Public DTC scoreboard — Q2 2026: what the latest 10-Qs reveal.

01 The cohort and the method

The twelve names on the original target list spanned beauty, drinkware/outdoor, eyewear, footwear, premium apparel, beer and RTD, energy drinks, telehealth, and Canadian premium outerwear. Three of them — Birkenstock (BIRK), On Holding (ONON), and Canada Goose (GOOS) — file annually as foreign private issuers and do not appear on EDGAR with Q1 2026 quarterly comparables. That leaves a working cohort of nine US-GAAP 10-Q filers: e.l.f. Beauty (ELF), Olaplex (OLPX), YETI Holdings (YETI), Warby Parker (WRBY), FIGS, Boston Beer (SAM), Celsius Holdings (CELH), Hims & Hers (HIMS), and Allbirds (BIRD). Every line below is pulled from each company's latest 10-Q via SEC EDGAR XBRL on 24 May 2026 — Q1 FY26 for the calendar filers and Q3 FY26 for ELF (whose fiscal year ends in March).

Five lines of unit economics are the comparison frame. Gross margin (revenue minus COGS, divided by revenue) — the structural pricing-power read. Operating margin (operating income / revenue) — the all-in profitability after marketing, SG&A and one-offs. Inventory days (inventory / quarterly COGS × 90) — the cash-trapped-in-stock read. Marketing intensity (SG&A or operating-expense ratio, the closest 10-Q proxy for CAC investment when marketing isn't separately disclosed). Operating cash flow per quarter — the truth-teller for whether the operating margin actually converts to cash. None of these require analyst access or paid databases; they are all extractable from public XBRL.

For private brands in the $10M–$80M revenue band, the public cohort is the most useful single benchmark available. The mid-market sponsor or strategic looking at a private brand is underwriting against the operating shape of the listed peers — what the gross margin looks like at scale, what the working capital cycle settles into, what marketing intensity is sustainable. A private operator who understands where they sit relative to the listed cohort has the right reference frame to pitch a process; an operator who doesn't is reading the wrong tape.

02 Gross margin — pricing power, ranked

Gross margin is the cleanest single read of structural pricing power. In the public cohort, it ranges from 72.1% at the top (Olaplex prestige hair) to 27.8% at the bottom (Allbirds in markdown-funded restructuring). The healthy band — every operator who is profitable or close to it — sits between 48% and 72%. The structure is category-driven: prestige beauty and personal care, telehealth Rx-and-OTC mixes, and premium-priced uniform/scrubs run at the top; beverage and beer, with their packaging and distribution overhead, run at the bottom.

For a private $10–80M brand, the gross-margin benchmark sets the ceiling for what category of buyer is plausible. Prestige beauty and supplements clearing 65%+ gross margin are the operators a strategic acquirer or top-tier sponsor will pay 11–15x EBITDA for, because the gross-margin durability supports both the multiple and the leverage. A 50% gross margin private apparel brand is being underwritten against YETI, WRBY, and the lower-tier public footwear peers — not against ELF or OLPX. Getting the peer set right is the single biggest source of unrealistic valuation expectations in private DTC sale processes.

The trajectory matters more than the level. OLPX has held 70%+ gross margin while revenue has dropped 40% from the 2022 peak — that durability is what keeps the brand a credible turn-around investment despite the operating compression. WRBY has expanded gross margin from 50% to 54% over three years as owned-manufacturing leverage has kicked in. ELF held 71% even while integrating Rhode and absorbing tariff exposure on China-sourced product. Private brands clearing the same gross margin band with a 24-month track record of stability or expansion will price at the top of their category; brands with margin compression in the recent history need to document the operational fix before a process opens.

03 Operating margin vs revenue growth — the scatter that matters

Gross margin is necessary but not sufficient. The operating-margin-versus-revenue-growth scatter is the read sponsors and strategics actually underwrite against. Up-and-to-the-right wins — strong revenue growth combined with positive operating margin, which is the rare combination that prints terminal-value multiples. The Q1 FY26 listed cohort shows how few brands sit in that quadrant.

CELH sits alone in the high-growth high-margin quadrant — 138% Q1 YoY revenue growth (distorted by Alani Nu acquisition) at 17.8% operating margin. Strip out the M&A and underlying organic growth is closer to 25-30%; the operating-margin profile is what Pepsi-distributed beverages at scale look like. ELF is the next-cleanest read — 25% organic revenue growth at 13.8% operating margin in Q3 FY26, even with Rhode integration costs compressing the line. Everyone else is either growing slowly (WRBY +8%, HIMS +4%) or growing fast at the cost of operating profit (FIGS +28% at 2.8% op margin, BIRD shrinking and burning).

For private operators, the practical read is that 20%+ revenue growth combined with 10%+ operating margin is rare enough at public scale that any private brand achieving it commands a strategic premium. A private brand growing 30% at 5% operating margin will price against FIGS or HIMS (low single-digit operating margin, growth-driven valuation). A brand growing 10% at 15% margin will price against the mature operators — YETI, WRBY at full-year run-rate — and clear on EBITDA multiples rather than revenue multiples. Knowing which side of that line you sit on, and which way you are trending, is the most consequential data point for sale-process timing.

04 Working capital — where the cash actually lives

The metric that ages worst in private-brand pitch decks and ages best in public 10-Qs is the working capital cycle. Inventory days, in particular, is where the gap between premium and commodity DTC shows up most clearly — and where the cash that the gross margin generates either flows to operations or gets trapped on the balance sheet.

The cluster that matters: high-gross-margin brands sit on BOTH ends of the inventory-days range. OLPX and FIGS hold 200+ days of inventory at 70%+ gross margin. HIMS holds 34 days at 65% gross margin. WRBY holds 38 days at 54% gross margin. The lesson is structural: prestige and seasonal-cycle brands fund their gross-margin premium with working-capital intensity that traps cash. Owned-manufacturing, build-to-demand, or service-fulfilment models extract the gross-margin premium without the working-capital cost. Private brands selling at a process need to be benchmarked against the right working-capital peer set — a premium fashion-cycle DTC at 220 inventory days will not price against an owned-manufacturing peer at 40 days, no matter how similar the gross margin looks on the surface.

The peer-by-peer DSO and DPO numbers tell a quieter story. WRBY operates at essentially zero accounts receivable (DTC consumer-direct collections) and 35-day DPO — the working capital cycle is therefore largely a pure inventory game. FIGS shows the same DTC-heavy AR pattern. The wholesale-heavy operators — ELF (over 150 days of AR turnover), CELH (with bottler-driven AR exposure) — carry a different shape, where the AR-to-inventory mix dominates the cycle. For a private operator benchmarking against the public cohort, the question is not "what is my cash conversion cycle in days" — it is "which peer's working-capital shape does my channel mix actually match." The pretty-public-brand benchmark is the wrong one if your wholesale exposure is 40% and the peer's is 5%.

05 Marketing intensity and the CAC proxy

Customer acquisition cost is not directly disclosed in 10-Qs — companies have wide latitude on what they include in "marketing expense" and how they bucket sales versus general-and-administrative. What is comparable across the cohort is SG&A or total operating expense as a percentage of revenue, which serves as the upper-bound CAC-plus-overhead proxy. Three things stand out in the Q1 FY26 numbers.

First, the high-growth telehealth and DTC operators run at the heaviest end of marketing intensity. HIMS spent 78% of revenue on operating expense in Q1 FY26 — explicit in the MD&A, the bulk of that is performance marketing for subscriber acquisition. The brand reports 2.4M subscribers in Q1, with revenue per quarterly subscriber around $254 (annualised ~$1,016 ARPU). If marketing alone is roughly 40% of revenue (~$243M Q1), the implied CAC against quarterly net adds gives a payback profile that requires multi-quarter retention to clear — which is exactly the model HIMS is investing in. Private telehealth brands or subscription-led DTC pitching against HIMS need to show the cohort retention curve that funds the CAC payback, not just the trailing-12 acquisition number.

Second, the mature beverage and drinkware operators run at the lighter end. CELH ran 30% of revenue in SG&A — distribution is handled by Pepsi, so the operating shape is closer to a branded ingredient business than a DTC. YETI at 52% SG&A reflects an omnichannel cost structure: retail relationships, owned-store investment, performance marketing. The lesson for private operators: SG&A leverage from channel diversification (wholesale, retail, distributor relationships) is the single most consequential margin lever once gross margin is in place. Pure-DTC operators with no channel diversification will run heavy SG&A indefinitely.

Third, the brands compressing operating margin are doing it in SG&A, not COGS. OLPX held 72% gross margin but SG&A as a percentage of revenue ballooned from 30%+ during the IPO peak to 66% in Q1 FY26 — the entire operating compression is in marketing and corporate overhead, not in cost-of-goods. The same pattern at BIRD: COGS held roughly stable in dollar terms while SG&A is now 84% of a shrinking revenue base. For private operators reading the public tape, the actionable takeaway is that operating-margin durability is a marketing-and-overhead discipline question more than a sourcing-and-COGS question once you have gross margin in the right band.

06 What private $10–80M operators should benchmark against

The public cohort is useful only insofar as private operators map themselves correctly into it. Three practical applications drop out of the Q2 2026 scoreboard.

Category-anchored benchmarks beat aggregate medians

A private supplements brand at 60% gross margin should not be benchmarked against the consumer-industry median multiple — it should be benchmarked against HIMS-adjacent (telehealth-style mix), CELH-adjacent (mass-market with retail distribution) or ELF-adjacent (prestige-to-mass crossover). The category structurally determines the gross-margin band, the working-capital cycle, and the marketing intensity. Brands that price themselves against the wrong peer set in a sell-side process either underprice (anchoring on a commoditised peer) or fail to clear (anchoring on a premium peer they cannot operationally support).

Trajectory of the trailing-24-months matters more than the snapshot

A 60% gross margin holding flat for 24 months reads completely differently from the same 60% gross margin compressing 200bp annually. ELF's 71% has held through tariff exposure and acquisition integration; OLPX's 72% has held through a 40% revenue drop. Those are exit-ready margin profiles. A private brand with the same headline gross margin but a 600bp compression over 24 months is signalling input-cost loss or pricing-power erosion — and will price 1-2 turns of EBITDA below the headline-margin peer. Trailing-24 stability or expansion is the diligence test; the snapshot is the marketing position.

Working capital cycle is the single most-undermarketed lever

Inventory days, DSO and DPO are rarely the centrepiece of private-brand pitch decks — and consistently are the line that surprises buyers in QoE. Two private brands with identical $40M revenue and 60% gross margin can have $5M of free cash flow generating in one case and $-2M in the other, purely on working-capital cycle differences. The WRBY-versus-FIGS gap (38 days versus 246 days inventory) is the public-market version of that spread. Private operators preparing for a process should rebuild their working capital cycle, document the trajectory, and explicitly benchmark against the right public peer — it is the single highest-ROI sell-side preparation activity after the QoE.

07 What we are watching into Q3 2026

Three lines on the scoreboard matter most into Q3 2026. First, whether OLPX revenue stabilises or continues to drift — the 72% gross margin holds the upside-case investment thesis together, and a fourth consecutive quarter of revenue stability would be the cleanest signal that the worst of the post-IPO compression is behind. Second, whether HIMS subscriber growth and ARPU continue to fund the 78% operating-expense intensity — Q2 will be the cleanest read on whether the GLP-1 and personalised-medication mix is durable or peak-cycle. Third, whether the second-tier DTC operators (BIRD specifically, but also FIGS and OLPX) close the operating-margin gap to the top of the cohort. Each move is one more data point for what private operators should expect when they open their next process.

We will publish the Q3 2026 scoreboard in August once the Q2 calendar 10-Qs are in. Companion read for private comparables: the Q2 2026 DTC and CPG mid-market M&A multiples post, which translates the public cohort into the private sponsor and strategic underwriting that mid-market operators actually face.