Honest Q2 2026 Earnings Report

Honest EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.04
• Consensus EPS: $0.01
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.03
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Honest Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $80.19 million
• Expected Revenue: $77.83 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$2.36 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Honest Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 8/5/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:45PM ET

Honest (NASDAQ:HNST) (NASDAQ: HNST) is a consumer goods company that develops and sells personal care, beauty, baby, and household products. Its product portfolio includes diapers, wipes, skin care, bath and body products, personal care items, cosmetics, and household cleaning products, with an emphasis on ingredient transparency and product design.

Founded in 2011, the company initially built its business primarily through direct-to-consumer sales and subscription offerings before expanding its retail presence. Honest products are sold through the company’s website and a range of retail partners, primarily in the United States, with select products also available in Canada.

The Honest Company was co-founded by actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba, Brian Lee, and Christopher Gavigan. The company became publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol HNST in 2021. Carla Vernón serves as chief executive officer.

Honest Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Organic growth and margins strengthened: Q2 organic revenue rose 6.7% and consumption increased nearly 8%, led by wipes and personal care. Underlying adjusted gross margin expanded to 43.8%, while underlying adjusted EBITDA margin reached a company-record 9.8%.
• Positive Sentiment: Wipes and personal care continued to outperform: Wipes consumption grew 26% and personal care grew 19%, substantially ahead of their respective categories. Household penetration increased 100 basis points to 8.1%, with nearly two-thirds of the gain coming from households without children.
• Positive Sentiment: Full-year outlook was raised: Honest now expects 2026 organic revenue growth of 5%-7%, adjusted EBITDA of $23 million-$25 million, and adjusted gross margins in the mid-40% range. The company plans to reinvest tariff-refund proceeds into marketing, operating capabilities, and growth initiatives.
• Positive Sentiment: Balance sheet and cash generation improved: The company ended the quarter with $105.9 million in cash, no debt, and $35.3 million of year-to-date free cash flow, compared with negative free cash flow in the prior-year period. It also repurchased 5.6 million shares for $18.7 million year to date.
• Negative Sentiment: Diaper-category pressure remains a headwind: Reported revenue declined 10.9% to $83.3 million, reflecting strategic exits and diaper revenue declines. Management characterized weakness across the diaper category as structural and said increased second-half marketing and capability investments will raise SG&A from Q2 levels.

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, welcome to The Honest Company second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Chris Mandeville, Vice President of Investor Relations at The Honest Company. Please go ahead.

[Chris Mandeville, VP of Investor Relations at The Honest Company]

Good afternoon, thank you for joining our second quarter 2026 conference call. With me today are Carla Vernón, our Chief Executive Officer, and Curtiss Bruce, our Chief Financial and Operating Officer. Before we begin, I will remind you that our remarks today include forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties. We do not undertake any obligation to update these statements, and actual results may differ materially. For a detailed discussion of these factors, please refer to our safe harbor statements in today's earnings materials and our recent SEC filings. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release and accompanying presentation, which are available at investors.honest.com.

[Chris Mandeville, VP of Investor Relations at The Honest Company]

Finally, please note that all consumption data included in our discussion today, unless otherwise noted, will reflect Circana MULO+ measured channel data for the 13 weeks ended June 28th, 2026, as compared to the prior year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Carla.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Thank you, Chris. Before I share our results for the second quarter of 2026, I want to welcome Chris in his new role as Vice President of Investor Relations. While Chris has already been with us for the last two earnings calls, we are thrilled that he has officially joined Honest. Now I'm pleased to share our results for the second quarter of 2026, which reflect the continued strength and momentum of our business. We achieved strong organic revenue growth of nearly 7% and our highest profit margins in the history of The Honest Company, with underlying adjusted gross margins of 43.8% and underlying adjusted EBITDA margins of 9.8%. Given our sound first half execution and confidence in the path ahead, we are raising our full year outlook.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

These Q2 results are a product of the ongoing structural improvements to our business and the team's continued commitment to operational excellence. Importantly, this strengthened financial foundation provides us with additional horsepower to accelerate investments in support of all three of our strategic pillars of brand maximization, margin enhancement, and operating discipline. Looking specifically at our first pillar, brand maximization, this quarter clearly showcased the power of our strategy. We are encouraged by our momentum as we scale our broad collection of cleanly formulated and sustainably designed Honest products. In addition to our top-line results, our overall consumption growth was up nearly 8%. This growth continued to be volume led and significantly outpaced the 2% growth in our comparative categories. Our vision to scale Honest is grounded in two important consumer truths. The first key consumer truth is the resonance of our Honest standard.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Our portfolio is formulated without 3,500 ingredients of concern that we choose not to use in our products. These high standards mean our products meet the high expectation of modern consumers who want clean formulation, excellent product performance, and joyful design in their Personal Care. The second key consumer truth is the broad appeal of Honest across households of all ages and stages. While we're often recognized for our wonderful portfolio of baby products, today, over half of our households have no kids at all. Our strength across household types is an important driver of scaling the Honest brand through our brand maximization strategy. Today, 89% of households in the U.S. do not have any children under the age of seven, and 75% of all U.S. households have no children at all. We continue to see progress in scaling Honest across a broad range of households.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

This quarter, our household penetration of 8.1% improved 100 basis points with nearly 2/3 of that growth coming from no-kid households. This growth gives us material evidence that more households are embracing Honest each year. In addition to this excellent progress, we are encouraged by the significant runway we see across our growth platforms. To put that opportunity into perspective, in baby personal care, key branded competitors hold household penetration anywhere from two to six times greater than we do. In all-purpose wipes, larger brands have as much as 5x-7x our household penetration. Let me share a closer look at how this momentum is being driven across our businesses, beginning with our wipes portfolio. Our total wipes portfolio delivered consumption growth of 26% vs comparative category growth of 2%. Our extensive wipes platform crosses several categories and uses.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

With such wide-ranging collections of wipes, Honest offers a variety of benefits that appeal to a broad range of household types. Our collections include our Clean Conscious Wipes, which are the number one natural baby wipe brand and grew 16% this quarter. Our flushable wipes, which grew more than 200% in Q2, making us the fastest-growing branded player in the segment. Our sanitizing wipes, which grew 55% in Q2 and are the second-largest hand sanitizing wipes brand in the category. These wipes businesses are all significantly outpacing the growth of their respective categories, and each delivers on the Honest standard of clean formulation, strong product performance, and joyful design. This year, our flushable wipes entered the spotlight with a new campaign that speaks to the category in an elegant yet irreverent style that is candid in a way that only Honest can be.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

In fact, our groundbreaking campaign, called It's Time to Get Honest, drove significant viral engagement, delivering well over 3 billion media impressions and increasing awareness of The Honest brand across a new, broader community. In addition to meeting the high standard for product quality, our flushable wipes packaging is designed to be a room accessory that is both elegant and unapologetic. The collection is gaining strong traction online and across brick-and-mortar retailers, including our recent addition into the feminine care aisle at CVS. Building on this momentum, we see greater things ahead in expanding distribution, increasing product offerings, and driving greater brand awareness for our flushable wipes. The strong Q2 performance of our wipes business also benefited from our three-pronged strategy to maximize tentpole merchandising events such as Amazon Prime Day.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

While strong consumer deal events can be treated as a one-time boost to sales, our team partners closely with retailers to ensure that we leverage these events to introduce our full Honest assortment to new shoppers, build recurring subscriptions, and increase brand discovery. We saw this working to great success across Prime Day, with 58% of the visitors to our Honest storefront being entirely new to The Honest brand. Our team has great plans to build on these early relationships to earn lasting loyalty across our full collection of Honest products. Turning to Personal Care. In Q2, our Personal Care portfolio grew 19%, outpacing the category's 5% growth rate. We design our Personal Care products to bring genuine joy and happiness to everyday routines.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

For some members of our Honest community, that means utilizing rich, beautifully authentic touches like the naturally derived soothing lavender in our signature baby personal care collection. For the members of our community with the most sensitive skin, it means providing products that are gentle, yet effective and often fragrance-free. By delivering on both preferences seamlessly, we maintained our position as the number two brand in total baby personal care. Earlier this year, The Honest brand made its debut into the big kid aisle, welcoming us into a new set of homes. The launch of our kid-friendly personal care lineup was timed in coordination with the "Toy Story 5" movie premiere and in partnership with Pixar's media campaign. The film, which debuted 30 years after the original movie, delivered the number one biggest global opening weekend in Pixar history.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

The magic of brands like Pixar and Honest is that they unlock the power of multi-generational appeal. Our Toy Story collection, which launched earlier this year at Walmart and Amazon, is getting ready to greet new families in the food channel, starting with retailers including H-E-B and select Ahold Delhaize banners. More than ever, Honest is expanding to meet consumers with products they love wherever they shop. Before concluding my remarks, it's important to acknowledge that the strong results in the quarter include a dampening effect from our diaper business. Current headwinds and shifting consumer dynamics appear to be structural for the diaper category, with most national brands experiencing declines. While our diaper business is navigating these same pressures, we remain committed to providing families with a diaper offering that meets the expectations of the Honest standard for quality, performance, and joy.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Because of the importance of families with babies, we are pleased to announce a new strategic partnership allowing The Honest brand to maintain its important place in baby and family-friendly apparel. Through a new licensing agreement with an industry-leading apparel manufacturer, Honest will transition back to an outbound licensing approach for this category. We are glad that families will have the Honest standard available to them when choosing bedding and baby apparel for their newest little ones. As you can see, we are energized about the strength of The Honest brand across all the segments we serve. Three and a half years ago, we began what was a necessary transformation to build a more powerful, Honest brand and Honest Company. We are now a fundamentally stronger enterprise, built on a durable foundation. The evidence of our progress is clear across an array of metrics. First, we're more strategically focused.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

We have intentionally shifted our revenue mix towards our higher growth and higher margin Wipes and Personal Care platforms, which now represent over 70% of our revenue. Second, we are more growth-driven. Since 2022, we have delivered an 11% consumption growth CAGR. Third, we are more structurally profitable. Our second quarter underlying adjusted gross margin of 44% is 1,500 basis points higher than we were in 2022. These gains have allowed us to make considerable progress towards operating a virtuous cycle for profitable growth. Our convictions are not simply based on metrics. Honest was founded to be more than a disruptor brand. We were built to bring the world a modern personal care company that delivers on a standard built for the modern era. Transformation alone is not the finish line. Our ongoing goal is to achieve true scale.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

With great intention and clarity, we have identified right to win categories where we are leading and delivering exactly what today's modern households need. We have executed this year in and year out with strict financial discipline. As we scale operationally, many of the important things about The Honest Company haven't changed. Our team of Honest Butterflies is an intense team of builders that pairs passion and vision with a focused approach to execution. Every product we create upholds our rigorous guiding principles. It's this joy, commitment, and uncompromising quality that makes Honest unique and meaningful to households of all types. This is the true heartbeat, giving the Honest brand both relevance and power. With that, I will now turn the call over to Curtiss to provide more details on our Q2 financial results and walk through our raised full-year outlook.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Thank you, Carla, and good afternoon, everyone. As you just heard, Q2 was a significant milestone that clearly validates our trajectory and highlights the robust results generated when our strategic focus meets disciplined execution. Let's dive into how that performance materialized across our metrics, starting with the top line. Second quarter reported revenue was $83.3 million, a decrease of 10.9% compared to the prior year period. This reflects the impact of strategic exits underpowering Honest growth and our diaper revenue declines, which were partially offset by our continued strength in Wipes and Personal Care. On an organic basis, revenue increased 6.7%, reflecting the momentum we continue to see in our higher growth, higher margin Wipes and Personal Care platforms. Our Q2 reported gross margin came in at 48.4%. On an adjusted basis, gross margin was 50.1%, an improvement of 970 basis points.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

This expansion includes a $6.6 million tariff refund and dilution from our apparel liquidation. Excluding these two items, our underlying margin was 43.8%, an improvement of approximately 340 basis points. This was driven by favorable product mix and operational improvements, including earlier than expected realization of supply chain savings. Total operating expenses decreased by $4.1 million-$30.8 million, highlighting progress made to right-size our SG&A. Within this, we strategically increased marketing by nearly 20%. This step up in spend, focused heavily on our Wipes and Personal Care platforms, was designed to capitalize on our momentum heading into the second half of the year. This targeted allocation of capital supports our ongoing focus on driving household penetration, which remains our primary catalyst for sustaining long-term growth. Net income for the quarter was $10.7 million, compared to $3.9 million in the prior year period.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Adjusted EBITDA was $14.5 million, yielding an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.3%. To understand our true underlying profitability, it is important to exclude the one-time tariff refund and apparel liquidation. When doing so, our underlying adjusted EBITDA margins of 9.8% expanded by approximately 160 basis points and marked an all-time high for the company. Our asset-light operating model continues to provide exceptional financial flexibility. We ended the quarter with $105.9 million in cash and cash equivalents and zero debt. Free cash flow was $35.3 million for the first six months of the year, a substantial improvement compared to negative free cash flow of $3.8 million in the prior year period. This was primarily driven by increased earnings, continued working capital improvements, and our asset-light operating model.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

While we do expect a timing benefit regarding inventory to partially reverse in the second half of the year, we maintain a distinct line of sight to further long-term working capital improvements. Year-to-date, we have repurchased 5.6 million shares for $18.7 million at an average price of $3.35 per share. At the end of the quarter, $6.3 million remains under our existing share repurchase authorization. These actions underscore our commitment to balancing aggressive reinvestment in our growth initiatives with returning value to our shareholders. Our strong execution in the first half of the year, which drove our top-line momentum and structural margin enhancements, gives us the confidence to raise our outlook. The tariff refunds provide additional flexibility and fuel for our strategic initiatives. We plan to aggressively reinvest these dollars now to accelerate household penetration and build a stronger Honest foundation for 2027 and beyond.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

With that context, our raised full-year 2026 outlook is as follows. Reported revenue in the range of $319 million-$325 million, which now includes an approximate $10 million benefit from apparel inventory liquidation revenue. Organic revenue growth of 5%-7%, up from 4%-6%, reflecting accelerated momentum in the second half vs first half of the year. Adjusted gross margins to land in the mid-40s, up from the low 40s, as we expect a continuation of robust year-over-year expansion driven by favorable mix and supply chain efficiencies. Adjusted EBITDA of $23 million-$25 million, up from $20 million-$23 million. Lastly, please assume our new apparel licensing agreement will be immaterial to our 2026 results. As I wrap up, I want to reiterate how pleased we are with our strong execution through the first half of the year.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Our record underlying profitability and robust free cash flow generation prove that our financial model is fundamentally stronger today than ever before. With our pristine balance sheet, structural margin improvement, and strategic reinvestment of our tariff refund, we have the fuel needed to confidently fund our next phase of profitable growth. With that, I will turn it back to Carla for final remarks.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Thank you, Curtiss. Before we move to Q&A, I want to express my deep gratitude to our incredible team of Honest Butterflies. Their passion and dedication are the true driving force behind the business performance results we shared today. As we look ahead, we will continue to deliver on our evergreen strategic pillars of brand maximization, margin enhancement, and operating discipline. By combining disciplined execution with our unwavering commitment to the Honest standard, we are unlocking the true vision of a modern personal care company. We enter the second half of the year well-positioned to build on our momentum, deliver on our raised 2026 outlook, and continue creating long-term shareholder value. With that, I now turn it over to the operator to open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one-one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one-one again. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Aaron Grey with Alliance Global Partners.

[Aaron Grey, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners]

Hi, good evening. Thank you very much for the questions. First question from me, just on the guidance, just quick clarification on the profit guidance. Assuming that the tariff is not included in that full year guide, because I know I see the two adjusted EBITDA numbers, one including tariff, one not including for the quarter. Secondly, in light of that, for the profits, just for the back half, if we take some assumptions on the profitability vs what we saw in 2Q. It does seem like it's coming down with some assumed either marketing or SG&A spend based off the gross margin guide. Just want to get some color in terms of what you're expecting for marketing in the back half, and if you're seeing the ROI that you would have expected with the increased marketing that we've seen in the first half of the year? Thanks.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Good evening, Aaron. Let me clarify the adjusted gross margin guide. Our adjusted gross margin does include both the favorable impact of the tariffs and also the depressing impact of the liquidation of the apparel on the full year. That adjusted gross margin includes both. I think what's important to remember is the underlying performance. Again, as we think about Q2, underlying gross margin year-to-date, 44%. Now we have an expectation, or we continue to have the expectation that our underlying gross margin performance will be stronger in the second half than the front half. The definition for adjusted has not changed from one quarter to the next, and it remains the same as you reflect on what the guidance is. Let me now get part of the question. I think you asked about marketing.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

We will be investing, as the remarks said, we started off with marketing investment against both Wipes and Personal Care. We will continue to focus on those two categories to drive additional household penetration in the second half. It will be a step up both in dollars and a percent basis. What I want to also just emphasize. The investments that we will be making in the second half are broader than marketing. We will be investing in capabilities to help us scale the business more effectively and efficiently as we move forward as well. You will see those investments come through the SG&A line.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Let me just hop in and tell you how we're feeling about how far marketing spending is working. Well, I'm feeling pretty great. We see that for the quarter, consumption was up 8%, and we also reflected on just overall, the trajectory of our business performance has been strong over the course of the three years. One of the things that's unique about this year is that for the first time, we were doing some marketing in different ways and on different things than we've done before. You remember that in the first half of the year, we supported this big launch into the big kid aisle with the Toy Story Pixar launch, which we were beneficiaries of being included in some of Disney's own marketing for the movie and as well as our marketing for the movie.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Feeling really good about how those businesses have kickstarted off to the first half of the year. We also launched that flushable wipes campaign that I talked about in the script, and that there are some images you'll find in some of our investor presentations. Supporting flushable wipes is a really new kind of marketing spending for us because you remember that I've been talking about the strength of The Honest brand across three different types of households, baby households, these big kid households, that's squarely where the Toy Story stuff is aimed, and then the households with no kids at all. Our flushable wipes allows us to cascade across all those households. This campaign was the first time that Honest, on a national basis, on a big, broad campaign, did marketing directly to adult consumers for themselves, for this brand at such a level.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

You can see that it's working when you see our household penetration gains. More than half of our households are households with no kids at all, and the larger part of the 100 basis points of household penetration increase we saw in the quarter came from no-kid households. This was really the first time we did big national campaign spending against those kinds of households. Lastly, we also launched a really broad portfolio covering campaign that we call The Mother of All Standards. This is a strong new campaign that we can reach even more households now that we're in a position to drive some greater upper funnel marketing in the back half.

[Aaron Grey, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners]

Thank you both, Curtiss and Carla, that's helpful. Second quick question from me, just on the licensing apparel and switching to licensing versus direct. Understand that it's going to be immaterial for 2026. Maybe just talk bigger picture about why you feel like that's going to be the right structure and setup for you guys, and how you expect that segment to evolve for you guys maybe in 2027 and beyond?

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Yeah, Aaron, let me take that. Our strategy of this enterprise being asset-light, the licensing model really lives into our asset-light DNA. We're excited to be able to be in the apparel business for consumers who love The Honest brand for babies, both clothes and bedding and such. This is an opportunity for us to do two things, participate in the category and do it in an asset-light, low capital intensive way. As you know, licensing is a margin-accretive proposition, we're excited on all fronts about this new agreement. We are not going to speculate about the sort of impact longer term. We're excited about the agreement. We've got a great new partner, and is on the maintaining the strategy of being asset-light.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley.

[Patty Kanada, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Hi, good afternoon. It's actually Patty Kanada on for Dara. I just had a couple of questions. One, just to follow up on the reinvestment piece, the stepped up reinvestment. You spoke about marketing, but could you say a bit more about how you're thinking or where the incremental dollars are going, in terms of how you're prioritizing across not just marketing, but also innovation and distribution? Thank you.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Oh, all right. It's nice to see you, or nice to hear from you. The way to think about this is that we've got strategic investments designed to map to the growth levers we've talked about in our strategy. As a reminder, we've talked about the growth levers in our strategies, both by the platforms that are our highest growth, highest margin platforms. We are showing that we are gaining share. We are winning. Consumers, clearly, households are embracing the products we bring, and that is Wipes and Personal Care. Those are really broad platforms. When we talk about Wipes and Personal Care, as a reminder, we are in the wipes segment in a number of ways. We've got the baby aisle where we have our all-purpose wipes. We've got the general adult aisle where we've got our flushable wipes and our hand sanitizing wipes. We've got makeup remover wipes.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

We're very broad-based, and our wipes are winning. We have a lot of opportunities to tell more households. In many cases, our wipes businesses are at less than 2% household penetration. Our competitive categories are significantly, from anywhere from 2x-6x more households buy those brands, know those brands. We've got a lot of people that we get to talk to across many different wipes platforms. There's brand awareness that we need to do, as well as just telling people about The Honest standard and this really differentiated benefit that our products bring. Similarly with Personal Care, our Personal Care is a business. We're the number two baby personal care business in that aisle and category. We are up 19% in the Personal Care business. We want to continue fueling that leadership and talking to consumers, bringing new households in as baby households.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

We'll be investing in those two platforms, both to make sure that we make consumers aware of all that we have to offer, as well as continuing to always recruit new households. As a reminder, we also have a strategy to be speaking broadly across households. That's very new for us in terms of our marketing investment structure, making sure that across, whether that is streaming or social or retail marketing, that we have or showing up with the right creative messages and showing up in the right channels and media spends to talk to these very compelling 75% of households that have no kids at all, and the other 14% that have big kids.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

That's how we're going to be using a lot of our marketing, as well as starting to take the Honest brand in just bigger, broader ways that upper funnel marketing can do to make sure more people understand this brand was built for the modern age. It's different than the other brands in the aisles, and we got a lot of people we need to tell about that. All of our added investment spending in the back half is not marketing, and it's important to talk about that because you remember our third pillar of our strategy is operating discipline. We've been a founder-built, startup, early-stage brand. We've got many systems that are getting more sophisticated and efficient as we continue to grow as a company.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

We are investing in making sure we're bringing online technologies that make us efficient, investing in this new and improved supply chain approach so that we can be working with our retail partners in a more integrated way. Our spending is across both marketing and how we operate.

[Patty Kanada, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

That's really helpful. Just maybe a quick one on diapers. The categories are still obviously very competitive, but anything you could share with us in terms of promotion and pricing dynamics that you're seeing, and just how you're thinking about the environment from here. Thank you.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Great. You know what? I want to take kind of a two-part approach to this. I want to start with diapers, and then I want to zoom farther out and talk about baby. First of all, listen, it's not easy to say it, the diaper category is very challenged right now. We're seeing it. We're hearing the other brands see it. We believe that what we're seeing, and Curtiss and I have spent a lot of time in CPG. We have been in a lot of categories. We've seen a lot of eras and dynamics. What we're seeing in the diaper category is something that looks structural and looks like it will be the dynamic for the foreseeable future.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

It's very honest and important to think of it that way so that we make sure we manage that business wisely against this strategy we've committed to of growing the top line faster than our categories and expanding profit faster than we grow the top line. When we look at that for diapers, we see all the major national branded players are losing share, they're losing unit growth, and that's really challenging. For us, as we see it, we've been investing in our diaper business in a couple of ways. We want to make sure, first of all, we bring a great diaper forward that delivers The Honest standard. You may remember, we recently improved our actual diaper technology, and we wanted to make sure that people have that both product performance and that clean commitment that we bring to the aisle, along with that style.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

The joy that we always bring in our diapers. That makes our diapers unique, and that's important because our diapers need to be worth it. We've also been investing in value, making sure that we show up with retailers to at least bring our diaper forward in the value we believe fits The Honest brand. What I would say about our approach to baby, if you remember, we are actually winning in baby. We're doing very well. Our all-purpose baby wipes are the number one natural baby wipe in the category, up 16%. We've got this beautiful extended portfolio of baby personal care products, up almost 20% in the quarter. With this addition of the licensing strategy we told you about in today's message, making sure that our soft, organic baby onesies, baby bedding is available to those baby families so that we have a full surround.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

What we are most glad for is that our baby portfolio is allowing us to offset the dampening effect that we see structurally in diapers. Our business has evolved such that diapers are now actually less than 25% of our overall consumption. Between our Wipes and our Personal Care business, that is now 70% of Honest consumption. The way we're balancing it allows us to deliver this raised guidance and the continued commitment of top line that grows faster than our categories and bottom line that outpaces the top.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anna Glaessgen with B. Riley Securities.

[Anna Glaessgen, Analyst at B. Riley Securities]

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to touch on distribution. In the past, you used to disclose ACV and talk about the number of doors you were in, but it got a little complicated between categories. Could you maybe just update us in terms of, you're investing in marketing to expand household penetration in the higher growth categories like Wipes and Personal Care. Could you maybe remind us where you sit today in terms of distribution and how much expanded door growth could support growth ahead? Thanks.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Yes. I am so glad you said that, Anna. It started to get very complicated to talk about distribution because each of our categories is so dramatically different, and they play in aisles with really, really different structural approaches to distribution. I'm going to just give you a contrast and an example. What it means to have great distribution in a flushable wipes aisle, really different than trial and travel, really different than baby. What we've tried to do to make it a little bit more uniform is still talk about the great runway ahead that we have and make it in a way that's sort of easier to monitor every time we're together with less of the noise and confusion by focusing it on the household penetration, a little bit more of a uniform fact.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Although I will note, it doesn't really allow us to tell you about the great growth we're doing online, when we talk about distribution. It is helpful to be focused on household penetration because it's really a better, more holistic picture. When you're looking at household penetration, you are accounting now for what the collective business looks like. As we become even more effective on our e-commerce channels, then it's important to have that unified language that works across both. As I told you, household penetration for the whole brand, while at 8.1%, and up 100 basis points year-over-year. If you now break that apart and look at any one given piece of our business, how much household penetration do you have in Personal Care? How much household penetration do you have in flushable wipes?

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

That's where the picture changes dramatically for a business like ours that crosses about 10 categories, kind of cumulate them to get to the eight, but you look at them separately, that's where the magic is. I mean, we are doing phenomenally, number two baby personal care brand, and we have less than 3% household penetration in that aisle. Some of the brands in baby personal care have 6x the households we do, and we're still number two. Imagine what happens with every point that we add on to household penetration. One of the back of the envelope numbers for me, every point that we gain in baby personal care is worth anywhere from $25 million-$30 million in annual sales.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

This journey we have of going to less than 3% penetration, and in something like flushable wipes, we don't even have 1% of the U.S. households. It's wild. We're so new, we only launched in that category three years ago. Some of our competitors have been out for twice as long as we have. We're very encouraged to already be the fourth largest flushable wipes brand with less than 1% of U.S. households. Again, we know that those households are worth anywhere from $20 million-$30 million every time we gain a point. That's how we're focusing on the growth, and that's why we want to talk to you about that whenever we're with you.

[Anna Glaessgen, Analyst at B. Riley Securities]

Got it. Thanks. That's super helpful, Carla. I just want to follow up on SG&A. Pretty big step down year-over-year, and then sequentially, and then given the investments in the back half, it seems like that's stepping back up. Was there anything that potentially shifted from Q2-Q3? Or anything to keep in mind there? Thanks.

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Anna. The performance that you saw on Q2, first, I would just want to recognize the execution of Powering Honest Growth that was behind that in the front half. Yes, you were thinking about it the right way as you look at the second half of the year, and we're talking about the investments in marketing and SG&A capabilities to set us up for sustained long-term scaling. We will see the SG&A step up from the, call it, low watermark that we had in Q2.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Owen Rickert with Northland Capital Markets.

[Owen Rickert, Analyst at Northland Capital Markets]

Hi, Carla. Hi, Curtiss. Thanks for taking my questions here. First for me, how much of the second quarter organic growth acceleration was driven by distribution gains versus velocity improvement? Is that mix shifting any one way or the other? How durable of a signal is that?

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Yeah. What I'll tell you is that, first of all, we came into this year expecting that we were going to have sequential improvement in organic revenue from first quarter to second quarter. The way to think about that was we were gaining distribution in Q1, then we were expecting that that would take hold and begin to accelerate in Q2 and balance of year. I think that's what we've seen happen in Q2, right? It is the growth behind our Personal Care and Wipes portfolios that continue to have momentum and win in the marketplace.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

Yeah. Remember, Owen, I think one of the things we've talked about on some of our conversations with you is what we want to do now is make sure that we sync our innovation schedule with the reset schedules that retailers have, especially at brick-and-mortar, and that we do that in a way that makes sure we get great returns on the investment across the year as we continue to build those. In general, you'll tend to see that the innovation punch happens earlier in the year. Then we begin focusing on just really planting, as Curtiss said so well, planting those roots really deep, making sure we invest in velocities, awareness, trial, and things like those tent pole merchandising events like your Circle Weeks and your Amazon Prime Day really give us an opportunity.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

We try to make sure the innovation is out, it's ready, it is locked and loaded so that we get the chance from the rooftops about it in those periods where you got a lot of eyeballs on the channel and on our site. In general, what you're seeing is great performance in foundational, durable momentum. I think that the consistency of the consumption numbers is another indicator for you that this is not some kind of high heat and then cool down period. It's very consistent growth.

[Owen Rickert, Analyst at Northland Capital Markets]

Got it. That's super helpful, guys. Lastly for me, the Powering Honest Growth costs are winding down, and you actually had a much smaller restructuring credit this quarter than I expected. Are we essentially through all of the P&L noise related to Powering Honest Growth?

[Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer at The Honest Company]

Yeah. First, let me just take an opportunity to recognize the team here that has been executing against Powering Honest Growth. We are going to deliver more savings and less cost than even the previous guidance that we had given. We are certainly excited about the opportunity to do that. From a completion standpoint, we are now live in our warehouse, so we've executed against the warehouse consolidation and begin seeing some of those savings in Q2, and we are largely through, but not completely through the costs related to the program. Very pleased with the result and the impact that it's had on the structural profitability within the business.

[Operator]

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to CEO Carla Vernón for any closing remarks.

[Carla Vernón, CEO at The Honest Company]

I just want to take this opportunity once again to echo what Curtiss said. We thank our teams. This has been incredible, powerful work. I also feel like if you have any interest in more answers, there's a great presentation on our investors.honest.com website, and we look forward to talking to you all next quarter.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Chris Mandeville, VP of Investor Relations
• Carla Vernón, CEO
• Curtiss Bruce, Chief Financial and Operating Officer

Analysts

• Aaron Grey, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners
• Patty Kanada, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Anna Glaessgen, Analyst at B. Riley Securities
• Owen Rickert, Analyst at Northland Capital Markets