Chewy, Inc. (NYSE: CHWY) reports fiscal second quarter 2026 results before the market opens on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, with a conference call scheduled for 8:00 am ET. The company confirmed the date in a press release issued on August 19, 2026. It is the first full quarter to be measured against guidance the company deliberately trimmed in June.
That detail is what makes this print worth reading closely. Chewy beat on profit in the first quarter and still cut its full year sales outlook, an unusual combination that told investors the company had more confidence in its margins than in its category. The second quarter is where that judgment gets tested against actual demand.
The numbers to hold in mind are narrow. Chewy guided second quarter net sales to a range of $3.30 billion to $3.33 billion, roughly 6% to 7% year over year growth, with adjusted earnings per share of about $0.36 and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.3% to 6.4%. Each of those figures encodes a specific assumption about how American pet owners are behaving.
In short
- Date and time: Chewy reports fiscal Q2 2026 before the open on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, with the call at 8:00 am ET.
- The bar: guidance of $3.30bn to $3.33bn in net sales (about 6% to 7% growth), ~$0.36 adjusted EPS, and a 6.3% to 6.4% adjusted EBITDA margin.
- The real story: growth is decelerating while profitability expands. Autoship growth slowed from 15% to 10% year over year between Q2 2025 and Q1 2026.
- The swing factor: the Modern Animal acquisition adds about $70m of fiscal 2026 revenue but is expected to be EBITDA-dollar neutral this year.
- What matters most: active customer growth, currently 3.6% and slowing, is the number that decides whether the margin story has a runway.
What Chewy reports on September 9 and why the date matters
The reporting window covers Chewy’s fiscal second quarter, the thirteen weeks ending in early August 2026. Chewy has historically released second quarter results in the first half of September, and the year-ago quarter was reported on September 10, 2025. The timing places this print squarely in the pre-holiday assessment window that retail investors use to calibrate fourth quarter expectations.
Chewy is a useful read for the broader online retail sector because it is a pure play. It has no store base to blame, no meaningful physical footprint outside its veterinary clinics, and a revenue mix dominated by replenishment rather than discretionary browsing. When Chewy’s growth slows, the slowdown is unusually clean to interpret.
That is also why the September 9 date carries weight beyond the ticker. Consumables are a defensive category, and pet food in particular is one of the last line items households cut. A demand signal from Chewy is closer to a read on household budget stress than a read on fashion cycles.
The comparison base is a strong quarter
The year-ago quarter was not an easy one to lap. In the thirteen weeks ended August 3, 2025, Chewy grew net sales by $245.6 million, or 8.6%, to approximately $3.10 billion. Management noted at the time that net sales exceeded the high end of guidance.
The composition of that quarter matters too. Consumables reached $2,149.4 million, up 6.6%. Hardgoods grew 15.2% to $346.1 million, and the Other category, which includes pharmacy, health services and advertising, grew 12.3% to $608.7 million.
Autoship customer net sales rose 15% in that quarter and accounted for 83% of total net sales. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.33, in line with consensus. Guiding to roughly 6% to 7% growth against that base is a deliberate step down.
What the guidance actually commits to
Guidance ranges are the most reliable text in any earnings preview because the company chose the words. Chewy’s second quarter range is unusually tight, which itself is information: a $30 million spread on a $3.3 billion quarter is under 1%.
Chewy reported first quarter net sales of $3,357.2 million for the thirteen weeks ended May 3, 2026. The second quarter guidance midpoint of roughly $3.315 billion is therefore below the quarter just reported, by about $42 million.
Sequential declines between the first and second fiscal quarters are not automatically alarming in this business, and quarterly comparisons in retail are usually made year over year for good reason. Still, the arithmetic is worth stating plainly rather than glossing.
Against the year-ago base of approximately $3.10 billion, the guided range implies growth of roughly 6.4% at the low end and 7.4% at the high end. That brackets the company’s own “approximately 6% to 7%” characterization.
The margin step-down is the more interesting line
Chewy delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.5% in the first quarter, which the company described as approximately 130 basis points of year over year expansion. Second quarter guidance calls for 6.3% to 6.4%, described as roughly 50 basis points of year over year expansion at the midpoint.
Two things are true at once here. Year over year, the margin is still expanding, which supports the profitability narrative. Sequentially, the guided margin is more than 100 basis points below the first quarter, which means the company expects a less favorable mix or higher spend, or both.
Adjusted EPS guidance of about $0.36 against the year-ago $0.33 implies roughly 9% growth. That is faster than the guided sales growth, which is the arithmetic signature of margin expansion doing real work.
| Metric | Q2 FY2025 actual | Q2 FY2026 guidance | Implied change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | ~$3.10bn | $3.30bn to $3.33bn | +6% to +7% |
| Net sales growth rate | +8.6% | ~+6% to +7% | Deceleration of ~2pts |
| Adjusted EPS | $0.33 | ~$0.36 | ~+9% |
| Adjusted EBITDA margin | ~5.8% to 5.9% (implied) | 6.3% to 6.4% | ~+50bps at midpoint |
| Autoship share of net sales | 83% | Not guided | Trending higher |
The implied year-ago adjusted EBITDA margin in that table is derived from the company’s own statement that the guided range represents about 50 basis points of expansion at the midpoint. It is arithmetic, not a reported figure, and should be treated as such.
Why the June guidance cut still frames this quarter
On June 10, 2026, Chewy reported first quarter results that beat on profitability and simultaneously trimmed the full year sales outlook. Net sales grew 7.7% to $3,357.2 million, gross margin reached 30.1%, net income was $94.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA hit $253.1 million. Diluted earnings per share came in at $0.23.
Despite that, the company revised its fiscal 2026 net sales outlook to a range of approximately $13.40 billion to $13.55 billion, representing roughly 6.3% to 7.5% year over year growth. The market read the revision rather than the beat, and the stock declined. We covered the mechanics of that reaction when Chewy trimmed its 2026 sales outlook alongside a record profit quarter.
Management was explicit about the reasoning. The company said the consumer pet environment had become incrementally more challenged since it set its original fiscal 2026 outlook earlier in the year, and that the update reflected a more appropriately conservative view of the consumer environment and of broader category growth assumptions.
The practical effect of a June revision is that the September bar is lower than it would otherwise have been. Meeting guidance in the second quarter is therefore a weaker signal than it looks, because the guidance was reset three months ago.
The stronger signal runs the other way. If Chewy misses a range it set conservatively and recently, that is a meaningful negative, because it implies the category deteriorated faster than a company with full visibility expected.
The third possibility is the one worth pricing. If Chewy comfortably exceeds the range and raises the full year outlook back toward its original shape, the June cut retroactively looks like conservatism rather than diagnosis.
There is also a governance point buried in the sequence. A company that cuts sales guidance while beating on profit is telling investors it would rather protect credibility on margin than defend a growth number it no longer believes.
That is a defensible choice, and it is the choice Chewy made in June. The second quarter is the first opportunity to see whether the reset range was calibrated correctly or simply moved out of the way.
The deceleration ladder is the real story
Strip away the quarter-to-quarter noise and a consistent pattern emerges across Chewy’s disclosed operating metrics. Growth in the underlying customer base is slowing, growth in spend per customer is holding, and profitability is improving. That is a specific kind of business, and it is not the kind Chewy was three years ago.
Autoship growth has slowed sharply
Autoship is Chewy’s subscription program, providing automatic ordering, payment and delivery. It is the closest thing the company has to contracted revenue, and management treats it as the primary driver of recurring net sales and retention.
In the second quarter of fiscal 2025, Autoship customer net sales grew 15% year over year and represented 83% of total net sales. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Autoship sales of $2,832.6 million grew 10% year over year and represented 84.4% of total net sales.
Read those two data points together and the picture is nuanced. The share of revenue running through subscription went up, which is structurally good, while the growth rate of that revenue fell by a third. Subscription share rising while subscription growth falls is a well documented pattern in replenishment businesses, and we have written about which subscription categories actually sustain repeat purchase once the early adopter cohort is fully converted.
Active customer growth keeps compressing
Chewy grew active customers 4.5% year over year to 20.9 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2025. By the first quarter of fiscal 2026, active customers reached 21.497 million, growth of 3.6%.
Net sales per active customer moved in the opposite direction, which is the offsetting force. NSPAC rose $26, or 4.6%, to $591 in Q2 fiscal 2025, and reached $597 in Q1 fiscal 2026, again up 4.6% year over year.
The combination is arithmetically coherent: roughly 3.6% more customers spending roughly 4.6% more each produces high single digit revenue growth. The vulnerability is that one of those two legs is visibly weakening and the other has been remarkably stable.
| Operating metric | Q2 FY2025 | Q1 FY2026 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales growth | +8.6% | +7.7% | Slowing |
| Active customers | 20.9m | 21.497m | Growing, more slowly |
| Active customer growth | +4.5% | +3.6% | Slowing |
| Net sales per active customer | $591 | $597 | Stable at +4.6% |
| Autoship growth | +15% | +10% | Slowing sharply |
| Autoship share of net sales | 83% | 84.4% | Rising |
| Adjusted EBITDA margin | ~5.8% to 5.9% (implied) | 7.5% | Expanding |
How the consumer environment changed underneath the guidance
Chief Executive Sumit Singh attributed the softer outlook to consumer behavior rather than to competitive loss. He said consumers are growing more discerning, driven in part by elevated fuel prices and broader macroeconomic pressures.
That framing is notable because it moves the explanation away from tariffs. For most of 2026, import costs dominated retail guidance language, and management teams reached for duty exposure as the default explanation for margin pressure.
Chewy’s mix makes it relatively insulated from that channel. Consumables and pharmacy dominate the revenue base, hardgoods are the smaller import-exposed line, and the company sells almost entirely domestically. Our analysis of why fuel and energy costs are displacing tariffs in retail guidance tracks the same shift in vocabulary that Chewy’s commentary reflects.
“More discerning” is not the same as “spending less.” It typically describes trade-down within a category rather than exit from it, which for a pet retailer means shifting from premium to mainstream food, stretching replenishment intervals, or deferring hardgoods purchases.
Each of those behaviors hits a different line. Trade-down compresses NSPAC, interval stretching suppresses Autoship growth without reducing the customer count, and hardgoods deferral hits the highest growth consumables-adjacent category.
The second quarter disclosure should let readers distinguish between them. If active customers hold and NSPAC softens, the story is trade-down. If active customers weaken and NSPAC holds, the story is acquisition, which is a harder problem.
Pet ownership dynamics sit underneath all of this. Household pet formation surged during the pandemic period and normalized afterward, which mechanically shrinks the pool of new customers available to any pet retailer regardless of execution.
If that is the binding constraint, then Chewy’s clinic strategy is a rational response rather than a diversification. Buying a channel that manufactures new customers is the correct move when organic acquisition is structurally capped.
What the Modern Animal acquisition adds, and when
Chewy agreed to acquire Modern Animal, a technology-forward veterinary platform with 29 owned clinics, round-the-clock virtual care, and a membership model the company describes as high retention. The deal has since completed.
The footprint effect is large in percentage terms. Chewy Vet Care expanded from 18 to 47 locations nationwide as a result, and the combined business is expected to operate approximately 60 clinics by the end of fiscal 2026.
According to the company, Modern Animal clinics generate revenue per location more than twice the industry average, with EBITDA margins exceeding 20% for mature clinics. That is the strategic case for paying up rather than building organically.
The customer acquisition angle is arguably more important than the clinic profit. Chewy has said that 40% of Chewy Vet Care customers are new to Chewy, and that those new customers carry an average net sales per active customer of roughly $900.
Set that $900 against the company-wide $597 and the logic is clear. A clinic is not primarily a clinic in this model, it is an acquisition channel that delivers customers worth roughly 50% more than the average, into a business where customer growth is the constrained input.
The 2026 versus 2027 split is the part to get right
The revenue contribution and the profit contribution arrive on different schedules, and conflating them is the easiest mistake to make in this quarter’s numbers. Modern Animal is expected to add more than $125 million in annualized run rate revenue, with an estimated $70 million contribution during fiscal 2026 itself.
On profit, the company guided the deal to be EBITDA-dollar neutral in 2026 on a pro forma basis, with EBITDA-dollar contribution expected to begin in 2027. Steady state embedded revenue from the combined clinic network is described as approaching $290 million.
The practical consequence for September 9 is that some portion of reported second quarter revenue growth is acquired rather than organic, while none of the incremental EBITDA is. Readers should expect the reported top line and the underlying demand signal to diverge slightly.
| Modern Animal metric | Figure | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Clinics acquired | 29 owned locations | Completed |
| Chewy Vet Care footprint | 18 to 47 locations | Immediate |
| Expected clinic count | ~60 | End of fiscal 2026 |
| Annualized run rate revenue added | >$125m | Run rate |
| Fiscal 2026 revenue contribution | ~$70m | FY2026 |
| EBITDA-dollar contribution | Neutral | FY2026 pro forma |
| EBITDA-dollar contribution begins | Positive | 2027 |
| Steady state embedded revenue | ~$290m | Steady state |
Where the margin expansion is actually coming from
A retailer that grows revenue at 7% and earnings at 9% is pulling margin from somewhere specific. In Chewy’s case there are three identifiable sources, and only one of them is conventional retail leverage.
The first is mix. Pharmacy, health services and advertising sit in the higher margin end of the business, and they have been growing faster than consumables. Gross margin of 30.1% in the first quarter reflects that drift.
The second is automation. Chewy has embedded artificial intelligence across customer service, pharmacy, fulfillment and marketing, and Singh has quantified the benefit at a low tens of millions of dollars in fiscal 2026, with a more meaningful ramp expected into 2027 and beyond.
The third is fulfillment cost discipline. Chewy ships heavy, low-density boxes, which makes it structurally sensitive to parcel pricing, and carrier rate increases land harder on pet food than on apparel. Our reporting on why effective peak parcel costs are likely to outrun the headline rate increase explains why that line deserves attention in any Q4 guidance Chewy offers on the call.
“Low tens of millions of dollars” against a roughly $13.5 billion revenue base is worth being precise about. At, say, $30 million, that is roughly 22 basis points of revenue, which is material to a 6.4% EBITDA margin but not transformative.
The forward-looking claim is the larger one. Management has framed 2026 as the investment year and 2027 as the year the benefit ramps, which places the payoff outside the window this earnings report can verify.
Investors should treat any specific 2027 quantification offered on the call as guidance rather than as an achieved result. The verifiable number on September 9 is the margin itself.
One nuance deserves flagging on the mix argument. Advertising and pharmacy revenue carry higher margins but also higher variability, and a revenue base that leans harder on them is a slightly less predictable one.
How Chewy sits against the rest of the reporting week
September 9 is a crowded morning. Several consumer names report in the same window, which means Chewy’s read-through will be interpreted alongside rather than in isolation.
American Eagle Outfitters reports the same day, and we previewed how American Eagle’s Q2 growth runs into a $20m tariff bill, a very different cost structure from Chewy’s. Kroger follows on September 11 with a grocery consumables read that is arguably the closest analogue to Chewy’s core category.
The contrast is useful. If Kroger reports resilient consumables volume and Chewy reports soft Autoship, the divergence points to something Chewy-specific rather than to household budget stress.
| Company | Report date | Primary read-through | Cost pressure cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chewy | September 9, before open | Online replenishment demand | Fuel, macro, consumer discernment |
| American Eagle Outfitters | September 9 | Discretionary apparel | Import tariffs |
| Kroger | September 11 | Grocery consumables volume | Identical sales bar, promotional intensity |
What to watch in the release and on the call
Most of the interpretive value on September 9 sits in four disclosures rather than in the headline beat or miss. Each maps to a specific uncertainty in the current setup.
The four numbers that matter
- Active customers. Growth was 3.6% in the first quarter, down from 4.5% a year earlier. A further step down is the single most important negative signal available, because NSPAC cannot carry growth indefinitely on its own.
- Autoship growth rate. The move from 15% to 10% is the sharpest deceleration in the disclosed metrics. Stabilization here would materially de-risk the full year range.
- Full year guidance treatment. Whether the $13.40bn to $13.55bn range is reaffirmed, narrowed, raised or cut again is the clearest statement management can make about category conditions.
- Organic versus acquired revenue. With roughly $70 million of fiscal 2026 revenue attributable to Modern Animal, the organic growth rate is the number that describes the underlying business.
Beyond those, the fourth quarter commentary carries outsized weight given the timing. Any framing of holiday promotional intensity, free shipping thresholds or hardgoods demand will be read directly into peak season expectations for the wider sector.
What could go wrong with the setup
The bear case does not require a demand collapse. It only requires the current pattern to continue for another two quarters.
If active customer growth falls below roughly 3% while NSPAC growth stays near 4.6%, headline growth drops toward the bottom of the full year range without any dramatic quarter. That is a slow compression rather than a shock, and it is harder for management to address with cost actions.
A second risk is that the margin expansion story runs out of easy sources. Mix shift toward pharmacy and advertising has finite headroom, and the AI benefit is explicitly back-loaded into 2027.
The third risk is specific to the clinic strategy. Chewy Vet Care is being underwritten on the claim that 40% of clinic customers are new to Chewy at roughly $900 NSPAC, and if that ratio degrades as the network scales from 47 to 60 locations, the acquisition channel thesis weakens.
The constructive case rests on the June cut having been conservative rather than diagnostic. Chewy set the current range while explicitly describing its own view as “more appropriately conservative,” which is language companies use when they are choosing a low bar.
If the second quarter lands at or above $3.33 billion with Autoship growth stabilizing near 10%, the full year range becomes comfortably achievable and the margin trajectory intact. In that scenario, a beat plus a reaffirmation reads more positively than the headline suggests.
The asymmetry is worth noting. Because the bar was reset downward in June, the informational content of a miss is considerably higher than the informational content of a modest beat.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly does Chewy report Q2 fiscal 2026 results?
Chewy reports before the market opens on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, with a conference call and webcast at 8:00 am ET. The company confirmed the schedule in a press release dated August 19, 2026, and the webcast is available on its investor relations site.
What is Chewy’s guidance for the second quarter?
Chewy guided to net sales of $3.30 billion to $3.33 billion, approximately 6% to 7% year over year growth. It also guided to adjusted earnings per share of about $0.36 and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.3% to 6.4%, representing roughly 50 basis points of year over year expansion at the midpoint.
Why did Chewy cut its fiscal 2026 outlook in June?
Management said the consumer pet environment had become incrementally more challenged since the original outlook was set, and that the revision reflected a more appropriately conservative view of the consumer environment and category growth. Chief Executive Sumit Singh pointed to consumers becoming more discerning, driven in part by elevated fuel prices and broader macroeconomic pressures.
What is Autoship and why does it matter so much?
Autoship is Chewy’s subscription program that automatically orders, charges for and delivers products on a recurring schedule. It represented 84.4% of net sales in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, which makes its growth rate effectively the growth rate of the company.
How much does Modern Animal contribute to this quarter?
Modern Animal is expected to contribute an estimated $70 million of revenue during fiscal 2026 and more than $125 million on an annualized run rate basis. On profit, the deal is expected to be EBITDA-dollar neutral in fiscal 2026 on a pro forma basis, with EBITDA-dollar contribution beginning in 2027.
Is Chewy exposed to import tariffs?
Less than most retailers, because consumables, pharmacy and health services dominate its revenue mix and hardgoods are the smaller import-exposed category. Management’s stated pressure points for the current outlook were fuel prices and general macroeconomic conditions rather than duties.
What was Chewy’s year-ago second quarter?
In the thirteen weeks ended August 3, 2025, net sales rose 8.6%, or $245.6 million, to approximately $3.10 billion, with active customers up 4.5% to 20.9 million and net sales per active customer up 4.6% to $591. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.33, in line with consensus at the time.
Which single metric should investors watch first?
Active customer growth, which slowed from 4.5% year over year in Q2 fiscal 2025 to 3.6% in Q1 fiscal 2026. Net sales per active customer has been stable at about 4.6% growth, so the customer count is the variable that determines whether high single digit revenue growth is sustainable.
Does a guidance beat on September 9 actually mean much?
Less than usual, because the bar was lowered in June and the range is deliberately conservative. A miss against a recently reset range would carry more information than a modest beat, since it would imply conditions deteriorated faster than a company with full visibility anticipated.