Carter's Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Carter’s (NYSE:CRI) reported third-quarter financial results on Friday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Carter’s reported third-quarter 2026 net sales of $752 million, essentially flat year-over-year, with a 45% increase in adjusted operating income and a 240 basis point expansion in adjusted operating margin.

The company launched a new brand initiative, including a revamped brand promise and updated logo, which generated over 1.6 billion media impressions and increased brand engagement.

Carter’s is implementing a revised organizational structure, adding key roles such as Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer to better align leadership with strategic initiatives.

Positive trends were seen in baby and toddler categories, with the company’s sleepwear category showing double-digit growth, aided by new marketing strategies and product offerings.

Despite a solid Q3, the company adjusted its Q4 revenue outlook downward, citing macroeconomic uncertainties and consumer spending pressures, but expects full-year 2026 to exceed last year’s key metrics.

Carter’s international business, particularly in Canada and Mexico, showed growth with a 4% increase in net sales and improved operating margins.

Management highlighted strategic focuses on expanding into older age groups, higher socioeconomic markets and international markets while leveraging consumer insights and brand equity.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Welcome to Carter’s third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. On the call are Sharon Price; John, Chief Executive Officer and President; Richard Wessenberg, Chief Financial Officer; Allison Peterson, Chief Commercial Officer; and T.C. Mugler, Vice President of Investigations. Please note that today’s call is being recorded. I’ll now turn the call over to T.C. Bobillard.

TC Bobillard (Investor Relations)

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Earlier today we issued two press releases: the announcement regarding the evolution of our leadership structure and our third quarter 2026 earnings. These releases, as well as the earnings presentation materials for today’s call, are available on our investor relations website at ir.carters.com. Note that statements on today’s call about items such as the company’s expectations and plans are forward-looking statements. For a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to vary from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please see our most recent SEC filings, as well as the earnings release and presentation materials posted on our website. In these materials, you will also find reconciliations of various non-GAAP financial measurements referenced during this call.

After today’s prepared remarks, we will take questions as time allows. I will now turn the call over to Sharon.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Sharon. Good morning everyone. We’re looking forward to updating you on the business. Today we will recap our third quarter performance and share our latest outlook for Q4 and how we think the year may finish up. As always, our objective is to provide a balanced update. We’ll share what’s working and where perhaps we have some reasons for caution. For the quarter we achieved our net sales forecast and exceeded our expectations on profitability.

Our teams are continuing to do a good job navigating the various challenges across the marketplace. We’re grateful for their resilience and resourcefulness and their openness to change as we continue to transform and strengthen the company for the long term. Our comments this morning on our third quarter performance and our outlook will track along with the presentation posted to the Investor Relations portion of our website. Turning to our presentation materials, on page two we have our GAAP basis P&L. As Sharon mentioned, net sales in the third quarter were $752 million, reported operating income was $56 million and reported earnings per share were $1 compared to 32 cents last year. On page three we have our GAAP basis P&L for the first nine months of the year.

On a year-to-date basis, net sales of more than $2 billion. Reported operating income was $224 million, which included the benefit of the tariff recovery in the second quarter as well as the impact of several other non-recurring charges. Year to date, reported earnings per share were $4.27 compared to $0.75 in 2025. On the following page we’ve summarized our non-GAAP adjustments. In the third quarter we recorded approximately $1 million in charges related to intellectual property litigation.

Year to date, our results included several non-recurring items, the most significant of which was the roughly $130 million recovery of previously paid tariffs and related interest. We also recorded approximately $7 million in charges year to date related to costs associated with leadership transition and litigation. Last year, both our third quarter and year-to-date adjustments primarily related to operating model improvement costs, organizational restructuring, and leadership transition costs.

Today our comments will speak to our performance on an adjusted basis, which excludes these unusual items. Our third quarter adjusted P&L is on page 5. As mentioned, our Q3 net sales were $752 million, down less than 1% versus last year. Sales were roughly comparable year over year in our U.S. Retail segment, down in U.S. Wholesale, and we posted growth in International. Adjusted gross margin expanded 200 basis points in Q3 over last year to 47.1%. The improvement in gross margin was driven by a higher year-over-year mix of U.S. Retail sales and higher realized pricing, which offset higher tariff costs and investments in product make.

On a consolidated basis, AURs increased mid-single digits while units decreased mid-single digits. In U.S. Retail, third quarter AURs were up low single digits over last year, and we also improved realized pricing in our U.S. Wholesale and International segments. Allison will comment further on U.S. Retail and Wholesale trends in a moment. For the quarter, adjusted SG&A decreased nearly 2% versus prior year to $303 million, with benefits from our productivity initiatives, including store closures, more than offsetting incremental investments in marketing and year-over-year inflationary pressures in wages and rent. Spending is an area we’ve managed well throughout the year. Year to date, adjusted SG&A is essentially flat with the prior year, and we’ve achieved 150 basis points of leverage on a rate basis on roughly comparable sales.

In the third quarter we achieved 30 basis points of SG&A leverage. Our third quarter adjusted operating income was $57 million at an adjusted operating margin of 7.6%, an improvement of 240 basis points over last year. Below the line, net interest and other expenses increased over prior year driven by higher interest costs from last year’s refinancing of our senior notes. Our effective tax rate for the third quarter was 24% compared to 22% last year.

The higher rate this year was the result of a higher proportion of U.S.-based income, which included the tariff recovery. For the full year we’re forecasting an effective tax rate of approximately 23%. And add all this to the bottom line, third quarter adjusted earnings per share were $1.03, an increase of nearly 40% over last year’s 74 cents. On page six we have a summary of our third quarter performance by business segment. As I mentioned earlier, net sales were roughly comparable year over year in our U.S. Retail segment, down in U.S. Wholesale, and we posted growth in International. Of particular note, each of our business segments posted improvement in operating income and operating margin in the third quarter. Now our newly named Chief Commercial Officer, Allison Peterson, will provide some additional perspective on our retail and wholesale businesses beginning on page seven.

Allison Peterson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Thank you, Richard. I’m thrilled to be stepping into this expanded role of Chief Commercial Officer at such an exciting time for our business. The structure we announced today creates an important opportunity to build on our strong foundation, accelerate growth and strengthen our position as the market leader. Together we plan to advance our go-to-market strategy, deepen our connections with customers and consumers, and deliver elevated experiences at every touch point.

I believe in our ability to translate these opportunities into sustained growth, driving meaningful value for our business. Now turning to our U.S. Retail segment results, third quarter net sales were comparable to prior year while operating profit nearly doubled. Higher realized pricing and the benefits from our productivity initiatives, including store closures, drove a 250 basis point increase in our operating margin for the quarter. Comparable retail sales increased 0.4% over last year with AUR up low single digits. This built on last year’s 2% comp growth and mid-single-digit AUR increase.

For the quarter, units were down low single digits versus prior year. We saw continued growth in our baby and toddler business, with our most important baby segment delivering its eighth consecutive quarter of comp sales growth driven by destination categories like bodysuits and sleepwear. Our older kid business was slightly down versus last year. Performance across both stores and e-commerce was comparable to prior year. We saw continued strength in average transactions driven by growth in both AUR and UPTs.

While traffic continues to be strong on a two-year basis and we’re pleased with the returns of our paid media investments, traffic decelerated from Q2 due to uneven product acceptance of our older kids back-to-school seasonal assortment. Additionally, we saw a softening of traffic to our stores as the average consumer continued to face higher gas prices as well as other inflationary pressures, a trend that is in line with other reported retail traffic trends in the industry.

As Sharon mentioned, Q3 sales were expected to be weighted to the month of September, and that’s exactly how the quarter unfolded. In July, comps were largely on plan, reflecting typical seasonal clearance activity. August trends were weaker than planned as warmer weather impacted much of the U.S. Although key back-to-school categories like denim and uniform showed strength, our older kids seasonal assortment fell short of our expectations as consumers were being more strategic with their spending and delaying purchases closer to need, a trend we believe has continued into the fourth quarter.

While Labor Day was softer than expected, as reported across much of the retail industry, we quickly pivoted our marketing and merchandising efforts from focusing on the entire collection to wear-now key items that were resonating with the consumer and saw the back-to-school business rebound. Knowing September was a must-win month, we also positioned the Carter’s brand to resonate with new and existing families in a differentiated way. We took this important commercial timeframe to lean into our most iconic baby products and create relevancy with the next generation of families through elevated storytelling, updated merchandising, personalized experiences, and compelling value. September comps were up double digits and exceeded our plan.

During this timeframe we saw outsized growth in our baby segment where we hold the number one market share position and acquired new consumers to the brand, including Gen Z. Another driver of our strong September performance was the launch of our new branding campaign, which can be seen on page 8. For the first time in 25 years, we’ve reimagined the Carter’s brand. As you can see, the brand has a new look and feel, a new logo, and an elevated brand promise: Let every child’s light shine.

On page nine you can see some of the other ways we are bringing the new Carter’s branding to life. Our intention is to increase the appeal and relevance of this great brand to a new generation of parents while maintaining a nod to Carter’s rich 160-year heritage. While this is a multi-year strategy, we are encouraged with the early results as unaided awareness and consideration are increasing. Engagement is also meaningfully up across our website and social media platforms, signaling that the content is resonating with our target consumers.

We’ll continue to build on our momentum with new brand moments in Q4 as we move through the key holiday period. Turning to page 10, we have reimagined the way consumers shop sleepwear, launching our stellar Sleep Shop featuring our Not-So-Scary Monsters collection. We saw a big opportunity to gain share in the important sleepwear category and connect with a new generation of consumers through new products, updated merchandising, and enhanced marketing. This category, which historically generates a high lifetime value, delivered double-digit unit and dollar sales growth in the quarter.

We expanded the role Carter’s plays in sleep by moving beyond product and into bedtime routines as a way to keep Carter’s top of mind and be of service to our consumers. In Q3, we launched our free Bedtime Monster Scanner as part of the Carter’s app to help parents and kids quell the anxiety we know is associated with the bedtime routine. Not only did we see great adoption within the app, but it drove double-digit conversion improvements to users who engage with this feature.

Finding new ways to expand the role Carter’s can play in families’ lives continues to be a focus for us as we elevate our brands in the minds of our consumers. Turning to the performance of our U.S. Wholesale segment on page 11, third quarter net sales for our wholesale segment decreased 4% versus prior year, which was better than expected, driven by earlier demand for fall products from key customers. As many of you know, our wholesale business can vary quarter to quarter due to shipment timing, and that has certainly been the case this year. On a year-to-date basis through Q3, net sales are up approximately 2% over prior year.

For the third quarter, pricing increased over prior year due in part to higher product costs. However, this is more than offset by a decline in units. Sales of our exclusive brands decreased mid-single digits versus last year in the quarter, driven by earlier fall shipments that benefited our Q2 results. Year to date, exclusive brand sales are up high single digits over last year driven by Carter’s, Child of Mine, and Just One You. Wholesale operating profit for the third quarter increased 11% over prior year, and operating margin expanded 230 basis points.

From a margin standpoint, higher realized pricing, favorable customer mix, and productivity initiatives more than offset higher tariff and product costs. I’ll now turn the call back to Richard.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Allison. Turning to our international segment, our businesses outside the United States continued to perform well in the third quarter. Total reported international net sales increased 4% over last year, with growth in all parts of our international business: Canada, Mexico, and with our wholesale partners outside of North America. In Canada, the largest component of our international business, net sales increased 4% over prior year in the third quarter, driven by a 2% increase in retail comp sales and growth in the Canadian wholesale channel.

In Mexico, comparable sales increased 8% over the prior year, which was led by our stores. Our team in Mexico drove a nice lift in units per transaction through some creative new merchandising and promotional initiatives which resonated well with consumers in the quarter. Third quarter sales in Mexico also benefited from new store openings in the first nine months. We’ve opened six new stores in Mexico. We continue to see strong momentum in the performance of these new store investments in this market.

International operating income increased 28% over last year to $12 million, and segment operating margin increased 180 basis points to 10%. The improved profitability was driven by higher realized pricing, productivity savings, and FX benefits, partially offset by higher product costs. Turning to page 12, we have some balance sheet and cash flow highlights. Our balance sheet remains very strong. We ended the quarter with significant liquidity, including cash on hand and short-term investments of over $525 million. Net inventories at quarter end were $587 million, 11% lower than prior year. Our inventory position at quarter end was a bit lower than we had planned, in part due to some delayed delivery of product from port congestion and container availability issues.

To date, these disruptions have not had a meaningful impact on the business, but our supply chain team is monitoring the situation closely. Year to date, we’ve generated operating cash flow of more than $100 million compared to a use of cash of $136 million last year. Our improved cash flow was driven by tariff recoveries and improved working capital, including lower inventories. We’ve also had good performance on a free cash flow basis, generating $72 million versus negative free cash flow of nearly $180 million in the first nine months of last year.

On returning capital to shareholders, we paid $27 million in dividends through the first nine months of the year. Overall, we believe our strong balance sheet and free cash flow generation are differentiating and strategic advantages for Carter’s. Pages 13 and 14 summarize our adjusted P&L and segment results for the first three quarters. This information is provided for your reference. Year to date through the first three quarters, net sales increased 4% with growth in all three of our business segments.

Q3 year to date, adjusted operating profit increased 20% and adjusted EPS increased 7%. As you will recall, the difference between operating income growth and EPS growth reflected higher net interest expense from last year’s refinancing of our senior notes. Turning now to our outlook, beginning with the fourth quarter on page 16. Fourth quarter is obviously very important in our business, not just in retail but also in wholesale where we have significant shipments planned, including product for the upcoming spring 2027 selling season. November and December have historically been the largest months of the fourth quarter and of the entire year, for that matter, so we have some big weeks and months ahead of us.

Our teams are focused on finishing the year strong, continuing the progress we’ve achieved this year. As we said in our discussion of Q3 results, we have to acknowledge some slowing of demand relative to earlier in the year. Given the various pressures which our target consumers are facing, this isn’t overly surprising. As such, we’ve updated our outlook for net sales for the balance of the year, prudently, we believe, to reflect an expectation for more moderate demand than in our previous forecast.

Specifically, we’ve adjusted our assumption in our U.S. Retail business to reflect current trends in U.S. Wholesale. We’ve also moderated our forecast for replenishment demand to better align with trends in the business. Over the past several years, we’ve seen a compression in the Q4 shopping period as consumers shopped much closer to the holidays. This has resulted in a corresponding acceleration in our business in the last six weeks or so of the year.

It seems possible we may see a similar consumer behavior this year as well. It’s also worth a reminder that last year included an extra week which we’ve estimated contributed approximately $37 million in net sales. For the fourth quarter, we’re forecasting net sales in the range of $860 million to $880 million, or mid-single-digit lower sales than last year’s fourth quarter. Using the midpoint of the range, for adjusted operating income we’re forecasting a range of $74 million to $83 million, which compares to $89 million a year ago.

And for adjusted fourth quarter EPS, we’re forecasting a range of $1.37 to $1.55 versus $1.90 in Q4 last year. Our outlook for the full year is included on page 17. We’re now expecting full year net sales in the range of $2,910,000,000 to $2,930,000,000. At the midpoint of the range, this represents growth of approximately 1% versus prior year, or 2% growth excluding last year’s 53rd week. Over the past few quarters, we’ve been able to offset lower than planned demand and additional promotional cadence to manage through some underperforming products with the benefit of lower than planned tariff costs and prudent expense management.

As such, we’re maintaining our previous outlook for full year adjusted operating income growth in the low-single-digit to mid-single-digit range. We’re also maintaining our outlook for adjusted EPS to decline in the high single digits to low double digits. Again, as a reminder, the delta between our forecast for adjusted operating income growth and lower adjusted EPS is the higher interest costs related to last year’s debt refinancing. Even with the moderated outlook for the top line, achievement of our forecast would cap a good year for Carter’s, delivering growth in net sales despite the net closure of nearly 40 stores and last year’s 53rd week, and posting meaningful improvement in operating profit. As also summarized here on page 17, we expect to have a good year on cash flow, with an outlook for operating cash flow in the range of $240 million to $250 million, reflecting the net tariff recovery and favorable movements in working capital as we finish the year.

Risks we’re monitoring include consumer sentiment and spending, given the ongoing pressures of persistent inflation, including the price of gas. We’ve also seen some impact on demand in past election cycles, including related inflation and the cost of media, so the upcoming midterms are on our radar. Given geopolitical uncertainty around the world, it’s possible there may be some additional disruption to the supply chain and the delivery of product.

And finally, we’ll be carefully monitoring and reacting to the overall promotional intensity of the market, particularly around the holidays. With these remarks, we’re ready to take your questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question at this time, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, simply press star 11 again. As a reminder, in the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the queue. Now, first question coming from the line of Jay Sole with UBS.

Jay Sole (Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much, Sharon. As you’ve had a chance to really dig into the business over the last quarter, can you maybe just talk about how you feel about the interplay between the wholesale channel for Carter’s and the U.S. Retail channel? Is there one channel you need to prioritize, and how do you think you’re going to—what’s the best way, do you think, you have to improve the traffic into the U.S. Retail stores? Thank you.

Allison Peterson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Well, first, thank you for that, because I think that it’s important to focus on not just strategy, but then how do you execute that strategy? Right. It’s great to have all this information, but what are we doing with it? How are we executing? How are we pushing it across the organization to find continued value and new opportunities? Yes, sleep is one of those. As I noted, it was proprietary research that provided the insights that moms just find the whole how you buy for sleep confusing.

And we’re like, wow. First of all, sleep, it stretches across all the ages. It has a very high lifetime value connection. And if we solve whatever might be the challenge for the parents with that type of thing where you’re engaged in an experience, they’re generally going to stick with you. Right. So you go from one-child household to a multi-child household. So sleep was a really great place for us to start. And that solution that we’ve come up with, of course we’ve also spoken to our key customers about this. You can actually see that solution being pushed out across numerous retail outlets where we’ve started and tested and proven the concept in our own stores. So that’s a really important model to just keep in the back of your mind as we move forward. Consumer insights driven into broader consumer touch points.

That’s number one. Number two, as I mentioned at the tail end of my script today and had spoken to some of you guys at the most recent Goldman conference, we’re looking at the purposeful expansion of the addressable market across three different vectors. That first vector is aging up the consumer. And I know you’ve heard this over and over again, but we have a lot more data now and a lot more insights about how to do that in a meaningful way. Not just from design and development, but all the way through how our stores look and how engaging those stores are for a. And when I say an older consumer, I’m talking about a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old, right? So don’t get too old on me. But that type of consumer, as well as aging up, excuse me, pushing up the socioeconomic strata, which we’ve been able to prove our ability to do so with our sub-brand Little Planet. So while early, it’s showing us that that consumer is absolutely willing to be engaged and involved in a sub-brand of Carter’s for a much more elevated look, feel, and approach with a bigger promise that’s linked to sort of the environmental concepts of some of the things that that particular consumer is looking for today.

And then finally on the third vector is the expansion into more of an international approach. We’re already a global brand. We have just not really had a consistent strategy on how we’re rolling out across the globe. And we have a lot of good touch points and a lot of good success in some of the markets that we’re in. So we are looking at an asset-light approach to a very systematic execution as we look toward that. And in fact, one of the reasons we’ve created this role, beyond pulling together all of our consumer insights, which will drive this across many of our categories and consumers, the international team will report into the Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer as we work toward a strategic approach to evolving in that area.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question in queue, coming from the line of Kelly Krager with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Kelly Krager (Analyst)

Hi. Thank you for taking our question. I just want to dig into the U.S. Wholesale business a little further. You’re guiding it down quite meaningfully versus prior expectations in the fourth quarter. So, you know, in last quarter you sounded very positive on the retailer reception of your product and pricing. So just curious if you could dig into what’s really changed there and provide us with any sort of color on how you are seeing order books shaping up for U.S. wholesale into next year.

And then secondly on pricing, obviously you’ve taken a lot of price this year. Just curious what you’re thinking on the pricing dynamics into next year given some of the cost headwinds we’re anticipating. Thanks.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

Hi Kelly. I’ll start, and my colleagues may want to add some thoughts. As it relates to the revision in revenue outlook, I would say the majority of that relates more to the U.S. Retail business than it does to wholesale. We had revised wholesale down in our previous forecast. I think we’ve further refined our outlook for replenishment demand, which is a component, obviously, of the wholesale revenue stream. So the more significant component would be U.S. Retail as opposed to wholesale.

So wholesale, on balance, there’s lots of moving pieces. As Allison said in her remarks, and so we had some volume that had been previously planned for the fourth quarter that moved forward and benefited Q3. That happens all the time in this business. I think if you look at our revised forecast, it implies kind of flattish to down slightly for the full-year segment results for wholesale. So I think we’re going to cap a good year in wholesale. Overall we had good demand for the order book for spring 2027.

The challenge with that is not all that comes next season. So we actually have more of that going in the fourth quarter. Spring pre-ships are up about 30% in the fourth quarter. That will benefit the fourth quarter versus early next year. We haven’t done sell-ins yet for fall. That will take place as we exit the year here. So on our next call we’ll probably have better line of sight to that.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question in queue, coming from the line of Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Ike Boruchow (Analyst)

Hey guys, good morning. Was hoping you could talk about AUR and gross margins, specifically for the fourth quarter, what your expectation is and how you kind of see the trajectory of AUR into next year.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

Sure. Again, I’ll start out there. So we had a nice lift in AUR in the third quarter. I think that’s a testament to how the retail team came together and developed that compelling late-September promotional drive, which was accretive overall to margins and profitability. So we do have pricing planned up, I’d say low single digit, in the U.S. retail business in fourth quarter as well. A little less than perhaps what we achieved in Q3, but Q4 is naturally a bit more of a promotional period than Q3 is.

So sequentially you lose a little bit of that. So still planning higher prices. I think we’ve been able to maintain those reasonably well. I think we’ve sold in, at this point, spring 2027, so that pricing is kind of known at this point. We have yet, as I mentioned, to sell in the fall assortment for the second half of the year. So more to come on that. And I’d like Allison to add some color to this. But as we noted in the remarks, we recognized and actually shared in the last call that September had that soft start in Labor Day, which apparently, from some of our research, was reflected in a lot of different sectors of the marketplace. But I was really proud to see the team double down on how to approach September and come back with a winning strategy to end up with a double-digit comp in September that clearly positively impacted the quarter overall.

And it was a very scalpelled approach to the way they attacked this opportunity, and ultimately that too was protective of the AUR being positive for the quarter.

Allison Peterson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah, absolutely. I think the team has done an excellent job surgically optimizing price across the assortment to deliver a low single-digit AUR increase in the quarter, and that was on top of a mid single-digit AUR increase last year. So the teams are definitely taking price where they can, and that is even with us considering some of the product headwinds that we talked about. So we are really seeing the teams lean in in a very strong way in taking price and realizing price in our destination categories, in our most important baby business, in our sleep business.

And we’re really seeing the benefits of that flow through to our gross margin, as Richard mentioned.

Ike Boruchow (Analyst)

Got it. And as a follow up on the gross margins, can you just quantify what was the lower tariff rate benefit to gross margin in the third quarter and what kind of a benefit do you have baked in on the fourth quarter? Just so we can kind of separate the core versus the tariff rate noise.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

I would say in the third quarter gross margin expanded by about 200 basis points. About half of that expansion had to do with just higher mix of the gross margin-rich U.S. retail business. So we had a higher proportion of U.S. retail sales. The balance would be improved pricing. Largely, tariffs were not as meaningful of a year-over-year driver in the third quarter. We get more of a benefit in fourth quarter from tariffs. From memory it’s 10 or 11 million dollars of lowered gross tariff burden in the fourth quarter, because last year we were selling through product that we had imported under the much higher IEBA tariff schemes.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question in the queue, coming from the line of Jim Cartier. Your line is now open.

Jim Cartier (Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I want to talk about the marketing spend. How does this year’s marketing spend compare to years past? Given the strong response that you’ve seen to the initial brand relaunch, is there an opportunity in the near term to lean into marketing in a bigger way to drive the business? And then where do you see kind of total marketing spend going over time?

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

Well, this has clearly been an area of investment for us, Jim, and one that we’re really pleased. We felt like the benchmarking that we had done indicated that we under-indexed other good branded companies in terms of what we spend on marketing overall. So we’re spending about $20 million more on demand creation this year versus a year ago, and that’s across a range of areas. But paid media in particular has proven to be a very good area for investment.

One of the things I like about our colleagues in marketing, they’re very rigorous in measuring the return on that investment. We do believe it’s driving traffic for us. We’ll continue to do that. And I don’t think we’re at the point of inefficiency yet with spending. So we’re kind of stepping our way into more spending over time.

Sharon Price John (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah. I would also add that our marketing investment is intentionally balanced across really two priorities, which is delivering results today while investing in the long-term relevance of our brands. And you’ll see that show up in the work we’re doing around reimagining the brands. And that is a strategy that we expect to pay off over a longer-term horizon. We do continue to see, as Richard mentioned, marketing contribution to retail sales grow year over year, and our increased spend is proving effective and efficient.

And although we are starting to feel, as the team mentioned, more pressure on our efficiency due to rising media costs, we’re very pleased with the efficiencies we’re seeing and the effectiveness we’re seeing in terms of marketing’s contribution to our total business. Yeah. And I would want to note that the change of the Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Brand Officer is not just in name. It’s a very important concept of how we feel we can drive value across the organization with our iconic brands. And that combination of upper-funnel marketing with a branded engagement to push us up in top-of-mind awareness and to drive that affinity, combined with the scaffold approach to promotions and occasionally, you know, marking down versus marketing in its most specific approach, is a very dynamic way to drive business over time.

And I would suggest that we would hope to see much more of that as we move forward, particularly with the positive impact of this branded initiative that we’ve launched. So while our marketing as a percent of sales, as Richard mentioned, has been comparatively low and, frankly, still is comparatively low to like companies, we will likely, as long as that ROI maintains some consistency, see a greater expense in marketing. But of course that’s with the objective to drive profitable sales.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Cooper with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

John Cooper (Analyst)

Hey, good morning everybody. Thank you for the question. Just a quick bookkeeping to start. If you could give us the quarter-to-date comp, please.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

It’s down, John. We’re actually going to move away from providing the inter-quarter data point. We had a lot of lessons in this last quarter about how that can move around as you get to the higher-volume periods. And so we are running down month to date. But the bigger volume periods, November and December, are still ahead of us. So we’re focused on delivering those.

John Cooper (Analyst)

Okay, totally. Thank you. And then if we could just talk about SG&A a bit and maybe—actually let’s start with gross margin. If you could give us a picture of what you’re expecting in terms of freight and cotton and how the tariff lapse should influence margins next year.

Richard Westenberger (Chief Financial Officer)

Yes. So I’ll start near-term in gross margin for the fourth quarter. We are expecting expansion again year over year in Q4, not to the same extent that we saw in Q3. You don’t have quite the same mix benefit. You do get a bit more of a tariff benefit in Q4. As I just mentioned, cotton is clearly up in the marketplace. It’s up about 20%. Just a reminder, we don’t buy raw cotton. We buy finished goods. And so our vendors buy cotton on our behalf. They’re buying all across the time continuum on our behalf.

So the more expensive cotton is really more an issue for our second half product costing in 2027. At this point, we’ve costed our assortments for the first part of next year. So I don’t expect cotton itself as a huge inflationary pressure. I do think we’re seeing other sources of inflation in transportation costs. With the cost of oil being what it is this year, we’re probably incurring another four or five million dollars of incremental freight surcharges just from our carriers because of the price of oil. So too early to probably be more specific on 2027. I do think that we’re seeing a trend towards inflation in our product input costs—probably more a second-half phenomenon. And then tariffs, to your question, I think that’s anybody’s guess.

I don’t think we’re out of the woods as it relates to tariffs. The administration clearly has a preference for this as a policy matter. I think the more recent tariffs have obviously been much more benign than the IPA-level tariffs. But my personal opinion is we’re not out of the woods as it relates to potential further changes there. So we’re mindful of what may happen.

OPERATOR

Thank you. And our last questioner will come from the line of Tom Naked with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Tom Naked (Analyst)

Hey, good morning everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I want to ask about the leadership changes and obviously a lot of folks moving into new roles and things like that. Sharon, can you give us any sort of timeline as to how long it will take for the new leadership structure to really impact the business and to kind of get operating at the level that you’re hoping to see?

Sharon Price John (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, thanks for that. And, well, you know, we do have a lot of the key executives already in place. It’s just an elevation and expansion of certain roles. So this is a really concerted approach to some consistency in key seats while adding newness in other areas, inclusive of a Chief Product Officer, which, as I noted, had been vacant. And the time period of that vacancy has been since August of last year, not August of this year, August of 2025.

So when you think about the kind of impact of someone coming to us from such an iconic company like H&M, who’s managed across multiple areas of apparel, including kids, of course, that could have quite a strong impact on the way we think about the business and in regards to many of the strategic initiatives that I’ve mentioned, particularly expansion of the addressable market. So we expect her to be able to start in January-ish, after the first of the year.

We’ll see. And the other opportunity is with the Chief Operations Officer, which we will be searching for. So that’s really hard to say, but I’m quite hopeful that a company like Carter’s, with a Fortune 1000 organization, with 160 years of history and iconic brands, and a situation where we have so much opportunity ahead of us, I certainly hope that that will attract the top talent as I have in other areas. So it will come in phases, to be truthful. In some cases, the work that will be done of creating more synergy across the organization and pulling up consumer insights and brand earlier into the process of the development of our products and driving insights across the entire organization all the way to the execution of the stores—the strategic insights of that will happen fairly rapidly, I would assume, but the ongoing execution of that will hit the market in different phases as we move forward.

Even with that, note that we have already, in the first four months, launched an entirely new brand look, feel, and logo for Carter’s, which we’ve already driven 1.6 billion impressions and a very positive response from the consumer. So some things can go fast and some things might take a minute.

Tom Naked (Analyst)

All right, very helpful. And if I could squeeze one in before the call ends here, there was a comment about monitoring and reacting to the promotions in the marketplace. Have you seen anything from the competitors out there that gives you any concern heading into the holidays?

Allison Peterson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Thank you for the question. We saw competitors raise prices on fall products until Labor Day, when they pivoted to deeper discounts and increased their promotionality for the month, kind of given what Sharon spoke to, which is a challenging Labor Day period, which we perceive happened across the market coming out of September. We have seen competitors pull back on promotions, but we are absolutely anticipating the promotional environment will intensify with heavy discounting in November and December, as many brands and retailers are talking about taking their tariff relief and potentially repurposing it back into price.

So we have considered and contemplated a more aggressive promotional environment in our forecast.

Tom Naked (Analyst)

Thank you.

Sharon Price John (Chief Executive Officer)

And that being said, just recall the last two months of the year are the most important months. We are completely focused on driving profitable sales through the end of the quarter, and we are constantly monitoring the competitive environment and the consumer. But as Richard noted earlier, this compressed timeline as we approach holidays is something to just keep in mind as we complete 2026 with an expectation of positive results across all of the key metrics. And with that, we’d like to thank you very much for joining us today and look forward to updating you on our progress in the next call.

OPERATOR

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That’s our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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