Brilliant Earth at Lytham Summit: Celebrating 20 Years of Growth

On Tuesday, 19 August 2025, Brilliant Earth (NASDAQ:BRLT) presented at the Lytham Partners Consumer & Technology Summit. The company celebrated its 20th anniversary, showcasing a robust financial performance and strategic growth plans. While emphasizing transparency and sustainability in the jewelry industry, the company also highlighted challenges in a competitive market.

Key Takeaways

• Brilliant Earth reported an 18% year-over-year increase in total orders.
• The company achieved a 16% five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019 to 2024.
• Gross margins improved from 42% to 60% over the same period.
• A one-time dividend of $25.3 million was declared, reflecting strong financial health.
• The company ended Q2 with approximately $99 million in net cash, up 5% year-over-year.

Financial Results

• Consistent profitability with 16 consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA.
• Strong gross margin profile, expanding from 42% to 60% between 2019 and 2024.
• The company’s cash position strengthened with $99 million in net cash, a 5% increase from the previous year.
• Declared a one-time dividend of $25.3 million, showcasing financial strength.

Operational Updates

• Showrooms have significantly boosted metro bookings, with strong double-digit increases after opening.
• Retail customer orders saw an 81% uplift year-over-year in Q2, driven by walk-ins.
• The company leverages celebrities to enhance brand awareness, tapping into diverse purchase occasions with its fine jewelry collection.
• Repeat orders grew by 11% year-over-year in Q2, reflecting customer retention success.

Future Outlook

• Focus on maintaining a premium brand and a differentiated business model.
• Emphasis on a data-driven, tech-enabled omnichannel platform.
• Goals include delivering profitability and achieving strategic objectives while expanding market share.

Q&A Highlights

• Target consumers are typically aged 25 to 44, with household incomes between $100,000 and $200,000.
• The company offers both natural and lab-grown diamonds, providing consumer choice.
• Q4 is expected to be the largest quarter, driven by gifting and fine jewelry sales.

For a comprehensive understanding, readers are invited to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Lytham Partners Consumer & Technology Summit:

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Hello. Welcome back to the Brilliant Earth webcast. My name is Adam Lowensteiner, vice president of Lithium Partners. And today, I’ll be moderating this fireside chat with mister Jeff Kuo, chief financial officer of Brilliant Earth, which trades under the ticker symbol BRLT on the Nasdaq. Let’s get started.

Jeff, welcome to the discussion.

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Maybe to kick things off, can you tell us

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: a little bit about yourself and Brilliant Earth? Sure. Brilliant Earth was founded in 02/2005, so we’re celebrating our twentieth anniversary this year with a mission to create a more transparent, sustainable and compassionate jewelry industry. And we’ve really been able to transform the industry with a combination of a number of things. One is an authentic mission driven brand that really resonates with our customers.

Beautifully designed, trend leading proprietary products, seamless integrated omnichannel experience across our now 42 showrooms, as well as our digital platform and an asset light and data and technology enabled business model. And this is all translated into our ability to profitably grow and gain share in the large and fragmented jewelry industry. And then in terms of my own background, I’m the CFO of Brilliant Earth, and I’ve been with the company since 2015.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Recently reported economic data reveal a strong consumer. What is Brilliant Earth seeing in the current environment? What type of consumer are you typically dealing with?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: So I’ll answer your first question or the second question first. So our typical consumer is in the 25 to 44 year old age range with about 100,000 to 200,000 annual household income. We have customers that are shopping together as a couple, gift givers, as well as people that are purchasing for themselves. And I think our consumers are really prioritizing meaningful brand connections with the brands that they purchase from and are looking for a seamless experience as they shop and engage with companies across different touch points. In terms of a bit about the current environment and consumers, I think customers in our space do tend to shop with a budget in mind, and we offer a curated selection of products that help them meet their needs within that budget.

One other thing that’s helpful to point out is that bridal jewelry tends to be a resilient category over time. And I think that we’re demonstrating strong resonance and traction with that customer base. Our recent results were some of the highlights included growing total orders 18% year over year and raising our annual net sales guidance, I think really reflect how we’re connecting with consumers, how our brand is really resonating and how we’re outperforming versus the jewelry industry overall.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: So you mentioned the company has an omnichannel model. Can you explain to our listeners what that means?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: Jewelry is a considered bigger ticket purchase. And so customers may engage with us multiple times through different touch points as they come to their decision and we help guide them towards the right decision for them. And so we really try to offer that seamless experience across touch points, whether that means you’re coming to our showrooms to see the collection in person or experiencing our website or engaging with us through social channels. I think we really want to create that integrated seamless experience so that we can meet our consumers where they want to shop, how they want to shop, and when they want to shop.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: So as part of the omnichannel model, the company has a retail strategy. Can you explain how your outlets are performing? What are the what their benefits are? And what markets are you targeting, if any? There

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: are a number of different benefits to our showrooms. One important one is that they drive incremental top line revenue when we open in new metros. And so we are looking really to drive incrementality in the Metro as we open the showroom. And one figure that we recently shared is that most of our showrooms drive strong double digit metro bookings uplift in the year after we open. So I think that’s one meaningful stat that just shows the traction that we’re able to get in driving uplift across an entire metro in the year after after we open.

Some other benefits include driving brand awareness and accretion to the customer acquisition economics. And so these are really powerful tools for us as a company to engage with our customer base. And I think one other thing to point out is that we’ve also had success as we’ve expanded the model beyond kind of appointment driven heritage from the showrooms to also allow for more walk in discovery and conversion. And one figure that we shared recently was that in Q2, we saw an 81% year over year order uplift for retail customers without a scheduled appointment. So that’s something that I think shows some success that we’re having in having the showroom model also cater to walk in discovery and walk in purchases.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: How do you compete? What are some of your company’s differentiators?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: Yeah. So this probably goes back to some of the points that I opened up with, but it’s reemphasizing them. So the first, it all comes down to our authentic and mission driven brand and really just connecting with customers in how we’re transparent with our sourcing and have been just been focused on driving, you know, driving transparency and sustainability in the jewelry industry from our founding. And I think that just really is connecting with our consumers. Another is just our products, which are proprietary, many of our proprietary to us, beautifully designed.

We’ve won industry awards and that could include, you know, our collection includes just a variety of different really trend leading trend leading designs ranging from things like our Jane Goodall collection, which we introduced last year, our soul collection to just everyday, everyday jewellery essentials. And we really offer a curated assortment across our product collection. And so that’s another thing that we’re really known for is just these beautifully designed trend leading products. Another is what I was just talking about, the seamless omnichannel experience across the physical showroom experience, the digital experience, or if you’re engaging with us on the phone or in a chat, you know, I think really providing that experience to meet consumers where they are. And then I think one other enabler that underpins everything else that we’re doing is just a really strong data technology AI enabled model that allows us to improve the customer experience, capture operational efficiencies and make smarter and faster decisions throughout the organization.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: How do consumers typically find Brilliant Earth? Are you able to obtain recurring purchases from your customers as well?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: Our customers find us through a variety of different ways. One is organically through our strong brand awareness, and this is amplified in moments that we’ve had such as custom bolo tie that we made for Beyonce, Selena Gomez wearing one of our one of a kind creations, which was a 20 carat diamond necklace from our Jane Goodall collection, or things like our first professional sports ambassador, Madison Keyes. And so these are some of the moments that really build awareness and connection with our consumers and showcase our brand. Another way is through word-of-mouth from other customers or social media or other engagement with us. We also do run diversified ranges of marketing campaigns to continue to grow awareness of our brand, or they may discover us through coming to one of our showrooms or walking by one of our showrooms.

So there’s a variety of different ways that people come to get to know us. And regarding your question on repeat or recurring purchases, yet we have been able to drive repeat purchasers. One of our recent figures was we, in Q2, drove 11% year over year growth in repeat orders in Q2. And I think things like the growth of our fine jewelry collection is a contributor that really allows us to touch more purchase occasions, including self purchase with our consumers. And that’s a contributor to the success that we’re having in terms of driving repeat.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: With the emergence of lab grown diamonds in recent years, is that a tailwind for Brilliant Earth? How are consumers accepting lab grown diamonds?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: So we’ve actually been selling natural and lab grown diamonds alongside each other for more than a decade, and we were one of the first to do so at scale, and we’ve had a lot of success in doing so. And we see this as one of the dimensions of choice for our consumers. And we have a large curated assortment of both natural and lab diamonds and jewelry to meet our consumers’ needs. And as lab awareness grows, I think that this continues to open up the market to more consumers.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: So as I’m speaking with the company’s CFO, I’d I’d be remiss not to discuss the company’s financials, which are very impressive. I mean, gross margins, several consecutive quarters of positive EBITDA, and a strong balance sheet. Are there any financial highlights that you’d like to share with the listeners?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: I’d like to highlight a few different things. One is that we have been able to profitably grow and gain share over time. From 2019 to 2024, we grew at a sixteen percent five year CAGR, and we also expanded our gross margins during the same time from 42% to 60%. You know, so we’ve had a strong gross margin profile. As you mentioned, we’ve also had 16 consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA.

So that’s all the quarters that we’ve reported as a public company. And we also have a strong balance sheet and ability to generate cash. We ended Q2 with about $99,000,000 in net cash, and that represented a growth of about 5% year over year. So I think the ability to drive the top line that we have while being profitable and also generating cash is a real differentiator for the company. And I think one highlight from our recent announcements is also that we declared a one time dividend of approximately $25,300,000 And so that reflects our strong balance sheet, our cash generation capability, and also how we think about providing returns to our shareholders, both in the near and the longer term.

And we’re able to do this while still being able to make the right long term investments in building the company, building the brand and continuing to gain share in the large jewelry industry.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Can you talk about seasonality in your business and how investors should look at that?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: So people do purchase from us throughout the year, and that includes holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, weddings and engagements that occur throughout the year. Q4 does tend to be seasonally our biggest quarter, including gifting and being the biggest quarter for fine jewelry. But we really do have many purchase occasions that occur throughout the year.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Is there anything else you’d like to add before we conclude the discussion?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: Probably just like to go back and summarize some of the key strategic levers that have allowed us to be successful, including the our premium brand, our differentiated business model that includes data driven tech enablement throughout the organization to support strong and good decision making, a seamless omnichannel platform that really meets customers where they want to shop, how they want to shop and when they want to shop and an asset light structure. And I think these all support our ability to deliver profitability and achieve our strategic and financial objectives and grow and gain share in a variety of different environments.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: If listeners want to reach out to you, how can they do so?

Jeff Kuo, Chief Financial Officer, Brilliant Earth: They can reach out to Colin Borland, who’s our vice president of strategy, business development, investor relations, and they can reach him at investorrelationsbrilliantearth dot com.

Adam Lowensteiner, Vice President, Lithium Partners: Thank you, Jeff, and thank you for everyone for watching. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a meeting with Brilliant Earth, please email me at Lowensteiner Lithium Partners dot com. We have more presentations and fireside chats coming up next, so don’t go anywhere yet. Thank you, and have a great rest of your day.

Unidentified speaker: Jeff, Adam, thank you very much for that discussion on Brilliant Earth. All right,

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.