Clas Ohlson Stock

Welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q1 2026-2027 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Kristofer Tonström and CFO, Pernilla Walfridsson. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Clas Ohlson report presentation. My name is Kristofer Tonström and I'm CEO, and I'm here together with Pernilla Walfridsson, CFO. Looking at today's agenda, we'll cover the general business update, move into financial development, go through events after the reporting period. And then I'll summarize before we will move into Q&A.

So first of all, highlighting the first quarter of '26-'27. We have had a strong start to our new year. We continue to grow. We grow profitably, and we also continue to create value. Looking at total sales. Organically, we were up 11%, and our operating profit amounted to SEK 339 million (sic) [ SEK 393 million ] resulting in an operating margin of 12% and a profit increase of approximately a bit more than 40% versus last year. Operating cash flow came in at SEK 663 million and return on capital employed came in at 34.9%. So all in all, this is resulting into a earnings per share of SEK 4.75 versus SEK 3.27 last year. Today, we also reported August, which is then the start to our second quarter. And here, we saw a 8% organic growth.

Then moving into the business update and starting with our financial targets that we updated back in June when we had our Capital Markets Day. The ambition is to -- over the next 3 years, every year, to grow at 5% organically every year to deliver around 12% operating margin and around 30% return on capital employed. And these targets, they define the level of performance that we believe Clas Ohlson should be able to sustain over time. They are not a forecast for a year or quarter, and it's certainly not a ceiling. And our ambition is not simply to reach the targets. It's really to prove that strong growth, profitability and efficiency can coexist over several years.

Next area is just an overview of our competitive strength. And I think the results coming out of the first quarter is really driven by those strengths and the combination of, first of all, our assortment where we do have our multi-niche assortment that we reinvent at a very high degree every year. And in the first quarter, we saw lots of new products being launched, while we, of course, have really focused also on the core assortment. We have our integrated omnichannel with our store network at attractive and accessible locations, combined with the strong growing and profitable e-com business. And those 2 in combination really drives customer convenience and also it drives profitable growth.

And then the last area is the -- when it comes to the customer meeting, of course, the ambition is to always deliver qualified service across the board. And we could see in the quarter that we had an NPS of 56, which is really continued strong levels. And then as a foundation of everything, we have our strong brand, where we do have a very broad appeal across multiple target audiences. And as one example of recent product launches and big bets that we have gone after now in the first quarter, I think the robotic lawnmowers assortment is a good example. Here, we have scaled up the business from 5 to 12 different brands, and we have seen really strong sales growth. We also see a range ranging from very affordable private label products. On robotic lawnmowers up to the most premium A brands. And I think that combination really gives customers the opportunity to find the right product according to their need and wallet.

Also looking at the online business. The online sales growth organically was 18% in the quarter, and our online sales now represents 22% of total sales. And again, I think it's a good example of the robotic lawnmowers. Most of that assortment has only been available online and obviously also then been a driver of the sales growth. Then moving into some of the key indicators that we constantly track and look at when it comes to customer relevance and satisfaction. Starting with product reviews. We do get a lot of reviews from our customers when it comes to their satisfaction with our products, quality, et cetera. And we can see also this quarter that we continue to deliver on very solid levels.

Second, we also deliver when it comes to affordability. We're not pushing growth at the expense of the customer experience. However, we are able to deliver a strong affordability versus customer expectations. And then last but not least, when it comes to the service and the customer experience, again, Net Promoter Score coming in at 56. So we're basically growing because customers continue to find relevant products at great value and with best-in-class service.

So last point from my end, outlining also our consumer missions. We did a few adjustments to the -- to these categories as we presented our future plan during the Capital Markets Day in June. And as we can see on the slide, you have the 5 consumer missions and they are all growing profitably now during the last quarter. So it's the breadth of that growth that is important. And then we have the adjacent product segments and spare parts contributing to both growth and profitability.

So with that, I'll hand over to Pernilla to take us through the financial development.

Thanks, Kristofer. And good morning everyone. Just like Kristofer mentioned, we have closed a strong Q1, and now let's take a closer look at the figures. The sales momentum continues and net sales were up 16% in the quarter, of which 11% relates to organic sales increase, 3% related to our recently acquired subsidiaries and currency effect 2%. Like-for-like growth accounted for 9% of growth in the quarter and 1% related to expansion of the store network. Online sales grew by 35% in total, of which acquisitions stood for 15%. Compared to the end of Q1 last year, we have increased the store network by 9 stores.

Looking at the home market, we saw a great performance throughout the quarter, with strong organic growth across the board. Sweden grew by 11%, Norway, 10%; and Finland, 9% organically. The macro environment is still volatile. We said during the Q4 report presentation that we expected freight cost to increase. And as we can see spot prices for transportation from Asia to Europe, has increased sharply in recent months. We see no impact from the increase in the first quarter, but there should be effect starting in Q3, Q4. Regarding currencies, we mentioned the negative effect of currency hedging in the report, and the background is visible here on the slide with a rapid and significant strength of the NOK versus the SEK. The flip side is obviously the positive impact on total sales as we have a large share of our sales in Norway.

Regarding currency hedging, we have decided to discontinue currency hedging as from now. After thorough analysis, we assessed that it does not create sufficient long-term value. Hedging has primarily shifted the timing of the impact rather than removing the underlying exposure with more efficient pricing practice, a higher proportion of e-com sales and a strong financial position, we believe that short-term currency risk can be managed without forward hedging. The last forward hedging will mature in Q4 26-27. With regards to purchasing prices, the maintained relatively low level of U.S. dollar versus SEK continues to help us during the quarter.

The gross margin increased by 1.8 percentage points in the quarter, up to 47.5%. Key explanations are a currency effect that I mentioned earlier, both the stronger NOK and the weaker U.S. dollar. And also that we have been able to get more favorable purchasing prices from our suppliers. And then over to the income statement. Operating profit increased to SEK 393 million compared to SEK 278 million a year ago. Operating margin landed at 12%. The increase in personnel expenses is just as in the last quarter related to higher volume in our logistic chain, wage increases, new stores and acquired businesses. Also, other external expenses follow the same pattern as in Q4 with higher costs related to increased investment in marketing and due to the addition of the acquired businesses. The EPS for the quarter was SEK 4.75.

The inventory is slightly up compared with the same period last year. We are content with the stock in trade and the slight increase should be seen in the light of new stores, increased assortment and adding acquired businesses since last year. Cash flow from operating activities totaled SEK 663 million compared to SEK 468 million last year, mainly thanks to improved profit and improved working capital free cash flow for the period amounted to SEK 363 million. Return on capital employed was at the end of Q1, 34.9%.

And with that, I'm handing back the presentation to you, Kristofer.

Thank you, Pernilla. Moving into the events after the reporting period. Today, we also reported our sales for August. And saw 8% organic growth, totaling sales at SEK 1.1 billion, a bit more than SEK 1.1 billion. 3% comes from acquisitions, 3% from currency effects. So all in all, the total sales was up 13%. And again, we could see a fairly broad development with both Sweden and Norway growing at 8% organically and Finland at 7%. Also other markets grew at 9% organically. So net-net, fairly solid across the countries. And also as recent months, we saw a broad development across the 5 consumer missions. Looking at store network in August this year versus last, we were up by 9 stores. So we'll now have a store network of 250 stores. Then summarizing.

Looking ahead, we see a continued clear path to continued growth and value creation. We believe that we are well positioned in our large and growing product niches, represented via the 5 consumer missions. The addressable market is SEK 350 billion, which means we're still fairly small in relation to that potential. We are focusing a lot on the needs-driven assortment and with a very high degree of assortment renewal, which is a key driver of constant relevance, but also customer satisfaction. Then we have the central -- our store locations and the store network, which is very available to our customers, combined with our full-scale e-com and also effective marketing. So net-net, I think we've seen over the last few years now a solid development. And the ambition is, of course, now to continue to deliver on these levels also over the next few years.

So looking at the plan ahead that we also talked a little bit more in detail about during the Capital Markets Day. I think the key point is that we do have multiple levers to pull when it comes to continue driving this profitable sales growth moving forward. It's not that we have one silver bullet or one big bet that has to materialize. It's really about the constant hard work to work across our assortments, our brand and our customer meeting, then supported by a strong foundation of operational efficiency and then also selective M&A that can really help us evolve.

So with that, we will now open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

Thank you very much. And congratulations on another set of very strong results. Can I just start asking about the sales development during the months here. You had exceptionally strong growth in June and also July and a little bit of slowdown in August here. Can you elaborate a little bit on the weather component or anything like that or comparisons or anything else that impacts the sales growth between the different months .

Niklas. So yes, looking at the summer months, obviously, the summer is always a little bit more volatile than other parts of the year, and there are external factors influencing us. Obviously, we never like to blame the weather for anything. But of course, we can explain development by changes in weather conditions, et cetera. So what we could see now during the full quarter, so May, June, July was that May -- in May, we had a big peak of selling lots of air cooling fans, air conditioning, et cetera. So it was a very solid month. And then combined, of course, with the strong base assortment and also driven a lot by what I explained earlier on in terms of garden machinery, et cetera.

Then looking at July, if I look at the comparison last year, July was a very hot month. We had lots of sales related to heating or air conditioners fans, et cetera, this year. That part of the business was much lower, and we had a bigger effect of that in June. So June was, again, a strong month on everything weather related, and then July was a bit slower there. So there we relied a lot on the base assortment, but also on the big bets across garden machinery, et cetera. So a little bit ups and downs during the summer.

And I think the key message is that we were able to stay relevant. Despite things moving a little bit up and down. Looking at August, a slightly lower level than the summer months, but again, a very solid base delivery. And again, relating a little bit to external conditions. Last year, it was very wet August. We sold lots of products related to flooding and et cetera, whereas this year, it's been a hot dry August. So again, external factors influence, but I think across the board, we've been able to really play from the all-weather portfolio that we have developed.

Very clear. And then moving to the gross margin. You mentioned here the hedges impacting the gross margin negatively. Is there any way you can quantify that? And I also note that the NOK has continued higher here in August? Is there a risk of a negative effect also in Q2?

You can find the hedging -- I mean, the hedging effect we report in the quarterly report, it's approximately year-on-year SEK 50 million negative effect from NOK hedges. And going forward, for the next quarter, I mean, what has happened is that the NOK has strengthened against SEK during the year. And I mean we enter hedges 6 to 9 months ahead, so to say. So we expect -- I mean, if you look at the development of the NOK, SEK, you can see approximately that. And so we expect a bit of this effect also to continue into Q2.

Okay. And the decision now to discontinue hedging. I assume that when you look at historical figures, you see that the volatility in earnings is immaterially impacted by these hedges. Is that the correct assumption?

It's more that hedging. I mean it's more a shift in the timing of the impact it's not removing the underlying exposure. And nowadays, we work with pricing practice, a higher portion of e-com sales and our strong financial position, we believe that we can manage a bit more short-term volatility .

Sorry, just to complement that. I think we always strive to be simple and not creating too many distractions neither internally nor also externally. So exactly as Pernilla outlined, I think this is just one other example of things that we try to -- unless it really creates value, we don't want to continue doing it. So I think that's the conclusion. .

Great. Can I also ask about the competitive environment? Have you noticed any changes in competition? And I'm thinking specifically like the Asian online discounters that have been met with significant import duties I know these maybe not direct competitors, but has that had any impact to your -- in your experience on demand? .

I think the general -- before I get to the Chinese platforms, I think the general competitive environment is that I think it's been a pretty strong consumption summer, that's what most numbers indicate also due to the development in Sweden. I mean there are a lot of indications that things are going in the right direction, and we've seen others reporting strong numbers. I think in general, it's been a high consumption summer. I also -- I think we've also seen some, as always, a lot of price discounting on the seasonal assortment, et cetera. But all in all, a general a positive environment, I would say, in general. Looking then at the Chinese platforms. We do not see an immediate impact on the Clas Ohlson part of the business since the new tariffs that were introduced in July. We do see some positive effect on our online businesses. So -- and that is more I would say, related maybe to that the platforms have invested less in marketing and traffic. So we have seen a little bit of positivity on the online businesses. But on Clas Ohlson, we haven't really seen any impact that we can correlate with that tariff change. .

The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just a few questions from my side as well here. In terms of organic growth, you did 11% organic growth in Q1. And you mentioned now in the presentation that online, you did 18% organically. Could you give us a corresponding number for the physical store network in terms of organic growth? .

Let's see. I think the like-for-like in Q1 was 9%, I think. So the overall like-for-like development was 9%. But then, of course, that includes the online like-for-like. So it's impacted by 18%, we don't separately report the store network. But I -- based on those numbers, I think we can confirm that the like-for-like on the store side, isolated is also positive. And that really links back to our key strategy of constantly driving like-for-like growth in the store network. That's one of the most important priorities. For us, new stores is not the single biggest growth driver. It's an aspect, but the key is driving like-for-like. So I think we've seen that in the quarter as well.

Yes. Perfect. That's helpful. And in terms of the strong online growth here in the quarter, could you maybe give some more comments on what's driving that? Is it simply more traffic and customer acquisitions? Or what are you seeing in terms of conversion rates, basket sizes and so forth.

Yes. I think the -- we have seen all aspects of the online business are going in the right direction with higher traffic, higher basket and a strong conversion in general. I would say the key driver of the online growth is again assortment related. We've done a lot of work over the last few years to also define and design more of an online -- pure online assortment. I had one example of the robotic lawn mowers, but we have others where we have a big assortment that we do not want to distribute to 250 stores available online. So that has driven both sales and traffic to the online side. .

So again, assortment. And then second, we continue to work with the performance marketing across the different parts of the business, both Clas Ohlson and others. And here, we've also said that the increase in marketing has really given also a strong return on investment. So performance marketing combined with strong assortment at the right prices has really helped the online development.

Perfect. Maybe coming back a little bit to my first question here. Because I'm thinking a little bit about the store growth. Obviously, you're still doing positive like-for-like sales also in the store network. But could you say anything about if you see any sort of risks for cannibalization when the network becomes more dense? Or are you simply opening up in areas where you don't have a lot of stores and so forth. So a little bit interested in that dynamic? .

Yes. No. So when it comes to the store network, obviously, every new store decision relates back to, of course, delivering on our return on investment demands, longer-term growth, longer-term availability to customers. And of course, a key aspect of that are risks of cannibalization. And the good thing is we have 250 stores. We've opened a lot of stores, almost 30 over the last 3 years. So we have a very strong set of insights and data to make fairly good assumptions and conclusions before we decide on a new store. So I would rather say that for every new store we open, it needs to stand on its own 2 feet when it comes to store P&L.

But the other thing is that it also drives the positive development on the e-com business. So I'm not worried about cannibalization driven by the new stores. And that's also another reason why we do a lot of store upgrades in the base network to ensure that every store is competitive.

Perfect. Maybe finally, if I may, in terms of the gross margin here, if we look beyond FX and hedging. Could you say anything about the current purchasing conditions? Are you still seeing improvements to the product margins through better sourcing setups? Or have that largely sort of come through and annualized now? Where are you in that process? .

Yes. We always, of course, work with improving purchasing prices. I think, as you say, of course, there are a lot of external factors helping us now with currencies, et cetera. There's still a little bit of an effect on the purchasing prices. But it's not the biggest driver as it has been over the last year. So of course, our job now moving forward is to continue to be effectively working with our sourcing network to always have competitive prices. .

At the same time, we have seen the producer price index in China, for example, now going up over the last few quarters. So we cannot rely solely on that aspect and it's also a smaller driver of the improvement than what we have seen in the last year.

The next question comes from Magnus Raman from SB1 Markets.

I think I'll just follow on, on that last question. Firstly, you mentioned the increase in producer price index in China. And -- but I -- is it fair at least to assume that these should be quite neutral in terms of passing through since all -- yes, most of your competitors are sourcing these goods from the same sort of supplier base in one way or another and would be impacted in the same way.

Yes, I think in general, I think it's fair to conclude -- now I use the producer price index in China as kind of a proxy for what's happened over the last few quarters. And it's obviously driven by some of the raw material increases that we have seen, driven by oil price increase, driven by the shortages of chips and tech product, et cetera. So I use that as a proxy. And I think it's fair to conclude, as you say that this is something impacting most companies that are importing products from other geographies.

Then the other thing is, of course, now we are less -- much less dependent on China with our broader sourcing network. But obviously, these increases are mostly driven by raw material increases, oil price increases, et cetera.

Yes, sure. And thereby should be also impacting other sourcing destination geography.

Yes, right.

And I also wanted to ask about the increase in marketing spending that you alluded to when you spoke about the increase in cost. And you also mentioned here in one question about your online businesses in particular that they, if anything, might have seen a little bit of relief on the performance marketing costs, if I got it correctly. So this overall increase in marketing spending, is it that the core Clas Ohlson has been increasing its performance marketing spending? Or is it more the traditional marketing costs? And how should we view it going forward? .

Yes. So looking at the increase, it's driven by first of all, that we have consolidated the acquired companies, and they obviously have high gross margins and then higher degree of performance spend. So that is one kind of structural part because it was not part of the base. But then to be clear, also on the Clas Ohlson side, we are increasing absolute amounts when it comes to spending. And this is obviously correlated with the growth that we're seeing, and we're only buying traffic that we judge to be profitable. So we're measuring this on return on ad spend, return on investment, et cetera. But also the Clas Ohlson part has gone up over the last quarter. And we expect that to -- it is continued to be a key lever for us also moving forward. .

But of course, the online growth and the spend growth should go hand-in-hand. And as long as there is profitable traffic to be had, we will continue that. So I think it's fair to assume that this development will continue.

Great. That's very clear. And then maybe one final to Pernilla. If you could remind us of the timing of initiating depreciation of the Insjön automation investments ?

When we finalize the investment, I mean we will start to depreciate when we take it into -- what have we communicated regarding the end date for it.

Yes. No, I think we -- I mean, so first -- now for the -- it's the first quarter where we now have a significant investment above SEK 130 million. So that immediately, of course, is an investment that has been done during the quarter. And then what I think we have said is that the investment will be finalized by the fall of '27.

And then we will start depreciating that investment.

Yes.

In total. So those -- it's not these batches, so to speak, quarterly, but there will be no D&A from this until that finalization.

Until we start to use it. Yes.

Since we have no more questions from the telco. So -- but we do have one question from Andreas from the webcast. It's 2 questions. One about which products that you believe will continue driving growth. And if you have any outlook for the coming year as well.

So starting with the first question. Of course, there is a part of the Clas Ohlson sales that is seasonally dependent. And of course, that is one of the drivers of the high assortment renewal. So as we move into the fall and then soon into the Christmas and the winter season, of course, we're shifting focus on the seasonal side, both into Christmas-related products, gifts, but also, again, back to air quality in terms of -- but now we turn from air conditioners to heaters, et cetera. So I think that's one example. And it's, of course, our job to ensure that we have all-weather portfolio that performs any season. .

And then I think the second key thing is we have a base assortment that is always on, always relevant, everything related to tech accessories, fixing products, cleaning products, et cetera. So it's that combination that constitutes the relevant assortment. And then looking at the coming years, I think I don't want to guide on the coming -- over the coming years, more specifically than I think the financial framework does. So of course, the job for us now is to continue balancing strong organic growth with strong profitability and strong return on capital. So those -- the financial targets and that framework, I think gives a good guidance on what we want to achieve over the next 3 years every year.

With that, we have no further questions from the webcast or the telco.

Thank you very much for calling in this morning and for all the great questions. We are now shifting focus from summer to fall. And then soon, we will be entering also the big peak season, that is, of course, important to us at Clas Ohlson. So look forward to seeing you all again in early December when we report our second quarter. So thank you very much.

Hello, and thanks for being here for Clas Ohlson's Capital Markets Day 2026. My name is Niklas Carlsson, I'm heading up Investor Relations and external communications here at Clas Ohlson's, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you all of you joining online, and all of you joining here in the room in Stockholm.

Over the next few hours, we will explain why Clas Ohlson is structurally stronger today than a couple of years back and that we're also updating our financial targets to reflect this transition. The financial targets, they are designed to support disciplined and profitable growth over time.

Today's speakers will give you more details on just that, our position and our way forward. We will start with an opening session with our CEO, Kristofer Tonström, who will outline what Clas Ohlson looks like today. And the journey we have made since the last Capital Markets Day that we held in 2022. Thereafter, our CFO, Pernilla Walfridsson joins Kristofer on stage and talk about how we are now updating our targets after a couple of years of really solid performance.

In the last session before the break, Kristofer will give us an introduction to our proven value creation model and the levers we see for continued growth.

After the break, the other members of our management team, which you can see here, we'll talk more about how we leverage our competitive strengths. Anders Molander, he will talk about our assortment development. Helena Holmstrom, about brand and customer base. Lene Iren Oen and Stefan Lindwall will talk about our omnichannel customer meeting and logistics.

And then finally, Kristofer will wrap up things with a short description of further growth optionality and summarize today's key messages before we move into a Q&A I will come back on stage for the Q&A. But as already communicated, there's possibilities to ask questions from here from the studio in Stockholm, but as well from our webcast where you can post any questions you might have.

But before handing over to our CEO, Kristofer Tonström, I also have the great pleasure of presenting today's disclaimer. Yes. There we go. The stage is yours.

Okay. Thank you. Remove the disclaimer. So thank you very much, Niklas, and a big welcome to everybody here in the room in Stockholm, a full house, great to see and also a big welcome to everybody joining us online. So last time we were together for this type of forum, 4 years ago, we talked a lot about a transformation plan.

Today, we will focus on some things slightly different. Today, we're going to talk about how we're now going to take the next chapter on the strategy that is already working. And looking at where we are today, as Niklas mentioned, we believe that we are a structurally stronger company today.

We have a more clear business model. We have stronger economics. And we also have more discipline when it comes to both growth and capital allocation. So today, we'll also talk about how we look forward and how we are confident in that we're going to continue driving profitable growth also in the next few years.

But before going into the future, let's take a bit of a step back and talk about what Clas Ohlson is today. As you know, we were founded for more than 100 years ago. And the philosophy from back in 1918 still holds true also today. And our founder talked about that we wanted to sell reliable products at low prices, offering the right quality according to need that's still extremely relevant.

We still believe that customers are looking for practical solutions, the right quality according to need but also at the right prices.

What has changed since back then is our ability to do this really at scale. And we obviously have evolved from being a mail order company into a physical retailer. And today, we're an established omnichannel player.

What has not changed is our attention to and our dear love and focus on products. We are nerdy in terms of the right product functionality, the right innovation, the right functionality when it comes to products.

So turning into what Clas Ohlson is today. We actually describe ourselves as a product-led omnichannel retailer. And everything that we do is organized around 5 consumer missions. You're going to hear more about that today.

We're not organized around categories. We believe -- we don't think that customers and people wake up and think about a category, they wake up and think about the problem that they want solved. So we are really organized around needs and we have structured ourselves across those 5 consumer missions that are really there to solve problems and actually deliver on specific needs.

And each of those 5 missions, they target a very specific market niche. And we're going to come back to the niches and the market potential, but they're really designed in a way where we are needs-based and they span across tidy up & organise, light up & decorate, home comfort & prepping, tech connect & entertain and also fix & repair.

So let's now also look at how this then translates into the markets where we operate. So overall, we are in Nordic. We have a Nordic scalable platform. We operate approximately 250 stores. Today, 249, tomorrow, it's going to be 250 when we open in Söderhamn.

So we have a scalable platform with physical stores being present with in Norway, Finland, Sweden being the biggest market, Norway, growing quickly, approaching the same size as Sweden and Finland remains a very attractive opportunity.

On top of the physical store network, we now also have a digital ecosystem that helps us reach more customers outside of the home markets. But I think the important point here is that we're not dependent on one geography. We have multiple legs to stand on. And on top of the sales and the commercial focus, we also have expanded our footprint when it comes to sourcing and Anders will talk a little bit about that a little bit more about that later on.

So if we then look at the market that we are playing in, it's commercially very attractive. Across the 5 consumer missions, we have done this work to really dig deeper into the missions and the niches that they are representing. And our addressable market is SEK 350 billion across Sweden or Finland across those 5 areas.

It's also a market where we see underlying growth over the next few years, which is a bit more than 2% is the expectation. Yet our market share remains relatively low. So from our perspective, future growth does not rely on us having to invent completely new markets.

It actually requires us to continue being relevant with customers and consumers in the markets where we already operate and where we do have capability.

And also, we believe that the Nordic region provides really a strong ambition strong foundation for our ambition forward. The Nordics really combine a strong purchasing power. Its strong digital adoption, high expectations on service, high expectations on convenience.

And also, we believe and we see in our customer meeting that everybody is really expecting a seamless shopping experience across channels. Also, the Nordic consumers value trust, they value simplicity and they also value quality.

So all of these characteristics are areas that really we believe play to our strength as a company.

And over time, we have also built out the Clas Ohlson ecosystem over the last 4 years. So we have broadened our capabilities at the same time as we have stayed very, very focused. So while Clas Ohlson remains really the core of the group, we have also expanded our capabilities through both acquisitions and also organic development. And these capabilities, they really broaden our customer reach, our assortment capabilities and also they create opportunities for more synergies across the full group.

But I think the key thing here is that they are not separate strategies. It's really aimed at driving towards the same ambition, solving everyday needs for our customers.

And we believe that this creates several competitive strengths. And if you look at all of these strengths, it's -- we believe that it's really the combination of these strengths that are difficult to replicate. So the first area is that we have a broad assortment, but it's curated. It's focused on the multi niche strategy, and it's a good balance between external and own brands.

We also do have a very high degree of assortment renewal every year, and we'll talk much more about that. We do have a very attractive store network that is both available and it's also very accessible for customers. And we have a profitable, growing and strong online sales channel.

So together, those 2, of course, then drives our omnichannel availability. On top of that, we have a high priority on our customer meeting, and we are able to provide very qualified service to our customers. and everything leans on a very strong brand with broad appeal across a broad target group.

And we believe that looking at one of these individually is not that unique. It's really the compelling aspect is really the combination of all of these areas. And we also believe that this combination and those strengths put us in an attractive position within the market.

So the way we view it, we sit in between very established retail models. And most retail models are very focused across one dimension.

So price-led discounters, obviously, focus on price. Single niche specialists focus on depth in one area. Marketplaces, obviously, focus on breadth and DIY change, obviously, focus on projects. And -- our model really combines focus with service and accessibility and also scale. And we believe that creates a position that is actually increasingly difficult to replicate. And all of this into what is a fairly simple value creation model. It all starts from customer needs, deeply understanding customer needs which enables us across the 5 missions to develop a very relevant assortment.

That relevant assortment drives traffic through our omnichannel, which is very available and accessible. And that traffic drives high frequency, but it also builds a lot of scale, which might be counterintuitive, but we'll look more about that later on. We build a lot of scale through that traffic increase. With that comes strong returns. And with our capital discipline, we are then able to also produce a strong free cash flow that can be reinvested into driving further customer value.

And this is very much a reinforcing cycle. The model becomes stronger, the more we grow. And also looking back over the last 4 years, each of these areas, we have also strengthened, which really brings me into the main message of today. And it's pretty straightforward. We believe that Clas Ohlson is a structurally stronger company today than it used to be.

We have strengthened the business model with clearly differentiated -- would clearly differentiated value proposition. We have also strengthened our profitability and returns, and the updated financial targets are here to support continued profitable growth over the next few years.

And we have also built multiple growth engines. And I think the key thing is our confidence comes from the fact that it's not one initiative that's supposed to drive the totality. It's really the combination of many drivers working together. So let's move into how we have done developed over the last 4 years since the last Capital Markets Day.

So what we have talked about so far is obviously explaining the model. And the next section now will go a bit more into how the business has changed, why it's stronger and also why we believe that these improvements we have made, why we believe they are actually structural. So let's start with where the company stands today.

So over the last 4 years, we have not only grown, we have also improved the quality of the business. And now we'll go through the strategy operating model and then financial performance and look at how that has evolved. But let's begin with looking at what we said 4 years ago.

So the ambition was to start driving top line growth, more net sales, and we laid out an ambition to be above SEK 10 billion by fiscal year '24/'25. We talked about assortment development, digital and physical availability, customer base and also how we want to win in Finland.

Apart of that -- apart from that, we talked about our sustainability agenda, and we also updated our financial targets. So when we look at what has happened then over the last 4 years and when we compare ourselves to that base before we kicked off the transformation, I think it hopefully becomes clear that we see visible improvements across most of the key areas. We've grown sales significantly from approximately SEK 8.8 billion to now above SEK 10.5 billion.

We have improved our operating margin from 8.2% to 12.2%. We have grown our online sales. That has been a key priority from SEK 971 million to now above SEK 2.5 billion. We have expanded the assortment. We came out of a period of where the assortment was shrinking. So we have gone from approximately 12,000 to 17,000 products over those years.

We've also built out our store network. In the beginning, we closed a few stores. And since then, we have opened actually 30 new, but the net-net adds up to 249. And importantly, we have also significantly expanded our customer base with the Club Clas now having gone from 4.3 million to 6.2 million members.

And I believe that this is -- the key thing is this is not driven by 1 exceptional year. It's really been year after year of disciplined execution that have put us in this position. So today, the company is not only larger, we also believe that it's stronger. And the key thing is it's not happened by accident. The results that we see today are really driven by deliberate decisions that we have made and deliberate focus areas that we have worked with.

We have moved from a very broad assortment offering. We used to be seen as a bit of an everything store. Customers didn't really know when to go to Clas Ohlson, and we have focused in on our 5 consumer missions that I've talked about.

The second thing, apart from also expanding the assortment from 12,000 to 17,000 products, we have also renewed the assortment with 30% every year, which means we have launched 5,000 new products every year since we kicked this off. As a sign of -- as a proof point on the omnichannel retail side, we have also gone in terms of online sales as a percent of the total, it's gone from 11% to 21%.

And in the quarter we presented this morning, it's actually up to 24%. We've also done a lot of work to diversify our sourcing base. So in the past, we used to be very focused on the Nordics plus China, where we've been for a long time. Now we're actually covering 2 out of the 3 global sourcing corridors with own operations across 5 countries, and Anders will talk more about that.

At the same time, as doing those things, we have also lowered our cost base. As one indicator, if I look at the number of white collar FTE colleagues within the company, we are actually 35% fewer than we were 4 years ago. And we have kept that strict and we have kept that cost base intact. At the same time, despite the high degree of assortment renewal, expansion of new categories, we have also been able to deliver better and stronger capital discipline.

And we can see that in our return on capital employed that has gone from 17% to 34%. So I think each decision that we have made has been important, but it's also together that this fundamentally, I believe, has actually improved the quality of the business model. And looking at then the financial development, it also reflects just that. So historically, we've had years of good performance and -- but the pattern has been a bit scattered, as we can see here on the slide. Growth has fluctuated, margins have fluctuated, returns have fluctuated.

And over the last 4 years, the trajectory has become significantly more consistent. Our growth has accelerated. Our margins have improved. But also, I think the performance has become a bit more predictable. And this is really what we mean when we talk about becoming stronger.

So it's not about one exceptional year, it's about higher quality business. And I think that also becomes clear when you look at returns. And we actually believe that one of the clearest indicators of quality and quality growth is also the fact that we can actually drive a stronger return on capital employed.

And historically, the returns have varied significantly. Today, it's a different level. But I think also here, -- the key is not the numbers in itself, but it's really what we have done to drive that returns development. We've had a stronger operating model, as I said. We do have better assortment productivity despite the size of the assortment. We have higher margins.

We have improved inventory efficiency, and we'll see more about that later. And we also have much stricter capital discipline. And that's why we believe actually that return on capital employed deserves a more prominent role as we look at this forward. And I would almost describe it as we -- when we operate and work, this is more than just a financial target. It's a bit of a management philosophy to ensure that we drive high-value growth.

I think the other area that we can look at to just see also the consistency of delivery is the development that we have seen now over the last 37 months. As you know, we've had a growth target of 5% sales growth every year. And we have actually consistently delivered on this consecutively for 37 months in a row, and we just this morning reported the main number.

So I think the key thing is, again, just visualizing that it's not just 1 year, 1 month, 1 quarter, it's been consistently going in the right direction. This does not mean that we expect every single month of the next 36 months to look exactly like this, but it gives us the confidence that it's a bit more predictable and also that we are moving in the right direction.

And also importantly, looking then across the financial metrics, I think the good thing is it's not isolated to one metric. Over the last few years, we have consistently delivered at or above the financial targets we set out to deliver. So sales above target, profitability above target.

We have a strong cash position and a strong balance sheet, and we've also followed our dividend policy. And I think it's fair to say that our confidence is not built on ambition. It's really built on delivery and consistent delivery. That's really what we focus on. And hopefully, looking at the track record, that also demonstrates this.

At the same time, financial development is only one part of the story. We've also made meaningful progress when it comes to the work we have done on sustainability. We have significantly reduced emissions in our own operations. Our supplier compliance remains very high. But also here, the key thing is we're integrating sustainability into everything that we do into sourcing, assortment development, supplier management. And we really view sustainability as part of doing good business.

It also strengthens our resilience. It supports our customer trust and also it increasingly actually drives a lot of the decisions that we make across the sourcing network, across the value chain. And when we do this well, it also actually drives efficiency, and it also enables us to have more cost effectiveness.

Now all of these changes and that progress has happened in a fairly challenged environment. So the recent performance, we don't believe has been driven by an improved consumer sentiment. It's actually been pretty fragile across the Nordics over the last few years. While we have continued to grow, we have continued to improve margins. We have continued to gain relevance despite the market context. And this also gives us the confidence that the performance we see here today and that we have seen is very much driven by the things that we can control and influence ourselves.

That's really the core of the culture at Clas Ohlson. We work on things that we can influence, and we can see that also in a fairly fragile environment, we've been able to deliver on that. And it also leans back on the strength of the assortment, the strength of the brand and also the strength of the customer meeting and the service we're able to provide every day.

And ultimately, it comes down to the right people. And I actually think that one of the other strengths of Clas Ohlson is the company culture. And retail is obviously a people business, and our customer experience is delivered every day throughout our organization with more than 5,000 colleagues out there.

And what we can see today is a highly engaged organization. We have strong internal promotion rates. We also have a long employee tenure. Just as one example, 55% of all the store managers, almost 250 of them have been with Clas Ohlson for more than 10 years.

And looking at the engagement rate of eNPS 38, the global retail average is around 15. So we believe that this is also a strong number. And we don't think these are soft metrics. They actually translate into the customer service and the customer experience. It translates into productivity and executional quality. And we also believe that culture is pretty hard to just replicate.

And I think if you put this in combination with what I mentioned before, with a leaner overhead, I also think that with fewer people and this high engagement, I think we're really creating real talent density as we now also move ahead. And this culture has also enabled us to be more focused. And instead of talking more about the culture, I just wanted to show a short clip. This is not produced for today.

It's a compilation of a few short internal videos just to give you a bit of the sense of what we see across the organization.

[Presentation]

And when I move around the company, I really truly see this everywhere, wherever I go, wherever I go to any of the offices, stores, our distribution center. It's really truly genuine drive, it's genuine leadership and also genuine energy. And I always reflect on that every time I've worked in one of our stores, which I do every year, I always ask the colleagues, are the customers always this happy?

And if someone has worked somewhere else, they say, no, it's actually not that common, but people come in with a smile. They expect this when you come to Clas Ohlson. And I do believe actually that is pretty unique. What I also think that the culture is doing is really driving focus for us.

And I think this has been one of the most important areas across the last few years. We've really deliberately gone after becoming much more focused. So as I also talked about, I think we have gone deeper into fewer but relevant customer needs and focused in on those. And historically, maybe we have been a bit focused on too many needs and not really making the biggest difference across all of them.

So today, we are, as I talked about bill, winning through carefully selected consumer missions. It's really making us into a destination now across those. The organization is much more focused because of that, we're not trying to do everything. We're doing fewer things. And it also enables strong customer service because you have to be an expert in slightly fewer things, but we can go deeper into those expertise areas.

And I think that creates relevance. It creates expertise. And really for us, the objective is not to have the largest assortment. The objective is to have the most relevant assortment for our customers. And I think that is an important distinction. And focus, I think, is also the same philosophy holds through when we look at acquisitions. And the acquisitions we have done have followed the same logic. We're not trying to acquire to just diversify.

We are acquiring businesses that can strengthen ourselves in our prioritized consumer missions and also that can help us evolve and develop our capabilities across the organization. So the businesses you can see here, the 3 companies we've acquired over the last 4 years, Spares, Phonelife, Reservdelaronline.

It helps us to deepen the expertise into carefully selected niches. It helps expand our assortment. It increases our digital reach. They are all digital native companies pure online players. And also it has helped us to really drive relevance across categories where we have already seen attractive opportunities, but where we are not able to give the same breadth. If you add this all up we have access to more than 200,000 products on top of the 17,000 products that we carry today.

Of course, this creates a lot of synergy opportunities. We're already pursuing a lot of areas where we look at common joint sourcing, customer insights, assortment development, customer relationship development, et cetera. So I'll talk more about that later.

So M&A remains a tool for Clas Ohlson, but it's not the strategy. It's a tool. It's not a strategy and I'll talk more about that. And also just looking a little bit, we can also see that the results are becoming visible. This is one example of Spares that we acquired 2.5 years ago. And since we acquired Spares, obviously, the main focus for us has been the business-to-consumer part of Spares.

B2B has been a bit more volatile for external reasons. But looking purely at the business-to-consumer development, we have seen a 25% net sales CAGR since we acquired Spares.

So also when it comes to profitability remains very attractive. And this also gives us a platform to start expanding to new markets, learning new things for the future. So over the last few years, we have taken Batteriexperten, which is one of the brands into Denmark, launched into Finland and we're just, as we speak launching Batteriexperten into both Poland and the Netherlands.

And what I think is also encouraging here is not only the growth in itself, but it's also the quality of growth. It's asset-light, it's digital, and it's also very specialized. So we're not trying to solve everything, but we go really, really deep into these niches. And importantly it's also complementary to Clas Ohlson is today, but it's deeply rooted in the same needs that we're able to solve in a new way.

And this gives us a source of optionality also as we look forward so this brings me back a little bit to the main message. And before discussing now a bit more about the future ambition.

Let's briefly summarize a little bit. So first of all, we believe that we are structurally stronger. We have a stronger operating model. We have a stronger customer proposition and we have a stronger balance sheet, and we have stronger returns. And I think the key thing here is also that we have built multiple growth engines. We're not relying on one silver bullet to solve everything for us to and that's what we'll also move into.

And I think we've also demonstrated the ability to execute consistently. So that's the foundation for what the next phase then is based on. So let's then turn into the financial framework that we have guiding us now moving forward. And I think one of the most important lessons for us over the last few years is that growth and discipline must really go hand in hand.

And that's why we have also formalized a structured capital allocation framework. And our first priority is always to invest in the core business, invest in our assortment, our brand, our customer meeting and then, of course, the supporting infrastructure to enable that, i.e., both logistics and IT, et cetera.

The second area is, of course, selective growth investments where we can do store expansion when we see that the returns justify the investment. We can also do rebuilds. We'll talk a bit more about that later, but we have done a lot of rebuilds, and that's a big opportunity for us.

We can also do selective M&A when we see and if we see that there's an opportunity to strengthen ourselves in one of the prioritized consumer missions or if it builds out our core capability. And finally, we will return excess capital to our shareholders. So that's a very simple framework, but it helps us to drive clarity. It helps us to drive discipline.

And importantly, it also ensures that growth never comes at the expense of returns. Because as I said before, the objective is not just to become bigger, it's also to become -- it's to drive more value per share over time. And that philosophy is then what sits behind the updated financial targets that we are introducing today. So with that, I'll welcome my colleague, Pernilla, on stage to talk a bit more about the updated financial targets.

After a couple of years of strong performance, we are now raising the target to support a disciplined profitable growth over time. The last time we updated our financial targets was in 2022 when we raised the profitability target to a range of 7% to 9%.

As you already know, we have reached and overdelivered versus that target for some time now. So with the new target, we are clearly stating that we are structurally stronger and more focused company than we were when the previous target were introduced.

So looking at our new financial targets, we have decided to keep our growth target 5% organic growth per year. Even if we have been on higher growth figures recently, we believe that this is a good level and a level that will compound over time to an attractive pace if we manage to deliver on this target year in and year out.

Please also note that we are talking about organic growth and growth from acquisition is -- potential acquisition is not included. We are extremely committed of driving like-for-like and at the same time, making sure that we can drive growth without compromising on profitability, which leads me to our next financial target.

With a new operating margin target of around 12%, we indicate that we believe that we can maintain the strong performance from recent years with a solid growth and a solid operating margin. We also indicate that the company has structurally improved and therefore, can deliver at a higher level compared to most others in the industry.

The wording around is very deliberate as we are now leaving our target range, meaning that we still need some flexibility, both upwards and downwards, but at the same time, being very clear on what we are aiming for. Besides adjusting a profitability target, we have also decided to introduce a new target, Return on Capital Employed.

We believe that this is a relevant KPI for capital discipline for Clas Ohlson. And speaking about the disciplined capital allocation, we have also decided to keep a dividend policy as is, meaning that dividends are to comprise at least 50% of earnings per share after tax with consideration to the financial position.

Perhaps even more important than the target themselves, I would like to highlight some of the factors that makes us confident in resilient 5% organic growth. Firstly, just as Kristofer mentioned before, we are addressing a growing market. Right now, we expect 2.4% compound annual growth rate at our selected product niches in the years to come.

We have also shown that we are capable of driving like-for-like through assortment renewal, which we intend to continue doing. We also plan to continue opening stores at a balanced pace, and we see further potential to -- for our online offering to continue growing faster compared to total growth.

In addition, we have more tools to utilize the potential to grow by adding additional product niches and selective M&As that over time can contribute to our organic growth. It's worth remembering that 5% today is very different from 5% 4 years ago.

We are a significantly larger company today. Maintaining the same growth rate from a much larger base requires substantially more value creation every year. We believe that 5% remains achievable with still allowing us a balance both profitability and capital efficiency.

Yes. And thank you, Pernilla. So moving into operating margin. I think here, as for sales, actually, it's not dependent on one single lever. It's really a combination of structural advantages that we see interacting to ensure that we will deliver around 12% also in the next 3 years. So first of all, when it comes to cost discipline and lean overhead, we've already showed that we are able to make the changes to become more cost effective.

And the key thing is for us to ensure that we maintain the discipline of not scaling cost as we grow. And we have done that so far, and we're going to commit to be really committed and disciplined also there forward.

The second thing is on the purchasing platform. We have growing scale. But also as we will hear more about, we have a much more diversified sourcing platform, which gives us a lot of opportunities to also drive margin from a sourcing point of view.

And third, we also see opportunities to drive group synergies with the acquisitions we have made, there are opportunities to work closer together and driving synergies that way.

And fourth, we also benefit from a very strong brand. So with a strong brand comes marketing efficiency, lower cost of acquisition. So every krona that we spend in marketing will produce and work for us harder given the strength of the brand. So maintaining that is critical. Also when it comes to omnichannel, it's key.

The stores strengthen our e-commerce, our e-commerce strengthen our stores. And together, it really becomes a profitable proposition. So evolving that further is also a critical area. And then we also continue to work on our assortment economics. Here, obviously, with private label development is a key focus area for us.

And with private labels, we drive diversification, we drive uniqueness, but it's obviously also a gross margin and a margin driver. And finally, we also do a lot of things to drive excellence across pricing and campaign. So not by doing massive price increases, but really working analytically, working with our category management in a smart way to ensure that we're always priced at the right way for our customers, but also to optimize our margin profile.

So I think the key thing is none of these are dependent on a specific economic cycle. They are really focused on things we can influence ourselves. And we also believe that these areas are now structural and a structural part of the company, and they are within our own control.

So of course, profitability is important, but profitability alone doesn't drive value. We also want to ensure that we convert profits into returns. So with that, I'll hand back to you, Pernilla to talk a bit more about.

Thank you, Kristofer. So moving on to the completely new financial target, return on capital employed. I would like to start by underlying that our business model is efficient and asset-light and that we have demonstrated strong discipline in how we allocate our capital.

We have [pole graded] speed and accuracy in forecasting strictly return requirements on all investments. We don't have any factories of our own, but instead, we have good relationship with our suppliers, just to mention a few examples. Combined with a strong operating margin, we get a high return on capital employed, and we intend to keep it that way.

With a target of around 30% return on capital employed, we aimed for maintain discipline capital allocation. Sales margin and return on capital is interact in a good way and help us to ensure discipline in investments throughout the company. The return on capital help us to ensure that growth and margins are not achieved with excess capital.

At the same time, as we are introducing a new target, we have also decided to remove our target net debt-to-EBITDA ratio below 2. This should not be seen as a sign that we intend to start building debt. The reason is simply that we don't see this target as relevant where we are as a company right now.

As you can see on the slide, we have not been near 2x limit and with the new ROCE target, starting increasing debt is not on the table. When it comes to a dividend policy, we have decided to leave it as is, distributing at least 50% of earnings per share after tax. We believe that this is well balanced between distributing to shareholders, but at the shareholders, but at the same time, being able to invest in future growth.

From a historical perspective, we have distributed all profit, sometimes more. But in recent years, we have first and foremost, been committed to increasing earnings per share and in that way, enabling a growing dividend. As you may have seen already, the Board proposed a dividend of SEK 9.25 per share for the financial year '25-'26.

Being disciplined in capital allocation is a key priority. Additional distribution can be considered when capital exceed attractive investment opportunities. So therefore, the Board also proposed an extra dividend of SEK 4.75 this year.

So all in all, these are our updated financial targets, 5% organic sales growth, around 12% operating margin, around 30% return on capital employed per year. Our dividend policy will leave as is, as I just explained. We look at this as a clear signal of us committing to disciplined profitable growth and to maintain a performance on a very competitive level. We are also updating our climate target, isn't that right, Kristofer?

Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much, Pernilla. Yes. So before moving into the growth opportunity, let's also briefly touch on our sustainability targets. And as I've already said, sustainability is obviously completely embedded into the strategy of Clas Ohlson and the way we work.

But the climate targets per se are also validated by the science-based target initiative, which is obviously good because it creates external credibility and also a clear framework of how we decrease emissions over time. But the key thing here is that sustainability remains a key focus and is embedded in the Clas Ohlson strategy.

We do work to make the life of our customers better every single day. And we also have a proposition where we sell high-quality products that will work for a long time. And we also offer a huge spare part assortment, repairs to extend the product life cycle of the product. So it's not only about reducing footprint, it's always about constantly evolving a more sustainable business model.

And if we do all of these things well, it's going to help us on also the customer proposition side. And also, as alluded to before, it's also going to make us use our resources overall more effectively. So with that, quickly reconnecting as we move into the next stage.

So we believe we are structurally stronger. We have sharpened the business model. We have improved our profitability. We have delivered stronger returns. And we've also now introduced a framework to help us continue that journey forward to drive disciplined but also profitable growth with high returns going forward.

And I think the key thing that gives us confidence is that it's not going to be one single factor driving this. It's really the combination of different levers, combination of different growth initiatives that gives us the confidence to continue forward. So that's why we believe that the financial target is a good framework to continue this.

So to more specifically then frame what will drive growth as we now look ahead, I think the key thing is and the most important area is that we do see significant room to grow. I've already talked about the SEK 350 billion as addressable market, our relatively modest market shares across those 5 market niches.

We have a very strong brand awareness. We only have 25% of the population being members of Club Clas, and we see that the more -- we have been able to grow that, and we have also seen a higher activity rate with the members. But the key thing is also we do not, with the targets we're setting ourselves, aim at unrealistic market share gains.

And also, we don't need to invent completely new categories, invent new markets. It's really about continuously playing from our strengths while being innovative and continuously evolving ourselves moving forward. So we believe that is an attractive starting point. And to lay it out into a bit more of a structured framework, here are the levers that we want to pull and that we're going to work with that also relies on the competitive strengths of Clas Ohlson.

First one, obviously, being assortment. We know that we are a product company that are here to develop products that fulfill specific needs of our customers. We're going to continue working with our assortment renewal. We have an opportunity. We have 5 consumer missions today. We have an opportunity to expand and add more niches and more missions.

We also see a big opportunity of continuously evolving the work we do on private labels. And as I alluded to before, group synergies and pricing campaign remains important.

Second thing on the brand, again, marketing efficiency comes out of the strength of the brand, but we also have seen over the last few years how much we have broadened the target audience, and Helena will talk more about that. We also now have some other strong brand assets across the Clas Ohlson Group. So those together with our private labels will also represent an opportunity for us to continue to expand.

And when it comes to the customer meeting, we will continue to evolve the store network, both with new stores and rebuilds, and we're going to continue to drive the e-com penetration, which supports then the very profitable omnichannel offering that we have. And then the customer-centric culture is obviously a requirement to make all of these things come alive.

On top of this, we also have additional growth levers and M&A can be a way to strengthen ourselves in one of the selected product niches. But as I said before, it's a tool. It's not a strategy in itself. And also the operational efficiency remains a critical focus area for us to ensure that we can scale without driving cost.

So again, we're not dependent on one growth engine. We have a lot of levers to pull from. And if we do that well while maintaining discipline, there is a lot of growth to be had. So in the next section, we will go deeper into each of those 3 areas, assortment, brand and customer meeting. But before we do that, we will take a short break, 25-minute break starting now. So let's have some coffee and mingle, and then we'll see each other back in 25 minutes.

[Break]

Okay. Welcome back, everybody here in the room, and welcome back to everybody online. So now we will continue with the second half of today. And now we will go deeper into how we intend to leverage now the competitive strengths that we have spent some time explaining. And the first step is really digging deeper into our assortment development. So with that, I will welcome my colleague, Anders, up on stage.

Hi, everyone. I'm very happy to be here today to share some insights to assortment and sourcing at Clas Ohlson. But before we move into the more details in the A in our ABC, meaning the assortment, I would like to share an overview of the addressable market in the Nordics.

And as you've heard before the coffee break from Kristofer and also Pernilla, we operate in a very large and attractive market, which we estimate to SEK 350 billion. We're growing at approximately 2.4% estimated the coming years between 2025 and 2029.

But what is more important is that our market shares remain very modest across most categories. That means that the future growth opportunity is not only in the market itself, but it's also dependent on our ability to continue gaining market share. And if we look at the categories more individually, we see different type of opportunities.

So fix and repair being the largest segment is estimated to be more than SEK 141 billion, and that includes categories within lawn and garden, for example, but it is excluding building materials, which can typically be found at DIY retailers. And at the same time, in this category, we only have 2% market share. So even a small market gain -- market share gain in this category could translate into significant growth for Clas Ohlson.

Home comfort and prepping is the fastest-growing segment with a CAGR of 4% in this period or expected CAGR. And this reflects several structural trends we see in the Nordics, including energy efficiency, air quality at home, preparedness in general, also called prepping and also an increasing interest in smarter and more self-sufficient homes.

In categories like tidy up & organise and also light up &decorate, we already hold stronger positions with a market share around 7%. And for certain categories, Carls Ohlson is actually -- or holding the first position when it comes to mental availability when asking consumers. And lighting is one of those. Other strong categories are kitchen and personal care. And these are areas where we believe our brand assortment and customer relevance are particularly strong.

And then finally, adjacent segments illustrates that there is still substantial room to expand also in nearby -- or nearby customer needs over time. Of course, we see good potential in Tech, connect & entertain as well. And as you can see, we have slightly higher market share in that category and also a slightly higher CAGR than average.

So the overall key takeaway is that we see a combination of large markets, a positive structural growth and still relatively low market share for Clas Ohlson. So combined with our strong Nordic brand, our omnichannel model and our ability to continuously renew the assortment, based on changing customer needs, we believe that this creates headroom for continued profitable growth.

So the overall flow behind how we renew and develop the assortment at Clas Ohlson can, in short, be divided into 3 steps. So we start with what we call trend sensing. That's a data-driven approach where we continuously identify trends. We look at customer behaviors and we look for new product opportunities. And while doing that, we also, of course, then assess the commercial potential.

From there, we move on to what we call experimenting. This is where we test products quickly and cheaply. Often in limited channels or volumes, and that is done to learn fast from real customer demand. And then finally, we move into scaling. And this is where products that demonstrate strong demand, profitability and long-term potential will be scaled up through broader distribution, optimized sourcing and increased investments.

So in simple terms, we sense trends, we test fast and we scale what works. And what you see on this slide is the logic behind how we think about assortment renewal at Clas Ohlson. With a wide assortment now ranging to more than 17,000 SKUs and a 30% renewal rate annually.

This is, of course, one of the absolute key focus areas for us. At its core, this is about balancing stability with speed. Traditionally, retail has been very forecast driven. So you predict the demand upfront. You then commit to quite large production volumes and then you optimize for low unit costs.

And that is a model that works very well for stable demand and long life cycles. And that is actually a model that works very well for us as well, and that is important for us. But a purely forecast-driven model can also create a very conservative assortment where the cost of being wrong can be very high and change happens very slowly.

So what we are building instead is a hybrid model. So for our proven core assortment, we continue to focus on forecasting excellence, replenishment and scale efficiency. Alongside that, we increasingly apply a more experimentation-driven approach for selected parts of the assortment. And the principle is, I would say, simple.

So instead of trying to be right from the start, we place many small bets, testing both new products and category opportunities quickly and cost effectively. And then we scale what proves to be successful. That means using low minimum order quantities, flexible sourcing, sometimes simplified packaging and limited rollouts, often online first or in selected number of stores.

And if we then get signals on strong demand, we would scale the volumes, we would optimize the sourcing and then gradually transition successfully -- successful products into our core assortment. So at the same time, weak performers are quickly removed.

And this is one of several reasons why we have been able to expand the assortment from 12,000 SKUs to 17,000 SKUs, almost a 40% increase without increasing the inventory in absolute terms. And Stefan will present that later on in more detail.

So this creates a continuous renewal engine where products and categories earn their place in the assortment based on real customer demand, not upfront assumptions. And importantly, we do not apply the same governance model for all type of product decisions. So test products and category initiatives, they require less upfront approval and process, but a tighter post-launch evaluation. And that allows us to move faster while maintaining a very strict discipline on both profitability and capital efficiency. And those 2 metrics are extremely important for me, my teams and I would say, Clas Ohlson as a company.

So over time, we believe this really creates several advantages. So one, it creates or increases the customer relevance because the assortment adapts faster to changing customer demands and trends. It improves capital efficiency because risk is spread across many smaller experiments instead of a few larger bets.

And it also actually increases innovation capacity because -- without -- because we can do that without driving wide assortment expansions. So quiet discipline, I would say. So ultimately, this is about combining the strength of 2 different operating models, the efficiency and stability of a strong core assortment and together with the speed and adaptability of a modern experimentation engine. Let me now move to sourcing, which is a very critical capability for -- behind both our margin development and also securing resilience now and forward.

So over the last few years, we have significantly expanded our global sourcing footprint by opening new sourcing offices outside China. Still, we are less people today than we were in mid-2022 when we look at the sourcing organization globally. And today, we cover 2 of the 3 sourcing corridors through offices and sourcing capabilities in the Nordics, in Poland, China, Vietnam, India and now most recently, Turkey in this year.

So this gives us direct access to a much larger supply market and a significantly larger supply base. And that is strategically important for several reasons. So first, it improves speed. Being closer to suppliers and production markets makes or enables faster decision-making, shorter lead times, improved time to market, but we also aim to source closer to our selling markets in order to benefit from lower transportation costs, improved working capital efficiency, of course, and also some sustainability benefits.

And second, we think this strengthened our resilience because we are actively working to identify alternative suppliers, both for new and existing products. And by diversifying our sourcing across multiple regions, we reduce the dependency on individual countries and by that, mitigates both geopolitical and operational risks, at least to some extent when it comes to geopolitical risks.

And at the same time, the broader supply base creates stronger opportunities for benchmarking and competitive tendering, which contributes to continued margin improvement over time. And I can tell you that competition between suppliers is by far the best lever to use if you want to have a strong margin development over time. So we will continue to work on that.

Product quality and compliance also, of course, then remains a critical priority for us. I think this becomes even more important when we have new actors entering the market with, let's say, sometimes less focus on quality and compliance. And we work continuously and systematically to ensure high product quality and very strict compliance processes, and that is done all in-house with our own engineers, technicians and specialists. And in addition, we receive, I would say, in average, 150,000 reviews per quarter, product reviews from our customers.

I saw this morning that we had 90,000 last quarter, but typically, it's more than 100,000. And we actively analyze these reviews and use the insights to both improve the product quality and improve our internal processes as well. And finally, innovation remains also a very critical capability within sourcing.

So while we are expanding our footprint outside China, China still is in the league when it comes to innovation, product development capabilities and to a large extent, also manufacturing ecosystems like raw material, et cetera. And that goes for most of our categories, to be honest.

So that is why we maintain a strong team and a very strong presence in China through our sourcing office in Shanghai, where we today manage more than 500 suppliers. And some 600 factories to, I think. So overall, our sourcing strategy is not about replacing one sourcing market with another. It's about building a more diversified, flexible and resilient sourcing platform, one that supports speed, innovation, risk management and, of course, long-term margin expansion simultaneously.

And finally, a few words about our assortment from a brand perspective. And you can see on the right-hand side, our own brands and on the left-hand side, a few examples of external brands that we offer today. So at Clas Ohlson, we believe in maintaining a healthy and deliberate balance between private label brands and strong external brands.

Our own brands are important because they allow us to differentiate products and also strengthen margins. At the same time, the well-known external brands remain a very important part of our customer offering. And brands such as Apple, Bosch, Philips, P&G and Husqvarna, for example, they help strengthen our customer trust. They increase relevance, and they ensure that customers can find both innovation and leading products within important categories. In addition, external brands typically support high inventory turnover and a very strong capital efficiency, which both, of course, then contributes very positively to our return on capital employed over time.

But we also see significant future potential for continue to develop our own brands further. And today, many of these products receive very, very strong customer ratings, and they are recognized for combining high quality with very much price for -- or strong value for money, sorry.

And following recent acquisitions within the group, we are also expanding the portfolio of brands across the group. And this creates additional opportunities, both for knowledge sharing, for synergies and new commercial opportunities within the group and between the companies.

So this is not an either/or strategy. We see the combination of prospect global brands and our strong private labels, and that creates a real competitive advantage that enables us to offer both value, innovation and the proper range in the assortment. All of this while maintaining both flexibility and profitability over time.

And on this slide, you see a quite wide mix of products, some recent or upcoming products is not, I would say, rocket science. It's very, very basic stuff, and that's the idea. So what is important is to note the breadth of our assortment. We focus on everyday needs and practical solutions across multiple customer missions or consumer missions rather than relying on a few seasonal trends, for example.

And this helps us maintain a relevant assortment throughout the year with limited dependency on things like weather, for example. So we think we have a very strong all-weather all year-round portfolio. So basically, we help consumers fix whatever needs to be fixed. Yes.

Thank you very much, Anders. And hopefully, that was a helpful sneak peek behind the curtain when it comes to the renewal engine of our assortment. So that's the first competitive strength that we're going to be leveraging further moving forward. And now we're going to be moving into the next one, which is all about our brand and also our expanding customer base. So to present that, I welcome my colleague, Helena, up on stage.

All right. Hi, everyone. It's really a privilege to represent and talk about the Clas Ohlson brand here today, one of our most important assets. Across Sweden, Norway and Finland, we have built a strong level of awareness and consumer trust over decades. In the region today, we have a total awareness of around 85%.

And for a company like ours, this is, of course, enormously important. We operate in categories where purchase decisions might be unplanned. They're highly habit driven, but mostly they're need-driven. And being top of mind in these decisions whenever a consumer needs lighting, storage, batteries or really any type of problem-solving product, that is a key competitive advantage.

But pushing awareness alone, though, that will really not move the needle for us. That's not enough. So what really matters is being mentally available in the right purchase situations and for the right category entry points. And for Clas Ohlson, those are our 5 consumer missions, as Anders and Kristofer talked about here before.

So that is -- so when consumers think about organizing their kitchen, fixing or repairing something, upgrading their mobile device or well, simply solving something that is a pain point in their everyday life, that is where we want to be the #1 destination. And this is strategically important because our addressable market, it's large, and it's also fragmented across many everyday categories.

But the more often consumers naturally associate Clas Ohlson with our chosen consumer missions, then the greater our opportunity becomes to drive more traffic, increase shopping frequency and build market share over time. So if you look at the chart on the right, you can see that our mental availability for our 5 consumer missions has strengthened over the last 3 years across all of our markets.

And in other words, that means that consumers are -- well, they're increasingly thinking about Clas Ohlson in more situations and for a broader range of needs. Norway remains our strongest market from a brand perspective. And what this figure here really means is that 69% of the Norwegian population are spontaneously mentioning Clas Ohlson when asked upon where to go in -- when in need of things related to any of our 5 missions.

So we're protecting also our very strong position in Sweden. And in Finland, we see the relatively highest growth, but coming from a lower base. And this development, it's important because when you combine a trusted and well-liked and well-known brand with growing mental availability and a broad and relevant assortment, as Anders talked about, products that people actually need and want to buy, then you create strong marketing efficiency.

And that means basically that every krona that we invest in marketing are giving us a lot of business back in terms of, well, lower cost of acquisition, obviously, higher conversion rates, larger traffic volumes, higher conversion rates, basket sizes goes up. That is really what our commercial engine that media marketing is for us. That's how it works.

Our position also gives us a lot of resilience. We've seen that not least, I mean, given the last few years in the Nordics where we have experienced a tougher consumer environment that Clas Ohlson as a trusted and familiar brand really tend to win.

So I'd really like to point this out that we are not just -- I mean, Clas Ohlson is not just a well-known retailer, but we have built consumer trust consistently over decades, really. And it is a combination of things that makes the uniqueness of our brand, strong value for money. We talked about that before, reliable quality, a consistent customer experience and, of course, everyday relevance.

Customers -- I mean, they know that our colleagues in store and in customer service will help them to land and informed decision on what product to buy. And hopefully, they will be very happy with that purchase, and they will use and they will like that product, and it will serve the purpose for them, hopefully, over a long time.

And they would also know that we have the right quality, but if a spare part would be needed, that would also be available in any of our stores. And you saw the video also earlier, and I hope that you here and everyone in the webcast as well, I mean, are familiar with that description that you can actually feel that when you enter any of our touch points that, I mean, people expect to be met with a smile, and we deliver upon that year in, year out and day in, day out.

We see it every day. So all of these things in total make the Clas Ohlson brand well, not only unique, but also durable and our customer meeting very difficult to replicate. And that creates advantages in both in terms of growth and in terms of marketing efficiency.

Our second structural advantage is our customer ecosystem and loyalty program, Club Clas. We have approximately 6.2 million members today that was also mentioned before across all other markets. And this gives us a very strong foundation to truly understand consumer behavior and doing so at scale.

And importantly, it's not just a database. I would like to be very clear on that, but it's a highly active and highly relevant customer base. And as an example, we have 9 out of 10 customers making a purchase at least once a year being then active on a rolling 12-month basis.

And on average, a customer makes around 5 purchases a year with Clas Ohlson. In addition, we have around 70% of total sales being member registered purchases. And I would say that is a lot for retail. And again, that gives us a rich understanding which we can leverage both across, well, categories analysis, obviously, but also channels and life stages. And this gives us the opportunity to continuously improve across several areas. Anders you talked about that before in terms of assortment relevance and assortment development, but also our communication, campaign efficiency and the overall customer meeting.

Over the last 3 years, we have grown the member base with a CAGR of around 7%. So we're, at the same time, growing the base, we're increasing the quality of customer data, and we're improving our ability to all the time act upon these insights in various ways.

Because, again, the better we understand the customer, the more relevant we can become. And I think relevance is the point I'm trying to make here, whether that is through assortment recommendations, improving our communication, more precise campaigns or a more seamless omnichannel experience.

So it's more than a traditional loyalty program, It's becoming a core commercial capability and the true part of our marketing and commercial engine, supporting again, both growth, retention and efficiency across all of our business. Clas Ohlson, we have a very diverse customer base. Historically, the typical Clas Ohlson customer was more concentrated around a fairly more traditional profile, typically male, middle-aged living in a house, owned a car.

And that customer group, that remains very important to us still. They're highly loyal, highly valuable to us. But over time and over these last few years, we have significantly been able to, well, broaden the relevance of both the brand and also the assortment.

So today, our customer base is much more diverse across age and gender, life stages, housing and -- well, other types of life situations. And we now see very strong representation amongst younger consumers families, but also customers living in more urban apartments.

We have a close to 50-50 split today in the base, looking into house -- between house and apartment living, and we have slightly more female than male customers overall. And I'd like to point this out because this evolution is strategically important for Clas Ohlson because it expands the addressable market, but it also reduces dependency quite significantly into -- or on any single customer segment.

So what we conclude at least is that we are fulfilling much more consumer needs now than we did before and that those needs, they have a broader appeal and that they apply to a broader demographic. We see that younger customers are growing faster than the overall base. And that is that we are attracting new generations of customers and doing so early in life because our customers then move through different life stages.

They are moving houses. They're hopefully having children renovating, organizing or, well, keeping themselves busy with different fashion projects, then many of those needs align very well with our assortment.

We also see that newer members tend to be or have more -- a stronger digital shopping behavior, which supports our omnichannel development and that road map, which Lene will talk a bit more about later. But to conclude, we see a customer base that is becoming increasingly broad, increasingly relevant, but it's also picked up for the future.

My next point would be that we are not just only growing the customer base, but we're also increasingly able to grow customer value over time. And what you see here in this chart, it's the development of the Club Clas members -- member base over the last 3 years, but it's broken down into recruitment cohorts.

So what becomes very clear here is the strength of retention that Club Clas members and our customers, they tend to stay with us. They stay with Clas Ohlson. And as an example, we have a large majority of customers who made registered purchases in 2023, who were still active making purchases last year in '25.

And roughly 30% of our member base account for close to 60% of registered sales.

And what we can see in this core group is, well, of course, they reflect both high engagement. They engage with us in all of our channels. They have strong shopping frequency, but they're also characterized by the fact that they are exploring our whole assortment breadth.

They do shop within many of our categories. And again, for them, Clas Ohlson seems to be the #1 destination for multiple everyday needs within our 5 consumer missions.

At the same time, we continue adding, well, new members every year, which means the overall base keeps expanding, while retention again remains strong. So this combination is very powerful.

Another important driver behind retention is customer satisfaction. We continue to maintain a very strong Net Promoter Score of around 56, and we are solid on Trustpilot scores of around 4.3, 4.4. And that's primarily driven again by strong service, trusted quality and assortment relevance. So overall, we see a customer base that remains highly active. We are continuing to grow through new members, but also by strengthening the relationships with our existing ones. We truly believe that we have only started to unlock the full value of our customer base.

Continued growth for Clas Ohlson is not solely dependent on new customer acquisition. And I think that's an important point to make because with more than 6 million members and high activity levels, only very small behavioral improvements in either direction makes a big business impact on the total.

And there are, of course, multiple levers to explore here when trying to steer existing customers towards more profitable behavior.

But to mention a few, the first one being assortment exploration. We have a major opportunity to help customers continuously discover our whole range. The second, to increase purchase frequency and basket value. We have potential to become even more embedded in consumers' lives.

As they explore more of our missions, they find us more relevant for more missions to explore more categories we believe there is potential to have customers interacting with us even more frequently. And the third lever being omnichannel engagement. We know that customers who shop with us in both physical and digital channels, they demonstrate both higher engagement, but also a higher customer lifetime value. And we will continue to improve that seamless customer experience across channels.

And at the same time, of course, attract new customers and build the base across the whole -- all of our markets. And -- well, finally, what gives us confidence in pursuing this opportunity is really the combination of where I started out with a strong, trusted, well-known, very well-liked brand, a strong team, engaged customers with increasingly -- well, displaying omnichannel behavior, strong capabilities within customer insights and working data-driven, leveraging all available technology there is in doing so and an assortment, of course, that remains relevant.

So we believe we have a strong and resilient customer platform that will help us continue to grow both the business and customer value going forward, but there is more potential ahead. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Helena, for giving more flavor to all the work going on in terms of our brand and our customer base. And then we will move into the third competitive strength that we're going to be leveraging even further moving forward, and that's our omnichannel customer meeting. So with that, I will welcome up my colleagues, Lene and the Stefan. So welcome up on stage.

So as previously mentioned, our business model really makes us different from our competitors. And you can see that in how we engage with our customers and where they choose to meet us. We have built a solid network of stores with city locations and shopping centers and around 85% of our stores are located in these areas.

At the same time, we are present in selected retail parks. And thanks to our footprint across the Nordics, most customers are located close to a Clas Ohlson store. We're in attractive locations with high traffic and strong neighboring brands. But what really makes the difference is our service. We focus on customer missions and our store teams are genuinely passionate about our products.

This allows us to deliver strong service over time. All our 3,800 store employees are trained to guide customers, and we invest continuously in building both product knowledge and deep understanding of the problems our products are designed to solve. As a result of this, we consistently deliver strong NPS scores over time.

We built a knowledge base in our stores that customers truly value, and we keep investing in that expertise as well as in personal customer interaction. That's obviously a clear competitive advantage for us. At the same time, we are very disciplined on costs. We're committed to maintaining a lean overhead. And one important reason for that is to make sure that our stores are properly staffed, so there's always someone there to help customers.

Our store format is flexible, but built on a consistent concept. Our sweet spot is around 1,000 square meters, which allows us to offer a full assortment of 10,000 to 11,000 articles. When locations vary in size, we simply adapt. We're continuously also upgrading our stores, and we clearly see that sales -- we clearly see sales uplift after renovations.

That's why in addition to opening new stores, we are investing even more in upgrading the ones we already have. Finland is a good example of this. We upgraded store there to better align our assortment with the customer needs, and we're seeing strong results.

Over the past 4 years, we renovated around 50 stores, and we plan to increase the pace by another 50 in the next 3 years. At the same time, we will continue opening new stores at around 10 per year. And now if we move further to e-commerce. We built a strong e-commerce channel that reaches customers, expands our assortment and drives profitable growth. A key part of this is our web-only range, which allows us to move faster, both in terms of innovation and testing. We can launch new products online without the space limitations of physical stores, which means we can quickly see what works and scale it.

Our endless aisle also plays an important role. It increases both the size and the relevance of our assortment. It allows us to go both deeper and broader in our categories than we can in stores alone.

Tech and accessories are good examples here. To be a leader in this space, you need a wide range. And that's clasohlson.com we offer exactly that. On top of this, we further strengthened our offer by the different online companies in the group, which offers another tens of thousands of products.

We can also offer a broader price range online by including premium products, we increase the average transaction value and profitability. In fact, ATV online is 3x higher than in stores, supported by the strong brand mentioned earlier.

Our online store is not just a place to buy, it become a key part of the customer journey. Customers use it to explore products, find inspiration, read product information and check availability in their nearest store. And all of this drives more frequent traffic, both online and in physical stores.

We also see that's online sales are growing faster than total sales. And our recent acquisitions are adding further to this momentum. With Teknikdelar, Batteriexperten and Teknikmagasinet, we now operate more than 20 online storefronts compared to just 1 before.

And that brings us to how everything comes together in our omnichannel model. Our omnichannel model is built on a unique store network that's closely integrated to our e-com operations, creating value both for customers and for us. For customers, this means a very flexible experience.

They can easily move between online and store and pick up their order in stores at no extra cost. And this is where it becomes really powerful.

When customers choose to collect their order in our physical store instead of traditional pickup points, it creates an important touch point. That's where we can meet the customer, offer guidance, build relationship and drive additional sales, strengthening both the experience and the value per customer.

So in this way, our stores are not just the distribution channel. They're an active part of sales and the overall customer experience. Together, our channels complement each other and helps drive both loyalty and profitable growth. Internally, it's really about using the full platform as effectively as possible.

We use our store network as part of our e-commerce engine, both for fulfillment and collection points. That helps reduce costs, increase availability and drive traffic back to stores. And the fact that more than 50% of our orders are fulfilled by our store network really shows how well integrated our channels are. So with that, I hand over to you, Stefan.

Thank you, Lene. Being this growing omnichannel company creates exciting challenges for our logistics team and infrastructure. As Lene just mentioned, 50% of our e-commerce orders are fulfilled through our own store network. The rest of our e-commerce orders are produced and shipped out from warehouse in the Insjön in the middle of Sweden with good transport infrastructure to Norway and to Stockholm, where the fares to Finland depart.

While e-commerce orders volume continue to show growth annually, the channel still represents a relatively minor share of our total logistics volume compared with the roughly 2,000 pallets that we ship daily to the 249 stores. The Clas Ohlson distribution center is a well-maintained logistics hub covering approximately 70,000 square meters.

To be cost efficient, we normally operate only daytime, but in peak season, we go for 24/7. The warehouse has a high degree of automation technology, hence, an opportunity for further scale effects, although this level of automation also comes with responsibility and require long-term planning together with other parts of the organization. We stay very close to our colleagues in sales and assortment to make sure we invest in time, but also in the right capabilities.

We should, for example, be capable to handle everything from a small tiny air pod to a large 110-kilogram snowblower. So I told you logistics in Carl Ohlson is exciting, didn't I. As illustrated on this slide, our group currently operate warehousing facilities at 4 locations in Sweden.

Our subsidiaries with a 100% e-commerce offering have their facilities in Stockholm and Malmö. From Malmö, we can actually reach over 100 million European customers within 2 to 3 days of lead time. As Kristofer and Anders previously pointed out, we strongly believe that the roughly 30% assortment renewal rate has been and is a key success factor.

Of maintaining this pace of assortment renewal requires a high degree of discipline and operational excellence across all the organization. As pointed out earlier today, during the past 3 years, we have increased sales, expanded assortment size by 40% from the 12,000 to the 17,000 SKUs. As you can see on this slide, simultaneously improved inventory efficiency by reducing inventory share of sales.

This contributes not only to a strong return on capital employed, but also to the release of valuable warehouse space. Talking about space. As we speak, me and my team are engaged in the biggest investment from a logistics perspective in Clas Ohlson's history, investing roughly SEK 450 million.

We call this Project Flow. And this investment is about 3 things: increase our total capacity to support the planned sales growth for the coming years, but also note that we designed it today to enable even more room to scale in the future. This growth opportunity can actually be seen in this slide.

The space between the blue and the brown shuttle area is room for further expansion.

Secondly, we add capability to build our outbound pallets a bit smarter to enable our store staff to spend even more time on customer-facing activities and less time on logistics. And the third goal is to strengthen our omnichannel capabilities while improving operational efficiency. By increasing productivity in our distribution center, we ensure a cost competitive operation regardless of whether we should ship an e-commerce order or replenish our stores.

These new capabilities are expected to go live in the second half of 2027 and deliver annual efficiency gains of approximately SEK 100 million. That was a brief introduction of our logistics operations. And with that, I hand over to Kristofer.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and thank you very much, Lene Oen for going deeper into our omnichannel capabilities, including logistics. So before we conclude, I would like to do is to briefly touch upon one area of optionality, and that's basically acquisitions. And over the last few years, we have demonstrated that we can identify, acquire, integrate businesses into Clas Ohlson. And importantly, though, acquisitions are not required to achieve our financial targets.

The financial targets are rooted in the strength of the core business, but we do see acquisitions as a helpful tool when we want to strengthen our consumer missions, evolve our capabilities or deliver attractive returns. So as always, growth alone is not sufficient. It's really about ensuring that we have the strategic fit and also that economics work for us. And our approach here remains very disciplined and also very selective.

So the philosophy is really reflected also in the simple approach that we apply to M&A. So we have intentionally a very, very simple M&A framework. We look for businesses that basically strengthens our existing model and businesses that can deepen our expertise, and I think the ones we have done is really an example of that or an area where we can expand our customer relevance, add capabilities or build things that are difficult to do ourselves organically. And every opportunity is evaluated through this same lens. So does it strengthen our strategy? Does it culturally fit with Clas Ohlson and can it generate attractive returns? It's not more difficult than that. And if it's not, then we simply walk away.

And that discipline is critical. And as I've mentioned multiple times today, we are interested in driving value, not simply just increasing the size of the company. So with that, let me bring the different parts of today's presentation together before we start moving into Q&A.

So we've covered a lot of ground this afternoon in a fairly short period of time, and we have discussed how the business has evolved over the last 4 years. We have tried to explain how the operating model works, how we think about growth moving forward, how we think about profitability, but also how we would like to allocate capital moving forward.

And before we open up for questions, let me try to summarize some of the key messages. So some of the key messages can really be linked into the 3 big overall areas. So first of all, we believe that we are a structurally stronger company. We see that based on the transformation and also the improved quality of the business model as well as the more clearly differentiated value proposition.

Second, we have a repeatable value creation model, and it's a model that is really centered around the consumer missions, our constant assortment renewal and also our omnichannel capabilities and also the discipline in terms of how we then allocate capital across those areas.

At the same time, we see multiple opportunities for growth. And as I've repeated a few times, it's really about a combination of multiple levers to drive that growth. We're not dependent on one single initiative. We have a broad opportunity range. So taken into account, it's really those things that give us confidence as we move forward.

And as I showed before, we have this simple framework to explain how we focus forward.

At the center is really where we create a lot of the value and for our customers. It's our assortment, it's our brand, it's our customer meeting. This is where we create relevance. It's where we build trust, and it's also where a lot of the future growth will come from. And obviously, supporting this, we have some supporting levers with selective M&A, as I just talked about, and also operational efficiency, which remains extremely important so that we can continue to scale with efficiency without adding costs.

And importantly, none of these elements standalone. They really work together to strengthen the totality and they reinforce each other. And together, they're supposed to support value creation over time, which is summarized in our very simple value creation model, where it all starts with the consumer needs, which drives relevance and traffic into the structured omnichannel capabilities, which builds frequency and scale and in turn, that should deliver strong returns and also produce a strong cash flow that can be then reinvested into further customer value.

And those -- that logic, we believe, is reflected then in the framework for the next few years in terms of the financial targets. And I do believe that this is -- the target is really an outcome of the fact that we're becoming a stronger, more focused and more disciplined company than in the past.

So -- and as I said before, this is really grounded in the strength of the business today, and it's supported by different growth engines, but we also have some clear growth optionality also as we look ahead. So with that, let me simply conclude with the fact that we believe that we are a stronger company.

We have a clear strategy, stronger operating model, stronger financial profile and also a more disciplined framework in terms of how we will continue to drive value over time. We will, of course, not be able to know exactly what the future holds, but I really believe that we are in a better place today than we were a few years ago, which provides resilience, but also discipline in terms of moving forward.

So thanks so much for the attention. And now we will move from presentation mode to Q&A mode. And before we start taking questions, we will rearrange a little bit on the stage, right, so that we can get all our colleagues up here on stage.

As promised, time for Q&A, and we'll start by taking questions from the studio here in Stockholm. So please raise your hand if you have a question and wait for the microphone. I think Magnus Roman, perhaps you are first.

Magnus Roman, SB1 Markets. I'd like to start asking about the private labels. You have mentioned them here in the presentation, but you have not disclosed over the recent years or for that matter, any time, I think, historically, the exact percentage of your sales. You talk in your annual report about a rough number. Could you perhaps let us know what your private label share is today? Or alternatively, how it has developed in the recent, say, 3 years? And what you expect for the coming years?

Yes. No. So I think we have been fairly transparent that we are 50-50. It's approximately 50% of sales in own brands that we source ourselves and 50% in known brands. And we believe that is a healthy split. As Anders talked about, they serve different purposes. We want to grow the total. And we also believe that it's important to find a balance to ensure we drive the right relevance and also the right margin profile.

So we have a 50-50 split in terms of sales today, and we also expect that split to be more or less the same. Then, of course, we work a lot with developing the private labels. We now have more private labels. But at the same time, of course, innovation speed, et cetera, on known brands goes hand-in-hand. So we want to grow the total, and we believe 50-50 is a pretty good balance. I don't know if you want to add something, Anders, to that.

No, I think you summarized it very well so.

But over the recent years, when you have developed your assortment quite a lot and you have, in my opinion, grown your sort of consumables offering, hasn't that led to an increase in your private label share?

I mean on a total yearly basis, I mean, there are periods where it might be higher than 50%. But if I look on a yearly basis over the last few years, it is actually fairly evenly split. And I think if you look at the total growth, it's really driven by both. And it's not -- as long as we can, in a disciplined way, deliver on the targets and deliver on profitable growth, it's not the ending mind in itself that's key, i.e., having a high private label share. We believe the balance is actually pretty healthy.

Sure. And when you say 50-50, you mean of sales, but gross profit is a higher share, of course. Would you care to say anything about what the gross margin difference is very roughly in percentage points?

No, we don't want to go into that into detail. I mean it's -- obviously, the gross margin overall is higher on private labels than they are on known brands. While as also Anders pointed out, I think a key point is, of course, that the private labels obviously have a longer product life cycle, takes longer to develop ship, all of these things, whereas then the known brands might have a lower gross margin, but the capital efficiency is high.

The inventory turnover is high, lead times shorter. And also importantly, if you look at the website right now, for example, I think we have said 11 different known brands now on robotic lawn mowers. I think the most expensive one is around SEK 40,000. So even if the gross margin percentage is slightly lower, it still delivers a lot of value and opportunity for strong microeconomics.

So we don't want to disclose in detail the exact margin, but it's really about balancing those 2 in an effective way.

Great. And then I have a question about online. You mentioned here or you showed both in numbers and in penetration how online has been growing a lot. But I assume that a lot of this growth is driven by the acquisitions you have made as in recent years. Would you care to let us know what the online penetration is for your core Clas Ohlson banner?

I think roughly our online sales, I talked about SEK 971 million, I think, 4 years ago, and online sales only on the Clas Ohlson side has almost doubled over those few years. So -- and we have reported -- now we report everything in one segment, as you know. And I think we have in a few of the quarters also reported the clasohlson.com sales, and it has varied between 15% to 20% over the last few quarters.

So the acquisitions obviously add scale, but we also see the Clas Ohlson online sales growing faster than the total Clas Ohlson development.

Great. And I have one final before we roll over. More people want to ask questions naturally. A little bit of futuristic question perhaps, but you talked about also the strength of your brand and how that helps you in terms of marketing/traffic generation cost, your club and so on.

How do you view the development as of recently in terms of competition for adverts, the cost to drive traffic in the market out there? And if you can compare that a little bit to what you see internally of your cost to drive traffic, especially now when you say that you have an ambition to expand online further as a share and totally. And also, maybe if you want to elaborate on your views of how this is going to change in the coming few years when people do their searching maybe in an LLM instead of on Google and how you position that?

Helena, do you want to give some flavor, would you want me to?

Yes, sure. As I talked about, the core in our commercial engine is, again, the high trust and -- I mean, the awareness and the strength of the brand itself. It gives us, I mean, a lot of competitive advantages, obviously, that together with a well-orchestrated and data-driven system that allows us to continuously optimize across channels, across categories, across markets.

And doing that, we look at all types of data points and traffic acquisition sources where LLM is one of them. So I mean, looking at that mix in total, we have a strong foundation to continuously optimize that and keep a close eye on it. In terms of Clas Ohlson, we also have our stores, obviously, that I mean, gives us a whole other foundation to build on. And I mean, whereas our subsidiaries with a pure online business, they have another business model and also a different way of continuously acquiring traffic and customers.

And I think that will probably hold, I mean, in comparison with Clas Ohlson. But I mean, we have a lot of synergies to capture there as well, looking into the whole media landscape. That is obviously evolving quite fast, yes.

Maybe just to complement on that is also what we -- those of you following us in detail, you have also noticed that we have reported slight increases in marketing spend over the last few quarters and the last year. And that also relates to the fact that we are working more dynamically with marketing also on the Clas Ohlson side, which is also, as Helena talked about, we have our acquired companies that work in a slightly different way. We are also becoming more of an online-centric player in terms of spending, dynamic marketing where we do see strong return on investment. So I think that's to just add a bit of flavor on that.

Yes. And we plan to continue with that, obviously, making sure that whatever money is on the table, that's the ones that we want, but not overpaying.

Yes Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie. Was at another Capital Markets Day for another company a couple of weeks ago, and I think 50% of the time was to discuss AI, which has hardly been touched upon at all today, which is actually kind of liberating.

But I assume that this is still a core part of your strategy internally in the company. So I'm curious about your use of AI, what kind of benefits you see from that? What kind of tech investments you've done, whether these are going to increase and what kind of benefits do you expect from that?

No, I think it's a really fair question. We were joking about that by the day that we might be the only management team in '26 having a Capital Markets Day without a lot of AI slides. I think for us, I would give a couple of perspectives and then happy to fill in. But I think the first point is for us, AI is a huge opportunity. It's not a threat.

We're not a SaaS company. We are a company focused on products that solve customer needs. So it's a huge opportunity. I think the second one is where we have pursued this the most is really when it comes back to operational efficiency. I talked a bit about the white-collar employee reductions we have done over the last few years being now 35% fewer. I think we launched our first only developed [GPTs] back in -- was it '23, '24?

I think it was on the Spring '22..

Yes. So right after -- so it's really been -- what we have learned is that you need a trigger to start driving behavioral change within the company. It's not enough to come top down and said, let's work AI. We have created triggers by becoming more effective and then obviously, relying on effective tools internally to get more done faster.

So if you look at our product enrichment, product information, imagery, a lot of things are automated today. And I think we're operating a big part of the product information with fewer people. And then obviously, you have seen the size of the launches, et cetera. So I think this is a concrete example. We really believe AI being an enabler across the whole company.

And of course, we are applying this anywhere possible. And I think -- and I know that all of us use it every day as an enabling tool. So we look at it as an opportunity for Clas Ohlson. It's already helping us scale things operationally. And then, of course, there are also all kinds of customer-facing opportunities as we move forward.

And here is also where we have the acquired companies being early on in terms of customer service, all of these things that we're elaborating with. But -- so a big opportunity, and we are working with it, but we feel that's a natural way of doing business today, right? Otherwise, you're going to miss out a lot.

We have a question over here, Andres.

On the investment in Insjön. How do you think that will affect your capital efficiency? That's my first question.

The investment in Insjön.

Yes.

It's going to help us because obviously, the intent on the investment is obviously, as Stefan talked about, to increase capacity, but also, of course, to drive efficiency. So we're investing between SEK 400 million and SEK 450 million, and we are looking at efficiencies of approximately SEK 100 million a year, which means 4-year payback.

So the intent, of course, is to continue doing what we have -- I think, especially Stefan and Anders have talked about, maintaining the assortment expansion, assortment renewal without driving net working capital. So I think that -- it's an enabler of maintaining discipline on the inventory side. We want the graph that Stefan talked about to maintain under control. And I think that's where if I look at our business model that we've talked about today, it is slightly different from lots of others.

A lot of other companies focus on small assortment, high volume per SKU, low price per SKU, and you need a limited assortment to drive high stock turnover. We are trying to do something fairly more complex. And then the investment in income back to your question, is an enabler of maintaining capital discipline.

That goes to the other question I have about the balance sheet then. Obviously, you generated a lot of cash and will likely continue to do so. But even with the extra dividend now and with the investment in Insjön, you will be, at least in my view, overcapitalized very soon again. So at what level of cash do you think -- well, do you think you are not overcapitalized?

Well, we're taking one big step at a time. I think looking back over the last few years, we've showed some history here. Obviously, we want to and we take pride in a strong financial position and a strong balance sheet. I think we have, over the last few years, shown now more structural discipline and also the fact that we are able to structurally improve the company.

Now we are in a position where we feel a good balance. And of course, it's a good thing that we can invest both SEK 600 million now in the year to come, so a bigger investment than before and at the same time, do an increased dividend. So we take step-by-step. I think the capital allocation framework is, of course, here to drive that discipline to ensure that we invest where it really delivers a return, but also that we will continuously also distribute cash to our shareholders.

I think this is another reason, of course, where return of capital employed is a good metric because with too much cash, that's also going to impact the return on capital employed. So we're taking steps. And we also believe in having resilience. We believe in having a strong balance sheet. We are very, very long term and are obviously always looking for the right investment opportunities that deliver the return.

Erik coming up with a question as well.

Erik Sandstedt at Kepler Cheuvreux. I've got a question about growth opportunities in light of your strong performance now in the Nordics and your new financial targets. Have you basically rolled out any international expansion other than the companies that you have already sort of acquired, -- so rolling out new stores outside of the Nordics is -- is that not on the agenda at all?

I mean we're not ruling out anything. We've been around for 108 years. We're building a structure to be around for a few more hundreds of years. So of course, we're not ruling out anything. I think the message today is that we see significant growth opportunities where we are strong and profitable. And obviously, we focus a lot on that.

With the expansion of the acquired companies, of course, we're learning a lot of different things. We're learning new markets. We're learning in getting new insights. So we're not ruling anything out, but I think it's fair to conclude that looking at the financial targets we're going through here today, they do not require us to move outside of the home base, but we're not ruling that out.

Then perhaps a specific question on like-for-like sales, 7% now in Q4 and for the full year. Obviously, you're growing faster in the online business than in the store network. But could you share any details about like-for-like sales also in the store network?

That's an incredibly important metric. That's the one that we look at, I would say, the most within the company because we have seen far too many examples of when you start looking at the total growth and you lose track of what's happening like-for-like. So without going through the details, I can confirm that the like-for-like that we have seen over the last few years is a combination of strong like-for-like in the store network and then together with the online sales.

Because we don't want to end up in a situation where we compensate by expanding into new locations, new stores and start losing sight on the like-for-like. The like-for-like is really a quality indicator and extremely important. So we have seen like-for-like on the store network over the last few years, and the intent is to continue that.

And maybe related to that, just coming back to the financial targets, a lot of companies frame the targets as achieving at least 12% or at least 5%. You're fairly specific here. Is that just conservatism? Or is it rather so that growing, for example, more than 5% may not be good for the business in terms of finding good store locations, the right staff and so forth? Or how should we think about that?

I think as we've outlined, the financial targets are designed as a combination to drive value creation longer term. I don't think that looking at any of those individually is kind of a cap. I mean, we just reported May numbers this morning where we grew organically 9%. I think the key thing is -- so the numbers are not a cap. It's basically our estimation of where we think we're going to be around.

And I think it's also an important framework to ensure that we do not stop running after growth that is not creating value. We are very, very long term, and we ensure that all the growth that we deliver, it also produces value and it also translates into returns.

So obviously, I wouldn't look at it as caps. We're going to do as much as possible, but we will not fall for the temptation of running after cost growth at any cost.

And maybe finally, if I may, in terms of the assortment, you mentioned that you are quite quick at removing underperforming products and making space for new products or good products. How do you actually do that in practice? Is it just by discounting? Or are there any other tools that you can use?

I would say that discounting is the primary one, and it works very well, I would say. 249 stores are doing their job and the online storefront, so to say, is probably the quickest one that we can use as well. So easier to change price on those 5,000 e-com-only products than changing price tags on 249 stores. But yes, discount is one. But we start very systematically with phase out as soon as we see that this is not a winner that we would like to scale. So yes.

And I think the key thing is, as well as Anders talked about, we don't want the consequences to be too big. And that's why we're trying to work in a very flexible way, as Anders laid out, that we're not having too high volumes of things to phase out. So -- but yes, fully agreed.

Any more questions from the live audience? There's, one more. Magnus?

A quick follow-up. I think it was interesting you reply about store expansion. You're not ruling out anything you're saying. So as a follow-up to that, what do you think are the main learnings you would draw from your previous internationalization adventures when you went into the U.K., Germany, even to Dubai with stores? What went wrong or what would you like to do differently if you would attempt again?

So first of all, my comment about ruling out should not be interpreted as we are sitting here with a plan to expand. It would be stupid to rule anything out, I think. I think we have shown that we can develop and evolve. That said, I think it's very fascinating to follow how you expand in 2026 versus in 2008. We entered the U.K. back in 2008. And obviously, the world looked in one way then, it looks in a completely different way today. I think the most recent website translations when we entered new markets with Batteriexperten costed us like SEK 20,000. And then it's really about the discipline of doing things in a customer-centric way with the right assortment, pricing, right fulfillment, payment options, all of these things.

So I think the key thing is it's, very easy today to enter new markets. But just by entering new markets, doesn't mean we will be the winner in a new market. And I think what we have also learned, as I think explained from a lot of my colleagues today is also that Clas Ohlson as a business model is slightly different. And just opening up a store saying Clas Ohlson, welcome, it's not that easy for customers to understand exactly what it's about. As I talked about in the retail models, we're not a discounter, we're not a DIY projects, et cetera. We are slightly different. So of course, the Clas Ohlson brand requires also to be very explicit and clear on the customer proposition.

And I think Finland is a good example of that. If you go to Finland today and you look at what we're promoting and merchandising in our Finnish stores, it's the same base assortment as the other 2 countries, but it's slightly enhanced in some areas and decreased in others. So you always also need to adapt to the local context, what the customer needs are, what the competition looks like. So I think we're also training on understanding how we have to adapt to be relevant to different certain countries.

So there are a lot of different learnings, both on the countries where we're existing today and also on the learnings we're getting by expanding on some of the Spares brands, for example. So we're collecting a lot of insight learnings. But again, that said, the market is huge here. We are profitable, we're growing, and it's always good to focus where you're strong, where you can produce strong returns and build ourselves stronger and not spreading ourselves too thinly.

Great reply. And just final sort of growth avenue, expanding to new -- viewing new growth opportunities. So a number of years back, you launched an initiative in services that you actually mentioned here also in your presentation, Clas Fixare. But we haven't heard much. Perhaps you can give us a little bit of an update, maybe some revenue number for the Clas Fixare business or margins if they dilute or accrete to your group margins?

So basically, I think the first most important thing is to comment that Clas Fixare, the purpose of Clas Fixare is to drive fantastic service to our customers and to continue to build the strong Clas Ohlson brand. And looking at what Helena talked about in terms of brand, obviously, we are very established in Sweden. Fixare is still only available in Sweden. And it's an opportunity. We say to our customers, we fix it together. But for Fixare, if you can't fix it, we fix it for you. It's a very appreciated service. It's a way to build the brand. It's a way to build and deepen the relationship with customers, but it's not identified as one of the growth drivers or profit drivers of the total company. It's part of the customer proposition. But it's doing well.

I don't know whether you want to comment anymore, but it's doing well. It's part of the service, but it's not a stand-alone growth driver. It's a way to further drive the brand in a very mature market.

I'm trying to see if there's any more hands in the air. No, not right now. I'm also keeping track of the webcast, but it seems like the webcast viewers think that you have asked relevant questions. I have a fairly open question here from the webcast about your outlook for this financial year. If you want to comment on that, Kristofer?

I mean, we have talked about the overall targets. And obviously, the targets are effective as of May 1. And of course, we have had a good start to that year from a sales point of view with good growth. And I don't think I want to guide more than that 1 month into the year.

And if that was it in terms of questions, I think it's time for us to wrap up. I'll hand it over to you, Kristofer, for just some final remarks.

Okay. Yes. So thank you very much. Great to see a filled up room with engagement around our journey and also lots of people calling in today during the web conference. So I hope we've been able to explain a bit more about our model, what has taken us to where we are today and also what our plan is to continue this forward. We've been around for 108 years, but I think me and my colleagues are here on stage, representing 5,000 other people feel that we have more in front of us than behind us, which I think is a good signal that there's tremendous opportunity, and it's a privilege to work from a position as a brand like Clas Ohlson, where there are so many different opportunities. I think that's it for today. And thank you so much for taking the time out to be here today.

[Audio Gap]

2026 report presentation. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to CEO, Kristofer Tonstrom and CFO, Pernilla Walfridsson. Please go ahead.

The Q4 and the year-end report presentation. My name is Kristofer Tonstrom, and I'm the President and CEO, and I'm here together with Pernilla Walfridsson, our CFO. So looking at the agenda today, we will review our business update, go through the financial developments from the quarter and the year, then cover the events after the reporting period, summarize and then move into Q&A.

So highlighting the fourth quarter and the year, we can conclude that we are closing the year from a position of strength. Q4 is a strong finish to a strong year. We have seen a very solid organic growth above our target. We have reported record sales and record earnings as well as strong cash generation and our balance sheet remains strong, which is also reflected in the proposed increased dividend that we will come back to. And we have also started the new year strongly with 9% organic growth in May, and we will also come back to that.

So moving into the business update and looking at the strategic execution following Q4. The business continues to develop in line with our strategy. We see progress across all the strategic pillars and also growth across all the prioritized niches as well as continued online growth and also a store network that continues to strengthen. We also see that [indiscernible] and customer engagement is improving and during the quarter, we also kicked off the building of -- that relates to the logistics investment, and it's progressing according to plan so far.

Then looking at how we're performing versus our critical -- from a customer point of view when it comes back to our assortments, our brand and our customer [ meeting ]. We, during the quarter, have received 90,000 product reviews. It's a smaller quarter. So it's also slightly fewer reviews, but we can also see that the feedback from customers remain very strong. We also deliver on the affordability scoring that we're following every quarter. And also NPS remains strong and still industry leading. So all in all, we're progressing well from a customer point of view.

Then turning to our consumer missions. Growth continues to be broad-based. All our emissions contribute to the overall growth. And I think one of the strengths in our business model is that we're not dependent on one category. We are broad-based, and we do have many legs to stand on. And I think we've also been able to demonstrate relevance across many different customer needs during this quarter.

So with that short introduction, I will then hand over to Pernilla for the financial development.

Thanks, Kristofer. Good morning, everyone. Let's take a closer look at the financials of the fourth quarter and the full year '25-'26. To begin with, net sales were up 11% in the quarter of which 9% relates to organic sales increase, 2% the later recently acquired subsidiaries and [ no ] currency effect in the quarter. 7% of the increase related to like-for-like growth and 1% related to expansion of digital networks. Online sales grew by 25% in total including the acquired Phonelife and Reservdelaronline businesses. For the full year, total sales amounted to SEK 12.5 billion and organic sales increased by about 9%. During the year, we increased the store network by 8 stores.

Looking at the home market, we saw great performance throughout the quarter as well as for the financial year. Organic growth in Sweden was 8% in the quarter, 11% in Norway and 9% in Finland. The macro environment is, as you know, very volatile. Currencies is always a factor. And in the quarter, the NOK has picked up substantially versus the SEK whereas the U.S. dollar remain on somewhat lower level. I would also like to mention that for the coming quarter, we anticipate negative hedging effects from the NOK with the significant uplift versus the SEK remains.

Spot prices for shipping remain at reasonable levels, but with a sharp increase in oil prices, we anticipate higher freight costs going forward as well as higher input costs in manufacturing. But still, of course, also impacted by the U.S. dollar development. The gross margin increased by 2.2 percentage points in the quarter, up to 50.1%. Key explanation to the strong gross margin were favorable purchasing currencies, improved purchasing prices, lower freight costs and positive mix effect on sales in the Spares Group meaning lower business-to-business sales and higher gross margin in the recently acquired companies.

Over to the income statement, we see good operating profit of SEK 180 million and a 6.9% operating margin. The increase in personnel expenses related to higher volumes in our logistics chain, wage increases, new stores and acquired businesses. Other external expenses also increased in the quarter, mainly due to increased investments in marketing and due to the addition of the acquired businesses. The EPS for the quarter was SEK 2.18 and SEK 18.40 for the full year. The inventory is marginally up compared with the same period last year. This level should be seen in the light of us also adding stores, adding assortment and adding acquired businesses since last year. On the other hand, we have also seen lower purchasing prices and currencies. So all in all, a balanced and efficient inventory.

Cash flow for the year improved versus cash flow from operating activities totaling SEK 2.1 billion, an improvement from SEK 1.8 billion last year mainly thanks to improved profit. Free cash flow for the period amounted to SEK 1.3 billion. Net debt EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, was minus 1.1 We maintained a strong net cash position.

Turning to investments. I think we have been disciplined in how we invest for the future and managed to come in at SEK 330 million for the year which is above our initial forecast of SEK 260 million but below if we exclude the acquisitions of Phonelife and Reservdelaronline.

For the year '26-'27, we intend to continue investing in our store network, both in new stores and in refurbishments, and we will continue to update our IT landscape. As previously communicated, the vast majority of our automation investments at our distribution centers will be accounted for in '26-'27. In total, we intend to invest approximately SEK 600 million in '26-'27.

And with that, I'm handing back the presentation to you, Kristofer.

Thank you very much, Pernilla. And then we will move into the events after the reporting period, starting with the May sales development that we also reported this morning. And overall, we have had a very strong start to the new financial year with an organic growth of -- in total 9% for the total company. And we see, again, broad-based growth with Sweden growing 11%, Norway 5% and Finland encouragingly 11% organic growth. Other markets grew 22%. So all in all, the momentum continues as we kick off the new financial year. And again, it's also, as said, broad-based across countries, but we can also confirm that it's broad-based across the 5 consumer missions.

Then turning to the proposed dividend that the Board is proposing today. Here, the proposed dividend is amounting to SEK 9.25 per share, up from SEK 7 last year, and it's to be distributed as two separate payments of SEK 4.65. The Board also proposes an extra dividend of SEK 4.75 per share to be also distributed into separate payments of SEK 2.375. And this is a reflection of the strong earnings growth and the strong EPS development. And our dividend policy moving forward remains unchanged. And the extra dividend reflects the strong balance sheet and the position that we are in from a business model point of view.

So moving into the summary and looking at the way forward. We do have a very large market opportunity. We have a strong position. We have a strong brand position. We have high customer satisfaction. We have a strong omnichannel platform, and we also have a strong financial profile. So we see continued opportunities for profitable growth, also supported by our business model that we believe has become significantly stronger now over the last few years.

So this morning, we also updated and announced updated financial targets. And these targets are valid for the next 3 years. So starting out of the new year on first of May. And here, the targets are balancing 3 important areas: First, an organic sales growth of 5% per year, an operating margin of around 12% per year and a return on capital employed of around 30% per year. Apart from the financial targets, the dividend policy, as I previously mentioned, remains unchanged, and the dividends are to comprise at least 50% of earnings per share after tax in consideration to the financial position. So I believe these targets reflect the company we have become. It's a balance between growth, profitability, but also with the introduction of return on capital employed, capital efficiency. I believe these targets are supported by the strength of the core business, and they're really designed to ensure that we support the disciplined and profitable growth over time. So not only for 1 year but really over the next 3 years. And I believe that the targets are supported by the strength of the business model.

So with that, I also want to highlight that this afternoon. So starting at 1:00 a.m. CET, we will have our Capital Markets Day. Here, we will have an opportunity to go deeper opportunity to explain more about the growth drivers moving forward, but also an opportunity to talk a bit more about the updated targets. So I hope to see many of you this afternoon.

And with that, we will move into Q&A.

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

Can I start by asking about the new financial targets? Because I note that all 3 operating performance targets here are below your current level. And then in the case of growth significantly below and not least in light of the continued strong sales you're delivering here in May. And I'm also noting that if you look in the past, the last 2 years, you have consistently been above your margin target. The past 3 years, you've consistently been above previous sales guidance. So I'm just curious if there's any reason why you're setting a target that is below where you currently are? Are you seeing any imminent threats here in terms of a slowdown of sales or margin pressure in the quarters ahead?

So to answer the last question first. So no, we do not see any imminent threat to our business model. I would rather say that the business model and the company is in a much more stronger structure than we have been in the past. Looking at the targets, they are clearly also outlined for the next 3 years. So it's not only for the first financial year, but for the next 3 years. And they should also be seen as in combination. So the 5% organic growth, together with around 12% and around 30% return on capital employed. And we believe that, that balance is really to ensure that we drive continued disciplined execution. I believe looking back, we have delivered and we have executed and the plan is to continue to deliver and execute forward. And the targets are designed as a combination to ensure that we continue that disciplined execution moving forward. But there are no threats at the horizon, and we will continue full steam ahead as we have in the past few years.

Okay. Very good. And then containing on the same topic because you mentioned here in the call, input costs, now significant tailwinds, and you're seeing some headwinds ahead related to oil prices, freight costs and then some hedging effect as well. Is there any way to quantify or at least say when these effects are going to hit? I assume that the NOK hedging, that's kind of a Q1 issue, whereas the freight and oil price, that's more for kind of coming quarters. Can you elaborate a little bit on it?

Yes, you're absolutely right. So relating to the NOK hedging, that's a Q1 effect, and we don't want to go into detailed exact numbers yet. But obviously, that's a Q1 and that's, of course, driven by the strong fluctuation of the Norwegian kroner. When it comes to the other parts, transportation and pricing, et cetera, that's obviously more with the lagging effect given the 6 to 8 months time from purchase to selling. At the same time, I also want to be clear that, obviously, what we are seeing right now with the macro environment is something that is the same for everybody. I believe that we are in a stronger position today than we have been in the past, given that we now have more global sourcing markets to operate from. We also have flexibility in terms of the 5 consumer missions. We're not dependent on 1 single area. We are broad -- we have a broader structure today. So I believe we are in a good position to manage these things. But obviously, some of these effects are inevitable, but we believe that despite those, we will deliver around the target levels that we talked about.

Very good. And then last question, just on Finland. We've seen a strong performance now both in the quarter and in May sales here. Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on in Finland, what efforts you've made? And what do you expect from this going forward? Are you more confident now on an accelerated rollout in Finland, for instance?

Yes. So Finland is clearly an attractive opportunity for us moving forward. And I think our confidence has increased over the last year. We started the finish transformation a couple of years back with taking out costs, making the store network more efficient, closing nonprofitable stores. Then we have also adjusted the assortment to be better equipped for the Finnish customers. And then we have also rebuilt all our stores.

So since last fall, we have started to activate the brand more than in the past, both the marketing, promotion and campaigns. And at the same time, we have also started a little bit more of an ambitious store expansion. So we have opened a couple of stores last year, and we do have a couple of stores also in the plan moving forward. So we are confident in Finland.

As I've said before, it's not going to be a quick fix, but for us, it's an attractive opportunity for the future. And the key thing is to continue driving the local relevance, continue driving and playing off our strength also in the Finnish market. And of course, it's encouraging to see the organic growth for the year and also for me going in the right direction.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB.

I'll ask a couple of questions, starting with merchandising, how we work with store offering and so forth. Is that on a store level point of view, deciding on products to have or who decides that?

So when it comes to merchandising, we have centralized most of the decisions in terms of merchandising to central function and also relying on systems to do that in an efficient way. The benefit with the business model is that we do see -- there are not huge differences between countries and geographies. There are slight differences north and south, et cetera. But we have centralized as many of those efficient as possible while we are also giving a little bit of flexibility to the store managers to pop up here and there, but most of the merchandising decisions are centralized.

Okay. You've obviously done a good job there. Then on the dividend, the payout here or the -- I mean, Sure, we use a special dividend here, but I assume you will soon be overcapitalized again. Is the dividend the tool you sort of will prioritize when it comes to capital allocation on an overcapitalized business?

So looking at the -- our capital allocation framework, it's very much to ensure we drive discipline, but of course also returns. So the #1 priority is investing in the core business so [ assortment ] meeting, but also infrastructure, for example, what we do now with logistics. Then we also have opportunities to do selective growth investments. And here we're, at this stage, investing in new stores, but also a more ambitious rebuild agenda that we'll talk a bit more about this afternoon. And then third, obviously, when we have to ensure those markets are fulfilled, there is also then a distribution to shareholders as the third party. As said this year, we're increasing investment and we're increasing the dividend. And for us, it's important to maintain a strong balance sheet, have the resources to ensure that we do -- are in a position to invest while we also want to be efficient. And obviously, with the return on capital employed target, that is also, of course, a way to drive efficiency in terms of managing cash in a prudent rate.

Yes. And last, on the return on capital employed question, our target. Does that also imply that you basically assume capital efficiency should be close to unchanged from here?

So obviously, looking back at our return on capital employed development over the years, obviously, we closed this last financial year now on the last of April with a return on capital employed of 34% which is a high level versus historical levels. And what we're guiding for is around 30% also in the next 3 years. So it's really looking at the targets in -- as a balance, but around 30%.

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

We do have one question from the webcast, it's [ Magnus Roman ] from [indiscernible]. He wants to know whether we would be able to elaborate on the magnitude of the gross margin drivers mentioned in your report.

Yes. So looking at the gross margin drivers, obviously, we indicate that currencies is one of the key drivers, but then we also have the purchasing prices, the positive effects from transportation and then also the positive effect from business to business being slightly below from a mix point of view. So those are the 4 drivers.

I think one comment is that if I look back at the last year, we have had -- from a currency point of view, it's been slightly negative to neutral. Now obviously, we start seeing the positive effect from the dollar but we've also had a positive effect now from the Norwegian kroner that has appreciated recently. So we don't want to quantify this more in detail. These are the drivers. And I think the priority order indicates a little bit of magnitude, but we don't want to give specific details on each of the drivers.

And we have no further questions from the webcast. So over to you, Kristofer, for some closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much for great questions, and we look forward to seeing all of you at 1:00 a.m. CET today where we will have an opportunity to go much deeper into the business, the business model and the way forward. So thank you so much.

The host has ended this call. Goodbye.

Welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q3 2025-2026 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Kristofer Tonström; and CFO, Pernilla Walfridsson. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q3 report presentation. My name is Kristofer Tonström, and I'm CEO. And here together with Pernilla Walfridsson, CFO.

So the agenda for today is to review the business update, the financial development for the quarter and then the events after the reporting period, then we'll do a short summary and move into Q&A.

So to highlight the highlights of the third quarter, really, the key takeaway from this quarter is that we again show a combination of continued sales growth and improved margins. Looking at sales, we came in at just above SEK 4 billion, which represented an organic growth of 8%. Our operating profit came in at SEK 659 million, which resulted in an operating margin of 16.2%.

Our operating cash flow for the first 3 quarters amounted to SEK 2.091 billion, and that is also up versus last year. And we still have a solid financial position with a net debt to EBITDA minus 1.3, which means we have a net cash position closing the quarter.

EPS for the first 3 quarters came in at SEK 16.22 also that's up versus last year. Today, we also reported our sales numbers for February. I'll come back to that, but we delivered 9% organic growth also in February.

So moving into the business update and looking first at our strategic position. In general, we operate in several attractive everyday niches where we can be highly relevant to our customers. And I believe it's the combination of this relevance, but also our focus that allows us to build a business that is both scalable and capital efficient. We focus on our areas where we want to become stronger assortment, brand, customer meeting. And with the focus, we do everything to also develop a more scalable operating model that generates strong free cash flow that can be reinvested.

Moving into the strategy execution. This slide really shows how the strategy is being executed across the organization with tangible results. And we continue to see progress in several areas, assortment development, omni growth, store expansion, marketing efficiency and cost competitiveness. So to just mention a few things from the quarter, starting with assortment. We do see continued strong development across our 5 consumer missions, i.e., the 5 niches. We also saw that January came in strongly. And here, we also saw a seasonal effect when the weather turned. We were able to also sell a lot of seasonal products that had slower growth in November, December. We've also kept assortment renewal high. We renew approximately 30% of the assortment every year, which really helps us to drive relevance.

On the profitable growing online business, we have seen a continued strong development versus business-to-consumers And the Clas Ohlson stand-alone part is growing 15% in the quarter, and now online sales represents 21% of our total sales in the third quarter. On the robust store network, we continue to see strong like-for-like development, which is obviously crucial. Also high customer satisfaction. And as we're now soon closing the year, we will add 8 new stores in '25, '26, slightly below the ambition of 10, but it's nothing dramatic. We have 7 stores planned now over the next few months. And our target that we announced today for next year is also, again, approximately 10 new stores for fiscal year '26, '27.

When it comes to customer communication, I wanted to highlight a survey that came out in Norway during the quarter where Clas Ohlson was awarded the strongest brand in retail in Norway. So the brand in the eyes of the consumers is actually now stronger than local brands like Norwegian, but also big other brands like IKEA. So we have a very solid position in Norway.

On the competitive cost base, we announced last quarter that we're increasing capacity but also efficiency in our logistics by investing more in our distribution center. And when it comes to sustainability, we have just signed a new agreement with PostNord. And here, we will have more free fossil-free transports to all our Nordic logistics hubs.

Going to the next point. For us, customer relevance is really at the center of the business and everything that we do. And I believe that a strong customer position is really one of the clearest proof points that the model is working. And as you can see on the slide, we continue to see strong customer trust, improving affordability and also high customer satisfaction. The NPS is dropping a little bit in the third quarter, which it usually does, given the high amount of volumes, but across the store network and our e-com, NPS remains very high.

So going to the next slide. We also know that and can confirm also for the third quarter that the growth is broad based. We do work with our 5 consumer missions to really win the 5 niches. And here in the quarter, all prioritized missions are contributing to growth. And this also confirms that our assortment strategy is working well, and we're less dependent on individual single product categories.

And then my final point is also just a few words about the January sales development. So we continue to see that we are strengthening our relevance throughout the year. January used to be a month where we have around SEK 600 million net sales for many years. And then over the last 3 years, we have really taken steps in the right direction, first, SEK 800 million, SEK 900 million. And this fiscal year, we came above SEK 1 billion in January. And again, I think that shows that a more balanced assortment means that the business actually becomes less dependent on seasonal peaks and that we can be relevant to our customers also in a month following the big peak season.

So with that, I'll hand over to Pernilla to take us through the financial development.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Kristofer. I will guide you through the financials of the third quarter. To begin with, net sales were up 6% in the quarter, of which 8% relates to organic sales increase, 1% related to our recent acquired subsidiaries and minus 3% relates to currency effects, 6% of the increase relates to like-for-like growth and 1% related to expansion of the store network. Online sales grew by 17% in total, including the acquired Phonelife and Reservdelaronline businesses. All in all, our business-to-consumer online sales developed very good. At the same time, we still have challenges in the Spares business-to-business, which is reflected in sales in other markets. For the 9-month period, total sales amounted to SEK 9.9 million, and the organic sales increase was 9%.

Looking at our home market. We had organic sales growth well above our long-term targets in all markets in the third quarter. We are pleased with all markets, but would like to underline the development in Finland with 9% organic growth in the quarter.

Also when it comes to macro trends impacting our business. We have seen a weaker NOK and a weaker U.S. dollar for quite some time now. The NOK has an immediate negative impact, which is not fully compensated by more favorable purchasing in U.S. dollar. Transportation costs remain at reasonable levels, which now is contributing to an improved gross margin, which we'll see on the next slide.

Input costs are favorable right now. And together with the previously mentioned transportation costs, these are the main explanation to the big improvement in gross margin by 2% to 46.8%. Currency impact was negative with weaker sales currencies partially offset by more favorable purchasing currencies. Please also note that the gross margin reflects our new reporting method nature of expense method, which we have informed about before.

When it comes to the income statement, we see a strong increase in operating profit at SEK 659 million and an EBIT margin of 16.2%, both of which we are at all time high in the third quarter. The increase in personnel expenses related to higher volumes in our logistics chain, wage increases and new stores. Other external expenses also increased in the quarter, mainly due to increased investment in marketing and due to the addition of the acquired businesses. The EPS for the quarter was SEK 8.09 and SEK 16.22 for the 9-month period.

The inventory is slightly down compared to the same period last year. The main factors behind the well-balanced inventory were higher efficiency, lower purchasing prices and currencies and higher sales. Cash flow for the 9-month period improved versus last year. Cash flow from operating activities totaled almost SEK 2.1 billion, an improvement from SEK 1.9 billion last year, mainly thanks to improved profit. Free cash flow for the period amounted to SEK 1.5 billion. Net debt to EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, was minus 1.3x. We maintained a net -- a strong net cash position.

And with that, I'm handing back the presentation to you, Kristofer.

Thank you, Pernilla. So moving into the events after the reporting period and our February sales numbers that we also released today. So we see that the continued positive sales development continues, reporting 9% organic growth now in February. And the growth continues to be broad-based with Norway having the highest organic growth at 11%, Sweden at 7% and Finland at 5% And we also see broad-based growth across our 5 consumer missions also in February. The store network is 6 stores higher in Feb versus last year.

Then moving into the summary. And looking at this slide that I do believe really shows the summarized Clas Ohlson case. So we have a strong brand, relevant assortment, efficient omni model and disciplined capital allocation. Also from the trend, I think we can see that the business is structurally stronger today than it was a few years ago. And of course, we maintain the focus on being really well positioned in our product niches, thanks to the consumer missions, really focusing on the needs-driven assortment and continuously delivering high customer satisfaction and then balancing the strength of the store network and also the profitable e-com growth.

So that summarizes a little bit where we are now across the third quarter. So with that, we'll open up for Q&A.

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

Congrats on another set of strong sales and earnings. Can I start asking about the margin outlook? If you look at the last few quarters now, we've seen both the gross and the EBIT margin rising by about 2 percentage points. And I'm curious on your view on the outlook here based on current freight and most importantly, the dollar rate. It seems to suggest that this has potential to continue. But is there anything that we should consider when we look at the quarters ahead here in terms of input costs and how that could impact the margins?

Yes. So if we look at the gross margin right now on the development, let's break it down into a few different buckets. So first of all, when it comes to currencies, as we've shown Pernilla's graph, the Norwegian krone has obviously strengthened over the last couple of weeks, but we've also seen that it's been volatile. So having a close look on the Norwegian krone versus last year, also in the fourth quarter is important. In April, we start meeting kind of a lower base on the Norwegian krone.

The U.S. dollar has slightly strengthened a little bit over the last couple of weeks, but all in all, as we also reported this quarter, we do see a help from the U.S. dollar, offsetting the part of the Norwegian krone effect. But net-net, currencies has been negative also in this -- slightly negative in the quarter. So keeping a close eye on that moving forward.

Second, when it comes to input costs, obviously, we have done a good job now over the last year to improve input costs. And we don't want to guide specifically on the development on that. But of course, we always work with being as efficient as we can in our buying processes. And the one other thing to keep an eye on is, obviously, the pricing development in the market. The U.S. dollar effect will be something that obviously benefits everybody in the market. And as always, we want to be very price competitive and affordable. So here, it's too early to tell what will happen with the price development.

And last but not least, to be clear on the crisis going on right now in the Middle East, there is no direct impact on our freight cost today. But of course, that develops by the day and week. So let's see how that continues, if there are any secondary implications moving forward. But right now, there's no impact on our freight costs. So those are some areas to look at as we look into the gross margin for the next quarter.

Very clear. And just a quick follow-up. Am I interpreting right that you have yet to see any real price pressure in your market because as you said, now everyone has been facing a weaker U.S. dollar and lower input costs. But there's no clear signs of price pressure among your peers.

I think over the third quarter, as always, November, December, obviously, was kind of promotion heavy. We haven't seen any structural big shifts in pricing, but we have heard others communicate and talk about in the market that there might not be a full impact of the dollar. So I think it's -- we haven't seen any big changes across Sweden or Finland now, but let's see how that develops.

Second question here on Finland, where you've seen a very strong improvement since October, but a little bit of slowdown here in the February sales. Can you talk a little bit about it? I believe you had a little bit of a relaunch in your Finnish ambitions. Can you talk a little bit about this and how you're seeing that progressing?

Yes. So we have, over the last, I would say, 18 months work deliberately on improving the performance in Finland. We started with a lot of work on taking out cost, slimming the store network. Then we have also done some assortment adjustments, rebuilt all the stores. And then as of the fall, we started to activate the brand a bit more and have done more in terms of pricing, promotion, et cetera. And we've seen the positive effect of that with the 9% organic growth across the third quarter.

As you say then, in Feb, the growth was 5% organic, so slightly below the third quarter. But in general, we see that the activities we have initiated and the work we do is helping us move in the right direction. So of course, the ambition is to continue growing also in Finland being the smallest market. But as I've said before, it won't be a quick fix, but our ambition is to win in Finland. And I do believe we have started to find a few things that work for us.

Very good. And just a final question. Your balance sheet, as you mentioned here, is very strong now. You have over SEK 2 billion in net cash, and that's after a recent acquisition and recent dividends as well. Can you elaborate a little bit on your thoughts on the use of proceeds here? I mean the payout, the dividend payout has only been around 50% in the last 3 years. Is that something you're looking at potentially increasing? Are you looking at considering buybacks? And what is your view on M&A now after the acquisitions of Spares, Phonelife and Reservdelaronline? Is that something you're looking at to continuing?

So as always, we want to have a very strong balance sheet. And then looking at kind of the capital allocation principles for us. We're obviously prioritizing investing in the core business with investments in DC and et cetera, new stores, refurbishing stores. So that's number one. Then we have, of course, done selective growth investments, M&A being one of those activities with the 3 acquisitions. And then third, obviously, it's about distributing the excess cash to our shareholders.

So we're trying to really work within that framework. And ahead of the fourth quarter, the Board will make a decision on the proposed dividend following this -- following where we are right now. So we'll come back on that on the fourth quarter, what will happen on the dividend.

Very clear. But can you just quickly say anything about M&A potential? Is that something you're looking at continuously. And then do you see medium-sized acquisitions as well? Or is it more smaller add-ons like you've done in the past?

So obviously, I think we have proven that M&A is part of the toolbox if the right opportunity arises. There is nothing here and now. But of course, we'll always keep track and look for opportunities. When it comes to the acquisitions we have done, they've all been done kind of in the same on the same platform, starting with Spares and then 2 add on acquisitions to strengthen that platform further.

So we're open. Nothing is assumed will happen, but we're open for it. But I also believe, as seen over the last few years, there are very few targets that actually meet our threshold, and the 3 we have done have done that. And of course, we're open to find more, but there's nothing I would count on.

The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB.

A few questions from my side. Going back to the input cost question. You said you benefited on that for some time. Could you talk a little bit more perhaps about how much is structural and what is cyclical and whether it can be repeated going forward? That's my first question.

Andreas, so looking at the input cost, we have done a lot of work over the last few years in terms of becoming structurally stronger when it comes to sourcing. And the key thing here has been to broaden our sourcing network. And today, we have our own organization based in Shanghai, in Vietman, now in India since a few months back, in Poland, and we're also looking at setting up an organization in Turkey. And then, of course, we're also sourcing as much as we can locally from the Nordics.

So I think one part of the improvement comes from us having even more options to choose from. I think the second part of the improvement also, of course, comes from scale. We have grown volumes significantly over the last few years. But then I would say when it comes to the more cyclical, obviously, there has been -- if you look at the producer price index, especially in China, that has been minus for a while. So of course, there are some cyclical elements also to the input costs. So I don't want to guide specifically on this moving forward, but I believe it's a combination of becoming structurally stronger and combined with also some cyclical elements, especially related to China.

Okay. And a follow-up on the M&A. What are your thresholds? And what are you looking for, be it product channels, geographies, et cetera? Can you give more color on that?

So I think the easiest way to talk about that is to talk about the 3 we have already done. So I think the key for us when we identified Spares, Phonelife, and Reservdelaronline as attractive targets, it's really been the combination of the strategic aspect of strengthening Clas Ohlson in one of the prioritized niches. And these companies, obviously, operate within connect, tech accessories and spare parts niche. So it's really about strategically strengthening us both in terms of assortment, customer relevance and the right pricing.

The second aspect of these companies have been that they are all profitable. They've been built as profitable companies as of day 1, there are no turnarounds and we've also reduced positive cash flow since a long time back.

And third, obviously, we also believe that all 3 of these are scalable. So they are in different parts of their journeys, but we all -- we believe they all have the potential to grow further, so that the stand-alone become an attractive investment.

So those are some of the key things that made us conclude that those were the right 3 things. So if we were to do this again, those are some of the important criteria. But again, I want to emphasize, there's nothing in the pipeline here now. It's an opportunity. We keep that door open. But obviously, in terms of capital allocation, number one is strengthening the core.

The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just a few follow-ups. Firstly, just you mentioned Middle East already, and if I understood it correctly, you see no sort of direct impacts. But do you see any impacts from rerouting and delays?

So at this stage, obviously, we need to be careful to conclude given how -- conclude exactly what it will look like. But if I look here and now today, we obviously have already rerouted our transportation from Asia following the issues in the Suez Canal, if it was 1 or 2 years ago. So we have already rerouted transportation around Africa. So there's not been any changes to that here now. But then as I said, of course, we are monitoring this to see whether there could be any secondary impacts following the other routes, so to say. But there are now no direct impact on the routes that our transportation is taking.

Yes. Perfect. Also, if you could maybe share -- I know you touched upon it, but share some more details on Norway and the strong performance there. What have you done differently? Or are you getting help from improving macro, maybe trying to sort of divide that a little bit? We've obviously seen pretty strong growth rates now for quite some time there.

I think as a starting point, the business model and the foundation and the core is exactly the same in Norway as in the other 2 countries. So we have the same strategy. We have the same core. Then what I think stands out in Norway is one area is, of course, the strength of the Clas Ohlson brand in the Norwegian market with the high trust that I referred to earlier in my presentation.

And second, I think the network and the availability in Norway, given that it's half the population than Sweden, and we almost have as many stores as in Sweden. Obviously, the strength of that store network gives a very strong availability for our customers, and it really helps us both on the store side and on the e-com side.

When it comes to more macro aspects and then the Norwegian economy is obviously strong. The consumer confidence has been lower in Norway over the last few years. But versus the other 2 markets, we still have seen a cautious consumer also in Norway, but maybe less impact versus a, for example, comparison with the Finnish market. So in general, the core is the same, but I think the strength of the core is even stronger in Norway than in -- especially in Finland, but also versus Sweden.

Perfect. And also maybe if you could help us better understand how to think about sort of comparison basis now going forward in terms of revenues here because March sales was very strong last year. I suppose it had to do also with the shift of Easter, whereas April was a bit lighter. So maybe just to sort of get the basis correct here. Was it the Easter shift that drove March last year?

Yes, you're right. So last year, the Easter shift drove more growth in March. Looking at the calendar now for this spring, Easter is still in April. So there's no shift, but it's a little bit earlier in April this year than it was last year, but no major shifts. So the same type of calendar as last year. Yes, so I don't think there's -- yes, so no major shifts as it was last year.

Okay. Then just a detailed question perhaps, but depreciation continues to be lower year-over-year. Is the current level now a good proxy for how to think about it over the coming year or so?

It's a lot of different things that affect the depreciation. I mean we have certain effects on IFRS 16, we renegotiate agreements and things like that, and that has an effect. And then there is depreciation that is a thing that is fully written off, and that has been a mix of things during the quarters. So if we look forward, I think that this is approximately a good mix.

Great. And then just finally, maybe if you could share any more details on your work with agentic commerce and whether relevant for your business. And if so, how your work is progressing.

Yes. So of course, this is high up on everybody's agendas, and there's a big hype of course, about this. What we -- our hypothesis and our paradigm is very much that the key thing is to have structure in terms of data structure, in terms of relevance, in terms of product pricing, product mix, et cetera. So we're doing a lot of work, as always, to ensure a strong base structure.

Then second, of course, there are a lot of examples flowing around, and we have seen things happening in the U.S. with ChatGPT starting and stopping with buy buttons, et cetera. So we're following this progress. We have chosen to work very closely with Google across the Nordics and obviously, are part of their AI search and work with that. And we believe the basis, if we can continue being as relevant as we are today versus the customers, we need to find ways of being as relevant if the market moves into agents actually shopping for customers.

However, we believe that won't change overnight. So as always, we don't want to rush into things, spending a lot of money on things that has yet to be proven, but we're very close to the development, and we're working very much with our core to ensure that we are well positioned no matter what happens. And this, of course, goes into development of the website and all of those things. So we're keeping a close eye on it. And of course, the development in this space is fast. So hope that's helpful.

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

And we do have a couple of written questions also. First one from Phillihp Bjerke. Could you provide some color on the split between price and volume growth in Q3 and in February?

Yes. So it's really a combination. And as we have seen that over the last year that there is a combination of volume growth and pricing, and we do not report this in detail. But it's a strong combination. And for us, it's important to ensure that we also keep driving volumes and in that sense, also capital efficiency by turning over higher volumes.

And we also have a question from Lucas, Lundbeck. You cite mix effects as a partial driver of gross margin improvement. Has the share of Clas Ohlson branded products in your revenue mix increased over the past 2 years, and is that a deliberate strategic priority going forward?

So let me divide that answer into 2 buckets. So the first one, I think this refers to the 9 months explanation of the gross margin improvement. And when we refer to mix here, the primary aspect is that the sales on Spares business-to-business has been lower over the last few quarters. So there is a structural mix effect because the gross margin on business-to-business is lower than business-to-consumer. So I think that's one of the key drivers of the mix impact on gross margin over the first 9 months.

Then to the second part of the question on private label. We obviously work with both private label development and strong brands and always see private label as a top priority, but we want to carry both and we want to grow both. So of course, private label is a way to drive uniqueness but also gross margin. But primarily, what we referred to in the report was linked to the business-to-business impact.

Great. So that was all the questions from the teleconference and from the webcast. So by that, I'm handing over to Kristofer for some final remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much for calling in. And before we close off, I also wanted to just make a quick reminder. We sent out a save the date for June 3, where we plan both to report the Q4 numbers during the morning. And then during the day, also hold the Capital Markets Day. So we haven't had a CMD since 2022. So we felt it's a good time to now update about the -- a little bit about the future. So I hope to see all of you there on June 3, and more details will follow on this as we get closer with exact timings and locations, et cetera.

So thank you very much for today. Have a good day.

Welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q2 2025-2026 Report Presentation. Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Kristofer Tonström and CFO, Pernilla Walfridsson. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Clas Ohlson's Q2 report presentation. My name is Kristofer Tonström and I'm CEO, and I'm here with Pernilla Walfridsson, CFO. So we'll today cover a business update, financial development for the quarter and then moving to events after the reporting period, then we'll summarize and then move into Q&A.

So starting with highlighting the second quarter. Overall, we continue to moving forward with fast pace and have seen strong both profit and sales growth in the quarter. So the second quarter came in at SEK 3 billion, which was an organic growth of 9% and the operating profit for the quarter came in at SEK 410 million, which then translates into an operating margin of 13.6%. And in absolute terms, it's up a bit more than 30% versus last year. When it comes to our online sales on the B2C side, we see continued strong sales growth in the quarter, and I'll come back to that in a second.

Also from a financial position point of view, we have seen -- we do have a solid financial position and also a cash flow that is up in the first half versus a year ago. Earnings per share amounted to SEK 4.85 versus SEK 3.63 last year. We've also reported the sales numbers for November today, and we'll come back to those in a second. But overall, we continue to see organic growth and it amounted to 6% in the -- during this month.

Then moving into the business update. Our strategic framework remains the same, and we are very much continuing to strengthen our competitive advantages and investing in our assortment brand and the customer meeting and doing everything to leverage this. We do have a differentiation strategy where we focus on our 5 distinct product niches where we want to be very strong. We also continue to do everything to become competitive across all parts of the organization and ensure that we do have the cost and efficiency that is in line also with discount competitors.

And our vision is to generate a strong free cash flow that we can then reinvest into our ABC. Then looking at the strategy execution for the second quarter. And at the top, we have the 3 growth drivers that we're focusing on. And at the bottom, we have the enablers. So starting with the first growth driver, which is assortment related. And here, an ambition is to have a relevant assortment all year around the prioritized niches. We have kept up a very high pace in terms of assortment renewal, and we have launched a lot of new products during the quarter, and we continue to see strong performance across all the 5 niches.

On the profitable and growing online business, the strong development continues. Looking purely at the clasohlson.com e-com, we grew actually 20% during the quarter. So continued high growth there. I'll also come back to the acquisitions that we have done in the events after the reporting period, but we are obviously increasing our online footprint via those two recent acquisitions.

Looking at the store network. We continue to build out, but also operate the store network that we have. And it's encouraging to see continued strong like-for-like development in the quarter. And also, in terms of store openings, we opened three new stores during the quarter and the high customer satisfaction remains and I'll also come back to that. When it comes to customer communication, Club Clas is an important priority for us. And during the quarter, we reached 6 million members. And we also continue to do -- we continue to invest in digital marketing and performance marketing to fuel growth, and we'll come back to that as well.

When it comes to the competitive cost base, here, we continue to work relentlessly on making the organization competitive across all parts of the business. And we also announced after the quarter ended a long-term investment in our logistics, and I'll also come back to that at the end. When it comes to sustainability and organization, also here, the acquisition of Reservdelaronline is a clear statement that we're also moving forward when it comes to the more circular business model of also being a spare part destination, and we'll talk a bit more about that later on as well.

Looking at the key things that we -- when we track our ABC, we continuously follow the product reviews that we get from our customers. And as always, we have a very high amount of reviews coming in. And we are consistently at high levels when it comes to the customers' satisfaction with our products. This is an important priority. When it comes to the affordability, also here, we are very competitive, and our customers really view Clas Ohlson as an affordable choice with the right products at the right price. Customer satisfaction remains at high level. and our Net Promoter Score during the quarter came in at 57.

Then looking at the 5 niches. This is an important priority for us. We do focus on those 5 niches, and we want to become best across each five. Looking at the quarter, we have seen growth across all parts of -- all 5 niches actually. And at the bottom, you also see the priority on spare parts, which we continue to also focus on.

So with that, I'll hand over to Pernilla to take us through the financial development.

Thank you, Kristofer, and good morning, everyone. It has been an eventful autumn, and I'm pleased to guide you through the strong financials of the second quarter. Looking at sales in the second quarter, total sales were up 7% and organic sales were up 9%. 7% of the increase relates to like-for-like growth and 2% relates to expansion of our store network Online sales grew by 8% in total. But as previously mentioned, business-to-consumer sales grew significantly more, at the same time as business-to-business online sales still is heavily impacted by the weak U.S. dollar.

For the 6-month period, the growth figures are similar to the quarter with organic growth of 9% and total sales growth of 7%. Sales per market follow a similar pattern as in the last quarter with extraordinary organic growth in Norway, continued strong sales in Sweden and positive development in Finland despite the relatively tough market. Also when it comes to macro trends impacting our business, we see a similar development as in the past quarter. Transportation costs remain at reasonable levels. Purchasing price and production capacity are favorable at the moment. The weak sales currency NOK continued to have an imitative negative impact. The U.S. dollar remains more favorable than the average for the last couple of years.

As I mentioned, input costs are favorable right now. And together with positive mix effect relating to price and product, we see a big improvement in gross margin by 2.6% to 48.7%. Please also note that as per the last quarter, the gross margin reflects our new reporting methods to the nature of expense method. Income statement shows a strong increase in operating profit at SEK 410 million and EBIT margin of 13.6%. The increase in personnel expenses relates to higher volume in our logistical chain, wage increases and new stores. The other external expenses also increased in the quarter, mainly due to increased investment in marketing.

The EPS for the quarter was SEK 4.85, an increase from SEK 3.63 last year's Q2.

As for the inventory, we see the usual build up for the third quarter sales period, which includes the Christmas sales. Compared to last year, we are on the same level despite new stores and more products, thanks to higher efficiency, lower purchasing cadences and higher sales. Cash flow for the first half of the year improved versus last year. Cash flow from operating activities totaled SEK 552 million, an improvement of SEK 530 million last year. Free cash flow for the first 6 months amounted to SEK 202 million compared with SEK 176 million last year, which is explained by higher operating result and change in working capital relating to accounts payable. Net debt to EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, was minus 0.7, so we maintained a net cash position.

And with that, I hand back the presentation to Kristofer.

Thank you, Pernilla. So now we will move into the events after the reporting period. And I'll start by talking a little bit about the acquisitions that we have announced and also the logistics investment and then moving into the sales numbers for November.

So starting with the two acquisitions. We do this to -- we announced this a couple of weeks ago, and we do this to further strengthen our presence across our prioritized niches. Specifically, when it comes to the acquisition of Phonelife and Teknikmagasinet, it's a way for us to further strengthen within the connect and enjoy your home niche and both via a bigger assortment and a stronger online presence. And the acquisition of Reservdelaronline is a way for us to further strengthen our presence across the spare parts.

So looking a little bit more into the details of those 2 companies. Both companies are strong online retailers that have grown profitably for many years. And the first one, Phonelife Teknikmagasinet has been around over the last 12 years and has been built with a very big focus on accessories to mobile phones. We do see this category as growing. Consumers buy less and less new mobile devices, but the accessories market is growing significantly, and we've seen that on the Clas Ohlson side as well. Phonelife, 2 years ago, we acquired the brand, the Teknikmagasinet, and since then, have seen the growth pick up further.

They offer 26,000 products in tech and tech accessories across the Nordics and also some additional European markets. The second company, Reservdelaronline has also been built specifically as an online retailer since 2017. And they are very focused on the niche -- spare part niche across garden machinery, et cetera. And today, they carry more than 8,000 spare parts in their own distribution center, but they also have access to more than 100,000 spare parts across the range. So strong brands partner with Reservdelaronline, and it's a good addition to the focus that Clas Ohlson has both across Garden machinery, but also when it comes to complementing with very relevant spare parts.

And then I'll hand over to Pernilla to talk a little bit about the transaction overviews for both of those acquisitions.

This is structurally similar for the total transactions. We have acquired 72% now, and we'll buy the remaining 30% after 3 years. Both transactions are financed through our balance sheet, cash payment. Beginning with Phonelife, the transaction values Phonelife at SEK 184 million, including an estimated earn-out for the period September to December 2025, with estimated sales of SEK 207 million for 2025 and EBITDA of SEK 18.4 million. Here the EBITDA multiple is 10x. We expect the transaction to be earnings accretive from day 1.

When it comes to the Reservdelaronline, the transaction values Reservdelaronline at SEK 45 million on a cash and debt basis. Looking at yearly EBITDA multiple, this correspond to 6x based on forecast net sales of SEK 59 million and EBITDA of SEK 7.5 million for 2025. Also, this transaction is fully financed with existing cash and is expected to be earnings accretive immediately.

With that, I ask you, Kristofer, to take over and comment on November sales.

Thank you, Pernilla. So just on -- to conclude on the acquisitions, it's also -- these are add-on acquisitions to the Spares Group that Clas Ohlson acquired 2 years ago. So we were going to run these companies as part of the Spares Group moving forward and thereby also get scale across the online businesses. So before moving into November, I also wanted to comment on the long-term logistics investment that we announced 2 weeks ago. So here, the Board has made a decision to invest between SEK 400 million and SEK 450 million in our current distribution center in Insjön and we do this to secure capacity for the future. We have seen significant growth over the last few years, and we want to increase our capacity and both extend the building and make it bigger, but also invest in a higher degree of automation within the DC.

And the ambition is to increase capacity with 15% to 20% but also to get efficiencies across the value chain. We have kicked this project off and the plan is to get going during the spring around March timings and we want to be ready with the rebuilds in the second half of '27. And the payback that we expect is that this will be fully -- full paid back within 4 years, which shows that we will get efficiencies out of this investment. And the investment itself will mainly impact the year '27 -- '26, '27. Also this investment is financed with our existing cash.

So with that, I'll move into the November sales development. So today, we also announced November and here, we saw sales amounting to approximately SEK 1.4 billion, which is up 6% organically versus last year. And it's -- as you can see on the graph here, it's also following a few strong years of organic growth. Looking across the markets, Sweden and Norway grew 6% and 5%, respectively. And it's also encouraging to see the second month in a row now where Finland grows 10% organically.

For the other markets, mainly related to the spares B2B side, we -- as for the previous months, we have seen a decline on this business, and here it's 27%. During the month, the store network increased or the store network is 6 stores higher than it was in November last year. So with that, we'll summarize and then move into Q&A.

So first of all, we do know that we're playing in a big, attractive and growing market. So the addressable market for Clas Ohlson across the 5 niches amounts to SEK 340 billion, and it's growing. That means that we have a market share of a bit more than 3% today. So we definitely see more growth to be had moving forward across the 3 markets. We have strong brand awareness. And looking at the prioritized Club Clas membership club, we have approximately 1/4 of the population today being members with Clas Ohlson.

So looking ahead, there's a clear path to continue value creating. We are well positioned across the product niches with a big, attractive market. We do focus on the needs-driven assortment, and we consistently deliver very high customer satisfaction. We also have the central store locations that we continue to invest in to further roll out new stores but also improve the -- improve the ones we have. We also have a full-scale e-commerce that's profitable, and we are also becoming more and more effective when it comes to marketing. And finally, we do have a strong financial position, and we focus on increasing earnings per share over time.

So with that, we will move into Q&A.

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

A couple of questions from my end. Can I start with the current trading? Because you say, on the one hand, you talked about a strong start to Christmas sales, but I've seen an interview here, you also complained a little bit about warm weather. Is one referring to November and the other one is referring to December? Or how would you just elaborate a little bit more on those comments?

Absolutely. So strong start to Christmas, for sure. So the Christmas assortment and sales leading up to Christmas is increasing significantly. When it comes to the other comment relates more to products related to heating, et cetera and it was prompted by a question whether the warm weather impacts us. So across those categories, sales is much lower, but it's by far compensated by the strong Christmas sales.

Okay. But is there any notable difference in your growth in November versus December? Or is that reading too much into it?

No. I think the key thing is I was relating all these comments to November. So across November, Christmas, the Christmas assortment, so string lights, Christmas trees, et cetera, we see strong growth, but also in November, obviously, weather-related products did not see a strong pickup given the warm climate across the 3 countries right now.

Okay. Very clear. Turning to margins. You had a tailwind here from lower input costs, but I assume that these will be a lot stronger going into Q3 and Q4 based on the lagging effects from a weaker U.S. dollar and lower transportation costs. And on the other hand, you're also facing much tougher comparisons on the gross margins. So how would you kind of weigh these effects when you look at margin outlook for H2?

Yes. So starting with the quarter, obviously, the gross margin improvement comes from, as Pernilla talked about, input cost obviously, so lower purchasing prices. And then second, there's also a bit of a mix effect given that the business-to-business business is slightly lower. We have seen the sales there, that has a mix effect given that the margins on business-to-business is lower. That said, obviously, in the quarter, the exchange rate effects were slightly negative. So despite a favorable U.S. dollar, it was offset by the Norwegian krona.

So looking ahead into the spring, it's important to remember the exposure to the Norwegian kroner. We need to move into April 2026 to start seeing a similar level of the Norwegian krone to where it is today. So the comparison -- comparables on the Norwegian krone remains fairly high in the next few months, whereas, of course, the U.S. dollar improvement is gradually going to -- or is already starting to help us. But we have an immediate effect of the high amount of sales in Norway, and that is offset by the dollar. But still a bit too early to say when that balance will start to become favorable from the dollar, but it's important to look at the Norwegian krone comparables also for the spring.

Okay. Very clear. Can I also ask -- I mean you now have almost SEK 1 billion in net cash, excluding lease obligations. How would you view the split here given that you now made 3 acquisitions in the past a little more than 2 years? How would your preference look for -- regarding future M&A or potentially increasing the yield to shareholders?

So obviously, it's clear that we want to continue to distribute at least half of EPS to our shareholders. That's a critical priority, of course, moving forward. Then the recent acquisitions is -- we obviously do that because we expect that also to be a strong return on that investment. And the acquisitions, the 3 we have done over the last few years are obviously companies that we believe strategically will complement Clas Ohlson, and there will also be a strong and good return on that investment.

So we always are open to look at opportunities. There are very few companies out there that meet those criteria. Now we have found 3, but looking forward, obviously, the priority is to continue to invest in the base business, our ABC, distribute cash too via the dividend. And then if there are opportunities, we will consider them. But it's not a -- yes, so I think that's the comment.

The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler.

Couple of questions. Could you share some additional details on the marketing spend in the quarter? Is the year-over-year increase more pronounced than we saw in Q1, for example? And to what extent have elevated marketing sort of been supporting the strong sales in recent months?

So overall, when it comes to marketing, we have talked about this a few -- for a few quarters now. And what we do is we work with dynamic performance marketing, which means basically that we buy traffic when we do see a strong return on that spend. So we do not limit it in the month. We actually buy traffic when we see that it's profitable to do so. And that spend needs to be obviously delivering a return. So in this quarter, it was slightly higher, and we have seen over a few quarters that the marketing spend has been slightly higher. That also relates to overall growth, but also we have seen over the last year how the Clas Ohlson e-com business has been significantly growing.

As I said before, during the quarter, we saw 20% growth on e-com. So obviously, the performance marketing is a driver of that. It's also important to remember that none of these costs are structural. It's basically something we decided to do when there is profitable traffic to be had but we can also equally turn it off if there's no traffic to -- that we judge would deliver a return. So we will continue working like that as long as it's the right type of investment to do.

Yes. And a follow-up on that in terms of marketing and how you drive the business. What investments are you making in agentic commerce? And how do you see that developing and maybe put that a little bit in perspective of sort of more traditional SEO marketing and so forth?

So overall, when it comes to marketing, looking at Clas Ohlson overall, we obviously have a very strong brand and the store presence for us is a key thing. We're building the brand by being very close to our customers. So the store is a big marketing vehicle. Then when it comes to the more bought marketing, we are mainly focusing on digital marketing and also we're leveraging the Club Clas membership club, where we communicate to customers that actually want to be communicated to.

So when it comes to agentic commerce, obviously, it's still early days. We are working closely with Google, and we are doing both investments, I mean, internally to strengthen SEO, et cetera, but when it comes to the more agentic commerce, it's still a bit too early to conclude what impact that will have. But we are working closely with Google and understanding how we can improve and become even more data-driven there.

Yes. Interesting. Just a few final sort of financial questions. I know that depreciation is down year-over-year in the quarter. Is this primarily a reflection of the previous write-downs of IT systems? Or is there anything else explaining that?

This is just -- I mean, we invest on an ongoing basis. And then we have all the investments that are fully written off. So this is just nothing special, just an ordinary part of our business.

And the write-downs were not....

Yes, so this is more on [indiscernible].

Yes. But I mean, is it fair to assume that depreciation will continue to be lower year-over-year. Now obviously, you will invest in the distribution center and so forth, but the rest of the business is growing but not depreciation. So I'm a bit curious whether that relates primarily to lower IT platform base, basically.

Well, it's not just not connected to that. It's more things are fully written off and then we add on new investments.

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. And then just finally for me, two quick questions relating to the acquisitions that you've done now of Phonelife and Reservdelaronline. Can I just confirm that this will be excluded from organic sales growth for the coming 12 months?

Yes.

Yes. And also in terms of how you account for it, you bought 70%, right? So will you consolidate the whole business and then report a minority interest? Or how will you account for the acquisition?

Exactly. Yes.

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

Yes, we do have one written question from Magnus Roman SP One Markets. He's wondering how much of the year-over-year gross margin increase was explained by changes in reporting method?

We have changed our reporting from Q1 '25-'26 to nature of expense method. So up until Q4 '24, '25, costs related to handling and distribution product that is in stores and at HQ have been included in cost of goods sold. But from Q1 '25-'26, these costs are allocated to personnel expenses, other external expenses, depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, and you will find recalculated data on our website regarding these, so you can see the change that we have done between the lines. This change has no impact on net sales and operating thus there are no impact on our financial targets.

Thank you, Pernilla. We don't have any more written questions, but I do see that there's someone queuing up in the teleconference. So we'll hand back to the Telecom Conference.

The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB.

On the competitive landscape, I mean, given that you have had the great performance now for quite some time. Do you see any changes how competition is behaving? And also can you mention a little bit about campaigning in general terms and whether companies are taking use of the weaker dollar?

So overall, when it comes to the competitive activity, we haven't seen any big changes. What we saw across, obviously, Black Week, as always, when it comes to Black Week and Black month, et cetera, there are lot of offers out there, but we don't have any consolidated data, whether that was more or less than last year, but of course, as always we've seen a lot of focus on that month. And so in general, no big shifts that we observed from competitive behavior. When it comes to the U.S. dollar, as you say, rightly so, the U.S. dollar will start to have a positive effect or has already started to across the market that are exposed.

So here, of course, we do track pricing across all our categories on a daily basis, and we have dynamically with our pricing and so they are always competitive. But so far, we haven't noticed any big changes to pricing in general but we're following that.

The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from DNB Carnegie.

Just a quick follow-up also. I note when you talk about this DC expansion, you talked about a capacity increase of 15% to 20%. But I also note that your sales have grown almost 40% in the last 3 years. So will this capacity increase of 15% to 20% will be enough? Or will you have to follow this up with additional investments over the next, say, 2 to 3 years?

No. So the capacity that we're investing in now are -- is what we believe we need also moving forward. So it's a combination, obviously, of a bigger building and then more automation to get efficiency across the value chain. We're obviously managing the volumes and the growth we have seen within the existing DC. So there is -- so this is to become both more effective and higher capacity. But the investment is done in a way where we believe that is going to support us also in the next few years.

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

Okay. Thank you very much for calling in this morning, and we will see all of you again when we report our third quarter in March. So thank you very much.

Welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q1 2025/2026 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Kristofer Tonström; and CFO, Pernilla Walfridsson. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Clas Ohlson's Q1 report presentation. My name is Kristofer Tonström. I'm the CEO, and I'm here with Pernilla Walfridsson, CFO.

So we'll go through a business update. Pernilla will take us through the financial development, and then I'll cover the events after the reporting period and then the strategy update and summary before we move into Q&A.

So overall, looking at the first quarter, we've had a strong start to the new year, and we have shown again that we can deliver both growth and profitability. Looking at some of the highlights, the first quarter sales came in at 10% organic growth and the operating profit came in at SEK 278 million, which is up 37% versus last year. And this resulted in an operating margin of 9.9%. Also cash flow was strong, coming in at SEK 468 million versus SEK 413 million last year. So the financial position is still strong with a net debt to EBITDA of 0.3, and we ended the quarter with a net cash position.

EPS came in at SEK 3.27, also that up versus SEK 2.3 last year. And today, we also reported the August numbers, and we saw a solid start also to the second quarter with 7% organic growth in August.

Moving into the business update and starting with our strategic position. We can -- we continue to execute on the strategy that we laid out back in '22. And we're doing everything to solidifying our competitive advantages related to our assortment, the Clas Ohlson brand and the customer meeting. And we are doing a lot of work to differentiate ourselves by focusing on our multiple niches and we are doing a lot of work to develop a scalable and also efficient operating model that's cost competitive. We measure ourselves versus the discounters and low-price players in the market.

And we want to generate a strong free cash flow that we can then reinvest into our ABC. So looking at the financial targets, we are overdelivering on the targets, both when it comes to sales and the margin in the quarter, and the financial position remains very solid.

Now looking at some of the highlights from the first quarter. We laid out three growth drivers for the year ahead. The first one is related back to our assortment, making it relevant 12 months a year. And here, we've had a continued high pace in terms of renewal. And we saw over the summer that we have seen strong performance both across the base business, seasonal products, but also niches. And we have also done a lot of work to become more flexible when it comes to purchasing. And we saw that we were able to meet the peak demand of seasonal products back in July when the weather turned very warm.

Second, on the profitable and growing online business. We see that the B2C channels show very positive development. Reported sales on e-com was plus 10%. But if we look in isolation on the Clas Ohlson part of the business, e-com was actually up 28% in the quarter. And the online-only assortment, which we have also worked on over the last few years is driving significant growth, and we now have more than 4,500 products that are web only.

Last but not least, on the growth drivers. We continue to work to building a more robust store network. In the quarter, we saw strong like-for-like development and also customer satisfaction remained very high during the summer months. And we are now preparing for even further rebuilds of more stores and also more store openings happening now in the second quarter. So the ambition to launch 10 new -- or add 10 net new stores this year remains as we move forward.

When it comes to the enablers, in terms of efficient customer communication, we keep working with a big focus on digital marketing, which is flexible and scalable. And it is supporting both online but also in-store growth. When it comes to the competitive cost base, here we continue to work with the -- across the organization to be competitive across all parts of Clas Ohlson and also not adding any structural costs, even though we're growing significantly.

Looking at the sustainability agenda and highlight here is that we see strong growth on spare parts, both on the Spares business, but also within the Clas Ohlson business. And here, the ambition is very much to deliver more and more sustainable business model where consumers buy products they really need, use for a long time, but also are able to repair.

Looking at the customer relevance and satisfaction. This is very much a few numbers that highlights the ABC, so we are very much in the sweet spot that we want to be in. Product reviews remain very strong. We get lots of reviews from our customers and the quality that the customers play back is that we have a very high-quality assortment.

When it comes to affordability, we continue to be competitive also versus the low-priced players in the market. And on the Net Promoter Score, we are still within very high levels across all the channels where we meet the customers with an NPS at 57% for the quarter.

So looking ahead, we are continuing the effort to strengthen Clas Ohlson across the five prioritized niches. We do look at ourselves as multi-niche players, and we could see across the quarter that we have been growing all prioritized niches and the work continues to further solidify ourselves across each of those five areas.

So with that, I will hand over to Pernilla to take us through the financial development.

Thanks, Kristofer, and good morning, everyone. Let's run through the numbers more in detail, but first, I would like to remind you of the changes in our reporting that comes into effect from this quarter. We have moved from the function of expense method to the nature of expense method. The main reason for the change is that this way of reporting profit and loss is how we already work internally and as a management reduced operations. This means simple way of working and more efficient processes. And we also believe it gives more transparent information on significant expense categories. This change has no impact on net sales and operating results and no impact on our financial targets. What you will see later on in the presentation is that it impacts our gross margin.

Looking at the performance during the quarter, we can conclude that sales were strong with total sales up 7% with 10% related to organic growth and minus 3% relates to currency effects. Like-for-like sales was up 7% and online sales, where as Kristofer mentioned, strong during the quarter, totaling SEK 542 million. Looking at the home market. We had strong organic growth figures across the board, but obviously, with extreme strong figures in Norway. As previously communicated, sales in markets outside Sweden, Norway and Finland, which is dominated by Spares business to businesses were down by 35% due to changing market dynamics following the weakening of the U.S. dollar.

When it comes to macro trends, we are less concerned about transportation costs at the moment as they have remained at a reasonable level, even if there has been an increase in spot prices during the summer. The U.S. dollar remains at lower level than in the last couple of years, which, of course, is positive for us as it is a big purchase in currency. Impact from NOK continues to be negative and unedited due to a large share of sales in Norway.

As I mentioned, our gross margin looks a bit different than we are used to due to a change in reporting method. All historical figures are, of course, available in previous reports. No matter reporting method, gross margin improved significantly from last year. The main factor behind the increase was lower purchasing costs. Currency effect was slightly positive too as positive effect from lower purchasing [challenges] and hedging compensated for the negative impact from selling currency NOK. But all in all, gross margin increased by 1.4 percentage points to 45.7%.

The income statement shows a record strong Q1. Operating profit amounted to SEK 278 million compared to SEK 203 million last year. Also note that we did not have any items affecting comparability in the quarter. The EPS for the quarter was SEK 3.27, an increase from SEK 2.3 in last year's Q1.

If we look at the inventory, the total inventory level is down compared to Q1 last year and at a very good level despite more stores compared to previous year. We are still very pleased with availability of product, and we think the stock in trade is fresh and well balanced. Cash flow for the quarter was strong. Cash flow from operating activities totaled SEK 378 million, an improvement from SEK 346 million last year. Free cash flow amounted to SEK 306 million compared to SEK 247 million last year. Since we are highlighting the free cash flow, I would also like to mention that we define free cash flow as cash flow after investing activities, including amortization of lease liabilities.

Net debt to EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, was minus 1x, so in other words, a maintained net cash position.

And with that, I will hand back the presentation to you, Kristofer.

Thank you, Pernilla. So moving into the events after the reporting period and the August sales numbers that we reported today. So all in all, another month now of about the SEK 1 billion in sales with a 7% organic growth, and we saw currency effects of 2% (sic) [-2%]. So solid development both in Sweden and Norway with 8% organically and a flat development in Finland.

When it comes to the store network, we were up 9 stores versus the same period last year. So overall, a solid start also to the second quarter sales-wise.

So then moving into the summary. So first of all, we are targeting a big and growing market. So we still see a big potential forward. The overall market opportunity for Clas Ohlson is SEK 340 billion across the market, Sweden, Norway and Finland, which means that we, today, have just above 3% market share. The brand is strong. We have approximately 1/4 of the population across these markets as members include Club Class, and we're now approaching 6 million members in Club Class, so all in all, the market potential is big, and we have shown over the last few years that we are able to progress across those five missions.

So when we look ahead, we do see a clear path to continued growth and value creation. We are well positioned across those niches. And as I just outlined, they represent a big market opportunity. We do see profitable growth across all the niches and also all the sales channels, which is a competitive advantage that we're able to let the customers choose whether they want to convert in a store or online. We also have a very needs-driven product assortment and high customer satisfaction. We continue to renew the assortment and also the fact that we're focusing on needs-driven products. We also believe that no matter what happens with the household spending and market economy, we should be relevant also moving forward.

We also have very central store locations, which enables a full-scale e-commerce. We have high volumes flowing from the stores when it comes to the online business. And we've also proven that the marketing is effective to drive online growth development, and we continue to work to solidify the store network.

And last but not least, we do have a high cost focus. And we are doing everything to be in a position that we can do more work in terms of investing in growth initiatives.

So with that, we will now move into Q&A.

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

Yes. Can I start asking a little bit about the gross margin. Very strong here, up 140 basis points year-over-year. First thing, just you mentioned the hedges here that had a positive impact. I'm just trying to understand whether this was an unusual positive effect that you saw or if the hedge is merely mitigated what would otherwise have been a negative effect? That's, I guess, my first question.

No. So there was a positive effect from the hedges. But if you zoom out, I would say that the biggest driver of the gross margin improvement was the purchasing prices. And then if you look at the net effect of currencies, the combination of the U.S. dollar improvement, the hedges were able to offset the Norwegian krone, but I'm not sure if it was an unusual effect in terms of the hedges. We can have a look at that separately, but that was -- that helped.

Okay, okay. Fair enough. And also looking at how currencies have continued to evolve and as well as transportation costs, et cetera. I'm assuming that these tailwinds that you saw in Q1 should be even more pronounced in the coming quarters, all else equal, based on kind of current spot prices. Am I correct in that? Or do you see this quarter as being unusual?

No, you're correct in that we will get more tailwind everything else equal, obviously, especially related back to the dollar and the transportation. That said, it's important to remember also that the Norwegian krone has established itself on a fairly low level. So also looking at the next few months, we have to look all the way until April '26 to start meeting the same levels as we are today. So there's going to be a continued pressure on the Norwegian krone for the remainder of the month this fiscal, if it remains at SEK 0.93, SEK 0.94 versus the Swedish krona.

And as we saw in the first quarter, we were able to offset that effect and we hope that we're going to be able to offset that effect forward as well. But there will still be some pressure there, but gradually, of course, the impact of U.S. dollar and transportation will help more as we move further into the year.

Very clear. Can I also ask about store openings? I note that last year, middle of the year, kind of from March to September, you opened 12 new stores. And since then, it's been more limited with store openings. You talk about 10 or 10 stores net for this financial year. I think you have five contracts so far. How confident are you that you can sign another five stores and open another five stores before the end of April? And what is your view in general on store openings? Are you pleased with the stores -- the recently opened stores? Do you think that this is the way to go going forward to continue with the kind of 10 stores per year in store openings?

So -- yes, so first of all, obviously, you're right that we have five contracts. We're still comfortable on the TAM. And then as we have said before, if it's plus 1 or minus 1 versus that ambition, we're still comfortable. Obviously, we are very picky when it comes to store openings. We are very happy with the store network that we have added to the business over the last few years. We consider the portfolio of new stores are adding value and delivering well. And then that, combined with the strong like-for-like development really encourages us to continue store expansion.

But again, we are very picky. We have lots of ongoing discussions right now across the countries. So we're confident in finding the right locations, but we always go for quality rather than quantity here, and we want to see a strong return on the investment that we put into a new store. So overall confident, but as always, we are very picky and go for quality versus quantity.

Very clear. Finally, I just have to ask, as you said here, you're very much overdelivering on your targets. You have a margin target of 7% to 9%. You're now on a rolling 12-month basis at 10.5%. Is there anything that you see here over the next year or so that suggests that this margin should return to the margin range of 7% to 9%? And why are you sticking to that target?

So there's nothing in the near term that shows that we should go down, and we're not doing any initiatives from our end to dilute the margin with pricing or promotion, et cetera. And then, of course, the biggest volatility for Clas Ohlson is as always, currencies. We have had a pretty big headwind for a few years now when it comes to the macro factors. Now we're, as we talked, about starting to see some tailwind, which, of course, will help that. But all in all, we do not see any signs that we will go down from this level.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments. The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I'm Erik Sandstedt with Kepler Cheuvreux here. I got a couple of questions as well. Firstly, in terms of marketing, you mentioned that marketing costs were higher in the quarter. Should we view that as more of a one-off effect or a sort of sustained higher level going forward?

Yes, Erik. No, the market increase that we saw this quarter was similar to what we reported last quarter. And it is something that we expect to remain, but it will vary a little bit. We are -- we have allocated more and more of the marketing spend into digital channels, which means that we are buying more based on available traffic out there and then on preset profit levels. So we will continue to spend as long as we see a strong ROI. So of course, there could be market dynamics that impacts this, but it's very much the flexible and scalable digital marketing that is higher in the quarter now versus last year, but we will continue working with that methodology because it works extremely well for us, and we saw that in both online numbers and also the overall growth.

So it's hard to tell exactly where we'll land quarter-by-quarter, and we work with it flexibly -- in a flexible way each month. And as long as there's profit to get, we will continue.

Perfect. Great. Then just a question on the online business. I know you elaborated a little bit on it. But could you say anything more about the profitability of the online business, both how it compares to the store margin, but also to what extent it contributed to the strong profit development in this quarter?

So overall, we have had that ambition for many years now that we want to have a profitable and growing online business. So as you know, we do not report profit per channel. But what we can confirm is that the online business is very profitable. And we do not see any issues in letting the customer choose sales channel, i.e., it is not a big difference between channels and then, of course, can vary in months and quarters. But all in all, we're very happy with the profitability in our online business. And that we do see as a continued competitive advantage moving forward.

Great. Then finally, just a question on August sales. It was -- sort of the growth rate was slightly lower than we saw in July and August, still above your target though. But could you share any more light on this? Was the summer months sort of exceptionally strong thanks to weather or what sort of were the difference between June, July versus August?

Yes. So first of all, August, we view it as another solid month with 7% organic growth. Then as you highlight, of course, growth was higher in July. And I guess the comment on July could be that if you look at the underlying business, we saw a similar organic growth rate and then we had a big effect of the seasonal products that came in on top. So the underlying growth was strong in July and June. And then in August, obviously, there is less seasonal effect.

August is also very much of a transition month for us as we move away from the summer season focus, we move into back-to-school, autumn, et cetera. So it's always a quarter where we shift focus or sorry, a month where we shift focus. And then as always, months -- the growth rate per month varies a little bit, but we still view August as a solid performance.

Well done on a strong quarter.

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

Yes, we do have a couple of written questions from the webcast. I'll start off with a question from one investor that we have touched upon already regarding the profitability target. And if there would be -- makes sense to at least remove the floor of the margin target. Comment on that, Kristofer.

As I outlined before, the margin, our ability to deliver a solid margin is, of course, a huge focus, and we do not see anything that will take this down in the near term but the margin target is still the same as it's been also for this year.

And we have a couple of questions from [indiscernible] representing Watch Media in Norway. First -- firstly, any comments on the strong growth [indiscernible] we've seen in the last couple of years.

Yes, overall, the -- obviously, we have picked up significantly when it comes to our sales. If you go back five, six years, we have like-for-like of 0% to 1%. And then over the last few years, we've seen that we've raised the minimum level significantly, and we've gone from approximately SEK 9 billion to SEK 12 billion now in the last three years. Obviously, it's a combination of the factors that we talked about with assortment, the growing online business and the store network. And all in all, if you look at the Club Class numbers, we do have a bigger and more active member and customer base. So we have kind of raised ourselves to the next level. And then as always, it's a combination of the factors that interact.

And a second one from Watch Media, any particular comments on the development in Norway as it is significantly higher revenue per capita in Norway compared to Sweden, for instance.

The Norwegian business, obviously, is very strong and it continues to perform really well. We are -- from a brand point of view, extremely strong in Norway. We've been -- we're seen as one of the strongest brands in Norwegian retail. So when it comes to the growth drivers in Norway, it's very much similar to what we've seen in Sweden. So the same factors impact but then, of course, per capita, we do have almost the same number of stores in Norway as we have in Sweden despite the half more or less of the population in Norway.

So the brand is incredibly strong. The Norwegian team has done an excellent job in meeting customers, being relevant every day in each of the stores and also the e-com business are supported. So the strength of the Norwegian business is built on the same foundation as other markets. But obviously, it's performed tremendously now. And we will do everything we can to keep that momentum.

And lastly, from Watch Media, a question about Clas Ohlson's potential and -- for further local presence in rural areas. And if you see any limits to market potential in terms of smaller cities, et cetera.

And I think here, Norway is an interesting example. In Norway, we are -- as I said, we do have almost the same number of stores as in Sweden, which means that we are performing extremely well also in smaller cities. And in Sweden, we have been more focused on the bigger cities, but we have also started to open stores in slightly more rural areas. And of course, that's an opportunity for us in Sweden, but especially in Norway, we've been able to succeed with that in a good way.

And the final question from the webcast is a question from Peter asking whether we want to comment anything on the slightly lower number of product reviews in the quarter.

Yes, well spotted. So yes, slightly lower number of reviews. At the same time, though, if I look at the absolutes here, I think we are -- compared to the market, we have extremely high levels, and we get reviews on a huge part of the assortment. I don't know any specific reasons for why there was a slight drop in terms of number of reviews that was especially in the fourth quarter. We saw it pick up a bit in the first quarter. So we are obviously encouraging our customers to give reviews. So there is no specific reason. But in general, the base level is very high, and we do get a lot of feedback from our customers on a going basis, which helps us continue strengthening the assortment.

And that was the final question from the webcast, so I'll hand back to you, Kristofer, for some final words.

Okay. Thank you very much for taking the time this morning, and now we obviously will start to gradually move from the important autumn season into the very important Christmas season. So everybody is doing everything now to ensure that we can meet customers and the big inflows now across also the important months ahead. So we'll see each other in December when we report our second quarter. So thank you very much.