Chewy Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
June 10, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Chewy reported Q1 net sales of $3.36 billion, up 7.7% year over year, with active customers rising to 21.5 million and Autoship sales growing more than 10% and accounting for 84.4% of total revenue.
  • Positive Sentiment: Profitability expanded meaningfully, as adjusted EBITDA margin reached 7.5% in Q1, up about 130 basis points, while free cash flow increased more than 45% to $71 million.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management lowered full-year fiscal 2026 net sales guidance to $13.40 billion-$13.55 billion, citing a more challenged consumer environment, softer premiumization, and weaker discretionary attach rates.
  • Positive Sentiment: Chewy highlighted growth in Chewy Health and Chewy Vet Care, including the closing of Modern Animal and plans to exit FY2026 with roughly 60 clinics, as a major long-term growth and customer acquisition opportunity.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company continues investing in AI, fulfillment, and Sponsored Ads to improve efficiency and margins, and still expects AI-driven benefits of low tens of millions of dollars in FY2026, with a larger ramp in 2027 and beyond.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Chewy Q1 2027
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Chewy first quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Lee Horowitz, Head of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance. Lee, please go ahead.

Lee Horowitz
Lee Horowitz
Head of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance at Chewy

Thank you for joining us on the call today to discuss our first quarter results for fiscal year-end 2026. Joining me today are Chewy's CEO, Sumit Singh, and CFO, Chris Deppe. 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. 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.

Lee Horowitz
Lee Horowitz
Head of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance at Chewy

We encourage you to review our SEC filings, including the section titled Risk Factors in our most recent Form 10-K, 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. 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 2025.

Lee Horowitz
Lee Horowitz
Head of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance 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. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Sumit.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thank you, Lee, and good morning, everyone. Chewy delivered solid results in Q1, continuing to outperform the broader pet category while further expanding profitability and free cash flow. Our results demonstrate the durability of our business model and the structural advantages embedded across the Chewy platform. Despite the consumer environment that weakened in the latter parts of the quarter, we delivered nearly 200,000 net customer additions, achieved solid top-line growth and record profitability, generated strong free cash flow, and maintained consistent category share capture, all while continuing to advance strategic initiatives that we believe will deepen Chewy's competitive moats, drive meaningful free cash flow dollars, and deliver long-term shareholder value creation. Q1 net sales grew 7.7% year-over-year to approximately $3.36 billion. We ended the quarter with 21.5 million active customers, up 3.6% year-over-year, while Net Sales Per Active Customer, or NSPAC, increased to $597.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Autoship customer sales once again outpaced overall company growth, increasing over 10% year-over-year and reaching 84.4% of total net sales in the quarter, further reinforcing the predictability, durability, and recurring nature of our revenue base. Importantly, our performance continues to validate what we have consistently said about the pet category and about Chewy specifically. Pet remains a resilient category driven by recurring non-discretionary needs and strong emotional attachment. At the same time consumers are growing more discerning, driven in part by elevated fuel prices and broader macroeconomic pressures. However even against this more challenged backdrop, Chewy continues to steadily gain share. Our value proposition remains exceptionally strong. Industry-leading convenience, highly competitive pricing, trusted service, deep assortment, and a recurring Autoship ecosystem that customers increasingly rely upon. We believe these advantages become even more relevant in periods where consumers prioritize value, reliability, and trusted relationships.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Importantly, our ability to continue expanding earnings and free cash flow in this environment further reinforces our confidence in the structural durability of the model. Let me spend a few minutes on margins and the underlying drivers supporting our profitability trajectory. Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin read 7.5%, representing approximately 130 basis points of year-over-year expansion on the back of exceptionally healthy EBITDA flow-through of greater than 25%. This level of profitability at our scale reflects continued strength across multiple areas of the business, including Sponsored Ads, category mix, supply chain efficiencies, marketing productivity, OpEx discipline, and improving operating leverage across our network. As we discussed previously, our long-term framework for margin expansion remains unchanged. We continue to believe Chewy has a unique and differentiated operating model, one that combines a leading recurring revenue engine with a highly scaled fulfillment and health platform.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We remain on track to reach our 10% adjusted EBITDA margin target over time. Importantly, our model does not require outsized industry growth or significant pricing inflation to expand margins. The underlying drivers of profitability expansion remain structural in nature and continue to strengthen, including the expansion of Sponsored Ads, product mix shift into higher margin categories, including health and operating expense leverage from automation and scale. Turning now to Chewy Health and Chewy Vet Care. We continue to believe health represents one of the largest and most compelling long-term opportunities for Chewy. Today, pet healthcare represents approximately $54 billion of TAM, including over $40 billion associated with in-clinic products and veterinary services alone. Our Chewy Vet Care clinics are delivering strong standalone economics while simultaneously acting as a powerful customer acquisition and retention engines for the broader Chewy ecosystem.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Approximately 40% of CVC customers are new to Chewy, and these customers tend to reach a year one NSPAC of approximately $900. Furthermore, existing Chewy customers who engage with CVC increase share of wallet meaningfully faster than other cohorts following their first visit. At the same time, our veterinary teams deliver industry-leading productivity metrics supported by the technology-enabled workflows and AI-assisted tools we are embedding across the platform, resulting in vet retention and employee satisfaction that outperforms peers. In a world where veterinarians are in short supply, this last point affords Chewy a structural advantage relative to peers as we look to scale our vet clinic footprint. As part of this strategy, we are excited about the recently announced acquisition of Modern Animal, which closed shortly after quarter-end.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Modern Animal adds a highly complementary and well-established footprint with above industry unit economics, strong clinical expertise, and an experience-led, technology-enabled model that closely aligns with CVC. This transaction accelerates the expansion of CVC and unlocks multiple avenues to accelerate clinic growth, combining CVC's organic growth with Modern Animal's existing footprint and development pipeline. Combined, we expect to operate approximately 60 clinics exiting fiscal 2026, with embedded revenue contribution approaching approximately $290 million at a steady state. We believe CVC will be a meaningful driver of long-term shareholder value at Chewy, and we look forward to updating you on our progress in the coming quarters. Now turning to AI. We continue to believe AI represents a meaningful opportunity for Chewy, both from a customer experience perspective and from an operational efficiency standpoint.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Over the last several quarters, we have continued to build the foundational infrastructure required to deploy AI broadly across the enterprise. Today, we are embedding AI across multiple layers of the business, including customer service, pharmacy operations, fulfillment, and marketing workflows. We continue to see meaningful opportunities to structurally lower cost to serve, while simultaneously improving speed, efficiency, and service quality. Based on our current roadmap and implementation progress, we continue to expect AI-driven efficiencies to contribute a low 10 of millions of dollars benefit in fiscal 2026, with a more meaningful ramp expected into 2027 and beyond. Now, before I turn the call over to Chris, I would like to briefly address our outlook and how we are thinking about the balance of the year.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

While we remain confident in the long-term trajectory of the business and Chewy's share gaining posture with an increasingly larger pet TAM available to us, we are also recognizing that the consumer pet environment has become incrementally more challenged since we initially established our fiscal 2026 outlook earlier this year. As a result, our updated guidance, which Chris will discuss in more detail shortly, now reflects a more appropriately conservative view of the consumer environment and broader category growth assumptions for the balance of the year. For clarity's sake, we are seeing a modest level of incremental pressure on premiumization and product attach rates amongst our current customer base, resulting in what we view as a short-term NSPAC headwind.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Conversely, our improved go-to-market initiatives, including better CRM efforts resulting in greater conversion, increased engagement via our mobile app, continued success in reactivating lapsed customers, and ongoing success in driving down churn, is supporting an ongoing healthy trajectory for customer net additions. That said, our confidence in the underlying strength of the business, our ability to continue gaining share, and our long-term growth and profitability algorithm remains unchanged. Pet remains a more resilient category relative to other parts of the consumer landscape, and Chewy is increasingly building the capabilities and business lines to accrue a growing share of this incredibly attractive end market. Additionally, the strength of our customer acquisition funnel continues to support sustained share gains across macro environments, while also positioning Chewy to return to more typical NSPAC compounding rates as consumer conditions normalize, all on top of a meaningfully larger customer base.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Furthermore, we believe our strategic initiatives across health, AI, fulfillment, and customer experience continue to strengthen the moat around the Chewy ecosystem. In closing, I want to thank the entire Chewy team for another quarter of disciplined execution and innovation. We remain focused on delivering profitable growth, durable free cash flow generation, and long-term shareholder value creation. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Thank you, Sumit, and thank you all for joining us today. Q1 results reflect continued disciplined execution across the business, highlighted by continued share gains, meaningful margin expansion, and strong free cash flow generation, despite a macro environment that softened as we moved through the quarter. Q1 net sales reached approximately $3.36 billion, representing 7.7% year-over-year growth, reflecting the continued strength across our recurring revenue base, balanced contribution from both active customer growth and NSPAC expansion, and ongoing market share gains within the pet category. We closed our acquisition of SmartPak in the first quarter as planned, and the revenue contribution from the business was in line with our previously communicated $80 million net sales expectation for the full-year 2026. We continue to grow active customers, ending the quarter with approximately 21.5 million, increasing 3.6% year-over-year.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Autoship customer sales reached approximately $2.83 billion in the quarter, increasing over 10% year-over-year and representing 84.4% of total net sales. Growth in Autoship continued to outpace overall company growth, reinforcing the durability and predictability of our recurring revenue model. NSPAC reached $597 in Q1, increasing approximately 4.6% year-over-year on a normalized basis when accounting for the extra week in the prior year comparable period, and reflects continued customer cohort maturation, growth in health and wellness penetration, and increasing cross-category engagement across the platform. Turning to profitability, we reported first quarter gross margin of 30.1%, representing approximately 50 basis points of year-over-year expansion, including a low single-digit million dollar impact from fuel surcharges passed on by our carrier partners. Gross margin performance was driven primarily by continued growth in Sponsored Ads, favorable category mix, and continued operating discipline. Moving to operating expenses.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Please note that my discussion of SG&A excludes share-based compensation expense and related taxes, as well as transaction and integration-related costs. First quarter non-GAAP SG&A was approximately $593 million, or 17.7% of net sales. Note, Q1 non-GAAP SG&A excluded approximately $10 million of transaction-related costs associated primarily with acquisition and integration activities related to SmartPak and Modern Animal. As planned, we delivered approximately 90 basis points of year-over-year SG&A leverage, reflecting continued operating discipline, fulfillment productivity improvements driving down our variable costs, and early benefits from technology and AI-enabled efficiencies across the organization. We continue to lower our cost to serve as we scale. Advertising and marketing expense was approximately $206 million, or 6.1% of net sales, reflecting modest leverage year-over-year.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

As we have consistently stated, our marketing strategy remains focused on profitable customer acquisition and long-term lifetime value generation, and we continue to see strong returns across both lower and upper funnel investments. Q1 adjusted net income was approximately $180 million, translating into adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.43. Adjusted EBITDA reached approximately $253 million in the quarter, representing a 7.5% adjusted EBITDA margin, up approximately 130 basis points year-over-year, and reflects adjusted EBITDA flow-through of greater than 25%. This level of profitability expansion reflects the structural strengthening of Chewy's earnings model. We are expanding earnings materially faster than revenue growth while continuing to invest behind strategic initiatives, including Chewy Health, Chewy Vet Care, AI infrastructure, and fulfillment network optimization.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

The power of our underlying profitability profile allows us to both deliver consistent margin expansion while simultaneously investing into core strategic growth drivers that give us an increasing right to win a growing share of the pet parent wallet. Free cash flow for the quarter was approximately $71 million, increasing over 45% year-over-year. Q1 free cash flow reflected approximately $109 million of net cash provided by operating activities and approximately $38 million of capital expenditures. Our continued free cash flow strength reflects the durability of the Chewy model, the recurring nature of our revenue base, and the structural expansion and profitability we continue to drive across the business. During the quarter, we deployed capital across several strategic priorities, including the acquisition of SmartPak and approximately $200 million of share repurchases under our existing program.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

These actions reflect our continued confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead of us, as well as our disciplined approach to capital allocation. We ended the quarter with approximately $520 million of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and over $1 billion of total available liquidity, inclusive of our revolving credit facility. Subsequent to quarter-end, we completed the acquisition of Modern Animal, further expanding our presence within the highly attractive and under-penetrated Pet Healthcare market. In addition, earlier today, we launched a $600 million Term Loan B transaction. Given the scale of our business, the durability of our earnings profile, and our consistent free cash flow generation, we believe adding a modest amount of leverage is an appropriate evolution of Chewy's capital structure. We intend to maintain a conservative balance sheet and over time, target net leverage below 2x adjusted EBITDA.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Within that framework, the transaction enhances our financial flexibility and positions us to continue investing behind our strategic priorities, pursue attractive growth opportunities, and return capital to shareholders while maintaining significant liquidity. Turning to our updated outlook. As Sumit mentioned earlier, while the pet category remains resilient overall, the consumer environment has become more challenged since we established our original fiscal 2026 outlook earlier this year. Most notably, we are seeing more pressure on discretionary attachment and premiumization behavior across portions of our customer base, resulting in slower NSPAC growth than we had originally anticipated. Against this backdrop, we are updating our full-year fiscal 2026 net sales outlook to reflect both the softer consumer environment as well as a more conservative set of internal assumptions for the balance of the year.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

For fiscal 2026, we now expect net sales of between approximately $13.40 billion and $13.55 billion, representing approximately 6.3%-7.5% year-over-year growth. Included within this range is an expected net sales contribution of approximately $80 million from SmartPak and approximately $70 million from Modern Animal for fiscal year 2026. As we entered the year, we anticipated several company-specific initiatives would support improving growth trends through the back half of fiscal 2026, including expectations that changes to our Autoship product flow would accelerate product line attachment rates and enhanced digital advertising bidding algorithms would drive faster levels of customer growth. While we remain confident in the long-term value of these initiatives and both products are delivering strong underlying gains, the impact of both products have been muted by the macro environment.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

We no longer believe it is prudent to embed a meaningful acceleration in consumer spending into our outlook given the current operating environment. The low end of our guidance range assumes the current consumer backdrop worsens relative to the trends we are observing at this point, while the high end assumes spending patterns improve from current levels as we move through the second half. We continue to see healthy active customer trends, ongoing market share gains, and continued strength in Autoship. That said, given the current environment, we now expect active customer additions to trend towards the lower end of our previously stated range of approximately 150,000-250,000 net adds per quarter. The Chewy customer funnel remains healthy with consistent churn gains during the quarter and extremely healthy reactivation rates, which are being somewhat offset by new to Chewy customer softness due to the challenged spending environment.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Turning to profitability guidance. Given the continued strength we are seeing across the earnings profile of the business, we are maintaining our full-year fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range at 6.6%-6.8%, or approximately 100 basis points of year-over-year expansion at the midpoint. That said, as we mentioned as part of the Modern Animal acquisition, while these clinics are highly profitable on a four-wall mature basis, we expect the business to represent a modest margin rate drag in 2026. Thus, our stable total margin guidance speaks to the increasing durability of Chewy's earnings algorithm. At the midpoints of our guidance ranges, this implies approximately $900 million of adjusted EBITDA for the year. Importantly, our updated profitability outlook continues to reflect ongoing investment across several strategic priorities, including Chewy Health, Chewy Vet Care, automation initiatives, AI-enabled productivity efforts, and continued customer acquisition investments.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Our confidence in earnings power of the business continues to strengthen, supported by structural improvements across gross margin, Sponsored Ads, fulfillment productivity, operating discipline, and broader operating leverage throughout the organization. Furthermore, as we look to continue to deliver robust profitability gains in spite of the more challenged consumer backdrop, we are able to action certain efficiency gains that we originally anticipated for the back half of 2026 earlier in the year, supporting full-year margin durability. As you think about the cadence of profitability through the balance of the year, there are several important items to keep in mind.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

First, as we discussed on our prior earnings call, we continue to expect quarterly gross margin cadence in fiscal 2026 to more closely resemble the patterns observed in fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024. Specifically, we expect second quarter gross margin to contract modestly year-over-year, driven primarily by difficult comparisons associated with non-recurring MAP pricing benefits realized during the second quarter of fiscal 2025. Despite this quarterly dynamic, we continue to expect gross margin expansion on a full-year basis. Second, we expect SG&A leverage to remain relatively consistent throughout the balance of the year as we continue investing behind strategic growth initiatives while also realizing ongoing operational efficiencies across the business. Taken together, these factors are expected to result in more muted adjusted EBITDA margin expansion during the second quarter relative to the first quarter, with stronger year-over-year expansion expected across the back half of the year.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Overall, while we are moderating our revenue expectations to reflect the current operating environment, our confidence in the long-term structural margin opportunity and free cash flow generation profile of the business continues to increase. Turning to second quarter guidance. For the second quarter of fiscal 2026, we expect net sales between approximately $3.30 billion and $3.33 billion, representing approximately 6%-7% year-over-year growth. Our second quarter outlook assumes the current operating environment and consumer behavior trends remain generally stable with what we experienced exiting the first quarter. We continue to see healthy active customer engagement, Autoship program strength, and continued market share gains, although we expect ongoing pressure on discretionary attachment and premiumization behavior to persist near term.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Given the number of moving pieces impacting quarterly profitability cadence, including the gross margin dynamics we discussed earlier, and our desire to be more transparent and clear with quarterly profitability expectations, we are introducing quarterly adjusted EBITDA margin guidance. For the second quarter, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin of between 6.3%-6.4%, representing approximately 50 basis points of year-over-year expansion at the midpoint. As a reminder, second quarter profitability will be impacted by more difficult year-over-year gross margin comparisons associated with non-recurring MAP pricing benefits realized in the prior year period, as well as elevated fuel surcharge costs flowing through the quarter, which we expect to represent a roughly mid-single digit million-dollar headwind to the quarter. At the same time, we continue to expect ongoing SG&A discipline and operational efficiency improvements across the business.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Furthermore, our updated guidance for adjusted EBITDA margin in fiscal year 2026 contemplates similar levels of fuel cost headwinds for the balance of the year. Thus, while second quarter adjusted EBITDA margin expansion is expected to be more muted relative to the first quarter, we continue to expect stronger year-over-year profitability expansion across the back half of fiscal 2026 as reflected in our full-year guide as we lap this one-time MAP item. We also expect adjusted diluted EPS for the second quarter to be approximately $0.36. Finally, for the full-year 2026, we continue to expect share-based compensation expense, including related taxes, to remain broadly flat year-over-year. We are lowering our weighted average diluted shares outstanding by 5 million shares and now expect to end the year with approximately 420 million shares.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Net interest expense of approximately $10 million-$15 million, given the interest expense on our recently launched Term Loan, and an effective tax rate in the range of approximately 24%-26%. In closing, I would like to thank all of our Chewy team members for their continued disciplined execution and focus on operational excellence. We believe the combination of our recurring revenue model, growing health ecosystem, structural margin expansion opportunities, and strong free cash flow generation positions Chewy well to continue delivering long-term profitable growth and shareholder value creation. With that, I will turn the call back over to Sumit for some closing remarks.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Thanks, Chris. While the consumer environment has become modestly more challenged, our first quarter results reinforce that the power of the Chewy model remains durable and continues to strengthen. We are continuing to gain share with an increasingly larger pet TAM by leveraging the assets and initiatives we have built across Autoship, health, vet care, AI, fulfillment, and customer experience. These capabilities are deepening our competitive moats, expanding the durability of our earnings and free cash flow profile, and strengthening our right to win a greater share of the pet parent wallet over time. As today's transitory headwinds subside, we believe Chewy will be even better positioned to compound those gains and deliver long-term shareholder value. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Nathan Feather with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Nathan Feather
Nathan Feather
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hey, everyone, thanks for taking the question. I appreciate the quarterly EBITDA guidance. That's really helpful. Can you almost put a finer point on the puts and takes here that are leading to the sequential margin improvement in the back half of the year? Thank you.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Nathan. Q2, I'll just emphasize, is really all about phasing. The SG&A expansion that we expect in Q2 remains broadly flat to what we saw in Q1 and what we'll see for most of the year. If you look at our growth margin curve from last year, Q2 had a much higher and sort of outsized increase quarter-over-quarter that's not our normal seasonal pattern that you can see in our fiscal 2023 and 2024. Q2 is really just a phasing of that growth margin, where 2026 looks more stable quarter-over-quarter on gross margin rate. As you get to the back half of the year, we continue to think back half of the year looks like our full-year, where SG&A delivers slightly more than gross margin improvement.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Gross margin will continue to expand year-on-year. The seasonality of gross margin in the back half of the year looks more normal versus what we experienced prior. Again, Q2 is really all phasing structurally. SG&A continues to leverage with fulfillment costs. We continue to leverage corporate payroll costs. Gross margin will continue to expand with Sponsored Ads, premiumization, and a rational promotional environment.

Nathan Feather
Nathan Feather
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe one and a follow-up, if I could. With respect to the comment you made about the consumer, how should we be thinking about going 1 level lower on consumer behavior? Are you seeing any deviation in behavior relative to age of cohort or income levels that you'd want to call out in terms of consumer behavior on the platform?

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Hey, Eric, this is Sumit. Not really. Those are not data points that we collect sort of on a periodic basis, more so on a twice-a-year basis. I can tell you that underneath of it, when we look at sort of cumulative reorder rates for customers, these type of trends are holding very positive. That's true for new customers as well as reactivated customers. When I look at NSPAC by cohort for the customers that we acquired in the period one of this year, that is now lapping sort of two periods, or that has now been with us for two periods now, those cohort trends are positive. Broadly speaking, this is, as we've shared on the call, more so around the broad trends of premiumization and a modest sort of impact on attach rates.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

In terms of consumer demographic, those type of data, we don't collect on a periodic basis.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Just one follow-up if I can. Against the macro environment you find yourself in now, when you think about some of the longer-term platform and product initiatives that you guys highlighted in your prepared remarks, how do you think about either maintaining or accelerating the investment cadence in the business to capitalize on your market share potential relative to the rest of the industry as you look out towards the remainder of this year? Thanks so much.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We're always taking the steps. We plan twice a year for the long-range plan and then sort of break those plans down into what we would execute over the next 12 months or so. Our focus is always investing in activities that allow us to grow our TAM and continue to gain incremental share of wallet from customers. Underneath the gross margin line, we're investing in activities like building up infrastructural capabilities to invest back in AI that are driving efficiency savings that we've obviously quantified last quarter, and we've again confirmed this quarter. If you take that framework, then at the most strategic level, we're investing behind initiatives like Chewy Health.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Underneath of that, it's Chewy Vet Care and clinic initiatives that opened up the TAM by incremental $40 billion and is the fastest compounder of NSPAC, is a good way to look at it. When you think about our product initiatives, they are much more so to drive NSPAC curves up, whether this is investment in Autoship that drives repeat recurring purchase behavior, whether it's improvement in experience that drives incremental. One of the projects that we mentioned on the script that we are now not underwriting as bullish a behavior as we'd initially concepted when we A/B tested it, is this kind of notion of attaching more lines to Autoship, per se. That again goes back to the way the consumer behavior is acting rather than the direct kind of loss of our belief that these products will continue to drive product attach rate.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Chewy Plus is another investment for us, although I should be very clear in saying that from a margin investment point of view, it is neutral, not dilutive to 2026. Again, that's one of those initiatives that we essentially are very closely evaluating a product market fit for in pushing NSPAC curves between $300 and $800 up. When you go kind of below the gross margin line, we've clearly talked about continuing to invest in automation, continuing to invest in AI, that drives SG&A curve leverages while we maintain really strong corporate payroll discipline across the company. We're evaluating every line of the income statement and ensuring that maximized profit converts into free cash flow on a moving basis.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

The last capital allocation, which is not directly a capital allocation question, but is how do we efficiently return capital back to shareholders?

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Doug Anmuth
Doug Anmuth
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thanks for taking the questions. Sumit, can you talk about just how you get the confidence that the weaker environment late 1Q and into 2Q is macro-driven and just weighing on the broader category rather than anything market share specific to Chewy? When you think about the AI savings that you talked about, the low 10s of millions in fiscal 2026, are you still expecting kind of what you had talked about previously, like $50 million+ in fiscal 2027? Thanks.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

The answer to the second question, because it's such a direct question, is yes. Moving to the first question on how are we confident, what are we viewing, et cetera. We're very clearly gaining share. Our data suggests that, competitive data across the industry suggests that, and there are a few things underneath of it. When you look at customer attraction towards Chewy, it remains solidly driven by both our efforts as well as when you look at branded searches towards Chewy or direct traffic that is migrating to Chewy, that traffic was stronger. That relative to underlying trends when we look at industry-level trends. In Q1, we saw weakening trends within the overall pet food and supplies from an impressions index point of view. That trend declined year-over-year, underscoring the cautious consumer.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Despite this, when you look at Chewy's absolute clicks, they increased mid-single-digit percentages year-over-year. That was true for pretty much every category that we play in. Number three, when you look at spend cohort behavior, we are continuing to, outside of the modest pressure that we've talked about in the detach rate, consumables and healthcare categories that are recurring in nature, fueled by the Autoship flywheel, continue to be super strong. When we look at underneath where the share dynamics lie today, we believe the primary source of share gain in the pet industry are still within large e-commerce players such as ourselves. Furthermore, when you look at our customer behavior, we continue to see lower churn, healthier reactivation rates, as well as healthy, yet modestly worse than expected, new customer acquisition.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

All those are indicators in a world where the consumer behavior is changing less so than our proposition is diluting in any particular way. That gives us the confidence that the pressures that we're seeing are primarily macro-related. Finally, when you look at the fact that e-commerce continues to take strand, we continue to hold on to our customers. We don't see indicators that suggest a meaningful change in the competitive environment. Taken together, these are the trends that are giving us the confidence that the pressure we are seeing today is primarily macro-related, reflecting a more cautious consumer environment rather than a result of increased competition or share loss.

Doug Anmuth
Doug Anmuth
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Sure.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria with Wolfe. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Shweta Khajuria
Shweta Khajuria
Analyst at Wolfe

Thank you for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. When we think about your mid to longer term growth rate, in your view, does anything change in the growth algorithm? Should we be thinking about your growth as sort of 2x the overall industry growth rate driven by the initiatives that you are taking outside of macro environment? The second is on CVC and the veterinarian efforts. Now that the acquisition is closed, could you please remind us what your goals are between now and year-end and how we should be thinking about your expansion efforts there? Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Sure. I'll take the first one. Chris can take the second one, and I'll add as required. Yes, the answer to the first question is we still expect us to continue to grow, share, and to grow two times or more relative to the market. The value proposition of how we are going to market is only strengthening across from broader initiatives where we're expanding TAM to the precision and quality of execution within those initiatives underneath those TAM. Whether that's on the food and supply side of the house or whether that's experience-led products such as Autoship or Chewy+, et cetera, or whether that's consumer behavior that we continue to accrue on our platforms. All of those are strengthening.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

We have clearly signaled our aspiration in continuing to play and gain meaningful share in the categories that are health-related, and we are continuing to see that come true. Overall, none of the expectation nor aspiration has changed in our ability to accrue market share and drive outsized growth relative to the market. Chris.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Yeah. On CVC, Shweta, clinics, we still believe are a compelling revenue and earnings growth driver for Chewy going forward. We closed the last fiscal year with 18 CVCs, and now that we have Modern Animal closed, we've added 29 clinics from them, putting us at 47 clinics. We will continue with our plan as stated of 10 to 12 new openings in fiscal 2026 for Chewy Vet Care and focus on integrating Modern Animal into our operating and technology stacks, and then evaluate the business going forward. We'll plan to attack it aggressively via expansion as we move forward and continue to evaluate all of our both organic and inorganic opportunities in the space. 2026, we'll stay with our 10 to 12 clinic opening plan of record and go from there.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Shweta, to summarize, we will exit 2026 with roughly 60 clinics. As Chris said, our focus is stabilization and integration alongside ensuring that the synergies that we saw, both from Modern to Chewy and Chewy to Modern, are essentially starting to get unlocked so we can have a really healthy 2027 relative to those.

Shweta Khajuria
Shweta Khajuria
Analyst at Wolfe

Thanks, Sumit. Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Morton with MoffettNathanson. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Morton
Michael Morton
Analyst at MoffettNathanson

Good morning. Thank you for the question. Just wanted some additional clarity on what you're seeing with the consumer and trying to connect some prior comments. Sumit, in May, when you were at an industry conference, you said you saw gross adds increasing and then churn improving quarter-over-quarter. The guidance in the forward commentary talks about customer additions coming in at the low end of the net adds range per quarter. I would just love to get a better understanding maybe of some of the breakdown in consumer behavior over the last 30 to 60 days that seems to be driving such a reset. Part of that is the question we get a lot, is Amazon's push into same-day grocery is having an impact in the competitive environment at all? Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Mike, nothing has changed relative to how we had forecasted the curve of the year. If you recall our comments from last quarter and then again at Boston, we've essentially provided a range of active adds to be between 150,000 to 250,000 customers on a quarterly basis. A further comment that we provided was that we will start out the year probably between the low to mid end of that, and then we had baked in an acceleration as we move from the first half of the year to the back half of the year. Underneath of those two comments, if you recall, we have reiterated that we are not underwriting a rebound in how adoption or relinquishment trends are essentially changing. We were not underwriting any kind of rebound relative to the industry.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

All of the progress that you're seeing is primarily driven by Chewy's efforts against a macro that was expected to normalize coming out of 2025, we prudently observed that perhaps we should not underwrite that normalization. All that has changed from that point until now is that we have seen instead of the back half getting stronger, we now maintain a point of view that we should be appropriately conservative given the trending that we have seen as we've played through the back half of Q1, which is a modest pressure on NSPAC driven by attach rate, particularly on the discretionary side, as well as premiumization headwinds. That is what is leading us to update the guidance.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

You could call it's majority on the macro, and there's a smaller amount based on our initiatives that we had underwritten or forecasted to provide us a tailwind as we had moved towards the back half of the year to consolidate NSPAC curves, and therefore drive the revenue. I would summarize it as the following. If you look at our long-term revenue guidance, it has consistently been high-single-digit to low-double-digit revenue growth. The two inputs of that algorithm are active adds growing at low- to mid-single-digit, and then NSPAC growing at mid to high single digit. Q4 performance or 2025 performance was very much written with the high end of low single digit in terms of customer additions, and then squarely mid single digits for NSPAC.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Our curve this year was also initially set for low- to mid-single-digit customer additions, which we are now kind of forecasting to perhaps being in that low- to mid-range of that 150,000 to 200,000 customers, as indicated on our earnings call today. Very consistent with our commentary relative to last quarter coming into this quarter, with the update being seen primarily on a slightly weaker macro. Second, Amazon's push into same-day grocery. No real comments. As I've mentioned, we're not seeing any change to competitive environment. We keep competitors in the rear view mirror, but clearly we're focused on our proposition, our customers, that continues to compound, and we continue to sort of pull away and orbit, if you would, relative to the innovation that we are driving in pet.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Not only in classic products that drive our food and supply segments, but also in net new categories such as health, equine, specialty animals, et cetera. Overall, we feel very good about our positioning. If you look at pricing or promotional intensity, which is generally sign of more competitive environment, we would say the broader retail environment is active from a promotional standpoint, but remains rational and consistent with what we've seen for quite some time now, right? Our approach continues to center on delivering a strong customer experience while managing the business with appropriate discipline. There were times in Q1 when we leaned in on promotions for a discrete period of time because we saw the opportunity in the front half of the quarter.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

As we moved into the back half of the quarter, we pulled back and are being deliberate about deploying these dollars to drive higher ROI when we see the opportunity.

Michael Morton
Michael Morton
Analyst at MoffettNathanson

Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Sure.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Anna Andreeva with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Anna Andreeva
Anna Andreeva
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Great. Thank you so much for taking our question. Good morning, and thank you for all the color. Sumit, we just wanted to follow up the pressure with premiumization on the net spend. I think you mentioned that's more across discretionary. Can you remind us what's the penetration of what you guys consider discretionary on the platform? Are you seeing this more with new or existing customers? Just your thoughts on company-specific initiatives to accelerate that net spend. I think you mentioned promotional environment is pretty rational for the industry, do you view higher promotional activity as a lever for Chewy to drive the business just as you go through the softer macro? Thank you so much.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Okay. Let's unpack those one-by-one. On the first one, premiumization and discretionary, what is the penetration on discretionary strategy itself? Okay. If you look at our filing, it is clear that hard goods continues to perform well and remains an important contributor to customer engagement and net spend growth. This is less specifically pointing towards hard goods softening. Right? What we are referring to is not a decline in hard goods demand. Rather, the pace of discretionary attachment is running below our original expectations entering the year. As you would expect, we forecast down to the line item level on customers that we bring onto the platform, the spending behaviors of those customers, new existing customers, and reactivated customers each have different type of cohorts curves that we build in. Within each of these, we're building an attach rate forecast.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

What we're referring to is not a decline in hard goods. Rather, the pace of discretionary attachment is running below. Customers are still purchasing discretionary categories but are somewhat being a little more deliberate in their spending decisions than they were several quarters ago. When we take a step back, our product expansion with hard goods assortment remains healthy and is continuing to support growth. The distinction is simply that because we consider treats also as a discretionary item. If you look at the way pet parents are experimental with treats, an average pet parent can try up to 12 different treat brands a year. Those brands, depending upon the willingness to pay rather than affordability characteristics of the consumer, can really lead to high-end premium treats being attached and driving the overall basket.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

The whole thing for us kind of moves together in our ability to drive stronger attachment. Our Autoship business has continued to grow strongly and is a premium driver of attach for us. At the same time, some of these other [non-sysgen-driven behaviors], including some customers adding line items to Autoship that one of our products were supposed to drive, those are some of the things that we're sort of staring at and saying, okay, might have been a bit more bullish on our forecasting. Your second is promotions-

Anna Andreeva
Anna Andreeva
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Just on the.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

a lever to accelerate. We view investment in the business broadly across the spectrum. We don't consider promotions. When we are investing behind initiatives, we're essentially first interested in ensuring that our TAM and profitability expand on a sustainable basis. We are less interested in chasing dilutive growth. We are also careful about not just over-pouring dollars into marketing with the outcome being us picking up lower quality customers. Anna, you may remember 2023, when we essentially ran sort of cash acquisition offers, and these type of offers just don't have high ROI and generally produce hit-and-run customers. Is promo a lever? I would say demand elasticity is a very proven dynamic in the economics of a business. At the same time, LTV to CAC is a highly disciplined lever that we keep in front of us.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

The ROI of the investment is also very important to us.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with Evercore. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mark Mahaney
Mark Mahaney
Analyst at Evercore

All right. Thanks. I just wanted to ask about Sponsored Ads, and if you could provide a little bit more of an update on this. I know you've been citing it for a while as a driver of gross margin expansion. If you could be more specific about that, and then if there's anything new in terms of the types of advertisers that you've been able to bring onto the platform, any color there would be great. Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

Hey, Mark. I can start. Chris can add as he sees fit. Sponsored Ads, we continue to be bullish, optimistic, and pleased with the progress of this particular initiative. If you recall, we exited last year at roughly 2025, we exited roughly at midpoint of our growth curve of overall expectation of 1%-3%. We leaned in with on-site ads as the primary growth driver of margin contribution in 2024 and 2025. As the program continues to grow, we will continue to mix into off-site ads. Broadly speaking, at our entitlement to which we are currently underwriting as 3%, we expect overall contribution to be at two-thirds or 70% of that to be converted to move to the bottom line.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

The quarter, we were pleased with, given our efforts to accelerate a product launch that we call Chewy Max, which allows advertisers to collaborate with us even faster. Our ability to solve cold start challenges with new or smaller brands with more efficacy. We saw roughly 40% of our advertisers try out the product and give us really high marks for what we've taken to market. Essentially, part of Sponsored Ads is helping us offset some part of the fuel pressures that we are now citing and are persistently loaded into our P&Ls. Broadly speaking, it remains a product that has high customer reception, receives strong scores from our advertisers. We have a healthy level of demand, and we continue to focus on, A, optimizing supply and ramping-up off-site ads.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Yeah, nothing to add. Agree.

Operator

We have time for one more question, which will come from the line of Michael McGovern with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael McGovern
Michael McGovern
Analyst at Bank of America

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Given CVC customers are about $900 in year one NSPAC, can you speak to the customer acquisition cost of a clinic-acquired customer versus your primary digital channels? Second question, just more broadly, can you talk about the EBITDA margin headwind from Modern Animal in the Q2 guidance? Anything along the lines of just how much of the quarter-on-quarter margin headwind is a self-directed investment there? Thank you.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

I'll take the first one. Chris will take the second. Mike, in terms of customer acquisition costs relative to digital, this has been a pleasant surprise for us. What we've seen is the halo of the Chewy brand. When a box is dropped in a particular MSA, with very little local activation, attracts a high-quality set of customers to CVC, therefore, making our overall acquisition costs also highly efficient. As you recall, 40% of customers, four out of 10 customers that are walking into CVC are net new to Chewy. We've essentially seen this behavior or this particular trend stay true for every box that we have dropped so far in the last 18 boxes that have been dropped.

Sumit Singh
Sumit Singh
CEO at Chewy

At this point, after having operated the infrastructure for roughly two, two and a half years, we have some good data points from our original cohorts as well as our newer cohorts. We're quite pleased with what it's costing us to acquire these customers. The Chewy brand awareness is helping a lot.

Chris Deppe
Chris Deppe
CFO at Chewy

Mike, on the Modern Animal EBITDA margin headwind, as we shared when we announced the transaction, we expect Modern Animal to be generally adjusted EBITDA dollar neutral in 2026. We shared there's a $70 million revenue or net sales impact for the year, roughly a dollar neutral EBITDA. That provides a modest margin rate drag for the year. From a timing and curve perspective, perhaps that drag is a little higher in Q2 and wanes through the year, but that's the overall view for Modern Animal.

Michael McGovern
Michael McGovern
Analyst at Bank of America

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for all your questions. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Chris Deppe
      Chris Deppe
      CFO
    • Lee Horowitz
      Lee Horowitz
      Head of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance
    • Sumit Singh
      Sumit Singh
      CEO
Analysts
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