Heritage Global Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 13, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: The company substantially wound down Heritage Global Capital, recording approximately $21.7 million in non-cash charges tied to non-performing loans. Consolidated operating loss was $20.9 million and net loss was $15.9 million, compared with net income of $1.6 million a year earlier.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management said exiting the capital business should reduce management distraction and allow capital and attention to shift toward the profitable industrial and financial-assets operations, which it views as stronger platforms for long-term growth.
  • Positive Sentiment: The DebtX, NLEX and newly acquired Boston Note businesses are being positioned as an asset-light brokerage platform covering performing and non-performing loans across residential and commercial markets. Management cited eight trial transactions generating more than $500,000 in revenue and sees significant expansion potential in seller-financed notes.
  • Positive Sentiment: Heritage Global reported a growing industrial-auction pipeline, including larger and more diverse opportunities in manufacturing, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, EVs, cannabis, construction and transportation. The company is adding select sales personnel and believes activity should strengthen in the second half of the year.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Quarterly revenue declined to $12.3 million from $14.3 million, while adjusted EBITDA fell to $1.2 million from $2.8 million. The company ended June with $13.2 million of cash, or $6.5 million in net available cash after client-related obligations, and $9.4 million of net working capital.
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Earnings Conference Call
Heritage Global Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Please note this call is being recorded. We are standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Jen Belodeau. Please go ahead.

Jen Belodeau
SVP at IMS Investor Relations

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call contains forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and projections about future events and are subject to change based on various important factors. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this call. For more details on factors that could affect these expectations, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Heritage Global's Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ross Dove. Please go ahead, Ross.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Before I turn it over to Brian to go through the financials, I want to take a few minutes to add some color to our recent news. Closing Heritage Global Capital was at a point of no return where it became both obvious and necessary on multiple fronts. First, the distraction on management team, then coupled with the continued lag on collections that was not improving. Our board and many investors had weighed in for several months that all focus should now be on growing the business units that are both profitable and strong and core to our future.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Honestly, it's a relief moving forward to just do that. It can be hard to fold, but I look at the great poker player Stu Ungar, and maybe he had the best advice of all. Fold to live to fold again." With that, everyone here is moving on, building the business units that are built to last. On the financial side, our acquisition of Boston Note that followed the DebtX acquisition is very exciting. With DebtX along with NLEX and Boston Note, we have an asset-light brokerage now that truly serves a broad and diverse range of financial asset classes, both performing and non-performing, and covering institutional and private sellers with all the building blocks ready to accelerate growth. It's exciting.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

On the industrial side, we have expanded our sales force and already see an expanded and more diverse sector pipeline with more bankruptcy assignments and also added transportation and construction products, which are additive to our well-respected and key manufacturing and processing auctions. We have built an extremely robust inventory holding at ALT, bringing us more buyers to the HG family as well. The trigger is simple and up to us. Grow what's strong and built to last. With that, I pass it back to Brian.

Brian Cobb
Brian Cobb
CFO at Heritage Global

Thank you, Ross, and welcome everyone. During the Q2, we made the strategic decision to substantially wind down Heritage Global Capital. In connection with this wind down, we recorded approximately $21.7 million in non-cash charges during the Q2 related to the write-down of non-performing loans within our specialty lending business. Despite the Q2 impact, we believe this is the right path forward in order to create a stronger platform anchored in the fundamentals of our core business that allows for growth and long-term shareholder value. We recorded a consolidated operating loss of $20.9 million in the Q2 of 2026, compared to consolidated operating income of $2.2 million in the prior year quarter.

Brian Cobb
Brian Cobb
CFO at Heritage Global

Our industrial assets division reported operating income of approximately $600,000 in the Q2 of 2026, compared to $1.3 million in the Q2 of 2025. In our financial assets division, due to the wind down of HCC, we reported an operating loss of $20.4 million in the Q2 of 2026, compared to operating income of $2.2 million in the prior year quarter. Our industrial assets division continued to execute on a steady volume of auction activity, though we've continued to see a similar trend of smaller scale opportunities absent larger auctions in the marketplace. With that said, we're seeing a solid pipeline of activity and remain confident in our ability to capitalize on opportunities in the space as they arise.

Brian Cobb
Brian Cobb
CFO at Heritage Global

Our refurbishment and resale business has been performing well as we're seeing our improvements to the quality of inventory continuing to translate to meaningful increases in asset turnover and improved profitability. Our financial assets division was impacted this quarter by non-cash charges associated with the wind down of HCC. Excluding these charges, the division reported a decent quarter as we saw continued activity in NLEX across the charge-off and non-performing loan space and began to realize gains from The Debt Exchange, a leading full-service loan sale advisor that we acquired in January of 2026. Subsequent to the quarter, we completed the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of the Boston Note Company, a seller-financed real estate brokerage with over 30 years of operating history in the residential space.

Brian Cobb
Brian Cobb
CFO at Heritage Global

The transaction acts as a bolt-on to DebtX and expands our financial assets platform as we look to enter additional asset classes and distribution channels while expanding upon the seller note category, which we believe is ripe with opportunity. We look forward to integrating Boston Note Company into the business and building upon their well-earned reputation in the marketplace. Additional consolidated financial results include the following. Revenue was $12.3 million in the Q2 of 2026, compared to $14.3 million in the Q2 of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.2 million, compared to $2.8 million in the prior year period. Net loss was $15.9 million or $0.46 per diluted share, compared to net income of $1.6 million or $0.05 per diluted share in the Q2 of 2025.

Brian Cobb
Brian Cobb
CFO at Heritage Global

Our balance sheet remains a strength with stockholders' equity of $51.9 million as of June 30, 2026, compared to $67 million at December 31, 2025, with net working capital of $9.4 million. Our cash balance reflects a total of $13.2 million as of June 30, 2026, and after removing amounts due to our clients or payables to sellers on our balance sheet, our net available cash balance was $6.5 million. With that, Ross, I'll turn it back over to you.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Thank you, Brian. Just as an ending, my thinking on all of this. Fifty years ago, when I lost my first deal, I took the long walk from the front of our warehouse to the back of the warehouse to face my grandfather, and I told my grandfather, "I feel really, really bad about the loss." He was at five o'clock having his normal bourbon, sitting at his desk, and he said to me, "Rossie boy, kid, I feel really, really good that you feel really bad." Now, flash forward 50 years to where I'm the age he was then, and I understand exactly what he meant, and I know exactly what we need to do to get out of feeling really bad and start feeling really good.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

That is the plan, that is all the effort, and that is everything we're going to do to move forward on the platforms that are strong and say goodbye to the platform that held us back. Onward and upward, I'm proud to announce thank you all for everything you've done, sticking with this and staying with this, and we're on our way in the right direction. Best to all, and we're around to answer any questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will open the floor for questions. If you'd like to ask a question, please press *1 on your touchtone phone now. If you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, you may press *2. Again, that is *1 to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Jacob Stephan
Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets

Hey, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions. Maybe just first, focusing on the two businesses that were recently acquired and maybe touching on how they kind of fit together. I'm wondering if you could talk about DebtX's performance relative to Q1, and then also just how does Boston Note fit in with that?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

I thought kind of start with how Boston Note fits in. This is Ross talking. We originally looked at Boston Note, and we didn't see where we were the perfect partner to Boston Note until after we acquired DebtX. Once we acquired DebtX, we really saw that there was an opportunity for Boston Note to convert from just doing seller finance to residential products to also seller finance commercial products. We knew that DebtX had an unparalleled exit platform as long as they could find the assets. We ran a trial for several months, and during the trial, we closed eight transactions and over a half a million dollars in revenue. It really became kind of apparent that they fit like a glove. We'd already acquired DebtX, and we knew that putting Boston Note in tandem with them was going to really create some synergy.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

We also knew that Boston Note turned down pretty much every kind of non-performing loan that was brought to them, and we had an avenue second to none on non-performing loans with NLEX. When we looked at it, we said putting these three companies under one roof will give us a commanding position in the marketplace. We feel that on a go-forward basis, you're going to see that over the next six months, year, two years as we blend them together, unify our sales pitch, and get them all working in consortium. We're really excited about what we think we can build there.

Jacob Stephan
Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets

Got it. And then, sorry, I might have missed this in the comments, but The Debt Exchange, Inc. acquisition relative to Q1. I guess your comments made it seem like things have improved off of a seasonally slow quarter, but any kind of comments there?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

They're a company that over the last, maybe, and Brian can give you the exact details, but over at least the last half decade, almost 50% to 60%, sometimes even two-thirds of their revenue comes in Q4. Their revenue primarily comes from banks, and while their revenue comes from banks, it's very common for the banks to wait till the end of the year for a lot of the asset flow. We'll know a lot better by January 1st how well we're doing. But the pipeline is growing and transactions are closing, and we're also adding the Boston Note Company transaction. I don't want to overstate what hasn't happened yet, but we're on the right track.

Jacob Stephan
Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets

Okay. Then maybe just touching on the auction activity. It sounded like the larger type auctions were a little bit softer or few and far between in the first half. I guess, what are you seeing in the second half that kind of gives you confidence in the pipeline that you referenced?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Yeah. It's almost like when we're slow for one or two quarters, we almost follow with one or two, three strong quarters afterwards. I've been doing this for five decades, and it's just the nature of the business that everything kind of comes in shifts. You go from doing a bunch of smaller auctions to do a bunch of bigger auctions, just by the sheer nature of the macroeconomy. Our pipeline has larger auctions now than it did in Q1 or Q2, and we're signing several of those. All roads lead to a positive second half of the year. And the good news is a lot of the things we're signing now are not just in our strongest sectors, the pharma sector, the food and beverage sector, but they're in a lot of diverse sectors where we're also good.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

I think there's bright days ahead on the industrial side.

Jacob Stephan
Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets

Great. I appreciate all the color. I'll turn it over.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum,. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Hi, George.

Logan Lillehaug
Logan Lillehaug
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Hey. Hey, Ross, Brian. You actually have Logan on for George here. Thanks for taking the question. First one, Ross, obviously, the capital segment has been in a tough spot here for several quarters. I wonder if you could just talk about what moving away from that opens up in terms of time and management focus. I guess how should we think about this move kind of lending itself to your desire to do more acquisitions?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Yeah. It became a real burden because in the end of the day, it was taking a lot of management time without us necessarily doing anything really, truly effective to improve it. In the end of the day, nobody can ever be sure with thousands of accounts what you're going to collect back. But if you're in a junior position, there's always risk. So it just got to the point where we said, "Look, this is not the best place for us going forward to either operate or to put more capital, that there's way better places to put our capital." It's time to basically end trying to fix something that is difficult to fix and try to focus all the energy on building what doesn't need fixing but is ripe for growing.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

So it became kind of obvious. Lots of investors kept saying it's the right move. Lots of board members kept saying it was the right move, and at some point in time, everyone in management kind of all stood up together and said, "All right, if we're ever going to do it, let's do it now." The best thing I can tell you is it does feel good to have it over with.

Logan Lillehaug
Logan Lillehaug
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Got it. You mentioned doing some more hiring on the industrial side. In the past, you've talked about maybe trying to add more business on that side that's outside the building. I'm curious if any of that hiring is focused there, or maybe just in general, help us understand kind of where you see opportunity to win new business there.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

We've been winning in more diverse auctions, not just outside the building, but in other sectors. There's lots of new sectors that are basically getting busy now. The EV sector is getting busy, the cannabis sector is getting busy. Lots of the food and beverage sectors are getting busy. There's lots of kind of inside the building manufacturing getting busy, coupled with a lot of outside the building construction and transportation. When you see this kind of broad group of asset classes getting busy, we're just building up because we think the amount of auctions and the size of auctions are going to grow over the next year or two years, and we want to make sure that we have the right sector and geographic coverage.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

This is not the type of business where we're looking to hire dozens of people, but we're going to add some select people to make sure we get as broad a coverage as we can.

Logan Lillehaug
Logan Lillehaug
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay. Thanks for taking the questions.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Michael Diana with Maxim Group. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Hi, Michael.

Michael Diana
Michael Diana
Analyst at Maxim Group

Thank you. Hey, Ross. You mentioned construction and transportation, which has been very successful for other people. What is your strategy or niche or whatever that you're going for there?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

The really, really big firms doing it, and there's obviously one monster firm. We're not out to try to take them on. There are lots of regional auctions, where in the end of the day, they're underneath the radar of somebody at that size. $500,000 auctions, $1 million, $2 million auctions, and those are really kind of our sweet spot. The auctions from basically $500,000 to $5 million to $10 million are our sweet spot. We're not looking to win the $50 million fleet auctions, but the individual owner retiring or the struggled company with some financial trouble that needs someone to come in right away with a lot of hand-holding kind of really fits our DNA and culture.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

We have won what I will call kind of one-off transactions that aren't from the biggest institutions or the biggest rental companies, but from individual sellers who were looking to really work with somebody on a one-on-one basis. We think there is a lot of that coming forward right now. We just want to make sure we can serve that market, Michael.

Michael Diana
Michael Diana
Analyst at Maxim Group

Yeah. Okay. That is what I figured. That is great. So you are in an area where you can compete well. Going to Boston Note, I am somewhat ignorant on the terminology there. Could you just explain to us what a seller note and a carryback note is?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

I sure can. So when an individual sells a property, it could be a residential property, it could be a multi-family, it could be any really category of property, it could be any kind of commercial property. An individual sells that property, and for whatever reason, the buyer will not either qualify for a bank loan or the seller of the property wanted a steady income and said, "You do not need to go to the bank. I will become your lender." He carries back the loan. So the seller carried back a first deed of trust secured by the collateral of the property he used to own.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Now, one year later, two years later, three years, four year later, for whatever reason, he wishes he could monetize that loan, and he really would like to get all of his cash, not get the monthly payments anymore. He did not really know where to go. He or she, as an individual, it was not that simple to go find a bank to sell it to. So Boston Note, for the last 30 years, primarily on the residential side, it says, "Come to us, and we will get you all cash and get you out of that seller carryback, and you will be done with it and have the money in the bank.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

" We figured out with the CEO of Boston Note, what if you did this for commercial loans, which is 50x bigger business, and what if you did this for larger jumbo real estate loans and non-performing loans and really extended the offering, what would it look like? He said, "Well, it will look like a lot more profitable, a lot larger company. How can you execute this?" We said, we think because of the two companies we already own, that putting everything together, we think it can really scale.

Michael Diana
Michael Diana
Analyst at Maxim Group

Okay. That sounds very logical. Do you have any idea, does anybody keep track of the magnitude of just the residential part of the market? I mean, how many of these carryback notes are out there?

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

All I know, I don't have the exact number. When we did the original basically analysis, we were under 2% of the market. So the market is 100 times bigger than what Boston Note, which is a boutique firm, was doing.

Michael Diana
Michael Diana
Analyst at Maxim Group

Okay. Great. Thanks, Ross.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Thank you, Michael.

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no additional questions at this time. I'd like to now turn the meeting back to Ross for any additional or closing remarks.

Ross Dove
Ross Dove
CEO at Heritage Global

Thank you all for attending. We got our work cut out for us, but we're very comfortable that we're in the right place at the right time with the right plan. Keep an eye on us, and I think you'll be very pleased as we move forward through the year. Thank you all, and anybody who has questions, you can contact us at any time, and we'd love to chat with you. Thank you again. Bye-bye.

Operator

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
Analysts
    • Jen Belodeau
      SVP at IMS Investor Relations
    • Jacob Stephan
      Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets
    • Logan Lillehaug
      Analyst at Craig-Hallum
    • Michael Diana
      Analyst at Maxim Group
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