I'm Oliver Chen, TD Cowen's Retail and Luxury Analyst, and we have Ciaran Long here, who's the CEO of a.k.a. Brands, who I've known for over a decade. a.k.a. Brands, 50% Princess Polly, Petal & Pup, and Culture Kings is about 30%. It's focused on trend-driven apparel and a fast-to-market operating model. Ciaran, thanks. Thanks, Oliver. Thanks for being here. You've done a lot of work over the past three years, inventory reset, sourcing, and rebuilding. The plan is to bring EBITDA up to the $30 million-$32 million versus $19 million last year. What's happening? Is this an inflection point? Yeah, we certainly feel 2026 is an inflection point for us. I think, you look, we've done a huge amount of work across the group, and across the brands. I would say taking these four brands that were predominantly direct to consumer and taking them now into other channels. Princess Polly's now up to 13 stores, and plans, a lease is signed for another eight stores. We've also taken Petal & Pup and Princess Polly into Nordstrom. Petal is now in Von Maur and expanding in Dillard's as well. Culture Kings continue to very much reset that brand now, moved it on to that test and repeat model, and are looking to really get after the expansion of that. What's happening with stores relative to digital, and why is your margin expanding so much? Yeah, I think, really for us on the margin side, look, I think it's been great. We've been working for a while now to move the men's business onto that test and repeat model. Yeah. That test and repeat model for us is just such a strong model where you're introducing new styles to your consumers every week. Based on the success of that style, you buy back into it, or you let it run out. Certainly, leads to great margins, allows you to be very differentiated from a marketing perspective, and really on-trend for the customer. Yeah. It's taken us some time to get the men's business there. Look, we've done a huge amount of work over the last couple of years to do that, and I think, we certainly saw kind of from a Q4 perspective, the customer really reacting positively to the new product we were bringing in on the men's side. In Q1, we saw the step-up in gross margin. For the group, we were up about 180 basis points year-over-year, and I would say, predominantly all of that coming from the men's business. I'd say really kind of setting us up to now have a good year into 2026. How are you set apart with test and repeat? What are the practices that make you better than others? Also, one of the strategies was the dual hemisphere strategy. Sure. Is that still true today? Yeah. Explain it to everybody as well. Yeah. Three of the four brands we have started in Australia, and we brought them and are scaling them here in the U.S. Obviously, you get that kind of dual season, right? Where it's winter here, it's summer down there. For us, as we launch new styles down there for their summer, you get a really good perspective on what sell-through, how the customer's reacting to that, which gives you more confidence to buy into those styles from a U.S. perspective and really get behind them then for spring/summer in the U.S. That dual hemisphere is certainly an advantage for us. For us, that model of test, repeat, and clear out. Like I said, for Polly, they'll introduce about 100 new styles every week, right, about 150 units deep into each one of those styles. We'll look at a number of different metrics across the first day, second, first week of sales, which will help them determine if they need to buy back and chase back into those styles. For us, ensuring that we can chase in, we've very short production windows, and we work very closely with vendors that can work in our model, right? That have the quality we need, the price point we need, but also just very short production times. That just allows us to be, for that consumer that we talk to, just very much be on-trend for them and make sure we're on top of that trend. You are a family of brands, when you think about each of your brands, perhaps you could give us a few tidbits on what we should know are focus areas for each of your major brands. Yeah. Four very different brands today. The largest brand we have is Princess Polly, about 50% of the group focused on that, probably 15 to 25-year-old consumer in the women's space. Was predominantly a direct-to-consumer, well, probably exclusively a direct-to-consumer brand. We opened their first store in, I think, September 2023. We're now up to 13 stores in the U.S. for them, and we opened their first store in Australia, where they started in December 2022. Just, I would say, having great success across the stores. They are kind of ahead of our expectations from a payback perspective, we'll continue to lean in there. Petal & Pup brand- Who's the main competition for Polly? I think there's obviously a lot of people competing for that space. Yeah. From that consumer, we obviously hear about, like, they enjoy Aritzia. Urban, Aerie, Edikted. There's just a lot of people that they're competing with. On the other women's brand, Petal & Pup, more focused on that 25 to 40-year-old consumer, onto a different stage of life. I would say Petal focuses on dressing them for all occasions. They went into Nordstrom in November or sorry, March 2024 from a dot com perspective, so really good success there. By March 2025, they were in all Nordstrom doors, in that trend section. If you go in there, you'd see a really strong presence from the Petal & Pup brand. Really happy with the success we've seen there. Then on the men's side, we've two brands, Culture Kings and mnml. Culture Kings really focuses on that retailtainment, is what I would call it, that kind of mix of music, sports, fashion, and differentiating themselves there. They have some third-party brands that they sell. New Era, ASICS, Nike, people like that. A lot of the product that they sell for those third-party brands is exclusive to Culture Kings. You won't find it elsewhere. About 50% of their business is brands that they've developed themselves. Carhartt, Saint Morta, brands like that. We opened their first store in Vegas, in the U.S., and now looking kind of for the second and third. What's changed most at Culture Kings? You spoke about profitability too, but what's ahead and long-term potential here? Yeah, I think, look, they have super potential. I think the store we have in Vegas really shows what they can do. It's just extremely differentiated, and I would say kind of leaning into that retailtainment, where, look, they have a lot of their product, like I said, is exclusive to them. Also what they do from a marketing activations, leveraging that store is just quite incredible, right? They had a big event there recently for their Loiter brand with WWE, and kind of taking that moment in the store. It's probably 1,000 people in the store. Taking that content, amplifying that online, and really allowing the brand to stand out from other people in the space. They just launched yesterday a Carhartt Coca-Cola collection. Yeah Kind of for World Cup. Yeah. Leaning into kind of the legacy of Coca-Cola and what they've done at prior soccer events. Their ability to develop, leverage their own portfolio of brands, develop products specific to a particular cultural moment going on, I think is just unrivaled out there, and certainly gives us confidence that there's a lot of runway ahead for the Culture Kings brand. How do you balance your capital allocation across different children you have? Yeah. We've no favorites, but we do have favorites kind of thing. I think we're very fortunate now that the brands, I would say, as we've kind of now reset Culture Kings and gotten them onto that test and repeat model. W e have much more confidence of leaning into the store opportunity that we have with them and allocating capital behind that brand. Like I mentioned, we've 13 stores open for Princess Polly now, eight more leases signed. We're going to continue to lean into that opportunity. I think I could certainly see 100 stores for Princess Polly in the U.S., also feel that there's the same opportunity at Culture Kings. What's keeping you back in terms of balancing growth and capital in terms of the store opportunity? I think we had a lot going on last year in 2025. Yeah. I think, look, for us, all of our sourcing was out of China when the tariffs were extremely high there. We worked very hard, and look, I think the team did a phenomenal job last year to transition us to a much more balanced supply chain. Yeah. One that can work in our model. I think with all of that, we slowed down the pacing of new signings for stores when the tariffs were extremely high. I think, look, that's behind us now. As we announced in our Q1 earnings that we're owed back about $26 million of tariff refunds. We've already gotten $6 million of that. I think that will significantly as well kind of strengthen our balance sheet, and just allow us more runway to go after the opportunities we have with these stores. You also noted some consumer pressure and softness in March and April. What's going on with your core consumer today? What trends are you seeing, and how might you rate the consumer health on a scale of one to 10? We noticed some softness in that kind of, I would say, late March into kind of April a little bit. We saw it come back in May. I think for those big moments, and certainly the grad season for Princess Polly is a big one, as is prom. Both of those were best that they have seen at Princess Polly. I think certainly feeling that the customer is there for the events that are going on for them. I would say from a U.S. perspective, certainly feel that the customer is just amazingly resilient as always, right? They'll get some pressure, but I think they are getting back to their normal run of things very quickly. I think we feel good about the guidance that we've out there for Q2 and for the year. Why has the U.S. consumer been so resilient? I think from what we see, the U.S. consumer just gets on with it, right? I think they certainly, when we saw gas prices go up rapidly, we certainly felt that the consumer pulled back a little bit. Yeah. I would say just seems to get used to the new norm quicker than we see in other regions. Yeah Just gets on with it. We've seen more pressure at low and middle with K-shaped consumer and economy. How does that manifest in your business, or it doesn't? Maybe it doesn't. I think, look, we all feel it a little bit. Yeah. I think what we felt and what we kind of talked about, that the consumer is there, they're coming. There's probably that last little item they're not dropping in the basket all of the times, and more kind of on the more discretionary side of things than anything else. What do you think is least understood about a.k.a. Brands? I think it continues to be the strength of that test and repeat model. Yeah. Look, I think a little bit the work we've had to do where we've had Princess Polly and Petal & Pup on that model kind of from day one. It's taken us time to transition Culture Kings there fully. The men's business, I think now that they're there. Look, I think that gross margin that we did in Q1 was 59%. It's the highest gross margin we've done since being public. I think that's really the first view that we've given people of, look, real change has happened here. Yeah. We've structurally improved the business, and with the kind of the strength of the brands and that kind of gross margin kicking in again. Yeah I think we can start really differentiating ourselves. Where are we now with this year relative to your long-term guidance? I think, look, this year, that $30 million, $32 million, kind of mid-single digits from an EBITDA perspective, I think it's the start of, I would say, us showing what we can really do with this model. We certainly feel that kind of from a long-term perspective, there's the ability to be double digit from an EBITDA perspective. I think that will come as we continue to increase the overall addressable market for the brand as we're doing. Continue to lean into new channel opportunities and leveraging that model. Mm-hmm. Thank you. It'd be great for you to update us on the balance sheet. Yeah. We made a lot of progress, I would say, kind of in bringing down, firstly, kind of improving the overall composition of the inventory and the quality of that. Year-over-year, at the end of March, our inventory was down about 28%. It's down over $40 million over the last three years, so just huge progress there. We also continue to pay down our debt. As I mentioned with this tariff refund of nearly $26 million that we're due back, I think that will also continue to improve our overall leverage and s trengthen our balance sheet. On margins and inventory, what should we think about in terms of inventory growth relative to sales, and also, what's happening now with merchandise margins and markdowns? Yeah, I think, look, for us, with that test and repeat model that we have and p hilosophically, we always want our inventory growth to be lower than our sales growth. Look, we've done that now for a number of years and would expect to continue to do that. We do think there'll be some modest growth from an inventory dollar perspective as we go through the year. Yeah. Look, that's really coming from leaning into new channels and new stores that we'll obviously kind of bring on some inventory from that but really focused on that kind of core principle of inventory growing at less than sales. From a margin markdown perspective, as I mentioned, 59% in Q1, kind of highest we've done. We certainly feel that the inventory's in a really good position, and with us now fully on that test and repeat model, that we can continue to grow margins while growing all of the brands. One of our big themes at the conference is adaptive retail and optimization, and that's a centerpiece of artificial intelligence. What are you seeing in terms of the most tangible benefits today, and how material can this be? Yeah, I think certainly early days, and I think we're really excited by what we're seeing. I think, look, as you mentioned, our family of brands, right? We're fortunate that all of the data for all of our brands we've brought together, we've normalized. With that, we can look across all of our brands in the portfolio as we're analyzing stuff. I think with our ability now to kind of, with that data, leverage AI, there's a lot of insights coming from it on how we can continue to be there more and more for customers, with great product, on point from a price perspective. Just continue to kind of lean into that and lean into the marketing opportunities that are out there. Look, we feel it's very early days. We've, I would say, just kind of opened it up to the full team for everybody to engage in it. I think we're seeing really interesting approaches that are different across merchandising, across marketing, across operations for how they're engaging with AI and with the data. I think, look, we're early days, but we're very bullish on what it can do. What's happening with TikTok and creator-led marketing? It's been a core competency of your company, too. Yeah, I think that we've certainly leaned in for us from a kind of a content and marketing perspective and being different from day one. Princess Polly very much leaned into influencer marketing, and I would say kind of those small influencers from day one, and it's kind of core to how they went to market. Over the last couple of years, we've certainly leaned more and more into TikTok. Yeah. Princess Polly at this stage is doing about 100 hours a week of live content on TikTok. Yeah. I think it's interesting what we're seeing there. I would say at this stage, really good from a reach perspective, right? We see where the commerce on a TikTok LIVE mightn't be kind of huge at the moment. We also see that as the TikTok LIVE is going on, it's having impact on a particular SKU velocity on our own site. You can absolutely track that there's a benefit there. Also leaning into TikTok Shop and just, I would say, building more and more of that creator community on that platform, talking about the brands, and then amplifying it on TikTok, and just other areas as well. Another interesting part of the story is international and global, in the U.K. distribution center. What percentage is non-U.S., and what's happening with that DC driving better conversion, and what should we think about as you scale global? Yeah, look, I would say international is a huge opportunity for us. As we mentioned, right, we started with these brands in Australia, now bringing them and scaling them in the U.S. We see demand for the brands, outside of Australia and the U.S. We've been servicing that demand out of a distribution center in the L.A. region. As you can imagine, long lead times, difficult for cart and checkout, things like that. And putting product now in the U.K., we did that for the Princess Polly brand at the end of March. Really, since doing that, we've just continued to see conversion improvements, repeat rate improvements, and look, super year-over-year growth in sales, but also week-over-week growth continuing. I think, look, it gives us a really good view that, the customer's there, they want that value proposition of wearing it on the weekend, and so kind of speed of delivery is important. Yeah. We put Princess Polly in there first. We'll follow with the other brands. I also feel that it gives us a good view on following that U.S. model of putting our product in front of customers wherever they are. We'll do that in the U.K., and we'll do that internationally. Feel there's a lot of opportunity for us. Thank you. I'll open it up now for questions. Question in the back. I actually have two questions. Kind of going back to the point about TikTok, what are your thoughts on, like, the role of kind of almost a store employee as almost a content creator and influencer? It's a conversation we're having here at this table about how the employees have been discovered and sellers gone, like, viral, typically out of office people and these employees gone viral, kind of creates more buzz around the brand. Ulta's kind of doing this with a kind of affiliates program where the employees can become content creators. How do you see those two things kind of intersecting? Yeah, I'll repeat the question: TikTok and content creators and TikTok and stakeholders, the role. It's been super interesting, right, as we've, as we started doing the live events with TikTok, right, and putting our own employees in front of the camera. We first started doing it at Princess Polly, there was obviously, I would say, a little bit of trepidation from the team, and it was kind of more of the home office team of kind of doing it. We have seen some of them go viral and just, like, fantastic response. I would say the engagement that they were getting from our customers from the audience that they're talking to is just super for them to see it. There's more and more of the team now interested in doing it. Right? I would say Polly kind of led there. We've also seen the same though across the other brands. I would say probably Culture Kings next up on just having their employees really engaging with their customers. To date, it's been more of the team kind of in what we would call kind of home office doing it rather than stores. I think we're trying to figure out how do we do some of those events in the stores and get those team members talking on live in those events. Look, for us, I think in all of our marketing life, being authentic to the consumer that we're talking to is just super important to us, and we spend a lot of time thinking about that. We know that those employees that we have in the stores are really authentic, so yeah, we're certainly going to kind of figure that out and lean into that as an opportunity. Other questions? On that question, what will be the hardest part of engaging in that in terms of TikTok and others? I think it'll just be helping with the execution on how do we help those store employees talk about the product. I think as you evolve, as you kind of put content on TikTok and evolve the content there, you do need to be conscious of, what are you talking about? What's the hook? How quickly does the hook come in? How do you talk about the product? We've learned a lot as we've kind of been engaging on TikTok over the last kind of 18 months, couple of years, I think just helping people with that. On your earlier comments, you've expanded beyond direct-to-consumer into several channels, retail, wholesale, and marketplaces. What's the optimal channel mix longer term? What have you learned from marketplaces as well? Yeah. All of our brands really just started with direct-to-consumer, and then we started first bringing them into marketplace and then stores. I think, look, we very much focus on let's put our product in front of our customers wherever they are. If that's just not I would say from a distribution perspective, also a marketing perspective is how we think about that. I think what's been interesting to us is the, as we put it on marketplace, and I would say nordstrom.com probably a great example, of just how positive the response there was. I would say one of the things that I suppose surprise might be too strong a word, but certainly got our attention, was the strength of kind of the old catalog that we had. Product that I would say kind of had– Classics, perhaps. Classics or kind of m atured for our customers that we were serving on our own direct-to-consumer site. Suddenly, you put them on some other marketplace to new customers, and they become bestsellers. Your ability to kind of keep leaning into, for us, right, that repeat product. That's the magic of the model, right? Is finding more and more of those cohorts of products that you can continue to lean into. That was certainly really interesting for us, and I would say gives you more and more confidence to lean into the right marketplaces. Right? For us, that's ones that we feel are brand-enhancing, we feel our customers are there, and have the right economics. Yeah. Does it make sense to have these brands under one platform, and/or why? Look, I think there's a huge amount that we can help these brands with, right? Yeah. They're kind of, certainly They're very early in their growth. I think there's expertise that we as a group can bring to these brands. Whether it's from a back office, from a technical perspective, from a sourcing perspective, distribution perspective, that brands of these size kind of on their own would struggle a little bit to get. I think, look, our model is we want to find these differentiated newer brands and help them scale, and help them scale in a very rapid and profitable way. I think we've got four great brands today that we're very focused on, but there's certainly an opportunity for us to start again looking at acquisition opportunities and bring more brands into the portfolio. What makes sense in terms of M&A and what you're contemplating that's most synergistic? I think, look, very focused on the four brands we have today, but certainly look at M&A. I think we have a pretty high bar now to who gets to join the group. Yeah. I think some aspects of it that the brands need to be open to working in that model of test and repeat. That's very much core to what we do. Also open to working in a very collaborative environment, right? All of our brands, we all share information across the group. Everybody's learning from everybody else. We want that kind of an environment where we can try things at one brand. If it works, roll it across everybody, and if it doesn't work, we're just making a mistake in one place and not everywhere. What have been your toughest problems? Gosh. I think, look, there's obviously been a lot go on from a macro perspective. Yeah. I think of when you're our size and what we're trying to do, and scale these brands very early in their life, it's certainly been challenging. Yeah. I think, look, the fact that we were able to, even last year, right, transform our supply chain while growing the brands, gross margins being up, and continuing to execute on that strategy of putting our brands in front of more customers, opening more stores. No matter the macro, the resilience we've built at these brands. Yeah The strength of the operating model is there, and we're really looking forward to kind of the next chapters. Last question, semi-related, but if we only remember a couple of things from this presentation, what should they be? I think, look, the four great brands here that customers are reacting to really, really positively. We're very early on in the growth opportunity that we have here in the U.S., internationally. Q1, we hit our highest gross margin ever. Inventory's in a great spot. 2026 is going to be a great year for us. Yeah. Well, Ciaran, you have cool proof points and really unique portfolio, also lots of creative avenues for growth. Thanks for your time. Thanks, Oliver.