Educational Development (NASDAQ:EDUC) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below.
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View the webcast at https://www.edcpub.com/investors
Summary
Educational Development Corporation reported a decrease in net revenues to $4.8 million from $7.1 million year-over-year for fiscal 2027 Q1, with a net loss of $1.4 million compared to $1.1 million the previous year.
The company saw a notable 20% increase in brand partner numbers, adding over 1,300 new partners, as a result of a successful recruiting initiative during March.
Cost-saving measures initiated at the beginning of the quarter are expected to yield $1.2 million in annual savings, positively impacting cash flow.
Inventory reductions contributed to improved cash flow, increasing cash balances from $1.3 million to $1.8 million by the end of the quarter.
Strategic initiatives included the successful launch of new book titles and IT projects aimed at reducing friction points for consumers and partners.
Future outlook remains focused on returning to pre-pandemic revenue and partner levels, with ongoing efforts to engage brand partners and expand product offerings.
Management emphasized the importance of new titles and IT improvements, expressing optimism about the company’s strategic direction and turnaround plan.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good afternoon everyone and thank you for participating in today’s conference call to discuss Educational Development Corp’s financial and operating results for its fiscal 2027 first quarter results. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. On the call today are Craig White, President and Chief Executive Officer, Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, and Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its results for the fiscal 2027 first quarter results.
The release will be available later today on the company’s website at www.edcpub.com. Before turning to the prepared remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to a variety of factors. We refer you to Educational Development Corp’s recent filing with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the company’s financial condition.
With that, I would like to turn the call over to Craig White, the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer.
Craig White, CEO President
Thank you, Chloe, and welcome everyone to the call. We appreciate your continued interest. I will start today’s call with some general comments regarding the quarter. Then I will pass the call over to Dan to run through the financials, after which Heather will provide an update on sales and marketing and IT projects, and then I will provide an update on our plans for the rest of fiscal 2027. During March, we ran a recruiting special surrounding our March 14th PI Day, which yielded better than expected results.
We added over 1,300 new brand partners, which brought our active brand partner numbers above 5,200, and we have maintained this level of brand partners to this day. This was a 20% growth in brand partner numbers since the end of last year, and continuing our brand partner growth is a key focus. Also, at the beginning of the quarter, we made several expense reductions which are expected to exceed $1.2 million in savings for the fiscal year. These savings, which include decreases in pay for our executive team, were made to improve our cash flow and give us the ability to continue to execute our conservative purchasing plan to replenish some of our best-selling titles as well as bring in new titles. Bringing in new titles energizes our brand partners and gives our retail reps some new products to present. I’m happy to say that many of these new titles came in throughout the last several months, and we have introduced them with much early success. That is some confirmation that our strategy is on point. The results for the quarter were driven by our lower revenue levels offset by lower expenses.
The focus of our fiscal 2027 turnaround plan remains on growing our revenue and brand partner levels back to pre-pandemic levels, and I’m happy with the initial progress our team has achieved. Heather will talk more about this progress in her marketing update. As I have said before, our turnaround plan is not an overnight change, but a carefully developed plan for growth over the next few quarters and years. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Dan O’Keefe to provide a brief overview of financials.
Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Craig. Our 2027 fiscal first quarter results compared to the first quarter last year included net revenues of 4.8 million compared to 7.1 million. Our average active brand partners for the quarter totaled 5,300 compared to 7,700 last year. Loss before income taxes was 1.4 million in both quarters. Net loss totaled 1.4 million for the quarter compared to a net loss last year of 1.1 million. In the first quarter, loss per share totaled $0.16 compared to a loss per share of $0.13 on a fully diluted basis.
Now for an update on our working capital. Inventory levels decreased from 37.7 million at the beginning of fiscal year 2027 to 36.2 million at the end of May, generating 1.5 million of cash flow from inventory reductions. Our cash balance increased from 1.3 million at the end of February to 1.8 million at the end of the first quarter. I would also like to mention an unusual accounting adjustment we continue to make due to our historical losses and operating expectations.
During the turnaround period, we evaluated the need for a valuation allowance for our deferred tax assets. Based on this evaluation, we continue to recognize a valuation adjustment, offsetting the deferred tax asset and eliminating the tax benefit on our income statement. This adjustment has no cash flow impact but had a direct impact on our tax expense, net earnings, and earnings per share. When the company returns to profitability, this evaluation adjustment will be reversed.
The reversal will have no cash flow impact but will have a direct impact on tax expense, net earnings, and earnings per share. This concludes the financial update. I will now turn the call back to Heather Cobb for a sales and marketing update.
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Thanks, Dan. As Craig mentioned, our Paper Pie Day celebration in March delivered positive results across the business. The promotion generated strong recruiting activity, drove sales through our site-wide offer, increased engagement with our newly created account credits program, and helped introduce several new titles to customers. It was a great example of how coordinated initiatives can create engagement across multiple areas of the company at the same time.
In April, members of our team attended the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the premier event in children’s publishing. The fair provides an important opportunity to discover new content, strengthen relationships with our publishing partners, and evaluate future additions to our catalog. We also had the privilege of then traveling and celebrating many of our top performers during our incentive trip to Bermuda, recognizing those who continue to share our products and build thriving businesses, helping to expand our reach and impact.
May brought the announcement of our next Storyscape and Cinematrip, which will take earners to Zion National Park in 2027. These experiences continue to be a powerful way to recognize achievement while inspiring future growth across the field. While brand partners were focused on serving customers and building their businesses throughout the spring, our home office team was busy preparing for Unfold, our annual convention. The event generated tremendous energy and optimism as attendees explored new product releases, participated in recruiting-focused initiatives, and received an early look at several technology enhancements currently in development.
These include our new AI-assisted book study named Read, which launched this week, as well as our upcoming projects like our Wish List and registry options, and the ability to identify and market to specific audiences with targeted office experience offers. The response to all of this reinforced what we’re seeing throughout the organization, a strong belief in where we’re headed and excitement about what lies ahead. Throughout this time period, our retail team was attending trade shows and showrooms highlighting the new titles that we have available as well as our vast backlist offerings.
As we move forward through the summer months, our attention is centered on our Well Read Summer campaign. We’re leaning into the growing consumer interest in analog experiences, reading, and intentional time together by focusing on book lovers and families seeking alternatives to screen-based entertainment. With additional promotions planned throughout the season, we believe that there are tailwinds to build on the engagement that we’ve seen so far this year.
I will now turn the call back over to Craig White.
Craig White, CEO President
Thank you, Heather and Dan. As I mentioned before, we are happy with the initial results for our turnaround plan. Specifically, we are continuing our effort to build our brand partner levels, and they are excited about our new titles and our IT improvements. You heard from Heather about some of our recent IT initiatives focused on making it easier to do business with us and adapting to the new way that different generations prefer to transact with us.
This new generation presents challenges not just for our company, but many companies in the direct selling industry to revise their engagement methods. I can tell you that our sales and marketing as well as IT departments are working actively to ensure our strategies take into account this important group. Lastly, I want to thank all shareholders for their patience, our employees for their commitment to our mission, and our customers and brand partners for their loyalty.
I’m confident that the steps we have taken and will continue to take will result in sales growth and our return to profitability. Now that we have provided a summary of some recent activity, I’ll now turn the call back over to the operator for question and answer.
OPERATOR
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then the number two. We will pause for a moment to compile the Q and A roster. We have a question from Paul Carter from Capstone Asset Management.
Your line is open.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So, first question is more of a housekeeping question. Most shareholders probably know Randall White’s long history with the company. I’m curious about the beneficial owner’s disclosure. In your latest circular, he’s no longer listed as a 5% beneficial owner. Was there an ownership transition or was that just…
Craig White, CEO President
Well, it’s a good question, Paul. The challenge is we don’t know. He’s not a Novo owner, and we have no visibility to his ownership levels. So we could not include it in the proxy because we could not confirm his share ownership.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Okay, I was just curious about that. And then just to clarify one thing on the brand partner numbers press release reference, it’s just average active brand partners of 5,300 for the quarter. But then your comments said that it started at 4,300 and then ended the quarter at 5,200. What happened there? Is that a reflection of an increase after the pledge promotion and then sort of towards the end of the quarter or…
Craig White, CEO President
Yeah. So it increased in March and then kind of remained pretty consistent through the end of the quarter.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Yeah, based on our… The way we count active, you know, at the end of every month there’s some people that fall off that we had such a great addition that that’s why we increased as a net. Okay, okay, great. And then just related to that, maybe this is a question for Heather. I know in your fiscal fourth quarter, the average account, I think, was 4,500. And then in Q1 you had promotion. So by the end of the day, the average number was up to 6,400, which is definitely encouraging, but I’m just trying to understand the three and three. Like, do you feel you have a pipeline of new recruiting initiatives that you can continue to expand the brand partner base for the rest of the year?
Or was kind of the March recruiting promotion a big one that caused kind of a spike?
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
That’s a great question, Paul. I would say we consistently offer a variety of different kinds of recruiting initiatives and promotions, not only just because we know that different audiences may be paying attention at different times of the year, but also different things attract different audiences as well. And so when we offer any sort of recruiting special or promotion, it will vary in some way, shape, or form, whether it’s cost or what is available as part of the kit, different things like that.
So we did a promotion immediately out of convention. We have other promotions planned coming later in the year as well. I don’t think that we are now or have ever been in the business that we can lean solely on a single promotion in a year and think that that is a place that we’re in good standing. Direct selling as a whole is a business of people coming in and people staying and people going at some sort of level. And so I think that we’re definitely looking ahead and planning ahead both in the current day and in the coming six months to a year.
So does that answer your question?
Craig White, CEO President
Let me add just a little bit, Paul. While I’m certainly not forecasting what’s going to be happening the rest of this year, I think this is evidence that our strategy is somewhat working. I mean, they were waiting for new titles, and now that we’ve released some new titles, everyone’s excited. There’s a buzz in the field. Condition was incredible. That’s how it works. It’s word of mouth. And while our brand partners are energized and excited and enthusiastic, it’s just easier for them to recruit.
So I think that’s basically what’s happening.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Actually, that’s a really good point. I’m curious, do you measure that? I’m sure you measure a lot of things, but since you are now able to buy new titles, are you noticing in data that brand partners are sticking around and being active for longer than maybe they were a year ago? Or is it just too early? It’s just too early to think.
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
That’s a great question. I will say we do look at all sorts of data like that. I think considering our new titles dropped, we released a few in March and April. But when I say a few, I mean that pretty literally. And so considering we’re not even a full month into our full release of new titles, it’s really too early to look at any concrete data that would show that.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Okay, great. And then just switching gears and I apologize. I just have two quick. So last quarter you talked about moving away from historical gross margins. You had product promotions during Q1. Did gross margins kind of move closer to historical levels? Are you still seeing some impact from.
Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer
I would say that we’re still seeing impact related to that. The promotions that we ran and the site life sale we ran were surrounding our paper pie day kind of was consistent with the promotions that we ran in the first quarter last year. So we don’t see a lot of margin improvement yet.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Okay, just one observation about that. So I know, like, as of now, I think your book value per share is around $4.87, which you think is talking quite a bit about your stock price. But 90% of that give or take, is represented by inventory. And I recognize the need to generate the cash and improve inventory given the amount of shareholder value that’s tied up in inventory. How are you balancing the desire to like reduce inventory levels with ensuring that you’re not sacrificing too much in terms of gross margin through promotions?
Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer
Well, again, good question. It’s kind of a balancing act, right? I mean, we need to bring in cash, but we don’t want to reduce the value of our product. So it is. I mean, we look at it every single month. Okay, do we need to do something in the next quarter or things like that? So it’s not. Well, I’d like to say it’s an overall strategy where we’re not going to discount as much and that is the case, but there’s just times where it’s necessary.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Is that balance sort of shifting towards not sacrificing gross margin? Because you said, you know, you need to raise cash. And obviously when you have the bank facility, there was an ongoing need and pressure from your bank. Now you don’t have that. And I think you said your cash. Does it sound like you kind of actively need cash or at least your cash balance will grow as much as you did in the past? And just sort of wondering if that is like directly playing into your decision on.
Craig White, CEO President
Well, that’s a great question. I’d like to say we’re back, but we’ve just so recently come out of difficult periods. I am somewhat conservative, but I think you’re right. We need to focus on new title acquisition and really make sure we’re not missing the window of opportunity here. So it’s point well taken and I agree with you, we need to try to reduce the times that we’re discounting. So you’re right.
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
I think I’ll add too, Paul, that when we do look at times that we’re discounting, we’re looking at it through a different lens. When we were doing deep discounting across the board as a site-wide sale, that looks very different than some of the things that we’ve done recently where we’ve done more of a category sale approach. And so we’ve deep discounted a handful of titles as opposed to just an across-the-board things like that, that while from an outside view it might look like, oh, they’re still offering site-wide sales, if you dig a little deeper, you will see that move that will get us back to those normal gross margins without just stopping that activity altogether in anticipation that the consumers are ready for that.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Okay, that’s great. That’s very helpful. Well, that’s it for me. Thanks very much everybody.
Craig White, CEO President
Thanks, Paul.
Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Paul.
OPERATOR
Our next question is from Igno Croxis. Your line is open.
Igno Croxis
It’s a little, there’s a, there’s an echo that makes it hard to hear you.
OPERATOR
So it should be better now. Now it’s a little better. Right. Apologies. Okay, so I have several questions and hopefully I won’t take that much of your time. So regarding the new. Very happy to see the new partners. I actually want to point out I think I did the count today. This is the first time in 10 quarters that the partner number is actually up, not down. So that’s nice to see. However, it doesn’t look like it’s translated into actual sales.
And I understand this is the new partners and it takes time. So what’s the typical ramp up time when you start seeing the actual tangible results from these new partners?
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that, you know, that goes back a little bit to the question that Paul had about, you know, is it, you know, we’ve released new titles, we have these new brand partners. Do we consider that a successful. We brought in these new brand partners in March. We have a decent amount of turnaround time to get them into the culture, into selling, introducing new titles, different things like that. I would say within the next couple of quarters we’ll definitely see some of that fall into place in the bottom.
Igno Croxis
Okay, so there is a significant lag just because you sign up new partners. It takes some time basically to get up to speed and to start delivering the revenue, it’s usually a couple of quarters lag. Right. That’s how I understood this.
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
It can be. It can also happen the other way where you see an immediate bolt to that and then it continues. So it can happen either way. We just don’t consider it completely negative if it doesn’t happen that way immediately.
Igno Croxis
Right. So fair enough. I know you put some effort in the promotion, but promotion cannot be continuous. How are you planning to keep the numbers of partners up going forward? What are your plans? What are you going to do differently? Because the count has been falling for two years and this time it seems to be turning around. But obviously just in the beginning of a turnaround, what are your plans to keep the numbers up?
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Yeah, I think that’s a great question and I think it’s what Craig and I both mentioned and alluded to as we shared the summary. Two main things are making sure that our inventory that we have in place is really what consumers are looking for right now. Whether that means new titles or staying in stock of some of the most beloved titles that we need to order reprints for and things like that. That’s where our conservative phase purchasing approach we really feel is key as part of that strategy.
The other thing is those IT initiatives that we mentioned, some of the ones that we very specifically mentioned is they all filter through this lens of just removing any sort of friction points and making it easier not only for the consumer to actually make that purchase, but also for the brand partner to get the information to them and help them along through the process of finding what they’re looking for.
Igno Croxis
Okay, that’s helpful titles. I know it’s not a precise equation, but could you give us some, some sense of how your mix of sales has changed or hasn’t changed so far? Like of a new titles versus the title scanning of your inventory or how it’s going to change going forward. Is there like percentages or how do you think about this?
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, we are going to have to really dig through the data on that one since we haven’t introduced new titles in quite a bit of time. And as we shared with Paul, we did that big drop in the middle of June and so we aren’t even a month into full sales cycle of new titles. So it really is too early to tell any of those percentages. If I were to give any sort of percentages right now, they’d be so inflated with people that are buying new titles because they’re excited about them that it really wouldn’t be accurate as the representation of what that means going forward.
Igno Croxis
Oh, and so what’s your.
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Yeah, I was just going to add that the new title drop was in the second quarter, so it’s not been reported. I just deleted in my summary that we’re happy with the results. So you could take that however you’d like.
Igno Croxis
Okay. No, no, no, I get it. So there’s a way of looking at a strictly old titles so that that makes sense. Speaking about the Q2, Q2 and I know you’re not providing guidance, but Q2 is. Summer is usually the slowest quarter. Do you think this is going to remain this way? Is it always seasonally this way or something is different about the summer?
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
No, I think it’s still hot and people are still on vacation. And so I think unless something drastically changes there, summer just remains just one of the lowest quarters for us as a whole.
Igno Croxis
Right. So Q3 is basically where we’ll probably see like the real results as things are turning around. Right? Realistically speaking.
Heather Kopp, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Well, all the results that we report we’re comparing not sequentially, but year over year. So I mean, even though Q2 is low, we’re still hoping and planning and working towards it being October last summer. I’m not saying it is, but that’s the plan.
Igno Croxis
Right. Okay. So you alluded that there is a significant expense reduction. I can see that you basically doing much better on a much lower revenue level, which is nice. I have a twofold question. Cash flow. So you basically right now earnings are not that important because we understand there is a depreciation, amortization and all that. I don’t know have you balance sheet in front of me. But I just want to understand how. What does your cash flow look like from operations? Is it really you were even with your falling revenue levels, you were still able to pay the bank loan and your cash flow stayed positive. If that steals a story that you expect that your cash flow will still stay positive even at this reduced levels.
Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer
Well, I’ll answer that on two points. The first point is that we had 1.4 million of operating losses in this quarter that we just reported. But our cash build was half a million dollars. So, you know, turning inventory into cash should translate into positive cash flow. Now, the key thing for us is sales growth because the faster we grow brand partners and now that we’re able to have new titles for our retail side, the faster we grow revenues overall, the more cash will fill.
Now, I don’t have the crystal lens to tell you how much cash flow we’re going to build, you know, over the next three quarters of fiscal 2027. But the plan is to be cash flow positive and hopefully be very cash flow positive.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Okay, so the cash flow, cash increase came out of your inventory reduction, not from reduction of your accounts receivable. Right. That’s what I’m reading from your comments.
Dan O’Keefe, Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, receivables dropped a little bit, but it was primarily from inventory reductions.
Paul Carter, Capstone Asset Management
Okay, that’s really great to hear and that sort of gives comfort to investors. Hard my last question and it’s sort of a comment, I know that I read your presentation and that’s one of the things it says you said no to Amazon, but given that you have so much inventory, have so many titles and actually did a dig into your titles and you have some tremendous titles that have been around forever and you have IP to them, intellectual property, the ownership.
Do you guys would ever consider partnering with somebody to move some of your biggest inventory items which are slow moving or you have too much and maybe not making, not exclusive and putting them on sale, maybe not good in your own channels. I understand that takes care and time but maybe partnering with somebody to put it in an online store. Any thoughts yet?
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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