Earnings Labs

Carter's, Inc. (CRI)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Mon, Oct 27, 2025

$37.59

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Carter's Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call. On the call are Douglas Palladini, Chief Executive Officer and President, Richard Westenberger, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, and Sean McHugh, Treasurer. Please note that today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. McHugh.

Sean McHugh

Management

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We issued our third quarter 2025 earnings release earlier today. The release and 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 and 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 Doug.

Douglas Palladini

Management

Thank you, Sean, and good morning, everyone. Now almost seven months into my role as Carter's CEO, our business transformation has accelerated as core tenets of new strategies take hold. Consumer response to new products and stories is strong and engagement levels are rising as a result, most notably among young Gen Z families with whom we must win. That said, our current results do not represent my ambition for Carter's nor where I believe we can be. There remains meaningful work to be done to eliminate costs, enhance productivity, excise non-value-add complexity, and exhibit consistent growth in revenue and profitability. I'll share some of what we're doing against these objectives shortly. But first, let's get an update on Q3 results from Richard.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Thank you, Doug. Good morning, everyone. I'll cover our third quarter performance and then a bit later I'll provide some thoughts on our outlook for the business over the balance of this year and into 2026. My comments this morning will track along with the presentation materials posted to the Investor Relations portion of our website. Beginning on Page two, we have our GAAP basis P&L for the third quarter. On third quarter net sales of $758 million, our reported operating income was $29 million and reported earnings per share were $0.32 compared to reported EPS of $1.62 last year. On Page three, we have our GAAP basis P&L for the first nine months of the year. On year-to-date sales of nearly $2 billion, our reported operating income was $59 million which represented a 3% operating margin. And year-to-date earnings per share were $0.75. Our third quarter and year-to-date results included a number of significant one-time charges, which we've summarized on Page four. These charges have been treated as adjustments to our reported results. In the third quarter, we completed the termination of our legacy Oshkosh B'gosh pension plan and recorded a non-cash after-tax charge of approximately $7 million. This final charge is in line with the amount we previously disclosed on our second quarter earnings call. We also terminated our deferred compensation plan in the third quarter and as a result recorded a one-time incremental tax charge of approximately $800,000. Finally, our third quarter reported results included a charge related to organizational restructuring of approximately $6 million for severance and other employee separation benefits. We expect to record an additional charge of up to $5 million in the fourth quarter related to this organizational restructuring. These charges largely represent cash severance, which we expect to pay to affected employees…

Douglas Palladini

Management

Thank you, Richard. I'm encouraged by several aspects of our third quarter performance. As we continue to fuel progress and momentum across our brands, I see more reasons than ever to believe we are returning to long-term sustainable and profitable growth. While we are studying our business in 2025, there's still meaningful work to do for Carter's to unlock its full potential in terms of exceeding both consumer and shareholder expectations. We are actively managing Carter's in a highly uncertain world and marketplace, particularly as it relates to tariffs. We look forward to sharing more of our long-range plan in 2026, but closer in, we're focused on what we think is possible over the near term based on what we can control. To manage tariff impact, we've taken two primary actions. First, we're mitigating what we can through our supplier base, where Carter's world-class supply chain team has realized meaningful duty reductions of more than $40 million. Second, we have raised prices where necessary, while striving to maintain Carter's exceptional value proposition. To date, D2C consumers are accepting higher prices while we have continued to grow our business. As Richard mentioned, Q3 is our second straight quarter of positive retail comp growth and AURs are up mid-single digits with average order values up low single digits. Taking price will continue to be a critical component of tariff mitigation moving forward. As we continue down the road of our ongoing transformation, it's imperative that Carter's deliver near-term profitability, which we can achieve most impactfully by reducing our cost base as growth initiatives build returns over time. We are rightsizing our company as well as preparing for our next phase of growth by optimizing our organization, infrastructure, processes, and tools. In doing so, we're taking several difficult but necessary decisions and have…

Richard Westenberger

Management

Thanks, Doug. Returning to our presentation materials on Page 19. We continue to monitor the situation with tariffs and the considerable impact they have begun to have on our business. As we all know now, over the past number of months, significantly higher tariffs have been implemented affecting imports from most every country, including those from which we source the majority of our products. These full reciprocal rates are much higher than those which have been in place historically and higher than what we have modeled and discussed with you all previously. The tariff rates now in effect bring our effective duty rate into the high 30% range versus about 13% historically. On a gross pre-mitigation basis, we've updated our estimate of the annualized incremental impact of the higher tariffs and now estimate that to be in the range of $200 million to $250 million. For 2025, we've estimated the net impact of additional tariffs on operating income to be in the range of $25 million to $35 million. As Doug mentioned, we've been pursuing tariff mitigation strategies across multiple fronts, the most material of which are the planned pricing increases across our assortments. We're also closely watching recent news reporting regarding current trade negotiations involving countries where Carter's production has been most affected by the higher tariffs. The situation remains very fluid and we're tracking the updates in real time. And if there is relief ultimately provided by the Supreme Court on the overall issue itself of higher tariffs, we will obviously seek to recover the significant amounts already paid and additional tariffs to date. Turning to Page 20. As noted in today's press release, we have not reinstated sales and earnings guidance given the ongoing and significant uncertainty regarding tariffs. We're still in the early days of gauging…

Douglas Palladini

Management

Thank you, Richard. This next step in our journey comes at a pivotal moment for Carter's. While our transformation is still underway, we are seeing clear proof that our strategies are working and gaining momentum and we must feed that inertia where we can yield the highest returns. I am sincerely grateful to all Carter's employees for their ongoing dedication to our business in creating this acceleration. We are also making deliberate tough choices to strengthen our business and our profitability. There is much more to come and we look forward to providing additional detail as we progress into 2026. Now, I'll turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

Operator

Operator

Certainly. Our first question will be coming from Paul Lejuez of Citi. Your line is open.

Kelly Crago

Analyst

Hi, guys. This is Kelly on for Paul. Thanks for taking our question. First one on I have two questions, one in the wholesale channel, one on the retail side. First on you with wholesale, I guess could you speak to a little bit more about what's happening with the Simple Joys brand exactly like kind of what's the go forward? I think you mentioned you're going to maybe reduce that brand, so what's going to put come in its place exactly? And then if you could just elaborate on the pricing that you're seeing in the wholesale channel? I think you mentioned pricing AUR is up mid-single digits in 3Q in retail. Just curious where that is on the wholesale side and how that's looking for the spring? And then just one follow-up on retail. Thanks.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Sure. Kelly, I'll start out on wholesale. And I know Doug wants to add some comments as well. So Simple Joys is the newest component of the exclusive brands portfolio. It's also the smallest part of that business. So that brand launched back in 2017. It really was kind of a different time period. We had considered for a number of years offering the flagship, the core brands, Carter's, Oshkosh, B'gosh on Amazon had for a number of reasons chosen not to do that back in that era. And so Simple Choice really was a terrific choice for that particular moment in time. We were treated extremely well by Amazon, and really treated as their private label, which led to really rapid growth in the brand. I think we've just entered kind of a new phase with everything that they've had going on as a company and some choices that they've made around how they manage brands. We think probably the better path forward is now to revisit that decision around the core flagship brand. So that's I think that's going to be the path going forward is taking the Carter's brand, the Oshkoshka brand and other brands that we may have in the portfolio. And Amazon continues to be certainly a super important channel of distribution for us.

Douglas Palladini

Management

Yes. We're already building the framework necessary to lean into the Amazon model with all of our brands. So I am confident that we will be able to build a much more meaningful lasting business beyond Simple Joys with all the Carter's brands. To touch just briefly on the rest of the wholesale business, what I would share is that we have gone deep with our key accounts to really understand what unlocking future growth is. The back and forth on the right products to make, the right assortments to offer has led to meaningful change in how we operate with our key accounts. And the results that we are seeing through H1 sell in. So we don't have any sell through on higher prices in wholesale yet. That won't impact us until January. But on sell in, we are seeing very positive results that lead us to believe that these higher prices will be accepted I think it's also really important to keep in mind that the value proposition that we offer remains widely intact even with higher prices, right. So the style, the quality, the price that we offer our product at will continue to be a distinct competitive advantage for Carter's moving forward even with the impact of higher pricing due tariff mitigation.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Kelly, your question on wholesale pricing in the third quarter roughly comparable, which is kind of in line. We have more degrees of freedom in our own retail channel and that's where the improvement in realized pricing occurred in Q3.

Kelly Crago

Analyst

Got it. Thanks. And then I just wanted to ask about the store closings and I think that you said that you would expect once the 150 stores are closed for that to be accretive to profitability and there's a sales transfer assumption there. Guess could you elaborate on what you're kind of assuming for the sales transfer to there and just any other color you could provide on how you've seen this play out? Thanks.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Sure, sure. So as the release indicates it's about 150 stores that's across North America. So it includes some stores in Canada and Mexico. To Doug's comment, the plan is to close majority of those stores at lease expiration. There are a handful that we think may be subject to the kick out clauses and would close before their natural lease expiration, but I think that would be in the minority. On a last twelve months basis, those stores did about $110 million in revenue. I would say they were kind of marginally profitable. And our history over time shows that there's about a 20% transfer rate to nearby stores and to our e-commerce channel. So leveraging the fixed cost and the asset base that's already in place, those tend to be pretty high margin flow through. So we would expect this at the end of the day to be accretive to operating income relative to the small margin that those stores are generating today.

Kelly Crago

Analyst

Thank you. Best of luck.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Thank you, Kelly.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will be coming from Jay Sole of UBS. Your line is open, Jay.

Jay Sole

Analyst

Great. Thank you so much. I'd love to ask about your preliminary 2026 view on sales growth being higher than a typical year given that like you just said you're closing 150 stores. The wholesale business has been on a declining trend. I think Richard you mentioned some of the indicators, macro indicators are looking a little bit weaker over last couple of months. Just tell us what do you exactly do you mean by sales growth higher than the typical year? Can you give us like a general number or a range? And then just the algorithm to get there, how do you expect to do that? Thank you.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes, I don't know if I'm going be much more specific on it. It's unusual for us to be commenting on the New Year on this call. So that's more typically the February year-end earnings call. So I think I'll stick to that discipline. I will say though the reason I commented on it was that we're expecting more of a benefit from pricing because AURs are going to go up and they're going up meaningfully across the assortment. That's what we need to do with a tariff challenge that represents that gross number of plus $200 million. So more will be driven by pricing in 2026 and less by units. We do still have some unit growth plan. I think an important macro assumption is that this is an industry issue that we think everyone in the industry is going be raising their prices. So we don't believe we're going to be an outlier. I think our teams have done a good job maintaining our competitiveness with the market. We have some really good rigor organizationally and process wise here internally that looks at that common basket of goods to make sure that we're not out of bounds with our primary competitors where she's shopping most typically. So we don't want to have that spread widen out. That tends to be when our business has dropped off a bit. So we're assuming that we're swimming in the same pool with everyone else, but everyone else is raising their prices. But more of the revenue gains next year will be driven by price than units.

Jay Sole

Analyst

Okay. I understand. Richard, that's helpful. Maybe Doug, I can ask you just one question. On the rightsizing organization initiatives, you've talking about meaningful reduction in of course, in office-based roles, a disciplined spending management across the organization. The company historically has always been pretty tight on controlling SG&A. How do you get comfortable that you can drive these savings and be able to offset the cost of tariffs, but not necessarily lose something important in terms of company's operational ability and just the ability to execute and serve the consumer the way that the brand the way you want to and the way the brand wants to?

Douglas Palladini

Management

Yes. Thanks, Jay. There's really two things happening there. The first one is the one you called out. We're trying to take cost out of the business and have a meaningful impact on our near-term profitability. That's happening. The part you didn't mention that is equally important to me is to take complexity out of our system. We simply need fewer people having greater ownership and accountability for us to get where we need to be. Clear ownership in the most important processes across the most important growth vectors for our business and then accountability on the results of those opportunities is really how we are going to show up going forward. So yes, cost savings important part, but removing complexity and fewer people with greater ownership and accountability are equally important here.

Jay Sole

Analyst

Got it. Understood. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question will be coming from Ike Boruchow of Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Hey, everyone. Thanks for the question. A couple for me. First quick clarification. On the Q4, the wholesale down low single, is that with you guys do have an extra week, just to clarify that. So is that with the extra week? And if so, what's the organic number?

Richard Westenberger

Management

That's correct. The fifty-third week is worth about $30 million in total.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Okay. Is that split pretty evenly between wholesale and retail?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Well, we'll take that up for you. I don't know off the top of my head, but we certainly will take that up for you.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Okay. The store closure plan, I mean, just for round numbers, are you effectively saying that you expect to end next year in The U.S. With roughly 700 stores and then roughly six fifty stores in the out year? I just know you've been opening a few and you're talking about maybe a few more openings. I'm just trying to make sure I know what the number is going to be going to.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. I think that's directionally correct.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Okay. Okay. The Simple Joys, I think Kelly had asked about it. Is there any way you could kind of just give us a little bit more detail there? What's the size of it today? It sounds like you're kind of saying you expect to replace it with your core branded business. Is there any more detail you can give us on the sizing? And is that a headwind? I mean, you called it out as a headwind in 3Q and 4Q. Is a that headwind we should be expecting to kind of continue into next year? Just any more detail there?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. I don't want to comment too much. It's unusual for us to comment on individual wholesale customer relationships. So and we certainly go to some lengths not to size those. As I said, it is the smallest part of the exclusive brands, which in total represent about half of our wholesale segment sales. So it's it is a bit of drag on revenue. That's we called it out because it was material enough to the segment results and to the company results to do so. It will be a bit of a drag I would think into next year, but I think we're excited about the opportunity of what the core brands could mean on the Amazon platform over time. It's a bigger opportunity. Our own brands are a bigger opportunity than what we're winding down with Simple Joys is how I had answered the question.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Got it. Understood. And then just the last one for me. I know Jay tried to talk about the top line and I appreciate Richard, you want to go there. But if we just leave top line aside, could you just help me understand a little bit better? You've laid out the productivity initiatives, which makes sense in our materials, so roughly $45 million. But the tariff headwind on the wraparound is decently more than that. You're also saying you want to invest in demand creation and then you also lose a week and there's some other little things in there. But I guess just where is the confidence coming from that you guys have to call out earnings growth in the next year? Just because it seems like you've got the right strategies in place. It just seems like you still have more pressure coming next year to kind of deal with. So I don't know if there's anything else you could share to help us understand where the confidence comes from?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. I would say a couple of things in response, Mike. One, we are seeing some progress and some acceptance from the consumer in raising prices. That needs to be a key element. There needs to be more of that that happens in 2026 to cover the bigger gross tariff exposure. So we are assuming that we have success in raising prices and the consumer broadly accepts that without tremendous pushback. I would say also we are expecting the benefit of the productivity initiatives and we're also assuming good return from the marketing investments as well, the demand creation investments. We've seen some of those proof points start to come through our business. Some of the work we've done over the last number of months have indicated we clearly under indexed the peers relative to the peer set relative to what we spend on marketing. So we've been stepping into that I think with some good returns. And so we're expecting to see more of that. So we think that marketing investment actually is accretive to the top line and bottom line next year. So you put all that together with the productivity savings with the ability to cover most, not all, but a good portion of those gross tariff exposures that leads to positive growth in operating income. And just to follow-up on your question on the fifty-third week, it's worth about $5 million at wholesale.

Ike Boruchow

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Richard Westenberger

Management

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will be coming from Chris Nardone of Bank of America. Your line is open, Chris.

Christopher Nardone

Analyst

Thank you, guys. Good morning. So just a couple of follow-up questions. So going back to the sales growth expectation for next year, is there anything different in your business today versus the prior period of price inflation that's giving you more confidence that you can grow sales both maybe AUR and units? And then can you just give us an update what you're seeing from your competition so far? Are they increasing pricing at a similar level? And how are you planning for the promotional environment into the holidays?

Douglas Palladini

Management

Yes. I'll just talk about a few reasons to believe in our current business that gives us faith going forward into 2026, Chris. The first thing I would say is that we are seeing growth in our better and best categories of business. That by nature is higher AUR business for us. The second thing is that our brands are bringing in more new consumers. So our consumer base is growing as our market share returns. And we are seeing a lot of the newness in consumers coming from those younger Gen Z families. And so there's a lot of opportunity there and reasons to believe our business is getting better there as well. I think it's across our brands too. It's not just Carter's. We're seeing growth in Oshkosh. We're seeing growth in Little Planet. We're seeing the launch of our toddler-specific Otter Avenue brand growing as well. And so there are meaningful growth factors across our brands, across ages, across product categories and in those that are best buckets, bringing in new consumers on top of that, we believe that bodes well for what's coming down the road in 2026. Richard?

Richard Westenberger

Management

And Chris, on pricing just in general, I would say we are the market leader. So we intend to exhibit market leadership here. And in the past when we've needed to raise prices because there's been some sort of an external shock to the system years ago when cotton doubled in price in a fairly short order, had to raise prices meaningfully, we were able to do so. So I would say the offset could be some loss of unit velocity. That's something that we're continuing to work through. I think our operational inventory teams have been really thoughtful where we think we may lose some unit intensity. We're reflecting that in our inventory commitments. On balance in our retail business where we control more of our destiny, think we've made a bit more of an investment in units to be able to do the business. There's probably a bit more at wholesale that you would expect to perhaps that you lose a bit of unit velocity there. But I think we're being really thoughtful about it. And I think again, is an industry issue. We're in a lot of the same factories as our wholesale customers. We see their product when we go to visit those vendors. So this is not a situation where our cost structure or our supply chain is somehow disadvantaged versus the industry. If anything, I think we have better cost than a lot of our peers in the industry. This is something that everyone is going to have to face. And so our intent is to do so thoughtfully and continue to watch our competitiveness as I mentioned earlier, but those are our plans to raise prices across the assortment.

Christopher Nardone

Analyst

Understood. Thank you. That was very helpful. And just a quick follow-up on margins. So appreciate the intro color for 2026. But as we think about the tariff impact, maybe into the first half of next year relative to the $25 million to $35 million rate for 4Q. Should that actually improve as you kind of ratchet up the mitigation? Or could that actually be more of a pressure point as you really are baking in the new rates into your inventory for first half? And then sorry to also throw this in, but is there anything else on the gross margin we should be thinking about into next year even directionally as it relates to labor, cotton costs, freight costs, anything worth calling out directionally?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Well, I would say cotton has been a bit of wind in our sails. It's been remarkably stable and actually down year over year. So we're not particularly concerned about cotton inflation. So I guess I don't want to be too specific on what we think the net impact will be. I think our teams have done a good job mitigating to date here in the second half of the year. It was never our intention to fully cover the cost of tariffs here in the 2025. It was too fluid of a situation. As we approach next year, we've had more time to absorb this. We've had more time to think about reticketing goods, which really hasn't been practical here in the second half twenty-five. It's been more of a response in ratcheting back promotional intensity in the business. So we have more of a pure kind of ticketing and pricing opportunity next year. It is our intent to cover the vast majority of this incremental tariff impact. Now it's a bigger gross impact than we had estimated before. So that is certainly a challenge. So pricing is a more significant element of it. And as Doug said, are other things beyond pricing that we're doing with our supply chain team in terms of working with our vendors, moving production. All of those are benefits in terms of reducing that gross tariff impact as well. So we're not entirely reliant on pricing to be the only weapon that we have here. It is the most significant, it is the most material, but it's certainly by no means the only thing that we're doing to mitigate the impact here.

Christopher Nardone

Analyst

Thank you. Good luck.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Thank you, Chris.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will be coming from Jim Chartier of Monness, Crisp, and Hardt. Your line is open.

James Andrew Chartier

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you just let us know what is the gross impact from tariffs in fourth quarter?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Estimated to be about $40 million, Jim.

James Andrew Chartier

Analyst

Okay. And then in terms of October to date, what have you seen with pricing in AUR so far?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Pricing continues to be up so far. We've just closed the month of October. It's up kind of in the high single-digit range from memory.

James Andrew Chartier

Analyst

Okay. So the expectation is just that holiday gets more promotional and the AUR gains is about half of what you did in third quarter. Is that right?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. I don't know if I'll say half as much. Just the holiday season is more promotional in general. So I expect we'd get some of that AUR gain as we get to the more promotional part of the quarter.

James Andrew Chartier

Analyst

Okay. And then the tax rate, is 24% a good number beyond 2025 as well?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. I think that's probably a decent planning assumption.

James Andrew Chartier

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Best of luck.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Thank you, Jim.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will be coming from Paul Kearney of Barclays. Your line is open, Paul.

Paul David Kearney

Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I'm just curious on the top line, if you're able to speak to the level of incremental price increases you're expecting for the retail channel for the first half? And I have a follow-up.

Richard Westenberger

Management

For the first half of next year, no. I think probably too soon to comment on that, Paul.

Paul David Kearney

Analyst

Okay. My next question is on the SG&A reductions and the cost savings and the reinvestment. I'm curious if there's anything we need to consider in terms of timing of some of these of when the savings flow through, when the reinvestment is expected? And then also, you spoke to improving returns on kind of the media spend. I'm curious if we can just drill down on that. What are you seeing in terms of the media spend thus far? And how is it being spent differently into next year? Thanks.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. So on the SG&A savings, would expect that it's January 1 when we're starting to realize the benefit of the run rate savings that we've articulated. So the reduction in force will be largely complete by the end of this year. So we'll start to get the organizational savings as we move into next year. The offset would be some of the demand creation investments that we articulated. That's about a $16 million. That's a full-year number for next year. And Doug will offer some comments as well and just in terms of the proof points we're seeing around marketing and the returns there. But we're going to step our way into it. We're going to continue to measure it rigorously. We're not going to write a check for that full amount the first day. We're going to just make sure it continues to generate the kind of returns that we anticipate.

Douglas Palladini

Management

Yes. So in terms of what's going to be different from a demand creation investment perspective, the first thing I would say is that there are two things that we are focusing on, driving traffic to our owned platforms where we see outstanding results for every point we gain in traffic across our fleet on our website there is meaningful top and bottom line results. Second, consumer loyalty and that has a lot to do with the experiences that we have on our sites and in our stores, on our apps with our loyalty program as well as the stories we tell about our brands and our products. Traditionally, over the past many years, Carter's messaging has been very focused on price and promotion. What you are already seeing is a lot more storytelling around product newness, product innovation and what each of our brands has to offer, which drives much more affinity and loyalty with consumers as well. So we will be tracking very closely against increasing traffic and increasing our resins with consumers through loyalty.

Paul David Kearney

Analyst

Thank you. Best of luck.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will be coming from Janet Kloppenburg of JJK Research Associates. Your line is open.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. And thank you for the detailed repositioning program. I wanted to ask if I got this right, Richard. Your comps are up and that's being driven by price. And is that against high promotional levels last year, which are not happening this year?

Richard Westenberger

Management

In general, yes, Janet. So it was the second half of last year that if you recall we made a pretty considerable investment in increasing the promotional intensity of the business, also adding some marketing, but it was a significant reset in pricing a year ago. So we're up against that period this year, which is why we're encouraged by the gains in AUR and the positive comps.

Operator

Operator

And you spoke about Amazon. What about your other exclusive brand partners? Are they accepting the price increases as you implement them?

Richard Westenberger

Management

Yes. Again, I don't know if I'm going to comment specifically on those two customers. I would say we've had very constructive conversations with our wholesale customers and they certainly are facing the same, tariff and cost pressures that we are. So those have been good discussions. It's never easy to raise price in the wholesale channel, but I would say we've got a great level of partnership with all of our wholesale customers.

Operator

Operator

And can you discuss, how much your clearance where your clearance inventories are year over year?

Richard Westenberger

Management

I would say, on balance in an improved position year over year exiting the third quarter. That was an issue a year ago as well with some of the price that we were taking at retail was to clear through some of the in particular spring season goods that had carried over into this early fall time period. We did not have that issue this year. And I would say, inventory balance is much more oriented around current and future seasons than it is past season. So I think inventory quality is very good at the moment.

Operator

Operator

And for Doug, you just touched on this a minute ago, but do you think some of this response on a high single-digit price increase, healthy response from the consumer is coming from merchandising initiatives and perhaps you could discuss those for us?

Douglas Palladini

Management

Yes, I do. As I talked about, we're seeing our better and best categories perform better as a part of the total mix than they have in the past. And much of that is also being fueled by new consumers coming into the store. So we're gaining market share back that has been lost previously and that is coming through these higher AUR products. As Richard talked about, one of the investments we have made is putting make back in our product. That means our design intent is stronger than it has been in many years and we believe that trend will continue well into 2026 and beyond.

Operator

Operator

Okay. And you're not contemplating any slowdown in the moderate to lower consumer target market that you address? I'm not suggesting you should. I just wondered how you thought about that.

Douglas Palladini

Management

We're not we're definitely cognizant of the macro and what's happening in the world. Inflation is real. As Richard mentioned, there are forces that are beyond our control. I can answer for what is within our control and that's what I just told you.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Thank you and good luck with everything.

Richard Westenberger

Management

Thank you. Thank you, Janet.

Operator

Operator

And I would now like to turn the call back to Doug for closing remarks.

Douglas Palladini

Management

Yes. Thank you everybody for joining us today. As you can tell, we are making progress against our core initiatives. We are seeing reasons to believe in our business. There remains a tremendous amount of work for us to do and we look forward to sharing more of that as we move forward. Thank you for being with us today.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.