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A decent first quarter? That’ll do
Wolverine Worldwide kicked off 2026 by doing the one thing investors always like to hear: beating its own expectations. The company said first-quarter revenue, gross margin, and earnings per share all came in above guidance for the period ended April 4th.
That matters because this is still a brand turnaround story, not a sleepy shoe company collecting dust in a mall back room. When management starts sounding upbeat about the business mix, it usually means the repair job is showing up where it counts: on the top line, in margins, and eventually in the stock chart.
The brands doing the heavy lifting
CEO Chris Hufnagel pointed to Merrell and Saucony as the brighter spots, saying the company is seeing encouraging progress across the business. Translation: the labels investors actually care about are apparently pulling more of the weight, which is a lot better than watching the whole thing wobble around like a sneaker with a loose sole.
For shareholders, the key question isn’t whether one quarter looked good. It’s whether this can turn into a pattern. One clean beat is nice. A repeatable trend is the stuff that gets valuation models to sit up straight.
Why you should care
If Wolverine can keep improving margins while revenue holds up, the market may start giving the stock more credit for execution instead of treating it like a perpetual rehab project. Big picture: this was a constructive update, and for a turnaround name, constructive is often the first step toward interesting.