Boozt Stock

Welcome to the Boozt Q2 2026 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Hermann Haraldsson; and CFO, Michael Bjergby. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning to all, and welcome to our Q2 2026 webcast. So let's just turn to the first slide, the agenda. So for today's presentation, we'll follow our usual agenda. I'll take you through the highlights and the strategic developments and then Michael will walk you through the numbers in detail. So please move on to the next slide.

When we started 2026, our ambition was clear. We wanted to get back to double-digit growth. We were quite confident that the initiatives we have put in place in 2025 were the right ones to position us strongly in the market and that they would bring us our growth momentum back. So this is why I'm very pleased that the results came through even faster than we expected. We grew 13% in the second quarter, and we almost doubled our EBIT margin to 6.5%. And this was a broad-based performance with every major category and every market contributing.

Behind the quarter, there were 3 main drivers. The first is our new assortment strategy which is broader and more inspirational than before. We offered 55% more styles on Boozt.com than in the same quarter last year and sold almost as many different styles also during the quarter. So that was very positive.

The second is AI. Our new AI initiatives have clearly improved the customer experience, and we're happy to see that our customers are responding accordingly. And the third thing is a real step change in our commercial organization. We've built a powerhouse of local country specialists, all sitting together at our new headquarters in Copenhagen. And this is something that we just couldn't have done before we moved the headquarters from Hyllie, Sweden to Copenhagen.

Alongside this very encouraging performance, we also decided during the quarter to sharpen our focus to make sure that we capture the full potential of our core business. So this is why we closed our B2B gift shop initiative and narrowed our focus. So as we say, we don't need to do everything. We just need to be very good at doing the right things.

We are now ramping up inventory as planned and we'll go into the autumn and winter season with more stock than last year and considerably better stock. And this is the key to keeping our momentum.

On the back of the current performance, we have also decided to expand our share buyback program to SEK 300 million, up from the SEK 200 million we announced after Q1. And finally, with Q3 tracking as expected, the guidance upgrade we announced on 29th of June is firmly confirmed. We don't take the second half for granted, but we're entering it from a position of real strength.

So now please turn to Slide #5. The women are back. Our clearest acceleration is coming from women's fashion. After several quarters of decline, the category is now growing strongly again. The numbers of customers shopping women's fashion in Boozt.com was up 20% in the quarter, and this wasn't just a 1-month spike. The trend was stable and solid all the way through the quarter. And this matters a great deal because the women who shop with us, they don't stay in one category. They browse and buy across all of them, home, beauty, kids and sports and even in menswear. And that is exactly what lifts basket value and loyalty across the platform and ultimately what creates long-term sustainable growth.

So let's turn to the next slide. One of the key drivers behind this acceleration is our revised assortment strategy. We've deliberately become more inspirational and less promotional, adding new brands, more breadth and greater variety to our offering on Boozt.com. That also included more premium products, which helped to elevate the shop and ultimately the brand. We added around 55% more styles to our spring/summer offering, and it really paid off through the second quarter. We got more clicks from our performance marketing channels, and we converted them better. So more choice for the customer, combined with reaching the right audience worked just as we had hoped.

Our focus now is firmly on the second half and our plan for the autumn/winter is at least as ambitious as what we've just done for spring/summer. We'll again increase the number of styles versus last year, and we'll bring in strong brands such as Gap, Max Mara and Paul Smith, along with other strong brands that support the categories. So with that, we're quite confident that we can carry our momentum into the most important time of the year.

So please move on to the next slide. We've been able to grow revenue significantly in the first half despite running on low inventory. And that says a lot about the quality of our stock and how well our assortment has performed. Now we tend to be quite careful about carrying too much stock. Some would say that we're almost allergic to it, but we recognize that going into the spring/summer season, we probably went a little too low. So we're pleased that after those lower levels during the first half, our inventory is now above last year's. So the buildup is well on track.

And as we speak, autumn/winter products are arriving and going live in good volumes, and that leaves us feeling very confident about the season ahead.

So let's move on, look at AI and the customer journey. We covered our main initiatives on the last quarter's call. So I won't go into all that detail again. But I think there are kind of 2 things worth highlighting this quarter. The first is imagery. Since we launched AI model images in April, we produced around 10,000 of them, adding roughly 300 new variants a day from just 16 reusable models and with no casting costs at all. Video is next along with categories like shoes, bags and accessories.

The second is our shopping assistant, which now has been live across all markets since June. It's still very early days, only around 3% of our customers use our AI assistant so far. But those who do, they convert roughly 2.5x our normal rate, and they spend about 8% more per order. We've only just started and the next step is to make the underlying search even smarter and even more personal.

So it is opportunities like these that let us significantly improve the customer experience, our service levels and the overall appeal of our sites and all at relatively low cost.

Let's move on to the next slide. Here is a nice illustration, a colorful one, if you like, of AI at work. For the World Cup, we wanted to capture the moment. So we used AI to style outfits and create campaign imagery in each team's colors, entirely from stock we already had with no new photo shoot required. It was relevant, it was fast and it was very local, except perhaps for Norway who became global darlings during the tournament and could be used everywhere. It was quite spontaneous and it's a small example, but it shows how quickly we can move on marketing content basically how we can be relevant at light speed and at low cost.

So please move to the next slide. Our department store model keeps compounding. 54% of our customers now buy from more than one category. Over the last 12 months, every single customer group buying across more than one category grew double digits versus last year. And our most engaged customers, the ones buying across all 6 categories, were up by 15%. This is exactly the pattern that we're chasing. The more of a platform a customer touches and the more of our categories she buys into, the more valuable she becomes and the longer she stays with us. But put simply, it creates both value and stickiness.

So with that, I will now hand over to Michael for the financial review.

Thank you, Hermann, and good morning, everyone. Please go to Slide #12. So we accelerated growth significantly in Q2. And when looking at all metrics, internal and external, the conclusion is that it was very broad-based across categories, countries, customers, et cetera.

So we see strong growth in our new customers. But for the first time in years, we also have good growth in sales to our current existing customers. The initiatives that we have executed are playing out as planned. Our positioning and the focus on Boozt has led to strong double-digit growth, as you can see on the slide. And this is really our main site and premium site where we see then slower growth in Booztlet. That implies a higher quality of earnings, better margins and it's also a positive for our long-term brand relationship.

We saw double-digit growth in all months of the quarter and the change into growth trajectory really happened from March. And as such, we believe that our performance has been driven through market share gains rather than being market-driven. During the summer, we did, however, see small signs of general improvement in consumer spending in our core markets, we believe.

Next slide. So the repositioning and ambition to grow the profitability in a healthy way is really now showing up in the numbers as we have probably advertised a couple of times. But gross margin reached 40.1%, a full percentage point ahead of last year. This is driven by real product margin. Boozt.com is doing less discounting as it leans further into being the premium destination and the mix has shifted. So it's relatively more sales that comes from Boozt versus Booztlet.

Other revenue grew 6% in the quarter, and we expect that to accelerate quite materially in the second half, which will provide further support for the gross margin for the second half of the year.

Please go to Slide #14 and profits. The profit development is generally showing improvement in the quality of earnings, increasing and healthy gross margin with leverage on the operational cost base. This is how we want to drive profitability improvements as we move along. In particular, for this quarter, we see improvement in the marketing cost ratio based on less offline spending, but also less marketing spend for Booztlet. Admin and other cost ratio is up fully as expected and planned and as a result of our relocation to our new headquarters in Copenhagen, but also investments in our commercial team and resources.

Adjustments for the quarter amounted to SEK 39 million. SEK 28 million relates to share-based payments, which is a noncash component, as you know, and correlates with performance and the share price. The remaining SEK 11 million related to initiatives taken to focus on the core business, which Hermann has already mentioned, and it mainly relates to the closing of the B2B shop initiative, leading to some FTE terminations, write-down of fixed assets and an elimination of a vendor software agreement. This was truly extraordinary, and we expect no further adjustments for the rest of the year, except for the usual share-based payments.

Please go to Slide #15. So we delivered 13% higher revenue with lower inventory levels throughout the first half year. And as such, it should not be a surprise that the performance of our inventory is much better than the performance in the same quarter last year. We can see that on the chart to the right.

We have fewer products, but stronger return on the capital we have employed. Currently, we now have inventory levels that is higher than last year, and we know that more products create more sales, but typically with a diminishing return on capital. So this is how we will continue to have a strong growth in the second half.

Please move to Slide #16 and our cash development for the year. So we have generated strong cash over the last 12 months of more than SEK 600 million. And for Q2 alone, we were just above cash breakeven. It's a bit more than SEK 100 million less than last year, despite stronger profit. And there are 2 reasons for that, as you can see on the bars on the chart.

One, we pay exit tax related to our headquarters move. And two, we are increasing our inventory position compared to the same period last year. Both factors are fully in line with plan and expectations.

Please go to the next slide on how we deploy this cash because on Slide 17, we have outlined that today, the Board has initiated a mandate to increase the current share buyback program by another SEK 100 million. With this expansion, we expect to repurchase shares for an amount of SEK 40 million -- around SEK 400 million this year, and that brings us to around SEK 850 million for the last 2 years, i.e., close to 10% of the share capital.

We continue to have a very strong balance sheet, and we want to maintain that as we move forward while still being disciplined in returning the excess cash that we generate back to shareholders. It is important to understand the dynamics of our cash generation because in periods with very high growth, we'll tie capital in inventory and areas to support the growth, whereas over the cycle, Boozt will fundamentally be highly cash generative. And that means that over the cycle, we will also be able to distribute significant cash back to shareholders.

This concludes my presentation for the Q2 results, and I'll now go to my final slide regarding the 2026 outlook. So during the year, we have upgraded now our financial outlook 2 times already and based on the accelerating growth momentum. Since our last upgrade on 29th of June, we have seen performance in line with expectations. And as such, we are today confirming our outlook.

Our expectations for CapEx have been adjusted to an interval towards the high end of our previous expectations, and this is mainly related to higher one-off investments in assets and installations at our Copenhagen headquarter.

So with this, I'm now handing it back to Hermann for final remarks.

Thank you, Michael. Yes, we came into this year with one main goal, and that was to get back to double-digit growth. It took the better part of a year to get the business ready. And this quarter is the clearest proof yet that what we're doing is working.

We did a great deal of the groundwork in 2025. We called it a transition year, a year to prepare for our next growth phase. You could think of it as kind of Boozt 3.0 and now the results are starting to show. We are selling more, discounting less and spending our marketing budget more intelligently. It's exactly the kind of growth that we want to keep reporting, high quality and getting more profitable as it scales.

We are now building inventory ahead of the holiday season, and I believe it will be the strongest autumn/winter lineup we've prepared. Now, we're not taking anything for granted. The comparison base gets tougher in the second half and a good deal still depends on executing the inventory buildup well and how the consumer holds up. But with a sharper organization and the momentum we're carrying, we feel well prepared for the most important part of our year.

So that concludes our presentation. And operator, will you please open up for questions?

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Johan Fred from SEB.

Starting off with the sales growth in Q2. As I read it, it was aided by an improved consumer sentiment in late Q2. How much of the 13% constant currency growth would you say is reflecting a genuinely sort of improved demand backdrop versus timing/comps? And has the sentiment improvement persisted into Q3? That's my first question.

Thank you. It's actually a difficult question because we see the consumer sentiment numbers in the region and actually during the quarter, they didn't improve. But as you say, the consumers seem to be more optimistic, and I think that the optimism has continued during the summer.

So I would rather lean on the optimistic consumer than the pessimistic one. I think -- having said that, I think that the growth in the quarter has to do with what we've been doing. I don't think we've been supported by a more general consumer demand and more optimistic consumer. So it's been the structural changes we've made. And again, somewhat easier comparisons. But again, we see probably a more optimistic consumer now than we did in the last quarter.

Got it. A second question on sort of AOV and new customer acquisition. New customer acquisition was strong in Q2. And you also stated here in the presentation that share of women shoppers grew 20% and also stated that customers buying from more categories also grew in Q2, which, as you say, should imply a higher AOV.

However, in Q2, AOV on Boozt.com declined year-on-year, even though we've also seen a reduction in promotional activity. Could you just help us understand the dynamics here in Q2? And what's the trajectory for the new cohorts as sort of their spending time or -- yes, as they mature, essentially?

Yes. Thank you very much for the question. So it is a good pick that the AOV for Boozt.com declined slightly in the quarter, whereas it increased in Booztlet. The reason for the decline is the average number of items in the basket. So we actually saw a very small increase in average price in Boozt.com, but the average items per basket is down.

And that really is because we had a relatively larger share of revenue on Boozt.com coming from new customers. And the new customers tend to buy only a fewer items per basket when they initially engage with us and then later on, they expand to new categories and then they also expand the number of items in the basket, so in time with higher AOV. And that is why we believe that this is sort of a onetime effect, if you like, when we get very -- a lot of new customers coming in and a relatively high share of revenue coming from new customers. Then you can see a dip in the AOV, but that will increase again going forward. So we don't expect that to be sustained going forward.

If I can add to that, you asked also about the cohorts. It's a bit early to say about the Q2 cohorts, but we see that all the cohorts from all the years are actually increasing our spend with us this quarter. And we haven't seen that trend for quite a while. So basically, the cohorts are back, and that is also very positive.

And just a follow-up there. When you say later on, what does that imply timing-wise? How long does it take on average for a new customer to become a returning sort of buying across category customer?

Yes, that's -- eventually it depends. We monitor kind of how many are back after 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. And we always see a dip in the following year and then they get back again. So -- but in general, what we're following is kind of the cohort behavior, like the '16 cohort, '17, '18, '19 cohort. And we are seeing now that they are actually increasing their spend with us against above index 100. And we have seen that actually for some years. So that's positive.

And there's no reason to believe that the Q2 cohort will not behave the same way because it's the same quality, et cetera, et cetera. And as Michael said, the item price increased. So I think it bodes quite well for future behavior.

If I may ask another question on the gross margin. The gains here was driven by better mix and reduced promotional activity in Boozt.com. How should we think about the sort of pricing discipline into H2, given sort of the higher volume autumn/winter season and sort of the competitive intensity increasing, especially during Q4?

So this is Michael speaking. And this will always be a tactical decision that we do not decide sort of in a fixed term before we go into the season, but something that -- where we trade accordingly. And this is the -- I would say, some of the strengths with our inventory model is that we can actually change relatively fast.

We have a clear ambition that we want to position our Boozt.com as our premium site. And we don't expect that there will be any significant change in the price competition, if you look at it from a market perspective. So we expect what we've seen in Q2 to be able to be sustained also in the second half.

So just to clarify, do you think that the pricing discipline is sustainable and see little risk for competitive intensity pressuring margins back down in H2?

Yes. Based on what we see right now, that's what we expect. But I'll also say that we will act sort of tactically when we take decisions going into sort of the -- especially the Black Friday trading and so on.

The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I want to start off by asking about the full year guidance. You grew sales 13% in Q2, and you talked about a fairly good momentum heading into the second half of the year and inventory ramp-up and so forth. But why does the 7% to 11% full year guidance imply a slowdown from the Q2 growth rate? Is it just an element of conservatism here? You mentioned the comps and so forth. Just maybe help us understand that a little bit.

Yes. Yes, it's kind of Q4 is the main season and with tougher comps, and I believe that our guidance for the second half is somewhere between 7% and 13% growth full year. So obviously, the aim is to have a double-digit growth for the full year. So obviously, our target is to be at the upper half of the range, but it's kind of -- it's too early after June to -- and after July and August to start kind of discussing because we don't know how the season will pan out.

But of course, there's no indications that we cannot reach double-digit growth for the full year. So this is what we're targeting, but it's just too early to discuss any changes to the guidance.

Yes. Fair enough. Then a question on the competitive environment. Could you say anything about what you're seeing in competitors like Zalando and the Chinese competitors, SHEIN and so forth? Any changes in the competitive intensity and so forth?

I think that we are extremely competitive at the moment, probably more competitive than for a long time. Due to that, we have very, very good control of all that is within our span of control. Our assortment is kind of considerably better than before. We have more choice, more options, more inspiration. Our platform is own built, so we can act fast and utilize AI to the utmost. So I think that we are very competitive. And I don't think that the competition is more intense. Might be even slightly less intrusive because I think a lot of players have challenges, I believe.

So I think that we are -- because of our focus, focusing on what we are extremely good at, which is also why we dismissed the gift shop of B2B. So I think that kind of our focus and our determination and with more inventory and with an extremely strong commercial team, I think we're in a very good shape going into the second half.

Perfect. And then just finally on capital allocation. With organic growth now accelerating, you still increase the buyback rather than investing even more in the business. I'm just a bit interested in the balance here between buybacks and reinvesting in growth.

Yes. And that is a good question and something that we have to consider all the time because having an inventory-led business model also implies that when we grow very fast then we also need to increase the inventory and that will take up quite significant capital and even more than the profit that we have delivered.

But we don't want to have any cash -- excess cash on the balance sheet. So we want to be disciplined. And as you know, we don't actually expect to have much higher inventory when we end the year compared to when we started this year. And at the same time, we have higher growth. So we have liquidity and sort of a healthy balance sheet to be able to do share buybacks. But we will always prioritize to make sure that we do what is right for the long term of the business. But we still have plenty of balance sheet to also provide the capital return to shareholders.

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank.

Hermann and Michael, a couple of questions. Starting with marketing spend as a percentage of sales and also in absolute numbers came down quite a bit. And you talked about a deliberate shift away from off-line marketing channels in favor of digital marketing.

Is that sort of big leap in improving efficiency, is that going to continue in the coming quarters? When you look at last year, you also had a big improvement in Q3 and onwards. Are we meeting the changes that you already saw last year or what sort of -- what's new here? What could continue?

Yes. So we actually believe that we are more efficient on marketing now, but that does not mean that we will see this kind of improvement in the marketing cost ratio going into second half.

We have -- we see extremely strong momentum and the customers are responding right now. So I would -- so you should expect that the sort of benefit from improved marketing cost ratio will be smaller in the second half than it was in the first half. Because it is a good opportunity right now to grow fast, and we want to invest properly behind that.

Okay. And a similar question on fulfillment efficiency. You are right about improved distribution agreements across partners. And at the same time you're also, of course, negatively affected by higher inbound of volumes. Is that also going to be the case as you ramp up inventory during the second half to sell more when you look at Q3 and Q4? Or how are they going to stack up against each other, you think?

Yes, exactly. So within the fulfillment cost, then we will always have ambitions to improve. It is -- when we have much higher inbound, that means something. And of course, when you sell more, you also have higher returns. So that has an impact on fulfillment -- and at the same time, on distribution, we have seen with the oil prices that there is a little bit of pressure also on the cost.

But regardless of this, we will continue to be very, very strict on our targets for fulfillment and distribution cost ratio. So with higher volumes, we will continue to target lower ratios and continue to see small improvements both in the fulfillment cost ratio and the distribution cost ratio.

And you also talked about the temporary effect from the installation of sprinkler systems that you did during the spring. That seems to be done now. Was that a meaningful impact on efficiency in Q2?

It had some impact. I think we managed it very well. But -- so I would say it will have a sort of a -- it had a small negative impact. But definitely, it impacted how efficient you can be when you have installations like that going on.

But that disruption is basically gone as we leave Q2.

Exactly. That is finalized in Q2.

Yes. And then just a couple of detailed questions. You closed down the B2B gift shop. How is sort of -- what does that mean in terms of lost sales or EBIT? And what is the saving on those SEK 11 million?

So there is -- all of the costs that related to that has basically been written off. So it was an initiative that was started off. You will see limited savings because it was an initiative that was coming up, but we also -- so in essence, it was a change of direction.

So I would say you will see the benefit in increased sales and focus on our core business. So from a sales perspective, there was -- it was actually a very good initiative and it had some potential to also be quite profitable. So it was -- in essence, it worked well, but we just needed to prioritize to focus on what we do best, and that is our B2C core business.

I understand. I see your point in sort of trying to get more out of the B2C business when you're more focused, of course. But you did have some B2B sales in Q3 and Q4 last year, I guess, which you don't have this year. Is that a meaningful number?

No, we didn't have any sales. So we hadn't even started the gift shop. So basically, we closed it down. We closed it down before it was operating. So again, as Michael said, it's a good idea.

Yes. So let's just focus. So we don't lose any revenues, nothing like that. It's just like we just closed it down before it was affecting the business.

And then I think, Mike, you also mentioned that other revenues will see a good pickup in H2. What is the visibility on that?

We have quite strong visibility because we discuss with the brands all the time. And there's no doubt that the Q1 in general was actually quite tough for the sort of trading environment in general and that's why some brands hold back. And really with coming into H2 where we increase our buying budget, that implies directly that they will spend more because that's part of the agreements with them.

And at the same time, we see also that the general environment is improving, and that means also that they will also be more willing to do marketing investments with us. So it's sort of constant dialogues that we have with the brands, and therefore, the visibility is quite strong.

Mike, would you say that Q3 is already in the bag in terms of agreements that you've signed?

In the bag is -- there's still some work to be done for September, but it is more or less sorted. It's very few percentages that can change now. Yes.

And I guess some of it is performance-based as well, so you don't really know the outcome.

Only to a very, very small extent. So we will know the outcome, not now, but very close to.

The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

Can I start by asking about the monthly sales trend? And the main reason for asking is because you said that sales in this quarter was fairly even throughout the quarter. And as I remember, in Q2 of last year, you had a decline in April, May for the first time ever, and then June was back to double digits. So I'm just curious, have you seen growth rates around 13% for all months despite the big variations in comparisons from the year before?

No, that is not -- it's not 13%, but what we did see was double-digit growth. But you are right, May last year was very weak. So we did have relatively low sales in May. But I would say from a momentum perspective and how it was panned out and then it was fairly evenly distributed among the months, and we had double-digit growth in all months.

Very fair. And also, we talked about the guidance being conservative on sales here. And kind of the same thing when you look at margins, even the upper end of your margin seems to indicate very limited margin expansion in H2, and the low end actually implies a margin contraction in H2. So is there any reason there or anything you care to elaborate on why you're being conservative?

I think it's Q4. It depends on how that pans out. We have increased our inventory buy, and we are allergic to stock. So it's just to be prudent. As we always say, we have the low end, meaning that if there's less demand than we expect, we need to discount more.

And of course, if demand is good, consumers are optimistic, then we will be towards the high end of the year. So Q4 is just such a big quarter that it's like it's -- you have to be careful in expecting too much. But of course, we expect much, but just -- we are trying to be a bit prudent.

And if you look at it from a financial and ratios perspective, then I would say we have already communicated that we expect to see an improving gross margin. So that's going to be supportive to margin H2-over-H2. But we have also communicated that the admin and cost ratio will increase. So these 2 will be offsetting each other.

And then the one that is still variable is, of course, the marketing cost ratio where we have -- where we will not see the same benefits as we have seen in H1 because we will invest more to make sure that we support our growth. So I think that's really sort of the key component of whether it will be in the high end, low end or even above the range.

Fair enough. Very clear. And this question here on cash flow. We touched upon this a little bit before here. But in the past, your cash flow has been the strongest when growth has been the lowest. And now that sales growth is back, what kind of needs do you see for increased investments in fulfillment and working capital as your sales are now back to double-digit growth?

We believe we are at a good revenue to inventory level. So that means that we believe that we have to improve -- increase the revenue in line with revenue -- the inventory in line with revenue as we move forward. So you can sort of model that inventory should increase as much as revenue as we move forward because that is a good level. Then payables will, of course, increase also with higher inventory.

Then we have discussed the [ AS4 ] for some time, a new AutoStore, which is required at some point, but that's a bit too early to discuss that at this call. But we will come back with further when we know more.

Okay. But this is most likely with investment in '27 already, right?

That is what we have communicated previously, yes.

The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABGSC.

I will start by sort of nitpicking some words from a previous back and forth with Daniel. You say that we should expect a smaller benefit from marketing in the second half than the first half. And I was wondering if you could just confirm whether or not we should expect savings from the marketing ratio in H2 at all, please.

I think this is generally what we believe that is possible. And long term, we believe that we can operate at a lower marketing cost ratio. So that is the general pattern and, again, a general trend that you should expect.

But we don't want to guide specifically for H2 on the marketing cost ratio because of the growth momentum that we see right now. We want to make sure that we have actually room to invest if needed. So we will allow ourselves to make that a little bit open and not be too firm on our guidance on marketing cost ratio exactly for H2.

All right. But you're not ruling it out either, I take it?

No. And the sort of general long-term direction is that we can be more efficient on marketing. Yes.

Perfect. I was wondering if you could expand a bit on Norway as well. Growth in Norway quite higher than the group average. Previously, you've sort of discussed the opportunity to increase the marketing push to the market since you don't pay import tariffs anymore. And I was basically wondering, is this what is happening. Or do you see any other concrete reason for the strong Norway performance specifically, please?

We are focusing more on Norway. We're not giving away the tariff savings that we made. So we are more kind of granular marketing. And now also, we are, as of September, strengthening our Norwegian setup. So I expect that to -- we will actually perform even better in Norway. There's a huge potential in Norway. And so we are kind of -- yes, perhaps a bit slowly, but we are gaining momentum in Norway and getting stronger there.

And I think that Norway will continue to be a strong market for us because it's -- after we have rid of tariffs, it's providing good profitability, and there's no need for us to pass the savings on to the consumer. So we can keep that. So that's also contributing to our profitability. So Norway is -- I expect to become even better.

Perfect. Do you still retain sort of the head start versus competitors related to the import tariffs in your view or are others...

No. All our competitors, on the back of our court case, they got the listing. So we took the battle and they benefited as well. But it is what it is. So it's even playing ground. So if you fulfill the requirements for the VOEC as it's called, then you don't need to pay tariffs.

Growth is not that you...

No, no, no. Our German friends, they listed shortly after us. So they owe us one.

Perfect. I was wondering as well, is it possible at all to discuss the incremental sales gained from the new brands on site? Like I understand there are obvious difficulties in terms of cannibalization and so on. But could you give us any color at all on the potential growth impact from the new brands, please?

It's -- no, it's very difficult. But what I can say is that the broader assortment combined with better targeting, meaning that kind of we get the right audience into the sites and they convert better. I think that's a very good formula. And the good thing is that, yes, we talked about having 55% more styles, variants live on the sites, but we also sold around 55% more styles in the quarter.

So we can't quantify the benefit, but kind of it trickles down. And I think that the good thing, again, is that we actually had -- the clicks are slightly more expensive. But as they convert better because it's the right audience and they are getting the right choice, it converts to the high conversion rates, which is a good thing. This is kind of -- that's why it's been quite beautiful, that relation, right? So -- but I can't give you a number of how much that meant. So -- but it's been very positive.

And this is what we're continuing into the second half with the same increase in assortment [indiscernible] more with more items. So we are going strong into the quarter with inventory.

Final one for me then. I was wondering if you could discuss the fact that your new customer generation is actually stronger than previously, simultaneously with lower marketing ratios than before. Is this -- would you say this is like due to the fact that you have new brands that sort of have a different target audience?

No, this is actually -- Benjamin, this is exactly what I was talking about is that our commercial team, we have basically built a local country marketing team in our new headquarters, so a power team there that are much more focused on performance in the individual markets using technology to attract and target the right audience. And when they get to the site and have more assortment, then they buy more.

So basically, the customers that haven't bought before and come in, they see a beautiful site with a lot of inspiration, images, good assortment and they buy more. So this is kind of -- that's why we went into this virtuous circle by combining a good assortment, AI-led inspiration, et cetera, with strong targeting.

So that's why we're in this kind of -- we're not hesitating when we are saying that this structurally is stuff that we have done, that is the main reason why we are growing this strongly for Boozt.com, 15% in the quarter. So it's this virtuous circle that we just went into.

I know you don't really communicate the conversion rate anymore.

No.

I mean, I guess you could sort of backtrack it slightly, but could you say anything, like on the order of magnitude, your conversion rate has improved?

No, I'd rather not do that. But it's improved significantly. And of course, I'm always concerned about costs and when I hear that click costs are increasing, but that just basically means that we are buying more qualified clicks and they convert better. So that is, I think -- and it's a combination of very focused staff focusing locally, and we're also very good at using technology to locate the right audience at the right time with the right message. So it's actually quite beautiful from that part. And being an old media guy myself, I think it's almost beautiful to watch.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Okay. Thank you for listening in. And yes -- and I guess we will see you over the next couple of weeks and I wish all of you a good day and a good weekend ahead. Thank you.

Good morning, and welcome to our Presentation of our Q1 2026 Report. Yes, let's just go to the agenda slide. We will have the usual agenda for the presentation, and I will present the highlights of the quarter and the strategic update before handing over to Michael for the financials.

So next slide, please. We have said that 2026 would be a year of growth acceleration and the first quarter tells us that we are back on track for that. We delivered 4% constant currency growth. And while January and February were soft, momentum changed in March, which saw a significant increase. This correlated with the launch of our spring/summer assortment where we went into the season with around 35% more styles than last year and an assortment that we believe is the most relevant and inspiring we have offered for some time. And we can see that our customers are responding. So that's very positive.

On profitability, the underlying margin continues to improve. Our adjusted EBIT margin increased slightly versus last year despite significant FX headwinds. Looking ahead, we are in a strong position to push harder in the second half. Our inventory is clean and healthy, and we have already committed to a significant ramp-up for the autumn/winter season to fully capture the growth momentum that we are building.

We will do this from our new base as the headquarter transition to Copenhagen was completed in February. This was done without disruption and gives us the foundation to build our culture and the best team in our industry. Today, we are also initiating a new SEK 200 million buyback program. Cash generation remains solid, and we will continue to distribute excess cash in a disciplined way.

And finally, on the outlook, we confirm our revenue guidance of 3% to 8% constant currency growth. But given the solid start of the year, the higher end of the revenue range is now considered being more likely. The adjusted EBIT margin guidance is raised 30 basis points to 5.6% to 6.8% to reflect the favorable currency moves. And Michael, he will take you through the details later.

So now please turn to the next slide. We believe that the improvement we saw in March is due to the strategic adjustments we made to Boozt.com going into 2026. We have elevated the brand. We are providing more inspiration, and we're using AI to improve the whole customer experience. And most importantly, we have rightsized and improved our inventory in many ways.

Following a year where we had to focus on cleaning our inventory, which had become too deep and without enough freshness and newness, we are now gradually building a more inspirational and a more aspirational assortment. In the first quarter, we added more than 100 new brands to Boozt.com, including well-known names like Birkenstock and Hunter in fashion and Peugeot in home. We have also widened our buying within our current brand portfolio, making slightly more fashion bets.

With more than 135,000 styles launched as part of the spring/summer campaign, we brought 35% more options than in SS25 to shop, and our customers responded well by buying 40% more style variations than last year. For the second half and the autumn/winter season, the buy plan is even more ambitious. We are adding more brands and more breadth across categories, including the return of Max Mara and GAP to the site and new additions like Paul Smith.

In total, we are on track to add more than 200 new brands during 2026 across our different categories. The point is simple; our customers are responding to a better and broader assortment. This gives us confidence in the acceleration that we are planning for the second half.

Next slide, please. Looking at the women's category, we are also seeing a better trend here. After a number of quarters with a decline in customers engaging with the category, we are starting to see a stable improvement. Active customers buying women's fashion on Boozt.com grew 3% in Q1, but the underlying development was even more encouraging. January and February were difficult, cold weather and limited inventory held us back, but it actually got a bit warmer in the region. And as we saw the first signs of spring, women reacted very well to the SS26 launch, supporting our acceleration in March.

We expect this momentum to continue as we broaden our assortment even further in the second half of the year. It goes without saying that this also has a spillover effect onto the rest of the business. When women engage with fashion, they often also move into beauty, kids, sports and home. So you might say that a healthy women's category drives the entire platform.

Next slide, please. As we scale that volume, it is essential that we do so efficiently and keep the cost base lean. AI has become a key part of how we do that, allowing us to handle increasing volumes without a proportion increasing costs. A clear example is in customer service, where AI now handles 40% of all inquiries. By automating the routine cases, we have been able to reduce our staffing requirements, allowing us to operate with a more focused team while maintaining a high service level.

In the supply chain, we have removed 20% of the manual workload by automating product categorization, among other things, which also ensures better data consistency. And in the warehouse, we have effectively added 5% to 10% in capacity within our existing footprint through the use of AI. So it's all about using technology to make our current infrastructure work harder and more efficiently. These are just a few examples, but they give a good idea of how broadly we work with AI to increase efficiency across the entire value chain.

So next slide, please. On the customer side, we are using AI to remove friction and make the shopping experience more relevant. This is already live and already contributing. All products now have AI-generated descriptions and tags. And for the spring/summer collection, we're also using AI-generated model pictures. We're also seeing a direct commercial impact from AI-supported style suggestions. When customers see outfits mixed and matched by AI, they add more to the basket, increasing the average order value.

As we've said before, AI is going to get us to a shopping experience that is very close to the experience you get when you engage with an outstanding shopping assistant in a physical store. The only thing that is missing is the ability to feel and touch the products.

Our Virtual Shopping Assistant is also off to a good start. While adoption rate is still in the very early stages, the conversion rate for customers who engage with the assistant is 130% higher than those who don't engage. So even though the sample size is still quite small, results are quite encouraging.

On product discovery, our recommendation click-through rate has improved from 1.5% to 5%, a meaningful step in making it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. By delivering more relevant suggestions and testing a number of AI tools, we ensure that finding the right product remains as intuitive and easy as possible for the consumer. But to wrap it up, AI is making us a more efficient business and better retail at the same time. That is not always easy to achieve, and this is why we keep investing in it.

The next slide, please. We work continuously to build out our non-fashion categories, adding both strong brands and more breadth to that part of the assortment. These categories performed well in the quarter, which is also evident from the increase in customers buying from more categories.

If we look at the chart, the trend is solid. Every group from 2 to 6 categories is growing in high single digits, up between 7% and 9%. This is a positive step-up from what we saw last year, and it shows that our focus on cross-selling between departments is paying off.

This is fundamental for us. We know that when a customer buys more than just fashion, when they add items from home or kids, they stay with us for longer and they return fewer items. The strategy is working, and it gives us a very strong foundation for the rest of the year.

With that, I will hand it over to Michael for the financial review.

Yes. Thank you, Hermann, and good morning, everyone. I will start out by presenting our financials for the quarter, followed by comments on our updated outlook for the year.

I'll start on Slide #11. So as Hermann said, we grew 4% in constant currency, and this was despite of lower inventory. We thereby maintained our growth momentum from Q4, and we improved our general return profile.

There are a few notables in the growth patterns that I believe are worth highlighting. First of all, our strategy with increased focus on our main premium side is firmly executed and showing results as expected, growing Boozt is growing 6% in constant currency and Booztlet is declining.

Secondly, the Nordics grew quite nicely with good stable growth in Denmark and Sweden, and we saw Norway grew 13%, where we continue to see that we have very strong potential for further growth and where we believe that we are underrepresented. Finland did not grow, and here, consumer behavior appears quite weak generally.

As mentioned, a couple of times, March was materially stronger than January and February, and I just want to mention that this is both because constant currency growth was stronger, but also because we now see less currency headwind. This is something that will benefit us for the rest of the year and something that will show in the reported numbers already from April.

Please go to the next slide for comments on our profitability. I think it's critical to understand that the quality of earnings are actually much stronger than they appear in the headline figures. The underlying gross margin is actually up and -- but impacted by FX, 70 basis points and also timing of other revenue as well as some COGS adjustment. And this is timing. As FX effects disappear, the reported gross margin will go up, and we saw that in March. So we had a positive reported gross margin in March, and that is a trend that we see continuing into April now, and we also expect for the rest of the year.

So the EBIT margin was slightly up. This was driven by less marketing spend. We have produced offline and improved efficiency, and this particularly related in this quarter to Booztlet due to reduced focus and reduced need for clearance at our outlet site. The marketing spend was completely in line with plan and expectations as when we started the quarter, so nothing out of the ordinary.

Next, please -- next slide, please. In Q1, the return on our capital improved as our inventory is moving faster and performing better. As you can see on the chart to the right, our quarterly inventory turnover improved to 0.4. And this, we believe, reflects both a broader, fresher and more relevant stock profile. When you have a stock profile like that, that's a very solid foundation for us to increase stock and take bets.

So we actually strive to increase stock as soon as possible, but we are also very firm and very strict on the quality that we require, and there is not much high-quality stock available at this point for the spring/summer trading. As such, the larger inventory ramp-up will be seen in the second half of the year where the increased buying budget is committed.

Now please move to Slide 14 and our cash development for the year. The free cash flow was negative and in line with expectations. It's driven by the normal working capital seasonality where we have significant payments of VAT provisions, et cetera. And this was combined with an increase in inventory where we're building up for the spring/summer trading.

On the bridge on the slide, you can see that the change from the same quarter last year, which is quite a representative quarter. The main difference is really related to exit tax payment in Sweden; CapEx increase due to the relocation of headquarter and then a bit of a larger increase of inventory than what we had last quarter. I want to mention also that our last 12 months' free cash flow is SEK 754 million, so far above 100% cash conversion.

Please move to Slide 15. So we ended the quarter with a cash position of SEK 239 million, and we also acquired shares for SEK 97 million in Q1. And as such, we continue to have a very strong balance sheet, and we have financial room to maneuver as we take on commercial opportunities in the market. Today, we have also find liquidity and space to initiate a new share buyback program of SEK 200 million that we are returning to our shareholders, and we will continue to be disciplined in our return of excess cash.

This completes my financial review, and I'll now turn to our outlook on Slide #17. I'll start out with some comments on the currency because this obviously had a relatively large impact due to the macro volatility, which had an impact on our main currencies and particularly the NOK has appreciated against the SEK supported by increasing oil prices. This has changed the expected FX impact on our financials for the year, and as such, we are increasing our EBIT margin guidance.

In the first quarter of 2026, we still had significant headwinds, both on revenue and EBIT margin. But if we assume that the current exchange rates hold, then that effect is diminishing quite materially for the rest of the year. That will be visible in our reported gross margin and our reported EBIT margin already from March.

The full year impact is now expected to be around 1 percentage point negative on revenue growth and a small negative impact on EBIT margin, and this is based on [ bank's ] fixing rates as of yesterday.

By the end of Q1 2026, we have also hedged more than half of our NOK exposure. We found that the current levels are attractive compared to last year. Although when we hedge, it did come with some implied cost because the forward rate is lower than the spot rate due to the interest rate difference between Norwegian kroner and the Swedish krona. The hedging also means that our sensitivity on our EBIT margin and our profit is lower now, which makes our updated EBIT margin guidance relatively robust.

Please go to Slide 18 for the outlook of the underlying business. So as mentioned, the spring season has started well for us, and the business is progressing in line with plan. As we said from the beginning of the year, we are targeting a growth acceleration during 2026, and we have an inventory buying plan and commercial initiatives lined up to deliver exactly that.

With the current momentum, we, therefore, consider the high end of the guidance range more likely. And on top of this, we also have almost 1 percentage points less negative impact from currency than what we expected in February. The EBIT margin guidance is upgraded by 30 basis points, which corresponds to almost SEK 30 million in absolute EBIT.

So with this, I will now hand the word back to Hermann for some final remarks.

Thank you, Michael. It has been a strong start to the spring/summer season, but we are far from claiming victory. The macro and consumer environment is uncertain, and our most important quarter of the year is still a long way off. But for now, Boozt is in a stronger position than we have been for a long time. Consumers are responding. Our inventory is excellent and commercial initiatives are yielding results. So now it is up to us to work hard to build further momentum as we move into the summer months.

So this concludes our prepared part of the presentation, and we will now open up for questions. So operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank.

Just a couple of questions from me. And I clearly hear you when it comes to sort of the sales momentum that you are experiencing currently, especially for March and April. And of course, that builds confidence to take more risk on inventory, but you have done that before and misjudged the market. I think you mentioned a year ago that you came into 2025 with too high inventories in the hope that the market would pick up. So what measures are you taking this time to not make that same mistake?

Well, experience is a good teacher, Daniel. I think if you noted that we have made quite a big change in our assortment strategy, buying more options, buying more breadth. I think we became too cautious going into '25, so buying more narrow or more depth. And unless when you do that, we're, of course, relying on existing customers to basically buy more. And by selling 40% more variants.

And actually, we didn't mention that during the call -- during the presentation, but we had 250,000 new customers. So the growth is very much driven by new customers. And that gives us confidence that by changing our assortment strategy and also -- we have also changed quite heavily in our marketing setup. This gives us confidence that we are on the right track.

And again, experience tells us that if we have too much stock, Booztlet is the best channel to clear that and get cash. So that gives us confidence to be -- take a bit more kind of risk or fashion risk or stock risk, you might say so. But in general, our stock is too low at the moment. And if you don't have the stock, you don't sell anything, right? So I think that kind of we are seeing that the actions we made end of last year and beginning of this year, they are paying off.

And what do you mean by significant ramp-up? What would that sort of entail in terms of inventory risk?

Well, we are talking about that we want to get back to double-digit growth in the second half. So probably, hopefully, that kind of -- at the end of the year, we see double-digit growth figures again. And of course, if you want to grow double digit, then you have to buy inventory for that. We are getting a higher inventory turnover.

So that's kind of -- so we probably don't need to buy kind of much more than for the double-digit growth that we're expecting. But we, of course, have to buy in advance. And we are adding something like 100 new brands in the second half as well as 35% new styles or new options. So of course, we have to ramp up because we just have -- don't have enough at the moment.

Okay. And just your comments on current trading, basically March and April, are very upbeat. Is that you alone specifically, you think, given what you've done with the assortment being more aspirational [ inbiz.com ] offering? Or is it also the market that you are, in general, seeing a better momentum in?

In all modesty, I think it's very -- it's quite company-specific because we don't see a tailwind with regards to the consumers. At best, the kind of the headwind that we've been facing over the last 2, 3, 4, 5 years is still the same. We're seeing consumer confidence figures actually in Denmark going down last month. So we're not seeing increasing headwinds.

And of course, we're hoping for tailwind, but it's based on the things that we have done. And as I said before, when you launch 35% more options on the site and customers are buying 40% more variants and options, and you're getting more new customers than you have been getting for a long time. I think that tells the story that it's very much company-specific what we're doing.

And is that -- given that you're sort of widening the offering and already done so, even though we didn't see this in this quarter when it comes to other revenues and you right timing effects, is that something that should drag along other revenues to pick up basically as we go into the coming quarters?

Yes.

Do they correlate basically?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And that sort of builds your confidence that, that particular line will also pick up in the second half?

Yes. And it's baked into the EBIT guidance, yes.

And are you also saying that when you say that there's not much quality inventory out there for the summer and spring season that even though you are seeing a pickup, you can't expect too much in the near term in terms of growth when we look at Q2?

Yes. That is why we are maintaining the revenue guidance with Q1 being better than expected, then, of course, it's more likely that we would end up in the high end of our guidance, but we just don't have enough stock for the first half of the year to go faster than we have expected.

Yes. And then just a final question. When you talk about AI and the inventory capacity, you've seen additional 5% to 10% inventory capacity at the warehouse through AI. How does that work? What have you done basically?

Yes. That's -- it's actually quite a complicated thing, but it has something to do with kind of the stocking and the cross stocking because you know we have a bulk stock warehouse where we -- so we kind of -- yes, it's about refilling and making the stock available to when we need it. So -- and it's a long story, but when we have the transfer cells that we introduced made it possible for us to -- I wouldn't call it just in time, but something similar that basically present the relevant stock to the warehouse when we need it for sale. And this is -- and these are, of course, tweaks because we need to start building more automation as we grow. But that's within the plan that's baked also into the CapEx that we're guiding on.

Yes. Okay.

Thanks, Daniel.

The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler.

Erik Sandstedt with Kepler. Three questions, please. Firstly, in terms of the brands, you're adding a lot of new brands to the platform now. But could you just help us understand why some of these brands are coming on board now rather than earlier? Is this driven more by sort of improved acceptances from the brands or changes in your own proposition? I'm just a bit curious why so many brands are being onboarded now.

It's a good question. The -- of course, we are have become a very big platform in the Nordics. And we have a lot of customers, I think, something like 2.8 million customers in -- over the last 12 months. So if you want to sell fashion or apparel, et cetera, in the Nordics, it's difficult to kind of pass by us.

But of course, we did -- we've tried to make a more clear distinction between Boozt and Booztlet. So making Boozt.com a more mid- to premium site, less discounting and more kind of premium. So of course, that means that brands are seeing it being more attractive to be in Boozt.com. Also when they see how we've been able to improve the customer experience, more inspiration, more guidance on the site. But kind of it all adds up. So it has a lot to do with us being much more clear on the profile of both Boozt and Booztlet.

That's interesting. And then on marketing, I'm just wondering to what extent the Q1 margin improvement here is basically driven by lower Booztlet-related marketing. You also talked about structural efficiency improvements and so forth. But how should we think about this dynamic if inventory levels now build again? Will you need to market more? Or is there a risk that you have sort of underinvested a bit in marketing in this quarter?

Yes. Thank you. This is Michael. So we have invested exactly as we planned. But as you said, it is correct that we have spent less on Booztlet than what we did last year. So the decline is mainly coming from Boozt in the first quarter. This was completely in line with plan. So we have definitely not underinvested, but we are also at a level in Q1, which is lower than we expected to be for the full year. So as such, we do expect to ramp up as we get into higher or important trading seasons and potentially also in Booztlet if needed.

If I can chip in also is that if you don't have enough stock inventory, there's no reason to spend a lot of money on marketing. So that's why we are very much data-driven on our marketing. So we spend what is needed to attract the customers. So that's why kind of -- it's not a case of pumping the EBIT. It's just by being clever on marketing that we're doing this.

But another way to frame that is, are you mainly spending on marketing to sort of clear out stock? Or are you not also just sort of building brand?

No, we are totally building brand. But of course, brand building has changed a lot over the recent years. And when it used to be offline media and TV is now across a lot of channels. So we are just -- we have become much better at getting return on our marketing investment.

Perfect. And finally, on AI, you spoke about how that's sort of driving efficiencies. And I think you touched upon the revenue side as well. But a bit curious specifically on agentic commerce, how -- is that an opportunity for you? Or is it more a way to sort of mitigate risks and how the entire market is kind of changing how consumers are interacting with platforms and brands?

It's both. It's an opportunity if you embrace it and it's a risk if you kind of discount it, right? So you have to embrace it. It's still small. But of course, you have to prepare for the future where agentic commerce might be big. And of course, we are doing that and they are putting a lot of resources within resources. So I think it's kind of -- it's a given that you have to -- it's a sales channel and where consumers buy. So you have to be able to kind of accommodate that. So we see this, yes, again, opportunity if you embrace it, but a risk if you don't do that.

The next question comes from Sebastian Gravefrom Nordea.

I'm Michael. And also congrats on what looks like a very encouraging start to the year. Hermann, you say you're far from claiming victory at this point yet. I mean you upgrade your growth guidance, at least you indicated that you're going to end in the upper end after only a small Q1 quarter here. So I mean, I guess, in light of everything going on with energy prices and still low consumer confidence, you must be very confident with the new assortment strategy and happy with what you see here in April so far.

So maybe -- could you maybe again try to elaborate a bit on the dynamics here around introducing new premiumized assortment? I mean what effects does it have on shopper behavior, engagement and potential overall -- spillover effects on the overall platform? And I guess what I'm asking is what provides you the comfort and confidence on H2 performance trending towards double-digit growth?

Yes. It's quite depressing to look at outside the window, seeing wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East. So kind of consumer sentiment or macros are not really helping. But what gives us confidence is that the things that we are in control of, they seem to work. And '25 was a boring year; to be honest, it was a transition year where we did some cuts on staff. We announced the move. We had too much of you could always almost claim kind of noninteresting inventory, especially for the women. So we changed that.

And the learning, of course, and we knew that is that women are the key because they are buying and they are buying the best. So if we're not attractive to the women's category, they would not shop also across categories. So this is why we did actually quite a big change to our assortment and said, okay, instead of buying deep and narrow, which is kind of you tend to do when you get a bit conservative or cautious, then you just rely 100% on the data and it means that you end up buying white and blue and black, et cetera.

We said, okay, we'll provide more inspiration, take a bit more fashion risk on the edges, knowing that it probably will be the stuff that will be discounted in the season, but basically if showing more freshness and more inspiration and that has paid off. And I think that the interesting KPI is that we have like 35% more variants live, but have sold 40% more. So apparently kind of inspiring a bit inspires a lot and makes them buy more.

So it's kind of -- and we have kind of have done that for the spring/summer and are doing that even further in the second half. And then that combined with our site shopping experience as well as our really, really strong marketing team that gives us confidence that the things that we are in control of will make us come back to a double-digit growth. I know it was a long speech, but I get really excited about it.

And if you look at the geographical performance, it appears that rest of the Nordics ex Norway continued to be fairly sloppy. I suppose this is a Finnish market. But what is your approach really to turn this around? And is it a priority at all here? Or are your focus elsewhere at the moment?

Yes. If you -- there's not much time to dig into the numbers. But if you notice Boozt.com, we are growing quite well both in Sweden and Denmark. I think 7% in Sweden, 9% in Denmark constant currency. And I think that is kind of some of the most encouraging numbers because our focus has been Boozt.com. We have to get Boozt.com. It's our premium brand. It's our flagship store and getting good growth in those 2 countries, along with a very strong growth in Norway, that gives us confidence.

Finland, they are still cautious and probably still a bit concerned about their big neighbor to the East. And that means that -- but again -- and Booztlet, we haven't had the need to clear stock, which -- so we have a negative growth in Booztlet. I think it's something like 33% in Denmark reported. So I think that is -- so I think that kind of the underlying numbers are quite positive for us because the changes that we've made start with Boozt.com and Booztlet only steps in when we have excess inventory. So all in all, kind of -- we are also quite happy with the Nordics, to be honest.

Okay. And what I hear you say is continue to build momentum in Sweden, Denmark and Norway and [indiscernible] today.

Yes. I think we will fix Finland as we get along.

Okay. And then my last question, I think and maybe this is for Michael, on the NOK appreciation. It looks like you're getting some -- obviously, some benefits in '26 as reflected in your margin guidance. However, it doesn't look like you're getting the full benefit from the recent NOK appreciation. I guess maybe you've been somewhat hedged here in the start of the year. So is it fair to assume a somewhat positive spillover into 2027 on the margins if the NOK remains at the current levels?

Thank you. Yes, that is correct that we have done some hedging that implies some losses also because the forward rate is lower than the spot rate. But -- so there will be a little bit of a positive spillover into next year if the current rates hold, but it's relatively limited in sort of the 10 to 15 basis points area.

Okay. Very clear. Great stuff.

The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABG Sundal Collier.

So a couple of more -- let's go to the long-term questions maybe. So your USD exposure is quite limited directly, but your suppliers are most likely paying for plenty of goods in USD. What have you heard in terms of pricing intentions for the autumn/winter assortment? Do you think lower USD rates will benefit Nordic consumers or well, by extension, fashion volumes in the end, do you think? Or what are your thoughts about this?

The USD doesn't affect us on the autumn/winter because the buy has been done and the prices have been agreed upon. So if they have any effect, that would be at the earliest for 2027.

And have you heard anything of the guidance...

No. No. No.

Any sort of pricing intentions for 2027?

No, not yet. Not yet.

All right. And then perhaps more of a bookkeeping question. Your D&A has been rather volatile in recent quarters. Could you say anything about what you see as a reasonable run rate assumption going forward?

Yes. So our D&A is going to be relatively stable also going forward. We have, as you know, because of the IFRS 16, we have the new headquarter, which is slightly higher. And the last quarter was impacted by some one-offs. But if you consider a little bit of increase compared to the run rate in 2025, then that is a good assumption for now.

All right. So up from the Q1 '26 level?

Yes, exactly.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank.

Yes. Just a follow-up on -- I think you talked about it last quarter in terms of the sort of upgraded Boozt Club that you've been introducing should have some accounting effects on Q2. Am I right?

Yes, we mentioned that at the last call. We are still fine-tuning the concept, and we have not finalized the Club benefits. We are in testing right now, and we have the technical platform in place. But it's critical for us to get in the calibration right before we launch that is essential. And it's not something that is easy to unwind once we are live.

So -- but I will also say that with the performance that we see right now, we are not in a rush to relaunch the Club as it is, even though we will launch at some point in time this year. However, for Q2, you should not expect a sort of an increase in depth from deferred revenue recognition from the Club.

So it's going to be postponed a bit?

Indeed, yes.

Yes. Okay. And you don't know really when then basically?

But we are -- as I said, we are calibrating the benefits of the Club. And that means that it may not be a revenue -- deferred revenue recognition depending on how it launches exactly because it's only if it's cash benefit directly that you have to reduce revenue. But if you are launching the benefits in a different way, then you can actually avoid it potentially. So that is what we are considering right now.

Okay. So it's still up for discussion. Okay.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for joining the conference, and thank you for some very good questions. So this -- yes, this concludes the webcast and the presentation, and I look forward to meeting you and engaging you over the next couple of weeks. Thank you very much, and have a good day.

Welcome to the Boozt Q4 2025 Report Presentation.

[Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Hermann Haraldsson; and CFO, Michael Bjergby. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome all to our Q4 [Technical Difficulty]. We will have the usual agenda for the presentation. I will present the highlights of the quarter and the business update before handing over to Michael for the financials.

So next slide, please. Well, 2025 has been a defining and transformative year for Boozt. It's no secret that it was a challenging period where we faced a continued tough market environment. However, we have not been idle. We used the year to trim the organization to carry out excess inventory and make a deliberate shift in strategy between our 2 platforms, Boozt.com and Booztlet, focusing more on our premium side. And finally, we're also moving to a new headquarters in Copenhagen, and this is a major step that gives us better access to talent and position us in one of the capitals of the Nordics.

Looking at the fourth quarter, net revenue grew 4% in constant currency. This is a slight acceleration compared with Q3. Growth was driven entirely by Boozt.com, which is already benefiting from a strategic shift towards a more premium in-season sales. On the profitability side, our focus on efficiency continues to pay off. And despite a competitive market and a high promotional intensity, we managed to improve our underlying EBIT margin. This was supported by efficiency gains across the entire value chain, proving that our leaner technology-driven structure is working and driving tangible results.

The highlight of the quarter and also the full year is our cash generation. We delivered a record high free cash flow of over SEK 1 billion in the quarter, supported by our disciplined effort to rightsize our inventory. Basically, we have essentially derisked the balance sheet, leaving us in a very strong position as we enter the new year. Because of this strong cash position, we intend to continue returning capital to the shareholders through a new share buyback program later this spring. We are currently completing the SEK 800 million capital return we promised at our last Capital Markets Day, and we plan to continue distributing excess cash to the shareholders.

Looking into 2026, our focus shifts from defense to offense. We are ready to start expanding our market share again as we target a gradual return towards double-digit growth levels. We have several growth drivers in place that I will cover in the following slides.

So please turn to Slide #5. I would like to start my presentation by looking at the journey we've been on so far. Since our launch in 2011, the industry and Boozt as well has moved through distinct phases. from early expansion and price leadership to the surge in online penetration we saw during the COVID years. The last 2 years have been a period of deceleration for the industry, marked by a decline in consumer confidence and the stalling of the post-pandemic online growth.

On top of this, we at Boozt have also had currency headwinds due to the strengthening of the SEK. However, as we enter 2026, we are moving into a new phase that I would like to call a rejuvenation. The next wave of growth will be driven by our leadership in service and convenience and AI is the engine that will drive this, making the customer journey more seamless, faster and more personal than ever before. This push should then be supported by a healthier Nordic consumer as market conditions are likely to improve gradually throughout the year.

Next slide, please. To fuel our return to growth in 2026, we have several engines running in parallel. We see small signs of market conditions beginning to turn with fiscal support for the Nordic consumer and likely some pent-up demand coming through. We are meeting this with a stronger assortment. This means bringing in new premium brands and ramping up our inventory to make sure that we have the right products for the market. We're also pushing forward with personalized shopping using targeted curation and personal prices to make sure that every customer feels that the experience or shopping journey, if you will, is built just for them.

Another big milestone is the relaunch of the Club Boozt in April. It's based on a new concept designed to be much more commercial focused and drive direct sales. Finally, supporting all of this is our AI integration, which is driving both the consumer journey and our overall operational effectiveness.

So next slide, please. Technology has always been the engine at Boozt, and we are now moving fast to embed AI into the core of our operations. The projects I'll highlight here are just examples as AI is already a part of our daily operations across the board. Broadly speaking, AI is a primary lever for our efficiency from optimizing the warehouse and forecasting demand to automate routine tasks like invoice handling and product categorization.

By letting technology handle the heavy lifting, we're able to operate a much leaner and much more efficient organization. This is also changing how our customers shop. We've just gone live with AI-powered search on Boozt.com, delivering much more intuitive and relevant results. Along with the visual search and AI generated inspiration, we are making product discovery faster and more personal. This, at the same time, as our service bots already handle 35% of inquiries, letting us scale without compromising quality.

And finally, we have just recently launched a virtual shopping assistant to act as a personal shopper through natural conversation. Looking ahead, we intend to stay at the forefront of this development. We are already in talks with Google and OpenAI about agentic commerce and how AI agents will shop in the future. Our approach is quite simple. We want AI to help customers find the right products, but we stay disciplined about how the actual buying happens. This ensures that we neither lose the curated feel nor the high average order value that makes Boozt unique. So you might say that we are, in just following these new standards, we are positioning Boozt to lead through them.

So now let's move on to the next slide, where we continue to see the department store model prove its worth, especially in a year where fashion demand remains soft. By offering a true department store experience, we create a natural hedge. When one category is muted, others step in to support the overall business. In 2025, 44% of our revenue on Boozt.com was generated from categories outside of fashion, and this is up from 42% last year. Our goal remains to move this towards 50% in the near term.

The diversification, of course, is not just about risk management. It's also about the bottom line. As we have stated on earlier occasions, multi-category shoppers stay with us longer, return fewer items and spend more per order. Today, 54% of our customers on boozt.com shop from more than one category. This is a clear step-up from 52% last year, showing that our efforts to encourage cross-category discovery are paying off.

Next slide, please. And if we look closer at how our customers shop, the trend is actually quite encouraging. We are seeing robust growth across the board for customers buying into multiple categories. As you can see on the slide, we saw an increase of between 6% and 9% in every group of customers shopping from 2 to 6 different categories. And this is exactly what we want to see. It shows that once we get customers into the Boozt ecosystem, they find value across our different departments.

Overall, our active customer base on Boozt.com stands at 2.8 million, which is a 2% increase over the last 12 months. While we always want to grow faster, the stability in a tough market really shows the strength of the department store model in building deep customer loyalty.

So with that, I would like to hand over now to Michael and the financial review.

Yes. Thank you, Hermann, and good morning from my side as well. I will start out by presenting our financials for the quarter, which were characterized by solid profitability and also record free cash flow. Afterwards, I'll go through the details of our outlook for 2026.

Please go to Slide #11. So we grew 4% in constant currency, which was just slightly above our growth in Q3, but it is important for us that we continue to improve our growth momentum. And across the value chain, we are laser-focused on accelerating growth even further as we move ahead. The incremental growth improvement was, to a large extent, driven by an increase in activity in women's fashion, which is our largest product category.

As previously announced, we have created a sharper distinction between Boozt and Booztlet, and we saw the results in September, but it really came to full effect here in Q4. As planned, we have generated solid growth at our more premium side and negative growth on Booztlet. The change of strategy between the 2 sites was a tough decision because we knew it will impact our growth short term, but it is the right long-term strategy and will support both growth and margins going forward, but it's also accretive to our relationship with our brands.

From a country perspective, the growth was relatively stable across our key markets, but I want to highlight double-digit growth both in Boozt and Booztlet in Norway, which is a market where we see continued great potential and where we are heavily underrepresented.

Now please go to the next slide and some comments on our profitability. The profits were strong in Q4 with an improvement of 0.9 percentage points on the EBIT margin if you exclude the effect from last year where there was a positive one-off of customs from Norway. Q1 to Q3 benefit was included in Q4. So in that sense, Q4 was distorted, but the year is comparable.

The gross margin was under pressure from 2 external headwinds: one, the continued SEK appreciation; and two, our promotional environment driven by price-sensitive consumption and especially in the Black Friday period. This is not specific for Boozt, but something that has been communicated consistently also by peers on the stock exchange and particularly related to the Swedish market. The FX impact contributed by a bit more than half of the decline in gross margin.

Even with the negative development on the gross margin, we delivered almost 10% EBIT margin driven by operational efficiencies really across the value chain, and this is even without any material leverage from higher revenue because net revenue only increased by 1%, but rather, it's really true cost increases across fulfillment and marketing and administrative costs. It illustrates the strength of our business model and how scalable it is. And overall, we delivered a small EBIT improvement for the year, even with some FX headwind.

Now please move to Slide 13 and our cash development for the year. We delivered record free cash flow in 2025, and the cash conversion was far above 100%. And needless to say, this is not sustainable in the long term. But the year and the cash really reflects that in an inventory business model like ours, where working capital swings far outweigh cash generation from profit, then there will be fluctuations. And fundamentally, Boozt has a very strong cash flow generation, easily above 70% of EBIT over the cycle.

2025 was a year of consolidation and improving the health of our inventory and working capital really was a driver of the free cash flow. So in rough terms, 50% of the cash flow was driven by normal profit cash, which is sustainable long term and 50% was driven by working capital improvements.

Please go to the next slide. We ended the year with a net cash position above SEK 1 billion, and it should be noted that year-end is the time of the year where working capital requirements are the absolute lowest. So this is not reflective of the excess cash available. But we want to be disciplined in returning excess cash back to shareholders, which is why we are today announcing a new share buyback program. And with that, we commit to distributing SEK 300 million back to shareholders in 2026, which comprises more than 5% of our market cap based on yesterday's closing.

We will continue to generate and optimize cash and return it to shareholders and combined in '25 and '26, share buybacks are now expected to amount to around SEK 750 million or 14% of the market cap based on yesterday's closing as well.

So with this, I have finished my financial review for 2025, and we will now look forward and turn to the outlook for 2026. Because as Hermann described, we believe that we are going into 2026 in a position of strength. And we have the right quality and quantity of our inventory. The organization is strengthened, and we have lined up a number of commercial initiatives that can drive growth, not least within AI. As such, we have created an expansion plan, I think a growth plan to deliver this growth acceleration during the year, and we are putting capital behind it, which is why we invest both in inventory, people and commercial initiatives to drive that growth.

Our outlook reflects the plan. And while we do not want to focus on what is out of our control, I will, before we jump into the details, consider the implications of the FX development on Slide #16. Firstly, related to the FX, I think it's important to understand why we are sensitive to FX movement. Boozt is a highly centralized business, and that makes a difference. We don't have subsidiaries across the globe where revenue and cost exposures offset each other. We do everything from Sweden. And as such, we have our inventory recorded in Swedish krona, fulfillment costs, administrative costs, all in Swedish krona, and we get revenue in many other currencies.

As an example, when we lose revenue from NOK depreciations against SEK, then there's around 90% drop-through to EBIT because we have very limited cost in Norway, only a bit of distribution and marketing cost. So in 2025, we lost more than SEK 160 million in revenue from changes in currency and with a relatively high drop-through to EBIT. And with the recent development in December and January, currencies will remain a headwind in 2026, even though our Danish kroner exposure will be much lower for March after our headquarter move.

As such, you can see the rates here on the slide to the right-hand side, and it's based on yesterday's fixing from this [indiscernible] and implies more than 2% negative impact on revenue. This can be calculated from the table to the right because euro and DKK represents, as you can see, almost 50% of revenue and has declined by 4% if you compare the spot to the average of 2025, which means that 4% time 50% implies 2 percentage points on group revenue alone from these 2 currencies. On top of this comes depreciation of smaller currencies against the SEK.

So with the estimated drop-through, then this has an effect of 0.6 percentage points on EBIT margin at the current FX rates in 2026.

Now please go to Slide #17. So we plan to accelerate growth and increase margins and thereby growing profit by double-digit amounts even despite of this currency headwind. We are guiding constant currency growth of 3% to 8% and an adjusted margin of 5.3% to 6.5%, which includes the negative impact from currency. It is important to highlight that we expect growth momentum to accelerate through the year, and we will continue to look at the acceleration, thereby gradually building towards very strong growth in the second half. This is driven by an offensive inventory buying plan, and that's particularly the [ AV26 buy ], but also our commercial initiatives, which gradually will have effect.

One of these initiatives is the launch of our Club Boozt in April. And the new concept is more commercially incentivizing and designed to drive growth. From a technical perspective, please note that this will temporarily impact reported figures because there will be deferred revenue recognition related to the programs' unused discounts. This may impact timing of revenue, but for the full year, the impact of both revenue and margins is expected to be very limited.

This brings me to the margin where we implicitly are underlying delivering minimum 20 basis points improvement for the low end of our revenue range and for higher revenue, there is significant potential for further operational leverage. It should be noted that the drivers of the margin are different from 2025 because we expect to drive profitability through gross margin, while we continue to be more effective also on marketing and fulfillment cost ratios.

The admin cost ratio is expected to increase. As we move to Copenhagen, the conversion of salaries from SEK to DKK will increase costs by approximately SEK 10 million to SEK 15 million, but this will be fully offset by lower costs related to social charges on the LTI program. But from an adjusted EBIT perspective, it will have a negative impact because the social charges for LTIPs are today booked as an adjustment. So from reported EBIT and from a cash perspective, it will be neutral.

We also see a double-digit SEK amount related to our people and organization. This is new commercial initiatives, but it's also increased running cost of our headquarter in Copenhagen compared to our headquarter in Hyllie. We consider these important investments for both talent acquisition and our organizational development.

CapEx is expected to amount to SEK 165 million to SEK 185 million, which is a bit higher than in 2025. The CapEx includes SEK 40 million one-off investment that we have already started at the warehouse, which relates to insurance compliance and does not really give any other benefit than improved compliance and the fact that we can have insurance at reasonable prices. On top of this, we have real, I would say, CapEx investments at the warehouse of SEK 40 million to SEK 50 million that support efficiencies and will create savings on the fulfillment line. And this year, our CapEx projects are focused on the return handling, but also the handling of what is classified as dangerous goods such as some beauty products. And these combined is very, very attractive investments.

So with our continued underlying margin improvement, we are firmly committed to reach our 10% EBIT margin target in the midterm. Since we announced our target of 10%, we have had significant FX headwind, and we've also seen muted consumer spend. But regardless of the label, our focus is on delivering continued margin expanding every single year towards the 10% mark.

Please move to my final slide of the day. So looking at cash flow in 2026, then as we also saw in 2025, we can easily deliver cash conversion of around 70%, and this includes even inventory increasing in line with revenue. But 2026 will be impacted by timing factors, which will be a benefit in the following years, particularly the exit tax and the inventory buildup with the cash outflows in 2026 will be beneficial to the cash flow in 2027 and beyond.

Now with the inventory buildup, we're also able to overperform compared to what we have guided today if there is demand in the market. The one-off moving cost has been recognized from the income statement in 2025, but we have cash effect during 2026, and this relates to double rent, cost of restoration of the old headquarter and practical handling of the move, et cetera.

Consequently, our free cash flow in 2026 is expected to be relatively moderate. As we continue to drive our margin, we will drive cash generation further, and this will create capital both for investments and further distribution back to shareholders in future years.

That concludes my prepared presentation for the day, and I will now turn to Hermann for the closing remarks.

Thank you, Michael. And yes, to conclude, I would like to leave you with the mindset that is driving us into 2026. 2025 was a year of consolidation. We focused on strengthening the foundation through necessary and tough decisions, meaning cleaning up our inventory, trimming the organization and sharpening the distinction between Boozt and Booztlet. We did the heavy lifting to ensure the business model is as scalable and lean as possible. So now we are playing offense.

We are in the process of moving into a new headquarters in Copenhagen. The move is all about top-tier talent access, adding even more specialized depth to our already strong team as we scale. So with this new energy, we're actually quite bullish. We are ramping up inventory to meet demand, adding new brands and targeting a broader and more inspirational assortment.

Tech will be a catalyst, utilizing AI as our copilot to deliver an ultra-personalized shopping experience and maximize customer value. The foundation is solid. The talent is coming on board, and we are very ready to execute.

So with this, I would like to conclude our part of the presentation and open up for questions. So operator, please go ahead.

The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

Can I ask you a little bit about the reason for your increased optimism on the market and your sales in '26? And more specifically, I'm thinking that the market has been challenging for several years now, and yet you delivered very strong growth in '23, and it slowed a little bit in '24, it slowed considerably further in '25. So what is the main reason for your optimism in '26? Because I mean, we've already seen the market picking up in '25, at least the online market has picked up in '25. So why should your performance be much better in '26? I guess that's my first question.

I'm not sure how much the market picked up actually in '25, to be honest. But the reason why we're optimistic is, on the one hand, external factors where you see fiscal stimulus, both Sweden and Denmark should kind of give a more optimistic and consumers feeling that they have more in their purse. And then on the other hand, kind of internal factors, we are in a very good shape. We are being more bullish on our inventory buy, as we said, buying more broadly and inspiration of Boozt.com. And this combined means that we are actually relatively optimistic.

We have been going into probably especially '25, where we had a bit too much stock and we're a bit negative. We were too cautious on our buying and too narrow. So we are seeing good receipt. We're seeing that our core customer, the women is coming back and they're buying more. So we are actually seeing a gradual improvement. And if you look at local currency, we are accelerating, albeit slow growth, Q3 and Q4 with 4% in local currency growth in Q4. So we are actually heading and aiming towards getting back to double-digit growth towards the end of the year and going into '27.

Very clear. And Booztlet, you mentioned here a sharp slowdown in the second half because of deliberate moves. Is this something that will continue to hamper your performance in H1? And is that a contributing factor to why you expect slower growth for the group in the first half?

You might say that kind of the Booztlet mission accomplished, Booztlet was supposed to help clear excess inventory during 2025. They managed to do so. And also, we also had too much kind of in-season inventory where we allowed Booztlet to clear that as well. We stopped that. And of course, this comes at the expense of Booztlet growth. But then on the other hand, we can see that the mothership Boozt.com is again growing healthy, 7% local currency growth in Q4. So you will see Boozt.com growing and Booztlet being a bit more muted because there is not that much inventory to clear for them. So you're right, Niklas, that it will come a bit at the expense of Booztlet.

Okay. Fair enough. And just last question, just the formality. The SEK 180 million exit tax payment, is this a pure cash flow effect? Or will that also impact your P&L?

Yes. Thank you, Niklas. This is a pure cash flow impact. And so it will not impact the tax on the P&L. And I just want to emphasize that the SEK 180 million is the full amount, which were only SEK 112 million will be paid in 2026. And it will be offset by benefits on Danish kroner tax, which is why we expect that the net tax effect from this in 2026 will be SEK 140 million.

Very clear. And then you will get that repaid in the coming 4 years as well?

Yes, exactly. So the exit tax payment creates a tax asset on the balance sheet, and this can be used for the following 5 years in Denmark.

The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABG Sundal Collier.

I'll start by saying that, yes, I sort of agree with Niklas that your optimism is sort of back and refreshing to see. But you also mentioned bringing in a couple of new brands in the quarter. I was wondering, could you give some examples of this?

Benjamin, that's a difficult question. We have some new brands. So I don't think I would like to highlight any more because we're getting big stock back among other brands and Hunter Boots, some kind of -- it might not be kind of huge brands, but they are kind of adding some flavor to the shopping experience and then a lot of kind of local brands within different price points. So it's kind of across the board in general. So we're going from being too much data focused and too much depth to also providing more inspiration going in 2026.

All right. And I was also interested in hearing your comments on the competition in the beauty segment, especially, [ please ]. Obviously, there has been some competitors really struggling here. So what's your read on the market?

It's very red, if you ask me. We have a lot of players that want to take the market and want to grow. So our kind of strategy for the Beauty segment is to basically tag along and get our customers to just add a beauty item into baskets, so maintaining a high average order value. So this is why even our beauty baskets are actually quite profitable. But it's not going to be beauty that's driving our category growth. It's more like it's kids, especially sports and then home. So the beauty is -- I think beauty is a very tough market, especially in Sweden at the moment.

Perfect. And a question on Denmark. You previously said or commented that you did not expect any like cost lift up or cost ramp-up from moving the staff to Copenhagen and that message has somewhat changed in this quarter. Could you elaborate a bit on that, please?

Yes. So I think what is -- the difference is probably what we see from -- if you look at the salary, then salary conversion has led to some increase, but this will be fully offset by lower payments of social charges. So I think that was the message from that. And then on the location change of the headquarter, then the rent is actually exactly the same in Hyllie as in Copenhagen, but it's the operational cost that is more expensive, such as property tax, we have the canteen running and as well as maintenance of the building, which is more expensive. So there is a bit more cost related to running in Copenhagen compared to Sweden.

Perfect. You also mentioned running quite a few commercial initiatives during the year. How should we think about that in relation to your admin costs or personnel costs, looking into 2026?

When you say commercial initiatives, are you talking about marketing or what do you mean, sorry?

Well, commercial initiatives, I believe that was the word you used. So yes, are you adding any marketing staff or are you adding any sales staff and...

Sorry. We are improving the organization being considerably more localized. It has been kind of a challenge for us to attract local marketeers to our office in Sweden, meaning when we talk about local marketeers, it could be marketeers from Finland, Norway, even from Sweden, where you have some people from Stockholm. But now that we're moving to Copenhagen, we're able to build a kind of a community of local marketeers sitting in Copenhagen.

So we actually kind of strengthened the commercial organization considerably by moving to Copenhagen and being a bit more kind of localized at the same time as we're getting the benefits from sitting together. So we're actually ramping up on hiring commercial people to be able to be even stronger in the different local markets because currently, Denmark has been a strong market because we have a lot of things, to be honest, that are driving that and partly Sweden, but a lot of the strong markets here in Sweden are sitting in Stockholm and we have had difficulty in attracting them to Malmo, but they would like to work come to Copenhagen and the same for Finns and Norwegian. So I think that is kind of a big part that will strengthen the commercial organization of that.

Just to add to that, there are also other initiatives that we don't disclose where we also add some employees. And when we add marketing employees, then it actually goes under the admin cost line because all it seems they are in admin, just to be clear.

Perfect. Do you mind putting a number on that as well?

No. So we don't disclose the effect of that. But I think what we have said is that the admin cost ratio could increase by, let's say, in rough terms, 0.5 percentage point, and this includes both the salary conversion, the additional relocation costs and the additional FTEs.

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske.

Just back to what you talked about in terms of Boozt.com and the increased focus on premium sales. Did this trend that you talked about or the shift that you've conducted, did it trend favorably into '26? Did you see sort of an underlying pickup of that shift that you conducted in terms of the sort of the customer picking that up basically into '26. Sort of could you shed some more light on that?

Daniel, actually, you can see that from the numbers where you can see that Boozt.com grew 7% in Q4, where we kind of slightly started to be a bit more premium, expand our range and actually do a little less discounting. And we're not going to be a luxury store. So we are still going to be mid- to premium, but we want to kind of elevate Boozt.com a bit more. And we actually can see that consumers are picking up, and we see quite a good sell-through of the more premium brands that we have introduced during the quarter.

Okay. I was just more referring to where are you in that process? Are you adding more and more of that premium assortment as we go into '26? Or has that been sort of done now, you're happy where you are as you leave '25?

We are relatively happy. I think we will always be kind of trying to add more brands, and we are seeing some attractive brands in the pipeline, but it's more to do with that we are broadening the assortment. buying more width, maybe also buying slightly more expensive price points than we did in 2025. And then, of course, there's going to be less promotional activity on Boozt.com. So we're kind of trying to -- it sounds kind of a bit [ cheesy ], but we're trying to elevate the experience on Boozt.com and being less discounted than we were kind of exiting '24 and the beginning of '25. And we actually see encouraging signs of that, especially because the women are actually also coming back.

But it sounds like you've sort of neglected inspirational part of the assortment over the past couple of years, like you said, and been quite data-driven and now you're getting your head around that going into '26. But if you compare where you were in terms of the level of premium that you catered like 5 years ago, are you higher now than you used to be? Or are we back to where you were? Or how does it compare?

I would say that we're higher now than we were in 5 years back. And we will be higher going at least when we exit 2026. So I think that we're in a good part. But again, you have to be careful because we're not going to be a luxury brand. We like kind of a position of the mid- to premium, as you know, where we get the good basket size, but we want to stay out of the luxury segment because that's not very profitable to be.

But do you feel that it has been sort of a trend in the market where maybe players like Zalando and yourself have become too much -- too similar basically?

I still think that we have a more premium experience. We have higher price points. And I think you can read it directly through the difference in basket size. I believe that our basket size is some 70% higher than our German friends. But of course, there's a considerable overlap between the 2 shops, but we're still kind of focusing on the Nordic consumers having -- being regarded as a more curated and probably a more premium experience than other in our market.

And then just you touched upon Norway. And I didn't see any numbers specifically for Norway, but you do sort of give the numbers of Sweden and Denmark and then the Nordics. But it looks like Norway, I don't know what Finland did, of course, but I guess Finland was still quite weak. Did Norway grow double digit in the quarter in local currency?

Yes, it did and more than 10%. So it was actually quite a good quarter for Norway, and we are seeing strong growth. We are investing in Norway and not -- of course, we are investing in profitable growth in Norway, but actually Norway was a very good market for us in Q4 and Finland was quite weak, actually, almost very weak. So yes, high growth environment.

And it sounds like that comes back to you being liberated of the import duties maybe and you're in a better position now to push ahead in Norway rather than the market being much stronger than a year ago. Is that correct?

That is correct. We have reinvested some of the savings that we have gotten from the customs for the duties. So we've put that back to the market and investing in marketing, and we'll continue to do that.

And could you sort of give us a guesstimate of what your sort of fair share should be in Norway given where you are in Sweden and Denmark compared to where you are now in Norway?

It's difficult, but Norway should be twice the size as it is today. Because Norway is -- the assortment that we have on Boozt is very well suited for the Norwegian market. And I think we have good consumer insight. So it's like -- it's all to double and do that within the next 3 to 5 years.

And today, it's 12% of sales or something like that?

Yes. You're not far off, I think. Michael said, we don't disclose. So I can't say anything.

Okay. And then just lastly, you scrapped the CapEx expansion plan a year ago. You are more optimistic today. You talk about ambitions to grow double digit towards the end of '26. You have guided for CapEx for '26, but it sounds -- looks a little bit like any sort of normal CapEx year. What are you sort of thinking when it comes to that plan you had?

Yes, I agree. It is more of a normal CapEx. I would say the SEK 40 million that we are doing for insurance compliance reasons is a bit of an extraordinary. But other than that, it is a normal year. With the growth that we have, we still expect that we will have to expand, but it will probably be a project that is required during '27, '28 with also CapEx split between the 2 years. So there's no sort of a big amount coming, which is far from what we have today in 2027. You shouldn't expect that.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Okay. Thank you for listening in and for some very good questions. And I guess that we will see you over the next weeks and wish you all a good day. Thank you.

Welcome to the Boozt Group Q3 2025 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Hermann Haraldsson; and CFO, Michael Bjergby. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, all, and welcome to our Q3 2025 webcast. Let's turn to the first slide, the agenda. We will have the usual agenda for the presentation. I will present the highlights of the quarter and the business update before handing over to Michael for the financials.

So if we look at the next slide, our highlights. Overall, Q3 was a decent quarter with strong operational performance. We had good margin progression and a solid free cash flow, which is a testament to our strong business model.

Our revenue growth is not where we wanted to be, but we have seen a gradual improvement, which is important heading into the most important part of the year for Boozt. This increase in the quarter was achieved despite a slightly difficult September, which was impacted by less favorable weather conditions for the autumn/winter collection. It was a bit warm.

In the quarter, Boozt.com gradually gained revenue traction and particularly in September, where we made a very clear strategic shift to focus on premium in-season sale on Boozt.com. This change in September changed the composition of growth between Boozt and Booztlet and improved the gross margin significantly. I will come back to this shift later. Our profitability improved significantly in the quarter despite continued headwind from currency. The increase was driven by all OpEx ratios.

Free cash flow was again strong. The underlying business is fundamentally very cash generative and with our disciplined management of inventory, it shows in the free cash flow. We have now generated almost SEK 500 million in the last 12 months and expect to generate more than SEK 500 million in cash in the year 2025.

With this performance in Q3, we are pleased to be able to both upgrade our EBIT margin guidance and expand our share buyback program. The Board has now initiated the process to increase the current share buyback program from the current SEK 300 million to now SEK 415 million. With this increase, we will have delivered on our target to return SEK 800 million of capital back to our shareholders in 3 years as communicated at the Capital Market Day in 2023.

On the outlook for the year, we now expect revenue growth of 0% to 3% or 2% to 5% in constant currency growth. Additionally, we increased our margin guidance. We now expect the adjusted EBIT margin for '25 to end between 5% and 6%.

Now let's turn to Slide 5 for the business update. Driving multi-category purchases remains a key strategic goal of our department store model as it directly correlates with customer loyalty and improved financial performance. And crucially, in the current market environment, our diverse categories also helped mitigate the impact of a muted fashion demand.

Over the last 12 months, we have successfully increased the purchase percentage of customers shopping from more than one category to 53% on Boozt.com. This is a step-up from 51% last quarter. This improvement occurred despite a strong inflow of new customers, around 170,000 joined this quarter, who typically start by shopping in a single category.

Our total active customer base over the last 12 months was broadly unchanged and stands around 2.7 million. This is a number that we need to improve. It has, in 2025, been impacted by a slight decline in female shoppers, and this is now starting to improve.

Please move to the next slide, please. I want to provide a few comments on the trend of our female shoppers. This is critical for us as we move forward on our growth journey. Revenue from the women's fashion category is gradually stabilizing after a longer period with some softness. This improvement is important because a stronger performance in women's fashion directly benefits our other categories as women are more often shopping from non-fashion categories, home, sport, beauty and kids.

The improving trend is supported by the number of women shopping on our site. If we isolate the numbers for Q3, active customers shopping women's fashion on Boozt.com declined by 2%. We are taking several strategic steps to strengthen our women's category and continue the positive momentum we're seeing.

First and foremost, we have expanded our teams within buying, merchandising and marketing to bring in new expertise and fresh perspectives. This enables us to create an even stronger and more relevant brand and product mix that meets the evolving needs of our female customers. The results are already showing.

In October alone, we saw a good increase in women's shopping on Boozt.com compared to last year. At the same time, we are reinforcing Boozt.com as a premium destination by elevating the customer experience, making it more inspirational, personalized and fashion-driven. Through richer storytelling, curated campaigns and the use of advanced AI tools, we are creating a more seamless and engaging shopping journey. By the [ SS '26 ] season, our product listings and pages will feature more enriched and inspirational content to help customers find what they love even faster.

Finally, we are diversifying our media mix to reach and inspire more women and men across platforms such as Meta and TikTok, while also experimenting with new opportunities on emerging AI-driven platforms. This improvement is supported by the clearer strategic distinction between Boozt.com and Booztlet.com.

Please turn to the next slide. This slide summarizes the strategic clarification that is fundamental to performance going forward. We have since September and into Q4, deliberately made a clear distinction for the roles of our 2 platforms to maximize both brand value and operational efficiency.

For Boozt.com, the strategy is firmly centered on its position as a premium destination. We are actively reducing the promotional activity to protect our brand equity as well as the value of our brands, strengthening long-term partner relationships.

On top of that, our customers' multi-category shopping is the engine that drives loyalty and diversification as well as reducing our overall risk. We believe this has been an important step to get Boozt.com back to growth with 3% organic growth in Q3.

Booztlet's prime focus, on the other hand, is on selling prior season stock with very limited access to current season products. Current season products could be accessed by Booztlet campaign buys, for example. Booztlet will continue to help reduce risk when purchasing and to maintain our current inventory.

Overall, Booztlet's role as a clearing mechanism is working exactly as planned as we are managing inventory well even in a year like '25, where our growth is not what we had planned for. On top of this, Booztlet also gives us access to another customer group, which is looking for bargains when shopping.

Active customers on Booztlet are now over 1 million, showing the relevance of the channel. Of these, 60% shopped only on Boozt.com and not Boozt.com in the last 12 months. The clear distinction between the sites is a fundamental part of our business model. It is long-term sustainable and ensures that we can optimize our premium market position by simultaneously safeguarding our balance sheet through effective inventory management.

Next slide, before I hand over to Michael, I want to highlight the significant effect of our clearance sales on Booztlet. The clearance sale, which was started in September last year, is now fully concluded and our inventory is definitively rightsized and at the right quality. This crucial derisking would not have been possible without Booztlet as a dedicated clearing channel as deep discounts on our main site, Boozt.com would have tinted our brand equity.

Inventory as a share of last 12 months revenue is now down to 38.2%, which we believe is a healthy level in our current state. This is a significant decrease of 5 percentage points compared to the same period last year, illustrating the importance of this exercise. It also supported our cash generation, driving our free cash flow to SEK 292 million in the quarter, a solid improvement compared to last year.

We are now entering the most important trading season with a healthy and high-quality inventory position. This puts us in an optimal position to capture demand and to exploit market opportunities without excess risk.

With that, I will now hand over to Michael and the financial review.

Yes. Thank you, Hermann, and good morning to all from me as well. I'll start on Slide 10 as we start off with a review of the revenue performance of the quarter.

Now in Q3, it was important for us to get back to growth after Q2 and see an incremental improvement in the growth rate. With 3% organic or constant currency growth, we delivered this improvement and from a category perspective, driven by a recovery in women's fashion, as Hermann also described, our largest and most important -- strategically most important category.

When reviewing the revenue across the 2 stores, Boozt and Booztlet, it appears like quite stable and uniform growth, but the quarter was, in fact, divided into 2 very different trading periods. Booztlet generated strong growth in the first months of the quarter during the clearance sales, and this reversed actually in September. For Boozt, it was opposite and the store generated very strong growth in September as the clearance sales was concluded.

With our sharper distinction between the 2 sites and our focus on premium sales on Boozt.com, the relatively stronger growth in Booz compared to Booztlet continued into early Q4, and we believe that this is the right composition and the most healthy growth dynamics.

Looking at the geographical revenue, the growth was relatively uniform across our key markets and all growing in the low single-digit area from a constant currency perspective.

I'll move to the next slide and provide some comments on the profitability of the quarter because overall, we are satisfied with our profit development. It shows the strength of our business model, which can be quite scalable and something that we can continue to optimize across the value chain.

It should not be a surprise that the gross margin is down in the quarter. It's quite natural when it is driven by the clearance sales in July and August. And it is quite natural that the gross margin is affected in a year, where revenue is lower than planned and expected.

On top of this, we continue to see a negative impact in the gross margin from the FX development. But as Hermann mentioned also in September, when the clearance sales was finalized, the year-over-year development on the gross margin actually was positive and in local currency improving compared to last year.

We improved the EBIT margin as we were able to more than offset the gross margin development through leverage on OpEx lines. We are continuously striving to optimize our efficiencies. We see that within the marketing spend. We see it within our fulfillment and distribution ratio. And as we continue to deliver -- to develop and also grow, we see long-term room for improvement on these lines continuously.

We also saw a continued good development on the admin ratio driven by the previously communicated ceasing of Norwegian customs as well as the downsizing of field [indiscernible] FTEs in year.

Depreciation was slightly up, driven by continued investment at our automated warehouse at Angelholm, but also investments in our best-in-class IT and [indiscernible].

Now please move to Slide 12, as I turn focus to our cash flow. The cash development was strong in Q3, and it's really a representation of our operating model and setup between Boozt and Booztlet, as we are managing our inventory and working capital.

It's quite an achievement to manage inventory and even reduce inventory in a year, where sales is lower than planned. This is a key strength and risk mitigating accomplishment of the business model and the dynamics between the stores.

Now generating free cash flow, which is 7x larger than EBIT as we did in this quarter is clearly not sustainable, but the quarter illustrates how working capital is the determining factor for our cash generation, and that is an important characteristic in a business like ours, where we trade massive volumes at relatively low margins, and I'll discuss these fundamentals of the cash flow over the cycle a bit more on the next slide.

Because the more appropriate performance view of the cash generation is to review the last 12 months, i.e., over the full 4 quarters of the year. And in the last 12 months, our cash conversion has been close to 100%, and that's even with a slight outflow from working capital.

We generated free cash flow of SEK 483 million out of a reported SEK 500 million EBIT. It shows how strong our underlying cash generation potential is. It is clear that when the business is growing very fast, it requires investments in working capital and in our warehouse capacity, but with more module growth, the cash conversion is fundamentally highly attractive like this year.

As we are guiding free cash flow of more than SEK 500 million for the full year 2025, it can also be concluded and again, in Q4 '25, we expect to generate more cash than we did last year, reflecting continued operational improvements and continued strong management of working capital.

Please move to the next slide for some comments on how the cash is used and generally our capital structure. As discussed, the business is highly cash generative in periods without the excessive growth. We are demonstrating this with our performance this quarter and with our outlook for the year.

We do not want to sit on that cash. It has to work and it has to create return, and we strive to be disciplined in our return of excess cash to shareholders, currently mainly through share buybacks.

As we are now extending our share buyback to purchase treasury shares worth more than SEK 400 million in the 1-year period since last AGM, we are actually returning quite a lot, and we're also achieving the target that we set out in our Capital Markets Day in 2023 and importantly, thereby delivering on our promises given.

Despite the relatively large share buyback this year, we still have a very strong and quite conservative capital structure and currently with net cash, which means negative net debt of around SEK 200 million. This also means that we have very strong liquidity. We are maintaining a strong balance sheet because it creates room to maneuver and to capture opportunities in the market. And in that sense, we can -- as we face commercial growth opportunities in the market, we can attack and allow working capital swings in temporary periods.

So with this, I have finalized my financial review, and I'll now turn to the future and our financial outlook on Slide #16. As Hermann mentioned in the beginning, we are satisfied with our strong operational performance, and we are updating our guidance to reflect the performance year-to-date. although we are currently facing the largest and most important months and trading periods of the year.

The new revenue guidance corresponds to 2% to 5% constant currency growth for the year, and we still expect full year headwind of around 2 percentage points from currency. With the new guidance, the required constant currency growth in the fourth quarter is 2% to 10%. This corresponds to 0% to 8% in net revenue growth. It's a relatively broad range, but it underlines the uncertainty that November and December inherently carries.

In regards to profitability, we are increasing the adjusted EBIT margin guidance driven by the factors that Hermann described earlier on the call. Fundamentally, we continue to see scope for further margin improvements. And this upgrade is an illustration of it.

In a year with muted growth, focus on inventory clearance and also sharper distinction of Boozt and Booztlet, and on top of this quite material headwind from currency, we are still able to drive the underlying margin forward.

For the full year, we estimate that the margin will be negatively impacted by around 1 percentage points due to the strengthening of SEK versus primarily euro, but also Danish kroner. The rest of our guidance remains unchanged, free cash flow of more than SEK 500 million and CapEx between SEK 150 million and SEK 170 million.

I'll have my final slide with a few comments about our relocation coming up shortly because as you are aware, we are investing in Boozt to become a unique and really preferred employer in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. And creating a strong organization and really a powerhouse under one roof is a way for us to sharpen the organizational capacity. This investment carries some nonrecurring costs, and there are some compliance matters related to the move that I'll describe briefly.

The nonrecurring costs are relatively limited and amount to around SEK 550 million, and it's mainly double leasing of the old headquarters at Hyllie, but also other smaller locations that we have as well as the restoration of our old headquarter. The larger part of these costs will be recognized in Q4 2025 and the rest in Q1 2026. The cash impact, however, will be spread across the year of 2026.

Another implication of the move is that there will be a so-called exit tax related to the activities and operation, which are moving to Denmark. Our core assets like the Angelholm warehouse and our listing, et cetera, will be maintained in Sweden. So this will not be subject to any new tax legislation.

But the exit tax payment in Sweden will create -- and that's important. It will create a deferred tax asset in Denmark based on the fundamental principle of the double tax treaty agreement between the 2 countries. So in layman terms, this means that the payment in Sweden can be deducted in Danish tax payments likely over a period of 5 years. And as a result, we expect no cash impact over the period from 2026 to 2030. But in 2026 alone, we expect excess cash tax payment of SEK 140 million.

This concludes the prepared part of my presentation, and I'll now hand the word back to Hermann for some final remarks.

Thank you, Michael. And before moving on to the Q&A, I would like to share a few words on our strategic outlook. Our focus remains clear. We want to get back to sizable growth. Our operations are like a well-oiled machine. We are very efficient, and we want to increase our revenue growth to exploit our unique and scalable business model.

We have strengthened our competitive position in the last couple of years, and I believe that the Boozt organization is now stronger than ever. With the move to Copenhagen, we will be a clear preferred employer and be able to attract key competencies and talent.

On top of that, we are quite confident that consumer sentiment and thus the market return for the better and that Boozt will be positioned as one of the strongest players in the region to capture more than our fair share of that growth.

So this concludes the presentation. And operator, will you please open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

Yes. Can I start asking about the sales guidance, the updated sales guidance, given that your sales in the first 9 months are essentially flat and your guidance now of 0% to 3% growth. That seems to indicate then expectations of an improvement in Q4. And given your comments here, I mean, on the one hand, September sales being weak, you seem to be a little bit more confident here on October, but there's a lot of uncertainties about November and December. So what gives you confidence that your sales will essentially accelerate in the fourth quarter?

Well, kind of the quarter so far supports the guidance and comps are slightly easier for the fourth quarter. And so we think it's kind of -- as far as we see, there's nothing that indicates that things would become worse. And so -- but still, it's -- we think it's a cautious guidance, but still we are seeing some optimism, especially also because the women have returned again, growing again in the women's. So I think there's reason to believe that we are back to at least a moderate growth.

Very good. And I'm also curious, when you're talking about the reduced campaign activity at Boozt.com and kind of shifting that towards Booztlet, how much of this is kind of a voluntary move? How much of this is a result of pushback from suppliers? And are you now where you want to be? Or do you think that there will be a further move towards reducing that level of discounting at the core Boozt.com site?

Yes, a good question. I think as you know, we basically have been slightly overstocked for the last 2 years, meaning that we have had to reduce inventory and use our channels. And you also have to look after our brand partners, and it's entirely voluntary, but we want to kind of elevate the brands and keep the high brand profile.

So kind of -- it's our initiative because we want to, again, create a more clear distinction between Boozt.com and Booztlet. I think that the overlap between the 2 shops and the offers were getting a bit too similar. So it's kind of a decision to create kind of 2 very distinct different shops.

I think that we're actually on a good track. We are of course, we have to act with the market, and we are price takers, and we cannot sell more expensive than the rest, but we're definitely not price leaders. And we're moving into a more kind of inspirational and discovery like.

And fortunately, our technology, AI helps a lot in doing that. So I think that we're in a good spot. And the inventory is right, so we don't need to clear, so we can actually also start to buy some campaign [ goods ]. So I think that we're in a quite strong position to capture growth when it returns.

Very good. But do you think that it's a challenge for you to drive growth if you hold back a lot of campaigns? Because I think in the past, the campaign activity at Boozt.com has also clearly been a growth driver. So moving away from that, is that a challenge for you right now? Is that a reason why we're seeing lower growth rates this year compared to the previous year?

I think it'd be a bit too -- I think it's a bit too far to say that is the main reason. I think that we've been hit by consumer sentiment and consumers holding back. But obviously, in the previous years, [ campaign buyers ] have been a big driver of us being able to offer strong campaigns. And as we have had too much inventory, we haven't bought too much campaign goods.

Now with the inventory size, we can get back to doing campaign buys and promoting the campaign [ buyers ]. And this is kind of all in alignment with the brand's interest. I think that kind of we are moving in a position, where we can get a bit back to kind of being a retailer with strong brands and relevant and good offers.

So I think that kind of we have put ourselves with our inventory position and with the kind of our brand and the distinction between 2 shops to be able to kind of again offer relevant campaigns without destroying margin or any brand relations.

And when you're talking about increase in campaign buys or campaign goods, are you talking already Q4? Or is this more an issue for 2026 and onwards?

We're starting in Q4 and -- but also in '26 onwards. So we see more campaign buys opportunities, both in the market and for ourselves than we've seen for quite some time.

The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABGSC.

I was wondering if you could give a bit more flavor on the quarter's growth by month, please. What was your growth in September, for example, when warehouse clearances were done?

Yes, the growth was -- as we said at the end of -- at the Q2 call, we came into the quarter with growth. And in July and August, September was actually kind of flattish because weather was -- it was very warm. So it was quite uneven growth for the quarter actually.

So that's why you should always be careful because especially when you -- the transition from summer to autumn to winter is like very dependent on temperatures and weather, et cetera, et cetera. So -- but it was quite uneven with September being more or less, less flat.

Right. Another possible interpretation of this report, I think, is that you spent too little on marketing in the quarter, reporting the lowest marketing ratio since mid-2019. And I was wondering if you could give us a bit more flavor or commentary regarding that.

Yes, we can do that. I don't think we spent too low and little because as we've been discussing before, it's all about kind of the marginal spend. And if the consumer is not there, you can just totally overspend on your marketing. And that's why we still have the ratio of how much do you want to pay for a new customer and what is the payback. So we're cautious.

We've been holding a bit back on our offline campaigns. as also we said in the Q2 call, that's because we haven't been really ready. But I think that kind of -- I said the ambition is to get marketing down and -- and even though our cost structure allows us to spend more on marketing, we don't want to throw any money. And just by increasing performance marketing, it's a bad investment. So that's why you'd rather hold back and save that money for a full year.

Perfect. And this is sort of a follow-up on Niklas' previous question. Would you say that your strategy from, say, October onwards is a new strategy with less discounts than previously or less targeted discounts than previously? Or should we understand it as a return to the pre-inventory clearance strategy essentially?

I think you should interpret as a return to the pre-inventory reduction strategy. We -- over the last 2 years, we've been expecting higher growth and [ bought ] for that growth, and it has materialized, which has meant that we have had to kind of clear because we are religious about not having too much inventory and not doing any write-downs. So we've basically been forced to do that.

Now with inventory being at a very good size, we are getting back to -- yes, as I said before, the phase, where we can -- we have the right inventory from the beginning of the season and can do opportunistic campaign buys to add some flavor and margin to -- and also add some basically attractiveness to the offer. So I think that we're kind of going back to, as you said, the pre-inventory write-down strategy, it's a long word.

All right. And finally, from my end, I was wondering if you could say anything else about the consumer environment as you see it currently in addition perhaps to the stronger October demand for the women's category. Should we understand that comment as being of like stronger growth for the whole business in October? Or is it more specific -- specifically related to the women's category?

Yes, sorry. Again, if you look at consumer sentiment, it's -- I think it's still below 0 in all the 4 Nordic countries, the 4 Scandinavian countries. So even though we're going up and Sweden seems to be the most positive country and probably even more positive next year, the Danes are still quite depressed. The Norwegians are getting closer to neutral and the Finns are also seem to be depressed.

What we notice, of course, is that the women are coming back. So we have a growth in women buying on Boozt in October. But -- and there's a but, the average item price they're buying for is lower than last year. So they are still kind of holding back and being cautious. So I'm not sure if we're out of the woods yet.

But with the stimuli that is coming in Sweden, also in Denmark, I think there's time to become a bit more optimistic about the future. So at least kind of we don't see any negative numbers anymore. So now it's just kind of the degree of positiveness.

But again, it's very early because in 1 month's time, I might be really happy or depressed depending on how this black month and Black Friday and Cyber Monday goes. So it's kind of -- it's too early to conclude because it's the next 1.5 months that is going to decide everything.

Yes, of course. You 're -- well, if history tells us anything, you're usually pretty good black month, but let's…

[indiscernible].

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank.

A couple of questions from me. Hermann, you talked about when we sort of heard from you the last time in Q2 that you basically missed maybe on womenswear when it came to dresses and so on in your purchasing heading into the spring season. Is there sort of anything that you've done entering the autumn/winter season that is sort of increasing the likelihood that you won't make that mistake again in terms of predicting the trends and so on?

Yes. That -- it's a good question, actually. Yes, there is because we became too cautious in the first half. We bought what we thought would be the sure thing. So we bought more depth than breadth. We kind of internally refer to it like we looked a bit more down, so looking too much to the numbers instead of looking up. So we set the buyers a bit more free and saying, okay, try to buy more inspiration, more breadth and try to see kind of there to take more risk again because our inventory position is so good.

And then, of course, we bought less dresses going into the quarter. So that was kind of -- so it's kind of -- when you're in a position when you have too much stock, you tend to be -- become a bit more too cautious. And I think that we became a bit too cautious.

So I think that we are going to be more -- liberate our buyers a bit more than we've done before because we know that we are very good at eliminating stock risk. So I think that you -- and I think that already now that the women can see that there's basically more and better choice in the shop.

So that's basically a reflection of what you're seeing in October, you think?

Yes. I think that's a good bet that women are able to find more exciting stuff. They still buy the sure thing, but they also want to be inspired, right? And we're getting better at that.

Just coming back to a detailed question on the marketing spend. And again, that was on the low side in Q3, and you already touched upon that, but it was also on the high side in Q2. And I think you wrote something about a timing effect, and you also mentioned that in Q2, they went a little bit overboard maybe or maybe it was also timing between the quarters. Is that correct? Or shed some more light on that?

Yes, that's correct. We had quite a big offline marketing campaign in May. which was a really bad month and the quarter [ get ] results. So we went slightly kind of -- I wouldn't say we went overboard, but the timing was unfortunately compared to the market, and our execution was maybe not spot on. So that's why kind of we are regrouping and redefining kind of what and how we want to communicate, especially offline.

I think in our performance marketing, we're on a good track. We are using marketing technology to an even greater extent, and it shows promising results. But again, we've been discussing this for like -- like now 8 years, Daniel, that we are very, very careful not to overspend on performance marketing because the marginal cost of the margin customer is just too high.

So we'd rather not spend and then accept low growth because often doesn't make sense. So that's why we're trying to guide it. And then again, the long term, our target is to get the margin cost ratio down to maybe 6%, 7%. So I think it's a path towards that goal.

And then also maybe coming back to the inventory and the size of the inventory, and I clearly hear you that you've been overstocked for quite some time, and you've done quite a lot of excessive clearance of inventory in the past couple of quarters, and you seem very happy entering the fall and winter season. Is there any risk that the inventory is too low to get up to the upper end of the implicit top line guidance that you have for Q4? Or is the sort of the capability to add on campaign buys or additional inventory in the season better now to support if top line would sort of surprise positively or demand would surprise positively?

You're right. Yes. You're right that there is a risk if demand is higher than projected that we don't have enough inventory with what we have now. This is also why we've started already to do some strong campaign buys and are increasing our campaign buys budget because you're right that of course, if consumers become more happy and start to buy again, then we don't have enough inventory. But we are actually working on that.

And I'm quite confident that if there is more growth than we guide, we would probably be able to kind of deliver on that growth. So -- but you're right that we are now going back to doing quite decent campaign buys.

And does that go hand in hand a little bit when it comes to other revenues? How do you see that into Q4 and '26?

Yes, it does. It has [ other ] revenues, especially the retail media revenue is not 100% linked, but it's quite linked to the buy as it always has been. So with us, if we are turning the buy down, then other revenue is affected and it's difficult to compensate for that by offering additional campaigns also because if consumers are holding back, the brands feel it themselves. So they're also less inclined to spend more in marketing. So it kind of goes hand in hand, but it's not a 100% correlation.

So we have been able to compensate slightly for that by offering better and more targeted campaign. Our BMP is actually getting better and better at both targeting and documenting the return on the marketing investments than before. But of course, it's linked to the buy.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Okay. Thank you for listening in and the questions. And yes, we are just waiting for a very interesting 1.5 months. And hopefully, we'll meet happy again after Black Friday and over the next coming weeks. Thank you very much, and bye-bye.