SharkNinja has done a couple of investor days since they last reported earnings. They have some clear messaging across the conferences and some takeaways.

Discretionary Spending

They mentioned in both investor days that they are competing with all discretionary spending currently. I think that’s the right way to look at it, and that extends to the whole outdoor cooking and lifestyle categories.

With ever increasing daily costs for consumers, they have to prioritize how they’ll spend any of their discretionary dollars. Brands are competing for wallet share, rather than just against competitors in their category.

SharkNinja’s CEO explained it well when asked about the economy.

Listen, I think the consumer obviously continues to be under pressure. I mean, as long as gas prices are sitting at $6, as long as sentiment is what it is. That being said, there is a certain amount of dollars that the consumer has to spend, will spend, is excited to spend. And I think they’re going to be very discerning about where they spend those dollars. And I’ve said this over and over again, like I don’t believe that we’re competing against what this group would consider our core competition. I don’t think that we’re competing against other home appliance companies. I think we’re competing against Olive Garden.

And I think we’re competing against Royal Caribbean. I think the question is, does the consumer go out to dinner 2 more times? Or do they buy a Ninja Crispi Pro that they can use at home to cook all the time? Is the consumer going to go on vacation? Or are they going to pull back on that cruise and invest it more in holiday purchases?

So what our job is, is we have to continue to develop exciting disruptive products. We have to continue to keep telling our story that drives viral excitement from the consumer, and we need to keep driving our omnichannel strategy. And I think over the last 18 years, what that has shown us is there is a certain amount of consumer discretionary spend that we’ve got to give the consumer a reason to invest it with SharkNinja versus investing it somewhere else.

Mark Barrocas, President and CEO of SharkNinja

Pricing

Running a bit counter to promoting discretionary spending, but key for margin preservation is pricing. SharkNinja did pricing in 2025 to deal with the tariffs, but didn’t yet this year. They are planning some small price increases entering into 2027.

So in ’26, we haven’t raised prices, okay? So let’s start with the fact that — I mean, our growth is coming predominantly from unit growth. We’ve got a little bit of ASP growth that’s happening from a mix perspective in the business as we start to continue to grow our espresso business at $600, $700. We continue to grow our outdoor cooking business, things like that. So you’ve got a little bit of benefit due to ASP mix improvement. But for the most part, it’s unit growth.

Now what do I expect as we move forward? I expect us — as we head towards the end of the year and into ’27, I expect us to look at taking a little bit of price. When you think about commodity costs, when you think about plastic prices, we’re going to be in a position as we head towards ’27 to have to start taking small amounts in price. And the playbook is basically the tariff playbook that we put in place back in ’25 that I think we did a great job of executing.

And so I think what you’ll see from us is some small price increases as we get towards the end of the year, maybe as we get to the beginning of ’27. But like everything, we’ll do it. We’ll watch it very closely. We’ll react accordingly. We’ll see what sticks. We’ll decide where there are products we want to take price and maybe promote a bit more. But I think we’ve got a really good playbook as to how to manage that.

Mark Barrocas, President and CEO of SharkNinja

As we enter Q4 and economic headwinds are continuing, it will be interesting to see if consumers keep accepting price increases. That’s been a question mark for companies across the board.

It may get to a point that consumer behavior is even more impacted due to prioritization. That’s a dangerous game because it opens the door for other brands to take share.

Focus on the Core

SharkNinja had clear messaging going into both investor days that their success isn’t just from expanding into new categories and new TAMs. They wanted investors to know that they’re focused on strengthening their core.

The other pieces are within new categories. We’ve launched 2 new categories this year. We’ve got another one coming. But I think the dependency on new categories, that’s not the story of this business. The story of this business is developing and maintaining a strong core, continuing to invest in that. And then as the new categories come about, they eventually end up back in the core, right? CREAMi. CREAMi is a big product. SLUSHi, big product. Those are all in the core business now.

Adam Quigley, CFO of SharkNinja

SharkNinja’s CEO said something similar when he was at the Goldman Sachs Global Consumer and Retail Conference.

Well, Brooke, in the second quarter earnings release, I made a point to really focus on the core and base business because I think it’s something that is really misunderstood by investors. They look at our new products and they look at our international expansion. And I think they miss the fact that underlying all of this is a really healthy core base business growing at mid- to high-single digits. 

And then you layer on top of that, the new products and you layer on top of that, the international growth, and it translates into a really strong growth algorithm in mid- to high teens. Last quarter, we were low 22% growth. But it’s that base business strength that I’m most excited about. I mean, if you think about this year, I mean, take a category like upright vacuum is probably our most mature category. We launched a product called the Shark Transformer. It raised average sell price. It improved gross margins in a market that is declining 1%, our business is growing 5%. 

So there’s lots of pieces. I mean, across 41 product categories, it’s funny, you come into a conference like this and everyone wants to talk about the new water purification, the Ninja HydraSense that we just launched or big TAM that we’re entering into or the Crispi Microwave in the microwave category that we’re launching into or international expansion. But as you look under the hood of the business, like it’s the strength of the core base business. We don’t have a leaky bucket. We do have a very healthy core base business. And then again, you layer on top of these other growth drivers, and that gives you the really strong growth that you’re seeing from us.

Mark Barrocas, President and CEO of SharkNinja