of like the underlying mix there, you know, is client spend rotating within that segment? Are you seeing a mix shift — like help me understand what’s happening with that comment.
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
So if you think about that business, two of the big drivers of the branded services are, you know, kind of headquarters selling or where we represent a client at headquarters, and then retail merchandising where we are sending folks in to execute in store. And you’re seeing persistent challenges with in-stock in a lot of categories — not every category, but probably a majority of categories across the store. And there’s a lot of reasons for that at retail.
And you’re not going to sell it if it’s not on the shelf. And I think our clients understand that. So you’re seeing an increase in project work so that you’ve got contracted continuity work. And if you look back maybe a year ago, projects were, call it, you know, maybe 15% of our total work in this space in the first half. Now they’re close to a little under 25%. And so we saw a pretty nice lift in project work, a little over 20% year over year, which is telling us that sort of unplanned need and/or opportunity to either get more display space on the floor or remediate out-of-stocks.
And as we look forward and have conversations with clients, both current and prospective, we see an opportunity to lean into this business. And it’s a syndicated business. We have some direct teams, but obviously we can realize pretty decent margins when you’re utilizing an existing force out there against multiple clients to solve problems. And then we’ve also put some investment into this area in becoming more alert-based and more — how do I say — just bringing more efficacy to the work.
You know, these folks were typically allocated by time — so going into stores every week, every two weeks, every four weeks on behalf of clients. We’re starting to pilot and realize great results in making it more alert-based, where we get a scan or read from a store and we actually just go and address whatever that issue is — a drawn-down display, out-of-stocks, whatever that might be. So that’s allowing us to deploy resources more efficiently as well.
And it’s a great labor force. I mean, it’s a team of roughly 5,000 folks. Average tenure with the organization over nine years. A lot of dedicated folks that both sell and remediate problems for our clients in stores.
Luke Morrison, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity
Yeah, yeah, okay, super helpful. And maybe just to follow up, you know, you’ve said reducing mix-driven margin pressures is obviously a priority here. As I look at experiential, you know, it’s both your fastest grower and your lowest margin segment. So help me just think through like what closes that gap. Is it, you know, labor efficiency? Is it event mix? Is it pricing? Is it — is there something else there?
Chris Growe, Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, Luke, it’s Chris, just to kind of address that in a couple different ways. You know, overall when you have this, you know, call it, you know, mix modeling that’s occurring this year with branded services down and experiential up, you’re going to have that kind of weight on the margin profile of the business. You know, we couldn’t help but reinvest back in the business this year as well, so you’re seeing a little less incremental margin in experiential this quarter.
But it’s all deliberate and I would just say, again, puts us in a great place to be able to sustain the growth going forward. As I look ahead, you know, we talk about a path towards stabilization for branded services. So that’s what we still see — us on that path, just maybe it’s a little slower. But I think you’re going to see that, you know, slow and gradual improvement in the rate of decline there. You’re seeing really good growth in experiential.
And then retailer, we talked about that being able to grow in the second half of the year. So you’re going to have some equalization, if I can say it that way, of the margin across the businesses as one grows and one declines. And you’ve got investments that are influencing that, and then you’ve got the benefit of the stabilization of branded services that will allow us to achieve that kind of margin stability — ultimately margin growth next year.
Luke Morrison, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity
Understood. I’ll pass it on.
OPERATOR
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Dave for closing remarks.
Dave Peacock, Chief Executive Officer
We want to thank everybody for joining and we look forward to connecting with this group next quarter.
OPERATOR
This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
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