Helen of Troy (HELE) stock jumps after a second-quarter beat and a raised outlook, with tariff refunds behind part of both, October 8, 2026

Helen of Troy shares rose on Thursday, October 8, 2026 after the owner of OXO and Hydro Flask reported adjusted earnings of $0.79 a share for its fiscal second quarter, against the $0.51 analysts expected, and raised its full-year adjusted EPS outlook to $3.60 to $4.15 from $3.25 to $3.75. About $0.12 of the quarter's adjusted EPS came from refunds of tariffs the company had paid. At 10:17 ET the stock was at $27.29, up 6.81% on the day.

The results reached the MoveSurge news feed at 06:45:37 ET, almost three hours before the open. In the following minute the stock traded from $25.00 to $28.00, a 12.0% move, and ten minutes later it stood at $27.75, up 11.0%, though only 1,128 shares changed hands in the first fifteen minutes, so those early prints rest on very thin trading.

The second quarter against estimates and a year earlier

Sales rose 2.1% and landed just under the estimate, after growing 8.2% to $402.1 million in the first quarter, so the beat came from margins rather than volume. Last year's GAAP loss of $13.44 a share included non-cash impairment charges worth $12.77 a share after tax. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $57.1 million.

How much of the quarter came from tariff refunds

The quarter included $26.9 million of gross pre-tax refunds of tariffs Helen of Troy had paid under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It spent about $23 million of that on the business in the same quarter, leaving a net pre-tax benefit of about $4.0 million, or roughly $0.12 a share. Gross margin rose 8.0 points to 52.2%, and the company put about 5.6 points of that down to the refunds net of higher tariff costs. Without those points the margin would have been about 46.6%, close to the first quarter's 46.0%.

Without the $0.12, adjusted EPS would have been about $0.67 a share, still $0.16 above the estimate, so the quarter beats with or without the refund.

The raised outlook and the refund inside it

The new outlook assumes Helen of Troy gets back the full $80.5 million of IEEPA tariffs it paid and reinvests $66.5 million to $70.5 million of it, for a net pre-tax benefit of $10 million to $14 million, or $0.30 to $0.45 a share. The adjusted EPS range rose by $0.35 at the bottom and $0.40 at the top, about the size of that benefit, while the sales range was narrowed around the same $1.795 billion midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected at $203 million to $210 million.