Earnings Labs

The Beauty Health Company (SKIN)

Q2 2021 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 10, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. And welcome to The Beauty Health Company Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Dawn Francfort. Please go ahead.

Dawn Francfort

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining The Beauty Health Company’s conference call to discuss the Company’s second 2021 financial results, which we released this afternoon and can be found on our website at investors.beautyhealth.com. With me on the call is Clint Carnell, Chief Executive Officer of The Beauty Health Company; and Liyuan Woo, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to remind you of the Company’s safe harbor language, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. Management may make forward-looking statements, including guidance and underlying assumptions. Forward-looking statements are based on expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a further discussion of risks related to our business, see our filings with the SEC. This call will contain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures of the most comparable GAAP measure are included in the earnings release, furnished to the SEC and available on our website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Clint Carnell, Chief Executive Officer of The Beauty Health Company.

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Thank you, Dawn. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us today for a discussion of our second quarter results. Before I get started, I’d like to first thank our employees and providers worldwide. Despite the still challenging environment, our employees and providers have shown a level of resilience and passion, enabling us to achieve our record performance. They are at the center of everything we do and a key driver of our success, and we simply could not have achieved any of this without them. Now, turning to a review of our quarter. We are very pleased with our second quarter performance and strong first half of 2021 with both, sales and adjusted EBITDA materially exceeding our own expectations. Our key strategic initiatives continue to gain traction, and we are capitalizing on the favorable self-care trends, which we believe represent a lasting shift in consumer behavior towards health and wellness. Now, subsequent to the quarter end, we have grown our Delivery Systems to over 18,000 units as we accelerate our investments in brand building programs and forge significant progress on strengthening our global connection with our consumers. And while a portion of the outsized growth was related to easier comps from COVID-19 and closures in the prior year, we drove significant growth compared to 2019 levels. We are also pleased to welcome distributors in Germany, Australia, France and Mexico to the HydraFacial family. And we’re thrilled to have them join the team as we see these markets as strategic to growing our business internationally. Turning to financials, adjusted EBITDA was $11.4 million, driven by strong net sales growth of over 370% year-over-year, significant gross margin expansion and disciplined expense management, while we continue to ramp up our strategic investments. We further strengthened our financial position, paying off our…

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Thank you, Clint, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, I’d like to thank our team around the globe for their continued dedication throughout the quarter. Their hard work and commitment of our people drove our impressive growth this quarter. This, along with the stacking and closing four distributor acquisitions in a still challenging environment demonstrates a unique outcome-driven growth mindset of our team and our business model. Just as a reminder, since we finalized the reverse merger on May 4th of this year, The Beauty Health financials reflect mainly HydraFacial historical information. There were a few significant non-cash accounting entries from the valuation of our words and mark-to-market valuation of the 7.5 million earnout shares here related to the four acquisitions, which we will address and adjust out as non-GAAP measures to focus our discussion on our core business performance. I’m going to review our second quarter results, touch on our balance sheet and then provide details on our updated 2021 guidance. And we’ll make select comparisons to our second quarter of 2019 in my prepared remarks, as we believe it is a more meaningful comparison due to the COVID-19-related market closures in 2020. Let me start with our second quarter results. As Clint mentioned, we are very pleased with our record performance this past quarter as we continue to build on our key strategic initiatives with second quarter results exceeding our expectations across all metrics. Since many of you may be new to our company, let me take a minute to talk about our business model. We have a fairly predictable sales cycle, with our seasonally strongest quarters in the second and fourth quarters of the year. Net sales of $66.5 million increased materially from last year’s COVID-impacted sales of $14.1 million and up 57% from $42.3 million…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Matthew O’Brien with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Matthew O’Brien: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess, Liyuan or Clint, I’m just curious about the comments right at the end there, as far as the guidance for the year, you’re not assuming any real COVID impact in the back half of the year. I know there are some hotspots. But, you’re assuming things are open. The distributors -- those new distributors are kicking in all these investments -- somewhat will be kicking in. So, the back half guidance doesn’t assume much in the way of growth versus the first half of the year. Was there maybe some delays as far as ordering in Q2 that showed up that won’t recur in Q3? Are you just trying to be somewhat conservative as a newer public company?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you joining and question. This is Clint. Yes, we want to be thoughtful obviously with the guidance, but I think that 2020 and early 2021 showed us, we have a very durable business, and any challenges related to COVID-19, the current Delta variant appear to be temporary. So, we feel really good about the visibility of the back half of the business -- back half of the year. Matthew O’Brien: So, just more conservative than anything else?

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Well, technically speaking on our guidance, we did capture some of the trends into Q3, Matt, and we are assuming Q4 will open up more. That’s how we model the numbers out. Matthew O’Brien: Okay. Thanks for that. And then, Clint, the Delivery Systems number, again, was kind of eye-popping from the release. So, can you talk a little bit about where some of that’s coming from? And then, I think it’s the best quarter you’ve ever had from a Delivery Systems perspective again. I don’t know if there was some pent-up demand from earlier this year that showed up in Q2, which should have been in Q1. But, I would think that’s a leading indicator for the growth of the business going forward. So, if you -- can you just talk about some of the channels where you saw some of that performance, and then what we should think about in terms of how those systems should ramp over the next 6 to 12 months?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Sure. Matt, I think, one is we’re benefiting from macro tailwinds focused on health and wellness, and certainly the zoom boom effect has benefited HydraFacial. I also think, during the lockdowns, we worked very hard to work with our HydraFacial community and particularly the estheticians, med spa owners and physicians that were concerned about their wherewithal. And I think we’re being rewarded for that, as we come back into the marketplace. We continued to increase our spend on consumer awareness. And as more consumers come into those Delivery Systems, we’re getting multiple systems purchases. So, we see leads at an all time high. We see yield rates very strong. And that’s good for the business, when we’re laying down more Delivery Systems than expected. And, we hope to see that trend to continue. Matthew O’Brien: Got it. If I could sneak one more in here. The investments, you’re increasing the guide by about $35 million with EBITDA staying the same site. So, you’ve talked about these investments. Is it primarily for international infrastructure versus some other areas on the investment side that’s ramping up domestically? You called out some of the things. But, if you -- you can maybe bucket where some of those returns could be a little bit sooner than you’ve kind of previously planned versus more of a ‘22 event. That would be helpful. Thanks.

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Sure. It’s a great question. So, the three buckets are pretty simple. Consumer awareness, when consumers become aware, like things like the Dubai, the London Experience Center, GLOWvolution, a very high percentage of those consumers are their first time. They’re very sticky and they become a really great lifetime value for us in part of the HydraFacial Nation. So, raising consumer awareness has really been opportunistic for us. Accelerating innovation, we have Project Casa and Syndeo on-track and really excited about those, getting some great early feedback and the app is out in beta. So, we really have accelerated a pretty transformative product development process that we’re real pleased with. And then, yes, finally, you see the growth in the international numbers. And while we’re really, really excited about that, we’ve got to get in front of the infrastructure, the systems, the processes, the personnel; you’ve seen us hire Stephan, Ben and Indra, very senior leaders with significant successful experience, scaling multinational organizations. And so, we feel given the tailwinds we have and the performance of the business, we need to keep our foot on the accelerator and ensure that we have all the infrastructure in place to handle the growth that we are seeing, particularly outside of the U.S. where we have less infrastructure, and while ensuring the same consumer experience, the same provider investment and the same type of NPS scores for the Company and the product.

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

And Matt, just to add to that point, the bucket, right? So the things that we’ve been constantly talking about, we actually know how to test and learn and react when it comes to marketing activation, or just turning that up around the globe. Now, obviously, it depends on the country and the situation, we can turn that up or down. So we’re planning to turn that up based on the trends we’re seeing. In terms R&D, we’re buying speed, and we’re going to continue to do that. And that’s a bit of incremental investment we’re looking at in that bucket. I think, the biggest investment is truly, to Clint’s point, growing people, process and systems, especially when it comes to international infrastructure. But, there’s other things. We mentioned the fact that we’re implementing ERP system where probably company ready, we’re adding the layers to that as well. So, there’s a little bit of investment on the overall infrastructure. But very much emphasize and kind of pull up in terms of the speed when it comes to international infrastructure.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Steph Wissink

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I have a follow-up question on Matt’s prior question. But just wanted to unpack R&D spend a little bit, I think Liyuan you mentioned speed. But just curious a little bit of how we should think about the R&D step up in front of the handheld device in the fourth quarter, and then 2.0, as you plan for 2022?

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. So, what we meant by that is obviously as we roll out, there’s the element of using external support and it’s also where the production taking place. So, referred to in that transitional period, sure, we can roll out the product on time, and also, robust, very robust rollout. So, when we talk about really investment in to speed, it’s not only just the R&D function, but also execution that’s specified in that category when it comes to roll out product, if that makes sense.

Steph Wissink

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

That’s very helpful. So, just in terms of framing the adjusted EBITDA guidance, would you recommend the biggest step function maybe to prior expectation would be a slightly higher R&D spend versus maybe what we had modeled?

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

I think to the degree, as we mentioned, the more emphasize, R&D I would say is a smaller bucket and followed by really marketing element. And then, there’s actually more dollar being invested in infrastructure and international scaling.

Steph Wissink

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay. That’s really helpful. And then, on marketing, I wanted to just unpack a little bit of what you’re finding as you think about your new device launches. Any change in your go-to-market strategy or the commercial mix of how you plan to market, whether that’s to the consumer or to your professional partners?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. Steph, it’s Clint. As we look, there is couple of things that are becoming -- I would say evolving to as really a B2C2B company. If you think about it, we have a significant provider base out there that’s continuing to accelerate when you see the units out there, raising consumer awareness. But now, when you look at the app, you look at the Wi-Fi connectivity and the relationship we’re building directly with the consumers. We’re building consumer capabilities with our channel partners. That’s really accelerating brand awareness, increasing utilization and making our providers more profitable. So, I think it’s the fact that the Company has really -- really adding. If you look at the three executives, we just added, really good consumer experience, creating brand awareness that creates the activation of HydraFacial. And that experience then becomes one that builds engagement with our company and results in the consumable revenue that’s -- that really is key to our P&L.

Steph Wissink

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Very helpful. Congrats on the good quarter everybody.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Linda Bolton Weiser

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. Hi. Thank you. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the distributor acquisitions. And what the effect on the income statement is? I would imagine it lifts your sales a little bit, but maybe it increases your SG&A. And then, kind of what you think that will mean longer term as you take these distributors internal?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. Hi, Linda. And thanks for the question. I’ll answer the first part and then hand second part to Liyuan. First, I think it’s unusual, but it’s a way that I think has been successful for us. And we go in and we acquire our existing partners. And we secure those principles, because those local relationships are so important. So, we don’t expect disruption to the business. And we also did these really in a collaborative manner with our distributors. And so, what we’re bringing them, as they grow to the point where they need infrastructure, maybe systems and processes, and they need the ability to do the things we’re doing globally, right? Raise consumer awareness through marketing, and physical events, more sophisticated digital transformation, skill sets, and then the ability to roll out products and in a more disciplined way. So, we are going to be building out infrastructure for these distributors. But, they’ve already grown to a pretty sizable business in these countries. So, just think about it supercharging in these markets, getting close to the consumer, and doing all the things that we do in the domestic markets. So, I think you’ll see us be really interested in being opportunistic on those, but really no disruption to the business. And they’re already well run businesses. So, this is supercharging. And Liyuan, I don’t know -- from a numbers standpoint, there’s a significant discount that we provided to distributors that they then pass along to the end providers. So, we obviously pick that up and feel that it was good for the distributor, and good for us, the valuation, you approach to them.

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. So Linda, as we shared previously, when we model out the number, we were already assuming we’re going to take these four distributors on the second half of the year. Obviously, if you think about what the four distributors are, right, Germany, France, Australia and Mexico. So, it depends on the geography and where they are with the trend. Obviously, there’s going to be that top-line transfer to Clint’s points. We’ve shared with you previously, it’s almost up to 50% of transfers, we actually are going to see that pick up, which we modeled in our numbers already, on the top line. But part of the investment is precisely, to Clint’s points, investing into our infrastructure globally, at both EMEA and APAC level, so we can support the further growth to the direct market.

Linda Bolton Weiser

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay, sounds good. And then, I was just curious if a lot of companies are talking about component shortages, are you experiencing any shortages of any of your components, or any difficulties at all in the supply chain, as you move for the robust demand for your products?

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes, Linda. We’ve always been top of mind when it comes to the supply chain, right? Like, if you look at our day-to-day business, we’re trying to diversify our vendor base. And we’re trying to really create way of securing these components and make sure we have enough of it to catch up to the demand level or the sales level. Obviously, as we innovate into these new product lines, I think that ship shortage, for example, you experience that everywhere globally, right? So, there’s certain level of that that’s precisely part of the reason we’re being very thoughtful in terms of how do we roll out these new product lines, but very much top of mind for us. And I think we’re here previously, we’ve been working on network optimization, really having a goal of having some of these products closer to our end customer, and actually help from a supply chain point of view as well in the long run.

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. And also, Linda, historically, we were owned by private equity, and one of the big parts of our investment thesis was to improve supply chain, improve our demand planning. And I think the team has really done a nice job. If you remember, we moved into new facility at the end of ‘19 and then COVID actually gave us a chance to build the core competencies. So, I think it’s more external challenges that Liyuan and the team are doing a great job of mitigating the risk against. So, I would say it’s just any CEO, CFO that don’t put supply chain on yellow right now, or being too optimistic, but I don’t think there is anything fundamental to our business that is overly concerned. It’s just a challenging, external environment that I think everybody is experiencing.

Linda Bolton Weiser

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay, great. And then, finally, I’ll just give it a try. But, are you willing to disclose the number of systems that were sold in the quarter or year-to-date?

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. So, Linda, I think we talked about this. This is why in the prepared remarks I kind of emphasized the point that we have trade-in, trade-out, we have distributor model that’s a bit different. We’re actually launching new type of delivery system. This is why we want to make sure, directionally we always tell you, right? At the end of the quarter, we’re almost at 18,000, for example, for the quarter and then after it’s over. So, we’ll give you a very much directionally where we are. But at the end of the year, we’ll give you a precise number. But I just want to emphasize, as a proxy, it was shared with everybody. You can do average, call it 20,000 per unit. You can do your modeling that way. But as we move, especially rolling new products out, those profiles could shift and change. So, we just want to be very -- make sure everybody is mindful. We’ll give you the precise number by the end of the year.

Linda Bolton Weiser

Analyst · Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you very much, and congratulations.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Kyle Rose

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you for taking the questions. I think, in the prepared remarks, you commented just on the positive pricing trends you’re seeing on the box side. Is that related to the acquisition of the international distributors or is there some -- or is there a different trend in the U.S. that you’d like to call out there?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. I think, not yet on the international side, Kyle. And thanks for your question and for joining us. Not yet because we just did those acquisitions the 1st of July. So, that wouldn’t be reflective. I just think we’re seeing overall strength in the brand. Our sales force has very high retention rates. We’re seeing really strong unit productivity. So, I think when ASPs are going up, typically it’s underlying strength of the brand, it’s demand, and it’s the ability to price competitively in the marketplace. So, I think the early question Linda had, that’s why we’re really trying to be thoughtful about disclosure of units, because we have a lot of trade-in and trade-offs, we have a lot of upgrades and second systems, and then we have next generation products, which are different, but there is no question, we’re seeing strength in ASP, strength in units. And that’s good for the recurring revenue model that we have.

Kyle Rose

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Great. And then, can you maybe just talk a little bit more about the app that you’re working on now and in testing? Maybe how you envision that from a longer term perspective, interacting and maybe connecting the company closer to consumers as well as physicians or estheticians?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Sure, sure. And I’ll give you this directional, Kyle, because we’re still working on our go-to-market strategy and we’re testing and learning, as we always do. We’re working with our channel partners. We’ve got the app out there. And essentially, app is just a tool to help consumers understand what their underlying skin conditions are and what types of services or products they should be using for that. It just is basically a nice guide to take into your medical spa, derma plastic or day spa to talk with that esthetician and give her a starting point for the conversation, and equip you as a consumer better. I think, going forward, what you’ll directionally see from us is, if you buy the home health device that you scan the QR code and it would connect you to the app. And that way we know that you have a home device. That will interact with the 2.0 device where you potentially are sharing your data, so that your esthetician knows what type of skincare regimen you have, what type of products and services you’ve been doing, what you believe your skin condition is. So, what we’re looking to do is really just hug that consumer in their journey for good skin health and give the provider more knowledge, so that when you present yourself in that 30-minute or hour consultation and treatment that we’re just -- we’re giving you better performance from the HydraFacial products that our providers are promoting out there. So, it really is connectivity, no different than what you see in other consumer facing products. We’re just bringing that to an area that historically has been a little technology-vary and that’s consumer healthcare.

Kyle Rose

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Great. And then, just last question for me is, some of the diligence we’ve been talking to physicians and users is that, might like something a little bit more acne focused, or at least to customize, based on the oil levels on specific patients. Wondering, if you could maybe comment on that a little bit and maybe any updates with respect to -- I think you’ve talked historically about one new serum a quarter. Obviously, you talked about the one that you launched in the Q2, just so maybe, forward trends with respect to the serums and boosters you plan to launch? Thank you.

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Sure. Thanks, Kyle. Yes. I’ll answer this in two parts and I’ll try to make it simple. And my children will probably shoot me after this call because both of them are on a HydraFacial treatment regimen because they’ve suffered from acne. They’re athletes. They always have oily sebaceous glands and HydraFacial is great for that. Our position as a company has been to not overemphasize the clinical claims, because as you know, acne is a very diverse condition, and there’s lots of different types of acne. And the world is littered with pharmaceutical companies that are actually gone bust trying to cure for acne. So, what we lead is as an n company, we work with our dermatologists, plastic surgeons, all of our estheticians to make HydraFacial part of that treatment regimen. But we will let the provider in conjunction with other treatments or services improve that patient’s outcome. I think it’s safe to say we do have more acne-focused serums we are working on and we’ll look to bring those to market. But I think first and foremost, we really look to under promise and over-deliver with the consumer and the provider. And we believe that medical diagnosis of something like acne and trying to help that consumer with that condition is better served having the professional guidance guide along with the treatment regimen than having the company dictate a claim that isn’t -- maybe we can’t meet all the time.

Kyle Rose

Analyst · Kyle Rose with Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you for the perspective.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Amit Hazan

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Hey. Good afternoon, folks. And nice -- congrats on nice quarter. Maybe I’ll just start with coming back to the guide for a second. I just want to make sure we’re all kind of level set in our expectations for 3Q and 4Q. Can you just give an -- especially what’s going on in the U.S. with Delta, any more color as to what you’re seeing so far this quarter? And really, how to think about -- you gave a little bit of kind of general guidelines to think about 3Q versus 1Q, but what else you could add for 3Q and 4Q, for us to consider, to get those numbers tight and where you want to have them? And then, on a prior question -- related on a prior question also, what is the contribution from the distributors that you purchase that are going to direct now? What is that contribution in the increased guide that you gave?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Sure. Thanks for joining and thanks for the question. I’ll answer the first part of that, and then maybe turn it over to Liyuan. Look, we’re looking at Delta, just like we looked at COVID. We have an incredibly durable business. We see these challenges as temporary, and we’re just leading through them. And I don’t think any CEO or management team will tell you this is fun. But, I will tell you, we just see a robust business, we see really strong consumer demand, we see very resilient providers, and we’re very-diversified. If you look at our channels, we’ve got great diversification. We’ve got great global diversification. And it’s a product that’s really desirable when you’ve got the type of macro tailwinds we do. So, I think we’re trying to be thoughtful with the top line guidance. We’re continuing to invest in the business because we believe that we need the infrastructure in place and the raising consumer awareness are things that are increasing shareholder rights, short and longer term. And so, we just see this Delta variant as just an external nuisance. It’s a very serious situation, but in terms of our business, we feel really good about the durability of the business and the temporary nature of any flare ups that we see. And that’s what we’re hearing from our channel partners as well as our distribution partners around the world.

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. And I need to add to that, you’re talking about the current trends. Obviously, if you look at by geography, there’s always open and close, right? Even if you look at Q2, I think a lot of European countries went through a lot of the ground, by country opening and closing. If you look at the Delta variant, right now, it’s probably impacting APAC the most, right? Because you saw the news in Japan, you’re seeing some of the trends that’s happening in China. So, some of these current trends we have added into our Q3 numbers. By the same token, if you think about the distributors, based on by country and by region, we kind of figure that out for Q3 and Q4, as well. We are actually speaking the additional accretion on the revenue, it’s not that material in terms of truly changing the trend for Q4.

Amit Hazan

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay. And then, I was hoping for just an update on both, Sephora and the progress you’re anticipating there this year, and also the new Nordstrom partnership, it would be great any more detail and color you could give around that?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Sure. I’ll take that. Sephora continues to be just a fantastic partner of The Beauty Health Company. And I think they’re -- I don’t want to speak for them. I think they’re being challenged as a retailer providing services and monitoring the situation just like we are. But I would say that both of us are on our front foot and providing the services where possible. And we’ll continue to work with them to open where they are able to. Nordstrom, to be clear, support is for HydraFacial. And it’s a fantastic treatment, the skin studios. And Nordstrom’s relationship will be the HydraFacial system in their flagship stores. And we said, as a kid who grew up in Seattle that was fun to see that one come full circle, and we’re really excited about it. And we’ll keep everyone posted as we have more than channel partners. I think, just to level set, we see these partnerships with retailers as a really good win-win. One is we help to provide them services and experiences that drive consumers in to buy more products from them. And what we get in return is, it really brings us closer to the consumer, raises awareness around the benefits of HydraFacial. And then, we’re able to drive people back out to our professional channel, med spas, our derms, our plastics our day spas. And so, it’s really a flywheel of influence us getting closer to the consumer, and for them capturing those consumers and keeping them there because the experience that they’re receiving through the HydraFacial treatment. So, you can expect to see more of those from us. And I just want to level set on how we view that relationship beyond just the revenue component.

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

And Amit, just to add to that point, right? We don’t have a revenue penetration or concentration problem here or a situation here, because if you can think about, we had shared with you previously, even if you look at a Sephora or any of these relationships, they’re all less than 5%. So, we actually have a lot of customers and we’re working with all of them.

Amit Hazan

Analyst · Amit Hazan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our last question comes from the line of Bruce Jackson with Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the questions. The gross margins in the quarter were impressive. And I was wondering if was a role of mix and volume in driving the gross margin improvement.

Liyuan Woo

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Hey, Bruce. Yes. So, as we mentioned, I think the fact that the leverage on sales plays a pretty significant role, in addition to the fact that we’ve had savings initiative that comes to fruition, especially impacting the first half of the year. So, that was the main factor contributing to that. We continue to work on the accretion. But, obviously, as we mentioned earlier, there’s always a supply chain risk that could negatively impact or offset some of these accretions, if that makes sense.

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Yes. And historically, Bruce, we only moved in this building in December of ‘19. It was really designed to give us significant capacity. And then, during COVID, we had a chance to automate our warehouse management system. We reduced the amount of people was required through that. And so, there was a lot of noise as we started to ramp up in early 2021. And so, we’re pleased with the way the facilities working, the automation investments we made, and we’ve got a lean, a better-performing personnel team here at headquarters. So, we’re pleased with it, but there was some noise that we’re pleased to see coming out of the system and we’re normalizing.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay. And then, do you think these levels are sustainable going forward?

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Well, we’ve raised our guidance twice, and it’s been during a challenging time and as a new public company. So, we want to be thoughtful about the guidance, Bruce. And we want to ensure our investors that we do what we say we’ll do, that we continue to raise consumer awareness, continue to put placements out there of systems and that we build out the infrastructure, so that as this growth continues the way that we would expect it to, that we can still have really high NPS scores with the consumer and the provider. We try not to overcomplicate our business. Our master plan right now, website says, sell a lot of products, continue to invest in our providers. HF CONNECT is quickly becoming the largest university or educator of estheticians. You can see the consumer activations that are happening in Dubai, London, GLOWvolution. And now, we’ve got a next generation technology is going to connect that community. And if we do that, hopefully our consumers trust us as a source for beauty health, for providers if we deliver value and they’re profitable, buy more systems and more serums from us, and we just try not to overcomplicate it and just real pleased to see the way the quarter and the first half of the year has come through for us as a new public company.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Okay, great. Well, congratulations on the quarter. And thank you for taking my question.

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that does conclude our question-and-answer session. And I would like to turn the conference back over Clint Carnell for any further remarks. End of Q&A:

Clint Carnell

Analyst · Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead

Great. Well, thanks everyone. I appreciate you joining us today and thank you for the thoughtful questions from our analyst community. And we look forward to sharing our Q3 results. And please follow us #hydrafacialnation and on Instagram and Facebook. And more importantly, I want to show all of you HydraFacials. And I will talk to you next quarter. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participating. You may now disconnect.