Chewy Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
June 11, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Strong Q1 results with net sales of $3.12 B, up 8.3% year-over-year and surpassing the high end of guidance, driven by a 12.3% increase in hardgoods.
  • Autoship program reached a record 82% of net sales, growing 14.8% year-over-year and enhancing customer loyalty and revenue predictability.
  • Active customers totaled 20.8 M, a 3.8% year-over-year increase, supported by stronger gross additions and improved customer retention.
  • Profitability improved, with a 29.6% gross margin (up ~60 bps adjusted YoY), $192.7 M of adjusted EBITDA (6.2% margin), and $48.7 M of free cash flow alongside $23.2 M in share repurchases.
  • Investments in strategic initiatives advanced, including expanding Chewy Vet Care to 11 clinics, ramping Sponsored Ads on and off-site, and launching Chewy Plus paid membership after beta testing.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Chewy Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to Chewy's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. My name is Emily, and I'll be coordinating your call today. After the presentation, you'll have the opportunity to ask any questions. I will now hand over to our host, Natalie Nowak, Director of Investor Relations to begin. Natalie, please go ahead.

Natalie Nowak
Natalie Nowak
Director - IR at Chewy

Thank you for joining us on the call today to discuss our first quarter results for fiscal year twenty twenty five. Joining me today are Chewy's CEO, Sumit Singh and CFO, David Reeder. Our earnings release, which was filed with the SEC earlier today, has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website. In addition to the earnings release, a presentation summarizing our results is also available on our website at investor.chewy.com. On our call today, we will be making forward looking statements, including statements concerning Chewy's financial results and performance, industry trends, strategic initiatives, share repurchase program and the environment in which we operate.

Natalie Nowak
Natalie Nowak
Director - IR at Chewy

Such statements are considered forward looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve certain risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward looking statements. We encourage you to review our SEC filings, including the section titled Risk Factors in our most recent Form 10 ks for a discussion of these risks. Reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. Also note that the forward looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date.

Natalie Nowak
Natalie Nowak
Director - IR at Chewy

We assume no obligation to update any forward looking statements except as required by law. Also, during this call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non GAAP items to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided on our Investor Relations website and in our earnings release. These non GAAP measures are not intended as a substitute for GAAP results. Additionally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons discussed on today's call will be against the comparable period of fiscal year 2024.

Natalie Nowak
Natalie Nowak
Director - IR at Chewy

Finally, this call in its entirety is being webcast on our Investor Relations website. A replay of the audio webcast will also be available on our Investor Relations website shortly. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Sumit.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thanks, Natalie, and good morning, everyone. The momentum at Chewy continues. Our team delivered a strong start to 2025 achieving top line results exceeding expectations, continued growth in active customers and solid profitability and free cash flow generation. Our Q1 results are a testament to the hard work and dedication of every Chewy team member and Chewy's ability to continue to take market share amidst a resilient pet category. Now let's review the specifics.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Q1 net sales exceeded the high end of our guidance range increasing by over 8% to $3,120,000,000 Net sales performance was underpinned by strong participation from new and existing customers across a variety of Chuy's offerings and our favorable mix of core consumables and health and wellness categories. Also notable this quarter was the 12.3% year over year growth we delivered within hardgoods. Over the last several quarters you have heard me talk about our ongoing efforts to refresh assortment and improve overall experience and we believe that customers appreciate the new offerings available in this category. Further, our Autoship subscription program continues to be a pillar of strength and differentiation for Chewy enabling high visibility and predictability in our business while also enhancing customer loyalty. First quarter Autoship customer sales of $2,560,000,000 represented approximately 82% of Q1 net sales reaching a record high for the company.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Growth in Autoship customer sales once again outpaced overall top line growth increasing by nearly 15% in the first quarter. Moving on to the topic of active customers, the momentum we spoke about last quarter continued through Q1 and we ended the quarter with 20,800,000 active customers reflecting 3.8% year over year growth and an increase of approximately 240,000 customers sequentially. Active customer growth was driven by continued strength in gross additions along with improvement in gross churn. Moving down the P and L, gross margin came in at 29.6% for the quarter. Recall that last year we highlighted approximately 70 basis points of one time items that benefited the Q1 fiscal twenty twenty four P and L.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Adjusting for these one time benefits in the comparable prior year period, we expanded gross margin by approximately 60 basis points year over year. Dave will provide additional color on our gross margin performance. We generated $192,700,000 of adjusted EBITDA in the quarter representing a 6.2% adjusted EBITDA margin and a year over year increase of approximately 50 basis points. Accounting for the previously mentioned one time items which positively impacted first quarter twenty twenty four, adjusted EBITDA margin increased approximately 120 basis points year over year. Our adjusted EBITDA performance in Q1 reflects our strong gross margin performance, continued OpEx discipline and the timing of certain marketing campaigns resulting in modest advertising and marketing leverage inside the quarter.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And finally, we generated nearly $50,000,000 of free cash flow and deployed $23,200,000 towards share repurchases in the quarter in line with our internal expectations. Now, I would like to provide an update on some of Chewy's strategic initiatives. Starting with Chewy vet care or CVC. Since our last earnings call, we have opened three additional Chewy vet care practices bringing our current CVC count to 11 locations across four states. The encouraging signs of success we have spoken about over the last several quarters remain strong through Q1.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Our current footprint continues to outperform relative to expectations in terms of demand generation and driving broader ecosystem benefits as customers deepen their commitment to Chewy. Additionally, we continue to gain valuable insight and learnings from each of our CVC locations as they ramp allowing us to apply those learnings to our recently opened and future clinics as we drive more efficient unit economics. We remain on track to open eight to 10 new clinics in fiscal year twenty twenty five and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress as we continue to build this business. Our Sponsored Ads business continues to perform well and grew sequentially quarter over quarter. The successful migration to our 1P platform that I spoke about last quarter has enabled us to broaden our suite of ad products and content capabilities including the expansion of off-site ads.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We are thoughtfully ramping off-site across search and social with demand exceeding internal expectations. We continue to be excited about our sponsored ads business. Elsewhere, I am excited to share that we have transitioned the Chewy Plus membership program out of beta phase following a successful testing period. While still in its nascent, we are excited about our ability to drive even stronger loyalty as we expand access and engagement with the Chewy Plus paid membership program. Before I wrap up, I would like to briefly share my perspective on Chewy's long term outlook.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We have a strong and growing confidence in our ability to deliver on the strategic roadmap and long term financial model that we outlined at Capital Markets Day in December 2023. That confidence is grounded in our execution to date and the meaningful progress we are making towards those goals. To illustrate, achieving the midpoint of our FY 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range would represent over two twenty basis points of margin expansion from 3.3% to approximately 5.6% in just two years. Importantly, consistent with last year approximately 80% of that profitability is expected to convert into free cash flow translating to approximately $550,000,000 all while continuing to fund our strategic growth initiative through the P and L. Key verticals like health, sponsored ads and private brands remain early in their life cycle and programs such as Autoship, our retail business and broader competitive modes continue to scale.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

These developments support our path to achieving our long term adjusted EBITDA margin target of 10%. Lastly, as you know earlier this month we announced that Dave Reeder, our CFO will be leaving Chewy to pursue a CEO role in the semiconductor industry. Dave will remain in his role for the next several weeks to ensure a smooth transition. We thank him for his contributions and wish him continued success. With strong internal talent, a differentiated strategy and solid momentum, we remain confident in our ability to deliver a share gaining FY 2025 and sustain long term value for our shareholders.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

With that, I will turn the call over to Dave.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Thank you, Sumit, and thank you all for joining us today. Our strong first quarter results showcase the resilience of the pet industry, the durability of Chewy's business model and continued momentum in the business.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

First quarter net sales grew 8.3% year over year to $3,120,000,000 exceeding the high end of the Q1 guidance range we provided last quarter. We saw continued momentum in active customer growth and ended Q1 with 20,800,000 active customers, reflecting a year over year increase of approximately 3.8%. Once again, we outperformed internal expectations and delivered year over year improvement across all elements of the active customer equation. New customers and reactivations grew year over year, while gross churn improved over the same period. Autoship customer sales increased by 14.8% to $2,560,000,000 in the first quarter, with growth in auto ship customer sales outpacing overall top line growth by approximately six fifty basis points.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Additionally, ship customer sales represented 82.2% of our total net sales in Q1, a new high for the business. NESTBAC reached $583 as of Q1, representing an increase of 3.7% year over year. Moving to profitability. We reported first quarter gross margin of 29.6%. As Sumit mentioned, last year in our first quarter twenty twenty four earnings script, we identified approximately 70 basis points of onetime items that benefited the Q1 fiscal twenty twenty four P and L, resulting in a normalized gross margin of approximately 29% in the first quarter twenty twenty four.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Adjusting for these one time benefits in the comparable prior year period, we expanded first quarter twenty twenty five gross margin by approximately 60 basis points year over year. Sponsored ads continues to be the largest driver of gross margin improvement year over year combined with strong auto ship baseload and products mix shift into margin accretive categories. Shifting to operating expenses. Please note that my discussion of SG and A excludes share based compensation expense and related taxes. In the first quarter, SG and A was $575,100,000 or 18.5% of net sales.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

For fiscal year twenty twenty five, we expect to deliver modest SG and A leverage driven by at scale fixed cost infrastructure and ongoing discipline and efficiency with respect to corporate payroll. First quarter advertising and marketing expense was $193,800,000 or 6.2 percent of net sales. Based on the timing of certain marketing campaigns, this expense category delivered modest leverage benefit in the first quarter. For the year, we continue to expect advertising and marketing expense to be largely in line with the results we've delivered in the last two years or approximately 6.7% to 6.8% of net sales in fiscal year twenty twenty three and fiscal year twenty twenty four respectively. This remains consistent with our previously stated long term target range of 6% to 7% of net sales.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

First quarter adjusted net income was $148,900,000 representing an 8.6% increase year over year. We delivered $0.35 of adjusted diluted earnings per share, the high end of our guidance range. First quarter adjusted EBITDA came in at $192,700,000 representing a 6.2% adjusted EBITDA margin, which equated to approximately 50 basis points of year over year margin expansion. Excluding the 70 basis points of one time benefit and first quarter twenty twenty four gross margin, our adjusted EBITDA flow through for Q1 twenty twenty five was approximately 21%. In the first quarter, we reported free cash flow of $48,700,000 which reflects $86,400,000 of net cash provided by operating activities and $37,700,000 of capital expenditures.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

For full year 2025, we expect approximately 80% of adjusted EBITDA to convert into free cash flow and that CapEx will be at the low end of our previously stated range of 1.52% of net sales. We continue to reinvest back into the business using our free cash flow while also returning capital to shareholders. We continue to periodically execute open market repurchases pursuant to the $500,000,000 share repurchase authorization we announced at this time last year. In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 665,000 shares for a total of $23,200,000 under our existing program. At the end of the first quarter, we had approximately $383,500,000 of remaining capacity under our existing program for future repurchases.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

We ended the quarter with approximately $616,000,000 in cash and cash equivalents and we remain debt free with an overall liquidity position of approximately $1,400,000,000 Now I'd like to discuss our second quarter and full year 2025 outlook. We expect second quarter twenty twenty five net sales of between $3,060,000,000 and $3,090,000,000 or approximately 7% to 8% year over year growth. And we are maintaining our full year 2025 net sales outlook of between $12,300,000,000 and $12,450,000,000 or approximately 6% to 7% year over year growth when adjusted to exclude the impact of the fifty third week in fiscal year twenty twenty four. Our first quarter results and second quarter net sales guidance indicate we are trending towards the upper half of our full year net sales guidance range. Given we still have much of the year ahead of us, we are reserving the flexibility to adjust the range upward as we continue to progress throughout the year.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Moving to profitability guidance. We are maintaining our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin outlook of 5.4% to 5.7%. The midpoint of our guidance range indicates approximately 75 basis points of year over year margin expansion and consistent with our comments last quarter and what we delivered in fiscal year twenty twenty four, we expect approximately 60% of our adjusted EBITDA margin expansion to be driven by improvements in gross margin. As such, and given our Q1 results, we expect to deliver sequential improvement in gross margin in the second quarter. Additionally, consistent with our comments last quarter pertaining to the 2025 quarterly progression of adjusted EBITDA margin, we expect first quarter results to represent the high point and expect modest sequential declines throughout the year due to typical seasonality and the timing of investments.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

We also expect second quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.03 0 to $0.35 For the full year 2025, we also anticipate share based compensation expense including relating taxes to be approximately $315,000,000 and weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately $430,000,000 We expect 2025 net interest income of approximately 25,000,000 to $30,000,000 and we expect our effective tax rate to be in the range of 20% to 22% for the year. And finally, as we discussed on our earnings call last quarter, we continue to embed in our guidance minimal expected impact from tariffs. In closing, I echo Sumit's perspective on Chewy's long term outlook. The company has a clear differentiated strategy and a strong leadership team focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences. These strengths position Chewy well to execute its roadmap, drive strong financial performance and continue to enhance shareholder value.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Leaving Chewy is a bittersweet decision. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work alongside Sumit and the talented team here. Thank you to all the Chewy team members for all your dedication and discipline. I wish the company continued success in the years ahead. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Our question today comes from Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Curtis, please go ahead.

Curtis Nagle
Curtis Nagle
Director - Senior US SMID Cap Internet Analyst at Bank of America

Great. Maybe just for a one. Could we just dig into net customer adds exceeded expectations pretty nicely in 1Q? Is low single digit growth still the right framework for customer count growth for the full year?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Hey, Kurt. This is Sumit. Good morning. Yes. So we were super pleased, with the rate and the momentum, that has continued from last quarter through Q1.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And, importantly these results as I've talked about in the previous quarter, we believe are predominantly due to the strength of execution and our own efforts. And so as the market continues to normalize in the background that should only serve as tailwind. That tailwind is not incorporated in our guidance. And so everything that we're delivering and what's incorporated in guidance is primarily our execution and our efforts. And so I think it's a pretty good baseline to take the low single digit rate, although obviously we're starting to operate at the higher end of that.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And, the reasons of, the reasons are pretty clear. We're adding more customers, on the gross add side and we're driving retention up and so therefore, gross churn is down and the algorithm is essentially spitting out a nice, cohort of customers which are higher quality, relative to kind of what we've seen coming out of the pandemic. So we're sort of pleased with both the rate of acquisition of customers or rate of ads as well as the quality of ads, driven the efforts that we've done, here in the last two to three quarters.

Curtis Nagle
Curtis Nagle
Director - Senior US SMID Cap Internet Analyst at Bank of America

Got it. Understood. And maybe just a quick update in terms of how you're thinking about growth for the industry this year. I think you pointed to still expecting a normalization. But in terms of growth and how to think about household formation, just an update on kind of where that sits now, from last quarter would be awesome. Thanks.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yeah. Sure. Sure. So, there's a couple of different data points that we're triangulating. of all, when you look at, you know, growth of the industry is primarily from a adoptions and relinquishments point of view, so net household formation has been flat.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So it hasn't gone backwards relative to where we were in in or how we came into the year. It's trending fairly flat, which is a continued kind of encouraging sign. Number two, overall, when we look at the top line growth of the industry, we are estimating based on the sources that we have in front of us roughly a 3% to 4% growth of the market. And clearly our guidance that we provided is a share gaining plan growing at roughly two times the growth of the market. And from a pricing standpoint, we're not really baking in any sort of inflation throughout the year.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Although it may not be surprising to hear that as sort of tariffs continue to roll out, the industry might actually react by adjusting some pricing in hard goods, or categories that are discretionary. And if that's the case, we stand ready to respond to that. But right now what you're seeing in our guidance is structural growth driven primarily by growth of active ads as well as share of wallet increases. Do you have anything to add?

Curtis Nagle
Curtis Nagle
Director - Senior US SMID Cap Internet Analyst at Bank of America

No, Chris,

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

it's a summarize. Thank you, Karen.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Thanks so much for taking the question. Just want to build on some of the comments in the prepared remarks on the advertising opportunity. How are you guys thinking about the investments that need to be made, especially against the off-site advertising opportunity as we look not only across 2025, but out on a multiyear view? And how can maybe you can give us a little bit more characterization of how the conversations with advertisers continue to evolve both on and off-site? And what that might mean for ads as a percentage of the business over the longer term and whether you have any updated views on that? Thank you.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Maybe I'll start with the part of that, Eric. And Sumit, maybe you can come in later and talk a little bit about some of the conversations with our suppliers. We feel great about the progress that we've made with respect to sponsored ads, both in 2024 as well as entering 2025. We're particularly excited as we've talked about previously about the party platform migration that we executed at the beginning of this year. To remind you, that's our party software stack that really kind of completes, although we're always updating it, it kind of completes the portfolio and suite of products that we wanted to be able to offer to our suppliers.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Specifically, it gives us the ability to support new content formats such as video. We're able to do more self-service. It enables us to do both on-site like we did primarily last year as well as off-site, which we're increasingly doing this year given the pent up demand there. And it just really enables us to kind of more fully offer to our partners the sponsored ads experience that they expect. So we're quite pleased with how it's performed.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

The momentum from fourth quarter last year and really all of 2024 has continued into 2025 and, looks like a good year for us in sponsored ads. Sumit, you want any comments on the

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yes. Eric, I would the framework that I would put in your mind, just building on what Dave said is, you know, we're thinking of this as a demand side demand side and supply side house, obviously. You know? So last year, we focused on on-site product ramp and opening up supply primarily in, you know, let's say, the consumables category. And so, this year, we're expanding the suite of products, as Dave mentioned, into social and off-site, and we're going to expand this into other categories.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So what you're seeing us is rapidly opening up supply. And our teams internally are very closely aligned with our partners, you know, both activating more partners as well as more dollars from pocket to be able to apply to these to the supply that we're opening up on the website to drive higher utilization rates. Right? We're super pleased with the utilization. And between our partners and us, we're super transparent and having a really good high quality conversation on the ROI expected.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And so far, we've continued to exceed ROI expectations, therefore, pretty nicely balancing the demand and supply side. And then on top of that, you want to put the 1P platform that essentially allows us to flow through a greater portion to our bottom line, and improve experience for our suppliers, including greater analytic capability that we didn't have, or or may not have had at the same level in the past. And so, you know, we're we're fairly pleased with the bespoke product that we're building in the early stages, but we've quickly ramped up into getting to the 1% a little bit beyond that. We are true to the 1% to 3% ranges that we've provided. The only implication you need to think about is as we move from on-site into off-site, we're still going to flow through at pretty high margins, albeit slightly lower than just the on-site product.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead,

Mark Mahaney
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Okay. Thank you. You talk about could you talk about the sustainability of the active customer growth by drilling down a little bit into what's causing the what's enabling you to drive retention up for existing customers? And are there new sources of gross adds that you're able to tap into now that you weren't in the past? So just talk about both sides of that equation and the sustainability going forward. Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yes. Mark, I'll start and Dave will add. So we feel pretty good about the sustainability. We're bullish, and we feel we're in early stages of gaining momentum. And momentum we continue to gain as you've sort of seen from the last three quarters of compiled results.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Internal efforts primarily point to the work that we've done in taking a broader marketing funnel and strategy to the market. Internally, they point to a better product whether it's the storefront or whether it's the app. And, you know, internally, the and the the quality of customer is what kind of drives confidence in, you know, the the retention and the future sort of revenue flywheel of these type of customers. So just to give you some data points, when you look at new customer nest pack for the Q1 twenty twenty five cohort, it is trending low single digits higher. Right now I'm just taking simple averages, so bear with me because the data is still early, but it's trending low single digits percentage higher on a year over year basis relative to Q1 twenty twenty four cohort.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And you would so what are the inputs of that? The inputs of that are, as Dave talked about and I talked about earlier, it's the increasing mix of autoship baseload. It's the, you know, mix towards repeatable categories like consumables and health that drive about 85% of our revenue. And so you would expect, you know, this then leading to improved reorder rates. Well, then you'd go over and see, well, did reorder rates actually improve?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So when you look at new customer reorder rates, new customer reorder rates also showed a steady improvement year over year, right? And relative to the cohorts of the previous, 2024, you know, reorder rates are also up by about low single digit percentage points. And so the combined, you know, tells you both sort of the gross adds tactics are working as well as, you know, our, I guess, efforts to retain these customers are driven by more structural, initiatives and actions that are more controllable, rather than kind of taking advantage of any sort of industry trending that may or may not happen. That's how we're looking at the rest of the year. Okay.

Mark Mahaney
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Thank you, Sumit.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nathan Feber with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Nathan Feather
Nathan Feather
Equity Research Associate at Morgan Stanley

Hey, everyone. Congrats on the really strong quarter here. Wanted to get a little bit into Tweet Plus with that program in a ton of beta. Again, any way to kinda think about the adoption rates you've received on that tier? And, you know, how should we kinda contextualize the the changes in both unit economics and wallet share once people join that program? Thank you.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Hey, Nathan. We had difficulty understanding your question. Would you mind perhaps repeating it for us?

Nathan Feather
Nathan Feather
Equity Research Associate at Morgan Stanley

Yes.

Nathan Feather
Nathan Feather
Equity Research Associate at Morgan Stanley

Sorry about that. I wanted to talk about Chewy Plus, essentially here the adoption rates you've received on that program and any way to think about the changes in unit economics or wallet share once people onboard? Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yeah. Nathan, I'll start and Dave will add as he sees pertinent. So, let's talk about Certreepa. So we had just to refresh our facts, we had a successful data in 2024 from May, June of twenty four all the way through January, February of this year. Right?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

And now we've chosen to expand the Chewy Plus, which is a paid program to all of our customers starting sort of, you know, late February, early March. So we've it's early stages. Also to recap, Chewy Plus offers members free shipping, 5% rewards that are aggregated as a, you know, into the in their accounts and then, you know, limited time exclusive offers. Members enjoy a free thirty day trial and then pay an introductory fee of $49 for the year for the membership. So now here are the results.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Since expanding, Chewy Plus has continued to show strong membership growth and positive customer feedback. Right? We're measuring active sessions for members that are higher. So so, active sessions are higher, orders and frequency is higher, cross category penetration is higher, which was one of the, you know, hypotheses or learning interest in the program to be able to see, hey, does it promote discoverability and does it promote attach rate? And, you know, we're seeing that relative to the cross category penetration of a non Chewy Plus member versus a Chewy Plus member.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Right? And there these numbers are up both on a year over year basis as well as compared to a similar cohort of nonmembers. So, you know, what you're essentially seeing is while Chewy Plus continues to show strong net sales growth given Nest Pack is expanding and expanding faster than a non Chewy Plus member, costs, right, have stayed in line with expectations, and these members are now driving incremental contribution profit. Right? We're gonna stay away from providing specific details today.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

But to give you early reads, you know, the the rate of membership sign ups is now, you know, we've now expanded the program. You can essentially see it on the website across our shopping funnel. We're still ramping up, so it's not fully ramped yet. And you should expect us to continue to ramp up. And on the background, we're going to keep it very disciplined on contribution profit and drive member growth on the front end. Dave, anything to add?

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Yes. Nathan, if I could just broaden out the commentary just for a moment and talk a little bit more about not all of our loyalty programs and not just Chewy Plus. You saw auto ship have a tremendous quarter, up four sixty bps on a year over year basis. Continued engagement with that cohort of customers that have decided that they like the value proposition as well as the convenience of Autoship. So when you kind of put this together in a constellation, you've got growing brand awareness for Chewy, you've got more conversion of that brand awareness to active customers, you've got that active customer growth that is more likely than not to be propensed to move into categories such as auto ship or Chewy Plus.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

You've got reduced then engagement, reduced or excuse me, increased engagement, reduced churn. And then you've got customers that have left realizing that they like the Chewy experience and coming back. All of this is coming together in the active customer growth that you're seeing as well as the Nest pack that you're seeing. Quite pleased with the first quarter, quite pleased with the momentum that we're carrying into second quarter and optimistic albeit early optimistic for the implications for the year.

Nathan Feather
Nathan Feather
Equity Research Associate at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to follow-up on the

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Autoship comments, David and Sumit, in particular. We've seen Autoship customer sales, I think, improved from about 66% of the total several years ago at the IPO to 82% today. So hoping you could just talk about the path new customers are taking to becoming Autoship customers and how that's evolved over the years? And then can you just talk about hardgoods a little bit, the drivers of the 12% growth that you're seeing there and some of the changes you're making in terms of assortment and experience, how that's improving? Thanks.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Sure. Hey, Doug, I'll start and Dave will add to it. So Autoship, when you deconstruct it as a business in itself, you know, the fundamental principles that we're applying are retention into Autoship is acquisition into Autoship followed by settlement and therefore retention into Autoship. Right? And so in terms of acquisition of, into Autoship, the roadmap follows some concepts that you would call our brilliance in the basics of retail, which is assortment, high in stock, and essentially, you know, paired with what you would consider is Chewy's moat and differentiation, which is a super convenient and high powered personalized digital experience that allows customers discoverability and therefore a higher rate of conversion than what you would expect or see in the rest of the industry.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So broadly, you know, that's been the template in how we've, you know, continued to grow the program. Yeah. And, you know, kudos to our partners for continuing to believe and support given how good a program this is to drive loyalty for a specific supplier brand and therefore generate lifetime value for long periods of time. Now on the retention side, we followed, you know, a similar playbook, you know, allowing our personalized approach and one on one connection with customers to be able to really get them to feel like, you know, they're getting value out of the program. They're, you know it's a it's a we we talk about loyalty, and and Dave said this well.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

When you talk about customer loyalty, right, it it it it's we think about the model that is built in concentric circles. It starts with the way that we go to market with our high touch service. It then builds around programs like Autoship. It then builds you know, introduces newer programs like Chewy Plus that that are now complementary to Autoship, and we're seeing both play off of each other. The app ecosystem essentially keeps customers, you know, more engaged and therefore highly profanced to to more discoverability and and and growth of share of wallet.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So anyway, I'll I'll I'll get back to the point on ownership. So that's so so I think over the last few years, you've seen us, you know, add assortment, improve experience, both purchase and post purchase, and that's the path from '66 to '82. Your question was around our good growth. This one I would say is, you know, a, again, brilliance in the basics and the team, you know, the team's resilience and the quality of execution being driven from the team. So you've heard us talk about freshness and newness of assortment.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

You heard us talk about better life cycle management of inventory. You heard us talk about discoverability. And then you heard us talk about a personalized approach that drives a better experience on the website. So it's all sort of combination of that. Dave, anything to add?

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Yeah. I mean, while you were speaking, I was just, you know, refreshing my memory across all of the subcategories within hardgoods. And Doug, as I look at the data here on a year over year basis, all of I mean, almost all of the categories that I've been kind of spot checking are up year over year in hardgoods. I think that speaks both to all of the things that we've discussed with respect to active customer growth, continued penetration with respect to share of wallet as well as refresh of assortment that the team has done an excellent job on getting that refreshed assortment, not only into our fulfillment centers, not only with our party shippers as well as party fulfillment, but also getting those products in front of customers at the point of time in which they're willing and able to make a discretionary purchase. All those things came together for us in first quarter, and that momentum looks quite positive.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Doug, to give you a few data points, I mean, we've added over 150 brands, new brands on the portfolio over the last two quarters. We've reduced time to onboarding SKUs by about 40% to 50%. And so what you're essentially if you put them together, you're saying, okay, you guys have more choices for customers and your go to market your go to market is two times faster than where it was last year. I mean, all of this translates to, you know, time. And then you put the effort of discoverability and post purchase experience that we deliver.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

It just it it it drives the flywheel a bit more efficiently, and that's what you're seeing.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Great. Thank you both.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Rupesh Parikh
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Morning and thanks for taking my question. So I guess I just want to go back to the top line. Very strong momentum, broad based category momentum as well. From a share perspective, where do you guys believe you're gaining market share? And any changes versus recent quarters?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yes. No doubt about it. I mean, whether you come at it from the industry growth at 3% to 4% and our guidance or you come at it from if you break that down mathematically, what you would find is so let's say let's just do kind of real time math. Let's say 3% of the industry at about $140,000,000,000 that means the industry will add roughly $4,000,000,000 this year, on a year over year basis. If you consider a penetration of somewhere in the 30% to 35% online and do the math of Chewy's revenue, what you would find is that we're picking up roughly $0.50 of every dollar that is moving online, which is higher than in the past we've talked about $0.40 to $0.42 of every dollar that's moving online.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

So there's clearly a share gain plan built in, and we're pleased with the way the teams are executing.

Rupesh Parikh
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Great. Thank you and Dave best of luck.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Thanks Rupesh.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Bellinger with Mizuho. Please go ahead David.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the questions and thanks to Dave as well. So two questions from us. one, just on gross margins within the core. In understanding the 70 basis point one time benefit you had last year, it still seems like something might be changing within the gross margin line.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

So could you just help us understand the moving pieces there? And excluding the sponsored ads and that being the largest driver of margin expansion, are you seeing something promotions or something else within the core Chewy retail business where the gross margins are weakening in some way? And then just a question on the operating expense line, not much leverage despite the automation efforts. Just anything that stood out in Q1? And what's leading to the stronger leverage that's planned through the rest of the year? Thank you.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Thanks David. A couple of items to note with respect to gross margin. One, we were internally, we were pleased with our gross margin. It came in largely as we expected. Two, on a normalized basis, it expanded more than 60 bps year over year.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

If you recall, in our first quarter of twenty twenty four, that script, which you referenced, we did identify roughly 70 bps of onetime items that benefited us in gross margin last year. That resulted in a first quarter twenty four gross margin of 29%. So you normalize for that on a year over year basis, up 60 bps. Three, in this call's prepared commentary, we indicated that we expect gross margin to increase sequentially from Q1 to Q2. We also reiterated that we expect our year over year EBITDA increase to be majority driven, roughly 60% by gross margin.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

So kind of a lot to like about our first quarter results, the market share gaining revenue, active customer growth, normalized year over year gross margin expansion, record EBITDA margin, continued momentum in the second quarter, lot to like. The puts and takes for gross margin, obviously, gross margin on a year over year basis normalized, as I mentioned, single biggest contributor sponsored ads followed by product mix accretion, followed by, of course, the normal kind of fixed cost absorption that you get in those lines. So we expect that playbook to continue in a very similar vein as what we saw last year. Moving to the operating expenses. We were pretty happy with the operating expenses for Q1.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Obviously, you can't get to that EBITDA margin of 6.2% without being happy with a lot of the lines in the P and L. We expect to get a little bit more contribution from gross margin in the second quarter as well as the latter half of the year. I'm talking about on a year over year basis. And we expect to continue to get leverage from the OpEx lines. We did have, as we called out, lower advertising and marketing expense in the first quarter.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

That was largely just a result of the timing of certain campaigns. So you've kind of seen that number on any specific quarter kind of bounce around between that 6% to 7% range. But we think for the year, advertising and marketing will be very consistent with what we've posted in prior years, so roughly 6.7, 6.8% of net sales. So no real surprise on that line for the year. But of course, on any specific quarter you may see a little movement just based on timing.

David Bellinger
David Bellinger
Director & Senior Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group

Great. Thank you. Very helpful.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Thanks, David.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Shweta Khajuria with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Shweta Khajuria
Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC

Thanks a lot for taking my question. I have one on CVC. So you talked about three new additions, 11 locations across four states. Could you help us think about how big of an opportunity this could be for you, especially as it relates to demand gen? And what's your how do you think about expanding, call it, one to three years out? Thanks a lot.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

I think what you're seeing us continue to do on CVC is just take a very measured approach with respect to rolling out vet clinics. As you know, we were very happy with the performance of the clinics that we rolled out in 2024. We expect to end this year in the high teens vet clinics, so call it roughly 10 plusminus a little bit vet clinics that we expect to roll out in 2025. The performance of the vet clinics that are maturing, we've been quite pleased with. We continue to grow their utilization and their bookings.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Forward booking rates remain quite strong and continue to strengthen actually. We've been happy with the new customers that are being introduced to Chewy, which are significantly higher than what we originally modeled. And so that's been a very pleasant surprise to us. And then as we've mentioned on some prior calls, those new customers that are coming into the vet clinics and that's their experience with Chewy, about half of them are then following that visit up within thirty days and actually purchasing from chewy.com. So I would say in terms of vet retention, in terms of performance of individual four wall clinic, kind of all metrics green by and large for the vet clinics.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

And so we're quite pleased with that performance. And I think you'll continue to see us take a measured approach with respect to rolling out vet clinics. In terms of the opportunity, I think the opportunity is clear. You've got roughly $20,000,000,000 plus type of markets for vet services in The U. S.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

This enables us to tap a portion of that market, albeit with a slow rollout as we kind of perfect our offering. It also enables us to continue to grow our pharmacy business and get more insight into all of the pharmacy that's offered within vet clinics, not just the portion that we're currently kind of seeing through our existing business. And so I think from that perspective, in terms of opening up a large TAM for us on a go forward basis, we're quite pleased. We're pleased with the results. Our customers are pleased with the services and the care that they're getting, and perhaps that's the most important thing. Sumit, do you have anything

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

I'd say two comments, starting with the TAM and then working backwards into see how to think about CVC in addition to what Dave said. So starting with the TAM, the $20 $25,000,000,000 that Dave's talking about, you know, doesn't doesn't fully encapsulate in newer tech or newer vertical newer technologies like either telehealth triage or insurance or software opportunities given how much opportunity there is to be able to bring a one piece solution to a fragmented software space or the data space in the pet health sector. And if you recall from our Capital Markets Day presentation, we laid out a pretty compelling vision of the stack that we're building, and that the industry is starting to benefit from. So we're super excited about that in terms of how we can contribute to expanding the TAM beyond what is currently captured. Number two, when you think about CVC, you you ought to also think about CVC in similar lines as to how you think about Autoship or Chewy Plus.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Right? These are ecosystem, you know, type concepts that allows a customer to discover Chewy in a new place and then expand their, you know, engagement with Chewy regardless of their point of entry into Chewy. And so, you know, we're these are these are highly defensible moats in the way that they bring customers in and keep customers in. And as we compound these moats, you know, we only had auto ship several years ago. Now we have, Autoship.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

In the future, we're going to have CVC. In the middle, we have the app and the Chewy Plus programs. And so we're sort of excited about how we think about customer engagement and growth of share of wallet in addition to opportunity of acquiring new customers through these varied channels.

Shweta Khajuria
Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC

Okay. Thanks, Sumit. Thanks, Dave. Dave, congrats and all the best.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Thanks, Joanna.

Operator

Thank you. We have time for one final question. And so our last question today comes from Stephen Zaccone with Citigroup. Steven, please go ahead.

Steven Zaccone
Steven Zaccone
Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail at Citi

Hey, good morning. Thanks very much for taking my question. I had two kind of quick ones. one just on pricing. What have you seen from a pricing standpoint?

Steven Zaccone
Steven Zaccone
Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail at Citi

Tariffs are probably starting to impact some of the product costs out there in the industry. So has anything changed on your view of the year? And then the is from an underlying category perspective, dogs versus cats, we've heard about more strength in the cat category this year. Has that been the case in your business as well?

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

Sure. I'll take pricing and Sumit, maybe you want to comment on dogs and cats. Look, from a pricing perspective, like for like, we see very little inflation in the industry right now. So again, I'm talking like for like products.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

That stated, we do see we continue to see humanization of pets and that humanization is leading to premiumization in terms of customers wanting more medicine, better supplements, better food for their pets to improve their overall pet health. And so while we're seeing we're continuing to see the trends towards premiumization, we are not seeing kind of on a like for like product basis much inflation right now. And I'm including the hard goods into that category. If you take the hard good category, even some of the ones that perhaps could be impacted by tariffs, you have to really look at how much inventory is physically in individual suppliers' locations onshore. And so that inventory is still in place.

David Reeder
David Reeder
CFO at Chewy

And I would say you haven't yet seen any increase from tariffs kind of flow through the hard goods category. So stay tuned on that front. As you know, from our perspective, the vast majority of our portfolio is consumables, 85% plus of our portfolio is consumables with domestic input source streams. So we see very little impact from tariffs on Chewy in fiscal year twenty twenty five and what we have seen we've embedded in our guidance. Sumit, any comments on dogs versus cats?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Yes, Steve. We love them all equally. And yes, in the previous call, we've come into the year sort of seeing either the proportion of cats or cats being a popular choice. The data doesn't refresh as often, but we've continued to see strengthening of the cat business and at the same time the dog business as well given that we drove 6% year over year growth in consumables, which is which accounted for roughly 50% of the growth overall for Chewy. So happy with the performance. Yes. Thanks for the next question.

Operator

Thank you. Those are all the questions we have time for today. And so this concludes our call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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