MONTRÉAL — Dorel Industries Inc. reported May 12 continuing financial struggles, particularly in its home division, for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025.

First quarter revenue was $320.5 million, down 8.7%, from $351.1 million a year ago. Reported net loss for the quarter was $25.3 million or $0.77 per diluted share compared to $17.6 million or $0.54 per diluted share a year ago. The reported net loss for the quarter includes total restructuring costs of $1.6 million and as such, adjusted net loss1 was $23.6 million or $0.72 per diluted share compared to $16.9 million or $0.52 per diluted share for the first quarter a year ago.  

According to Dorel President & CEO Martin Schwartz, Dorel Juvenile had a strong start to 2025, with "another quarter of organic revenue growth." He pointed to new product introductions and a robust pipeline of upcoming launches is robust as positive news as well as the weakening of the U.S. dollar in the quarter against most other major currencies which helped earnings and should continue to do so going forward, he said.

Conversely, Dorel Home faced a challenging start to the year, with e-commerce sales much lower than expected. "As we said in our last earnings release, brick and mortar success will be a key to our turnaround, but the change in the e-commerce landscape means we significantly underperformed. We have lowered our expectations on what the e-commerce channel can deliver and as a result will be taking further action to substantially reduce our footprint,” said Schwartz.

“The lower-than-expected sales and margin levels in the first quarter in the Home segment has prompted additional restructuring activities which will be communicated and subsequently implethamented during the second quarter, over and above those previously announced on January 30, 2025. 

As a first step, the operations of the Home segment will be significantly altered, with the sales, marketing and product development organization being merged into the successful Cosco division. The new organization will design, develop and bring to market both imported and domestically produced product for the entire Home segment. 

In addition, a substantial number of positions will be eliminated as they have been identified during the second quarter as redundant and not necessary to support anticipated sales levels and channels moving forward. Back-office functions to support the organization will also be consolidated, leveraging resources from the Juvenile segment where beneficial. The company is still actively pursuing other opportunities that we believe can decrease our overhead and operating costs further and will communicate all meaningful developments by the end of June 2025. 

The benefits of the restructuring plan announced in January are evident in the lower run rate of operating expenses. In addition, the manufacturing operations in Montreal, Quebec were closed in the first quarter. 

"The ability to further reduce the Home segment’s footprint is being explored to deliver even more cost savings connected to the SKU reduction initiative and smaller distribution footprint objectives. Dorel Juvenile continues to identify opportunities for cost reduction across the segment and in the quarter ended March 31, 2025 recorded $1.2 million in restructuring costs, made up of severance and related employee costs.”

Dorel is an FDMC 300 listed company ranking #29 on the list of top North American wood products manufacturers.