BARK, Inc. Q1 FY2026 earnings call

• Delivered $103 million of revenue, well above guidance, with over $16 million from non-D2C sources, nearly double from last year. • Delivered positive adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, improving by nearly $2 million from last year. • In D2C, $89.2 million in revenue, $2.3 million from BARK Air (300% improvement from last year) and maintained 99% 5-star rating. • Product mix shifted with Super Chewer accounting for ~2/3 of new subscribers. • Introduced new brand platform SPARK. • Debuting BARK in the Belly consumables line with profits from kibble going to feeding dogs in need. • Commerce segment revenue up 50% Y/Y due to expanded distribution. • Supply chain team responded to tariff environment, expecting results in back half of year.

Total revenue for the first quarter was $102.9 million. The D2C segment (excluding Air) delivered $86.8 million in revenue, with BARK Air contributing $2.3 million. D2C gross margin was 67%, up 250 basis points year-over-year. The Commerce segment delivered $13.7 million in the quarter, a 50% increase year-over-year. D2C gross margin (excluding BARK Air) was a record 69.3%, while Commerce gross margin was 31.7%.

• Maintaining cautious stance due to uncertainty in tariffs, trade policy, and consumer trends; not providing full year guidance. • Q2 total revenues expected between $102 million and $105 million. • Q2 adjusted EBITDA expected between negative $2 million and positive $2 million. • Anticipate a heavier commerce quarter in Q2, with commerce representing 25% to 30% of Q2 revenue.

• Uncertainty surrounding tariffs, trade policy, and broader consumer trends. • Supplier transitions and evolving tariff environment. • Timing shifts in retailer intake impacting commerce segment performance.

Q: First one for me. If we think about the EBITDA guidance for the second quarter, obviously, a loss of $2 million to a positive $2 million, a kind of wide range there. Just curious what kind of puts you at the low end of the range, what potentially puts you at the high end of that range?

A: Ryan, this is Zach here. Look, the midpoint of the guidance is in line with Q1. So we feel pretty good about the overall guidance range. A lot of it is to do with timing. So tariff flow-through timing, coupled with some timing on operating expenses, that could swing the overall profit performance and hence, the broader range.

Q: Can you maybe give us a little bit more color on what drove stronger subscriber trends in Q1, especially on low advertising spend? And are you seeing sort of that momentum continuing here into fiscal Q2?

A: Maria, it's Matt here. I think what drove that is just ongoing experimentation with different, different ad formats, different concepts, different ways of trying to attract the customer. And there's been a real focus by us on getting a higher quality customer. One way that we talked about that, that played out was a pretty dramatic shift over to Super Chewer customers, which at a base level have an average order value that's about $5 per unit higher. That's one way. We're also looking for subscribers to prepay for their subscriptions upfront, and we've made good progress there to respond to some of the upsell or cross-sell offers that we've made and certainly made some progress there in terms of the initial purchase that they're making and their initial commitment. So we knew we were focused more on the side of higher-quality subscribers and spending less to acquire those. And when we pulled back, we expected more of a pullback in terms of the volume, and we just outperformed that. So pretty happy about that. The momentum in the learning continues. But as we're learning, sometimes it doesn't always go well, but so far, so good.